Free Republic

The Bolsheviks took over Russia pretending to have widespread popular support. In fact, a tiny cult had seized power against the will of the vast majority. To hide this nasty reality, "the leading Bolsheviks instituted propaganda on a governmental level. While propaganda had been around for a long time, the Bolshevik innovation consisted in assigning propaganda a central place in national life: previously employed to touch up or distort reality, in Communist Russia propaganda became a surrogate reality." That's the essence of Lenin's Train: it's another world. The key weapon in its influence is agitprop, a portmanteau for "highly politicized...

A public high school in Towson, Maryland is being criticized by Republican lawmakers in the state because of a history lesson that compares President Trump with Nazis and communists. According to a report from The Baltimore Sun, a slide used in a presentation in an Advanced Placement history lesson at Loch Raven High School shows a picture of Trump, with the caption “Wants to round up a group of people and build a giant wall.” Underneath that is swastika with the caption "been there" and the communist hammer and sickle symbol with the caption "Done that." Another caption reads “Oh,...

Has the United States ever fought a war that was justified? Apparently not, according to many students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., who were asked about that by Campus Reform. "I cannot think of a single war that America has been a part of that has been justified," one student told reporter Eduardo Neret. When asked specifically if World War II was a just war, the student said it was not. "I don't believe America fought that war for the just reasons,” the student answered. One young lady responded: "The only one that I can, like, reasonably, like, justify...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) lowered the projected cost of ObamaCare's health insurance benefits Monday by $104 billion over 10 years. The law's insurance coverage provisions will now cost close to $1.4 trillion between 2015 and 2024, about $100 billion less than previously estimated, the CBO said. What is driving the lowered estimate? According to the report released by CBO, it has primarily to do with lower-than-expected premiums for exchange policies. So, good news for the Obama administration? Not so fast. Per CBO: A crucial factor in the current revision was an analysis of the characteristics of plans offered through...

A majority of Americans now define success as not falling behind. They worry that fundamental changes in the economy are making it more difficult for them—and their children—to get ahead. The road still rises. But the climb is steeper, and the falls are more frequent. That’s the view of prospects for upward mobility in the modern American economy that emerges from the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll. Although an overwhelming majority of Americans still define the U.S. as “the land of opportunity,” nearly as many agree that getting ahead is more difficult for workers today than it was for...

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – A second, smaller oil containment box was lowered into the sea near the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. The box was being slowly submerged to the seabed Tuesday. But it won't be placed over the spewing well right away. BP spokesman Bill Salvin says engineers want to make sure everything is configured correctly and avoid the same buildup of ice crystals that stymied their first attempt at using a larger box that was about 100 tons. This box will be connected to a ship on the surface by a pipe-within-a-pipe when it's...