Free Republic

Even if racism were wiped out tomorrow, we'd still need to address pervasive racial wealth inequality. Here's why. Although the Civil Rights Act, the landmark legislation which just reached its 50th anniversary, made great strides in desegregating the economy, economic discrimination is still widespread, and anti-discrimination legislation alone can never rectify the economic damage inflicted upon blacks by slavery and our Jim Crow apartheid regime. The Civil Rights Act was a mild reform, all things considered, but one conservatives fought with vigor and one many conservatives are still bitter about to this day. When the Civil Rights Act passed in...

In her recent post at the Nation, Michelle Goldberg attempts to place the dust-up over #CancelColbert into a broader frame of what she calls “radical anti-liberalism.” She writes: “One of the most striking characteristics of ‘60s radicalism was its aversion to liberalism,” wrote Alice Echols in Daring to Be Bad, her history of radical feminism. “Radicals’ repudiation of liberalism was not immediate; rather, it developed in response to liberalism’s defaults—specifically, its timidity regarding black civil rights and its escalation of the Vietnam War.” Something similar, albeit on a much smaller scale, happened after Bill Clinton ended welfare as we know...

RUSH: Salon.com. This is a huge piece here. This prints out to six pages. "Why You're Wrong About Communism: 7 Huge Misconceptions About It (and Capitalism) -- Most of what Americans think they know about capitalism and communism is total nonsense," and as I read through this... I'm not gonna read the whole thing to you, but we will link to it at RushLimbaugh.com. As you read through this, if you take the time to do it, this could very easily be the kind of gobbledygook that's being taught in college. "As the commentary around the recent deaths of Nelson...

Is communism making a comeback? On its face, the question seems more than a little absurd. The Berlin Wall came down over 24 years ago. We are more than 22 years removed from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. All that remains are the Stalinist museum pieces of North Korea and Cuba, the former an isolated country known mainly for its absurd dictator and starving population, the latter a beautiful island stuck in a 1950s time warp due to backwards economic and social policies. Even China, the one major power still ruled by...

As the commentary around the recent deaths of Nelson Mandela, Amiri Baraka and Pete Seeger made abundantly clear, most of what Americans think they know about capitalism and communism is arrant nonsense. This is not surprising, given our country’s history of Red Scares designed to impress that anti-capitalism is tantamount to treason. In 2014, though, we are too far removed from the Cold War-era threat of thermonuclear annihilation to continue without taking stock of the hype we’ve been made, despite Harry Allen’s famous injunction, to believe. So, here are seven bogus claims people make about communism and capitalism. 1. Only...

Though it’s been well documented that opposition forces in Syria are mostly run by Islamic terrorists—mainly Al Qaeda—Congress has secretly approved U.S. weapons flow to what officials describe as “moderate” Syrian rebel factions. The problem with this is that there are no “moderate” rebel forces in Syria, according to a number of reputable news reports, both domestic and international. In fact, the New York Times published a piece last spring that confirms Islamist rebels—including the most extreme groups in the notorious Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda-aligned force—are running the show in Syria. “The Islamist character of the opposition reflects...

<p>What if there were a fourth branch of government that would allow the fans of “Duck Dynasty” to overturn Roe v. Wade, repeal Obamacare and pretty much nullify any federal law or Supreme Court decision they don’t like, based on the support of as little as 12 percent of the nation’s population? And what if that fourth branch already existed in the American constitutional order, just waiting to be properly realized?</p>

Excerpted from "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA" Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past. It’s not news that the major US media are run by and for big business, or that the major media companies are themselves big businesses. Twenty years ago,...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie strode to the microphones in Trenton Wednesday night and took an hour of reporters’ tough questions about a plot by staffers to punish Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor by snarling his city’s traffic for four days. Penitent, occasionally defiant, Christie insisted he didn’t know about the scheme. But he said he took full responsibility for the scandal, apologized to the citizens of Fort Lee and promised to get to the bottom of what happened. Oh wait. That’s not what Christie did at all. The famously fearless governor canceled his one public appearance of the day, ignored...

Yes, nepotism, carpetbagging and cruelty to her sister hurt -- but Cheney’s troubles show a movement near its end. OK, Liz Cheney was a carpetbagger from Virginia who had little to sell in Wyoming besides her father’s connections. Still, Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter was not nearly as ludicrous a Senate candidate as Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, or Joe Miller of Alaska, or Sharron Angle of Nevada, or Joe Buck of Colorado, or … well, you get the point – all of whom won their 2010 Tea Party primaries against respectable conservative mainstream Republicans. That was 2010. On Sunday the...

By shifting the spectrum of debate, here's how America's rightward march has been normalized throughout history. From Nixon to Reagan to Gingrich to Bush to Paul Ryan and Chris Christie today, leaders who’ve shifted America to the right have been aided by moderating misrepresentations. In the case of Reagan, it was not just the man, but conservatism itself that received the flattering reinterpretation. That was a difference that mattered; it goes to the heart of why Reagan is the American right’s touchstone. But the more general process of misrepresenting and reinterpreting increasingly radical ideological figures as if they were normal,...

Your guide to dealing with relatives with awful views this long weekend. A special "Obamacare train wreck" edition Once again, Americans everywhere are spending a wonderful day with their families, being thankful for things, and also probably getting trapped wherever they are for days because of storms and mass nationwide flight delays and cancellations. But while family is a wonderful thing, sometimes people in your family hold very different beliefs than you do about important things like race relations and Islam. Once again, I am here with your guide to arguing intelligently, or at least coherently, with your right-wing relations....

Washington Post political blogger Chris Cillizza has discovered President Barack Obama’s “biggest problem.” It is “fanatical Republican opposition to his agenda and a money-captured political system that gives a minority party a great deal of power to act on that opposition.” Haha just kidding, no, it’s not that, it’s “Jon Stewart.” You know, the funny cable show talking guy. The one who does the jokes that you like. What makes Stewart a problem is that he has been strongly criticizing/making funny jokes about the Obama administration’s major healthcare #fail this week. Cillizza explains: “Stewart dedicated the entire first 10 minutes...

Barney Frank spent 32 years in the U.S. House before retiring in January. In recent years, he helmed the House Financial Services Committee during the 2008 financial crisis, became the first member of Congress to marry a same-sex partner while in office and helped lead the charge for a ban on anti-gay firings (so far stymied) and post-crash financial reform (that law now bears his name). He’s currently writing a book. In a Monday afternoon interview, Frank predicted the endgame of the debt-ceiling showdown and defended his push in Congress for an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would have left out...

It’s three years away, but the ongoing government shutdown and debt ceiling debate makes it clear that Democrats need to be thinking now about a candidate able to effectively counter the Tea Party caucus in Congress — which thanks to gerrymandering, isn’t going anywhere until 2020. While the Republican field is already loaded with possible candidates — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush III and Bobby Jindal – the Democratic field is apparently sealed: Hillary Clinton. RealClearPolitics finds Hillary getting 61 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary against Joe Biden (11), Elizabeth Warren (7),...

A House minority from white districts want to destroy the first black president, and the GOP majority abets them. On the day the Affordable Care Act takes effect, the U.S. government is shut down, and it may be permanently broken. You’ll read lots of explanations for the dysfunction, but the simple truth is this: It’s the culmination of 50 years of evolving yet consistent Republican strategy to depict government as the enemy, an oppressor that works primarily as the protector of and provider for African-Americans, to the detriment of everyone else. The fact that everything came apart under our first...

In a recent interview with Salon, outspoken progressive Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) hailed the rise of what he called “stealth socialism” through America’s recent monetary policy decisions.Asked by interviewer David Dayen whether the financial system has become “safer” in the years since the financial collapse and subsequent government interventions like 2010′s Dodd-Frank bill, Grayson praised the Federal Reserve for its “unconventional” policies that have “put us back on a low-level track toward growth.”Asked about the Fed’s expanding balance sheet, the Florida Democrat said: “We’ve had a government takeover of the bond market. Stealth socialism’s been created. Government simply ends up...

An entire generation has dismissed The Boss' music as lame "dad rock." Here's why they're all wrongEvery few weeks or so, I’ll be talking to someone at a bar or club or house party, and the conversation will inevitably turn toward Bruce Springsteen. The exchange is usually as follows: BAR PATRON/PARTY GUEST: So, what kind of music do you listen to? ME: Oh, a little bit of everything … blues, jazz, funk, Bruce Springsteen (brief pause) … you know, my tastes are super eclectic. BAR PATRON/PARTY GUEST: Um, why do you like Springsteen? ME: So, you don’t like Bruce Springsteen?...

Huron Chief: What has Magua done to fire the forest that we may burn? Last of the Mohicans 1971 When they sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind; Hosea 8:7a K’Ehleyr: Don’t play the wounded Klingon for me, Duras, you don’t do it very well. “Star Trek: The Next Generation: Reunion (1990) When I saw this post at Salon I couldn’t believe my eyes: The right’s black crime obsession Conservative media’s total fixation on black-on-black and black-on-white crime isn’t going to end. Here’s why Seriously Salon you are playing the “race obsession” card, Seriously?The left spent a full year...

Link only.