About Us

American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to thoughtfully exploring issues important to Americans. In addition to regular staff, our content comes from volunteer contributors in fields beyond journalism, who are animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.

There is no limit to the topics appearing on American Thinker. If topics address America’s political, economic, national security, and social well-being, they have a home here. We also examine business, science, technology, medicine, management, and economics in their practical and ethical dimensions. Lastly, we believe strongly in Israel’s right to exist and defend herself.

Our Staff

Thomas Lifson, Founder and Editor Emeritus

Thomas calls himself a recovering academic. After graduating from Kenyon College, he studied modern Japan, sociology, and business as a graduate student at Harvard (three degrees). He joined the faculty at Harvard Business School, where he began the consulting career that was to lead him away from academia. He also taught sociology and East Asian studies at Harvard and held visiting professorships at Columbia University and the Japanese National Museum of Ethnology. As a consultant, he has worked with major companies from the United States, Japan, Europe, Asia, and Australasia at the nexus of human, organizational, and strategic issues.

A Democrat by birth, Thomas became more conservative in adulthood as reality taught him that dreams of perfecting human society always run smack into human nature.

Thomas founded American Thinker in 2003 as a curated forum for people who want a voice regarding America’s well-being.

Richard Baehr, Co-Founder

Drew Belsky, Deputy Editor

Drew discovered the insanity of leftism by living for several years in New York City and Washington, D.C. He has done editing work for multiple book projects, online publications, and self-publishers.

J.R. Dunn, Deputy Editor

J.R. has been involved in several fields of business, including real estate, infotech, and P.R. He managed a real estate corporation in Northern New Jersey for a decade beginning in the late ’70s (think Glengarry Glen Ross). During the dot-com epoch, he worked at a pioneering Wall Street business database firm until 9/11 wiped out many of the company’s clients. In recent years, he has worked for Novita, a New Jersey political P.R. agency.

As a writer, J.R. has published three critically acclaimed novels: This Side of Judgment (1994), Days of Cain (1997), and Full Tide of Night (1998). He has also published a number of shorts and articles in various magazines and anthologies. Additionally, J.R. worked on the academic encyclopedia The International Military Encyclopedia (1992– ) as an associate editor for twelve years.

His first book on politics, Death by Liberalism: The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies, deals with the inexplicably overlooked fact that liberal policies (criminal justice “reform,” the CAFE standards, the DDT ban, etc.) tend to kill Americans by the tens of thousands.

He is not the British thrash guitarist,

the Texas C&W singer,

the British sword & sorcery novelist,

or the Florida jeweler.

Nor is he the author of the superb “Comparison of NBR with other oil-resistant rubbers for automotive applications,” widely viewed as standard work in its field.

Ed Lasky, Co-Founder

Mike McDaniel, Deputy Editor

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearms instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.

Olivia Murray, Deputy Editor

Olivia Murray is a history graduate of the University of Arizona and credits American Thinker and its published content as crucial to developing her political and critical mind. She joined the team in March of 2022.

Monica Showalter, Deputy Editor

Monica is a graduate of the University of San Francisco and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is a veteran foreign correspondent and financial journalist, having worked at Forbes magazine and Investor’s Business Daily before joining American Thinker.

Andrea Widburg, Managing Editor

Andrea is a happily retired lawyer (B.A. in history from UC Berkeley; J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law) and the mother of two grown children whom she likes a great deal and who seem to like her. Like Ronald Reagan, she didn’t leave the Democrat party, which was her political home for half her life; the Democrat party left her. She reads and writes about politics compulsively and is grateful to have a paying job that revolves around her compulsions.

If you like political memes, she runs a weekly compilation on her original blog, Bookworm Room. You can check it out or sign up for a newsletter. (You’ll find the sign-up form on the right side of her site.)