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The Paradox of Jimmy Kimmel, Charlie Kirk, and Freedom of Speech

01 October 2025 • by Bob • Politics, Opinion

Earlier today I saw an article from the New York Post titled Jimmy Kimmel’s short-lived ratings spike comes to screeching halt, and the article made me want to revisit some ideas that I had jotted down several days ago. At the time, I had neglected to post anything because a great deal had already been said about Disney/ABC infamously dropping Jimmy Kimmel after he behaved badly following the murder of Charlie Kirk, and still more has been said about Disney/ABC infamously reinstating Jimmy Kimmel.

Let me be honest about one thing right up front: I don't watch late night television, but I used to. At the risk of "Too Much Information," I grew up watching Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in the 1970s. Carson was a gracious host who made his guests look like superstars, and a genuinely funny entertainer who largely kept his political views to himself. Two of my favorite comedians during Johnny Carson's reign as the undisputed king of late night were Steve Martin and David Letterman, both of whom were frequent guests on The Tonight Show. When the 1980s rolled around, I was thrilled when David Letterman was rumored to be taking over when Johnny Carson eventually retired. Of course, things didn't go according to plan: Jay Leno infamously took over The Tonight Show, and David Letterman eventually took The Late Show to another network. But sometime during late night television's tenure in the 1990s, a curious thing happened: late night ceased to be funny.

I still watched David Letterman occasionally after hours, but I didn't like Jay Leno's futile attempts at being a late night host - he simply wasn't funny enough. Sadly, things didn't improve when Conan O'Brien took over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno, nor did they improve when Jay Leno infamously stole The Tonight Show back from Conan O'Brien. But the problem with late night television's lack of humor wasn't limited to The Tonight Show and The Late Show; other late night programs like The Late Late Show, The Jon Stewart Show, Politically Incorrect, and a host of other utterly forgettable late night offerings tried and failed to capture the magic that was once late night. Of course, changes in audience preferences had something to do with that. Primetime television in the 1960s and and 1970s were plagued with a never-ending stream of "variety shows," which featured myriad performers getting their 15 minutes of fame. When those shows fell out of fashion around 1980, late night television picked up the slack as late night talk shows of the 1980s and 1990s featured myriad artists getting their 15 minutes of fame. However, the late night television hosts of the 1990s through today could never move past the formulaic monologue followed by guest interviews with the occasional sketch comedy to make things interesting. Of all the late night hosts to come and go - with hosts like Bill Maher, Arsenio Hall, Craig Kilborn, Samantha Bee, Seth Meyers, Craig Ferguson, to name a few - none of them strayed much from Johnny Carson's pattern, meaning that most of everything being aired during late night was redundant drivel. (Though to be fair, James Corden occasionally had some brilliant ideas.)

Jumping to today's late night television programming, the predominant hosts of their respective shows are Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Greg Gutfeld (with the highest-rated late night show), and - of course - Jimmy Kimmel. As I said earlier, however, late night talk shows are in a downward spiral, because none of these shows are funny. Each of those shows pander to their ever-dwindling audiences, and all of them fail to compete with content that's readily-available on YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and a host of other streaming platforms. Audiences no longer need to wait until after hours to be entertained, their favorite content and artists are only a click away at any time of day or night.

Having sufficiently set the stage on the highs and lows of late night television, I will return to my discussion of Jimmy Kimmel. From what few excerpts I've seen that people have posted of Kimmel's whiny, pretentious, inane and unamusing drivel - I'm glad that I've never watched his show. Of all the late night hosts that I have seen - and trust me, I've seen a lot - Kimmel is the least interesting, by far. Not that my opinion means anything to him, of course. I am a relative nobody who isn't a member of one of his target demographics. But as I said before, Kimmel's audience has continued to shrink even within his target demographics. And, let's be honest: are we surprised by Kimmel's demise? Hardly. Kimmel is a pompous, self-aggrandizing  windbag who can neither take nor deliver a joke. Which is, ironically, a joke in itself.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder on September 10, 2025, liberals across the country were tripping over each other to post and re-post everything they'd come to loathe about Kirk, even though a lot (but not all) of what they were saying was demonstrably false. At first Kimmel seemed to chart a different course when he took to the airwaves to say the following:

This wasn't a bad offering, but it offered neither comfort nor olive branch. Kimmel followed his underwhelming opening statement with a plethora of Trump jokes, which to his credit were largely factual. Trump can be a genuine equine posterior at times. The Trump jokes were followed by several additional minutes of what were supposed to be jokes about politics and other things in the news, but none of it was actually funny, so I have a hard time referring to the words that were coming out of Kimmel's mouth as "jokes."

A few days later, however, Kimmel dropped the pretense of civility. Rather than moving away from the topic of Kirk's death, or to offer solace to any of his viewers who might have been emotionally wounded by recent events, Kimmel decided to follow the angry, liberal mob taking cheap shots at Charlie Kirk and his followers when he took to the airwaves with the following drivel:

Then the show cut to several scenes in which reporters asked Trump about Charlie Kirk, and in response Trump changed the subject to talk about the ballroom that's being built in Washington DC. Kimmel reacted to those scenes with the following observation about Trump:

The show cut away to several more scenes of Trump behaving like... well, Trump. He's a buffoon, and I make no attempts to justify his buffoonery. But the scenes that were shown were wrapped in a flurry of fatuous verbal diarrhea from Kimmel, for example when he waxed poetically about how Kash Patel was mishandling the investigation:

Kimmel was mocking the fact that the FBI had originally said that they had the shooting suspect in custody, but later corrected themselves to say that they hadn't. Later the news reported that someone had intentionally confessed to the shooting in the moment in order to distract authorities and let the actual killer escape. Kimmel - or his writers - should have known that, but they apparently lack the mental fortitude that is required to type the letters "G - O - O - G - L - E" into a web browser.

The rest of the Kimmel's monologue didn't get any better; he continued to spew vitriol at pretty much everyone whom he detests, and yet - as I've said many times - nothing he said was actually funny, but a lot of what he said was opportunistic and mean-spirited. Kimmel was clearly taking advantage of Charlie Kirk's murder to do the exact thing that he was supposedly upset about: Kimmel was desperately trying to characterize Charlie Kirk's murder as anything other than someone on his side of the political spectrum and doing everything he could to score political points from it.

So to sum up - Jimmy Kimmel was behaving like: an ass for being insensitive, an idiot for failing to look up anything that could easily be disproven, a liar for saying things that he knew to be false, and a hypocrite for acting in the same manner that he was mocking.

Kimmel's behavior was too much for a few of the companies that syndicate ABC/Disney, and they announced that they would be dropping Kimmel's show from their broadcast lineups. To their credit, ABC/Disney did the right thing by suspending Jimmy Kimmel and offering a path back that was very simple: apologize. When faced with the fact that syndicators were dropping his show, Kimmel didn't say he was sorry - he doubled down on his arrogance, and Disney/ABC famously suspended his show. However, the "Hollywood types" didn't take the news of Kimmel's suspension lying down. They were immediately up in arms defending Kimmel from the imaginary villains they perceived were violating Kimmel's "Freedom of Speech," which is a cheap soapbox that Hollywood types like to hide behind whenever anyone calls them out for being the pampered, selfish and vile narcissists that most of them are in real life (e.g. when they're not accepting the scores of self-congratulatory awards that they love to hand out to each other).

But here's the thing: no one was violating Kimmel's freedom of speech. Kimmel wasn't being arrested for the things he said, and unlike other areas of the world, Kimmel had no reason to fear being executed for the things he said. Kimmel's show was suspended, but he was still free to say whatever he wanted to say. Kimmel could have gone on any number of news programs, podcasts and talk shows and said literally whatever he wanted to say - even if it was untrue - about his predicament. And even if Kimmel had been fired, he was still free to offer his services to any competing network that would have him. After all the hoopla that he had caused, Kimmel probably would have had several job offers from sympathetic stooges within the week. The political comedian Bill Maher has spoken in the past about getting fired for something he said and being rehired later, and I am certain that Kimmel would have been able to do the same. In other words - Kimmel wasn't being censored, nor was his freedom of speech being infringed. On the contrary, Kimmel, said some stupid things, and society was holding him accountable.

However, the public pressure was too much for ABC/Disney, so to their discredit, they added insult to injury by doing the wrong thing and reinstating Jimmy Kimmel. No apologies necessary.

After returning to the air, Kimmel's opening monologue made a half-hearted and wholly insincere attempt at addressing what happened, which was liberally punctuated with alligator tears and a failed impression of someone being choked up with emotion. Kimmel came nowhere close to admitting that was wrong, of course. On the contrary, he intimated that he simply wanted to clarify that he wouldn't capitalize on someone's murder, although that is exactly what he had done. Of all the things that Kimmel said during his victory lap on his first night back, the following excerpt is the only attempt that Kimmel made with regard to addressing what he had said and done:

These few words from Kimmel stand in direct contradiction to what he said when he was suspended: he did make light of the situation, and he did blame a specific group, and the things he said weren't  the opposite of the point that he was trying to make, and his statements were ill-timed and clearly said, and he did point fingers. Nothing Kimmel asserted in this short quotation was factual, and none of it was anything close to an apology. What Kimmel said, in essence, was: perhaps you misunderstood me. In other words, Kimmel blamed everyone else for being upset with him. The rest of Kimmel's monologue was a rah-rah-rah continuation of the narcissistic blather that others in the media had been spewing about "protecting free speech", etc. All the while failing to take any semblance of ownership for his situation, and attempting with all his might to hide behind the First Amendment - even though it really didn't apply here. As I said before, Kimmel could have been fired and that wouldn't have been a violation of his First Amendment rights. Kimmel has the right to speak his mind, and ABC/Disney has the right to disagree and potentially reprimand him for the things he says - to include terminating his contract if they so desire.

While it is often ill-advised to speak on behalf of the deceased, Charlie Kirk was a big defender of freedom of speech, and in an interesting paradox, I honestly believe that Charlie Kirk would have defended Jimmy Kimmel's constitutionally-guaranteed right to be a jerk. Kirk knew that people who disagreed with him also frequently mocked him, and he showed on more than one occasion that he could take a joke and be a good sport about it. For example: Kirk famously said that he thought South Park's parody of him was a badge of honor. With that in mind, I honestly think that Kirk would have seen the attempts to punish Kimmel as unnecessary, but as I said - it is ill-advised to speak on behalf of the deceased, so I will drop the subject.

The sad part is, Kimmel is too much of a creatively-challenged cretin to step outside his tiny echo chamber long enough to realize that - long before he had said anything stupid - he could have taken advantage of this national tragedy to become the hero of his own saga. What Kimmel could have done (or perhaps should have done), was to use his platform to try to bring the country together, and speak out against the rampant string of politically-motivated violence. David Letterman famously did something like that after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and I sincerely believe that Johnny Carson would have done something similar. Imagine if Kimmel had said something like the following on the day that Charlie Kirk was murdered: "Earlier today, a tragic thing happened here in America: a young, father of two was shot and killed in front of a live audience. We currently do not know the assailant or what his or her motivation was, but this violence has to stop." An empathetic and reasoned approach like this example would have been great. It would have been impactful. It could have touched the hearts of Americans young and old. Instead, what Kimmel did was to try and pin the assassination on the people with whom he disagrees ("the MAGA gang"). After Kirk's killer was caught and his true motivations were revealed, Kimmel's poor choice of words and actions in days following Kirk's murder upped his status from insensitive jackass to blathering ignoramus.

An interesting twist to all this hysteria is that Kimmel's ratings have been in decline for some time, and Kimmel's public-facing faux pas might have been just the thing that ABC/Disney needed to unload Kimmel's show. On the other hand, Kimmel, rather than waiting for the inevitable, could have taken advantage of this situation to leave his show with a public display of feigned disgust and besmirched honor in order to save some modicum of image within the entertainment world. Instead of watching his show continue to crater, Kimmel could have left ABC/Disney while continuing to blather on about how his freedom of speech was being trampled, and then laughed all the way to the bank when a sympathetic network or cable channel offered him a more lucrative contract. It's like Metallica when Napster came along: Metallica didn't have to admit that their declining record sales were due to the fact that they'd ceased being relevant when they could simply blame Napster. (Sorry, Jimmy - when your show inevitably gets canned, you're going to have to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that... well, it's your show that sucks, not everyone else.)

In the end, this entire affair came down to a staring contest between Jimmy Kimmel and Disney/ABC, and it was Disney/ABC that blinked. If you are someone on Disney/ABC's payroll and you've been chomping at the bit to say something awful, I'd say that now is your chance, because Disney/ABC have collectively proven that they lack the intestinal fortitude to stand their ground when challenged. But that being said, there are some lessons to be learned: just because you do something stupid and get to keep your job, that does not mean that you are free from the ramifications of your bad decisions. And sometimes, such as a situation like Jimmy Kimmel's, you get to keep your job because you're the circus sideshow freak of late night television rather than having any actual talent.

Charlie Kirk (1993 - 2025) - Christian, Husband, Father, Political Activist, and Martyr

10 September 2025 • by Bob • Opinion, Politics, Religion

Ah, I see that the "Coexist" people are alive and well and spreading their message of tolerance again.

I saw the following image when the news broke that Charlie Kirk had been shot by an assassin while speaking at a University in Utah, and as most people probably now know, Kirk has sadly succumbed to injuries. Kirk's untimely death at the age of 31 leaves a wife and two children, which is tragic enough by itself, but what I find reprehensible are the circumstances surrounding his death and some people's reactions to it.

Prior to his death, the majority of people in this country probably weren't aware of Charlie Kirk's existence. For their benefit, I should explain that Kirk made a name for himself by traveling around the country to visit college and university campuses and debate students across a broad spectrum of political and religious topics. One topic that he was particularly outspoken in favor of was our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, and the ultimate irony of which was the number of people who tried to prevent Kirk from speaking at their college and university campuses. These bastions of higher learning were at one time the strongholds of free thought and expression, but they have devolved into close-minded, echo chambers where the mere possibility of a dissenting opinion is met with derision, or in many cases - outright violence, such as Charlie Kirk's assassination earlier today.

The prominent Democratic governor, ambassador, and former presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson II, famously said two things that have always stuck with me: "My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular," and "All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions." I never met Charlie Kirk, but I would be willing to guess that he probably agreed with both of those sentiments.

Having framed that part of Charlie Kirk's professional history, that leads me to what I find far more tragic about his assassination: the imminent demise of free speech. There is no shortage of hate-filled people in this country who despised Charlie Kirk and others like him for expressing an opinion that is contrary to what the hate-filled people believe. But these hate-filled people do not understand that their misguided attempts to shut down free expression stand in direct opposition to what living in a "free society" actually means.

Over the past few years, I've had several conversations with Millennials and Gen Zers who have actually said that some people do not deserve free speech. I'd love to say that these Millennials and Gen Zers were speaking about racists or neo-Nazis, but they weren't. These Millennials and Gen Zers were talking about people with whom they simply disagreed. (Although in further irony, these Millennials and Gen Zers were predominantly opposed to capital punishment, with the exception of racists and neo-Nazis, whom the Millennials and Gen Zers felt didn't deserve to live - much less have freedom of speech. However, these same Millennials and Gen Zers often take the additional step of labeling people who disagree with them as racists or neo-Nazis, but I digress.)

This sort of thinking from Millennials and Gen Zers - that free speech shouldn't be a universal right for everyone - is especially dangerous, for it tears away at one of the core principles in the bedrock of our civilization. Here's a case in point: there are untold millions of people who despise our sitting president, but freedom of speech guarantees our citizens the right to speak out in opposition to our president. We are one of the few countries in the world where this form of political opposition is enshrined in our constitution and protected by law, and no one - certainly not Millennials and Gen Zers - should be afforded the opportunity to say who "deserves" to have free speech. To paraphrase former ambassador Stevenson again, everyone should feel safe enough to be unpopular.

Adding insult to injury, there are several people today who are actually happy that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. They detested what he had to say, they loathed him for his beliefs, and now they're rejoicing at the news of his death. At the end of the day, I think that's the greatest tragedy in all of this. I may disagree with others' opinions, sometimes vehemently, but no one should fear for their safety just because I think they're wrong about something. No one needs to die just because they've said something unpopular.

All this discussion brings me back to my opening statement, for it is the people who consistently preach messages of "coexistence" and "tolerance" whom I have usually found to be paradoxically the least tolerant and least interested in living peacefully with others and others' opinions.

In closing, if you disliked Charlie Kirk, I understand why, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But Kirk didn't deserve to die for his opinions. And if you're one of the people who is glad that he was killed earlier today, then you should seriously reconsider your worldview, because Charlie Kirk wasn't the problem - you are.

Not Everyone Can Do The Job

02 September 2025 • by Bob • Military, Opinion

I saw the following image earlier today, and I have to admit - I felt this way during my tenure in the military.

To be blunt, there were some jobs within the military that not everyone could do.  But that had nothing to do with gender or race - it was a question of skills and abilities.

I didn't care if a man or a woman volunteered for any specific position within our armed services - as far as I was concerned, it only mattered if they could accomplish the mission. It didn't matter if ten people were needed for a mission and it took seven women and three men, or eight men and two women, or any mixture of white, black, Hispanic, Asian, etc. soldiers. What screwed things up was when I witnessed firsthand that DEI idiots were demanding that some roles needed to be "easier" so that a "more diverse population" could get in.

I saw a Warrant Officer argue against reducing the skills necessary to complete the Army's Air Assault program so that more women could pass the course. When he was accused of being a chauvinist he replied, "Combat isn't sexist. A bullet doesn't care if you're a man or a woman. The person standing next to you needs to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will be able to have their back when the time comes."

When we reduce the qualifications of certain jobs in the name of "equal outcomes," we jeopardize everyone's safety.

Why Rick Steves is Wrong about Weed

27 June 2025 • by Bob • Health, Opinion, Science

My wife and I are big fans of travel writer Rick Steves. Over the years we've watched his travel shows on PBS, we always use his guidebooks as we travel throughout Europe, and we've been on a couple of his European tours (which are worth every penny). Because of our fanboy status, I follow Rick Steves on Social Media, and I was both surprised and shocked when Rick posted the following on Facebook earlier today:

Rick's position is understandable: he's a cannabis user, and everyone who is behaving in a manner that others might perceive as wrong would love to see all restrictions lifted for their chosen vice. This mindset is what has led several states to overturn previous laws that criminalized marijuana use, but just because something has been made legal doesn't make it right. For example, adultery used to be illegal, now it's only viewed as immoral. In other words, adultery may be legal, but it's still regarded as unacceptable, because it hurts people. And it's the same thing with marijuana use; just because cannabis has been made legal in some areas doesn't mean that its harmful effects have been negated. On the contrary, numerous researchers in science and medical fields have published a wealth of peer-reviewed articles about the negative effects of recreational cannabis use, though this research falls on deaf ears because people want what they want, regardless of the consequences. (Which is why tobacco use has remained popular around the world despite overwhelming evidence that it's a highly addictive drug that kills millions of people per year.)

With that in mind, I felt prompted to respond to Rick's post with the following comment:

I fully expected a wave of negative feedback from the pro-cannabis crowd in response to my comment, but that didn't happen. Instead, Rick promptly deleted my response. Apparently, Rick doesn't like people presenting a solid argument that disagrees with him.

C'est la vie.

A Picture is Worth Thousands of Broken Hearts

12 October 2023 • by Bob • Religion, Politics

I wanted to reshare this photo because it was very personal to me. My wife and I have a bed very similar to this in the bedroom where our four-year-old granddaughter sleeps peacefully when she comes to visit, and I can imagine that the child who owned this bed was sleeping peacefully in it before she was senselessly slaughtered this past weekend. And what had the child done to deserve such a violent and militaristic execution? She was alive, and that was it. For thousands of years people have killed millions of Jews simply because they existed, and many of these genocides have been largely ignored by unsympathetic historians because the victims were Jews and no one seemed to care about their suffering. This is racism at its worst, and it must stop.

Over the past few decades, I have also heard much about the plight of the Palestinians, and if I'm being honest, I have to agree with some of the arguments that I have heard in their favor. I believe that Palestinians should have an independent state where they can live in peace, and if you study your history, you'll see that on multiple occasions Israel offered huge swaths of land with which the Palestinians could have created a free state for themselves. But the Palestinians refused these offers, because the terrorists the Palestinians voted into power, namely Hamas, do not want to peacefully coexist with Israel. Hamas has been very vocal over the years about its intentions to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, which is what lead to Saturday's surprise attack and the deaths of hundreds of innocent Jewish people for the simple crime of not being dead already.

I occasionally see people driving around with the "COEXIST" bumper sticker that is fashioned from the iconography of several major religions. While this is a noble-sounding sentiment, it reveals much about the naiveté of the person who emblazoned their vehicle with such innocent absurdity. The problem with preaching this particular message of coexistence is that it completely ignores the actions and emotions of people who do not share a common sense of right and wrong. Americans had a difficult time understanding this disparity when 9/11 happened; the thousands of innocent lives who died in the Twin Towers and Washington DC hadn't done anything to warrant their tragic deaths at the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists, but the enemy we faced was so blinded by hatred that it could not be reasoned with. Sadly, this is where Israel finds itself today. Hamas cannot be reasoned with. Hamas doesn't want to coexist. Hamas only wants to hate Jews and kidnap families and rape women and kill innocent people - like the child who owned the bed in this photo. Being ex-military, I am angered by this image. I am repulsed by what it depicts. I want vengeance for what Hamas has done. But that's not my place, and if I'm not careful, I may find myself so consumed by hatred for Hamas that I'm no better than they are.

It's Memorial Day - Thank a Veteran

29 May 2023 • by Bob • Military, Opinion

An anonymous person posted a suggestion to social media that everyone should "Thank a Veteran this Memorial Day." I thought that proposal sounded like a good idea, so to all my former uniformed brethren - I say with a grateful heart, "Thank you for your service."

However, no sooner had the anonymous person posted their statement of gratitude, another well-meaning person responded with the following meme:

Giving benefit of the doubt, I believe the second poster's intentions were good, and I agree that wishing someone a "Happy Memorial Day" is culturally insensitive. Memorial Day is a time to remember and honor the sacrifices of our nation’s men and women who have fallen in combat. There is nothing that is "happy" about this annual observance, and as such the phrase "Happy Memorial Day" is at best an oxymoron, and at worst it is an insult to those who have lost loved ones during their time in service.

However, while I agree that we should NEVER utter the words "Happy Memorial Day" because they dishonor the meaning of that holiday, we can ALWAYS thank our veterans - whether it's Memorial Day, or Veteran's Day, or Independence Day, or Mother's Day, or Christmas Day, or a Tuesday, or a Friday, or any day that ends in "day."

In one fashion or another, every veteran has sacrificed, which is amply expressed by the following adage: "All gave some, but some gave all."

POSTSCRIPT:

For more information about Memorial Day, see The Tangled Roots of Memorial Day and Why It's Celebrated on the NY Times website.

College Loans and Debt Forgiveness

31 January 2023 • by Bob • Education, Opinion, Politics

The United States government made it far too easy for students to take loans, and colleges pounced on students' willingness to take loans and jacked up tuition costs disproportionately to the rest of society - knowing full well that students would eventually bear the full financial weight of their poor choices and the government would be forced to make good on those loans one way or other. With that in mind, it doesn't matter whether you label the US government's current meddling in the college tuition debacle "overcharge reimbursement" or "loan forgiveness," because at the end of the day either way you choose to title such a program is little more than playing games with semantics.

In my opinion, what should be happening is these same colleges should be forced to eat part of the costs; some office of the government should take each college individually and review their tuition costs back to 1970 and compare the rise in tuition with inflation in the rest of society and determine whether each college rose their tuition costs more than inflation, and that's the part of the costs that the colleges should be forced to absorb - WITH NO GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS. If a college has to layoff workers to balance their books, then so be it, because there are ample studies available about colleges hiring an exponential number of non-educators with the increased fees they were charging, so that should take care of itself.

Once the colleges' culpability has been taken care of, the remaining costs are the financial obligations of the students - WITH NO GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS, either. While I realize that colleges were offering easy money to students at a time when most students were too stupid to realize the ill-effects of staggering debt (which is also why credit cards set up shop in student unions across the country), I have zero tolerance for students who claim to be a "victim" when no one was holding a gun to their collective heads. At any time the students could have said no. Instead of a loan for exorbitant tuition, students could have:

1. Gone to a different college (which would have encouraged colleges to be competitive).
2. Pursued their base courses through a cheaper, two-year college to save costs (which would have also forced four-year colleges to re-examine tuition costs to attract newer students).
3. Spent more time researching the millions of dollars that are available each year as grants and scholarships (which most students ignored since those involved doing some "work" to discover and apply for, and loans only required a signature).
4. Taken time off between high school and college to save up for school (which MIGHT have encouraged colleges to create more attractive entry-level pricing).
5. Join the military to earn money for college (which is what I personally did).

In addition, students could have chosen a different major, or a different school, or a different career path, or refused to go to college, or myriad other options that were available to them. However, most students took the easy route and chose to sign a loan for their education - AND THAT'S TOTALLY ON THEM. Regardless of whether the school was charging too much, at the end of the day each student made a conscious choice to enter into debt unwisely; the same choice that people make when they sign up for a 33% credit card, or take a loan for a vehicular lemon, or pay too much for a property without doing the requisite market research, etc.

As I said earlier, no one held a gun to students' collective heads. If students signed up for massive amounts of debt, that is entirely on them - the rest of the country should not be forced to pay for their collective stupidity through taxation. On the contrary, the colleges themselves should be forced to reset tuition levels to reasonable rates and backdate loan amounts accordingly, and students should be required to pay off the remainder.

PS - If something like this proposal was rolled out, I would also suggest that whichever office of government went through the books to synchronize college tuition rates with inflation over the past several decades should also be able to force schools to adopt realistic tuition rates going forward, too. If a school is caught trying to jack up tuition rates, they should be penalized in some way.

For more things to think about, see Why is College So Expensive?, New Rule: The College Scam, Is College Worth It?, and Game of Loans.

Brittney Griner vs the World

14 December 2022 • by Bob • Politics, Opinion

If I might be so bold as to weigh in on the subject, the following illustration hits home with what has been my biggest complaint with the entire media circus that surrounded the entirety of Brittney Griner's arrest and subsequent incarceration: she's nothing but a celebrity, and a minor one at that, so I failed to understand the constant hype around "getting her home."

Despite the Vice President's comments about Griner being "wrongfully detained", at the end of the day - Griner broke Russia's laws, and as such she deserved to be punished according to their laws. We might not like those laws, but our nation would do the same if a foreign national broke our laws while on our soil. Do I think Griner's prison sentence was considerably longer than it should have been? Heck yes, and diplomacy should have been used to reduce Griner's sentence to something a little more reasonable.

Of course, in hindsight we see the ulterior purpose behind Griner's sentence - it was a poker move. Putin knew that if the punishment was far too excessive for Griner's minor crime, he could force the United States to do something unreasonable in order to rectify what was clearly an unjust situation - which we did. The United States traded a major criminal, who will undoubtedly return to his prior life of crime, in order to free a celebrity whom most people couldn't pick out of a lineup.

Adding insult to injury, however, is the fact that the United States attempted to free retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan or schoolteacher Marc Fogel as part of this prisoner exchange, and rather than forcing the Russians back to the negotiating table, the US acquiesced to Russia's terms. There are SOOOO many things wrong with what happened here.

First of all, Putin stared down the USA, and the USA blinked. The key takeaway for everyone around the globe who opposes the USA is: the USA is weak and easily manipulated. From a statecraft perspective, the Brittney Griner prisoner exchange was an utter failure from the point of view that matters most; e.g. foreign perceptions of the USA.

What's more, however, is the USA has shown once again how anyone who ISN'T a celebrity doesn't matter. If the USA could have traded for just one prisoner, that ABSOLUTELY SHOULD have been Paul Whelan, who has been held by Russia for four years, or Marc Fogel, whose crime and sentence were nearly identical to Griner's. Instead, the weak-minded and weak-kneed imbeciles who headed up this political debacle threw the non-celebrities to the wolves, and opted to bring home the prisoner who would get them on the 6 o'clock news.

In the end, that's the part that hurts the worst: this administration has demonstrated, once again, that the common man has less worth than canine feces to those who could make a difference. This entire affair has been nothing but a cheap public relations stunt for the Biden administration; let everyone else and the country be damned.

Egypt Discarded the Rosetta Stone, Now Egypt Wants It Back

05 December 2022 • by Bob • History, Opinion

A pair of articles recently caught my eye: Egyptians call on British Museum to return the Rosetta stone (from PBS) and Act of plunder: Egyptians want the Rosetta Stone back (from Al Jazeera).

As a student of history, I have a difficult time accepting the demands of countries to have treasures like Rosetta Stone "returned" to their country of origin when that country never bothered to take care of these treasures in the past. While the Rosetta Stone was created in Egypt, it was also discarded by Egypt and lost to the world for literally 2,000 years. What's more, the Rosetta Stone's discovery was over two centuries ago, it's purpose was deciphered by archeologists and scholars from central Europe - not Egypt - and it has been on public display for the rest of the world to admire for two centuries.

The Rosetta Stone's fate thus far - e.g. safely kept in a museum - has been far better than if it had been taken as spoils of war by a military commander, and spent the past two centuries languishing in someone's private collection, which might easily have happened if others had discovered the Rosetta Stone. Or as we have seen with ISIS running rampant throughout the Middle East, the Rosetta Stone might just as easily have been destroyed due to the ignorance of its discoverers.

At what point is an item of antiquity no longer within the realm of "possession" by a country that cared so little for its significance that it was used as building material? Now that 200 years have passed and Egypt has finally realized the Rosetta Stone's worth - if nothing more than museum fodder for tourist money - why should the rest of the world heed the requests of a country that didn't care enough to preserve it in the first place?

Europeans didn't raid an Egyptian museum to steal the Rosetta Stone from it's "rightful owners." On the contrary, French soldiers found the Rosetta Stone discarded in the desert, and realizing its potential significance, the French treated the Rosetta Stone with far greater care than Egypt had demonstrated. Eventually France lost its battles with England, and the British took possession of the Rosetta Stone and placed it in a position of prestige at the British Museum. As I said earlier, the Rosetta Stone has fared far better in the hands of foreigners than it had had in its country of origin.

Enough said. Rant over. Please resume your regularly-scheduled Internet browsing.

Unionism, Socialism, Capitalism, and Communism

12 September 2022 • by Bob • Politics, Opinion

A few years ago, Ben Shapiro (like him or hate him) was speaking at a university, and a young Socialist stepped up to the microphone during a Q&A session to promote the related ideas of Unionization, Market Socialism (as opposed to political), and worker-owned businesses. The Socialist kept pressing the point that Capitalism is unfair to workers because workers provide all the labor for lower wages than business owners receive, which is classical Marxism at its best (or worst, as the case may be). The Socialist kept espousing what he thinks is "fair" with regard to wage gaps between the common worker and the CEO. Though to be clear, the young Socialist doesn't use the word "fair." Instead, he obscures that notion through a never-ending barrage of Socialist jargon. Nevertheless, that is his implication: Capitalism is "unfair" because workers do not earn as much as business owners.

However, Shapiro's answer provides one of the best explanations for why there is a logical reason for wage disparity, and I highly suggest that you watch it. There are two versions of this video: a shorter version (≈3:30) with just the highlights at https://youtu.be/3xq-q6a9tCM, and the full version (≈12:50) with the entire conversation at https://youtu.be/NUauABEnTZI. Unions are not a bad thing conceptually; the problem is that they often devolve into a bad thing in reality.

I have seen several situations where unions keep round-tripping back to the negotiating table again and again asking for benefits that are unnecessary (and I can cite examples), and the unions in these situations eventually force their parent businesses to become unprofitable (which is what has led to more robots on factory floors, self-checkout lines in supermarkets, jobs headed overseas, and self-service kiosks at fast-food restaurants). When unions demand higher wages for skills that are easy-to-train and therefore more or less expendable, businesses will do away with expendable laborers. (Either by outsourcing or automation, as I have just mentioned.) In a like manner, when unions demand benefits with significant costs from businesses like paid college tuition for workers' family members, six months of paid maternity leave, etc., these unions may force companies into bankruptcy. Don't get me wrong, paid college tuition and paid maternity leave are wonderful benefits to have, but when labor demands these types of things and profits cannot keep up with the increased expenditures, businesses are doomed to fail and everyone is out of work.

There was a greater need for unions a century ago, when modern labor laws had yet to be written and factories routinely abused their laborers. Times have changed, and everyone in the United States is in the top 1% of the world with regard to health, housing, employment, wages, etc. The quality of life in North America exceeds that of nearly the entire planet, and yet people still find room to complain - because people delude themselves into thinking that life is somehow "unfair" to them, which is typically because someone else has something that they want; either a higher salary, or a better job, a better house, a better car, a better spouse, etc. People want what they don't have, and that's what led to the "99%" riots a few years ago, and also to thousands of misguided Socialists and/or Unionists who decry their elevated global conditions as some form of suffering. Don't get me wrong, nothing is perfect and laborers still need representation to prevent potential abuse, but the irresponsible claims emanating from the mouths of most Unionists sound ludicrous when you take into account just how blessed some of the people doing the complaining really are.

As for Socialism, which typically goes hand in hand with Unionism and eventually devolves into Communism, let me take a moment to briefly editorialize. I have witnessed first-hand the many evils of Communism, which is why I cannot support anyone who is espousing either a Communist or Socialist system of government. While a logical argument can be made for socializing specific programs - such as healthcare - both Communism and Socialism are doomed to failure from their inception, because they seek to forcibly create "equality of outcome" instead of "equality of opportunity."

Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to qualify for the job they desire, and an equal opportunity to seek advancement within their respective places of employment. However, people deserve to be rewarded for their efforts, and if one person chooses to outperform their peers, they should be compensated for their efforts. Likewise, if someone chooses to accept greater responsibility within their company, or to step out as an entrepreneur and found their own company, they should also be compensated for their efforts. In a Capitalist society, they will be. However, in a Communist or Socialist society, everyone is forced into categories - often from which they cannot escape - and the outcome is dictated by the state. If Person A outperforms Person B, that doesn't matter; compensation must be the same for both people, for that is "equality" under Communism and Socialism. Of course, this system is untenable for those who are forced to suffer under it, which is why millions of people have fled Communist or Socialist societies over the past century, and millions more have been put to death or imprisoned when trying to protest their oppressive regimes. This is why most countries that adopt Communism or Socialism are forced to do so at gunpoint.

Most people who deride Capitalism do so because they have a misguided view of "fairness," which is generally an untrustworthy worldview. What is "fair" for Person A seldom seems "fair" to Person B if Person A has more than Person B, and therein lies the problem. In an equality of opportunity scenario, both Person A and Person B have the same chance to make more or less based on their personal participation, which is the ideal way of conducting society. However, in an equality of outcome scenario, if Person A has acquired more than Person B, that is forbidden by the state, and the government must intervene and force both persons to be "equal," which is not an ideal way to conduct a society.

This is what we have seen time and again with Communist or Socialist societies; they actively seek equality of outcome, and millions are forced to suffer as a result. The former Soviet Union, North Korea, China, the Warsaw Pact, and Cuba are just a few examples from the 20th century of what happens in an equality of outcome society. Even though barely a generation has gone by since the demise of the Soviet Union, there are thousands of gullible individuals who would gratefully embrace Communism and Socialism because they think that some part of their lives isn't "fair." These people are - as the Communists called them - "Useful Idiots." Such people hasten their own demise by failing to understand what they are promoting; as the old adage says, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."

I will now step down off my soapbox and back quietly away.

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