Free Republic

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”-The Princess BrideWe are now reaping a bitter generational harvest in America, sown into the ground because we have permitted: Marxists almost unchecked dominance of the influential platforms of pop culture and the classroom. Too many of our churches to retreat into some “comfortably numb” seeker-friendly Xanadu, where they building suburban palaces instead of culture. The Republican Party to be taken over by a feckless political class either unwilling or incapable of defending and advancing our principles. One of the most rotten fruits of this...

What people find morally acceptable and unacceptable depends on where they live in the world.The charts below from the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project show people's views on eight topics, often considered moral issues: extramarital affairs, gambling, homosexuality, abortion, premarital sex, alcohol consumption, divorce, and contraceptives.Pew surveyed 40,117 respondents in 40 different countries in 2013 to obtain the data.The first graphic below gives the median response across the world. People were the most disapproving of extramarital affairs, with 78% calling them morally "unacceptable," while 14% of respondents, the lowest in the survey, felt contraceptive use was "unacceptable." Topics like premarital sex and alcohol...

We live in reductionist times, which is another way of saying that we live in times that have often cast aside the deeper, sacramental, and mysterious meaning of things and people.Many human beings reduce themselves and others to merely biological realities. Gone is the soul and the mysterious spark we call life. Gone is the metaphysical, there is only the physical. Even our longings, our thirst and hunger for justice, our attraction to what is good, true and beautiful, even these soulful expressions and their reaching what is not material and “understood” by many today merely as emanations of the...

There is this notion, one we hear more and more, that the Republican Party has to shed the social issues to seize the future. "Social issues are not the business of government!" says thoroughly modern millennial. It's a seductive cry, one repeated this past Tuesday in an article about how some young libertarians dubbed the "Liberty Kids" are taking over the moribund Los Angeles GOP. Oh, wouldn't the political landscape be simple if we could just boil things down to fiscal responsibility? But life is seldom simple. If you would claim to be purely fiscal, or assert that "social issues"...

For the second time in eight days, a South Florida circuit judge has declared the state's gay marriage ban unconstitutional and ordered that same-sex couples be allowed to marry.

Americans who oppose same-sex marriage often face "intolerance" from those who support it, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said Wednesday in a speech about values that appeared aimed at wooing social conservatives. In remarks he said were likely to get him criticized as a bigot, the Florida Republican told an audience at Catholic University that a strong America is impossible without Americans who hold strong values. Seeming to seek a debate over those values, he criticized liberals who defend abortion rights for women but not protections for "the unborn."

Efforts to proclaim moral equivalence are not always misguided; sometimes each side is equally at fault or close enough. But these efforts are often misguided and unhelpful -- and sometimes harmful. Throughout my life, there has been an increasing trend to attach moral equivalence to all kinds of disputes and conflicts, such as Israel vs. Hamas, which is the subject of a future column. I assume this is mostly an outgrowth of our culture's descent into moral relativism, but it's also a product of our intellectual laziness. We see it everywhere. It is a common practice in describing marriages gone...

People who disagree with same-sex marriage and birth-control use have been met with accusations of bigotry. Are some Christians being unfairly shamed out of the public sphere? Is evangelical Christian morality still viable in American public life? This is the question lurking in recent debates over religious-liberty issues, from the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision to the Christian bakers who object to baking cakes for gay weddings. In discussions of these cases, objections to same-sex marriage and contraception are described as a retreat from “secular society.” And in some cases, evangelicals actually have retreated: Since the Boy Scouts of America...

‘New analyses of the human genome establish that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional,” writes Nicholas Wade in his recently published book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. That sounds reasonable, and Wade, a science reporter and editor for many years at Nature and the New York Times, seems an unimpeachable source. But many well-meaning people will regard his words as provocative and even dangerous. For they fatally undermine the idea, widely shared by so-called progressives, that any apparent differences between groups of people are the product of nurture rather than nature, of social conditioning rather...

Shoe thief sends SR500, asks victim for forgivenessA thief with a guilty conscience has asked for forgiveness from a Saudi man whose shoes he had stolen eight years ago. The guilt-ridden thief sent SR500 in an envelope alongside the apology note. The victim, Abu Abdul Rahman,said that his shoes were stolen as he was having dinner at a wedding reception hosted by a relative, local news site Sabq reported on Thursday. In keeping with the local tradition, food is served on in a majlis and guests and hosts leave their shoes at the door. Abu Abdul Rahman said that he...

A common criticism of the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual morality has to do with the largely unmarried clergy who are charged with preaching the message.  The accepted wisdom is that celibate males have no business telling married couples how to live their lives: “What do they know about the subject?”   I remember a particularly egregious example. In 1974, Earl Butz, then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, ridiculed Pope Paul VI’s opposition to contraception, “He no playa the game, he no maka the rules.” He later apologized, but in reality he was only saying publicly what many, including many Catholics, were saying...

In an interview with KABC radio last week, Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) offered the liberal world view of globalism before nationalism last week during an interview about the on-going crisis in Iraq. Hahn said she was "kind of uncomfortable" with the concept that the United States could claim any moral authority in using military action. "I'm kind of uncomfortable with, you know, with the United States feeling that we do have some moral authority to go into these other countries and use military power to solve problems," the California lawmaker said. Hahn also invoked the United Nations as a basis...

Calvin, Aquinas and a Whopper with Cheese "Be Your Way!" The new slogan sums up the philosophy that drives our public debate on morality “Have It Your Way!” You’ve heard it thousands of times. That’s because Burger King has been drumming it into our heads for forty years. But you’re not going to hear it any more. Burger King no longer wants you to “Have It Your Way!” That’s not good enough for you. From now on, “Be Your Way!” According to Associated Press, Burger King wants to communicate that customers, “can and should live how they want anytime. It’s...

The American public has become more tolerant on a number of moral issues, including premarital sex, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. On a list of 19 major moral issues of the day, Americans express levels of moral acceptance that are as high or higher than in the past on 12 of them, a group that also encompasses social mores such as polygamy, having a child out of wedlock, and divorce.

More Americans continue to identify themselves as conservatives than as liberals on economic and social matters. However, the conservative advantage on each dimension is shrinking from higher points in recent years, down to 21 points on economic policy and four points on social policy.

Can you tell the difference? The original reason many supported abortion, was because of rape or incest. Forty years later less than 1 percent of the more than 1 million abortions in the US, occur because of rape or incest. Please tell me what the child did to deserve death in those two circumstances, because as far as God is concerned, to support abortion under any circumstance is still murder. Around the world there has been more than 1.5 BILLION babies have been aborted worldwide in the past 50 years. An estimated 50 million abortions are carried out throughout...

...and killed by jealous love rival who accused him of having affair with his partner * Dominque Leboucher, 55, was attacked with a knife inside his home * Alleged killer then ran outside and committed suicide in a nearby field * Police are investigating claims newly-elected mayor was having affair * They believe he may have been sleeping with the wife of a constituent

ST. LOUIS — St. Louis’ city leaders were already gathered last night for an LGBT equality fundraiser, which turned suddenly into a celebration of the hometown Rams’ decision to draft the out gay defensive star Michael Sam in Saturday night’s NFL draft. Sam will be “received with open arms by the city of St. Louis, no question about it,” Mayor Francis Slay, among those gathered for the fundraiser, told BuzzFeed.

What is wrong with you people? Seriously. A Black Mass was to be celebrated at Harvard. “The event, organized by the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club and the New York-based Satanic Temple,” writes FoxNews, “is to take place at an on-campus bar and is being billed as part of a ‘larger effort to explore the religious facets’ that influence contemporary culture, organizers from the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club say. The ceremony has traditionally been performed by satanic cults to parody the Catholic Church, and officials at the Archdiocese of Boston are furious that such an event could be held...

Wednesday, May 07, 2014 Kicking Cats and Killing Kids Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog We live in a highly moral society. And we know this is true because our guardians of public morality, our politicians, professors and professional entertainers remind us of this at every possible occasion. Just like the guardians of public morality in Iran, China and Pakistan assure their people that they are the very best and most moral people in the world. Once upon a time we used to have benchmarks for that sort of thing. We were the best people in the...