Free Republic

In 1965 the Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan released the now-famous Moynihan Report which showed that the number one cause of black poverty was the breakdown of the married, two-parent biological family. The Democrats did not recieve this news well. They pilloried Moynihan and called him a racist. Then they went into, in Moynihan's words, denial mode. 40 years later and out of wedlock childbirths have more than doubled and the Democrats are still in denial mode. The scientific debate is over, even among liberal sociologists. But the silence is deafening. Here is some information that the GOP should be repeating...

So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. -- Matthew 7:12 The Golden Rule is probably the most universal of all ethical principles. It can be found in nearly every major religion from Christianity to Zoroastrianism. The Golden Rule is also one of the few ethical principles that can be proven in formal logic - the artificial language that philosophers and mathematicians created to bring rigor and clarity to philosophical debates. Who would have thought that you could prove an ethical principle? Problems With The Literal...

Theistic philosophy has undergone an explosion in the past several decades. The beauty of the internet is that we no longer have to wait many generations for those new ideas to trickle down to the general public. Instead they are out there for the taking. Set aside your old "Hume, Kant, and Russell proved that there is no God" and make way for the new lines of evidence. If you just read one book on existence of God and other Christian apologetics, I would recommend Reasons for the Hope Within, which is a cutting edge book oriented towards the general...

Sorry for the vanity, but this seems like an important enough post for the main page. Here is my (incomplete) list of essential conservative organizations: NRA Gun control is as much an anethema to freedom as speech control or religion control. The Heritage Foundation Probably the leading conservative think tank. The Cato Institute The leading small government/libertarian/anti-federalist think tank. The Acton Institute Liberty has not subsisted outside of Christianity.

Conservatives love the debate over the Living Document Constitution because it is such an easy fight. After all, you wouldn't join a weekend softball league with a Living Document rulebook. Conservatives cherish this role as Keeper of the Constitution, so it can seem like a slap in the face when the left mounts a credible defense of the Living Document. But it is worth taking the time to understand their arguments because it will lead to a much deeper understanding of why a Living Document Constitution is dangerous. Here is a great defense of the Living Document by Jack Balkin,...

Starting in about the fourth grade, history teachers taught me that the Articles of Confederation were fatally flawed. The same complaint was inevitably offered up by these history teachers: the Federal government envisioned by the Articles was weak and ineffective. Today while riding the train to work and zoning out, three things occured to me in rapid succession: Weak federal government, you say? Tell me more.My history teachers were a bunch of knee-jerk liberals and proud of it.In all these years, I had never bothered to actually read the Articles of Confederation. So I googled it. What a piece of...

Here is a neat federalist solution to tax reform: a state GDP tax. The federal government can require that states turn over 25% (or whatever) of their GDP but can not specify how that money is raised. That freedom is left to the states. Blue states can use progressive income taxes with high marginal rates. Red states can experiment with a flat tax or a sales tax. This has many advantages over our current system or even a national sales tax or flat tax. Depoliticize the tax reform debate. Blue and red states would be free to go their own...

Sweden is frequently held up as an example that the United States should try to emulate. It has the one of the most extensive welfare states in Europe and yet is also more prosperous and has lower unemployment than its neighbors to the south. But a closer examination reveals that not only could the Swedish model never work for the United States, but that it isn’t working too well for Sweden itself. Sweden is a small country of nine million people who are almost exclusively native born middle class whites. Since the early stages of the Swedish welfare state were...

The Declaration of Independance was not the only important event of 1776.That was also the year that Adam Smith created the modern science of economics when he published The Wealth of Nations. On the second page of the book Smith explains that pin makers could only make at most 20 pins per day, but with the help of machinery they could make 4800 pins per day. This has two consequences. The first is that pins get a lot cheaper. A penny saved is a penny earned so cheaper pins meant that everyone got a little bit richer. The second consequence...

US climate talks 'disappointing' Sunset on the 118 or Ronald Reagan Freeway (Getty) Mr Blair wants to highlight climate change at the G8 summit Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett has spoken of the UK government's frustration over America's failure to agree to take action on climate change. UK prime minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush were unable to reach a deal on the issue during talks in Washington last week. Mr Blair is hoping to highlight climate change at next month's G8 summit. Mrs Beckett told The Independent the UK was "disappointed" that there was a lack of "common...

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson It has been proven countless times over thousands of years of economic history that central planning fails and free markets succeed. A recent example is job-protection laws. Michael Moore would never be able to make "Roger and Me" in Germany because Germany has the world's strongest job-protection laws. But...

CITIES AREN'T DOING AS WELL AS YOU THINK. Urban Legends by Joel Kotkin Only at TNR Online Post date: 05.23.05 Usually journalists get accused of overemphasizing bad news. Yet in the case of America's cities, the media has often made things appear rosier than they really are. The idea that American cities, indeed cities worldwide, are experiencing a renaissance has been widely, and often uncritically, accepted since the late 1990s. This new optimism rests largely on the impact of globalization and the worldwide shift from a manufacturing to an information economy. "Neither western civilization, nor western cities," historian Peter Hall...

At the polls earlier this month, Tony Blair saw his majority in the House of Commons reduced from 161 to 67 seats. Though the Conservatives captured 33 seats, Michael Howard, the party leader, felt compelled to announce his resignation. Howard genuinely believed that he could have defeated Blair's "new" Labour. He was wrong and his departure, once again, raises some important questions: What do the Tories stand for? What should they stand for? What does it mean to be a conservative in the 21st century? Answers to those questions will be crucial for Britain and for Europe alike. A quarter...

In a new report, six think-tanks have slashed their forecast for German economic growth in 2005, citing high oil prices and an unfavourable exchange rate. If Germany’s export-driven economy cannot recover when the world economy is racing along, how will it fare during a slowdown? IN THEORY, Germany should be booming by now. Sizzling global economic growth in 2004, and more of the same expected for 2005, has raised demand for its exports, a boon to its large manufacturing sector. The European Central Bank (ECB) has kept interest rates in the euro area at an easy 2% for 22 months,...

NEW YORK - A volatile topic inspired heated debate as several hundred people gathered to discuss the impact of misogynistic rap on black women. Rapper Remy Ma, underground emcee Jean Grae, author and radio personality Karen Hunter (news), Essence magazine health editor Akiba Solomon and DJ Beverly Bond were featured on the panel, titled "Images of Women in Hip Hop," on Tuesday night at the Fashion Institute of Technology. More than 300 people filled the auditorium to capacity, spilling onto the stage and into the aisles. Attendees listened raptly as panelists debated hip-hop's treatment of women before vociferously voicing their...

My apologies for the vanity. As an ex-liberal it has been very rewarding to finally see the truth! I've been reading a lot of lay books on economics such as those by Thomas Sowell. I'd like to read a more formal textbook or two on economics and was wondering if anyone here could recommend some? Also, I'm currently in IT. I have a degree in Pure Mathematics and am considering switching fields to become an actuary. Are there any other good careers that have to do with math and economics? Thanks!

P.S.: I'm not blaming McGovern. Virtually all right thinking sophisticates were for a guaranteed annual income when McGovern proposed it. I was too. But the voters hated it. Only later did it become clear to many in the center and left that the voters were right--welfare-for-the-abled bodied was sustaining an underclass.

It is standard practice to honor a movement's preferred name for itself. Here are the results of a Google News search on 'Pro-Life' -- which is what the pro-life movement calls itself: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,630 for Pro-Life A Google News search on 'Anti-Abortion' (what the pro-choice movement calls the pro-life movement): Results 1 - 10 of about 2,280 for Anti-Abortion. By contrast, the breakdown for the Pro-Choice movement is: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,680 for Pro-Choice.Results 1 - 10 of about 423 for Pro-Abortion.Results of searches for other perjorative names for the Pro-Choice movement,...

Last month my father, a Normandy veteran, came to Washington to see the new World War II Memorial. We took his picture at the area that commemorates D-Day, by the pillar for the state of New York, where he has lived most of his life, and by the inscription for Remagen Bridge, a battle in which he participated. My father hated the military and hated his wartime experiences. Only late in life has he been able to set aside his negative feelings about military life, war, and the awfulness of killing and allow himself to appreciate what his generation accomplished...

I'm sure that at this point most Freepers have seen the MSM groupthink explain away the moral values vote. Here's why they are wrong: In statistics there are two kinds of analysis: prospective and retrospective. Retrospective analysis is done by a methodology that is determined after the results have come in. Prospective analysis is done by a methodology that was choosen before the results come in. Of the two forms, prospective analysis is far more powerful. That's because retrospective analysis is fraught with the "lies, damned lies and statistics" problem - you can change your methodology to arrive at nearly...