Free Republic

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has just demonstrated that you can become a billionaire in America many times over, while being clueless about the country you live in. To Bloomberg, if you oppose a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, you are indulging in religious bigotry and do not understand the Constitution. Here is the mayor explaining how the heroes of 9/11 died so that mosques might be built anywhere in New York City. “On Sept. 11th, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not...

Heather Mac Donald is a very good journalist, and conservatives are in her debt for her work dealing with immigration, crime, and the realities of urban life. But Mac Donald, an atheist, is puzzled by religion. Last Sunday, this puzzlement took the form of a short piece at the Secular Right website, where Mac Donald expressed her shock at seeing a flyer for “one of those creepy painted sculptures of Mary with oversized, tear-encrusted eyes and an undersized mouth” in her apartment building in Manhattan. The flyer was for a visit of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima at...

Notre Dame taught a clear lesson today, in its decision to have President Obama as a commencement speaker and to award him an honorary degree. That lesson is this: American politicians can freely embrace abortion and face no negative consequences at all. Any pro-abortion politician who climbs to the top of Benjamin Disraeli’s “greasy pole” will get nothing but applause and praise from those who now run Notre Dame. The Second Vatican Council defines abortion as an “unspeakable crime.” Not so Notre Dame. Father Jenkins’ effusive introduction of Obama never hinted that abortion is an “unspeakable crime.” According to Father...

As the U.S. financial crisis broadens and deepens, wiping out the wealth and savings of tens of millions, destroying hopes and dreams, it is hard not to see in all of this history’s verdict upon this generation. We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. For how did this befall us, save through decisions that brushed aside lessons that history and experience had taught our fathers? It all began with the corruption called sub-prime mortgages. The motivation was not wicked. Democrats wanted to raise home ownership among African-Americans from 50 percent to the 75 percent of white folks....

When one reads the new atheists, one gets the impression that the influence of Christianity has been entirely baleful, that Christianity’s contribution to morality has been entirely negative, and that the United States, far from being a Christian country historically, is really the finest flower of the anti-religious Enlightenment, and that we therefore ought to stamp out all public manifestations of Christianity, which will most likely wither away anyway as Americans become as sensible as contemporary Britons and Scandinavians. These peculiar beliefs often find expression in lawsuits trying to suppress all public expressions of Christianity. It is therefore with some...

In his homily at his inaugural Mass as Pope, Benedict XVI asked Catholics to “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” The media firestorm over Benedict’s decision to lift the excommunication of the four bishops consecrated without papal approval in 1988 by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre provides a perfect illustration of how modern wolves attack and what they attack, and thus might be of interest to non-Catholics as well as Catholics. Lefebvre, the former archbishop of Dakar, Senegal, became increasingly disenchanted by the doctrinal confusion that followed in the wake of the Second...

Most libertarian and conservative leaders are opposing government aid for the auto makers. However, theories of leaving everything to the free market are not valid when the market is crashing or is dysfunctional, as it is now for bonds. Libertarian theories and principles are great for normal times, but they need to be realistic and modified during times of chaos. Consider that they now coincide with the Far Left which also wants to see the car companies in bankruptcy. Instead of just blindly opposing any government intervention or subsidies, libertarians should be debating how to make government provision of liquidity...

One wonders: What did Sarah Palin ever do to inspire the rage and bile that exploded on her selection by John McCain? What is there either in this woman’s record or resume to elicit such feline ferocity? What did we know of her when she was introduced? That she was a mother of five who had brought into this world a baby boy with Down syndrome, thus living her Christian beliefs. That she was a small-town conservative who had risen from mayor of Wasilla (Pop. 9,700) to be governor of a state twice the size of Texas. That she was...

Very good news from The Nation: >Remember when Pat Buchanan ran a number of hard-right, fringe campaigns for president in the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000? Well, guess who was supporting him: From an AP report in 1999: Pat Buchanan brought his conservative message of a smaller government and an America First foreign policy to Fairbanks and Wasilla on Friday as he continued a campaign swing through Alaska. Buchanan’s strong message championing states rights resonated with the roughly 85 people gathered for an Interior Republican luncheon in Fairbanks. … Among those sporting Buchanan buttons were Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin and...

Caucasian Games: The Score by Srdja Trifkovic A week after Georgia’s failed attempt to conquer the breakaway province of South Ossetia, the crisis is over. The only major issue still unresolved concerns Mikheil Saakashvili’s motivation. His order to attack on the night of August 7-8 was a breathtakingly risky move; but was it a calculated, or reckless gamble? That Saakashvili acted with the tacit approval (if not active encouragement) of the United States is reasonable to assume, considering the presence of over a hundred U.S. military advisors in Georgia. Actively involved at all levels of planning, training and equipping the...

Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships. Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours. Vladimir Putin took the...

Posted by Tom Piatak on May 10, 2008 In response to my recent piece on science and religion, one of the commenters, GM, took me to task: “you may want to consider and ask why atheists seem angry. There’s no indication that you understand why.” I have to confess, GM was right: I do not understand why some atheists are so angry. I have no trouble understanding that some people cannot give intellectual assent to faith, and I have long known atheists and agnostics. But none of the atheists and agnostics I know are angry. In fact, they respect the...

In short, these characters cannot build a virtual fence and won't complete a physical fence. If the nation is fed up with Republicans, who can blame them? Securing a border is not that difficult. In 1954, President Eisenhower sent an Army general to Texas to do it. He began repatriating thousands of Mexicans and had the situation in hand within a year. Along the San Diego corridor, a crude fence of corrugated steel matting from U.S. airfields in Vietnam has stopped illegal trucks from crossing, cut back 90 percent on the illegal alien traffic, and virtually eliminated murders and assaults...

The Great Betrayal by Patrick J. Buchanan Offering more “straight talk” on the Sunday before the Florida primary, John McCain made an arresting prediction: “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s not going to be over right away. There’s going to be other wars. I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.” Ike promised to “go to Korea” and ended that war. Nixon pledged to end Vietnam with honor. McCain says we may be in Iraq a hundred years and warns, “there’s going to be other wars.”...

GOP Loses Its Life A pro-abortion nominee would shatter Reagan’s coalition. by Tom Piatak 1980 was a watershed year for the Republican Party. The importance of social conservatives to the coalition Ronald Reagan was assembling was such that George H.W. Bush had to renounce his pro-choice past to become Reagan’s running mate. Since that time, every presidential and vice-presidential nominee of the GOP has been pro-life. There is room for debate about what social conservatives have gotten from the GOP; many now complain that they are consigned to the back of the Republican bus. But there is no doubt what...

The Broken Compass Posted by Tom Piatak on December 14, 2007 It seems fitting that Hollywood has chosen to observe Christmas in the year Christopher Hitchens’ atheist manifesto became a best-seller by releasing The Golden Compass, a movie based on the first volume of a fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials by another angry British atheist, Philip Pullman. Lest there be any doubt what Pullman’s objective is, he told the Washington Post in 2001 that “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief” and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 that “My books are about killing God.” Pullman, in fact,...

The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45. The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century. Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800. Have gold, silver, oil, the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar all suddenly soared in value in just a few years? Nope. The dollar has...

To the hysteriacs, Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler and we are all at Munich – and we should behave like Churchill and gird for war. This is absurd. Hitler could destroy the Jewish population of Europe because he was able to conquer Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. Iran has no air force or navy we could not dispatch in a week and no nukes. Israel has 200 to 300 nuclear warheads and, if it believed its survival was at stake, could turn Tehran into toast in 10 minutes. America and Iran have great differences, but also common interests....

In July 1941, a political prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. As a punishment, ten others were chosen by the Nazis to be killed in a starvation bunker. One of these men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, began lamenting what his death would mean for his wife and children. Upon hearing these cries, another prisoner, a Franciscan friar named Maksymilian Kolbe—who had run afoul of the Nazis after sheltering refugees, including hundreds of Jews, at his friary—volunteered to take Gajowniczek’s place and was sent to the starvation bunker in his stead. In the bunker, Kolbe became the leader of those awaiting death, whom he was...

Elevated to the papacy at 78, Benedict XVI will take no action greater in significance for the Catholic Church than his motu proprio declaring that the Latin Mass must be said in every diocese – on the request of the faithful. Dissenting bishops must comply. "What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us, too," said the Holy Father in his apostolic letter, as he authorized the universal use of the sole official version of the mass allowed in the four centuries between the Council of Trent and Vatican II. To which many Catholics will respond: "Alleluia!...