Free Republic

Mr. President, perhaps amidst the merriment surrounding the inaugural festivities you misremembered your oath. Sir, you solemnly swore “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” But these few weeks hence, your State of the Union speech essentially disavowed America’s cherished founding charter. Many left-leaning pundits applaud your “bold” vision to radically redefine America. President Obama, you are understandably emboldened by re-election, but you were not made king. Regardless of whether you agree with constitutional precepts, you’re still legally bound; still compelled by the sacred oath you swore. Perhaps while lecturing college students on Constitutional Law you read it. What authorization...

Confession: I plucked the inspiration for this piece from my father. Given the premise, perhaps that’s appropriate. The common underlying current to the progressivism which has saturated America’s social, political and economic firmament is an erosion of America’s multigenerational purpose. The federal apparatus has supplanted families as our primary support mechanism. Families provide the sure foundation undergirding Western Civilization. No laws or economic remedy can arrest social breakdown if the family structure fractures. Yet, progressives have commandeered the political realm to overhaul culture. Marriage withers under easy divorce, subsidized illegitimacy, and the desire among progressives to make it anything and...

"This notion that the children belong to the state, that their education must be provided for by the state … is inimical at every step to liberty.” – J. Gresham Machen The swelling legions of homeschoolers poke a subtle rebuke at America’s ever expanding nanny state. Under both parties, Washington has systematically invaded private spheres and co-opted public services historically performed by local bodies. But a spontaneous groundswell of freedom minded folks has continued America’s rich inheritance of rugged individualism. The God-fearing, flag-waiving, gun-toting homeschool crowd embodies the American spirit of mutual self-reliance. You won’t encounter a more neighborly bunch....

As debates over firearms simmer and President Obama mulls sweeping firearm restrictions via executive orders, media personalities like Piers Morgan dismiss guests defending gun rights with contempt. You’d think resistance to disarmament amounts to culpability for the Sandy Hook slaughter. Yet, as John Lott’s bestseller, More Guns, Less Crime, highlights crime rates have tumbled while gun ownership has soared, including permits to carry concealed weapons. America has more murder than many similarly advanced countries, but overall violent crime, save inner-cities plagued by family breakdown, remains below peer nations. The streets in Mr. Morgan’s England are far more dangerous.

Welcome to Obamaland where our inalienable rights are being gradually degraded. Now that President Obama needs never to curry electoral favor again will government’s grasping overreach soon strangle a successful arts-and-crafts company? “We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” says attorney Kyle Duncan of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. Mr. Duncan represents Hobby Lobby, a family-owned retail chain risking severe penalties for putting principles before profits. Limited self-government descends into tyranny. Hobby Lobby faces looming fines of up to $1.3 million per day for refusing to abide a spurious provision of the...

The U.S. Supreme Court recently opted for two cases pertaining to same-sex marriage. Windsor v. United States challenges the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Had Edith Windsor's deceased “spouse” been a man she would have been saved $363,000 in estate taxes. The other concerns the Ninth Circuit’s overturning Proposition 8; a successful ballot initiative which prevented same-sex marriage in California. Leave lawyering to lawyers, but when pendulums swing sometimes they return like wrecking balls smacking those who previously prodded the pendulum. Government, at least Washington, should not interfere in marriage. It has, sometimes at the insistence of those most adamantly...

The Eighties action flick Red Dawn has been redone. It’s preposterous that Soviet Russia’s dilapidated economy, let alone North Korea in the remake, could marshal sufficient logistical capacity to project more than a token force across an ocean. Given the Communist Party USA’s ecstatic response to Barrack Obama’s re-election, Democrats may be succeeding where the Red Army dared not tread. CPUSA’s Sam Webb gloats, “The Communist Party said a year ago that the 2012 elections would be the main front of the class and democratic struggle, and subsequent events have confirmed that fact... Had Romney won the Presidency and the...

Many nights as I stroll into the kitchen after work three little ones come at a gallop. My daughters arrive first, bearing hugs, one on each arm. Then my son with a grin so bright and so big it barely fits his face lands a haymaker in the one spot a three year old can hurt you. As many parents can attest, boys and girls differ. Try as the Left may to thwart reality, adult men and women remain different. It’s impossible to comprehend human interactions without recognizing this undeniable certainty. Nevertheless, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched legal...

Despite stagnant markets and tepid approval marks, President Obama cobbled together a coalition of religious and ethnic minorities, single women, government employees and union members to attract 50.6 percent of voters. This prompted many pundits to proclaim there aren’t enough grouchy old white men for Republicans to remain relevant. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz chastised that Republicans, “got whiter and more male.” David Bositis told CNN earlier this year, “Their voters are white, aging and dying off.” The Left becomes increasingly ecstatic as the Caucasian majority shrivels. Minority populations are younger, expanding rapidly and demand action. But several factors are missed....

In the election’s aftermath, the culture war looks like a rout. Few ever relished this fight; most preferred simply to be left alone. We aren’t community organizers. Sadly, neutrality was not realistic. No, being Switzerland was never an option. By not defending America’s heritage of limited government, free markets and biblical morality, we’re being overrun a la Belgium. Powerful forces array. Christians consider this battle in spiritual terms. Conservatives sense a political donnybrook. Others deplore eroding standards of conduct and lost liberty. The Left vies for our children’s hearts, souls and minds. While no majority, progressives dominate the dissemination of...

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” - Tenth Amendment What a nasty, sordid presidential campaign, particularly if you live in a hotly contested area. Thankfully, we watch very little television, but wow, talk about being inundated with attack ads. Apparently, Ohio got the point, Romney is evil. Some voters are now elated while others are depressed. Still more risk experiencing buyer’s remorse. Many in battleground states are just relieved it’s over. The increasingly rancorous nature of elections reflects...

Witnessing the presidential results springs several old sayings to mind. It’s been noted that you can vote yourself into socialism, but you can’t vote yourself back out. Apparently, America wants to continue testing the iron law of economics trying to find that there is such a thing as a free lunch. Let’s keep the fantasy going; someone else will pay for it later. President Obama largely spent his first term campaigning on the taxpayers’ tab. The bunch from Chicago reconfigured the Executive Branch into a dole dispensing contraption bolstering cronies and bribing the electorate. The result: four consecutive trillion dollar...

Democrats could be doubly disappointed come January. President Obama might be handing Mitt Romney unparalleled presidential power. The best alibi liberals can leverage in defending Obama’s overstretch continues to be blaming problems "inherited" from Bush while scaring voters about Mr. Romney’s sinister aspirations. Rather than tout his public sector expansion Obama’s electoral pitch consists largely in lambasting Romney for private sector success. To illustrate a point, accept that Republicans are equally inept, waste as much and are just as scandal prone as Democrats. Pretend Romney really is the fiend that Obama’s attack ads caricature. He'll outsource your job then let...

Christians frightened for America’s future face a conundrum this electoral season. Biblical precepts must steer our politics; loving God with all our hearts, souls and minds obviously includes discernment at the polls. “When you enter the voting booth,” says R.C. Sproul, “don’t leave your Christianity in the parking lot.” How should Christians vote their beliefs? Only God knows either candidate’s heart, but Mitt Romney professes Mormonism. Culturally, Mormons make for great neighbors and business partners. Many behave better than most Christians, but faith is more than mere morals. When Latter-day Saints talk of Christ they conceive of a created being....

“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible.” – George Washington The last debate established that both parties miss the obvious. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama nibbled around the edges, largely agreeing. They reduced foreign policy to being compassionate about “gender equality” while trying to talk tough. Both would do this and undo that, making promises they’ll never keep all while purporting fiscal responsibility. Neither explained an underlying principle informing their decisions. Without such a compass, each seems inclined to...

The recent fiasco in Libya and the manner President Obama’s media minions have abetted his deception provides an epitaph for the soon to be demised Obama administration: Four Americans died. Obama lied. The press complied. Republicans have been trying to highlight the terrorist attack on our Libyan embassy for weeks, but recognizing how damaging this episode was to Obama’s credibility, media coverage has been subdued. Who requested what security and when is important, but these things always appear obvious in hindsight. Much more telling is the way our hyper-partisan press ignored how the administration initially attributed Bengazi to some YouTube...

Recent banking trends offer subtle clues about the business cycle. The financial crisis which burst across world markets in 2008 stemmed from explosive monetary policy during the preceding period. An old banking adage holds that the worst loans fund in the best of times. Greenspan’s Put and Bush’s deficits injected cortisone after the tech bubble dislocated markets and 9/11 hit. Instead of allowing the recession’s curative surgery, intrinsic weaknesses were perpetuated. From artificially low interest rates and devalued dollars to fiscal deficits rewarding idleness, federal policies prodded us from savers to borrowers and from producers to consumers. Nothing can be...

The presidential debates have elicited abundant boxing metaphors, which as a former boxer and coach can always be entertaining. Boxing only works so well as a debate analogy because unlike verbal sparring, there are no predetermined spans of offense and defense. In debates, both speakers are supposed to get turns. At least, before Joe Biden obliterated the Marquis of Queensberry by incessantly interrupting his challenger Paul Ryan. Biden boxed brilliantly even if it wasn’t pretty and drew little blood. Before last night’s bout, reporters asked Biden if he would “rope-a-dope?” Biden boasted, “You ever see me rope-a-dope?” If you recall,...

Obamacare sparked criticism for it inducing government dependency, aggravating budget pressures, and even failing to reduce insurance premiums as promised, but the law also increasingly politicizes healthcare innovation. Sown throughout what encompasses thousands of rules, Washington has established itself as the hinge on which healthcare turns. Businesses must please political masters before serving customers. Medical investment will mirror energy, where research and development no longer follows market dynamics. Instead, taxpayers cater to the connected and politically favored. To see why, take the much reviled medical device tax. Under the Affordable Care Act, beginning January 1st, sales of medical devices from...

Federal functionaries serving radical agendas rather than taxpayers riddle Washington. Last week came further evidence that cultural Marxism imbues the Department of Agriculture. Orthodox Marxism fixates on the economic, revolving around class struggles. Cultural Marxism, otherwise called political correctness, incorporates social dynamics. The “privileged” class extends beyond capitalists and bourgeois to whites, men, Christians and heterosexuals. While workers are still afforded victimhood those “alienated” by American culture also include minorities, women and even people behaving ways historically considered immoral. President Obama perceives society through this politically correct prism. His raison d’être rests on a post-modern variant of Marxism popular in...