Free Republic

Most successful movies try to cash in on their box office bonanza with a sequel. Some do this well, like The Godfather, with both original and sequel winning best picture. Others simply get old and tiresome, like the Star Wars or Halloween franchises. COVID is no exception, after a wildly successful debut year. Success, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. For those who died or are suffering long haul symptoms, it was a disaster. Same for owners of closed businesses, those still out of work, and individuals and their families dealing with the aftershocks of depression, substance...

What is it to be a conservative? A happy warrior— firm in faith, grounded in goodness and respect, grateful and focused, resilient and other-regarding, someone who lives for the future with unblinking reference to the past. He or she is an undeterred fighter, full of heart and taking a long view in both directions, resolved to high purpose. From Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk, this is the true conservative—a happy warrior. The happy warrior is an American who understands unwavering defense of principle, individual rights, hard work, and an equal shot at “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” aware...

Tucker’s claim is entirely plausible to me. Nobody else in the media with an audience in the millions dares to explore many of the topics his show raises. And the NSA has been caught spying on citizens repeatedly. If this pans out – and there is good reason to suspect it will – the deepest end of the deep state will be caught breaking the law and interfering with what remains of the free press. Monday night’s edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the highest rated program on cable news, featured a shocking short segment (video below) in which the host...

The techniques of political warfare that Nazi Joseph Goebbels pioneered remain powerful and effective, especially when they go unrecognized and unchallenged. Joseph Goebbels faced a significant challenge when he accepted a prominent party posting in Berlin in October of 1926. While the Nazi party had some strength in the south and north of Germany, it had virtually no support in the capital, where the Social Democrats and Communists effectively competed in elections but the public barely knew the National Socialists existed. Goebbels set out to change this by staging provocations against his political adversaries, marching his uniformed followers into their...

The great humorist, Jerome K. Jerome, suggested many years ago that, “… we all love peace, but not peace at any price.” Peace is only a reality between states that are rational and can in time become friendly towards each other. Today leftists and all those who shout out the vacuous phrase, “peace and justice,” have turned those once noble words into soiled and tarnished rags. They have become the very folk who, through one of life’s supreme ironies, shout down dissenting voices and thus become guilty of the very violent behavior they claim to oppose. The universities and colleges...

Order is not currently being maintained and chaos reigns among the ranks as anti-American indoctrination of active service members runs rampant. America’s top military leaders have thrust themselves into the national spotlight by their overt politization and cowardly acquiescence to the radicalized Democrat Party. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, in Congressional testimony, defended the teaching and promotion of Marxist based Critical Race Theory throughout the military. He also linked what he categorized as rampant “White Rage” to the 75+million supporters of President Trump. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gilday, defended the Navy-wide dissemination of...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki Monday defended U.S. track and field star Gwen Berry's decision to turn her back on the nation's flag, saying Berry was seeking to "peacefully protest" the moments that Americans "haven’t lived up to our highest ideals." Berry, 31, placed third over the weekend in the hammer throw during the U.S. Olympic trials, earning her a spot on the team. As the National Anthem was played, she turned from the flag. "This weekend, Gwen Barry, who hopes to represent the United States as an Olympian on the hammer throwing events, won a bronze medal at...

Registered voters believe Vice President Kamala Harris has failed at her task of addressing the root causes of migration from Central America to the United States, a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll reveals. The results are based on online surveys of 2,006 registered voters between June 15 and 17. The pollsters asked, “Do you think vice president Kamala Harris has done a good job, adequate job, or a bad job tackling the root causes of illegal immigration?” Most voters rated Harris’s performance as inferior, with 44 percent saying she has done a “bad job,” 30 percent a “good job,” and 26...

The need for election audits is proof that our elections are not to be trusted. Republicans seem confident about their chances for taking back the U.S. House in the 2022 midterm elections. Some might even think that victory is a “done deal” because the electorate has finally gotten wise to what the Dems are really up to, and to the true nature of their authoritarian party. Republicans might well be correct in their reading of voter sentiment, but it might not make any difference. GOP strategists need to throttle back their optimism, for the changes to elections that worked for...

No one is paying much attention, but Washington is building up a vast new multitrillion-dollar welfare class: corporate America. Deep inside President Joe Biden's budget are hundreds of billions of dollars of loans, grants and loan guarantees for corporate America. This Aid to Dependent Corporations is most prevalent in the area of renewable energy. Despite more than $100 billion already doled out to wind and solar companies over the past 30 years, the Biden plan would enrich often-very wealthy investors in solar and wind plants with another $100 to $200 billion in the president's green energy scheme. For the past...

Maricopa County, Arizona, announced Monday that it will replace all of the voting equipment handed over to private contractors for an election "audit" ordered by Arizona's Republican-controlled Senate. "The voters of Maricopa County can rest assured, the county will never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections," Maricopa County said in a statement. "As a result, the county will not use the subpoenaed equipment in any future elections." Maricopa County's Board of Supervisors told Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in a letter Monday that it shares her concerns about potential tampering by the GOP-hired...

What matters on Twitter ... often just stays on Twitter. Those who use the platform to voice opinions on faith, politics, guns, culture, the military, the police and a whole host of other issues just aren't representative of popular opinion. They tend to hold positions not just to the left but to the far, far left. Journalists, who are among the worst Twitter addicts, seize on those positions as if in church. They craft ideas from them; they turn out stories based on the thinking that goes on within that bubble. What they produce rarely comes from anything that resembles...

There has been an increasingly frenzied gusher of leaks from the offices of New York County’s District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., telling breathless journalists that the grand jury is about to indict The Trump Organization, maybe as early as next week. These leaks specifically relate to the sitting grand jury (which just continued a previous one dating back to 2018). These leaks tell the public that the grand jury will indict Donald Trump any day now. Of course, the hyper-ventilating journalists are confusing an “any day now” indictment of The Trump Organization (a company) with an arrest of Donald Trump...

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In an annual poll commissioned by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, 70% of respondents said the quality of life in the city has declined. The so-called City Beat Poll was conducted from May 25 to 31, at a time when city residents had faced the economic and social impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic for more than a year. The responses also revealed that crime and homelessness are the top concerns among those who responded, with 80% of people saying they think crime has increased and 88% saying homelessness has worsened in recent years. A few other results in...

As many observers have noted, staying safe has become a religion. "Safetyism," as it is sometimes called, like all religions, places what it values -- in this case, being safe -- above other values. Safetyism explains the willingness of Americans to give up their most cherished values -- including liberty -- in the name of safety for the last year and a half. Millions of Americans not only gave up their right to go to work, earn a living, attend church or synagogue, and visit friends and relatives, but they even gave up their right to visit dying relatives and...

As the old saying goes, “There are three kinds of lies: lie, damned lies, and statistics.” It is of the statistics I wish to address today. I’ve always said, and will continue to say, that if you can control the unit of measure, you can control everything. It’s a pretty simple concept – if you get to determine what constitutes funny, you can make yourself the funniest. Same goes for fastest, smartest, best looking, whatever you can think of – if you get to decide what makes something what it is, you have absolute power. While most people wouldn’t reconstitute...

Owners of units in a Florida oceanfront condo building that collapsed with deadly consequences were just days away from a deadline to start making steep payments toward more than $9 million in major repairs that had been recommended nearly three years earlier. That cost estimate, from the Morabito Consultants engineering firm in 2018, meant owners at Champlain Towers South were facing payments of anywhere from $80,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $330,000 or so for a penthouse, to be paid all at once or in installments. Their first deadline was July 1. One resident whose apartment was spared, Adalberto Aguero,...

The bipartisan infrastructure agreement reached last week will get rid of all of the country's lead pines and service lines, according to a new White House memo, but it's not clear how long it will take. The memo, from National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and senior adviser Anita Dunn, says the bipartisan framework "will replace 100 percent of the nation's lead pipes and service lines." White House press secretary Jen Psaki also told reporters on Monday that "it will put Americans to work replacing 100 percent of our nation's lead water pipes" but wouldn't give a time period when...

The United Nations Human Rights Council has urged global action including reparations to "make amends" for racism against people of African descent. Its new report also urges educational reform and apologies to address discrimination. The findings cite concerns in about 60 countries including the UK, Belgium, France, Canada, Brazil and Colombia. In a statement on Monday, UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet called "on all states to stop denying - and start dismantling - racism" and to "listen to the voices of people of African descent". The UN's report is based on discussions with more than 300 experts...