You were built for meaning, not cheap pleasure



For most of human history, scarcity was the enemy. Territory, calories, energy, and land all had to be fought for, hoarded, and rationed. Wars were waged and innovations forged to survive deprivation. But the material hardship that once united societies in common struggle has largely faded in the affluent world.

Now we face a different enemy: artificial abundance.

The future belongs to those who reject the simulacrum and embrace reality.

In the wealthiest nations, human beings are no longer selected for resilience in the face of scarcity. They’re selected for their ability to resist the seductions of abundance — synthetic food, fake relationships, dopamine on demand. The danger isn’t hunger or want, but the numbing comfort of simulated satisfaction.

Loaded with empty calories

Once, entire civilizations rose or fell depending on their ability to produce and preserve food. Famines routinely devastated societies, and most people spent their lives just trying to eat.

Now, calories come cheap and easy. Factory farming, food science, and global logistics mean even the poorest Americans can gorge on processed junk. A trip to McDonald’s or a few bucks at Walmart buys a week’s worth of empty calories.

But artificial flavorings and chemical fillers are no substitute for real food. They simulate nourishment, but slowly poison the body. Calories are now so available that obesity, not hunger, is the largest threat to the well-being of the poor. The need has been met — and subverted.

Sex and glory, sold cheap

The same dynamic has corrupted sexual desire. Historically, sex drove men to build civilizations, conquer enemies, win wealth, and rise in status. Today, that drive is short-circuited. Men can now simulate conquest and fulfillment without risk, pain, or purpose — through pornography and video games.

Why fight for honor or love when you can get the illusion of both from a screen? Instead of greatness, many young men settle for a life of digital masturbation — and that’s how the system likes it. Young men remain trapped in a kind of eternal adolescence: satisfied just enough to avoid rebellion, addicted just enough to stay quiet.

Fake attention, real loneliness

Social media and dating apps have similarly distorted the lives of young women. Women crave connection, validation, and community — roles they once fulfilled in family, faith, and friendship.

Now they chase attention online, deluding themselves into believing that likes and comments are the same as love and loyalty. Social media simulates female community and male desire, but gives neither. Depression rises. Real-life relationships crumble. Women fear male attention in person but crave it online, where they feel in control.

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What results is a dysfunctional, hypergamous dating market. Men won’t approach. Women hold out for the fantasy of the “perfect man” who never arrives. Both sexes lose.

Lockdowns revealed the lie

COVID-19 lockdowns showed us the true danger of attempting to simulate every aspect of human experience.

During the lockdowns, social interactions from school, church, work, and even bonding with friends over a meal became impossible. School, church, work, friendship — all of it was forcibly digitized.

The results were catastrophic: soaring depression, stalled childhood development, and broken education.

But the worst part? People stayed in their digital cages even after the doors opened. Simulated connection became easier than real interaction. And easier won.

The real thing is harder — and worth it

Reality demands effort. Family, community, faith, and responsibility are hard. They hurt. They risk rejection. But they matter.

Left alone with simulated choices, most people will pick the path of least resistance. That’s why society must rethink what it rewards. Because the simulations aren’t harmless distractions — they’re traps.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “simulacrum” — a copy with no original. A cheeseburger that isn’t food. AI “friends” that aren’t human and virtual “communities” that cannot possibly relieve loneliness. A porn star who looks and behaves nothing like a real woman. Online attention that ruins offline romance. Video game violence that replaces true heroism.

An evolutionary filter

We face an evolutionary bottleneck as serious as any in human history. But instead of favoring the strong, smart, or adaptable, survival now depends on who can say no.

Can you say no to simulated sex? Simulated success? Simulated community? Can you hunger for meaning, not just comfort?

Those who make it through this filter will be the ones who choose austerity over ease — who hunger for the real thing. The future belongs to those who reject the simulacrum and embrace reality.

Artificial intelligence will only make these temptations worse. But those who refuse to be pacified will also be the ones who endure.

Choose meaning. Teach your children to do the same. The future depends on it.

The American Jew in TR’s View

During the presidential administration of Theodore Roosevelt, the American Jewish population nearly doubled, to almost two million. But long before he entered the White House, Roosevelt was familiar with Jewish issues. After all, Roosevelt began his meteoric political rise in New York, America’s most Jewish city. These combined experiences have led historian Andrew Porwancher to write American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews, a useful book that explores how instrumental Jewish issues were throughout Roosevelt’s presidency.

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All aboard! Trump should greenlight the Freedom Train



America has long celebrated its greatest moments by train.

In 1915, a steam locomotive carried the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia to San Francisco and back, drawing enormous crowds. In 1947, the Freedom Train crisscrossed the country with priceless artifacts of American history. Then came the biggest triumph: the Bicentennial American Freedom Train of 1976, which drew more than 50,000 people at each of its 138 stops.

The train would take the quarter-millennial celebration directly to the people — right where it belongs.

On the cusp of the nation’s 250th birthday, it’s time to bring that tradition back. The red, white, and blue steam train should roll again — celebrating America’s founding and bringing history to Main Streets across the land.

The original idea came from John Wayne. That alone might have been enough for Kamala Harris to oppose it, had she been elected president. Add in the train’s cinematic clouds of smoke, its role in commemorating the westward settlement, and its unapologetic embrace of American greatness, and it’s hard to imagine today’s progressive leaders welcoming it.

But President Trump would. He’s restoring the spirit Wayne loved: American strength, love of country, masculine virtue. Trump has already pledged to include a statue of the Duke in his proposed National Garden of American Heroes. If he also allows the new train to display the federal artifacts its predecessors carried — the original Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase document, Lincoln’s hat, Ruth’s bat — then the American Freedom Train can run again in 2026.

The artifacts are key. If the administration releases them, the biggest remaining challenge will be time.

In 1976, the train took 15 months to organize. Today, in a country where builders are building again, that timeline can be compressed. But it will take at least a year to prepare the train — to build display cars, ready the steam engine, transport and secure the artifacts, and tackle the logistics of a 48-state journey.

The clock is ticking. A decision now could kick off the celebration by next July 4.

The Bicentennial Freedom Train didn’t just appear for a few fireworks in early July. It helped stretch the nation’s celebration over nearly two years — from the April 1975 anniversary of Lexington and Concord to a final stop in Miami on New Year’s Eve 1976.

A Quarter-Millennial Freedom Train would do the same. It would extend the celebration beyond Independence Day and tie together local and national events like nothing else. That was exactly the intention in 1976. John Warner, head of the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, called the train “the most visible” element of the celebration — one that helped “sew together” diverse festivities across the country.

Once again, the train would showcase cherished artifacts: Paul Revere’s saddlebags, Washington’s personal copy of the Constitution, JFK’s handwritten inaugural address, even lunar rocks and Olympic memorabilia from the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.”

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  Denver Post via Getty Images

Private citizens would lead the effort, just as they did before. The American Freedom Train Foundation includes veterans of the original Bicentennial train. They know how to plan and execute a coast-to-coast expedition. They just need modest federal support — and access to the artifacts — to bring it to life.

Army veteran and Nashville artist Tim Maggart sings that the Freedom Train is “as American as a line drive.” And that’s exactly what it would be: a rolling, photogenic, crowd-pleasing tribute to our nation. Day after day, the locomotive would thunder past landmarks, through cities and farmlands, beneath America’s spacious skies. And at every stop, Americans would cheer.

The train would symbolize both American power and American pride. It would carry our founding history from coast to coast, just as it once did. And it would take the quarter-millennial celebration directly to the people — right where it belongs.

Flower Power

"You’ve seen one orchid," said my late father-in-law, "you’ve seen ’em all." I endorse his view. To my orchid-phobic eye, these flowers are meretricious tarts, the strumpets of the botanical world. You couldn’t pay me to have one in the house. Someone once sent me a potted orchid in my college days as a Thank You for a favor: I gave it away to my scout (as we called our cleaning-ladies).

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If we can’t speak civilly, we’ll fight brutally



Last weekend in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, protesters gathered for a No Kings rally, holding signs that compared federal immigration officers to Nazis — one reading, “Nazis used trains. ICE uses planes.” These kinds of messages aren’t just offensive, they’re dangerous. And they’re becoming far too common in politics.

The same weekend, halfway across the country, Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman (DFL) was shot and killed in a politically motivated attack. While the investigation is ongoing, the timing is chilling — and it reminds us that words and rhetoric can have consequences far beyond the floor of a legislative chamber.

Most people don’t want politics to be a blood sport. They want real solutions.

When public servants are threatened, harassed, or even harmed for doing their jobs, something has gone deeply wrong in our democracy.

It’s time to turn down the temperature — not just in our political speeches, but on our main streets, in school board meetings, and even our protest signs.

Cool the rhetoric

Public service is about problem-solving, not posturing. I’ve always believed in working with my neighbors — even when we disagree — to make our community safer and stronger. But that’s becoming harder when disagreement is met with dehumanization and history is twisted into political theater.

We’ve seen it right here in my community. At a recent public hearing on how to protect children from online predators, a woman disrupted the meeting to shout that our Jewish sheriff, Fred Harran, was a “Nazi.” A week later, during a Bucks County Commissioners meeting about a law enforcement partnership with ICE, Commissioner Bob Harvie warned of “parallels” between modern politics and pre-war Nazi Germany.

I’ve worked hard in the state House to expand Holocaust education in Pennsylvania schools, because I believe history must be remembered — not weaponized. As the daughter of educators, I was raised to know that using Nazi references as political attacks not only dishonors the memory of those who suffered, it poisons the possibility of honest, civil debate.

Civil discourse is critical

None of this is to say we shouldn’t debate serious issues — immigration, public safety, fiscal priorities, and the future of our communities. Or that we shouldn’t take part in peaceful protest rooted in our First Amendment rights. We must. But we must also remember that democracy isn’t about shouting each other down — it’s about listening, questioning, and finding common ground.

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The truth is, most people don’t want politics to be a blood sport. They want real solutions. They want their kids to be safe, their neighborhoods to be strong, and their elected officials to focus on solving problems — not scoring points.

Let’s be better than the signs. Let’s be better than the sound bites. Let’s choose to be neighbors first and partisans second.

Because if we don’t change the tone now, we risk losing more than just elections — we risk losing one another.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania and made available via RealClearWire.

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