Free Republic

“…a system that has been hollowed out by a string of cascading failures runs into one more crisis than it can tolerate, and implodes under the weight of its own absurdities. We are much closer to such scenes in North America and Western Europe right now than I think most people realize.” —John Michael Greer Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss was a bigger shock to the Washington DC deep state Blob than Donald Trump’s victory. But the dynamics of this trauma operated at many levels. At the most superficial level was the hysterical response of Democratic Party rank-and-file women who regarded...

Pope Francis Slams ‘Populism and Conspiracy Theories’ in Lisbon AddressROME — Pope Francis began his four-day visit to Portugal for World Youth Day by blasting capitalism, populism, and insufficient attention to migrants and climate change.“At a time when we are witnessing in many places a climate of protest and unrest, fertile terrain for populism and conspiracy theories, World Youth Day represents a chance to build together,” the pontiff told civil authorities and diplomats gathered in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon.Lamenting a lack of greater global cohesiveness, the pope cautioned that “planetary injustices, wars, climate and migration crises seem to run...

The Martha’s Vineyard experience marks a unique opportunity for modern bicoastal progressivism. Martha’s Vineyard has been all over the news. The tony resort community so loves aiding and comforting the undocumented immigrants who were flown in from Florida that it hugged them—for barely 48 hours. Oddly, the Left became unhinged when red-state governors—whose states the last two years were flooded with some 3 million illegal aliens—finally decided to spread welcoming chores among affluent blue-state communities. It was a natural fit. Most, like Washington, D.C., and New York, were on record as sanctuary city jurisdictions. In the abstract, they endorse open...

Sam Harris deserves our gratitude. With dazzling honesty, the liberal atheist...has said out loud what we all knew but which his ilk have blurred for the past two years: Once you decide Donald Trump is the second coming of Adolf Hitler, then anything is legitimate to stop him — and, yes, everything illegitimate was done to stop him in 2020, and it was “warranted.” Skip It has progressed to the next stage, of stigmatizing and dehumanizing Trump’s supporters.... The dozens of Trump supporters held in a DC jail without trial for months and even years over Jan. 6 offenses, many...

"Communism is neither a trend of thought, nor a doctrine (but) an evil specter forged by hate, degeneracy, and other elemental forces (spirits) in the universe. In another dimension, not visible to us, it took the form of a serpent, then..a red dragon...it keeps company with Satan, who hates God. It exploits low-level beings and demons to wreak havoc on humankind. The goal of the specter is to ruin humanity." (How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World, The Epoch Times, Preface xxii)

Two recent news stories, seemingly unrelated, point to a question we must increasingly ask: How many institutions are controlled by the people they’re supposed to serve? The first is that Republican state attorneys general are going after investment fund BlackRock for misbehavior. Instead of managing money from state pension funds and other investors to earn the greatest return, BlackRock, they say, is investing to advance its management’s social and political goals. Under the rubric of environmental, social and governance (or ESG) policies, the fund managers are rating companies not on money-making criteria but on, well, environmental and social ones. The...

Working-class Americans are paying a heavy price for their elites’ moral posturing. As gasoline prices in the US continue to surge to an unprecedented $7 a gallon in some places, President Joe Biden seems more interested in finding someone to blame than mitigating the problem. ‘Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’, the president said on Friday at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference. The president then cited a ‘fact checker’ in the New York Times and a Washington Post op-ed to counter anyone daring to lay the blame for skyrocketing prices at the...

In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden promoted electric vehicles (EVs), trumpeting his plans to establish “a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations.” In so doing, Biden is unwittingly supporting the worst humanitarian abuses in the world. This is because of the way in which the materials used in manufacturing the batteries that power today’s EVs are obtained. To obtain a reasonable amount of power per pound of battery weight, EV manufacturers generally use various forms of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, so named because the battery’s positive electrode, called the cathode, is largely made...

The Forbidden City is a giant palace compound built in Beijing during the Ming Dynasty in China. Commoners were not allowed entrance. Inside, the Emperor and his court lived in splendor and isolation protected by walls and armies of guards. We have never had the equivalent here in the United States. Until now. Beijing Biden is constructing his own Forbidden City in what used to be the capital of a free republic.Out in the heartland of America a giant truckers’ convoy, which by the end of the day may include 10,000 vehicles, is headed for Washington, DC. The people of...

If America’s journalists once spoke truth to power, today America’s journalists are the powerful, a tightly knit caste both highly educated and affluent. “Elite journalists resemble senators, billionaires, and World Economic Forum attendees in terms of educational attainment,” a recent study found. Politicians and journalists go to the same schools and live in the same neighborhoods — especially liberal journalists. Reporters didn’t used to be celebrities. But cable news and Twitter have changed the equation. Social media offer journalists a lower-grade but still-fulfilling form of attention, the ersatz celebrity of our age — internet fame — provided you can write...

To understand the modern world, perhaps the most important rule one needs to know is this: Everything the Left touches it ruins. This first became clear to me years ago during my radio show. I was talking about the Left's war on the Boy Scouts (for not accepting announced gay people). It was becoming clear that this would ultimately lead to the decline of the Boy Scouts, which led me to ask: "Will the left replace the Boy Scouts with a left-wing Boy Scouts?" Then I answered my own question: Of course not. Because the Left only destroys; it doesn't...

It seems like rock star Ted Nugent thinks vaccine mandates have a "stranglehold" on the public. Nugent , who said he was sharing "truth, logic, and common sense with people who care," responded to a question Friday about vaccine policies, referring to COVID-19 as a "weaponized virus." He contracted the coronavirus earlier in 2021. "I did what the government told me not to do, which is what I always do," he said. "Because what the government tells you to do is always the wrong thing. I took hydroxychloroquine , ivermectin, steroids, and zinc and continued with my healthy lifestyle, being...

The question that keeps occurring to a confirmed regime opponent like myself in this First Year of the Great Biden Era is this: What is really going on? Is the ruling class executing on a brilliant strategy to transform the political landscape for the next generation? Are they just fumbling along, trying to keep ahead of their wokist crazies? Or are they executing another of Baldrick’s Cunning Plans that will inevitably blow up in their faces? Let’s look at Option One. The closest thing I have ever seen to a brilliant strategy is Bill Clinton’s 1992 “New Democrat” campaign: nobody...

How often during the last year of wokeness have middle- and lower-class Americans listened to multimillionaires of all races and genders lecture them on their various pathologies and oppressions? University presidents with million-dollar salaries virtue-signal on the cheap their own sort of "unearned white privilege." Meghan Markle and the Obamas, from their plush estates, indict Americans for their biases. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors Brignac decries the oppressive victimization she and others have suffered -- from one of her four recently acquired homes. Do we need another performance-art sermon on America's innate unfairness from billionaire entertainers such as Beyonce,...

Wherein a cosseted white female sports announcer discovers that "diversity" is a zero-sum game. Back when ESPN was watchable, I confess to having a petite faiblesse for Rachel Nichols. She was cute and congenial, and — unlike many females broadcasting male sports — she rarely pretended to know more than she did. These past weeks, however, Nichols has found herself embroiled in a petite scandale. Her transgression? Objecting to the professional mugging she received at the hand of ESPN's "diversity" goons. I would have preferred to portray my beloved Rachel as pure victim, but the story's not quite that simple....

I don’t imagine that Andrew Sullivan is reading anything I’ve written here at Hot Air but that said his piece today could easily be a follow up to this one that I wrote yesterday. If you missed mine, the basic point of it was that the media’s recounting of the culture war often frames conservatives as the aggressors. But in fact there’s pretty good evidence that it’s the left that has moved most dramatically away from the center. The right is most often just trying to reject some of the left’s more extreme plans and intentions. In short, the culture...

Back in the 1970s, the nation of Chile embarked on one of the boldest sets of free market economic reforms in history. The government called in the Chicago Boys, as they were called, led by Milton Friedman and other University of Chicago free market economists They were given a free hand to redesign the Chilean economic system with property rights, a low flat tax, privatization of the Social Security system, and industry deregulation. In 1991, Friedman wrote that Chile now has "the three freedoms: economic freedom, political freedom, and human freedom. It will be interesting to see if they can...

My question to the federal government in these troubled times is simple: who stands for me? The Congress doesn't, the president and his administration don't, and the Supreme Court doesn't. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and Armed Forces don't! Who represents me? The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are under constant assault by the current congressional leadership. Some may suggest that many in our current government do not give a wit about the rights and protections afforded to the American people by our founding documents. This great Republic was founded on the principle of the consent of the governed. Millions...

Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change. Dalton is one of the most selective private schools in Manhattan, in part because it knows the answer to an important question: What do hedge-funders want?They want what no one else has. At Dalton, that means an “archaeologist in residence,” a teaching kitchen, a rooftop greenhouse, and a theater proscenium lovingly restored after it was “destroyed by a previous renovation.” So it was a misstep when Jim Best, the head of school—relatively new, and with a salary of $700,000—said that...

On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough attacked CPAC by trashing what he saw as false populism. He repeatedly ripped President Trump, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton for criticizing elitism while being elitist Ivy League alums themselves. Scarborough also repeatedly mentioning that he hadn't gone to an Ivy school. Boasting of his matriculation at the University of Alabama, he worked in several "Roll Tides." But Scarborough got in some snobbery of his own, twice letting it be known that he's had Ivy Leaguers working for him since he was "23, 24." So who's the elitist now? Get the rest...