There are moments when diplomacy does not prevent a war. It merely reveals what the war is actually about. On September 11, 1776, three representatives of the Continental Congress crossed under a flag of truce to Staten Island. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge came to hear what Admiral Lord Richard Howe could offer […]

Technology is wonderful right up until it begins deciding who deserves to be watched, tracked, exposed, transported, or accidentally reduced to a screaming cloud of subatomic regret. In San Jose, a woman’s offensive public behavior became the justification for an extraordinary digital manhunt. Cameras followed her movements, strangers identified her, and the machinery normally associated […]

September 11 arrives each year carrying the familiar weight of memory. On its twenty-fifth anniversary, however, remembrance alone no longer seems sufficient. The ceremonies, speeches, and images remain important, but they leave us with a harder question: What have we learned? An entire generation has now grown up without a personal memory of the attacks. […]

Free speech rarely disappears with a dramatic announcement. More often, it retreats quietly as people calculate the possible cost of saying what they think. They worry about an employer, a university administrator, an online mob, or someone willing to turn disagreement into a threat. Nothing has been formally prohibited, yet the silence is real. The […]

The Hermit Kingdom of the Mind The modern world offers more information than any previous generation could have imagined. Nearly every argument, perspective, news report, historical document, and dissenting opinion is available within seconds. Yet access to information has not necessarily made us more intellectually curious. In many cases, it has simply allowed us to […]

NIL auctions, purchased blowouts and the financial collapse threatening the schools beneath the Saturday spectacle College football has always meant more to me than the final score. It carries memories of Saturdays with my father, Navy playing Air Force in Colorado Springs, regional rivalries, marching bands and traditions inherited across generations. My father once enlivened […]

The Thought Police Are Watching the Taproom There was once a useful boundary between public conduct and private conviction. You could buy bread, order coffee, or enjoy a pint without first demanding a political confession from the person behind the counter. That boundary is rapidly disappearing, particularly when activists can search public records, identify a […]

Congress Condemns an Ideology, Avoids a Budget, and Calls It Governing Congress has managed to discover socialism. This might seem encouraging until you remember that the national debt has reached $40 trillion, the federal government still lacks a genuine budget, and lawmakers apparently have plenty of time for nonbinding resolutions designed to produce campaign advertisements. […]

Washington has always been skilled at confusing an announcement with an accomplishment. President Trump’s new Venezuelan oil agreement sounds impressive: American control over billions of barrels, lower gasoline prices, and new supplies for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Then reality intrudes. Venezuelan crude resembles tar more than Texas oil, the country’s infrastructure is collapsing, and its […]

Government loves a list. It loves categories, identification numbers, demographic boxes, databases and tracking systems, each created with assurances that the information will be used responsibly and only for its stated purpose. Sometimes those systems genuinely improve accountability. Sometimes they reveal that the government has developed a remarkable ability to count things it cannot competently […]