Free Republic

Pharoah, let my people go: How did ancient Egypt become a land of slaves building fantastic monuments to dictatorial leaders? The land of Egypt was rich and fertile, a seeming paradise for egalitarian living. Stephanie Pappas writes in Live Science about how despots “evolved” in ancient societies, but that’s a misleading use of the term; it actually was a series of bad choices by free people. She writes how Simon Powers at the University of Lausanne came up with a mathematical model to explain the shift from egalitarianism to despotism. Whether it actually explains them could be disputed, but he...

President Barack Obama's abrupt shift from seeking immigration legislation to pursuing a go-it-alone executive strategy raises expectations among immigration advocates that Obama may have trouble satisfying while setting up a clash with House Republicans who've already threatened to sue him. Limited in his powers to ease deportations and under pressure to crack down on a tide of Central American children entering the U.S. without their parents, Obama has only so many options to tackle an immigration conundrum complicated by a midterm election that could cost him Democratic control of the Senate. Obama on Monday blamed Republican resistance for the demise...

Since Teddy Roosevelt counseled, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” U.S. presidents have mostly followed his advice, cautioning adversaries to resolve conflicts peacefully or suffer consequences. Even President Carter brandished America's big stick upon learning that bad things happen when you're not respected, prompting him to reconsider deterrence, given “the Soviets' ultimate goals.” But today, after unilaterally “resetting” relations with repressive regimes, including Iran and Russia -- whose Ukraine incursion is “the gravest threat to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War,” proclaimed NATO's chief -- America's posture is more akin to “speak loudly and...

Cruz’s father, Rafael, fled Cuba and the Castro regime for the U.S. as a teenager. | AP PhotoClose Sen. Ted Cruz said while there are some differences between President Barack Obama and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Obama is displaying “dictatorial” tendencies as president.During an interview by Jorge Ramos on Fusion, the Texas Republican was asked about comments his father has made comparing Obama to Castro and whether the analogy was “fair” and if he’d like to draw a distinction between the two.“Obviously, there are enormous differences; the United States is not imprisoning and torturing political dissidents,” Cruz said...

North Korea publicly executed around 80 people earlier this month, many for watching smuggled South Korean TV shows, a South Korean newspaper reported Monday. -excerpt- In the eastern port of Wonsan, the authorities gathered 10,000 people in a sports stadium to watch the execution of eight people by firing squad, the source quoted one eyewitness as saying.

Too many of our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry as a threat. At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his...

President Obama on Friday demanded “new strategies” to boost the nation’s resilience to powerful storms, drought, heat waves and other dangerous weather linked to climate change. Obama issued a wide-ranging executive order designed to support “climate resilient” infrastructure investment in states and communities. It also calls on federal agencies to change their policies and rules “to make the Nation's watersheds, natural resources, and ecosystems, and the communities and economies that depend on them, more resilient in the face of a changing climate.” The executive order, echoing Obama’s second-term climate agenda released in June, recognizes that climate change is inevitable even...

Millions of Americans are frustrated and perplexed watching bureaucrats party it up on their tax dollars, even those who work for the very agency that takes their money in the first place. More and more people are at a loss to understand “why somebody doesn’t do something about it.” Day in and day out, they watch thieves flaunting their ill-gotten gains on television, while at the same time using their power to try to punish those who would question their authority. How did America evolve from a constitutional republic to a dictatorial nation where the ruling class is far more...

‘Smoking’ gun nets 60G fine 60G fine for cig lighter By JULIA MARSH Last Updated: 3:42 AM, May 2, 2013 Posted: 3:16 AM, May 2, 2013 The owner of a Midtown tourist shop is firing back at Mayor Bloomberg’s crusade against toy guns, filing papers to block a $60,000 fine from the city for selling lighters shaped like small pistols. “We don’t have the money,” said Fred Shayes, 49, who owns US Camera & Computer Inc. near Penn Station. “I would have to take a loan out from the bank to pay that.” Shayes filed a petition in Manhattan Supreme...

Mayor Bloomberg Expected To Sign E-Bike Ban Dirt Bikes Also To Be Banned From NYC Streets April 26, 2013 10:54 AM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to sign a new law banning the e-bike, which some say is fastand dangerous. The City Council passed the legislation on Thursday. The bikes are often used by delivery people and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the new law plugs loopholes and totally bans electric bikes from the streets of New York.

Barack Obama has kept the press well away this President’s Day (Washington's Birthday) weekend (hat tip: Drudge Report) as he golfs with Tiger Woods in Florida. As Politico’s Dylan Byers writes: Ed Henry, the Fox News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents Association, released a statement Sunday evening in which he said the press corps had been given no access to the president, who was joined on his outing by star golfer Tiger Woods, and that the WHCA would fight for greater transparency in the days ahead. "Speaking on behalf of the White House Correspondents Association, I can...

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” Aldous Huxley, Berkeley, March 20, 1962 Given the current debate over whether our world lists more towards...

President Obama’s announcement last week on his plans to make sweeping changes to our nation’s gun laws by presidential executive order is yet another example of his continual disregard for the United States Constitution and the separation of powers it set forth to protect the American people from government by fiat. Putting aside for a moment the misdirected emphasis on gun ownership, as opposed to mental illness and cultural glorification of violence to curb gun crime, President Obama’s actions represent another attempt to circumvent Congress – a Congress elected by the people but controlled by Republicans – to establish public...

The Muslim Brotherhood has vowed to face down Egypt's ruling generals in a "life or death" struggle over the country's political future, after declaring that its candidate had won the presidential election and would refuse to accept the junta's last-ditch attempts to engineer a constitutional coup. As final ballot results trickled in and unofficial tallies suggested that Mohamed Morsi had secured approximately 52% of the popular vote, the Brotherhood deployed its harshest language yet against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), promising to bring millions of Egyptians back on to the streets if attempts to rebuild the old...

. . . We have devised a foolproof means of guaranteeing that tax increases will be approved on the ballot. Here’s how . . . Only allow people to vote who are willing to pay the tax, and of course they must vote “Yes.” In other words, a new tax or a higher tax can be approved, but only if those voting Yes are the only ones to pay it. If you want higher taxes, you can vote Yes and pay the higher taxes. . .

Carroll Quigley, in the course of his examination of the failure of most Latin American / South American nations-states, delivered an astonishing analysis of what he believed to be the root cause of these failures in the first edition (1966) of his renowned Tragedy and Hope. Here, in almost an aside, he defines what he calls the "Pakistani-Peruvian axis" - a combination of Asian despotism and Arabic outlook (key word, that - outlook), both of which have their roots in Bronze Age antiquity, that pervade what Quigley calls the shattered cultures that dwell on its axis from Pakistan to the...

interesting and comprehensive

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--

Is it just me, or is the way this whole cult of personality thing going on with our current President beginning to really take on the characteristics of a type of benevolent despotism on the part of our federal government? ObamaCare -- and this creepy new gag, where Barack Obama will be beamed September 8th into the classrooms of all our children -- seems to be the latest manifestation of this phenomenon. First, there was a 787 billion dollar stimulus that doesn't seem to be stimulating much other than a ton of equally-creepy "Your Obama Stimulus Dollars at Work" road...

It is incredible that in American an Administration has created a Public Enemies List. Please write your representatives, the Whitehouse and the MSM showing your distrust of this government the Media that is silent.