Free Republic

Jesus is the best thing I could recommend to anyone because He changed my life. That’s why I have the sticker on my car for anyone who is interested to see,’ Jalil Mashali said. A German taxi driver and Christian convert from Islam has been fined over a Bible quote sticker on his car’s rear window due to what his city refers to as unlawful “religious advertising.” Jalil Mashali was threatened with a fine of up to 1,000 euros in October due to a small sticker on his taxi car that displays a cross and reads, “Jesus – I am...

Jacinda Ardern may no longer be Prime Minister of New Zealand, but she was back at the United Nations continuing her call for international censorship. Ardern is now one of the leading anti-free speech figures in the world and continues to draw support from political and academic establishments. In her latest attack on free speech, Ardean declared free speech as a virtual weapon of war. She is demanding that the world join her in battling free speech as part of its own war against “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Her views, of course, were not only enthusiastically embraced by authoritarian countries, but...

Northwestern University has long been a school hostile to free speech. My alma mater was ranked 197 out of 203 universities for free speech in a major survey by FIRE. (Fortunately, my other alma mater, the University of Chicago, was ranked number one for free speech). This month showed why Northwestern developed a reputation for speech intolerance and a lack of ideological diversity. Northwestern University’s Associated Student Government suspended the funding for the College Republicans due to objections to posters for an event featuring writer and critical race theory critic James Lindsay. The justification was a poster featuring a skull...

Here’s an icebreaker the next time you end up speaking to one of your left-wing neighbors or colleagues. Or a telling question you can pose the next person who applies to you for a job. Apropos of nothing, inquire of this person along the following lines:Hey, I’m just kind of wondering … five years down the road … do you see your family and mine living in the same nation-state, under the same kinds of laws with equal rights and liberties? Or are you planning on people like us being driven out by angry mobs/ imprisoned for thought crimes /...

We’re still days away from the official beginning of the 2022 World Cup, and we already have our first tense encounter between a reporter and a Qatari official caught on live television. Danish reporter Rasmus Tantholdt was reporting live on TV2 when a group of men approached him in a golf cart, clearly upset with him filming. One man waved at the camera, but another tried to cover it up, which quickly escalated into a heated exchange.

JSE-listed pharmaceutical retailer Dis-Chem has issued a moratorium on hiring white people to improve its employment equity profile. In a letter to senior management dated September 19, founder and CEO Ivan Saltzman announced the moratorium, which includes external appointments and internal promotions. "It’s the ratio between white and black that counts. So, when no suitable black candidate is found, and a white is appointed, we need several blacks just to maintain the status quo, never mind moving forward," said Saltzman.

I am old enough to remember when Pride was a parade. Activists lobbying for marriage equality organized the day-long events in cities around the nation. I attended out of curiosity and a “live and let live” approach to marriage equality as a young adult, and I was sometimes shocked by the flamboyance and blatant sexualized behavior at the events. Gradually the parades turned into festivals that went on for a weekend or a week. You may have thought once the Obergefell decision legalized marriage equality nationwide, the Pride parades would go the way of the civil rights marches of the...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally denounced China, Russia, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Eritrea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan for "engaging in systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom." The specific anti-religious actions noted by Blinken include "discrimination against person espousing beliefs that contradict government policies, banning religious gatherings to worship, censoring dissenting views, and threatening or imprisoning those who resist the government's efforts to reeducate them. In far too many places around the world we continue to see governments harass, arrest, threaten, jail, and kill individuals simply for seeking to live their lives in accordance with their...

Dorian Abbot is an associate professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He spends his days studying climate change and extrasolar planets. In a piece written for Bari Weiss’ Substack, Abbot says he’s never been particularly political. He uses an online tool to decide who to vote for. But a few years ago he began to have concerns about academic freedom. He says he mostly kept his thoughts to himself for several years but that changed last summer. In the fall of 2020 I started advocating openly for academic freedom and merit-based evaluations. I...

Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.Dear Provost Susan Jeffords, ​​I’m writing to you today to resign as assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University. Over the last decade, it has been my privilege to teach at the university. My specialties are critical thinking, ethics and the Socratic method, and I teach classes like Science and Pseudoscience and The Philosophy of Education. But in addition to exploring classic philosophers and traditional texts, I’ve invited a wide...

One hundred and forty-six people in Halifax, Nova Scotia wait on a list to borrow a library book. A question hangs over them: Will activists let them read it? The book is mine — Irreversible Damage — and it is an investigation of a medical mystery: Why is the number of teenage girls requesting (and obtaining) gender reassignment skyrocketing in the United States, Canada, Scandinavia and Europe? In Great Britain, it’s up 4,400% over the last decade. Though it shouldn’t be, this has become a highly controversial area of inquiry. The book is an exploration of why so many girls...

Why is it that so-called "woke liberals" who always claim to be tolerant are always the least tolerant people of all? They are always so angry all the time, always going out of their way to take offense, and above all, they hate to see other people happy. Now Meat Loaf (real name Marvin Lee Aday) is a pretty affable kind of guy who never meant anybody any harm. Despite his vast success in the music business (over 40 million albums sold!), he's still a regular guy who likes people. Like many of us, he's a bit oversized and has...

Michael Wasserman wants to let his freedom fly — but his town of Long Beach, LI, isn’t having it. “I believe the city is trying to silence me because I’m pro-Trump,” he told The Post. The 62-year-old entrepreneur has become known in the area for plastering his home — along with his Porsche and Jeep — with a rotating variety of political flags and stickers. Now he has filed a $25 million federal suit — against the City of Long Beach, the chief of police, the city manager and specific police officers — after officials forced him to remove the...

I finished part one of this series by mentioning an even deeper level to our current predicament. I want to get to that, but first, I want to set that discussion up a bit more. I begin with this statement: Wokism is now the official state religion of the United States of America. By constitutional standards, this means something has gone wrong. The United States isn't supposed to have a state religion. The First Amendment specifically prohibits the establishment of a state religion. Yet it now has one, and its name is Wokism. Fuss about my characterization if you want—it...

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s name has been removed from a historic warship in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor by the Living Classrooms Foundation. The foundation’s removal of Taney’s name from the ship serves as the latest in a series of gestures meant to acknowledge past wrongs and signal solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. James Piper Bond, LCF president and CEO, said in a statement Wednesday that the organization was inspired to make the change, calling the court ruling “an abomination” and “great injustice”...

At best, people publicly compete to pretend they love strangers living ways of life incompatible with their own, the better to appear virtuous or at least to avoid punishment. At worst, policies that command love between strangers and across incompatible lifeways degenerate quickly into violence and persecution. Pride parades and calendars of ritual appreciation are undergirded by campaigns to eliminate political dissent, ranging from physical assault and property destruction to cancelling and doxxing. The new project shows the extent of the ruin that awaits down this path. As its proponents claim, even those who denounce hate and personally reject it...

Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States JANUARY 26, 2021 • PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS Advancing inclusion and belonging for people of all races, national origins, and ethnicities is critical to guaranteeing the safety and security of the American people. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) persons, families, communities, and businesses at risk. The Federal Government must recognize that it has played a role in furthering these xenophobic sentiments through the actions of political leaders, including references to...

State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, said Monday he was “horrified” by State Rep. Chris Dush’s comments comparing the Wolf administration’s efforts to slow the spread of covid-19 with the Nazi Party. During a committee hearing Monday, Dush, R-Jefferson, expressed his displeasure with what he perceived as Gov. Tom Wolf’s lack of transparency in releasing coronavirus data and information about the state’s business waiver process. “The press has been having a very difficult time fulfilling its responsibility to the public getting information out because this governor has repeatedly refused all sorts of information,” said Dush at a House State Government...

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz sparred with New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over several unanswered science questions. The spat began Thursday when Ocasio-Cortez criticized President Donald Trump for putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the task force responding to Coronavirus. Cruz responded by asking Ocasio-Cortez, “As you are speaking as the oracle of science, tell us, what exactly is a Y chromosome?”

A UK magazine called ArtsProfessional has published the results of a “Freedom of Expression survey” and the results are not good. The survey found that in the professional art world in the UK , self-censorship is the norm and pressure to stay silent on controversial issues is felt by most. A culture of self-censorship and fear of backlash from funders, colleagues and the public is convincing arts and cultural workers to stay silent on important issues, according to new research from ArtsProfessional… While about 90% of respondents agreed that “the arts and cultural sector has a responsibility to use its...