Free Republic

Do you have 22 1/2 minutes to invest in this reminder of how we have gotten so far off-course from the original founding of our nation? P.S. I know this information has been posted on FR before, but I couldn't find a video version. This posting is for those who learn and retain information better by way of a visual/audio presentation.

At the core of America’s founding was a simple, yet literally revolutionary, idea: that all people deserve to be free because they are created by God in His image, and that our rights come from God, not government. This was articulated in the most important sentence in America’s founding, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those 36 words are sometimes called the best-known...

Hey Mr. Constitutuional Scholar....THE UNITED STATES IS A CONSITUTIONAL REPUBLIC!!!

The sexting scandal of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and current New York mayoral candidate, puts into focus the importance of character to public service. Weiner's texts, tweets and photos show not just a tawdry person but a risk-taking, deceitful individual who continued his serial texting and lied about it even as he prepared to run again for office. His wife, Huma Abedin, is standing by her man and expects the public to defer to her judgment as to his fitness for office. It is Abedin's personal business as to whether she will forgive and support Weiner, but it...

I'm needing a bit of advice here and hoping someone could possibly answer my question. I want to delete my account and need to know what the procedure is . Thanks!

July 3 marks the last day of the battle of Gettysburg 150 years ago -- Pickett's Charge, the "high water mark of the Confederacy." July 4 is of course Independence Day, but this year it is also the sesquicentennial of the surrender of Vicksburg, which split the rebel states in two by securing the length of the Mississippi for the Union. This week, a century and a half ago, marked the certain beginning of the end for the Confederacy and thus of slavery and the rise of the great Republic of freedom. To commemorate this week, I am spending the...

Tyler Weyer and his fellow seniors at Republic High School began considering possible commencement speakers last fall...But Weyer had a crazy thought. “I said, ‘Hey, let’s just get Sarah Palin,’ ” said Weyer, the 17-year-old senior class president at Republic High...Then came another e-mail from Palin’s people – this time to set up a phone call with him and school officials...On April 18, Weyer and school officials had the phone call with Palin’s representative, and learned that Palin would be coming to graduation... Anderson’s priority is to preserve the event as a commencement ceremony – something focused on the students...

In an interview with Bloomberg TV from the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, former Vice President Al Gore claims American democracy has been "hacked." Gore also opined on former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently commenting that she regretted her decision in Bush v. Gore. "[America] has been hacked. That is a computer term when the operating system of a computer is taken over and the computer does things the owner does not want it to. That is what has been happening to American democracy. You have 90% of the people in favor of background checks for gun...

America, weÂ’re told from a young age, is all about democracy, and democracy is all about choosing whom you want to be your representatives and holding them accountable. This seems like an entirely uncontroversial idea, but a surprising number of Republican politicians would like to do away with this right, and return the country to an older era when Americans didnÂ’t directly elect their representatives in Washington.Until 1913 and the ratification of the 17th Amendment, Americans didnÂ’t actually elect senators, state legislators did. The change seems unquestionably positive, but Rep. Jeff Flake, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for a...

For those of you who do not know, especially young people, I am compelled to inform you of the generally un-known truth that the word "Liberal" has a proud heritage and was originally a word that described men who were the political opposites of modern "Liberals." The word "Liberal" was forcibly stolen and corrupted by evil men who intentionally perverted the use and meaning of the word. In the long forgotten past, the word "Liberal" described honorable and principled men who held to a philosophy of government that advocated Constitutional Republicanism. Constitutional Republicanism is a type of government almost unknown...

 "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..."  -- Article IV, Section 4, the United States Constitution What is a REAL REPUBLICAN? A REAL REPUBLICAN is an American who adheres politically, in word and deed, to the original natural law moral principles of our republic, to the sworn duty to support the stated purposes and explicit provisions of the U.S. Constitution, and is firmly committed to the preservation of representative self-government. What are the original principles of our republic? Those principles are summed up best in our nation's charter, the Declaration...

How often have you heard people refer to America as a Democracy? When was the last time that you heard America referred to as a Republic? There is a very good reason that our Pledge of Allegiance refers to our country as a Republic and there is a very good reason that our Declaration of Independence and our constitution do not even mentioned the word "democracy". Many people are under the false impression our form of government is a democracy, or representative democracy. This is of course completely untrue. The Founders were extremely knowledgeable about the issue of democracy and...

The president of the Central African Republic has fled the country's capital and rebels have seized control of the city, a government official said Sunday. President Francois Bozize crossed into the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Jules Gautier Ngbapo, a spokesman for the government's territorial administration minister. He declined to disclose Bozize's location Sunday. "Central Africans are waiting for the new president to be named," Ngbapo said in a written statement. Word of Bozize's surprise departure came as violence erupted in the capital, Bangui. Witnesses reported hours of gunfire, and Ngbapo said at least seven civilians were killed as rebels...

No idea of who this guy is, but he does a great job of making the message clear..

"Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality," ran the eight-column banner in which The Washington Post captured the essence of Obama's second inaugural. There he declared: "What binds this nation together ... what makes us exceptional -- what makes us American -- is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago." Obama then quoted our Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit...

It has long been understood that there is something peculiar, even paradoxical, about conservatism in America. American conservatism is different from conservatism in other countries, even those countries which were the original source of many other American ideas and ideals, i.e., the countries of Europe. Indeed, the very term “American conservatism” is something of an oxymoron. For most Europeans who came to America, the whole purpose of their difficult and disruptive journey to the New World was not to conserve European institutions but to leave them behind and to create something new, often an entirely new life and even a...

The recent election loss at a time when every economic indicator over the previous four years should have catapulted Romney to victory, started me to seriously think; not think about Romney’s failures, not about what the conservative movement should have done or about two parties which were once upon a time closer at their furthest distance than they were even in FDR’s time (and that says a lot). In fact other than 1860 we have never been so dissimilar and as a people, so divided. A thought often wonders about its origin as much as what it is about; something...

Prepaid wireless carrier Republic Wireless has been offering its $19 per month, unlimited everything, prepaid smartphone plan since about this time last year. At the time, though, there were a few catches; you had to buy a very low-end smartphone from them, you had to use its Hybrid Calling technology for most of your calls, and you could only get in if you were lucky enough to be accepted to an exclusive "beta wave." Since then, Republic Wireless has upgraded to the slightly more modern Motorola Defy XT as its flagship smartphone model, and has changed to allow unlimited calling,...

Our opponents in the gun control movement, when they do try to argue down to the philosophical underpinnings of the gun culture in this country, do little more than display their stunning ignorance of history. I’ll ignore for a moment the utterly false notion that self-defense was never mentioned by any of the founders (Adams mentioned it, several founders carried pistols for self-defense, and it’s mentioned in many state analogues to the 2nd Amendment), and concentrate instead of the notion that militia in the colonial or early republic was anything like the top-down organized instrument of state power that our...

The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention. McHenry’s notes were first published in The American Historical Review, vol. 11, 1906, and the anecdote on p. 618 reads: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”