The meme is funny — and more truth than satire. The fact remains, however: Under Democrats, every voter will give up much more than $5000.

AND their guns. AND their retirement accounts. AND the Social Security and Medicare they were forced to pay for and will now, with those programs going bankrupt, they will never see. AND all economic growth, jobs and actual affordability due to the 90 percent tax rates that AOC and Bernie Sanders talk about. AND their ability to use fossil fuels. AND their freedom of speech. AND their freedom of choice on vaxes or other medical decisions. AND their ability to live in a world where violent criminals are locked up, and where Iranian mullahs can’t annihilate us with nukes paid for by Biden and Obama. AND secure borders that keep out terrorists and sociopaths. AND their sovereignty over their own children’s education and hormone injections. AND so much more.

Under Democrats, you will give up essentially everything — except for legalized weed and free abortions. I do not understand why so many people vote for this.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Posted on September 26, 2026

If Democrats take over Congress and the White House in 2026 and 2028, it will be a catastrophe. But even so, Republicans could come back in two elections after that. This presupposes Republicans stay as firm as Trump has forced them to be, and gets back more into economic issues like privatization, massive tax and regulation cuts. It’s really our only hope, because Democrats have radicalized to well beyond the COVID or puppet Biden eras, the worst eras for liberty in American history to date. If the radical left Democrats now in control of that Party impose, or try to impose, a full-fledged dictatorship the next time they seize power, it’s either (1) curtains for America and for all human liberty; or (2) a terrible civil war in America that will probably become a terrible world war. It’s sobering, but these are the facts. I wish you people who voted to give leftists and their RINO enablers power all these years would face and own up to what you’ve done.

The Ed Sheeran affair last week involved yet another pop celebrity caving in to the official dogma of the day. Sheeran initially tried not to take a side, and then (clearly after pressure) wobbled and conceded that he is against Israel and in favor of Muslim terrorism in Palestine and elsewhere. Always shocking; never a surprise. We are living in the Cultural Revolution of Maoist China, which means: Everything is political. Everything. You WILL take a side — or else. Your position, even if you don’t wish it to be part of your creative endeavors, WILL be the position of The Party. The only difference is that the will of the Party (for now) gets enforced primarily through money and pressure by government funded academics, government subsidized/manipulated corporate hacks and intellectually bereft Internet typists who label themselves journalists and think their feelings (posing as philosophically important content) matter. If things are this bad now, just imagine how it will get when The Party has 100 percent control over Congress, a packed Supreme Court and the White House.

“The wicked only grow bolder when they are tolerated.” We don’t just tolerate the wicked (meaning the irrational, the wrong, the barbaric, the dishonest). We subsidize them, applaud them, cheer them on, tiptoe on eggshells around them, ostracize and intimidate dissenters and then wonder why the world is going to hell and ludicrous caricatures start to dominate government, business, media and academia.

Michael J. Hurd, Daiiy Dose of Reason

The Time article describes Che as creating the blueprint for Cuba’s communist revolution:

“Che has taken three crucial steps. He has cut Cuba’s main economic ties with the West and hooked them to the Communist world. He has started preparing for the war he expects the U.S. to wage against him. And he has taken bold action to spread his revolutionary influence across the rest of Latin America.”

Che’s “bold action” did influence South America. He is still seen as a communist messianic figure who promises a wonderful future — after the violent destruction of the old order.

But the brutal truth of communist regimes is a tale best told by survivors.

One such survivor is Armando Valladares, whose book Against All Hope tells the truth of an oppressive regime still supported by naïve youths wearing T-shirts featuring Che Guevara — a man Valladares witnessed as taking a deep personal interest in the interrogation, torture, and execution of political prisoners

Valladares endured 22 years as a prisoner of the Castro regime. He was arrested in 1960 because of his opposition to communism and was not released until 1982, and then only because of the intervention of international leaders and human rights organizations. From his cell window, he witnessed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He was tortured. He listened to Castro’s firing squads eliminate the opposition.

He remembers the West’s infatuation with and promotion of Castro, recalling that at first Castro publicly promoted democracy. Valladares wrote that Castro appeared as a guest on the famous program “Meet the Press” on April 19, 1959. Journalist Lawrence Spivak asked Castro, “I want to know where your heart lies in the struggle between Communism and democracy. Whose side, where is your heart and where are your feelings?” Castro immediately responded, ‘Democracy is my ideal, really… I am not Communist. I am not agreed with Communism… There is no doubt for me between democracy and Communism.”

The truth about Castro was soon apparent. Valladares wrote:

“Early in 1959, on January 21, to be exact, Castro gave a speech in front of the Presidential Palace in which he declared, ‘There will not be more than about four hundred henchmen and conspirators against the Revolution that we will execute.’ But many more than that had already fallen before the firing squads in those days of barbarity and death. On January 12, on a firing range located in a small valley called San Juan, at the end of the island in the province of Oriente, hundreds of soldiers from the defeated army of Batista had been lined up in a trench knee- deep and more than fifty yards long. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were machine- gunned there where they stood. Then with bulldozers the trenches were turned into mass graves. There had been no trial of any kind for those men. Many of them were hardly more than boys, who had joined the army because money and food were scarce at home. The mass execution was ordered by Raúl Castro and attended by him personally. Nor was it an isolated instance.”

Fidel, Che, and Raul: These have been the hellish messiahs anointed to rule over the Cuban people. The results of their dedication to their ideology have been manifestly apparent for decades. Cuba is in ruins.

However, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has noted, the communist template for Cuba and its plans to revolutionize all of South America and to influence the people of the United States continue to this day.

In view of the brutal and hellish record of its failed communist messiahs, past and present, it is only right that the ideology and actions of the current government of Cuba be confronted and resisted by the United States of America.

The Monroe Doctrine should continue to be implemented.

Witness Armando Valladares, who is now 89 years old, would no doubt approve

The Time article describes Che as creating the blueprint for Cuba’s communist revolution:

“Che has taken three crucial steps. He has cut Cuba’s main economic ties with the West and hooked them to the Communist world. He has started preparing for the war he expects the U.S. to wage against him. And he has taken bold action to spread his revolutionary influence across the rest of Latin America.”

Che’s “bold action” did influence South America. He is still seen as a communist messianic figure who promises a wonderful future — after the violent destruction of the old order.

But the brutal truth of communist regimes is a tale best told by survivors.

One such survivor is Armando Valladares, whose book Against All Hope tells the truth of an oppressive regime still supported by naïve youths wearing T-shirts featuring Che Guevara — a man Valladares witnessed as taking a deep personal interest in the interrogation, torture, and execution of political prisoners

Valladares endured 22 years as a prisoner of the Castro regime. He was arrested in 1960 because of his opposition to communism and was not released until 1982, and then only because of the intervention of international leaders and human rights organizations. From his cell window, he witnessed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He was tortured. He listened to Castro’s firing squads eliminate the opposition.

He remembers the West’s infatuation with and promotion of Castro, recalling that at first Castro publicly promoted democracy. Valladares wrote that Castro appeared as a guest on the famous program “Meet the Press” on April 19, 1959. Journalist Lawrence Spivak asked Castro, “I want to know where your heart lies in the struggle between Communism and democracy. Whose side, where is your heart and where are your feelings?” Castro immediately responded, ‘Democracy is my ideal, really… I am not Communist. I am not agreed with Communism… There is no doubt for me between democracy and Communism.”

The truth about Castro was soon apparent. Valladares wrote:

“Early in 1959, on January 21, to be exact, Castro gave a speech in front of the Presidential Palace in which he declared, ‘There will not be more than about four hundred henchmen and conspirators against the Revolution that we will execute.’ But many more than that had already fallen before the firing squads in those days of barbarity and death. On January 12, on a firing range located in a small valley called San Juan, at the end of the island in the province of Oriente, hundreds of soldiers from the defeated army of Batista had been lined up in a trench knee- deep and more than fifty yards long. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were machine- gunned there where they stood. Then with bulldozers the trenches were turned into mass graves. There had been no trial of any kind for those men. Many of them were hardly more than boys, who had joined the army because money and food were scarce at home. The mass execution was ordered by Raúl Castro and attended by him personally. Nor was it an isolated instance.”

Fidel, Che, and Raul: These have been the hellish messiahs anointed to rule over the Cuban people. The results of their dedication to their ideology have been manifestly apparent for decades. Cuba is in ruins.

However, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has noted, the communist template for Cuba and its plans to revolutionize all of South America and to influence the people of the United States continue to this day.

In view of the brutal and hellish record of its failed communist messiahs, past and present, it is only right that the ideology and actions of the current government of Cuba be confronted and resisted by the United States of America.

The Monroe Doctrine should continue to be implemented.

Witness Armando Valladares, who is now 89 years old, would no doubt approve

Historian Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times, described the 1930s as “the age of the heroic lie.” “Saintly mendacity” became its most prized virtue. Stalin’s Soviet Union was built on sanctified fabrications that characterized communist ideology and practice.

The creation of Stalin as a communist messianic figure was part of the “saintly mendacity.”

Johnson wrote that views of Stalin written in the years 1929-34 made strange reading. Enthusiastic supporters in media and political circles included H.G. Wells, who claimed “everybody trusts him.” The American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies, described the brutal dictator: “His brown eye is exceedingly wise and gentle. A child would like to sit on his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.” Chilean writer Pablo Neruda wrote he was “a good-natured man of principle.”

The adulatory posture of the 1930s clerisy comprised of academics, politicians, and the press toward communist thugs remained scarcely unchanged into the late 50s and 60s.

As author Matthew Blackwell points out in his essay “Devastation and Denial: Cambodia and the Academic Left,” the academic left of the 70s either evaded or completely refused to condemn the genocide committed by Pol Pot, who deeply admired Jean Paul Sartre’s philosophy of violence as a tool of change.

Blackwell points out “the French cognoscenti had become entranced by Stalinism after the Second World War. Here was a group of bright, erudite people ready to toler­ate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines.”

The clerisy’s elevation and support of a communist messianic strongman was also on full display when Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba. On January 19, 1959, Life magazine ran an article featuring Castro’s takeover of Cuba.

The article is titled, “Liberator’s Triumphal March.” It begins, “Down from the eastern hills where he had forged his big victory, Fidel Castro marched in tumultuous triumph through the towns and villages of post-Batista Cuba. He came not as a dutifully honored conqueror, but as a man ecstatically acclaimed by the people he had liberated.”

Fidel is described as being greeted by throngs of people who threw flowers at his feet, listened to speeches in which he proclaimed “Now we are going to purify this country.” The purification was to start with a group of “impartial, honest men.”

The immediate need was for purification from the influence of the former Batista regime. A few heads had to roll in order to create a new Cuba. The minor adjustment needed for purification of the nation was only just, as Castro’s accomplices were “driven to fury by the indiscriminate torture and killing of their friends.”

The rebels immediately executed 40 of Batista’s accomplices and threw another 2,000 into jail.

Life magazine included a photo of one of the executions. The magazine’s snuff photo was captured at the moment bullets hit Cornelio Rojas, Batista’s chief of police. Rojas’ hat was flying off, his face contorted. Immediately beneath the photo was an advertisement for Campbell’s turkey noodle soup. “Have you had your soup today?” Further down, an ad for a refrigerator showed a fully cooked turkey on the shelf.

Whatever the nature of his crimes, real and/or supposed, Rojas received no trial. Nor were official or specific charges brought against him.

The new liberator of Cuba was aided by sidekick Che Guevara, whom Time magazine, in an article titled “Cuba: Castro’s Brain,” described as having a “sweet smile.”

The Time article describes Che as creating the blueprint for Cuba’s communist revolution:

“Che has taken three crucial steps. He has cut Cuba’s main economic ties with the West and hooked them to the Communist world. He has started preparing for the war he expects the U.S. to wage against him. And he has taken bold action to spread his revolutionary influence across the rest of Latin America.”

Che’s “bold action” did influence South America. He is still seen as a communist messianic figure who promises a wonderful future — after the violent destruction of the old order.

But the brutal truth of communist regimes is a tale best told by survivors.

One such survivor is Armando Valladares, whose book Against All Hope tells the truth of an oppressive regime still supported by naïve youths wearing T-shirts featuring Che Guevara — a man Valladares witnessed as taking a deep personal interest in the interrogation, torture, and execution of political prisoners

Valladares endured 22 years as a prisoner of the Castro regime. He was arrested in 1960 because of his opposition to communism and was not released until 1982, and then only because of the intervention of international leaders and human rights organizations. From his cell window, he witnessed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He was tortured. He listened to Castro’s firing squads eliminate the opposition.

He remembers the West’s infatuation with and promotion of Castro, recalling that at first Castro publicly promoted democracy. Valladares wrote that Castro appeared as a guest on the famous program “Meet the Press” on April 19, 1959. Journalist Lawrence Spivak asked Castro, “I want to know where your heart lies in the struggle between Communism and democracy. Whose side, where is your heart and where are your feelings?” Castro immediately responded, ‘Democracy is my ideal, really… I am not Communist. I am not agreed with Communism… There is no doubt for me between democracy and Communism.”

The truth about Castro was soon apparent. Valladares wrote:

“Early in 1959, on January 21, to be exact, Castro gave a speech in front of the Presidential Palace in which he declared, ‘There will not be more than about four hundred henchmen and conspirators against the Revolution that we will execute.’ But many more than that had already fallen before the firing squads in those days of barbarity and death. On January 12, on a firing range located in a small valley called San Juan, at the end of the island in the province of Oriente, hundreds of soldiers from the defeated army of Batista had been lined up in a trench knee- deep and more than fifty yards long. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were machine- gunned there where they stood. Then with bulldozers the trenches were turned into mass graves. There had been no trial of any kind for those men. Many of them were hardly more than boys, who had joined the army because money and food were scarce at home. The mass execution was ordered by Raúl Castro and attended by him personally. Nor was it an isolated instance.”

Fidel, Che, and Raul: These have been the hellish messiahs anointed to rule over the Cuban people. The results of their dedication to their ideology have been manifestly apparent for decades. Cuba is in ruins.

However, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has noted, the communist template for Cuba and its plans to revolutionize all of South America and to influence the people of the United States continue to this day.

In view of the brutal and hellish record of its failed communist messiahs, past and present, it is only right that the ideology and actions of the current government of Cuba be confronted and resisted by the United States of America.

The Monroe Doctrine should continue to be implemented.

Witness Armando Valladares, who is now 89 years old, would no doubt approve.

American Thinker

The president is skeptical that Tehran will meet his demands

President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.

Tehran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and resumed nuclear talks in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, which is causing deep damage to the country’s economy. Trump says openly that Tehran is begging for a deal after the midterms that dismantles its nuclear program.

But privately Trump is skeptical Iran would meet his demands and has told his staff that he sees a renewed bombing campaign as likely, the officials said. 

Trump’s current position indicates the conflict’s stage—a liminal space between war and peace—is likely to tilt back toward hostilities. But the president, who has declared victory since the earliest days of the seven-month fight, alternates between pursuing diplomacy, ordering airstrikes and tightening sanctions around Iran. His views today could shift as the war drags over the coming weeks, officials said, and could be affected by the results of the midterms.

The level of strikes Trump is contemplating couldn’t be determined. He is reluctant to resume major combat operations, the officials said, partly because the U.S. wants to reserve dwindling munitions for other contingencies. But Trump has also announced massive attacks to push through diplomatic deadlocks in U.S.-Iran negotiations, sometimes following through but always stepping back from his most audacious threats, including wiping out the entirety of Iranian civilization.

Trump told the United Nations this week politics don’t enter his mind when aiming to pry nuclear fuel from Iran.

“The Republican Party is running, and I’ll be helping them, but I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence.

Wall Street Journal

Young men look at dating culture and see women who are prepared to choose husbands but less prepared to become wives.

There are now roughly30.4 million unmarried American men between the ages of 20 and 39, nearly twice the number of married men in the same cohort. The predictable explanation is that men are to blame. Pornography, gaming, delayed adulthood, declining ambition, fear of commitment, social awkwardness, the manosphere, and economic stagnation all make the list of reasons. But after years of dissecting so-called “toxic masculinity,” perhaps it is time to ask what has toxic femininity done to the modern woman? Have women today become poor prospects for marriage?

That honest question may sound inflammatory because our culture has spent decades teaching women to evaluate men while treating reciprocal scrutiny as sexism. Women are encouraged to identify red flags, examine a man’s income, ambition, temperament, sexual habits, emotional intelligence, politics, attachment style, relationship with his mother, willingness to provide, and potential as a father. This is considered discernment, rightly so. Men, however, are increasingly discovering that asking similarly consequential questions about women’s character invites accusations of insecurity, misogyny, or an inability to “handle” independent women.

The frustration becomes easier to understand when you look at the culture young men are actually encountering. Social media tells women to know their worth, never settle, protect their peace, trust the ick, establish another boundary, identify the narcissist, and treat independence as a prerequisite for emotional health. Cosmopolitan recently described the practice of “decentering men” as a rejection of organizing women’s lives around male approval and the so-called patriarchy, while Psychology Today has promoted a model of “decentering men” built around preserving autonomy and identity while dating.

Of course, no woman should build her identity entirely around whether a man chooses her, and no one should remain in an abusive relationship for the sake of saying she has one. But the cumulative message is more radical than its internet virality. A culture built around protecting the self from imposition will eventually produce people who regard the obligation of duty itself with suspicion. Marriage, however, is almost entirely made of obligations. A husband will interfere with your preferences. Children will obliterate your schedule. Family will demand money, time, patience, forgiveness, dependence, and sacrifice precisely when self-actualization would be easier.

This is one reason so many young men look at today’s dating culture and see women who are prepared to choose husbands but less prepared to become wives.

The Lindsay Clancy trial let the cat out of the bag. What disturbed many young men was the intensity of identification with the woman who killed three children. They watched social media turn the case into another story about systems failing women; they watched TikTok conspiracy theories baselessly implicate Patrick Clancy in the children’s deaths; and some users went so far as to invoke zodiac signs while attempting to redirect suspicion toward Patrick. Some men began looking at their own girlfriends and asking an uncomfortable question: Can this woman become the mother of my future children?

The Clancy response exposed what years of discussion about “toxic masculinity” have conspicuously avoided: femininity can become toxic too. We have no difficulty admitting that masculine virtues require discipline. Yet feminine instincts are routinely treated differently. Empathy can become indulgence. Vulnerability can become a mechanism for escaping accountability. Emotional sensitivity can become manipulation. Social intelligence can become reputational warfare and exclusion. Female solidarity can become the instinct to identify with another woman before asking whether she is right. Compassion can become so detached from judgment that the person presenting the greatest emotional suffering becomes the presumed victim even when actual victims are lying dead.

Feminist ideology adds another layer. For decades, women have been trained to interpret their lives through systems of so-called oppression: patriarchy, unequal emotional labor, reproductive burdens, workplace discrimination, male violence, and expectations surrounding motherhood. The woman is increasingly understood first as someone acted upon rather than someone who acts, which means her failures are explained environmentally while male failures remain evidence of character.

This appears everywhere in contemporary culture. Male failure is moralized: grow up, work harder, stop watching porn, control your anger, earn more, become useful. Female failure is often therapeuticized: understand your trauma, honor your emotions, enforce your boundaries, protect your peace, consider how the system failed you. One sex is routinely told that maturity means mastering itself; the other is increasingly encouraged to understand and love itself as is.

Today’s young men are experiencing this in real time. They notice that many women still want the very masculine virtues the culture has spent decades problematizing. Women want men who are confident enough to initiate, ambitious enough to provide, strong enough to protect, decisive enough to lead, and emotionally steady enough to absorb difficulty without collapsing. Yet confidence can be redescribed as arrogance, provision as patriarchy, leadership as control, protectiveness as possessiveness, and stoicism as emotional unavailability. We have made masculinity culturally suspect while continuing to demand its benefits in private.

Meanwhile, young women’s own orientation toward marriage has changed dramatically. In 1993, 83 percent of female high-school seniors expected to marry someday, compared with 76 percent of boys. By 2023, the share of boys was virtually unchanged at 74 percent, while girls had fallen to 61 percent. The familiar story that men simply abandoned marriage while women patiently waited for them to mature is no longer intellectually adequate.

Women have agency too, which means they are capable of being badly formed by a culture rather than merely victimized by it. Too many young women have been formed to excel at independence without being formed for interdependence, to identify mistreatment without recognizing ordinary sacrifice, to demand emotional intelligence without cultivating emotional self-government, and to desire strong men while viewing traditional masculinity with suspicion. Social media has amplified those contradictions until they look like virtues.

For years, men have been told that wanting a good wife does not make them deserving of one. They must become husbands worth marrying. That remains true. But the inverse is equally true, no matter how uncomfortable our culture finds it. Wanting a good man does not make a woman marriage material. She has to become the kind of woman a good man can trust with his name, his home, his children, and the life he is trying to build.

Thirty million unmarried men are telling us something. Perhaps instead of automatically asking what is wrong with them, we should finally be willing to ask what kind of women our culture has taught them to choose from.

Bethany Miller, The Federalist

by Alex Epstein | Sep 23, 2026

AI developers are creating affordable, powerful mental assistance for everyone—and yet are afraid this is somehow going to destroy the world.

It’s so sad that AI developers are creating affordable, powerful mental assistance for everyone—and yet are afraid this is somehow going to destroy the world.

AI is amplified intelligence

“AI” is a new type of computer. It doesn’t replace the human mind, it amplifies the human mind. AI should be called amplified intelligence not “artificial intelligence,” because it doesn’t replace the human mind, it amplifies the human mind. An artificial heart can replace the role your heart plays in your life. AI cannot replace the role your mind plays in your life. If I could only use three words to describe large language models, I would describe them as “symbol-guessing savants.” They aren’t conscious and they don’t have goals. But they are extraordinarily good at taking the symbols we give them and generating symbols we find useful.

We need to be careful how we connect it to high-stakes systems.

That’s it.

Premises behind “AI Going Rogue”

“AI went rogue” amounts to:

1. Someone took a powerful, open-ended computer that they don’t perfectly control (i.e., one running LLMs).

2. They deliberately reduced their control over its ability to produce potentially harmful outputs.

3. They connected the deliberately-badly-controlled computer to a high-stakes system.

Whether this is done irresponsibly or as a legitimate exploration of potential risks, it does not justify doomerism. The proper conclusion to draw is that we need to responsibly develop LLM computers and be very responsible about when and how we connect them to high-stakes systems.

Not that AI is some interested, conscious being that has a 10% or even 0.0000001% chance of killing us all. “AI” is a bunch of computers running an amazing new kind of software that we can and should use to be of enormous assistance to our lives. AI computers are no more self-interested or conscious than a calculator or an abacus—even though their outputs do a great job of mimicking interests and consciousness.

Solution to AI threats

While there is a real threat of people accidentally misusing AI assistance to do a lot of damage, that threat is always going to be limited by the humans who ultimately direct AI computers and can literally unplug them. We already have laws against configuring and connecting computers in ways that lead to felonies. AI companies should develop technologies and practices so their AI agents follow those laws, not ask the government to dictatorially limit AI progress as such.

The biggest AI threat by far is bad actors deliberately using AI assistance to do a lot of damage. To prevent this threat, as well as to reduce the damage of accidents, we need good actors, above all in the US, to proudly lead in this technology. Not to indulge in fear-mongering based on metaphysical nonsense.

The Industrial Revolution gave us machine physical assistance. The AI revolution is giving us machine mental assistance. This is an enormous expansion of human capability—and we’re only just beginning to discover what we can do with it.

Adapted from a series of posts by the author on X.

Alex Epstein

Alex Epstein is a philosopher who applies big-picture, humanistic thinking to industrial and environmental controversies.

He founded Center for Industrial Progress (CIP), a for-profit think tank and communications consulting firm focused on energy and environmental issues, in 2011 to offer a positive, pro-human alternative to the Green movement.

He is the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less.

He is the author of EnergyTalkingPoints.com featuring hundreds of concise, powerful, well-referenced talking points on energy, environmental, and climate issues.

Follow him on Twitter @AlexEpstein.

As shocking as it may seem, the same does not apply to a child. Yes, you brought them into existence, you endured their infancy, fed them, clothed them, and worked hard to ensure their education. Though these are big things, you child asked for none of them. Put bluntly, your child did not ask to be born.

Nobody likes to help anybody who feels righteously entitled. Yet, your child is entitled to your care. And entitlement in this context is indeed valid. The parent chooses to give him life, and with that comes the responsibility of helping him into adulthood.

Some parents go to the opposite extreme. Instead of resenting their child for feeling entitled, they actually assume she’s entitled to everything – forever. You’d be surprised at how often I see parents of twenty- or thirty-somethings pouring money and resources into that adult. They rationalize: “It’s my child. And I love him or her.” But does that love make you their slave in perpetuity? Sometimes I’ll ask such parents if their son or daughter deserves that help. The question rarely occurs to them, and sometimes they even resent it.

Some help is deserved and some isn’t. And this doesn’t change just because you gave life to that person and cared for him when he was helpless. Many parents of grown children resent the help they feel they’re expected to give when they find these grown children mooching off of them. And in spite of that, they feel guilty! “How can I resent my own child?” Well, the “child” is no longer helpless. You can’t throw a two-year-old or a fifteen-year-old out on her own, but that doesn’t mean you can never throw a grownup out. Resentful parents can’t have it both ways. They can’t righteously announce, “I’ll never throw my (adult) child out, no matter how much he mooches or brings his problems upon himself,” and then feel resentful about it. Your grown child is just responding to the message you’re clearly sending: He or she is free to live off of you forever.

A parent has to be prepared to let a grown-up child go – even if it means throwing him out. Set a deadline, and stick to it. Anything less conveys the very unloving message that, “You can’t survive alone. I don’t have confidence in you, and I know you have to rely on me.”

Though childhood is a temporary state of helplessness, by adolescence a healthy young adult is capable of abstract thinking and a significant measure of responsibility and freedom. An adult child is no more helpless than you are. As fellow adults, you may be able and willing to help each other out; but short of an obvious accident or illness, nobody is helpless.

The challenge for parents is to keep things in perspective. When your kids are young, don’t resent them for the fact that while they might enjoy being alive, they didn’t ask to be born. They cannot help that they require your help to survive. But grown children are not helpless. They’re adults, and the responsibilities you once had don’t convey into their adulthood.

Parents of teenagers sometimes tell me that they don’t feel appreciated by their kids. “Look at all I’ve done for them,” they say. “Why can’t they show gratitude?” As reasonable as this may seem, it contains a huge error. Gratitude is an emotion one feels when somebody does something you wanted them to do. For example, I needed the door held for me, and you held the door. I feel gratitude. I asked you to be truthful and you were truthful. I feel gratitude. You got me a discount on a new car. I feel gratitude. All of these are things I wanted, and you delivered.

As shocking as it may seem, the same does not apply to a child. Yes, you brought them into existence, you endured their infancy, fed them, clothed them, and worked hard to ensure their education. Though these are big things, you child asked for none of them. Put bluntly, your child did not ask to be born.

Nobody likes to help anybody who feels righteously entitled. Yet, your child is entitled to your care. And entitlement in this context is indeed valid. The parent chooses to give him life, and with that comes the responsibility of helping him into adulthood.

Some parents go to the opposite extreme. Instead of resenting their child for feeling entitled, they actually assume she’s entitled to everything – forever. You’d be surprised at how often I see parents of twenty- or thirty-somethings pouring money and resources into that adult. They rationalize: “It’s my child. And I love him or her.” But does that love make you their slave in perpetuity? Sometimes I’ll ask such parents if their son or daughter deserves that help. The question rarely occurs to them, and sometimes they even resent it.

Some help is deserved and some isn’t. And this doesn’t change just because you gave life to that person and cared for him when he was helpless. Many parents of grown children resent the help they feel they’re expected to give when they find these grown children mooching off of them. And in spite of that, they feel guilty! “How can I resent my own child?” Well, the “child” is no longer helpless. You can’t throw a two-year-old or a fifteen-year-old out on her own, but that doesn’t mean you can never throw a grownup out. Resentful parents can’t have it both ways. They can’t righteously announce, “I’ll never throw my (adult) child out, no matter how much he mooches or brings his problems upon himself,” and then feel resentful about it. Your grown child is just responding to the message you’re clearly sending: He or she is free to live off of you forever.

A parent has to be prepared to let a grown-up child go – even if it means throwing him out. Set a deadline, and stick to it. Anything less conveys the very unloving message that, “You can’t survive alone. I don’t have confidence in you, and I know you have to rely on me.”

Though childhood is a temporary state of helplessness, by adolescence a healthy young adult is capable of abstract thinking and a significant measure of responsibility and freedom. An adult child is no more helpless than you are. As fellow adults, you may be able and willing to help each other out; but short of an obvious accident or illness, nobody is helpless.

The challenge for parents is to keep things in perspective. When your kids are young, don’t resent them for the fact that while they might enjoy being alive, they didn’t ask to be born. They cannot help that they require your help to survive. But grown children are not helpless. They’re adults, and the responsibilities you once had don’t convey into their adulthood.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

A surprising number of newly retired people I see are stressed over what they’re going to do with themselves. Some tell me that they’re not qualified for the jobs they want, and others aren’t interested in the jobs for which they’re qualified. Add that to the unique economy of a seasonal resort, and you end up with lots of restless, dissatisfied people.

In this age of smartphones, Facebook, chat rooms, blogs, texts, email, corporate websites, etc., etc., there are better ways to look for a job than trudging from one storefront to another; becoming increasingly disheveled as the day wears on. It amazes me how many older people don’t consider the influence of the Internet and the power of something as basic as an Internet search.

An effective job hunt ends up boiling down to five basic strategies; each contributing to the ultimate goal.

1. Continue the search. Assume you can and will find an interesting job. If unemployment is at, say, 10%, then remember that 90% ARE employed. In spite of the daily negativity spewing out of your TV, people are still spending money, new businesses are still opening, and profit is still a reality.
2. Be positive. And stay positive! Even if the economy gets worse, new opportunities will open in some areas. Vocational-technical education is a prime example: People who lose or quit their jobs sometimes want to learn new skills. Hair continues to grow and must be cut. Air conditioning systems must be fixed. Just about everybody has a car that will need repair. Computer skills are still in demand. A friend who owned and operated a vo-tech school marveled at how his enrollments soared every time “the economy” took a downturn. For better or for worse, the government makes tax money available for just this sort of education. Opportunity exists during good times and bad.
3. Don’t think in terms of age. As you get older, you might have less physical ability but more mental ability. This increased mental ability stems from the wisdom that comes from your years on this earth. If you’ve been reading, thinking and learning throughout your life, continuing to do so will not be a challenge.
4. Dissatisfaction is in your head, not in reality. “I feel like there’s no job match for me. Therefore there isn’t one.” Wrong! The futility may seem real, but it’s only a feeling. Granted, you can’t pretend to know things you don’t know, but you do have the power to take action and find out about those things. We never outgrow the ability to learn. Our minds just need to be open. For those who get frustrated and stop looking, all possibilities instantly disappear.
5. Don’t fall for false alternatives. Years ago, a man told me he really wanted to become a presidential press secretary. And if that didn’t happen, he would have to end up as a greeter for Walmart. After I picked myself up off the floor, I realized this guy genuinely believed that there was simply nothing in between. In reality, there’s everything in between. All he had to do was to take off his blinders.

Beware the foolish false alternatives! When a person rejects the very good in favor of ‘nothing less than perfect’, he or she could be left with the futility of having given up – much worse than even the most menial job. Don’t let that happen.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

Moments before President Xi Jinping climbed down the steps of his aircraft to be greeted by Donald Trump, US marines were filmed on their hands and knees smoothing out the red carpet, Chinese officials looking down from the top of the steps. It was an uncomfortable image, ridiculed on social media for the symbolism of kowtowing to the emperor. But it set the tone for a summit which so far has been heavy on pomp and ceremony, rich in platitudes, but with very little in the way of substance.

A strong diplomatic case can be made for political fawning – where the power dynamics are lopsided against you, and if there’s a chance of a reasonable payback. After all, it’s what Trump’s democratic Western allies do a lot of the time in order to keep Trump on side, fend off his punitive tariffs and tame his caprice. But even allowing for Trump’s soft spot for autocrats and political theatre, his treatment of Xi has so far been cringemaking, the returns so minimal that it rather begs the question: what was the point?

Their main achievement during the first day of the summit appears to be a two-month extension of a trade war truce. This was struck last November in order to end tit-for-tat sanctions that saw China weaponise its control over the global supply of rare earths, essential for high-technology products, in retaliation for sky-high US tariffs.

They also agreed that they should keep in touch over the threat to human existence from artificial intelligence – or ‘super intelligence’ as Trump calls it – while seemingly also agreeing that there was nothing much worth talking about. Xi said, ‘humans must remain in control over AI technology’, while the US president called it a ‘big topic’ of discussions, saying he and and his Chinese counterpart were happy to ‘leave it exactly where it is’.

Trump met Xi in person at the foot of that smoothed-out red carpet – the first time that a sitting American president has greeted a foreign leader in Washington in person for 64 years. Xi never made the effort when the US president visited Beijing in May, during which the pomp and ceremony were much more low key. The two leaders began their bilateral meeting yesterday morning after a military performance that involved an ear-splitting flyover by a B-2 Spirit bomber and four F-22 Raptor fighter jets.

At the start of their meeting, Xi appealed for ‘healthy’ competition with the US and ‘not a wrestle in which one side wins or loses’, Trump said he had forged ‘a truly great friendship’ with the Chinese leader. The visit comes amid fresh rumours about Xi’s health – the 74-year-old skipped a dinner during the recent BRICS summit in Delhi and was rumoured to have been hospitalised on his return to Beijing. But in a Truth Social post, the US President wrote that Xi looked ‘strong. Vibrant and fit’.

At a lavish White House dinner last night, Trump said that the US and China had ‘never gotten along better’, while Xi said he and the US president had ‘sincere, in-depth’ exchanges and came to an understanding on many issues, though he did not elaborate. He said that Trump’s goal of ‘making America great again’ and his own commitment to ‘national rejuvenation’ were not necessarily incompatible. ‘These two goals are both ambitious and can surely be mutually reinforcing,’ he said.

Xi also served up some pandas – two of them, to be sent to Atlanta Zoo ‘in a few days’ as an ‘envoy of friendship’. Panda diplomacy has long been a feature of Chinese statecraft. They are rented, rather than given, since as with rare earths China has a monopoly and can recall them at any time – as it did in 2024 when four were taken back from Atlanta amid rising US tensions. They should beware of becoming too comfortable in their new American home. Trump presented Xi with a statue of a bald eagle, a national symbol of US, which he said was designed by himself and first lady Melania.

During the banquet, the two leaders sat at the top table alongside US technology leaders, including Elon Musk (Tesla), Jason Huang (Nvidia), Lisa Su (AMD) and Tim Cook (Apple). They represented the cutting edge in American technology leadership. No Chinese business people attended, since Xi reportedly chose not to bring a delegation with him to Washington, after initially indicating that he would do so. It was not immediately clear why, but many of China’s top companies are blacklisted for their links to the Chinese military.

Earlier, hundreds of human rights activists marched in Washington, protesting against Xi’s visit and his repression against ethnic minorities and dissidents, and included Hong Kongers, Uyghurs and Tibetans. On the eve of the summit, Andy Burnham had reportedly implored Trump to bring up the case of imprisoned Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai, though it is unclear whether he did so. There were many elephants in the ballroom last night – from the Iran war, where China has reportedly supplied targeting data to the Islamic regime, to Beijing’s support for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, US support for (and China’s aggression against) Taiwan, China’s alleged copying of America’s AI models and China’s mercantilism, over-production and record-breaking trade surplus.

There is still a day of this summit to go, so more substance could emerge. During his banquet speech, Trump went off script and pointed to the construction of the new White House ballroom. ‘If we had it, we would have way more than 1,000 people,’ he boasted, inviting his guests to take a look. It is not clear whether any of them took up the offer. If they did, it could well have been the most interesting thing they’d done all day.

Ian Williams, The Spectator

An 11-year-old’s ride to a fishing spot in Oviedo, Florida, ended with police stopping him, fingerprinting him, towing his electric dirt bike, and ordering him to appear in court.

Cade Kirchner, a sixth grader, was riding toward a nearby pond with his fishing pole on Labor Day, September 7.

His father, Chris Kirchner, said Cade was about 300 feet from home and traveling on the road’s shoulder.

The family says the bike was limited to 20 miles per hour. FOX 35 Orlando reported that police classified it as a motorcycle under Florida law.

They say the 4,500-watt machine has pegs instead of pedals, so Florida law classifies it as a motorcycle, not an e-bike, meaning it needs registration, insurance, a motorcycle endorsement, and a licensed adult rider.

The citation was issued under Florida Statute 320.02 for an unregistered vehicle, which requires a court appearance.

Because Cade had no driver’s license, they put his fingerprint on the ticket to satisfy ID rules. The bike was towed because it “is not legally allowed on the roadway.”

Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek called Cade a “good kid” but said officers’ hands were tied by state definitions. Police added they could have piled on more citations and chose only one.

“The State of Florida regulates motorcycle use, and the definition of what counts as a motorcycle and what counts as an e-bike,” Mayor Sladek said.

“Even if it has two wheels, if it doesn’t have pedals, the State of Florida will classify that as a motorcycle and not as an e-bike.”

Body-camera footage shows an officer warning Cade that he had to appear in court or “they’re going to put out a warrant.”

The hearing is scheduled for a school day, meaning the sixth grader will have to miss class. ClickOrlando reported that his father plans to ask prosecutors to dismiss the case.

According to the news outlet, Cade got his e-bike after raising $900 through his summer business selling squirrel tables.

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit