Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
Quick note before I get into it, because today’s the day this actually matters. It’s Patriot Day. Twenty-five years since 2,977 people went to work, boarded a flight, or showed up for a shift, and didn’t come home, and since 343 FDNY firefighters ran up stairwells everyone else was running down. Everything below this gets …
There is a maddening repetition in civilization. The national rise-and-fall pattern is the common thread. Mankind never learns; never studies; never accepts reality. Mankind always embraces a delusional blindness. This blind eye excuses, embraces, and enjoys a fancied invincible hubris. The cyclical repetition is amazing. A nation’s “rise and fall” is not Rome’s exclusivity.
How does this happen? Why are citizens complacent regarding their nation’s existence?
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., discusses the influence of democratic socialists and pushes back on policy proposals from what he calls ‘radical far-left’ candidates while speaking at the GOP midterm convention.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, Americans still have questions—and apparently asking them remains more dangerous to polite society than leaving them unanswered. We know intelligence agencies had information about future hijackers, critical information wasn’t effectively shared, early accounts of the military response proved inaccurate, Saudi-connected individuals assisted two hijackers, and Building 7 became the first known tall building to completely collapse primarily from uncontrolled ordinary-content fires. None of that proves an inside job. It proves something much simpler: “trust us” isn’t an acceptable substitute for history. Open the remaining files, follow the evidence wherever it leads, destroy the stupid conspiracy theories with facts—and answer the legitimate questions. After 25 years, Americans have earned something better than a press release.
There are many fundamental flaws in our current system.
One huge flaw? The data government provides.
It is always under the control of an elected administration – that would suffer un-election should too much of that data be negative.
So it is inherently in every administration’s interest? To fudge, obfuscate and reconfigure the data.
The biblical phrase “handwriting on the wall” referenced G-d warning the King of Babylon his days were numbered (Daniel Ch. 5). It was a clear sign of impending doom — collapse, or downfall that is obvious to everyone except the person it concerns.
I learned something while sitting on a Michigan jury that sent me down one hell of a rabbit hole: Michigan can separately criminalize using a computer to commit a crime. In 2026, when your phone, truck, watch, bank, doorbell and possibly your toaster are computers, that starts sounding suspiciously like an enhancement for breathing oxygen while committing a crime.
I’m not expecting the GOP leadership to be perfect. But I don’t want them trying to pick state nominees and then supporting Democrats.
Dad thought “permanent trailer plate” meant permanent. Government apparently meant, “until you buy another trailer, peasant.” For generations, recycling an old trailer plate was the kind of technically-wrong rural economics nobody noticed unless a cop had an actual reason to look. Today, cameras, databases, and algorithms potentially can notice—and remember—things no human officer ever would have bothered with.
That raises a bigger question than Dad’s Great Trailer Plate Crime Spree: **When technology makes it possible for government to notice nearly everything, should it?**
A fortnight ago I highlighted an inter-businesses solution that was achieved nigh entirely without DC involvement.
The airline and cell phone industries
Paying an unfair tax is one thing. Wearing clothes you wouldn’t otherwise wear is another. But what happens when government finally asks the question Christians have faced since Rome: Will you obey us when obeying us means disobeying Christ? That’s where Romans 13 meets Acts 5:29—and Christianity stops being a bumper sticker.
Before America entered World War II, Uncle Sam looked at the Singer Sewing Machine Company and essentially asked, “Nice factory. Can you make a .45?” The result was just 500 Singer M1911A1 pistols—one of today’s great military-firearms collectibles. Singer wasn’t forced into gunmaking by the Defense Production Act; that law wouldn’t exist until 1950. Instead, the Army paid civilian companies to learn military production before the shooting started. It was industrial mobilization with refreshingly little mystery: you cannot surge a factory you don’t have.
Red China is hurting for certain. The world’s largest oil importer lost oil from Iran and Venezuela, which supplied 15% of the oil it bought last year.
Under Trump, the USA is a net exporter of oil. That should be the case for decades to come because thanks to President Trump and Chief Warrant Officer Five Eric A. Slover, America now controls 65 billion barrels of oil in Venezuela. Slover is the helicopter pilot who took a licking of bullets but kept on ticking as the military extracted Maduro on January 3, earning a Medal of Honor.
Reagan National was a perfectly reasonable airport when it opened in 1941. Eighty-five years later, we’ve packed commercial jets, military helicopters, presidential transportation, restricted airspace and national-security missions into the same tiny patch of sky—and the warning signs are getting difficult to ignore. After 67 deaths, an emergency airspace redesign, repeated communications failures and a Marine One separation incident, perhaps the problem isn’t the latest procedure or antenna. Perhaps Washington’s convenience has simply outlived the acceptable risk.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson reflects on how President Donald Trump was able to return to the political spotlight on ‘Life, Liberty & Levin.’
When President Reagan was negotiating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union, he repeatedly said his rule was “Trust but verify.” Those simple three words summarize a truism about human nature. Trust is only possible in an environment of transparency and accountability. It cannot exist when the party demanding trust, is also hiding the truth.
So, what does the Western Civilization course I took at the University of Kansas decades ago have to do with why so many young Americans are drawn to communism?
The Pentagon doesn’t fight just one kind of war. Some are fought with tanks and rifles; others with spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and somebody quietly asking, “Where haven’t they spent their money yet?” Born from Robert McNamara’s 1960s-era attempt to bring rational analysis to defense spending, the POM process evolved into an institutionalized food fight where the Active Army, National Guard, and Army Reserve defend their rice bowls while hunting for everyone else’s leftovers. I happened to be pretty good at looking under the fiscal seat cushions—and somewhere, I suspect, a retired National Guard programmer still mutters my name. Welcome to the Pentagon Wars.
Panelists Miranda Devine and Kellyanne Conway dissect the economy under President Donald Trump, U.S. sanctions on Iran and more on ‘Kudlow.’
I grew up during the Cold War. We were told, taught, cajoled, and force-fed that communism was evil. And it was and remains. Our politicians said so, our teachers taught us, the Church preached it, and the media warned us. History has shown it to be true. It was common knowledge.