Before the coffee gets cold, remember that silence in the face of falsehood is not neutrality — it's a decision, and it has a cost. This week's Finding Truth explores why calling out lies and moral wrongs is an act of respect, not rudeness, and how to hold the line without losing your integrity in the process.

Polls and surveys can reveal what people believe, but they can also be designed to shape what people believe. In this Finding Truth coffee conversation, Cletus Taylor explains how loaded questions, selective sampling, answer scales, timing, and headline framing can turn public opinion into packaged persuasion—and how A Student of Truth can spot the difference.

Federal grants can reflect lawful policy priorities, but they should not become tools of political punishment after awards are made. This Finding Truth post examines recent court filings, clean-energy grant cancellations, and why public trust depends on process as much as policy.

Pull up a chair. Today’s coffee chat is about claims, counterclaims, court rulings, primary upsets, and why truth usually needs more time than the news cycle is willing to give it. Some political stories are born complicated. Election stories are usually born complicated, raised by suspicion, sent to school in campaign season, and then shoved into a headline before they have even found their shoes. That is not a criticism of reporters trying to make sense of a loud public squ

Intelligence is not the same as evidence. This Finding Truth coffee chat looks at Gulf of Tonkin, Iraq WMD, and today’s headlines to ask how citizens can take threats seriously without rushing uncertainty into certainty.

What does it mean to love America well? This Fourth of July reflection explores the difference between patriotism and nationalism, and why truth, humility, and civic responsibility matter more than ever.

A republic is in trouble when honest disagreement starts sounding like a crime. This Finding Truth reflection explores why questioning power is not a threat to America, but one of the ways citizens help keep the republic alive.

Every now and then, a story comes along that makes anyone who calls themselves a student of truth pause for a minute. Not just to react to the headline, but to sit with it. To ask what it means today, what it could become tomorrow, and what kind of responsibility comes with knowing. This week, that story is about autonomous weapons, or “killer robots,” as the headline writers like to call them. According to New Scientist, drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy said a one-time Ukr

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why smart, thoughtful people can hold so tightly to beliefs that don’t seem to stand up to much scrutiny, you’re definitely not alone. It’s one of those deeply human things. Emotion, especially strong emotion like fear, anger, or hate, can move a lot faster than logic, evidence, and sometimes even our own better judgment. And when someone questions a belief that’s tied to those emotions, we usually don’t respond in the calm, measured wa

General election season in Texas always brings noise, but this year the noise is doing more than filling airtime. It is shaping perception, steering emotion, and pushing voters toward reaction instead of reflection. In this post, I take a closer look at how both parties, along with powerful outside groups, use fear, outrage, and selective truth to influence the races for governor and U.S. senator, and why a Student of Truth has to learn to see through it all.

How Citizens United reshaped campaign money, and what the United States can still do about it. Let's talk campaign money, constitutional power, and civic choices. Start with the basic question Here is a question worth sitting with over coffee: when an election costs billions of dollars, who actually has the loudest voice? Many other democracies place firmer limits on who can give, how much can be spent, and how visible that money must be. That matters because campaign finance

So I want to make this promise clearly and publicly: ebook versions of Secure by Habit will always be available free of charge at cletustaylor.com, including the current versions, all future editions, and any translations we are able to publish over time.

When fear shapes public discourse, it often shapes the law as well. Using anti-Sharia politics as a prime example, this essay explores how fear-driven legislation can drift away from constitutional neutrality, equal protection, and civil liberty, and why the Constitution demands something steadier.

The first real crack for me came when I stopped reading arguments and started reading outcomes. Not hot takes, not speeches, but what actually happened to real people over long timelines. The detail that hit me hardest was painfully simple: an innocent man can be put to death by society, and that includes me. I can support “justice,” vote, argue, share posts, and feel certain, and still be wrong in a way that cannot be undone. That wasn’t a moral speech to myself. It was me r

Not a lecture. More like a coffee chat about money, stress, and why everything costs 40% more than your brain is willing to accept. Is Civl Unrest in Our Future? Wealth inequality isn’t new in America. What feels new is how wide the gap has gotten, and how many people feel like they’re working hard just to stay in place. You know the feeling, you check your bank app and it checks you. So yeah, it’s fair to ask, without being dramatic: are we inching toward a point where the e

Every few weeks, a post goes viral claiming that entire professions law, accounting, customer service, design can now be “100% automated.” One recent example, attributed to someone named Ken Yand , argued that his first big‑law job could be fully replaced by AI today and that we’re sliding into a K‑shaped economy where some rise and many fall. I can’t verify whether that specific post came from a real person or an AI‑generated account. But the claims deserve a closer look, b

Lincoln promised a government “of the people.” So why does it feel like everyone but the people is driving it now?

Truth feels harder to grab lately, doesn’t it? Like we’re all squinting through fog while scrolling the feed. I just published a new post on how truth gets blurred in three different ways: • Misinformation (false, usually shared without malicious intent) • Malinformation (true info used to harm—often by stripping missing context) • Propaganda (strategic messaging that shapes belief over time) I also included quick, practical “spot it in the wild” tips and what to do next when

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the kind of person who values truth over opinion. Not because opinions don’t matter, they do. But because opinions without solid ground can turn into noise fast.