November 25, 2022

The new generation's sex problem

I wonder where on God's continuum America lies at this moment.  To read and hear the current era's accounts of perversity passing itself off as someone's truth is disheartening, not to mention as old as mankind.  The p...

November 7, 2022

The slippery slope of the political class

I am cautiously confident in the news that a red wave will crash upon America tomorrow. That Biden warned us how long the votes may take to count makes me hope our side’s countermeasures will be sufficient. Let’s say that the predictions ...

October 2, 2022

Does it matter which megalomaniac is behind the curtain?

George Soros with his Open Society money plus the Chicago Marxist contingency of Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Penny Pritzker, and Barack Obama are five people I'm inclined to group as the Biden puppet masters.  Is there a pecking order ...

September 25, 2022

Trump or DeSantis? Why not both?

Jack Cashill, in his Thursday AT piece, "Can the GOP Accommodate Two Rock Stars?" seemed to be taken with DeSantis's use of "we," whereas Trump uses "I," as did Obama. But DeSantis's choice of "we" w...

August 17, 2022

How school district bureaucrats can get you fired for wrongthink

Abraham Lincoln observed that "nearly all men can handle a little adversity.  If you want to test a man's character, give him power." Along a similar trajectory, 19th-century religious leader Joseph Smith, interestingly, wr...

July 17, 2022

The terrifying End Times philosophy of the radical left

What is it that today's progressive left envisions when they dream of fuzzy utopian ambitions like the "end of history"?  A couple of core pretensions emerge.  History's arc will have been bent toward justice, an...

May 15, 2022

Parenting regrets bubbling up?

Since the new millennium, what I term "rearview-mirror parenting" has precipitated in parents a sobering self-appraisal of how successfully they raised their children.  Myers-Briggs probably won't venture to offer online asses...

April 17, 2022

Are you sure you want a government crypto-currency?

In an article by Wendy McElroy from bitcoin.com in 2017, Ms. McElroy took on the hazards of a digital currency issued by the U.S. government.  Back then, it was referred to as Fedcoin.  The subject has been on ...

April 7, 2022

How art criticism signaled the woke revolution 30 years ago

As an artist, I first became aware of postmodernism's canceling influence as I read art reviews in the leading arts magazines during the '90s.  The reviews suddenly were different.  Instead of analysis of an artist's c...

March 13, 2022

How much should we care about a war across the world?

Last night, I found myself singing the Beatles' line: "Nothing to get up about — Strawberry fields forever."  It came to mind as I contemplated our stressed world — too many intrigues of consequence whirling. ...

March 8, 2022

Putin gets some unexpected pickles

The news on Ukraine is filled with portents, but in the U.S., people seem to have a youthful, exuberant faith in the Ukrainians to take care of themselves.  To gauge the current velocity, remember when the academic concept "intersectio...

February 24, 2022

On whom to blame the sins of civilization?

In almost every chapter of 2 Kings in the Old Testament is the recurring announcement of a king's passing.  It begins with how King So-and-So "slept with his fathers" and his son became king.  The follow-up reads, ...

February 4, 2022

The Democrats lack moral footing, and that is fine with them

Consider the Marxist revolutionary slogan, By any means necessary, or BAMN.  The average person can be forgiven if he naïvely assumes that by any means necessary and the cliché all's fair in love and...

January 23, 2022

How the unrighteous whittle away at freedom

There is a great whittling going on.  It is a pastime as old as mankind.  It is not the sort practiced by retired codgers sitting on front porches with pocket knives carving wooden artifacts for their grandchildren.  The...

December 21, 2021

Government's pervasive oppression is converting people from liberalism

Government is a most discouraging aspect of existence because it is a pervasive given.  In the hearts of 99 percent of readers is the desire to be left alone by government.  My daughter-in-law started a small charity venture sever...

December 11, 2021

America's left and right are splitting into parallel universes

That America let the Democrats hard-party in the house with Ferris Bueller abandon as long as they have is unfortunate, but more Americans are coming home and are not happy.  Their trust has been repaid with their country in shambles. ...

December 1, 2021

Woke-free holidays

In this year of woke CRT (consciousness-raising theatre), we didn't do a traditional Thanksgiving.  Our daughter and her family took off for Disney World.  My wife and I were forced to navigate the holiday alone, so we splurge...

November 24, 2021

Liberalism really is a religion

Liberals all rehearse the same political catechism.  Their liturgy is as rote as the voice prompts of self-checkout.  I offer the word liturgy to highlight the theme of John McWhorter's brilliant book, Woke...

November 7, 2021

Liberals can't handle guilt

To put it bluntly, liberals can't handle guilt. They live with an uncomfortable tension.  They ambivalently believe they deserve to feel guilty because they're sort of sure they are.  After all, they are Democrats. ...

October 24, 2021

Slumming in America off borrowed moral capital

All modern debate with the progressive left is unproductive, whether one on one or in the town square.  That we now dispute information as being real or as misinformation or disinformation renders debate worthless.  The impossibil...

October 19, 2021

Suicide of the West continues

A book I can't recommend enough is James Burnham's excellent Suicide of the West.  It is not just timeless (he wrote it in 1964); it is dumbfounding in its contemporariness.  Burnham, an original editor at William F. ...

October 12, 2021

Stealthing and other sex issues

Is it any wonder civilization is in upheaval? To kick things off:  Madonna, to promote her new documentary, Madame X, threw herself provocatively and awkwardly on Jimmy Fallon’s desk. As he attempted to cover her unsettli...

September 26, 2021

Democrats are not yet tired of COVID Hell

One has to wonder how many times Americans are going to have to wade through the liberal Democrats' unholy swamps.  To look at the migrant crisis under the Del Rio bridge is to quote Clarke Griswold from Christmas Vacation.  ...

September 21, 2021

Why does half of America vote for such horrible things?

My wife and I passed some people relaxing on their porch here in California. I wondered how long their "NO RECALL" sign would grace their railing.  They are happy, I assume, that Gavin Newsom is still in office. But why are the...

September 17, 2021

Biden and Fauci expose the sausage making

As with many people this last weekend, I encountered something about the 9/11 attacks. My wife and I watched the movie, Worth, with Michael Keaton as the NY mediating lawyer, Ken Feinberg, whose job it was as a “Special Master,” to come u...

September 5, 2021

When civilization is treated like a dropped call

Are we even recoverable in the fundamental transformation of  America and the world in total via the great reset?  The Afghanistan negative policy event, in DoS speak, is a macro-watershed moment.  Its micro-analogu...

August 28, 2021

In the real world, we're terrified to talk about what matters

There is really nothing to cheer about on any front, is there?  Over the last year and a half, life in the world has been on auto-pilot.  Even before Afghanistan fell, the unsticking of civilization's glue had cast a pall of b...

August 25, 2021

Leave polarization to the magnets

For many Americans, politics is not often about substance; it's about loyalty.  One votes for one's party as one cheers for one's home team.  As in sports, family tradition also casts its spell on one's political a...

August 19, 2021

Joe Biden crisis management, Chicago-style

Ole Joe says it's Trump's fault.  Chuck Todd tells viewers that the debacle would have been worse under Trump.  French president Emmanuel Macron talks about needing a "robust" response to the coming Afghan migrat...

August 18, 2021

The Democrats' ancient mischief

Is there anything that comes out of the mouths of elected Democrats that is true?  Their desire to fundamentally change America into something else (not good) is daily expressed in their outright prevarications.  What justifies th...

August 10, 2021

Does the left really know what time it is?

Does anybody really know what time it is?  The band Chicago asked that question back in 1970.  It's a memorable song and a sly question.  But the more intriguing question is the follow-up: does anybody really care —...

July 26, 2021

Donald's trumpet

It was written in Joshua 23:10: "One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you."  Think Donald Trump!  Is he not still the political Joshua ...

July 21, 2021

The world has only 5,000 people that matter

I don't remember the congressional issue I broached, but it matters not.  The person to whom I made the comment observed, "They are (as in elected representatives) supposed to be working for us."  I would h...

July 13, 2021

Thinking by footnote

William Golding in his essay "Thinking as a Hobby" observed that "[m]an is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill."  I spent some years on a farm with cow...

July 6, 2021

Idealism: The crass cousin of true virtue

After the election of Donald Trump, a friend of the family mentioned that she and her daughters were attending the Women's March on Washington held on the first full day of the Trump administration.  I wondered if they were recreating a...

June 29, 2021

Imitation is the sincerest form of leftism

I recall almost nothing from fourth grade except my teacher assuring us that communism in the Soviet Union was not the problem. No, the problem was merely the dictatorship. I’d like to relive the moment to ask him if we should just ankle tha...

June 23, 2021

The redundancy of racial empathy

As I listen and read about America's systemic racism embedded in all the assorted fabrics of American life, I am numb.  William Buckley in his book, Rumbles Left and Right, makes the point that in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, ...