Free Republic

In the past half-century, America seems to have swung from a conformist social ethic to a radical individualistic social ethic.

NEW YORK (AP) — At the end of “The Searchers,” one of John Wayne’s most renowned Westerns, a kidnapped girl has been rescued and a family reunited. As the closing music swells, Wayne’s character looks around at his kin — people who have other people to lean on — and then walks off toward the dusty West Texas horizon, lonesome and alone. It’s a classic example of a fundamental American tall tale — that of a nation built on notions of individualism, a male-dominated story filled with loners and “rugged individualists” who suck it up, do what needs to be...

If you blinked you might have missed the momentous occasion of the release of the second part of the UN IPCC’s sixth assessment report of how we're all going to die unless we all board jets and attend global warming conferences. Or give lots of money to those officials who do it for us.Since no one reads these things anyway, by the time the fourteenth chapter of the second part of the sixth assessment rolled around, everyone was drunk and decided to take shots at conservatives.Chapter 14 was on North America and warned of the threat posed by "individualistic" conservatives...

Carlos A. Rodríguez

ROME — Pope Francis urged a group of university students Sunday to fight off the “virus of individualism” by giving their lives in service of others. “In these confused times, made even more complex by the pandemic, I repeat to you: do not allow yourselves to be robbed of hope!” the pontiff exhorted in a video message to students at the University of Milan.

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...

“‘I’d rather be myself,’ he said. ‘Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.’” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance “Even despotism does not produce...

Left leaning commentator Matthew Yglesias, who’s Jewish, tweeted today: “Think I’m becoming a Straussian/Putnamist who instrumentally wants to get everyone to go to church again.” Columnist Ross Douthat, who’s Catholic, responded: “Be the change you seek.” Yglesias retorted: “Not gonna sell out the chosen people like that! But I’m gonna go neocon and root for the Christians vs the post-Christians.” (Political philosopher Leo Strauss is considered a father of neoconservatism. Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone about declining social capital and civic life in America.) Although personal religious faith remains strong for many Americans, institutional Christianity is declining, with a minority...

In the summer of 2014, I gave birth to a baby boy. He was born with a perfect Apgar score, after a very easy delivery. But my labor had not been smooth—in fact, throughout the day and a half of contractions, I believed there was something decidedly wrong. I also felt that way as I held him for the first time, and he writhed violently under my hands. In a video taken about 10 minutes after he was born, he can be seen lifting his head up off my chest. “Ooooh, look at how advanced he is!” someone can be...

From our first day at school to our last day of work, we are told not to be entrepreneurs or think for ourselves, but instead to do what others tell us. Rather than playing a pickup game of whiffle ball on the neighborhood corner, we play organized tee ball with coaches and uniforms. Rather than studying what we are interested in while in college, we take classes that will “lead to a good job at an established company.” Instead of starting a company, we work as a nameless drone for a corporate behemoth. Rather than explore the woods, we follow...

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...

In a grim convention speech, Sen. Bernie Sanders said "voters will face a choice between authoritarianism and freedom this November. One of the candidates intends to impose a regime of individualism that will stifle the human dream of collectivism envisioned by Karl Marx. The other candidate offers a pathway to escape this dire fate." "If Donald Trump is reelected Americans will be forced to earn their own livings," Sanders lamented. "Some will be encouraged to embark on a futile quest for success as owners and operators of small businesses. Others will be expected to take jobs producing products that consumers...

Francis made a statement from the Vatican on Sunday, praising healthcare workers in Italy's Lombardy region who stood by their patients during the pandemic's "troubled months." Lombardy was Italy's worst-affected region at the height of the pandemic. Francis later warned people to "be careful," and not to allow individualism to again become "the guiding principle of society." Francis used the health care workers as an example to make his point, saying their professionalism was "one of the pillars of [Italy]." The Pope described the medical workers as "angels." In April, he said the pandemic could be one of "nature's responses"...

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Radical New Progressive Left abhors guns as much from an aesthetic standpoint as from a political, social, and ethical one. Thus, they never fail to use a particularly tragic albeit rare instance of misuse of a firearm by the criminal and the occasional lunatic to denounce firearms ownership and possession generally, vociferously, and this is reflected in the question they ask and the manner in which they ask it: How can society protect itself from the “scourge” of guns? You will note that their professed concern is that of society, of the Collective, the Hive,...

The Fourth honors the founding of America. It's the anniversary of the day in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was approved. The Declaration was important. It didn't say that America would be the best country because it would have the biggest military, toughest leaders, most government giveaways, or tightest borders. The great innovation that day in Philadelphia was the declaration that the United States would have a limited government, rooted in the idea that every individual has inalienable rights. In other words, we do not get our rights from the government. They already exist. The government's job is to...

REVIEW ESSAYSérotonine by Michel Houellebecq Flammarion, 2019, 352 pages For a brief moment, just before the end of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Sérotonine, a ray of hope seems to galvanize its protagonist. For a short while he seems to recover his lust for life. Having languished for years without a sense of purpose, Florent-Claude resolves to end his reliance on antidepressants. Gradually something akin to a will to live begins to resurface: he notices skirts by the bar in a café, girls, facial expressions, emotion, desire, and irritation at the mind-numbing TV programs he had been watching every day. Indeed,...

Socialism is on the march! It’s just that nobody quite knows what it is. A Gallup poll in August found that 57 percent of Democrats said they view socialism positively, while only 47 percent had a favorable view of capitalism. Only 16 percent of Republicans thought well of socialism. Findings like this—along with other polls showing socialism’s support among millennials generally as well as the sudden celebrity of avowed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after her stunning defeat of fourth-ranked Democratic House leader Joseph Crowley in a New York primary—have invited waves of op-eds crashing across the waterfront: What is socialism? Why...

Note: Fr. Imbelli tells us he was reading along in some works by Pope Benedict XVI and was moved to extract several passages that seemed to speak powerfully to the multiple scandals in which we find ourselves. We agree, and thought you would like to see them as well. – Robert Royal During his last trip to Germany, at Freiburg im Breisgau, on September 24thand 25th2011, Benedict XVI gave two addresses to German bishops, clergy, and lay leaders. Reports at the time indicated they were not well received by the audience. From the vantage of the present crisis, however,...

It will come as no surprise that this year Hillsdale College has chosen to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Douglass. Born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass fled north to freedom in 1838. Eventually, he became a celebrated orator, and a leading figure in the abolition movement. Douglass also became a friend of Hillsdale College. He was twice an honored guest of the college. His first visit took place in January 1863, a few weeks after the final issuance of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. On that occasion, Douglass delivered an address entitled “Popular Error and Unpopular Truth.”...

At the next table in the cafe where I was working this morning, a young woman spent a whole hour talking excitedly to her older companion about herself, her hopes and aspirations for her job, her romantic relationship and her home. It was hard to avoid the impression that she thought herself the centre of the Universe, her dreams eminently fascinating and important. Is this simply what young people or “millennials” (people born after 1980) are like these days? Fuelled by the endless opportunity for self-promotion and self-reflection on social media, combined with a wider culture that’s arguably placed greater...