Free Republic

Society is society. Government is government. They are two entirely distinct, and completely separate things. Not in the land of Progressivism, however. For progressives, society is government and government is society. They are equally the same and there is no possible distinction. You can routinely see the rotting husk of this when someone proceeds to inform you that "they believe society should do x or y" but when talking of x or y they are instead referring to government action. "I believe that we as a society should take care of the poor, and that's why I support {insert name...

Fake News? That pales in comparison to Fake History. As committed socialist George Orwell once wrote: He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. There is an article in Vox yesterday which explains exactly why there need to be more conservative citizen historians so as to hold "the experts" accountable. Titled "“They have no allegiance to liberal democracy”: an expert on antifa explains the group", faux-historian Mark Bray accurately admits that Antifa terrorists have no interest in Freedom. They have no allegiance to liberal democracy, which they believe has failed the marginalized...

Technically speaking, progressives have had about six different names. I believe that if the progressives ever did change their name again, they would choose the word "technocrat" as their new hiding place. First, for a little background. Note: this is not designed to be an all-encompassing, uncover-every-stone-history lesson. Starting out, the earliest progressives were known as "Georgists" - that is, Henry George and the publication of the book Progress and Poverty. Note the word "progress" in the title. Georgists were not the uniform statist that we would come to know, starting around the beginning of the 20th century. One of...

In describing some of the history of American Progressivism, Dinesh D'Souza asks a very provocative question: Think about this: we know the name of the philosopher of capitalism, Adam Smith. We also know the name of the philosopher of Marxism, Karl Marx. So, quick, what is the name of the philosopher of fascism? Yes, exactly. You don’t know. Virtually no one knows. My point is that this is not because there were no foundational thinkers behind fascism – there were several – but rather that the left had to get rid of them in order to avoid confronting their unavoidable...

Generally speaking, if someone is running into a litany or a rant and denouncing you as a reactionary, that person is probably a communist. That is, in the 21st century. But what if the year is 1912? "Reactionary" is a word that statists of all stripes love to use, even those who do not behold the Communist viewpoint. In a speech denouncing the GOP, the DNC, and anybody else who he didn't like, Theodore Roosevelt said the following: I merely want to discuss the difference of policy between the Progressive and the Democratic Party and to ask you to think...

Now this is a very interesting poll. 58% of republicans think colleges have a negative impact on the country. I've seen several reports about this poll, and surprisingly, every single report omits the most important word: INDOCTRINATION.The real question isn't if republicans have a negative opinion of universities. The real question is: Does America even have universities? I'm very serious about that. A "university" that engages primarily in progressive and communist propaganda and indoctrination and does not actually educate, can it legitimately be called a college or a university? I would answer that question quite firmly as a no. America...

It's such a shame to see a magazine that claims to be "The Root", be so willing to ignore "the roots" of what you would think would be their own history. Recently, The Root engaged in gross historical malpractice by giving voice to people who would benefit greatly from learning their own true history. They created a short video titled "No Country for Me." This is (among many reasons) one of the reasons why I recorded William Cooper Nell's 1855 book The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution as an audiobook. There are many outlets out there, even outlets such...

This is fully conjecture, but I'm convinced that the answer is yes. During the time in which Wilson was inventing the concept of the "living and breathing constitution", Wilson made the following observations: (Constitutional Government, page 55) The government of the United States was constructed upon the Whig theory of political dynamics, which was a sort of unconscious copy of the Newtonian theory of the universe [see: Newtonian government]. In our own day, whenever we discuss the structure or development of anything, whether in nature or in society, we consciously or unconsciously follow Darwin; but before Darwin, they followed Newton....

The American Thinker has an interesting piece today about Howard Zinn, in which the claim is made that: "Zinn, more than any other man, turned our history books on their heads, and in a way, changed the contemporary course of history." Honestly, I'm not sure that's true. In comparing Zinn to Charles Beard, one of the main issues is the simple expanse of time. Sure, Zinn is more acute in the lies he has written, but Beard has had over a century for his poison to become foundational thinking. Here's the thing: Howard Zinn never knew the real America, so...

Common knowledge has it that the Red Scare involved Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, and Cold War highlights. While all of this is true, that's the second Red Scare of the 1960's. The first Red Scare is far more interesting. The first Red Scare involved progressives using the force of big government against their ideological opponents, the communists. While it is true that (probably) the two most high profile people to be deported were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman - both anarchists(not communists) - that does not change the fact that one of the main goals of the 1917-1919 purge was to...

Making Socialists Out of College Students: A Story of Professors and Other Collegians who Hobnob with Radicals I don't need to say much about this, except this: Read this book! But, do pay attention to the publication date. 1920. It's out of copyright and free to download from the public domain. To our friends who believe that all evil begins in the 1960's, I emplore you. Please look back further. To our friends who believe that all evil begins in the 1930's, I emplore you. Please look back further!

Lies are as important an ingredient in the ideology of progressives as is h20 in water. Two months ago, a Planned Parenthood pamphlet from 1952 was making the rounds, and everybody was rushing to condemn the organization for it. Here is the pamphlet. Here it is again, and again and again. The last link is the most direct, but at the same time the most problematic. It states at the top "MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH". This entirely misses the point and as far as I'm concerned, it's dangerous. If you guys want to attack individual leaves on the tree,...

Initiate a discussion about welfare, and inevitably the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt pops up. Often times FDR comes up in the first sentence. Problem is, this simply is not historically accurate. It is true to say that FDR supercharged welfare, but anything else is fake history. Not only did welfare in America exist prior to FDR, but the first welfare program for citizens was repealed in 1929. The interesting story, however, is that it was not people who were first at being put on welfare by the federal government. That's what makes the issue of the first 48 welfare...

The grapevines that line rolling hillsides and sweeping valleys in Northern California’s wine country have become iconic – a symbol of the region’s rustic charm that helped California earn its reputation as a world-class wine and food destination. But winegrapes have new competition: weed. California’s legalization of recreational marijuana has led to the beginning of a major transformation of wine country. It’s been just seven months, but already investors are snapping up property where wine was once produced. Vineyard operators are developing expertise in cannabis cultivation. New, specialty marijuana businesses are sprouting up in Sonoma and Mendocino counties. And farmers...

Have you ever heard of the Sheppard-Towner Act? No, of course not. That's because it was repealed in 1929. Specifically it was allowed to expire and congress did not move to act, to renew the bill. In 1921, this bill created the first national welfare program in the United States, which as you probably guessed it, was "for the children", and "for the women", and blah blah blah. Progressives always recycle the same foolishness. "For the children" and "for the women" - these are generally the primary schemes that the progressives always use as an excuse to grow government, isn't...

In his speech to Congress on December 7, 1915, Woodrow Wilson made the following point about hyphenated Americans: There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics...

In 1921, George Douglas Howard Cole(Who would become a member of the Fabian Society) wrote the following in a book about Guild Socialism: (page 156) We have now completed our outline sketch of the structure and methods of working of a Guild Socialist Commonwealth, and have thus come to the threshold of the practical problem of transition to it from the capitalist Society of to-day. And here the first question that confronts us, as it confronts all Socialists under the conditions of the present time, is the question of "evolution and revolution." Do we hope and intend to bring about...

There is a new argument that progressives are cooking up, consider this a warning. Be prepared. In Original Intent and the Framers' Constitution, the following is written: (page 268) Oddly enough, those who advocate a constitutional "jurisprudence of original intention" and assert that the Constitution "said what it meant and meant what it said," are the ones who most vigorously deny content to the Ninth Amendment and to the concept of a "living Constitution." Presumably, they would not swear fealty to a dead Constitution, not even to a static one of the sort endorsed by Chief Justice Roger Taney in...

(He) stated his position when he said that the history of government, the history of liberty, was the history of the limitation of governmental power. This is true as an academic statement of history in the past. It is not true as a statement affecting the present. It is true of the history of medieval Europe. It is not true of the history of twentieth-century America. In the days when all governmental power existed exclusively in the king or in the baronage and when the people had no shred of that power in their own hands, then it undoubtedly was...

PROGRESSIVE CAUSE GREATER THAN ANY INDIVIDUALBy Theodore Roosevelt, October 14th, 1912 Just before entering the Auditorium at Milwaukee, an attempt was made on Colonel Roosevelt's life. The speech which follows is from a stenographic report, differing considerably from the prepared manuscript. - Editor's Note FRIENDS, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a...