Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
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.
Fox News contributor Paul Mauro discusses New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signing an executive order for a day of remembrance for the 9/11 attacks and handing the pen used to sign it to a former al Qaeda defense lawyer on ‘The Will Cain Show.’
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses the similarities between President Donald Trump and former President Ronald Reagan on ‘Life, Liberty & Levin.’
The Army has a remarkable ability to take a perfectly functional warrior, promote him a few times, hand him three computer monitors, and turn him into a PowerPoint-slinging indoor cat. Thus begins the evolution of the FOBbit: that mysterious creature who once went outside the wire but now survives on RFIs, synchronization meetings, Green Beans coffee, and Baskin-Robbins. The real horror comes when you finally look down at your ice cream, look at your clean uniform, hit “Send” on another 1600 suspense, and realize the terrible truth: Oh, $h!tt! I’m the FOBbit.
Modern man says he doesn’t believe in miracles while standing on a wet rock hurtling through space, made of stardust, possessing consciousness nobody can fully explain, pondering a universe nobody can explain why exists. God? Ridiculous. Ancient aliens? Now you have his attention. Maybe we didn’t stop believing—we just changed the vocabulary and became selectively skeptical about which mysteries are socially acceptable. Watch for AFNN next week as we ask the uncomfortable question: “I Don’t Believe in Miracles,” Says the Miracle.
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.
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.’
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?
What if the Beast of Revelation didn’t rise from the sea—but arrived in a server rack? This fictional, extra-biblical excursion imagines AI as the Beast, data centers as its temples, and humanity enthusiastically feeding it electricity, water, privacy, knowledge, and eventually perhaps our autonomy. The disturbing part isn’t that the machine might conquer us. It’s that we may build it ourselves, connect everything to it, put it in our pockets—and stand in line for the upgrade.
America once produced men who wouldn’t leave the house without a sword hanging from their belt. Washington carried one. Patton designed one. West Point cadets still have them. Yet today, strap on a saber for a trip to Home Depot and suddenly you’re the weird guy. Maybe it’s time to bring back the original open carry. Swords are arms. Shall not be infringed. Support the right. Respect the right. Carry a sword.
Christians are frequently reminded that Romans 13 tells us to obey governing authorities. Fair enough. But what happens when government reverses its God-given assignment—punishing good, protecting evil, or commanding Christians to violate their conscience? Scripture actually answers that question, and the answer is considerably less comfortable than “just obey.”
Raymond Ibrahim’s *Sword and Scimitar* commits a dangerous act in modern history: it starts at the beginning. Long before the First Crusade of 1095, Christian lands across the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, and Anatolia had already faced centuries of Islamic conquest and warfare. Through eight pivotal battles spanning more than a thousand years, Ibrahim restores the part of the timeline that somehow keeps falling behind history’s couch cushions. His argument is uncomfortable, provocative, and difficult to dismiss: the Crusades weren’t Chapter One of the conflict—they arrived hundreds of pages into the story. You can debate Ibrahim’s conclusions, but you can’t understand 1095 while pretending 636 never happened.
Romans 13 and Revelation 13 aren’t enemies. They’re bookends. One describes government as God intended it to be: rewarding good and restraining evil. The other warns what happens when government abandons that mission and begins demanding loyalty that belongs to God alone. History is filled with examples of Romans 13 being used to justify kings, slavery, and authoritarian regimes, while Scripture repeatedly reminds believers that their highest allegiance is not to a political party, a flag, or a nation. Christians are called to be good citizens, but faithful disciples. God first. Everything else second.
What happens when a nation begins to lose faith in its own elections, institutions, and leaders? History suggests that political polarization can quickly become tribalism, and tribalism can consume a republic from within. But Christians have walked this road before. The Bible never calls believers to place their ultimate hope in governments, political parties, or personalities. Instead, it teaches an ordered loyalty: love your country, serve your neighbors, pray for your leaders—but worship God alone. When the world grows chaotic, the Church should become the calmest place in it, remembering that while kingdoms rise and fall, the Kingdom of God has never required a recount.
In 1763, Fort Michilimackinac fell without an artillery barrage, a breached wall, or a prolonged siege. The Ojibwe used something far more effective: deception, surprise, a lacrosse game—and a British commander who ignored warnings that an attack was coming. What followed was one of the most audacious actions in Michigan history, preserved for us through the eyewitness account of a fur trader who somehow survived it.
Most Americans learned about the Atlantic slave trade—and rightly so—but human slavery has a much longer, darker, and considerably less convenient history. Across centuries, African captives were transported through vast Middle Eastern and Islamic slave networks, and most males were even castrated and sold as eunuchs. It’s a chapter that complicates the tidy heroes-and-villains version of history. Slavery wasn’t the invention of one race, religion, or civilization. It was a human disease—and if we’re going to learn from history, we should have the courage to teach the whole ugly story.
I don’t know many journalists who have been so effective at uncovering government fraud that lawmakers in one state are going to extraordinary lengths to pass a new law that would essentially criminalize investigative journalism and make it illegal to investigate fraud there. Then there’s Nick Shirley
If I were Dr. Evil, I wouldn’t build a death ray—I’d build three crises. Light up the Middle East, keep NATO and Russia occupied in Europe, then watch China eye Taiwan while America tries to put out three fires with one garden hose. The nightmare isn’t one enemy defeating America; it’s several adversaries realizing they don’t have to take turns.
History’s most dangerous political bait-and-switch begins when groups with completely incompatible end goals unite around a common enemy. Iran’s Marxists thought they were using the Islamists; the Islamists had other plans. Today, America’s socialists, progressives, and Islamist activists sometimes find themselves marching beneath the same anti-capitalist and anti-Western banners. Iran offers an uncomfortable warning: before helping tear down the old order, you’d better ask what your revolutionary partners intend to build in its place—and whether they’ll still need you when they’re finished.