Free Republic

For my work in corporate social responsibility, I was recently reading The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi’s critique of capitalism, when something he wrote gave me one of those really uncomfortable “Aha” moments. Polanyi was discussing the alternatives to capitalism -- left socialism and right socialism (which we call “Fascism”). His point was that these two socialisms were created to undo the disruptions of capitalism which had privileged “money power” to degrade human sociality into atomic individualism driven by self-seeking greed. When I read his observation that the Fascist phase of anti-capitalism brought about “Irrational philosophies, racialist aesthetics, anti-capitalist demagogy, heterodox...

"On May 27th, KCSO Special Operations Division intercepted a message indicating that Blevins was preparing to proceed with a mass shooting. In the message, Mr. Blevins made a specific threat that included WalMart. Working with the FBI, KCSO Investigators confirmed Mr. Blevins' capability of following through with the threat and moved immediately to arrest him,"

In the past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more affordable than before. And people are less likely to receive validation for the material items they display. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs. .... Thorstein Veblen’s famous “leisure class” has evolved into the “luxury belief class.” Veblen, an economist and sociologist, made his observations about social class...

The Biden regime is fully embracing a radical globalist plan that seeks to destroy capitalism and replace it with a socialist system. “The Great Reset” was unveiled at the World Economic Forum (WEC) in Davos, Switzerland last June, using the coronavirus pandemic and “global warming” as pretexts to impose on the world far-left social programs like government-provided basic income, the Green New Deal, universal healthcare, and of course, massive tax increases.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) announced today that she has created a new congressional committee—inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt—that is designed “to study and combat the concentration of wealth in America and its role in triggering economic collapse.” “As House Speaker, I am proud to announce the creation of the new, bipartisan Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, which will be an essential force in Congressional Democrats’ action to combat the crisis of income and wealth disparity in America,” Pelosi said. “It is molded after the mission of the Temporary National Economic Committee, founded by President...

In a tweet to mark the International Day of Cooperatives, Saturday, Pope Francis notes that cooperatives across the globe are making a real difference in the fight against climate change.For the past 97 years, the International Day of Cooperatives has been celebrated each year on the first Saturday of July. Since 1995, the United Nations and the International Cooperative Alliance have chosen the theme of the annual day. The focus for this year is on climate action for sustainable development for a healthier, fairer and more united economy. In a tweet for Saturday’s observance, Pope Francis also focused on the...

Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday night said the way the Allied Powers defeated the Nazis during World War II provides a blueprint for how the United States should defeat global warming. Ocasio-Cortez appeared at a climate change town hall in College Point, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, where she discussed her "radical" plan to tackle global warming, according to a clip first flagged by the Republican National Committee.

I have often wondered how I missed the coming tragedy. It is not so much that I should have predicted that Americans would elect Donald Trump. It’s just that I shouldn’t have put it past us. It was tough to keep track of the currents of politics and pageantry swirling at once. All my life I had seen myself, and my people, backed into a corner. Had I been wrong? Watching the crowds at county fairs cheer for Michelle Obama in 2008, or flipping through the enchanting photo spreads of the glamorous incoming administration, it was easy to believe that...

Despite the turbulence of the Weimar years, Germany has followed a steady capitalist economic model since the end of the Second World War. But that doesn’t mean people like the idea, a new study shows. Contrary to the US, where belief in capitalism is as entrenched as hot dogs and baseball, Germany has always had a more complicated relationship to the philosophy of competitive markets. This is, after all, the country that gave us the founding communist thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. And a study published by Statista and YouGov on Tuesday shows that only 16 percent of Germans...

Donald Trump will have a climate plan and it will be ugly. For now, the Republican frontrunner is pedaling the kind of denialism his party loves, having called global warming everything from a "hoax" to a "con job" to a Chinese plot. But an interview with his energy adviser hinted that Trump might endeavor to Make Atmospheric Carbon Levels Great Again. "My advice would be, while I'm a skeptic as well", Trump energy honcho Kevin Cramer [said], "he is a product of political populism, and political populism believes that there needs [to be] some addressing of climate change". Cramer has...

A group of Native Americans in Arizona is taking on two Australian resources giants to try to save a sacred desert campground from being destroyed by a huge mining development. Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of Australia's Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, plans to turn the area around the Oak Flat campsite in the Tonto National Forest into the biggest copper mine in North America. Members of the local San Carlos Apache tribe said Oak Flat was a sacred place where they had held religious and cultural ceremonies for centuries. "It is no different to what people can relate to about...

"Representative democracy" has failed; the private sector is "inept"; and only bigger government - led by China and the US - has the power to save the world from climate change. So says Bill Gates in a dogmatic but somewhat confused interview with The Atlantic in which he simultaneously pours scorn on green tech solutions but insists that more of them are needed - on a scale bigger than the Manhattan Project - if we are to deal successfully with a problem whose nature he admits may well have been exaggerated by environmentalists.

The controversial pastor who preached at a church attended by President Obama said on Saturday that “Jesus was a Palestinian,” alluded to Israel as an apartheid state and compared “the youth in Ferguson and the youth in Palestine” during a speech in Washington, D.C. Jeremiah Wright, who led Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago from 1972 to 2008, spoke at a Nation of Islam event titled “Justice or Else!” on the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March.

Anti-capitalism, pro-AGW, and anti-gun By now, you’ve probably seen the Tweets, read the quotes, or listened to the proclamations coming from the Vatican. The Pope has decided to embrace the global warming faith, attack capitalism, decry the successes of western nations, and rail against guns, gun manufacturers, and those who support the industry. In short (abortion and gay marriage aside) he’s taken a turn to the hard-left. In the span of a decade, we’ve gone from a Pope teaming with Reagan to defeat the Soviet Union to a Pope who embraces the classist financial rhetoric of our old enemies. That’s...

Since 1880, when global temperatures began to be systematically collected, no year has been warmer than 2014. The 15 warmest years, with one single exception, have come during the first 15 years of the new millennium. Indeed, it has become an open question as to whether global warming can be stopped anymore—or at least limited as policymakers have called for. Is capitalism ultimately responsible for the problem, or could it actually help to solve it? […] Following the Copenhagen fiasco, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer of the Netherlands, resigned in...

One in five Germans believe that a revolution would be the only way to truly reform society, a study released by the Free University of Berlin on Monday shows. Anti-capitalism, anti-fascism and anti-racism were all are prominent positions according to the study entitled “Against state and capital—for the revolution”, which has revealed a public much further to the left than previously thought. In the report, 20% of the people surveyed agreed with the statement that “Living conditions won’t be improved by reforms—we need a revolution”. A similar percentage of people said they saw the rise of a new fascism in...

A social media campaign calling for a boycott on spending this Black Friday has caught the attention of celebrities. In an effort to protest the Missouri grand jury’s decision on Monday not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in August, US celebrities have taken to social media to use the hashtags #NotOneDime, #BlackoutFriday and #BlackoutBlackFriday to advocate for a retail boycott. They include actors Michael B. Jordan and Jesse Williams, Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler, actress Kat Graham, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and journalist Soledad O’Brien . The hashtags are meant to encourage people...

… Opponents of the carbon tax implemented in 2012 had the media largely on their side. Electricity prices soared—not mainly because of the tax, but because power companies were spending billions on infrastructure. Most electricity users were compensated for the added cost of the tax, but many of them didn’t know that. And rising gas prices fed the fury—even though the tax didn’t apply to gasoline. Australia’s experience illustrates how easy it is to scuttle complicated environmental laws, and serves as a warning to President Barack Obama, whose recent proposal to force a 30 percent cut in power plants’ carbon...

Obama’s inability to make a decision on Keystone has finally yielded a result – Canada has made the decision for him. Breitbart reports Canada has just approved the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project – a major pipeline to ship Canadian oil to Asia. The Canadian oil will still be burnt – in Asia, instead of America. All the jobs and energy security which Canadian oil could have delivered to America, will instead be delivered to Asia. Rather than purchasing crude from a friendly and allied neighbor, the United States will most likely need to continue its reliance upon hostile sources like...

That National Public Radio has nice things to say about socialism shouldn’t be surprising. After all, “Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public,” explains NPR’s own website. “Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism…and eventually the loss of public radio stations.” NPR’s brand of journalism came under fire most recently when Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn sponsored a bill in 2011 to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. “Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds programming for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, has received...