Free Republic

Have you noticed how deeply invested Democrats and only Democrats are in this Covid-19 narrative no matter how non-lethal and non-threatening it has proven to be? Yep, the same people who have been willing to say anything and do anything to get rid of Donald Trump? –even frame him for something they did? I will concede one thing: The death rate is much higher than even they report because for seven months, they’ve been scaring people to death. Shelby County woman who passed away 6 months ago gets letter saying she is COVID-19 positive...

There is an organized and growing effort to push back against the cancel culture on college campuses. Thousands of conservative and libertarian scholars and academics are standing up and issuing a ringing endorsement of academic freedom. It’s called “The Philadelphia Statement on Civil Discourse and the Strengthening of Liberal Democracy” and has been signed by such luminaries as Robert George, Christina Hoff Sommers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and more. The statement embodies concepts that all can embrace — at least, those whose minds haven’t been poisoned by the radical left. Tragically, we are losing these defining features of our democracy. Common...

People who refuse to wear a face mask, or comply with social distancing, are more likely to have sociopath tendencies a study has found. Callousness, deceitfulness, and manipulativeness - possible signs of a sociopath - were traits commonly found among people who broke Covid-19 safety rules. Findings come from a survey of around 1,600 people in Brazil which has the second highest number of reported Covid-19 cases in the world (3.8million). The researchers said these people in society pose a risk to others, considering they still do not obey rules despite cases and deaths climbing. It adds to research done...

Actor Michael Keaton took to social media on Wednesday to implore President Donald Trump to “resign,” adding, “No harm. No foul. Walk Away. Would be Very Patriotic.” “Resign. No harm. No foul. Walk away. Would be very patriotic and I would personally write a note thanking him,” begged the Desperate Measures actor in an Instagram post. “I swear I’m not being condescending. It’s just the truth.”

To her, some of the most compelling evidence in favor of face masks comes from laboratory tests. A Florida team used mannequin heads to simulate coughing and sneezing and lasers to illuminate the tiny respiratory droplets believed to the main route of transmission. Without masks, the droplets traveled more than 8 feet. A stitched, double-layer cotton mask limited the spread to 2.5 inches...Another lab study...Yet another team used a bird flu virus as a stand in for the novel coronavirus and showed that even homemade paper and cloth masks could block penetration of more than 95 percent of virus-laden aerosols.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich discussed the push made by the progressive left in America to undermine the traditional education system. Newt....“I think what you’re seeing is the dumbing down of America for three generations, you’re seeing left-wing indoctrination and literally groupthink,”.... I really think the time has come to take back the schools and to take back the universities. And I think that a lot of governors, frankly, aren’t doing their job when they allow public universities to be run by people who are radically anti-American.” “So, this is a very dangerous moment in our history,” Gingrich...

Writing in this magazine a month ago, I applauded the government’s stated aim of trying to follow the science in dealing with Covid. Such promises are easier made than kept. Following science means understanding science. It means engaging with rival interpretations of the limited data in order to tease out what is most important in what we don’t know. Instead, the government in the UK (and many other places) seems uninterested in alternative viewpoints. The chosen narrative – that lockdown has saved countless lives – has been doggedly followed by all spokespeople. No doubt is allowed. We have been seeing...

Are you about to post a tweet containing “harmful” language? Don’t worry — Twitter is experimenting with a feature that will warn you ahead of time, so you don’t accidentally infect any users with your wrongthink. “When things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean,” wrote Twitter’s official support account in a tweet yesterday. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful.” It’s a bit like “precrime” in the 2002...

As long as there are residents in the state of Michigan who need help and who need a voice, Democratic Congresswoman Karen Whitsett promised Saturday that she will not be silenced. In an interview on "Fox & Friends Weekend" with host Pete Hegseth, Whitsett explained that she would also continue to work with President Trump and any president who extended a hand her way to ensure what's done in her state needs to be done. On Saturday, a group called the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Organization will consider censuring Whitsett for foregoing the status quo and meeting with President...

Democratic Party leaders in Georgia and Michigan have targeted two state legislators for punishment. The “crime” of which both are accused is “breaking our party’s united front against the Trump menace,” said state Rep. James Beverly (D-Macon), chairman of the party’s House caucus. Georgia state representative Vernon Jones (D-DeKalb) made the “mistake” of praising the positive impacts on African Americans of Trump’s economic and prison-reform policies. Beverly pointed out that “it is our Party’s position that nothing Trump does is worthy of approval. Everything must be condemned if we hope to unseat him in the November election. There must be...

Thomas Fleming talked about his book, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War, in which he portrays the Civil War as a tragedy that American leaders foresaw and struggled to prevent. He spoke about how public opinion and propaganda helped spark the war, and the longstanding tensions between the North and South. He also discussed events that heightened fear of a slave rebellion in the southern states. The Pritzker Military Library hosted this event.

...Folks, Americans are extremely naive about what’s coming. We just cannot imagine that people who burst into tears in the face of gentle mockery of their political beliefs can ever come to power. They are already in power, in the sense that they have mesmerized leaders of American institutions. I’m telling you, that 2015 showdown on Yale’s campus between Prof. Nicholas Christakis and the shrieking students was profoundly symbolic. Christakis used the techniques of discursive reason to try to establish contact with these young people. None of it mattered. They yelled and cursed and sobbed. The fact that he disagreed...

It all started in June 2018, when Quillette published my article, “Why Women Don’t Code,” and things picked up steam when Jordan Peterson shared a link to the article on his Twitter account. A burst of outrage and press coverage followed which I discussed in a follow-up piece. The original article was one of the ten most read pieces published by Quillette in 2018, and continues to generate interest. A recent YouTube video about it has been viewed over 120,000 times, as of this writing: In his tweet promoting my article, Peterson took issue with one of my claims. I...

Despite Yale’s push for increased diversity among faculty members — specifically with regards to demographic categories such as race, gender and sexual orientation — several members of the University community voiced their concerns about the lack of political diversity. According to data from the Office of Institutional Research, the faculty gender gap is shrinking. Since 2006, the percentage of female Faculty of Arts and Sciences members has grown from roughly one-quarter to one-third. Yale faculty have also grown racially diverse over the years. But conservative professors criticized what they saw as a lack of effort to recruit a faculty body...

Here’s my New Year 2020 gift to the Democrat Party. This is a teachable moment. I’m going to teach you how real Americans actually think. Because Democrats are clearly A) clueless and delusional, or B) so anti-American and pure Marxist in their thinking, they have no ability to even fake patriotism anymore. Or C) they’re just blind, deaf and really, really dumb. What does this stem from? Well first is “group think.” Democrats live in a bubble. They actually believe the lies, fraud and fake news spouted by Democrat politicians, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the mainstream media. They are never...

The Washington Post recently published a surprising indictment of MSNBC host, Stanford graduate and Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow. Post media critic Erik Wemple wrote that Maddow deliberately misled her audience by claiming the now-discredited Steele dossier was largely verifiable -- even at a time when there was plenty of evidence that it was mostly bogus. At the very time Maddow was reassuring viewers that Christopher Steele was believable, populist talk radio and the much-criticized Fox News Channel were insisting that most of Steele's allegations simply could not be true. Maddow was wrong. Her less degreed critics proved to be right....

American journalist H.L. Mencken once observed, “Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.” Despite an unending respect for Mencken, this is an occasion in which I found him mistaken, after I violated the Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.” Worse yet, I am a recidivist sinner, after testifying as a constitutional expert in both the Clinton and Trump impeachment hearings. Like all mortal sins, the violation of the Eleventh Commandment comes with not just eternal but immediate damnation. What is most...

(h/t bitt) Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation. Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding ‘mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure future events through transparency and regeneration of individual thought (breaking the...

A bridge-building disaster should be incomprehensible in today’s technical world. Humans have been building bridges for centuries. The science should be well sorted out by now — and for the most part, it is. But the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the March 2018 collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge highlighted basic design flaws and a complete lack of oversight by every single party that had responsibility to either identify the design errors or stop work once it was clear that there was a massive internal failure. We all know “what happened” here. But the “why” is more elusive....

In the 1960s, I came across a small training manual distributed by the Communist Party that showed how a small group of people – as few as four – could dominate a much larger group and sway the outcome of any action taken by that group. It was called the Diamond Technique. The principle is based on the fact that people in groups tend to be effected by mass psychology. They derive comfort and security from being aligned with the majority, especially if controversy or conflict is involved. Even if they do not like what the majority is doing, if...