In her 2022 memoir, abortionist Christine Henneberg told the story of a pregnant Black woman who came to the hospital where Henneberg was a resident. The 26-year-old woman was with her two-year-old son. She was pregnant and bleeding.

The doctor, whom Henneberg calls Dr. A., asked the woman, “Is this a planned pregnancy? Do you think you’re going to keep it?” The woman said her pregnancy wasn’t planned, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted an abortion. The baby’s father, she said, wanted the child.

Because of the bleeding, Dr. A. did an ultrasound. When the young mother saw her baby on the screen, she became excited. Henneberg writes:

Dr. A inserted the probe and found the pregnancy, a seven-week fetal pole with a clear flicker at its center. The young woman asked to see the image; she pulled her son onto the table with her and pointed at the screen. “Look, baby!” She cooed. “There’s the heartbeat! You see it? You see the heart?”

The woman then asked if she might have been pregnant with twins. The father of the baby, she said, was a twin. Dr. A told her it could’ve been a twin pregnancy, but if so, the other twin had miscarried, and only this baby was still alive. The loss of the twin could have caused the bleeding. The remaining baby, however, was healthy.

Dr. A again asked if she wanted an abortion. After weighing her decision, the woman decided to have her baby. She seemed excited, and Henneberg describes her as “beaming.”

But Henneberg didn’t share her joy.

In her own words, she was “horrified” that the woman had chosen life. Henneberg says, “It was not the decision I had expected or wanted for her.” Henneberg further writes:

I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and say, “You do realize, this is not just about how you feel this moment, today. This is about your body, a 40-week pregnancy, and then the rest of your life. A third child. How will you cope? How will you afford it? Think about this.”

I thought Dr. A should have said something to try to guide her, remind her of these things.

But Dr. A. just said, “Okay then, great.”

Henneberg was angry at Dr. A. for not pressuring the woman into an abortion. That night, Henneberg describes herself “scribbling furiously” in her journal, still angry that the woman didn’t choose an abortion. She writes:

I thought about her “decision” (if that’s what you could even call it, I mused bitterly) and wondered whether and how we had failed her.

Dr. A., I decided, should have been more careful about showing her the ultrasound, because the woman seemed to have been influenced by the image of the fetal heartbeat, the idea of having possibly conceived twins…

Henneberg seemed to believe that Dr. A should have refused to show the patient her ultrasound, removing even the option of informed consent. But a woman has the right to know vital information about what’s going on in her own body. Hiding the truth from women might make it more likely they will choose abortion, but it’s a violation of their rights.

And it can set up a woman for emotional trauma when she eventually learns the truth.

Henneberg complained that, by not having an abortion, the pregnant woman had chosen the “easy” way, saying, “Everyone will be happy for you. No one can question you. No one can call you a murderer. No one can tell you you will regret it, even if, maybe, you will.”

The women having abortions, she felt, were the courageous ones, because abortion carries stigma, but they were still doing what (she thought) was best for themselves.

In retrospect, the author admits she was “neglecting to consider how I might have felt differently if she had been a white woman in her 30s, well-educated, articulate—a woman more like me.”

In this way, Henneberg acknowledges the racist underpinnings of her feelings. To be fair, she seems to at least realize how inappropriate her feelings were, saying, “My understanding of ‘choice’ was limited to the choices I’d make, choices of privilege and control.”

In America, there is a long history of coercive policies aimed at people of color surrounding pregnancy and birth. Historically, minority women have been victims of forced sterilization and abortion and/or sterilization coercion by white doctors.

Source: Christine Henneberg Boundless: An Abortion Doctor Becomes a Mother (San Francisco, California, 2022) 86, 88-90

Susan Terzo, National Right to Life

A horrible tragedy occurred yesterday in Canada when a killer, later identified as a “trans identifying woman,” shot nine people to death and injured 27 others, before turning the gun on himself. The Canadian establishment has been desperate to hide the truth about the shooter, but this was not a secret the establishment could sit on.

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The shooting took place at the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in tiny Tumbler Ridge, a remote rural community in British Columbia. The killer began by murdering two people at a home, then headed for the secondary school (grades 7-12), where he opened fire. Six people died on school grounds, and one died en route to the hospital.

The initial police alert described the shooter as “a female in a dress with brown hair.” (Clearly, they meant a brown-haired female, not a brown-haired dress.) Almost instantly, though, social media users (me included) posited that the shooter was probably a member of the mentally-ill cohort who claim to be the opposite of their biological sex:

I wonder if time will show this to have been a man in a dress.

Tariffs Fall and Investment Surges

Trade shapes power structures, and when two economies tighten bonds, the ripple spreads far beyond shipping lanes and customs desks. On Feb. 12, 2026, the Trump administration finalized a sweeping trade agreement with Taiwan that cuts tariffs, boosts American exports, and pours hundreds of billions into U.S. industry.

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Taiwan agreed to eliminate or sharply reduce tariffs on nearly all American goods, as duties on U.S. beef, dairy, and corn were reduced immediately to 0%. Pork belly tariffs fell from 40% to 10%, and ham fell from 32% to 10%. Taiwan also removed non-tariff barriers on motor vehicles, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals, accepting U.S. safety standards in those sectors.

The U.S. dropped tariffs on Taiwanese imports to 15% from 20%, a shift that aligns Taiwan with key competitors like South Korea and Japan. Semiconductors and advanced electronics stand at the center of that adjustment.

Taiwan is committed to buying nearly $85 billion in U.S. goods between 2026 and 2029, including $44.4 billion in liquefied natural gas and crude oil, $15.2 billion in civil aircraft and engines, and $25.2 billion in power grid equipment and generators. Rounding out the list are marine and steelmaking equipment.

A $250 Billion Manufacturing Anchor

Reaching even higher is the headline figure; Taiwanese companies pledged $250 billion in U.S. production across semiconductors, energy, AI, and advanced electronics.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation committed $100 billion within that total, with the Taiwanese government guaranteeing another $250 billion to support supply chain expansion.

U.S. Ambassador Jamieson Greer oversaw the signing under the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. 

“President Trump’s leadership in the Asia-Pacific region continues to generate prosperous trade ties for the United States with important partners across Asia, while further advancing the economic and national security interests of the American people,” said Ambassador Greer.  “The Agreement on Reciprocal Trade with Taiwan will eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers facing U.S. exports to Taiwan, furthering opportunities for American farmers, ranchers, fishermen, workers, small businesses, and manufacturers. This Agreement also builds on our longstanding economic and trade relationship with Taiwan and will significantly enhance the resilience of our supply chains, particularly in high-technology sectors.  I want to thank my counterparts from Taiwan for their strong commitment to achieving fair and balanced trade with the United States.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick highlighted investment guarantees and the expansion of high-tech industrial clusters on American soil.

The trade deficit with Taiwan reached over $125 billion in the first eleven months of 2025, a sharp increase from $73.7 billion in 2024. AI chip imports drove much of that increase, with leaders framing the agreement as a step toward balance while strengthening supply chain resilience.

Beijing Pushes Back

Anything with Taiwan, however, comes loaded with a 1,000-pound panda bear behind it. China responded with firm opposition, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun declaring that Beijing rejects agreements between nations that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

China said on Friday it “resolutely opposes” a deal signed by Washington and Taipei to reduce tariffs on Taiwanese products and increase the self-ruled island’s investment in the United States.

“China consistently and resolutely opposes any agreement… signed between countries with which it has diplomatic relations and the Taiwan region of China,” Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said, urging Washington to abide by the one-China principle.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called Taiwan the most important issue in China-U.S. relations during a recent call with President Donald Trump, pressing for prudent handling of arms sales and warning against deeper ties.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, however, described the pact as pivotal for the island’s economic future, urging closer trade alignment with democracies such as the United States, Japan, and European partners over a deeper reliance on China.

Strategic Stakes Beyond Commerce

Over 70% of global advanced chip production depends on Taiwan, as shifting capital and facilities toward American soil reduces exposure to geopolitical shocks. Industrial clusters anchored in American states simultaneously strengthen national security and economic leverage.

Lawmakers in both capitals have raised legitimate questions about deficit levels and investment commitments, yet leaders on both sides have signaled confidence that legislative hurdles will be easily cleared.

China said on Friday it “resolutely opposes” a deal signed by Washington and Taipei to reduce tariffs on Taiwanese products and increase the self-ruled island’s investment in the United States.

“China consistently and resolutely opposes any agreement… signed between countries with which it has diplomatic relations and the Taiwan region of China,” Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said, urging Washington to abide by the one-China principle.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called Taiwan the most important issue in China-U.S. relations during a recent call with President Donald Trump, pressing for prudent handling of arms sales and warning against deeper ties.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, however, described the pact as pivotal for the island’s economic future, urging closer trade alignment with democracies such as the United States, Japan, and European partners over a deeper reliance on China.

Strategic Stakes Beyond Commerce

Over 70% of global advanced chip production depends on Taiwan, as shifting capital and facilities toward American soil reduces exposure to geopolitical shocks. Industrial clusters anchored in American states simultaneously strengthen national security and economic leverage.

Lawmakers in both capitals have raised legitimate questions about deficit levels and investment commitments, yet leaders on both sides have signaled confidence that legislative hurdles will be easily cleared.

The framework signed in January matured into the final agreement in February, and tariff reductions have already begun.

Trade deals don’t move markets; they move alliances. When energy contracts, semiconductor fabrication plants, aircraft engines, and grid equipment bind two economies, political alignment follows.

Final Thoughts

The agreement reshapes more than tariffs; it reorders supply chains, redirects capital, and signals resolve with increasing pressure from Beijing. President Trump framed the pact as part of a broader strategy to secure manufacturing, energy independence, and technological leadership.

For deeper analysis, exclusive columns, and ad-free access to reporting that cuts through spin, join PJ Media VIP. Support independent journalism and receive 60 percent off with promo code FIGHT.

Dirty Harry writes for PJ Media, apparently.”  –  Redstater in a Blue Apocalypse

David Manney writes for PJ Media with the outlook of someone who has spent nearly sixty years watching the world with both eyes open. He leans on plain language, lived experience, and a stubborn belief that character still matters, even when no one is paying attention. A former graphic designer, marketing content specialist, marketing professional, journalist, and technical writer, he tries to sort truth from noise and share what he sees without theatrics.

He lives in the Midwest with his wife, who is smarter than he is and far more graceful about it, along with their two dogs, Watson and Mabel. Manney often jokes that he has never faked sarcasm in his life, and most days his columns prove it.

We might want to rethink DEI and a left-wing political stance as the sole qualifications for high-level law enforcement positions.

Via Fox News:

A North Carolina House Oversight Committee hearing spurred on by the recent killing of a young Ukrainian woman, Iryna Zarutska, in Charlotte, took an unexpected turn when [Republican State Representative Allen] Chesser asked Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, “What branch of government do you operate under?”

McFadden, who is the top law enforcement officer in the county where Zarutska was killed, simply answered, “Mecklenburg County,” prompting Chesser to repeat, “What branch of government do you operate under, sheriff?”

McFadden’s next guess was “Constitution of the United States.”

Chesser remarked, “This is not where I was anticipating getting stuck. Um, are you aware of how many branches of government there are?” The sheriff quickly shot back, “No.”

At least he answered that last question correctly.

Chesser continued, “For the sake of debate, let’s say there are three branches of government: legislative, executive, judicial. Of those three, which do you fall under?”

McFadden guessed “judicial,” probably because it was the last one listed and the only one he could remember.

As for why McFadden has refused to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, he previously averred the following:

“We do not have a role in enforcement whatsoever, we do not have to follow the rules and the laws that are governed by our lawmakers in Raleigh.”

McFadden’s conspicuous cognitive impairment makes it unlikely that he could have secured his lofty position if not for his race. We are getting to the point where DEI is not funny anymore and needs to end before it destroys our country.

Moonbattery

3:09:56 AM by factmart

Candice Owens, she has to be the worst conservative I have seen in my 73 years on earth. To belittle Charlie Kirk wife. What does the Bible say about how to treat a widow. Charlie is in Heaven, and the Lord is not going to let him know how his so called friend is treating his wife. The Lord has wiped away every tear from his eyes. Candice you are a low life, how you have treated Charlie’s legacy and his wife, and his kids. I forgive you Candice. You should repeat of your sins and sin no more. Does anyone else feel this way?

The country still shares one screen, but not one meaning. One side will dominate the other, or separation will harden into something more permanent.

The Seattle Seahawks trampled the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX, but the postgame chatter barely touched football. Fans and pundits argued about anthems, halftime, commercials, and what the whole spectacle “said” about America.

For better or worse, the Super Bowl serves as the premier civic liturgy of the American empire, a night when strangers share the same screens and offices share the same small talk. When that ritual becomes another front in the culture war, the country loses one more place to breathe.

Americans once used the game to share food, laugh at ads, and pretend for a night that they still belonged to one people. This year, the country used the game to rehearse separation.

Families fight. Politics intrudes. Resentments pile up. Holidays still force a pause. Thanksgiving and Christmas push people back to the same table, reminding them that the argument cannot become the relationship.

When even the ritual itself turns into the argument — when Thanksgiving and Christmas are no longer about gratitude or celebrating the birth of Christ but rather who can win a political debate — the family slides from conflict toward rupture. A nation works the same way. Shared ceremonies do not solve deep disagreements, but they keep disagreement from becoming total separation.

From national pastime to litmus test

Americans rarely stop living their separate lives to watch the same thing at the same time. Streaming splinters audiences. Social media isolates communities. Even big films and best-selling books now fall into ideological silos.

The Super Bowl remains one of the few national events that still compels common attention. People who hate sports tune in for the ads so they can follow the conversation at work the next day. A shared celebration, however frivolous, still binds people who otherwise share little else in common.

This year’s Super Bowl looked like a country at war with itself.

The broadcast opened with two national anthems: the familiar Francis Scott Key standard and the newer “black national anthem” that appears at more NFL events each season. The league has leaned hard into woke activism, from corporate rituals to social campaigns, and it rarely hides the moral it wants viewers to absorb. Two anthems signal two constituencies. Two constituencies begin to behave like two nations.

A cultural sorting mechanism

The halftime show sharpened that divide. The NFL chose Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican artist who performs almost entirely in Spanish, and the set centered on Hispanic identity. The stage recreated a bodega, complete with an “EBT welcome” neon sign. The performance leaned into sexual provocation, with dancers simulating sex acts and same-sex grinding played for shock and applause. The show ended with performers hoisting foreign flags, a tableau that read less like cultural flair and more like a victory lap.

A large portion of the audience did not buy what the league sold. Ratings suggested many viewers tuned out during the set. Some did so out of prudishness, others out of irritation at the message, others out of confusion. Either way, the halftime show did not function as a shared moment. It became a sorting mechanism.

Turning Point USA offered a competing halftime program featuring country artists singing about America and Jesus Christ. The stream broke records and reportedly became YouTube’s largest live broadcast. The accomplishment deserves credit. The need for it should worry anyone who wants a coherent nation. Instead of one shared celebration, Americans built parallel ceremonies, then congratulated themselves for avoiding each other.

Who is the customer here?

The commercials followed the same pattern. One spot from a mortgage lender portrayed a family of color moving into a mostly white neighborhood and encountering casual racism until they instructed the residents on diversity and inclusion. The ad did not wink. It preached.

Another strange commercial, backed by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, aimed to address rising anti-Semitism. It showed a Jewish student harassed in a school hallway as classmates mocked him and stuck a note reading “dirty Jew” to his backpack. The boy reached his locker, where a black student offered solidarity based on shared experience with hatred from whites. The ad then unveiled a “blue square” social media campaign modeled on the “black square” campaign that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020.

NFL owners did not back away from the woke script. They turned the dial higher.

Two different worlds

The next day I went to my barber, and he described the shift in real time. Small talk drives that job. For most of his life, the Monday after the Super Bowl brought lively chatter about the best plays and the funniest ads. This year, customers wanted to talk politics. They complained about the anthems, the halftime, the messaging, the moral scolding. The game itself barely came up. Friendly banter about the MVP and next season’s prospects gave way to arguments about what kind of country this still is.

That exchange captured the larger problem. Conservatives and liberals increasingly inhabit different worlds. They share geography, but they do not share premises. They do not share authorities. They do not share the same media diet, the same moral language, or the same sense of what counts as a fact. When they occupy the same room, they talk past each other. When they can avoid the room, they do.

The old American civic fracture ran along a map. The new fracture runs through families, workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods. The country did not divide into North and South. It divided into competing moral nations layered on top of the same territory. Each tribe builds its own institutions, its own entertainers, its own narratives, and, increasingly, its own rituals.

No stable regime can endure that kind of division indefinitely. One side will eventually impose cultural dominance on the other, with power used to punish dissent and enforce conformity. Or the country will choose some form of national divorce, formal or informal, with communities separating as much as law and logistics allow.

The Super Bowl did not create this crisis. It revealed it. A shared civic ritual lets people practice unity without requiring uniformity. Americans once used the game as a harmless excuse to share food, laugh at ads, and pretend for a night that they still belonged to one people. This year, the country used the game to rehearse separation.

A nation that cannot share a football game cannot share much else for long.

Auron MacIntyre, The Blaze

Chaos erupted Thursday at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee oversight hearing when Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley confronted Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison over the astounding levels of fraud uncovered in the state just months ago.

During the contentious exchange, Hawley accused Ellison of blatant corruption, alleging he worked with individuals later convicted in the scandal to shield them from investigators, and accepted a $10,000 campaign contribution from them just nine days after pledging to assist their cause.

“The people who ran the Feeding Our Futures program came to you in your official office in the state capitol on December 11, 2021, and asked for your help in getting investigators off their backs,” Sen. Hawley said. They complained to you for upwards of an hour about state investigators going after them, and they begged you to help them. And you agreed to it, amazingly. And we know you did.”

“That’s not true,” Ellison shot back.

“It’s all caught on tape,” Hawley replied. “Every single sentence is caught on tape. Here’s what you said. Let’s take a look.”

You said to them, ‘Send me the names of all these folks who are investigating them.’ You said to them, ‘Send me their names, and I’ll take that list, and I’ll call the person over at Education who’s investigating them and say, what’s going on?’ Why am I getting these complaints? Then you went on to say, ‘I already have my team working on this. What day should we get together to discuss it again?’ You made pledge after pledge to them. You said, we’ve got to make sure this guy who’s investigating them stops it. You said, ‘You have my attention. I’m concerned about this.’ You said, ‘Let’s go fight these people,’ meaning the people who are investigating the fraud. Why’d you do it? Why’d you help them?

Ellison fired back, accusing Hawley of “cherry-picking quotes,” though it was unclear how the remarks in question could be meaningfully recontextualized in a more favorable light.

“I already have my team working on this,” Ellison insisted. “My team assisted with the information that led to the prosecution and conviction of these people.”

He went on to argue that because it was a federal prosecution, he had no part in the actual conviction of the fraudsters.

“BS,” Hawley exclaimed. “You had whistleblowers come to you as early as 2019.”

The Senator went on to accuse Ellison of taking a bribe, in the form of a $10,000 campaign contribution.

Here’s what happened. They went to your office. They solicited money from you. They solicited help from you. They came to your office. It was your official office.You’ve been with them for 54 minutes. They asked you for help. You pledged it to them, and they talked repeatedly about money. In fact, it’s all they talk about. Money, money, money, money. They said, we will put our dollars in the right place. We will support candidates that will fight to protect our interests. You replied, ‘that’s right.’ They said, if you are securing your donor base and securing your power base, you can act the way you want. You replied, ‘money is freedom.’ They said, ‘the amount of money circulating…’ I’m reading the transcript. ‘The amount of money circulating in our community today is powerful, and we haven’t realized it in a meaningful way.’ And you said, ‘Give me the specifics.’ And nine days later, you took $10,000 from people who were then indicted. It’s in your reports. Why’d you do it? Was it worth it?

“You know what? This is a theatrical performance,” Ellison said.

“This is the truth,” Hawley said. “This is what accountability looks like, of which you’ve had none. You helped fraudsters defraud your state and this government of $9 billion, and you got a fat campaign contribution out of it. You ought to be indicted. That’s the truth.”

“Well, for the record, he’s lying, and that’s the truth,” Ellison said.

Sen. Hawley went on:

Oh, no, this is all on the record, sir. Did you bother to investigate where the money that you facilitated their fraud for, where it went? Do you know where it went, what it was used for, the fraudulent money? I do, because we just heard testimony about it yesterday. The funds went to hundreds of millions of dollars, to terrorist groups, to transnational criminal organizations, to the drug trade, to drug trafficking, to child trafficking. And you took $10,000, and helped them do it. The other thing is, whistleblowers came to you as early as 2019. Let’s look. As early as 2019, whistleblower…

In 2019, whistleblowers came to you in your office and referred to you fraud allegations from Feeding Our Futures, and you blew them off. Listen, your own state newspaper, The Minnesota Star-Tribune. The Partners in Nutrition brought its concerns to the attorney general’s office in 2018 and in 2019, and you did nothing. You did nothing for years. The only action you took is, once all these fraudsters came to your office and asked you to get involved and offered you money, then you got involved. Then you took the money, and then you got involved.

Hawley then told Minnesota’s attorney general that he belongs in jail, prompting Ellison to respond, “Well, we’ll see what you can do about it.” Whether Ellison will ultimately face any criminal charges remains an open question.

Dmitri Bolt, Townhall

In periods of civilizational stress, the defining intellectuals are rarely those who echo prevailing orthodoxies. Rather, they are individuals insisting on the legitimacy of first principles when those principles have become unfashionable or even dangerous to articulate. In contemporary Britain, Natasha Hausdorff, Douglas Murray, and Matt Goodwin exemplify this truth-seeking, altruistic calling. Each operates within a distinct professional domain—law, cultural criticism, and political science—yet all share a deeply anti-totalitarian idealism rooted in the defense of liberal democracy against ideological capture. Their engagement is not abstract but personal, involving reputational risk, social ostracism, and sustained public hostility. What unites them is not only dissent, but also a principled refusal to surrender truth, legality or democratic consent to coercive moral narratives.

Natasha Hausdorff’s contribution is distinguished by its juridical precision and moral clarity. As an international lawyer, she confronts one of the most ideologically distorted arenas of contemporary discourse: the legal treatment of Israel. Her merit lies not only in her mastery of international law but also in her insistence that law must remain tethered to evidence, context, and equal standards. In an environment where legal language is routinely weaponized to achieve political ends, her work exposes how selective interpretation and institutional bias corrode the credibility of the legal order itself.

Hausdorff’s anti-totalitarianism manifests in her resistance to what might be termed “normative inversion”: the process by which democratic self-defense is reframed as criminality, while terror, incitement, and authoritarian violence are excused as resistance. This inversion, which includes “victim blaming” at the national level, is not accidental but ideological, sustained by international bodies and NGOs that claim neutrality while advancing a rigid moral hierarchy. Hausdorff’s idealism consists in her refusal to abandon universal legal principles even when doing so would grant her professional safety. By applying the same standards to Israel as to any other state—and insisting those standards be applied universally—she challenges a deeply corrupt system that depends on exception and scapegoating.

The personal courage involved in this stance should not be underestimated. Defending Israel in contemporary legal and academic spaces often entails professional isolation, harassment, and reputational damage. Hausdorff’s willingness to endure these costs reflects a deeper conviction: that the erosion of legal objectivity in one case endangers all liberal democracies. Her engagement is therefore not parochial but civilizational. She understands that when law becomes a tool of ideological enforcement, it ceases to restrain power and instead legitimizes its abuse.

Douglas Murray’s singular merit lies in his capacity to articulate civilizational questions with philosophical depth and rhetorical force at a time when such questions are actively suppressed by mainstream media and academia. His legendary appearance at the Oxford Union twelve years ago became the precursor to numerous daring charges. Time and again, he has taken on Islamists and left-wing celebrities in front of menacing audiences. Importantly, he is not only a shrewd polemicist, who remains calm under pressure, but also a moral diagnostician of Western self-doubt. His anti-totalitarian idealism emerges from his insistence that liberal societies must believe in themselves to remain liberal. Against the prevailing assumption that self-criticism is the highest virtue, he argues that relentless self-denunciation becomes indistinguishable from moral abdication.

Murray’s battleground is primarily cultural. He confronts what might be called the “soft totalitarianism” of consensus enforcement: the informal but pervasive mechanisms by which dissenting views are marginalized without overt coercion. By challenging dogmas surrounding mass immigration, identity politics, and historical guilt, he violates the unspoken rules of acceptable discourse. The ferocity of the response to his work—character assassination, deplatforming campaigns, and persistent misrepresentation—testifies to the power of those rules.

Murray’s idealism is not reactionary nostalgia but a defense of Enlightenment inheritance: reason, individual moral agency, and universal rights. He rejects the reduction of individuals to group identities and resists the moral determinism that excuses behavior based on origin or grievance. This position places him in direct opposition to ideologies that divide society into permanent oppressors and victims, a framework mirroring the propagandistic logic of totalitarian systems even when expressed in therapeutic language. 

Crucially, Murray’s engagement is animated by empathy rather than contempt. His unwavering critique of Islamism, for instance, is paired with a compassionate defense of Muslims who seek to live freely within liberal societies. What he rejects is not “diversity” as such but the refusal to draw moral boundaries. His courage consists in naming those boundaries when institutions and elites prefer ambiguity. In doing so, he exposes the paradox of a liberalism unwilling to defend its own conditions of existence. His deep concern is that the West, instead of standing firm on its Judeo-Christian ideals, is giving in to barbarism and thus preparing its own suicide.

Matt Goodwin’s merit is anchored in democratic realism. As a political scientist, he confronts the gap between elite consensus and popular consent, particularly on immigration, national identity, and sovereignty. His anti-totalitarian idealism is grounded in a simple but increasingly radical proposition: that democracy requires listening to voters even when their views are considered “inconvenient.” His work challenges the technocratic assumption that policy legitimacy flows from expertise alone rather than from democratic authorization. 

Goodwin’s courage lies in his tireless determination to document and articulate patterns that many academics prefer to obscure for fear of ostracism or collapse of preferred theses. By analyzing electoral data, public opinion, and class realignments, he reveals how large segments of the population have been systematically excluded from meaningful representation. His critics often accuse him of “legitimizing extremism,” yet this accusation itself reflects a totalitarian impulse: the belief that certain preferences are illegitimate by definition and must therefore be managed rather than debated.

What distinguishes Goodwin’s idealism is his refusal to moralize disagreement. He does not portray voters as dupes or villains but as rational actors—fellow citizens with a claim to respect in that very capacity—responding to lived experience. In doing so, he restores dignity to democratic participation. This stance is costly in an academic environment increasingly aligned with activist (and, occasionally, extremist) priorities. Professional sanction, media hostility, and institutional marginalization (cancellation) are familiar risks for scholars who deviate from progressive orthodoxy. Goodwin accepts these risks as the price of intellectual honesty.

Taken together, Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin exemplify different dimensions of liberal, anti-totalitarian resistance. Hausdorff defends the integrity of law against ideological capture; Murray defends cultural confidence against moral coercion; Goodwin defends democratic consent against technocratic paternalism. Their idealism is not utopian but grounded in institutional realism. Unlike utopians, they do not imagine a conflict-free society, but they insist that conflict must be governed by rules, reason, and accountability rather than by intimidation or narrative dominance.

Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin have not spared themselves in the never-ending fight for justice. What makes the engagement of these three individuals particularly significant is that it occurs within liberal democracies that deny any resemblance to totalitarianism. Yet totalitarian tendencies rarely announce themselves openly. They emerge through the normalization of double standards, the stigmatization of dissent, and the substitution of moral certainty for empirical inquiry. Each in their own way, Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin recognize these patterns and refuse to accommodate them, even when accommodation would be personally advantageous.

The courage of those three modern heroes is therefore not performative but structural. It consists in sustained engagement over time—under conditions of persistent pressure. They do not retreat into irony or detachment but remain publicly accountable for their arguments. In doing so, behaving like true students of Socrates, they uphold a model of intellectual citizenship that is increasingly rare: one that treats truth as an honorable responsibility rather than a (narcissistic) posture.

Ultimately, the significance of Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin lies not only in the positions that they defend but also in the example that they set. They demonstrate that idealism need not be naïve, that realism need not be cynical, and that courage remains possible even in environments intrinsically hostile to independent thought. Their work reminds us that liberal democracy is not self-sustaining. It survives only so long as individuals are willing to defend its principles against both overt enemies and internal corrosion. In that defense, these three individuals stand as serious, if controversial, guardians of a fragile inheritance.

Lars Maller, American Thinker

If you’re old enough, you’ll recall the 1961 Berlin crisis. I recall it subsequently, when schools taught real history. That crisis happened during the Cold War’s peak years. In brief, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev wanted the U.S. out of West Berlin. There were multiple reasons, but, chiefly, access to West Berlin allowed East Germans to escape communist rule.

According to the National Archives, by 1961, as many as four million Germans had escaped East Germany using West Berlin. With tensions rising, and the hemorrhaging increasing, Khrushchev ordered the Soviets’ East German puppet government to string barbed wire and erect concrete barricades around West Berlin to stop the outflow. That was the beginning of the Berlin Wall, which stood as a testament to communism’s failure until 1989.

What does that have to do with America today? The point is that people vote with their feet when conditions become unacceptable. That’s no less true here. Since the nation’s inception — in fact, long before the founding — people came to the continent to escape troubles and moved west in search of better lives. East Germans fled primarily because of politics — albeit, of a brutal, totalitarian stripe.

Annually and increasingly, tens of thousands of people are leaving blue states because of politics. High taxes and red tape, inflated costs, unchecked crime, failing schools, and unashamed race bias — directed at whites — are pushing people out. Soft political tyranny and cultural decay are drivers. Human nature is universal. People will endure until they cannot.

That’s bleak news for blue states. Regardless how many times Gavin Newsom shrugs, ongoing outmigration is having adverse consequences for California and its blue cousins. Red states are benefitting. The influx of money, skilled labor, tech expertise, and businesses are gifts.

Blue state population drains have been occurring for a couple of decades. Outmigration is compounded by low fertility rates. COVID tyranny — generally worse in blue states — spurred further exoduses. Blue states have yet to recover fully from draconian lockdowns.

Wrote Steven Malanga in a fact-packed analysis for City Journal, February 4:

By contrast, Democratic states dominate the list of places with the biggest outflow of residents. Nine of the ten states losing the most population are Democratic, led by California, with a net loss of 229,000 residents, and including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois. A notable addition to the bottom ten is Colorado — a politically competitive state as recently as 2019 but dominated by Democrats since. Unlike California and New York, which have seen net outmigration for more than a decade, Colorado’s fortunes have only recently turned, but dramatically so, as the state recorded the eighth-highest net loss of residents last fiscal year. Only four of the 15 Democratic trifecta states last year gained residents: Washington, Oregon, Delaware, and Maine. In all, Democratic-led states lost about 495,000 residents to net migration.

Opening the borders to millions of “undocumented” migrants was supposedly the remedy for what ails blue states. Population replenishment — albeit with poorly educated, low-skilled peoples — is necessary. Welfare dependency ensures Democrat control. More bodies are required for U.S. Census purposes.

The Biden administration oversaw and manipulated the 2020 Census data to make sure illegals were counted for political reasons. Beyond propping up blue states, hordes of illegals streaming into red states were supposed to “transform” them. With millions of illegals still in the country, Democrats’ hope of transformations isn’t dead yet, but President Trump is determined to foil their schemes. The president closed the borders at an astonishing clip. In little more than a year, over 2.8 million illegals have been deported or have self-deported. The SAVE Act needs to be passed.

The point is worth stressing. Democrats are preoccupied with political survival. Without more bodies — without larger numbers of pliant constituents — population shifts sound a death knell. The 2030 census is pivotal. Perhaps eight — maybe more — U.S. House seats and electoral college votes are expected to shift to red states. The next census is yet another reason to maintain GOP congressional majorities and elect J.D. Vance president — the GOP’s putative nominee — in 2028.

With Trump’s rise in 2016, party realignment has accelerated. The college-educated affluent are now mainstays of the Democrat coalition, along with blacks. That represents an historic reversal. The GOP used to be the party of big money. Yes, money counts, and money fuels the progressive Left’s control of institutions, but those advantages aren’t enough. Numbers matter, and the Great American Middle are the numbers.

Working class and middle-income Americans are trending toward the GOP — or more, accurately, away from Democrats and toward Trump. Jacksonian Democracy, Lincoln Republicanism, McKinley’s working man’s GOP, and FDR’s New Deal are proof that working-class and middle-income voters decide political fortunes.

Not all the wealthy are Democrat locks, however. More of them are abandoning blue states. Since the affluent pay a disproportionate share of taxes, that’s a gut punch to spendthrift Democrats, who keep raising taxes, which helps fuel their states’ doom loops.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is proposing higher taxes on the wealthy to finance his free lunch ploys. He’s about to learn the hard way that money flees quickly and fixed assets can be divested. His supporters claim that if the wealthy don’t like paying more taxes and decide to leave, their businesses can seized. As one of Mamdani’s backers said in an X post video, anyone looking to scram could face confiscatory fines. Never mind constitutional guarantees. Mandani’s supporters are edging closer to the Russian mindset circa 1961.

Not incidentally, blue-collar and middle-income citizens pay taxes, too. Socially, these cohorts anchor communities. They provide skilled labor and management. They’re service providers. They start small businesses. It’s a double whammy for blue states when the wealthy and the Great American Middle departs.

In the early 2000s, Ruy Teixeira and John Judis wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority. It was an optimistic assessment of the Democrats’ future. To Teixeira’s credit, he admits that not only did a Democrat majority not materialize, but that the progressive moment has passed. Teixeira counsels Democrats to return to a more centrist approach to policy and governance. But are Democrats listening? It doesn’t seem so.

A majority of Virginia voters — driven by affluent, government careerists and contractors in Northern Virginia’s D.C. suburbs — just elected Abigail Spanberger governor and handed Democrats legislative majorities. No sooner were Democrats sworn in then a slew of new tax proposals emerged. Wasn’t Democrats’ mantra affordability? They’re also pushing softer criminal penalties. And Spanberger signed an executive order ending cooperation with federal authorities to curtail immigration enforcement. Democrats need the bodies.

Another reason people are leaving blue states, quality of life. Portland is an example.

Wrote Mark Hemmingway for RealClearInvestigations, February 4:

In December, bestselling author and humorist David Sedaris wrote a New Yorker magazine essay about a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. While on a walk to a donut shop, he “lost count of the strung-out addicts I passed on my way” before eventually encountering four homeless people huddled around an empty baby carriage and smoking drugs right on the sidewalk. Moments later, a dog belonging to one of the addicts rushed out and bit him.

Joel Kotkin, a well-regarded demographer and old-school Democrat, in a February 1 New York Post opinion piece, wonders if California is a “lost cause?” After cataloguing many of California’s woes caused by Democrats, Kotkin writes that there aren’t enough Republicans in the once Golden State to win and effect change. He’s right about that. His hope is that “San Jose’s pragmatic [Democrat] Mayor Matt Mahan” wins his party’s gubernatorial nomination. We suppose he’s a voice of sanity. But can one sane voice change California’s miserable dynamic?

Probably not. With a younger generation of Democrats moving even further left, and increasing numbers of sensible Californians voting with their feet, California’s troubles may be baked in. As is the case in other blue states.

Maybe Democrats should consult history? Germans remember. Go ask them.

J. Robert Smith can be found at X. His handle is @JRobertSmith1. At Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover.

I often make fun of the liberal mindset that prescribes that all the personal problems of people in our society can and must be solved by government taxing and spending and the creation of more and more “programs” of one sort and another. As I write on my “About” page:

The central tenet of [the Manhattan] orthodoxy is that all personal problems of the people in society can be solved by government taxing and spending. The obvious corollary is that since all problems can be solved by taxing and spending, therefore they must be solved by taxing and spending, and anyone who stands in the way of those solutions is immoral.

The fundamental difficulty here, as Margaret Thatcher famously quipped, is that pretty soon you “run out of other people’s money.” And that’s when you are only trying to create perfect fairness and justice within your own country. More recently the progressive orthodoxy has morphed to a point where the American taxpayers are now seen as obligated to solve the personal problems of everyone in the world.

Do you think I am exaggerating? Consider if you will the most extreme of possible examples: Afghanistan. Are the American taxpayers obliged to solve the personal problems of the people in that god-forsaken country? If you are wondering, check out this piece from the New York Times on February 4, headline, “In Afghanistan, a Trail of Hunger and Death Behind U.S. Aid Cuts.”

Afghanistan — Isn’t that the country that fought violently and relentlessly for two decades to drive the U.S. out, finally succeeding when the U.S. withdrew in August 2021? We tried to bring 21st century civilization to this violent, tribal society, and they manifestly hated us and wanted nothing to do with us. They killed thousands of our soldiers. Now that we have left, it seems that they find themselves without enough to eat. Could that possibly be our problem? That is the gist of this article. In fact it’s even worse than that, because the article tries to spin the facts to make the reader feel guilty for the alleged suffering of these people. A few excerpts:

The U.S. aid cuts in Afghanistan were as sudden as they were brutal. Even after the U.S. withdrawal and the end of the war in 2021, the United States continued pouring money into Afghanistan. From the 2021 Taliban takeover until last year, Washington had provided nearly $1 billion annually — over a third of all aid flowing into one of the world’s poorest countries.

Did you know that after the disastrous 2021 withdrawal the Biden administration went right ahead and continued to throw a billion a year of American taxpayer money at these people who hate us? And then the bad, bad Trump people imposed the “brutal” cuts.

The [U.S. Agency for International Development’s] programs once helped clear landscapes scarred by war and mines, diversify crops and keep millions from hunger. Four million children are now at risk of dying from malnutrition, according to the World Food Program, the most in a quarter-century.

And it’s not just food but health centers:

Nearly 450 health centers closed because of the cuts, including a tiny white building in the drought-stricken village of Nalej, where Malika Ghullami safely gave birth to two children in past years and was pregnant again with twins last year.

Does it occur to you that the Afghans might have enough to eat if they devoted some effort to growing food instead of opium poppies? Exact figures are not available, but supplying opium to the international drug market is estimated to constitute up to half of the Afghan economy. Somehow this New York Times article never mentions that.

For some more honest information on the Afghan drug-dominated economy, here is a piece from February last year from something called the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. The gist is that after a half-hearted attempt in 2022 by the Taliban-dominated government to ban the growing of opium poppies, the market has returned to “normal,” with Afghanistan by far the dominant supplier of opium in the world markets. The Global Initiative calls the supposed ban of poppy growing “smoke and mirrors.”

Fieldwork in Afghanistan in 2024 found that the sale of opium continued unabated and had even become more ubiquitous. . . . Contrary to initial predictions, the opium ban has not put an end to the illicit drug trade in Afghanistan. The powerful traffickers who were the main source of funding for the Taliban during the insurgency continued to operate freely. . . . Despite the Taliban’s show of strength, the resurgence of cultivation and the continued trade in illicit drugs are testament to the deep roots and resilience of Afghanistan’s illicit drug economy.

So how about Afghanistan taking some of the multi-billions from the international drug trade and devoting that to buying food or operating health clinics? I’m sorry, but that would be expecting these supposedly “fiercely independent” people to actually take some responsibility for their own lives and their own society. If you think they should, then you are not aware of the fundamental principle that it is the American taxpayer, and only the American taxpayer, who must solve all of their problems.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian