Hard Times, Soft People, and the Lie We Tell Ourselves

The now-famous line popularized by G. Michael Hopf—“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times”—isn’t just internet wisdom wrapped in a motivational poster. It’s a stripped-down field manual for understanding why civilizations rise, peak, wobble, and then fall flat on their face.

Why We Call It Political Science

Let us dive a bit deeper into Aristotle’s view of politics and how it differed from his teacher Plato.  Previously we saw how Aristotle disagreed with his teacher Plato that only a philosopher king could properly rule.  Aristotle believed that humans were inherently flawed and that reality required just laws to be supreme in order to …

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A Letter of Concern and Foreboding to the Society of Professional Journalists

Several months ago, I sent a note to Caroline Hendrie, Executive Director of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), the 117-year-old organization that focuses on journalism ethics, defending the First Amendment, and providing professional development for both legacy and independent journalists. I have been a member of SPJ for more than 50 years, since I …

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Reefer Madness Wasn’t a Movie—It Was a 100-Year Information Operation

There’s a comfortable lie Americans like to tell themselves: that we are too smart, too informed, too free to be manipulated at scale. That propaganda is something that happens in other countries, to other people, under other flags. Then you dig up a grainy black-and-white relic like Reefer Madness and realize—no, we ran one of the most effective information operations in modern history… on ourselves.

Welcome to the War You Didn’t Notice: Living in Fifth-Generation Conflict Since 2019

There was no declaration. No troop movement you could point to on a map. No shock-and-awe campaign lighting up the night sky. And yet somewhere around 2019, the world shifted—and it hasn’t felt normal since. That’s because the battlefield changed. We are now living inside what military thinkers call Fifth-generation warfare. And unlike every war that came before it, this one isn’t being fought over land. It’s being fought over you.

We cannot go back in time to take advantage of opportunities we have already passed up

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain fisked an article from The New York Times, one which tried to make the case that American women postponing childbirth might still have children later in life. “Fertility delayed is fertility denied” is one of the great maxims of demographics. As a matter of statistical average, postponing parenthood means …

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The Room Full of Adolescence: A Few Bars of Human Connection

I was in a hotel with a few hundred Mennonites.

I walked into the hotel at noon. At first, I was confused inasmuch as the lobby was full of cape dresses, plain suits, and broad-brimmed hats. Some of the older men had beards, some were clean-shaven. The women wore head coverings.

I thought maybe I’d taken a wrong turn on the interstate.

What Is Truth?

Not every question is asked in order to get an answer.  In the scene I described in my last article, the Roman ruler asks this question not in order to better understand the Truth, but rather to mock the very idea of Truth.  Think of it along the lines of your significant other asking, “What …

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Men Striving for Godliness: Architects of Order or Architects of Chaos?

In the quest to emulate godly attributes, men often find themselves at a crossroads: to transform chaos into order or to unleash chaos upon order. This dichotomy, inspired by the insights of scholar Michael Heiser but infused with my own perspective, delves into the essence of human nature and the paths we choose.

Yet another public school teacher accused of trying to become sexually involved with a student

There was no one more disappointed than I was when The Philadelphia Inquirer and then-Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams started going after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for covering up sexual abuses by Catholic priests, or the horrible statistics when the John Jay Report, The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests …

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Night Witches and the Art of Terror: How Improvised Bombers Haunted the Wehrmacht After Dark

In 1941, the Soviet Union was being dismantled at industrial speed. Entire armies vanished. Cities fell. Aircraft factories were evacuated east while German armor drove forward. There was no time for elegance. The Red Army needed pilots, aircraft, and pressure on the enemy—immediately. So they did something profoundly unromantic and brutally practical: they took civilians who could fly and turned them into combat airmen.