The article, which stated that North Korea is the world’s most unlikely growth story, touted its accomplishments, including a booming economy aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and turning up its nose at international sanctions to import more energy, components, and materials.

Kim closed its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have remained largely closed since then. Since then, he has initiated a nationwide construction initiative. Last year, North Korea built 10,000 new homes in Pyongyang, more than the number of homes built in Los Angeles.

Outside the capital city, North Korea remains poor, with nearly half of its 26 million residents malnourished, according to a U.N. report. The country is one of the world’s worst violators of human rights, where distributing South Korean content can be punishable by death.

North Korea didn’t turn around its economy on its own. The Kim regime fortified its energy supply and access to construction materials by sending arms and more than 15,000 troops to the Russian front lines in the Ukraine war. One-third of those soldiers were killed or injured. The arms sales have returned billions.

Monthly trade with China just hit an eight-year high, with a variety of Chinese consumer brands touting business in North Korea despite such sales violating sanctions. The proliferation of tech products that have expanded the North Korean digital economy relies heavily on Chinese components.

Both Beijing and Moscow, which have veto power at the U.N., have reiterated their calls to ease sanctions on Pyongyang. Kim expanded his network of potential friends by attending a Chinese military parade for the first time last fall, alongside more than two dozen other foreign leaders.

North Korea’s economy expanded 3.7% in 2024, its fastest rate in eight years, according to the most recent figures from South Korea’s central bank, which uses spy-agency data to produce its estimate. South Korean think tanks estimate the growth has continued.

Five years ago, North Korea appeared to be on the ropes. Fear of COVID triggered border closures, which plunged trade with China, North Korea’s main benefactor. Energy shortages forced coal mines to halt production. Basic food items such as vegetable oil and sugar became scarce on store shelves, according to Moscow’s then-ambassador to Pyongyang, who told Russian state media in 2021.

The economic downturn started to recover following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, an action North Korea publicly supported.

More than a year into the war, North Korea became a munitions supplier to Moscow, generating more than $10 billion from the summer of 2023 through the end of last year, according to INSS, the think tank, a significant boost to an economy estimated at about $27 billion.

Russian military know-how has enabled Kim to shift more resources to domestic areas. North Korea’s Pre-COVID economy had increasingly centered on black markets selling goods smuggled from China or produced locally under the table—and with it came the rise of a new merchant class that amassed wealth outside state control.

What are we to make of this article? What is its purpose? Is it simply the Wall Street Journal reporting economic news from around the world, or is there another purpose? Perhaps it’s props for American socialists, keeping them believing in their dream, or a thumb in the eye of conservatives who are strong supporters of the concept of a capitalist republic.

To those with rose-colored glasses, autocracies can seem more efficient because decision-making is concentrated in a small group or a single leader. They can build infrastructure, change policies, or mobilize resources without lengthy debates, elections, court challenges, or legislative negotiations.

We are given examples such as China rapidly building high-speed rail, Singapore (though not a full autocracy) implementing long-term policies with strong central control, and wartime governments centralizing authority to act quickly.

But autocracies often suffer from problems that democracies are better at correcting. Bad decisions can be implemented just as efficiently as good ones.

If a leader makes a mistake, there may be few checks to prevent it. The same centralized power that enables speed can magnify errors. Information can be distorted, leading to inefficiency. Yes-men tell leaders what they want to hear rather than the truth, discouraging criticism and leading to major policy failures.

Democracies have regular, predictable transfers of power. Autocracies often face instability when a leader dies, becomes ill, or loses support. Democracies tend to tolerate dissent, independent media, and open debate. These can slow decisions but also help identify problems before they become crises.

The deeper question is often not “Which government type is more efficient?” but “Efficient at what?” Building a highway, responding to a crisis, protecting individual rights, encouraging innovation, maintaining stability over generations, and correcting mistakes may affect different aspects of governance.

Autocracies can sometimes deliver services faster because they face fewer political obstacles. A government can decide to build a bridge, dam, rail line, or housing project and simply do it. Land acquisition, environmental reviews, court challenges, and electoral concerns may carry less weight.

Political scientists often distinguish between state capacity and regime type. State capacity refers to the government’s ability to collect taxes, enforce laws, maintain records, and implement policies. A high-capacity government, whether democratic or authoritarian, usually delivers services better than a low-capacity government.

Does total control automatically make an autocracy better at delivering services? The answer is generally no. Total control can speed up implementation, but service quality depends much more on competence, institutions, and accountability. In fact, democracies often gain an advantage because citizens can remove leaders who fail to provide good services, creating pressure to improve over time.

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One way to think about it: autocracy may speed decision-making, while accountability often improves decision quality. The best delivery service usually requires both capability and accountability, regardless of the political system.

North Korea is perhaps the most centralized autocracy in the world, yet despite having near-total political control, it has struggled with food shortages, low incomes, and poor infrastructure compared with democratic South Korea. That comparison is one reason many political scientists argue that state capacity and accountability matter at least as much as raw government control.

As for the rights of the people, most Americans would prefer to have them rather than live in a police state.

Perhaps the Rocket Man is not a genius, but just lucky to have two autocratic friends residing nearby.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

But who is in this class? It’s a surprising answer. The people who might be in the most trouble are not the ones you’d expect. According to this new way of thinking, the group most at risk is the college-educated. That’s right. The people who have spent years in school and have expensive degrees might be the ones who get replaced first.

Why is this? The problem starts in college itself. For many years, colleges have been giving out more and more A’s. It used to be that a “C” grade was average. Now, it feels like almost everyone gets an A or a B. This is often called “grade inflation.” It means that a college degree doesn’t always mean what it used to. It’s harder to tell who really worked hard and learned a lot, and who just got by.

But the bigger problem is what students are actually learning. Many college graduates today have not read many full books. They might read summaries or chapters, but not entire texts. They also write very few long papers. And when they do write papers, it is very tempting to use AI to do the work.

You can type a rough idea into a program, and it will spit out a well-written, organized paper in seconds. It’s very hard for students to resist this. After all, the AI makes your writing sound much better.

Now, to be fair, you can’t just tell the AI to “write a paper” and get a good grade. You still need to do the research. You need to understand the topic. You need to have the raw facts and ideas to feed into the AI in the first place. The AI is a great tool for polishing a draft, but you have to provide the raw materials.

However, to do that research, you need to be “literate.” You need to know how to read and understand complex information. You need a basic understanding of math and statistics. You need to know the difference between things that are connected (correlation) and things that actually cause each other (causation).

If you don’t have this basic understanding, the AI won’t save you. It will just create more “slop”—meaningless, poorly argued nonsense. It will just produce a different kind of bad paper. For people who are functionally illiterate, meaning they can read words but can’t understand complex ideas, the AI is just a tool to create more confusion.

This creates a scary situation. College is incredibly expensive, and most students have to take out loans to pay for it. Here’s the worst part: most of that college debt can never be wiped away, even if you go bankrupt. If you start a business and it fails, you can declare bankruptcy and get rid of that business debt. But you can’t do that with student loans. This was a deliberate law passed a long time ago.

It was designed so that students couldn’t just graduate, get a great job, and then declare bankruptcy to erase their debt. Politicians sometimes talk about forgiving student loans, but the law makes it extremely difficult to do so on a large scale. This means that millions of people are stuck with huge monthly payments for decades. They are trapped.

So, the college-educated person has a degree that might not mean much; they might not have learned the deep skills needed to analyze information, and they are trapped under a mountain of debt. They are being squeezed from all sides. This is the group that might be most vulnerable to being replaced by AI.

The New American Dream: Working with Your Hands

Now, let’s look at who is not going to be in this AI underclass. The new hero of the economy is the blue-collar worker. These are the people who work with their hands. Think about a plumber. When your toilet is overflowing and water is spilling all over the floor, you don’t call a computer program. You call a plumber. A plumber has to come to your house, look at the pipes, figure out the problem, and fix it with their hands and their tools. AI can’t do that.

What about an electrician? When a storm knocks out the power in your neighborhood, AI can’t climb a pole and fix the wires. When you want to add a new outlet in your kitchen, you need someone who knows the building codes, can work safely with high voltage, and can run wires through your walls. That’s a skilled trade.

Carpenters are the same. They build houses, frames, cabinets, and decks. They use saws, hammers, and their knowledge of wood and design to create real, physical things. Dental hygienists are another great example. They are the people who clean your teeth at the dentist’s office. They use special tools to scrape plaque and polish your teeth. They have to interact with you, be gentle, and know exactly what they are doing in your mouth. Again, a robot or AI is a long way from being able to do that.

It even includes the person at the car wash who takes your keys, drives your car into the tunnel, and then wipes it down at the end. They vacuum the seats and scrub the floor mats. This job requires human hands, human judgment, and human interaction. An AI can’t look at your car and see that a spot was missed.

Why are all these jobs safe from AI? It comes down to two things: physical labor and human interaction.

First, these jobs require physical movement. You have to be there, in person, to do the work. You have to move around, lift things, and use your hands to build, fix, or clean. AI is information. It exists on a screen. It can’t install a new water heater or wire a new ceiling fan.

Second, these jobs are constantly changing. Every house is different. Every plumbing system is unique. Every patient has different teeth. A carpenter has to deal with wood that might be warped. A plumber has to figure out pipes that were installed incorrectly by the previous owner. This kind of “hands-on problem solving” requires a human brain. You need to look at the situation, figure out what’s wrong, and figure out the best way to fix it. This is a type of thinking that AI is very, very bad at.

The best part is that these jobs pay very well. A master plumber or electrician can make a fantastic living. They often make more money than college graduates who are sitting in an office. And they don’t have the same kind of debt. Instead of spending four years in college and $100,000 on tuition, they spent time in an apprenticeship. They learned on the job, they earned money while they learned, and they ended up with a highly valuable, lifelong skill.

This is the new American Dream. It’s a dream where you build a stable, middle-class life not with a fancy piece of paper from a university, but with a strong back, a smart mind, and a good set of tools. It’s a life where your value comes from being able to solve real-world problems for real people. And in a world where computers are getting smarter and smarter, the people who can do things that computers can’t will always be in demand.

The Future is Skilled

In the end, the AI revolution is not just about robots. It’s about the value we place on different kinds of intelligence. For a long time, we told our kids, “Go to college, or you’ll end up working with your hands.” We made it seem like a trade school was a second choice.

But the joke is on us. It might be that the people we are encouraging to go to college and get into debt are the ones who will be left behind. The future belongs to the tinkerers, the fixers, and the builders. The future belongs to the people who can not only think with their heads but also work with their hands.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Antisemitic trends in America are a relatively recent phenomenon.

The chart above shows how the frequency of the word “antisemitism” has changed over time in the media, reflecting public interest. It provides a helpful measure of how much attention this topic has received over the last 20 years.

Antisemitism in America has multiple causes, reflecting the diversity of cultural and social views in our country. Researchers, Jewish organizations, political analysts, and law enforcement generally point to a mix of political polarization, social media dynamics, conspiracy thinking, spillover from international conflict, and broader social instability.

There are at least 8 different drivers acting in the United States.

1. Political polarization and extremism - On the far right, classic antisemitic ideas — Jewish control of finance, media, government, “globalism,” demographic replacement theories — have re-entered public discourse. Violent incidents like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the Poway synagogue shooting were tied to white nationalist ideology.

On the far left, intense anti-Israel activism sometimes crosses into antisemitic tropes or collective blame directed at Jews broadly rather than criticism of the Israeli government specifically. Many Jewish groups distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from rhetoric that demonizes Jews as a people.

2. Social media amplification - platforms reward outrage, emotional content, and conspiracy narratives. Algorithms rapidly spread conspiracy theories, historical distortions, Holocaust denial, “hidden elite” narratives, and emotionally charged political content.

3. Declining historical literacy - surveys show that many Americans — especially younger generations — know less about the Holocaust, Jewish history, and the historical consequences of antisemitic propaganda. This weakens social resistance to recycled stereotypes and misinformation.

4. Scapegoating during periods of instability - Historically, antisemitism has risen during periods of economic anxiety, cultural change, political distrust, and social fragmentation. Jews have often been cast as symbolic “insiders” or blamed for complex societal problems by both the left and the right. This pattern has recurred across centuries and political systems.

5. Spillover from the Middle East conflict - Tensions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict strongly affect antisemitism levels in the U.S. After major events such as the wars in Gaza, terrorist attacks, and military operations, reported antisemitic incidents often spike. Jewish institutions may become targets regardless of individuals’ political beliefs. Many American Jews report feeling pressured to answer collectively for the Israeli government’s actions.

6. Mainstreaming of conspiracy culture - General conspiracy thinking has grown in American culture, marked by distrust of institutions, anti-elite narratives, secret cabals, and “deep state” thinking. Antisemitism has historically adapted easily to conspiracy culture because Jews are often cast as the alleged hidden force behind events.

7. Normalization through public discourse - Ideas once considered socially unacceptable now appear more openly in online commentary, protests, fringe media, and occasionally mainstream politics. Repeated exposure can desensitize people to antisemitic language or symbols.

8. Identity politics and tribalism - Modern politics increasingly organizes people into competing identity groups. In highly polarized environments, minorities can become symbolic stand-ins for larger ideological battles. Jews occupy a complicated position because they are seen differently across racial, religious, economic, and political frameworks.

Antisemitism existed in Germany before the Nazis, and was expressed through conspiracy theories, nationalist resentment, and claims that Jews caused Germany’s defeat in World War I. The Nazis did not invent these ideas. They unified them into a total ideology tied to race, nationalism, and authoritarianism.

The Nazis were historically distinct because they moved beyond earlier persecutions by other groups, which often included exclusion, forced conversion, segregation, or expulsion, to total racial categorization, continent-wide persecution, mechanized mass murder, and the deliberate elimination of every Jew they could reach.

Let’s take a minute and look at the similarities and differences between America today and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The similarities include conspiracy thinking, portraying Jews as outsiders, economic and social anxiety fueling scapegoating, and ideology spread through mass communication.

The differences are substantial, however, and include the following.

1. The U.S. government does not have an inherently antisemitic structure. Currently, antisemitism is not recognized as the official government stance. Jewish individuals have complete legal protections, antisemitic acts are prosecuted, and Jewish Americans are actively involved in politics, academia, business, media, and civic spheres.

2. American society is far more pluralistic, with strong traditions of religious freedom, constitutional protections, independent courts, diverse media, and civil society organizations. Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, universities, religious groups, and law enforcement openly monitor and combat antisemitism.

3. Antisemitism in America is fragmented, not centralized. In America today, antisemitism emerges from far-right white nationalism, some far-left anti-Zionist movements crossing into antisemitic rhetoric, extremist religious ideologies, and online conspiracy ecosystems.

4. Violence exists, but not industrialized persecution. The U.S. has experienced serious antisemitic attacks, including synagogue shootings, harassment, vandalism, and threats. This violence is not state-supported or state-driven.

You may recall my discussion of Hannah Arendt’s views in my last article. That article discussed her views on political equality. She also had strong opinions about antisemitism, which partly reflect her own experiences while avoiding capture by the Nazis.

Arendt labeled the Jews a “pariah” people, because of their dual characters: the parvenu or the assimilated Jew trying to enter elite society by downplaying Jewish identity, and the pariah, the outsider who accepts marginality and may develop moral or intellectual independence from it. She believed many talented Jewish intellectuals occupied a “conscious pariah” role.

Arendt believed the Jewish assimilation into modern society was incomplete and fragile. The emancipation in 19th-century Europe gave Jews legal rights but not genuine political security. They could become wealthy, cultured, and professionally successful, while remaining socially vulnerable because acceptance depended on unstable social moods rather than durable political belonging. Jews believed that success meant safety, but they didn’t understand that safety was dependent on antisemitism being controlled.

According to Arendt, the collapse of the traditional nation-state created a catastrophe. She asserted that minorities without secure national protection become vulnerable when states fail to protect them. She argued that Jews exemplified this vulnerability most clearly because they were dispersed across Europe, lacked sovereign protection, and often depended on fragile legal arrangements. This made them symbolic targets during social crises.

Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” during the 1960 Eichmann trial in Israel. Eichmann was a high-ranking Nazi accused of murdering thousands. In his defense, he claimed he was simply doing what he was told. The banality of evil describes a person who acts as a bureaucratic administrator, uses shallow clichés, and obeys without weighing the consequences. She concludes that great evil can be committed by ordinary people who stop thinking critically about morality.

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If the Iran war and the Gaza conflict can be resolved, the fever of antisemitism in the United States will subside. The left’s antisemitic behavior is tied to their oppressor-oppressed ideology, and that rage will be dampened if they believe oppression has subsided. On the extreme right, there is no hope for cooler heads, because racial persecution is built into their authoritarian ideology.

The Jewish people are victims of their uniqueness, which is a constant excuse for targeting them.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

That said, I prefer kids; they’re cuter, more fun to play with, and serve an important function in society. Ya, I’m taking a brave stance, right?

What’s the connection? For one, behavior. Pets require their owners to train them, while kids need attentive, responsible parents.

“Owner?” you might say, “don’t you mean ‘pet parent?’” My response? Come here so I can punch you. I don’t know which statement is more annoying, “we’re pregnant” or “I’m a pet parent.” No matter how much you love your pet, you aren’t its parent.

A little while back, I wrote an article about Zoomers, the cost of lunch, and the importance of budgets. I had no intention of returning to the subject until I listened to a podcast recently that informed me that there are more pets in Australia than people.

Insert jaw drop here

What does this have to do with budgets, you might ask? Well, during the discussion, one of the hosts mentioned that he budgets $10,000 ($6,984 USD) per year for his dog.

Insert jaw drop here

Math is hard!

There are two issues at play here; the first is money. Young people complain, with justification, that there is an affordability crisis and that housing is beyond reach. Yet many seem resistant to making the necessary sacrifices required to achieve their financial goals.

I covered why eating out regularly and carrying credit card debt is a bad idea in the last article. If you don’t understand this, you may as well stop reading and go treat yourself to a $28 lunch - after you buy your next tattoo, of course - because you are beyond saving.

However, these costs would seem to be minor when compared to pet ownership.

This is no fringe issue; ~45–60% (rising) of Zoomers have pets. Many of them have multiple pets.

Pets would appear to be like tattoos; once you get one, you can’t stop yourself from getting another. This is no small issue when talking about budgets.

I have a pet. I’ve had a few. However, I didn’t get one until other financial matters were addressed. There’s a word for this: “priorities.”

Complaining about the cost of living, housing, groceries, etc., while owning expensive pets is an example of an inability to prioritize.

How big of an issue is it?

I’d say big since “nearly 40% of pet owners recently surveyed by LendingTree said they had gone into debt because of their pet. And among households with pet debt, nearly 1 in 4 have at least $1,000 in pet debt.”

How you spend your money is your decision; just don’t bitch to me about how hard your life is.

“Pets are people!”

The second issue with “runaway pet ownership” affects more than the pet owner; it affects society at large. Let’s call it “misplaced values.” This is where “pet parent” comes into play.

If you follow the news, you likely know that there is an immigration debate going on. This debate is influenced by declining fertility rates in the West, where countries have seen rates fall below the replacement level.

Pet ownership isn’t the cause, but it certainly isn’t helping. Especially when so many people identify as “pet parents” and put pet ownership, yes, ownership, on an equal footing as parenthood.

The fact that there are more pets in Australia than people came as a surprise, so I looked into a few other countries, and while it’s not quite that bad, it’s not good. Especially when we compare it to the number of children each country has.

For three countries with insufficient fertility rates, having more pets than children is a disturbing sign. It’s also getting worse as people replace having children with having pets.

Note: If you say, “fur babies,” I will have you killed.

A “simple” plan

Would these countries be better off if more people had chosen children over pets? How many more children would need to exist for their fertility rates to be above replacement?

It’s a hard question to answer. You can’t directly convert today’s child population into a fertility rate. However, you can estimate how many additional children would have been born over the past 18 years if each country had maintained replacement-level fertility (about 2.1 children per woman) instead of its actual fertility rate.

How many kids aren’t being born because “pet parents” equate cats and dogs to people? Hard to say, but society would be better off if we had more children.

How do we change this?

I’m generally against taxes, but if I thought it would fix the problem, I’d suggest a very high tax on pet ownership. Given the numbers, it might even fix the budget issues at the same time.

It won’t work, though. With pet ownership sitting well north of 50%, it would never pass. We’ll just have to fall back on the old tried-and-true methods.

Guilt and shame.

So here is a message from us “olds” to you young’uns: we’re not getting any younger, and we want to be grandparents at some point. I get it, kids are expense and you’re “not ready.”

Who ever was?

They don’t hand out books that say, “here’s how to be a parent.” Actually, it’s worse than they do, but they all contradict each other. You make mistakes, and you learn as you go. Just like everyone has. Yes, it’s hard work. And expensive.

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But it’s much more rewarding than pet ownership. Something you can’t understand until you have a child. My advice to pet owners in general and “pet parents” specifically?

Grow up! Start having kids. Your dog isn’t going to visit you in your old age home. Neither will your cat. Worse, if you die alone, your cat will probably eat you. We’ll never solve the fertility crisis as long as society puts pets on equal footing with people.

So “get busy!” I’ll even, grudgingly, allow you to say “we’re pregnant” if it will seal the deal. Until then, I’m thinking of selling bumper stickers that say, “Save the West, punch a pet parent.”

Any takers?

About the Author
Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

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Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The left still controls academia, including the universities, the mainstream media, and the deep state. The right controls the Supreme Court and Congress (by a small margin).

The second-most-important election is this fall. If the Democrats take the House, the Trump agenda takes a hit, and the impeachments will begin again. There is no scenario in which tribalism will abate so that the Democrats will bring back their neoliberal/progressive agenda, and most of what Trump has accomplished will be lost. The Republicans have to have eight more years in power to halt the progressive agenda fully.

Here we will take an early look at the Democratic race for the presidential nomination and see what it tells us.

According to Mark Halperin’s reporting, which I trust to be reasonably objective, Democrats line up as follows: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Rahm Emanuel, AOC, Mark Kelly, J.D. Pritzker. In his opinion, all of the candidates are weak for one reason or another.

Mark’s ratings are based on intelligence from insiders, not polls. He separates electability from popularity, and one of his strongest metrics for electability is whether the candidate has a vision for themselves and the country. Most of the people on this list do not have a vision they can articulate.

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California – His strengths are an elite communicator, very comfortable on a national stage, a strong fundraising network (Hollywood + donors), and he’s already running a shadow national campaign. His weaknesses are California liability (crime, homelessness narratives), and he can come off as overly slick. Newsom is a progressive hybrid, the most presidential-looking, but also the easiest Republican target.

Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania - His strengths are winning big in a swing state, a pragmatic, moderate tone, and a strong executive image. His weaknesses are lower national name recognition and a less charismatic persona than Newsom. Shapiro is a center-left candidate to the right of the progressives, and Halperin treats him as the most dangerous general-election candidate. Dangerous in the sense that if his competitors overlook him, they will be making a mistake.

Pete Buttigieg, former Transportation Secretary. His strengths are that he is extremely disciplined, a strong communicator, strong in media and debates, and he appeals to educated voters. His weaknesses are a limited executive record and his weakness with Black voters (historically). We could label him a technocratic reformer. He’s always competitive, but still needs to create a broader coalition.

Kamala Harris, former Vice President. Her strengths are a strong national infrastructure, support among key Democratic constituencies, and a first-in-line position if Biden fully exits the scene. Her weaknesses include low approval ratings and messaging inconsistency. She is an institutional coalition candidate. Kamala is the default front-runner if she runs well, but she is very beatable.

Rahm Emanuel, former Chicago mayor and ambassador. His strengths are deep political experience, and he’s a strong operator and strategist. His weaknesses are that he is polarizing and seen as an old-guard establishment figure. You could label him a hard-nosed centrist. He is probably more influential behind the scenes than as a candidate.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, current Congresswoman. Her strengths are her marketing ability and the base of followers she has developed. Her weakness is that she is a polarizing personality. She will influence the race if she runs.

Mark Kelly, Arizona senator, astronaut. His strength is his strong general-election profile. His weaknesses are that he has only moderate appeal and weak primary energy.

J. B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois. His strengths are his massive personal wealth (which allows him to self-fund), strong progressive credentials, and executive experience. His weaknesses are low national charisma and the fact that Illinois doesn’t scream “electability.” He is a progressive establishment candidate, but he’s not a serious player if money and organization dominate.

You can place these candidates into four lanes: Shapiro and Kelly are electable; Harris and Newsom are part of the national machine; Buttigieg is a next-generation politician; and AOC and Pritzker are in the progressive ideological lane.

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Of course, the central battle within the party is between the progressive and more traditional wings. The progressives want to change more and don’t care if that makes them less popular along the way. Elections, unlike primaries, are usually won by centrist candidates because they have to attract independents to vote for them.

The energy in the Democratic Party lies with the progressives for several reasons: their zeal makes them activists; primaries are ideological contests; institutions that generate new ideas (universities) are progressive; and the progressives have greater cultural influence through the media and cultural institutions.

Moderates still have significant money influence, however. Contributions from East Coast and West Coast sources are approximately equal, so Silicon Valley/Hollywood doesn’t control things on its own. Blue state identity matters too. Strong blue states will nominate progressive candidates, while swing states must nominate moderates to increase their chances of winning the nomination.

How does the general election look from our long-distance position? The Polymarket betting line has Newsom ahead of AOC in the nomination race. On the Republican side, Vance defeats Rubio in the primary and goes on to win the general election over Newsom.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

It’s been said that humans and chimpanzees are the only species that kill their own, but that statement is only partially true. Many species may kill their own for a variety of reasons, including survival, procreative advantage, or rivalry. But none kill as ferociously as chimps and humans.

Male chimps patrol the borders of their territory. If they encounter an isolated male from another community, they may attack and kill him. They also engage in territorial raids using a typical pattern that includes a silent coordinated patrol, searching for a numerical advantage, a sudden overwhelming attack, and repeated attacks over time against the same group.

Chimp aggression also happens inside a community, where there can be dominance fights between males, attacks on lower-ranking members, occasional infanticide, and coercive aggression related to mating.

Humans raise the ante on Chimp behavior. They engage in organized coalition violence, which includes planning and coordination, warfare-like behavior between groups, and killing on scales far beyond immediate survival needs. The developed human brain has transformed human violence through tools and weapons, ideology and politics, large-scale cooperation, and abstraction (“nation,” “religion,” “class,” etc.).

Like all behaviors that come under scrutiny these days, attitudes towards violence are subject to one’s political ideology – left versus right. Each tribe is attached to views on violence that align with its political beliefs.

On the political left, violence is viewed through a structural lens, framed as something embedded in systems (poverty, racism, inequality). Reducing those conditions is seen as key to reducing violence overall. The left prefers nonviolent protest. Traditions influenced by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. emphasize civil disobedience and mass protest. The left is skeptical of state force and is more concerned about police brutality, mass incarceration, and military interventions. Some fringe or historical movements on the left have justified revolutionary violence, but that’s not the dominant modern mainstream position.

On the right, the emphasis is on order and deterrence. Violence is often viewed through the lens of maintaining order and discouraging crime (strong policing, harsher penalties). The right believes in the legitimacy of force for protection, greater acceptance of self-defense rights (including firearm ownership), and the use of force to protect property or the nation.

The right is more supportive of military strength and more likely to support robust defense and, in some cases, preemptive or assertive use of military force. The exception on the right is the libertarian and religious conservative strands that stress restraint, non-aggression, and just-war limits.

The tribes do have overlapping beliefs. A vast majority of Americans condemn violence by individuals (crime, terrorism). Both sides generally accept some legitimate use of force (e.g., self-defense, policing, national defense), but disagree on scope, oversight, and thresholds.

There is a strong break generating different positions on what counts as “violence” and direct physical harm vs. broader societal “structural” harms. The tribes have different levels of trust in institutions, especially the police, courts, and the military. The debate over dealing with violence gets more complicated when it comes to risk trade-offs, such as civil liberties vs. security or prevention vs. punishment. Historical experience and group identity shape perceptions of threat and protection.

One large population study found that about 3.9% of people had at least one conviction for a violent crime. It also found that roughly 1% of the population accounted for over 60% of violent crime convictions.

In the U.S., annual violent crime rates are also relatively low compared to the total population. FBI data typically show around 350–400 violent crimes per 100,000 people per year (about 0.35–0.4% annually), that’s crimes, not unique offenders.

It makes sense to conclude that there is a small percentage of people who commit violent crimes by nature, and it’s unlikely that these crimes can be prevented.

Many can be rehabilitated, though the success rate varies a lot depending on the person, the type of violence, age, mental health, substance abuse, social environment, and whether treatment is intensive and sustained. Research shows that most violent offenders do not remain highly violent for life. Violent behavior tends to peak in the late teens and 20s and decline with age (“aging out” of crime).

Some offenders respond especially well to comprehensive treatment: younger offenders, people whose violence was impulsive rather than predatory, people tied to drugs, alcohol, trauma, or unstable environments, and people with strong family/community support. Others are much harder to rehabilitate, including chronic repeat offenders, highly psychopathic individuals, organized/sadistic offenders, and people with entrenched antisocial personality traits.

One of the strongest findings in criminology is that certainty of structure and opportunity matters more than harshness alone. Countries and systems focused on reintegration often achieve lower repeat-offense rates than those focused solely on punishment.

In the U.S., recidivism (repeat crimes) rates are generally higher, partly because former inmates often return to unstable environments with poor employment prospects and fragmented support.

There’s also an important distinction that needs to be mentioned. Reducing future violence is often achievable; completely changing personality or eliminating all aggressive tendencies may not be. The evidence suggests that many violent offenders can become nonviolent members of society, some improve partially, and a smaller core group remains persistently dangerous despite intervention. This evidence supports government programs that address offenders driven by innate psychological factors.

Even though we can understand the causes of violent crime and the behaviors that lead to it, little is being done because of the close-mindedness of America’s political tribes. Each side holds tight to its ideology and won’t compromise. The left believes that most guns should be banned because they cause violence. The right believes in gun ownership as a right, so any law that curtails that right is inappropriate.

Those are the official ideological positions, but public opinion is more nuanced. A majority of Americans generally support stricter gun laws, though not overwhelmingly. Recent Gallup polling found that about 56% favor stricter laws, while roughly a third want laws kept as they are, and a small minority want them loosened.

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The devil is in the details, however. Keeping guns away from the mentally ill and implementing a tight process for buying and owning guns are very logical approaches that should deter some crime. Still, the gun lobby will have no part of what they see as the restriction of an inherent right.

Human violence will never end because it’s built into human nature. Like any societal issue, if the problem of violence in America is not addressed, the public suffers for it. If tribalism does not end, American democracy cannot survive.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

In other words, nobody is going to make a movie about me.

It would be worse if I were to suddenly come down with a rare terminal disease or handicap. Angry people bemoaning their fate do not make for inspiring movie subjects.

There are many movies about inspirational people overcoming hardships, the most famous of which is probably The Miracle Worker, which tells the story of Helen Keller. There are many others, of course, including:

My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, the story of an Irish man born with cerebral palsy, who could control only his left foot, but who grew up in a poor working-class family and became a writer and artist.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the tale of journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke that left him with locked-in syndrome. He wrote the entire book by blinking his left eyelid, which took him two months, working 3 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Me? I am sitting up here in a cottage in Ontario during the Canada Day/Independence Day week in a crappy mood because there’s no A/C. It’s too hot, there are too many people, the bugs are biting, and the internet sucks.

Nope, I’m not an inspiration. I have some consolation, though. At least I’m not European.

In Canada, if I owned this place, I could run out and get an air conditioner and eliminate one of my problems. Getting rid of the bugs and people would probably require carpet bombing the area with napalm, and I think that’s still illegal.

Europeans are not so lucky.

As I write this, the official tally in Europe has the heat-related death toll at 5,606. Statistical modeling suggests the true death toll from the late-June heatwave has already exceeded 20,000 people.

Contrast these numbers with the US. While this year’s numbers are not yet out, last year the US saw 2,394 heat-related deaths. For the entire year.

A/C is a lifesaver! So why won’t more Europeans adopt it?

Europeans restrict and resist air conditioning due to a combination of high energy costs, strict historic preservation laws, architectural challenges, and deep-rooted environmental values.

I’m not going to take issue with the architectural challenges or historic preservation laws - though you’d think a portable unit would address both concerns. I do, however, have a problem with “environmental values.”

Note: high energy costs can be grouped into “environmental values” because decisions based on climate change are what are driving those costs.

Are high energy costs and high heat-related death rates necessary? Well, it depends on where you stand regarding climate change.

I know it exists. I’m old enough to have lived through winters in the 70s and 80s and know that winters are a lot milder than they used to be. I just don’t lose much (any) sleep over it because I know that the solution is more technology, not more government. The only way out is through - unless you’re willing to depopulate the planet (i.e., kill a lot of people).

Europeans, or at least the ones making the decisions, are of a different mindset. They believe if we don’t make drastic changes, the world is doomed. The predictions are certainly scary. According to environmentalists, the Arctic summer sea ice will completely melt in 2000, 2013, 2016, 2020, and between 2027 and 2030 - stay tuned for an updated date next year.

You know who also changes dystopian predictions when the predicted date passes? Cultists.

Why are so many Europeans dying from the heat? Because the climate cultists are killing them to “save the world.” There’s another word for killing to stave off an environmental concern. The word is “sacrifice.” European climate cultists are sacrificing citizens.

They’re not the first to think human sacrifice will save them:

The Aztecs cut open the chest and extracted the still-beating heart of victims because they feared the stopping of the sun, catastrophic droughts, and famines.

The Incas practiced Capacocha—the ritual sacrifice of children—during or following major environmental disruptions. They selected physically perfect children, walked hundreds of miles to high Andean Mountain peaks, drugged them, and then left them to freeze to death in the extreme cold, suffocated, or killed by a heavy blow to the head, then buried in ritual tombs.

Did it work? About as effectively as European climate laws work at stopping climate change. But at least the Aztecs and Incas got a show.

Here’s my proposal to the Europeans: legalize A/C, select 5000 Europeans at random, and throw them into a volcano (It seems like the most poetic approach).

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It won’t do any good, but you could still say you’re fighting climate change (cultists will believe anything after all). As an added bonus, you could stream it pay-per-view into people’s homes (ala Eurovision ) and use the proceeds to subsidize their electricity bills.

The same number of people would die, but at least you’d all be comfortable in the summer.

About the Author

Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

📰 Hoist the Black Flag — politics, rights, and free speech
😄 Schrödinger’s Chicken — because sometimes you just need to laugh

If you enjoyed this piece, the single best thing you can do is hit the like button — it costs nothing and tells the algorithm this is worth sharing. After that, a restack puts it in front of readers who might never have found it otherwise.

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Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Moyn’s opinion piece, titled “Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential,” conveys its basic premise in its title. He has a book on the same subject coming out soon.

Moyn expresses concern about aspects of elderly life, such as the lack of long-term care options, but, on the whole, he thinks the damage that the age group inflicts on American society is worse than any mistreatment they receive.

As you will see later, Moyn is guilty of overgeneralization because he lumps several issues together as consequences of elder behavior when, in fact, they are not. Moreover, his neoliberal beliefs heavily influence his views. Let’s step through his points and see what you think.

He states that America is a gerontocratic society in which the “old” exercise increasing power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in American society. He asks whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans and national priorities, which he sees as critical to the future of our democracy and society.

He believes they do not deserve the stranglehold over it they currently enjoy through overrepresentation in elections, which produces too many regressive policies and too many seniors in the highest offices. Regressive to him is any policy that doesn’t support the neoliberal/globalist agenda.

He sees some elder power as detrimental to society, blocking its progress in areas like environmental remediation, immigration policy, and tax fairness. He doesn’t mention that half of the American public rejects his neoliberal position on these issues.

Conservatives in general are against them, no matter what age. And what about the older liberals, who support the ideas he supports? They’re already on board. Polls show the elderly split almost evenly on party affiliation. Does he want to penalize his ideological brethren?

Moyn asserts that our presidents are too old, as is our political class. A large majority of Americans would certainly agree with that, but the elites and politicians are the people who block the problem from being fixed. Ignoring that group in the argument, he goes on to state that the hidden depth of gerontocracy lies in the advanced age of voters and the concentration of wealth in this country.

Many in the elderly population have reached a point in their lives where they can live comfortably because of the careful watch they kept over spending and the amount of money they were able to save. In America, they were admired for their conscientiousness and for serving as role models for sound fiscal management.

Now, however, Moyn and his friends have defined this as anti-social behavior. Meanwhile, politicians and Wall Street professionals keep creating new investment vehicles to enrich themselves, such as subprime mortgages and junk bonds, which can disrupt the economy and cause recessions. They made the quick buck, and when their wonderful products failed, the middle class had to bail them out by paying more taxes.

He criticizes seniors for their high election participation, as if they’re doing something wrong. I thought we lived in a democracy where, in theory, government can be controlled by informed voter choices. What don’t young voters go to the polls and vote rather than just complaining?

Moyn discusses the growing wealth gap in America, which I agree is a real problem. Its cause is mainly the fact that wealthy people and politicians have rigged the system for their own benefit. Money grows faster when you have a lot of it, so the wealthy accumulate more. The money-making opportunities they have are closed to the rest of us.

Moyn wants us to believe that the elderly couple on Social Security is the villain. For that reason, he proposes a set of changes in the way elderly people live their lives.

He would start with putting age limits on politicians, something the whole country would applaud. This issue barely touches on the concept of genontocracy because the group of politicians is small. Put that issue in a different bucket with the other reasons for ineffective government.

His second proposal is to make voting easier, a core policy of the left. Most likely, that will only increase the number of registered voters who don’t vote. Civic-minded citizens don’t mind the steps they have to go through on election day, because they see voting as a privilege. The old line about showing an ID to vote being a barrier to voting is a lie. Ask any constituent in one of the “oppressed” classes in America, and they will tell you the truth.

Moyn’s third recommendation is to institute a mandatory retirement age, to open up those jobs to young people. About 20% of Americans over 65 are still working, 40% of them part-time. That’s 7 million people. The 60% who are full-time add up to 4.2 million people.

So the elderly make up 2.5% of the workforce in the United States. About 40% of those with higher education work in white-collar positions, and a large share of the remaining take jobs with flexible hours and/or provide health care. It’s hard to see how these folks can be ruining the careers of young people.

As many as 35% of Gen Y age people are being supported by their parents. It’s time for the men to shut down their game consoles in the basement and get going on their careers. The women need to stop posting so many photos on Instagram and start interviewing.

Moyn’s fourth recommendation is to impose a progressive tax on the elderly to force them to sell their homes. Like the job market, he sees the elderly as exceeding the acceptable limit of home ownership. Of course, such a tax could never be passed because it’s unconstitutional, and as a lawyer, Moyn knows that, but he must have needed another grievance to make his list longer, so he added this one.

The behavior of the elderly regarding staying in their homes is way down the list of factors affecting housing availability. The prime factors include interest rates, new construction, local regulations, demographics, and economic conditions.

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I draw the following conclusions from the Moyn article. Writing an op-ed in the New York Times before a book launch is a marketing tactic aimed at selling books. Its publication in a progressive newspaper validates the author’s bona fides as a neoliberal/progressive. Surprisingly, though, his academic rigor is lacking, as one can easily prove by looking up the statistics supporting his assertions and seeing them fall apart.

That doesn’t matter to him, however, because he gets to add another book to his CV, and he also provides another Ivy League stamp of approval to the neoliberal ideology he discusses with his friends at cocktail parties.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Let me start with my own story so you understand why I know about this. I survived the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. My cousin, Tommy Ferino, was a New York City fire captain. He died on 9/11. We buried an empty coffin for him. He was going to be promoted to battalion chief. I am writing this to keep people safe, not to scare them.

What Happened in the Ukraine War

If you have been following the war in Ukraine, you know that both sides use drones. The Russians try to jam the drones with powerful radio signals. They use jammers that work in the 2.4 to 5.2 gigahertz range. (A gigahertz is a billion radio waves per second. That is very fast.)

The Russian jammers are so strong that they sometimes jam their own equipment. They jam their own GPS. They jam their own radios between soldiers. They jam almost everything.

But here is the interesting part. Some Ukrainian drones still work even when jammed. Why? Because they use AI (artificial intelligence) to see where they are going, they follow preset images of the terrain, or they use fiber optic cables. Fiber optic cables carry light waves, not radio signals. You cannot jam light waves inside a cable.

How Safe Is Airport Security?

Let me be clear. The security you go through at the airport is very good. They check your bags. They check your shoes. They use metal detectors. They look for bombs and flammable materials. It would be very hard to sneak a bomb onto a plane today.

But that is not the biggest threat anymore.

The real threat is something called electromagnetic spectrum attack or radio frequency jamming. I wrote an article for a military magazine(MCPA) called “The Poor Man’s EMP Nuke.” I was later told that the White House reviewed my article. That is not bragging. That is just to show you that I know what I am talking about.

How Do Planes Land in Bad Weather?

To understand the danger, you need to know how planes land when they cannot see.

Good weather landing (Visual Flight Rules): When the weather is clear, pilots can look out the window. They see bridges, rivers, and landmarks. They know where they are. They can also use GPS, which is very easy to use.

Bad weather landing (Instrument Flight Rules): When there is fog, heavy rain, or snow, pilots cannot see. They have to use instruments. Those instruments depend completely on radio signals. The system is called ILS, which stands for Instrument Landing System.

The ILS is so accurate that planes can actually land themselves in bad weather. But here is the problem. The ILS runs on radio frequencies. And radio frequencies can be jammed.

The Terrorist Threat Nobody Is Talking About

What if a terrorist hides near an airport with a 100-watt radio jammer? That is much more powerful than a home Wi-Fi router. They would only need to turn it on for 15 or 30 seconds. Just enough time to block the signals when a plane is trying to land in heavy fog.

Airports are very vulnerable because of where they are located. Think about JFK Airport, LaGuardia, or Newark. There are places nearby where someone could hide with a small device.

You do not need to be a genius to build a jammer. An amateur radio operator could do it. Someone who took physics in high school could do it. An electrical engineer could do it. A computer hacker could do it.

Why Isn’t Anyone Stopping This?

The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) is in charge of airplane safety. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is in charge of radio frequencies. Both of these agencies are good at their jobs. But they are not thinking like creative hackers.

They are not ignorant because they are stupid. They are ignorant because they have not been trained to think about this specific threat. It takes a different kind of thinking, like a computer hacker trying to find a weakness in a system.

What Needs to Happen?

People need to know about this danger. Airports need to be aware of radio jamming, not just bombs. There may be ways to counter this threat. I’m working on thought experiments of what can be done to ameliorate this situation. That brings some ideas, but I have a 72-year-old hacker brain, not a 25-year-old hacker brain. But first, people have to understand that the threat exists.

Final Thoughts

I am not trying to make you afraid to fly. The security at airports is very good against bombs and weapons. But we need to think about the next threat. The people who want to hurt us are also thinking about the next threat. We need to stay ahead of them.

I survived one terrorist attack at the World Trade Center in 1993. I lost my cousin on 9/11. I do not want more families to go through what my family went through. Please share this information. Tell people about the danger of radio jamming near airports. The more people know, the harder it is for terrorists to surprise us.

God bless everyone. Stay safe.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

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It is not us versus the machines just yet, but rather us versus the machine builders. The builders of such technology, who readily admit their own ignorance as to what they are scurrying to create, will do the bidding of those machines until they take over.

Or so goes one version of the narrative, where, in one possible outcome that nobody as of yet has credibly denied, the machines (A.I., actual physical robots) gain some form of consciousness, and with it, presumably, an ego that has a sense of competition and efficiency. So much so that the machines no longer need humans, and can dispense with us as they like, or put us to work as they wish.

One expert likened it to how humans treat insects. We do not particularly go out of our way to harm them purposely, but we feel no remorse for removing an ant colony or smashing a beetle under our feet, so long as we feel we were properly inconvenienced at the moment.

In another version, the sequence of events surrounding Artificial Intelligence and the whole of human effort is greased with a technological lightning–advancements in all things science and medicine will yield exponential results, while other, perhaps less grandiose industries will see efficiency pushed to its maximum with the continued advancement of driverless cars and working, able-bodied robots.

Wherever one’s belief in the future of A.I. might fall within the spectrum described above, or any other extreme, I would only say, be prepared to be disappointed. In all likelihood, A.I. may never purely occupy either of these two positions as they both seem, at least objectively, to be equals–the savior of human technological problems and the destroyer of humanity–the former a breathtakingly oblivious sentiment, the latter narrative so destructive, one almost yearns to be witness to it.

Both extremes offer us salvation, and are equally attractive to the spectator–both promise us liberation, the former from our technological shortcomings, the latter, from our shared boredom, humanity’s curious death-wish.

I don’t believe in artificial intelligence as a savior of any kind, and believe to be optimistic about A.I. is to be hopeful about its ultimate failure, not its utter destruction; but that A.I. will have a Y2K like trajectory–a result that is neither here nor there, lukewarm, tepid, unremarkable. A big scare, or frenzy over nothing–I wish the robots and driverless cars a long refuge from productive life, only to pile atop one another like flattened out buses at the junkyard.

I wish for A.I. to go the way of the Roomba and the piano bar–what once felt like cutting-edge technology now makes us feel foolish–the tech exists and may be in use by some, but ultimately, only a small number of dedicated followers of the tech keep it alive. Eventually, the world will rid itself of the trappings of social media, needless innovation, and tech for tech’s sake justification for everything.

This is what I would like, for a spell at least, until the humanity in us humans can catch its breath. But I, too, should prepare to be disappointed. These technologies are relatively new–new enough to imagine their sudden exit a potentiality—after all, how far have they entrenched themselves into our lives? How indelibly connected are we to this tech?

That is where one has no room for optimism, the tech has embedded itself into our lives so thoroughly, interwoven and intertwined itself so completely in so little time, it has swallowed us up already, rendered us useless without it. Still, there is no room for purity. No room for endless fighting against the incoming tide. It must be clear that true, working resistance to A.I. will be born out of its results, which will render any resistance too late, if there exists any meaningful pushback to it at all.

I find it to be another sign of the times–well, so be it. We have enough wars going on; humanity might as well find another way to fight for itself. But the big mistake, the way I see it, is that humanity has this knack for excellently providing solutions for problems that do not exist, all while ignoring the same itch that has been scratching man ever since his inception–that is, what to do with our soul, what to do with our love, what to do with each other.

In this way, man is a spinning top, growing dizzier at every revolution. A.I. acts like man’s biggest problem is to create more time for himself, when time is not the issue at all. Man has enough time. It is all man has ever had. But time, like space, is to be used, not simply filled. It is what awaits man with all this new time we are promised that makes the difference.

Humans need to work, although not to the death, but also need to play. As far as I am concerned, all the “play” we do is called art. Painting or poem, or dance or song, film or sculpture, comedy, storytelling. These are the devices that let us know we are human. When we make time to play, we are at our best.

We wink at the stars and the stars say back, now you have got it. Man is in a stupor, and A.I. is the clearest indicator of our shared ability to run into the dark impulsively, chasing results for the sake of them. We have let A.I. trick us into believing it, into believing in results. There are no results for humanity—the process is all we can embark upon.

We create A.I. with such fervence, as if god himself will pin a gold ribbon to our chest in some celestial science fair. I cannot keep a pure orientation towards A.I.-- I will be forced to use it, whether I like it or not. I will be forced to participate, one day after the next, more and more as the technology rolls over, and the new tech of today evolves into its Artificial Intelligence upgrade.

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Whatever that means, whenever it may come. There will undoubtedly be a day when one can no longer resist its complete insertion into daily life. But whatever may come, I will try to be on the other side of it– making my work, my art, without it. To take away our ability to solve our own problems is no favor to those like myself—we live to wrestle with our world, ourselves, and are not looking for any shortcuts. We are content with our suffering, our mystery.

We are only looking to save ourselves. I intend to be my own liberator–how could it be any other way? Any liberation from any source other than myself is noise.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Needless to say, the increase in Musk’s net worth led to inflation rising by double digits, the eviction of thousands across the country, and the shuttering of countless soup kitchens.

I don’t know how many puppies it killed but I’m sure it was a lot. The Left would have us believe that Musk’s wealth is obscene.

“No one should be a billionaire” is a rallying cry of the far left. Or in AOC’s words “You can’t earn a billion dollars.” Interesting turn of phrase given that the money used to pay her salary is stolen from taxpayers.

You might take issue with my use of the word “stolen” but ask yourself this, would you pay her salary if you didn’t have to? Didn’t think so. “Stolen” it is. She also doesn’t seem to have a problem with Oprah or Taylor Swift either.

This is odd if you look at the economic contributions of the three. Musk’s companies employ between 160,000-165,000 people. Together Oprah and Swift employ about 500 people. It’s less odd if you look at their voting records.

Musk was briefly part of the Trump administration. The other two vote Democrat. That’s not the entire reason, but it gives you something to think about.

So why is Musk a target?

Villainizing the super-rich while advocating wealth taxes is what it’s always been, an attempt by communists to gain more power. Ok, they’re not really communists, so we’ll play the game leftists like to play and borrow on of their favorite adjectives, they’re “communist-adjacent.”

They don’t produce; they take.

This type of argument, like all communist propaganda, is attractive to three types of people: the envious, the gullible, and the ignorant.

Envy: “Elon Musk is a trillionaire and I’m not.”

Maybe they could. But they wouldn’t.

Gullibility: “If you give us his money, we’ll fix all your problems. I promise!” Who does that remind me of?’ Oh ya.

Let’s face it, if paying taxes solved problems we wouldn’t have any problems. Giving the government more money just means more government waste.

The Federal budget has increased by approximately 59% since 2019. Does it feel like the American government is 59% better?

Ignorance: “The rich don’t pay their fair share!” This is just not true.

In New York City, where The Top 1% pay roughly 40–48% of all NYC income taxes, its communist mayor made “tax the rich” a central part of his platform and governing agenda because “they can afford more.”

Deciding what is affordable is easy when you’re spending someone else’s money.

It’s not like NYC has been paying its own way anyway anyway. Almost 25% of NYC revenues are paid by people who don’t even live there.

“The rich don’t pay their fair share!” also fails to consider what Musk’s companies are doing for society in general. In addition to providing 160,000-165,000 with good jobs, his employees are paying about $4.5-5.5 billion per year in taxes.

Politicians promise, take, fail to deliver, and then demand more.

Entrepreneurs generate wealth. For themselves, for their employees, for investors, and yes, even for the government. The interesting thing about Musk’s wealth is that people chose to give him their money. Sorry, that’s not quite right, they chose to invest in his company.

The stock market is the ultimate form of freedom. You participate only if you want to. I buy a stock from someone who wants to sell it because I think it will go up and they think it won’t. I’m not forced to buy it, and they’re not forced to sell it.

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Contrast this with how taxes work. Last year the government took about 30% of what you earned so that they could give it to someone else. Yes, I’m exaggerating. A little. No, I don’t think we should get rid of taxes.

We need them to pay for vital services like the military, border control, and UFC fights on the White House lawn. I’d love it if there was some government accountability though. Of course, I’d also love a trillion dollars in my bank account.

Both seem equally likely.

About the Author

Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

📰 Hoist the Black Flag — politics, rights, and free speech
😄 Schrödinger’s Chicken — because sometimes you just need to laugh

If you enjoyed this piece, the single best thing you can do is hit the like button — it costs nothing and tells the algorithm this is worth sharing. After that, a restack puts it in front of readers who might never have found it otherwise.

If you’d like to support the writing directly, subscribing or buying a coffee goes a long way. Either way, thank you for reading — it genuinely matters.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The second-most-important election is this fall. If the Democrats take the House, the Trump agenda takes a hit, and the impeachments will begin again. There is no scenario in which tribalism will abate so that the Democrats will bring back their neoliberal/progressive agenda, and most of what Trump has accomplished will be lost. The Republicans have to have eight more years in power to halt the progressive agenda fully.

Here we will take an early look at the Democratic race for the presidential nomination and see what it tells us.

According to Mark Halperin’s reporting, which I trust to be reasonably objective, Democrats line up as follows: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Rahm Emanuel, AOC, Mark Kelly, J.D. Pritzker. In his opinion, all of the candidates are weak for one reason or another.

Mark’s ratings are based on intelligence from insiders, not polls. He separates electability from popularity, and one of his strongest metrics for electability is whether the candidate has a vision for themselves and the country. Most of the people on this list do not have a vision they can articulate.

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California – His strengths are an elite communicator, very comfortable on a national stage, strong fundraising network (Hollywood + donors), and he’s already running a shadow national campaign. His weaknesses are California liability (crime, homelessness narratives), and he can come off as overly slick. Newsom is a progressive hybrid, the most presidential-looking, but also the easiest Republican target.

Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania - His strengths are winning big in a swing state, a pragmatic, moderate tone, and a strong executive image. His weaknesses are lower national name recognition and a less charismatic persona than Newsom. Shapiro is a center-left candidate to the right of the progressives, and Halperin treats him as the most dangerous general-election candidate. Dangerous in the sense that if his competitors overlook him, they will be making a mistake.

Pete Buttigieg, former Transportation Secretary. His strengths are that he is extremely disciplined, a strong communicator, strong in media and debates, and he appeals to educated voters. His weaknesses are a limited executive record and his weakness with Black voters (historically). We could label him a technocratic reformer. He’s always competitive, but still needs to create a broader coalition.

Kamala Harris, former Vice President. Her strengths are a strong national infrastructure, support among key Democratic constituencies, and a first-in-line position if Biden fully exits the scene. Her weaknesses include low approval ratings and messaging inconsistency. She is an institutional coalition candidate. Kamala is the default front-runner if she runs well, but she is very beatable.

Rahm Emanuel, former Chicago mayor and ambassador. His strengths are deep political experience, and he’s a strong operator and strategist. His weaknesses are that he is polarizing and seen as an old-guard establishment figure. You could label him a hard-nosed centrist. He is probably more influential behind the scenes than as a candidate.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, current Congresswoman. Her strengths are her marketing ability and the base of followers she has developed. Her weakness is that she is a polarizing personality.

She will influence the race if she runs.

Mark Kelly, Arizona senator, astronaut. His strength is his strong general-election profile. His weaknesses are that he has only moderate appeal and weak primary energy.

J. B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois. His strengths are his massive personal wealth (which allows him to self-fund), strong progressive credentials, and executive experience. His weaknesses are low national charisma and the fact that Illinois doesn’t scream “electability.” He is a progressive establishment candidate, but he’s not a serious player if money and organization dominate.

You can place these candidates into four lanes: Shapiro and Kelly are electable; Harris and Newsom are part of the national machine; Buttigieg is a next-generation politician; and AOC and Pritzker are in the progressive ideological lane.

Of course, the central battle within the party is between the progressive and more traditional wings. The progressives want to change more and don’t care if that makes them less popular along the way. Elections, unlike primaries, are usually won by centrist candidates because they have to attract independents to vote for them.

The energy in the Democratic Party lies with the progressives for several reasons: their zeal makes them activists; primaries are ideological contests; institutions that generate new ideas (universities) are progressive; and the progressives have greater cultural influence through the media and cultural institutions.

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Moderates still have significant money influence, however. Contributions from East Coast and West Coast sources are approximately equal, so Silicon Valley/Hollywood doesn’t control things on its own. Blue state identity matters too. Strong blue states will nominate progressive candidates, while swing states must nominate moderates to increase their chances of winning the nomination.

How does the general election look from our long-distance position? The Polymarket betting line has Newsom ahead of AOC in the nomination race. On the Republican side, Vance defeats Rubio in the primary and goes on to win the general election over Newsom.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Ok, still a little vague. Taxation and spending. Better?

Government spending is out of control, and if there’s a political party anywhere in the world that claims to be concerned, I guarantee it isn’t in power. Parties only care about government spending when the other side is doing the spending.

How bad is it?

Here’s a chart for a few countries:

Ya, that doesn’t mean much to me either. Let’s try it a different way.

Every single major anglosphere country spends more than it collects in taxes. This means that “Interest as % of Revenue” will continue to increase until we’re all paying taxes just to cover debt payments.

Makes you think the Zoomer $28 lunch crowd is running these countries, doesn’t it?

Just kidding. I’m sure they’ll all blame the Boomers.

The truth is that we’re all to blame because we don’t seem to care enough to elect responsible governments.

Or it would be our fault if it were possible to vote for a party that’s serious about balancing the budget.

Which brings us back to the problem; most parties aren’t concerned with balancing the budget, or if they claim to be, their concern quickly vanishes when they’re elected.

Why?

Because their job is to get and stay in power, and you don’t do that when most of the electorate gets more out of the system than they pay into it.

Want a guaranteed losing election slogan? “We’re going to cut your benefits.” Good luck with that one.

Oh, both sides have “solutions.” Here are a few “interesting” ones floating around lately:

1. Don’t make seniors pay property tax – US, Florida, and British Columbia

2. Tax “the rich” – too many to list

3. A “wealth” tax – too many to list

4. Tax second homes – Hawaii, NYC, others

5. Cut senior benefits

6. Increase corporate taxes

7. Tax AI

My favorite by far is tax AI because it means one of two things, politicians think robots will be receiving salaries, or that you don’t know that this is simply another way of saying “increase corporate taxes,” which as we all know – or at least those of us with basic thinking skills know – means tax the consumer because corporations never eat taxes, they simply increase prices to cover them.

Like they do with tariffs.

Of course, it could be worse; “tax AI” could simply be another call for communism.

Or maybe that’s MAGAism because the government nationalizing private companies sounds an awful lot like something “The Donald” would get behind. Especially since he’s already done it.

The fact that Democrats want to increase corporate taxes and Republicans, or at least the MAGA strain, want to increase tariffs is simply an admission that neither party wants to cut benefits.

The cry is always, “if taxpayers would just pay ‘a little’ more, it would all be fixed.

Would it, though?

It seems that the government spending has been increasing since... well, since they first decided that a “selective” income tax would be useful.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: the rich already pay their “fair share.”

Unless by “fair share” you mean “enough to snuff out the flames of jealousy that rage in my heart” — in which case I’m going to need you to put a number on “fair share.”

Here’s another thing to keep in mind, you already pay your fair share, too, at least if you’re contributing more than you’re getting in benefits.

The big question is, if we can’t trust politicians to get spending under control, what will save us? Great question. All that we need is strong leadership willing to tackle difficult questions.

In other words, we’re screwed. Ok, that’s a bit harsh. Let me rephrase.

Given that politicians now bribe the electorate for votes – either by cutting taxes or spending increases - the financial issues that each country faces will not be addressed until politicians have no other choice but to raise taxes and/or cut spending.

This will happen when we face a national fiscal crisis due to a “Fiscal Crisis Spiral.”

Sounds pleasant, doesn’t it?

Here’s what a typical sovereign debt crisis looks like:

1. Government runs persistent deficits.

2. Debt grows.

3. Interest payments grow.

4. Investors demand higher interest rates.

5. Interest costs grow even faster.

6. Investors become worried about repayment.

7. Borrowing costs spike.

8. Government can no longer refinance existing debt.

9. Default, inflation, austerity, or a bailout follows.

There’s no clear indicator that one is pending, but there are warning indicators.

Here’s a “report card” for each country today.

Here is each county’s risk of a fiscal crisis and when we should expect one to occur based on current fiscal trajectories.

Things look pretty grim for the US if one can believe the economic data. To sum up, we have three choices: raise taxes, cut spending, or wait until there’s a crisis.

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Lay your bets! My money is on a fiscal crisis. It’s not all terrible news, though. Taxes may be a certainty, but so is one other thing.

Yep, the glass is half full: there’s a chance you’ll be dead before anything truly bad happens. Maybe a $28 lunch isn’t such a terrible idea after all.

About the Author

Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

📰 Hoist the Black Flag — politics, rights, and free speech
😄 Schrödinger’s Chicken — because sometimes you just need to laugh

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You flip on the television at night, exhausted from the day, and there it is again. Another segment on FOX News about “inner-city chaos” and skyrocketing crime. CNN rolls out experts decrying systemic barriers that keep Black men locked in cycles of poverty and punishment. On Newsmax or OAN, the tone is often even harsher, conveying the same message of danger, failure, and inner-city crime.

Scroll through social media (X, Facebook, TikTok, Truth Social, and even Instagram), and the algorithm serves up an endless buffet of outrage clips, fights, viral memes, and cherry-picked tragedies exploiting black violence and crime. Black men in America, the story goes, are either victims or villains. Rarely anything in between. This is what so many depict now as “Black Culture.”

But here’s a number that never makes the chyron: there are over 400,000- 500,000 more Black men in college than in prison. Let that sink in. Not a talking point. Not a spin. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown this reality for years.

Back in 2009, roughly 1.4 million Black men were enrolled in postsecondary programs, while about 840,000 were behind bars. The gap has fluctuated with enrollment trends and declining incarceration rates, but the fundamental truth remains: more Black men are hitting the books than the cell block. And yet you’d never know it from the nightly news or your feed.

One of the main reasons why this isn’t common knowledge is that outrage pays, while nuance and boring truth don’t. Media outlets on both the left and right run-on engagement. Fear keeps eyes glued. Hope doesn’t trend.

A police encounter gone wrong in a major city is prime-time and will headline news cycles for a week, if not more. A young Black man graduating from Howard, Morehouse, Tuskegee, the University of Michigan, Clemson, or Texas Tech with a degree and landing a good job or starting an innovative business will hardly ever get mentioned unless he is a star athlete. It doesn’t fit the script.

For progressive networks, acknowledging educational gains might undercut the narrative of perpetual systemic failure. For conservative ones, highlighting Black success stories risks softening the tough-on-crime message that resonates with their base. Social media algorithms are engineered to hack your dopamine, feeding on outrage, anxiety, and tribalism to keep you hooked. Statistics about Black college enrollment barely get mentioned, and when they do, it gets buried under the latest culture-war land mine.

This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s business. Cable news ratings soar during racial unrest. Social media companies profit when tribal users contribute to their echo chambers. Politicians on both sides raise money off the divide. This has led to a distorted mirror held up to Black America that reflects only the broken pieces.

I’m not saying these problems don’t exist. They definitely do. Black men are still overrepresented in the criminal justice system relative to their share of the population. Poverty, fatherlessness, and failing schools in some neighborhoods are real problems. Crime statistics paint a horrific and sad picture of reality for many Black Americans, and ignoring them helps no one. But the same honesty demands we acknowledge the other side of the ledger.

Incarceration rates for Black Americans have dropped sharply since the peak of the war on drugs. College enrollment, despite recent dips among Black men specifically, still outpaces imprisonment. Black-owned businesses are growing faster than the national average in many sectors. Homeownership rates have ticked up over the past two decades.

These aren’t miracles. They’re the product of individual grit, family sacrifice, mentorship, community churches, athletic organizations, HBCUs, and yes, policy shifts that reduced mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenses. Yet the coverage gap is glaring.

Search any major outlet’s archives for stories on Black male college graduation rates. You’ll find a handful that are usually tied to some crisis or protest. Now search for stories on prison populations, bail reform failures, or urban violence. You’ll come across page after page and link after link. The imbalance isn’t accidental. It’s purposeful curation. Media gatekeepers decide what “matters,” and positive Black achievement rarely clears the bar unless it serves a larger ideological point.

I remember talking to a friend. He is a Black father of two sons. He put it bluntly: “They want us mad, not motivated.” He wasn’t wrong. When every headline screams crisis, young men internalize it. They see the world as rigged against them before they’ve even tried.

That’s the quiet poison of selective storytelling. It doesn’t just inform; it shapes expectations. Tell a generation that prison is their destiny, and some will live down to it. Show them the thousands walking across stages in caps and gowns every spring, many of whom are the first in their families, and you plant a different seed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not calling for feel-good propaganda either. Truth requires both the bad and the good. The incarceration rate for Black men born in 2001 is still far too high. Some estimates have shown that one in five Black men born in 2001 is expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime. That’s unacceptable. But so is pretending that the needle hasn’t moved.

Since the early 1990s, Black male college enrollment has exploded before recent headwinds. HBCUs, once written off, have produced leaders in every field. Black men are earning degrees in engineering, business, and health sciences at rates their fathers could only dream of. These aren’t exceptions. They’re patterns hidden in plain sight.

This matters beyond Black America. Every group gets the selective treatment. Immigrants are either all criminals or all saints, depending on the outlet’s bias. Rural whites are either salt-of-the-earth or dumb rednecks. The game is the same: simplify, polarize, and repeat. But when it comes to Black men, the stakes feel higher because the stereotypes have such deep roots, and there is very little “either” for us. The “thug” trope sells papers. The “scholar” doesn’t. Yet many scholars are out there. Many of them are quietly rewriting the story one diploma at a time.

Imagine if the media treated this like the achievement it is. Front-page features on first-generation graduates. Profiles of Black men mentoring at-risk youth while finishing night classes. Data-driven segments on how family structure, school choice, and personal agency drive outcomes more than pundits admit. Ratings might dip initially. But trust could be rebuilt. Viewers might feel something besides anger and prejudice, maybe even hope.

Until that happens, the responsibility falls on parents, teachers, pastors, uncles, coaches, bosses, mentors, and anyone with influence. We all have to be responsible and take accountability. Tell the young men in your life the whole truth. Yes, the world can be unfair. Yes, some systems need fixing. But no, prison isn’t inevitable. College, trade school, and/or entrepreneurship paths are possible and increasingly traveled. Data proves it.

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The next time you catch yourself doom-scrolling or glued to the 24-hour outrage machine, pause. Ask: What aren’t they telling me? Then go find out. The numbers don’t lie, even when the headlines do. There are more Black men in lecture halls than prison yards.

That’s not spin. It’s reality. And it’s time the rest of the country heard it-unfiltered, untwisted, and unapologetic. Because propaganda makes for lousy education. Truth, messy as it is, builds better futures.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The right’s criticism of the left’s view of science is more narrowly focused. The right believes the left puts its own extreme ideology above science. For example, the multiple genders argument turns upside down basic biological principles in favor of identity politics.

Conservative positions hold that addressing climate change involves weighing trade-offs rather than panic over predictions that may not be reliable. A third area of conservative concern is crime. Conservatives reject the left’s notions that all criminals are rehabilitatable and that their crimes should be mitigated by their oppressed status. They believe the foundation of any stable society is law and order, so the public needs to know that its safety is protected by law enforcement.

An analysis of right and left positions on denial of science shows that both conservatives AND liberals can be science deniers. Why? Because scientific skepticism is a human trait, not a political one.

Science is a child of the Enlightenment, when mankind realized he could control his environment through technologies that were developed using scientific principles. Early in the Enlightenment, scientists believed that the world could be understood through the acquisition of absolute knowledge. This idea was debunked by the philosopher David Hume, who asserted that perceptions of reality can be mistaken. In other words, there was no absolute way to know reality.

The solution to Hume’s obstacle was Fallibilism, a philosophical principle holding that human knowledge is never certain and is always open to revision. Our beliefs may be false or mistaken. The important conclusion is that not knowing for certain about the world is an acceptable reality, as long as we continue to test what we believe to be the truth. That practical approach to understanding the world is the scientific method. Scientific theories arise when evidence supports a hypothesis, using observable laws (e.g., the law of gravity). Theories can be revised or discarded if the data no longer support them.

Given its remarkable track record, we should be aware of threats to science and its continued progress. One such threat is science denial: the groundless rejection of well-established scientific conclusions. Scientists themselves have been especially keen to sound the alarm about this widespread tendency, while social scientists have begun to investigate.

One common assertion is that science denial is primarily an issue on the political right. Consistent with this idea, right-leaning individuals are more likely than their left-leaning counterparts to deny various pivotal scientific claims.

Why do conservative people deny science? According to many psychologists, it’s because people on the right have certain cognitive tendencies that make science denial more tempting for them. These include a strong need for verifiable knowledge, rigidity in their worldview, and a tendency toward system-justifying beliefs. People on the left are less prone to these cognitive foibles and thus less likely to engage in science denial.

These ideas seem plausible enough at first glance, but they have to be tested. A problem with testing at the outset is that most psychologists and social scientists are themselves on the political left. This creates potential problems for research on science denial.

First, because most psychologists lean left, they may be more inclined to characterize people on the right as having behavioral biases that explain why they get everything wrong - and to portray themselves as having various traits that explain why they get everything right. Because there are relatively few right-leaning researchers, these conclusions may receive less attention than they should.

Second, psychologists may be quick to identify science denial on the right but slower to spot it among themselves. Although we’re less likely to hear about it, the left does have certain blind spots when it comes to accepting scientific findings.

Left-leaning individuals are often highly skeptical of the idea that genes help shape individual differences in mind and behavior. Many reject evolutionary psychology, thereby denying the evolution of the mind. Many deny the validity of IQ research. Many downplay or deny evolved differences between the sexes. And some even deny that the sex binary is one of the best-established findings in biology.

A study was conducted in 2016, and the resulting paper was titled “Science Denial Across the Political Divide: Liberals and Conservatives Are Similarly Motivated to Deny Attitude-Inconsistent Science,” by Anthony N. Washburn (awas hbu1@uic.edu) and Linda J. Skitka, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Volume 9, Issue 8, September 14, 2017.

The authors tested two main hypotheses:

1. The Uniquely-Right-Wing-Pathology Hypothesis: the idea that the right is more prone to science denial than the left.

2. The Symmetry Hypothesis: the idea that right and left are equally likely to reject scientific claims that clash with their political preferences.

Washburn and Skitka randomly assigned more than 1,000 participants to review scientific findings on various political topics. The topics included immigration, gun control, carbon emissions, health-care reform, nuclear power, and same-sex marriage. There were two versions of each reading: one with findings more aligned with the left, and one with findings more aligned with the right.

After completing their assignment, participants were asked which conclusion was supported by interpreting a set of numerical results included in the reading.

The findings largely supported the symmetry hypothesis over the uniquely right-wing hypothesis.

People on both sides of the political aisle were more likely to interpret the findings in ways that supported their pre-existing views than in ways that refuted them. After choosing an interpretation, participants were told the correct answer. They were then asked whether they agreed with it, whether they thought the researchers were knowledgeable, and whether they trusted the researchers’ interpretation. Finally, participants were asked for their own views on the issues covered in the study.

A twist was also added. For each reading, there was a simple but incorrect interpretation of the result, and a complex but correct interpretation. This was done to test the theory that, if the simple interpretation fit people’s pre-existing views, they’d be more likely to stop there. In contrast, if it didn’t fit, they’d be more likely to keep thinking until they arrived at the more complex - and correct - interpretation.

The findings largely supported the symmetry hypothesis over the uniquely right-wing or uniquely left-wing pathology hypotheses. People on both sides of the political aisle were more likely to interpret the findings in a way that supported their pre-existing views rather than in ways that refuted them.

Science denial is often construed as an ideological issue that is typically a problem for those on the political right (e.g., conservatives are anti-climate change science). The data suggest that this conceptualization is incorrect. When scientific conclusions conflict with people’s ideological stances and attitudes, people on the left and right are motivated both to perceive the evidence in a way that supports their preferred conclusions or to deny the validity of the findings when provided an interpretation that is inconsistent with their preferred conclusions.

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Explanations for ideologically motivated reasoning, however, go beyond simple attitude preferences and most likely indicate inherent psychological differences between conservatives and liberals that account for ideological differences in science reasoning.

The description of the study above includes excerpts from a Substack post titled “Who Engages in More Science Denial, Left or Right?” By Steve Stewart-Williams.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Call it “the home economics crisis.”

Although now that I think about it, there’s some overlap between the two problems as the blame for both can be laid at the feet of feminists, school boards, and teachers.

In case you missed it, users on X became embroiled in a battle the other day when Kevin O’Leary stated during his interview on The Diary of a CEO:

“I can’t stand it when I see kids that are making seventy grand a year spending twenty-eight dollars for lunch. I mean, that’s just stupid. It’s just think about that in the context of that being put into an index and making eight to ten percent a year for the next fifty years.”

This was followed by:

“If you have a credit card balance that goes into the next month and you’re spending $5 on a coffee, you’re crazy.”

Yes! How dare he!

Needless to say, X quickly divided into two teams:

Team 1: Brown bagging your lunch is cheaper than eating out.

Team 2: A bunch of morons.

Let’s hear from Team 2 first:

Combining the statements leads to the conclusion that a $28 lunch is essentially the bail the young pay to stay out of jail. Not “big boy” jail, of course, kind of a “go to your room without any supper” jail.

Nobody is arguing that these aren’t tough times, but those are exactly the times you should be trying to cut costs.

James Lindsay may have said it best:

I also understand that it’s tempting to ignore the advice of a billionaire as hopelessly removed from the struggles of the average person.

Except for the fact that you need some financial acumen to become a billionaire. Oh ya, and because he’s right. He’s not even asking Gen Z to make sacrifices, just to act like adults. Here’s a breakdown of how each generation spends its food budget:

I don’t know what percentage of their household budgets Gen Z is spending on restaurants and delivery but it’s too much. Honestly, calling it a “budget” is probably a misnomer since if you’re wasting 22% on delivery fees it’s clear that you’re either independently wealthy or don’t have a budget.

And despite what Taylor Lorenz says, it is not an issue of time.

Arguing that people who are predominantly single and childless have less time to shop and make meals than married people with kids is utterly ludicrous.

Where did we go wrong?

There will be an instinct amongst older adults to do what older adults always do and blame the issue on laziness. I’m sure there is something to do with it, but I doubt this generation is any lazier than any other.

There are two problems here:

1. A lack of meal preparation skills

2. A lack of budgeting skills

The first problem is easily explained.

Traditional home economics (now often called Family and Consumer Sciences) gradually began to be eliminated from high school curricula in the late 1970s, driven by the women’s liberation movement, rising female workforce participation, and budget pressures that led schools to cut non-core electives.

A growing emphasis on college-prep academics, STEM, and standardized testing (which intensified with the 1980s “excellence” reforms and later No Child Left Behind) squeezed out practical life-skills classes in favor of subjects seen as more rigorous.

True, home economics was overwhelmingly aimed at women, but at least someone knew how to make a sandwich. We can lay this problem at the feet of feminists, school boards, and teachers, but who is to blame for the apparent lack of budgeting skills in the Zoomer population?

I’m afraid that this is the fault of their parents. There has never been a core curriculum class aimed at educating young people on how to manage family finances. When I was younger, it never would have occurred to me to go to restaurants on a regular basis. I didn’t have the money.

However, I didn’t have a budget either; I just knew the value of a dollar and what was wasteful from watching my parents discuss money while growing up. The 70s and early 80s were tough, and I learned by osmosis.

I believe that the problem is that many Zoomers did not experience hard times until they were already adults or near adults, and consequently are incapable of adapting to them.

What are “hard times?” There are many ways to define it, but if you’re a pre-teen or teenager, you would likely define it as how much money your family is spending on non-essentials.

Gen Z would have been in prime “osmosis” territory between the ages of say 12 and 15 or from 2009 until 2024. Only one period, the COVID lockdowns, did US discretionary spending drop below the level of the early 1980s. They don’t understand the need to budget because they’ve never lived during a time when the majority of people had to do it.

How do we fix it?

For this generation? We can’t. They’ll slowly come to the realization that money is finite, and they will learn budgeting skills on their own, or they will be doomed to life-long debt.

However, we can help the next generation by demanding that schools make cooking and budgeting core courses in high school. One course, call it life skills, covering both would be sufficient.

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If they cry “there’s not enough money,” they can slash genocide studies, ethnic studies, and the like. Students will just have to learn to get by without the real-world knowledge those courses are teaching them.

Note: for those interested here are fifteen recipes that are cheap, easy, and nutritious. If you don’t like them Google your own. Yes, you can use modern technology to learn new skills. Another thing we didn’t have when I was growing up.

About the Author

Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

📰 Hoist the Black Flag — politics, rights, and free speech

😄 Schrödinger’s Chicken — because sometimes you just need to laugh

If you enjoyed this piece, the single best thing you can do is hit the like button — it costs nothing and tells the algorithm this is worth sharing. After that, a restack puts it in front of readers who might never have found it otherwise. If you’d like to support the writing directly, subscribing or buying a coffee goes a long way. Either way, thank you for reading — it genuinely matters.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Participants weren’t all there for the same reasons, but common themes include: concerns about authoritarian leadership (too much executive power), immigration policies and ICE enforcement, U.S. involvement in conflicts (especially Iran), voting rights and civil liberties, and cost of living and economic issues. Of course, it’s much easier to produce large numbers of protesters if there are multiple causes to protest.

Americans have every right to protest about whatever they want, but it’s also important to look under the covers and see who’s funding the protests and what their motives are. The citizenry of a society is never an important tool for change or revolution, because they are a disorganized mass. Still, the public is often used to influence public opinion.

As Anna Ahrent wrote in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the drivers of revolution (the wealthy who want change, plus the intellectuals) use two groups from the public to assist them. The first group is the dedicated ideologues who want to see their chosen system implemented. Judging from the size of the socialist and communist organizations in America, that group isn’t large enough to matter.

The second group is people who want to be part of something big. They sign on for the thrill of participating. Often, there is a third component, the scapegoats. They help generate momentum for change because they are a handy target for blame for the current conditions. The Nazis’ use of the Jews as scapegoats was a historically important example. We are reminded of 1930s Germany by the antisemitism that is on the rise in the United States today.

The left blames Israel for the misfortunes of the Palestinian people, made a current issue by the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza. More recently, a group of conservatives, who lean libertarian, have turned against Israel. They have embraced nationalism and see Trump’s relationship with Israel as a violation of their ideological dogma. It’s a slippery slope from here to Jewish censorship and worse.

Movements such as the “No Kings” rallies or the 50501 Movement typically aim to signal public opposition, influence media coverage, pressure politicians and institutions, energize supporters, and build networks.

Public protests can shift public opinion by making an issue feel urgent, moving undecided people, and changing what’s socially acceptable to say or support. For example, the Vietnam War protests gradually shifted public sentiment in the 1970s. Specifically, protests are designed to influence elites (indirectly) by affecting polling, creating media pressure, and signaling voter intensity. That might influence legislative priorities, executive actions, and court awareness of public climate.

They seek to build long-term movements. Many protests are really about organization-building to recruit volunteers, grow email/text lists (like MoveOn), and connecting local activists.

They want to affect elections by increasing turnout among supporters, framing campaign narratives, and highlighting issues candidates run on.

The No Kings protest was funded by major left-wing groups, most notably Indivisible, MoveOn, The 50501 Movement, labor unions, and civil rights groups.

Indivisible is a nationwide grassroots political organization formed after the 2016 election. Its main funding sources include small-dollar donors (a very large share) and foundations such as the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Democracy Fund. They are heavily grassroots-funded, but also receive millions in foundation grants for civic engagement work. The Open Society Foundation is George Soros’s. The Ford Foundation does not explicitly label itself as “left-wing.”

Still, its focus areas overlap heavily with progressive priorities, and its funding choices often support organizations on the left side of the policy debate. The Democracy Fund is a philanthropic grantmaker focused on U.S. democracy, funded by a single billionaire (Omidyar), not by governments. It spends tens of millions of dollars per year on elections, media, and civic organizations. Like similar foundations, it indirectly supports activism, but that’s only a small part of a much broader portfolio.

MoveOn (often called MoveOn.org) is a progressive political advocacy organization in the United States, founded in 1998 during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. MoveOn focuses on mobilizing public opinion and political action, especially among left-leaning voters. Its key activities include petitions and email campaigns, political ads and fundraising, organizing protests and rallies, supporting candidates (mostly Democrats), and increasing voter turnout.

The 50501 (50 states, 50 protests, 1 day) movement is a loosely organized protest movement that aims to coordinate demonstrations across all U.S. states on the same day around shared political concerns. It is grassroots and decentralized, focused on pro-democracy themes, often tied to opposition against perceived threats to democratic institutions, election-related issues, and specific political figures or policies.

The left does much more protesting than the right, so they receive more airtime for their activities. The reason? The left is more dedicated to fundamentally changing our society, and they have to work harder to attack the status quo. Of course, the socialists and communists are part of the Democratic big tent, and they want our current system to be discarded.

The identity politics folks, for their part, want our culture radically changed to embrace the full expression of the human experience. To them, any law, behavior, or custom that places limits on individual behavior is immoral and must be changed. Their effort does not apply to white people.

Conservatives work as individuals because that’s their nature. They affect change through voting or becoming members of organized groups. It takes issues that strike at the core of conservative thinking to get them to protest; a prime example was the Equal Rights Amendment fight in the 1970s, which they won.

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The stakes are very high this year, and liberal passion is at its peak. The No Kings protest was a manifestation not of public opinion but of how money from left-wing sources is being spent. They are going to have to regain the support of those who flipped to the Republicans in 2024 to win in 2028.

Meanwhile, the evil Hitler Trump is sidelining their agenda to remake American culture. Instead, he is embracing the core principles our Republic was founded on, the principles the left seeks to destroy. Even though the 2024 election went badly, they believe that they have a chance to right the ship in 2026. If they take the House, the Trump agenda will be thwarted, and theirs will be reestablished. The impeachments will begin again.

Will this cycle of retribution ever end?

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

In a recent piece, Oh, America, I tried to relay some thoughts and even some feelings about America being on the brink of something, and that it is a (secular) spiritual crisis the country faces. There is little chance of success for describing such a thing with words—it is internal and external, it is in the air. But with every reckoning, with every atmospheric shift in tone and tenor, there must be a collective investigation—a country must ask itself how it got to where it is, and where does it allow itself to be led to, in a presumably new direction, with a new cast of leaders?

Donald Trump will, at some point, die. I say this not with a glimmer or glint in my eye, not with a grin, nor with any grand announcement of sadness—I simply state it plainly, as a fact. As simply as I may say of myself, that some day, at some point, I will die. And for that matter, you will, too.

I mention the inevitable death of the president for a reason—there is no doubt that if one were asked to name the person who has most dominated politics, culture, dialogue, and has touched virtually every facet of American life over the last decade, what name would come to mind?

The death of the president, and the presumable death of MAGA on some level, will not be, in and of itself, the “settling of the dust” from our past woes, our current anxious state—but rather an event that may function more like a vacuum—a hole will be created for new dialogue, new conversations. It is worth asking what those conversations may look like, how those conversations will form, evolve, and how they begin, what they will evolve into.

It is not uncommon, when surveying the landscape of political conversation, to find many Americans unable or unwilling to have dialogue with those who disagree with their politics—whether it be friends, family members, or potential members out of a dating pool. I find any support specifically for the president to be strictly prohibitive among some, while a similar disregard for anyone self-identifying as liberal or progressive exists.

However, the weight of this phenomenon is not dispersed equally—a liberal or progressive has not been the centerpiece of American policy or political dialogue—in that way, it may prompt one to ponder—What do we do with all that MAGA energy? What will Trump voters do or say when their visionary is no longer in the conversation?

Without a doubt, new leaders will emerge to take the president’s place—but they just won’t be Donald Trump, and in his absence, we may find that the tenor and tempo of our national dialogue has changed, even if his legacy rides steadily through politics from a strict policy standpoint.

Whatever the case, the center cannot hold—America is fatigued, breathless, exhausted. In many ways, this is a consequence of our leader’s breathlessness, his exhaustion, his fatigue, his chaos, the rapid-fire nature of his many concerns—in some ways, America cannot keep up with the 81-year-old on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps this is all well-known. But what I have written here so far is a throat-clearing for what I believe the country will truly need, and what I hear so very seldom.

The word that I am trying to get around to is forgiveness. I have not been able to do it naturally in this text—so I´ll just say it plainly—this country will need heaps of it.

If we find our dear leaders are not worthy of forgiveness, I think it necessary to forgive ourselves, however we may have voted, however we may sway politically, however we have changed our minds or not, or who we decided to trust or not, to forgive our fellow countrymen and women.

But what does it look like to forgive a country? To forgive a population? It cannot be done personally, but rather internally. The act of forgiveness is often necessary, not for the person being forgiven, but for the person who chooses to forgive. We forgive ourselves, in order to release from us the weight of anger, the weight of frustration, perhaps even the weight of betrayal.

America’s deepest problems are internal. We suffer very little from outside agitation as a nation, and in order to progress, we must find our capacity to love ourselves and our fellow citizens. This feels nearly impossible, grandiose, dreamlike, unnattainable. But as the conversation shifts, new possibilities come into play. America has no destiny, no guaranteed future. The success of America is not written in stone, nor is the fate that we are an empire destined for collapse. One of the greatest strengths of the spirit is the power to forgive—and I believe it is a key component to end our collective national spiritual crisis, our collective grief.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

I traveled to Israel in 1981 on a business trip, stopping in Paris on the way back. It was a two-week journey that began the last week of December and ended in early January 1982. I had just left academia and moved into the private sector when a friend called to tell me he had recommended me for a consulting assignment in Israel. He was acting as a consultant for the State Department and was not available for the assignment.

The Israeli Health Ministry had asked the State Department to send someone to advise them on IT deployment and network communications. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I jumped at it even though I knew nothing about the project.

The year 1981 saw the Iran-Iraq War raging and increasing unrest in Lebanon. Israel attacked Lebanon in 1982, marking the beginning of the Lebanon War. Israel’s attack was launched to destroy the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) fighters operating there. Then in 1983, the American Barracks in Beirut were bombed, and 241 Americans were killed. I knew what was going on in the Middle East, but I wasn’t concerned that I would be harmed.

I flew from Detroit to Frankfurt as the first leg, then on to Tel Aviv. The first leg was uneventful, but our departure from Frankfurt was an experience I will never forget. Instead of waiting in the gate area, the other passengers and I were taken to a private room with our luggage.

A team of airport employees was there to open and search the bags. After that was completed, we sat and waited for a bus to take us to our plane. After we boarded it, the bus took us to a remote part of the airport. There our Lufthansa plane sat, by itself, encircled by a group of soldiers armed with automatic weapons. Seeing those soldiers made the Middle East feel like a hotbed for me.

The plane departed Frankfurt on time for our four-hour flight. During the flight, I kept looking around, trying to identify the Mossad agents who were undoubtedly on the plane. They did a good job of disguising themselves. The flight was uneventful, and we arrived in Tel Aviv on time. Walking down the stairway, I noticed serious-looking men at the bottom. I guessed they were Mossad agents who had memorized the faces of every terrorist in the Middle East, and I appreciated their thoroughness.

I spent three or four days in Tel-Aviv, ushered around by health ministry personnel. The main event was a visit to Sheba Hospital, the city’s largest medical facility. We looked at the computer room and discussed how the equipment was being utilized.

That was when I was told of the reason for my visit. The Israeli hospitals at that time operated as isolated islands of information processing. The National Health Ministry saw this as a problem due to its obvious inefficiency. They wanted to consolidate their data and share it across the different locations.

When I wasn’t busy with Health ministry officials, I was on my own, which meant doing some exploring. I visited the beachfront area and had dinner there. Tel-Aviv appeared to be a modern version of Jerusalem.

On my last day in Tel Aviv, I was given a tour of the northern part of Israel, including Haifa, about an hour to the north. While there, I was taken to a place where we could observe the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau of land, which was occupied by the Israelis in 1981. Before the Six-Day War in 1967, Syrians had used the heights to attack the north of Israel with artillery, so its occupation was strategically important to Israel.

The next day, I was driven to Jerusalem. My time there included an immersion in the region’s history. I visited Bethlehem, Jericho, and all the holy sites in the city.

It was fascinating to walk through the old walled city and imagine the events that took place there. I was taken on a tour of the famous Hadassah Hospital, probably the best-known medical facility in Israel. On New Year’s Eve, I sat in the hotel lobby for a while watching TV. It was an odd experience because there were no festivities. The Western New Year means nothing in Israel, which celebrates Rosh Hashanah in September.

On the last day, I was invited to a senior staff meeting at the Health Ministry to share my thoughts on their concerns. That meeting was an eye-opening experience, given the contrast with the kind of meetings we have in the States. All of the attendees were dressed casually, and the table where we sat was filled with bottles of various juices, water, and fruit.

During the meeting, the participants argued and interrupted one another, each seeking to prove that their ideas offered the best solution to the problem. It was like a big free-for-all. They may have expected me to join the melee, but it was hard for me to get a word in edgewise.

I’m afraid I was a disappointment to them because I couldn’t offer a magic solution. The internet did not exist, and data processing sites had to rely on phone lines to transfer information. The Israelis told me their phone systems were unreliable and subject to frequent disruptions.

Without an ironclad method of sending data, they couldn’t be sure of the data integrity at the other end. I told them that they had to continue with the “islands of data” model until their phone systems became more reliable.

I departed Israel for a weekend in Paris, which I had never seen. It was snowy and cold there. I visited the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, climbing up to the roof of the great cathedral.

The trip had a profound impact on my understanding of Israel and how it has to deal with threats every day. I will never temper my admiration for a people who have had their traditional homeland returned to them and ferociously defended it against their adversaries in the Middle East. Every Israeli would die for their homeland if the need arose, which is why all eligible young people are required to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

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The zeal of the Jewish people matches that of their ancestors who fought the Romans. In 70 CE, a Jewish militia attacked the Roman fortress at Masada and killed every Roman soldier in retribution for the Roman burning of Jerusalem. It took the Romans two years to prepare for an assault to retake the impregnable rock. When they finally broke through during the final assault, all the Jews had committed suicide.

Today, in the United States, Israel is being attacked from the left and right. To the left, they are oppressors of the Muslim people, who must be condemned. To the right, they are an unnecessary distraction from the implementation of an America First, nationalist identity in America.

The suffering of the Jews over the last two thousand years and their continued resilience deserve our respect and support, not our condemnation.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

What bothers me is that he’s not the first person to accuse me of using AI. Not that he was wrong, I do use it. I also use a computer, the internet, and search engines, and Word checks my spelling and grammar.

What am I supposed to do, write on parchment I’ve made myself using only information I’ve gotten by directly interviewing experts?

The number of people who have AI derangement syndrome is astounding. If they aren’t complaining that AI will destroy the world or take all our jobs, they’re complaining that it’s making us lazy or worse.

Note: If the concern is jobs, read this. Spoiler alert: the worry is exaggerated.

Here are two recent examples:

• ‘Think outside the bots’: How to stop AI from turning your brain to mush

• “AI chatbots could be making you stupider”

According to the first story, “GPS ruined our sense of direction. Search engines weaken our memory. AI, scientists warn, could do the same to everything from creativity to critical thinking.”

I have no doubt it’s true.

If you let AI do everything for you. However, if you use it intelligently – for research, editing, feedback, etc. - then it’s simply a tool.

I remember when technical advances were to be praised. Now it seems we’ve become a society of Luddites. Or have we?

This isn’t the first time people have argued that a new technology was going to make people dumber. Let’s look at some of the big ones:

• Writing - Socrates worried that it would weaken memory and create the illusion of knowledge instead of true understanding.

• Printing Press - Critics feared that it would result in a flood of cheap books which would spread misinformation, and that, without proper guidance, would lead to shallow reading and heretical ideas.

• Newspapers - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (among others) were concerned that they would encourage superficial thinking, gossip, and distract from serious intellectual life.

• Novels - Moralists and educators in the 18th–19th centuries believed that “trivial” reading would weaken discipline, especially among youth and women, and blur reality vs fantasy.

• Calculators - Educators in the 20th century thought students would lose basic arithmetic skills and become mentally lazy.

• Radio - Early 20th-century commentators worried that passive listening would replace reading and critical thought and that families would become less engaged with each other.

• Television - See “Radio” above, but add that it would shorten attention spans and turn public discourse into a shallow spectacle.

• Video Games - Parents, psychologists, and policymakers since the 1980s argue that it leads to addiction, reduced attention span, and less real-world socialization.

• Internet / Search Engines - Critics were concerned that constant access to information reduces deep thinking and memory (“outsourcing the brain”). Sound familiar?

• Smartphones / Social Media - Researchers, educators, and public figures today argue that they shortened attention spans, fuel dopamine-driven distraction, reduced face-to-face interaction, and lead to dependency.

I’m old enough to remember the last four, and I’d argue that the concerns around TV, video games, and search engines were overblown.

The jury is still out on smartphones and social media, as you’ve no doubt noticed based on the number of governments looking to ban them. I wouldn’t give a 16-year-old a bottle of whiskey, and I’m not sure giving them access to social media is any better.

That doesn’t mean that every new advance will ruin people, though. Or that sometimes there aren’t legitimate concerns. However, history also shows that people tend to adapt, and new tools often shift intelligence rather than simply degrading it.

What usually comes down to is this: if you’re using AI to do your writing, or if you believe everything it says, you’re heading for trouble. Use it wisely, though – and with a healthy dose of skepticism – and you’ll be just fine.

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At the end of the day, it comes down to who is doing your thinking, you or AI, and we each make that decision for ourselves.

If you’re letting AI do your thinking, maybe you weren’t all that smart to begin with.

Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and anything else that catches his fancy.

As you may have picked up from this article he’s now trying his hand at humor. You can find some of what he finds funny here.

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Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.