Free Republic

In November of 2010 in Don’t be VAT stupid Herman Cain writes: ``A national retail sales tax on top of all the confusing and unfair taxes we have today is insane! It gives the out-of-control bureaucrats and politicians in denial one more tool to lie, deceive, manipulate and destroy this country.`` The fact is, Herman is now proposing a new tax, a national retail sales tax, in addition to taxing corporate profits and incomes, and also would tax the wages working people earn. Herman Cain essentially admitted in the above mentioned article his existing plan is ``insane!`` So, why do...

The major difference between Hitler and the Communist genocidal murderers –Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot –was what groups they chose for extermination. For Hitler, first Jews and ultimately Slavs and other "non-Aryans" were declared the enemy and unworthy of life. For the Communists, the rich –the bourgeoisie, landowners and capitalists –were labeled the enemy and regarded as unworthy of life. Hitler mass-murdered on the basis of race, the Communists on the basis of class. Because the Holocaust was unique in its industrialization of death and in its targeting of every Jew, including babies, for death, the post-World War II world...

On a daily basis, I sit in awe at the amount of nonsense that pervades the world’s media. The latest is the preoccupation with the ethnicity of Steve Jobs’s biological father. Steve Jobs was adopted at birth. And until his untimely death last week, as far as almost anyone in the world knew, he was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Jobs. In fact, as far as Steve Jobs himself was concerned, his only parents were Paul and Clara Jobs. As the New York Times reported nearly 15 years ago (“Creating Jobs,” Jan. 12, 1997): “Jobs holds a firm...

Last week, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Below are some excerpts from Brooks' summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. (It was led by "the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith.") "Smith and company asked about the young people's moral lives, and the results are depressing … "When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn't answer the question or described problems that are not moral...

With the exception of the United States, nearly all the world's nations; newspapers, radio and TV news stations; the United Nations; and the world's Leftist academics and organizations have condemned Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident. The characterizations of the Jewish state range from a society so evil that it should not be allowed to exist to a villainous nation that is responsible for a) the suffering of millions of innocent Palestinian men, women and children; b) the lack of Mideast peace; therefore c) the Muslim world's anger at the West; and therefore d) Islamic terrorism itself. Let's hope the...

The citizens of San Francisco will be voting on a proposition that seeks to ban circumcision in that city. Though I am strongly opposed to the proposition, if it passes, some good may come of it. Let me explain. I am a passionate advocate of Jewish ritual known as the brit (often pronounced bris) -- the ritual circumcision of 8-day-old Jewish boys. I am even an advocate of circumcision generally. I was recently in Africa -- in Zimbabwe and Zambia -- where I delivered mosquito nets and seeds to the poorest of Africa's poor. I saw giant billboards there, as...

South Korea has joined with only two other countries in the world in dropping the name of the forthcoming film "Captain America" and using the subtitle, "The First Avenger." The other two countries are Russia and Ukraine. According to the New York Times report, "Although that country (South Korea) is one of Hollywood's top-performing territories, resentment about the continued presence of the United States military runs deep." For years now, I have intended to write a column about the most glaring case of international ingratitude of which I am aware. The "Captain America" story has finally pushed me over the...

It appears that The Rapture leading to the end of the world predicted by a Christian radio broadcaster for this past Saturday, May 21, did not take place. And the failure was covered worldwide. A Google search on Saturday evening yielded over 32,000 articles — in English alone — in the world media. The secular, especially the anti-religious, Left enjoys these spectacles of religious foolishness. They seem to confirm not only how absurd these end-of-days predictions are, but how absurd religion is in general. But the Left should not laugh too loudly. The religious world has far fewer doomsday predictions...

Yes, Jews Are the Chosen People For good or ill I assume that the type of person who reads columns such as this one has wondered at one time or another why, for thousands of years, there has been so much attention paid to Jews; and why, today, so much attention is paid to Israel, the lone Jewish state. How do most people explain this preoccupation? There is no fully rational explanation for the amount of attention paid to the Jews and the Jewish state. And there is no fully rational explanation for the amount of hatred directed at them....

Editor's Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center's West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the first.I’ve got a few weighty things on my mind that I'm about to unpack on you. But let's ease into it gently, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh: Q: What do God and Barack Obama have in common? A: Neither has a birth certificate! Q: What is one difference between Obama and God? A: Leftists love Obama! Q: What’s another difference between Obama and God? A: God doesn’t think he’s Obama!...

It was difficult to control my emotions -- specifically, my anger -- during my visit to Vietnam last week. The more I came to admire the Vietnamese people -- their intelligence, love of life, dignity and hard work -- the more rage I felt for the communists who brought them (and, of course, us Americans) so much suffering in the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, communists still rule the country. Yet, Vietnam today has embraced the only way that exists to escape poverty, let alone to produce prosperity: capitalism and the free market. So what exactly did the...

Tuesday, when you see President Obama give his State of the Union address, you will see four things: the president entering the hall, the president ascending the rostrum to be greeted by the vice president and the speaker of the House, the president giving his speech and the reactions of members of the Congress and others in the hall. Here is the one thing you will not see and probably have never seen. You won't see what is behind the president and above the vice president and the speaker of the House. And because you won't see it, you won't...

According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Arthur Brooks’s Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans. Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.” But common sense and data suggest other explanations. For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least half a century conservatives have been far more willing...

DOWNTOWN — This year's November election kicked off a hard-hitting town hall discussion Sunday night by conservative radio talk show hosts on issues ranging from the "tea party" movement to California's business environment. About 1,300 people attended 870 AM KRLA radio's "Town hall 2010" forum at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, where radio hosts Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Mike Gallagher and Kevin James took on some of the state's and nation's most pressing issues, including the upcoming Nov. 2 election. Republicans could gain 20 to 90 Democratic seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate in this year's election,...

My Dear Hispanic Friends: I am writing to you as a concerned and sympathetic American who is a Republican. My sentiments do not represent those of every American — that would be impossible. But I believe the following represents what most Americans believe. First, a message to those of you here illegally: You may be very surprised to hear this, but in your position, millions of Americans, including me, would have done what you did. If I lived in a poor country with a largely corrupt government, a country in which I had little or no hope for an improved...

Dinesh D'Souza fills in for Dennis Prager and talks about his new book, The Roots of Obama's Rage. Some of the most fascinating biographical info on what may drive Obama's worldview.

This post includes and excerpt from a recent article on Front Page Magazine, a small excerpt from David Horowitz's book, Unholy Alliance as well as some input by Melanie Phillips and Dennis Prager with some joining commentary by yours truly. All references linked for your following through and use.

The giveaway regarding presidential candidate Barack Obama's plans for America was his repeated use of the words "fundamentally transform." Some of us instinctively reacted negatively -- in fact, with horror -- at the thought of fundamentally transforming America. The "us" are conservatives. One unbridgeable divide between left and right is how each views alternatives to present-day America. Those on the left imagine an ideal society that has never existed, and therefore seek to "fundamentally transform" America. When liberals imagine an America fundamentally transformed, they envision it becoming a nearly utopian society in which there is no greed, no racism, no...

There was one thing more than any other that turned this New York, liberal, Jewish, Columbia University graduate student away from modern liberalism: its use of moral equivalence to avoid confronting evil during the Cold War. There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the Left, which had been morally confused about Communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I. After the Vietnam War, even liberals who continued to describe Communism as evil were labeled “right-wingers” and “Cold Warriors.” And...

Jewish liberals, like other liberals, believe that there are three positive traits that describe liberals far more accurately than they describe conservatives — compassionate, intellectual and open-minded. Though I am a Jewish conservative, I don’t believe that either side has anything close to a monopoly on compassion. There are compassionate Jews who are conservative and compassionate Jews who are liberal. As regards being intellectual, I acknowledge that there are more Jewish intellectuals who are liberal — since there are a lot more Jewish liberals, there will be a lot more liberal Jewish intellectuals. But I doubt that the percentage of...