Edifice of Trust

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....

The Supreme Court's decision to strike down minority-majority voting districts presumably required under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been denounced as attack by a right-wing Court dominated by Trump appointees on the civil rights of African Americans. But the Court correctly asserted that such racially gerrymandered districts were unconstitutional. In this commentary we look at how this deci...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech at the University of Texas celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and praising its principles and values. But he went on to say that the goals of progressivism are antithetical to those of the Declaration unleashing a deluge of outrage from the left. Robert Reich called him the Worst Justice Ever. In this commentary...

Danielle Allen describes in her book, Our Declaration, the lengthy and difficult process behind the writing of the Declaration of Independence. But the process behind the Declaration mirrored the democracy it sought to create. In this commentary, we look at how democracy is a process and discuss how this process is lacking in our current politics.

The well-educated Founders of America structured the new nation based on the classical literature of Democratic Athens and the Roman Republic that they had studied in college. And ended up with something they never expected. But it worked. And it has continued to work for 250 years. But now our political leaders are rejecting those ideas and principles. In this commentary we look at the sources of...

The No Kings protests were touted as a great success as millions turned out into the streets while the rest of us were inundated by widespread and generally favorable press coverage. But other than making them feel proud of themselves and superior to the MAGA deplorables what did they actually accomplish? The Democrats appear to be doubling down on the same policies that propelled Donald Trump bac...

Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani say that billionaires shouldn't exist. But the truth of the matter is that our welfare system is dependent on those billionaires and other productive workers that produce much more than they consume. In this commentary we analyze the economic forces driving the American welfare state and show how that system is unsustainable.

The Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have suffered heavy damage in personnel and equipment from the joint American and Israeli airstrikes against their country. But they are counting on high gas prices and sagging poll numbers to sap the American will to continue this fight. But there are consequences to ending this war prematurely. In this commentary we look at why we need...

Will the killing of Ali Khamenei and many of his top Islamic supporters mimic the capture and arrest of Maduro in Venezuela? Maduro and his regime were more profit hungry drug dealers than true believers in socialism or communism. It remains to be seen if the Islamic regime in Iran was made up to true believers or money-hungry profiteers. In this commentary we will try to look beyond the current f...

Time is running out for Donald Trump to establish his legacy. The legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, for good or ill, has lasted over 200 years since his death. Will Mr. Trump's legacy last centuries? And what will be his legacy? In this commentary we will investigate Mr. Trump's efforts and try to answer those questions.

Senator Chuck Schumer has announced that the Democrats will shut down the government if their demands aren't met. President Trump vilifies and tries to punish anyone who puts their conscience ahead of absolute loyalty to the MAGA agenda. The word compromise is alien to these two radical factions. But compromise is essential for a working democracy. In this commentary we investigate why compromise...

Does the rising price of gold signal a looming financial crisis? The price of gold is just one of the forbidding economic signals we are confronting. In this commentary we look at a range of warnings and what we should do about them.

CNBC's Squawk Box crew will probably not have to make their annual pilgrimage to Davos next year. The American-led rules-based world order that the World Economic Forum had tried to reshape to match the good intentions of the global elite is dead. President Trump's speech at Davos was its eulogy. In this commentary we will try to peer into what is coming next.

President Trump's actions at home and abroad appear to be unconstrained by custom, decency or any rule of law. Hoover Institute fellow Thomas Sowell pointed out in his book, A Conflict of Visions, how an unconstrained vision can ignore the trade-offs the real world imposes on human activities leading to sometimes disastrous unintended consequences. In this commentary we look at how President Trump...

President Trump is wasting no time to put into action the principles expounded in the recently published National Security Strategy (NSS 2025). It is a strategy based on American power and American interests but not on American values. In this commentary we look at alternatives to a great power multipolar world but these alternatives must await the departure of Donald Trump.

Maduro is now gone but many of the factors that precipitated his capture and arrest are still in place. The socialist government is still in charge. The Venezuelan armed forces are more or less intact. Far left "colectivos" still control the streets of Caracas. Cartels and drug runners still have a lots of product for the American market. In this commentary we look at the current situation and dis...

As we enter the year 2026, we must confront the reality that we are living in a new world order. The old American led rules-based world order that was able to avoid great power conflict and provide economic growth and improved living standards across the globe is gone. In this commentary we look at how this new world order changes America's priorities.