Free Republic

Sigmund Freud was the fellow who had the copyright on the ego, the id and the superego. He was also the guy who managed to turn the couch, formerly just another piece of over-stuffed Viennese furniture, into a legitimate business expense. But even he acknowledged that he was unable to decipher what it was that women wanted. Strangely enough, that happens to be one question to which I actually know the answer. Women want men to be manly chaps, strong and virile, while at the same time they want us to be completely open and in touch with our emotions....

HAVANA - Over the past 10 years I've crossed Cuba many times -- by train, bus, motorcycle and '57 Chevy, transported on the backs of produce wagons and horse-drawn carts, standing in peso trucks shoulder-to-shoulder with locals, and squeezed atop water carriers. Along the central motorway, down dusty trails that pass obscure rural villages, through seemingly impassible roads after torrents of rain, my drivers took a foreigner aboard, even if it was forbidden. Some even took me into their homes and allowed me to witness their lives. Their kindness will stay with me always. So will their terrible plight. When...

In a remarkably even-handed article, Margaret Bunting points Guardian readers to the emerging debate on human enhancement, and the forthcoming pamphlet on “Better Humans" from the British thinktank Demos. To the real enthusiasts - they call themselves transhumanists - humanity is on the point of being liberated from its biology. In their advocacy of our “technological rights”, they believe that human beings are on the brink of a huge leap in development, leaving behind the sick, quarrelsome, weak, fallible creatures we have been up to now. We will be, as their slogan goes, “better than well”. This is the prospect...

Enrico Ferri (1856-1926), a prominent socialist of his day, was an Italian criminologist who for many years was the editor of Avanti, a socialist daily.  Writing in "Socialism and Religious Beliefs," he spoke of the all-important connection between Darwin's theory and socialism:  "I add that not only is Darwinism not contrary to socialism, but that it forms one of its fundamental scientific premises.  As Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing else than the logical and vital outcome partly of Darwinism and partly of Spencerian evolution."  (www.marxists.org/...) Enrico frankly discussed how and why Darwinian socialism serves as an alternate religion:  "socialism...

Where else but California? By: Ray Haynes - Commentary Where else but our socialist paradise? Three bills before the Legislature last week demonstrate just how out of touch the Legislative majority really is. First, AB 1418 by Jerome Horton. Last year, Republicans wanted to list the names and addresses of child molesters on the Internet so that parents could protect their children from the sexual predators in their neighborhoods. The listing was a common-sense approach for parents who, with information about sexual predators, could take steps to protect their children from these evil perpetrators. The Democrats were afraid these predators...

As optimism poured into their hearts and knowledge crammed into their brains, more than 100 local residents peered with a wan smile into their collective future Friday during the first official smart growth educational workshop. Four erudite speakers presented a path toward a near-utopian life for Ukiahans -- full of walkable communities, slower traffic and more prominent greenscaping. But it was the far-reaching, more intimate impacts of smart growth that produced a series of gasps from the audience. A cross-sectional crowd of elected officials, public and private planners, contractors, builders and other concerned citizens took part of the workshop, co-sponsored...

A surge in random violence has pushed San Francisco's homicide rate ahead of last year's pace, leaving city officials wondering what more they can do to reduce the bloodshed. Two killings took place Friday. In the first, a carpenter was gunned down in the morning as he walked in a Mission District alley, possibly because he was wearing a blue shirt in territory claimed by a gang that wears red. Then at 6:30 p.m., an unidentified man was gunned down in the 1600 block of Sunnydale Avenue. The two killings brought the city's total to 84 slayings in 2005, compared...

With critics charging he misled Americans on the war in Iraq, President Bush says, "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops." Is it right to argue about the reasons for going to war, or should we "put this debate behind us," as the president's national security adviser suggests?

Freeper Investigation: Original Intent and Constitutional Jurisprudence by Jean F. Drew English and Anglo-American law’s core principle is the opposition to abusive power as exercised by the state. As Dan Gifford writes in “The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason,” “The law is not the law regardless if it be good, bad, or indifferent. There is a higher moral law, originating within ancient Jewish law, which requires individual responsibility for opposing evil and promoting goodness. It is from this basic tenet that English law and Anglo-American law embody the following principle: The individual has rights against the...

The LA Times recently ran a story about the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit, which contained a mind-boggling statistic: of the more than 100 offenders the unit has arrested over the last four years, “all but one” has been “a hard-core Trekkie.” Blogger Ernest Miller thought this claim was improbable. “I could go to a science fiction convention,” he explained “and be less likely to find that 99+ percent of the attendees were hard-core Trekkies.” While there may be quibbling about the exact numbers, the Toronto detectives claim that the connection is undeniable. In fact, Star...

BRASILIA, Brazil - A top Cabinet official resigned Thursday over accusations he knew of a vote-buying scheme in Congress, becoming the highest-ranking official hit by a scandal that has shaken President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration. Chief of Staff Jose Dirceu was accused by congressman Roberto Jefferson of involvement in a plan to pay legislators a monthly bribe to support the Silva's Workers Party. Dirceu, a close ally and friend of the president, denied the accusations in a nationally televised statement. But he said was stepping down and Silva "accepted my request to leave the government." The scandal erupted...

Leftists love to complain and they especially love to whine about "greed." They just don't get it. A market economy is based on incentives. The prospect of financial reward is what motivates most people to work, save and invest. There's nothing particularly ingenious about a system that recognizes this. It's intuitive. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith didn't invent an economic system; he merely observed and analyzed what people do naturally when left to their own devices. Socialism, on the other hand, is an ingenious system, an invention of coercive economic utopians, based on the notion that human nature...

Hollywood actor Richard Gere joined some 30 Nobel Laureates for a gathering of the world's top thinkers in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. The conference, bringing together luminaries such as former peace prize winner the Dalai Lama, has set itself the none too modest task of finding solutions to the world's problems. "A process begins here -- a process that all of you will shape -- and by your effort, help shape our world," host King Abdullah II of Jordan said in his opening speech. Highlighting the conflict in the Middle East, he said the world needed to make...

In British legend, mysterious lights said to lead travelers from well-trodden paths into treacherous marshes are called the "Will o' the Wisp." The title also describes malevolent spirits who lure their prey into disaster with false promises. They erect symbolic lighthouses which instead of guiding vessels to safety, lead the unwary into destruction on the rocks and shoals. In his book "The End of Time," David Horowitz writes, "The desire for more than is possible is the cause of greater human misery than any other," which is another way of warning of the dangers of pursuing the political incarnation of...

It seems like every day I run across an article that informs me that some state's school has taken Jefferson and Washington out of the mandatory coursework, only to replace them with Cesar Chavez and Betty Friedan. As if only the white male students should be inspired by the Founding Fathers. Other school districts have cancelled dodgeball because inferior athletes may feel, well, inferior. Many school districts have disallowed birthday parties and/or cupcakes in the classroom because some students have summer birthdays and can't have their own days of attention in the classroom. The inane list goes on and on....

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

If you believe the fulfillment of your cause will create Heaven on Earth, anything done in its name is justified. Grasping this basic concept helps one to better understand the present-day beheadings by backward fundamentalists hoping to create Allah’s Kingdom in the temporal world. It also helps one understand the mass killings of the past in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union supported by cultured intellectuals promising to make men perfect. This is why utopianism is so dangerous. It rationalizes horrible crimes done to attain the unattainable. The intellectual morons discussed in my book by the same name get blinded...

The sages say there is more to life than sitting by a river on a glorious late summer afternoon, listening to music, with a beautiful city in the background. What the heck do the sages know? And why do you need any more than what Pittsburgh offered a week ago Saturday? The sky was a deep blue and the air was crisp and cool. We'll overlook the fact that it took the remnants of a hurricane to blow away the humidity and gunk normally lurking in the Southwestern Pennsylvania air. Remember, we don't have to worry about hurricanes or earthquakes,...

A Modest Plea for Pollution Control By Bob Formaini It is now a well-accepted principle that governments can, through central regulatory control, protect us from whatever it decides is "pollution." The word pollution is not a scientific term; pollution is whatever the people who control discourse on this issue deem it to be. In that spirit, I would like to propose that government get busy at once controlling the most damaging form of pollution the human race has to contend with: mind pollution. So-called hate crimes laws and political correctness are a weak, inadequate way to deal with the byproducts...

It's long been an irony that the same American who gushes over a delightful corner patisserie in the 16th arrondissement buys into a subdivision that is the antithesis of Parisian street life. There are no corner bakeries in the gently curving streets of suburbia, for an Old World clutter of transit, shops and residences is precisely what's been designed out of the suburban landscape. Does the irony lie in our rote desire for a suburban home, or in the fact we've had so few choices? Many of us would love to live in an urban neighborhood rich with transit and...