Free Republic

When Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif, went off on Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis, for his remarks that “We have got a tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work,” the wrong part what she had to say got all the attention. The big buzz that Congressional Black Caucus member Lee generated was her accusation that Ryan’s remarks were a “thinly veiled racial attack.” But the part of her remarks I found most interesting was “…Mr. Ryan should...

Racism used to mean hating someone because of his race. No more. Today, 99 times out of 100 in politics, the word “racist” is used purely for political reasons without any regard to whether something bigoted was actually said. That doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist. It CERTAINLY DOES and sometimes it's right out in the open, like the Left's "Black Americans are way too stupid and incompetent to get voter ID like all the other races" canard. But, if we were to define "racism" as offensive statements about someone of another race that wouldn't be automatically excused if Joe...

If you’re a conservative, you don't need to silence the opposition. In fact, we conservatives want liberals to talk, to make buffoons of themselves, to prove their folly. We want liberals to expound upon their ridiculous ideas, to show the world exactly what they're about. Nancy Pelosi? Give that tiresome woman a microphone. Chatty liberals are the best advertisement for conservatism. But liberals just can’t have conservatives speaking. We’ll tell the truth, and that’s why liberals need to shut us up. Their traditional intimidation tactics are wearing out. Calling someone a “racist” used to be a devastating moral indictment. Liberals’...

One of the oldest rules in psychology and economics is that if you reward a behavior, you can expect to see it more often. In America, we reward victimhood. That makes us feel good about ourselves and in some cases, it helps improve the lives of the people who've been victimized, but there's a dark side to it as well. It creates perverse incentives for people, it helps legitimize a victimhood mentality, and it also encourages people to fake hate crimes. Under normal circumstances, that would seldom happen. However, in a society where we celebrate victimhood and savagely attack people...

Come on, Oprah. You're way too smart to be this stupid. When are you going to get off this kick about Barack Obama being disrespected more than previous presidents just because he is a black man? It's getting embarrassing, Oprah. You're one of America's great talents and greatest success stories. You're a self-made billionaire, an astute multimedia mogul, a beloved cultural icon. You're admired around the world for your generosity and good works. Your opinions and endorsements influence what millions of people read, how they think and who they vote for. But after five years of President Obama's reign, you...

World War II Vets Under Attack by Blacks." Can you imagine such a headline in The New York Times -- or anywhere else, except perhaps some in underground racist tract? But for the second time in three months, an 80-plus-year-old WWII veteran was murdered by black suspects. In Washington, 88-year-old Delbert Belton, who fought and took a bullet to the leg at the Battle of Okinawa, was beaten to death by two black teen suspects. The motive? Police describe the killing as a random attack. In Mississippi, 87-year-old Lawrence E. Thornton, a WWII vet who served as a Navy fireman...

When Shelby Steele recently wrote about “The Decline of the Civil Rights Leadership,” he put his finger on a serious problem for our country. Professor Steele noted that there has been a corruption of moral authority at the top of the media-selected Civil Rights elite. He wrote this powerful paragraph: Put bluntly, this leadership rather easily tolerates black kids killing other black kids. But it cannot abide a white person (and Mr. Zimmerman, with his Hispanic background, was pushed into a white identity by the media over his objections) getting away with killing a black person without undermining the leadership's...

Bizarrely, racism in America is no longer mainly about race. Sure, race is involved in a peripheral manner, but racism has mainly become an excuse, a dodge, a way to escape responsibility. When a black liberal is criticized, he cries racism. When liberalism fails, liberals cry racism. When the Democrat Party gets in trouble, liberals cry racism. It has become the ever present background noise of politics, like birds chirping in the forest. Racism does still exist and always will, but once the Democrat Party joined the GOP in being opposed to racist policies, appealing to racism became a...

The greatest hope most Americans -- including Republicans -- had when Barack Obama was elected president was that the election of a black person as the country's president would reduce, if not come close to eliminating, the racial tensions that have plagued America for generations. This has not happened. The election, and even the re-election, of a black man as president, in a country that is 87 percent non-black -- a first in human history -- has had no impact on what are called "racial tensions." In case there was any doubt about this, the reactions to the George Zimmerman...

Professor Craig Frisby is on the faculty of University of Missouri's Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology. His most recent book is "Meeting the Psychoeducational Needs of Minority Students." It's a 662-page textbook covering a range of topics from multiculturalism and home and family influences to student testing and school discipline. There's no way full justice can be given to this excellent work in the space of this column, so I'll highlight a few valuable insights he makes that would help educators do a better job with minority students. Quack multiculturalism is the name Frisby gives to the vision...

"Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness." -- Mary Frances Berry, the liberal former Chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights "Liberals claim Republicans speak in racist code words for the simple...

Joe Klein: "Bigoted" If You Don't Think Obama's Intelligent - The Chris Matthews ShowOn Chris Matthews' weekend talk show, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell and Time Magazine's Joe Klein teamed up to insulate President Obama from attack, insinuating that questioning the President's intelligence and work ethic in the wake of a lackluster debate performance is racist. First up, Andrea Mitchell recounted an exchange she had with Romney campaign co-chair John Sununu in which Sununu said Obama "revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are."...

Democrats have run a number on Republicans. They have skillfully captured certain words in the American lexicon and redefined them, applying Democrat-themed meanings for the specific purpose of cowing Republicans into silence and submission. I have watched the escalation of this vocabulary abuse for almost a decade, and I am sorry to say, this particular Democrat scheme is working. Republicans seem afraid to speak the unvarnished truth about Democrat party leaders for fear of reprisals in the mainstream media, an organization that has repeatedly proved that it is indisputably in the tank for Barack Obama. What are Republicans afraid to...

My new film, "2016 Obama's America," has been in theaters for a little over seven weeks and is no longer going unnoticed. Those who make their living reviewing films are coming out in droves on both sides of the opinion spectrum and those reviewers who find the film entertaining, educational and even inspiring are not only right but now once again in the minority. Ardent partisans who somehow missed their calling as spokespersons for liberal politicians and ended up as film reviewers instead, are wont to find any film that doesn't tow the liberal line to be lacking in content,...