The following are exclusive feature articles by RenewAmerica analysts. The views expressed generally reflect the values and philosophy of RenewAmerica although each writer is responsible for the accuracy of individual pieces, and the position taken is the writers own.
June 28, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST During the culture war of the last forty years, Evangelicals, devout Catholics, and moralists have been migrating steadily to the increasingly conservative Republican Party. Atheists, agnostics, and moral relativists have been migrating to the increasingly liberal Democratic party... (more)
June 25, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST As is the case with many others who have followed the uniquely anti-American path of this administration, the shock waves emanate not so much from the man himself, but from the mere fact that in his quest for re-election, President Obama remains highly competitive (if polls are to be believed). Is this a result of the mainstream media? Perhaps, though another possibility might be considered... (more)
June 21, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST Lee Harris, author of Civilization and its Enemies, believes that neither liberals nor conservatives understand radical Muslim terrorists. We will have difficulty winning a war against an enemy we do not understand. Both liberals and conservatives have misconceptions about Muslim terrorism... (more)
June 18, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST Calling on Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, and the senators from your state (details below). When Ronald Reagan arrived at the White House with an agenda to end the Cold War, he understood that in order to bring down the Soviet Empire, he would also have to face down one of communism's most intransigent enablers - - the post World War II pressure for the surrender of U.S. sovereignty... (more)
June 14, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST As America approaches the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which brought down the Nixon presidency, no historical discussion of the scandal will be complete without including the extensive research done by author Max Holland. "Leak: Why Mark Felt became Deep Throat" centers on a little-known but significant factor that drove much of the drama: the pure personal pique of one man... (more)
June 14, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST When I was eighteen, I knew that the left is generally deceived. It required a few years to find out what the core delusion was, but many years to appreciate how radical is the lie they believe and why it leads to so much deception... (more)
June 11, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST Readers were warned at the outset of our our summation of pre-Cold War events that it would require an entire book - - rather than a mere column - - to do full justice to so huge a swath of history. We still are not writing a book, but for those genuinely in search of further (albeit encapsulated) explanations, here goes... (more)
June 7, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by following his instincts and ignoring a lot of bad advice from establishment Republicans in and out of his administration. A new book just released tells the amazing story of Jeane Kirkpatrick, a onetime liberal Democrat whose intellectual honesty and probing mind led her to the inner circles of the Reagan foreign policy strategists... (more)
June 7, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST Debates about abortion are often very heated because they involve a head-on collision of worldviews. Abortion cannot be supported within the internal logic of the Christian worldview. Laws against abortion cannot be supported within the internal logic of the worldview of liberal postmodernism... (more)
June 1, 2012
PATRICK GARRY, RA ANALYST There are two promises that modern liberalism asserts - - two images about itself that it propagates. First, that it strives to fulfill the communal bonds and yearnings of human beings, to mitigate the harsh brutalities of an Ayn Rand-type of conservatism. And second, that it, and only it, represents the needs and interests of the common person... (more)
May 31, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST The scientists whose voices are quoted in the popular press sound like they are certain about global warming. But do they have adequate grounds for that certitude? Have they really done their homework?... (more)
May 28, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST It has been a century since Woodrow Wilson reportedly opined that young boys should grow up to be as unlike their fathers as possible. Whether he worded it exactly that way, our 28th president surely pursued the goal, both as educator and as politician... (more)
May 24, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The threat of an accelerated economic collapse after the November election (a concern feared by analysts for months) may be accompanied by rolling blackouts that will leave the prospect of millions of Americans either freezing or roasting in the dark. In the years immediately ahead, that could lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs... (more)
May 17, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST Fighting fallacies one at a time as they spring from a false ideology is like Hercules' battle with the Hydra - - a serpentine creature with seven heads. When he cut off one serpent head, two more heads grew in its place... (more)
May 14, 2012
JOAN SWIRSKY, RA ANALYST In 1960, as a young wife living with my husband on his Ivy League campus, I had a front-row seat when the Feminist Movement made its debut. I was doing nothing, according to Obama mouthpiece Hilary Rosen, because, after all, caring for our infant son, taking care of our home, and supporting the efforts of my equally hard-working husband Steve, was - - ala Rosen's characterization of worthy activity - - the very definition of sloth... (more)
May 10, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST As I was sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast and reading the newspaper, I perused the voting records of the nine Supreme Court justices during 2003. We had three conservative justices: Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia; three liberal justices: Stevens, Ginsberg, and Souter; and three moderate and/or unpredictable justices: O'Connor, Kennedy, and Breyer... (more)
May 7, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST It has been 64 years since President Harry S. Truman pulled the upset victory of the 20th Century, and historians still can't get enough of it. Now comes a new volume brimming with fresh and detailed information... (more)
May 3, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST This essay begins with a recap and commentary on Thomas Sowell's brilliant critique of the old liberal obsession with "change" and with seeking socioeconomic "root-causes" for all social problems... (more)
April 30, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The time has long passed when we could afford to look the other way on the extent to which subversive influences - - communist and jihad-oriented Islamists - - have for years been worming their way into the high councils of our government... (more)
April 26, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST Certain aspects of the culture war have ancient roots. One of the central points of disagreement regards the existence of a universal moral law. Political philosophers have been arguing about this for three hundred years. The ideas at stake are ancient... (more)
April 26, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST It is with a mixture of caution and fascination that one reviews a book by Michael Savage. Some toxic controversies in which he has been embroiled transcend his worldview (about which some have questioned)... (more)
April 19, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST In this essay, I discuss some psychological similarities between Postmodernism and barbarism. Both seem to inflict some of the same kinds of torments upon the mind. I shall contrast these miseries with the joys of a high culture... (more)
April 16, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST In a crowded field, it takes extraordinary perception (to say nothing of time) to choose the right candidate for public office. No such difficulty exists in the Utah's Second Congressional District... (more)
April 16, 2012
PATRICK GARRY, RA ANALYST In his emerging re-election campaign, President Obama's message is becoming clear and simple: be afraid, be very afraid of those heartless conservatives. What is amazing is that his message is almost completely opposite from his message of four years ago... (more)
April 12, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST How important was freeing the slaves to Abraham Lincoln? Was that his top priority? How did Lincoln view his primary mission as president? I have heard these issues debated all my life. The issue is now resolved for me by reading One Last Card to Play, a book review by Peter Schramm of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, by Allen C. Guelzo. Lincoln was a greater president than I had realized... (more)
April 9, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST Several years ago during the Jesse Helms era, a top staffer for a relatively conservative East Coast U.S. Senator told me that Senator Helms was probably the only true unalloyed conservative in that august body... (more)
April 5, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST I coined the term "Hard Postmodernism" as a shorthand reference to a set of theories of cultural determinism. I define "Soft Postmodernism" as a set of liberal multicultural myths derived from the pseudo-scientific writings of prestigious cultural anthropologists and sociologists... (more)
March 29, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The voters of Maryland's Eighth Congressional District have an opportunity in that state's primary next Tuesday (April 3) to help send to the House of Representatives a candidate who - - metaphorically speaking - - knows "where the bodies are buried" in this town. He has been investigating evil-doers for years... (more)
March 29, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST This essay begins with a brief outline of the rise and collapse of Modernism. In the aftermath of that collapse, a number of disillusioned modernists committed a peculiar form of spiritual suicide. This may be responsible for some of the odd qualities of contemporary postmodern liberalism. It has profound implications for the culture war, and for Christian apologetics and evangelism... (more)
March 26, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST Let your imagination run wild: What if President William Howard Taft suddenly disappeared nearly 100 years ago on his way out the White House door and was resurrected (as certified by scientists) in 2012? That fantasy would leave intact his previous life's accomplishments as an educator, solicitor general, holder of two judgeships, governor-general of the Philippines and, of course, president for four years... (more)
March 22, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST Over twenty years ago, I had an intermittent conversation about homosexuality with a gay man at work. Although he persistently brought up the subject, he would periodically fly into a rage and call me a bigot when I disagreed with him. That man went on to become a key homosexual organizer in my city... (more)
March 19, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST This column — here, now, and forever — rejects any and all invitations for membership in a Denounce Club. That is...where we are pressured to denounce fellow pro-Americans, a classic divide-and-conquer scenario inscribed in the strategy bible of those who take a dim view of America and Americans in general... (more)
March 15, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST Baron Montesquieu (Mahn-tes'-kyoo) De Secondat (French political philosopher, 1689–1755) wrote The Spirit of the Laws (l'Espirit des Lois, 1750), which is esteemed by some as the most important work of political philosophy of the 18th century... (more)
March 12, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST You may have heard the late Andrew Breitbart was initially alerted to the Democrat/media complex when that collaboration smeared Clarence Thomas as it fought to block the latter's Supreme Court confirmation in 1991. There is, of course, more to Breitbart's venture into battle against those who would trash his country... (more)
March 8, 2012
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST The culture war might be likened to fighting a war against a coalition of powers. Imagine WWI-style trench warfare on a long front. In the center of the enemy lines are the forces of moral relativism. These forces oppose the idea that there is a universal moral law. On one flank are the forces of the sexual revolution, including gays, feminists, adulterers, the promiscuous, and the pro-abortion folks... (more)
March 5, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The 2008 market crash was an (unofficial) act of war on the United States. That is the thrust of Kevin D. Freeman's carefully documented "The Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why it Can Happen Again." He does not dismiss a theory of Spain redux... (more)
March 5, 2012
PATRICK GARRY, RA ANALYST The Obama administration has been preaching the language of social redistribution ever since it assumed leadership of the federal government. Indeed, President Obama's re-election campaign will center around this message - - of using government to carry out a redistribution of wealth to the politically favored... (more)
February 27, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST Many viewers scratched their heads during a Republican presidential candidate debate when George Stephanopoulos, an erstwhile Clinton administration official, suddenly brought up the question of contraception... (more)
February 27, 2012
PATRICK GARRY, RA ANALYST The framers' belief in limited government pervades the entire constitutional structure. It is the continuous theme of The Federalist Papers. Until the New Deal agenda tried to wipe away limited government principles from the political and constitutional consciousness, those principles controlled American political and constitutional governance for a century and a half... (more)
February 20, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST Patrick J. Buchanan has been fired by MSNBC. For years, the longtime author/columnist/commentator had served as that network's lone conservative voice... (more)
February 13, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The candidacy of Rick Santorum for the Republican presidential nomination is scoring big time as I write. (Who knows if that will be the case by the time you read this?) The book on the former Pennsylvania senator, we are repeatedly informed by the media, is that he is mostly "a social conservative guy"... (more)
February 6, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The Republicans appear destined to slug it out for a few more rounds before landing on a candidate. But Republican strategists have their eyes on the target: extracting the tools of power from a man widely viewed as not just wrong-headed, but dangerous... (more)
January 26, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST What we witnessed Tuesday night on Capitol Hill was the oratorical version of a typical White House that one would expect on a Friday afternoon (i.e., when forced to reveal bad news, the Obama White House releases a blizzard of paperwork Friday at about 4:30 or 5, hoping most reporters have launched their weekends at the bar)... (more)
January 23, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The life story of George Washington is "a miracle." After all, Glenn Beck asks, what other mortal "can lay claim to a legacy that has allowed so many to experience freedom around the world?" In "Being George Washington: The Indispensable Man as You've Never Seen Him," Mr. Beck brings the "father of our country" and first president to life... (more)
January 16, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST In years past, incumbent office-holders more often than not could count on a popular passivity to enable them to get by on name recognition and thirty-second sound bites. That neat little arrangement has been interrupted in many places. The state of Utah presents a case study for Americans elsewhere to consider as they pursue their own efforts to hold their public servants accountable... (more)
January 9, 2012
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST There is no effort within the U.S. intelligence community - - as far as we know - - to find out how on earth 16 intelligence agencies bestowed an imprimatur upon a 2007 "estimate" that totally inaccurately declared that Iran had given up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. In November, we raised the question as to whether the flawed finding was the result of enemy influence within the CIA or other agency... (more)
December 29, 2011
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST When the old (2011) gives way to the new (2012), the longer view comes into focus. All of which prompts the following... (more)
December 19, 2011
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The congested and crumbling condition of our surface transportation network is so acute that "almost anything" to bring about short-term improvement "will be better than what we are doing now." Is the gas tax you pay at the pump, at least as it is currently formulated, a failure? Is it as ineffective in highway/roads upkeep as it is politically unpopular?... (more)
December 12, 2011
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) crowd (with White House ties) is the natural outgrowth of several generations of classroom Marxist indoctrination. Foremost has been the hate-America "history" taught in writings of the late Communist Party member Howard Zinn... (more)
December 8, 2011
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST The mainstream media have pounced on every GOP presidential candidate widely perceived (correctly or not) as credibly equipped to articulate conservative issues in the 2012 election campaign... (more)
