Free Republic

Awesome. This guy has it going on.

Who Really Discovered America? Did ancient Hebrews reach the shores of the North and South American continents thousands of years before Christopher Columbus? What evidence is there for Hebrew and Israelite occupation of the Western Hemisphere even a thousand years before Christ? Was trans-Atlantic commerce and travel fairly routine in the days of king Solomon of Israel? Read here the intriguing, fascinating saga of the TRUE DISCOVERERS OF AMERICA! William F. Dankenbring A stone in a dry creek bed in New Mexico, discovered by early settlers in the region, is one of the most amazing archaeological discoveries in the Western...

he economy isn't growing fast enough to lower unemployment and still needs the benefit of the Federal Reserve's $600 billion Treasury bond-purchase program. That was the assessment Wednesday of Fed policymakers as they ended their first meeting of the year. The Fed made no changes to the program, and the decision was unanimous. The decision came from a new lineup of voting members that includes two officials who have criticized the bond purchases. They have said the purchases could eventually ignite inflation or speculative buying in assets like stocks. The bond-buying program is intended to lower rates on loans and...

I stole a laundry bag from the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires. It was made of thick ivory linen, embroidered with the words "dry cleaning" in cerulean blue, and looked like something that I could have found at an antique textiles show. But that wasn't the case. I'm usually pretty scrupulous about purloined souvenirs. Of course, I help myself to soap and shampoo, sewing kits, even those black sponges meant to spruce up your shoes -- oh, and ballpoint pens and darling little notepads. But the laundry bag was my first sojourn into the land of, what shall we...

You’ve likely heard the expression, “Mugged by reality.” It usually refers to having a treasured ideal shattered by some stubborn feature of human nature or unbending aspect of science or geopolitics. I’ve been eager to proclaim that the financial meltdown shows our world being mugged by economic reality. But increasingly, it seems humanity is attempting to perform a multitrillion-dollar mugging of reality. This is the first postmodern recession. It combines baby-boomer self-absorption with the ahistorical ignorance of the following generation, plus the acute narcissism common to both. The accompanying histrionics erase perspective and proportion – and the chance for rational...

"Either relativism is a genuine theory in which a real assertion is made, or else it isn't. But any attempt to assert relativism without relying on just-plain truth [absolute] would inevitably fail, because it would generate an infinite regress. And, of course, any assertion of relativism that does not rely on just-plain truth would be-self defeating. So it looks like any apparent assertion of relativism is either self-defeating or else is not a real assertion, but something more like an empty slogan." (Jubien, Michael. Contemporary Metaphysics. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997) "The only way the relativist can avoid the painful dilemma...

... There are lots of questions to be asked about Postmodernism, and one of the most important is about politics involved -- or more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance and instability something good or bad? ... the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive as Sarup, Flax and Butler all point out. ... postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictible, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be...

Postmodern Epistemologies by: Bethany Stotts, February 19, 2008 ...How does style affect our perception of the text, and does style itself impart its own distinct meaning?...Modern Language Association (MLA) professors attempted to answer these questions by drawing upon postmodern academics who remain skeptical of absolute knowledge, one of whom belongs to the radical “naturalist” Brights movement. Among the scholars mentioned were Donald Freeman, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Mark Turner, Daniel Dennett, and Noam Chomsky.... Instead, Chodat referred the audience to the works of radical atheist and Brights Movement member Dennett, who is listed on the site as one of the movement’s “enthusiastic...

If you can't find a religion that moves you, why not invent one? America has a long history of do-it-yourself spirituality going back at least far as Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists. And that desire to "roll your own religion" shows no sign of fading away. A September 2005 Newsweek poll found eight in 10 Americans do not believe any one faith is the sole path to salvation. So it's no surprise that some are weaving together strands from a variety of faiths to create their own personal religions. Wendi Moore-Buysee, a 36-year-old motivational speaker and life coach, is...

Appropriate Response to the Emerging Church Movement© By David Kowalksi Looking out of the windows of our homes we respond indifferently to the presence of dirt on the ground. Should that dirt makes its way into our homes, however, our feelings change and we proceed to sweep it out because it does not belong there. In John 2:14-16 [1] , after passing passively through the streets of Jerusalem, Jesus’ passivity gave way to angry expression as he proceeded to sweep clean the house of God. John says in verse 15 that when Jesus saw the money changers “He made a...

Eddie Vedolla is a Pomo, was raised on the Guidiville Rancheria by a grandfather who was a Pomo, and is so proud of his heritage that he served five years on the Guidiville tribal council. But those who succeeded him on the council said he is not a Guidiville Pomo, and they simply expelled him from the tribe. "We grew up on the Guidiville Rancheria. My grandfather raised us," he said. Being expelled is "incredibly devastating. It just devastated my whole family." Vedolla, 66, is among a growing number of American Indians who say they've been banished from their tribes...

The debate about Jay Bennish, the Colorado high school teacher who confused a diatribe against the Bush administration with a lesson in geography, is not about free speech, but about the meltdown of Western civilization. Jay Bennish, the product of baby boomer teachers and parents, is not unlike other recent high school and college graduates. He was denied the opportunity for an education. But come to think of it, baby boomers like me were denied educations. I had a Jay Bennish teaching my tenth-grade "social studies" class in 1973 (note the subject name that already reveals the non-academic nature of...

Address to: Summer Sounds Symposium Punga Cove, New Zealand February 11 2006 For the past three decades and more, many of the leading opinion makers in our universities, the media and the arts have regarded Western culture as, at best, something to be ashamed of, or at worst, something to be opposed. Before the 1960s, if Western intellectuals reflected on the long-term achievements of their culture, they explained it in terms of its own evolution: the inheritance of ancient Greece, Rome and Christianity, tempered by the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the scientific and industrial revolutions. Even a radical...

There came two declarations last week, from very different and utterly unrelated sources, but containing by implication the same message – namely that the assumptions behind our new society and new lifestyles are not true and therefore do not work. The first came from Lucien Bouchard, who abandoned a federal Conservative government to become a Quebec separatist and now appears to be abandoning separatism to return to conservatism – not to the party, but the philosophy. Bouchard headed a panel of 12 Quebec economists, business leaders, politicians and journalists who issued what they described as "a wake-up call" to Quebec....

SACRAMENTO – One week after accepting a $50,000 donation from a partner in a tribal casino project, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's political committee said Wednesday it would return the money after questions were raised about the donation by The Associated Press. Schwarzenegger made a promise during the 2003 recall campaign not to accept campaign contributions from groups that negotiate directly with his office – specifically identifying tribal gambling as one of those special interests. Last week at a birthday celebration fundraising event in Yuba City, the governor received a $50,000 contribution from Yuba County Entertainment LLC, a partner in a proposed...

1. The Enlightenment Left and its Enemies   Throughout the twentieth century, certain segments of the Left have either downplayed the horrendous crimes of, or made common cause with, totalitarian tyrannies run by the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini, Milosevic, Saddam, et al. In such cases, Enlightenment principles of freedom, democracy and human rights were abandoned under some sort of delusion that the regimes in question represented “anti-imperialism”, a “new civilization”, a “political spirituality”, etc. The story is, or at least should be, well-known.   The pages here provide a survey of how...

Call for Papers Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets Editors: Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) Barbara Penner (University College-London) "You know what they say about men who hang around women's lavatories. They're asking to have their illusions shattered." - Georgina to Albert, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover We invite contributions for the edited collection Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets. Public toilets are amenities with a functional, even a civic, purpose. Yet they also act as the unconscious of public spaces. They can be a haven: a place to regain composure,...

How mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World By Peter Temple April 17, 2004 HOW MUMBO-JUMBO CONQUERED THE WORLD: A SHORT HISTORY OF MODERN DELUSIONS, By Francis Wheen Once upon a time, undergraduate history students soon encountered the turning point. Many essay and exam questions took the form: The Portuguese discovery of bananas in 1482: a turning point in imperial history? Discuss. History, it seemed, was a snake pit of turning points. To make matters worse, amid the writhing, some points, while clearly points as such, turned out to be duds. They failed to pivot: King Krum's defeat of Emperor Nicephorus in 811:...