Free Republic

Hustlers and people with little understanding want us to believe that today’s black problems are the continuing result of a legacy of slavery, poverty and racial discrimination. The fact is that most of the social pathology seen in poor black neighborhoods is entirely new in black history. Let’s look at some of it. Today the overwhelming majority of black children are raised in single female-headed families. As early as the 1880s, three-quarters of black families were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black families were two-parent. One study of 19th-century slave families found that in up to...

So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families. The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time. Now, philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse have felt compelled to conduct a cool reassessment. Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for...

If our nation is going to pull out of this Obamaland crap-ditch that weÂ’re currently mired in, then were going to need men. Not males, but men. Men who personally, politically and culturally scrap indifference, take responsibility, lead boldly and expect success. Which means, if IÂ’m right in my assessment, that weÂ’re more screwed than a drunken coed at Panama City Beach during Spring Break because there are pusillanimous punks oÂ’plenty nowadays. Yep, I blame the absence of men being men as the chief reason why weÂ’re being hijacked by commie clowns and a significant swath of our nation is...

In the United Kingdom, Ellen Brown was asked by her mom, Jenny Dias, and stepdad Tony to act as surrogates so they could have a baby. In 1990, Jenny split from Ellen’s dad and met Tony two years later. She informed him that she underwent a hysterectomy and couldn’t have any more children. Jenny said, “Tony accepted it very well and wanted our relationship more than children.”However, as their wedding day grew closer they discussed surrogacy. Jenny said, “I wanted to be genetically connected to Tony’s offspring — so I didn’t want to do it with anyone but Ellen.”...

More voters say their family is worse off than better off under ObamaCare. In addition, most of those who had to change their insurance coverage because of the health care law say it cost them money. That’s according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. Overall, 42 percent say the country is worse off under the 2010 health care law. Some 44 percent felt that way last year (June 2014). […] Clearly partisanship plays a role: 73 percent of Republicans say the country is worse off under Obamacare, while just 12 percent of Democrats feel that way. Has the law...

Children remind us that “we are always children”, they bring their way of seeing reality, with a “confident and pure” gaze (“they have not yet learned the science of duplicity which we adults have learned”), they can “teach us to smile and cry again”. “Of course they also bring concerns and sometimes many problems, but a society with these concerns and these problems is far better than a society that is sad and gray because it has no children!” This was the crux of Francis’ message at this Wednesday’s General Audience in St. Peter’s Square.  After reflecting on the different figures...

Perhaps the decisive factors in combating poverty and enabling upward mobility were not economic but cultural — the habits, mores and dispositions that equip individuals to take advantage of opportunities. This was dismaying because governments know how to alter incentives and remove barriers but not how to manipulate culture. The assumption that the condition of the poor must improve as macroeconomic conditions improve was to be refuted by a deepened understanding of the crucial role of the family as the primary transmitter of the social capital essential for self-reliance and betterment. Family structure is the primary predictor of social outcomes,...

An older generation complaining that an emerging one will be the death of civilization as we know it is a cliche and constant as the North Star. However, based on some rather troubling data regarding today’s millennials, it could turn out to be true this time. In his first inaugural address as governor of California 47 years ago, Ronald Reagan warned us that “freedom is a fragile thing, and is never more than one generation away from extinction.” He also reminded us that freedom “is not ours by inheritance but must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation,...

DENVER — Colorado already is being sued by two neighboring states for legalizing marijuana. Now, the state faces groundbreaking lawsuits from its own residents, who are asking a federal judge to order the new recreational industry to close. The owners of a mountain hotel and a southern Colorado horse farm argue in a pair of lawsuits filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Denver that the 2012 marijuana-legalization measure has hurt their property and that the marijuana industry is stinky and attracts unsavory visitors.

While firmly upholding Church teaching regarding contraception, Pope Francis clarified that good Catholics need not mate “like rabbits, or wasp spiders, with the female devouring the male following the procreative act.” “Openness to life for the husband,” the pontiff said to reporters on his return flight from the Philippines, “is a condition for the sacrament of matrimony.” Catholic couples should practice mutual love and tenderness, he explained, rather than the female “catching her partner in a web and slowly gnawing on him while he’s still alive, resulting in his slow, agonizing death.”

The new Mercedes-Benz CLA has absolutely killed its sales since it debuted earlier in the year. Mercedes wanted a new entry-level model that would bring in a younger generation of buyer, and the CLA and GLA have absolutely knocked it out of the park. Now Mercedes wants to expand the lineup for the cars’ platform. We’ve already seen the CLA 45 AMG, and the GLA, but according to Mercedes, what the CLA needs is a shooting brake. Or what us Americans call “a wagon.” Gone are the days of dorky wood-lined station wagons. Today’s modern iterations are some of the...

Mayor de Blasio, his wife and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton paid a sympathetic visit to loved ones of slain Officer Rafael Ramos on Monday, as the family prepared for the cop’s funeral. The mayor chatted with Ramos’s relatives on the family porch in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, before stepping inside to visit more mourners for 30 minutes. The trio left without answering any questions from reporters outside, kept at a distance by NYPD guards. On his way out, de Blasio could be heard telling one of Ramos’s loved ones: “I’m sorry for your loss.” The family will hold a wake for...

The Census Bureau reported in a study released this week that 65 percent of American children lived in households taking aid from one or more federal program as of the fall of 2011. "Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of children," said the Census Bureau, "lived in households that participated in at least one or more of the following government aid programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Medicaid, and the National School Lunch Program." How to be dependent on government is now one of...

We don't have to love our parents. We have to honor them. Last week PragerUniversity.com released 11 five-minute video courses: each of the Ten Commandments and an introduction. We received over one million views this first week. The reason we made these videos is that we believe that everything needed to make a good world is contained in the Ten Commandments. This month, my columns consist of transcripts of some the courses, each of which I present. Whatever your faith, or if you have no faith, I invite you to watch the videos at www.prageru.com. They are cleverly animated with...

It was the day before Thanksgiving; crisp and clear. I was giving the Mullmobile it's quarterly treat: A professional car wash. At Andy's Car Wash in Alexandria, you drop your car off, then go inside to pay. A woman and a little girl - about three-and-a-half - were paying ahead of me. It was a cold day, so the little girl was bundled up in the way little girls are on a cold late-Autumn day. Ignoring the advice of The Lad, ("Dad, just because you CAN talk to everybody in the world, doesn't mean you HAVE to talk to everybody...

Rescue Christians has been working also very hard on the ground in Pakistan. Our teams have been doing some major research and we have now identified a further 350 Christian families (around 3000 people) who are enslaved by cruel Muslim kiln owners. A few days ago shoebat.com reported on the outrageous and tragic murder of a Christian couple who were burnt alive at one of these kiln’s . If only we knew of their predicament in time, as we had already freed six familes from another kiln less than one mile away. ... there are 20,000 Christian families spread throughout...

Senator Elizabeth Warren, always outspoken on the tension between Main Street and Wall Street, took shots Sunday at a system she said is "rigged" against the little guy. In an interview in Salon, Warren, who has said she doesn't plan to seek the 2016 presidential nomination, said fellow Democrats including President Obama have not done enough to help consumers. On President Obama: Warren praised Obama for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency aimed at enforcing consumer protection laws. But she told Salon that "there has not been nearly enough change" in the wake of the...

Who runs the world? In these six societies: Girls. By standard definition, a matriarchy is a “family, group or state governed by a matriarch (a woman who is head of a family or tribe).” Anthropologists and feminists have since created more specific classifications for female societies, including the matrilineal system. Matrilineality refers not only to tracing one’s lineage through maternal ancestry, it can also refer to a civil system in which one inherits property through the female line. While the legendary Amazons (probably the most widely known matriarchy) are relegated to mythology, there are a handful of female-led societies...

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput announced today at a conference in Fargo, North Dakota that Pope Francis has accepted his invitation to come to Philadelphia in September 2015 to attend the World Meeting of Families. Chaput's announcement confirmed rumors that the Supreme Pontiff was coming to the United States. The World Meeting of Families is an event held every three years by the Pontifical Council of the Family. Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J. confirmed that the Bishop of Rome was indeed coming to Philadelphia for the event, and was also mulling offers to visit other major cities on the East...

Concerned that the City is an inhomogeneous hodgepodge with pockets of great wealth in some neighborhoods and squalor in others, newly appointed Housing Preservation and Development Commissar Vicki Been announced a plan to move 80,000 to 120,000 poorer families into middle class neighborhoods. “This way instead of having blight and filth in every direction they might look poorer families will be within easy walking distance of a better kept neighborhood,” Been boasted. “The crimes that plague poorer sections of our City would be more evenly dispersed throughout the whole City. Victims will come from a more broadly representative subset of...