Free Republic

Today, we are increasingly faced with a contrived reality. A mirage. Images shone on a wall (television screens, cell-phone, laptops) portraying what our captors wish for us to believe (is reality). What is truth? Let me suggest that truth, increasingly, is a byproduct of force. Are any important matters reasoned true today, or are we stuck in a battle of messaging wills? In this, let me suggest, the Left are winning, as we’ve abandoned reason, and are left with, whatever message can be advanced enthusiastically enough, to run roughshod over the other. As Goebbels stated; “If you tell a lie...

Anti-racism is racism, too. How Progressives are risking the heritage of the Enlightenment — and the equality of citizens. Progressives style themselves the ones who regard human progress as a moral task. They intervene to force society into the direction they see as the only correct one. Magic words are: emancipation, integration and inclusion. They see themselves as the avant garde of global openness and tolerance. These same progressive comrades have become entangled lately in contradictions that give rise even among their leftist friends to doubts about the progressiveness of their positions. Is it not astonishing when logical secularists like...

When Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517, 500 years ago this week, he probably had no idea what forces he was unleashing. Although his intention was to spur reform within the Catholic Church rather than breaking off and starting a new church, he ended up accomplishing both. In fact, the Reformation started by Luther set in motion an awakening that stimulated an unusual concentration of human genius and extraordinary wisdom that would culminate in the birth of a new nation -- one unprecedented in human history, dedicated to upholding its citizens'...

Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries. The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex, but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture. That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married...

For some years I have been convinced of the need for a Church-wide theological statement on sexuality. In fact, I actually wrote one that never saw the light of day. I was glad, therefore, to be invited to a day-long analysis of the proposed Nashville Statement, which appeared in public a few days later. Though some of us urged the inclusion of biblical references, this statement faithfully reflects the Scriptural teaching on human sexuality. This basic statement of biblical truth is crucial in our day of biblical ignorance. Since many evangelicals now use egalitarianism (no difference between males and females)...

"...I’d urge you to read a fascinating article in this Sunday’s New York Times. It turns out that America’s less religious citizens are far more likely to believe in things such as ghosts and UFOs than people who attend church. The author, psychology professor Clay Routledge, locates this phenomenon in the quest for meaning..."For instance, my colleagues and I recently published a series of studies in the journal Motivation and Emotion demonstrating that the link between low religiosity and belief in advanced alien visitors is at least partly explained by the pursuit of meaning. The less religious participants were, we...

A liberal is someone who craves an increase in government spending, power, and control, such as ObamaCare. Liberals also support the censorship and denial of Christianity. Liberals who are a part of the secular left prefer the atheist religion over the Christian faith, as atheism has no objective morality to hinder their big government plans. Increasingly, liberals side with the homosexual agenda, including homosexual "marriage". Liberals favor a welfare state where people receive endless entitlements without working. The liberal ideology has degenerated into economically unsound views and intolerant ideology. All liberals support, in knee-jerk fashion, the opposite of conservative principles,...

It’s Easter, a time when Christians the world over commemorate the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of their Lord and Savior. However, it isn’t just Christians, but anyone and everyone who regularly reaps the incalculable benefits of Western civilization that should be grateful for the fact that Jesus of Nazareth walked among us. In virtually every conceivable way, Jesus, courtesy of the legions of disciples that He spawned throughout the centuries, has made the world that we take for granted. Though it will doubtless come as an enormous shock to such Christophobic atheists as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their ilk,...

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who has been in the, news sharing his erroneous theory of morality in a mistitled book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Dr. Haidt bases his theory of morality on the atheist assumption that evolution is a non-purposive mechanism, driven by random mutations selected for survival functionality. From that spiritual void, Dr. Haidt tells us morality is an artifact of evolutionary sociobiology. "Evolution shaped human brains[, resulting in] evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress selfishness and make social life possible." Social life is the universal human...

'What kind of journalist can glorify the channeling of innocent children into a lifetime of misery?' “Why Amnesty Makes Sense” reads the cover of a June 2007 issue of Time magazine, teasing an immigration story inside. “Is Your Baby Racist?” asks a 2009 Newsweek cover. And “Gender Revolution” blares a January 2017 National Geographic cover featuring a “transgender child.” These three magazine covers, and many others like them, have something in common: They all reflect the increasingly irrational “progressive” worldview, according to journalist and best-selling author David Kupelian. .. Alex Newman, an international journalist and educator, attempted to explain what...

On January 20th, 2017, TV viewers were shocked by the stark contrast between the pomp and grandeur of the Presidential inauguration and the angry, violent protests in the nearby streets. At its great civic moments, America calls on the law of God, seeks his blessing in prayer and asks its officials to swear on the Bible. In no other US inauguration ceremony was more honor given to the God of that Bible. More peaceful, but far more ideological were the huge feminist marches of January 21st. These were no mere political reaction to the macho braggadocio of Trump. In fact,...

Conservative values are more conducive to lasting happiness; liberal values tend to engender fleeting pleasure. Liberals pursue happiness, but for conservatives it naturally ensues. Ever wonder why so many liberal Democrats are seething in discontent? It’s because they are takers, not givers. Mounting research indicates that generosity, rather than selfishness, is more likely to produce lasting happiness, an elusive emotion for liberals who languish on the wrong side of the generosity gap. Supported by analysis of IRS tax data, there’s plenty of evidence that states who voted for John McCain gave far more of their discretionary income to charity than...

Many books have been written about the success of the West, analyzing why Europe was able to pull ahead of the rest of the world by the end of the Middle Ages. The most common explanations cite the West's superior geography, commerce, and technology. Completely overlooked is the fact that faith in reason, rooted in Christianity's commitment to rational theology, made all these developments possible. Simply put, the conventional wisdom that Western success depended upon overcoming religious barriers to progress is utter nonsense. In The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that Christianity...

Who has a right to speak out about homosexuality after the Orlando Gay Bar massacre, and what should be said? It is tempting for Christians who hold to the biblical condemnation of homosexuality to go silent, but is that right? One group that does not hesitate is ISIS, which from the beginning has openly claimed responsibility, describing the gunman as one of its heroic fighters. Various Islamic spokesmen, like Fahad Qureshi, admitted in 2013 that the desire to see homosexuals killed was a belief held even by “moderate” Muslims. Just weeks before Orlando, Muslim cleric Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, during a...

Politics Socialism’s Lonely Eden by Chad Ashby March 22, 2016 The rise of Bernie Sanders this election cycle has American voters dusting off an old question: What is socialism? In 2016, the Cold War is a distant memory, and many millennial voters were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a political race shaped by tweets and sound bytes, it’s tempting to think socialism is just a catchall term for a hodgepodge of liberal policies like free college, universal healthcare, wealth redistribution, and tax plans. Such assumptions suggest that socialism is misunderstood in the 21st century—in fact, even...

The appearance of a new episode of the Star Wars film series is an important moment for Christian witness. To be sure, we can shrug our shoulders, since Star Wars is old news. Or we can enthusiastically introduce our grandchildren to what we might think is a beloved, harmless yarn. Or we can—and should—discover in the series an occasion to sharpen our presentation of the gospel message and help our children and grandchildren, and anyone else who might be interested, to understand the culture in which they live.In this famous and creative saga, which we must respect for its artistic...

Prepare to be “nudged” by Obama's new “behavioral science” squads — for your own good, of course. Under the guise of better “serving” the American people through government, Obama signed an executive order this week calling for federal agencies and departments to deploy emerging “behavioral science” techniques against the public.Among other goals, the expansion of federal mind manipulation is supposed to help more Americans access government welfare programs, take their “recommended” vaccines, supply more information about themselves to the federal government, and accelerate the transition toward what Obama called “a low-carbon economy.” The controversial decree, signed on September 15, explicitly...

What does the rising generation of young evangelicals think about marriage? [Catholics too!] Here's the troubling truth. For five years, Dr. Abigail Rine has been teaching a course on gender theory at George Fox University, an evangelical school in the Quaker tradition. At the beginning of the semester, she tells her students that “they are guaranteed to read something they will find disagreeable, probably even offensive.” Writing at FirstThings.com recently, she related how five years ago it was easy to find readings that challenged and even offended the evangelical college students “considering the secular bent of contemporary gender studies.” But...

We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn't exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, the idea of children. Today, it is simply taken for granted that the innocence and vulnerability of children makes them beings of particular value, and entitled to particular care. We also romanticize children — their beauty, their joy, their liveliness. Our culture encourages us to...

(Snip) They [Christian small business owners]are in this sense more like religious believers under compulsion in a society with an established church than like believers denied the freedom to exercise their religion. Liberals are in this respect right to say they’re not trying to kill religious liberty. They’re trying to take it back to something like the form it had in the Anglo-American world when the Anglo-American world had a formal state religion—except now the state religion is supposed to be progressive liberalism. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416421/church-left-yuval-levin