Free Republic

“Liberalism was never about freedom, but nurtured a profound desire to change humanity above all other aspects. This rendered it a willing ally of tyrants promising to do the dirty work of such a project.” — John Waters on Substack An anxious silence falls over the land this Memorial Day as we discern increasingly that those we put in charge of this shape-shifting thing called the public interest are running out of trips to lay on the people. Something grotesque is revealing itself: a bankruptcy not just of money but of national purpose, meaning, and legitimacy. You realize this day,...

A nation of leftists, not laws. The University of California regents, saying they support an equitable education for all, unanimously agreed Thursday to find a pathway to enact a bold policy to hire students who lack legal status and work permits.Bold, that is to say boldly illegal.The Immigration Reform and Control Act is very clear on the matter.§ 1324a. Unlawful employment of aliens(1) In general It is unlawful for a person or other entity— (A) to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alienWhich...

This should be the perfect country. And yet it's a total basket case. Warning: Before reading this, one should play this tango. It will set the mood. Argentina is on the verge of economic collapse again...for the umpteenth time. How does Argentina do it? I mean, for quite some time, I have been utterly amazed at how Argentina manages to fall on its face. And it has done so for over a century. On paper, Argentina should be the richest, most productive nation on the planet. – 45 million people in a large country, roughly half the size of the...

From Nashville to San Bernardino, ignoring victims and excusing terrorists. “Our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now.” That was Biden White House press secretary Karine Saint-Pierre, several days after Audrey Hale murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, nine years old and the daughter of Covenant Presbyterian pastor Chad Scruggs. By any standard, this mass murder, committed in the run-up to “Trans Vengeance Day,” was an act of terrorism. Biden press secretary Karine Saint-Pierre did not name or condemn Audrey...

Leftist policies start out seemingly reasonable and compassionate before they become totally monstrous. Initially, there are sympathetic test cases, they started out with arguing that raped 12-year-olds should be able to get an abortion, and then before you know, it’s partial-birth abortion for bored celebrities. Euthanasia was supposed to help those with fatal illnesses suffering a great deal of pain. And then, in typical fashion, it morphed into killing teenagers and the depressed. Where to in the Great North? How about killing the homeless and the poor? Half of Canadians would agree to allow adults in Canada to seek medical...

At peak woke, our reign of terror is beginning to lose momentum because its continuation would destroy all the work of 247 years of American progress and sacrifice. The decade-long French Revolution that broke out in 1789 soon devolved into far more than removing the monarchy, as it became antithetical to the earlier American precedent. American notions of liberty and freedom were seen as far too narrow, given the state, if only all-powerful and all-wise, could mandate “equality” and force “fraternity” among its subjects. Each cycle of French revolutionary fervor soon became more radicalized and cannibalistic—until it reached its logical...

The Woke U.S. Army has lost its grip on reality. How many rank and file still have confidence in their leadership? What's the cost of losing your grip on reality? Or is there no difference between relying on the Wokish alternative of confused pronouns and cross dressers rather than old-fashioned sweat and intellect? Back in the day, every reporter knew immediately which editors didn’t have a clue about how to be a journalist. Thankfully, the least competent were eventually assigned inconsequential duties or quit and went into PR. But as long as incompetents remained in the newsroom, reporters lost whatever...

I've always wondered why liberals would support legislation that obviously harms them. Tax increases, open borders, defunding the police, weakness abroad, eliminating gas-powered cars — these measures harm most people, including liberals, but as California shows, they continue to garner majority support from the liberal base. There was a time when the cardinal rule of politics was never to admit to supporting a tax increase. Higher taxes, even on "the rich," hurt everyone because they are passed along from the rich to the less affluent. The electorate understood this, and they punished candidates like George H.W. Bush, who lost to...

How odd that those on the Left who in the past decried “American imperialism” are now proving the greatest imperialists of all. The old cultural imperialism was supposedly greedy corporatism like Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Starbucks sprouting up worldwide to supplant local competitors. But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped....

Who knew? Progressive economists are now attacking economics. According to Burton Abrams "progressives in the Democrat Party, backed… by left-wing sociologists and political scientists": deny basic economic principles and theory. They deny that incentives matter, that markets work better than government dictates, that scarcity and opportunity costs exist, that the laws of supply and demand are operative, that benefit-cost analyses have merit, and that economic efficiency makes consumers and producers better off. Okay, fine. So how do progressive experience things? They rely heavily on the vaguely defined concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In other words, politics. In another proof...

A TikTok user named Paulina was recently terrorized beyond imagining while at the Rainbow Oaks Country Market, in Fallbrook, California. No, she wasn’t shot at by an illegal alien with an illegal gun. Nor was she beaten by screaming men claiming to be women. This was even worse than being misgendered. The National Anthem played on the restaurant’s television and sound system, and diners stopped eating, stood up, and placed their hands over their hearts. For Paulina, this triggered fear and, on her part, racism. That’s depressing. Even more depressing is that the most popular commenters shared her fear, outrage,...

America is the story of freedom. It was settled by those determined to rid themselves of Old World shackles and build something entirely new. Its people rejected servitude to a foreign king across the ocean. It fought a bloody civil war as testament to its founding principles that liberty and equality under the law are human rights irrespective of race. It became home to waves of new immigrants through the centuries who crossed great distances and risked tremendous perils — all to flee the tyrannies behind them and reach America's shores. Because no other nation has ever been birthed into...

What will happen when significant numbers of men gradually embrace feminine identities while girls, similarly drugged to suppress their female identities, strive to replace men in traditional masculine occupations? Future historians may look back on 2023 as Peak Trans Women insanity. The highly publicized boycott of Bud Light beer over Anheuser-Busch’s choice to feature the trans “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney may have garnered the most publicity, but it is only a small part of this craze. This prominence is particularly visible in the fashion industry where leading brands such as Chanel, Versace, and Victoria’s Secret now showcase biological men dressed as...

Most conservatives were shocked and surprised when Fox News took the Tucker Carlson program off the air last week. It was watched by 3.2 million mostly affluent viewers each night. It was the seventh most popular program on cable TV. It attracted nearly twice as many viewers as MSNBC and CNN combined. MSNBC had an audience of roughly 1.14 million viewers. CNN only had roughly 473,000. However, Tucker Carlson’s program had been on life support since December 18, 2018. That is when “progressive” Democrats cancelled most of its sponsors. On December 13, 2018, Tucker Carlson did a segment on the...

April 30, 2023/ Francis Menton Readers here frequently express some combination of amazement or sympathy to me about my living in Manhattan. The news is filled with reports of spiking crime in our major cities, most especially in New York. Am I not in constant danger? How do I dare to go outside, particularly at night? It is true that there has been some substantial increase in crime in my area (Greenwich Village), particularly in shoplifting. This increase has followed some recent criminal justice “reforms,” notably limitations on the use of bail requirements to hold accused criminals pending trial. However,...

Conservative Justices on the Supreme Court are under a concerted attack from the left. What they could not accomplish legally they are taking to smearing and libeling in an effort to dismantle the Court. I have been warning about this persecution. One by one the Justices are being targeted for allegations concocted by democrats and their operatives. One can easily recall the invective hurled at Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation but as that failed to prevent Kavanaugh from a seat on the Court the atrocity is being revved up. First it was Clarence Thomas. Led by democrat henchmen, left wing...

They target those stupid enough to believe an obvious grift. Sadly, there are lots of voters who repeatedly make easy marks. According to the American Heritage dictionary, this is the definition of “Stupid”: 1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse. 2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes. 3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless. That applies to a lot of Americans…Democrat voters in general and, in particular, a majority of blacks, college students, and white college-educated women. Notice I said Democrat voters, not Democrat politicians. Democrat politicians may be many things, hypocrites, liars,...

Fonte responds to Allen: “The arguments over Educating for American Democracy and the controversies over the teaching and learning of history and civics in our schools are not academic arguments.” I thank Danielle Allen for her skillful and lively response to my essay on how the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) project represents a textbook case of conservative accommodationism. Professor Allen is the daughter of my friend, the great Bill Allen, who served President Ronald Reagan and continues to serve American education with distinction. Although a progressive, Ms. Allen speaks “Straussian” and has been effective in recruiting some conservative intellectuals...

Those of us on the side of civilizational sanity need all the help we can get in pushing back against the onslaught. Last Friday, I attended the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary Gala, a sprawling and swanky affair featuring many fine presentations, a surprise Dierks Bentley mini-concert for the country music enthusiasts (yours truly among them) and an extravagant post-dinner fireworks show over the Potomac River. But the highlight of the evening, bar none, was former Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s electric keynote address and his (all-too-brief) colloquy on stage afterward with Heritage’s exceptional new president, Kevin Roberts. Carlson’s speech was...

The Left is a cult instigating a movement to destroy traditional mores and culture, and then impose a radically new, perverse morality and order on Americans. If you never watched the brilliant German movie, Downfall, do so. It stars the late Bruno Ganz, whose portrayal of Adolf Hitler during his last days in his Berlin bunker was powerfully chilling. Hitler was a psychopath, whose unshakable certitude and will were central to driving National Socialism’s capture of the German people. Both were also central to the numbing devastation that Hitler’s hubris brought to Germans in the end. Seeing the movie again,...