A big change. The post The album Geddy Lee called Rush’s turning point: “He had to figure out a way in” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Compared to recent Thanksgivings at the Kengor abode, this one isn’t quite as bountiful — or perhaps I should say fruitful. Yes, you heard that correctly: Cornish Cross Broilers…. You know that your prospects for life are not long when the name you bear spells your fate in the oven. Sure, from a human perspective, the Kengor abode is fruitful. We’ll have 18 people at our house in the woods in western Pennsylvania, along with a forecast of three to six inches of snow. That includes seven of my eight children. The only one who can’t make it — my oldest daughter — is blessedly prohibited by her and her husband’s little blessing, our first grandchild. The little guy was born 10 weeks premature, but I’m happy to report that he’s doing terrific and might be discharged from the hospital this week. That would be something for which the whole family is especially thankful. Less productive — or I should say reproductive — were my two turkeys. This time each year, I regale readers of The American Spectator with tantalizing tales of the turkeys I raise, typically a half dozen or so. All but two or three — a male and female or two — are spared the knife in mid-November. They’re kept throughout the winter and into the next spring for purposes of reproducing the next harvest. Each female produces 60 or so eggs, which I incubate and hatch. For young LGBTQ liberals who don’t understand what we used to call “the birds and the bees,” the process works like this: the female produces eggs. The male produces sperm. When the two have sexual relations, the eggs are fertilized and thus capable of generating baby turkeys. Paul’s turkey — thawing on the kitchen counter and ready for broiling (Paul Kengor/American Spectator) Despite what your college or university taught you, that’s how nature works. This egg-sperm thing also occurs in homo sapiens (Gen Z alert: “homo” in this context doesn’t refer to sexuality). Unless perhaps the female has been visiting the Planned Parenthood clinic to secure birth-control pills. In fact, that makes me suspicious of my two most recent turkeys. Last year, I retained two turkeys — beautiful birds, exquisite. To borrow from my gal Sydney Sweeney, they had great genes. Had Planned Parenthood matron Margaret Sanger and her band of race eugenicists spotted these impressive creatures, they would have drooled at the prospect of “creating a race of thoroughbreds,” as Maggie put it on the masthead of her flagship publication, Birth Control Review. Unfortunately, these two good-looking birds were infertile (or at least one of the two was infertile). The female laid several dozen eggs, which I carefully incubated. This process would normally yield at least a dozen baby turkeys (they’re called “poults”), but this time, I didn’t get a single hatch. Not one. It was as if this pair came not from Agway but Planned Parenthood. And returning to some clarifications for the LGBTQ community, I can attest that the male wasn’t “gay.” No, he quite visibly if not crudely demonstrated his interest in the female. His behavior was so aggressive that if a feminist had entered my property and observed his “toxic masculinity,” screams if not lawsuits would have ensued immediately. It was hard to call what I witnessed “consensual.” Certainly not on every occasion. I should also make clear to LGBTQ folks that there was no “gender dysphoria” among either of the two birds. But getting back to the problem at hand: These two utterly failed to reproduce. The pair didn’t generate a single damned hatch. Alas, this meant that when I took them to the Amish lady for butchering, it was the end of my current stock. I’m happy to report, however, that the male weighed in at 25 pounds. He alone will feed the Kengor family and our guests, plus the potatoes, pies, cranberry sauce, and overall feast that my wife skillfully prepares. The lead photo in this article shows what he looked like thawing on the counter. He’ll look even better on the dining room table. Sorry, vegans and animal-rights nuts. Call it God’s dominion, the natural law. A Coda to My Turkey Tale Not wanting an empty cage with no fresh meat available, I did replace the turkeys with a hearty supply of 10 Cornish Cross Broiler meat chickens. Yes, you heard that correctly: Cornish Cross Broilers. Indeed, their very name bespeaks their ultimate destination: the broiler. You know that your prospects for life are not long when the name you bear spells your fate in the oven. These 10 never have a chance for longevity. They live only about 12 weeks before their dénouement with the Amish lady. Incidentally, her name is “Fannie,” and she greets the chickens by declaring in a gentle, sweet voice: “Yep, time to take their heads off.” If that sounds a bit crass, consider that Fannie’s action at that point is an act of mercy. These broilers, after all, are bred to eat. In fact, they eat so fast, so fastidiously, so unceasingly, that they’ll eat themselves to death. It’s true. They devour their feed so continuously, with no off switch, that their hearts pop. I lost two to sudden cardiac arrest. The others have filled my freezer in lieu of those failed turkey hatches that never transpired. And so, the bounty is plenty at the Kengor abode this season. We have multiple Cornish Broilers and two (infertile) turkeys available consumption. We are thankful for that. My best wishes to all of you and your families for a blessed Thanksgiving. Enjoy your turkey. READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Maximilian Kolbe’s Triumph at Auschwitz The Mamdani Model: More Socialist Mayors to Come New Yorkers Elect ANOTHER Commie Mayor  

Whenever the holiday season comes upon us, annual traditions and thanksgiving activities are a blessing. Family events center around each special occasion — Hannukah, Christmas, New Year’s — and Thanksgiving is no exception. Yet, while this celebration is quite common for American households, and we grow up anticipating the turkey, stuffing, apple pie — the inevitable food “coma” and football naps — many of us remain curious about how this ritual began — the “origin story” of this beloved holiday. But most aren’t told that native people likely outnumbered English colonists 2-to-1 at the harvest feast in 1621. Early on in school, we learn to equate Thanksgiving with a feast between Pilgrims and Native Americans. But there is additional background surrounding this holiday that isn’t typically taught or highlighted. Did you know there is a “Mother of Thanksgiving,” and that its recognition can be traced back to the founding fathers of the United States? Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, and we celebrate it annually on the fourth Thursday in November. But there is more to this celebration — this annual ritual — than just “turkey and dressing.” Thanksgiving is commonly known as a way to commemorate the colonial Pilgrims’ harvest meal in 1621, which they shared with the Wampanoag Indian tribe, who “were key to the survival of the colonists during the first year they arrived in 1620. As years passed, designating feasts dedicated to giving thanks “on an annual or occasional basis” became common practice in other New England settlements as well. A tradition had begun to take shape. Besides the original meal shared in 1621, Pilgrims held a second Thanksgiving in 1623 to celebrate the end of a long drought. Yet, technically, the first official designated Thanksgiving was celebrated much later — in 1789. According to the National Archives, Congress asked President George Washington for a national day of thanksgiving. Thursday, November 26, 1789, was, therefore, declared (original spelling): “Day of Publick Thanksgivin” This, America’s National Day of Thanksgiving, is about reflecting on blessings and acknowledging gratitude. After all, President George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation included its stated purpose: Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” We can all thank the “Mother of Thanksgiving,” writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale, for successfully establishing Thanksgiving as an annual national holiday. As a long-time editor of the magazine Godey’s Lady Book, Hale frequently wrote about this already-popular (yet unofficial) autumn tradition. She also lobbied state and federal officials to create a “fixed, national day of thanks on the last Thursday of November.” After that first established Thanksgiving in 1789, the dates and months of subsequent Thanksgiving holidays varied. It took almost another 100 years for one clear date to be established. We owe the latter to the efforts of Ms. Hale. She eventually penned a letter to President Abraham Lincoln on September 28, 1863, requesting the last Thursday in November be designated a day of Thanksgiving for the whole country. In response, President Lincoln declared on October 3 that this would, in fact, be the case. He explained that “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, the American people should take some time for gratitude.” These yearly celebrations continued in this tradition until 1939. That August, President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) announced that Thanksgiving was going to be celebrated a week earlier, saying that “merchants would benefit from another excuse for shopping between Labor Day and Christmas.” This caused some controversy throughout the next few years, splitting almost half the nation between the two dates. FDR ultimately reversed his decision in December of 1941, signing the resolution from Congress that declared Thanksgiving would go back to being celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November from then on. The Real Roots of Thanksgiving Before they’re served piles of turkey and pie, kids often hear the story of the first Thanksgiving — how Pilgrims and Native Americans came together to feast and count their blessings. But most aren’t told that native people likely outnumbered English colonists 2-to-1 at the harvest feast in 1621. Nor do they usually learn just how much Pilgrims relied on the native Wampanoag tribe during those tough early days for survival. New archaeological work at the town’s original Pilgrim settlement has unearthed more artifacts from native American culture than previously found. The discovery provides more context to a Dec. 11, 1621, letter written by Edward Winslow, an early Pilgrim, to a friend back in England that offers clues about the feast that became known as the first Thanksgiving. Winslow wrote that Wampanoag leader Massasoit “with some 90 men” joined the colonists for a three-day feast. About half of the 102 Pilgrims who arrived the year before died the first winter, meaning native people would have nearly doubled the 50 or so Pilgrims at the 1621 event. Winslow’s letter detailed a successful first year of harvest for the Pilgrims, with 20 acres of corn and six acres of barley. Peas didn’t fare so well. He does not use the term “Thanksgiving” but describes a three-day feast with Massasoit and his men to “rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.” The 1621 feast was almost an entirely male affair. Only four married women were living in Plymouth when the feast was held, according to Plimoth Plantation, after so many died from sickness and disease during the colony’s first year. As for the 90 native people, the Winslow letter refers to Massasoit and his “men,” but no women. The letter refers to “others” who attended the feast, but Begley said it’s unclear who they were. One of the Pilgrim women was Winslow’s wife, Susanna White Winslow. The Pilgrim Hall Museum  counts 53 Pilgrims overall at the feast: 22 men, nine adolescent boys, five adolescent girls and 13 young children. Preparing the meal, like any other day, would have been the responsibility of the women and children. About 140 are thought to have joined the first Thanksgiving meal. The American Spirit The Wampanoags were being harassed by another Indian tribe to the West, the Narragansett. Making peace with the Pilgrims afforded security for the Wampanoag. An agreement was struck for the benefit of both Pilgrim and Wampanoag. The latter would help the settlers survive the winter and the Pilgrims would be a deterrent for the Wampanoag against their nemesis to the west. The two groups sat down and talked about survival and thus peace. Ultimately, they came up with 75 years of peace — the longest-standing peace known within this country. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this month, let us remember the many blessings of God upon our shores and gratitude for the contributions of the Native American people early in our history which (in many respects) allowed our past to have a future in this land of plenty — which we call — the United States of America. READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf Jr.: While Humans Were Tuning Their Guitars — AI Created America’s No. 1 Country Song From Orwell to Brussels: The EU’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ Arrives America’s Trade Deficits Are Not Innocuous

President Theodore Roosevelt said it best regarding immigration, that “we have room for but one sole loyalty, and that is a loyalty to the American people.” (READ MORE: CBO Finds That Taxpayers Footed Massive Costs of Illegal Immigration Under Biden) On this episode of The Spectacle Podcast, hosts Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay discuss how America is being devalued by immigrant communities who refuse to assimilate into American culture and values. They cite various examples, such as the illegal Indian trucker scam, the Muslim settlements in Texas, and other ethnic enclaves like the Somalis in Minnesota. They also discuss the historical context of immigration in the United States and argue that assimilation is essential to the stability and success of America. (RELATED: The New H-1B Tax: An Exercise in Crony Capitalism)  Tune in to hear their discussion! Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify. Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.  

Thanksgiving invites us to pause and consider the gifts we often overlook. This year, at a moment of rising political unease and ideological confusion, I am especially grateful for one extraordinary inheritance: a nation and its creed brought into being by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for the institutions that have preserved our liberty even when they frustrate us. Why, in addition to family, friends and a feast, is this on my mind today? In certain circles, especially among “postliberal” thinkers on the right, it’s now fashionable to claim that the Constitution has failed. Some argue that the country’s founding was overly individualistic or insufficiently moral, that our constitutional structure prevents the pursuit of a unified national purpose, or that what we need instead is a more powerful state headed by a muscular executive and a more cohesive cultural or religious identity enforced from above. These arguments aren’t abstract. Some theorists openly celebrate unchecked executive power or regimes that derive legitimacy from hierarchy rather than the people’s consent. Increasingly, they dismiss the founding not as a glorious achievement but as an obstacle to national renewal through centralized authority. This agenda ignores the extraordinary success of the American constitutional experiment and the astonishing diversity it has held together for nearly two and a half centuries. As famed historian Gordon Wood recently reminded us in The Wall Street Journal, America has always been different. Most countries emerged from a shared language, lineage, or ancient heritage. The United States did the opposite: It built a state first and then had to discover what it meant to be a nation. From the beginning, America was a mixture of peoples. John Adams wrote that it resembled “several distinct nations almost” and pondered whether such a collection could truly cohere. Leaders marveled as the first census revealed an array of languages, religions and origins. Yet over time, Americans did form a common identity — not through blood or inherited culture but through shared ideals. National unity solidified after these ideals were articulated in the Declaration and given lasting institutional form in the Constitution. This is what makes the United States what Wood calls a “creedal nation.” To be an American is not to descend from a particular people but to embrace a set of principles: liberty, equality (of opportunity), self-government and the rule of law. The Constitution brilliantly translated those principles into a durable structure, allowing people who differ in background and belief to live together as citizens. It allows a couple who arrived from Romania in 1980, or from Haiti or Mexico decades later, to stand on equal civic footing with families whose ancestors were here at the founding. That’s among our greatest blessings. The Constitution has been amended and improved over the decades, often through great struggle. The post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments — especially the Fourteenth — did not break from the founding but fulfilled it. They made national citizenship a reality and gave legal force to the moral principle of equality, tying every American to the generation of 1776. In that process, the Constitution was strengthened, not repudiated. This reality helps explain why postliberal critiques faulting the Constitution for failing to impose a single moral or cultural vision miss the mark. Constitutional limits exist because the Founders feared unchecked power, whether exercised by a ruler or by majorities which have at times been egregiously wrong. The Constitution protects a pluralistic society from the dangers of centralized authority and ideological certitude. In a nation as varied as ours, those protections are not optional. We live in a time when self-appointed saviors on all sides claim to possess the single solution to our problems. The Constitution responds with humility. It demands persuasion, not imposition. It insists on limits. It expects disagreements. It trusts that freedom, not enforced consensus, is the proper foundation for a lasting political community. The Constitution doesn’t guarantee national unity. It guarantees something better: a system that channels conflict without destroying liberty. As Wood notes, democracy can be volatile. The Founders knew that well. Their answer is a framework that moderates collective impulses while preserving the rights of individuals and minorities. This framework has steadied the nation before. It carried us through the early years, and through waves of immigration and rising diversity. It carried us through civil war, economic crises and global conflict. And if we remember what we have, it can carry us through our present troubles. This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for the institutions that have preserved our liberty even when they frustrate us. In a country bound not by ancestry but by shared principles, the Constitution is more than a governing document. It is the mechanism through which a diverse people becomes a nation. That’s a gift worth defending and giving thanks for. READ MORE from Veronique de Rugy: The Answer to Republicans’ ‘Affordability Problem’? Unleash Supply. Washington’s Use of the ‘Emergency’ Label Comes to a Head The Forces Fueling America’s 45-Year Debt Addiction Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM

We are increasingly asked now, particularly by those of anti-Western or antihuman persuasions, to see the Indian tribes populating the Americas before the arrival of European explorers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s fabled Noble Savages. The 18th century philosopher conceived of man as having once lived in an uncorrupted state of nature. In this state, man possessed true virtue but has since been corrupted by our societal and cultural institutions and conventions. Ideologues and historical revisionists attempt to paint Native American culture in this same light. So often, pre-Columbian Native Americans are portrayed as uncorrupted, as living harmoniously with nature and one another, and as possessing a far more nuanced ethical framework than their morally suspect, imperialist European contemporaries. Despite the prevalence of this vision of tribal Indian culture, it is as much of a fallacy as Rousseau’s conception of primitive man. Indigenous culture was, in reality, barbaric, particularly when it came to the treatment of rival tribes and prisoners. However, the falsity of this narrative has not diminished its dissemination, prevalence, or promulgation, particularly around Thanksgiving. Earlier this month, the ACLU published an article calling for the “Dismantling [of] harmful rhetoric about Thanksgiving and Native American history.” The article decries the “systematic removal, assimilation, and eradication of Indigenous cultures, languages, and people … by white settlers” and the subsequent loss of many Indigenous “traditions.” “The forced displacement of Indigenous peoples was (and still is) a deliberate attempt to sever Indigenous people from their traditional ways of living, including food production and ceremony,” the ACLU argues. They write that “many Indigenous-led movements are actively working to restore ancestral food practices. Native American people around the country have been reclaiming traditional foods, decolonizing their diets, and relearning how to use food as medicine to keep cultural food practices alive for generations to come.” This article, like so many others, portrays the Natives as spiritually enlightened sages, living in harmony with nature and one another, while their European contemporaries are painted as little more than genocidal oppressors and brutes. This propagandized understanding of Thanksgiving and native-White relations is so ahistorical it hardly merits serious refutation. However, the ACLU tells us to, “Educate ourselves and others about Indigenous cultures and histories.” So, let’s attempt to do just that. Indigenous culture was, in reality, barbaric, particularly when it came to the treatment of rival tribes and prisoners. During raids of other camps, American Indians would often capture men, women, and children for torture. Indians of eastern North American tribes in particular are said to have “evinced great emotional satisfactions from the prolonged tortures often inflicted upon war captives.” Torture could last for multiple days and was often perpetrated by all members of the tribe, including women and children. Men would be burned alive, women would be raped and disfigured, and captive children would frequently be killed. Scalping is one of the most well known and horrific practices common among indigenous tribes. The scalps of both dead and living Indians were highly prized and would frequently be taken as trophies. Moving southward, the native empires of Mesoamerica were likewise brutal beyond imagining. The Aztecs would often ceremoniously burn their victims alive. Sacrifices also had their hearts cut out, were stoned to death, decapitated, shot full of arrows, crushed, and tossed from the tops of temples. Many victims, including those of burning, were children, as they were considered to be pure. While the conquistadors surely committed many atrocities in their conquest of the region, the atrocities of the Aztecs should not be downplayed or forgotten. Many Mesoamerican tribes even allied with Cortéz to escape the abuses of the Aztecs and Mayans, both of which employed slave labor, warred constantly, and demanded tribute from subjugated peoples, often in the form of human sacrifices. All of this is not to say that the Native Americans were not sometimes brutally mistreated by the European powers that colonized the continent, nor is it to say that there were not virtues in indigenous cultures. We should seek to recognize the unique beauty of native cultures but should not accept the ahistorical vision of those cultures as uncommonly virtuous and noble. Native tribes committed acts of unthinkable barbarism and cruelty, as did, at times, the White settlers who battled them. Nothing, other than certain ideological agendas, is served by misrepresenting indigenous tribes as paragons of peace, virtue, and social harmony. READ MORE: Thanksgiving: Why It Is America’s Foundational Holiday Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Buffy Sainte-Marie, Imposter Indian, Stripped of Order of Canada Honor Kyle Reynolds is a masters student at St. John’s College where he studies philosophy and theology. His essays have been published by the Foundation for Economic Education, the Mises Institute, and the Heritage Foundation.

Woke is Dead: How Common Sense Triumphed in an Age of Total Madness By Piers Morgan Harper Collins, 310 pages, $22 The estimable Piers Morgan’s new book, Woke is Dead, generously repays the reading time, containing as it does wit, wisdom, and humor. (Perhaps I should say humour in respect to Britain’s best controversialist.) A year and change ago, sensible Americanos who had had enough of the insanity demanded, in the immortal words of Roberto Duran, “No mas, no mas.” I extend this praise even though I believe woke is anything but dead. Wounded perhaps by our recent spasm of common sense — a virtue that is anything but common — but not dead by a long shot. It will take more than a new president and a handful of well-aimed executive orders to root woke out of its littorals in academe (where the rubber meets the sky), the legacy media, the entertainment industry, and a dismaying chunk of corporate America. These cultural transmission belts, all dominated by the madcap left, will not give up easily. Promising trends are afoot now, but it’s still too soon to sing, “Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead.” Especially dismaying is that the woke tragedy has not been a bottom-up but a top-down phenomena. The more years one has sat directly on one’s backside at university, the more strings of degrees behind one’s name, the more likely one is to believe that a six-foot tall person with an X and Y chromosome, a five-o’clock shadow at three-o’clock, and an Adam’s apple the size of a real apple, can become a she just by declaring himself to be one. More confirmation, if more were needed, that George Orwell was spot on when he said: “Some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals believe them.” No fool like an “educated” fool. Woke is Dead is a tour-de-insanity of our recent political and cultural history, most of which informed TAS readers are already familiar with. But as Morgan unspools them in all their daffy details, we’re reminded of how far down the rabbit-hole we had fallen before the much-needed pushback began a year or so ago. Consider. In Woke World, we were joylessly hectored, from high atop Mount Virtue, to believe, or at least to pretend to believe, that: The U.S. is a racist hell-hole where white Americans oppress black Americans and should be engaged full-time in mea culpas. Donald Trump is the head racist and Al Sharpton (dial 1-800-HUSTLE) is a civil rights leader; Criminals, even those with rap sheets longer than a Fidel Castro speech, are victims who should be helped rather than hindered in any way, and police officers are criminals; There are many sexes and even more pronouns. People can move freely from one to another at their whim. And it’s right and proper that men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports and lurk in women’s intimate spaces, displaying their male tool-kits and enjoying the view; Earth will fry unless we turn the planet over to the tender mercies of Al Gore, AOC, and the delusions of various enviro-nutters like Gerda Thundermug; The world would be better off if cleansed of all traces of religion (except Islam, of course) and of traditional masculinity, re-defined as toxic masculinity; Enforceable borders are so 20th Century; Alice, call your office. Wonderland was a lot like this. The outrageous brain infarcts and others were, and in some precincts still are, enforced with a rigid cancellation system that would have made the Stasi proud. At the height of woke cancel culture, anyone bold enough to state the bloody obvious, that Dr. Rachel Levine is an ugly guy in a dress, risked a visit from a grim-faced delegation of red-guards from the HR department. (To this day many HR departments function as political officers, enforcers of the orthodoxies of the left progressive enterprise.) A year and change ago, sensible Americanos who had had enough of the insanity demanded, in the immortal words of Roberto Duran, “No mas, no mas.”  Morgan calls Donald Trump’s election in 2024 both a cause and an effect of this return to common sense. “In a world where the scourge of wokeism rendered so many people weak-willed, work-shy, lacking in the resilience, resolve, and perseverance required to navigate life’s travails, and totally devoid of basic common sense, Trump has all those qualities in abundance.” (The desirable qualities, not the weak-willed etc.) In short order Trump closed our borders and started shipping out the worst of the millions of gate-crashers that the previous administration invited in, made it official government policy that there are only two sexes, put pressure on cities and states to treat criminals like criminals, backed away from the Democrats’ suicidal energy policies, and began the battle to end DEI, which is little more than discrimination against whites and Asians. (The only way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. DEI is not a cure for discrimination. It’s just another form of it.) As Morgan phrases it: “It took a right-wing and white president to restore Martin Luther King’s aspiration of character over color.” Common sense once again has a fighting chance in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Fewer Americans, in the face of cosmic stupidity by the woke scolds, are going along with the gag. They’ve begun to say out loud what they’ve kept in for fear of the woke cancelling squads. There are many battles to come in the culture war. But at least, as Morgan lays it out in just 310 pages of straight-forward prose, the battle has been joined. Woke is Dead is a fine primer on the dreary period we’ve endured, the re-awakening, and an encouraging take on the road ahead. In the last decade we’ve undergone a cultural lobotomy. But, happily, this one is reversible. It will take time, courage, and persistence. Stay tuned. In due course we’ll see if we’re up to the mark. A word on Piers Morgan and the difficulty of assigning ideological labels to individuals these days. Morgan has always described himself as a liberal, even though he is always tearing forensic strips off of people, policies, and ideas that fly under the liberal label. He explains: “I’ve always considered myself to be a liberal because liberalism meant free speech, free markets, small government, a color-blind society, and a general but pragmatic aversion to war. Yes to all of that. But the woke-branded liberalism is the polar opposite.”  If this sounds a lot like conservatism to you, it does to me as well. Few people who describe themselves as liberals today would subscribe to any one or all of these. For those who have common sense friends or relations on their gift list, Woke is Dead would be a fine stocking stuffer. READ MORE from Larry Thornberry: Democrat Policies Are Crazy, but Crazy Still Sells (See NYC) RIP Mike Greenwell — a Good Ball Player and a Good Man Octogenarians Can Solve Murders Too    

Progressive Prejudice: Exposing the Devouring Mother By Leslie Corbly Bombadier Books, 320 pages, $18.99  There are books that inform — and there are books that awaken. Progressive Prejudice: Exposing the Devouring Mother by Leslie Corbly is the latter. It’s a clarion call to the sleeping church, a piercing trumpet in a nation lulled into moral amnesia. It’s not merely a book about politics, feminism, or abortion — it is a confrontation with the spiritual black hole that is pulling at modern America. (RELATED: The Slow Suffocation of Christian America) She writes as one who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death — literally. Corbly’s voice is that of a prophet raised from the ashes of the very ideology she exposes. She is not an armchair theologian or a distant commentator. She writes as one who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death — literally. As she recounts in her haunting introduction, “Leslie is half-aborted” were the first words she remembers learning about herself. That phrase alone captures the spiritual sickness of our age: a world that treats life not as sacred but as negotiable, children not as blessings but as burdens, womanhood not as a calling but as a weapon. Corbly’s testimony and analysis strike at the root of a rebellion as old as Eden — the desire to be as gods. She calls it the spirit of the “Devouring Mother”: the perversion of the nurturing feminine into something that consumes rather than protects. In this fallen order, a woman’s power, once meant to reflect the creative mercy of God, has been twisted into a destructive autonomy that claims the right to give and take life. The serpent’s whisper — “You shall be as gods” — has been repackaged as “My body, my choice.” (RELATED: God in the Age of Pronouns: Father, Mother, or Neither?) Which has continued its perversion so completely that the Hollywood “in” crowd now contains hordes of women subjecting their kids to chemical castration and medical mutilation in the name of the satanic ideology of transgenderism. (RELATED: The Bizarre Phenomenon of Celebrity Transgender Children Confronts Changing Attitudes) Throughout Progressive Prejudice, Corbly traces this satanic inversion from its roots in postmodern relativism to its poisonous fruit in abortion culture. She writes with righteous fire, arguing that when society allows one group — mothers — to decide the worth of another — children — it has already enthroned human pride over divine justice. In her words, “Supporting abortion is not justice. It is inequality. It is prejudice.” She calls abortion what it is: the ultimate form of idolatry. It is the sacrifice of the innocent upon the altar of convenience and autonomy, the Baal worship of the modern age. In Scripture, the Israelites were condemned for passing their children through the fire to Molech. Today, the fire burns behind the sterile walls of abortion clinics, and we dare to call it “reproductive healthcare.” Corbly exposes that evil with the moral clarity of Elijah standing before the prophets of Baal, asking the only question that matters: “How long will you waver between two opinions?” Her writing draws deeply from both theology and lived experience, merging the intellectual rigor of an apologist with the brokenhearted honesty of a survivor. She shows how the progressive worldview — rooted in godless self-deification — has inverted every moral category. Equality has become equity. Compassion has become coercion. Love has been hollowed out and replaced with sentimentality devoid of truth. Her analysis of “progressive privilege” is devastating. She shows how secular progressivism has become the default religion of our institutions — our schools, media, and even many churches — preaching tolerance while silencing dissent, worshiping empathy while discarding life. “The gatekeepers of the cultural conversation,” she writes, “control the terms of the moral debate.” In other words, the priests of this new religion no longer wear robes; they wear lab coats and judicial robes. They carry TV microphones instead of a staff. And yet, amid this darkness, Corbly’s message is not one of despair — it is one of fierce, radiant hope. Like Jeremiah lamenting over Jerusalem, she weeps over a people who have forgotten God, yet she also believes in redemption through truth. Every page of this book echoes a biblical call to repentance, a reminder that even in the ruins of moral decay, the grace of Christ can restore what the world has defiled. Abortion is not simply a social issue; it is spiritual warfare. For the believer, this book demands a response. It reminds us that our faith is not meant to be polite or passive in the face of evil. The Christian call to “defend the cause of the fatherless” (Isaiah 1:17) is not metaphorical — it is literal. Abortion is not simply a social issue; it is spiritual warfare. It is the very battlefield where the church must stand, armored in truth, against the principalities of death. Corbly understands that abortion is not an isolated sin — it is the visible symptom of a culture that has dethroned God. She argues that feminism’s march toward total autonomy was not liberation but bondage: bondage to pride, to envy, to the lie that a woman’s worth depends on imitating the sins of man rather than reflecting the grace of Christ. In Corbly’s words, “Women have demanded to be treated as gods, thus transforming children from people worthy of protection to either a curse to avoid or an accessory to wear.” The power of Progressive Prejudice lies in its uncompromising truth-telling. Corbly refuses to sanitize her story or soften her message to please the world. Her writing cuts like a conviction-sharpened razor. When she describes the “weaponization of empathy” by the progressive left — how emotional manipulation has replaced moral reasoning — she forces readers to confront how even compassion can be corrupted when divorced from the Cross. What makes this book essential for Christians, especially in the pro-life movement, is that it transcends politics. Corbly’s fight is not left versus right — it is life versus death, truth versus delusion, Christ versus the spirit of the age. Her argument is not that we should simply oppose abortion, but that we must restore a biblical worldview that honors God’s image in every person, from conception to natural death. Like the prophets of old, Corbly exposes the idols of our time, and her message burns with the conviction of divine calling. In a nation where even many churches have fallen silent on the sanctity of life, her voice is a reminder that truth and love are never at odds. “We cannot serve both God and choice,” her pages seem to shout. “Choose this day whom you will serve.” Progressive Prejudice is not comfortable reading. It’s convicting, humbling, and, at times, searingly painful. But it is holy work — the kind of truth that purifies rather than panders. For every pastor who fears speaking against abortion, for every believer tempted to compromise with the world, for every pro-life Christian who needs to be reminded why this fight is sacred — this book is required reading. Leslie Corbly stands reminiscent of a modern-day Deborah in an age of Jezebels — a woman who wields truth like a sword, not for vengeance but for redemption. Her testimony is living proof that even those labeled “unwanted” by the world are cherished by the Creator who knit them together in the womb. Read this book. Then pray. Then act. Because in a culture that calls evil good and good evil, Progressive Prejudice is not just a book — it is a call to arms for the Body of Christ. READ MORE from Scott McKay: We Should Declare War on the Cancerous Cartel in Caracas Five Quick Things: A Bush Family Comeback? Not No. Hell No! ‘Don’t Give Up The Ship’? Seriously?

Ken Burns has come in for some deserved criticism for pushing the line, in his new documentary on the American Revolution, that the Founding Fathers got their ideas about confederative government from the Iroquois and the Six Nations.  From what I have been able to gather, outside of his dutiful reportage of treaties and conflicts, Benjamin Franklin himself, put forward as the best case for Iroquois influence and generally friendly to the Indians, mentions them only a small handful of times in writings that take up many thousands of pages, and never with any specificity as regards governmental structure. But colleges … have a duty to transmit these bodies of knowledge, and to develop them if they can.  If they do not, they are pointless. Historians who take the trouble to read through all the debates, newspapers, broadsides, letters, and contemporary books on the new nation, and who immerse themselves besides in what the Founders read — Scripture, ancient historians, political philosophers, Milton and other politically minded poets, the great jurists such as Coke and Blackstone — and who familiarize themselves with well-governed nations that could serve as examples for the Founders to imitate, such as the Dutch republic — do not take the notion seriously.  To put it another way, if you do not know who Polybius was, or why George Washington was considered the Cincinnatus of his country, or what the governor of the Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, was referring to when he scouted the impracticability “of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients, applauded by some of later times,” concerning the elimination of private property, you are in no position to express an opinion on this matter. Meanwhile, I have seen a clip in which the historian Victor Davis Hanson explains what was going on with the Romans and the Jews in first-century Judea, and why Pontius Pilate, as Hanson interprets the matter, was content to have Jesus executed and to pin the blame on the Jewish leaders. His questioner is the fitness coach and podcaster Jillian Michaels, who throughout the clip looks at Hanson with blank disbelief, as if he were speaking madness. That is because she takes for granted that only Christians believe that Jesus really existed; that the gospels were written “hundreds of years” after the events described; that there is no evidence for his existence outside of the gospels; and that the faith only really began at the Council of Nicaea. These are opinions she may have picked up socially, as a dog in the woods picks up burrs, because, again, anybody who reads history, not to mention the New Testament, knows better. My point is not to criticize our poor schools and colleges, but to note a shift in what it has come to mean to think you know things. Knowledge is hard-won.  That is why we used to have intellectual disciplines, defining what was to be studied, the methods of investigation, the criteria for judging probability or certainty, and the ancillary fields the scholar needs experience in to help him make sense of his own.  If you were going to study Renaissance English literature, you had to familiarize yourself with the poetry, the drama, the prose fiction, the essays, and many other works, such as Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, or Hakluyt’s Voyages.   That in turn would require a broad knowledge of English literature generally, to be at ease when you judge what an English poet can do with words of various provenance, or with the typical meters of English poetry, or with the various “voices,” direct or suggestive or ironic or self-critical, that a poet may use while writing in the first person. Especially you must be well-acquainted with what the poets read, both in English and in other tongues. Because no one can learn all the languages in the world, we must often rely on good translations.  Still, certain foreign languages might be, for practical purposes, recommended or required, such as Italian at least for the study of Edmund Spenser, or Latin at least for the study of Milton. Nor could you settle your focus on literature alone.  The most influential scholar of medieval English literature in the last 100 years, D. W. Robertson, devoted his A Preface to Chaucer to the study, among other things, of medieval iconography, to show what Chaucer’s audience might have seen in their minds when, for example, the two roguish scholars in the Reeve’s Tale describe the action of the grain and the hopper in the mill they have gone to, to make sure the miller does not cheat them. Robertson shows us the “mystic mill” on one of the capitals of the basilica at Vezelay, with the figure of Moses pouring grain from a sack into a mill, with the figure of Saint Paul gathering the meal below.  To understand the thought behind the image, and to understand Chaucer’s allegorical art, you must be familiar with New Testament exegesis of the Old Testament, as in Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans: you must separate the wheat of meaning from the integument of the letter.  As Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest says at the beginning of his tale, we are to “take the fruit and let the chaff be still.”  To read Robertson’s work is to encounter, on every page, artists, poets, critics, philosophers, and theologians, spanning two thousand years.  His knowledge was both encyclopedic and acutely specific, and his skill at interpretation was careful and subtle and yet always productive of clarity. Now, such work is exceedingly difficult.  Nor is there anything in our current universities that encourages it, or that reliably produces scholars capable of appreciating it.  There are several causes of this cultural and intellectual decay.  I will bring up only one of them here.  We have, in the humanities and the social sciences, given over the notion that our central task is to impart a clear body of knowledge, with the intellectual skills necessary to understand it. “Programs,” ill-defined, often determined by political advocacy, produce graduates trained in no discipline at all, with a shallow and scatter-shot approach to a set of items that otherwise have little to do with one another. An American Studies graduate will be neither an historian nor a literary critic nor an economist, but he will be encouraged to think he is all three.  Unfortunately, a little of this and that and the other adds up to less than nothing — to someone trained up in skimming, and thus peculiarly susceptible to academic fads and pretensions. Nor is the problem limited to such programs. It infects departments too.  Few of our graduates with a degree in English know much about English poetry, or about literature written before 1900 generally. The creators and writers of the old Star Trek series could quote, without fuss, Hamlet and The Tempest in a single episode whose title comes from the 17th century poet George Herbert: “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”  I would now be pleasantly surprised to meet English majors who know who Herbert was — and Herbert, for my money, is the greatest writer of religious poetry in English, and one of the two or three of our language’s greatest lyric poets. Is over-specialization the problem?  Yes and no. Abandon general knowledge, and you end up with idiosyncrasy: an English professor who focuses on cross-dressing in Renaissance drama, but whose knowledge of English literature and language generally is scant. But such a “specialist,” in our time, is not even a specialist, strictly speaking, because he has not been brought up in any clear discipline. The remedy, again, is not to be “interdisciplinary,” or rather sub-disciplinary, flitting from one flower to another, like a butterfly. It is to return to the disciplines, which, as I say, always required broad knowledge of matters beyond one’s field.  The Shakespeare scholar, as such, should read Plutarch. The Tennyson scholar, as such, should read Newman. How can you read Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto,” or Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, written when the Hawthornes and the Brownings lived in Italy and became good friends, if you know nothing about Renaissance and Greco-Roman art? Most people will not incline toward such painstaking work, supposing they are capable of it.  But colleges — and ancillary institutions of public learning — have a duty to transmit these bodies of knowledge, and to develop them if they can.  If they do not, they are pointless.  If they do, the knowledge does not remain trammeled up within ivy-covered walls.  We would get people outside of the colleges, saying, “But separation of the executive and the legislative came from republican Rome” and not the Iroquois, or, “But Luke leaves off Acts before the death of his friend, Paul,” and so forth.  We would know too much to fall for the barrage of nonsense aimed at us from all sides, every day, on all subjects, world without end. READ MORE from Anthony Esolen: A Dome for Man ‘Magical Keys’ Are No Substitute for Real Knowledge At the Tip of Your Fingers

As we gather to celebrate Thanksgiving, with many worrying about the impossibly high cost of health insurance, let’s play a game of What If? What if healthcare dollars currently going to insurance companies were paid instead to the consumers themselves? Would good things result, or bad? This “what if” exercise was prompted by President Trump’s offhand suggestion to give ACA subsidies “directly to the people … [instead of] … BIG, BAD insurance companies”? (Republicans are currently considering this idea but only for the ACA.) What if healthcare dollars were given directly to We the People? That would be an awesome Thanksgiving gift! Specifically, what if all the money called employer-sponsored health benefit that presently goes to insurance companies were paid instead directly to employees? What might happen? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “The average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance [paid to insurance companies] in 2024 were … $25,572 for family coverage.” Approximately 165 million Americans receive such an employer-sponsored health benefit. Paying each employee the average premium that currently is going to insurance would put $4,219,380,000,000 in the hands of U.S. consumers. The $25,572 payment to insurers is actually wages earned by the employee but not given to the employee. This is a holdover from a wage freeze accommodation enacted during World War II that was never repealed, even though all other wartime wage and price freezes were reversed. Beside correcting the obvious injustice of denying employees their full wages, numerous other positive impacts would result. To play out the optimal scenario, Congress would have to create a new no-limit HSA in which to put the additional wages. Current medical savings accounts have limits well below $25,000. To project subsequent events, assume Americans could put the $25,572 in such an HSA and use the funds tax-free to pay for medical expenses. Overnight, there would be a huge marketplace of consumers — half the nation — with $4 trillion to spend on health care. They could shop for both care and insurance. Sellers of same would have to compete with each other for consumer dollars rather than large numbers of contracted patients as they do now. Prices for both care and insurance would plummet due to inter-seller competition. Insurers would have to offer policies that consumers want instead of federally mandates policies. Most thoughtful individuals would purchase various forms of high deductible, “catastrophic” insurance and pay from the HSA for routine care, even in-hospital procedures. Procedures like hernia repair, cataract surgery, and childbirth have charges in a direct-pay (not insurance-based) environment well within the available funds in the new HSA. While insurance company bottom lines would likely suffer, these companies would quickly adapt as they are used to aggressive competition. Not so the doctors. Physicians are socialized in school and post-graduate training to eschew both competition and advertising. (Contrast to lawyers, especially in personal injury.) Practicing medicine in a competitive free market with more than 165 million potential patients who have money would initially be distressing and possibly overwhelming. Those who adapt and who publish affordable prices with understandable outcomes, and who offer rapid service would quickly find their waiting rooms and their pocketbooks over-flowing. Hospitals would have to publish lists of competitive prices that consumers not insurance would pay, replacing the current phantom price lists that are full charges, not the actual payments to providers which are much lower. Hospitals and other facilities would have to publish outcomes data in formats that people could understand or risk having empty operating rooms. A large number of federal and state healthcare bureaucrats would find themselves out of work. While this would be unfortunate for them, tax-payers would suddenly be off the hook for much of the cost of healthcare BURRDEN — bureaucracy, unnecessary rules and regulations, directives, enforcement, and noncompliance activities. Last year the cost of BURRDEN was more than $2 trillion. Consider what not spending that amount would do to the federal budget and the national debt. Medicaid/CHIP with 77.7 million enrollees should return to its original design: 50 programs run solely by the states, with unrestricted block grants from Washington. The federal one-size-fits-all approach to Medicaid has never worked and was in fact prohibited in the Medicaid law, Section 1801. What if healthcare dollars were given directly to We the People? That would be an awesome Thanksgiving gift! READ MORE from Deane Waldman: Subtext to Shutdown: Unaffordable Healthcare Where Have All Our Healthcare Dollars Gone? DOGE Is Missing $2 Trillion in Healthcare Waste “Dr. Deane” Waldman, MD, MBA, is professor emeritus of pediatrics, pathology, and decision science; and former director of the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange. His latest book, Empower – Two Doctors’ Cure for Healthcare, was co-authored with Vance Ginn, PhD (Economics). Follow Dr. Deane on X @DrDeaneW or visit www.empowerpatients.info.