Free Republic

When in doubt, blame businesses for closing their doors instead of the crime that has made it unsustainable for them to operate. San Francisco might even do you one better: force the businesses to stay open anyway. One of the 11 members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is floating reviving a vetoed 1984 law that would force grocery stores to stay open against their will. Supervisor Dean Preston calls it a “good idea” because of the risk of “food insecurity” that comes with grocery stores closing. The law in question would require stores to give a whopping six-month notice...

If it ain’t broke, break it. This is Joe Biden’s guiding principle. He took President Donald J. Trump’s much-tighter southern border and ripped it as wide open as a gutted trout’s belly. Biden turned Trump’s energy independence into begging Iran and Venezuela to pump more oil. He also devolved Trump’s peace in the Middle East into a five-front Arab war on Israel and let the Houthi terrorists convert the Red Sea into a shooting gallery. And for his next trick, Biden wants to impersonate a Latin autocrat. On December 7, a date that shall live in infamy, Biden’s Commerce Department...

Influencer and mother Carla Bellucci made headlines when she told the media that she would be charging family members to serve them dinner and a single glass of champagne at Christmas. Bellucci has previously been dubbed the "Britain's most hated woman" after she admitted on television that she exaggerated her feelings of depression and flirted in order to get a nose job provided by the publicly funded and overburdened British health care system. Since then, she has also gained infamy for other behavior, such as hiring male strippers for her 18-year-old daughter’s birthday and crowdfunding a butt lift procedure. But...

It's often said that homosexuals have always been with us, as if the "gay rights" movement has just spontaneously emerged, but the truth is that it has been traced to one man, a communist named Harry Hay. This is a story that deserves to be told as society proceeds with a debate over the extent of "gay rights." This is what lies behind the drive for homosexual marriage. Their "rights" won't end with that. They want to legalize child molestation by calling it "love." With the gay marriage debate underway, it's time for the major media to tell the full...

At first glance, a lot of the social problems and resource waste emerging from government intervention seem pretty easy to fix: the government should just stop doing whatever it is doing that is creating the problems and the waste. The stubborn persistence of institutions and organizations that keep societies poor is a vexing problem for social scientists. In Political Capitalism, the economist Randall Holcombe takes on this problem by analyzing “political capitalism” as a distinct economic system with its own logic and features rather than as some kind of midpoint between capitalism and socialism. As he points out, people do...

Ayn Rand referred to the business and political masters (and clueless destroyers) of the economy as ‘looters.’ ... One guesses that Ayn Rand, author of the 1957 dystopian novel “Atlas Shrugged,” wouldn’t be surprised by our government-business partnerships and moral crusades. Sam Bankman-Fried would fit perfectly as a character in an “Atlas Shrugged” sequel. In Rand’s novel, a do-good industrialist collaborating with political managers of the economy opines, “It’s generally conceded that the free economy is now on trial. Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social responsibilities, the people won’t stand for it. If it doesn’t develop...

Fifty-seven years ago, Ayn Rand predicted the red wave sweeping America today. The Left Cashes In On The Real Red Wave By Eileen F. Toplansky Indeed, there was a red wave but not the one conservatives had hoped for. It was, however, the continuation of the leftists’, Marxists’, and communists’ eternal obsession to destroy America and obliterate her values—and Ayn Rand predicted it in her 1965 seminal book titled The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. Frighteningly prescient, Rand understood the beginnings of the “intellectual disintegration” that is now front and center in most colleges. Fifty-seven years later, the Left is...

As Rishi Sunak prepares to become the UK’s next prime minister at the start of the festival of Diwali – when Hindus pray to the goddess Lakshmi for prosperity and success – in India some Hindus celebrated the fact that someone sharing their religion had reached such high office in the UK. “To have a Hindu inside 10 Downing Street is something astonishing and of great joy, and that too on Diwali,” said Satish Verma, a supermarket owner in Delhi. “Although he is British, it will make us Hindus proud that one of us made it so big.” Sunak, who...

This New York Times article on the failure of California’s high speed rail reminds me of the chapter “The Moratorium on Brains” from Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged.In that chapter from the fictional book, everyone on a passenger train died because the train was controlled by politics instead of common sense.This new article from the New York Times explains how the real world train’s ridiculous, absurd, irrational route was chosen based on politics instead of on common sense.The New York Times article states:“… the design for the nation’s most ambitious infrastructure project was never based on the easiest or...

For most of my adult life I’ve been told about Ayn Rand’s famous novel…but had no idea what it was about. It was particularly popular among my Libertarian buddies. So, I finally ordered a copy…and when it came, I had to update the prescription for my reading glasses, because it’s over a thousand pages in nine-point type. Early on I was able to kind of get a handle on what it was about. There are basically two kinds of people: problem solvers or innovators who are constantly trying to make things work better…and cronies, who have an overwhelming sense of...

Anecdotally, and entirely unscientifically, I think I've discovered one of the greatest motivating factors in the world: The desire to be left alone. I don't mean the desire to BE alone (though as an introvert, that's often the case) but to be LEFT alone. But politicians won't do that. They spend all their time making sure each and every one of us is on their radar, somehow. In fact, they've insured we can all be pegged as criminals. There are so many laws on the books, we can't help but break one or two every time we inhale. Statistics vary,...

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” – Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged “A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead “The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.” – Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism “To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed...

Subheading: ‘2112’ can be considered many things – a band manifesto, a conceptual landmark, maybe even the birth of prog metal – but above all, it was the band’s play for creative independence.The year 1976 was a make-or-break time for Rush. It found them with ambition to spare, a growing cult audience, and a label that wasn’t sure what to do with them. It was time to pull together all of their disparate ideas into one major statement and they accomplish just that with their fourth studio album, 2112. This was the crucial turning point for the band, the album...

From our first day at school to our last day of work, we are told not to be entrepreneurs or think for ourselves, but instead to do what others tell us. Rather than playing a pickup game of whiffle ball on the neighborhood corner, we play organized tee ball with coaches and uniforms. Rather than studying what we are interested in while in college, we take classes that will “lead to a good job at an established company.” Instead of starting a company, we work as a nameless drone for a corporate behemoth. Rather than explore the woods, we follow...

“Morally and economically, the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull. Morally, the chance to satisfy demands by force spreads the demands wider and wider, with less and less pretense at justification. Economically, the forced demands of one group create hardships for all others, thus producing an inextricable mixture of actual victims and plain parasites.” -Ayn Rand I think that this quote by Ayn Rand on the welfare state is, like most quotations of hers, absolutely spot on. It perfectly sums up the negative current and after-effects of the welfare programs enacted by “looters” in the government to please...

“The self-respecting small home owners and shop owners are the unprotected and undefended victims of every race riot.” -Ayn Rand If there is one word that will eventually come to describe the summer of 2020, it will be “riots.” We have seen the violent, riotous instincts of Democrats on full display as Antifa thugs attack conservatives and BLM Marxists smash shop windows and loot the contents of every business they come across. Both conservatives and liberals have been all over the media talking about these riots. Conservatives insist that the so-called “peaceful protesters” are really violent mobs of looters and...

Organizations that vigorously oppose government spending took Paycheck Protection Program loans, including some that have criticized the CARES Act, which created the PPP program, according to data released by the Small Business Administration. Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, which says it “educates taxpayers on the true cost of government” and “the realities of costly government programs,” received between $150,000 and $300,000 in loans. In a statement, Americans for Tax Reform claimed it “never opposed” the PPP program and defended the foundation’s decision to take government loans, which it said allowed the foundation to “maintain its employees without laying anyone off”...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Ayn Rand. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Ayn Rand was an author best known for her libertarian positions and celebration of individual rights and initiatives. Her best known books are The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the...

REASON #8: PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY IS A DEEP SUBJECT THAT CAN BE QUITE INTIMIDATING. MODERN PHILOSOPHY IS SO ESOTERIC THAT FEW CAN UNDERSTAND OR RELATE TO IT, BUT CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY IS DIFFERENT. As with so many things, if you go back to the beginning and learn first principles, you can develop a deep and satisfying understanding of a subject that is baffling in its modern form. While philosophy may seem abstract and unrelated to the real world, quite the opposite is true. In fact, we are all philosophers; we all have a view of reality, a worldview, as we say today....

Who is John Galt? In 1957 Ayn Rand published her final novel, Atlas Shrugged. This magnum opus describing her philosophy of “objectivism” sought to call attention to the danger of socialism and communism and demonstrate the virtues of freedom and capitalism. Rand came to America from Russia following the 1917 communist revolution led by Lenin, which destroyed the social norms. Who is John Galt? He is the leader of the resistance to the statists of a dystopian United States. Galt has created the intellectual and emotional genesis for unravelling the suffocating government. He has secretly organized leaders of the private...