Free Republic

This is AP, so no quoting. Gist of article in comment below.

You’ve probably read that the series of speeches President Barack Obama started giving Wednesday are a “pivot” to the economy designed to rev things up. Well, they’re not. Obama’s speeches will be no less than the manifesto of a leftist president who plans to spend his remaining time in office installing as much of his big government “project” as possible by whatever means he can get away with. If you got the wrong message, it’s because Washington reporters too often have a poor understanding of people who have a systematic philosophy and truly believe in what they are doing. Obama,...

In 1975: 1.You could buy an airline ticket and fly without ever showing an ID. 2.You could buy cough syrup without showing an ID. 3.You could buy and sell gold coins without showing an ID 4.You could buy a gun without showing an ID 5.You could pull as much cash out of your bank account without the bank filing a report with the government. 6.You could get a job without having to prove you were an American. 7.You could buy cigarettes without showing an ID 8.You could have a phone conversation without the government knowing who you called and who...

Can the family die, as a legal and social institution in Italy? Such a question could not even have been asked 40 years ago in this country, but in that time, the social and demographic landscape has changed dramatically, and the unthinkable is going on around us. For some time I’ve been thinking about and reading various opinions on how the destruction of marriage as a legal and social institution in the formerly Christian West, has forwarded the aims of that nebulously defined, but apparently all-powerful, class of people I’ve come to call, simply, “the Statists” or “the Secularists.” It’s...

Part 1 in a new series examining the common fallacies committed by both statists and theists. This video covers the fact that both atheism and libertarianism are both negative philosophies, and therefore the burden of proof is on statists and theists ...

Amid all the emotion over same-sex marriage, the limited-government argument for marriage as uniting a man and a woman keeps getting short shrift. It fell to me to make that case during a discussion of marriage law and the Supreme Court with the worthy S.E. Cupp on a recent installment of “Real News from The Blaze,” and I’d like to flesh out those thoughts here. For starters, virtually every political community has regulated male-female sexual relationships. This is not because government cares about romance as such. Government recognizes male-female sexual relationships because these alone produce new human beings. For highly...

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...