Free Republic

Donald Trump is not a conservative--he's a reality TV star thoroughly in tune with the passions and dynamics of mass publicity and social media. No matter how much he denounces them, he's still a product of victim-based identity politics.A lot of people think Donald Trump is a throwback to an earlier time in American history. He's seen as a nativist who wants to go back to the days of pre-multicultural America, to a time before identity politics and political correctness. But this interpretation misses something very important about the Trump phenomenon. The Donald is very much a child of contemporary...

Democracy and common sense teach us to seek the truth by listening to one another. If we will not even provide a room for people who want to talk with one another because we do not like what they say, then democracy is impossible.When I was a junior in college and looking for a summer job to defray the next year's tuition, I answered an ambiguous ad in a newspaper and found myself selling high-quality pots and pans, china, and cutlery to unmarried working girls. It actually was a good job for a good company. I ended up selling $20,000...

Senator Rubio is on the firmest possible scientific ground when he says that science shows that the child in the womb, from the very point of successful fertilization, is indeed a human being.Senator Marco Rubio is right. The life of a human being begins at conception—not at implantation, “viability,” or birth. This is a scientific fact. It is not, as CNN journalist Chris Cuomo ignorantly insisted in a televised confrontation with Rubio, a claim of “faith” with no scientific basis. To our surprise, however, the distinguished bioethicist Arthur Caplan has intervened to try to rescue Mr. Cuomo in a fight...

A skilled surgeon needs a scalpel, but killers can get by with cudgels. That is because it’s a whole lot easier to smash a skull than to separate conjoined twins. America’s abortion status quo is corrupt and callous, a regime of highly organized crime which lets abortionists legally kill an unborn child through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason, and be massively subsidized by the government to do it. Taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood clinics are strategically planted in poor, non-white neighborhoods across the country, still serving Margaret Sanger’s racist mission of getting “more children from the fit, fewer from...

Don’t let them lie to you. Congress CAN defund Planned Parenthood. GOP establishment-types like John Boehner are going to try to convince you that it’s impossible to defund Planned Parenthood because funding for this baby-killing monster is baked into the cake of mandatory spending. They will try to tell you that since Planned Parenthood is funded through Medicaid, and Medicaid is an entitlement program, there is nothing they can do. In their never-ending quest to make excuses for their abysmal failure to do the right and courageous thing, they will raise their hands helplessly in the air, shrug, put on...

2016 GOP pack has mostly listened to voters and moved in the right direction on these key issues. Thursday night’s prime time debate on Fox News was entertaining and revealing. Before I get into the meat of what really mattered, a few broad observations: ** I look forward to the next debate, when the pointedly smart and principled Carly Fiorina will probably be up on stage, replacing (I hope) the drab, self- congratulatory John Kasich. She sounded like the college teacher everyone hoped to study with. He came across like the lackluster pastor of a fading suburban church. Kasich was...

Without a doubt, we — the church and its congregants — have hurt our witness to the world with our hypocrisy, thereby undercutting our moral and spiritual authority. Why should people listen to us if we preach one thing and do another? How can we expose sin in the society when we’re practicing sin in the church? On what basis can we speak out against same-sex “marriage” when we’ve allowed our own marriages to go to pot? The pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church not only inflicted terrible suffering on the boys who were abused, but it also terribly...

I started noticing “Cecil the Lion” trending on Facebook and Twitter at some point yesterday afternoon. By the evening, it was the most popular topic on social media, and stories about the lion were popping up on all of the national news sites. Before I took the time to investigate, I tried to imagine if there could be any valid reason for a wild cat to become the biggest news item in the world. On a day when another undercover video revealed Planned Parenthood dismembering murdered children for profit, I strained to think if there might be some justification for...

As both the House and Senate consider bills to defund Planned Parenthood — the abortion giant responsible for hundreds of thousands of grisly child-killings every year — pro-life conservatives should ask the members of Congress who claim to stand with them one, simple question: Are you as dedicated to life as the Democratic party is to death? The Democrats’ dedication is unquestioned. They are indispensable in providing Planned Parenthood with $528 million of its $1.3 billion annual budget, and they’ve steadfastly defended the group despite an avalanche of evidence of its sheer depravity. Founded by Margaret Sanger, an unapologetic eugenicist,...

Christians are called to live in the real, fallen world, not a wistful fantasyland where everyone tells the truth, secretly means well, and is just a winsome podcast or three-minute hug away from repentance and salvation. Stuff’s getting real out there. The principalities and powers are waxing cocky. They’ve started to drop their masks and strut their horns and hooves by daylight. Believers can only benefit by calling things as they are. Our thin-skinned friends might wince at first and shun us, but give them a little while, and one after another will call late at night and say, “I...

The Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage settled little. It merely launched a bigger struggle over the definition of marriage. Now, resistance to Obergefell v. Hodges will join Roe v. Wade in becoming another, long-tailed comet moving across the socio-political skies of America. A third, landmark Supreme Court initiative waits over the horizon. It will involve the 2nd Amendment. Perhaps not soon, but coming. Following Obergefell v. Hodges, much discussion now centers on the potential loss of tax-exempt status to churches that resist. Same-sex marriage zealots will look for opportunities to cement the Court’s decision by forcing churches, through the...

When one observes President Obama’s unwillingness to accommodate America’s four-century long religious conscience protection through his attempts to require Catholics to go against their own doctrines and beliefs, one is tempted to say that he is anti-Catholic. But that characterization would not be correct. Although he has recently singled out Catholics, he has equally targeted traditional Protestant beliefs over the past four years. So since he has attacked Catholics and Protestants, one is tempted to say that he is anti-Christian. But that, too, would be inaccurate. He has been equally disrespectful in his appalling treatment of religious Jews in general...

Without question, the Supreme Court’s decision to impose homosexual marriage as a constitutional right is disappointing. There was a time when the Court rightly bestowed a great respect for America’s Christian heritage and to the Creator on which the Declaration of Independence was based. Sadly, those time are passed. As Christians, we know God, in His great wisdom, established the institution of marriage as only between one man and one woman. Not even the Supreme Court can change that.Because of judicial activism, Christian ministries can and should take steps to protect their religious freedoms. No longer can even churches believe...

Late in June, the United States Supreme Court will issue its ruling on the Constitutional status of same-sex marriage. Despite some promising hints of second-guessing by a justice or two during their April hearing on this question, the majority of seasoned court observers still expect a ruling saying that the penumbra of the Constitution mandates same-sex marriage. A hopeful minority look for a deference to at least some of the states. For mere Christians, the issue actually lies at a different level. Authentic Christianity has never been a "national" movement. Whether viewed from a spiritual or a political perspective, the...

[ . . .] But my concern is less with prognosticating on what the court might do, but rather on the reaction of the Christian community to the presumed attempted destruction of marriage, specifically from its leaders. What should we expect? It appears to me that there are some who suffer from “Tony Campolo Syndrome.” That is, they are on the verge of “stepping over” – coming out of the “one-man-one-woman marriage closet” – and a bit eager to embrace so-called same-sex “marriage.” Why will several prominent Christian “leaders” do this? It will not be because they can biblically defend...

Good news from the Supreme Court today: If you like your health care subsidies, you can keep them. If you like limited government and the separation of powers, you are out of luck. Now that Chief Justice Roberts and five of his colleagues found that the phrase “Exchange established by the State” means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government,” we should henceforth follow Justice Scalia’s suggestion that this act of Congress, which had to be passed before the People knew what was in it and then had to be rescued not once, but twice, by a complicit...

A recent Gallup poll, "Moral Acceptability: Changes Over Time," shows Americans made a startling move to the left over the past 15 years. A blanket blaming of the church is the easy answer, but today, where black and white has faded into varying shades of gray, we are better served going back to where it began because we didn't get where we are today overnight. America's moral decline began with Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt [FDR]. Their arrogant defiance and blatant hostility toward the U.S. Constitution inspired them to lead an insurrection from the Oval Office, effectively convincing...

One of the pressing issues of Chesterton’s time was “birth control.” He not only objected to the idea, he objected to the very term because it meant the opposite of what it said. It meant no birth and no control. I can only imagine he would have the same objections about “gay marriage.” The idea is wrong, but so is the name. It is not gay and it is not marriage. Chesterton was so consistently right in his pronouncements and prophecies because he understood that anything that attacked the family was bad for society. That is why he spoke out...

How should we judge the health of a culture? We might do it by pointing to its greatest virtues. The Greek city states between 500 and 300 B.C., though they were not especially densely populated, gave the west the architectural “language” it still employs for everything from grand hotels to private homes. The colonial house, in this sense, belongs to a Greek colony before the American. Athens gave us the ideals and some of the techniques of democracy. She invented the drama, and the great troika of tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, are unsurpassed by anyone to come, except for...

Confusion again reigns today in many Jewish circles, particularly in Israel: Some of us joyfully celebrate a festive holiday, while others watch from the side, not sure what to make of it. Some recite the usual Tachanun penitential prayer and bemusedly ask, "What, another religious-Zionist holiday?" as their neighbors recite the joyous Hallel prayer instead. A quick review of the miraculously historic events of this month 48 years ago may help clear up some of the confusion. A brief synopsis: As on Purim, Passover, and other holidays, our enemies set out to destroy us – literally – and G-d came...