Free Republic

Crisis and upheaval have brought out the best in some (think of Ulysses Grant) and the worst in others (think of Vidkun Quisling).  This holds true of Christian churches and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).  In previous columns, my colleagues and I have raised red flags about the SBC, including corruption and leftward drift.  One sees this in executive leadership (see this about president J.D. Greear), in missions (see here and here), in the management of seminaries (see here), in the workings of the SBC's publishing company (see here and here), in its political advocacy (see here), in its gatherings (see here),...

Colorado Governor Jared Polis had a powerful response when he was asked about a Republican leader's comparison of stay-at-home orders to Nazism. During a press briefing Wednesday, a reporter asked Polis, who is Jewish, about criticism toward the stay-at-home orders put in place to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. "We're seeing a lot of rebellion out here against your orders, which have been called tyrannical against local health department orders, being equated to Nazism. How do you react to that, what do you say to those people who are clearly getting frustrated with this stay-at-home order?" the reporter...

As New York City becomes the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, the city is going into lockdown. Frontline healthcare workers are preparing for shortages of beds and equipment, and the USNS Comfort, a massive hospital ship, has arrived to help deal with the influx of patients. Samaritan's Purse, a Christian humanitarian organization that, among other things, brings medical professionals and supplies to war zones and disaster hotspots around the world, has set up a 68-bed field hospital in Central Park with 60 to 70 medical staff to treat coronavirus patients. The arrival of Samaritan's Purse was...

"There are no libertarians in a global pandemic." So goes the smug punchline of large-government advocates who point to the necessity of collective action in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. Without government, they say, we'd all be dead. Few libertarians would disagree. The hardcore libertarians at Reason magazine aren't spending their days fulminating over the evils of government-required lockdown orders in the face of a fast-spreading, deadly disease. That's because they, like all other sentient human beings, recognize that collective action is sometimes necessary. But here's the dirty little secret: Institutional failures during this pandemic are more indicative...

The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men. As naked...

Molly Jong-Fast @MollyJongFast So the states are basically governing themselves because our president doesn’t know how to president at all?

Apparently, a URL was mandatory, so I linked to FR. Has anyone else read this book? I inherited it from my grandfather, who was a cop with an extensive library consisting of all manners of philosophy, religion, myth, and history. I ask because I'm hardly thirty pages in, and I feel like this book was just written. Quotes shared here are cited as well as the can be via a smartphone and clumsy keypads. --- "Dedicated to: Mary Gracious Mother-Heart Of the World's Savior In Prayerful Hope Of The Conversion of Russia" Lastly, a paragraph; the one which made me...

An illegal immigrant accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in Brooklyn was cut loose thanks to New York’s “sanctuary city” policy and the Brooklyn District Attorney — despite a request by immigration officials that he be detained. Guatemalan national Miguel Federico Ajqui-Ajtzalam, 20, was arraigned Friday on a 20-count criminal complaint for allegedly raping the girl five times in 2018. But Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez’s office didn’t ask the judge to set bail, and Criminal Court Judge Hilary Gingold agreed to let him go on supervised release. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had issued a detainer asking the city to nevertheless...

We have long heard the phrase “The dumbing down of America” to describe the effort of the Democratic Party to indoctrinate, under-educate, immigrate and acclimate, to influence the coming elections to favor the Democrat candidates. Usually, when we think about this process, we tend to imagine it to be the poorly educated, illegal aliens, the huddled masses who dwell generationally at the bottom of the prosperity chain, looking for someone to blame their plight on. And such a movement does exist in those echelons as the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party strives to tilt the playing field by hook,...

Weeks after J.K. Rowling expressed disdain for a British employer firing an employee for stating sex is binary, another employer—this time in the U.S.—allegedly fired a freelance columnist for saying there are only two sexes. Jon Caldara, a regular columnist for The Denver Post, announced Jan. 17 in a Facebook post that the publication had fired him for his traditional, but apparently offensive and “insensitive,” beliefs about sex and gender. An editor’s note posted Jan.21 at The Denver Post confirmed Megan Schrader, editor of The Denver Post’s editorial pages, decided the publication no longer would run Caldara’s weekly freelance column,...

In terms of seriousness, I realize that this question ranks right up there with “Why is There Air?” (which was a pretty funny comedy album from back in the 60s). There have been hundreds of books and articles which have examined the “roots of progressive rage.” At times I believe that we have seen so much progressive fury that we have almost become inured to it. Like most people, I usually adhere to the philosophy of “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and progressives gotta rant.” However, during the holiday season, I ran across two instances that caused me to...

Abby Huntsman announced on Monday she’s quitting “The View” to join her father, Jon Huntsman Jr., on his Utah gubernatorial campaign. But Page Six is told that the campaign isn’t the real reason for her exit from the ABC fixture, which has recently been rocked by a breakdown in the relationship between Meghan McCain and her fellow panelists. “It’s an unhealthy environment — just the way that things are handled during shows and how people deal with each other,” said an insider familiar with Huntsman’s thinking. “It’s intense.” “Abby made an issue [to executives] about the overall environment. She’s felt...

Background: My family has an email list where we share articles and opinions. Someone recently circulated this opinion piece from the New York Times, and I am offering my response hoping for comments from my FRiends. Who Killed the Knapp Family? YAMHILL, Ore. — Chaos reigned daily on the No. 6 school bus, with working-class boys and girls flirting and gossiping and dreaming, brimming with mischief, bravado and optimism. Nick rode it every day in the 1970s with neighbors here in rural Oregon, neighbors like Farlan, Zealan, Rogena, Nathan and Keylan Knapp. They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose...

All fantasy worlds draw from reality, and the Star Wars universe is no exception. As fans flock to theaters to see “The Rise of Skywalker” this holiday week, most of their minds will be on the grand visuals, enduring characters and exciting storytelling, and not on how the films reflect our culture — including its prejudices. But if we take a moment to think about it, George Lucas’s galaxy is, and has always been, far, far away from being an original or an inclusive creation. Star Wars is shot with “Orientalizing” stereotypes — patronizing tropes that represent an imagined East,...

A Vermont state senator wants to ban on cell phone use for anyone under 21. According to WPTZ, Democratic Senator John Rodgers says the phones are a big factor in teenage driving deaths, but can also lead to bullying and radicalization.

RUSH: One of the things that I have made a point of over and over, and I have for many, many moons, is that most of us feel like we are being governed against our will. Obama, the Democrats win, and they govern against the will of the people. It’s a sinking sensation. And I have made the point over and over again that liberalism is not the majority of thinking in this country, and it’s not even close. And yet it appears to be the dominate way of thinking. So there’s a Gallup poll out here today filled with...

Even as The Economist drifts further and further into progressivism and away from the liberalism of its founding, it still claims to be liberalism’s true, authentic voice. The Economist fashions itself a liberal magazine, in the original sense of the word. The weekly was founded in 1843 to argue against the corn laws, which discouraged food imports with tariffs and other restrictions and kept domestic food prices high. It chalked up the repeal of those laws only three years later to “a fearless reliance upon the truth and justice of a great principle”: liberalism.Today we usually call the intellectual descendants...

A heartbreaking reminder about the prevalence of abortion, statistics compiled by Worldometers indicate that there were over 42.3 million abortions world-wide in 2019. The independent site collects data from governments and other reputable organizations and then reports the data, along with estimates and projections, based on those numbers. When contrasting the abortion numbers to other causes of death, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, traffic accidents and suicide, abortions far outnumbered every other cause. By contrast, 8.2 million people died from cancer in 2019, 5 million from smoking, 13 million from disease, and 1.7 million died of HIV/AIDS. Deaths by malaria and alcohol...

Liberals are melting down as #ItsOkayToBeWhite became Twitter’s top trending hashtag on Monday. The phrase doesn’t claim that it is “better” or “superior” to be white, or disparage any other races, simply that it is “OK,” if you are.

America made a huge stride in 2008 when voters picked Barack Obama, the first black man to serve in the nation’s highest office. But that means nothing to film director and TDS sufferer Michael Moore.