Free Republic

A great title can get people to read your book, attend your event or click on your op-ed. I often choose a title before I write a piece to keep me on track when I have too many things to say and too few words in which to say them.“The War for America’s Soul” is the title of a conservative event sponsored by Salem Media, parent company of Townhall, that is touring the country. The title is borrowed from the latest book by Salem syndicated talk show host Sebastian Gorka.Is that title accurate or is it just hyperbole to sell...

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, on October 5, 2001, Francis Fukuyama declared that his "end of history" thesis remains valid twelve years after he first presented it shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama’s core argument was that after the defeat of Communism and National Socialism, no serious ideological competitor to Western-style liberal democracy was likely to emerge in the future. Thus, in terms of political philosophy, liberal democracy is the end of the evolutionary process. To be sure, there will be wars and terrorism, but no alternative ideology with a universal appeal...

Attorney General William Barr in a speech Friday bemoaned the "moral upheaval" of religious values in the United States, saying it has brought "suffering and misery." Barr made the comments during an address at the University of Notre Dame Law School. He said the deterioration of religion in the country is an "organized destruction" by secularists in an "unremitting assault on religion and traditional values," according to CNN. "Among the militant secularists are many so-called progressives. But where is the progress?" Barr asked. This "upheaval" has led to growing illegitimacy rates, drug use and "angry, alienated young males," CNN reported...

A 12-year-old Kansas girl was arrested – as in, hauled out of school in handcuffs, charged with a crime, and was handed a court date – for making a “finger gun” and pointing it at fellow students. According to the Kansas City Star, police in Overland Park “hauled her out of school in handcuffs, arrested her and charged the child with a felony for threatening” after the middle-schooler pointed the “finger gun” at other students before pointing it at herself. Johnson County District Court documents obtained by the Kansas City Star claim the child “unlawfully and feloniously communicated a threat...

Our story could have ended very differently. If America had embraced the truth, that would have put us on a far different road than the one we are on today. Instead, we are steamrolling toward oblivion, and only a small handful of brave watchmen are even warning about the ominous fate that lies directly ahead of us. We live at a time when “evil” is called “good” and “good” is called “evil”, and just about every form of human degradation that you can possibly imagine is absolutely exploding in our society. For years I have been warning that if we...

...Progressivism: the religion of progress, a form of millenarianism that makes a god of the individual and a sacred and divine right of even his most capricious desires. Progressivism is a form of deified materialism that sees men as undifferentiated and interchangeable beings without sex or origin, beings that, like so many Legos, have been entirely constructed and may thus be deconstructed at will. Progressivism is a form of secularized messianism, as were Jacobinism, communism, fascism, Nazism, neoliberalism and the ideology of human rights. Progressivism is a revolution. Indeed, you may recall that our dear President titled his campaign book,...

President Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a "Kulturkampf." As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump. For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected and constantly attacked. In 2016 and early 2017, President Barack Obama's appointees in the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice tried to subvert the Trump campaign, interfere with his transition and, ultimately, abort...

Until Jesus returns and sets up His perfect kingdom, the culture wars will continue to rage, and there will be many setbacks along the way. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be some real victories as well. Let’s focus on some positive, recent news.1) The number of abortions in America continues to drop.To be sure, this news is hardly all positive, since hundreds of thousands of babies are still aborted every year in the USA. How excited would we be about a hypothetical headline during World War II that stated, “The number of Jews being slaughtered is declining”? Or, in...

Two years ago President Trump sent his trusted lieutenant, Steve Bannon, into European exile. My tea leaves says Trump exiled Bannon for two reasons: 1) to stir up patriotic deplorables of the Old World in their fight against Davos elites; and 2) to keep Bannon a safe distance from American politics so Trump could work with McConnell to approve the historic tax cuts that caused the America economy to shift into overdrive. But Banished Bannon is Back!  The media-savvy protege of Andrew Breitbart once again joins the US political fray to energize the fight for Trump's re-election. This one-hour...

Another day, week, month, year of “can you believe what Trump said?” Another news cycle trying to convince those who don’t already despise the president that THIS time it’s different because THIS time he’s gone too far. “He’s violating the standards of decency! He’s a global embarrassment! He’s a poor role model for our children!” Yep, we’ve heard it all. It’s almost getting boring to say it, but let’s try it again. Donald Trump didn’t happen in a vacuum. He happened as a response, a response to the norm-breaking, divisive, anti-American left-wing culture and party who set today’s politics...

Chickens are friends for some people, dinner for others. Sometimes both. But one animal rights group feels that the name of a rural road in the Treasure Valley isn’t kind to poultry. PETA sent out a news release Wednesday morning alerting Idaho media that it has written a letter to Caldwell Mayor Garret Nancolas to ask for a change to the street name Chicken Dinner Road. However, Caldwell city street maps don’t include Chicken Dinner Road, which is located in rural Canyon County. ...

One thing you can say about the left, they do get high marks for message discipline. Some functionary in the propaganda department comes up with a talking point and immediately, the entire herd -- from senior Democrats in the United States Senate to weekend anchors on MSNBC and everyone in between -- all of them shamelessly repeat in verbatim, like it's an original thought. You've heard a lot of lines like that. One of them we've heard a lot recently is about Donald Trump and the law. The president, Democrats will tell you again and again, believes he is "above...

Can you stand one more addition to the discussion on the Ahmari-French debates? The most positive assessment I can make of Sohrab Ahmari’s side of the argument is that many of us on the Right want to believe that we have a free and fair system for expressing our views and attempting to get the government to enact the policies we want, and under the law, we do. But in practice, the deck is stacked particularly high against conservative Christians, and some of our country’s most powerful institutions are less inclined to even give lip service to the concept of...

A civil war is coming to America, only this time, it will be abortion, rather than slavery, that divides the nation. And while I hope will all my heart that it will not be a physically violent war, the ideological conflict will certainly be violent and intense.We witnessed some of this during the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, when the opposition to his confirmation was fierce to the point of screaming and pounding at the Senate’s doors.This brought to my mind the famous line, “Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned,” based on which I wrote an article...

Will the United States soon enter a second civil war? Polling data from Georgetown University shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe a civil war is coming down the pike — and most people aren’t actually willing to make the changes necessary to stop it. Across the board, Americans are doubling down on their political values and are refusing to compromise on the issues tearing the country apart.

The American electorate is more divided than at any point in recent memory...A consideration of America’s recent past is essential to understanding why polarization defines the character of our contemporary moment and how such division has reached its fever pitch. Lucky for us, the academic study of the culture wars has found its most comprehensive text to date in Andrew Hartman’s A War for the Soul of America. For Hartman, the beginnings of our politically fraught moment can be found not in the debates over the implementation of the New Deal or the battles over temperance as other historians have...

VANCOUVER, March 28, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A B.C. human rights tribunal has ruled that a Christian activist discriminated against a man who claims to be "female" by distributing flyers that referred to the man, who was running for political office at the time, as a "biological male." The court ruled for transgender activist "Morgane" Oger, born Ronan Oger, and against Christian activist Bill Whatcott by declaring it’s discriminatory not to accept transgender people as the gender they claim to be. In a 104-page ruling released Wednesday (read full ruling below), the tribunal further declared there’s no room for any public...

Girls at Pinewood Derby: The new face of Boy Scouting

Every experienced political observer knows that polls of adults are much more liberal than polls of likely voters. What that means is that for political purposes, a poll of adults doesn’t mean much. On the other hand, it also means that the culture at large is significantly more liberal than the group of people that turn out to vote. This is reflected in our culture, which by every measure imaginable is considerably more liberal than it has ever been. Some people may think, “Gee, that’s just how it is. Cultures ALWAYS get more liberal over time,” but that’s not true....

Democracy. Freedom of Speech. The Presunption of Innocence. The need for guilt to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. These pillars of Western society are under attack from within.