You may not know me. I could be your neighbor, someone behind you in line at the store, or the person walking their dog down your street. We may never speak, but you’re safer because I carry a concealed firearm every day. Whether or not you support my right to do so, the reality is that your personal safety has quietly benefited from it.

Many people feel uneasy about the idea of civilians carrying guns. That’s understandable in a culture where headlines focus more on firearm misuse than responsible ownership. But there’s another side to the story—one backed by hard data. Dr. John Lott’s book More Guns, Less Crime presents a comprehensive analysis showing that when law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons, violent crime consistently drops.

Lott’s findings are not based on opinion or anecdote—they’re rooted in empirical research. His work examined data across all 3,054 U.S. counties over several decades. The pattern was clear: when states passed “shall-issue” laws, which make it easier for law-abiding citizens to get concealed carry permits, rates of murder, rape, and aggravated assault declined. Criminals, in short, are far less likely to attack when the risk of encountering an armed victim rises.

This effect isn’t magic—it’s deterrence. Just as police presence deters crime, so does the possibility that a potential victim might be armed. And unlike police, who can’t be everywhere at once, concealed carriers are already there—on the sidewalk, in the coffee shop, walking their dog. We blend in, invisible and unremarkable. That uncertainty is exactly what makes us effective.

Let me be clear: I don’t carry because I want to be a hero. I carry because I’ve accepted the uncomfortable truth that evil exists, and the first line of defense in any crisis is the person already on the scene. I hope to live my entire life without drawing my firearm in self-defense. But if violence comes, I won’t be caught helpless. I will be ready to protect myself, my family, and even complete strangers—people who may never know I was the reason they walked away safely.

You may not like guns. You may believe that society would be better off without them. That’s a belief you’re entitled to. But criminals don’t share your idealism. They don’t surrender their weapons or obey gun laws. They prey on the vulnerable and count on compliant victims. By choosing to carry, I shift the balance. I make our community harder to victimize—even if you wish I wouldn’t.

There’s a quiet irony here: the same people who most oppose concealed carry often benefit most from it. They enjoy the same deterrence effect as those who support it. They walk the same safer streets, sit in the same restaurants, send their children to the same schools. And because people like me carry responsibly and legally, they reap the security rewards, whether they know it or not.

So, to those who feel safer in a society where only the police are armed—I understand your perspective, but I don't share your faith in that ideal. I carry because I believe in taking personal responsibility for my safety—and, by extension, yours. You may not thank me. You may even resent me. But I carry anyway. And you are safer for it. You’re welcome.

However deep one's faith in a loving God, I cannot fathom how a parent processes the sudden death of a young child.

This past spring, the five-year-old son of close friends went to bed one night. He did not wake up again. No illness. No medical clues. No answers.

This morning, I learned that the three-and-a-half-year-old son of a colleague became feverish and out of sorts after dinner last night. As his fever spiked, his parents took him to the emergency room, out of an abundance of caution. He passed away a few hours later. No explanation. No time to say goodbye.

The older I get, the less embarrassed I feel crying over something that breaks my heart. If you believe that makes me weak, then I pray I am never as strong as you are.

Tonight, as I tuck my four-year-old and eleven-month-old sons into bed, they will hear what they have heard each day of their lives - my first words to them every morning and my last words to them every night - "I love you. Daddy will always love you."

Lately, I find myself increasingly concerned with the more sinister consequences of dependence on technologies that offer convenient ways to do all of the things we once did for ourselves.

We once used maps and road signs to navigate from point A to point B. We once ran out to the car on cold winter mornings to get the car started warming. We once wrote personal letters and captured our most private thoughts in bound journals that we secreted away from prying eyes. We once explored the world of ideas through books, newspapers and periodicals.

Now, we use GPS to navigate, so we never need to look at a map again. We remote start our cars with smart phone apps. We use email and social media messaging to communicate with our loved ones and bare our souls. We stream news broadcasts through cable providers or read online versions of once respected publications.

Yes, when it is working, GPS will certainly get us where we want to go. At that point, we may know where we are, but we have no coherent sense of how we got there - or how to get back. Then again, if your GPS always tells you where you are, then it also pinpoints your location for others, some of whom you would prefer not have that information. But since it is for your own safety, all is well.

If you can start your car with an app on your phone, then there are likely protocols already in place to disable your car from a server room hundreds of miles away (whether the car is parked or moving at high speed). All for the sake of public safety, of course. Fair enough.

The platforms we trust with our personal communications and most private thoughts are all literally in the business of reading through that information and compiling data that can be used to manipulate us into buying this product or voting for that candidate, and then selling that data to the highest bidder. Enjoy the convenience of streamlined shopping and voting.

If this seems innocuous enough, consider those who despise you sifting through decades-old emails, direct messages and social media posts, looking for a random utterance they can take out of context, dishonestly misrepresent and then use to destroy your career, your family and your place in society. Community standards must be maintained, after all.

Finally, if the memory hole of George Orwell's 1984 was possible in a dystopian world where physical newspapers and magazines were still the order of the day, how much easier to simply rewrite accounts of everything you see, hear or read, when none of it exists in the physical world. Just fill a few offices with right-thinking, latte-sipping, skinny-jean-clad moderators with sufficient zeal for eradicating wrongthink misinformation. The public deserves the truth, however much curation it takes to whittle it down.

My recent forays into digital minimalism are about more than just some Luddite fetish for an imaginary simpler time. They are about taking some steps to restore the inner life that used to truly define who we were as individuals. We all want to believe we are more than just the sum of our user data, but if your digital footprint is the only mark you intend to leave on this world, perhaps you are not much more than that after all.

In June of 1630, the Arbella came to anchor in Salem Harbor, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony was born. Arriving ten years after the settlers of Plymouth Plantation, this first venture of the Massachusetts Bay Company was led by a 41-year-old lawyer named John Winthrop. Just before making landfall, Winthrop stood on the deck of the Arbella, and delivered a sermon, which has since become known as the "City Upon a Hill" speech.

While this speech has often be reviled by critics of America's Pilgrims as some sort of pompous, holier-than-thou harangue, one need only read the sermon in its entirety to understand Winthrop's true purpose in calling his fellow adventurers to walk in a spirit of humble service to God and to each other.

Winthrop's vision of a City Upon a Hill became a consistent theme throughout Ronald Reagan's public career. At the very first Conservative Political Action Conference in January of 1974, Reagan delivered a speech outlining his own vision of what it meant for America to serve as a city on a hill, closing that address with the unapologetic claim that "...we are today the last best hope of man on earth."

As dark as our present days may seem to us at times, we should consider the words of John Winthrop to those exhausted pilgrims, poised to land upon a shore completely alien to the world they had known.

If freedom falls here, it falls everywhere. Only God can deliver victory in a battle on that scale.

Here are Winthrop's words:

Now, the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah: To do Justly. To love mercy. To walk humbly with our God.

For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man.
We must entertain each other in brotherly affection.
We must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities.
We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality.
We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labour and suffer together.

Always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in the work – our Community as members of the same body.
So shall wee keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with.
We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: The Lord make it like that of New England.

For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us – so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.

We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for Gods sake.
We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us – till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel —

"Beloved, there is now set before us life, and good, death and evil in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another. To walk in his ways and to keep his commandments and his ordinance, and his laws, and the articles of our covenant with Him – that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it.

But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other Gods – our pleasures, and profits, and serve them – it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good Land whither we pass over this vast Sea to possess it."

— Deuteronomy 30

Therefore, let us choose life, that we, and our seed may live – by obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is our life, and our prosperity.

While frittering away a few minutes watching random YouTube videos the other day, I came across an old TEDtalk about procrastination. The video is linked below, and I encourage readers to give it a look. The reason I mention it here, though, is that the speaker finished his talk by illustrating just how much time each of us has in this life to either use or waste.

If you assume you are going to live to be ninety years old, then your life will ultimately consist of 4,680 weeks. That sounds like a lot, but the speaker illustrated the reality of this statistic by showing a graphic composed of boxes representing these 4,680 weeks, and reminding the audience that "...we've already used a lot of those."

Even looking at his graphic, the limitations of a lifetime still did not sink in for me, until I created my own graphic to see how far along the path I am already. I created a spreadsheet consisting of 90 columns and 52 rows. The cell in the upper left corner of the array contains my date of birth. The cell in the lower right corning holds that same date ninety years later. Every cell in between contains the date of each week in between. Here is what it looks like.

Each green box represents a week I have lived (or wasted) since the day I was born. Each blue box is a week I have left to live or waste as I choose (again, assuming I live to be ninety years old). We all understand intellectually that we reach a point in our lives where the days behind us outnumber the days ahead, but seeing that mathematical reality in living color really brings it home.

I am inclined to update this chart weekly, and use it as the background image on all my devices. Anything I can do to treat each of those of those little blue boxes like a precious jewel, not to be wasted.

For those interested in burning about fourteen minutes of this week's gift of life, here is a link to the YouTube video that prompted this reflection.

January 25, 1974
First Conservative Political Action Conference

There are three men here tonight I am very proud to introduce. It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted as they have never been lifted in many years. This happened when planes began landing on American soil and in the Philippines, bringing back men who had lived with honor for many miserable years in North Vietnam prisons. Three of those men are here tonight, John McCain, Bill Lawrence and Ed Martin. It is an honor to be here tonight. I am proud that you asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished company.

There are men here tonight who, through their wisdom, their foresight and their courage, have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our times. In years past when others were silent or too blind to the facts, they spoke up forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has passed since Barry Goldwater walked a lonely path across this land reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can’t go on forever borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and reduce the standard of living. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle in our country all of the great ideas and principles which set this nation apart from all the others that preceded it, but louder and more strident voices utter easily sold cliches.

Cartoonists with acid-tipped pens portray some of the reminders of our heritage and our destiny as old-fashioned. They say that we are trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is termed by them as “taking the country back to McKinley.” Of course, I never found that was so bad – under McKinley we freed Cuba. On the span of history, we are still thought of as a young upstart country celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we are the oldest continuing republic in the world.

I thought that tonight, rather than talking on the subjects you are discussing, or trying to find something new to say, it might be appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage.

You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.

This was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the beginning of this country, as it is also true of those later immigrants who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic, but our heritage does set us apart. Some years ago a writer, who happened to be an avid student of history, told me a story about that day in the little hall in Philadelphia where honorable men, hard-pressed by a King who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey, debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess, I never researched or made an effort to verify it. Perhaps it is only legend. But story, or legend, he described the atmosphere, the strain, the debate, and that as men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable act, the walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price – the gallows and the headman’s axe. As the day wore on the issue hung in the balance, and then, according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery. He was not a young man and was obviously calling on all the energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment, he said, “Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines – freedom.” And he added, “If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever.” And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, as I say, whether story or legend, the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was miracle enough. Fifty-six men, a little band so unique – we have never seen their like since – pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.

And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart – but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships – they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home–he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep – all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.

Now we are a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes blood lines from every corner of the world. We have shed that American-melting-pot blood in every corner of the world, usually in defense of someone’s freedom. Those who remained of that remarkable band we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men’s dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution, probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man’s relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contain many of the same guarantees as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say, “Government grants you these rights,” and ours says, “You are born with these rights, they are yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you.”

Lord Acton of England, who once said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” would say of that document, “They had solved with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities, and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom.” Never in any society has the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority.

In less than twenty years we would go to war because the God-given rights of the American sailors, as defined in the Constitution, were being violated by a foreign power. We served notice then on the world that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights of even the least among us. But still, in an older, cynical world, they were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they would come over and divide us up.

In the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he fled to escape execution. In America, this young Hungarian, Koscha by name, became an importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day, business took him to a Mediterranean port. There was a large Austrian warship under the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him. He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken aboard that large ship. This man’s servant, desperate, walking up and down the harbor, suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he had heard. It was a small American war sloop. He went aboard and told Captain Ingraham, of that war sloop, his story. Captain Ingraham went to the American Consul. When the American Consul learned that Koscha had only taken out his first citizenship papers, the consul washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, “I am the senior officer in this port and I believe, under my oath of my office, that I owe this man the protection of our flag.”

He went aboard the Austrian warship and demanded to see their prisoner, our citizen. The Admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck. He was in chains and had been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, “I can hear him better without those chains,” and the chains were removed. He walked over and said to Koscha, “I will ask you one question; consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?” Koscha nodded dumbly, “Yes,” and the Captain said, “You shall have it.” He went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day three more Austrian ships sailed into harbor. It looked as though the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the Austrian flag ship to tell the Admiral that any attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force. He said that he would expect a satisfactory answer by four o'clock that afternoon. As the hour neared they looked at each other through the glasses. As it struck four he had them roll the cannons into the ports and had them light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons – one little sloop. Suddenly the lookout tower called out and said, “They are lowering a boat,” and they rowed Koscha over to the little American ship.

Captain Ingraham then went below and wrote his letter of resignation to the United States Navy. In it he said, “I did what I thought my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country in any way, I resign.” His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with these words: “This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the most important battle in our Nation’s history.” Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.

I did not tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government meeting its highest responsibility.

In recent years we have been treated to a rash of noble-sounding phrases. Some of them sound good, but they don’t hold up under close analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the young senator from Massachusetts, “The greatest good for the greatest number.” Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority.

We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

I realize that such a pronouncement, of course, would possibly be laying one open to the charge of warmongering – but that would also be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price and has fought harder for freedom than any generation that had ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible, all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of John Stuart Mill when he said that “war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.”

The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. The man who has nothing which he cares about more than his personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The widespread disaffection with things military is only a part of the philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you who have recently, or presently are still receiving an education, I am awed by your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the attempts that have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to persuade you that there is little to admire in America. For the second time in this century, capitalism and the free enterprise are under assault. Privately owned business is blamed for spoiling the environment, exploiting the worker and seducing, if not outright raping, the customer. Those who make the charge have the solution, of course – government regulation and control. We may never get around to explaining how citizens who are so gullible that they can be suckered into buying cereal or soap that they don’t need and would not be good for them, can at the same time be astute enough to choose representatives in government to which they would entrust the running of their lives.

Not too long ago, a poll was taken on 2,500 college campuses in this country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained. Overwhelmingly, 65, 70, and 75 percent of the students found business responsible, as I have said before, for the things that were wrong in this country. That same number said that government was the solution and should take over the management and the control of private business. Eighty percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep its paws out of their private lives.

We are told every day that the assembly-line worker is becoming a dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization. Well, there isn’t a socialist country in the world that would not give its copy of Karl Marx for our standardization.

Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly line means more leisure for the worker – freedom from backbreaking and mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx did not abolish child labor or free the women from working in the coal mines in England – the steam engine and modern machinery did that.

Unfortunately, the disciples of the new order have had a hand in determining too much policy in recent decades. Government has grown in size and power and cost through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society. It costs more for government today than a family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. Not even the Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions, bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government, but the federal registry, listing their regulations, is just a few pages short of being as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this government. There were eight cabinet departments and 12 independent agencies to administer the federal health program. There were 35 housing programs and 20 transportation projects. Public utilities had to cope with 27 different agencies on just routine business. There were 192 installations and nine departments with 1,000 projects having to do with the field of pollution.

One Congressman found the federal government was spending 4 billion dollars on research in its own laboratories but did not know where they were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing. One of the research projects was “The Demography of Happiness,” and for 249,000 dollars we found that “people who make more money are happier than people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick.” For 15 cents they could have bought an Almanac and read the old bromide, “It’s better to be rich, young and healthy, than poor, old and sick.”

The course that you have chosen is far more in tune with the hopes and aspirations of our people than are those who would sacrifice freedom for some fancied security.

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, “We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.” Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.

When I was born my life expectancy was 10 years less than I have already lived – that’s a cause of regret for some people in California, I know. Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what is considered the poverty line today, three-quarters lived in what is considered substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than 10 percent. We have increased our life expectancy by wiping out, almost totally, diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world. I doubt if the young people here tonight know the names of some of the diseases that were commonplace when we were growing up. We have more doctors per thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more hospitals than any nation in the world.

When I was your age, believe it or not, none of us knew that we even had a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became a radio sport announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn’t have a Hank Aaron or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spaulding Guide said baseball was a game for Caucasian gentlemen. Some of us then began editorializing and campaigning against this. Gradually we campaigned against all those other areas where the constitutional rights of a large segment of our citizenry were being denied. We have not finished the job. We still have a long way to go, but we have made more progress in a few years than we have made in more than a century.

One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher education are doing so in the United States. The percentage of our young Negro community that is going to college is greater than the percentage of whites in any other country in the world.

One-half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in this republic. We have distributed our wealth more widely among our people than any society known to man. Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. Ninety-five percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients – and a part of the five percent that don’t are trying to lose weight! Ninety-nine percent have gas or electric refrigeration, 92 percent have televisions, and an equal number have telephones. There are 120 million cars on our streets and highways – and all of them are on the street at once when you are trying to get home at night. But isn’t this just proof of our materialism – the very thing that we are charged with? Well, we also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras, and opera companies, non-profit theaters, and publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together.

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling the earth above us in the Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through those years of torture and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We found them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

Hard times breed strong men.
Strong men build good times.
Good times spawn weak men.
Weak men beget hard times.

All of this has happened before.
All of this will happen again.

Being on "the right side of history" isn't about picking the winning side.
It is about being an agent of order in a maelstrom of chaos.

Learn the truth.
Speak the truth.
Never accept the socially convenient lies of the unthinking mob.

They don't hate you for what you say.
They don't hate you for what you do.
They hate you, because you exist.
Your existence substantiates their guilt.

I have followed the progress of the Convention of States movement with great interest since it first launched in 2013. For those not familiar with the legal context for an Article V Convention or States, or for those who have learned most of what they think they know from the legacy media, I encourage you to visit the CoS website to get the story from the source.

When the movement first started, political elites scoffed at the notion that we the people could actually use the plain text of the Constitution to take our power back. As of today, 15 states have already passed CoS resolutions, while 8 others have seen resolutions passed in one legislative house, and another 16 have legislation active in this current session. The Constitution stipulates that a Constitutional Convention must be held, once 34 states have passed resolutions to authorize one.

Despite being supportive from the very beginning, even I have been skeptical of states finding the backbone to bring a convention to life. Not only am I becoming more optimistic that success is within reach, the tone of corporate media coverage of the movement has begun showing a level of animosity that can only reflect a growing panic among the political elite that the unthinkable may soon become reality. The peasants are revolting, and that's not just Mel Brooks talking.

With the possibility that we might see tangible proposals for amending the Constitution coming from those of us outside the beltway, I wanted to take the opportunity to propose a few of the amendments I think are critical to restoring American greatness.

Restoring State Sovereignty

Despite the long perpetuated myth that the 17th Amendment, allowing for the direct election of United States Senators, was some sort of victory for democracy, serious observers generally agree that this delusion could not be further from the truth. Altering the method by which Senators are elected had nothing to do with expanding democracy and everything to do with stripping the states of any power they might have to resist the dictates of a more muscular federal government. Woodrow Wilson notoriously despised the Constitution's protections of the power of states to defend the rights of their citizens against federal dictates. He was convinced that the experts in Washington would always know better what was best in every case, and that local ignorance should not be allowed to stand in the way of progress.

The following amendment is intended to heal this self-inflicted wound:

The seventeenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Upon ratification of this amendment, the election of United States Senators shall be remanded to the exclusive authority of the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the original text of Article I, Section 3.

The voting shall be public, and each legislator shall openly declare the candidate for whom his or her vote is cast.

Each citizen may petition his or her state legislator(s) to support or oppose any candidate, however, no public balloting shall be allowed to replace or constrain the voting of the legislators for the office of United States Senator.

Re-Federalizing the Presidency

Like the Senate, the office of the President was intended to balance the competing interests of state and federal authority. The Electoral College exists precisely to ensure that less populous states have some modicum of protection from a majoritarian tyranny in the selection of the nation's executive. Unfortunately, the Electoral College has proven a half-measure in providing this protection, since the method of selecting electors was left to individual states to determine. During the first half-century of the republic, most states maintained the practice of allowing state legislators to name electors to the Electoral College. But because the U.S. Constitution was silent on the issue, states eventually succumbed to popular pressure to conduct public elections to name electors.

With one voice, the left in America now rails against the Electoral College and argues for its abolition. In truth, the Electoral College no longer provides its fully intended measure of protection against blind majoritarianism. But far from abolishing the institution, our best hope for restoring the integrity of our federal system is to close the gap the framers left in the electoral process and ensure that the votes cast in the electoral college adequately reflect the will of the states, not the will of the donor class.

The President of the United States shall be chosen by the Electoral College, as provided in Article II, Section 1.

On the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, electors shall be selected by a vote of the legislators in each state.

The voting shall be public, and each legislator shall openly declare the candidate for whom his or her vote is cast.

Each citizen may petition his or her state legislator(s) to support or oppose any candidate, however, no public balloting shall be allowed to replace or constrain the voting of the legislators for the office of the President of the United States.

In the event that a state's legislature is unable to agree upon the selection of a single candidate by the date scheduled for election, the Governor of that state shall name the candidate to whom the state's electors are pledged.

Establishing Judicial Stability

Recent talk of court packing has underscored the vulnerability of the Supreme Court to partisan political meddling. So long as any slim, temporary majority of partisan politicians can install a handful of similarly partisan jurists into lifetime appointments, there is no solid ground from which the integrity of the Constitution can be defended. The below amendment is written not only to prevent future attempts at court packing, but to also remedy the damage inflicted by any court packing exercise conducted prior to its ratification.

The effect of this amendment is to limit the size of the United States Supreme Court to no more than nine justices.

Upon ratification of this amendment, any sitting Justice whose confirmation produced a Supreme Court panel of greater than nine justices will be immediately removed from the court and barred for life from further service on the federal bench.

Upon ratification of this amendment, any rulings issued by a Supreme Court panel comprised of greater that nine justices, or by a panel that includes a justice removed by the above provision, are immediately and irrevocably vacated. Likewise, any subsequent District, Appellate or Supreme Court ruling predicated upon the substance of such vacated rulings are themselves likewise vacated.

Reaffirming the Right to Bear Arms

Intellectually honest students of American history recognize three very important truths about the origins and intent of the Second Amendment.

• Since the right to armed self-defense is a natural right that precedes the existence of government, the Second Amendment does not GRANT a right to the individual citizen, but rather PROHIBITS the government from infringing upon a right over which government has no moral authority.
• Despite sometimes willful efforts to misconstrue the meaning of the amendment's prefatory clause, the right to keep and bear arms was always intended to protect an individual right completely outside the context of military service to the state.
• Because the authors of the Constitution saw this right as a critically necessary check on the tyrannical potential of government, they fully intended every free citizen to have unfettered access to so-called "battlefield weapons of war".

The following proposed amendment removes opportunities for intentional misinterpretations perpetrated by intellectually dishonest actors (including at least one former Supreme Court Justice).

A universally well-armed population being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms suitable for use in military conflict shall not be infringed.

Preventing Partisan Dilution of States' Authority

Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution grants Congress the near-unilateral authority to admit new states as follows:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

At no time in our history did this arrangement represent the threat to the integrity of our federal system that it does today, but these are not normal times. Throwing aside any vestige of respect for American norms and traditions, a razor thin majority in Congress has undertaken an effort to manufacture future electoral majorities by admitting both the District of Columbia and the island of Puerto Rico as new states. The following amendment would prevent such brazenly partisan attempts at electoral jury rigging, by requiring that the states themselves consent to the addition of new members to their ranks. The proposed amendment reads as follows:

The admittance of New States into this Union may be proposed by the Congress; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

Congress having proposed the admission of a New State into the Union, such admission must be approved by the legislatures of a majority of the states comprising the Union a the time of the proposal.

If a period of five years has elapsed since the proposed admission of a new state, and a majority of the state legislatures has not approved the admission, then the proposal is withdrawn.

Once withdrawn, any new proposal of statehood shall require approval by a majority of the state legislatures convening after the date of the new proposal.

Doubtless, there are many other amendments likely to be discussed and debated at a convention, but in my view, the above would have the greatest chance of restoring our nation to the best conceived elements of its founding.

Once upon a time, there were some things about which Americans all agreed.

At a time when we seem to agree on almost nothing, this film shouldn't just be nostalgiac. It should be aspirational.

As I lay awake this morning, waiting for the alarm (or the baby) to sound, my wandering mind gradually focused on a single question — "What are you most afraid of?"

I am not afraid of dying. I sincerely believe I am not. What I do fear is dying, without having gotten around to living. Coming to that realization just a few months shy of my 56th birthday seems ridiculous, but it is indeed a hard truth.

I fear that those who survive me will believe I was someone other than who I believe I am. I fear that my wife and children might wonder how much I loved them. I fear never mastering the habits that should have defined my life. I fear never finishing the achievements that should have defined my legacy.

I sometimes see in my older children the same sense of ambivalent ambition that has served me so poorly — the sense that the array of potential avenues for success and fulfillment is so broad that every commitment seems to come with an opportunity cost too heavy to bear.

This paralysis of overwhelming opportunity not only burdens the ability to commit fully to any single pursuit, it also deepens the sense of disappointment and loss when those few, half-hearted commitments we force ourselves to make produce their inevitably half-measured results.

So what do I tell my children about this? What do I tell myself? Sometimes, letting life imitate art is not a half-bad idea. For me, the best moment in the film Shawshank Redemption comes when Tim Robbins offers this observation to Morgan Freeman.

I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really.
Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'.

That simple statement encapsulates the meaning of the entire film for me. It is the full-throated battle cry that shouts down the cacophonous din of every fear of failure we hear in our heads every waking hour of every day.

If I want my survivors to believe I was the man I wanted to be, then I need to be that man for them, while I still have days left in me to do so.

Ensuring that loved ones feel loved starts with saying the words every... single... day. Beyond the words, there are endless opportunities to prove the truth of the words through action, if only we would take the time to imagine those actions, and then follow through.

The work of building the habits that define a life begins with the choice of just one habit. Focus on only one. Make it a reality, and then move on. Building good habits is itself a skill that can only be mastered by doing it — not by thinking about it or worrying about it.

It is far too easy to use the despair of not achieving everything as an excuse to achieve nothing at all. Choose the thing. Do the thing. Stop making excuses. And, for God's sake, stop whining all the time.

It seems strange that we spend so much of our lives trying to lose our fear of dying. All of that energy could be so much better spent figuring out how to stop being so afraid of living.

Yes, this is a smorgasbord of first world problems. But this is the first world, and I prefer facing the problems I have, rather than feeling guilty about the problems I don't have.

Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That’s a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It’s a good thing.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.

— George Orwell

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

— Marcus Aurelius

What follows is an essay by Werner Erhard. As a believing Christian, I am not convinced that this take is entirely aligned with my sense of truth, but it still feels like a useful meditation on our relationship with God as the ultimate what's so.

"What’s so is always just what’s so. What’s so doesn’t care what you think, feel, intend or wish; it will not bend. You can be freaked out or driven over what’s so, and it won’t change what’s so. If you’re late for an appointment, getting freaked out about it won’t have you arrive any earlier. If you’re having a bad day, being freaked out won’t change what’s so. That which you seek will not bring you satisfaction – aligning with what’s so will. When you’re upset, you’re never upset over what’s so. What’s so is just what’s so, and you’re upset.

If your house burns down and you get upset, does it bring your house back? What’s so doesn’t care if you’re upset; it’s up to you how you handle what’s so. There is no confusion in what’s so. When you don’t know you just don’t know – there is no confusion there. There’s nothing right or wrong about what’s so. What’s so is always open to different interpretations. There’s always just what’s so, and then you have an interpretation. What scares you isn’t what’s so, it’s your interpretation. The interpretation is never true; what’s so is real, the interpretation is not.

Who you’re being is just who you’re being, and what’s so doesn’t care if you’re happy with it or not, so why should you? When you’re not being with what’s so, that’s also just what’s so. Why should you concern yourself? Other people should always be the way they’re being; if you think they shouldn’t, that’s your interpretation. Bring yourself back to what’s so about them. Until you can be with what’s so, you can’t be with anything or anyone. You may have control over other people’s what’s so, but none over their interpretation – give it up.

If you take action or not, it’s still just what’s so. If it works out well or not, it’s still just what’s so. You can never make a right or wrong decision, or take a right or wrong action. Whatever you do will always bring you more of what’s so, and then you have an interpretation about it. Whatever you don’t have, so what? Whatever you’ve done or thought in the past, again so what? Whatever happens in the future is not to be feared. It’s just going to be more of what’s so. The challenge is to spend as much time in what’s so as you can. The chatter in your head is more interpretation, and it has nothing to do with what’s so. There’s nothing wrong with the chatter, it’s just you listening to a fantasy.

The thought that there is something wrong is an illusion; there is nothing wrong, there is only what’s so. Notice when you’re comparing what’s so to some fantasy of how it should be. Bring yourself back to what’s so and it will be O.K. Ask yourself what’s so, and align with that. Align with what’s so and it will not matter. That is the foundation of transformation and satisfaction. Not aligning with what’s so is the only thing that will ever bring you hardship or suffering. Life in what’s so will bring you harmony, grace, and balance. Ask yourself – what’s so about your situation?

This YouTube video is a meditative presentation of the above.

For more information on Werner Ehrhard himself, visit wernererhard.com

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

— Frederick Douglass