Free Republic

Since the Bolshevik Revolution, the clenched fist has been the left’s most visible symbol. In the ‘60s, it adorned posters and buttons and was adopted as a symbol of revolution by SDS, the black power movement, feminists and other Trotsky wannabes here and abroad. Now, it’s been resurrected by some in Occupy Wall Street. The symbolism couldn’t be more fitting. Fists are for smashing (institutions and traditions), bashing (heads) and pounding (square pegs into round holes).

Language barriers are obviously an impediment to communication. If one man speaks Chinese and another Swedish, it may be hard for them to settle even simple matters, let alone the deep issues of the day. Yet there can be language barriers even within a language, such as when people use ill-defined terminology. In fact, some debates rage on endlessly partially because people who have the same tongue are, sometimes unknowingly, speaking a different language. This occurs to me when I hear many arguments about Left versus Right. For example, it’s not uncommon for conservatives and liberals to debate whether groups...

Paul Weston’s latest essay concerns the apparent indifference of the British media and political establishment to racially motivated crime — unless, of course, that crime is committed by white people against non-whites... The mainstream media (MSM) have devoted a great deal of space to the Stephen Lawrence case of late. Many journalists have commented that whilst Britain was a racist country in the recent past, the Britain of today is a much more tolerant place. This may well be the case with regard to white-on-non-white racial crime, but what about the violent crime committed by non-whites on whites, and what...

<p>Lest you doubt that we’re headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within ten minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the “crazy things” he’s said and done.</p>

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You know these are interesting times when Glenn Beck, Dianne Feinstein, Rand Paul and the ACLU all agree on an issue. The issue in question is Subtitle D of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), headed to the president’s desk. These under-the-radar provisions, co-sponsored by Senators John McCain and Carl Levin, would allow for the indefinite military detention of any person alleged to be a member of Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces.” The provisions also apply to any person who supports or aids “belligerent” acts against the United States, whether the person is apprehended here or abroad. 
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"If Joseph Goebbels was around, he'd be very proud of the Democrat Party because they have an incredible propaganda machine." Those words of Congressman Allen West, R-Plantation, caused local Democrats and their Jewish supporters to shake and shiver with anger laced with a bit of politics. Frankly, I don't know which posture is more important to them. The Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and local Jewish organizations immediately responded to calls for action from their Democratic cohorts and sent out messages of outrage to West over his comments

The Billionaires of the Left aren't interested in making money. The reason is that they're Good People, and Good People Don't Tell Lies. Warren Buffett is a Good Person who wants to pay more taxes. How do we know? 'Cause he says so, any time the media ask him. That's proof enough, isn't it? George Soros isn't interested in making more billions. Soros is a Good Convicted Insider Trader, who tried to knock off the currency of Malaysia and the UK, impoverishing millions of people. When asked about that, Gyorgyi says somebody had to do it. See? He's a Good...

The current financial debacle in Europe and the near-bankrupt status of the United Sates have been brought about by an obsessive loyalty to statist doctrine and an inability to admit failure -- traits common to the left on both sides of the Atlantic. The current dilemma is the end-product of decades of uncontrolled spending and economic policies promoted not to benefit the people in the long term, but to maintain the power base of the dominant governing class. The path to insolvency taken by the countries of Europe and the United States has been on a parallel track. Facts and...

Imagine what would happen if America barged its way into a developing country, buttered up its homicidal dictator and agreed a back-of-the-envelope deal in which he signed over his nation’s mineral wealth in return for roads, railways and sports stadiums. Everyone would benefit, no? No. The problem is that the infrastructure turns out to be worth a hell of a lot less than the minerals. Fortunately, Washington has had the foresight to top up the dictator’s Swiss bank account. Problem solved! As for the mining operation, the Americans really don’t want to be bothered by minimum wages or trade unions....

The privileged Occupy kiddies of U.C. Berkeley were back in action again yesterday, play-acting at revolution to entertain their professors. The purported thesis of this particular Occupation is “more money for secondary education,” but that’s just a veneer (a very very thin veneer, as the above photo shows) for a more radical agenda....

I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings. I understand that there is a residual sympathy for service members, perhaps engendered by support for troops in World War II, or perhaps from when there was a draft and people with few resources to resist were involuntarily sent to battle. That sympathy is not particularly rational in today's world, however.

The left's worst crime in the Middle East is its craven love for tyranny, for grand empires built on race and religion [...] The left’s worst crime in the Middle East is its craven love for tyranny, for grand empires built on race and religion, over the national and political rights of the minority. These Apartheid states are all they care about. Their greatest effort has been set not on resolving the stateless problems of the Kurdish minority, on the national borders of Armenia or ending the Turkish occupation and settlement of Cyprus—but on adding yet another Arab-Muslim state to...

[snip]...Furthermore, in the interests of full disclosure, I should confess that for a long time I was a Democrat. But, in my own defense, I was never a liberal. For those of a tender age, I should hasten to mention that there was a time when it was possible to be one without being the other. So, for instance, I could be a registered Democrat while simultaneously opposing unilateral disarmament. I could be a Democrat and still believe that Whitaker Chambers was telling the truth and that Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg were lying when they denied being Soviet spies....

This holiday season is a time to examine who's been naughty and who's been nice, but I'm unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy. Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet, when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates. Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, "Who Really Cares," cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an...

The left is on the ropes. Their Keynesian tactics to “revive” the economy are making it far worse instead. Conservative Tea Party types pushing the Republican Party to the right and taking over the House of Representatives are making it difficult for tax-and-spend liberals to continue on their road to bankrupting the country. The Supreme Court is poised to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. President Obama is sinking in the polls. The European Union, the ideal welfare-state leftists used as a model for decades, is disintegrating. Pundits claim that if the election were held tomorrow, Democrats would lose the Senate and the...

"Citizen journalist Ringo captured this speaker at the Occupy Los Angeles camp a few days ago letting the cat out of the bag: After dismissing nonviolence as a dead end, he admits that for the Occupiers to achieve their goals, violence and bloodshed will be necessary: Here’s a transcript, starting at 32 seconds into the video: Occupy L.A. Speaker: “One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution, and Indian so-called Revolution. Gandhi, Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the...

OKLAHOMA CITY – Approximately 300 people gathered in Kerr Park late Monday afternoon as part of the national “Occupy Wall Street” movement which is spreading through the U.S. like wildfire. And many of them plan to camp and protest Wall Street, the Federal Reserve or other bastions of corporate power – indefinitely. “In the unfortunate instance that you are arrested, do not resist arrest,” warned an attorney acting as part of the Occupy OKC legal team. He went on to say that Occupy OKC is committed to non-violence. The Oklahoma City Police Department had so far been very courteous and...

The “Occupy� movement claims to represent 99% of the people (hence their motto, “We Are the 99%�). The US military stands for everything the Occupiers oppose; it is after all the force which imposes the evils of capitalism on the nation and the world.Wouldn’t it be interesting if, as an experiment, we arranged to have the Occupy movement and the US military each hold events in the same city on the same day — and then see which one drew more visitors? If the Occupiers truly represented the 99%, and if the military really were the musclemen for the corporations,...

Cheering Economic Terrorism – SEIU Getting Ready to ‘Terrify’ DC: Stephen Lerner at SIEU Meeting Outlines Rules for Creating a Crisis — We Want Their Kids to Hate Them, Name Enemies Like Glenn Beck, Shut Down Bridges, Long Occupations, Recruit Tea Party

I once had a conversation with a well-connected Democrat in Washington, D.C., with regard to lack of advertising in conservative publications. Without missing a beat, she said it was because "advertisers and corporate America are petrified of the far left. The executives at these companies fear that if they advertise in conservative outlets, the far left will harass them, boycott them, threaten them, and picket them forever until they give in to the thuggish behavior." I then pointed out that these same companies who for the most part shun conservative outlets are thrilled to advertise in far-left magazines like Mother...

I'm sure their whackadoo status doesn't really come as a surprise to most but you really don't understand the full extent of their idiocy until you see this "Proposed List of Demands For Occupy Wall St Movement!" which I paste below with commentary: Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental...

Why hasn’t there been a Tea Party on the left? And can President Obama and the American left develop a functional relationship? That those two questions are not asked very often is a sign of how much of the nation’s political energy has been monopolized by the right from the beginning of Obama’s term. This has skewed media coverage of almost every issue, created the impression that the president is far more liberal than he is, and turned the nation’s agenda away from progressive reform. A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda...

Obama’s family feud with the leftBy Sam Youngman - 09/28/11 05:00 AM ET “It’s like, ‘Well, gosh, we’ve got this historic healthcare legislation that we’ve been trying to get for 100 years, but it didn’t have every bell and whistle that we wanted right now, so let’s focus on what we didn’t get instead of what we got.’ That self-critical element of the progressive mind is probably a healthy thing, but it can also be debilitating.” — President Obama to Rolling Stone, September 2010 “I’m sorry I’m not sorry.” — Vince Vaughn in “Wedding Crashers.” A note to the professional...

It has been hammered home anyone who disagrees with Obama is a racist. Therefore, anyone on the left supporting a primary challenger is a racist and should be called on it. Ed

September 17 was supposed to be the Day of Rage, the starting point of an anti-capitalist revolution that (in theory) was going to sweep the country coast-to-coast. As I noted yesterday, “The plan is to protest in state capitals and major cities across the nation, but the focus of the revolution will be in New York, where a hoped-for 20,000 anti-capitalists will ‘occupy’ Wall Street.” I dutifully sent my operatives out to cover what were to be three of the largest Day of Rage protests — in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — so humanity would have a...

Major Update: The Obama White House will be burned down by green greed ($$$$) and fraudulant solar power investment. Ironic, isn’t it? It turns out that the bureaucrat responsible for overseeing Solyndra had direct financial ties to Obama and Solyndra: Steve Spinner, who helped monitor the Energy Department’s issuance of $25 billion in government loan guarantees to renewable energy projects, was one of Obama’s top fundraisers in 2008 and is raising money for the president’s 2012 reelection campaign. Spinner did not have any role in the selection of applicants for the loan program and, in fact, was recused from the...

Soon after I published an article questioning the global-warming orthodoxy, the world’s foremost hypocrite, Al Gore, informed anyone who still listens to him that my position is akin to racism. The wise course of action would be to ignore the rants of a man who desperately needs the world to remain fearful of carbon, the element on which all life on earth is based. If that fear were to vanish, how would he continue to rake in the millions needed for the purchase of his next beach house? But enough is enough. Why should I sit quietly and let...

Ever wondered why it is that Conservatives are called the "right" and Liberals are called the "left"? By chance I stumbled upon this verse in the Bible: "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, But the heart of the fool to the left." Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV) Thus sayeth the Lord. Can't get any simpler than that.

Don’t be fooled. These are not your friends or fellow patriots. They will try to lure you in as comrades. These are the Unions, Progressives, Communists, Marxists, Socialists, Anarchists – they bring the rage. They will organize and use the youth to rally. You are fodder to them and your life means nothing. They want to foment chaos and violence so the government has an excuse to clamp down on Americans. Don’t. Do. It.

In February, the National Interest published an article by Ian Kershaw called “The Ghosts of Fascists Past“: A prominent British government minister, Baroness Warsi, herself a Muslim, claimed just recently that Islamophobia has “passed the dinner-table test” in Britain and is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial. She warned of growing intolerance, prejudice and bigotry toward the Muslim faith and its adherents. . . . If we add to the mix the anti-immigrant feeling that is widespread in many parts of the Continent, then racism, it has to be admitted, is far from eradicated. How dangerous is it, given...

The point where we reach the limits of civil debate about policy is, like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous description of pornography, hard to define but you generally know it when you see it. That’s the only possible reaction to a blog post by Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner who wrote on Sunday to say the actions of the terrorists who murdered eight Israelis near Eilat last week were justified. Yes, you read that right.

The liberal-Left has many vices. But surely the most noisome one of all (in a crowded field) is its rank hypocrisy. If you’re going to take the moral high ground – as Lefties will insist on doing at every opportunity – the very least you owe the world in return if you have a shred of compunction, decency or intellectual consistency is to demonstrate more integrity than those you are impugning. And if you can’t do that, then bloody well shut up. In the last few months, you can’t have helped noticing, the liberal-Left media, led by the BBC and...

The Rage on the Left Is Just BeginningBy Juan Williams FoxNews.com Published August 19, 2011 If you are a right-winger who does not like President Obama and calls his policies “socialist,” you’ve got to hear what is going on among America’s left-wingers. In fact, you can even read it for yourself in The New York Times. Left-wing columnist Maureen Dowd has written several columns dripping with contempt for Obama since he struck a deal with Republicans to cut spending but chose not to increase taxes in order to lower our nation's debt. And Paul Krugman the Nobel Prize-winning economist has...

According to Real Clear Politics, everyone's least favorite Failed Messiah, Barack Hussein Obama, has a 46.6% approval rating. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html) It would not be a stretch to say that our Dear Leader's chances for reelection are slim. The economy is in shambles. Gas prices are through the roof. The housing market has ceased to exist. The stock market is more schizophrenic than the Middle East. The War on Terror has become a quagmire with no end in sight. Unemployment is at nightmare levels. Things are so bad there are unsubstantiated rumors that professional atheist Christopher Hitchens has started a prayer group....

Gee, who could’ve seen this coming? 20 leftist radicals were arrested today in the US House after they harassed Republican lawmakers and disrupted procedures. Far left members of National People’s Action took credit for the disruption. They’re outraged that they won’t be getting more of your money. The Washington Post reported: More than 20 protesters were arrested Monday afternoon after causing a disruption in the House gallery as lawmakers debated the debt-reduction deal negotiated by the White House and congressional leaders. Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said 22 protesters were arrested and charged with disruption of Congress.

Dear Friend, In this video commentary, I explain how Obama blew up the debt deal to appease the left. Soros and Co. are pulling his strings.

Last Friday morning, Anders Breivik burst onto the international screen when he carried out a monstrous act of terrorism against his fellow Norwegians. Breivik bombed the offices housing the Norwegian government with the intention of murdering its leaders. He then traveled to the Utoeya Island and murdered scores of young people participating in a summer program sponsored by Norway’s ruling party. In all, last Friday Breivik murdered 76 people. Most of them were teenagers. Although he has confessed to his crimes, there are still important questions that remain unanswered. For instance, we still do not know if he acted alone....

I want to thank Representative Nancy Pelosi for standing up and reminding Americans that the ethical core and the psychological heart of a progressive is to be a preening narcissist, camouflaged as a social redeemer. Thank you Rep. Nancy Pelosi for standing in front of the cameras and telling Americans and the world that Republicans, who say they want to cut government spending, are liars. Because it drives home the reality that you have burdened generations of Americans with an unaffordable health bill. You spoke forcefully to the cameras warning America that the Right wants to destroy food safety, clean...

Politics today is radically secularist and antiparticularist. It aims to dissolve what is left of traditional society and construct a universal form of human association that will constitute a technically rational system for the equal satisfaction of desire. Religion is to be banished from public life, ethnic and gender distinctions abolished, and a worldwide order established, based on world markets and trans-national bureaucracies, that is to override local differences in the name of human rights, international economic development, and collective security. Contemporary liberalism expresses and supports that new order. Not all members of our ruling elites adhere to liberalism, and...

Often the Left is so predictable. While Norway mourns the deaths of the 92 (so far) shooting victims, kook bloggers at FireDogLake, Democratic Underground, and elsewhere are already labelling the alleged killer to be "right wing." This meme appears to have started with a comment made by a Norwegian political science professor who speculated that the shooter might be "right wing." Even Sarah Palin is now being blamed for the shooting because the suspect reportedly favored the creation of a European Tea Party. The media keeps repeating the mantra that the shooter is "right wing." But what does it even...

On Monday, I blogged about a Jersey City gun "buyback" on The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance—my focus was on the ignorant cop collecting guns who was photographed with his finger curled on the trigger. At the time, the “buyback” proprietors did not release a number of guns collected, but did say it “exceeded expectations.” Now we find out how high they set those expectations: They collected 65 guns. None, of course, from criminals, unless somebody wanted to take advantage of the “No Questions Asked” policy and either cash in on a stolen gun or else dispose of...

Every society has its red lines. Areas that are off limits. Behaviors that are unacceptable. Lines that should not be crossed. And the left has progressively dismantled the red lines that constrain it, while seizing control of the infrastructure that marks out a society's red lines. By controlling that cultural infrastructure, the left can insure that all of a society's remaining standards are double standards. The inability to hold the left accountable for its actions is traceable back to this lack of standards. How does one call for accountability when there is no objective standard to measure the wrongness of...

To Wells, Jewish identity was an obstacle to the New World Order, but he was in denial about the fact that every cultural identity was an obstacle. So Wells too repeated the basic Socialist error of taking an unworkable premise, and assuming that it would be workable if only it weren’t for the Jews. Today, the existence of Israel is treated as an obstacle to world peace. Once again the left is possessed by the idea that if the Jewish question is finally resolved, a modern rational world state can come into being. The flip side of this childish and...

The Yesha Human Rights Organization on Tuesday sent a letter to chief state prosecutor Shai Nitzan demanding he investigate leftwing journalist Yonatan Shem-or over statements he made on the Hebrew-language news website MySay. The Yesha Human Rights Organization said Shem-or's comments were nothing short of incitement to violence against rightwing Israelis. ... Shem-or's article “fulfills the criteria to warrant a criminal investigation against the writer and against the website that published it.” The attorneys, comparing the article and reactions to it on the website to another case Nitzan has been involved in, said that “the talkback commentaries on this article...

Sunday was the first day of Sgt. Gilad Schalit’s sixth year in captivity. Schalit was kidnapped on June 26, 2006 and has been held hostage by Palestinian terrorists affiliated with Hamas in Gaza ever since. For five years, Schalit has been held incognito. His terrorist captors have permitted him to send but one letter to his family and released but one video of Schalit over this entire period. He has been denied visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross. He was clearly emaciated in the video. Over the past five years, Hamas has engaged in periodic indirect negotiations...

Many are caught up in the illusion of right and left, chasing their own tail, hoping to be free. Once you take a look at this chart, you may start chasing the right people....right out of office!! The matrix, once seen, fades like the mirage it is.

Earlier this week, New York Times columnist and Princeton professor Paul Krugman argued that folks on the Left were better able to accurately reiterate competing (ie conservative or libertarian) economic and political positions than, say, the Right could outline the liberal position. We will leave aside issues we might have with a Nobel Prize winning economist making such sweeping statements based on absolutely no facts. To a large extent, KrugmanÂ’s conceit is just part and parcel of the liberal hubris that they are smarter, better educated, and more empathetic than their political opponents (a conceit that is actually philosophically necessary...

Is this what the Left calls civility? The Facebook group "I hate it when I wake up and Sarah Palin is still alive" has grown to well over 3,000 members. 3,249 people to be exact. Over three thousand left-wingers wish to see Mrs. Palin die. And their group's official picture: Some of the comments underneath read: ...Don't forget about comments like these (swearing obscured):

Most have heard of Ecclesiastes 10:2 but did you know that Liberals are perfectly willing to change the Bible translation to their liking? The King James version has been around since 1611 King James Bible: A wise man's heart [is] at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left. Then the new INTERNATIONAL version in 1984 New International Version (©1984): The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. In 2007 the Liberals just could not leave this one alone and came up with a new translation so the...