Christopher F. Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution is a landmark study of America’s radicalization since the 1960s. It is a carefully constructed work full of insights, which confirmed for me the conclusions that I had reached while studying some of the same topics. Rufo shows convincingly that certain radical thinkers, most of whom were American born, affected deeply and perhaps irreversibly American institutions starting in the 1960s. This study clearly avoids an interpretive perspective that I have repeatedly mocked, exemplified by those who pretend that American culture and politics were generally sound up until quite recently, perhaps until the point when LGBT enthusiasts turned from gay marriage to gender transitioning.
Read MoreTag: America
Commentary: American Public Says Biden Is Not the Leader America Needs to Fix the Country
A giant new poll delving deep into the public’s views on President Biden, Former President Trump, the U.S. economy and their own economic situation reveals a people deeply unhappy with the direction of the country under President Biden.
First, the latest CBS News/YouGov poll shows Trump beating Biden by one point 50% to 49%. While that’s well within the margin of error, other recent polls have shown Trump beating Biden by as many as six percentage points in the past three weeks. Whatever the metric, Trump is polling significantly better now than he was at any time in 2020, and that has Democrats worried.
Read MoreCommentary: Interest Rates Are Soaring, Raising the Alarm for a Painful Reckoning for America
Someone with a million dollars of credit card debt probably wouldn’t celebrate if his interest rate skyrocketed. Yet some analysts are touting rising interest rates on America’s trillions of dollars of long-term debt as a good sign for the U.S. economy.
Are they right? Are rising long-term interest rates a good thing? Certainly not for anyone looking to secure a 30-year mortgage at two-decade-high rates. And certainly not for the federal budget. Not when America is sitting on $32.7 trillion in debt.
Read MoreVivek Ramaswamy’s 10 Truths for America in 2024
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released a list of the 10 “truths” he said he believes to be “pure” and “cold hard facts.”
Read MoreCommentary: The Great China-American Abyss
Imagine if the United States treated China in the same way it does us?
What if American companies simply ignored Chinese copyrights and patents, and stole Chinese ideas, inventions, and intellectual property, as they pleased and with impunity?
Read MoreCommentary: Unions Have Betrayed America
Anyone suggesting there is no role for unions in America today might first consider a fact of history: more than a century ago, when oligarchs and the companies they owned had treated workers as if they were livestock, reduced to living in squalid pens with rationed food and water, it was unions that organized these workers to resist. It was unions who gave these workers back their humanity, and negotiated collective bargaining agreements and laws that eliminated child labor, enforced workplace safety, established an 8-hour work day, paid overtime, health benefits, and retirement pensions.
Read MoreCommentary: Someone Needs to Stand Up to Biden’s Current Madness
Britain slept in the 1930s as an inevitable war with Hitler loomed.
A lonely Winston Churchill had only a few courageous partners to oppose the appeasement and incompetence of his conservative colleague Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Read MoreCommentary: America Must Reclaim What the Left Has Attempted to Destroy
History remembers Independence Hall for the grave, soul-stirring words written there:
“All men are created equal …”
Read MoreCommentary: America for Sale
The dollar’s status as the sole transaction and reserve currency of the world gives America’s federal government unique privileges. International demand for dollars enables federal budget deficits. It also creates an incentive for trade deficits, because incoming investments effectively collateralize American currency. To perpetuate this multi-decade debt binge, America’s real estate and corporate assets are for sale to any foreign investor with surplus dollars.
Read MoreCommentary: America Wakes Up to Woke
Wokeness was envisioned as a new reboot of the coalition of the oppressed.
Those purportedly victimized by traditional America would find “intersectional” solidarity in their victimhood owing to the supposed sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other alleged American sins, past and present.
Read MoreCommentary: Iowa and Minnesota Are Neighboring States That Show Different Futures for America
There is no Berlin Wall or 38th Parallel separating Lyle, Minnesota, from Mona, Iowa, just 1.4 miles south along 1st Street, but the two towns are under governments with widely diverging visions. Iowa, once a “purple” state that leaned Democrat is now a “red” conservative state, while Minnesota, long a reliable Democrat state, has taken a radical, leftward turn. These neighbors exemplify the different visions for America that its citizens are likely to be offered in 2024.
Read MoreOnly One-Third of Generation Z Is ‘Very Proud’ to Live in America
A new survey confirms the ongoing decline in patriotism among younger Americans, with just over one-third of the youngest generation expressing great pride in the fact that they are Americans.
As the Daily Caller reports, the poll by Morning Consult asked Americans about whether or not they would prefer to buy American-made products, even if it meant spending more money than they would for foreign-made goods. Baby Boomers, the current oldest generation, were the most likely to buy “made in America” products.
Read MoreNorth Dakota Governor Doug Burgum Launches Bid for White House, Joining Crowded Field of GOP Contenders
At a Fargo events center packed with family, friends and neighbors, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum stressed his small-town roots, his success in building a multi-billion dollar software business on the Great Plains, governing a growing state, and his vision for an innovative America in announcing his bid for the White House.
The newly minted presidential candidate joins a crowded field of declared Republican presidential candidates, launching his campaign on the same day former Vice President Mike Pence kicked off his in Iowa.
Read MoreCommentary: A Whisper to the Conservative Movement
America is in a state of decline, if not chaos, following disappointing results in three straight elections and too many years of organized turmoil in our streets, schools, government institutions, and elsewhere. Reversing this requires fundamental changes in conservatives’ political and philanthropic strategies.
Read MoreCommentary: America and the Future of Globalism
If globalization is the economic integration of nations in a world where technology has all but erased once formidable barriers to long-distance communication and transportation, globalism is its cultural and ideological counterpart. In theory, the same dynamics might apply. As economies merge, cultures merge as well. As we move deeper into the 21st century, a global melting pot blends everything and everyone together. A planetary civilization marches united into a future of peaceful coexistence, ecological restoration, human life extension, and galactic exploration.
Read MoreMichigan State University Revises Language Guide to Remove ‘Bunnies,’ ‘Christmas Trees’ from List of Offensive Terms
Michigan State University (MSU) appears to have revised an inclusive language guide to remove words such as “bunnies,” “chicks” and “America” from its list of potentially offensive terms following a string of backlash, the New Guard reported.
MSU’s language guide originally warned readers to refrain from using specific words, such as “bunnies,” “chicks,” “Christmas trees” and “reindeer,” that could be affiliated with religious holidays. The guide currently posted on the university’s website was revised in April and removes the section as well as one that listed “America” as an avoidable term.
Read MoreCommentary: America’s Radical Criminal Justice Reform Disaster
Over the past decade or so, America has undertaken a radical experiment with criminal justice reform. The consequences have been devastating.
The number of people arrested in America each year has fallen sharply over the past two decades. Public prosecutors now prosecute significantly fewer cases. Those that are convicted can generally expect shorter sentences. The combined effect of all this is that America’s prison population is now 25 percent lower than it was in 2011.
Read MoreCommentary: A Grand Alliance to Overcome the Elite Betrayal of America
For the first time in history, the ruling class of a powerful nation has abandoned its fellow citizens. What is happening in America today is more than a return to feudalism, although the new economic model into which we’re being herded is correctly compared to feudalism. The reality is actually much worse: America’s elites view ordinary citizens as no longer necessary. Because of globalism, they are replaceable. Because of automation, they are superfluous. Because of environmentalism, they are unsustainable.
Read MoreCommentary: America Doesn’t Have a Free Press
Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk kicked the hornet’s nest when he labeled National Public Radio “state affiliated media.” The howls of protest were amusing, and telling. While they like to pretend otherwise, the mass media in the United States operate much like the state-run media of autocratic regimes.
And it isn’t just NPR. The New York Times and CNN are preoccupied with the generation of propaganda, narrative making, the enforcement of dogmas (“woke” agendas on race, climate, sex, etc.), and the censorship of dissenters.
Read MoreCommentary: America Is a Land of Systemic Justice
Abraham Lincoln described America as a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Today’s Left portrays America as a nation conceived in slavery, and dedicated to the perpetuation of racial oppression. When CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell asked Joe Biden in the summer of 2020, “Do you believe there is ‘systemic racism’ in law enforcement,” Biden answered, “Absolutely. But it’s not just in law enforcement. It’s across the board. It’s in housing. It’s in education. It’s in everything we do.”
Read MoreGOP Presidential Candidate Ramaswamy: Department of Education’s Radical Gender Ideology Creates Psychopaths
Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy blasted the U.S. Department of Education for creating “psychopaths” through gender ideology agendas while the nation’s schools are left unprotected from mass shooters like the one that terrorized a Nashville elementary school this week.
“The real question is why this psychopath in Nashville was able to get into the school in the first place,” the Ohio entrepreneur and anti-woke crusader wrote in a tweet. “We protect green pieces of paper in a bank with more armed guards than we do our kids in schools … There’s more security at a random mall than in a public school.”
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: 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: 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: America’s Breaking Point on Sanctuary Policies
As modern society races forward to embrace digital technology and global connectivity, some time-worn principles remain unchanged. The truth matters. Results matter. Some ideas can be made fashionable with ubiquitous propaganda, media campaigns, and focus group-tested language. But, if those ideas do not deliver on their promises and serve the public, then the public will eventually sour on them.
Read MoreCommentary: The Real Pandemic in America Today Is Obesity
According to the mainstream media, the most important health crisis in the world today is either COVID-19 or mental health. We all know why they say that; money. Money is the most important factor deciding what is and is not important in America today. Hundreds of billions of dollars are up for grabs yearly from these two “pandemics,” and companies like Pfizer are only too eager to profit from them.
Pfizer boasts on its website that the company has “successfully manufactured more than 3 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine in 2021 and expects to manufacture 4 billion doses in 2022.” Looking a little deeper, we can also see that hundreds of millions of prescriptions are written yearly for drugs that treat mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. Pfizer sells a lot of those as well. In 2020 alone, more than 20 percent of U.S. adults had been issued a prescription for such drugs. Those are frightening numbers.
Read MoreCommentary: America’s Race-Obsessed Society
Recently an unarmed 29-year-old African American, Tyre Nichols, was brutally beaten to death by five black Memphis police officers. They were charged with murder. All belonged to a special crime unit known as the Scorpions.
Both the victimizers and victim were black. The Memphis police chief is black. The assistant police chief is black.
Read MoreCommentary: The Unacceptable Cost of Open-Border Mission Creep
One of the pitfalls of political extremism is that a few bad foundational ideas beget a host of even worse ideas and results. Such is the case with our immigration crisis, as what began with faculty lounge bull sessions has become accepted government policy that now threatens America’s future.
The idea that America’s borders should be softened to the point that any noncitizen could enter the country on his own terms was always problematic. From that flawed logic has come an intricate web of problems that most in our government have no will, no courage, and no competence to repair.
Read MoreCommentary: The Unbearable Lightness of Pining Backward
DISCLAIMER: Nearly everything I say in this essay I have already said at least once and, in most cases, more than once. At the same time, some points that might have borne repeating—such as why I think theoretical topics like this matter—I intend to skip. They’re all covered in the last one and, anyway, Paul Gottfried, to whom I am mostly responding, didn’t question the relevance of the subject matter. Those of you annoyed by repetition, uninterested in theoretical matters, or who just want MAGA red meat, do all of us a favor and don’t read this.
Read MoreAll-Star Panelist Roger Simon Comments on World Economic Forum’s Hypocrisy
Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to weigh in on the World Economic Forum taking place in Davos, Switzerland, and the blatant hypocrisy.
Read MoreCommentary: Compared to the Present, Trump Era Was a Golden Age
Excusing his tendency to hyperbole, one finds it hard to disagree when Donald Trump talks about how much better things were before the “China virus” ruined his reelection effort and set the country on a path of decline. The America that existed before COVID, the George Floyd revolution, and the rigged 2020 election is not so far in the past, but it was a completely different world.
Gas was cheap, crime was down, the border was secure, and the country was a lot freer. Words like “misinformation” were seldom heard on the lips of bureaucrats or neighbors deputized by them, and one didn’t fear losing employment or the right to travel for refusing an experimental drug. Believe it or not, before those momentous, nightmarish months of violence and upheaval that changed everything, Trump was on a glide path to victory, having been cleared of impeachment over a long-forgotten “perfect phone call” with Ukraine.
Read MorePoll: Just 16 Percent of Gen Z Adults Are Proud to Live in America
A new poll shows that a staggeringly low percentage of adults in the Gen Z generation express pride in being Americans, with only 16 percent saying that they love their country.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the Morning Consult survey focused on adult members of Generation Z, also known as “Zoomers,” between the ages of 18 and 25. With only 16 percent saying that they were proud to be Americans, they are by far the least-patriotic generation. In the same poll, Millennials were revealed to be the second-lowest, with only 36 percent saying they were proud to be Americans.
Read MoreAmerica Is Shipping So Many Weapons to Ukraine, Defense Companies Can’t Keep Up, Top Navy Officers Warn
Top officers in the U.S. Navy warned that the Ukraine war is putting a strain on an already stretched industrial base Tuesday, complaining defense contractors continue to fall behind in keeping up with the Navy’s needs, according to media reports.
Defense companies have struggled for years to keep pace with the Navy’s demands, citing pandemic-induced supply chain setbacks and a shortage of available labor, Navy Times reported. As the U.S. continues sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine, heightening the burden on weapons manufacturers, top Navy brass expressed worry that the fleet could fall dangerously low on needed assets if the war stretches out much longer.
Read MoreCommentary: Individuals Can Realign America
We live in tumultuous and often troubling times, but that does not make them unique. The ordeals and challenges we face are as old as our species: war, famine, disease, poverty, hate, mass psychosis, greed, brutality, tyranny. Nature is often cruel, and the human capacity to inflict harm on other humans is bottomless.
Read MoreCommentary: An Age of Decay
America ran out of frontier when we hit the Pacific Ocean. And that changed things. Alaska and Hawaii were too far away to figure in most people’s aspirations, so for decades, it was the West Coast states and especially California that represented dreams and possibilities in the national imagination. The American dream reached its apotheosis in California. After World War II, the state became our collective tomorrow. But today, it looks more like a future that the rest of the country should avoid—a place where a few coastal enclaves have grown fabulously wealthy while everyone else falls further and further behind.
Read MoreMore than Two-Thirds of Voters Believe America is Heading in the Wrong Direction
More than two-thirds of voters now say the United States is headed in the wrong direction, according to a new poll from the State Policy Network. Voter satisfaction with the country’s direction has continued to plummet since July.
SPN’s State’s Voices opinion poll surveyed nearly 2,000 registered voters and was conducted in partnership with Morning Consult through online interviews.
Read MoreCommentary: An American Awakening
The seemingly novel developments of the last several years have not taken me by surprise. When I completed American Awakening in May 2020, the national election was still five months into the future, and the stringent measures ostensibly instituted to hold the Wuhan Flu at bay had just been implemented. I thought then that a Democratic Party victory in November 2020 would promise the American electorate a return to normal politics, but in fact would operate on the basis of what, in American Awakening, I called the politics of innocence and transgression; and that if Joe Biden became the Democratic Party nominee, in order to demonstrate that he was the-right-kind-of-white-man, he would champion this sort of politics.
Read MoreCommentary: The Things We Believe In
Rosa Parks was one of America’s indispensable civil rights icons, Rita Hayworth one of its great actresses, Ronald Reagan one of its most consequential presidents, and Norman Rockwell one of its most beloved artists. They all had something else in common, along with 700,000 Americans who die with Alzheimer’s disease every year. All four of them suffered memory losses so thorough and tragic that they eventually had no knowledge of who they were, how important they had been, and why their lives had mattered to millions.
Read MoreCommentary: If Voter Fraud Isn’t Addressed, Democracy in America Won’t Exist
Stop trying to take Ron DeSantis away from Florida. Just stop it. I understand the rationale, but it’s wrong. It may be quite reasonable to be jealous of Florida for its governor—the only governor in the nation to win my coveted “competent” rating on every major issue. But before we encourage DeSantis and Donald Trump to have a falling out that splits the party (or, rather, before we let the RINO simps do it at the behest of Democrats and lots of Chinese money), let’s review a few salient points.
Read MoreCrom’s Crommentary: Identifying ‘America’s Cancer’ as Economic Restructuring Looms
Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
Read MoreCommentary: The Jones Act Works for America and Virginia
Media outlets, intellectuals, and even academics talk about the Jones Act as an antiquated piece of legislation that prevents the U.S. from mysteriously entering an economic golden age. Yes, it’s a hundred years old, but don’t let its age mislead you. Today, it is much more important to America and Virginia than its critics admit.
Read MoreCommentary: The Tyranny of the Minority
In the Federalist, James Madison famously warned against the “tyranny of the majority,” but it is unlikely he could have envisioned what we face today. Twenty-first-century America is dissolving before our eyes, as a tyrannical coalition of minorities steals our heritage and sovereignty. Not ethnic minorities—their American bequest is being stolen right alongside that of America’s shrinking white majority. Nobody is exempt, and everyone should unite to resist.
Read MoreCommentary: A Blueprint for Tackling America’s Crippling National Debt
Our debt is too large. Inflation is too high. We rarely pass a budget anymore — this year neither Budget Committee even bothered to come up with one. This is how great nations become weakened nations, and with all the threats on the world stage, it is urgent we make a change now.
What we need is a budget that changes our fiscal trajectory away from one where the debt is growing faster than the economy, to one where it is stabilized and then gradually brought down.
Read MoreCommentary: Four Issues to Unify the GOP and Realign America
If Republicans hope to unify their party and realign American politics in their favor, they will need to do more than pour billions of dollars into television ads that highlight rampaging looters and the despairing jobless. They have to offer hope tied to an achievable agenda. Americans are ready for an alternative to Democratic fearmongering and stagnation. Give it to them.
Standing in the way of Republicans developing a comprehensive agenda they can agree on is the deepening rift within the party. On one side is the legacy party, represented by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and other so-called moderate Republicans. Opposing them is the MAGA movement led by Donald Trump and backed up by, among other groups, the Freedom Caucus, which now constitutes a majority of House Republicans.
Read MoreCommentary: America Needs a National Conservative Party
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
Abraham Lincoln and other future-minded Whigs recognized this in 1854 when they created the Republican Party. The Whig Party, a contributor of good ideas and good leaders during its heyday, had been on a losing streak and was divided between incompatible factions, one opposing slavery and the other supporting it. Six years later, Lincoln won the presidency on the Republican ticket, and the Whig Party disbanded.
Read MoreProminent Pollster Says Time for America to Mandate All Ballots Be Counted on Election Day5
With states like Arizona, Nevada and Alaska taking days to determine midterm election results, influential pollster Scott Rasmussen says there is overwhelming support for America to mandate ballots be in and counted by Election Day.
“One of the 80% issues, and there aren’t a whole lot of 80% issues in America-one of them is that all ballots should be in by Election Day,” Scott Rasmussen said Wednesday night on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “We should know the results on Election Day.”
Read MoreCommentary: America Needs to Take Immigration 101
If there’s one thing our corporate media loves as much as hyping an upcoming election, it is conducting a days-long postmortem on that election: identifying the winners and losers, who dropped the ball and who is “The Next Big Thing.” Yet, beneath the surface of personality-driven analysis, one can find data that reveals much about what Americans see as the nation’s biggest problems.
An NBC News exit poll found that the biggest issues to voters, in order of importance, were: inflation, abortion, crime, gun policy, and immigration. After the last two years of Biden-fueled destruction of our border, the idea that immigration barely registers as the fifth-most important issue to voters should be disturbing.
Read MoreCommentary: Learning All the Wrong Lessons from America’s Energy Crisis
Self-inflicted wounds create teachable moments, but the architects of America’s current energy crisis are learning all the wrong lessons.
Skyrocketing energy costs are one of America’s harsh post-Covid realities. And with one in four American households struggling to pay for their energy needs before Covid, policymakers should have set their sights on making energy more affordable for more Americans.
Read MorePoll: Arizonans Unhappy with Country’s Direction
When it comes to the direction of the country, Arizona residents have a pessimistic view, according to a new poll.
The Goldwater Institute released a poll that shows that 67% of Arizonans believe America is on the wrong track, while just 22% believe it’s on the right track; 11% said they don’t know how to answer that question.
Read MoreCommentary: The Faith of Nations
In the faith of nations is their life and their undoing, much as it is with individuals. We may survive on the faith of others, but we cannot flourish any more than a child would when attempting to live out the dreams of his parents without making them his own. Faith is an intangible. The artificial intelligence of a computer might precisely calculate the chance of a success but it has no clue as to the value of failure. Faith can absorb both and then some.
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