Free Republic

There is a point in almost every debate at which the losing party recognizes its predicament and concludes that its only remaining play is to try to corrupt the language. In Texas, pro-choice hero Wendy Davis has begun, risibly, to describe herself as “pro-life”; in his second inaugural, President Obama cloaked the most ambitious statist agenda in a half-century in the patois of limited government and rebellion; and, in my own country of birth, authorities that lock people up for speaking do so in the ostensible name of “respect.” If you can’t beat ’em, confuse ’em. Yesterday morning, Obamacare’s beleaguered...

Opportunity, not entitlements, is the path forwardThere has been much discussion about income inequality recently. President Obama seems to think that we can make significant progress in eliminating poverty by raising the minimum wage, as his State of the Union address highlighted. Many hope that through a simple declaration, the poor can be elevated to a higher social status. Such people fail to realize that pay is associated with value — otherwise, we could just pay everybody $1 million a year and let everybody be rich. In a capitalistic society, those individuals who produce the wherewithal to obtain income tend...

Years ago, someone said that, according to the laws of aerodynamics, bumblebees cannot fly. But the bumblebees, not knowing the laws of aerodynamics, go ahead and fly anyway. Something like that happens among people. There have been many ponderous academic writings and dour editorials in the mainstream media, lamenting that most people born poor cannot rise in American society any more. Meanwhile, many poor immigrants arrive here from various parts of Asia, and rise on up the ladder anyway. Often these Asian immigrants arrive not only with very little money, but also very little knowledge of English. They start out...

They were the royal children; the sons and daughters of the Baby Boomers who adored and spoiled them and promised them that life would be wonderful. They were designer babies with clothing and shoes that sported logos just like their parents. Their parents were on waiting lists to get them into the right pre-school, they were given lavish birthday parties and extravagant gifts. They were trained and brainwashed and made to believe that getting into the “right” college meant success or failure. They were given trophies and awards for playing sports whether they were accomplished or not. It didn’t matter...

There are two kinds of men that this article will necessarily offend. The first, and most obvious, is the kind of man who honestly believes in an exceptional Mexican work ethic -- the man who attempts to befriend or utilize the Mexican population to prove himself not to be a racist, to acquire their votes, or to unfairly associate himself with qualities belonging to others. But the second kind of man, in my opinion, deserves to be offended far more than the rest, for, hoping to find an essay about the laziness of Mexicans, what he is actually going to...

.................Obama's buddies in Hollywood are loving the fact that he is finally putting an end to the "embarrassing" flag-waving, proud American, Ronald-Reagan American-exceptionalism crap. Along with standards of morality and character,patriotism gives them the heebie-jeebies. Obama's new lowered American standard also includes making it a crime against society to make money--at least if you are a conservative or Republican. Hardcore liberal singer Barbra Streisand can charge a gazillion dollars for a ticket to her concert. Several Democrats are multimillionaires. The Obamas eat only $150-a-pound Kobe beef. Three of Michelle Obama's vacations cost taxpayers one million dollars. And yet Obama and...

An ‘Error Message’ on the Screen of Western Civ? The Most Important Question Facing us in 2012 is more than an Election The most important question of the coming year is not “who will be the next occupant of the White House?” The single most important matter before us all is a question of value. It is a question that may be stated, “Will the Western world embrace the very thing that holds it together. Or will it continue the denial of the obvious and seal its inevitable decline?” Let me explain. In historiography – the study of history –...

A newly released report reveals some hard facts about how much time and effort President Obama has actually put into fixing the economy. An analysis of the President's official schedule looks at his first 1257 days, and paints a picture of what reality looks like, as opposed to his rhetoric. The following excerpt shows some of the startling facts.

This year another advertisement entered a crowded field, without pomp but predicated on real-world circumstance–Chrysler’s “Halftime in America,” featuring a weathered but resolute Clint Eastwood. He isn’t exactly selling anything in the spot, which is filmed to resemble a political ad if it were produced by Paul Haggis (Eastwood’s collaborator on Million Dollar Baby and the director of Crash). Instead, he aims to jolt, then scold, but ultimately soothe the viewer. First seen walking from the shadows of a hazy football game, he hunches his shoulders walks with a tired grace. Speaking in a voice so gravelly you could walk...

This year another advertisement entered a crowded field, without pomp but predicated on real-world circumstance–Chrysler’s “Halftime in America,” featuring a weathered but resolute Clint Eastwood. He isn’t exactly selling anything in the spot, which is filmed to resemble a political ad if it were produced by Paul Haggis (Eastwood’s collaborator on Million Dollar Baby and the director of Crash). Instead, he aims to jolt, then scold, but ultimately soothe the viewer. First seen walking from the shadows of a hazy football game, he hunches his shoulders walks with a tired grace. Speaking in a voice so gravelly you could walk...

Ann Coulter has been a Romney supporter for a long time, and she's a brawler; it's no surprise that she would come away from the SC primary swinging. What's unexpected is who she's targeting. Instead of diligently investigating why Newt won, she has turned her acerbic tongue loose on the electorate instead. The very next morning after the primary, she suggested that republicans have become 'the mob' on Fox News, and has implied there and elsewhere that voters are stupid for backing Gingrich just because he can deliver an insult to the MBM. Along with a host of other sarcastic...

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When Sul Morina first came to England as a 16-year-old he was an asylum seeker uprooted from his family in Albania who could not speak a word of English. (snip) In 2001 he came to England as a teenager unable to speak the langauage, and went to school and learned English. After about eight months he was transferred to year 10 and studied GCSEs. “They weren’t great, but I then went to college and studied electrical installation and then became an apprentice with a company called Electec Services,” he added. However finding enough work to keep going financially was tough,...

A European team of researchers led by the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom postulates that the 'Protestant work ethic' that emerged in the 19th century may have helped to propel the economies of northern Europe over their southern neighbours. The study is presented in two articles published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Scandinavian Journal of Economics. Lead author Dr Sascha Becker, the deputy head of Warwick's Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE), collated data to determine if Max Weber's Protestant Work Ethic theory - that Protestantism encouraged hard work as a duty...

First lady Michelle Obama on Monday told a fundraiser in Southern California of the toll the presidency has taken on her husband Barack Obama. "I see the sadness and worry that's creasing his face," she said to a crowd of about 500 at the Pasadena luncheon organized by the Southern California Women For Obama. She described his worth ethic as “tireless,” according to pool reports. "He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him," she said. "This man doesn't take a day off."

Most people say that a job is good for making money. So, if you don't need money, what's the point? The fabled English aristocratic class of the late 19th and early 20th century apparently thought that way, if the caricatures painted by Jeeves and Wooster, Brideshead, and the like have any truth to them. Their main job was getting dressed and undressed. It seems like young Americans are thinking the same way. Doug French drew my attention to some statistics from the Wall Street Journal on teenage employment that knocked me out. In 2000, slightly more than a third of...

One of the telling signs carried in a Tea Party demonstration said: "Spread my work ethic, not my wealth." It may be better to teach people how to fish, rather than giving them fish -- but too many politicians give them fish, in order to get their votes. * University students rioting against tuition increases on both sides of the Atlantic are painful signs of the degeneracy of our times. The idea that taxpayers owe it to you to pay for what you want suggests that much of today's education fails to instill reality, and instead panders to a self-centered...

Tenacity: A Thanksgiving Lesson November 25th, 2010 by Dr. Mark W. HendricksonEvery fall in my Econ 101 course, during the last class period before we part for Thanksgiving, I share a lesson from early American history. It is particularly timely, because it deals with those we credit with the first American Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony. Upon arriving in New England, the Pilgrims shared “their meat, drink, apparel and all provisions” in common. As inevitably happens under collective ownership, the incentive to work disappeared. The grim result was food shortages, hunger, starvation; indeed, half of those who sailed on...

Here is the most chronic problem in Europe: Barely 30% of Europeans work, to sustain the rest. Working hours have been steadily reduced in most countries; holidays have multiplied, and perhaps even more than elsewhere, Europe has fled to service industry and public-sector employment, which is often not really productive work, or may be just disguised welfare, or at least workfare..... It was only 10 or 15 years ago when European elites dreamed audibly of standing on each others’ shoulders and reliving the glories of Europe’s preeminence in the world, before it gave us Nazism and Communism. There abounded smug...

<p>Jared Rogalia, 25, a Hertz rental car manager-trainee in Alexandria, is as cranky as someone twice his age when he complains about his generation’s work ethic. Here’s how Rogalia characterizes his age group: “The first is: really spoiled and lazy. The second is: We’re free-spirited. And the third is: They’d rather be poorer and have free time than have a lot of money.”</p>