Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

As we close in on our nation’s birthday, more and more data give us cause for great concern. As Abraham Lincoln put it in his time, so too is it true today: “At what point is the approach of danger [to us] to be expected? [I]f it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation...

.America is celebrating its 250th birthday, but it's been hard to get the party started. Many Americans remember our bicentennial in 1976. It wasn't long after Watergate and the Vietnam War. It was even a presidential election year, but we put all of that on hold to celebrate our great nation. How long ago that seems. This year, the administration launched a nonpartisan freedom 250 initiative to g...

California’s progressives are eyeing other people’s money. Again . The proposed “Billionaire Tax Act” would amend the state constitution to impose a one-time five percent tax on residents with a net worth above a billion dollars. Supporters say it’s just a one-time levy for worthy causes. But experience says “one time” rarely means one time, and the uninte...

We warned repeatedly when Canada began to adopt assisted suicide as part of its government-run health care. Socialized medicine combined with assisted suicide sets up foreseeable economic incentives that reward disposal of patients rather than chronic care. But even we couldn’t have dreamed that Canada would grow so desperate to reduce costs that they would condone assisted suicide assessmen...

With the end of commencement season, it is worth considering what advice a generation of youth more in need of sober and serious advice than at any other time in our history should hear. Professor Jonathan Haidt has pointed out, having given our children smartphones, we are now engaged in the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children.  Major corporations...

It’s commencement season again—another class of young Americans heading out into the world. But one statistic says a lot about what they’re leaving behind: at top universities this year, left-wing speakers outnumber others six to one on commencement stages. That lack of viewpoint diversity point to something deeper: An intellectual climate marked by intolerance and conformity, no...

As we watch the president navigate the ongoing interactions with the remaining leadership in Iran, it’s worth reminding ourselves: President Trump has done hundreds of deals. He also walked away from probably three times as many deals. The thousands of commentators with little to zero knowledge of negotiations are just guessing. Here’s what we know: First: President Trump has the cruci...

In 1976, Harry Jaffa wrote that in 1776 the United States was nothing, promising to become everything; and having become everything it was promising to become nothing.  This is truer now, on our 250th anniversary, than 50 years ago. The state of our students’ civic understanding is abominable: we are at a record low of students knowing the basic fundaments of our constitutional and poli...

This Memorial Day comes as our nation marks 250 years of freedom—a quarter of a millennia since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. On this Memorial Day, we should pause and recognize that we don’t have one without the other. That is: We only have the freedom that we cherish as a result of those who stood up to fight for it and defend it. And more specifically: Willing to p...

Justice Clarence Thomas recently became the second longest-serving justice in US history — and that’s something to celebrate. He is exceptional, both as a jurist and as a man. Raised in poverty in a wooden shack in the segregated South, he credits his grandfather for shaping his character. From that foundation, he has articulated a powerful and increasingly influential originalist visi...

Is the war with Iran “worth it?” The cost—at this point—is the loss of 13 American soldiers and scores more seriously wounded. If, as widely expected, combat operations resume those human costs will climb. So too will gas prices and the prices of everything that depends upon oil. President Trump knows this, of course, but stated plainly: Operation Epic Fury had to be undert...

Numerous media outlets had a difficult time with the Rededicate 250 celebration the White House sponsored this past Sunday.  One major paper reported “Until Trump’s second term in office, it had been virtually unheard of in modern times for U.S. government officials to publicly tie the nation to a specific set of religious beliefs. Trump’s cabinet members have changed that n...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the US Department of Justice struck a blow against the trans industry in a new settlement: Ten million dollars. And a new, first-in-the-nation clinic to unwind the damage done to children caught up in the pediatric-sex-change industry's machinations. Stripping five of its practitioners of access to more potential victims. Texas Children's Hospital in Houston a...

Recently, a professor of Politics at Princeton wrote an op-ed pointing out how many of his students—and students at other colleges—simply are unfamiliar with the Ten Commandments.  He writes, “they lack religious literacy, and their ignorance of religious ideas means they struggle to understand a wide array of Western art, literature and philosophy.” They also wouldn&r...

In an age of fleeting stories fed by a constant conveyor belt of crisis and frenzy, keeping us all in a common state of agitation, with little ability to focus on the meaningful, let us do exactly that as we prepare for Memorial Day, coming up in another weekend. The great historian Wilfred McClay once wrote “Without memory, and without the stories by which our memories are carried forward,...

With the background of Russia's invasion and ongoing war against Ukraine, recently this astounding headline from the BBC: “Putin says he thinks Ukraine conflict coming to an end.” Now for perspective: Just consider last weekend's annual Victory Day parade in Moscow. It commemorates the end of World War II What's notable this year is not what happened, but what didn't happen. Russia cou...

Donald Trump finally got his response from Iran. Will he act on it? Last week, Trump had sent a 14-point framework to mediators in Islamabad for reaching a peace accord with Iran. Trump insisted that the IRGC surrender its highly enriched uranium, agree to verifiably end its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and stop attacking international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran demanded that the US r...

The Trump administration has launched an investigation into Smith College—one of the seven historical all-women colleges in the American Northeast. Why the investigation? Well, Smith College is and has been since 2015—admitting biological males. The “seven sisters” have been granted an exemption, going all the way back to the 1970’s to Title IX legislation. They were...

Since the battle with Iran began on February 28, there’ve been so many reports of “deals” with the rump regime atop the ruins of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it seems almost silly to respond to another one. But I trust Israeli journalist Amit Segal. On Wednesday, Segal summed up the supposed framework. The most salient part is said to include—and I qu...

Talking politics with your average young male these days, chances are you will hear all kinds of odd theories coming from the Pied Pipers of Podcastistan. You will hear them mentioning “experts” nobody heard of until about 10 minutes ago or until they were discovered by these podcasters because of their contrary, and often, conspiratorial thinking. Young men, especially, are attracted...

Today’s Democrats seem to be trying a new take on the “Extreme Makeover” reality show. Their offshoot: I’d call it “Extremist Makeover.” And we see it in their likely candidate for Senate in Maine. It looks pretty close to certain Democrats be nominating oysterman Graham Platner in the Pinetree state. He is not a "liberal." Platner is not even a "leftist." He&rs...

It’s an age-old question: God or Mammon? What leads to a happier, more fulfilling life — religion, or money? Now, it seems we have an answer. According to the General Social Survey, church attendance predicts happiness more strongly than wealth does. In fact, poor Americans who attend church regularly are happier than wealthy Americans who never attend at all. Prominent behavioral scie...

Many predictions about the midterm elections in the United States are dire for the GOP: a wipeout in the House, perhaps losing the Senate majority as well. The GOP could weather the electoral storm that almost always chastens the party of a president finishing his sixth year in office. But they got to do stuff. To do that weathering: Every candidate in every partisan race has to make the case, whi...

With its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court took the United States one step closer to the race-blind, color-blind equal opportunity society envisioned by our Constitution. The ruling shifts voting rights law from judging maps by racial outcomes, toward a simpler question: whether lawmakers intentionally discriminated. This is as it should be. Today, there are a record 58 minority...

In the wake of the third assassination attempt on President Trump in a period of less than two years, the President correctly concluded: “He was probably a pretty sick guy.” That came from his interview Sunday night on “60 Minutes.” In looking for a cause the president pointed to the changes we’ve all been living through: “The internet, maybe more than anything...