Free Republic

Three Americans who helped take down an alleged gunman aboard a train bound for Paris will speak today from the home of the U.S. ambassador to France. Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler will speak to the media a day before being received by French President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace.

Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. -- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

France's exhaustion with its unions has found its voice in a 21-year-old student, Sabine Herold, who is challenging the silent majority to revolt against the strikes crippling her country ... In the middle of the Iraq war, she and her friends demonstrated outside the American embassy in support of military action, a bold step considering the overwhelming opposition to the war in France. "There is a systemic opposition to America in France," she said yesterday.

HAILED as the new Joan of Arc on a crusade to stop France’s powerful unions holding the silent majority hostage over pension reform, Sabine Herold, 21, a politics student, has become an instant heroine to those who are fed up with seeing their country crippled by seemingly endless strikes. Shouting into a microphone to loud applause, Ms Herold delivered a stirring message to the tens of thousands of followers who gathered in the Place du Chatelet in the centre of Paris at the weekend, to hear her speak on behalf of her association, Liberté, j’écris ton nom. "How numerous we...

<p>During his years in Congress, Dick Armey was a firm and incisive defender of conservative values. Individual constitutional liberties against the government were very much among them. In his December 6 farewell address at the National Press Club, the retiring Republican Majority Leader warned of the "awful, dangerous seduction" of sacrificing our freedoms for safety in our war to defeat "this insidious threat that comes right into our neighborhood."</p>