Free Republic

I teach an American Government class for a University of Wisconsin College. The other day my supervising Professor in critiquing my class Syllabus made this statement: "I prefer that you not refer to the founders as Founding Fathers....my reason is that they aren't my daddy. My ancestors weren't even here at the time and I think calling people your daddy is not as objective as political scientists should aim to be." Ignoring his subjectivity in a number of other areas in his curriculum, for example his analysis of Wisconsin Governor Walker's Balanced Budget Act 10 smacked more of a subjective,...

Prepping US Armed Forces to cope with extremists doesn't sound bad until you discover that an example of the type of extremists our troops may have to suppress are people who oppose taxes or tyranny. According to the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide, America's Founding Fathers were “extremists who unjustly opposed legitimate ruling authorities.” The training guide says that “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples. The...

Typically domestic terrorists in the U.S. are people who cling to obsolete beliefs from the time of the American Revolution. They are conservative Christians, reactionary Republicans and conspiracy theorists many of whom belong to racist hate groups. Tea Partiers commonly own guns and stock up ammunition and food in anticipation of starting another civil war to overthrow the will of the governing body that represent all of the American people. Did I miss anything here? I don’t think so because we see this everyday on national television with the Tea Party Taliban accusing the government of infringing on their “God...

A Department of Defense teaching guide meant to fight extremism advises students that rather than “dressing in sheets” modern-day radicals “will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place,” and describes 18th-century American patriots seeking freedom from the British as belonging to “extremist ideologies.” The guide comes from documents obtained by Judicial Watch and is authored by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a DoD-funded diversity training center. Under a section titled “extremist ideologies,” the document states, “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought...

For the Journal of the American Revolution, Todd Andrlik compiled a list of the ages of the key participants in the Revolutionary War as of July 4, 1776. Many of them were surprisingly young: Marquis de Lafayette, 18 James Monroe, 18 Gilbert Stuart, 20 Aaron Burr, 20 Alexander Hamilton, 21 Betsy Ross, 24 James Madison, 25 This is kind of blowing my mind...because of the compression of history, I'd always assumed all these people were around the same age. But in thinking about it, all startups need young people...Hamilton, Lafayette, and Burr were perhaps the Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg of...

Whether it was finding the solid ground in writing the Declaration of Independence that would justify and drive a revolution or defining the core rights that would guide the crafting for our Constitution, our Founding Fathers held firmly to core principles that would help them navigate through unchartered waters. Every improvement is the result of change, but not every change is an improvement. Our Founding Fathers had to find a compass to give them a true north as they sorted through the choices and changes our emerging country faced. After more than two centuries, it is understandable that our citizens...

Americans voted twice for a big-government President, and now we’re beginning to experience the impact of big government. Are you shocked? It’s been nearly five years of the President and Congress spending future generations into the oblivion of debt, the Executive Branch securing control over huge chunks of the private economy (two car companies, multiple banks and the health care industry are only part of it), and a dramatic expansion of both the defined role, and the powers of the IRS. At this point in the Obama presidency, we the people should not be surprised by a government that has...

<p>President Obama is under fire for remarks he made after meeting with Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang, one of the world’s few Communist leaders.</p> <p>Obama appeared to compliment Vietnam’s late Communist dictator Ho Chi Minh, pointing out that the Vietnam War-era leader was inspired by none other than our Founding Fathers and documents.</p>

Following a meeting with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang today at the White House, President Barack Obama seemed to offer praise for communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh as someone “inspired” by America’s Founding Fathers, the PJ Tatler reports. During the Oval Office meeting, Obama says he and Sang “discussed the challenges that all of us face when it comes to issues of human rights,” referring to Vietnam’s sordid record on the issue. “And we had a very candid conversation about both the progress that Vietnam is making and the challenges that remain.” When it was time to leave, Sang reportedly...

President Obama hailed hard-core communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh today as a pretty open guy who was actually inspired by the Founders. Obama took a break from his jobs-pivot speeches to meet Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang at the White House. The pair held joint remarks in the Oval Office afterward. Obama said their first bilateral meeting “represents the steady progression and strengthening of the relationship between our two countries.” “Obviously, we all recognize the extraordinarily complex history between the United States and Vietnam. Step by step, what we have been able to establish is a degree

Egypt is on everyone’s mind as a democratically-elected government was overthrown by the Egyptian military. It is utterly necessary as the country was moving toward an Islamic state, slowly turning into, at minimum, an oligarchy if not a dictatorship. The question becomes why, after only about a year, did the government fail where ours has endured for 226 years? The answer is right under our noses and we often do not think about it. Our government had the advantage of six giants of history involved from the start. Those men were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Hamilton. Each one...

In the close of HBO's wonderful 2008 series about America's second president, titled "John Adams," the voice of Adams is narrated by actor Paul Giamatti and it closes the seven part mini-series: Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it. These words were not dramatic flair of a modern day screenwriter but the actual thoughts of John Adams recorded by his hand in a...

Holy war can seem like something that happened long ago or that happens far away — the Crusades of medieval Europe, for example, or jihadists fighting secular forces today. But since their country’s founding, Americans have often thought of their wars as sacred, even when the primary objectives have been political. This began with the American Revolution. When colonists declared their independence on July 4, 1776, religious conviction inspired them. Because they believed that their cause had divine support, many patriots’ ardor was both political and religious. They saw the conflict as a just, secular war, but they fought it...

There is no one among America's Founding Fathers who provides as articulate and discerning a vision of genuinely conservative thought as John Adams. John Adams: The Most Conservative of Founding Fathers Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. | The New American 04 July 2013 As Russell Kirk suggests in his classic, The Conservative Mind, there is no one among America’s Founding Fathers who provides as articulate and discerning a vision of genuinely conservative thought as John Adams. Adams was a man of great learning and genius. He also is among the most prolific political authors that the United States ever produced. Kirk...

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it was published in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words, which you will see evidenced here:

<p>Will you be celebrating Natural Law this July 4th? You should be. Your Founding Fathers did.</p> <p>In declaring their independence and asserting their God-given rights, the Founding Fathers—particularly the pen of Thomas Jefferson—acknowledged the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”</p>

New federal law: The constitutional reset law We need what I would call a “constitutional reset” law passed that would make null and void any existing federal law that has been passed over the past 237 years that they did not have... Follow the link above to read the rest

Recent opinion polls demonstrate a deepening distrust of the federal government. That's not an altogether bad thing. Our nation's founders recognized that most human abuses are the result of government. As Thomas Paine said, "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil." Because of their fear of abuse, the Constitution's framers sought to keep the federal government limited in its power. Their distrust of Congress is seen in the governing rules and language used throughout our Constitution. The Bill of Rights is explicit in that distrust, using language such as "Congress shall not abridge," "shall not infringe,"...

As we celebrate our nation's 237th birthday, a crucial facet of American life has all but vanished. We have forsaken, in a systematic and deliberate public manner, one of our most fundamental duties: fostering civic virtue in each and every one of our citizens. What does it mean to be an American? Politicians in both parties keep pushing to create a new "path to citizenship" for millions of illegal aliens. But if sovereignty and self-preservation still matter in Washington, citizenship must be guarded ferociously against those who would exploit and devalue it at every electoral whim. The pavers of the...

Last week, I highlighted four little-known facts about the Declaration of Independence. Here are a few more facts to add to those oddities: There are at least 26 surviving paper copies of the Declaration of Independence of the hundreds made in July 1776 for circulation among the Colonies. After Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Committee of Five, which was appointed to write it, was also responsible with overseeing its reproduction for proclamation to those living in the Colonies. The reproduction was done at the shop of Philadelphia printer John Dunlap. "On July 5, Dunlap's copies were dispatched across...

Being about a week away from Independence Day, I was doing a little reflecting upon the history surrounding the Declaration of Independence. And I thought it would be of equal interest to many of my readers to look at some often-overlooked aspects of the declaration's production and legacy. Several historical websites hold some fascinating facts about this national treasure -- including the National Archives and Records Administration's site, at http://www.archives.gov. In addition, on History's website, the article "9 Things You May Not Know About the Declaration of Independence," by Elizabeth Harrison, has some intriguing notes. Let me elaborate on some...

An unspecified time ago a bunch of Founding Founders of unknown sexual orientations and sexual identities founded a country on a non-exclusive basis in order to promote free birth control, open borders and cowboy poetry. We are engaged now in a great civil war for transgender bathrooms, gay marines and abortions for all to test whether a nation so conceived can endure all its abortions. The White House has today put up a link to a new government website that collates and offers key documents from the revolution and the founding era. But it appears that the administration couldn’t bring...

The scandals surrounding the Obama administration come down to one common theme -- that the ever-growing size and scope of our federal government gives it enormous power over virtually every aspect of our lives, power that in the wrong hands can be used to reward supporters, exact revenge and punish enemies. In education, health care, transportation, energy, disaster relief, welfare, commerce, work and salary rules, and on and on, the federal government plays an outsized role completely inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' notion of a limited government that allows maximum personal liberty. In 1900, government at all three levels --...

The feast of Pentecost is the celebration of one of the most important moments in church history. It commemorates the day when, after the Resurrection of the Lord, the Holy Spirit gave the Faithful a special ability to speak to crowds of different nationalities in their own languages. Now, we don’t know exactly what happened that day – whether the Apostles instantly learned other languages, or their audiences instantly learned to hear them in their heads as if they had. All we know is that the leaders of the Church were suddenly, miraculously, able to reach people, and this was...

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? For the record, here's a portrait of the men who pledged "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" for liberty many years ago. Fifty-six men from each of the original 13 colonies signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Nine of the signers were immigrants, two were brothers and two were cousins. One was an orphan. The average age of a signer was 45. Benjamin Franklin was the oldest delegate at 70. The youngest was Thomas Lynch Jr. of South Carolina...

In the American Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers proclaimed that we are endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, we have long forgotten what our Founders meant by that now iconic phrase—“the pursuit of happiness”—and, as a consequence, we are now in jeopardy of losing the very liberty our Founders purchased for us at the risk of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Indeed, if we properly understood what our Founding Fathers meant by the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” a photographer in New Mexico, a pastry business owner in Colorado,...

The old adage that one lie leads to another is never more apparent than when modern American public officials deal with issues arising from sexual immorality. President Bill Clinton, for example, started a chain of lies when he decided to have an adulterous relationship with a White House intern. Clinton first lied to his wife, then to a federal court, then to the American people. Nor could Clinton's lies, delivered as president, be his lies alone. His partisans in Congress either had to abandon him or add another link to the chain of lies by declaring that perjury and...

It's Holy Week, but what's not so holy is the assault on religious liberty in the U.S. Religious liberty has been called rightly America's "first freedom," not only because the right is contained in the First Amendment but also because it predates the U.S. and has its origin in God, not government, and the freedoms he endowed within us. But over the past few decades, that basic freedom has come under assault -- particularly, in recent years, regarding Christianity. Last week, I discussed how religious liberty in foreign countries is being suppressed. This week, I will begin to address...

Since the 1950s the Longview, Wash. City Council has opened its public meetings with prayer, as Congress has done for 239 years. But fear of a lawsuit from groups like the ALCU has caused the mayor to tell the local ministerial association that it is “not acceptable” for ministers who volunteer to give a Christian prayer that refers to Jesus. To their credit, the ministers refused to give a generic prayer that violates the convictions of their faith. So, for fear of an ACLU threat, city officials decided to exclude ministers simply because their faith teaches them to pray...

In the past few weeks, I've highlighted ways we can reduce violent crime in the U.S. But I've saved the best and most powerful solutions for last because they work from the inside out.In Part 1, I revealed how rational and rewarding it would be to post armed guards at our schools. In Part 2, I showed how reducing the number of firearms in the U.S. would not curb violent crime. In Part 3, I began to discuss the first of two ways in which our Founding Fathers expected to produce and maintain civility and decency in society. They esteemed...

I am in Paris for one afternoon and overnight because the non-stop service from Oujda, Morocco to Dulles International Airport just outside Washington, DC hasn't yet begun. We flew into Orly Airport which is the Newark Airport of Europe. If you can arrange a trip that doesn't include Orly, I recommend you do that. But, any story that ends with, "and then we had dinner in Paris" is a pretty good story. Washington, DC is awash in activity surrounding the President's State of the Union address tomorrow night at nine Eastern time. As we have discussed before, every association, DC-based...

American society’s schizophrenic attitudes about business could be the subject of a book. (Perhaps multiple volumes.) For example, in the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, we heard constantly about the need to create jobs and bring down unemployment. And yet, media coverage and Hollywood depictions of business only reinforce the popular fiction that business owners are little more than greedy exploitative bloodsuckers (whose enterprises apparently exist for the sole purpose of being gouged for taxes to be spent by profligate lawmakers with no sense of their own fiscal responsibility). Regrettably, this is typical. But our culture’s conflict...

Who isn't sickened by the moral decay and heinous acts of violence across our country? My heart and prayers continue to go out to victims everywhere. But do gun bans -- such as the one proposed this past week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., which would outlaw 120 specific firearms -- curb violent crime? Not according to a recent Fox News investigation titled "Assault-weapons ban no guarantee mass shootings would decrease, data shows." The report concluded, "Data published earlier this year showed that while the (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which was signed by President Bill Clinton)...

"Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality," ran the eight-column banner in which The Washington Post captured the essence of Obama's second inaugural. There he declared: "What binds this nation together ... what makes us exceptional -- what makes us American -- is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago." Obama then quoted our 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...

For those of you who didn't catch the tail end of Mark Levin's show Tuesday night, here's what he discussed in the last 5 minutes.(mp3) At the Constitutional Convention, July 17th, 1787, delegate Gunning Bedford of Delaware made the following proposal: Mr. BEDFORD moved that the 2d. member of Resolution 6. be so altered as to read "and moreover to legislate in all cases for the general interests of the Union, and also in those to which the States are separately incompetent," or in which the harmony of the U. States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual Legislation."...

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, said: "The British are not coming. ... We don't need all these guns to kill people." Lewis' vision, shared by many, represents a gross ignorance of why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment. How about a few quotes from the period and you decide whether our Founding Fathers harbored a fear of foreign tyrants. Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed," adding later, "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents,...

James Madison Drinks, and Writes an ArticlePhilip Freneau had set the deadline for the December 22nd edition of the National Gazette, and James Madison found himself racing the hourglass. Freneau published the newspaper, dedicated to the positions of Thomas Jefferson’s faction within the Congress and the council around His Excellency, while working for the red-haired Secretary of State as a translator. Mr. Jefferson saw neither difficulty nor conflict with this arrangement. Freneau had labeled the men of Alexander Hamilton’s faction as Monarchists, Tories, and Anti-Republicans, claiming their role was to reverse the results of 1776. The Secretary of the Treasury...

Following the tragic shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. by Adam Lanza , many Americans are wondering what exactly our Founding Fathers intended when they set the Second Amendment to paper more than 200 years ago. Surely not the killing of 20 young children and six women.

>Yes, we lost. But I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to say that ACORN stole the election, do you? PPP's first post election national poll finds that Republicans are taking the results pretty hard...and also declining in numbers. 49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore. Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they...

There’s an old story from the Jewish shetls of Eastern Europe. There was a singing contest among the animals. The Nightingale loses, despite her lovely singing voice. Looking down on the jury, she sees the grunting wild pigs. She weeps, not because she lost, she says. “But see who my judges are!” America must feel like the Nightingale whenever she has to go before a UN panel. I had the honor of serving our country as U.S. Ambassador to the UN’s Human Rights Commission. In those days, the UN body had such worthy respecters of human rights as Algeria, Libya,...

"There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit" - Ronald Reagan I have not had a lot to say in quite a while, and I have explained much of why that is here. Transcribing takes up a lot of time. In addition to the transcription, the other major project that I have been putting time into is getting a speech from one of the Founding Fathers translated into Spanish. I have a full transcript of one of George Washington's speeches up on my Original Sources...

America’s first mega-church, defined as a congregation of 2,000 attendees or more, held services in the capitol building inside the House of Representatives. It remained there until 1868 as the congregation raised money for building a new sanctuary they could call their own. According to the diary of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, church services were also held in the Treasury building and the Supreme Court Building. He describes the Reverend James Laurie, pastor of a Presbyterian Church, that had settled into the Treasury Building, preaching to an overflow audience in the Supreme Court Chamber,...

We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln Are we in the United States sovereign individuals? I believe we are according to the U.S. Constitution. The purpose of this treatise is to investigate and expose the principals of not only what it means to be sovereign, but of sovereignty in general and whether the U.S. Constitution actually guarantees the individual sovereign status. This discourse will touch on the differences between republicanism, democracy and the actual make-up of the United...

The Constitution of the United States is much more than just a piece of paper; it is a document written by God fearing men who believed in Liberty and Justice for all who are citizens of this great nation and their Posterity. While the U.S. Constitution is a guide for ourselves and for those who represent us, the U.S. Constitution is much more; it is the “law of the land” and should be viewed as such, as well as considered whenever any of the three branches of government, i.e., Legislative, Executive, or Judicial, enact new laws or perform the duties...

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Our founders wrote more on the issues of modern times than people perhaps realize. The words used are simply different, sometimes being more complex or sometimes outdated. In a letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote some things about John Jacques Rousseau and the distortions of reality that took place in the French Revolution: (in section III) (Alt. link) That all men are born to equal rights is true. Every being has a right to his own, as clear, as moral, as sacred, as any other being has. This is as indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But...

Michael Moore said on Piers Morgan Tuesday night that the founding Fathers would have omitted the right to bear arms from the Bill of Rights if they would have known how much guns would modernize in the coming centuries.

Who wasn't shocked and disheartened by yet another tragic mass shooting, this time in Aurora, Colo.? Like millions of Americans, my wife, Gena, and I send our heartfelt condolences and prayers to the victims of this murderous spree and their families. We, too, commend the heroes who gave their lives to save others. Truly, every victim of this reprehensible executioner is in some way heroic, for the victims were injured or died in the midst of a culture war in which even our theaters and schools have become battlegrounds. Moreover, we salute and support the Colorado peace officers, emergency...

This afternoon, President Barack Obama gave a speech affirming his support for extending some of the 2001 and 2003 temporary federal tax cuts, which are often grouped together and referred to as the “Bush tax cuts.” It was a bluntly political speech made for the sole purpose of making headlines tomorrow along the lines of “President Obama Supports Tax Cuts.” I’ve written before about the so-called “Bush tax cuts,” so if you want to know my opinion about whether or not they should be extended, look here. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to ignore the political and...

America's Roman Catholic bishops just completed the "Fortnight for Freedom," a two-week period intended to "support a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty." As evangelical and Catholic leaders have spent the past year opposing the Obama administration's so-called contraceptive mandate, the timing, motives, and agenda driving the "Fortnight for Freedom" have prompted widespread commentary. Rather than scrutinizing the Fortnight's agenda, Protestants could examine deeper questions than what took place on the surface. It's important to consider the Fortnight's placement on the calendar—the significance of the Fortnight's dates, June 21 to July 4—to understand the nature of...