Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero.....

...In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which had required stations to present politically “balanced” programming — the new wave of “hot” talkers enabled stations to create entire schedules consisting of nothing but conservative chatter... [Now], Faced with aging and shrinking audiences, competition from newer technologies and financial problems for the biggest station owners, talk radio is in decline — both as a business and a political force...

But conservative talk radio’s foremost problem isn’t so much how many people are listening as who. The audience that grew up with Limbaugh is now quite gray, largely people 65 and older... Meanwhile, plain old AM-FM radio — the primary medium for talk programs — is rapidly losing ground to newer technologies such as satellite radio, streaming audio and podcasts...

Talk radio’s older demographics were a weakness even before the pandemic... Turned off by the hosts’ occasional nastiness and seeking young customers, many blue-chip companies have stopped advertising on talk-radio shows, leaving the stations with smaller sponsors who pay less, he said...

All of this doesn’t mean the era of hyperbolic, confrontational conservative talk exemplified by Limbaugh is coming to an end. The medium might be in trouble, but the conservative message is already moving to new delivery systems.

A huge coalition of activist groups had been working together since the spring to make sure that Joe Biden won and that the “election stayed won” amid Donald Trump’s subterfuge....

By the time rioters ransacked the Capitol, the machinery of the left had already been primed to respond — prepared by months spent sketching out doomsday scenarios and mapping out responses, by countless hours of training exercises and reams of opinion research.

“The DNC has certainly taken the position that there should no longer be caucuses in any state and has imposed requirements that make it even more difficult to carry out caucus,” the report concludes.

Since 1972, Iowans have held the nation’s first presidential nominating contest, a position that has come under attack from Democrats who argue the state’s overwhelmingly white population is not representative of the country and therefore should not play an outsize role in picking the party’s nominee.

In particular, the audit points to the difficulties the state party faced in increasing participation while avoiding any processes that were similar to primary voting because of New Hampshire’s insistence on being the first primary state in the nation.

Progressives are right that the quest for racial justice should not be compromised — and is, in fact, an electoral asset. (After all, 85 percent of Biden voters told the exit pollsters that the criminal justice system treats Blacks unfairly.) But moderates are right that slogans like "Defund the police" can bring down moderate lawmakers, such as Staten Island's defeated Rep. Max Rose. Here's a rule for the future: Any slogan that requires five minutes to explain what it really means is not a good slogan.