Free Republic

Since the Enlightenment, the Anglosphere has had a laudable commitment to due process, which means opposing the brutality of group punishment. But what happens when that commitment leads to societal suicide? Our Founders cannot have intended this, especially regarding those people who ignored due process to enter America illegally. In 73 BC seventy slaves escaped from a gladiator school in the town of Caupa, in central Italy. They spent the next two years attacking various towns and encouraging slaves to revolt and join them. This was the beginning of the Third Servile War. By 71 BC the force numbered 120,000,...

“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you?” I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat. Being a Democrat wasn’t...

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my...

Looking back at the histories of different nations, one must conclude that high cultural achievements have never been an antidote to evil. Many years ago, I happened to read the book Russia in 1839 by the French traveler and literary man Marquis de Custine, and there I found some interesting judgments about the Russian people: "The Russian people are a nation of mutes. Everything is there, the only thing missing is freedom. That is, a life." "Everyone there is too miserable to complain." "To live in Russia, it’s not enough to hide your thoughts. You have to pretend." "The Russians...

For many years—most of my politically cognizant life, in fact—I felt secure in my politics. Truth and justice, I believed, leaned leftward. If you were some version of a decent human being, you cared about those less fortunate than you, which meant that you supported a whole host of measures designed to even the playing field a little. Sometimes, these measures had unintended consequences (see under: Stalin, Josef), but that wasn’t reason enough to despair of the long march to equality. Besides, there was hardly an alternative: On the other end of the political transom lurked despicable creeps, right-wing orcs...

In 2019, the Society for Classical Studies, a non-profit North American scholarly organization devoted to all aspects of Greek and Roman civilization, held a rather memorable conference in San Diego. Titled “The Future of Classics,” panelists were asked for their opinions on “the diminution of our future role” in society. One of the panelists, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an associate professor of classics at Princeton who researches and teaches the Roman Republic and early Empire, wasted no time in making his point, calling for all Classics to die “as swiftly as possible.” Peralta, a black academic, criticized Classics for their failure...

The West is falling. Quietly, politically, without a violent upheaval, the Islamists are taking control of France. A dissolute literature professor named François retires to a monastery near Poitiers, the place where Charles Martel stopped the last advance of Islam in 732. A man at once mesmerized and dejected by the sensual pleasures of cultural decadence, François is seeking to reconnect with the Christian religion that formed the great French culture of the past. But faith in that religion will not come to him. “I no longer knew the meaning of my presence in this place,” he says of the...

In college, we are taught that one of the founders of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, was a deist. Indeed, he was. What the professors did not tell us was that Paine's masterpiece, "Common Sense" — the pamphlet that persuaded the American people to move from merely seeking some redress of grievance from British government to flat out seeking independence — made almost all of its arguments from the Bible.Paine knew that the American people were the most biblically literate people in the world at that time. Arguably, they were the most biblically literate generation of all history. They were...

Enlightenment: the moment the wave realizes it is the oceanEnlightenment: a blessing…and a curse“The fair breeze blew, The white foam flew, And the forrow followed free. We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner**If you are one who prays you might pray for our Francine, who finds herself in a very dark place in need of strength and faith.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

“Black Studies” professor Kehinde Andrews of Birmingham City University has denounced the Enlightenment as “little more than White identity politics” and “racist knowledge”.Andrews, who is Britain’s inaugural professor of “black studies”, made the comments on social media while sharing a link to an interview with the Times Higher Education Supplement discussing his upcoming book, The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World.“The enlightenment was little more than White identity politics, yet its racist knowledge still underpins university education,” alleged Andrews, who has previously made waves by claiming that “the British Empire did far more harm...

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (French: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme) is a book by Abbé Augustin Barruel, a French Jesuit priest. It was written and published in French in 1797-98, and translated into English in 1799. In the book, Barruel claims that the French Revolution was the result of a deliberate conspiracy or plot to overthrow the throne, altar and aristocratic society in Europe. The plot was allegedly hatched by a coalition of philosophes, Freemasons. The conspirators created a system that was inherited by the Jacobins who operated it to its greatest potential. The Memoirs purports...

Literary survival in an age of tyranny: The F word vs. the law, and legitimacy An often repeated quote, almost always mis-attributed to Voltaire, makes an interesting study of itself, in usually being presented as: "Voltaire once wrote: “To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” Who in American politics are people not allowed to criticize?" https://www.quora.com/Voltaire-once-wrote-%E2%80%9CTo-find-out-who-rules-over-you-simply-find-out-who-you-are-not-allowed-to-criticize-%E2%80%9D-Who-in-American-politics-are-people-not-allowed-to-criticize Legitimizing the quote has required its re-attribution to avoid mentioning, much less wallowing into what it was that drove the real author to think as he did. In current context, that history only amplifies...

We'll be able to have more productive and honest conversations with one another the sooner we realize that while morality takes sides, science does not.Even as coronavirus vaccines slowly make their way into the population, debates rage around the world on whether lockdowns should continue or be implemented anew. Often in these debates, one hears the term “science” tossed about irresponsibly, sometimes by participants on both sides of the argument.Most of the time, however, when people say that we should “follow the science,” they mean we should listen to the expert advice of medical professionals who argue in favor of...

While establishment media have declared Joe Biden to be the president-elect, there will be "no transition" until the General Services Administration certifies the election results. That's the word from the acting deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, John Barsa. "You should be aware, the only official announcement about an election result that matters is from the head of GSA, so until the head of GSA makes a determination as to who won an election, nothing changes," he told his colleagues Monday, according to a recording of the call obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Biden's team said...

Dr. Rodney Stark has written nearly 40 books on a wide range of topics, including a number of recent books on the history of Christianity, monotheism, Christianity in China, and the roots of modernity...His most recent book is Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History (Templeton Press, 2016), which addresses ten prevalent myths about Church history... CWR: You begin the book by first noting your upbringing as an American Protestant and then discussing “distinguished bigots”. What is a “distinguished bigot”? ... Dr. Rodney Stark: By distinguished bigots I mean prominent scholars and intellectuals who clearly are antagonistic to the...

Last November, Jack Dorsey, the brains behind Twitter, declared that he had gone on a 10-day silent retreat in Myanmar to practice Vipassana, considered the oldest form of Buddhist meditation. Sounding more like the Monk of Silicon Valley than the Disruptor of Wall Street, Dorsey explained that giving up “devices, reading, writing, physical exercise, music, intoxicants, meat, talking, or even eye contact with others” was a “detox of all the noise in the world.” Never mind that he conveniently forgot about Myanmar’s violence toward the Rohingya minority, and not to mention that much of that noise is amplified through the...

Please click on the Relevant Radio link above. Patrick Madrid, of Mexican descent, is an expert on the Cristero War, Rebellion, Movement,

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What, then, was “the Enlightenment”? This term was promoted, first and foremost, by the late-18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant . . . [who declared] that only reason allows human beings to emerge from their “self-incurred immaturity” by casting aside the “dogmas and formulas” of authority and tradition. For Kant, reason is universal, infallible and a priori—meaning independent of experience. As far as reason is concerned, there is one eternally valid, unassailably correct answer to every question in science, morality and politics . . . This astonishing arrogance is based on a powerful idea: that mathematics can produce universal truths by beginning...

When many people think about the ongoing culture war in the Western world, they often think of it as a war between left and right, or between liberals and conservatives. As the political environment becomes more complex, these traditional labels lose more relevance. The line between the two major political movements has blurred, which means someone that may have been a political foe in the past may be an ally today. This change is due to the large increase of political polarization we've seen over the past several years. A portion of the right has gone so far right that...