A Time for Choosing

I got my photo with Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz (left) at the Paxton rally on September 21, 2026;
Trump endorsed Paxton on video at the rally (top right)

We’re less than a month out from the start of early voting in the November midterm elections (Early Voting begins October 19 in Texas). It seems we say this every time, but it becomes more intensely true each time: this may be the most important election ever for our future.

The reason that is more true now is that the Democrats have laid out their plan, if they gain the House and the Senate: impeach Trump, pack the Supreme Court, remove election integrity laws, give statehood to DC and Puerto Rico, and allow in illegal aliens—and let them vote, get rid of the Electoral College, and possible abolish the Senate. In short, it is to remove any possibility of opposition in the future, giving them a total and permanent socialist dictatorship.

The outcome of having socialists and Islamists in power would not offer a better future for America; it would be to offer what Cuba, Venezuela, and other socialist regimes have offered: poverty and tyranny.

They say they are offering better economic and social conditions. But no socialist regime has ever come through on that promise; that is simply the lie they use to get themselves installed in positions of power.

Here in Texas, we have a couple of races that exemplify the existential battleground. There’s Greg Abbott vs. Gina Hinajosa for Governor. And the other is the senate race: Ken Paxton vs James Talarico.

This is Texas, where a Democrat has not won a statewide race since 1994. Before that, Texas was pretty much a reliably Democrat state, but that was back when they were Democrats just because they were in the South (the South was mainly Democrat in the Civil War), and some of them even considered themselves “conservative.”

While, in the wild, you can still find some non-radical Democrats in Texas, they aren’t in leadership positions or running for office.

Texans are, as a people, no-nonsense, common sense, plain speaking, hard working, and God believing. The Democrat Party is none of those things. The Democratic Socialists, who run the party now, are dead set against all of those things—and anything else wholesome and good that could lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

On Monday I attended a rally for Ken Paxton. Senator Ted Cruz also came—and he is an excellent and entertaining speaker. This was in the middle of the day, at a church in northwest Houston. It was packed. I don’t know quite how to estimate numbers, but I’m guessing around 500 (maybe it was double that; I don’t know). It was hosted by Cypress Republicans and was a very positive and well-organized event. That’s a lot of people at a ticketed (but low-cost) event on a workday. And there was a lot of positive energy in the room. It’s hard, after an event like that, to believe that the polls are close, and we could really be facing the possibility of a tyrannical takeover of our beloved state. And, as Texas goes, so goes the nation. This is precarious.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

President Dallin H. Oaks, screenshot from here

Earlier this week, on the eve of Constitution Day (which is September 17), there was a program at the Washington National Cathedral. The keynote address was given by Dallin H. Oaks, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a former constitutional law professor, Utah State Supreme Court Justice, law clerk to the US Supreme Court. And what I knew him for, as President of Brigham Young University, finishing his time there upon my graduation. In his 90s now, he is still energetic and wise.

I’ve got the whole transcript. (Video is here.) I’ll be sharing large parts, interspersed with a few comments as I think about what he said. I think it will be a fitting way to celebrate Constitution Day in this 250^th Year celebration of our nation.

I am grateful to be here in this sacred setting with many scholars, civic leaders, and others I respect.

I'm here to speak as part of the National Cathedral's ongoing effort to find a better way to embody the love of God in public life, offering hope for unity and a moral framework to move forward in a divided world.

In my professional work, I have always regarded the United States Constitution as a model for a diverse people to achieve self-government.

Along with Professor Yuval Levin and others, I read our history to teach that "creating purpose of the Constitution."

It was at this point I looked up the spelling and tried to find the quote. I couldn’t find that exact phrase, but I suspect it comes from Yuval Levin’s book American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. 

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Remember! Remember! 25, 14, 1

 

In some of my gospel learning, I’ve studied just a smattering of ancient Biblical Hebrew language and history. Among these things, I learned that there is a particular day of infamy to ancient Israel, called Tisha B'Av (תִּשְׁעָה בְּאָב).  On this day, the 9^th of the month of Av (which varies on our calendar, but was July 22-23 this year, counting sundown to sundown), they mark a number of disasters in their history, most notably temple destructions in Jerusalem: first, Solomon’s Temple in 587 BC, which was destroyed by the Babylonians; second, Herod’s Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. There are another dozen or so bad things that have happened on Tisha B’Av over the centuries. It’s considered a time of mourning, and of bad luck. You wouldn’t want to set you wedding date to coincide.

The month of September has become America’s Tisha B’Av, or time of mourning. 

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Compromises on the Way to a More Perfect Union: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part 9

 

We’re two months past the official Semiquincentennial July 4^th celebration day. But it’s still the year of celebration.

In this series, we’ve spent several months on various parts of our beloved Constitution.

Here’s the series up to this point, if you missed any or want to review:

·        January: The Declaration

·        February: Preamble to the Constitution

·        March: Article I: Lawmaking

·        April: Article II: Executive Branch

·        May: Article III: Judicial Branch

·        June: Bill of Rights

·        July: Happy Birthday, America!

·        August: Bill of Rights Continued

This month in particular ought to be about celebrating that amazing document, since it was signed in September (1787). There’s enough good in our Constitution that we could finish the year-long series doing more and more Constitution. I do, however, plan to celebrate some other American things in the few remaining months. But not today.

Today I thought it might be useful to go through the two major compromises in the Constitution.

The Great Compromise

The first one on our list, sometimes called the Great Compromise, had to do with the question of whether representation should be based on population or equally by state.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK

Principles of the Economic Sphere

There are principles we use in the Spherical Model to identify whether something qualifies as leading toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization, or in the other direction toward tyranny, poverty, and savagery.

Because of the prevalence of socialism in our time, I thought it might be a good exercise about now, two months ahead of the mid-term elections, to look at the principles. Since socialism claims to be just an alternative economic system to capitalism (the word they prefer to free-market), we’ll focus on the economic principles.

I’m taking from the list of principles here, where you can find the list for the political and social spheres as well.  And I’m taking from the list of question to ask candidates from here and here, where you can find those lists for all three spheres.  

We’ll go through the principles, and individually ask whether socialism agrees.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government Is Illegal

Communism is against the law in the United States.

In theory, that has been true since its inception, and well before its first introduction to people in this country—because our law is the Constitution, to which communism is antithetical. The implementation of communism requires replacement of any existing political system. To translate, that means the overthrow of the United States government and our Constitution.

But, as we know, making something illegal doesn’t mean it no longer exists.

What I’m going to go through here today is a thought exercise only. But these are thoughts I believe we should be going through prior to any next election. There is a threat to our constitutional republic. And it is a real threat, a “clear and present danger” to our God-given rights by authoritarian tyrants.

Back in the 1950s, there was what was referred to as the Red Scare, when the Cold War was underway, and the enemy was a communist regime looking to expand its power and control around the world.

The threat was real. This enemy, the Soviet Union mainly, had nuclear weapons. The Chinese Communist Party was also a threat, although they didn’t succeed in getting nuclear weapons until 1964. But also during this time communist North Korea invaded South Korea, involving the US in the Korean War.

The ideologies of communism had been spreading in America, and indeed had infiltrated higher echelons of government. McCarthy was right about that.

So it was in response to this real threat (whether exaggerated in numbers at the time or not) that the Communist Control Act of 1954 was written—and passed unanimously in the Senate, then amended in the House to clarify definitions.

We’ll look at the law itself, and then talk about why it was (almost) never invoked, and why we maybe ought to be thinking about it today.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

BIll of Rights Continued: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part 8

This is a monthly series throughout 2026, the Semiquincentennial year. You can see the other parts here:

·       January: The Declaration 

·       February: Preamble to the Constitution 

·       March: Article I: Lawmaking 

·       April: Article II: Executive Branch 

·       May: Article III: Judicial Branch 

·       June: Bill of Rights 

·       July: Happy Birthday, America! 

In our discussion of rights, back in June, we talked about what is a right, so we can recognize what we’re dealing with. Because a lot of Americans have been confused about that for a century or so.

And we covered a bit of history related to the Bill of Rights, and how we got those first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.

Then we talked about the first of the five rights in the First Amendment: the right to freedom of religion.

So that leaves the other four in that amendment, and a number of others in the remaining Bill of Rights. We’ll see what we get through today.

The other four rights in the First Amendment are:

·       Freedom of speech.

·       Freedom of the press.

·       Freedom to peaceably assemble.

·       Freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Last week we talked about the pandemic a bit—and a little bit of the 5^th Amendment (which was invoked 111 times by Fauci in that Senate hearing). And it’s interesting to note that all of these First Amendment rights were abridged during the pandemic.

The Constitution guarantees us that government will not abridge these rights—and yet government did anyway.

Our discussions here are intended to inform us, so that we don’t blissfully go along with whatever government officials say. Because government is fire, and it needs to be carefully contained, or it gets out of control and burns. In real terms, rather than metaphorical, government is full of humans, many of whom are motivated by power and greed, and they work for those motivators, rather than for the good of society. Some—maybe even the worst—work for the power and money with the full conviction that they are doing it for our own good, even when they’re doing it against our will.

So, about those guaranteed rights.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Faucian Deal with the Devil

If you’ve tuned in to independent conservative news, you know that Wednesday, July 29, was Fauci’s day to come before the Senate hearing—not to testify, but to invoke the 5^th Amendment, 111 times (probably a record), when he’d already been given a blanket pardon by the Biden autopen for anything he might be accused of going back to 2014.

He pleaded the 5^th when asked the color of his tie and whether there was a notebook on the table in front of him. Other than his opening statement, which amounted to, “Rand Paul has it in for me, a sincere and devoted public servant who never did anything wrong,” he said nothing but the same script about invoking the 5^th.

The hearing nevertheless went on. I watched the livestream Robert Gouveia had done, which included the full hearing, plus his commentary afterward (and occasionally brief commentary during). He was using the C-SPAN livestream.

There was a lot we already knew. There was a little bit new.

The diaries were new. These were not leaked. Fauci wrote these personal files on his government computer, which means they are government property, not his personal diaries, regardless of how he thought of them. He’d worked in government for something like five decades; he knew about FOIA requests for anything written on government computers.

They reveal that he absolutely knew the virus had leaked from the Wuhan lab—as early as December 2019, before it ever reached the US. Then he lied about that to the American public.

The reason for the lie seems clear: he had funded the gain-of-function research in Wuhan (and elsewhere), despite President Obama’s order curtailing any such research—because, being “the science,” he knew better than the president and acted on his own, going through some back channels to hide what he was doing.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Still Paying Attention

When big news happens over and over, it starts to seem less big, just by comparison. One of these days maybe I’ll cover the whole list of things we weren’t allowed to talk about during the previous administration that we were right about all along. But just one of those “we told you so” things today.

Last week we had a report come out about election integrity issues. The President gave a speech. He did not say the 2020 election was stolen; he said China and other nations had the ability to do it, and there was quite a lot else, but nothing that could tag him as an election denier and therefore dismissible.

Let’s be clear on one thing, though: laws have been broken, and vulnerabilities are extraordinary—so that we have more reason to doubt election integrity than to trust in it.

The main piece is that China had stolen the personal data of some 220 million voter registrations. Note: As of April 2026 there are 204.6 million registered voters. I don’t know if that means China has all records, or all or almost all plus a whole lot of invalid ones. But they shouldn’t have the data required to, say, request a ballot by mail for every voter in America, if they happen to feel like it.

Another piece is that, while our IC (Intelligence Community) knew this in 2020, they purposely withheld the info from the President’s daily intelligence briefings.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Socialism is Treason Against Our Constitutional Republic

Socialism is treason. But not everyone considering socialism knows that. And I’m not sure the defenders of our country are willing to say so.

If we’re not going to treat socialists as treasonous, then what?

We have to re-educate people out of socialism and back into freedom.

To those who espouse socialist ideas because of the indoctrination of the institutions, I hold out hope for them.

In sincere conversation with them, when they tell you socialism is better than capitalism, you can ask them to explain: “Do you really mean that you want to overthrow our government—a government designed to protect our life, liberty, and property—and replace it with coercion, property confiscation, and some central authority deciding whether you get to use your own money?”

If you’re reading here, chances are you already know socialism is bad. But let’s go through the thought process anyway. Maybe it will help you undo the indoctrination for someone you care about.

 

Ruler’s Law vs. Rule of Law

We have rule of law. The basic law of the US is the Constitution, which protects our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The agreement of the indivisible states, under the Constitution, is that we will abide by this law.

While people are free to disagree about political issues—and our God-given free speech right allows them to say things that are not true, that are even antithetical to the Constitution—they should not advocate for the overthrow of the Constitution without risking a charge of treason.

Above all else we could say (and some of which we will), socialism, communism, fascism, or any other Marx-based -ism is anti-Constitutional and therefore anti-American. It is subversive.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

What Is a Citizen?

 

This year’s Supreme Court session ended at the end of June, which is usual. The fact that the final days of June are watched like a sporting tournament tells us the judiciary has more power than it ought to have.

We were assured, by Hamilton in Federalist 78: 

[T]he judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

In other words, it has only the words of its opinions—and what power the society as a whole grants to those opinions.

When the opinions are good, we are pleased that they have clarified and verified the law. When the opinions are not good, we are frustrated that their opinions have the power of law, as if they had power to legislate. We were promised by our founders that we would not be put into this position. And yet here we are.

Here is what Thomas Jefferson said about such a situation:

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not ... would make the judiciary a despotic branch. ... [T]he germ of dissolution of our federal government is ... the federal Judiciary ... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped. … They are construing our Constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.”

 Several of the cases this session deserve a good discussion. But for today we’ll just cover the final one. The Supreme Court rendered its decision about birthright citizenship on June 30^th, the last day of the 2025 session. It deserves a post of its own. The question—still unanswered—in Trump v. Barbara is, What is a citizen?

It shouldn’t be that difficult to answer, on par with “what is a woman?” which is another question at least one of our justices cannot answer. It takes a certain obtuseness, maybe only possible by well-educated individuals lacking wisdom and moral fiber, to fail to understand such basics.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Happy Birthday, America! Celebrating the Semiquincentennial Part VII

The 250^th Birthday of our country is a big deal. Most countries don’t even have a birthday they can identify. And while our US Constitution still has another eleven years before it hits 250, the average constitution in world history lasts only 17 years. We’re more than 30 times the average age. So we’re celebrating!

This series of monthly posts began in January. Here’s the series so far:

·       Part I: The Declaration 

·       Part II: The Preamble to the Constitution 

·       Part III: Article I, Lawmaking 

·       Part IV: Article II, The Executive Branch 

·       Part V: Article III, The Judicial Branch 

·       Part VI: The Bill of Rights, mainly 1^st Amendment Religious Freedom 

So, we’ve been doing some learning in our monthly celebration posts. But this month, with the actual birthday this very Saturday, I’m taking one post to focus more on the celebrating than the historical record—although there are some good places to go for your American history learning with your families this summer. I recommend PragerU videos (no cost), and Glenn Beck’s Torch has a “Summer of 250 Study Guide,” free for subscribers, with original songs for each of the Bill of Rights, and plenty more to make our nation’s founding interesting. 

For adults, I continue to recommend Hillsdale College courses, probably starting with Constitution 101. And, again, I recommend this 1989 video of the making of the Constitution, A More Perfect Union.   Anything from Wallbuilders, with David and Tim Barton, is also good; they have books, videos, museums, and more. Here’s a video from a couple of months ago that just popped up for me, about the signers of the Declaration.  Also, I think this weekend the Young Washington movie comes out; I haven’t seen it, but I’m hopeful that it will be good. Washington was an extraordinary person.

And, while we covered the Declaration of Independence back in January, do yourself a favor and take the five minutes to read it sometime this weekend—preferably within hearing of young people.

Celebration

Back in 1976, at our bicentennial, we had a lot of local things going on. I was in a choral group of young adults; I was still 17, but had just graduated from high school, so I qualified for the young adult group at church. We had a director who was studying to become a director, which he accomplished shortly afterward. The only song I remember singing was “Fifty Nifty United States” originally by Ray Charles. We had choreography and everything. I’ve since had my daughter and a homeschool group perform that song. I haven’t found a good video/audio version that wouldn’t be improved by your singing it yourself in your family, so I won’t link to any. But here’s the sheet music. It’s worth learning. It’s pretty fun. And the states in alphabetical order will forever stick in your mind.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conservative Partying, Part III: Platform & Resolutions

This is the third of three posts reporting on the Texas State Republican Convention, held in Houston June 8-13. Part I covers festivities, election of officers, and Rule Committee. Part II covers Legislative Priorities.

This post we’ll cover Platform & Resolutions Committee, from the perspective of an editor, which you’re probably not going to get anywhere else (not that the world is clamoring for such a perspective). Anyway, I’m afraid it’s still long, but it’s all in this post anyway. No more splitting into parts.

As I was reporting some arcane detail to my husband, with great enthusiasm, he commented that I sure am passionate about this. And that’s true. I love the words and the ideas—a whole lot more than the politicking. Anyway, here we go.

The Platform Is Conservative

Let me start with something positive. I had a conversation with one of the Committee members, someone for whom this is not her first rodeo either. And she asked me my impression of how the platform is doing. I don’t remember the exact wording of her question, but I was happy to report that, from my viewpoint, our platform is getting more conservative over time, and the grassroots are getting more unified.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conservative Partying, Part II: Legislative Priorities and (part of) Platform

 

Today is Part II of my debrief of the Texas Republican Convention. Part I is here.

I thought I would do Legislative Priorities and Platform in one post, but this has gotten ridiculously long. So I’m going to split it, and cover Platform & Resolutions in a Part III. (I’m assuming you’ll thank me later.) Most of it is written, so I should get Part III posted in a day or so. Thank you for your patience. I’m still quicker at getting this out than RPT is.

The convention ended Saturday, June 13. After two other editors did formatting and general edits, I spent all of Monday and Tuesday after convention doing a careful edit. There was integrating those changes and finishing indexing, and then a meeting between the Editorial Committee Chair, the RPT Secretary, and the Platform Committee Chair to go over any edits that needed approval—and to add the changes that were made on the floor of the convention, which I believe added one plank and one resolution, plus some other amendments to planks. I have not seen the final wording of those floor changes, other than what I saw on screen at convention. I do not understand the delay following convention to get those to the editors; a process changed after 2022, apparently.

But as of today, as I begin writing on Thursday, June 25, no updated version has been posted since the printed (and online) Permanent Committee Report for either Platform, Rules, or Legislative Priorities.

So we do not yet know the results of the scantron voting. We do not have a list of 8 Legislative Priorities, narrowed down from the 15 presented by the Permanent Committee. And we do not have the edited version of the Platform, which should include those floor changes, and the final numbering.

So all I can write about today is what we voted on, not what the results are.

To see the version we saw for floor debate, you can go here (until they move it or change it). 

I could also mention that this wasn’t that easy to find. I tried the TexasGOP.org site; I found nothing but the 2024 versions there. I couldn’t even find Convention information, other than on the calendar, telling me that event had passed.

I tried looking up the convention, which is a separate site: convention.TexasGOP.org. And all I could find were the schedules provided for convention goers.

So I did another search and found these versions on the “about” page of the convention website, and scrolled down and found the links I needed.

It shouldn’t be this hard, especially for somebody who has been paying attention all along.

If you’d like to watch the floor debates, LP and Platform happened on June 13. Floor debate for Chair election and Rules happened on June 12. And the Permanent Committees were on June 11. Temporary Committee of the Whole for Platform was Jun 10. You can find several of the livestreams on YouTube. 

Legislative Priorities

Legislative Priorities Committee was an addition not that long ago. We added them as part of our Platform Report in our Senatorial District 7 Convention in I think 2016 and 2018. And then Mark Ramsey, the 2018 State Platform Chair, had persuaded RPT to add Legislative Priorities as a separate committee, and was the first Chair of that committee in 2020.

The purpose of Platform is to guide mainly the Texas Legislature (and also some direction to other state leaders and to the US Congress) to know what the grassroots cares about.

The platform continues to be long, with lots of specific details. As we get ignored, we add more details.

There’s so much there, in the RPT Platform, it seemed like a good idea (I think it is) to tell the Legislature what is most important. That’s what Legislative Priorities is intended to do. LPs are, then, an extension to the Platform; in fact, each LP must relate to at least one plank in the Platform. So there’s some communication between these two committees during Convention Committee meetings.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conservative Partying, Part I: Festivities, Election of Officers, and Rules

 

Last week was the state Republican Party of Texas Convention, June 11-13, with preliminary meetings starting June 8. It was held here in Houston, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, one of just a few facilities in the state big enough to handle this large convention. (The other cities are San Antonion, Dallas, and Ft. Worth, so it’s always going to be in one of these cities.)

There were festivities. But there was also business: elections of officers, and setting the Rules, Legislative Priorities, and Platform for the upcoming biennium. I spent my time editing the platform again (I know I’d said I wouldn’t do it again, but at least I didn’t lead the team or work through any nights). So I’ll cover the other business first and then spend a bit more time on Platform.

Festivities

There was a live elephant. I missed when it came into the main hall, but I saw it in the exhibit hall, behind Governor Abbott, where people were getting photos. They closed the line just before I got there, so I didn’t get pictures with me in them.

Governor Abbott taking photos with supporters

 An elephant, indoors, is pretty awesome. My guess is the Democrats won’t try to compete with a live donkey at theirs. It would be an offense to donkeys, as Ted Cruz quipped.

There were speeches, and songs. Some of the music was really good. I missed much of that, because I don’t get there in mornings, especially when I didn’t get to bed before 3:00 AM. I did listen to livestreams on YouTube. Go to the RPT channel and choose what you want to see.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Bill of Rights: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part VI

We’re reaching the halfway point—and approaching the actual July 4^th birthday—in our celebration of the 250^th birthday of our nation. So far we’ve celebrated by walking through our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble and first three Articles of the Constitution, covering the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

If we were simply walking straight through, we’d get to Article IV on through VII of the Constitution. Maybe we’ll come back to these in more detail, but for now let’s just summarize those articles:

Article 4 covers interstate rules, and guarantees for citizens going state to state. There are four sections, including information about how new states may be admitted, and how the federal government guarantees protection to each of the states.

Article 5 offers ways to amend the Constitution: amendments can be proposed by either two-thirds of both Houses, or two-thirds of the state legislatures can propose an amendment. This option has been talked of more in the past few years; 20 states so far have voted to go ahead (including my state of Texas), out of a needed 34.

Article 6 talks about paying debts incurred by the national government, and that the federal government shall be the supreme law of the land.

Article 7 talks about ratification of the Constitution, and signatures from representatives of the states at the Constitutional Convention, where the document was written and revised.

Next come the Amendments. There are 27. The first 10 are what we call the Bill of Rights. And that’s the topic for today’s post. Even so, we might not cover all 10. I’m going to go through a little history and background and at least cover the First Amendment. And since there could be books and books written on the First Amendment, we’ll mostly just get to the first right in the First Amendment.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Empire, the Thucydides Trap, and Other Big Picture Things

 

I’ve been interested lately in the bigger picture—and it’s the more positive picture—of President Trump on the world stage. So much interrelates. I’ve written about it here and here. 

One of my sources has been Glenn Beck. But I was clued in by a friend to another source of just this kind of chessboard thinking: Promethean Action. Mainly, I’ve heard from two women, Susan Kokinda and Barbara Boyd, who study and make the connections and try to share this rather complicated viewpoint with the world. I’m still looking into the background, which I may touch on below.

I had heard Susan Kokinda a time or two on Stephen Gardner’s podcast. I had even gone to her Substack once. But then I forgot to keep going there. So I knew who she was when a friend reminded me of this resource, and I’ve been listening and learning—about things I never knew before—this past couple of weeks.

These people are very pro-Trump, in a very serious and non-cheerleader kind of way. They use a deep study of history, maybe particularly ancient Greek history, to understand what we’re seeing today.

I’d like to use a fair amount of their own words to explain what’s happening in the world, at least their viewpoint, which I find compelling.

The Empire

I think it will help to start with The Empire.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.