Free Republic

Every life unjustly killed deserves justice. In the cause to make things right, I will not join a movement that has nearly everything wrong. More innocent lives have now been killed (#BlueLivesMatter, too) since these predominantly violent protests began over George Floyd’s horrific death. What about the black lives killed in this nationwide chaos? Do they matter?“Well, you don’t have to agree with everything. Just pick out the good things in the #BlackLivesMatter movement,” I’m told. Really? Let’s apply that same logic to another example. I’ve been repeatedly approached to partner with New Black Panthers in anti-abortion billboard campaigns. We...

Elmer J. Fudd will have to find another way to bag that wascally wabbit, Bugs Bunny, during hunting season. Because in the updated Looney Tunes cartoons streaming on HBO Max, he won’t be allowed to have a rifle, according to a report. In the new versions of the classic cartoons, Fudd will still be hunting, but will use a scythe. That’s a modification in response to US gun violence, according to a report. In response to US gun violence, the showrunners will not include firearms in Fudd’s arsenal. That is not to say that he has given up hunting Bugs...

Is there a single person who believes this moment will end in racial harmony? Is that even a goal anymore?

President Trump on Wednesday threatened to “strongly regulate” or close down social media platforms if they silence conservative voices, stepping up his criticism after Twitter attached fact-checking context to Mr. Trump’s tweets for the first time on Tuesday. “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,” the president said on Twitter. “We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that…happen again,” the president said.

Everywhere you go, there is nowhere to go. The closure of many public conveniences as part of the coronavirus lockdown is forcing a rethink of the way Britons relieve themselves away from home. “The way the world is going, the traditional public convenience is becoming a thing of the past,” said Raymond Martin, managing director of the British Toilet Association, which is advising dozens of councils and companies on the problems of maintaining safe washroom facilities at a time of acute anxiety about the lethally infectious virus. A coming revolution in lavatory design may spell the end of the urinals...

The late Philip Roth is my favorite novelist, and his novel The Plot Against America, now a widely-praised HBO mini-series, is an excellent, disturbing book. The book posits an alternate history in which an isolationist, antisemitic Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR for the U.S. presidency in 1940, and proceeds to enact a series of increasingly draconian antisemitic measures. Among those measures are sending Jewish youths out to the country to live with Gentile families to become “real patriotic Americans,” away from the implied malevolent of their families, the Jewish community, Jewish culture, and Judaism. The irony in the title of this...

I’m writing more in anger than in sadness. As holder of an Eagle Scout badge, I went through the sadness stage back in 2013 when the Boy Scouts board caved to the LGBTQ lobby. Well, okay, I was pretty angry then, too, watching the saboteurs within and without the organization systematically undermine it in the name of “tolerance.” It didn’t matter that the Scouts won all their court battles, including at the Supreme Court, to maintain their moral standards. The saboteurs were intent on ending the Scouts’ common-sense, existentially necessary exclusion of boys who sexually desire males. And that was...

A college student at the University of Virginia says there are too many white people in their new multicultural building. She wants white people to know there are other places on campus they can go and to be mindful that the MSC, Multicultural Student Center, is for people of color and that people of color might feel uncomfortable around too many white folks. (video on source)

The specter of divorce still haunts young adults and disadvantaged couples, contributing to family instability.

This week, Chick-fil-A, the immensely popular Christian-owned chicken sandwich giant, caved to the cultural left. For years, the left targeted Chick-fil-A, dating back to the 2012 revelation that Chairman and CEO Dan Cathy supports traditional marriage -- and, horror of horrors, that charities given donations by Chick-fil-A support traditional marriage. This prompted paroxysms of outrage in the media, who quickly demanded that Chick-fil-A toe the Democratic Party line, despite the fact that then-President Barack Obama did not officially endorse same-sex marriage until May 2012.

I predict that there will be more scrutiny, not less, of the decision made by the Chick-fil-A Foundation. I am sure the company will revise its response. More nuance will surely be forthcoming because of the nationwide backlash. Nuance, however, is what causes you to lose in politics, get defeated in war and get burned at the stake in religion.

If the last 24 hours have proven anything about Chick-fil-A, it's this: It was never about the chicken. For millions of Americans, there was a much deeper significance behind every decision to pull in the parking lot and walk through those doors. It wasn't about the menu. It wasn't even about the service. It was that every time someone ate there, they were making a cultural statement. Chick-fil-A was a business, yes. But it was also a giant rebuttal of everything the bullies stood for. Until it wasn't.

Most of us who were there on that sunny August day will never forget. For everyone else, there's a sign: "Above this plaque is a bullet hole. It marks the heroic action taken by Family Research Council employee Leo Johnson on August 15, 2012." That was the morning Floyd Corkins walked into our lobby and changed FRC forever. He'd bought a gun and learned how to use it. He'd loaded three magazines. In his backpack was a stash of chicken sandwiches that he planned to smear in the faces of staffers he hoped to kill. "They endorse Chick-fil-A," he said....

"One big orgy." That's the stereotype about the lifestyle of consensual non-monogamy — an arrangement where committed partners openly agree to have sexual relationships with other people. But people who have practiced non-monogamy for years say it's not all wild sex — or even all that wild. It takes a lot of work, and it carries a lot of stigma. There can be serious consequences for the family life and even careers of those involved. "Many people are trying to create families in different kinds of ways. And a lot of people see that as dangerous," Diana Adams, a Brooklyn-based...

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,...