Free Republic

Even before Charlie Kirk had been pronounced dead, the narrative apparatus of the Left was in full gear trying to blame the assassination on the Right. Once it became clear that the shooter was a standard-issue leftist, the narrative shifted to “this is a both-sides problem.” But before Kirk had been laid the rest, the experts and researchers had been mobilized to assert that the original claims, if not accurate, were consistent with a pattern in which political violence in America is largely a right-wing problem. Having spent my career in academia sopping up such unctuous claims, let me assure...

Imagine a world without McDonald’s, Nike, or Kraft Foods. A world where the budget-conscious and time-strapped have nowhere to grab a quick bite, where almost no one drives a car, where television is extinct. Sound pretty bleak? This is the utopian vision of the Adbusters Media Foundation. “We will wreck this world,” Kalle Lasn declares in his book Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge -- and Why We Must. That, quite simply, is the goal of the Vancouver-based organization he founded and runs. A self-described group of “anarchists” and “neo-Luddites,” Adbusters are not merely environmentalists, animal-rights activists,...

There's a Mormon character in one of ABC's new fall series. And viewers will learn this when they see him wearing nothing but his temple garments. That's just one of the reasons that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may not be particularly pleased with that character in the pilot of "Quantico," which is scheduled to premiere on Sunday, Sept. 27, at 9 p.m. on ABC/Ch. 4. The series is about a bunch of new recruits who arrive at the FBI training base in Quantico, Va., for training.

Joshua Safran, the creator of the ABC TV show Quantico, is proud of the fact that his show, about FBI agents hunting down terrorists, has never featured a Muslim terrorist. "For me, it was important to not ever put a Muslim terrorist on our show. There hasn't been one". Important because political correctness requires him to deny the existence of radical Islamic terrorism, one of the prime missions of the FBI to combat. Most of the storyline revolves around the FBI's attempt to find a person who plants bombs. The suspect shifts over time but is never a Muslim, because...

SNIP At the National Press Club, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson pointed out that the entire media business – especially the press (and the entertainment industry to a great extent) – used to be on the side of the people, but now they are only catering to a few affluent urban liberals. Isn’t that swell? The very media that’s supposed to be catering to the majority of Americans is now critical of the very audience they’re supposed to cater to. SNIP As I’ve said before, the second most far-left outfit in the history of broadcasting right now behind NBC is...

Jennings was perhaps the most outrageous government appointee in memory. He is a long-time homosexual activist who began his career in Massachusetts, and founded GLSEN, the national homosexual group that targets children in schools. Jennings' depraved record of pushing homosexuality and transgenderism to kids goes back decades. Jennings' Dept. of Education office received $410 million in FY 2011. Among other efforts, last year, Jennings helped introduce Bill 4530 in Congress that would require normalization of homosexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, etc., in America's public schools. He also set up an "anti-bullying" conference at the White House in March, part of the larger...

New and interesting details have emerged regarding the transgender Minneapolis Catholic School shooter’s manifesto, including one that may surprise a few people. As The Gateway Pundits Jordan Conradson reported, a shooting was reported this morning at Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Annunciation Church and Catholic School. According to reports, students were attending an all-school mass on Wednesday morning when the gunfire started. Two children were killed, and 14 were injured, while three adults were also wounded. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed that the shooter, who died of a self-inflicted wound, was a male in his early 20s. He has been identified as...

We must not be complacent about communist and woke ideology:Marxism and related ideologies are still very much with us. The Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall may have come crashing down some 35 years ago, but the pernicious threat that is Communism and godless Socialism remain. They are found throughout Western institutions, be it the media, academia, or the political and cultural arenas.In a recent piece I examined a new book by the important Christian thinker Os Guinness: Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds (Kildare, 2024). In it he argues that there...

NAGOYA The statue of 16th-century warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi located at the entrance of a shopping arcade in Nagoya has been beheaded, a local association said Tuesday. A local resident notified the shopping center association on Saturday that the statue was missing its head. The neck has since been covered with duct tape to prevent further damage, according to an official of the group. The association, which regards the statue as a symbolic figure of the arcade, is considering filing a damage report with police, the official said. The defacement of the statue, made of reinforced plastic, comes after previous instances...

It was, the prosecutor declared, a “moronic mission” of historic proportions — a pair of hapless vandals who chopped down perhaps the most beloved tree in England, located in a gap in Hadrian’s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage site built by the Romans. The victim of the brutal 2023 chainsaw massacre, the Sycamore Gap tree, appeared in the 1991 movie “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” starring Kevin Costner. Prosecutors, citing experts, said it was worth 458,000 pounds or about $613,000, though to admirers who viewed it as a symbol of the untamed beauty of the north, it was priceless. At...

This year those of us who cherish the phrase “Merry Christmas” have started to say “Merry Christ-mas” to reinsert the name Christ into the greeting. Here’s a reminder of how we started to lose “Merry Christmas” 40 years ago. On the day before Christmas in 1971 the New York Times ran an article about a new “holiday” called Kwanzaa that was invented by an America hating Black separatist named Ron Everett. Everett now uses the made up “African” name Maulana Ron Karenga to show the world he wants nothing to do with White America. That Mr. Karenga was in a...

In one of the worst wrongful birth lawsuits in history, the parents of a daughter with cystic fibrosis have won $2 million in a lawsuit against their OBGYN, claiming their daughter’s disability prevents them from enjoying their lives. A Connecticut couple won a $2 million settlement in the lawsuit, a case that pro-life advocates say devalues the inherent worth of every human being. Elizabeth and Eric Trotter filed the suit in 2020, alleging that medical negligence prevented them from making an informed decision about their daughter Madelyn’s conception or birth. Madelyn, now 6, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis shortly after...

Abbott’s statement: “(It is) a significant achievement (by Anthony Albanese) to be the first Prime Minister since John Howard and the first Labor Prime minister since Bob Hawke to be returned to government ……… What I really do want to say though is to reassure people who voted Liberal (in Australia that means conservative because the biggest conservative party is called the Liberal Party) today and people who normally vote for the coalition not to lose heart. At our best we are the freedom party. We are the tradition party. We are the patriot party and at our best I...

For most of Western history, art was used as a way for patrons to showcase achievements, propagandize citizens, or lionize individuals. Maybe the single greatest artist in human history, Michelangelo, created his greatest works for patrons of various sorts. He created David for the Florentine Guild of Wool, the Pieta for the French ambassador to the Holy See, and the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica for popes. Art was, in one way or another, an homage to something greater than its creator.Fast-forward about three centuries, and the art world begun to change. The idea of art as an indulgence...

A bite-sized chunk of my big-picture piece from Quadrant has now been excerpted in Australia's national newspaper, The Australian: The biggest story of our time is that the entirety of the western world is sliding off the cliff – and most citizens of the west are not even aware of it, and have no desire to be made aware of it. In that respect, I envy them. It is comforting to paddle one's canoe and insist that the ever louder roaring sound from up ahead is the crowd at a Taylor Swift gig and not Niagara Falls. To be sure,...

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) held a gripping press conference on Friday, releasing shocking new details from the investigation into this week’s explosion at Trump Hotel Las Vegas. Authorities unveiled excerpts from texts and notes discovered on the devices of suspect Matthew Livelsberger. Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren took the podium, detailing a chilling manifesto that Livelsberger left behind. The notes, laden with political grievances and existential despair, suggest a man deeply embittered by what he saw as America’s “terminal illness” under “weak and feckless leadership.” In one excerpt from the note application on Livelsberger’s device, he writes: “Fellow...

SALCAJA, Guatemala -- Working and going to school have become optional in this highland Guatemalan town, thanks to a flood of U.S. dollars sent home by migrants living in the United States. The family-run mills that produce brightly colored, hand-woven traditional fabrics have fallen quiet as their potential work force -- mostly young men -- hang out at the town's pool halls or video game salons, living off remittances and waiting to make their own journeys north. "Kids have easy money, and the only thing they know how to do is spend it on video games," complained Salcaja Mayor Miguel...

Trump and his cabinet nominess will move the country from an administrative state to the sort of republic the Founders envisioned. There have been thousands of words written about the 2024 presidential election, but I think Jeffrey Tucker’s article at Brownstone best summarized the sea change in votes cast , and Victor Davis Hanson best describes the cabinet nominees so far of greatest significance, people selected in part to avenge their treatment by the prior lawless administration. Tucker argues that what we are seeing is an actual, not purported, transfer of power. A transfer from a permanent government to a...

Everyone has a moment when they first realized that Donald Trump might well return, and here is mine. It was back in March, during a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, when I happened to read the explanatory text beside an old painting. This note described the westward advance of the United States in the 19th century as “settler colonialism.” I read it and I knew instantly where this nation was going. My problem with this bit of academic jargon was not that it was wrong, per se, or that President Biden was somehow responsible for putting it there,...

FIRST ON FOX – A recent hire at the nuclear security wing of the Department of Energy has previously called for disarmament policies – which reduce or eliminate nuclear weapons – arguing that advancing "queer theory" was essential to that agenda as well as important to America's national security. The Biden-Harris administration announced Sneha Nair had been appointed as special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration in February 2024. Nair believes in eradicating purported "White supremacy" in the nuclear field as well as "queering nuclear weapons" as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion push she believes is essential...