Free Republic

What are we willing to die for? Should American soldiers die in the Middle East or risk their lives in the South China Sea or should they take on drug pushers and people smuggling criminals on the Mexican border?

It begins with a carefully chosen angle and a smartphone tilted somewhere above eye level. Background, lighting, and facial expression are then all considered—perhaps a doe-eyed stare in the restroom mirror or an enthusiastic smile sitting down to your favorite meal. The arm is carefully extended, smartphone in hand, the camera looks you in the face, and snap. Flattering filters soften the colors, fix the blemishes, and blur the outlines. This is the selfie. No true selfie is complete until it is offered up for public consumption via at least one of various available social media outlets. As your...

Immaturity. Self-indulgence. Irresponsibility. These are what liberalism is all about Anyone who regularly uses common sense knows that liberals are almost always wrong. Wrong in their opinions, wrong in their justifications, wrong in their worldview. There is not an area in our social or political discourse in which liberals don’t regularly say or do things that simply make no sense to people who expect rational behavior on the part of others. More often than not, normal people find themselves looking at liberals and wondering, “What were they thinking???” Now, it’s alright to be wrong. Everybody gets something wrong every once...

An aspiring model spent massive amounts of money on plastic surgery in order to make herself look like a real-life sex doll. French native Victoria Wild dropped $45,000 on the multiple surgeries, which the model proudly said that her goal was to look like a “bimbo doll.” She may be pleased with her new look, but in all honesty she looks like she belongs in a circus tent. Her surgical enhancements include; three pounds of breast implants, rhinoplasty, implants in her buttocks, lip implants that make her look like a sucker fish, and of course Botox to make sure she...

The culture war might be likened to fighting a war against a coalition of powers. Imagine WWI-style trench warfare on a long front. In the center of the enemy lines are the forces of moral relativism. These forces oppose the idea that there is a universal moral law. On one flank are the forces of the sexual revolution, including gays, feminists, adulterers, the promiscuous, and the pro-abortion folks. On the other flank are the cultural relativists, and multiculturalists. This camp opposes the ideas of truth, beauty, and intrinsic quality. It seeks to suppress the literary, philosophical, and artistic heritage of...

February 6, 2010 Save the planet? Darling, that’s so last season Ring-pull handbags and frocks made of milk? Celebrity fashionistas aren’t helping ecology, they are glorifying themselves Janice Turner Although I celebrate the Oscar nomination for Colin Firth, undisputed king of simmering internal conflict, I’m concerned about his wife Livia. I’m not sure she will cope, not after the Screen Actors Guild Awards when, “just hours” before the ceremony, her dress woven from milk — yes, milk — didn’t fit, and her clutch bag encrusted in ring-pulls clashed with her gold vegetarian shoes. Undeniably, as her Vogue blog put it,...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- If you listen to Republicans, Democrats haven't accomplished much since taking over Congress last January, but they did reach one landmark Wednesday with the holding of a record 1,000th vote of the year. The vote was on a bill to give self-autonomy to Native Hawaiians, extending the previous record of 942 votes in a year set in 1978. With this session of Congress expected to drag on well into December, the final figure should be far above that of previous Congresses. "Our job is to take America in a new direction, and we are working hard to...

June 4, 2006 Perfecting the Art of Self Indulgence By Carol Turoff Basking in the anguish he caused his children and two former wives pays off nicely for ex-Governor James McGreevy. Remember former Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey? He's the boyish looking top-of-the-ticket, twice married, husband and father of two who resigned his office in 2004. Employing the strategic defensive maneuver of deflecting disclosure by his lover, he preemptively declared himself a "gay American," and walked off the political stage. With his bewildered wife standing beside him, he announced his "consensual affair" with another man. Golan Cipel, was...

(AgapePress) -- Anyone know where we can find some Etruscans? You know, members of the Etruscan civilization that existed in ancient Italy, predating even Rome? Well, there aren't any. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Roman civilization and ceased to exist as a distinct people. Ominously, if a growing number of experts and cultural observers are right, it's entirely possible that the same question may be asked 100 years from now -- only about Italians or Spaniards or Russians. As writer Mark Steyn glumly put it in The New Criterion, "Much of what we loosely call the Western world will...