By Selwyn Duke
Here’s a point to ponder: Despite being 31-33 percent Republican, New Hampshire has no GOP congressman. What would a Republican congressional district look like were the state forced to create one?
Then, imagine Massachusetts had to forge a district for its gun owners, who comprise just 14.7 percent of the state’s population. Would it or the New Hampshire district look anything like this?
By Selwyn Duke
For decades, there would be much talk among politicians about United States budget deficits (and the national debt). Yet this faded sometime after 2010, at the latest, after which our debt achieved elephant-in-the-room status. It’s perhaps just too scary or inconvenient — when you want or are promising free stuff — to discuss. Regardless, what just happened is discussion-worthy. To wit:
U.S. public debt has reached 100 percent of GDP for just the second time (first was during the Covid pandemic) since the WWII-era. We’re now in league with debtor nations such as Greece, Italy, France, and Canada.
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My time working with kids, decades ago, left me with some interesting stories. One of them involved a boy of about 10 — I’ll call him Joe (not his real name) — who’d been diagnosed with “ADHD.” His mother told me a mental-health professional gave them a book for him to read on children thus diagnosed. She ended up taking it away from Joe, however. Why?
He began, she explained, copying the bad behavior of the archetypal ADHD child in the book.
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By Selwyn Duke
In the 19th century, European immigrants might write home a letter including something such as the following. “Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I can eat meat every day!” Such a lifestyle was unheard of in the Old World. And now there may be the 21st-century version of this incredulity. It goes something like this:
“Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I see meat advertisements every day!”
This isn’t so far-fetched now that Amsterdam, Holland, has just banned the advertising of all meat products. This comes on the heels, too, of another story about the “War on Meat.” In that case, cited were two “bioethics” professors who suggested spreading ticks whose bite can cause a severe meat allergy. (Yes, really.) Insofar as drug capital Amsterdam goes, however, meat is not the only target. As The Independent reported Monday:
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By Selwyn Duke
The Muslim Brotherhood once outlined a plan that “involved softening America through cultural influence, political infiltration, and demographic expansion,” as one ex-Muslim observer related it. And now critics have an Exhibit A in the cultural-influence department.
To celebrate the Islamic holiday Eid, there’ll be an event originally billed as “Muslims Only” at a taxpayer-funded Texas waterpark.
After a backlash, the organizer changed the messaging to, “modest dress only” and added “all are welcome” to celebrate Eid. But here’s the kicker:
However the event is framed, it appears legal.
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By Selwyn Duke
If your three children all got sick the day after a new kid came over to play, you’d have a decent clue about who the vector of disease was. This comes to mind with the reintroduction in California of an ancient killer: tuberculosis (TB).
The world’s deadliest infectious disease, TB caused an estimated 1.23 million deaths worldwide in 2024. In fact, approximately 10.7 million people were sickened by it that year. And the disease ranks among the top 10 overall causes of global mortality.
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By Selwyn Duke
It raised eyebrows when Michelle Obama said at a 2008 campaign rally, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” (And all it took was her husband becoming a probable presidential nominee.) But she’s not alone in lacking pride. In fact, a 2025 Gallup poll found that only 36 percent of Democrats are very proud to be American. (This doesn’t likely result from a spiritual quest to develop humility, either.)
Critics may point out that much of this hinges on who controls government. Surveyed Democrats do, after all, register lower pride numbers now that President Donald Trump is in office.
Yet this gets at a reality: When speaking of loving America, which “America” is at issue? Is it the republic of our Founding Fathers’ dreams — or of Karl Marx’s? Is it the one we once were heading toward or the one we’re now heading toward? Is it America or Amerika? Leftists very well may like the latter, in theory. (The experience of it would be quite different. See the Kronstadt sailors, et al.) But speaking of what these United States are meant to be, a commentator recently asked a question:
“Why Do Democrats Hate America?”
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Image created with Grok AI.
By Selwyn Duke
In 2018-2019, Democrats lifted a ban on head coverings in the House so that newly-sworn-in Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) could wear her hijab. Democrats have also generally defended the “right” to sport Muslim headwear in schools, workplaces, and in interactions with government. But Democrats in former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department (DOJ) apparently showed no such affinity for Catholic nuns’ head coverings.
In fact, it has emerged that senior DOJ prosecutors spoke of them with contempt. This was, too, all while salivating over the prospect of prosecuting some nuns who exercised their First Amendment rights.
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By Selwyn Duke
Since committing a “hate crime” brings more prison time, we could wonder:
Does committing a “love crime” reduce one’s sentence?
This may sound silly, a bit like countering feminism with “masculinism” or Islamophobia with “Islamophilia.” Yet it also may put in perspective how silly the accepted terms are.
Whatever the case, I’m old enough to remember when “hate crime,” per se, was not a thing. There’s a good case, too, for eliminating the category from the books. For not only does it allow for bias — that of the government in prosecution — but these laws appear otherwise counterproductive, too.
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By Selwyn Duke
“Equality tells us nothing about quality.” This is a simple truth — hiding in plain sight. Would we, after all, rather have equality in poverty or inequality in abundance? Would we prefer the equality of all being deathly ill or the inequality of varying levels of health? Would we choose equality in abject stupidity or the inequality of differing degrees of brilliance?
Brilliance isn’t required to know the answers, but, still, man so often kneecaps himself with equality efforts. Affirmative action — which metastasized into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) — seeks outcome equality at competence’s expense. And if a few more helicopters and planes crash, and more criminals escape miniature cops, well, eggs for omelets, ya know?
This all raises a question: Is a “bad take on equality,” as a commentator recently put it, destroying our country? But then there’s a more fundamental question:
Is the focus on equality itself, no matter how it’s conceived, tragically misguided?
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