Free Republic

It’s not every society whose ideals are embodied by a corpse. But in the Soviet Union, the never-decaying body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was meant to freeze his ideals in time: a promise to citizens that they were on the collective path to the bright communist future. Opened to visitors on August 1, 1924, his mausoleum became a key symbol of Soviet power, from the saint-like aura around Lenin’s remains to the Politburo’s tradition of standing atop the structure on holidays. Today, the unburied body remains a lingering element of the Soviet legacy, representing Russia’s inability or unwillingness to bury...

For those who know that "ignoring history dooms us to repeat it", I am reminded about stories that my Ukrainian dad used to tell me, with tears in his eyes, when I was young, on the train rides from CT to NY to visit his immigrant family. My dad immigrated/escaped in 1916 and today's events, though not exactly like those he relayed, are eerily similar in scope; are we doomed to repeat the history of about a century ago?

The cooling of enthusiasm for China’s investments mirrors the unease of incoming governments in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Maldives, where new administrations have come to power wary of Chinese deals struck by their predecessors. Pakistan’s new government had wanted to review all BRI contracts. Officials say there are concerns the deals were badly negotiated, too expensive or overly favored China.

I want you to meet some brave Christian leaders pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. When thinking of the golden age of the Church, many of us hearken back to the book of Acts, when Peter and John stood up to the religious authorities, who told them to be silent about Jesus the risen Messiah. "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God," they answered, "you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." Then they prayed for boldness, and the Church...

The Chinese government is supervising a five-year plan to make Christianity more compatible with socialism in which there will be a "rewrite" of the Bible, a prominent religious freedom activist has told Congress. The Rev. Bob Fu, a former Chinese house church leader who immigrated to the United States in 1997 and founded the persecution watchdog organization China Aid, provided great detail during a House hearing Thursday about a plan enacted by leading state-sanctioned denominations in China to "Sincize" Christianity

Chinese security forces continue to surround the Kirti Tibetan monastery in Sichuan after local residents tried to stop them from arresting the 2,500 monks holed up inside. The standoff began earlier this week, when hundreds of people living in Sichuan's Aba region converged on the monastery determined to stop police from removing the monks for reeducation. The monks could soon face food shortages because they depend on offerings from locals, the Voice of America reports. A U.S. State Department spokesman said the U.S. is concerned about China's actions in Aba, which it called it inconsistent with the internationally recognized principles...

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham just issued a statement on the latest Kavanaugh allegations, calling them "outrageous" and warning his fellow Republicans that if they bail on their Supreme Court nominee "we deserve our fate." Here's the full statement: “Judge Kavanaugh has just emphatically denied the recent allegation being levied by Michael Avenatti and his client. He says he does not know the woman in question and emphatically denies the accusations. I would remind everyone that dozens of women who knew Judge Kavanaugh during the time period in question completely vouch for his good character.

"...as has been the theme throughout much of the first three weeks of the NFL season, roughing the passer penalties were a significant storyline from Monday’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Bucs, Steelers set new mark for roughing penalties Officials called four roughing penalties during Pittsburgh’s 30-27 win on Monday, which is tied for most in the league in one game since 2001, according to ESPN. While a couple of them were fairly clear violations of contact with the quarterback’s head, others appeared to fall into the vague new definition of the foul that penalizes defenders...

... A climate comeback story is possible. Whether it was seeing Californian forests turn to cinder or a deadly 106-degree heat spikes in Japan this summer, something is fundamentally changing in the way companies and citizens care about the issue. The price of climate change is no longer a concern for later, but one for right now. It is not the case that our grandchildren alone will bear the costs. We experience the effects, and have to pay for them, right here and right now - to the effect of hundreds of billions dollars, and affecting hundreds of millions of...

During the 20th century the Neronic cross or pentagram became the symbol for the "peace" movement. It was the arch-communist Bertrand Russell who adapted the sinister Neronic cross as the now famous peace symbol because he himself was a determined enemy of Jesus Christ and Christianity.

When writing The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx thought he was providing a road to utopia, but everywhere his ideas were tried, they resulted in catastrophe and mass murder. In this video, Paul Kengor, Professor of Political Science at Grove City College, illuminates the life of the mild-mannered 19th Century German whose ideas led to the rise of some of the most brutal dictators in world history.

FULL TITLE: China's Chilling 'Social Credit System' Is Straight Out of Dystopian Sci-Fi, And It's Already Switched On Like Black Mirror. Totally like Black Mirror. It's been in the pipeline for years: a sprawling, technological mass surveillance network the likes of which the world has never seen. And it's already been switched on. China's "Social Credit System" – which is expected to be fully operational by 2020 – doesn't just monitor the nation's almost 1.4 billion citizens. It's also designed to control and coerce them, in a gigantic social engineering experiment that some have called the "gamification of trust". That's...

When President Obama embraced “Medicare for All” earlier this month, it was a remarkable moment. Not because the proposal will be adopted (it won’t) or because the price tag would bankrupt the nation (it would). Rather, it was a remarkable moment because a former American president played the role of enabler for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Indeed, Obama’s endorsement was a moment of great celebration for an organization that for years has plotted to hijack the Democratic Party and use it as a parasitic host to remake the nation. Here’s how. Back in 2012, the Vice Chairman of...

In conventional accounts of the Chinese Revolutionary Civil War (1926–1949), Mao Zedong is shown towering heroically above a great throng of adoring peasants, who have surged up in a great wave to defeat their imperialist foes and propel the Communists into power. A growing number of historians—both in China and abroad—have begun to unpick the myth. Jung Chang and John Halliday wrote a scathing retelling of Mao’s life and actions, with the thesis that Mao and his followers were bloodthirsty thugs who bullied their way into power through anti-civilian violence, sinister manipulation and dumb luck. Otto Braun documented many of...

President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in June 1993. She was confirmed two months later by a vote of 96 to 3, and not a single senator asked her about her ten years litigating cases for the ACLU, she said in an appearance on Thursday. “I wish I could wave a magic wand and have it go back to the way it — the way it was,” Ginsburg told a gathering at the George Washington University Law School. […] “The way it was, was right. The way it is, is wrong,” she said, drawing applause...

Marxism has its place in civilized discourse, as do questions about the morality of nuclear weapons. Even torture, slightly euphemized, is a suitable topic for debate; there are two sides at least, each with something to say. But next to nothing can be said for nationalism, which is all but a synonym for racism, persecution and war. Nationalism was responsible for World War I. Nationalism was behind the Nazis. And so on. Yoram Hazony, an Israeli political theorist, will have none of this. Over the past two years Hazony’s byline has appeared frequently in the Wall Street Journal , where...

Lithuania on Friday urged American retail giant Walmart to stop selling T-shirts and hoodies with Soviet hammer and sickle symbols, insisting the image insults victims of often deadly Soviet-era persecution. “We sent a letter to Walmart requesting the withdrawal of products with Soviet symbols and we are still waiting for a reaction,” Lithuanian ambassador to the US Rolandas Krisciunas said. The hammer and sickle symbol is banned in Lithuania... The Baltic state’s foreign minister Linas Linkevicius tweeted: “You wouldn’t buy Nazi-themed clothing, would you? “We trust @Walmart’s moral stance & call to withdraw products with the symbols of mass murders.”...

Socialists and Communists are not known to be rational thinkers, they are indoctrinated sheeple who memorize and repeat what they are told without questioning, in exchange for special benefits People used to ask me what we ate when I was growing up in communist Eastern Europe. Women were quite thin and beautiful, on the “Ceausescu diet.” We were not just told how much to eat by decree but food was quite scarce and highly rationed. If a person dared to stash more food than the Communist Party deemed necessary, that person paid dearly in fines and eventually jail. Of course...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCSQb00ihQo An in-depth look at #Communist policies that have destroyed civilized debate. We discuss #dialectical #materialism, repressive tolerance and an explanation on how we used to handle disagreements. Bonus: story about a donkey that fell into a well will remind you how traditional people dealt with hardship.

The thought of Karl Marx, a German political agitator whose theory of “scientific socialism” wreaked havoc on the world for most of the 20th century, would seem to have been consigned to the ash heap of history following the fall of the Eastern Bloc communist regimes from 1989 to 1991. After decades of mass murder claiming tens of millions of victims, as well as the totalitarian oppression of hundreds of millions more, the reputation of Marxism had been destroyed almost completely, seemingly assuring its final demise.However, a resurgence of interest in Marx’s thought has been ongoing since 2008, when the...