Free Republic

Progressives will always claim that no matter how badly their plans go wrong, at least their terrible policies were well-intentioned.The regimes that shot orphans, starved entire cities into submission and committed genocide were “caring” in comparison to the heartless Dickensian capitalists who did nothing for the poor except create cheap products and jobs. They might have killed millions, but their red hearts were in the right place. They didn’t just spend all their time gobbling caviar and diving into swimming pools full of all money like the millionaires of the West. Instead they gave speeches about Marxism-Leninism, killed anyone who...

Humorous short video portrayal of the utopian society of the future. Click link to watch.

"On Wednesday, Obama administration officials confirmed to The Post that Cuba has freed American citizen Alan Gross. Gross, who was detained in December 2009 while working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, had been accused of espionage and sentenced to 15 years in prison by Cuba. His imprisonment was a major problem in relations between Washington and Havana. Gross was not freed by accident. According to ABC News, his release is the culmination of more than a year of "secret back-channel talks at the highest levels of both governments." And, importantly, his release comes at the...

Imagine living your entire life using the name that was given to you at birth and then having the government tell you that you have to change it. We’re not at that point in the United States (yet), but in North Korea, that’s exactly what everyone with the name “Jong-Un” is being forced to do. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un apparently loves his name so much that he’s decided that no one else can use it. Since Jong-un is quite a popular name in the country, it looks like a lot of people are going to have to look for...

"Do you just want your kids to be test machines and cheap workers for corporations?"Lily Tang Williams, a mother of three, testified before the Colorado State Board of Education that Common Core was similar to the education she received growing up in Mao’s Communist China. “Common Core, in my eyes, is the same as the Communist core I once saw in China,” Williams said. “I grew up under Mao’s regime and we had the Communist-dominated education — nationalized testing, nationalized curriculum, and nationalized indoctrination.” In a post at FreedomWorks, Williams wrote about her experience with the Chinese education system: Our...

A Milford parent is questioning the two-day suspension of his 10-year-old son from Stacy Middle School. Nickolas Taylor, a fifth-grader, was suspended after pointing an imaginary ray gun - his finger - and mouthing laser sounds in the school’s cafeteria last Friday, said Brian Taylor, Nickolas' father. “I think this is very slanderous toward Nickolas and his character,” said Taylor. “It was non-threatening. He’s just a typical boy with an imagination.” A conduct slip, written by Assistant Principal Noah Collins, lists the offense as a threat. Collins could not be reached for comment despite numerous phone calls and emails seeking...

Professor Jonathan Gruber of MIT, who designed the Affordable Care Act, used to be the symbol of the Democrats’ technocratic bona fides, and an example of how big government with its “scientific” experts can solve social and economic problems from health care to a warming planet. Yet a recently publicized video of remarks he made at a panel in 2013, along with 2 other videos in the same vein, has now made him the poster child of the elitist progressives’ contempt for the American people, and their sacrifice of prudence and reason to raw political power. In the video Gruber...

British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted Friday he would not pay a European Union bill for an additional €2.1 billion ($2.65 billion) contribution to the EU coffers at a time of increasing pressure at home for the country to leave the bloc. Thumping his fist in frustration, Cameron said “people should be in no doubt: as an important contributor to this organization, we are not suddenly going to get out our checkbook and write a check for €2 billion. It is not happening.” Cameron said asking Britain for a top-up of some 20 percent in its contributions on short notice...

In response to fears of Ebola spreading within the U.S., the Pentagon is forming a “quick strike team” consisting of 30 people. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Sunday that the medical support team will feature 20 critical care nurses, five doctors and five trainers who specialize in infectious disease protocols. The team is composed of civilian health care providers though no names have been released at this point. The team was created in response.....

A U.S. report released Thursday says China’s human rights record has worsened in key areas over the past year and that limits on free speech and assembly are growing. The annual report by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said the country has tightened restrictions on civil society, rights advocates, journalists and religious organizations. It added that President Xi Jinping has adhered “to the authoritarian model of his predecessors” since taking power last year. That model “poses a serious challenge to U.S.-China relations and China’s own development,” the report said. It recommended that the U.S. press for more freedoms in China,...

Last week’s People's Climate March drew 400,000 people onto the streets of Manhattan and a great deal of international attention to a subject of dire urgency. But some were skeptical about the event’s overall significance. “The march slogan was, ‘to change everything, we need everyone,’ which is telling, because it won’t change everything, because it didn’t include everyone,” wrote David Roberts of Grist. “Specifically, it won’t change American politics because it didn’t include conservatives.” True enough. If there weren’t such a stark divide between American conservatives and almost everyone else on the question of the existence and importance of climate...

In May, the European Commission summarily rejected the largest democratic initiative in European Union history. The decision left many wondering: Is participatory democracy dead in the European Union? Self-governance is essential to any democratic regime, but that’s merely an inconvenient truth to the bureaucrats in Brussels. The European Union continues to wrestle with criticism of its ever-deepening democracy deficit — the failure of the EU system to involve citizens in the decision-making process. The only EU body elected by the citizenry is the European Parliament. Yet this body is almost perfunctory. The redoubtable European Commission retains total power of initiating...

Hungary leader Viktor Orban has said he wants to build an illiberal state based on national foundations, citing Russia and China as examples.Speaking at a retreat of ethnic Hungarian leaders in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on Saturday (26 July) the right wing leader said that the 2008 financial crisis triggered changes as significant as the two world wars and as those in 1990, the year of transition in Eastern and Central Europe. The experience of the financial crisis showed that “liberal democratic states cannot remain globally competitive.” […] "Today, the world tries to understand systems which are not Western, not liberal,...

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors. "You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. It was, to put mildly, a significant departure from the more traditional liberal stance that openness and transparency...

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." --Party slogan, "1984" It is an essential part of the totalitarian mentality -- excuse me, not mentality, but to use today's neo-non-word, mindset. As if approved ideas could simply be poured into the mind to set, the way concrete is. And any trace of what was once there will be covered, effaced, smoothed over. For the past must not only be hidden but, to the well-trained mindset, it never existed at all. It's an approach as old as the French Revolution, which was not only...

(CNSNews.com) – White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday the Obama administration’s foreign policies in a number of areas have enhanced the world’s “tranquility” – a word that raised eyebrows as reporters pointed to situations in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine and the South China Sea. More than one reporter during Monday’s press briefing referred to a front-page Wall Street Journal article highlighting some of those crises, and citing security strategists as saying “the breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s.”

We are seeing the most dangerous trend ever. There is an agenda behind the curtain and that is to sustain government at all costs and that includes everything you own. I have warned that either government will move toward a totalitarian state or to real democracy – real Athens style without the career politicians. The latter is possible with civil unrest as we saw in Ukraine. This agenda requires no secret group of sinister corporations, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, or Bildebergs. This is plain old Adam Smith where those in government will never admit they are wrong so the reason they are...

Get in their face and punch back twice as hard, a legendary community organizer demanded of his constituents, before becoming America’s most passive chief effective, feigning discovery of scandal after scandal only after being informed by the media. Back in April, Princeton freshman Tal Fortgang punched back twice as hard at one of the latest cliches the left uses to avoid having argument — “Check your privilege,” a disguised form of racism, as the privilege implied is based on skin color. As Kurt Schlichter wrote a couple of weeks ago in his epic deconstruction of the phrase at Townhall.com:

Or as Marie Antoinette said: "Let them eat cake." For most people, the field of education is now a big swamp of claims and counterclaims that never seem to be resolved. People give up trying to make sense of it all. It's a safe bet that the Education Establishment likes this surrender just fine. A baffled public will be a passive public that pays taxes but otherwise shuts up. If the public is confused, they can't possibly mount a resistance to the foolishness in public schools. If people want reform, they have to understand the basic issues. This is not...

Before I begin, I want to pose a question to the powers that control our society today: Am I allowed to comment on issues that pertain to homosexuality if I don't echo the views of our masters? Will people who read this column willingly twist what I say to justify condemnation of anyone who disagrees with them? They certainly do it to many other people. Note to those waiting for an excuse to pretend to be offended so they can cram their views down our throats with McCarthyite tactics: Please read precisely what I say and don't draw unwarranted inferences,...