Think for a moment about the “speed of life.” Two centuries ago, it took months to cross the Atlantic on a wooden ship. Today, it takes five hours by plane. The Pony Express once needed weeks to deliver a message. The telegraph shrank that to seconds.
Human ingenuity has always accelerated life, but it was still bound by reality — the limits of earth’s raw materials.
On August 15, 1971, America traded reality for illusion.
Technology built from those natural parts is real, sustainable, and grounded. But when systems detach from the real world, they become artificial. They may run for a time, but they cannot endure.
Now consider money as a form of energy. Once, it was tangible: gold coins, silver dollars, bills you could hold in your hand. Even when transactions became electronic, they were still tethered to reality, with gold as their anchor. Cotton became fabric, chickens became food, gold became money. Nature set the limits.
That changed on August 15, 1971.
Faced with economic pressures, President Richard Nixon severed the dollar from gold. In doing so, he handed America’s financial energy supply to the Federal Reserve and the political class — a system now untethered from nature. Money no longer reflected real value. It was conjured from nothing. Now the government, once dependent on the real economy, had the power to create its own artificial economy.
You can’t print money to pay your bills. You live in reality. Washington escaped it — at least temporarily. The result is a false economy where the supply of “financial energy” outruns the natural world.
That’s why ordinary Americans feel like they are running on a treadmill that only speeds up. The $37 trillion in so-called “debt” isn’t debt at all. Debt requires repayment. It is the measure of money created out of thin air. When fake energy collides with real commodities, prices rise.
Look around you. Everything in your home — your chair, your phone, your groceries — is either a commodity or built from one. Oil powers the machinery that produces and delivers them. Since 2000, the cost of commodities has risen about 8% every year. Wages, in contrast, have only risen about 3% annually. That gap explains why families can’t keep up, why the middle class shrinks, and why frustration mounts. And because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, this inflation doesn’t just punish Americans — it ripples out to every nation on earth.
Think of the human body. It runs on about six volts of electricity. Plug it into 220 volts and you’ll get incredible output — briefly — before the system burns out. That’s what the Federal Reserve and political elites have done to our economy: forced humanity into hyper-speed, compressing decades of natural economic activity into a few frantic years. The result is burnout — social unrest, inequality, rage, endless wars, and declining health.
Even environmental strain ties back to this misalignment. Artificial money fuels artificial demand, driving overproduction and overconsumption. Elites congratulate themselves for “managing” the system while ordinary citizens pay the price — in higher bills, weaker wages, and a constant sense of instability.
This was not inevitable. For nearly two centuries, the dollar was worth 100 cents, because it was tied to gold. Today, it’s worth about three cents. The rest has been stolen — not from us, but from the future. Tomorrow’s dollars are being dragged into yesterday’s spending. But eventually, nothing will be left to plunder. That is the endgame of artificial money: a collision between illusion and reality.
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Most Americans don’t fully understand this, but they feel it in their bones. They sense that something is wrong, that they work harder only to fall farther behind. Artificial money creates artificial problems — and artificial problems have no real solutions. Only a reckoning with reality can set them right.
Elites in Washington and on Wall Street will not save us. They are the ones benefiting from the distortion. The rest of us are left to adapt. For many, that means simplifying life, rediscovering the virtues of family, community, and localism — the parts of America still tethered to reality. In the countryside, where life is slower, you can still glimpse the America that once was.
On August 15, 1971, America traded reality for illusion. The day Nixon closed the gold window, government and elites unshackled themselves from the limits the rest of us still live under. Until we recognize that truth, we will keep chasing solutions to problems that can’t be solved — because they were never real to begin with.
Over the weekend, Indiana’s lieutenant governor decided to show his cards. On social media, he boasted of supporting the importation of 40,000 Haitians into his state. Then, in a tacit admission that he knew how wrong this was, he shut off the comments, then deleted the post.
If he’s so proud of turning his state into a third-world dumping ground, why silence the people who elected him? Because he knows his constituents — Trump voters in a state the president won by 20 points in 2024 — vehemently reject it. He tried backtracking with another post, but that was too little, too late.
America’s culture comes from Americans. Indiana deserves leaders who understand that. Iowa will have one.
When a Republican openly advocates something his base opposes, he’s telling you whom he serves. Not the people of Indiana. Not the voters of the GOP. He serves the corporatist and globalist interests that see middle America as expendable.
This fight is no longer Republican versus Democrat. It isn’t conservative versus liberal. The real question is simple: Do you believe America is for Americans or not?
Do landowners in Iowa actually own their land, or are they just maintaining it and paying taxes on it until some globalist interest comes along and decides to take it? Do the people of Indiana get to pass on their heritage, or must they watch it be erased by forced demographic change?
Democrats like Tim Walz in Minnesota and Rob Sand in my home state of Iowa are eager to impose that future. But too many Republicans are playing along, including Indiana’s lieutenant governor.
I’m running for governor because part of a governor’s job is to protect and preserve the culture of his state. And culture begins with people — families and communities who built the heartland on hard work, dedication, grit, integrity, and a belief that a holy and righteous God still rewards such things with peace and prosperity.
That means ending the punishment of Americans who play by the rules, only to be undercut for cheap labor and political power. Donald Trump understood this, which is why he became the most successful Republican leader of the modern era. Yet too many in the party haven’t learned the lesson — or refuse to.
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Here is what must be done to preserve our way of life.
We need an economy that works for families — not for Wall Street. As governor, I will launch the largest skilled-trade expansion in Iowa’s history. These are good jobs AI won’t erase, jobs that don’t require sending our kids off to universities that saddle them with six figures in student loan debt and leftist indoctrination.
Our communities must shape government, not the other way around. They are not cogs in the globalist-corporatist machine. They are the bedrock of America’s culture, traditions, and faith. They built the greatest nation in history, and they deserve protection.
America’s culture comes from Americans. Indiana deserves leaders who understand that. Iowa will have one. If elected governor, I will use every power vested in me to protect and preserve Iowa’s culture — a culture rooted in Iowans themselves.
German economist Klaus Schwab founded the World Economic Forum in 1971 with the aim of engaging "the foremost political, business, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agenda."
During his tenure, the WEF founder made no secret of his desire to radically reshape the world, pushing for a "Great Reset" of capitalism, pressuring businesses to commit to eliminating carbon emissions, grooming a network of future politicians, and characterizing "misinformation and disinformation" as two of the greatest threats facing humanity.
'You have to force behaviors. At BlackRock we are forcing behaviors.'
Under Schwab's leadership, the WEF also informed the masses in 2018, "You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy."
After five decades in the role, Klaus Schwab announced on April 1 that he was stepping down as chairman.
The WEF originally indicated that Schwab would complete his departure by January 2027; however, he stepped down on April 21 after his organization launched an investigation into allegations that he engaged in financial and ethical misconduct.
The forum announced on Friday that the investigation found "no evidence of material wrongdoing by Klaus Schwab" as well as who would replace him: Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, and André Hoffmann, vice chairman of the Swiss drug company Roche. The billionaire duo will serve as co-chairs.
"This moment marks a pivotal transition for the World Economic Forum. The board will now focus its attention on institutionalizing the Forum as a resilient International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation," the forum said in a statement. "This next chapter will be guided by the original mission developed by Klaus Schwab: Bringing together government, business, and civil society to improve the state of the world."
Schwab's mission might be easier to accomplish with Fink at the helm, given that he also runs the world's largest asset manager, which reported $11.58 trillion in assets under management in the first quarter of this year and has offices in 30 countries.
Fink, like his predecessor, was an early champion of handcuffing investing to liberal environmental, social, and governance agendas and has evidenced a willingness to socially engineer human behavior.
'What's emerging now is globalization's second draft.'
When discussing the imagined importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in a 2017 interview, Fink said that "behaviors are going to have to change. This is one thing we’re asking companies. You have to force behaviors. At BlackRock we are forcing behaviors."
Years later, Fink vowed in a letter to shareholders to "embed DEI into everything we do."
While BlackRock dropped its DEI goals earlier this year, citing "significant changes to the U.S. legal and policy environment related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) that apply to many companies," the WEF could afford Fink another vehicle to push the divisive agenda abroad.
Fink also apparently shares Schwab's globalist outlook.
Fink noted in a recent op-ed in the Financial Times that "globalization is now coming apart," thanks in part to the Trump administration's "backlash to the era of what might be called 'globalism without guardrails.'" The BlackRock CEO, evidently not a fan of nationalism, expressed cautious optimism that "what's emerging now is globalization's second draft."
Fink suggested in a joint statement with Hoffmann that the need for the forum is greater than ever and that it "can serve as a unique catalyst for cooperation, one that fosters trust, identifies shared goals, and turns dialogue into action."
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In a brazen slap to both American science and American sovereignty, Dr. Reina Roa — Panama’s top health bureaucrat and the incoming head of the World Health Organization’s anti-tobacco treaty summit — is openly attacking the credibility of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In an official July 8 communication, Roa dismissed the FDA’s evidence-based reviews of reduced-risk nicotine products such as e-cigarettes and pouches, arrogantly questioning the agency’s independence simply because its conclusions don’t align with the WHO’s ideological agenda.
If the global public health community truly wishes to reduce the burden of smoking, it must start by respecting the integrity of scientific bodies like the FDA.
This is not a harmless bureaucratic quibble. It is an extraordinary and unfounded rebuke of one of the world’s most respected regulatory institutions — and, by extension, an insult to the United States. Moreover, it’s a refusal to acknowledge an ever-growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating that non-combustible nicotine products are dramatically less harmful than smoking.
Roa’s claim that “there is no independent scientific consensus not affiliated with the tobacco industry confirming that these products pose a substantially lower risk” is demonstrably false. The global scientific consensus on this matter is overwhelming and spans continents, ideologies, and public health traditions.
The U.K.’s Royal College of Physicians stated in its landmark 2016 report “Nicotine without Smoke” that “the hazard to health arising from long-term vapour inhalation … is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco.” Public Health England, now the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, famously concluded that vaping is “at least 95% less harmful than smoking.”
In 2018, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found “substantial evidence that exposure to toxic substances from e-cigarettes is significantly lower compared with combustible tobacco cigarettes.” Cancer Research U.K. is clear that “e-cigarettes are far less harmful than smoking,” and Action on Smoking and Health in Britain echoes that “the evidence is increasingly clear that vaping is much less harmful than smoking.”
International bodies agree. New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, France’s National Academy of Medicine, Canada’s Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, and Australia’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health have all publicly confirmed that vaping and other non-combustible nicotine products are significantly less harmful than smoking.
This is not outlier science. It is the core of responsible and evidence-based policymaking.
Roa’s suggestion that these positions do not represent a true scientific consensus reflects either willful ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead. Worse, it insinuates that the FDA, a regulatory agency known for setting some of the toughest product standards globally, may be compromised or manipulated by the tobacco industry. This is an outrageous accusation bordering on outright defamation.
What a turnaround for the WHO. In its 2015 study group report, it recommended that “regulatory strategies developed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could be used as a basis for deciding on best practices.”
Yet now that the FDA has authorized vapes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches as “appropriate for the protection of public health,” Roa signals that the WHO has suddenly changed its mind — raising the question of whether her position has more to do with U.S. funding cuts for the WHO than with public health.
It would be troubling enough if this false rhetoric came from a fringe voice. But an official communique from the Ministry of Health of Panama and incoming president of the 11th Conference of the Parties, the key global gathering for setting tobacco policy under the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, should be held accountable.
The role should demand evidence-based leadership and the ability to unify countries around the shared goal of reducing smoking-related death and disease. Instead, Roa’s rejection of accepted fact signals a concerning unwillingness to engage with real-world data and a disregard for the urgent need to provide smokers — especially in developing nations — with accurate information.
Questioning the FDA’s independence is not only offensive to American regulators and public health professionals but also an error that weakens the credibility of the WHO. Tobacco harm reduction is not an American invention, nor is it industry propaganda. It is a public health strategy rooted in the principle of reducing risk for people who either can’t or won’t quit nicotine entirely. The WHO’s own Framework Convention on Tobacco Control treaty explicitly mentions harm reduction, yet it continues to sideline this approach in practice.
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By downplaying the FDA’s role and dismissing the broad scientific consensus, Roa undermines the credibility of public health institutions worldwide and fuels mistrust in regulatory science. Ironically, in accusing others of lacking independence, she raises questions about her own objectivity in presiding over COP 11 — the most important international public health meeting of the year. Such a gathering should be conducted impartially, without an atmosphere that attempts to exclude the settled consensus about reduced-harm products.
Roa’s remarks betray the very mission of the WHO and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control treaty. If the global public health community truly wishes to reduce the burden of smoking, it must start by respecting the integrity of scientific bodies like the FDA, embracing credible evidence wherever it originates, and recognizing that harm reduction is not a threat — it’s an opportunity.
What passes for intellectual heft at the Atlantic is any criticism of President Donald Trump. In the Atlantic’s pages and its digital fare, you can read the now-discredited musings of David Frum, who helped bring us the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the inane foreign policy arguments of Max Boot; the interventionist prescriptions of Anne Applebaum; and now, the democracy promotion of political science professor Brian Klaas, who, in a recent article, blames President Trump for killing “American democracy promotion.”
If Klaas is correct, that is one more reason that Americans need to thank President Trump.
Klaas’ first priority is using American treasure and blood to promote his chimerical notions of global democracy and universal human rights.
One would have thought that the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq would have humbled our nation’s democracy promoters — but they haven’t. One would have thought that the failed foreign policy of Jimmy Carter would have humbled those who wish to make “human rights” the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy — but it didn’t. One would have thought that the chaos facilitated by the so-called “Arab Spring” would engender prudence and introspection among the democracy promoters — but it is not so.
Professor Klaas wants the world to become democratic and for U.S. foreign policy to lead the effort in bringing the globe to the promised land.
The Trump administration, Klaas writes, has “turn[ed] against a long-standing tradition of Western democracy promotion.”
Perhaps Klaas has never read George Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he counseled his countrymen to conduct foreign policy based solely on the nation’s interests. Or perhaps he missed John Quincy Adams’ July 4, 1821, address, in which he cautioned against going abroad in search of monsters to destroy and reminded his listeners that America is the well-wisher of freedom to all but the champion only of her own.
Perhaps Klaas believes that Wilsonianism is a “long-standing” American tradition, but in reality, it is mostly limited to starry-eyed liberal internationalists and neoconservatives.
Klaas mentions the “democracy boom” under President Bill Clinton, which was nothing more than a temporary consequence of America’s victory in the Cold War. Yet Klaas thinks it was the beginning of “shifting international norms” where freedom and democracy triumphed in “the ideological battle against rival models of governance” and “had become an inexorable force.”
Here, Klaas is likely referring to Francis Fukuyama’s discredited theory of the “end of history.” We have since discovered, however, that history didn’t die and that democracy is fragile, especially in places and among civilizations that have little democratic experience.
Fukuyama was wrong, but Samuel Huntington was right when he wrote about the coming “clash of civilizations.” One wonders if Klaas has read Huntington or Toynbee — or Spengler for that matter. Or, even more recently, Robert Kaplan’s “The Tragic Mind.”
Klaas criticizes Trump for praising dictators, but President Woodrow Wilson praised Lenin and President Franklin Roosevelt praised Stalin. Klaas says that Trump is indifferent to democracy and human rights. No, Trump simply refuses to make them the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, which is a “long-standing” tradition that stretches back long before Wilson to our founding fathers.
However, neither Wilson nor FDR wanted America to right every wrong in the world, as Klaas does. Klaas wants his “human rights” and democracy agenda “backed by weapons.” He laments that authoritarian regimes no longer need to fear the “condemnation” and the “bombs” of the American president.
Klaas’ leftism is revealed when he condemns the United States for helping to replace Mossaddegh with the pro-American shah of Iran, overthrowing the Marxist regime of Patrice Lumumba in Congo, helping to overthrow Allende in Chile, and cozying up to other authoritarian regimes.
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The professor also might want to read Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards” to learn that sometimes doing these things is in America’s national interests. Klaas’ leftism jumps off the page when he refers to the illegal aliens removed by the Trump administration — many with criminal records — as “foreign pilgrims.”
Some of those “foreign pilgrims” raped and killed Americans. But Klaas’ first priority is not America or its citizens; it is using American treasure and blood to promote his chimerical notions of global democracy and universal human rights. He is anti-Trump precisely because Trump’s foreign policy is America First. Let’s hope Klaas’ style of democracy promotion is dead.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
For generations, homeownership has been a cornerstone of the American dream. It meant stability, responsibility, and the chance to pass wealth to the next generation. It gave people a stake in their communities.
But that dream is slipping away. And it’s not by accident.
If we want Americans to remain free and self-governing, they must be able to own their homes and their futures.
We are drifting into a rental society. Fewer families can afford to buy a home, while massive investment firms and corporate landlords are buying up the housing supply and turning America into a nation of tenants.
This is hardly the natural evolution of the market. Rather, it’s the result of decades of bad policy, turbocharged by emerging technology and justified by global elites who’ve decided that private property is both outdated and unsustainable.
The “renters’ revolution” emerged from bad policy. For years, local, state, and federal governments have made it more difficult and expensive to build homes. Zoning restrictions choke supply.
Environmental rules delay development. Add in the unintended consequences of government-backed mortgage schemes in the Bill Clinton era, which played a major role in the 2008 housing market crash, and you’ve got a system that makes homes less attainable, despite the stated intentions of the enacted policies.
Into that broken system stepped Wall Street. After the crash, investment giants like Blackstone began buying up foreclosed homes in bulk, turning millions of single-family homes into rental properties. Much of this trend is made possible by emerging technology.
Today, institutional investors use artificial intelligence and algorithmic tools to scan markets and make instant cash offers, often outbidding families looking to buy their first homes. Companies such as Invitation Homes own tens of thousands of properties, all of which are managed through centralized apps, automated lease terms, and data-driven pricing tools.
We are experiencing a market shift — from millions of individual owners to a few corporate landlords.
This shift is also being encouraged, explicitly and implicitly, by international organizations pushing a post-ownership future. The World Economic Forum’s “you’ll own nothing and be happy” slogan was presented as a prediction, not a policy.
But look closer, and you’ll see that many World Economic Forum and United Nations initiatives actively promote this shift. The U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals call for denser high-rise cities, a move away from single-family zoning, and new restrictions on suburban development, all in the name of “sustainability” and “equity.”
It’s a coordinated ideological push to replace ownership with access, property with subscriptions, and permanence with flexibility. And the consequences are already showing.
When you don’t own your home, you don’t control it. You follow the rules set by someone else. That might mean no pets, no subleasing, and often no firearms on the premises.
As environmental, social, and governance scores, smart devices, and digital IDs creep into the rental landscape, we are fast approaching a future where landlords, driven by corporate and political incentives, can enforce ideological compliance under the guise of lease terms.
Renting means you’re always paying, never building. Homes have long been the foundation of middle-class wealth in America. When families are locked out of ownership, they’re locked out of that opportunity. The result is a cycle where equity flows upward to institutional investors while working families remain stuck on the hamster wheel.
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The “renters’ revolution” isn’t without psychological and cultural costs too. People who own their homes are more likely to put down roots, raise families, get involved in their communities, and feel a stake in the future of the country. Renters, especially when forced into that role, often feel transient and disempowered. That rootlessness is breeding disconnection and resentment.
These psychological costs have political consequences. Younger Americans, who increasingly see homeownership as unattainable, are also more likely to believe the system is rigged against them.
And who can blame them? They’re being told that capitalism failed them, when in reality, it’s crony capitalism, ESG corporatism, and global central planners who’ve rigged the game. But that distinction is often lost — or intentionally obscured. This increases the potential for them to turn to the siren song of socialism or further government action.
This is not just an economic problem. It’s a civic one. A society where most people don’t own anything is a society that’s easier to control, easier to manipulate, and easier to pacify. If we want Americans to remain free and self-governing, they must be able to own their homes and their futures.
We need lawmakers to investigate the concentration of housing in corporate hands. We need to roll back ESG-driven distortions in markets and rethink zoning rules that throttle supply. We should do more to promote first-time homeownership, rather than punishing it. And we must restore the idea that private property is not just an economic good — it’s a political necessity.
Just one day after the two-year anniversary of the horrific October 7 attack by Hamas, it was announced that Israel and Hamas accepted the terms of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war. It was a feat that then-President Joe Biden could not accomplish. In fact, it was a feat that no other world […]
Mass deportation of illegal immigrants is not enough to save America. We have to recover an insistence on assimilation.
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