Free Republic

This week, the House passed a reauthorization bill of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), but this bill falls short and fails to accomplish its namesake goal. From its inception, the purpose of VAWA has been to protect, support, and seek justice for women who have suffered assault or abuse. CWALAC fully supports that mission. The goal of the current VAWA reauthorization efforts should advance these objectives, not compromise them. The reauthorization must address misguided efforts to go beyond the scope of VAWA, which represent a fundamental threat to the privacy and safety of women and girls. Unfortunately, the House-passed...

Donald Trump Jr. is exactly right: when female athletes train their whole lives to be the best at their sport, only to be denied their rightfully earned victory — as well as opportunities for scholarship money — by men who enjoy the performance-enhancing advantages of XY chromosomes, it is indeed a “grave injustice.” But this week, Democrats have introduced legislation to normalize such injustice on a national level through an Orwellian twist of language, calling their bill the “Equality” Act. This bill would make sweeping changes to civil rights laws, replacing our cherished values of freedom and liberty with intimidation...

I don’t understand the idea that ideology is a bad thing. Notice the contradiction here? “Ideas are a bad thing.” That itself is an idea. Democrats, some party insiders say, are going over a cliff. They’re going all-out socialist. Even Communist. One of their leading figures wants to tear down every single building in America and build new ones, conforming to environmentalist standards. Most of her colleagues in the Establishment either agree, or are reluctant to be seen disagreeing. Is ideology to blame for this madness? No way. It’s not ideology that’s to blame. Ideology simply means the presence of...

Not many presidential candidates in American history, outside perhaps a Eugene Debs or Gus Hall, would announce a presidential bid vowing to “transform the country” and complete “the political revolution.” Then again, not many candidates have been like Bernie Sanders, a lifetime socialist who, in the 1980 presidential campaign, when normal people were deciding between Carter or Reagan, served as a presidential elector for the Socialist Workers’ Party. And yet, this onetime Trotskyist and member of a Marxist-Stalinist kibbutz received 13 million votes in the 2016 Democratic Party primary, or 40% of Democrat votes. This isn’t your granddaddy’s Democratic Party,...

Beware the traitor, we are finding out. History will probably record that high-ranking government officials tried to overturn the election of Donald Trump. History, I suspect, will use the word coup and will call these people traitors. This is unpleasant stuff but also clarifying. A small group of people, well organized and focused on the same goal, can overturn and destroy much larger organizations. John Dewey and his supporters, a century ago, did not think of themselves as traitors, nor would they use the word coup. But they organized themselves in exactly that fashion. A few hundred professors of education...

In "Why God? Explaining Religious Phenomena", sociologist Rodney Stark writes that these godless movements do not count as religions because "without the existence of a conscious divine being ... these 'Godless religions' can offer no otherworldly rewards, no miracles, not even any reason for prayer or worship." (Skip) ... he makes the following proposition: "The everlasting basis for religion will be the human conviction and hope that life has meaning." Is this not exactly the point of Marxism: that instead of the endless cycle of exploitation of man by man, we are entering an era in which workers of the...

This is progressive ideology 101 here. Forget that this is gun grabbing. Forget that this is running to the camera seeking the spotlight. Kamala Harris, who is working very hard to position herself as a future presidential candidate, recently said the following: When you see the effect of this extreme violence on a human body, and especially the body of a child, maybe it will shock some people into understanding this cannot be a political issue. We have to be practical. I support the Second Amendment, but we have to have smart gun safety laws. We cannot tolerate a society...

A mass of recent stories about white folk fearing the “browning” of the United States is doing rounds not only on social media, but in what passes for regular news networks. The accusations state that people voted for Trump because they are racist, because they don’t want more people with darker skin coming to the US. Not only is this idea wrong, it is politically motivated. If you really want to know what American’s (and people in Europe) are afraid of, it’s not the “browning” of the nation, it is the flawed and often dangerous ideology that comes with some...

In my last blog post, I wrote about how critical specialization is to progressive ideology, and the weaknesses that get bred in because of that. I also wanted to point something out, and I don't think very many people will like it. Culturally, I am quite certain that progressivism would be hard pressed to justify its own existence without specialization, and gun control is one of those topics that is probably the easiest to dissect. One of the main stated goals of gun control is to get guns out of the hands of pretty much everybody, but the only people...

Question for the esteemed forum, and those in the conservative media: The Judiciary gets a pass for their ongoing misdeeds. It's clear the left has set it up so whatever they need to do they do it in court, at every level of the judiciary. They can't win in the arena of ideas, nor in the legislature (except with ongoing, reliable GOP help). The Court is their stronghold. Why hasn't the conservative media made this an ongoing feature? O'Reilly had Pinhead of the Day, and Rush has his updates, which I love. I'd like to see someone prominent highlight a...

This lady used to be a real hardcore Leftist, but she suddenly switched and voted Republican in 2012. What made her change? Read on to find out.Dr. Danusha V. Goska has abandoned the Leftist philosophy for good. She wrote a long article that explains each point in detail at American Thinker. It also includes a bio of Dr. Goska that shows her Leftist ‘street cred’.To sum up, here are her Top 10 Reasons for Dumping Leftist Ideology:10. Huffiness We rushed to cast everyone in one of three roles: victim, victimizer, or champion of the oppressed. We lived our lives in...

Common knowledge has it that the Red Scare involved Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, and Cold War highlights. While all of this is true, that's the second Red Scare of the 1960's. The first Red Scare is far more interesting. The first Red Scare involved progressives using the force of big government against their ideological opponents, the communists. While it is true that (probably) the two most high profile people to be deported were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman - both anarchists(not communists) - that does not change the fact that one of the main goals of the 1917-1919 purge was to...

When President Trump authorized the bombing of Syrian airfields in response to what his office said was an Al-Assad chemical weapons attack, not only was this in line with what many Syrian refugees want, it is also what Barack Obama famously called for with his “Red Line” in 2012. It is also in direct opposition t the Kremlin, who claim that the attacks were carried out by Syrian rebel groups. But, but, but, It’s Trump!!! They cry. And how could any self-respecting person agree with the actions of him? At the point when the most “mouth-frothing” occurs, I like to...

Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors: It never occurred to me in my earlier creations of these freewheeling monthly or bimonthly "Messages from Dan" that I would have to write a Message about a previous Message. But it seems obvious that I must do just that. (For those visitors who may have missed the April 2006 Message, please find it in the archives linked above—or be warned that what follows here will be very cryptic, at best.)This writing a message-about-a-message feels incestuous. But there’s nothing to be done about that except to get it done and go on to other...

The anti-Trump demonstrations we now see in the streets are not just examples of the immaturity of many modern secular liberals, who seem to think that everyone else is somehow obligated to agree with them. They’re also a symptom of the distorted influence politics now exercises over our culture. But in addition to being a symptom of our culture, the dominance of politics in every aspect of life is also a consequence of liberalism itself. The tendency of liberalism has always been to politicize everything. Thanks to liberalism, we have a politicized media that has abandoned journalistic standards in a...

Boxing promoter Don King at the Republican National Convention, Photo Credit: Tyler O'Neil, PJ MediaIn an interview with PJ Media on the Republican National Convention floor on Tuesday, boxing promoter Don King shared his surprising views of the Black Lives Matter movement. He seemed to be all over the board, hitting on America's history of racism, his friendship with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and his full-throated support for Donald Trump.When it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement, King admitted that "the natural response would say All Lives Matter, but that's a diversion." He admitted that "my friend"...

Relax. If one theme is constant among conservative #NeverTrumpers, it’s that Donald Trump is not really a conservative. People cite his past support for things like single-payer health care and abortion rights, as well as his fondness for eminent domain – which he’s used to his advantage as a real estate developer. People like me counter by citing his current policy proposals – cutting taxes, replacing ObamaCare with market-based health care mechanisms, unleashing domestic energy – as evidence that his current thinking is much more in line with conservatives than his thinking of the past.

"A 'twisted ideology' drove an Israeli soldier to fatally shoot a Palestinian assailant in the head as he lay subdued in the road," the US news site Vice claims, based on a classified IDF report on the recent incident. "A few seconds before the attack, few seconds before the attack, as came up in the investigation with Sergeant M, (Azariya) told him that 'a terrorist that wounded their friend needs to die," the site reported, adding that "Sergeant M tried to calm the soldier down telling him, 'Relax, our wounded friend will be just fine.'" Despite this, Azariya still shot...

HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Communist-led Cuba was an "attack" on its history and culture aimed at misleading a new business class, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on Monday, the latest sign of blow-back after the ground-breaking trip last month. "In this visit, there was a deep attack on our ideas, our history, our culture and our symbols," Rodriguez said at the Communist Party congress. Cuban leaders have hardened language against the United States since Obama became the first U.S. president to visit the island in 88 years, with Fidel Castro accusing him of sweet-talking the...

Politics Socialism’s Lonely Eden by Chad Ashby March 22, 2016 The rise of Bernie Sanders this election cycle has American voters dusting off an old question: What is socialism? In 2016, the Cold War is a distant memory, and many millennial voters were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a political race shaped by tweets and sound bytes, it’s tempting to think socialism is just a catchall term for a hodgepodge of liberal policies like free college, universal healthcare, wealth redistribution, and tax plans. Such assumptions suggest that socialism is misunderstood in the 21st century—in fact, even...