Free Republic

Through relentless government action and social pressure, America’s operating vocabulary has become Orwellian. Most everyone has heard the meme, “He who controls the agenda controls the meeting.” Acknowledging that we can understand ultimate power would be controlling the words and language everyone uses lest they find socially or professionally ostracized. When our government removes social media posts that differ from government policy or suppresses speech by arbitrarily deeming it hate speech, we begin to look quite like Orwell’s fictional Oceania. But that’s just a start. All kinds of behavior and thought are being restricted, manipulated, or banned through the left’s...

Major AI service providers continue to deploy content moderation algorithms designed to suppress and manipulate viewpoints, actively enforcing censorship under the guise of moderation. From Foreign PsyOps to Domestic Thought Control The censorship and content manipulation we see today did not emerge organically—it was the result of government-directed psychological operations (PsyOps) repurposed for domestic control. What was once used in foreign influence campaigns to destabilize adversarial regimes or control narratives abroad was turned inward—against the American people. The Twitter Files, exposed by investigative journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, provided irrefutable evidence that U.S. government agencies used taxpayer dollars to...

Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Sandra Bullock, Viola Davis, Helen Mirren... Carlos Gascon? Even though one of these things is not like the other, they all have something in common: They've been nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Actress." Look, I couldn't care less about the Oscars, and I'm sure most of you agree. Hollywood has long proven that it is out of touch with reality and out of touch with the rest of the country. But as a woman — an actual biological woman in case we have any confused liberals lurking around — I'm so sick of...

A tough stretch for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., got worse Tuesday when she watched members of her party vote for a bill she attacked at the expense of widespread mockery. Ocasio-Cortez's viral rant against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act wasn't enough to convince Democratic allies Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, both of Texas, to vote against the bill. Cuellar and Gonzalez joined 218 House Republicans who voted for the bill that seeks to prevent federally funded educational institutions from allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls and women's sports. For Ocasio-Cortez, the notion of Democratic congressmen...

SNIP It also amends the Criminal Code to create a new standalone hate crime offence that would allow penalties up to life imprisonment to deter hateful conduct, as well as raise the maximum punishments for hate propaganda offences from five years to life imprisonment for advocating genocide.SNIPHarmful content is defined in the legislation as content that incites violence, that foments hatred, that incites violent extremism or terrorism, is used to bully a child, that sexually victimizes a child, that induces a child to harm themselves, or intimate content communicated without consent.The bill also creates a new Digital Safety Commission, which...

The first- and second-wave feminist movements really just wanted women to have equal footing with men, which was noble, even if we disagree with some of the methods and outcomes. But the late-stage feminism, with its capitulation to the transgender agenda, has literally undone over a century of work on behalf of women. To the point where women are not only second-class citizens to delusional men who pretend they're women, but we can't even be called women anymore. They've had a list of euphemisms for us -- womb owner, egg producer, birthing person -- but now we're literally being redefined...

A far-left climate change group has spent millions of dollars in a bid to help climate activists sound like human beings when interacting with other people. Potential Energy Coalition launched the “Talk Like a Human” campaign, which suggests activists use terms such as “extreme weather” and “overheating” in place of “climate change” and “warming.”Additionally, it promotes positive language like “enjoy” over “sacrifice” when discussing the future impacts of climate actions. The coalition emphasizes localized language, suggesting activists talk about pollution rather than the global scope of climate change.

Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger predicted that late Republican President Ronald Reagan would be backing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election. Kinzinger, among Trump's most outspoken GOP critics and a member of the House January 6 committee while serving in Congress, endorsed Harris during the Democratic National Convention last month despite remaining a Republican. On Tuesday, hours before Trump and Harris were set to face off in their first and possibly only presidential debate, Kinzinger speculated that Republican icon Reagan would have taken a similar stance by supporting Harris over Trump. "Reagan would...

Vice President Kamala Harris has leaned into the prosecutorial experience she once downplayed...And the party has uniformly sought to blame Republicans for an illegal immigration crisis that unfolded on Democrats’ watch.... Harris and other Democrats have gone out of their way in this election to distance themselves from soft-on-crime positions they celebrated... Democratic candidates in congressional races have sunk $24 million into pro-police campaign ads so far this cycle... Republicans have increasingly focused on what they see as the weaponization of the Department of Justice against Democrats’ ideological foes....Still, Democrats have cast Trump as posing the greater threat of weaponizing...

As the back-to-school school season kicks off, the Vermont Department of Health is encouraging school employees and others to refrain from referring to children as a "son" or "daughter" and instead embrace gender-neutral terminology. In a Facebook post Wednesday, the department declared, "The language we use matters." "When talking about family, it's important to use terms that cover the many versions of what family can look like," the department stated. A picture accompanying the Facebook post featured a few examples of what constituted "inclusive language for families." The agency advised the use of the terms "child" or "kid" to refer...

One piece of PBS’s coverage of the last night of the Democratic National Convention unwittingly confirmed media labeling bias on PBS and other “mainstream “outlets. First, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart hailed the Democrat’s vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz for using the supposedly less frightening and more convincing term “gun safety legislation” instead of “gun violence laws” (a term the PBS News Hour also uses). Anchor Geoff Bennett expanded that "language" argument to encompass abortion. Anchor Geoff Bennett, 9:50 p.m. (ET): We have seen Democrats do that on abortion, talking less about abortion rights and more about reproductive freedom. To what...

President Joe Biden, battling a behind-the-scenes campaign led by former speaker Nancy Pelosi to abandon his reelection bid, appears to be getting unexpected support from a former rival—former first lady and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Biden, who famously resents being asked to step aside as the sitting vice president to make way for Clinton's losing 2016 presidential bid, is facing a full-blown revolt among party donors and elected officials in swing states and districts after a catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump. And yet, as his campaign's cash flow begins to dry up, Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President...

Justice Sotomayor’s reaction to the SCOTUS immunity decision reveals a disturbing development in the nation’s ultimate Constitution-interpreting body. “You Americans, you are so naïve,” Joseph Brodsky, a Soviet dissident who was also a Nobel laureate in literature, is supposed to have said to students of his at Columbia sometime in the seventies or the eighties. “You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.” For people who take an idea like this seriously, the twelve hours following the release of the...

With the ideological left’s attempt to erase women, whether through sports, attempting to add “birthing people” in our laws, or denying natural distinctions between men and women, we are grateful Governor Youngkin is doing the opposite. The Governor vetoed a bill (HB 781, D-Herring) this year intended to initiate a task force to evaluate maternal health in Virginia but ridiculously replaced “mothers” with “birthing people.” Last week Governor Youngkin issued Executive Order 32 to reestablish the Task Force on Maternal Health Data and Quality Measures, and he did it without including contraceptive mandates or woke language such as “birthing people”....

24-page internal document calls to replace terms like 'cockpit' with 'flight deck,' use 'they/them' as default pronouns to not assume gender ===================================================================== The Department of the Interior published a guide to “inclusive language,” exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire, that tells bureaucrats to avoid gendered terms like “husband,” “son,” and “daughter,” and even instructs them to use the “they/them” pronouns for individuals rather than assume someone’s gender. The 24-page document, called the U.S. Department of the Interior Inclusive Language Guide and published this month “for official use only,” was published this month and details what terms bureaucrats should use or...

A mom has claimed she was booted off a United Airlines flight with her distressed 16-month-old son over using the wrong pronoun for a flight attendant. Jenna Longoria was expecting to fly to Austin from San Francisco on Wednesday with her mom and son when United stopped them from traveling. She alleges she was denied boarding after an 'accidental' mix-up when addressing a United staff member, who she says refused to accept her apology. The frantic mom also alleged the flight had taken off with her luggage containing her and her mom's medication still on board, leaving at risk of...

15 Times 2024 Was Orwell’s 1984“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.”The novel 1984 is author George Orwell’s cautionary tale of a future totalitarian government that uses mass surveillance to redefine truth and tyrannize citizens. Once a work of fiction, it now reads like a disturbingly accurate picture of the present day. From the left’s rejection of objective truths to the media’s manipulation of language, 2024 is looking increasingly like 1984....

"A cancer organization said that it recognized readers could be offended by the term cervix and explained that the term "front hole" would be more inclusive to men who believe they are women"... ..."The Canadian Cancer Society joins the ranks of cervical cancer charity Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust from the United Kingdom, which deemed the vagina as a "bonus hole" in 2023 in an effort to not upset men who believe they are women."

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a holiday called “Menstrual Hygiene Day,” a day that is aimed at creating a period-friendly world for “menstruators.” In a post on X, the DOL shared a link to a blog post about Menstrual Hygiene Day and five ways that employers can make their workplaces “menstruation friendly” for “menstruators.” “To commemorate this Menstrual Hygiene Day, the Women’s Bureau is breaking down the stereotypes and stigmas that have made menstruation a taboo topic in the workplace,” the DOL’s blog post read. “Menstruation is a natural part of half our population’s life, and yet it...

VIDEOHere you see new NYU graduates reveal what happens when young minds are subjected to years of leftist brainwashing. They tell us their "concentrations" (is "major" now supposed to be a taboo word?) are which results in great inadvertent comedy. I mean how can you not laugh when a new graduate tells you that his major (oops, I mean "concentration) is "Equilibrium or Negotiated Paradox."Most if not all these graduates will end up as useless slugs with ZERO useful skills feeding at governmental or corporate grant troughs.