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.
At the National Institutes of Health, six directors — from institutes focused on infectious disease, child health, nursing research and the human genome — are leaving or being forced out.
At the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly a dozen top leaders, including the chief air traffic officer, are retiring early.
And at the Treasury Department, more than 200 experienced managers and highly skilled technical experts who help run the government’s financial systems chose to accept the Trump administration’s resignation offer earlier this year, according to a staffer and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Across the federal government, a push for early retirement and voluntary separation is fueling a voluntary exodus of experienced, knowledgeable staffers unlike anything in living memory, according to interviews with 18 employees across 10 agencies and records reviewed by The Post. Other leaders with decades of service are being dismissed as the administration eliminates full offices or divisions at a time.
The first resignation offer, sent in January, saw 75,000 workers across government agree to quit and keep drawing pay through September, the administration has said. But a second round, rolling out agency by agency through the spring, is seeing a sustained, swelling uptick that will dwarf the first, potentially climbing into the hundreds of thousands, the employees and the records show.
Trump posted a video titled, “The Video Hillary Clinton Does Not Want You to See” that documented just some of the mysterious ‘suicides’ linked to the Clinton Crime family.
The video touched on the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr., DNC staffer Seth Rich, Clinton White House Counsel Vince Foster, Clinton White House intern Mary Mahoney, and others connected to the Clintons.
In July 1999, Hillary Clinton’s senate rival and front-runner for NY senate seat John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash.
Mary Mahoney was a Clinton White House intern who could have been a star witness at the Clinton impeachment trials. She was executed at a DC Starbucks in July 1997.
In July 1993, White House Counsel Vince Foster was found dead of an apparent ‘suicide’ in Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Parkway in Virginia.
In 1998, James McDougal, a key witness for White House prosecutors and financial partners with Bill and Hillary Clinton that led to the Whitewater scandal, died of cardiac arrest at the Federal Correctional Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, just before he was supposed to testify.
In 2015, Clinton White House Executive Chef Walter Scheib died of an ‘accidental drowning’ after he went on a hike on a trail in Taos, New Mexico. Scheib’s body was found submerged “in a mountain drainage flowing with surface runoff.”
In July 2016, DNC staffer Seth Rich was shot and killed in DC while he was walking home from a bar. It is believed that Seth Rich was the source of the Hillary Clinton/ DNC leaked emails published by Wikileaks. The Clinton/DNC emails published by Wikileaks greatly damaged Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
In August 2016, Shawn Lucas, a Bernie Sanders supporter who sued the DNC for rigging the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton was found dead in his home.
Although the term “mental health” is loaded with debatable philosophical suppositions, and though there may be a better term to substitute for this one, I find the term sufficiently suitable for the moment. Moreover, I am a firm believer in the need for attending to one’s psychological needs and desires.
But just because “mental health” is meaningful doesn’t mean, as many apparently think, that the terms “mental illness” and, synonymously, “mental disorder” necessarily are.
Ontology is the philosophy or study of being, of existence: What does it mean to be? To inquire into the ontological status of a thing is to inquire into what it means for it to exist, or how it exists.
The question before us here is, What is the ontological status of a mental disorder?
What kind of a thing is it? Every so many years, the American Psychiatric Association releases another version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). With each new edition, its list of mental disorders grows. Presently, there are around 300 or so such disorders listed.
Now, pathology is the branch of medical science that focuses on the study and diagnosis of disease. This is from the Pathology Department at McGill University:
Clinical pathology involves the examination of surgically removed organs, tissues (biopsy samples), bodily fluids, and, in some cases, the whole body (autopsy). Aspects of a bodily specimen that may be considered include its gross anatomical make up, appearance of the cells using immunological markers and chemical signatures, as well as genetic studies and gene markers. Pathologists specialize in a wide range of diseases, including cancer, and the vast majority of cancer diagnoses are made by pathologists. The cellular pattern of tissue samples is observed under a microscope to help determine if a sample is cancerous or non-cancerous (benign).
Notice that pathologists practice both anatomical pathology (the examination of the structural alterations in tissues and organs) and clinical pathology (the use of laboratory tests in the identification of disease).
Pathologists determine the presence of diseases in their patients by signs — i.e., objective, demonstrable markers that they can directly observe. A fever, a rash, elevated blood pressure — these are all examples of signs. Signs are not the same thing as symptoms, which are just the subjective experiences that patients report. Fatigue, a headache, a pain in the abdomen — these are examples of symptoms.
As Jeffrey Schaler, who was once a member of the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University, reminds us, “it is a fact that there is no literal disease identified by pathologists as mental illness.”
There’s a good reason for this.
Mental illnesses are identified on the basis of symptoms alone. There are no signs — no saliva, urine, or blood tests, no laboratory tests of any sort — by which a mental illness can be diagnosed. And these symptoms are nothing more or less than the reported behaviors of the patient.
What this means, then, is that a mental disorder or illness is a cluster of types of behaviors to which the APA ascribes a label — the label of a “disorder” or “illness.” Furthermore, this determination its leadership makes on the basis of…a vote. The APA decides which behaviors constitute what it will classify as a disorder.
Since, then, a disorder is not a singular thing, but rather a manifold of those behaviors that the APA has chosen to label a disorder, it’s that much clearer why pathologists will not recognize so-called mental disorders: The behaviors that are supposed to constitute mental disorders are descriptive. They are not explanatory.
Pathologists, as we know, search for the underlying causes of disease. Psychiatrists, in glaring contrast, describe behaviors, symptoms, as their patients report them. Thus, for example, an “anxiety disorder” is not the cause of the heart palpitations, dry mouth, queasy stomach, perspiration, tightness of chest, etc. experienced by the person who has been so “diagnosed.” What the APA has decided to call an anxiety disorder is these symptoms. There is no disorder over and above these symptoms that is causing them.
The One and the Many is one of the metaphysical problems first identified at the inception of the Western philosophical tradition in ancient Greece. Characteristic of the Greek mind is the idea that behind “the Many,” the world of many, ever-changing things that we perceive with our senses, is a more ultimate reality, “the One,” a single, eternal, permanent thing upon which the former depends. From its earliest days to the present, philosophers have never stopped arguing with one another over how best to resolve this problem.
To put the ontological status of a mental disorder in the terms of the problem of the One and the Many, the verdict is clear: The Many don’t arise from the One. The Many are the One.
In other words, a person who says she has some or all of the symptoms associated with anxiety disorders but not at any specific time or toward any specific objects may think she is saying something informative when she attributes these symptoms to “Generalized Anxiety Disorder.” But since the latter is not a One — an entity underlying the symptoms and giving rise to them — but rather a short-hand way of referring to those very symptoms, what she is actually saying is only as meaningful as a tautology. Her “diagnosis” amounts to this:
I’m prone, for no particular reason and with respect to no particular object, to have heart palpitations, sweaty palms, and an upset stomach because I’m prone to have heart palpitations, sweaty palms, and an upset stomach for no particular reason and with respect to no particular object.
To be told, then, that a person has a mental disorder is only to be told that the challenging experiences with which one contends are those that a committee of psychiatrists has decided to label a “disorder.” Yet the label is the package of experiences. It adds nothing to one’s awareness other than the illusion of being offered a causal explanation for one’s specific life challenges.
We must conclude that, at best, the ontology of a mental disorder remains…elusive.
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U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that President Trump’s responsibility to American citizens and national security, must be directly frustrated.
Acting under the Alien Enemies Act, President Trump accurately characterized Venezuelan gang members as not only aliens and enemies, but as criminals posing danger to the country. The Court apparently believes otherwise, and a majority ruled to pause deportation subject to a purported right of due process that they invented out of constitutional thin air.
As usual, two justices alone understand the law, and dissented: Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
But what is fascinating is that they appear the only functional legal experts on the nine-person court.
The rest seem to prioritize politics.
Perhaps that is unfair, but if you look at the track record of key legal decisions over fundamental constitutional interpretation, Alito and Thomas stand out as the only reliable, mature thinkers who can reason with the Constitution in front of them.
In the past, other administrations sought to “pack” the court with more appointees who could be counted on to toe the line as a unified bloc for partisan objectives.
It was a way of converting the Supreme Court into an effective legislature, which it never can be, of course, but also as a way to illegally frustrate a functional government by blocking or slowing down actual democratic processes of representation and consent.
But why add more judges to the Court if you can simply “hive off” and count on, a simple majority that consistently acts the way you want?
President Trump is doing his job as president, rightly interpreting the law, and upholding the Constitution.
The Chief Justice, and a cooperating wing, are apparently willing to frustrate executive responsibility, and prioritize illegal alien criminals over U.S. citizens, freely taking numerous “legal shortcuts.”
The Venezuelans and other invaders are not U.S. citizens, they are not “Persons” in the Constitution, and they are not granted any due process, except immediate deportation which is far more generous treatment than they would get in most other countries: in some, which the progressive left admires, their acts could rise to capital punishment.
This brings up a crucial point in comparative constitutional law: the concept of comity.
You don’t hear it discussed much, but it’s central to the underlying nature of the entire illegal immigrant invasion program that clearly involved organized human extraction and the “herding” of millions of unknown parties illegally into our country. The concept of “comity” asks how other countries could allow this to happen: how did potentially dozens of other sovereign countries, each with their own constitutions, happen to treat our Constitution with complete disregard, deliberately undermining it, and international law?
The doctrine of international comity refers to standards of public international law, and reciprocity.
Deporting illegal gang members not only honors that doctrine, but asks their countries of origin to do the same by facilitating their return.
The recent majority Supreme Court decision not only got our own Constitution wrong, but got everyone else’s wrong as well. It doesn’t reflect a full consideration of comparative and international law, which is relevant for the case before them. Given the limited way we train our lawyers and judges, that is not unexpected. But it’s a liability: our courts can work in ways that are against both domestic rules of law, and international order, by destabilizing both, through legal incompetence.
But this is where it gets interesting, because it reinforces the legal authority of President Trump’s position on illegal aliens:
The Comity Clause references Privileges and Immunities in Article Four of the Constitution: “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Note it says “Citizens.” Article Four also includes the interstate Extradition Clause.
Since illegals have neither U.S. citizenship nor U.S. constitutional personhood, they do not qualify for U.S. interstate rendition or due process. The only relevant legal action is international extradition to the one state that controls for their status: the foreign country of origin from where they are fugitives.
In the alternative, illegals could be jailed, and under the Thirteenth Amendment, thereby converted to slavery status as punishment.
That would be the only path to theoretically invoking the Fourteenth Amendment, for release from obligation. But since illegals do not qualify for U.S. criminal due process, the U.S. Patriot Act provides government authority to detain a non-citizen indefinitely without criminal charge. If the Supreme Court followed the law, it would stand down and recognize that it has no relevant jurisdiction. The Executive Office does.
Illegals have a choice: be subject to our Constitution if they insist, be jailed under expedited special proceeding, and by the Thirteenth Amendment, put in servitude as punishment; or be put under indefinite detention by the Patriot Act under national security; or, be extradited as fugitives from foreign states; or, be graciously deported for illegal entry, under an international comity standard.
In economics, these are called tradeoffs.
In the Constitution, it’s called the law of the land. For judges who can’t follow it, they may face impeachment. As the current “packed wing” of the SCOTUS seems determined to protect and harbor foreign criminals, they could then be subject to the Patriot Act which charges the Justice Department with preventing terror acts, including those potentially facilitating it.
Illegal criminal aliens can be characterized under domestic terror standards, and must be deported. Supreme Court justices that protect them may face impeachment, loose immunity, and risk liability.
Matthew G. Andersson is the author of the upcoming book “Legally Blind” concerning ideology in law. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the University of Texas at Austin where he worked with economist and White House national security advisor W.W. Rostow.
Now more than ever, the ability to speak our minds is crucial to the republic we cherish. If what you see on American Thinker resonates with you, please consider supporting our work with a donation of as much or as little as you can give. Every dollar contributed helps us pay our staff and keep our ideas heard and our voices strong.
Woke may be dying, but history warns: every collapse of the left births a new epoch—often more radical than the last.
The other day, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in England, proclaiming the death of woke and the end of the Progressive Era. This is more than a “vibe-shift,” Kaufmann writes; it’s “the end of the 60-year rise of left-liberalism in American culture.” He continues, arguing that the backlash against the left’s aggressive embrace of identity politics and its imposition of that politics on every aspect of our lives is far more profound and widespread than the 1990s reaction to “political correctness” and has even seeped into the left’s own organs of cultural transmission, including the mainstream media. This, in turn, has created a crisis of confidence among cultural liberals, leaving them disorganized, despondent, and marking the end of “the age of progressive confidence.”
On the one hand, I think Kaufmann is unequivocally right about all of this. I have written about the death of woke and the end of this current era of leftism myself, and I believe that Kaufmann has identified the causes and indications of the cultural left’s collapse quite nicely and succinctly.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that the death of woke will necessarily be the panacea some might hope. As even Professor Kaufmann concedes, “What replaces progressivism as our cultural lodestar will become evident only in the fullness of time.” Unfortunately, if past is prologue, “progressivism’s” replacement may well be even worse.
If one looks at the totality of the history of the left—from its bloody birth in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to the present—then neither the death of woke nor my apprehension about the future should come as much of a surprise. Since the beginning, the left has progressed through a series of conceptual epochs, each lasting a handful of decades, following similar patterns: intellectual inception followed by slow but sure growth, resulting, eventually, in cultural domination, and then a swift demise related to its inability to deliver upon the millenarian promises it made.
The rise and progression of the left is presaged by the Enlightenment and, especially, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the intellectual godfather of the left. The Enlightenment purposefully destroyed the old moral order, which had existed for roughly 2000 years, and attempted to replace it with a moral order based exclusively on reason, as opposed to the “superstitions” of the past. Given that the Enlightenment both caused and bled into the French Revolution, I think it’s fair to say that the post-Enlightenment period begins around 1799, with Napoleon’s ascent to power and the end of the revolution. This, then, can also be taken as the starting date for the First Epoch in the left as a political enterprise.
This First Epoch is distinguished mostly by its heterogeneity and, in some ways, its genial naivete. It saw the rise of Utopian Socialism in France and Great Britain and of philosophical leftism, primarily in Germany (Kant and Hegel, most notably). The ideas that dominated this epoch included ethical systems with foundations not derived from the supernatural and radical egalitarianism. Francois-Noel (“Gracchus”) Babeuf became the first true champion of the latter of these and, through the efforts and writings of Giuseppe Maria Lodovico Buonarroti, became an inspiration for the early communists and, in time, for Marx and Engels as well. The First Epoch is marked mostly by confusion, contradiction, and slow but sure formulation of a grand utopian scheme.
That basic, naive scheme failed to produce much by way of political reform, however, and by 1848, the men and women of Europe were tired, disappointed, and in the mood for radical change. From Napoleon’s ascent to the revolutions of 1848 and the concomitant publication of The Communist Manifesto was 49 years. During this period, the ideas constituting “the left” took form, namely its essential ethical justification and its basic economic scheme, but meaningful political progress remained elusive. And thus ends the First Epoch.
The Second Epoch in the evolution of the left can probably be said to start in 1867 with the publication of the first volume of Marx’s Kapital, his magnum opus, and with the subsequent rise of more overtly political and less strictly intellectual efforts to move the left’s agenda into the broader public domain. From 1867 on into the early twentieth century, the left was characterized by the dominance of Marxism (as described by Marx), as well as the rise of more practical competing and complementary efforts to turn the leftist vision into political reality (Syndicalism and Anarchy in Europe, Pragmatism and Progressivism in the United States). The Second Epoch was also, however, marked by the complete collapse of Marx’s vision with the onset of World War I. Marx had insisted that, under such circumstances, the “workers of the world” would “unite” and throw off their chains, choosing class solidarity over national allegiance. The Great War, of course, proved otherwise. Its onset, in 1914—47 years after the publication of Marx’s opus—signified the end of the Second Epoch, the epoch of Marx.
The Third Epoch can be said to start with the publication, in 1923, of György Lukács’s own magnum opus, History and Class Consciousness. Although there are many people and many works to pick from in this era, I’ll use Lukács and his book as the epochal marker because he is generally acknowledged to be the father of “cultural Marxism,” and it is generally considered to be his blueprint.
Industrialized Europe emerged from World War I shattered and broken, not just physically, but psychologically, emotionally, and most especially, spiritually. The new Europe was exhausted and scarred, increasingly frustrated with the old gods but far from enamored with the new ones. It rejected Marx openly, just as it rejected every teleological ethos.
As a result, nihilism replaced faith. Pessimism replaced hope. The “Ego” replaced everything else. Marx’s fears were realized, and his antagonist, Max Stirner, was proven prescient in his warnings about the “Ego’s” steadfastness.
In order to get the Marxist program back on track, Lukács—plus Gramsci, plus Adorno, et al.—had to fight back against the ascension of the ego, against the selfish rejection of communism for the satisfaction of the self. Cultural Marxism and its long march through the institutions constituted the plan for that fight.
This Third Epoch lasted only 41 years, however, and ended in 1964, when one of the cultural Marxists’ fellow travelers—Herbert Marcuse—simply conceded defeat. His book, One-Dimensional Man, was a eulogy for Lukácsian and Gramscian cultural Marxism. It was also a primal scream in frustration at the persistence of the ego (and the prescience of Stirner). Most notably, however, it was a blueprint in its own right for advancing the cause and promoting the revolutionary mindset.
Marcuse conceded that the capitalist system was simply too good at providing goods and services that made the masses comfortable and happy. It therefore deprived them of ever knowing or caring about their true oppressed consciousness. Workers had become one-dimensional consumers, distracted from their fate by their egos and the creature comforts of capitalism. As a result, Marcuse determined the left would have to recruit an entirely new revolutionary class to facilitate the revolution. He identified the socially oppressed—minorities, women, sexual subgroups, etc.—as this new revolutionary class.
Marcuse’s focus on identity evolved, over time, into political correctness and then into “woke,” which is our present-day plague.
This Fourth Epoch—the Marcusian Epoch—has been longer and more thoroughly culturally dominating than previous epochs, but as Eric Kaufmann and others have noted, it too is fatally flawed and bound to collapse. Its end may have been delayed, but it too was/is inevitable.
The real question at this point is what will come next. What will characterize the Fifth Epoch in the history of the left? I think a Fifth Epoch is unavoidable, largely because the moral and social foundations of Western Civilization, which were destroyed by the Enlightenment, remain in tatters. Indeed, they grow more and more tattered by the day. Marxism, per se, is no longer a real threat to the West, but then, it hasn’t been one in more than a century. The “left,” however, will adapt again, and it will morph to fill the voids left in Western Civilization by the Enlightenment.
In other words, celebrate the death of woke but brace yourself for whatever comes after it.
NewsNation political contributor Chris Cillizza said Thursday that fresh polling data paints a dire picture for the Democratic Party.
Just roughly one-third of Democrats said they were “very optimistic” or “somewhat optimistic” regarding the future of their own party, according to a Wednesday poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Cillizza said on his YouTube channel that this survey, alongside another poll, underscores how damaged the party has become.
WATCH:
VIDEO AT LINK………………
“The extent to which Democrats, Democrats think the Democratic brand is broken is pretty stunning to me, and we have a bunch of new polling data out lately that I want to go through that kind of explains where the Democratic Party is … the Democratic Party is in worse shape today, both in terms of how it’s viewed by the general electorate but also how Democrats feel about it, than at any time that I can remember in my covering of politics, which is now — because I’m old — almost three decades,” Cillizza said.
Cillizza walked through the AP poll’s numbers, noting the dramatic drop in Democrats’ optimism since July 2024, when the party was transitioning from former President Joe Biden to former Vice President Kamala Harris as its presidential nominee following Biden’s disastrous June debate against President Donald Trump.
“Maybe you get a little of the excitement of switching from Biden to Harris in those numbers,” he said. “But six in ten Democrats, even in that moment — which was chaotic at a minimum — even in that moment said they were somewhat or very optimistic about the future of the party. Today it is one in three.”
He also emphasized the stark contrast with Republican voters. The majority of Republicans, 55%, said they felt “very” or “somewhat” optimistic regarding their party’s future in the survey.
Cillizza then turned to a Tuesday Puck/Echelon poll, where Puck directed Echelon Insights to ask voters: “What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of the Democratic Party?”
Among all likely voters, the most common answers were “liberal, weak, corrupt.” Among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, the most common answer was “weak.”
“So ‘weak’ was the number one word that Democrats associated with their party. And ‘ineffective’ was right there as well. So: liberal, weak, corrupt for the general electorate, and weak and ineffective for the just-Democratic sample,” Cillizza said. “I find that — I guess not surprising, because we’ve had the Democratic brand in a place since Donald Trump won in 2024 that I’ve not seen before. In worse shape in terms of how people view it than I’ve ever seen before. I’ve talked to pollsters who said they’ve sat in focus groups, and the words that keep coming up are ‘weak’ and ‘woke.’ So that ‘weak’ word keeps coming up.”
“And I think that is sort of a big problem for the Democratic Party. You can’t be viewed as weak. You know, Donald Trump’s great strength — even for people who don’t agree with him — is he’s viewed as a fighter and tough. Now, we can debate whether he is a fighter and tough, but that’s how he’s viewed,” he continued. “And Democrats right now — even among themselves — see themselves as weak and ineffective. And I just think that’s incredibly telling and problematic for a party … these numbers and those words, even for me, who kind of knew that the Democratic brand was not in good shape, were pretty, pretty shocking.”
During Supreme Court oral arguments in the Trump v. CASA, Washington, and New Jersey cases, Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a surgical takedown of the legal rationale for nationwide injunctions, using just one line.
The case centers around whether lower courts can issue sweeping injunctions that block federal policies nationwide, even when only a handful of plaintiffs are before the court. Representing the United States, Solicitor General John Sauer argued that such broad orders violate established legal norms and Supreme Court precedent.
“We believe that the best reading of that is what you said in Trump against Hawaii, which is that Wirtz in 1963 was really the first universal injunction,” Sauer told the Court. “There’s a dispute about Perkins against Lukens Oil going back to 1940. And of course, we point to the Court’s opinion that reversed that universal injunction issued by the D.C. Circuit and said it’s profoundly wrong.”
Sauer continued, listing key precedents that have rejected expansive injunctive relief. “If you look at the cases that either party cite, you see a common theme. The cases that we cite — like National Treasury Employees Union, Perkins, Frothingham, and Massachusetts v. Mellon, going back to Scott v. Donald — in all of those, those are cases where Court considered and addressed the sort of universal — well, in that case, statewide — provision of injunctive relief.”
He emphasized, “When the Court has considered and addressed this, it has consistently said, ‘You have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs appearing in court and complaining of that remedy.’”
That’s when Justice Thomas stepped in and cut through the legal weeds with a devastatingly simple observation.
“So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunction?” he asked.
Sauer didn’t hesitate: “That’s exactly correct. And in fact, those were very limited, very rare, even in the 1960s.”
He went on to explain that nationwide injunctions didn’t truly explode until 2007. “In our cert petition in Summers v. Rhode Island Institute, we pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.”
Thomas’s concise question — “So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunction?” — hit the heart of the issue. With that simple question, he challenged the idea that such drastic judicial remedies were historically essential, even during one of the most tumultuous and morally urgent periods in American history: the civil rights era, a time when federal courts began issuing broader remedies to dismantle Jim Crow laws and enforce desegregation.
In other words, if the courts managed to confront segregation, enforce Brown v. Board of Education, and make tremendous progress for civil rights without needing to impose blanket nationwide injunctions, then why are they supposedly necessary today over what amounts to policy disputes?
In just one sentence, Thomas accomplished what pages of legal briefs failed to do. He exposed the historical and constitutional weakness of the left’s favorite legal tactic.
Thomas’s brilliant takedown reveals how progressives weaponized the courts after failing legislatively. Don’t miss our uncensored coverage of the judicial battles shaping America’s future. Join PJ Media VIP today for exclusive analysis and commentary the mainstream media won’t provide. Use code FIGHT for 60% off and stand with us against judicial activism!
“He’s a great columnist. I think he’s terrific.” – Mark Levin
Matt Margolis is a conservative commentator and columnist. His work has been cited on Fox News and national conservative talk radio, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dan Bongino Show. Matt is the author of several books and has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America’s Voice News, Salem News Channel, and even CNN.
In the five years since I began writing the Twilight Patriot Substack, I’ve had occasion to mention only one pope — and that was the medieval Pope Innocent III, who appears briefly in my essay on the Magna Carta.
If you’re a Catholic and you believe that these men are chosen with the aid of the Holy Spirit, then the reason for refusing to put them in political boxes should be obvious. If, like me, you’re merely an astute observer of events, then just remember how John Paul II annoyed the traditionalists by kissing the Quran as a gesture of friendship to Muslims, and how Francis annoyed the liberals by complaining about the frociaggine (i.e., “faggotry”) in the Vatican. These “factions” in the Church, and their respective popes, are not as different from each other as the news industry tries to make us think!
This was also the reason that, when the American Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected last week and became Pope Leo XIV, I wasn’t at all surprised by the regnal name he chose. After all, popes and cardinals and bishops are also annoyed by the attempts by outsiders to cast everything they do in a factional light, and every new pope naturally wants to emphasize unity and make it clear that he’s a pope for the whole Church. But reusing the name of any recent pontiff — for instance, by becoming Pius XIII, John Paul III, Benedict XVII, or Francis II — would align oneself with a faction.
Francis tried to get around this problem by naming himself after a saint (Francis of Assisi) whose name had yet to be used by any popes. But this was a radical enough move that if the next pope had done the same thing, he would have simply been saying, “I’m going to be a second Francis,” which is not the message Cardinal Prevost wanted to send. And so he had to reach back a little more than a century into the past, for the name of the most recent pope who is admired by just about everyone in the Church — and that was Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903.
Pope Leo XIII had a fascinating life. He was born in 1810 as the sixth child of a Sienese count and a descendent of Cola di Rienzo, the great Roman populist of the early Renaissance. He was a clever boy, writing poetry in Latin by age 11; at 18 he entered a pontifical academy, where he was soon impressing the cardinals with his knowledge of canon law. He rose steadily through the ranks and at age 67 was elected pope, reigning until his death at 93, during which time he became the oldest pope ever, as well as the first pope to be filmed and the first to have his voice recorded.
A lot of progressive commentators are gushing over the new Pope Leo’s apparent admiration for Leo XIII, whom they describe as a “social justice” pope, who, by issuing the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, “defended workers’ rights” and “laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching.”
The expectation seems to be that the people who read these headlines will nod along with the progressive buzzwords without thinking too hard about what these things meant in 1891, much less actually reading Rerum Novarum for themselves.
I am of the opinion that everyone should read Rerum Novarum. (Here is the Latin original; here is the official English translation.) “But I am not Catholic,” some of you might say, “so why should I care what a long-dead pope had to say about the proper relationship between labor and capital?”
Well, I am not an Anglican, but I still wrote a positive review of C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy last November. There is just something important about seeing a Christian thinker, of whatever denomination, predict what will happen if mankind keeps on pursuing some materialist vision of utopia — and then seeing that prediction fulfilled. And for Leo XIII, writing way back in 1891, that utopian vision was the one peddled by the Socialistae — the followers of people like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (no one had yet heard of Lenin or Trotsky) who insisted that a happy and just society was about to come into being, if and only if socialist revolutionaries could abolish private property.
Leo was not an apologist for laissez-faire capitalism. He was frank about the hard condition of the working poor in most of Europe and the genuine evils that had stirred up class conflict and made the doctrine of the Socialistae seem appealing. He writes that
some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.
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Pope Leo XIII was unapologetically in favor of what were, at the time, called “social laws” — laws that regulated workplace safety conditions, established minimum wages, limited the hours and days of labor to ensure that workers had enough time for rest and worship, forbade women and children from being employed in work “unsuited to their sex and age,” and ensured that children had enough education that they could make the best use of their talents, even if they began life poor.
But with the would-be abolishers of private property, there could be no compromise. It was against human nature. Man, at his creation, had been given dominion over the earth and had been commanded to till the soil to earn his bread. To forbid him from owning the soil he worked, the tools with which he worked it, or the fruits of his toil would be to deprive him of his humanity.
To the Marxist intellectuals, who gabbled about the difference between “private property” and “personal property” — who insisted that only the “means of production” would be owned by the state, and that workers would still receive wages for the labor they contributed — Leo’s response was simple. Men of thrift and foresight, as soon as they had saved up a little money beyond their immediate needs, would want to buy land with it, or machinery, or something that would make supporting their families a little easier in the future than it had been in the past. And if a working man couldn’t reinvest his own wages, then they were never his wages to begin with.
Would social inequality be the result? Of course. And Pope Leo (who is after all the son of a count!) isn’t much troubled by this.
It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialistae may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition.
Due to mankind’s fallen condition, inequality will produce benefits to the human race but also suffering and hardships that have to be endured. But this doesn’t mean it can be done away with, and those who “pretend differently — who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment — they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present.” Also,
just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, whereas perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.
Later in the encyclical, Leo talks about the especial duties governments have to protect the working poor, and the right the workers have to form trade unions and workingmen’s associations to collectively bargain for their rights, and to provide relief for widows, orphans, and the sick or injured. He also argues that these organizations will succeed to the extent that they are motivated by Christian charity, and a realization that working for the material well-being of one’s fellow men is not an end in itself, but a preparation for the world to come.
But what does he hope will be achieved, in this world, by all this work on behalf of the poor?
If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. … The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.
Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For, the result of civil change and revolution has been to divide cities into two classes separated by a wide chasm, [but] if working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another.
A further consequence will result in the great abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. …
And a third advantage would spring from this: men would cling to the country in which they were born, for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life.
These three important benefits, however, can be reckoned on only provided that a man’s means be not drained and exhausted by excessive taxation. The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State has the right to control its use in the interests of the public good alone, but by no means to absorb it altogether. The State would therefore be unjust and cruel if under the name of taxation it were to deprive the private owner of more than is fair.
This, then, is the “social teaching” to which Pope Leo XIII committed the Catholic Church: that without property there is no liberty, and that church and state should work together to create a nation of property-owners — a nation that makes no pretense to bring about earthly equality but does its best to make sure every working man is rewarded for his toil, and that those with the greatest talents, and best work ethic, are able to rise to the stations where they can be of the most use to their fellow men.
On the whole, the moral sense of Rerum Novarum is closer to what one finds in the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute than it is to the platform of practically any present-day left-wing party.
And it’s worth remembering that Pope Leo’s predictions were borne out by events. Just as Pope Paul VI, when he issued Humanae Vitae in 1968, had foreseen the bad results of the Sexual Revolution with far more clarity than its naïve promoters did, so too did Leo XIII, nearly eighty years earlier, foresee the bad results of the Bolshevik revolution.
The nations of Catholic Europe where Leo’s teachings were held in the highest regard — that is, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, and pre-WWII Poland — all managed to put a lid on the class conflict and avoid the horrors of communism (though in Spain this was a near-run thing). Protestant countries like England and the United States, who were led in a similar direction from their own pulpits, also prospered. Meanwhile, it was Russia, where the Orthodox Church was subservient to the tsars and largely failed to call out corruption and greed among the upper classes, that fell to the horrors of communism.
Rerum Novarum means “of the New Things” in Latin, though it is often translated loosely as “Revolutionary Changes.” Though the matters that Leo spoke of may not be as “new” as they were in 1891, they are still relevant. We patriots would do well to remember that if we want men and women to “cling to the country in which they were born,” then we must make sure that government does not simply try to help corporations maximize profits. It must also defend the domestic labor market, keep skilled industries in the country rather than offshoring them, and force people to respect borders.
In short, we must favor the “national conservatism” of statesmen like Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and J.D. Vance over the worn out globalism of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and Klaus Schwab.
This, then, is the “social teaching” that the author of Rerum Novarum left behind him. And if you are as curious about the world as I am, then you will read Rerum Novarum for yourself, instead of blindly assuming that the left-wing press knows what it’s talking about when it says that Leo XIII was a “pope for the poor” or a “champion of the working classes!”
Twilight Patriot is the pen name for a young American who lives in South Carolina, where he is currently working toward a graduate degree. He also has a Substack where you can read more of his writings, such as this recent essay about how medieval and renaissance Europe owe their progress in science and engineering to the Christian faith.
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Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted on July 9, 1962 as part of a group of tests collectively known as Operation Fishbowl. While Starfish Prime was not the first high-altitude test, it was the largest nuclear test ever conducted by the United States in space. The test led to the discovery and understanding of the nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effect and a mapping of seasonal mixing rates of tropical and polar air masses.
Key Takeaways: Starfish Prime Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States on July 9, 1962. It was part of Operation Fishbowl. It was the largest nuclear test conducted in outer space, with a yield of 1.4 megatons. Starfish Prime generated an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that damaged electrical systems in Hawaii, just under 900 miles away.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 