Free Republic

Out promoting his new film “The Hateful Eight,” longtime libertarian Kurt Russell opened up again about his politics, this time to the Daily Beast, where he pointed out an obvious fact: that Bill Maher is nothing close to a libertarian. “I’m not a Bill Maher libertarian,” Russell said. “That’s faux-libertarianism. He doesn’t know what it is. I like him, and he’s a nice guy, but seriously, that’s not libertarianism.”

Who lost the libertarians?” It’s a question you hear a lot from conservatives of late. The reason should be obvious to anyone who has followed the conservative movement’s internecine intellectual frictions over the last decade — or decades. Self-described libertarians are a minority, even among the ranks of people one could properly describe as libertarian. On many, or even most, contentious public-policy issues — economics, gun rights, health care, free speech, regulation, constitutional interpretation — most support for the libertarian position actually comes from people who describe themselves as conservatives. In other words, conservatives tend to be libertarian, but libertarians...

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Thursday that parents should not be forced to vaccinate their children against diseases like measles or mumps. However, she said she also believes schools should be free to make vaccinations for communicable diseases a requirement for attendance, saying families have to "make that trade-off" for themselves. Fiorina told reporters after the event that "when you have highly communicable diseases where you have a vaccine that's proven, like measles or mumps, then I think a parent can make that choice." California, where Fiorina ran for a Senate seat against Democrat Barbara Boxer in 2010, recently...

Glenn Beck certainly did not hold anything back concerning how he feels about Donald Trump regarding his performance during Fox News’ August 6 debate, calling the billionaire a “son of a b**ch” (via The Hill): Conservative radio host Glenn Beck called Donald Trump a "son of a b*#ch," and panned his performance in Thursday night's GOP presidential debate. On his Friday broadcast, Beck argued that the GOP front-runner was a "big loser" in the first showdown between Republican candidates. He is the most arrogant candidate next to the candidate called Barack Obama,” he said. “I mean, there’s nobody I’ve seen...

Of those running for president, who will give this speech? “Ladies and Gentlemen, my administration will implement a series of economic policies to cause the economy to grow at an average rate of 4 percent or more a year. Growth of 4 percent-plus per year will create jobs at a faster rate than the growth in the labor force and provide hope for those who had despaired of finding a good job again. At a growth rate of a little over 4 percent per year, real incomes for all of our citizens will double in only 17 years. (At the...

In 2005, I changed my mind about climate change: I concluded that the balance of the scientific evidence showed that man-made global warming could likely pose a significant problem for humanity by the end of this century. My new assessment did not please a number of my friends, some of whom made their disappointment clear.At the 2007 annual gala dinner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based free-market think tank, the master of ceremonies was former National Review editor John O'Sullivan. To entertain the crowd, O'Sullivan put together a counterfeit tale in which I ostensibly had given a lecture on...

Leftism [including all forms of collectivism] is a juvenile mentality in which the adherents want what they want and cannot be troubled with limitations and consequences. They think that their unworkable ideas will work if everyone believes in them. Given that it is essentially a belief system that is not amenable to logic, reason or evidence, it is necessarily dogmatic. Those who disagree are a threat; the mere existence of contrary thoughts cannot be tolerated and must be quashed at all costs. And, oddly enough, is a closely related cadre of religious dogmatists who, in their infantile mentality, blasphemously posits...

Conservatives often find themselves at odds with the libertarian crowd. However, is that anger really warranted? As President Reagan once said, “If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” True conservatives and libertarians, let’s not pretend there aren’t fakers on both side, all agree on the fundamentals: limited government, personal responsibility, and economic freedom. Neither group wants the government interfering in our daily lives and telling us what we can and cannot do. Now there may be slight disagreements on how that plays out in the policy arena, but we should not allow...

A ballot issue in Florida this November will be "Amendment 2", a measure that would legalize medical marijuana in the state. Crist and his liberal ally, attorney John Morgan, are proponents of the ballot measure, while current GOP governor Rick Scott is against it. WFTV9 reports: Crist has changed parties and changed stances on gay marriage, abortion and medical marijuana. He said he will vote yes on Amendment 2. “I do support it,” Crist said. “Rick Scott opposes it; I don't know what else to tell you.” Critics think medical marijuana was pushed onto the ballot by Attorney John Morgan...

Obama has made mistakes but so did Bush by invading. There's no good case for U.S. military intervention now. Though many claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan on foreign policy, too few look at how he really conducted it. The Iraq war is one of the best examples of where we went wrong because we ignored that.In 1984, Reagan's Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger developed the following criteria for war, primarily to avoid another Vietnam. His speech, "The Uses of Military Power," boils down to this: The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests...

s a de-facto declaration of war. The measure, which was introduced several months ago by Senators Lindsey Graham, Bob Casey and Joe Lieberman, supports continuing to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The resolution advocates using methods other than containment to stop Iran, including exerting economic and diplomatic pressure. Senate Joint Resolution 41 “rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran.” Senators expressed their fears regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “We know that Iran would create access for terrorists – access for them – to these nuclear weapons, making the Middle...

This week we cover everything from the futility of New York State's Conservative Party-from William F. Buckley's idealism to a third rate patronage mill-to the phone hacking scandal roiling Hollywood, to the reason why Corey Booker might not have done such a swell job as mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

Libertarians warned for years that government is force, that government always grows and that America's police have become too much like an occupying army. We get accused of being paranoid, but we look less paranoid after heavily armed police in Ferguson, Missouri, tear gassed peaceful protesters, arrested journalists and stopped some journalists from entering the town. One week before the rioting began, Fox News aired my documentary on the militarization of law enforcement, "Policing America." That show didn't stop some left-wing commentators from making the bizarre claim that libertarians like me have been silent about Ferguson. I can't force them...

There's an old rule in journalism: All you need are three good examples to prove a trend. And by that measure, writer Robert Draper had more than he needed to declare a new "libertarian moment" in American politics. In a New York Times Magazine cover story, Draper made exactly that case. His chief evidence: Young people are more libertarian today, and libertarian ideas are having a renaissance on the right. Also, self-described "libertarian-ish" Sen. Rand Paul's star is on the rise, thanks in part to national exhaustion with foreign interventions. Plus: recent victories for legalized weed and gay marriage. All...

Long before billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel dreamed up the idea of a floating libertarian island nation, a 24-year-old Yale grad student named Jason Sorens proposed a far more down-to-earth experiment for those who wanted to live the limited government lifestyle: that a critical mass of “freedom-loving people… establish residence in a small state and take over the state government.” The “Free State Project” call to action was in 2001. By 2003, five thousand people agreed to take part and they held a vote to decide which low-population state would be the staging ground for the libertarianvasion, which would be...

The Roberts Court certainly seems like a conservative juggernaut. And, yes, from campaign finance to race to religion, it has moved the law dramatically to the right. But Wednesday's Supreme Court decision on cell-phone privacy shows that this isn't the entire story. In a number of significant areas of law, a majority of the Roberts Court will line up behind rulings that are not so much conservative as libertarian, often with a surprisingly progressive bent. That is certainly true of Riley v. California, in which Chief Justice John Roberts, on behalf of his unanimous colleagues, concluded Wednesday that police may...

An adviser to Pope Francis says Catholicism is incompatible with libertarianism. He's right. At least by one National Review writer's definition of the free market. It should come as no surprise that Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga's recent comments on American libertarianism have stirred a bit of a furor in free-market circles. On American zeal for preserving laissez-faire economic systems, the Honduran Cardinal had the following to say at speech on June 3 in Washington, D.C.: The elimination of the structural causes for poverty is a matter of urgency that can no longer be postponed... The hungry or sick child of...

It began in the early 1940s. FDR had launched the New Deal’s collectivization of America, and a small but prescient group of libertarian and conservative intellectuals were in rebellion – such thinkers as Richard Weaver, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, John T. Flynn, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand, to be followed a decade later by the likes of Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, and Murray Rothbard. Out of their cerebral and activist efforts there began the movement to repeal the overweening statism that was infiltrating America from Europe via Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. The infamous year...

In an interview with Salon, the president of American Atheists reviewed the decision of the American Conservative Union (ACU) to rescind his organization’s invitation to CPAC. David Silverman charges that the ACU is both “pretending” that “atheists aren’t relevant” and that “Christianity still holds water in American society.”When asked about his reported “pledge” to “attack the very idea that Christianity is an important element of conservatism,” Silverman responded that while “I did say that I was going to attack the idea that Christianity and conservatism were inseparable,” he was not waging “an attack on people of faith.” “I wanted to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)DENVER — Colorado welfare recipients are using ATMs located inside marijuana retail shops to withdraw cash. The money was given to them by taxpayers to help their families survive, but an exclusive Fox31 Denver investigation found some cash benefits most likely going toward marijuana purchases. FOX31 Denver asked the Colorado Department of Human Services for its “Quest card” database of Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cash transactions for the month of January, 2014. That is the first month in which Colorado marijuana dispensaries were regulated and open for recreational sales. The FOX31 Denver investigative team matched the addresses of EBT cash...