No one said it was going to be easy.

Common sense has become a common theme for President Donald Trump.

So, what exactly is common sense? I think it’s like obscenity. I know it when I see it. For certain, much of what we have suffering from the Left makes a mockery of common sense. Here are some examples.

Does it make sense to allow millions of poor, unskilled, unvetted, social services-consuming immigrants – a meaningful percentage of whom are likely to be criminals or terrorists – into our country?

Does it make sense to cast aside education, training, competence, and natural aptitude in favor of ethnicity and skin color in hiring airline pilots and air traffic controllers? (For that matter, does it make sense for any job?)

Does it make sense for the government to keep borrowing money to spend on things that don’t make the country safer, cleaner, more secure or more prosperous?

Does it make sense to pour billions of dollars into an education system that by every objective measure is failing to educate children?

Does it make sense to force young women who compete in athletics to risk serious injury competing against a bigger, stronger male?

Does it make sense to stand mute while U.S. trade policy has the effect of exporting American jobs and strategic manufacturing capacity to nations that hate us?

No country can call itself sovereign if it doesn’t have a border.

Skin color isn’t the deciding factor in one’s suitability to be an airline pilot (or a butcher, baker or candlestick maker).

You know in your personal life that unlimited borrowing is unsustainable.

What Donald Trump promised in his campaign is a return to common sense. One might substitute the word, “normal.”

For at least the past 60 years, little by little and bit by bit the Left has used language and propaganda and command of the top reaches of the culture to degrade the norms that have been in place since the founding of the nation.

However, the people who live in the heartland of the country who grow our food, stock our shelves, fix our machines, dispose of our trash and defend our shores have finally had enough. So, in 2024, many of them who had voted for Democrats their entire adult lives voted for a Republican named Donald Trump.

Trump is now committing the ultimate mortal sin in politics. He’s keeping his campaign promises. The Left – which includes the legacy media – isn’t having it. Which means, if you voted for Trump, the Left isn’t having you.

Rooting out the crazy and returning to “normal” won’t be quick, smooth or easy. The avalanche of lawsuits against Trump’s executive actions is a portent of frustrations to come. But don’t be distracted. Trump – or something like him – is what we’ve been wishing for.

Temporary setbacks will happen. Lose heart, and one can imagine a broken, dystopic country like that which was devolving under Joe Biden.

But stay the course Trump has mapped and one can imagine a country that regains its success ethic and its cultural health.

How the Left now rolls.

In 2012, Chick Fil-A CEO Dan Cathey expressed his belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The LGBTQ “community” went nuclear and called for boycotting Chick Fil-A.

Sales at Chick Fil-A skyrocketed. Several stores ran out of chicken. The loony-tune left’s childish boycott of Chick Fil-A boomeranged on them big time.

Perhaps this story might prompt you to reconsider your position regarding buying a Tesla. Donald Trump just bought two of them.

It wasn’t that long ago that Tesla was the darling of the Left. So darling was Tesla that Joe Biden wanted to force all of us to either own one or not drive at all. Elon Musk was to the Left a reliable, wealthy, techie-nerd liberal and Tesla vehicles were seen as the salvation of the planet.

But that was before Elon Musk began supporting Donald Trump and went to work in the Trump administration.

Just like that, Elon Musk and his highly successful car company became the embodiment of evil. And now, rather than pushing us to buy a Tesla, far-left liberals are sitting silently as organized, paid activists set Tesla vehicles on fire, sabotage Tesla charging stations and vandalize Tesla dealerships.

An anti-Musk doxing website called “DOGEquest” has reportedly published the personal information of Tesla owners, including their phone numbers and home addresses. They promise to remove the personal information once they receive “convincing evidence” that the owner has repented of sin by having sold his or her Tesla.

If you have heard any prominent Democrat publicly denounce the violence being committed upon Tesla vehicles and dealerships, please drop me a line telling me who, when and where.

Because I haven’t.

Isn’t it true to form that those on the Left – who are oh, so committed to diversity and inclusion and freedom of speech and democracy and the rule of law and all– are the ones prone to political violence?

In 2017, a far-left loon shot and seriously injured Republican representative Steve Scalise as he and colleagues were practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Donald Trump was shot and injured at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and then stalked by a would-be shooter a few weeks later as he was playing golf.

Did anyone on the right shoot at or otherwise try to hurt Kamala Harris? Are the staffs of Democratic lawmakers being doxed by Trump supporters? Has Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or any prominent pundit on the right called for boycotting companies whose CEOs donate heavily to Democrats?

Here’ Rep. Maxine Waters in 2019 calling for the public harassment of Trump’s cabinet.

And if you see anybody from that cabinet, in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them.

No Republican lawmaker would even consider anything similar aimed at Democrats.

What’s happening to Tesla owners and dealers is nothing short of domestic terrorism. But Democrats offer no condemnation. Because deep inside, they’re down with it.

When an organization fails in its mission, the employees lose their jobs.

The Left – which for this discussion includes most Democratic members of Congress, most of the media, and the top leaders at the country’s teachers’ unions – is aghast that the Trump administration just laid off about 1,300 employees at the Department of Education. That’s roughly half the staff.

National Education Association president Becky Pringle’s statement was predictably apocalyptic and predictably predictable. She said:

Firing – without cause – nearly half of the Department of Education staff means they are getting rid of the dedicated public servants who help ensure our nation’s students have access to the programs and resources to keep class sizes down and expand learning opportunities for students so they can grow into their full brilliance. The Trump administration has abandoned students, parents, and educators across the nation.”

Will someone help me here? Can someone please show me how the Department of Education has been helping American students grow into their “full brilliance?” Because the data I read says that reading, math scores and overall educational attainment scores have been in freefall since the Department of Education was created under Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Most Americans alive today don’t remember when American public education was the envy of the world. American public schools, under the control of the citizens in the communities that they served (that’s why we persist in calling them “independent” school districts in Texas), did an amazing job turning out young adults that were competent in math, English, history, geography, and the basic sciences.

That was then.

America now ranks fourth in the world – behind Luxembourg, Norway and Iceland – in education spending per pupil yet ranks a dismal 31^st in student achievement.

Emblazoned at the top of the Department of Education website you’ll see the words, “Fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” The part about “equal access” harkens back to the vestiges of discrimination against black students that still existed in 1979. Let’s leave that discussion for another time and for now agree that “fostering educational excellence” is simply not happening.

What is happening is that the Department of Education is passing out money. Gobs of it. Just for the exercise I clicked on the “Grants and Programs” tab on the department website. That’s where I found the link to the “Asian American and Pacific Islander Data Disaggregation Initiative.” (No, I have no idea what that means.)

So, I dug a little deeper and learned that this program works, “…in consortia with local educational agencies to obtain and evaluate disaggregated data on English Learner AAPI subpopulations…” (Rule of thumb. If a federal program can’t be explained in plain English, the program is very likely a total waste of money.)

But with due respect to “data disaggregation” and all, the Department of Education cost $268 billion in 2024 and yet American kids can’t read or do math at grade level. Since its establishment in 1979, the DOE has, by any objective measure, failed to improve education in America.

If half the employees just got laid off, we should ask, “When will the rest get their pink slips?”

A great country should expect better.

Since President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening, much has been written and said about the Democrats’ childish behavior in the House chamber. I kept picturing a two-year-old flinging her cereal bowl from the tray of her highchair. It was all embarrassing, beneath the dignity of the institution and ultimately pointless.

Others have given a detailed recounting. Permit me only to add that I lament that Al Greene is from Texas.

Instead, let’s just say that if you can’t applaud for bringing a moment of sunshine into the life of a 13-year-old boy who otherwise lives under the constant dark cloud of brain cancer, there’s something truly wrong with you.

So long as Democrats keep doubling down on stupid with their silly tantrums and their ad nauseum characterizations of Trump as Hitler and his supporters as racist, bigoted, homophobic, uncultured Neanderthals, the prospects for Republican electoral success will be bright. The Democrats’ far left lunacy may still play well in the cloistered coastal enclaves where elite liberals tend to cluster. But it appalls people in the heartland of the country. Democrats are losing the people who feed us, defend us, fix our machines, stock our shelves, clean up after us, pay their taxes and do their best to raise responsible children. Many in that great middle-of-the-country, middle-of-the-political-road-cohort once voted Democrat. It was their votes for Donald Trump that made the critical difference last November.

Conservative pundits might look upon the Democrats’ self-immolation as good news. And in the short term, they’re probably right.

But in the bigger picture – the picture that includes the long-term health of the republic – I’m one who looks upon the Democrats and wishes they’d get better.

A healthy society needs robust competition in the marketplace of ideas. Businesses and organizations that don’t face worthy competition become complacent and lazy. Political parties that lack principled competition become vulnerable to their own excesses.

The Dallas Cowboys of the mid 1990s were certainly great because they had great players and a great coach. (His name was Jimmy Johnson, Jerry. He’d likely have won you many more championships if you hadn’t childishly run him off.) But the 1990s Cowboys were also great because they knew they had to face the San Francisco 49ers.

I remember the Democratic Party that was once the party of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Joe Lieberman. Democrats of that era may have been wrong in the eyes of their Republican opponents. But those Democrats were principled in their positions and the Sturm & Drang of politics notwithstanding, largely decorous in their pursuit of them.

And by and large, the country thrived.

That Democratic Party is long gone. In its place are the glum faces, pink dresses, idiotic protest paddles and foaming-at-the-mouth outbursts of Tuesday night.

It’s hard not to take delight watching the Democrats dig their hole even deeper. But for Republicans to be at their best, and for the nation to truly hit its peak, I wish the Democrats would get better.

What’s next for the church of Peter?

As I write this, Pope Francis is in a hospital in Rome suffering with pneumonia and kidney failure. That’s not good news for an 88-year-old man. Francis could pull through and I hope he does. But in any case, his papacy will soon be over.

I was standing on a rain-soaked St. Peter’s Square on March 13, 2013, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio was introduced to the world as Pope Francis. A crowd of about 100,000 cheered as he gave his urbi et orbi blessing. All of us in the media scrambled to report that prior to his election, Bergoglio was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Early the next morning I sat in the ABC News Bureau in Rome and wrote the following to wrap up KTBB’s coverage.

I’m not Catholic. I’m a Methodist.

Still, I find myself rooting for the Catholic Church. Everyone who professes a Christian faith is descended from the church in Rome. For all the faults of the Roman Church, and they are numerous, at its core the Catholic Church has been an institution dedicated to elevating humans that they might become more worthy of their belief in having been created in God’s own image. The Christian faith in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, has, among other things, chastened its believers. The authority of the church mitigated the baser instincts of man. The teachings of the church have sought to summon our better angels.

As the church has forfeited moral authority due to ineptitude and self-inflicted wounds such as the clergy abuse scandals, nothing really good has rushed in to fill the resulting vacuum.

I also believe that to the extent that the Roman Church suffers a loss of respect, that loss of respect negatively impacts all Christian congregations. For most of the world, Catholicism is Christianity.

Thus, I wish Pope Francis well. I’d like to see the Catholic Church get some of its mojo back.”

The sad fact is that my wish was not granted.

I went on to say the morning after the election that Job One for the new pope was to re-evangelize Europe with an eye toward the same thing for the United States.

Mark 16:15 says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”

Much to my disappointment, too much of Francis’s preaching centered not on the gospels but on secular leftist causes such as climate change, transgenderism and unfettered illegal immigration. Pride flags and BLM flags in the sanctuaries of Catholic and other Christian churches served to distract from the dwindling numbers of parishioners in the pews.

European governments are now trying to figure out what to do about their own illegal immigration problem.

The fear is that Francis has packed the College of Cardinals with like-minded leftists who are likely to select another leftist pope.

The hope is that just as it did in our recent election, the pendulum will swing the other way.

For the sake of Christendom and the world, let’s pray that it does.

Directly over the target.

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Given the amount of fire he’s taking, we can be certain that Elon Musk is directly over the target. In addition to having ignited a wave of howling by enraged Democrats over his upending of the waste and corruption at the United States Agency for International Development ($2 million for sex change surgeries and “LGBTQ activism” in Guatemala anyone?), Musk has uncovered breathtaking sloppiness and massive fiscal irresponsibility at the Treasury Department.

That’s not all. He’s all over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, calling for it to be shut down because it is operating without congressionally approved funding, and it is promulgating banking regulations that have the perverse effect of making credit and financial services harder to obtain for low-income consumers.

Everywhere he shows up, he finds staggering levels of waste, inefficiency and fraud on the part of the federal government that we pay for and that is supposed to be working for us.

You’d think that rooting out waste and fraud would be enjoy bipartisan support. But no. Democrats are beside themselves. Here’s Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, (a Native American descendant, just ask her), shrieking about Elon Musk at a small public rally Monday.

This is like a bank robber trying to fire the cops and turn off the alarms just before he strolls into the lobby.”

Yeah, Liz, that’s it. It’s not that billions of dollars taken from the paychecks of those hard-working low income and middle-class taxpayers you say you’re all about are being wasted in the most grotesque ways possible. It’s that Elon Musk – the richest man in the world – is trying to steal from them. In fact, it’s the Leviathan state that Democrats so strongly favor that is stealing, and in ways that no one has dared to imagine until now.

You sometimes have to ask, can these people hear themselves?

In the case of Musk’s criticisms of the Treasury Department, rather than saying, “Wow it looks like the Treasury is long overdue for an audit,” attorneys general from 19 blue states filed suit in Federal Court for the Southern District of New York – a friendly venue for Democrats. The judge, Obama appointee Paul Engelmayer, issued an order blocking access by Musk and the DOGE team to the Treasury payments system.

The order essentially says that only permanent federal bureaucrats can have access. Mere “political appointees” cannot. Never mind that the Secretary of the Treasury is a political appointee. The ruling is ridiculous on its face. The Treasury secretary can look at anything at the Department of the Treasury that he wants. And so can anyone else appointed by the president – say, for example, Elon Musk.

God bless Elon Musk and God bless Trump for appointing him to this role. All of us who pay taxes take have long known that we are, to some degree or another, being ripped off. But Democrats are panicking because we’re all about to find out that it is many, many, many orders of magnitude worse than we thought.

Let the sunlight in.

How dare we even presume to ask.

How dare anyone – least of all someone dispatched by Donald Trump – presume to investigate how our tax money gets spent. That’s exactly what Elon Musk – the richest man in the world – is doing and the Democrats are coming unglued.

Elon Musk is working for the Trump administration gratis and is heading up an ad hoc government…agency?, committee?, initiative?… call it whatever, it goes by “DOGE,” the Department of Government Efficiency. It’s not really a department in the strictest sense of the word but it doesn’t matter. Elon Musk is busy bringing to light the federal government’s horrific stewardship of our money. And right now, he’s focused on the United States Agency for International Development – a.k.a USAID.

Like most federal programs, USAID started with great intentions. President John F. Kennedy wanted to organize US foreign aid under a single agency. The agency’s principal mandate was to provide disaster and poverty relief to nations around the world who might otherwise have sought such relief from the Soviet Union – and in so doing fall under Soviet domination.

But also like most federal programs, USAID has mutated into something far removed from its founding vision.

And Elon Musk is on it.

Space is simply too short for an exhaustive listing of the ways USAID is wasting your money (while mocking your core values). But here’s a short list.

• $446,000 to promote the expansion of atheism in Nepal.
• $3.3 million to “normalize being LGBTQ” in the Caribbean.
• How about this gem: $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan to become “climate leaders.”
• 3.6 billion condoms having a price tag of $118.6 million spread about to 60 countries around the world.
• $55,750 for a presentation—led by female and LGBTQ+ journalists—warning about the impact of “climate change” in Argentina.
• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatamala.

The list never ends. And it is truly astonishing how much of it is tied in one way or another to either sex or climate change. And it’s equally astonishing how little of it is tied to disaster relief, poverty relief or indeed anything connected to American national interest.

When did you vote for any of this crap? When did Obama or Biden or Bush or Clinton or anybody tell us this was going on?

As for the Democrats, their attitude is, “How dare we question it?” Here’s a short montage of them melting down Wednesday over Elon Musk asking on our behalf.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) We will see you in the courts and Congress and the streets. Elon Musk is a Nazi nepo baby.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) It is time for us to shine. It is time for us to be heard. It is time for us to make sure that they know that we will not go.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) In the building behind me. Elon Musk is seizing power from the American people. We are here to fight back.

This is what now passes for policy debate among Democrats.

So, bottom line, stop and consider this. USAID is one agency. There are hundreds.

It’s probably a good thing that Elon Musk sleeps at the office.

We’ve only just begun.

Most Americans do not favor open borders.

Most Americans do not favor hiring based on race, gender or sexual orientation, preferring hiring and advancement based on merit instead. Affirmative action going back to when it first emerged under John F. Kennedy, has never enjoyed majority support.

Many Americans like their electric vehicles. But most of us oppose being told we have to either drive one or not drive at all.

Most Americans believe that the federal government is too big and too intrusive.

Most of us oppose biological men competing in women’s sports. And by a very large margin, most of us are appalled at the very thought of mutilating children via gender surgery.

Speaking of children, most of us believe that sex education of any kind – straight, gay, trans or whatever – has no place in kindergarten.

Most of us believe that criminals should be punished, with the severity of the punishment rising proportionately to the seriousness of the crime. We, most of us, further believe that arrested suspects that have a clear propensity for repeat offense should at the very minimum have to post bail to be let out of jail pending trial.

Most of us believe – indeed the core principles upon which our nation was founded state – that justice should be blind and that using the justice system to persecute political enemies threatens the very foundation of the republic.

These positions stand solidly in the mainstream of American ethos.

And yet…

Millions of poor, social services-dependent migrants are in the country illegally, most of them having arrived in just the past four years.

Hiring, contracting and college admissions based on immutable characteristics like race or gender have crowded out merit in major companies and top universities across the country.

Repeat offenders are walking the streets of our major cities.

That the Department of Justice was weaponized by the Obama and Biden administrations for political purposes is now indisputable.

The federal government has gotten bigger and more intrusive with each successive administration (save for the deregulation push of Trump’s first term).

Had Kamala Harris won the 2024 election we’d all still be looking at being eventually forced to buy an electric vehicle, the blatant unfairness of men competing in women’s sports would be continuing apace, government would continue to grow and we’d have little recourse against leftist educrats pushing sex onto our grade schoolers.

Mainstream as we normals believe ourselves to be, it is undeniable that a small group of elitists living mostly on the coasts have been very successful at advancing hard left policies that defy majority opinion.

And that’s why we have been so giddy watching Donald Trump move with amazing speed to unravel the far left lunacy of the cosmically awful Biden administration.

Being happy right now is fine. But as my dad used to say, don’t get cocky.

The committed leftists that pushed these radical policies so successfully for so long have not gone away. They do not intend to surrender. They are momentarily on the back foot following Trump’s decisive victory. But they will regroup.

The fight’s not over.

It’s just begun.

Wasted legacy.

From a technique standpoint, the legacy network news operations – ABC, CBS, NBC (and let’s throw in CNN) – are all very good at what they do. They have, over most of a century, become extremely skilled at gathering huge quantities of news audio and video and distilling it into highly watchable and highly listenable news stories.

They do it every single day and they do it on a tight deadline. From the perspective of tradecraft, America’s legacy network newsrooms are the best in the world.

To fully appreciate that tradecraft one must see it. From political conventions across five presidential administrations to two papal conclaves at the Vatican, I have personally watched the legacy networks in action. I have been there as radio and television assignment editors, reporters, videographers, editors and anchors have worked with astonishing proficiency to put out a great looking and great sounding product.

For decades those superior skills – together with the undeniable fact that collectively speaking the legacy networks were the only game in town – garnered huge audiences. Those huge audiences assured superior access to newsmakers and preferred positions at big news events.

Certainly, the confluence of social media and smartphones has acted as a disintermediating force that has disrupted the legacy networks. Where once it took a mountain of expensive infrastructure to get a story from New York or Washington or Rome or London into cars and homes, today anyone on the scene with a smartphone can be a reporter.

But with that said, the advantages gained by the long and massive incumbency of the legacy networks should have been more protective than it has turned out to be. Sure, anyone can now be a reporter. But the vast majority of people lack the skills to report a story compellingly and the long history to report it credibly.

I said should have been more protective. It hasn’t been because the legacy networks – as if acting intentionally – forfeited their credibility. Secure in the belief that they would always enjoy top-tier status, they morphed from doing their best to report the day’s events to doing their best to shape the day’s events. And they did it from a monolithically leftist perspective.

The resulting “news” product has become an orchestrated effort to advance a predetermined liberal narrative. It has also become drippingly condescending and utterly dismissive of the fundamental beliefs and morals of at least half the country.

The audience has responded by abandoning the legacy networks in droves. Joe Rogan’s podcast alone reaches nearly as many consumers as the legacy networks combined.

Given that today we have countless news reporting sources and given that it’s hard to know the respective agendas of those sources, it would be nice if we could look to the legacy guys as a reliable source.

But rather than properly leveraging their incumbency, they have instead consciously substituted political activism in place of traditional journalism and in so doing, become embarrassingly irrelevant.

It’s a terrible waste of skill, talent and expertise. And it’s a terrible disservice to the republic.

Trump’s challenge from within.

Not to throw a wet blanket on the celebratory mood among we who voted for Donald Trump last November, but RMG Research, a national public opinion research firm founded by Scott Rasmussen, released a poll this week that offers some reason for concern.

According to the poll, nearly half of federal employees plan to resist Trump administration policy. The poll further reveals that when asked how they would respond to a lawful presidential order with which they disagree, nearly two thirds of managers who self-identified in the poll as Democrats said they would ignore the directive and “do what they thought was best.”

When you consider that by a very sizable margin the majority of federal employees are Democrats, it’s clear that Donald Trump’s biggest obstacle in a second term will likely be the employees who nominally work for him.

Imagine being hired by a struggling company to turn things around. Imagine that the entirety of your life’s work will be judged based on your success or lack thereof in that endeavor.

Now, imagine that most of your employees want you to fail. Imagine further that those employees are comfortable believing that they can either ignore your directives outright or work proactively to sabotage their implementation – and get away with it.

That describes fairly accurately the state of play as Donald Trump prepares to assume office next week.

The Deep State is called that for a reason. Federal employees believe – with good reason – that administrations come and go but the bureaucracy is forever. They won’t give an inch without a fight. They’ll have the media, federal employee unions and half of Congress on their side.

This all raises two important considerations. First, federal employees who ignore lawful presidential orders based on their own political beliefs aren’t engaged in “resistance.” Use of the word, “resistance” calls to mind principled efforts to thwart tyranny, such as that of the French Resistance in World War II.

This isn’t that. What the respondents to the RMG poll are contemplating is insubordination. Insubordination is a firing offense in the private sector. It’s a court martial offense in the military of any nation.

Second, when you stop and think about it, this isn’t really about Donald Trump. It’s about the contempt in which you and I are held by those who are nominally employed to serve us.

It’s about public employees arrogating to themselves the right and power to ignore the expressed will of the people who pay their salaries. It’s about public employees substituting their judgment in place of ours as to how the country should be managed and governed.

It is utterly antithetical to the foundational principles of a free and democratic republic.

Donald Trump knows all this just as he also knows that growing public frustration with it is a big reason that he has twice won the presidency.

So, as you celebrate Trump’s return to office be both realistic and aware. The Deep State will not be brought to heel easily.

It’s going to get ugly.

Will Californians at last ask themselves the hard question?

Coastal California is one of the nicest places on Earth. It has a 1,000-mile coastline, magnificent natural geography and a Mediterranean climate, all set against the vista of the beautiful Pacific Ocean.

But no place is perfect, and nothing is free and the price attendant to enjoying the picturesque natural landscape, and the year-round moderate climate of Coastal California, is to live with the risk of natural disasters, one of which is wildfires – such as those now devastating Los Angeles.

If you choose to live in an area prone to natural disaster, you have an affirmative duty to fully acknowledge that risk, which includes holding your government to account for being properly prepared.

The residents, homeowners and business owners of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Altadena and other Greater Los Angeles communities are finding out the hard way that their government is woefully unprepared.

As the tragedy of the Los Angeles wildfires unfolds, it is becoming clear in an acutely painful way that government in California – at both the state and local levels – is breathtakingly incompetent.

Protecting the lives and property of citizens is the first job of government. It is why governments were ever formed in the first place. If the job of protecting lives and property isn’t done, nothing else that government does matters.

Yet even though an astonishing percentage of California citizens have seemed blissfully unaware of it – up until now at least – government in California hasn’t operated in their interest in quite some time.

Government in California has greatly curtailed – sometimes to the point of outright abandonment – the performance of its core functions in favor of far-left initiatives that include DEI-dominated hiring practices, extreme environmental policy, race-fixated law enforcement and a near theological (fetishistic?) belief in man-made climate change. Taken together, radical leftism has crowded out governmental attendance to the day-to-day interests of the California citizens that government is nominally there to serve.

You and I take for granted that water will come out of the fire hydrant at the end of our block. We simply assume that our local government would take steps to mitigate an obvious extreme fire risk.

The citizens of LA have learned the hard way that they can’t make such assumptions.

From allowing environmental extremism to stand in the way of clearing dry, fire-prone underbrush (as happens in other places with similar geography), to allowing concern for an obscure fish species to stand in the way of providing adequate water supplies, to prioritizing race-based hiring in the fire department, to cutting fire department budgets, leaving them undermanned and underequipped so as to fund the costs of homelessness (driven in large measure by illegal immigration), California – a one-party Democratic state – has abjectly failed in its basic duty to protect its citizens.

Tens of thousands of Angelenos have lost literally everything. It seems cruel to ask this question now.

But it will have to be asked sometime.

As they begin the long, hard slog of rebuilding their lives, will these beleaguered, over-taxed citizens at last reexamine how they vote?

What this conservative believes.

You have to be careful with generalizations yet some things can be generally true. Here’s an example.

I believe that those on the political left are, broadly speaking, right brain dominant while those on the political right are, again broadly speaking, left brain dominant. As many of us have been taught, the right brain is associated with creativity, intuition, feelings and emotion while the left brain is associated with logic, language and analytical thinking.

I bring this up in connection with a piece I wrote in this space in May 2013 in which, responding to a liberal caller to the Sean Hannity Show, I attempted to set forth dispassionately, logically and as articulately as I could muster, why I am a conservative.

Here it is.

I believe in the genius of the Constitution of the United States and the express limitations that it imposes upon government. I believe that the men who crafted it, imperfect as they were, were men of exceptional vision.

I believe in the sanctity of private property, including the right to retain the lion’s share of what one lawfully earns. I believe in the right to dispose of that property as one sees fit, even from beyond the grave.

I believe in the sovereignty of the individual. Therefore, I believe in personal responsibility. I believe in the duty of self-help and in the freedom that flows from self-reliance.

I believe that people can be trusted with their own lives. I believe in the positive forces attendant to free individuals ordering their affairs and expending their energies without interference and in such a way as they themselves determine to be best.

I believe in the duty of charity toward those, who through no fault of their own, cannot adequately provide for themselves or mitigate their own suffering. I believe that a good and decent society looks after those who cannot look after themselves.

I believe in the dignity of labor and in the soul-robbing ignominy of idleness.

I believe in failure. I believe that the lessons learned in failure contribute indispensably to eventual success. I believe that the freedom to fail is inseparable from the freedom to succeed.

I believe in thrift – particularly as it pertains to the use of money taken by taxation.

I believe in the sanctity of human life and the profound responsibility that falls upon those who bring a new child into the world. I believe in mothers and fathers. I believe in the duty incumbent upon them to sacrifice of themselves, to the best of their ability, toward the goal of turning the child they created into a self-sufficient adult.

I believe in enterprise and in the creative forces for good that enterprise unleashes. Toward its advancement, I believe in fair, predictable regulation that is only so limiting as is necessary to impartially protect the interests of businesses, citizens, taxpayers and consumers.

I believe that humankind will always live in a world beset by strife, tragedy, illness, suffering, poverty, mayhem and malfeasance. I believe that while attempts to mitigate such dark forces are appropriate wherever they may be effectively applied, sweeping, ill-considered efforts born of hubris to eradicate such forces altogether will always fail.

I believe in risk. I believe that to avoid risk too vigorously is to foreclose the possibility of living life to its fullest.

I believe in the power of dispersed knowledge. I believe that innovation and the solutions to problems are much more likely to come from the bottom up than the top down.

I believe in economic freedom. I believe that for all the admitted faults of free-market capitalism, it has nevertheless done more to lift humankind out of poverty than any other economic system ever devised.

I believe that government is at once necessary and dangerous. I believe that governments are constituted of humans and that humans can never be trusted not to abuse power over other humans. Thus, I believe in the smallest government possible consistent with defending the peace and enabling the free conduct of commerce.

Most of all, I believe that this is the day the Lord has made, and that so far as our human limitations will allow, we should rejoice, and be glad in it.

Keep Christmas well.

Consequential.

Donald Trump is, again, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

Let’s leave it aside that Time Magazine is a shadow of its former self. It still exists and, as it has for decades, every year its editors pick a Person of the Year.

In 2024, who else could it be?

Who thought that the man who lost the 2020 election, upon whom was heaped the totality of blame for the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, who was criminally indicted in New York City, Washington D.C., Florida and Georgia on a total of nearly 100 alleged felonies (all of which, constituted a complete crock), was actually convicted in New York and faced being sentenced to prison, and was found liable for more than a half billion dollars in civil damages in New York (also a total crock); who thought that such a man could go on to decisively win a second, non-consecutive term as President of the United States?

No Hollywood studio executive would ever buy the screenplay.

Yet that’s exactly what happened and, unlike eight years ago, the country seems pretty excited about it.

Sure, the Dems are licking their wounds. But they’re not out this time wearing genitalia-themed hats. They’re not going on about “Russia collusion.” The Washington Post isn’t running articles talking about impeaching Donald Trump even before he takes office.

And even as the Democrats sulk, ordinary working folks and small business owners – many of whom just voted Republican for the first time in their lives – are positively giddy.

The pundits say it was the economy that helped Trump. No doubt. But I think it goes beyond food, fuel and rent.

I think that Americans have had it with the Left’s embrace of Big Government, Big Banking, Big Tech, Big Media, Big Business, Big Ag, Big Pharma and Big Entertainment – along with the elitists that run them.

Who thinks the country is better off for having surrendered America’s economic sovereignty to globalist organizations like the World Trade Organization?

Who thinks that granting Most Favored Nation status to China, thereby gutting American manufacturing while handing over the peace dividend from having won the Cold War to our greatest strategic and economic adversary, was a good idea?

By this point in America’s history the country should be substantially debt free, racial tension should be a fading memory, our kids should be the best educated on Earth, our military should command fear and respect in every corner of the globe, chronic disease should be on the downswing, life expectancy should be on the upswing and our justice system should be the standard by which all countries in the world are judged.

A growing appreciation for the fact that none of these things is currently true, together with a growing appreciation for the idea that Donald Trump has a unique set of skills to perhaps make them true – and to in so doing become one of the country’s most consequential presidents — is what really has the country pumped.

That’s why Donald Trump handily won the election. And it’s why he’s Time’s Person of the Year for the second time.

What do these guys know that we’ll probably never know?

The only presidential pardon that bears even a passing resemblance to Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon of his son, Hunter, is President Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon in September 1974, a month after Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace.

Ford pardoned Nixon for “all offenses against the United States” that he “committed or may have committed” from January 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974 – the precise term of Nixon’s presidency.

That pardon was considered by many at the time to be excessive. In the annals of presidential pardons, it was without precedent.

But there was logic to it.

The stated goal was to bring an end to the contentiousness that had come to define the Nixon presidency. Gerald Ford was correct in his belief that prosecuting Nixon would have distracted from the business of reestablishing a functioning administration following the chaos that had hobbled the administration of a Watergate-plagued Nixon. Ford was correct in believing that the country would have suffered all the pain and angst attendant to prosecuting a former president without gaining the benefit of a timely and conclusive disposition of the controversies that drove Nixon from office.

Better then to move on with the nation’s pressing business. It was a sweeping pardon. But objections at the time notwithstanding, there was good reason behind it.

But by comparison, Hunter Biden’s pardon redefines sweeping. A better word is breathtaking. The pardon covers eleven years and any federal crime all the way up to mass murder.

Perhaps we should give Joe Biden some credit. As diminished as he obviously is, there’s logic to this pardon, too. Hunter stands convicted of only two crimes, but he stands pardoned for anything and everything.

One result is that it lets loose one’s imagination.

We know about $20 million worth of payments from mostly malfeasant foreign governments that wound up in various bank accounts controlled by the Biden family. We know that little, if any, federal income tax was ever paid on that money. We don’t know what that money bought but we can easily believe that those paying it believed they were getting value received for value given.

But what do we not know? Just how deep is the corruption? One can only imagine.

And thus, the logic. The logic is that unlike Nixon, whose pardon period coincided with the time when he was in the White House being president, Hunter Biden’s pardon period coincides with him galivanting around the world. One can imagine so much corruption and so much malfeasance and so much legal exposure that the only prudent thing to do is to take it off the table preemptively, multiple promises to the contrary be damned.

That leaves one seething in the realization that Biden and son, safe in their media-protected leftist Washington cocoon, correctly believed that they’d get away with it.

I remember the outrage surrounding Richard Nixon’s pardon by President Ford. But Nixon should rest in peace. His legacy just got a fresh coat of polish, thanks to Joe and Hunter Biden.

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