Free Republic

As of August 2020, we Americans are embroiled in an intensifying cold civil war. Democrats and the left are the aggressors. Cancel culture is a chief weapon. It's not being employed wholesale — yet — but it is being selectively used as a means of instilling fear in the citizenry. As morally repugnant as cancel culture is, in war, the question is invariably asked: must we fight fire with fire? Must we cancel the left and its allies to stop their Jacobin terror? It's a legitimate question. Decent Americans are, naturally, repulsed by the tactic — and, increasingly, personally threatened....

Have we reached Peak Corporate Cave-In? It kind of looks like it - Trader Joe's has decided to reverse course and not change all the brand labels of its products to satisfy the wokeness demands of a tiny, largely white, racism-parsing left-wing mob. Here's their statement: To Our Valued Customers: In light of recent feedback and attention we’ve received about our product naming, we have some things we’d like to say to clarify our approach.  A few weeks ago, an online petition was launched calling on us to “remove racist packaging from [our] products.” Following were inaccurate reports that the petition prompted...

Days after dozens of artists, writers and academics, including JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood, signed an open letter decrying the weakening of public debate amid a rise in what they call “illiberalism”, another group has denounced it. The counter opinion comes amid raging debate over 'cancel culture' where prominent people face a backlash for sharing controversial opinions."The signatories, many of them white, wealthy and endowed with massive platforms, argue that they are afraid of being silenced, that so-called cancel culture is out of control, and that they fear for their jobs and free exchange of ideas, even as...

Scrabble just got W-O-K-E. Players of the classic board game will no longer be able to rack up points for spelling out racial and ethnic slurs, according to Scrabble officials. A total of 236 bigoted words were removed from the official Scrabble word list used at tournaments — in order to make the game friendlier to all types of people, The North American Scrabble Players Association. said Wednesday. “Removing slurs is the very least that we can do to make our association more inclusive,” NASPA CEO John Chew said in a statement. “How can we in this day tell prospective...

CHICAGO — The Chicago Blackhawks say they will continue to use their team name because it honours a Native American leader who has been an inspiration to generations. "The Chicago Blackhawks name and logo symbolizes an important and historic person, Black Hawk of Illinois’ Sac & Fox Nation, whose leadership and life has inspired generations of Native Americans, veterans and the public," the NHL team said in a statement Tuesday. "We celebrate Black Hawk’s legacy by offering ongoing reverent examples of Native American culture, traditions and contributions, providing a platform for genuine dialogue with local and national Native American groups....

The city of Duluth is moving to delete the word “chief” from the titles of two of its administrative leadership positions in an effort to remove language that some Native Americans and others find offensive. On Monday, the City Council is scheduled to take up an amendment to the city charter to change the name of the city’s “chief administrative officer” to “city administrator.” The city’s “chief financial officer” would be renamed “finance director.”

NEW YORK — The owner of the Uncle Ben’s brand of rice says the brand will “evolve” in response to concerns about racial stereotyping. Caroline Sherman, a spokeswoman for Mars, which owns Uncle Ben’s, says the company is listening to the voices of consumers, especially in the black community, and recognizes that “now is the right time to evolve the brand, including its visual identity.” In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, activists and consumers have demanded that companies take a stand against racial injustice or lose their business.

When it comes to who is the better shooter and why, men or women, the iconic Irving Berlin duet from Annie Get Your Gun immediately springs to mind. “Anything you can do I can do better! I can do anything better than you” is sung while Annie Oakley and Frank Butler prepare for the climactic sharpshooting contest in the classic Broadway musical. For an object as functionally gender-neutral as a gun, why is it that each of the sexes assumes they are better adept at mastering it? Any quality instructor will tell you the real weapon is not the gun....

(From NextDoor CEO) Neighbors, Let me say it unequivocally: Racism has no place on Nextdoor. First, I want to express my outrage and sadness for those who have been hurt by the legacy of racism in the United States. I am heartbroken for those experiencing loss and grief right now. Recent events have acutely exposed that some of the behavior we see on our platform is not at all in line with our values as a company. We’ve heard from many Black neighbors that they do not feel welcome and respected. For this, we are sorry. This, we must change....

The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. The Black Lives Matter movement claims that only whites can be racists. And while justifying violence to achieve “social justice,” the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one. Many members of the black community would be shocked to learn that the intellectual godfathers of this movement are mostly white Communists, “queers”...

Just four days after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police Officer, Derek Chauvin, and the video sparked protests across the country, Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz welcomed in a few dozen African American community leaders to talk at One Government Center. Mayor Kapszukiewicz acknowledged that Toledo is 652 miles away from Minneapolis, where the incident happened that resulted in Floyd's death. But he said the video made him sick to his stomach and he made a long-term commitment to opening up communication, and having difficult conversations like he had. In front of the Safety Building after the meeting, the mayor...

A school district in Maryland revamped its eighth grade U.S. history curriculum after reviewing how it approached topics like slavery. Eighth graders at Montgomery County Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the nation, now mostly use primary sources like letters and speeches to learn about U.S. history, instead of relying on textbooks alone. "It was really important to us to make sure that we are telling an inclusive narrative of American history," said Tiferet Ani, social studies curriculum specialist. "And so to get away from sort of the dominant narrative that's focused on presidents, on generals, you know,...

UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall is no more, its name removed from the law school today (Thursday, Jan. 30), campus officials announced. The denaming — the outcome of a nearly three-year process launched after a Berkeley lecturer discovered the racist writings of John Henry Boalt, a 19th century Oakland attorney — is the first time a Berkeley facility’s name has been eliminated due to its namesake’s character or actions.

A school principal in Cumberland County, N.S., is being criticized for throwing her school's athletic trophies and plaques into a dumpster, apparently as part of a space-making exercise. The discovery was made last Thursday night by Ashley Collins, a former student at Advocate District School who now has two daughters going to the primary-through-Grade-12 school. "I just couldn't believe that something like that would cross someone's mind to do such a thing," said Collins, who graduated from the school in 2007.

When I was first asked to review Jeanine Cummins’s “American Dirt” for the Globe, I was thrilled. With advance blurbs comparing it to “The Grapes of Wrath,” I knew it was going to be a big book, and I wanted to be part of that conversation.... But once that initial excitement had worn off, I read with growing distaste.. Soledad had been forced into sexual slavery. As her “life deteriorated into a series of lurid traumas,” we learn that her beauty and virtue were her downfall. Degradation followed degradation, at the hands of her captor... As I read, it became...

Since 1969, "Virginia Is for Lovers" has been the tourism and travel slogan of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Advertising Age called it "one of the most iconic ad campaigns in the past 50 years." But the Virginia of 2020 seems to be another country than the friendly commonwealth to which this writer moved four decades ago.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge is getting a lot of well deserved attention and praise for staring for staring down the academic diversity mafia and throwing its own rhetoric back in its face. Required to submit to what amounts to a loyalty oath to "diversity" in order to qualify for a merit raise at UCLA Law School, he spoke truth to power and discussed his devotion to intellectual diversity — documenting it with footnotes. I take the liberty of reprinting it in its entirety below, taken from his blog, ProfessorBainbridge.com:

For the first time ever, the crowns in five major beauty pageants -- Miss Universe, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, Miss America and now, Miss World -- are all held by black women. On Saturday evening, 23-year-old Toni-Ann Singh from Jamaica was crowned Miss World 2019 and joined the growing group of black women making history as reigning winners of major pageants.

Fact: Medical science, NOT feelings, determines a person's sex - male or female. Genesis 5:2, in announcing the creation, says: “He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.” One of the first questions a pregnant woman is asked is whether the child she is carrying is a girl or a boy. Since the beginning of the human race, there have been only two sexes - male and female - which is determined at the point of conception when the father’s sperm containing either an “X” or a “Y” chromosome unites...

Students at the University of Oklahoma are working to remove the school’s “Boomer” and “Sooner” nicknames out of concern that the words are offensive to Native Americans. According to the OU Daily, the Undergraduate Student Congress met Nov. 12 to mandate a name change for the “Sooner Freshman Council”, citing the words “boomer” and “sooner” as offensive to the Native American community.