Good day. It's Tuesday, November the 4th, 2025. We're glad you've joined us for Denison

Forum's Daily Article Podcast. I'm Chris Elkins, narrating today's daily article written by our

co-founder, Dr. Jim Denison. In a Democratic Republic, politics and politicians will always play an outsized role in our culture.

For example, this morning's announcement that former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84 is making headlines, even though his term in office ended 16 years ago.

Today's political races are dominating the news as well,

from the mayoral contest in New York City to gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to a redistricting vote in California.

By my calculations, these elections will directly affect 80.3 million people, which is obviously a very significant number of people, but less than a quarter of our national population.

The larger story is what they mean for our own larger story.

According to a new poll, 49% of Americans say our best times are behind us, while only 41% think they lie ahead. According to a new poll, 49% of Americans say our best times are behind us, while only 41% think they lie ahead. According to Politico, this underscores, quote, a pervasive sense of unease about both

individuals' own future and the national direction, end quote. Only 39% of Americans believe the

Republican Party governs in an honest and ethical

way. Only 42% say the same about the Democratic Party. Most Americans expect political violence to

keep growing in the U.S. We're not surprised by reports that Iranians are taught to hate America,

but it's distressing that so many Americans are taught the same.

In cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan's latest blog, the Oxford and Harvard PhD graduate summarizes a new report on American higher education.

He writes,

On race in American history, for example, only one viewpoint is

actually taught that the U.S. is a white supremacist state that murders and imprisons black people

as its core goal, that its real founding was 1619, its constitution is a form of white tyranny,

and racial progress is a lie designed to obscure this permanent reality."

In quote, Sullivan Greaves for recent generations who have been indoctrinated in critical theory and its resultant anti-Americanism.

Clearly, we live in a divided and divisive time in great need of a

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