Free Republic

In a Weekly Standard piece titled, “The ‘American Sniper’ Freakout: Why the Left Can’t Tolerate This Movie,” Mark Hemingway does a fine job of breaking down exactly why the Left either hates “American Sniper” or is dishonestly claiming it is a left-wing movie. It’s a thorough, must-read that perfectly lays out the case. Outside the context of the film itself, there is an additional reason the Left can’t tolerate Eastwood’s masterpiece: every act of apostasy, even one, must be punished. The Left cannot tolerate dissent. If just one thing sneaks through the institutions the Left is desperate to hold a...

The first step toward an in-depth understanding of adult behavior is to comprehend its origins in childhood. Whether adaptive or maladaptive, the enduring patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that define adult personality begin in the early years of life. In fact, our earliest experiences with caretakers and others, acting on inherited temperament factors, strongly determine our later personality traits, including those expressed in political values and beliefs. The dispositions of the liberal mind are no exception: his hopes and fears, beliefs and passions, values and morals are in great measure the legacy of his childhood from birth through...

Certain neurotic themes are dominant in the radical liberal mind’s perceptions of the world. All of them portray the citizen as a suffering child who is victimized, helpless and in need of rescue. All are evident in various liberal platforms. They represent the liberal mind’s transference of childhood dynamics into the world of adult relationships. As expressed in his most passionate political pronouncements, the radical liberal mind believes that: A very large portion of the population is suffering; they are suffering because they are deprived, neglected, exploited or abused. They are suffering because of certain injustices inflicted upon them. They...

(snip) Pseudo-idealism is a term coined by the Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith to describe apparently charitable behavior that on scrutiny is revealed as selfish, because the giver is engaging in it only so that he or she can feel good about him- or herself. It is a characteristic commonly found among the left, and it constitutes what the author Geoffrey Wheatcroft recognized as the left's inherent dishonesty. (snip)

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com. Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does...

Students across the United States are getting a taste of progressivism. And it doesn’t seem to please their palates. The implementation of Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity lunch standards is encountering backlash from students and school administrators across the country. The program seems to have taught them a valuable lesson in the realities of progressivism -- that when American voters give up power to busy-body progressives, the result is more control over their lives and the loss of individual liberties. They responded to this newfound reality with boycotts, social media angst, and filled trash cans instead of filled bellies.According to the Government...

Today at an awards ceremony in Washington DC, Governor Jack Markell, an honorary chair of the NewDEAL (Developing Exceptional American Leaders), announced the winners of the group’s New Ideas Challenge. NewDEAL is a national network of pro-growth progressive state and local elected officials working to expand opportunity in the changing economy.

Jonathan Gruber seems to be giving the propagandists of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia a run for their money. In addition to bragging about hoodwinking the American public into believing that healthcare reform was actually about reforming healthcare, he has also called abortion a “social good” because it kills “marginal children” in poor communities. This gem of a human being, unsurprisingly, was also a vocal advocate for former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s cigarette tax… Ya know, the $5.85 tax on each pack of smokes (which inevitably drives tobacco sales to the criminal, tax-evading, entrepreneurs like Eric Garner)? According to Breitbart.com:Michael Bloomberg, who is...

Assuming Gruber's message is true, it means the Obama administration deliberately evaded our democratic process to pass its signature legislation. Its justification, which Gruber makes explicit, is not only that "we know what's best for you," but also that "you are too dense to know that yourself." This arrogant, condescending approach extends far beyond Obamacare. It is an essential feature of progressive politics for the past century. From the outset, progressive politics yoked expert advice to expansive state action, especially redistributive policies to help the poor. It says, "We are experts who want to help you, the great unwashed. You...

Which brings us to attempt three -- the “Transformation,” I guess we’ll call it. The flaw here arose from the selection of a completely uneducated and possibly ineducable candidate to carry it out. Barack Obama checked all the boxes and touched all the bases during his career without, it seems, ever learning a single thing worth knowing. The tell with this man was the fact that he utterly lacks the humility that has marked men of wisdom since Confucius and Socrates. According to Obama, he was “a better speechwriter than his speechwriters,” a better economist, better banker, better planner, and...

Whenever the media high foreheads or anyone else labels “progressive” those politicians and agendas that any fair-minded person would term way-out-left zany liberal, my ears bleed. Letting liberals get away with pretending they are progressive is akin to wiping out an entire population and calling it, “ethnic cleansing.” Oh wait, thatis what they call it. Yet from the sound of it you’d think it’s some kind of Martha Stewart disinfectant instead of rampant murder. To control language is to control meaning. Similarly, “progressivism” sounds jauntily forward-thinking but is actually a moldy graveyard of exhausted ideas, cousin to the long-dead tyrannies...

PARIS -- Some warped minds believe that when a nation suffers a terrorist attack, it somehow deserved it and should set about doing some soul searching. Implicit in this argument is the notion that the attacker was somehow justified in his heinous actions -- there was no other option but to lash out violently. Except that there is. Even the Islamic State could choose to exercise unofficial diplomacy through a sympathetic Persian Gulf country. But it doesn't, because the Islamic State isn't interested in diplomacy -- yet some critics expect Western democracies to suck it up whatever terrorism comes their...

Democrats are OK with changing the rules of the game to pass their agendas. But when it comes to Republicans using the same rules, Democrats warn of impending doom in order to defeat Republicans.For example, former Clinton Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, is now warning in a video by Moveon.org that if Republicans win the Senate they will pass their right-wing agenda using….wait for it….DUN Dun dun….RECONCILIATION!https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5SQP2KZflco Ok I don’t blame you if didn’t watch it. In short, reconciliation is a Senate rule that allows passage of a budget bill with a simple majority, bypassing the normal process that requires...

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a ribeye, extra rare, and the chef or the waiter or somebody messed it up. I sent it back to the kitchen. A lesbian couple near Uniontown, Ohio, ordered a baby, extra white, and their order got messed up — the sperm bank mistakenly gave them the product of a black man, with the result that their daughter, Payton, is half black. And that’s the problem with treating children as consumer products: You cannot send them back to the kitchen. Good thing fertility doctors don’t work for tips. Naturally, there is a lawsuit...

You’ve seen this a lot in the last decade and a half: progressives asserting a moral equivalence between radial Islam and Christianity. The argument usually goes something like, “Yeah, sure, terrorists are bad, but they’re hardly the only people to kill in the name of their religion!” Then there’s the obligatory reference to the crusades. OK, sure, Christianity, like most religions, has had some less-than-flattering moments. But it’s history. If you can point me to the mass graves, severed heads or buildings for Christianity in our lifetime… no need to finish that sentence because there aren’t any. Christianity is an...

Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall. Ah, Progressives! You really have to – well, not admire them exactly – but if not admire them then at least grant them a grudging respect for the tenacity of their beliefs. Unfortunately for them, the Socialist utopia is a Cryptid, which, according to Wikipedia’s serviceable definition, is “a creature whose existence has been suggested but has not been discovered or documented by the scientific community.” Here’s another example of a cryptid: it’s called the Loch Ness Monster. Like the socialist utopia, the Loch Ness Monster requires a lot of...

The U.S. Constitution, as its framers understood it, was a means to an end. It was crafted and adopted for the sake of achieving the natural-law principles referred to in the Declaration of Independence. The progressives understood this very clearly as well. The robust regulatory and redistributive aims of the progressive policy agenda were inevitably at odds with the natural-law theory of the founding. This basic fact makes understandable Woodrow Wilson’s admonition (in an address ostensibly honoring Thomas Jefferson) that, “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” Do not, in other words,...

The US Constitution is much more important, and in much greater danger than most people realize. I will discuss both issues in this article. Some people believe, and I am one of them, that there is one short passage in our founding documents that encapsulates, enshrines, and defines what is so unique and important about the US Constitution, and the United States of America. Oddly enough it is not to be found in the Constitution at all – it is in “The Declaration of Independence.” I am talking about the preamble to the Declaration – specifically the first sentence. Without...

With the Vatican’s Synod on the Family fast approaching and Pope Francis’ call to the Catholic Church to be a “field hospital for sinners” more focused on mercy than rules, lots of people are looking for hints at what the gathering of bishops will urge at the extraordinary synod next month. A wedding of 20 couples in St. Peter’s Square, some of whom cohabited prior to marriage, has CBS News hailing the “progressive Pope,” who’s progressively progressive. Or something: Many had been living together prior to getting married, which is forbidden in Catholicism. Some even have children.But none of...

Detroit's Under-Funded Fire Departments Use a Soda Can For a Fire Alarm Where absent money leaves gaps, ingenuity fills in. Nowhere is that more true than in Detroit's fire departments, where, as Detroit Free Press reporter Tresa Baldas shows us, a soda can full of jangling coins and screws alerts the Motor City's long-suffering heroes when there's an emergency. The system is brilliantly simple: A soda can full of rattling metal is balanced on top of the fire department's printer at the end of the tray. When the printer spits out an emergency alert, the paper knocks over the can....