Free Republic

Reflections on the burning of Baltimore... Imagine that your boss assigns you to a research project. You work late nights for a month doing research; you present your findings on time, and your boss rips it up and directs the I.T. department to scrub all your research from your computer. And then he tells you to start from scratch and do it again. Or imagine that your boss assigns you to design an advertising campaign. You hire the models and photographers, write the copy, build the storyboards, film the commercials and print ads… and present them for his consideration. He...

As the 2016 election approaches, have we learned anything from history? On April 24, 1184 B.C., as legend has it, the Trojans looked out over their city wall, and saw the Greek ships sailing away, the Greeks apparently having given up after ten long years of war. All that was left was a horse. A great big, huge, heavy, beautiful horse statue on wheels, bearing a note, reading “The Greeks dedicate this thank-offering to Athena for their return home.” Well, the Trojans were no fools; they saw a great big piece of art, obviously the result of great work and...

Let’s begin this one with a disclaimer: I detest the current presidential primary process. I consider it an unfair and anachronistic approach that should have long ago been corrected. That being said… it’s the method we have, so for the time being at least, the games begin in Iowa… Our major-party presidential nominees are selected through a time-honored tradition. Based on the theory that the people best suited to select a president are those who know him best, our system relies on aspiring candidates moving into Iowa and New Hampshire for months at a time, visiting small towns throughout these...

The following transcript could not be authenticated. It was broadcast from a wiretap accidentally placed in a conference room in Havana, but with the generally low quality of the antiquated electronics available in Cuba, some of the audio was muffled… and there’s always the little matter of questionable translations from the Spanish… but here is what we have, submitted for your consideration without any warranty whatsoever... Lead Voice #1: Let’s get to work, men. I meet with the Great Satan tomorrow. Underling Voice A: You’re dying, boss? Lead Voice #1: No, you idiot, I mean the president of the United...

We can save the bother of waiting a year, and spending a lot of money and time on a primary season, by just giving the nomination to Jeb Bush now. His grandfather was a senator, his father was president, his brother was president. It’s in his genes. But on top of all that, he has genuine accomplishments of his own; Jeb Bush is a successful two-term governor of a critically important state, the electoral college powerhouse and sometime swing state of Florida. Add to all this the fact that his marriage to a Hispanic wife gives him some undefinable cred...

What does it mean to be springtime in an odd year in America? As the snow begins to melt, the birds chirp and sing; the trees and bushes bud with new growth. The sun reemerges from its long vacation behind the clouds, and the study of economics takes a holiday. True, this last part probably doesn’t apply to everyone. Texans, Oklahomans and Montanans don’t forget everything they ever learned in school, just because it’s time for mayors and city councilmen to seek reelection to their valuable positions at the public trough, but here in the rust belt, where we hold...

With an illegal alien population of about 20 million or so, in a nation of over 300 million, one might ask, why on earth are we so focused on this single issue? After all, 20 million is less than ten percent of our population. This nation is suffering. The real issues we need to address include joblessness, drug abuse, gang crime, a crippling national debt, an incredibly expensive but ever-worsening education system, rampant vote fraud, severe military threats from abroad… and many more. These are issues that affect everyone in our entire country, not just ten percent of us! In...

I cannot tell a lie: I am an extremist. As an amateur actor, I have certain beliefs that I hold dear. I detest drama and tragedy; I really only like comedy, both musical and non-musical. I believe the stage is for laughter and song, for tap dances and pratfalls. I won’t spend my money buying tickets to see a sad show, and I certainly don’t like to waste eight weeks of my life rehearsing to perform in one. Many would call these views extreme. As a trade compliance manager, I have spent my career – my “day job,” if you...

Reflections on the United States’ Commander-In-Chief, on Presidents’ Day… During the summer of 1787, the member states of the United States of America sent delegates to Philadelphia, hoping that in this new convention, they could right the errors made in the construction of the Articles of Confederation. The nation was in an economic depression that had not ended with the peace signed in 1783, as many had expected. On the contrary, our currency was worthless, our borders were porous, our cargo was in jeopardy on the high seas, and our veterans were destitute at home. The delegates to the Constitutional...

This week’s business news concerns yet another high profile corporate merger. Less than two years after office supply and computer retailers Office Depot and Office Max were forced into a merger, it now looks like Staples will be acquiring them. Where once there were three retailers, soon (or eventually, since such consolidations do take time), there will be only one. The Resident of the White House, no doubt remembering that the success of Staples was an early credit to his rival Mitt Romney’s storied career as an investment wizard, lost no time in taking pot-shots against Staples for its employee...

Reflections on the days when a labor leader led our nation, on the great man's birthday... As the author writes this column, dozens of ships, each one laden with tens of thousands of truckloads of cargo, are sitting in the Pacific, parked for weeks at a time in a line, waiting for the longshoremen to stop their slowdown and get back to work. Modern containerships are measured in TEUs, a unit of measure specific to the transportation industry. The standard intermodal container (so-called because it can be transported by truck, rail, or ship, easily transferred from one to the next...

The current Resident of the White House is fond of stating something of which he disapproves – say, interrogating terrorists or growing the economy – and closing the point with the words “But that’s not who we are.” It is condescending, patronizing, smarmy… it is in fact the perfect example of what has always been wrong with the Obama persona – he talks down to his audience, sets up straw men to knock down, sets American against American, in not only class warfare but every other arena as well, all the while mischaracterizing the issue itself. Young against old, healthy...

By John F. Di Leo - On Wednesday, January 21, the sun rose on a nation still licking its wounds from a beating it had taken the night before. At 9:00pm EST on Tuesday, a pugilist stood there – the Resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – safe behind a big, sturdy podium for protection, and socked the American people in the jaw, again and again, for as long as we were willing to sit out here in TV-land and take it... and the entire bodyguard that the Constitution had provided to defend them from such a beating - the House,...

Democrats have long called for grammar school to be “free” (that is, taxpayer-funded)… and they’ve long called for high school to be “free” (yes, even more taxpayer-funded)… and now the Democrats are calling for college – or at least the first two years of it – to be free as well. The proposal can – and should – be shot down with a single point: The United States is, by any measure of the term, bankrupt. We have gone from 7 trillion dollars in debt to 15 trillion in just six years, more than doubling a national debt that had...

Reflections on the War on Terror, a century into it... - There are as many truisms in war as there are in peace. Favorites include “The generals are always fighting the last war,” “There is nothing new under the sun,” “An army marches on its stomach.” All are true, to an extent, and can be applied to the study of any war, including the current one. But it’s also worth considering one of the great lies of all time, always cited, rarely true: “But This Time Is Different!” We say it to our parents when we hope for an exception...

Historians, political scientists, and philosophers alike often look at revolutions and ask the question "Was it a simple coup d'etat, or a real popular revolution? And if a real popular revolution, just how 'popular' was it, really?" It's often not that easy to tell. We can easily look at the Russian Revolution, for example, and see how there was first a large popular revolution, one that was then taken over by a much smaller communist contingent that was nowhere near as popular, but was brutal enough to win over the nascent White Russian government. One can do the math easily,...

With Illinois Senator Dick "Turban" Durbin running the Senate Democrat caucus while Harry Reid recuperates... and with Hillary Clinton still being discussed as a potential 2016 presidential candidate, and with two years yet to run on the Obama "presidency" before we're mercifully granted its end... it might be helpful to better understand the environment that bred these typical Chicago politicians. So, here are some more definitions of words and idioms that mean something else in Illinois; posted as a public service to the consumers of news. Art Institute: A building full of statues, much like the Chicago City Council when...

In the old country, life was predictable. If your father was a farmer, so were you. If your mother was a maid, so were you. If your father served in the House of Lords, so did you; if your father went off to war, possibly never to return, well… so did you. There were exceptions, in that feudal and post-feudal world, but not many. Poverty bred poverty; wealth bred wealth. There wasn’t much of a middle class, but merchants’ children did usually grow up to take over the family bakery, smithy, or cobbler shop, to be merchants themselves. Life was,...

Reflections on the Problem of Political Opposition... In the Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers declared the only legitimate purpose of government: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness… that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” So, this was not just the plan for the United States. This part of the Declaration comes before the listing of our Founders’...

Since The Resident’s unexpected and unethical decision to unilaterally discard a half-century of history and reopen diplomatic relations with the Castro brothers’ prison colony known as Cuba, a particularly destructive claim has resurfaced, one that merits careful analysis and rejection. For decades now, the Left has spouted a peculiar claim – that Cuba is poor because of our 54-year-long embargo against the communist country. If the reader has compassion for the suffering denizens of that miserable island, this has to be a strong argument, but it’s wrong – utterly without merit, in fact – for several critical reasons. The claim...