Free Republic

Conservatives have been calling for a spiritual revival, another Great Awakening, to undo the cultural stagnation infecting the nation. Evangelicals debate whether they should engage in the political arena to address society’s ills. They agree on the need for increased religious fervor to solve the nation’s problems. They see in history a recurring Old Testament theme: that people persist in erroneous ways until they desperately turn to God, repent and flourish, only to repeat the cycle. Conservatives see these revivals occurring when things seem darkest and when believers were most prone to despair. Conservatives see signs of America’s decay in...

Over the past decade, left-leaning opinion makers have been at war against the U.S. Constitution and our Founders. The nomination of originalist judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court has provoked renewal of the onslaught. The assault takes several forms, which are discussed below. First, however, let’s see what triggered it.The Constitution limits and distributes political power. American “progressives” almost universally favor a very powerful central government so most do not think highly of the Constitution. Throughout the 20th Century, however, they generally avoided direct criticism. Instead, they contended that the Constitution authorizes, or even mandates, their political agenda.A good...

Father James Altman discusses 167 years of warnings from the last TEN popes about the evils of socialism, and how the US is under relentless attack by socialists NOW who openly operate in our country under sweet-sounding names like liberty, justice, love, & equality - "nothing more than adjectives for human exaltation ... man-made 'rights.'"

‘Fratelli Tutti’ Restates Pope’s Progressivism Encyclical commends Gandhi, King, Tutu and Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - In his longest encyclical yet, offering "a new vision of fraternity," Pope Francis restates his frequently repeated pronouncements on migration, markets, media, interfaith dialogue, populism, nationalism, redistribution of wealth and the death penalty.  A masked panel introduces Fratelli Tutti to the media Extensively citing his controversial "Human Fraternity" covenant with Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb and naming the Sunni leader five times in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti ("Brothers All"), Francis quotes the Qur'an affirming: "Whoever kills a person is like one who kills the whole of humanity,...

SACRAMENTO, CA—In a move to prevent Californians from fleeing by the millions, Gavin Newsom announced a ban on gasoline automobiles this week. The law will make it so that Californians can't drive away and escape the state in a matter of hours, forcing them to instead form migrant caravans and make the treacherous trek across the blistering deserts of the Southwest. "Now, they'll have to cross the desert on foot," Newsom said as he handed down the order. "I'll show them, trying to flee my progressive utopia! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The US elections will be a contest not just between political figures and rival parties but between opposing worldviews. Biden’s intention to “Europeanize” American democracy would leave the international system bereft of the democracy that saved humanity multiple times from the calamities wreaked upon it by European utopian thought. President Donald Trump’s declaration in his Mount Rushmore speech of his intention to defend the traditional values of the United States, and Joe Biden’s declaration (backed by Bernie Sanders) of his intention to bring about a transformation of the United States, indicate that the 2020 elections will not be,...

By preserving culture and supporting children, the nuclear family consequently becomes the highest and most effective form of empowerment. By now, people are realizing that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is less an organization committed to improving the black community, and more a Marxist group exploiting racial tensions to push its agenda. According to a recent poll, “70 percent of respondents think that the movement has not improved race relations, with 38 percent saying Black Lives Matter has made race relations worse.” After so much agitation and protest, BLM has little to show for itself besides fomenting chaos in urban America...

6 Ways To Raise A Patriot WhatÂ’s the most patriotic thing you can do right now? Raise a patriot! One silver lining of recent political and cultural upheaval is that parents are finally waking up to the indoctrination of their children. IÂ’ve always known my kidsÂ’ schools were liberal, but it wasnÂ’t until COVID-19 homeschooling began that I discovered my sonÂ’s high school curriculum included Chinese communist propaganda videos. I sat at my kitchen counter with my jaw open as we watched an assigned video justifying and promoting the Chinese Communist PartyÂ’s inhumane population control policies with zero counterpoint...

Leftist citizens of the world are uncomfortable at the sight of unabashed and self-confident patriots celebrating the founding of a nation dedicated to undeniable truths. Tough. Let the micro-aggressions roll as we stand athwart the progressive junking of all that is good and decent. On our nation’s 150th anniversary in 1926, Republican president Calvin Coolidge gave a speech in which he responded to the progressive wave that was muddying the minds of the nation. Only thirteen years after the passage of the destructive 16th and 17th Amendments, Coolidge deftly reminded Americans not to discard principles that had served the nation...

Left-wing demonstrators and rioters have managed to achieve in a matter of weeks what courteous conservative thinkers failed to accomplish in a century: Knock Woodrow Wilson off his progressive pedestal. More than any other figure in American history, President Wilson embodied and popularized the 20th Century ideology known as Progressivism. Wilson’s eight years in the presidency created the template for the modern administrative state: a powerful executive branch, an oversized bureaucracy, the increased centralization of government, an unending demand for so-called legislative reforms, and multiplying federal agencies regulating more aspects of life. In a sense, the Wilson program of 1913...

Journalism today likes to provoke us, do you feel provoked? In the blueprint for modern journalism, "Public Opinion", Lippmann wrote on Page 355 the following: It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is...

Skepticism is at the heart of the scientific method. Question everything. Test everything. Scientific knowledge is established by evidence, not authority. The method is sound, but the execution may be imperfect. That's why I have faith in the methods of science but not necessarily in scientists. Experts in science have a store of credibility that can be maintained only by their performance. I have a great deal of trust in the meteorologists at the National Weather Service because their forecasts are 80%–90% accurate (no weatherman jokes, please — I used to be one!). But if most of their predictions began...

As left-wing Democrat-controlled states continue to keep people in lockdown, it is becoming apparent that they are using the pandemic as a means to gain ultimate control of people's lives. In fact, leftists the world over are exploiting the pandemic in order to create their alleged utopias. Vanessa Vallejo, a Colombian activist and columnist explains that Whenever they come to power, communists work hard to create a clientele network that will vote for them and support them in the future. So instead of looking for real solutions to lift people out of poverty altogether, they offer them subsidies or useless...

"There are no libertarians in a global pandemic." So goes the smug punchline of large-government advocates who point to the necessity of collective action in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. Without government, they say, we'd all be dead. Few libertarians would disagree. The hardcore libertarians at Reason magazine aren't spending their days fulminating over the evils of government-required lockdown orders in the face of a fast-spreading, deadly disease. That's because they, like all other sentient human beings, recognize that collective action is sometimes necessary. But here's the dirty little secret: Institutional failures during this pandemic are more indicative...

The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men. As naked...

Much has been said by other conservative bloggers about the recent 1619 Project's correction, but missing from all of those articles is any mention the weakness left behind. A few days ago, this was posted online. Everybody focused on the two word change at the core of the correction. That's important, but that's not as important as this: Versions of this interpretation can be found in much of the scholarship into the origins and character of the Revolution that has marked the past 40 years or so of early American historiography — in part because historians of the past few...

General Motors (GM) recently announced it was investing billions into a new eco-friendly “electric car” initiative to compete with the tech giant Tesla in an effort to go green, and tech media outlets are touting the change. Both Axios and The Verge ran stories March 4 on GM’s $20 billion bet over the next five years on its new green initiative. And while Axios questioned the stability of GM’s commitment, and The Verge tried to play gotcha by criticizing how the company’s past positions have aligned with the policies of President Donald Trump, the outlets appeared to like the shift...

Christendom Is the Solution for the Emptiness of our Nihilistic Society Grave moral problems are tearing the country apart. For many, this is apparent in the form of broken homes, procured abortion, shattered communities and lost Faith. Many people get it right when pointing out the problems. However, they get it wrong when looking for solutions. Some get it wrong because they look for solutions that address symptoms, not causes. Others search for a way out that involves the least possible effort. In these politically correct times, people are told not to offend anyone by their proposals. Thus, they automatically...

The raids constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes. Friday, January 3, 2020 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. Reed Politics History Woodrow Wilson First Amendment Communism World War I Police State Exactly a hundred years ago this morning—on January 3, 1920—Americans woke up to discover just how little their own government regarded the cherished Bill of Rights. During the night, some 4,000 of their fellow citizens were rounded up and jailed for what amounted, in...

JD Greear, Pastor of The Summit Church and the current President of the Southern Baptist Convention, explained his position on how Christians should address transgendered people during a recent podcast. Greear raised some eyebrows but claiming he’d address folks with their “preferred pronoun.” J.D. Greear, current SBC president: "If a transgender person, you know, came into our church, came into my life, I think my disposition would be to refer to them by their preferred pronoun." 😮https://t.co/sbbaTromvc — Gus in Memphis (@F3_Gus) November 22, 2019 Chick-fil-A’s Dan Cathy Issues Blunt Response to Accusations of Caving to LGBTQ Activists This advice,...