Free Republic

Let’s revisit the tumultuous second half of 2021. Dementia-addled President Joe Biden executed a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan in August that resulted in the killing of thirteen servicemembers. Having spectacularly failed America’s warfighters, he transitioned quickly to the ongoing “fight against COVID.” No cost was too great or burden too onerous in the federal government’s war against microscopic organisms. Billions were funneled to pharmaceutical companies (aka Democrat Party donors) to pay for witch doctors’ experimental elixirs. Billions more were funneled to “news” platforms and “non-governmental” organizations (all on the USAID dole) to push the White House’s preferred COVID narratives and...

Wokeness is in retreat, but its stench will be hard to eliminate. Consider the curious case of the bone-headed “Nasdaq diversity rules” — edicts by the stock market giant to force every company that “lists” there to choose a board of directors that stresses intersectionality — racial, sexual and gender diversity — as opposed to competence.*** Forcing it on corporate boards as Nasdaq has been doing since 2020 is particularly scary. And now it’s illegal. *** Nasdaq turned decades of corporate law on its head at the height of the so-called social justice movement. It came at a particular hysterical...

The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a "settlement demand" to Elon Musk, according to a Thursday social media post by the tech billionaire. The federal financial regulator is asking Musk to agree to terms including a fine, or "face charges on numerous counts" regarding "Certain Purchases, Sales and Disclosures of Twitter Shares." The SEC has been investigating whether Musk committed securities fraud in 2022 as he sold shares in Tesla and shored up a stake in social network Twitter, ahead of his leveraged buyout. The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a "settlement demand" to Elon Musk, the tech...

For years, reforming the Constitution has been a misguided conservative issue. Downplaying the danger of a runaway convention, impatient conservatives have campaigned to ask the states to call a Constitutional Convention (Con-Con) to consider reforms and amendments that might address their many legitimate concerns. Now, leftists are appearing on the reform horizon, calling for major constitutional changes. One impatient leftist is Prof. Erwin Chemirinsky, dean of the Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States, goes beyond reform and calls for scrapping the Constitution altogether. He...

The current unifying theme among a set of people who regard themselves as progressive, liberal, mainstream, respectable, and so on, is a spectacular punishment fetish. Arrest them arrest them arrest them arrest them, they helpfully explain about people who disagree with them about anything, ever. See, for an easy example of the discipline fetish, this quite popular reader-generated “diary” post from a few days ago at Daily Kos, arguing that Tulsi Gabbard’s “Quiet Skies” designation is a proper use of the state security apparatus against a domestic enemy: It seems to this reader that our intelligence services are merely doing...

We have previously discussed the anti-free speech views of Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who has tried to sell citizens on the perfectly Orwellian view that more freedom means tyranny when it comes to the freedom of expression. He also demanded that former president Donald Trump be banned from ballots as a “traitor” — all in the name of protecting democracy from itself. Last week, Reich wrote a column declaring Elon Musk “out of control” in his refusal to censor citizens and appeared to call for his arrest.Reich has long been a prominent voice in the anti-free speech movement...

A brief discussion of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson’s court case regarding freedom of speech in Canada. The College of Psychologist’s is forcing mandatory “social media re-training” in order for Jordan to keep his license, after a dozen or so complaints were submitted online about his tweets and Joe Rogan podcasts. The Supreme Court has ruled against his appeal, ruling that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has no force against the mid level bureaucrats who rule the professional colleges and regulatory boards. This is a blow to all working professionals in Canada who value freedom of speech, to say...

The United Kingdom’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, has threatened to extradite overseas social media users who have supported or spoken out on the anti-mass migration protests and riots gripping the country. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised draconian action against those protesting against the deadly stabbing of multiple young girls by a migration-background teenager in Southport, England last week. (snip) X owner and tech billionaire Elon Musk has also strongly criticized Prime Minister Starmer for two-tier policing of anti-mass migration demonstrators and Muslim counter-demonstrators, branding him “#TwoTierKier.”It remains unclear whether the British government will try to extradite...

You know the term “authoritarian.” You think you know what it means. An authoritarian dad, boss, or government says: my way or the highway. They are forever barking orders and see compliance as the answer to all human problems. There is no room for uncertainty, adaptation to time and place, or negotiation. It’s ruling by personal dictate while tolerating no dissent. To be authoritarian is to be inhumane, to rule with arbitrary and capricious imposition. It can also mean to be ruled impersonally by a machine regardless of the cost. Sounds like a conventional government bureaucracy, right? Indeed. Think of...

I’m old. So old that I still believe that classic Western liberalism is the best system for assuring prosperity and peace, and authoritarianism, particularly of a theocratic nature, is a disastrous governance style. Watching the encampments and riots on college campuses, I see that too many young people have missed this lesson and instead support violent, barbaric, theocratic authoritarianism. I think these participants are not representative of a majority of students or voters and that the weak responses of some universities bode ill for their futures. Moreover, I think the Administration’s failure to act on the side of Western civilization...

Finland’s Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) is questioning a government proposal to raise the VAT value-added tax on sweets and chocolate. The THL, a Finnish research and development institute which is attached to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, announced that it did not agree with the decision to raise the tax from 14 to 25.5 percent. Talking to STT, the Finnish news agency, a senior THL investigator Heli Kuusipalo explained that the institute would prefer to see a sugar taxation system that was health-based rather than a direct VAT hike. The higher the sugar content in any...

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Wednesday on his show “Morning Joe” that some supporters of former President Donald Trump have a “sickness” because they want authoritarianism. Tuesday, during a Fox News Channel town hall, host Sean Hannity asked, “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Trump said, “Except for day one.”

With every hour that passes, Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination grows tighter. Every day in which his opponents aren’t gaining ground on his position is a day in which he gets nearer to appearing on the ballot next November and nearer to possibly being inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.

Mayor Eric Adams is leading a coalition of 62 mayors across the nation in calling for US House Speaker Mike Johnson to pass a ban on assault weapons following the mass shooting in Maine. During a news conference on Thursday, Adams pointed to the massacre in Lewiston, where 18 people were killed, as the latest example of why the federal government needs to revive its former assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. “Eighteen Mainers were stolen from us by yet another disturbed man, wielding an assault rifle that had no business on our streets,” Adams said. “Mass shooting deaths...

Victor Davis Hanson, speaking to host Dan Proft on American Greatness’ “Counterculture” podcast, said that it’s necessary to “clean up and break up” rogue government agencies that “lie with impunity.” “How do you stop the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the local prosecutors from doing what they’re doing?” Hanson asked Proft. “James Comey, Anthony Fauci, Robert Mueller, Andrew McCabe — that lie with impunity?” “You’d have to go through and completely clean out and break up those agencies.” This full interview is available on Rumble, YouTube, and Spotify. In his interview with Proft, Hanson offered an analysis of the current...

The Tyranny of AuthorityAs they reinstate mask mandates at colleges and at TSA, one really must recognize that everything they told us before has been proven a lie. Everything you were told about masks, about vaccines, about safety, about mandates were all BS, all of it. Some of us knew that immediately, could smell the rat. A lot didn’t, many fell for some part of it, others for all of it and some just did it to get along without making waves. Well, this is the result of being afraid to rock the boat. Without any evidence, without any medical...

In my last post, I argued that we’ve developed a two-tiered justice system, in which ordinary people have to take their losses in court and adjust their behavior accordingly, but Our Masters on the Left can just blow by their losses and, with utter impunity, keep right on keepin’ on. I noted two examples: President Biden’s determination to continue his gigantic loan “forgiveness” program still without the Congressional approval the Supreme Court held is constitutionally required; and his and his allies’ continued, if not even more aggressive, determination to persist with anti-white racial balancing by hiding it or calling it...

It is easy to get caught up in the current state of American politics, but it is essential that we also keep an eye on the future, especially as authoritarians on the left are aggressively trying to influence the next generations to buy into their statist ideology.A recent survey conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek revealed that almost half of millennials support the idea of misgendering someone being considered a criminal offense. This means that a huge chunk of Americans in this age group want to use the government to force people to censor themselves, which is a...

This article is a pre-amble to the main point. Authoritarianism in America is becoming more like authoritarianism in Communist China. This first phase has focused on using government power against conservatives. If the present trends continue, those who used the system of government against conservatives will soon find themselves becoming victims. To be smarmy, swatting will increasingly look like American authoritarianism with Chinese characteristics. What that begins to looks like is described below.

Abstract In two pre-registered studies, we investigated the relationship of left-wing authoritarianism with the ego-focused trait of narcissism. Based on existing research, we expected individuals with higher levels of left-wing authoritarianism to also report higher levels of narcissism. Further, as individuals with leftist political attitudes can be assumed to be striving for social equality, we expected left-wing authoritarianism to also be positively related to prosocial traits, but narcissism to remain a significant predictor of left-wing authoritarianism above and beyond those prosocial dispositions. We investigated our hypotheses in two studies using cross-sectional correlational designs. Two nearly representative US samples (Study 1:...