Shows / Edifice of Trust
Edifice of Trust
The Edifice of Trust is a podcast that provides discussion and analysis of today's current events from the perspective of America's Founding Principles. Based on Enlightenment philosophy as espoused by John Locke and economic freedom as described by Adam Smith, the host, Victor Bolles, provides listeners a path toward understanding current events from these timeless principles. Many Americans believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, the podcast tries to point out a new course…
Episodes
Edifice of TrustCan DEI Be Saved?
Recent commentaries in the Wall Street Journal set forth competing visions on whether Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs can be saved or should be…
Edifice of TrustAn Age of Agency
Ian Rowe, an educator in the Bronx, writes that developing a sense of agency is essential in liberating poor and minority kids from a dreary future of poverty…
Edifice of TrustUrgent Priorities 2024
Once again, while our so-called political leaders are completely absorbed by their campaigns for reelection, they ignore the urgent national priorities that…
Edifice of TrustMislabeled
how mislabeling political beliefs and governmental policies creates confusion and contributes to the divisiveness wracking our country.
Edifice of TrustThe Attraction of Victimhood
Why do so many people in America identify as victims, the victims of an oppressive system? What is the source of this feeling? Why do so many people believe…
Edifice of TrustDr. - not Mr. - Spock
Scientific inquiry is the process where we learn more and more about our universe through experimentation to support or disprove our theories. But…
Edifice of TrustWar in the Levant
If you call the swath of land east of the Mediterranean Sea the Levant instead of Israel and Palestine, you can see the recent conflicts in the region with a…
Edifice of TrustThe Slippery Slope of Fairness
Politicians are always promoting new laws and government programs to make things more fair. But fairness is not a good standard on which to base laws and…
Edifice of TrustMaking Sense of Irrational War
To our Western minds the horrific attack on Israel by the Hamas terror group was irrational and incomprehensible. But even more irrational and incomprehensible…
Edifice of TrustShared Values and Common Goals Part One
America has not been this divided since the Civil War. But poll after poll show that Americans left, right and center share many of the same values. So what is…
Edifice of TrustDeficit of Hope
From the dark days and widespread pessimism of the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan's optimistic speeches gave American reason to hope for a better future. We are…
Edifice of TrustNumbers Guy
Is America suffering from a plague of psychic epidemics? Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote that man has no adequate protection from psychic epidemics which…
Edifice of TrustBILLIONAIRES SHOULD NOT EXIST
Climate activists, parroting Bernie Sanders, hold up signs declaring "BILLIONAIRES SHOULD NOT EXIST" to justify vandalizing the property of rich people. But if…
Edifice of TrustPeak China?
Has China reached its peak of economic power as many talking heads and think tank fellows are writing and podcasting about? The reality doesn't matter, only…
Edifice of TrustOur Precarious Liberty
The Declaration of Independence states that we all are endowed with the right to pursue happiness and the things that make us happy are usually in our…
Edifice of TrustSurviving in a Multipolar World
The world is changing, and if you are one of the billions of people who have benefitted from the Western rules-based world order, not in a good way. Change, of…
Edifice of TrustUkraine Model
Many foreign policy experts have been recommending the armistice between North and South Korea as a model for the resolution of the war on Ukraine. The…
Edifice of TrustThis Is How They Think
A recent open letter from some leftist college professors urges President Biden to defy the recent Supreme Court decisions. The letter not only exposes how the…
Edifice of TrustWhither Europe?
The welfare state was invented by German Chancellor Bismarck to placate the masses while he created an industrial empire to dominate Europe. The industrial…
Edifice of TrustRINOS and DINOS
I really like Joe. I thought he would have made a good Vice President. What? No, I am not talking about Joe Biden. I am talking about Joe Lieberman. Joe…
Edifice of TrustThe Wrong Way to Make Law
The left is mad at the Supreme Court. They are mad because the Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is refusing to endorse the social justice policies that…
Edifice of TrustThe Difference between Lying and Delusion
Russian President Putin has a deluded vision of a Russian-led Eurasian civilization of which Ukraine is an integral part, justifying his invasion of that…
Edifice of TrustPostmodern Prehistory
In their recent book, The Dawn of Everything, Authors David Graeber and David Wengrow attempt to redefine human prehistory through the lens of their…
Edifice of TrustWar of Attrition
Historian Stephen Kotkin asserts that the War on Ukraine has evolved into a war of attrition. He further asserts that two key elements to continue such a war…
Edifice of TrustVivek Who???
Who is Vivek Ramaswamy? When Vivek Ramaswamy announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for president of the United States everyone (including me)…
Edifice of TrustA Postmodern Future
The bizarre and previously fringe philosophy that is postmodernism has become mainstream among US academics as the principal Counter-Enlightenment school of…
Edifice of TrustIdeological Justice
The progressive left has long desired that the US judicial system become more activist in promoting their progressive agenda unconstrained by an originalist…
Edifice of TrustExplaining John Wayne
To kids growing up in the 1950s, John Wayne was the symbol of what those kids should grow up to be. A bit gruff, but honest. Fierce, but protective of those in…
Edifice of TrustPerp Walk
Is Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg trying to indict former President Trump in order to incarcerate him or to assure that he becomes the presidential candidate for the…
Edifice of TrustTwo Decades
Where will we all be in two decades? A better question is where should we be in two decades? Seventy percent of American think we are heading in the wrong…
Edifice of TrustThe Fed that Should Be
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System have been put in charge of running the US economy. But it shouldn't be this way. The Fed wasn't created to…
Edifice of TrustDemocracy is not a Verb
Yale professor Timothy Snyder recently did a Ted Talk where he asserted that democracy should be a verb, something that you do. He asserts, "democracy has to…
Edifice of TrustA Color Blurred Society
Despite heightened rhetoric about systemic racism and arguments about disparate outcomes, everybody from ordinary people to superstar quarterbacks are the…
Edifice of TrustThe Junzi Way
Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 until 1990 incorporated the concept of junzi, the Confucian ideal of being a moral person, as a key element…
Edifice of TrustCan Artificial Intelligence Cure Healthcare?
Healthcare in the United States is a mess. And it is a mess because of people. Different people want different things. And powerful people and the institutions…
Edifice of TrustNon-Trivial Pursuits
Gotchas, paybacks and vendettas do not make for a legislative agenda. They may appeal to the Freedom Caucus, but most Americans want Congress to address the…
Edifice of TrustUrgent Priorities 2023
Last year I published a podcast (Urgent Priorities, December 30, 2021) on the urgent priorities that America had to confront in the year 2022. Since many of…
Edifice of TrustWakanda Dreamin'
On a recent podcast, professors Glenn Loury and John McWhorter were discussing how slaveowners had used techniques to break a slave's bond to their past (their…
Edifice of TrustThe Real Message of Welfare
Many people may need public assistance from time to time but the structure of the American welfare state encourages behaviors that perpetuate impoverishment…
Edifice of TrustConservatism is not Enough
Labels can be confusing, especially when they keep changing. They are more like brand names than descriptors of political philosophy. When a candidate says "I…
Edifice of TrustDon't Twerk on My Parade
Cultural changes have come to Central Texas in the form of competing Christmas/Holiday parades in the rural town of Taylor. Change is inevitable but not all…
Edifice of TrustToxic Magic and the Red Ripple
An endorsement from former President Donald Trump was magic for his chosen candidates in the Republican primaries, but the results of the 2022 mid-term…
Edifice of TrustThe War on Profit
Joe Biden and the Democrats have a problem with profit. Not just the "outrageous" and excessive profits that the oil companies are reaping now. All profit…
Edifice of TrustThe Cult of Woke
The proponents of the Woke progressive-left agenda appear resistant to logical argument and react with outrage at any criticism of their movement. They reject…
Edifice of TrustWake Up! Dems
Noble Prize winner Daniel Kahneman explained in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, that the human brain can be viewed as being divided into two separate brains…
Edifice of TrustSocial Justrice is Incompatible with Democracy
Many people think social justice is synonymous with democracy, that you can't have true democracy without social justice. But they are wrong. The Soviet Union…
Edifice of TrustThe Pension Pit
As exploding pension costs cause state and local governments to cut back on services, citizens are fleeing rising crime, failing schools and increasing taxes…
Edifice of TrustThe Difference between Democracy and Liberty
Pollsters report that American citizens are very worried about the state of our democracy in the run-up to the 2022 mid-term elections. It is true that…
Edifice of TrustReward Work Not Wealth
The White House recently released the Biden-Harris Economic Blueprint that lays out what the Biden administration wants to do and what it envisions for the…
Edifice of TrustSemi-What?
In a recent speech, President Joe Biden accused ex-President Trump and his MAGA-Republican followers of following a semi-fascist philosophy that, "threatens…
Edifice of TrustEnergy Policy! What's That?
This podcast is an excerpt about energy policy from my 2015 book, Principled Policy. As Saudi Arabia announces a cut-back in production and Russia the shut-off…
Edifice of TrustNot a Band-Aid
Almost everyone agrees that President Biden's plan to forgive billions and billions of dollars of student debt is a bad idea. But it not a bad idea just…
Edifice of TrustThe Duty of Citizens
Citizens of the United States have many civil rights, but they also have duties and responsibilities. Duties and responsibilities beyond voting and paying…
Edifice of TrustHow to Destroy the Republican Party
Former President Donald Trump is the dominant figure in the Republican Party and aspires to be its candidate for President in the 2024 elections. To implement…
Edifice of TrustThe Deficit Reduction Dance
The Inflation Reduction Act concocted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic maverick Joe Manchin is being rushed through Congress in the hopes…
Edifice of TrustGasolina Barata
First, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador snubbed President Biden's invitation to the recent Summit of the Americas by refusing to attend unless the…
Edifice of TrustWhen Face Value is Two Faced
Institutions that are intended to foster professionalism and civic responsibility have been taken over in order to promote progressive ideology. Membership in…
Edifice of TrustWeasel Words
The left is always coming up with new words or redefining the meaning of old words to make their progressive ideas more palatable to the American public…
Edifice of TrustChaos in the Culture Wars
Extremists on the left and right are fighting a culture war to transform America into something unrecognizable. And while they are fighting each other, they…
Edifice of TrustCapitulation (or not)
Financial markets are nearing capitulation, interest rates are rising, inflation is roaring, and recession is looming. The American people, along with…