Edifice of Trust

The Democrats cannot pack left-leaning justices onto the Supreme Court until they have a Democratic president who can nominate candidates with the correct ideological orientation. But that has not stopped them from trying to soften up the public's acceptability for the need to expand the Court as a solution to a problem. But it is actually their problem, not our problem. The Court is actually doin...

The welfare state, as practiced in Europe and recommended by Bernie Sanders and the progressive left in the US, is becoming unraveled in France as the country runs out of resources while the populace demands evermore benefits. The end result is riots on the streets of Paris. But the demand for entitlements is insatiable igniting more riots throughout France that are spreading to the rest of Europe...

If I were in President Trump's shoes I would do things differently. Almost anyone would do things differently. President Trump may be likely to stay his course and not change anything. But without changes, much of what he has tried to accomplish – policies, buildings, names changes, etc. – will be wiped out by succeeding administrations. Change is the only way to preserve his legacy.

There are very few debates between rival candidates in the runup to the 2026 mid-term elections. And the few that have been held deteriorated into ad hominin attacks and shouting matches. But we live in a democracy and we need to able to debate the issues that confront us. And sometimes we even need to compromise to order to serve the American people.

French students are rioting in the streets because they want their government, already huge by any standard, to get even bigger. This despite the fact that their government cannot afford it current huge welfare state and is deeply in debt. Many Americans also want their government to do more. But do we want to follow the path France has taken?

Who does care about election day this November? The outcome seems pretty much preordained even though the MAGA right and socialist left continue to fight it out. But we deserve a better choice than these two essentially un-American options. If we want better choices in November 2028 we need to start working on it now!

This has been a difficult commentary to prepare. America has welcomed people of many different religions as visitors as well as citizens. But members of one religion have repeatedly attacked us and our friends and allies. Many people, even some of our own leaders, have said that these attacks are only perpetrated by extremists within this religion. But it is hard to separate the extremists from ot...

My wife always complains that my commentaries are depressing because I only discuss the bad news out there. But there is good news out there as well, if you look hard enough. In this commentary we look at some of the good news out there and discuss why many people are still anxious and depressed.

Greedy capitalists are not the only people exploiting workers and other so-called victims in the US. Political party platforms try to seduce people who feel that they are being victimized by powerful forces beyond their control and the Democratic Socialists of America are no exception. But the people need to realize that the solutions proffered by these political parties, whether industrial policy...

Republicans and Democrats have been buying votes for decades with generous benefits and even more generous tax cuts – and now even the Democratic Socialists want to get in on the action. But there has been little improvement in the condition of the American people despite all these so-called benefits. The only discernible benefit appears to have been the continuous reelection of incumbents will in...

There are a lot of policies being promoted under the name of socialism by Democrats in the runup to this fall's mid-term elections (and especially by the progressive wing of the Democrats as well as the Democratic Socialists of America) that have nothing to do with socialism. But many of these policies have more to do with the frigidity of individualism than with the warmth of collectivism.

Within two months of his election as president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez held a referendum for a constitutional assembly to change the basic institutions of Venezuelan democracy. With only 52% of the vote he was able to control 95% of delegates to that assembly. That was almost 30 years ago and the Venezuelans have not had a free and fair election since. The Democratic Socialist of America have ou...

A few days ago President Trump announced a temporary pause in kinetic warfare against Iran in order to give diplomatic negotiations another chance. Another chance? Hah! How many rounds of diplomatic talks do we need to realize that the Iranians will never be willing to negotiate away their key national and ideological priorities.

For 250 years John Adams has been wrong about the imminent demise of American democracy. And while President Trump's vision of American greatness is distorted by his own psychoses, his goal is not to destroy American democracy (although it might be an unintended consequence of his actions) . The Democratic Socialists of America do want to destroy the democracy Adams and other Founders created. In...

The campaign promises of politicians are similar to the theatrical plot device known as deus ex machina, something (in ancient Greek dramas an actor portraying a god hoisted onto the stage by a mechanical device) that somehow resolves an otherwise unsolvable problem the actors on the stage could not solve on their own. Politicians promise to resolve the otherwise unsolvable problems confronted by...

About a million years ago, our prehistoric ancestors were reduced to barely thirteen hundred individuals, a so-called genetic bottleneck. If our ancestors had not survived that precarious moment in time, we wouldn't exist. Right now we may be experiencing another genetic bottleneck as birth rates around the world are plummeting below the replacement rate. In this commentary, we look at declining p...

The candidates for the upcoming 2026 elections that are being chosen by the Republicans and Democrats (aka MAGA and DSA) are repellent to say the least. Voters entering the voting booth must hold their nose and suppress their gag reflex before pulling the lever. In this commentary we look at how be optimistic about America even when confronted by this dismal reality.

Many of the early colonists came to North America so that they could practice their interpretation of the Christian faith for which they were being persecuted in their home countries. And those Christian principles played an essential role in creating what is now America. Movements to end slavery and expand women's suffrage began with Christian religious movements. In this commentary we discuss ho...

The Greatest Generation was made up of millions of ordinary Americans that rose to the challenges of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Past generations of American have had to meet the challenges of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and others. Our generation, my generation, have reaped the benefits of past generations but are not passing a better world onto our children and grandc...

As the largest shareholder in the newly public company, SpaceX, Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire. And it is only a matter of time for calls to tax the hell out of him start coming in from the left. But why? In this commentary we look at the counterproductive policy of taxing wealth creation.

Nicholas Wade, in his most recent book the Origin of Politics, tries to use evolution to justify why a nation state based on ethnicity, language and religion is the best political structure for the United States and other nations around the world. He rejects the aspirational vision of the Enlightenment principles and values that were the basis for the Declaration of Independence and the Constituti...

Peace talks with Iran are ongoing but, seemingly, going nowhere. As Condoleezza Rice stated in a recent op-ed, no deal is better than a bed deal. But any deal that does not change the behavior the Iranian regime is probably a bad deal. In this commentary, we look at how the parties to any peace deal have different motives and different objectives for these negotiations.

Americans love to root for the underdog. But rooting for an underdog doesn't mean we want to tilt the field in the underdog's favor. We want the underdog to win fair and square. But how does rooting for the underdog translate from sports to real life? In this commentary we look at how we should root for all the underdogs that exist in real life.

There is no big tent in the Republican Party. Only loyalty to President Trump and his agenda is acceptable. Everyone else must be purged and President Trump has been very successful during this primary season in achieving this goal. Democrats are also in the process of cancelling anyone with ideas outside their leftist agenda. In this commentary we ask how these trends will affect "the Blessings o...

Watching a golf tournament on Sunday afternoon has become a non-stop barrage of adverts for betting, announcers discussing of the odds for each player and other incentives to gamble even more from the PGA tour's official sportsbook, FanDuel. People may have a right to gamble(although Jefferson did not include that right in his list of unalienable rights) but that does not mean they should gamble....