Free Republic

In 2025, arguably the biggest movie of the year didn’t come from Hollywood or even hit U.S. movie theaters. It came from South Korea. KPop Demon Hunters became Netflix’s most popular film of all time and won Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song... In 2020, Parasite became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. A year later, Squid Game became one of the most-watched television shows during the COVID-19 pandemic... Korean music has topped charts with bands like Blackpink and BTS. Even Korean beauty products, or K-beauty, have begun to...

The radical culture war on public art. The Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, has called for the removal of a mural of Iryna Zarutska, a young Ukrainian refugee whose brutal murder was caught on video, because, according to Mayor Smiley, because of its “misguided, isolating intent”. Providence has a BLM street mural covering three blocks and a “Love is a Many Gendered Thing” mural, but Mayor Smiley urged supporting artists “whose work brings us closer together rather than divide us” and remembering Irina’s murder divides us. Unlike BLM and “Love is a Many Gendered Thing” which bring us together. In...

The University of Virginia fired its head women’s basketball coach, Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, in a shocking move after the Cavaliers made a surprise run to the Sweet 16, though reports suggest a toxic culture had developed within the program. Virginia had been coming off one of the program’s most successful seasons in recent memory – reaching the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2000 – when the school made the announcement that Agugua-Hamilton was out in a terse statement released over the weekend. But behind the scenes, Agugua-Hamilton was the subject of an internal investigation, USA Today reported. The outlet...

The city of Springfield, Ohio, gained unwanted notoriety recently, but Springfield and other Ohio cities have genuine problems that have nothing to do with dubious claims of barbecued pets. In these cities, the majority of children under age 18 are being raised by single mothers (either never married or divorced/separated) who do not live with their children’s fathers or stepfathers. In Springfield, for example, only 44% of mothers were married and living with their husbands and children during the five-year period from 2018-2022. In Cleveland, only 33% were. In Youngstown, 32%; while in Cincinnati, 46%. By contrast, in the suburban...

Guest Post by Matt Van Swol I think I know why everything sucks… …and it’s because everything is fake We are getting fake college degrees that cost 4 years and six figures that teach you fake education and get you fake jobs. We are eating fake food, with fake ingredients, funded by fake research. We are scrolling through fake lives, with fake relationships, who take fake, curated vacations to promote brands that make fake products. We are voting for fake candidates, who run on fake promises, inside a fake system that was never designed to fix anything. We are raising...

Public conversation about family estrangement has intensified following comments by Oprah Winfrey discussing the growing number of adult children who choose to distance themselves from their parents. Critics have accused her of promoting what some call a modern “cut-off culture.” Supporters argue she is simply giving voice to people who feel wounded by their families. But the truth is more complicated than the debate suggests. Family estrangement is not a phenomenon limited to abusive or dysfunctional homes. It happens in families that, from the outside, appear loving, stable and responsible. It happens in homes where parents worked long hours, sacrificed...

The parallels between American black ghettos and European no-go zones are obvious. In a relatively short period from 1940–1960, over 2.5 million blacks migrated to Northern cities from the predominately agrarian South. Their assimilation into mainstream society was arduous. It became a visible problem by the 1960s with unrest and rioting commonplace in black neighborhoods during summer months. It was against this backdrop of urban unrest and Vietnam war protest that the Canadian rock band, Guess Who, created the 1970 hit American Woman. The song’s iconic lyrics express the band’s rejection of the great temptress, America, with her seductive allure...

Several years ago, I joined some friends on a trip to Mackinac Island, a place famous for its Victorian culture and ban on automobiles. After bicycling around the island, we decided to splurge and have tea at The Grand Hotel, which is as polished as its name sounds. Before trooping in for tea, however, we stopped in a nearby restroom to exchange our sports clothes for something a little classier, for the hotel requires its patrons to dress up before entering its domain. Such a change was a bit of a bother, but in the long run, it made me...

Jimmy Kimmel is a free speech warrior and a man of the people — well, some of the people. Earlier this week, the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host slammed new U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin as “unqualified” for a curious reason. “Before he was elected to the Senate, Markwayne Mullin was a low-level MMA fighter and a plumber. “That’s right. We have a plumber protecting us from terrorism now. It worked for Super Mario. Why not Markwayne?” Mullin, who until last week was a Senator from Oklahoma, took over the family plumbing business when his father became ill. Kimmel...

Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violet Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment PDF Biden CIA’s War on Motherhood: /1 Newly released CIA documents reveal the Biden Administration identified “motherhood” and “homemaking” as indicators of “white racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism” /2 The intelligence assessment reveals the top-to-bottom bias at Biden’s CIA. /3 The Trump Administration recently retracted a 2021 intelligence assessment titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment.” /4 The now-retracted CIA intelligence assessment defines “white REMVE-sympathetic” actors as those who “may not openly advocate violence” but instead amplify “narratives” about “perceived threats”...

A spate of fires and disasters has befallen the city's historic architecture over the years, raising questions about whether these are freak accidents or a symptom of wider issues. "Each time these collapses or fires happen, the same conversations happen and everyone agrees it's terrible and we should do something about it," says Matt Loader, co-founder of architecture firm Loader Monteith. "Then 18 months later it happens again somewhere. "Our Victorian city is disappearing, a piece at a time." Demolition of the remains of the Union Street building began on Friday. Niall Murphy, director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust, told...

I’ve been writing lately about how the crisis of a lack of objectivity—and the disappearance of even basic first- and second-order thinking—creates a cascade of unintended consequences. When people stop asking “what happens next?” or “what happens after that?”, society slowly fills up with individuals who react to everything emotionally and instantly. They become, for lack of a better phrase, human raw nerve endings. Every stimulus produces an immediate response. No reflection, no restraint, no perspective. Just reaction. Not surprisingly, I was asked recently what we can actually do about it. How do we reverse what looks like a pretty...

With so much going on in the world, it's easy to forget that it's only been a little over a year since Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was killed. He was allegedly gunned down by Luigi Mangione, who is awaiting trial on both state and federal charges in conjunction with Thompson's murder. In his alleged manifesto, Mangione wrote "these parasites had it coming" and "I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done." Several prominent Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defended Mangione's actions, essentially saying violence is wrong, but UnitedHealthcare...

The statue of a Texas Rangers law enforcement figure disappeared under a shroud of controversy nearly six years ago.The Rangers, who love reunions more than most organizations, are bringing back another figure from the past, one who disappeared under a shroud of controversy nearly six years ago. On Monday morning, the club accepted and installed the 12-foot bronze One Riot, One Ranger statue depicting a member of the Texas Rangers law enforcement agency that had previously stood at Dallas Love Field until it was removed during the racially-charged summer of 2020 after a book detailing incidents of police brutality...

Islamists try to show dominance, and the left is going along, except that they picked the wrong issue. ell, that escalated quickly. Islamists are trying to show dominance, and the left is going along, except that they picked the wrong issue. These days, events happen so quickly, it's hard to keep up, but you would have to be living under a rock not to have heard of the left in their red/green alliance stumble into one of the worst 90/10 issues of all time. Along with blaring the call to prayer (noise ordinances, what noise ordinances?), one of New York...

The aggressive push for socialism in America is not just a policy debate. It is a direct assault on the American founding and the prosperity it created. Under the guise of “progress,” bloated liberals are imposing a compulsory, state-led ideology and economy that mirrors failed socialist experiments of the past. In 1988, I escaped the crushing weight of communism in Romania, trading a life of state-mandated silence for the promise of American liberty. As a political refugee, America gave me the soil to rebuild my life from nothing. But today, America’s foundation is shaking. I look at the country that...

Thirty-five years after its theatrical release, the creative team behind one of cinema’s most celebrated psychological thrillers is doing something that has become all too common in Hollywood: apologizing for a film that won the industry’s top honors and captivated millions of viewers.“The Silence of the Lambs,” which hit theaters on Valentine’s Day 1991, became the year’s fifth-highest-grossing title and made history as just the third film to sweep the “big five” Academy Awards: best picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay. The film starred Jodie Foster as FBI trainee Clarice Starling tracking serial killer Buffalo Bill while consulting with the...

Nothing has changed the culture in the last 30 years quite like the onward march of digital technology. With each tool the industry places in our digital toolkit — the World Wide Web, streaming video, social media, smartphones, podcasts, artificial intelligence — comes new possibilities but also endless challenges. It is no different in the church. We use digital technology for much good in our life together, but that same technology also has the potential for great ill. As a church, we must think through its use critically. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s 2023 convention asked the Commission on Theology and...

The Super Bowl now plays like America’s divorce proceedingsThe country still shares one screen, but not one meaning. One side will dominate the other, or separation will harden into something more permanent.The Seattle Seahawks trampled the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX, but the postgame chatter barely touched football. Fans and pundits argued about anthems, halftime, commercials, and what the whole spectacle “said” about America.For better or worse, the Super Bowl serves as the premier civic liturgy of the American empire, a night when strangers share the same screens and offices share the same small talk. When that...

With Britain on the brink of civil war, engulfed in growing anarchy, it is encouraging to hear three voices exposing the enemies of civilization and attempting to reverse the current decline by appealing to morality and reason. In periods of civilizational stress, the defining intellectuals are rarely those who echo prevailing orthodoxies. Rather, they are individuals insisting on the legitimacy of first principles when those principles have become unfashionable or even dangerous to articulate. In contemporary Britain, Natasha Hausdorff, Douglas Murray, and Matt Goodwin exemplify this truth-seeking, altruistic calling. Each operates within a distinct professional domain—law, cultural criticism, and political...