trump – Martin Simpson

History Corner: Why We aren’t Nazis, and Trump isn’t Hitler (posted 11/12/25)

I hope you all had a meaningful and contemplative Veteran’s Day, and that you’re getting into a Thanksgiving mood. Here in north Florida it has dropped below 40 degrees, so many locals have broken out the parkas, and are still shivering anyway.

I’ve been paying at least minimal attention to the current kerfuffles in Washington, and am glad that this pointless shutdown is finally ending. And it’s fun to watch the blue-on-blue sniping over that, with the most extreme lefties raging at the Senate Dems who voted to break the filibuster and end the shutdown, while those lefties try in vain to reason with Those Who Can’t Be Reasoned With.

Note to self: Pick up another bag of popcorn at Publix tomorrow, because you’re out.

Amidst all that, I saw a few new stories of more violent attacks on ICE agents doing their jobs, and yet another rash of Dems comparing them to the Gestapo. And this on the heels of a lefty friend of mine asking what I think of “the Right’s Nazi problem.”

If it was anybody but him, I would have let my sarcastic freak flag fly – I keep it in my temperature-controlled flag wardrobe, along with my Stars and Stripes, my Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, and my Gator flag (the latter will remain in storage until we can find a coach who can distinguish between his fundament and a hole in the ground).

But because I love that guy, I didn’t say, “Do you mean the problem we have with the left calling us Nazis all the time for no rational reason?”

Instead, I wrote a thoughtful reply pointing out that with the exception of a handful of whackos who have no mainstream support in conservative circles, American conservatives have no connection to Nazis whatsoever. Because we hate Nazis as much as we hate communists.

But that got me thinking that perhaps some of you would like a quick primer to summarize why the Nazi-GOP and Hitler-Trump comparisons are ridiculous, which you can share with any lefty relatives or acquaintances who raise the subject. (Because if you just punch them in the face, then YOU’LL be the bad guy.)

So, before you can say, “We don’t deserve you, Martin!” here it is:

First, for most leftists, “Nazi” has become an almost meaningless term of utter derision, to be applied to nearly every conservative they disagree with. In that way, Nazi is just like “fascist” – it basically means very, very bad, and has been divorced from all historical meaning and context.

It is taken as axiomatic in academia and the mainstream left that Naziism and fascism are both right-wing ideologies. But as with so much that is axiomatic in academia, that is at best a distortion, and at worst just false. Because there is plenty of evidence that Naziism and fascism are more leftist than rightist ideologies.

A great book on the subject is Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” (2008). Even though Jonah has sadly contracted a severe case of TDS, he’s a very good writer, and he lays out the ideological and historical connections in great detail.

Mussolini was a committed socialist for years, and started the fascist party only when the mainstream socialists rejected Italian nationalism. But he didn’t reject socialism/leftism, as much as combine it with nationalism. He named his party after the “fasces” – a Latin word for a bundle of bound wooden rods/sticks that the Romans had used as a symbol of authority.

That branding combined his love of Italy and the Roman Empire, authoritarianism, and his leftist devotion to collectivism. (The explicit symbolism was that the weak individual sticks become unbreakable when combined into a collective.)

A common definition of fascism starts by calling it “far right” (because of course it does), but then says that it is characterized by, “a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”

Look at that the description, and tell me what parts do NOT also apply to communism or the various “socialist republics” (USSR, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, every nation behind the Iron Curtain, etc.).

“Ultranationalist” doesn’t apply, because good commies are internationalists (workers of THE WORLD unite, and all that), and possibly “natural social hierarchy” (though that is the defacto situation in communist countries, where party members are always an elite class above the peasants).

But all the rest of that definition applies 100% to communist governments. 1. Dictatorial leader (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ceausescu et al) 2. Centralized autocracy (check) 3. Militarism (yep) 4. Forcible suppression of opposition (yep) 5. Subordination of individual interests for the nation/collective (yep). 6. Strong regimentation of society and the economy (hell yeah!)

Hitler and the Nazis, on the other hand, were such eccentric weirdos that their political DNA is tough to fit as neatly into a left/right spectrum. The Jew hatred was apolitical, and made them almost unique, in that they were fanatically devoted to winning the war…but simultaneously crippled their own war effort by devoting tons of badly needed resources – men and materiel – to killing Jews. And Hitler’s personal pathologies and enthusiasms made his government’s policies volatile and erratic.

Just like Mussolini, Hitler was a nationalist, and didn’t reject socialism – just international socialism. That’s why he named his party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. (If the Nazis truly were wholly right-wing, they would be the first and only rightist party in the history of the world with “socialist” and “workers” in its name!) But since nationalism is (correctly) usually associated with the right, and because Hitler’s most hated enemy (after the Jews) was the communists, it became easy to see the Germany/Russia conflict as right vs. left, rather than the fratricidal battle among socialists (national vs. international) that it was.

That’s not to say that Naziism was purely a leftist ideology. Only that it was a weird goulash of multiple, sometimes contradictory influences: right-wing nationalism; virulent anti-Semitism; Master Race/perverted Darwinist racism; and authoritarian leftism.

What has always aggravated me is that our country (and the West writ large) has rightly come to terms with and utterly rejected Naziism, but we’ve never done the same with socialism/communism. (I join those because Marx and most of his orthodox descendants see them as inexorably joined: socialism is the interim step in which the workers take control of the means of production, and communism is the second step in which the State withers away. Step 2 has never happened, of course, because the theory is fatally flawed and disregards human nature.)

It’s socially acceptable (and even chic) for college kids to wear Che Guevara t-shirts and commie iconography (hammer and sickle jewelry or pins, etc.) in a way it would never be for them to wear a Himmler or Hitler t-shirt or swastika pins. In colleges, whole fields can call themselves “Marxist” without any stigma, and I’ll bet that only a tiny minority of college kids know that Stalin almost certainly killed more people than Hitler, and Mao slaughtered more than the two of them combined, or that communism/socialism killed well over 100 million people in only a little more than a century.

I think that that’s what makes communism/socialism so dangerous: it has never been held to account and rejected, the way Naziism (rightly!) has been. Too many people still attribute good motivations to the commies/socialists – they supposedly wanted a more egalitarian and economically fair society (some surely did, but many clearly didn’t!) – and completely gloss over the fact that that system inevitably descended into dictatorship, oppression, poverty, environmental degradation and mass murder.

This terrible, dishonest distortion – Hitler’s crimes and 15-20 million killed are the epitome of human evil, but the gulags and 100+ million communist murders are just well-intentioned tragedies along the path paved by collectivized farming, 5-year plans and the Great Leap Forward, etc. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, as Lenin said – is in large part the result of the dishonest and inaccurate way history is taught in America.

Finally we come to the idiotic Trump = Hitler comparison.

Hitler took power at the end of January, 1933. Within his first SIX MONTHS, he banned other political parties and labor unions, pushed through the Enabling Act which allowed him to make laws without even consulting the Reichstag (congress), and in 18 months he’d executed over 150 leaders of a rival element in the Nazi party in the Night of the Long Knives, and taken total control of the judiciary. Within his first 5 years, he’d invaded and subsumed another country, forced all young boys to join the Hitler Youth, murdered an estimated 70K-100,000 disabled or gay Germans, and started throwing dissidents into proto-concentration camps.

By comparison, Trump has been in office for a little less than 5 years over his two terms, and unlike Hitler in his first 5 years, he has not tried to ban the Democrat party or unions. (In fact, a near or actual majority of private sector union members likely voted for him last year). He has not tried to abolish congress, and they’ve hampered him at every turn, tying him up in hoax investigations that took years before he was vindicated. The oppositional judiciary has buried him in a blizzard of bogus TROs, which he’s appealed but abided by.

He hasn’t murdered a single Republican (not even the RINOs!), Democrat, gay guy or anybody else. He’s got Jewish grandchildren and has appointed many Jews to his administration, and he’s a national hero in Israel, after having spearheaded a peace treaty and the release of Jewish hostages.

You know, just like Hitler did, with the Jews putting an honorary kippah on his head and carrying him out of the Reichstag on their shoulders, chanting, “Hit-ler! Hit-ler!” and “We love you, Adolf!”

So remember: If some leftist asks you why conservatives love Nazis so much, don’t punch him. Instead, print out this column and give him a copy. Then say, “Good day, sir,” and turn on your heel.

If he tries to speak again, say, “I said GOOD DAY!”

If he insists on continuing to bother you after that… commence to punching.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

0-0-0

If you enjoyed this column, please share it. To see more of Martin’s past columns, go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com, and click Subscribe (on the bottom of your phone screen, or the right side of your computer screen) to receive a notice when new columns post.

I’ve Returned, With a Few Election Thoughts (posted 11/5/25)

I’m back from Maine, just in time for a horrible election showing.

I’m speaking, of course, of my incomprehensible loss – again! – in yet another People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive competition. This time I was runner-up to some British actor nobody’s ever heard of, in another instance of “always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”

Or in my case, “always the People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive Runner-Up, never People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.” And I’m getting pretty darn sick of it.

Sure, it’s some consolation that my smokeshow wife tells me that even as an elderly gentleman, I still have the kind of smoldering good looks that, when I’m out in public and make momentary eye contact with a member of the fairer sex, swooning and an arousal-based loss of consciousness regularly ensues.

Okay, she’s never said that in so many words.

Or in any words even approaching those.

But after many decades of marriage, I can read her thoughts flawlessly at all times. (Because you know husbands are GREAT at that.) And I’m pretty sure that that’s what she thinks.

Anyway, by now the main point here is clear: the sexiest man jury at People magazine is composed solely of members of the LGBTQ+ community and those with late-stage macular degeneration. So don’t bother nominating me again next year, because I’m out!

Okay, enough tomfoolery. This election really sucked.

Not because blue candidates won in blue states. Like the Good Book says, “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a blue-state voter returns to his folly.” So despite our hopes that it would be otherwise, this isn’t a surprise.

But the depressing part is who won, and by how much.

Spanberger is a cowardly, robotic husk who couldn’t even look Winsome Earle-Sears in the eye when called to give a defense for her terrible policies. Jay Jones fantasized about murdering his political opponent, and about watching that man’s children die in their mother’s arms. And Mamdani is a nepo baby neophyte who combines the most deadly ideologies of the last century, communism and jihad. Mikie Sherrill lied about her bad behavior in the service, and is lying about it still.

Plus she’s a woman called “Mikie,” for which there is no excuse.

And yet they all won, going away. Jones, at least, was supposed to be in some trouble, as you might expect for a bloodthirsty scumbag running in an election less than 2 months after his similarly violence-loving political co-religionist murdered Charlie Kirk. But it looks like Jones still won by 4 or 5 points.

To make things worse, three Dem judges in purple PA were up for retention votes, and the voters kept all three, even though that same electorate voted for Trump last year. And in California – see the dogs and their vomit reference above – went through with Ken-Doll Newsom’s crooked gerrymandering scheme.

Unexpectedly!

I haven’t had time to think through much of this, having just been traveling, but my initial thoughts are:

1. I hope Democrat voters get what they are asking for – good, hard, and sans lubrication.

2. I wish the damage they’re about to do – especially in NYC – could be contained to themselves. But as always, there will be a lot of collateral damage, including the fact that Florida is about to get more crowded.

3. We need to make Mamdani the face of the Democrat party. Because thanks to a benevolent God, the rest of America isn’t New York City, politically speaking. And we should hang that smirking, incompetent, anti-Semitic commie around the DNC’s neck, as the city descends into an ever-more dysfunctional, Dinkins-ian morass of filth, crime and red ink.

4. We need to gerrymander every red state in the country, ASAP. The Dems have mastered that strategy, and we need to fight fire with fire, or surrender the midterms before they’ve even begun.

I’ll be back with a regular column in the next day or two. In the meantime, and as always…

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

Erika Kirk is Better than Me, and Trump is on a Roll vs. Drug Runners (posted 9/22/25)

Reason #135 why Erika Kirk is a better person than me: at Charlie’s memorial service, she forgave his murderer. Which is an amazing and Christ-like thing to be able to do.

I aspire to that kind of grace, but even though I never met Charlie, and can’t possibly feel his loss anywhere near as strongly as she does, I’m not close to being there yet. In fact, last week I did some research to make sure that Utah still uses the firing squad for executions (they do, though lethal injection is their first choice, unless they can’t obtain the necessary drugs, which is often the case).

And if that’s not the perfect execution method for this coward – in a “live by the long gun, die by the long gun” sort of way – I don’t know what is. Utah uses 5 riflemen (one with a blank in his gun) to carry out executions, and they pin a little target over the criminal’s heart beforehand.

I’d like to see a guy accidently go to pin the target on the killer’s crotch, then go, “Oh, my mistake. I’m sure we’ll all be aiming for your heart.” And then wink at the guy. And possibly lean over and whisper to him, “You know that the real-life fascists are totalitarians who kill people for speaking out against them, right? So Charlie was the anti-fascist, and you are the actual fascist.”

And then maybe he could show the guy his bullet, into the casing of which he had carved, “No, YOU catch, fascist!”

And if he were really cool, the rifleman could re-enact one of my favorite scenes from the great, Elmore Leonard-inspired tv series Justified. He could hold a bullet out in front of him, and drop it into the creep’s lap, and then say, “The next one’s gonna be coming a little faster.”

I also wouldn’t be disappointed if all four initial bullets missed the killer’s heart. Maybe one could hit each knee, and one the groin? And how cool would it be if the fourth one took off a bunch of his ear? Then, while the riflemen waited a while for somebody to go find four more bullets, they could have a loud conversation that my conical purple wizard hat tells me would go like this:

Riflemen (RF) 1: Wow, what are the odds that we’d all miss his heart?

RF 2: I know, right? And now we have to wait until someone can walk slowly to the armory and try to scrounge up some more bullets, while this guy bleeds profusely.

RF 3: And whoever shot him in the groin? Talk about “aim small, miss small!”

RF 4: Taking off his ear was a pretty weird shot too. Why does it ring a bell, somehow?

RF 5 (snapping his fingers): I’ve got it! That’s where this creep’s leftist co-religionist shot Trump, who is coincidentally also another anti-fascist. (And then all five of them could give the bleeding coward a long, dirty look.)

And, scene.

So…yeah. Erika Kirk is an amazing person. And I’ve got a lot of work to do on that “forgive your enemies” part of my faith.

In other news, I haven’t commented on a lot of good things that have been going on, since I’ve been so preoccupied with the Charlie assassination story. I think CO and others have rightly pointed out some wrong moves that Trump has made recently, but overall, I think he’s still mostly on a roll, and I’d like to start the week off with a few of those.

I’m really glad that Trump is now looking into using RICO laws to go after Antifa. I’ll talk more about that in a future column, but for now I’ll just say that this is one more thing that Trump is doing that conservatives have dreamed about for years, but had given up on ever seeing come to fruition.

Ending the federal Education Department was another one of those. That department wasn’t in the constitution or any founding documents – it had only been created in the 1970s, for crying out loud! And it obviously didn’t do anything worthwhile: it didn’t train teachers, or improve curricula, or raise test scores. What it did do was fill up a huge building on some expensive real estate in DC, and employ an army of six-figure educrats who produced nothing of value.

Another former pipe dream had been the defunding of NPR and PBS. Another was building a border wall. And now those three things are a reality, along with a lot more.

Another great recent development has been Trump’s blowing up one drug-running boat full of fentanyl after another. There have been three of them so far, and they are awesome for many reasons:

1. They involve exciting videos with a chase scene that ends in a dramatic explosion.

2. They represent a lot of deadly drugs that will never make it to our shores, and a dramatic lesson for would-be Venezuelan drug runners watching their buddies get blown up on tv.

3. They also gave the usual suspects on the left the opportunity to display their own moral imbecility. The same talking heads and pols who could barely muster any concern for Charlie Kirk after he was murdered were full of grave pronouncements about the illegality and horror of those poor drug traffickers, gone too soon. What about due process, and their now fatherless children? Who is going to teach those youngsters the ins and outs of lethal drug running?

Oh, won’t someone think of the future gang-banging, American-murdering children?!

4. There’s a pretty good chance that my high school Spanish is failing me. (The main thing I remember is, “Silencio por favor, Martino.” Which I think means, “You’re doing a great job, Martin! Keep it up.”) But I’m pretty sure “agua” means water. And you can’t spell “Tren de Aragua” without “agua.”

So unless I’m mistaken, “Tren de Aragua” means “burial at sea, under mucho agua.” Which is perfect, because lately, the most common last words for predatory Venezuela criminals have been, “Ay, dios mio! Glug glug glug.”

Finally, I am all-in on Trump’s decision to change the name of the Defense Department to the War Department. The leftist establishment reacted in two equally wrong ways: some of them said that this was the end of the world, and the rest said that it was just a meaningless semantic change, and so why was Trump wasting his time doing it?

The second group is just wrong. Names of things are important, and often represent ideological battles lost or won. Many times, giving something a name that sticks represents a stolen rhetorical base that shapes everything that comes afterward.

For example, both parties try to give every bill they pass a name with positive connotations. If you call an obscenely bloated, propagandistic spending bill “The Inflation Reduction Act,” many stupid people will not notice that it inevitably causes inflation to skyrocket.

If you name a quintessentially fascist group – one whose members form “black blocs” of armed thugs and carry out organized violence campaigns to coerce and intimidate citizens – a name like “antifa” (anti-fascist), very, VERY stupid people will cite that name to hold that group blameless. (I’m looking at you, Don Lemon.)

I could go on and on. “Planned Parenthood” is dedicated to wiping out parenthood. The “American Civil Liberties Union” is hostile to the civil liberties of one half of the country. “The View” is hosted by a bunch of arousal-killing harridans wearing ideological blinders producing a Ray Charlesian political blindness.

So yes, the War Department sends a very different message from the Defense Department. I understand why the change was originally made: we are not the typical kind of empire that grinds its enemies underfoot, enslaves the defeated peoples, and claim their lands as our own subjugated provinces.

We won WWII with a War Department, and afterwards, as we looked at Japanese cities that were glowing, and German cities that were smoking, we figured we’d made our point. So we switched to “Defense Department.”

Self defense is – or at least used to be! – universally recognized as a legitimate right of all nations. And we wanted to be thought of as a nation that doesn’t start wars, but will sure as hell end them! Which was good, as far as it went.

But “defense” just doesn’t get the point across the way “war” does.

Would Shakespeare’s speech by Marc Antony stir us the way it does if it went, “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of defense!”? Would World War I carry the same emotional weight if it were called, “The Great Defense,” or “The Defense to end all Defenses?”

Is anybody going to read “Defense and Peace?” Would anybody be intimidated by a cigar-chomping general growling that “Defense is hell!”

Would Isaiah’s dream connote the same promise if he looked to the day when we “beat our swords into plowshares, and study defense no more?”

To summarize the difference between “defense” and “war:”

Joe Biden claimed to be “defending” America from drug trafficking, and that took the form of ushering unvetted traffickers across our border, with a “save the date” government form asking them to show up for a court hearing in 5 years.

But Trump is waging a WAR on drug traffickers.

And that looks a speed boat racing across the water, before being hit by a Hellfire missile and turned into a flaming wreck, while its gang-banger crew cartwheel into the water missing a few limbs, crying, “Ayieee! Why didn’t I join Tren de dry land?!”

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

A Few Thoughts on What Motivates the Dems (posted 9/3/25)

As you read this, I’m once again on my way up to Tennessee and then to Illinois. This time, I’ll be seeing mom and sis in TN on the way up and back as always, but I’ll also be attending my first high school reunion ever, up in Illinois.

This is our 45th year reunion, and I figured I better get up there and see as many people as I can while there are still this many of us left! I’ll also hang with the cousins for a day or two afterward.

So I won’t have a column on Friday, and probably not on Monday either.

Today I’m bringing you an idea that I’ve just consciously realized, though I think I’ve had it in the back of my head for a while now. But so far, I think I had mistaken the Democrats’ second most prominent reason for opposing Trump.

Two columns ago, I wondered in writing why more Dems don’t just admit when one Trump decision or policy actually works, if for no other reason than to look reasonable, and to keep their powder dry for a time when one of Trump’s more controversial policies is vulnerable to some strategic criticism.

I think we can all agree that the first and main reason that explains their resistance to his every move – from mob protests, to stalling tactics in Congress, to illegal local court rulings – is their Stage-4 Metastatic Trump Derangement Syndrome. As much as they hate conservatism and the GOP, they hate Trump with the burning fury of a thousand suns.

He’s their Great Orange Whale, and they will pursue him with an obsessive fury that cannot be assuaged. Ahab’s famous last words, as he realizes that his hunt has become suicidal – “From hell’s heart, I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.” – are directed at Moby Dick.

But do those words not sound as if they could come from the mouths of any of dozens of d*cks in the Democrat party? (And I’m not just talking about Dick “nobody ever calls him Richard” Durbin and Richard “everyone secretly calls him Dick” Blumenthal.)

I’ve previously thought that the Democrats’ second reason for opposing Trump at every turn was the one they have shouted from the rooftops: they believe that all of his policies are so wrong-headed and certain to end in failure, and they are doing everything they can to prevent the damaging outcome of those policies.

I still think that some Dems believe that. But I used to think that nearly ALL Dems believed it, either because they don’t know any better, or because they’ve been seduced or brainwashed by the pleasures and self-satisfaction of believing yourself to be one of the good guys, on the right side of history, fighting against dark forces.

But I now think that the elites and the smartest people in the Democrat party and legacy media are opposing Trump for the opposite reason.

They are not trying to stop him because of how disastrous his policies will be; they are trying to stop him because of how successful his policies will be, if he is allowed to carry them out.

I guess that should have been obvious, because as conservatives, the common sense behind conservative policies seems obvious.

If you lower tax rates and allow people to keep more of what they earn, they’ll work harder and earn more, and pay more taxes. (Duh!) If you harshly punish crime you’ll get less of it, and if you don’t you’ll get more of it. (Duh!) Men can’t become women, and women can’t become men, and people who come here illegally are illegals. (Duh X 3!)

The Dems have worked very hard at pushing their party line that all of our ideas are untrue, to the point that many of their foot soldiers believe it, despite all evidence to the contrary. But their party leaders have to know better at this point. Because they’ve been proved wrong too many times, and it’s become a pattern that the professional politicians amongst them cannot be unaware of.

Dems screamed all through 2024 that the border crisis – after denying that it existed for the previous three years, when all PWFE (People With Functioning Eyes) knew that it existed – could not be fixed, and the border not secured, without “comprehensive immigration reform,” a massive, complicated set of laws and regulations that would take many months to create and debate and pass, and many more months to implement.

Annnndddd…Trump closed the border in 27 minutes, and it worked like a charm.

The same thing has happened with crime. The left said that if we could defund the police and allow “the people” to police themselves, the result would be Edenic. So they gave over Seattle and Portland to CHAZ and CHOP and The People’s Republic of Meth, and got chaos, violence and filth.

Some radical lefties protested Trump’s moving the National Guard into DC, claiming that it would exacerbate tensions and lead to increased violence there.

Annnnddddd…NOPE!

Also, Dems – and a few oddball conservatives (or ex-conservatives?) like Tucker Carlson –warned that if Trump tried to take out the Iranian nuke facilities he’d be launching WWIII, that Russia/China/India and the rest of the BRICS nations (whoever they are) would align against us and plunge the region into violent chaos, killing millions, including the US troops that would have to be on the ground to try to stop the slaughter.

Annnndddd… Trump took out the nuke facilities with one strike, following on 11 days of previous Israeli strikes that took out Iranian air defenses, surface nuke facilities, and every Iranian military leader above the rank of Cannon Fodder, First Class.

Thus tempting me to seek a patent on a line of t-shirts (playing off the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War) featuring Trump’s famous mugshot over the words, “12 Days, B*tch!”

The four long years of Biden and the last 7 months of Trump II have shown that the Dems’ most powerful foe isn’t Trump, or the GOP. It’s reality. Because their plans keep running into Reality, and so far, Reality is undefeated.

The “Inflation Reduction Act” spiked the rate of inflation. The campaign against Trump’s re-election based on “defending democracy” was crushed by democracy, in the form of the popular vote. After accepting tent cities and filth in LA for years, Ken-Doll Newsom showed that it could all be easily cleaned up, when he cleaned it up in a few days before the ChiCom big wigs came for a visit.

Annnddd…then it returned to an intractable problem again, once the commies left.

Trump showed that he can clean up DC, and that he could close the border, and that he could take out the Iranian nuke threat with one stroke. By using DOGE-like efforts and cutting many billions of DEI and other wasteful spending, he is proving that nobody outside of USAID and the many hundreds of leftist NGOs they’ve been feeding will miss them. Closing down the Department of Education will save us billions and cost our children’s actual education nothing.

Not all of Trump’s actions will be successful, of course. And not every Democrat plan is doomed to fail.

But as conservatives, Reality provides a nice tailwind for us, helping us along. For the Dems, it’s a ferocious headwind to struggle against, forcing all of them to bend forward until they’re almost crawling, and threatening to toss them tumbling backwards, arse over teakettle.

All of them except for JB Pritzker.

Because if I can take a page from the Democrats’ hysterical handbook of smears, that Hippopomatic Hitler is huge!

Hamas delenda est!

My Strategy For Not Letting Politics Turn You Into an Idiot (posted 8/28/25)

In the comments to my Wednesday column, David Michael DeLoach wondered whether, when I mentioned that “an extended family member [of mine] is a manager of a Cracker Barrel,” I may have been talking about JB Pritzker. Even though I probably wouldn’t admit it if the Round Mound of Unsound Governance were related to me, I can promise that he isn’t.

But the idea did cause me to wonder what that might be like. The first thing I thought of was a hypothetical Thanksgiving if Uncle Pritzker – D(irigible) came over for dinner. I can picture how it would start: I bow my head to say grace. “Lord, we thank you for this—”

And the prayer is interrupted by a horrific, cacophonous chomping/gnashing/slobbering/crunching sound that drives us all to instinctively crouch beneath the table, before we open our eyes and slowly peek out.

Annnndddd…there’s a stripped-clean turkey carcass that looks like a school of piranhas just swam over it and JB’s chair is empty. And probably broken into kindling.

And, scene.

Okay, having got that out of the way…

Regular readers often tell me that I’m a role model for them. Well, maybe not “often.”

Okay, one reader said that once. He said that whenever he’s faced with a choice, he asks, “WWMD?” (What would Martacus do?) and then acts accordingly. And who am I to contradict his wise plan?

So as a public service, I will now explain how I think we should behave when we’re confronted with bonehead mistakes by politicians on our side of the aisle. And it’s a pretty simple plan:

Admit it. Don’t lie about it, or try to spin it. Call it a mistake, explain your reasoning, and then do whatever you can to persuade people to agree with you, and to persuade the politician to reverse course.

Don’t be a spoiled narcissist and stomp away, pouting that your guy has betrayed you, and if you ever vote again, it won’t be for him!

After that, recognize that no politician will please you 100% of the time, and consider rating your guy with a batting average. If he’s hitting over .500, that’s good. Anything over .700 is great, and the best you’re likely to get in this fallen world.

Then move on with your life.

I’ll give you an example. I am a dedicated conservative, and pretty much no politician with a chance of winning national office is conservative enough for me. So I’m generally hoping for the best, but expecting to be disappointed fairly often, without that thought crushing me. (I might call this being “cautiously optimistic.”)

Right now I’d say that Trump is hitting around .750, and I’m loving a lot of what’s happening. Closing down the border in 20 minutes, ramping up deportation efforts through various means (raids prioritizing the worst of the worst, encouraging self-deportation through the app and even cash payments, etc.), the BBB tax breaks, cracking down on antisemitism on campuses, cutting USAID and the Department of Education and PBS/NPR, some DOGE cuts, taking out Iran’s nuke facilities etc. and etc.

But he’s not a consistent and disciplined conservative, so he’s done things I don’t like. I don’t like the “no taxes on tips” – not because I don’t like tax cuts, but because I don’t like the government picking winning and losers, and giving bennies to some blue collar workers (wait staff) over others (cooks, bus boys, etc.). Just lower taxes across the board, and let the free market work.

I don’t like the feds taking stakes in private companies (Intel, Nvidia, etc.), for the same reason.

I think his tariffs have been more chaotic and confusing than they’ve needed to be, and I don’t understand imposing them on our allies as much (or sometimes more than) on our enemies.

Speaking of the Chicoms, I also don’t like inexplicably playing nice with them, as when he has allowed them to keep TikTok going (breaking an earlier promise), and especially agreeing to allow 600,000 Chinese students to take up slots in our universities and gather intelligence for a brutal communist dictatorship.

And as positive as Trump’s governing results have been, I think he’s giving up 10-15 points in approval – which becomes political capital in future battles – as a penalty for acting more like a jackass than he needs to.

Still, all things considered, he’s doing a really good job, and considering the hellish possible Hillary and Que Mala administrations that he’s saved us from, he’s by far the best president since Reagan, IMHO.

See? Was that so hard? I know that parts of it probably bugged some of you, but we’re all fine. I might even be wrong about some of it. (Spoiler alert: nope!)

Now let’s look at the other side of the aisle, to the smoking, clattering, rattling wreck that is the national Democrat party and their MSM remoras. How have those elite Dems been reacting to Trump’s second term so far? Are they admitting the mistakes their side has made, or some of the good moves that Trump has made, and doing a little self-reflection? Are they trying to call balls and strikes, and trying not to look like they’ve gone bat-guano crazy?

Hoo-boy, they are NOT!

Start with the border. The Dems are obviously on the losing end of that issue, but they can’t just admit that Trump was right to close the border. And when he deports a high-profile bad actor like Kilmar, the Dems can’t just say, “Okay, he’s a bum, but a lot of the illegals are good people just trying to make better lives for themselves.”

Nope, they’ve got to claim he’s an unjustly victimized Maryland father. And when it comes out that his wife told the cops that he was beating her – twice! – they say, “Don’t believe all women!” And when he has common MS-13 tattoos, and when video surfaces of him smuggling half a dozen Mexicans cross-country in another gang-member’s car?

The Dems plug their ears and close their eyes and chant, “Mary-land fa-ther, Mary-land fa-ther” over and over again.

Or consider crime. When Trump goes into DC and crime immediately drops, the Dems can’t just say, “Thanks for the help, and we now realize that we need to do more, so we’ve got it from here.”

Nope, they’ve got to scream about orange fascism, and show the country that they’d rather let their black constituents die than let them be protected by the Apricot Adolf. Ken-Doll Newsom tried to troll Trump, pointing out cities in Red States with higher murder rates per capita than LA. Annnnddd… all of those cities have been governed entirely by Democrats for decades. D’oh!

When a smarter Democrat like (don’t laugh) Joe Scarborough tried to keep Chicago’s awful mayor “Let’s Go” Brandon Johnson from making the same mistake of denying his obvious crime problem, Johnson was too dimwitted to take the lifeline.

Scarborough first asked him if an extra 5,000 cops on the beat would help, but Johnson rambled about how money for more housing and education would help. Joe tried again, suggesting that more cops would be useful, but Johnson Que-Mala-ed off into some word salad about how the question is too complex and multifaceted, and root causes, and infrastructure…

To his credit, Joe said, “That’s not what I asked,” and begged the dope to just say that more cops could be part of the solution. But Let’s-Go was still muttering his previous answer. “…and systemic racism, and Jim Crow, and unequally distributed resources…”

When Joe finally threw up his hands and gave up, Johnson then had his bodyguards pop some smoke outside the studio, so that he could run serpentine to his limo amid chattering small arms fire, while he called back over his shoulder, “We don’t want Trump’s KKK storm troopers here, we’re doing fine!”

The lefties have been doing the same thing about redistricting. Rather than just admitting that they’ve gerrymandered in all the blue states but that it’s sleazy and everyone should stop it, they have to pretend that the GOP move to do it in red states is an unprecedent assault on democracy.

David Brooks, the formerly reasonable person who sold his soul to become the token “conservative” at the NYT compared Texas redistricting to the use of mustard gas in war! And he couldn’t even leave it at that, saying “I fully grant you that Trump started it,” when he knows perfectly well that the largest blue states are more lopsidedly gerrymandered than the red states will be after they redistrict.

Finally, the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, which is a story we’ve seen way too often: mentally unstable damned soul commits mass killing atrocity.

Decent people would feel the grief and hold their tongues and support the victims in any way they could. Stupid politicians would jump in and start assigning blame without knowing the facts. Evil morons would apply their political litmus test, playing the story up if the killer could be identified with their opponents, or trying to bury it if he’s associated with their side, and lying about the details either way.

Does anyone have to guess which way the Dems and the MSM (but I repeat myself) played the Minneapolis story?

Even after so many such stories have blown up in their faces in the past, the Dems can’t resist jumping on the rake again.

Mayor Jacob Frey – who you may remember as Mayor Wussy McPussington from several years ago, when he was surrendering his city to BLM rioters –sneered at those offering “thoughts and prayers,” and condemning anyone who noticed that the killer identified his own “trans” identity as one source of his misery as transphobic bigots.

A soporific NPR host, after an interview in which a Minneapolis official correctly called the male killer “he,” corrected the “error,” saying that we don’t know the killer’s identity or how “they” identify.” Later on, the New York Times cleared up the confusion, calling the male killer “her.” Because: journalism!

Talented writer/moron Stephen King – perhaps thinking that since inanimate objects in his fiction (e.g. the car Christine) kill people, inanimate guns must also kill people in the real world – shared his wisdom about the culprit. “Whether he was transgender is beside the point. The point is he had a gun.”

(Um, do I have to admonish you about misgendering the obviously female killer, Stephen? Shame on you!)

A gun “expert” on CNN agreed with King that semi-automatic weapons are the problem. Then he immediately proved that he doesn’t know the most basic facts about guns, by saying that “these things [semi-auto weapons] can shoot dozens of bullets in just one trigger pull.” (Of course, FULLY automatic weapons do that. And in this context, they are the opposite of SEMI-automatic weapons, you numbskull.)

Perhaps the best example of leftist lying about this newest story came from ABC News reporter Aaron Katersky who said that “the name of Donald Trump” was written on his guns. Could this finally be the elusive, murderous Trump supporter whom the legacy media has been waiting for, lo these many years?

Nope! It turns out the phrases, “Kill Donald Trump” and “Kill Trump Now!” appeared on the killer’s guns.

If I didn’t know the killer is already dead, I’d phone in a tip to the cops that they might need to see if Tim Wolz, Gavin Newsom or most of the Democrat members of congress can account for their whereabouts at the time of the shooting.

Because that sounds like something straight out of the DNC.

Hamas delenda est!

Red and Blue See Crime & Punishment Very Differently (posted 8/18/25)

In recent decades, attitudes toward crime from the right and the left have diverged, not because the GOP has moved a lot, but because the Dems have raced to their extreme left.

Conservatives have always been enthusiastic about law and order, and prone to more vigorous law enforcement, and it’s no coincidence that red states are the ones who allow the death penalty. The attitude of many conservatives has been parodied as, “If you kill someone in a red state, we’ll kill you back.”

And most of us don’t mind that jibe one bit.

While old-school Dems also wanted to live in crime-free communities, their approach to the justice system was heavy on the rehabilitation and light on the punishment. They had some good points, and for prisoners who were willing to make changes in their lives and rehabilitate themselves, some good came out of that approach. But nobody can say the results weren’t mixed, at best.

However, conservatives’ attitudes toward law enforcement have also been complicated, due to our instinctive skepticism about the encroachments of the power-hungry State. Tensions were brought to the fore during covid, when conservatives in blue states had repeated and increasingly contentious run-ins with states who quickly instituted draconian restrictions, and then held onto them like grim Pelosi.

Sorry, that’s “grim death.”

Most blue states imposed mandatory lock-downs, mandatory school and business closings, mandatory masking, and Rube Goldberg rules about everything. You had to wear a mask on a plane, but the airline served snacks…which you could eat by lowering your mask…but only for long enough to stuff some snacks into your mouth. After which you should yank your mask back up, so you could aspirate a mouthful of peanuts and choke your way to a covid-less death. Hooray for science!

You had to stay 6 feet apart, and could only occupy some buildings at 25% capacity – two numbers that were plucked out of thin air, and meant nothing.

California filled skate parks with sand…because young kids who were at no risk from the virus needed to be prevented from getting fresh air and exercise, lest they be slain by the virus that was no threat to them in the first place.

California also arrested a guy who was paddle boarding. Alone. In the ocean.

So normally pro-law-enforcement conservatives became scofflaws during Covid. Most of them will explain the contrast by drawing a distinction between laws – which we support pretty enthusiastically – and regulations – some of which are reasonable…but not many.

Traditional Democrats/leftists have usually been much more fond of regulations in general – they love to tell you what kinds of toilets or light bulbs or cars you may buy, and (recently) that you ladies must allow a creepy dude to watch you shower, while he levitates a towel in front of him without the use of his hands.

And you are legally required to call him “Crystal.”

What has changed lately is that what had been the extreme fringe of the left has wrested away control of the Democrat party. They have not just energetically piled into the lefty clown car, they’re now driving it!

Consider the dramatic changes in just the last several decades. In the early 1990s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously coined the phrase “defining deviancy down,” by which he meant permissively normalizing bad behaviors. Some of those were social – removing the stigma from out-of-wedlock births, allowing “social promotion” of under-performing students in schools – but many involved the greater acceptance of criminal behavior.

Think about that. Not that long ago – not in Pilgrim America, or Victorian England, but when Kurt Cobain was still alive! – one of the most influential Dems could write an essay calling for more stringent enforcement of traditional social and legal norms, and get a respectful hearing and a lot of support from elected and influential lefties all over the country.

Today, that world seems as dead and gone as Julius Caesar, or Joe Biden.

The dominant far-left – the group who cheers on the murder of a CEO by a trust-fund coward, who will elect Commie Mamdani in NYC, and who has stage-four TDS – has lost its ethical moorings when it comes to crime. They’ll ignore and deny that crime is happening, and dare you to disagree.

Baltimore and New York City are as safe as Pennsylvania Dutch country during Amish-Fest. Publicly defecating meth-enthusiasts in San Francisco are “outdoorsmen.” Shambling armies of mentally ill addicts living in filthy tents all over LA and Seattle and Portland are “urban campers.” Brother’s-widow-jumping addict Hunter Biden is “the smartest person I know.”

Nearly a century ago, four gunmen killed seven rival gangsters in Chicago in the still-infamous “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Today, seven Chicagoans are killed every other weekend, and it barely makes the papers. And if you do notice it, Mayor Brandon will call you a racist.

Even worse, lefty pols and media actively excuse the most brutal acts if they’re perpetrated by one of their pet victim groups. The half-dozen black criminals who beat and stomped three defenseless middle-aged white folks in Cincinnati were defended by a black elected official on racial solidarity grounds, and by a black police official because the video you watched “lacked context.”

There is a silver lining in this mess, though, because the legacy media’s ridiculous crime coverage is giving them even more opportunities to discredit themselves. They’ve already greatly decreased their ability to harm their enemies and help their friends. Accusations of racism used to end careers; now they elicit mostly eye rolls. Reports that some leftist project is succeeding or some rightist action is bringing about the apocalypse are both greeted with instinctive skepticism or outright disbelief.

And the Left’s doubling down on crime is putting them even more behind the 8-ball. Trump’s move into DC has maneuvered them into insisting that DC is super safe, and the residents there resent law enforcement coming in and ham-handedly arresting all of the violent criminals who weren’t really there, and confiscating all the illegally-owned guns that don’t exist. Or something.

The infamous covid-era “mostly peaceful protests” (spoken by a leftist reporter in front of a block full of burning buildings) has now got two new contenders in dishonest cluelessness. The first was CNN empty head Erin Burnett’s idiotic description of the whacko who killed three people in NYC a couple of weeks ago: “male, mustache, sunglasses, possibly white.”

Burnett immediately became a laughingstock, because viewers could see a picture in real time of the killer walking into the building while carrying a rifle. Burnett was referencing that picture, and she got the male, facial hair, and sunglasses parts right.

But that guy was as white as Liz Warren is Cherokee. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

The sunglasses hid his eyes – which in subsequently released pics had an Asian look to them – but he was clearly black, and it wasn’t a close call. He had a short Afro, and he looked like if John Shaft and Billy Dee Williams had had a baby.

By the way, this just in from Cincinnati: Seven people have been arrested in the beatings, and they include a Montianez, a Jermaine, a Dekyra, a Dominique, and an Aisha.

Or, as Erin Burnett would put it, “they’re all possibly white.”

The second contender in the leftist cover-up sweepstakes comes to us from New Jersey, courtesy of a “journalist” named Dana DiFilippo. Dana was covering the story of an illegal alien named Raul Luna-Perez, who was picked up for DWI three times in four months. The third time, he caused a wreck that killed a woman and her daughter.

So Perez is an illegal who could have been detained and deported just for that. And he should have been arrested, detained, convicted and eventually deported for either of his first two DWIs. But it’s a blue state, so he was able to go for the drunk driving hat-trick, and kill two innocent people. But at least he was jailed and held for trial and eventual deportation then, right?

Have you not been paying attention? Blue state. Leftist judge.

So he was released pending his trial. (Fortunately, Biden and Que Mala lost last November, so he was quickly picked up by ICE, and is no longer on our streets.)

So how did Dana cover this story? First, she called Perez an “undocumented immigrant.” Because of course she did.

Then she said that he was “at the center of an immigration fight between Trump and NJ’s Governor.” Nice use of the passive voice there. He’s not an illegal immigrant serial drunk-driving killer. He’s just caught up in a fight between Bad Orange Man and NJ governor of indeterminate political persuasion.

But the part of her one-paragraph post that caused Dana to quickly delete her entire X account and flee into the night came next, when she claimed that Perez “had a largely clean driving record, despite prior DUI arrests.”

Let that sink in.

Wouldn’t Dana make a great defense lawyer?

“Your Honor, members of the jury, my client Mr. Bundy has met literally THOUSANDS of women in his lifetime, and he’s accused of murdering no more than a few dozen of them, tops. I’d call that a largely clean dating record. I rest my case.”

Ugh. We don’t hate the media enough, people.

But we’re getting there.

Hamas delenda est!

I See Some Bad Things on the Horizon for the Dems (posted 7/11/25)

Yes, faithful readers, your eyes are not deceiving you: you are reading my fifth consecutive daily column.

I know: a five-column week is an impressive achievement. It’s like shooting under 60 in one round of a golf tournament, or throwing back-to-back no-hitters in the MLB. Or the Bears drafting a quarterback who doesn’t rip the hearts out of Bears fans and stomp on them with inexplicably sharp cleats by the time Halloween rolls around and we’re eliminated from the playoffs.

Would I be able to do this if I weren’t semi-retired? No.

Would I be able to do it without your faithful readership, which I might even describe as verging on adoration, if my instinctive modesty didn’t restrain me? No.

Would I be able to do it if I didn’t have the strength of ten men, because my heart is pure? No way.

Okay, enough of that. It’s Friday, baby, so where my narwhals at?

Today I’m focusing on some escalating bad behavior from mainstream Dems in the congress and the MSM that is not going to end well for them. I’m talking about their increasingly unhinged and violent rhetoric aimed at ICE agents who are just doing their jobs and enforcing our immigration laws.

The Dems are in such an impenetrable bubble that they really do seem to think that the public is on their side, and that the Cuddly Kilmar doll is going to be a big seller this Christmas. (You pull a string on his back, and he says, “MS-13 forever, homes!” and “My old lady had that beating coming, your honor.”) (Unregistered car filled with illegals he was caught trafficking sold separately.)

Many Democrats are in the throes of anger, and convinced that it’s the righteous kind. Axios interviewed a dozen Democrat House members who anonymously reported that their voters are getting more and more heated. One said that, “our own base is telling us that there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public.”

Another reported that his constituents are saying that “civility isn’t working” and to prepare for “violence…to fight to protect our democracy.” A third said that “people online have sent me crazy sh*t, told me to storm the White House and stuff like that.”

(Because insurrection is (D)ifferent when they do it.)

Of course, this is the predictable result of Democrat elites ramping up hatred on their side in recent years. By last November, their supporters didn’t think Trump could ever win, or that if he did, it would be through some illegitimate trickery. So when he swept the swing states, won the popular vote, and beat Que Mala in the electoral college like Kilmar tuning up his wife because she looked at him wrong, they didn’t know what to do.

The same boneheads telling them to “fight for democracy” – until democracy worked, and swept Trump into a second presidential term – have now gone back to the Extremist Handbook of Inflammatory Slogans and recycled “Conservatives are Nazis and ICE is the Gestapo!”

They have no idea that they’re racing down F**k-Around Street with the pedal to the metal, and they’re fast approaching Find-Out Avenue. And that intersection is strewn with spike strips and Jersey barriers, and both sides of the cross street are lined with empty prison buses. The seat belts in those buses come with complementary handcuffs, and in front of each bus is a squad of Homan’s Heroes®. And those guys are there to do calligraphy and jail rioters.

And they’re all out of fountain pens.

Okay, that got a little weird at the end. Annnndddd…I’m pushing away the glass of Knob Creek 9 until I finish this column.

Anyway, the lefty activists have been asking for trouble, and now they’re starting to get it. More and more stories are coming out about imbeciles interfering with ICE and getting arrested or worse.

On Tuesday four morons were caught after they put out devices that spiked the tires of ICE vehicles. Their mugshots send the clear, non-verbal message we’ve all come to expect in these situations: “My prospects for ever having sexual congress with a decent woman are slim and none, and slim has left the building.”

A day earlier, at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, TX, an idiot armed himself and dressed up in tactical gear and attacked border patrol agents and local police. He managed to wound one of them before they shot him a lot, and he quickly took the pavement temperature challenge. Because: Texas.

Or, as a Breitbart story put it, “Cops Neutralize Attacker.”

I love the use of the term “neutralized” here. You almost never hear it outside of thriller novels or movies, or IDF after-action reports, which regular readers know are my favorites. “We neutralized that Hezbollah leader’s eyes and hands in our pager attack three weeks ago. And we just neutralized the rest of him with a missile strike on a goat pen where he was having a conjugal visit. Shalom, and thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Ten radical freaks ambushed an ICE facility on the Fourth of July, wounding one agent before escaping, frustratingly un-shot. But they were soon arrested, and their chances of being home in time to find a Cuddly Kilmar under their Christmas tree are not good.

Just yesterday a Texas Constable arrested a 22-year-old Mensa member named Serio Olivares (tragically, an American citizen), whose dad owns a business where ICE agents arrested some illegals. As the agents were about to leave, Serio arrived and confronted them, damaging one of their cars. When they left, he pursued them, driving recklessly, until they stopped and arrested him.

The local “liberal Democrat district attorney’s office” would not press any more serious charges than misdemeanor traffic violations, so the constable is contacting the Feds to bring more serious interference with federal agents charges.

My favorite part of the story is that Serio is a serial offender. Unexpectedly!

Because last November, he was charged with interfering with an officer’s public duties – sound familiar? – but that charge was later dismissed, in a deal in which he pled to one felony charge. In March he was given diversion after cocaine possession and unlawful carrying of a gun – C’mon, Texas! You’re letting me down here – on the condition that he not commit another crime within one year.

Right now Serio is staring intently at a calendar, trying to do some basic calculations. I’d love to be there when he figures out that from March to July is four months. And I’d REALLY love to be there 10 minutes later, when he realizes that four months is less than one year.

Which means that he can still serve two years on the earlier coke charge, in addition to whatever sentence the Feds are going to give him for his latest stunt.

To paraphrase the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is a failure to cogitate.”

If the Dems keep this up, one of their unstable foot-soldiers is eventually going to kill an ICE agent, and they are not going to enjoy what comes next.

In the meantime, I’m praying for our cops, border patrol and ICE agents, and bracing for more winning, and the lefty activist tantrums that come with it.

Hamas delenda est!

Tucker Goes Off the Rails, & Jamaal Bowman Thinks the N-word Causes Obesity? (posted 7/10/25)

As enjoyable as it is to make fun of leftists when they beclown themselves, we also need to call balls and strikes on our side too. And I have to do that now with Tucker Carlson, who has sadly joined Jonah Goldberg as one of my formerly favorite voices on the right who has gone off the rails.

Within the last year I’ve written about Tucker doing some inexplicably bad interviews. He talked with a weirdo named Darryl Cooper – Carlson called him “the best and most honest popular historian” – who claimed that Churchill (not Hitler) was the chief villain of WWII, and that the Nazis killed millions of POWs out of pity, to save them from starving to death.

Because the Nazis were known for nothing more than their humanitarian compassion for the sub-human untermenschen.

Tucker also did a shockingly sycophantic interview with Putin, in which he praised the magnificence of a Soviet Potemkin subway station, and the cleanliness and great prices in a similarly phony Moscow grocery store.

His recent debate/interview with Ted Cruz was another low point. He used cheap gotcha questions, bad faith arguments and ad hominem attacks in the service of a utopian, anti-war stance that he contradicted a few minutes later. When he asked Cruz what Iran’s population is and Cruz admitted he didn’t know, Carlson adopted an exaggerated astonishment, asking how Cruz could justify going to war with Iran when he doesn’t even know the population.

The debate was about the wisdom and risks of Trump potentially striking Iran’s nuke facilities, and Cruz asked the obvious question of what difference it would make, in that context, whether Iran’s population is 80, 90 or 100 million? Carlson snapped, “If you don’t know anything about the country—” and when Cruz objected, Carlson asked what the ethnic breakdown of Iran was.

Cruz (correctly) answered that it is Persian and mostly Shia, but then refused to play Tucker’s game further. Carlson accused Cruz of not believing that Iran has tried to kill Trump – a pretty well-established fact, I think – or else he would have supported going to war with Iran beforehand. Eventually Cruz got Tucker to reveal how dishonest he was being, when Tucker said that if HE believed that Iran had tried to kill Trump, he’d support nuking Tehran!

This following months of Tucker virtue signaling about how he was against even one person ever dying in a war, and calling people “warmongers” and “ghouls” if they supported Israel’s strikes to take out Iran’s nukes and top military personnel.

Hey Tucker, around 9 million people live in Tehran. Even my weak, English professor math tells me that that’s roughly 9 million times the one single person you would never want to see die in a war.

Tucker’s rhetorical games avoided the real issues that the debate should have focused on: Has Iran been sponsoring terrorist attacks on Israel, America and her allies throughout the Middle East for years? (Yes!) Are the Iranian weird beards racing to get a nuclear weapon? (Yes again!) Are they likely to use such a bomb to dominate the region and threaten our allies and interests? (Hell yes!)

Tucker ignored the (glowing) elephant in the room, instead arguing that Cruz’s position is corrupt and evil because he doesn’t know that Iranians’ favorite food is chelo kebab, and that their top three turns-ons are moonlit walks in the desert, a well-defined unibrow (on a man or woman), and paying others to murder Jews.

Oddly enough, Carlson’s breathless predictions of the resulting apocalypse if Trump struck Iran’s nuclear sites – A forever war! An American ground invasion with mountains of casualties! Russian and China jumping in on Iran’s side! – were quickly proven to be ridiculous hysteria.

Unexpectedly!

But Carlson’s cage-match interview with Ted Cruz looks even worse when compared to the obsequious tongue-bath he just gave to Iran’s president, a man whose name is not even worth my time to look up, since he’s a powerless puppet of the radical ayatollahs who actually rule Iran.

Carlson went after Cruz hammer and tongs, like Thor after drinking a flagon of mead dosed with cocaine and meth. (Mmmm, meth-mead…) But when he talked with Mahmoud the Grouch (on-point puppet reference), Tucker sounded like Oprah interviewing Que Mala. No follow-ups, no challenges. Just a series of questions with no pushback whatsoever, no matter how outrageous the lies being spouted.

There are a dozen examples, but I’ll just cite two that made me shake my head so hard I was in danger of becoming self-concussed. (In the commentary business, we call this, “Pulling a Crockett.”)

When the prez claimed that Iran has never and is not now trying to build a nuclear bomb – only clean, green, oh-so-civilian nuclear power – Tucker was silent. He didn’t ask, “Why would the world’s most oil-rich nation need nuclear power?” Or “Why have you already enriched uranium to the 60% range when civilian use only requires 3-5%?” or even, “Who buries a civilian power plant hundreds of yards under a freaking mountain?!”

Later, Tucker did manage to ask him what’s up with the constant “death to America” chants.

And Jihadi Lambchop (puppet reference for the over-60 crowd, and Shari Lewis enthusiasts) says that it doesn’t mean “Death to America.” Don’t be silly. It really means death to “crimes, to killing and carnage, to insecurity and stability… [and to] “bullying.”

Got that? “Death to bullying.” Because who amongst us, when we see bullying going on – or insecurity, too! – doesn’t race up behind the bullying, pull its head back, and cut its head off with our scimitar, while screaming, “Death to bullying!?”

If that doesn’t make you say, “WTF?” or “You’ve got to be Schiff-ing me!” that’s because you’re not Tucker Carlson. Who just nodded and moved on.

Watching this made me miss the old Tucker I thought I knew. But on the bright side, it also taught me something about the Iranian president: If Jeff Dunham ever fires him from his gig as Achmed the Dead Terrorist’s sidekick (and there’s the puppet reference hat-trick, my narwhals!), his skill at torturing the language qualifies him to land a tenured position at Harvard as the new occupant of the Bill Clinton Chair for Post-Modern Deconstructionist Prevaricating.

That job comes with a six-figure salary, all the interns you can grope, and some sweet stationery with an embossed illustration from the Kama Sutra under the position’s Latin motto: “Pendeat ex quid significat ‘est’ ‘est’.”

(In English: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ ‘is’.”)

Rather than leaving you on that down note, I’ll close with my favorite comedy story from the last week in June. (I know that was last month. I’m mocking as fast as I can!)

You might remember Jamaal Bowman from that time when he was the congressman who pulled a fire alarm to prevent a House vote that the Democrats were going to lose. When it turned out that his devious act was caught on camera, his defense was – did I mention that he was a former school principal? – “I don’t know how fire alarms work.”

So he lost his next election – unexpectedly! – and has now been reduced to selling his blood, collecting cans, and appearing on CNN panels.

In his most recent CNN appearance, he announced that he’s made a breakthrough medical discovery that might hurt my chances of getting the Nobel Prize for Medicine (for my Simpson Gender Confirmation Protocol™ – see yesterday’s column). If he edges me out, I’m going to be at the end of my rope. Especially after I’ve been runner-up for People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year for the last 20 years running!

(George Clooney? I get it. Chris Hemsworth? Understood. But John Krasinski? Now you’re just rubbing salt in my wounds, People Magazine!)

Where was I? Oh yeah.

Jamaal Bowman has discovered the cause of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity in the African-American community. And he rushed straight from the laboratory to CNN to explain, in this quote which I swear to you I am not making up:

“You can’t be calm about this! I’m a black man in America! The reason why heart disease and cancer and obesity and diabetes are bigger in the black community is because of the stress we carry from having to deal with being called the N-word directly or indirectly every day.”

And before you can ask: No, he is not talking about the word “narwhal.” But the fine people at COOSP (the Cautious Optimism Office of Standards and Practices) have asked me to proceed as if he is.

Sure, at first glance this quote would appear to suggest that Jamaal Bowman is a race-hustling, imbecilic grifter. At second glance, too. But if you hang in there long enough, at around glance number 147 or so, Bowman’s theory starts to make sense.

So I’ve spent the last 3 weeks researching his claims. I decided that heart disease is tougher to quantify quickly, so I focused on cancer, diabetes and obesity. I found 1000 black volunteers and exposed them to various sources of n-word exposure, and calculated how much each exposure would increase tumors, blood sugar levels, and weight gain.

Here are my preliminary results, adjusted per capita:

Reading Huckleberry Finn (one of the main characters is named “Narwhal Jim,” so…) – 1 tumor, a 10 mg/dl increase in blood sugar, and 4 pounds of added weight.

Watching Pulp Fiction’s “dead narwhal storage” scene – 2 tumors, 15 mg of blood sugar, 10 extra pounds

Watching Richard Pryor “Live on the Sunset Strip” – 5 tumors, 30 mg blood sugar, 30 pounds

Watching any Dave Chappell Netflix Special – 6 tumors, 70 mg, 50 pounds

My research found a little good news, because as with many medical conditions, some people are more susceptible than others. Sure, for bitter racial hypochondriacs like Joy Reid or Whoopi Goldberg, just hearing a conversation about the west African nation of Niger is close enough to cause a skin rash and 5 pounds of weight gain.

Meanwhile, role model and great man Clarence Thomas – who has been called a “house narwhal” by half the malevolent leftists in academia and the MSM thousands of times – is still strong like bull.

Anyway, I’ve got bad news and worse news for Jamaal Bowman.

The bad news is that even though Hippocratic-oath-related concerns forced me to cut my final test short, that one produced the highest rate of TVNE (Toxic Verbal Narwhal Exposure), which resulted from listening to a complete album by any rapper other than Kid Rock.

To wit: head-to-toe metastatic cancer, more sugar than a super-sized Mountain Dew/ice cream float, and weight class: Pritzker.

The worse news is the Recommended Course of Treatment: spend more time around white people.

I can hear Jamaal now: The cure is worse than the disease!

Hamas delenda est!

Reading the SCOTUS Case that Allows Trump to Act As President Again (posted 7/7/25)

I’ll be back with another column covering the ongoing foolishness in our politics tomorrow or Wednesday, but today I have to ask you to bear with me, because I’ve written an uncharacteristically serious column about the SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. Casa, Inc. That’s the one dealing with the dozens of universal injunctions by district court judges who have been trying to stop Trump’s every move.

The underlying case was about Trump’s EO ending birthright citizenship for the born-in-America children of illegals, which I’m afraid he might well lose, though he shouldn’t, IMHO. But the ruling in Casa settled what should have been an obvious point: the US government can’t function with 677 de facto presidents, i.e. district court judges who can stop any executive decision for months or years at a time.

I’ve read the whole decision – written by Amy Coney-Barrett – including the concurrences by Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh and the dissents by Sotomayor and Jackson, and I’d encourage anyone who is interested to read it, too. As I discovered when I read the abortion and second amendment cases several summers ago, SCOTUS decisions are unexpectedly understandable, even for non-lawyers.

I read this one over the Independence Day weekend, which seemed appropriate, given how grateful I am for our independence and for this ruling!

I’ve found that I can just skip over the citations and look up only the legal terms that aren’t self-explanatory, and I was surprised at how much the justices’ writing reveals their intelligence, discipline and character. The best writers and thinkers on our side are Thomas and Alito, IMHO. On the other side, I think the general consensus is that Kagan is the smartest, Sotomayor is mediocre, and Jackson is embarrassingly bad.

After reading this case, I think Sotomayor did a little better than I expected, and Jackson was as bad as I expected. And I thought Barrett wrote a much stronger originalist argument than I’d expected, and not just because she mercilessly took Jackson’s bizarre rambling apart.

Barrett starts the majority opinion – the initial summary of which is only around 2000 words –at the nation’s beginning, noting that “Universal injunctions are not sufficiently analogous to any relief available in the court of equity in England at the time of the founding.” She then moves forward in time, claiming, “Nor did founding-era courts of equity in the United States chart a different course. If anything, the approach traditionally taken by federal courts cuts against the existence of such a sweeping remedy.”

She addresses the counter-arguments, noting that “respondents claim that universal injunctions are the modern equivalent of the decree resulting from a ‘bill of peace,’” but then cites a bunch of precedents to show why that analogy does not hold. She closes by summarizing the points on which the government must prevail, and demonstrating that they do so, while noting that this doesn’t mean that they will ultimately win on the underlying birthright citizenship question. The key sentence in her conclusion, IMHO: “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

The full 6500-word opinion that follows traces the history of universal injunctions, pointing out that they “were not a feature of federal-court litigation until sometime in the 20^th Century,” and that they have been exploding since W’s term, when over three-quarters of them have been issued. (And we all know that the explosion of injunctions in the first four months of Trump II has drastically added to that statistical imbalance.)

Her closing: “The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our nation’s history…. Had federal courts believed themselves to possess the tool, surely they would not have let it lay idle.”

Thomas uses a citation-heavy 1200 words to emphasize the need for judicial restraint that this ruling supports. Then Alito’s concurrence anticipates the activist left’s next counter-moves to try to get around this clear ruling. He warns about an expanded view of third-party standing (plaintiffs who aren’t affected by an issue arguing on behalf of others) and class-action filings.

On the former, he says, “Left unchecked, the practice of reflexive state third-party standing will undermine today’s decision as a practical matter.” On the latter,“Today’s decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following Rule 23’s procedural protections for class certification.” (Rule 23 forces plaintiffs to meet specific requirements to achieve a class-action suit, which activists hate, as you might imagine.)

Alito warns that lower courts “should not view today’s decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors of Rule 23.” “Lax enforcement of the requirements for third-party standing and class certification would create a potentially significant loophole to today’s decision.”

Many on the left are already talking about trying both of these tactics, thus proving Alito’s point. Hopefully his warning will rein in most lower courts from trying these end-around moves, though I imagine the most lawless of the activist judges will go for it anyway, being constrained by neither law nor ethics, as they obviously are.

Sotomayor actually lays out a pretty convincing argument that birthright citizenship is constitutional. She relies mostly on the fact that it has been a long-standing precedent, which is ironic, since she and the other “living constitution” supporters only seem to value precedent when it leads to their favored political conclusions. (They made a big deal about the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade being overturned, for example, but they had nothing to say about the nearly 200-year precedent of abortion not being in the constitution, until the Roe court “discovered” it in 1973. Not to mention the nearly 250-year precedent that the court shattered in Obergefell, when they “discovered” gay marriage hidden in the constitution. Probably right next to the right to abortion, as well as the pre-emptive prohibition from ever electing Trump president.)

The most striking characteristics of Sotomayor’s argument are her nakedly partisan tone and how consistently she calls for more power for her court. She claims that the English equity courts “unlike this court” “constantly declined to lay down any rule that shall limit their power and discretion.” She says that those older courts “[kept] injunctive relief flexible,” as opposed to the originalists on this court, who want to “freeze in amber” the precedents that they cite. She takes a final shot at the conservatives, saying that unlike the equity courts she claims “delight[ed] to do justice, and not by halves,” this court only wants to do justice “by piecemeal,” which results in “strip[ping] federal courts of authority” and causing a “diminution of judicial power.”

But while Sotomayor makes typical “living constitution” arguments that tend toward giving courts the power to “legislate from the bench,” Ketanji Jean-Pierre goes flying right past Sotomayor in her truly awful dissent. I would warn anyone not to read Jackson immediately before the sober clarity of Thomas or Alito, because doing so could give you the bends.

If Sotomayor sounds like a partisan guest on PBS, Jackson sounds like an unhinged MSNBC host and a high school sophomore had a baby, and that baby was elevated to SCOTUS purely for DEI reasons. Because: yikes!

She comes out of the gate hot – hot, and stupid! – by slandering the conservative majority, saying “The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution…is an existential threat to the rule of law.”

That’s three partisan MSM talking points in one sentence, and things don’t get any better from there. She constantly begs the question by assuming that Trump’s EO is obviously unconstitutional throughout, even though SCOTUS has agreed to take that contention up in the fall term. Her tone is by turns emotional (she talks about her disillusionment, fear and frustration), heavy on the kind of lefty talking points she started with (describing the court as endorsing “a rule-of-kings governing system”) and light on relevant citations and concrete argument.

In fact, she disdains the originalists’ analysis of whether universal injunctions have analogous precedents in the English courts and the Founders’ Judiciary Act of 1789 as “a mind-numbing technical query.” (Many sane lawyers would call it “establishing foundations.”) She also calls it “legalese” and “a smokescreen!”

She uses inappropriate phrases such as “…(wait for it)…” as if she were me, writing my juvenile mockeries of self-important leftists, rather than a SCOTUS justice! She also seems to not understand the roles of lower courts and SCOTUS any more than she understands what a woman is, because she chides the originalist SCOTUS members for their “dismissive treatment of the solemn duties and responsibilities of the lower courts.”

First, if the partisan lower courts had been taking their duties and responsibilities seriously, we wouldn’t be in this mess! Second, they’re LOWER courts, you dunce! The job of the higher court is to evaluate and often reverse the lower courts. How does someone who went to law school not know that?

By the end – and despite her rejection of English law and our early court decisions which originated from it – she approvingly cites Hypothetical Interplanetary Law. To wit, “A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: ‘What good is the constitution, then?’”

Good lord. I guess if an imaginary ET doesn’t like our constitution, we should just dissolve it and then re-establish ourselves as Ketanji-land?

Barrett’s backhanding of Jackson’s ridiculous blathering is unusually scathing, and yet still not nearly scathing enough. She calls Jackson’s argument a “startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever,” and points out that it “[waves] away attention to the limits on judicial power as a “mind-numbingly technical query.”

And she finally does the judicial equivalent of coming off the top rope to slam a metal folding chair over Jackson’s 10-cent head in what has to be one of the most brutal dismissals in SCOTUS history: “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

So that leaves us with the smartest of the 3 liberal justices, Elena Kagan, who didn’t write in this case. And her silence is deafening.

Because in a talk she gave in 2022, Kagan forcefully pointed out the danger of district court judges issuing universal injunctions, saying, “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for years that it takes to go through a legal process.”

In fact, she specifically condemned the practice of “judge shopping” to get those injunctions She mentioned that when Trump was president, lefty plaintiffs went to the liberal northern district of California, and when Biden was president, righties went to a conservative district in Texas.

She was obviously right about that, since out of the 95 US court districts, 5 leftist districts have issued something like 35 of the most important 40 universal injunctions against Trump. So Kagan is vindicated, and her clear stance against universal injunctions stands as a brave example of a justice not being swayed by her own personal political partisanship.

Oh no, wait. In Trump v. Casa, Inc she voted against the position she had taken just three years ago, and by not writing a dissent, she gave no reason for the change.

I’d like to say, “I wonder why,” but we all know, don’t we? When universal injunctions are hampering a Democrat president, they are very bad. But when they are hampering a Republican president, they magically become extra super-constitutional and good.

Because on the high court – just as in Congress, and governors’ offices, and mayors’ offices – it’s (D)ifferent when they do it.

Hamas delenda est!

Celebrating Independence, & Contemplating the Left-Right Pride in America Gap (posted 7/4/25)

Well, this is my fourth column of the week, and I’ve still managed to fall behind somehow on all of the (mostly good) news that’s happening. And I’m half-way through the process of reading the entire SCOTUS ruling from last week on nationwide injunctions.

So my plan is to have a column on Monday with my thoughts on that great SCOTUS ruling. (Will I also be mocking Ketanji Jean-Pierre? Damn straight.) And I foresee another 4 column-week (at least) coming next week, if I’m going to have any chance of keeping my head above water during the deluge of winning that’s happening right now.

But I’ve buried the lede, because it’s Independence Day, and I hope you all have a great one.

It’s hard to talk about this day without going through a bunch of cliches that are so familiar that we’re now too close to see them. But this really is an amazing country, founded by geniuses, and with a history we should be proud of. And while we often take it for granted, I’ve been encouraged by a feeling that there seems to be a recent uptick in appreciation for the country.

However, that appreciation might not be as widespread as it feels to me, a fact brought home by a Gallup poll I read a few days ago, which is fascinating for three reasons: 1. It ties into a discussion I’ve been having with one of my lefty buddies recently. 2. The reporting on it was a textbook example of MSM media bias. (And no, we don’t hate them enough.) 3. It clearly illustrates a profound difference between the left and right in America.

I wrote a few months ago about several lefties who are good, old friends of mine, and in one of my recent email exchanges with one of them, I commented on those leftists who really dislike America. In his response, he said that he hoped I didn’t think he was among them, and I assured him that I didn’t. He’s a good man and he loves the country; I wouldn’t be able to maintain a friendship with somebody who hates my country.

But I think it’s pretty obvious that there is a disturbingly large segment of the left who disdains America, and it includes too many of the party’s leaders, including their last living president. Obama famously expressed his desire to “fundamentally transform” America because he thought it communicated the ambition of his policy agenda. But many of us realized the clear inference of that statement: if you love something or someone, you don’t want to “fundamentally transform” them.

When they look at American history, many leftists focus almost exclusively on the sins that we share with all other nations throughout history – slavery, violent clashes with earlier inhabitants, bigotry – rather than the breathtaking achievements that set us apart. And they judge us for the former more harshly than they ever would judge other nations, while they downplay, deny or elide our accomplishments.

They don’t just view us as no better than other nations, but as much worse. Ilhan Omar says that Somalia is better than America (though she seems frustratingly unwilling to go back there), illegal thugs from Mexico wave their flag and burn ours, and Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential leftist screed blames America for 1619 (which we shouldn’t have to point out was a century and a half before America existed) and denigrates 1776.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was well calculated to enrage the left, and boy did it! Their primary response was summarized by creepy Andrew Cuomo, then governor of one of our largest states: “America was never that great.”

On this Fourth of July, let the left have that pinched and sour lie. I’ll stick with the idea in one of my favorite poems, this one from Sir Walter Scott. It starts with these lines:

“Breathes there a man, with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said,/This is my own, my native land!/Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,/ As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,/ From wandering on a foreign strand!”

(I wish the complainers on the left would spend a little more time wandering on a foreign strand, instead of staying here and b*tching.)

The end of the verse switches to contemplating the rightful end such a person will come to:

“The wretch, concentred all in self/Living, shall forfeit fair renown,/ And, doubly dying, shall go down/ To the vile dust, from which he sprung,/ Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”

Walter knew what he was talking about.

So here’s the reporting on the Gallup poll’s results. In 13 left-leaning publications – HuffPo, Daily Kos, Axios, Newseek, etc. – the headlines are a variation on a theme: American pride falls to record low. (Remember: this isn’t talking about pride in your sexual tastes or fetishes. That was last month.)

Several publications are a little more dramatic (“Americans have never hated being Americans more,” says the New Republic), or identify the real cause of the problem: “American pride plunges to new low under Trump,” says Alternet; “National Pride in American takes dramatic nosedive under Trump,” sneers the Daily Beast.

So the message is clear: more Americans than ever think that America sucks, and it’s all Trump’s fault. Unexpectedly!

But you won’t be shocked to find that the feckless media bottom-dwellers skewed their headlines. Because the poll itself breaks the results down by political groups, and it finds that Republicans are pretty consistently proud to be American, while pride among Independents has been slowly slipping over the last 10 years, but is still a majority position.

But the vast majority of diminished pride has happened among the Democrats, 62% of whom were proud to be American last year, while only 36% feel that way now.

So the accurate headline isn’t “Americans’ pride plunges under Trump.” It’s “GOP consistently proud, most Independents proud, Democrats throw a tantrum like whiny little beeyotches when they don’t get their Cadaver in Chief.”

Which leads me to my final point concerning the dramatic differences between the parties. It’s natural for your pride to ebb and flow a little bit, depending on whether your guy is president or not.

Even I (an optimistic, America-loving patriot) – when watching Joe Biden fall up staircases and over sandbags, and scream at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson, and poop on the Pope – had to fight the urge to wear dark glasses and a baseball cap low over my forehead in the hopes that people would mistake me for a miserable Canadian.

But the surprising thing is that pride in our country is not only highest among Republicans, it’s much more consistent. The Gallup poll has tracked national pride since 2001, and in the wake of 9/11, GOP pride was at 90%; for the next 24 years, it averaged right around where it is now, at 92%. It only dipped into the 80s during the 4 years of Biden, and at its low point was still at 84%.

The Democrats started out at 87%, and briefly touched 90% once, in 2002. Since then it’s been a steady decline, staying in the high 70s to low 80s until 2015, when it plunged down to 42% during Trump I. It recovered when Biden began his reign of error, but even then it only reached a high of 62.

The Independents have generally been in between the two parties. It’s a little troubling that Independents’ pride has also been sliding – if less extremely, and with less volatility than the Dems’ – from 76% ten years ago to 53% now. But my instinct is that if you forced Independents to declare for one party or the other, the most patriotic among them would go to the GOP, and the less patriotic to the Dems, leaving both parties about where they are now.

We probably didn’t need this poll to tell us the two main take-aways from the data.

First, Democrats are generally less patriotic than Republicans. Over the last 10 years, which were evenly split between Dem and GOP presidents, only a little over half of Democrats (55%) said they are proud to be American, while more than 90% of Republicans said that over the last 25 years.

Second, Democrats’ patriotism is much less steadfast; it waxes and wanes depending on whether or not they control the White House.

On both of those points, I’d much rather be on our side than on theirs. I’m glad that we can see America with all of its flaws – and yes, these are often expressed in the foolish choices manifested in badly chosen presidents – and still love it, and be proud to be American.

Watching so many on the other side cling to their bitterness and focus it on this amazing country is hard to take. Their rejection of our founding and traditions leads to so much unhappiness, as we’ve seen in the degradation of the big blue cities, the hollowed-out universities, and the lost reputation of the compromised legacy media.

But we can’t let that temper our own optimism. We’re winning a lot of battles now, and the ship of state is slowly turning in the right direction. Our successes and their failures are making the differences between our philosophies all the more stark, and more and more people are voting with their feet,

We’re still facing a lot of challenges, and we’ve got a lot of obstacles to overcome. Getting our budget under control, repairing the damage caused by an open border, and cleaning up our damaged institutions is going to be a long slog. But every generation since the founding has had to fight to preserve the republic, so we know that it can be done.

And we can see the road the Democrats are on – in California, Chicago, and now New York City – and we know how they’re going to end up.

Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

Happy Independence Day, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!