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.
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.” —Sun Tzu
You understand, don’t you, what the aim was of the “Seditious Six” politicians who made last week’s now-notorious video suggesting that US military personnel should refuse the president’s orders if they deemed them to be “illegal?” This was the old Lefty game of provoking the authorities to react intemperately so they can be labeled “fascist.” It’s like the old schoolyard game of the kid who goes I’m touching you. . . I’m touching you. . . until the touched kid explodes. . . so the toucher can then say, look, he’s hitting me!
And they certainly succeeded in pissing-off the president enough for Mr. Trump to suggest they could be hanged for their little prank — though he was probably incorrect about the legal niceties therein.
That members of the out-party in Congress and the Senate must resort to this kind of skylarking japery tells you how desperate they are. The organizer, Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA officer. Is she in communication regularly with any of her former colleagues at the Agency? And did she coordinate any part of her prank with them? I bet DNI Tulsi Gabbard could find out and let CIA Director John Ratcliffe know so he can fire their a**.
The intel bureaucracy remains a hotbed of resistance to the swamp-draining project underway since 01/20/25. The swamp creatures like their swamp fecund and fetid as it has been, with the rich revenue stream it is used to feeding on, and Mr. Trump has done much to change that. Alas, the CIA remains the most implacably opaque major operation in government. It insists that its activities require secrecy, and the awful downside is that the Agency has run without real oversight since its inception after the Second World War. Gawd knows how many John Brennan clones are still lodged over in the Langley, VA, HQ.
Of all the celebrated new appointees in the agencies, Mr. Ratcliffe has been the least visible. He went into the job with very promising credentials, having served as DNI in the last months of Trump 1.0. He must know where a whole lot of bodies are buried (some of them actual bodies) but the public has heard squat from him all year.
Surely Mr. Ratcliffe must also know by now who in the CIA was scheming along with John Brennan to perpetrate RussiaGate, and who was on the leak-line to the news media. He must know how Adam Schiff coordinated impeachment No. 1 with CIA agent Eric Ciaramella, then Intel Inspector-General Michael Atkinson, Col. Alexander Vindman, and Lawfare ninjas Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, and Andrew Weissmann. He must know who in “Joe Biden’s” White House was coordinating the 92 felony prosecutions against Mr. Trump with DA Alvin Bragg and AG Letitia James in New York and DA Fani Willis Fulton County, GA.
He must know how BLM and Antifa were allowed to burn down Minneapolis in 2020, and riot in scores of other places. He must know what agencies and what persons in them coordinated the Covid-19 operation and which foreign entities were involved. (Was it the US military, as many suspect, and how, if at all, did freelance players such as Bill Gates and George Soros’s myriad organizations fit in the picture?) And how is the machinery of the Democratic Party entangled in the workings of US intel? (Prime suspects: Sen. Mark Warner and his staff.)
You can say much the same thing about FBI Director Kash Patel and his Deputy Director, Dan Bongino. They were apparently horrified by the rot they encountered there on taking office earlier this year. What is so difficult about firing people, even a whole lot of people? And why wouldn’t you say you are doing it? Likewise, Pam Bondi, at her resistance-infected DOJ?
Mr. Trump had a rough week working through his “divorce” from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Both of them behaved rather badly; he the usual name-calling; she playing up to the cluster-B ignoramouses on The View, and then resigning from Congress in a snit (walking away from Daddy). The Epstein Files legislation she was twanging on the president about got passed in a flash and signed, but it contained rules that can easily be used to keep key documents suppressed. The suspicion will linger that it’s all about protecting Israel, and thereby stir-up continued animus against the Jews.
Mr. Trump had a ju-jitsu session in the Oval Office with NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, the avowed communist jihadi — putting the young insta-celebrity pol off-balance by acting all nice and accommodating. “I want him to do a great job. . . “ “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought. . .” “It was a great honor [to meet him]. . . .” the president declared on his Truth Social account. Stand by on what any of that means.
And now, as we plunge into Thanksgiving week, comes the Ukraine peace proposal. Everybody knows it is a recognition that Russia is grinding toward victory in any case, and carrying-on further slaughter and destruction on-the-ground is insane. But then, Ukraine’s ruler, Mr. Zelenskyy, is insane (probably high on drugs, too), and the EU leadership is insane seeking to start a war with Russia that it has zero ability to prosecute — and nevermind whatever the obdurate defenders of the UK’s sclerotic empire think they’re doing to keep the Ukraine War going. But, bottom line: there’s a good possibility that the war will be over before Christmas, and the world will be better off for that.
With all the above going on, America needs a break. Enjoy a turkey, if you can afford to buy one, and count your blessings — for we are still a blessed people in a blessed land, and we should all show a little gratitude for the privilege of just being here on a planet so superbly suited to our needs.
By now everyone is aware that six Democrats in Congress created videos in which they openly encourage members of the U.S. military and Intelligence Community to mutiny against the commander in chief. They couched their seditious statements in the pretense that they are interested only in protecting the Constitution, but their message is unmistakable: Resist President Trump’s lawful orders, and we’ll have your backs.
Americans whose minds have not been pickled by leftism are not impressed. The Democrat instigators have been called “TikTok Traitors,” the “Seditious Six,” the “Idiot Six,” and worse. President Trump immediately accused the lawmakers of sedition and demanded that they be arrested and stand trial for their potentially deadly provocations. In response, the Democrat provocateurs have pretended to be outraged that the commander in chief would correctly describe their seditious actions as seditious.
Democrat word games have become so exhausting over the last thirty years. Remember when Bill Clinton lied about his affair with twenty-two-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky by telling a grand jury, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”? No matter how corrupt American politicians were before Clinton’s galling equivocation, it has seemed as if rhetorical obfuscation began exponentially accelerating after that moment.
Fast-forward to 2025, and former CIA director John Brennan is entirely comfortable going on national news shows and telling the world that he and fifty other “intelligence professionals” never lied about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell” being Russian disinformation because the spies clearly stated in their 2020 pre-election op-ed defending the Bidens that the laptop’s treasure trove of criminality had merely “the hallmarks” of a Russian operation. If Americans were confused about their attempt to blame Hunter’s crimes on the Russians, that’s because Americans are poor readers!
Senator Elissa Slotkin — one of the “Seditious Six,” a former CIA analyst, and a protégée of John Brennan — is busy playing the same sick word games as Slick Willy and commie Brennan. She claims that her seditious video is meant only to draw attention to President Trump’s “illegal orders,” but when she is pressed to name one such “illegal order,” she admits that she is “not aware” of any.
If Slotkin can’t identify any of President Trump’s orders as illegal, why is she making videos encouraging rank insubordination among America’s military and intelligence personnel? The Democrats are executing the exact same playbook that they have been using against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. For months, Democrat governors and lawmakers have threatened federal agents with future prosecution for doing nothing more than enforcing existing immigration law and arresting criminal illegal aliens in their states. In order to protect millions of foreign nationals from deportation, Democrats have been obstructing law enforcement operations by promising to punish officers who do their jobs.
Threatening ICE agents with unlawful and malicious prosecutions will inevitably get people killed, because in the real world, hesitation invites disaster. When prominent Democrats encourage military and intelligence personnel to resist orders, the consequences are potentially catastrophic. As one astute commenter notes, “the threat of weaponized lawfare against U.S. troops is seditious psychological warfare. It’s seditious sabotage aimed at breaking the chain of command. It’s a seditious plot to erode trust in leaders and it undermines the oath that keeps the military united and effective.” The Democrat strategy is nefarious and straightforward: Induce service members to question the orders of their commanding officers. Hesitation and delay during combat will not only get Americans killed, but also directly serve enemy
Democrats’ attempts to confuse American service members also encourage our geopolitical adversaries to be more aggressive. As Glenn Beck argues, “if a video like this were aimed at Putin’s military, we’d assume Russia was unstable or nearing a coup.” Therefore, Democrats have severely “weakened America — signaling doubt to allies and opportunity to enemies.” If you were a general in China’s military, would you be less or more willing to invade Taiwan after prominent Democrat officials encouraged division and subversion among America’s rank-and-file troops? Public calls for insubordination make America appear destined for civil war at home and ill-prepared to defend its own interests or those of its allies abroad.
In describing his disgust with Democrats’ efforts to instigate a military rebellion against the Trump administration, Congressman Byron Donalds pulled no punches: “Donald Trump is the commander in chief, not Mr. Crow, not Senator Slotkin. They are not the commander in chief! And like I said before, they would not tolerate any Republican launching any video like that!” Can you imagine? After patriotic grandparents and Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans protested the fraudulent 2020 election by walking through the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Democrats (and useful RINO idiots Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) spent tens of millions of dollars producing a theatrical congressional hearing meant to demonize all MAGA voters as “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists.” If prominent Republicans in Congress had subsequently encouraged members of the military and Intelligence Community to disobey orders coming from installed-president Biden, the backlash against them would have been swift and brutal. Not only would they have been expelled from Congress, but they also would have been arrested in the most publicly humiliating fashion. In contrast, the “Seditious Six” sit for ego-stroking interviews during which they play victim.
This is what Republicans mean when they denounce “Democrat privilege” in the United States. Time and again, Democrats do things with impunity that would land a normal Republican in prison for decades.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, and their fellow Russia Collusion Hoax co-conspirators will never be held accountable for manipulating intelligence to frame President Trump as a Russian spy. Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats who bailed out arsonists during the most destructive riots in American history will never be held accountable for putting violent repeat offenders back on the street. Alexander Vindman will never be held accountable for undermining the Trump White House and triggering a farcical impeachment. None of the conspirators who violated state election laws and used fraudulent mail-in ballots to pretend that Sleepy Joe Biden was the most popular presidential candidate in our nation’s history will ever be held accountable for stealing the 2020 election. Anthony Fauci won’t be held accountable for covering up the laboratory origin of COVID or hiding the worst side-effects of the mRNA “vaccines.” Social media companies won’t be held accountable for censoring Americans who protested the stolen 2020 election or the unconstitutional “vaccine” mandates imposed by installed-president Biden’s administration. It appears that neither Jim Comey nor Letitia James will be held accountable for respectively committing perjury and mortgage fraud. Democrat prosecutors and judges will never be held accountable for abusing the criminal justice system to railroad President Trump, his friends, and his voters.
In the United States, two-tiered “justice” protects Democrats and renders Republicans defenseless.
Now we will see whether six Democrats can actually get away with encouraging a military mutiny. If past is prologue, the answer is surely “yes.”
There’s a popular social media meme that succinctly describes our situation: When leftists say “our democracy,” what they mean is “our regime.” Democrats have taken over so much of the permanent bureaucracy that even when they are out of power, they still command much of the American government. They are emboldened to commit sedition and treason because they know that no left-leaning prosecutor, judge, or jury will hold them accountable. This kind of in-your-face double-standard will eventually end the Union.
Let’s hope, for the sake of our country’s future, that guilty Democrats begin to pay a price. Forgive me for not holding my breath.
President Donald Trump is delaying a planned announcement of a proposal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, according to two White House officials, after congressional Republicans pushed back against the president’s sudden embrace of the expiring subsidies.
Trump was expected to unveil a plan aimed at halting ACA premium spikes on Monday, as first reported by MS NOW. But the reveal has been postponed — though not canceled — said the White House officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the internal strategy.
Both White House officials noted that Trump’s announcement — which was never officially on the schedule — would take place soon. But they acknowledged the initial plan, which would have sought to end “surprise premium hikes” for those on Obamacare programs, was being actively reworked.
“Until President Trump makes an announcement himself, any reporting about the Administration’s healthcare positions is mere speculation,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
While the White House sought to downplay the seriousness of the delay, Republicans indicated they were surprised and angered by a plan that would help preserve the Affordable Care Act.
“I wasn’t expecting the proposal to be Obamacare-lite,” a conservative House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the yet-to-be-released plan. “Absolutely not supportive of extending ACA subsidies.”
“I’ve talked to enough [Republicans] to know that people weren’t expecting this and aren’t happy about it,” this lawmaker added. “I don’t see how a proposal like this has any chance of getting majority Republican support. We need to be focused on health care, but extending Obamacare isn’t even serious.”
Another conservative House Republican, who also requested anonymity to speak candidly about the proposal, told MS NOW that lawmakers knew the White House was working on something. “But not with a primary focus on the subsidies,” this Republican said.
‘I wasn’t expecting the proposal to be Obamacare-lite,’ said a conservative House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the yet-to-be-released plan. ‘Absolutely not supportive of extending ACA subsidies.’
The White House appears not to have sought significant input from Capitol Hill on the plan, with Republicans who spoke to MS NOW suggesting that most lawmakers were unaware the administration’s health care proposal would include an extension of the subsidies. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., were expected to be briefed for the first time on the plan Sunday afternoon.
The delay comes as the president — and Hill Republicans — are caught in a bind over health care. Covid-era subsidies for nearly 22 million Americans who get their health insurance through the ACA exchanges are set to lose those plans at the end of the year, a change that would cause massive price spikes in red and blue states alike.
Thune promised a vote on extending the subsidies to Democrats, who agreed to end the recent government shutdown as long as they secured a vote to extend them.
Despite the lack of an official announcement, some Republicans who were learning the broad strokes of Trump’s plan from the media were not especially happy with it.
“I would absolutely NOT be supportive of that,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told MS NOW of extending the subsidies on Monday morning. “Since I last checked, Covid has been over for some time. This is definitely not the DOGE thing to do,” he added, referring to the cost-cutting agency formerly run by president adviser Elon Musk.
Other Republicans were more succinct. When MS NOW asked fellow Freedom Caucus member Greg Steube, R-Fla., if he would be supportive of the White House health-care proposal, he had a two-letter response: “No.”
Another conservative House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the yet-to-be-released plan, told MS NOW they were also skeptical of the idea.
“Fix health care for working Americans or don’t talk to me about subsidies,” this lawmaker said.
Trump’s proposal — whatever it may end up being, and whenever it may end up coming — would mark a significant development in the ongoing health care discussion in Washington. If Republicans suddenly relented and agreed to extend the ACA subsidies, even in a slightly modified form, that would mark a significant win for Democrats.
For weeks, Republicans have railed against extending the subsidies, arguing that Obamacare is broken and that extending the subsidies would amount to padding the coffers of insurance companies.
“I’m not putting a Band-Aid on something that’s broken,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told reporters last week.
America’s leftists have gone from a reverence for Europe’s socialist institutions to a subtle but complete nullification of the United States Constitution and American law.
Leftists always adored Europe’s soft socialism. They wanted socialized medicine, practically free pharmaceutical drugs, six weeks of paid vacation a year, one year of parental leave for both parents (not that leftists actually want people to have children), subsidized housing, etc.
Pointing out that all of this came about because of American taxpayers who funded building Europe back up after WWII, who absorbed all of Europe’s defense costs, and who pay the costs of all the research and advertising behind the drugs sold at a discount to European socialized systems fell on deaf ears. Europe was the way.
Of course, lately, Europe hasn’t been the way. Its socialized medicine systems have fallen on hard times, with euthanasia often seen as the ultimate cost savings. Europeans aren’t having children, so parental leave is kind of a moot point. And of course, the systems are collapsing under the weight of unlimited immigration from Muslim countries—often a man, his multiple wives, and their many children—none of whom have paid into the system but all of whom get the benefits, including the subsidized housing, healthcare, education, etc.
With Europe increasingly less of a stellar example and more of a terrible lesson, Democrats have shifted to something new: International law.
The seeds of this have been there for a long time. All of you must remember in 2012, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, while in Egypt announced that she really didn’t like the pithy, government-limiting American Constitution. Given the choice, she said, she’d prefer the South African constitution, with its long preamble, 14 chapters, 244 sections (32 of which purport to be a “Bill of Rights”), 8 schedules, and 16 amendments. Thus, she explained,
“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa,” says Ginsburg, whom President Clinton nominated to the court in 1993. “That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. … It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution.”
Even though the American Constitution advances values bestowing rights on all American citizens, for Ginsburg, it was a document fatally tainted by the Founders’ bad views about women, blacks, and Native Americans. The whole Constitution is the fruit of the poisonous Founders’ tree.
Well, if a Supreme Court justice says the Constitution is bad, you can’t be surprised to fast-forward 13 years and discover Democrat party politicians saying that international law overrides American law. Zohran Mamdani is especially fond of international law if it means destroying Israel.
To that end, he insisted before his election that, because the International Criminal Court has put out a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he would arrest Netanyahu if the latter came to New York City:
“This is something that I intend to fulfill,” Mamdani remarked, reiterating a pledge he had made earlier in the mayoral race, as the newspaper put it. “It is my desire to ensure that this be a city that stands up for international law.”
“Being a city of international law means looking to uphold international law,” Mamdani said. “And that means upholding the warrants from the International Criminal Court, whether they’re for Benjamin Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin.”
Second, it is unlawful for an American citizen to imprison, threaten, or intimidate (among other things) a foreign official or head of state. 18 U.S.C. § 112. The penalty can be up to 10 years in prison or more if weapons are used (as would be the case if Mamdani authorized armed police to detain Bibi).
Mamdani either does not care. But it doesn’t stop there.
Last week, a huge, intimidating, anti-Israel crowd gathered around the Park East Synagogue to protest the fact that it was holding an event for Nefesh B’nefesh, an organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel. The protest was almost an illegal activity under federal law, and Harmeet Dhillon has promised to investigate and prosecute:
Mamdani’s response was interesting. First, he issued a bland statement saying it wasn’t really a good thing to surround some unnamed type of “House of Worship” and threaten people:
“The Mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said Thursday. “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation…”
Way to keep it bland, Mr. Mayor-elect.
Mamdani didn’t stop there, though. He added this strange statement: “…these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.” In Mamdani-World, Jews immigrating to Israel is “a violation of international law.”
First, no, it isn’t (at least, not yet). Even if the world says that the settlements in Judea and Samaria, the ancient heart of Israel, are “illegal,” immigrating to Israel is not a violation of any international law.
Second, and more importantly, international law doesn’t apply in New York or anywhere in America. What happened inside the synagogue was perfectly legal and unobjectionable…in America.
Mamdani, though, isn’t the only Democrat turning to international law when American law fails to help his objectives. Mayor Brandon Johnson, the truly execrable Chicago mayor, has the same attitude. He believes that, when the President of the United States enforces American immigration law in an American city, that, too, is a violation of “international law.”
What these ardent leftists are saying isn’t accidental, and it’s not ignorant. They hate America, and they desperately want to do away with the Constitution that limits the government while extending maximum liberty to the American people—something international law definitely doesn’t do.
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In the wake of a tsunami or a suicide attack, most religious leaders hesitate to rush in and justify the ways of God toward humanity. It wasn’t always so. As the defining crisis in American history gathered momentum and became civil war, ministers North and South spoke with authority, even defiance, about the overriding purposes of God. The impact was sobering. Precisely at a time when Protestant influence on national values had no real rivals, America collapsed into a war over the decisive moral issue of the day.
The most astute theologian of the crisis, a layperson named Abraham Lincoln, framed the issue in simple terms: “Both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” And since they prayed for different outcomes, “the prayers of both could not be answered.” In an environment like ours in which the role of religion in public life is energetically debated and values such as freedom are said not to be “America’s gift to the world” but instead “God’s gift to humanity,” the Civil War provides a cautionary tale about the limits of religious belief in guiding a democracy.
In this trim volume adapted from lectures at Penn State, Mark Noll continues the argument he began in his previous book, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. There has never been a period during which America was more unified around a core set of values, Noll argues, than between 1800 and 1860. This antebellum piety was a unique synthesis of republican ideals, Enlightenment assumptions and traditional Christian beliefs. In Europe antiauthoritarian hopes were assumed to sound the death knell of religion, but in the United States republican ideals and Protestant evangelicalism shaped and reinforced each other. That the success of Jacksonian democracy coincided with the spread of Methodism and revivalism is no accident. And yet on the eve of the Civil War, Noll shows, this evangelical consensus became “divided against itself,” fueling the larger conflict. If democracy as practiced in the nation could not work, neither could the faith that shored up its legitimacy. The political crisis, in other words, was necessarily a theological one, because theology and republicanism shared the same rhetoric.
The key to the antebellum synthesis—and, for Noll, the heart of the problem—was a widespread belief in a commonsense approach to the Bible. A faith available to all had for its authority a book accessible to all. The Bible yields its plain meaning to the believer. And so if the apostle Paul commanded, “Slaves, obey your masters,” and told a Christian slave to return to his master, no sophistication was needed to see that the Bible condones slavery. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Jefferson wrote of the nation’s founding ideals, and Noll sees the same democratic instinct guiding biblical understanding. No bishop or Harvard scholar was needed to tell the unordained evangelist or even the man in his cabin reading the Bible by firelight what the Bible does and does not say.
But common sense applied to morality as well as to understanding the Bible. To some, including many readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the moral reprehensibility of slavery became more and more obvious, and the simplicity of an individual verse less decisive. Stowe’s novel was powerful because it showed the limits of a morality shaped by exegesis alone.
The ensuing theological crisis was in some ways, then, a battle between moral common sense and exegetical common sense. Those who wanted to criticize slavery and still honor biblical authority could separate out larger principles or themes (love of neighbor, say) and then use those principles to frame specific problem texts. But this interpretive move was usually seen either as a slippery slope (such “methods of interpretation will get rid of everything,” one observer noted), or as an undemocratic, elitist exercise (only a theologian could work out these interpretations). Religion is “too simple,” abolitionist Gerrit Smith declared, “to make the training of a theological seminary necessary for those who teach it.” Contemporary debates over homosexuality often reenact this antebellum dilemma.
For churches and theologians, then, the Civil War was an interpretive crisis. Noll frames the stand-off eloquently:
There were no resources within democratic or voluntary procedures to resolve the public division of opinion that was created by voluntary and democratic interpretations of the Bible. The Book that made the nation was destroying the nation; the nation that had taken to the Book was rescued not by the Book but by the force of arms.
More problematic in the long run than the question of slavery (what theologian today would defend it?) was the issue of providence. Religious leaders on both sides assumed that the war was God’s will. A leading northern theologian, Charles Hodge, was representative: “That it was a design of God to bring about this event cannot be doubted.” In the South, a Methodist minister rallied an audience with the claim that his region’s cause was “the cause of God, the cause of Christ, of humanity.” But as Lincoln noted as early as 1858, simply acknowledging God’s providence was the easy part: “There is no contending against the Will of God. . . . Still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases.” Lincoln’s uneasy approach to understanding how cataclysm could demonstrate God’s purpose forms the climax of Noll’s earlier America’s God. In The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Noll again reveals his astonishment that Lincoln could offer such a probing portrait of an Almighty who has his own purposes while, in contrast, the country’s “recognized religious leaders offered a thin, simple view of God’s providence and a morally juvenile view of the nation and its fate.”
The Civil War showed the frailty of the consensus of antebellum Protestantism. Common sense can describe a group’s approach as long as members of the group reach common conclusions. Where there are divisions of interests and experience, however, what is plainly and obviously right to one may be despicable to another. As the U.S. became more complex, either theology could become more complex too or Christians could lash themselves to an earlier vision of simplicity that was, as Noll shows, a hybrid of republican and biblical values.
In responding to this crisis, Noll suggests, European critics of American theology acknowledged problems such as racism and economic self-interest more readily than did their American counterparts. Noll is particularly drawn to conservative Catholic critiques, which make for some jolting examples. He describes the work of one French critic this way: “The elements that set his work apart from Protestant parallels—especially the treatment of Catholicism as the long-term friend of liberty and his challenge to capricious biblical interpretation—constituted a distinctively Catholic contribution.” One waits for a polite rejoinder that doesn’t come. “Catholicism as the long-term friend of liberty”? A German critic also declares the Catholic Church a bulwark of human freedom and gets a pass. And surely Orestes Brownson confuses the usual meaning of the word liberty when he claims that “popular liberty can be sustained only by a religion . . . speaking from above and able to command.” If Catholicism’s critique of American Protestantism is important, as Noll claims, it is not because Catholicism has been a better steward of liberty but because it poses an alternative to a boundaryless individualism.
But there are other alternatives, and readers of Noll’s new volume owe it to themselves to seek out chapter 21 of his previous book, America’s God. There he presents a more searching critique of antebellum piety through the melancholy perspectives of Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville and Abraham Lincoln, a triumvirate “aloof from the organized Christianity of the United States” but attuned to the spiritual dilemmas occasioned by the war. All three present indigenous critiques of a piety that comes too easily and a knowledge of God’s purposes that comes too quickly.
One way to move on from the antebellum consensus of simplistic biblical faith is to say that uncertainty and disagreement form an occasion not for submission to some larger authority “greater than the individual interpretation” but for charity among individual interpreters. The individualistic energy of America doesn’t have to be valorized by a republican gospel, but it can be embraced as an opportunity for the development of other virtues. Forbearance in the face of disagreement makes for its own kind of unity, one worth not fighting for.
Eric Swalwell sometimes flies under the radar among members of Congress who operate daily with a double-digit IQ. Often, it’s members of the so-called Squad who earn that accolade. They get the spotlight, and rightly so.
But the congressman proves his mettle time and time again, spitting out ideas indicating he’s clearly two beers short of a six-pack.
Swalwell, the Democrat Representative who has served California’s 14th congressional district, recently announced he was jumping into the Golden State’s gubernatorial race. He announced his laughable campaign with the less humorous Jimmy Kimmel because, of course.
Things got infinitely funnier when, speaking with CNN over the weekend, Swalwell offered one of his initial brilliant ideas for the 2026 election. He wants Californians to have the option to vote by phone.
We’re not kidding.
“I want us to be able to vote by phone. I think every Californian— vote by phone, yeah, if we can do our taxes, do our… healthcare appointments… essentially do your banking online, you should be able to vote by phone,” he said.
“Make it safe, make it secure. But it’s actually already happening all over the United States. I want us to be a blue state that doesn’t do just a little bit better than, like, Georgia or Alabama, when it comes to like, voting access,” Swalwell explained. “I want us to max out democracy.”
The phrase “max out democracy” absolutely had to have been workshopped by an intern fresh out of high school. You know, high school, where Swalwell no doubt was stuffed in his locker nearly every day. I kid, I kid.
Swalwell got absolutely raked over the coals for the idea.
“Vote by phone so every 13-year-old with mom’s iPhone can pick the governor. Eric Swalwell just invented election fraud 2.0,” one X user wrote. “Genius level: room temperature IQ.”
It’s not even that warm.
“This is the worst voting idea I’ve EVER heard. That would be an abject disaster,” Eric Daugherty, Chief Content Officer for Florida’s Voice, added.
“Democrats always want more cheating in our elections,” conservative commentator Paul Szypula responded to the idea.
Fact check: True.
Currently, there are roughly zero U.S. states that allow universal voting by phone (e.g., via mobile app, voice call, or SMS) in federal, state, or local elections, primarily due to significant security, privacy, and verification concerns. Concerns that would be obvious to anybody with more than three functioning brain cells.
Some states have tested mobile or online voting pilots for specific populations, primarily for military and overseas citizens or voters with disabilities. Even then, it’s not widespread and often requires biometric verification or is restricted to specific jurisdictions.
Voting by phone fails most critically on authentication, secrecy, and verifiability. Phone numbers are easily spoofed, hijacked via SIM-swapping, or bought in bulk, making it impossible to prove that the person voting is the actual registered voter. The fraud alarms should be going off everywhere. But what is an alarm to you and me seems like a golden opportunity for Swalwell.
Similar to efforts to allow voting without government-issued identification, Democrats are always looking to expand who has access to the ballot box. Not to “max out democracy” as Swalwell suggests, but rather to allow as many unverified people as possible access to elections to muddy the waters.
Rusty Weiss has been covering politics for over 15 years. His writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, Fox News, Breitbart, and many more. Follow him on X.
Nov 14, 2025 10:32 pm · Updated Nov 18, 2025 7:54 pm
Reading time: about 6 minutes
It’s Tuesday, Nov. 4: Election Day 2025. The day began with the death of Dick Cheney and ended with the election of Democrats and Democratic Socialists all over the country.
I grew up in Astoria, Queens — the heart of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America with Tiffany Cabán, Zohran Mamdani and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez as my DSA-endorsed representatives. Ever since the Democratic primary, I had been counting down the months, days and, by 8:59 p.m., the seconds until New York City would elect a Democratic Socialist as our mayor.
This election cycle yielded incredible news for leftists all around the country. In New York City, Mamdani won with over 50 percent of the vote. Kelsea Bond became the first Democratic Socialist to be elected in Atlanta, winning over 64 percent of the vote. It was a victory for Democrats as well, with decisive wins for governors in Virginia and New Jersey, managing to flip a significant number of Republican voters. Here in Ithaca, DSA-endorsed candidates Jorge DeFendini and Hannah Shvets won seats in the Ithaca Common Council.
For the first time, there was something that I was excited to vote for in US politics. As a nine-year-old, I rode the tide of Bernie Sanders enthusiasm, yelling out “Feel the Bern” with my parents at political rallies — the only time I have ever attended them. After that, it was disappointment after disappointment with Trump’s first far-right candidacy and disillusionment over Biden’s support of Israel in its genocide of the Palestinian people. With the Harris and Trump electoral race, my choice was between a center-right and far-right candidate.
Compared to the international political spectrum, United States politics is skewed to the right. Our “left-wing” representatives, the Democratic Party, are, to borrow from folk musician Phill Ochs, “ten degrees to the left of center in good times [and] ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” In the first 2024 election debate, Kamala Harris affirmed that she was pro-military, pro-fracking and against gun control. “Radical” Democratic Socialists such as Mamdani, who Republicans have branded as “communist extremists,” base their platform on policies taken for granted in most European countries. Abroad, free public transit, universal childcare and rent freezes are programs of common sense and empathy.
Yet, Mamdani’s victory proved that grassroots organizing can triumph over oligarchy. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign raked in $55 million from a handful of power brokers, calculating to $65 a vote. A large sum went into an Islamophobic smear campaign featuring racist AI-generated ads, including one infamous video depicting an AI-generated Mamdani eating with his hands and a Black man wearing a keffiyeh and shoplifting.
Zohran’s campaign, on the other hand, was powered by over 100,000 unpaid volunteers. Daily, people knocked on doors, called voters and organized within their communities. Every time I went back home, I would spot “Vote for Zohran” messages written on the sidewalk in chalk.
It was the same story for Hannah Shvet’s campaign ever since she narrowly won her primary against landlord and former factory CEO, G.P. Zurenda. After losing to Shvets, Zurenda then proceeded to pull an Andrew Cuomo by running as an independent in the general election. Like Cuomo, a small number of big corporations and property owners paid large sums of money to his campaign. Zurenda averaged $362 per donor while Shvets averaged $15.64 from 448 contributors.
In an interview with me, Shvet’s campaign reported that volunteers knocked on 2,479 houses, registered close to 200 students to vote, tabled outside for weeks, assembled scores of buttons and made 3,670 phone calls. All this was organized by students who have their hands full with classwork in one of the most elite universities in the nation. “I think just being present around campus this month helped a lot,” said Shvets in the interview. “We got to know so many people and told them about the race, how to vote and why it’s so important for Cornell students to engage in local politics.”
Hannah Shvets won with a staggering margin of 243 to 134 in an election with historic voter turnout. In NYC, we saw the greatest number of voters in half a century. These elections demonstrate the formidable strength of grassroots organizing. That’s certainly not a new revelation, but it needs to be said. It needs to be yelled out from rooftops and spread from city to city. Most importantly, it needs to continue to ensure that our elected Democratic Socialists can fulfill their promises.
Although I believe that capitalism must ultimately be replaced for true liberation, these electoral wins matter right now. Rent stabilization, free child care and higher minimum wages can alleviate the symptoms of oppression and have the capacity to help millions — indisputably, an incredible victory. “We can mobilize people around these issues,” said Shvets. “Coming to public comment at City Hall, writing letters to Cornell, holding rallies, etc., are all things that go into getting meaningful legislation passed.”
But the fight is not over. The forces of oligarchy and fascism — through real east lobbies, police unions, billionaire donors, AIPAC and conservative media ecosystems — are prepared to smother these victories. They will spend billions to undermine our elected Democratic Socialists, starve them of resources, and then proclaim that “once again, socialism failed.”
This is why the work after election day is even more important. The real power gained from organizing to elect Mamdani, Shvets and many more, is the momentum that comes from learning how to mobilize renters, students and the community. Electoral politics will not guarantee us a new world, but these wins open up a small crack in the current system. And historically, from these cracks slip through revolutions. As Mamdani said in his victory speech, quoting Eugene Debs, “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.” As the Red Sun Rises on this new dawn, it is up to us to make sure it reaches its zenith in the sky.
Mina Petrova
Mina Petrova ‘29 is a Freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences studying English, History, and Government. Her fortnightly column ‘North Star’ studies the past and critiques the present, focusing on politics, protests and activism that strive toward a more equitable future. She can be reached at mpetrova@cornellsun.com.
Taxpayers are footing the bill for up to $30 billion in fraudulent payments, one expert told The Daily Wire.
Though the government shutdown has ended, the fight over Obamacare is still raging.
Democrats want to extend and renew the Affordable Care Act’s expanded COVID-era subsidies, which are set to expire on December 31. Doing so would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Republicans want to let the subsidies lapse, and find a way to reform America’s healthcare system.
Ryan Long, Senior Research Fellow at the Paragon Health Institute, told The Daily Wire that the expanded subsidies have created zero-dollar insurance plans that have sparked widespread fraud and abuse.
“There’s upwards of 6 million people who aren’t actually within that income category that are claiming credits as if they were in that income category,” he explained. “In certain states, there are three to four times as many people enrolled in 100 to 150% of poverty in these $0 plans than there are people actually in those income brackets.”
“So these COVID credits have just produced massive amounts of fraud,” he said. “The federal government’s paying, you know, upwards of $27 billion to $30 billion in fraudulent payments.”
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz echoed this concern last week. “Today, it’s over 11 million people who have Obamacare, never use their policies … which means they often don’t know that they have it,” he said. “Yet we’re stuck with the bill.”
Obamacare is also making health insurance more expensive. Obamacare plan premiums have climbed a whopping 169% since 2013. The increase is far steeper than that of employer-sponsored insurance, because when prices rise, the government is paying most of the cost, so insurers can keep raising them without people feeling the impact, Long explained.
What we’ve seen is, since the [ACA] was established or implemented in 2014, employer-sponsored premiums have gone up about 68%. ACA premiums have gone up 129%,” he said. “So that can’t be a function of just prices going up. There’s something truly wrong here.”
Healthcare costs and wait times have not improved since the implementation of Obamacare, either. So, where is all this money going?
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told The Daily Wire in an interview this week that a lot of this money is going to insurance companies.
“The largest carrier of exchange policies is UnitedHealthcare,” he said. “Their stock price has gone up 1,177 % since the invitation of Obamacare. Of the top seven carriers, the smallest amount of stock increases — I think, 414%. A lot of money into the insurance companies, a lot of money into the hospitals. There’s no doubt about it that we’ve got rural hospitals that are in trouble, but the big city hospitals are making money hand over fists.”
“There is nothing about Obamacare that created incentives to save money,” he emphasized. “All the incentives are to increase the money spent on healthcare so everybody gets their cut, everybody gets to make their profit. Non-profit hospitals, take a look at the pay of CEOs — some of them are making over $30 million a year in total compensation.”
“Money is flowing into the medical establishment, they’re making money hand over fists; the tabs are being picked up by the American taxpayer,” the senator told The Daily Wire.
Democrats’ solution to the healthcare crisis is to continue to extend and expand subsidies.
“We had a provision that was ready to be signed, that we know would’ve decreased premiums by 10 to 15%,” Long said. “Senate Democrats objected to it — the same policy that they were saying we had to do back in 2018. And so I think that they’ve just said, ‘Hey, the horse is outta the barn, we’ll just, you know, paper over any mistakes with more subsidies.’”
Twenty-two million of the 24 million people will still get their subsidies, the original Obamacare subsidies, which subsidize the insurance at 91 % of the premiums,” he explained. “So their premiums won’t double.”
“Now, you can argue that people that went from paying a negligible amount to zero premiums, they’re going to have to pay another negligible amount,” Johnson said. “But again, going from zero to a negligible amount is an infinite increase. You can’t put that as ‘doubling premiums.’”
“The people we’re talking about, the 1.6 million people whose subsidies completely go away — I’m willing to work with Democrats on that,” the senator added. “But again, it’s simply false to say that most people are gonna see their premiums double and triple. Now, the gross premium has more than doubled and tripled since Obamacare, but that’s because of Obamacare.”
The GOP believes that deep reforms need to be made — or Obamacare needs to be scrapped entirely.
President Donald Trump has proposed HSA-style accounts for Americans, allowing them to purchase their own healthcare plans, opening up the market, and bypassing insurance companies.
“I am calling today for insurance companies not to be paid,” Trump said last week. “But for this massive amount of money to be paid directly to the people so they can buy their own healthcare. They’re gonna buy their own healthcare, and we’re gonna forget this Obamacare madness.”
🚨 WOW! President Trump has the Democrats TOTALLY CORNERED on Obamacare
“I am calling today for insurance companies NOT to be paid. But for this massive amount of money be paid DIRECTLY to the people so they can buy their own healthcare!”
Though the government shutdown has ended, the fight over Obamacare is still raging.
Democrats want to extend and renew the Affordable Care Act’s expanded COVID-era subsidies, which are set to expire on December 31. Doing so would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Republicans want to let the subsidies lapse, and find a way to reform America’s healthcare system.
Ryan Long, Senior Research Fellow at the Paragon Health Institute, told The Daily Wire that the expanded subsidies have created zero-dollar insurance plans that have sparked widespread fraud and abuse.
“There’s upwards of 6 million people who aren’t actually within that income category that are claiming credits as if they were in that income category,” he explained. “In certain states, there are three to four times as many people enrolled in 100 to 150% of poverty in these $0 plans than there are people actually in those income brackets.”
“So these COVID credits have just produced massive amounts of fraud,” he said. “The federal government’s paying, you know, upwards of $27 billion to $30 billion in fraudulent payments.”
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz echoed this concern last week. “Today, it’s over 11 million people who have Obamacare, never use their policies … which means they often don’t know that they have it,” he said. “Yet we’re stuck with the bill.
Obamacare is also making health insurance more expensive. Obamacare plan premiums have climbed a whopping 169% since 2013. The increase is far steeper than that of employer-sponsored insurance, because when prices rise, the government is paying most of the cost, so insurers can keep raising them without people feeling the impact, Long explained.
“What we’ve seen is, since the [ACA] was established or implemented in 2014, employer-sponsored premiums have gone up about 68%. ACA premiums have gone up 129%,” he said. “So that can’t be a function of just prices going up. There’s something truly wrong here.”
Healthcare costs and wait times have not improved since the implementation of Obamacare, either. So, where is all this money going?
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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told The Daily Wire in an interview this week that a lot of this money is going to insurance companies.
“The largest carrier of exchange policies is UnitedHealthcare,” he said. “Their stock price has gone up 1,177 % since the invitation of Obamacare. Of the top seven carriers, the smallest amount of stock increases — I think, 414%. A lot of money into the insurance companies, a lot of money into the hospitals. There’s no doubt about it that we’ve got rural hospitals that are in trouble, but the big city hospitals are making money hand over fists.”
“There is nothing about Obamacare that created incentives to save money,” he emphasized. “All the incentives are to increase the money spent on healthcare so everybody gets their cut, everybody gets to make their profit. Non-profit hospitals, take a look at the pay of CEOs — some of them are making over $30 million a year in total compensation.”
“Money is flowing into the medical establishment, they’re making money hand over fists; the tabs are being picked up by the American taxpayer,” the senator told The Daily Wire.
Democrats’ solution to the healthcare crisis is to continue to extend and expand subsidies.
“We had a provision that was ready to be signed, that we know would’ve decreased premiums by 10 to 15%,” Long said. “Senate Democrats objected to it — the same policy that they were saying we had to do back in 2018. And so I think that they’ve just said, ‘Hey, the horse is outta the barn, we’ll just, you know, paper over any mistakes with more subsidies.’”
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Johnson said Democrats are insisting on extending the COVID-era subsidies “to paper over to hide the fact that Obamacare has just been a miserable failure.”
“It caused premiums to skyrocket, as opposed to … President Obama saying that he would reduce premiums by $2,500 a year by family — again, that’s a total lie,” he added.
Johnson also pushed back on Democrats’ claims that premiums will double for millions and millions of Americans if the subsidies aren’t extended.
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“Twenty-two million of the 24 million people will still get their subsidies, the original Obamacare subsidies, which subsidize the insurance at 91 % of the premiums,” he explained. “So their premiums won’t double.”
“Now, you can argue that people that went from paying a negligible amount to zero premiums, they’re going to have to pay another negligible amount,” Johnson said. “But again, going from zero to a negligible amount is an infinite increase. You can’t put that as ‘doubling premiums.’”
“The people we’re talking about, the 1.6 million people whose subsidies completely go away — I’m willing to work with Democrats on that,” the senator added. “But again, it’s simply false to say that most people are gonna see their premiums double and triple. Now, the gross premium has more than doubled and tripled since Obamacare, but that’s because of Obamacare.”
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The GOP believes that deep reforms need to be made — or Obamacare needs to be scrapped entirely.
President Donald Trump has proposed HSA-style accounts for Americans, allowing them to purchase their own healthcare plans, opening up the market, and bypassing insurance companies.
“I am calling today for insurance companies not to be paid,” Trump said last week. “But for this massive amount of money to be paid directly to the people so they can buy their own healthcare. They’re gonna buy their own healthcare, and we’re gonna forget this Obamacare madness.”
🚨 WOW! President Trump has the Democrats TOTALLY CORNERED on Obamacare
“I am calling today for insurance companies NOT to be paid. But for this massive amount of money be paid DIRECTLY to the people so they can buy their own healthcare!”
Republicans seem to be on board with the proposal. In fact, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said last weekend that he’s drafting legislation to put this idea into action.
Long said this could be a good move for Americans. If Congress were to adequately fund Cost-Sharing Reductions (CSR) — which are supposed to help people pay for things like deductibles and copays — that could drastically lower premiums and cut tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding, he explained. And, as Trump proposed, sending that money straight to Americans rather than insurance companies would only empower patients.
“One thing that we’ve advocated for is if you appropriate those CSR subsidies, which is one of the twin pillars of the subsidy structure from the ACA, you’ll reduce premiums by 10 to 15%,” he explained. “Two, you’ll lower federal spending by about $30 billion. You’ll give patients more power and choice. And we think with that power and choice, you’ll also have the effect of them being better shoppers, and that will lead to more competition and choice.”
“So one thing that you could do is appropriate those CSR subsidies, and instead of giving those CSRs straight to the insurance company, you can give those to people in an HSA, where they can have more power to shop around for more valued services or better-priced services,” he elaborated. “Again, you’ll have the twin effects of lowering premiums, lowering federal spending, and empowering patients, which we think is sort of a triple winner.”
Schools across the country have been lowering standards and removing penalties for failure,” writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Colleges have stopped requiring applicants to submit test scores. The results of this vast experiment are in. Joe College can’t do math well enough to succeed in a science, engineering, computer or business major. The odds are he’ll struggle to complete college reading assignments and write a coherent essay.
The University of California system went “test-free” five years ago. SAT and ACT scores aren’t considered in admissions. The percentage of new students who can’t meet high school — or middle school — standards soared.
“We call it quantitative literacy, just knowing which fraction is larger or smaller, that the slope is positive when it is going up,” Janine Wilson, the chair of the undergraduate economics program at UC Davis, told Horowitch. “We are just seeing many folks without that capability.”
Students seem to think they don’t need to learn math, said Maria Emelianenko, chair of George Mason University’s math department. AI will do it for them.
“Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” Brian Conrad, a Stanford math professor, said. “The premise that foundational ideas don’t need to be learned anymore is a recipe for idiocracy.”
Horowitch points to several culprits for the decline in achievement, starting with the distractions caused by smartphones in schools, and the federal government’s weakening of accountability measures.
Of course, remote learning was an educational disaster. Students learned very little, and teachers were told to lower standards even further.
“Equity” initiatives led to “no zeroes” grading: Students can get partial credit for assignments never even attempted, much less successfully completed. I used to think “A” stood for “average.” In some schools, “A” is for “alive.”
Students move through high school getting A’s and thinking they’re prepared for the next step, writes Kelsey Piper in The Argument. “They were lied to.”
“Year after year, they fall farther behind,” and it becomes harder for teachers to give them honest grades, she writes. “It would ruin the kids’ GPAs and college prospects.”
They get to college and end up in low-level remedial classes, Piper writes. If they’d failed earlier, they might be prepared to excel in college. Giving them undeserved A’s wastes their time and makes it likely they’ll waste time and money in college. “Cargo cult equity needs to die.”
Requiring SAT or ACT scores would identify college applicants with inflated grades and weak skills. Some selective colleges have abandoned test-optional policies, and I predict nearly all will do so very soon. (UC is more extreme: Test scores aren’t considered at all.)
But what about all the kids who aren’t trying to get into selective colleges, but do need math and reading skills to learn a skilled job or qualify for military service or function in the adult world? They need to be taught the basics, retaught if they’ve failed to achieve mastery, and given an opportunity to build on that foundation during their many years of free education.
Is it wrong for white Christian men to have a sense of identity?
Ben Shapiro seems to think so. During a recent interview with Dana Loesch, the Daily Wire host lamented the rise in white identity among young conservatives. “I think we can start with what’s driving this in the first place,” Shapiro said. “For a decade or more, there was an attempt by the left to target Christian white men.”
Continuing, he explained:
“In saying that over and over and over, they started to create a feeling in a lot of young white men, that as a targeted group, they actually were an identity group of their own, and that now as an identity group of their own, they must rise up and lay low anyone who is not a member of that group.”
Shapiro’s two assertions are correct: the left promulgates anti-white identity politics, and many younger conservatives have developed a sense of white identity in response to it.
But his read of the situation is simplistic. White people can have a positive sense of identity without needing to “rise up and lay low” people from other backgrounds.
It is reasonable not only for white conservatives but also for conservatives of any racial background to object to demographic change, race preferences, and the demonization of European contributions to world civilization. One could certainly oppose these things on colorblind grounds, as conservative activist Chris Rufo has done, since it appears to be the most effective way to build a broad coalition capable of winning elections and changing laws.
But just as Asians may oppose woke policies on the grounds that they feel personally targeted, so, too, do many white people oppose them because they feel targeted. It is entirely reasonable to oppose a policy that directly targets you because of your race, while supporting a colorblind approach to undoing those policies.
In other words, it would be entirely sensible for a white American to object to becoming a minority in a country where discrimination against and demonization of whites is not only legal but widely celebrated. I fail to see why a self-respecting person of any race would support such discriminatory treatment of their own group. Does this qualify as white identity politics?
Clearly, it would be a grievous mistake to look at our current situation and conclude that the solution is to hate all non-white people, expel all blacks from America, advocate for violence, or become as loud and annoying about one’s white identity as the woke activists are about theirs. Those who espouse this hardline white identity politics are often crude and disagreeable, and I’m convinced most on the right who categorically reject any form of white identity are responding to them.
Yet those who seek to quash any sense of white self-identification among younger generations misunderstand the phenomenon and are doomed to fail. Life experiences for young Americans differ dramatically from those of their elders.
For one thing, many young white people grew up in raucous minority-majority schools, where to be white may be to stick out like a sore thumb. Spend a little time on X and you are bound to see videos of black mob violence against white teenagers in high schools across the country. It doesn’t help that in class these students are taught to feel ashamed of their ancestors’ real or perceived sins, a narrative that is also promoted by political elites, entertainers, and the mainstream media.
It’s a sorry situation. But one thing’s clear: telling young white Americans that these problems don’t exist is the surest way to lose credibility in their eyes.
Like it or not, many young white people are being forced to confront the realities of race. To ensure they avoid overreacting, it is important to eschew the finger-wagging and moral denunciations that brought us here.
Those who point to antiwhite discrimination are now so accustomed to scolding that they’ve become immune to it. Instead, what is needed is to calmly and rationally acknowledge the injustice they see while explaining why things shouldn’t be taken too far.
What does such an explanation look like?
In the first place, it’s important to stress that hardline white identity politics is a dead end for the right. If ending anti-white racism and mass immigration are the goals, then the right must build a coalition capable of winning elections and changing laws.
Appealing only to white people is unlikely to make that happen. In fact, Trump campaigned on mass deportations and opposition to anti-white DEI policies, yet he won by increasing his share of minority voters at the same time he supported these policies. Had he adopted a hard white identity politics approach, not only would he have alienated non-white voters, but he also would have alienated many whites.
Second, hardline white identity politics doesn’t offer a path to individual or national flourishing. Look at the white nationalist movement to see what happens to those who subscribe to and get caught up in this ideology. It always ends badly. They find themselves cut off from polite society—not only because of the risk of doxing, but also because the demand for an ever-ratcheting ideological purity puts one at odds with most people, even white conservatives, who do not share their views.
It is perhaps no surprise that when one looks at the numerous high-profile white nationalists who have disavowed the movement—from Derek Black to Jeff Schoep—one notes how easily, once leaving, they became leftists. If this kind of intellectual instability isn’t a wise idea at the individual level, it certainly isn’t going to be at the national level.
The third and last reason is that the form of white identity advocated by hardline proponents is not, as they assert, historically accurate. It’s true that white identity has played a role in American history. British colonists recognized themselves as distinct from Indians and black slaves and understood that those racial differences were greater than whatever ethnic and religious divides separated them from other Europeans.
But modern proponents of hardline white identity politics, who reduce everything to race, ignore the realities of ethnicity, culture, and religion. Putting your racial identity above all else is a sign of deracination, not a return to tradition.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that race is an inconsequential factor in society. We can support racially neutral laws while at the same time opposing the third-world demographic transformation of the West.
Recognizing and celebrating the unique achievements of Europeans need not entail supremacism. We can acknowledge that group differences exist without resorting to hatred. And there’s simply no reason why white Christian men should be uniquely denied a sense of identity.
Some, like Ben Shapiro, might disagree on that last point. But the onus is ultimately on them to demonstrate that their position is not rooted in an anti-white double standard.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 