Free Republic

If the United States manages to put down the woke revolution, it will be because a critical mass of liberals chooses to reject it. Conservatives, opposed to wokeness from the start, can make arguments and stand up for their principles individually. But they can’t stop the liberal-to-woke conversion process that turns mildly left-of-center Americans into cosplay Black Panthers overnight. The liberals themselves are the gatekeepers of their own movement and its institutions. Given that these institutions—news media, social media, entertainment, academia, and the current majority party in Washington—shape so many aspects of American life, it’s mostly up to liberals to...

Back in our cheery, prelapsarian days—2016, to be exact—a young and photogenic NFL quarterback named Colin Kaepernick chose to express his patriotism by kneeling whenever the National Anthem was played before football games. He kneeled, you see, merely to protest police mistreatment of African Americans. And we knew that Kaepernick actually loved America because he told us so . “I’m not anti-America,” he said. “I love America…. I think having these conversations helps everybody have a better understanding of where everybody is coming from.” And everyone bought it. Oh, how they loved to love Kaepernick’s love. “Colin Kaepernick Reminds Us...

The most potent ingredient making Tuesday's election bittersweet is the apparent passage of Proposition 8 in California. It's one thing for a state to decide in advance not to allow same-sex marriages. It's another thing entirely to watch a state strip a targeted group of citizens of the already vested right to marry. Gay marriage is still a big leap for the country -- even as recently as 10 years ago, it's something that was barely discussed, and the idea even engendered vehement debates among gay people (Andrew Sullivan's advocacy of gay marriage in his 1996 book, Virtually Normal, sparked...