Free Republic

<p>I recently took a few road trips longitudinally and latitudinally across California. The state bears little to no resemblance to what I was born into. In a word, it is now a medieval place of lords and peasants-and few in between. Or rather, as I gazed out on the California Aqueduct, the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Luis Reservoir, I realized we are like the hapless, squatter Greeks of the Dark Ages, who could not figure out who those mythical Mycenaean lords were that built huge projects still standing in their midst, long after Lord Ajax and King Odysseus disappeared into exaggeration and myth. Henry Huntington built the entire Big Creek Hydroelectric Project in the time it took our generation to go to three hearings on a proposed dam.</p>

I am a Progressive Conservative. I base this on the definition of the word "progress". From the Merriam-Webster site: "the process of improving or developing something over a period of time". Among conservatives who follow the news, this word would seem almost a contradiction. They are used to hearing the word associated with liberalism and socialism. It appears those movements have co-opted a perfectly positive word "progressive" with its root word meaning of improvement. My sense is that the average person sees the word "progressive" and thinks "progress". This average person has little connection to secular campuses in which 'progressive'...

[snipets:] From polio to poverty, we are winning. Well done, human race. Well done. At the end of September, the Global Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication convened in Bali and, after reviewing the reports of its member nations, declared poliovirus type 2 eradicated in the wild. This was really only a bureaucratic stamp on a fact: The last case of type 2 polio was identified in Aligarh, India, in 1999. Thanks in no small part to... *** Despite the no-knowthings who go around complaining that “we don’t make things here anymore,” the United States continues to make the...

[Another pro-technology piece. Of course, we need free markets so entrepreneurs can do great things!] The Imperative of Technological Progress: Why Stagnation Will Necessarily Lead to Disaster and How Techno-Optimism Can Overcome It“He who moves not forward, goes backward.” -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe If the approximate technological and economic status quo persists, massive societal disintegration looms on the horizon. A Greece-style crisis of national-government expenditures may occur as some have predicted, but would only be a symptom of a greater problem. The fundamental driver of crisis since at least September 11, 2001, and more acutely since the Great Recession...

Obamacare! The War on Drugs! A War on Poverty! Prohibition! The idea that government will bring social progress isn't new. Europe's monarchs believed in big government long before there was a Soviet Union or a welfare state. Eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire praised "enlightened" monarchs like Prussia's Frederick the Great. Since the nineteenth century, so-called "progressives" have wanted government to get ever larger. They got their wish. The results were not so good for people. Today pundits and protesters moan about fiscal "austerity" in nations like Greece. But if austerity means cuts in government, there hasn't been much of it. Sure, Greece...

I loved reading the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie books to my daughter. The somewhat Aesopian theme is that if you give the mouse what it wants – a cookie – it will just want more: a glass of milk, a straw, etc. The story came to mind last week, a week that began with many vowing to inter the Confederate flag and that ended with the Supreme Court mandating that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. As far as culture-war victories go, the flag news was big, but the marriage ruling was tantamount to VE...

Nine days after its launch to the International Space Station went awry, Russia's robotic Progress 59 cargo ship is due to take a fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere within hours. Predictions from a variety of expert analysts — at places ranging from Russia's Roscosmos space agency to the U.S. Strategic Command — call for the Progress to break up in the atmosphere around 10 p.m. to midnight (02:00 to 04:00 UTC), with a margin of uncertainty that extends a couple of hours before or after that time. "We can exclude any time after early Friday morning," the European Space Agency's...

On this Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, instead of listening to irreverent race-baiters like “Reverends” Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, let us imagine what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleague Rosa Parks might say about race relations in America. First, Dr. King would remind us that in previous decades, white people were never indicted, let alone convicted and incarcerated for willfully killing black people. White lynch mobs would preen for cameras following their savage murders of black people, brazenly smiling because they knew that no white jury would convict them. King would retell the trial of the...

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told Megyn Kelly Tuesday that the Special Committee investigating Benghazi is making “tremendous progress.” “We have a very robust investigative plan that will kick off in December. And, Megyn I can tell you my goal was to have an investigation where witnesses who had never been talked to before felt comfortable coming forward because of the seriousness of our investigation and that is precisely what is happening. It is not with a lot of fanfare and there aren’t a lot of public hearings but trust me when I tell you we are making tremendous progress.”

When real estate developer Forest City began construction on a new apartment complex at 2175 Market St., it announced that it would build more affordable units than required by the city — 20 percent instead of 12. The response was overwhelming. Forest City put a booth in the lobby of The Chronicle building — chosen because it is centrally located, near public transit and well-recognized — and got more than 6,800 applications. For 18 apartments

There you have it... :-) And here I thought it was liberal policies. There isn't much of a difference between that and Superman since belief in both requires make-believe.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has "made some progress" in complicated talks to try to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, his department said Thursday. "We know we're not there yet. But I think we have made some progress," said deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, according to AFP. "The secretary is very engaged in it. And hopefully soon we'll be able to get something temporary in place," she added. Harf refused to be drawn further, including whether Washington was still trying to put in place a 24-hour truce or something longer, nor would she be drawn on how much...

I remember about 10 years ago, I was watching a National Geographic show about a hunter-gatherer tribe in Papua New Guinea. The men were running around in loincloths with spears, hunting animals, making offerings to the gods — you know, typical primitive-tribe stuff. But okay, I don't judge... we're all descended from people like that. ......................................................... I suspect that the real reason we don't adopt Japanese toilets is the very fact that people are so eager to give reasons not to. We've grown used to the idea that everything good is invented in America. If it wasn't invented here, it...

The UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has apologised to the Syrian people after peace talks in Geneva ended without making progress. He had held final discussions with both sides in Geneva in a last-ditch bid to break the stalemate between the Syrian government and opposition. Mr Brahimi said a key sticking point was the government's refusal to talk about a transitional governing body. No date has been set for a third round of talks. The UK and France have blamed President Assad's government for the failure of the talks. The conflict in Syria has claimed more than 100,000 lives since March...

Call me a cockeyed optimist but many of the recent reports about our energy resources and discoveries in medical advances conjure up visions of an America enjoying low gas and energy prices; low unemployment, high wages and low cost medical treatments. None of these changes will be possible, however, unless we have a government willing to allow them. American citizens (legitimate citizens, not just residents) can vote to elect a government that is not beholden to special interest donors and lobbyists. While this sounds unlikely at the moment, it is not impossible especially if the comatose voters who got us...

The reemergence of a Democratic left will be one of the major stories of 2014. Moderates, don’t be alarmed. The return of a viable, vocal left will actually be good news for the political center. For a long time, the American conversation has been terribly distorted because an active, uncompromising political right has not had to face a comparably influential left. As a result, our entire debate has been dragged in a conservative direction, meaning that the center has been pulled that way, too.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry insisted on Sunday that concrete progress has been made in peace talks between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority (PA), but said details will be kept under wraps, AFP reports. Kerry, who has made nine trips to the Middle East since March and helped launch nine-month direct talks between the two sides in July, said talking about any agreements could be counterproductive. "I'm personally encouraged that very tough issues are beginning to take shape," he was quoted as having said in an interview with ABC's "This Week." .....

The White House has released its second monthly report card on Obamacare enrollment in state and federal exchanges, documenting a mix of progress and problems in the system since it launched in October. The numbers offer some good news: a surge in sign-ups in November after a barrage of improvements to HealthCare.gov, and robust online traffic to the insurance portals shows that interest in the products remains strong. But the figures also illustrate some serious problems ahead: there's a huge backlog of consumers who have applied for a plan but not yet picked one, and electronic errors on the computer...

…and a pretty sweet Minority Report-esque dynamic infographic (“infomotion?”), to boot. The point? The world today has more than its share of problems, but we can all be thankful it isn’t the world of 200 years ago. The charming Swede is Hans Rosling—physician, statistician, and host of BBC 4′s The Joy of Stats. Pretty much everything about this video makes me happy, not least of all that the Brits have a TV program celebrating statistics itself.

A Progress Kentucky volunteer who was at the center of a story involving the secret recording of Senator Mitch McConnell’s campaign meeting earlier this year has publicly admitted to making the recording, and he says that his attorney has been contacted by an assistant US Attorney about the matter.Curtis Morrison, a founder and volunteer for Progress Kentucky, admitted to making the recording in a self-confession of sorts today at Salon.com.From ABC News (via AP): A Kentucky man has admitted to secretly recording a private campaign meeting between Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and his aides earlier this year.Curtis Morrison of...