Comes word that the University of Texas and Oklahoma University are joining the Southeastern Conference, primarily to take advantage of the SEC’s huge TV contract.  That will likely kick off another round of conference realignments, probably killing off another conference or 3, and, ultimately, driving another nail in the coffin of the fiction of college amateur sports. It’s an enduring fiction, granted, but it’s been a fiction for a century at least.  With the recent Supreme Court ruling that the colleges and their syndicate, the NCAA, can’t prevent athletes from profiting from shoe deals and the like, it’s becoming a … Continue reading Random Thoughts, Bowing To Reality Edition

There is no better commentary on Joe Biden’s decision to abandon Afghanistan than Winston Churchill’s statement to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after the disastrous Munich Agreement, in which Chamberlain acceded to Hitler’s demands to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour.  You chose dishonour and you will have war.” This was said 83 years ago, in the prelude to a war in which at least 70 million people died.  A shame Biden is not a student of history – a subject about which Churchill knew more than a little. Kenneth D. Gough … Continue reading You Will Have War

A true story:  Sir John Sinclair, a young friend of the great and good Dr. Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy, founder of modern economics and author of The Wealth of Nations, informed Smith of the British loss at Saratoga and proclaimed the nation was ruined.  Smith replied, “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation”. Let’s hope he was right.  Failure is contagious.  Once it becomes a habit, it’s hard to break.  But Great Britain learned the lessons of its failures in North America and persevered.  It went on to defeat France in the Napoleonic Wars (just … Continue reading The Ruin In A Nation

Full disclosure:  I’ve known Rusty Crowe for well over 30 years, consider him a friend, and we’re pretty much on the same page politically.  So I’m not coming at this as a cynical reporter digging for the truth.  On the other hand, I’ll follow a wise friend’s advice: “Never make any politician look any better than they are.”  Most of what follows is selections from the recording, lightly edited for clarity, plus a few editorial comments (sorry, couldn’t help myself). Not long ago Rebecca Horvath and I sat down with Rusty at one of Elizabethton’s finest eateries and just talked … Continue reading An Interview with Senator Rusty Crowe, Part 1

Can you have too much of a good thing?  Yes. During a recent visit with our son’s family in North Carolina we took the grandkids to Durham’s great kids’ museum, the Museum of Life and Science.  I highly recommend it, even if, due to the presence of Duke University and the Research Triangle, Durham is morphing into a hilariously-Progressive caricature of upper-middle-class elite snobbery detached from the poor and politically-isolated working class that still makes up the majority of its population.  It’s OK to visit, but you might not want to live there. The Covid 19 pandemic was ending, but … Continue reading Too Much of a Good Thing?

Conservatives and Liberals of the world, unite! Don’t think that the schools in Northeast Tennessee are crazy enough to try to sneak Critical Race Theory into our children’s curricula?  Think again: Critical Race Theory – CRT for short – by any other name, equity and diversity included, is still CRT.  And if you don’t think it’s an idea aimed straight at the heart of America, don’t take my word for it, take William Galston’s.  Readers of the Wall Street Journal will recognize Galston.  He’s a long-time scholar at the well-respected but left-of-center think tank, the Brookings Institution.  It’s a gas … Continue reading Racism In The Name Of Anti-racism Is As Racist As It Gets

Haiti is one of the most miserable places on earth.  Slave revolts weren’t uncommon in the Caribbean islands; given that the life expectancy of a slave on a sugar plantation was around 3 years, what did they have to lose?  But only in Haiti did a revolt turn into a revolution and then into a country – which has never seen a day of freedom or honest, competent, government since it gained independence from France in 1804.  Nor have the occasional ham-handed interventions by the U.S. and/or the U.N. made one bit of difference.  It’s still as poor, hungry, sick, … Continue reading Random Thoughts, One Damn Thing After Another Edition

One of the most-intensely debated questions in our system of government is the means of selecting judges:  Should they be appointed or elected?  The current situation satisfies no one, and the arguments seem evenly divided. It gets back to this: Our government derives its authority from the people, who are sovereign and have the God-given right (or natural right, for our agnostic and atheist friends) to elect their governors themselves, based on whatever criteria they deem good and sufficient.  It says so, right there in the Declaration of Independence, and is instituted in the Constitution.  Or does it?  Why, then, … Continue reading Dog Chews Judicial Bone

You’ve probably heard of Critical Race Theory and likely thought, this is too crazy to ever take root here.  Think again.  It’s already here in the schools, it has been for some time, and it’s having a real impact.  Here is a good, short explanation.  Forewarned is fore-armed.  And don’t think that the revolutionaries pushing this stuff are going to simply go away.  They will have to be confronted and defeated. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-roots-of-wokeness Ken Gough Continue reading Neo-racist Critical Race Theory Is Here Right Now