Free Republic

Researchers have mapped an underlying “psychological signature” for people who are predisposed to holding extreme social, political and religious attitudes and supporting violence in the name of ideology. A new study suggests that a particular mix of personality traits and types of unconscious cognition – the ways our brain takes in basic information – is a strong predictor for extremist views across a range of beliefs, including nationalism and religious fervour. These mental characteristics include poorer working memory and slower “perceptual strategies” – the unconscious processing of changing stimuli, such as shape and colour – as well as tendencies towards...

We like to claim Ernesto “Che” Guevara as one of our own. Guevara was an Argentina-born guerrilla fighter who helped Fidel Castro overthrow the American-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He had an Irish ancestor, Patrick Lynch, who was born in Galway in 1715. So thrilled are we by this connection that, in 2012, a Che statue was proposed by Galway city council, and a stamp was issued here in his honour five years later. The uncomfortable reality that Guevara killed lots of people does not count against him in Ireland. Revolutionary violence has always had a certain romantic...

President Biden has revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to keep foreign countries and companies out of America’s bulk power systems – principally entities associated with the Chinese Communist Party – as part of his “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” The executive order, which executes key tenets of President Biden’s climate change agenda, was released on the former Veep’s first day in office. Section 7 of the massive order, which includes the revocation of the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, also revokes several climate and energy-focused...

Tuesday, Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson referred to President Donald Trump’s supporters as “members of a cult” that he says need to be “reprogrammed.” Robinson, on “Morning Joe,” asked New York Times writer and 1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones how to start and complete the “process” of deprogramming the Trump supporters.

The State Department website was reportedly manipulated Monday by a “disgruntled staffer” to say that President Donald Trump’s last day in office was Jan. 11, sparking resignation rumors online. “Donald J. Trump’s term ended on 2021-01-11 19:49:00,” the site said.

Josh Hawley @HawleyMO Tonight while I was in Missouri, Antifa scumbags came to our place in DC and threatened my wife and newborn daughter, who can’t travel. They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door. Let me be clear: My family & I will not be intimidated by leftwing violence 11:13 PM · Jan 4, 2021 ShutDownDC @ShutDown_DC Tonight we dropped in at the home of @HawleyMO to encourage him to end his attack on democracy. Let's be clear, Hawley and his pals are doing real and serious damage to our democracy. And they're emboldening thugs like...

Olbermann: “Let us brace ourselves. The task is two-fold. Terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ballot box. And then he, and his enablers, and his supporters and his collaborators, and the Mike Lees, and the William Barrs, the Sean Hannitys and the Mike Pences, and the Rudy Giulianis, and the Amy Coney Barrets must be prosecuted and removed from our society while we try to rebuild it. And to rebuild the world Trump has nearly destroyed by turning it over to a virus."

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer, who admitted overseeing the torture and killings of as many as 16,000 Cambodians while running the regime’s most notorious prison, has died. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was 77 and had been serving a life prison term for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The communist Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79 was accused of genocide for causing the deaths of so many of their countrymen from executions, starvation and lack of medical care due to its radical policies. Only after neighboring Vietnam pushed the Khmer Rouge from...

... Kamala Harris strongly rebuked President Donald Trump for politicizing the issue of wearing a pandemic mask during an interview Sunday with CNN's Dana Bash. Harris, minutes earlier in the same interview, said she would be skeptical of a coronavirus vaccine distributed by the Trump administration but said a big part of the problem with pandemic response " is that we have a president of the United States who made this a partisan issue and made it a political issue." BASH: Would a Biden/Harris administration support a federal mask mandate? HARRIS: So it's about a national standard. Everyone should wear...

He was a self-declared revolutionary who wants to tear down this nation. He admitted to murdering a patriot. And mainstream media loves him. ================================================================================ When Cultural Marxism meets mainstream media propaganda, the worst scenarios become possible. ThatÂ’s what weÂ’re seeing playing out in real-time following the police killing of Michael Forest Reinoehl, a man who wanted to destroy America. HeÂ’s also a man who admitted to killing right-wing protester Aaron Danielson. In the NY Times article and nearly every other post we reviewed from mainstream media, Reinoehl was portrayed as a positive force of change in society. He isnÂ’t being...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that 74 people are facing federal charges stemming from clashes in Portland, Ore., amid protests over systemic racism and police brutality. Portland’s months long demonstrations, sparked by the killings of Black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, have largely been peaceful, though have at times turned violent and led to looting and clashes with law enforcement, including federal agents deployed to the city this summer to protect federal property. “Violent agitators have hijacked any semblance of First Amendment protected activity, engaging in violent criminal acts and destruction of public safety,” U.S. Attorney...

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors on Thursday charged a 17-year-old from Illinois in the fatal shooting of two protesters and the wounding of a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a night of unrest following the weekend police shooting of Jacob Blake. Kyle Rittenhouse faces charges of first-degree intentional homicide, one count of first-degree reckless homicide, one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment. He would face a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, the most serious crime in Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump referred to Kamala Harris as a “nasty woman”, referencing her 2018 grilling of Brett Kavanaugh over allegations – denied by Kavanaugh – that the now supreme court justice attempted to rape Dr Christine Blasey Ford when they were teenagers. Nasty or “not nice” seem to be words Trump reserves for women who hold men in power to account: Trump similarly insulted Hilary Clinton during the 2016 election race, when she hinted at his reluctance to publish his tax returns. Trump also ordered female reporters who question him to “be nice” and has previously said it was...

In the runup to World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt enlisted the entire US economy in an effort to scale up production of war material. All of the country’s resources were bent to the task. In 1939, the US had 1,700 aircraft; in 1945, it had 300,000 military aircraft and 18,500 B–24 bombers. By the time the war was won, the economy was up and humming with a massively expanded workforce (drawing in women and African Americans) and turbocharged productive capacity. Investments made during the war mobilization yielded a robust middle class and decades of sustained, broadly shared prosperity....

Human Rights Watch has called on countries to negotiate on a new international treaty against the so-called “killer robots”, adding that as many as 30 nations have shown a desire to explicitly ban fully autonomous weapons. In a report released on Monday, the New York-based nongovernmental organization reviewed the policies of 97 countries that have publicly discussed their views on fully autonomous weapons since the issue was first heard at the Human Rights Council in 2013. The report titled, “Stopping Killer Robots: Country Positions on Banning Fully Autonomous Weapons and Retaining Human Control,” says that a growing number of countries...

Revolutions tend to devour their own, but rarely has this happened as swiftly, publicly, and predictably as it did with Portland’s overpraised “Wall of Moms.” The brainchild of a suburban Mexican-American woman named Beverly Barnum, the group was loosely organized among other moms on Facebook who were incensed that President Trump had dispatched federal officers to Portland to protect the federal courthouse that had become the main target of three-months-long protests in the city. Wearing yellow T-shirts and linking arms, the Moms created a “wall” between federal officers and Black Lives Matter protestors in July, chanting “Feds stay clear. Moms...

The Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress has just produced an important new study titled "The Demise of the Happy Two-Parent Home." The report exhaustively presents data showing the shocking collapse of marriage and the traditional family in America and then explores possible explanations for why it has happened. In 1962, 71% of women ages 15-44 were married. By 2019, this was down to 42%. In 1962, 5% of women ages 30-34 had never been married. By 2019, this was up to 35%. In the 1960s, less than 1% of couples living together were not married. Today, it is...

The momentum that had been building around Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) as a possible vice presidential pick for Joe Biden has come to an abrupt halt amid controversy over Cuba. The suggestion that Bass harbored some degree of past sympathy for the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro has caused consternation among Democrats in Florida. They worry that selecting Bass could seriously endanger Biden’s chances in the largest of the battleground states. The stakes could hardly be higher, they warn. Picking Bass “violates the central tenet of a vice presidential selection, which is ‘Do no harm,’” according to Florida-based pollster and...

To understand just how normalized radical ideas are on college campuses, look at the curriculum for which students pay thousands and thousands of dollars. From their first steps on campus for orientation to walking across the stage on graduation day, students are usually bombarded with leftist propaganda. College campuses facilitate the perfect environment for indoctrination, providing a platform for radical professors to teach their opinion as fact. As a young woman in college, I know firsthand how difficult it can be to stand behind conservative values in the face of leftist campus culture.Conservative parents are in a catch-22. While still...

The family of George Floyd gathered Wednesday night to join with those calling for change and equality. A hologram of Floyd was projected next to the Lee monument before a crowd of hundreds gathering and cheering. It’s part of a national tour sponsored by Change.org.