“As the USS Gerald R. Ford — the largest aircraft carrier afloat — casts its shadow along the Venezuelan coast, the United States must confront an uncomfortable question: What national interest is being protected by threatening a country that poses no military, territorial, or existential danger to the American republic? The answer, made clear by an array of respected American scholars, former officials, and ex-military insiders, has nothing to do with security. Instead, it arises from a familiar mixture of ideology, geopolitical control, and the old reflex of imperial overreach. This is not defense. This is theater — one part provocation, one part political opportunism, and no part necessity. Among the clearest voices cutting through the rhetoric is professor John Mearsheimer, perhaps the most prominent American realist in international relations. He does not mince words: Venezuela is not a threat to the United States.” (12/13/25)
“How do you solve a problem like Nick Fuentes, the racist dateless wonder whose stratospheric online rise has tickled the Zoomer right, horrified the Boomer sensibles and – until now – left the rest of our news feeds blissfully unmolested? Once a fringe figure on the American right, this neo-fascist gnome has now become an unignorable topic in The Discourse. … Perhaps the barmiest claim made about Fuentes is that he is the next stage of the populist revolt – a take that serves to both flatter his ego and vindicate the fever dreams of the anti-populist set. … Nick Fuentes is only a clownish mirror image of everything that Americans have been rebelling against.” (12/23/25)
“Like the country he ‘leads,’ Donald J. Trump lives in a state of perpetual denial. Trump and his enablers like to present him as a hands-on president, a man at the top of his game, whether it’s on the golf course, in the Oval Office, or at televised cabinet briefings where sycophants pucker up and lather him with praise. … Yet when asked about the strike on boats in the Caribbean, Trump, the master of denial, ‘knows nothing.’ The pardon of former Honduran president and convicted cocaine kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández? ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.'” (12/12/25)
“Truth is truth is truth. Truth never changes. Lies can, and do, change all the time, but the truth will never change. I ate a hot dog for supper last night. That is the truth. It will never change. It was true last night, it is true today, it will be true tomorrow, it will be true 2,000 years from now. That is why Solomon wrote, ‘buy the truth and sell it not’ (Proverbs 23:23). Only liars hate the truth. Edmund Burke wrote, over 200 years ago, some great moral and political truths that are just as true today as they were when Burke wrote them. Moral truth, just like historical truth, never changes because it is rooted in the very nature of an eternal, unchanging God. This is why we should study history: to learn the truths that never change and base our lives upon them. But the Left [sic] doesn’t want to do that because it’s all a power game to them.” (12/13/25)
“Israel has penned us all into a ‘debate,’ one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire – not the genocide it is waging by other means.” (12/12/25)
“Break out the popcorn and a jumbo box of Raisinets, because just when we thought the Warner Bros. Discovery drama was over, it turned out we had barely gotten started. The suspense over the company’s pending sale is mounting, and new questions are developing faster than writers can resolve old ones. Which suitor will shareholders choose? Will regulators block the deal? Will any of these characters find happily ever after? … Eventually writers might resolve the biggest mystery: Why does anyone want to buy this company, anyway?” (12/12/25)
“In bullying Maduro, Trump aspires to nothing loftier than the principle that, within any given sphere of influence, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. … Having gone through the horrors we have gone through, I don’t begrudge Venezuelans their revenge fantasies against Maduro’s genuinely evil regime. Smart, sane Venezuelans I know will read this column, agree with every word in it, and still want Trump to start dropping bombs on Maduro and his cronies. At this point, the hatreds in Venezuela are tribal — once you’ve seen a government destroy not just your life but the life of everyone you care about, you will side with its enemies, whoever they may be. But we should at least have the presence of mind to grasp what we’re supporting.” (12/12/25)
“Community colleges are a critical component of American higher education. For many working adults and lower-income students, these institutions provide an accessible, affordable pathway to obtaining a bachelor’s degree. A four-year college is an increasingly expensive proposition. For the 2025-2026 academic year, the average annual in-state tuition and fees at a public college totals $10,340; at a private college, it’s $39,307. With these financial pressures weighing heavily on young adults and their families, the opportunity to enroll in community college classes and transfer to a four-year institution is a cost-saving option well worth considering. But there’s a major issue facing the transfer students who choose this path: Many of them aren’t ready to do the work that their new schools demand.” (12/13/25)
Source: Freedom and Flourishing
by Dr. Edward W Younkins
“In her 2023 work The Two Moralities, social psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman presents a framework for understanding political differences rooted in the most fundamental motivational distinction in psychology: approach and avoidance. She argues that these basic motivational systems give rise to two distinct moralities: a proscriptive morality that defends against negative outcomes and focuses on what we should not do, and a prescriptive morality that moves us toward positive outcomes and focuses on what we should do. The former can be viewed as a morality of justice that emphasizes rules, impartiality, law, order, universal principles, retributive justice, and equality of opportunity whereas the latter can be viewed as a morality of care that is rooted in empathy, connection, compassion, responsiveness, safety nets, and equality of outcomes.” (12/12/25)
