Free Republic

As clashes between protesters and counter-protesters turn increasingly violent, the media wants you to think it’s the fault of 'right-wing extremists.' It’s not. In the wake of recent deadly clashes between Black Lives Matter activists and counter-protesters in Portland and Kenosha, Wis., the media is rolling out a new narrative: that right-wing extremists have introduced firearms to what have been, until now, “largely peaceful protests,” and BLM demonstrators are now trying to figure out how to keep themselves safe.Consider an appallingly dishonest New York Times headline on Tuesday that , “As Guns Get Drawn at Protest Sites, Demonstrators Fear a...

The most violence-ridden cities in American are run by Democrats. Why then, should they be trusted to lead an entire nation of more than 330 million people? Democrats have recently joined forces in blaming President Trump of fanning the flames of violence. While this is nothing new, it is concerning evidence of a pattern among the left. More particularly, the party that seeks to lead the nation is unwilling to take responsibility for the misdeeds of its members and is always looking to blame others. Americans should not trust this party to lead them.As reported by The Hill, Rep. Karen...

Officer Jakhary Jackson has experienced the vitriol of Portland's white woke protesters, who engage in white saviorism and destroy minority communities while claiming to champion racial equality. In one black Portland police officer’s frontline experience, the Black Lives Matter protests in his city are not about helping black people attain better lives. What this officer sees is privileged white kids infiltrating communities that don’t belong to them to burn stuff, break things, cause trouble, incite violence, and tell black people what they should do.This officer, Jakhary Jackson, is a nine-year veteran of the Portland Bureau of Police. After working for...

In an Oval Office interview with The Federalist's Ben Domenech, President Trump calls on Republicans to stand strong and unite against lawlessness. In a wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office Friday, President Donald J. Trump said that the country is in the midst of “a political war … where the left will use anything to win, including the culture.” The president said that to restore order and win in 2020, his Republican allies “need to be stronger” in standing up to rioters and those who would tear down statues. “They’ve got to get much tougher,” Trump said, drawing comparisons to...

We must re-acknowledge and respect the role of parents and the wisdom of elders so that we can affect authentic, lasting, positive change in our society.> The 1950s brought programming to America’s living rooms that revered parents, especially fathers, in TV shows like “Father Knows Best,” “Make Room for Daddy,” and “Ozzie and Harriet.” The same decade simultaneously engineered the American teenager, ushered in the exaltation of “youth culture” in music and film, and eroded the reverence of parents and elders. Over the last 70 years, the glorification of youth-centric culture has exacerbated the degradation of parental honor. Hollywood sought...

The left has moved beyond indoctrination through biased textbooks and false narratives. Now, our kids are being taught to channel their anger in protest. For years, conservatives have been sounding the alarm about anti-American indoctrination in public schools. TheyÂ’ve pointed out the dangers of mainstreaming of Howard ZinnÂ’s A PeopleÂ’s History of the United States. TheyÂ’ve exposed the racialism of the 1619 Project. Unfortunately, however, the situation in public schools is far worse than the mere presence of propaganda.Theoretically, parents can resist the dominant paradigm by explaining that itÂ’s just the teacherÂ’s opinion, and providing a counter-narrative at home. But...

With weak mayors and powerless police, we have little choice but to take our safety into our own hands. I bought a gun last weekend. It’s not a purchase I wanted to make, and I pray I never have to use it, but with mayhem recently engulfing cities across the United States, I and many others are biting the bullet and purchasing firearms.Mine is a Springfield 9mm — something small enough to fit in my nightstand or under my driver’s seat should I have to visit one of America’s many war-torn cities. But it’s powerful enough to do the job.I’ve...

For my internet video this week, my staff showed me clips of violent cops. It's not just Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes -- it's the other cops who just watch. It's the Buffalo cops who floored a protester and simply walked by as he lay unconscious, bleeding out of his ear. It's a cop in Philadelphia, swinging his baton into protestors, the Atlanta police needlessly tasing two college students, the NYC cops beating a bicyclist and dozens of cases where police lied about what they'd done until body cams or cellphone cameras revealed the...

The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property. The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property.

A social worker and an abortionist won't do you much good when an armed intruder is breaking into your home in the night — and if Democrats had their way, you'd be rendered defenseless as well. Whether “Defund the Police” actually means dismantling police departments, as it appears to in Minneapolis, or is an attempt to gaslight conservatives while neutering law enforcement, one thing is certain: The party yelling to “defund the police” is the same one that desperately wants to disarm the citizenry, rendering them utterly defenseless.Leftists, and increasingly the Democratic mainstream, have long assured Second Amendment advocates that...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Jim McCoy. Progressives inhabiting the mainstream media, the Democratic Party and Hollywood continue to herald how the Covid-19 virus, tainted economy, condemnation from China, the racist police beating of innocent demonstrators, and the disunifying editorial from four star General James “Chaos” Mattis about our president, are harbingers of doom for the Trump administration and Republican candidates come election time. There is at least one strong indicator that may prove these liberal naysayers wrong about the effects the current schiff-storm may have at the ballot box in November. John R. Lott, Jr. wrote in National...

"Pick a knee," says CNN's S. E. Cupp, "The one that knelt on a neck or the one that knelt to try to prevent it." This kind of ugly false choice -- either you adopt my favored form of political protest or you support murder! -- is meant to bully you into participating in groupthink. Worse, it's meant to shame the target of Cupp's exhortation into taking ownership of racism, an evil that may have nothing to do with him. I find the abuse of black civilians -- or, though this is apparently a provocation, any civilians -- by the...

Portland, a smallish Pacific-Northwest city in a state once known for its moderate politicians, is now become an epicenter of radical activism. Some violent protests, starting in Minneapolis and rapidly expanding to cities all over North America and abroad, have challenged local governments’ ability to keep the peace over the past two weeks. It was unsurprising that chaos erupted in Portland, Oregon.How did Portland, a smallish Pacific-Northwest city in a state that was once known for its moderate politicians, become an epicenter of radical activism and inadequate governance?Starting with the Wobblies in the early 20th century, a thread of radicalism...

Last week, during some of the race-related protests, President Trump famously held up a Bible in one hand outside of an historic D.C. church that rioters had set afire. Actress Debra Messing (Will and Grace) then sent out a tweet, in which she showed Trump with the Bible and next to it she juxtaposed a picture of Hitler supposedly holding a Bible. She had the caption: “A dog whistle to white nationalists and Nazis.” She also declared, “This is no accident!” Of course, the picture of Hitler holding a Bible is a total fake. Furthermore, putting a Bible in Hitler’s...

Democrats took aggressive social distancing action to combat coronavirus, but they’re throwing their arguments out the window when it comes to rioting and protesting. That contradiction is growing and is increasingly dangerous to them. The longer the protests continue, the more opportunity for Middle America and moderate voters to make that connection and turn on Democrats. As coronavirus entered America, state and local governments responded with an unprecedented lockdown of society and the economy, leaving almost 43 million people to file for unemployment in the past three months. In the first quarter, the economy shrank 5 percent, and the Atlanta...

After kneeling for close to nine minutes before the cameras Monday morning, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the Justice in Policing Bill of 2020. Following bipartisan support for reforms, some including Black Caucus Chair Rep. Bass (D-Calif.), hoped for a cooperative tackling of the issue. First steps by Pelosi, however, suggest that this attempt is falling into the same partisan trap previous attempts at reform have. Rumors began swirling the morning of Pelosi’s announcement that Republicans had been blocked from contributing to the immense bill. Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) confirmed that was the case. “As a Member of...

With the death of George Floyd -- a heinous atrocity virtually every American decries -- unity should have prevailed. Americans hate police brutality; Americans care about black lives; Americans despise looting and rioting; Americans want to protect citizens but preserve the ability of the police to stop crime. Instead, the country seems to be falling apart. That's because of the utterly chaotic political and media response to the Floyd tragedy: a response that demands agreement but, most of all, requires compliance. You must kneel. You must kneel because you cannot understand. You simply cannot. If you have to ask for...

The Democratic Party is navigating a crossroads in realtime. The left, more broadly, has chosen its path. Joe Biden is now an unlikely bulwark. It all comes down to one viral video. The relevant clip documents Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a progressive Democrat, paying lip service to George Floyd protesters before being booed out of the crowd for meekly refusing demands to defund the police. Throw all the national polls and focus groups away—that constituency may soon be the only one that matters. *snip* If they get their way on this, a proposal so radical it tests their ability to...

One of the most visible and insistent demands of the Black Lives Matter movement is the abolition or disbandment of the police—or at the very least defunding them, which taken to the extreme would amount to the same thing. “Abolish the police” has become a rallying cry among protesters and a litmus test for elected officials seeking to ally with them.What comes after the police have been abolished remains unclear. Protesters and politicians alike are hazy on details, preferring instead to talk about “reimagining public safety” and throwing around vague terms like “community policing.”Of course, in concrete terms what...

As the protests condemning the tragic death of George Floyd continue and the opportunistic riots rage on, the media has turned against the entire concept of the police with a vengeance. As such, several media outlets have decided to attack a staple of the American television landscape – police procedurals. With recent unjust demonization of the police as a whole becoming a popular political stance from the woke crowd, their positive portrayal on television has come under fire. Some have argued that the issue with this sub-genre of shows is their focus on the perspectives of their police protagonists at...