Free Republic

In Ryszard Legutko's latest book, 'The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols,' the Polish professor and survivor of communism warns that the coercive attempts of modern liberals to redefine freedom are more destructive than liberating.Life under Communism was peculiar and paradoxical, observes Polish professor and politician Ryszard Legutko in his new book The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols. It was rigid and confined by an “ideological straitjacket.” Yet the abolishing of the old forms and institutions also fostered a “permanent instability,” in which “no principle was secure...

American colonial leaders in the 18th century and Martin Luther King, Jr. both fused religious beliefs with philosophical principles to motivate action. Throughout the Stamp Act crisis of the 1760s — the “Prologue to Revolution,” according to the title of historian Edmund S. Morgan’s published collection of documents — the British North American colonists sent petition after petition to both houses of the British Parliament. These petitions frequently asserted the rights that the colonists possessed as British subjects.According to the Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, the colonists were “entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties” due...

Recently, there have been a number of articles and statements asserting that fascism is rising in Europe, and that Donald Trump is an American example of fascism. This is a misrepresentation of a very real phenomenon. The nation-state is reasserting itself as the primary vehicle of political life. Multinational institutions like the European Union and multilateral trade treaties are being challenged because they are seen by some as not being in the national interest. The charge of a rise in fascism derives from a profound misunderstanding of what fascism is. It is also an attempt to discredit the resurgence of...

Briefing Paper #69 10/08 Author: Bill Crouse Postmodern Politics I. Introduction A. As Christians we must view everything through the lense of the Biblical Worldview, making all thoughts captive to Christ; and always seeking the mind of Christ (IICor 10:5; Phil.2:5). This includes political philosophy and economic theory, though many Christians still mistakenly think these areas are neutral territory. The truth is, some theories harmonize better than others. B. We are all aware that discussions in the realm of politics and economic theory these days can be filled with vitriol and rancor like no other subject. We need to ask...

[In The death of Socialism Roger Kimball wrote:] [Joshua Muravchik's Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism] provides a devastating anatomy of the socialist dream -- a dream that with clocklike regularity becomes a nightmare. If, as Muravchik suggests, "socialism was . . . the most popular political idea ever invented," it is also undoubtedly the bloodiest. Of course, many who profess socialism are decent and humane people. And it is worth noting that socialism comes in mild as well as tyrannical versions. Muravchik, who was once a socialist himself, pays frequent homage to the generous impulses that...

Progressive Calls for Civics Education by: Bethany Stotts, April 11, 2008 Contrary to the assumption that curriculum reform is promoted by only by conservatives, a member of the progressive movement recently lamented that students were losing touch with their American heritage. “We need to care, the Progressive Movement needs to care that the fabric of civics education in our country essentially has been decimated,” said Andrea Batista Schlesinger at a recent conference on the New Deal. However, Schlesinger warned the audience to not tell anyone what she said, lest she be accused of being a neoconservative. “And this where I...

Academia’s Big Tent by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 24, 2008 You can get a pretty good idea of where academics are coming from politically and where they expect their junior colleagues to fall on the political spectrum by what they tell each other, particularly when they put it down on paper. “The numerous ways of teaching suggest that there are varying philosophical or personal visions put forth about college teaching,” Michael W. Galbraith writes in College Teaching: Developing Perspective Through Dialogue.... “Once you discover what beliefs, values, and attitudes you hold, you will have the basis for a focused and...

     Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism by Roger Kimball    It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way.—Marx to Engels, 1857What socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything.—V. I. Lenin, 1917Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.—Pascal, Pensées Born in Radom, in eastern Poland, in 1927, the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski is closing in on his eightieth year. He has...

Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive...

In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids claimed the lives of more than 900,000 Japanese civilians—not counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is more than twice the total number of combat deaths that the United States has suffered in all its foreign wars combined. On one night, that of March 9-10, 1945, 234 Superfortresses dropped 1,167 tons of incendiary bombs over downtown Tokyo; 83,793 Japanese bodies were found in the charred remains—a number greater than the 80,942 combat fatalities that the United States sustained in the Korean and Vietnam...