Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension officers stand on the scene where Alex Pretti was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Self-reliance is not an abstraction. It is practiced daily, deliberately and with discipline. Every morning, I awaken early and run six miles — not because the world demands it, but because mastery of the body strengthens mastery of the mind.

Children under the age of 17 should not be on social media. Not because technology is evil, but because childhood is fragile and social media is not built for moral development.

Difference does not imply superiority or inferiority. It simply acknowledges reality. Men and women are different, and those differences are precisely why sex-segregated sports exist.

Good does not need evil to define itself. Truth does not need lies to validate it. But corruption cannot survive without something good to exploit. The responsibility of our time is to stop feeding it with silence and complacency and to restore moral clarity as the foundation of leadership worthy of public trust.

The progressive movement, however, must confront its own complicity. A philosophy that treats enforcement itself as oppression, that excuses disorder as activism and that relies on media distortion to advance its aims is not reformist — it is corrosive. A society cannot function when laws are optional, authority is demonized and chaos is reframed as conscience.

History warns us that great powers often stumble when confidence hardens into certainty.

This case is not an argument for blind trust in authority, nor is it a call to dismiss legitimate scrutiny of use-of-force decisions. Investigations matter. Transparency matters. Accountability matters. But so does honesty about human limitation and the consequences of escalation.

So, it won’t be a simple vote that decides Venezuela’s future. There will be fights, maybe even a civil war, just like we had in Iraq all those years ago. Every country has a military, and every country has politicians who want power.

Marion County did not make me who I am because it was perfect. It made me who I am because it was honest. Honest about work, honest about faith, honest about responsibility and honest about human limitations. Those lessons remain relevant, not because they are old, but because human nature has not changed. If America is to endure, it would do well to remember what small towns like mine once understood without needing to be reminded.

His worldview is built on resentment rather than responsibility, identity rather than character, and outrage rather than policy. This may generate attention online, but it cannot build institutions, govern effectively or improve lives. History shows that movements centered on humiliation and exclusion inevitably consume themselves.

It is truly an enduring legacy: Fox hunting remains a deeply embedded tradition in Maryland, celebrated through events like the Hunt Cup and the continued activities of clubs in the greater Baltimore area.

Some time between 62 and 65 A.D., Saint Peter wrote in I Peter: “Be alert and be of sober mind.” Imagine that. An instruction to be vigilant and sober-minded. Roughly 1,960 years later, it sounds anachronistic. Solemn and stern. Oddly out of place. Never, though, has it been more timely to be reminded of the need to be serious and sober. Consider sinking into a comfortable chair and taking a deep and sustained puff of high-potency marijuana; immediately, seriousness and sobri

Right now, too many Americans are white-knuckling their way through each month — nervous, numb and spiritually adrift. Changing course will require more than a new policy or a new president. It will require rebuilding the financial, social and spiritual foundations that make real life possible — and having the honesty to admit that our souls are just as overdrawn as our credit cards.

In that sense, belief in heaven is the ultimate inclusivity — not because standards are lowered, but because grace is freely offered. Anyone may pass through the Pearly Gates who believes in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, confesses Him as Lord, and trusts in His death and resurrection for salvation.

The restraint that civilization requires does not come from men; it comes from God’s Law, written in our hearts, there even before we learned to argue about it. If it comes from man, that begs the question as to which man.