Free Republic

There are few things in life as exquisitely pleasurable as watching the terminally silly fight among themselves, and, for those of us who have turned the practice into a spectator sport of sorts, this week certainly did not disappoint. On Tuesday, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait decided that he was tired of watching people he dislikes use the tactics on which he himself likes to rely, and, with 4,700 words of deliciously biting criticism, set off something of a firestorm. “The language police are perverting liberalism!” griped Chait. “The new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters...

In a Weekly Standard piece titled, “The ‘American Sniper’ Freakout: Why the Left Can’t Tolerate This Movie,” Mark Hemingway does a fine job of breaking down exactly why the Left either hates “American Sniper” or is dishonestly claiming it is a left-wing movie. It’s a thorough, must-read that perfectly lays out the case. Outside the context of the film itself, there is an additional reason the Left can’t tolerate Eastwood’s masterpiece: every act of apostasy, even one, must be punished. The Left cannot tolerate dissent. If just one thing sneaks through the institutions the Left is desperate to hold a...

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. — Charles Krauthammer Even liberals who've accomplished a lot in their lives and have high IQs often say things on a regular basis that are stunningly, profoundly stupid and at odds with the way the world works. Modern liberalism has become so bereft of common sense and instinctually suicidal that America can only survive over the long haul by thwarting the liberal agenda. In fact, liberalism has become such a toxic and poisonous philosophy that most...

The first step toward an in-depth understanding of adult behavior is to comprehend its origins in childhood. Whether adaptive or maladaptive, the enduring patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that define adult personality begin in the early years of life. In fact, our earliest experiences with caretakers and others, acting on inherited temperament factors, strongly determine our later personality traits, including those expressed in political values and beliefs. The dispositions of the liberal mind are no exception: his hopes and fears, beliefs and passions, values and morals are in great measure the legacy of his childhood from birth through...

Certain neurotic themes are dominant in the radical liberal mind’s perceptions of the world. All of them portray the citizen as a suffering child who is victimized, helpless and in need of rescue. All are evident in various liberal platforms. They represent the liberal mind’s transference of childhood dynamics into the world of adult relationships. As expressed in his most passionate political pronouncements, the radical liberal mind believes that: A very large portion of the population is suffering; they are suffering because they are deprived, neglected, exploited or abused. They are suffering because of certain injustices inflicted upon them. They...

(snip) Pseudo-idealism is a term coined by the Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith to describe apparently charitable behavior that on scrutiny is revealed as selfish, because the giver is engaging in it only so that he or she can feel good about him- or herself. It is a characteristic commonly found among the left, and it constitutes what the author Geoffrey Wheatcroft recognized as the left's inherent dishonesty. (snip)

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com. Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does...

One of the rarest and most important things a pope does is issue encyclicals. In the eight years of Pope Benedict’s papacy, he issued three encyclicals. In the 27 years of Pope John Paul II’s papacy, he issued 14 encyclicals. Since his ascendancy to the papacy in March 2013, Pope Francis has issued one. But Pope Francis is about to issue an encyclical to the world’s 5,000 bishops and 400,000 priests that tells us a great deal about him, about Latin America, and, most of all, about the influence of what has been the most dynamic religion in the...

I must say that for some decades now, the media have proven to be terrible weather forecasters, always finding the climate of hate on the right, and never seeing it on the left of the political map. My friend (who picked his moniker "Danube of Thought" from the late Romanian despot Nicolae Ceausescu) documents some of the coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy -- murdered by a Communist gunman: "Hatred and fanaticism, the flabby spirit of complacency that has permitted the preachers of fanatical hatred to appear respectable, and the self-righteousness that labels all who disagree with us as...

Wickedness has darkened this season of lights in Brooklyn. It is no surprise or accident that a ghoul like Ismaaiyl Brinsley bathed himself in messages of hate, racial division and anger and then chose to destroy lives. But Brinsley wasn’t alone in his racially soaked hatred of the police. For starters, a mob has Brinsley’s back. This seemingly disconnected mob has been on the prowl in the months since America learned of Ferguson, Missouri. They’ve smashed up windows of banks in Berkeley, burned up bakeries in Ferguson, and looted, burned, shot, robbed and killed across the nation. But such mobs...

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” - Aldous Huxley I like quotes. Quotes are wisdom for those with short attention spans. They are disregarded by many as irrelevant platitudes or obsolete; however, they are knowledge, often hard-earned and considered by their authors to be important enough to be passed on. I’ve chosen the above quote for today, not only because it is always relevant, but because we bear witness to a time where the political left of this country is trying...

Students at George Washington University signed a petition to deport one American citizen in exchange for one illegal immigrant. More than two-thirds of the students approached by Campus Reform agreed to sign the petition. Students at George Washington University (GWU) willingly signed a petition supporting the deportation of one American citizen in exchange for one illegal immigrant. “Please sign our petition for President Obama to deport one American citizen, in exchange for one undocumented immigrant,” read the petition. “Everyone must be allowed a shot at the ‘American Dream.’ Americans should not be greedy. Let us right the wrongs of...

How does one explain liberals’ relentless obsession with race? Democrats and left-wing activists clutch the notion of racism as America’s defining characteristic just as streetcorner drunks cling to their fifths of cheap booze. No matter what, neither community can unhand those bottles. In fact, this debilitating liberal addiction deserves a name: raceaholism. Advertisement Raceaholics like President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, New York mayor Bill de Blasio, overexposed circus barker Al Sharpton, Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, their allies, and their media enablers cannot stop talking about race. They refract almost every issue through that prism. According to them,...

Even as they publicly condemn Tea Party Republicans as hostage-taking legislative thugs, the truth is that some Democrats are quietly jealous of them. Think of it: The Tea Party gang gets to intimidate party leaders, threaten legislation, block nominees, shut down the government and default on the debt if they don’t get their way. They cause major trouble. Boy, does that sound good. The extreme right has power, and that’s something the left hasn’t had much of for a long time. But in the aftermath of the party’s disastrous midterm performance, it’s very possible that the Democratic Party leadership will...

If you don’t believe in climate change, you’re less likely to feel that the weather is getting warmer—and vice versa. That’s according to a study that analyzed how people remembered a particularly warm winter in the US in 2012. And they found those who believed in climate change remembered it being warmer, while those who didn’t thought it was colder. The research, published in Nature Climate Change, was carried out by three US sociologists—Dr. Aaron McCright of Michigan State University, Dr. Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State, and Dr. Chenyang Xiao of American University. …

Oakland school officials, under pressure from supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, have agreed to reinstate a controversial curriculum that includes a lesson comparing the convicted cop killer to the Rev. Martin Luther King J

Rob Stein is the founder of the Democracy Alliance, an umbrella a group that organizes the funding of left-wing causes by rich liberals and interest groups. In The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado by Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer, at page 7, Stein explains candidly what politics is all about for the Left: “The reason it is so important to control government is because government is the source of enormous power,” Stein continued. “One president in this country, when he or she takes office, appoints…5,000 people to run a bureaucracy, nonmilitary nonpostal service of 2 million people, who hire...

Wake Forest University kicked off the fall 2014 semester by instituting a campus-wide online system that has the potential to restrict free speech by allowing students and staff to anonymously file reports on any occurrences they deem biased or hateful. Known as the Bias Incident Report system , the online form does not specify the criteria for filing a report, nor does it explicitly define the word “bias.” Instead, students are pressured to submit a report anytime they believe they are encountering an incident of hate or bias — potentially opening the floodgates for students to report incidents without cause....

PJ Media has been covering the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division for years. This is the unit that will be investigating the shooting in Ferguson and deciding whether to charge the police officer with civil rights crimes. PJ Media had to sue Eric Holder to obtain the resumes of the lawyers he hired to populate this unit. No wonder. The “Every Single One”series at PJ Media revealed that all of Holder’s attorney hires were leftists, some even with a history of anti-police activities. Read the detailed biographies of the lawyers here. Why does it matter that the DOJ...

Pharoah, let my people go: How did ancient Egypt become a land of slaves building fantastic monuments to dictatorial leaders? The land of Egypt was rich and fertile, a seeming paradise for egalitarian living. Stephanie Pappas writes in Live Science about how despots “evolved” in ancient societies, but that’s a misleading use of the term; it actually was a series of bad choices by free people. She writes how Simon Powers at the University of Lausanne came up with a mathematical model to explain the shift from egalitarianism to despotism. Whether it actually explains them could be disputed, but he...