Free Republic

My interest was piqued recently when I encountered at Townhall.com the title of Kurt Schlicter’s article: “Let’s Help Academia Destroy Itself.” The author, a self-described conservative, levels a visceral assault against the university. Schlicter offers an essentially two prong attack against academia. The first we can call “the tick argument.” Academia, he says, is like “a liberal tick” in that it divests society of its “blood” while producing nothing in return. The second argument centers on the politicization of higher education. Schlicter calls academia “the College-Progressive Complex,” for it is “a reservoir of leftism” that American taxpayers are forced to...

It would be difficult to expand the food stamp program (officially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) much further. Between 2008 and 2010, the number of able-bodied people getting food stamps doubled, after the Obama administration lifted work requirements. One in seven Americans is on food stamps, which cost the federal government some $84.6 billion in 2011. One way to help SNAP recipients without spending more would be to teach them to stretch their dollars. That’s where Stephanie Nelson, The Coupon Mom, comes in. She started her business years ago as a way to help others save money...

Journey back with me, if you will, to a simpler time. To a dark and ominous period known as American history up until now. An oppressive period when society actually believed the genitals you left your mother’s womb with determined your gender. A tyrannical time when parents actually parented according to the acknowledged moral standard of the universe, rather than enabling and validating their offspring’s unhealthy tantrums and desires. Thankfully we’ve progressed past that now. We are entering a brave new world. A world where a 6-year old boy in Colorado Springs demanding he’s actually a girl isn’t thought to...

Imagine browsing Facebook one day and discovered a photograph of your 14-year-old daughter wearing a burqa – at school. That’s exactly what happened to a parent in Lumberton, Tex. She asked me not to disclose her identity because she fears for her daughter’s safety. Her daughter’s world geography class was supposed to be learning about the continents. Instead, they were given a tutorial in Islam – complete with authentic Muslim garments. Some of the young ladies were photographed – and the image has now gone viral. The students were told the purpose of the class was to change their perceptions...

During black history month, we rightly celebrate men like black abolitionist Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King, Jr. At pivotal points in America's history, these men took a stand for equal rights for black Americans. But it's time we honor the achieving black Americans who have taken advantage of those rights, applied their skills, overcome obstacles, and achieved their piece of the American Dream. Though thankful for their freedom and opportunity, many now rail against the culture of victim-hood that sadly contributes to high black unemployment, black-on-black crime, and the explosion of fatherless families in black America. One such man...

The current political wisdom as expressed by the deep thinkers at the Washington Post and the New York Times holds that President Obama stands triumphant and, as such, he is now confidently setting the national agenda. As E.J. Dionne wrote in the Post last week, “He (Obama) is free from the need to save an economy close to collapse, from illusions that Republicans in Congress would work with him readily, from the threat of a rising Tea Party movement, and from the need to run for re-election.” Is that a fact? Today the economy shows an 8% unemployment rate, which...

On January 26, 2013, the Librarian of Congress issued a ruling that made it illegal to unlock new phones. Unlocking is a technique to alter the settings on your phone to use your phone on a different carrier. Doing so could place you in legal liability for up to 5 years in jail and a $500,000 fine (specifically the Librarian of Congress allowed the existing exception to lapse). This prohibition is a violation of our property rights, and it makes you wonder, if you can’t alter the settings on your phone, do you even own your own phone? The ruling...

Dear Fellow Fan, It was wholly a pleasure to get your video of Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" as only she could -- and did. It rekindled childhood memories of listening to the Kate Smith radio show every school day morning at 9 in Miss Hinkle's fourth grade class. It was the best part of the day, not counting baseball at recess. It included a wrap-up of the day's news, and so fulfilled the Current Events requirement. But the show wasn't over till the fat lady sang. And did she ever, especially "God Bless America." Her version has no...

The grotesque spectacle of the State of the Union address, with its lengthy receiving line of adoring sycophants, demonstrates why the President is operating under the delusion that he is more than just our President. Like him, many people seem to fundamentally misunderstand his role. He’s not our “leader,” or our “ruler,” or our national “daddy,” no matter what his adoring fan, comic Chris Rock, thinks. Let’s clarify things for those folks with the unseemly desire to offer up their personal sovereignty to some government hack. Unlike Hollywood geniuses better known for exposing their breasts than exposing their brains, I'll...

An increasing number of blacks appear to finally be getting angry with Obama. It’s just too bad it took four years and voting for Obama a second time for blacks to realize the president doesn’t care about their interests. Immigration and the president’s determination to get legislation passed granting amnesty to an estimated 11-20 million illegal aliens seems to be the straw that broke black liberals’ backs. Recently some Black Americans have been calling into black talk radio shows like “Keeping it Real with Al Sharpton, complaining immigration is not an important issue to them. This is despite Al Sharpton’s...

Something is terribly wrong. Used to be, I could safely attend the annual Delta show at the Arkansas Arts Center here in Little Rock with serene confidence that I would never agree with the judge's picks. It gave me the feeling, hollow as it might be, that I marched to a different drummer from the cognoscenti's. For my taste in such things has long been irreparably bourgeois -- middle-class, middlebrow, middlin' in general. Even verging on the sentimental, and maybe not just verging. Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," Edward Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning," Charles Demuth's "I Saw the Figure Five...

Jennifer Morbelli’s baby had a name. The baby registry was complete, filled with already-purchased items like the book “I’ll Love You Forever.” The nursery was set up. Jennifer Morbelli’s baby, Madison Leigh, was a wanted child—and only seven weeks shy of birth. Instead, mother and child both died last week from a botched late-term abortion. After learning that Madison had severe birth defects and a short life expectancy, Jennifer and her husband turned to Leroy Carhart, one of the only doctors in the country who performs third-trimester abortions. On February 7th, Jennifer was rushed to the emergency room. (When hospital...

Consider this a love letter to a lady I saw only for a moment. Thirty years ago. She was passing on a trolley car, and I was on a bus headed in the opposite direction. It was in a city called Leningrad back then. I wonder if she's still living. Has she changed as much as Russia has since? Or maybe she hasn't changed very much at all, as Russia hasn't. She lingers in the mind. Today an older but no wiser newspaperman in Little Rock, Ark., sits down to write 800 words about Valentine's Day and there she...

Difficulty in getting change in our country is an ongoing source of frustration. Particularly when we have huge problems facing us as we do today. But the founders knew what they were doing setting up the checks and balances of our constitutional republic. The delicate arrangement we call freedom should never submit with ease to a charismatic demagogue or to an emotion filled crisis. The current push for gun control is case and point. It is at a time like this that we should be grateful that changing our laws is hard to do. Every normal and decent American wants...

It is one of life's great mysteries that so many liberal people are so callous when it comes to aborting fetuses. I mean, the Democratic convention last summer was almost a pro-abortion pep rally, as a variety of pro-choice speakers, including the self-proclaimed "Catholic woman" Caroline Kennedy, knelt at the altar of "reproductive rights." Recently, another woman who calls herself a Catholic, Mary Elizabeth Williams, wrote a shocking article for Salon. Entitled "So What if Abortion Ends Life?" Williams starkly states: "I believe that life starts at conception. And it's never stopped me from being pro-choice." In the body...

This week marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and since state-sanctioned slaughter via judicial fiat began at least 50 million Americans have been killed. Over the last 40 years there have been some eloquent attempts to win the defining moral argument of our age, but few have come close to being as effective as the one I’m sharing with you today. And it was written by Jesse Jackson. Yes, that Jesse Jackson. To commemorate the 4th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1977, Jackson wrote an editorial titled How We Respect Life is the Over-Riding Moral Issue. What’s...

"We've been wandering in the desert for 40 years," declared Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley. It was an ever-present reflection during the week that marked four decades of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion. Last week, Cardinal O'Malley led a Mass that began at least 24 hours of prayer and protest for thousands of people gathered at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in our nation's capital. Are you, dear reader, sick of abortion, of the poverty of the discourse about the issue, the twisted politics that accompany it and where...

In an ideal world, Roe v. Wade -- perhaps the most insidious Supreme Court ruling since the infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857 -- would be overturned. And contrary to what most leftists assert, however, this does not necessarily mean that abortion would be universally prohibited and illegal. For example, before Roe became the law of the land in 1973, abortion was permissible in certain states. The legality of abortion, then, should be decided by individuals at the state level -- at least in the short-term -- not by a High Court of un-elected, unaccountable judges in Washington. This...

Dear Ebony, I do not have high hopes, given the way Ebony treats black non-liberals, that you will review my new book, "Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives, Eight Hours." It is, in the end, about the importance of fathers -- and the damage done to a child who grows up without one. Why do I know you will ignore my book despite its examination of the most important issue facing "black America"? Your magazine treats black conservatives as if they were the enemy, that they bring nothing valid to the discussion. Ebony magazine, a monthly staple of American black...

In the wake of the brutal, senseless tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the gun control debate is once again aflame in Washington, D.C. Advocates of strict gun control laws are taking advantage of the visceral, emotional nature of the event to push their agenda, while the NRA and their adherents have been put on the defensive. As frustrating as it is for supporters of responsible gun ownership to witness the irresponsible politicization of this issue, we are seeing how government reacts when free men cease to govern themselves with virtue and restraint. When the social consensus unravels and each...