Robert Westergard

Husband, dad, grandpa. Big fan of truth, natural rights, personal responsibility and natural consequences. Heterodox.

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@flashsotu89 @0Beanie05923291 Why so much faith in spending more money?!? Students from low-spending states like Utah or Idaho are consistently high performers, and recent data shows New York and California among the highest spenders yet their students rank below states that spend far less, like Mississippi.

[WG MORROW @WGMorrow]

https://t.co/IRLmrjFA7q

[Athenaeum Book Club @athenaeumbc]

The situation is so much more desperate than you probably realize.

University professors are saying they're now unable to teach history because reading long books and passages is how a person learns history. Their students are simply incapable of reading more than a few pages.

Some classes don't assign any reading at all now, only lectures.

There is an assumption among the people managing this decline that reading is just a way of receiving information. It isn't. Proper reading is how we build the mental muscle to synthesize ideas and evaluate them.

If the catastrophic decline in reading and literacy is not addressed now, we risk losing everything. This is civilizational.

Western civilization cannot survive the death of reading because it was built by people with the kind of cognitive depth that a culture of deep reading brings:

Complex reasoning, extended internal dialogue, the capacity to hold opposing ideas in tension. Our systems and institutions are complex, and they require well ordered minds to maintain them.

Reading forms minds, and the West was built by the richest minds in history. We must continue to form new minds in this same model if we're going to keep it.

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@0Beanie05923291 @maxwelltani Exactly. There’s a huge difference between being schooled and being educated (what our education system does now vs what was expected before compulsory public schooling). John Taylor Gatto lays this out in wonderful detail in Dumbing Us Down and Weapons of Mass Instruction.

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

So are you racist, or ignorant?

Those are genuinely the only two options on the table, and I ask as a science teacher who assigns exactly this reading. The minimum wage — the policy you are waving around like a moral trophy — was BUILT to hurt the very people you claim to be fighting for. That is not a hot take. That is the documented historical record. So either you do not know it (ignorant), or you know it and you are pushing it anyway (worse than ignorant).

Let me teach the class you apparently skipped.

Princeton economist Thomas Leonard spent an entire career documenting this. Progressive economists — the intellectual grandparents of your caucus — championed wage floors specifically to price "unemployables" out of the labor market. Their word. Not mine. And "unemployables" meant Black Americans, immigrants, and the disabled. Then came the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, pushed by Southern Democrats and union bosses who were furious that Black construction workers kept winning federal contracts by accepting competitive wages. Representative Martin Dies said it out loud, on the House floor, in the Congressional Record: you cannot prescribe the same wages for the Black man as the white man. The FLSA of 1938 then conveniently excluded farm and domestic work — the exact sectors where Black labor was concentrated in the Jim Crow South. Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate and not exactly a wild-eyed radical, called it "the most anti-Negro law on our statute books." That was 1966. So. Racist, or ignorant? Take your time.

Now the part where your heart is supposedly in the right place. It is not helping a single soul. A sixteen-year-old with zero skills and an empty resume is HIRABLE at $7.25. That same kid is UNEMPLOYABLE at $15, because no business on this green Earth pays forty-two grand a year for someone who needs six months of training before they produce a dime of value. Two-thirds of more than a hundred studies (Neumark and Wascher) found negative employment effects. South Carolina: wage hikes cut teen employment by 8.9 percent, and cut it for workers without a high school diploma by 15.5 percent. The CBO said a $17 floor knocks 350,000 people OUT of the labor force entirely. Not up into better jobs. Out.

Here is the revolutionary concept the crayon-eating wing of economic policy cannot seem to grasp, bless the collective heart: wages are a VOLUNTARY agreement. A worker accepts what a business offers. If nobody accepts, the business raises the offer or it folds. McDonald's already pays well above your sacred $7.25, and they will happily tell you the crew job is a STEPPING STONE, not a life sentence. Walmart store managers clear six figures with no college debt. The ladder works fine. You are the one sawing off the bottom rung with a smile and calling the sawdust "a decent quality of life."

And I have to ask what I ask every Democrat, so here it is: what have you actually DONE for the people of Pennsylvania? Because from the cheap seats, the whole pitch is another handout, another dependency, another rung deleted — and a dependent population that has nowhere left to vote but back to you. The antebellum South needed a captive underclass to keep one party in power. The chains got swapped for talking points. The math did not budge an inch. Quinn's First Law of Liberalism, stated plainly: liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent. You set out to lift the low-wage worker, and you erase his first job. Every single time.

Somewhere a village is short one economist, and I think we found where. The elevator on this policy never left the basement, and you keep mashing the button expecting a penthouse. Running on dial-up in a fiber-optic world. 404: labor economics not found.

But what do I know. I am only a science teacher who actually read Thomas Leonard, the Congressional Record, and the CBO score instead of getting my economics from a caucus meme with a stock photo.
@JoJoFromJerz @atrupar @TheYoungTurks

#MAGA #Veterans #Trump

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

An important discussion usually missed in today’s “social studies” version of civics education.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Unfortunately, this has the foundation upside down.

Natural rights, private property, and free enterprise are the roots from which speech, consent, and limited government all grow.

James Madison was direct in that government is instituted to protect property of every sort.

The founding was about securing what belongs to the individual by nature.

Murray Rothbard documented that the American Revolution was a revolt in defense of natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

Government existed only to protect those rights, not to create or redistribute them. “Liberty and Property” was the unifying cry.

Ayn Rand cut to the core in “Man’s Rights”: “the right to life is the source of all rights and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”

Free speech requires property in your mind, voice, and means of expression.
Free enterprise is voluntary exchange built on the same foundation.

Remove secure property and both collapse into state permission.

Checks and balances, consent of the governed, and equality under law are tools to secure natural rights, not independent ends.

When a nation ranks the roots last, it treats derived “freedoms” as gifts from power, which explains a lot about where we are.

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@EndWokeness Jasmine is an actual, honest-to-goodness megalomaniac clinging desperately to the relevance of her expiring elected position. Thank goodness Texas sat her back down.

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@DoctorVive @dfenton @BjornLomborg It seems you’re overlooking that most northern-hemisphere wildfires also happened in summer and fall in prior years, so it would be good to compare this year’s YTD burns with prior years’ (2012-2025) YTD burns…which is exactly what his data is showing:

https://t.co/BJH9wioDI5

[Bjorn Lomborg @BjornLomborg]

Less Global Fire

Halfway through 2026, the world has burned at record-low levels for more than three months

Every continent is below average, and Africa, Americas, and Europe are at record lows

Media only showing stuff burning leaves us badly informed

https://t.co/iDqlYckvRT

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I challenge every single person who believes minors should be enabled and even encouraged to transition to read this first person testimony to the end.

1/3

via @IWF https://t.co/3276o4tg8J

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@RehanRC @Ourharveyclan @EBoKnowss Does it need to be? Common sense is not actually all that common, and enough of it is genius.

[Valerie Anne Smith @ValerieAnne1970]

Sen. Ron Johnson: “This is a PROFOUND revelation… The US FDA now admits COVID-19 vaccines KILLED American children.”

Healthy kids — virtually ZERO risk from COVID — were FORCED by Biden mandates into lethal shots.

Leaked FDA memo on child deaths: regulators confess their actions “we have harmed more children than we saved.”

They KNEW the risks. They HID the signals. They MANDATED the deaths anyway.

Mass murder by mandate. Where is the justice?

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

Often wrong, never in doubt.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

💪

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@FurkanGozukara @TonyClimate Brennan’s activities as a proven liar, partisan political hack and propaganda pusher have long since eclipsed his position as former CIA director and destroyed his credibility on anything important.

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

💯 … without personal accountability for these crimes there is zero incentive to discontinue the abusive behavior.

[John Eastman @DrJohnEastman]

This information is stunning, but thorough and, for those of us who have been living through it, long overdue. Now its time for the perpetrators of this massive conspiracy to get indicted for these crimes.

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

More Zeeks would make this world a better place.

[Zeek Arkham 🇺🇸 @ZeekArkham]

Dear Chuck Schumer,

Hi. Black dude here. I can trace my family ancestry to slavery. I even know where they were slaves. My mom experienced Jim Crow. I think I’ve watched every episode of “Eyes On the Prize” when I was younger.

With that said…

Can you directly explain to me how the SAVE Act is “Jim Crow 2.0?” Literally every black person I know has ID. Literally every black person I know has a car or at least a ride. Literally every black person I know knows how to vote (well… except the ones with felonies… but they don’t count).

With your advanced white liberal thinking, you must know more than me. Apparently, as I experience daily on this app, white liberals are experts on being black; even more so than actual black folks. Perhaps you could explain it like I’m five. I’d look it up on the internet, but Kathy Hochul has already told me I don’t know what a computer is and Joe Biden said I can’t navigate it, anyway.

Looking forward to your answer.

No hugs.
Zeek

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

Thomas Sowell’s insight is genius.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Unrealized gains tax for Gen-Z:

You buy a Pokémon card for $50.

Someone offers you $500 for it. You say no. You love that card. You're keeping it.

The government says: "Cool, but that card is worth $500 now. You owe us $100 in taxes."
You: "…I didn't sell it."

Government: "Don't care. Pay up."

You don't have $100 lying around. So you're forced to sell the card you love just to pay a tax on money you never received.

Next month? That card drops back to $50.

Your card is gone. Your money is gone. And the government shrugs.

That's a wealth tax on unrealized gains. They don't pay you back the tax...

Now picture this.

Your mom calls you crying. She has to sell the house she raised you in. Not because she can't afford it. She's lived there 30 years. It's paid off.

But some website says it's worth more now and the government says she owes $15,000 she doesn't have.

So she sells your childhood home. The kitchen where she made you breakfast. The doorframe where she marked your height every birthday.

Gone.

To pay a tax on money that was never real.

Now picture the opposite.

Your dad put everything into his small business. For 20 years he built it from nothing. One year the business is "valued" at $2 million on paper. He owes a massive tax bill. He empties his savings. Sells his truck. Borrows money. Pays it.

Next year the market crashes. His business is worth $200,000.

He lost everything to pay a tax on a number that doesn't exist anymore.

Does the government give him his money back?
No.

Does the government give him his truck back?
No.

Does the government care?
No.

They sold this idea as "taxing billionaires." But billionaires have armies of lawyers, offshore accounts, and trusts. They'll be fine.

You know who won't be fine? Your mom. Your dad. Your neighbor with a small business. The farmer down the road who's had the same land for four generations and now has to sell it because dirt got expensive.

You're not taxing wealth. You're taxing people for owning things.

It's like getting a parking ticket for a car you might drive somewhere someday.

They want you to own nothing and be happy. To fund the fraud, waste and abuse of the welfare state they created.

There is enough money. More tax isn't needed. It's all a lie. But you've been gaslit into believing this is a rich vs poor debate.

I hope you understand what's at stake.

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

Once you’ve seen behind the curtain, the the climate cult is ridiculous.

[Wide Awake Media @wideawake_media]

Journalist Alex Newman delivers a flawless 90-second summary of the climate agenda:

"The notion that CO₂ is pollution is absolutely preposterous... But from a totalitarian perspective, if you can convince people that CO₂ is pollution, there's no human activity that doesn't result in CO₂ emissions."

"Every single aspect of your life, then, if we submit to the idea that CO₂ is pollution, then comes under the regulatory control of the people who claim to be saving us from pollution."

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@headdock @EricLDaugh I think this is the first time I’ve been blocked! The good doc apparently wants to live undisturbed in his ideological echo chamber. Worrisome that a physician, ethics teacher and editor in chief of a medical journal is so disturbed by a contrasting opinion🤔😳

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@headdock @EricLDaugh You should get out more. Slightly more than half (most) of those with the IQs you describe voted for him. Maybe your math skills need a refresher, or more likely you just need to get out of your ideological echo chamber. Learning why they did would be better than insults. Cheers!

[Robert Westergard @R_Westergard]

@compliantvc While I do appreciate the satire (so believable it made me do a double take!)…your post highlights the disturbing fact that crass thinking, as exemplified by your post, is embraced and supported by the EU 🤡, they criminalize speech as a bridge too far. 🤦‍♂️