Free Republic

When I was growing up, organizations that expressed any views at all similar to those expressed by Communist groups were called “Communist fronts.” Anyone who defended on the grounds of civil liberties the right of communists to express their hateful ideology was labeled a “commie-symp.” All decent people railed against this coerced, “politically correct” guilt-by-association, because it endangered freedom of speech, freedom of association, basic fairness and, especially, truth. Today a similar tactic of defamatory character assassination against people with whom one disagrees, particularly conservatives, is being employed by elements of the left, including some in the mainstream media. Consider...

European leaders can see that a demographic disaster is taking place. They know that in two or three decades, Europe will be ruled by Islam. They try to anesthetize non-Muslim populations with dreams about an idyllic future that will never exist. They say that Europe will have to learn to live with terrorism, that there is nothing anyone can do about it. But there is a lot they can do; they just do not want to -- it might cost them Muslim votes. Winston Churchill told Neville Chamberlain, "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor,...

Facebook censorship of individual member pages is not just limited to the United States. On Wednesday, Facebook deleted the personal account/page of Ingrid Carlqvist, the Gatestone Institute's Swedish expert. Her offense was posting a video news report she created for Gatestone that discussed an almost 1,500% increase in rapes in Sweden. Ms. Carlqvist suggests the increase of rapes may be attributable to the mass influx of immigrants coming mainly from Muslim countries such as Iraq, Syria and Somalia. Gatestone Institute is a non-partisan; not-for-profit international policy think tank run by former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Carlqvist's video (embedded below) is...

In a worrying development for free speech and the free exchange of ideas, Facebook has announced a Europeanwide initiative to combat so-called online extremism and "hate speech." The social media giant pledged to spend over $1 million on the new "Initiative for Civil Courage Online," which it launched in Berlin in partnership with the German Ministry of Justice and other organizations. It has even hired a unit of publisher Bertelsmann to monitor and delete "racist" posts on its site in Germany. But critics are concerned the initiative will be used to suppress the free speech of conservative and populist critics...

Once upon a time, there was a safe welfare state called Sweden, where people rarely locked their doors. Now, this country is a night-watchman state -- each man is on his own. When the Minister of Justice, Morgan Johansson, encourages breaking the law, it means opening the gates to anarchy. Mr. and Mrs. Swede have every reason to be worried, with the influx of 190,000 unskilled and unemployed migrants expected this year -- equivalent to 2% of Sweden's current population. The number is as if 6.4 million penniless migrants who did not speak English arrived in U.S. in one year,...