Free Republic

“If I pack up my toys and go home, there are people in red MAGA hats who would be saying, ‘Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.’” Kristen Soltis Anderson is losing faith in her party. And that should trigger alarms for Republican leaders concerned about the GOP’s long-term health. Anderson is a smart and telegenic young Republican pollster. She has specialized in studying how the party can improve its anemic performance among the Millennial generation, which will pass the right-leaning baby boomers to become the largest generation of eligible voters in 2018. Now she is wondering...

Despite a rousing speech by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who indicated that he would soon open an office in the state in pursuit of his presidential ambitions, California's Republican Party convention in Los Angeles, "Reclaim California," sounded a note of division, with three prominent Republicans declining to support the party's candidate for governor, amidst growing concern about the party's future as a statewide political institution. Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks), who lost to former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari in the primary election after being outspent in the closing weeks, declined to endorse Kashkari when asked by the Sacramento Bee,...

Karen Owen, a writer for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia, authored a recent column in which she sneered that “the term Christian conservative” is “an oxymoron.” How, she asked, “can we call ourselves – and practically insist that we are – a Christian nation when we seemingly ignore so many teachings of Christ?” So what examples does she cite to make her dubious case? Well, there’s the decision by greeting card giant Hallmark to alter the lyrics of “Deck the Halls” on a Christmas ornament from “don we now our gay apparel” to “don we now our fun apparel.”...

Fifty-six percent of Americans ages 18-29 disapproved of the Affordable Care Act, the poll found; when it was worded as “Obamacare,” the disapproval was 1 point higher. And less than a third planned to buy health insurance from an exchange... ..President Obama’s job-approval rating had dropped to 41 percent, about the same as the president’s approval rating among the population as a whole, with 54 percent disapproving. The poll also found that a surprising 47 percent of millennials would recall Obama if they could; 46 percent would not. For a group that has been among Obama’s staunchest supporters, these numbers...

We ought to think about the cultural roots of the budget crisis in Washington. The political left says the shutdown is all about an ideological tantrum of a handful of Republicans. Certainly, tea partiers have an ideology and vision about what ground rules would produce a more prosperous, freer and fairer America. But let's be honest. The gentleman in the White House, our president, is as hard core in his ideological dispositions as any tea partier. Each side believes America would be better off if it were run according to their vision. What's the crucial difference? As a tea partier,...

By voting with their feet, however, social conservatives are not giving up, they are taking a public stand -- which creates a forum to make their case more effectively. They should take this opportunity to argue that the practice of homosexuality has a negative impact not just on the family but also on individuals -- that it expresses a profound disrespect for a person’s biological identity. Biologically, physiologically, males and females are clearly counterparts to one another. The male sexual and reproductive anatomy is obviously designed for a relationship with a female, and vice versa. Homosexual practice thus requires individuals...

For some years now, we have been told about a major division within American conservatism: fiscal conservatives vs. social conservatives. This division is hurting conservatism and hurting America -- because the survival of American values depends on both fiscal and social conservatism. Furthermore, the division is logically and morally untenable. A conservative conserves all American values, not just economic ones. By "social conservatism," I am referring to the second and third components of what I call the American Trinity -- liberty, "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum." It is worth noting that a similar bifurcation does not exist...

August 31, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Many Americans have been shocked by reports about a recent pro-pedophilia conference in Baltimore in which psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, representing institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins, sought to present pedophilia in a sympathetic and even positive light. But why should this surprise us? Academic articles in scholarly journals have been presenting pedophilia in a sympathetic light for years, and, as Matthew Cullinan Hoffman noted, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released a report in 1998 “claiming that the ‘negative potential’ of adult sex with children was ‘overstated’ and that ‘the vast majority of...

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. The abstinence-only sex-education programs on which the federal government has been spending around $176 million a year have been shown to have zero effect. That's right: zero. "Abstinence-only" classes in public schools, funded by provisions of the 1996 federal welfare reform law, focus on the message of waiting until marriage. They do not teach about contraception or safe sex. But a national study that tracked 2,000 young people over several years has found no evidence that such classes as currently taught actually increased rates of sexual abstinence. It found that program participants...

Paris Hilton is at it again. The 24-year-old hotel heiress is the feature attraction in Carl's Jr.'s new Spicy Burger ad campaign, aimed at the horny male TV-watching population. Scantily clad in a one-piece leather outfit plunging down to below her navel, Hilton struts into an empty warehouse, licks her finger, then suds up herself and a Bentley automobile, as a stripper-styled "I Love Paris" rendition slowly plays in the background. At the end of the spot, Hilton bites the burger and sucks her finger clean. The commercial closes with Hilton's tagline flashing across the screen: "That's Hot." The spot...

Thought for the day If you believe in a truly libertarian society, your only way to success is in working to build a society based upon traditional morality, shame and chastity. Contradictory? Actually, no. Given a little examination, it turns out to be rather obvious; almost self-evidently true. If you want to live in a country where every man supports himself rather than looking to the taxpayer, where crime is rare and so massive police powers, ID cards and DNA databases are superfluous, you will not do so on the back of the destructive policies of social liberalism. Libertarians traditionally...