Free Republic

Many argue that what Facebook and other platforms are doing amounts to “censorship.” I disagree. It comes down to the fundamental difference between a private platform refusing to carry your ideas on their property, and a government prohibiting you from speaking your ideas, anywhere, with the threat of prosecution. These are categorically different. The former is distasteful, unwise, and yes, perhaps even a tragic loss of opportunity; the latter infringes on our right to free speech. What’s more, a system of government oversight wouldn’t work, anyway: The entire issue with speech policies is that having anyone decide for you what...

Canadian government lawyers recently invited US whistleblower Chelsea Manning to travel to a hearing in Ottowa – so that border agents could then physically remove her from the country. The bizarre request, which was eventually denied by an adjudicator, was made ahead of an immigration hearing set to begin on Thursday for Manning, whose previous attempts to enter Canada have been denied. Manning, a former US intelligence analyst who leaked thousands of sensitive government documents and diplomatic cables about the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to WikiLeaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013. Her sentence was...

Monday, four dozen Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan's air defense zone, climaxing a weekend of provocations that saw nearly 150 sorties of China-based fighters and bombers. The U.S. State Department countered by issuing a stern statement warning Beijing about the adverse effect on regional "stability" of such "provocative military activity." Yet even as the waves of Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan's air defense zone, President Joe Biden was reassuring Japan's new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that the U.S. would defend the Senkakus from any Chinese attack. Controlled by Japan but claimed by China, the Senkakus are uninhabited rocks in...

In a 2010 essay for The American Spectator, the late, great intellectual Angelo Codevilla wrote a rare essay that was, in retrospect, so prescient as to be outright eerie. Titled "America's Ruling Class" and deploying "class"-based phraseology historically more at home in some corners of the political left than on the postwar political right, Codevilla set his sights squarely on his eponymous target. "Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits," he wrote. "Whether formally...

More than 300,000 people participated in a march in favor of women and of life in Mexico City on Sunday, with more than 1 million total in associated marches across the country. For the Oct. 3 march in Mexico City, the crowd gathered outside the National Auditorium and marched for more than a mile to the Independence Monument. They chanted in favor of women and the defense of life from the moment of conception. Posters and slogans also highlighted criticism of the members of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, who in September made two decisions in favor...

When is a fake setting not a fake setting? When resident Joe Biden sits in front of it. The "independent fact-checkers", a phrase that in itself strains credulity, leaped to defend Biden after he received a COVID booster shot in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Sept. 27. For political rookies, the EEOB is not the White House, but sits next to the White House. Jokers on Facebook showed a photograph of Biden getting his booster vaccination in the South Court Auditorium in front of a set that resembled the Oval Office. One said, "Joe Biden using a fake White...

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Mainstream Idaho Republicans concerned about a takeover by the surging far-right wing of the party are asking Democrats, Independents or other affiliated voters to register as Republicans to vote in the party’s May primary. Republicans closed their primary a decade ago, and the already deep-red state has been turning deeper red ever since. It could go further that way next year with the ultra far-right lieutenant governor challenging the more moderate governor. Republican primaries draw fewer but more hard-right voters than general elections. The Republican primary typically decides most elected offices, and particularly statewide elected offices...

Is it really a surprise that a formal move toward police repression of its political opponents – siccing the FBI on critics of Critical Race Theory – is coming from the chief law enforcement officer of the Biden regime? The latest polling indicates that the already low public approval of the Biden presidency is declining further.The prospects for any improvement in these numbers are poor. We have a massive wave of inflation ahead, with gasoline and natural gas both rapidly increasing in price, and both hard to cut back on. The chaos of the surrender to the Taliban augurs for...

Nearly 14 million gun-sale background checks have been conducted in 2021. As more Americans purchase firearms, it’s natural to see participants from more diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds. For gun control interests, this is unsettling. Why? They arrogantly assume it’s sexist and racist to support gun rights. And they couldn’t be more wrong. That’s why organizations like the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) hope to capitalize on this positive trend through their Reality Check campaign. I recently spoke to two USCCA ambassadors, firearms instructor Beth Alcazar and Top Shot Season 4 Champion Chris Cheng, on why a strengthened firearms community...

Western Rifle Shooters has a post up with a bunch of videos about the poison you-know-what. Included is a quote from Andrew Anglin which got me thinking. This is of course assuming that all those who have submitted to be poisoned won’t, in fact, die of their poisoning. I mean, if there really is a great die off then most everyone whose skin tone is as yours will be on your team. Unless it goes all Mad Max style with robber barons and the like raping and pillaging and then it’s every squad for themselves. But if that doesn’t come...

Fascism is a nebulous term which people throw around as a pejorative, even for minor things. When asked what they mean by fascism, they're at a loss. Like the word 'racist,' 'fascism' or 'fascist' is typically used by liberals and their ilk to smear their opponents and to cut off debates. As for those who seriously write about fascism, each seems to have their own definition. Perhaps George Orwell said it best in 1946: "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'" Still, a broad working definition of fascism can be...

If they have a principled opposition to taking the COVID vaccine, the system is offering them no mercy. In 1619, a physician named Charles de Lorme developed the famous plague doctor costume, consisting of a long leather coat and a beaked mask with crystal eyepieces. The beak was filled with herbs to protect the healer from the patient. This gear was developed out of the realization that diseased people were themselves infectious and that their very breath could infect others. The salient point is that doctors were willing to go among desperately ill patients and strive to heal them even...

What has been done to so many people by so few people has been orders of magnitude worse than anything that COVID-19 virus has done. Just imagine if no one knew that there has been a 'novel' COVID-19 virus 'pandemic' sweeping our nation and the world for the past 20 months or so. What if people weren't subjected to nonstop body count and 'case' tallies? What if they didn't know about the hyper-wrong, grossly inflated death projections in early 2020 from that mathematical virus model and its always-wrong author in England? What if we hadn't had a similarly accuracy-challenged little...

Shortly after the ‘War Against COVID’ began, the government designated two new categories of American citizens -- the largely arbitrary classification of ‘essential’ and ‘nonessential’ workers. Firefighters and paramedics were deemed essential, for good reasons. But now, like their colleagues on the frontline in the medical profession, these brave men and women -- once heralded as heroes -- are now scorned as villains. In the state of California, they have gone from heroes to zeroes in the eyes of despotic Democrats, who have given them an ultimatum: get vaccinated or get fired. In August the Los Angeles City Council voted...

That’s what we have -- an unanswered guess that was given a Nobel Prize. This past week, Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for research that led to early computer models of the Earth's climate. On the face of it, some people might think this is a grand achievement. In reality, unlike many Nobel-worthy accomplishments that are based on hard data or newly known processes, this one was simply a guess. Incredibly, we still don’t have an answer, more than 60 years later. As the BBC reports, “It is incredibly difficult...

Viruses and other infectious organisms have been around since long before humans walked the planet. While many microorganisms are helpful and necessary for human survival and function, others bring disease and death. Immunity is what prevents humans from being wiped out by a particularly virulent bug. The CDC defines immunity as “protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.” How does one achieve immunity? As the CDC explains, there are two ways. Natural immunity is acquired from exposure to the disease organism through infection with the actual...

There is little evidence that Marxists attempt to make life better for their people. In communist Yugoslavia, where I lived for a year, Marshall Tito claimed at least 34 villas as his "home," though officially all were "owned" by the state. Many of these palatial homes were seized from the nation's former royalty, the Karađorđević family. Just like communists everywhere, Tito appropriated both the properties and the lifestyle of his predecessors. As far as ordinary Yugoslavs were concerned, the only difference was that the communists were more brutal than the royals. of Yugoslavia In reality, the "vanguard of the proletariat,"...

China is banning the export of phosphate, a major component of commercial fertilizer, through 2022. “Fertilizer prices have increased dramatically in recent years, and the news coming from China will more than likely help this trend continue,” said Theresa Sisung, field crops specialist for the Michigan Farm Bureau. “Farmers should talk to their retailers sooner rather than later to discuss their options for purchasing fertilizer for their 2022 crop needs.” According to John Ezinga, vice president of agronomy at Michigan Agricultural Commodities Inc., the move will adversely affect prices. “Growers are going to feel it,” Ezinga said. “Look at your...

The boss of Intel says the US chipmaker is no longer considering building a factory in the UK because of Brexit. Pat Gelsinger told the BBC that before the UK left the EU, the country "would have been a site that we would have considered". But he added: "Post-Brexit... we're looking at EU countries and getting support from the EU". Intel wants to boost its output amid a global chip shortage that has hit the supply of cars and other goods. The firm - which is one of the world's largest makers of semiconductors - says the crisis has shown...

Wokesters have too much power and we don't know how this will end. From George Orwell's 1984 "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." And to paraphrase Orwell's Animal Farm, the paint is not yet dry on the side of the barn, and they are already changing the rules to...