Category: The Enemy Within
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By Selwyn Duke “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are,” the saying goes. Revealing who your heroes and hated foes are says a lot about you, too. This brings us to Americans who revile Thomas Jefferson (when their ancestors revered him). What can we say about them? Writing at…
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By Selwyn Duke Someone close to me had a great friend who lived through the Stalinist times in Ukraine. She said that when she was a little girl, her father made the whole family go to bed every evening fully clothed, coat, shoes, and all. One night she found out why. Secret police came to…
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By Selwyn Duke In 1811, Joseph de Maistre, a French philosopher who detested the French Revolution, famously said: “People get the government they deserve.” In light of recent events in France and elsewhere, however, something else comes to mind: Do people get the riots they deserve, too? Maybe—sometimes. Now, I’ll preface my remarks by saying…
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By Selwyn Duke It’s an amazing, though ignored, story: Murder in the United States is at its lowest level since perhaps 1900. As for the violent-crime rate in general, it fell 9.3 percent in 2025. This is the largest year-to-year decline since the FBI began estimating national trends in 1936. Something else at its lowest…
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By Selwyn Duke Napoleon Bonaparte once said that history is “a series of agreed-upon myths.” Yet that current events can be, too, brings us to a question. Can the Democrats win the midterms only if Americans subscribe to a certain myth? That is, the idea that President Donald Trump’s second term has been a failure.…
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By Selwyn Duke “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” So said George Washington during his Farewell Address on September 17, 1796. They’re powerful parting words, but also, today, controversial ones. They’re met now with protestations such as “Whose God?!” and “You can be moral without God!” Well,…
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By Selwyn Duke One candidate has chosen a pastor who isn’t sure Jesus Christ existed and believes He didn’t die for our sins. Another supposes that Scripture got it wrong on sexuality. A third expressed discomfort at public Christian displays and suggests they should be rooted out. And a fourth opposes a ban on youth…
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By Selwyn Duke So often today we use weasel words, terms that just aren’t, you might say, “up to the challenge.” We may state that something is “inappropriate,” “suboptimal,” “problematic,” “misguided,” or “inadvisable” — even if it’s downright wicked. But not so with Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. He’s urging Catholics…
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By Selwyn Duke An interesting thing happened years ago when undercover reporters, posing as an anti-firearms group, approached liberal journalist Bob Braun with a large sign stating, “THIS HOME IS PROUDLY GUN FREE.” They wanted to know: Would you support the cause and display it on your lawn? “I agree with you and I am…
