Free Republic

Yellow Journalism, Yellow Cake By Robert Wolf The controversy over whether the now infamous line about Saddam trying to purchase uranium from Niger is nitpicking in the extreme. "The CIA cleared the speech. The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," Rice said, en route to Uganda. If the CIA -- the director of central intelligence -- had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone," Rice said. George Tenet has taken responsibility for including it. That should be the end of it. Democrats, who think they are making hay don’t realize that the American public...

NO NANNIES NEED APPLY by Robert Wolf We are not a democracy. As has often been said, democracy is two wolves and a sheep arguing about what is for dinner. We are (or were meant to be) a Federal Republic, a collaboration of autonomous states headed by a deliberately shackled Federal government. As citizen of this Federal republic we should be permitted to manage our own risk and to pursue our own destiny; free of the meddling of those who think fast food is bad for us, that motorcyclists must wear helmets, or that we should split up into multi-cultural...

Age of Opinion By Robert Wolf Garbage in Garbage out, a concept well understood by computer geeks, is the perfect metaphor for what has happened to public education in the United States. Just as democracy, a generic substitution for the more specific, republic, is the word of the day in politics, so egalitarianism or multi-culturalism is the by-word in American Education. Egalité is not a synonym for democracy, as those with a vested interest in promoting the concept would have you believe. The standard dictionary definition of egalitarianism is affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social,...

A To-Do List By Robert Wolf There is much consternation to the effect that politics has become a full body contact sport. Many are dismayed because all that is important is winning. Pubs and Dems will say anything and do anything to win, but the end of world is not at hand, not if we are up to the challenge. Libertarians think Republicans are Clinton Lite. Conservatives are depressed because congressional spending continues unabated. Conservatives and Libertarians are, both, ready ‘to give up the ghost’, ‘shed that mortal coil’ and ‘head for the hills’, perhaps for good reason; watching the...

Religious Intolerance and the ACLU By Robert Wolf Amendment I of the Constitution of the US reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” and continues with “or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This is the so-called Establishment clause we hear so much about. The phrase separation of Church and State we hear so often comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson 21 years later in which he...

When Brave New Worlds Collide By Robert Wolf Progressives, Greens and other socialists may quarrel amongst themselves from time to time, but they are united in their reverence for a book by David Korten entitled, “When Corporations Rule the World”. A revised edition has recently reached the shelves. This book must be on Stan Lee’s nightstand. Its title is reminiscent of a science fiction novel; an unholy cross between “When Worlds Collide” and “Brave New World”. It depicts Libertarians and other free market advocates as quislings or ‘useful idiots’ in a capitalistic conspiracy to rule the world. It portrays them...

Tolerance: The Enlightenment Vs Multi-Culturalism. By Robert Wolf Tolerance, as exemplified by the Enlightenment ‘philosophes’, incorporated the belief that each individual should be free to pursue his own interests. In the words of Locke, “The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests. Civil interests I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body (recreation); and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like.1 Unlike Hobbes’ Leviathan’, Locke regards this contract as revocable, a government that depends upon the consent...

Death by a Thousand Cuts: Spending cuts do not lead to a smaller government. By Robert Wolf When, oh when, will Americans catch on to the deception practiced upon us, largely by Republicans, that spending cuts are reducing the size of the Federal government? Cuts in spending accomplish no such thing. They slow the growth of government debt, and even that by no appreciable amount, but not the growth of government. Not a single government program will have less money this year, next year or any year--each and every year they get more. In perpetuity it seems, Republicans are allowed...

National Character: The Quest for Sainthood. By Robert Wolf There is a theory that national behavior is an amplification of the aggregate behavior of its individual citizens, i.e., that the political macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm. The theory should not startle anyone, historians and public leaders have spoken and written about ‘national character’ for a centuries and have concluded that individual responsibility and morality can not be divorced from good government. Transubstantiation Does government transform society or is it society that transforms government? When Progressives and others lovers of the collectives chide government over its inability to transform...