Free Republic

The American people can never forget the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence—for the simple reason that if they ever do forget, they will no longer be Americans. As individuals, we are not entirely defined by our personal histories. We can change. So can nations. But just as no one would discard his or her personal history—memories of family and friends, of love nurtured and adversity overcome—for anything less than the most dire of reasons, a nation cannot erase or tamper with its own history unless it has decided to become something else: a new country, unattached to its...

With the midterm elections approaching, Americans face a critical decision about the future of their country. The Democratic Socialists of America have a radical vision for America, one that rejects both the Constitution and the Bible. But this conflict over faith, freedom, and the role of government is nothing new. It dates back to the founding of our nation, when it wasn't the DSA challenging these principles, but the Deists. The Founders confronted these competing ideas more than two centuries ago, and the debate continues today. With so much at stake in the upcoming elections, understanding this history — and...

Language is always in flux, with different phrases and slang coming and going. Similar to inside jokes and cultural references, what was commonly said in one generation sounds bizarre to another. The idioms and sayings of our grandparents' generation don't make much sense to us, so we choose to use language that we can relate to. In this process, then, the older phrases begin to disappear.If you've ever rolled your eyes at one of the seemingly silly things your grandparent said, then you are in good company. Some of us might say the phrases of our grandparents' era, but they've...

U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar's account of fleeing Somalia's civil war as a child offers a timeline of her early life, family history and eventual resettlement in the United States, including a recollection of how officials recorded relatives' birth dates during the refugee screening process. The Minnesota Democrat's 2020 memoir, This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey From Refugee to Congresswoman, describes a childhood disrupted by fighting in Mogadishu and a journey that took the family through Somalia and Kenya before they were eventually resettled in the United States. Omar has faced a wave of scrutiny from MAGA hard-liners and...

Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano stands accused of damaging an Iwo Jima statue. Credit: Prince William County Police Department A Virginia man has been arrested after allegedly getting caught in an incredibly sickening act that betrays those who bled for our country during World War II. As InsideNoVa.com reported, Prince William County police officers responded to an incident involving the historic Iwo Jima monument in Quantico near Richmond Highway and Fuller Road. The statue is located roughly two miles from Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Upon arrival, officers found a thug who has since been identified as 27-year-old Miguel Alonso...

A dark chapter in the family history of Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan has made its way into the race, but it is unclear whether voters will hold the alleged sins of her long-dead grandfather against her. Earlier this week, Alpha News revealed the troubled mental health history of Flanagan's grandfather, John Jacob Hartmann, supported by old newspaper accounts and court records. He spent decades in psychiatric custody, escaped twice and was suspected in multiple killings, though never charged. The reporting comes just weeks before the midterm elections, in which Flanagan, the state's lieutenant governor, faces former television sports...

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of two colossal statues believed to depict Ramses II after a local landowner reported finding an inscribed stone block in the village of Behbeit El-Hagar. The discoveries were made by an archaeological mission from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). According to Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, Secretary-General of the SCA, the first find was a stone head more than five-feet-high from a massive statue. It depicts a man wearing a double crown, a symbol of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt worn by ancient Egyptian rulers. Nearby, archaeologists found part of the statue’s...

Patience and Jarod Blocker are rare for their age. The Gillette couple has a passion for classic pre-64 Winchester Model 70 rifles. Planning for next year's Winchester Arms Collectors Association show in Cody, Patience says, "It's going to be bad-ass."

1879 Reichsrevolver with a homemade ejector rod and optical sight. The 1879 Reichsrevolver was adopted by the German military a few years after German unification. Author attached a red dot optical sight without modifying the revolver. It is clamped on, with no metal removed. Ejector rods were separate. The one above is homemade.Consider the pistol the revolvers were to replace, the Kavalleriepistol M 1850. It is about .59 caliber, firing a 267 grain round ball from a smooth bore, contained in a paper cartridge with about 67 grains of black powder.Interpolating from data measured at the YouTube channel capandball, the...

Newly released memos reveal Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private alarm over Army biodefense experiments with Ebola and their results, which he worried would erode public trust in vaccines. His concern predated the COVID lockdown by almost four years. Ebola is not only deadly, but reports show a death rate 50 times that of COVID. =============================================================== Dr. Anthony Fauci privately sounded the alarm when he learned the U.S. Army had conducted an experiment a decade ago that aerosolized the lethal Ebola virus, which is not normally transmitted by air, and then shared the results publicly amid an ongoing outbreak in Africa, according...

A hijacked ship, a runaway congregation, jailed Baptist preachers, and a snowy churchyard in Madison County, Virginia By: Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, and Jill Glasspool Malone, PhD In January 1789, snow covered the ground around a plain wooden church at the foot of the Blue Ridge. Inside, a German-speaking Lutheran congregation finished its worship service. Two fiddlers played afterward, because this congregation loved music. Then the whole crowd went outside to hear two young Virginians argue about the new Constitution. One was James Madison, age thirty-seven. The other was James Monroe, age thirty. Both would later become President. That...

A few months after 9/11, freeper Starrgaizr took it upon himself/herself to collect the links to the many threads that were posted on this site on that day, from the first post about the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center, on through into the night.Here are the Free Republic threads from September 11, 2001.Some of you may recognize many of the names on these posts. They are part of real world history, frozen in cyberspace and time, a memorial to what happened on that day as we saw it on this site.

The ad begins with a poor Russian peon, bundled up for the harsh winter, cautiously asking a stern sentry about what he is guarding. “Is toilet paper.” “Is good?” “Is cheap,” replies the soldier. The word spreads down the ranks of the people standing in line at the store. “Cheap toilet paper!” they say in astonished turn. One gets his hands on some: it bends and folds, as if it’s not toilet “paper” at all but lengths of semi-raw wood pulp. For some reason that television commercial from the mid-’80s has come to mind quite a lot lately. It was...

A thousand years ago, almost nobody would have bet on Europe. China was richer, more advanced and more powerful. So how did a poor, divided backwater end up dominating the world? This is the strange story of Europe's unlikely rise, and the accidental advantage that may have changed history forever... Something Went Very Wrong With Human History | 17:26 Michael Button | Patterns of History | 21.5K subscribers | 53,344 views | August 16, 2026

A Greek woman named Phryne became an iconic figure in ancient Athens, remembered for the extraordinary moment when her beauty purportedly saved her life. Not many people in history can claim that they were so close to being imprisoned, or worse, executed for something they had committed, but whose beauty saved their lives, but this was the case for the ancient Greek woman. Phryne’s life in the shadow of impiety in ancient Athens Phryne lived in Athens during the fourth century BC. She was born in Thespiae in Boeotia around 371 BC before moving to Athens, ancient Greece’s epicenter. The...

For some reason, this might come as a shock to many people, but Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ is a fantastic song. To this day, it remains one of the most inventive to ever top the charts in both the UK and the US. Alas, it is still maligned in many circles. The embalming gloss of the 1980s production may well lend it a visceral, adrenalised edge, but what it gives in energy, it, admittedly, slightly taketh away from sincerity and refinement. It might be genius, but there is no doubting there is a certain greasiness to it....

Americans should not fear the past. I remember the first time I came across a “trigger warning.” I was on a university campus in the ‘90s, attending the first lecture of a new history professor. As I perused her course syllabus, I was impressed with the reading list and organization. Then I spotted an incongruous “warning” to women and African Americans suggesting that they might find some of the material offensive. At first, I thought it was an inappropriate joke. I asked someone about it, and I was informed that “trigger warnings” had become increasingly common in the classrooms of...

The push is back on for slavery reparations. In July, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report urging the immediate adoption of reparations. As Lanessa Owens-Chaplin — one of the report’s authors and Director of the Racial Justice Center at NYCLU — puts it: “Reparations are a debt that is owed. Enslaved Black people built the foundation of New York’s economy… Reparations must be extended to all Black New Yorkers descended from those enslaved by New York State.” The NYCLU report is predicated on an undeniable reality: the persistent wealth gap between black and white households. But all...

The full, updated American History and Civics Curriculum, which includes lesson planning prompts, assignments, and assessments Primary sources, images, and maps to support instruction Interactive, searchable flip books that make the material easy to navigate and share An online course that gives practical strategies for teaching American History with excellence

Los Angeles has any number of problems: crime, homelessness, and productive people are leaving due to the idiot policies of the city and the state of California. Now, we can again add that ancient curse of big cities: Disease. The other thing Los Angeles shares with so many other large cities throughout human history is rats. Rats have accompanied humans almost everywhere, and they bring disease with them. That, too, is happening right now in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles County (L.A.), rats abound. You may see only an occasional rat dart across an alley or root through a restaurant...