The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
Vice President JD Vance just dropped a hilarious Oval Office story leaving the entire room cracking up.
President Trump glanced over the Resolute Desk at VP Vance and Secretary Marco Rubio and said, “You guys have shitty shoes.”
Right then and there, Trump pulled out a shoe catalog and gifted them 4 pairs of shoes. 🤣
Wait until the end of the story…
“Today I’m in the Oval Office with the President and Marco Rubio, and we’re talking about something really important. The President kind of holds up his hand and says, ‘no, no, no, hold on a second. There’s something much more important. Shoes.’”
“He peers over the resolute desk and he says, Marco, JD, you guys have shitty shoes.”
“He goes out and grabs a catalog. There happens to be another politician in the room I won’t say who, and you’ll find out why in a second. And he actually runs us through this incredible shoe catalog. The President is gifting us with four pairs of shoes.”
“He says, Marco, what’s your shoe size? And Marco’s apparently an eleven and a half. He says, JD, what’s your shoe size? My shoe size is 13. I asked this politician, who I won’t embarrass, what his shoe size is, and he says, seven. The President leans back in his chair and says, you know you can in his chair and says, you know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.”
It starts with a call. A sore knee, a lingering cough, a changing mole – nothing urgent – but not quite ignorable. The receptionist is polite, but the first available appointment is three weeks away.
For millions of Americans, health care begins with a wait. For many, walk-in clinics have replaced family medicine.
“People have started to accept that,” Dr. Dorothy Serna, a primary care physician who left traditional practice for a concierge model, told The Epoch Times. “They think, ‘I can’t get my doctor, so I won’t even try. I’ll just go to urgent care. I’ll wait. I’ll Google it.’”
Such scenarios have become the norm rather than the exception. What was once a simple task—seeing your doctor when you need care—has evolved into a complex navigation challenge that requires strategy, persistence, and insider knowledge to overcome.
A Month, If You’re Lucky
More than 100 million people lack a regular primary care provider, a figure that continues to climb each year. New patients wait an average of 23.5 days to see a primary care doctor, often longer in cities. Even existing patients face significant waits, although generally shorter than those of new patients.
The problem continues to grow. A 2025 survey by AMN Healthcare found the average wait for a physician appointment in major metro areas has stretched to 31 days—up 19 percent since 2022 and nearly 50 percent since 2004. In Boston, patients wait more than two months, the longest wait time in the nation.
If this is the situation in cities with the most doctors, rural patients can expect even worse outcomes. Only 9 percent of U.S. physicians practice in those communities, leaving patients to travel farther, wait longer, and often go without care altogether.
The problem is reshaping how Americans access health care. Primary care, traditionally the system’s front door, has become its biggest bottleneck. Routine problems escalate into emergencies, and preventive care gets delayed.
The shortage is structural. Nearly half of primary care doctors are older than 55, and few younger physicians are choosing the field. Only 15 percent remain in primary care five years after completing their training. The United States has 67 primary care doctors per 100,000 people—about half the rate of Canada. While many other wealthy nations devote 7 percent to 14 percent of their health budgets to primary care, the United States spends less than 5 percent.
Preventive medicine is collapsing into fragmented, reactive care, and patients are left waiting while disease advances.
The Specialist Referral Maze
Seeing a specialist presents its own set of challenges. Even after securing a coveted primary care appointment and obtaining a referral, patients face another round of lengthy delays.
Specialist wait times vary dramatically by field and location. New patients wait about two weeks for orthopedic surgery, a month for cardiology and dermatology, and six weeks for obstetrics and gynecology—and often longer in big cities.
The referral process itself creates additional friction. Insurance authorizations can add weeks to the timeline. Paperwork gets lost between offices. Some specialists require specific diagnostic tests before scheduling, adding another layer of delay.
Online patient forums overflow with stories of months-long waits for neurology consultations and gastroenterology appointments that stretch nearly a year.
Strategies for Gaining Access to Care
Whether it’s finding a new doctor, landing a specialist appointment, or just breaking through your provider’s backlog, the challenge is access. Some patients manage access by knowing how the system works. The following tactics won’t fix the shortage, but they can shift the odds in our favor.
Step 1: Finding a Primary Care Doctor or Specialist
Start With People
The fastest way to find a doctor isn’t online—it’s through people. A 2022 study in Arthroscopy, Sports Medicine, and Rehabilitation found that most patients turn to family, friends, or trusted professionals.
Try these approaches:
Ask for Specific Names, Not Just Practices: When you call, mention who referred you: “My friend Maria is a patient of Dr. Green and suggested I call.” Clinics often note these connections, which can move you up the callback list.
Verify Fit Before Booking: Ask about insurance acceptance, after-hours options, and same-day visits. Research shows that these logistics often influence satisfaction more than credentials.
Tap Professional Circles: Pharmacists, therapists, or other doctors often know who’s taking new patients or who communicates well.
Combine Word-of-Mouth With Research: Once you have a few names, check online reviews for red flags rather than perfection. A consistent theme of poor communication is more telling than a few harsh comments.
Keep a Running Short List: Save the contact info of doctors recommended by friends or professionals, even if you’re not looking right now. It can save weeks if you suddenly need care.
Go Digital
Hospital and insurer websites often have hidden scheduling tools—but you have to know where to look.
Start With Your Insurance Portal: Log in and click “Find Care” or “Find a Doctor.” These directories usually show which providers are in-network and, increasingly, whether they’re accepting new patients. Some include direct links to schedule an appointment.
Check Hospital or Health-System Pages: Look for a “Patient Portal,” “Book Online,” or “Schedule a Visit” tab. Large systems such as Mass General Brigham, Cleveland Clinic, or Mayo Clinic sometimes let patients view real-time openings and book directly, often without calling.
Check Official Directories: State medical boards list every licensed provider, and state chapters of the American Academy of Family Physicians or internal-medicine societies often post searchable directories by region or availability. These sources verify credentials and can uncover clinicians not featured on commercial platforms.
Use Third-Party Tools: Zocdoc, Healthgrades, and One Medical integrate with clinic calendars, allowing you to filter by specialty, insurance, and sometimes the soonest available appointment.
Double-Check Listings: Online directories can lag by weeks. Once you find an opening, call or message the office through its portal to confirm.
Expand Your Definition of ‘Doctor’
When appointment backlogs stretch for weeks, the key may be to expand what “care” looks like.
Look for Team-Based Clinics: Nurse practitioners and physician assistants can diagnose, prescribe, and manage most common conditions. They’re often easier to book than physicians, and Medical Group Management Association data show practices that rely more on team-based care are better able to keep wait times under control.
Consider Direct Primary Care or Concierge Medicine: These membership models offer longer visits, direct messaging, and same-day scheduling in exchange for a monthly fee—usually $50 to $150.
Explore Integrative or Naturopathic Care: In 26 states, licensed naturopaths can diagnose conditions, order labs, and prescribe medications. Functional-medicine doctors—typically medical doctors or doctors of osteopathic medicine—combine conventional care with nutrition and lifestyle approaches. These options can offer more time and continuity, though insurance coverage varies.
Be Flexible About How–and Where–You’re Seen
When options are limited, flexibility can make the difference between waiting weeks and getting care today.
Try Virtual Visits: During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth use by primary care doctors jumped to nearly 50 percent from 5 percent, and many patients plan to keep using it. Virtual visits aren’t a substitute for hands-on exams, but they can bridge gaps until you’re seen in person.
Widen Your Search: Appointment backlogs don’t move in sync from place to place. A 30-minute drive to a nearby town or a different hospital system can sometimes mean being seen weeks sooner.
Step 2: Getting Seen Sooner
Once you’ve identified the provider or practice that fits your needs, the next challenge is securing an appointment. That’s where persistence, flexibility, and a few behind-the-scenes strategies can make all the difference.
Work the System–Nicely: Staff work within limits, but your tone matters. “Create a sense of urgency,” Serna said. “Say, ‘I’m worried and would like to be seen sooner if something opens up.’” A little empathy goes a long way—schedulers often remember polite persistence.
Call Early: Most offices hold a few same-day or next-day slots for urgent needs, but they go fast. Call right when the office opens to improve your chances of landing one.
Join the Cancellation List: Ask the office to add you to their cancellation list—a roster of patients willing to come in on short notice if someone else cancels. Patients who are flexible often get the first call, and a quick weekly check-in helps keep your name visible.
Ask About Virtual Options: For non-urgent issues that don’t require a physical exam, virtual care can be a quicker route. “It saves time for everyone,” Serna said. Many systems offer virtual visits within days, particularly for follow-up appointments or initial consultations.
Bring in Backup: When care stalls, someone has to move it along. “Most people don’t know how to get past the scheduler to the clinical team,” said Serna. She sometimes makes those calls herself, reaching out directly to a specialist when a patient’s referral has hit a wall.
Ask whether your doctor’s office can do the same by contacting the specialist or testing center on your behalf. If that doesn’t work, an outside advocate may help. A 2024 review found that patients with advocates began treatment sooner in 70 percent of cases. The National Association of Healthcare Advocacy and the Patient Advocate Foundation connect patients with professional or nonprofit advocates.
Navigating From Within
The U.S. health care system may be slow and fragmented, but it is not impenetrable. With preparation, patience, and the right questions, it is still possible to find a way through. That might mean asking for multiple referrals, using portals to spot cancellations, or simply knowing how to frame urgency without panic.
These recommendations aren’t shortcuts so much as survival skills—the small, persistent acts patients use to keep the system from shutting them out entirely. It’s about finding agency in a system that often rewards persistence over passivity.
What’s Next: Getting the appointment is only the first victory. Making it count is the next—something we’ll tackle in the following article.
After successfully holding strong in the face of a Democrat-led government shutdown over Obamacare, a cabal of House Republicans is now waiving the white flag on the issue.
On Thursday, nearly three dozen Democrats and Republicans introduced a proposal to extend taxpayer-funded Obamacare subsidies. As Federalist Senior Contributor Christopher Jacobs hasregularlyreportedinthesepages, these Biden-era subsidies — which are set to expire at the end of this year — have been a complete and total disaster.
Spearheaded by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Jen Kiggins, R-Va., the measure “would extend and reduce the tax credits in a two-step process, requiring two separate votes by Congress,” according to The New York Times. While the first vote “would extend the tax credits for a year with some modifications, including the addition of a new income limit,” the second vote “would implement what the group described as ‘more significant reforms,’ including potentially eliminating $0 premiums, with exceptions for need-based support.”
During a press conference introducing the proposal, Democrat-turned-Republican Jeff Van Drew laid out his best case for forcing taxpayers to keep bankrolling this broken system. The New Jersey congressman’s explanation as a self-declared “conservative” was (naturally) unconvincing.
“I do not like the Affordable Care Act. … And it’s fraught with all kinds of problems, there’s a lot of corruption … But that’s not the point today, and that’s not the discussion for today,” Van Drew said. These subsidies haven’t “been good. But ladies and gentlemen, we have a responsibility. … So, I believe that we have two responsibilities. One, to have a bridge for the American people … that would allow them to keep their health insurance. I think the second responsibility we have is to do much, much better with health care.”
In just 28 days, the ACA subsidies expire.
The tax credits need to be reformed, no question about that.
But we need to extend them now so Americans stay covered while we work on a real fix to this broken system. pic.twitter.com/xhZ9yuGBBK— Congressman Jeff Van Drew (@Congressman_JVD) December 4, 2025
If you’re left wondering what should happen at the end of the next proposed subsidy extension, you’re not alone. As my colleague Eddie Scarry observed in response to Van Drew’s comments, “So you’re creating a ‘bridge’ by extending the subsidies but you have no plan for what happens when that extension again runs out? Literally a bridge to nowhere. Laughable.”
Perhaps the richest part of Van Drew’s remarks, however, is the part in which he whined about wishing lawmakers could’ve been working on health care rather than having “43 days off” because of the government shutdown.
Forty-three days? What about the 15 years Republicans have spent campaigning on “repealing and replacing” Obamacare? It’s 2025, and the GOP still doesn’t have a plan to revoke the disastrous law and institute a market-oriented solution that fosters competition and naturally drives down costs.
Fortunately, the Gottheimer-Kiggins proposal seems unlikely to make any significant headway, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., shooting down the idea on Thursday. (House Republican leadership is reportedly expected to introduce its own health care package sometime next week, although it’s currently unknown if that proposal will include any extension of the Obamacare subsidies.)
But whether or not the “bipartisan” proposal passes is beside the point. That a group of Republicans would take it upon themselves to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and hand Democrats exactly what they’ve been wanting is a disgrace.
Then again, it’s not shocking when considering that the Republican Party has no ability or interest in governing and no collective vision for what success for the country looks like. By every measure, it’s more useless than that raccoon that broke into an ABC store, got drunk, and passed out on the bathroom floor.
But according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, everything is just hunky dory. The Louisiana Republican recently claimed that the current GOP-run Congress is “the most productive and consequential Congress in our lifetime.”
If by “most productive and consequential,” he means squandering a rare opportunity to enact real and significant change for the American people, then he’s absolutely right.
Pete Hegseth is facing a calculated smear campaign because he threatens the entrenched establishment reshaping America’s military into something weaker and more political.
I have had enough. I can no longer sit still while the Deep State does its very best to smear Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and have him removed from his post via lies, rumors, propaganda, and innuendo. It feels exactly like version 2.0 of the “Trump/Russia Collusion” disinformation campaign, and it needs to be called out for what it is.
Enough.
I am here to defend the best Secretary of War/Defense since Caspar Weinberger.
What we have seen in the last few weeks is clearly an orchestrated, carefully constructed character assassination campaign against Hegseth.
The campaign began in the early days of November when the leaders of the Sedition 6 introduced legislation known as the “No Troops in Our Streets Act,” legislation clearly designed to undermine the roles of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth in the military chain of command. Then, of course, on November 18, the Sedition 6—led by Senators Mark Kelly and Elisa Slotkin—launched their infamous video calling (via innuendo and plausible deniability) for military members to disobey lawful orders they disagree with politically by pretending such lawful orders are “unlawful.” For the next eight days, the Deep State went into a full media onslaught that seemed designed to foment a military mutiny against Trump and Hegseth. Suddenly, these wannabe seditionists were forced to hit the brakes on their information operation, as on November 26 two West Virginia National Guard soldiers patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., in support of anti-crime operations were shot by an Afghan civilian with former ties to the CIA, and America saw an easy connection between that attack and the calls to undermine Trump, Hegseth, and the anti-crime mission.
But the Deep State never rests and was quick to shift gears and change the subject away from their own perfidy. On November 28, the Washington Post published its anonymously sourced hit piece on Hegseth, alleging that he personally directed war crimes, and in a matter of minutes, the entire Democrat hierarchy and its minions in the national media ran with Nancy Pelosi’s beloved “wrap-up smear” in a transparent effort to remove Hegseth.
We now know, of course, it was all a lie. The Democrats and the national media want you to believe that two “fishermen” survived a first strike on their drug-laden speedboat and were then floating in the water helplessly like Rose and Jack at the end of “Titanic,” and we gunned them down as helpless victims and in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In reality, the two narco-terrorists were back on board their partially damaged boat, seeking to conduct damage control and recover their WMD cargo. The narco-terrorists and their lethal cargo were lawful targets under all U.S. laws and all treaties to which the U.S. is a party. No war crimes were involved—just an effective and entirely lawful military strike on narco-terrorists who kill thousands of Americans annually. The Washington Post lied, as is its wont in any matter involving the Trump Administration.
But the damage was done, and too many Americans are still clinging to the lies. In fact, it was an opinion piece I saw today by the desiccated remains of George Will, published in that same Washington Post and uncritically repeating all of that tabloid’s original lies, that pushed me over the edge and caused me to rise to the defense of Pete Hegseth with this article.
As a veteran of the same wars Hegseth fought in and as a retired Army colonel who also fought the Beltway wars of the Pentagon, I take the attacks on Hegseth personally, as he is trying to fix all of the ills that I saw so clearly in my time in service. My sincere belief is that at this time in American history, Pete Hegseth is the perfect person to serve as Secretary of War.
I’ll explain why.
America’s military spent 20+ years engaged in a GWOT battle that, after its first few years, became a predominantly political, economic, diplomatic, and law enforcement mission where the military was not the right tool in the DIME-FIL* toolbox. “Nation building,” ridiculously restrictive, JAG-inspired rules of engagement, social justice experimentation, Military Transition Teams and Security Force Assistance Brigades, and the bastardization of combat arms units away from their mission-essential tasks all created a U.S. military that was risk averse to a crippling degree, lacked adequate training and equipment readiness levels for high-intensity conflict, had broken morale and poor retention/recruiting, and was more concerned about DEI than closing with and destroying the enemy.
The military that Donald Trump inherited from Joe Biden in January of this year was a broken shell of the military that entered the GWOT in 2001. It had lost its focus on lethality, valued skin color and genitalia more than warfighting competency, and was not even able to fully recognize its own missions in a world rife with peer competitors bent on high-intensity global or regional domination, such as China and Russia. Yes, low-intensity conflict was still on the menu in places like Yemen, Syria, and the battles against narco-terrorists, but a military trained for high-intensity conflict can adjust to low-intensity conflict quickly, but it does not work so well the other way around.
As Donald Trump took office, what America needed was a Secretary of War who was intimately familiar with these failures—somebody who had fought those GWOT battles and understood our failings deep in his or her soul. Such a person could not be one of the Perfumed Princes who engineered and would repeat our failures. Instead, it needed to be someone with muddy boots who had experienced the mess we had become at a deeply personal, tactical level.
Moreover, it needed to be someone who understood information operations and the climate of global, instantaneous messaging that is our new day-to-day.
This person did not need to have a comprehensive understanding of military procurement and the military/industrial complex that accompanies Beltway jockeying with Congress and defense contractors—those skills are widely available and could easily be obtained by hiring effective subordinates with the shared vision of a military that needed to be once again focused on lethality.
What might such a person have looked like?
Well, he or she would need to have the following qualifications:
A military career that involved killing the enemy up close and personal in the most efficient manner possible. An infantryman, if possible. A Combat Infantryman Badge would be double plus good. Muddy boots experience leading troops in direct combat in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Deep experience in leading one of the failed coalition training missions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Someone who shared the dark personal struggles of every veteran who had come home from our endless wars. A final military rank that meant he or she was never a Perfumed Prince and was never polluted by the Beltway mind virus that seems to infect every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or Guardian who ever pins on a star. Deep experience in information operations, such as being a best-selling author on military affairs or being a military expert on a major news network. Those are the qualifications that were needed to turn America’s military around and restore it to once again being the premier warfighting force in world history. We did not need more of the same. We did not need a former Raytheon board member. We did not need a former congressman who cared more about politics than winning wars. We did not need yet another retired general who was an architect of our useless, endless wars. What we needed was someone who truly understood the errors of the GWOT, understood that the mission of the U.S. military is to close with and destroy the enemy in the most violent and expeditious manner possible, and who had the chops in the 24/7 modern information environment to wage information warfare just as effectively as his opponents.
One American and one American only had those qualifications: Pete Hegseth, and that man is doing everything I could have ever hoped for to restore the pride and skill we have lost. His focus on lethality and warfighting skill is the one and only antidote to the intentional failures that have scarred veterans like Hegseth and me over the past 24 years.
Please realize this: Hegseth is a threat to anyone who prefers the Obama/Biden vision of an impotent social justice military. He is a threat to anyone who thinks R2P** is a core competency of the American military. He is a threat to anyone who thinks enriching the military/industrial complex is more important than winning wars. Basically, he is a threat to anyone who sees the military as a politicized force and not an effective warfighting endeavor. In other words, Hegseth is a threat to the Beltway defense establishment that has exchanged failure for dollars since the days of Robert McNamara.
Which is why it is so very, very important that the same defense establishment (elected, unelected, and media) smear him in every way imaginable and at every opportunity. When you see and hear the abject lies of the Sedition 6 and their ilk, and when you see and hear wholly fabricated, libelous stories like the “Kill Them All” Hoax, realize why this is happening. These fake news stories are designed to attack and defeat an existential threat to the leftist vision of a social justice American military that exists to enrich defense industry campaign contributors.
Like Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth is an existential threat to the leftist evils that nearly defeated America and the Constitution via Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
It takes a strong man to withstand the onslaught of the Deep State, with all of its lies, libel, and propaganda. Donald Trump is one man who withstood that fire of infamous defamation. Pete Hegseth is another.
We all owe Pete Hegseth our gratitude for the personal cost he is enduring in the name of freedom. He could be sitting at home enjoying his writings and his Fox News appearances. Instead, he is enduring the cowardly slings and arrows of powerful liars as he strives to fix the ills that have long beset our nation’s military.
The disgusting disinformation campaign against Hegseth needs to be challenged vigorously, and I encourage all of you readers to help lead the counterattack.
Conservatives interested in higher-education reform often ask themselves where things went wrong. Answers usually range from the radicalism of the 1960s to the rise of social media or the triumph of critical theories in various departments and then the university as a whole. True, but the problem lies deeper, as well.
Few are willing to trace today’s ills to the rise of the Progressive University or, what is the same thing, the making of higher education in the image of the modern research university. The modern research university is a source of pride among modern peoples. Commercials for universities during football games emphasize how universities contribute to scientific progress, vanquishing diseases and engendering more prosperous living and economic growth.
American universities and universities worldwide (especially in Germany) have contributed much to the storehouse of scientific knowledge. Research universities have produced, collected, and organized knowledge for the relief of man’s estate. Yet, when the research university becomes the model for all fields of knowledge, intellectual corruption is not far away.
The Progressive University seeks to achieve progress through socially organized intelligence. Classical colleges, in contrast, were keepers of our civilizational flame. Frederick Rudolph’s fascinating Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study Since 1636 (1977) celebrates the rise of this new vision of university life. Before the research university, American colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and William & Mary were small classical colleges with fewer than two dozen faculty members each. Each designed its own admissions standards, and students interested in applying might attend “prep” schools to prepare for entrance exams. A fixed classical curriculum emphasizing Latin, moral philosophy, mathematics, and natural philosophy awaited students.
Conservatives interested in higher-education reform often ask themselves where things went wrong. Answers usually range from the radicalism of the 1960s to the rise of social media or the triumph of critical theories in various departments and then the university as a whole. True, but the problem lies deeper, as well.
Few are willing to trace today’s ills to the rise of the Progressive University or, what is the same thing, the making of higher education in the image of the modern research university. The modern research university is a source of pride among modern peoples. Commercials for universities during football games emphasize how universities contribute to scientific progress, vanquishing diseases and engendering more prosperous living and economic growth.
Few are willing to trace today’s ills to the making of higher education as the modern research university.American universities and universities worldwide (especially in Germany) have contributed much to the storehouse of scientific knowledge. Research universities have produced, collected, and organized knowledge for the relief of man’s estate. Yet, when the research university becomes the model for all fields of knowledge, intellectual corruption is not far away.
When the research university becomes the model for all fields of knowledge, intellectual corruption is not far away.The Progressive University seeks to achieve progress through socially organized intelligence. Classical colleges, in contrast, were keepers of our civilizational flame. Frederick Rudolph’s fascinating Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study Since 1636 (1977) celebrates the rise of this new vision of university life. Before the research university, American colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and William & Mary were small classical colleges with fewer than two dozen faculty members each. Each designed its own admissions standards, and students interested in applying might attend “prep” schools to prepare for entrance exams. A fixed classical curriculum emphasizing Latin, moral philosophy, mathematics, and natural philosophy awaited students. Faculty were called professors (e.g., professor of moral philosophy and belles-lettres), but they did not belong to formal departments and did not have anything like PhDs. They were intelligent amateurs, in love with their subject matters and deemed acceptable by the rest of the faculty. There were no majors, no accreditors, no electives, no professional organizations, and no departments. Well fewer than five percent of Americans attended such schools, though the institutions had an outsized influence on American politics through preparing statesmen, community leaders, and ordinary politicians.
Other educational institutions existed during the heyday of the classical college. Academies arose locally to prepare people for professions. Agriculture, trade, and engineering academies, for instance, staffed by intelligent practitioners in those areas, trained future practitioners. Professional schools in theology, law, and medicine would admit and train graduates from classical colleges or others able to pass entrance exams. Common schools gave citizens a good enough education for purposes of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Prep schools would get students ready for entrance exams for colleges. Societies of amateurs arose to pursue scientific knowledge, making no few advances over the course of time.
The somewhat haphazard American system of higher learning was not, under the classical model, harnessing educational institutions for the advancement of knowledge and the relief of man’s estate, as other systems around the world had begun to do. Germany was late to the big-power competition in Europe, but it caught up with a more dedicated form of national pride and a super-competent system of education with the research university at its apex. Americans borrowed liberally, but not slavishly, from the German idea of the university as they built the Progressive University.
It took generations for the new model to fully conquer American higher education. The Progressive University is organized around specialized and professionalized departments with an overarching and increasingly professionalized administration. Curricula revolve mostly around departments. Departments conduct hiring. Hiring is increasingly specialized and credentialed, such that a department will hire PhDs only from acceptable degree-granting departmental programs. Departments grant tenure and promotion, based on discipline-specific publications. Remnants of the old classical idea persisted for a generation in general education, but increasingly specific departments now offer it.
Less than a third of faculty in higher education had PhDs in 1900. Still, in 1903, William James, a mere amateur, penned “The PhD Octopus,” critical of the coming necessity that all future college professors have PhDs. “America is,” James wrote, “rapidly drifting towards a state of things in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him.” He hoped to “cast a critical eye upon this decidedly grotesque tendency” lest America, like other nations, “suffer terribly from the Mandarin disease.” The “institutionalizing on a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive,” he warned, “always tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption.”
We are five generations into an experiment in which the higher-education system is dominated by PhDs.Slowly but surely, the demand for PhDs increased as more were produced. First, in the early 1900s, major universities aspired to have department chairs with PhDs. A half-century later, a majority of faculty in the hard sciences had PhDs. By the 1960s, most faculty in the humanities had PhDs, too. What the PhD indicated, however, was the rise of the academic discipline or department as the central organizing principle of higher education. Students major in a discipline. Departments provide classes for general education. Departments staff the university. PhD programs produce professors, not “men of letters.”
Where classical colleges were strong, the Progressive University is weak.We are, in a sense, five generations into this experiment in which the higher-education system is dominated by PhDs and departments. We can conduct a postmortem on the Progressive University’s living body.
On one hand, aspects of the Progressive University are powerful and attractive. In theory, faculty focusing on one area of knowledge in research and teaching contributes to the project of conquering nature by obeying and understanding it. The more faculty in the hard sciences focus on medical research or oxidation, the more likely they are to go deep and make discoveries into the secret workings of nature. Much evidence exists that physics, biology, medical, and nursing faculty make precisely such advances. Students benefit from learning about science from such experts. America’s polytechnic and engineering programs are envies of the world, as evidenced by how many foreigners attend American engineering schools.
“The ignorance and general incompetency of the average graduate of American Medical Schools,” wrote Harvard’s Charles Eliot in the 1870s, “is something horrible to contemplate. The whole system of medical education in this country needs thorough reformation.” And medical schools were reformed, in part through professional associations dedicated to improving specialties, in part through the hiring of faculty capable of producing and knowing the latest research, and in part by the building of standardized medical schools with real admissions standards. No one would repeat Eliot’s critique of medical schools today!—where universities contribute to progress and technical training with the real stuff of nature: atoms, mechanical structures, or the human body.
Real downsides exist for the Progressive University, however. Where classical colleges were strong, the Progressive University is weak. Universities trade depth and specialization for breadth and wisdom. Faculty were more attached to their colleges than to a discipline under the classical model. Faculty were intelligent generalists hired for their ability to teach and inspire, not for their ability to conduct research. Faculty often grasped the wider swath of Western Civilization, being knowers of philosophy, history, literature, and theology—or what was once called “belles-lettres.” The backward-looking understanding of our civilizational roots was front and center, while the progressive and technical branches were to be learned elsewhere.
Nearly all of the non-hard-science “disciplines” now adopt the research methods of the hard sciences, as if the social sciences or the humane “disciplines” are just different versions of physics or biology. The center of gravity on the Progressive University is toward the hard sciences. Political science, for instance—my discipline—no longer aspires to understand the regime or offers a diagnosis of our political situation with a remedy but makes itself irrelevant to politics through “positivistic” research methods borrowed from the natural sciences. Other social sciences, even less grounded in reality, are simply dominated by ideological thinking.
Consider, for a moment, the plight of the many civics centers being established around the country—something reformers put much faith in. Each civics center is trying to do something bigger than a department. They are trying to restore some understanding of the classical college in a part of the Progressive University. However, they must all use the tools of the Progressive University to do so. They must find scholars who have earned a PhD in a specific discipline, who conduct ongoing research in their field of study, who are well-published through the peer-review process, et cetera. Each genuinely classical faculty member is a kind of miracle, surviving as a generalist in an age of extreme specialization and scientism. “Where will we find aligned faculty?” is the question on the lips of every administrator in civics centers.
Must practically every university have, mostly, the same administrative and curricular form (as they do today)?Higher-education reformers should put the Progressive University—the university designed to produce organized social intelligence through modern research methods—in the dock. The Progressive University is, according to its supporters, something liberating and powerful. There is something to that. Nevertheless, we should revisit questions long thought to be settled: Can different disciplines coexist easily on campuses? Is organizing curricula around disciplines a salutary development, or does it hamstring reformers’ efforts to preserve our civilizational heritage? Must we have PhDs teaching all university courses? Must practically every university and college have, mostly, the same administrative and curricular form (as they do today)?
No simple return to the classical college is possible. We will have research universities, and we should. We will have big medical schools, and we should. But the Progressive University is not an unmixed blessing to the cause of civilization. The Progressive University cannot and should not be simply destroyed. Instead, we should painfully, deliberately peel back the assumptions on which our Progressive University system has been built and reconsider.
Scott Yenor is director of the Kenneth B. Simon Center for American Politics at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a professor of political science at Boise State University.
The election result of a Republican victory in Tennessee — like the recent Democrat/Communist victories in New York and Virginia — mainly reinforce how divided America is. People on each side are doubling and tripling down. There’s no longer any middle; it all boils down to capitalism and individual liberty (which Republicans pay some lip service and loyalty to); versus totalitarianism (which the Democratic Party has now adopted nationwide). In a way, it’s all for the good. Sooner or later, Americans must come to understand: It’s one or the other. Communism is not compatible with capitalism. Individual rights are incompatible with the Democratic Party. The Bill of Rights and the Green New Deal/Sharia Law simply cannot coexist.
The parties now give us a stark choice. Republicans are for liberty, if only by default. Democrats are for total sacrifice of the individual to the State in as hard core a manner as ever seen in this country.
The choice is yours, America. While you still have any choices.
As for Communism, remember a timeless truth about socialism or Communism: Those who scream the loudest about the “evils” of money are the ones who will sell their souls for it.
Christmas generally means one of two things to people: Jesus Christ; or capitalism, meaning the gifts and material or secular celebrations.
In today’s culture, Christmas is more important than ever before. Businesses practically close down for the entire month. (Have you tried getting business done with a bank, an insurance company, or just about anything other than a retail store during Thanksgiving to Christmas? Or tried to find a job? Or get even minimal service from a government agency?) Black Friday shopping sprees now top summer vacation and almost eclipse Christmas itself.
Yes, Christmas is all about either Jesus or capitalism. Yet these are two things disparaged by cultural and corporate elites (all leftist, now even Communist) who rule over us. Interesting. Why do they approve of Christmas when it’s made possible by the two things they loathe the most: capitalism and Jesus?
Nothing says “hope and change” quite like bulldozing a beloved public park for a 235-foot phallic tower dedicated to oneself. Welcome to the Obama Presidential Center (OPC), an $830 million (and rising) vanity project in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park. The man who once preached community organizing couldn’t find a single non-park site in his hometown for his monument. I get angry every time I see a story about this thing. It feels as if Obama is giving America a gigantic, double-barreled middle finger. No honest observer can look at this monstrosity and feel inspired. Like the modern Democrat Party, the OPC has zero redeeming features.
Let’s start with the trees: over 800 mature oaks, many a century old, were felled for parking and “campus” space. Environmentalists who paralyzed industries to save a single spotted owl suddenly decided trees are renewable when a favored Democrat is involved. A Frederick Law Olmsted-designed urban oasis was sacrificed without a shrug. The community hated it from the start. Bronzeville residents, preservationists, and even Obama voters begged the foundation to build somewhere, anywhere else — abandoned lots and shuttered factories were plentiful. Instead, the Obamas demanded federally protected parkland for a private foundation that will one day charge admission. Lawsuits were filed, federal reviews manipulated, and courts eventually capitulated.
The building itself defies description. Critics call it Stalinist, Brutalist, or a rejected Bond-villain lair; supporters claim that it’s “bold.” It offends traditionalists and competent modernists alike. It resembles either a North Korean guard tower or a Star Wars Jawa sandcrawler — take your pick.
Cost was originally pitched at $500 million; it’s now past $830 million with no end in sight. A promised $470 million endowment meant to offset neighborhood damage and future maintenance has only $1 million in it and no realistic funding plan. The Chicago machine, as usual, simply looked the other way.
Staff salaries are equally shameless. Valerie Jarrett, an old Obama confidante, was installed as director at nearly $750,000 a year despite the museum remaining unbuilt. By opening day (if it ever comes), she’ll have collected almost $2 million — much of it apparently from early donor funds — while taxpayers will cover ongoing upkeep.
Construction, handled by the hand-picked Lakeside Alliance, promised diversity and local hiring. It delivered federal indictments instead. The safety record was catastrophic — workers fell, fingers were severed, racial slurs scrawled on site. Minority subcontractors say they were stiffed while prime contractors cashed in.
Inside, visitors won’t find presidential papers (those are digitized elsewhere, safely away from scholars). They’ll get immersive exhibits about Barack’s greatness, Michelle’s garden, and probably a hologram slow-jamming the news. Run by a private foundation, the “library” can charge whatever it wants for access. Transparency you can believe in. Jackson Park, once a free public space for picnics and pickup games, is now a gated, security-patrolled compound where ordinary Chicagoans will pay to admire murals of the Great Leader. Frederick Law Olmsted spins in his grave.
The OPC perfectly embodies elite Democrat hypocrisy: lecture the country about sacrifice and community, then raze a public park, burn through a billion dollars, and erect a concrete eyesore — all while keeping actual records under private lock and key.
Strip away the renderings and PBS specials, and the Obama Center is a 235-foot park-gobbling “up yours” to the country he once pretended to serve. A private fortress in a working-class public park (used heavily by black Chicagoans), ringed by bollards and ticket booths. A “presidential library” with no papers. A tower that announces the rules — preservation, open records, environmental review, basic aesthetics — are for little people only.
Every over-budget yard of concrete screams: We got ours; you get selfies at the gift shop. The couple who scolded us about carbon footprints clear-cut ancient oaks. The administration that demonized “millionaires and billionaires” vacuumed anonymous nine-figure donations while the South Side bled and the city teeters on bankruptcy. When workers were maimed, subcontractors stiffed, and costs exploded, the response was always a polished shrug and another gala.
This isn’t just narcissism; it’s contempt poured in concrete and glass on ground that once belonged to everyone. The Obama Center isn’t a monument to a president. It’s a tribute to a ruling class that no longer hides its disdain for the rest of us.
Psalm 123 comes to mind: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy. For we are filled with contempt. Our soul has had enough of the scorn of the rich, of the proud man’s disdain.”
Listening to the news, how often do you feel gaslighted? Lied to? I’m guessing quite often. Again, we’re being lied to about Islam; you know, the “religion of peace.” Last week, a practicing Muslim gunned down two National Guard (NG) soldiers in Washington D.C. Immediately, the claptrap media warned against Islamophobia, that the murder had nothing to do with Islam. Right, and abortion has nothing to do with infanticide. Do people actually believe such lies? Obviously, they do, because media such as MS-NOW (former MSNBC), CNN, the NY Times, NPR, and all the other leftist media blamed President Trump for instigating and inciting the Muslim to action. A quick review will help.
Prior to the late 1960s and early 70s, most in the West didn’t think much or often of the Middle East or threats posed by Islam. We were more occupied with the Soviet threat. Nevertheless, Muslim/Islamic terrorists were killing people all over the world — particularly targeting Israel and Jews, hijacking planes, shooting up airports, bombing embassies, and the like. When Iranian Muslims captured the U.S. Embassy in Tehran (1979), and held Americans hostage for 444 days, we took notice. In the ensuing decades, Muslim terrorists and Islamic madmen have been on the march across the globe — the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed (April 1983 — 49 killed); the Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed (October 1983 — 241 killed); Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed (1988 – 270 killed); World Trade Center was bombed (1993 — six killed); the Khobar Tower was bombed (1996 — 19 airmen killed); U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed (1998 — hundreds killed, thousands injured); the USS Cole was bombed (2000 — 19 sailors killed); and the 9/11 attacks (September 2001 — killed thousands). Since 9/11, Islamic terrorist attacks targeting Americans, both here and abroad, have almost become routine — the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, the Boston Marathon Bombers, the San Bernadino attack (2015 — 14 killed), the Orlando Nightclub Shooting (2016 — 49 killed), the NYC truck attack (2017), the New Orleans truck ramming (2025 New Years Day — 14 killed), and last month’s shooting of two NG soldiers in D.C.
The above attacks were some of the major ones against American targets. Muslims have targeted just about every country in the world beginning with attacks against Israel’s Olympic Team (Munich 1972 — 12 killed); Beirut became a hellhole (1970s and 80s); the Bali Nightclub attack (2002 – 202 killed); the Madrid Train bombing (2004 – 193 killed, thousands injured); the London Subway bombing (2005 — 56 killed); the Mumbai, India attacks (2008 — 175 killed); the Charlie Hebdo attack (2015 — 17 killed); the Paris Nightclub suicide bombings (2015 — 130 killed); the Nice, France truck attack (2016 — 86 killed); and the Moscow Theater Attack (2024 — 145 killed). Let’s not forget the Hamas Oct 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed over 1,200 and took 250 hostages. These were the Muslim attacks that garnered large media because they were against western countries and killed westerners.
Elsewhere, Christians in Nigeria are being genocided by Muslims. Also daily, in Africa/Muslim/Arab/Islamic countries there are terrorist attacks that kill one, two, or dozens and receive little media attention. Apart from non-Muslims being killed by Muslims, Muslims kill more of themselves far and away than they kill of others.
If you think these attacks by Muslims are one-offs and happen infrequently, think again. According to the website “thereligionofpeace.com,” worldwide last month there were 92 Islamic attacks in 17 countries that killed 378 people and injured 210. The website admits they don’t catch all attacks, because some are not immediately reported or claimed by a terrorist group. Actually, November was a light month. The previous month saw 152 Islamic attacks in 18 countries that killed 2,548 and injured 458. In all of 2025, there have been 1,875 Islamic attacks in 48 countries, 13,337 people killed and 6,139 injured. In 2024, worldwide there were 1,762 Islamic attacks in 52 countries, 9,587 people killed and 8,464 injured. Every year prior had similar numbers, all carried out by Muslims.
It is obvious that Islam is at war with the world and even among themselves. Islam is not using standing armies; instead, it has deployed millions of propagandized foot-soldiers around the world. Islam is a broke culture and ideology, incompatible with civilized society. It oppresses half its population (women) and turns the other half (men) into oppressors who treat other cultures and peoples as subservient. If Satan founded a religion, it would be Islam, because Satan deceives and oppresses; ditto for Islam.
The terrorist shooting of the National Guard soldiers in Washington was carried out by an Afghan Muslim refugee, who was granted asylum status but “struggled to adapt” to the United States. Dems and leftists are the only ones surprised that third-world Muslim refugees “struggle” and don’t assimilate into American culture. There is almost zero chance that any Muslim refugee will assimilate into American culture, because nothing here is remotely similar to Afghanistan or to any other Muslim country. Yet, the Biden regime brought in tens of thousands, knowing they wouldn’t assimilate and labelling all those who thought they should racist/xenophobic. Our language, religion, culture, and way of life are incompatible with Islam because Islam is an ideology of oppression that wraps itself in the cloak of religion.
At one time, immigrants were not allowed into this country unless they could 100% support themselves and their families. Now, the Dems import illegal immigrants from third-world hellholes, and wantonly support them with $$$ Billions in freebies. After this latest Muslim terror attack, President Trump announced a halt to all visas to third-world countries (except for tourist visas). Also, he ordered a complete re-examination of all Afghan asylum seekers. Those announcements are a good start, but given that Islamic ideology is incapable of existing alongside the U.S. Constitution, all Muslim asylum seekers should be reviewed.
No surprise, the Dems are hoppin’ mad because the Trump administration is cutting funding to illegals, deporting illegals, and deporting unvetted asylum seekers. They’re upset because by deporting illegals and other extremists, their voting base is being deported. Dems know they cannot win debates based on ideas. So, they brought in millions to replace the voters who are fleeing them in droves.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 
