Entries by Thomas C. Patterson

Beware Those Who Intentionally Use Words To Lie

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The word “liberal” was once considered a compliment. It meant fair, principled, and thoughtful. The Age of Enlightenment was birthed by “classical liberals” with their then-fantastical notions about government by consent of the governed, legal equality of all, and individually owned rights. Later as ideologies like collectivism and class oppression gained favor among the intelligentsia, […]

America’s Future Clouded By Illegal Immigration, Uncontrolled Debt

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Americans are feeling growing unease about the accumulating dysfunctions afflicting us which seem to elude governmental solutions. The combination of weak leadership and irresolute voters has led to diminished standing internationally, inflation, rising crime rates, energy shortages, the hollowing out of once-great cities, and persistent racial disparities. Yet the greatest threats of all to our […]

Biden Inexplicably Helps Iran To Achieve Nuclear Arms

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Iranian mullahs must be thrilled at the progress they are making in obtaining nuclear capability. It represents the realization of their millennia-old ambition to turn the world into an Islamic caliphate. The world should be thoroughly alarmed. The West seemingly insists on not paying much attention but observant Muslims, which is most of them, […]

America’s Campaigns Are Costing More And Producing Worse Results Than Ever

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last fall a television news host advised viewers to “fasten their seat belts“ because they were now in the exciting final countdown to the presidential election – which was at that point fifteen months in the future! Strange as it once would have seemed, the comment actually made some sense because the news cycle had […]

The High Cost Of Unlimited Illegal Immigration

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Governor Katie Hobbs has had a change of heart over the immigration crisis on Arizona’s southern border. She recently reversed an earlier decision against deploying the National Guard, now sending over 200 Tucson sector troops and committing up to $5 million in Arizona taxpayer money to send troops to the Lukeville Port of Entry. Hobbs […]

To Succeed In War We Must Understand The Enemy

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Chinese general Sun Tzo 2500 years ago wrote “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of 100 battles.“ That’s good advice. Unfortunately, America’s media and military leadership feign ignorance of their current enemies. They never use the words “Muslim” or “Islamist” to identify our foes, terms which […]

Americans Should Take Islamism Very Seriously

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

In a speech following 9/11, President Bush assured us that in spite of this terrorist attack, all humans deep in their hearts long for freedom and brotherhood. It’s a comforting sentiment, but it’s not true. Radical Islamists openly proclaim their disdain for freedom as another decadent Western value. Iranian street crowds commonly chant “Death to […]

Zero Net by 2050 Has Zero Chance Of Succeeding

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Arizona State University President Michael Crow believes we are in such danger that we should amend the US Constitution to empower the government to deal more expansively with climate change. Dr. Crow’s view that constitutional protections of our liberties should be eliminated when they become inconvenient wouldn’t square with the founders’, but his estimate of […]

Government Unions Call The Shots

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

American schoolchildren are taught that they are being raised in a democracy, where elected officials pass the laws, bureaucrats administer the laws, and government workers dutifully carry them out. That’s a crock. Americans at this time are mostly governed under rules generated by an unelected bureaucracy, the so-called “dark state”. Worse, personnel and financial matters […]

The Unconscionable Surge At The Border Must End

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The immigration crisis is crushing New York City. According to ABC7 news, last week alone 2900 new “asylum seekers” entered one of the city’s 200 new emergency shelters. Mayor Eric Adams says the city spends $383 per day per family on food, shelter and other expenses, which are deemed the migrants’ right to receive for […]

Race Based Reparations Don’t Make Sense

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

When the notion of race-based reparations was first advanced, I didn’t take it seriously. Surely, something so costly and unhelpful would never gain traction with the American public, so why worry about it? But on further reflection, it seems several ideas have graduated from the unthinkable to reality over the last few years in today’s […]

Is the Fair Tax in Our Future?“

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Critics of Donald Trump once counted tax evasion among his many faults. But it turned out that he wasn’t breaking any tax laws. He was simply utilizing the complex web of exemptions, deductions and other rules available to reduce his tax bill to near zero. It would be hard to imagine a worse tax system […]

Let’s Get Serious About Eliminating The Department Of Education

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

“The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2023”.  If you’ve read this far, you have completed HR899, introduced by Rep.Thomas Massie. Abolishing the DOE isn’t a new idea. The department was created in 1979 by the Carter administration, fulfilling a campaign promise to the NEA, the teachers union, which in turn gave him […]

EVs Are Not The Solution

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Electric vehicles have become the centerpiece of the plan to ward off climate change by drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Biden administration seems to feel that if we can just get people to plug in their cars to a non-emitting electrical socket instead of filling up with carboniferous fossil fuels – voila! By 2050 […]

Free Things From The Government Are Never Free

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

American school children are instructed that the late 19th century, the Gilded Age, was dominated by “robber barons“ who made great fortunes creating monopolies that exploited the poor and middle classes. Howard Zinn‘s best-selling textbook, which introduced generations of Americans to their own history, informed them that “ordinary people who lived through the Gilded Age… […]

Politized Science Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Lancet was once a leading British medical journal. It was sober and medically exacting. It was so respected that it was often cited to settle controversial issues in the field of medicine. Today, it is a shell of its former self, shot through with leftist political ideology. A recent editorial called out the UK […]

Transitioning Children Is A Dangerous Fad

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: Dr. Patterson’s essay below is an excellent analysis of the crisis of the cultural and medical profession pathology erupting in our nation and across western societies in recent years. Accompanying this essay today is the brilliant Matt Walsh video and documentary, What is a Women, in our Best of Twitter. Although a long […]

We Deserve A Better Voting System

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Elections aren’t being stolen. But they are carried out under rules devised by one side for their benefit. The Left loves our election system and why wouldn’t they? It has been a boon for them. They can win elections even when all seems lost.  They have learned to exploit, through both legal and extra-legal means, […]

Climate Danger

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Americans are becoming neurotic worriers.  Covid brought out the worst in us, as politicized medical leaders rushed us into a panic response that did far more harm than the disease itself without fundamentally affecting the net outcome of the pandemic. But Covid is hardly the only example of Americans overestimating the dangers in their lives. […]

Armed Teachers

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Americans were outraged to learn of the Nashville school shooting, where a transgender female shot and killed three children and three adults at a Christian school. As always, a fierce political debate broke out after the murders. Gun control advocates, mostly Democrats, again made impassioned and often vitriolic pleas for more stringent gun laws. It […]

What Were We Thinking to Allow Government Unions to Organize?

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

It’s not exactly breaking news that America’s public schools are failing academically. There have been encouraging stories of charter schools and other schools of choice successfully raising achievement levels for underprivileged students previously deemed uneducable. But our schools are still producing a generation of students lacking basic computational or literacy skills, much less an understanding […]

DEI Is An Attack on Free Speech

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Jonathan Haidt is a professor at NYU, an acknowledged leader in the field of social psychology, and a champion of free speech. He recently faced a requirement that all scholars wishing to present research to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology were to submit a statement explaining “whether and how this submission advanced the […]

Republicans Have a Chance For a Great Start-If They Don’t Blow It

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Decades of institutional self-neglect have left Congress dysfunctional and unfit to fulfill its constitutional role as the most consequential branch of government. Government of the people has morphed into government by bureaucrats, by the executive, and by the courts. The decision-making mechanisms of the People’s House are broken. If you were fortunate enough to be […]

Climate Reparations? Nah!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last month UN members met once again to live the good life for a few days and push for the unlikely elimination of climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convened COP27 in the impressive Egyptian coastal city of Shark El-Sheik. 100 heads of state and 25,000 attendees (carbon footprint alert!) met […]

ESG Is A Non-Starter That We Are Being Pushed Into

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The world of finance is turning bullish on ESG, an investment strategy directing funds to corporations with woke environmental, social, and governance policies. Trillions of dollars have already flowed into ESG funds, projected to hit $50 trillion in two years. ESG boosters claim the funds enable investors to do well by doing good. You can […]

America Is Facing a Cycle of Doom But Nobody Seems To Care

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: We think the author is spot on – that our political elites, the media, and the public at large are currently living a delusional life. They simply do not recognize the serious nature of our financial situation. The markets however are starting to see the problem. Not only have we had the worst […]

Dems Are Successfully Executing a Long-Range Strategy on the Border

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Pundits commonly depict the ongoing calamity at our border as the result of Biden administration incompetence. As with inflation, urban crime, and the deficit, their near-complete lack of insight and management skills is leading us over a cliff. But this analysis itself is a major error. They know exactly what they are doing, and they […]

Executing a Long Term Plan While Playing Dumb

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Pundits commonly depict the ongoing calamity at our border as the result of the Biden administration’s incompetence. As with inflation, urban crime, and the deficit, their near-complete lack of insight and management skills is leading us over a cliff. But this analysis itself is a major error. They know exactly what they are doing and […]

Threats To The Court Are The Real Threat To Democracy

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with the concurrence of much of the Left, believes our democracy is once again under attack, this time from our own “rogue“ Supreme Court. MSNBC agreed that “the Supreme Court has gone rogue“. The Congressional Progressive Caucus insists “we must hold these rogue justices to account“. It goes beyond coordinated hysterical rhetoric. […]

Time to Deal With Politicians Who Keep Bringing Us Massive Needless Spending Bills.

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: Thomas Patterson’s excellent review of the deceptive and punishing Inflation Reduction Act ends with a statement about Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. He is accurately labeled as the 51st vote for the Inflation Reduction Act causing incalculable damage to Americans’ economic well-being and liberty and should be a major focus of the November 8th election. […]

Our Elitist Environmental Experts Are Driving Us Over The Cliff

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Leftist thought leaders insist that we are facing an environmental holocaust unless we immediately drastically reduce carbon emissions. Yet it’s curious. The governing and influence elites demand massive societal sacrifice, while they are apparently not concerned enough to alter their own extravagant lifestyles. They own multiple sumptuous homes, cars, and yachts. They fly individual private jets […]

Bulk-mail Voting Is The Main Obstacle to Election Integrity

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The debate over election fraud versus voter suppression is high-stakes and high-intensity. Trump loyalists insist the election was stolen, mechanically rigged, and rife with fraudulent actors. Democrats continue to insist that fraud never happens, an argument easily swatted away by the existence of thousands of documented incidents. But Democrats have a point in that the […]

Our Cowardly Handling of Ukraine Could Come Back To Bite US

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

If America has learned anything from foreign entanglements over the past century, surely it is this: enemy conflicts must be engaged only if our vital interests are at stake. A war worth fighting must have clear objectives and a path to victory. Clearly, in WWII, all options save winning were unthinkable. We did win and […]

Strong Families Are Worth Defending

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a landmark report in which he contended that the rising number of black families headed by unmarried mothers would reduce the prospects for Blacks to rise out of poverty, in spite of that era’s landmark civil rights legislation. Moynihan was furiously denounced for his efforts. But he was proven […]

A Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment May Be Our Only Hope.

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Over the last few decades, no force on earth has been able to halt the explosive growth of US federal debt. At the conclusion of WWII, fiscal conservatives were aghast that our national debt had ballooned to $259 billion. By the end of the Vietnam war it stood at $533 billion and, despite urgent warnings, […]

The Sham of White Supremacy

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

According to President Biden, “terrorism from White supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today”, as he put it in an address to Congress. Attorney General Merrick Garland agreed, noting that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists“ are the most dangerous element of domestic violence. Garland declared that we must “bring federal resources […]

Our Schools Aren’t Competitive But Money Is Not The Problem.

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

America’s schools, including Arizona’s, are stuck in mediocrity. Our academic achievement indicators trail 20 of our OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] peers in every subject. It’s not getting better, either. It matters more than national pride. The US has fallen to tenth in overall economic competitiveness, our lowest rank ever. Stanford’s Eric Hanushek […]

The Border Invasion is an Existential Crisis for America

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The invasion crisis on our southern border is baffling. How could this outrage be happening? The White House wants you to believe that they’re powerless to stop it. They’re willing to appear negligent and/or stupid to keep the wheels turning. But there’s only one possible explanation that holds water: it’s a plan. And it’s working, […]

The Urge To Spend

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Loma Verde, California is building a $24 million recreation center with a pool . Forest Lakes , Minnesota is getting a $1.5 million golf clubhouse, while San Antonio is purchasing a $15 million theme park. These may seem frivolous when rampant inflation is threatening, but never mind, they’re all “free“, a synonym for “paid for […]

The BLM Scam

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

I don’t know about you, but the first time I heard the slogan “Black Lives Matter“ I thought it was, well…curious. Who said otherwise these days? Wasn’t that obvious? I soon discovered the depths of my naïveté. The tip-off was realizing that “All Lives Matter“ was not a more inclusive iteration of the same concept, […]

Biden’s Weakness With Iran Is Putting Us in a Dangerous Situation

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Biden’s bungling of the Iranian nuclear negotiations may well go down as the most consequential error in the history of statecraft. He has granted concession after concession to coax Iran into doing what they want to anyway, which is to revive the nuclear treaty (NCPOA) under which they would eventually acquire full nuclear capability. The […]

Black Lives Matters Failure is a Blessing In Disguise

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

I don’t know about you, but the first time I heard the slogan “Black Lives Matter“ I thought it was, well…curious. Who said otherwise these days? Wasn’t that obvious? I soon discovered the depths of my naïveté. The tip-off was realizing that “All Lives Matter“ was not a more inclusive iteration of the same concept, […]

Biden Is Helping the Mullahs

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

When Joe Biden assumed the presidency one year ago, America had finally achieved energy independence.  Iran was in chaos, fearing that its nuclear ambitions had been dashed. A year later, it’s America’s interests that have been dashed. Biden campaigned on a pledge to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord and work on its weaknesses later. He […]

Just What We Need-The Anti-Work Movement

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

On Fox News recently, the leader of an “anti-work subreddit“ with over 100,000 followers, caused a stir by claiming that “laziness” was a virtuous lifestyle choice, which should be freely available. She depicted work as a form of oppression that the woke are justified in resisting in principle. The guest was a part-time dog walker […]

Voting Rights

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: Although the HR-1, the Right to Vote Act, did not progress through the Senate last week with Senators Sinema (AZ) and Manchin (WVa) courageously refusing to vote for the elimination of the chamber’s filibuster rule, the Democrats will continue to dishonestly preach about voter suppression, the voter ID requirement (claiming it is a […]

Free Speech And The Great Barrington Declaration

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The controversy over Covid management is not a medical disagreement but a political fight. It’s also a free speech issue, the question of whether those who disagree with the political/medical status quo should be silenced. Although we have learned more over time about the origins and development of Covid, there is no question it is […]

Ending The Marathon Campaign

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower announced he was a Republican 10 months before the general election. In June, he resigned from his military office to devote full time to his presidential campaign. Adlai Stevenson was already a Democrat by 1952 but resisted multiple efforts by Democrat partisans to nominate him as their candidate. After his stirring […]

Time to Move On School Choice

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Teachers’ unions appear to have run into a buzz saw. On October 25, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten tweeted enthusiastic support for a Washington Post article titled “Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t.“ By November 6, Her message had drastically changed. “Parents have to […]

Medicare Ads And Other Inane Policies

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

We’ve all seen them, the Medicare TV ads exhorting seniors to apply for enhanced benefits. The government appears to be coaxing often reluctant retirees into greater dependence. But this is a colossally bad idea, even for those of us who support helping citizens in their sunset years. It stimulates greed (it’s freeeee!) and entitlement in […]

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