Free Republic

What if there were an environmental catastrophe and nobody came? Would it tell us anything about the environmental movement that it can make headline news out of a warm day in April – yet when there is no political gain to be had, it can ignore the near extinction of three major species? I believe it would. Let’s talk about the biggest environmental disaster you’ve never heard of: the wholesale slaughter of India’s entire vulture population. In just over a decade, the combined population of India’s three species of vultures has plummeted from around 30 million to just 10,000 today...

Are you an angry anti-American Marxist displaced by the fall of communism and the end of the cold war?  Are you a depressed apocalyptic turtleneck wearer in need of an atheist Armageddon to tout?  Are you tired of speaking for the proletariat only to have them tell you to “shove it?”Well then, the answer to your problems is here!  In a remarkable coincidence, this Sunday is not only Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, it’s also Earth Day!  And the new “Green” movement is accepting all the debris of Marxism’s collapse NO QUESTIONS ASKED!  Enlist now and receive a free “Che Speaks for...

May 1 is going to be “A Day Without Illegal Aliens.” This is supposed to frighten you. Why? Because you are an American -- weak, pampered, spoiled and allegedly incapable of taking care of yourself. You need the illegal alien servant class just to survive. Those who want amnesty for immigration criminals -- illegal aliens, pandering politicians, ethnic grievance agitators and the politically correct media -- have swallowed their own propaganda and believe that the American economy is totally dependent for its greatness on unskilled illegal labor and the corrupt underground economy it fosters. So on May 1, the ridiculous,...

I have a friend who is fond of the saying, “Analogy is the lowest form of reason.”Perhaps -- but conspiracy theory is not far behind. There is something really emotionally satisfying about the idea that bad things are all part of a plot and you know who the plotters are. To start with it’s simple. There’s no need to study macroeconomics or history or anything else with a lot of math or footnotes involved. Your answer is as understandable as the last episode of “Survivor.”And like “Survivor,” it’s excellent theater. Every good story has a bad guy, and fighting bad...

High energy costs are a mystery. It seems like no matter how much we prohibit domestic energy production, energy prices just keep going up -- and we just keep getting more dependent on foreign sources. There is no law of economics that can explain it, no hypothetical relationship between supply and demand that could predict price. Bill O’Reilly must be right. High prices must be the result of a secret plot by big oil, or perhaps the freemasons. Well, that’s one explanation. Or we could consider a radical alternative: energy prices are high because Americans object to every possible source...

For 10 nights now, France has burned and spun.  The fire has been provided by rioters, but the spin has been provided by the French government and the mainstream media, both in Europe and in North America.  At first the riots were ignored, then portrayed as typical French-style protest, then as understandable acts of anger by an underclass made desperate by poverty, and finally they are being reluctantly described for what they are: race riots.Gangs of Arab and African Muslim men, the children and grandchildren of immigrants accepted into France following the collapse of her African empire, are conducting an...

One of the many negative consequences of America’s defeat in The Vietnam War has been the uncontrolled proliferation of Vietnams since then. Nicaragua threatened to become another Vietnam. Lebanon nearly became another Vietnam. Had Grenada been only slightly larger than a manhole cover and lasted one more hour, it would have become a Caribbean-Style Vietnam. The invasion of Panama was rapidly degenerating into a Narco-Vietnam, right up until we won. Likewise, the First Gulf War was certainly developing into another Vietnam, but then sadly, it ended quickly and with few casualties. For people of a certain age or political stripe,...

Having watched the news for the past week, I now believe that Hurricane Katrina represents a colossal failure of the Federal Government. At first, I thought that maybe local government, through the police and fire departments (a.k.a. “first responders”), had the immediate role in saving people, but I was wrong. The way the mainstream media has hammered away on me with constant wailing repetition has really been persuasive. If having small children has taught me anything, it’s that authoritative speech is marked by great volume and numbing reiteration. So yes, Mama Media, it’s all about a Federal failure. But what,...

New Orleans Didn’t Just Go Nuts -- It’s Been Nuts by Mac Johnson Posted Sep 6, 2005 Where to even begin in being one more idiot talking about Hurricane Katrina? I hate the subject. It should be a news item and a humanitarian cause --a huge recovery and reconstruction effort joined in by all. It should not be a political issue fit for “commentary.” But the Hurricane tore at more than just the weaknesses in New Orleans’ inadequate levees. The shortcomings of the levee system were known to all who ever lived on the Gulf Coast, and in the end,...

Where to even begin in being one more idiot talking about Hurricane Katrina? I hate the subject. It should be a news item and a humanitarian cause --a huge recovery and reconstruction effort joined in by all. It should not a political issue fit for “commentary.” But the Hurricane tore at more than just the weaknesses in New Orleans’ inadequate levees. The shortcomings of the levee system were known to all who ever lived on the Gulf Coast, and in the end, all the levees really did was encourage expanded development in a huge geologic bowl sitting between a large...