The restoration of common sense

Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Good morning.

Welcome back to O’Bservations. It’s been over three months since I sent out my last report. That’s an eternity in the news business.

Where have I been? Out and about, here and there. Missed you! Hope the feeling is mutual.

The world of news has been busy during our hiatus with its usual absurdities. Most of which was trivial nonsense not the least bit worthy of your attention. As usual, I’ll stick to the items that matter.

The quick summary is that President Trump is winning so much—the bombing in Iran, tariffs, the economy and stock market, tax-busting legislation, returning investment and jobs to our country, defeating crime and illegal immigration, exposing and exorcising the demons of secular progressivism and wokeism, restoring common sense, pasting the Dems on every conceivable subject—that it’s quite possible even his supporters are growing tired of winning.

There is, indeed, early evidence this may be happening.

This outcome was once predicted by candidate Trump himself. His prophetic words are immortalized in the Trump Happiness Montage that conservative Christian commentator and Daily Wire podcaster Andrew Klavan created and runs on his weekly show (which is must-see viewing in the O’Boyle household each Friday night).

I’ve been listening and laughing to it all summer long. Whenever I read or view something wildly out of touch with reality—just about a daily occurrence when observing what claims to be “objective, impartial” coverage by the legacy news media—I dial up the happiness montage. It’s not only very funny. It’s also an accurate assessment of reality as we enter the ninth month of Trump 2.0.

Andrew Klavan is among the few news observers I still trust. I’d also put Hugh Hewitt and Victor Davis Hanson on that highest pedestal for truth, accuracy and common sense. I also trust Bari Weiss’ Free Press, and a handful of other digital news sites. The list of sources I question is so long and growing longer by the minute, it’s not worth reciting here. We’ll deal with that later.

But first, without further delay … cue the choir singing the soaring Hallelujahs of Handel’s triumphant masterwork, Messiah … the Trump Happiness Montage, courtesy of the flamboyant Andrew Klavan. As it says in the opening advisory to the video, do not be offended. If you are, “I want to apologize in advance for the fact that I don’t care.”

Now that we’re in a better mood, here’s a second piece of happiness I’d like to share.

Next year, on Independence Day in 2026, we will celebrate America’s 250th birthday! This is a gargantuan milestone in the history of our cherished republic. Two-hundred-fifty years of freedom! Freedom like the world has never known.

In the coming year, I intend to end my report each month by focusing on some aspect of our traditions and history that make the United States of America unique. You’ll have to read to the end of this report to see what the first one is.

Two months ago, back on July 4th, America’s 249th birthday celebration was special for our family. We spent the day in Lakeside, Ohio, which has become our annual holiday retreat. Lakeside Chautauqua is a spectacular place to celebrate Independence Day, and this year was no exception.

It began as in past years with the “parade of bikes.” Hundreds of children rode their bicycles—festooned in red, white and blue—down the parade route on Second Street.

Our six grandchildren were among the cyclists, save for the twin boys, who were pushed in a stroller by their parents, Erin and Scott Westgate. Fortunately, the twins were strapped in and couldn’t escape! (Fortunate for them and parade spectators—what can I say, they’re very active boys.)

The day ended with the traditional fireworks display off Lakeside pier on Lake Erie.

The pictures below are a montage of the day’s memories. They show scenes a visitor to Lakeside encounters on Independence Day.

The images highlight what I consider to be one of our primary jobs as parents and grandparents. It is not only to give our offspring great memories of Independence Day, but reverence for what it represents.

We seek to instill in our progeny virtues and values. You do that by accentuating the four F’s—faith and freedom, surrounded by family and friends (with the double F fast upon us, the best season of the year: fall football!).

As a youngish adult in my early 30s, my family and I lived in Germany when I was a correspondent overseas for the Wall Street Journal. Our daughter Erin was born there.

This experience was a turning point in my life.

I traveled extensively in the East bloc behind what was then known as the “Iron Curtain,” Winston Churchill’s famous phrase. I witnessed spy swaps and stood next to the Berlin Wall (on the Western side, of course; I would have been shot dead had I tried to do that on the Eastern side).

Two months before the wall fell on November 9, 1989, I stood among East Germans in a church service in Leipzig as they demanded to be released from their captivity. I heard how they yearned to be free, and enjoy the freedoms they could only dream of while watching Western television.

I had encountered outright evil for the first time in my life. From that experience I learned that the U.S. of A. is the greatest, most free, most generous, most remarkable nation on planet Earth.

These experiences in Germany were a turning point in my personal theology.

I came to believe that the United States was one of the last places on Earth where the Evil One had not yet claimed victory. Louise and I used to discuss this subject on a fairly regular basis, as free Western Europe was even then making a sharp turn leftward toward secular progressivism.

So when I say that the United States is a great country, and that our Independence Day should be proclaimed loudly and proudly, I say this not out of dim-witted patriotism or wild-eyed fanaticism. There was something special about my home country, its place in the cosmos, and in world history.

Covering Presidents Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, I came to believe that America was ordained by God to be a beacon of freedom, hope, and liberty to the world. Our country did not achieve this distinction by an accident of history or chance, but through Divine Providence

All humans are sinful, Americans along with everyone else, as the Apostle Paul asserts in Romans 3:23. But America occupies a special place in world history.

To deny this is to be utterly ignorant of the American story, and its implications in the context of world events and world history. Ours is a legacy not grounded in oppression, as progressive Leftists maintain, but in the freedom that our founding documents proclaim.

That’s why I unequivocally subscribe to the sentiment expressed in the video below by Michael Medved. He is a widely acclaimed film critic, radio host, bestselling author, frequent guest of Grove City College, and one of the most genial and gracious men I’ve met. He is also an Orthodox Jew who admires Christianity and its contributions to the world.

“We live at a very difficult time,” Medved says, repeating themes in his new book and accompanying movie, The American Miracle. “Americans have a fundamental choice to make about the way we view our country. Should we view our country with guilt or gratitude?”

While provocative, the question Mr. Medved poses is among the most important swirling about in these United States circa Trump 2.0.

Do you view your country with guilt or gratitude? I am unequivocally, unapologetically in the gratitude camp. Given my life experiences I shared above, it is impossible for me to feel shame or guilt.

In that regard, I part company with many people who control our institutions these days. The guilt and shame perspective is the prevailing ethos among many elites in America today. To be perfectly frank, I regard people who think that way as not having had sufficient life experiences to understand how flat-out wrong their perspectives are.

Yet in the legacy news media, in the courts, in education, among so many young people (sadly), the view of America is one of guilt and ridicule.

That’s why younger voters embrace a Socialist candidate like Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York City. Incredibly, Mr. Mamdani is currently leading in the polls. If elected in November, we’ll have to change the nickname of the Big Apple to “Havana on the Hudson.”

The unchallenged rhetorical refrain in these circles is that America is a shameful place with a deplorable history.

I believe this guilt narrative is the fundamental dividing line between those who hate Donald Trump, and those who love him (with exceptions of course).

Trump supporters are proud to be Americans, as the Lee Greenwood lyric proclaims. Our church members sang that song with gusto when we marched in the South Hills Memorial Day parade at the start of summer.

The question Mr. Medved poses strikes me as the patriotic equivalent of separating the sheep from the goats.

It is a question that has profound theological implications because what progressive Leftists seek to destroy, above all else, are the very beliefs we Christians hold dearest: faith in God, faith in the essential blessedness of this country.

In seeking to destroy these foundational beliefs, in my opinion it is irrefutable they are doing grave harm to young people in our republic.

Their belief in nothing has, not surprisingly, given rise to a nihilist ideology among young adults. In my view, there is an absolute correlation between what children are taught by social media and in many public schools now—that belief in God or their country is foolish—and the spread of demoralized, self-destructive, suicidal, even homicidal thoughts, and aberrant behaviors.

Donald Trump’s greatest achievement among many as President is ripping the roof off of the evil among us. He exposed it. In the process, he has shown us how upside-down things really are in this country.

As a lifetime reader of the Bible, and C.S. Lewis, I believe down to my socks that we live in enemy-held territory—the “Silent Planet,” as Lewis called planet Earth in his Space Trilogy.

The masses were largely oblivious to this spiritual warfare, until President Trump came along. But secular progressives have understood for generations the war they are waging. They know they win the future if the children are theirs.

The Evil One orchestrates these lies and deceit. While he prefers that the children live, so they can continue to propagate his lies, dead is okay, too. That was Lewis’ perspective in The Screwtape Letters, and I concur.

While this may sound sinister, even catastrophic, I believe it is a reasonable conclusion to draw when considering the events which occurred in Minneapolis last week. The reality of the situation cannot be ignored.

Try as we might to deny that reality, it is staring us right in the face. It is impossible to look at the photo below and not see that evil is among us.

From my perspective, one of the worst (but least discussed) problems we have in our society today is a reluctance to recognize evil. It’s not politically correct to call things evil. Such language is not considered permissible anymore. Only Donald Trump merits denigration by opponents as “evil.”

This failure to distinguish between good and evil, between right and wrong, has fed larger societal problems.

In addition to the obvious mental-health issues, many parents have neglected the spiritual health of their children. We’ve allowed the world to dictate what goes on in our homes. Too often, children are left to themselves on the internet, in chat rooms, on their phones.

Some have exacerbated the mental and spiritual crisis by pretending, absurdly, that boys can be girls simply by proclaiming that as their new identity. They’ve pretended that the answers to such problems as gender dysphoria is to have the child’s genitalia removed—sometimes without parental notification or consent—even though that’s no longer medically advised.

The shooter at Annunciation Church was Robert Westman, who armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol killed two children, aged 8 and 10, while injuring 17 other people. He then killed himself.

Though Westman was clearly deranged—and, I’d contend, demon-possessed—all of the arms were purchased legally. The place where this event occurred—Minneapolis, Minnesota—has among the toughest gun laws in the country.

Authorities say Westman fired through the stained-glass windows of Annunciation Catholic Church during a Mass to celebrate the start of the school year.

Unable to gain entry into the sanctuary, Westman started firing from outside into the church one week ago today as Mass began. Some people were still finding their seats. The churchgoers included more than students and school staff. Among those injured as bullets strafed the sanctuary were three people in their 80s, according to police.

The shooter fit the profile of a nihilist, according to this report by Peter Savodnik in the Free Press. It’s a profile so common now that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under Trump head Kash Patel, recently identified a new criminal category called Nihilist Violent Extremist, or NVE.

You have to read conservative news sources to gain these facts.

Savodnik writes: Young people who fall into this NVE category “hunger to sow destruction and death. … They’re part of a decentralized network of lone wolfs spread across screens and feeds and chat rooms across America.”

A common thread among nihilists, Savodnik reports, is that “life is meaningless; that words like truth, justice and God are empty slogans; that everything must be razed. … Today, you can feel the nihilist impulse coursing through America, which has been mostly stripped of its faith and a shared national culture …”

The FBI is currently investigating hundreds of cases in all 55 of its field offices in which those under investigation exhibit characteristics similar to that of Westman.

He was born male but started identifying as female in 2020, when he was 17 and changed his name to “Robin.”

Even though the New York Times reported on Thursday that the FBI “is investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics,” it neglected to mention that the shooter had transitioned from male to female. The shooter was identified in its reports as “Robin Westman,” and referred to only as “she” (even though women rarely commit such crimes).

Why would the Times leave out those facts? Because they might offend their “audience.” Limiting the information conveyed to their audience is the strategy the Times employs to prosper in the era of “fake news.” Facts that may offend their audience are withheld. Reinforcing negative stereotypes about Trump, and seldom challenging what their audience already believes, quality as the only news “fit to print.”

The Times also neglected to mention the clear motive for the shooting—so clear Westman had written it on the weapons he used to conduct his murderous rampage.

A troubling 11-minute video posted by Westman hours before the attack captures him surveying his arsenal.

On the guns, barrels, grips, magazines and slides were Westman’s handwritten slogans:

“6 million wasn’t enough.”

“Humanity is overrated.”

“Israel must fall.”

“Burn Israel.”

“Kill Donald Trump.”

“I’m the Woker, Baby, Why So Queerious.”

“Defend Equality.”

“Where Is Your God.”

“For the Children.”

Here are a few other facts about the shooter that you’ll only find in conservative news reports.

Westman wrote in a journal entry before his murderous rampage that he was “tired of being trans,” and wished he’d “never brain-washed” himself into changing his gender.

And there’s the T-shirt worn (before the shooting) by Minnesota Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan which read: PROTECT THE TRANS CHILDREN—with a dagger above.

The post (from Sean Hannity of Fox News) includes a film clip of Flanagan, wearing the T-shirt.

Speaking in support of medical transitions for minors, she asserts: “This is life affirming and life-saving healthcare. When our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them. That’s what it means to be a good parent.”

I would challenge her contention that the sole job of a parent is to listen, and believe your child. Children are called children for a reason.

They lack the discernment that grown-ups are supposed to provide. Love is not only listening to your child. Truth is invariably the most loving thing a parent can offer, along with discipline.

As offensive as the killing was, prayer as a response to it was also targeted in the rhetorical shooting that ensued immediately after the event.

Jen Psaki, President Biden’s former press secretary who now spews her venom on MSNBC, immediately—and incredibly—attacked not the deranged shooter and the ideology that left him unhinged, but prayer, of all things.

Those who sought solace in prayer were the villains here. Talk about unhinged.

Fortunately, the backlash against her was swift from some independent media outlets.

Here is what the Free Press’ Will Rahn wrote: “For the life of me, I cannot understand the Democratic impulse to diminish the power of praying for the victims, children who were shot while praying. It’s like a preprogrammed, knee-jerk reaction that, especially in this instance, is just bizarre and offensive. Those who seek solace in prayer pray in these situations. … I get that you want to make this about gun control. My suggestion is that you shut up about the prayer stuff and just make it about gun control.”

Unlike Mr. Rahn, though, I understand this “impulse” very clearly. So does any Christian now confronted with “negative world.” Pastor Nate Devlin delivered his usual insightful exegesis (from Psalms) of what that phrase signifies in the concluding sermon to his summer series, “Cheerfulness in Negative World.”

Referencing the church shooting, he said: “The church has a responsibility to resist negative world. The church cannot and must not remain inert in the face of wickedness.”

While I don’t consider Democrats generally anti-religion, the leadership of the Democratic Party surely is. Their leaders absolutely have antipathy and disdain toward religion, and those who pray. They view prayer as the problem rather than the solution. Jen Psaki was merely speaking the truth out loud. She broke the code of silence, uttering thoughts that top Democratic power brokers typically leave unsaid.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to lose popularity and voters, a fact which even the Times now acknowledges.

“Democrats have lost ground to Republicans in every single state that tracks voter registration by political party—often by a lot. Recovering could take years,” the Times warned its largely Democratic readership recently.

Top Dem leaders are angry about the current state of their party, and the scandals that escalated this summer involving former Presidents Joe Biden, and now Barack Obama.

They’re angry they no longer have all the power. They’re angry that a man they call a fascist and Nazi—a man they impeached twice, and waged lawfare against to keep him from running again—miraculously sailed through all that and now has beaten them at the ballot box at least twice.

Worse still, he’s succeeding. And he is succeeding like no President in my lifetime. What Trump and his administration have accomplished in a mere eight months is nothing short of miraculous.

I’ve never seen a President so dominate all aspects of American society as successfully as Trump has. While polling suggests that my admiration of his performance is at best shared by little more than half of the electorate, I think it is impossible to deny the success of his policies. The facts speak for themselves.

Consider his tariffs, which lower court judges in the federal system have repeatedly sought to nullify by unlawfully voiding (in my view) his executive privilege to set tariffs as President. The Supreme Court will eventually settle the matter. But in the meantime, it is impossible to ignore the good that tariffs are bringing.

It’s now clear that in their rush to blast Trump, economists didn’t consider countervailing forces. Tariffs didn’t produce a recession, as predicted. They didn’t contribute to inflation, as predicted. They didn’t harm corporate profits, as predicted. And they haven’t crushed the stock market, as investors feared back in April. Quite the contrary.

Since that April low, the S&P 500 is up more than 30%, climbing to record highs. Analysts now predict the stock market will continue to climb higher. Especially if the Federal Reserve—which Trump has been warring with—cuts interest rates as expected later this month.

In fact, despite all the hand-wringing, tariffs have proven to be a huge windfall for the federal government. They are now expected to bring additional net revenue to the Treasury Department of $4.5 trillion over the next decade, cutting deficits. Tariffs are also bringing more investment and jobs back to the United States, as manufacturers seek to evade the levies. And they’ve given Trump a big stick in bilateral talks with nations that are our enemies, such as China and Russia.

But you won’t read about these benefits on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

The commentary of the editors is overwhelmingly negative. The editors there are suffering from what one wag economist calls “Trump Tariff Syndrome.”

Andrew Klavan recently said on his program that he’d cancelled his WSJ subscription because he could no longer trust the paper to deliver unbiased news and commentary about Trump. I’ve noticed the same, and considered doing the same. I would have cancelled by now if it weren’t for this report.

“Trump Tariff Syndrome” is a new variant of the original virus from the President’s first term known as “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Both forms of derangement are when commentators claim to be impartial (both liberal and now even some once reliable conservative voices), then ignore reality and can’t admit they were wrong.

Like when President Trump gave the order back in June to drop U.S. bunker-busting bombs to destroy Iran’s capacity to nuke the world, Tucker Carlson predicted it would unleash World War III and lead to thousands of U.S. military deaths. To date, for the record, not one American soldier or citizen has died. Not one GI has even had a hang nail, to the best of my knowledge.

Carlson is a supposed conservative who has been at odds with Trump lately. The liberal news media is also getting whacked big time in Trump 2.0. You’d think legacy news would have taken note of this by now, and made adjustments in its coverage. Instead, it has doubled down.

Consider what befell National Public Radio.

In July, NPR earned the dubious but merited distinction of being defunded by Uncle Sam. Washington seldom turns away supplicants, especially those with the lobbying power of 1,200 affiliated radio stations nationwide.

But once respected NPR has done what is virtually impossible in modern-day Washington. The federal donor spigot was officially shut off in July, finally and justifiably, for betraying the public trust and alleged liberal bias (which any former sentient listener knows is not “alleged”).

That this scandal of shoveling taxpayer dollars year after year to a news outlet as biased as NPR shows how difficult it is to reach consensus in Washington, even on the most indisputable of matters. NPR’s bias is overt, unrelenting and unrepentant.

If you doubt that, read this commentary by former NPR senior editor Uri Berliner, a self-described liberal, on the occasion of the Senate cutting its funding (“Happy Independence Day, NPR”), or his earlier expose on the same subject, for which he was suspended, and later fired.

You got that right—telling the truth at NPR is professionally fatal to truthtellers. It can literally get you tossed off the team.

NPR has every right to slant its coverage of the news as it sees fit. But taxpayers do not have to underwrite their bias. No more than we have to pay Harvard billions of dollars each year while it violates federal anti-discrimination laws to placate radical campus Muslims who attack Jews.

As an experiment recently, I listened to NPR. I suppose I was feeling sorry for them. About 15 years ago—before the political advent of Donald Trump and Covid, the watershed events that have crushed the trustworthiness of the legacy news business—I regularly listened to Weekend Edition and its host, the then clever Scott Simon. I’d go so far as to say I was even a fan of Mr. Simon’s work.

The segment I heard on a recent Saturday morning was their weekly sports roundup. How contentious could sports possibly be? Think again.

Host Simon immediately turned what should have been a benign sports report into a political soapbox, ruthlessly laying into President Trump. The President’s grotesque offense: Public comments he’d made that week about returning the NFL Commanders of Washington to their original identity, the Redskins.

At the time of the name change, the Washington “Filibusters” was the humorous option I preferred (as I said then in this column).

The guest sports reporter with whom Simon was chatting had nothing to say in response to his outburst. They moved on.

I did too. Click. I’d run the experiment, and it produced the expected results.

As promised earlier, I intend to end each report until next Independence Day 2026 with a vignette telling some aspect of American history.

My closing story today has a local angle.

A week ago, I taught the first class of the new school year to fifth- through eighth-grade students in our Academy here at the church. The year-long subject I am teaching is the history of American journalism. It is a subject I know a lot about.

The first class was last Thursday, the day after the Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis. As a “show and tell” item for the first class, I’d brought in the front page of the Wall Street Journal from that day.

“It’s the paper I used to work for,” I told them.

The photograph on the front page was the same photo shown earlier in this report, of the mother comforting her sobbing son in her arms.

The photo understandably unsettled the students.

I then asked, “Why do we need to be aware of unpleasant things in the world?”

One student replied: “So we can protect ourselves.”

Another said: “So we can pray for them.”

Out of the mouths of babes … POW, Jen Psaki. Take that!

Then I showed them another item I’d brought in. Concrete shards and Stacheldraht (barbed wire auf Deutsch), remnants from the Berlin Wall.

Looking at the barbed wire, one student remarked: “It looks like Christ’s crown of thorns.” As many times as I’d seen it, I never thought of that. But the similarity was unmistakable.

When the wall came thundering down—thanks to the goodness of America, and the resolve of President Reagan—East Germans escaped their captivity. When the tomb was empty—thanks to the goodness of God, and the sacrifice of Jesus—we escaped our captivity forever.

That’s my report for September. Until October, blessings to you.