Free Republic

Tocqueville saw a nation of individuals who were defiant of authority. Today? Welcome to Planet Government.In "Democracy in America," published in 1833, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the way Americans preferred voluntary association to government regulation. "The inhabitant of the United States," he wrote, "has only a defiant and restive regard for social authority and he appeals to it . . . only when he cannot do without it." Unlike Frenchmen, he continued, who instinctively looked to the state to provide economic and social order, Americans relied on their own efforts. "In the United States, they associate for the goals...

"Why are there no libertarian countries?" In a much-discussed essay for Salon magazine, Michael Lind asks: "If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?" Such is the philosophical poverty of liberalism today that this stands as a profound question. Definitions vary, but broadly speaking, libertarianism is the idea that people should be as free as possible from state coercion so long as they don't harm anyone. The job of the state...

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...

The prime objective of secularists in modern times has been to “free” us all from the influence (The burden, they’d say) of Christianity. Just how they have gone about destroying that influence on the course of human affairs is ably described in Dr. Benjamin Wiker’s new book Worshipping the State:  How Liberalism Became our State Religion.Wiker, who has taught at Franciscan University and Thomas Aquinas College, holds that the raison d’être of secular philosophers’ has been to reduce Christianity’s hold on Western culture, and either to subordinate the Church to the state or to establish a rival civic religion that...

TIME Magazine's Joe Klein appeared on Chris Matthews' weekend show Sunday, where he asserted that it is "crap" and "anti-American" to think the government might become oppressive. "...What do they need all those bullets for? I guess they just don't feel very strong," he began, laughing as he argued that we have become a "lot more wimpy" as a country because "these gun advocates at the NRA want these semi-automatic weapons." When Matthews asked how the "cowboy culture" factors in, Klein responded: Well, I think that that's at the root of it, but there's something else that's going on now...

According to Bill O’Reilly, pundits cannot appeal to the Bible any longer for public policy regarding homosexuals that want to get married. At least I think it’s just in regards to homosexual marriages. Hell, I don’t know when and where we can use the Scripture any longer. Can we still use it in church? Does anyone know? Well for now, I think it’s just in regards to homosexuals who want to get hitched that we’re verboten to bring the Verbum Dei into the discussion. Geez, it’s getting tough keeping up with what we can and can’t reference anymore, eh? I...

Between youth riots in Cyprus over the tax levy on deposits and the Eurogroup’s Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem’s verbal gaffes, it has been a busy day in Europe. First, the announcement of a deal on Cyprus sent the Euro Stoxx index upwards (resolution of uncertainty). Then Dijsselbloem said that the tax levy on Cyprus deposits was a template for other countries (massive creation of uncertainty). Then he said he wasn't sure what template meant. First, can you spot when Dijsselbloem made his template gaffe? Second, how could the CEO of the Eurogroup NOT know what a template is? Then adding gas...

Over the weekend, the citizens of Cyprus discovered that help was on the way as their debt-laden island nation learned that the European Union and the International Monetary Fund had agreed to provide Cyprus with $13 billion in bank bailouts. But there was a catch: no longer were these funds going to be pain-free. Average Cypriots would have to pony up as well. 6.75 percent of all deposits in Cyprus-based banks below 100,000 Euros would be reclaimed by the government. Depositors with over 100,000 Euros would have to surrender 9.9 percent of their savings. The news spread like wildfire. The...

Among the landmarks in the 2013 Women’s History Month is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique—a work that was once hailed as the “the spark that ignited second-wave feminism.” Yet Friedan’s dictum that women be “liberated” actually had limiting consequences. A perspective with 50-year hindsight reveals that, as the foundations of the family began to deteriorate, a rise in single-mother households had repercussions for the health, happiness, and financial well-being of women and children. Today, a steady decline in the rate of marriage and sharp decrease in the proportion of adults who have married...

“We have a weapon more powerful… than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon… is our refusal!” - Michael Collins The police in America have proven once again that they are above the law and have a license to kill as the charred remains of Christopher Dorner were cooling in the cabin in California. The more thuggish aspects of the constabulary were on the mainstream news despite the twisted and sycophantic relationship of the press in lionizing tyranny everyday in the hero worship of the thin political black and blue line. The readers who have read...

Why has the American society changed so drastically in the past few decades? How did the feminist movement get started? How did Obama get elected? Why are there so many single parent families? Where is God?

President Barack Obama’s second inauguration speech promised a sharply ideological second term where the “the people” will use government to accomplish the tasks that he declared cannot be accomplished by individuals. “No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores,” he declared in a 2,103-word speech that included numerous campaign-style jabs at his political opponents. “Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one...

If you've done some serious reading on 20th century activities of the "international banking elite", and reviewed the patterns of the last century, you would see the world's most powerful international banking new world order types way too close to the goal line for your personal comfort. The officer corps of the U.S. military is a key piece of the puzzle. At the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, the U.S. military basically divided itself into two sides and fought itself. The question then was on succession. In the future the question to the service members would be on federation:...

"...... Despite accusations by former cult members that Mr. Koresh sexually abused girls, there is considerable evidence that the children were, in at least some important respects, well cared for. None show any signs of physical abuse, and most seem consumed with a wish to see their parents. Many of the children, from 5 months to 12 years old, emerged from the compound with small bags of favorite belongings or notes from their parents about their favorite foods, books and bedtime rituals, said Joyce Sparks, a caseworker for the state's Child Protective Services agency. Reports from caseworkers who have seen...

I looked up Statism and is seems a whole lot like communism. I thought it would be good if we had a discussion/education effort to explain the different political and economic systems. Statism Communism Socialism anarchism Capitalism Despotism Dictatorship Autocracy Conservatism Democrcy Imperialism Monarchy Plutocracy Theocracy Liberalism Libertarianism Objectivism Republicanism What are these systems? I know a lot of these overlap and some are political systems and some are economic and some are both. What are the good and bad of each? Are there any that I left out?On a scale of 1-10 with 1 representing Good and 10 representing...

"I'm in the top two percent," said Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, this week on CNBC. "Right now, I'm paying 45 percent of my total income in income taxes ... You tell me, what's fair about that when medieval serfs pay 25 percent, I'm paying half? I don't care what the majority voted to do, they don't have a right to steal my money just because they vote for it." But according to most Americans, they do. And that's the problem. As America racks up more debt than God has ever seen on this earth, Barack Obama prepares...

The Progressives won on Tuesday. I don't mean the people who voted Democrat who call themselves "progressive." Though they won, too. I mean the Progressives who've been waging a century-long effort to transform our American-style government into a European-style state. The words "government" and "state" are often used interchangeably, but they are really different things. According to the founders' vision, the people are sovereign and the government belongs to us. Under the European notion of the state, the people are creatures of the state, significant only as parts of the whole. This European version of the state can be nice....

h/t Australian TEA Party

Mitt Romney has hit a nerve. The mainstream media are indignant and downright apoplectic over Romney's "47 percent" comment. But as Eric Hoffer once observed, "we are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about." In fact, the Obama administration's long term strategy is to create a permanent class of federally dependent citizens tipping over 50 percent in order to suffocate the very atmosphere that gives life to intellectual and political diversity in America. As James Madison said, there are "two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which...

The West’s political and social model is in crisis - but emerging internet technology will make it possible to survive without big government "Until August 1914,” wrote the historian AJP Taylor, an “Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state. [Government] left the adult citizen alone.” How different it is today. From the moment he gets out of bed in the morning, an Englishman’s life is overseen by officialdom. As he switches on a bedside light, the energy comes from a market supervised by the state. As he dresses, he does so in clothes imported...