Jeffrey Epstein (1953-2019) was an American financier and convicted sex offender who was accused of serial sex trafficking of women and girls. Along with his convicted confederate, Ghislaine Maxwell, he systematically groomed and sexually abused (and enabled the sexual abuse of) hundreds and hundreds of young women and girls. Through his successful financial career, Epstein became a multimillionaire and developed a social circle that included extremely wealthy individuals, prominent politicians, and even royalty. While jailed and awaiting a federal sex-trafficking trial, Epstein killed himself by hanging.

On 6 and 9 August 1945 (80 years ago), the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, ultimately ending World War II. These bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people. This has been the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. This event, George Will observes, “transported humanity from one geopolitical era to another.”

On 16 July 2025, Andy Byron (50), CEO of the medium-sized software company Astronomer, attended a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts. [Coldplay are a British rock band formed in London in 1997 and are considered one of the most influential bands of the 21st century.] The jumbotron camera turned to Byron, who was holding Kristin Cabot (52), the company’s HR director, around the waist. When they noticed themselves on the stadium’s “kiss cam” (camera), they immediately disengaged, with Cabot turning her back and Byron awkwardly ducking out of view. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” said Coldplay’s lead singer, Chris Martin, to the stadium audience of 66,000. Cabot and Byron were indeed married, but not to each other. The clip quickly went viral on TikTok, then everywhere else.

On the last day of its term, in the case of Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, by a 6-to-3 vote the US Supreme Court delivered a decisive ruling against one of the worst industries in America. It upheld a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to “use reasonable age verification methods” to make sure that their customers are at least 18 years old. The court split on ideological lines, with the six Republican appointees voting to uphold the law and the three Democratic appointees in dissent.

Planned Parenthood was founded in 1916 as a grassroots movement to provide family planning to poor women. The trouble for Planned Parenthood in 2025 stems from its dual and often dueling roles as both a national advocacy organization and a local healthcare provider, one inherently political and the other necessarily nonpartisan. [More about that later in this essay.] Planned Parenthood is actually 48 independently incorporated affiliates operating under the national organization’s umbrella.

During one of my trips to Europe in 2005, I visited the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, Germany. I wanted to visit this church because in 1982 the pastor of that church, Christian Fuhrer, began Monday prayer meetings to pray for peace amid global violence and the oppressive East German regime. At first, the number attending these prayer meetings was small but attendance began to swell and spilled over to mass meetings outside the church gates.

To fully understand the development of American civilization, one must come to terms with the strategic role revivals have played. Colonial America was shaped and transformed by the First Great Awakening of the 1740s and the Methodist revival that followed. America of the early national period (1815-1850) was profoundly impacted by the Second Great Awakening. You cannot understand the energy for the abolition of slavery, the passion for women’s rights, the temperance movement and other social reform movements without coming to terms with this revival.

As many have observed over the last decade, competing world orders are emerging that center on Russia, China and Iran challenging the world order organized by the US. It is also a challenge that focuses on democracy versus authoritarian dictatorship. Putin, Xi and Khamenei argue that democracy does not work. People, they argue, are willing to surrender their rights in exchange of order and stability. The US is the only nation that can serve as a buffer against the forces of evil represented by Russia, China and Iran. Recently, it is in the Middle East where these competing world orders are being challenged.

It is now an axiom in 2025 American culture that America’s citizens do not trust their government; they have lost confidence in government and are skeptical of almost anything coming out of Washington or even state capitals. For a democracy to truly function well there must be a bond of trust between government and its citizens; a confidence that the state has its citizens’ best interests at heart. If there is an absence of trust, citizens will turn to someone or some form of government they can trust.

Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal recently wrote a most convicting piece on “trashing America’s global good name.” He wrote: “When I worked in Tokyo in the 1990s, a Japanese colleague told me a story about her father’s defining experience with Americans. In the days after Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, he was a young boy living in a small town.”