Free Republic

The World Economic Forum is pushing for a global transition away from private ownership of vehicles and other "idle equipment" as part of a "clean energy revolution,” itself part of the Great Reset. SNIP The first of these is the most important, and surely the most arousing to the likes of Klaus Schwab (son of a former member of several National Socialist (i.e. Nazi) organizations, and his ilk. The report argues that private ownership of vehicles and electronic devices, et. al., is wasteful and inefficient, and that we must “go from owning to using.” It further notes, "The average car...

In the wake of another senseless shooting yesterday we can expect progressive attacks on our Second Amendment freedom to become even more shrill and frenetic. That is why now is a good time to go back to basics. In this essay I will explain the history and theoretical underpinnings of the Second Amendment and discuss why it continues to be vitally important in both of its functions – ensuring the right of law abiding citizens to defend against both private violence and public violence.The Theoretical Underpinnings of the Right to Keep and Bear ArmsThe United States Supreme Court has held...

Our rights aren’t some vague, occasionally important idea that the government grants us. Instead, they are a definite concept granted by God. When he created us, he endowed us with the rights of life, liberty, property, and, if understood properly, the right to happiness. Happiness in that context means the ability to go out and pursue your dreams to build something and seek fulfillment. For that reason, gun rights are human rights. So are free speech rights, even on college campuses. So is your right to go build something without government interference, and then pass it on to your family...

The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property. The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property.

Right now all of us have decisions to make about how much freedom is too much freedom. On the national lockdown loosening in some states and stubbornly persisting in others, Americans are very much of two minds. For some, including most of the media, it is an inconvenience, but a righteous one that saves lives. For others, often with smaller megaphones, it is a powerfully destructive force economically and socially. But we should be able to agree that, whether justified or not, the lockdown has been a massive infringement on Americans’ basic rights. At least since women received the right...

“There’s this peace and inner calm that you need when shooting,” Michele Meyenberger says as the sound of gun fire echoes through the clubhouse. A magazine of ammunition for her Sturmgewehr 90, a modified semi-automatic rifle issued by the Swiss army, sits on the table as Meyenberger eyes the clock, knowing that it’s almost her turn on the shooting range. The 30-year-old is one of dozens of local rifle owners who have traveled to the Swiss village of Märwil for a shooting festival — where participants take aim at what seems like an impossibly small target located 300 meters (984...

How Legalizing Abortion Undermines The Basis For A Free Society Ireland’s abortion legalization erodes the very foundations of human dignity upon which self-government depends. Ireland voted to repeal its long-standing abortion ban on Friday, overturning a constitutional amendment that protected “the right to life of the unborn,” requiring legislators to consider the inherent worth of the fetus in all legislative decisions. In the span of just 35 years, Ireland’s overwhelmingly Catholic population has drifted, in public attitudes and votes, from entrenching the rights of the unborn to laying the foundation for stripping them away. Newspapers around the world are hailing...

My comments are in response to an article which appeared yesterday entitled, What Leftists Don’t Understand about Economics, by Daniel Carter, of Investment Watch. Link below. Where do you want me to start? Liberals and their philosophical/political brethren understand little if anything about economics, and even less about the principles of Natural Law and Natural Rights which underscore free-market capitalism. Volumes have been written about Natural Rights beginning with Thales of Miletus in the 6th century B.C. He and the Seven Sages of Miletus, rather than the later Greeks Plato and Aristotle, are credited with giving philosophical birth to the...

Indeed, the repeal of the Obamacare mandate is one of the great civil rights victories of our times. Obamacare violates our inalienable natural rights/property rights in critical ways. First, it compels you to purchase an insurance product you may not need or want in terms dictated by the government. In a free society, you would be free to negotiate the terms and coverages of the plans, deductables, price, etc. For example, an elderly couple doesn't need pregnancy benefits, infant annihilation coverage, or coverage for any minor children. When I was working, we had two health insurance choices---Self, or Self and...

President Barack Obama affirmed this week that the Declaration of Independence recognizes that “individual human beings” have “God-given rights.” Yet, he insisted this was a “radical idea” at the time of the founding. […] “So I recognize a traditional society may value unity and cohesion more than a diverse country like my own,” he said, “which was founded upon what, at the time, was a radical idea — the idea of the liberty of individual human beings endowed with certain God-given rights.” What would Alexander Hamilton say to that? Or Thomas Jefferson? Or Cicero? Writing in February 1775, a young...

What happened to bring us where we are today – on the brink of social, moral, and financial collapse? We forgot the Principle set forth in our Declaration that the sole purpose of civil government is to secure our Natural God-given rights by protecting us from those who seek to take these rights away from us. We were seduced and deceived into believing that civil government should 1) Provide for our needs; and 2) Protect us from the risks and uncertainties of Life. The belief that government is responsible for all our needs is self-destructive. Historically, when this ideology has...

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” -The Declaration of Independence It is not the federal government’s job to secure ALL of our Natural Unalienable Rights, just those appropriate for a “federal” government. Other God-given rights are secured by state and local governments. How is the Natural Right to Life Secured?...

In the first chapter to his superb new book, Our Republican Constitution, Professor Randy Barnett opens with the events and intellectual background that led to our Declaration of Independence. Of primary importance is the concept and place of natural law and natural rights. Thousands of men risked their necks in order to assume “the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature” entitled them. Whatever structures of government were to follow, their designs would recognize self-evident truths, that all men are in possession of God-given, natural, unalienable rights. While the literature of the time emphasized rights to life,...

As is evident by the variety of thinkers and source documents presented here, the natural law and natural right tradition is a complex and many-sided body of moral and political thought. It is unified, however, by an agreement as to the natural (as distinguished from conventional or man-made) character of principles of right and wrong, and of justice and injustice. Philosophers and statesmen who think and act within this shared understanding agree that the standards that ought to guide the ordering of political and social life are accessible to human reason. One can find this appeal to natural standards of...

When the forces of American progressivism emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, those who would one day be labeled as conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians found themselves quite ill-prepared for the intellectual and political onslaught. Perhaps the best analyst at the time progressivism emerged, somewhat surprisingly, was E.L. Godkin, the venerable founder of The Nation. t was the rights of man that engaged the attention of the political thinkers of the eighteenth century. The world had suffered so much misery due to the results of dynastic ambitions and jealousies, and the masses of mankind were everywhere so burdened by the...

The word "right," used as a noun, means, my dictionary tells me, a "just, or lawful claim." Claim on what? On whatever I want and can lawfully have. I have a right to life, that is, a just claim on life. I have a right to liberty, a just claim to be free. I have a right to property, a just claim on land, goods, or other wealth. My right is not life, liberty, property, but rather my proper and just claim upon these things. The distinction is important. It was understood by our revolutionary forefathers but is widely misunderstood...

The U.S. Constitution, as its framers understood it, was a means to an end. It was crafted and adopted for the sake of achieving the natural-law principles referred to in the Declaration of Independence. The progressives understood this very clearly as well. The robust regulatory and redistributive aims of the progressive policy agenda were inevitably at odds with the natural-law theory of the founding. This basic fact makes understandable Woodrow Wilson’s admonition (in an address ostensibly honoring Thomas Jefferson) that, “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” Do not, in other words,...

The US Constitution is much more important, and in much greater danger than most people realize. I will discuss both issues in this article. Some people believe, and I am one of them, that there is one short passage in our founding documents that encapsulates, enshrines, and defines what is so unique and important about the US Constitution, and the United States of America. Oddly enough it is not to be found in the Constitution at all – it is in “The Declaration of Independence.” I am talking about the preamble to the Declaration – specifically the first sentence. Without...

Today is the birthday of a man who left an indelible imprint on American history and the history of the free world more broadly. The Englishman John Locke was born on August 29, 1632. Locke was one of the most heralded Enlightenment thinkers — preeminent among classical liberals — developing theories on natural rights, property, government, not to mention law and philosophy more broadly that would influence the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Western civilization itself. His intellectual achievements were so great that Thomas Jefferson identified Locke as one of “the three greatest men who ever lived, without any...

We marched against the recent attack on voting rights. We demanded justice in the face of Stand Your Ground laws and racial profiling. We marched to raise awareness on unemployment, poverty, gun violence, immigration, and gay rights. And we called for action on climate change. Chances are, when you think about civil rights, environmental issues aren't on the radar screen. But stop and think about it. Remember Hurricane Katrina? The hurricane that leveled New Orleans showed that severe weather in low-income neighborhoods and communities of colour is a matter of life and death. The images from the storm are hard...