Free Republic

Cultural revolutions are insidious and not just because they seek to change the way people think, write, speak, and act. They are also dangerous because they are fueled by self-righteous sanctimoniousness, expressed in seemingly innocuous terms such as “social activism,” “equality,” and “fairness.”The ultimate aim of the Jacobin, Bolshevik, or Maoist is raw power—force of the sort sought by Hugo Chavez or the Castro dynasty to get rich, inflict payback on their perceived enemies, reward friends, and pose as saviors.Cubans and Venezuelans got poor and killed; woke Chavezes and Castros got rich and murderous.Leftist agendas are harder to thwart than...

Senior pastor Chris Hodges had liked tweets by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, July 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Local government authorities ended a partnership with a Christian church in Alabama offering outreach programs at public housing communities after a senior pastor was criticized online for liking several conservative-based memes. The church also was banned from leasing public high schools for its worship services. According to a report by AL.com, senior pastor Chris Hodges was first denounced by high school English teacher Jasmine Faith Clisby, who pointed out on Facebook that “Hodges, founder of the Church of...

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky -- A Kentucky couple is under house arrest after one of them tested positive for coronavirus and refused to sign self-quarantine papers. Elizabeth Linscott got tested for COVID-19 because she was planning to go visit her parents. "My grandparents wanted to see me, too, so, just to make sure that, you know, if I tested negative, that they would be okay, everything would be fine," Linscott said. After testing positive but without showing any symptoms, Linscott said the health department contacted her, requesting she sign documents. "I agreed to comply to call the Health Department if I was...

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cuyahoga County’s enforcement of Gov. Mike DeWine’s mask order will largely rely upon complaints filed by the public, rather than proactive policing, County Executive Armond Budish announced Friday. Individuals who see others failing to abide by the mask requirement should call in complaints to the county’s new hotline at 216-698-5050, or file complaints online at cuyahogacounty.us/maskexperience. County workers will then contact the subject of the complaints — either individuals or businesses — to let them know a complaint has been filed, Budish said. Complaints also will be forwarded to the Board of Health, and the relevant city...

“Killing Eve” star Jodie Comer is in hot water on Twitter. The 27-year-old is facing “cancel” cries online after social media users discovered she’s possibly dating a Republican who supports President Trump. This comes amid her vocal support for several progressive causes, such as Black Lives Matter and Pride. Twitter sleuths linked the actress, who plays a queer woman on “Killing Eve,” to a man named James Burke after paparazzi photos surfaced of her sitting outdoors with a mystery man. A man by that name is a registered Republican. However, it’s not evidently clear how Burke’s name was discovered, or...

Scrabble just got W-O-K-E. Players of the classic board game will no longer be able to rack up points for spelling out racial and ethnic slurs, according to Scrabble officials. A total of 236 bigoted words were removed from the official Scrabble word list used at tournaments — in order to make the game friendlier to all types of people, The North American Scrabble Players Association. said Wednesday. “Removing slurs is the very least that we can do to make our association more inclusive,” NASPA CEO John Chew said in a statement. “How can we in this day tell prospective...

Cancel Culture is about to claim another scalp: George Orwell. And that’s just the first news item in today’s edition of Insanity Wrap. I hope you’re sitting down, because in addition to Orwell, we also have biological sex as white oppression and our future as human-dolphin hybrids. If you thought yesterday’s Insanity Wrap was crazy, you haven’t had to wrap your brain around nothin’ yet. Let us go now to Twitter, where “journalist, writer, filmmaker, and musician” Ben Norton apparently felt the iron was finally hot enough to re-pimp his 2016 cancel culture essay ridiculing 1984 and Animal Farm author...

In a trial heat for the 1984 presidential election, former Vice President Walter Mondale is now leading President Ronald Reagan by a 53-44 percent margin. This is the first time in modern political history that an incumbent president has run behind his potential opponent so early in his term.

The Washington Redskins have decided to remove all references of original owner George Preston Marshall, who founded the team in 1933 and owned it until his death in 1969. According to the Washington Post, the Redskins plan to erase Marshall's name from franchise history by removing his name from all official team material. This means Marshall will no longer be mentioned anywhere in their Ring of Fame, on their History Wall, or on the team's official website.

Two national parks in California are removing all mention of Robert E. Lee from informational material even though several majestic sequoias are named for the Confederate general. Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks are removing references to Lee from exhibits, printed and online material as protests against racism and police brutality have led, in some places, to the removal or pulling down of monuments to historical figures linked to slavery or colonialism. Protest have been spurred nationwide over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white officer pressed a knee to his neck in Minnesota. A...

The stepmother of the Atlanta police officer charged with murdering Rayshard Brooks has been fired from her job as a HR director of a mortgage company because employees no longer felt comfortable engaging with her. Garrett Rolfe's stepmother, Melissa Rolfe, had her employment at the Atlanta-based Equity Prime Mortgage terminated this week, according to a statement from the company on Thursday. The statement said Melissa, a HR director, had violated company policy and created an 'uncomfortable' and 'hostile' working environment as she was transitioning to a leave of absence granted by the firm. It is not yet clear what Melissa...

On Thursday, June 4, 2020, a 22-year-old activist named Kennedy Mitchum reached out to the publishers of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to express her frustration with their definition of the word "racist:" A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Mitchum felt this was inadequate to fully cover the scope of systemic issues and unconscious biases that affect race relations in America. Growing up in Florissant, Missouri — just a few miles away from Ferguson — she'd grown tired of trying to explain to...

HBO Max has removed the Oscar-winning Civil War epic "Gone With The Wind" from its library over concerns about racial tensions following the death of George Floyd. I predicted this would happen in my new book, "Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation." I would sincerely encourage you to get a copy and prepare to defend our great name from the jihadists. I was ridiculed by many in the conservative and the leftist media for my assertion that we were approaching a day when book bannings and movie bannings would become the norm in American society....

(CNN) Kennedy Mitchum wasn't expecting much when she emailed Merriam-Webster last month, but she wanted to let the dictionary publisher know that she thought its definition of the word racism was inadequate. So she was surprised when an editor responded and even more surprised that the company agreed to update the entry. Mitchum has gotten into a lot conversations about racism and injustice where people have pointed to the dictionary to prove that they're not racist. It's happened a lot more lately as the world reacts to the death of George Floyd while in the custody of four Minneapolis police...

“Progressive” ideology always rests on a conviction that the current “regressive” system is comprehensively unjust and must be destroyed by exploiting its weaknesses. The most famous proponent of such tactics in recent years has been the late Saul Alinksy, the intellectual godfather of the modern Democrat Party, but former Soviet journalist and KGB informant Yuri Bezmenov laid out an even more concise strategy for subversion in a 1984 interview.Alinksy’s seminal book specified 13 Rules for Radicals, but Bezmenov had only four “stages of ideological subversion,” and they will sound very familiar to anyone following the current wave of left-wing riots,...

To @realdonaldtrump Through my ongoing conversations with friends, teammates, and leaders in the black community, I realize this is not an issue about the American flag. It has never been. We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities. We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week. We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform. We are...

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), in an interview published Wednesday, explained why she rejects the term “rioting” in describing violent protests, contending that the word is part of “negative language used far too often in a description of black people by folks who fundamentally don’t see black people the same way they see whites and others.” Waters spoke to The Cut about her “longtime fight over the language of insurrection and unrest versus rioting” and told the outlet that the unrest in recent days brought her to reflect on “what was going on back in the day, when I was confronting...

As the U.S. aims to reduce the spread of COVID-19, tens of thousands of Americans have applied for contact tracer roles to help track cases and exposure, according to The New York Times. Five things to know about these workers: 1. At least 11,142 contact tracers are working now in the U.S., according to a survey conducted in late April by NPR. The number may be higher since figures for all states in the late April survey have not been updated. 2. Estimates of how many contact tracers are needed nationwide range from 100,000 to 300,000, according to NPR and...

Apple in iOS 13.5 is introducing an exposure notification API designed to allow apps created by public health authorities worldwide to notify people who come into contact with someone who has COVID-19 about their exposure to the virus. Apple's Exposure Notification feature is privacy focused and shares no personally identifiable information or location data with the public health authorities creating the apps, but some users may want to opt out of the feature, which is enabled by default when upgrading to iOS 13.5. Apple in the iOS 13.5 update added a toggle to disable COVID-19 Exposure Notifications for those who...

Michigan state police are “monitoring all of the conversations” of protesters planning to descend on the capitol Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told reporters. “I don’t know the group, I’ve not vetted the data, I can’t vouch for it,” she admitted. Whitmer was then asked if she “wants to see” the Michigan State Police ticket protesters who are violating social distancing orders. “I think the Michigan State Police is monitoring all of the conversations around this event tomorrow – that they are prepared and are working with the attorney general,” she said. She said they are prepared to ticket protesters “if...