Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – The Family

The family is not a niche issue, a private lifestyle preference, or a sentimental talking point reserved for holidays and greeting cards. It is the most basic social institution in any civilization and the primary mechanism by which moral norms, economic stability, and social trust are transmitted from one generation to the next. When families…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – Welfare Programs

Before examining partisan positions, the term welfare programs must be defined carefully. Sloppy definitions lead to sloppy thinking, and sloppy thinking leads to bad policy. In contemporary political debate, the word “welfare” is often used imprecisely to refer to any government benefit, which obscures meaningful distinctions between social insurance, entitlement programs, and means-tested assistance. Defining…

What is Electioneering, and Why Should We Care About it?

Electioneering refers to efforts aimed at influencing how individuals vote, particularly when those efforts occur at or near the time and place of voting. While political advocacy is an essential feature of democratic life, electioneering becomes problematic when it intrudes upon the voting process itself. In contemporary legal and civic discussions, electioneering commonly includes: The…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – USAID Funding

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) occupies a curious place in American public life. It is rarely discussed in everyday political conversation, seldom appears in campaign debates, and is often described in vague terms such as “foreign aid,” “humanitarian assistance,” or “development work.” Yet USAID controls tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, operates…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – Religious Liberty

Religious liberty is not a side issue in American life. It is one of the load-bearing pillars of the constitutional order, and when it weakens, the entire structure of a free society begins to creak. The Founders did not treat religious freedom as a hobby right or a private eccentricity. They treated it as a…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – Surrogacy and In Vitro Fertilization

Surrogacy and in vitro fertilization (IVF) are often discussed as niche medical or personal issues—matters best left to doctors, infertile couples, and private contracts. That framing is misleading. These practices now sit squarely at the intersection of law, economics, technology, ethics, and public policy. They raise foundational questions about how American society understands human life,…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – China Foreign Policy

American foreign policy toward China is no longer an abstract concern reserved for diplomats, think tanks, or defense analysts. It has become a kitchen-table issue that affects jobs, prices, national security, religious liberty, and America’s long-term survival as a free and sovereign nation. For this reason alone, China policy deserves careful attention from American voters.…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: The Ukraine – Russia Conflict

The Ukraine–Russia war did not suddenly appear in February 2022, even though that date marks Russia’s full-scale invasion. The conflict is the culmination of decades of unresolved geopolitical tensions following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. When the USSR dissolved, Ukraine emerged as an independent nation but inherited a complicated legacy: deep cultural…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – University Activism

American universities have long been viewed as places of learning, debate, and intellectual formation. For much of the nation’s history, higher education was understood as a training ground for future leaders—men and women shaped not only by technical knowledge but by habits of reasoned argument, civic responsibility, and respect for pluralism. Over the last decade,…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: K-12 Public Education

Public education is not a narrow policy dispute. It sits at the crossroads of culture, economics, parental authority, national cohesion, and the future moral imagination of the country. Few institutions touch more Americans more directly or more persistently than the public school system. Over fifty million children attend public K–12 schools each year, and nearly…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation – Abortion

Abortion is not a peripheral policy dispute. It is one of the most morally serious, socially consequential, and politically divisive issues in American life. Unlike debates over tax rates, regulatory policy, or even foreign affairs, abortion directly concerns the deliberate ending of developing human life. For this reason alone, it commands sustained attention from voters…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Gay Marriage

The question of gay marriage occupies a unique and enduring place in modern American political life because it is not merely a policy dispute. It is a disagreement about the nature of marriage itself, the role of the state in redefining long-standing social institutions, and the moral framework that undergirds law, family, and civil society.…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Energy Policy

Energy policy is not an abstract debate reserved for economists, environmental activists, or politicians in Washington. It reaches directly into the daily life of every American household. Energy determines the price of gasoline at the pump, the cost of heating a home in winter, the reliability of the electrical grid during summer heat waves, the…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Policing and Racism Claims

Policing is one of those public issues that touches ordinary Americans far more directly than abstract debates in Washington. Unlike foreign policy or monetary theory, policing is experienced at street level—when a family calls 911, when a business owner locks up at night, when parents decide whether their children can safely walk home from school.…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: The Second Amendment

The Second Amendment is not a niche or technical policy question. It is one of the most emotionally charged, philosophically revealing, and politically consequential issues in American public life. Few topics more clearly expose the differences between how Americans understand liberty, government authority, public safety, and human nature itself. For voters, the Second Amendment functions…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Crime and Punishment

Crime and punishment sit near the foundation of any functioning civilization. Long before debates over taxation, healthcare, or environmental policy arise, a society must answer a basic question: Will law-abiding citizens be protected, and will wrongdoing be punished fairly and consistently? If the answer is unclear or evasive, everything else begins to wobble. For American…

Critical Issues Dividing the Party and the Nation: Israel Foreign Policy

American foreign policy toward Israel is not an abstract, distant concern reserved for diplomats and academics. It is a concrete issue that touches U.S. national security, economic stability, energy markets, counterterrorism, constitutional governance, and the moral credibility of American leadership abroad. For voters attempting to weigh party platforms seriously, Israel functions as a kind of…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Civil Rights

Few political phrases carry as much moral weight in American public life as civil rights. It is a term that evokes the nation’s highest ideals—liberty, equality before the law, and protection from unjust government power. Because of this moral weight, civil rights has become one of the most contested and misused concepts in modern political…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Cannabis Legalization

Cannabis legalization has moved from the political margins to the center of American public debate in little more than two decades. What was once treated almost exclusively as a criminal justice matter is now discussed in terms of personal liberty, public health, state revenue, social equity, and federalism. Today, marijuana policy affects tens of millions…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Election Integrity

Election integrity is not a fringe concern, nor is it a recent invention of partisan politics. It sits at the foundation of a constitutional republic. If citizens cannot trust that elections are conducted honestly, transparently, and according to the law, then every downstream political outcome becomes suspect. Laws may still be enforced, courts may still…

Critical Issues Dividing the Parties and the Nation: Free Speech

Free speech is not a fashionable abstraction or a luxury for polite societies. It is a structural necessity for a constitutional republic. The First Amendment’s protection of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition is not an ornament added for decoration; it is the load-bearing wall that allows every other liberty to stand. At its core,…

Critical Issues Dividing The Parties and the Nation: Immigration and the Border

Immigration and border policy is one of the most persistent, polarizing, and consequential issues in contemporary American politics. It sits at the intersection of national security, economic opportunity, humanitarian concern, rule of law, and national identity. For many voters, it drives electoral choices, affects local public services, and stokes powerful cultural emotions. Yet despite its…