Free Republic

In a world of now close to 200 countries, every day provides an updated report card as to what works and what doesn’t in economic policy. As reported by the IMF, World Bank, and UN, some countries have per capita GDP as much as 300 times more than the per capita GDP of other countries. What are the poor ones doing wrong? Most countries largely stick with the same collection of economic policies for long periods of time, with only small changes. Unsurprisingly, the rich get richer, because what they are doing is working. The poor may or may not...

Faculty said they felt trapped in an ‘alternate reality’ when trying to navigate the college’s ‘toxic’ DEI environment.. College students attending universities with restrictive speech codes are used to walking on eggshells and keeping their heads down on campus out of fear of committing social suicide or experiencing violence. In the disordered world of contemporary higher education, Jewish students receive limited, if any, support from school administrators amid explicit calls for violence against them, while other students face punishment for banal infractions like rolling a “free speech ball” around campus. But if you are shocked at how students are subject...

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” chant myriads of Jew haters and their airheaded acolytes in academia. It is meant to be offensive, provocative, and intimidating, and is a not-so-subtle call for the genocide of the Jews of Israel. It has become a staple at rallies and on college campuses, where analogous calls for ethnic cleansing anywhere else in the world but Israel and to any other ethnic group but Jews would be met with swift retribution. By the modern standards of the loony left, this is protected free speech. There are those who argue that...

Memphis — An After School Satan Club plans to begin offering activities to children at a Tennessee elementary school following Christmas break, officials said, and the move immediately proved controversial. The Satanic Temple plans to host the club at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, news outlets reported. It will begin meeting on Jan. 10 in the school's library and run through the spring semester, according to an announcement Tuesday posted on social media.

Patriotism? To What? I wish more people could see the United States Government for what it really is, a brutal organization seeking every means of stepping on one’s neck while they rip the wallet from their back pocket. What method of thuggery have they refused to utilize? A SWAT team descending on a local preacher or common welder who participated in a protest is not police work or law enforcement, it’s terrorism. It’s not fear of the preacher or common welder that dictates their actions, but the sheer terror they might strike into the hearts of patriots that they strive...

Citizens threatened into compliance are no match for citizens inspired to reach for higher ideals. There are two great battles dominating Western nations today. The first is political and involves a contest between freedom-minded citizens and an ever-expanding State. The second is cultural (or perhaps, more accurately, spiritual) and involves a contest between fear-driven dogma and inspiration-driven ideals. Globalization, or the secular religion dedicated to the concentration of power into the hands of an elite few, runs on the energy of fear. Liberty movements that abhor the current trend toward a new-world-order framework intent on micromanaging human activity run instead...

True Leadership Stops It.. People talk about the Weimar Republic that gave rise to Adolph Hitler but very few understand what the Weimar was all about. ... from deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.. The Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s was a world leader in most fields of art, science and intellect. ... Berlin had three opera houses, and Germany as a whole no less than eighty. Every middle-sized city had its own orchestra ... And in science, of course, the Germans were preeminent…. The Germany of 1920 had a significantly higher per capita educational level than...

The Biden administration has delayed its ban on menthol cigarettes after strategists warned President Biden that it could negatively impact his support among black voters. Leaders in the black community claim that the ban would foster an underground market and cause police to target black smokers in a disproportional manner, the Washington Post reports. Since the black community has drastically dwindled its support for Biden over the past few years, the president's administration isn't taking any chances despite updated health guidance from the FDA and CDC. According to data from the CDC, 81 percent of black smokers opt for menthol...

Bureaucracy raises the cost of higher education while clamping down on speech.. Ignited by Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel, divisive domestic conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have driven a new wave of campus censorship. But the problem of stifled speech on campus for both students and faculty has been around long before Oct. 7. ... 1 in 10 college students say they have been threatened with disciplinary action – or worse, actually disciplined – for their speech. ... About one in six professors report that they have either been threatened with punishment or actually investigated for their academic freedom or...

Newsom’s malevolent, self-serving nature came through loud and clear. As any resident of California can tell you, just about every word out of Newsom’s mouth in this debate was a lie. Under his terms of office, the quality of life in California has declined tragically. As the charts showed, crime is up, far worse than Florida. Hundreds of thousands of locals who used to love downtown for music, theater, museums, no longer go there. It’s too dangerous. San Francisco is in worse shape than LA… as everyone knows. He was far, far worse than DeSantis during the Covid nonsense. Our...

Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom will face off on Fox News in the great “Red State vs. Blue State” debate, AKA the GovShove or the Acrimonica in Alpharetta or Sir Galahad’s Lament . Whatever it is dubbed, the debate is important for both men, with DeSantis – why didn’t he wait until ’28? – having to prove that his terrible campaign has been a mere eight-month “oopsy” and with Newsom having to prove that he is a human being and not just an autobot bred for office by the San Francisco elite. Over the past...

Wake up to a concerning reality – the media is subtly pushing for Personal Carbon Allowances, urging you to accept it as a normal restriction and even your civic duty. But make no mistake, it’s neither normal nor your duty; it’s an encroachment on your freedom. Under the guise of environmental responsibility, governments are pushing Personal Carbon Allowances, attempting to normalize what is essentially a curb on your lifestyle. It’s a subtle move towards control, masquerading as a shared responsibility for the planet.

America and the Fourth Political TheoryThere is no progression from the founding of the United States. Every step away from the founding principles of individual rights and freedom is not a progression, it is a degradation. The mistake that so many people have made is to believe that there has to be some form of updating the founding principles in order to move forward, but all of it goes backward. In one sense there is the recognition that the nation has modernized, but what it has done is drift backwards, towards the fiefdoms of Britain, the Lords and Commoners. America,...

In yet another sign of a global political shift, the right-wing populist Party for Freedom in the Netherlands is projected to win a large plurality. According to exit polling, the PVV will pick up at least 35 seats while the current ruling coalition will combine for 37 losses while only winning 41 seats total.. That makes Geert Wilders, the founder of the Party for Freedom, the big winner. It also means an absolute meltdown has already started given how much Wilders is hated by the European left.. ... The Netherlands has been in the midst of a soft political revolution...

New York once again has the dubious distinction of being labeled “the least free state” in America, according to a report issued by libertarian-leaning think tank The Cato Institute. The Empire State ranked dead last — 50th — for policies impacting economic, social and personal freedoms in 2022, the report claims. By comparison, Florida ranked 2nd after New Hampshire as the most free state in the union. Cato said New York is a fiscal basket case. The state ranked 50th for economic freedom and scored at or near the bottom for debt and state and local taxation, government consumption, land...

Citing the need for equity, lawmakers in several Democrat-controlled states have passed measures recently that make it harder to discipline students who act up in the classroom.Schools in California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, and other states have adopted student discipline systems based on "restorative justice" instead of suspending students for bad behavior.That means, instead of giving students penalties for misbehavior, schools use "empathetic communication" to explain to students why their misbehavior is harmful.But at least one state has struck out in a different direction in the hopes of improving student success.In Oklahoma, Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction, has...

Coalesce or DieI caught a couple of clips the other day of some of the big podcasters or candidates and their counterparts on the other side of the spectrum. What became apparent from the beginning was the fundamental misunderstanding of who and what Trump is. Now, that seems ridiculous given the amount of time that Trump has been in front of the cameras, the near hysteria with which his every utterance is screamed across the internet, both positive and negative, but it seems true. I know people don’t want to hear about politics, especially at this stage, but this is...

Mayor Eric Adams is leading a coalition of 62 mayors across the nation in calling for US House Speaker Mike Johnson to pass a ban on assault weapons following the mass shooting in Maine. During a news conference on Thursday, Adams pointed to the massacre in Lewiston, where 18 people were killed, as the latest example of why the federal government needs to revive its former assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. “Eighteen Mainers were stolen from us by yet another disturbed man, wielding an assault rifle that had no business on our streets,” Adams said. “Mass shooting deaths...

The Nashville Police Department has suspended seven detectives in relation to the unauthorized leak of school shooter Audey Hale’s writings, according to a report. The officers were placed on administrative duty Wednesday as the agency attempts to pinpoint exactly how conservative commentator Steven Crowder obtained the explosive documents, according to NBC’s Nashville affiliate. Department spokesperson Don Aaron told the station “seven individuals are on administrative assignment to protect the integrity of the active, progressing investigation.” Aaron stressed the move was “absolutely not punitive” and said the suspended detectives would not be named at this time. Crowder said an unidentified party...

Our freedom to roam is under assault from a plan to close everything off and make us ask permission before we enjoy it.. There is a plan underway to close the great open spaces of the American West to you, me, our children, and our children’s children. The federal government — which owns most of this land — is determined to move from a “use and let use” system of accessing Western public lands to a permission-based system that will mean reservations, permits, and closures. Just last month, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision to close 317...