Free Republic

George Szamuely The Bunker We’re the Warmongers Quiz time. Who said the following? "Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. National composition of almost all countries in the world today…has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully." Elie Wiesel? Madeleine Albright? George Soros? Vojislav Kostnica, Zoran Djindjic ...

Viva Italia Liberteria! by Ralph Raico Unlikely as it may seem to some, one of the most vigorous libertarian movements in the whole world is now active in Italy. This my friend Hans-Hermann Hoppe and I can attest to from personal experience. In the past couple of years, we’ve attended conferences in Milan and come to know many of the academics and younger intellectuals who comprise this heartening and delightfully unexpected phenomenon. The professors write their libertarian books and articles and spread the word among their peers. Meanwhile, the younger people also arrange for public exhibitions of libertarian history (one ...

Bush’s Education Plan by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Republicans are cheering Bush’s education bill, but they should ask themselves this critical question: why is Teddy Kennedy smiling? What American education needs is not another federal reform bill. We need a revolution to end what has been called the "twelve-year sentence," also known as public school. In this system, everyone is taxed whether or not he has kids, and parents are enticed to take advantage of the free service by surrendering their children to the government to teach and raise. At government school, kids are subjected to relentless political propaganda, develop ...

For Education and Discussion only; not for personal use A Dirty Win by Ryan McMaken Even though it looks like Bush has pretty much sewn up the election at this point, the harm to the American system of government has already been done. The legal precedents that have followed this election have shown such contempt for representative government, that the imminent Bush victory is hardly worth celebrating. For the first time in American history, a disputed election has all but ignored the legislative branches of the Federal government and of the states. Except for the election of 1860 (which is ...

Secession and Liberty by Thomas J. DiLorenzo The presidential election of 2000 showed that America is now divided into two great political classes: the productive, taxpaying class and the parasitic, live-at-others’-expense class. The latter group includes millions of welfare bums, federal, state and local government bureaucrats and "contractors," and their massive supporting propaganda apparatus in the universities, on television, and in print journalism. Now that the vast majority of what the central government does is unconstitutional, there is almost no restraint at all on the extent to which the latter class can use the coercive powers of the state to ...

Ill-Gotten Gains: Why Christians Shouldn’t Take Government Money by Hans Friedrich It’s not often that I agree with the California Teachers Association on anything, but this year they’re making a good point: implementing vouchers would be disastrous for California’s children. Here in California there is a voucher initiative called, ironically, "The Quality Education Amendment" (Proposition 38), on the ballot this November. If Prop. 38 passes, every student in California will be guaranteed a $4000 voucher redeemable at any school their parents wish for them to attend. It’s supporters include moderates, fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, private schools hoping for more business ...

Senate ratifies Desertification Treaty, 33 others eco-logic report In the last days of the 106th Congress, the U.S. Senate ratified 34 treaties - without debate, without a vote, and almost without notice. Most of the treaties were between the U.S. and a single other nation, having to do with treatment of criminals, stolen vehicles, and other single-issue matters. Two of the treaties, however, have much broader implications: the International Plant Protection Convention, adopted at the World Conference on Food and Agriculture in Rome in 1997, and the Convention on Desertification, adopted in Paris, in 1994. These two treaties are an ...

The Great American Textbook Scandal ONE DAY IN MARCH OF last year Leonard Tramiel, a balding, dark-bearded man of 45, sat alone in a science classroom in Milpitas, a middle-class community on the south end of San Francisco Bay. Having earned a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University and having made a bundle in Silicon Valley, Tramiel now taught occasionally around the Bay Area as a volunteer. Savoring a few quiet moments before 30 eighth graders surged into the classroom, Tramiel opened their astronomy textbook, Prentice Hall's Exploring The Universe, to the lesson for the day. Tramiel was surprised to ...

Catholic voucher foes organize Parents worry public funding will tighten government control By Janet Naylor / The Detroit News TROY -- Some Oakland County Catholic parents are hoping to get the word out that free money isn't free. With 100 parents and counting, Oakland Catholics Opposing Vouchers want to make sure Catholic parents hear all facets of the Proposal 1 issue. The question on the Nov. 7 statewide ballot would allow publicly funded tuition vouchers to go to students in seven poorly performing school districts to defray costs of attending private schools. They know they're facing serious opposition: The Catholic ...

Freud and the Constitution by Joseph Sobran Laurence Olivier’s fine 1948 film version of Hamlet is still the only movie in which the same man won Academy Awards as both best actor and best director. But in one respect the film shows its age badly. Olivier was taken with a Freudian interpretation of the play that was very fashionable in the Forties. He had read the book Hamlet and Oedipus, by Freud’s British disciple Ernest Jones, whom he consulted before shooting began. Jones convinced Olivier that Hamlet delays avenging his father’s murder because he’s inhibited by an Oedipus complex. He ...

School Voucher Program Teaches Hard Lessons By JILL LEOVY, Times Staff Writer MILWAUKEE--One lesson is clear from this city's decade-old experiment with school vouchers: A lot of people didn't know as much about schools as they thought they did. Barbara Lee, a Catholic school principal, didn't know that two-thirds of her teaching staff would quit the first year her school accepted voucher students. Edward Mc Milin, a public school bureaucrat, didn't know that, given choices, many parents would care more about day care than test scores. And Taki S. Raton, a private school principal, didn't know when he opened his ...

Friday, October 6, 2000 Gore: Renaissance man or unbalanced? by David Limbaugh To me the only thing more frightening than Al Gore's book "Earth in the Balance" is that he reportedly believes the stuff in it. There's another thing about it, though, that bothers me even more. I confess that when I bought the book I expected sensationalism and doomsday alarmism, but I did not anticipate the sweeping scope of the book and what it apparently reveals about Gore. The most noteworthy thing about it is Gore's breathtaking presumptuousness and audacity. He essentially holds himself out as a Renaissance man. ...

Homeschoolers may want to freep this poll on Fox. There is about 15 min left--sorry to be so late.

Published Monday, September 25, 2000 ELECTION 2000: STATE PROPOSITIONS Home-schoolers shun money from Prop. 38 Many parents will vote against the measure, saying taking the government's money would hold them to the government's rules By Ethan Rarick TIMES STAFF WRITER If California voters approve the school voucher initiative on the November ballot, Valorie Rice might eventually be able to haul in more than $12,000 a year from the government. She plans to vote no. The money would come in the form of three vouchers -- each worth at least $4,000 -- for Rice's children. The Concord woman already home-schools the ...

Homeschool Civics Lessons by Cathy Cuthbert California homeschoolers took an emotional roller coaster ride this spring and summer when Berkeley Unified School District officials made a bid to outlaw homeschooling in our state. The Berkeley bureaucrats' attempt to have the courts declare independent homeschooling illegal was stopped when an open minded District Attorney, willing to educate himself about the Education Code and listen to the rock solid legal reasoning of Attorney William Rogers, declined to prosecute "The Berkeley Four" for truancy. This was, of course, a victory for homeschoolers, with the Education Establishment again being turned back in their endless ...

My Bush epiphany By Lawrence Auster © 2000 WorldNetDaily.com A few weeks before he was nominated as the Republican candidate for president of the United States, I happened to see Bob Dole being interviewed on TV. As I watched, everything I knew about Dole came to mind -- the love for big government that he had unembarrassedly revealed in his Senate retirement speech a few days earlier, the constant hints and sardonic asides by which he distanced himself from conservatives and accommodated himself to liberals, even the way his eyes kept shifting from side to side as he spoke. Suddenly ...

Tuesday, September 19, 2000 The Gramscian commie in the White House by Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld Back in 1993, I received a 49-page report entitled "Secret: FBI Documents Link Bill & Hillary Clinton to Marxist-Terrorist Network," published by the Sunset Research Group of Wichita, Kan. It was a meticulously documented report showing the connections of the Clintons to the Institute for Policy Studies, a Marxist think tank in Washington. Clinton's top economic advisor was Derek Shearer, an IPS operative and advocate of Marxist socialism. Shearer's sister Brooke was also Hillary's traveling companion. The report states: In a 1980 book he ...

Three U.N. Summits Promote Globalism From Chuck Missler Last week the United Nations hosted nearly 1,000 of the world's religious leaders at the "World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders" in New York. Leaders of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, and dozens of lesser-known religions, were present. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticized the world's religious leaders for not taking a more active role in promoting peace within their own spheres of influence. He told the assembled leaders, "Religion has often been yoked to nationalism, stoking the flames of violent conflict and setting group against group. Religious leaders have not ...

Millennium Declaration legitimizes U.N. Global Governance Agenda From LifeSite The United Nations Millennium Summit, the largest gathering of world leaders in history, concluded Friday and the final version of the Summit Declaration has been released. The Declaration, a statement agreed to by a vote of the vast majority of world leaders is regarded by the United Nations as having "sketched out clear directions for adapting the Organization to its role in the new century." "It lies in your power, and therefore is your responsibility, to reach the goals that you have defined", declared U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. "Only you ...

It's time to part company One political question we have to answer is whether George W. Bush or Albert Gore shall be president, and just which party will control the House of Representatives and the Senate. But I'd suggest that there's a far more important long-run question we must answer: If one group of people prefers government control and management of people's lives, and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, and risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences, or should they be ...