For several months, a central theme of my columns has been a simple but historically grounded claim: the political and economic philosophies of progressive socialism and communism have never worked as promised. Time and again, totalitarian systems and command-and-control economies have enriched ruling elites while diminishing the standard of living for ordinary people. Oligarchy is […]
There is a familiar narrative now circulating through mainstream media and progressive political circles: that America is mired in an “affordability crisis,” and that the underlying cause is what critics call “oligarchic capitalism.” It is a phrase designed to provoke—suggesting that free markets have devolved into rule by the few, leaving ordinary citizens economically stranded. […]
The partisan arguments now raging between left and right in America differ not merely in policy preferences but in their grounding assumptions and their political philosophy. Yet the vocabulary now used to describe political protest, and political violence has become alarmingly imprecise. Even the terms found in the nation’s own constitutional and legal inheritance—”rebellion” and […]
Received a thoughtful and compelling email today from one of my closest lifelong friends. Fritz and I played junior and senior league baseball together, and we were teammates in football from eighth grade through high school. He was a great player on a great team. I was good, but not great. He sent me a […]
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the celebrations have been plentiful—parades, flyovers, concerts, and public spectacle. Yet amid the pageantry, something essential is missing: a serious national conversation about the ideas and antecedent principles that shaped our Founding—particularly the role of religion and faith. This omission is not […]
There is a quiet illusion that haunts modern leadership: the belief that authority is self‑justifying. That to possess the right to act is to possess the wisdom to act. But this is a confusion as old as political philosophy itself, and one that every serious thinker—from Aristotle to Aquinas to the Stoics—warned against with remarkable […]
It was my great honor to attend my grandson’s Little League All-Star game in Seattle last week. It has been 30 years since my own children played, and 62 years since I first took the field. Across generations of Livingston boys, those games have become part of our family’s shared memory—along with lessons that can […]
Several years ago, I sat down with a group of residency program directors in the offices of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. The department’s director at the time, Richard Armstrong, was not present, but two representatives from his agency joined us to explain the funding and deployment of assets for the new Idaho […]
The phrase came to me secondhand, but it landed with uncommon force: “People in this country just aren’t hungry enough.” A close friend—recovering from a serious health crisis—told me this after an unexpected immersion in something he had rarely watched before: the evening news. Night after night, from a hospital bed, he observed street demonstrations, […]
Our politics are no longer arguing over omelets; we are arguing over whether eggs even exist. Until we recover a shared moral and ethical foundation, serious debate in America—and in Idaho—will remain nearly impossible. I owe the simplification of this point to a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal by Mr. Erni Laynez, who […]
We have indeed always had coarse political rhetoric in America, and it has often spilled over into actual violence. Yet the quality of our language still matters enormously because coarse language is often a tell for coarse thinking. When senior government officials—whether the heads of law enforcement agencies or cabinet departments—resort to shouting, smearing opponents as “Nazis,” […]
Panels of “experts” are everywhere today—on politics, sports, economics, even religion—and yet their track record for getting things right is remarkably poor. One begins to wonder whether they are experts at all, or simply performers chasing relevance. Consider the American bishops who confidently opined about who would be the next pope. How many were correct? […]