Blog - Hugh Hewitt

Friday, December 19, 2025

I worked in the People’s Republic of China in the late 1980’s, just as they were attempting to liberalize their economy.  It seemed a time of great promise.  The Soviet Union was falling and China seemed determined to avoid the same fate and so sought a soft landing away from communism.  It seemed to be working for a while.  Sure the government remained quite centralized, but the economy was liberalizing rapidly.  But it was a shell game, three-card monte, a trick.  A way to worm their way towards major power status without direct conflict.  President Trump understands this and is fighting back.  Democrats, unfortunately, don’t get it just yet.  And so China is trying the same game in Trumpian terms. . . .

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Last night’s presidential address was part of the ongoing meme wars.  Democrats and their willing allies in media are trying desperately to make this administration look bad.  They report the bad, ignore the good and spin whatever they can.  Every administration, every one, does good and bad.  What makes an administration good or bad in the end is the balance between the two and, perhaps more importantly, the stories told about that administration. Deep reads into history (if anybody does that anymore?) will reveal administrations thought awful contemporaneously, but proven quite good by history – and vice versa.  But contemporaneous accounts are what move elections and so the battle rages on.. . .

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Fox recently looked at the mounting evidence of grade inflation.  Covid has accelerated it and “raised awareness” (can we officially call that turn of phrase a cliché yet?) about it, but the problem existed well before.  The video piece in the link presents an educator that talks about the fact that there are a lot of good students still coming out of school, but I wonder.  You see, never talked about is the fact that grade inflation demotivates students actually capable of excellence.. . .

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Yesterday saw the politicization of what is the most tragic small story I have encountered in a long time.  Families often carry a lot of tragedy, but rarely does that tragedy extend all the way to parricide.  Parricide accounts for only about two percent of all homicides and homicide, while way too common, is still something most people live their entire lives without encountering on a personal level.  Parricide involving a public figure is virtually unheard of – but there it was yesterday.  What kind of world do we live in that it turned, almost immediately, into a political spitball fight?. . .

Monday, December 15, 2025

I am a “boomer” – born post-war but with memories fresh, and just as the Civil Rights Movement was beginning to take shape.  I was born to a world that was determined to eliminate prejudice.  Having witnessed the atrocities of Hitler’s Germany, the Civil Rights Movement arose and gained ground precisely to make sure nothing of the sort could happen ever again. Race, creed, religion, or gender were not a basis for determining if person was good or bad.  We were told this over and over and over again.  You did not bear animus for groups of people, however they were grouped; you reserved your animus for those that “earned” it – individually.  Sure, in “lesser” parts of the world such prejudice still existed, but for us in the west, we were determined to make such prejudice disappear.  We have failed.. . .

Sunday, December 14, 2025

Lesson 1: Be careful with your bragging.  First the host’s beloved, as he tells us constantly, Ohio State loses the Big Ten football championship (something he barely mentioned this past week) to former Big Ten doormat Indiana University (a name never mentioned in the week past) and now Indiana’s quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, wins the Heisman Trophy over Ohio State’s Julian Sayin.  Bragging just makes the eventual humiliation that much more humiliating.  Sadly, now we must turn our attention to far more consequential, and unfortunately deadly, news and lessons.. . .

Saturday, December 13, 2025

I get it all the time – usually about sports – a prompt, notification or alert about a story so astonishing that you just have to click.  And when you get there, the claims that lead you there are quite hyperbolic if not outright lies.  The internet and its primary expression, social media, are rendering shorter and shorter attention spans, making it harder and harder to attract attention and attracting attention is how you make money there.  It is therefore natural, especially when soulless and ethically devoid AI is writing the material, that hyperbole to the point of lying would become increasingly common.  But it is also highly unfortunate.. . .

Friday, December 12, 2025

In 2020 I noted “The Sad Death of A Once Great Magazine” as Scientific American did what no self-respecting science magazine should do – endorse a presidential candidate.  I concluded “Specialty journalism is officially dead – consumed by politics.”  Covid was, of course, involved in the discussion at the time wherein everyone hid behind “the science” and no one had or knew any actual science.  No longer is it merely specialty journalism that is consumed by politics, it is science itself.. . .

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Billions of dollars taken by fraud during covid in California.  A similar situation in Minnesota flowing from covid.  Both states run by Democrats.  I do not think these Democrats are corrupt, but they are inept.  Quoting Carl Sagan, billions and billions of dollars of inept.  Simply put, they cannot govern.. . .

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

The world is full of various expressions of the depravity that can be the human soul.  This kind of hatred is disgusting and history has shown us where it leads.  Human trafficking, especially with children, is a human evil I hate to contemplate.  But having just read this story about the open air drug market in Philadelphia, I cannot help but wonder if I have found rock bottom.  It tells a tale of a unique kind of human trafficking, not where people are bought and sold, but where they are indeed held as slaves without even the minimal housing and sustenance accorded to slaves that provide labor of some sort.. . .