Free Republic

As the discourse rolls on regarding former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick‘s decision to take a knee during the national anthem–and the movement his protest ignited–support for the blacklisted athlete-cum-activist is sprouting up across the country. Yesterday afternoon, on Twitter, some of that support came from U.S. Army Infantry Officer and U.S. Military Academy at West Point alumnus, Spenser Rapone. Rapone posts under the handle @punkproletarian and is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Under the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick, he tweeted an image of himself raising the left clenched-fist of solidarity, support and resistance as well as the message, “Communism...

Just days after The National Park Service (NPS) was forced to shut down its Twitter activity over two retweets the Department of the Interior deemed inconsistent with the agency’s mission, the Twitter account for Badlands National Park in South Dakota seems to have gone rogue, tweeting numerous scientific facts about climate change that have since been deleted. The first tweet about climate science came at 11:40 a.m. local time Tuesday. It said: “The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of December 2016, 404.93 ppm.”

The following is an email from Mark Nugent of Sacramento california who at the age of 16 was forced into the mental health system against his will, branded mentally ill, stripped of his trust fund by his liberal parents and forced on SSI. The SSI program was originally intended for those liberals branded too old or too stupid to work. It pays very little, about $695 a month and to receive it one must not hold assets or property worth more than $2000.  People with disabilities who receive SSI [Supplemental Security Income] payments continue to be the nation’s poorest citizens....

Congresswoman Barbara Lee expressed her sympathies with those mourning Cuban president Fidel Castro. He died Friday at age 90.

A former National Security Agency employee convicted of selling defense and communication secrets he gained during his career has been released from federal custody 30 years after his arrest. The sentence for Cold War-era spy Ronald Pelton, 74, ended on Tuesday. He had been placed on home confinement several months ago to serve out the final stretch of his sentence and was released Tuesday from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, agency spokesman Ed Ross said. Pelton, a former NSA intelligence communications specialist, was arrested in November 1985 on charges of selling information to the Soviets about signals intelligence...

A married Army general on Tuesday introduced his spouse at a Pentagon event that featured lots of top brass, including Defense Secretary Ashton Carter as the keynote speaker. What made this seemingly routine introduction noteworthy is that Brig. Gen. Randy S. Taylor introduced his husband, Lucas. “My husband Lucas is sitting up front here,” Gen. Taylor said of the man in the same row as Mr. Carter, Army Secretary John McHugh and other senior officials. He said Lucas has subjugated his own career to support the general’s frequent moves over an 18-year relationship.

The latest version of a top-selling study guide for the Advanced Placement European History exam explains the French Revolution with a chart which identifies Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a fascist and pairs him with the Ku Klux Klan.“Barron’s AP European History” (7th edition) makes the claim, intended for consumption by American high school students, on page 168. The chart attempts to compare modern American political affiliations with the various factions involved in the French Revolution. The chart moves politically from left to right.The far right of the chart is labeled “fascist.” The authors demonstrate modern-day “fascists” by pairing “Clarence...

For many politicians and pundits, the Charlie Hebdo tragedy is cause to stoke the fires of terror — and worse. Here are a few sentences I should not have to write but apparently must, all the same: Taking the life of another human being is an absolutely terrible thing for a person to do. By definition, murder is a crime — perhaps the most heinous one there is. No one should be physically threatened, much less killed, for sharing an opinion. Everyone should have the right to say, write, draw or otherwise express whatever sentiment they’d like without fear of...

David Greco, cofounder and executive director of ARTE Inc., said Wednesday he’s confident police will be able to identify the individual who vandalized one of the organization’s “Heroes & Icons” posters at City Hall earlier this week. The unidentified vandal scrawled the word “asesino,” the Spanish word for “murderer,” in black ink atop the shoulder of the Argentine Marxist-Leninist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Greco said a police report has been filed and City Hall security personnel are reviewing surveillance camera footage. The exhibit, which went up Sept. 22 to honor Hispanic History Month, includes approximately 40 posters depicting Latino historical...

Can you imagine the reputation of a literary figure surviving the disclosure that he worked (however briefly and ineffectually) for Hitler's Abwehr? Yet Ernest Hemingway worked for Stalin’s KGB and nobody (among the “smart set”) seems to bat an eye. According to KGB defector Alexander Vassiliev "the 42-year-old Hemingway was recruited by the KGB under the cover name "Argo" in 1941, and cooperated with Soviet agents whom he met in Havana and London. This comes from a book published in 2009 by Yale Univ. Press (not exactly a branch of the John Birch Society.)"Castro's revolution," Hemingway wrote in 1960, “is...

It is a long-standing and often repeated lament on the right that academia and college campuses are self-declared enemies of conservative thinking broadly, and the Republican party specifically, and in a treacherous but overt and unrepentant manner. So it comes as no surprise to website The College Fix that some colleges are offering course credit for promoting socialist causes and participating in socialist recruitment on campus. Not a surprise, but still an outrage. Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) are coordinating with administrators to help YDS Leader program participants get college credit for their activities. According to The Fix, activities which...

“When women go wrong men go right after them.” – Mae West “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill wrote this over a century ago. During my junior year in high school, the nuns asked about our plans for after we graduated. When I said I was going to attend State University, I noticed their disappointment. I asked my favorite nun, “Why?” She answered, “That means you’ll leave four years later a communist and an atheist!” What a giggle we girls...

On Sunday, Lincoln Center Out of Doors hosted the third of five days of “New York City Honors Pete Seeger,” or Seegerfest, as the events are called. This was the festival’s main event. A concert featured artists singing songs Seeger was associated with, like “The Hammer Song,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and, of course, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” The artists included old-time folkies like Judy Collins, who opened the program, Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, the popular children’s singer Dan Zanes, banjo master Tony Trischka, Tom Chapin and the Chapin sisters, and Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. The artists...

David and Jason Benham said Thursday they were disappointed that HGTV pulled the plug on "Flip it Forward," due to debut in October. After the network announced the show was upcoming, the lobbying group Right Wing Watch labeled David Benham an "anti-gay extremist" and reported on statements he made against homosexuality and gay marriage.

If the United States wants to avoid falling like the Roman Empire, it must avoid “overconsumption” and distribute resources equally, according to a study funded by NASA. “The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent,” reads the NASA-funded report published in the Ecological Economics journal. “Two important features seem to appear across societies that have collapsed,” the study adds. “The stretching of resources...

Despite 100 years of historical evidence that communism leads to food shortages, genocide, and police states, the Oklahoma Communist Party, in a recently publicized ad, has promised the exact opposite... No where in the ad are mentions of the atrocities that took place in the Soviet Union or China in the 20th Century, nor the human rights violations that still take place in North Korea and Cuba to this day. Instead, all the readers see are smiling faces, just so happy that communism has finally taken over the US... And, for whatever reason, the picture saying that racism will end...

First Lady Michelle Obama says Jane Fonda is one of her role models, and that she admires her political savviness. During an interview with People Magazine, Obama listed "Hanoi Jane," as one of the people she would like to look and live like when she's 70 or 80 years old. "There’s Jane Fonda, a beautiful, engaged, politically savvy, sharp woman," Obama said. The comment is likely to enrage Vietnam War veterans who still remember how Fonda, now 76, went to North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery. Fonda denounced U.S. military leaders as "war criminals"...

That's the title of a new book by Fred Jerome, a compilation of essays from these and other noteworthies: This anthology features essays by revolutionary thinkers, activists, and artists-including Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, civil rights activist Angela Davis, incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu Jamal, and economist Rick Wolff- addressing various aspects of a new society and, crucially, how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, living in a society that is truly fair and just. I suppose that's one way to describe their vision. I might ask the question, "fair and just for whom"?...

For a long time, the communist left has used the word "progressive" to cloak its agenda. This phenomenon is hardly new. It has gone on since at least the 1930s, not long after the American Communist Party was founded in Chicago.I know this well, having written at length on the subject. You might have thought this strategy died with the USSR, when we won the Cold War and once >defeated communism. Unfortunately, thanks to the left's takeover of education and media, it continues unabated, and is moving full steam ahead in Barack Obama's fundamentally transformed America, where the far left...

4. Make Everything Owned by EverybodyHoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock of this country leads to such horrific inequality. "Capital stock" refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets. This detachment means that there's a way easier way to collectivize wealth ownership than having to stage uprisings...