Free Republic

The ultra-progressive New School university is facing a projected $85.5 million budget deficit — and things are so bad that even asked students and faculty have been asked to submit budget-cutting suggestions. In no surprise for a school that’s produced Marxists and progressives such as Jacques Derrida and Erich Fromm, the ideas include chopping executive salaries and even selling off the school-owned Greenwich Village townhouse currently occupied by former Clinton cabinet member Donna Shalala, now serving as New School’s interim president. The New School woke up to a harsh reality during the pandemic: operating a private university in lower Manhattan...

Last time, I noted that Erich Fromm's "antidote" to movements like Wokism (as well as Nietzche's earlier concept of the Übermensch) depended on the assumption—or at least hope—that man could transcend his own humanity. This feels like a critical error—possibly a foundational one. Maybe it's an important part of how we got into this mess. Where does the belief we can transcend our own humanity come from? Well, let's start here: I don't think it comes from Judaism or Christianity. Among other things, the Hebrew Bible is a stark catalogue of human fallibility. Adam and Eve disobey God, lie to...

God is Love (I John 4:8)And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (EXODUS 34:6-7)God is Love. Yet, that is not all that the Bible says about God. Scripture also reveals that, God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all....

...who remembers the last time a Washington baseball team played in the World Series. It was in 1933, 86 years ago. The next time is tonight. During 33 of those years, we didn’t even have a baseball team in Washington. That makes the dry spell a little less remarkable, though perhaps even more painful. But even a 53 year dry spell is massive (longer than the one experienced by the Cleveland Indians — 1954 until 1995 — but not as long a wait as Chicago Cubs fans endured — 1945 until 2016). Actually, Ted Lerner, owner of the Washington Nationals,...

Years ago, in 1941, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm published a book called “Escape from Freedom”. Amazon summarizes the book as follows: The pursuit of freedom has indelibly marked Western culture since Renaissance humanism and Protestantism began the fight for individualism and self-determination. This freedom, however, can make people feel unmoored, and is often accompanied by feelings of isolation, fear, and the loss of self, all leading to a desire for authoritarianism, conformity, or destructiveness. It is not only the question of freedom that makes Fromm’s debut book a timeless classic. In this examination of the roots of Nazism and fascism in...