Free Republic

From the 1950s gangs of North London to the ruins of the Roman Empire, from the rise of the Berlin Wall to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, from the horrors of the Vietnam War to those of Biafra, Beirut, Iraq and elsewhere, as well as the beautiful bleakness of the Somerset countryside

A Christmas Prayer By Rian B. Anderson It was Christmas Eve 1881. I was fifteen years old and feeling like the world had caved in on me because there just hadn't been enough money to buy me the rifle that I'd wanted so bad that year for Christmas. We did the chores early that night for some reason. I just figured Daddy wanted a little extra time so we could read in the Bible. After supper was over I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Daddy to get down the old...

The first trailer for Christopher Nolan‘s feature take of Homer’s The Odyssey is here, and yet the highly anticipated movie has already sold out 70MM Imax tickets at AMC and Regal cinemas. Matt Damon is seen here as Odysseus, King of Ithaca, leading his soldiers home after the Trojan War. There’s barely a glimpse of a monster in the trailer, but per the poem which is set around eighth century BCE, he faces Polyphemus the Cyclops, Sirens, the nymph Calypso and the witch goddess Circe in the treacherous oceans. If anything, there’s a lot of ocean and a lot of...

Yesterday, down in Southern NC, I stood next to a magnificent animal. The owner's daughter took him out for a spin. I've never seen anything like it.

In this witty, new breed of mystery, George (Hugh Jackman) is a shepherd who reads detective novels to his beloved sheep every night, assuming they can’t possibly understand. But when a mysterious incident disrupts life on the farm, the sheep realize they must become the detectives. As they follow the clues and investigate human suspects, they prove that even sheep can be brilliant crime-solvers.

Part 1Part 2CAST: Milton Metz (narrator) Wayne Perkey (Ebeneezer Scrooge) Terry Meiners (Bob Cratchit)Fred Wiche (nephew Fred) Rush Limbaugh (solicitor) Van Vance (Jacob Marley's ghost) Jane Norris (Christmas past ghost) Joe Donovan (Christmas present ghost) Joe Elliot (Christmas Yet to Come ghost) Laura Shirley (Mrs. Cratchit) Ken Schulz (Peter) Mary Jeffries (Belle) Beth Merrill (Martha Cratchit) Frederick Speck (Tiny Tim) Brian Rublein (1st man) John Asher (2nd man) Skip Essick (Joe) Tony Cruise (man) Christopher Holcombe (1st boy) Edward Pratt (2nd boy) Sara Greiling (3rd boy) -- Directed by David Holland ---- Produced by Scott Goettel -- special thanks to...

Taken from The Secret Destiny of America, Manly P. Hall's work on the occult history and future of the American continent, this article shows that the American ideals of constitutional democracy, universal suffrage and a free people under God are the culmination of thousands of years of tireless work undertaken by great initiates on behalf of humanity.

The first night of Hanukkah falls on Sunday, Dec. 14.The first night of Hanukkah falls on Sunday, Dec. 14. The history of Hanukkah Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah) is a Jewish holiday that lasts for eight nights, usually in November or December. This year, it begins at sundown on Sunday, December 14, 2025 and ends with nightfall on Monday, December 22, 2025. Here is what you need to know about Hanukkah. What is Hanukkah? Hanukkah starts on the 25th of Kislev, a month in the Hebrew...

It’s easy to be a Scrooge about Christmas movies, especially these days. Streaming platforms have shamelessly muscled into the Hallmark market, churning out quick, cheap holiday romcoms with C-list casts every year, hoping to land on something so irresistibly cheesy it briefly becomes a seasonal phenomenon. Put that cynicism aside, however, and most of us can admit that we all have at least one movie we return to every December – the one that allows us to embrace nostalgia unapologetically and lets us know that the most wonderful time of the year has arrived. It doesn’t have to be schmaltzy...

When the inscrutable Dr. Lao (Tony Randall) and his mystical Chinese medicine show roll into the Wild West settlement of Abalone, Arizona, he ends up in the middle of an ongoing feud between a ruthless land baron, Clint Stark (Arthur O'Connell), and an idealistic newspaper editor, Ed Cunningham (John Ericson). The shape-shifting Dr. Lao soon weighs in on the battle, as well as the problems of widowed librarian Angela (Barbara Eden) and her ambitious young son, Mike.

In American high schools, the age of the book may be fading. Many teenagers are assigned few full books to read from beginning to end — often just one or two per year, according to researchers and thousands of responses to an informal reader survey by The New York Times. Twelfth-grade reading scores are at historic lows, and college professors, even at elite schools, are increasingly reporting difficulties in getting students to engage with lengthy or complex texts. Perhaps that is to be expected in the era of TikTok and A.I. Some education experts believe that in the near future,...

Children as young as five are being taught "abortion is a superpower" in a new book. "Abortion Is Everything" by Amelia Bonow and Rachel Kessler is billed as a non-fiction book, and will begin shipping to purchasers in January 2026. It is being promoted by pro-abortion group Shout Your Abortion (SYA) - which hails the tome as a way to "empower parents and kids". Elsewhere, children between five and eight years old are taught "about what abortion is, how it might feel, and why people have abortions". "Abortion is a tool that allows human beings to shape our destinies, and...

Since the late 19th century, school yearbooks have been a ubiquitous and mostly unchanging element of American school life. Decade after decade, they deliver a predictable mix of class, club, and team photos, cheesy graphics, and cringey comments. But the most consistent feature of yearbooks may be what they don’t include—references to political upheaval or resistance movements. As public schools across the United States face heightened censorship and the threat of funding losses for noncompliance, school yearbooks remind us that there is nothing new about political censorship in schools. A few rare examples also reveal that there some students and...

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird hardly needs an introduction, as I expect everyone in the world has read it, or has seen the film starring Gregory Peck. (If you haven’t read it, perhaps you should.) Lee, incidentally, went to visit the film set, and had this to say about Peck: “an inspired performance. In some mysterious way, Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch transcended illusion.” If that seems a tad clichéd and not especially insightful, then I’m afraid to say that this is the general tenor of the nonfiction pieces in The Land of Sweet Forever , alongside eight previously unseen...

(1918-1985) Working name of US author born Edward Hamilton Waldo in New York City.

Men aren’t vanishing from fiction. The truth is more complicated (Cannot be posted due to FR rules.)

President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that Americans may "not even have income tax to pay" in the near future, saying tariff-driven revenue could allow for the historic elimination of the federal income tax under his tenure. Trump told a press gaggle after his cabinet meeting that "at some point in the not too distant future you won’t even have income tax to pay," arguing that revenue the government is collecting under his administration is now "so great… so enormous." "Whether you get rid of it or just keep it around for fun or have it really low, much lower than...

Avatar: Fire and Ash has had its first few screenings for press on Monday, and the early reaction suggests James Cameron can celebrate yet another billion dollar box office mega hit. While official critics reviews for Fire and Ash are embargoed till closer to the film's Dec. 19 release date, 20th Century Studios allowed press to release social media reaction to screenings this week. The third installment in Cameron's groundbreaking Avatar series, sees the action return to Pandora after the events of 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water, and introduces the "Ash" people, fire-themed Na'vi clan. Fire and Ash stars...

A graduate assistant was removed from her position amid investigations into a contested discrimination report filed by a disgruntled student who repeatedly referenced the Bible in an essay response to an article about gender stereotypes — for a course taught by a transgender instructor. In her essay, which was supposed to cover “how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender,” University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky presented a Biblically-fueled tirade against the notion that there are multiple genders. The psychology course’s professor, graduate student Mel Curth, who uses “she/they” pronouns, failed Fulnecky on the grounds that she neglected...

These are some texts my mother has sent me: ‘They found a mole on my back . . .’ ‘I think Janet may have been contacted by ISIS . . .’ ‘Madeline, the guest room is haunted . . .’ For the reader’s peace of mind: the mole was benign, Janet has not been contacted by the Islamic State and the guest room, well, that remains to be seen. I’ve always accepted my mother’s overuse of ellipses as an idiosyncrasy of an elderly texter. But she doesn’t reserve the ‘. . .’ for ominous messages. When I told her the...