Free Republic

Totalitarian Subversion- Can we Awaken from the Nightmare? by LOYALTOLIBERTY on MAY 18, 2013 Whatever Obama, Hilary Clinton, Susan Rice and other Obama faction officials were seeking to achieve with their lies about the terrorist murders of U.S. officials in Benghazi; whatever the full extent of the ideologically motivated political abuses at the IRS, one thing is clear. Except for mindless apparatchiks, thoughtlessly loyal to the Obama cult, (like Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton, for example) no sane person can now consider it crazy or irrational to distrust the words and actions of those presently controlling the U.S. government. These...

One of the problems with positive rights though, which conservatives and libertarians tend to point out, is that in order for them to mean anything in practice, someone else will inherently have to provide the means by which they are given. For example, if you have the right to health-care, then a doctor or nurse will have to at some point, render that care. Either the medical practitioner will have to be paid for his or her rendering of care, or he or she will have to be compelled to render it. This is manifestly different from a negative right...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let me start digging into this IRS Stack that I have here. UK Daily Mail: "When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train. "'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training...

Some days one can't help but look at the headlines and think of Ayn Rand. With all the destructive measures by desperate governments from Cyprus to Argentina, it seems sometimes like we're reading from the pages of her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. But what we're seeing now seems to have far surpassed Atlas Shrugged. We're definitely into 1984 territory. We've recently learned that the US federal government has (a) secretly tapped the Associated Press's phone records, and (b) used the nation's tax authorities to target opposition political groups. This is the same sort of thing one would expect from Belarus...

Some days one can't help but look at the headlines and think of Ayn Rand. With all the destructive measures by desperate governments from Cyprus to Argentina, it seems sometimes like we're reading from the pages of her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. But what we're seeing now seems to have far surpassed Atlas Shrugged. We're definitely into 1984 territory. We've recently learned that the US federal government has (a) secretly tapped the Associated Press's phone records, and (b) used the nation's tax authorities to target opposition political groups. This is the same sort of thing one would expect from Belarus...

For a long time conservatives have warned that the heavy propaganda and regulatory hands of the Obama administration were not going to change the exercise or eating habits of 315 million Americans... Now comes early statistical proof that after reelecting Obama with fewer votes the second time and 1,567 days of his reign of government intervention and stimulation, many Americans are deciding that maybe the Obamas' plans for their lives do not fit their plans for their own lives.

Kansas governor Sam Brownback heard something recently. He received a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder stating that Kansas' newly enacted legislation prohibiting government agents from enforcing federal gun laws in the state "directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional." Unconstitutional, Eric? My, how antebellum of you. Meanwhile, the South Carolina House just passed a law criminalizing the enforcement of ObamaCare within its state borders, a move that critics will also attack with talk of the Supremacy Clause. Speaking of supremacy, AG Holder also told Brownback that the feds would litigate if necessary "to prevent the State of...

Iceland just elected the parties which plunged them into crisis only five years ago. Is it casino capitalism all over again, or just a slap in the face of the EU? In terms of redemptive electoral stories, the return of the Independence Party in Iceland is quite significant, albeit that they will come back to government with only a few percentage points more votes than they polled at their nadir in the depths of the Icelandic crisis in 2009. However the biggest winner was Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, the leader of the Progressive Party, who propelled his party to hold 19 seats...

Where are today’s rebels?  Where is the counterculture? Ear-budded hipsters, with their sheep-like devotion to Apple products and the Obama administration, sit in on the April 20 “Day of Pot” in Denver, content and satisfied with their free birth control and legalized maryjane.  Meanwhile SWAT teams descend on Watertown, Massachusetts, trampling Fourth Amendment rights in search of a “person of interest”– while a Saudi National is quietly sent back to his homeland.These hipsters champion the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado while the war on Big Tobacco rages on.  Since 1997 the FDA inherited control over the $365.5 billion global...

Thomas Lucente: American liberty died in Boston where it was born By THOMAS J. LUCENTE Jr. tlucente@limanews.com 419-993-2095 The American liberty movement, with little argument, was pretty much born and nurtured in the environs of Boston. And that is apparently where it died. In what can only be called the Siege of Watertown, the government essentially declared martial law in the Massachusetts town, put thousands of law-abiding Americans under house arrest and went from house to house frisking and searching homes while pointing automatic weapons at Americans. All to arrest a single teenager. In the end, the terrorists won. America...

I just saw a headline that made me think that libertarian fantasies somehow had turned into reality. As you can see, 24 IRS employees were just arrested for stealing. But what about the other 105,976 bureaucrats at the Internal Revenue Service who seize our money under the implied threat of violence? Shouldn’t they be arrested for stealing from us as well?

Is America a two party Dictatorship? A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual: a dictator . It has three possible meanings: 1. A Roman dictator was the incumbent of a political office of legislate of the Roman Republic . Roman dictators were allocated absolute power during times of emergency. Their power was originally neither arbitrary nor unaccountable, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictatorships after the beginning of the 2nd century BC, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman...

On Saturday, I gave a speech to a local Tea Party group that posed the question of whether or not America can still be considered the land of the free. I have come to the conclusion in recent days that America is in fact no longer the land of the free. I have decided that the title is something that we gave up long ago. We live in a nation of constantly expanding state power. Whether it be modern examples like the Patriot Act and the NDAA or historic examples like Japanese internment and the Alien and Sedition Acts, the...

The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a child's scrawl. "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure." They're the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution. Aaron Harvey's son wrote as part of a school lesson, "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure." TheBlaze has redacted the child's name. Harvey's son attends Cedar Hills Elementary in...

‘I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rights…to Be Safer’ The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a child's scrawl. "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure." They're the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution. Florida 4th Grader Brings Home Paper That Says, I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rights in Order to Be Safer...paper Aaron Harvey's son wrote as...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s efforts to sell liberty to a mostly minority audience at Howard University collided with the enticements of the entitlement mentality. His vision of “getting the government off your back” failed to resonate with students who expect the government to provide for them. “You say you’re working to get the government to leave us alone,” said one student during the question and answer phase of Paul’s talk. “I don’t want to be left alone. I want the government to take care of me. In your ideal world I’d be on my own. I’d have to work for...

I just had breakfast with the Rev. John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg. Well, not the real Peter Muhlenberg, but a preacher friend of mine named Travis Witt. Travis does a powerful impersonation of the Revolutionary War-time pastor-patriot at churches and other venues around the country. Travis will be in his full Muhlenberg character at The Awakening 2013 on April 19-20 in Orlando, Fla. The Awakening is a life-changing, spiritual-political revival. But more on that later. At breakfast, Travis and I were discussing the man Muhlenberg and what he stood for. One early Sunday morning in January 1776, Rev. Muhlenberg was preaching...

I took the time to create a survey related to the Federal Bill of Rights. I am very curious as to how the current crop of Conservative / libertarians feel on this issue. I would be most gratified if you all could take the time to answer the six or so questions that I created. It has no marketing value or anything like that. Instead, it is designed to test the waters, so to speak, as to whether Americans have just simply given up or are still reared up and full of piss and fight.

The purpose of our government is to protect us from lawlessness, but history tells us that governments themselves can become lawless. When this happens we need local officials with wisdom and courage to impose on our behalf. That is why I am pleased to know Carroll County Commissioner Richard Rothschild, who is an elected official willing to stand and do his duty. I am asking you to give your attention and your support to Commissioner Rothschild. – Michael PeroutkaAcross Maryland, people are scared. They fear their government has become perverted and our Constitution is being shredded.People ask, “Why do they...

Obama’s actions throughout his “presidency,” and the active support of Democrats, have made it crystal clear that he and the party hate free Americans. Everything they have colluded on has been aimed at harming We, the People, as free citizens of a capitalist, constitutional republic. From the daily attempts to shred the Constitution, to the total fraud of ObamaCare and the use of it to attack Christians, to the looting of the treasury and redistribution of our money to Big Banks and Big Unions, to the raising of already out-of-control taxes, to the destruction of our energy industries and much,...

1973 REPORT OF THE ABA SPECIAL CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION STUDY COMMITTEERECOMMENDATIONWHEREAS, the House of Delegates, at its July 1971 meeting, created the Constitutional Convention Study Committee “to analyze and study all questions of law concerned with the calling of a national Constitutional Convention, including, but not limited to, the question of whether such a Convention’s jurisdiction can be limited to the subject matter given rise to its call, or whether the convening of such a Convention, as a matter of constitutional law, opens such a Convention to multiple amendments and the consideration of a new Constitution”; and WHEREAS, the Constitutional Convention...

Last week, I gave 12 examples of how religious liberty has been assaulted in just the past two years in the U.S. Here are about two dozen more instances just for good measure, as reported by the Family Research Council, the office of Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., and various media outlets. --The following public institutions recently have joined the growing ranks of those that have banned the use of the word "Easter" in order to diminish or eliminate references to religion: East Meadow School District in New York, Prospect Heights Public Library in Illinois, Heritage Elementary School in Alabama,...

Loren J. Ems, author of "Sword of Liberty" has organized an Article V Constitutional conference at the University of Central Florida. The event, to be held the weekend of April 26-27, has enlisted a number of 'experts' to participate. Such an 'Article V' convention can be held by various states, bypassing Washington altogether. This current effort would be a beginning. Citizens are encouraged to participate, and can enroll at the conference web site. Any FReeper including those from Florida are welcome to participate in the weekend meetings. Attendance is FREE

"Most modern liberals, at their most consistent, want a situation in which as many individuals as possible can realize as many of their ends as possible, without assessment of the value of these ends as such, save in so far as they may frustrate the purposes of others. They wish the frontiers between individuals or groups of men to be drawn solely with a view to preventing collisions between human purposes, all of which must be considered to be equally ultimate, uncriticizable ends in themselves." — Isaiah Berlin I've written a lot lately about how conservatives lost the culture war....

One of the many reasons conservatives dislike government overreach is because government is so often wrong about so much. And what’s worse, regardless of the magnitude of the government’s failures, citizens are stuck with the consequences of those policies, in most cases forever. This is not a new phenomenon. This has been going on for decades. Upon its establishment in 1965 the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the cost of Medicare would rise to $12 billion by 1990. Unfortunately for American taxpayers that prediction was off by a power of nine, coming in at $110 billion. And things...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Sunday: Sometimes government does know best. And in those cases, Americans should just cede their rights. “I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom,” Mr. Bloomberg said, during an appearance on NBC. He made the statement during discussion of his soda ban — just shot down by the courts — and insistence that his fight to control sugary drink portion sizes in the city would go forth.

Today Meghan McCain and Margaret Hoover paired up to pen an op-ed for USA Today, calling on conservatives to support marriage equality. In the article, McCain and Hoover outline the inevitable demise of anti-LGBT organizations and leadership, as country continues to shift support toward marriage equality. They wrote: Marriage is marriage, whether a person is straight or gay. Marriage also promotes outcomes that we as conservatives should support: stable homes, with committed couples who take care of themselves without government intrusion. We know the benefits to society from healthy marriages, and we celebrate them. Our fellow Republicans should be strengthening...

Survey after survey has shown that views on basic social issues often move very slowly. But support for marriage equality is turning out to be one big exception to the rule. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 58 percent of Americans now think it should be legal for same-sex couples to get married. That is an astounding increase from a low of 32 percent less than a decade ago. And in another shift that is seen as directly related to support for equal rights, only 24 percent see homosexuality as a choice, compared to 40 percent almost 20...

Sebelius listens as President Obama announces the contraceptive mandate at the White House Jan.12, 2012. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza. Washington D.C., Mar 21, 2013 / 05:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite proposals to modify the federal contraception mandate, the U.S. bishops said that the regulation is still unacceptable due to its narrow view of religion and resulting violations of religious liberty.   “The identity of the person or group having the religious freedom objection should not matter; what should matter instead is whether the person or group faces government coercion to violate conscience,� said a document filed...

[Written to and for liberals, conservatives will also find this defining, and perhaps useful in challenging liberal acquaintances. A slideshow can be found at the link.]As a principle, would you prefer others to direct your life, or would you prefer to have the freedom to direct your own life?   Answer this question and I will tell you who you really are – and who you are not…   With this question we are reaching down to the philosophical bottom line of your life – the ideological core of your being. Please consciously answer the above question to yourself before continuing to read. (Voluntarily...

1) Because Obama Is Half Black? 2) Because We Are Afraid Of An Economic Collapse That Will Never Come? 3) Because We Are Paranoid Over Unfounded Threats Of Martial Law? 4) Because We Refuse To Accept That The World Is Changing Without Us?

Two of the nation’s leading evangelicals are throwing their weight behind President Barack Obama’s push for universal background checks for all gun buyers, a measure that faces stiff opposition in both the House and Senate. Rev. Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse, and Dr. Richard Land from the Southern Baptist Convention told TIME Magazine they supported the proposal. “As ministers, we agreed together that we could stand on a united front for universal background checks,” Graham said. “We think that’s reasonable and responsible.”

RUSH: Os Guinness. His book is A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future. "Americans today are heedlessly pursuing a vision of freedom that is short-lived and suicidal. Once again, freedom without virtue, leadership without character, business without trust, law without customs, education without meaning and medicine, science and technology without human considerations can end only in disaster." Who are the groups all of a sudden or for all times who need protection? Gays, they need to be liberated by the government. Blacks, Hispanics, women, left-handed people, you name it. Anyone they can claim is being discriminated against...

The left would probably be completely beside themselves at this comparison, but it's totally appropriate.We have fallen very far from our founding when government, even at the local level, feels entitled to micromanage our lives down to the number of ounces of soda we drink. From Super Conservative

Out: Tebowing and Eastwooding In: The #PalinLibertyPose Sarah Palin’s wildly popular CPAC speech, punctuated by the Big Gulp swig heard ’round the word, has sparked a new late-night, post-CPAC trend: Send in your pics!!!!

-h/t Kirby-

Rex Parris, the mayor of Lancaster, California, wants every new home in his city to host solar. And starting next January, that could be a reality. Yesterday in Lancaster, homebuilder KB Home celebrated its 1,000th new home with solar panels from SunPower. Speaking at the event, Mayor Parris announced his city will institute a first-of-its-kind requirement that solar be installed on every new single-family home built in Lancaster after January 1, 2014. The new law will be written into Lancaster’s “Residential Zones Update” on residential solar. Along with a range of green building provisions, it specifies that new single family...

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Complete text of Patrick Henry's speech at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775. No man, Mr. President, thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This...

Join the "Stand and Fight" program from NRA (ASAP) When I say (ASAP) I mean NOW >>>>>>>> ! If you want to remain free and retain your constitutional rights and are willing to defend those rights, join NOW

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Government can continue to Spy on and monitor the phone conversations of Americans...

Recently a discussion of this story about DC Comics being pressured by homosexual activists to fire one of its writers because he’s on the board of the National Organization of Marriage prompted vigorous debate on my Facebook wall. While perusing through the various comments, it was obvious there still exists much confusion in our country today about the term “rights.” There are two types of rights: unalienable and contractual. Sometimes referred to as a natural right (i.e. “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” reference from The Declaration of Independence), an unalienable right is a right that comes from God...

The finger pointing and the blame game of Washington gets old, but a messy representative democracy is better than an efficient dictatorship. This past weekend, I toured Washington with my 5th-grade son, Robert, his classmates and their mothers. I've been to Washington more times than I can remember, but each visit fills me with hope and inspiration. It's not just the city, which in the summer is hot, humid and buggy and in the winter can be bone-chilling (as it was this weekend), but it's what the city stands for: a city created to house the federal government of...

Our Congressman, Rob Woodall sent out an online survey on the second amendment. I crafted a lengthy response and sent it to him. I thought I would share it here for your comments and discussion.

History shows that the destruction of affluent societies is often self-induced. Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline? Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, when historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs, and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure — and who gets the most of both — more often than poverty and exhaustion, cause civilization to implode. One...

Ever wonder how a free society manages to deteriorate into a totalitarian police state? How do people willingly submit to tyranny after they have known freedom?

The President and the national media have created a crisis that they say must be addressed—the crisis of gun crime. In fact, crime is at a long-time low, and the crisis is a farce (check out FBI crime statistics if you don't believe me). Nevertheless, the President insists that we must do something about it, and has introduced legislation ostensibly to that end. He says that those who disagree with him ought to be willing to compromise. What nobody's mentioning is that the current situation is already the vilest of compromises. So I agree with the President; let's do something—even...

An important point that is seldom made in modern political discourse is the uncreative nature of government. By this I mean that government, as an entity, does not and cannot create—it can only regulate. The governing documents of this country—the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—limit “government more than governments had ever been limited in any nation” prior. And for the first half of its 224-year existence, Leonard Read notes that: No citizen turned to government for help and for two reasons: (1) it had nothing on hand to give, and (2) it had not the power to take from...

Good panel discussion of current events and trends releated to the potential and/or pending loss of Liberty to our own government, and our own stupidity. Matt Bracken, (FReeper Travis McGee) author and columnist contributes a good bit about half way down the comments. Good stuff. A lot of it is over the top for me, as I prefer MAtt's more Constitutionally-based, pragmatic, reasoned approach. Enjoy!

(CNSNews.com) – Catholic, pro-life, and religious liberty leaders denounced the latest revised rule by the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) concerning mandated coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, stating that it is an “accounting gimmick,” an “accounting shell game,” which will “do practically nothing to lessen President Obama’s attack on religious freedom.”The HHS mandate, as it stands under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), requires nearly all health insurance plans to offer sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs, such as “ella,” without co-pays. Strictly religious entities, such as a church or seminary, could exempt themselves from the mandate.In its...