The survival of our republic is at stake.  And the threat from socialist-minded radicals who have explicitly called for nationalization of healthcare, doing away with the US Senate, abolishing prisons, defunding the police and the military, seizing private property, limiting the ability of the Supreme Court, and tossing out the Constitution.  In other words, upend the republic and turn America into something it was never designed to be, much less anything the majority of commonsense Americans want now.  The socialist vision for America would make the nation unrecognizable.

The radicals see the forceful takeover of your life, your choices, your property as a necessity to deliver what they believe is a utopia.  Indeed, for them, the dystopian alternative is Donald Trump, whom they hate with a seething disdain. Their condemnation of the man rivals their infatuation with the socialist, indeed Communist, dream that has failed everywhere it has been tried.  It will reliably fail again if they succeed in 2026.

So, what is in the balance?  To answer that, one needs to understand what the election is and isn’t about.

What it isn’t about

Those who support the socialist myth tell us this election is about “affordability.”  They blame Trump for inflation, gas prices, and high housing costs, especially food and fuel costs.  They have conveniently forgotten how Joe Biden ruined the economy that Trump inherited.  Unfortunately, things won’t improve enough before the election, even if the war with Iran ends.

Absent from their current claim that Trump has ruined the economy is the slightest recognition that wages are at an all-time high and poverty at an all-time low.  The stock market is as healthy as it’s been in recent memory (up 18 percent).  Despite gas prices, energy production has rebounded in America to new highs.  Indeed, under Biden, average gas prices were $3.56.  Under Trump, they are slightly lower at $3.52.  So, while gas prices today—influenced by the war in Iran—are a real burden, the real issue is how socialists will handle the economy going forward.

We need look no further than Biden’s failed Inflation Reduction Act, the ill-named bill that did more to increase inflation than any binge spending in the past 50 years. The result?   Inflation peaked at 9 percent.  That’s what happens when too much money chases too few goods.  Democrats and their Socialist understudies cannot wait to repeat that mistake.  Moreover, the flood of money into Democrat-controlled blue enclaves has resulted in a level of waste and fraud we have never witnessed.  So, do not be fooled.  The crucial issue in this election is not affordability.  It’s more fundamental.

What it is about

In a word, this election centers on survivability. The lurch to the left by the Democratic Party has taken it from one that putatively supported blue-collar Americans to one that now demands oppressive policies that would centrally manage every aspect of their lives.  It is no longer the party of John Kennedy or even Bill Clinton.  It is now the party of superannuated hippies and chic leftist millionaires who are thrilled to finance the political takeover of the nation by up-talking baristas, woke-worshipping activists, and pro-terrorist antisemites.  Their collective trait is their ability to release a paroxysm of outrage over Trump that sounds like an operatic chorus of wounded animals.  Their hatred for Trump is only exceeded by their hatred of the American Republic and our Constitution.  And that is what is truly at stake this November.

Midterm or Midturn

American voters face a dilemma.  The economy, for all its positive trends in employment, salaries, and reduced poverty, is overshadowed by high food and fuel prices.  But if those are primary issues that determine the midterm result, we are in deep trouble.  On the contrary, if we ignore the good trends that Republicans have delivered—lower taxes, a secure border, record low crime rates, regulatory reform, the expansion of energy production, record job growth, and an improved balance of trade—then we will set ourselves on a path where radicals will destroy all of that while undermining the republic and imperil our survival as a free constitutional republic.

The midterm must not become a midturn, where we turn back to the policies of the Biden years, which were an unparalleled disaster.

Indeed, this definition was derived from—you guessed it—an AI program developed by Microsoft called “Copilot.”  Even though these programs are no substitute for human judgment, they’re useful for aggregating internet data.

These assistants do not represent the full power of AI systems or what they can potentially do to assist mankind.  Indeed, they represent hardly a bite-sized hors d’oeuvre compared to the plat de resistance that will be served up as AI systems are perfected in the future.

AI can advance medical research and cure diseases that have haunted mankind for millennia.  Future generations can also benefit from AI in education, transforming learning from cramming students together in the classroom to individually tailored and accelerated learning opportunities for those aspiring to a profession that suits their goals.

AI’s role in streamlining industry will also spark a productivity revolution that will wildly outpace the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries when machinery, steam power, the growth of factories, and the mass production of manufactured goods swept the Western world.

A  less noble aspect of the AI revolution concerns an area of research that has occupied me for the past three years: a revolution in AI-enabled warfare.  AI in military operations will give commanders in the field a distinct advantage over their opponents. It will enable commanders to act on exquisite information with remarkable speed before opponents realize they are being targeted.  Constellations of sensors will make the battlefield more transparent than ever before.  And AI will be essentially in the business of sorting volumes of targeting information that, when attacked in the right sequence with the best munitions, will deliver a certain victory.

Unfortunately, there has been precious little useful discussion now that AI has become the latest political football in America.  The AI discussion today centers on how this superintelligence will usher in the end of humanity.  In a word, it’s hogwash.  Yet there are genuine concerns about how to ensure AI doesn’t develop to the point where humanity cannot control it.  For that reason, we need more people like Dr. Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano to inform the discussion.

These two ethicists have given a lot of thought to the AI debate.  Americans are being ill-served by hysterical politicians and, sadly, self-serving AI CEOs and techno-poohbahs.  The former seek political victories at the polls. The latter feign AI disaster to entice government involvement in AI production so they can skirt product liability by blaming the government for letting them develop programs that wind up hurting people.  In other words, the debate we are hearing is both opportunistic and deceitful. It needs to be elevated by logic and critical thinking.

In their article titled “Between Extinction and Hubris: A Dialectical Approach to AI Risk, Control, and Governance,” which appears in the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Annett and Giordano make this observation.

“AI remains extraordinarily capable but importantly bounded. It does not possess independent political authority, military command, economic sovereignty, or generalized physical agency.” They recognize that AI has vulnerabilities, including others’ ability to manipulate it and the possibility of unpredictable behavior.  But their larger concern is the risk that humans will progressively cede to AI because it will be “efficient, economically advantageous, operationally expedient,” and, in a military context, viewed as essential to outthinking the enemy.  In other words, AI will be so good that humans will let it run wild.  How do they suggest we govern AI?

They wisely assert that “[A]ny posture toward effective governance should address AI capability, human cognition, organizational behavior, institutional incentives, and geopolitical competition as components of a single evolving system; because the essential question is whether humans and their institutions will retain the knowledge, discipline, humility, and capacity required to exercise such control when it matters most.”  Bingo.

Among their many recommendations are (1) regulations that address what a system can actually accomplish rather than the title it’s given; (2) mandate ongoing testing and evaluation to ensure AI doesn’t create harm; (3) require that humans possess adequate information, competence, time, and actual authority to challenge or abort AI-generated actions; (4) ensure that as machines become more capable, requirements are adjusted to control them; (5) create chains of human responsibility; (6) require mandatory AI incident-reporting systems; (7) create independent high-risk AI oversight mechanisms; and (8) establish international norms for the employment of military AI.

Indeed, what we need in America is less hysteria about AI development and more sound, authentic logic from critical thinkers like Doctors Annett and Giordano to frame it.

Let’s face it. Data centers are ugly.  Big suburban boxes in what is otherwise a verdant landscape of tract housing and shopping malls with “big box” stores that supply the beleaguered people of these regions with all manner of consumables and conveniences, including entertainment electronics—dependent on, you guessed it, data centers.  But I digress.

A segment of the population could be called CAVE people: “Citizens Against Virtually Everything.”  Many of them oppose data centers reflexively.  But I suspect most people opposed to these suburban monstrosities are realistic.  They understand that data centers are necessary if we want the computing power we will need in the years ahead to remain an economically dominant world power.  They get it.  They just don’t want a data center nearby.  I can’t say I disagree.  If one threatened my river environment, I would be very actively involved in opposing it.  But like a hospital, I think we need them.  Yet I don’t want to be next door to the Emergency Room entrance and the cacophony of sirens at all hours of the night.

The physical irritations over data centers notwithstanding, the anxiety over them belies a more fundamental concern: the role and impact of AI in our society, something data centers facilitate.  People should have legitimate concerns about AI, particularly its potential impact on freedom.  Privacy is often cited as a concern.  But since the advent of the internet, people have long surrendered their privacy, personal data, internet usage, and even buying preferences to IT companies.  If you doubt that, look at how many garden tips you get after buying a rake online. The most profound threat is that powerful entities, including governments, will use AI abusively to control lives, choices, and activities.  That is a real concern, not one to dismiss casually.

Yet AI will greatly benefit society.  Medical research, product productivity, public safety. air traffic control, structural design, mathematical calculations, infrastructure operations, and educational opportunities for countless people; AI will be decisive.  That list is long.  But there are threats.  AI development can enable it to do things that could harm people.  For that reason, we need controls.  Fortunately, a few—a very few—people in Washington, DC, understand the need for guardrails.

That’s why the Frontier Act (H.R. 9925), a bipartisan congressional bill introduced on 23 July 2026 by Representative Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Representative Lori Trahan (D-MA), should pass.  It would establish (1) an AI risk-management framework, (2) independent audits, (3) AI incident reporting, (4) ongoing threat assessments, and (5) a uniform national standard for product transparency, auditing, and reporting of catastrophic risk to prevent a patchwork of state regulations.  In other words, an approach to bring some rational order to the oversight of AI, a technology that will have a tremendous impact on everything from medical research to industrial efficiency to an explosion in American productivity that will, in turn, advance American wealth to levels never before witnessed.  Indeed, by 2028, America could possess 80 percent of the world’s computing power.

Who does that threaten? China, that’s who. Which is why the communists have released disinformation bots to scare the pants off of Americans as they go to the polls in November. The Chinese have highlighted the connections between data centers and AI to frighten our citizens and stir up anxiety.  Data centers are not the problem.

The “problem” is that China can’t keep up with the US.  So, it’s doing its best to discourage US data center development that fuels the AI revolution. Predictably, the far left in America is parroting the Chinese lies to garner anti-GOP sentiment. No surprise there. They shilled for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during COVID.

If you think AI is the threat du jour, consider this.  The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and their enabling establishment Democrats have adopted the communist propaganda line on AI.  Democrats are no longer talking about “affordability” or the war in Iran.  Yet consider their program to abolish the Senate, pack the Supreme Court, toss out the Constitution, seize private property, fling open the borders, and destroy the healthcare system. 

You might see AI as a threat when the real one is the radical DSA-CCP agenda to destroy America.

So, I developed my Copy Book Warrior website to share my weekly thoughts with you, hopefully wise ones, now up to 325 of them. And for the most part, that has been well received. A dedicated circle of people takes time to thank me each week. It’s encouraging.  Occasionally, I hear from some of you who have been content to consume my updates, but feel compelled to respond with a compliment because it struck a chord with you. And yes, sometimes—rarely—the comments are terse. But in any case, my objective has been to pass on some wisdom as I see it.

So, why am I sharing these thoughts? Because I want yours.  Recently, a VMI classmate of mine who is also a dear friend said, “Scottie, we need to get you your own Substack?”   I thought, “Well, that’s nice. What the heck is a Substack?”  So, I looked it up and learned that “Substack is an online platform that allows writers and creators to publish newsletters, podcasts, and videos directly to subscribers, offering tools to monetize content through paid subscriptions.”

It sounded similar to what I thought I was already doing on my website until I asked my IT expert. She promptly told me, “Do it. It will help you grow your audience through subscriptions to people well beyond your in-house email list.”

Frankly, I have spent a fair amount of personal money doing this weekly update for six years, and the idea that good folks—readers who care—might be willing to come alongside in the effort to help finance the work is refreshing.  Yet I don’t want to disincentivize folks from staying with me and participating in vital dialogue that is so badly needed in a country consumed with social media nonsense.

With that in mind, I need to hear from you; please email me back with your views. Consider these questions when you do.

1. Should I use Substack to continue this effort? My website URL would stay the same but look a little different, and you would be able to get my emails and read my past writings.
2. Would you be willing to pay a modest subscription fee to read my thoughts and dialogue with me?
3. Would you prefer that, instead of a fee, I solicit voluntary donations?
4. Should my updates continue to be at 11 AM each Thursday, or more randomly in the course of a week, maybe more than one?
5. Should I also consider starting a podcast on the issues I can discuss with interviewees, focusing largely on social issues, international affairs, national security, and common-sense things we all care about?
6. Should I simply fade away and enjoy retirement…until I can’t stand it anymore and return to writing.

Please take a moment to tell me what you think.  I promise I will read each email and decide once I’ve given all the input some thought.

To be sure, sometimes when I wake up early on a Thursday, I have no idea what I will publish that day. I try to mitigate that “writer’s block” by drafting my thoughts on Wednesday, as I am with this one. Maybe it will be an easier chore with a Substack. Frankly, I have more research to do on that.

And as for podcasts, I think I know more about how to drive the astrophysics and orchestrate a podcast. I’m sure I can learn, but I suspect that will require help, and help is not a free proposition these days, which brings me back to the subscription question.  Much to consider.

All in all, that leads me to this conclusion.  I love writing.  It is one of the most cathartic things for me.  Moreover, it allows me to be completely honest with others about what I think.  And I don’t think I have the exclusive answer to the things I address, but I do try to address issues in a respectful, logical framework that reflects my worldview.

Therefore, Copybook Warriors, let me hear from you.  Please tell me what you think.  Should I stay with the current format, or take a new direction that could build a larger following? And no, I have no intention of reengaging in elected politics.  My goal is to share the truth as I see it. Help me determine how in the coming days.

When I was born in 1951, the Korean War was raging, although I was unaware of that. But as I became more aware of this thing called “the Army,” my interest grew.  Like many boys, I soon gravitated toward outdoor shenanigans.  Growing up in Virginia, however, we preferred playing Yankees and Confederates to Cowboys and Indians.  After all, statues of Confederate warriors lined Richmond’s streets.  How could we resist, especially since my parents picked “Lee” as my first name?

In time, my awareness would grow.  My great-uncle Emmit “Bub” Baker had served in WWI with the 80th Division. Known as the “Blue Ridge Division,” it was composed of men mostly from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.  Uncle Bub would regale us with stories, mostly humorous ones, of his service in the “Great War,” when he served as a Sergeant.  Omitting the more gory aspects of combat, he shared stories about his time serving on the division’s general staff.  War then seemed a “fun” idea to an admiring boy. I would later learn it was not so.

In time, indeed, in the 6^th grade, I had it in my mind to attend Fork Union Military Academy.  After seeing an ad for it in a magazine, I fancied the idea of wearing a uniform and learned to march and adapt to military regimen.  Once there, I had second thoughts, but as I learned and lived in that corps of cadets, I grew more fond of the “Army” life.  I recall one of my classmates had a father who was a helicopter pilot who, with some others, flew their UH-1 Hueys to Fork Union and landed on the football field.  It was fascinating to many of us, and I remember how complex and big they seemed to a little guy as I stood on one of the aircraft’s skids and peered inside.  Yep. I was falling in love.

When high school arrived, and I grew weary of being away from my family, I chose to attend a day military school in Richmond, Benedictine High School.  My love for the military grew stronger, and any doubt about my future was dispelled.  I would be a soldier one way or the other.

Vietnam was raging in those days, and I was more than aware of the combat occurring then—and, unlike many of my 1960s cohort, I was drawn to it.  In 1968, as I was nearing my graduation, I said to my father that I wanted to enlist in the Army and “go to Vietnam.”  He gently told me that I was going to a place that began with “V,” but it wasn’t “Vietnam.”

In 1969, he, along with one of Richmond’s most prominent graduates of the Virginia Military Institute, deposited me there on a very humid day in August.  It was the best decision I “never” made.  There, I learned what duty, honor, and hard work really meant.  I also learned the value of friendship and camaraderie with my “Brother Rats,” which lasts to this day.  In my final two years at the Institute, my future was assured as my performance as a student and cadet improved dramatically.  After being designated as a Distinguished Military Graduate (DMG), I was commissioned as a regular officer in the US Army, a dream come true for a boy who began with a fascination for Army gear.

In time, I would learn the complexities of soldiering.  It’s not about marching about, or spiffy uniforms, or ribbons arrayed on your chest.  It’s more than that.  It’s about relationships to one end, combat readiness.  I was absorbed in that life and look back longingly to the days when I served with soldiers and leaders who were ready to give, as President Lincoln eloquently said at Gettysburg in 1863, “the last full measure of devotion.”  The Army was and remains my identity.

Today, the Army I grew to love is in much turmoil.  The nature of war is rapidly changing, and the Army must transform how we fight to meet the challenges ahead.  That will require steady hands and a clear vision. That transformation is now the business of others, who I pray will be the kind of warrior-thinkers who will set it on the right path, one that will not only be victorious in battle, but also an inspiration to a young boy somewhere marveling at the possibilities. 

If you dig a bit, you strike this: “Of or constituting a political party professing the principles of conservatism.”  Closer yet.

A bit deeper yields this: “Tending or inclined to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions” or “marked by moderation or caution.”  But even this misses the true meaning of conservatism.  In my mind, it is to conserve what is good, honorable, and useful to mankind.

Conservatives love the founding vision and its products, including the Constitution, the separation of powers, states’ rights, and the Bill of Rights, all pivotal propositions to a Constitutional Republic. In other words, conservatives want to preserve what makes us free.  We also want to preserve other things like traditional family values, freedom of religion, and the right to pursue your American dream without some bureaucratic busybody giving you unhelpful man-on-man coverage. Get lost. We can figure it out without some busybody wearing green eyeshades watching over us. Conservatives believe in individual effort, risk-taking, and the right to succeed or fail.  Imagine that—people who understand both sides of that coin.

There’s more to conservatism than the political or ideological interpretations.  There’s conservation, as in efforts resulting in “a careful preservation and protection of something, especiallyplanned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect.”  That’s distinct from environmental extremism and climate alarmism by those who overstate and exaggerate the danger from the development and the wise use of natural resources, like fossil fuels.  Should we weigh carefully the threats we face from irresponsible exploitation of natural resources? Yes.  Should we be concerned about clean water and air? Yes. Should we strive to mitigate the harmful effects of pollution?  Of course.

In that regard, for many years I have been concerned with what I would call practical conservation.  God made our world for our use.  And as such, we should take care of it so that it is available to our progeny and us.  In other words, our environment is not something we put in a museum behind a glass wall to view, but rather available to us for responsible use.  In that context, the radical among us would see the environment as “off limits” to anyone who would use it to improve our lives, especially if it results in personal profit, such as energy manufacturing.

As a way of expressing my personal commitment to conservation, I raise oysters off of our pier on the Potomac River.  It’s hard work.  I’m not motivated to do that solely because I like to eat them.  I do it because I know oysters can filter large amounts of water through their systems, removing nutrients from the river and the Chesapeake Bay.  Nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment from runoff in the Bay’s tributaries harm sea life and other species dependent on the Potomac’s bounty. This very morning, I am reminded of that as I watched pods of dolphins swimming off of our shore, feeding on the abundant fish in the river.  These dolphins are consuming healthy fish that are better for the millions of oysters that live in the Bay and its tributaries, including those occupying cages hung off a pier.

So, conservation is best expressed by doing, not by people dispensing empty, politically motivated rhetoric like the Green New Deal, whose true aim is to raise taxes on us to fuel burgeoning government spending.  We must move beyond climate alarmism and take a practical approach to conservation.

I have observed that some people fit neatly into what journalist Tom Wolfe coined “radical chic.”  These are often upper-class people who engage in the fashionable practice of associating with politically radical people and causes.  Some today fall into what I would call the environmentally chic, those who spout concern for the environment, preferring to virtue signal without lifting a finger to do anything practical.  You have seen them jetting about the highway with their “Save the Bay” bumper stickers.  If you were to encounter these people at a cocktail party and ask them what they know about efforts to stem nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment from polluting the Bay, you should not be surprised at the wondering stare you get as they balance their wine glass while reaching for another piece of cheese.

Environmental chicness also includes young socialists in college who demand “climate action.”  They haven’t a clue how to translate their zealous energy into productive undertakings to improve the environment as they skip a class to head to the next sign-waving protest on their schedule.

They should try oystering.  It’s hard work. But that’s the problem for them—hard work.

How has this happened?  How is it that an entire generation has become so ignorant that they subscribe to a governing system that would have as its central organizing principle the ascendancy of a dominant state that would destroy the Constitution and free-market economy?  Sadly, the answer is clear. They know nothing about the Constitution, its underlying principles, or free-market capitalism, which has made us the freest and most prosperous nation in world history.

You can thank the deplorable American teacher unions for conjuring up a national curse that threatens to upend our system of government, our economy, and our freedom.  No entity is more corrosive in American education than teacher unions. Putatively organized to protect teachers’ rights and advocate for policies that improve education, they do the opposite.  Their focus has been not to educate, but rather to indoctrinate young minds in the ways of the liberal left.

Consider how they have supported efforts to recast American history.  Students are no longer taught the genius of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe in crafting the most remarkable governing order ever devised in human history.  No, those men are to be regarded as racist, oppressive, and filled with evil intent.  Is it any surprise that such thinking has given rise to a generation of empty-headed young idealogues who have followed the siren song of Marx, Lenin, Castro, and Mamdani?

This is not the only spell cast by the teacher unions.  They have been prominent in supporting the worst of the feminist movement in America, particularly by advancing “toxic masculinity” as a deterrent to helping boys grow up to be confident men.  No, boys must not be encouraged to play contact sports and certainly not to hunt or fish.  Likewise, they have supported exposing young children to alternative sexual lifestyles under the guise of normalcy.  They are undiminished in their anti-Christian sentiments while elevating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as an article of modern faith.  If the teacher unions are known for one thing, it is this.  They hate traditional American values with the same fervor as the rising stars in the DSA.

Others have done significant damage to the minds of the DSA cohort.  American universities, with some notable exceptions, have been overrun by left-leaning professors who have one thing in common.  They have never served in the military, signed the bottom of a paycheck, or engaged in the kind of hard work that has made America great in the past and can again.  Moreover, these so-called educators have never read the Federalist Papers, James Madison’s Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, or The Republic, Plato’s Socratic dialogue concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man.  Why read any of that if you intend to pollute the minds of young people to advocate for the destruction of our republic?  Perish the thought. Indeed, perish thinking.

Complicit with teacher unions and the corrupt academic establishment in America are left-leaning journalists unconcerned with fact and objectivity.  They fuel the handiwork of those who want to see America changed into something it was never designed to be and something rational people have no desire to embrace.

What must be done?  Educating must be done.  And that will take a genuine revolution by those of us who are distraught with what is occurring in the classrooms and lecture halls of our nation.  It won’t happen by magic either.  It will require people of goodwill to insist on taking a place in education and academia to right the education system in America, which is foundering in ideological quicksand.  It means former military, people with business experience, scientists, engineers, builders, and others with real-world experience who love this country step forward as educators to address the heresies of thought introduced to the youngest among us.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

The table was always set beautifully.  Silverware was properly arranged with forks on the left of the plate, tines facing up. The salad fork was placed on the outermost left next to the dinner fork closer to the plate.  Knives and spoons were to the right of the plate, with knife blades always facing inward and spoons placed to the right of knives. Dessert utensils were placed horizontally above the plate, with the fork handle pointing left and the spoon handle pointing right.  Etiquette guru Emily Post would have been proud.

As teens, our mom would sometimes tell us to arrange the place setting, and we did according to standard.  Doing this didn’t make the food taste any better, but it taught us that life involves standards and routine.  Both are necessary to order life, I suppose, and there was a certain comfort in it.

Table manners were also important, and our parents were keen on instructing us.  Once you cut one piece of food with the fork in the left hand, you set the knife aside and switched the fork to your right hand before taking a bite.  They never told us why.  It was sufficient for us to believe that our parents had a good reason for these gastronomical gymnastics, and we happily complied.

Napkins, we were reminded, were not handkerchiefs.  They would lie in the lap, not tucked into the collar like a bib.  Asking “please” was expected when you wanted the salt, pepper, or butter, and such was not handed across the table like a lifeguard reaching for a struggling swimmer.  These were passed around the table person-by-person, each pausing between bites to hand the item to their neighbor until it arrived at its intended location.

After my Dad said grace and the food was passed around, there was light conversation at the table, and we learned not to interrupt others or speak with a mouthful of food.  The conversations covered various things.  We talked about what our Dad did at the office, events of the day, and sometimes reminders of school and dreaded homework, a chore I found difficult and boring.  Sometimes we would delve into family lore.  It was always interesting to hear a tale from the past, sometimes humorous ones that had been shared previously, but the story was just as funny when retold and further embellished.

Occasionally, new information would arise, maybe about future travel, or something that needed fixing or addressing in some fashion.  It was a combination of small talk and emerging news, all around the table without any of the distractions of technology. Today, many families sit at a table and do not say a word while riveted to their cell phones.  Our conversations in the past were our “social media.”

Sadly, the family dinner is an heirloom.  To be sure, people still have dinners on occasions like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and birthdays, while seated around the table.  But the daily family dinner, as I recall it growing up, is a thing of yesteryear.  We can thank the advent of television for that.  When the evening news began at the dinner hour, modernity teed up the TV dinner: small portions of bland, processed food in an aluminum tray placed conveniently before the diner so one could eat and focus not on one another, but on some TV personality who had little family lore and wisdom to impart.  Cellphones at dinner today accomplish a similar distraction from humanity.

Soon, pizza delivery and fast food restaurants added additional competition for formal dinner arrangements.  In time, table manners and politeness were no longer required.  Grab-and-go has supplanted “May I be excused,” the proper departure for youngsters from the dinner table after everyone has finished eating.

All that has changed with both parents working, hectic commutes, and kids engaged in abundant after-school sports and other endeavors.  Post-activity stops at a fast-food restaurant to feed everyone in the car as the family rushes home have replaced the time-honored and routinized family dinner and all that entails.  I suppose that’s why McDonald’s, Burger King, and Chick-fil-A restaurants dot the landscape across America today.  Fast food pit stops have become the modern family dining room.

With that, we have lost an important moment in the day when families can come together to not only be nourished, but to nourish important relationships.  If there is any institution that should be revived today, it’s the tradition of the family dinner, even if it entails plasticware, paper towel napkins, and pizza boxes. 

The opportunity presented itself one weekend when I was at the river with my youngest son, a very astute young man, not given to flippancy.  He is thoughtful and aware of how his generation thinks, moves, and responds to the events of the day.

In the course of our conversation, I asked him, “How can I better connect with young people?”  His response was eye-opening.  He noted that people of his generation consume information—news, as another way to express that—in ways quite different from my generation.  I was intrigued.

Why?  Because in my generation, we consumed news by reading original sources.  When we picked up a newspaper in 1968 to read about the Presidential election that year, we read reports based on observed events and quotes, without an author’s personal opinions or summary interpretations projected onto those occasions.  As Detective Joe Friday of “Dragnet” fame would have said, “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” 

But much had changed since the fictitious Detective Friday policed Los Angeles to round up criminals.  He was a “good guy” among characters of my generation.  Today, the far left would defund him and his police force.  They would consider him a “fascist” until, of course, he came to arrest the person who just assaulted, burglarized, or savaged them in some unspeakable manner—context matters.  So does reality.  And that seems to get past people on the far left.  But I digress.

My son’s observations about how his generation consumes news are important even today.  He pointed to an interesting phenomenon.  His fellow travelers tended to react to news, not consume it directly. How does that work?  It starts with a new item that provokes interest among those who initially read or see it, and then they respond to it in some form or fashion.  Maybe they note it.  A bit more frequently, they express an immediate view or opinion.

And it is the opinions—not the original news item—that set the stage for follow-on expressions.  So, when some snowflake or pajama boy reacts with outrage over a particular item of news, it is their outrage—not the facts of the report—that sets in motion a cascading response by people that spins ever farther away from the core facts of the report.  It’s like the game of Gossip my generation played with an assembled group of willing participants.  The first person would have a certain fact like “My cousin told me she just had a baby.” The next person would then whisper the message to another person.  But by the time it has passed across the ears of several people, the message would be “My cousin just called me a baby.”

The reactions to news and the subsequent interpretations of the report become the “news,” indeed very remote from the original facts at hand.  Such is the era of social media, when people react to things that are concentric circles apart from the original expression.  Younger generations have become rebounders of outrage, expressing views that are inconsistent with facts and context.  But for them, their reverberations are facts.  And therein lies the challenge.

It would be good if the younger generation had a framework in civics and genuine history as they express themselves.  In fact, they lack that knowledge, leading them to conclude that a socialist society—despite decades of proven failure—will deliver a utopia, and will in fact be quite the opposite.

Some would say. “We need to reform education in America.”  Others would say, “We need to take back the centers of higher education that have become centers of far-left indoctrination.”  That would help.  But what we must do is create opportunities in the social media information space to set the record straight and encourage young people to reach deeper into what they are served as news to help them focus on the facts.

I’m not smart enough to do that.  But someone out there is.  Indeed, they may make a ton of money in the process of creating greater enlightenment.  But as far as I’m concerned, success will be attained when a young person comes to realize that someone else’s opinion is not fact.  It’s an opinion and should be treated as such and no more. 

I’m glad I listened to my young son.  He’s wise beyond his years, and I learned.

We Boomers, eager to shed the fetters of traditionalism, raised our children as free spirits.  We were disinclined to adhere to the traditions and preferences of our parents as stogy and unimaginative.  Sex and intoxication replaced modesty and sobriety.  Heavy metal preferable to a violin concerto.  Television was desired more than a good book.  Sleeping in replaced Sunday services.  Hedonism substituted for virtuous living.  Anti-Americanism supplanted patriotism.  We were part of a generation in revolt that in the end realized that our behavior and practices were themselves revolting.

Many of us Boomers took account of how we lived our early lives and settled on the Christian worldview.  But certainly not all of us.  For those who didn’t, they raised a generation of children further inclined to revolt against their parents, even those whose view of the world began to reflect that of their parents.  They recognized—at long last—that their thoughts agreed with those of their parents.  By then, however, the generations since have embraced values increasingly alien and distant from the Greatest Generation’s.

Boomers sired Gen X, who in turn yielded the Millennials, who then brought forth Gen Z, the latter having a much distorted view of the work ethic and the role and purpose of government. Many believe that they can dictate the nature of their jobs.  They insist that work accommodate them as opposed to conforming to the requirements of their employers, to whom they freely obligated themselves. They’ve adopted the notion of “work-life balance,” as if employment must conform to their schedules and requirements, not what their employers expect of them. 

Gen Z views the government not as the protector of our freedom, but rather the guarantor of their success.  Furthermore, they have decided that the government is obliged to oblige them.  That free stuff fulfills their freedom.  That someone else can pay for their needs.  Is that demented notion any wonder given the last 60 years when those who have ruled over us have transformed the government from the guardian of our freedom to an ATM?  Should it mystify us that when you raise a generation utterly ignorant of civics, they would have such views?  When history is jettisoned for replacement theories concerning the nation’s founding that conform to radical ideologies, should we be astonished by the ignorance of our progeny concerning who they are and from whom they descended?

We Boomers once regarded our parents as members of the Greatest Generation, those who rose to oppose genuine fascism, not the progressive recasting of that evil that far-left radicals confer on those who seek to sustain our free constitutional republic today.

The Boomers and our children must bear the burden of what we have wrought.  And what now exists—like a thrown boomerang —is hurtling back in our direction to strike us in the face.  What we have done is now undoing our nation.  What shall we do about that?

Os Guinness, a well-regarded Christian apologist and critical thinker, has observed that in the American tradition of freedom, the only appropriate restraint in living as free men and women is self-restraint.  That needs much repair today.  We can attempt to fix that problem with legislation.  In some cases that is needed, particularly to deal with the evildoers living among us who have utterly no concept of self-restraint.  But while in some cases that may be necessary, it is insufficient.

The real answer is to right our own worldview and take actions to embrace and exhibit the Judeo-Christian ethic in our society.  That must, however, be an authentic expression of Biblical truth, not virtue signaling whereby we speak what is right but fail to live up to it.  Our children may lack any understanding of that worldview, but they are not blind.  They can detect hypocrisy and virtue signaling quite readily.  We must live genuinely and, in doing so, begin a vital transformation that many of us believe can only occur with a Christian revival across our nation.

Doing so requires we also confront how social media acts as an echo mechanism by which misinformation and distorted truth are transmuted into twisted interpretations and outright falsehoods.  We must recognize that if we want to propagate facts and truth, we must engage misinformed generations on their digital turf.  We are being outdone in that by deceivers, and we must rebuff them soundly.  That means using the technology of young Americans to inform them of the transcendent wisdom they need to go forward best.  Maybe then, we also will measure up to being the great generation that our parents were, something well within our grasp.