Free Republic

Welcome back to our series on what weakens our integrity and how to strengthen it. Thus far we have discussed how we decide to commit a dishonest act, and how the distance between that act and its consequences can increase our ability to rationalize immorality as acceptable behavior. Today we are going to discuss another important factor that influences our comfort level with dishonest decisions: seeing other people make them. Dishonesty as a Social Contagion As psychology professor Dan Ariely explored the nature and motivations for dishonesty, he found himself wondering whether it might spread from person to person like...

As we celebrate our nation's 237th birthday, a crucial facet of American life has all but vanished. We have forsaken, in a systematic and deliberate public manner, one of our most fundamental duties: fostering civic virtue in each and every one of our citizens. What does it mean to be an American? Politicians in both parties keep pushing to create a new "path to citizenship" for millions of illegal aliens. But if sovereignty and self-preservation still matter in Washington, citizenship must be guarded ferociously against those who would exploit and devalue it at every electoral whim. The pavers of the...

We all remember the phrase Harry Truman had made years ago, and was immortalized on a plaque on the resolute desk in the Oval Office... "The Buck Stops Here!" http://www.trumanlibrary.org/buckstop.htm Regardless of your politics, an individual is only worth their weight in that arena in their ability to maintain some sort of credibility with their peers and their opposition... Whether we hate them, or like a particular elected official, the government we elect them to maintain for us has changed, fundamentally, as stated before the current President took office, and so eloquently enumerated to everyone who could listen and comprehend...

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...

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream---and not make dreams your master; If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those...

When Mitt Romney blurted out his now notorious 47-percent lament, liberal gaffe-o-meters went ballistic, acting as though he were an American Ebenezer Scrooge who had just shoved Tiny Tim Cratchit into a ditch and then burned down a crutch factory. As several observers have noted, this amorphous statistic includes myriads of worthy beneficiaries indeed, such as veterans, social security recipients, the physically or mentally disabled, the deserving poor, and those utterly unable to take care of themselves in a society where the federal government has assumed tasks that once were the preserve of families, churches, voluntary organizations, and state or...

Perhaps everyone in the eighteenth century could have agreed that in theory no State was more beautiful than a republic, whose whole object by definition was the good of the people. Yet everyone knew it was a fragile beauty indeed. It was axiomatic that no society could hold together without the obedience of its members to the legally constituted authority. In a monarchy the complicated texture of the society, “the magnificence, costly equipage and dazzling splendors” lavished on the prince, the “multitude of criminal laws, with severe penalties, the very rigor of the unitary authority often with the aid of...

Right now I am reading an advanced copy of Os Guinness’s's A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future. The book will be released by IVP on August 6. It’s an essential read and I pledge to publish a future review for our PowerBlog readers. Guinness was interviewed in Religion & Liberty in 1998. In my recent talks around town I have been asking questions about our capacity and desire for self-government as a community and nation. I recently gave a local presentation on President Calvin Coolidge and he helped inspire a greater desire to ask the foundational...

The Mexican countryside is sunny, pleasant, full of stray dogs and in each corner of Russia, you'll find decaying houses containing a samovar. But today, a nation like Mexico or Russia probably wouldn't last two months in a full out military confrontation with tiny Sweden (9.5 inhabitants). But that isn't the real point here, although it is worth pointing out how pathetic nations like Mexico and Russia really are considering the fact they have an abundance of natural resources and border to two of the largest and most successful economies on Earth (USA and the EU). America is presently being...

A number of Civil War & History bloggers, academics, and "me too, me too" types have jumped on the "enemy of American Exceptionalism" bandwagon. Why? It's chic, hip, cool, sophisticated. You know, it's rad man. It's also the current ruling political philosophy in that cesspool we call Washington D.C. It gets you better gigs, it makes one look better (so they think) in the eyes of the world (like I care), and it also gets you noticed - an important thing for the insecure and self-absorbed (most politicians). And, of course, its also misguided and embarrassingly non-thinking. But anti-American Exceptionalism...

To my Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that Rivers cAnneot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence. Thy love is such I can no way repay. The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let's...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_ASo clear and cogent, Freidman demolishes Phil Donahue. Greed and the lies of politicians who claim they are not greedy but are above it

Featured Term (selected at random):TENDENCY Any inclination or disposition that, in human beings, becomes a desire. It is either an attraction to some specific good or an aversion from some specific evil. Natural tendencies are inborn and are really one's natural powers or faculties seeking expression. Supeernatural tendencies are the graces divinely conferred to incline the will to the practice of virtue beyond the capacity of the native will, or of virtue known only on divine faith. Both natural and supernatural tendencies may be either conscious, also called elicited, when a person actually experiences his striving toward a good or...

The barometer of My Love is first My Virtue for in its wings you will find the healing grace of My blood and Testimony wrapped in the wisdom of My understanding releasing Eternal knowledge through dreams , visions and words that release open heaven experiences for those that seek my Chariot of Fire . For truly to find this Throne of Grace you must surpass My mercies to the point of "True surrender" where your fleshly desires robbing Me of your time have ceased completely and I reign supreme for for you to find the facets leading into the Tapestry...

National Public Radio's firing of the talented and amiable Juan Williams for comments he made on Fox News about Muslims is outrageous, even disgusting. But it is not an aberration. It is emblematic of the "dictatorship of virtue" imposed on Americans by the country's elites -- many of them, like those at NPR, publicly funded but unaccountable to the American public. Judging from the response to Williams's firing and the immediate extension of his multimillion dollar contract with Fox News, it looks like he will thrive. But arrayed against the unchecked power of elite multiculturalism, now ensconced not only in...

Sluthood wasn't always considered a virtue. Most normal, rational people look at sleeping around as something sad and wrong. It's not healthy, physically or mentally, it can be damaging to a young girl's reputation, and it can also be incredibly dangerous. Women that sleep around oftentimes end up feeling used and regret their choices when they get older and decide to settle down. Other women end up contracting STDs, which may or may not be treatable. For these reasons and more, being a slut is understandably looked down upon -- it can be genuinely harmful. Today's pseudo-feminists, however, have...

This past Saturday, Barbara Billingsley passed away at the age of 94. For those of you scratching your heads but acquainted with 1950s television, Billingsley played the ever-gracious and loving, hearth-and-home mother June Cleaver in the classic sitcom "Leave It to Beaver." ...In fact, LITB is certainly preferable to America’s new reality, one in which, as Talbot says himself, parents raise children “in a less secure, divorce-prone, sometimes violent world.” Of course, this is an admission that there was an old reality. It was a time when the family was intact, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was low, and the biggest problems...

The School of The Dominican Teaching Sisters of Fanjeaux (France) have received 10 Novices on the 4th of August. The congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Fajeaux was founded in 1975 as a group of 19 Sisters in the Mother House in Tolouse which they left, to remain true to the traditional Liturgy and to the fundamental constitutions. Today, 35 years later. the "School Sisters of the Dominicans of the Holy Name of Jesus at Fanjeaux" are circa 180 sisters. They operate eight schools. The Mother house is located in the vicinity of Prouille (in Southwest France) where in 1208...

Lists Every Catholic Should be Familiar With Jump to: The 7 Sacraments (The Holy Mysteries)The 7 Corporal Works of MercyThe 7 Spiritual Works of MercyThe 3 Eminent Good WorksThe 7 Gifts of the Holy Ghost (& the Charismata)The 12 Fruits of the Holy GhostThe 3 Theological VirtuesThe 4 Cardinal VirtuesThe 7 Capital Sins & Their Contrary VirtuesThe 6 Sins Against the Holy GhostThe 4 Sins That Cry Out to HeavenThe 3 Conditions of Mortal SinThe 9 Ways We Participate in Others' SinsThe 10 CommandmentsThe 2 Greatest CommandmentsThe 3 Evangelical CounselsThe 6 Precepts of the ChurchThe Holy Days of Obligation (English)The...

Virtue: A Democratic Problem   By Dr. Jeff Mirus | July 16, 2010 2:30 PM Those who have ever taken a political science course which was not merely an exercise in advocacy may remember considering the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of government. Monarchy had its corruption in tyranny, oligarchy in plutocracy, and democracy in mob rule. For many centuries, most Catholic political theorists suggested that monarchy was the best form of government, because it mirrored the way God runs the universe. More recently, Catholic thinkers have suggested that democracy is most in keeping with human dignity, as it...