I can only speak from my own discoveries. Sunday is the beginning of every work week.

I am writing this column on a beautiful, sunny day in Southern California. It is a Monday in mid-August, so it is not a national holiday, yet in Los Angeles County, where I live, all the schools and all government offices are closed. Why?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent Vermont) recently launched his latest bid to ban private health insurance and force all Americans into a government-run health plan.

If one is to believe the prevailing narrative from Donald Trump’s campaign to retake the White House, the 2024 Republican presidential primary might as well be over. The former president has been consistently dominating the top-line horse race polling for months now, the argument goes, despite (or perhaps because of ?) the fact he has now been criminally indicted four separate times, by three different prosecutors, in four different jurisdictions. Therefore, the Trump triumphalists shout from their rooftops, the other candidates should just drop out right now. “Spare your dignity and coronate Trump today!!!” This argument is absurd for approximately a million different reasons. First, and perhaps most important, the last time I checked the calendar, it still said, “August 2023.” While commentators, campaign operatives and political junkies with apparently nothing else better to do in their free time are already intensely following the Republican presidential primary, the same is simply not true for the vast majority of Americans who largely tune out the news during the dog days of summer. A political party’s first televised presidential primary debate marks the unofficial beginning of its normal, nonactivist voter base paying attention in earnest. Yes, Trump has maintained a stubborn lead in the national horse race polls for months now. But it is still ridiculously early.

The United States is fraying at the seams under the erosion of standards of lawful behavior. It has become commonplace to see videos of people violently assaulting total strangers. Mobs of teens in Chicago riot, loot and set cars on fire, and the mayor makes excuses. Individuals walk into department stores and leave with armfuls of stolen items. The thefts are done with impunity, as if the thieves know that employees who try to stop them or defend themselves face a greater likelihood of consequences -- including prosecution -- than the criminals themselves do. This phenomenon isn’t confined to the poor or disenfranchised. Earlier this year, students at Stanford Law School heckled and screamed obscenities at a federal judge who had been invited to speak there. Similar incidents have taken place on campuses across the country. Pundits were aghast. These are the elites, they said, the creme de la creme of society. What did this behavior portend for the future and our future leaders?

The New York Post reports: “About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which posted the numbers, has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S.

Recently I read through some old magazines, and in The New American (Feb. 19, 1996) the headline “Protecting What Is Precious” caught my eye.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dennis Prager is off this week. We hope readers will enjoy the following guest column by Ben Shapiro.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Laura Hollis is off this week. We hope readers will enjoy the following guest column by Judge Andrew P.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines sat before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last March and calmly explained why Communist China is no friend of the United States. “[T]he People’s Republic of China -- which is increasingly challenging the United States economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world -- remains our unparalleled priority,” she said.