Free Republic

The book-burning culture of the Left is continuing its march. As everyone knows, Amazon has achieved a virtual monopoly on the book industry. It has vast powers to decide what books people can read – and what they can’t read. After 3½ years of publishing our groundbreaking 600-page book, The Health Hazards of Homosexuality: What the Medical and Psychological Research Reveals, Amazon has suddenly notified us that it has banned it from being printed or sold on its site. Amazon is also refusing to allow us to print any more copies for our own use and has even blocked us...

For the many political and social activists inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, erasing history is a perfectly acceptable remedy to the many systems of oppression in the institutions of America. First and foremost, movies and television series that don’t fit a very specific social justice viewpoint must be expunged. “Gone with the Wind” has been removed from HBO’s streaming service. The shows “Cops” and “Live PD” have both been canceled by their respective networks. Now, Amazon may soon follow suit by removing the beloved ’80s action-comedy series “The Dukes of Hazzard” from its streaming service.

Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's were legendary among the community of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery readers—and now they're gone. Venerable Minneapolis science fiction and fantasy bookstore Uncle Hugo’s and its sister store in the same building, Uncle Edgar’s, which specialized in mysteries, were both burned to ruins last Friday night by rioters. The store took its name from two major awards in the genre fields, science fiction’s Hugo awards, and mysteries Edgar’s. Independent bookstores are a threatened American institution, and Uncle Hugo’s was considered a flagship operation. Owner Don Blyly was noted for his ability to adapt to modern...

Yahoo has announced it will be removing all content from its free long-running online discussion boards, Yahoo Groups. While Yahoo said in a statement that the Yahoo Groups site will continue to exist, users will no longer be able to upload any new content to the site as of October 21, and from December 14, all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. The content that will be affected include files, polls, links, photos, folders, database, calendar, attachments, conversations, email updates, message digest, and message history. "You'll have until that date to save anything you've uploaded," the...

Amazon has removed English-language books by a man largely considered “the father of conversion therapy” from its site following mounting pressure from LGBTQ activists. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, founder of the now-shuttered Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic, as well as the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), authored several how-to guides directed to parents of LGBTQ youth, including “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.” His books are some of the most well-known works about conversion therapy, the pseudoscientific practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. “I would say many survivors of conversion therapy could...

The San Francisco school board unanimously voted Tuesday to destroy a controversial school mural featuring slaves and a dead Native American, saying the removal equates to necessary reparations for historic wrongs. The board voted to paint over the mural at Washington High School but added a caveat, leaving the door open to the possibility of obscuring the mural with panels if painting it results in long delays from legal challenges or other issues. The preference, however, is to destroy it, board members said. “It might be art and it can also be racist; it can be both,” said board member...

Goldfield Trading Post has canceled both Adam Calhoun and Demun Jones’ controversial shows scheduled for June 7 and 8, the midtown Sacramento country bar announced in a Facebook post.

It is a common theme in our post-Christian age to tar the early Church with certain atrocities against philosophy and science. One of the accusations most commonly trotted out is that the Christians burned the world-famous library at Alexandria. This "perniciously persistent" myth is tidily demolished by David Bentley Hart in a 2010 article in First Things. But even if the myth were true, the Roman Christians had a model to follow in that Hellenistic pagans themselves consigned Christian books to the flames during the persecutions. For a period of about eight years in the early 4th century AD, it...

In doing some research on the previous post, I ran across this intriguing letter from Julian the Apostate to Ecdicius, the Prefect of Egypt. Julian wrote the letter at the end of January in AD 362 and it follows up on the assassination of George, the Arian bishop of Alexandria, by a pagan mob in his city. Here is the brief letter in full: Some men have a passion for horses, others for birds, others, again, for wild beasts; but I, from childhood, have been penetrated by a passionate longing to acquire books. It would therefore be absurd if I...

With the news last week that Amazon has banned Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill for Islam, co-authored by British activist Tommy Robinson and Peter McLoughlin, Amazon has crossed a very dangerous and precarious line.Two immediate questions come to mind. First, why ban a book critiquing Islam when a host of other books critiquing – no, harshly attacking – other religious faiths are available on Amazon? Second, why ban this book and not other books that critique Islam? Why draw the line here?When McLoughlin, who helped expose the “grooming” crimes committed by some British Muslims, received word that the book had...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — They are fighting, yes, but the fight crackles with the enticing electricity that only Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn could deliver. He is storming out the door. She is throwing his golf clubs after him. The music is jaunty. He is charmingly irritated.</p>

We now see their secret plan unfolding -- the largest suppression and bastardizing of free speech in US history. And with lightning speed too -- a fascist 'blitzkrieg' launched against free speech, coordinated within the timeline of weeks before an election. What we are up against: Fox News Pundit Says Bomb Suspect Threatened Her In A Tweet, Twitter Did Nothing [6] LifeSite just received an email at 8:30 p.m. EST from our web-hosting company alerting us that they will be taking our website down within 12 hours ... We received absolutely no forewarning whatsoever about this decision. The company is...

I am really upset by Facebook's (et al!) censorship of conservative voices, and of SPLC or whatever it is being the 'lens' through which they judge. I think a nation-wide boycott for one week would send a message. Thoughts??

The Biloxi School District got complaints about the wording in “To Kill A Mockingbird” — an American classic being taught in 8th grade English Language Arts classes — and pulled it from the curriculum. It was an administrative and department decision, a member of the school board said, and not something that the school board voted on. It happened Wednesday or Thursday. Kenny Holloway, vice president of the Biloxi School Board said, “There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books. “It’s still...

A crowd of ignorant protesters pulled down a bronze Confederate statue that stood before a county government building in Durham, North Carolina — the angry national backlash to the Charlottesville brouhaha over the Robert E. Lee monument. This is not how civil societies operate. And yet this is what the left has brought, and now cheers. What’s next — burning books with offensive content? Burning books written by those who used to own slaves? At the very least, museums will have to go

A Swedish council has admitted that local libraries have been throwing out copies of a popular children’s book because it contains racist expressions, with one local journalist even claiming the books are being burnt. Older versions of the Pippi Langstrumpf [Pippi Longstocking] book entitled ‘Pippi in the South Seas,’ have been discarded by libraries in the Botkyrka municipality.

In working through some of the 7,000 Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department yesterday, I came across one curious one sent from aide Huma Abedin to the then-Secretary of State regarding a Koran-burning in the U.S.Here is another intriguing email: https://twitter.com/bhweingarten/status/638734489531871234 It is noteworthy that this message on a sensitive subject — presumably about a meeting between then-Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Sec. of State Clinton on weapons collections in Libya — would be left unredacted, while many other emails in the Clinton trove are redacted in toto. This may be because news reports around the September 10, 2011 email date indicate...

Three senior House Democrats asked U.S. teachers Monday to destroy a book written by climate scientists challenging the environmentalist view of global warming. The Democrats were responding to a campaign by the conservative Heartland Institute copies of the 2015 book, “Why Climate Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” to about 200,000 science teachers. Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott of the Committee on Education, Raúl M. Grijalva of the Committee on Natural Resources, and Eddie Bernice Johnson of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology all issued a statement telling teachers to trash the book. “Public school classrooms are no place for anti-science...

Mosul (Agenzia Fides) - The jihadists of the Islamic State (Daesh) have released via the internet a short video documenting the burning of Christian books in the area of Mosul. The images show a militant jihadist who throws in flames books and dossiers that have crucifixes on the cover. The video, launched under the title "The Diwan (office) for Education destroys books regarding Christian Education in Mosul", was released on the net at the end of last week through the application Android jihadist Amaq News, with the intent to promptly disseminate all the news that concerns operations and terrorist attacks...

SNIPPET: " It was found at the front door of the Islamic Center of East Lansing." SNIPPET: "The department is offering $10,000 for any information that would lead to the identification and prosecution of those responsible for this act. Those with information are asked to call Det. Sherief Fadly..."