Free Republic

Over the past few years, I have lost count as to how many Republicans, conservatives, independents and libertarians have told me that they have learned the art of self-censorship when it comes to discussing or even hinting at their political or faith-based views. They went into self-censorship mode as a self-preservation response to the woke/cancel culture vigilantism many believe has swept into the corners of academia, corporate America and the mainstream media. As many now believe that identity politics and the search for any micro-aggression or misappropriation rule the day in these powerful, left-leaning institutions, they have decided that discretion...

With the start of classes at George Washington Law School, I have already had visits to my office of conservative and libertarian students asking if I thought they could speak freely in other classes without being penalized by professors. Despite teaching for decades, it is a question that I never heard from students until the last few years. It is now routine. It is the widespread fear of conservative students who have faced faculties with overwhelmingly liberal viewpoints and growing intolerance on virtually every campus. Now a new study at North Carolina confirms how conservative students routinely “self-censor” and do...

Survey ranks the 10 best and worst schools for free speech in 2021, according to students Sixty-six percent of college students think shouting down a speaker they disagree with is acceptable to shut down their talk, and another 23 percent believe violence can be used to cancel a speech, according to a wide-scale survey released this week. The 2021 College Free Speech Rankings, a follow-up on the first survey in 2020, asked over 37,000 students at 159 top-ranked U.S. colleges and universities to share their views about free speech on campus. Published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,...

While many Americans worry about ever-increasing (self censorship), those responsible for it have managed to amplify its effects by creating a climate of (self-censorship).Due to the psychological mechanisms of self-censorship, a single account blocked, a single video deleted, or a book banned can result in a broad chilling of speech. Important policy debates don’t occur, news story ideas aren’t pitched to editors, and books aren’t accepted for publishing, or written to begin with.In some cases, it appears the censors employ the psychological tricks on purpose, achieving maximum suppression with minimal responsibility. These methods aren’t new—in fact, they have long been...

A few weeks after we put up our secret Trump sign, I started to see more go up in my neighborhood. On one nearby street, five formerly bare houses in a row now sport American flags. While driving around my neighborhood early this fall, I suddenly realized I was seeing bare yards where in previous election years there have always been billboard-sized Republican signs. Once I started seeing ghosted Donald Trump signs, I couldnÂ’t unsee them. Judging by my neighborhood and those nearby in my Midwestern town, plenty of Democrats feel safe displaying their voting preferences, but Republicans do not....

A UK magazine called ArtsProfessional has published the results of a “Freedom of Expression survey” and the results are not good. The survey found that in the professional art world in the UK , self-censorship is the norm and pressure to stay silent on controversial issues is felt by most. A culture of self-censorship and fear of backlash from funders, colleagues and the public is convincing arts and cultural workers to stay silent on important issues, according to new research from ArtsProfessional… While about 90% of respondents agreed that “the arts and cultural sector has a responsibility to use its...

In the most liberal cities in America, the goal of maximum "inclusion" often requires an energetic scrubbing of language, especially gender terms. This week in California, the Berkeley City Council voted to amend its municipal code to achieve maximum sensitivity for the ever-increasing demands of the gender-smashing left. A council member explained, "In recent years, broadening societal awareness of transgender and gender nonconforming identities has brought to light the importance of non-binary gender inclusivity." It was high time to "make the environment of City Hall and the language of city legislation consistent with the principles of inclusion." Some of the...

The 7th of this month marked two years to the day since two gunmen walked into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and murdered twelve people. This period also therefore marks the second anniversary of the period of about an hour during which much of the free world proclaimed itself to be "Charlie" and attempted, by walking through the street, standing for moments of silence or re-tweeting the hashtag "Je Suis Charlie" to show the whole world that freedom cannot be suppressed and that the pen is mightier than the Kalashnikov. So two years on is...

Free speech proponent Mark Steyn scolded Western media on “The Kelly File” for being all bark and no bite in support of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo following a brutal terrorist attack Wednesday that left 12 dead.Steyn told Megyn Kelly the Western media needs to “man up” and not “retreat even further into self-censorship” in the aftermath of the massacre in Paris.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell Sharp-eyed readers will note that the link to National Review Online has vanished from my list of useful or interesting sites. Some will ask why; others will know. For those not yet aware, the reason is this John Derbyshire article: There is much talk about “the talk.” “Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and...

Andrew, I don’t agree with everything Nick Cohen says (particularly in those passages where he himself feels obliged to lapse into equivalism) but he’s right about liberalism’s retreat into a cowed quiescence, both in Pakistan and in the heart of the west. By way of a (so far) less bloody example: "A prominent British imam has been forced to retract his claims that Islam is compatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution after receiving death threats from fundamentalists." This is not in Lahore or Cairo but in London, at what is described as “a prominent mosque which also runs one of...

When the BBC finally ‘fessed up last week to the Global Warming Fraud  -- without admitting how much they aided and abetted the scam over ten years or more --  a liberal gent I know was shocked. He had sort of gritted his teeth and tolerated my skepticism over the years, but he never wanted to judge the whole fraudulent business for himself, although he had plenty of qualifications to do so. But this fraud was obvious. You had to want to close your eyes not to see it. I say that with all appreciation to the scientists and bloggers...

Whenever I write about Europe and demography, I get a lot of mail on the general line of, “Oh, yeah, Steyn? When will Muslims be 50.01 per cent of the population then? 2020? 2030? C’mon, you scaremonger…” And I usually reply that it’s not about hitting 50 per cent. It’s about the point at which mediating between the Muslim population and the broader population becomes a central and then the dominant feature of the culture. In Northern Ireland, the Loyalists outnumbered the Republicans by two to one more or less, but an arithmetical majority didn’t prevent 30 years of, to...

OK, so let's create a level playing field here. I have not even heard of this on CBS, ABC, NBC or any of the cable news services, even FOX NEWS. OR in any of the Newsrags or other publications. Read this and weep. Bet you $20 you did not hear this on the national news. The animals pictured below car-jacked, then raped Christopher Newsom, cut off his penis, then set him on fire and fatally shot him several times while they forced his girlfriend, Channon Christian, to watch. An even more cruel fate awaited her! Channon Christian, was beaten...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - An editor of a Danish newspaper that published the controversial prophet Muhammad cartoons said Wednesday he expects the debate about self-censorship in the media and artists' fear of offending Islam to continue for years. The Jyllands-Posten daily in 2005 published 12 drawings — one of them showing Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another portrayed him with a bushy gray beard and holding a sword. The cartoons, which were reprinted in a range of Western media, triggered international protests across the Muslim world and attacks on Danish embassies in January 2006....

New Mexico artist crushed by own sculpture 14 Jun 2006 Luis Jimenez, a Latin American sculptor whose work adorns public places across the U.S., has died after being crushed by his own sculpture. Part of the sculpture fell and pinned the 65-year-old artist against a steel support while it was being moved with a hoist at Jimenez's studio in Hondo, New Mexico, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff's office. Jimenez was pronounced dead at a nearby medical centre. His death is being termed an industrial accident and is under investigation, authorities said. Jimenez, a native of El Paso, Texas, was...

John Burns, the great New York Times reporter, offers us a brutally blunt assessment of how badly Western correspondents covered Saddam Hussein's regime. His report, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Editor & Publisher, is spreading rapidly on the Internet and is bound to have an impact on the public's already low respect for most journalists. The compulsively candid Burns, until recently the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq, wrote his comments for the new book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq" (The Lyons Press), a collection of first-person accounts by journalists in Iraq. Burns, who has...

ATLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff. For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he...

US news organisations “censored” their coverage of the US campaign in Afghanistan in order to be in step with public opinion in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a CNN senior executive has claimed. Coverage of the war in Afghanistan was shaped by the level of public support that existed for US action, Rena Golden, the executive vice-president and general manager of CNN International claimed. Speaking at Newsworld Asia, a conference for news executives in Singapore, Golden said: “Anyone who claims the US media didn’t censor itself is kidding you. It wasn’t a matter of government pressure but...