Free Republic

It’s the natural progression of things: Millennials believe calling yourself a socialist is sexy.Remember the way-cool Sixties when guys used to attend protests and rallies to get laid, because young women could not resist such caring, passionate, liberal guys? Now there’s an app for that. But as in the way of all flesh the guys have had to up the ante on their care, passion and liberalism - all the way to socialism: Things have gotten so social with socialism that the young and restless now can consult a dating app called Red Yenta to find the fellow socialist of...

The environmentalist movement was never about smog, pollution or even global warming. In the minds of naive people who fell for the propaganda, it was. But the reality was always implicit. The environmentalist movement was always about control. And shame. The “Green New Deal” has exposed the environmentalist movement for what it is. It has made the insanity explicit. If you want to sum up environmentalism, you might call it urban religion. It’s an expression of guilt. “You live in a land of plenty. It’s shameful.” Today’s environmentalists are the modern Puritans. They’re repressive, shaming and hostile to comfort and...

In my last article about how life was so much better 40 years ago, I promised I would even things out and talk about how things have actually improved in the past few decades since I was a kid. (I don't want anyone thinking I'm a crotchety old guy.) So here goes — seven things that make life better now than "back in the good old days": 1. Healthier choices in food. Health food has become mainstream. You don't have to go to some out of the way "health food shop" run by "hippies" to get what you need. All...

While others in my family are already planning Christmas Eve dinner, I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Halloween has come and gone. At this point, I am simply thankful that my husband and son threw away the carved pumpkin on the front step rather than leaving it to decay in place, as happened a few years ago. Thanksgiving arrives next week, and, though we are hosting a dinner, I am not sure how many guests will show up, I have not laid out the seating chart, and I have no idea what...

In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appeared on a BBC news show. The host asked King about Attorney General Robert Kennedy's prediction, an audacious one at the time, that a black man could be elected president in 40 years. King thought it would not take that long: "There are certain problems and prejudices and mores in our society which make it difficult now. However, I am very optimistic about the future. Frankly, I have seen certain changes in the United States over the last two years that surprise me. ... On the basis of this, I think we may...

YPG Press Office released a report on results of YPG operations, Turkish and ISIS attacks against Syrian people between 1-31 August. People's Defence Units (YPG) Press Office released the balance sheet of war for the month of August. YPG statement read as follows: "Our Rojava defence forces -People's Defence Units (YPG) and Women's Defence Units (YPJ)- led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the struggle against ISIS. 'Liberation Operation for Raqqa', disrupted plans of the enemies in August 2017. - The occupying Turkish army and Turkish supported gangs targeted YPG/YPJ military positions, homes and fields of civilians 158 times.  Turkish army...

Generally speaking, if someone is running into a litany or a rant and denouncing you as a reactionary, that person is probably a communist. That is, in the 21st century. But what if the year is 1912? "Reactionary" is a word that statists of all stripes love to use, even those who do not behold the Communist viewpoint. In a speech denouncing the GOP, the DNC, and anybody else who he didn't like, Theodore Roosevelt said the following: I merely want to discuss the difference of policy between the Progressive and the Democratic Party and to ask you to think...

Societal changes take place so slowly that we rarely see them unfold on a day-to-day basis. Our culture and lifestyles adapt so quickly to new technology that we soon can't remember life without the latest innovation. But when we look back over any significant period of time, the scale of change is truly breathtaking. Today, smartphones are such a part of the culture that it's hard to believe they've only been around for a decade. But the smartphone era began just 10 years ago with the June 29, 2007 release of the iPhone. Time magazine hailed it as the 2007...

Having bestowed the presidency on a candidate who described their country as a “hellhole” besieged by multitudes trying to get into it, Americans need an antidote for social hypochondria. Fortunately, one has arrived from Don Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and proprietor of the indispensable blog Cafe Hayek. He has good news: You are as rich as John D. Rockefeller. Richer, actually. Some historians estimate that on September 29, 1916, a surge in the price of Rockefeller’s shares of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey made him America’s first billionaire. Others say he never...

So much of America's future is at stake in the 2016 presidential election. But let's focus for a moment on just one area--energy and the environment--where the Obama administration has made startling progress.... Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, arguably President Obama's best Cabinet appointment, has been leading a quiet revolution in clean-energy technology. Innovation is transforming this industry, costs are plummeting and entrepreneurs are devising radical new systems that create American jobs--in addition to protecting the planet.... Here's a suggestion for any fact-based, technology-respecting candidate in either party: Promise that, if elected, you'll try to persuade Moniz to remain in place.......

Tuesday after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (I-Vt.) won his home state Democratic primary in Vermont by a large margin, he gave a victory speech saying, “this campaign is not just about electing the president, it is about transforming America.”

The controversy over a Super Bowl ad for a snack chip that allegedly "humanized," of all things, a pre-born human being highlights the deliberate rejection of reality of the "abortion rights" objectors. On its face, as others have noted, the controversy exposes the pernicious obfuscation that a fetus is nothing more than a "meaningless blob of protoplasm." Yet, the anti-reality inherent in pro-abortion propaganda is only one example exposing the delusional foundations of modern secular culture, most prominently manifested in its ideology of sexuality, including the normalization of all manner of sexual deviance, same-sex "marriage," gender-fluidity, human-robot "intimacy," and...

<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...