Free Republic

Here's one of those peeks inside the mind of a true believer, a follower of Marx, whether they realize it or not. Even though this parent feels she is doing what is best for his child, she wonders if she shouldn't sacrifice her child's education for the greater good.Not my words...hers: My family lives on the west side of Los Angeles. I face the same choice as many urban families: Will the kids attend public or private schools? Should one minimize opportunities for one's own child in service to the greater good? In our desire to protect our children physically...

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith.] Communist Zealots: the Anabaptists Sometimes Martin Luther must have felt that he had loosed the whirlwind, even opened the gates of Hell. Shortly after Luther launched the Reformation, various Anabaptist sects appeared and spread throughout Germany. The Anabaptists believed in predestination of the elect, but they also believed, in contrast to Luther, that they knew infallibly who the elect were: i.e., themselves. The sign of that election was in an emotional, mystical conversion process, that of being "born again,"...

Who could forget how Newsweek editor Evan Thomas practically fell to his knees last summer in adoration of President Obama, declaring on MSNBC: "I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above — above the world, he's sort of God." How about the musings of the Washington Post "On Faith" column in February 2008: "Is Obama the Messiah? People are asking these days and it's not so hard to understand why: the desperate throngs, the tears, the great awakening of a slumbering demographic."

February 5 is the National Wear Red Day when the bold colors of our outfits are supposed to remind us to take better care of our heart. It is not about love (not until Valentine’s Day) – it is about wellness and fitness and healthy lifestyle. There are two approaches to trying to get the attention of the folks about wellness: the collectivistic and the individualistic. The first one tries to put the people in the context of the big society. We heard a lot of it recently during the Health Care Debate in America. Ideas like: we all have...

This Cartoon Seemed Far-Fetched In 1948

A well-regulated militia ... So begins the historic statement of 27 words that fuels the titanic battle that rages between the proponents of freedom and the forces of collectivism. As I started to write this piece, I realized that during the past 230 years, words and definitions have mutated into something that would be unrecognizable to our founding fathers. Brilliant though they were, they could not predict how future generations would define certain words and concepts. Where we use word de jure slogans, the framers wrote in terms of underlying human experience. If James Madison had lived today and realized...

A Noxious 2,400-year old lie, originated by Plato, still cripples us today. And, once more, Karl R. Popper comes to the rescue. Popper has examined, in great detail the writings of Plato. He concludes that Plato, and later thinkers and writers that followed Plato have wreaked havoc in science politics and philosophy down through the centuries. Popper presents the following small table of word definitions. The two columns have opposite definitions .i.e., individualism is the opposite of collectivism. Egotism is the opposite of altruism. Individualism Collectivism egotism altruism To see the whole post:Click here

President Obama channeled his inner populist this morning, announcing that he wants to impose a fee on banks to help recover taxpayer funds used to rescue Wall Street. In announcing the new fees, Obama was harsh to the institutions whose greed and speculation drove the economy downhill and required billions of dollars of taxpayer aid. Much of the money has been repaid, but the administration estimates that more than $117 billion will be lost and it hopes to recover those funds from the new fee over 10 years. “My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are...

And so the solstice passes and a new year dawns, leaving “newsmen” everywhere with a dearth of “news” to report (since the government bureaus close down, issuing no new edicts for the “newsmen” to interpret and praise, which should give you some indication of what really passes for “news,” these days.) Traditionally, those in the “news” business respond by taking a stab at predicting noteworthy events of the year to come. We can predict the future quite accurately. Unfortunately, accurate predictions are a bore. The sun will rise 363 more times this year. When I ask for extra salt and...

Two recent stories have defined for me, or rather illustrated under no uncertain terms, what it is that drives and shapes this administration’s political orientation. The first illustration is the recent news that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently issued a recommendation to America’s health care community that mammograms under the age of 50 are counterproductive and unnecessary, even going so far as to discourage breast self-examination in general, citing a "moderate certainty that the harms outweigh the benefits." To be fair, while this is a government funded study (and the agency is part of the U.S. Department of...

Glenn Beck is not exactly the most beloved figure in the US media. Of course, there are not unjustified reasons for that. Even for those who ultimately agree with him, he comes off as completely eccentric and a little bit too prone to conspiracy theories. However, there is an advantage to being a bit on the edge and even over the edge. One can challenge the mainstream, "official" opinions of those who seek to regulate public opinion. One of the most widespread myths in media is that black conservatives are an oxymoron or simply don't exist. But the most despicable...

I first visited West Berlin in June 1981. I took the closed American military train through the 112-mile-long corridor through hostile communist East Germany that offered access to that city from the free world. I was told not to take photos out the closed and covered windows along the way. Peeking out the window I could see armed communist guards along the route making sure that the prohibition was enforced. West Berlin was an island of freedom in the middle of a communist country, protected by the occupying powers of the United States, Britain, and France. It was a bright...

Note: To All Fifth Columnists is an open letter written by Ayn Rand around the beginning of 1941, when she was encouraging conservative intellectuals to form a national organization advocating individualism. She desired for the letter be issued by such an organization. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You who read this represent the greatest danger to America. No matter what the outcome of the war in Europe may be, Totalitarianism has already won a complete victory in many American minds and conquered all of our intellectual life. You have helped it to win. Perhaps it is your right to destroy civilization and bring dictatorship...

President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Cass Sunstein, says that organs for transplant shortages could be averted by reforming the protocol that determines when organs may be harvested from donors. Currently, persons wishing to donate organs must sign permission documents in advance. Many do not. The number of organs available for transplant would be larger if explicit permission were not required. “Just because a person is born with an organ doesn’t mean he is entitled to keep it if a greater need could be served by a different disposition of this asset,”...

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann expressed disappointment that the US Senate has decided to delete “end-of-life counseling” from their version of the President’s health care bill. “Now a frightened or lonely elderly man or woman won’t get the benefit of friendly advice on how to end their pain,” Olbermann complained. “They’ll be left to go it alone, unaware that the government is willing to provide assisted suicide at little or no expense to them.” Worse still, according to Olbermann, “society will have to continue to bear the burdens of costly medical treatment for many who really have nothing much to live for.”...

Syndicalism is alive and well in Washington. Syndicalism embraces the notion that labor unions should have leadership roles in all aspects of a society whether it be banking, business, science, the arts, manufacturing, or politics. Syndicalism seeks the establishment of a communist state. The bolsheviks, led by Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, used as a rallying cry: “All power to the Soviets,” wherein the word “soviet” means council, (but was widely understood as labor union). The new nation that emerged once the Bolsheviks had seized power from the Romanovs in Russia (1917) was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). [Continue in...

What liberals do is break down the concept of self, attribute all valuable traits to society or inheritance (non-biological), then establish an infrastructure to replace one's personal characteristics with the "appropriate" ones.... First, liberals resolve to expurgate the concept of self. This process begins in early childhood, epitomized by the universal kindergarten phrase, "If you can't share with everyone, don't bring it." They might as well post, "...to each his own need" all around the room.... Second, after successfully flattening the ability distribution, liberals blame society for all uneven outcomes. Feminists pontificate about Western standards of beauty, attempting to define...

PHILADELPHIA - For students at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, there really is such a thing as a free lunch - and a free breakfast, too. With no strings attached. The Philadelphia school district's unique program provides free food for all children in schools with a high percentage of low-income students, dispensing with the cumbersome forms parents must fill out elsewhere to qualify their kids for free meals. Although federal officials recently threatened to kill this paperless model, other cities are looking to replicate it. Food service directors say it eliminates the costly bureaucracy that both deters needy families from applying...

[Attack on freedom with an ACORN tie-in.] June 12, 2009 – Americans historically are a generous people. Thus it’s shocking to see the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy undermining the valid foundations of charity in the name of charity. A major report from that organization asserts that “Philanthropy at its Best must serve the public good by contributing to strong, participatory democracy that engages all communities.” It then asserts that any charitable organization that properly promotes this value must do two things: First, “Provide at least 50 percent of its grant dollars to benefit low-income communities, communities of color and...

On Wednesday, according to news reports, James W. Von Brunn, a longtime belligerent racist and anti-Semite, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and opened fire, murdering a security guard before he himself was shot and neutralized. Good people everywhere recognize the vicious criminality of his attack, and the particular insidiousness of his motivation to lash out where he did. In reflecting on this tragedy, it is an appropriate time to contemplate the sanctity of innocent life, the horror that is unleashed by bigotry and intolerance, and the fragility of peaceful human relations. We should all be thankful that such...