March 4, 2025

Trump’s common sense revolution: Transformation and revelation

Trump’s common sense revolution is transforming the Republican Party.  By transforming the Republican Party into the party of common sense, Trump is making it the natural home of any American voter who cares about America. But what h...

October 23, 2024

Liking Trump

You probably know someone who claims not to like Trump but is keen to vote for him anyway — and you also may have seen this posting, which has been all over the internet. These folks are very interesting.  Of course, they are doing...

August 9, 2024

‘Common sense’: Trump gets it

We can learn a lot from Barton Swaim’s Wall Street Journal article, “Can Trump Beat Harris with Common Sense?” On the one hand, Swaim seems genuinely puzzled by the nature of Trump’s support.  Because people who a...

July 31, 2024

Our post-truth world

Did you know that the Oxford Dictionaries selected “post-truth” as the Word of the Year for 2016?  Both the selection of “post-truth” and the timing of its selection are remarkable.   In 2016, Americans ...

July 9, 2024

An immigration debacle and America’s elections

I recently returned from a trip abroad.  I was glad to be home, but the reception awaiting me at the border dampened my enthusiasm. The security theatre I was put through was more elaborate and more absurd than ever, but that is probably...

January 12, 2024

Have universities ever been a source of political wisdom?

Over at Power Line, while discussing the Claudine Gay/Harvard scandals, John Hinderaker raised the “broader question whether universities collectively have even been a source of wisdom on political issues.” It’s an important ques...

August 30, 2023

Want to fix America? Bring down the Department of Education

American education has been captured by the left — and deliberately ruined.  In their thoughtful article "Education: How to Destroy and Reconquer," Arthur Milikh and Scott Yenor describe what the Left has accomplished:  ...

August 17, 2023

Is it necessary to prove what's 'self-evident'?

I am a fan of Dr. Peter McCullough.  He has much to offer, and his recent thoughtful and informed newsletter, entitled "Academic Medicine Covering Up COVID-19 Vaccine Cardiac Arrests?," especially deserves your thoughtful attentio...

June 29, 2023

The insulting farce of the Hunter Biden plea deal

Over at The Epoch Times, Roger Simon states the commonsense truth that the "Hunter Biden 'Plea Deal' Is an Insult to Our Intelligence."  He quotes presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy: It's no accident that the ...

June 3, 2023

Time to abolish the FBI

I am a fan of Roger Simon.  His articles are great examples of the Tom Paine tradition in American political writing.  Yes, he writes as a citizen speaking common sense to his fellow citizens, but he gives us more to like. ...

February 2, 2023

UnLocke-ing the American Founders

Over at Power Line, Professor Steven Hayward recently asked, "Are We Trapped in a Locke-Box?"  It is an important question because most books on the American founders make the claim that the British philosopher John Locke provides...

December 22, 2022

3 must-read books to ring in the new year

What a year!  America, once known as the common sense nation, seems to have left common sense behind in the increasingly bizarre Biden era.  Yet 2022 has been a banner year for truly great common sense books by thoughtful American...

December 10, 2022

Conservatives must not drop the ball on classical liberalism

In a recent article over at The Federalist, Josh Herring asks, "Can classical liberalism operate in a post-Christian America?"  It's an intriguing question.  However, near the beginning of the article, Herring makes ...

October 7, 2022

Who will the Democrat presidential ticket be in 2024?

A fellow offering a prediction about an election in these chaotic times surely owes his readers a track record of previous successes.  Unfortunately, I have only one earlier success, and it was long ago — but it was a trifecta. ...

June 16, 2022

How many Enlightenments were there?

An American Enlightenment?  The very idea of an American Enlightenment is surprising to many Americans.  Yet the editor of The Enlightenment Reader, a collection of writings from the Enlightenment Era, wrote that "America was...

March 18, 2022

Chiropractic and the cure for COVID

Why didn't COVID bother chiropractors?  One illustrative story is here.  It involves a woman with an extremely dire diagnosis — viral encephalitis, comatose, only hours to live — given a chiropractic adjustment and...

March 5, 2022

COVID Did Not Panic Chiropractors. Why Not?

If you have been troubled by the rapidly declining claims for the efficacy of the COVID vaccines and boosters or by the rapidly rising reports of problems with the vaccines and the boosters, you might be interested to know how it came about that COVI...

August 31, 2021

Can Americans still beat Democrat voter fraud?

The Democrats are the party of voter fraud.  This is the basic fact of American politics.  Republicans know it, and so do Democrats.  We all know that the dead who vote always vote for the Democrat and that those voting ...

August 13, 2021

Getting rid of the CDC would be a great start

Believe it or not, we owe the evil Dr. Fauci a debt of gratitude.  He has demonstrated for all time the costs and folly of allowing ourselves to be ruled by government experts.  In addition, he has even given us the perfect name f...

April 29, 2021

Remember an age when modern Democrat schemes would be laughed out of the room

The deep significance of H.R. 1 is that we no longer live in the Founders' republic.  In a recent column at American Greatness, Glenn Ellmers describes how H.R. 1 would have fared in the American republic we once had (italics in original)...

April 6, 2021

What will future Americans think when they look back at us?

Are we witnessing the failure of the American experiment in government by the people, of the people, and for the people?  America today certainly has the look and feel of terminal decline.  Meanwhile, America's enemies, foreig...

March 9, 2021

The Deep State's victory could be temporary

Donald Trump forced its hand; the Deep State had to cheat to win.  And this was not the sort of cheating we have grown accustomed to, like the relatively modest cheating in Illinois and Texas that got Kennedy "elected" in 1960....

January 13, 2021

Standing up for America

We now have what Venezuela has made itself famous for: a stolen election.   The Democrats even used the very same Dominion software the corrupt rulers of Venezuela rely on.   That's a wow! There will be consequenc...

December 7, 2020

A bit of common sense about elections and what they mean

You and I are witnesses to a crime; we are witnessing a criminal conspiracy to steal the American presidential election.  What, in your opinion, is this crime's most astonishing feature?  Is it how brazen it is?  It is, after al...

September 14, 2020

AP reporter proclaims his ignorance on 'self-evident truths' in the age of Trump

The Associated Press has provided an "analysis" by Calvin Woodward with this headline "AP Analysis: In Trump's America, truths are not self-evident."  It is an anti-Trump diatribe, the kind of thing we have come to expect...

August 19, 2020

When American universities taught common sense

When Lord Acton visited Harvard in 1853, he found that the philosophy of the college was common sense.  Acton wrote that by "the third year Reid becomes a text-book."  The Reid whose philosophy became the focus of the ju...

August 6, 2020

Coronavirus common sense

Have you heard the news?  The epidemic is largely over in Sweden, the country that has been criticized for not imposing lockdowns.  Sweden chose the commonsense approach of protecting the elderly and those with pre-existing health...

July 3, 2020

Abolishing common sense

Thomas Sowell reminds us that public intellectuals helped make WWII the most devastating war in human history.  Public intellectuals "played a major role in creating the atmosphere of both military weakness and political irresolution w...

June 30, 2020

Americans need common sense to save the Constitution and the nation

In a recent posting here at American Thinker, I wrote: "What you and I know by common sense is ... most of what we need to know to be a sovereign people, a people capable of ruling ourselves."  We can't do a good job of govern...

June 24, 2020

The Supreme Court versus Common Sense

For many years, Americans who love this country and revere the Constitution have longed for a Supreme Court dedicated to upholding the Constitution.  Instead, year after year, America and the American idea have been under attack by the Court....

June 6, 2020

Intellectuals versus Common Sense

In his book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell takes America's "public intellectuals" on a well deserved trip to the woodshed.  He makes many interesting claims, including this one: "The unarticulated cultural disti...

May 10, 2020

Common Sense and Self-Evident Truth in a Post-Truth World

Many Americans today go far beyond simply rejecting the ideas of the American founders, the claims of the Declaration, and the Constitution.  They reject the very idea of truth.  These Americans were taught in American universitie...

April 24, 2020

A first step to expertise on the American founding

It is not yet clear when life is going to return to something like normal in these United States.  Meanwhile, many of us have our schedules freed up dramatically.  What to do with all that newfound free time?  May I sugg...

April 1, 2020

The Darwin Awards and the laws of common sense

Have you heard about the Darwin Awards?  You might enjoy checking them out.  The awards are given to individuals for outstanding achievement in improving the gene pool "by eliminating themselves from the human race in an obvi...

March 7, 2020

Why 'Unalienable'?

There is a constant stream of books and articles telling us, often strenuously and at great length, that the American Founders got the ideas they used for the Founding from the British philosopher John Locke.  The Founders would be puzzled ...

February 26, 2020

Sanders pockets the Party

Despite everything the party insiders and their lackeys in the media are doing to try to stop him, Bernie Sanders keeps polling well and getting votes.  That has the Democrat powers-that-be in a panic.  Their fear is that Sanders ...

February 14, 2020

The Democrats' Playbook Will Endure Forever

In conversation with a friend of a friend at a party on Saturday, I recommended the new Clarence Thomas movie, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.  When I mentioned Thomas's name, he shuddered and called him "that terr...

January 23, 2020

Joe Biden: The great uniter of the liberal factions?

Biden is clearly the right choice for the Democrats.  He unites in himself the two wings that have defined the Democrats: the Obama wing and the Clinton wing. First, there is Obama's foreign policy legacy.  Biden was aligne...

October 15, 2019

Political correctness versus common sense

The masters of political correctness in America are moving fast.  For example, consider the explosion of so-called gender identities."  In 2016, New York City released a list of 31 genders approved by the city's Commission ...

September 7, 2019

The Europeans Keep Rejecting Liberty

Modern continental Europe keeps trying to solve its political problem — and then to impose its solution on everyone within reach.  Recognizing this historical process can help us understand European anti-Americanism, strongest perhaps in G...

August 21, 2019

Transgender insanity: Another big battle in the war on common sense

I'm guessing you have already noticed that there is a war on common sense going on all around us, but have you heard about this recent assault in that war?  It's a doozy.  A women's shelter is being sued for turning aw...

August 3, 2019

Unlearners and the Left

Unlearners.  You have known some, surely.  Perhaps you had a co-worker who was one, or even a boss.  Maybe you have one in your family. Unlearners are people who seem to be unable to learn from experience.  ...

July 1, 2019

Making Sense of Common Sense

Over at Spectator USA, Sam Leith's article with the title "Common sense is the real generation gap" caught my interest. I thought I knew where he was headed.  After all, common sense has probably always been the real genera...

June 17, 2019

The Forgotten Bargain that Made America

How did we Americans get ourselves into the mess we are now in? It's a complicated story.  It started when the American people broke a bargain honorably made.  And not just any bargain.  The bargain that was broke...

February 2, 2019

How to Destroy the Bill of Rights: Start with the 9th and 10th Amendments

Are you worried about the Democrats' plans for the First and Second Amendments?  You are right to be concerned.  The leftists who have taken over and transformed that political party have made it clear that they intend to elim...

January 5, 2019

The American Enlightenment: Worlds apart from the French one

The American Enlightenment?  The idea may seem surprising.  Wasn't the Enlightenment about the ideas of the French philosopher Voltaire and his followers? Actually, there was an American Enlightenment, and it was fundamenta...

December 12, 2018

Liberals' deadly strategy to wreck the USA: Attack faith and common sense

In On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, Michael Novak wrote:  "The founding generation moved easily between faith and practical, common-sense reasoning, indeed mounted upwards on both those wings in uni...

October 31, 2018

Loving 'the left'

Have you noticed that people are beginning to use "the left" and "leftists" when they discuss the opponents of the American way of life who have taken over the Democrats?  It is a healthy trend. For too long, leftists...

August 9, 2018

The Pitiful Roots of Anti-Americanism

The anti-Semite is a crank and a bore.  However, the anti-Semite has an important psychological and even spiritual advantage over certain other kinds of cranks: he knows that to other people, he is a crackpot.  This leaves the doo...

April 27, 2018

The American Principle of Liberty

It is a remarkable fact, though little noticed, that we no longer conduct our politics in the language of the Founders.  What that means is we no longer think politically in their terms.  Although the American Founding was all about unal...

April 15, 2018

How to Defend the Second Amendment

Recently, there has been quite a lot written in defense of the Second Amendment.  Some of those defenses have been quite good, but what is most remarkable to me is that I have not found one that makes the case as the American Founders would...

March 23, 2018

Was Obama's foreign policy brilliant or a disaster?

Weighing the successes and failures of a president's foreign policy is standard operating procedure in the world of punditry.  Experts have been thus weighing in on Barack Obama's foreign policy.  The problem with this game ...

December 31, 2017

The Trouble with Conservatism

When FDR stole the name of "liberalism" to disguise the fact that he was a Progressive, he succeeded in doing more than simply confusing America's voters in his day, many of whom had been made suspicious of Progressivism by Woodrow Wils...

December 20, 2017

Liberalism: It's All in the Name

There is so much confusion about the meaning of the term.  In fact, "liberalism" seems to be a word at war with itself.  For example, "illiberal" means "restricting freedom of thought or behavior."  Yet pe...

September 7, 2017

1913: The Turning Point

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was the newly elected president.  Wilson and his fellow progressives scorned the Constitution and the Declaration.  They moved swiftly to replace the Founders' republic with a new regime. There is widespread a...

August 15, 2017

Unicorns, yetis, Loch Ness Monster: Liberal university does something never seen

Something truly astonishing has happened at Rutgers University: the firing of a radical leftist professor. The professor, Kevin Allred, taught a course in women's and gender studies entitled "Politicizing Beyoncé."  Here ...

August 10, 2017

How about America returns to common sense?

Donald Trump's proposals – the ones driving so many people crazy – are simply policies that are good for America.  They are just common sense.  Because they are common sense, they deserve broad bipartisan support – whi...

August 3, 2017

Defending the Founders and the (American) Enlightenment

In his article "Modernity and the Secularization of Reason," Tim Jones claims that fascism and communism are "rooted in the reason midwifed out of philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Bacon, Hume, and Marx."...

June 7, 2017

News flash: Where you live is the House of War

Do you know this term?  It is really important that you know it and really important that you understand it, too.  Why?  Because according to Islam, it's where you live. According to the adherents of Islam, the world is divided ...

May 9, 2017

Destroying the college racket

Retired Professor Armando Simon offered us his thoughtful reflections on the rotten state of American universities and colleges in "A Professor Looks at the College Racket." Racket, indeed.  We are indebted to Professor Simon for ou...

March 18, 2017

The Federal Jobs Program, Then and Now

Have you heard that a bill has been introduced in the House prohibiting federal employees from using government computers and devices to watch pornography on the job? The bill is in response to many stories of federal employees spending their work...

March 12, 2017

The administrative state and the deep state

We no longer live in a constitutional republic.  Congress routinely passes bills that violate the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, and judges boldly legislate from the bench instead of upholding the Constitution. American progressiv...

February 8, 2017

2016 and 1860: What do California and South Carolina have in common?

The last time Democrats were this upset about the election of a Republican president was when America elected Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's election revealed that for many Democrats, loyalty to the Union was only provisional.  "Not my p...

February 7, 2017

What Ever Happened to Common Sense?

I have been hearing from many people about common sense lately.  Because a book of mine has that phrase in the title, people frequently offer me their thoughts about common sense.  Over time, this has amounted to a kind of informal and u...

January 3, 2017

Trump and the crisis of American Conservatism

Conservatism can be defined as an attitude of resistance to radical change marked by caution and prudence.  Because progressives reject the American idea, American conservatism quite naturally over time came to define itself as resistance to the...

January 2, 2017

Defining American Conservatism

The meaning of conservatism has long been a matter of dispute among conservatives.  The election of Donald Trump has raised that dispute to a fever pitch.  Consequently, this might be a good time to bring some precision to this debate. I...

December 28, 2016

Will 2016 be a real turning point?

Our bipartisan political elite began the year confident the fix was in.  They had a dispiriting political rerun planned for us.  There was to be another Bush-Clinton electoral "contest," overseen as always by the "news" ...

December 11, 2016

Donald Trump's common sense conservatism

What is common sense conservatism?  As articulated by Donald Trump, first and foremost, it is America controlling its borders.  Trump says we are not a country if we don't control our borders – no borders, no country.  That...

November 24, 2016

The Electoral College favors common sense

The Electoral College has once again done what seems to be its special genius to do.  It favored the common sense of the American people. The presidential contest in 2016 came down to common sense versus political correctness – and comm...

November 14, 2016

The Electoral College Is Brilliant

The progressives are determined to get rid of the Electoral College.  Of course they are.  Abolishing the Electoral College would complete their project of overthrowing America's unique federal system, begun about one hundred years ago....

November 1, 2016

Imposing the new 'realism'

Ordinary Americans are for the most part commonsense realists.  For most Americans, especially those who have not had the privilege of being steeped in sophisticated Ivy League thinking, it is still self-evident that a boy in a tutu and a tiara ...

August 6, 2016

America: The Common Sense Nation No More?

When America knew itself, we were the common sense nation. Common sense was once at the center of public life in America.  The Founders put it there.  According to the American Idea, the American people are sovereign.  The Founders ...

June 24, 2016

Sovereignty in America

There is so much to like in Bruce Walker's article "Decentralize Sovereignty" in the June 23 issue of The American Thinker!  We can all agree with Mr. Walker: the Framers of the Constitution intended to prevent the concentration of...

December 20, 2014

Defending America's Constitution

In his thoughtful and informed “The Greatest Constitutional Document of All” (The American Thinker, December 15, 2014), Rob Natelson gives the prize to the Magna Carta. Other thinkers have in a similar vein emphasized the importan...

November 1, 2014

'Liberals' Aren't Liberal

Have you read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom?  It is the little book that became a surprise bestseller and inspired Reagan and Thatcher.  In it, Hayek demonstrated that allowing the government to acquire increased control over the econom...

September 15, 2014

The Progressives: Modern and Postmodern

I. The Modern Progressives Woodrow Wilson, the very model of the modern Progressive, utterly rejected the Founders’ self-evident truths and unalienable rights.  Wilson and the modern Progressives saw the Declaration and the Constitution...

June 22, 2014

A Quick Defense of Classical Liberalism

Bill Starr’s thoughtful and interesting discussion of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence ("The Blood of Liberty," American Thinker, June 21, 2014) has much to recommend it.  However, the following quote from his article calls out f...