The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Are Your Heroes Worthy Enough?

Barry MacDonald

A person needs a method of organization to begin a day with purposeful energy. Have you ever stopped to take account of the quality of the ideas that motivate you? How much of what you do arises from the impetus of resentment or fear? Does cynicism wear away at your morale?

Doctors have a habit of measuring pain on a scale of one to ten. On such a scale where does your bitterness lie? Where on a scale of vengeance would you guess that your family or neighbors reside? Isn’t it odd that as material comforts and technological advantages go, Americans are exceptionally lucky people, yet we may not appreciate our good fortune?

The malign influence of Karl Marx, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Saul Alinsky persists. These men studied masses of humanity and seized on the proclivity of people to be cleverly herded under a spell of fear, envy, greed, and hatred. These dark intellectuals didn’t create human nature, but they infected society with techniques of manipulation that typify the nature of news, politics, and entertainment. Perhaps society will never be free from the taint of Marx, Machiavelli, and Alinsky.

Have you stopped to consider how much of your awareness is driven by allegiance to heroes? Our voluntary associations provide us with the numerical strength that we lack on our own. We need leaders who are compatible with us for knowledge and encouragement. We are hemmed about with unique difficulties that separate and isolate us. We carry solitary and burdensome worries that may be hard to articulate and communicate. Our leaders are examples of honesty, integrity, courage, wisdom, and endurance. We also learn these qualities from friends, loved ones, and worthy partnerships.

I don’t have to solve the world’s problems by myself. My heroes help me to see around corners to solutions that I could never have come to from an isolated perspective. I do a survey of my associates and identify those whom I trust and respect. My high-profile heroes are prominent characters of tremendous societal sway. They are decisive and demonstrate panache. They are brave and are sometimes victorious against the malefactors that surround them (and me also). My heroes have a store of invaluable knowledge. I will never stop learning from their stalwart arsenal of wisdom. Many of my heroes aren’t alive, but I can ponder layers within layers of their instruction. The willingness to be unpopular for a good cause is a noble quality.

Every person chooses their own heroes both consciously and unconsciously. History and literature are stuffed with heroic paragons. Whom have you chosen? Who are your heroes of sports, politics, history, philosophy? Which entertainers, actors, actresses, directors, and satirists do you enjoy? How often does politics come into play? How often do you laugh?

It is a conundrum that the direction of politics seemingly must devolve to Machiavellian and Marxist tricks. When one side resorts to the mass broadcast of big lies with the connivance of big media, how is the other to respond? Once the electorate has been brainwashed and polarized what is to be done? Escalation occurs in words and deeds, so that political rhetoric becomes relentless and ruthless. As in warfare, escalation leads to increased barbarism, so former standards of decency are lost. How are the cycles of accusation to be ended? Doesn’t it take a bully to defeat a bully?

So much of American political discourse has been reduced to a tribalism that is blind to subtlety and difficulty. Politics is a gossipy stew that summons prurient interest. It is hard not to take pleasure in an opponent’s misery, or to indulge a hunger for vengeance.

I can talk to almost everyone in a respectful manner about daily concerns. Only when topics of politics are broached must I tread with care. I recognize soon enough how much genuine communication is possible. I don’t waste words on people who are hypnotized.

It is a shame that feminism has demonized fatherhood. “A woman’s right to choose” is an effective catch phrase with formidable leverage on the issues of abortion. Men are villainized and ostracized. Relations between men and women are complicated in America. Too many Americans believe that husbands and fathers are not necessarily relevant to women. The bitter feminist espousal of “toxic masculinity” has given rise to the emergence “toxic femininity” that expresses hatred for half of humanity. If men do not assume their natural duties to be loving fathers to their children, how will they ever learn to grow up? Angry feminists want revenge for the proclaimed scourge of “patriarchy.” There is no end to their bitterness. Everyone suffers as a result, especially boys. Children, especially boys, need a responsible, admirable father figure in a household to learn by example.

A new term was invented in 2019 that describes the estrangement between men and women. The word “Heteropessimism” was coined by Asa Seresin. The word’s origin was academic, from the University of New England. Heteropessimism is believed to be the obstinate prejudice against the heterosexual experience by heterosexuals. It is a modern malady articulated by intellectuals.

Most of my heroes are not involved in politics. For my sanity I have to detach from the poisoned brew of partisan politics for portions of my day. I start my day with meditation books. My friends are examples of integrity and responsibility. They are good fathers and mothers. We are concerned with a multiplicity of details, daily, weekly, and monthly, that need to be addressed with infinite care. The energy that I put into good order and direction buoys me. My attention to mundane but necessary chores provides a healthy perspective on national politics that helps me to discern the true from the false. Truth has resonance while deceit feels slimy.

People have a duty to find sources of positive energy. Over millennia millions of wise and inspirational words have been written. We can choose to drink deeply of wisdom.     *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Joe Rogan Talks to Kash Patel, Director of the FBI

Editorial — Barry MacDonald

Alongside talk radio and Substack, an army of podcasters has risen to challenge and counter the preeminence of the mainstream media. Ordinary Americans who thirst for a more balanced and trustworthy presentation of events may turn to a multitude of informed and patriotic podcasters for daily commentary.

A most highly rated podcaster is Joe Rogan. In the Joe Rogan Experience, #2334 Episode, he interviewed Kash Patel, the current Director of the FBI. The following are bullet points taken from their conversation. A full video of their discussion is available on YouTube.

• Kash Patel cites U.S. government statistics. He says that in previous years 100,000 people were dying of drug overdoses a year — one every seven minutes. A child was being raped every six and a half minutes in America. There were two homicides an hour.
• The precursors for the production of fentanyl comes from the Communist Chinese Party. There are hundreds of companies “standing up” in mainland China that ship the precursors throughout the world. The Chinese claim that they don’t make fentanyl, but they manufacture the ingredients and move them to Mexico. Patel’s FBI has organized a massive enterprise to go after the fentanyl precursor companies in mainland China. The Chinese are shipping precursors to India and Canada as well as Mexico to have the drugs assembled. Because the Trump Administration closed the southern border, the ingredients are flown to Vancouver, manufactured there, and smuggled into America from the North.
• There aren’t deaths from fentanyl in China, India, England, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. Patel asserts that the Chinese view America as an adversary. The Chinese long-term game is to “kneecap” the U.S., to take out generations of young men and women who would grow up to be soldiers, police, or teachers. There is not much profit in the fentanyl business for the Chinese. Their goal is to kill Americans.
• The Trump Administration is taking an “all-of-government” approach to fentanyl. The FBI is working with the Secretary of the Treasury to apply sanctions to the production companies. The FBI is cooperating with Five Eyes partners, the English-speaking countries of Canada, America, England, New Zealand, and Australia. The U.S. shares intelligence with them. Patel reminds U.S. partners that “The CCP just hasn’t directed it at you yet.” Fentanyl isn’t being deployed in their countries, but it is being manufactured there. Patel wants those factories shut down. There has not been a reduction in the amount of fentanyl precursors that China makes, but the Trump administration is crushing fentanyl trafficking. China is adapting. They seek other ways into American besides the southern border. Patel promises that “we will not have kids dying of fentanyl overdoses in our streets. . . . Just give me a little bit more time.”
• In Patel’s own words: “They [the manufacturers] are so demonic in their ways. . . . Once they get the precursors from the CCP, they take their pill presses and they make fake oxycodone. . . . make tens of thousands of pills of fake oxycodone and we bust them for it. And in that fake pill is fentanyl. It’s laced with fentanyl that kills people. . . . Then the drug trafficking organizations make it appealing for the youth, shape this illicit narcotic in the form of candy and gummy bears. So you have kids in New York who just have a trace amount, touch it, and are also dying from it. . . . So, they have absolutely no rules or boundaries whatsoever when it comes to how they deploy fentanyl to get into our population. It could be through another drug. It could be through a synthetic. It could be through a fake drug . . . . Thousands of pounds of material that looks like candy. . . . It just looks appealing to kids, right? So inner-city youth, they put a pill down on the table, put a gummy bear down on the table. You know, a younger person’s going to be like, oh, that’s cool. Let me try that. I mean, I can tell you stories from now until the entire show. About high school kids on the verge of graduating. And they went out and took a pill that they thought was, you know, an upper. But it happened to be laced with fentanyl. They died. Their parents are calling. They’re destroyed. And people are like, well, we got to go after the drug traffickers. I’m like, we do, and we are. But my job is to educate the American public on the root cause of the fentanyl that is destroying our society.
• “I literally just got off the phone with the Indian government. I said, I need your help. This stuff’s coming into your country, and then they’re moving it from your country because India is not consuming fentanyl. They’re not. No one’s dying over there from fentanyl. But I need you and your help. So, my FBI is over there working with the heads of their government law enforcement authorities to say, we’re going to find these companies that buy it. And we’re going to shut them down. We’re going to sanction them. We’re going to arrest them where we can. We’re going to indict them in America if we can. We’re going to indict them in India if we can. Start indicting them in places like Canada and the UK and England and Australia. This is a global problem. And the reason it’s gotten so bad is because nobody did anything for four years. You know, people are like, how do they stand this up? Well, if you give the CCP [time], that has an endless amount of money to deploy in human capital, that’s what happens. It metastasizes.
• “Look, to me, I’m a National Security guy. And anything that kills 100,000 people a year is a National Security crisis, right? It’s what we call a tier one threat. And the last administration did not classify the drug trafficking enterprise as a prime threat against the American people. [the Biden Administration reoriented] the system of intelligence collection operations. . . . I’m not making this up. They said climate change is our biggest priority. DEI is our biggest priority. You guys have heard this, and you’ve had guests on that say it. But these are the ramifications in real life. I only have X amount of people that can target something, right? Same with the CIA, same with the DOD. But if the United States government and Uncle Sam and your commander in chief say, hey, I need your X amount of people looking here, I can’t clone that army to look back at fentanyl. Plus, we have to follow the chain of command.
• “So, I’ll give you a better example. So, I was in the end of the last Trump administration. I was Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense. One of the greatest jobs. At the time, I thought the greatest job I’d ever have. And when we left, we said [to the Biden Administration], hey, you know, Iran’s a huge threat. Never let up on the counterterrorism mission. We still have hostages out there we got to find and bring home. And the narcotics mission is a big priority. We handed off our playbook and we said, look, this is not a political issue. This is protecting the American people and our allies. So, we hope you guys continue this effort. So, the DOD has this thing called CONOPS, concept of operations. The Department of Defense has three million employees. And a CONOP is how you move the machine of the Department of Defense. Hey, we have a threat in [some part of the world]. How many carrier groups are we sending down there? We got a threat with government X. What are we doing operationally, kinetically? What are we doing for intelligence collection? That’s a CONOP. The first concept of operation that the Biden administration launched at the Department of Defense was on climate change.”
• [Rogan asks]: “What do you think that’s all about? As an outsider. . . I just don’t understand. Where’s the profit in this? . . . . What’s the motive? What would incentivize all these people to get on board with it without someone logically stepping in and saying, hey, this is not our top priority?”
• “So that was something I tried to answer when I was out of government for the last four years before I took this job. And the answer lay in the first Trump term. We were doing things so effectively on national security that hadn’t been done before. In such speed and volume that the media hated us for it because the other party had tried to do it and failed. So, when it comes to, okay, hostages, I could talk about that forever too. It used to be counterterrorism was a big portfolio. I ran it for the White House and National Security Council in the first Trump administration. . . . People don’t know this, President Trump in his first term brought home and rescued over 50 hostages and detainees from around the world. That’s more than every president before him combined.
• “Did you hear about the successes of reuniting families with lost loved ones from Africa and the Middle East, or these operations that the president was courageous enough to greenlight to go into places like Afghanistan, and do these hostage rescue ops and use SEAL Team 6 and Delta, or take out guys like Baghdadi and Soleimani? President Trump’s directive was simple. We are going to protect the homeland. We’re not going to endanger the lives of our armed forces and our intelligence community. But their job is to protect the homeland. And he said go. And we went. And I think there was such a resounding success that the media had such a hatred for President Trump and his administration. They just said, one, we’re not going to give you the credit, two, we’re going to put out a ton of disinformation, which we can get into. And three, [the Biden Administration] just said, and this is my opinion, we’re not going to do any of the stuff that worked because then we’ll have to attribute it to Trump’s policies. So, we’re going to go off on our end. And I keep asking people to prove me wrong.
• . . . . You had the Secretary of Defense in the Biden administration . . . go to a hospital, MIA, literally AWOL, and didn’t tell the commander in chief, and broke the National Command Authority. . . . And I was a guy responsible for the nuclear football for a part of my time at the White House. . . . There is an unbroken chain of command between President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Command Authority at all times because shit happens. And what if it had happened in that one or two weeks the guy was in the hospital, and maybe something did, and we don’t even know. Right. But no one, including the president, didn’t know the Secretary of Defense was in the hospital. I can’t tell you how big of a cataclysmic failure for the national security mission that is. And what I tell people when they’re like, that’s all right, it’s not that big of a deal. What if Hegseth [Secretary of DOD] took a week out and said, I’m going to the hospital, I’m not telling anyone. What do you think the media would do to that guy and Trump if that were to happen now? There’s a plan in place. Deputy Secretary of Defense comes in. You know, every time a senior goes out, there is a continuity of government plan in place. Oh, you’re out for a weekend treatment. No problem.”

******

Alert Americans who paid attention to the mismanagement of the country surely suspected that the Biden Administration’s priorities were badly misplaced. To care more about climate change and DEI than the 100,000 Americans dying each year of fentanyl is a monstrous indictment. The spiteful hatred on the part of the Biden Administration and the media not to give the Trump Administration due credit for his national security accomplishments is another catastrophic moral failing. That Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, would go AWOL for two weeks is a black mark of fecklessness. The Democratic Party has sunk to a low, disreputable form of politics. It is difficult to see how they may regain their integrity with their present leaders.      *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

A Chasm of Division in America

Barry MacDonald — Editorial

One may think of other times in history when America was bitterly fractured over differences of politics and culture.

The division caused by the Vietnam War, along with the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., with the civil rights movement and race riots, and with the Manson murders is an equivalent to the trouble in America now. Family members were bitterly estranged over opinions that could not be reconciled. There was great doubt about the worthiness and goodness of America. American leaders had lied to the public about important issues. The Vietnam War started through dubious means and progressed with deficient strategy and poor leadership. Over time stalemate disintegrated America’s trust in its presidents and generals. The measurement of success through the relatively high numbers of enemy dead compared with American dead came to be seen as cynical, senseless, barbaric, and unworthy. Poor whites and minorities were drafted without access to the deferment that more affluent Americans enjoyed. The poor were unwillingly sent to a war they believed to be unjust and unworthy of the sacrifice of their lives.

The mystery that surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a wound that never healed. Americans began to mistrust and hate their government. The secrecy of the bureaucracy was noticed, loathed, and despised.

Marxist agitators infiltrated university campuses in groups like the Weathermen Underground that carried out terrorist bombings throughout America. Patty Hearst, granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Nineteen months after her abduction she became a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was arrested for bank robbery. She had been brainwashed by Leftist ideology.

The Watergate impeachment saga, the forced resignation of President Nixon, President Ford’s pardon of Nixon, the abandonment of South Vietnam, and the victory of Communist North Vietnam were flashpoints in a dark era of American history. The prestigious media triumphed over the downfall of the Nixon administration. Nixon’s humiliation was a cultural turning point. As a teenager I remember the glee with which many of my generation celebrated.

Rock and roll, popular fiction, movies, entertainment, and intellectual commentary reflected and contributed to a marked shift to Left in American politics in the ’60s and’70s. It was hip to be young and distrustful of older generations, institutions, and American heritage. A gulf separated those who knew the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War from those who protested the Vietnam war. For most of us during those times it was better to be guarded among casual acquaintance lest conversation devolve into viciousness.

Americans of that era had become deaf to opposing opinions, and blind to the good-hearted intentions of others whose experience had so profoundly and differently affected them. Scornful caricatures of standup comics were weapons in a cultural war. Patriotism was mocked. Societal trauma made us hate and demonize each other. How much division can a society bear? America’s leaders tested the limits of social cohesion during the Vietnam War.

The St. Croix Review was founded in 1968, amid the estrangement of the American Left and Right. The roots of The St. Croix Review are embedded in the soil of American goodness, decent civil liberties, respect for our neighbors and communities, economic liberty, a stout defense of American sovereignty, lawful order, personal self-reliance and individual initiative, the bedrock of motherhood, fatherhood, and family, honest and transparent government, and, most of all, the importance of personal integrity.

Let’s take stock of the malign influence that Leftwing ideology has imposed on American society since the Vietnam era.

On a podcast Megan Kelly revealed the contents of the writings of Audrey Hale, the 2023 Covenant School shooter. Hale murdered three nine-year-old students and three adults at the Covenant School. In her journals (that were kept from the public by the Nashville police for two years) Hale repeatedly confessed hatred for white Americans. Hale was obsessed with transgenderism. She wrote “Female pronouns make me like I want to die.” She considered herself and other murderers as “gods.” She thought of Tim McVeigh, Jim Jones, Jeffery Dahmer, and Dylan Klebold (one of the two Columbine school shooters) as “gods.” Hale regarded herself to be the reincarnated soul of Dylan Klebold. She wrote of Klebold, “My thoughts of depression are forever linked to his and my experience as well.”

Clearly Hale was hypnotized by Leftist identity politics. Her profound disturbance was coincident with the introduction of gender indoctrination into the curriculum of America’s public schools. It is difficult to imagine that the toxic brew of hatred and confusion that skewed Hale’s consciousness would have arisen without the impetus of Woke ideology.

Let’s take stock of the tendency toward political violence encouraged by Leftist rhetoric. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a nonprofit organization that reports on the spread of “ideologically motivated threats, disinformation, and misinformation across social media and physical spaces.” They “identify and forecast emerging threats in the era of information disorder.” They track “how viral social media narratives were legitimizing political violence, particularly in the aftermath of the United Healthcare CEO’s assassination.” The authors of reports write, “The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users.”

The reports note Leftist influence in a proposed California ballot measure named “the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act,” that celebrates the alleged leftist murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The ballot measure targets health insurance denials, one of Mangione’s reported motivations. Just days after the Luigi Mangione Act was filed in California a California man who was “angry with pharmacies” was arrested for the murder of a Walgreens employee. The victim, Erick Velazquez, was not a pharmacist but was a respected husband and father of two children.

M.D. Kittle writes for The Federalist. He reports that 55 percent of “self-identified leftists” say that killing President Trump is justifiable. Kittle cites a NCRI report:

“The unhinged left, fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome and seething hatred for Elon Musk, is trending more violent, according to a new study that finds political violence targeting President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser is ‘becoming increasingly normalized.’ . . .

“The report, produced by the Network of Contagion Research Institute in partnership with Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab, finds a broader ‘assassination culture’ appears to be ‘emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, with expanding targets now including figures such as Donald Trump.’

“Less than a year after assassination attempts on then-presidential candidate Trump and the literally explosive violence against Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles, it’s no secret that leftists are ratcheting up violent rhetoric and actions. The more troubling trend is that an ‘assassination culture’ isn’t just coming from the ‘fringe’ left.

“‘These attitudes are not fringe — they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse,’ states the report, titled, ‘Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence.’”

The political rhetoric of Democratic politicians has poisoned the American people. President’s Biden’s use of the appellation “extreme Maga Republicans” has had an impact. The constant harangue and equation from multiple elected Democrats toward both Republican politicians and Republican voters with slurs and smears of “Hitler,” “Nazis,” and “fascists” has soured, embittered, and hardened the hearts and minds of American leftists.

Clearly the tenor of the mass media’s barrage of leftist narrative in the delivery of the daily news has had a profoundly negative effect on American society. The corporate media has turned broadcast and printed news into a daily attack in the style of a Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals attack. Every issue is fodder for the seizure of Leftist power. A relevant modern proverb is: The issue is not the issue; the issue is power. The broadcast news and the major newspapers of the ’60s and ’70s were dignified and restrained in comparison with the sly bile and pollution practiced by our current “journalists.”

I am a poet and I associate with various groups of poets in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Of the dozens of poets whom I know, all but one is on the political Left. They are vocally extreme in their rhetoric. There is an ignorance embedded in their opinions that appears to be insuperable. A pinprick of a counterargument would come against the iron bull of decades of propaganda. When I am with them, I am able to communicate in a light-hearted mien, in the ethereal realm that skillful poets are able to exploit. There is much to discuss apart from politics. I am able to listen to their rage against President Trump and be unaffected. I see their upside-down version of reality. I notice a certain coherence and predictability about them. I feel a sadness in my association with them because they will never know the best of me. I have prominent duties among them. I realize I have constructed a house of cards. If I expressed political opinions I would probably be ostracized. I don’t talk about politics, but I am not hiding either. I will play the role that God assigns for me when I am among them. I could intelligently explain my take on any issue that is likely to emerge in conversation. I would not be heard. I don’t believe them to be intentionally cruel people. They are products of the Vietnam War, and of the layers and layers of leftist media narrative, and of a community of like-minded individuals. They are cogs in the leftist machine. They have many worthy qualities but appeals to liberty would find no reception with them. They have been trained to be intolerant, but they cannot recognize their intolerance.

We good-hearted Americans who are frightened by America’s and Western Europe’s descent toward leftist totalitarianism must do our best to reach those people who are able to hear our message. We must hold to our positions and be eloquent and persistent in the defense of our ideals.

It is ironic that the elitist Left accuses the Right of being fascist, when it is the Left that is most fascistic. To accuse the Right of the very wickedness that they do is a devilish trick. Accusation and demonization are effective tools.

If America is to recover, we must focus and direct our message skillfully. We must free our schools from the malignant influence of leftist propaganda. We must propagate alternative media platforms. We must humble the bureaucracy. And we must support the broad swath of the current Trump agenda.

Once people learn to think like Marxists, with a vicious victim mentality, they are formed in concrete.     *

Writers for Conservatives: 15 — Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Jigs Gardner

The late Jigs Gardner was an associate editor of The St. Croix Review. Jigs Gardner wrote from the Adirondacks. These early essays, some of which were written decades ago, are of timeless quality.

Recently I chanced to read a favorable review of a history book in which the author describes frontier realities as “myth-making,” and remarks that the standard “narrative” nowadays is that Indians were peace-loving folks persecuted by evil white settlers. This is only one small sample, of course, and I’m sure my readers know that denigration of the American past is conventional behavior among academics, not to speak of Hollywood and the media. These are the thoughts provoked by that notice.

Before I began this series, I wrote a short essay, “The Culture of Conservatives,” for the St. Croix Review, criticizing the way conservative magazines focused exclusively on politics, arguing that what was needed was a deeper appreciation of culture — the politics would follow. The obvious meaning is that, as the subsequent series tries to show, reading good literature deepens our consciousness by exposing us to other points of view. There is a broader meaning of culture which I want to invoke: The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns and beliefs (that’s why my essays have not been about contemporary writers; their culture is mean and negative). Writers do not announce their cultural attitudes; they are just there, largely unconscious, communicated by language, gestures, assumptions.

The cultural climate is far more important than we think, affecting all our thoughts and acts. The cultural elite has been contemptuous of America since the 1920s and in the last 40 years that attitude has spread to all levels of society, witness the book I noted at the beginning. We are living in a poisonous cultural atmosphere, and what is the answer of politics? The stupid extension of presidential campaigning has rendered politics even more incredibly shallow than usual. I would like to think that if we resolutely mocked and denounced every manifestation of anti-Americanism, we would soon improve our politics and politicians. Politics follows culture.

Reading the review of that contemptible history book made me remember a fine writer and patriot who wrote an excellent history of the frontier: Teddy Roosevelt. We do not think of him as a writer because his political career obscures everything else. He is one of our best prose stylists, second only to Thoreau, with a style that is muscular, sinewy, and direct. His sentences are always absolutely clear. He has none of Thoreau’s sly humor or subtle grace, but you are never in any doubt about his meaning.

The Winning of the West (1889-96) was originally planned to cover not only the trans-Appalachian West (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the old Northwest) but the entire southwest up to 1850, a project curtailed by the pressures of his political life. What we have are two volumes beginning in the 1760s, extending to the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. We have become so used to finely drawn, complex histories that we may lose sight of the basic outlines of the past. In fact, sophisticated moderns deny such outlines entirely, rejecting them as simpleminded. To maintain that pose, however, they have to ignore facts or explain them away. Roosevelt’s history doesn’t stint on detail, but his account of the conquering of the old West makes the basic outlines unmistakably clear.

Although there were many points of contention between Britain and the Colonies, the one thing that rendered conflict inevitable was the British intention to maintain the territory beyond the Alleghenies in a wild state where Indians could hunt and trap for the benefit of British traders and the Crown. The Proclamation Line of 1763 specifically barred settlement there — but men like Daniel Boone were already exploring the Kentucky wilderness. The tide of settlement was inexorable. Roosevelt manages his narrative by treating specific areas (the French of the Ohio Valley, 1763-1775) or events (Lord Dunmore’s War) in short chapters, painting a picture, stroke by stroke, detail by detail, of the vast wilderness gradually being transformed into a settled land by the efforts of hunters, explorers, surveyors, and frontier settlers, all of whom played their essential parts in the struggle before, during, and after the Revolution. He emphasizes two aspects (aside from their hardihood) of the frontiersmen: Their rugged individualism and their instinct for coming together to form self-governing communities.

Roosevelt was a man of the 19th century. He owned a cattle ranch in the wild country of North Dakota, and he knew, better than any of us can know, something of what frontier life could be like. He had no illusions about frontiersmen; he knew that they committed outrages against the Indians just as the Indians did against the whites, but:

“Unless we are willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghenies should remain an unpeopled waste, a hunting-ground of savages, war was inevitable.”

Only the frontiersmen were tough enough to do it, and in doing so, they laid the foundations of our national greatness. Let me quote some more from the book for the pleasure of my patriotic readers:

“It has often been said that we owe all our success to our surroundings; that any race with our opportunities could have done as well. . . . Undoubtedly our opportunities have been great; undoubtedly, we have often and lamentably failed in taking advantage of them. But what nation ever has done all that was possible with the chances offered it? . . . The truth is, that in starting a new nation in a new country, as we have done, while there are exceptional chances to be taken advantage of, there are also exceptional dangers and difficulties to be overcome. . . . Looked at absolutely, we must frankly acknowledge that we have fallen very far short indeed of the high ideal we should have reached. Looked at relatively, it must also be said that we have done better than any other nation or race working under our conditions.

“No other conquering and colonizing nation has ever treated the original savage owners of the soil with such generosity as the United States.

“Americans need to keep in mind the fact that as a nation they have erred far more often in not being willing enough to fight than in being too willing. . . . The educated classes, in particular, need to be perpetually reminded that, although it is an evil thing to brave a conflict needlessly, or to bully and bluster, it is an even worse thing to flinch from a fight for which there is legitimate provocation, or to live in supine, slothful, unprepared ease, helpless to avenge an injury.”

Roosevelt wrote four hunting books: Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885), Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (1888), The Wilderness Hunter (1895), and Hunting the Grizzly (1905). I like them all, but I think my favorite is Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail because it is a varied mixture of subjects. It was written as a series of articles, profusely illustrated by the great Western artist, Frederic Remington, for the Century magazine. The first chapters are about life on his ranch, which he relished. You can sense the attraction in this passage:

“The whole existence is patriarchal in character: It is the life of men who live in the open, who tend their herds on horseback, who go armed and ready to guard their lives by their own prowess, whose wants are very simple, and who call no man master.”

Note, however, that feeling does not cloud his judgment:

“In its present form stock-raising on the plains is doomed, and can hardly outlast the century. The great free ranches, with their barbarous, picturesque, and curiously fascinating surroundings, mark a primitive stage of existence as surely as do the great tracts of primeval forests, and like the latter must pass away before the onward march of our people; and we who have felt the charm of the life, and have exulted in its abounding vigor and its bold, restless freedom, will not only regret its passing for our own sakes, but must also feel real sorrow that those who come after us are not to see, as we have seen, what is perhaps the pleasantest, healthiest, and most exciting phase of American existence.”

There is a realism and a sensitivity about that paragraph that is characteristic. The first sentence is stark, flat, uncompromising, all that needs to be said from a factual point of view. The rest of the paragraph, the long second sentence with its accumulative force, makes us understand the intellectual and emotional significance of the first sentence, coloring the picture with richly evocative adjectives.

The hunting chapters (and the hunting books in general) are based on Roosevelt’s experience, vividly described, but they also contain lively descriptions of flora and fauna; he was a many-sided man with an eye for beauty and much else besides:

“Even in the waste places the cactuses are blooming; and one kind in particular, a dwarfish, globular plant, with its mass of splendid crimson flowers glows against the sides of the gray buttes like a splash of flame.”

Reading him is like being in the company of a fascinating man of great character and intellect who speaks clearly and gracefully of his experiences. He wrote more than I have mentioned, but those are the titles I recommend. Try libraries and second-hand stores, although occasionally a small press will do a reprint. My 1995 copy of Ranch Life and The Hunting Trail was done by Gramercy Books (a Random House imprint) and contains this note:

“[This book] reflects the culture and attitudes of late 19th century America, which are not necessarily those of the publisher of this Gramercy edition.”

Such are the lengths to which the craven will go to satisfy political correctness.

“Vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing.” —Bernard Baruch.     *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Elon Musk Is a Liberator

Editorial — Barry MacDonald

Who could have predicted two years ago that Elon Musk would buy Twitter? Musk is a hero who restored free speech to a decisive and global forum. Musk bought Twitter and freed America and the world.

To have the preeminent tech-genius of the century on our side is a game changer.

Who could have foreseen that Elon Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, would value liberty so much that he would defy the political orthodoxy of the progressive movement?

Marxist revolutionaries have strangled Western political and cultural commentary during the last four years. When Musk bought, renamed, and repurposed Twitter (now X), he turned the tide against woke malignancy.

Musk invited the authors and researchers Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger to investigate the previous executive operation of Twitter. Taibbi and Shellenberger exposed — in the “Twitter Files” — the fact that President Biden’s federal agencies and a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) exerted great pressure on Twitter to censor the expression of any opinion, and to stifle any discussion, even factually correct information, that countered and undermined the agenda of the Democratic Party.

For the entire length of the Biden Administration, totalitarianism blossomed in America and in Western Europe. NGOs and malevolent bureaucrats in Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department exerted a malign leverage to silence critics.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, valid questions were smothered about the lockdowns of businesses, about the origin of the virus, about the closures of public schools, about the efficacy of mRNA vaccines compared with alternative medicines, about the harm done to American liberty by vaccine mandates, about the effectiveness of masks to prevent infection, and about the “safe” distance we were required to stand apart from each other. Politicians divided businesses into categories of essential and nonessential. Politicians impoverished those that couldn’t afford the bribe money in the form of campaign donations. Giant pharmaceutical companies profited enormously from vaccine mandates. Large and connected corporations prospered while the middle class suffered. Public-school students stayed home and didn’t learn at the behest of national teachers’ unions.

The prominent, stubborn, and courageous dissenters from progressive orthodoxy who challenged progressive narratives were either shadow-banned or censored on social media. Because they lacked mainstream forums to broadcast their facts and opinions, dissenters and critics were silenced, slandered, demonized, isolated, demoralized, and “canceled” — many lost their jobs.

What do Elon Musk, and Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger (authors of the “Twitter Files”) have in common? They all consistently voted for Democrats before the 2024 elections. Each has abandoned the anti-American, accusatory, hate filled, intolerant, totalitarian impulse of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. Tech wizards Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Mark Zuckerberg (better late than never) have also abandoned and spoken against the malice of the Left.

People who cherish liberty must trust in the eventual victory of justice and decency. Help arrives from unexpected sources.

Who could have predicted two years ago that the liberators of America would come from the ranks of disillusioned, elite entrepreneurs and intellectuals of leftist persuasion?

Elon Musk and a cadre of young, tech-savvy computer engineers, in the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are a lance that pierces the secretive and insular blob of federal bureaucracy. These 20-year-old geniuses whom Musk recruited use a spear of algorithms and AI to trace streams of federal revenue that previously were hidden from public scrutiny.

Musk revealed that $59 million was spent by FEMA within one week to house illegal aliens at high-end hotels in New York City — in defiance of the Trump Administration. At the same time, impoverished American citizens continue to suffer the aftereffects of hurricane Helene in North Carolina. The misspent $59 million is a data point that adds to a mountain of evidence that progressives put the welfare of illegal aliens above devastated American citizens.

One egregious example of woke ideology run amuck is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This agency for decades has functioned as a slush fund for all sorts of wasteful and mendacious activity. The following is a partial list of what DOGE has exposed so far:

• $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid “binary-gendered language.”
• $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq.
• $4.5+ million to “combat disinformation” in Kazakhstan.
• $1.5 million for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities.”
• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBTQ activism” in Guatemala.
• $6 million to “transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles.”
• $2.1 million to help the BBC “value the diversity of Libyan society.”
• $10 million worth of USAID-funded meals, which went to an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group.
• $6 million for tourism in Egypt.
• $2.5 million to promote “inclusion” in Vietnam.
• $40 million was directed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• $20 million for a group related to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax.
• $1.1 million to an Armenian “LGBTQ group.”
• $1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, D.C., build “a state-of-the-art 440-seat auditorium.”
• $1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers.
• $1.5 million to promote “LGBTQ advocacy” in Jamaica.
• $1.5 million to “rebuild” the Cuban media ecosystem.
• $2 million to promote “LGBTQ equality through entrepreneurship” in Latin America.
• $500K to solve sectarian violence in Israel (just ten days before the Hamas October 7 attack).
• $2.3 million for “artisanal and small-scale gold mining” in the Amazon.
• $3.9 million for “LGBTQ causes” in the western Balkans.
• $5.5 million for LGBTQ activism in Uganda.
• $6 million for advancing LGBTQ issues in “priority countries around the world.”
• $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa.
• $8.3 million for “USAID Education: Equity and Inclusion.”
• USAID’s “climate strategy” outlined a $150 billion “whole-of-agency” approach to build an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

• $25 million for Deloitte (a “multinational professional services network”) to promote “green transportation” in the country of Georgia.

The money spent by the USAID is filtered through a network of hundreds of shady non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — inside America and globally. The NGOs have vague names. One such NGO is the “Civil Society Engagement Program” in the nation of Georgia. The names are purposely cryptic so that the purpose of the group remains obscure to critics. It appears that the mission of USAID, and of the NGOs it employs, is to convert both American institutions and foreign governance to progressive “woke” ideology. USAID is very much an American, imperial, left-wing enterprise.

USAID is an epitome of how the federal bureaucracy works. For decades, USAID has successfully repelled Congressional oversight. Recently, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa has spoken of how the staff of USAID has simply refused to provide her with information about the ageney’s operation. The bureaucrats, and the Democrats who support them, have considered themselves above and beyond Congressional accountability.

Recent essays in the media report that USAID and NGO activity, with clandestine CIA participation, have meddled, destabilized, and even toppled several foreign governments — in Ukraine, Georgia, and Romania. Also, there are questions raised about USAID involvement in the funding and organization of anti-Semitic protests on university campuses last year, in the two impeachments of President Trump, and in the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots of the summer, 2020. USAID has hundreds of media companies on the payroll internationally and domestically. Captured media reliably push a global, woke agenda. The revolutionary activity of USAID overseas, which raises mobs of protestors on the streets, mirrors the massive protests that have disturbed American cities and campuses recently. Who funded and organized the anti-Israeli violence in America last year, and during the summer riots of 2020 after the George Floyd incident?

The velocity of change in the first three weeks of the Trump administration is overwhelming. So much has been revealed so quickly that comprehension is difficult. We are in the process of discerning truth from fiction.

What we have now are suspicions about the depth and character of the left-wing perfidy of USAID. It will take a long time to discover the factual details of the damage and dubious legality that USAID committed. We may never uncover all the evil deeds.

Every day, new facts emerge from the work of Musk and DOGE. Blizzards of arcane and outrageous stories are brought to light daily to boggle, astound, and outrage Americans. The Democrats have turned the federal bureaucracy into an enormous engine of propaganda, oppression, and grift. DOGE has yet to target the Department of Education and the Department of Defense. Who knows what mountains of negligence, corruption, and waste will be found? Time and patience will be necessary for the American people to absorb the magnitude of corruption involved.

The public esteem of the mainstream media is at a nadir. According to Gallup, 36 percent of U.S. adults “have no trust at all in the media,” and 33 percent have “not very much” confidence. A recent CBS poll measured President Trump’s approval: Sixty-nine percent of Americans see him as “tough,” 63 percent see him as “energetic,” 60 percent as “focused,” and 58 percent as “effective.”

The media shield of Democratic deceit has dissolved. For the first time in generations, the corruption of the Democrat Party stands exposed to a vast swath of the electorate. Good-hearted Americans should be grateful!

The American people are alert and attentive. They recognize that they have been swindled for four years. From the first days of his administration, Joe Biden was unfit to be president. The Democratic Party and corporate media lied and boldly insisted that he was capable.

President Trump defeated the Democratic Party, the progressive movement, and the corporate media. Elon Musk lent Trump a mighty hand. Brighter days are ahead!

Consider the arc of civil rights in America. Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, the area where blacks were forced to sit during the Jim Crow era. The composure and self-sacrifice of Parks has been overlaid with the entitled arrogance of Maxine Waters. Waters, a long-time bitter partisan, led a mob of furious Congresspeople to the doors of the Department of Education. These lawmakers represent the pro-censorship and oppression of the Democratic Party. They wanted to interrupt a DOGE audit of the Department of Education. A brave and determined security guard impeded the mob. The mob was stopped.

Note: An excellent introduction to the Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole of USAID, State Department, CIA, and Department of Defense operations are two of Joe Rogan’s podcasts with Mike Benz. To listen to Benz is to be initiated into a cloak-and-dagger reality that surpasses spy fiction.   *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

The Rise of the Counter Elite

Barry MacDonald

Bari Weiss recently had a remarkable conversation with Marc Andreessen on an episode of her podcast, Honestly.

Weiss is a journalist who wrote for the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She left The New York Times in July 2020, when she was repelled by the radical takeover of the news and editorials. She founded the media company The Free Press, and she hosts the podcast Honestly.

Marc Andreessen is a software engineer, entrepreneur, billionaire, venture capital investor, and political activist. He voted for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden (in 2020), and for Donald Trump in 2024. He sits on the board of Meta (formerly Facebook) and is involved with other tech companies.

Marc Andreessen’s views can be summarized as follows:

• Andreessen was in the meeting when the Facebook board decided on the definition of hate speech. They determined that hate speech is that which makes people “uncomfortable.” Andreessen compares the power to censor speech to the use of the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy: The use of the One Ring inevitably corrupts and turns to evil. Facebook’s definition inevitably leads to the establishment of commissars who rule over speech for the benefit of an autocratic elite.
• Andreessen cites James Burnham. Burnham was a Trotskyite who became a Cold War conservative writer and co-founded of The National Review with William F. Buckley. Burnham believed that government always takes the form of an oligarchy. Andreessen believes that America is not a democracy, but an oligarchy. The question is whether the American oligarchy is benevolent or repressive to the American people. Andreessen spoke about Burnham’s view of the “managerial class,” that explains much of the power of the federal bureaucracy today: A few people in advantageous positions may control many because they are able to come together and cooperate. Burnham also wrote about the “circulation” of the elite, which means that a “counter elite” rises from the ranks of the elite to contest for power. The counter elite is more inventive and productive than the elite. A resistance to the Biden/Harris campaign, and to the radical Democrats of Washington, D.C., arose composed of discontented Democrats who could no longer stomach the deranged agenda of the radicals.
• The Biden Administration expresses “seething contempt” for the tech industry. Andreessen and his business partner, Benjamin Horowitz, met with officials of the Biden Administration in Washington, D.C. They were told not to invest in startup AI tech companies. The Biden Administration would suppress a free market for AI. Only two or three companies would be allowed. The government would “cocoon” and control them. The Biden people would classify the mathematics underneath AI, just as the federal government classified entire sections of physics and atomic science during the Cold War. The Biden Administration wanted total control of AI. AI control of society would be 1,000 times worse than social media censorship. AI would control banks, health care, education, and the economy for the benefit of the elite. AI control would be like the Chinese totalitarian, social credit system. The meeting with the Biden crew horrified both Andreessen and Horowitz. They decided to endorse Trump for president.
• Donald Trump’s escape from an assassin’s bullet was the turning point of the 2024 election. The moment when Trump rose with a fist in the air to shout “fight, fight, fight” was iconic. Trump wore a blue suit, red tie, and a white shirt — the colors of the country. An American flag was in the background. Americans don’t see that kind of courage except on a battlefield in wartime. Afterward, the photo of a bloodied Trump went viral on the Internet. Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump after the attempted assassination. Musk’s endorsement was a cascading event that gave permission to others. Andreessen and Horowitz endorsed Trump after the shooting. Andreessen and Horowitz had met with Trump on the weekend prior to the shooting.
• The 2020 election of President Biden was a dark turn in American history. Questions linger. Did Biden compromise with radical progressives to get the nomination? Was he fully cognizant of the viciousness of his government? Has Biden been in charge all along? Or did the aggressive young White House staffers take advantage of Biden’s senility to seize control of policy? To what extent is Biden complicit?
• The Biden Administration is incredibly repressive. To them, capitalism is bad. Technology is bad. Their attitude is a radical departure from the progressive movements of the Clinton administration, from the first term of the Obama administration, and from the thought of moderate Democrats. They don’t even want economic growth. Before 2020, Democrats wanted America to succeed. The Biden team is anti-business, anti-growth, anti-technology, anti-liberty, anti-American.
• Andreessen is appalled by the “soft totalitarianism” of the Biden people. They weaponized social media and the Department of Justice to go after their enemies. Andreessen cites: 1) the destruction of the crypto currency industry; 2), the threats against startup AI companies; and 3) the proposed tax on unrealized income, that he believes would obliterate business formation and capital enterprise. Andreessen cites the systematic and punitive process of “de-banking” that emerged in the Biden years. Political opponents and disfavored individuals discovered that they were denied access to their bank accounts, and that no other banks would do business with them. Melania and Barron Trump were de-banked. Thirty CEOs of crypto companies were de-banked. The Biden people went after the families of their “enemies,” which is a move that is evil, totalitarian, and Stalinist. People were unable to obtain loans for homes or businesses. Car insurance and home insurance were denied to them. When the federal government acts through the agency of private companies to punish political opponents, federal laws are violated. Andreessen said that the Trump people are aware of the problem, and that he hopes to see prosecutions.
• Andreessen commented on John Stewart’s comedy. Stewart joked about the coincidence of the name of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the emergence of the COVID virus in close proximity. The official narrative was that COVID-19 came from a wet market in Wuhan, and not from the Wuhan lab. Stewart punctured the propaganda. Andreessen’s tech friends laughed about the monologue and on the spot, they decided not to censor the lab-leak theory. Stewart instigated a cultural shift in acceptable opinion and the tech barons responded.
• Andreessen has spent half of his time since the November 5 election in Palm Beach. He is in consultation with the future Trump Administration. In association with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, he will be an unpaid volunteer in the department of government efficiency (DOGE).

Conservatives have vigorous new allies in our battle against the radical, Orwellian, Marxists. They are Democrats who have been driven out of the moderate Democratic party. They include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Bari Weiss, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Joe Rogan, and others. They will disagree with us on certain issues.

Our new allies are refugees who fled totalitarianism, just as the Russians did when they fled the Soviet Union. Our new allies include reporters, scholars, and intellectuals such as Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger. Taibbi and Schellenberger were invited by Elon Musk to audit the operation of Twitter (presently named X) prior to Musk’s purchase of the social platform. In the “Twitter Files,” Taibbi and Schellenberger exposed the pervasive and unconstitutional suppression of free speech on social media by the government. The FBI, CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security pressured Facebook and Twitter to suppress valid counternarratives to Biden policy on school closures, the efficacy of masks and vaccines, the lab-leak theory, and more during the years of the COVID pandemic.

We should be grateful for our new allies. They have shifted the arena of civilized debate to the right — toward us and away from the radicals. They have helped to stigmatize the Marxist, Machiavellian, Saul Alinsky-inspired, sadistic Left.

On the other hand, we in the conservative movement must consider who we are and what we believe as conservatives. In this issue of The St. Croix Review, we will consider how we might better align conservative principles with the evolution of American society. Is the conservative movement up to the task of the ongoing defense of America? How should conservatives approach AI, social media, foreign policy and defense, the education system, trade, the state of our courts and the law, health care, bureaucracy, social services?

Did Trump win the election because Americans were just fed up with the obvious lies and incompetence of the woke Left? Did Americans just have enough of the brutal and intolerant censorship? Did the radicals go only a couple of steps too far? Doesn’t the Left retain 90 percent control of the cultural highpoints of American culture? Can the Left bide its time and return with renewed vigor and better strategy? Did the radical Left lose a battle, or the war?

How should we attempt to reform the rotten Ivy League colleges? Should we tax their endowments? Should we, and could we, cease government support for elite universities? Should we reconsider the issuance of student visas for foreigners who partly compose the anti-Semitic mobs on campus? Will a degree from Harvard suffer continuous loss of prestige due to the infection of woke ideology? Will student debt and profitless degrees dissuade potential students? How may we influence the graduation of indoctrinated students into elite positions inside bureaucracy, law firms, and Fortune 500 corporations? How do we heal the continued blight of education in America? Could we foster a competitive network of private schools to compete with public schools — enough to reap the benefits of competitive discipline?

Perhaps the most pivotal figure of this election cycle, besides Trump, was Elon Musk. Before the 2024 election, Musk was a Democrat. Musk provided permission for intellectuals and entrepreneurs to publicly abandon the radical Democratic party. Would Trump have won the election if Musk had not bought Twitter and revealed the Left’s machinery of censorship? It is doubtful.

Musk’s brilliance is invaluable. Will Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy manage through DOGE to minimize and humble the federal bureaucracy? Will they achieve more than the Reagan Administration? The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives during the Reagan years. The next two years of Republican control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency will be decisive: Will the entrenched cooperation between corporations, too-big-to-fail banks, and the federal government be weakened or ended?

The American people have much to be grateful for. The arena of debate is now recentered on shared ideals of honesty, decency, patriotism, prosperity, and liberty. Good-hearted Americans may sigh in relief. Patriotic, productive Americans may relax. We are free of tyranny for now.     *