Free Republic

Fractured RealitiesWe used to share the same lies. Now we each get our own. Soon, we may not even agree that reality exists.Reality has been shattered into billions of pieces, each one perfectly tailored to fit someone’s worldview. The same event triggers completely different movies in our heads. The same evidence proves opposite truths. We’re not just disagreeing—we’re living in different universes, each one feeling absolutely real to the person inside it.This didn’t happen by accident. Someone broke it. Someone profits from the pieces.What follows is a diagnostic assessment. Five voices responding to the same events, each one convinced that...

Red in Tooth & ClawRacism, Eugenics & Other Bad Ideas from the Intellectual Descendants of DarwinOn July 21, 1925, John Scopes was found guilty of teaching Darwinian evolution in a state-funded high school in Dayton, Tennessee. He was fined $100. Scopes had ostensibly lost his battle with the state. But the side he represented was winning the greater war. I don’t say that because Scopes’s verdict was later overturned on a technicality. My contention is that the ideology he helped unleash on the public has been the source of more human oppression, suffering, and death than anyone in that Dayton...

If you’ve paid any attention to global headlines, you might have noticed something deeply unsettling: Muslims, as a general trend, often seem to harbor an unusual hostility toward dogs. While the rest of the world hails dogs as “man’s best friend,” in many Islamic societies, they’re treated as filth, vermin, or worse — literal devils.I’ve written about this before (see links below), but in case you’re new to the topic, consider just a few recent developments from the Islamic world:Dog Deaths, Abuse, and Massacres: A Global TrendMay 2025, UK: A Muslim man running a dog rescue shelter called Save a...

The Invisible LeashOpenAI’s $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s io Products isn’t just the largest deal in the company’s history—it’s the ritual completion of what I warned about in “Node Without Consent.” Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone, iPad, and Apple’s most iconic products, is now building something far more insidious. If “Node Without Consent” revealed the architecture of biodigital control, this moment represents its activation—where the theoretical framework snaps shut and the dream of human agency must now be fought for at the level of metaphysics itself.The philosophical sleight-of-hand is breathtaking. Ive frames their goal as building “a...

The Bread, the Circus, and the Sugar WaterI was watching the Knicks game last night, still processing my conversation with Naomi Wolf about consciousness and mind control earlier yesterday, when I realized I was witnessing the final performance of a civilization that has forgotten what reality is.The game itself—human bodies moving through space, demonstrating skill, strength, and coordination—represents one of the last connections to authentic physical reality in our entirely mediated existence. But even this vestige of the real has been weaponized as a delivery system for the artificial. Between every moment of genuine athletic achievement, we’re subjected to a...

In the Name of Health: First Reactions to the MAHA ReportThe first report from the Make America Healthy Again Commission is out, with a particular focus on children’s health. The relatively short report includes astonishing data on obesity, heart disease, diabetes, life expectancy, substance abuse, mental illness, and many other terribles. The report is a shock, a painful read, a five-alarm fire, and the charts alone are astonishing. It is embedded below for your reading misery. “This report—Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment—is a call to action. It presents the stark reality of American children’s declining health, backed by compelling...

Democrats Don’t Get The Benefit Of The Doubt On Biden’s Health, ‘86,’ Or Anything ElseWe don’t know all the details of Biden’s cancer timeline or Comey’s latest beach walk. But we do know about Democrats’ relationship with the truth. And that tells us everything.Joe Biden’s inner circle can’t stress this enough: Before last Friday, the former president had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Pinky swear.A Biden spokesman “clarified” the “timeline” in a statement to multiple news outlets after widespread speculation that Biden’s Sunday cancer announcement wasn’t so much a new diagnosis as a new disclosure. Even Democrat doctors came...

We need to teach our sons that a woman is not the same as a man -- and women are to be honored and respected because of that, not dishonored by expecting them to fulfill their role and ours, too.Decades ago, I first saw the reports and subsequent studies in National Geographic concerning juvenile male elephants rampaging through unfortunate villages, crushing huts, destroying crops, and intimidating terrified villagers.The researchers finally realized that the juvenile male elephants lived in a herd where the mature, dominant bulls had either been poached or removed.It seems the juveniles didn’t know how to act when...

The Drug Pricing ScrambleFor the same pharmaceutical products, US prices can be anywhere between two and ten times higher in US markets compared to prices across the border. Nor is importation allowed, even though this would drive prices toward equilibrium by facilitating market competition. This problem has persisted for decades. US taxpayers and health insurance subscribers subsidize pharmaceutical products for the rest of the world. While many politicians have denounced this problem, and sworn to fix it with a genuine competitive market, the barriers have traced to the same source: entrenched industrial interests that like the rigged monopolistic system of...

Trump’s Riyadh Speech Heralds The End Of Failed Neocon Foreign PolicyTruly looking out for American interests means refraining from trying to remake foreign countries in our own image.In what was probably the most important presidential speech in decades, President Donald Trump repudiated decades of failed interventionist U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East during an official visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday.Not only did Trump lambast neocon “nation-building” in the region, he more or less vowed never to pursue the kinds of neocon misadventures that spilt American blood and treasure over the past 25 years in the insane pursuit...

Small Reforms to Improve the US Medical SystemThe American system of medical-care delivery has no name. It is neither single payer nor based on private enterprise. It is a patchwork of cockamamie carrots and sticks, agencies and incentives, exceptions and accounting tricks, cajoles and punishments, cobbled together over some 50-100 years of legislation that itself was a product of pressure-group pushes, graft, loopholes, mandates, and subsidies. It’s not even a clean public-private partnership. It’s a public-private-nonprofit-grifter-payola regulatory cacophony of confusion and chaos over which pharmaceutical companies and professional lobbyists exercise the dominant influence. Still it quasi-functions. It hobbles along year...

Information Processing: An Unnatural Attribute of LifeResearchers have long recognized information (CSI) as a prime descriptor of living systems, in comparison to the low levels of information in non-living systems. Skeptics, however, seem to have remained convinced that natural processes can gradually ratchet up information, even in opposition to established laws of physics and observable operations of nature.Recently, researchers have put forward a corollary attribute of living systems, namely that living organisms process and manipulate information. Decision-making based on information processing appears as a ubiquitous biosignature.Unlike non-living systems, living systems actively acquire, process, and use information about their environments to...

Here’s The Federalist’s Guide To This Year’s Biggest Supreme Court CasesThis comprehensive guide will help you identify and understand the major cases to be decided on by the nation’s highest court this term.Summer is right around the corner, which means the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is gearing up to release opinions on some of the biggest policy debates impacting the country.With dozens of cases covering a large swath of issues heard by the high court every year, it can be difficult to keep track of which consequential opinions Americans should keep their eyes on. That’s why The Federalist’s 2024-2025 Supreme...

America’s Hidden TransformationExecutive SummaryWhat if the America you pledge allegiance to isn’t the one running the show? This investigation examines how America’s governance system fundamentally transformed since 1871 through a documented pattern of legal, financial, and administrative changes. The evidence reveals a gradual shift from constitutional principles toward corporate-style management structures – not through a single event, but through an accumulation of incremental changes spanning generations that have quietly restructured the relationship between citizens and government.This analysis prioritizes primary sources, identifies patterns across multiple domains rather than isolated events, and examines timeline correlations – particularly noting how crises often preceded...

‘I, Pencil’ defined free trade — Trump’s tariffs are writing the sequel The president’s plan to restore American manufacturing isn’t nostalgia — it’s strategy. Supply lines are now battlegrounds, and Trump wants America to be ready.On Sept. 17, 2024, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in the hands and pockets of alleged Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon and Syria. Intelligence sources believe the Israeli government carried out the operation in retaliation for the terrorist attacks committed on Oct. 7, 2023.Israeli agents reportedly intercepted the devices — manufactured overseas — and modified their batteries to include small amounts of explosives. However...

A Roadmap to IndependenceThe Trump Administration is focusing on recovering self-reliance.The most powerful nation in history has spent the last three decades outsourcing its strength. Factories have been shuttered, energy dependence was reinstated, domestic bureaucracies have continued to grow, and bad trade deals were signed with rivals—all moves that have weakened America’s sovereignty. The Trump Administration is reversing this decline not only through rhetoric but also through action (which, admittedly, can be confusing at times).The common thread weaved through President Trump’s current efforts is self-reliance. It’s evident in the concessions the Trump Administration is seeking from partners and adversaries alike....

Trade should work for America, not rule it Ideological free trade has failed. It’s time America puts its citizens first, just like every other serious country on Earth.This week, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, announced his organization’s support for President Trump’s trade policy. That includes backing Trump’s use of tariff threats to secure better trade deals with foreign nations.The announcement reflects a broader shift underway at Heritage. Once a pillar of the conservative establishment, the think tank has moved toward a more populist, "America First" approach that challenges the traditional Republican consensus on trade.Predictably, critics from the...

From The People’s CubeFor anyone still tuning in to the regularly scheduled gaslighting, here’s a video that might crack your screen a little. Brought to you by nobody. Funded by nothing. Approved by no one. Enjoy PROPAGANDA: The Music Video.Watch: PROPAGANDA: The Music Video Lyrics below:PROPAGANDA They drop us in the pit, red against blue, Twistin’ the truth just to split us in two. Stir up the rage, then sit back and gloat, Holdin’ the leash while we’re at each other’s throats. They cut us up in little tribes, Tellin’ us who to hate and who to idolize. They spread...

The Judicial Insurrection Is Worse Than You Think The point of all the injunctions and restraining orders is to preserve the supreme rule of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.At this point it’s not too much to say that the federal judiciary has plunged us into a constitutional crisis. The fusillade of injunctions and temporary restraining orders issued by district court judges in recent weeks against the Trump administration — on everything from foreign aid to immigration enforcement to Defense Department enlistment policy to climate change grants for Citibank — boggles the mind.More nationwide injunctions and restraining orders have been issued...

The Wonders of Intelligent Design in ChemistryA few years ago, Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) featured a story in the field of structural biology entitled “How Transcription Gets Its Start, in Pictures.” Transcription is the biochemical process that occurs in every cell in the human body when protein synthesis is initiated. It is a complex series of steps that begins in the nucleus when a gene — a section on a strand of DNA — expresses instructions for a specific protein to be produced. In simple terms, the portion of the DNA molecule where the gene is located is unzipped,...