Free Republic

Ensconced on the wall of the Supreme Court is a freize of the supposed "great lawgivers" of the Middle Ages. Under the prevailing left wing mores, one of the images simply must be removed- the image of Muhammed. Muhammed was a slave owner.The paradox A poignant paradox of Islamic slavery is that the humanity of the various rules and customs that led to the freeing of slaves created a demand for new slaves that could only be supplied by war, forcing people into slavery or trading slaves. Muslim slavery continued for centuries The legality of slavery in Islam, together with...

One of our very own FReepers wrote a book called, "The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun", which was released last month. I ordered it and read it and hope you'll bear with me as I offer my review of the book. First, I do not know Matthew outside of Free Republic and I'm getting nothing for doing this review. The story takes place at some point in the future. Maybe a decade from now, maybe twenty years from now. The world has faced a crisis in which fiat currencies like the dollar and the Euro have fallen and trade is done...

Following the events in Charlottesville last weekend, we are now engaged in a national orgy of banishing whatever can be identified as "symbols of oppression" from the past. Everywhere they exist, statues of Confederate figures are being removed from public spaces. In Congress, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has called for removal of a dozen or so statues of Confederate figures from the U.S. Capitol. (Funny, but there didn't seem to be any problem with them when she was Speaker not so long ago.) Here in New York, we don't have much in the way of symbols honoring Confederate figures, but...

... on both his mother’s AND his father’s side of the family, Obama is descended from people who owned and/or sold black African slaves. How ironic that Obama received almost universal support from blacks who are here because their ancestors were grabbed up and sold into slavery by other black Africans, including Obama’s father’s tribe. Not surprisingly, when this issue first came up from a story published in the Baltimore Sun on March 2, 2007, quoted here by Sweetness and Light, which only looked into Obama’s mother’s family, the media demonized Obama’s mother’s side of the family for apparently owning...

As the face of CNN, Anderson Cooper makes a very good living as wealthy, privileged white man casting judgments of affiliation upon his political enemies. This includes taking a handful of idiotic white supremacists and declaring they represent millions of Republicans/conservatives, pro-America, Trump supporters, etc. And yet Mr. Cooper himself has a much closer affiliation to slavery than he likely wants his leftist viewers to know. As a descendant of the Vanderbilt family, one of the wealthiest “old money” families in American history, Cooper is a direct descendant of big time slave owners. Cooper’s great-great grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, owned several...

With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Republican Party controlled the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, and the presidency. Sensing the beginning of the end to the institution of slavery in the U.S., Democrat-controlled states began to secede from the Union... Tellingly, in their secession declarations, among the list of grievances, virtually every southern state referenced the election of Lincoln and the threat he and his party presented to the institution of slavery. ...The Confederate States of America was formed at the Montgomery Convention in February of 1861. For the southern states—and anyone else in the world paying...

All of a sudden America is confronted with American leftists abruptly striking out at their own history — pulling down statues of those who were the military leaders of a philosophical belief that is historically recorded and enshrined as the building block of the Democratic Party. In a 2016 commencement address to City College in New York graduates, then-First Lady Michelle Obama said that “every single day” as First Lady “I wake up in a house that was built by slaves.” True enough.   Back there in the stone age of 2008 I authored a piece in The American Spectator which was...

The conversation about monuments — particularly which should stay and which should go — has eclipsed nearly all other conversations in the week following a rally-turned-near-riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. CNN's Kate Bolduan spoke to liberal analyst Angela Rye on Thursday, asking her whether the uproar was truly just about the monuments. Rye claimed that the problem ran much deeper than that: .. Rye concluded her argument by asserting that America was very close to once again being a nation of slavery: “We definitely need to learn about it so that we don't repeat it, because we're very close to repeating...

This pamphlet is designed to give its readers a solid overview of the Democratic Party's history. Genocide, Hickory and Slavery: The Origins of the Party The Democratic Party, as a party distinct from the Democratic-Republican Party, began with the beliefs and ambitions of one man: Andrew Jackson. Nicknamed Old Hickory, he became the President of the United States from 1829 to 1837. However, had not Jackson's ideas and ambitions appealed to many Americans in the 1820's and 30's, the Democratic Party would never have formed around him. Andrew Jackson was born in North Carolina in 1767. He became a successful...

Only those who are so-called “woke” (I just threw up in my mouth) are deserving of statues in American history. That’s what CNN commentator Angela Rye said during a panel discussion with CNN’s Kate Bolduan. As the nation descends into chaos concerning political commentary over the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia that left scores of people injured and one woman dead, we’re on the discussion of statues. White nationalists descended into the city last Saturday to supposedly protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. Far left counter protesters arrived and skirmishes broke out. It culminated when a...

New York, both the city and the state, is named after the house of York and particularly for James Stuart, then Duke of York, one of the most successful slavers in colonial American history. President Donald Trump wondered aloud during a raucous press conference Tuesday whether the impulse to tear down memorials to leaders of the Confederacy like Gen. Robert E. Lee would slip into calls to remove monuments to America’s founders, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, both of whom owned slaves. The memory of slavery is enshrined in the name New York as well as the name of...

New York activist Al Sharpton offered an emotional and personal case calling for the federal government to halt funding to Washington, D.C.'s Jefferson Memorial. Sharpton said America's third president and the author of the Declaration of Independence had several slaves. His iconic round-roofed memorial sits on the edge of Potomac River- the first of several monuments lining Washington's Ohio Drive. Sharpton also noted how Jefferson is said to have fathered a child with a slave named Sally Hemings. "People need to understand that people were enslaved," Sharpton told PBS' Charlie Rose. He said that his great-grandfather was a slave who...

If Democrats seeking the removal of historical memorials tied to racist history are serious, they should be tripping over one another to get in front of a camera and call for the removal of memorials and namesakes to Presidents Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Sen. Robert C Byrd. These five men had two things in common–all had a penchant for racism to one degree or another, and all were Democrats. Some of the memorials to them are monuments, some are groves, others are highways, bridges, colleges, and even cemeteries. Of course, the cemeteries ought...

Assault against history goes way beyond the confederacy. It has become identity politics on steroids. The way to destroy liberty is to destroy the history, especially if the hero in history is a dead white European male. . . The liberal left’s desire to tear down any and all memories of the Confederate States of America is reaching a crescendo. Statues are being torn down. State flags are being redesigned and burned. According to the Democrats, and their Black Lives Matter brethren, all vestiges of the dark time when the Southern States practiced slavery must be stricken from the record....

The mayor, more than half of the D.C. Council, and the D.C. attorney general have joined activists in calling for the removal of a statue of a Confederate general from federal land in Judiciary Square. "Albert Pike was a strong proponent of slavery and fought to try to preserve that in this country. Regardless of what he did in other parts of his life, it's inappropriate to honor him," says At-large Councilmember David Grosso, who sent a letter today to the acting director of the National Park Service calling for a statue of Pike at 3rd and D streets NW...

"History, by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." ---Thomas Jefferson From the time of the middle of the 19th Century, the deep Southern States’ governments and the Southern people have been depicted as being totally preoccupied with the survival of slavery, while Northern people were to become...

After white nationalists protested the City of Charlottesville’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza claimed Sunday that Lee opposed slavery.Verdict: FalseWhile Lee disagreed with slavery in an abstract sense, he held views similar to his pro-slavery contemporaries and criticized abolitionists of his day.Fact Check: D’Souza claimed in a tweet that Lee, a Confederate general during the Civil War, was a poor example of the evils of slavery. The claim is counterintuitive – Lee owned slaves, and he fought for the Confederacy in a rebellion that was, in part, predicated on slavery.The...

RUSH: Those of you driving a Prius, those of you who have ordered a Tesla, those of you who think that you are saving the planet before it climate change or other horrible acts of nature because you are purchasing an electric car, which means that you are engaging in sustainable, renewable energy, this story is for you. ItÂ’s from the U.K. Daily Mail. Now, weÂ’re gonna link to this story at RushLimbaugh.com, and I want those of you out there to pass this story on to everybody you know that drives an electric car or a hybrid. I donÂ’t...

Slavery in America, typically associated with blacks from Africa, was an enterprise that began with the shipping of more than 300,000 white Britons to the colonies. This little known history is fascinatingly recounted in White Cargo (New York University Press, 2007). Drawing on letters, diaries, ship manifests, court documents, and government archives, authors Don Jordan and Michael Walsh detail how thousands of whites endured the hardships of tobacco farming and lived and died in bondage in the New World. Following the cultivation in 1613 of an acceptable tobacco crop in Virginia, the need for labor accelerated. Slavery was viewed as...

Slavery in America, typically associated with blacks from Africa, was an enterprise that began with the shipping of more than 300,000 white Britons to the colonies. This little known history is fascinatingly recounted in White Cargo (New York University Press, 2007). Drawing on letters, diaries, ship manifests, court documents, and government archives, authors Don Jordan and Michael Walsh detail how thousands of whites endured the hardships of tobacco farming and lived and died in bondage in the New World. Following the cultivation in 1613 of an acceptable tobacco crop in Virginia, the need for labor accelerated. Slavery was viewed as...