Free Republic

Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot was arrested when his house was raided by ten police men. He spent a night in a police cell and was then released. It is unclear if Nekschot is to be prosecuted. The raid apparently happened because of complaints by fundamentalist imam van de Ven, a Dutch Islam convert who once said that he'd like to see critics of Islam like Geert Wilders to be dead. Nekschot is a controversial cartoonist who criticizes multi cultural society and religions. Although his work is not exactly an example of fine taste sometimes his arrest raised protests. The raid...

Fascism Was Anti-Religious Too Bethany Stotts, May 13, 2008 In our age of moral relativity, leaders like George W. Bush and Tony Blair have been cast as modern Adolph Hitlers—a practice which trivializes the “moral collapse” perpetuated by the Third Reich. Weekly Standard contributor David Gelernter, in contrast, is intent on magnifying these moral differences. Claiming inspiration from T.S. Eliot’s characterization of WWII as a choice between “Christianity” or “paganism,” the Yale professor said at the American Enterprise Institute that “The thesis I want to investigate, one that involves such a daunting tangle of complex issues and demands so many...

A new battlefront in the war to erase politically incorrect civil liberties is taking place across corporate America under the innocuous-sounding banner of "Wellness."  Wellness certainly sounds nice; what kind of person is against wellness?  That sounds as crazy as being anti-hope, or standing in the way of change.  Obviously we all want to be well, but now it appears you won't have much choice in the matter.  Be well or face consequences beyond the state of one's health. But always remember: We're doing this for your own good. The latest thing that's in our best interest is a renewed...

Independent election observers in Zimbabwe say police have raided their offices. At the same time, security forces descended on opposition headquarters. Police seized material on vote counting from both offices. Some 200 people were beaten, shoved and arrested in the raid on the opposition headquarters, according to party officials. Zimbabweans are still awaiting official results from the March 29 presidential election. The opposition says President Robert Mugabe is using violence and stealth to hold on to power. The opposition and the independent observers both claim the opposition won the vote, based on their own surveys of results posted at ballot...

Lately I've been thinking of four left wing incidents that happened in Maine over the course of two years. I feel I should get them off my chest I think some of them would be interesting and I think others should know about them. The first one involves an incident that took place in the Bangor metro area two years ago. This freind of mine and his family were having trouble. He had difficulty getting by and he worked at Edwards Shop'n'save in Hampden outside Bangor. He was on food stamps and his wife was laid off and couldn't get...

Speaking in February of the man she knows better than anyone else does, Michelle Obama said that her husband, Illinois Senator and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination Barack Obama, is the only candidate for president who understands that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their "broken souls." She also said that her husband's unique understanding of the state of souls of the American people makes him uniquely qualified to be President. Obama can do what his opponent in the Democratic race Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, cannot do....

March 28th, 2008 Zagreb, March 28 (CP) – Retired Croatian army general Ivan Korade is being looked for by some 300 police special forces as he is believed to be involved in the killing of four people in Croatia’s Zagorje region. Ret. Gen. Ivan Korade, 44, known for his short temper and many incidents over the years has gone missing after bodies of people linked to him in some way had been found in two villages, one of which he has a home in. The first body was found in the late hours of Wednesday in a weekend home and...

Hiding behind the mesmerizing power of identity politics, in this case multiplied by two, the left is about to capture America by stealth. Senators Clinton and Obama are the perfect agents.... In addition to public ownership, which doesn't work, and the Democrats' standard formula of higher taxes and spending, which is destructive, the inevitable next step is to add a system of "mandates." Under this mutation, government allows for the continuation of private property and businesses, but only in modified form. Government selectively intervenes to direct how property is used or a business is run — and, to the extent...

The US Federal Reserve is examining the Nordic bank nationalisations of the 1990s as a possible interim solution to the US financial crisis. The Fed has been criticised for its rescue of Bear Stearns, which critics say has degenerated into a taxpayer gift to rich bankers. A senior official at one of the Scandinavian central banks told The Daily Telegraph that Fed strategists had stepped up contacts to learn how Norway, Sweden and Finland managed their traumatic crisis from 1991 to 1993, which brought the region's economy to its knees. It is understood that Fed vice-chairman Don Kohn remains very...

I finally found a supply of Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism” in a mall in Roanoke, Virginia and am halfway through reading it. It is a polemic and well written, but it’s also a good history of Fascism from the beginning of the 20th century to now. The problem for most people is that for them, history starts with the day they were born. To them, the “New Deal” was how the sainted FDR ended the Great Depression. To have lived through that period was traumatic, and people in their 80s and older will carry the memory to their death....

In my last column, I talked about how the real agenda behind liberal policies is control – control of you and your life, in all its aspects. There is simply nothing safe from this agenda – from the more picayune things, such as the type of light bulbs in your lamps at home or whether you can have a smoke, to the big things like where you can live and what type of vehicle you can drive (if any at all). You might be asking, especially if you don't care about incandescent versus compact fluorescent, or don't smoke, or don't...

Compassionate fascism is just as anti-liberty as the other kind Perhaps you wonder how society's self-appointed hall monitors got the right to make you feel bad about the fries on your plate or the cigarette you're smoking, or outlaw listening to iPods while crossing the street. If so, you may also be fed up with being nagged about recycling, and be wondering why just because you don't think we're all responsible for global warming, you have been designated a pariah through that infelicitous phrase -- climate-change denier. You know what that's supposed to sound like. Worse, some of your accusers...

Liberals get really testy when some folks, devout Christians for example, choose to live their lives under God’s laws; but have no compunction in compelling others to live under the tender mercies of the Nanny State where they make the rules. Five years ago, when the smoking ban in restaurants first went into effect in my home state of Connecticut, I told a few folks who were happy about it, that it was only a matter of time before the government came after their private property rights or other issues that were near and dear to their hearts. Most people...

New Haven (AP) _ An eighth-grade honors student at a New Haven school has been suspended for buying a bag of candy at school. Michael Sheridan, a student at Sheridan Middle School, was suspended from school for one day, barred from attending an honors student dinner and stripped of his title as class vice president. Officials say he was punished because he bought a bag of Skittles from another student. A school spokeswoman says the New Haven school system banned candy sales and fundraisers in 2003 as part of the districtwide school wellness policy. Spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo says there are...

In Islamism's Cross Hairs, Mohamad Sifaoui is interviewed by Middle East Quarterly on his article: "I Consider Islamism to Be Fascism" MEQ: Do you believe that moderate Islam exists? Sifaoui: Of course, it does. If the majority of Muslims were not moderate, Islamists would have destroyed the Western world a long time ago. Despite its technological lead, its nuclear power, and all its armies, the Western world would never be able to face an Islamist world entirely convinced by the terrorist cause. One billion people supporting Al-Qaeda would reduce the rest of the world to ashes. Islam contains violent texts...

What is Fascism and Who is a Fascist? by Thomas Sowell (February 18, 2008) Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss -- and a major loss.Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis. This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time -- and which, for that reason, is likely to...

A California court has ruled that several children in one homeschool family must be enrolled in a public school or "legally qualified" private school, and must attend, sending ripples of shock into the nation's homeschooling advocates as the family reviews its options for appeal. The ruling came in a case brought against Jonathan and Mary Long over the education being provided to two of their eight children. They are considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, because they have homeschooled all of their children, the oldest now 29, because of various anti-Christian influences in California's public schools. The decision...

Two Democrats have introduced legislation sought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that could broaden voter support for a twice-delayed, $9.9 billion high-speed-rail bond on the November ballot. A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, Sabrina Lockhart, said Thursday that the administration worked with the rail board to draft the Galgiani and Ma bill. The bill by Assemblywomen Cathleen Galgiani of Tracy and Fiona Ma of San Francisco would allow the bonds to be used for all segments of the proposed 700-mile rail system. The bond's current language dedicates the money only for the proposed segment between the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.Ma and...

Russia could be sliding into dictatorship as Germany did soon after World War I, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has warned. "There is a mentality of being stabbed in the back that reminds me of the Weimar Republic," Mr Ilves told Russia's Moscow Times newspaper. The Weimar Republic is the name given to the German state in 1919-1933 - before Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Estonia-Russia ties have been tense since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Last year, Tallinn and Moscow had an all-out row over the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial in the Estonian capital. Amnesty report...

Liberal Fascism   By David ForsmarkFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, February 26, 2008 Liberal FascismThe Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of MeaningBy Jonah GoldbergDoubleday, $27.95, 487 pp.Review by David ForsmarkThat "thwack" you hear from coast to coast is conservative book-writing pundits smacking themselves on the forehead and exclaiming, "Why didn't I think of that?" The reason is National Review editor Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, as it racks up huge sales and dominates best-seller lists.It's a natural — even obvious...

Jonah Goldberg on Liberal Fascism (And how Barack Obama fits in) Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 8:03 PM HH: Jonah, reading Liberal Fascism, I come across the recognition, I knew it, but I didn’t really confront it, that Saul Alinsky has two candidates for the Democratic nomination. And not just people who read his books, people who worked for him. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both Alinskyites. JG: Yeah. HH: It’s stunning. JG: They’re both true disciples of Alinsky. HH: Yeah. JG: And it’s amazing. And Alinsky was obsessed with power. HH: Yeah. JG: Obsessed with power. HH: A...

The “Global Poverty Act of 2007” introduced by Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is on the brink of enactment by the U.S. Senate. A companion bill (H.R. 1302) passed in the House of Representatives last September. The legislation would obligate the United States to contribute an additional $90 billion per year to the United Nations to “fight global poverty.” Obama called the bill “a down payment on America’s moral obligation to the poor of the world.” “I have always held that the principle guide to economic policy ought to be ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his...

A ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone who does not pay for a government smoking permit has been proposed by Health England, a ministerial advisory board. The idea is the brainchild of the board's chairman, Julian Le Grand, who is a professor at the London School of Economics and was Tony Blair's senior health adviser. In a paper being studied by Lord Darzi, the health minister appointed to oversee NHS reform, he says many smokers would be helped to break the habit if they had to make a decision whether to "opt in".

NACOGDOCHES — The rows of extra chairs brought into the The Fredonia's biggest meeting room Thursday night were not enough to accommodate more than 750 people who attended an open house and public hearing on the proposed TTC-69 highway. Texas Department of Transportation officials heard hours of public testimony that continued late into the night overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of new roadways through East Texas. Applause throughout the hours-long meeting never swelled as loudly as it did when the first speaker of the night, state Rep. Wayne Christian, told TxDOT representatives emphatically that "our answer is 'no' on the...

"Alles muss anders sein" (Everything must be different) -- Hitler's briefest summary of his policies History never repeats itself but sometimes it comes close. Obama is NOT a Fascist insofar as the Fascists were patriotic and Obama is the sort of America-hater that is now typical of the Left. Right up to JFK, the American Left was patriotic. It no longer is. And sometimes Obama doesn't even bother to pretend -- as we see below: But in matters other than patriotism -- the appeal for unity, the preaching of "change", the vague but inspiring rhetoric and the automatic turning to...

Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss — and a major loss. Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis. This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time — and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized. Because the word "fascist" is often thrown around...

Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss — and a major loss. Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis. This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time — and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized. Because the word "fascist" is often thrown around...

A statewide cap on driving? Here’s the thing nobody is quite willing to say out loud about implementing California’s climate change law in the land use arena: The state may have to place an overall cap on vehicle miles traveled (VMT), even as it must accommodate more growth. Last Friday at UCLA Extension’s annual Land Use Law and Planning Conference, keynote speaker Anthony Eggert, senior policy advisor at the California Air Resources Board, issued what amounted to a plea for help from the 400 land use practitioners gathered in the room. CARB is charged with implementing AB 32. Land use...

What The Daily Show cut out. If you’re like me, you probably watch Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. If you’re like me, you probably also turn to reruns of Scrubs or Seinfeld when the newsmaker interview comes on. If that’s the case, you probably missed me and Jon Stewart playing Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots last week. It started civilly enough, discussing my new book, Liberal Fascism. But things got sufficiently testy that we spent nearly 20 minutes swearing and sparring, and only six minutes aired. The result was “choppy as hell,” Stewart conceded.

A key state senator said Tuesday that he'll vote against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's health care expansion bill, leaving the measure's fate in doubt on the eve of its first Senate hearing. The bill's supporters also got some bad news from the Legislature's budget analyst, who said the costs of running an insurance pool that would be established under the program could exceed revenues by as much as $1.5 billion a year in the fifth year of the program. That would lead to an overall deficit in the fund of $4 billion under the cost scenario the analyst said was most...

Last Updated: Friday, 18 January 2008, 13:10 GMT Pantomime gun must be registered A Cornish village drama group has had to register a toy gun with the police to comply with health and safety rules. Carnon Downs drama group in Cornwall have also had to keep their plastic cutlasses and wooden swords locked up for the pantomime, Robinson Crusoe. Producers of the show called the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) rules "farcical". A spokesman for the HSE said the rules were designed to make risks "sensibly managed". "It gets a bit farcical when you are dealing with plastic swords,"Linda Barker...

Putin's role model Vladimir Putin has had some great publicity lately. Time magazine recently dubbed him the Person of the Year. What that says about "You" — the previous recipient of the P.O.Y. designation — I don't know. Time gave Putin that title because he represents a mounting preference for authoritarianism over the chaos of democracy and the uncertainty of the free market. He "has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power," the editors declare. While Time saw fit to...

Liberal Fascism Explained by: Amanda Busse, January 16, 2008 Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg is tired of being called a fascist. In his latest book, Liberal Fascism, he fights back against the term that those on the right are often saddled with, reminding readers that the original fascists leaned more toward the left. Goldberg, the editor-at-large for National Review Online, argues in his book that fascism under Benito Mussolini and Nazism under Adolf Hitler came from the same intellectual source as Progressivism, the birth-mother of American liberalism. The term “liberal fascism” comes from a speech made by author H. G. Wells...

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really. His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party. These facts jar because they...

Goldberg has marshaled a staggering amount of evidence to conclude, as the first chapter has it, that "everything you know about fascism is wrong." Mussolini was weaned on anarcho-socialism (his father Alessandro was a socialist and anarchist). Mussolini and the Italian Fascist party were, in the early years, not anti-Semitic—in fact, the party included Jews. As a young man, Mussolini had carried in his pocket a medallion of Karl Marx, whose influence—combined with the bizarre syndicalist philosophy of George Sorel and a Nietzschean contempt for Christianity—resulted in Italian fascism, a mix of myth-making, prophecy about the rise of the working...

January 11, 2008, 2:16 p.m. Debating Liberal FascismReviewing a review. By Jonah Goldberg On Thursday, I said that David Neiwert’s review of my book, Liberal Fascism, in The American Prospect was the sort of “shallow, cliché ridden, attack-the-messenger stuff that I would expect Ezra to find so persuasive.� But it turned out I’d misquoted Neiwert, for which I apologized. I also said I was bleary from the slog of promoting the book and maybe I was too harsh. Well, now — as they used to say of Nixon — I’m tanned, rested and ready (minus the tan). So with...

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning Author: Jonah Goldberg Upcoming Schedule Saturday, January 12, at 10:00 PM Sunday, January 13, at 3:30 AM Sunday, January 13, at 10:00 AM Monday, January 14, at 1:00 AM About the Program Jonah Goldberg explores the political theories of fascism and contends that there are several colloaries between the politics of the left and fascist ideology. Jonah Goldberg presents his book at The Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. About the Author Jonah Goldberg is contributing editor for the National Review and a columnist for...

The incoherence of our political discourse results in part from sheer ignorance of political philosophy and its history. -- snip -- Liberal Fascism goes a long way to providing that lost history and recovering the true origins and meanings of our political principles and ideals. Goldberg, a syndicated columnist and editor at the National Review, modestly calls himself a journalist. But he has in fact written a well-documented, fast-paced history of modern politics and political philosophy.

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak. The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves. Someone, apparently the unidentified...

Vladimir Putin will now use Time magazine's honor to enhance his own power. BY GARRY KASPAROV Sunday, December 23, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST Ever since President Vladimir Putin took office eight long years ago, the political and media leadership of the West have had a full-time job trying to look on the bright side of Russia's rapid turn from democracy. The free press has been demolished, elections are canceled and rigged, and then we hear how popular Mr. Putin is. Opposition marches are crushed, and we're told--over and over--how much better off we are today than in the days of...

Monks at a Lowcountry monastery are looking for a new source of income. Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery on the Cooper River, announced Thursday it will cease its egg production business following pressure from an animal rights group. The phaseout of the industry, which has sustained the brothers for more than 40 years, comes after attacks by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Earlier this year, and again this week, PETA charged that the birds at Mepkin Abbey were caged in cramped quarters and suffered inhumane practices. PETA urged shoppers to boycott Mepkin Abbey eggs, which are sold at...

Do not confuse the word "fascist" the way some pundits throw it around, undefined and out of context, with the word "fascist" in the title of Colleen Elizabeth Kelley’s latest book. She first defines fascism, gives historical examples, creates a framework for study and then presents the study to readers.... She argues that the president and his staff relied on a set of particular strategies that coalesced into anti-democratic talk to take advantage of the post-9/11 situation and justify the 2003 war against Iraq. "One does not have to be a fascist to use communication that primes a democracy for...

History Upside Down The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression DAVID MEIR-LEVI Overview Reviews Excerpt In the United Nations, on university campuses, and among a growing number of our most prestigious Western newspapers, the historical record has been rewritten so thoroughly that Israel is seen as the worst of the oppressive Western occupiers of the Third World. So successful has this campaign been that Palestinian spinmeisters and their apologists have effectively declared that the Israelis, a people living in the shadow of the Holocaust, are themselves “Nazis.” How could this happen? How did unacceptable anti-Semitism morph...

Quiz yourself on the Israeli Arab ["Palestinian"] conflict       1) When was the Arab immigration to [the historic Jewish land of] Israel -"Palestine" boosted?   A When they wanted to see Jewish holy sites. B When [anti French and anti British] Arab nationalism spread across the middle east. C When the Zionists Jews came and cultivated the deserted land.     2) What's [Arab "Palestinian" highest "national" icon] Yasser Arafat's country of origin?   A Israel ["Palestine"]. B Jordan. C Egypt.     3) Why were there --initially-- more Arab immigrants ["residents"] than Jewish immigrants (Arab majority)?   A Because...

Islamofascism: Why It Is Fascism and Why Hating It Isn't Racist Nicholas M. Guariglia 06 Dec 2007 This is getting a bit tedious, but for as long as there are those who decry antifascists as something they are not, there must be those who forcefully defend the spirit of antifascism. A few weeks ago, student groups across some 200 universities aligned with commentator David Horowitz, amongst others, to declare Islamofascism Awareness Week. Such “cause-awareness” charades –– global warming/cooling awareness, the danger of giant man-eating squirrels/how to save endangered giant man-eating squirrels, etc. –– where do-gooders sit around a table and...

In an effort to motivate workers to kick unhealthy habits, U.S. companies are hitting them where it hurts: in their wallets. Employers who provide health insurance often use financial incentives, such as contributions toward premiums, to encourage workers to participate in wellness programs like smoking-cessation courses. Now some employers are wielding a stick as well as a carrot. Employees at some companies who are overweight, smoke, or have high cholesterol, for instance, and who don't participate in supplementary wellness programs, will pay more for health insurance. In extreme cases, employees' insurance deductibles could rise by $2,000. "The bottom line," says...

If there is anything that qualifies Mitt Romney to be president of the United States, it is his record on health care and his record of leadership. If there is any one thing that might keep him out of the White House it is his Mormonism. The United States will spend nearly $2.4 trillion on health care in 2007, and that number is expected to rise to $4 trillion by 2015. But, high spending does not translate into broad access to health care. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 45 million Americans – about 15 percent of the population...

Remembering Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' By Hilda Pierce November 9, 2007 Crystal Night is a beautiful name for an evil event that took place in Austria and Germany on the night of Nov. 9, 1938. It was orchestrated on the orders of Adolph Hitler's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels. Adolf Eichmann also had a part in organizing the “Night of Broken Glass,” the night of burning synagogues, smashing windows of Jewish stores, looting, killing or torturing Jews on the streets and in their homes, 69 years ago today. It is a historical date because it was also the...

During the week of October 22-26, David Horowitz and his Freedom Center held a series of events at 100 campuses for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, intended to counter standard academic nitwitery about the war on terrorism ("America is evil," "We brought it on ourselves," "9/11 was a Republican conspiracy"). Admirable though this was, attention must be called to an even more imminent threat. By the authority vested in me (by myself), I hereby designate the week of November 5th Left-Fascism Awareness Week -- a time to consider the clear and present danger to free speech emanating from the Left, from academic...

At the Democrats' presidential debate last week, the candidates were asked to comment on issues pertaining to education. This was Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd's response: "I've been asked the question over the years, 'What's the single most important issue?' I always say education because it is the answer to every other problem we confront as a people here." Needless to say, no other candidate took issue with Sen. Dodd, and it is likely that most senators, all the Democrats and many Republicans, would agree with the sentiment. But the sentiment is not only wrong, it is destructive. There are, of...