Reflections on Life & Liberty: Recent Episodes
Texas Scorecard
Michael Quinn Sullivan discusses the finer points of life and liberty from a historical, biblical, and sometimes personal context in the search for greater understanding of the world around us.
Chorazin had a spectacular view of the Sea of Galilee, but an even better view of history of history in the making. They squandered both.
Too often, conservatives cede the selection of the rhetorical battleground to the left. It is why we are losing.
People who cower and cringe rarely fight back. The political elite wants us to live lives full of anxiety so that we can be more easily controlled.
Stop waiting for a politician to do your job. It is up to us to re-take our government and our culture.
Every generation must shrug the vestiges of socialism if we are truly thankful for liberty.
On Veterans Day, we should thank those who served… and make sure we are building a republic worth serving.
Feeding an irksome “frenemy” to an alligator in the fray of an internecine fight might feel good, but it ignores that the alligator will next be looking to feed on you.
The world tells us that the ends justify the means if we make them sound righteous enough.
Self-pity is a bottomless pit when we make our lives about ourselves. INTRO: In this week’s reflection, Michael Quinn Sullivan writes that rather than star as the martyrs in our […]
Political purity czars are a lonely lot and rarely as pure as they perceive themselves.
America watched as church leaders in 2020 put the gathering of the saints on par with the meeting of the Rotary Club.
All law is a matter of morality; the only question is if that law is in keeping with, or foreign to, the moral precepts of holy scripture.
As a self-governing nation, each of us are supposed to be the leaders. Do we act like it?
The issues facing our republic are deadly serious, but that doesn’t mean we always have to be.
Like Hunter Biden, wealth and political status were intertwined for the rich young man in the often misquoted New Testament story.
The gooey, saccharine-sweet niceness demanded of us by politicians isn’t found anywhere in the Bible.
A Muslim shrine built in the form of a Christian church on the ruins of a pagan temple built on the ruins of a Jewish temple, built on the rock designated by God for a sacrifice.
However exalted or self-important we may be, we all eventuallybecome a footnote in the great story of history.
We can be a self-governing Republic, or we can be a subservient people governed by tyrants.
We must stop seeing the military as props in political theater but as a precious and limited resource.
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
We have too often adopted a participation-trophy mentality when it comes to political engagement.
Rather than fight the enemy, we have contented ourselves with blaming the victims and shunning the warriors.
What’s so good about the day when an innocent man was executed by the political elite for challenging their authority?
There is an unfortunate trend in politics for voters not to believe who the incumbents really are, even when the politician shows then.
The Nazis’ atrocities are made all the more horrific with the knowledge we’re all capable of such horror.
We must stop voting as if we’re judges in a talent show; we’re trying to save the republic.
Our Founding Fathers understood citizens must be able to expose government malfeasance, criticize public policy, and publicly identify corruption.
If we want to be praying for the leadership of our nation, we need to be praying for our fellow citizens.
For too long, too many of us have been lulled to civic sleep or pointed in the wrong direction.
Conservatives have been doing way too much settling for the low-bar results tepidly offered by our civic clerks.
“Be Prepared” is the well-known motto of the Boy Scouts of America. It’s also a pretty good admonition for successful living.
Regardless of our political, ideological, and even theological beliefs, an honest review of history keeps us grounded in facts as we move toward the future.
As a self-governing people, we must pursue righteousness if we are to enjoy the blessings of liberty.
Independence Day should not only be a celebration of history, but a commitment to the future.
In this week’s reflection, Michael Quinn Sullivan explores the curious swap of “party colors” – liberty blue and commie red – that the GOP adopted in the aftermath of the 2000 election. More important than colors, says Sullivan, has been the tendency of Republican politicians to react to Democrats rather than define an agenda.
With certain exceptions, we generally cannot control the circumstances of life. In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan explains why we must look forward joyfully to what we can achieve in our circumstances and the contribution we can make toward the advancement of liberty.
With what should be read with a resigned sigh, the concluding words of the Book of Judges explains, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan explains why our system of self-governance requires a citizens to fixes their eyes on God, and not ourselves.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan explores the “awesome” responsibility of parents to educate their children so that they can grow into responsible, self-governing adults able to lead the republic into the future.
Going into the Memorial Day weekend, there is too much forgetfulness for the the American blood shed to secure our god-given rights. In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan says everyone should take a break from the cookouts and sales to reflect on what is required to maintain liberty.
Gideon was a complicated figure in the Old Testament, and cautionary tale for each of us. He started strong, but became what he’d been fighting against. In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan says we need to be on guard against being led astray by our own hearts.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan explains how our republic is being killed because too many Americans have stopped caring about liberty and self-governance.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan reflects on the sometimes-frustrating "now, but not yet" duality which courses through scripture and is even embedded in our Constitution. He argues that the idea imperfect men strive for a "more perfect" civil government means, as a self-governing people, that we cannot sit around cursing the darkness – but rather must be building bigger and better lights.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan says out-of-control government spending won’t be solved by addressing “waste” until we redefine waste to mean any spending that isn’t explicitly authorized by the Constitution. Budgets are bloated by the big-government programs that benefit us personally. Util we control ourselves, Sullivan says, we will never control government.
“Play it safe,” we’re often told. “Take small steps,” people say. This week, Michael Quinn Sullivan reflects on the importance of Texas’ patriots in 1836 being willing to risk everything rather than live as serfs. Liberty has never been achieved through timidity, he says, but is born from boldness.
When the ruling elite in Jerusalem tried to trip up Jesus and ask about the Roman tax burden, He famously deflected. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus knew they weren’t really curious about tax policy; they just wanted an excuse to turn Him into a criminal.
Rather than Pharisees trying to trip us up, we have the federal tax code. While the Bible has less than 800,000 words, the federal tax code has close to 10 million.
In this week’s Reflection, Michael Quinn Sullivan says that throughout history taxes have been used by the ruling elite to harass and manipulate the people while enriching themselves and their cronies.
Politicians working to undermine our republic and erode liberty don’t want witnesses to their dirty deeds, explains Michael Quinn Sullivan in this week’s reflection. Our system of government wasn’t designed to be set on autopilot, but rather requires the daily oversight of the citizenry.
In this week’s edition of his podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan discusses the modern “isms” arising from Karl Marx. He explains they are rooted in the state stealing all property and distributing goods based on the intellectual whims of those in charge.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan tells the story of Megiddo – a city that held outsized influence over the ancient world for nearly seven millennia its decline two thousand years ago. He reflects on what it would take for people thousands of years from now to remember Texas.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan discusses what he calls an "uncomfortable truth: self-governance demands that we first govern ourselves."
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan reflects on the importance of voters demanding that politicians keep their promises.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan writes about the fall of the Alamo, how it inspired Texas’ victory in the war of independence… and how being faithful is more important than being successful.It is a choice, he says, that everyone has to make.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan says the real fight for the Republic is not between Republicans and Democrats, but the ruling elite and everyone else. While the differences between Republicans and Democrats are real, the self-serving elite are letting citizens fight over table scraps as they devour the Republic.
In this edition of the podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan explains that men cannot be publicly virtuous and privately scandalous. The private morality of politicians always impacts their public morals.
No matter how hard they try, says Michael Sullivan in today’s Reflection, politicians cannot seek both your approval and the approval of the political establishment.
In the physics of politics, explains Michael Quinn Sullivan, political volume can create a mass of support. Conversely, a loud campaign doesn’t necessarily mean it has a lot of support. Rather than get pulled into the personality games of campaigns, citizens should focus on the substance of ideas and work to promote them.
Mark Twain famously said God made idiots for practice, then made school boards. Whatever else we might be tempted to think about the idiotic behavior of the local school district, we should start by remembering that we elect them... Or, as is more often the case in Texas, we ignore the elections where the school board is elected.
As a governing system, explains Michael Quinn Sullivan in this reflection, socialism demands that government be placed over the God of Abraham. As a result, the dignity – and even value – of the individual collapses before the needs of the state.
In this week’s reflection, Michael Quinn Sullivan looks at the importance of the 1948 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what protecting original manuscripts of important documents says about a people.
The people of ancient Chorazin were given front row seats to the most amazing miracles in history, yet they rejected God and faded away. In this week’s reflection, Michael Quinn Sullivan says America should be careful about repeating that mistake.
This week, Michael Quinn Sullivan reflects on a major grassroots victory in 2021 that was nearly 40 years in the making… and the beneficial effects of which won’t be seen for another decade. As he puts it, “The cause of liberty is advanced not in giant leaps, but in persistent and consistent steps forward.”
Michael Quinn Sullivan compares the months-long preparations for Christmas to standing on the roadside for hours, admiring the "distance" marker to the destination. “The view might be nice, but it's not where we’re going,” he says.
In this week’s reflection, Michael Quinn Sullivan says that presenting liberty simply as a means to the end of economic prosperity fails to recognize that liberty is intrinsically good – not just for what it can lead to, but for what it is.
In this week’s podcast, Michael Quinn Sullivan explains how important it is that everyone do what they can, cheerfully, in the fight for liberty.