Free Republic

"...What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them. Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral. Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes. What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it. Does history have any meaning or purpose?It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.” I take...

What do the Occupy movement, foreskins, an ice rink, international human rights and the world’s largest gathering of naked Santa Clauses have to do with each other? Under normal circumstances, nothing — but this is San Francisco after all, where anything is possible, so come along on a guided photographic tour of several separate socio-political events that inevitably overlapped and coalesced into an unforgettable political mashup. It’s not often that one must wear a Santa costume as part of one’s job, but on Saturday, December 10 that moment had finally arrived for me: I suited up and made my way...

OCEAN AVENUE — A coalition of 13 churches will open a truncated version of their annual holiday display Sunday with an impassioned plea to City Hall to restore 11 pieces of prize real estate that were snatched up by a group of activist atheists. An organization called Save Our Nativity Scenes, or SONS, requested that churches ring bells at 3 p.m. Dec. 11 to signal the start of a ceremony that will end in a flashlight vigil, urging city officials to reserve space specifically for the booths....

Armed with snarky signs and at least one false mustache, a group of about 10 anti-Occupy Portland protestors, who called themselves Un-Occupy Portland, stood near Ankeny Plaza to deliver a message to the Occupy movement: "We're seriously annoyed, and we want you to stop." As members of Occupy Portland gathered for a rally on the plaza, the Un-Occupy protestors held signs with sayings such as "We are the 98.999%. We are seriously annoyed with the 0.001%," "I'm bored and easily influenced," and "Un-Occupy Portland: The 98.999% for Portland Police, Taxpayers and the City's Budget."....

The privileged Occupy kiddies of U.C. Berkeley were back in action again yesterday, play-acting at revolution to entertain their professors. The purported thesis of this particular Occupation is “more money for secondary education,” but that’s just a veneer (a very very thin veneer, as the above photo shows) for a more radical agenda....

A clique of privileged U.C. Berkeley students, upset that they’re the top 1% of elite students in the state and thus disqualified from participating in the Occupy movement, could no longer contain their frustration on Wednesday and threw an Occutantrum, attempting to “occupy” a few square yards of the 1,200-acre campus. The police dutifully played their roles in the street theater performance, showing up in riot gear and looking scary so the privileged students could shout at them and feel properly revolutionary, as instructed by their professors. Following the script, the police repeatedly removed the handful of occupation tents so...

The dream is slowly dissolving. The Netherlands was once the promised land for homosexuals. In 2001, this resulted in the first legal same-sex marriages in the world. Now more and more couples are being persecuted by their neighbours. Robin and Sam (not their real names) no longer dare to walk hand in hand in Amsterdam. They have decided to move to the Veluwe region in the east of the Netherlands. The first time they were confronted with aggressive behaviour was seven years ago. They hadn't been together very long and, like many couples in love, they were walking hand in...

NEW YORK — Can an Anglican theologian from Britain revive an 80-year-old Catholic social justice theory and provide a solution to America’s economic woes and political polarization? Philosopher and political thinker Phillip Blond thinks so, and he’s giving it everything he’s got. Blond, who has been a counselor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, just wrapped up a two-week U.S. tour to pitch his retooled version of “distributism,” a theory that argues that both capitalism and government are out of control. In that sense, the thinking goes, both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are right...

"Citizen journalist Ringo captured this speaker at the Occupy Los Angeles camp a few days ago letting the cat out of the bag: After dismissing nonviolence as a dead end, he admits that for the Occupiers to achieve their goals, violence and bloodshed will be necessary: Here’s a transcript, starting at 32 seconds into the video: Occupy L.A. Speaker: “One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution, and Indian so-called Revolution. Gandhi, Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the...

For Portland bicycle commuters hoping that TriMet would build a “sonic bike path” connecting to the nation’s largest car-free bridge, Thursday was the day the music died. The idea was for an intricate sequence of concrete grooves on the path that would play Simon and Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)” when bicycle tires rolled over them. But Oregon’s largest transit agency announced a song that goes something like this: Not going to happen. Citing concerns about cost, safety and design, the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project’s art advisory committee told TriMet and Portland’s Bicycle Advisory Committee today that it...

Consider yourself warned: those naked guys in the Castro are going to turn out in force on Saturday for a noon-time “nude-in” at what they call The Buff Stop. (For non-nudists, that’s the plaza at the corner of Castro and 17th Street.) Though the naked guys aren’t fans of Supervisor Scott Wiener’s recently proposed legislation mandating that they put a towel down on a public chair or bench before sitting on it, the nude-in is actually unrelated. It was planned weeks ago as a sort of pre-party for Sunday’s Folsom Street Fair. Because, you know, that day-long celebration of all...

September 17 was supposed to be the Day of Rage, the starting point of an anti-capitalist revolution that (in theory) was going to sweep the country coast-to-coast. As I noted yesterday, “The plan is to protest in state capitals and major cities across the nation, but the focus of the revolution will be in New York, where a hoped-for 20,000 anti-capitalists will ‘occupy’ Wall Street.” I dutifully sent my operatives out to cover what were to be three of the largest Day of Rage protests — in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — so humanity would have a...