Free Republic

Tapping on the Twitter icon recently, as I have done for a dozen years, I found a notice from the company, under its new name, telling me that I had been permanently banned, that my account was closed and that I would never be allowed to open another.“After careful review,” it read, “we determined your account broke the X Rules.”No specifics, no citation, no offending tweet. Just, you’re gone. I’ve never been warned, put on probation or otherwise censured or chastised by the company. All I’ve ever heard from Twitter were entreaties – which I declined – to monetize my...

I refuse to do business with any enterprise that mandates the covid vaccine for its employees.I refuse to be part of any sort of coercive scheme that holds a family’s livelihood hostage in order to take away a worker’s right to make her own healthcare decisions.I won’t be partner to that.And I don’t trust that a business which so disrespects its employees is going to have any respect for its customers.So I’m keeping my money and my patronage where they respect human dignity and freedom, and where they respect their employees’ right to decide what to or what not to...

Of course the news media is biased. It always has been, and it always will be. To say otherwise is to deny the entire history of American journalism. Widespread press animus toward Donald Trump -- before the election and after -- is undeniable. It is palpable. The media hates Trump, Republicans, conservatives and what they believe in. It is the defining theme of the contemporary American news business. But it is also neither new nor surprising. From the earliest days of this Republic, and through every era of its history, the news of the day has been driven by a...

This morning, Senator Chuck Schumer is going to call my radio show and talk about taxes and infrastructure and the cleanup of a couple of recent storms. He is going to talk and I am going to listen. Part of me wishes it was the other way around. Because I’ve got something I want to say to Chuck Schumer. Not about our politics, where we have big disagreements. But about his conduct as Senate minority leader, where I wish we could find some common ground. First, here’s some background. I am a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who lives in arguably the most...

The challenge of racial division in America today is not just that there are forces pushing us apart, but that we've lost the things that held us together. Relations between black people and white people are probably at their worst in anyone's lifetime, with most of those divisions exacerbated dramatically in the last handful of years. The reasons for that have more to do with the manipulation of racial animosity than the reality of the racial situation. Politicians and activists, each standing to benefit by pitting people against one another, have whipped up an internal and seemingly unresolvable conflict between...

He was wrong on the theology. But he’s not running for pastor in chief. He’s running for commander in chief. And if you’re eight months away from possibly swearing in as president, maybe you weigh and calculate your answers in a way not obvious to the rest of us. I’m talking about Donald Trump and the answer to a question I asked him last week. In the run up to the New York presidential primary, he called in to WSYR radio in Syracuse and I got to speak to him for a few minutes. I asked him several things over...

Everything changed on American college campuses yesterday. A chill wind blew through every president and chancellor’s office. A reign of terror commenced. With the announcement that the chancellor and president of the University of Missouri system had been forced out of office, a new national paradigm of collegiate power was established. Its impact on an already tottering system of higher education is uncertain but frightening. What’s the background: Black students, fueled by the professional protesting at Ferguson, felt slighted. They cited an incident in which the student-body president claimed he was called a racial slur, a swastika was drawn in...

On Tuesday, at the voting booth, America took a hard turn in the Republican direction. In race after race and state after state, the big winners at the ballot box were Republican candidates and Republican principles. I know why. It’s because the Democrat brand sucks. It’s because Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and any number of their hangers on have turned their party into something hostile to the beliefs and lives of an increasing number of Americans. Let me give you some examples. The Democrat Party is the party of people who hate the cops. If you think cops are...

He waited for the cameraman to turn back. He wanted the audience to see her die, and the cameraman had panned to the right, to show the resort, so he lowered the gun and waited for him to turn back. Then he opened fire. Some fat loser named Vester who wanted to kill some white people and settle some scores and make a name for himself. He was “Bryce” on TV. And he was Bryce on Twitter as he posted the video of himself gunning down three innocent people, unloading his Glock into them and America's consciousness. Camera in the...

In Missouri yesterday, the governor put the National Guard on alert. He and his state and much of the county are fearing the worst. As early as today, a grand jury could come back in Ferguson after months of deliberation in the matter of a white police officer who shot and killed a black teen-ager. The National Guard and the region’s police agencies are on standby because of the expectation that the jury will find no probable cause to charge the officer with a crime. That decision, many fear, could spark race riots in Missouri and elsewhere. Earlier, upset in...

I know what domestic violence looks like. Hell, I know what it tastes like. It’s the salty taste of blood after you get popped in the mouth. The odd aroma of iron as it dries on your lips. The swirling dizziness when you bounce off a wall or take a swat to the head. The breathless, convulsing, burning sting as you dance across the room or writhe on the floor while the belt lashes you. The belt or the Hot Wheels track or the wooden spoon. Or the switch or the leather strop. It is the thundering curses downstairs at...

It doesn’t matter who’s killed. It only matters who does the killing. That’s an unavoidable conclusion as you look at the current upset over the shooting of an 18-year-old African-American man in Ferguson, Missouri. Yes, this man’s death is tragic. What occurred, we don’t yet know. But no matter what happened, he is dead and his young life’s potential is lost. But, in the context of violent crime in America and the state of Missouri, his death is one of many. And yet the reaction to it is wholly different from the others. Being honest about that difference, and understanding...

Here’s what you do about the kids coming across the border. You put them on a plane, fly them back to their own countries, and turn them over to their own governments. And you make sure there are plenty of TV cameras to record the event. You make sure the whole world knows that the welcome mat is at the front door, and anybody sneaking in the back door is going to be deported immediately. Show the world that we are not the hemisphere’s EBT card. That’s what common sense says. But we don’t live in a common-sense world. We...

Being Christian in America increasingly means something very different from what it has meant previously in our nation’s history. As the culture and its values change, so too does the position once held by the teachings of traditional, Bible-based Christianity. Simply put, the Christian values once applauded by this society are increasingly being attacked by this society, and that growing antagonism extends not just to the values, but to the people who ascribe to them. Bible-based Christians should be aware of that attitudinal shift, and of the adversity and persecution which will accompany it. American society and traditional Christianity have...

It’s not a matter of color, it’s a matter of culture. In 2042 – when the Census Bureau says white people will fall below 50 percent of the population – it’s not race that will determine how things go, it will be behavior. Whether this milestone ushers in a new era of American glory – or whether it kills the Republic as we know it – will be determined by the personal conduct of the Americans of that day. It doesn’t matter what color the Americans of 2042 are, it only matters that they retain enough traditional American culture to...

Bradley Manning is going to Leavenworth. He deserves it. But he doesn’t deserve to go alone. The largest American intelligence breach since Benedict Arnold is being placed on the back of a private first class. That proves that crap rolls downhill, and that the brass knows how to cover its ass. You know the story. A she-male recruit ends up with a top-secret clearance and downloads every secret we’ve got onto a thumb drive which he gives to the piece of crap who heads that America-hating group Wikileaks. Wham, bam, we’re screwed. People died because of it, terrorists were empowered...

For more than 200 years, the United States was a Christian nation. And then right was wrong, down was up, evil was good, and the vote was 5-to-4. Our judicial masters spoke and the gleeful reporters shoved microphones in the faces of people wearing rainbow t-shirts. Something God placed in the heavens as a sign of his love, and something man put on a flag to tell God to go screw himself. The course has been set to make gay marriage the law of the land, the first giant step has been taken, and yesterday’s vice has become today’s virtue....

The George Zimmerman trial begins today. It is expected to last from four to six weeks. That means the riots should be at the beginning of August. George Zimmerman is the guy who killed Trayvon Martin. He shot him to death. Zimmerman was an over-zealous Neighborhood Watch volunteer and Trayvon was a teen-aged black kid. Trayvon was walking back from the store, Zimmerman was watching a guy with low-slung pants. One followed the other and then one confronted the other and when the head pounding and the trigger pulling were done, Trayvon was dead. Zimmerman says Trayvon overpowered him and...

The American family is dead. It doesn’t know it yet, but like a person with an undiagnosed but metastatic malignancy, its days are numbered. It is on its last legs, stumbling through in an ever-weaker and less-vital state, about to fall face forward into oblivion. Marx got his wish. In the “Communist Manifesto,” he said that the bourgeois family was an institution based on private gain, on capital, and that for the proletariat to rise, the bourgeois family must be destroyed. Family, as he saw it, was an institution for the preservation of wealth and comfort, that it was selfishness...

Benghazi is not like Watergate. It’s worse. But it won’t have the same end. In Benghazi, American military specialists, hurrying to relieve other Americans under fire, were twice ordered not to. In Benghazi itself, they ignored the order and saved dozens. In Tripoli, they had to obey, and two brave former SEALS died as a result. Let me repeat. American men at arms, ready and eager to go to the aid of their countrymen, were, in two separate incidents, ordered to stand down. Two separate conscious decisions were made to let Americans die. The fundamental ethic of the American armed...