Free Republic

It’s nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician, or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips. Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence. So, I thought I’d begin this discussion by first looking up the definition of diversity. Here’s my question to those who are wedded to diversity and inclusion: Are people better off the less they have in common with one another? For example, women are less likely to be able to march 12.4 miles in five hours with an 83-pound assault...

Once again, a traditional symbol has become a target of those who attack private property rights and the American way of life. In this case, the symbol is the lawn – those closely-cropped grassy areas that surround most single-family homes. The basis for the attack is very typically environmentalism and racism. The messenger is an article in The New York Times. Its title is unassuming enough – “The Great American Lawn: How the Dream was Manufactured.” The vehicle is an embedded seven-minute film, produced by David Botti. The Attack The film’s first minute summarizes the environmental concerns: More water is...

Did the Apostle Paul really say women can never be pastors? Within evangelical Christianity the debate surrounding women in ministry, particularly in ordained leadership capacities, is usually framed as complementarianism vs. egalitarianism. Complementarians believe that women are forbidden from holding certain offices in the Church. Egalitarians insist that Scripture does not warrant such restrictions. In part 1, The Christian Post examined the views of some female complementarians. For this second part, CP interviewed an egalitarian, Ben Witherington III, a professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. "There is evidence in the New Testament of women teaching...

When a dozen of conservatism’s best minds take on Socialism and expose it for the utopian fraud it is, attention must be paid. In a brief foreword to a special issue of National Review, Editor-in-Chief Richard Lowry admitted that many conservatives thought socialism in America had been “vanquished” after the collapse of Soviet Communism 30 years ago. But as T. S. Eliot insisted, “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The experts examine socialism in its many guises, beginning with Charles Cooke’s blunt assessment that socialism is not...

He’s been cheered and condemned, boosted and banned… and now he’s at ideacity to offer perspectives from the front lines of the political correctness battleground. Professor and clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson believes that no matter how controversial, we must recognize the importance of free speech – particularly on college campuses. (This is an excellent take down of the scourge of postmodernism that is responsible for the cultural rot that is destroying the western world, from multiculturalism, relativism, egalitarianism, neo-marxism, etc. He's a passionate, eloquent, courageous and intelligent speaker on a mission, and who may single handedly end up saving...

Fraud: While the global warming alarmists have done a good job of spreading fright, they haven’t been so good at hiding their real motivation. Yet another one has slipped up and revealed the catalyst driving the climate scare. We have been told now for almost three decades that man has to change his ways or his fossil-fuel emissions will scorch Earth with catastrophic warming. Scientists, politicians and activists have maintained the narrative that their concern is only about caring for our planet and its inhabitants. But this is simply not true. The narrative is a ruse. They are after something...

See the linked site, pages 15-17.

The further into the frightening future we travel, the more we will need to understand what has gone wrong with our national thinking, and more importantly, how we are going to correct it. We have spent the last 6 years listening to our dear leader chastise us about equality, about paying our “fair share,” about redistributing wealth. His ideas are essentially and hopelessly false and infantile. Either we rid ourselves of such rubbish, or life in America will continue to go bad. The idea of fairness is one of the earliest moral ideas that children grasp. If little Steven sees...

"Egalitarianism" sounds so good, progressive, enlightened and compassionate. And above all, of course, caring. But in reality the opposite of all those adjectives is closer to the truth of egalitarianism. For the only way to make all the individuals of a society equal is to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator. Recently it was the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Three years later, in 1917, the Russian Revolution took place. This should remind us that in the past almost 100 years during which attempts at equalisation were repeatedly made, everybody - except...

In Ayn Rand’s prophetic 1950’s novel Atlas Shrugged, a corrupt and collectivist government has taken over a futuristic America, eerily similar to our government today. John Galt, the industrialist hero and protagonist, takes the few able “men of the mind” away from the corrupt society in order to eventually collapse the system so the government can no longer “loot’’ from these few men with the ability to produce and hold things together. When finally captured later in the novel, the government is so desperate to help save their crumbling system that they offer Galt the position of Economic Dictator as...

It’s been 35 years since 918 people, including 257 children, died on Nov. 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple massacre in Jonestown. The mass murder inside the South American jungle commune in Guyana was engineered by Jim Jones, a murderous cult leader, and was the only time in American history a member of Congress, Leo Ryan, D-Calif., was killed in the line of official duty. Most of the victims were forced to commit suicide by drinking a fatal cocktail of poisoned punch spiked with a Valium tranquilizer. In the days that followed the slaughter of the innocents, Jonestown became a...

I remember that Paola Cavalieri, the editor of the Italian journal Etica e Animali, once said to me: "If human beings have privileges at the expense of nonhuman animal suffering, it would be best if none of them existed: at least we would all be equal". There is a deep truth in that: egalitarianism, taken to its extreme consequences, would lead to total destruction of all sentient life. Being dead is the only state in which we are all equal. Life is diversity itself. I was reminded of that when I heard on the radio a discussion about zero-hours...

In this clip from the 1980 special 'Free To Choose,' socialist Frances Fox Piven tangles with economist Thomas Sowell. Sowell discusses the "process" versus aspiration - concluding that whatever the purported social goals of egalitarianism, liberty suffers.

The more often liberals speak on the topic of same-sex marriage, the more illogical their arguments become. Of course, the worst arguments come from liberal professors because they talk about the subject to the point of obsession. And the worst of the worst come from English professors steeped in postmodern orthodoxy. A recent letter to the editor by North Carolina English professor Dick Veit is illustrative. Dick writes the following (in italics). I respond intermittently. Students considering a major in English at a secular university should read his words carefully: If you can’t claim that your own marriage would be...

Three crucial points underlie our crisis of culture in the Western world: 1) There is no culture, at least as we know it in the West, without the bourgeoisie. 2) The notion of egalitarianism, which in the last few hundred years has come to dominate our thinking, is wreaking havoc on Western culture. 3) By embracing the concept of egalitarianism, the bourgeoisie is precipitating the dissolution of our culture and the self-destruction of the middle class.[i] 1) Culture and the Middle Class The middle class has supplied most of the innovators in Western culture, science, and economics. The philosopher David...

Individual liberty vs. coercive social equality -- that's pretty much the uber-debate and story of the past 220 years! Freedom for the individual to economically and socially rise or fall, based on justice and the merits -- or at least based on the fairly-reliable and relatively-fair opinions of the free market and free society -- is the great political and social goal of all time. Forced equality of the individual with his fellows -- based on some sort of allegedly-wise-and-virtuous tyrannical and coercive government social mechanism -- is the all-time great evil.

Barack Obama has long seen the U.S. Constitution as an obstacle to what he considers progress. In a 2001 interview that surfaced during the presidential campaign, he made this very clear: the Supreme Court under Justice Earl Warren had failed to break "free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution," Obama mused on a radio show. The Warren Court was insufficiently radical, he said, conceding too much ground to the traditional interpreters of the Constitution as a "charter of negative liberties," which "says what the states can't do to you, says what the...

A Christian couple have been charged with a criminal offence after taking part in what they regarded as a reasonable discussion about religion with guests at their hotel. Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were arrested after a Muslim woman complained to police that she had been offended by their comments. They have been charged under public order laws with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words’ that were ‘religiously aggravated’. The couple, whose trial has been set for December, face a fine of up to £5,000 and a criminal record if they are convicted. Although the facts are disputed, it is thought...

Forget the recession and the "uninsured." Obama has bigger fish to fry.If we believe that Obama is trying to end the recession or fix the health-care system, we’ll miss his real agenda. The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt? Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence? Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious? But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of...

This movie looks really good.