Free Republic

He was the kind of person American conservatism seeks to enable — the self-made man; the radical, pajama-clad individual; the author of his own destiny. And he idealized women as women, in a way the left no longer allows.Ironically, when given the choice of going full-throttle into hard-core pornography, and creating the kind of content the market now demanded, or bowing to mainstream traditional standards that shunned nudity on supermarket shelves, Playboy made the more conservative choice. Even in the battle to survive commercially, there were lines Hugh Hefner would not cross. He thus took his place alongside the very...

Libertarianism.org, a project from the Cato Institute, claimed “Islamic teachings are consistent [with] many libertarian principles, such as tolerance, property rights & individualism” in a tweet on Tuesday. In the post linked in the tweet, Libertarianism.org also praised Ibn Khaldun as a libertarian hero, describing him as “the most consistent of the many free-market economists in Islamic history,” despite the fact that Khaldun promoted slavery. “Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated,”...

n 2002, I got it into my head that I wanted to attend what was then described as the “Old Latin Mass.” I had been reading in the dingy corners of the Internet, which is always dangerous, and these Latin Mass people seemed able to explain some of the gap between the grand ideas I was studying in a medieval-theology class at my college and the worship at most Catholic parishes, which, to me, seemed little different from the Lutheran services I’d seen as a teenager. One Sunday morning I got in my car, and life has never been the...

Kentucky governor Matt Bevin said last week that he hopes the Kentucky legislature won’t consider a transgender-bathroom bill in the upcoming legislative session; according to Bevin, “the last thing we need is more government rules.” He’s absolutely right, and I think it’s worth offering a conservative defense of transgender rights — which ought to be a conservative issue. On the American political spectrum, conservatism is the mind-your-own-business ideology. I know smoking is unhealthy, but I enjoy smoking, and my health is none of your business. I know motorcycles can be dangerous, but I like the wind in my hair; whether...

In the spectacular 2005 film, V for Vendetta, the globalist elite establish a tyrannical government in the United Kingdom after launching a number of false flag terrorist incidents. The libertarian freedom fighter ‘V,’ breaks into the main government communications center in London. After seizing the TV station, V goes on the air and broadcasts to the people of London, in what is probably one of the greatest anti-government scenes in film history. During the broadcast, V states, among many other things, that “the truth is, there’s something terribly wrong with this country.” The same can be said for the US...

Leading libertarian thinker Charles Murray is now urging a halt to the immigration of lower-skilled workers, because the cutoff of extra labor may persuade employers and political leaders to revive declining communities of lower-skilled Americans. “I have had to undergo a great deal of rethinking on all of this this year… [now] I want to shut down low-skill immigration for a while,” Charles Murray told a D.C. event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies. “The thing that has gotten to me over this year … has been the very simple idea that the citizens of a nation owe something...

Ron Paul Institute Senior Fellow Adam Dick, in a Wake Up Call Podcast interview posted on Friday, argues that Libertarian Party presidential and vice-presidential nominees Gary Johnson and Bill Weld have drug the term “libertarian” through the mud with their advocacy of anti-libertarian positions on matters ranging from their choices for Supreme Court appointments to PATRIOT Act reauthorization to foreign intervention to the use of terror watch lists to outlaw people possessing guns. Dick addresses the Libertarian presidential ticket during an in-depth discussion of his new book, A Tipping Point for Liberty: Exposing and Defeating Leviathan Government. During Dick’s...

I just hope everyone there – and all of you out in blogland – keep in mind Bryan Caplan’s Ideological Turing Test: Strive to model your opponent’s thinking as human and well-intentioned, not demonic. I always do, even though everyone is stupid.I love the above quote for a number of reasons, not least because, although laced with irony, it gingerly hints at a fundamental ignorance among vast swathes of the population. Not simply of economics, which, admittedly, is a seemingly abstruse, esoteric area of knowledge that routinely confuses even credentialed experts in their chosen field, but of simple cause and...

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.