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If you’re like me, the last time you gave any serious consideration to The Enlightenment was when you were in college. Even then, it seemed to me that it was a bunch of old men in powdered wigs sitting around saying painfully obvious things like, “I think, therefore I am”.

The more I learn about the American Revolution, the more I’ve come to realize that The Enlightenment was not the irrelevant philosophical exercise that I thought it was. It is, in fact, the basis for most modern social, political, and economic thought.

OK, What Exactly Was The Enlightenment?

It was an intellectual movement that began principally in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. It emphasized reason, science, liberty, and skepticism of inherited authority. Some of the smartest people in Europe reexamined everything they thought they knew. They questioned the nature of God, the foundations of knowledge, the rights of individuals and how they related to the purpose of government, and the relationships between the people with power and those without. Underneath it all was the core belief in the possibility of human progress.

Elements of the Enlightenment

There are several key elements that define The Enlightenment. Probably the most important was an almost religious devotion to the supremacy of reason. Prior to this, most Europeans accepted that the ultimate authorities in the world were the church and the monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers were the first to question those authorities. They argued that a human mind with its ability for observation, logic, and evaluation of evidence could discover the truth without having it dictated by the church or the king. They didn’t necessarily reject religion, but they questioned superstition, intolerance, and blind obedience. They thought that reason gave people the power to understand the universe and improve the human condition.

Closely related to this was their belief in empiricism and the scientific method. The Enlightenment came soon after the Scientific Revolution and was influenced by figures such as Isaac Newton who demonstrated that nature operated according to principles that could be discovered and understood and that true understanding came from observable experience rather than from inherited doctrine. René Descartes, whom I quoted somewhat cavalierly in my opening paragraph, is sometimes recognized as the philosophical godfather of the Enlightenment. His landmark work Discourse on the Method, published in 1637, gave rise to the practice of rejecting any belief that couldn’t be verified by rigorous inquiry.

Another central element is the belief in the natural rights of humanity. They believed that all people possess certain rights bestowed by nature. These include life, liberty, property, and security and that all people possess these rights simply because they live. Central to this is the idea that no government had granted those rights and therefore no government can legitimately revoke them. They viewed this as an implicit social contract between rulers and the people and not a gift of a sovereign. The key element of this idea is that the people could, at any time, withdraw their consent and reconstitute the government.

Other key elements of the Enlightenment included skepticism towards authority, and a questioning of the scripture as the final word on nature. They disputed the divine rights of kings. They also stressed religious toleration and proposed the conscience should not be coerced by the state. They had a strong belief in the ability of civilization to progress through education, science, and political reform. While all enlightenment thinkers did not have the exact same specific beliefs, they believed in the core element of the value of the improvement of humanity.

Who’s Who in The Enlightenment and the Revolution

There were many writers, scientists, and philosophers associated with The Enlightenment. They range from Adam Smith and his economic theories to Voltaire and his theories of tolerance and free thought. In an essay such as this it would be impossible for me to do justice to all these great thinkers. I’m going to focus on the two I believe had the greatest impact on the American Revolution: John Locke and Charles- Louise de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu.

Locke was a physician, philosopher and political theorist and his works probably had a greater influence on revolutionary thought than those of anyone else. His central argument was that all individuals have a natural right to life, liberty and property and that those rights exist independent of any government and that no government possesses the right to violate them.

Montesquieu was a French judge and political philosopher whom many view as the architect of separation of powers. He wrote that tyranny is best prevented by dividing governmental authority among distinct branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—and that each will check the power of the other.

Likewise, almost every central player in the American Revolution was familiar with the works of The Enlightenment writers. I’m going to focus on the two whose work, I believe, most obviously reflects the thoughts of The Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Jefferson, Locke, and the Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson is, arguably, the member of the revolutionary generation most identified with the philosophy of John Locke. Other colonial writers such as George Mason in his June1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights and Samuel Adams in his 1772 The Rights of the Colonists, clearly reflected Lockean principles. In fact, Adams specifically mentioned Locke in his treatise. But it is Jefferson in his Declaration of Independence whose relationship to John Locke is most familiar to the American people.

Locke argued that all individuals possess natural rights that include life, liberty, and property and that governments exist solely to protect those rights. Jefferson incorporated Locke’s ideas almost in verbatim into the Declaration’s most famous passage excepting that he substituted “the pursuit of happiness” for Locke’s “property”. Jefferson likely intended to broaden the appeal of his arguments beyond just protection of wealthy landowners to include more universal human rights. The Declaration also included other elements that reflected Locke’s thoughts such as a listing of violations by the British government that caused it to forfeit its legitimate authority. Jefferson had turned Locke’s social contract theory into a statement of grievances against the British monarchy.

I think it’s also important to note that not all historians agree that John Locke was the sole or even principal influence on Jefferson’s thinking in the Declaration. Other enlightenment philosophers thought to have influenced Jefferson include Francis Hutchinson, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Jefferson himself identified the ancient philosophers Aristotle and Cicero as being intellectual sources.

Some historians have proposed that the inclusion of Locke’s ideas in the Declaration of Independence was less the result of a deep philosophical study on the part of Jefferson then a recognition that Locke’s ideas had become widely accepted in the colonies by the 1770s. Jefferson himself later wrote that the declaration wasn’t meant to be a new philosophy but to reflect the “common sense of the subject”. Regardless of whether the influence was direct or indirect, I find it difficult not to see the ideas of John Locke throughout the Declaration of Independence.

James Madison, Montesquieu, and the Constitution

Montesquieu laid out his ideas for the separation of powers in his 1748 treatise The Spirit of the Laws. He was concerned that whoever holds power will tend to abuse it. He believed that the best protection for liberty is dividing governmental power among three co-equal groups: those who make the law (legislative), those who carry out the law (executive), and those who judge disputes (judicial). He further believed that if one of these groups held excessive power, freedom would be endangered because the same person could write laws to their own benefit, then enforce those laws as they saw fit and then render judgments in their own favor.

James Madison has often been called the “father of the Constitution”. I’ve never thought that was a very accurate description, mainly because I’m not sure what it means. There was no single author of the Constitution, it was a group effort that was based on compromise, debate, bargaining, threats, and endless rewriting.

I would call Madison the architect of the Constitution. While he didn’t come up with the idea of the three branches of government, it had been in wide circulation in the colonies for several years, he showed up at the Constitutional Convention with a plan. As a result, the convention wound up debating his plan as the basis for a new constitution. Madison’s “Virginia Plan” underwent extensive revisions at the hands of the convention, but its basic structure of three coequal branches of government, reflecting Montesquieu’s ideas, remained intact.

The Legacy of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment had a profound effect on both political and intellectual thought in the western world. It influenced not only the American Revolution but later the French Revolution. Though largely unrecognized by other revolutionaries at the time, its philosophy influenced democratic movements around the world.

The ideas of constitutional government with its principles of freedom of speech, religious liberty, and human rights all trace directly back to Enlightenment ideas. The Enlightenment did have its own problems. Many of the thinkers, reflecting the social and political mores of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, excluded women, enslaved Africans, indigenous people, and the lower social and economic classes from their ideas of political and social equality. Perhaps ironically, their emphasis on reason and human progress eventually began to bring these other groups into full membership in democratic society.

Unfortunately, many of the Enlightenment principles that underpin our system of government are currently under attack by politicians and oligarchs attempting to consolidate their own power and wealth.

Image generated by author using ChatGPT.

Sources

Britannica: The Enlightenment

Wikipedia: Enlightenment Philosophy

Wikipedia: Age of Enlightenment

World History Encyclopedia: 12 Key Enlightenment Philosophers

Britannica: Key Figures of the Enlightenment

Britannica: John Locke

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Locke’s Political Philosophy

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: John Locke

History Hit: Heroes of the Enlightenment

U.S. Army: Impact of the Enlightenment on the American Revolution

usconstitution.net: Enlightenment’s Impact on U.S. Democracy

Albert.io: The Enlightenment and the American Revolution

Vaia: Philosophy of the Declaration of Independence

UGA Press: Montesquieu and the American Constitution

Wikipedia: Influence of the American Revolution on the French Revolution

Accountability or Restoration? The Dilemma Facing Democrats

By John Turley

On November 10, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

It is tempting to imagine Donald Trump, his sons, and the rest of his administration standing in the dock answering criminal charges. It would be satisfying, but a waste of time, considering the amount of work needed to repair the damage that he has done to this country. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be held responsible; I’m saying that repair and restoration should come before revenge.

I know some of you are thinking “It’s not revenge, it’s justice.” I agree that justice needs to be done, but it should be deliberate, fact-based justice, not the weaponized justice of the Trump administration. More importantly, it should not detract from the important work of rebuilding public faith in our government and restoring important programs that have been destroyed.

The Democrats message should be first that they’re going to make the government work for the people again and that they will provide remedies where the law allows. At the same time, they must assure the public that where there is credible evidence of wrongdoing there will be a proper and independent investigation. They must state that no one gets immunity because they are powerful or wealthy and likewise that no one loses their constitutional rights because they are unpopular.

The guiding principle should be that they will not sacrifice justice for the appearance of reconciliation and will not sacrifice the public’s welfare for the satisfaction of punishment. They will repair injuries, establish responsibility in a fair manner, and make it harder for anyone else to abuse government powers.

We must also hold the members of the Trump administration accountable to send a message to future political leaders that such behavior is not tolerable. It is important to recognize the difference between illegal behavior and bad policy. The Congress should concentrate on repairing bad policy but should at the same time put in place the procedures for punishing crimes. Special prosecutors and revived inspectors general would be the most reasonable method of pursuing the legal avenues.

Convening impeachment hearings might be an appealing undertaking. but in the long run it will be unsuccessful in removing Donald Trump from office and will detract from the important work of reversing the damage he has done. Since there’s little likelihood a finding 67 senators who will vote for conviction, it would simply be a “feel good” activity.

It may seem simple to distinguish criminal conduct from bad policy decisions. But it’s not as straightforward as it seems. Illegal and harmful are not simply interchangeable ideas.

Bribery, obstruction of justice, and corruption obviously require criminal investigation. It will not be possible to investigate everything at once. Congress should prioritize criminal investigations based on the seriousness of the harm done to the public not on what would make the biggest splash on the 6:00 news.

Abuses of government authority may violate constitutional or administrative law while not resulting in any individual criminal liability. There are also actions that may be harmful, discriminatory, economically damaging, or contrary to traditional activity but still are not unlawful. Pursuing a criminal indictment against behavior that is not clearly unlawful runs the risk of tainting the entire investigative process, ultimately accomplishing little, and emboldening future bad actors with the idea if they can “get away with it”.

It is important at the beginning to establish that officials who have violated criminal statutes cannot claim immunity from prosecution simply because they were pursuing political objectives or operating under the orders of government officials. We need to strongly invalidate the “I was only following orders” defense.

I won’t attempt to list the number of things that Congress needs to undertake to repair all the damage that’s been done to this country. Many of the political and institutional problems exposed during the Trump administration are not necessarily new. There have been longstanding tensions between presidential authority over federal bureaucracy and immigration policy and the role of congressional oversight. We’ve also seen increasing politicization of judicial review and law enforcement.

But I believe one thing is important: we must not only repair the damage that’s been done but we must perform an analysis of how a single administration was able to undermine years of government procedure and policy so that we can ensure that safeguards are in place to prevent it from ever happening again.

Congress should pursue a two-track program running in unison to examine both personal accountability and systemic reform. Congress needs to be careful not to make promises beyond their ability to deliver. The Democrats do not have a veto proof majority and attempting to reach beyond what they can expect to accomplish may undermine their entire program.

This is not about one president or one administration, and it is not an either-or choice. We need to do both. If done properly, we could emerge with an even stronger constitutional system with stronger checks and balances and a greater ability to serve the public.

Would Jesus Recognize the Politics of the Modern Conservative Evangelical Church?

By John Turley

On November 2, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

American conservative evangelical Christianity has become one of the most influential political forces in the United States. Over the past several decades, and particularly since the rise of Donald Trump, a large and highly visible portion of white evangelical Protestantism has aligned itself closely with the Republican Party. Its political agenda has emphasized opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights, stricter immigration enforcement, gun rights, religious liberty, traditional gender roles, and, increasingly, the claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

This raises an uncomfortable but legitimate question: How closely does this political movement resemble the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels?

The “conservative evangelical church” is not a single institution with a single political agenda. It encompasses Southern Baptists, nondenominational megachurches, Reformed Christians, Pentecostals, charismatics, and many independent congregations. Millions of people in evangelical congregations do not always agree with one another or even with their pastors on all political issues.

Polls usually focus on the segment most visible in American politics, white conservative evangelical Protestants. They make up a population of roughly twenty-five million adults whose voting behavior and political opinions have been extensively studied. This is the group I will focus on.

We shouldn’t assume they represent all evangelicals. Black and Latino evangelicals, for example, often share many of the same theological beliefs while differing substantially in their political opinions.

I’m not going to discuss if evangelicals are “hypocrites.” That accusation generates more heat than light. A more useful approach is to compare documented evangelical political positions with specific teachings attributed to Jesus and ask where the two fit comfortably and where they do not.

What Did Jesus Actually Teach?

Whatever you believe about the historical Jesus or the theological claims made about him, the Gospels present a recognizable and consistent ethical message.

The Sermon on the Mount praises the meek and merciful and commands followers to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them. The Good Samaritan makes a despised outsider the model of what it means to be a neighbor. People are judged according to whether they fed the hungry, clothed the needy, welcomed the stranger, and cared for the imprisoned.

Jesus also repeatedly warns about the love of wealth. In one case, he tells a rich man that his possessions are an obstacle to following him and declares that no one can serve both God and money. In another case he says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus never says that money is evil, and he recognizes that it can be used to do good for the less fortunate. He warned against greed and accumulating wealth for its own sake.

These are not obscure theological interpretations. They are among the best-known passages in Christian scripture.

The difficulty comes when Christians try to translate the teachings of a first-century itinerant Jewish rabbi into the policies of a twenty-first-century nation-state. Jesus never developed a federal budget, immigration code, tax schedule, or health-care program.

Christians can agree that they should help the poor while disagreeing about whether it should be done by government or private charity. They can value compassion toward immigrants while also believing that nations have a legitimate right to control their borders.

Christians have struggled with this distinction between personal morality and governmental responsibility since the fourth century when Christianity began to expand their political power. We should be cautious about declaring that any particular modern policy is obviously “what Jesus would do.”

Where the Fit Is Closer Than Critics Admit

Several aspects of conservative evangelicalism deserve consideration before we look at the contradictions.

The first is opposition to abortion. Evangelicals generally understand their pro-life position to be protection of vulnerable human life. Whether you agree with their conclusions about when personhood begins, the argument itself is not difficult to connect with a Christian obligation to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Second, evangelicals have a substantial tradition of charitable giving. Practicing evangelicals tend to donate generously to churches and charities. Evangelical organizations have played important roles in disaster relief, international development, food assistance, adoption services, and care for the poor. Charitable giving is an important part of evangelical religious practice and has an obvious connection with the Gospel emphasis on caring for people in need.

Immigration provides a third, more complicated example. Surveys suggest that many evangelicals hold positions more nuanced than their political reputation would suggest. Some support secure borders and enforcement of immigration laws while simultaneously opposing the separation of families and favoring some form of legal status or pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States.

This is not necessarily inconsistent. You can believe both that a nation requires secure borders and that immigrants should be treated humanely. The difficulty arises when enforcement becomes punitive.

Where the Fit Becomes Strained

White evangelicals have been unusually supportive of aggressive immigration enforcement, increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, detention of undocumented migrants, and mass-deportation proposals. They also tend to view ICE more favorably than other major religious groups.

The story of The Good Samaritan is instructive on many levels. On the surface this is a story of someone considered to be an outsider showing compassion and caring for an unfortunate person. Samaritans were considered disreputable by Jews and the fact that a Samaritan would offer unequivocal love and concern for the less fortunate while Jews did not is significant on its own.

There’s another layer to this story. The “expert in the law” who questioned Jesus about whom he should see as his neighbor has long been considered to be a minor character who simply sets up the question so Jesus can provide a story. But a deeper reading reveals that the expert may be the object of the story. Rather than trying to understand who his neighbor is, he is attempting to set boundaries around those to whom he must show love. Jesus doesn’t ridicule him or directly point out his errors. He merely allows him to conclude that everyone is his neighbor regardless of any preconceived notions about them. Whether this changes the expert or not we aren’t told. We can only hope that it does.

This passage doesn’t tell us how governments should regulate immigration, but it makes it difficult to argue that the suffering of foreigners should be morally irrelevant to Christians.

An even more striking controversy has developed within evangelicalism over empathy.

Some conservative Christian writers, including Pastor Doug Wilson and theologian Joe Rigney, have warned that empathy can become morally dangerous when it causes people to identify so completely with another person’s suffering that they abandon moral judgment. They distinguish empathy from sympathy or compassion and argue that Christians should resist the former when it undermines their political objectives.

Their evangelical critics regard this as a remarkable reversal of traditional Christian priorities. Compassion for people who suffer is hardly peripheral to the ministry of Jesus. He repeatedly responded to sickness, hunger, grief, exclusion, and poverty with compassion and empathy.

The significance of this debate is that the criticism is no longer simply coming from secular liberals attacking conservative Christianity. Evangelicals themselves are arguing about whether their political culture has made them suspicious of one of Christianity’s central virtues.

Wealth, Poverty, and Selective Morality

Jesus repeatedly describes love of wealth as spiritually dangerous. He warns against storing treasures on earth and says that people cannot serve both God and money.

Jesus did not propose an economic system. Nothing in the Gospels tells us whether the top marginal tax rate should be 25 percent or 50 percent. It is simplistic to claim that Christianity requires support for a particular welfare program or tax policy.

But it is equally difficult to reconcile the Gospels with a Christianity that celebrates wealth while treating poverty as evidence of personal failure.

This leads to a broader question of selective morality. Why do abortion and sexual orientation receive enormous political attention while greed, pride, dishonesty, cruelty, contempt for foreigners, and indifference toward the poor receive comparatively less? Jesus certainly discussed sexual morality, but he also spoke repeatedly about money, hypocrisy, mercy, forgiveness, pride, and care for society’s outcasts.

A political Christianity that concentrates heavily on some sins while overlooking others risks reshaping the Gospel around the priorities of a political coalition.

Romans 13 and the Power of Government

The tension is especially visible in the Trump administration’s family-separation policy of 2018. Attorney General Jeff Sessions invoked Romans 13, Paul’s admonition to submit to governing authorities, as defense of their enforcement of immigration law.

The argument cannot simply be dismissed as theological fabrication. But Romans 13 also carries historical baggage. Appeals to obey governmental authority have repeatedly been used to defend unjust political systems and even slavery. These arguments generally ignore the fact that the same chapter concludes by describing love of one’s neighbor as fulfillment of the law.

There is also an historic Christian theological tradition behind this argument. Martin Luther’s “Two Kingdoms” theology distinguished between the responsibilities of individual Christians and those of civil government. Individuals may be commanded to forgive enemies, while governments still require police, courts, prisons, and armies. A government cannot literally turn the other cheek when confronted with violent crime or invasion.

Christianity contains these two obligations and they are often in tension — respect for legitimate civil authority and resistance to injustice. Emphasizing only the first can turn obedience to government into a religious virtue regardless of what government does. It’s important to remember Jesus’ commandment to render under Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s. Unfortunately, many modern conservative evangelicals seem to confuse Caesar and God.

Trump, Cyrus, and the Question of Character

Some evangelical leaders have compared Trump with Cyrus, the Persian king described in Isaiah. Cyrus was not an Israelite and did not worship Israel’s God, but the biblical narrative presents him as an instrument through whom God carried out a larger purpose.

Applied to Trump, the argument is straightforward. A political leader does not need to be personally virtuous to accomplish outcomes Christians consider desirable. Polling suggests that many white evangelicals make precisely this distinction. They express reservations about Trump’s personal behavior while strongly approving of his presidency and policies.

This is nothing new. Voters have routinely supported politicians they consider personally flawed because they prefer their policies to the alternative.

But for Christians, it creates another tension. The New Testament places considerable emphasis on honesty, fidelity, humility, self-control, and personal character. If those virtues matter when evaluating pastors, teachers, neighbors, and ordinary church members, Evangelical Christians need to explain why they are less important when evaluating political leaders.

Christian Nationalism

Perhaps the greatest departure from the teaching of Jesus comes with Christian nationalism. This is the idea that Christianity should enjoy a privileged relationship with the American state and that American law should explicitly reflect Christian identity.

The problem is not that Christians participate in politics. Christianity has influenced political movements ranging from the abolition of slavery and civil rights to temperance and opposition to abortion. Religious citizens have the same right as everyone else to bring their moral convictions into public debate.

The danger arises when Christianity becomes identified with a particular nation, party, or political leader and when Christian groups insist that the government must reflect only their religious convictions.

Jesus consistently resisted attempts to transform his religious mission into conventional political power. When questioned by Pilate, he declared that his kingdom was “not of this world.” His followers may participate vigorously in earthly politics, but the Gospel does not easily support the proposition that any modern nation is itself God’s kingdom.

A church shaped by Jesus should be capable of criticizing every political party, including the one supported by most of its members. It should be suspicious when electoral victory is described as divine victory and equally suspicious when political opponents are treated as enemies of God.

A Church Arguing With Itself

American evangelicalism is already having this debate internally. Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has warned that mass deportation could separate an enormous number of families and has urged evangelicals to approach immigration through a more explicitly Christian framework.

Ordinary evangelical Christians are more divided than either their harshest critics or their most politically vocal leaders like to acknowledge. The story is not simply one of a monolithic church abandoning the teachings of its founder. It is the story of a large and diverse religious movement struggling with an ancient problem. How should a religion built around mercy, sacrifice, forgiveness, and love of neighbor fit within a political system built around power, law, coercion, and competing interests?

Evangelicals invoking Romans 13, and other teachings of Jesus, believe they are interpreting scripture faithfully. They may not be correct about every political conclusion, or any conclusion, but they have not invented the argument from nothing.

Perhaps the best test is not whether conservative evangelicals can find biblical passages supporting their positions; almost any political movement can do that. The important question is what receives the greatest emphasis.

If someone encountered American Christianity without ever having read the Gospels, what would they conclude Jesus cared about most? Abortion? Sexuality? Immigration enforcement? Religious control of government? Or would they recognize a teacher who spoke relentlessly about mercy, humility, forgiveness, hypocrisy, wealth, and care for outsiders and the poor?

That is a question worth asking not only of conservative evangelicals, but of every Christian movement that seeks political power.

Illustration generated by author using ChatGPT

Sources

1. Pew Research Center, “White evangelicals remain among Trump’s strongest supporters, but less so than a year ago” (Feb. 9, 2026). https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/09/white-evangelicals-remain-among-trumps-strongest-supporters-but-theyre-less-supportive-than-a-year-ago/

2. Pew Research Center, “Americans’ Views of Religion’s Role in Government and Christian Nationalism” (May 14, 2026). https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/05/14/how-americans-feel-about-religions-influence-in-government-and-public-life/

3. PRRI, “Immigration Enforcement, ICE, and Civil Liberties in the Second Trump Administration” (March 26, 2026). https://prri.org/research/americans-views-on-immigration-enforcement-ice-and-civil-liberties-in-the-second-trump-administration/

4. PRRI, “The New Immigration Crackdown: Where Americans Stand” (Dec. 9, 2025). https://prri.org/research/the-new-immigration-crackdown-where-americans-stand/

5. Lifeway Research / Evangelical Immigration Table, “Evangelicals Want Secure Borders and Citizenship Pathway for Immigrants” (2025 study). https://research.lifeway.com/2025/02/05/evangelicals-want-secure-borders-and-citizenship-pathway-for-immigrants/

6. Religion News Service / Word&Way, “Evangelical Groups Warn Trump’s Deportations Could Leave 1.3M ‘Torn Apart’ From Families” (May 5, 2026). https://wordandway.org/2026/05/05/evangelical-groups-warn-trumps-deportations-could-leave-1-3m-torn-apart-from-families/

7. The Banner, “U.S. Evangelicals Divided Over What Faith Demands as Immigration Tensions Deepen” (Feb. 6, 2026). https://www.thebanner.org/news/2026/02/us-evangelicals-divided-over-what-faith-demands-as-immigration-tensions-deepen

8. PBS News, “Is empathy a sin? Some conservative Christians argue it can be” (Aug. 21, 2025). https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/is-empathy-a-sin-some-conservative-christians-argue-it-can-be

9. The Gospel Coalition, “Navigating Empathy” (Themelios, Dec. 7, 2021). https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/navigating-empathy/

10. Texas Observer, “The Little-Known Theology Behind White Evangelical Support of Donald Trump” (April 20, 2019). https://www.texasobserver.org/the-little-known-theology-behind-white-evangelical-support-of-donald-trump/

11. HuffPost, “Evangelicals Keep Misusing The Same Bible Verses To Give Trump A Pass” (June 20, 2018). https://www.huffpost.com/entry/evangelicals-keep-misusing-the-same-bible-verses-to-give-trump-a-pass_n_5b297b7fe4b0a4dc9921e6e8

12. Commonweal Magazine, “Rationalizing Trump” (Feb. 24, 2025). https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/rationalizing-trump

13. Providence, “Romans 13 and ICE under the Trump Administration” (Feb. 24, 2026). https://providencemag.com/2026/03/romans-13-and-ice-under-the-trump-administration/

14. Grey Matter Research, “Giving Is Down among Evangelicals” (Sept. 10, 2024). https://greymatterresearch.com/the-giving-gap/

15. Lifeway Research, “What Sparks Evangelical Generosity? Discipleship” (Jan. 14, 2022). https://research.lifeway.com/2022/01/14/are-evangelicals-generous-enough/

16. MinistryWatch, “Christians are Most Charitable, Giving Drives Happiness” (Dec. 18, 2024). https://ministrywatch.com/christians-are-most-charitable-giving-drives-happiness/

Beyond “OK, Boomer” — Why Stereotyping Seniors Gets It Wrong

By John Turley

On October 30, 2026

In Commentary

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive, but it seems that the Internet has lumped everyone over the age of 60 into the monolithic group known as “Boomers“. It not only includes those of us in the baby boom generation is also catches the older Gen X people as well. It seems that we all have the same opinions about everything, at least in the minds of the young blog writers. The internet is flooded with articles with titles such as “Crazy Things that Boomers Eat”, “Stupid Things that Boomers Still Believe”, “10 phrases that Boomers Won’t Understand”, and, my all-time favorite, “15 Things that Show Boomers only Care about Themselves “. If I were to write these same articles using “Gen Z” in place of “Boomers”, I’d be accused of being an out of touch old fossil.

Many young people assume that all seniors form a single uniform conservative voting bloc. According to the Pew Research Center in a 2026 party affiliation survey, adults 65 and older are almost evenly split, 51% favoring Republicans and 46% favoring Democrats. But even that is somewhat misleading, many of us, older folks who report favoring Republicans still think of ourselves as belonging to the Republican Party of Nelson Rockefeller, fiscally conservative, and socially moderate. This was the Republican Party before MAGA or the Tea Party. I know because I was once one of those Republicans. While I no longer identify as a Republican, I don’t identify as a Democrat either.

The Boomers led the protest against the Vietnam War. Some of us turned out by the thousands to protest against what many viewed as an unjust war. Of course, there were many of us who served because we felt it was our duty to our country, not because we felt that the government was always right. This was the first time the people actually began to distrust their government. While it’s a common sentiment now it was an alien concept to us at the time.

I haven’t noticed large numbers of the younger, progressive members of our society protesting any of the recent wars. Personally, I believe that since there is no draft, war doesn’t touch them individually, so as a group they don’t have the motivation to protest. I’ve been to the No Kings rallies and it’s unusual to see anyone under 60 and people under 50 are rare. So, the idea that seniors blindly support the government just doesn’t hold up.

There is a common misconception among young people that Boomers are technologically inept. They mistake unfamiliarity with a lack of understanding. The 20-year-old who takes great pride in their ability to post TikTok videos likely has little or no understanding of the science that makes social media possible. Of course, there are some older people who really don’t understand technology just as there are younger people who don’t. But this is the generation that was a major force in the development of laptop computers, cellular technology and smartphones, the Internet, Wi-Fi, and most of the convivences of the digital age that young people take for granted. We had to repeatedly learn new technology and adapt as science evolved. Younger people grew up with cell phones and computers and have not had to adapt to never before seen technical advances. Saying that we Boomers don’t understand technology it’s the same thing as saying our parents’ generation who put a man on the moon didn’t understand technology because they didn’t have a laptop computer and had to rely on a slide rule.

Boomers are typically painted as being sexually repressed and homophobic. But this is the generation that led away in the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, and the gay pride movement. We had slogans such as “free love “ and “make love not war“. This was a generation that took part in the “Stonewall Riots” that first drew national attention to police abuse of gay people. It’s also the generation that led the way for same-sex marriage and for gay couples to adopt.

Support for same-sex marriage is a good model for understanding how Boomer’s opinions have evolved. Gallup survey data from the 1990s showed this age group to be largely opposed to same-sex marriage, but by 2016 these same surveys showed a majority approving, and the approval rate has continued to climb. This shift in attitudes has been slow, but most of the Boomers grew up at a time when homosexuality was widely condemned, was almost never discussed publicly, and people could even be criminally charged. People in their late 80s in early 90s are the least likely to have shifted positions on gay rights issues but they are the ones who were raised in the times of the harshest attitudes.

Boomers are usually identified with racial prejudice, and this may be the clearest example of the generational divide. To provide some historical framework, many of us older members of the generation were born and came of age during the waning days of racial segregation. This had a profound effect on both Black and White Boomers as we saw racial hatred and violence played out on our television and argued about in our living rooms. For some it heightened their racial animosity while others were incensed at the unfair treatment of their fellow citizens.

Many young White college students joined with Black students at civil rights rallies, voter registration drives, and as freedom riders. Unfortunately, many also joined groups opposed to civil rights and some even engaged in violence against minorities.

Surveys over the past 25 years have shown a generally positive, though slight, shift in the attitudes of White Boomers on racial issues and support for programs to improve racial equality and address the lingering effects of past discrimination. But the positive shift has not been universal. Older White citizens who strongly identify with conservative causes have shown an increasing resistance to programs to support minority rights as demonstrated by their almost universal opposition to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

It is still important to recognize that a Black middle-class family has more in common with a White middle-class family than either one has with a billionaire, regardless of race. The increasing recognition of this commonality hopefully will lead to improving relations across all levels of society.

The younger generation seems to reserve its strongest criticism of the Boomers for issues related to the economy. They see older citizens as a Greedy Gray Army out to steal their future, and keep all the wealth for ourselves. They fail to recognize that we spent our entire lives working and saving. We paid income taxes. We paid Social Security taxes. We paid Medicare taxes. We invested in IRAs and retirement accounts. We are not stealing anything from anyone. We are not being given anything. We earned it. We deserve it. And we expect to receive it.

Looking at it from the perspective of older Americans, we see younger people demanding student loan forgiveness and affordable—subsidized—housing and healthcare. Many of us believe that we’re asking for what we worked for and it’s the young who want a transfer of wealth. At the same time many older people are raising their grandchildren and even great grandchildren and providing significant financial support to their adult children.

Putting all seniors in a single group is no more accurate than saying that all young people lack respect, have no work ethic, and are only concerned with physical appearance and the number of likes they get on social media. It is true, that if you look at “average” polling data it will tell you that the average 75-year-old has different opinions than the average 25-year-old. But that’s a long way from saying all 75-year-olds have the same opinion. It seems that ageism may be the only acceptable prejudice left in American society.

To any young people who have made it this far in this article, I just want to say: “We are all individuals with our own opinions. You’re going to be old someday and the younger generation will look at you as a bunch of out-of- touch old fossils.”

Image generated by author using ChatGPT.

The Generation Gap Is In The Soap Dish

By John Turley

On October 9, 2026

In Humor

It seems that hardly a week goes by that I don’t see one or more articles about some aspect of the “generation gap”. Usually, they have something to do with old folks complaining about how the younger generation has no manners, respect, or work ethic and the younger people complaining about how the old fogeys—usually referred to as Boomers—just don’t understand technology, social media, or whatever the hot item of the day is. Of course, they expect us old folks to benefit from the vast experience gained in their two and a half decades of life. I’m always reminded of an old saying, “all old people were young once, but no young person has ever been old.” Of course, there I go again, another Boomer wandering back into the past.

But there is a real generation gap, and it is “bar soap versus shower gel.” It’s hard to believe, but somebody actually did a survey on this subject and found that 65% of older people prefer bar soap while about 75% of younger people preferred shower gel.

It actually surprised me to learn that all that soap in the squeeze bottles isn’t the same. There is shower gel and then there is body wash. Apparently, body wash is more moisturizing while gel is better for oily skin. I just know that I don’t care for either one of them and I always feel like they never get completely rinsed off.

My wife and I have been doing a lot of traveling this summer and it seems that hotels have almost all completed their transition from bar soap to that liquid stuff in a dispenser hanging on the wall. From what little research I’ve done, apparently this went into full swing during COVID. The claim was that the shower gel is less likely to transmit infection. Although I don’t understand how a dispenser that sits there all the time and is handled by everyone is less a threat of infection than an individually wrapped bar of soap that only I handle. I think it’s just cheaper.

I only ask one thing from a bar of soap and that’s to get me clean. It’s a pretty simple process. You pick it up. You use it. You put it down. You can hold it in one hand. You’re not trying to open a slippery bottle with wet hands. In between showers the soap just sits in a dish waiting for its next job.

It seems to me that life with shower gel is much more complicated. You can’t take a shower until you have a collection of bottles and a personal development plan. You must have one bottle for your hair, one bottle for your face, and another bottle for your body. You have your energizing body wash for the mornings and a calming body wash for evenings. You also have a body wash with botanical extracts for when you need to reconnect with nature. It’s important to have a selection of body washes to be sure that one will match your mood. And don’t even get me started on exfoliating.

If you ask, “Which one is soap?”, you get the answer “It’s not soap, it’s a hydrating shower gel.” You then ask, “Does it get you clean?” And the answer is “Yes.” You respond, “Then it’s soap.” Although I suppose that may be considered an insensitive line of questioning.

I know when my bar of soap is about to fade away, it keeps getting smaller. With shower gel you don’t discover the bottle is empty until you’re standing there soaking wet and trying to squeeze out the last little bit. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d prefer a little advance notice.

And then there’s the whole thing about fragrances. I prefer my soap to smell something like soap. With shower gel there is a whole range of everything from cedarwood to spice to cinnamon to coastal sage to citrus fruit. I can’t even begin to guess what Morning Breeze is supposed to smell like.

I suppose that there’s room for coexistence. I’ll keep my bar of soap, and they can keep their collection of squeezables. But it’s going to take a much larger soap dish. Just so no one expects me to try their brand new $20 bottle of eucalyptus body wash.

Image generated by author using ChatGPT.

Why Is Everyone Talking About Socialism Again?

By John Turley

On August 22, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

For much of the late twentieth century, “socialism” was almost a forbidden word in American politics. Republicans used it as an accusation, Democrats generally avoided it, and politicians who actually described themselves as socialists occupied a small place on the political fringe.

Things have changed dramatically. Today, politicians on both the right and the left talk about socialism—although they usually mean entirely different things.

On the right, “socialism” has become a broad warning label applied to proposals ranging from universal health insurance to government regulation and higher taxes. On the left, a growing number of politicians and activists have reclaimed the word, associating it with economic equality, stronger labor rights, universal public services, and restraints on corporate power.

The interesting question may be less whether America is becoming socialist than why Americans are suddenly arguing about the meaning of socialism.

Socialism Originally Meant Something Specific

Historically, socialism was not simply another word for government spending. It developed during the nineteenth century largely in response to industrial capitalism. Although socialist thinkers disagreed considerably among themselves, they generally believed that the production resources of society—factories, mines, transportation systems, land, and eventually large corporations—should be owned collectively or controlled by workers rather than by private investors.

Karl Marx advocated a transformation by revolution. Other socialists eventually pursued democratic and parliamentary approaches.

That distinction matters because many policies routinely described as “socialist” in American political debate do not meet the traditional definition at all. A government can tax corporations, regulate banks, provide health insurance, and maintain a generous welfare system while leaving most businesses privately owned. Economists would normally describe such a country as a mixed capitalist economy or social democracy, rather than a socialist economy.

What the American Right Means by Socialism

For many conservatives, socialism has acquired a much broader meaning. The term is frequently applied to policies that increase government involvement in the economy such as progressive taxation, environmental regulation, student-debt relief, subsidized health care, expanded welfare benefits, government-supported child care, or other programs that redistribute income or provide services collectively.

In this usage, socialism is less a precise economic system than a direction of travel. Conservatives argue that as government assumes greater responsibility for allocating resources and providing benefits, individual choice and private markets become less important.

There is a legitimate philosophical argument here. There has always been a debate over where the boundary should lie between private markets and collective responsibility.

But calling every government economic intervention “socialism” stretches the word almost beyond recognition. By that definition, nearly every modern industrial democracy—including the United States—has been partly socialist for generations.

The political usefulness of the word helps explain its persistence. For Americans who remember the Cold War, “socialism” may evoke the Soviet Union, communist Eastern Europe, Cuba, or more recently Venezuela. Calling an opponent socialist therefore does more than criticize a particular tax or health-care proposal. It associates that proposal with an entire political system many Americans regard as oppressive and economically unsuccessful.

Polling illustrates how powerful that association remains. Pew Research Center found in 2022 that only 14 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents had a positive impression of socialism. Republicans were also much more likely than Democrats to associate socialism with restrictions on individual freedom.

What the American Left Means by Socialism

The situation on the left is considerably more complicated because there is no single left-wing definition of socialism.

Many Americans who describe themselves favorably toward “socialism” appear to mean something closer to social democracy: a basically capitalist economy combined with universal health care, stronger unions, affordable higher education, progressive taxation, extensive social insurance, and stronger regulation of corporations.

Their preferred models are often Scandinavian countries such as Denmark and Finland. Yet those countries retain private businesses, private property, financial markets, entrepreneurship, and international corporations. They are heavily regulated capitalist welfare states, not classical socialist economies.

Pew’s research demonstrates this ambiguity. When Americans favorable toward socialism were asked what they liked about it, many emphasized fairness, meeting basic needs, and combining elements of capitalism and socialism rather than eliminating capitalism altogether.

Other people on the American left mean something more substantial when they use the term. The Democratic Socialists of America, for example, explicitly says democratic socialism should go beyond merely regulating capitalism. The organization advocates greater democratic control of workplaces and collective ownership of important parts of the economy, including areas such as energy and transportation. That position is much closer to the traditional meaning of socialism.

Consequently, it is misleading to assume that a liberal Democrat supporting Medicare expansion and a democratic socialist advocating worker control of corporations necessarily have the same economic philosophy.

They may support some of the same immediate policies while disagreeing profoundly about the ultimate economic system they want.

Why Has Socialism Suddenly Returned?

First was the financial crisis of 2008. Younger Americans watched banks and financial institutions receive extraordinary government assistance while millions of ordinary Americans lost jobs, savings, and homes. That experience weakened the assumption that an essentially unregulated market produces fair outcomes.

Then came decades of concern about wage stagnation, college debt, housing affordability, medical expenses, and growing concentrations of wealth. For some younger Americans, “capitalism” increasingly came to mean not neighborhood businesses and entrepreneurship but enormous corporations, billionaires and now trillionaires, expensive housing, and economic insecurity.

Bernie Sanders accelerated the transformation during his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. By openly calling himself a democratic socialist while attracting millions of votes, Sanders helped remove some of the Cold War stigma surrounding the word.

Generational change matters as well. Younger Americans did not experience the Cold War in the same way their parents and grandparents did. Pew found striking age differences in its 2022 survey. Americans under 30 were roughly as likely to have an exclusively positive view of socialism as an exclusively positive view of capitalism. Older Americans remained considerably more favorable toward capitalism.

The political right has responded by emphasizing the word even more strongly. That makes strategic sense. If progressive Democrats increasingly accept the socialist label—or propose policies Republicans can associate with it—Republicans have an incentive to connect those policies with a word that remains deeply unpopular among conservative and many older voters.

The result is a feedback loop: the left talks more about socialism because the word has become less frightening to some voters, while the right talks more about socialism precisely because it hopes to make the word frightening again.

Is America Already Partly Socialist?

The answer depends almost entirely upon our definition.

Under the traditional definition—collective ownership of the means of production—the United States is overwhelmingly capitalist. Most farms, factories, banks, hospitals, restaurants, stores, technology companies, media companies, and other productive enterprises are privately owned.

But America has never operated as a completely laissez-faire capitalist economy either.

The federal government operates Social Security, for example, which the Social Security Administration itself describes as a social insurance program. Workers and employers contribute through payroll taxes, and benefits provide partial income replacement after retirement, disability, or death. About 96 percent of American jobs are covered.

Medicare and Medicaid place government deeply into health-care financing while most hospitals, physician practices, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and medical suppliers remain private.

The government also insures private bank deposits through the FDIC. Deposits at insured banks are generally protected up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, per ownership category, backed by the federal government.

Public schools, public universities, highways, libraries, police departments, fire departments, water systems, parks, and numerous municipal utilities provide goods and services collectively rather than through ordinary private markets.

The United States even owns or operates certain enterprises directly. The Postal Service, for example, is an independent establishment within the executive branch that provides a nationwide public service while simultaneously operating in a competitive marketplace.

These arrangements contain elements of collective provision, social insurance, public ownership, or economic regulation, but calling all of them “socialism” creates more confusion than clarity.

A public fire department is not evidence that America has adopted a socialist economic system any more than a privately owned grocery store proves that government has no role in the economy.

America Has a Mixed Economy—and Always Has

Perhaps the greatest problem with the current socialism debate is the assumption that capitalism and socialism exist as two completely separate boxes and that a country must choose one or the other. Modern economies rarely work that way.

The United States relies primarily on private ownership, competition, investment, and markets to produce goods and services. At the same time, Americans have repeatedly decided that certain risks and services should be handled collectively.

Even organized labor introduces an element of collective economic power into a capitalist system, although union membership has declined substantially. In 2025, 10 percent of American wage and salary workers belonged to unions, compared with 20.1 percent in 1983.

The real political disagreement is rarely capitalism versus socialism in their pure theoretical forms. It is about where to draw the line between the market and the community.

Should health insurance operate primarily as a commercial product or a public service? Should housing be left largely to market forces or should government intervene to make it more affordable? Should corporations answer primarily to shareholders, or should workers have greater influence over corporate decisions? How progressive should taxation be? Which industries, if any, should be publicly owned? How much inequality should society tolerate in exchange for the incentives created by private enterprise?

A surprising twist is that some of the loudest recent “socialism” accusations are coming from conservatives — aimed at their own president. Since returning to office, the Trump administration has taken direct equity stakes in Intel, secured a “golden share” in U.S. Steel, arranged profit-sharing with Nvidia and AMD on chip sales to China, imposed sweeping tariffs, and directed the Pentagon to prioritize coal — an unprecedented degree of direct federal involvement in private enterprise for a Republican administration. Commentators across the spectrum — from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Wall Street Journal — have reached for terms like “state capitalism” or “state capitalism with American characteristics,” an explicit echo of the Chinese Communist Party’s own “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. One economist with more than three decades of market-watching called it plainly “the most economically interventionist government of my lifetime”.

Those are legitimate political questions. Calling one side “capitalist” and the other “socialist” obscures more than it explains.

The Word May Matter Less Than the Argument

There is one particularly revealing finding in the polling. Americans do not necessarily treat capitalism and socialism as opposites. Pew found people who expressed favorable opinions of both, suggesting that many Americans interpret capitalism as representing markets and opportunity while interpreting socialism as representing economic security and fairness.

That may tell us something important about the current debate. It appears that Americans want the vitality of capitalism tempered by the compassion of socialism.

The renewed interest in socialism doesn’t indicate that millions of Americans suddenly want the government to seize factories and abolish private enterprise. Instead, it reflects dissatisfaction with how the existing economic system distributes opportunity, security, wealth, and political power.

Conservative warnings about socialism often reflect a genuine concern that expanding government responsibility can gradually reduce economic freedom, increase taxation, and shift decisions from individuals and markets toward political institutions.

Those are fundamentally different concerns—and both become difficult to discuss when the same word means entirely different things to the people using it.

The question is not whether America should become “socialist,” it is what kind of capitalism we want.

That argument has been with us throughout American history. Only the vocabulary has changed.

For an additional discussion of the elements of socialism, see my post Three Shades of Left, published on November 10th 2025.

Image generated by author using ChatGPT.

Sources

NY1 State of Politics, “Understanding democratic socialism amid its rise in 2026 elections,” July 7, 2026. https://nystateofpolitics.com/state-of-politics/new-york/politics/2026/07/07/understanding-democratic-socialism-amid-its-rise-in-2026-elections
CNN, “Americans — including many Republicans — are losing faith in capitalism, polling shows,” July 23, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/23/politics/republicans-capitalism-socialism-poll
HotAir, “Is Socialism Really Gaining Steam, or Are Socialists Just Gaming the System Better?,” July 28, 2026. https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/07/28/is-socialism-really-gaining-steam-or-are-socialists-just-gaming-the-system-better-n3817374
USA Today, “Mamdani wins NYC mayor’s race in generational shift for Democrats,” November 2025. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/mamdani-faces-cuomo-become-nyc-132437910.html
AOL/NBC News republish, “In generational shift, Zohran Mamdani wins NYC mayor’s race,” November 2025. https://www.aol.com/articles/generational-shift-zohran-mamdani-wins-024145015.html
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Wikipedia, “Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor” (Bernie Sanders quote on the 2008 bailout). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_for_the_rich_and_capitalism_for_the_poor
Yahoo/The Hill, “Jeffries accuses Trump of tanking the economy to create opportunities for the rich,” 2026. https://www.yahoo.com/news/jeffries-accuses-trump-tanking-economy-220454230.html
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A Versus B, “Capitalism vs Socialism 2026: Key Differences Explained.” https://www.aversusb.net/blog/capitalism-vs-socialism-2026-key-differences-explained

Our Shared Story Can Still Bring Us Together

By John Turley

On August 18, 2026

In Commentary

I’ve been a member of the Sons of the American Revolution for quite some time now. At the beginning of April, I started looking around for a Memorial Day event that we could join. I had assumed that my hometown of Charleston WV, being the state capital, would surely have an event since it is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I was surprised to find that none was planned.

I believed that it was especially important that a Memorial Day service be held here because West Virginia has, since World War II, one of the highest per capita rates of military service and combat casualties in the country. So, another SAR member and I got together, and we planned our own event and arranged for it to be held on the state capitol grounds. At the end of our service, I looked out at the group that was gathered: there was no right or left, there was no red or blue, there was no conservative or liberal. There were only proud Americans who had come together to honor our country, its veterans and its history.

Americans disagree about almost everything these days. Politics, religion, education, history, and even the meaning of patriotism have all become subjects of bitter debate. Too often, we define ourselves more by the groups we oppose than by the country we share.

Yet there are still opportunities to remember that before we were Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or progressives, we were Americans. The ongoing 250th Anniversary of the Revolutionary Era offers one of those rare opportunities to express what we share, not how we differ.

The semiquincentennial should be far more than fireworks, parades, and historical reenactments. It should be an invitation to rediscover the remarkable story we all inherited. The American Revolution was not perfect. The nation it created was imperfect from the beginning, carrying the stain of slavery, denying women equal rights, and often failing to live up to its own ideals. Those shortcomings do not erase the extraordinary achievement of creating a republic founded on the revolutionary belief that legitimate government derives its authority from the consent of the governed.

The founders left us more than a nation. They left us a challenge. Every generation has been asked to move the country a little closer to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence—that all people are created equal and possess inherent rights that no government should take away. Those words have inspired abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights leaders, immigrants seeking freedom, and millions of ordinary citizens who believed America could become better than it was.

That is a heritage worth celebrating together.

Organizations devoted to civic life have an important role to play in that celebration. Groups such as the Sons of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the American Legion, Rotary clubs, Civitan clubs, veterans’ organizations, scouting groups, historical societies, libraries, museums, churches, and countless other local groups have spent decades preserving history, encouraging volunteerism, supporting education, and strengthening their communities. While each has its own mission and traditions, they all remind us that citizenship is more than voting every few years. It is an ongoing commitment to serving neighbors and improving the places where we live.

These organizations also offer something increasingly rare in modern America: opportunities for people with different political views to work side by side on practical goals. A community service project, a scholarship program, a veterans’ memorial, a food drive, or a history program rarely asks participants how they voted. It asks only if they are willing to help.

That is a lesson our country desperately needs. Social media and cable television often reward outrage. Algorithms profit by convincing us that our fellow Americans are enemies rather than neighbors. It becomes easy to believe that our differences outweigh everything we have in common.

History tells a different story. Americans have survived fierce political battles before. We have argued over the Constitution, endured civil war, struggled through economic depression and assassinations, fought world wars, and confronted profound disagreements about civil rights and social change. Our history has never been one of perfect unity. Instead, it has been a continuing effort to find common purpose despite deep disagreements.

The Revolution itself offers an example. The thirteen colonies differed enormously in religion, economy, geography, and culture. New England merchants, Virginia planters, Pennsylvania farmers, and South Carolina traders often had conflicting interests. Yet they discovered that some principles were more important than their differences. Their unity was never complete, but it was sufficient to build a nation. We face no less important a challenge today.

The 250th anniversary should encourage every community to host public readings of the Declaration of Independence, historical lectures, concerts, service projects, naturalization ceremonies, veterans’ recognitions, student essay contests, and volunteer events that welcome everyone. These occasions should not become platforms for partisan speeches. They should remind us that our history belongs to all Americans.

Celebrating our shared heritage does not require us to ignore the darker chapters of our past. Mature patriotism is honest enough to acknowledge failures while remaining grateful for the ideals that allowed those failures to be challenged and corrected. A confident nation can tell its whole story without either whitewashing its mistakes or denying its accomplishments.

Perhaps that is the greatest gift the 250th anniversary can offer is reminding us that America has always been a work in progress. Each generation inherits both the nation’s achievements and its unfinished work. If we can gather to honor the courage, sacrifice, and aspirations of those who came before us, perhaps we can rediscover something that has become increasingly scarce — the ability to see one another first as fellow citizens.

Our common heritage cannot solve every political disagreement. It will not erase ideological differences or end heated debates about the country’s future. Nor should it. Democracy depends upon vigorous debate. But it also depends upon something deeper — a shared commitment to our republic and our active participation as citizens. We need to become informed participants in our society and we need to vote and encourage others to vote.

As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, the greatest act of patriotism is not winning another political argument. It is remembering that despite our many differences, we remain participants in the same remarkable American experiment. If civic organizations, veterans’ groups, historical societies, schools, churches, and local communities can help us rediscover that simple truth, they will have performed one of the greatest public services imaginable.

The founders gave us a republic, and they challenged each generation to preserve it and to improve it. Two hundred and fifty years later, that responsibility belongs to all of us. We must not fail.

Image generated br author using ChatGPT.

Trump, MAGA, and the Politics of Permission

By John Turley

On July 18, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

Donald Trump did not invent a new American bigotry. He did something more subtle—and perhaps more consequential. He transformed long-standing resentments into a political identity and gave many people permission to express views they had previously kept private.

The central question surrounding the Make America Great Again movement is: has it created a new ethical worldview, or has it simply exposed attitudes that have long existed beneath the surface of American society? The answer is probably: both.

The resentments themselves are not new. Long before Trump entered politics, historians and political scientists documented the enduring influence of racial resentment, nativism, religious nationalism, and cultural anxiety. Many Americans believed their country was changing too quickly and that immigration, globalization, and shifting social norms threatened a way of life they once took for granted.

American history offers countless examples. Anti-immigrant movements flourished in the nineteenth century. Segregation and white supremacy were embedded in law for generations. George Wallace’s “law and order” campaigns, Pat Buchanan’s culture-war speeches, and the Tea Party’s reaction to Barack Obama’s presidency all reflected recurring fears that “real America” was slipping away.

Obama’s election encouraged hopes that the nation had entered a post-racial era, yet research continued to show that racial and cultural anxieties remained powerful undercurrents. Trump did not create those sentiments. He recognized them, embraced them, and gave them a simple narrative.

“Make America Great Again” is more than a campaign slogan. It tells a story of loss, restoration, and retribution. It suggests that something valuable has been taken away and that reclaiming it is both necessary and morally justified. For many supporters, it became less about policy than identity.

Trump’s most significant innovation was not ideological but cultural. Previous politicians often relied on coded language while preserving at least the appearance of restraint. Trump discarded those conventions. He mocked opponents, encouraged inflammatory chants, proposed banning Muslims from entering the country, and described immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of America. Many supporters interpreted this not as recklessness but as authenticity—a rejection of what they viewed as the constraints of political correctness.

That shift changed more than political rhetoric. It altered the boundaries of acceptable public behavior. Conduct once viewed as disqualifying became, for many supporters, evidence of courage and honesty. Loyalty increasingly outweighed character. Offending critics became proof that one was willing to stand up to elite opinion.

Political scientists describe this process as norm erosion. Laws remain the same, but the unwritten rules governing public life gradually weaken. Loyalty becomes more important than truth, institutions are trusted only when they favor one’s own side, and democratic restraints come to be seen as obstacles rather than safeguards.

Trump did not invent this dynamic. Populist movements throughout history have divided society into virtuous insiders and corrupt outsiders. His contribution was to make that style of politics a daily spectacle. Political conflict became a struggle between patriots and traitors, real Americans and dangerous enemies. Once politics is framed in existential terms, compromise becomes betrayal and restraint begins to look like weakness.

It would be inaccurate to say Trump created prejudice from nothing. A more persuasive argument is that he reduced the social cost of expressing it. Social norms matter because they define the boundaries of acceptable conduct. When prominent public figures use inflammatory language or repeat conspiracy theories without losing support from their followers, those boundaries inevitably shift.

Supporters who might once have hesitated can now dismiss criticism as media bias or political correctness. The line between prejudice and plain speaking becomes increasingly blurred.

This may prove to be Trump’s most enduring legacy. Even if his personal political influence fades, the standards governing public discourse may not return to where they once were. Future politicians can imitate the style—its confrontation, norm-breaking, and appeals to grievance—even if they reject parts of Trump’s agenda.

That is why the distinction between creating prejudice and legitimizing it matters. If Trump merely invented these impulses, defeating one political leader might solve the problem. But if he tapped into deeper currents already present in American society, then the challenge extends far beyond one election.

Trump is best understood as both symptom and accelerant. He gave shape to existing resentments, transformed them into a powerful political identity, and lowered the barriers against openly expressing them. The prejudices themselves were not new. The confidence with which they could be publicly displayed—and sometimes celebrated—was.

Whether that change proves temporary or enduring may become one of the defining questions facing American democracy.

The Golden Age That Never Was

By John Turley

On July 14, 2026

In Commentary, History, Politics

How the Myth of 1950s America Is Being Weaponized by the Modern Right

Not long ago, I was sitting in a waiting room waiting to get an X-ray done. They had MeTV on the television and Leave It To Beaver was playing. You know, the classic 1950s television show where dad went to work, mom stayed at home and did housework while wearing pearls, a dress and heels, and the kids were well behaved even though they may occasionally have been “scamps”. Few ideas exert a stronger pull on the American imagination than the belief that there was once a lost golden age—a time when the nation was more prosperous, more moral, more unified, and more secure than it is today.

Ask most Americans when the country was at its best and there’s a decent chance you’ll hear something like: ” the ’50s.” Clean neighborhoods. Stable families. Everyone going to church on Sunday. One income paying the bills. It’s a seductive image and it’s one that right-wing politicians and evangelical leaders have been selling hard for decades. The only problem is that it was never the whole truth. In 2025, the effort to resurrect that selective memory began the move from campaign rhetoric into actual governance.

Let’s take a close look at the mythology of postwar America and examine what the 1940s and 1950s actually looked like for the millions of Americans excluded from the postcard image and explore how modern conservative politicians and religious leaders are drawing on that mythology to reshape the country today.

The Legend: America’s Postwar Paradise

It’s easy to understand the emotional pull. After the trauma of World War II and the deprivation of the Great Depression, the late 1940s and 1950s did, for a particular slice of America, offer something genuinely new: suburban homes, new cars, television sets, and a sense of safety and prosperity that earlier generations couldn’t have imagined. For white, middle-class families in the northern and midwestern United States, the GI Bill opened the door to homeownership and college education. Real wages rose. Life expectancy improved. The birth rate climbed.

Televisions went from being owned by 12 percent of households in 1950 to over 90 percent by the end of the decade and beamed idealized domestic life straight into living rooms across the country. Programs like Father Knows Best and, of course, Leave It to Beaver were essentially aspirational advertising. Nobody was poor. Nobody was Black. Nobody was gay. Nobody was confused. Everyone’s lawn was neatly trimmed and their problems resolved in 22 minutes.

It is worth acknowledging that aspects of this nostalgia reflect real experience for a limited few. The cultural stability and sense of community that many Americans remember from the era were genuine features of daily life for some people in some places. Writer Alan Ehrenhalt, who wrote extensively about 1950s Chicago neighborhoods, documented the authentic bonds people formed and the coherent community life that anchored their lives. The nostalgia is not entirely manufactured. But the question is: whose nostalgia counts, and who pays the price for making it policy?

The Reality Check: Who Got Left Out

Here is what the postcard left out: the United States of the 1950s was a country of legally enforced racial segregation, economic exclusion, and profound gender inequality. It was, in many respects, a country operating an unofficial domestic system of apartheid.

Jim Crow laws governed daily life for Black Americans from the post-Reconstruction era through the mid-1960s. Schools, workplaces, public transportation, medical facilities, and parks were racially segregated across the South and informally segregated in much of the North. Poll taxes and literacy tests suppressed Black voting. Vagrancy laws effectively criminalized unemployment among Black men. Physical terror, including lynching and the threat of violence, was used as a tool of social control.

Black Americans in the 1950s faced a starkly different economic reality than white Americans. Discriminatory lending practices, including the federally sanctioned “redlining” that denied mortgages to Black families in certain zip codes, locked millions out of the very suburban prosperity that defines the nostalgic image of the era. The GI Bill, widely celebrated as the engine of postwar middle-class expansion, was administered locally and largely excluded Black veterans in the South through discriminatory implementation.

Women fared little better by today’s standards. The idealization of the 1950s housewife conceals the coercive nature of women’s domestic confinement in that era. Women were largely excluded from professional careers, could not obtain credit cards in their own names until 1974, and faced deeply limited legal recourse against workplace discrimination or domestic violence. The image of the contented housewife was, for many women, less a personal choice than the only option available to them.

The economy itself was more volatile than the mythology suggests. The United States suffered four recessions between 1949 and 1960. Average GDP growth during the Eisenhower years ran at about 2.5 percent — respectable, but hardly the sustained boom of legend. And when measured by real GDP per capita in today’s dollars, the average American is roughly 3.7 times better off financially now than in 1955, which complicates the argument that things were economically superior back then.

The period was also marked by intense Cold War anxiety. Americans conducted nuclear attack drills in schools and lived with the constant fear of atomic war. I can remember the “duck and cover” drills that we had in school, as if hiding under our desk would protect us from a nuclear blast. The era also witnessed the rise of McCarthyism, during which accusations of communist sympathies, most without proof, damaged careers and chilled political dissent.

In this version of history, America was once united, moral, prosperous, and respected. Something then went wrong—often identified as secularization, feminism, immigration, globalization, civil rights activism, cultural liberalism, or government expansion. The nation’s challenges are therefore attributed not to complex economic and social forces but to a departure from traditional values.

Building the Myth: The Role of Religion and Cold War Politics

One of the most significant and least understood aspects of 1950s nostalgia is how deliberately constructed it was at the time. The “Christian America” that modern evangelical conservatives point to as a foundational model was, in large part, a Cold War invention.

Historian Kevin Kruse, in his book “One Nation Under God,” documents in detail how business, political, and religious leaders worked during the 1940s and 1950s to fuse Christianity with American national identity in an explicit effort to distinguish the United States from “godless communism.” The phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 following a lobbying campaign by the Knights of Columbus. “In God We Trust” was adopted as the national motto in 1956, replacing the unofficial but far more pluralistic “E Pluribus Unum” — “Out of Many, One.” Both initiatives had the explicit goal of defining American identity through religious contrast with the Soviet Union, not of recovering some ancient tradition.

President Eisenhower was the central political figure in this fusion of piety and patriotism. Though he had little religious affiliation for most of his life, in 1953 he was baptized in the Presbyterian Church and became active in what historians called the “religious revival” of 1950s America. He signed the National Association of Evangelicals’ “Statement of Seven Divine Freedoms” in 1953 and became what many regarded as a symbolic pastor-in-chief. The Advertising Council ran a nationwide “Religion in American Life” campaign encouraging church attendance. Corporate America joined in: Walt Disney incorporated explicitly patriotic and religious themes into his Anaheim park. The annual National Prayer Breakfast was institutionalized. Presidential speeches began ending with “God bless America” as a matter of course.

Kruse is careful to note that this represented something genuinely new, not the recovery of something original. The “Christian founding” narrative so beloved by modern evangelical conservatives is, in his assessment, more myth than history. What the 1950s actually produced was a strategic civil religion built for Cold War propaganda — a useful fiction that has since been mistaken for ancient truth.

For many voters, such appeals are less about historical accuracy than emotional reassurance. They promise stability amid rapid change and offer a sense of continuity in a world that often feels uncertain.

The Political Machinery: From Reagan to MAGA

“Make America Great Again” is not, as many people assume, a phrase that originated with Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan used it extensively during his 1980 presidential campaign. Its emotional logic — that there was a better time, that it was taken from us, that we can return to it — has been a structural feature of American right-wing politics for at least four decades.

What Trump did was amplify it and make the temporal reference more explicit. When pressed, Trump has pointed to the late 1940s and 1950s as the era he has in mind as a model of national greatness. And his supporters appear to share that view. A 2024 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that approximately 70 percent of Republicans believe that America’s culture and way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s.

That survey finding is worth thinking about. Seven in ten members of one of the nation’s two major political parties believe the country was better when segregation was legal, women couldn’t get a credit card, and McCarthyism was destroying careers on the basis of rumor and suspicion. The longing is, of course, more selective than that, most of those respondents are thinking of the community, stability, and cultural coherence of the era, not its injustices. But the political machinery that exploits that nostalgia does not make those fine distinctions.

Project 2025, the 900-page policy blueprint produced by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of allied conservative organizations, is perhaps the most systematic expression of this restorationist project. Its stated goals include restoring “the family as the centerpiece of American life,” reducing federal government size, centralizing executive power, and returning to what it calls “foundational values.” The document explicitly frames the current moment as a crisis requiring urgent corrective action to restore something that has been lost: a rhetorical structure that assumes the loss of a golden past as its premise.

The Evangelical Revival: Reclaiming a Nation That Never Quite Was

For evangelical Christians in the MAGA coalition, the 1950s hold special significance because of the Eisenhower-era fusion of Christianity and national identity. The addition of “under God” to the Pledge and “In God We Trust” to the currency are treated as evidence of a deep historical tradition — proof that America has “always” been a Christian nation. As one analysis published in Mere Orthodoxy noted, among proponents of Christian nationalism, there is broad agreement that “the cultural Christianity of the Eisenhower era presents a model to which we should aspire.”

The political ambitions of this movement are not subtle. During the first year of Trump’s second term, a series of executive orders moved explicitly toward institutionalizing evangelical Christian priorities within the federal government. One established a task force to “eradicate Christian bias” from government. Another created a White House Faith Office. A third established a Religious Liberty Commission. The rhetorical framing was consistently restorative — “bringing back” religion, returning to foundational truths, recovering what was lost.

What this narrative omits, as historians of religion have carefully documented, is that the “Christian America” of the 1950s was itself a political construction, not an inherited tradition. The founders were, at best, a religiously mixed group whose Enlightenment-influenced constitutional framework was deliberately secular. As Americans United for Separation of Church and State ha noted, the Cold War-era religious symbols that Christian nationalists now treat as bedrock tradition would have been unfamiliar and to the actual founders.

The 1950s that evangelicals and Christian nationalists embrace as a Christian model was also the decade that ended with Supreme Court rulings in 1962 and 1963 prohibiting sponsored prayer and Bible reading in public schools. From the Christian nationalist perspective, those rulings mark the beginning of America’s moral decline. Which means the golden age they want to restore existed for, at most, a few years before it was, by their own account, already being dismantled.

Nostalgia as a Political Tool: The Psychology Behind the Appeal

None of this is to say that nostalgia is inherently dishonest or manipulative. Research in psychology consistently shows that people misremember the past by emphasizing positive personal experiences and filtering out context that complicates the picture. This is normal human cognition, not bad faith. For working-class white Americans who experienced the 1950s as a period of genuine stability and upward mobility, the memory is not false. The problem arises when personal memory is converted into universal history and then into policy prescription.

Political movements have always understood the emotional power of a remembered golden age. The appeal to restoration allows politicians to diagnose the present as fallen and to promise recovery without having to specify precisely what they’re recovering. It is a rhetorically flexible tool: it can mean lower taxes, stronger churches, tougher borders, whiter neighborhoods, or simply the vague sense that things made more sense once and someone took them away from you. The ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. It allows a coalition of people with different specific grievances to unite around a shared emotional posture.

What makes the current moment distinctive is the ambition and specificity of the institutional project. Earlier iterations of “Make America Great Again” were largely rhetorical. Project 2025, Christian nationalism’s White House offices, and the executive order campaign of Trump’s second term represent an attempt to translate nostalgic sentiment into durable structural change. The mythology is no longer just a campaign slogan. It is becoming, or attempting to become, a governing framework.

What Gets Left Out When We Go Back

The practical consequences of any serious attempt to restore something like 1950s governance deserve direct examination. The America of that era did not inadvertently exclude Black citizens, women, LGBTQ+ Americans, and religious minorities from full participation in public life. It excluded them by law and by deliberate institutional design. Any genuine “return” to the social order of that era would require actively undoing the legal and social progress of the intervening seven decades.

Some elements of the contemporary right’s agenda move explicitly in that direction: challenges to voting rights provisions, rollbacks of civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, attacks on DEI programs, restrictions on reproductive autonomy, and pressure on the constitutional separation of church and state. Whether these specific policies will achieve their stated goals is a matter of legitimate political debate. But the historical record of the 1950s for the Americans who were not white, male, heterosexual, and Protestant is not ambiguous. For them it was not a golden age, not even close.

Perhaps the most honest thing one can say about the 1950s is what the historical record shows: it was a complex, contradictory decade. For some Americans, it genuinely offered stability, community, and opportunity. For others, it was a system of legal oppression maintained by violence and economic exclusion. Both things are true. A serious engagement with the era requires recognizing that contradiction. A political mythology that acknowledges only one of those truths is not history. It is propaganda.

A Final Thought

The golden age of America is a powerful story. It has the great advantage of being partly true — enough to feel authentic to those who experienced it, enough to resonate with people who wish the present were simpler and more coherent. But it is a partial truth that has been shaped, amplified, and in some cases invented to serve political ends. The religious symbolism of the Eisenhower era was a Cold War construction, not an ancient tradition. The prosperity of the postwar years was real for some but radically unequal. The community stability that people remember was purchased, in part, through the enforced subordination of millions of Americans.

Understanding all of this doesn’t require abandoning the genuine good things of that era — community, stability, the importance of family and neighborhood. It requires being honest about the terms on which those good things were available and for whom. And it requires asking whether the politicians and religious leaders invoking that era’s memory are interested in what made it work for many Americans and extending those benefits to everyone, or whether they are more interested in what made it work specifically for white, Christian, heterosexual men.

History does not go backward. But it can be selectively remembered in ways that carry serious consequences for the present. That is worth thinking carefully about.

Sources

1. Petit, K. (2025). “The Myth of the American Golden Age.” Medium

2. Cochrane, J. H. (2026). “The 1950s: A Not-So-Golden Age.” Coolidge Review

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4. Americans United for Separation of Church and State. (2020). “Trapped in a Time Warp: Christian Nationalists Pine for the 1950s.” au.org

5. Fea, J. (2015). “One Nation Under God.” Review of Kruse, K., “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.” Christianity Today

6. Americans United for Separation of Church and State. (2025). “In God We Trust: Don’t Blame It on the Founders.” au.org

7. Baptist News Global. (2023). “Christian Nationalism: How Evangelical Christianity Became a Political Religion.” baptistnews.com

8. Homeaddict.io. (2025). “19 Myths About the 1950s.” homeaddict.io

9. Mitchell, D. (2024). “The 1950s Economic Golden Age Is a Myth.” Foundation for Economic Education

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12. Salon.com. (2025). “Trump’s MAGA Coalition Is Showing Cracks Over Religion.” salon.com

13. Mere Orthodoxy. (2024). “The ‘New’ Christian Nationalism.” mereorthodoxy.com

14. Oxford Academic. (2024). “Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress after Slavery.” Quarterly Journal of Economics. academic.oup.com

15. Newsweek. (2026). “Project 2025 Group Has Plan for Next 250 Years of America.” newsweek.com

Who Gets to Decide? The Modern Battle Over Books in America

By John Turley

On June 19, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

If you thought book banning was a relic of the past, think again. The United States is experiencing the most intense wave of book challenges in modern memory. Over the last four years, thousands of books have been removed from school and library shelves, sparking a national debate about parental rights, free expression, education, and the role of government.

At the center of the controversy is a simple but powerful question: Who gets to decide what children and communities are allowed to read?

We were casually looking for books to read with our grandson this year. He loves baseball so we were looking for books on that topic. Somehow we got on a site about banned books and, yes, there was a baseball story on the list, curiosity got us. The book is Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki and Dom Lee. This is the story about a baseball field that was created in a Japanese internment camp in during World War II and the prejudice they faced when they returned home after the war. The story, written on a fourth grade reading level, is about how the boys played baseball during their internment and how it helped them to survive. This is a banned book?? Why??

This made us wonder what it means to be on a “banned book list”. Just because it’s on the list does every library or school have to ban it? The answer is no, thank goodness. Members of library boards and school boards and parents play an important role and they have a lot to consider. Here are some interesting details about book banning in its current evolution.

The Scale of the Movement

The numbers are striking. According to PEN America, nearly 23,000 book bans have occurred in public schools since 2021. During the 2023–24 school year alone, more than 10,000 individual book bans were recorded. The following year saw nearly 7,000 additional bans affecting more than 3,700 unique titles.

Florida has led the nation in book removals for three consecutive years, followed by Texas and Tennessee. The American Library Association (ALA) documented more than 4,200 unique titles challenged in 2025, making it one of the highest years ever recorded.

Not every challenge results in a permanent ban. Some books are removed temporarily while review committees evaluate complaints. Others are eventually restored to shelves. Yet the sheer volume of challenges has significantly reduced access to books for many students and library users.

Supporters argue these actions protect children from inappropriate material. Critics view them as a growing campaign of censorship.

Which Books Are Being Targeted?

The books most frequently challenged share common themes.

According to the ALA, many complaints focus on books that discuss race, racism, gender identity, sexuality, or LGBTQ+ experiences. Others involve sexual content, abuse, violence, or mental health issues.

Among the most challenged books in recent years are Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Looking for Alaska by John Green, and several novels by Sarah J. Maas.

Classic works have also been caught in the controversy. Schools and districts in several states have removed or restricted books such as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and even George Orwell’s 1984.

Critics of the banning movement note that many of these books have been available in schools for years or even decades. They argue that the current challenges are less about newly discovered concerns and more about broader cultural and political disagreements.

Who Is Driving the Challenges?

One of the most significant developments is the changing source of complaints.

The ALA reports that in 2025, 92 percent of book challenges originated from organized groups, government officials, or political activists rather than individual parents. Twenty years earlier, most challenges came from local citizens raising concerns about specific books.

This shift suggests that book challenges have become part of a larger political movement rather than isolated local disputes.

Among the most visible organizations is Moms for Liberty, founded in Florida in 2021. Originally focused on opposition to COVID-19 school policies, the group later turned its attention to curriculum issues and library books. It now claims chapters in dozens of states and has become a major force in school board elections and library controversies.

Other organizations, including No Left Turn in Education, Citizens Defending Freedom, and various state-based groups, have pursued similar goals. These organizations often share lists of books to challenge, provide guidance to local activists, and coordinate campaigns across multiple communities.

Supporters describe these efforts as parental advocacy. Critics see them as organized attempts to impose political and ideological restrictions on public education.

The Political Connection

The book-banning movement has become closely associated with broader conservative politics, particularly the MAGA movement.

Moms for Liberty has maintained ties with the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that developed Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation has sponsored Moms for Liberty events and honored the organization with awards recognizing its activism.

The relationship became even more visible when Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice left the organization to lead the Heritage Foundation’s parental-rights initiative.

Former President Donald Trump has also embraced many of the same themes. He appeared at a Moms for Liberty national summit and has frequently criticized educational institutions, libraries, and schools that he believes promote what he describes as inappropriate or politically biased material.

Supporters view these alliances as part of a broader effort to restore parental control over education. Opponents argue they demonstrate that book challenges have become deeply intertwined with national political agendas.

Project 2025 and Libraries

Much attention has focused on Project 2025, the policy blueprint produced by the Heritage Foundation.

The document calls for stronger action against what its authors characterize as inappropriate materials in schools and libraries. Critics have highlighted language suggesting that educators and librarians who provide access to certain materials could face legal consequences.

Supporters argue that such proposals are intended to protect children from explicit content. Opponents contend that they would create a chilling effect, discouraging educators and librarians from offering books dealing with controversial subjects.

The debate reflects a broader disagreement about where the line should be drawn between protecting minors and preserving intellectual freedom.

How Libraries and Schools Are Responding

Responses vary widely across the country.

Some school districts remove challenged books immediately. Others establish review committees consisting of teachers, librarians, administrators, parents, and sometimes students. These committees examine books in their entirety before making recommendations.

Public libraries have generally been more resistant to removing books. Most rely on formal collection-development policies and challenge procedures designed to balance community concerns with principles of intellectual freedom.

Many libraries have retained challenged books after review, arguing that public libraries serve diverse populations and that parents should make reading decisions for their own children without limiting access for others.

At the same time, librarians in some states report increasing pressure from elected officials and advocacy groups. Concerns about funding, employment consequences, and potential legal liability have led some libraries to avoid purchasing controversial titles altogether.

Critics refer to this phenomenon as “preemptive censorship” because books disappear before formal challenges even occur.

State Governments Enter the Fight

Several states have moved beyond local challenges and enacted statewide policies.

Utah, South Carolina, and Tennessee have adopted mechanisms that allow certain books to be removed from schools statewide. Florida has expanded parental authority over educational materials and library collections.

Supporters argue these measures provide consistency and protect children across entire states. Critics counter that statewide restrictions eliminate local decision-making and reduce access to books for students whose families may have no objections to the material.

The controversy has occasionally reached dramatic levels. In Randolph County, North Carolina, county commissioners dissolved the public library board after it refused to remove a children’s book featuring a transgender character.

Such disputes illustrate how library policy has become a flashpoint in cultural conflicts.

The Courts Push Back

Many of these policies have faced legal challenges and the results have been mixed.

In Iowa, a federal judge blocked portions of a state law that prohibited books containing descriptions of sexual activity, ruling that the restrictions likely violated First Amendment protections. In the Rutherford County, Tennessee case, the first legal challenge to that state’s expanded book statute — a federal judge declined to issue a preliminary injunction, writing that a school board “has not prohibited students from reading the books or acquiring them elsewhere; instead, it has merely opted not to carry them on school library bookshelves.”

Courts have often struggled to balance competing interests. School boards possess significant authority over educational materials, while students have constitutional protections related to access to information.

The legal outcomes remain uncertain, but the judiciary has become one of the primary battlegrounds in the debate.

Voters Respond

School board elections have become another arena for the conflict.

In several Texas districts during 2025, voters removed incumbents who had championed aggressive book-removal policies. Similar results appeared in other states, suggesting that many voters are uncomfortable with the scope of current restrictions. At the same time, candidates supporting stricter controls continue to win elections in other communities.

The mixed results indicate that Americans remain deeply divided on the issue.

A Growing Countermovement

Opposition to book bans has generated its own political response. Organizations such as PEN America, the Authors Guild, the ALA, and numerous local advocacy groups have organized campaigns defending intellectual freedom. Several states have considered legislation designed to make book removals more difficult.

Minnesota, for example, has considered legislation that would prohibit the removal of books based primarily on ideological objections and would place greater authority in the hands of professional librarians.

Supporters argue such laws protect access to information. Critics contend they diminish parental influence and local control.

The Bottom Line

The modern book-banning movement is unlike anything seen in recent decades. Its scale is unprecedented, its organization is sophisticated, and its connections to broader political movements are well documented.

Supporters view the effort as a legitimate exercise of parental rights and community standards. Critics see it as an organized campaign to restrict access to ideas, experiences, and viewpoints that some groups find objectionable.

The debate is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. It touches fundamental questions about education, democracy, free speech, and the role of public institutions.

Who should decide what belongs on library shelves? Parents? Librarians? Teachers? School boards? Legislatures? Courts?

Americans have not reached a consensus on those questions. Until they do, the battle over books is likely to remain one of the most visible fronts in the nation’s ongoing culture wars.

Illustration generated by author using Chat GPT

Sources

PEN America — Book Bans Overview

PEN America — The Normalization of Book Banning (2024–25 Report)

American Library Association — Censorship by the Numbers

ALA — Most Challenged Books

NPR — ALA Releases 2025 Most Challenged Books

NPR — PEN America 2024–25 Report

Authors Guild — Voters Reject Book Restrictions, 2025

Washington Post — Trump, Moms for Liberty, Heritage Foundation

New Jersey Monitor — M4L Summit and Project 2025 Ties

GLAAD — Moms for Liberty and Book Bans