When my new book, “The Case for America,” was launched this month, the first thing I wanted to do was hear from my listeners and readers about how they would make the case. So, I published an invitation on my website asking people to record short videos, and I’ve been playing some of them on air during “Special Report.” 

I’ve been happy with the diverse contributions from across the country. The optimism and pride are like a tonic in a time often characterized by disagreement. Here are the voices of our fellow Americans making the case. I hope you are as inspired by them as I have been.

In the book, I write about the immigrant success story that continues to stand as proof of our special nature. Charlie C. is an example of the immigrant success story. “I believe the U.S. is unique because it’s a place where immigrants can rise from the lower middle class to the top 3% in just one generation,” Charlie said, describing his own experience. “My family moved here when I was 10, and we started in suburban Philadelphia with very humble means. McDonald’s was a luxury. My English was very limited, but through hard work, I went on to attend an Ivy League school and earn a PhD. Now I’m one of the top engineers at a Fortune 500 company, surrounded by 18,000 colleagues. I’m grateful for a wife of 24 years and three wonderful kids. I believe my achievements would not be possible anywhere else, as this country is the only one founded on a belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.”

Well said.

“If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.”

This silly bartender would make a great professor for Communism 101.

AOC will never be anything more than an airheaded bartender with dung for brains. It doesn’t matter if other dung-for-brains morons with the power of the vote were to ever elect her as president; she is, and always will be, a preeminent example of a failed education system and the worst that America has to offer: [X post at source article]

Sure, someone with a mind like AOC literally can’t earn a billion dollars, but some people can. Ignoring government cronyism and the fake free market (we have too much government intervention for a true free market), earned billionaires are the innovators and the risk-takers, either bringing a highly desired product to market or making good investments that bring great rewards.

This is all aside from one of the greatest political ironies I’ve ever heard of: AOC is actually living on stolen wealth, 100%. My wealth and your wealth, to be clear. And she’s not just eking by on a small civil servant’s compensation, she’s raking in almost three times the average American salary—definitely so when you consider all her added non-paycheck perks.

AOC has so much stolen wealth in her bank that she can afford to attend Met Galas wearing designer gowns about taxing the rich, and afford to rent a luxury apartment in the richest neighborhoods in the U.S. I don’t consent to being taxed so AOC can have a job (I do so at the threat of government violence), but I do consent to all the ways I spend my money that winds up in the billionaires’ wallets.

Sure, someone with a mind like AOC literally can’t earn a billion dollars, but some people can. Ignoring government cronyism and the fake free market (we have too much government intervention for a true free market), earned billionaires are the innovators and the risk-takers, either bringing a highly desired product to market or making good investments that bring great rewards.

This is all aside from one of the greatest political ironies I’ve ever heard of: AOC is actually living on stolen wealth, 100%. My wealth and your wealth, to be clear. And she’s not just eking by on a small civil servant’s compensation, she’s raking in almost three times the average American salary—definitely so when you consider all her added non-paycheck perks.

AOC has so much stolen wealth in her bank that she can afford to attend Met Galas wearing designer gowns about taxing the rich, and afford to rent a luxury apartment in the richest neighborhoods in the U.S. I don’t consent to being taxed so AOC can have a job (I do so at the threat of government violence), but I do consent to all the ways I spend my money that winds up in the billionaires’ wallets.

AOC rants about paying people “less than what they’re worth,” but what about paying people infinitely more than they’re worth? Especially when you’re paying them with…stolen wealth.

I recently had a conversation with someone who argued that the solution to essentially all political problems in the U.S. would be solved if we just “killed all the billionaires.” Mind you, this is someone who voluntarily and happily shops on Amazon for the convenience (Bezos), routinely buys Apple products (Tim Cook), consentingly takes vaccines (Big Pharma billionaires), and purchases groceries from Whole Foods (again, Bezos)—choosing to enrich the billionaires out of his own free will. As he said, they have too much money, and therefore too much power. He’s not wrong that billionaire cash is presenting a problem in politics, but of course, his “solution” is psychotic, and obviously, hypocritical.

But, for the sake of the argument, let’s play along, though not kill these people, who, as far as I know, haven’t done anything that warrants the death penalty (maybe with the exception of Bill Gates), let’s just confiscate all the wealth, as a good communist would do, and as AOC advocates. Let’s “tax the rich,” 100%, and then let’s seize all their property—“every home, property, business, investment, car, and yacht, right down to their kids’ teddy bears”—and sell it for “full market value,” which of course, is entirely unrealistic. What do we get?

That would raise enough revenue to finance the federal government for 9 months. Not 9 months out of every year: 9 months one time. Then, with no billionaires left to pillage, it’s gone—as is your 401(k), because most of that wealth would’ve been liquidated out of the stock market.

Not to mention the industries and jobs that would disappear.)

Now what AOC? Where do we get the money now? I can’t imagine she’s going to suggest “the millionaires,” since she is one. This silly bartender would make a great professor for Communism 101. (The only places retarded people can make tons of money: academia and government.)

And that’s where we’re at—we’ve got the absolute stupidest people in America’s history standing on the shoulders of brilliant and courageous minds like Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, and Davy Crockett, acting as if they’re worth anything, by virtue of the office, voting on our futures. God help us.

American Thinker

Named around 71 times in Scripture, Lebanon is both a biblical landscape and a living homeland now marked by war and fragile hope.

Southern Lebanon is not often the first place Christians think of when reading Scripture. Yet both the Bible and long-standing tradition place this region quietly within the story of salvation.

Two cities anchor that connection: Tyre and Sidon.

Both are named multiple times in the Hebrew Bible as centers of trade and power. In the Gospels, they appear again when Jesus travels to the region, encountering the Syrophoenician woman who asks for her daughter’s healing (Mark 7:24–30). This brief episode places southern Lebanon within the lived geography of Christ’s ministry.

Christians in Lebanon

Christians make up about 30% of Lebanon’s population (some estimates suggest even more), the largest share in the Middle East. The Maronite Church is the biggest community, alongside Greek Orthodox and Melkite Catholics.

Southern Lebanon includes historic Christian villages, though many families have been displaced by ongoing conflict.

In Maghdouche, local tradition holds that the Virgin Mary waited while Jesus preached in nearby Tyre and Sidon. Today, the shrine of Our Lady of Mantara keeps that memory alive, not as a scriptural claim, but as a testimony to how early Christians understood the movements of Christ and His mother. (Photo above and below show that shrine.)

Further south, the village of Qana is identified by some local traditions as the site of the wedding feast where Jesus turned water into wine. The Gospel of John specifies Cana of Galilee, and scholars continue to debate the precise location. Still, for many believers in Lebanon, Qana remains a place of devotion tied to Christ’s first public sign.

Traditions regarding Biblical locations do not all carry the same historical certainty. But together they reveal something important: southern Lebanon has long been received by Christians not as a distant land, but as part of a sacred landscape — one touched directly or indirectly by the Gospel story.

That sense of belonging makes the present moment more difficult to accept.

A region under strain

A new phase of conflict is reshaping life in southern Lebanon. According to recent reporting, Israel plans to establish a large buffer zone in the region, with troops taking control of areas south of the Litani River.

Bridges across the Litani have been destroyed, and more than one million people have been displaced, according to BBC. Over 1,000 people have been killed, including children and medical workers. Many residents have been told they will not be allowed to return to their homes until security conditions change.

While southern Lebanon is often described as a stronghold of Hezbollah, it is also home to diverse communities, including Christians whose presence stretches back centuries. For them, this is not only a geopolitical crisis. It is a question of continuity — whether families, parishes, and traditions rooted in this land can endure another period of upheaval.

The Bible’s references to Lebanon often speak of strength: cedars that rise high and endure. Christian tradition, too, has treated this land as a place marked by grace and memory. Today, that same land is marked by uncertainty. Yet its history — biblical and lived — suggests that even under pressure, it remains more than a battlefield.

We’ve cracked the case.

Joan Swirsky | May 9, 2026

No matter how bizarre or puzzling or impossibly complex crime scenes seemed to be, the detective Sherlock Holmes, accompanied by his friend Dr. John Watson — both fictional characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the late 1800s — never failed to solve them.

Using keen observation — actually noting teeny, tiny, sometimes microscopic details that eluded even the sleuths at Scotland Yard — as well as the forensic science of the day, Holmes astounded the experts and ultimately became one of the most popular figures in all of literature…to this day!

Holmes may lie in the realm of fiction, but every now and then, a real-life character comes along who reinforces the concept of exceptionalism, who demonstrates that there are still highly original thinkers among us who can shed light where only darkness once prevailed.

And that Would Be?

That would be Warren Kinsella, a native Canadian with an impressive résumé and a long list of accomplishments.  In this riveting interview, featured on Israpundit.org, he relates how in his experience in running political campaigns — and being the campaign manager for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien (1993–2003) — he instantly recognized that the virtual explosion of worldwide anti-Semitism after October 7, 2023 was significantly similar to…yes, political campaigns, in which those who run them are primarily concerned with (1) Volunteers, (2) Leadership, (3) Messaging, (4) Money, (5) Advertising, and (6) Social Media.

The campaign against Israel, Mr. Kinsella said, was “ready to go” and “kicked off” with 2,500 anti-Israel protests around the world —  “even before Israel started to fight back!”  They were using professional signs, professional organizers, a professional global campaign, and that’s hard to do, but they pulled it off.

Additionally, Mr. Kinsella said that this pro-Hamas, anti-Israel campaign targeted young people who were more “susceptible to conspiracy theories, more susceptible to accept antisemitic tropes — the Holocaust didn’t happen, Jews control the world, et al. — all of that nonsense. Young people, unfortunately, in Canada and the U.S. and Europe, were much more willing to accept those types of lies.”

Mr. Kinsella explained that in this global eruption of Jew- and Israel-hatred, the campaign manager was Iran, Qatar was the banker, China and Russia acted as campaign co-chairs, Hamas and Hezb’allah were on the front lines, and also that “the alphabet soup of NGOs (non-governmental organizations), nonprofits, and charities pushing these hateful messages were ready to move … while October 7 was happening … which was either a hell of a coincidence, or they knew in advance what was going to happen.”

But what puzzled me at the time and raised some red flags in my mind was that the very next day, instantaneously, it seemed, there appeared professionally produced protest signs and placards and enormous crowds of protesters — fueled by the efforts of the late Rev. Jesse Jackson — to fight the Supreme Court decision.

How could they produce those signs and all those people overnight? I wondered.

And that is not to omit Black Lives Matter, the Marxist terrorist group that rampaged across the U.S. in 2021 to protest the death of George Floyd and was responsible for about $2 billion in property damage, devastating arson, widespread theft, the injuries of more than 240 police officers and destruction of hundreds of police precincts, upward of 30 murders, and the defacement and vandalism of synagogues, at which they screamed “F— the Jews and Kill the Police.”  That BLM!  The group that was magically able to mobilize huge crowds of like-minded thugs overnight!  How did they do that?

Oh, and you cannot make this up: While Black Lives Matter raked in $90 billion, guess what they did with some of that money!  They imitated the white people and the capitalists they claimed to detest — but actually envy with blazing green-eyed jealousy — by purchasing a $6-million  mansion in lily-white Belair, one of the toniest residential enclaves of California.  

Even before that, the same questions occurred to me when the protesters from Antifa — the so-called anti-fascist group — so reviled the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016 that they decided to storm through America, committing unspeakably violent crimes.  And then we learned that on various street corners, there were neatly piled mounds of bricks, placed strategically so that they had plenty of ammunition to hurl these missiles through the windows of various businesses, thereby telling the world of their hatred of our electoral system and of capitalism.

Where did those brick piles come from? I wondered.

The Money Angle

Many of these seditious and, I think, treasonous organization are funded by none other than white, leftist, America-hating — and envious — billionaires.

According to writer Vanessa Berg, “most people who participate in anti-Jewish discourse do not wake up thinking, ‘How can I be antisemitic today?’  That’s not how systems work.  They respond to incentives.  Today, hostility toward Jews is not just expressed; it is incentivized — not everywhere, not by everyone — but enough to matter, enough to shape behavior, enough to create a system in which attacking Jews … can be profitable.”

“In previous eras,” Berg continues, “antisemitism spread through institutions like churches, governments, and political movements.  Today, it spreads through markets: attention markets, media markets, political markets.  That shift matters because markets don’t ask whether something is true or just.  They ask whether it works.  And right now, in too many cases, attacking Jews works.”

Words

After the catastrophic terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, when 1,200 Jewish men, women, children, and infants were savagely set on fire, raped, violently tortured, and then murdered, and 251 were taken hostage — also to be tortured and raped in the elaborate tunnels the terrorists constructed underground, with the help of massive international donations of money — untold numbers of passionate pro-Israel commentators and journalists throughout the world expended multimillions of words in Israel’s defense.  Just to mention some of my own: here and here and here and here.

Many of these articles attempted to explain the international volcanic eruption of Jew- and Israel-hatred and the embrace of the terrorists by traditional American conservatives such as the execrable Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, as well as their incomprehensible, bizarre, and equally passionate support for the murderers, rapists, and torturers of Hamas — those ferocious genocidal terrorists who were acting on the mandates of not only their public statements over decades, but also their written charter and, of course, the non-negotiable dictates of their bosses and sponsors, the murderous mullahs in Iran.

I certainly missed many of these articles, but of the ones I read, none succeeded in explaining this “spontaneous” worldwide explosion of in-your-face racism, lawlessness, and deep hatred.

Kinsella succeeds in spelling out the elaborate planning — indeed, orchestration — that has gone into the constant drumbeat of anti-Jew and anti-Israel demonstrations worldwide, of huge crowds blaming Israel for being attacked, of equally “spontaneous” demonstrations on campuses, on street corners, in major cities throughout the world, with demonstrators all decked out in keffiyehs and holding up professionally created placards, all condemning “genocidal” and “apartheid” Israel.

Not only that, but vicious videos like this, with so-called journalists like Megyn Kelly asking quite sneeringly, “Who are they?” — the Jews and Israelis, that is — and Israel-loathing obsessives like Carlson and Owens and Fuentes sharing their vomitus and bile with anyone who has the stomach to watch or listen, and to like-minded racists.

These kinds of demonstrations, Kinsella says, have been going on for years, actually for decades on end.

Indeed, recent headlines attest to this hatred’s pandemic nature.  Here is but a minuscule example:

• Peru’s President Under Fire Over Antisemitic Remarks Blaming Jews for ‘Pushing’ Germany Into World War II.
• Toronto Judaica shop hit by rock in latest antisemitic attack.
• Night of Fear in Los Angeles: Assault Near Synagogue Raises Alarming Concerns Over the Rapid Escalation of Antisemitism
• Masked pro-Palestinian students ‘seize’ Belgian university, cover their faces with keffiyehs and demand the university impose a full academic boycott on Israel
• Spat at, threatened and kidnapped: British Jews tell of rising antisemitism
• Why Are Portugal’s Leaders Silent on Rise of Antisemitic Attacks?

Is There a Solution?

Author Kinsella suggests a number of strategies, all of which involve significantly more accountability and punishment than now exists for the purveyors of antisemitism.  Among them:

• Defeating anonymity so that the thugs who wear masks and use fake names online are subject to new laws that level serious consequences.
• Penalizing the haters to the full extent of the law instead of deporting the non-citizens or allowing turnstile so-called justice.
• Targeting online antisemitism, including all the fake accounts, and using regulatory powers, including imprisonment.
• Forcing social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok to be much stricter in moderating content or else facing serious consequences themselves.
• Funding bias crime units, and if they don’t exist, creating them.

The Pushback

By the same benevolent mercy and justice described in the Hebrew Bible, God blessed Israel by vanquishing from history the immensely powerful empires that sought to extinguish the Jews — the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Assyrians, et al., all of them extinct for centuries.

And when He observed the psychotic October 7 attack on his “chosen people” as so sinful, so craven, so immoral, so bestial, he sent President Donald J. Trump to aid our closest ally and to instruct a largely racist world about the difference between right and wrong and good and bad, and also what is worthy of defending and fighting for at this fraught time in world history.

Joan Swirsky is a New York–based journalist and author.  Her website is www.joanswirsky.com, and she can be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com.

Sir Keir Starmer has again insisted he will not quit despite calls from dozens of Labour MPs in the wake of the party’s local election mauling. The Prime Minister warned that if he left No 10 it would “plunge the country into chaos”.

Speaking in south London today, Sir Keir said: “I’m not going to walk away from this; that would plunge the country into chaos. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to respond. It doesn’t mean we don’t need to rebuild. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to set out the path ahead. That’s what I’m going to do in the coming days.”

He said Labour needs to set out arguments about hope and the future, and appeal to young people, admitting that “the hope wasn’t there enough in the first two years of this Government”.

He added: “I will be setting out those arguments, but more than anything, setting out with clarity the values and convictions that drive me.”

It comes as a string of Labour backbenchers have publicly demanded Sir Keir should either quit or set a timetable for his departure.

Labour lost more than 1,000 councillors in Thursday’s ballots, with Reform UK making stunning gains in the Red Wall.

Sir Keir has brought former prime minister Gordon Brown back into Government in a desperate bid to cling to power.

Katie Harris, Express

President Donald Trump said Friday night that the United States military could decide to relocate the troops that are currently stationed in Germany and move them to Poland.

The president touted his friendship with the country’s leader, President Karol Nawrocki, who assumed office last year. The Pentagon previously indicated that the U.S. would move 5,000 troops from Germany in the next six to 12 months.

“Well, Poland would like that,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We have a great relationship with Poland. I have a great relationship with the president. I endorsed him, and he won. He came from way behind, and he won. He’s a great fighter, he’s a great guy. I like him a lot, so that’s possible.”

Germany is currently home to the largest U.S. military presence in Europe, with more than 35,000 troops currently stationed in the country, and is also viewed as crucial to the U.S.’s presence on the continent.

The United Kingdom and Italy also host over 10,000 U.S. troops each. Poland currently hosts 369 permanently assigned active-duty ​service members and about 10,000 personnel of rotational force, according to Reuters.

Just the News

Great Britain, traditionally considered the anchor of western civilization, is facing an incomprehensibly tragic fate, determined to replace its people and commit cultural suicid

Great Britain once commanded respect worldwide as the irreplaceable anchor of Western civilization. Its institutions—rooted in the Magna Carta’s covenant of liberties, the common law’s impartiality, the Enlightenment’s rational skepticism, and the parliamentary democracy that exported freedom across continents—embodied the West’s highest aspirations: individual autonomy, secular governance, equality before the law, and the unyielding defense of conscience. 

Yet these foundations are now being dismantled. In earlier times, this would have taken a military invasion or revolution. Today, however, the cultural collapse is brought about by mass migration and a demographic transformation whose consequences are as predictable as they are catastrophic. Projections confirm that the White British population, the historic carrier of Judeo-Christian values, will be reduced to minority status by 2063, with the transition arriving even sooner among the young. To be sure, this goes far beyond the exotic “diversity” celebrated by progressives in the past; it is the wholesale replacement of a tolerant, open society by an intolerant culture defined by ideological totalitarianism and systemic discrimination against women, homosexuals, and adherents of other faiths. The inevitable result will be the erasure of Britain as the West’s moral and cultural lodestar, supplanted by parallel societies, thoroughly Islamic powerhouses, governed by supremacist norms that brook no dissent.

The data are irrefutable and accelerating. A 2025 report by Professor Matthew Goodwin for the Centre for Heterodox Social Science forecasts that White Britons will fall below 50% of the national population by 2063, with those under forty crossing the threshold by 2050 and the share collapsing to roughly 33.7% by 2100. These findings echo Professor David Coleman’s 2010 Oxford study, which projected minority status by approximately 2066 under net immigration of 180,000 annually; current realities have rendered that timeline optimistic.

The 2010 University of Leeds analysis already anticipated a drop to 79% White British by 2051. The engines of this transformation are relentless: record net migration, peaking at 906,000 in 2023 and still exceeding 200,000 annually even after recent declines; fertility rates among White Britons languishing at approximately 1.39–1.54 children per woman, versus 1.97–2.03 among foreign-born residents; and the youthful demographic momentum of ethnic-minority cohorts. 

London and Birmingham have already passed the tipping point, their 2021 Census data revealing “minority White British” majorities. By century’s end, nearly half the population will be foreign-born or their immediate descendants. Accordingly, to dismiss the problem out of hand and characterize the demographic trend as “organic evolution” is an insult to the British; rather, it is “engineered displacement,” fueled by elite policies that treat borders as suggestions and native birth rates as irrelevant.

Britain’s historic role as civilizational anchor renders this shift existential. From the Glorious Revolution’s constitutional settlement to the abolition of the slave trade, from Newton’s empiricism to Mill’s marketplace of ideas, Britain forged the template for limited government, free speech, and personal dignity. These were not abstract ideals but lived realities that defeated tyranny, emancipated women, and decriminalized homosexuality. Yet the incoming demographic tide imports a culture fundamentally at odds with this inheritance. The primary vector is not abstract “ethnicity” but the rapid growth of populations from Muslim-majority regions, whose orthodox religious framework—when measured by attitudes in British Muslim communities—reveals an ideological totalitarianism that subordinates individual rights to divine command (as interpreted by imams, community leaders, and theological scholars, depending on time and place).

Polling data expose the gulf. A 2024 Henry Jackson Society survey found that only 28% of British Muslims viewed the outlawing of homosexuality as undesirable (compared with 62% of the general public), while 27% saw outlawing gay marriage as undesirable (compared to 60% of the wider public). Earlier Channel 4/ICM polling (2016) recorded 52% of British Muslims disagreeing that homosexuality should be legal. Support for sharia provisions remains stubbornly high: 23% in 2016 favored its introduction in parts of Britain, and the 2024 survey showed significant minorities endorsing compulsory halal in schools/hospitals (57%), public prayer rooms in secular institutions (66%), and legalization of polygamy (21%). These attitudes are not fringe; they reflect a worldview in which revelation trumps consent, and apostasy, blasphemy, or “insult” to the faith justifies coercion.

The cultural consequences are already manifest and will intensify as demographic weight shifts. Women face systemic subordination. Orthodox Islamic norms—evident in elevated rates of forced marriage, “honor”-based violence, and female genital mutilation within affected communities—treat female autonomy as a threat. The 2024 HJS polling revealed only 17% of British Muslims viewing a more traditional role for women as undesirable, while 39% in 2016 agreed that “wives should always obey their husbands” (Channel 4/ICM).

Rape-gang scandals, spanning Rotherham, Rochdale, and beyond, illustrate the contempt: organized networks disproportionately involving men of Pakistani Muslim heritage preyed on thousands of White working-class girls, with authorities paralyzed by fear of “racism” accusations. Recent inquiries, including Baroness Casey’s 2025 report and the Home Office’s independent panel, confirm over-representation of Asian and Pakistani-heritage suspects in group-based child sexual exploitation and explicitly probe the role of ethnicity, religion, and culture—factors long denied in the name of “multiculturalism.” Victims were branded “kuffar” (infidels), their degradation rationalized through a lens of religious entitlement. This is not isolated criminality; it is cultural entitlement enabled by demographic enclaves.

Homosexuals encounter visceral rejection. In communities where significant pluralities still regard same-sex relations as immoral or criminalizable, public spaces in Birmingham or Tower Hamlets have witnessed harassment, protests against LGBT education, and “no-go” pressures. The ideological totalitarianism increasingly extends to non-Muslims: blasphemy sensitivities stifle criticism, antisemitic incidents surge in tandem with Muslim population growth, and Christian minorities report intimidation. Parallel legal systems—sharia councils—already adjudicate family matters in ways incompatible with British equality.

As White Britons become minorities in their own cities and eventually their nation, Islamic norms will not assimilate; on the contrary, they will dominate, demanding accommodation while offering none. Schools with no White British pupils, hospitals enforcing halal norms, and political discourse paralyzed by fear of “Islamophobia” (i.e., the consequent ostracization, harassment, or assault)—the ultimate heresy from an appeasement point of view—are harbingers of a society where Western liberalism is the minority creed.

The pessimism is warranted precisely because the process is self-reinforcing. Lower native fertility, unchecked migration, and higher immigrant birth rates create a demographic momentum that no modest policy tweak can arrest. Elites, intoxicated by virtue-signaling and terrified of “far-right” labels, have presided over this transformation without democratic consent. The result is not hybrid vigor but cultural suicide: the anchor of the West—its commitment to reason, rights, and restraint—snapped in favor of a totalizing ideology that views pluralism as weakness and dissent as heresy.

By 2063, Britain will not be recognizably British. Its cathedrals may stand, but the values that built them will be relics. The tolerant society that once exported liberty will import the very intolerance that it once overcame. Demographic destiny, absent radical reversal, ensures that the eclipse is total. The light that illuminated the West will flicker out in the land of its birth, leaving a darker, more divided realm where ideological totalitarianism reigns and the discriminated—women, homosexuals, religious minorities—pay the price of elite folly. History is unlikely to record this as enrichment; it is a civilian conquest terminating a civilization.

American Thinker

In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister, Terje Aasland, has a pithy response: “We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.”

This week, to the alarm of environmental campaigners, he announced that three gasfields off the country’s southern coast would reopen by the end of 2028 – nearly three decades after they closed – to meet a shortfall caused by the impact of the war in Ukraine and disruption to supplies from the Middle East.

The decision will help keep gas and oil production at about the 2025 level – which has been stable for almost 20 years – and stay broadly the same for the rest of this decade. Norway has 97 offshore oilfields, three of which came on stream last year, and its Norwegian Offshore Directorate expects “100 and beyond” within the next two years, still producing at least the present level of 2m barrels of oil daily.

The Barents Sea, in the high north, is the new gas and oil frontier – with the prospect of mining for seabed minerals between northern Norway and Greenland, a more distant prospect after initial surveys by the Norwegian Offshore Directorate – an agency of Aasland’s department – showed potential.

“Norwegian offshore production plays an important role in ensuring energy security in Europe,” Aasland tells the Guardian. “The world, and Europe, will have a need for oil and gas for decades to come and it is crucial that Norway continues to develop its continental shelf to remain a reliable and long-term supplier … and (with) a high level of exploration activity.”

As the birth rate continues to plummet to record lows, data shows that a significant percentage of liberals are deprioritizing the importance of marriage and having children, especially among teens. Among conservatives, however, the phenomenon does not appear to be occurring.

In an article published last week by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), sociologists Brad Wilcox and Grant Bailey highlight how the aspirations that many liberals claim to have about marrying and having children are not lining up with their real-world behavior, which appears to be heavily influenced by negative media narratives.

They note that mainstream media outlets like Bloomberg, The New York Times, and The Washington Post have been publishing a steady stream of articles for decades that “devalue, deny, and discount the institution of marriage.”

Wilcox and Bailey further noted that current data on marriage has made it clear that the anti-marriage messaging is having an effect on the actual marriage rates of left-leaning, college-educated Americans. “No group of Americans is less likely to say marriage matters than liberals, especially the college educated,” they observe.

Among the cohort, only 30% agree that “children are better off with married parents,” according to the 2022 American Family Survey. Interestingly, less educated liberals were more supportive of the principle at 36%.

Conservatives hold strikingly different views on the question (which has been proven to be true time and again by social science data). The survey found that over nine in 10 college-educated conservatives (91%) say that children are better off with married parents, with 73% of less educated conservatives agreeing.

The proof of the importance of worldview regarding marriage is borne out in the actual data of who is married. As Wilcox and Bailey point out, “a majority of conservative men and women are married, and a majority of liberals are not,” with college-educated conservatives aged 22-40 being 50% more likely to be married than their liberal peers.

The bleak marriage picture for liberals becomes worse when considering the data on progressive teens’ views on the institution. A Monitoring the Future study found that since 2010, the percentage of liberal 12th graders who say they expect to get married has plummeted, with boys dropping 22 percentage points to 53% and girls dropping 12 points to 63%.

The outlook among conservative teens is far more positive, holding largely steady at around 83% for boys and 90% for girls over the last decade and a half.

“Despite many on the Left suggesting declines in marriage are largely a class issue, we found that political views were a stronger predictor of being married than college education,” IFS Research Fellow Grant Bailey told The Washington Stand. “Marriage rates are significantly lower among liberal adults, and left-leaning teens are increasingly disinterested in marriage.”

The grim marital outlook and the decreasing number of marriages among liberals, who encompass roughly 48% of the U.S. population, are likely a significant factor in the dwindling American birth rate. This is because the birth rate among married women (81.6 per 1,000) is considerably higher than it is for unmarried women (36.4 per 1,000).

Studies show that what liberals (and conservatives) are missing out on by eschewing marriage and children is happiness and fulfilment. Data collected in 2024 shows that just 66% of unmarried liberals aged 22-40 say they are “pretty” or “very” happy, compared to 86% of liberals who are married.

A considerable (although not as sharp) difference also exists among conservatives, with 90% of those who are married saying they are happy compared to 73% of those who are not.

Policy analysts like Leah Libresco Sargeant argue that those who are married are called to witness how married life brings meaning and purpose to a world hungering for both. “As a married woman, I think marriage is great,” she recently observed. “It shouldn’t be this ‘hard sell.’

We should approach marriage with a real sense of optimism in that we’re trying to invite people into this phase of life that is both challenging and beautiful.”

Originally published at The Washington Stand