Campbell Kitts Blog

  The human animal is fundamentally tribal. We are born with a deep, evolutionary mandate to seek out the warmth of the hearth, to find a community where we can belong, and to surround ourselves with people who will care for us when we are weak. This desire is so overwhelming that it frequently gives birth to a dangerous, comforting illusion: the assumption that others harbor the same good intentions toward us that we harbor toward them. But human beings are fiercely complex. Beneath the veneer of polite society, people are often driven by raw self-interest, quiet dishonesty, and calculated spite. Intentions are not etched onto foreheads nor written on the backs of palms. They are fiercely guarded in the darkest, most inaccessible vaults of the human heart, hidden away from the public gaze. To navigate the world unaware of this is to pay the devastating cost of naiveté. The naive individual operates much like Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Myshkin is undeniably good, but...

  "The greatest wealth is to live content with enough"  Plato Navigating the Trap of the Puer Aeternus: When Growing Up Becomes Optional Human history is filled with archetypes that mirror our deepest psychological truths. Among the most fascinating—and quietly destructive,is the concept of the Puer Aeternus (often referred to in analytical psychology as the eternal youth, or famously popularized as the "Peter Pan syndrome"). Originally a mythological term for a child-god who remains forever young, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung adopted the phrase to describe adults whose emotional and psychological development remains frozen at an adolescent level. On the surface, the puer (or puella for women) often appears charming, deeply creative, and brimming with potential. They possess a vibrant idealism and a sparkling intellect. However, beneath this dazzling veneer lies a profound paradox. The eternal youth is terrified of commitment, boundaries, and limits. To the puer, ch...

  The horseshoe theory (sometimes called the horseshoe effect in political discourse) proposes that the political spectrum is not a straight line with the far-left and far-right at opposite poles. Instead, it curves like a horseshoe , so the extremes bend toward each other. The moderates and centrists sit at the open curve, while the tips—representing authoritarian or extremist tendencies—come closer together than either does to the center. Proponents argue that both far-left and far-right ideologies often share traits like intolerance of dissent, a willingness to use state power or violence for ideological purity, cult-like leadership, suppression of free speech, and a binary “us vs. them” worldview, even if their stated goals (class equality vs. national/racial purity) differ sharply. The idea has roots in observations from the 20th century, with the metaphor appearing in Weimar Republic discussions around groups like the Black Front. French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye popul...

p>   The Cato Institute ’s Revelatory Study: How Immigrants Delivered a $14.5 Trillion Fiscal Surplus to America (1994–2023) – And Why the “Job-Stealing” Myth Refuses to Die In an era of heated debates over borders, budgets, and belonging, one think tank has delivered data that challenges entrenched narratives. The Cato Institute’s February 2026 white paper, “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023” , authored by David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar , concludes that the U.S. immigrant population—legal and illegal—generated more in taxes than it consumed in benefits every single year for three decades. The cumulative result: a staggering $14.5 trillion fiscal surplus in real 2024 dollars ($10.6 trillion in direct net taxes plus $3.9 trillion in avoided interest on public debt).  Immigrants paid roughly 17% more in taxes per capita than native-born Americans while costing 26% less in benefits (excluding pure public goods like national defens...