State of Friday: ALL ROADS LEAD TO ...

Otherwise, we’re all toast.

Jul 10, 2026

Greetings, Dear Reader,

I’ve been missing more days than I’d like lately and for that I humbly apologize. Been sick as all get out the last week and convalescence has taken a bit longer than expected. Getting older every day!

I’m also a father of two and soon to be three this upcoming first week of August, so it isn’t going to be much easier.

I hope to keep writing during “paternity leave” (lame!) because I’ll have the time when the baby sleeps.

In any case, let’s get on with it!

Before all that though, a word from our sponsor on health care.

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ALL ROADS LEAD TO …

Rome. In Latin: Omnes viae Romam Ducunt. It dates back to medieval times, but the idea is much older.

Essentially it means that you could be in any satellite village, city or outpost during the height of the Roman empire, and if you traveled the roads long enough, you’d end up in Rome.

It was something I’ve been thinking deeply about lately as I navigate the history of the Catholic faith and our current political age. I’m certainly not unique in this regard.

At the end of the night last night during a networking dinner I had arranged for various conservative media outlets, one older woman asked me about the tattoo on my left arm. The mark of the Roman legion across a rather worn out gladius.

Many Marines in my generation carried the mark. Also not unique.

One of the VIP guests mentioned she was interviewing the secretary of education soon and asked if any of us had thoughts.

“Well,” I started.

—

Twelve hours earlier, I was standing in front of a bunch of wide-eyed Capitol Hill interns giving a rousing speech, if I do say so myself, about “going on offense” and how to do it.

Afterward, one of them asked, “What in your opinion is the most pressing issue young conservatives should be aware of today?”

Without hesitating: Education.

—

If we follow the roads from any major issue — trans ideology, illegal immigration, poor policing, the rise of socialism — they’ll lead us right back to education. Starting from K-12 and finishing at major universities, the entire system has become a skinsuit for leftist recruitment and development.

The problem isn’t simply the dilution of education*, but to a greater degree, education becoming a comprehensive development and deployment program for both new members of the radical left, but also new platforms.

*(The “watering down” of education itself is downstream of the perverse left-wing takeover. To infiltrate institutions, radicals need to credential more of their loyal and vicious idiots. The best way to do that is to make the credentials easier to attain.)

You can really take your pick. Is illegal immigration your cause du jour? Where do you think the concept of “no person is illegal” comes from? Where are the lawyers and activists inculcated with fallacious multiculturalism propaganda?

Incidentally, both public and private universities have a financial incentive in perpetuating multiculturalism ideology. Just look at how much money they’re making lately from foreign students.

What other issue? How about the rise of socialism? From Mamdani to Michelle Wu and Chevalier, contemporary socialists cannot win elections without semi-affluent, downwardly mobile college-educated elites.

Socialist Jeneese Lewis George doesn’t beat the moderate Kenyan McDuffie in the DC Mayor election if it’s just working-class black residents doing the bulk of the voting. Unfortunately, she trounced him among transient, educated whites.

Look at the demographics of the modern Democratic Socialists of America. More than 80% white nonhispanic, more than 80% college educated.

It’s the one metric that carries across cities and states.

Or maybe your big thing is bathrooms, girls sports, and dudes in women’s clothing. Maybe gender goblins in women’s lingerie reading to children is your primary cause.

You can interrupt an event or get the library to cancel drag queen story hour. You can get your local school to stop letting dudes on the girls volleyball team. Those are great local wins, you love to see it.

It’s also like swatting a handful of yellowjackets and expecting the stinging to stop. It won’t unless you get the nest.

They didn’t really exist in these numbers 20 years ago.

Who’s making the gender goblins?

We can destroy planes on the runways, that’s great, but hitting the factories would be an even bigger win.

—

Of the 50 states in the Union, at least 40 allow governors to line item veto State budgets. Many also grant governors broad authority to appoint members of public university boards.

Some governors, like Desantis and recently Abbot, have flexed these powers, but only in small test cases.

It’s my contention that the fastest way to really upend the radical left’s pipeline and thus alleviate the primary political issues facing us today is for Republican governors to actually grow a pair. These guys need to reach down south, grab a hold of their cajones, and actually wield the power they’re duly elected to wield.

That means cutting budgets. It also means appointing board members who will line edit curricula and staff. Yes, and staff. Bring the administrator to student ratio back into normal proportions – in some cases, there is literally one administrator for every four students – and fire entire departments. Annihilate all forms of critical theory.

The main issue with this course of action is twofold. One: it’s hard. It requires actually doing the work of auditing and identifying bad people and bad programs.

Number two: Can you imagine the howling from the media if Desantis took an action that resulted in more than half the public university employees being unemployed?

Oh boy – IGBBMN.

—

In the short term, the pain would be great. Howling from the media. Swaths of newly unemployed. NYT think pieces from “wrongly targeted” teachers of (Gay Race Communist) “history.”

In the long term, however, here’s how I see it playing out.

First, the critical theorists will have to find a place to go. Bear in mind that anywhere they go invariably gets worse. Their only safe haven would be blue states. If blue states want to bankrupt themselves with a self-consuming, expensive ideology, by all means.

Second, as education in red states heals, it also becomes highly attractive. Actual scholars and actually serious students will seek out those institutions.

As the years and, yes, even decades pass, what was once a comprehensive problem across all of education will suddenly appear extremely balkanized. You’ll have classical K-12 and Higher Learning in certain states, and in others you’ll have credential mills that aren’t taken seriously.

How long before they collapse entirely, your guess is as good as mine, but they will collapse.

Let me know what you think, Dear Reader.

See you Monday.