Free Republic

RUSH: On this program yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, your beloved host issued a prediction. The prediction was, quote, “You watch. Somebody’s gonna suggest Trump’s rallies not be allowed to happen anymore because that’s where all of this white supremacy is coming from. Never mind the fact that if you look at the manifesto of the shooter in Dayton, you find a total deranged leftist progressive.” Even CNN is reporting this today, the derangement of this guy, and they’re not happy having to do it. This guy was in a “porno brand.” (interruption) You didn’t…? He’s just a total, total sicko,...

President Trump's vision to "make America great again" was not expected to include a litany of horrifying hate-fuelled violence yet it is becoming the leitmotif of his time in office. Mr Trump has stood accused of sowing division and bigotry rather than helping to unite and heal. His kowtowing to the gun lobby has made it difficult to mount a defence, especially when combined with his inability to tone down incendiary language. This issue is, of course, far bigger than President Trump - somehow, mass-shootings have become routine in the US. Political paralysis in combating gun violence is astonishing given...

William Penn was arrested and imprisoned several times for sharing his politically incorrect views which were not in agreement with the government's agenda. Once he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for eight months. While in London's notorious Newgate Prison, William Penn wrote 1670: "By Liberty of Conscience, we understand not only a mere Liberty of the Mind ... but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear or favor of any mortal man, we sin, and incur divine...

President Donald Trump's reelection campaign has taken issue with a Facebook post from Texas congressman Joaquin Castro that lists the names and employers of Trump donors in San Antonio and accuses the private citizens of "contributing to harmful rhetoric that targets the Hispanic community and so many others." Castro, twin brother of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro, posted late Monday night on Facebook that he was "sad to see so many San Antonians on this list of maximum donors to Donald Trump." He specifically called out two companies, including a popular BBQ restaurant, and posted a list of 44...

Kapur’s new wearable device system, can detect what you’re saying when you’re talking to yourself, even if you’re completely silent and not moving your mouth. The technology involves a system of sensors that detect the minuscule neuromuscular signals sent by the brain to the vocal cords and muscles of the throat and tongue. These signals are sent out whenever we speak to ourselves silently, even if we make no sounds. The device feeds the signals through an A.I., which “reads” them and turns them into words. The user hears the A.I.’s responses through a microphone that conducts sound through the...

Tocqueville: on America, Algeria, & How "despotism" of "all powerful government" comes when citizens "debase" their souls seeking "vulgar pleasures"Alexis de Tocqueville was born JULY 29, 1805. A French social scientist, he traveled the United States in 1831, and wrote a two-part work, Democracy in America (1835; 1840), which has been described as: "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written." In it, Tocqueville wrote: "Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the...

As expected, China's central bank came in today to stop the bloodletting in the markets following Monday's shocking after-market announcement by the Treasury Department that the Bank was manipulating the dollar-yuan exchange rate. Animal spirits went into near-giddyness in the market after hours Monday, thinking Treasury would deliver a blow to China assets this morning. China ended up doing better than expected, thanks in part to the actions of the central bank, led by Yi Gang. The People's Bank of China announced on Tuesday that it would provide some stability in the coming weeks to the yuan. They'll take about...

China on Aug. 6 vowed to take countermeasures if the United States follows through on a plan to deploy mid-range ground-launched missiles in Asia. The director of the Chinese foreign ministry’s Arms Control Department, Fu Cong, made the statement after the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia on Aug. 2 and announced plans to deploy missiles in order to deter China. “China will not stand idly by and be forced to take countermeasures should the U.S. deploy intermediate-range ground-based missiles in this part of the world,” Fu said. Fu also called on South...

The robotic tail is designed to help the wearer to stay balanced when moving quickly or carrying heavy objects. A robotic tail that claims to balance out the human body could be used instead of a cane to help prevent elderly people from falling over. The strap-on appendage, known as Arque, has been developed by researchers at Keio University in Japan. It is inspired by a seahorse's tail, which is strong enough to withstand predators' bites but flexible enough to grip things in its environment, like coral. The tail can be be adjusted to fit whoever is wearing it by...

The Chinese Foreign Ministry railed against the United States in its Monday press conference, accusing the U.S. of “conniving with violent criminals” in Hong Kong in an “arrogant” bid to undermine China’s national unity. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying unleashed an anti-U.S. tirade after a reporter asked about U.S. politicians and Trump administration officials speaking out against the “repression” of Hong Kong protesters and refusing to accept China’s framing of their demonstrations as “riots.” Hua leaned hard into the Chinese Communist Party line that Hong Kong’s protests have been hijacked by violent fringe separatists who are in thrall to hostile...

NEW YORK (AP) - An appeals court has revived a defamation lawsuit Sarah Palin brought against The New York Times. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored the lawsuit on Tuesday, saying Palin must be allowed to collect evidence to support her claims. Still, it said Palin's burden of proof was high to show the Times acted with actual malice when it published an editorial titled "America's Lethal Politics" in 2017. The onetime Republican vice presidential nominee sued over the editorial published after a gunman opened fire on Republican lawmakers in Virginia, wounding U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise.

The Brexit vote recalls a prescient editorial from Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal Christianity & Crisis (a model for this magazine!) in January 1946 warning that “the movement toward centralized authority on a world scale contains a threat of world tyranny, particularly if the authority within the world is conceived merely in terms of police power in world government.” In the aftermath of WWII’s murderous horrors, this editorial supported the emerging United Nations and some abridgments of national sovereignty. Though perhaps excessive and overly optimistic, his article was at least still aware of the accompanying dangers to liberty and self-government. Increasing numbers...

A New York professor is calling for the abolition of grades. He claims they are not only unfair to students, but that they are a means of propping up capitalism, and as such, academia would be better off doing away with grading entirely. “Grading takes up much of my time that could be better spent on teaching or otherwise directly interacting with students,” New School professor Richard Wolff wrote in a Monday op-ed entitled “Grades Are Capitalism in Action. Let’s Get Them Out of Our Schools.” He claims the practice of administering grades to students has “little educational payoff” and...

Leader of outrage mob "The AOC Squad," Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), imploded late Monday when a photo of "Team Mitch" members posing with a cardboard cutout of her went viral.The image shows supporters for Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign mocking the socialist congresswomen by posing with an AOC cutout.

You can get away with calling something "white trash" in polite company, on cable television and in the headline of a magazine article. An article in The New Republic once posed the question of whether President Trump might be "a white trash icon." For some reason, the term manages to come across as less offensive than most other racial slurs. Yet "white trash" could be called the Swiss army knife of insults. It's deft in its ability to demean multiple groups at once: white people and people of color, poor people and people who "act" like poor people, rural folks...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court [the Second Circuit Court of Appeals with jurisdiction over New York] revived former U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, over an editorial that she said maliciously linked her to the 2011 mass shooting that seriously wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Fresh calls for gun control following massacres in two U.S. cities over the weekend are testing the resilience of the National Rifle Association at a time when the nation’s largest gun lobby is riven by leadership clashes and allegations of reckless spending. The NRA, which has blocked proposed restrictions after past mass shootings, including at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., has lost key veterans in recent months, including lobbyist Christopher Cox, who back-channeled with the White House and lawmakers during previous political crises. The NRA’s longtime advertising firm, which helped craft its hard-edge responses to past gun violence,...

Might is Right, or The Survival of the Fittest is a book most people have never even heard of, but it has had an enduring history on the fringes of American thought and ideology. Originally published in Chicago in 1896, it has been reprinted many times over the past 125 years, including online and as an audiobook. The identity of “Ragnar Redbeard” is not known with certainty, though most credit an obscure writer named Arthur Desmond with authorship (a few claim noted author Jack London had a role in its writing, but there is little evidence to support it). The...

The far-left New York Times caved to the leftist Twitter mob with a major switch in headlines between its first and second editions. The first print edition’s headline read, “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism.” But after the Blue Checkmark Mafia freaked out, the Times caved with a late edition headline that reads, “Assailing Hate But Not Guns.”

Florida lawmaker wants to stop men from voting on measures to protect unborn babies from abortion. Lauren Book, a pro-abortion Democrat and state senator, recently introduced a state constitutional amendment that would ban Florida lawmakers from restricting abortion unless at least half of the legislators are women, according to the New York Daily News. Because Book’s bill, state Senate Bill 60, is a constitutional amendment, it would have to be approved by state voters as well as the legislature. “No vote about us without us,” Book told the Tallahassee Democrat. “Seeing what state legislatures across the country have done, I...