Free Republic

Some LGBT advocates say those with same-sex attraction who use "avoidance techniques" are cheating.Martin Luther wrote, "If your head is made of butter, stay away from the fire." Sound advice for anyone seeking freedom from a bad habit or sinful temptation.To listen to gay supporters, one should be able to immerse themselves in all things homosexual and have the will power to abstain from sin.Are avoidance techniques true in the natural realm?Indeed they are. Someone might say the very term "avoidance techniques" sounds unbiblical.Fair skinned persons should avoid the noon day sun; that would include me. I burn easily.Persons allergic...

“I like you. You and me, we’re going to be best friends.” It is early January, and Eric Schneiderman is sitting in his 25th-floor office above Lower Manhattan, doing his best Donald Trump impression, puckering his lips into a duck face, scrunching up his nose and lowering his voice into something that resembles the president’s outer-borough growl. Schneiderman is recalling his meeting with Trump in 2010. Back then, Schneiderman was running for attorney general of New York, and Trump was still in his pre-birther, reality TV host phase. Trump had donated money to one of Schneiderman’s opponents in the Democratic...

•President Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth, Vt., on July 4, 1872. He is the only president born on July 4; however, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe all died on the Fourth of July. •One lucky Philadelphian purchased a $4 picture at a flea market. Behind the picture was an original 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence. It was sold to TV producer Norman Lear for $8.1 million. •After the war, King George III rationalized that Washington would become a dictator and make the Americans yearn for royal rule. When he was told that Washington planned to...

Ben Franklin is often quoted as having said, “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.” But he was actually talking about wine. In a 1779 letter to French artist Francois Morellet, Franklin began by stating, “In vino veritas . . . Truth is in wine.” He then continued to wax lyrical: “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards. There it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” The new book, “Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin,” by...

It was on September 17, 1787 that our rule of law, the US Constitution was signed in Philadelphia. History tells us of an exchange that occurred outside of Independence Hall between Benjamin Franklin and a Philadelphia socialite, Mrs. Powell. Mrs. Powell inquired of Mr. Franklin, “well, what is it that we have, a monarchy or a republic”? Mr. Franklin replied, famously, “a Republic, if you can keep it”. That was the challenge of 230 years ago, and now we must ask ourselves, do we truly want to keep this Constitutional Republic. However, there is a greater question, how many people...

Here’s a list of things I don’t  feel like talking about today: the Emmys, Kim Jong-un, St. Louis riots/protests, terrorist attacks anywhere.Usually when I don’t want to be annoyed food is a safe bet, no?  No. I see that the cognoscenti of New York are promoting a new form of extreme eating based on extremely expensive extreme aging: Steak Aging Goes Beyond Weeks to Months for Some Chefs. This is beef aged for up to 180 days – that’s 6 months! In dog years I believe that translates to carrion. But if you’re up for laying out a car payment...

Every July 4th, citizens of the United States of America everywhere celebrate Independence Day, commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and separation from British rule. The Continental Congress had actually voted to approve a resolution of independence on July 2nd and declare the Thirteen Colonies a new nation, the United States of America. However, it would not actually come until two days later that the Declaration of Independence was drawn up, revised by the Continental Congress, and officially signed. Were any signers of the Declaration of Independence Catholic? Of the 56 total signatories of the Declaration of Independence,...

When you think of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, it’s likely because of his ill-advised, bad-weather kite-flying foray or his face on the hundred-dollar bill or possibly the pithy sayings from Poor Richard’s Almanack. Here’s another side of Franklin: swashbuckling swordsman. In its Sept. 20 “Important American Furniture, Silver, Outsider and Folk Art” sale, Christie’s is set to feature just that as they offer a brilliant silver-hilted small sword, made for Franklin by a neighbor in Philadelphia circa 1760. Thankfully, it won’t ruin your peaceable image of the portly American statesman; at the time, it was a part of a gentleman’s...

In Philadelphia, in what now is called Independence Hall, is preserved a Chippendale style chair crafted in 1779 by the cabinetmaker John Folwell, with a sun on the horizon carved at the top. For nearly three months in 1787, George Washington used this chair during the sessions of the Federal Convention. According to James Madison, whose feet would have dangled from it since, at 5’4” he was ten inches shorter than Washington, Benjamin Franklin mused: “I have often in the course of the session looked at that sun behind the President without being able to tell whether it was...

Sometimes the rigors of daily life just get too overwhelming, causing me to turn to other less stressful items of interest. So I am now reading, “Benjamin Franklin -- An American Life,” by famed biographer, Walter Isaacson. It is already an amazing story about an amazing man, and I am not half way through its 586 pages --- small type, no pictures! Benjamin Franklin: author, inventor, scientist, politician, raconteur. But he considered himself, first and foremost, to be a printer. And would generally sign his name, “Benjamin Franklin, printer.” For in that Colonial period, a printer was a person of...

My FRiends, congratulations to Mr. Trump on his pending Republican nomination!  And what better way to celebrate than to compare Trump with the so-called "First American" and Founding Father, Ben Franklin. On Google Images, I ran across an amusing New York Magazine portrait of Trump wearing an 18th century hair style.  Then, shortly thereafter I found the splendid painting of Ben Franklin by David Martin.  I said: "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to GIMP those images together?" so Trump and Old Ben could sit together at the same table and shoot the breeze. For the story, I searched Wikipedia...

THIS FOUNDER explains the media today.

" . . . Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power, and the love of money. Separately each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men, a post of honour that shall be at the same time a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it. The vast number of such...

Having a go round with an atheist who flung this at me. Can anyone expound on the overall context and meaning ? I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"--John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson "But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legaends, hae been blended with both Jewish and Chiistian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed.--John Adams in a letter to...

Thanks to the marketing power of HBO, John Adams is no longer the forgotten American revolutionary — at least for a week. Adams feared his role would be neglected. Thomas Jefferson got all the credit for writing the Declaration of Independence, even though Adams was on that committee and had suggested that Jefferson draft it, since he was a better writer and a Virginian. (Adams wanted some geographic diversity to bind the southern colonies with New England in a common cause.) For the same geopolitical reason, Adams proposed that George Washington of Virginia command the Continental Army. Adams also worked...

Alert: Americans who honor the U.S. Constitution’s strict separation of church and state are now genuinely alarmed. Agnostics and atheists, as well as observant people of every faith, fear — sensibly — that the religious right is gaining historic political power, via an ultraconservative movement with highly placed friends. But many of us feel helpless. We haven’t read the Founding Documents since school (if then). We lack arguing tools, “verbal karate” evidence we can cite in defending a secular United States. For instance, such extremists claim — and, too often, we ourselves assume — that U.S. law has religious...

The current use of the “wall of separation” between church and state as a legal defense for the removal of the expression of American religious culture from governmental institutions and the prohibition of the free exercise of individuals working within them goes contrary not only to the original intent of the Founders and the Framers but also to the religious, political, and legal history and traditions of the United States of America. Courts, county school boards, teachers, and individuals, unwittingly devoid of the knowledge of the substantial role religion (primarily Protestant Christianity) played in the birth and formation of the...

Early in the nineteenth century the brilliant French observer Alexis de Tocqueville gave this estimate of America and Americans in his book Democracy in America: “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than America.” A similar assessment could not be made at the end of the twentieth century. That is not to say that the Christian religion exercises any great influence over the souls of men in any nation today, but the loss of its original influence is certainly as great if not greater in the United...

The American Colonist's Library A TREASURY OF PRIMARY DOCUMENTS Primary Source Documents Pertaining to Early American HistoryAn invaluable collection of historical works which contributed to the formation of American politics, culture, and ideals  The following is a massive collection of the literature and documents which were most relevant to the colonists' lives in America. If it isn't here, it probably is not available online anywhere. ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE (500 B.C.-1800 A.D.)  (Use Your Browser's FIND Function to Search this Library)  Given the Supreme Court's impending decision, the ultimate historic origins of the national motto, "In God We Trust" and...

Do you like having rights the government cannot take away? Do you like being equal? Do you like a country with few laws? These ideas have origins. RIGHTS To have individual rights the government cannot take away, rights must come from a power "higher" than government. The Declaration states "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men" In other words, rights come from God and government's job is to protect your rights. In his Inaugural Address, 1961, President John F. Kennedy put it...