Free Republic

Mr. President, you asked in your press conference last week, “What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they’re for.”Republicans realize freedom is in jeopardy, for the self-anointed ruling class that bankrolls the Democratic Party to cloak their own greed does not understand liberty. These usurpers pocket the hard-earned money of citizens or print it, causing inflation, the most regressive of taxes. The cost of basic goods ─ food, gas and shelter ─ constitute the greatest proportion of wages for working Americans who do not have letters after their names.Republicans hold these truths: Liberty, as promised...

The Washington City Council passed a resolution “regarding rights and liberty” Wednesday, making the council’s stance against mask and vaccination mandates official. Introduced by Councilwoman Kim Casperson, the resolution states that the City Council “supports individual choice in health care decisions” and that “as it pertains to the health decisions of Washington City’s citizens, employees, or officers, the Washington City Council does not support mask or vaccination mandates.” According to the language of the resolution, it is to serve as a clarifying statement that the council is committed to “liberty and individual rights.” Washington City Manager Jeremy Redd said this...

Philosopher Robert Bellah once posited that modern Western human beings identify themselves in a peculiar way: as emotional cores, surrounded by baser material. According to Bellah, we are expressive individualists -- meaning that "each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized." This mode of self-definition wars with older, more traditional modes, which suggest that our identities lie in how we interact with the world and society around us. Expressive individualism, by contrast, suggests that we are not truly ourselves unless the world confirms all of our...

Another tennis controversy emerges in Australia and this has nothing to do with the pandemic.It has been a common expression when watching the news out of Australia that the country has become a lost cause when it comes to personal freedoms. The government in panic mode, or eyeing an opportunity at more oppression, has put on a stunning display of oppression in the name of public safety. Videos of people being arrested over masks are just the start; there have been manhunts for vaccine scofflaws and internment camps set up for those denying the chance to get vaccinated.This extended to...

LIBERTY RANT CAUTION - LONG RANT FOLLOWS These people have no concept of the meaning of the words freedom, liberty or individualism. “Give me liberty, or give me death.” - Patrick Henry “Only the educated are free.” - Epictetus I am a vegan - therefore you must be a vegan. I wear a mask, but I am not protected unless you also wear a mask. I am vaccinated, but I am not protected unless you also are vaccinated. “Victor Davis Hanson: Restoring the Idea of Liberty in America” - https://youtu.be/WlajjTc3blA “There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for...

Placer County’s Board of Supervisors are thrilled that Hillsdale College, a small, ultra-conservative Christian university, plans to build a campus on farmland west of Roseville. The problem is that Hillsdale is an extremist institution, perpetuating alternative facts and harmful conspiracy theories. Placer County’s agreement with Hillsdale signals a deeper conflict in our county – that of local elected officials not only entertaining fringe beliefs but creating a space where young people can be radicalized against democracy. Instead of promoting knowledge and understanding in the best traditions of higher education, Hillsdale’s plans for Placer threatens more political and cultural conflict in...

Americans' freedoms have been gradually eroded over the last 20 years, a new study has found, with the COVID-19 pandemic giving local officials more power over everyday life. A new study by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank that promotes individual liberty, limited government and free markets, has assessed each of the 50 states under 23 different categories and produced an overall ranking. The most and least free states are unchanged - New York being the least free, followed by Hawaii and California, and New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada being the most free.

resident Joe Biden delivered another one of those COVID-19 speeches Thursday morning. It was the languid Joe today, more reminiscent of a Franklin Roosevelt fireside chat than the absurdly torrid speech he delivered in Atlanta this week that would have made the always bombastic Louisiana Gov. Huey Long appears placid. Biden may think he’s doing an excellent job at playing the good cop, bad cop routine, but in both roles he not only appears unhinged, but always struggling to grasp the issue at hand. Thursday was no exception. Biden gently chided the unvaccinated whom he continues to blame for the...

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. In 2021, political, social, and cultural trends that had been developing for decades reached a level of surreal absurdity. Under the stress of the pandemic crisis, we witnessed our alleged “cognitive elites” in government, schools, popular culture, and media saying and doing things that an illiterate peasant in the 18th century would consider the words and deeds of a lunatic. In every dimension of our existence, gross violations of logic and common sense were shamelessly indulged, the lies never acknowledged even when exposed. The presidency of Donald...

Over the centuries, all of the kingdoms and empires of the world have failed. And many for similar reasons. America—whether by accident or design—was poised to avoid that fate. But to benefit themselves, today’s race-baiting, un-American liberal elites have undone our shining city on a hill. Headlines about race dominate the mainstream news cycle, as the left-wing media insists on dividing us into racial categories. Liberal elites are dragging us into ruin, but it’s not too late to reverse the tide. Across history and empires, a society's cultural, economic, and political elites consolidate power, inevitably leading to more and more...

Under the pretext of public health, the soul of what is known as the Free West has left most Western countries. Looking at the government overreach and abuses of power in virtually every other Western nation, one can only conclude that America truly is the last free man standing. Here is a rundown of the suppression of liberty in major Western countries. CANADA Let's start with our neighbor to the north. Canada is one of the least free countries in the Western world. In some ways it is the least free. In every area of life, including freedom of speech,...

Facebook has "permanently disabled" the ads account of a conservative children's book publisher, claiming that Heroes of Liberty – which has published books about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, former President Ronald Reagan and author Thomas Sowell – violated the company's rules against "Low Quality or Disruptive Content." Facebook originally locked the ads account on Dec. 23, and after Heroes of Liberty appealed the ruling, the company permanently disabled the account. "The question is: is a children's biography of Ronald Reagan no longer permissible on Facebook? We don’t know. But apparently promoting one may well kill a business," Heroes...

We are witnessing history being repeated.Between September 1935 and the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 more than 120 laws, decrees and regulations, imposing over 400 legal restrictions, were enacted by the Third Reich on the justification of protecting the health of the German people. During the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship, from 1933 until the outbreak of war in 1939, Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects of their public and private lives. Many of these were national laws but state, regional, and municipal officials, acting on their...

Clark County Today Administrator Heidi Wetzler shares clinical psychology professor Mattias Desmet’s theory about the societal conditions under which a population ends up willingly sacrificing their freedom.

This time of year, dear readers, is when us writers curate lists. Some are about the best movies, top kitchen appliances or favorite new songs of 2021. This year, I'd like to recommend three books to read after the tumultuous events of 2021. My first is a new and important book by law professors Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick: "The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and before it, no individuals of African descent -- including slaves and free persons -- could become U.S. citizens. While the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, it didn't...

LONDON (AP) — Nations across Europe are moving to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, triggering calls for protests from Paris to Barcelona. As case numbers escalated, alarmed ministers in France, Cyprus and Austria tightened travel restrictions. Paris canceled its New Year’s Eve fireworks. Denmark closed theaters, concert halls, amusement parks and museums. Ireland imposed an 8 p.m. curfew on pubs and bars and limited attendance at indoor and outdoor events. But the moves are causing anger. Crowds protesting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s latest coronavirus restrictions flooded...

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden downplayed concerns that many Americans have about his vaccine mandates going too far and encroaching on their individual freedoms. “Your vaccine mandates have suffered some setbacks in court recently,” WHIOTV 7 reporter John Bedell said. “Federal judges have halted three of those COVID vaccine mandates.” “Are you going to back down or are you going to continue to fight those in court?” Bedell asked. “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated. That’s the problem,” Biden said. “Everybody talks about freedom about not to have a shot or have a test....

Here are two questions pertinent to our times: (1) How would you reduce the greatest free republic in history to despotism in a short time? and (2) How would you stop that from happening? The answer to the first question has been provided in these last two disastrous years. The answer to the second has begun to emerge in recent months. Both are worthy of study. Reducing a Great Republic to Despotism To establish despotism in a nation like ours, you might begin, if you were smart, by building a bureaucracy of great complexity that commands a large percentage of...

The owner of a wine and beer bar who openly flouted Gov. Tim Walz's executive orders to shut down last winter during the COVID-19 pandemic was found guilty of six criminal misdemeanor counts Thursday by a Freeborn County jury. A jury of three women and three men took only an hour of deliberation to convict Lisa Hanson, the 57-year-old bar owner, after a three-day trial punctuated by Hanson's repeated attempts to argue that Walz's orders were unconstitutional. Judge Joseph Bueltel followed the reading of the verdict with a scathing denunciation of Hanson's behavior, explaining why the governor's orders were legal....

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The owner of a bar in Albert Lea was found guilty Thursday of six criminal misdemeanor charges and sentenced to 90 days in jail for defying Gov. Tim Walz’s executive orders to close her business last winter. The jury found Lisa Hanson, 57, guilty after deliberating for an hour, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. Prosecutors had asked that Hanson be fined $500 and jailed for several days, but Judge Joseph Bueltel gave her a 90-day jail sentence and a $1,000 fine, saying he wanted to send a message to people who violate executive orders. “You wanted to make...