Free Republic

        Lyrics: The economy is shrinkingOur money is a jokeWe should go back to trading seashellsAnd just admit that we're brokeAnd our food supply is shrinking(yeah, yeah)But we continue happily(yeah, yeah)Building condos on farm land(yeah, yeah)And dumping sewage in the sea(yeah, yeah) Someone's talking 'bout a big ideaSomeone's talking 'bout a higher visionEverybody's on the runLookin' out for number oneAnd your big ideas don't fit Big ideas in the shrinking worldBig ideas in the shrinking worldBig ideas in the shrinking worldWell you make us real nervous with your big ideas Our water is shrinkingAll the pipes...

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, and also for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India.  He wrote classic poems and stories which include (among many others) "The Jungle book", a children's book of short stories which contains the famous story "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the poems "Gunga Din" and "Mandalay". He also wrote the novels "The Man Who Would Be King" and "Captains Courageous", as well as his two most famous poems, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" and "IF__".  He was born in India, and...

The rush to get married matches the rush for businesses to cash in on tourists. "It's a gold rush," said Santiago Corrado of Visit Tampa Bay. "We have the weather, a mix of history, of art, of culture, the beaches are nearby, you've got theme parks." Out-of-town same sex couples were once shunned by the state's 2008, voter-approved anti-gay marriage amendment. Now they're being coveted by businesses and tourism leaders. "You could get married at the aquarium, you could get married at the yacht starship, you could get married at any of our great parks," said Corrada.

Stop the Madness of Un-Thanksgiving John Horvat II 26 November As we gear up for the Thanksgiving holidays, many are preparing to engage in a strange new ritual that is crowding out the traditional turkey and pumpkin pie. The ritual, of course, is the extension of Black Friday shopping into Thanksgiving Day. It is a practice so shocking that we might as well create a new holiday—un-Thanksgiving—since nothing could be more contrary to the intention of the real holiday than its present evolution. This year, media will again report on frenzied shoppers mobbing retail stores in search of super bargains....

It is critical for us who would preach the Gospel to ponder what sorts of presuppositions our listeners bring to the conversation. Today, sadly, there are many trends that have poisoned the culture and make our task much more difficult.But difficult does not mean impossible. And thus it helps to describe modern mindsets, not to despair of them, but to describe them with some insight, rather than be vaguely aware of them. And being more clear on the presuppositions that people bring we can better speak our message and also go to work on those presuppositions and ask people to...

Given the length of this article, I have condensed it down to the more salient aspects. I would encourage you to read it through in its entirety at the above link. (snip) I am going to do this in the greatest economy of words possible, synthesizing books, interviews, and numerous articles so that you can understand the prophetic nature of what is happening, and about to happen in the United States, and indeed, the whole world, as central to the Storm that is now hereÂ… (snip) COMMUNISM IS NOT DEADIndeed, the harlot is merely being used by the beast to...

I have always been a believer. Among other reasons, that’s because I think rationality demands it.When I talk about “belief” here, I mean it in a very broad sense, which is not synonymous with “Catholic” or even “Christian”; Sikhs, Hindus and Zoroastrians might all qualify, and I myself was raised in the LDS church and not (according to Rome’s decree) validly baptized until the age of 25. When I speak here of “believers,” I am distinguishing those who are prepared to believe in more than what eye can see, ear can hear or elaborate scientific machine can detect.I wouldn’t...

It has been called "America's most disturbing holiday". Black Friday is the day when millions of average Americans wait outside retail stores in the middle of the night in the freezing cold to spend more money that they do not have for more cheap Chinese-made products that they do not need. It is a day when the rest of the world makes fun of Americans for behaving like "rabid animals" and "zombies" as we indulge in a tsunami of greed. It truly is a shameful orgy of materialism for a morally bankrupt nation. It is being projected that approximately 140...

American Christian author Dr. Frank Turek notes that Cambridge-trained Ph.D. Stephen Meyer's New York Times best-seller, "Darwin's Doubt," is creating a major scientific controversy. Because Darwinists absolutely hate it, Meyer's well-reasoned argument that an intelligent designer is the best explanation for the evidence at hand elicits irrational accusations that Meyers is anti-scientific and guilty of endangering sexual freedom everywhere. (Darwin's Doubt, Turek, Townhall.com, July 09, 2013) Meyer writes, "Neo-Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design are not two different kinds of inquiry, as some critics have asserted. They are two different answers – formulated using a similar logic and method...

This recalls a brilliant quote by Lady Margaret Thatcher: "People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is TONS of room at the top..."

For as long as I can remember, I've always thought about waking up obscenely early the morning after Thanksgiving, to check out the goings-on at the toy or department store. Not because I wanted to shop, but to visit the safari -- it's always struck me as quite the exotic mystery, why anyone would want to walk away from a calm morning with family or friends to fight for a parking spot. Of course, now indelibly imprinted in our brains are news images of packed stores on Thanksgiving night itself. For as long as I can remember, my friend...

“Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18 In “Against the Heathen,” early Church Father Athanasius reveals that pride and haughtiness preceded man’s fall into idolatry and paganism. A haughty spirit led them to make light of higher things, and deliberately disregarding what they knew to be true they began to seek in preference things in the lower or natural dimension. Thus they fell into worship of self, sexual pleasures and acquisition of status and things to the living God and higher things. The truth as to evil said Athanasius, “….is that it originates, and...

...many of the greatest scientists in history have been metaphysical dualists who accepted the existence of matter and spirit. Why this idea should be considered “unscientific” is never fully explained. It is sufficient to know that materialism is the dominant philosophy of today’s scientific establishment. Any scientists who dare to publicly disagree with materialism aren’t going to gain any career advantage. Materialism, in fact, has become a political power in the academic world

The media has been having a prolonged belly laugh at a group that had the temerity to suggest that the world would end today. Of course it's ridiculous when Harold Camping predicted that the world will be over today, but not when Al Gore predicted that the North Pole would melt in five years. True believers in Gore would say that's the difference between science and eschatology. But when bogus science warns us of an apocalypse if we don't follow the tenets of their ideology, then how much difference is there anyway? Of course no one expects MSNBC to do...

An Open Letter to My Physicist Friend RE: Darwinism and the Problem of Free Will By Jean F. Drew Dear A — Regarding the discussion of “free will” at www.naturalism.org, you wrote: “I am surprised to find a ‘scientific naturalism’ so similar to the utmost banality, shallowness and false superficiality of the ‘scientific materialism’ that I [had] to learn in … school [during] the communist regime.” I think this is a very striking statement; and I understand what you mean. I read in your Book of the Living Universe long ago that you were aware of the problem of “tampering”...

The scientific popularizers—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and others—don’t go in for nuance, as David Hart has pointed out again and again in our pages. They cheerfully champion the most reductive sort of materialism, including the idea that free will does not exist because our minds are just neural networks that function according to physical laws. Why are they so enthusiastic about this idea that our minds are just neural networks? It’s not at first sight a very attractive belief. After all, free will provides a sense of self-possession, and it’s the source of the drama in life. We...

Mike Zhang considered himself serious boyfriend material. He knew what to order at an Italian restaurant. He could mix a tasty margarita. And he always volunteered to carry his girlfriend's handbag. Then came the deal breaker. Zhang, a 28-year-old language tutor and interpreter, couldn't afford an apartment in the capital's scorching property market. Rather than waste any more time, his girlfriend of more than two years dumped him. Zhang's misfortune is not uncommon. China's housing boom has created a woefully frustrated class of bachelors. Home prices in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai have easily doubled over the last year...

There is a quote from Archbishop Oscar Romero that both traditional and progressive Catholics love to latch onto, because each feels Romero was speaking for them: A church that doesn’t provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a Word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, what kind of gospel is that? Preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed do not light up the world! In truth, Romero was speaking for Christ. His words are a challenge to all of us, from the happy-clappy-God-is-Love-so-let’s-not-judge mushes to the stern God-is-Justice-and-you’re-going-to-hell prunes. It is...

You will often hear Jews say, with pride, that Judaism rejects a missionary or evangelizing stance. This is true in the narrow sense that Jews do not pursue converts to Judaism, but it is deeply misleading in another. The German Orthodox rabbi, polemicist, and scriptural expositor Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), a towering figure in modern Jewish thought, taught insistently that God brought the “Abrahamitic nation” onto the stage of history for “the salvation of the world through Judaism.” As he wrote in his Torah commentary, this was to be accomplished “by example and admonition,” with the Jews as “God’s...

A recurring theme of the Obama White House is "sacrifice." The president has repeatedly stressed the need for us to tighten our belts. He has informed us, "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ..." During the campaign, his wife told us that we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. Shortly after the election, the president said that "[e]verybody's going to have to give. Everybody's going to have to have some skin in the game." This emphasis...