Free Republic

(June 15) -- If you aren't the least bit concerned about the health of America's freedoms, you are either a) in a multiyear-long drug induced coma, B) Sean Penn, or C) dead. And you've definitely never heard of Overton's Window. The Overton Window is a political theory developed by the late Joseph Overton, a brilliant public policy strategist and ardent free-marketer. Overton observed that "when public policies in a given area (education, health care) are arranged from freest to least free, only a relatively narrow window of options will be considered politically acceptable." The theory says the window will gradually...

Civilization Revisited by: John Hendershot, September 29, 2009 The distance between Left and Right in America seems greater now than at any time during the past forty years, and we are waging a fierce debate over the size, scope, and role of government in our lives. Governments of all stripes fall due to corruption of both principles and people, and if ever there was a moment when we needed insight into the oracles of our Founding Fathers, it is now. Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), was a prolific author. He wrote a couple of...

A political paradigm, in order for it to be observed and labeled as such, must be meet the criteria in order to pass the test. It has to satisfy the central theme of a particular time (usually during a perceived crisis), but that theme has to be able to incorporate political, economic, and social beliefs along with it. Moreover, it needs approval from a clear majority of members from society, and must be able to add to those numbers over time, or sustain the clear majority over time. Needless to say, a Political Paradigm can easily be overstated and rarely...

Requiem for the Left: They're All Stalinists (and Hypocrites) NowBy Barry LoberfeldFrontPageMagazine.com | August 5, 2005 Primo: The Cerberean Conception Since it's almost become a cliché to observe that Marxism is dead in practice – that is, if you overlook its authoritarian half-life in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam – but thriving in theory, we can at least ask exactly what that theory is, a question that returns three very different answers: Some should get all of the pie. This is classic manual-labor theory of value Marx: Since the manual laborers produce all wealth, anyone else who has any wealth...

Declaring that some of the words used by Orianna Fallaci in her book about Islam were "without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith," an Italian judge has ordered her to stand trial for anti-Islamic defamation. Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice has in effect accused all of America of anti-Islamic defamation, saying that a single mishandling by a single U.S. serviceman of a single copy of the Koran is a terrible offense that tarnishes the image of our country. Yet even as our Secretary of State condemns America for its bigotry, the Saudi government funds the massive...

It was once said that "democracy is the most promiscuous word in the language; she is everybody's mistress." Indeed, political regimes of widely differing institutional features label themselves democracies, as did totalitarian communist orders. Often, the best guide to a country's democratic credentials was that it didn't call itself democratic: compare West Germany's Federal Republic with the East German Democratic Republic. A particularly instructive example of the meaninglessness of the term was the election of the Marxist Salvador Allende in Chile in 1970. He has always been heralded as a democratic communist who was destroyed by America and international capitalism....

Flirting with Fascism Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right. By John Laughland On the antiwar Right, it has been customary to attack the warmongering neoconservative clique for its Trotskyite origins. Certainly, the founding father of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940. Other future leading lights of the neocon movement were also initially Trotskyites, like James Burnham and Max Kampelman—the latter a conscientious objector during the war against Hitler, a status that Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of Jeane, used...

Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (1949,1966): Bettina Bien Greaves gave her kind permission for this online edition (see note). Pat Galea prepared the Palm files, which correspond to the fourth edition text. For the fully restored First Edition (1949), see THE SCHOLAR'S EDITION. html> <p><!--A{text-decoration: none}--> <p> Friday, November 15, 2002 Books and Essays for Hand-Held ComputersHuman Action by Ludwig von Mises (1949,1966): Bettina Bien Greaves gave her kind permission for this online edition (see note). Pat Galea prepared the Palm files, which correspond to the fourth edition text. For the fully restored First Edition (1949), see THE SCHOLAR'S EDITION. See also Mises's essay "The Why of Human...