Free Republic

I still think frequently about the fact that a pandemic came & created an undeniable moral imperative for solidarity -- for acting together, on one another's behalf -- and it caused an eruption of fury among conservatives that is still raging.

Javier Milei caused a political earthquake in November after winning the presidency in Argentina, ending decades of socialist rule. The wild-haired economist got to work immediately after being sworn in, slashing the number of government ministries, including the nation's gender and diversity bureaucracy. He's now pushing the ball further down the field, with a sweeping executive order that eliminates many of the more communistic aspects of Argentina's government. That comes as the once-wealthy South American country desperately tries to recover from a self-inflicted inflation crisis that has seen prices rise 160 percent in the preceding year. Milei ran on a...

"Argentines Today is a historic day for our country after decades of failures, impoverishment, decadence and anomie, today we formally begin the path of reconstruction since we took office just 8 business days ago, we have been focused on trying to contain the enormous crisis that we inherited, that is why we designed a shock stabilization plan that includes a fiscal adjustment program, an exchange rate policy that adjusted the exchange rate to the market value and a monetary policy that includes the sanitation of the Central Bank. We are doing our utmost to try to reduce the tragic effects...

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and advocate for the "Great Reset" transformation of the entire world into a collectivist anthill society, is recommending China as the model for other countries to emulate. "They have a great idea for the perfect society and the ruthless courage required to impose it on their own citizens," Schwab said. "Just take a look at what they have done in just the last few years. They have invented a new disease that has the potential to significantly reduce the planet's overpopulation problem. At the same time they have taken the extreme...

In a bid to help heal a divided country, Anthony Fauci encouraged the University of Michigan’s Comeback Commencement crowd to challenge untruths and push back on the “egregious distortion of reality” that permeates social media and “so-called news organizations.” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, spoke at the May 7 event, two years in the making due to the COVID-19 pandemic for which Fauci helped guide the nation’s response. In his Michigan Stadium address, he discussed the divisiveness of the nation and his view of its...

For my work in corporate social responsibility, I was recently reading The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi’s critique of capitalism, when something he wrote gave me one of those really uncomfortable “Aha” moments. Polanyi was discussing the alternatives to capitalism -- left socialism and right socialism (which we call “Fascism”). His point was that these two socialisms were created to undo the disruptions of capitalism which had privileged “money power” to degrade human sociality into atomic individualism driven by self-seeking greed. When I read his observation that the Fascist phase of anti-capitalism brought about “Irrational philosophies, racialist aesthetics, anti-capitalist demagogy, heterodox...

Mayor Bill de Blasio has asked the City's Public Design Commission to authorize the removal of a statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall's Council chambers where it has stood for the past 187 years. "It's not just the fact that Jefferson owned slaves," de Blasio argued. "It's also the insidiously anti-social phrase 'unalienable rights' that he snuck into the Declaration of Independence that undermine the power of the people to democratically replace individualism with collectivism. As this past two years of pandemic should have taught us, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness conflict with the social discipline required...

The highest paid bureaucrat in the entire federal government went on Face the Nation yesterday and let his mask slip. He might as well have put on a Grinch costume when he responded to a question from host Margaret Brennan on whether or not people could gather for Christmas this year and answered that it is too early to tell: Fauci wasn't questioned about why wealthy and sophisticated countries like Norway and Japan are returning to normal life, joining Sweden, which has never engaged in the historically unprecedented move of quarantining healthy people. Instead, Fauci wants to focus on "cases"...

Students enrolled at the University of Maryland and at Rutgers in New Jersey demonstrated against their schools’ requirement that they must take the experimental COVID vaccination to attend classes in the Fall semester. One UM student called the requirement an “abuse of rights and abuse of power” and demanded it be “reeled back.” Another student asserted that “forced consent isn’t real consent.” Maryland House Delegate Lauren Arikan (R-Baltimore County) supported the protest, saying that “coercing students to take an experimental drug is not appropriate” and urged the University Administrators to rescind the mandate because “these vaccines are not like those...

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed wireless brain implants that have been inserted into mice to see if their behavior can be controlled remotely. An experiment found that it can. To be more explicit, the experiment tried to use the devices to get the mice to become friends with other mice having the same implants. It worked. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra called this experiment "a potential game-changer for the President's drive to unify the country. The main impediment to total unity is independent thought. The aspiration of trying to achieve unity via volitional means is likely...

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a hospice that declined to participate in administering assisted suicide cannot stay in business. The Delta Hospice Society, located in British Columbia has resisted demands that it must kill its residents if that's what they want done. The Court explicitly rejected the argument that the refusal to participate in terminating a person's life was an allowable option. "Even though there are other fully participating hospitals and hospices that a patient or resident could freely choose, the Government's policy is that assisted suicide is for the collective benefit of all," the Court said....

The crusade to entrench "equitable math" as THE way to teach math is gaining steam in California. A training manual training manual funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation lays out the critical "problems" with unwoke mathematics. These are (1) a focus on getting the right answer, (2) independent thinking and problem solving, (3) grading students based on their performance and knowledge, and (4) requiring students to show their work. California Department of Education Superintendent Tony Thurmond described traditional math as "extremely intimidating and, frankly, of dubious value in our modern world. Let's face it, not everyone can handle...

Democrats in Congress are advancing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2021. If enacted, this bill would ban state right-to-work laws and severely curtail the "gig" economy. In right-to-work states workers are not required to be union members in order to be employed. The "gig" economy consists of individuals working as independent contractors. Co-sponsor of the bill, House Committee on Education and Labor Chairman Robert Scott (D-VA) pointed out that "both the right-to-work and the 'gig' economy impede a union's efforts to organize an employer's workforce. Allowing people to work without belonging to a union undermines socialist...

Identity politics will drive us straight back into the tyranny and subjugation our Founders and subsequent generations fought so hard to escape.For something as seemingly mundane as a government report on civics, the “1776 Commission Report” has been a surprisingly hot topic.The report was posted to the White House website on a Monday around 5:30 p.m. ET. It was one of the last actions of the Trump administration. Less than 48 hours later, in one of the very first acts of the Biden administration, it was taken down. Fortunately, a handful of organizations posted it on their own websites so...

For millennia, China has taught its citizens to embrace individual sacrifice for the greater good. Writer Huang Hung explains how this mindset allows the country to preserve safety during a crisis. (Video at link)

President Trump's brief bout with COVID-19 was followed by him urging the American people to "not let it control your life. Don't be afraid of COVID. Go on and live your lives like Americans always have with courage, enterprise, and optimism." Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called Trump's advice "demented. If it weren't for fear of the virus we never would have been able to achieve much of what Democrats around the nation have these last six months. We have shown that it is possible to identify the essential industries and ensure their survival. At the same time we have...

All decent Americans stand against racism. But if weÂ’re to live as brothers, we must stop indicting all those who share a skin tone for the sins of others. I was nowhere near the intersection of Chicago Avenue and 38th Street when George Floyd tragically lost his life. I wasnÂ’t in Minnesota. I was more than 500 miles away. With the exception of the officers at that heartbreaking scene, there are more than 329 million additional Americans who had no part in that terrible evening.So why are so many people acting as if it were their knee, not Derek ChauvinÂ’s,...

Dozens of hippies who got stuck at a festival in Panama due to coronavirus realized that the collectivist utopia they sought after is actually “hell” as they bicker over food and territory.

As I write this, there are over a quarter of a million recorded deaths from the corona virus and many many more to come. We know now that the virus originated in Wuhan China, probably in its virology lab, and that the Chinese concealed the fact that it was contagious between humans and deadly for weeks. They allowed a Lunar New Year celebration in Wuhan that involved tens of thousands of people, and also permitted 5 million inhabitants of Wuhan to leave the city and spread the virus. Moreover, they permitted hundreds of thousands of Chinese to travel abroad to...

The great paradox of the American Left is that it aspires to collectivism, but can only get it through tribalism. Every Democrat presidential primary is a frantic effort by collectivist candidates to amass enough tribal support from different identity politics groups to secure the collectivist nomination. Senator Bernie Sanders, the great socialist hope of collectivism, tried to rope in Latinos and black Democrats, succeeded with the former, failed with the latter, and lost South Carolina. And everything. When lefties switched from class warfare to identity politics, they became hopelessly mired in tribalism. Their old animating principle of an egalitarian...