Free Republic

We all remember the phrase Harry Truman had made years ago, and was immortalized on a plaque on the resolute desk in the Oval Office... "The Buck Stops Here!" http://www.trumanlibrary.org/buckstop.htm Regardless of your politics, an individual is only worth their weight in that arena in their ability to maintain some sort of credibility with their peers and their opposition... Whether we hate them, or like a particular elected official, the government we elect them to maintain for us has changed, fundamentally, as stated before the current President took office, and so eloquently enumerated to everyone who could listen and comprehend...

For some years now, we have been told about a major division within American conservatism: fiscal conservatives vs. social conservatives. This division is hurting conservatism and hurting America -- because the survival of American values depends on both fiscal and social conservatism. Furthermore, the division is logically and morally untenable. A conservative conserves all American values, not just economic ones. By "social conservatism," I am referring to the second and third components of what I call the American Trinity -- liberty, "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum." It is worth noting that a similar bifurcation does not exist...

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream---and not make dreams your master; If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those...

When Mitt Romney blurted out his now notorious 47-percent lament, liberal gaffe-o-meters went ballistic, acting as though he were an American Ebenezer Scrooge who had just shoved Tiny Tim Cratchit into a ditch and then burned down a crutch factory. As several observers have noted, this amorphous statistic includes myriads of worthy beneficiaries indeed, such as veterans, social security recipients, the physically or mentally disabled, the deserving poor, and those utterly unable to take care of themselves in a society where the federal government has assumed tasks that once were the preserve of families, churches, voluntary organizations, and state or...

Perhaps everyone in the eighteenth century could have agreed that in theory no State was more beautiful than a republic, whose whole object by definition was the good of the people. Yet everyone knew it was a fragile beauty indeed. It was axiomatic that no society could hold together without the obedience of its members to the legally constituted authority. In a monarchy the complicated texture of the society, “the magnificence, costly equipage and dazzling splendors” lavished on the prince, the “multitude of criminal laws, with severe penalties, the very rigor of the unitary authority often with the aid of...

Right now I am reading an advanced copy of Os Guinness’s's A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future. The book will be released by IVP on August 6. It’s an essential read and I pledge to publish a future review for our PowerBlog readers. Guinness was interviewed in Religion & Liberty in 1998. In my recent talks around town I have been asking questions about our capacity and desire for self-government as a community and nation. I recently gave a local presentation on President Calvin Coolidge and he helped inspire a greater desire to ask the foundational...

The Mexican countryside is sunny, pleasant, full of stray dogs and in each corner of Russia, you'll find decaying houses containing a samovar. But today, a nation like Mexico or Russia probably wouldn't last two months in a full out military confrontation with tiny Sweden (9.5 inhabitants). But that isn't the real point here, although it is worth pointing out how pathetic nations like Mexico and Russia really are considering the fact they have an abundance of natural resources and border to two of the largest and most successful economies on Earth (USA and the EU). America is presently being...

A number of Civil War & History bloggers, academics, and "me too, me too" types have jumped on the "enemy of American Exceptionalism" bandwagon. Why? It's chic, hip, cool, sophisticated. You know, it's rad man. It's also the current ruling political philosophy in that cesspool we call Washington D.C. It gets you better gigs, it makes one look better (so they think) in the eyes of the world (like I care), and it also gets you noticed - an important thing for the insecure and self-absorbed (most politicians). And, of course, its also misguided and embarrassingly non-thinking. But anti-American Exceptionalism...

To my Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that Rivers cAnneot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence. Thy love is such I can no way repay. The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let's...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_ASo clear and cogent, Freidman demolishes Phil Donahue. Greed and the lies of politicians who claim they are not greedy but are above it

Featured Term (selected at random):TENDENCY Any inclination or disposition that, in human beings, becomes a desire. It is either an attraction to some specific good or an aversion from some specific evil. Natural tendencies are inborn and are really one's natural powers or faculties seeking expression. Supeernatural tendencies are the graces divinely conferred to incline the will to the practice of virtue beyond the capacity of the native will, or of virtue known only on divine faith. Both natural and supernatural tendencies may be either conscious, also called elicited, when a person actually experiences his striving toward a good or...

The barometer of My Love is first My Virtue for in its wings you will find the healing grace of My blood and Testimony wrapped in the wisdom of My understanding releasing Eternal knowledge through dreams , visions and words that release open heaven experiences for those that seek my Chariot of Fire . For truly to find this Throne of Grace you must surpass My mercies to the point of "True surrender" where your fleshly desires robbing Me of your time have ceased completely and I reign supreme for for you to find the facets leading into the Tapestry...

National Public Radio's firing of the talented and amiable Juan Williams for comments he made on Fox News about Muslims is outrageous, even disgusting. But it is not an aberration. It is emblematic of the "dictatorship of virtue" imposed on Americans by the country's elites -- many of them, like those at NPR, publicly funded but unaccountable to the American public. Judging from the response to Williams's firing and the immediate extension of his multimillion dollar contract with Fox News, it looks like he will thrive. But arrayed against the unchecked power of elite multiculturalism, now ensconced not only in...

Sluthood wasn't always considered a virtue. Most normal, rational people look at sleeping around as something sad and wrong. It's not healthy, physically or mentally, it can be damaging to a young girl's reputation, and it can also be incredibly dangerous. Women that sleep around oftentimes end up feeling used and regret their choices when they get older and decide to settle down. Other women end up contracting STDs, which may or may not be treatable. For these reasons and more, being a slut is understandably looked down upon -- it can be genuinely harmful. Today's pseudo-feminists, however, have...

This past Saturday, Barbara Billingsley passed away at the age of 94. For those of you scratching your heads but acquainted with 1950s television, Billingsley played the ever-gracious and loving, hearth-and-home mother June Cleaver in the classic sitcom "Leave It to Beaver." ...In fact, LITB is certainly preferable to America’s new reality, one in which, as Talbot says himself, parents raise children “in a less secure, divorce-prone, sometimes violent world.” Of course, this is an admission that there was an old reality. It was a time when the family was intact, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was low, and the biggest problems...

The School of The Dominican Teaching Sisters of Fanjeaux (France) have received 10 Novices on the 4th of August. The congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Fajeaux was founded in 1975 as a group of 19 Sisters in the Mother House in Tolouse which they left, to remain true to the traditional Liturgy and to the fundamental constitutions. Today, 35 years later. the "School Sisters of the Dominicans of the Holy Name of Jesus at Fanjeaux" are circa 180 sisters. They operate eight schools. The Mother house is located in the vicinity of Prouille (in Southwest France) where in 1208...

Lists Every Catholic Should be Familiar With Jump to: The 7 Sacraments (The Holy Mysteries)The 7 Corporal Works of MercyThe 7 Spiritual Works of MercyThe 3 Eminent Good WorksThe 7 Gifts of the Holy Ghost (& the Charismata)The 12 Fruits of the Holy GhostThe 3 Theological VirtuesThe 4 Cardinal VirtuesThe 7 Capital Sins & Their Contrary VirtuesThe 6 Sins Against the Holy GhostThe 4 Sins That Cry Out to HeavenThe 3 Conditions of Mortal SinThe 9 Ways We Participate in Others' SinsThe 10 CommandmentsThe 2 Greatest CommandmentsThe 3 Evangelical CounselsThe 6 Precepts of the ChurchThe Holy Days of Obligation (English)The...

Virtue: A Democratic Problem   By Dr. Jeff Mirus | July 16, 2010 2:30 PM Those who have ever taken a political science course which was not merely an exercise in advocacy may remember considering the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of government. Monarchy had its corruption in tyranny, oligarchy in plutocracy, and democracy in mob rule. For many centuries, most Catholic political theorists suggested that monarchy was the best form of government, because it mirrored the way God runs the universe. More recently, Catholic thinkers have suggested that democracy is most in keeping with human dignity, as it...

  As the discussion of individual liberty and civil order enters its 2,363rd year, the forum welcomes a new voice, pleading for definition, definition. In the September 11, 1962 issue of National Review an essay of signal importance was published under the title, “Freedom or Virtue?� Written with the grace and knowledge typical of all of Brent Bozell's work, the essay mounted an attack on the “fusionist� efforts of Frank Meyer and Stanton Evans, in effect affirming that there can be no peaceful coexistence of the “libertarians� and the “traditionalists� among conservatives. First, let’s take a moment to review Mr....

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition. But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping. A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix. For unknown...

It was a scene Saudi women’s rights activists have dreamt of for years. When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition. But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping. A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a...

All the virtue that is saving, and that distinguishes true Christians from others, is summed up in Christian love. That love is the very life and spirit of a true faith…the apostle tells us in Gal v. 6, "Faith worketh by love." Divine knowledge and divine love go together …True discoveries of the divine character dispose us to love God as the supreme good; they unite the heart in love to Christ; they incline the soul to flow out in love to God's people, and to all mankind. When persons have a true discovery of the excellency and sufficiency of...

“I love vulgarity. Good taste is death, vulgarity is life." These words by English fashion designer Mary Quant, who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants, reveal one of the most important...aspects of the “fashion revolution” that started in the sixties: vulgarity. ...It is a vulgarity that tramples upon not only good taste and decorum but which reflects a mentality opposed to all order and discipline and to every kind of restraint, be it esthetic, moral or social, and which ultimately suggests a completely “liberated” standard of behavior.... The premise that comfort and practicality must preside over the...

Not only do the findings of science have moral implications, the actual work of scientific research presupposes that the researcher himself is a man of virtue. When scientific research is divorced from, or worse opposed to, the life of virtue it is not simply the research or the researcher that suffers but the whole human family. Take for example, the scandal surrounding the conduct of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the UK. Whether or not the recently revealed emails and computer programs from undermine the theory of anthropological global warning (AGW), it is...

It is almost irresistible for conservatives to snicker as Democrats in Massachusetts hold hearings and seek ways to justify an attempt to change the law in Massachusetts to allow the Democratic governor of the Commonwealth to appoint a Democratic senator--presumably available to vote for President Obama's initiatives. It was just a few years ago when Senator John Kerry was running for president and the governor was a Republican that the Democratic state legislature thought it imperative to change the law to prevent governors from appointing senators. It is just too delicious, the hypocrisy too obvious, for conservatives to ignore. Yet...

In the Aristotelian tradition, virtue stands in the middle, between two extremes, a too much and a too little. Aristotle thought that a non-arbitrary middle could be found. Prudence arrived at it, but did not constitute it. Aristotle's good man lived virtuously, not just any way. Our actions were judged midst the actual circumstances in which we lived our lives. But suppose I have an argument about what is half of thirty. One man says it is twenty, the other twenty-five. Thus, their mean is twenty-two and a half. But all three views are wrong, though twenty is closer...

Forget courage, thrift, fidelity or industry. Generosity? Humility? Fortitude? Honesty? Those are so 19th Century. According to Master Card, today’s virtue resides in being eco-conscious. The latest in MasterCard’s successful “priceless” series of ads features a young boy shadowing his father, saving the lout from committing a series of environmental atrocities – a smug little moralist saving the sinner from himself. When Dad leaves the water running as he brushes his teeth, Junior is on hand. “Water glass,” says the (child’s) voice over, “five dollars.” Cut to a hardware store where Dopey Dad is looking for light bulbs. Luckily, his...

The Catechism describes sloth as a culpable lack of physical or spiritual effort that can actually refuse the joy that comes from God. The slothful person is lukewarm towards, perhaps even repelled by, divine goodness and spiritual practices (Catechism #1866, 2094, 2733). The loss of one’s spiritual moorings manifests itself in flight from God and apathy in the service of one’s neighbor. How can we overcome this most deadly vice? Mass society engenders a sense of powerlessness, but size need not leave us apathetic. It is possible to carve out a more human scale of life. Begin with your family,...

Last night, quite late in the evening, and on the show, the girl who has pledged to sell her virginity for the highest bid, convinced her to not "give it up" if a higher bid - individual or cumulative comes in to top the present $3.7 million offer that has been registered. Having done MANY interviews declining similar offers, Natalie Dylan (not her real name) has agreed to remain a virgin, and give ALL of the proceeds (that she had previously agreed to use towards graduate school) instead--to stopping the horrific practice of child sex trafficking.

The news reports seem to vary from day to day. Either condom-based sex education works, or it doesn't. Either abstinence should be the focus, or it shouldn't.But, according to government-supported research at the Heritage Foundation, one thing is clear: Teens who abstain from sex share some characteristics.The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health identified eight personality and behavioral traits that were associated with both abstinence and academic achievement:• Future orientation, with a focus on long-term goals. • Willingness to postpone current pleasures for larger future rewards. • Perseverance, as in the ability to stick to a task or commitment. • A belief that...

Morality is Habit-Forming: The Cardinal Virtues Issue: What are the cardinal virtues?  What is the role of the cardinal virtues in the Christian life? Response: Virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do the good (Catechism, no. 1803). There are two types of virtues: theological and human (or moral) virtues. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity relate directly to God, are given to us at Baptism, and allow us to live a life of supernatural grace as children of God (cf. Catechism, nos. 1812-13). The immediate object of the human virtues is not God, but human activities...

This is a fairly long read, but it made a lot of sense to me ... is sleep deprivation kicking in or am I still lucid?Linky Thing: Technology, Culture, and Virtue

Founder’s Quotes – Madison on Virtue in Politicians The Patriot Post had this: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the...

What would you say if I told you that there is an American business that drops metric tons of toxic waste on your country and in your homes every day? I'm not talking about chemical waste or nuclear waste but toxins far more lethal - the byproducts of what's called entertainment, which are destroying the social environment. I refer to Hollywood, whose primary products are sex, violence, perversion, nihilism, attacks on religion and a thoroughgoing anti-family ethic. They are produced both for domestic consumption and export. It wasn't always so. As fans of old movies can attest, in the 1930s...

Atheists can be good, but people who believe in God are more likely to value being good, a recent study showed. An analysis by sociologist and pollster Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, addressed the question "Do people need God to be good?" Polling 1,600 Canadians, the nationwide survey found that those who believe in God are consistently more likely than atheists to highly value such traits as courtesy, concern for others, forgiveness, generosity and patience. Believers are also more inclined to place high value on friendship, family life, and being loved. While God and religion...

  Having A Humble Opinion of Self - Imitation of Christ EVERY man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul to study the course of the stars. He who knows himself well becomes mean in his own eyes and is not happy when praised by men. If I knew all things in the world and had not charity, what would it profit me before God Who will judge me by my deeds? Shun too great a desire...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidates argued Saturday night that organized labor is an essential part of the nation's economy whose troubles mirror the deterioration of the middle class way of life. "The only way to reinvigorate the middle class is to reinvigorate the labor movement," Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware told several hundred union members at a labor forum in eastern Iowa. For all the candidates, it was one stop in a busy several days leading to a Sunday morning debate in Des Moines. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York leads the Democratic field in national polls...

I finally had a chance to sit down and read the Globes 7 piece story on Mitt Romney. It's worth a read if you have the time. Long, but full of details. Before reading it what struck me, was the Boston Globe does a 7 article piece on Romney, and the most negative thing the public can take away from it is that Romney strapped a dog carrier to the top of his car. You would think with a paper owned by the NYTimes that has a penchant for negative stories on Romney, a little more could have been unearthed,...

Contrary to my usual method, I will presently argue a rather moderate position-but one absolutely essential to the preservation of a free, civil, and tolerant society. My purpose here is not to refute any religion or religion-based system of ethics. Nor is my purpose to dissuade anyone from adhering to a religion or religion-based system of ethics. On the whole, I consider ethics based on religion to have beneficial consequences in this world, and I have found the individuals today who genuinely practice a religious morality to be decent, respectable, trustworthy, and upright persons. Such people are my friends and...

Be nice. It's now the law in one Canadian city. Calgary, Alberta, has new regulations that ban public fighting, spitting, defecation and urination. Loitering or putting your feet up on public benches are no-nos, too. Officials said they're tired of the disgusting and disrespectful behavior. Violators can be fined, under an ordinance passed Monday. But critics charge the anti-rudeness regulations are aimed at the homeless in city parks. The city council narrowly passed the legislation. Laurie Fuhr of the Calgary Housing Action Initiative said she and her group tried to quash the bylaw and they plan to continue fighting it,...

Don't Speak About Religion And Politics?Over the past couple of years there has been much debate over the civil display of religious inscriptions, like the Ten Commandments (also called the Decalogue). I was shocked to read this past week Bob Unruh's exclusives on WND about how the U.S. Supreme Court is even now silencing the truths about the Commandments in its own building. People often say to stay clear of discussing religion and politics. True patriots don't do that. That is why I will address both in this article. Revolutionary Thought about the DecalogueI've learned some things recently about the...

Inscribed on the base of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington D.C. is the tribute of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz to the fighting men on Iwo Jima: "Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue." That simple statement says a lot about the character of the boys (as they were called then) who went to war two generations ago. These boys grew up fast. And when they returned home, they proceeded to build the greatest economic and industrial power anyone had ever seen. Truly they were the Greatest Generation. In a time when political mudslinging and the total lack...

KABUL - The Afghan government's move to reactivate the Department of Vice and Virtue has set alarm bells ringing among sections of the international community. Under the Taliban, a full-fledged ministry was responsible for formulating some of its most contentious laws. The Taliban's tal-Amr bi al-ma'ruf wa al-Nahi 'an al-Munkir or Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was responsible for implementing a wide range of codes governing public behavior, including bans on activities ranging from homosexuality and apparently innocent pastimes such as kite-flying and music to the absurd, including on women showing their ankles, as...

Editor's note: The following commentary is adapted from an address by Rabbi Shmuley to his son Mendy in synagogue on Saturday, May 6, 2006. ------------------------------------------------------ Mendy, today is your Bar Mitzvah. As your father, I want to help inspire you on this momentous occasion with words that I hope will stay with you forever. In your Torah portion, you read God's seminal command, "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy" (Leviticus 19:2). To be holy is to be set apart. The Sabbath is holy because its restfulness distinguishes it from the work days of the week. The...

A mother who found out she had cancer after becoming pregnant sacrificed her life for her unborn baby by refusing an abortion and chemotherapy, a British newspaper reported. Devout Catholic Bernadette Mimura, known as Milai, shunned the potentially life-saving treatment because doctors told her it would kill the child, the Northern Echo regional daily reported Friday. The 37-year-old, a native of the Philippines who lived near Stockton-on-Tees in northeast England with her British partner, Adam Taylor, survived long enough to see the birth of their son, Nathan. But soon after seeing him baptized, she was transferred to a hospice and...

Being good is not boring, says Pope VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict told Roman Catholics on Thursday that being good was not boring and urged people to reject the idea that they were missing out if they did not sin. The 78-year-old German Pope made his comments in a homily for thousands of people in St Peter's Basilica on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a national holiday in many Catholic countries. "The suspicion emerges in us that a person who does not sin is, after all, boring; that something is missing from his life: the dramatic dimension of...

Visit a calibration laboratory. We measure for a living. I must tell you frankly that no device exists which can measure a soul. This much I must concede to the opposition. And yet, unlike CNN, we don't end the story, without, as Paul Harvey would quip, "..the rest of the story..." You see, we also can find no meter which indicates decency, no instrument which responds to integrity, and no apparatus to measure honor. The mainstream media would conclude, and quite obviously has concluded that, ergo sum, these things don't exist. But oddly, one of the strongest proofs of their...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Let's be good cosmopolitans and offer sociological explanations rather than moral judgments about students, The Washington Post reports, having sex during the day in high schools. Sociology discerns connections, and there may be one between the fact that teenagers are relaxing from academic rigors by enjoying sex in the school auditorium, and the fact that Americans in public soon will be able to watch pornography, and prime-time television programs such as ``Desperate Housewives'' -- and, for the high-minded, C-SPAN -- on their cell phones and video iPods.</p>

Walter Soboleff gave the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood a strong reminder of its cultural values in a keynote speech on Tuesday morning for the organizations' weeklong convention in Juneau. The theme of this year's gathering is "Teaching Respect to Our Youth Through Our Families", with a focus on family-based education. Children's welfare, Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq are among the social and political topics to be discussed at the 93rd convention. Soboleff, a Juneau pastor and Native scholar, said spending time with Tlingit elders in the 1940s was a high privilege and was "like going...

The Delightful Secrets of Sex Juli Loesch Wiley on Fertility & Contraception With all the incessant media drooling over the sexual options smorgasbord, with the Gay Summer of 2003 still flickering blue on our TV screens, and with even the Girl Scouts and the YWCA endorsing “safe-sex” training for young girls, people plugged into the mass culture have heard few discordant notes about the sexual revolution—and some have heard, perhaps, only one. Namely, that “the pope” is against it. To whom is sometimes added “the Christian right.” And, especially maddening to the Socially Responsible, “the pope” is even for some...