Ben Voth

Ben Voth


  • How Two Southern Methodists Helped Make King’s Dream Come True

    January 20, 2025

    How Two Southern Methodists Helped Make King’s Dream Come True

    One of the most serious problems we face as a nation in 2025 is recovering our national history. Our history has been smeared and distorted by a deliberate Jacobin academic culture that hopes to make young minds despair about the nation’s good ...

  • Honoring President Carter by reducing American homelessness

    December 30, 2024

    Honoring President Carter by reducing American homelessness

    The death of President Carter is an excellent occasion to examine the unique American problem of homelessness. Carter’s most famous charity and outlet for service work was Habitat for Humanity. Carter worked with the group for 35 years and help...

  • Deconstructing the Mythology of January 6

    November 7, 2024

    Deconstructing the Mythology of January 6

    In the aftermath of the 2024 election, the certification of electoral votes at the House will stand as a looming civic impasse. There is a congressional process necessary to the certification of Presidential elections and the rhetorical interpretatio...

  • Ted Cruz conducts a candidate fact check clinic

    October 17, 2024

    Ted Cruz conducts a candidate fact check clinic

    More than 60 million dollars is being spent by Democrats to help House of Representatives member Collin Allred defeat Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Tuesday night’s debate was an important opportunity for Allred to perhaps upset the incumbent sen...

  • President Trump Won the Debate with Harris

    September 12, 2024

    President Trump Won the Debate with Harris

    It is not surprising that there was a surge of punditry opinions arguing that Kamala Harris won the September 10 debate with Donald Trump. The DNC desperately needed the validation of such a win and it was also evident that the ABC moderators felt th...

  • The Democrats and Racism in History

    July 31, 2024

    The Democrats and Racism in History

    On July 29, President Biden spoke at the LBJ Presidential Library to stress his party’s commitment to equal rights of black Americans.  This summer is the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer 1964 and the passage of the 1964 Civil Right...

  • Academic Presidential Rankings

    July 15, 2024

    Academic Presidential Rankings

    Professors Brandon Rottinghaus, of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn, of Coastal Carolina University curated a 2024 presidential ranking poll among academic historians. Their survey was used as evidence by President Biden in the recent d...

  • Solutions to the Debate Moderator Problem in Presidential Debates

    June 26, 2024

    Solutions to the Debate Moderator Problem in Presidential Debates

    The impending Presidential debate on Thursday is colliding with a recurring rhetorical problem: the Presidential debate moderators. Since the inception of televised presidential debates in 1960 with the debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixo...

  • Hugo Black and Democrat Racism

    June 16, 2024

    Hugo Black and Democrat Racism

    On October 20, 1921 a Methodist minister Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson was acquitted of killing Catholic priest Rev. James E. Coyle in Birmingham, Alabama. The rather sensational trial centered upon the idea that the priest committed a heinous social crim...

  • Criminal Convictions and the Presidency

    May 31, 2024

    Criminal Convictions and the Presidency

    On Thursday May 30, a New York court led by Judge Juan Merchan convicted a U.S. President of 34 felony counts. Trump was not the first President to be arrested -- that honor belongs to Ulysses S. Grant when he was arrested in 1872 by a black police o...

  • Palestine is Free. . . In Israel

    April 26, 2024

    Palestine is Free. . . In Israel

    One of the central features of current anti-Semitic propaganda against the state of Israel is the slogan “Free Palestine!” One can find this graffiti around the world as apologists for Hamas define the military fight against the October 7...

  • The Meaning of Malcolm X’s Death

    February 21, 2024

    The Meaning of Malcolm X’s Death

    February 21, 2024 is the 59th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X.  His life, political rhetoric, and death remain a growing source of misunderstanding about Black/White relations in the U.S. and even the global community.  In rec...

  • December 25, 2023

    Jesus’ Birth and Christian Nationalism

    One of the many pathological critiques offered by our corrupt intellectual culture is an urgent warning about impending Christian Nationalism. This is the latest expression of a decades-long tradition that demonizes Republicans as coming to implement...

  • November 17, 2023

    Responding to Bin Laden’s Letter to America

    As part of the emerging genocidal war against Israel, Tik Tok is unleashing an anti-American and anti-Semitic meme with regard to Bin Laden’s letter to America. Young Americans are posting pensive reconsiderations of their own convictions after...

  • November 1, 2023

    The New Global Anti-Semitism

    The global banner of anti-Semitism is once again being unfurled in a rage of rhetorical madness unleashed by the flailing Iranian theocracy. The growing success of the Abraham Accords that is slowly and steadily undermining the pathological consensus...

  • October 9, 2023

    The Rhetorical War for Israel

    With hundreds of Israelis killed and many more kidnapped or injured by the anti-Semitic Arab supremacists of Hamas, the rhetorical war for Israel has begun. This war, as has always been the case, is fought in the realm of rhetoric and argument and no...

  • October 5, 2023

    Kevin McCarthy and the Political Culture

    Political pundits are stunned at the recent ouster of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.  The removal is the latest public backlash against political establishment politics in the United States implemented by a corrupt intellectual culture....

  • August 3, 2023

    100 Years Against Our Imperial Presidency

    August 3, 2023 represents the 100-year anniversary of the inauguration of President Calvin Coolidge.  The immediate circumstances of his rise to the highest office from the position of Vice President were peculiar and challenging.  Presiden...

  • May 28, 2023

    The Politics of Jesus

    Tony Campolo is among the more famous evangelical leaders in the United States more affiliated with the political Left. His perhaps most famous book -- Is Jesus a Democrat or a Republican? -- tried to imagine a centrist view of Jesus. Despite his fri...

  • January 24, 2023

    Reducing the Deficits of the Federal Government

    It has again become openly fashionable to rhetorically complain about excessive government spending.  One can wax eloquent about the fundamental insincerity of the complaint, but this misses a rather elemental and important point:  it is po...

  • November 4, 2022

    Biden's Rhetoric and Political Violence

    In the fall of 1860, Tommy Wilson was four years old.  As he stood near the front gate of his Augusta, Georgia home a local told him that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president and now there would be war.  Tommy’s father, a Presby...

  • July 30, 2022

    Overcoming the Rhetoric of Jacobinism

    One of the most powerful tools of social control is capacity to define words.  George Orwell established the ominous potential of the political darkness extending from such power.  We in the United States find ourselves subjugated increasin...

  • February 6, 2022

    Afro-Idealism in Black History Month and January 6

    On January 6, 2021, President Biden stood below the rotunda of the Capitol dome to explain that "the truth will set us free," on the one-year anniversary of violent protests at the Capitol. Jesus was right when he proclaimed this teachin...

  • October 6, 2021

    The Good News about the U.S. Budget Deficit

    Americans are rightly concerned about deficit spending in the United States, especially as directed by the perpetually reckless Congress that is constitutionally mandated to care for the purse strings of the nation.  At present, the President,...

  • August 17, 2021

    President Biden’s Genocide

    Afghanistan has fallen. The Taliban are the newly inaugurated genocidaires to now rule that nation. Women between the ages of 15 and 45 have already been ordered to make themselves available to slavish marriages with the male martyrs of their new glo...

  • August 6, 2021

    America is Structurally Anti-Racist Redux

    Probably the most censored article I have written as a professor is one I wrote last summer entitled:  “America is structurally anti-racist.”  If you Google that title, the article does not appear.  You will see dozens of G...

  • July 7, 2021

    Remembering the 2016 killing of five Dallas police officers

    July 7, 2021, is the five-year anniversary of Micah Xavier Johnson's attack on Dallas police officers and the larger world of nonviolent political change.  On that fateful evening in 2016, Black Lives Matter protesters organized a rally...

  • June 19, 2021

    Juneteenth and Texas History

    General Granger's Orders Number 3 read at Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865: The people are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of ...

  • June 4, 2021

    The Presidential Response to the Tulsa Riot

    “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. But just because history is silent, it doesn't mean that it did not take place... And while darkness can hide much, it can never erase what ...

  • February 20, 2021

    Understanding the Texas Energy Crisis

    A rhetorical battle is now underway to make sure the Texas energy crisis does not go to waste.  As the largest electoral star in the remnants of red states, the stakes for changing the politics of the state are considerable.  The arctic wea...

  • November 26, 2020

    Democrats Must Regret Messing with Texas

    One of the elusive goals of our corrupt intellectual culture is to turn Texas blue.  Among the 4 most populous states, California, Texas, Florida, and New York, Texas is an exceptional electoral prize and one which, if turned to blue politics, w...

  • October 27, 2020

    Should Christians Vote for the Vain and Boastful?

    Evangelical thinker, author, and Christian pastor John Piper stirred the Christian community and a larger public intrigued with how Christians may vote in the this election with his recent essay, “Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin: Pond...

  • October 8, 2020

    Pence won, and the Commission on Presidential Debates continues to lose

    Vice President Mike Pence scored a convincing win in the Wednesday night debate with Kamala Harris.  The debate was a more ordered affair with far fewer interruptions and clearer contrasts between the two campaigns.  These are imp...

  • October 3, 2020

    It's Time to Reform How Presidential Debates Go

    Amid the clamor and uproar of presidential debate number one on Tuesday night, moderator Chris Wallace invited the president to come and take his seat as the moderator.  Though meant in jest, the exchange was an important signifier of the o...

  • July 22, 2020

    America is Structurally Anti-Racist

    One of the emergent strategies on college campuses for destroying the United States is describing it falsely as a racist institution.  America is not simply “not racist.”  America is the most important and successful anti-racist...

  • April 29, 2020

    The Anti-Trump Fantasy Theme

    In 2008, the American political landscape was electrified by the emergence of Sarah Palin.  As a governor of Alaska, Palin's selection to be John McCain's vice presidential running mate added energy to McCain's relatively lethar...

  • February 8, 2020

    America Rising

    The major political events of the first week of February portend an incredible seismic shift in American and ultimately global politics.  These events include 1) Brexit, 2) Coronavirus in China, 3) the Senate impeachment trial and acquittal...

  • January 22, 2020

    America’s Most Successful Human Rights Campaign: The Pro Life Movement

    Abortion is among the most controversial and debated topics in the United States.  As a college professor and debate coach of 25 years, I can easily observe that the most restricted civil right on campuses is the right to speak on behalf of unbo...

  • December 27, 2019

    Trump and the Pharisees

    The recurring effort to subordinate Christianity to the reactionary public ethics of those who do not like Republican presidents is enjoying another resurgence.  The recent editorial in Christianity Today and editorials in places like the Christ...

  • November 28, 2019

    The Red Scare and Whistleblowers

    The real danger to our present republic is the ascendant interpretive hypocrisy of our American elite.  One of the enduring mythologies of elite revisionism of American history is the dangerous figure of Joseph McCarthy.  In the popular tel...

  • October 30, 2019

    The rhetoric of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's death

    One of the world's most important genocidaires of the 21st century era is dead.  After numerous false reports to this effect over the past five years, it does appear that President Trump and American special forces have accomplished the...

  • October 16, 2019

    How Can We Fix Debate in America?

    The New York Times recently ran an editorial arguing that scholastic debate is harming our society. Debate represents one of our most important pedagogical tools in education and its proper implementation could do more to restore our society than alm...

  • October 1, 2019

    International Blue Privilege Meets the Trump Wrecking Ball

    Another chapter in the saga of attempting the removal of President Trump is upon us:  Ukraine.  The crisis continues to clarify the dangerous but persistent problem of an elite intellectual power structure that refuses to yield or be r...

  • August 21, 2019

    Academia and Republican Presidents

    In the mid-1980s I was traveling with our collegiate debate team from Texas to a tournament in Kansas.  We stopped at a Pizza Hut in Oklahoma for lunch and a waitress attempted to take our drink order.  One of our more outspoken team member...

  • August 10, 2019

    Killing One Another

    The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton unleashed their own secondary agony of interpretation provided by our Jacobin commentary class.  At the heart of this pathological narrative are cynical manipulative notions of white supremacy, gun contro...

  • July 30, 2019

    Understanding the Democratic Presidential Primary Debates

    Tonight, a slate of ten candidates for the Democratic party nomination to be President will spar on stage in front of CNN cameras with the goal of becoming their party’s nominee.  The primary debates are an important rhetorical feature of ...

  • March 27, 2019

    The Poison that Is Killing America

    The Mueller report came back after almost two years of work and millions of dollars of reactionary political efforts aimed at removing an American president.  The results are devastating to the NeverTrump community.  They were gal...

  • January 21, 2019

    Martin Luther King, Jr. and the War without Violence

    Martin Luther King and America's major civil rights leaders fought an integrated and nonviolent war against racial segregation.  Their affirmation of "beloved community" emphasized their Christian notions of love being stronge...

  • December 24, 2018

    The War on Christmas

    One of the fashionable memes of the season offered by our more educated elite is the mocking of “the war on Christmas.”  In their view, Christmas faces little meaningful social constraint and the metaphor of ‘war’ is the ...

  • December 8, 2018

    Mis-Underestimating Bush

    The day of mourning for President H.W. Bush provided a brilliant moment for the epideictic to outshine the deliberative nonsense that so regularly shouted down the Bush family from the 1990s to the present.  The passing of Bush 41 provides ...

  • October 29, 2018

    The Intellectual Culture of Anti-Semitism

    The outrageous slaughter of members of the Jewish community at a synagogue in Pittsburgh exposes the harsh reality of anti-Semitism in the United States. When I worked at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2006 and 2007, I was most dismay...

  • August 19, 2018

    And They Wonder Why We're Angry

    America is experiencing a major culture war between its interpreters and the people.  It is less a war of political parties: Democrat versus Republican.  It is less a war of ideologies: conservative versus liberal.  The ...

  • June 17, 2018

    The Jesus Fallacy

    As President Trump was beating swords into plowshares in Singapore, it must have been exasperating for his reactionary critics who mocked him for canceling the summit when he successfully completed the meeting, opening doors to peace.  The ...

  • May 2, 2018

    Two Saturdays in April 2018

    April 21 and April 28 are two Saturdays that rather perfectly typify the divided America.  On April 21, in Houston, Texas, the nation could observe on placid channels such as C-SPAN the memorial service for First Lady Barbara Bush....

  • April 28, 2018

    The War on Reason

    "We are living through an all-out war on truth, facts and reason," said presidential candidate and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York recently.  In many respects, the American public has been living within a war...

  • April 4, 2018

    Civil Rights Renaissance to Remember Martin Luther King

    March 4, 2018 is the 50th anniversary of what may arguably be the end of America’s second revolution:  the civil rights movement.  On March 4, 1968, Martin Luther was assassinated on the balcony of the Loraine Motel in Memphis.  ...

  • February 21, 2018

    The Habits of IndigNation

    Most Americans are now aware that we live in an essentially surreal political environment.  A concerted team of political reactionaries guides the national conversation from crisis to crisis, all the while demanding further expansions of fe...

  • December 24, 2017

    The politics of Christmas

    The bright lights of Christmas should be seen against the larger political darkness from which they emerge.  The less popular narration provided by Matthew may be part of what Mahmoud Abbas recently divined as Jews being "really excellent i...

  • December 5, 2017

    The Disingenuous Tax Cut Debate

    One of the important drivers of political dysfunction in America is the dishonest framing of debates Americans need to observe. Among the many controversies misrepresented by the commentary class is the tax cut debate. At the heart of the misrepresen...

  • August 31, 2017

    Hurricane Harvey, or Katrina II

    In August of 2005, the coastlines surrounding New Orleans were devastated by a Category 3 hurricane.  More than 1,800 people were killed in the aftermath.  Most of the deaths were related to the breach of levees in New Orleans.  Though...

  • July 12, 2017

    Commander in Chief Trump defeats the ISIS Genocidaire

    Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. As the leader of ISIS, he represented one of the most important leaders of genocide in the 21st century.  Since his ascendancy in Iraq, created by the power vacuum endorsed by the election of President Obama, Bag...

  • May 4, 2017

    How many Americans does Obamacare kill each day?

    In 2015, something unexpected and unusual happened to the United States. For the first time since 1993, life expectancy in the United States declined. The decline was significant and extensive. Life expectancy is one of the most basic indicators of h...

  • February 17, 2017

    The Left Silences Debate

    This week the nation’s top debate coaches released their recognition of the top collegiate policy debate teams. This exceptional group of sixteen teams receives pre-bids to the National Debate Tournament at the end of March and will have strong...

  • January 31, 2017

    President Obama’s Genocide

    Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was released from Iraqi prison custody in 2009, shortly after President Obama came to power largely upon a political promise to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq. Baghdadi was captured in February 2004 by U.S. forces and had ...

  • December 12, 2016

    The revenge of Sarah Palin

    Twenty-sixteen may turn out to be the year of the woman after all.  The woman of the year is Sarah Palin, who eight years ago was crucified by assorted media and elites in order to usher in the new transformation of America promised by Senator O...

  • October 21, 2016

    Ain't I a Woman?: The Political Economy of Sexism and Racism

    It is that time again in the political cycle of America, where social justice is reinvented as the exclusive domain of one political party.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is promising to do for gender equality what President Barack Obama ha...

  • September 25, 2016

    Is Hillary Clinton Losing the 2016 Election?

    The anxiety is palatable.  The question will not be made audible, but it remains: is she losing this election?  Is it really slipping away?  To put it in the words of Hillary Clinton:  "Why am I not winning by 50 points?...

  • June 15, 2016

    On Islamic terror, words do matter

    Yesterday, President Obama responded to years of criticism arguing that he refused to say "radical Islam" as an identity for America's enemy: "What exactly would using this label accomplish?  What exactly would it change?...

  • April 23, 2016

    Reforming Academia in 2016

    Even President Barack Obama recently lamented the declining state of affairs on America’s college campuses. Essentially, a doctrinaire sense of victimology has descended upon campuses such that free speech, critical thinking, and debate are all...

  • January 13, 2016

    Comparing Obama's 2016 SOTU and Bush's 2008 SOTU

    Last night, President Obama gave his final State of the Union speech before Congress and some members of the Supreme Court.  His speech was more about the long-term future and less about the immediate year remaining.  The president's sp...

  • January 2, 2016

    American Goodness and Generosity in the Aftermath of a Texas Tornado

    On December 26, an F4 tornado tore through my community of Rowlett, Texas.  After killing eight people in cars near the intersection of Interstate 30 and the George W. Bush turnpike, the twister destroyed dozens of homes in Garland and Rowlett....

  • December 7, 2015

    President Obama's theophobia

    On Sunday night, President Obama sought to reassure the nation that, while he was serious about the American fight against ISIS, we as citizens of the United States need to remain vigilant against excessive reactions against Muslims here at home and ...

  • November 4, 2015

    Can the Presidential Debate Format Be Un-Wrecked?

    After the most recent presidential candidate debate, it is apparent to almost everyone that the journalistic moderation of presidential debates is damaging our civic process.  As a debate professional, I have struggled with the American presiden...

  • October 11, 2015

    Killing Christians and Jews

    The gunman in Oregon performed a powerfully bigoted and hateful argument as a statement against Christians and Jews.  The steadfast refusal of our intellectual culture to take seriously the global and American agenda of violence against Christia...

  • August 7, 2015

    Winners and losers for the RNC Cleveland debate 2016

    The interpreting classes of media, academics, and Hollywood are busy with the assignment of winners and losers from the Thursday night debate among Republican aspirants to the nomination for president of the United States.  Ostensibly, the Repub...

  • May 20, 2015

    Reforming American Presidential Debates

    It is difficult to overstate the importance of American presidential debates. Since the inception of televised debate era in 1960, debates have attracted massive viewing audiences. As many as 80 million Americans will tune into any of the American Pr...

  • March 22, 2015

    The Vindication of George W. Bush

    This week at Hofstra University, academics and political experts are gathering to discuss the meaning of the presidency of George W. Bush. President Bush remains an enigmatic yet vital figure in American politics. For liberals, he is the antithesis o...

  • March 3, 2015

    The Rhetoric of Genocide

    The White House is reeling from a public argument against advisor Susan Rice placed recently in the NYT suggesting she has “a blind spot for genocide.” The problem of genocide is beginning to envelope the administration as it limps t...

  • December 25, 2014

    Merry Christmas from Texas to the World

    Texas has blessed the world with an incredible Christmas gift: plummeting oil prices. Both the production and the technology of fracking were substantially innovated and pioneered in the Lone Star state. The ramifications here at home and abroad are ...

  • December 11, 2014

    American Deceptionalism

    Americans are drawn to the latest spectacle surrounding Jonathan Gruber -- an MIT professor -- paid almost six million dollars to assist in deceiving the public with regard to the Affordable Care Act.  Gruber recently treated the public to anoth...

  • November 6, 2014

    Five easy pieces of a brighter future

    One of the things that surprises me talking to young people across the nation is their frustration that nothing can be done to fix the political pains felt at home and abroad.  They are often pleasantly surprised to find that there are easy steps to ...

  • August 25, 2014

    Escaping the American Onlookership

    Most Americans are at least somewhat aware of the painful web of political cynicism that presently ensnares them.  The news media, entertainment, academic, and government nerves centers of the nation pulse with deception designed to nudge the pu...

  • June 29, 2014

    Stopping Global Supremacists

    Fifty years ago this summer, three young men -- James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andy Goodman -- were brutally murdered in the sovereign state of Mississippi to send a political message in defense of radical racial and ethnic supremacy. After trai...

  • May 1, 2014

    How the Civil Rights Movement Dismissed its Early Heroes

    "Destroy segregation." Those were James Farmer Jr’s words to James Farmer Sr. in 1938 when his father asked him what he planned to do with his college education.  What ensued remains one of the greatest yet largely forgotten stor...

  • January 19, 2014

    What Republican Senate Control Means for America

    One of the most important memes of political intellectual culture today is that the Republicans are no better than the Democrats.  Conservatives express this vividly in the notion of RINOs (Republican in name only).  Is this histo...

  • December 25, 2013

    Mary's Christmas

    One of the unfortunate features of our cynical intellectual culture is the phobia surrounding Christmas. Texas legislators recently went as far as passing a law to guarantee everyone in public schools the right to say "Merry Christmas." That did not ...

  • December 14, 2013

    A Definitive History of Media Bias

    In many respects, the current cultural crisis of the United States is rooted not in our political institutions, but in the epistemic organs of our larger civic body.  For America, basically four organs pump the life-giving civic blood of pu...

  • November 22, 2013

    Don't Blame Dallas for JFK's Assassination

      The nation remembers the 50th anniversary of one of the more stunning assassinations in world history. Riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963. The effort to understand this ...

  • November 10, 2013

    The Blue Elite and Female Lives

    "I am pro-life,"  [Wendy Davis] said, borrowing from the label anti-abortion activists assign themselves. "I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, ever...

  • October 16, 2013

    The War between Texas and DC

    George P. Mitchell died this past summer. Though not widely noted, his American ingenuity has laid siege to the fundamental injustices of the world and promised a now inevitable American economic renaissance. In the 1980s, industry experts thought hi...

  • October 4, 2013

    How Government Shutdowns Help America

    The government shutdown is probably improving the future of the United States. That may seem impossible, given the hyperbole flying about the public sphere this week as the partial shutdown of the federal government began.  But understanding w...

  • August 25, 2013

    Christianity and Martin Luther King's Dream

    The nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's dream on August 28.  In 1963, King gave what many communication experts view as the greatest speech of the past 100 years.  Yet despite the speech's popularity, experts co...

  • July 11, 2013

    Blue Privilege

    One of the most seminal guilt-control mechanisms of the academic anti-American movement is a notion of "White privilege." White privilege is a rhetorical construct suggesting that those with understood fairer complexions derive inordinate preference ...

  • April 23, 2013

    Restoring the Image of President George W. Bush

    See also: Did Bill Maher Just Trump Bush on Islam? The nation honors the formal opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas Thursday.  A library serving as the government repositor...

  • January 19, 2013

    In the Energy Debate between Palin and Obama...Obama Lost

    You  know we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices. If we're going to take control of our energy future, and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year when the economy starts getting better, world demand sta...

  • September 16, 2012

    It's Not Bush's Fault

    Madeleine Albright recently made headlines responding to a question about when Democrats might stop blaming President Bush for economic difficulties and other contemporary problems.  She flippantly responded:  "Never."  Her comment was...

  • December 2, 2011

    The Fall of the House of Frank

    The imminent retirement of Barney Frank from the House of Representatives is an important rhetorical marker for one of the most significant financial disasters in U.S. history.  The housing bubble and ultimate collapse was substantially informed...

  • September 11, 2011

    The Sounds of Silence on 9/11

    A famous left wing professor has called for silence to commemorate 9/11. America is about to be engulfed in a tidal wave of 9/11 commemoration. There has never been anything like it before, so as a society we are constructing the rules for the proce...

  • January 30, 2011

    The EPA's Mess with Texas

    As part of Obama's new political initiative to bypass a Congress that rejected his leadership in 2009 and 2010, he has announced executive orders to allow the federal government to restrict economic activity to fit legislative goals he apparently no ...

  • September 2, 2010

    Iraq: The Good War

    The United States has concluded major combat operations in Iraq. After seven years of war, it is important to remember the good accomplished by these efforts. The rhetorical interpretation of the war in many respects overwhelmed the facts on the grou...

  • August 27, 2010

    Top Ten Things America Has Done for Muslims

    The current disagreement over the Ground Zero Mosque is an important historical stop on a long timeline of cultural debate between Islamic supremacists and the West. Recruits and devotees of these violent Arab Islamic supremacists, such as Nidal Hasa...

  • June 19, 2010

    The reality of international soccer - anti-American bias

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  • May 7, 2010

    American Fossil Fuels: The New Alternative Energy Source

    The explosion of the Gulf oil platform this past week is a useful crisis for those advocates who hope to further restrict and prevent the extraction of fossil fuels in the United States. The recent coal mining accident in Virginia is another opportun...

  • March 14, 2010

    Backing Away from the Wall

    It is an article of faith on the left that a "Wall" separating church and state justifies hounding religion out of the public square. But the federal courts have been backing away from that metaphor.March 11, 2010 may go down as another pol...

  • November 11, 2009

    Victims, Villains, and Heroes

    American soldiers find themselves once again caught in the inhumane crossfire of the media. Since the Vietnam War, the media has designated soldiers as falling into one of two unfortunate categories: victim or villain. The current struggle to make me...

  • July 9, 2009

    Hating Palin

    As a communication professional I have largely been at a loss to explain the judgments being drawn about Governor Palin by allegedly expert pundits.  The general meme from pundits is that Palin is a quitter who cannot take the heat.It seems like...

  • May 3, 2009

    The Tortured Rhetoric of the Reactionary Left

    The reactionary left has descended upon waterboarding as its new case study in why conservatives are diabolical and without conscience.  The sad reality is that conservatives are reacting in the rather conventional manner of going on the defensi...

  • April 4, 2009

    Churchill's Finest Hour?

    In January of 2005, I publicly confronted Professor Ward Churchill for his outrageous allegation from a September 12, 2001 essay that the victims of the world trade center were "little Eichmanns."  At the time, my questions and concern...

  • January 24, 2009

    George W. Bush: The Case for Greatness

    Great Presidents are defined by their times.  In the study of public address and great American rhetoric, scholars speak of an exigence -- the necessities of a moment.  For President Bush, there may not be a clearer indication of the defini...

  • December 19, 2008

    Bloodless Sunday

    Sunday the global reactionaries celebrated an incident of an Iraqi news reported throwing their shoes at President Bush and calling him "a dog."  The reporter noted that this was for all the "widows and orphans" Bush had crea...

  • October 21, 2008

    Palin's People Power

    One of the more awkward realities of this election is Governor Sarah Palin.  Her selection as the Vice Presidential candidate for Senator John McCain's bid to the White House has electrified America.  By electrified, I mean it has torn the ...

  • September 18, 2008

    Obama and Bush agree on more than you think

    The Obama campaign has founded their election strategy upon drawing similarities between Senator McCain and President Bush.  Despite his avowed aversion toward the policies of President Bush, it is useful to examine important arguments made...

  • June 3, 2008

    The Congressional Energy Crisis

    Recently members of Congress treated the media and the American public to the spectacle of questioning oil executives as to why gasoline prices were so high.  Though this theater has been repeated with some vigor since at least the 1970s, member...

  • March 9, 2008

    Monsters, by Ben Voth

    Noted genocide expert Samantha Power resigned from her campaign post as an advisor for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.  Power resigned over the controversy created when she described democratic campaign rival Hillary Clinton as a ...

  • January 29, 2008

    The Global Gettysburg

    President Bush's State of the Union speech signaled an important first step in the establishment of his legacy.  In many respects, the speech reflected a transformation in the American Presidency from domestic protector to global idealist. ...

  • October 18, 2007

    Eradicating Religion in Burma

    "Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end. ""It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be ma...

  • September 17, 2007

    Brian De Palma and Rape in Iraq

    Famed film director Brian De Palma (Scarface, The Untouchables) has completed and publicly screened a new film, Redacted, detailing allegations of a rape by US soldiers in Iraq.  The appearance of this film is sad but not surprising.  Ameri...

  • March 31, 2007

    The Current Meaning of Vietnam

    Vietnam Vietnam Vietnam.  These are words we here with some regularity in today's media.  The metaphorical lens through which all contemporary military conflicts must be viewed is Vietnam.  For anyone championing a notion of American d...