Free Republic

School districts across America are voting to include Black Lives Matter in their primary and secondary school curricula. Because whether BLM is taught at all should largely be dependent on how it is taught, it's important to get a handle on the factual and ideological premises behind it.In a February letter to his staff, Allen Bourff, the superintendent at Indiana's Hamilton Southeastern School, created a firestorm by instructing that BLM should be taught as a political issue, not as a social issue. Some BLM-supporters strongly objected. Indiana's Racial Equity Community Network released a statement: "The Black Lives Matter movement is...

In my meandering post from last night I theorized that the Left was using jim crow and the civil rights movement to initiate a process whereby the "unjust" laws of G-d would be superseded by the "just" secular laws of man. This is the root of the whole problem. Because there never was, is not now, and never will be an objective secular standard of morality/ethics/justice. Any system created by people is going to be arbitrary. Furthermore, the very purpose of morality/ethics/justice is submission to the Divine Will. Any system which by-passes this for mere utilitarian results is missing the...

President-elect Joe Biden had a little bit of a problem dealing with the English language when he announced his White House science team on Saturday. He used the verb "will" when he meant to say "is." "I've always said that the Biden-Harris administration will also going to lead, and we're going to lead with science and truth," Biden said, according to the video on CSPAN. "We believe in both," said Biden. As he said this, Biden turned to look at Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who was standing behind him. He laughed. She returned the laugh and said: "That's right." But...

What should we think when every single Democrat voted against the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett? What does this say about their convictions and ideology? There were actually three Democrats who voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch in 2017 (Donnelly, Heitkamp, and Manchin). Even Brett Kavanaugh received one Democratic vote in 2018 (again, Manchin). But when it came to Barrett, not one Democrat voted for her. Not one. This happened despite her receiving a “‘Well Qualified’ rating from the American Bar Association (ABA) whose representatives relayed descriptions of her as ‘brilliant’ and an ‘intellectual giant.’” And this happened despite...

If you listen to the left, you would think that conservative Americans are primarily White racists who want to preserve a White America. These White nationalists, frightened by foreign immigration and terrified by the rising prominence of Black Americans, have aligned themselves with Donald Trump in order to “make America White again.” In reality, while this may speak for a tiny minority of conservatives, it does not speak for the masses. It is a destructive ideology we resist. Race is not the issue. Our universities have shifted dramatically to the left, to the point that, in 2016, a Harvard student...

...FBI Director Christopher Wray doesn’t necessarily find himself in the same company as Jong-Fast, but he’s also apparently not a believer in the notion that antifa groups pose any sort of serious threat. In fact, he’s not even necessarily a believer that antifa groups really exist. Instead, Wray indicated during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday that antifa is more of a ideological view of the world.... To the extent it is an ideology, however, Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw thought Wray was “downplaying” the effects of it. “I’ve heard many members of this body, of this committee,...

I was in New York on that September 11, 19 years ago. The darkness that descended that day and the hope that rose from it are indelible parts of everyone who lived through the attacks, especially, of course, those who lost family or friends that day. The tragedy and the lessons we learned from it could come in handy at this difficult time in our nation's history. The coronavirus pandemic could help us remember our gifts and strive to live with renewed priorities, gratitude and zeal for life. Instead, we see a country in flames in more ways than one....

On July 20, Nancy Pelosi said that if President Trump refuses to accept the results of the November election, he will have to be "fumigated" out of the White House. Fumigation is a technique used against insects, and the idea that human beings are insects has a long history in totalitarian discourse. Hitler described Jews as "vermin" and "parasites," a form of dehumanization that is always just one step away from physical violence. Speaker Pelosi should apologize immediately, and profusely, for her use of this inappropriate rhetoric. Most thoughtful persons would agree that labeling another an "insect" is uncivil. A...

America is currently experiencing something of a revolutionary mood. The toppling of statues, the "cancelation" of journalists and public figures who stray from the new mainstream in their thought, and the speed with which CEOs and boardrooms have caved to online Twitter mobs indicate that a radical cultural shift is taking place. While much ink has been spilled debating the broader meaning of this moment, the seemingly outlandish suggestion by some that we are witnessing the rise of a quasi-spiritual movement, rather than one that is purely political, needs to be taken seriously, as it may help explain some of...

o I guess this is how it’s going to be everywhere, for the foreseeable future: More than 1,200 current employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed a letter calling for the federal agency to address “ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination” against Black employees, NPR has learned. In the letter, addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield and dated June 30, the authors put their call for change in the context of the coronavirus pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black people and the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks. NPR obtained...

It’s not the content of your belief that makes you dangerous, it’s the way you believe it.

Since infancy, the vast majority of us are brought up to believe that we are all the same. As David Brooks put it, “the gospel of multiculturalism preaches that all groups and cultures are equally wonderful.” In our current political climate, to suggest otherwise is akin to applying tar to one’s own skin and rolling around in a pile of feathers. The problem with the idealistic notion of “global” equality is that the premise that “we are all the same” is patently absurd. In the same way that John Lennon’s “Imagine” offers a ridiculously oversimplified explanation of the barriers to...

An academic study by a trio of professors claims to have proven there is no such thing as media bias despite the fact that the same study found most journalists are much father left than the average Twitter user. In fact, a majority of journalists, based on their Twitter interactions, are somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders. Here’s the graph showing the results:From the study: Figure 2 shows the distribution of ideological positions of journalists based on their Twitter interactions. As can be seen, journalists are dominantly liberal and often fall far to the left of Americans. A...

Over the past year, conservatism has changed. At least, the way conservative intellectuals and some politicians talk has changed. Many now speak of orienting our society toward the common good, and about using government power to pursue that good. But has anything really changed within the Republican party? Politics and policy often run a course independent of philosophical debate. Are policymakers ready to go on offense and commit to a different strategy for combatting transgender ideology and the gay agenda? The answer seems to be yes.Last month, NBC News announced: “Dozens of anti-LGBTQ state bills already proposed in 2020, advocates...

Some time ago, I had been asked to look over the final, pre-publication draft of a book, written by a friend of one of my West Point classmates whose father just happens to be a Medal of Honor recipient. More on that later. I made note of some things and informed the author. Below is my review of the final, published book. The book, Women in Combat; Feminism Goes to War, is written by Mark C. Atkins, a self-described, “failed Marine” (I checked; He has an Honorable Discharge) does what few folks today have courage to do, call out the...

Less than a year after having gender surgery, Nathaniel now says, “This whole thing was a bad idea. I am 19 years old, and I feel as though I have ruined my life.” It’s heartbreaking each time I get a letter from someone who underwent gender-change surgery and regrets it, especially someone as young as Nathaniel. With his permission, I’m telling a bit of his story to raise awareness of the young lives being ruined by the rush to surgery, and hoping that hearing the testimony of this young man will influence others on this path to slow down and...

We’ve frequently reported on the subversive, hyper-sexualized works of Teen Vogue, such as their instruction on anal sex, including sex toys on back-to-school lists, and, most recently, offering their teen readers advice on procuring an abortion without their parents’ knowledge. Now, in an article titled, “What Trans & Non-Binary Menstruators Should Know About Periods,” Seventeen Magazine enlists the help of a transgender menstruation activist to help its readers find “inclusive products” for menstruation. If only this were satire. The article, written by self-described “Period Prince” and “non-binary & trans period activist” Cass Bliss (a biological female), reads, in part: "When...

Minneapolis once had the reputation of being a nice city. That seems, now, like a long time ago in a galaxy far away. These days, the reality is different. This sickening video of a gang of youths viciously brutalizing a man just outside Target Field, where the Twins play baseball, has gone national. It is visual proof of how feral downtown Minneapolis has become: Or, to take another example, on the last night of the Minnesota State Fair, generally thought of as one of the more wholesome events a family can attend, there was a gang rumble just outside the...

The leader of Poland’s ruling party praised the Archbishop of Krakow on Sunday for his opposition to the redefinition of marriage and gender ideology in the country. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) Party, said at a campaign event in Southeast Poland on Aug. 18 that he was “grateful” to Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski for his statement earlier this month that attempts to redefine marriage and impose gender ideology in Poland were part of a “rainbow plague.” Calling the promotion of LGBT ideology a “hard offensive” and a “travelling theatre,” Kaczynski said that “we are the ones...

[Professor Ludwig analyses developments in New York State to show what our Education Establishment probably wants to do everywhere. Scary.]America's education system is driven decade after decade by a never-ending stream of jargon. Left-wing educators seemingly never get tired of reproducing their pap in schools of education and not-for-profit organizations. Their jargon continuously reconfigures and is infinitely creative in saying the same thing in different ways; decade after decade educational jargon expresses educational models that produce fewer and fewer diligent, capable, informed, goal-oriented students. The successive models since the 1890s can, in a general sense, be called "progressive education." These...