Free Republic

Earlier today President Trump signed an executive order promoting speech and religious liberty during a ceremony in the Rose Garden:

In another move to free up domestic energy supplies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at lifting the Obama administration’s offshore drilling restrictions.For decades, bad policies have blocked access to America’s abundance of domestic resources, yet America has still managed to be a global energy leader. Trump’s executive order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” could unleash further success in the energy sector.The economic potential sitting just off America’s coasts is enormous. The Outer Continental Shelf is awash with natural resources, containing an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.Realizing...

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen have both progressed from the first round in the French presidential election. The two candidates will face off in the second round on May 7, where Macron is widely tipped to become the president of France.

Beyond partisan differences over economic policies, there are stark divisions on a fundamental question: What makes someone rich or poor? Most Republicans link a person’s financial standing to their own hard work – or the lack of it. Most Democrats say that whether someone is rich or poor is more attributable to circumstances beyond their control. The public overall is about evenly divided over which has more to do with why a person is rich: 45% say it is because he or she worked harder than most people, while 43% say it is because they had more advantages in life...

Between 1935 and 1975, Will and Ariel Durant published a series of volumes that together were known as “The Story of Civilization.” They basically told human history (mostly Western history) as an accumulation of great ideas and innovations, from the Egyptians, through Athens, Magna Carta, the Age of Faith, the Renaissance and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The series was phenomenally successful, selling over two million copies. That series encapsulated the Western civilization narrative that people, at least in Europe and North America, used for most of the past few centuries to explain their place in the world...

The meaning of words change over time, which presents problems to historians and patriots alike. Liberty, being so important to the American psyche, is one such word. With that in mind, hang on for a rocky read. Few words conjure more and varied impressions than the word, ‘liberty.’ Long before the American Revolution, liberty was the means to overthrow a tyrant, or alternatively, of appointing a chieftain whom all were obliged to obey. In the 17th and 18th century, no other political ideal was invoked more often, but with less precision. As opposed to today, where many view liberty as...

I thank God every day for President Trump and pray for his continuing success. Had Trump not entered the race, the GOPe would have delivered the nomination to Jeb Bush and then Her Royal Heinous Hillary would be sitting in the White House today. Those who think that doesn't make any difference whatsoever are perfectly free to post somewhere else. God bless President Trump. God bless America.

The sooner the president realizes that Ryan is an establishment swamp dwelling snake...that's going to suck him down into the swampy quicksand and destroy his chances of enacting HIS agenda the better off he and we will be. Ryan represents the enemy within! Trump won the election already! Now it's his duty is to change gears, uphold the constitution, drain the swamp and MAGA. Quit screwing around with unwanted, unpopular, unsustainable, unconstitutional health care schemes. Push for and accept nothing less than a full repeal on Obamacare and then get to work enacting the rest of HIS MAGA agenda!! And...

A buy-to-let tycoon facing a public backlash over his ban on "coloured" tenants has said: "I would do it again." Fergus Wilson has banned "coloured" people from renting his homes because he claims they leave them smelling of curry, costing him thousands of pounds after they leave. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has pledged to investigate the matter. Mr Wilson insisted he was "not racist" and said his move was an "economic decision". He said his stance was no different from his ban on letting his properties to smokers and dog owners. The 69-year-old said: "There has been much...

My fellow Americans: From the early days of the colonies, prayer in school was practiced and revered as an important tradition. Indeed, for nearly 200 years of our nation's history, it was considered a natural expression of our religious freedom. But in 1962 the Supreme Court handed down a controversial decision prohibiting prayer in public schools. Sometimes I can't help but feel the first amendment is being turned on its head. Because ask yourselves: Can it really be true that the first amendment can permit Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen to march on public property, advocate the extermination of people...

Free Republic stands for God, family, country. We generally look to Judeo-Christian* guidance on issues of law, morality, justice, freedom, life, family and civil society. And we have a Christian self-governing, self-reliant, individual accountability & responsibility, you gotta work if able-bodied and want to eat attitude on cultural and societal issues. And a Christian pro-Constitution, original intent, pro-liberty, pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, restricted government, small government, states rights, individual rights, free enterprise position on political and civil matters. *Note: I say Judeo-Christian because Jesus was a Jew and referred to the Ten Commandments, Jewish law, beliefs and customs and the scripture...

A lawsuit in Seattle pits some fundamental rights against each other — it’s civil rights that ban discrimination, and property rights that allow owners to decide what to do with their homes and land. The issue is with a new law that requires landlords to rent to tenants on a “first come, first served” basis. The goal is to make sure all renters are treated equally. But the landlords who are suing say the program is a bureaucratic nightmare and unconstitutional. Critics say it’s all about the survival of the fastest, but supporters say it levels the playing field for...

Cops accused of intimidating, threatening, then poking fun at faith.

A week from today The Netherlands goes to the polls for a general election, and the big question is how well Geert Wilders and the PVV will do. Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan sends this handy roundup of election-related information to help non-Dutch readers get a handle on the situation. By H. Numan On the 15th of March the Dutch will vote. The national elections are very much in the international news. The big questions are: will the PVV win? What will happen if they do? Journalists from all over the world flock to The Netherlands to interview Wilders and...

In opposing the godless and bloody French Revolution, Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, concluded that, "I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies;…with morality and religion;…with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what...

With a new administration comes, for once, a new clarity. President Trump is attempting to bring some sanity to our immigration programs – requiring vetting before admission of refugees, for example, so that we don’t suffer the horrific outbreaks of criminality – car fires, riots, gang rapes, honor killings, and the like – that Europe has suffered for years, at the hands of these very same so-called “refugees.” And before the ink was dry on his Executive Order (almost word for word an executive order issued by his predecessors, with nothing radical about it at all), the George Soros –funded...

Ironically, Beza found his "signal example"8 of how to deal with tyranny and resistance not so much in the work of early Calvinists as in the work of later Lutherans—particularly the Lutheran jurists and theologians who had drafted the Magdeburg Confession of 1550. The Magdeburg Confession was a major distillation of the most advanced Lutheran resistance theories of the day.9 The leaders of the small Saxon city of Magdeburg had drafted this Confession in response to the order of the Holy Roman Emperor to impose by civil law the uniform Catholic doctrines and liturgies being crafted by the Council of...

Within four hours of becoming president of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to limit immediately the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) in ways that are revolutionary. With the stroke of a pen, the president assaulted the heart of the law that was the domestic centerpiece of his predecessor’s administration. How did this happen? How can a U.S. president, who took an oath to enforce the laws faithfully, gut one of them merely because he disagrees with it? Here is the back story. When ObamaCare went through Congress in 2010, all...

This photographer has a long love affair with Lady Liberty - and has captured it on film. Peter Alessandria, of New Jersey, started taking pictures of the statue in 2013 as part of his work capturing New York's famous landmarks.