Free Republic

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, I know as an adult and as a decent, nice person, I know as a person with manners and sense of propriety that you're not supposed to comment on the way people look. In fact, I'll tell you a little story for those of you who are listening here but never had a chance to hear my mother call this program or in other ways be involved in my life. She passed away in 2000. Early on in this program's history, likely the first sixmonths of the program in 1988, somehow we ended up discussing...

If you want to know why everything is going wrong for Obama and the Democrats, from Obamacare to Ukraine, the answer is simple. Liberals got everything they asked for, from stimulus to “reset.” I know: Crimea River. But we conservatives only ever get a smidgen of what we want. Even back in the golden age of Reagan, we Reaganites weren't at all sure what we'd got in Ronaldus Magnus. Could he get through a presidential debate without putting a foot in it? Would supply-side economics really end the 1970s stagflation? Was SDI going to end up a Star Wars fantasy?...

Iran Executes Two for ‘Perversion’ Third dealt death sentence for ‘insulting the prophet’ Iran executed two gay men on Sunday for the crime of “perversion” and has sentenced a third individual to death for “insulting the prophet,” according to human rights activists tracking the situation. The head of Iran’s judiciary department in the northern city of Rasht announced on Sunday that two homosexual men had been executed for “perversion,” which is considered a severe crime under Iran’s hardline Islamic law. The executions come less than two months after Iranian authorities publicly hanged 40 individuals in a two-week period. Iran is...

In an interview with Salon, the president of American Atheists reviewed the decision of the American Conservative Union (ACU) to rescind his organization’s invitation to CPAC. David Silverman charges that the ACU is both “pretending” that “atheists aren’t relevant” and that “Christianity still holds water in American society.”When asked about his reported “pledge” to “attack the very idea that Christianity is an important element of conservatism,” Silverman responded that while “I did say that I was going to attack the idea that Christianity and conservatism were inseparable,” he was not waging “an attack on people of faith.” “I wanted to...

A band of Dartmouth College students has sent an extortion letter to the school’s administration. The group, self-described as “concerned Asian, Black, Latino, Native, Undocumented, Queer, and Differently-Abled students,” wants Dartmouth to yield to its demands under threat of “physical action.” The un-named collection of radicals demand a number of steps be taken by Dartmouth to “eradicate systems of oppression as they affect marginalized communities on this campus.” Taken verbatim, their list of demands are as follows: • Racial enrollment quotas for Black and Latino students to “at least 10 percent each” • “Ensure that 47 percent of post-doctoral students...

Those pursuing three authoritarian agenda items once considered unthinkable emanating from an administration which has become openly hostile to what once were our basic freedoms can already hang “Mission (Partially) Accomplished” banners on their walls.First, there are the ongoing revelations about the government’s accumulation of digital mountains [1] of personal information on citizens’ daily lives.If there’s a positive result from this, it would be that many Americans have become a bit more careful about their data trail. But the good news ends there. Our emails, Facebook posts, text messages and other communications are subject to easy scrutiny by government...

This short book rewrites the history of modern American liberalism. It shows that what we think of liberalism today – the top and bottom coalition we associate with President Obama - began not with Progressivism or the New Deal but rather in the wake of the post-WWI disillusionment with American society. In the twenties, the first writers and thinkers to call themselves liberals adopted the hostility to bourgeois life that had long characterized European intellectuals of both the left and the right. The aim of liberalism’s foundational writers and thinkers such as Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis...

VIDEO: Conservatism vs Liberalism mini-debate between Gov. Scott Walker (WI) and far-Left Gov. Peter Shumlin (VT). Walker cleans Shumlin's clock and shows what kind of candidate Walker might be in 2016.

If this Harvard University student got her way, free speech on campus would be abolished and professors with dissenting views fired, because radical leftism is the only permissible political philosophy and the First Amendment is a barrier preventing modern colleges from fulfilling their proper role as indoctrination camps. Her name is Sandra Korn. She is a senior at Harvard and columnist for the Harvard Crimson. In a recent column, Korn unambiguously insisted that the university should stop guaranteeing professors and students the right to hold controversial views and pursue research that challenges liberalism.

Cancel the philosophy courses, people. Oh, and we’re going to be shuttering the political science, religion, and pre-law departments too. We’ll keep some of the English and history folks on for a while longer, but they should probably keep their résumés handy. Because, you see, they are of no use anymore. We have the answers to the big questions, so why keep pretending there’s anything left to discuss? At least that’s where Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, seems to be coming down. Her school invited a famous left-wing Princeton professor, Cornel West, and a famous right-wing Princeton professor,...

This week brought two sharp reminders of what our country will increasingly look like should Democrats be given complete control of our lives. Here’s why we cannot give up the fight for our freedoms. Last month the Democrat Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, told a public radio host he thought, “….extreme conservatives” who are “right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay,” have “no place in the state of New York.” Honesty like this, even on a public radio station few people actually listen to, is rare for any politician especially a Democrat. Given the size of his audience Cuomo was likely using...

In Chapters twenty and twenty-One of his excellent book Liberalism is a Sin, Father Felix Sarda Y Salvany, a noted philosopher of his day, writes: "Liberalism never gives battle on solid ground; it knows too well that in a discussion of principles it must meet with irretrievable defeat. It prefers tactics of recrimination and, under the sting of a just flagellation, whiningly accuses Catholics of lack of charity in their polemics. This is also the ground which certain Catholics, tainted with Liberalism, are in the habit of taking. Let us see what is to be said on this score. We...

Yesterday our old friend Craig Shirley, chronicler of Ronald Reagan’s five-decade war of ideas against liberalism and communism, defined the national Republican Party this way in an interview with Brietbart’s Michael Patrick Leahy: "The Washington Republican party is no longer a political party in the way we understand political parties. It more resembles a crime family than a movement of ideas." Shirley was commenting on the charge that the reason Congress has not gotten to the bottom of the IRS targeting of conservatives and Tea Party movement groups is because the establishment GOP wants the IRS to hobble these groups...

The world teeters on the precipice of entering either a lasting era of darkness, or an era of jubilant rebirth and renewal. If just one more voice is required to fuel the flames of freedom, which I believe is the path to the latter, I offer my voice for that cause. Just like so many of you across this once and still great nation, I am jaded by the lack of representation, despite an ever burdening sea of regulation and taxation, as well as a cultural assault which seeks to undermine our traditions and drive a wedge between every demographic...

One year ago today, Intellectual Takeout had one of its most illuminating Facebook posts and corresponding reactions. Ever. Being Valentine’s Day, we decided to share definitions of the “four loves” from C.S. Lewis’ book of the same name. The first love we shared was Affection, which is best exemplified in the love of parents for offspring and offspring for parents. It got lots of likes, though more from females. All in all, predictable. The second love we shared was Friendship. Here’s what we wrote in our Facebook post: And the second love? Friendship. “When either Affection or Eros is one’s...

The trouble began when Paramount, nervous about how audiences would respond to Aronofsky's fantastical world and his deeply conflicted Noah, insisted on conducting test screenings over the director's vehement objections while the film was a work in progress. Friction grew when a segment of the recruited Christian viewers, among whom the studio had hoped to find Noah's most enthusiastic fans, questioned the film's adherence to the Bible story and reacted negatively to the intensity and darkness of the lead character. Aronofsky's Noah gets drunk, for example, and considers taking drastic measures to eradicate mankind from the planet. Hoping to woo...

Created by young Slovak sculpture Martin Hudáček, the work is meant to capture 'the devestation' abortion can bring to a woman, and the 'pain, mercy, and forgiveness' for those who -sadly- chose to terminate a pregnancy... The Roman Catholic artist added that said the sculpture also 'expresses hope which is given to believers by the One who died on the cross for us, and showed how much He cares about all of us.' Amen to that... LifeSite News   Rose and Her Lilly   h/t UE McGill

Chrissie Hynde's daughter 'superglued herself to fellow fracking protester' Natalie Hynde, whose father is musician Ray Davies, is on trial for the incident at the main gate of energy firm Cuadrilla's test drilling plant near Balcombe, West Sussex By Hayley Dixon, and agencies 2:26PM GMT 11 Feb 2014 Natalie Hynde, the daughter of The Kinks singer Ray Davies and The Pretenders' star Chrissie Hynde, superglued herself to a fellow anti-fracking protester outside the main gate of an exploratory oil drilling site, a court has heard. Miss Hynde, 31, and Simon Medhurst, 55, are jointly charged over the incident at the...

North Carolina NAACP President William Barber led a massive group Saturday morning through downtown Raleigh in the "Historic Thousands on Jones Street," now turned "Moral March on Raleigh." It was part of their continuing fight against the Republican led legislature. The march follows the 13 Moral Mondays seen in Raleigh over the summer, and then several more that followed throughout the state. Now it is back, fusing with the annual "HK on J" march. (SNIP) Organizers of the march made five demands: • Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability. • Provide well-funded, quality public education for all. •...

It’s hard to figure out what to make of the people in this story. Should these people be laughed at or pitied? Recently a group of 25 self-described “Students of Color” held a sit-in to support poor English writing skills. They whined about the “racism” of being offered constructive criticism of their lack of grammar, spelling and punctuation abilities. As products of dysfunctional government schools, many if not all of them have little or no writing skill. Many of them don’t know they have no writing skills. They have been lied to and had their heads patted so often by...