Free Republic

If there is a single problem with our lives today, it is the breathtaking shallowness of modern life. We seem infatuated with grade-school gossip and a breathless yearning for "stuff," as if the latest gadgetry or a fatter bank account could make anything real in our lives better. We seem to believe in nothing but this gossip and these gadgets. This infantile fixation stretches across political party and ideology. This is a reflection of godlessness, shattered families, and the wicked drumbeat in education and media of indoctrination instead of learning or amusement. It is astounding how little most people know...

OK, FREEPERS, LET'S START THIS CONTEST FOR THE GREATEST SONG OF THE '70S. The baseline for the contest is the top 7 hits of each year of the '70s, as compiled by BILLBOARD. This is not based on personal preferences, biases, prejudices, or counter-culture fringe-element reactivity. The rules in general will be to vote for everything shown. NO equivocating, ties, or omissions. Votes will ONLY be counted if the "ballot" is COMPLETE. *ROUND 1* We begin by taking the #7 songs of each year and paring them from 10 songs to 4 (to set up brackets of 64 for the...

"A recent report from the Social Capital Project reveals that the American family is disintegrating, fast. Fully 40 percent of mothers are currently unmarried. This is bad news, because good families depend on good marriages. Marriage is the moral glue that binds them. It’s the stabilizing agent. There’s a reason that children from married couples do better in school, and are less likely to end up in jail as compared to children of unmarried mothers, known as “fragile families."

In 1953, Martin Luther King Jr. preached a sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church that we need to hear today, because it’s about something we’ve forgotten as we stoke the flames of anger and blame others for our real and perceived sufferings — it’s about personal responsibility. Our refusal to accept responsibility is a rot within our society, a cancer that is eating away at our institutions, relationships, and liberty. We point fingers at others instead of pointing them at ourselves. We see ourselves as victims of everything — the economy, government action or inaction, other people, our parents, our...

Who wants to participate in a music play-off bracket-type poll for best songs of the '70s? 3 years ago I ran a "tournament" to pick the best songs of the '80s, based first on Billboard rankings, so only the best of the best are included! You can view how this played out here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3249477/posts That's what I want to do for the '70s. (Wouldn't mind doing it for other decades, either!)

There is reason to believe that an increasing number of young people regard unbridled free speech as a threat, showing themselves to be in the grip of rigid and intolerant ways of thinking about disagreement. But what are the intellectual tendencies behind this new intolerance, and how do they creep into popular discourse? The following list is not comprehensive, but nonetheless seems to me to cover the key problems.

When President Trump asked why the U.S. should accept immigrants from third-world nations he allegedly characterized as "s-holes," liberals (and some neo-conservatives) howled with outrage, branding the president a bigot and a racist. But...was Mr. Trump right? Perhaps far more than his opponents would like to admit. Don't take my word for it – take the word of the liberal, globalist United Nations, which celebrated its annual "World Toilet Day" and named its "Toilet Heroes" last November 19. Here are a few interesting statistics, straight from the U.N.: - Around 60% of the global population – 4.5 billion people –...

A year in review of crazy A lot of things happened in 2017 — including a lot of being offended. It was hard to narrow it down, but here — in no particular order — are the eleven most politically correct moments of 2017: 1. It was declared “cultural appropriation” for a white woman to wear hoop earrings. A resident assistant at Pitzer College sent out a campus-wide email declaring that it was unacceptable for white girls to wear hoop earrings — because wearing them was culturally offensive to “the black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings.” This...

Fictional Cold War warrior James Bond should be played by a woman, Theresa May has said, hailing the new female Doctor Who as a victory for “girl power”. Speaking on a flight to Cyprus last week, where she gave a Christmas address to troops at RAF Akrotiri, the prime minister revealed she was a fan of the BBC science fiction show Doctor Who, and lauded the public broadcaster’s decision to cast Jodie Whittaker in the iconic time traveller’s role. “I think it’s a great move forward for girl power that there is going to be a female Doctor Who. And...

Not fit for 21st Century PeeCee police approval per CNN's Carol Costello! #Hillaryarius! The sexism is everywhere!!! CNN sees that Mr. Potter is the Liberal seeking to put the people in the straight jacket of his "public housing" and George Bailey is the "Donald Trump" seeking to make Bedford Falls great again by freeing the people from the dictatorial power of "Progressive" Potter... (censor! Can't allow that truth out!) As with all (misnamed) "progressives" Potter sought to own and control ALL aspects of life in Bedford Falls, seeing only George Bailey as standing in his way! He seeks and thinks...

In September 1975, The Grateful Dead released what was to become its highest chart-topping album for the next twelve years, Blues for Allah. In an interview at the time, the group’s lyricist, Robert Hunter, described the album’s title song as “a requiem for King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, a progressive, democratically-inclined ruler (and incidentally a fan of the Grateful Dead) whose assassination in 1975 shocked us personally.” Hunter went on to note proudly that the lyrics of the album, inspired as it was as much by Bach as by Eastern influences, were printed in Arabic on the back of album....

Before kids can get the great books in college, they need the 1,000 good books in k-12. http://www.kofc15693.org/john-seniors-list-of-1000-good-books/

PITTSBURGH — It’s just after 6 o’clock in the morning, but Joseph Sabino Mistick is already on his second cappuccino and is now buying a round for everyone who just walked into La Prima Espresso coffee shop. “Misticks for all of them!” the former deputy mayor of Pittsburgh says to the barista. (The hot creamy creation with an extra sprinkle of cocoa is named after him.) It’s dark and frigid outside, but inside this tiny espresso bar the room is bursting with rich aromas, chatter and excitement as patrons start planning their traditional day of shopping for cena della Vigilia...

There’s a possibility our species will, in the not-too-distant future, be wiped out. Not by a meteor, but by simply no longer reproducing. Sterility won’t be the culprit, it will be the rise of the zeta males.You doubtlessly have heard of alpha and beta males – alphas being dominant and aggressive, and betas being pajama wearing, vegans with man-buns. While it may seem like those two options represent the bookends of the scale, there is a new, disturbing option emerging that may, and maybe should, mean the end of all human reproduction: the zeta male.The zeta male is so far...

Woody Allen, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese today added their names to a petition demanding the immediate release of Roman Polanski from detention in Zurich. The director was arrested on Saturday over a three-decade-old underage sex case when he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the city's film festival. "Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision," says the petition, which is co-ordinated by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), a film industry organisation which also represents performance and visual artists.

Acording to an essay in the social-justice blog Everyday Feminism, it actually “might be” possible for Asian Americans to appropriate Asian culture — yes, even though it’s their own culture. “There are two main reasons why we might be considered to be culturally appropriating as people of the Asian diaspora,” Ayesha Sharma writes in a post titled “Can Asian-Americans Appropriate Their Own Culture?” “The first is we’re reclaiming our culture with some unfamiliarity and distance from the cultures of our ‘homelands.’”

The cold civil war we are fighting is not just going well. Contrary to what was once expected, this war right now is in a stage of overwhelming success. Not that we have won anything permanent, but one has to be amazed at how positively things are going. Consumer confidence is close to an all-time high. Our economic growth is over 3%. After nearly a decade, our economy is clearly coming out of the doldrums, and the U.S. population is becoming optimistic about its future. Trump is remaking the judiciary, an extraordinary achievement. Illegal immigration is down, eventually to be...

A Culture Without God Is Like a Ship Without a Pilot Msgr. Charles Pope • November 29, 2017 • In the Liturgy of the Hours this week we read a remarkable attributed to St. Macarius, a bishop of the early Church. I marvel at its vivid imagery, and yet at the same time, questions arise in my mind as to the general application of the text. In effect, the text states that if the soul does not have Christ living within, it falls into utter disrepair and a contemptible state.Allow me to have Bishop Macarius speak for himself and...

Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, told his parliament last week that he has “no intention” of accepting more migrants despite pressure from the UN Refugee Agency. During a debate in Japan’s parliament, Mr. Abe argued that accepting foreign workers should is justifiable only where they are truly needed to “keep Japan’s economy and infrastructure sustainable.”

Our universities are no longer committed to educating the young. Rather, the professorate has betrayed America’s future, and there is little more than lip service paid to learning in the noble sense of the word. What now matters most is the profit motive and filling students with a strange delusion called “social justice.” The problem is not only that there is no such thing as social justice -- all justice being context-specific, that is, determined by relations between individuals -- because the young are not taught that culture is a way of life, and a far better one than the...