Free Republic

I distinctly remember taking part in an online discussion several years ago where one of the interlocutors warned me what would happen if Google ever became an evil monopoly. I couldn’t help but think to myself, have you not been paying attention? Leaving aside its extensive invasions of privacy, its intense cooperation with the largest dictatorship on the planet, as well as its agreements with more benighted countries which might or might not censor blasphemous search results, there is the pervasive ideological bias which infects this corporation and periodically makes itself known through heavy-handed editorial and advertising decisions. However, a...

One of the most interesting social media platforms-and aside from Facebook itself, the most popular one in the English language-is Twitter. The evangelists of this global means of communication would claim it’s responsible for catalyzing a host of revolutions within otherwise repressed dictatorships, while its critics might describe it as a meaningless echo chamber which others use to exploit journalistic credulity. Even as its user base declines and it struggles to find a viable revenue model, it can’t be denied that Twitter exerts an outsized influence, if only upon the narratives crafted by the mainstream news media. A perfect example...

When I first saw the now infamous Google doodle published last week I was a bit perplexed. Was every social justice warrior’s favorite search engine honoring an unsung Asian suffragette, or perhaps one of Anita Sarkeesian’s cyber-feminist forebears? As it turns out, Google was paying tribute to a Marxist, anti-American demagogue who admired cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and the late Al Qaeda emir Osama Bin Laden. Yuri Kochiyama would cut an odd figure today, coming as she did from what’s now one of the most well-educated and generally well-off non-white ethnicities in this country; a group which politically is more often...

One of the chief misconceptions about my immigration views is that they’re born of willful intransigence. The conceit that my political philosophy was shaped years ago-true, to a large degree-and has been unyielding in the face of overwhelming evidence which logically refutes it-completely baseless-is surprisingly widespread among my critics. The truth is that I’m actually desperate to be persuaded, to be convinced that open borders is somehow a desirable-or even workable-state of affairs. Admitting that you’re wrong, especially about sincerely, long-held convictions, can be psychically devastating for some individuals. One need only read David Horowitz’s disturbing memoir Radical Son to...

Short of the death or illness of a loved one, or the passing of a beloved pet, it’s hard to conceive of something more traumatic than losing your house. To have to be confronted with 2 of those tragedies simultaneously is almost incomprehensible. Unfortunately, that’s what the Baca Family is facing after their family home was destroyed in a fire, along with their possessions, books, heirlooms, and their precious cat Tyga. Recognizing how compassionate and generous our readers have been in the past, I’d like to ask you all to do what you can to help out the Bacas as...

One of the benefits of living in New York City-a place which often feels like it was expressly designed to discourage your presence-is the seemingly endless opportunities to see amazing, live music acts. Just within the past decade I’ve had the chance to watch the New York Festival Orchestra perform a remarkable tribute to the victims of the 2011 Japanese earthquake, meet the Bangles at the Highline Ballroom, see a remarkable chamber orchestra at Lincoln Center, and attend concerts by groups and individual artists like Hello Seahorse, They Might Be Giants, Dramarama, Stevie Wonder, Los Lobos, Big Daddy Kane, Bad...

With the world aflame, it’s only appropriate that our periodical digest of immigration and cultural news returns. Starting off in the States, we find that Michelle Root, after a heartfelt meeting with Donald Trump, has decided to throw her support behind his candidacy. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the case, Michelle is the mother of Sarah Root, who was murdered by a criminal alien that is now at large because of our government’s brilliant oversight of this national disaster. For a good exposition of why Donald Trump is worth supporting, I recommend David Horowitz’s fantastic piece in...

While I can’t say I share Mr. Condell’s faith in the democratic process, there’s not much else in this video with which I disagree. The pestilential influence progressivism has exerted over the United Kingdom can be felt in nearly ever facet of political and social life. However, the most concrete example is undoubtedly the indulgence of a irredentist, rapacious Islamic ideology-a wholly alien import, despite propaganda to the contrary-which has now resulted in the election of a man who can only be described as an Islamist fellow traveler. The fact that Europe’s premiere city, and one of the financial capitals...

We've come to expect dissimulation and manipulation from the news media in our country, especially major commercial and public broadcasting networks, national newspapers and prominent Web aggregators such as the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. We've seen this repeatedly in foreign affairs coverage, which has led to a host of disastrous policy decisions in countries ranging from Somalia, to Kosovo, to Libya, and now Syria. Perhaps the most catastrophic result of media deception and obfuscation can be seen in Europe, which is in the process of being subsumed by a mass of Middle Eastern, North African, and Central Asian refugees with...

The American victims our our government’s reckless immigration policies speak out. Watch the complete hearing live. That’s some nice lying, Congresswoman Lofgren.

A small victory for freedom of thought in a nation which has gradually descended into the muck of fascism, aided in no small part by the wholesale importation of Islamic radicals. Paul Weston, himself a victim of political persecution for expressing wrong think, explains why Tommy Robinson is the #1 target of the British government in a disturbing essay for Gates of Vienna, which you can read here.As frightening as what’s transpiring in the UK is to most rational human beings, the sad truth is that these anti-Western witch hunts could very well make there way to the United States,...

Some great footage from outside the Grand Hyatt during the GOP Gala. Really demonstrating the face of open borders fanatics/leftists in this country.

The last We Are Breitbart gathering I went to was also the first-at least, on the Eastern seaboard-and wasn’t an event that I relished attending. It was held to mourn and honor a man whom we all admired and loved, who had died less than a week before at the apex of a career spent shifting the media narrative in this country. It was a wake-organized by my friend David Bernstein-which also served as a catalyst to continue the work that Andrew wouldn’t be able to complete. The beautiful tribute by my friend Karol Markowicz, as well as the stirring...

I just hope everyone there – and all of you out in blogland – keep in mind Bryan Caplan’s Ideological Turing Test: Strive to model your opponent’s thinking as human and well-intentioned, not demonic. I always do, even though everyone is stupid.I love the above quote for a number of reasons, not least because, although laced with irony, it gingerly hints at a fundamental ignorance among vast swathes of the population. Not simply of economics, which, admittedly, is a seemingly abstruse, esoteric area of knowledge that routinely confuses even credentialed experts in their chosen field, but of simple cause and...

This week marks the centenary of a series of events which would forever change the future Ireland and Great Britain. Planned and set in motion by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood-a group of Irish republicans seeking a democratic Irish state free of British rule-and supported by James Connally’s Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers led by Patrick Pearse-the Easter Rising was a momentous historical event. April 29th was the date on which Pearse ordered his men-and all the other companies under his command-to surrender to General William Lowe of the British Army. Max Boot, despite his...

This month is bookended by two tragic anniversaries, which should serve as reflection points for not only the conservative movement but also the torpid, insular world of contemporary political journalism. While the untimely death of Andrew Breitbart has been discussed at length by numerous online news outlets-most of which would not exist but for his pioneering work in this field-yesterday marked the ninth year we’ve been without an equally brilliant American-by way of Winnipeg-iconoclast. If Breitbart was a blowtorch to doctrinaire leftist, media-regurgitated nostrums, engulfing them in his incandescent fury, then Cathy Seipp was a scalpel, skillfully and wittily excising...

It turns out that the Religion of Peace isn’t through culling apostates and infidels this Easter Weekend. A breakaway faction of the Pakistani, i.e. the good, Taliban have claimed responsibility for the bombing of a park which has resulted in the deaths of over 60 people, most of them women and children. The city of Lahore has a long, illustrious history of jihadist-inspired pogroms, including a massacre which took place at an Ahmadi mosque, much like the one the departed Shah Assad probably attended, nearly six years ago. There have been more than 30 major terror attacks of this kind...

Paul Weston’s speech, unfortunately, has been removed from Youtube. However, watching this question and answer session-while you still can-will be an illuminating experience, rest assured. The lecture he had originally planned to deliver was quashed, naturally, by brutal, anti-Western thugs who happen to make their habitation in Canada. Illustrating, once again, the obstacles we face in spreading the truth about the greatest threat to Western civilization in the contemporary era.

One of the enduring arguments between me and my anarcho-capitalist friends is the ideal immigration policy in a society where the state-and all of its many interventions-still, unfortunately, exists. While generally well-grounded philosophically, they seem to take an ad hoc, emotionally-laden, irrational approach to what is arguably the most important domestic policy issue of the 21st century. Often relying upon ad hominem attacks, or a misguided interpretation of the non-aggression principle, they insist upon defending the dissolution of borders, even if it means transgressing against the property and lives of people who do want to be enriched by third world...

One of the unfortunate realities of clinical research is that much of it doesn’t bear fruit in the way its intended beneficiaries would like it to, i.e. resulting in cures for the diseases from which they suffer. It often leads researchers into blind alleys and cul-de-sacs rather than transformative medical breakthroughs. Even so, this experimentation is necessary, if only to learn from their past failures and mistaken assumptions-a process illuminated brilliantly in The Emperor of All Maladies, the first comprehensive biography of cancer-and ultimately discover successful treatments and therapies. But this presupposes a consistent stream of funding to enable research...