Free Republic

Lost amidst all the mainstream media furor over what President Trump said about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, when he said it, and who he condemned is any real analysis on their part about why that violence occurred in the first place. Specifically why were the state and local police ordered to stand down, allowing the white nationalists and Antifa groups to clash.Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe claimed that the state police were ordered to stand down because of stashed  weapons caches around Charlottesville and because militiamen on the scene were better armed than the police. An investigation (something the MSM...

Updated 17 Aug 2017 at 6:20 AM In the aftermath of violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, progressive activists nationwide have demanded, and in some cases illegally carried out, the tearing down and removal of statues and monuments to Confederate leaders and soldiers on public space. Now Black Lives Matter activists have gone even further — going so far as to call for a ban on all Confederate imagery — even in private possession. Inspired by Germany’s post-war laws banning any and all Nazi imagery, Black Lives Matter activists on Twitter called for a similar ban on...

History proves you cannot appease Marxist/fascist/socialist/globalist totalitarians. They will never be satisfied and will never stop. Trump is absolutely correct. If you allow them to tear down these historical Civil War monuments, then they’ll be coming after Washington and Jefferson next. In fact, they’ll be coming after the American flag, our national anthem, our Judeo-Christian heritage, the Bible, and anything to do with the founding of this great nation while leaving the institution of slavery intact. And that includes the constitution itself. It did not ban slavery and must therefore be destroyed. And they will continue destroying monuments, burning books,...

A crowd of ignorant protesters pulled down a bronze Confederate statue that stood before a county government building in Durham, North Carolina — the angry national backlash to the Charlottesville brouhaha over the Robert E. Lee monument. This is not how civil societies operate. And yet this is what the left has brought, and now cheers. What’s next — burning books with offensive content? Burning books written by those who used to own slaves? At the very least, museums will have to go

There's a massive amount of commentary today on the drive to remove monuments related to the Confederacy. Statues of generals, political leaders, and prominent citizens during that period in history are coming down all over the South following the violence in Charlottesville. Monuments that remind local citizens of their ancestors who died in the Civil War are also being removed. In truth, Charlottesville is an excuse to do what activists have wanted to do for decades; remove every last reminder that there was, at one time, an independent nation on the American continent based on the idea that humans could...

The city of Baltimore took down some Confederate statues on Wednesday morning. Similar statues have divided opinion throughout the country, with those supporting their retention stating that they mark US civil war history. Those against say they are racist symbols that celebrate slavery.

Free speech is under assault because of a three-step argument made by the advocates and justifiers of violence. The first step is they say that the validity or invalidity of an argument can be judged solely by the ethnic, sexual, racial, or cultural identity of the person making the argument. The second step is that they claim those who say otherwise are engaging in what they call “verbal violence,” and the final step is they conclude that physical violence is sometimes justified in order to stop such verbal violence. So let’s examine each of these three steps in turn. First,...

Last weekend, I watched with horror as events in Charlottesville unfolded. Having served as North Carolina Attorney General for 16 years, I am all too familiar with the racism, bigotry and full-out white supremacy that exist in corners of our society. But it was shocking to watch these elements displayed so publicly — venom and hatred shamelessly spewed in epithets. My stomach sank to learn that a peaceful counter-protester had been killed and many others injured as the hatred morphed into violence. It started with a monument, stone and metal, inanimate and yet more provocative now than ever. Charlottesville could have been...

Councilman Mark Whitaker says he wants city leaders to consider banning racist groups from protesting in Portsmouth. Whitaker sent an email Tuesday to City Council members, City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton and City Attorney Solomon Ashby requesting that the group discuss the issue at the Aug. 21 public work session. The councilman said he made the request in light of “the tragic events in Charlottesville and other issues across the country involving White-Supremacist, White-Nationalist, Neo-Nazi, and other hate groups with a history and pattern of perpetrating violence on citizens.” On Saturday, a white-supremacist gathering in Charlottesville turned deadly when a...

The left is on record stating "you never want to let a serious crisis to go to waste," and this recent high-visibility incident is no exception to their rule. What exactly IS this whole event all about anyway? A single death of a protester? Dozens of people are murdered in Chicago most months, with barely a raise of an eyebrow. Black lives matter so much, I guess. So, this isn't really about a death at the hands of another person, now is it? For those with brains who are paying attention, and who know the tactics of the left, we...

A Gwinnett County judge and longtime local politician has been suspended after making controversial Facebook posts about protests over Confederate memorials in Charlottesville, Virginia, and elsewhere. Judge Jim Hinkle — a magistrate judge who served as mayor of the city of Grayson for more than two decades before retiring in 2013 — took to Facebook on Saturday to label the Charlottesville protesters “snowflakes” with “no concept of history.” On Tuesday morning, he followed that missive with another post, this one comparing “the nut cases tearing down monuments” to the so-called Islamic State. A few hours after that post — which...

For eight months Richard Spencer has vexed residents of Alexandria, Va., who despite writing "hate has no home here" on his sidewalk have found there's no way to force the white nationalist to leave. The far-right organizer played a key role in last weekend's violent events in Charlottesville, Va., reviving his national profile and leading to another rally outside his rented northern Virginia home. But finding a way to force Spencer out of a rented two-floor space serving as both residence and political hub has been fruitless. "We can't just read his tweets and arrest him and remove him, which...

The official Twitter account of Black Lives Matter and the organization’s Chicago branch have announced that all Confederate groups, flags and statues “should be illegal” in the United States. Government officials should look to Germany’s decision to outlaw “the Nazis, their symbols, salutes” and flags after World War II, the racial activist group says. The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter issued two tweets on Monday afternoon related to Confederate symbolism.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GA (CBS46) - Former Georgia House Minority Leader and candidate for governor of the state Stacey Abrams is calling for the Confederate carvings on Stone Mountain to be removed. Abrams tweeted that the carvings is a "blight on our state and should be removed". She also tweeted that "Confederate monuments belong in museums where we can study and reflect on that terrible history, not in places of honor across our state". The Confederate Memorial Carving has images of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and were not complete until a dedication ceremony...

The founders carefully and deliberately defined the First Amendment so that only a village idiot at the time could mistake its meaning. "Congress shall make no law..." is about as clear a statement of intent as can be found in the document.

"No Free Speech for Fascists!" It's a motto you see on pre-printed signs at protests, including at yesterday's rallies in reaction to the violence and death in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. Paired with a flood of invective against the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for the group's support of Unite the Right's right to stage a rally at the city's statue of Robert E. Lee in the first place, they make for a troubling trend. Support for the ACLU has been on the uptick from the left of late, thanks to Executive Director Anthony Romero's decisive legal maneuvering and online...

Actually, white nationalist speech is protected under the First Amendment, as is all “hate speech,” because there’s no such thing as “hate speech” in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence. How many primers on free-speech law need to be posted on the Internet before people absorb this very basic fact? I’m less annoyed at Patrisse Cullors, who’s obviously pushing this lie as part of a political agenda, than I am at Katy Tur, who views her profession through a heroic lens and is ostensibly there to fact-check. If someone’s spouting misinformation about the First Amendment (of all things) right in front of you,...

Seconds after President Trump’s Monday remarks finally calling out the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists by name, CNN hosts and panelists made clear that there was nothing Trump could have said that would have satisfied them, excoriating him for not going far enough and announcing “policy in terms of addressing this.” Inside Politics aired during and immediately after the President’s statement and Bloomberg’s Margaret Talev got the first crack, slamming Trump for not doing “outreach to people not white or who might feel that they were on the victimized end of the message that the protesters were carrying.”Never Satisfied: CNN...

In the wake of a violent white supremacist rally in neighboring Virginia, House Speaker Michael E. Busch said Monday it’s time to take down Maryland’s most prominent Confederate-era monument. Busch said the statue of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney — author of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to black people — should no longer preside over the front lawn of the Maryland State House.“It certainly doesn’t belong there,” said Busch, an Anne Arundel County Democrat.“It's the appropriate time to remove it,” he said. Leaving it in place after white supremacists...