Free Republic

Socialism is immoral because at its core, once you strip away the camouflage of false compassion, it requires an acceptance that the government owns you, that when the rubber hits the road you are simply a number, and that if you are more productive than most other people you will be regarded as a cash cow to be milked for what some group of statists considers The Common Good. You can dress that up in the “party dress” of alleged compassion but it remains un-American and immoral.

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble.In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness. Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures. The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher...

WASHINGTON -- The White House plans to host a discussion on immigration on Thursday with advocates, faith-based groups, businesses and law enforcement officials. An administration official says that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will lead the discussion. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting is not public. Last week President Barack Obama said immigration reform is important but that other priorities such as his health care overhaul and financial regulation are going to come first. Obama said he expects to see draft legislation for an immigration overhaul by the end of the year, with changing the system...

Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 70% owned by the taxpayer, has reportedly offered a 'golden hello' worth more than £7m to hire a star banker. RBS has agreed to the package to lure bond trader Antonio Polverino away from Merrill Lynch, it is claimed.

It sounds so simple: Just tax the few to pay for social programs that benefit the many. Yet no political idea — embodied by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call to tax the wealthy to cover health care for everyone else — has ever proved more contentious. The country was founded on the principle of unlimited and unbounded opportunity. Despite what poll questions often appear to say, class warfare language, outside the Democratic primary electorate, has always been politically counterproductive, because it divides Americans from one another and from their own aspirations and dreams. And class warfare could be especially problematic...

Mike Huckabee, himself once an object of significant media attention, has always chafed a bit at Sarah Palin's rise. And in two different bytes on "Fox News Sunday" today he didn't mince words about her decision to resign. "In a primary this is going to be an issue she'll have to face. Will she be able to withstand the pressure?" he asked. And, referring to the ethics inquiries Palin faces, Huckabee said of his own time as a GOP governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state:"If that had been the case for me, I would've quit in my first month. If...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

Click to watch video poem. Gift wrapping paper's barely off. Toy plane's lost its appeal. The boy demands a rocket, now. His brother's he might steal. Struggling to fill my void With crap I'll never need. You won't enjoy what I can't have. More envy piled on greed. Video viewed a million times; Our Youtube star's arrived. She frowns at her subscriber count, And barely feels alive. Struggling to fill my void With crap I'll never need. You won't enjoy what I can't have. More envy piled on greed. Gold custom diamond insets for Discerning clientele. His five million dollar...

Remember the word "covet", as in "shall not"? Envy is a deadly sin. It is a deliberate decision to ignore our shared humanity and favor, instead, things we can't take with us. Inducing someone else to commit a deadly sin is an even worse act. Class envy, albeit one of the two foundations of the modern Democratic Party's soul (identity politics being the other), is very divisive and fuels mob rule. It is a tool that exploits happy people who were previously neither aware of their forced group membership nor of their antipathy toward other groups. It is a tool...

The poor you will always have, the good book says, but as for the rich man, he will wither away like a delicate flower in the midday sun. The first prediction has certainly been borne out, but the second part (James 1:11) had not yet come to pass by the Panic of 1907, when Theodore Roosevelt warned of a coming reckoning against the "malefactors of great wealth." Nor by 1990, when former Nixon aide Kevin Phillips predicted that Americans would rise to extract revenge on "the rich who got the benefits of the go-go years" of the 1980s. As late...

WASHINGTON: As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath. Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet? Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his...

OBAMA & CONGRESS BLAST CITI OVER JET By JENNIFER GOULD KEIL and CHUCK BENNETT January 27, 2009 -- High-flying Citigroup executives, trying desperately to hang on to their new, $50 million luxury jet, took heavy flak yesterday from the White House and Congress after The Post revealed how the beleaguerred bank is blowing taxpayers' rescue funds. EDITORIAL: CITIBOOBS The Financial behemoth, being kept afloat by $45 billion in public life support, should not be spending its precious greenbacks on frivolous luxuries, said President Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs. Obama "doesn't believe" business jets are the "best use of money," said Gibbs....

But I am sick and tired of the America bashing by Brits---and with their unraveling society...becoming a western staging ground for Islamists/1000 mosques established over the last 10 years--many in abandoned churches--the highest youth drunkeness and teen pregnancy and abortion rates in Europe, exploding street crime and murders--talk about the pot calling kettle black. A couple sample comments in response to the tragic Santa murders report in The Daily Mail today: "America has always been the same. If you haven't previously run amok and committed mass murder, then you can go into a gun shop and legally buy guns to...

Courtesy of Dr. John Rossi, as shared with Glenn Beck Every once in a while, a very special story comes along to remind us how blessed we’ve been in our Republic -- and how threatened it is as we rack up bills totaling trillions of dollars in IOUs and the spectre of massive inflation, socialism and the systematic destruction of personal freedoms continues to grow like a cancer in America. Glenn Beck read this on his radio program on December 8th. It was written by Dr. John Rossi, who handed it to Glenn while he was making his book tour...

Pres-elect Barack Hussein Obama is rumored to have bought some high priced bling for his bride in appreciation for her support. Is this the change Obama was thinking during his campaign? Certainly not small change.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's_______. You fill in the blank. These are the words that much of western civilization's legal and financial systems have been founded upon for centuries. You are expected to go out and toil for what you desire, not expect to have it taken from someone else and given to you. The idea is that it is fundamentally immoral to desire to take what your neighbor owns for yourself. The problem is that once envy and jealously take over, one's own initiative and industry wither away, leaving one vulnerable to snake oil salesmen who tell you...

ABC News Reporter Jake Tapper's Political Punch Blog has a report on Sen. Barack Obama's push-back on John McCain's description of his tax policies, Tapper begins with a quote from Obama in Florida, here is the whole report: "The reason that we want to do this, change our tax code, is not because I have anything against the rich," Obama said in Sarasota, Fla., yesterday. "I love rich people! I want all of you to be rich. Go for it. That's the American dream, that's the American way, that's terrific.

"Sometimes the leak is so bad that even a plumber can't fix it." This was the concise summation of a cable political strategist the other day, after the third and final presidential debate. That sounds about right, and yet the race in its final days retains a feeling of dynamism. I think it is going to burst open or tighten, not just mosey along. (snip) But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for,...

Below is a table of income tax distribution from 2005, and the floor of the income for each income level. Top Top Top Top Top Bottom Item Tax Year 1 percent 5 percent 10 percent 25 percent 50 percent 50 Percent Pct of All Income Taxes Paid 2005 39.38 59.67 70.30 85.99 96.93 3.07 Income floor for bracket 2006 392,643 153,866 109,441 65,084 32,261 < 32,261 My rhetorical question for Democrats; What is the end goal for who pays what percent of the nations income taxes? Is the Democrat talking point of "tax breaks for the rich" a real issue...

The thought has occurred to me, as I'm sure it has to many of you, that the critics of our politics, our lifestyles (as imagined by them), and our values tend to be miserable creatures. It never fails that conservative Republicans are parodied as white suburban idiots, the two kid, two car, evangelical churchgoing families who are closet racists, prudes, and simpletons. Of course, I know plenty of conservatives who defy this description. What I've noticed over time is that way too many lefty types seem to hate themselves. They hate their lives. Perhaps its because their lives are screwed...

Bon Jovi are playing a free concert in New York this weekend, however it seems some ticket holders are selling their "free" entry to desperate fans for as much as $1,500 a pair. Around 60,000 tickets were given away for free by New York City for the giant concert at Central Park on Saturday 12th July, to celebrate the July 15th All-Star baseball game that will be held at the Yankee Stadium. According to the New York Post, 267 listings for tickets being sold on eBay were found yesterday (July 7th), despite the tickets being printed with a warning that...

In 30 years, I have provided this hotel and our guests with over a million orders. One million, two hundred. I have seen a lot of people that I have seen on television. Some use alias names, but I can look on the sheet and know exactly who they are. It's kind of cute because they don't realize you really know who they are. You go along with it. You'd be amazed. You get the guests that really admire their pets. One wanted caviar, and she wanted my waiter to actually hand-feed it to the feline when we were upstairs....

Once known as the Mother of Presidents, Ohio is now getting poorer, older and dumber – and making all the wrong moves to reverse the situation. And that may actually be a plus for Barack Obama. His party is finding that lofty, vague promises of change combined with high-spending, high-tax, welfare state-ish policies are a political winner in the state. How else to explain why Gov. Ted Strickland's approval ratings are in the mid-50s or why Democrats may even win control of the state House for the first time in 14 years? But as a formula for economic revival, it...

University campuses receive a great deal of attention due to the political and cultural indoctrination and activism that some academics try to pass off as education.[1] However, government education bureaucrats are eager to ensure that their prescribed views are etched on the slate of the human mind at a much earlier age. For this reason, the most shameless political and cultural activism is often directed, under the guise of environmental and social education, at young children attending government primary schools.In Australia, governments have adopted environmental education programs that teach children that human intrusion into nature is to be condemned and...

While Disney artists bring their imaginations to life through animation, Disney executives are living a lifestyle that animators can’t even begin to imagine. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Disney chief executive Bob Iger received a 7% pay increase in 2007 for a total financial compensation of $27.7 million. According to the company’s proxy statement, the breakdown is as follows: $2 million salary, which remained the same as 2006; a $13.7 million bonus, which was a decrease from his $15 million bonus in ‘06; stock awards totaling $7.9 million, and $740,000 for personal air travel, security and a car...

t’s time to take a serious look at John Edwards - - again. Capitalizing on the “anybody-but-Hillary� wave that swept over Hawkeye State Democrats last Thursday, former Senator and Vice Presidential Candidate Edwards emerged as a second-place winner in the Iowa caucuses. He achieved this despite his comparatively low levels of campaign funds, and a campaign organization that perils in comparison to that of both his first place rival Barack Obama, and the opponent who now in some sense “trails� him, former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. And given this, and given the highly unpredictable nature of this entire campaign...

Taxes: Charles Rangel, chief of the House Ways and Means Committee, wants to pass the largest incometax hike ever, to punish the rich. That the middle class and poor would lose millions of jobs goes unmentioned. The crafty veteran Harlem lawmaker says it’s all worth it to shield the middle class from the ever-expanding Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) It would be tempting to accuse Rangel of waging a “Class War” on the rich, but the class who would really get hurt here is the working class, those who are employed by the people Rangel would hurt. As House Ways and...

Key legislators and presidential hopefuls in the Democratic Party have proposed raising the top two tax rates. They're also suggesting extra surtaxes for war, for alleviating the Alternative Minimum Tax, for Social Security, and for subsidizing compulsory health insurance. Barack Obama and John Edwards advocate taxing capital gains at 28%; Hillary Clinton favors taxing dividends at the surtaxed income-tax rates... ...The CBO reckons the top 1% accounted for more than 59% of all capital gains, interest, dividends and rent reported on individual tax returns by 2004. Yet estimates of the share of national wealth of the top 1% range from...

ALBURQUERQUE, Spain - Spanish cuisine tickles the palate in a thousand ways: ugly but delicious creatures called goose barnacles; boiled octopus with a dash of olive oil and paprika; thick, mushy sausage made from pig's blood. Spaniards are nothing if not dedicated eaters. Now, hard-core foodies are drooling over the prospect of something truly superlative from Spain, at least in price: a salt-cured ham costing about $2,100 per leg, or a cruel $160 per pound. It's a price believed to make it the most expensive ham in the world. Don't grab your wallet just yet. And forget about asking for...

As my wife will attest, I often suffer from futterneid. This is the term Germans use to describe the envy we feel when, for example, someone orders a better meal than ours. I’m also prone to schadenfreude, the tendency to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. So if I get the braised short ribs and you get stuck with the snail tartare, your futterneid will fuel my schadenfreude. Perhaps it’s no coincidence the Germans have so many words for the chillingly petty emotions that run like cold streams through the human heart. Poor, dark, and divided, Germany was an...

As my wife will attest, I often suffer from futterneid. This is the term Germans use to describe the envy we feel when, for example, someone orders a better meal than ours. I'm also prone to schadenfreude, the tendency to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. So if I get the braised short ribs and you get stuck with the snail tartare, your futterneid will fuel my schadenfreude. Perhaps it's no coincidence the Germans have so many words for the chillingly petty emotions that run like cold streams through the human heart. Poor, dark and divided, Germany was an...

So we are agreed. We are living in the second great Gilded Age, a time of startling personal wealth. In the West, the mansion after mansion with broad and rolling grounds; in the East, the apartments with foyers in which bowling teams could play. Or, on another level, the week's vacation in Disneyland or Dublin with the entire family--this in a nation in which, well within human memory, people with a week off stayed home and fixed things in the garage, or drove to the beach for a day and sat on a blanket from one of the kid's beds...

Frankly, those are the only messages you get from her latest column. And what a shame, because she also illustrates how ridiculous the 'feminist establishment' truly has become while simultaneously reinforcing the stereotype that feminists are simply bitter and jealous: "Fred Thompson, would-be presidential candidate, is 64 years old and looks it. His wife, Jeri, is two years younger than one of his daughters and looks even younger than her 40 years. This term is generally used to refer to women who are substantially younger, less wrinkled, and sometimes, but not always, more accomplished than the old model. The old...

The man who was arrested went out for drinks and lap dances, they say. Finally hitting the Lotto may have cost Kalvin Stockford his life. The burly Orange County tree trimmer won $10,000 last month and had been bragging about it ever since. Employees found their crew boss dead on the floor with empty pockets Monday morning at Gator Tree Experts near West Fairbanks Avenue. Suspicions quickly focused on Dwayne Ricardo Smith, a missing co-worker with a history of violent crimes, according to Orange County sheriff's reports. Within hours, Smith's best friend began telling detectives about a night that began...

If the top Democratic hopefuls are under the impression that the way to stop Third Worlders from hating America is to build schools in their countries, they need to think again. On Tuesday, Senator Clinton floated the idea that we should spend 10 billion dollars over a five year period on schools and teachers in poor nations. The justification for this being that such schools could give children an alternative to the anti-Americanism they are so often steeped in these days. Senators Obama and Edwards are of similar mind as well. --snip-- It would seem that more promising strategies would...

The British government has banned all military service members from talking to the media in return for payment following a storm of protests over interviews with the 15 marines and sailors who were held captive in Iran. A defense ministry spokesman told CNN on Monday that a review was announced on Sunday into military personnel speaking to the media in return for payment. While this review is ongoing, a ban is in force on all personnel from speaking to the media for payment. Effectively, personnel can still talk to the media but cannot receive money in return. The move to...

Two days after they were paraded as heroes with a story to tell, some of the 15 British sailors and marines captured and released by Iran seemed today to have decided they have a story to sell. In a highly unusual decision, Britain’s Ministry of Defense – normally tight-lipped to say the least – acknowledged on Saturday that it had agreed for some of the sailors and marines to offer their experiences for sale to newspapers and television stations. Such transactions are common enough among civilians trading rights to their stories for considerable sums of money. But the notion of...

The 15 British military captives who were released by the Iranians have been authorised by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to sell their stories. MoD officials claimed that the move to lift the ban on military personnel selling their stories while in service was justified because of the “exceptional circumstances” of the case. The hostages are expected to earn as much as £250,000 between them. The story of Faye Turney, 26, the only female among them, is expected to be the most lucrative. She could profit by as much as £150,000 from a joint deal with a newspaper and ITV....

On Appeasing Envy By Henry Hazlitt Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever succeeded in doing is to equalize downward. This has even been caustically described as their intention. "Your levellers," said Samuel Johnson in the mid-eighteenth century, "wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves." And in our own day we find even an eminent liberal like the late Mr. Justice Holmes writing: "I have no respect for the passion for equality,...

Alan Mulally, who succeeded Bill Ford last year as chief executive of Ford Motor Co. (F), received compensation valued at $39.1 million in his four months on the job in 2006, including an $18.5 million bonus related to his signing and awards he gave up when he left his previous employer Boeing Co. (BA), according to a regulatory filing Thursday. Mulally took over as CEO in September and also is the Dearborn, Mich.-based company's president. The total of $39.1 million is based on Associated Press calculations. The nation's second biggest automaker lost $12.7 billion in 2006, the largest in its...

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans ? those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 ? receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows. The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression. While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with...

One expects the political left to point to income inequality as a defect of our capitalist system. But when President George W. Bush expresses alarm over a "growing income inequality gap" and urges corporations to rethink the compensation packages they offer to top executives, we would be wise to pay attention. In the past 15 years, incomes in each of the five quintiles (i.e., 20 percent shares of the population) tracked by the government rose in real, inflation-adjusted dollars. Incomes in the top quintile rose by slightly more than 20 percent. Incomes in the bottom quintile rose by 21 percent....

Andrew Paul Gutierrez, a 67-year-old professor of ecosystems science in UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, has a word for those who believe human ingenuity and productivity are boundless. He calls them "cornucopians." He thinks cornucopians are misguided and prone to taking big risks that can backfire. That's one of the reasons he is upset that the university where he has spent his entire academic life is joining with oil giant BP in a $500 million, 10-year program to discover how to mass-produce clean, safe transportation fuels -- such as ethanol -- from biomass in an environmentally safe and cost-effective...

With Democrats in control of both Houses of Congress for the first time in twelve years, economic inequality is back on the agenda. In his response to the State of the Union address, new Virginia Senator James Webb began by contrasting how much those at the top of the average company earned with the amount earned by those at the bottom. Running for the Democratic Presidential nomination, John Edwards is returning to his 2004 theme of "two Americas." They are joined by liberal pundits such as Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait, who between them accuse conservatives of "hatred" and of...

BY all means unfurl the banners, dust off the placards and prop up the distorted effigies of George W. Bush. Start practising those chants of "Down with America" and "America, the Great Satan" and stop bathing and brushing your hair (a less commented on pre-requisite for some protesters) for another anti-American protest. With US Vice-President Dick Cheney in Australia next week, it's not an opportunity to be missed for those who hate the US. But before the crowd tail-gates Cheney as he meets Australian political leaders, maybe it's time to check what it is that drives animosity towards the US....

In a Newsweek column titled "How Dems can win White House," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., opines about the difficulties that the Democratic Party has had in defining itself. The senator wonders, enviously, how Republicans have been able to "identify issues that connected to their deeply held values," reduce them to a few words – eight according to Schumer – and communicate to the American people. "What are our eight words?" the senator asks. But Democrats have a very clear picture of who they are. And newly elected Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, who his party picked to give their...

...The most celebrated case involved Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary who resigned the Harvard University presidency last February after a stormy five-year tenure, which included a no-confidence vote by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the prospect of another. But top officials have also departed after no-confidence votes at a range of other campuses, large and small, public and private, including Gallaudet University, the nation’s premier institution for the deaf; Case Western Reserve, a major research university in Ohio; Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Texas; and the small University of Maine at Presque Isle. The Explanation...

The Homeland Security Department is lumping New York City together with parts of New Jersey to assess how much anti-terror cash to send to the area - a stunning shift that lawmakers fear could take an even bigger bite out of the Big Apple's funding. Under the change, New York is the only major city this year to be saddled by a secondary metropolitan area, one across state lines - Newark and Jersey City in this case. "We are looking at the New York metropolitan area, which includes northern New Jersey, for the purposes of assessing risk," Homeland Security Secretary...

<p>I have a dream that Pelosi, who was chauffeured to school as a child and who, with her investor husband, owns minority shares in the Auberge du Soleil resort hotel and the CordeValle Golf Club, will look over her famous strand of South Sea Tahitian pearls and forge bonds of understanding with the zillionaire corporate barons in the opposing party.</p>

Perhaps it is one of the fruits of the “self-esteem” emphasis in our schools that so many people feel confident to voice strong convictions about things they know little or nothing about — or, worse yet, are misinformed about. One of the hardest things for anyone to be informed about is the value of someone else’s productivity. Yet there are cries from all directions that some people are being paid “too much” and others “too little.” Judging Worth Who can possibly be better informed about the value of what someone else produces than those who use the goods or services...