Free Republic

Before There Were “Isms” There Were Traditions There Were Nations And There Was God by Baruch Pletner - June 29, 2019 The only way forward is to go back. Back to our families, our communities, our nation, and our houses of worship. Our opinion page has been critical of President Trump’s policy towards Iran and America’s love affair with capitalism to the point of placing that economic system, which bears a name given to it by none other than Karl Marx, on a pedestal reserved for the Founding Fathers of the Republic. There is, however, one thing that Trump understands,...

This past year of presidential jockeying is a tableau painted by an electorate feeling so violated that it has cried out for a champion. The desperation encouraged statesmen and women to enter the contest, but was also an invitation to anyone with a penchant for publicity and power. Motivation behind both the call and some who responded to it should be cause for concern, and how we arrived at this point in history is the question that requires hard answers. Years of reversing our educational system from admiring America’s founding to disparaging it, has reaped a harvest of younger voters...

It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression. It’s taken socialism half that time to come back from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In New York City, avowed socialist Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that his goal is to take “dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities” — the gap between rich and poor. In Seattle, newly elected socialist city Councilmember Kshama Sawant addressed supporters, explaining, “I wear the badge of socialist with honor.” To great acclaim from the left, columnist Jesse Myerson of Rolling Stone put out a column telling millennials...

"China Is Communist in Name Only." Wrong. If Vladimir Lenin were reincarnated in 21st-century Beijing and managed to avert his eyes from the city's glittering skyscrapers and conspicuous consumption, he would instantly recognize in the ruling Chinese Communist Party a replica of the system he designed nearly a century ago for the victors of the Bolshevik Revolution. One need only look at the party's structure to see how communist -- and Leninist -- China's political system remains. ...[F]or all their liberalization of the economy, Chinese leaders have been careful to keep control of the commanding heights of politics through the...

Watch "Make Mine Freedom" {1948}

So many wrong conclusions have been drawn in the free-speech debate as it relates to Don Imus and the racial hustlers known as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Imus had every right to call the Rutgers women's basketball players "nappy-headed hos," just as the CBS brass had every right to first suspend the crank and then fire him after advertisers started pulling out and public opinion reached a critical mass. Jackson and Sharpton, of course, say all kinds of racially incendiary things and seemingly are granted a free pass. The difference is that Jackson and Sharpton answer to no one...

Recently a very dangerous notion has been making the rounds among conservatives, a notion which should be put to rest immediately lest it metastasize into a dangerous malignancy. Heady with victory, the American conservative movement has been theorizing that liberalism and the left lie mortally wounded, and that a future of freedom and prosperity is assured. I would like to paraphrase Mark Twain and state unequivocally that the death of the left has been greatly exaggerated. If government can be compared to Leviathan, then the twin faces of liberalism and leftism should properly be compared to the Hydra, a monster...