Free Republic

Libertarianism goes mainstream By: James Hohmann April 7, 2013 06:50 AM EDT Stereotyped for decades as pro-pot, pro-porn and pro-pacifism, libertarians are becoming mainstream. Fair or not, Ron Paul epitomized to a swath of voters the caricature of a goofy grandpa who invests in gold, stockpiles guns, sees black helicopters whirling overhead and quotes Friedrich Hayek. His ride into the sunset — combined with an evolving electorates’s move away from hot-button social issues — gives a new libertarian guard the opportunity to rebrand their governing philosophy as more reasonable, serious and compatible with the Republican Party. Led by Sen. Rand...

Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed the overwhelming support of American Jews during his presidency, and the reasons are clear. In his three-plus terms from 1933 to 1945, he led the war against Hitler, supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine... Starting in the 1960s, a flood of books appeared with self-evident titles like “No Haven for the Oppressed” and “While Six Million Died.” But the most influential account by far was David S. Wyman’s “Abandonment of the Jews,” published in 1984. Wyman considered numerous parties responsible for America’s tepid response to the Holocaust, including a badly divided Jewish community, a nest of virulent...

“A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port,” wrote the teachers in charge of organizing the curriculum about the Boston Tea Party. “Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities.

NBC is developing a drama series about George Washington, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “Washington: A Life.” In that book, author Ron Chernow wrote that the country’s first president “ranks as the most famously elusive figure in American history, a remote, enigmatic personage more revered than truly loved.”... The network has ordered a script from David Seidler... “There’s George Washington the national icon, starting from the dollar bill with his supposed mouthful of wooden teeth, and then there’s the George Washington who had an adulterous affair with his best friend’s wife. The George Washington obsessed with social status, finely...

CBS News has released a clip of an interview by Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes on Sep. 12 with President Barack Obama that indicates Obama knew the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was a premeditated terror attack--and suggests the White House later deceived the public by blaming protests against an anti-Islam video. CBS chose not to air the clip for over a month--but did air Obama’s attack on Romney that same night. Obama told Kroft that the attack in Benghazi was different from the violent protest at the U.S. embassy in Cairo: "You're right that this is...

The whole world changed on Tuesday. At least, that is what many would have us to believe. Smithsonian magazine, published by the Smithsonian Institution, declares that the news released Tuesday was “apt to send jolts through the world of biblical scholarship — and beyond.” Really?What was this news? Professor Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School announced at a conference in Rome that she had identified an ancient papyrus fragment that includes the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” Within hours, headlines around the world advertised the announcement with headlines like “Ancient Papyrus Could Be Evidence that Jesus Had...

JERUSALEM -- Archaeologists have unearthed a trove of artifacts dating back to the time of the biblical King David that they say closely correspond to the description of Solomon’s Temple found in the Book of Kings. Hebrew University archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel said the find “is extraordinary” first because it marks the first time that shrines from the time of the early Israelite kings were found. In addition, two small, well-preserved models discovered in the excavations closely resemble elements described in the Bible. The multiyear excavations took place at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem, adjacent...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials. Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a top aide to Osama bin Laden. Mohammed is...

Pre-Order your copy today! Release Date: April 10, 2012 (See special pricing below) The Jefferson Lies Book - Thomas Jefferson stands falsely accused of several crimes, among them infidelity and disbelief. David Barton now sets the record straight. Having borne the brunt of a smear campaign that started more than two centuries ago, the reputation and character of American president Thomas Jefferson show considerable tarnish, as lies and misunderstandings have gathered on his legacy. Discover the truth about Thomas Jefferson! Find answers to these common questions: Jefferson and Sally: Did he really have children by his slave, Sally Hemings? Jefferson...

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...