The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
The “climate change” proponents predicted an ice-free Arctic by 2014. It’s now 2025 — and the Arctic is still perfectly frozen.
Their forecasts are never accurate. Often, their predictions are just the opposite of what proves true.
Yet the billions of dollars and bottomless pit of virtue and credibility attributed to these charlatans — it never stops.
And all the fools, unconcerned with facts, continue to applaud the deindustrialzation of civilization and the destruction of life on earth as we know it. “Climate change” isn’t merely an urban religion, or a group psychosis. It’s an international, globalist Communist death pact supported by the richest, the most educated and the allegedly most enlightened. In practice, it will lead — via the elimination of all fossil fuels and the resulting collapse of the electric grid — to a standard of living prior to pre-1850s America, except for the elites portrayed by this picture. Suffering, starvation and unimaginable catastrophe will inevitably result. In short: They want the mass of humanity barefoot and pregnant. Easier to control us that way.
It’s like watching the murder-suicide of civilization. Trump is admirably pushing back in his second term, but after 2028 we’re right back where we started if we don’t have some kind of revolution for freedom, man’s rights and the virtue of authentic, unhampered capitalism.
President Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that his administration could distribute dividends from tariff revenues to Americans with certain income levels.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Trump said that a distribution of dividends to selected U.S. households is possible, even as the government works to pay down the national debt.
“We have a lot of money coming in, much more money than the country has ever seen, by hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “There could be a distribution for dividends to the people of our country. I would say for people that would be middle-income people and lower-income people, we could do a dividend.”
He also reaffirmed the government’s commitment to lower drug prices, in line with his May 12 executive order that requires drug manufacturers to offer American consumers “the most-favored-nation lowest price” for prescription drugs.
“We‘ll be dropping drug prices, it will start over the next two to three months, by 1,200, 1,300 and even 1,400 percent,” he said. “We will pay as low as the lowest nation in the world.”
Trump did not specify the potential amount of dividends he could distribute. The U.S. government collected $28 billion in tariff revenues in July, marking a record monthly high and bringing the total revenue for the fiscal year to more than $151 billion, according to Treasury data.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told last month’s cabinet meeting that tariff collections could reach $300 billion by the end of the year, as a result of Trump’s trade campaign.
Trump imposed a 10 percent baseline tariff on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, along with reciprocal tariffs that vary depending on their trade barriers with the United States, as part of an effort to address trade deficits. He later implemented a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs, before extending the reprieve to Aug. 1 to allow time for negotiations.
The president signed an executive order on July 31 imposing reciprocal tariffs of between 10 percent and 41 percent on more than 60 U.S. trading partners. The new tariff rates, which are set to take effect on Aug. 7, were determined based on whether each nation has reached an agreement with the United States and the nature of those agreements.
In his order, Trump stated that some trading partners have agreed to or are close to making “meaningful trade and security commitments with the United States,” while others have proposed terms that he thinks fail to adequately address trade imbalances or “align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national-security matters.”
“There are also some trading partners that have failed to engage in negotiations with the United States or to take adequate steps to align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national security matters,” the order stated.
The Trump administration is working on a trade deal with China, which is subject to an extended deadline through Aug. 12, following a May 12 agreement in which the two largest economies agreed to lower tariffs and roll back certain trade restrictions for 90 days.
Joseph Lord and Reuters contributed to this report.
Ilhan Omar presents herself as a champion of justice, minority rights, accountability, and anti-imperialism. Her refusal to recognise or condemn the genocide her father’s military executed is irreconcilable with this public brand. Her silence is not neutral—it is an affront to survivors who endured collective persecution and loss. To inherit privilege built on systemic violence yet actively ignore that historical legacy is an insult to the hundreds of thousands of victims and millions of survivors of the Isaaq Genocide her father’s military committed.
Why Ilhan Omar Must Now Come Clean Ilhan Omar must publicly acknowledge her father’s role in the Isaaq Genocide, issue a formal condemnation of this atrocity, and actively support international recognition of the Republic of Somaliland. Only through transparency and public moral accountability and redemption can she reconcile her public advocacy with her personal history. Failing to do so makes her an electoral liability to the Democratic Party, as she continuous to bring them into disrepute and cost them votes.
Between 1987 and 1989, the Somali military in which Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, served as a senior officer executed a brutal and systematic campaign of genocide targeting the Isaaq people of the modern day Republic of Somaliland.
This dark chapter in Africa’s history, which was known as the Isaaq Genocide, was a merciless military campaign that resulted in the killing of over 200,000 Isaaq civilians. It also involved widespread forced displacement, scorched‑earth destruction of the second and third largest cities (Hargeisa and Burao), aerial bombardement of almost every other single city, town and village in Somaliland, and two decades of large‑scale red-terror style tactics against the civilian population of Somaliland.
It was carried out through relentless aerial bombardments – planes repeatedly strafed fleeing refugees – summary executions, burning of entire villages, deportations, land‑mining of water sources and homes, Holodomor style government enforced man-made famines (the Dabadheer Drought) and the use of paramilitary units such as the Somali Armed Forces’ “Dabar Goynta Isaaqa” (The Isaaq Exterminators), composed exclusively of non-ethnically Isaaq soldiers, to enact mass killings under Somalia’s military direction.
War-damaged houses in Hargeysa, a major city in northern Somalia, 1991. Eyewitness testimonies documented “mass executions by firing squad, forced disappearances, looting, mass torture, mass surveillance, rape used as a weapon, curfews and mass killings of civilians even in areas with limited resistance or lawful liberation movement activities, such in Berbera where thousands of government soldiers were stationed. Isaaq civilians across what was then the Somalia Republic, were detained and executed en-mass by Somalia government execution squads led by Colonels like Ilhan Omar’s father.
Across the country civilians were forced from their homes into dehumanising conditions, including many kept in dungeons, underground prisons and pits. Even famous Isaaqs such as Somaliland’s most renowned poet ‘Hadraawi’ did not escape this torture and years of detention under the most brutal and unsanitary conditions imaginable. Even in Mogadishu, deep inside neighbouring Somalia – and almosr 1,500KM from Somaliland’s capital of Hargeisa – Isaaq civilians were being killed in their homes, in the city and on Mogadishu’s beaches. The Jazeera massacre of 1989 is a particularly brutal example that is etched in history.
At the heart of this brutal military regime was Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father. His rank, authority, membership of the regime Daarood clan, and 10+ years of having climbed the hierarchy in Somalia military to the rank of Colonel, placed him squarely in the Somali military’s command hierarchy during and at the height of its Isaaq genocide campaign. Based on his position, loyalty to the regime, and his role in the military, it is virtually certain that he had intimate knowledge of and involvement in the planning, conception, direction and execution of the genocide.
By both legal and historical standards, despite Ilhan Omar’s team’s spin in numerous recent articles which have been placed in left-leaning online publications, the logical conclusion that Ilhan Omar’s father was almost certainly intimately involved in the Isaaq Genocide is unmistakable. It is supported on the balance of probabilities and the totality of circumstantial and inferential evidence available indicates, more critically, that it meets the threshold that this was the case ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
What Human Rights Reports Show Investigations from Africa Watch, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN‑commissioned Mburu Report, articles from the Washington Post and New York Times are clear: the Isaaq Genocide was conceived, planned, and executed using official state machinery. The Somalian military directed attacks such as the scorched‑earth campaign, the mining of grazing areas and waterholes, and mass destruction of homes; entire cities were intentionally razed to eliminate Isaaq presence.
The numerous reports and newspaper articles detail how the military in which Ilhan Omar’s father was a Colonel, based on government directives such as the notorious “Letter of Death” attributed to General Morgan, advocated a campaign of obliteration and extermination of ethnically Isaaq civilians who form the absolute majority of the population in Somaliland – demonstrating that genocide was national policy, not the act of rogue units. The Somalian military deployed the most heinous an inhumane propaganda to justify and enable their genocide. Ilhan Omar’s father was at one point in charge of propaganda and during his 10+ year tenure with Somalia’s military between 1981 and 1991 – a timeline which coincides with the timeline of when Somalia’s military was perpetrating the Isaaq Genocide – would almost certainly have been involved in conceiving and disseminating Isaaq Genocide propaganda. Propaganda which would have got hundreds of thousands of innocent Somalilanders, ethnic Isaaq civilians, killed.
Colonels like Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, would have operated within the command structure of Somalia’s military during the Isaaq Genocide. As a Colonel he would have been overseeing operations in Hargeisa, Oodweyne, Burao, El‑Afweyn, Gebiley, Berbera, Garadag, Erigabo, Sheikh and else where in Somaliland where mass arrests, executions, and infrastructure destruction were used to terrorise, ethnically cleanse and exterminate the Isaaq people of Somaliland.
Taken together, these findings show that it is extremely likely that Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, played a direct or enabling role in the genocide. This conclusion aligns with command responsibility in law and meets the legal standard of being demonstrably proven, both on the balance of probability under civil law, and beyond reasonable doubt under criminal law. The idea that a Colonel in Somalia’s military in a brutal dictatorship did not participate in the pervasive and ubiquitous genocidal activities his military was carry out in every city, town and village in the decade in which he was serving in and leading the military, is implausible, illogical and does not stand up to scrutiny. It is high time that Ilhan Omar comes clean about her father’s role in the Isaaq Genocide.
What the Isaaq Genocide entailed and the role of Colonels in the genocide Contemporaneous reporting from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian in 1988‑1989 described systematic aerial bombardments, civilian casualties, mass evacuations, and city‑scale destruction. Eyewitnesses at the time compared Hargeisa’s devastation to “the Dresden of Africa,” with over 90 percent of the city destroyed, widespread displacement, and the use of mercenary pilots for bombing runs. These independent accounts support the historical record and reinforce that senior military officers – including Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father – under a strict command and control structure, could not have remained passive much less or uninvolved. Nor is there any evidence of him refusing to carry out or resisting the military orders of genocide which the commander in chief, dictator Siad Barre, had issued. In fact, Ilhan Omar and her family only fled the country when the regime was toppled in January 1991, when his last enclave in the capital of Mogadishu was overrun by the resistance movements. This suggests her Colonel father was loyal to the dictator to the end, and fought alongside him to perpetrate the genocide, only leaving his side when the regime was toppled. A disloyal Colonel also would not have shot up through the ranks, having been promoted in quick succession, having joined as a cadet in 1981 and left as a loyal Colonel by 1991 upon the regime’s fall. This begs the question, why would a brutal dictator elevate and promote a disloyal Colonel? Of course the reality is that he would not have. Therefore her father must have been a loyal and faithful servant, who executed the orders of Genocide to the letter, and was likely handsomely rewarded for this.
While Ilhan Omar’s camp has recently pivoted to portraying her Colonel father as a “teacher trainer”, this kind of fiction and verbal acrobatics is far removed from reality. The hint of the nature of his job and the rank he held is clear from his title: Colonel. He clearly held senior military responsibilities. In the genocide perpetrated by the Somalian military, Colonels oversaw planning, command, logistics, and ideological enforcement and practical execution of the Genocide. Their commands were clear and their role was clear. In one well publicised example of such military orders to commit genocide, issued by General Mohammed Said Hersi aka ‘General Morgan’ to all military units, was caught on video, and was later reported by Al Jazeera in their later documentary about the Isaaq Genocide titled “Kill All But the Crows”. The military orders were as follows: “Attack and eliminate them all. Destroy water sources, reservoirs. Burn villages, pillage, kill residents allow no life no activity. kill even the wounded. Kill all but the crows”. Deserters, defectors and those who went AWOL would be found and summarily executed (yet of course this does not excuse being complicit in a Genocide). It is therefore inconceivable that Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, did not carry out or did not authorise key military activities that facilitated, enabled or directly executed genocidal acts. His contributions as a high ranking Colonel likely included:
Ideological indoctrination, tactical training and direct military orders aligned with anti‑Isaaq policies. Coordination of logistics, troop deployment, and use of Somali Airlines and military aircraft
officials included Colonels, and their immediate family members like Ilhan Omar, lived gilded lifestyles and were probably in many ways indirect beneficiaries of the Genocide. It is highly plausible that she, even as a child, benefited materially or socially from the outcomes of the genocide: the seizure of Isaaq assets, the redistribution of power and wealth to regime cronies like her Colonel father, and consolidation of power by non‑Isaaq elites. In fact, Ilhan Omar is named in that context in the Palgrave Handbook on Left Wing Extremism where serious and unanswered questions are raised about her claim to be a valid refugee. It is increasingly becoming apparent that a more accurate reinterpretation of her personal history is the daughter of a Genocidaire and war criminal, who lived a gilded lifestyle as a child of the regime elite who was potentially a beneficiary of Genocide, but once in the west reinvented herself as a liberal refugee victim.
Ilhan Omar presents herself as a champion of justice, minority rights, accountability, and anti-imperialism. Her refusal to recognise or condemn the genocide her father’s military executed is irreconcilable with this public brand. Her silence is not neutral—it is an affront to survivors who endured collective persecution and loss. To inherit privilege built on systemic violence yet actively ignore that historical legacy is an insult to the hundreds of thousands of victims and millions of survivors of the Isaaq Genocide her father’s military committed.
Why Ilhan Omar Must Now Come Clean Ilhan Omar must publicly acknowledge her father’s role in the Isaaq Genocide, issue a formal condemnation of this atrocity, and actively support international recognition of the Republic of Somaliland. Only through transparency and public moral accountability and redemption can she reconcile her public advocacy with her personal history. Failing to do so makes her an electoral liability to the Democratic Party, as she continuous to bring them into disrepute and cost them votes.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed that he is taking action to prevent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) users from purchasing items such as sugary drinks.
Kennedy pointed out that while people can make their own decisions regarding what to buy and what not to buy, taxpayers in the United States “should not pay” for people on SNAP to purchase items like sugary sodas.
The comments from Kennedy were made as he and U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary joined Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in celebrating the signing of six new SNAP state waivers, which would “amend the statutory definition of food for purchase and end the subsidization of popular types of junk food beginning in 2026,” according to an HHS press release. States signing the new SNAP waivers include West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Other states, such as Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah, have previously signed SNAP waivers.
“We are spending $405 million a day on SNAP, about ten percent is going to sugary drinks … if you add candies to that, it’s about 13 to 17 percent,” Kennedy said on Monday. “We all believe in free choice, we live in a democracy, people can make their own choice about what they’re going to buy and what they’re not going to buy.”
“If you want to buy a sugary soda — you ought to be able to do that — the U.S. taxpayer should not pay for it,” Kennedy added. “The U.S. taxpayer should not be paying to feed kids foods, the poorest kids in our country, the foods that are going to give them diabetes. And then my agency ends up — through Medicaid and Medicare — paying for those injuries. We’re going to put an end to that, and we’re doing it step by step, state by state.”
Kennedy added that he was working with Rollins on dietary guidelines, noting that the dietary guidelines they “inherited from the Biden administration were 453 pages long.”
“They were driven by the same commercial impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid, and they were incomprehensible,” Kennedy continued. “We are going to release dietary guidelines that are four or five or six pages long, that are understandable, that are simple, and will allow people to make good choices about their food.”
Breitbart News reported that during Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, he spoke about reversing “the chronic disease epidemic” in the nation. Kennedy “provided some examples of how” the U.S. “could implement the MAHA agenda”:
He provided some examples of how the United States could implement the MAHA agenda, using federal funding of the SNAP program — and school lunch programs — as examples.
“We should be giving 60 percent of the kids in school processed food that is making them sick. … We shouldn’t be spending 10 percent of the SNAP program on sugar drinks. We so we have a direct ability to change things,” he said, adding that “we need to focus more on outcome-based medicine, on putting people in charge of their own health care, of making them accountable for their own health care so they understand the relationship between eating and getting sick” with Medicaid and Medicare as well.
Kennedy has also clarified that he would not “take food away from anybody,” adding that if people want their McDonald’s or Hostess Twinkies, they “should be able to get them,” but that they should also be aware of what the impacts of those food items are on their health.
Kennedy added that he was working with Rollins on dietary guidelines, noting that the dietary guidelines they “inherited from the Biden administration were 453 pages long.”
“They were driven by the same commercial impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid, and they were incomprehensible,” Kennedy continued. “We are going to release dietary guidelines that are four or five or six pages long, that are understandable, that are simple, and will allow people to make good choices about their food.”
Breitbart News reported that during Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, he spoke about reversing “the chronic disease epidemic” in the nation. Kennedy “provided some examples of how” the U.S. “could implement the MAHA agenda”:
He provided some examples of how the United States could implement the MAHA agenda, using federal funding of the SNAP program — and school lunch programs — as examples.
“We should be giving 60 percent of the kids in school processed food that is making them sick. … We shouldn’t be spending 10 percent of the SNAP program on sugar drinks. We so we have a direct ability to change things,” he said, adding that “we need to focus more on outcome-based medicine, on putting people in charge of their own health care, of making them accountable for their own health care so they understand the relationship between eating and getting sick” with Medicaid and Medicare as well.
Kennedy has also clarified that he would not “take food away from anybody,” adding that if people want their McDonald’s or Hostess Twinkies, they “should be able to get them,” but that they should also be aware of what the impacts of those food items are on their health.
Yeah, well, we told you so before you got into this mess.
…
The Nantucket City Council and Nantucket residents are suffering from buyer’s remorse, like everybody who decided to buy a Yugo based on the marketing that it was a great car at an amazing price.
We told you so. It’s as if liberals see common sense and choose to do the opposite of what it tells them. No amount of sage advice will dissuade them because some “expert” with dollar signs in their eyes can talk them into anything as long as they whisper magic words like “renewable energy.”
If they could go back in time, officials in Nantucket, Massachusetts, wouldn’t sign the legal agreement that helped bring the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town’s picturesque shoreline.
That was the common sentiment expressed during a Nantucket select board meeting this week about the August 2020 community benefit agreement the town entered into with developers of the Vineyard Wind project, which is currently under construction. “These wind turbines are bigger, brighter, and much more impactful than we ever thought—and not to mention the environmental hazards from failures,” said Dawn Hill, the chairwoman of the select board, which serves as the town’s executive body.
The agreement represented Nantucket’s formal endorsement of the project and satisfied Vineyard Wind’s legal responsibility to consult with the town. Because Nantucket is a federally designated national historic district, regulators and developers must consult with the town on new projects that may threaten its protected status.
“Hindsight is 20/20,” added Greg Werkheiser, an attorney who represents Nantucket. “Every lawyer in the world wishes 5 or 10 years into a negotiated contract that they could take the knowledge they have, fly back in time, and renegotiate—but communities make the choices they have with the information they have at the time.”
WE told you so. They had the information if they cared to look. They saw it and rejected it because they believed they were smarter than everybody else. They are the good people. Virtuous. Want to save Gaia, if not the whales. So they bought into a lie.
Hill, Werkheiser, and the other officials present accused Vineyard Wind of cutting off communications with the town, failing to reduce light pollution emitted by its turbines, slow-walking reports on environmental impacts of the project, failing to disclose construction delays, and failing to work with officials on a plan for emergency scenarios—all of which they said are violations of the 2020 agreement. The Nantucket officials then directed 15 public demands at Vineyard Wind.
The issue is a microcosm of the resistance offshore wind projects have faced in coastal communities along the East Coast and could serve as a warning for communities where developers are considering future projects. But while communities in Delaware, New Jersey, and New York have successfully stymied offshore wind development, Nantucket’s options are more limited—Vineyard Wind is permitted, already under construction, and expected to begin operations by the end of the year.
We told them so. But this is Nantucket, where all the beautiful people know so much more than we do. They are the good people who look down their noses at us, sure in the knowledge that they will do well by doing good. Wind power! It must be great!
Newsflash: it’s not great. And it’s not even as if the ocean is just a nice view getting ruined by the turbines. For many, it is their livelihood, and these clean energy vultures are utterly indifferent to that. Not only do people work on the ocean, but tourism also drives the economy.
Tensions between Nantucket and Vineyard Wind reached a boiling point in July 2024 after a football field-sized blade on one of its wind towers fell apart during construction, sending 50 tons of fiberglass and industrial-grade foam into the ocean, forcing the island’s beaches to close. Project developers waited until debris washed ashore three days following the failure before they informed Nantucket about the incident, sparking fury from officials, businesses, and residents.
In the 12 months since the blade failure, the developers haven’t provided the town with information about changes to the construction timeline or the progress of environmental reviews related to the blade failure. As of this week, Vineyard Wind’s leadership remains in “hiding,” according to Mohr. Alas, Vineyard Wind issued its most recent press release in October, and its only public update this year appears to have come during an earnings call held last week by one of its developers, the Spain-based energy firm Iberdrola.
“They were not uninformed. Local groups were informing them five years ago that they should not do this deal and gave them all the reasons why they now regret it,” said Dave Stevenson, the director of the Center for Energy Competitiveness at the right-leaning Caesar Rodney Institute. “The folks in the town didn’t fight, they didn’t look at all the negatives, they just didn’t listen.”
This is a pattern that, by now, we have all seen except the liberals who keep making the same mistakes over and over again. It’s not just “clean energy”-it’s everything. It’s the homeless problem, defund the police, and every damn thing you can imagine. We warn them, but they know better.
And then disaster strikes, and they claim they didn’t have any way to know.
A false ecumenism which avoids condemning modern Christian theological errors – and the accompanying violations of natural and civil law (including international law) which silence engenders – must stop. Since the New Covenant, theologies which justify taking lands without divine mandates, along with the accompanying ethnic cleansing and war crimes, are akin to Christian apostasy (cf. Heb 6:6). False political theologies, false doctrines, and false prophecies work against the New Covenant and true peace. The errors must be condemned clearly in accord with Scripture in the Tradition [Scripture and Tradition are inseparable]. This can be done alongside condemnations of antisemitism and better definitions of it. Recent definitions of antisemitism which include anti-Zionism are false definitions and counterproductive…(especially since ‘theological’ Zionism must be condemned).”
Introduction: There Are Forms of Zionism Contrary to Christian Doctrine
Culturally, America’s founding was overwhelmingly by a majority population of Christians. Catholics paved and navigated the way for Anglicans to colonize America’s East Coast after the Spanish had established routes between Europe and the New World. At the same time further north, French Catholics established settlements in what became Canada. Before the other European settlements, Catholic Spain settled Florida and territory that eventually became the USA. Besides settlements that became California and Texas, Catholic Spain also settled Mexico and Central and South America (along with Catholic Portugal). After Spain permanently settled Florida, the Anglicans established the Thirteen Colonies of what initiated the USA.
The Americas is the result of an overwhelmingly Christian endeavor at the foundation of which formed the modern nations, cultures and laws. Christians from North to South America have an obligation to ensure Christian culture endures in a place of esteem and honor within their nations. This is owed not only for the sake of honoring good heritage but also the truth that Jesus is God’s ultimate revelation for the salvation of the human race. Nevertheless, as an American-born U.S. citizen and Catholic authoring this essay, it will focus on the USA as “America” and will criticize “theological” Zionism (as opposed to early 20th century “political” Zionism). The goal is to reform American politics and stem a growing Christian apostasy. Renewal and reform are a necessity for every individual and nation.
About the last sixty years, U.S. Americans appropriated and developed a Zionist mindset which had always been foreign to Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Catholics and Orthodox outside the Middle East in general were not interested in preventing any gradual and peaceful immigration of Jews back to Palestine for the sake of their heritage (political Zionism) and so were not necessarily anti-Zionist when the movement was well-underway at the start of the 20th century. Christians were especially open to Zionism for secular reasons (a.k.a. “political” Zionism) by the time of the 1930’s and the later Nazi holocaust of Jews. At that time of clear revelation of atrocities (1945) everyone, including Palestinians, wanted safety for Jews from such future crimes. Earlier lack of overt support was not from what some modern Jewish critics attempt to label falsely as antisemitism, or hate based on ethnicity. Middle East opposition was related to massive British-sponsored immigration of Europeans into the region, not antisemitism.
Rather, Catholic and Orthodox Churches maintained apostolic succession and Christ’s mandates to govern and teach the people of God which no other Christian communities could legitimately claim from Scripture and history. They were open to a homeland for Jews (political Zionism])for political reasons, but absolutely not in Palestine for primarily theological reasons (a.k.a. “theological” Zionism) in terms of a divine mandate. As authentic ministers and judges within the New Covenant of Christ the King, which all the law and prophets of ancient Israel had anticipated for the future Israel (cf. Rom 9:6-8), it was the duty of Catholic and Orthodox bishops to show love and mercy and make proper distinctions between “political” and “theological” acceptance. However, since bishops govern as stewards of a kingdom that is not of this world, they did not interfere in the mandates proper to secular governments like Great Britain and later enshrinements of international law at the United Nations (of which the Vatican has observer status).
According to Christ’s mandates as judges and stewards, Catholic and Orthodox bishops rightly interpreted how the promises of God had taken final form (cf. Heb 9:10) in the renewed Israel of God (cf. Gal 6:16) of the “new covenant” (Jer 31:31), the Church. Any kind of Zionism that would pretend ancient Israelites and their descendants “according-to-the-flesh” (Rom 9:3) still had a divine mandate to take forcibly the lands of ancient Israel was known to be false doctrine and contrary to the doctrines of Jesus Christ. Jews could lawfully acquire land in accord with natural and international law in Palestine (political Zionism), but no one should pretend there was a divine mandate or necessity for such acquisitions since the time of Christ and destruction of the Second Temple. For this reason, most Christians by the 1940’s originally went along with what was more a secular or “political” Zionism rather than what later became a “theological” Zionism, claims to a divine mandate and right to Palestinian lands.
Jewish Zionists have no divine mandate to forcibly take land from Palestinians or territories under the control of other countries or peoples. God’s plan in Christ “reformed” (cf. Heb 9:10; Eph 1:10) all mandates. Mandates are the issue at the heart of the wars and conflicts in Palestine and the Middle East where illegal Jewish settlers continue to try and take land from Palestinians and others. In a recent Vatican News article (28 July 2025) about the illegal Jewish settlers trying to run Christian Palestinians off their land in the Palestinian West Bank, German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert commented upon the matter: “Whether the target is a Christian village or a Muslim community, these extremist settlers may claim divine mandate, but in truth they are criminals, strangers to any authentic faith.” (Emphasis mine.)
As Middle East wars and politics became more divisive after 1967 when the state of Israel expanded through wars and occupations, American corporate media monopolized the narrative and led Americans not to question the political Zionism which rapidly was becoming theological Zionism. Christian fundamentalists in America were adopting theological Zionism as a part of their prior false dispensationalist prophetic views (Christian Zionism) related to the Book of Revelation. Many Dispensationalist views did not accept the Church as the new or “reformed” (cf Heb 9:10) Israel. Christian Zionists, especially Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority of the 1980’s, brought theological Zionism to bear in American foreign policy in both major political parties and the growing deep state.
Christian Zionism basically infused theological Zionism into American foreign policy and so the governing elite (Jews, Catholics, Protestants, etc…) implicitly adopted in their outlooks the false doctrine of theological Zionism: that Jews still had a divine mandate for sole possession of the lands of Palestine and it overrode natural rights. It’s understood that theological Zionism can have more moderate views than the illegal settlers. Nevertheless, comments of recent cabinet picks of President Trump, especially a Catholic Congresswoman, specifically advocated that Israel had a divine mandate for the land during Senate confirmation hearings.
NO ONE, no single group alone, has a divine mandate any longer for the lands. Early 20th century acceptance of the past’s secular (or “political”) Zionism mistakenly led to growing acceptance of “theological” Zionism by the 1980’s. It has only grown worse when 21st century Senators like Ted Cruz tell Americans we have an obligation to support the state of Israel because basically “the Bible says so.” Herein, America behaves theocratically and needs Papal counsel.
Theological Zionism colonized the American mind and led to endless modern Middle East false crusades as Americans adopted Christian Zionism as a standard political ethos: Christians had to help the Jews, despite an illegal occupation according to international law, because “the Bible says so.” Is “crusades” too strong a term? Have people already forgotten that in 2001 George W. Bush called American response to 9/11 a new “crusade” days after the terror attacks? “This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.” A group of Jewish Zionist Israelis (not representative of all Jews) danced in New York City because they knew this attack would drag America more deeply into their wars for more Palestinian lands. The truth is that American acceptance of theological Zionism had already dragged Congress into today’s acceptance of Netanyahu’s politics since the 1990’s and into 2025 with starvation of Gazans. Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress in 2024 just before the ICC issued arrest warrants for war crimes in Gaza. In turn, the U.S. sanctioned ICC members for Netanyahu (and probably their own protection).
In 2001, Bush’s speechwriters knew America’s European and Christian heritage, but Zionism had distorted the heritage. Nevertheless, the Zionist mindset behind Bush’s modern false “crusade” and the neo-conservative desire to remake the Middle East, was destructive to Christian identity and mission. Its true ends, theological Zionism, were injurious to Christian culture in America. It was about making the Middle East and America safe for theological Zionists (misled Christians and crypto-Kahanists), but not necessarily for authentic Christianity and Rabbinic or Talmudic Jews.
By the years 2024 to 2025 of the Christian Era, theological Zionism made American Christians and politicians blind to a genocide in Gaza and ICC concerns under the false banner of primarily fighting Islamic terrorists. Yes, Islamic terrorist ideology must also be resisted always and everywhere, and the state of Israel has a right to defend itself, but arming and funding an Israeli military involved in genocide and/or ethnic cleansing is not Christian heritage and remains contrary to American law. There will be serious need for serious deprogramming of people who advocated for starvation and slaughter of civilians.
For decades, propaganda machines and social media have been militarized and funded by the state of Israel for Zionist goals. The military-industrial complex of a foreign nation specifically targets Americans to stop the questioning of Zionism and so preserve American military support for Israel’s theological Zionist expansionism. It is partly why Congress passed a non-binding resolution in December 2023 which threatened authentic free-speech and falsely labeled anti-Zionism as hate speech and antisemitism. Israel sponsors limiting free speech concerning Zionism under the pretense that it is identical with Judaism.
Americans rightly love our Jewish neighbors and hate real antisemitism, but Americans are now supposed to be afraid to question “Zionism” which can include “theological” Zionism. American Christians must realize Zionism is not the sole representative of Judaism, but an attempt to use Judaism for political ends and what Christians have always known to be a false Messianism. Yes, militant Islam, always a threat within and from Islam itself, is a threat to Christianity, but this does not make Zionism in its “religious” or “theological” form an ally or friend of Christianity. Christians still seek authentic friendship with all Jews and Muslims of goodwill.
Theological Zionism is not just held by a vast number of Jews, but especially by large swaths of Christians in America (primarily fundamentalists who originally spread it, but shockingly many American Catholics who absorbed it). Late 19th century Zionism originally was basically a movement about a homeland for the Jews that romanticized about returning to what was once ancient biblical Israel 3,000 years ago. Who wouldn’t romanticize such a return after various persecutions in Christian and Communist countries and countless pogroms? In its romanticization and zeal, ideological adherents forget to mention ancient Israel was destroyed 2,700 years ago when most of it was overrun by the Assyrians and left only the small remnant of Judea and their land (Judah, one tribe of the original 12 which eventually encompassed Benjamin and a mix of Levites, became known as the Jews).
A hundred years after the Assyrian destruction of Israel 2700 years ago, Judea was basically occupied from that time forward by foreign world empires until Judea was destroyed 2,000 years ago. Judea and the capitol Jerusalem were destroyed exactly forty years after Jewish leaders rejected and condemned Jesus Christ, exactly as Jesus Christ prophesied. Since then, and until the Zionist “return” movement of the late 19th century – which later was officially adopted by the British government in the early 20th century – Jews had been an extremely small population in what had become Palestine for 1900 years. About 1880 A.D., the Jewish population in Palestine (according to Ottoman records) was about 2-5% of the population of the territory (cf. Jonathan Mendel in Ilan Pappe’s 10 Myths About Israel). Zionists originally wished to legally acquire the land from the centuries-old legal inhabitants of Palestine. Many Arabs will explain that what once started as legal became the Nakba, forced and violent displacement due to both political and theological Zionism.
In all blunt actuality, Zionism, a political movement motivated by religious romanticism for an era that hadn’t existed for 3,000 years, rode on the back of anti-Catholic and Freemasonic British sponsorship under the 1917 Balfour Declaration and ensuing British rule over Palestine, basically through a League of Nations mandate. (“Freemasonry” matters because it is inherently relativist and indifferentist when it comes to Christian doctrine and relation of the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.) Palestine in the early 1920’s became known as British Mandated Palestine through 1948. This is when Jews began larger and rapid migrations into Palestine and eventually began to expel Palestinians from the Palestinian homelands where Christians were 15% of the population and Muslims were 80% of the population before modern political Zionism. Since that time, the romanticized political movement of Zionism grew into a religious movement or “religious Zionism.” It was due to fundamentalist Chrisitan political “forces” in America joining with fundamentalist Jewish Zionists; all due to false prophecies and false interpretations of God’s covenants (which relied on false “theological” Zionism).
Where Zionism was originally a romanticized ethno-political movement in the late-19th and early-20th century under Theodore Herzl, and initially led by agnostic and Jewish atheists wanting a homeland where Jews would not be persecuted for their ethnic identity and Rabbinic or Talmudic Judaism (practicing Judaism without a Temple and without animal sacrifices), it became more religious and fundamentalist by the 1980’s-90’s. This fundamentalist turn or “religious” Zionism embraced theological Zionism and has led to endless violations of the rights of Palestinian Christians and Muslims. It also must be noted that many Jews in America and throughout the world also oppose these violations of Palestinian rights and they reject violent settlers in their theological views.
After the long-term Likud party leadership of the 21st century, extreme “theological” Zionists entered Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet since 2022 with Itamar Ben Gvir, etc… With these more recent political-theological events in mind, the true Israel of God (the Church of the New Covenant) has an obligation to remind the world of its mandate and condemn any form of theological Zionism by Christians (particularly Americans) and Jews which has led to lawlessness by Israeli Jewish settlers and/or prolonged denial of rights to Palestinians. After all, why would the American State Department remove sanctions on illegal Jewish settlers in 2025 given the extreme conditions in the West Bank of 2024-2025? In union with the Christian Patriarchs of the Palestinian territories and territories of the state of Israel, it is hoped the Pope will officially condemn the errors of theological Zionism. An encyclical is a good tool of magisterial authority to affirm the faith that Jesus established as King of “the Israel of God,” the new Israel (Gal 6:16; cf. LG #9.3).
This essay will expand this argument into three parts: Part I: an explanation on how ancient Israel lost its divine mandate for the land, but the Church, the reformed and new Israel (cf. Heb 9:10; Gal 6:16; Rom 9:4-8; LG #9.3) has the spiritual mandate to teach and clarify God’s promises; Part II: the present situation and long-suffering of Palestinians necessitating intervention; and, lastly, Part III: legal papal interventions available. It wishes to condemn antisemitism and simultaneously protect the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The essay strives to maintain proper distinctions to accomplish this. It needs a charitable reading since the audience is at different levels of background and there are many complexities which it tries to summarize fairly.
Recent revelations from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have undermined the Deep State party line that Seth Rich’s murder was a botched robbery. This assumption hinged on the nearly universal acceptance that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC and DCCC servers in 2016. That assumption has collapsed.
In the early morning hours of July 10, 2016, unknown assailants beat and then shot to death the 27-year-old DNC data analyst. This much is not in question. Everything else about Rich’s murder is. The most honest assessment of what happened to Rich came from his mother. On the day after the shooting, Mary Rich, told local TV news that her son struggled with his attackers: “His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything….They took his life for literally no reason. They didn’t finish robbing him, they just took his life.”
In fact, they did not start robbing him. They left without taking his cellphone, his wallet, or his watch. The dying Rich told the police only that his assailants spoke Spanish (as, curiously, did the operatives who broke into the Watergate). Against the backdrop of the very public Hillary email scandal, the inexplicable murder of a Bernie Sanders-supporting DNC data analyst should have been catnip for every red blooded journalist in DC.
It wasn’t. From this point on, Democrats and their media allies aggressively suppressed any suggestion that Rich’s death was something other than a “botched robbery.” As FOX News learned the hard way, to question whether Rich may have been the source of the emails leaked to Julian Assange and Wikileaks was to invite scorn and crippling law suits.
For Democrats, the one silver lining in the April 2019 release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference was the belief that, if nothing else, Team Mueller put the kibosh on the various “conspiracy theories” around Rich’s murder. Said the leftist Daily Beast at the time, “Julian Assange repeatedly blamed Seth Rich, the murdered DNC staffer, for Russia’s leaks. The Mueller report shows that Assange was lying from the start.”
Far from “blaming” Rich, Assange offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to Rich’s killers. Team Mueller acknowledged that Assange had strongly suggested Rich was his source but dismissed Assange’s comments, claiming they were “designed to obscure the source of the materials that WikiLeaks was releasing.“ This was nuts. Assange had far less reason to protect the Russians than Mueller did to indict them.
Team Mueller expressed shock that even after the now infamous Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was released on January 6, 2017, “Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking.” According to Mueller, Assange reportedly told a U.S. congressman “that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”
It would have helped, of course, if Mueller and his team had spoken with Assange, but his first hand evidence would have spoiled the second hand narrative they established at the top of the report—”The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” This unfounded assumption dictated all conclusions that followed. Assange was “lying” because he challenged those conclusions.
In tracing the “evidence of Russian government operations,” the Mueller report cites as Exhibit A the fact that “in June [2016], the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network.”
The “cyber response team” in question was CrowdStrike, an outfit recommended by Perkins Coie, the same law firm responsible for the Steele dossier. The FBI had been shut out of the review. On January 5, 2017, a “senior law enforcement official” admitted as much, telling CNN, “The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated.” CNN reported this a day before the ICA was released.
The fact that its agents were denied access to the DNC servers may explain why, as Tulsi Gabbard reported, “the FBI and NSA had ‘low confidence’ in attributing the data leaks from these entities to Russia.” In its October 7, 2016 press release on Russian interference the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Homeland Security chose to suppress this exculpatory bit of information.
Even CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry had doubts about Russia hacking the DNC servers. In closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Community in 2017, he conceded, “There’s not evidence that [the data] were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.”
Leonard Benardo was less concerned about whether Russians hacked the DNC servers than he was about how Hillary Clinton could exploit the rumor that they had. Benardo, senior vice president for George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, was planted deep in the Clinton campaign. Of note, he began his work with the Open Society Foundations at the Soros Foundation Moscow.
Clinton’s schemes, laid out in a pair of emails, were unearthed by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) John Durham and shared by Gabbard this week. In a July 25, 2016, email, Bernardo wrote, “The media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid…Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”
“Julie” refers to Clinton campaign official Julia Smith. In the two days that followed Smith appears to have run her plans by Hillary Clinton. On July 27, 2016, Benardo wrote, “HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russia hampering U.S. elections. This should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level.” When questioned by Durham’s staff, Benardo lamely asserted that “to the best of his knowledge, he did not draft the emails.”
None of this proves people close to Hillary Clinton had Seth Rich killed, but it does show that Assange is a more credible source than the conspirators who framed Donald Trump. The Rich murder deserves the attention it was denied from day one. There can be no surer way to pierce the fog in which the legacy media have shrouded this scandal than to find Rich’s killers.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will begin trying to remove Democratic lawmakers from office Monday if they don’t return. Dozens of them left the state in a last-resort attempt to block redrawn U.S. House maps that President Trump wants before the 2026 midterm elections.
Abbott is taking a far more aggressive stance than the one he took in 2021. He swiftly warning Democrats that he will seek to remove them from office if they are not back when the House reconvenes Monday afternoon. Abbott cited a non-binding 2021 legal opinion issued by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, which suggested a court could determine that a legislator had forfeited their office.
He also suggested the lawmakers may have committed felonies by raising money to help pay for fines they’d face.
“This truancy ends now,” Abbott said.
In response, House Democrats issued a four-word statement: “Come and take it.”
Background
Forty Democrats left the state on Sunday and fled to Illinois so they wouldn’t have to deal with the vote on redistricting. Ironically, Illinois is one of the worst gerrymandered states in the nation, which is why it goes left most elections.
The Republicans are trying to add five more seats through redistricting at the suggestion of President Trump. Four of the five new districts are majority Hispanic. This is not a racial move.
Republicans hold 25 of the 38 states. They are attempting to do what Democrats have done in states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and so on.
A vote on the proposed maps had been set for Monday in the Texas House of Representatives, but it cannot proceed if the majority of Democratic members deny a quorum by not showing up. After one group of Democrats landed in Chicago on Sunday, they were welcomed by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, but declined to say how long they were prepared to stay out of Texas.
“We will do whatever it takes. What that looks like, we don’t know,” said state Rep. Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic Caucus leader.
All the walkout does is delay the vote. In other words, it’s theatrics to show their base they are doing something so courageous that you have to vote for them again.
How many people do you employ this month?” might sound like the kind of question an employer can easily answer, but it’s not. Especially for large businesses, the exact number of employees in a given month is hard to pin down. The media report layoffs and hires in round numbers, but for calculating total employment in the country, it really matters whether “500” means 478 or 523, because those discrepancies multiplied across millions of businesses make a huge difference.
President Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (not pictured), as President Trump announces a deal to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., July 14, 2025. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)
August 4, 2025 6:30 AM
‘How many people do you employ this month?” might sound like the kind of question an employer can easily answer, but it’s not. Especially for large businesses, the exact number of employees in a given month is hard to pin down. The media report layoffs and hires in round numbers, but for calculating total employment in the country, it really matters whether “500” means 478 or 523, because those discrepancies multiplied across millions of businesses make a huge difference.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics sends a survey to employers each month to figure out how many people they employ, as part of the jobs report. In the good old days before Covid, that survey had a response rate of about 60 percent. From respondents’ guesses about how many people they employ, the BLS had to guess about how many people are employed in this nation of 340 million souls.
That’s a really hard job. The BLS employs some of the best statisticians in the world, and they happen to be pretty good at it, often getting within a tenth of a percent of the final workforce numbers.
Then, Covid happened, and the establishment survey response rate dropped like a rock. It hasn’t recovered and currently sits at 43 percent. What was already hard at a 60 percent response rate is now even harder.
The problem of falling response rates has been well known for years, even before Covid. “The quality of data from household surveys is in decline,” said a paper published in the fall 2015 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, because “households have become increasingly less likely to answer surveys at all” and “those that respond are less likely to answer certain questions.”
Within government, Donald Trump’s appointee as BLS commissioner, William Beach, has been a leader in calling for modernizing the surveys that statistical agencies rely on. As commissioner from 2019 to 2023, Beach asked Congress for several million dollars in funding — peanuts, in federal budget terms — to redo the survey along the lines of other countries such as the U.K., which now uses an online-first methodology. It never came to be.
Beach organized a letter to Congress and the executive branch signed by numerous statistical experts in February of this year outlining the long-running problems statistical agencies have been facing. Budgets have not kept up with costs that are out of the agencies’ control, and staff who were doing vital work have been cut. Neither Congress nor the administration took action.
Beach has called Trump’s firing of his successor, Erika McEntarfer, “totally groundless,” and he’s correct. The issues with jobs reporting are not about politics or McEntarfer’s competence. In fact, they are exactly the kind of thing that an administration committed to technological modernization and government efficiency should find to be in its wheelhouse. And there’s no reason to think this particular jobs report was any more flawed than any other.
McEntarfer was not standing in the way of this modernization. Trump was mad about the jobs report, so he fired her.
He made this abundantly clear in a Truth Social post less than an hour after the one announcing McEntarfer’s firing, where he called the jobs numbers “rigged” against Republicans. So biased, apparently, that Vice President Vance was referring to them approvingly on social media mere hours beforehand.
There’s no consistent partisan bias at work here, as was demonstrated last year when the same BLS that Trump said was pro-Democrat for issuing downward revisions of earlier jobs reports under Biden issued the weakest jobs report of the year right before the presidential election. The job is hard when done well, and it’s been getting harder to do well.
Trump is now claiming the downward revisions of earlier jobs reports under Trump are a sign of political bias, even though that means it was initially making him look better. He says so because he wants the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, and weakening job performance makes that more likely.
No one should have to take these tantrums seriously, but firing the BLS commissioner is serious. The integrity of United States statistics is important not just for the government, but for the private sector as well. And these reports are relied upon around the world, not just in the U.S. The goal should be to get them right, not make them more favorable to the president.
Trump is shooting the messenger of bad economic news, not unlike when China discontinues inconvenient data series that make the Communist Party look bad. The BLS will continue to do its work, but now under a justified cloud of speculation that it is manipulating data to avoid Trump’s wrath. And the economy itself is what it is, no matter how the statistics are reported.
Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, economics, and culture—and no one, not even the experts, knows what happens when the old orthodoxy finally breaks.
Donald Trump’s far-ranging counter-revolution, to quote the old Star Trek mission statement, seeks “To boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Because no conservative president has dared to question the last 70 years of progressive cultural, social, economic, and political dominance, all traditional wisdom, all our renowned “experts,” and all the self-described “authorities” have no real credibility in their mostly flawed analyses and wrong prognoses.
Read what our legacy media predicted in March for this summer’s economy, or in January for the future of the border, or what would happen should the U.S. Air Force enter Iranian airspace.
Take the border. “Comprehensive immigration reform” (a euphemism for rolling amnesties and a still-open border) was the establishment’s answer to 10,000 foreign nationals storming the border during peak surges of the Biden administration.
But no president had ever simultaneously 1) pressured Mexico to close its borders and patrol ours, 2) announced a plan to complete a border wall along the entire US-Mexico boundary, 3) stopped catch-and-release, 4) ceased refugee applications after illegally entering the U.S., 5) introduced policies encouraging voluntary self-deportation, and 6) prevented all illegal entries at the border.
The result is that we do not know the full effects of these combined border policies.
So far, one million foreign nationals have lost jobs, and 2 million Americans have gained them since Trump’s inauguration. How much money will be saved in local, state, and federal entitlements if illegal immigrants return home?
How much trauma and costs will be avoided if 500,000 criminal aliens are deported?
How many serious and lethal hit-and-run accidents will be prevented?
To what degree will the idea of citizenship be reenergized once it is not reduced to the equivalency of mere residence?
How many emergency rooms will have more space for U.S. citizens? No one knows, but the consequences could be enormous.
The U.S. has never applied so many tariffs in so many ways upon so many goods from so many countries. As a result, economists have sworn since March that we are headed to a recession, stock collapse, stagflation, and high unemployment.
But do they really know the profit margins of our mercantile importers, who tariff our goods but expect easy entry for their exports to the U.S.?
Can importers pay a 15% tariff, still make a handsome profit, and not raise costs excessively on the U.S. consumer? If trade surpluses do not matter and tariffs hurt those who implement them, why do sophisticated Europeans, adroit Japanese, and smart Chinese prefer surpluses and tariffs to our deficits and zero or low tariffs? Are they on to something?
Do moderate tariffs encourage rather than retard American enterprise, on the theory that it will not be undercut by dumping and exchange manipulation and can also compete with far cheaper energy and transportation costs?
No one really knows these answers because the U.S. has never tried the current policy in quite the present way before. We do know that the radical free trade and asymmetrical tariffs of the last half-century empowered China to world power status with a dangerous military and hollowed out the U.S. industrial interior.
Is the $2 trillion budget deficit, as predicted, set in stone? Will the national debt only grow to unsustainable levels? However, federal agencies have never announced annual cuts of nearly $200 billion—along with a ten percent reduction in the budget deficit.
Never has the government promised to deregulate and fast-track permits for construction, energy development, and manufacturing from 2-3 years to mere months. What will the financial results be?
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggests that $15 trillion in new foreign investments are now promised. If accurate, what will such influxes do to employment? To federal revenues? To the economy in general?
Is it possible that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could be right that $300 billion in federal income will come from new tariffs—if true, that might reduce the deficit by another 15 percent?
What is the effect on the economy of cheaper energy costs when production is slated to rise without draining the strategic petroleum reserve on the eve of elections?
No one has ever questioned universities before so systematically.
We do know that student loan debt has spiraled to $1.7 trillion. Graduation rates have dropped to about 50-60 percent of those who enroll. The average student now takes six—not four—years to graduate. Today’s graduates, by all accounts, leave universities with fewer analytical skills, less language fluency, and reduced general knowledge than in past decades. Faculties have never been more weaponized, with 90-95 percent reportedly holding progressive views.
If universities are taxed on their endowments, will that not force them to reconsider their efforts to maintain their non-profit status?
Will 15 percent limits on overhead charges on federal grants force researchers to watch their budgets and universities to curb their bloated administrative legions?
What is so wrong with curbing the tuition gouging and profiteering off foreign students, and limiting their numbers to ensure access to underserved, deserving Americans?
Will the end of segregated dorms, safe spaces, and “affinity” graduations lead to more integration and assimilation than do the current tribal fixations on race and ethnicity? Historically, does tribalism or assimilation best serve a nation?
Will meritocratic admissions improve student skills, rewarding those who study hard and encouraging those who do not to emulate those who do? Will minorities who are admitted under meritocratic criteria be seen as more or less qualified?
Are far fewer administrators, more emphasis on instruction and less on politics, and more students from the heartland and fewer from communist China or the illiberal Middle East such bad things?
In the last 50 years, affirmative action transmogrified into DEI racial separatism, chauvinism, and a system of reparatory spoils, played and manipulated by grifters, opportunists, and fakers, from Elizabeth Warren-style phonies and Jussie Smollett-like con artists to opportunists like Zohran Mamdani who game the system.
Has any chauvinistic multiracial democracy—like Brazil or India—or any multiethnic or multireligious confederation—such as Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, or Iraq—ever succeeded by prioritizing caste, race, religious sectarianism, or ethnic tribalism?
Can any top-down imposed policy ever be successful when 70 percent of the electorate opposes it?
Can any government that institutionalizes bias and preferences succeed while ignoring class in favor of race—without ever clearly defining which racial criteria justify the entire spoils system, or why?
In our postmodern 21st-century system, no one knows exactly what will happen when race becomes incidental rather than essential. But we do know from history where we were headed under the current aberrant system.
Abroad, in the last 30 years, NATO was voluntarily hollowed out—largely praised in the abstract by European grandees and shorted and ignored in the concrete by Euro budget technocrats. Yet since the days of the Cold War, NATO members had not met their defense expenditure promises.
Now, most NATO members have met those commitments. Frontline NATO states like Sweden, Finland, and Poland are far better armed and prepared than legacy Western members like Belgium, Spain, or Italy. If there follows a rearmed and recommitted NATO, will not the world become a safer place?
We were told for a half-century to steer clear of Iran, the supposed unhinged, lethal bully of the Middle East. Their henchmen blew up barracks and embassies, took and executed hostages, and sowed terror throughout the Middle East with their killer surrogates Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
But Iran had never really fought, much less won a war, since it pleaded with Saddam Hussein for an armistice from the catastrophic Iran-Iraq conflict.
What will be the effect on the Middle East with a currently impotent Iran, an inert Hezbollah, and a subterranean Hamas in hiding? More importantly, what is the current regional role of Iran without a nuclear program, air defenses, a navy, or expeditionary terrorist forces? Again, no one knows.
Finally, we have never seen anything quite so radical as the new Democratic Party, at least not since the McGovern blowout of 1972. In its 24/7, 360-degree fixation on hating Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda, rarely has a party embraced signature policies that are so despised by the American people. As a result, we have no idea what the result will be other than a national implosion at the polls.
Why would any political party embrace open borders, the influx of 12 million illegal aliens, 600 sanctuary cities, biological men dominating women’s sports, dismantling the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries, prosecutors who release rather than indict and convict violent criminals, defunding the police, tribal fixations and racial spoils systems in defiance of the Supreme Court, the terrorists of Hamas over democratic Israel, and overt campus anti-Semitism?
We are in the middle of a counter-revolution, whose fate will likely be decided in 15 months by the midterm elections and the status of the late 2026 economy.
Structural changes across the economy, culture, and politics of the country are underway. Our bicoastal experts and authorities are mostly predicting a multifaceted systems failure—without explaining why or how.
Yet the only constant in their predictions is that when and if they prove wrong, they will not pivot, correct, or apologize, but simply move on to their next flawed prognosis, fortified by their titles and letters after their names—but otherwise little else.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 