Over the past decade or so, the term “cancel culture,” and its traveling companion “woke,” have been used by some on the right to label and vilify those on the left who have spoken out and taken actions contrary to their perspective. Media coverage has disclosed that there are some on the right who employ cancel culture tactics. Truth be told, they are much better practitioners of the cancel culture than those on the left. We made this point in a 2021 blog titled, “Do We Have … [Read more...]
Thanksgiving Thoughts on Our Divided Nation
On this Thanksgiving Day, the concept of a united and unified America seems an alien one. In fact, it is almost impossible to contemplate. That is a line from our 2016 Thanksgiving Thoughts on Our Divided Nation blog. In our 2020 Thanksgiving Thoughts on our Divided Nation blog, we stated: How many times greater is that divide in 2020? It is unquantifiable. It is fair to say though that the divide is a chasm and the width and depth of that chasm is … [Read more...]
America’s Gerrymandered Economy
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. — Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Presidential Inaugural Address, 1937 Much has been written over the past several months about the gerrymandering of congressional districts in order to try to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. As in the past, this gerrymandering is … [Read more...]
The One Big Beautiful Bill is Bountiful and Beastly
On July 4, President Donald J Trump signed his signature piece of domestic legislation, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). There’s no doubt Trump thought the bill was beautiful at the time. Polling indicates, however, that the majority of Americans didn’t see it that way. CNN and KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) polls conducted in July, after the OBBB became law, showed more than six in 10 of those surveyed disapproved of it. The … [Read more...]
A Day to Celebrate American Workers–and Immigrants
That was the opening line of our Labor Day blog last year. Because of the American performance in the Olympics in 2024, we focused on celebrating the work of the American athletes, and the connection between their Olympic spirit and the spirit of those American workers “committed to excellence in all lines of work.” We went on to state that those workers: … are on the playing field and the battlefield; on the shop floor and in the office, in the classroom and the … [Read more...]
The Need for More Responsive and Responsible Higher Education
As we wrote in our blog preceding this one, since returning to office on January 20, Donald Trump and his administration have launched an unprecedented and unwarranted attack on higher education that will do considerable damage to it. That’s not just our opinion. It’s also the opinion of hundreds of college leaders who signed a public statement titled “A Call for Constructive Engagement,” issued by the American Association of Colleges and … [Read more...]
Higher Education, Lower Expectations
Since returning to office on January 20, Donald Trump and his administration have launched an unprecedented and unwarranted attack on higher education that will do considerable damage. Unfortunately, in this century, the higher education establishment has done considerable damage to itself. Public Opinion and Views on Higher Education At one time, higher education was held in uniformly high regard. Today, for a variety of reasons, this is no longer the case. The expectations … [Read more...]
Trust Busting and the News Media
This is the second part of a two-part series on trust-busting and the news media. In part one, we examined the nature of the trust-busting from a variety of perspectives. In this blog, we examine the causes of the trust-busting and what to do to address them. Many critics of the traditional news media would cite it as the sole source of the trust-busting. That is definitely not the case. The Trust-Busting Factors As we pointed out near the end of our first blog, there are a number … [Read more...]
Silencing the Voices of America
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. — Harry S. Truman President Truman’s somber warning issued in 1950 is prescient and chilling in 2025. (For information on the context for Truman’s comment, click here). That’s due to the fact that … [Read more...]
Trump’s War on DEI
Immediately upon his return to the White House Donald J. Trump went to war against DEI. On January 20 and January 21, President Trump signed three executive orders related to DEI. Two addressed DEI initiatives in the federal government. The third was directed at DEI initiatives in the private sector. In this blog, we examine the nature and impact of those executive orders and look at DEI in a broader context. DEI Elimination in the Government The governmentally focused executive … [Read more...]