Free Republic

As is typical for left-wingers, they want to tear down rather than build up There was an interesting story coming out of the Denver area recently which many may not have seen. It involved hundreds of high school students from five schools in Jefferson County, Colorado, walking out of classes, most often at the instigation of their teachers, and protesting several recent decisions made by the school board of that county, a board which includes several recently elected conservative members. The two most commonly cited reasons for the protests were the imposition of merit pay for teachers and a proposed...

Progress: “Forward or onward movement towards a destination…. Development towards an improved or more advanced condition.” Progressive: “Happening or developing gradually or in stages.” [Compare with Darwinist evolution theory.] “(A person or idea) favouring social reform; Favouring change or innovation.” Progressivist: A person who is “modern, liberal, advanced, forward-looking, forward-thinking, go-ahead, enlightened, enterprising, innovative, up-and-coming, new, dynamic, avant-garde, modernistic, disruptive; radical, left-wing, reforming, reformist, revolutionary, revisionist” So much for definitions provided by the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language . It seems to me there is a whole lot of pure hope (and hype) associated with the idea of “human...

John Kerry made a name for himself by attacking the military and the United States. [video] So it should come as no surprise that Kerry is still bashing America. The Secretary of State recently told a crowd, “I get always a little uptight when I hear politicians say how exceptional we are.” The State Department reported, via Weekly Standard: "I was privileged to speak to the graduating class of Yale this year, and it was particularly a pleasure because it happened to turn out to be, literally, I hate to say it, 48 years to the day that I was...

As a U.S. Air Force veteran, I understand and appreciate the sacrifices true patriotism demands. Whether you are serving in peacetime or wartime, as a private or commander-in-chief, defending our country is a great responsibility and requires a steadfast commitment. Many of my fellow servicemen are fed up with the status quo and have expressed a desire for a true leader to step forward in 2016, a leader who is passionate about the values they have sworn to defend: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Armed with this knowledge I began an intensive search for a leader who...

CNN) -- pRresident Barack Obama on Wednesday outlined a foreign policy vision of "might doing right," arguing that modern pragmatism requires both a strong military and the diplomatic tools of alliances and sanctions to exert influence and provide global leadership. He told graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that after the nation's "long season of war and divisions about how to move forward," they now would represent America with the duty "not only to protect our country, but to do what is right and just." Watch this video Obama outlines foreign policy vision Under fire from...

'I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,' the president insisted Yet he used the words 'partner' and 'partnership' 16 times in his speech at West Point, outlining a contradictory foreign policyObama replaced the phrase 'collective action' – in his prepared remarks – with the words 'multilateral action' several timesWorking through NATO and the UN will dominate American foreign policy, Obama said: 'This is American leadership, American strength'

In 2000 I was standing in for my boss at the time, then-representative John Shadegg (R., Ariz.), as I spoke to an AP Government class in Phoenix. It was the first time I had visited a high-school class on his behalf, but I had my spiel ready. I knew exactly how to kick it off: Raise your hand if you think ours is the greatest country in the world. From there, I had planned to launch into a speech explaining that our democratic values, federalism, and respect for individual freedom made us great. Slight hiccup: Only half the class raised...

SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. government is relinquishing its control of the Internet's address system in a shift that may raise questions about the future direction of online innovation and communications. The decision announced Friday begins a long-planned transition affecting the stewardship of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. Although other countries have had a say in how the Internet is run, the U.S. government retained veto power over ICANN. The Commerce Department hopes to end its ICANN oversight by the time its contract expires in September 2015. Proposals for a new ICANN stewardship will be...

If there is any current example of American exceptionalism, that belief that the United States is a unique country, based around an idea rather than tribal affinities, it is its space program. No other country has had its citizens walk on the moon. A self described "expert in communications" named Linda Billings takes a dim view of American exceptionalism as it is related to the high frontier of space. Indeed she takes an exception to the very idea of a space frontier. Her blog post is a look into how the liberal mind thinks about space issues.

"American exceptionalism is a fact of America’s past, not something that you can choose whether to “believe in” any more than you can choose whether to ‘believe in’ the battle of Gettysburg. Understanding its meaning is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand what it has meant to be an American." ~ Charles Murray

Asked, early in his presidency, whether he believed in American exceptionalism, Barack Obama gave a telling reply. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." The first part of that answer is fascinating (we'll come back to the Greeks in a bit). Most Brits do indeed believe in British exceptionalism. But here's the thing: They define it in almost exactly the same way that Americans do. British exceptionalism, like its American cousin, has traditionally been held to reside in a series of values and institutions: personal...

Why is the national pride of that era gone? Could it possibly have anything to do with . . .

At the core of America’s founding was a simple, yet literally revolutionary, idea: that all people deserve to be free because they are created by God in His image, and that our rights come from God, not government. This was articulated in the most important sentence in America’s founding, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those 36 words are sometimes called the best-known...

Dear Republican "Leaders", Instead of taking the bait Russian President Vladimir Putin so expertly placed on the hook and denouncing him for his critical views of American Exceptionalism, perhaps you should direct some of your ire towards those in THIS country who have derided the concept themselves for decades: DemocRATS, College professors, Hollywood "actors", members of The Weather Underground (oh, wait, I already mentioned College professors) as well as SOME Presidents we know.Presidents who circled the globe pronouncing American Exceptionalism is akin to Greek Exceptionalism, Spanish Exceptionalism, Trinidad and Tobagoan Exceptionalism, etc.While you're at it, maybe you could lob a...

It’s a sad day for the United States when the president of any other country, but especially Russia, can outmaneuver our president and successfully claim the moral high ground on anything. But that’s exactly what happened thanks to President Obama's feckless “foreign policy by gaffe” – if you can even it call it policy – toward Syria in recent weeks. But in the course of seizing that high ground, Vladimir Putin got a couple of things wrong. He wrote a column in The New York Times Wednesday that concluded, “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by...

Fundamentally opposed principalities and powers have been locked in a titanic ideologic death dance since the creation of this Free Republic. Destructive and divisive forces hate time tested traditions and any notion of orthodoxy. They prosper through the dark arts of guile, disinformation and deception. Striking always from behind the scenes, hidden behind the obvious are failed policies based upon submission to human frailty, greed and pride. Our Republic, draws it's strength from the consent of the righteous and the efforts of the exceptional. Empty class envy manifestos that guarantee results in life are a deadly poison. Shared success, class...

WASHINGTON (BP) -- Scripture has had a tremendous influence on the rights of citizens throughout American history, two historians said at a recent Washington, D.C., forum. "The Bible permeated both private expressions and the public announcements of those who shaped the new nation and its political institutions," said Daniel Dreisbach, an author and a law professor at American University. The Founding Fathers were not as religiously conventional as history textbooks make them out to be, he said. "The Bible's influence is not merely ignored in the scholarship; rather, many scholars contend that the leading founders -- influenced by rationalism, the...

A member of the president’s National Security Council who shares Noam Chomsky’s foreign-policy goals? An influential presidential adviser whom 1960s revolutionary Tom Hayden treats as a fellow radical? ... Samantha Power, senior director of multilateral affairs for the National Security Council and perhaps the principal architect of our current intervention in Libya, is all of these things. These scary-sounding tidbits might be dismissed as isolated “gotchas.” Unfortunately, when we view these radical outcroppings in the full sweep of her life’s work, Samantha Power emerges as a patriot’s nightmare — a woman determined to subordinate America’s national sovereignty to an international...

That an Ivy League historian takes exception to the idea of American Exceptionalism may not surprise. That the skeptic is not a man of the Left is rather noteworthy. “The term did not even exist until the middle of the Twentieth Century,” University of Pennsylvania historian Walter McDougall claimed in remarks at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Alexis deTocqueville used it as an adjective but it did not get picked up,” McDougall said. The Catholic Church and the Communist International used the term in the early 20th Century, according to McDougall. Both the Church and the Communist party fretted over it...

In the Judeo-Christian understanding, God is a being who loves humanity—even sinful and erring humanity—and creates an ordered world that we can know and harness for productive ends. This is a very different conception from the capricious and transcendent God of Islam, who cannot love because such would imply weakness or incompleteness. Muslims can be sure of heavenly reward only through dying to protect Islam from its enemies. Under Islam, human beings submit as a collectivity to Allah’s absolute power; in the Judeo-Christian tradition, in contrast, individuals have inalienable rights granted by a God who limits His own power in...