Free Republic

Books for the Arsenal of Ordered Liberty Posted by Hunter Bakeron Monday, January 4, 2010 As we begin the New Year, I find myself thinking about books that fill the conservative armamentarium for resisting the left-liberal onslaught on the past handful of years. I’ve omitted some categories, like military and foreign policy, because they are outside my areas of expertise and don’t apply as much to the Acton mission, anyway. Here are my recommendations:Economics:Common Sense Economics by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, and Dwight Lee — Dr. Gwartney taught the first economics class I ever took as a university student and...

Catholic, Crusader, Leper and King: The Life of Baldwin IV and the Triumph of the Cross By MichaModern society obsessively avoids suffering, risk and danger.  It secures everything with seatbelts and safety rails, air conditions the summer heat, prints warnings on coffee cups and advises that that safety glasses should be used while working with hammers.  Certainly such precautions have prevented misfortune.  However, since heroism and excellence are born from confronting rather than avoiding suffering and peril, the mania for safeguards has also diminished the notion of these qualities.  This is unfortunate since only those intrepid souls who confront danger,...

A Labour minister has sparked controversy by claiming that an alternative symbol is needed for the Red Cross because of the logo's supposed links to the Crusades. Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant said that the historic emblem risked undermining the work of the humanitarian organisation. His intervention came as MPs debated the adoption of the 'red crystal' - a diamond

A former FBI special agent told law enforcement and Homeland Security personnel that a network of Islamic organizations are working to incrementally implement Islamic law in the United States. During a presentation at the Bedford County Emergency Management Agency, former FBI agent John Guandolo briefed members about groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which he claims is working with other Islamic groups to slowly implement Shariah, also known as Islamic law, which encompasses all areas of life. Guandolo worked in the FBI since 1996, including nine years as a member of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the...

NEVER-BEFORE-REVEALED TERRORIST TRAINING VIDEO EXPOSES 35 COMPOUNDS ON AMERICAN SOILBy Steve Foley - Posted on February 9th, 2009 Press Release from the Christian Action Network “Act like you are his friend. Then kill him.” – Sheik Muburak Gilani explaining how to kill American infidels Washington, DC—Christian Action Network will show Homegrown Jihad at the Landmark Theater in Washington, DC, on February 11, 2009, at 7:30 pm. There is no charge to attend the viewing. Copies can also be obtained at www.christianaction.org. The American public was never supposed to know. The 2006 Justice Department document that exposes 35 terrorist training compounds...

We tend to focus on creeping sharia in the U.S. but Canada is not exempt from the grand jihad as this article from earlier this year indicates. With porous borders and chatter of a North American Union we should hope Canada is taking the threat seriously. David Harris. The enemy within If terrorism suspect Momin Khawaja, now on trial in Ottawa, is as guilty as Crown prosecutors say, it’ll be time to settle an important question: Was Mr. Khawaja a “Naji man”? Amid trial allegations, court details and defence objections, significant questions arise about Mr. Khawaja’s status as a consultant...

Over the next year, the U.S. government will need to borrow somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, the most ever by far. Estimates go as high as $2 trillion, depending on how quickly the economy cools and how fast tax revenues fall. The simple question most of America has not asked is this: Where is the money going to come from? The federal government already knows the answer to that question, and it has implications Americans are not ready for but will soon be faced with. America is going cap in hand to Middle East oil exporters. What government...

Since CNN devoted so much time to covering the Hajj, a number of prominent Muslims -- including known terrorists and jihadists -- have opined that "We are defeating these people [American "evangelicals"] through their homes in their lands." "Terrorists gush over CNN coverage," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily, December 12 (thanks to Doc Washburn): JERUSALEM – CNN's extensive coverage this week of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca is a defeat for evangelical Christians and proves it is only a question of time before Islam will be "shining all over the world," according to Muslim terrorists in Gaza speaking to...

More evil and violence from the ‘religion’ of ‘piece’. No wonder muslim kids grow up so full of hate and venom, the very people charged with protecting them are beating them down in the name of allah. Gee what a shocker there… Muslim children are being beaten and abused regularly by teachers at some British madrassas - Islamic evening classes - an investigation by The Times has found. Students have been slapped, punched and had their ears twisted, according to an unpublished report by an imam based on interviews with victims in the north of England. One was “picked up...

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Robert Spencer [whose “Jihad Watch” is featured weekly in HUMAN EVENTS] has been a one-man warning system against radical Islam. A scholar who has spent most of his professional life studying Islam, his string of books dissects the world's largest religion as a bastion of intolerance and hate, justified by the teachings of spiritual leader Mohammed and various holy men. As one of his previous titles, the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam," suggests, Spencer does not buckle in fear of the type of backlash that can materialize as a death-threatening fatwa against a critical...

A 19-year-old man is tortured and beheaded for a bad joke interpreted as blasphemy. A father is accused of killing his son because he converted to another religion. They are not Muslims but Christians, and the place is France in the mid-1700s. There was a time when Europe often behaved in ways parallel to that of Muslim-majority countries today. Yet by the end of the 1700s, this was changing. In the first case cited above, the king and even Catholic bishops failed to save the unfortunate Chevalier de la Barre, but the outcry led to the end of such actions....

Riyadh, 2 April (AKI) - Swiss football referee Massimo Busacca vowed he would wear a whistle with the Swiss Cross symbol on it during of the Saudi championship on Wednesday, despite anger voiced in the Kingdom at the 'crusader' item. "I have respect for all religions, including Islam, but I don't see anything offensive in this and am optimistic. I will not give up my 'crusader' whistle," he told pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat. Many in Saudi Arabia had called for Busacca to sport a different whistle to avoid offending Muslims. He has previously refereed several soccer matches in the Kingdom....

The relationship between Muslims and Christians received added attention this past Easter when Pope Benedict XVI publicly baptized Magdi Allam, the most prominent Muslim journalist in Italy.  Allam knew that publicly renouncing his Islamic faith would bring attempts on his life from angered Muslims, but expressed conviction that his newfound faith would sustain him through any difficulties. "You asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another and much more grave death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but...

Crusaders 'left genetic legacy' The genetic signature can be traced to Europe Scientists have detected the faint genetic traces left by medieval crusaders in the Middle East. The team says it found a particular DNA signature which recently appeared in Lebanon and is probably linked to the crusades. The finding comes from the Genographic Project, a major effort to track human migrations through DNA. Details of the research have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The researchers found that some Christian men in Lebanon carry a DNA signature hailing from Western Europe. The scientists also found that...

At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, the Frankish king Charles Martel defeated the Saracens and pushed the forces of Islam back into the Iberian Peninsula. It was not until 1492 that the Moors were finally thrown out of Europe, but in the meantime the Islamic virus was contained in Spain and Portugal, and thus kept out of the heart of Western Europe. One of Charles Martel’s comrades-in-arms at Poitiers was a warrior of the North known as Ogier le Danois, later Holger Danske, or Holger the Dane. Although Holger was a historical figure, little is known of him, and...

According to the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia, the Spanish football club Barcelona is altering its famous badge in some Arab countries in order to avoid offending Muslims. The badge is especially altered in Saudi Arabia or Algeria, where the Barcelona shirts are being sold without the red cross of Saint George, the patron saint of the Catalan region which Barca claims to represent, the La Vanguardia newspaper found in a private investigation. The badge, which was created in 1906, features a single vertical red line in Saudi Arabia and Algeria, due to the fact that there, the red cross represents...

Robert Spencer on the Battles Still Being Waged WASHINGTON, D.C., 11 MARCH 2006 (ZENIT) The Crusades may be causing more devastation today than they ever did in the three centuries when most of them were fought, according to one expert. Robert Spencer, author of "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)" (Regnery), claims that the damage is not in terms of lives lost and property destroyed but is a more subtle destruction. Spencer shared with ZENIT how false ideas about the Crusades are being used by extremists to foment hostility to the West today. Q: The Crusades are often...

No sooner had the six Muslims been arrested for planning an attack on Fort Dix, the left wing media was pimping the concept that the six had absolutely nothing to do with al Qaeda; no connection, no alliance, no nothing (no mention of Islam) and further, that radicals anyway make up a small, misguided splinter group. Of course we Americans are so terminally ignorant that we swallow this traitorous lie as if it were written in the Bible; and we sigh in relief comforted by this “liberal cabal’s” continuing propaganda to separate our minds from reality. When pushed against the...

Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has discovered. The way the slave trade is taught can lead white children as well as black pupils to feel alienated, according to a study by the Historical Association. A lack of knowledge among teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects. Some teachers dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons because of fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-semitic reactions. One school avoided teaching the...

As the Pelosi Democrats attempt to steer the debate on Iraq and the war on terror away from President Bush's approach, it is useful to examine the premises behind the liberal Democratic understanding of the war on terror. So far the Democrats have been successful in faulting the president's admittedly-flawed approach. But there is no advantage in trading one bad model for another. Here, then, is my critique of some of the major elements of the liberal explanation for "why they hate us." They're very upset at us for the Crusades: James Carroll’s recent book Crusade, portrays the Crusades as...