Free Republic

It is common knowledge --at least for part of the right-- that resentment of Israel is merely an extension of Western self-hatred. We know that Israel is hated by the Arab world and many of the “have nots” of the postmodern age, because the fact that it is the only democracy and successful economy in the Middle East serves as a constant and unwelcome reminder to these countries that their problems cannot simply be blamed on the Western colonial legacy, and that, on the contrary, there is a fundamental flaw in their mentality and culture. For the same reason, the...

Hundreds of fans celebrating Mexico’s 3-1 World Cup win over Croatia faced off with police in the streets of Huntington Park, south of downtown Los Angeles, on Monday.

This short book rewrites the history of modern American liberalism. It shows that what we think of liberalism today – the top and bottom coalition we associate with President Obama - began not with Progressivism or the New Deal but rather in the wake of the post-WWI disillusionment with American society. In the twenties, the first writers and thinkers to call themselves liberals adopted the hostility to bourgeois life that had long characterized European intellectuals of both the left and the right. The aim of liberalism’s foundational writers and thinkers such as Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis...

This article will give greater meaning to Barack Obama’s outrageous declaration in Roanoke that, “If you own your business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” (didntbuildthat.com) Obama’s minions in the press claim that highlighting the president’s Roanoke quote is ripping an incidental remark out of context or bungling his intended syntax. Taking together all the president’s actions since assuming the throne in the Oval Office, it’s easy to see his remark in Roanoke fits quite well with his agenda: ATTACK THE INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUAL. When people perceive their society is being infiltrated and taken over by Collectivism, how...

Was D-Day the beginning of a heroic crusade to “Free Europe” or was it a pyrrhic victory for the United States? Did the collectivism that grew at home during World War II help save our liberty or destroy it? Today marks the 68th anniversary of the invasion of fortress Europe by Allied forces, better known as “D-Day.” On that day 156,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. Over 4,000 of them were killed and another 6,000 were wounded. On the German side it is estimated that 4,000-9,000 German soldiers were killed and wounded. Over 425,000 Allied and German...

In a recent campaign speech, Obama said: “See, the question is not whether things will get better — they always do… The question is whether together, we can muster the will — in our own lives, in our common institutions, in our politics — to bring about the changes we need.” This is a revealing statement. It reveals the assumption of all liberals and socialists, Obama included, that the money will always be there. Will a wrecked economy improve? “They always do.” This implies that the economy will get better, no matter what the government does to it. Tell this...

Excerpts from a letter of Ayn Rand to Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, February 28, 1946 -- "The Free Market", 2001 No. 1You imply that the cause of the world’s troubles lies solely in the people’s ignorance of economics and that the way to cure the world is to teach it the proper economic knowledge. This is not true – therefore your program will not work. You cannot hope to effect a cure by starting with a wrong diagnosis. The root of the whole modern disaster is philosophical and moral. People are not embracing collectivism...

Alana Goodman, at the conservative site Hot Air, is quoted as saying the following about anti-pursuit of happiness candidate Rick Santorum: “Where’s the conservative outrage? If Santorum’s comments aren’t nanny state-ism in its purest form, then what is?… If you’re a conservative and you give Santorum a pass on this, you forego any future right to complain about liberals taking away your Happy Meals and trans fats.” Goodman is referring to Santorum’s recent and past comments that freedom as specified in the U.S. Constitution is not absolute, and that government policy must take a position on birth control, abortion, and...

It has lain hidden for nearly 70 years and looks, to the untrained eye, like a building site. But this insignificant tunnel opening in the soft sand of western Poland represents one of the greatest examples of British wartime heroism. And the sensational story became the Hollywood classic, The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen. We are standing in the notorious PoW camp Stalag Luft III, built at the height of the Third Reich, 100 miles east of Berlin. Ten thousand prisoners were kept under German guns here on a 60-acre site ringed with a double barbed-wire fence and watchtowers. Read...

If there is any intellectual of the last 100 years who scares the Left, it is Ayn Rand. One needs only to search her name on the internet and they will find that she is perhaps more abused and insulted than Milton Friedman and Reagan. Often the charges that most attack her with can be boiled down to “She believes that people should be self-centered bastards and not give a damn about anyone else.” While anyone who has taken the time to read her fiction and nonfiction works knows that the above claim isn’t accurate, the fact that Rand is...

Everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, keep saying that "Herman Cain must answer the charges against him." When he repeatedly says, "I didn't do it. I don't even remember these interactions with these women," this isn't considered answering. But how is one to prove a negative? How is one supposed to prove that one is not guilty of something? If someone walked up to you and said, "You killed my brother," you'd be shocked. "What?" you'd say. "What are you talking about? How dare you make such an accusation? What's going on here?" Imagine if you were put on trial for...

Is Judaism, long championed as a great lifestyle for thinkers and questioners, actually collectivist? Abandoning Eden wrote a post recently about "Holocaust-shaming", a term I had never heard of before she mentioned it. The phenomenon exists, though, and I wonder why no one else (that I can tell) has discussed it much. Like other tragedies that have befallen the Jews, the Holocaust is used as an emotional tool to manipulate non-believers, rebels and even mild skeptics into practicing the religion. Many of us have heard arguments such as, "Your great-grandparents were gassed/enslaved/shot because they were Jews, so you'd better stay...

Is the Tea Party on a mission from God? Or are its principles applicable to the religious and the non-religious alike?

Many commentators are on a mission to contextualise the riots that have swept parts of urban London and other British cities. ‘It’s very naive to look at these riots without the context’, says one journalist, who says the reason the violence kicked off in the London suburb of Tottenham is because ‘that area is getting 75% cuts [in public services]’. Others have said that the political context for the rioting is youth unemployment or working-class anger at David Cameron’s cuts agenda. ‘There is a context to London’s riots that can’t be ignored’, said a writer for the Guardian, and it...

Brock Chisolm, former Director of the (United Nations) World Health Organization, is quoted as saying, "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas." [GWB quote of the day, 7/7/1999]. Remove from the minds of men? Doesn't that sound like mental conditioning? How does that square with the Alexander Downer/Tim Fischer version of globalism as freer markets? It doesn't, does it? Some years ago another hero of the globalist-Left, B.F.Skinner, in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, mounted a concerted attack on what he...

For the sake of "diversity" we allowed the concept of "ethnicity" to enter our cultures. While we have always valued differences here in the US--for example in Holland, Michigan, the Dutch are so old fashioned that people from The Netherlands often travel here during the Tulip Festival to see the old traditions long forgotten in Holland--there is a difference between celebrating such things, and trading it up for racism, which we have done. Thirty years ago, the author Ayn Rand saw this form of racism coming and described it: "'Ethnicity' is an anti-concept, used as a disguise for the word...

Garrison Keillor, self-appointed cultural representative of regular old Americans, ruffled some feathers yesterday with a mildly xenophobic rant about Christmas. After lambasting a Unitarian church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for “spiritual piracy and cultural elitism”—tweaking the lyrics of “Silent Night” for a singalong, in layman’s terms—he turned his ire in a different direction: And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’?...

For two decades, the Religious Right has reveled in the successes of their crusade to erode the wall separating church and state. Since America's sharp Left turn in 2008, they have not been so quick to gloat. Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said, "I'm not grieving over Barack Obama's victory, but over the loss of things that I've fought for, for 35 years," particularly concerning abortion rights and advancement of the so-called homosexual agenda. The Religious Right itself seems to be taking a soul-searching sabbatical, to get back in touch with its deeper mission: to live...

Note: To All Fifth Columnists is an open letter written by Ayn Rand around the beginning of 1941, when she was encouraging conservative intellectuals to form a national organization advocating individualism. She desired for the letter be issued by such an organization. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You who read this represent the greatest danger to America. No matter what the outcome of the war in Europe may be, Totalitarianism has already won a complete victory in many American minds and conquered all of our intellectual life. You have helped it to win. Perhaps it is your right to destroy civilization and bring dictatorship...

Alleged Drug Dealers, Robbers Had Been Under Surveillance By Officers Before All Hell Broke Loose Thursday Morning Pump-Action Automatic Shotgun Used Against Cops, 5 WoundedJERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBS) ―Jersey city looked more like a war zone early Thursday morning. In the hours since the deadly shootout that injured five police officers doctors have been working furiously to save the lives of the two most critically hurt. The gunfight erupted just before dawn Thursday during a police stakeout in Jersey City. Officers were tracking the two people seen in a surveillance video robbing and shooting a man last month. But they...