Free Republic

In the ultimate manifestation of extreme ‘cancel’ culture meets the domino effect, Americans have decided to cancel seemingly everything, everywhere, because of the coronavirus epidemic. My gut (and hope) says this is all cartoonishly overblown and we’ll look back on some of these extreme measures and laugh, but the rest of the world seems to have decided that it’s the next bubonic plague, or something, and is taking action accordingly. The purported logic is to slow the virus’ spread so medical facilities aren’t overwhelmed, and there is soundness to it. Even with a more than slight percentage chance of older...

Dr. Brian Monahan, attending physician of Congress, told a closed meeting of Senate staffers this week that 70 million to 150 million Americans -- a third of the nation -- could contract the coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci testified that the mortality rate for COVID-19 will likely run near 1%. Translation: Between 750,000 and 1.1 million Americans may die of this disease before it runs its course. The latter figure is equal to all the U.S. dead in World War II and on both sides in the Civil War. Chancellor Angela Merkel warns that 70% of Germany's population -- 58 million...

Peace is better than war. And, if we want our world to be at peace, we need to support the peace makers and to understand those who are different from us rather than demonise them. For this reason, the two politicians I most admire in American politics right now are the two peace candidates for president: POTUS and Tulsi Gabbard. I don’t need to educate Free Republic readers about why I love The Donald. You already know the reasons for saying that he is an outstanding president who thoroughly deserves reelection. But in the case of Gabbard, these are the...

George Soros, the financier and philanthropist, has pledged $1bn to support a global network of higher education to train students in civic engagement in response to resurgent nationalism around the world. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Soros lambasted rising populism internationally and picked out US president Donald Trump as well as China’s Xi Jinping, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi — and Brexit. “I believe that as a long-term strategy our best hope lies in access to quality education, specifically an education that reinforces the autonomy of the individual by cultivating critical thinking and emphasising...

Dozens of masked men in New Delhi stormed one of India’s most prestigious universities on Sunday, attacking students and professors with rods and bricks, vandalizing dormitories and injuring at least 42 people, some of them seriously, officials said. Some students accused the police of complicity, and videos posted on social media appeared to show officers standing by as students were beaten in front of them. SNIP In recent weeks, as protests swelled over a contentious citizenship law that many Indians see as discriminatory against the country’s 200 million Muslim minority, there were at least two similar attacks at other colleges....

Kwanzaa, celebrated exclusively by white liberals, is a fake holiday invented in 1966 by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Karenga -- aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves, the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural gibberish that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga's United Slaves. In what was ultimately a foolish gambit, during the madness of the '60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better. (It's the same function MSNBC serves...

At first glance, the new nationalism of conservatives will seem benign and even uncontroversial. In his book “The Case for Nationalism,” Rich Lowry defines nationalism as flowing from a people’s “natural devotion to their home and to their country.” Yoram Hazony, in his book “The Virtue of Nationalism,” also has a rather anodyne definition of nationalism. It means “that the world is governed best when nations agree to cultivate their own traditions, free from interference by other nations.” There is nothing particularly controversial at all about these statements. Defined in these terms, it sounds like little more than simply defending...

A feeling of “extreme nationalism” has gripped the United States, according to former CBS News anchor Dan Rather. “We have our differences and President Trump has found it to his … advantage to exploit those differences,” Rather said during an interview Thursday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe while promoting his new book. Rather continued: We’re in danger of sliding from extreme nationalism into tribalism. In our country, which is a new experiment in history — first time in history any people tried to be free… we’re constantly trying to perfect it. It depends on [us] as a people, as a...

The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed a law last year declaring Israel “the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious, and historical right to self-determination.” One might suppose that this “Basic Law” (akin to a constitutional amendment) would be as contentious as the Vatican proclaiming itself Catholic. To the contrary. Although the “nation-state law” changed no policies and affirmed a relationship between Jews and Israel that had been manifest since the country’s founding in 1948, the legislation was exceptionally controversial. One of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main political opponents, opposition leader Tzipi Livni, charged...

James Reardon Jr., 20, has been charged with telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing and is being held in the Mahoning County Jail on $250,000 bond with a court hearing planned for Monday morning. On Friday, the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force raided Reardon’s house and seized a cache of weapons and ammunition, including dozens of round of ammo, multiple semi-automatic weapons, a gas mask and bulletproof armor. snip Police initially became aware of Reardon on July 11 when he posted a video on Instagram of a man shooting a semi-automatic rifle with sirens and screams in the background. He tagged...

In interview, pope outlines Amazon synod, warns against nationalism Pope Francis greets Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican April 17, 2019. In a new interview on the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, Pope Francis praised the increased awareness and efforts among young people to seek action on climate change. VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon is an “urgent” gathering, not of scientists and politicians, but for the church whose main focus in discussions will be evangelization, Pope Francis said in a new...

The Brexit vote recalls a prescient editorial from Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal Christianity & Crisis (a model for this magazine!) in January 1946 warning that “the movement toward centralized authority on a world scale contains a threat of world tyranny, particularly if the authority within the world is conceived merely in terms of police power in world government.” In the aftermath of WWII’s murderous horrors, this editorial supported the emerging United Nations and some abridgments of national sovereignty. Though perhaps excessive and overly optimistic, his article was at least still aware of the accompanying dangers to liberty and self-government. Increasing numbers...

Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- ‘tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Donald Trump is a nationalist who supports all things American, and has admitted as much. What he is not is a white nationalist -- a detail that, like a decimal point, seems minor on the surface yet really is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. Yet Democrats and the hard left continue to play with lightning, incessantly labeling Trump a white nationalist despite knowing how such language...

Students at Georgetown University deemed a quote from Barack Obama to be racist because they thought it was said by Donald Trump. Campus Reform reporter Cabot Phillips went to Georgetown University and asked students how they felt about the quote, which they near universally condemned. The quote was from Obama’s 2014 address about immigration. He had said, “we are a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable, especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why over the past six years deportations of criminals are up 80 percent, and that’s...

he return of nationalism has created a much-discussed “crisis of conservatism” that may be unprecedented since modern Anglo-American conservatism was formulated by Russell Kirk, William Buckley, and their colleagues in the 1950s. At the heart of this crisis is a question: Is the new American and British nationalism a hostile usurper that has arrived on the scene to displace political conservatism? Or is nationalism an essential, if neglected, part of the Anglo-American conservative tradition at its best? The conference on “National Conservatism” will bring together public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism...

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,...

“Europe is for Europeans” With too many Muslim migrants, “the continent could become ‘Muslim’ or ‘African.'”“Only a ‘limited number’ of migrants should be permitted to reside in Europe” According to globalist labels, these are the “racist“, “Islamophobic“, “intolerant“, “EU democracy-threatening“, “far right“, “Nazi” words of populists like Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini right? Throw in Donald Trump too. Except, that they are not the words of “populists” who have been logically and responsibly aiming to protect their citizenry and democratic heritage, but are constantly attacked and disparaged, even by the Pope–the blind guide sitting comfortably, wealthy and...

In order to make arguments for nationalism, we have to define it. The first definition in Merriam-Webster is "loyalty and devotion to a nation." But in a second paragraph, it adds, "especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups." Let's be clear: If the second paragraph is the only definition of nationalism, nationalism is always a bad thing. Furthermore, I acknowledge that this definition is what some people have in mind when they call themselves...

Despite the U.S. declaring an “Open Door Policy” in support of China’s sovereignty, U.S. Marines on May 31, 1900 invaded China to help defeat the Boxer Rebellion. With imperial Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Japan, and Russia trying to carve China into colonies, Secretary of State John Hay in the fall of 1899 declared the United States would honor an “Open Door Policy” that respected Chinese territorial and administrative integrity and allowed equal trading privileges for all nations. Nineteenth-century imperialists had forced China’s ruling Qing Dynasty to accept foreign dominance over much of China’s economic affairs. Two Opium Wars with...

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has pledged to unite Europe’s far-right into an international alliance of populists, and the European Parliamentary elections will be the first test of whether his strategy is bearing fruit. Leading political scientist Ivan Krastev has argued that Bannon’s form of populism is “likely to be the major alternative to liberalism in the coming decades.”