First Principles

A Time for Choosing, Again

Steeling Our Patriotic Reserve on America’s 250th As we mark the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, Ronald Reagan’s words from more than six decades ago echo with fresh urgency: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.” This wasn’t mere rhetoric from…

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Pride Before the Fall

MLB's Selective War on Christian Conscience Just days ago, three San Francisco Giants pitchers—Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker—took the mound during the team's Pride Night wearing the league-issued rainbow caps. They did not protest. They did not disrupt the game. They simply added a quiet inscription in white: “Gen 9:12-16.” That passage from the Book of Genesis carries the original meaning of the rainbow. God declares to Noah: “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow…

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The SpaceX 4,400

The Ordinary Workers Who Own the Future In the flood of viral posts and headlines after SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO, one image cuts through the noise: hardworking Americans—janitors, cooks, and welders—standing tall beside the rockets they helped build, now minted as millionaires. It’s not mere meme fodder. It’s cultural shorthand for a truth that unsettles much of the modern political and media class. SpaceX’s public debut, valued around $1.77 trillion, did far more than pad one man’s paper wealth. It created generational wealth for roughly 4,400 current and former employees—welders, cafeteria workers, technicians, launch site staff, engineers, and support personnel at every…

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Poppy’s Witness

A Father’s Heart, a Mother's Stand, and the Sanctity of Every Life I need to talk about this raw, the way I write when the curtain gets yanked all the way back. No polish for the sake of comfort. No slogans that let us off the hook. Just the naked testimony of a father who has walked the road the culture now debates in headlines and Instagram Stories. When Jesse and Ashley Ridgway, the YouTubers behind McJuggerNuggets, announced they had terminated their pregnancy after learning their child had Trisomy 21—Down syndrome—they described the condition as “objectively s---ty from a health perspective.”…

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Girls Deserve Better

Dismantling the Defense of Spot-Taking in High School Sports One year ago, I published "The Unfairness of Spot-Taking", arguing that protected categories like women’s sports exist because of immutable sex differences. Allowing males to enter those categories doesn’t expand inclusion — it enables straightforward theft of spots, medals, opportunities, and dignity from the very group the category was designed to protect. The events of the past year, capped by the 2026 CIF State Championships, have proven the thesis beyond any reasonable doubt. And few pieces illustrate the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the denialist side better than the Orange County Register’s…

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Because They Lived

Lives of Courage: Memorial Day Stories of Brotherhood and Legacy This Memorial Day, we pause not only in solemn remembrance, but in profound gratitude. We are not gathered at gravesides, before memorial walls, or in quiet moments of reflection merely because brave Americans died in service to our nation. We are here—deeply moved, forever changed—because they lived. In a world that often rushes toward the next distraction, Memorial Day calls us back to what truly matters. It is a sacred invitation to honor the full lives of those who answered the call with courage, served with integrity, and gave everything so…

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The Machiavellian Nonprofit

Funding the Hate It Professes to Fight — And Why Marc Andreessen Is Asking the Right Question A federal indictment has exposed the Southern Poverty Law Center for allegedly doing the unthinkable: using donor money to secretly sustain the very extremist groups it built a fortune warning the public about. Over $3 million routed through sham entities between 2014 and 2023. One paid asset, identified only as F-37, received more than $270,000 while embedded in the online leadership chat planning the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. He attended at the SPLC’s direction, made racist postings under its supervision, and…

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A Once-in-a-Generation Constitutional Trifecta

Three Supreme Court Cases That Could Restore the Foundations of Self-Government In most Supreme Court terms, we see important cases that refine doctrine or settle discrete disputes. But every so often—perhaps once in a generation—the docket aligns on questions that strike at the structural pillars of how Americans choose their representatives, conduct their elections, and define membership in the polity. The 2025–2026 term appears poised to deliver exactly that kind of moment with three pending cases: Louisiana v. Callais, Watson v. RNC, and Trump v. Barbara. In essence, these cases ask: May race predominate in drawing congressional districts to satisfy Section…

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Shepherding Order

From Empathy to Exploitation: The Cycles of Weakness and Renewal In a past that is now lost forever, There was a time when the land was sacred, And the Ancient Ones were as one with it. A time when only the children of the Great Spirit were here To light their fires in these places with no boundaries. When the forests were as thick as the fur of the winter bear, When a warrior could walk from horizon to horizon on the backs of the buffalo. When the deserts were in bloom, and the streams pure as freshly fallen snow. In…

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Fidelity to the Permanent Things

The Imperative of Pruning: Lessons from Conservatism's Past for Its Present Reckoning In the shadow of a resurgent conservative movement post-2024, where victories at the ballot box mask deeper fissures, a quiet but fierce battle rages-not against external foes like progressive overreach or cultural Marxism, but within the ranks themselves. This internal reckoning, akin to the purges that forged modern conservatism from the chaotic mid-20th century, demands a return to first principles and the permanent things. As voices like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens amplify rhetoric that veers perilously close to historical toxins, the imperative to prune-methodically, courageously-has never been more…

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