Free Republic

Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier is gearing up for what she hopes is the next big fight in Congress — balancing out the growing economic inequality that has ravaged the middle class for years — so she reckoned she’d do a bit of ground-level research first. And since you can’t get much more ground level than a homeless shelter, that’s where she went last Friday — to spend the night. The Maple Street Shelter in Redwood City was the destination. Speier had actually been there a week before to chat with the residents, and the fact that a well-off Hillsborough member...

Someone summarized Barack Obama in three words — "educated," "smart" and "ignorant." Unfortunately, those same three words would describe all too many of the people who come out of our most prestigious colleges and universities today. President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again. Economic equality? That was tried in the 19th century, in communities set up by Robert Owen, the man who coined the term "socialism." Those communities all collapsed. It was tried...

Amid the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, one complaint became almost a refrain: What about economic justice? After all, the official title of the event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The line "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" resides in the rhetorical pantheon with "Four score and seven years ago" and "We the People of the United States, in order to form...

Looking over the program for the coming festivities in Washington to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march on Washington, and Dr. King’s famous August 28, 1963 “I have a dream” speech, it’s hard to not feel sober about the whole thing. I say sober because there is good news and bad news. What’s the good news? There has been monumental progress in the quality of life, on average, that black Americans lead today compared to 1963. The bad news? Fifty years is a long time, and the progress that has been achieved is not nearly what it...

President Obama has only occasionally used his bully pulpit to confront racial inequality in America, even if race inherently has been a backdrop of his tenure as the first black president. He has, however, made fighting economic inequality a central goal of his presidency, delivering forceful speeches and advocating policies aimed at shrinking the income gap and increasing social mobility. When he speaks later this month on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Obama will be at the confluence of efforts to reduce racial and economic divisions. As the president addresses a crowd from...

Three brilliant black leaders are tuning out Obama and the black community needs to tune into these leaders. I’m surfing between the major news networks on a recent evening and I catch FOX News Channel’s Sean Hannity in the middle of an amazing interview with a guest named Harry Alford, the CEO and co-founder of the Black Chamber of Commerce. My jaw drops as Alford essentially calls Obama an anti-business tyrant who is hurting the African American community; he says he voted for Obama in 2008 but now has buyer’s remorse. I get to thinking: Given the choice between Alford...

As our nation remakes itself into a European social democracy, bidding farewell to American Exceptionalism, we hear constant calls for "sacrifice." Have you wondered exactly what it is that we've been asked to give up? The radical idea that all men should be equal before the law, each free to pursue happiness using his own means, created a nation of innovators that transformed the world. American culture had little tolerance for hereditary privilege, instead celebrating the self-made man accepting unequal outcomes as the price society pays to motivate entrepreneurial risk. Our founding social contract gave almost everyone a shot at...