Free Republic

The fifth and final paper in The Lancet Series on physical inactivity explained that because of the global reach, high prevalence, and colossal harms of inactivity, it should be considered pandemic. Harold W. Kohl, III, leading author and from the University of Texas Health School of Public Health, said:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg loves us. He wants us to be healthy. So he’s taken it upon himself to pass laws to stop people from eating too much salt, trans fats, and big sugary drinks. He believes these new laws will make a difference. Of course, they might, but so will passing a law that requires everybody to eat only 1800 calories per day. When Mayor Bloomberg gets a hold of the new exercise study, there’s no telling what new laws will be passed. According to the medical journal The Lancelot, “a third of the world’s adults are physically...

Left-leaning politicians and earth-saving environmental zealots have touted the “new economy” and its new “green jobs” as the solution to what ails us. So, what exactly is a “green job?” As you will see, the Big Government has defined “green jobs” in such a way that nearly everything can be considered a “green job,” which means no matter what happens, the Big Government can claim success. Virtually any new job is essentially a “green job.” Why? Because Big Government says so...

Political writing tends to be bad writing, noted George Orwell in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” Too often it's a tool for deception and obfuscation rather than clear communication. Orwell criticizes particularly those who rely on political catch phrases devised by others, throwing their minds open and “letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in.” It's an easy way of avoiding the hard work good writing demands, says Orwell. Catch phrases “will construct your sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent - and at need they will perform the important service...

Brave New World (is Here!) If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.” In many...

Read Aldous Huxley’s review of 1984 he sent to George Orwell Several months after George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984 was published in 1949, Aldous Huxley sent a letter to his former French pupil. The Brave New World author had received a copy of 1984 from the publisher at Orwell's behest, but his poor eyesight prevented him from finishing the book for several months. In his letter to Orwell, the fifty-year-old author compared the two books' screwed-up futures and saw the Orwellian Oceanic dystopia as a predecessor to his own World State. Wrote Huxley in October 1949: Agreeing with all that...

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati on Friday struck down Michigan's Proposal 2, the ban on the consideration of race and gender when hiring public employees or enrolling students at public colleges. The voter-approved constitutional amendments burdens minorities and violates the U.S. Constitution, the court said in its 2-1 decision. The court said it violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, who had suggested the city challenge the amendment after it was passed, was exultant Friday upon hearing the news of the reversal. “Wow! Wow! Wow!” Heartwell said. “It confirms the belief that many of...

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Party members of Orwell’s futuristic society are forced to watch daily the government’s Two Minutes’ Hate… a film projected on telescreens depicting The Party’s enemies. The purpose was to brainwash its own skeptical citizens and reinforce the rest using emotionally based sound and images. Today, we just call it television. The marriage between the Democrat Party and Hollywood is the new Big Brother. And Big Brother is tasked with indoctrinating a large society into a left wing perspective. The most efficient way is to present a single message to a massive audience and this...

ALISO VIEJO – Members of a local church are saying an ad for their Easter service was deemed too controversial to run because it named Jesus.

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them… George Orwell thus laid the groundwork for the coinage of doublespeak, at best a simple euphemism, sometimes mere ambiguity, and at worst deliberate deceit. The purpose of doublethink is to synthesize the irrational. The purpose of doublespeak is to...

The Communist Party USA has scrubbed its website of references that stated it "actively supported" President Obama's election. An article posted on the party's official website on Dec. 30, 2007, previously stated, "Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election." The article was referring to Obama's 2004 election to the Senate. It detailed how the African-American community and trade unionists played key roles in defeating the "ultra right." "This was also reflected in the historic election of Barack Obama. Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election," stated the article, a screen shot of which was captured by...

The concept of an Elite was described by George Orwell in his book 1984: his portrayal was so graphic it seems our current Socialists borrow as heavily from Orwell as they do from Alynsky. Orwell condemned and ridiculed the Elite: Alynsky described how to use the concept to achieve power and confuse the opposition. Both the authors have been extremely useful in defining the mission for the Elite wannabe, the Rules for Radicals is an effective guide that capitalizes on the absurdity that is the image of the Elite: an image that is still useful in the audacity of...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes as close to George Orwell’s version of Big Brother as any element of the federal government. It operates on a totally irrational basis, ignoring anything that even passes for real science. Through its regulatory power imposes insane mandates that drive up the cost of everything and is trying to drive major elements of energy provision out of business. What, for example, is the EPA doing offering “tips to protect eyes, skin from the Sun’s harmful rays”? Does the EPA sell sunscreen products? ...Charged with keeping the U.S. waters clean, why has the EPA launched...

New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records--that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year--must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity. The obesity-rating regulation states that every American's electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.” The law also requires that these electronic health records be available--with appropriate security measures--on a national...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is saying that the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on North Korea was not terrorism, and not enough by itself to put the Pyongyang back on a U.S. terror blacklist. The State Department said Monday that the March sinking of the frigate Cheonan was a "provocative action" and a violation of the truce that ended the Korean war. But it added that the sinking by a reported North Korean torpedo strike was the act of one state's military against another.

“Thought crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for awhile…but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” George Orwell, 1984 “The fact is we are witnessing an all-out drive to impose thought control that seeks to ban the ability—the right—to think or speak for one’s self. Thinking is becoming a crime.” (Globally Acceptable Truth and the Crime of Thinking, Tom DeWeese, Address to the 10th Annual Freedom 21 Conference, 10/16/09) In an article entitled “Dems Undermine Free Speech in Hate Crimes Ploy,” the Washington Examiner exposes the insidious machinations of House...

Those New Jersey school children singing songs of praise to Obama might remind us of this poem from Animal Farm by George Orwell: Comrade Napoleon Friend of fatherless!Fountain of happiness!Lord of the swill-bucket!Oh, how my soul is onFire when I gaze at thyCalm and commanding eye,Like the sun in the sky,Comrade Napoleon! Thou art the giver ofAll that thy creatures love,Full belly twice a day, clean straw to roll upon;Every beast great or smallSleeps at peace in his stall,Thou watchest over all,Comrade Napoleon! Had I a sucking pig,Ere he had grown as bigEven as a pint bottle or as a...

Senator Ted Kennedy, who is now 76 years old and was ( diagnosed with brain cancer) in May of last year, is telling the world that nationalized medical care is "the cause of his life." He wants to see it pass as soon as possible, before he departs this vale of tears. The prospect of Kennedy's passing is viewed by the liberal press with anticipatory tears and mourning. But they are not asking the proper question by their own lights: That question -- which will be asked for you and me when we reach his age and state in life...

Link only: Ban on tobacco urged in military

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR’’ opens with one of the most famous first lines in modern English literature - the vaguely unnerving “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’’ The line it ends with is even more famous, and considerably more sinister: “He loved Big Brother.’’ George Orwell’s brilliant, bitter novel turns 60 this month, but after all these years it has lost none of its nightmarish chill. Its hero is the decidedly unheroic Winston Smith, a weak and wistful man who lives in the totalitarian police state of Oceania, which is ruled by the Party...