Happy Thanksgiving. Here’s a confession. It isn’t my favorite holiday. And that’s because of the food. I’m thankful to have it, of course. But turkey is health food, not holiday food. Gravy is a mechanism to cover that which would otherwise be devoid of flavor. Mashed potatoes are the unimaginative use of a tuber vegetable that should have ended when the deep fryer was invented. Stuffing is rehydrated couch cushion. Cranberry sauce is the very inspiration of Sesame Street’s “which one of these doesn’t belong.” And on my top 100 pie chart, you would never find the word pumpkin. But I do love the underlying theme of the day…giving thanks. And family is at the top of my list. I have an amazing one…big and extended. And I can almost hear one of my amazing cousins asking as she always does, half seriously half to tease, “what are you thankful for?” So here goes. I will spend the day on a beach in Florida. I will be thankful for the sun on my skin, the sea breeze to keep me from overheating, the feel of my bare feet in direct contact with the earth, the sound of the surf gently lapping against the shore, and my physical ability to walk the beach. There may be an umbrella drink after my walk, for which I will certainly be thankful. As I gaze out on the Gulf of Mexico, I will be most thankful that I was born healthy in the greatest country on the planet to a loving, upper middle-class family with every opportunity and advantage that one can have. If life were measured by where you stood as a baserunner in baseball, then I was, without a doubt, born on third base. I thank God, too, that I am smart enough to know I didn’t hit a triple. So not only do I have a responsibility to respect those who worked harder than I to reach third, I also have a responsibility to help those who haven’t yet reached here. 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. But why is it that we can’t talk politics? After all, we will be surrounded by people who share some of the same DNA as we do and who have had many of the same life experiences as we have. Yet with all that in common, we still disagree. Therein lies the lesson. If I can disagree with someone who shares my DNA or life experience, then certainly I will disagree with those who don’t. Perhaps then, I should give the same grace to strangers that I do to my family. The grace to either not talk about it or to do so gently, respecting if not their belief, at least their right to have that belief. Perhaps I should take a moment to contemplate what in their experience may have given them that belief. And if I can’t figure out what in their experience led them to that belief, perhaps I should ask so as to learn instead of pounce as to be right. Perhaps I should also treat that person on the other end of a computer screen as if I had to sit next to him at the dinner table. I will invariably see something else as I walk the beach Thursday. There will be at least one boat moored along the beach that will have a MAGA flag flapping in the breeze. Political flags on boats are unfortunately a thing, now. Replace the MAGA flag with a “No Kings” flag if you like. Either way, roughly half of passersby will be happy about the flag’s message and roughly half will be disgusted by it. But 100% of passersby will be reminded about real life when all they are trying to do is walk a beach, trying to escape real life for a brief moment. We need to do a better job remembering that just because we have a right to do a thing doesn’t mean that we should. We also need to remember that it is precisely because we have the right to do it, that America is great. Not was great, is. And that, I would hope, is something for which we can all agree to be thankful. Then on Monday, let’s get back to trying to perfect our union, understanding that not all have had as much to be thankful for as we.

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 . Our president likes to spitball ideas into open mics. I have always disliked that. As the old saying goes, a president’s words can move markets and mobilize armies. Spitballing puts actual lives in jeopardy. And when it comes to economic policy, it necessarily gives pause to the Fed as they work to control interest rates and liquidity. That same Fed that the president then criticizes ad nauseam for not moving quickly enough. Rebate checks are an insanely bad idea. As I have said in this space on countless occasions, the national debt is the greatest threat facing our nation. And rebate checks ignore that our current national debt as I type this sentence is $38,177,980,067,868. The last eight digits of the debt clock were moving so fast that I had to take a screen shot to be able to report them to you. Eight digits is tens of millions of dollars! But let’s say for the sake of argument that we didn’t have a national debt or that we were so callous that we didn’t care if our kids and grandkids were saddled with paying the debt for us. Even then, rebate checks are an insanely bad idea. That is because the idea assumes there is actually going to be revenue available to give back. Tariffs are but one component of the monies that the federal government collects. In fact, last year they made up only two percent of that revenue . Over 90% of federal government revenue comes from taxes – individual, payroll, and corporate. And we don’t yet know what those revenues will be for this tax year or any moving forward. The Big Beautiful Law locked in the Trump tax rates, removed taxes on tips and overtime, and increased several deductions. What will that do to federal income tax revenue? The job market is slowing with signs that more and more entry level jobs will be replaced by AI. What effect will that have on payroll tax revenue? And of course, corporations have had to shoulder the lion’s share of the cost increases from tariffs, unable to pass all increases on to the consumer. How will this impact corporate tax revenue? Beyond that, the President’s projections of tariff revenue are just that, projections. They assume the current rates will stay in place, which is a stretch given his penchant for shooting from the hip, his transactional form of negotiating, and his apparent susceptibility to flattery. But even if the rates stayed the same, even if the tariffs stayed in place, and even if they are not struck down by the Supreme Court, the projections also assume no contraction in the economy. They assume consumer spending doesn’t slow, and with it imports that are subject to tariff. I guess what I am saying is that giving rebates on projected increases in one of the smallest pieces of federal revenue at a time when our debt load is out of control is asinine. But of course, we have a President that worries more about how it plays than the end results. And giving people money plays very well. But what we need now is not some ill-advised Robin Hood doling our own money back out to us and wanting to be celebrated for it. We already give people more than we have to give. In fiscal 2025 , the federal government brought in $5.23 trillion and spent $7.01 trillion. On what planet do those rebate checks not bounce. We needn’t look too far back for an example of what unnecessary or excessive government refunds can do. In 2020 – the last year of President Trump’s first term in office and the first year of the Covid pandemic – the federal government issued two rounds of stimulus checks . The first was for $1,200 and the second for $600. This second-round check, in December 2020, would have been $2,000 had President Trump gotten his way. In addition, for several months the federal government paid $600 per week in unemployment benefits over and above the regular state benefits. Further, it allowed penalty-free withdrawals from retirement accounts, froze repayments and interest accruals on student loans, and created loan programs for businesses, even those businesses in no danger. The result of this excess government spending was severe inflation. Inflation, in its simplest terms, is too much money chasing too few goods. The government put excess money into the economy and, because the supply chain had come to halt, that money was chasing fewer goods. It is fascinating to me that what many refer to as Biden inflation actually started before the man even took the oath of office! To be sure he is not blameless in the matter of inflation, or on countless other issues. But one of his first decisions contributing to that inflation, was the third round of stimulus checks, the $1,400 in March 2021. But that $1,400 was the additional $1,400 that President Trump wanted to go out in December 2020. To be fair, governing during the pandemic was hard. Mistakes were made, many with nothing but good intentions. But we need to learn from the past. Whether the too few goods come from the Covid supply chain issues or a tariff-inspired slowdown in business production, the last thing the government should be doing is ensuring there is too much money chasing those goods. And of course, when you have created an inflationary environment already through excessive government spending, there is only one thing left to do to compound the problem. You give people a longer term to pay for something that inflation has put out of their reach. We have already seen an increase in people borrowing on credit cards for daily necessities. We’ve already seen car payment terms stretch out to an average of 69 months , with a staggering 22% of loans at an 84 month term. We have seen a huge increase in pay over time purchases on everything from airplane tickets to furniture. So, right on cue…the 50-year mortgage. We have decimated the ability to buy a starter home. So instead of controlling government spending so we can bring down rates, instead of investment in housing supply to bring down prices, let's just lower payments by letting people make those payments over a longer term. The end result…more people would enter the housing market than our current supply could support. So housing prices would rise even further, making housing even less affordable. Spitballing into open mics. The debt clock now that I am done writing and proofing this post now stands at $38,193,777,916,711, an increase of almost $16 billion with a "B" since I started writing this post.

My birthday was this past weekend. As is my want each year, I spent the day in solitude, ignoring the calls and texts from the many people who are a blessing in my life. They understand. I get very pensive around my birthday. What have I accomplished? What have I not? How much time do I have left and what should I do with it? When it’s all over will I hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” or will I instead hear, “How could you have wasted that head start?” Yea, all of that. This weekend was no different, other than it happened against the backdrop of the continuing federal government shutdown and the scramble by local leaders to address the needs of their constituents affected by benefits running dry. In my contemplative mood, and perhaps in an effort to lengthen that whole ‘how much time do I have left’ concern, I decided to go for a healthy lunch and a long walk. So I grabbed my earbuds and headed out. At the lunch counter, I sat sipping some sort of kale juice while people watching. A woman entered the restaurant pushing a girl in a wheelchair who had both physical and intellectual disabilities. The girl wanted to sit in a certain section, but there were no tables available. She became very upset. Both the woman and the hostess tried to console her, explaining that the other section would be just as nice. I tapped the religious medals on my necklace, saying a silent prayer for her and her caregivers. I went on to pray in gratitude for the health of my family and finished with a rather frank exchange with the Lord calling myself some colorful things while apologizing for ever feeling I had a right to be melancholy. After lunch, I took that walk. One of the songs that played in my earbuds was Bruce Springsteen’s “Long Walk Home.” Perhaps no lyric ever written so succinctly sums up my belief in the idea of America more than these words from that song: “Son, we’re lucky in this town, It’s a beautiful place to be born. It just wraps its arms around you, Nobody crowds you, nobody goes it alone. You know that flag flying over the courthouse Means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.” 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. Again, instead of money being spent on services, taxpayer dollars are being spent on lawsuits . And dangerous precedent appears to be occurring, with Courts instead of Congress directing how money should be spent. Regardless of any altruistic intent, bad precedent is bad precedent. So let’s recap. Congress is on paid vacation. Courts are telling the Executive how to spend money. The Executive is telling the Legislature to get rid of the filibuster . And no one is checking the Executive. I think my copy of the Constitution just spontaneously combusted. Fortunately, despite all this federal ineptitude, local Republican and Democratic officials all across the country are scrambling to be sure our neighbors get fed. They are working with state agencies, private organizations, and generous donors. In the best-case scenario, everyone’s nutritional needs will be met, leaving only their added stress and fear at the feet of Congress. In the best case. It's easy, with the number of stats thrown at us daily, to become desensitized. So let’s try it this way, 42 million Americans is one in eight of us. Of us. At some point we may want to have a conversation about how in hell one in eight Americans are on food stamps. And that is to say nothing of the millions more Americans who do not qualify for the program that surely feel they too could use some help. The answer isn’t that 42 million people are gaming the system and it isn’t that billionaires are evil. I’m afraid we’re going to have to do heavier intellectual lifting than that. And the answer may not fit on a bumper sticker or in a seven-second TikTok. No, the answer will be multi-faceted and complex. So too, is the solution. This week, I awoke to see that New York City residents elected Zohran Mamdani , a self-described democratic socialist, as their new mayor. It is hard for a self-described conservative capitalist like me to wrap my head around that. But that didn’t happen by accident. So what can we learn from it? What does that result tell us? Certainly, the NYC economy can be an animal unto itself. The tax load and cost of housing there turn what would be an affluent salary in other parts of the country into one that struggles like heck to get by in NYC. And the mean income there has absolutely no chance. So, it isn’t surprising that in this environment where cost of living pressures are on steroids, that we got this result. But this won’t be the last such result. A recent Cato Institute poll found that 62% of American voters under the age of 29 have a favorable view of socialism. Should we be surprised by that? For starters, this is an age group that has grown up in more of a sharing economy – think Uber and apps that allow them to split bills. They have seen astronomical tuitions and emerge from school with more debt than their degrees are worth. Unless they work in AI, they can’t get a great job because, well, AI will start doing all the entry-level jobs. They are aging off Mom and Dad’s insurance and seeing double-digit premium increases for plans that still have deductibles so high that should they get sick, they will go bankrupt. There is no such thing as a starter home and rents are out of control. Marijuana is legal even where it isn’t and legal gambling is at their fingertips. Half their leaders think the stock market is a better gauge of economic health than is the health of the middle class. And the other half seem to think universal basic everything is appropriate because we have the greatest economy on earth, forgetting that the engine that drives that great economy is the innovation born from personal incentive. My point is this. Millions of our neighbors are in need and we have a moral obligation to be sure "nobody goes it alone." But the answer is not short-sighted leadership that chips away at our Constitutional Republic. Nor is it embracing economic forms that have a long record of failure. Instead, it's time for serious people that see some truth in the other side’s experience. Because one thing is for certain. If we aren’t very careful about the direction we are heading, it is indeed going to be a very “Long Walk Home.”

Perhaps someone who has run for office already and hopes to again one day shouldn’t talk about belonging to a country club… I belong to a country club. Several years ago when Covid restrictions forced the club to shut down its indoor dining, management decided to open a temporary burger and hotdog stand on the golf course to feed hungry golfers. It was a Covid-era adjustment always meant to go away. And it did go away after Covid…for precisely three weeks before member uproar required its reintroduction. It is now permanent, with additional capital spent to get a proper sized grilling station to replace the temporary one and additional recurring expenses to hire new employees to replace the ones that moved back inside to the main kitchen. Whether it is with that country club burger stand or with your local coffee chain’s seasonal pumpkin spice latte or with McDonald’s iconic McRib sandwich, the principle is the same. Once you offer something to customers, it’s hard to take it away. The same is true of government services and, indeed, citizens’ rights. 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. In any endeavor there are two components, the idea and the execution. I find that the original idea is rarely the problem. The problem often lies in the execution. Let’s look at an example. Somewhere along the line an efficiency expert had a great idea. He or she said, let’s conserve by cutting down on the amount of hand soap and paper towel dispensed by the automated machines in public lavatories. Weird example, I know, but stick with me. Reducing those by a reasonable amount would truly be conservation. But what happens when the execution is flawed? Anyone that has used an airport lavatory while traveling lately has probably noticed that the pea-sized dollop of soap dispensed has gotten so small that one must go back to the dispenser for a second or third dose. The amount of paper towel dispensed is now so little that it requires one to go back for a second…third…or perhaps fourth sheet. Where is the conservation there? Had they reduced the settings by say a third, one might be satisfied using just what is dispensed. But by reducing by half, the user now feels compelled to go back for more, using the same or more than they would have under the original settings. There is a point where intended savings leads to actual waste. All too often government is the guy who took a good idea and blew it by making the piece of paper towel just a bit too small. And because proper execution is the difference between whether or not an idea works and because it is hard to take something away from a citizen once granted, it is all the more important for government to get it right in the first place. Very seldom does government intervention need to be immediate. Wars, depressions, and pandemics are hopefully few and far between. The rest – the everyday business of government on which our representatives spend the bulk of their time – can be, and should be, more deliberate. Deliberateness allows for getting things right the first time. Getting it right the first time is one of the many reasons I argue for a more moderate approach to government. One side passing legislation with 51% of the votes is simply asking for that legislation to be reversed when they have only 49% of the votes. I would argue further that no piece of legislation is important enough, no piece of legislation has enough consensus within our country, if it can garner only 51% of the vote. I would argue that legislation without consensus is unnecessary legislation. Less is often more. I do grant that there will be times of such import – such as matters of equal protection or national security – that a representative must vote a certain way regardless of public opinion. Otherwise, slow, deliberate legislating that can garner a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate and be justifiable to the vast majority of the populace should be the regular order. Put another way, if two thirds of the American people wouldn’t agree something will improve our lives or our nation, don’t saddle us with it. And if they do agree it will improve things, then execute it well, revisiting it often to be sure it is still necessary and achieving the desired outcomes. Similarly, if a nominee proposed by the Executive cannot garner 60 votes in the Senate, that nomination should not move forward. I understand that the Executive has the ability to nominate who he feels would best fill the role. But to the Senate belongs the duty of Advice and Consent . And that duty is not a rubber stamp; it is a check. I would argue that if 41 Senators cannot support a nominee, there must be a better nominee out there. And the Executive should pick one so good out of his candidate pool of 266,000,000 adult Americans, that 41 Senators couldn’t come up with a defensible reason to vote no. We need to get back to regular order, legislating through hard committee work that leaves each side of the aisle just a bit disappointed in the end product. Because just a little bit disappointed is not enough of a reason to revisit that legislation upon the next change in majority. Just a little disappointed is legislation that can stand the test of time. Just a little disappointed is legislation that lets Americans and American businesses know they can plan for the future without fear of erratic change or things granted being taken away.

Lessons from the Ryder Cup : I am reminded daily that real life, done well, can be instructive for our politics and that real life, done poorly, mirrors our politics. The biennial Ryder Cup golf tournament between Team USA and Team Europe took place this past weekend. It never disappoints. Congratulations to Europe…a team that is so easy to secretly root for…on an amazing victory. Congratulations to our US team for an inspirational comeback attempt. Golf holds a special place in my heart. It’s a game in which a player calls a penalty on himself when necessary and removes his hat to shake hands with his opponent, regardless of the outcome. It is the best of sportsmanship and the best of human nature. And so the majority of fans at the Ryder Cup, on both sides, knew it proper to root for their team and not against the other. But there was a minority – the boisterous few – who instead thought it appropriate to make noise during an opposing player’s swing or to yell vile obscenities at him or his wife. The main target of these offenses was Team Europe’s star, Rory McIlroy. I offer his words from the victor’s press conference . “I think golf should be held to a higher standard than what was seen out there this week. Golf has the ability to unite people. Golf teaches you very good life lessons. It teaches you etiquette. It teaches you how to play by the rules. It teaches you how to respect people.” I think many of us are so unsettled by seeing poor behavior around golf, like that exhibited by some of our fans, because golf seems to be the last best public sanctuary of etiquette, good life lessons, and mutual respect in a world where increasingly those things don’t exist. So with golf, we hold on desperately even as the decay in decorum seeps into our beloved game. Justin Thomas, one of the stars of our team was quintessentially American – brash perhaps, bold definitely, but ultimately fair. He was the head cheerleader when he or a teammate made a great shot. No one revved up that New York crowd like he did. But he also put his hands in the air to quiet those same fans so the European’s had a fair chance to make a great shot in return. He fought his heart out to win his final match on Sunday, which he did. But later when Shane Lowry holed his putt on the last to secure the win for Europe, Thomas, seeing what that accomplishment meant to Lowry, was the first American to come onto the green to congratulate him. Quintessentially American. Fitness for Duty : Secretary of Defense, sorry Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of our flag officers to Virginia this week for a televised “show.” He spoke for 45 minutes. Well-prepared and practiced, the message centered on his view of what constitutes fitness for duty and his belief that the military be returned to a meritocracy. The villain of the day was, not surprisingly in a MAGA administration, wokeness. This made for television show cost tax payers millions to assemble, lodge, and protect those assembled. That is in addition to the cost to taxpayers of renaming that department that will only be renamed when the next Democratic president comes into office. President Trump also spoke , for 0ver an hour, to these men and women who have risked everything for us. Most of us who have given the time to watching an entire speech or press conference of his know of the absurdity of some of his meanderings. But highlighting some from this one is necessary because of who his audience was and what they represent. Again, keep in mind that these men and women had just heard a 45-minute speech on fitness for duty. The President congratulated himself on renaming the Gulf of Mexico; talked about the rigged election claiming he is actually the 45 th , 46 th , and 47 th President; referred to “nuclear” as the other “n” word you can’t say; claimed that everybody loves his signature; reiterated that “tariff” is the most beautiful word; told them they had to count on people like him to keep them out of wars; said it makes sense for Canada to become our 51st state; told them the ships they’re building aren’t aesthetically pleasing enough to him; told them he got the highest numbers of votes ever received, won every swing state, won the popular vote, “won everything”; called the gathered media “sleaze bags”; called the public servants surrounding President Biden “radical left lunatics”; said DC was worse than Afghanistan; mused that they should use dangerous US cities for military training grounds; said the governor of Illinois is “so stupid they threw him out of his family business”; claimed some criminals may have been born that way; claimed that every day President Biden fell down stairs and said the only thing he respected about President Obama was that he would “bop down those stairs, but he did a lousy job as president”; exclaimed “a year ago we were a dead country”; and finally, in reference to the fired generals, he said “We got many of you out of here because we weren’t satisfied; we know everything about everyone.” Government Shutdown : One need not be an arbitrator to understand that the first rule of conflict resolution is that no one gets everything they want. Yet Republicans continue to believe they can institute their political worldview to the exclusion of Democrats and Democrats continue to forget that they are in the minority. Both forget there will always be another election, and the electorate has a finicky way of reminding them where they have fallen short. That reminder usually revolves around the pocketbook. And perhaps no issue is affecting the American pocketbook more than health insurance, the very issue on which Democrats are holding out. This shutdown, like every other, will end with an agreement not measurably different than what could have happened without shutdown. All that will be left is figuring out who voters will hold responsible. Will they blame the Republicans who hold the White House and both chambers of Congress? Or will they blame the Democrats, particularly Senate Minority Leader Schumer who is protecting himself from a possible primary challenge on his left? My guess, 50/50 based on your media outlet of choice. Television this week has been rife with hypocrisy with members of Congress on both sides saying the exact opposite of what they have in the past. My favorite has been watching members of my party say that Democrats always expected the health insurance tax credits to lapse and that is why they didn’t make them permanent. That is like saying the Republicans always intended for the Trump tax cuts to lapse and that is why they didn’t make them permanent. Neither is true. Both were required to lapse because both used the reconciliation process , not regular order, to pass things unilaterally. The truth is reconciliation limits the creation of deficits when using this process, and both parties as an end-around made the policies sunset before those limits were hit. We have to start talking about the real costs of shutdowns. And I don’t mean the cliched video footage of the first graders denied a chance to visit something on a field trip or vacationers denied a chance to visit a national park. (Though I would argue that the stupidity of shutdowns is proven when an area of government that is actually done exceedingly well – the national park system – is affected.) I don’t mean scaring seniors that somehow their benefits may be affected. I don’t mean the stress on some federal workers who keep us safe – like air traffic controllers – being forced to work without pay. And I don’t even mean the further chipping away, real or perceived, at the full faith and credit of the United States. No, I mean the actual hard dollar costs of a shutdown that rob taxpayers of their hard-earned money. In preparation for a shutdown, whether or not it even comes to fruition, federal agencies spend millions of dollars, dollars that should have been spent on whatever mission it is they exist to effectuate. If Republicans believe that the federal government is too big and that certain agencies are unnecessary, then certainly an unnecessary agency or employee working to prepare for a shutdown is, well, unnecessary. But it happens…every time. Furloughed federal employees get backpay when the government reopens after a shutdown. In the 2013 shutdown, for example, over $2 billion went out after the fact to furloughed employees. That money was doled out in return for zero productivity. The American taxpayer got nothing in return for it. There is something inherently evil about letting furloughed employees sit at home with nothing to think about except whether their jobs will ultimately be taken away by someone who so callously speaks of culling the size of federal government without due concern to the human beings involved. And that is exactly how OMB Director, Russell Vought, elected by no one, approaches this. Vought was a key contributor to Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term that then candidate Trump disavowed. Putting that aside for now, what do you think the first thing a furloughed employee does, not knowing how long this will last or when their backpay will come? They stop spending. Those employees aren’t the only ones who stop spending. Because the government stops paying vendors, those businesses stop spending. Because projects are delayed by stalled regularity approvals or SBA loans, new investment into the economy slows. Investment delayed is economic productivity never achieved. GDP falls as a result. In the 2018 shutdown that continued into 2019, GDP fell by some $11 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office. Unforced errors are the worst kind of error. And it is precisely this level of economic uncertainty, whether from shutdowns or tariffs, that causes such angst to the Federal Reserve at a time all of us would like to see rates come down. While demagogues are demonizing the size of government and painting every federal worker as someone working to either give your money to a killer from another country with a different skin tone or trying to figure out how to use inclusion of “them” to somehow exclude you, the inconvenient truth is that the federal workforce is comprised of the same number of people now as it was when I was born 52 years ago. It has less employees now than did it at certain times under both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. When one factors in population growth, federal employees now make up a smaller percentage of our nation’s overall workforce. I know that complicates my party’s narrative, particularly given that federal employee salary and benefits are less than $400 billion of our $7 trillion dollar annual spend. What has grown dramatically over the years, and will continue to grow if the result of this shutdown is terminating federal workers, is the number of private contractors our government uses. And while the private sector can do many things better than the public sector, they require turning a profit. Further, I don’t think anyone would argue that using contractors increases transparency or accountability, two things important to most voters. No, instead it increases the likelihood of patronage and cronyism, and the waste that typically accompanies it. Another reminder, and yet more costs : Finally, to those who think those on the other side of the political aisle are the enemy, that your opponent in politics is to be hated, that we should further demonize each other, something else happened this past weekend that should remind us what hatred actually looks like. Hundreds gathered in worship only to find themselves screening children behind them as a man rammed his truck into their church, opened fire, and burned the church to the ground. And so we have more costs…lost lives, lives that will never again be the same, and the financial costs across our society to further protect us from instances like this instead of addressing the root causes.

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. The social media universe is filled with elected officials, on both sides, rightfully calling for prayer for Charlie and his family. They are rightfully saying violence has no place in our national discourse. I hope next week those same officials remember how they feel in this moment and choose their rhetoric more carefully. Because whether it contributed in this case or not, words matter and inflammatory words sow discord that can lead to violence. The social media universe is also filled with gruesome video of the shooting. People are rightfully shaken up. This was heinous. Feeling as we do about these images, one dares only imagine how we would feel seeing video from a school shooting showing the same horrific thing happening to a six-year-old. We shouldn’t need video to finally inspire a national movement on gun violence . Against this backdrop, I return now to what I started writing before the shooting, renewed more than ever in its import. Whether or not one is a parent, we are all familiar with the power of the phrase, “That's Enough!” Whether we have used it or heard it used, we are familiar with its effect. Children who have gone too far, gone from harmless fun to annoying or unsafe behavior, at long last being told by a parent, “That is enough.” And for those of us bystanders there is the welcome silence that hopefully follows. Some of us may have had a friend that has gone too far, perhaps with substance use or another vice like gambling or simply acting out of character. And perhaps we have found the courage to give them some version of, “That’s enough now.” Perhaps nowhere does enough play a bigger role than in finances, be they a person’s or a nation’s. Sometimes enough is decided for us by a low bank account or nearing a credit limit. Sometimes enough is a calculated decision…I can retire now. In a perfect world, enough would be a moral consideration too. An executive might say that making 30 times more than his shop floor employee is enough; he needn’t make 300 times. An insurance company might say it will charge less instead of using excess earnings to pay for stadium naming rights or $2,000 bottles of wine for the CEO at the annual retreat. In a perfect world. I have been quiet these last few weeks, taking a break from posting. And this isn’t because I haven’t had thoughts on the issues of the day. Rather it is because, like many of us, I have had enough. I have had enough of people not saying, “Enough.” Someone should tell Benjamin Netanyahu, “Enough!” The October 7 th attack was the most heinous attack imaginable. But at some point, self-defense becomes vengeance. And we have been at that point for a very long time. Great and just nations have a responsibility for proportionality. People of faith have a responsibility to protect innocent civilians, even in a land run by evildoers. And practical leaders have a responsibility to know that nothing is a greater catalyst for further radicalization than creating more poverty and more suffering. It isn’t hard to radicalize someone who has no opportunity, no job, and has seen his little sister die of starvation. It is as easy as pointing and saying, “That is who did this to you.” But Netanyahu doesn’t want peace, does he? No, he just violated the sovereignty of the one nation in best position to help broker it, Qatar . No, Bibi wants scorched earth. Someone should tell the media, “Enough!” You gave us a President Donald Trump with your predilection for sensationalism, covering him 24/7. You gave us slanted opinion under the guise of a newscast. You gave us pundits and sat them behind an anchor’s desk. You gave us the stories you wanted to cover and ignored those that didn’t fit your narrative. If you were a right-leaning station you didn’t show all President Trump’s meanderings and vile comments. You slammed MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd over his comments that Kirk’s killing may somehow have been related to hateful speech. If you were a left-leaning station you didn’t show when, for all his vileness, President Trump did something well. You slammed Fox’s Jesse Watters for his comments about avenging Kirk’s death. Someone should tell the federal courts, “Enough!” You serve for life and aren’t required to run for office. You are not subject to, and need not be concerned with, the enflamed passions of the people, or for that matter the enflamed passions of the man who nominated you. You need only be concerned with the Law, in all its beautiful, blind coldness. You shouldn’t allow yourselves to be forum-shopped to give nationwide injunctions. You shouldn’t use the emergency Shadow Docket with such enthusiasm. And you should be very careful of creating a branch of government that isn’t coequal and cannot be held to account . Those guardrails removed, a speed boat being blown out of the water without legal justification is just the beginning. Someone should tell the Democrats, “Enough!” There is a difference between equal protection and mandating celebration. There is a difference between caring for those less fortunate than we and supporting those who work the system instead of going to work. There is a difference between regulating capitalism where it falters and instituting socialism. Someone should tell them the lesson they should have learned from the last election, and the path to helping this nation back from the edge, isn’t that they too should start using more fighting words or posting videos of themselves lifting weights. Bro culture doesn’t a more perfect Union inspire. Someone should tell the Republicans, “Enough!” The ends don’t justify the means. The Constitution is not a doormat and emergency declarations aren’t the proper tool for routine governance. A vote against a former president isn’t a vote for everything the current one campaigned on or thought of last night at three in the morning. And it certainly isn’t a vote for Stephen-Miller-level evil or Cabinet-level clownery. And the votes you received from the working class certainly did not come because they hoped that billionaires would become more billionairy at their expense. Even if one believed a vote for President Trump was a vote for all his policies, 49.8% of the vote does not a mandate make. And instead of leaders saying to me behind closed doors that we’ll fix it after President Trump is gone, stand up. Someone should tell Congress, “Enough!” Take back the gavel from an overreaching Executive. Take back legislation from an overreaching Judiciary. Vote no to spending our children’s and grandchildren’s money on our current lifestyle. Stop allowing money to be spent to undo something that will simply be reinstated upon the next change in majority. That too is waste. Stop sending out those vile fundraising emails that I had the courage not to send when I ran. 'The world is on fire’ emails effectively raise money, but the costs are simply too high. And for God’s sake, go grab a drink with someone with a different letter in parenthesis after their name. You’ll be okay and you may learn something. And if someone posts a pic of you doing so on social media, have the political courage to say, “So what of it?” Someone should say to those social media keyboard warriors, dime store influencers, podcasters who don't research, and supposed patriots who love only one half of their country, “Enough!” Facts matter. Knowing history matters. The Constitution and our institutions matter. Perfecting our Union matters. And for the love of all that is good and holy and decent and kind, understand that the simplest explanation is often the correct one; conspiracy theories and ascribing evil genius to people who simply made bad decisions isn’t the simplest explanation. Someone should say to anyone who weaponizes religion for any purpose or to any leader who dog whistles using it, “Enough!” The very first line of the very first amendment to the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” That doesn’t just mean we don’t have a national religion like we have a national bird. It also means we separate Church and State. We do not govern according to a specific faith canon, be it Christian or Sharia. I am a person of faith, a Christian. But our founders, inspired as they were by faith, put in place a system to govern for those of all faiths and for those of no faith at all. Were that not enough, the Christ I believe in is inclusive and taught, “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” The words Christ and Patriot are not synonyms, regardless of how often some on the far right employ them in the same tweet in such calculated proximity. Too much harm has been done throughout history under the misuse of religion. No more need be. Besides, the proper way to affect the world with your faith is simply to live it. Charlie Kirk’s organization is called Turning Point USA. We are indeed at a turning point. But that turning point hinges less on what your tax rate is, less on what social programs we offer and how they are administered, and less on what you think should be taught at schools. It hinges far more on how we treat one another and how we talk about one another while we figure out the rest. A difference in the top tax bracket of a few percentage points does not end a Union. A book being included in the school library does not end a Union. Calculated division, if we allow it to, can. So at long last, I say, “That’s enough now.”

Funerals are instructive and the one I attended this week was no different. It was a beautiful service for a gentle man. He excelled in his career but that wasn’t what his son and grandkids talked about in their amazing eulogies. Instead, they spoke of fishing trips and drives to the dollar store, drives extended by shortcuts that weren’t shortcuts at all simply so he could spend more time with them. They spoke of his facial expressions that could teach a thousand things without uttering a word. Eulogies often remind me that how one does it often leaves a greater impact on others than what one does. Tip O’Neill, a Democrat, served as Speaker of the House during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. I can’t remember his policies, though I’m sure I disagreed with most. I remember only one thing from his eulogies. It’s this. He was waiting for a haircut in a Boston barber shop when he noticed holes in the bottom of the shoes of a man sitting in the barber’s chair. When the man stood to leave, Speaker O’Neill quietly asked him if those were his best shoes. The man, embarrassed, admitted they were. The Speaker sent him across the street to a shoe store, instructing him to tell the shop owner he would be over after his haircut to pay for whichever pair the man selected. That act of kindness is what I remember about the third highest ranking official of the United States during the 1980’s. 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. One of my favorite movies is A Bronx Tale . Chazz Palminteri brilliantly portrays Sonny, a neighborhood crime boss. Robert De Niro, cast opposite him, plays a bus driver named Lorenzo. The movie follows the life of Lorenzo’s young son as Sonny gains an outsized influence over him. Watching, we forget that mob bosses kill. We forget that they earn a living by taking. Instead, we focus on the life lessons that Sonny teaches the boy. And they are great lessons, including how to tell on the first date if someone is worth marrying. Hint, it’s if she reaches over to unlock your car door after you open the passenger door for her. Okay, so that one may not work in these days of keyless entry, but you get the point. Be with someone who thinks of others. In one scene in the movie, a biker gang wanders into Sonny’s social club. Sonny’s underlings initially refuse to serve them. When Sonny enters to ask what is going on, the leader of the gang tells him that all they want is a couple beers and then they’ll be on their way. Sonny says to the biker, “Spoken like a gentleman.” He then motions to his bartender saying, “Give them their beers; go ahead.” But once the beers are served, the bikers’ true intent to trash the place emerges. They shake their beer bottles and spray the bartenders. Sonny, seeing this, calmly walks to the front door. He locks it shut and places the key into his suitcoat pocket. The bikers’ faces drop. Sonny says to them, “Now youse can’t leave.” Mobsters pour out of the back room, beating the bikers. They throw them, bloodied, onto the sidewalk. They destroy their motorcycles. A group of young thugs from the neighborhood, would-be mobsters, single out a wounded biker to continue kicking. The scene ends with Sonny lifting the head of one of the bloodied bikers saying, “Look at me. I’m the one that did this to you. Remember me.” Of course, I don’t condone violence. But the scene is a lesson. It begins with a lesson about treating people with respect, taking them at their word until they give you reason not to. It moves on to a lesson about never starting something, but once started not being afraid to finish it. In the actions of the young would-be mobsters, we get a lesson in how pathetic blind following, mimicry, and picking on the defenseless can be. The scene ends with one final lesson from Sonny – you did this to yourself; remember how you feel right now the next time you get the urge to bully someone you think is weaker. There’s a compass in that toughness. Beyond loving movies, I’m also an American history buff. The Revolution, the Founding, the Civil War, our presidents…it all enthralls me. And I tend to learn from everyone, even those on the wrong side of history and even those on the wrong side of right. This is why preserving history is important, to celebrate the right, learn from the wrong, and appreciate the different experiences of others. The right of the Civil War won the Civil War. Slavery is so abhorrent that I cannot even begin to know how to fully fathom it. In the last presidential primary season, there was a renewed debate over whether that war was more about slavery or states’ rights. Regardless of what they were fighting for, the evil institution of slavery would have survived had the South won. The right won that war. I visit the battlefields of that war often. The events that unfolded in those fields were also horrific. Over 600,000 lives were lost. But the stories that tend to linger with me long after I leave are those where a soldier on one side recognized the common humanity in one on the other. I think of Gettysburg with its 50,000 casualties. But I also think of the friendship of Union General Winfield Scott Hancock and Confederate General Lewis Armistead. They served on opposite sides during Pickett’s charge. Armistead, wounded with injuries that would prove mortal, inquired after his friend, Hancock, only to learn that he too had been wounded a few hundred yards away. Each was a casualty at the hands of the other’s men. I think of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain with its 4,000 casualties. Fighting was intense as the Confederate positions were well entrenched. But the moment of the battle I remember is when Confederate Colonel William Martin jumped onto his earthworks to order his men to cease fire because the constant fire of his cannons had started the dried leaves and brush on fire. And in that fire, wounded Union soldiers were burning. “ Boys, this is butchery ,” he yelled. He waived his white handkerchief, allowing his men and the Union men to rescue the wounded before they burned to death. President Abraham Lincoln with fanatical focus employed every means, including executive overreach and the suspension of habeas corpus, to save the Union and end slavery. While touring Richmond after the rebel withdrawal, he was asked by one of his generals how they should treat the local citizens. He responded, “Let ‘em up easy.” General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House was littered with moments of humanity. When General Lee considered his options before surrendering, some on his staff urged him to disperse his army into the woods, tell them to regroup with other armies of the South or return home, but to continue fighting either way. Lee refused, believing that men without leaders or rations might turn into marauders in order to survive. “We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from,” he answered. Ely Parker was a Native American who served under General Ulysses S. Grant. A colonel at the time, Parker drafted the surrender documents. General Lee originally mistook him for a black man. When he realized he was incorrect, he said to Parker, “I am glad to see one real American here.” Colonel Parker, who earned the rank of Brevet Brigadier General that same day, replied, “We are all Americans, sir.” General Grant’s terms of surrender were lenient and he provided three days rations to the hungry Southern troops. After the signing, he and his officers walked out onto the porch of McLean House to see off Lee and his officers. They did not gloat. They did mock Lee as the worst general ever. They didn’t say Lee was nasty to us. Instead, General Grant, with his officers following his example, raised his hat to his vanquished foe. General Lee, returned the gesture and rode away. In similar fashion, General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Union officer who oversaw the ceremony in which the Southern troops filed by to surrender their weapons and flags, ordered his men to salute the rebel troops. I’m not an historian. I’m simply recounting moments that struck me. I offer them, cherry-picked as they may be, as examples of men showing a limit to what their partisanship would allow. Colonel Martin’s brand of partisanship in that moment wouldn’t allow for his enemy to burn alive. General Lee’s wouldn’t allow for guerilla warfare to cast a nation further into chaos. General Grant’s, though it allowed for subjecting entire cities to siege to end a war, wouldn’t allow an enemy once defeated to starve. General Chamberlain’s and President Lincoln’s wouldn’t allow a defeated foe one more reason to feel slight. They all seemed to recognize, by these acts, that moving forward together after a contest would not be served by exacerbating injury. Just the opposite. As we stumble through the issues of our time, trying desperately to find the right in all of them, I wonder what our partisanship will allow? Are we so entrenched in our beliefs on taxes or entitlements or immigration or any of the myriad of issues facing us today – issues that are important, but fall well short of slavery or brother literally taking up arms against brother – that we would be willing to treat, and to speak about, fellow human beings with less respect than did these men who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War and that evil institution? Will we continue to ratchet up the divisiveness and dehumanize those who think differently than we, making it impossible to move forward together? And will we continue to reward with our votes those who deliberately sow division as a means to an end that doesn’t actually serve us? What I’m clumsily trying to say, through analogy to funerals and movies and the Civil War, is that I hope we as a people find our way to remembering that how we do it matters just as much as what we do. How we do it matters a great deal.

I was asked recently by someone I respect very much to write on the subject of guns. So here goes. This is my longest post to date, at triple my normal length. But how could it not be? 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. I won’t leave you in suspense. I am a conservative gun owner who believes it is too easy to get a gun and too hard to take it away. I believe the introductory clause of the Second Amendment to our Constitution is there for a reason. I believe the right of parents to make sure their kids come home safely from school far outweighs someone’s right to entertainment, and frankly too much of gun owners’ want of a certain type of firearm is for entertainment.  And unfortunately, nothing I say below will cure evil or sickness or take away the animalistic capacity of human beings to hurt one another. The well-worn Charlton Heston notion that a gun in the hands of a good man is only a danger to a bad man tends to ignore the statistics on the harm that can come from the good man’s gun. A good man’s gun can be fired by a curious child at a sibling. A good man’s gun can discharge accidentally. A good man’s gun can be fired intentionally at an intruder that turns out not to be an intruder. And a good man’s gun can be turned upon the good man. Citizenship is tricky business in a free society. And too often people focus on their rights instead of their responsibilities. Yes, we have the right to have that loud after-market exhaust on our sports car, but do we have the right to wake everyone in the neighborhood when we pull into our driveway at two in the morning? Yes, we have the right to smoke or to eat a dozen donuts every morning, but do we have the right to have society pay our medical bills for the resultant lung cancer or diabetes? And yes, we have the right to bear arms, but do we have the right to bear instruments of war? This issue, like every issue we face, hinges on the proper role of government. Where do we draw the line between too little government and too much? It begins by understanding why a free people consent to be governed in the first place. The only reason we do is because the natural order of things is dangerous, and we seek to be kept safe in our persons and property. So we consent to be governed, understanding that in agreeing to be governed we, by necessity, have to give up some liberty so that our neighbor can also be kept safe in his or her person and property. That’s the only way it works. The key, and the challenge then, is getting the balance correct so that we give up just enough liberty for the desired security. Too little surrendering of personal liberty creates a government that cannot effectuate its primary goal. Too much needlessly infringes upon individual rights. But regardless of where the legislative line is drawn, we as citizens can also decide that sacrificing a bit more for our neighbors is simply the right thing to do on the if-come it may just help in some small way, be it giving up high-capacity gun magazines or wearing a mask into a grocery store during a pandemic. Our modern citizenry is too quick to call something an infringement on our liberty that would more accurately be described as sacrificing a bit for our neighbor’s peace of mind. A refresher on what true sacrifice is, what our forebears gave to society and what limitations they accepted for the greater good, might be instructive. An 18-year-old dying on the beaches of Normandy before he had even lived a life was actual sacrifice. Little of what is asked of us today is. We have a love affair with guns in America. We have the highest per capita gun ownership of any country, with more guns than citizens. We lose almost 50,000 people per year to guns . And more than half of those are suicides. We cannot know how many of those suicides could have been prevented if the means of death weren’t so readily available. But I imagine it is not an insignificant number, as evidenced by the large uptick we are seeing in a group that historically did not use firearms in suicide…young girls and women. I believe life is precious and the loss of any person diminishes us all. But I am also a small-government conservative who doesn’t believe government’s role is to protect a person from themselves, but rather to protect a person from others. So, I will concentrate this piece on violence perpetrated on another human being using a gun. More than half of all murders are committed with a handgun and by someone known to the victim. I wish there was something I could think of to stop that. No amount of magazine size restrictions or rounds fired per minute regulations will materially change those horrific outcomes. But where we can make a difference with sensible regulation is with mass shootings. When I ran for United States Congress, I participated in a Republican primary debate the night after the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Appropriately, a question was posed about gun regulation very early in the debate. Here is what I said that night. “I’m a gun owner and I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in the right to defend yourself, the right to pass on a tradition of hunting to your family. But certainly a grandmother should be able to go to a grocery store, a child should be able to go to school, and a former president should be able to go to a political rally without being the victim of gun violence. We have smart people in this country and we have to figure out a way to protect my right to bear arms but your right to feel safe. And certainly, having that conversation, a sensible conversation, is not violative of the Second Amendment; it is simply recognizing that we live in common society with each other and we have to find a solution.” The Second Amendment is one sentence but causes so much rancor. It reads simply, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The founders were not casual with word choice. The introductory clause did not say, “In order that a citizen may protect his home.” It did not say, “In order that a citizen may teach his son how to hunt.” It did not say, “In order that a citizen may enjoy firing hundreds of rounds of tracer fire in his backyard.” This amendment was always about the ability of the State to protect its interest. The main battle lines of the Constitution were always about State verses Federal. And this amendment was no different. To some it was to protect the ability of the nascent nation to defend itself, knowing that state militias were needed in lieu of and then in supplement to a standing federal army. To some, leery of federal overreach (including interference in the affairs of slave-holding states) or tyrannical government, the purpose was to protect states from a federal standing army. Further supporting the belief that this amendment was more about state security, the original draft that circulated around Congress for months included a conscientious objector clause to ensure that someone with religious objections could not be pressed into service. That clause was dropped in the final approved version, but still speaks to intent. Now, I’m not arguing the founders didn’t believe in self-protection or gun ownership for other purposes. But that isn’t what they felt was important enough to enshrine, and so the fervent reliance upon this amendment by some on the right with such absolute certainty is misguided. I am turned off by extremism in any form. And I do see a form of extremism in any one-issue advocacy, because no one issue exists in a vacuum. One cannot discuss taxation without discussing deficits or abortion without discussing the role of government or guns without discussing mental illness. But one-issue advocates would have us do just that – opine on their issue in a vacuum. And that is why I, as a candidate for Congress, did not fill out any of the dozens of surveys I received from issue advocacy groups, including those received from gun groups. I also find some extremism in the language those groups use that isn’t helpful to finding solutions. One gun advocacy group that sent me a survey ended their cover letter to me, a federal candidate for office, with the line, “Failure to respond to this survey will be deemed a hostile act.” A hostile act? I wonder what they intended by that or what they hoped I would infer? James Madison, who drafted the Second Amendment, and Thomas Jefferson lived 30 miles apart in Virginia. I have visited both homes often. I have stared out their windows and walked their grounds, both in awe of our founders and in horror at the institution of slavery that existed on both properties. Today it takes 45 minutes to get from one property to the other. In their time, it took a day or two, long enough that they would typically stay a few weeks at a time to justify the journey. They could not have imagined a world where one could wake up in Portsmouth, NH, and be in Los Angeles by lunch time. During the Revolution a skilled marksman could get off two or three musket shots per minute. The founders could not have fathomed a world in which an AR-15 fitted with a bump stock could get off over 400 rounds per minute. So perhaps the founders, as brilliant as they were, may have modified their view on guns given the risk of destruction inherent in new technology and may have modified their view on states’ rights in certain instances given the risk of geographic proximity inherent in modern travel. As much as I believe in the Tenth Amendment – “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” – there are now times, because of the ease with which we can travel and relocate, when issues of safety or even of administration need to be addressed at a national level. Just as the Articles of Confederation fell short by providing a central government too weak to do the necessary like govern interstate commerce, so too is a states’ rights view of the world too weak to address our mutual safety. So, either we can embrace the need for strength of the federal government in certain areas, or we must embrace the chaos where the state with the most lax laws on guns or pollution or health governs our collective safety. I said earlier that the attraction to certain weapons seems to me to be more for entertainment than self-defense. I like to target shoot as much as anyone. And I listen to others around me when I’m at the range or a gun show or even at a hardware store. I’ve never heard anyone say they modified their gun or bought a bump stock to protect their home better. No, it is typically because they like the way the trigger feels now or how many rounds they can get down range or some other such comment that always feels more akin to me to the concept of tuning a car for more horsepower or adding a few more inches of lift to an offroad vehicle. It’s preference, not necessity. And regardless of how much horsepower one puts in a car, we still have speed limits. Where is the infringement argument on speed limits? Where is the advocacy group? I have heard the argument that citizens should have a right to bear more potent weapons to protect against a government that has gone too far. After all, the Declaration of Independence says it is “the Right of the People to alter or abolish” a government that has become destructive of the ends of liberty. Ignoring for a moment that there are more effective ways to address government overreach enumerated in our other rights – speech, assembly, and suffrage – I would also remind these people that the government owns F35 fighter jets. So good luck. At some point governing becomes more about addressing the likely, not the far-fetched. We have more than one mass shooting per day and haven’t had to take up arms against an oppressive government in 250 years. On which should our legislation focus? Much of our legislation in this country, often written by lobbyists, is complex with both intended and unintended loop holes. Machine guns are illegal in our country. But the legislation banning them defines them not by the number of rounds fired per minute, but rather by the mechanical action that one pull of the trigger can fire more than one round. Loophole! Enter smart people and the creation of the bump stock. The bump stock is a device that replaces the traditional stock end of a semi-automatic weapon, the part that rests against the shoulder of the shooter. It harnesses the recoil of a fired weapon to essentially bump the trigger back into the trigger finger allowing it to fire a similar number of rounds as a machine gun. They are legal again in our country, but why are they necessary? Do we have the right to be lazy in the defense of our homes by not having to strain with a trigger pull for each round fired? Do we have the right to hunt deer with an AR-15 when, as the comedian Ron White used to joke, that elusive creature can so effectively be killed by a Buick traveling the speed limit with its headlights on and horn blowing? We have to honestly talk about the real danger of owning weapons of war. What gun advocacy groups fail to acknowledge is that a law-abiding citizen who legally owns a weapon can still have a mental break or have his weapon taken by another. And limiting the damage he, or another, can do is the role of government. Ceding a fraction of our liberty is the job of citizens seeking to live in common society with one another. There is a reason in our society we take steps like having a flight attendant go into an airplane cockpit when one of the pilots comes out to use the lavatory; we learned what can happen when one pilot is left alone and we vowed not to let that happen again. There is no difference between this, which we accept and see as common sense, and limiting rounds in magazines and access to assault weapons…it gives us a chance to tackle the gunman. It gives us a chance. It gives our kids a chance. The recent Supreme Court rulings on guns are torturous to read, littered with examinations of word definitions, grammar, historical contextualism, and discussions of analogous verses exact comparison. And while in general these decisions are deemed to expand the scope of the Second Amendment to include self-defense, they all allow for reasonable restrictions on that right. The Heller decision ruled that the Second Amendment protects the right of a citizen to possess a handgun for self-defense in the home. Written by Justice Antonin Scalia, it acknowledged that there can be reasonable restrictions on that right, including which weapons a citizen can possess. It nodded to the notion that whether for self-defense or militia service, a private citizen would not be in possession of an instrument of war such as a machine gun, but rather ordinary weapons of self-defense. The Bruen decision went even further than Heller, saying the Second Amendment protects a citizen’s right to bear arms in public. Written by Justice Clarence Thomas it said that states can indeed require permitting, so long as it is on objective criteria such as background checks and not on arbitrary subjective grounds. And the Rahimi decision , penned by Chief Justice John Roberts with a margin of 8-1, ruled that gun rights can be taken away from those deemed to be a threat to another person. To those who would say we should ban guns completely, I would say that we need to remember that different people have a different life experience. I live in a community where if I call 911 in the middle of the night, a police cruiser will come around the corner on two wheels screaming to my immediate defense. But some live in rural areas without a dedicated police force, some live in areas where the existing police force is over-strained, and, if we are being honest, some live in areas that are too often neglected. And all those citizens have a right to defend themselves and their families. As an aside while on the subject of self-defense, we should acknowledge that there is a chasm between the laws of certain states as to what constitutes legal self-defense. And perhaps, just perhaps, the appropriate legal standard should be somewhere between the duty-to-retreat states and the stand-your-ground states. It should be common sense that I shouldn’t have to keep backing away from someone who is threatening me or my family with a knife before I end the threat. But it should also be common sense that I shouldn’t be able to take a life simply because someone shoves me to the ground. We tend to accept the advancement of technology in every aspect of our lives. Our phones open on facial recognition. Our cars become more and more self-driving. Locks on our homes have keypads, biometric scanners, and remote phone-unlocking. We also have smart gun technology, guns that can only be fired by the owner. They exist. But on arguments of reliability, we tend to dismiss them. But in that dismissal, let’s be clear in what we are saying. We are saying that our life as the gun owner is more important than a life that could be spared by keeping someone other than the owner (be it a curious child or a criminal) from discharging that weapon. And, of course, gun advocacy groups are vehemently opposed to smart guns believing them to be a precursor to further regulation. Another problem with legislation in our country is that sensible regulation always trails private sector innovation, whether it is addressing technology advances in fracking or AI or self-driving cars or guns. Ghost guns, be they assembled from a kit or built at home with a 3D printer, are a proper danger. And our regulation of them is trailing behind. Recently the Supreme Court upheld the ATF rule that ghost guns are subject to the same regulations as commercially available firearms. That is a start. But how will we address the next private sector innovation or screen for firearms at airports and public buildings as they become less detectible? Background checks, reasonable waiting periods, mandatory gun safety courses, magazine-size restrictions, bump stock bans, and holding gunowners responsible for the storage of and access to their weapons are not overly burdensome infringements, especially when measured against the potential safety gains for society. And if a citizen has threatened someone, or been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to be a danger to someone else, then his weapons must be taken away. That isn’t government overreach, that is an individual paying the price for violating his responsibility as a citizen in common society. Actions have consequences, criminals lose rights, and those in need should get the protection they require. That’s what civilized society does. Again, governance must address the likely before the far-fetched. And it is far more likely that someone who has threatened someone else, or is viewed to be a danger, will use that weapon illegally than it is that that person will require it for self-defense during the time period in which it has been taken away. Our default setting in those instances should be to take the weapon. And if a citizen raises that weapon against a law enforcement officer attempting to enforce that court order then we should treat that citizen to a cot and three square meals for a very, very long time. Time after time we discover after a mass shooting that there were red flags. Parents knew their teenager was having difficulties but still bought them a gun as a birthday gift. School administrators were aware of a student’s threatening posts but didn’t do enough. FBI agents visited a home but closed the file. One agency flagged the individual but the background check didn’t have access to that information. This is low hanging fruit - taking threats seriously, saying something when we see something, removing weapons when someone in the home is in crisis, law enforcement files being universally uploaded and available to other agencies, uniform duty-to-warn laws, and state reciprocity in red-flag situations. Come on. I said earlier that no single issue exists in a vacuum. We cannot talk about gun safety without talking about mental health, substance abuse, lack of financial opportunities, and proper funding for services that can help. Investment in these areas, making sure that people that work in our mental health centers and in our classrooms make more than the people cooking our french fries, might be a sensible start. Education is the silver bullet that cures all. Nothing reduces the chances that someone will turn to crime or be radicalized like giving him the education and tools necessary for financial opportunity. And to those who want less guns and more restrictions, I would say let’s be sure that at the same time we don’t continue to create an environment where more and more people feel less inclined to become law enforcement officers. It’s an impossibly hard job and they deserve our support, proper compensation, and funding. Because right now they are being asked to keep us safe, get themselves home safely to their families, and be on-the-fly mental health counselors all at once. Nothing I have laid out here helps get the guns out of the hands of criminals or those that would skirt gun laws. And a 65 mph sign on the highway does nothing to stop a person from driving 95. But would anyone argue that keeping law abiding citizens from driving 95 mph on the highway has probably saved lives? Criminals will always seek weapons to facilitate their criminal activity. And with the advent of ghost guns and 3D printing and whatever technology comes next, keeping weapons out of their hands is most likely impossible. But what is possible is decreasing crime. And that means increasing opportunity. That means investing in education. It means creating and protecting a robust economy. It means eliminating any legislation that resembles a regressive tax or helps leave people behind. Unfortunately, no regulations will keep human beings from killing or harming one another. No regulation will eliminate evil or sickness. But government isn’t about the elimination. Government is about improving the odds on a safe and prosperous outcome. It can’t eliminate greenhouse gasses but it can reduce them. It can’t guarantee successful outcomes for all citizens but it can create equal opportunity. And it can’t eliminate murder, but it can reduce the body count. It can’t predict the future but it does have an obligation to learn from the past and implement reasonable measures to keep us safe. That isn’t infringement; it’s good governance. And to my fellow gun owners, I would end by saying that true patriotism is putting one’s neighbor above oneself. How are we doing on that?

“We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight.” Those are the words of the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, in describing the Democrat's response to the plan of Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional district map in order to gain five more seats in the United States House of Representatives. Knife fights are messy, and this one is no different. 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. Texas state Democratic legislators hid out in other states to prevent the quorum necessary to take up the issue of redistricting (or any other issue). The Texas governor threatened to arrest them for it. A U.S. Senator suggested the FBI get involved. Governors of Democrat-led states, like Newsom of California and Pritzker of Illinois, threatened to redraw their maps in retaliation. Welcome to another edition of politicians gone wild, ratcheting up the temperature instead of cooling passions. All indications are that we are entering an arms race – a race, as others have noted, to allow politicians to pick their voters instead of allowing voters to pick their representatives. Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution, stained as it is with the three-fifths compromise and amended to remove that stain by the 14 th Amendment, makes clear that our representation will be adjusted once within every ten-year term by a count of the population. And because the number of members of the House of Representatives is capped at 435, a population shift between states can cause an individual state to gain or lose seats. That change, together with the need to be sure each seat represents roughly the same number of people (currently around 760,000), drives the need for redistricting. Our Constitution, together with several of its Amendments, also attempts to ensure that no American citizen is disenfranchised. As a result, the right to vote may not be infringed upon because of race, gender, age, or financial means. I am not naive to the fact that there are still places in this country where race is considered in redistricting. And where that still exists, the courts must stamp it out. I am also not naive to the fact that there is a difference between being able to cast a ballot and having that ballot actually count. Note I didn’t say counted; I said count, meaning that your vote is not so outnumbered by other votes that it simply does not matter. Some states are so red or so blue that a voter of the minority political party in that state may feel discouraged that their vote doesn’t count. There isn’t anything a districting map can, or should, do about that so long as the map mirrors that state’s overall voter makeup. There will always be people in a minority, whether that is a racial minority, ethnic minority, religious minority, or a minority viewpoint. And in a Democratic Republic, so long as that minority’s rights are protected, it is okay that the majority’s will be done. But what of a deliberate carving up of congressional districts in such a manner as to also serve to disenfranchise. What of a deliberate carving up that either seeks to create more districts that lean toward a certain group’s worldview than would otherwise exist in that state or seeks to consolidate all those with an alternate worldview into as few districts as possible within that state to limit the seats they would control? Are not those also forms of disenfranchisement? And is not that a level of disenfranchisement that Congress or the federal courts should be called upon to address? After all, Section 4 of the Constitution, though it gives to state legislators the power to prescribe how elections are handled, does allow Congress to make laws to alter those regulations if necessary. President Trump won Texas in 2024 with 56% of the popular vote. In that same election, Republicans won 25 of Texas’ 38 Congressional seats or 66% of them. The five additional seats the Republicans hope to gain by redistricting would give them 79% of the seats. That is a 23% improvement over the presidential result. Sounds a bit like disenfranchisement. Interestingly, this redistricting may cause Rep. Al Green to lose his seat . Green is the Democrat who was rightfully removed from President Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress earlier this year. Political retribution or coincidence? Many of our Founders were leery of political parties – or factions as they called them – and more still believed that regional interests were more important factors requiring representation than grand national ones. They felt what bound a community together was important, whether it was an agricultural community or a merchant community. Because of that, they felt representation should be closest to the people, not in some far-off land across the sea, and taxation without representation was abominable. We now, as they did then, send people to our nation’s capital to represent our interests. We don’t send them there to represent the interests of a party. We don’t send them there so a certain person can keep a gavel. Being an accountant and finance person by trade, I tend to want to see the numbers. So let’s look at numbers to see if we have an issue with gerrymandering in this country. To those who don’t like numbers and spreadsheets, I apologize for the next few paragraphs. In 2024, we had an election with both a presidential contest and contests for each seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. So, I built a spreadsheet showing all 50 states, comparing for each of them the percentage that either President Trump or Vice President Harris won with to the percentage of congressional seats that went to that same political party. In all but one state (Nevada), the party that won at the top of the ticket also won the most congressional seats. I then looked at the disparity between those two percentages, much like I did for Texas earlier in this piece. But because we are talking about gaining or losing actual seats in Congress, I then multiplied that disparity percentage by the number of congressional seats available in that state to see just how many seats are potentially being gained by the way district maps are drawn. The state with the largest disparity in seat count is California, the state whose governor threatened a tit for tat redistricting. Harris won with 59% of the popular vote, but 83% of the congressional races were won by Democrats. That disparity of 24% (83% less 59%) multiplied by available congressional seats in California (52) means that Democrats picked up 13 more seats than they would have had the district map matched the voters current bent. The next highest, with a total of 5, is the state where most of the Texas legislators are hiding out…Illinois. Tied for the next highest, with 4, is also a state where some of the Texas legislators went…New York. In fairness, New York is tied with Texas at that number. If Texas succeeds in its gerrymandering, and if the election results match the intent, their number will increase to 9, placing them in second place on the list. So as outrageous as Texas’ attempt to gerrymander is, it appears to me as if Governors Newsom and Pritzker may be living in glass houses. The most fascinating thing about my analysis was the total net effect of the disparity across all 50 states. If you add up California’s 13 in favor of Democrats, Texas’ 4 in favor of Republicans, and so on to net out all 50 states…it quite literally nets out to a pickup of 0.21 members for Democrats nationwide. In other words, there is literally no pickup for either party! And that makes sense because Congress as a whole already mirrors the national electoral makeup; Republicans currently have 51% of House seats and a recent national Gallup poll shows that Republicans have a 1% advantage over Democrats in party affiliation. So if this tit for tat between state legislatures is unlikely to change the balance of power in Washington, what is the real effect of going to war over redistricting? The real danger is that because the individual districts drawn will be so slanted toward one particular party, the candidates will become more extreme and they will work more for their party than for their constituents. They will become more extreme because they can more easily ignore voters of the other party without repercussion. The only thing that will remove them from office is offending the party itself. To stay in office, then, they will likely need to vote with party leadership 100% of the time. The needs of the individual district will grow less important. No one ever became a better leader or candidate by not having their views challenged. No one ever became a better leader by being surrounded by yes men. I would argue that the best candidate is one who has to campaign in a fairly evenly-divided district. Because you best be smart. You best be attentive to issues of that particular district. And you best remember that you can be gone tomorrow if you forget who you are serving. If you don’t believe me when I speak of the dangers of redistricting on who or what is served by your representatives, I remind you the Texas legislature is doing nothing right now because of an unnecessary, made-up issue of national partisanship when they should be serving their constituents who are still reeling from the recent flooding. Maybe we should gerrymander to 50/50 districts so that representatives have to serve all. Perhaps then we’ll get some stuff accomplished.

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 are often driven by limits of time and resources. There is only so much time in a day. There is only so much money in a bank account. Priorities can also be affected by our attention span or by the effort we choose to put in. They tend to change as we age. And every once in a while, our priorities need to be realigned either through self-reflection or, if we are lucky enough to have them in our lives, good people around us brave enough to point out when we’ve lost our way. I’ve been thinking about priorities lately as someone in my family is recovering from surgery. Thank God she is doing great, but our family’s priorities have changed while we help out during the recovery. Gone is the ability to prioritize luxury or leisure. Medicine schedules, laundry, meal preparation, and keeping enough ice on hand to soothe the swelling are the priorities of the day. The beautiful flowers on the front porch have wilted without her usual fastidious attention. The once immaculate house forgives piles of post-surgery instructions, surgical supplies, and empty food containers belonging to amazing neighbors. Last night, we watched what I haven’t in many years…the national evening news. And with all that is going on in our nation and in our world, the lead story was the death of Ozzy Osbourne. Now, God rest his soul and give comfort to his loved ones and all, but really? The lead story? Certainly the news anchor would brush by this quickly and move on to weightier coverage, right? Yep. The next story was surely more consequential. Coke, as President Donald Trump urged, is going to release its Mexican formula, made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup, in the United States. And then on to yet more coverage of the deader-than-Elvis Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing merry-go-round of which party not in the White House wants the party in the White House to release the files that either definitely exist and are sitting on someone’s desk or never existed in the first place. Eventually, the news turned to Gaza – two million internally displaced people and 500,000 facing starvation. Starvation. Which Coke do you think they would prefer? Media, the fourth estate, is a vital part of a free society. And I have great respect for those that do it well. I miss Tim Russert and Chris Wallace on Sunday mornings. And I miss Neil Cavuto on weekday afternoons. The danger of media done wrong isn’t in the way they cover a story. After all, most of us are smart enough to see a bent to the coverage and calibrate accordingly. The real danger lies in the selection of which stories to cover, or not to cover. Additional dangers of late are the consolidation of media outlets under a few large corporations, corporate censoring of their own reporters’ independent coverage, and media companies settling lawsuits or canceling programming to appease someone or smooth the wheels of regulatory approval for a pending merger. Media done well, media that contributes to protecting our freedoms, must be fearless, not fearful. Media isn’t to blame for all our problems. In fact, traditional media is now a very small piece of our media intake. Social media is where one third of Americans get their news, and where more than half get some of their news. Influencers have a growing and outsized impact on what we consider important and how we engage with it. The fact checking inherent in traditional media is increasingly replaced with none in social media and podcasts. This changing landscape of how we get our information is why politicians have completely left behind the art of spin and gone instead to straight out lying. They can, without repercussion (at least in their minds). Their base believes the lies. The lies get them votes. To hell with the repercussions. But the repercussions include a continued erosion of shared facts and civil discourse. The repercussions include citizens believing we are a failed nation when we are not. And with a nation, much like with a child, telling them they are no good enough times will convince them of it and ensure that outcome. We are being led masterfully toward failure. Magicians distract us with misdirection over there so that we miss the sleight-of-hand over here. Our current politicians and extreme partisans are no different. Shiny objects – the things they use to draw attention away from other issues – so easily distract because they are easy to digest and opine upon. They are often those that drive an emotional response, because emotion stirs people to action and, more importantly, raises money. But emotion ratchets up divisiveness as well. And we are paying the price. To be sure, we as a nation have countless important issues to tackle. We may disagree on how to prioritize those issues. But a broke nation can’t address anything on your list or on mine. A broke nation can’t secure borders, combat terrorism or crime, or make Social Security and Medicaid payments. It can’t invest in cancer research or in art. To do anything a government must do, or whatever you think it should do, it must first be solvent. So, when are we going to prioritize the fact that we are $37 trillion in debt instead of prioritizing either tax cuts or spending increases? We pay over $1 trillion a year in interest expense on our debt. Our debt load has grown faster than the demand for that debt, as evidenced by foreign investors now owning just 30% of our debt verses the 50% they owned 15 years ago. The long end of the yield curve – which predicts future interest rates – isn’t coming down with short term rates; it is actually rising. As a result, our interest payments are going to rise dramatically even if we don’t borrow more. But we will borrow more, in a big and beautiful way, won’t we? And if our borrowings continue to outpace the demand to buy that debt, we will need to increase interest rates further to entice people to buy it. That will have requisite ripple effects, like driving up the rates we pay for mortgages. Scarier still, what happens when we have an economic downturn, as surely someday we will? Consumer spending, which makes up 70% of our economy, will slow causing corporate earnings to fall. Corporate tax payments will decline. And even with that reduced government revenue, government spending will necessarily have to increase to stave off further recession or, worse yet, depression. The government will need to borrow more to do so. And no one will be around to buy our debt, so rates will have to increase further to entice them to buy it. Cue the snowball effect. We are broke, and the debt collection phone calls are about to begin. Perhaps we should focus because each of us owes $108,311. Alternatively, we could just let the calls go to voicemail.

An airport run and the Big, Beautiful Law have me thinking about perspective.   We human beings are a funny lot. We can lift each other up and let each other down. Our attitudes can be contagious for good or for bad. Our interactions can send each other off like dominoes to brighten up or rain upon the days of everyone else we meet.   Recently, I picked up my mother from the airport. As I waited for her outside the TSA screening area, I took great pleasure in the people watching – you know, those real life “Love Actually” moments. A young couple arrived with their two toddlers in tow. The young wife threw herself into the outstretched arms of her waiting parents. Her husband dutifully shook his father-in-law’s hand. And their little girl said to her grandfather, “Poppy we saw another plane fly right under us!” A few feet away, an older couple dropped off their middle-aged daughter. Goodbyes already exchanged, the daughter walked away. Her wheelchair-bound father yelled after her, “Take care of that little dog of yours.” Father-speak for I wish you weren’t leaving us. The mother turned the father’s wheelchair around, and they headed home to their routine and, perhaps, a home that may now feel too quiet.   When my mother finally arrived, we waited for her bags at the baggage carousel. I glanced across the carousel to see an elderly woman being wheeled up to the carousel by an airline employee. She handed the man a tip. He started to walk away, opening the folded money to count it. Just one dollar. He shook his head and walked back to the woman. He handed the dollar back to her, saying something to her as he did. The woman slid the dollar back into the pocket of her pink, knit cardigan. The man walked away. Still shaking his head, he slammed a luggage cart back into the rack. I watched the woman’s expression as whatever the man said sank in. She looked at first a little annoyed, but then a sadness seemed to take hold. Two people’s day ruined. Cue the domino effect.   The older I get the more I try to not judge. The man may have had his day ruined long before that small tip. He may be struggling with bills or a health issue. Either way perhaps he rudely said, “Apparently you need this more than I do.” Or perhaps for all the head shaking and cart slamming out of the woman’s view, he found it within himself to kindly tell a little fib like, “Thank you anyway ma’am, but I’m not supposed to accept tips.”   For the woman’s part, she could be affluent but stingy.  If she is stingy, it could be out of selfishness or because her life experiences have made her fearful of running out of money. Or just perhaps, a dollar is a lot of money to her, but she couldn’t fathom not being kind enough to offer something.   Everything is relative, and perspective is everything. Someone of Bill Gates’ wealth in that moment could have handed the man a $100 bill. But the question I have is, who would have done more for that man? Certainly the $100 would go further towards paying his bills than the $1. But who has sacrificed more, the giver of the $100 or the giver of the $1? Perspective. We have a choice both of how to perceive things and how to react to them. We have a choice to give people the benefit of the doubt. We have the choice to let our attitude stay positive so that we go through our day as a domino of kindness, not of bitterness. We have a choice to count our blessings rather than keep an account of who may be getting one over on us.   That perspective also applies to public policy. The just passed Big, Beautiful Bill hinges heavily on your perspective. We seem to live in a country where a large percentage perceive the affluent as selfish and illegal immigrants as hard-working saints. Another large percentage view the struggling as gaming the system and illegal immigrants as murderers. I know that is shameful oversimplification on my part, but I don’t think it’s that far off. We need to do a better job calling balls and strikes so we can solve our problems. We need to do so in a way that doesn’t portray all rich people as robber barons, Medicaid recipients as scammers, or illegal immigrants as murderers. While it may be the case in some instances, scheming hyperbole is the lowest caliber of argument. America is worthy of more elevated debate.    To be sure there are those able-bodied Americans who receive government assistance that are gaming the system, sapping resources intended for those in true need. The human resource professionals that work for me always seem amazed that employee beneficiaries know more than they on the availability of and technicalities surrounding assistance programs. To be sure our government programs have fraud that needs to be eradicated. And no doubt our programs can get the implementation horribly wrong, unintentionally incenting the wrong behavior. I think of an amazingly competent young, single mother that worked at one of my companies. She excelled at her job and we wanted to promote her. She refused the promotion because the new salary put her over the threshold to receive assistance but under the level by which she would be better off without that assistance. And so taxpayers continued to bear the burden, not we the employer. I also think of the Medicaid system that, by the way it reimburses the states, incents states to add people they wouldn’t normally add. These are all areas that need to be addressed.   To be sure there are millions of Americans that pay their fair share, or more, of taxes. They work hard for their money and tax bills hurt, particularly for those in the middle class or those in states and cities with excessive local taxes. Four in ten Americans pay no federal income tax and the top 1% of earners pay nearly half of our federal income taxes. Those two facts are staggering. But to believe those who pay no income tax pay no taxes is fallacy. Most of them also work hard for their money, paying other taxes along the way such as sales tax, property tax, Social Security, and Medicare.   A fair tax system, or a fair entitlement program if we are going to have it, is one designed using a veil of ignorance, not knowing if the designer will be a school teacher or a hedge fund billionaire. Pretend you don’t know where on the economic spectrum you will fall. Now design a system that you believe will be fair regardless of your status. That is what our leaders must do. That is what a civilized society must do.   I have been disappointed by some of the conversations I have heard as of late. An affluent person at a country club bemoaning that he has to support people gaming the system, as if somehow those folks are leading better or more rewarding lives than he. A person on assistance programs vilifying the affluent as if they don’t work hard for the blessed lifestyles they have. Perspective can teach us a lot. Who in the 1% would trade lives with any of the 4 in 10 that pay no taxes? No one. Who would choose to remain in a life of government assistance if their path of opportunity and life experience led them to believe they could own a yacht someday? No one. Those are the two extremes, of course. The conversation is more difficult for those in the economic middle, I grant. For them, we must ensure that how we conduct public policy always allows the middle class to reap the reward of their hard work.   I do think both sides of the political spectrum grumble too much and discount other people’s experience. Perhaps discount isn’t the correct word. Perhaps it is simply not putting themselves in the other person’s shoes long enough to allow the potential for understanding. And frankly we don’t know what we don’t know. For example, those of us that live in affluent suburbs with several hospitals and urgent care centers within a few miles drive don’t know that tens of thousands of commercial fishermen in another state have one hospital on their island, and that hospital is so reliant on Medicaid dollars that cuts to that program will close it. Perspective.   As for the political parties, their perspectives are different as well. The only fraud Republicans seem to care about is entitlement fraud, seemingly oblivious to the countless people that engage in tax fraud. Democrats, on the other hand, seize on tax avoidance wanting more IRS agents yet seem to slow-walk work on entitlement fraud. And both parties are wrong for it.   Perspective will determine the winners of the 2026 midterm elections, too. I am a small government conservative. I am for strong borders and national defense. I value personal responsibility and a strong work ethic. But being the party that acts in a way that allows the perception that it locked in tax breaks for the affluent while using cuts to healthcare and food assistance programs to fund more walls and cages may not be the best way to hold onto congressional majorities. I miss when our party spoke of compassionate conservatism. It’s not only the right approach; polling seems to show it is where the majority of Americans are right now. Republicans would be well advised that a softer touch on all the issues of the day might be the answer, just as Democrats might be well advised to stop being pulled so far left by their most progressive.   Inherently we know that people’s experiences color their perspective. Some of us are born empathetic or learn it from our parents or religious tradition. But I think most of us find our empathy for others by having been knocked down ourselves. Perhaps the worst leaders are the ones who have never been knocked down, ones who assume all struggles are the result of laziness or self-inflicted wounds. They are not. So let’s continue the work of perfecting this union and improving the administration of our bureaucracy. It needs it. But at the same time, let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt along the way. If for no other reason, let’s do it because, like that elderly woman in the pink sweater, we can’t fathom not being kind enough to offer something.

I started this piece a few days ago on what would have been my father’s 90 th birthday. He’s been gone too long, so long now that even though I remember his lessons, I struggle to remember the actual sound of his voice. Isn’t that awful? He was an amazing father who passed before having a chance to be an amazing grandfather. I won’t spend pages describing him. Instead, I’ll give you some quick homework. Read the prose poem called Desiderata by Max Ehrmann. Better yet, do as Dad did…hang a copy of it in your home or office and randomly quote lines from it to your loved ones. I can picture him walking down the hall toward his bedroom, trying not to spill coffee on the pale green carpet, quoting, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.”   But, back to work. We find ourselves in the awkward phases on so many things in our national life. We are stuck in the awkward transition years in the awkward middle between what was and what will be. Whether in technological advancement or public policy, things are just clunky.   Our new cars are awkward. They aren’t completely self-driving yet, but they have safety systems that give people just enough confidence to feel they can watch a podcast while driving. They have collision sensors that jerk them to a near stop when not necessary and active lane-keeping assist that is just clumsy enough to make them overreact at the wrong time. They have adaptive cruise control that causes traffic jams as every car now slows down to keep an unnecessary five car lengths between them and the car in front of them.   AI is awkward. It is increasingly being used in place of human effort, but it learns from everything out there, including inaccurate information. No doubt it will make us more productive in the end, but we are losing real artists and gaining ChatGPT Hemingways.   Even our television viewing is clunky. We are in the awkward phase between cable and streaming, still paying too much for cable but having to buy streaming subscriptions because Amazon and others have secured the rights to things we used to just flip between using our remotes. And God forbid I try to stream a network station from outside my home cable area!   But it isn’t just our tech that has us in an awkward phase. Our identity is awkward as well. We are losing the generations that knew hardship and gaining the ones that all got trophies. We are losing generations that were grateful just to have a job and gaining ones that feel entitled to stay in their pajamas and to “take a moment” when things get difficult. We are losing the ability to look one another in the eye and gaining the bravado to sling awfulness at one another over our devices. We are losing a sense of shared responsibility and placing too much emphasis on our individuality. We are demonizing capitalism and shooting flirting glances across the room at socialism. We can’t agree if we want the government to provide more or for our taxes to be lower, so we continue to add government services while melting our nation’s credit card. And instead of paying the bill when due, we wait until the eleventh hour and ask for an increase in our credit limit. We’ve gone from the greatest generation’s sacrifice to “Don’t worry, our kids and grandkids can pay for it.”   This week saw a return to 6-3 Supreme Court rulings. It saw a self-described democratic socialist win the mayoral primary in New York on a platform of rent freezes, city-owned grocery stores, $30 minimum wage, and free transportation. It saw continued argument over whether the bombings of Iranian nuclear sites were an unparalleled success or a bug bite that will heal in three days. It saw more haggling over the “Big, Beautiful Bill”, or is it the “most immoral piece of legislation in history”? Depends on who you ask.   This week saw a United States Senator who could have been the vote to defeat that bill she viewed as imperfect instead vote to pass it. Then she walked out of the chamber to tell reporters she hopes the House will not pass it as is. And so a bill supposedly so beautiful required the tie-breaking vote of the Vice President. This week saw the announced retirements of yet more moderates in the House and Senate, one of whom did so as to be able to vote his conscience for the remainder of his term. Well sir, what the hell were you down there for in the first place?   We have two parties, one that claims to represent the working class and the other that got many of their votes by becoming more populist and more pro-union by the day. The Republicans will paint Zohran Mamdani as the face of the Democratic Party and the Democrats will paint every Republican in the image and likeness of President Donald Trump. Both parties will be wrong about that but raise a ton of money on their wrongness. Worse yet the average American voter, fueled by the echo chamber he or she is in, will believe all Democrats are socialists or all Republicans are oligarchs. Fundraising will be good; the damage will be permanent. And all the while, that average American will pay more attention to Jeff Bezos’ wedding or Sean Combs’ trial than all of this.   The awkward phase is the place where the Constitution is seen as a nuisance standing in the way of progress. A 24/7 news cycle and seven-second TikTok clips don’t have the time for constitutional process or nuance or for the lessons of history. We don’t even have the time for consistency or fealty to belief. Last year Republicans were opposed to EV mandates and Democrats lined up for Teslas. Three months ago, Republicans were doing free ads for Tesla and Democrats were burning them. This week, Democrats are praising Elon Musk for his comments on the Big, Beautiful Bill and Republicans are threatening him with investigation. In the awkward phases, consistency and predictability are apparently character flaws! This week also brought us the Supreme Court decision on Trump v. Casa. Both political factions have used litigation to fight public policy with which they disagree. And both have forum-shopped for the court whose makeup was more likely to render a verdict in their favor. The hope was that the court chosen would then grant a nationwide injunction to block implementation of that policy. In Casa, a case framed around the issue of birthright citizenship, the 6-3 decision of the Court limited district courts’ abilities to make nationwide injunctions. Right or wrong, this ruling will not help get us out of the awkward phases. It may actually create more awkwardness as districts decide solely for their area what policies can and cannot be implemented. And so until an issue is taken up by the Supreme Court, we could have instances where a law or executive order proceeds in some districts and not in others. If forum-shopping and nationwide injunctions are wrong, so too is an Executive that charges full steam ahead knowing that the damage of an ill-conceived or illegal executive order will already be done by the time the courts can stop it. So too is Congress putting out huge pieces of legislation in the wee hours of the morning using Reconciliation instead of proper order. So too is a Supreme Court using the emergency shadow docket with increasing and alarming frequency. So too is tax payer money being wasted to litigate things that are so clearly unconstitutional. It is clear the 14 th Amendment, for right or for wrong, plainly protects birthright citizenship. Should birthright citizenship be the law of the land any longer? We should debate that. And if it no longer should, then a constitutional amendment should be proffered. Until then the Executive’s only recourse is to enforce the laws on the books.   “The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival.”  These are the words of one of our Supreme Court justices from her opinion in Casa. These words are wise; they are properly admonitory. But I wonder, because of the divisive times in which we find ourselves, because we are in the awkward phases, whether readers will first need to know if they are the words of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for the majority, or Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, before deciding whether or not to agree with them? They are Justice Sotomayor’s. But that shouldn’t matter.   Anyway, as we navigate the awkward phases, let’s remember the closing words of the Desiderata, “…whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”