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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed new all-star panelist and the Director of Litigation for the Southeastern Legal Foundation, Braden Boucek in studio to talk about his background and role.
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Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.
To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home—only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.
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This November, Americans are facing a simple decision. Voters will choose between common sense and crazy, between affirming America’s values of freedom and prosperity or continuing the far-left’s plunge into lawless chaos.
Last week, Leader Kevin McCarthy released House Republicans’ Commitment to America, a plan to address the issues that matter most to voters — to create a strong economy, a safe nation, a free America, and an accountable government. Republican policies work and can deliver a brighter, more prosperous alternative to Joe Biden and Democrats’ record of high prices, surging crime and failed big government.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist, official guest host, and Faith and Freedom Coalition’s State of Tennessee Director Aaron Gulbransen in-studio to comment upon the notion that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice is running America.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist, official guest host, and Faith and Freedom Coalition’s State of Tennessee Director Aaron Gulbransen in-studio to contemplate whether or not Joe Biden will seek re-election, secret media messages, and the need for uniting figure.
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In the 1990s, William Strauss and Neil Howe predicted a “Fourth Turning” around 2020, meaning the final reordering of a once-in-a-generation global order. Their thesis is not necessarily pessimistic, although a “positive” resolution is not guaranteed. Either way, their thesis is inconvenient to progressives, who promise linear progress, not generational cycles.
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My wife and I recently were out for our morning walk and she commented on how weird inflation is. Some prices are sky high, she observed, while others have barely budged.
A carton of eggs is up 33 percent over the last year, while tomatoes haven’t changed at all. Airline flights are through the roof, but the cabin we rented on our last vacation was several hundred dollars less than in previous years. Our electric bill is soaring, but her personal care products and my son’s new sneakers were about the same (or less) than what she had previously paid.
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With China’s decision to close negotiations with the U.S. following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, it’s fair to ask how the U.S.’s rapport with the People’s Republic got to this tense point in the first place.
The actor Dennis Quaid said his involvement with cocaine had three stages: “the fun, the fun with problems, and then just the problems.”
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Friday 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.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Gulbransen welcomed U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07) to the newsmaker line to weigh in on the death of Bin Laden’s right-hand man, al-Zawahiri and the ideology that America is evil and must be brought down.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed TN-5 congressional candidate Jeff Beierlein in studio to talk about going from unknown to a political candidate and turning around America.
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On June 25, Joe Biden signed into law the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” a gun control bill that sailed through the U.S. Congress in reaction to recent mass shootings. With another high-profile mass shooting on July 4, many politicians are already wondering if the new law went far enough. But “mass shootings,” the overwhelming majority of which are perpetrated by well-armed inner city gangs, are just one tragic element of an overall breakdown of law and order in the United States. Restoring law and order is possible without resorting to radical, reactionary measures. We need to reinstate policies that worked in the past and will work again.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in-studio to comment upon inflation in America and around the world.
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American morality is in decline, and the population is starting to take note. Half of Americans—a record high number—now rate U.S. morals as “poor,” according to a recent Gallup poll. “Consideration of others” is the leading indicator of this moral decline, Americans say, followed by “racism/discrimination.”
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Wednesday 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.
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In the Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” a shepherd boy repeatedly cries “wolf” to trick villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking the sheep. After a great deal of false alarms, the boy’s cries lose significance to the townsfolk. One day when a wolf really does appear and the boy cries out for help, the villagers ignore him. The boy had sounded a false alarm so many times, his true cries for help had no relevance.
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