Free Republic

Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia. Former history teacher and scholar Tamaki Matsuoka holds Japan's education system responsible for a number of the country's foreign relations difficulties. "Our system has been creating young people who get annoyed by all the complaints that China and South Korea make about war atrocities because they are not...

The late great Murray Rothbard gave a series of lectures in 1986 at New York Polytechnic University entitled "The American Economy and the End of Laissez-Faire: 1870 to World War II." Fortunately, somebody recorded them. Lecture 2: The Railroading of the American People.

Friday, February 02, 2018 The Kidnappings Americans Won't Do Posted by Daniel Greenfield We all know that there are jobs that Americans won’t do. That’s what the politicians who don’t want Americans doing them tell us. If an industry is dominated by immigrants or illegal aliens, they say that it’s because Americans won’t do these jobs. But when immigrants and aliens dominate certain types of crime, is it because there are some crimes that Americans won’t commit? Like kidnapping? According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 42.4 percent of federal kidnapping convictions are of non-citizens. Non-citizens also account for 31.5...

Joe Kennedy Sr., JFK's father and the patriarch of "America's Royal Family," left behind a complicated legacy, including anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies. In 1928, Joe Kennedy Sr. sold two of his small film studios, creating RKO Pictures, best known for allowing 24-year-old wunderkind Orson Welles to make Citizen Kane, the revered film chronicling the rise and fall of Charles Foster Kane, an illustrious yet treacherous American magnate. But Joe Kennedy Sr.’s own rollercoaster of a biography trumps even the fictional Kane’s in every regard, from his hand-over-fist stock market days to his persona non grata period as a failed World...

"...The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is...

Border Patrol agents in El Paso, Texas found a 75-foot tunnel along the U.S. bank of the Rio Grande river – and one former Border Patrol chief believes its origins could go back 100 years. The tunnel was found when Texas Department of Transportation employees were building near downtown and notified Border Patrol agents of a cave in. The Border Patrol’s Confined Space Entry Team went inside to take a look and found it goes further into the U.S. but not into Mexico. “Remediation efforts are already under way, which include filling the tunnel with concrete. At this time we...

Patrick N. Hunt discusses his new book on Hannibal and how much of his success was based on solid financing. Audio Player Few military leaders hold as much allure for historians as Hannibal Barca of Carthage (today’s Tunisia). Born in 247 B.C., he is still studied today because of his unparalleled ability to strategize and get inside the mind of his opponent in battle. Archaeologist Patrick N. Hunt, who had been the director of Stanford’s Alpine Archaeology Project, has written a new book about the legendary figure that is simply titled Hannibal. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel...

This is the bizarre moment a radio studio descended into chaos when two guests began fighting about Joseph Stalin. A studio webcam caught how a physical altercation broke out while Nikolai Svanidze, 62, and Maksim Shevchenko, 51, discussed Stalin's role in World War II. Mr Svanidze, a TV and radio presenter, said the communist leader was responsible for the terrible condition the Soviet Union was in by the end of the war. Mr Shevchenko, a journalist, praised Stalin's leadership of the USSR. He contrasted the situation in the USSR with that of France during the same period He said: 'By...

When my grandfather set off for World War II, he was a handsome young officer in his prime, the spitting image of Gregory Peck. He returned a very different person, haunted by what he’d seen. Like countless others who fought to safeguard the freedom of this country, he never truly found peace again. He survived the bullets only to drink himself to death. Were he alive today I wonder what he would make of his legacy — today’s generation of young people for whom he sacrificed his health, happiness and, ultimately, his sanity. Part of me is very glad he’s...

Were 18th-century pirates literate? What sort of books did they keep on board ship? ... During conservation work on artifacts recovered from the wreckage of Queen Anne's Revenge -- the flagship of the pirate Blackbeard -- 16 tiny fragments of paper were discovered in a mass of wet sludge removed from the chamber for a breech-loading cannon. The largest fragment was only about the size of a quarter. Paper is an extremely rare material to find on shipwrecks, especially one 300 years old, because it usually disintegrates quickly under water... As the work progressed another discovery was made -- that...

“I offer my deepest condolences to you and the entire Cuban nation over the death of your brother, the leader of the Cuban revolution Fidel Castro. The name of this remarkable statesman is rightfully viewed as a symbol of a whole era in modern history. Free and independent Cuba built by him and his fellow revolutionaries has become an influential member of the international community and serves as an inspiring example for many countries and peoples. Fidel Castro was a sincere and reliable friend of Russia. He made a tremendous personal contribution to the establishment and progress of Russian-Cuban...

Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in 1940 and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor. Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by Josef Mengele (1911-79). During World War II (1939-45), more than 1 million people, by some accounts, lost their lives at Auschwitz. In January 1945, with the...

Obama vs. Trump: Who Really Colluded with Russia? Trump didn’t collude with Russia. Obama did. January 26, 2018 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism. September 2009. Obama hadn’t even been in office for a whole year when he gave in to Moscow’s biggest demand by dropping the missile defense shield for Poland and the Czech Republic. During his campaign, he had enthusiastically backed the defensive program, declaring, “We have to send a clear signal that Poland and other countries in...

Today is Australia Day, the anniversary of the date in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip led a fleet of convict ships into Sydney Cove and initiated the establishment of New South Wales, Australia, as a penal colony. By the mid-19th century, free immigration had replaced the transportation of convicts in populating the country, and a half dozen other colonies were established there, leading to a final federation as the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. British involvement in Australian affairs was formally abolished in 1986, and in many ways, the modern nation more resembles the United States than any other in...

Why Humans Left Africa: Our Ancestors Watched Climate Change To Cold, Dry BY ELANA GLOWATZ @ELANAGLOW ON 10/05/17 AT 3:09 PM Early humans may have left Africa and spread all over the globe because their home climate was drying up. The idea comes from samples of marine sediment taken from northeastern Africa that show the area was cold and dry around 60,000 years ago, which is around the time humans might have migrated off that continent and into Europe and Asia. A team of scientists wrote in the journal Geology that after warm and wet conditions between 120,000 and 90,000...

Just after the end of World War I, a young Army officer who was born in Denison, Texas, was assigned to accompany an expedition of military vehicles driving across America. The mission was to determine the difficulties the nation might face moving an entire army across the continent. Lucky thing the country was no longer at war. The convoy constantly ground to a halt on unpaved roads, sinking into mud, slipping into ditches and sliding into quicksand. The cross-country journey took 62 days, averaging about six miles an hour, something close to the speed of a leisurely walk. The lessons...

Among the roster of white privileges is the ability not to step in other people's poop too often in public, or to ingest it with our food and drink and pass it on to our children and friends, who could actually sicken and die from some strains of E. coli. Public sanitation as we know it today was invented in Great Britain and France shortly before 1900, with the United States quickly following suit to separate fresh water from disease-carrying offal in places like New York City, where you can still see the first sanitation plant built about a century...

At a small and lightly covered ceremony at Springfield Armory National Historic Site in Massachusets location, the U.S. Army officially turned over control of the Colonel Benton Small Arms collection to the National Park Service of the United States. Previously the U.S. Army technically had control over the small arms in the museum (but not the physical historic site itself). This led to some tensions between the Park Service and the Department of Defense despite Congress itself authorizing the creation of the site 40 years ago. Fortunately for both the National Park Service and the U.S. Army, the DOD realized...

January 17th is the anniversary of the birth of American statesman, philosopher, and scientist Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) in Boston. After apprenticing with his brother as a printer, Franklin settled in Philadelphia, published The Pennsylvania Gazette, and gained a wide circle of readers with his Poor Richard's Almanack (1732-1757). Entering civic affairs, he was eventually appointed Postmaster General for the colonies (1753-1774) while also dabbling in a variety of scientific pursuits. Before the Revolution, Franklin spent a total of 14 years representing the Pennsylvania Assembly in England, attempting to achieve reconciliation with the home country. Failing that, he was elected to...

Andrew Jackson isn’t the only US President to keep a pet bird in the White House. Teddy Roosevelt had a one-legged rooster and James Buchanan supposedly owned two bald eagles (because America). But to our knowledge, Jackson was the only one to have a swearing parrot. The bird’s name was Poll and was originally meant for Jackson’s wife, Rachel. But after she passed away, Jackson became the African Grey’s caretaker. So how did the parrot get a foul mouth? We can’t say for sure. But with what we know about Jackson—a man so tough and temperamental his nickname was “Old...