Big Tech CEOs should leave policy to the politicians



President Donald Trump’s latest comments on semiconductor exports sounded almost conciliatory — until they weren’t. Speaking recently on “60 Minutes,” the president said he would let Nvidia “deal with China” but drew a bright red line: Beijing could buy chips, just not the “most advanced” ones. The message was calibrated for maximum effect: permissive enough to please markets, hawkish enough to claim toughness. Nvidia’s stock jumped immediately — but China did not get what it wanted.

Days later, in a Financial Times interview, Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, warned that if the U.S. blocked his company from selling more of its advanced chips to China, it would “lose” the AI race. The argument was astonishing in its candor: Cut us off, Beijing wins.

As grateful as America should be for breathtaking innovations, an irreconcilable tension exists between national interest and fiduciary duty.

The comparison between a president sounding measured and a CEO trying to sound indispensable captures a dangerous inversion of power. Nvidia has become more than America’s most valuable company. It’s attempting to become its policymaker, shaping the boundaries of what Washington thinks possible in its competition with China.

To understand how one company reached that position, it helps to revisit what happened in Washington just days before Trump met Xi Jinping in South Korea.

Nvidia called it a GPU Technology Conference. Yet the event felt less like a developer’s conference and more like a tech-bro-meets-MAGA jamboree: free swag and a booming video hymn to American genius — from Thomas Edison to Donald J. Trump. Huang, leather jacket gleaming, strode out like a preacher to proclaim that the age of reindustrialization had arrived.

The D.C. version of GTC was not the San Jose GTC tech insiders have come to know. For the first time, Nvidia brought a full-blown edition of its developers’ confab to the capital, a strategic choice. The company does not merely want to sit at the table where policy is made — it wants to own it.

After hours of Super Bowl-style buildup — financiers whispering, tech CEOs hinting — attendees were herded into a dimly lit hall, where Huang unveiled a cascade of partnerships. The headline act that made sleeves roll up on both the policy bench and the brokerage floor was the Vera Rubin Superchip, billed as made in America and spoken of with the gravity reserved for national monuments.

It’s a dazzling feat of engineering: silicon that can be waved before a crowd as proof that America can still design, assemble, and scale. Expected to debut next year, the chip is music to policy wonks’ ears, a gleaming symbol of reindustrialization, and perhaps a psychological hedge against the fragility of Taiwan. For investors, it’s manna. As robots increasingly take charge, building chips in the U.S. will keep the supply chain close to home and safeguard companies against the whims of geopolitics.

Then, with the applause fading, an undercurrent of tension lingered, one that perhaps only the wonks could fully register. After that opening montage, capped by Jensen’s almost rhetorical question, “Was that video amazing?” the subtext became harder to ignore. And when he closed his remarks by thanking the audience “for your service and for making America great again,” it was impossible not to think of what the financiers were murmuring on the next stage over.

“Nvidia will — or should — ship more GPUs to China.” “Jensen’s flying straight to Korea after GTC to meet Trump.” “A deal’s coming.”

Those were among the refrains traded by figures like Cantor Fitzgerald’s C.J. Muse and Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner. All this, of course, is contrary to the prevailing consensus among China-watchers that the notion of rendering Beijing dependent on Nvidia’s chips is fantasy. Cultivating indigenous capability by acquiring American technology by legal or illicit means has long been Beijing’s modus operandi.

Huang knows this. Still, his company has long worked to blunt export controls and push China-specific versions of its flagship Blackwell chip, the so-called B20. It’s a familiar playbook: First came the H100, then its “export-compliant” cousins, the H800 and H20. Each time, Washington tightens the rules; each time, Nvidia finds a workaround. But this must stop.

RELATED: Big Tech’s AI boom hits voters hard — and Democrats pounce

Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images

The dilemma is simple but corrosive. As grateful as America should be for breathtaking innovations, an irreconcilable tension exists between national interest and fiduciary duty. Huang may sound bullish on “betting on America,” but the reality is starker: If his company could power the AI revolutions of both superpowers at once, it would add trillions to its market cap. He is pragmatic and coldly arithmetic. Build the best chips, profit from ubiquity. You don’t get where he is without knowing your math.

At GTC, I saw the divide play out in miniature. As Altimeter’s Brad Gerstner floated the idea that “logic is on the side of letting Nvidia compete with China,” I turned to a biotech researcher. Blunt and unamused, he said: “Bulls**t.” He went on to explain that, in his field especially, China’s ascent has been a wholesale rejection of the “make China dependent” fantasy. He wasn’t wrong: Under Xi Jinping, the Made in China 2025 agenda has rendered such dependency theories delusional.

Huang tries to thread the needle gracefully, extolling U.S. manufacturing while signaling an embrace of Chinese developers. As an American, it’s hard not to be charmed by his all-American chip. As a realist, however, one leaves with questions no press release can answer. In a way, the release of this patriot-approved superchip was meant to suggest, “See, now we can sell some Blackwells to China.” As charmed as one can be, the answer is still no.

One could have told the Roosevelt administration that cutting Germany off from nuclear materials would stifle innovation. Yet we did exactly that during the Manhattan Project. And we won. It may not sound like it, but this is the same choice we face today — only this race has even greater implications for the future of civilization.

The goal can’t be attempting to trap Beijing in “dependency.” The stakes are too high. The most prudent approach is to focus on surpassing them in innovation while closing loopholes that let Beijing do what it has mastered: Learn from us, then try to replace us.

Jensen Huang has every right to fight for his company’s profits. But foreign policy shouldn’t run on a corporate playbook. The U.S. needs innovators — not influencers — setting the terms of technological rivalry.

Editor’s note: A version of article appeared originally at the American Mind.

America’s new lost generation is looking for home — and finding the wrong ones



A friend who works with high school students recently said to me, “I overheard a group of boys talking about 'international Jewry.'” He was in disbelief to hear these seemingly mild-mannered kids express views that, not 20 years ago, would have been considered taboo.

What is going on with Gen Z?

I have written elsewhere that Gen Z is experiencing a kind of church resurgence. That remains true. But at the same time, Gen Z is one of the most polarized generations in American history.

Social systems that seek to reorient reality by means of uprooting history and tradition will ultimately create a rootless and disaffected class in search of belonging.

In 2024, Gen Z — led in part by young activists like Charlie Kirk and Scott Presler — shifted toward Donald Trump. He won 46% of Gen Z voters — 56% of young men and 40% of young women. This led many to expect that a younger, more populist generation would shift the country rightward. But now in 2025, the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won 78% of the youth vote in New York City — 67% of young men and 84% of young women. Far from being locked into any one existing political party, young people are more divided than ever.

One cause of this is what I call “nomadic progressivism.” Kids born between, say, 1997 and 2012 have been thoroughly inundated with progressivism and identity politics from birth. They came of age amid several key developments that shaped their moral and social formation:

  • The Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015 and the legalization of same-sex marriage.
  • The killing of Trayvon Martin and the rise of Black Lives Matter.
  • The surge of transgender activism that dominated headlines in the early 2020s.
  • The appearance of Greta Thunberg and the new climate movement.
  • The explosive growth of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Vine.

We could list hundreds of others, but these movements captured Gen Z’s moral imagination. Each sought, in the name of justice or progress, to undermine the inherited order, replacing the inherited structures of culture with moral and social uncertainty.

Gen Z grew up bullied by progressive ideology, and until the shocking election of Donald Trump in 2016, there was no visible reaction. Society appeared to be marching unopposed toward progressive utopia. But Trump’s election broke the spell. His first term was marked by protests, the rise of transgender ideology, and a wave of social revolt.

Then came COVID-19. As the left preached “safety,” Gen Z was locked inside, immersed in a digital environment, and wracked by depression and anxiety. Created for engagement and real community, young people were instead sent to their rooms and told to stay there.

This, I believe, is the key: Progressivism prepared the soil for radicalization. It removed the roots — churches, families, communities — that once grounded Gen Z’s moral life. It left young people searching for belonging in a barren landscape.

The philosopher and novelist Simone Weil wrote in “The Need for Roots” that “human beings have roots by virtue of their real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community, which preserves in living shape particular treasures of the past and particular expectations for the future.” When that participation is stripped away, people search for roots elsewhere.

For Gen Z women, that search often led to Instagram and other social media platforms. They heard celebrities and influencers denounce the status quo. They were told marriage was oppressive, men were vile, and independence was the highest good. But that “empowerment” was often just loneliness in disguise.

RELATED: Young, broke, and voting blue: 2025’s harsh lesson for the right

Photo by Jeremy Weine/Getty Images

As for Gen Z men, constant ridicule and belittlement left them disoriented. Why invest in a society that despises you? Why build what the world condemns? In this vacuum arose the “manosphere.” Figures like Andrew Tate offered refuge. They told men it was OK to be men — and as they were among the only ones saying so, they had free rein to define what it meant. If honor, discipline, and respectful courtship were only going to get you mocked and condemned, manosphere influencers reasoned that you might as well double down on boorishness, lust, and aggression.

As distrust of the government and institutions grew, young men turned elsewhere for truth. In gnostic fashion, figures like Nick Fuentes promised to reveal “how things really are.” But as Christopher Rufo has noted, it is a ruse. Fuentes exploits the crisis of masculinity to peddle resentment and historical denialism. Progressive Gen Z women, seeking fulfillment in the depths of the online space, are little different from the young men seeking connection and meaning from those like Fuentes.

Gen Z is a generation longing for roots. Its members are trying to find them on the fringes of society, since their own roots were dug out years ago. Progressivism creates nomads. Social systems that seek to reorient reality by means of uprooting history and tradition will ultimately create a rootless and disaffected class in search of belonging. And they will find it in dark places.

The men and women of Gen Z are not uniquely radical. They are uniquely rootless. They have inherited a moral landscape stripped of shared meaning, through which they drift amid ideologies that promise belonging but deliver only bitterness. The progressive order unmoored them; now the reactionary order recruits them. And unless a deeper renewal of faith, family, and community takes root, this generation will continue to wander — searching for the very home that modernity taught them to forget.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

‘I Never Want To Hear Again’: Democrats’ Leader Delusional After Picking Up Some Victories

Wouldn’t count on young men

If conservatives will not defend capitalism, who will?



In the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s electoral victory earlier this month, it became clear that socialism is a greater threat on the left than ever before. It is also clear that the GOP could no longer coast along by proclaiming, “Vote for us because he’s a socialist,” assuming that people would forever have a knee-jerk reaction to that word.

One issue that defined New York’s mayoral race — and increasingly politics throughout the country — is affordability. For millions of Americans, affording rent, groceries, health care, and a home seem further out of reach than ever before. The issue has been winked at by politicians across the spectrum for years around election time with precious little results to show for it.

Explaining to voters why they are wrong — or even worse, outright dismissing their concerns — has never worked politically, and that is not going to change now.

We have largely reached a point where this can no longer be avoided: We are now seeing regular releases of ever-worsening economic figures. The median age for all U.S. home buyers is 59 — a staggering statistic by itself, made even worse by the fact that it is up from just 28 back in 1991.

And it is not just that people are getting priced out of home ownership — rents have gone up astronomically over the past decade, leading us to a situation in which the American consumer is clearly struggling to get by. From credit card debt at record highs with seriously delinquent accounts hitting 12%, the highest since 2012, to auto repos matching 2009 levels, it is pretty clear that the consumer is maxed out.

Looking around at how conservative pundits spent the last few weeks talking though, you would not know it at all. You would be forgiven if you thought they had just come off a huge electoral victory. Conservatism simply cannot reduce itself to being the worst caricature of cold elitism that turns a blind eye to the very real economic struggles many in the country are facing.

Ben Shapiro kicked things off after suggesting to young people that they simply should not live in places like New York City, criticizing the idea that someone would deserve to live where they grew up and where job opportunities are heavily concentrated.

That same week, Donald Trump opened a rift within his own base — a rare sight for sure — in an interview with Laura Ingraham over the issue of H-1B visas. When she pushed him on his stance, saying that we have “plenty of talented people here,” he interrupted with, “No you don’t, no you don’t.” Instead of focusing on how to make American workers more competitive through better education or training, the message heard by many was that Americans were not up for the job.

Worst of all may have been Dinesh D’Souza, who felt the need to weigh in on Vivek Ramaswamy’s meritocratic education reform by essentially race-baiting, saying: “How ironic it will be if a brown American like Vivek actually helps to fix education and raise the prospects of white kids, while all the professional whiteys on X continue their idle boasting.” Whatever the merits of education reform, mocking struggling Americans — especially through whatever “professional whiteys” is supposed to mean — is not doing anyone any favors.

With approaches like these from the right, who needs the left anymore? It took Ramaswamy’s opponent in the Ohio gubernatorial race, Amy Acton, all of 24 hours to put together an ad saying that Ramaswamy thinks “Ohioans are lazy and mediocre. He’s wrong.” It practically wrote itself.

Arguments like these from conservatives do more damage to the defense of capitalism than attacks from socialists ever could and are totally disconnected from what free markets actually are. Capitalism has delivered more prosperity than any system in human history, and it is not even close — but it did not get there by running on the platform of saying, “You’re too poor to live where you grew up, our country isn’t talented, move aside.”

New York City is famous throughout the world because it is the city where generation after generation of people who wanted to work hard could go and make something of themselves. Nobody I have seen on the right is asking for a luxury life handed to them on a silver spoon while they sit on the couch. They are frustrated by the fact that the world seems to be increasingly out of reach for them.

The only person in the GOP who seems to be able to see this, I’m horrified to say, appears to be Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), who spent the last few weeks getting attacked for acknowledging that many “young adults are barely making it” and accusing Trump’s allies of gaslighting Americans about the cost of living. On Saturday, she posted on X: “My heart is with Americans who struggle to afford life in America today.”

To her credit, she has been consistent in prioritizing cost-of-living issues — something that has become far too rare in the GOP since Donald Trump took office. She has taken the lead in warning that health insurance premiums would double for millions of Americans — including her own adult children — when enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire, while Republican leadership has largely sidestepped the problem.

RELATED: Mamdani sells socialism — and Republicans peddle the Temu version

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

We on the right have long embraced a tougher-love approach that certainly includes prioritizing a strong work ethic, and nobody needs to give that up. But that is not the issue here at all — Ben Shapiro’s comments are not directed at people who do not want to work; they are directed at and felt by those who do work and still cannot afford many basic things that previous generations took for granted.

Explaining to voters why they are wrong — or even worse, outright dismissing their concerns — has never worked politically, and that is not going to change now. Support for capitalism has now fallen to 54% overall, with Democrats preferring socialism 66% to 42%.

Peter Thiel’s now-viral email from 2020 captures exactly what is underlying this shift:

From the perspective of a broken generational compact ... when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time ... if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.

He was right then, and he is right now. The only thing left to be seen is whether the right will wake up to that reality before it is too late.

If this month’s performance is any indication, I am not holding my breath.

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

How faith sustained me in my darkest hour



I am a retired Navy lieutenant commander who served our nation for nearly two decades in the intelligence community. My wife, Sharon, and I spent years running a successful software company serving federal agencies. We were living peacefully on our small family farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley when, in a pre-dawn SWAT raid, armor-clad FBI agents shattered our lives following the January 6 protest at the nation’s Capitol.

What followed was my arrest for a crime I never committed, solitary confinement in what I can only describe as an icy dungeon, and a battle through a politically driven legal system determined to crush everything Sharon and I had built together.

The thought consumed me: I’m never getting out of here. Why not take control?

There are moments in life when everything you thought defined you simply ceases to exist. For me, that moment came in a Virginia supermax solitary confinement cell, lying on cold concrete after being struck in the spine by a guard, unable to draw a full breath, watching uniformed backs disappear through a steel door that slammed with finality.

In that cell, I had no pride, no dignity, no vanity, no vitality, no ambition, no joy, no self-respect, no ego, no hope. I was reduced to what I can only describe as the rapidly hammering heart of human anguish.

I've spent considerable time thinking about whether places of extreme suffering have the power to trap a person's essence — whether dungeons and passageways can hold people captive by imprinting upon them the heartache, grief, and distress endured, replaying that wretchedness and pain in a perpetual loop across time itself. In those solitary confinement catacombs, I felt that I was living in exactly such a place.

The darkest thought came to me with unexpected clarity: As a Christian, I know I am going to heaven. This knowledge, when I thought too much about it, formed an excellent argument for suicide. Why endure this abuse when I could be with Jesus, with friends and family, with my puppy in heaven? I wouldn’t shake there. I wouldn't hurt or ache any more. It would stop the pain. In the depths of my hopelessness, this thought gave me a feeling of relief. My suffering would end, and Sharon could live and be free.

I was so far gone that I let the enemy put these thoughts in my head. Death, which should have come to me many years from now as a benevolent old friend bringing gifts of peace and rest, instead clung to my being like a fungus rooted in desperation and despair. I heard other inmates talk of it through the walls and in the passageways — to no one in particular, or at least to no one somebody else could see.

The thought consumed me: I’m never getting out of here. Why not take control?

So I told the Lord then and there that I wanted to come home to Him, to end all of this, and I asked Him to make it so. My will to go on had fled me. Unless you have reached the point of total physical and emotional collapse, I'm not sure I can make you understand. In a way, I was already dead.

That might have been the first and only time this confessed control freak had ever said “Your will be done, Father,” and really meant it.

I had no control over anything in my desiccated world, but I had the ability to relinquish control of my life that day. Nothing that I owned or that I thought was a part of me existed in that hell. Was this “dying to self”? Those curious Bible words suddenly made sense.

It had something to do with my idea of the sum of me as a human being — my personal, selfish desires, the things I wanted or ever thought I did, my plans for a happy future with Sharon. I couldn’t clearly picture them any more. They were lost like last night’s dreams, forgotten with the free man's morning coffee.

Right now, they counted for exactly nothing.

I didn't know how to pray at that moment. I was too beaten down, and I didn't have the tongue for it. All I could offer was: “Whatever You have planned is much better than this, Lord. Let's try that, please, because this place totally sucks.”

With the warning lights on the remnant of my life force glaring a constant red, He took me in.

RELATED: The grace our cruel culture can’t understand

Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

That surrender — that complete, desperate relinquishment of control — was the moment my faith stopped being something I professed and became something I lived. Not in victory, but in total defeat. Not in strength, but in absolute weakness. It was there, in that place of utter brokenness, that I discovered what faith actually means: trusting God when you have nothing left, not even yourself.

Through years of persecution, Sharon and I were repeatedly pulled from the brink by what I can only describe as miraculous events. Our marital bond and our enduring faith in God sustained us through a battle against overwhelming odds. In a federal courtroom where I faced slander, perjury, and falsification of evidence, it was that moment of complete surrender in solitary confinement — when I finally meant “Your will be done” — that gave me the strength to endure what seemed unendurable.

I am living proof that faith isn't found in our strength, but in God's strength when ours has completely failed.

Our forefathers prayed on Thanksgiving. We scroll.



There was a time when Thanksgiving pointed toward something higher than stampedes for electronics or a long weekend of football. At its root, Thanksgiving was a public reminder that faith, family, and country are inseparable — and that a free people must recognize the source of their blessings.

Long before Congress fixed the holiday to the end of November, colonies and early states observed floating days of thanksgiving, prayer, and fasting. These were civic acts as much as religious ones: moments when communities asked God to protect them from calamity and guide their families and their nation.

Grounded in gratitude

The Continental Congress issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation in 1777, drafted by Samuel Adams. The delegates called on Americans to acknowledge God’s providence “with Gratitude” and to implore “such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of.”

Twelve years later, President George Washington proclaimed the first federal day of thanksgiving under the Constitution. He asked citizens to gather in public and private worship, to seek forgiveness for “national and other transgressions,” and to pray for the growth of “true religion and virtue.”

Our problems — social, fiscal, and moral — are immense. But they are not greater than the God our ancestors trusted.

Other presidents followed suit. During rising tensions with France in 1798, John Adams declared a national day of “solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer,” arguing that only a virtuous people could sustain liberty. The next year he called for another day of thanksgiving, urging citizens to set aside work, confess national sins, and recommit themselves to God.

For generations, this was the American understanding: national strength flowed from moral character, and moral character flowed from religious conviction.

The evolution of a holiday

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln — responding to years of lobbying by Sarah Josepha Hale — established the last Thursday in November as a permanent national Thanksgiving. Hale saw the holiday as a unifying civic ritual that strengthened families and reminded Americans of their shared heritage.

Calvin Coolidge echoed this tradition in 1924, observing that Thanksgiving revealed “the spiritual strength of the nation.” Even as technology transformed daily life, he insisted that the meaning of the day remain unchanged.

But as the country drifted from an agricultural rhythm and from public expressions of faith, the holiday’s original purpose faded. The deeper meaning — gratitude, repentance, unity — gave way to distraction.

When a nation forgets

Today, America marks Thanksgiving with a national character far removed from the one our forebears envisioned. The founders believed public acknowledgment of God’s authority anchored liberty. Modern institutions increasingly treat religious conviction as an obstacle.

Court rulings have redefined marriage, narrowed the space for religious conscience, and removed long-standing religious symbols from public grounds. Citizens have been fined, penalized, or jailed for refusing to violate their beliefs. The very freedoms early Americans prayed to preserve are now treated as negotiable.

At the same time, other pillars of national life — family stability, civic order, border security, self-government — erode under cultural and political pressure. As faith recedes, government fills the void. The founders warned that a people who lose their internal moral compass invite external control.

Former House Speaker Robert Winthrop (Whig-Mass.) put it plainly in 1849: A society will be governed “either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man.”

A lesson from history

The collapse of religious conviction in much of Europe created a vacuum quickly filled by ideologies hostile to Western values. America resisted this trend longer, but the rising influence of secularism and identity ideology pushes our society toward the same drift: a nation less confident in its heritage, less united by a common purpose.

Ronald Reagan saw the warning signs decades ago. In his 1989 farewell, he lamented that younger generations were no longer taught to love their country or understand why the Pilgrims came here. Patriotism, once absorbed through family, school, and culture, had been replaced by fashionable cynicism.

Thanksgiving offers the antidote Reagan urged: a return to gratitude, history, and shared purpose.

RELATED: Why we need God’s blessing more than ever

Photo by Barney Burstein/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Thanksgiving was meant to be the clearest expression of a nation united by faith, family, and patriotism. It rooted liberty in gratitude and gratitude in God’s providence.

Reagan captured that spirit in 1986, writing that Thanksgiving “underscores our unshakable belief in God as the foundation of our Nation.” That conviction made possible the prosperity and freedom Americans inherited.

Today’s constitutional conservatives must lead in restoring that heritage — not by nostalgia, but by example. Families who teach gratitude, faith, and national purpose build the civic strength the founders believed essential.

A return to gratitude

Thanksgiving calls each of us to humility: to recognize that national renewal begins with personal renewal. Our problems — social, fiscal, and moral — are immense. But they are not greater than the God our ancestors trusted.

That confidence is the heart of Thanksgiving. It is why the Pilgrims prayed, why Congress proclaimed days of fasting and praise, why Lincoln unified the holiday, and why generations of Americans pause each November to give thanks.

Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared at Conservative Review in 2015.

Legacy Media Goes From Ignoring To Endorsing Illegal Immigrant Crime

Migrants maintain tight-knit networks across the United States

Give thanks for the sun, the CO2, and the farmers — not the climate scolds



What if, this Thanksgiving, we offered a small tribute to global warming and the relative abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? An apparently scandalous idea. Global elites and their media partners insist that these forces promise catastrophe. Yet sound thinking demands the opposite conclusion.

Fifty years ago, the story was reversed. In the 1970s, major outlets warned of a coming ice age. Some scientists called for immediate action to stop the planet from plunging into widespread glaciation.

Abundance is not an accident. It reflects a climate far friendlier than the one our ancestors endured — and a modern economy powered by fuels that make global agriculture possible.

The fear of cold had at least a historical basis. Unlike today’s speculative climate models, past civilizations suffered through genuine cold-driven crises.

The Little Ice Age, from roughly 1300 to 1850, brought centuries of persistent chill. Historical accounts describe crops withering, growing seasons collapsing, and communities starving as food systems failed. The Thames froze solid. Frost fairs became a tradition because the cold was relentless. Entire regions fell into poverty and instability.

People living through those centuries would have welcomed the warmth we enjoy today.

Modern Americans rarely think about that history as they prepare Thanksgiving meals sourced from every climate zone on Earth. Our abundance depends on a long supply chain anchored in one fundamental reality: Plants grow best in warmth, not cold.

Warm periods fed civilizations

Warm eras have repeatedly aligned with human flourishing. During the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, farmers cultivated crops in regions that are too cold for them now. Warmer temperatures didn’t bring disaster; they supported prosperity.

The present is no exception. Earth has quietly greened since the late 20th century. Satellite data shows expanding vegetation, especially in arid regions. The drivers are straightforward: increased carbon dioxide and a slightly warmer global climate.

CO2 is not a toxin. It’s plant food — an essential input for photosynthesis. Higher concentrations allow crops to use water more efficiently and grow more robustly. This is one of the greatest environmental improvements of the past century, though you would never know it from the coverage.

RELATED: ‘Green Antoinettes’ live large, preach small

Julia Klueva via iStock/Getty Images

The other indispensable ingredient is modern fertilizer, made largely from natural gas. High-yield crops require nitrogen, and synthetic fertilizers supply it.

Energy-dense fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — power nearly every part of modern agriculture. Irrigation pumps, fertilizer plants, harvesters, delivery trucks, and refrigeration systems depend on them. Remove these fuels, and global food systems collapse. The return of famine would be swift.

A simple truth

Climate alarmists warn that warming will devastate global food security. Actual yields say otherwise. For 40 years, production of wheat, corn, rice, and other staples has climbed dramatically. Most food shortages today result from war or corrupt governance, not climate.

Earth’s climate has always shifted. Mega-droughts, severe floods, heat waves, and cold snaps have occurred throughout history. Treating every anomaly as evidence of imminent collapse ignores the long record of natural variability.

So as Americans gather around Thanksgiving tables, remember a simple truth: The feast depends on warmth, carbon dioxide, and the affordable energy that moves food from field to plate.

This abundance is not an accident. It reflects a climate far friendlier than the one our ancestors endured — and a modern economy powered by fuels that make global agriculture possible.

The families behind our veterans deserve more than once-a-year thanks



Every November, America pauses to thank its veterans. As Thanksgiving approaches — and as we mark Veterans and Military Families Month — it’s worth remembering that real gratitude does not begin in ceremonies. It begins in living rooms, workplaces, and communities willing to listen.

When I returned from Iraq, I believed my mission was complete. I had led soldiers through chaos during the invasion of Baghdad and made it home alive. What I didn’t expect was the second battle: reintegration. Purpose felt less defined. Connection felt harder to find. The uniform came off, but the transition demanded its own kind of discipline.

Service doesn’t end on the battlefield. It continues in the boardroom, the classroom, the town hall — and at the dinner table.

Like many veterans, I learned that coming home isn’t an ending. It’s a transfer of duty.

Service that spans generations

That duty is carried not just by veterans but by the families who stand behind them. A spouse manages a household while absorbing the worry that never quite fades. A child learns resilience from absence. A parent hopes each phone call means his son or daughter is one day closer to coming home — and able to stay.

My son is now a second lieutenant in the Army. Watching him begin his own journey reminds me that service does not stop at the edge of a battlefield. It moves through generations. Families carry it alongside us.

The meaning of gratitude

Thanksgiving offers a natural moment to reflect on gratitude — not the polite version, but the kind that demands something from us.

It demands employers who recognize leadership potential behind a résumé gap.

It demands communities willing to listen before advising.

It demands fellow veterans who know that strength includes accepting help, not just offering it.

Most of all, it demands that Americans see military families not as supporting characters but as central figures in the story of national resilience.

RELATED: Thankful for a capitalist Thanksgiving

skynesher via iStock/Getty Images

What we owe the next generation

The wars of the last two decades lasted longer than anyone expected. Their consequences will last even longer. We owe it to the next generation — including my son’s — to show that a nation’s strength is not measured only by how it deploys its forces, but by how it welcomes them back.

As we close Veterans and Military Families Month and gather around Thanksgiving tables, we can honor veterans in a simple but meaningful way: not by assuming we understand their experience, but by inviting them to share it. Not by thanking them once a year, but by offering them roles in which their judgment, discipline, and experience make a difference.

Service doesn’t end on the battlefield. It continues in the boardroom, the classroom, the town hall — and at the dinner table.

We’re not a republic in crisis. We’re an empire in denial.



Forms of government are not laboratory specimens. You cannot line them up like competing scientific theories, test them under controlled conditions, and then apply the “correct” model to every nation on earth.

The United States learned that lesson the hard way in places like Afghanistan. The George W. Bush vision of exporting liberal democracy across the world was delusional because cultures differ and human beings are not blank slates. People must be governed in ways that align with their nature and customs.

If conservatives wish to make the United States a republic again, they must begin by admitting what America has become.

Government forms have limits. They are not universal ideologies that can fit any situation, and when nations ignore those limits, they fail. America keeps expanding beyond what a republic can bear and refuses to admit it, with predictable consequences.

In its classical form, a republic rests on a set of virtuous citizens capable of self-government through shared beliefs, values, and customs. Citizenship is limited and precious. It conveys as many responsibilities as rights. Citizens do not gain the vote simply because they reside inside a border. They earn it through constant engagement with the body politic. They are soldiers, business owners, family men, and stalwart church members. They have shown both a willingness to sacrifice for society and the capacity to contribute meaningfully to it.

The phrase “self-governing” can mislead because it suggests isolated, autonomous individuals. That is not what classical thinkers meant. A republic needs the lightest touch of any governmental form because the community reinforces itself. Citizens hold each other to account.

From Aristotle to Machiavelli to the American founders, the assumption was the same: A republic requires a virtuous people bound by thick ties of identity and shared moral expectations. Formal authority exists, but most of the real enforcement happens through custom and communal pressure, with the civil magistrate stepping in only when necessary. A republic works only when its people possess enough virtue and cohesion to govern themselves.

That is why republics are rare. They have a strict limitation: scale.

Most successful republics in history have been compact city-states with contained populations capable of maintaining identity and virtue. Once a republic expands, it must incorporate people who do not share its customs or worldview. In “The Prince,” Machiavelli warns rulers who wish to expand that they should only conquer nations sharing similar religion, language, and heritage. That common ground allows the conquered population to assimilate.

Ruling peoples with radically different cultures is far more difficult because the subjects cannot easily accept the rule of a leader whose assumptions differ so dramatically from their own.

A country that does not share culture, religion, tradition, or heritage cannot function as a republic because the people lack the common ground necessary for self-rule. The gaps are too wide to be bridged by normal political debate. A stronger form of authority becomes necessary to bind disparate groups together.

This is why kingdoms and empires are far more common throughout history. Most populations do not possess the cohesion or virtue required for republican government and must instead be ruled by a king. Empires are simply multicultural kingdoms, held together by an emperor who forces cooperation among groups that otherwise could not form a single polity.

Even classical empires understood the need to respect the character of their diverse subjects. Wise rulers did not attempt to make every people act the same. They allowed local custom to continue as long as taxes were paid and troops supplied. Local leaders were often retained. Sometimes a local king stayed on his throne but only if he showed deference to the emperor. The multicultural empire required a much stronger hand, though wise emperors used that power sparingly.

This historical reality explains much about the behavior of modern liberal democracies. Many citizens wonder why their leaders insist on importing large numbers of foreigners despite popular opposition. Cheap labor and imported voters are part of the answer, but in the end, it comes down to the pursuit of raw power.

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Large-scale immigration introduces deep cultural differences that destabilize the political order, and the only way to manage that instability is more centralized authority. A liberal democracy that becomes too diverse must govern in the manner of an empire. Its leaders must exercise the level of authority required to hold multiple nations together under one state.

The fact is, multicultural societies trend toward authoritarianism. They must. The differences are too great to manage through ordinary civic persuasion. This dynamic intensifies when the state attempts to integrate its various peoples rather than allowing them to exist separately. By transforming their democracies into multiethnic empires, Western leaders acquire imperial levels of power while maintaining the appearance of popular rule.

No republic can survive the level of diversity now celebrated as a civic virtue.

If conservatives wish to make the United States a republic again, they must begin by admitting what America has become. The country has been transformed into a multicultural empire and is governed accordingly. It grants immense power to its ruling elite in the hope that it can manage the instability produced by extreme diversity.

A republic cannot endure under these conditions. America must end immigration, scale back its foreign ambitions, and cultivate a shared, virtuous culture. Without these steps, talk of republican revival is performative. The structure of a republic cannot survive the substance of an empire.

If Americans will not reclaim the unity that makes self-government possible, then they will be ruled, not represented. Republics are earned. Empires are endured.