Free Republic

Catholic Sources and the Declaration of IndependenceREV. JOHN C. RAGER, S.T.D.The American Declaration of Independence, which is so admirable and dignified an expression of the American mind, is at the same time an accurate expression of the Catholic mind, medieval and modern. The general historical background, which projected the American Declaration of Independence, is well known. There has been much discussion, however, concerning the parentage, direct and indirect, of the political principles that make the American Declaration what it is, “that most wonderful work ever struck off at a given moment by the hand and purpose of man.” Two facts...

RUSH: Now time for a tradition, an annual tradition, and that is The Real Story of Thanksgiving from my book that I wrote back in the early nineties. I wrote two of them, actually. In one of the books I wrote, The Real Story of Thanksgiving. And reading from it has become something we do every year on the program because it's still not taught. The myth of Thanksgiving is still what is taught, and that myth is basically that a bunch of thieves from Europe arrived quite by accident at Plymouth Rock, and if it weren't for the Indians...

When Mitt Romney's second book, No Apology, came out a year ago, it looked like he was moving away from the far-right demagoguery of his 2008 bid for the presidency, and toward a more moderate centrism for the 2012 election cycle. (See "New and Improved Romney," Talking Politics, February 10, 2010.) But times change, and so does Mitt. A year later, with the Tea Party–fueled extremism of the 2010 midterms foretelling a rightward tilt to the GOP presidential primaries, Romney is tacking back — as evidenced by changes made to two sections of the text in the new paperback edition...

NEW YORK (AP) -- The developer of an Islamic cultural center that opened Wednesday evening near the site of the terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center says the biggest error on the project was not involving the families of 9/11 victims from the start. People crowded into the center, where a small orchestra played traditional Middle Eastern instruments and a photo exhibit of New York children of different ethnicities lined the walls. The enthusiasm at the opening belied its troubled beginnings. snip He called opposition to the center - which prompted one of the most virulent national discussions...

Activists tell The Daily Caller that The Walt Disney Company is refusing to re-air a 9/11-related docudrama, effectively burying politically inconvenient facts about the events which led to the 9/11 terror attacks, in order to protect the political future of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “The Path to 9/11,” first aired on ABC in 2006, portrayed President Bill Clinton’s administration as ignoring warnings and signs that Osama bin Laden and al Qaida were planning a major attack on the United States — a finding supported by The 9/11 Commission Report. But since 2006 Disney CEO Bob Iger has repeatedly refused...

If the UN should decide to recognize a "State of Palestine" in the biblical homeland of the Jewish people it would endorse a bizarre irony. Why? Because Palestinian national identity borrows so extensively from Jewish and Zionist sources as to virtually constitute historical plagiarism. "Palestine" emerged as an abbreviation of "Syria Palaestina." The name was imposed by Roman conquerors to obliterate the connection of Jews to their land after the Bar Kochba rebellion collapsed in 135 CE. During four hundred years of Ottoman rule, Arabs considered it to be part of Syria-Palestine, not a separate entity. A remote and neglected...

My son LOVES the Military Channel and really loves WW2 history. It is pretty much "All Nazi All Of The Time" on there that I have noticed. I have found the distinct lack of any docs that show the evils of Mao, Stalin, and others. It's now become a joke.....and I have mentioned this to my child. WHY all 'Hitler' and no 'Stalin'? I'm SURE it has to do with who owns the channel, no doubt.

The enthusiastic response Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received when he addressed Congress on May 24 came from both sides of the aisle. Democrats and Republicans both took part in the numerous standing ovations. Afterward, Democrats and Republicans made statements criticizing President Obama's positions and supporting Israel's. But perhaps it is not so surprising that the prime minister was able to attract such bipartisan support. His father accomplished something similar 67 years ago. In the summer of 1944, 34-year-old Benzion Netanyahu was the executive director of the American wing of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionist movement. One of Benzion Netanyahu's tasks was...

Unfortunately for those academics still in denial, much of what goes on within the Ivory Towers of academia, along with other educational institutions, can no longer be covered in darkness and hidden from the rest of the world. The internet, Youtube, blogging, phone cameras, and all the other media options now available make it impossible to hide the truth. Nonetheless, some of these folks still act like it's 1970 and believe . . .

... [Fadel Soliman's] new Arabic book, Copts: Muslims Before Muhammad, which he has been promoting all over the media, including al-Jazeera, asserts that, at the time of the Muslim conquest of Egypt (c. 640), the vast majority of Egyptians were not, as history has long taught, Christians, but rather prototypical Muslims, or muwahidin, who were actually being oppressed by Christians: hence, the Muslim conquest of Egypt was really about "liberating" fellow Muslims. Soliman's evidence is that the Arian sect, which rejected the claim that Jesus was coequal with God, was present in 4th century Egypt. Therefore, according to Soliman, the...

THE BAILOUT So along comes FDR. One of the very first things he did was issue an executive order basically outlawing the private ownership of gold bullion. US Treasury Gold Certificates were no longer legal tender when held by the general public, unless exchanged at the US Treasury or Federal Reserve Bank for other non-gold paper. The US Treasury could then transfer 6,000 metric tons of gold to the Federal Reserve as a token backing for the “full faith and credit of the United States”. Reportedly, the US Treasury sent gold certificates to the Federal Reserve in exchange for Federal...

In July, the (NEH) sponsored a workshop on “History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII” for college professors in Hawaii. Professor Penelope Blake, a veteran professor of Humanities at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., was one of 25 American scholars chosen to attend the workshop, but was reportedly disheartened to find the conference “driven by an overt political bias and a blatant anti-American agenda.” Professor Blake is now reportedly calling on Congress to implement better oversight over the NEH. In a letter addressed directly to her Illinois congressman, Rep. Don Manzullo, Blake documents conference details...

TEN REASONS WHY ISAIAH 53 CANNOT REFER TO ISRAEL Compiled by Jonathan Sacks The passage known as “Isaiah 53” actually begins at Isaiah 52:13 and includes the entire 53rd chapter of Isaiah. This passage speaks in detail of the life, suffering, and death of Messiah. (This passage is quoted below.) The overwhelmingly dominant Jewish view throughout history has been that this extended passage speaks of Messiah. (See “What Rabbis Have Said about Isaiah 53.”) Therefore, the Jewish view of the Messiah traditionally has included the understanding that the Messiah would suffer and die as the ultimate kaparrah (atonement) for the...

So Im in the middel of a debate between a group of left wing commies Very hard core I might add. The debate was touched off after a friend of mine from California who was a homeschooling mother of 3 kids came under attack by the commies. It was started off by an evil woman named vampiressontheprowlq who is known for calling freedom a form of fascism and advocating the destruction of America on youtube with her girlfriend and lover. Here are some excerpts of the filth I have recieved... Ray Bradbury wrote "Fahrenheit 451", from fresh thoughts in his...

<p>NewsletterShare Close this Share Box154 Comments | Post Comment.Wed Dec. 1, 2010 2:47 PM PST In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.</p>

In July 2010 the NEH sponsored a workshop for college professors at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii. The title of the conference was "History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War." As one of the 25 American scholars chosen to attend the workshop, Professor Penelope Blake anticipated an opportunity to visit hallowed sites such as Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial and the Punchbowl Cemetery and engage with scholars who share her interest in studying this often neglected part of World War II history. Instead, Professor Blake was treated to the most disturbing experience of her academic career, a...

During the grimmest most desperate times of the WWII, when greater nations were run over, collapsed, and capitulated in a matter of days, the Allies found themselves floundering in the face of tyranny and the brutality of the Wehrmacht. That is when, once again, the geographically tiny nation of Greece, but a nation with an awesome sense of doing what is right, refused to submit to tyranny - just as they had refused many times before in their glorious history.

In yet another attempt to assault the tea party movement, the left has a new weapon up its sleeve. A weapon its predecessors in totalitarian countries such as liberal Germany and liberal China have used frequently. Revisionist history. In this case it concerns an event in American history. the Boston Tea party. A revolt by colonists where a merchant ship carrying tea from the British East India company was seized and its cargo dumped overboard. This was all due to unjust taxation by British Parliament thousands of miles away. Taxation without representation as our founders put it which was considered...

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi is the dirtbag who was convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and murdering 270 people, including several children. While reading his Wikipedia article, I noticed that no one had yet placed him in Wikipedia's "Murderers of children" category. Not only would it be a good idea to apply that badge of shame to Megrahi; it's an accurate and appropriate use of the category. I made the appropriate edit. Along comes an uber-politically correct Wikipedia user named "Dougweller," who for some reason works diligently to cast Megrahi, the mass murderer, in...

Friday was the anniversary of the U.S. Bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Monday is the anniversary of its bombing of Nagasaki. The explosion of the Fat Man atomic device over Nagasaki is pictured. It rose eleven miles into the sky over Ground Zero. The important thing, though, is that it—together with the Little Boy device that was deployed over Hiroshima—killed approximately 200,000 human beings. And it ended the war with Japan. It is understandable that many Americans at the time were relieved that the long burden of the bloodiest war in human history could finally be laid down....

... Was it right for President Harry S. Truman to order the use of atomic weapons? As Al Smith used to say, let's look at the record. By the summer of 1945, Japan was clearly beaten, and yet it fought on with unmatched ferocity and tenacity. The last two major operations of the Pacific war, the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, were also the bloodiest. Between February and June of 1945, more than 72,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or lost in action. Japanese losses were even worse: 21,000 dead on Iwo Jima and 94,000 killed in the battle for...

... Bruce Cumings’s “Korean War,” [is] a powerful revisionist history of America’s intervention in Korea. Beneath its bland title, Mr. Cumings’s book is a squirm-inducing assault on America’s moral behavior during the Korean War, a conflict that he says is misremembered when it is remembered at all. It’s a book that puts the reflexive anti-Americanism of North Korea’s leaders into sympathetic historical context. Mr. Cumings is chairman of the history department at the University of Chicago and the author of “The Origins of the Korean War,” a respected two-volume survey. He mows down a host of myths about the war...

NEW YORK, MAY 28, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Pave the Way Foundation has received permission from the Vatican's semi-official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, to publish online its archived editions from 1938 to 1945. The New York-based foundation, a non-sectarian organization whose mission is to identify and try to eliminate obstacles between religions and to initiate positive gestures in order to improve interreligious relations, has been working to discover the facts regarding Pope Pius XII and his efforts to help Jews during World War II. As part of this effort, it has been working to retrieve and publicize as many documents as possible to...

I've written and produced video about the liberal whitewashing of black history for years, as has the Reverend Wayne Perryman, as has Frances Rice, as has Larry Edler, as has David Barton of Wallbuilders for even providing physical documentation, as well as many others. I've also said someone in the mainstream media would 'reveal' this revised history to the nation and act as if he or she discovered it. Despite the truth being out there for years, it’s probably not going to explode until some big shot news anchor gives us an “explosive expose” bringing us all those facts first,...

(CNSNews.com) - Conservative legal experts say a federal district judge in Wisconsin had no legal basis for declaring the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional – and predict the decision cannot stand. “If the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, then the Constitution itself if unconstitutional,” Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va., told CNSNews.com. The judge agreed with the atheist group, and based her decision, in part, on the fact that atheists “feel” marginalized by the law, which directs the president to declare a National Day of Prayer. Rep....

John McCain — who built his political persona and his 2008 presidential campaign around the claim that he’s a “maverick” — told Newsweek recently: “I never considered myself a maverick.” When POLITICO asked McCain about the contradiction at the Capitol this week, the Arizona Republican grew visibly irritated and snapped: “I’ve been called a thousand things. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”He said 48 percent of the homeowners in his state are underwater on their mortgages. He said he’s always “done what’s best for my state and the nation.” Then he said it again, adding, “People can consider me whatever they want.” And...

Political Content in this week’s new movies plus some old dvds and newly released blu-rays… new movies: Date Night, Letters To God… old dvds: Babel, The Strangers, The Brothers Bloom, The Mist, The Ninth Gate, Kingdom of Heaven… new blu-rays: The Relic, Jade

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- President Bush took the first step in a historic reduction of strategic nuclear weapons Tuesday, slashing the U.S. stockpile by two-thirds and winning a commitment from Russian President Vladimir Putin to "try to respond in kind." In a joint news conference at the White House on the first day of a three-day summit meeting, Bush said he had informed Putin "that the United States will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade." "Current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today's strategic realities,"...

The nation’s public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star state’s influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the state—and by extension, in much of the rest of the country—will be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May. Don McElroy, who leads the...

Compare these two screenshots I just took. Notice the word I highlighted in my google search. Brecht Forum is a communist group. It's not on wikipedia anymore. I had to shrink the text to be able to capture the whole page so you could see what's happened here. Not hard to figure out. I originally figured I'd just post the google cache for you to see, but that's been cleaned also.(or more likely, the wipe occurred long enough ago that the cache cached the newer page)

Communism was very popular in our grand parents day. He begins with talking about the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. And then there was a large march in the Hamptons. But the main word that puts it all in perspective is "Progressive." Progressives were in both parties. Just remember that when you hear progress and social justice, watch out.

In the days of the Soviet Union, children in schools learned that Russians invented the airplane and the refrigerator. They learned there was no God and that the glorious days of the union began and ended with Marxism. History texts were rewritten to eliminate any mention of Holy Mother Russia, the Orthodox Church, the Czars or Peter the Great. The new understanding of the world included “equality,” “fairness” with no differences in gender. Women worked the same as men. Children were raised in government day care and educated by the state. Loyalty to the Communist Party was demanded above family....

To the young Tom Hanks, history was as dull as an algebra equation. For Hanks — a classic baby boomer, born in 1956 — World War II was just a string of long-ago muzzle flashes in black-and-white. Yet he did have a more direct connection to the global cataclysm. His father had been a U.S. Naval mechanic (second class) in World War II. But Amos Hanks wasn't the type to tell his son tales of bravery and sacrifice. "Growing up, I always knew Dad was somewhere in the Pacific fixing things," Hanks says. "He had nothing nice to say about...

When it debuted the left instantly hailed it as an anti-war masterpiece. The book "The Last Train from Hiroshima," a popular history of the WWII A-Bomb drops on Japan, quickly accumulated much acclaim. This was "gleaming" wartime history according to The New York Times. It was so poignant and solemn that moviemaker James Camereon was said to be considering making a movie based on the book. It wasn't long, though, before major questions about the veracity of the tale were raised. The author of the book, Charles Pellegrino, used the experiences of at least three participants in the bombings at...

There is some histographical debate concerning the legacy of the California progressives. More pessimistic historians are inclined to believe that subsequent conservative administrations wiped out most progressive gains. Corporate domination of state politics, banished under the reign of Johnson, returned. During the 1930s and 1940s, corporate lobbyist Arthur Samish dominated state politics, at one point publicly posing with a ventriloquist's dummy to gleefully demonstrate that he was the puppet master who manipulated the hapless legislature. Governor Earl Warren admitted “On matters that effect his clients, Artie unquestionably has more power than the governor.” 1 Although Sammish was eventually imprisoned in...

He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. State education leaders say this may help students learn about more recent history in greater depth. "We are certainly not trying to go away from American history," Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told Fox News. "What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where...

A state board of only 15 people will vote on whether to revise U.S. textbooks to omit references to Daniel Boone, Gen. George Patton, Nathan Hale, Columbus Day and Christmas. The Texas State Board of Education will also vote on a proposal to substitute the term "American" with "global citizen." Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, is warning Americans to speak up before only eight people, with a majority vote, have a chance to literally rewrite American history. He appeared on the "Huckabee Show" to explain why the board's vote matters to the rest of America. Staver said...

Memory Hole Gets Crowded Malcolm A. Kline, February 9, 2010 Marxists believe that he who controls the past controls the future. It’s hard not to see that philosophy at work in the actions of various state boards of education around the country. Nevertheless, whether by accident or design, students who have not been taught, for example, the Constitution, will find it difficult to label anything unconstitutional. When my stepson was in high school, he was assigned the task of writing his own constitution. I suggested that he cut and paste the original to see if the teacher would notice. He...

Lady Elizabeth Butler's painting 'The Remnant of an Army' depicts Dr William Brydon, sole survivor of the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 As both Britain and America are plunged into an orgy of tortured introspection over what we are doing in Afghanistan, a further very important factor needs to be fed into the discussion, because it helps to explain not only why we have got into such a tragic mess but also why our armed intervention in that unhappy country is doomed. What we are hardly ever told about Afghanistan is that it has been for 300 years the...

It’s bad enough that President Obama could not be bothered to attend the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even acknowledge the role played by Ronald Reagan in the Wall’s demise as well as the downfall of Communism was highly insulting towards one of the greatest figures of our time, and reeked of petty and partisan mean-spiritedness. The Secretary of State’s remarks yesterday in Berlin completely erased from history the huge contribution played not only by President Reagan but also by the United States in confronting the Soviet Empire....

I received the following email, yesterday, on Facebook. Please note the lovely sentiments expressed by the writer. Isn’t his lack of any bigotry, touching? His grasp of the truth, monumental? James Miller November 8 at 6:50pm i hope all you fake imposter jews have another holocaust and this time they get all of you greedy bloodsucking leechs lol....you have the nerve to call yourselves a chosen race....you were crawling around the caves of Germany and Russia when indigenous nubians and kemetans were ruling the world.....the moors came up to europe for 700 years and brought ur people out of the...

Most thoughtful commentators bemoan the decline of bipartisanship and the coarsening of political discourse in the United States. The president promised to reach out to the opposition and hoped for 80 Senate votes for his stimulus bill. But he disregarded all Republican suggestions for the bill and acquiesced in its Pelosification into a groaning, creaking, Democratic gravy train. I remember, as a very young person, the august comparative tranquillity of the Eisenhower era, when the president requested national air time only for matters of indisputable national interest. He never abused this privilege, and there was no call for equal time....

This past week, Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church raised a strong voice of warning in defense of religious freedom... Those who see his talk solely, or even primarily, as a reaction to the Proposition 8 battle in California and its aftermath either have not read the talk or willingly wish to minimize its importance. SNIP It is fair to say that no other religious group in the history of the America has greater standing to rise to the defense of religious liberty than do the Latter-day Saints. SNIP Without meaning...

AP) A Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin's grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people to their deaths. A judge at a Moscow district court rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili's claim that Novaya Gazeta defamed Stalin in an April article referring to the strongman leader as a "bloodthirsty cannibal." A ruling against Novaya Gazeta would have been seen as an exoneration of Stalin more than 50 years after his death. It would have been a major setback to beleaguered Russian liberals who say the country must acknowledge the truth of...

Historical fiction differs from ordinary fiction in that it is presenting the past, history, in a novelistic format, with characters who ellicit sympathy or antipathy, in the context of a story that ought to be plausible against the known historical record. Monsieur Jacq is an Egyptologist. I can't begin to hold a candle to his knowledge of the reign of Ramses II. But one thing I do know is that the Egyptian evidence is mostly elicited from archaeological evidence, hieroglyphics on walls, papyrus, and from whatever contacts they had with other civilizations. That being the case, I could understand M....

NEW YORK – A government that is constitutionally required to offer each citizen a "useful" job in the farms or industries of the nation. A country whose leadership intercedes to ensure every farmer can sell his product for a good return. A nation that has the power to act against "unfair competition" and monopolies in business. This is not a description of Cuba, communist China, or the USSR until 1991. It's the vision of the future of the U.S, as mandated by a radical new "bill of rights" drawn up and pushed by President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass...

The top-selling Bible in North America will undergo its first revision in 25 years, modernizing the language in some sections and promising to reopen a contentious debate about changing gender terms in the sacred text. The New International Version, the Bible of choice for conservative evangelicals, will be revised to reflect changes in English usage and advances in Biblical scholarship, it was announced Tuesday. The revision is scheduled to be completed late next year and published in 2011.

How Did We Come to This? Robert Benne During last week's biennial Church Wide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the church affirmed major policy recommendations to allow for the blessing of same-sex unions (which practice will soon inflate to same-sex marriage) and the rostering of gay and lesbian pastors in partnered relationships. Earlier in the week it also passed by one vote—out of over a thousand total votes cast—a Social Statement on Sexuality that admitted there was no consensus on the moral evaluation of homosexual conduct, and offered no compelling biblical or theological reasons to support the...

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Josef Stalin was in the dock on Monday when a Russian court held a preliminary hearing in a libel case brought by his grandson over a newspaper story which said the tyrant had ordered the killings of Soviet citizens. Rights groups say the case shows a creeping attempt in modern Russia to paint a more benevolent picture of the Soviet Union's most feared leader, under whose rule millions perished. Stalin's grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, is seeking 9.5 million roubles ($299,000) from the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and 500,000 roubles from the author of an article published last April claiming...

This is what appears to anger today's Russian historical establishment: accounts of Red Army crimes on the march to Berlin; assertions by the Baltic countries and others in Eastern Europe that Soviet forces came as occupiers as much as liberators; any suggestion that Stalin's Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were anything but complete opposites and bitter enemies.