On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was scheduled to address Texas Democratic leaders and supporters at a fundraising dinner in Austin honoring him and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. He never made it. Earlier that day, an assassin’s bullets took his life in Dallas. But they did not silence the words he had prepared for that evening. More...

Remember how everyone was talking about the dangers of AI just a month ago? “Is There Really a 10% Chance AI Could Kill Us All.”—The L.A, Times For weeks, news reports have warned that artificial intelligence could someday escape human control, threatening everything from national security to humanity’s very existence in the future. The future is here but it’s not...

Republican John Williams, a chicken farmer and feed dealer from southern Delaware, had never gone to college.  He spoke so quietly on the Senate floor that the news media dubbed him “Whispering Willie.” But when he spoke, people listened as he exposed the biggest corruption scandals of the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s – sending hundreds of government officials to...

The political and cultural landscape has become a minefield of conflicting beliefs, many now rooted less in public policy than in personal identity. One of James Madison’s central concerns in drafting the Constitution was the danger posed by “factions”—political, economic or ideological groups so driven by shared passions that they might place their own power above the rights of others...

“Politics had infiltrated every corner of government—a strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White House.” —Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men I recently reread All the President’s Men and was taken back to a time I believed America would never experience again. NEVER. More than half a century after Watergate, the country is AGAIN confronting...

“Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”—George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796 “Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption…. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls.”—Donald Trump, Election...

Conclusion: The Words That Made Us and Still Must.  In December of 1776, the Revolution was not moving toward triumph. It was close to collapse. Washington’s army was exhausted. Enlistments were running out. Men who had already given much were being asked to give more. Then Thomas Paine’s words were read aloud… …  “These are the times that try men’s...

Lately, I’ve been reading more history, mostly to educate myself. But the other night, I opened Lord Acton’s Lectures on the French Revolution and didn’t get far before I sat up in bed. I was reading about France two centuries ago, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the comparisons to Washington today. To be honest, most of what I remember...

The current American political order is starting to feel like a collision between the films Seven Days in May and All the King’s Men. One warns us about powerful institutions turning against constitutional democracy. The other shows how a populist leader can take grievance, resentment, and loyalty and turn them into a system of rule. I recently watched both films...

Last August, I wrote that I was “stepping back from the chaos” of Donald Trump. I meant to write about his presidency only when his actions were significant. That was the naïve part. This is not Republican versus Democrat. This is democracy versus authoritarianism: 2025–2026 — Turned pressure on universities into national policy.After targeting individual universities with investigations and funding...