As we enter the final 100 days before the midterm elections, I find myself both astonished and concerned—not only by how progressive Democrats and Democratic Socialists have shaped the political narrative, but by how effectively they have reshaped the very language through which Americans interpret that narrative. Control of language is control of thought, and […]
For philosophers from antiquity through the Enlightenment and into our own unsettled age, “the people” has never meant a mere aggregation of individuals. It has meant something far richer: an organized community bound together by shared political and economic experiences, a common moral vocabulary, and a recognizable way of life. Without that shared core, there […]
America’s political divide is no longer merely about policy; it is about first principles. On one side stands a tradition rooted in ordered liberty, personal responsibility, and the dignity of productive labor. On the other, a growing movement—often identified with Democratic Socialism—that increasingly questions those very foundations. In its most strident expressions, this movement calls […]
A free press that hides the truth from voters may still be constitutional—but it has betrayed the Madisonian ideal it was given to serve. The Fourth Estate once named something noble: the public press and journalists as a distinct power in society, standing alongside clergy, nobility, and commoners in early modern Europe. The press emerged […]
There is an old saying about the trials and tribulations the people of Israel faced during their forty years in the desert. On at least three occasions, they turned their backs on God and on their leader Moses, begging to return to Egypt and its grinding slavery and servitude. They preferred the familiarity of chains […]
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 […]