Free Republic

Popular tech companies—Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others—have strongly protected free speech online, a policy widely associated with the legal norms of the United States. American tech companies, however, operate globally, and their platforms are subject to regulation by the European Union, whose member states offer less protection to expression than does the United States. European regulators are pressuring tech companies to control and suppress extreme speech. The regulators’ clear warning is that, if the companies do not comply “voluntarily,” they will face harsher laws and potential liability. This regulatory effort runs the risk of censorship creep, whereby a wide array...

Given its prominence in current public discourse, one would think that hate, not love, is a many-splendored thing. The perfectly good word, which oozes out of every media pore, is now so overused that it means next to nothing. Every time you turn around, someone is accused of “hate” merely for expressing disagreement. This is not just a matter of semantics. It’s serious. When you cheapen a word, it discourages honest discussion and leads to more confusion and conflict, which is how the devil likes it. We have it on good authority that the underworld thrives on mayhem. One large...

This makes twice in 10 days that a host on MSNBC has openly marveled at the idea that many, many Americans believe their rights come from God and are recognized in the Constitution rather than derive from the Constitution itself. How can it be that this idea is so inexplicably foreign, even accounting for MSNBC’s left-wing bias? They know the percentage of the country that’s religious; they’ve read that not-unimportant bit in the Declaration of Independence about men being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”; they’ve read a treatise or two on natural law while in college; they’ve...

Freedom Without the Truth Leads to Chaos and Slavery Msgr. Charles Pope • December 6, 2016 • To most modern minds, freedom is a very detached concept; it is an abstraction of sorts, a free-floating power unmoored from any limits or defining standards. Freedom today is often viewed as personal and self-referential, with little consideration as to how one’s “freedom” might affect that of someone else. A healthy sense of the common good suffers mightily in a world of deeply conflicting personal freedoms.I have written before on the paradoxes of freedom and will not repeat all of that here,...

Most governments compete for the innovators of the world. In the United States, however, every great innovation leads to more government departments and more regulation, lessening the incentive to innovate. So companies innovating around drones, Bitcoin and initial coin offerings, driverless cars, and many new drugs are moving their operations overseas. What if policymakers instead adopted an entrepreneurial mindset? Delegating responsibility for our poor, our criminals, our sick, and our uneducated to the government may seem easier. But in practice, if incentives are aligned, it is far more effective to keep responsibility with the people, who can innovate and provide...

Kyle Chapman, who is accused of engaging in violent brawls in Berkeley during pro-Trump and "alt right" rallies earlier this year, was cuffed and taken to jail from an Alameda County courtroom this morning after a judge set his bail at $135,000. Chapman, a Daly City resident, is charged by the district attorney with possession of an illegal weapon in the form of a stick. Berkeley police officers wrote in charging documents that he was seen beating people with the stick and dousing people with pepper spray on March 4. At a morning court hearing in Oakland, Judge Mark McCannon...

Choose Sides? You Bet. But Antifa and Fascism Are the Same Side. Advocates of liberal society are a side in themselves, and the left- and right-wing thugs battling in the streets are rival siblings from an illiberal family....The problem many Americans had with Trump's weasel words was that Heather Heyer was dead, and many other people injured, in Charlottesville, allegedly at the hands of James Alex Fields, Jr., a neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd in an act of political terrorism. And Fields was in Charlottesville to attend a rally featuring a dollar-store version of a Leni Riefenstahl...

I am on the road. I can report that the cornfields of Iowa stretch for milescontinue through Nebraskaall the way to the rolling hills of the western side of the state  where they run into Wyoming cattle country.Take to the backroads for a few days, see the real Americathat has no intention of going anywhere.And doesn’t want anyone re-writing our history.Keep your mitts off our statuesHave a great weekend, cowpokes.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

The Restored Republic Let the light of the Statue of Liberty always live in your heart, and never be taken from you “Never in the course of human endeavor, has one nation risen up to declare that every citizen is their own sovereign, where the powers of government, are subservient to the rights of the individual. Liberty is the light to freedom in a world of darkness and oppression. Liberty has a home, it’s called the United States of America.

On this day in 1776, members of Congress affix their signatures to an enlarged copy of the Declaration of Independence. Fifty-six congressional delegates in total signed the document, including some who were not present at the vote approving the declaration. The delegates signed by state from North to South, beginning with Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire and ending with George Walton of Georgia. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and James Duane, Robert Livingston and John Jay of New York refused to sign. Carter Braxton of Virginia; Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; George Reed of Delaware; and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina opposed...

President Trump may be facing a roadblock on the rest of his nominees but he’s outpacing his predecessors when it comes to getting federal judges confirmed after his fifth court pick was approved by the Senate on Tuesday. Alabama lawyer Kevin Christopher Newsom was confirmed to a seat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 66-31 vote, with 16 Democrats joining the GOP. He’s the third circuit judge approved so far, and combined with one district judge and Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, it puts the president and the GOP-led Senate well ahead of pace. By...

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a senior judicial analyst for Fox News, was a guest lecturer last week at Mises University in Auburn Alabama. During an opening lecture where he discussed natural rights, the development of the Constitution and footnote 4 of United States v. Carolene Products Co., he closed the question and answer period following his lecture by saying he saw dark clouds coming for the country and warned the students that some of them may die in government prisons by standing faithful to first principles. The full warning is here (1 minute 33 seconds):

President Trump’s defense of “western values” in his speech in Poland this week was condemned by a pair of left-wing magazines. The New Republic’s Jeet Heer called it “a paean to white grievance.” The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart called it “an outburst of racial and religious paranoia.” “Mr. Trump’s unapologetic praise of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness puts ‘white values’ ahead of alternative perspectives,” Heer complained. “His pledge of support for the dignity of every human life is a thinly-veiled jab at a woman’s right to abort her unwanted child. His assumption that it is the hope of every soul...

"White privilege" (their term for self-sufficient productive people) is a direct result of our American heritage and Judeo-Christian work ethic and free market economy. America was founded on the Judeo-Christian principles of liberty, freedom, self-sufficiency, self-responsibility, self-governance, respect for God, respect for self, for each other and the law, civic responsibility and the value of family, church, tradition, education and hard work. The liberal/progressive/atheist/socialist democrats have been working overtime for a hundred years or more trying to tear all that down. They are teaching our children that there is no God, that government is all powerful and will provide for...

During Saturday’s Freedom Rally at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump said that ever since 1776, America has always affirmed “that liberty comes from Our Creator.” He also told the evangelical community that his administration will “support and defend your religious liberty.” In his speech, the president celebrated God’s presence at America’s founding and Religious Freedom in America today. Following his salute to America’s veterans, he stated, “Tonight we celebrate veterans. We also reflect on all that we cherish as Americans. We love our country, we love our families, we love our freedom, and we love our...

My "Rewriting American History" column of a fortnight ago, about the dismantling of Confederate monuments, generated considerable mail. Some argued there should not be statues honoring traitors such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, who fought against the Union. Victors of wars get to write the history, and the history they write often does not reflect the facts. Let's look at some of the facts and ask: Did the South have a right to secede from the Union? If it did, we can't label Confederate generals as traitors. Article 1 of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which...

Fortnight for Freedom: Please Spend Some Time Working and Praying to Protect Your Religious Liberty Msgr. Charles Pope • June 22, 2017 • There has been a steady erosion of religious liberty in the United States in recent years. It has been challenged through a broad range of incidents, requirements from the medical world, health insurance mandates, and court decisions. We often take our religious freedom for granted, but it is under substantive though sometimes subtle challenge. We are in the midst of a sea change; we are being told that religion has no place in the marketplace, in...

Former President Barack Obama in Montreal this week warned the world against income inequality and the concentration of wealth, all while pulling down $7,700 per minute at his $400,000 speech. Obama’s first post-presidency address on Canadian soil was loaded with anti-Trump, anti-capitalism and anti-American rhetoric. Big surprise there. Obama said that the concentration of wealth fans fears that governments exist solely to benefit the powerful, NBC reported and noted that Obama is now “striving to be an international community organizer.” He said the U.S. and other nations showed there was a better way “in creating an international order that was...

If you approach the study of our Constitution with the mental image of building a house, it’s easier to comprehend and retain what you are learning. The original four short pages that make up the seven Articles of the Constitution provide the concrete foundation and the framework. The authors were literally called the “framers” of the Constitution. The Articles are short, to the point, and critically important in understanding the foundation of our republic. Patrick Henry said, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people. It is an instrument for the people to restrain the...

any who would rewrite history, would have us to believe the women during the revolution were oppressed subservient wives of overbearing husbands who dictated policy in the home. Nothing could be further from the truth. The founding women of our nation carried themselves with dignity and strength; believing with their hearts and souls the value of Liberty was worthy of their families’ sacrifice. These were women of principle, of courage, and of great resolve, willing to sacrifice all so that their children could be free.