Free Republic

For a long time conservatives have warned that the heavy propaganda and regulatory hands of the Obama administration were not going to change the exercise or eating habits of 315 million Americans... Now comes early statistical proof that after reelecting Obama with fewer votes the second time and 1,567 days of his reign of government intervention and stimulation, many Americans are deciding that maybe the Obamas' plans for their lives do not fit their plans for their own lives.

Jihad has blown up The Liberal Utopia. The visionary liberal land of political and social perfection. President Obama is not happy — and he isn’t alone. You know the place. • The Liberal Utopia is a land where gun background checks prevent mass murder. • The Liberal Utopia is a land where Islamic fundamentalists have changed their perception of America because the President travels to Muslim nations to give lovely speeches, believes that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere is a wonderful sign of an Arab Spring, and refuses to use the word “terrorist” whether his administration is investigating...

What futurists in 1988 imagined Los Angeles would be like in 2013 With the year 2013 a quarter of a century away, the Los Angeles Times in 1988 asked 30 futurists and other experts what they thought life in their city would look like in 2013. They may have overshot the sophistication of our robots, but many of those predictions for 2013 have come true—or at least come close. Reporter Nicole Yorkin wrote the futurism pieces for the April 3, 1988 issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, compiling the information from her various interviews. The articles include illustrations by...

I recently read the new biography of Trotsky by Oxford don Robert Service, published in 2009 by Pan Books. It is well-written and surprisingly interesting. The book does a great public service in describing the life of the actual Trotsky, whose previous “biographies” were little more than hagiographies written by his toady worshippers (people like Isaac Deutscher). The last time that I had taken any interest in Trotsky was when I was a teenager and had fleeting delusions of believing in “socialism.” Reading the new book as an adult and as an economist, I found it a useful opportunity to...

Exclusive: William Murray blasts establishment for still ignoring so-called social issues A politician who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the vote of Paul. This statement was obviously proven in the election of Barack Obama who spent four years expanding the ranks of dependency using every avenue of government possible, from food stamps to mortgage reductions. At the founding of our nation, Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.” California has lead the way to hell in numerous ways for decades, and in...

How quickly people will give up their freedoms today for the illusion of security, and the false hope of prosperity through government control. The point that this cartoon seems to be making, is beware of any individual, organization, or administration that attempts to escalate class, or race warfare to divide the country and make socialism appear to be the only solution. We will always have our differences, but putting the government in charge of everything, and surrendering person freedom is not the solution. This cartoon is timeless and is just as true today as it was in 1948! Obama's Socialism...

<> Though many of the state margins were narrow President Obama ran the table winning every swing or battleground state with the possible exception of Florida where votes are still being counted as of 5:30 this morning. President Obama also won the popular vote by 2 million votes. The President won 303 electoral votes to 206 for Romney. We knew about 11 pm that the President had won when Ohio was called for him. Democrats also held the Senate. Elizabeth Warren won with a good margin in Massachusetts. Claire McKaskill won in Missouri beating Akin-he of the legitimate rape...

Best Future Dystopias Where The Liberals Have Won The Republican Party is gathering in St. Paul, to put forth its vision of the future. And over the next few days, you'll be hearing a lot about the horrendous futures that could take shape if gormless liberals were allowed to run the show. Which makes us wonder: what does science fiction, the literature of the future, have to say about liberal-run dystopias? And it turns out, there are plenty of horrendous futures blighted by the heavy hands of our zinfandel-spitting liberal elites. Here are the scifi stories John McCain should mention...

LILLE, France (Reuters) - Police in France said on Friday they were trying to identify the skeleton of a man believed to have lain undiscovered in bed for more than 15 years. The body, found in an abandoned house in the northern city of Lille, is thought to be that of the elderly owner of the property, who lived alone and appeared to have no relatives. Police said they had found piles of unopened mail at the house dating back to 1996.

This was inspired by a tweet I favorited from @RaulCorrea, I snarked it up a bit. You can see the original tweet here.

California is in the midst of a monstrous debt crisis, the inescapable result of its leading Democrats having gambled on an annual deficit less than $9.2 billion (an immense sum in itself), but now facing a shortfall of nearly twice that amount. For the good of the country, anyone who is actually surprised at this development should be barred from voting in any election until they can pass a third-grade remedial math exam. The inevitability of the California crisis has long been glaringly obvious to all but the most ideologically blinded leftists. Unfortunately, the government of the Golden State is...

Jim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons “Season of the Witch,” the new book by Salon founder David Talbot, tells the story of the wild and bloody birth of “San Francisco values.” The following excerpt – Part 1 in a three-part series -- recounts one of the darker dramas before the ultimate triumph of those values. Jim Jones, the strange and charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, proved a master at politically wiring San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The driven preacher had begun his climb up the political...

Read Aldous Huxley’s review of 1984 he sent to George Orwell Several months after George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984 was published in 1949, Aldous Huxley sent a letter to his former French pupil. The Brave New World author had received a copy of 1984 from the publisher at Orwell's behest, but his poor eyesight prevented him from finishing the book for several months. In his letter to Orwell, the fifty-year-old author compared the two books' screwed-up futures and saw the Orwellian Oceanic dystopia as a predecessor to his own World State. Wrote Huxley in October 1949: Agreeing with all that...

Men are dreaming animals, and the incapacity to dream makes a man less than human. Indeed, we have no knowledge of any human community where men do fail to dream. Which is to say, we know of no human community whose members do not have a vision of perfection—a vision in which the frustrations inherent in our human condition are annulled and transcended. The existence of such dreaming visions is not, in itself, a problem. They are, on the contrary, a testament to the creativity of man which flows from the fact that he is a creature uniquely endowed with...

The publisher of Mark Levin's new #1 book Ameritopia has made the Epilogue publicly available. It is one of the most compelling 8 pages I've ever read in a book. Here it is.

A Venezuelan campaign group says the country has suffered a record number of murders in 2011. The Venezuela Violence Observatory says at least 19,336 people have been killed this year, an average of 53 a day. The figures suggest Venezuela's murder rate is the highest in South America and four times that of Mexico. Criminal violence is set to be a major issue in next year's elections, when President Hugo Chavez is seeking another term in office. "We must inform the nation that 2011 will end as the the most violent year in the nation's history," the Venezuela Violence Observatory...

Commentary: Rich world’s social discontent will result in restored trade barriersBy Amotz Asa-El JERUSALEM (MarketWatch) -- “The basis of our government is the opinion of the people,” said Thomas Jefferson. A novelty when it was said in 1787, that insight now goes without saying, provided that one knows just what “the opinion of the people” is. Reuters An Occupy Wall Street campaign demonstrator holds a placard in Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street in New York on Oct. 17, 2011. However, as the world followed recent days’ social protest in 70 cities from New York and Frankfurt to Tokyo and Sydney,...

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr. Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only...

Transient meth-head Kirk Wise probably made more money than you did last year -- and he didn't even have a job. Wise, 45, is a professional copper thief who steals copper wire to support his $100-a-day meth habit. He's pretty good at it, too -- according to Wise, he's netted nearly $100,000 since January of 2010 by selling the copper to scrap-metal recycling businesses throughout the east Valley. (...) He admitted to everything -- he said he stole copper to support his meth habit and he'd netted $95,000 since last January. He told police he'd been stealing copper for three...

I watched a National Geographic special the other day on NetFlix. It was about the Mayan culture in South America and Mexico. This documentary was about several anthropologist who took it upon themselves to decipher the ancient hieroglyphics that covered the buildings and walls of the decaying Mayan structures. It was quite ironic how the anthropologists romanticized the undisturbed culture of the Mayans and the harm (they say) Spanish priests brought to their way of life. Well, according to the history of their "civilization" these people lived in constant conflict and fear. War and bloodshed was a common community concern....