Politics

What makes The United States so impressive is that our head of state defends the right to speech with which he disagrees, or at least he is supposed to if he does the only job to which the founders asked him to swear an oath – “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

A thoughtful reflection on American optimism in the face of political extremism, government overreach, and global instability. Drawing from history, leadership, and culture, this blog explores how restraint, civic courage, and faith in democratic balance remain essential to preserving America’s ideals—especially when optimism feels hardest to hold.

Happy Thanksgiving. This year, like all years, the same unwritten rule will apply around the Thanksgiving table. Don’t talk politics or religion! This year, just maybe, that rule will be even more important.

Economic populism is not conservative; it’s inflationary. This week, President Donald Trump floated two insanely bad ideas. The first was once again suggesting the idea of using tariff revenue to issue rebate checks of $2,000. The second was the idea of a 50-year home mortgage.

Perhaps no lyric ever written so succinctly sums up my belief in the idea of America more than these words from that song. Those words cut through me harder than they normally do. We’re losing who we are. The list of things we’ll do is getting longer and the list of things we won’t, shorter. This week, 42 million Americans are facing their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits running dry because of the shutdown.

Once the customer, the American citizen in this case, has grown accustomed to a government service, it is hard, and in many cases unfair, to take it away. And it doesn’t matter if that service provided or right granted is Social Security, Trump-era tax cuts, Affordable Care Act subsidies, or reproductive rights. No one likes having something and then having it taken away.

I am reminded daily that real life, done well, can be instructive for our politics and that real life, done poorly, mirrors our politics.

I started this piece eight hours before Charlie Kirk was murdered and I finish it now while the manhunt for his killer is still underway. We do not yet know the motive. We do not yet know the shooter’s mental condition. We do not yet know the shooter’s political affiliation. And while we soon will, I fear the truth will not stop some from advancing theories of their own.

In our nation, we often value toughness more than gentleness. We like our leaders tough. We like our athletes tough. We like our movie protagonists tough. We don’t even mind when they are flawed. Flawed is fine; we all are. But I feel we used to gravitate toward tough guys whose compass still pointed somewhere toward fairness and compassion.

The President of the United States of America brazenly and unabashedly, in the plain light of day and not in some smoke-filled back room, called for gerrymandering to retain the Republican majority.

You can tell a lot about a person, a media company, or a nation by the things he or it chooses to prioritize. For a person, priorities...

Fifty thousand more American families will feel the pain of losing a loved one to a bullet this year. This topic is as important as it gets.

Last fiscal year, our federal government took in $5 trillion dollars but spent $7 trillion. It spent 40% more than it had available to...

Thirty-two minutes, that is how long it takes to read the United States Constitution and its 27 amendments. Article II, Section 1 of the...

On July 21, 2005, shortly after the horrific terrorist bombings on the London transportation system that killed 52 people and injured...

Ronald Reagan, in his presidential farewell address, touted the accomplishments of the American economy during his time in office by...

The difference between effective and ineffective leadership lies mostly in asking the question, “And then what?” Every decision we make...

It’s hard to succeed in big things if you can’t succeed in the small ones. And last week the United States Congress proved that point....

I met President Joe Biden once. It was after his vice presidency and before his decision to run for president. I told him that, as a...

Clichés typically become clichés because they are fundamentally true. As someone who fancies himself a bit of a writer, I spend most of...