Free Republic

Fifteen or twenty years ago, and for some years following, there was a great deal of publicity about bee colonies dying out. The cause of the decline was unclear, but most people assumed it was somehow our fault. Where I live, “Save the Bees” signs started cropping up in yards and in front of apartment dwellings, along with “All Are Welcome Here” and “We Believe In Science.” Some people let their lawns go wild, not, as one might suspect, because they were too lazy to mow, but because they hoped a weed-filled lawn would be good habitat for bees. But...

The Biden administration must end its resettlement of migrants on National Park Service land, says House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR). Westerman used a Wednesday oversight hearing to highlight the Biden administration’s construction plan for migrant camps on “some of America’s most treasured lands.”

New evidence has surfaced which indicates Englishmen in the American colonies had the right to keep and bear arms before the right was codified in England. In 1606, King James I granted perpetual rights to arms for the Virginia colonies, which covered what would become the southern colonies during the 1600s. From The History of Bans on Types of Arms Before 1900, by David Kopel and Joseph Greenlee, Law review article, 165 pages, 2021. In the early history section of the article, one startling fact revealed was the Royal Charter of King James I, in 1606, granted to members of...

During his career, Franklin printed nearly 2,500,000 money notes for the American Colonies...However, one major problem stood in the way of efforts to print paper money: counterfeiting. When Franklin opened his printing house in 1728, paper money was a relatively new concept. Unlike gold and silver, paper money's lack of intrinsic value meant it was constantly at risk of depreciating. There were no standardized bills in the Colonial period, leaving an opportunity for counterfeiters to pass off fake bills as real ones. In response, Franklin worked to embed a suite of security features that made his bills distinctive...One of the...

Those who lived in the original New England colonies thought differently about guns and the responsibility of their citizens. Leftist Massachusetts is a perfect example of the pendulum wildly swinging from one extreme to the other. The Massachusetts Bay colony "required" that every able-bodied man (adult male) own a weapon. In 1632 a Plymouth colony statute ordered that "every free man or other inhabitant of this colony provide for himself … a sufficient musket … 2 pounds of powder and 10 pounds of bullets with a fine of 10 shillings per person who was not armed." The 1632 statute added...

Abraham Lincoln was right when he declared that, at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the Constitution, it was widely expected that slavery was on the wane, and would soon die out. That broad sentiment is actually a matter of public record, but that record has been effectively suppressed. ... Massachusetts in the Lead In 1767, the General Court of Massachusetts (the equivalent of the House of Representatives) passed a bill “to prevent the unnatural and unwarrantable custom of enslaving mankind in this province and the importation of slaves into the same.” That is, the...

Which U.S. state that started off as one of the original 13 colonies would our Founding Fathers recognize most clearly aligned with their vision of liberty? If you think none of the 13 states deserve that honor then which states today do? Perhaps this is not a totally fair question since our society has changed (not all for the better) so much since 1776. I'm sure every U.S. state government today has far more bureaucracy than the Founding Fathers would ever have wanted to see. But some states are clearly better than others in their governance.

Both the English and the Native Americans Used Children to Learn the Mysterious Ways of Their New Neighbors In 1608, Thomas Savage, age 13, arrived on the first ship from England bringing supplies to the newly founded Jamestown colony. He had been in Virginia just a few weeks when he was presented as a gift to Wahunsenaca, the great Powhatan who ruled over most of the people along the rivers leading into the lower Chesapeake Bay area. In return, Powhatan gave the English a young man named Namontack. Such exchanges of young people were considered normal. As English expeditions began...

Full title: What Jamaican Maroons and the Founding Fathers have in common: When fighting a superpower, it is not possible to free every single person We live in an age were now even the most fringe of arguments, the idea of reparations, is a widespread part of presidential elections. The problem with this is that if the progressives had any consistency they would be demanding that Britain pay reparations to American blacks. The Founding Fathers didn't bring all of these slaves here. King George did. All three of them. Queen Anne did. King William did. Queen Mary did. King James...

An Anglophile who decided he had heard enough from US Republican presidential candidates, wrote the desperate letter to Her Majesty herself. It read: “On behalf of the American people, I urgently implore you to take us back. “Clearly, the options we have to lead us aren’t up to par. Again, please, I beg of you, make the United States of America a colony of the United Kingdom. “For further reasons as to why this is such a necessary, albeit drastic, step, I refer to tonight’s Republican Party Primary debate. Thank you. God save The Queen.”

Sometimes the rigors of daily life just get too overwhelming, causing me to turn to other less stressful items of interest. So I am now reading, “Benjamin Franklin — An American Life,” by famed biographer, Walter Isaacson. Ben Franklin It is already an amazing story about an amazing man, and I am not half way through its 586 pages — small type, no pictures! Benjamin Franklin: author, inventor, scientist, politician, raconteur. But he considered himself, first and foremost, to be a printer. And would generally sign his name, “Benjamin Franklin, printer.” For in that Colonial period, a printer was a...

In time for the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Whitefield (pronounced Whit-field), my co-blogger Thomas Kidd has just published a biography of the man he terms America’s Spiritual Founding Father. [Yale University Press identifies October 28 as the book's release date, but it is already shipping].portrait-of-george-whitefield.jpg!Blog Kidd’s George Whitefield is an eminently readable and informative book. It begins with a simple yet critical argument: “George Whitefield was the key figure in the first generation of Anglo-American evangelical Christianity.” Wesley started what became a major denomination. Edwards made far more serious and sustained theological contributions. Whitefield, though, tied...

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went beyond the talking points she was given on the terrorist attack in Libya when she appeared on Sunday talk shows shortly after the Sept. 11 attack. Ayotte, along with five other senators, met with Rice on the Hill this week to discuss her reaction to the attack, which left four Americans dead. Ayotte said she was “very troubled” by what she heard, noting specifically that Rice had read the classified intelligence briefings saying that al-Qaida was behind the attack and did not mention that in her television appearances. Ayotte also...

America’s Catholic Colony By: Matthew E. Bunson The history of Colonial England in America is one of great irony: The same Protestant groups who fled England in pursuit of toleration and religious liberty brought with them an utter hatred for the Church. They installed laws and customs that excluded Catholics from all aspects of public life for over a century and a half. This reality makes the story of Catholics in the first days of Maryland all the more remarkable. From its founding, Maryland was intended to be a place where Catholics were welcomed and permitted to share in the...

The Catholic Church in the United States of AmericaFR. ROBERT J. FOX This chapter explores the early days of the English colonies, when the rights of Catholics were not respected, to the end of the nineteenth century. Cecil Calvert(1606 - 1675) No. The English colonies were founded at the same time the Church was persecuted in England. Virginia colonists were members of the English Church; in New England the colonists were Calvinists. Catholics were not permitted in these colonies. Catholics were excluded from the Dutch colony in New York and the Swedish settlement of Delaware also. In 1683 James...

Almost every American knows the traditional story of July Fourth—the soaring idealism of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress's grim pledge to defy the world's most powerful nation with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. But what else about revolutionary America might help us feel closer to those founders in their tricornered hats, fancy waistcoats and tight knee-breeches? Those Americans, it turns out, had the highest per capita income in the civilized world of their time. They also paid the lowest taxes—and they were determined to keep it that way. By 1776, the 13 American colonies had...

The pocket-sized ivory sundial likely belonged to one of the early English gentlemen colonists. It was discovered while archaeologists were carefully digging fill soil above a cellar dated to the early James Fort period (1607-1610) at Jamestown, Virginia, the site of North America's first successful English colony. The artifact was the lower leaf of an ivory pocket sundial known in the 17th century as a diptych dial. It clearly bore the name of its maker, Hans Miller, who was a 17th century craftsman known to have made sundials in Nuremberg, Germany. Like many objects found at the Jamestown excavations, it...

It's an eye opening experience for a Brit returning to her hometown to witness firsthand the growing muslim extremism in Britain.

Father Cantalamessa's 3rd Advent Sermon "The First Evangelization of the American Continent" ROME, DEC. 16, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the third Advent sermon by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the pontifical household, which was delivered today.* * *1. The Christian faith crosses the oceanFour days ago the American continent celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which in Mexico is also a holy day of obligation. This is a happy coincidence, when our subject in this meditation is the third great wave of evangelization that followed the discovery of the New World. Never more...

The establishment of the Shenandoah National Park displaced the traditional communities of Backcountry folk who had lived for generations in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Front Royal and Rockfish Gap. By and large, the houses, barns, and stores which were within the Park boundaries were not spared -- they were razed. [Vintage photographs]