Free Republic

When I was looking desperately for a number of years two decades ago for voices that intelligently and courageously spoke up against the militarist excesses of Bush 2, I was astonished and delighted by what I found on The American Right - Congressman Ron Paul and Patrick Joseph Buchanan. IMHO there is nothing short on film from Buchannan to match the magnificence and power of Paul's "what if" speech. But the longer culture wars speech on youtube is for me an almost sacred text which I watch once or twice a year to restore my faith in truth. My own...

A series of declassified satellite images from the Cold War era have revealed hundreds of undiscovered Roman forts in Iraq and Syria. A total of 396 new sites have been identified from the images taken in the 1960s and 1970s, with the findings, published in the journal Antiquity, changing the perception of how the region functioned. A previous 1934 aerial survey, conducted by French explorer Antoine Poidebard, recorded 116 Roman forts across the region. They were previously thought to form a defensive line against incursions from Arabia and Persia along the Roman Empire’s eastern flank. The latest findings, however, suggest...

A fundamental strength of conservatism is not forgetting the past out of hubris believing that we can get all new answers to everything now. When Tucker Carlson (https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4192571/posts) says: "You can say you care about America, but if you’re sending $100 billion to foreign countries right now, you’re lying" and “If something really dramatic in your country happens — like young people can’t, I don’t know, get married, you know, or buy houses or have any hope for a future that approaches, you know, the middle class upbringing they had — then you’ve got a huge problem and someone should...

Bronx child prodigy and poet Joy Davidman was born in NYC in 1915 and died in Oxford, England, aged 45, in 1960. Davidman was a convert from communism to Christianity during a troubled marriage. She then moved to England and found her second and final husband, writer and theologian, C.S. Lewis. She wrote: “What war did for him (hasten disillusionment with communism), childbirth did for me. I began to notice what neglected, neurotic waifs the children of Communists were and to question the genuineness of the love of mankind that didn’t begin at home.” Perhaps motherhood taught her of our...

Last year on this date, I paraphrased the words of Marcus Junius Brutus (and Gaius Epidius Marullus and Aussie bush poet Banjo Paterson) against tyranny to condemn the then Premier of Victoria, Australia, Daniel Michael Andrews (his full criminal name): “You are a block, a stone, a worse than senseless thing. You contaminate our future with mass debt And sell the vison splendid of our southern land For all the trash of Spring St cowards’ tyranny. I would rather be a dog who bays the moon than deny the simple agonising fact that your wide deep crimes against democracy are...

Why I Am a Christian: Knowing God. Download free, next three days: Where Do You Want to Go, Eternally? Healing One Heart at a Time, With John Wesley's Forms of Prayer (Modern English)! The book topics include: The Truth about Eternity, I've Broken the Commandments!, Taste and See, Who Was Jesus, Anyway? Good Man, Crazy Man, Son of God?, The Real Jesus Claimed to be God and Performed Miracles, Jesus Fulfilled Prophesy and Rose from the Dead, Jesus Is God, Bonus Resources For Further Study, and John Wesley's A Collection of Forms of Prayer for Every Day in the Week.The...

2 days after Gandhi's birthday, I publish a comparison of his thought and the ideas and practices of a few American conservatives. "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." (cf TR's favourite proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."?) “The future depends on what you do today.” ("It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking." - Ron Paul) "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." ("The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and...

Without freedom of speech no problem can be addressed let alone solved. Freedom of speech underpins all other freedoms and comes to us from God. Logos. The Word. Rationality. Discourse. ONLY LOGOS LIVES.

n 2022, Jon Lauck published The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900. His book describes a wonderful range of things to love about the 19th-century Midwest: its democratic civic ethos, the enduring Midwestern commitment to antislavery that resulted from the Northwest Ordinance’s original prohibition of the practice, and the wildfire-spread of co-educational colleges in the region. Lauck also adorns his book with wonderful quotations, which illustrate points such as the Midwestern love of literature that made it the talk of every table. “When William Dean Howells was visiting Representative James A. Garfield in Hiram, Ohio, in the...

In the Land of White Death, by Valerian Albanov, English translation published in 2000 by Random House, 205 pages. Original published in Russian in 1917. This is the story of an ill-fated ship, as written by one of only two survivors, the officer who was the navigator of the Santa Clara. The ship went to sea ill prepared, without key provisions and trained personnel. Trapped in Arctic ice for two years, the navigator lead a group attempting to reach land over the pack ice. This is his story, a direct, first person account of survival against daunting obstacles.The dismal fate...

America’s educational institutions used to adhere to objective standards of excellence. Students and faculty members had to strive and were rewarded (or not) according to their performance. What their background might be or where their ancestors lived didn’t matter. That was true until a corrosive idea called “disparate impact” began taking hold in the country some 50 years ago. What that meant was that objective standards were objectionable if they resulted in poorer performance by certain racial groups. The obsession with disparate impact was kick-started by the Supreme Court’s 1971 Griggs v. Duke Power decision and has been growing in...

On September 17, in 1180 A.D., poet, composer and nun Hildegard Von Bingen died. Hildegard created the word Viriditas to describe the intrinsic ability to heal of plants, people and God. The word derives from the Latin adjective viridis meaning green. I believe that Hildegard's profoundly poetic imagination would also have had in mind the Latin noun vir meaning man. My thoughts today on Hildegard's language lead me to think she thought of men as being green in a truly healing way. God Bless Hildegard Von Bingen.

With so many Americans now saying that they prefer to live under socialism than capitalism, it’s good to get a strong reminder about the true nature of socialist regimes. I’ve just read a book that does so. When I was much younger – in the 1960s and 70s – there was quite a lot of news about Cuba: Fidel Castro’s seizure of power, the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, people escaping by sea (and many perishing in the attempt), suggestions that Castro was behind JFK’s assassination, and so on. Today, however, one hears rather little about Cuba,...

Five years ago, after 30 years working in midwifery, I came up with the principles reprinted below. Why do I repost this today? A. "Telehealth" is causing skyrocketing abortions in Colorado. (https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4178731/posts) B. A Wyoming judge cannot define "woman" so a sorority must accept a trans "woman" whom the sorority does not want to accept. (https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4178718/posts) C. A Canadian woman seeking treatment for suicidal thoughts is asked to consider euthanasia. (https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4178754/posts) The above looks insane to me. Sanity is what most people think is normal: "1. Men, women and children need to live with love. This love is an indispensable...

In 1951, Swedish actress Ulla Jacobsson preceded Marilyn Monroe by three years in her free celebration of her female form on camera. In classical Latin her first name "Ulla" meant "any female". She died in Vienna on August 20, 1982. Jacqueline Susann, author "Valley Of The Dolls" and "The Love Machine" about fictional television producer Robin Stone, was born on August 20, 1918 in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. "Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my...

Ron Paul, who is, in my view, perhaps the single greatest living libertarian politician in the world, was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1935. He came to my attention through his “what if” speech on YouTube. I consider it to be a truly great poem. I throw up for contrast with some of Paul’s thought a book title from Paleoconservative Pat Buchanan: “Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.” To what extent would his fellow libertarian, Ron Paul, agree? Here is a taste of Paul’s thought: “There is...

Ancient Caesarea's water arch collapsed, putting its preservation at risk; The 1,870-year-old structure, built by Emperor Hadrian, was renowned for its precise design and impressive attention to detail at the time The historical water arch in Caesarea suffered a collapse during the early hours of Friday. This arch stands on the Aqueduct Beach, a popular bathing spot. Representatives from the Antiquities Authority were present at the site this morning, and a team from the Antiquities Authority's Conservation Directorate is expected to evaluate the extent of the damage on Sunday. The collapsed portion of the arch, a 1,870-year-old addition built during...

Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman-turned-philosopher. In 1941, he wrote “My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.” Ten years later, Hoffer’s masterpiece The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements was published when he was in his late forties. Its unexpected success led him to later be appointed an adjunct professor at University of California, Berkeley. A slim volume, The True Believer was a favorite of President Dwight Eisenhower, who regularly gifted copies to friends. The British...

Arma Virumque Me Cano. Rewriting Vergil, I sing of weapons, and of myself as a man. In this land where, as freedom fighter Steve of Wonthaggi tells it, " ......... men have been decommissioned of traditional roles. ....... (Some people) want us to be demonised as non accepting, small minded , woman-bashing shits." That isn't what we are. It is misandry. Lest We Forget.

I have never seen anything like this. The US Treasury 10Y-2Y yield curve is deep in inversion and has had a negative slope for 265 straight days. Bidenomics is born under a bad sign! On the commodities front, heating oil is up almost 2% this morning and nickel (an important element in Biden’s green energy mandates) is up 1.78%. On the crypto front, Bitcoin is up 0.47% and Dogecoin is up 5.58%. You can always buy Kamala’s Own Word Salad Dressing!