Free Republic

Enemies of Freedom wish to see our prosperous nation willingly give up our success to become a failed state. Think about the enormity and monstrous nature of that goal they set for themselves. All they had at first were the obvious imperfections of our country to work with, and our enemy commenced from there. Have you considered the impact of the plan by the destroyers to change our language and its influence on all of us? Within this strategy is another plan to change the emotional impact of words we never contemplated or would not have given a passing glance....

By the ancient world’s tradition, it was on July 21, 356 — the night of Alexander the Great‘s birth* — that a theretofore forgettable man set fire to the wooden rafters of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Situated on the Hellenized coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selcuk, Turkey, Ephesus was one of the great cities of the Mediterranean. It counted Artemis (Diana) its patron deity, and gloried in a jaw-dropping marble temple, bankrolled two centuries before by the Lydian king Croesus, that would have nearly covered a modern football pitch. Ephesians took their Artemis seriously: 400-plus years later,...

In 356 B.C., a Greek psychopath by the name of Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in order to immortalize his name. Hence the phrase: to pursue a Herostratic honor. In 2008 A.D., a rather inscrutable individual was elected president of the United States and proceeded without delay to covet and acquire a more or less identical distinction, intent on destroying the temple of constitutional liberty under the rubric of a “fundamental transformation.” Of course, there is more to it than simply desiring a historic reputation by whatever means at his disposal. It has become obvious...