Free Republic

Twenty-five years ago, far-left socialist Hugo Chavez assumed Venezuela's presidency, lawfully elected and sworn in on Feb. 2, 1999, after an up-and-down career as a restive army office involved in a coup d'etat. He ran and won as an outsider at a time when the establishment had discredited itself, got into trouble when oil prices fell, and signed on to an International Monetary Fund austerity program, such as were being employed at the time in measures that left capitals burning. Once in. it didn't take long for Chavez to turn his once-prosperous country into a socialist hellhole. Today, the country...

As a professional rhetorician and teacher of rhetoric—the art of persuasion—for over 35 years, I have seen a lot of bad arguments. And not all of them have come from my college students. Not by a long shot. But in all that time, the worst argument I have ever heard, by far, is this one: “If it only saves one life….” It’s a line big-government types love to trot out whenever they want good-hearted, well-meaning people to accept some sketchy, illogical, oppressive measure because, you know, it just might save one person’s life. An example is socialized medicine, which would...

On the night before Halloween, Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted a video of a socialist sermon he delivered to "The Squad" of new socialist congresswomen, touting a "Green New Deal" and the banning of private health insurance to have a "Medicare for All" system. Their goal is to make Biden the most socialist president imaginable -- or, in safer terminology, "the most progressive president since FDR." Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, signed on to Bernie's socialist health-care bill in the Senate and proposed a Climate Equity Act with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So, it is comical that the "independent fact-checkers" at...

Are you enjoying your first taste of socialism? Life in America today is a sneak preview of life in Cuba or Venezuela. Democrats love it. This is the future they plan for you. The current economic catastrophe is exactly what America will look like if we institute the Green New Deal. The goal is to defeat climate change by killing your job, taking away your car, closing your business and turning America into Cuba or Venezuela. It's a progressive Democrat's rainy dream. And isn't it great? You don't need to go to work. Money magically appears in your bank account....

The election prognosticators at the FiveThirtyEight website estimate that former Vice President Joe Biden is ahead in the Democratic delegate race by about 150 votes -- 935 to 785 for Sen. Bernie Sanders. Doesn't that suggest a close race and a long road ahead? They say no. Bernie is now behind 15% to 20% in the national polls, and "Sanders tends to lose more ground every time a new set of states votes." Democrats, who treat the prospect of President Donald Trump's reelection as a "moral 9/11," much like his first election, want to avoid any long-running Biden-bashing feud. If...

On the brink of what could have been an absolute disaster, American Democrats thoroughly rejected socialism on South Carolina Saturday and Super Tuesday by overwhelmingly choosing former Vice President Joe Biden over Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. That was the general media talking point over the next several days after Biden ‘saved the Democratic party,’ and James Carville’s heart, with a dramatic come-from-behind win that almost nobody saw coming. Like the ending of every dumb Marvel movie, however, Biden’s seemingly improbable win wouldn’t have happened without the help of a key cast of characters. Fearing socialism, or perhaps a back-alley...

If you are dumb enough to slobber over a socialist then you’re already inclined toward being a hapless mark, so it should be no surprise that you Bernie dorks are about to get screwed over again by the Democratic Party. Here’s how it’s going to go: Because you are stupid – you support a socialist, so you are presumptively stupid – you think that if you work really hard and win the votes the establishment creeps who own the Democratic Party are going to let you have a say. But, like last time, you won’t get a say. You’ll work...

Since a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination has endorsed it, since most of his opponents have refused to denounce it, and since a majority of young people appear to approve of it, now is a good time to ask: what exactly is socialism? In a free market, you can buy just about any product you can afford so long as you are willing to pay the market price. Since market prices tend to reflect the social cost of production, in order to consume a good, you must pay what it costs society to produce it. On the supply side, people...

“Well, if you add up what Mayor Pete, Amy Klobachar, and Joe Biden got in New Hampshire, you can see the moderates still haven’t coalesced around Bernie quite yet. There’s still time. It’s going to be a long primary fight.” How many times have you heard that conventional wisdom since the senator from Vermont effectively won the first two primary elections of the cycle? By the way, it also completely ignores his outsized role in their race four years ago. Bernie’s not going away. He never left. He’s the shingles of campaigns. It’s purely wishful thinking by those who understand...

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wants to impose national rent control. He unveiled the policy proposal last September and recently reiterated his support via Twitter. Sanders proposes a national cap on annual rent increases to 1.5 times the rate of inflation or 3 percent—whichever is higher.Ironically, the article Sanders tweeted out attributes increasing rent prices, in part, to government control over the private housing market. This irony reinforces what many economists already know to be true: the left’s prescriptions for lowering housing prices are precisely what keeps prices high and supply low.Rent control would be a flagrant infringement of American property...

With the hot-button word “socialism” sparking intense political debate as Americans brace for the 2020 presidential election, two U.S. economists have completed a global drinking tour – and a book already at the top of Amazon's "beer" category – warning that the socialist lure could lead to a drastic dry-up of the country’s adult beverages. “Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World,” by Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell, is billed as a “worldwide tour guide written in plain English” which takes readers on a not-so-luxurious expedition into three countries that have embraced socialism – North Korea,...

No matter how far to the left much of the mainstream media may swing, I’ll confess to never having seen this one coming. At the Washington Post this week, Jackson Diehl pens an op-ed about the horrific conditions in Venezuela. Regular readers are already familiar with the tragic story because we cover it here every week. Four million refugees have now fled the country and are outstripping the humanitarian aid available in Colombia and other neighboring nations. The lack of food, potable water and medical supplies inside Venezuela literally has people falling down dead in the streets. Violence and starvation...

At the dawn of the USSR, hopes of the imminent global rule of communism soared high among leftists of the world. But in a few decades, it became clear that the socialistic ideals of Lenin had failed. How did this come to happen? “It is important to distinguish socialism from communism,” says Elena Malysheva, dean at the Division of Archival Studies at the Institute for History and Archives. “While socialism was the formal type of state administration of the USSR, communism was the ruling ideology. The project of the socialist state was initially utopian and populistic.” “The Soviet project contained...

Ideas run the world. Good ones create freedom and wealth; bad ones, oppression and poverty. You are not what you eat, but what you think. Politicians in particular fall under the sway of ideas. As John Maynard Keynes put it, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. . . . It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.” The...

Septuagenarian presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been capitalizing on young people's lack of knowledge and life experience to sell them a bill of rotten goods.

Sticks and stones may break bones, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just hopes his words are enough to get Republicans to back off Obamacare. “We’re not going to bow to Tea Party anarchists who deny the mere fact that Obamacare is the law,” Reid said this morning. That was just the start of it, though. Reid used words like "fanatic" and "extremist" to describe Republicans threatening to hold up a budget until Congress votes to defund Obamacare and its exchanges, which open for enrollment in eight days. “Are Republicans so intent on undermining President Obama and the signature health...

Reuters) - George Soros, who died XXX at age XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of free-wheeling capitalism that made him billions.

Eighth-graders in Wisconsin’s Union Grove school district were assigned to fill out a “Liberalism vs. Conservatism” crossword puzzle, and they learned some new and very questionable “facts.” Students learned conservatism is “the political belief of preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms … ” Conversely, they learned liberalism is “the political belief of equality and personal freedom for everyone, often changing the current system to increase government protection of civil liberties.” See the photos here. The crossword puzzle was part of a civics assignment that was forwarded to EAGnews by Tamara Varebrook, a local conservative activist whose eighth-grade daughter...

A mother at a Wisconsin public school said her daughter’s eighth grade class was assigned a worksheet with some eyebrow-raising definitions for “conservatism” and “liberalism.” Conservatism, it stated in part, believes in “preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms” while liberalism is for “equality and personal freedom for everyone.” “This is indoctrination,” Tamra Varebrook, a Republican activist in Racine, Wis., told TheBlaze on Thursday after her 13-year-old daughter showed her the crossword-style vocabulary sheet from Union Grove Elementary School earlier this week. Varebrook first talked about the assignment with the news arm of the conservative Education Action Group. Varebrook...

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell delivered an unexpectedly laudatory eulogy for Margaret Thatcher on The Last Word Monday night, but it was not one that many of her Republican admirers would appreciate. While conservative columnist George Will credited Thatcher for helping to “bury socialism as a doctrine of governance” in his tribute to the former British prime minister in The Washington Post, O’Donnell praised her for upholding the “good socialism” that still exists in Britain.“What do you call a person who gets rid of bad socialism and keeps good socialism?” O’Donnell asked. “I call that person a good socialist, like Margaret Thatcher.”...