There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute; even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.
Joined May 2009
- Tweets15.3K
- Following2.4K
- Followers1.6K
- Likes44.8K
Pinned Tweet
How to raise a high performing student with an ambition to participate in the economy as soon as possible?
It sort of requires a heroic attention to idealism, which their concentration wanes if you ask them to do that.
Books all high school and college students should read... This is my list. It's not in any particular order but it is a list of my favorites. If you're a parent to a tween, figure out how to carve out time for your child to read. Don't *force* them, instead figure out a way to encourage it, by suggesting repeatedly that they do it. Ask them to put the tech device down for one hour the first time they get started. I would start these by age 11. Not all can be read at that age, so go through the list and make wise choices. Obviously you and your child have been reading before age 11 but these are the books to transition to starting around 11.
Buy one of the books below and just give it to them. I suggest Animal Farm as a starting point.
Also here's a suggestion. I created a list of ten questions after each book, printed it out and asked my kids to take the quiz. I gave them a reward just for doing it (like a Texas Roadhouse gift card for example, but anything will do). Didn't matter if they scored 6 out of 10 or 10 for 10. I found my child who embraced these quizzes after each book did better in school than my child who pushed back a little bit. Call me crazy! (but the results are kids that score top of their classes in every subject).
Animal Farm (Orwell)
1984 (Orwell)
Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
The Road to Serfdom (Hayek)
Intellectuals and Socialism (Hayek) (this short book is usually attached to the end of The Road to Serfdom but if not, it is public domain and you can search for the PDF).
The Other Wes Moore (Moore)
Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
Night (Elie Wiesel)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
The Wealth of Nations (Smith)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
Ulysses (Joyce)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou)
The Demon-Haunted World (Carl Sagan)
Economic Facts and Fallacies (Sowell) or
Basic Economics (Thomas Sowell) (need an entire summer!)
Lord Of The Rings (Tolkien)
The Moon is Down (Steinbeck)
The Myth of the Robber Barons (Folsom, Jr.)
Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman)
Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak)
Atlas Shrugged (Rand)
The Constitution of the United States
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
Macbeth (Shakespeare)
Hannah Arendt "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
Iliad (Homer)
Odyssey (Homer) (recommend Iliad before Odyssey if possible)
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Paradise Lost (Milton)
The Inferno (Dante)
Common Sense (Paine)
Cosmos (Sagan)
The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
The Old man and the sea (Hemingway)
A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway)
The Outsiders (Hinton)
Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Brave New World (Huxley)
Uncle Tom’s cabin (Stowe)
The Scarlett Letter (Hawthorne)
The Call of the Wild (London)
The Red Badge of Courage (Crane)
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle)
The Closing of the American Mind (Bloom)
A conflict of visions (Sowell)
Who Stole Feminism (Christina Hoff Sommers)
Here are four books all young ladies should read… All of life’s experiences, the good and the bad, are described in beautiful and instructive detail:
The Secret Garden
The Little Princess
Little Women
Anne of Green Gables
- Live long and prosper.
Great post. Every word true.
We all say over and over, it’s time to reset things, but really it is time to reset. If it’s not enumerated in the constitution or bill of rights, the federal government’s laws and regulations should be deprecated.
The men who wrote the Constitution owned guns, distrusted bankers, and believed taxation without consent was worth dying over. They would not recognize the country operating under their name today.
Federal spending crossed $7 trillion per year. The income tax, which the founders explicitly rejected, now reaches into every paycheck you earn before you touch a dollar of it. The Federal Reserve, a central bank of the exact type Jefferson warned would strip citizens of property through inflation, has spent the last two decades aggressively expanding the money supply and handing you the bill through rising prices.
The founders drew the federal government's powers in a short, specific list. Congress could coin money, raise an army, and regulate interstate trade. What it could not do is not in that list, because the founders assumed the limits were obvious. They were wrong to assume that.
Today the federal government licenses your profession, subsidizes your competitor, dictates your health plan, and surveils your financial transactions above $600. The administrative state, staffed by unelected bureaucrats at the FDA, SEC, EPA, and an estimated 430 other agencies, writes rules carrying the force of law without a single congressional vote. Madison called this precise arrangement tyranny in The Federalist Papers(No. 47).
The founders risked hanging to escape a government that taxed tea at 3%. You hand over 30 percent of your income and are supposed to thank the state for the privilege of keeping the rest.
This!
Brilliant. 🖖
I get tired of Democrats claiming to be on the “right side of history” when both their past and their present are so utterly sordid and destructive. So, if you are a Democrat, let me tell you about MY side of history and YOUR side of history.
My side of history is Cato the Elder, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Irving Babbitt and William F. Buckley. Your side of history is Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Josef Stalin, Mao’s Little Red Book and Noam Chomsky.
My side of history is George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Your side of history is Tories who fled to Canada, Jefferson Davis, Woodrow Wilson, Bull Connor, George Wallace and Nancy Pelosi.
My side of history is freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and spirited debate. Your side of history is ThoughtCrime, Speech Codes, religious persecution and Cancel Culture.
My side of history is Brown v. Board of Ed., Loving v. VA, Gitlow v. NY, and Heller v. DC. Your side of history is Dred Scott, Korematsu and Roe v. Wade.
My side of history is Jackie Robinson. Your side of history is Colin Kaepernick.
My side of history is head held high, standing straight, hand over heart. Your side of history is sullen glances at the ground, kneeling.
My side of history is the family as the foundation of society. Your side of history is mutilating confused children.
My side of history is the rockets’ red glare. Your side of history is imagine no religion.
My side of history is firefighters going up the stairs into the Twin Towers. Your side of history is 28-year-old men playing Call of Duty in their mothers’ basements.
My side of history is smoked brisket. Your side of history is a no-foam, no-sugar, soy latte.
My side of history is Lincoln freeing the slaves and General Patton liberating Buchenwald. Your side of history is Fort Sumter, the Gulag and Pol Pot’s killing fields.
My side of history is Mel Brooks. Your side of history is Amy Schumer.
My side of history is all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Your side of history is critical theory and only some lives matter.
My side of history is 20-year-olds storming Omaha Beach. Your side of history is 20-year-olds in their safe spaces with adult coloring books.
My side of history is American men and women disabled by an IED. Your side of history is American men and women disabled by anxiety.
My side of history is the Kentucky Rifle, the Springfield 1861, the M1911, the M1 Garand, the M14 and the AR15. Your side of history is whimpering submission.
My side of history is Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Apollo 11 and Jonas Salk. Your side of history is “global warming,” 100+ genders and porous cloth masks stopping viruses.
My side is of history is laughing babies. Your side of history is selling aborted baby parts on the open market.
My side of history is the Sistine Chapel and Monet’s water lilies. Your side of history is an inverted crucifix in a bottle of urine.
My side of history is construction. Your side of history is deconstruction.
My side of history is civilization. Your side of history is nihilism.
And, MOST OF ALL:
My side of history is liberty. Your side of history is tyranny.
*finis*
This meme is spot on. Buckley captured this eruditely in a comment he made decades ago (recently posted by @VoLDaily )
“A democracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.”
— William F. Buckley Jr.
Parallel Spock retweeted
I have been waiting 24 years for my neighbor David Westerfield to be executed for the kidnapping and murder of my 7-year-old neighbor, Danielle van Dam. And now thanks to @GavinNewsom, it looks like it will never happen.
I was 13 when he abducted her from her bedroom in the middle of the night in 2002. I would never equate what I experienced with what her family suffered, but Danielle's murder devastated our whole neighborhood, and me personally. I was a sensitive kid and it was a major contributor to my mental health decline in adolescence.
In the 20 days between her disappearance and his arrest, I developed insomnia and spent those nights walking around the house checking the locks on the doors and windows. I followed the trial closely. As we learned the horrific details, I couldn't stop thinking about what she endured during the 3 days he had her.
Her body was found dumped off the side of a road 25 days after she went missing. It was too decomposed to test for sexual assault, but we all knew that's why he took her. He was also convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material found on his computer.
There was never any doubt about Westerfield's guilt. There was an abundance of forensic evidence, including her blood on his clothing and in his motorhome. In 2019, the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld his conviction and death sentence. Shortly afterward, Newsom imposed his moratorium. And now he does THIS.
California voters rejected abolishing the death penalty in both 2012 and 2016, and even voted to expedite executions. All these years, I've held on to the hope that someone would eventually take office who respected the will of California voters and would allow these sentences to be carried out.
It's especially insulting to hear Newsom go on about morality, as if he is morally superior to those of us whose lives were affected by these heinous crimes and who want to see the perpetrators brought to justice. I'm hoping the California Supreme Court can stop Westerfield's commutation.
Parallel Spock retweeted
We call this Pseudo-profound bullshit.
Admittedly quite crude, but succinctly fitting.
(Seemingly impressive assertions presented as truisms and/or meaningful, but are actually vacuous)
Many leaders who have risen to power learned how to spew this nonsense during their critical oratory years, because it’s quite effective on those of average to above average intelligence.
A few observations of the erudite Mr. Shatner’s post:
1. I see what I believe to be an Omega speedmaster watch on his wrist (that’s the moon watch). Perhaps I have that wrong. Anyway, looking at the time on the watch vs the shadows, I can tell this pic is a few years old.
2. Mr. Shatner’s vehicle has some white paint embedded into it at the driver side front fender. This is an indication that Bill scrapped the garage trim driving into his garage at home. I don’t see this as damage from another vehicle. This also leads me to believe the picture is a few years old.
3. Mr. Shatner’s physique is a bit more out of shape compared to more recent pictures. This picture is consistent with images from a few years ago.
Thus, I conclude Bill doesn’t wear a mask outside in public currently. I put the odds at 9 to 1 (or less than 10% that he wears a mask). I could be wrong of course.
Being wrong won’t preclude my love for Mr. Shatner - he is excellent.
This!
🎯
Those of us on the conservative side in American politics don't need new principles. We need to recover and rededicate ourselves to the old ones. If we do--but only if we do--we can meet the challenges of a progressive movement that has fully embraced expressive individualism and identity politics and is increasingly, and more and more openly, socialist.
Unsubscribe
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
The people go where the children are coming from. In other words, teenagers and 20-somethings are a “leading” indicator of where society heads toward.
Years of socialism and victim ideology embedded in *most* (not all) public school districts, along with the programming on social media that is pervasively progressive, and you have a recipe for young adults who prioritize their needs/pleasures over life.
The antidote will be to inculcate purpose and serving the greater good. The prerequisite is for youth to learn what the greater good is.
🖖 🙏
I understand @CatholicVote position (or change thereof) on Mike Rogers.
The Catholic message often and mostly needs to adhere to certain unbreakable principles. Abortion and the right to life are examples of those unbreakable tenets.
With that said, I urge all Michigan voters, Catholic or otherwise, NOT to misconstrue a message of non-endorsement by CatholicVote as your justification or your rationale to either NOT vote or to vote for the Islamic socialist.
Voting comes down to a binary decision. Good or bad.
Yet we are not binary in our minds, thoughts, or principles, and neither are our candidates. Our candidates do NOT hold every view that we do; to do so would render us all as bots (robots). I don’t know about you, but I’m not a bot - I have my own mind and my own conclusions, but I seek objective truth.
We are not bots, and we have differing opinions, even in our households where we might hold 99% of the same values and views, we can and do disagree on things. We are humans!
Therefore, we narrow the nominees down to two candidates typically on the ballot. Thus, you will never hold all the same views as the candidates.
You MUST assess where a candidate stands on most issues, and then you must vote. To protest your vote is NOT a protest, it is simply giving the other side two votes… their radical vote and your vote (because you don’t offset them).
My friends in Michigan: get out and vote!
After all, the continuity of our existence depends on the well-being of children. Your children’s well-being depends on private property rights, and civil liberties. If you don’t vote, you risk your posterity.
It is logical. 🖖
Cc: @catholickelsey
An important message from CatholicVote President & CEO Kelsey Reinhardt following Mike Rogers' position shift on abortion:
"Just before Election Day, Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, announced that he will not take a pro-life stand on abortion.
Mr. Rogers could have made the best of the Dobbs decision, which made abortion a state issue as well as a federal one. Sending it to the states has allowed several states to pass laws protecting unborn children. Abdul El-Sayed wants to eliminate state pro-life laws and make abortion legal in all 50 states. Mike Rogers could have simply said he respects the decision made by Michigan voters—without parroting pro-abortion lines.
While we believe that Abdul El-Sayed would be far worse, CatholicVote cannot endorse a candidate who supports abortion. There will be Catholics who will now say that they cannot vote for either candidate, and we understand and respect that decision.
Many of you gave, knocked on doors, and prayed for his campaign because you trusted that he would stand for the unborn, as he did for years in Congress. I trusted that too.
The priority of life
So let me tell you plainly: I am deeply disappointed, and I know many of you are as well and CatholicVote now will regrettably be suspending our endorsement.
The principles that guide CatholicVote are clear and consistent and also hierarchical. The teaching of the Catholic Church is that the threat of abortion is the preeminent priority because all rights are second to that first right, the right to life.
While many issues are prudential: data centers, tax rates, how best to fund and operate education, this issue is non-negotiable.
The whole picture
But we at CatholicVote still owe you the whole picture, which is now a rather more complicated look at the lesser of two evils.
Rogers' opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, offers Catholic voters no refuge. He is a firm supporter of abortion on demand and abortion expansion, and on issue after issue, from his total support of transgender ideology, his total disregard for parental rights, his opposition to school choice, and his problematic ties to Islamic radicals—to mention just a few—makes clear that his agenda runs directly against what the Church teaches.
As I wrote to you recently, El-Sayed has also responded to fair questions about his judgment with false equivalences that put our own Church at the center of them. Rogers' failure to defend life does not make that alternative any less grave. At the very least, he will not expand access to abortion.
Living out faithful citizenship calls on Catholics to engage in prayer, evaluate each candidate's record with honesty, and occasionally cast a ballot for the candidate who is less flawed."
@catholickelsey
I support @RepKeithSelf on this legislation 100%.
I have long written and advocated for controls & restraints on the surveillance state in the U.S. illegally perpetrated against US citizens.
Currently it is the wild wild west across states as they do their own things. Pennsylvania has surveillance cameras capturing citizens’ movements without consent or warrant. In Pennsylvania for example, a police officer will sit in a private parking lot (e.g., Wawa) and have some coffee while their automated surveillance camera scans every license plate driving and and out of the lot. When it flags a plate where the registration has lapsed, the officer will follow the vehicle and pull them over on a public road.
Many say this is a great way of catching illegal activity. I say it’s illegal search and seizure. The search took place on a private lot without the consent of the owner. The search lacked probably cause.
Scanning license plates is NOT probable cause in itself, so it can’t be used legally for a stop.
I WANT to catch people doing illegal things, but I want law enforcement to do so using existing laws and existing procedures that do not cross Constitutional lines for search and seizure. Citizens have a right not to be randomly searched by the government and this extends to citizens traversing public roads to visit marketplaces, jobs, etc.
The state of Pennsylvania argues its right to randomly scan license plates because it claims “ownership” of the license plates. I call that out as patently false and therefore an invalid argument. Your state does not “own” your license plate. The People own them. The state is given limited authority to facilitate these license plates for the use of registering vehicles and identifying them in lawful circumstances. They manufacture them on our behalf, and manage the assignment of them to us for purposes of registering and identifying our vehicles belonging to us. The state cannot simply assert ownership privilege and therefore unlimited privilege to use them any way it sees fit. The citizens cannot authorize random warrantless surveil and search of license plates even if we wanted to because the 4th Amendment affirms our innate (God given) right against arbitrary government search and seizure. This right extends to our homes, and our persons and our property when we’re in public.
Again, government should utilize existing frameworks to carry out its law enforcement activities, including discovery, investigation, and petitions for search warrants when probable cause has been gathered. Randomly searching your license plate while in public is NOT within that legal investigative framework.
All liberty-loving citizens should advocate for ENDING the SURVEILLANCE STATE. If you allow one link to be broken in our chain of liberty and freedom, you ALLOW the government to control you as a serf and to abridge any and all of your rights. You may as well live in Russia, Cuba, or China in that instance. The U.S. is the ONLY country that affirms creator granted unalienable rights (that is, rights you’re born with simply because you exist, and you could not have been born to serve as a slave to the state or other people). We MUST maintain our Constitutional Republic; it’s the only one we have. Support this legislation. Support it nationally.
It is logical.
My PRIVACY Act confronts the surveillance state at the federal level by:
🔒Requiring a warrant before extracting data from automated license plate reader systems.
⏱️Limiting how long collected data may be retained.
❌Prohibiting federal funds from being used to purchase these systems.
This is a commonsense bill that needs to be brought to the House floor and passed!
Parallel Spock retweeted
Every father has that one moment when his kids are younger that he remembers vividly and wants to visit again some day.
To what end?
Kerry proposes the 19,000 school districts in the United States take the unbelievably complex action of moving school back an hour, and the resulting consequences on families and supporting businesses that have to deal with that change, amplified across the nation, instead of rolling back the clock to normal time (standard) which happens at 2am and doesn’t impact people’s actual schedules the way changing the entire school schedule would.
I ask Kerry: what happens when selfish adults decide one hour daylight saving isn’t enough for the winter hours, the mob democracy wants another hour of sun in the evening, and successfully lobbies their government keepers to move it yet another hour? Do we then start school another hour later?
Permanent standard time is logical.
After all, the continuity of our existence depends on the well-being of children.
It hasn’t been our dad’s Democrat party since Clinton; his wife was/is a socialist and has been advocating for central planning and state control virtually her entire adult life.
Kennedy was a conservative who affiliated with the Democrat party because he thought it was the party that advocated for individual liberty; he was wrong (but right about a lot of things).
Shout out to @PlotWeaver for the receipt (screenshot). I should have credited HappyGranddaddd!
Parallel Spock retweeted
This is insane
A federal judge in SDNY just ordered that this video of Trump offering $5000 if Republicans win the elections had to be DELETED
It would sure be a shame if we all made it go viral again!
It is logical.
I Support Making Standard Time Permanent!
Here are 10 reasons why.
Every year, millions of Americans are forced to “spring forward” and “fall back,” but few stop to ask why. Daylight Saving Time (DST) disrupts our sleep, safety, and health twice a year without providing any proven benefits. It’s time to make Permanent Standard Time the law of the land.
1️⃣ Safety First:
Who wants it to be dark when their children walk to school in the morning? That’s unsafe. And who wants sunlight pouring through their windows at 9 PM, making it harder for older Americans to fall asleep? Standard Time addresses both problems by aligning daylight with our daily lives.
2️⃣ We’ve Tried Permanent DST: It Failed:
In 1974, the U.S. adopted year-round Daylight Saving Time. The result? Disaster. Children went to school in pitch darkness, safety concerns mounted, and public backlash became so strong that Congress reversed the decision within a year.
3️⃣ Standard Time Matches Human Biology:
Standard Time follows the sun’s natural cycle. It aligns with our circadian rhythms, supporting better sleep and reducing the risks of obesity, depression, and cardiovascular disease. Our bodies were designed around the sun, not the clock.
4️⃣ Health and Safety Benefits:
Studies show that switching to and from DST increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents. Keeping Standard Time year-round eliminates these dangerous transitions and helps keep Americans healthier and safer.
5️⃣ Proven Success Across the Map:
Arizona, Hawaii, and all five U.S. territories already observe Permanent Standard Time. Most of Mexico also restored Permanent Standard Time in 2022. The rest of America should follow their lead.
6️⃣ Expert Consensus:
More than 80 organizations, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Society for Research in Biological Rhythms, support Permanent Standard Time. When doctors, scientists, educators, and faith leaders agree, it’s time to listen.
7️⃣ Practical and Reliable:
No more biannual clock changes. No missed meetings. No software errors. Permanent Standard Time makes scheduling, coordination, and business operations smoother and more predictable.
8️⃣ Better for Students and Families:
Students benefit when their school schedules align with natural daylight. Standard Time supports morning alertness and better learning outcomes instead of groggy mornings in the darkness.
9️⃣ Safer Roads and Stronger Communities:
Research has shown that car accidents increase immediately after DST transitions. Standard Time keeps sunrise closer to our daily activities, helping reduce drowsy driving and potentially lowering crime rates during dark morning hours.
🔟 Stability for Health and Happiness:
Time changes disrupt sleep and increase stress and anxiety. Permanent Standard Time provides consistency and a foundation for healthier, happier lives.
It’s simple: Standard Time is natural time.
It’s time to stop changing the clocks and start restoring common sense.
