I recently read a Substack article by Dutch Rojas titled, ”The Language of Compassion Is Doing the Work.” The title is close to the truth—but not quite. My concern is not with the logic of his argument, which is largely sound, but with the linguistic distortion that underlies many progressive approaches to modern social problems. Compassion, properly […]
American politics has drifted into theater, and the reporting of news has followed close behind. What once aimed at informing the public now often entertains it. In that environment, celebrity-seeking politicians’ demagogue for attention, trading reasoned argument for applause lines, while intuition and virtue signaling increasingly substitute for disciplined thought. A recent interview between Representative […]
I write today to remember two remarkable men whose lives intersected in an unexpected and meaningful way. In their own distinct fashions, both men loved God, loved their country, and loved the land itself. Each, in his own sphere, left behind a legacy worthy of preservation and respect. The first was Captain John “Blackjack” Bartlett—known […]
It has long seemed to me that American history moves forward in bursts of spirit. Certain generations, or even certain individuals, appear with an inner fire that pulls the country out of stagnation and into a new era. In my own lifetime, the most vivid example is the generation that emerged after World War II. […]
Over the past several days, I found myself unexpectedly drawn to the events surrounding King Charles III’s state visit to the United States. As someone never particularly sympathetic to monarchy, I approached his appearances with skepticism. Yet I was pleasantly surprised by the tone and substance of his two principal speeches—one at the White House […]
Last week, The Gem State Patriot ran an essay by Robert Neugebauer unpacking a word most Americans had never heard: “stochastic.” It may be one of the most important concepts for understanding why our politics now feels one step away from bloodshed. In statistics, a stochastic process is about probability, not certainty. You cannot say […]
The careless use of the term “Christian nationalism” has become a rhetorical shortcut—one that obscures more than it clarifies. In contemporary discourse, it is too often deployed as a catch-all epithet, flattening important distinctions in American constitutional thought and moral philosophy. There is, in fact, a meaningful difference between invoking one’s faith as the moral […]
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, let us not forget how deeply our Founders believed in the guiding hand of Divine Providence. In the Declaration of Independence, they staked their project on a theological claim, insisting that “we hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all men are created equal, [that] […]
A natural way to think about politics is not as a pyramid, but as a web. Instead of starting with “the state” and working downward, imagine a landscape of “nodes” or pockets of civic energy that grow from the inside out—bottom‑up rather than top‑down. These nodes are the precincts, churches, voluntary associations, local media outlets, […]
When experts speak, they seldom preface their assertions with the words, “This is my opinion.” In every sphere of life, experts disagree—scientists, lawyers, theologians, generals, and even Popes. Yet we often treat their statements as if they were final, unquestionable truths. In my own life there have been three places where adding the phrase “in […]
I write in response to a recent e-mail that asks me to reflect on the Beatitudes and the command to love our neighbor and even our enemy, and to address a frequent misunderstanding: that Christian charity requires passivity in the face of evil. Loving our neighbor and our enemy, rightly understood, often requires confronting evil […]
A Hayekian Case Against Idaho’s Marijuana Act In economics, Friedrich Hayek distinguished between two kinds of knowledge. “General” or scientific knowledge is abstract and law‑like what economists, engineers, and scientists know about general relationships of cause and effect, production functions, and technological possibilities. “Particular” or local knowledge concerns the “circumstances of time and place”: concrete, […]