Free Republic

Elements of the left and their allies in the media are constantly driving this point home: White people are bad and so is the culture that they have created. Everything we value as a society is bad and, more than that, little more than an ex post facto justification for the subjugation of non-whites. Western culture is white culture, and all things white are bad. But as with everything else which these elements of the left and their allies in the media push, this is simply false. While the overlap between white people – that is, people of European descent...

PRINCE Charles issued an extraordinary rallying cry today calling on Muslims living in the UK to show more respect for British values.The heir to the throne railed against the radicalisation of young British men by Islamist extremists as he launched an impassioned defence of Britain's "Christian" heritage. Telling British muslims that they should show more respect for "the values we hold dear," the Prince revealed that he was terrified by the influence of radical preachers who spread their teachings on the internet. In an unprecedented outburst, he said: "The radicalisation of people in Britain is a great worry, and the...

When I received word of the fatal car bomb attack on Coptic worshipers leaving the Saints Coptic Church in Alexandria after this year's New Year's mass, I recalled my earliest memories of the first of these brutal, senseless, and unprovoked attacks against the Coptic people in my homeland of Egypt. Eighty-three Christians were massacred in El-Zawia El Hamra, Cairo in 1980 by Muslim believers committing an act of jihad similar to this current episode and similar to what we now face in other parts of the world today. We took our persecution for granted, and I wondered then where my...

Pop Quiz by: Bethany Stotts, July 15, 2008 How much do American high-schoolers know about their literary heritage? A non-profit group called Common Core surveyed 12,000 17-year-olds this year in order to answer just that question. Barely over half (52%) of the surveyed teenagers knew that 1984 was about “a dictatorship in which every citizen was watched in order to stamp out all individuality,” reports Frederick Hess, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Hess authored the Common Core study. Far more prevalent was knowledge of civil-rights-related literature such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Uncle Tom’s Cabin,...

VIENNA, Austria -- European imams have pledged to work harder to prove that Islam is compatible with democracy and that the majority of Muslims living in the West support human rights, free speech and pluralism. More than 130 prayer leaders from across the continent, in a meeting sponsored by Austria as the current president of the European Union, agreed that Islamic theologians in Europe must do more to establish that their faith does not clash with Western values. The declaration published yesterday amounted to a catalog of homegrown moderate views that Western politicians have been urging Muslim leaders to draw...

Yesterday I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting a very special person. If you did not know the tiny, unpretentious and vivacious grey-haired lady whom I had the privilege of sitting next to you would never guess that she is one of the most formidable personalities of our time. When I drove to The Hague I did not know I was going to meet her, but I knew her name – or rather the pseudonym which she generally uses: Bat Ye’or. It is Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile.” She was born in Cairo but her family was expelled from...

The Means and Ends of Islamists by Edward Hudgins Objectivist Center/Atlas Society After each new suicide attack, as innocent blood flows in the streets of Baghdad, London, Madrid, or Tel Aviv, there is a surge of speculation about what motivates terrorists who are willing to give up their own lives for their cause. Some observers say they're motivated by traditional geopolitical goals—for example, to drive the allies out of Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Middle East; to punish allied countries for their policies; or (that perennial favorite) to drive Israel into the sea. Those who buy this explanation often contend that...

The Means and Ends of Islamists by Edward Hudgins Objectivist Center/Atlas Society After each new suicide attack, as innocent blood flows in the streets of Baghdad, London, Madrid, or Tel Aviv, there is a surge of speculation about what motivates terrorists who are willing to give up their own lives for their cause. Some observers say they're motivated by traditional geopolitical goals—for example, to drive the allies out of Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Middle East; to punish allied countries for their policies; or (that perennial favorite) to drive Israel into the sea. Those who buy this explanation often contend that...

SOME stories just slip away, even from plain sight. One such story began on January 30, in Auburn. It was a Saturday. Elections were being held in Iraq. The Iraqis in Sydney, as in Iraq, were voting in large numbers after years of repression. Almost 12,000 people registered to vote in Australia, most of them in Sydney. A polling booth was set up in Auburn, near the heart of the city's Iraqi community. This did not sit well with some people. About two dozen men from several Middle Eastern countries gathered near the polling booth to intimidate voters. They took...

The Iliad and Islam By Edward Hudgins "Sing, oh Goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles, which brought pains a thousand-fold upon the Achaians." So opens "The Iliad," the world's first great literary work. Homer's poem about the Trojan War has intrigue, politics, sex, and vast battles—all the elements of an exciting epic, whether recited in the halls of ancient palaces or made into a Hollywood blockbuster. The Bronze-Age society of the Greeks who fought before Priam's fortress around 1250 BCE was in many ways primitive and brutal. After the sack of sacred Ilium that society collapsed. Five hundred years...

ON THE NEED TO PROTECT WESTERN VALUES As a scholar with an interest in world history and having lived in many countries in Europe and North America, I find myself repeatedly stunned at the uniqueness of our era and its values, western values. I have to date to locate in the annals of world history any people, any epoch or culture which has on such a demographically and geographically large scale offered individuals and groups the possibility of choice and development according to the dictates of their own conscience, free to be more or less part of a larger group,...

President Bush: “Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group are 'ready' for democracy—-as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress.” His idea—-that there is no necessary connection between Western political traditions and the success of democracy—-is important. But is it true? Today his hypothesis is being tested in Iraq, where an old baseball joke is pertinent. A manager says, “Our team is just two players away from being a championship team. Unfortunately, the two players are Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.” Iraq is just...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. warships carrying 2,300 Marines are off Liberia's coast, U.S. forces still are in harm's way in Afghanistan and U.S. military deaths in Iraq are, as this is written, just nine short of the total before President Bush declared major combat operations over. But some people think America is underengaged abroad. For example, the presidents of Oxfam America and Refugees International, writing in The Washington Post in support of intervention in Liberia, urge the Bush administration to confront ``head-on'' many crises: ``Central Asia, the Balkans and Western Africa are areas of the world that provide too many examples...

Social Democrats takes on Islam. The social democrats is now challenging the arab world, and concludes that western values are superior to the religious and undemocratic values that are prevalent in many middle eastern and northern African countries. In their new foreign policy initiative which is published next week. Western Values shall be rewarded. The middle east in pinpointed as the most important area where foreign aid shall be purposefully used to reward countries and governments that encourages and develops westen values such as democracy, human rights, and good governance. Mellemøsten udpeges som det vigtigste område, hvor bistandshjælp målrettet skal...