“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.”
–A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh.
This is our last day deep in the heart of Texas. It has been a wonderful time with family and friends. But it will be good to return home.
And it is not like we will not be back. After what will probably be her last Summer of leisure, Holland will return to Dallas to attend law school at SMU. English and I will visit occasionally (English probably more than me). We look forward to following the next chapters of The Adventures of Holland Koontz.
Today I have chosen 3 articles which touch on important topics. Don Feder discusses the dangers of our nation’s falling fertility rates. Robert Knight writes about the dishonest media, always 1 of my favorite topics. And Everett Pipe takes issue with Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s claim that the United States is not “a Christian nation” (we quote an excerpt from Justice Gorsuch’s remarks on May 11). Enjoy!
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Justice Gorsuch ignores the faith behind America’s freedoms
Rights, self-government and equality depend on moral foundations the Founders repeatedly traced to religion and virtue
BY: Everett Piper, The Washington Times (May 10, 2026).
In a recent interview, Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the United States is not a Christian nation but rather one that is “creedal.”
He went on to extol the principles of “equality, inalienable rights and self-rule” as being above any commonly held religious beliefs or consequent moral obligations. More specifically, Mr. Gorsuch said, “[America] was not founded on a religion. It is not based on a common culture, even, or heritage. We’re a creedal nation.”
The fact that one of the supposed “conservative” judges of our nation’s highest court just made such a statement should stun all of us. Why? Because it is simply not true, and anyone with an elementary school understanding of American history should know it.
How could Justice Gorsuch not know that the principles he claims to cherish — such as “equality, inalienable rights and self-rule” — do not just create themselves ex nihilo, i.e., out of nothing? How could he not know that human rights, personal liberty and the right to self-governance must be grounded in something and that their source is the very religion, culture and common heritage he denies?
How could he not know that our Founding Fathers — the ones who wrote, signed and championed the “creed” he says he loves — said the exact opposite of what he claims?
How could he not know that the authors of our nation’s creed told us repeatedly that we, in fact, are a country of common faith and common values and that what binds us together is our Judeo-Christian understanding and respect for the Bible?
How could Justice Gorsuch not know that James McHenry, for example, declared, “The Holy Scriptures … can alone secure to society order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness.”
How could he not know that President John Quincy Adams said, “No book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible. [It is] the first and almost the only book deserving such universal recommendation.”
How could he not know that one of our earliest American historians, W.P. Strickland, observed, “Who … will call into question the assertion that this is a Bible nation? Who will charge the government with indifference to religion when the first Congress of the States assumed all the rights and performed all the duties of a Bible Society long before such an institution had an existence in the world!”
How could Justice Gorsuch not know that John Jay (Founding Father and original chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) said, “The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the Word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue, therefore … to regulate your life by its precepts.”
How could he not know that Jay went further to declare, “The Moral or Natural Law was given by the Sovereign of the universe to all mankind … Being founded by infinite wisdom and goodness on essential right, which never varies, it can require no amendment or alteration.” Lest we miss his point, he concluded by saying, “The Gospel not only recognizes the whole Moral Law and extends and perfects our knowledge of it, but also enjoins on all mankind the observance of it. Being ordered by a Legislator of infinite wisdom and rectitude and in Whom there is ‘no variableness,’ it must be free from imperfection and therefore never has nor ever will require any [change].”
How could any “conservative” justice of any court not know all this?
America’s common religious and cultural heritage is irrefutable. It is the glue that has bound us together for 250 years. It is the source and stability of the national “creed” that Justice Gorsuch so admires.
None of the freedoms and rights he is charged to defend would exist without the very faith and foundation he now sidesteps and denies.
Those who gave their blood and fortune to bequeath to us the liberties Justice Gorsuch now celebrates knew this. They also made it very clear that should we ever forget that we are, in fact, a people bound together by this common faith and common heritage, that our efforts at “self-rule” would fail and our country would fall.
Before the good justice grants any more interviews, he might do well to go back and read a little bit of American history. I recommend he start with President John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
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Lawlessness, big government and its media enablers
Pressing a pillow to the face of real journalism
BY: Robert Knight, The Washington Times (May 10, 2026).
What are we up to now — four attempts on President Trump’s life? And possibly one on the life of Vice President J.D. Vance?
This has happened amid constant Democratic vilification of Mr. Trump, his staff and conservative Supreme Court justices, who have had to increase their security. Several Cabinet members and other top staff have left their homes and moved to military bases to protect their families from crazies.
In Virginia, Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti basically declared Tuesday that it was open season for harassing Trump administration officials and their families.
One of many Democratic district attorneys elected with aid from leftist financier George Soros, Ms. Dehghani-Tafti dropped criminal charges against a woman who had gone to Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s Arlington County neighborhood to scare him and his family.
On Sept. 11, 2025, the day after Charlie Kirk’s murder on a Utah campus, activist Barbara Wien and her husband, Robert Herman, handed out flyers bearing a photo of Mr. Miller with a red line through it.
“Wanted for crimes against humanity,” the flyer read, along with the Millers’ home address and “No Nazis in NOVA,” referring to Northern Virginia.
Upon spotting Mr. Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, on the Millers’ front porch, Ms. Wien, a “retired peace studies professor,” made a gesture to indicate that she was watching her, The Washington Post reported.
You know, just free speech stuff. Nothing to worry about. Especially if you have children. The Millers have three young children and a baby on the way.
A Virginia statute says, “It shall be unlawful for any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass another person, to publish the person’s name or photograph along with identifying information … or identification of the person’s primary residence address.”
The Class 1 misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of 12 years and a $2,500 fine.
But wait. It was only a Trump official and his family who were being targeted. Also, Ms. Wien said she didn’t know who made the flyer and hadn’t been aware that the Millers’ address was on it. Right.
Ms. Dehghani-Tafti said that pursuing the charge would “risk having a chilling effect on others wishing to engage in peaceful, political protest.”
Not feeling the warmth after being doxed in their own neighborhood, the Millers moved to military housing.
When shots were fired outside the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, Mr. Miller instantly shielded the pregnant Mrs. Miller with his body, an act of chivalry that has gone viral on social media.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of California, was arrested and charged with attempting to assassinate the president.
On May 4, a gunman who had been tracking Mr. Vance’s motorcade a block from the White House exchanged fire with Secret Service agents. A child was struck and briefly hospitalized. Michael Marx, 45, of Texas, was arrested.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Mr. Marx exclaimed, “F the White House” after being arrested.
We are constantly being told that “both sides” are responsible for the rise in violence and that “both sides” should turn down the rhetoric. That is a lie propounded by legacy media, which see no enemies to the left, even as that side grows more violent.
You might think the shooting near the White House, which occurred around 3:30 p.m., would be front-page news, especially after the attempted assassination of the president only days earlier.
The Washington Post buried it in the second section, on page B-20. It was, in fact, the very last story in the entire publication.
On the front page, however, The Post gaily celebrated its latest Pulitzer prizes. The paper won for feature photography and for the big one: the Public Service Award.
It got the latter largely for siccing hard-left reporter Hannah Natanson to crusade against the Trump administration’s attempts to rein in the federal bureaucracy through the Department of Government Efficiency.
The best argument for freedom of the press is that it is there to keep government honest and in check. The Post news staff appears to feel otherwise. Instead, it goes after any attempt to impose accountability on the ever-growing permanent state.
It may have helped Ms. Natanson’s case for a Pulitzer that the FBI had executed a search warrant at her home in January, looking for leaked classified information from a federal contractor who was charged under the Espionage Act. The agents told her she wasn’t a target of their investigation, but what a feather in her cap.
In its glory days, The Post brought down a sitting president, Richard Nixon, by regurgitating leads fed to it by FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, whose cover was “Deep Throat.”
During the Obama and Biden administrations, The Post was incurious about any number of reportable scandals, including mass illegal immigration and lies about COVID-19 and the Russian collusion hoax. The latter netted Pulitzers for The Post and The New York Times, which played key roles in manipulating the public.
That itself should be a major news story. Yet it doesn’t fit the narrative, so don’t hold your breath.
When the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, the legacy media pointedly ignored it while leftist-controlled social media crushed it.
Dave Burge, who writes at Iowahawkblog, put it best when he observed, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”
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Falling fertility: The world could end in empty cradles
Gen Z will regret not having children
BY: Don Feder, The Washington Times (May 10, 2026).
Generation Z is easily the most self-absorbed, egocentric generation in history. Their hubris will have consequences for its members, society and the future of humanity.
A Barna Survey on Gen Z attitudes toward marriage and children signals looming disaster.
Overall, the survey by America’s foremost Christian pollster shows that Gen Z is largely disconnected from reality. Among 14- to 29-year-olds, support for socialism has increased 17 percentage points since the last time the survey was taken, from 22% to 39%. Why not?
The signs of its success are all around us. What do you do when you get caught between Pyongyang and New York City?
Barna notes: “Young adults today report high levels of anxiety, uncertainty and emotional complexity in their daily lives — factors that may shape how they approach long-term decisions like marriage.”
In other words, they are emotional lightweights.
My parents married in 1936, in the depths of the Great Depression. They were married for 20 years before they could afford to buy a house.
Of course, there was nothing to be anxious about in 1936 — nothing except Nazis goose-stepping across Europe, Imperial Japan tearing up Asia and Marshal Stalin waiting to pounce.
The survey’s most troubling disclosure is this: Some 74% of Gen Z say life can be fulfilling without children. This attitude has been carefully cultivated by elites in education, news media and Hollywood.
If marriage and children aren’t important, then what is the greatest source of satisfaction for this aimless generation? Their careers, condos, cars, investments or the number of likes they get on social media?
I have a friend who is a successful lawyer. In her 70s, she says she was focused on a legal career since high school. Now, she wishes someone had told her about the importance of children decades earlier, while she still had time.
The decisions Gen Z makes about marriage and children won’t affect them alone. It is a butterfly effect that starts in the maternity ward and eventually collapses the Social Security Trust Fund.
To put it bluntly, our civilization is dying because too many have unknowingly chosen for it to happen.
Our society is aging rapidly as fewer children are born to replace previous generations.
Fertility is the key to a nation’s future. A nation’s fertility rate is the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime. Replacement level fertility is 2.1. We haven’t been there in almost 20 years. In 2025, America’s fertility rate was 1.57, the lowest on record and well below replacement, and it keeps going down.
This means fewer taxpayers supporting more elderly people who need their pensions funded and their medical bills paid.
An industrialized society runs on people, all sorts of people, including architects, teachers, medical personnel, first responders, assembly-line and agricultural workers, investors and innovators. As more of them retire, fewer are waiting to take their place.
In 20 years, we will still have the abundant natural resources we have today, but we will have no one to harness them. We will still have the roads, railroads and ports, but not the truck drivers, trainmen and longshoremen.
America will contract. Small towns and medium-size cities will be abandoned. Life will be centered on large cities, which will be increasingly unlivable, as the pool of police, firefighters and medical personnel dries up.
Fertility and marriage go hand in hand. In 1970, more than 40% of households consisted of married couples with children younger than 18. By 2022, that figure had declined to 22%. In 2024, for the first time, a majority of women weren’t married.
The survey shows one positive trend.
Barna reports that Generation Z has outpaced all other generations in church attendance. On average, they attend religious services 1.9 times a month, compared with 1.8 for millennials.
There is a gender gap here too. Although 21% of Gen Z men attend church monthly, only 12% of Gen Z women are regular churchgoers. They are probably too busy marching with CodePink.
Regardless of their sex, when they are in church, do they hear anything positive about marriage and procreation, such as “Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth” and “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh”?
Churches and synagogues need to do more than pay lip service to marriage and procreation. Otherwise, the world may end not in fire or ice but empty cradles.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 