Free Republic

Distressed by the high cost of college and the high unemployment of college graduates, Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) recommended “a major revision of how we educate people for the public good. I have heard so many stories of graduates facing crushing debt loads and no prospects of a job that I think it’s time we remake the whole system.” “First of all, why should a student have to pay for college?” Rangel asked. “We don’t make them pay for elementary or high school. If a college degree is needed for the role a person is to play in our society...

One of President Obama’s pitches in promoting his Affordable Care Act was the promise that those who were happy with their current coverage could keep it. The statute, however, requires those whose policies are deemed non-compliant to switch to more comprehensive and expensive plans beginning January 1, 2014. Most affected will be healthy people currently enrolled in high-deductible plans. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explains that “in our view, high-deductible policies are inadequate for several reasons. The major flaw in the premise of such policies is that the individual is competent to assess his own health. Doctors are...

President Barack Obama toasted the founding dictator of post-colonial Tanzania on Monday, who collectivized the nation’s low-tech agricultural sector, established a one-party state and left that African nation’s economy in ruins.“[Y]ou might say an American child is my child. We might say a Tanzanian child is my child,” Obama said after quoting the Tanzanian saying “my neighbor’s child is my child.”“In this way, both of our nations will be looking after all of our children and we’ll be living out the vision of President [Julius] Nyerere,” Obama continued. “The core values that he proclaimed for Tanzania also describe what both our...

Saturday, June 15, 2013 The End of Control Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog We utilize systems to achieve goals whether it's defending the country or fighting poverty or making the trains run in time or achieving political change. Modem systems are systematic creatures that aim to achieve goals by maximizing control over all the subsidiary elements of the problem. So if you set out to solve poverty, you need control over all the social and economic elements that either cause poverty or could be used to ameliorate poverty. Those elements include the sum amount of national...

When fascism comes to America, what will it look (and feel) like? Very much like what we have now, because a version of fascism is already here. I am not the first to worry about the prospect of fascism in America. In 1935, for example, Sinclair Lewis published It Can't Happen Here, which is a fictional account of a fascist take-over of the country. In 2008, Joe Conason published It Can Happen Here. The book's subtitle, Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, tells all we need to know.

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being. This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic...

A Florida father says he was shocked to find a note in his fourth-grade son's backpack suggesting that his teacher instructed students to write letters on their willingness to give up their constitutional rights. Aaron Harvey told WOKV.com that his 10-year-old son was told to write a note reading, "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure," after a civics lesson at the end of last year. Harvey said he found the note earlier this month and obtained the curriculum guide for the lesson, which he said was geared...

Saying that too many of our children are ill-prepared for the world of the future, President Obama urged Congress to enact federal funding for pre-schools. “We need to replace the idiosyncratic influences of our ‘do-it-yourself’ methods of child rearing with a more cohesive approach,” the President said. “Leaving so much of the responsibility on each individual family is a formula for chaos. Different parents seek to instill different value systems. The result is that clashes of these value systems impede coordinated progress toward the collective well-being of all.” “In addition to providing an environment for the inculcation of better values,...

Via Legal Insurrection, between this and Krystal Ball’s Socratic dialogue with a five-year-old about gay marriage, evidently it was indoctrination weekend at MSNBC. The novelty here isn’t the sentiment, it’s the candor. Hillary made this same point more digestible for the public by ladling on warm-fuzzy sauce about a “village” raising a child together. (Similarly, don’t think of huge government programs as budget-busting liabilities. They’re Christmas presents!) Harris-Perry had 30 seconds to give her version of the same point; when you’re operating within those time constraints, there may be no way to make the pitch in terms less creepy than...

Watch as a proud American communist urges us to Lean Forward:We have never invested as much in public education as we should have? Because we've always had kind of a private notion of children? "Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility"? We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children? So part of it is we have to kind of break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents.

Both President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) labeled GOP demands that the federal deficit be reduced by focusing on cuts in government spending “narrow minded.” “By insisting on looking only at federal spending they’re ignoring 75% of the economy,” the President complained. “America produces $15 trillion of output per year. The federal government only spends $3.5 trillion of that. What we’re saying is that the fairest way to cut the deficit is to take a slice out of the bigger piece of the pie that currently is allocated to the private sector.” “Every dollar we let the...

Daniel Hannan cuts through the disinformation routinely spewed by the pundit class to reveal the true historical nature of fascism, albeit as it pertains to British politics. The lessons, however, are applicable here as well. 'I am a Socialist,' Hitler told Otto Strasser in 1930, 'and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow'. No one at the time would have regarded it as a controversial statement. The Nazis could hardly have been more open in their socialism, describing themselves with the same terminology as our own SWP: National Socialist German Workers' Party. Almost everyone in...

I recently read the new biography of Trotsky by Oxford don Robert Service, published in 2009 by Pan Books. It is well-written and surprisingly interesting. The book does a great public service in describing the life of the actual Trotsky, whose previous “biographies” were little more than hagiographies written by his toady worshippers (people like Isaac Deutscher). The last time that I had taken any interest in Trotsky was when I was a teenager and had fleeting delusions of believing in “socialism.” Reading the new book as an adult and as an economist, I found it a useful opportunity to...

Urging that “we break free of the archaic notions of our nation's so-called 'Founding Fathers,'” President Barack Obama launched his second term with a stirring call to “update our concepts to fit our modern circumstances.” The President maintained that “the Founders' original idea that 'liberty' means freedom from government abuses and usurpations has no relevance today. Our government does not usurp our rights. The people elect their rulers and expect them to create the kind of rights appropriate to the world we live in now.” “How much liberty does a person have if he lacks the will or ability to...

President Obama’s inaugural address was eloquent and moving in parts. It was also deeply partisan and polarizing, something that is unusual for a day normally devoted to unity and common purpose. But not in Barack Obama’s America. In his inaugural speech he did what he seemingly cannot keep himself from doing: portraying himself and his followers as Children of Light and portraying his opponents as Children of Darkness. You are either with Obama–or you are with the forces of cruelty and bigotry. In Obama’s world, there is no middle ground. He is the Voice of Reason; those who oppose him...

In his second inaugural address, Obama makes clear that it’s fight night in America. snip Indeed, Obama’s second inaugural address was a liberal wet dream: It pressed all of the Left’s erogenous zones: • Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? Obama vowed not to change or reform them — even though they are driving us toward financial insolvency, and even though they provide workers with a relatively lousy return on their investment. • “Climate change”? It is real, and it must be addressed — now! • “Sustainable (read: green) energy”? “America cannot resist this transition. We must lead it” — now!...

In the libertarian sci-fi classic, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth's tyrannical big government. The ins and outs of agitating and organizing the masses to fight the oppressive Authority feel just as realistic as the finer points of everyday life in the underground Lunar cities of the future. The proposed revolutionary scenario could even serve as a workable model for similar real-life endeavors, if only the renowned futurist author hadn't neglected to factor in the immanent function of any oppressive regime: systemic...

Most modern-day leftists in Western countries have abandoned the idea of a violent revolution, having replaced it with "the long march through the institutions" as part of the culture war to transform the society through cultural hegemony. Instead of commanding firing squads, they play mind games of manipulative illusions, in which the demonization of dissent plays a crucial role. The basic premise hasn't changed: as much as the statists want you to love them, they want you to hate their opponents even more. Until a time when political opposition can be eliminated completely, having opponents can still be useful: you...

This is...about a coordinated effort by about 36 different interest groups with reported revenues of no less than $1.69 billion, pledging millions of dollars to work together to attack conservative supporters and organizations, to intervene directly in Democratic politics, to push for filibuster reform to better enable a push through their agenda without any input from the opposition, and expanding "voting rights" and fighting voter registration laws to further grease the skids for their legislative agenda. 1. Who belongs: Here are a few of them: ...the AFL-CIO, the Center for American Progress, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common...

In "Liberalism and Social Action" (Excerpts only), John Dewey explains the following: The idealistic philosophy taught that men are held together by the relations that proceed from and that manifest an ultimate cosmic mind. It followed that the basis of society and the state is shared intelligence and purpose, not force nor yet self-interest. The state is a moral organism, of which government is one organ. Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free. The state is but one organ among many...