Free Republic

Who are the 10% of people who believe the Ukraine can win a war with Russia? I guess we should be celebrating – two years ago, a majority thought this was a reasonable proposition. It was always very incredible to me. I kept saying “bro, have you seen a map? Russia is like, a lot bigger than the Ukraine.”

August is the time of year that the majority of Europeans head off on vacation, and Americans reading the news are reminded of how crappy the paid time off policy is in the US.That is no doubt true. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), American workers put in more hours than every other “developed” country in the ILO’s report – France, Belgium, Germany, Australia, the UK, and Sweden. That averages out to roughly 400 more hours on the job every year compared to Germany.The legal right to paid vacation and total number of mandated paid holidays. Source: Center for...

Well over one-third of Europeans have been left struggling to pay their bill amid the ongoing cost inflation crisis, a government survey has revealed. A survey conducted on behalf of the European Union has found that well over one-third of Europeans have at one point struggled to pay their bills in the year prior to the poll taking place. Although unseasonably warm weather on the continent has meant that the bloc has largely avoided major power shortages, huge numbers of EU citizens have nevertheless struggled to deal with the heightened price of food, fuel and services caused by the ongoing...

<p>Is there a political group with less self-esteem than the modern left? The constant seeking of approval, including from countries we won our independence from, has always been pretty cringe. Under President Trump, that only got worse as Europe decided that the United States was evil incarnate — despite them owing their current freedom (or what they call freedom) to our actions.</p>

Former Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif) assailed President Trump for "alienating our allies to such an extent that they may not come to our aid should we be attacked." "A prime cause of the alienation was Trump's bullying them to honor their NATO military commitments," Swalwell contended. "This reversed decades of bi-partisan policy that looked the other way when our allies fell short of meeting their obligations. This bi-partisan policy built an enormous amount of good will that Trump has squandered." Swalwell rejected the idea that without meeting the NATO military obligations the so-called allies would not be...

The British Museum tries to counter an ugly truth long captured in Western art. ... Objectively speaking, the “Slave Market” painting in question portrays a reality that has played out countless times over the centuries: African and Middle Eastern Muslims have long targeted European women—so much so as to have enslaved millions of them over the centuries. The Muslim demand for, in the words of one historian, “white-complexioned blondes, with straight hair and blue eyes,” traces back to the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, who enticed his followers to wage jihad against neighboring Byzantium by citing its blonde (“yellow”) women awaiting...

The exaggeration of white privilege has become a cornerstone of progressivism. It’s also one of the ways Democrats risk losing the 2020 presidential race, as it leads inexorably to the devaluation of voters needed to clinch the Electoral College. The problem with a race-based, victim-washed vision of 2019 America is that being white is not enough, and never has been. I was a diplomat for 24 years, about as privileged a job on paper as you can get. But inside the State Department, being white was only a start. The real criteria was “pale, male, and Yale.” Being white (the...

You all know by now that I’m into beauty pageants given that I grew up in Puerto Rico, aside from the fact that my best friend’s daughter is the current Miss Puerto Rico. She’ll be participating in the Miss Universe Pageant in December 2019. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts about this subject, Donald Trump has been to the island numerous times and we got to know him quite well when he was the owner of Miss Universe, Inc. Previous post about Trump’s pageant organizational skills: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3763583/posts People call President Trump a “Racist”, which is so untrue. I’ve just analyzed...

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — As Peter Johnson and Emily Neal waited for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to arrive at Barley’s, a brick-lined sports bar in southwestern Iowa, they gamed out possible nominees in the Democratic presidential primary. Mr. Johnson, a 27-year-old law student, said the large field was a great equalizer, and “if at the end of it we get an old white guy, someone who represents the status quo, it’ll be because they’ve proven themselves.” Ms. Neal, a dental hygienist, made an agonized face at Mr. Johnson, her boyfriend. Wouldn’t something be lost, she asked, if the historically diverse slate...

Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization, Occidental culture, the Western world, Western society, and European civilization, is a term used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems and specific artifacts and technologies that have some origin or association with Europe. The term also applies beyond Europe to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence. For example, Western culture includes countries in the Americas and Australasia, whose language and demographic ethnicity majorities are European. The development of western culture has been...

Warning: This article briefly mentions torture methods.On October 19, Catholics will celebrate the feast day of saints Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brebeuf, and companions, the first martyrs in North America recognized by the Catholic Church. These martyrs, either Frenchmen or Native American converts, were brutally murdered in the 1640s in what is now Canada by Mohawk and Iroquois warriors.Their deaths, particularly in light of the recent Columbus Day holiday and the renewed demands for its ending or renaming, remind us that the relationship between Europeans and the indigenous American peoples is often not reducible to the simplistic paradigm of...

06/12/2018Ryan McMaken In last week's column comparing median income numbers from country to country, we found that, by the measure the OECD uses, median incomes in the US are the seventh highest in the world (not counting some tiny city states.) Even after including income from welfare programs, the median income of the US is about equal to that of Austria and Denmark.These numbers include incomes from welfare programs, so it may very well be that the US's relatively pro-market institutions really do lead to higher incomes for many millions of people — even including people in the lower third...

European leaders may be scratching their heads because they've never seen anyone like President Donald Trump, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday. "Whatever the Europeans are doing, they are confused because they've never seen anything like this president," Cramer added on "Squawk on the Street." "They are so over their heads versus this guy."

How Europeans evolved white skin By Ann Gibbons ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI—Most of us think of Europe as the ancestral home of white people. But a new study shows that pale skin, as well as other traits such as tallness and the ability to digest milk as adults, arrived in most of the continent relatively recently. The work, presented here last week at the 84th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, offers dramatic evidence of recent evolution in Europe and shows that most modern Europeans don’t look much like those of 8000 years ago. The origins of Europeans...

The Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healy, has decided that she can dictate law without recourse to the legislature or the courts.  She has decided to unilaterally change the definition of what is and is not an “assault weapon” in the law.Crimes committed with all rifles are exeedingly rare in Massachusetts.  2014, is the lastest year we have records for in the FBI Uniform Crime Report. In 2014, no murders with rifles of any kind, let alone “assault weapons” were recorded in Massachusetts. Yes, you read correctly.  Zero.  Ziltch. Nada.  If there had been a single crime committed in...

Swiss authorities recently denied citizenship to a pair of Muslim sisters, 12 and 14, who refused to take part in their school's swimming lessons alongside boys of their age group in the city of Basel. According to USA Today, the girls had applied for citizenship a few months ago, but their request was denied this week. “Whoever doesn’t fulfill these conditions violates the law and therefore cannot be naturalized,” Stefan Wehrle, president of the naturalization committee, told TV station SRF on Tuesday. Reports do not indicate the nationality of the Muslim family, but the episode is yet another reminder of...

An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers. Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it. Modal Trigger A slide from the Bank School shows the different goals for white children (right) and “kids of color” (left). They complain the K-8 school of 430...

After a contingent of ten police officers were scared off from rescuing a ten-year-old rape victim from a refugee center, authorities professed themselves to be at a loss for what to do next. "The ardor with which the Muslim mob attacked the police seeking to remove the boy from the center has caused us to reexamine our premises," National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson admitted. "To us, the idea of grown men sexually abusing this young boy is repugnant. But are we guilty of projecting our own values onto another culture?" "I am told that keeping such boys on hand for...

I know, I know … Europeans also believe in the fantasy that they can live in a socialist utopia of sorts and the bill will never come due too. Er, except in Greece, of course.This “new” outrage, though, is simply the usual Euro “superiority” fantasy. They always have a better/smarter/eco friendlier idea and we New Worlders, well, we’re wasteful, uncouth and unsophisticated barbarians, or something: Overall, it’s safe to say that Europe thinks America’s love of air-conditioning is actually quite daft. Europeans have wondered about this particular U.S. addiction for a while now: Back in 1992, Cambridge University Prof....

For centuries, archaeologists have reconstructed the early history of Europe by digging up ancient settlements and examining the items that their inhabitants left behind. More recently, researchers have been scrutinizing something even more revealing than pots, chariots and swords: DNA. On Wednesday in the journal Nature, two teams of scientists — one based at the University of Copenhagen and one based at Harvard University — presented the largest studies to date of ancient European DNA, extracted from 170 skeletons found in countries from Spain to Russia. Both studies indicate that today’s Europeans descend from three groups who moved into Europe...