Political observers and partisan activists debate whether Donald Trump or some other Republican candidate has the best chance of beating a Democratic rival in the 2024 presidential election. But earlier this month, Trump demonstrated that just as he did in 2016, he is raising campaign issues central to America’s future, issues that no other candidate is talking about. The latest flare-ups of what have been nearly eight years of relentless, orchestrated prosecution of Trump are a massive distraction but don’t change this reality.
Read MoreCategory: Commentary
Commentary: Iowa U.S. Senator Joni Ernst Says Time Is Up for TikTok
Make no mistake about it, TikTok is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda machine living rent-free on the devices of 150 million Americans, and it’s putting our national security in jeopardy. This insidious app collects your data, surveils behavior, monitors user habits, and negatively influences our youth with an endless stream of addictive content.
Read MoreCommentary: It’s Time to End Mexican Cartels’ Reign of Terror
Walking down long, ornate hallways, across a grand central courtyard adorned with a Pegasus-topped fountain, and through yet more corridors, our bipartisan delegation was guided to the offices of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for what we hoped would be a timely and useful meeting for our nations. Since the enactment of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), ongoing trade issues continue to flare up, and since the beginning of the Biden Administration our southern border with Mexico has deteriorated into a chaotic, dangerous, and lawless morass.
Read MoreCommentary: Congress Is Central in the Authorization to Impose a Central Bank Digital Currency
“[W]e would not proceed with this without support from Congress, and I think that would ideally come in the form of an authorizing law, rather than us trying to interpret our law to enable this.”
That was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in March 2021, noting the fact that when it comes a central bank digital currency – a more distinct possibility after several bank failures have swept across the global financial system – that Congress simply has not authorized such an undertaking.
Read MoreVictor Davis Hanson Commentary: The Megalomaniacs Running Radical Universities Are Blind to the Generations of Taxpayers That Built Them
The most recent shout-down debacle at Stanford’s law school, one of many such recent sordid episodes, prompts the question: “Who owns our universities?”
The law students who are in residence for three years apparently assume they embody the university. And so, they believe they represent and speak for a score of diverse Stanford interests when they shout down federal Judge Kyle Duncan, as if he were an intruder into their own woke private domain.
Read MoreCommentary: Why Not ‘America First?’
It’s challenging to say something original about the Ukraine war. It’s been debated now for more than a year, and it’s not over yet. But that’s bad news for those supporting the war. Most Americans’ interest in foreign policy matters is limited, and many expect quicker favorable results than are probably ever possible in war. A year of war in a far-off land – another war in another far-off land – is not something Americans are likely to support for long, especially if it’s led by a stumble-bum president who picks incompetents for cabinet secretaries, campaigned for a mentally challenged stroke victim, and may be compromised by his son’s business dealings.
Read MoreCommentary: The Language of Politics and the Politics of Language
On his blog A Pilgrim in Narnia, Brenton Dickieson tells us that C.S. Lewis in his Studies in Words defined “verbicide” as the “murder of words.” Dickieson adds that “Lewis has some similar concerns as George Orwell in his ‘Politics and the English Language.’ Words can be politicized or bent into the service of those who are peddling products or ideas.”
The 21st century has given us a multitude of these vampires, who—having sucked the original meanings out of certain nouns and verbs—then use the carcasses to sell certain ideologies or to confuse the rest of us. Here is a partial list of these zombie words.
Read MoreCommentary: Informants Everywhere
After nine weeks of testimony from multiple government witnesses, including FBI agents, the Justice Department finally concluded its case-in-chief in the Proud Boys’ seditious conspiracy trial on Monday.
Five Proud Boys, including the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, are accused of conspiring to “oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” on January 6, 2021. It is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s most consequential case related to January 6; convictions will help build a similar case against Donald Trump largely based on his infamous “stand back and stand by” remark to the Proud Boys during an October 2020 presidential debate.
Read MoreCommentary: The Difference Between Non-Profit and Not for Profit Companies
For Ask an Economist this week I have a question from Hal who asks, “What is the difference between a ‘non-profit’ and a ‘not for profit’?”
In order to address this question, I think it’s important to discuss what separates a for-profit business from these two forms of organization.
Read MoreCommentary: The ATF Expansion of the Gun Registry Turns Law-Abiding Gun Owners into Felons
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has followed through on their plan to turn millions of lawful gun owners into felons in the name of “public safety” by reclassifying pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, effectively expanding the unconstitutional national gun registry.
Stabilizing braces are devices that can be attached to pistols to aid the user in balancing their arm. Originally created to help people with disabilities, the accessory is now more popular amongst mainstream shooters who use them to adapt pistols into guns that can be shot from the shoulder, which has been legal to do in the past. Now, there’s a big hoop to jump through if you don’t want to be hit with fines and/or jail time.
Read MoreCommentary: More Work to be Done on Emergency Powers as Pandemic Wanes
Most Americans are likely pleased that when they turn on their television, no longer are there talking heads and public health figures breathlessly discussing COVID-19 case counts and deaths. Broadly, the media as a whole is no longer incessantly reporting on the topic, and nationally, the federal public health emergency declared for the COVID-19 pandemic terminates on May 11.
While the old signs of the pandemic have virtually vanished, Americans won’t forget what their governments did to them.
Read MoreCommentary: Parents’ Bill of Rights Is How Congress Can Help State School Reformers
The stunning success of conservative education reform across the country in the past few years is the result a moral fact: Parents are children’s primary educators. Until very recently, this was not disputed, let alone controversial.
But lately, it has become clear that progressive elites who run teachers unions and school boards, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media no longer share this view. Their contempt for parents’ rights has fueled a long train of abuses, from racist curricula to a war on girls sports and bathrooms to darker episodes of criminal cover-ups and student grooming.
Read MoreCommentary: DeSantis Staff Need Not Apply for the Trump Campaign
As Ron DeSantis emerges as a prospective rival for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s campaign has put word out that anyone who works for the Florida governor will be blackballed.
According to sources with direct knowledge of the edict, Justin Caporale, who helps lead the advance team for the former president, has said that anyone who staffed a recent DeSantis book tour will be considered “persona non grata.” A top Trump ally was more comprehensive, telling RealClearPolitics that the prohibition would apply to more than just the junior aides tasked with setting up folding chairs and hanging banners.
Read MoreCommentary: America’s Southern Border Invasion
By almost any significant metric, this is not America’s finest hour. We do not appear to be respected or feared economically, militarily, or in any other way by rival nations. Americans do not feel confident about the future, and we are seemingly more polarized along partisan lines than ever before.
Adding to our collective sense of dread is the sight of our nation’s geographic integrity slipping away. Almost daily we see untold numbers of foreign nationals trampling what used to be our southern border, demanding rights and privileges that previously were reserved for citizens and legal residents.
Read MoreCommentary: Questions Without Answers About Ukraine
Ukrainians, and many Europeans and Americans, are defining an envisioned Ukrainian victory as the complete expulsion of all Russians from its 2013 borders. Or, as a Ukrainian national security chief put it, the war ends with Ukrainian tanks in Red Square.
But mysteries remain about such ambitious agendas.
Read MoreCommentary: The Problematic Rise of ‘Media Literacy Education’
New Jersey is enlisting public-school teachers and librarians to show children how to combat what it calls the grave threat of disinformation.
“Our democracy remains under sustained attack through the proliferation of disinformation,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in signing the nation’s first law mandating “information literacy” instruction for all K-12 students. The law, which aims to provide students with the “critical thinking” skills necessary to differentiate between “facts, points of view, and opinions” will, Murphy proclaimed, ensure “that our kids … possess the skills needed to discern fact from fiction.”
Read MoreCommentary: The Origin of American Exceptionalism
Today, saying that America is exceptional has become a controversial statement. With the claim that America is a deeply racist and terrible country, American exceptionalism is lambasted as a myth.
But few today know the origins of American exceptionalism and its place as the main storyline of U.S. nationalism. And yet, it’s only by examining the history of this idea that we can have an informed opinion on the issue. So, what is the history of American exceptionalism?
Read MoreCommentary: A Trump Arrest Imperils the American Idea
Peril awaits the America I love if the 45th president of the United States is arrested or even “just” arraigned. When a former American president is targeted by the politically despicable woke, we all face disaster.
We have rules in the American game. Most of those rules are set forth explicitly in our Constitution, its amendments, and two centuries of binding judicial opinions interpreting, adding to, or deleting rules. One might call those rules “America’s Written Law.” And then there are unwritten rules one might call “America’s Oral Law,” the traditions that have been handed down from generation to generation. How can we know what these Oral Laws of America are if they are not written anywhere? We just do.
Read MoreCommentary: The Things Students Are Learning After They Left Public Schools During Pandemic
The education disruption caused by mass school closures and prolonged remote instruction beginning three years ago this month led many families to seek other learning options beyond an assigned district school. Emerging research reveals just how significant and sustained that shift was.
In a new report, “Where the Kids Went: Nonpublic Schooling and Demographic Change during the Pandemic Exodus from Public Schools,” Stanford economist Thomas Dee reveals that more than 1.2 million students left district schools during the pandemic response. That exodus endured throughout the 2021/2022 academic year, as families continued to opt for private schools and homeschooling even though most district schools reopened.
Read MoreCommentary: Donald Trump, American Dissident
Donald Trump has had an unusually long and dramatic tenure at the center of American politics. The reason is simple: Trump has an indomitable personality and an abiding refusal to kowtow to the establishment’s sacred cows. From the moment he entered the arena, he continuously provoked the ruling powers into a hysterical frenzy of breathless rage. Indeed, it’s hard to think of another American political figure who has caused more chaos, or faced more concerted and unscrupulous opposition.
Only days ago, Trump sent his enemies up a wall with a blistering statement calling for an immediate end to the war in Ukraine, which he dared to call a “proxy battle,” and not the moral crusade for “democracy” that busybodies in both parties in Washington have described ad nauseam. America’s most dangerous foes are not in Russia, Trump said, but right here at home. Patriotic Americans are under siege by corrupt, “godless” tyrants who want to flood their neighborhoods with foreigners, force “Marxist” ideology on them and their children, and let politically protected criminals run amok, Trump said.
Read MoreVictor Davis Hanson Commentary: Once Vaunted as the Best in the Word, Stanford University’s Wayward Record is Growing Infamous
Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle.
That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.
Read MoreCommentary: The Universities I Knew in Soviet Russia Valued Merit More than Some American Schools Do Today
Walking near Temple University, I noticed a flyer advocating for “socialism in our lifetime.” The message from an outside group reads in full, “Socialist Revolution: Join the fight for socialism in our lifetime.” Having grown up in Soviet-era Ukraine and now a tenured professor at Temple, I feel strongly that most college-age Americans do not understand what they are saying when they advocate for socialism.
Read MoreCommentary: Connecting Dots from COVID to SVB and Beyond
A collection of seemingly random crises can spell out a sinister “conspiracy theory” when you consider their connections and where they are leading. An overplayed plot? Perhaps, but how many so-called conspiracy theories have proven to be reality recently?
First, the world economy shut down with the COVID lockdown. Manufacturing stopped and capital construction projects were put on hold. No one was making anything, and consumers were buying very little.
Read MoreCommentary: The Right Is Still Afraid to Fight the Culture War
Republican culture warriors have devoted considerable energy to subjects like “drag queen story hour” and “protecting women’s sports.” While these battles must be fought, they are oblique ways of addressing the real problem. Drag shows are low-hanging fruit. It doesn’t require much courage to denounce them. What does take some courage is to say, “so-called transgender individuals are mentally ill, and their dangerous delusions must be rejected for the sake of our children, and our personal dignity as rational beings.”
Read MoreCommentary: Biden Turns Christianity on Its Head
Gender ideology preys upon the young, convincing girls and boys that they were “born in the wrong body” and rushing them onto experimental drugs, hormones, and surgeries that will leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile. Yet the ostensible Catholic who currently occupies the Oval Office not only supports this horror but had the gall to condemn those who would protect children from it as “sinful” and “cruel.”
Read MoreCommentary: The Thing Exercise and Economics Have in Common
With a background in both studying economics and working in the fitness industry, I can see how the two fields complement each other and together provide a valuable learning opportunity. I’ve found that the lessons I taught my fitness clients in the gym about the well-being of their bodies are similar to the lessons that governments, and the public, need to learn about the well-being of the “body politic,” particularly when it comes to the economy.
Read MoreCommentary: Legacy Media Ignored Voting Irregularities in 2020 Election
The lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Services, set to go to trial on April 17, may turn out to be a seminal case in First Amendment jurisprudence, with effects that reach well beyond Fox. In a nutshell, Dominion charges that Fox defamed them by putting on air people who claimed that Dominion’s voting machines yielded incorrect results, to the benefit of Joe Biden. More than this, the plaintiffs have secured, through depositions, evidence that Fox News hosts and news executives themselves disbelieved the claims their on-air guests were making.
Read MoreCommentary: The Way Government Lost 15 Million Acres of Public Land in the United States
Leave it to the United States Government to lose track of almost three states worth of public land. Only an institution with so little incentive and ability to allocate resources for the betterment of human wellbeing could instantiate such a catastrophic waste of potential.
The following is a story of an engineer named Eric Siegfried, a Montana man who caught public officials in almost unimaginable levels of incompetence and waste. It is also a cautionary tale about the way extreme misallocations of resources are the predictable outcome of America’s current form of land use governance, which systematically severs control over certain resources from anyone equipped to use them rationally and effectively.
Read MoreCommentary: America’s Byzantine Trajectory
When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome.
Always outnumbered in a sea of enemies, the Byzantines’ survival had depended on its realist diplomacy of dividing its enemies, avoiding military quagmires, and ensuring constant deterrence.
Read MoreCommentary: SVB, ESG, and Biden’s ERISA Rule
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) occurred just days after Congress passed the Braun-Barr resolution, which overturns the Biden administration’s “Prudence and Loyalty” rule and its encouragement of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing by pension managers under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The timing could hardly be more instructive. The Prudence and Loyalty rule, the White House had recently argued in its defense, “reflects what successful marketplace investors already know – there is an extensive body of evidence that environmental, social, and governance factors can have material impacts on certain markets, industries, and companies.”
Read MoreCommentary: Michelle Obama Is Not Coming to Save the Democrats
I love a good conspiracy theory. Aliens, ancient builders, Bigfoot—I will absolutely click on that headline and read the latest conspiracy, no matter how fanciful or ludicrous. Everyone has a harmless personal foible, right? And in the times we live in now, shadowy government conspiracies and UFOs are no longer just for “The X Files.”
Read MoreCommentary: DeSantis Charms GOP by Condemning ‘Leaks’ and ‘Palace Intrigue’
On its face, there wasn’t anything unusual about the email that landed last week in the press office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Background interview request from the Washington Post,” read the subject line that summarized the industry-standard process whereby information is shared with reporters under pre-negotiated terms, usually anonymity. When sanctioned by a politician or their team, it is called “going on background” to shape and broaden a story with additional facts and contexts but without direct attribution. When not sanctioned, well, then that is just called leaking.
Read MoreCommentary: Leftist Groups Tapping $1 Billion to Vastly Expand the Private Financing of Public Elections
Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts, begun in 2020, to use private money to influence and run public elections.
Supported by groups with more than $1 billion at their disposal, according to public records, these partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government or political parties.
Read MoreCommentary: The Ruling Class War on Trump
The battle lines could not be clearer.
A war has been declared on former President Donald Trump by the American Ruling Class. A war personified by the conduct of the corrupt New York County District Attorney’s Office.
Read MoreCommentary: Centrist Parties Will Try and Fail to Sway the 2024 Election
You’re forgiven if you didn’t hear the news – or didn’t pay attention to it – but former Maryland governor Larry Hogan announced last week that he won’t run against Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
This didn’t mean Hogan accepted the inevitable and intends to throw-in with the wisdom of his party’s voters and simply do what most loyal politicians do when the grassroots selects in a primary someone he or she doesn’t necessarily agree with. No, Hogan said he hopes like heck that someone other than Trump or DeSantis will earn the GOP nod – and henceforth release him from taking drastic measures. But should Republican primary participants opt for a Trump or DeSantis candidacy… Larry may run instead on a third-party ticket.
Read MoreCommentary: Despite ‘Strong’ Rhetoric, Biden Administration Signals Gloomy Economic Outlook
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the now-released President’s Budget is projecting just 0.6 percent in inflation-adjusted real growth of the U.S. economy in 2023 as the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 4.3 percent in 2023 and peak at 4.6 percent in 2024 after the economy is finished overheating from the continued, elevated inflation, consumers max out on credit and spending falls off a cliff.
Read MoreCommentary: Donald Trump Reemerges as the Republican Alpha at CPAC
At the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Donald Trump demonstrated, once again, why he remains leader of the Republican Party. He made it clear that he should not be displaced until long after his 2024 presidential primary victory.
Trump showed the rhetorical brilliance that vaulted him from political outsider to the heir to Ronald Reagan in an instant. At a time when too many Republican politicians stumble over each other for positions just to lurch back toward the middle and lose their mettle, Trump gave the base the red meat they needed to hear.
Read MoreCommentary: Please, No More America-Hating Diplomats
It would be illogical to put a Quaker, whose religion forbids violence, in charge of recruitment for the Marines. So why would we ask someone who despises the U.S. economic system in charge of recruiting American diplomats?
Yet, recently, at an Atlantic Council seminar, the deputy director of the Rangel International Affairs Fellowship called capitalism “a common enemy.”
Read MoreCommentary: Student Debt Forgiveness Won’t Cure Higher Education’s Ills
On February 28th, the Supreme Court heard arguments on President Biden’s plan to extinguish an estimated $400 billion in student debt. Biden deserves credit for highlighting a debilitating federal program in desperate need of reform. His proposal, however, would make the problem far worse, not better. Any serious reform would force academic institutions to take some responsibility for the education they provide—and to show some responsibility to the many young Americans they induce to go deeply into debt.
Read MoreCommentary: Medicaid Expansion Fails to Deliver on Promises
Medicaid expansion is failing states across the nation according to a recent Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) report. The report found states that have expanded Medicaid have faced more hospital closures than states that haven’t expanded the program. Of course, for years, advocates have claimed that expansion would be a necessary provision for financial health and job security for hospitals. Though, as suspected, data reveals the opposite. More accurately, non-expansion states have seen improved profitability, a larger bed capacity, and increased job growth.
Read MoreCommentary: Climate Policies Will Shut Down Farmers
Belgian and Dutch farmers are protesting because they are losing their livelihoods in the name of fighting so-called climate change as European governments seek to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, necessary inputs of modern agriculture. Will American farmers and consumers soon face the same fate?
European farmers are being told that because of the aim for “net-zero emissions” of greenhouse gases and other so-called pollutants in 2050, their industry is being phased out if they can’t adapt.
Read MoreCommentary: Government Censorship Agency Scrubs Disinformation Web Page About Its History Interacting with Social Media Platforms
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the censorship agency everyone has been talking about, has scrubbed its Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation (MDM) webpage, https://cisa.gov/mdm to remove any mentions of interacting with “appropriate social media platforms” to “route disinformation concerns”.
How malinformative, to use the agency’s jargon. Malinformation, per the agency, “is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” By removing mentions and the context of the agency’s stated history of interacting with social media platforms, the agency is apparently attempting to mislead, harm and manipulate the public into believing it never did those things in the first place.
Read MoreCommentary: The Left Is Downplaying Reality of Fentanyl Crisis
The Left refuses to connect the dots between the fentanyl and border crises because it would require acknowledging that we have an open border.
The truth of the matter is that the border crisis and fentanyl problem in America are directly related.
Read MoreCommentary: Seperating Fact from Fiction
The State of New Jersey recently enacted a law that requires K–12 students to learn “information literacy.” Stated plainly, this is the skills to determine what’s true and what’s not. The law is allegedly the first of its kind in the nation.
The sentiment behind the legislation is admirable, but the law itself is vague and gives the NJ Department of Education broad authority to create these standards. Given the track record of the U.S. education establishment, this could be an epic mistake.
Read MoreCommentary: The Importance of Philosophical Fiction
I must admit that I have not always been a serious reader. Like the vast majority of consumers of art, I was more interested in the escapist element of fiction and cinema. I would read a book or watch a film as a way to escape into another world for a couple hours. I was enthralled by the likes of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Stephen King’s The Shining.
Read MoreCommentary: Daylight Saving Time’s Mixed Results
This weekend, public service announcements will remind us daylight saving time is over. This means you have to set your clocks forward an hour at 2 a.m. on March 12.
This semiannual ritual shifts our rhythms and temporarily makes us groggy at times when we normally feel alert. Moreover, many Americans are confused about why we spring forward in March and fall back in November, and whether it is worth the trouble.
Read MoreCommentary: The Price of Eliminating Consequences
Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a Portland, Oregon good Samaritan confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods.
More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage—of the thieves!
Read MoreCommentary: The Right’s Long Countermarch Through the Institutions
Is the Right commencing a long countermarch through the institutions, including the very one – the academy – from which the Left’s own long march began?
Judging by the distress shown by some in the educational establishment, and like-minded corporate media, regarding higher-education reform efforts in North Carolina and Florida, one might get the impression that the countermarch is not only underway but rapidly advancing – threatening progressives’ stranglehold over schools and virtually every other American power center.
Read MoreCommentary: The Difficult Truths About Unrenewable ‘Renewables’
Today in America, there are obvious disconnects between observable reality and the narratives we get from the corporate special interests controlling the news we consume, along with politicians who are supposedly elected to represent us.
This is nothing new. Elites have defined America’s destiny throughout its history. The only difference today is that the internet, despite ongoing crackdowns, still manages to deliver an unprecedented volume of contrarian perspectives to millions of people. We aren’t any freer or less manipulated today than we ever were, we’re just more aware of it.
Read MoreCommentary: Gender Ideology is Losing and the Equal Rights Amendment Should, Too
Medical professionals and the public are pushing back against radical gender ideologies that have claimed the minds, bodies, and lives of too many children. Those at war against biological sex are losing — but only if the ERA is defeated, too.
On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted its latest hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment. This time, to consider the merits of removing the amendments’ pesky expiration date.
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