Free Republic

PROGRESS OF NATIONALISM IN THE UNITED STATES. BY EDWARD BELLAMY, AUTHOR OF "LOOKING BACKWARD." Technically, the term Nationalism, as descriptive of a definite doctrine of social and industrial reform, was first used in 1888 by clubs made up of persons who sympathized with the ideas of a proper industrial organization set forth in "Looking Backward," and believed in the feasibility of their substantial adoption as the actual basis of society. Nationalism, in this strict sense, is the doctrine of those who hold that the principle of popular government by the equal voice of all for the equal benefit of all,...

"Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered," China's new leader, Xi Jinping, told a closed meeting of party elite in Guangdong province. "Finally all it took was one quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party, and a great party was gone," said Xi, according to notes obtained by The New York Times. "Everyone is talking about reform, but in fact everyone has a fear of reform," said Chinese historian Ma Jong. "The question is: Can society be kept...

I'm An American, AND PROUD AS HELL!Thankfully I was born an American. Born in the greatest nation in the history of the world. But I became an American, slowly and decisively over my entire life, and these were but a few of my moments of decision; When my 92 year old great Grandfather, an immigrant for the bowels of depravity in Italy stood in a crowded church basement and took the pledge of allegiance to his beloved country to finally become a citizen, after struggling to overcome illiteracy and poverty, and raise a fine and honorable family. He had to...

Those of us who pay attention to such things will have noticed a difference between the BBC coverage of the Golden Jubilee in 2002 and of the present Diamond Jubilee. Ten years ago, the coverage was adequate, though reluctant and even a little stiff. This time, it has been gushing and completely uncritical. There are various possible reasons for my observation. The first is that I was mistaken then and am mistaken now. I do not think this is the case, but feel obliged to mention it. The second is that Golden Jubilees are rare events, and Diamond Jubilees very...

All hail, or should we say ‘heil,’ the rise of the Golden Dawn fascists in Greece. It’s all the rage (literally) in the streets of Greece these days. They now hold 21 seats in the Greek government – about 7% of the controlling body – and combined with the Communists, that control is closer to 20%. And their influence is not only growing there, but in Europe and the US. The darkness is rising once again and the Golden Dawn is telling those in power they should fear them now and indeed, they should take those threats to heart. Golden...

When it comes to American exceptionalism, Mitt Romney is going all in. His book “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” is a love song to the idea that this country merits “the protection of Providence” and has a singular “calling” to be a beacon for freedom. A major theme for him on the campaign trail is the nation’s divine destiny, a heritage Romney said has made him “stand a little taller, a little straighter” when overseas. But what Romney doesn’t say is that, for followers of his made-in-America religion, Mormonism, exceptionalism isn’t political metaphor. It’s theology. The faith’s sacred...

During the latter part of the nineteenth century a coalition of moralists and social reformers sincerely thought that giving political power to women would eliminate all traditional social evils. After all, men had always ruled, and women were supposedly inherently more moral and more religious than men. Maybe this would fix everything. Thus the push for women's suffrage. And when it was all over, women were just like the men. I am going to suggest something absolutely outrageous. But it's been knocking around in my mind for a while, and I hope that the example of women's suffrage will show...

And the demonization of Serbs, Israelis, patriotic Americans, and the ongoing attacks against capitalism.The definition of "nationalism"--Webster's New World Dictionary 1982: a) devotion to one's nation; patriotism. b) excessive, narrow, or jingoist patriotism; chauvinism.the doctrine that national interest , security, etc. are more important than international considerations.the desire for or advocacy of national independence.  The definition most Americans would certainly agree with are,- 1. a)-devotion to one's nation; patriotism and all of # 2 & 3. But certainly not 1. b)-excessive, narrow, or jingoist patriotism; chauvinism.jingo- "a person who boasts of his patriotism and favors an aggressive , threatening , warlike foreign policy; chauvinist"-...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said ahead of a meeting Friday with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he would warn his Israeli counterpart about the global economic consequences of a military strike on Iran's nuclear program, adding that he still favors sanctions and diplomacy over a strike.

In a clip from his interview with WSJ's Simon Constable, Dr. Nouriel Roubini insists that it was the policies of George W. Bush that caused the current U.S. economic crisis.

Classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo never used the term “economy” by itself. They always used the term “political economy.” For classical economists, it was impossible to understand politics without economics or economics without politics. The two fields are certainly different but they are also intimately linked. The use of the term “economy” by itself did not begin until the late 19th century. Smith understood that while an efficient market would emerge from individual choices, those choices were framed by the political system in which they were made, just as the political system was shaped by economic...

Resource nationalism is biggest risk to miners: report Sun Aug 7, 2011 2:11pm GMT LONDON (Reuters) - Resource nationalism is the biggest threat facing the mining sector this year and next as governments seek to take advantage of higher commodity prices to try to restore fragile finances, advisory and accountancy firm Ernst & Young (E&Y) said on Sunday. "Because the mining and metals sector rebounded quickly from the global financial crisis, it became an early target to help restore treasury conditions," the firm said. E&Y said it had identified at least 25 countries in 2010/11 that had increased, or announced...

Tell me who you are and I can tell you how you see the past. That vanishing country falling away behind us. Are we on the way up or the way down? Are we better off than we were four years ago, or forty or four hundred? Is this the best of times or the worst of times? The answer lies inside you. It is defined by your values. For some capacitive touchscreens and infinite channels mean a brighter future. For others, the values of home and family, dignity and country, that were lost matter more than the swipe pass...

The final Space Shuttle mission ended last week, amidst calls for Washington to cut spending. The Shuttle program cost over $200bln, not to mention 14 lives, while giving little in return. Clearly a Shuttle launch was a majestic site; no one had ever assembled a machine so complicated that had to perform perfectly. Still, at over $400 million per pop, these are expensive warm-fuzzy moments. The Shuttles’ accomplishments were few. They launched satellites that could have been delivered to orbit cheaper by unmanned rockets. They built a space station that replaced an existing station – both of which served no...

The live leak online manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik

This ia a Movie by Anders Behring Breivik - Knights Templar 2083 The man behind explosion in Oslo who killed 7 people, and about 90 youth people at Utøya island outside Oslo July 22th . Anders Behring Breivik is A 32-year-old Norwegian he has been arrested over two terror attacks in Norway as 92 are confirmed dead . Police have said the Norwegian man arrested after the twin attacks in Norway is a right-winger with anti-Muslim views, but they do not know whether that was a factor in the attacks. His views are very clear from this video of his...

The management theory is not applicable to the oil industry. This business is peculiar. Of course, if one talks about Western oil companies, then here it is alright. Management theorems and models work in them successfully as in any other corporations like General Motors and Microsoft. However what share of oil does western Big Oil produce? The answer is only 10%. It controls still less – about 6% of all world reserves. The rest is controlled by national oil companies. By the way there are not so many of them – usually one for each petrostate. And as you see,...

The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia established the principle that nation states could run their internal affairs as they pleased – it was no longer acceptable for Catholic states to invade Protestant states because they didn’t like their religion (or vice versa). Westphalianism proved a vital organizing principle for the next 300 years, allowing significant periods of peace to appear between all the wars – and thus mankind’s greatest boon, the Industrial Revolution to become established. We now appear to be abandoning that principle – and the economic and political implications of doing so are dire. The Westphalia principle always had...

Almost half the country would back a new right-wing party that vowed to crack down on immigration and Islamic extremists, a shock poll reveals today. They would also restrict the ­building of mosques and order the flag of St George or the Union Jack be flown on all public buildings. The revelations will spark fresh fears of racial tension in Britain amid a new wave of support for extreme right-wing parties like the British National Party and the English Defence League. Findings of the survey, the largest of its kind and involving 5,054 people, are in a major report called...

18 Bishops [13 Catholic] participated in a silent hunger strike on the property of St. Mark-University of Bangalore, among them the Archbishop of Bangalore, Msgr Bernard Moras. At the protest and the hunger strike the Bishops present, the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) and the Christians of Karnatakas have forged a counter-report with the title: "1000 Day Government, 236 Attacks, 1000 traumatized people". The official report of the Somsekhar-Investigative Commission exonerated the radical Hindu organizations Bajrang Dal and Sangh Parivar. The Bishops called a press conference to make note of this, that this exoneration is "politically motivated". At the...

To My Fellow Conservatives: I have been saying for years that immigrants that come to this country should embrace this country instead of coming and sucking the life out of it while never accepting our culture and never truly becoming Americans. My family came here from Italy in the early 1900's. They wanted to be Americans. They wanted to learn the language. They loved America and all she stood for. Today, immigrants come to this country but...

Anything Reps. Ron Paul (R., Tex.) and Barney Frank (D., Mass.) both support should give the rest of us pause. Their proposal to slash defense spending by $1 trillion over a decade — only the most recent joint effort by the new isolationists on the Left and Right to curtail American military strength around the world — is as foolhardy as it is unrealistic. Were such a policy enacted, the nation and the world would be set on a path not toward peace, but toward instability, conflict, and a lessening of freedom in many corners of the world. As the...

Most men can't take 70-80 hours of hard labor at a tough place of work like an elite assembly line of car manufacturing for weeks in a row. I passed the test, at the age of 37, at one of the largest industrial plants in Europe: Volvo Torslanda. I've also worked as a lumberjack here in Sweden, as a cook ("cooks calling themselves chefs usually are be morons" - Mario Batali) and I've also ran businesses of my own - admittedly with little of success. In both America and Europe, there seems to be a major lack of adrenaline and...

The European Union is dying -- not a dramatic or sudden death, but one so slow and steady that we may look across the Atlantic one day soon and realize that the project of European integration that we've taken for granted over the past half-century is no more. Europe's decline is partly economic. The financial crisis has taken a painful toll on many E.U. members, and high national debts and the uncertain health of the continent's banks may mean more trouble ahead. But these woes pale in comparison with a more serious malady: From London to Berlin to Warsaw, Europe...

Yankee Utopians in a Chinese CenturyFor those who can yet recall the backyard blast furnaces of Mao's China in the 1950s and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to re-instill peasant values in the 1970s, the news was jarring. In 2011, said the Financial Times, China will surpass the United States as first manufacturing power, a title America has held since surpassing Great Britain around 1890. Each year, China passes a new milestone. Last year, China surpassed Germany as the greatest exporting nation. This year, China surpasses Japan as the world's second-largest economy. This year, China became the first auto manufacturer...

German flags have sprouted like red, black and gold wildflowers across Berlin this summer. They're appearing on balconies, cars, bicycles, storefront windows, even painted on children's cheeks. Few can match Youssef Bassal's. Eager to show his enthusiasm for Germany's soccer team during the World Cup, Mr. Bassal, a 38-year old Lebanese immigrant, unfurled a 60-by-15-foot German flag a few weeks ago, on the facade of the building that houses his cell-phone store. Mr. Bassal knew his Fahne, as the Germans call it, would draw onlookers. What he didn't anticipate was the reaction—outrage. During the flag's first night on exhibit, Mr....

Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers' houses, according to the number of names, every male, by their polls; From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: you shall number them by their hosts, you and Aaron. (From this week's Torah portion, Bamidbar, Numbers 1:2-3) The ultimate purpose of the journey of the Israelites in the desert was the establishment of a kingdom of priests - a nation that testifies to the existence of the Creator and expresses His will...

Back in 2005 I wrote an article entitled: “I’m a Nationalist.” Over the weekend, while doing a bit of light research, I came across the piece -- and read it again. Honestly, I can’t see that anything has changed my mind. If ANYTHING I am MORE of a nationalist today than I was 5 years ago. Why? One word: “OBAMA!” The dictionary defines a nationalist as: One with “Devotion to the interests or culture of one's nation.” (Free on-line dictionary) The dictionary defines a nationalism as: “1: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting...

White British actresses told to leave Bollywood British actresses who appear in Bollywood films are being targeted in a hate campaign by one of India's most feared political leaders. By Dean Nelson in New Delhi Published: 5:55PM GMT 17 Mar 2010 Actress Hazel Crowney: British actresses have flocked to Bollywood Stars including Alice Patten, the daughter of Lord Patten of Barnes, and Hazel Crowney, a former model from Kent, have been accused of stealing jobs from local girls. Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a Mumbai nationalist street gang and political party which inspires terror throughout the city, has called...

State Leaders Face Pinched Budgets and Threats to Safety NetTo hear Republicans in Congress tell it, the Grand Old Party is pretty much united against the deficit-spending approach to economic recovery. Don’t tell that to local GOP officials. Faced with the most severe budget crises in decades, state and local policymakers from across the country — including a growing list of prominent Republicans — have been only too happy to accept the additional federal funding that accompanied last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill. Not only did that money prop up job markets, many say, but it kept social-service programs running...

Loud and proud isn't the norm up north, but it's suiting our neighbors well VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Shane Koyczan sat partly hidden in a darkened restaurant booth, and it was probably better that way. Since his stirring spoken-word performance at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the poet has become a national celebrity. It's hard for him to walk down a street here without being stopped. ''We Are More,'' the poem he recited in front of a worldwide TV audience of 3 billion people, arrived at a time when Canadians are getting comfortable with the idea of saying...

Anti-British National Party (BNP) protesters breached security and broke into BBC Television Centre tonight ahead of Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on Question Time. Around 30 people rushed through the main gates of the BBC’s broadcasting headquarters in West London. Ten were dragged out of the car park by police officers but at least 20 more made it inside the building where the leader of the BNP will take part in the political panel show tonight... As several hundred protesters blocked the road outside Television Centre, delaying his arrival, Mr Griffin criticised the security operation. “It seems the police do not...

The weekend's European Parliament and British local county council elections were not only a victory for the center-right over the center-left. More significantly, they were indications of the growing rejection of the last 60 years of denationalized and consolidating European history. They were, particularly, a sharp assertion by many indigenous Europeans that they will not put up with losing their culture to overly assertive Islamic or other immigrants in Europe. The latter point was made most emphatically by the voters of Holland, Hungary, Finland, Britain, Austria, Denmark and Italy... But the loudest vox populi was heard in Britain... The UKIP's...

London, UK (BANG) - Britain's Prince Charles wants grey squirrels exterminated. The future king - a keen environmentalist - has claimed it is essential to eliminate the animal, introduced from North America in the 19th century, because of the threat they pose to native red squirrels. In a letter to the Country Land and Business Association, Charles - patron of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust said: "In order to be able to save the red squirrels and ensure their future in this country, it is absolutely crucial to eliminate the greys which, as you know, are an alien species to...

What is “transnationalism” generally? Well, let’s start by considering how two academics—one a critic of transnationalism, the other an ardent proponent—have described it. Our first academic contrasts a “nationalist jurisprudence” with a “transnationalist jurisprudence.” A nationalist jurisprudence “is characterized by commitments to territoriality, extreme deference to national executive power and political institutions, and resistance to comity or international law as meaningful constraints on national prerogatives.” A nationalist jurisprudence “largely refuses to look beyond U.S. national interests when assessing the legality of extraterritorial action,” has “largely rejected international comity as a reason unilaterally to restrain the scope of U.S. regulation,” and...

China best-seller lashes "Mafia don" America Reuters By Chris Buckley – Thu Mar 26, 12:25 am ET BEIJING (Reuters) – China's sparring with the West has inspired its own angry best-seller, lashing foreign targets and the country's own elite with scorn popular with some readers but worrying for a government wanting to tether nationalism. "China is Unhappy" has sold quickly since its publication earlier this month, but some state-run newspapers have fretted over its scathing assaults on the United States and the West -- blasts that also spatter doubt on Beijing's own policies. Chinese President Hu Jintao goes to London...

In The National, Pankaj Mishra is dyspeptic about partition, which has led both India and Israel into a "moral wilderness" of nationalism. (I do wish he'd pointed out that the Pakistanis got a state, the Palestinians didn't.) He says in spite of "fierce PR," India's democracy has a scary underbelly, a long tradition of Hindu nationalism, now ascendant: Reverence for Adolf Hitler – who is hailed as a hero in textbooks in the Hindu nationalist-ruled state of Gujarat, while Mein Kampf remains popular at bookstores – is one of the many sinister aspects of “rising” India today. This cult of...

The language about mandatory volunteerism that was "missing" from the HR1388 bill voted on yesterday in the Senate, is now showing up on this bill HR1444 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1444

In his 1835 masterpiece, Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, reported on his observations of the American scene after an extensive tour of the new Republic. One of his most profound insights had to do with the genius of Americans in the formation of institutions that mediate between large, distant government and the solitary, insular individual: Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans...

..(snip)…Does this not raise suspicion? While we hear of the “outrage” of the people who brought us the bonus scandal, the same people are rushing to pass the GIVE Act (you give, they take): national service. Senator Reid asked that the Senate proceed to act on this bill and then immediately asked for a cloture motion. Cloture The cloture rule–Rule 22–is the only formal procedure that Senate rules provide for breaking a filibuster. A filibuster is an attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter. Under cloture, the Senate may limit consideration of a pending...

Remember this? (see video at link) Obama's vision of a domestic security force "just as strong, just as well funded as our military" ( and presumbly loyal to him personally) just got a lot closer. The House of representatives has just passed HR 1388 otherwise known as the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act. This reauthorizes through 2014 the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, acts that originally, among other programs, funded the AmeriCorps and the National Senior Service Corps. However, it not only reauthorizes the programs, but also includes...

OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL House adopts plan for 'volunteer' corps Also requires new evaluation of 'mandatory' service for all -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 19, 2009 4:58 pm Eastern By Bob Unruh © 2009 WorldNetDaily The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a plan to set up a new "volunteer corps" and consider whether "a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people" should be developed.

<p>MANAGING a crisis as complex as this one has so far called for nuance and pragmatism rather than stridency and principle. Should governments prop up credit markets by offering guarantees or creating bad banks? Probably both. What package of fiscal stimulus would be most effective? It varies from one country to the next. Should banks be nationalised? Yes, in some circumstances. Only the foolish and the partisan have rejected (or embraced) any solutions categorically.</p>

Wanted: leaders to face demons of Europe’s past By Philip Stephens Published: February 19 2009 19:46 | Last updated: February 19 2009 19:46 During George W. Bush’s time, US officials would sometimes mock Europe’s addiction to meetings. America, they would tell visitors to Washington, had the capacity and courage to act. The best its allies could do was to summon yet another interminable meeting. My reaction was that it was often better to get everyone around a table than, say, to start another war. Europe had learnt that the hard way during the first half of the 20th century. The...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- What does it mean to nationalize a bank, anyway? That question has weighed on the minds of investors in the two weeks since the Obama administration's comprehensive financial industry stability plan fell flat. And they came to a head Friday. Nationalization fears helped drag down shares of Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) as much as 36% at one point Friday. BofA recovered most of its losses to finish Friday down just 3.6%. But Cit's stock closed Friday with a 22% loss. The term nationalization has been used to cover a...

With all the recent moves by the feds regarding bail outs and the cash they are giving away. I find myself just overwhelmed by the moves they are making and the implications of these moves. Some of my questions are “Does the Federal government now “OWN” the US banking system”? If so, where does that leave the “FED”. Or does the FED now own the US banking system? More to the point, who owns the banking system? Do they also “OWN” the auto business? Same kind of questions. Are any freepers out there able to sum up these moves in...

Do you ever wonder how Chinese children are being educated in nationalism? The following video, which is spreading through Chinese cyberspace, will give you a clue. It shows a group of rural grade-school students performing a poetry reading. The lines are apparently written by adults, and refer to news events in 2008. No name of the school was mentioned in the original video post, translated by CDT.

Time and again we’ve heard about the lost jobs and economic impact of failing to bail out the beleaguered American auto manufacturers. But little mention has been made of the consequences of going through with the bailout, and how such an action would be viewed by other Americans. In an interview following a Dec. 10 press conference where he and four other senators aired their opposition to the proposed bailout deal struck by congressional leaders and the White House (and approved by the U.S. House of Representatives 237-170 that evening), Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., warned that the perception that some...

Now it's official -- sort of. The United States is in decline. The National Intelligence Council has warned in its latest report that the United States will decline as an economic and political world power over the next 20 years. The NIC (NASDAQ:EGOV) report is the first major U.S. government document on national strategy to appear since the Wall Street financial crisis began in September. But it does far more than simply note the crisis' existence. It warns that the ensuing economic crisis now sweeping the entire world is just the first part of a far vaster process -- a...

Devolution has been good for Spain, but it may have gone too far THE hardest problem for the authors of Spain’s democratic constitution was to strike a balance between the central government and the claims of Catalonia, the Basque country and Galicia for home rule. The formula they came up with was known as café para todos, or coffee for all: Spain was divided into 17 “autonomous communities” (plus the enclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast), each with its own elected parliament and government. This estado de las autonomías seemed a neat solution. Over the past...