Free Republic

A UK magazine called ArtsProfessional has published the results of a “Freedom of Expression survey” and the results are not good. The survey found that in the professional art world in the UK , self-censorship is the norm and pressure to stay silent on controversial issues is felt by most. A culture of self-censorship and fear of backlash from funders, colleagues and the public is convincing arts and cultural workers to stay silent on important issues, according to new research from ArtsProfessional… While about 90% of respondents agreed that “the arts and cultural sector has a responsibility to use its...

NBC’s medical drama New Amsterdam had an unusual diagnosis this Tuesday in the episode, “Sabbath.” After Dr. Helen Sharpe finds her 13-year-old patient Cephas has four benign tumors growing in his stomach and that the boy has elevated levels of stress hormones, psychiatrist Dr. Iggy Frome determines the tumors were caused by racism. As the surgeon operates and removes the four tumors from Cephas, he warns the tumors could come back and might not be benign next time. Iggy realizes Cephas feels isolated and threatened all the time after asking him a series of questions that measures a person’s level...

When Chelsea Mitchell, ranked as the fastest girl in the 55-meter dash in Connecticut high school track, showed up for a competition last year, she knew it would be a challenge. Her competitors included two biological males who said they identify as girls. Mitchell, a senior at Canton High School, had seen the speeds posted by the two. She was aware that other girls had lost to athletes born as boys who identify as girls. But at the time, she says, she “could feel the adrenaline in my blood.” That adrenaline wasn’t enough, though. Mitchell came in third behind the...

Behold the greening of America: A wind turbine’s blades can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing, so at the end of their lifespan they can’t just be hauled away. First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer… The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another. Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling...

Last week, Wells Fargo and Fifth Third Bank announced they no longer would donate to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which enables more than 108,000 low-income children and children in foster care to receive scholarships to attend a safe and effective school of choice. The move comes after the Orlando Sentinel published a piece suggesting that $105 million in tax credit scholarships had been used by families to pay tuition at faith-based schools that, as The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann put it, “uphold their faiths’ historic sexual ethics.” Businesses that contribute to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations in the state can receive...

Two additional venues have canceled a lecture event featuring conservative commentator and author Michelle Malkin. The event was first moved to the Gendron Franco Center in Lewiston, Maine, after a local hotel canceled the event as originally planned by a group of University of Maine students. Malkin’s second backup location has now also canceled her planned lecture. It appears the event will still happen, but details on a fourth venue have not been made public as of this writing. According to a local news report, the Gendron Franco Center announced on Friday that it canceled a Friday night event featuring...

Urban slang defines a person being "woke" or "wokeness" as someone being cognizant of "social justice." Social justice, in this worldview, encompasses racism, feminism, gender fluidity, inequality, and "undocumented visitors" (illegal aliens). The very word connotes a superior state of being in which any opposing opinion is perceived as a personal affront, or even attack, and triggers the necessity for safe spaces. Opposing viewpoints are bludgeoned on college campuses and in the mainstream media as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, gun-toting, and Bible-thumping idiocies. Oh, the elitism — and blindness! The woke are really the unwoke — those with no sense...

It all started in June 2018, when Quillette published my article, “Why Women Don’t Code,” and things picked up steam when Jordan Peterson shared a link to the article on his Twitter account. A burst of outrage and press coverage followed which I discussed in a follow-up piece. The original article was one of the ten most read pieces published by Quillette in 2018, and continues to generate interest. A recent YouTube video about it has been viewed over 120,000 times, as of this writing: In his tweet promoting my article, Peterson took issue with one of my claims. I...

On Monday, singer-songwriter Boy George mocked the idea of folks having so-called “preferred pronouns,” calling it “ridiculous.” “Leave your pronoun’s at the door!” the “Karma Chameleon” singer posted to social media. ======================================================= Boy George ✔ @BoyGeorge Leave your pronoun's at the door! 4,556 8:41 AM - Jan 6, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy 862 people are talking about this ------------------------------------------------------------ Responding to criticism, Boy George, whose real name is George Alan O’Dowd, posted: “You must refer to me as ‘Napoleon’ and that’s as ridiculous as it gets!” he said, noting that he “used the ladies toilet throughout the 80s!”...

The director Terry Gilliam has invited renewed backlash after repeating his claim that he is a “black lesbian in transition”, assailing the #MeToo movement as a “witch-hunt” and asserting that some of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims are “adults who made choices”. The website PinkNews offered swift condemnation, calling the 79-year-old’s comments “a feeble attempt to prove that white men are the real victims”. SNIP Gilliam said he was “tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world”. On to the #MeToo movement, he said: “I want people to take responsibility and not just...

1. A college diversity-training course taught that it was culturally insensitive to expect people to be on time. 2. The phrase “trigger warning” was deemed a trigger. 3. A professor was accused of sexual harassment for saying that effort is 10 percent of the grade. 4. A campus survey included a trigger warning to caution college students that it may contain “anatomical names of body parts.” 5. University researchers demanded that we accept people who “identify as real vampires.” 6. A Seattle-area councilman was concerned about the city hosing poop off of its sidewalks because he thought that it might...

Seventy years ago the University of California introduced a loyalty oath, requiring employees to swear they were “not a member of the Communist Party.” After a contentious period in which 31 faculty were fired for refusing to sign, the requirement was reconsidered. An eventual consequence was the current Standing Order of the Regents 101.1(d): “No political test shall ever be considered in the appointment and promotion of any faculty member or employee.” This is a statement of principle. No one will be denied a position at the University of California based on political beliefs. No communist, no conservative, no progressive,...

Be careful what you write on the internet: it turns out it’s not just Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google that is judging you.If your offenses are within an acceptable range you will get an Oxford English Language Dictionary .  But if you’ve  offended beyond that level you get the special Ikea dictionary. Ikea dictionary: some assembly required But hey, according to the IMT (infinite monkey theory) all you need do is select letters at random and pretty soon you’ll have a great post without any grammar errors or misspelled words.  Good luck. Posted from: MOTUS A.D. 

In honor of President Trump’s trip to London, and because there’s only 22 shopping days till Christmas, I give you last year’s Heathrow Bears “advert” as the Brits call them. In it we see the homesick couple, Edward and Doris Bair returning to London, and their family, from their retirement home in Florida when they realize that sunshine isn’t everything. We see them arriving at Heathrow, where they met and their romance began 50 years ago.2017 Heathrow Christmas advertWhy Europe’s busiest airport that operates at near capacity needs an “advert” at all is unclear to me, but then I don’t...

I’ll never forget the Friday after Thanksgiving, 2011. I was vaguely aware of the pseudo-holiday known as Black Friday, but I had seldom participated. On that day, however, I had to go to a local big-box store to get diapers and baby wipes for my then four-week-old daughter, Catherine. As the sun sank in the dreary November sky over Toledo, Ohio, I noticed traffic in this small Midwestern city had slowed to a crawl more than a mile from the mall. By the time I finally made it inside the store, it was a madhouse. The customers weren’t gleeful, joyfully...

A professor at Indiana University who defended "racist, sexist, and homophobic" comments that he posted on his social media accounts will keep his job because his views are protected under the Constitution, university officials announced after they were bombarded with demands to fire him. Eric Rasmusen, a professor of business economics and public policy at the university, tweeted this month a quote from an article that said, "geniuses are overwhelmingly male because they combine outlier IQ with moderately low Agreeableness and Moderately low Conscientiousness." The article, titled, "Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably" was published by The Unz Review, which describes...

Chick-fil-A's disappointing decision to discontinue donations to "controversial" Christian charities is emblematic of the power of political correctness and the bullying left that drives it. If the previously stalwart Chick-fil-A folds, who is left standing to fight? Tireless, intolerant LGBTQ activists bombarded the restaurant chain with protests and accusations about it being "anti-gay." The gist of its sin is that it has donated millions of dollars to The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which have historically opposed same-sex marriage. Just this week, the restaurant chain announced it has stopped funding these two charities. "We made multi-year commitments...

Ahhh yes, the tolerant left. I can provide you with tens of thousands of some of the most hateful things ever said by the left all over facebook. From the most abrasive vulgarity to outright calling for murder and violence it is not only tolerated but almost never censored... This changes the instant you offer a truth against a leftist worldview. Banned by facebook for 24 hours. Its nothing really and I know many here are probably banned like this too and some even for longer times. My crime? Stating the following words: "Transgenderism is a disorder where the affected...

Strange days, indeed, when America’s free press opposes free speech. “Free speech is killing us,” headlined a New York Times op-ed. Its author, New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz, argued that “hate speech” leads to violence. Worse, he claims it can cause totalitarianism and even genocide. To avoid this fate, Marantz says we must rethink the First Amendment, which would include government and private companies striving to limit “hate speech.” He agrees with a former American Civil Liberties Union official that one day in the not-so-distant future, legal “protection of hate speech” will “seem ridiculous in retrospect.” Some governments have...

"This whole concept of political correctness ... it's going to destroy our nation." That was the no-nonsense response of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson to Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) earlier this week. Wexton was trying for a "gotcha" moment in a congressional hearing when she asked Dr. Carson if he would "apologize" for being quoted for expressing concern over "big, hairy men" trying to gain entry into an Alaska women's homeless shelter. I could not have said it better. On yesterday's edition of Washington Watch, Dr. Carson – or Dr. Politically Incorrect as I've called him -...