Free Republic

Few matters ignite more controversy than America’s Christian roots. The issue reverberates anew this electoral season where the faiths of both major candidates have been questioned. Religion imbues politics. The battle over America’s beginnings muddles wishful hero worship with efforts to commandeer America’s past so to steer her future. The most vocal proponents of Christian America and their counterparts advocating a completely secular state necessarily cherry-pick data to prove exaggerations while discarding inconvenient details. By transforming our Forefathers into faithful servants of Christ the Religious Right risks compromising the biblical message. Baptist theologian Al Mohler warns advocates of Christian America...

Federal indebtedness recently surpassed $16 trillion. Moody’s quickly reiterated that America’s debt rating could be cut if Washington fails to navigate the approaching fiscal rapids. Can Congress keep the state ship afloat? They can’t even pass a budget. Meanwhile, with QE3, Ben Bernanke’s Fed cast credibility overboard by nakedly politicizing monetary policy. Unfortunately, deficits and rate manipulation have muddled recovery. With currency no longer anchored to the certainty of gold and the Constitution no longer America’s political compass, Washington has led the economy adrift. Whatever Moody’s ultimately scores Treasuries the central planners are lost at sea. Washington gets an F.

Remember the old saw about speeding: anyone zipping along faster is nuts, but slower drivers are idiots. Ideologues believing in limited government are an obstinate breed, myself included. We find anyone who wants more government as fools, but those desiring even less are crazy. In theory, if everyone went 65 we'd never have a traffic jam. Sadly, state authority is necessary because of man's fallen nature. Many libertarians approve same-sex marriage. Likewise, some perceive abortion as fundamental to freedom, even questioning Ron Paul for championing life. Meanwhile, Americans have grown so inured to government intervention that letting people purchase contraceptives...

Once there was an unwritten rule that the Federal Reserve would refrain from significant policy adjustments before an election. Few things are as encompassing to culture as our currency, or as vital that they be thought free of intrigues. With public confidence in the dollar diminished, or perturbed by politics, society suffers this dearth of trust in more than just finance. Commentary abounds that Mr. Bernanke will soon commence yet more quantitative easing, QE3 for short. Why? Clearly the ongoing economic stagnation stems not from prohibitively high interest rates. Rates hover just off historic lows. Given the moribund economy, financial...

Wow! We’ll soon cross Sixteen Trillion Dollars in Federal Debt! S-i-x-t-e-e-n T-r-i-l-l-i-o-n D-o-l-l-a-r-s. That’s a lot of vote buying even for Washington. Is this ruin? Have we indentured our children into servitude? Solomon warned borrowers will be slaves to their lenders. Add $120 plus trillion in unfunded forthcoming liabilities and, well, we’re doomed. Yet, as significant as this looks, and sixteen trillion of anything cannot be insignificant, the economic repercussions are the least of America’s worries. We still finance this cheaply. Rates on Treasuries remain low. Moreover, America endures as the world’s preeminent economic engine. Obviously, debt weighs heavily on...

Vice President Biden presented America with what liberals might call a “teachable moment.” Race has long served as a trump card silencing opposition. Whites wilt when challenged by race. But Biden ups the ante by insinuating Republicans trying to ease financial regulation harbor sinister intentions. Biden warns blacks, “they gonna put y’all back in chains.” More freedom, via less red-tape, translates as slavery. America is apparently so endemically prejudiced, “institutionally racist” some say, that minorities risk grave calamity without Washington’s muscular intervention. President Obama re-confirmed Biden as running-mate and refuses to repudiate him. Team Obama’s divisive message: Racist Republicans would...

Ample rebuttal has been served against President Obama’s “You didn’t build that!” claim. Obama retreated, but then recently insinuated “Romney-Hood” will help the rich rob the poor via tax breaks and describes Paul Ryan’s budget proposal as “thinly veiled Social-Darwinism.” As absurd as these ideas sound, crowds cheered. We’re not witnessing rival visions offering different paths to similar ends. The gulf extends beyond whether borrowing and spending better ushers prosperity as opposed to saving and producing; aggregate demand maintenance versus supply-side economics. It’s deeper. A widening political divide besets America. The sides not only propose competing, even contradictory methods, Left...

America finally has a politician running nationally those who esteem freedom can respect both in character and also largely in ideology. From his “Aw Gosh” demeanor and Middle-American values, springs a nimble mind which quickly grasps the core issues. He can even articulate them without a teleprompter. Mitt Romney chose rightly in Paul Ryan. The Romney campaign had recently tested Condi Rice as a trial balloon. The Wall Street Journal exhilaratingly proclaimed, “Ms. Rice's assets are obvious: She's a woman; she's black …” It looked bleakly like Romney might trip into the same trap as Senator McCain. Sarah Palin is...

Chick-fil-A’s owner, Dan Cathy, has been excoriated recently for pronouncing Christian principles and fearing God’s judgment. When asked about his traditional take on families, Mr. Cathy acknowledged, “Well, guilty as charged.” “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit.” Cathy continued, “We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.” A firestorm ignited. Media outlets nationwide translated this benign statement into portraying Cathy as some raving bigot intent on persecuting anyone with whom he disagrees. The outcry prompted the...

Welcome to the bizarre world of banking regulation. Despite the recent disaster wrought by affirmative action lending, Washington ratchets up still more politically correct requirements and shifts the measure of discrimination towards “disparate impact.” Even unbiased behaviors are subject to penalty unless they benefit protected classes. It’s no longer blind justice meted equally before the law. “Diversity” has become Washington’s Holy Grail, discharging unequal justice in preference for specific outcomes. The burden on businesses expands beyond banning discrimination into virtually requiring reverse discrimination. Recall before the Great Recession, banks supposedly did not sufficiently extend credit for minorities and less affluent...

America has a serious problem. The integrity of interest rates has been compromised. Free enterprise requires fidelity and trust. A banking cabal regularly conspires to rig rates benefiting large banks and their political allies. These actions almost certainly harm others. Collusion and market manipulation are reprehensible, but enough about Ben Bernanke and his merry price fixing elves at the Federal Reserve, let’s delve into the LIBOR scandal. For disclosure, I’m a bank underwriter. My employer has not been implicated (and almost certainly won’t be) and my department doesn’t use LIBOR. Nonetheless, note, the following observations are mine alone. We can...

President Obama’s campaign trumpets compassion while portraying Mitt Romney’s business acumen as immoral. Obama presumes righteous superiority, but how is exploiting the poor for political props presidential? Why must Romney justify success? How, two decades after communism collapsed, does antagonistic class rhetoric retain credibility? Liberals paint free markets as morally lacking by bemoaning that capitalism plunders workers and pillages the environment. Progressives compare real world capitalism – distorted by fallen man and political intrusion as it inevitably exists – against theoretical ideals never attained anywhere, leastwise in socialist systems prone to oppression and ecological calamity. Progressives exaggerate the excesses and...

“A republic, if you can keep it.” Ben Franklin Masked by chatter around judicial wrangling, electoral ramifications and how the surprising Obamacare decision impacts policy, many miss the wretched significance of Chief Justice Roberts’ twisted logic. He has empowered runaway government certain to incite chaos. The Affordable Care Act reflects the logical continuation of a decades-long drift toward domineering by Washington over every facet of life. Not logical as in likely to succeed. Few government initiatives do. But logical because rather than scuttle past failures, subsequent congresses spawn new efforts to offset what prior funding merely squandered. Taxpayers already footed...

Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, exemplifying mainstream media’s pervasive bias, unleashed a firestorm recently. Ms. Rosen ridiculed Mitt Romney’s wife regarding the economic literacy of stay-at-home mothers; contemptuously dismissing Ann Romney for “never having worked a day in her life.” Many mothers managing family finances implicitly understand economics better than political strategists or government bureaucrats. Housewives engage markets constantly. Ludwig von Mises noted of inflation, the “housewife knows much more about price changes as far as they affect her own household than the statistical averages can tell.” The myriad advantages of full time motherhood extend far beyond finance, but there are...

Paul Krugman again. Still beholden to chimerical Phillips Curve absurdities, the professor proposes inflation to stimulate stagnant labor markets. The Phillips Curve insists that rising inflation lowers unemployment. The theory presumes businesses increase prices faster than workers’ wages raise effectively making labor inexpensive. When real salaries shrink, hiring accelerates. As Krugman details, the Fed’s focus is dual: stable prices and full employment. So he seeks to overcome persistent unemployment through purposeful failure on the price front, lamenting that “Fed officials ... are feeling intimidated ... and that American workers are paying the price for their timidity.” Krugman thus urges Ben...

Bill Flax Popular in Opinion 1 PETA vs. people ... and animals 2 EPA's new farcical carbon mandate 3 Manhattan Moment: One word hurting growth: Zero 4 Examiner Editorial: Obama's budget, not Ryan's, is 'antithetical' to history 5 How many incumbents voted themselves a pay raise this year? Last week the Environmental Protection Agency issued new standards for carbon dioxide requiring that fewer than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide be released per megawatt-hour of electricity. Plants running on natural gas already average below 850 pounds. Coal-fired plants, which emit on average 1,768 pounds per megawatt-hour, cannot achieve this without prohibitively...

Dueling visions fight for America’s future. It isn’t so much conflicting economic theories seeking similar ends, but fundamental disagreements over the scope of government. The competing sides champion very different ideals. The debate pits forces seeking safety through government against those striving to live free of government interference; between those thinking it one’s responsibility to provide for his own and those who essentially suggest the state exists so we don’t have to. President Obama repeatedly pillories Republicans for espousing “On your own” economics while seemingly esteeming “On the dole” economics himself. He rails that the rich should fork over their...

The recent release of a tape by Andrew Breitbart's outfit sparked renewed interest in President Obama's murky past. In anticipation, conservatives were elated that the president might finally be exposed. The tape showed Obama, then at Harvard Law, orchestrating a protest on behalf of Derrick Bell. Without providing any background on just how radical is Professor Bell, the compliant liberal media derisively dismissed it all as conservative paranoia, even proclaiming presidential vindication. It still appears preposterous to purport that America elected a communist ideologue. The world's greatest beneficiary of capitalist bounty would never willingly empower a radical socialist to "fundamentally...

Amidst flowery February orations, in retrospect, the Civil Rights movement’s main beneficiary appears to be Washington. State segregation ceased, which is well, but forced federal integration remains, well, wrong. Washington rightly overturned denials of freedom oppressing southern blacks, but did so by infringing on others’ liberties elsewhere. En route, civil rights became the sine qua non of American statism. Civil rights legislation provided the primary catalyst for government’s escalation since WWII. Sadly, the Civil Rights Act brought neither legal equality as proposed in theory; nor equality of outcomes to which the Left strove in practice. The CRA failed doubly. First,...

Nowhere is the haughtiness of American politics better displayed than with our dueling former Speakers. The latest love spat between Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi illuminates America’s sorry political state. She keeps coyly insinuating she knows something and will time its release for maximum damage. It appears Mr. Gingrich is finished anyway, and I’m no fan. His infidelities trouble me. His overarching concern seems to be Newt Gingrich, a not uncommon trait in politicians, but hardly the attribute of a transcendent leader. His prior associations with Mrs. Pelosi promoting Cap and Trade and frequent policy flip-flops reveal an unscrupulous opportunist....