Free Republic

After enjoying many decades of high public support, higher education in the U.S. is in serious decline. Polls show that a sizeable percentage of the populace now doubts that college is worth the cost and that it contributes to the public good. Enrollments keep falling, and the luster that a college degree used to confer on graduates has become tarnished, especially since recent events indicate that, instead of helping them mature, college turns them into ideologically obsessed activists. What has gone wrong? In his latest book, Let Colleges Fail, economics professor Richard Vedder employs his insights to answer that question....

I recently came across an alarming 2014 article on academic freedom in the Harvard Crimson. “Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice” was the subtitle. The author was an obviously very bright female student. Academic freedom exists to allow a university to be unimpeded in its search for truth. It has been known since the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, if not before, that justice depends on first getting the facts right. A just conviction depends on true evidence. Academic freedom is necessary to achieve real justice. But not according to then-Harvard student Sandra Korn, whose first target...

84 years ago today, Bob Dylan was born. At his Nobel Prize winning best, from 1961 to 1966, he challenged us to rethink everything with everything he wrote. Donald Trump, born about 5 years after Dylan, in 1946, looks to me like he is just entering into a period of his Dylanesque best. Trump forces us to revealuate this modern world all the time. Bob Dylan mastered and elevated American music twice to great literature in a few short years, first as a folkie but then as a great rock n roller. Potus 45 surprised everyone to come down a...

Sorry, I have time on my hands, and I don’t trust ANYBODY in politics except Scott Adams and he’s not long for the world 🥺😥😱

mysterious Lord: the silent hidden God mercy and refuge lodge inside the shadows of His wings My friend, anglo-catholic Anglican bishop David Farrer, describes George Pell’s prison journals as “remarkably uplifting” and said he is grateful for the way they help us to pray. Above is a prayer which I have shaped today from words of the Cardinal about mass in the May 20, 2019 entry to the journal and from the words of Psalm 57 which he quotes in that entry. Lest We Forget: Cardinal George Pell, a truly great man of God, thrown to the lions by a...

For people like me, the Australia I was born into, was a meritocracy where one wage could get a family a home. Times have changed. The forty hour week is gone for far too many people. But endeavour still inspires me. Youth brings me hope. As in my above poeticised image from a Maribyrnong Park Football Club match last Saturday. Today we need them to be lions. Reminds me of Shakespeare: “To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms...

Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,— One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up...

Peter, an individual, betrayed Jesus, by denying knowing him three times, and thereby betrayed the group of individuals to which he belonged. His own conscience troubled Peter very deeply. Waltzing Matilda, often called Australia’s unofficial national anthem, is also about betrayal. But it is the betrayal of the human rights of an individual denied his basic right to food by an unjust society. The swaggy is driven to suicide, whereas Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built. For me the fusion of these two different types of betrayal is very beautiful. Perhaps a strange...

For the entire existence of the James G. Martin Center, we have been arguing that, due to governmental policies, higher education has been badly oversold. That is, many students have been lured into college even though they have little interest in or aptitude for advanced academic studies. The notion that a college degree was a sure-fire investment that would pay off handsomely after graduation was erroneous, but great numbers of students and their families were taken in by that siren song. Moreover, a stigma somehow attached to students who didn’t go to college—if you had to “settle” for working after...

I need help in finding a forgotten science fiction book. I can describe the plot, but have forgotten the title and author. The plot is in a future where people in rural areas live in fortified homes and are suspicious of anyone they do not know. There is significant overpopulation. Gas vehicles are frowned upon and/or forbidden in urban areas. Vehicles which exceed the speed limit on the interstate are simply machine-gunned because stopping them has become too dangerous. However, the Supreme Court has ruled there is a privacy right as part of the Second Amendment, and the government has...

I'm having a promotion for a book I wrote and published (under pen name Lyle Wesley) on Amazon. The title is A Night that Saved Virginia. It is historical fiction based on a true event; a British attempt to capture Thomas Jefferson at Monticello when he was Governor of Virginia. The E-Book version is free on Amazon until March 18th. The Amazon link is https://a.co/d/4mDuwJF. Best Regards and Happy Sunday!

Here's the starting point for this article. For almost 100 years the Education Establishment has maneuvered, plotted, and schemed to eliminate phonics, and to make American children memorize sight-words. The pitch has always been sweeping: phonics can’t possibly work for a complex language like English, and sight-words are the only way to go. Teachers, students, and parents have been bullied relentlessly to embrace what phonics experts (such as Rudolf Flesch) assume is a fraud and a nonstarter. How does the ordinary citizen deal with this? Well, it's been rough because the professors at Harvard, etc. do not play games. They're...

Raden Ajeng Kartini was a first wave feminist and is a national hero in Indonesia. The pillars of her feminism were: A. Family. This included deep love and respect for her father and husband. B. What women are as mothers. C. Education where teachers strive to be like mothers to their students. D. Pride in her own people and culture. If only modern feminists could be more Kartiniist. I believe that is what a true fourth wave of feminism needs to aim for: nomore misandry and no more marginalisation of mums. Like Kartini when she wrote with pride of having...

Gone are the days when reading a book was the preferred means to knowledge, replaced by the rapid consumption of digital media and the allure of screen-based entertainment. This phenomenon is growing in America, and it is pronounced among our youth. One consequence is that we appear to be reading less these days, and while our attention span does not (yet) rival that of the much-maligned goldfish (eight seconds), it is getting discernibly shorter. First, is this thinking true? And, second, do our technological gadgets predispose us to this phenomenon? Are we sacrificing something important, turning from books to bots?...

Amazon MGM Studios is set to take creative control of the James Bond franchise. The shock announcement — which is sure to shake and, indeed, stir the industry — was made Thursday, alongside the news that long-time producers and custodians of 007, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, would be stepping back. As per details of the historic agreement, Amazon MGM Studios, Wilson and Broccoli have formed a new joint venture to house the James Bond intellectual property rights. The three parties will remain co-owners of the iconic franchise but Amazon MGM will have creative control. “Since his theatrical introduction...

According to The Guardian, the owners of the James Bond franchise are facing a copyright lawsuit barring the use of the titular name and codename "007." A Dubai-based property developer, Josef Kleindienst, has filed lawsuits in the UK and EU challenging the James Bond trademark, arguing that Danjaq and Eon have not commercially exploited it across various goods and services for over five years. The claims target multiple versions of the Bond name, including "James Bond 007" and "Bond, James Bond." What The James Bond Lawsuit Means For The Franchise The Legal Battle That Could Reshape 007’s Future The legal...

The Three Investigators is a series of children’s mystery novels that many members of Generation X, including myself, grew up with. They’ve been out of print in the U.S. for decades. But now, all 10 of the books that were written by series creator Robert Arthur are back in print, in paperback.

Star Trek: Deleted Scene - Who Mourns For Adonais? - Lt. Carolyn Palomas Is Pregnant With Apollo's Child. In this deleted scene from Star Trek (The Original Series - TOS), from the episode, "Who Mourns For Adonais?", on the Enterprise bridge, this scene was voiced by the Script Director, with Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) giving facial expressions, as responses. Dr. McCoy says that Lt. Carolyn Palomas is pregnant, with Apollo's child. Captain Kirk responds with, "What?" McCoy continues that he has a question for Spock's computer: Will the child be man or god? This is reminiscent of Genesis, Chapter 6...

In April 1948, Deir Yassin was an Arab village of about a thousand residents. It was captured then by Jewish forces seeking to break the siege of Jerusalem during the war for Israel’s independence. Most of the fighting was done by the underground soldiers of the Irgun and Lehi, with assistance from the Haganah, the official fighting force of the Jewish establishment. A truck-mounted loudspeaker blaring a warning for residents to flee the village fell into a trench that had been dug by villagers. The result was a bloody house-to-house battle with a high death toll. That much everyone agrees...

Professor John Ellis has been a critic of our higher-education system for many years. His book The Breakdown of Higher Education (which I reviewed here) masterfully analyzed the perverse trends that were (and still are) causing our colleges and universities to deliver much less educational value at much higher cost. His latest book, A Short History of Relations Between Peoples, is not primarily about higher education, but Martin Center readers will find it important because Ellis indicts our academic elites for their role in undoing centuries of progress and turning humanity back towards tribalism. The main goal of this book...