Free Republic

If you want to see the best football code in the world, you have to visit Australia in April-September. Port Melbourne footballer Maddy “Maddawg” Patterson was a tree planter but now she’s a sparky. (Electrician.) Her focus and concentration on the game and on her team is cool, calm, poised and beautiful. And what is it on the field that drives Maddawg’s commitment to her club and her nation’s native game? It’s wonderful goals like this sublimely skilled evasion of opponents by teammate Kaitlyn O’Keefe.

I cannot think of anything in comedy in my lifetime more deeply meaningful to me than Babylon Bee. There was Mark Twain. Who agrees? Who believes that the Bee's Trump Bible is sacrilegious?

French screen legend, Brigitte Bardot, was born on the 28th of September, 1934, in Paris. She has, in different ways, and for two very different sets of beings, been a great libertarian all her life. I believe her own words prove that: “I’m a girl from a good family who was very well brought up. One day I turned my back on it all and became a bohemian ……. I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous and very unhappy ……” “It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen ………. I gave my...

Patsy Cline was born on the 8th of September, 1932, in Winchester, Virginia. As her words attest, she is a country music great: “You want me to act like we’ve never kissed, you want to forget; pretend we’ve never met , and I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I haven’t yet… You walk by, and I fall to pieces.” “I’m gonna walk a little bit of dog.” “Oh, I offended you with my opinion? You should hear the the ones I keep to myself.” “Carnegie Hall was real fabulous, but you know, it ain’t as big as the Grand Ole...

Anne Boleyn was a beautiful woman who died for an effectively polygamous man, Henry the VIIIth. In 1532, on September the first, he made Anne the Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry created this title for her. These words attributed to her suggest she was very much a woman who was ready for a man: “Seduce me. Write letters to me. And poems, I love poems. Ravish me with your words. Seduce me.” Anne married Henry but when he did not have a son by her to be heir to his throne he had her executed. She spoke...

Ingrid Bergman was one of her photographer father’s favourite subjects. She once said, “I didn’t choose acting. It chose me.” When she was two and a half years old her mother died and when she was 14 her father died. Later she said, “The theater was my mother and my father.” and “I have had my different husbands, my families. I am fond of them all and I visit them all. But deep inside me there is the feeling that I belong to show business.” She died at midnight on her birthday, August 29, in 1982. Does that mean something?

Ruby Keeler was born into a catholic family in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on this date in 1909. She worked hard in tough times: "Dancing in speakeasies was a job, and none of us knew for sure who were gangsters. No one told us, so how could we know? My mother used to come and take me home. We thought nothing of walking home together at two in the morning." She supported Eisenhower's campaign in 1952. In the movie “Dames”, Ruby Keeler’s character Barbara Hemingway said, “I’m free, white, and 21. I love to dance AND I’m going to dance.” Those...

Arma Virumque Me Cano. Rewriting Vergil, I sing of weapons, and of myself as a man. In this land where, as freedom fighter Steve of Wonthaggi tells it, " ......... men have been decommissioned of traditional roles. ....... (Some people) want us to be demonised as non accepting, small minded , woman-bashing shits." That isn't what we are. It is misandry. Lest We Forget.

Conservative writer and broadcaster Tammy Bruce was born on August 20, 1962, in Los Angeles. I love her intelligent mastery of English: "No matter how noble the original intentions, the seductions of power can turn any movement from one seeking equal rights to one that would deny them to others." "One of the goals of the Feminist Elite is to reinforce to women the idea that men are obsolete." "Gone are the days when reality fed the feminist movement." "For women who turn to welfare, Big Brother becomes Husband." I see here the seeds of a fourth wave of feminism....

Ron Paul, who is, in my view, perhaps the single greatest living libertarian politician in the world, was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1935. He came to my attention through his “what if” speech on YouTube. I consider it to be a truly great poem. I throw up for contrast with some of Paul’s thought a book title from Paleoconservative Pat Buchanan: “Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.” To what extent would his fellow libertarian, Ron Paul, agree? Here is a taste of Paul’s thought: “There is...

In 1951, Swedish actress Ulla Jacobsson preceded Marilyn Monroe by three years in her free celebration of her female form on camera. In classical Latin her first name "Ulla" meant "any female". She died in Vienna on August 20, 1982. Jacqueline Susann, author "Valley Of The Dolls" and "The Love Machine" about fictional television producer Robin Stone, was born on August 20, 1918 in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. "Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my...

Sharpshooter Annie Oakley, born On August 13, 1860, Was A Very Tough Woman. In this century, Oakley, for me, is a beacon of deeply American and female toughness and freedom. She said: "God intended women to be outside as well as men, and they do not know what they are missing when they stay cooped up in the house." "I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies." "Any woman who does not thoroughly enjoy tramping across the country on a clear frosty morning with a good gun...

Melbourne Freedom Fighter Pauline is shocked at the torture of Julian Assange for telling truths. All we mortal human beings usually seem to need to speak our truths as best we can. Godless tyrants now frequently destroy what's best in themselves and too many innocent victims. “I do not play games," Mila Kunis has said, "but always just say what’s on my mind. Ostentatious Godless tyrants now frequently destroy what's best in themselves and too many innocent victims. – for fools. If a man's afraid of your honesty, it means that he is not the one you need."

Norma Shearer (121st birthday today on august 11, tomorrow, American time) said "A woman today is good, or she is bad, according to the way she does a thing - and not because of the thing itself." And “The morals of yesterday are no more. They are as dead as the day they were lived. Economic independence has put woman on exactly the same footing as man.” This is easy to disapprove of. And to be drawn to. Freedom works. Morality? Whose?

Modern gender bigotry hurts and separates both men and women in oceans of inhumane distrust and fear. A dystopian nightmare. Central Melbourne freedom fighter and life long nurse Pauline explains what we need to understand in order to heal from this disease: "Women are sacred and possess this incredible super power to grow and carry life. Men are important too, and the current BS is making men and women forget how incredibly unique and special we all are, as men and women." God Bless Pauline.

On August 8 in 1967 Vivien Leigh died and in 2011 Betty Ford died. Scarlett O'Hara. Blanche DuBois. Alcoholism overcome. Leigh said: "Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say. But the dread must never show." Ford said: "It's always been my feeling that God lends you your children until they're about eighteen years old. If you haven't made your points with them by then, it's too late." She used her freedom.and spoke her mind. God Bless Truth

Lady Godiva and her hubby, Leofric, the Earl Of Mercia were both generous to Christian religious houses. He established a Benedictine monastery in Coventry. She gave gold and silver jewelry to monasteries. One necklace was hung on the neck of the Virgin Mary. The first known Rosary-like string of prayer beads was made by her. That's history. Different times. According to legend, LG was deeply troubled by oppressive taxation of the people by her husband and entreated him again and again to lower taxes but he refused. However she persisted and eventually he gave in on the condition that she...

Poet Emma Lazarus was born on July 22nd, 1849 in New York City. She is most famous for the words: “Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me ....." She also had some great thoughts about the dangers of anti patriotic crap: "“Let our first care today be the re-establishment of our physical strength, the reconstruction of our national organism, so that in future, where the respect due to us cannot be won by entreaty, it may be commanded, and where...

On the 15th of July, 1606, Golden Age artist Rembrandt was born. He looked back for wisdom to the ancient Greeks. The Greek ideas of society are a crucial part of the foundations of The West. In 1951, also on the 15th of July, Jesse Ventura was born in Minneapolis. He is a modern part of the Western Tradition of freedom. A man whose words show that he is appalled by the horrors big government can create” “I want to make government more directly accountable to the people.” “I believe in the American people’s ability to govern themselves. If government...

This post compares the attitudes of Rembrandt and Jesse Ventura, both born on July 15, to suicide. In 1664, Rembrandt showed genuine compassion in his portrayal of the suicide of the raped ancient Roman noblewoman, Lucretia. Her left hand is raised as if to say no to the attack on her person. Her other hand holding a knife ready to destroy herself. Her sweet, beautiful face is both purposeful and powerless in its sad tilt towards the blade. In modern times, in openly discussing the taboo issue of suicide, Ventura has shown a good combination of tough honesty and human...