Free Republic

Matt Walsh, that’s who. So, who is Matt Walsh? Some pinko-commie? A left-wing tenured professor lurking in the halls of academe? Perhaps he's a lunatic, trans-racial fraud tortured by the white guilt boogey man? No, he’s a conservative Catholic blogger with a big following. Walsh recently penned a column entitled, No, America Is Not a Great Nation. The concept of American greatness is perennially under attack from elements of the Left. However, it has become fashionable for certain pundits on the Right to join the Left in the funeral dirge. American politics and government, specifically the entrenched Left-wing bureaucracy, are...

BY ALL APPEARANCES, Bob Valenti is your average upwardly mobile suburbanite. The 40-something father of two has a couple of advanced degrees and a high-paying job at a high-flying technology company. He has an aggressive retirement plan and plenty socked away in college funds for his kids. As of last year, he also has a plan for surviving the end of the world as we know it. A few years ago, Valenti (who asked that his real name not be used, for reasons that will be clear soon enough) and his wife traded their Chicago townhouse for a gorgeous $800,000...

You have to hear what this young black educated female has to say about the liberals and Democrats. Needless to say, I am very impressed by this young woman:

The pace of change impacting the United States of America is accelerating at an alarming rate. This week the Supreme Court bolstered Obamacare by rewriting the law and sanctioning the subsidies that are the centerpiece of the program. On Friday, by a 5-4 margin, the justices legalized gay marriage in all 50 states. This sweeping decision rendered meaningless the vote of Americans in states across the nation. In essence, these Supreme Court justices, a majority appointed by Republicans, have become a leading force in advancing the liberal agenda. According to research from the New York Times, 54% of the rulings...

(Disclaimer: The author of this piece is a white, middle class, heterosexual, Christian male. Please disregard all opinions below because PRIVILEGE.) A friend texted me the other day about abortion. Previously, she was very pro-choice. However, after reading up on the horrors of abortion and how women are negatively affected, she realized that she was actually pro-life. She told me she felt convicted in her new belief, but she was afraid to speak out about it because “people are too mean.” She's right. People are mean. If she expressed her opinion publicly, there's no doubt she would be ruthlessly attacked...

Editor’s note: This column was co-authored by Kristin Carey. Every Western Christian knows it: the feeling that comes when eyes turn away from us, when quiet scoffing and silent anger sweep over us. We know that feeling when we turn down vices, or bring up hopes, or steadily stick to “outdated” morals. They (those who roll their eyes or keep their distance) hear we are Christians and assume we are some mix of naive, boring, closed-minded, prejudiced, and hypocritical. They ask us, again and again, not to judge them—we feel misunderstood. In this “us” vs. “them” mentality, Christians are pre-judged...

Left’s Bystander Nation. Let the authorities and experts handle it, while you mind your own business. Individual responsibility is something for cowboys from Oklahoma For all intents and purposes the Savopoulos family were good, civic–minded residents of Washington, DC. Savvas, and his wife Amy, were active in charitable causes and contributed $51,800 to both Republican and Democrat candidates since 2006. The Daily Mail reports that even though Savopoulos was very wealthy he didn’t surround himself with bodyguards or other security and the family didn’t hesitate to open the door when someone knocked. When you live near Vice President Joe “Shotgun”...

Our fallen heroes, our country, and our civilization deserve no less, no less than our best efforts and no less than our best sense Any reasonable stance about the nature of Islam invites both reasoned and unreasoned Commentary, and from all sides of the spectrum of belief systems. When discussing Islam it seems as if the perspectives we’re stuck with are those of the mink-wearer—vs. the mink. Certainly these two perspectives cannot be reconciled. So it seems with the nature of Islam. Even when we boot irrational arguments from the room, many legitimate but diametrically opposed arguments remain standing.

Earlier this week, outlaw motorcycle clubs engaged in a daylight gun battle in Waco, Texas. This combat involved hundreds of people. The mall where the riot occurred was left resembling a war zone, with hundreds of spent bullet cartridges strewn about, broken bodies everywhere, and police and other local municipal services overwhelmed. By the end of melee, nine outlaws were dead, 18 wounded, and at least 165 people were arrested; 120 guns were recovered at the crime scene. In late April and early May, African-American young people protested the killing of Freddie Gray by the Baltimore police. Those peaceful protests...

Maybe someone can explain this. Making sense of this can't be easy. The question is whether or not it can be done and even greater, whether it should. How did society come to a point in which a person can sue for forced abortions on minority children and be lauded as an advocate? Isn't this something that anyone on the most basic of levels, and I'm talking real basic over here, should find loathsome and disgusting? At the same time, a person who says that the life of a potential or developing baby is worth more than that of a...

WHEN our family moved from the West Village to the Upper East Side in 2004, seeking proximity to Central Park, my in-laws and a good public school, I thought it unlikely that the neighborhood would hold any big surprises. For many years I had immersed myself — through interviews, reviews of the anthropological literature and participant-observation — in the lives of women from the Amazon basin to sororities at a Big Ten school. I thought I knew from foreign. Then I met the women I came to call the Glam SAHMs, for glamorous stay-at-home-moms, of my new habitat. My culture...

With the 25th anniversary of The Hubble Space Telescope fast approaching, Brady and Keith look at a priceless artefact - Sir Isaac Newton's very own reflecting telescope.

Brady and Keith look at some of The Royal Society's collection of standard weights and measures - including a particularly special one that even Keith had never unpacked before!

PATERSON — The man who was believed to have fathered twin girls in Passaic County actually only fathered one of them, according to a precedent-setting ruling by a Superior Court judge. It's the first paternity case in New Jersey and only the third nationwide to feature two different fathers for a set of twins. Judge Sohail Mohammed ruled that a man identified only as "A.S." was off the hook for child support payments to one of the twins after DNA testing determined he fathered one with 99.9 percent certainty but could not have been the father of the other.

Almost everyone has heard the phrase, "a gift that keeps on giving"; a reference to a charitable undertaking that encourages beneficiaries in the direction of self-reliance & personal responsibility. Such a gift is likely to involve recognition of important aspects of human nature--a concept or concepts that encourage individuals to identify & employ actual talents--that inspire beneficiaries to solve real problems, rather than look to others to solve those problems for them.

Is it just me or does it seem to me that inthe last 10 years maybe longer that the overwhelming pressure in society is to become a "rental" based economy vs. an "ownership" economy? We see this everywhere, from local businessees offering leasing options for people wanting to buy items like TV's, Furniture, and Appliances, to propsals being made in government to collect "taxes" on miles drven on cars. Over a hundred years ago, Property taxes were the first step to establishing the idea that one doesn't even truly own the land under thier own feet that they may have...

Last night I stumbled across a collections of interviews conducted in the 1930s with blacks who had been born into slavery. They're kind of hard to read since they're written as the words were spoken with a heavy southern black accent. Most interesting to me is the lack of anger from these former slaves. In fact, some spoke quite fondly of their former owners. At worst, they spoke with indifference of their former owners. None of this matches the rage filled narrative of today with the endless claims of payment due.

One of the ongoing discussions on this website is the degree to which the government is you and me, the citizenry, us. Many people hold that when we pay taxes – for instance – we are really just paying back into society, of which we are a part. We are contributing to the coffers of the great American village. Taxation isn’t theft because who is taking the money? The government, which is elected by and composed of citizens. It’s all just a big circle. We’re just paying ourselves. I even had a neighbor tell me once that he actually “enjoyed”...

Sen. Ted Cruz, who recently announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential ticket, thinks, like many conservatives, global warming isn’t happening. As he said on Seth Meyers’ talk show on March 16, “Satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there’s been zero warming, none whatsoever.” It’s no surprise that Cruz picked that figure: 17 years ago was 1998, an “El Nino” year, when global temperatures were artificially elevated after which they returned to their normal gradually increasing rate. When you look at all the data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (not just the cherry-picked data that...

Back before self-esteem spirit animals and pre-nup voodoo dominated the contents of free-form wedding vows, we had simple yet robust odes like ‘in sickness and in health’ and ‘for richer or poorer.’ The true magic of those words lies in their claim that the deepest reserves of sacrificial love can still be tapped when life’s trials are the most daunting. But there is another angle to consider when ‘for richer or poorer’ is weighed and measured in light of modern data. When it comes to viewing marriage as a kind of lottery ticket, richer stands out as a safe bet....