Free Republic

Francisco Salinas is the Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion at Boise State University (BSU). He is perhaps the most intellectually constipated college administrator working west of the Mississippi and outside of the State of California. Due to his relative obscurity, his mendacity was well hidden until he decided to lash out at BSU Professor Scott Yenor. I am writing today in Yenor’s defense.The motivation for Salinas’ vicious attack on his colleague was that Professor Yenor decided to write an article in which he criticized feminism in general and gender identity politics in particular. In other words, he decided to...

A progressive correspondent asks: “If you were drafting the Constitution in 2017, would you include the Second Amendment?” It’s an ignorant question, but one that was asked in good faith, and the answer may be illuminating to some of our friends who are mystified by conservative thinking on the question. The short answer is: Yes, of course a 21st-century Bill of Rights should codify the right to keep and bear arms. The document does not create the right; the right precedes the document, which merely recognizes it and ensures that the government is constrained when, inevitably, its all-too-human members are...

Amid all the hysteria surrounding Donald Trump, clear and sober analyses of who he is and what to expect have been few and far between. I’ve already seen numerous progressives warning that Trump intends to eviscerate entitlements. It’s as if facts never enter the progressive consciousness. Their opponents are an undifferentiated blob and hold what progressives take to be generically right-wing positions. What might a libertarian reasonably hope for, while of course bracing himself for the usual horrors? Primarily these: (1) de-escalation of tension with Russia; (2) lower corporate taxes; (3) regulatory relief.

Several months ago I received a scathing rebuke from a gay professor who we will call Rod – because that is his name. He was angered by my insistence that a Christian musician should not be forced to perform at gay weddings. He asserted that the “cost of doing business” is that you must “accommodate” all segments of the population, regardless of your religious beliefs. In other words, he articulated the belief that every single business has to serve every single customer in order to “accommodate the public” – even if that means attending religious services that violate his conscience....

“The world is a mess, and while there is no simple pill America can administer to fix things, what we know is that there is significant room for progressives to articulate a foreign policy vision that is truly our own,” Murphy wrote in his op-ed article. A practical outcome, he wrote, could be the transfer of some resources now devoted to military expenditures, to diplomatic and foreign aid “so that our global anti-poverty budget, not our military budget, equals that of the other world powers combined.” ... Murphy said Clinton’s “strength is clearly going to be her experience on foreign...

Eric Garner died in July because he resisted arrest, forcing police to take him down the way they take down thousands of suspects daily. Only Garner wasn’t an average suspect. He had allowed himself to become morbidly obese and had diabetes, heart disease and who knows what other self-imposed health problems. Still, he never should have died that summer day. Big government killed Eric Garner. Police were just the weapon. Garner was selling “illegal cigarettes” that day, or “loosies” – individual cigarettes from a pack. Why would anyone buy individual cigarettes? Because government, in this case New York, both city...

One constant we have experienced under the reign of Barack Obama has been government and non-governmental agency (NGO) lies and distortions about the statistical state of our nation. Believing the unemployment numbers, for instance, has become an exercise in suspension of disbelief. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has used a fabricated dysfunctional formula for counting our unemployed neighbors for so long that people have forgotten they are being lied to, if they ever knew the difference. Recently a new insidious lie was quietly slipped into the public area. Under cover of Obama’s multiple scandals the Brookings Institute, a reliably liberal...

The old guard....that old guard that gave us McCain and Romney to sacrifice at the altar of Obama, knowing full well they would lose....is at it again pulling out the knives and placing them into the backs of the new guard. The guard that has actual idea's, that actually has courage, that is willing to take on the old crony's. Here's Bill Kristol, that champion of the old guard: Was it, as Seth Lipsky suggested in a column in the New York Post, “wonderful,” signifying both that “our country is in a constitutional moment” and “the rise of a new...

We face two conflicts in the present day and against the present day. Both conflicts are being fought against ideologies dislocated in time, longing urgently for the past and the future. Islamism is a reactionary ideology preaching a perfect world to be gained by stepping back to the 7th Century origins of its founding and seeks to recreate it by enslaving women and non-Muslims, making Mohammed’s false treaties with Christians and Jews, this time no longer in Arabia, but around the world, and then subjugating them to usher in an age of perfect peace. Progressivism looks for its utopias not...

GLENDALE, Calif. (KABC) -- Proposition 37 is a measure to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food. There are two sides to this contentious issue.

Our economy is lousy, the labor force participation rate is the lowest in 31 years, we’ve had 43 consecutive months with unemployment over 8 percent, and a record 47 million people are on food stamps, so one might expect President Obama would welcome as much help as he could get. Surely he would want private sector job creators – investors and entrepreneurs – to have the strongest possible incentives for turning around this Obama “recovery” where household incomes are falling faster than they fell in the Bush recession. But Obama’s priority is class warfare. That’s why he relentlessly denounces job...

Whatever decision the Supreme Court announces on Obamacare tomorrow, the various liberal missives of anticipatory anxiety in recent days have already revealed a great deal about the Left’s attitude toward our constitutional system. What we’ve learned can hardly come as news to conservatives, but it has been put forward in an unusually clear and undiluted form, and so is worth some thought.... The basic message of these left-leaning diatribes is pretty simple: A majority of the Court could only disagree with liberals about whether requiring all Americans to buy health insurance is beyond the proper bounds of the Congress’s power...

The most common left-wing objection to the right is that it wants to control others' lives. But, both in America and elsewhere, the threat to personal liberty has emanated far more from the left. In the past generation, the left has controlled so much speech and behavior that these controls are now assumed to be a normal part of life. Through the use of public opprobrium, laws and lawsuits, Americans today are less free than at any time since the abolition of slavery (with the obvious exception of blacks under Jim Crow). Public opprobrium is known as political correctness, and...

This is now the national equivalent of a brawl breaking out in the stands at a Little League T-ball game because Joey’s dad thinks he was safe and Billy’s dad says he was out. Except instead of headlocks and punches, there’s fake anthrax and professional security involved.Are we sure this is still a “liberals hate the Palins” story and not a story about DWTS fans investing psychologically in this moronic show to a near-psychotic degree? We’re told the threats began to come in last week, after Bristol and Mark made the finals. Execs on the show told Mark to stop...

For those that can not get Glenn Beck here is todays show 02/03/10. Click me for video...

America’s Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion was delivered to me a while ago. I read the book shortly after I received it, and was amazed at how the author, Herbert London, could possibly put so much information that would normally fill volumes into a small, 97 page book. The number of pages fooled me, however. I did not move through the material nearly as quickly as I thought I would. Contained within the pages of Herb London’s small book is a huge message. Mr. London meticulously researched the material, and wrote the book in such a...

WASHINGTON -- For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets. And whatever combination of goods, services and jobs the market cooked up was presumed to be fine for the nation and for its citizens -- certainly better than government meddling. No longer. Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair,...