The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
The Democratic Socialists of America Just Adopted a Radical New Platform
Earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America’s top leadership met for an in-person meeting of their National Political Committee (NPC), the DSA’s governing authority. The result of the meeting was “Workers Deserve More!”, a rebooted platform for the organization featuring a host of radical proposals. The document commits DSA to scrapping the U.S. Senate, “abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,” defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and “replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
As more and more members seek election to local and national positions, the platform represents a clear statement of the DSA’s views. Its radicalism, therefore, gives a glimpse into how the equivalent of the DSA’s board of directors—some of whom have appeared to moderate—actually think about politics.
“Workers Deserve More!” emerged from another DSA committee that spent two months grappling with and debating its language. When the NPC took up the document, its presenter urged the DSA to pass it unamended after it cleared the committee unanimously.
Instead, DSA leadership added four amendments: one on “real democracy”—calling for the replacement of “the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress”—another on police and prison abolition, a provision explicitly naming Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, and a ranked-choice voting section. The NPC passed two of these four amendments unanimously, while the “real democracy” provision prevailed by a razor-thin margin.
“Workers Deserve More!” has revolutionary aspirations. It aims to “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” The document makes clear that achieving this vision would require “building a new society from the ground up,” accompanied by sweeping structural changes.
To accomplish that goal, the DSA calls for sweeping political and economic changes, including full public financing for campaigns and the abolition of the Electoral College, alongside the establishment of public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability, and strict regulations on investment properties.
It would also defund the Department of War, close overseas bases, and end all economic sanctions—which would include those in states like Iran, Cuba, and Russia. The platform further endorses universal amnesty for illegal immigrants, and ending “restrictions on . . . marriage,” which would presumably entail the legalization of polygamy.
Mike LaChance
Mike LaChance has been covering higher education and politics for Legal Insurrection since 2012. He has also written for American Lookout, Townhall, and Twitchy.
Since 2008 he has contributed work to the Daily Caller, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, the Center for Security Policy, the Washington Free Beacon, and Ricochet.
Mike is a Generation X, New England lifer who describes his political views as conservative and libertarian.
The famous quote from Winston Churchill about Socialism is as apt today as when first uttered in 1948: “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” Forty-three years later in 1991, Churchill stood fully vindicated, as the Soviet Union fell, following decades of not just stagnation and decline, but immense human suffering and death. At the time I thought, no one could ever possibly again take this ideology seriously.
Well, here we are in the United States of 2026, and you could easily get the impression that Socialism is on the march. Politicians proudly claiming the Socialist (or even Communist) brand hold the mayoralties of all the largest cities, and their movement is the source of all the energy in today’s Democratic Party.
New York’s primary elections are set for June 23, with “early voting” already well underway. Two days ago (June 18), proud Socialists Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders came together for a rally in Brooklyn to promote a collection of their ideological comrades seeking to knock out “moderate” Democrats in three races for Congress in New York City. The Socialist candidates are Brad Lander in NY-10 (Lower Manhattan/Brooklyn — my district!), Claire Valdez in NY-7 (Brooklyn/Queens), and Darializa Chevalier in NY-13 (Northern Manhattan/Bronx). Valdez and Chevalier are endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Lander was also a member of the DSA for 30 years going back to college, but quit the group in October 2023 after it held a rally in support of the Hamas massacres of October 7 that year. But don’t worry, Lander is fully aligned with the DSA on economic issues, and also regularly accuses Israel of “genocide” for its actions in Gaza. Although these primaries are by no means certainties, all of Lander, Valdez and Chevalier have led in at least some polls.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, far-left Mayor Karen Bass faces a serious challenge from even-farther-left DSA member Nithya Raman; in DC, the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary (and thus presumptive next Mayor) Janeese Lewis George, is a member of the DSA; and the new Mayor of Seattle, Katie Wilson, proclaims herself a “democratic socialist” (although apparently not actually a member of the DSA).
You could certainly be forgiven for getting the impression that the radical explicitly Socialist left is quickly becoming ascendant. Is there any hope of stopping its rise?
For some perspective, I suggest looking at recent developments in Latin America. In Latin America, a dramatic transformation of electoral politics has been occurring over the past several years. If you haven’t been following it closely, you may be amazed at how far the transformation has progressed. I’ll take it country by country:
– Argentina. Javier Milei was elected in November 2023 to a four-year term as President. He has substantially cut the size of government and re-invigorated the economy.
– Bolivia. In Bolivia, a Socialist party, MAS (“Movement Toward Socialism”) and charismatic leader Evo Morales took power in 2006. Morales was re-elected twice, and then, facing term limits, got a subservient Supreme Court to give him permission to run again in 2019. He claimed to win in an extremely dubious election. (See details here in a Manhattan Contrarian post.). Meanwhile, Morales and his redistributionist policies gradually ran the economy into the ground. By the 2025 election, the Bolivians had had enough. In the October that year, the MAS party was voted out by a huge margin. Its presidential candidate got about 4% of the vote, and it lost all but two seats in the legislature. New President Paz took office in November 2025.
– Chile. Left-wing President Gabriel Boric (he called himself a “libertarian socialist”) got voted out in December 2025 in favor of José Kast.
– Honduras. New President Nasry Asfura was elected in November 2025, and sworn in in January 2026. He promises to cut the size of government and incentivize the private sector.
– Peru. A run-off in the recent presidential election was held June 7, and the final results have still not been reported. However, according to this Wall Street Journal report from June 11, it looks like the centrist candidate, Keiko Fujimori, is likely to win an extremely narrow victory against left-wing opponent Roberto Sanchez.
– Colombia. The second round of the presidential election is tomorrow, June 21, between the right-wing Espriella and left-wing Cepeda. Current left-wing President Petro is barred from running for re-election. In the polling, Espriella leads by about 4-8% — not a huge amount, but generally beyond the margin of error.
It’s almost as if the Latin Americans have finally looked at the ruin that the left and Socialism have wreaked on places like Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba, and decided that it is time to try something different.
Here in the U.S., suppose that all of Lander, Valdez, and Chevalier win their primaries. Is this the path to victory for Democrats in November and thereafter? If those candidates win, they will then join the likes of Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Graham Platner, Brandon Johnson, Katie Wilson, Nithya Raman, and plenty of other such as the face of today’s Democratic Party. I don’t know when this will become electorally toxic, but the recent results in Latin America show that eventually the electorate will recognize snake oil for what it is.
The Obama Presidential Center is finally open, on South Stony Island in Chicago.
June 19 marked a gala opening day with four former residents of the Oval Office in attendance, along with their respective wives, enabling a happy photo of the eight of them to dominate the news stories instead of actual photos of the building they were supposed to be celebrating.
The Obama Presidential Center is a brutalist structure of pre-fab concrete, topped with a massive string of unreadable block lettering – which we are given to believe is an excerpt from one of the bestselling Obama memoirs that libraries and schools bought by the case but presumably, nobody actually read.
Architectural criticism is largely subjective, as is most criticism, but we take our architecture more seriously here in Chicago than they do in many places, so it’s a meaningful issue here, well worth pondering.
Despite the city’s general degradation in recent decades, Chicago has long been known as the city of skyscrapers.
Its beautiful skyline on Lake Michigan boasts the works of many of the world’s greatest architects – William LeBaron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Helmut Jahn, Daniel Burnham, and Graham and Khan. Chicago may be the only city where you can overhear regular folks argue the relative merits of architects, with the same fervor that they use when discussing the best pizzerias, Italian beef or gyros shops.
When Chicago gets a new building, the architect’s renderings are shared with delight. We may have crippling taxes, crushing traffic congestion, lethal neighborhoods and a shrinking tax base, but darn it, we can still be proud of our architecture, our theatre, and our cuisine.
To say that the Obama center was a let-down for any proud Chicagoan’s spirit is putting it mildly.
You might not know it to look at us, but Chicagoans tend to be more open-minded, more patient, than you might expect. We saw the renderings and couldn’t quite believe it at first. We saw the photos while it was going up, and we told ourselves to give it a chance.
It’s a Chicago building, after all; surely it will look better when it’s painted, or when it’s clad in marble – that must be what they plan, right? Or maybe the landscaping will make all the difference. Imagine a frustrated bride trying on a hideous bridal gown, and desperately hoping that the veil, train, or gloves will somehow transform the thing from pumpkin to chariot.
But the center finally opened – way over budget and way behind schedule – and if anything, it turned out to be even more hideous than we expected. The comparisons online and in the press ran the gamut from “a giant dumpster” to “a concentration camp guard tower.” Virtually nothing positive was written about it because there truly is nothing good to say about it. One can hardly imagine such failure; perhaps the only explanation is that it was intentional, a final, vulgar insult to the city that foolishly handed this socialist carpetbagger a political career.
But to the surprise of many, neither the hideousness of the building nor the celebrity status of the honored guests was to capture the headlines after this opening. The news story that shocked unsuspecting readers was the number of lawsuits from contractors who have allegedly been stiffed by the center’s building committee.
Like far too many public programs, the little 8-story Obama Presidential Center was saddled with a budget that grew much bigger than its original promise. The final number reported in June was about $850 million, an amazing price for a relatively small and incredibly ugly structure.
For comparison, the magnificent Trump International Tower, 100 gleaming stories of steel and glass, built just 15 years earlier in Chicago’s much pricier Magnificent Mile (right where Michigan Avenue crosses the Chicago River, alongside two true Chicago landmarks, the Tribune Tower and the Wrigley Building) also cost $850 million.
Yes, that’s right – both structures have the same price tag.
The printing, advertising, hotel, and catering bills unpaid. When called on it, the pols have been known to sneer “well, just think of it as a contribution.” That’s just how too many DNC bosses tend to think.
If the mainstream press did their job and reported such stories with the fervor that they shower on Republican shortcomings, it’s unlikely that any contractor would ever accept business from a Democrat project on anything but a 100% cash-in-advance basis.
But we still haven’t come to the biggest question: the Obama Presidential Center is on nineteen acres of land, which they didn’t even have to purchase; Chicago politicians engineered a 99-year lease for a nominal cost – a single ten dollar bill – so that they’d have the use of the land for free, for a century. Yes, you read that right: Nineteen acres in Chicago for free.
Usually, the price of the land and its property taxes are a big part of any large construction project. A business doesn’t start collecting rents or sales or ticket purchases until after it opens, and must spend the years of construction paying for the costs of building and the cost of the real estate.
But in this case, thanks to generous local connections at City Hall, the Obama Foundation didn’t have to worry about those normally immense real estate costs, freeing up their capital to properly do a “pay as you go” process with the construction contractors.
Of all the questions that plague us about this Obama Foundation project, the biggest has to be this one: If they raised $850 million, and they got the land for free, and yet, they still aren’t paying their contractors, Where the heck did all that money go?
LONDON — In a stunning fall from power, one of the world’s foremost Muslim leaders was forced to resign as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Keir Starmer, a preeminent voice for Islam on the world stage over the past several years, announced his resignation this morning after losing the support of several powerful mosques.
“It is time for someone else to lead the intifada,” said Starmer, standing outside the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. “I have had the great privilege these past few years of heading up the Muslim takeover of England, glory to Allah. You know, 10 years ago, you couldn’t stab a native citizen and have the police arrest him while he’s dying. I’m extremely proud of the progress we’ve made, but it’s time to hand over the proverbial scimitar to the next leader. Thank you, and Allahu Akbar.”
According to sources within the Labour Party, the search had already begun for a devout Muslim leader to take Starmer’s place. “We have some great potential options identified,” said Labour leader Stanley Higgins. “There’s Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed, and also Sir William Chestershire of Brighton. I think we’re going to go with Mohammed.”
At publishing time, Starmer had reportedly accepted a new position as an aide to the “probably gay” Ayatollah of Iran.
A newly surfaced video shows Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico welcoming a climate activist organization to Texas and praising its work, a position that appears at odds with his campaign’s efforts to portray him as a supporter of the state’s energy industry.
In a June 2024 video promoting the expansion of Third Act into Texas, Talarico thanked the group for coming to the Lone Star State and said he looked forward to working “alongside” the organization.
“I’ve been fighting climate change my entire career,” Talarico said. Calling Texas “the front line in the fight to save democracy and our planet,” he described Third Act’s efforts as “critical” and “historic” because “the stakes could not be higher.”
Third Act is a climate activist organization founded by environmentalist Bill McKibben that advocates moving away from oil and gas and has campaigned to pressure major financial institutions to stop financing new fossil fuel projects.
The description for the June 2024 event stated that participants were part of a movement to “increase the use of renewable energy” and “move away from fossil fuels.”
Third Act has also called for stopping the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. Two weeks after Talarico’s appearance, Third Act Texas called for a transition to “100% renewable resources as soon as possible.”
The organization has drawn attention for staging “die-in” protests outside banks as part of campaigns targeting financing for fossil fuel projects. During one series of demonstrations in New York, Third Act boasted that more than 200 individuals affiliated with the organization were arrested.
The video offers a reminder of Talarico’s long record of climate activism as he campaigns statewide in Texas, where oil and natural gas remain major drivers of the economy.
As a member of the Texas House, Talarico authored legislation in 2021 that would have required Texas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. He also filed legislation that would require climate change education in public schools.
Talarico’s climate advocacy has extended beyond legislation. During his 2022 re-election campaign, he announced that his campaign would temporarily adopt a vegan diet, describing the move as a response to what he called an “existential climate crisis.”
The resurfaced comments come as Talarico has sought to reassure voters that he supports Texas’ oil and gas industry.
Texas leads the nation in oil and gas employment, with more than 476,000 workers directly employed by the industry and millions of additional jobs supported by oil and natural gas activity. Industry estimates place the sector’s economic impact at hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Talarico campaign spokesman JT Ennis disputed suggestions that the candidate opposes Texas energy production.
“James went to public schools funded by the oil and gas industry and knows how essential oil and gas is to Texas’ economy — it’s why he supports LNG production and backed legislation to strengthen it in the Texas legislature,” Ennis told Texas Scorecard. “James will always put the economic interests of Texans first — creating good jobs and lowering energy costs.”
Republicans, however, argue the video highlights a disconnect between Talarico’s current campaign messaging and his history of climate activism.
“James Talarico wants to force Texans to ride tandem bikes and go vegan, so he doesn’t feel like the only low T soy boy in the state,” RNC spokesman Zach Kraft told Texas Scorecard.
“The good news is that after his Green New Deal agenda is rejected by voters in November, Talarico will have plenty of free time to attend as many ‘die-ins’ and Greta Thunberg protests as his heart desires.”
Recently the head of German domestic intelligence, Sinan Selen, held a meeting in the Bundestag building where he laid out for a select audience the threat of Islamist infiltration into the country’s political institutions. More on his warning can be found here: “Germany’s Intelligence Chief Warns of Islamist Infiltration of Political Institutions,” by Jules Gomes, Middle East Forum, June 14, 2026:
Sinan Selen, Cybersec22, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
At a closed-door meeting for select guests in the German Parliament building, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence service, warned of high-level Islamist infiltration into German political institutions.
Sinan Selen, 54, who has served as president of the BfV since 2025, explicitly raised the alarm about the Muslim Brotherhood before a select audience at the German Bundestag during a breakfast meeting, BILD said in an exclusive report in early June, noting that the information leaked to the newspaper was “extremely worrying.”
Islamist groups in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular were exerting targeted influence on state and political structures in Germany with a view to transforming the state and society, Selen told the secret meeting. The ultimate goal of these infiltration attempts was the establishment of an Islamic society.
The Muslim Brotherhood does not act violently, but it is no less dangerous, because it pursues its objectives in an extremely strategic manner with long-term goals, the intelligence head noted. The Islamists respect German laws—but only insofar as these laws are compatible with Sharia.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy involves establishing contacts with political figures and inviting them to events through a complex network of organizations. The goal is to build long-term relationships and influence public officials in line with the movement’s agenda. For example, officials should oppose criticism of political Islam or turn a blind eye to Islamism, Selen said.
Parties on the left-wing political spectrum are more open and susceptible to contact and infiltration from Islamists, the intelligence chief warned. This is partly due to a lack of understanding of Islamist structures and partly due to a poorly understood concept of tolerance.
Several participants at the closed-door meeting, organized under the patronage of State Secretary for the Interior Christoph de Vries, told BILD that they were surprised by the urgency of Selen’s remarks but also satisfied with the clarity of his message.
In a follow-up interview with BILD published on June 4, Güner Balci, the Integration Commissioner for Berlin-Neukölln, confirmed that Islamist infiltration was so widespread in Germany that there are “still police projects nationwide in which Islamists participate.”
“Women and girls are forced to enter marriage as virgins or at least to pretend to be,” Balci warned. Because many people in Muslim communities “despise, abhor, and even want to punish” homosexuality, “we have a very high number of homophobic attacks and crimes in Neukölln, but also in other districts of Berlin.”
“Islamists have indeed gained a foothold in many areas, and not just in Neukölln,” Balci said. “They aren’t just active in mosque communities; they’re doing educational work, community outreach, they’re approachable for all kinds of issues in the neighborhood, they maintain contact.”
“They work in supposed integration projects funded by public money—and in doing so, they are gradually gaining access to more and more areas and spaces, and more and more ways to reach young people,” she added.
It is noteworthy that both Germany’s domestic intelligence chief Sinan Selen, born in Istanbul and raised in a secular Turkish family that immigrated to Cologne, and Berlin-Neukölln Integration Commissioner Güner Balcı, the daughter of Turkish Alevi guest workers, have emerged as particularly clear-eyed voices on the Islamist threat. Their backgrounds underscore the critical distinction between Islam as a faith and Islamism as a political ideology. Those with intimate knowledge of Muslim-majority societies and communities often best appreciate this divide—and recognize that effectively countering Islamist infiltration requires supporting anti-Islamist Muslims and secular voices rather than blurring the lines between the religion and its totalitarian perversion.
I’m not convinced that those now called “Islamists” represent a “totalitarian perversion” of the faith. They are the Muslims who take their Islam straight, not on the rocks. It is the “moderate” Muslims who choose to ignore parts of the faith, but we have no way of knowing which Muslims are only feigning “moderation” or which, initially being real moderates, for whatever reason become more fanatical in their faith. The countries of the Western world have no way to distinguish the “moderates” from the “fanatic,” when they cross the border, and cannot be sure that those who initially may appear “moderate” will remain that way. European countries must strive to end migration by all Muslims into their midst.
“That the ones who are responsible for Europe even being in this situation are slowly waking up is one step in the right direction, as we need to counter Islamist infiltration,” Kent Ekeroth, a former Sweden Democrats MP, told Focus for Western Islamism….
But those who are “waking up” to the perils of Islamic political infiltration were never part of the leadership that allowed mass migration of Muslims into their countries in the first place. Such leaders as Jordan Bardella of the National Rally in France, Alice Weidel of the Alternative für Deutschland, Rupert Lowe of the Restore Britain party, and Giorgia Meloni of the Fratelli d’Italia party have always been leery of Muslim migrants. What has changed is popular sentiment. It has become ever more hostile to Muslim migrants, which explains why those leaders, and their anti-Muslim immigrant parties, have risen so spectacularly in the polls. The naïve enthusiasm for Muslim migrants, as famously expressed in former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s insistence in 2015 that “Wir schaffen das!” — “We Can Do This!” — that is, we the people of Germany can successfully integrate large numbers of Muslims into our societies, has disappeared. Instead, the indigenous peoples of Europe have realized that the large-scale presence of Muslims in their countries has created a situation that for them is more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that large-scale Muslim presence.
It is the Muslim alliance with the left that has magnified the threat of Islamic penetration of Germany’s political institutions. This alliance should be publicized, and efforts made to convince the left that such an alliance is misconceived, given Islam’s misogyny and homophobia, and Islam’s refusal to uphold both freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Writing on X, the German political scientist Nina Scholz said she was “naturally delighted when security agencies share the analysis from our book.” Scholz’s book, Political Islam—A Hybrid Threat to Europe: The Muslim Brotherhood’s “Civilization Jihad,” was published in April.
According to Scholz’s findings, the Muslim Brotherhood attempts to delegitimize the state and its institutions by infiltrating state institutions, influencing legislation, and exploiting the state’s weakness caused by external and internal crises to shift norms.
“A central element of their strategy is citizenship, which grants civic rights to activists in the network,” she writes, explaining that Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the chief ideologue of the Brotherhood, explicitly recommends that Muslims accept the citizenship of their host countries in his book on the interpretation of Islamic norms for Muslims in non-Muslim countries.
According to Al-Qaradawi, Muslims should accept citizenship not out of any sense of loyalty to the state, but only in order to vote for those who will support their Islamic penetration of domestic institutions. Think only of Zohran Mamdani, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Sadiq Khan.
What begins as an alliance of seeming equals — Muslims and leftists — according to Scholz soon metamorphoses into an alliance where Muslims, that is, the Muslim Brotherhood, call the shots, and the leftists, having nowhere else to go, must follow. For all Muslims know, as Muhammad insisted, that “Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated.”
Now the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service has issued his warning about Muslim infiltration of the country’s political institutions behind closed doors. Why should he not come out of the shadows and address the entire Bundestag with his warning? Surely he, who was born into a Muslim family, is not afraid to endure the predictable slander from the Muslims and the Left, that he is a “racist” and an “Islamophobe.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, continued to push for the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act.
In a TV interview Sunday, Lee called on his colleagues to do the “hard work” necessary to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Lee touted the bill, saying it makes “it easy to vote, hard to cheat.”
The Senate needs to be willing to do the hard work to make sure that that happens,” Lee said.
“If we put it on the floor tomorrow and we announce that we’re going to debate it until it passes, I’m confident that we can get there,” Lee added.
While the bill passed the GOP-controlled House, it has stalled in the Senate because Republicans lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democrat filibuster.
But Lee remains undeterred, saying there are multiple ways to secure passage of the legislation.
“We’re 10 votes shy of cloture, of forcing debate to a close; that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t pass it,” Lee said.
“There are a couple ways to get there. One would be nuking the filibuster; as you pointed out, that appears not likely to happen,” Lee added. “But the other way is to exhaust the other side, to continue to debate the bill until it passes.”
Lee said the SAVE America Act is worth tying up the Senate floor until it is passed.
We haven’t tried what I believe it takes to get the SAVE America Act passed, which is to put it on the floor and to say we’re going to debate this for weeks,” Lee said.
“And we’ll stay through weekends. We’ll stay through previously scheduled recesses if necessary, but we’re going to stay on this bill until it passes,” Lee added.
President Donald Trump has made passage of the SAVE America Act one of his top priorities, vowing not to sign legislation reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the warrantless collection of communications involving targeted foreigners located outside the U.S., until SAVE passes.
Trump is playing a very long game with Iran. He has until 2028 to get the job done, and he is prepared to take as much time as is needed to make it happen.
I’m just a guy out there watching the news. I don’t have any inside information, contacts, or bona fides that make me any smarter than anyone else. I come to opinions by trying to separate the signal from the noise, the facts from the fancy. I’d say over 98% of what we get is noise. People in the media must write things to get paid, so a lot of what we get is baloney they cook up to meet deadlines. I’m guessing that a lot of the time, they know it’s baloney, but they serve it up anyway because they must write something. The news that recurs over time, from multiple sources and perspectives, is the coherent, consistent signal. The rest is noise.
So, I’d say this is the signal of where Trump stands on Iran: He is a very shrewd and patient man. He is also very smart and intuitive, and he picks up on things quickly, which explains why he has evolved into a prescient politician.
Trump must pull his party through the midterms. As the leader of his party, he must do it to remain its leader. As the executive, he must do it to retain control of Congress, if for no other reason than to avoid the relentless assault and sabotage that would be his life if the Democrats take over.
Trump is playing a very long game with Iran. He has until 2028 to get the job done, and he is prepared to take as much time as is needed to make it happen.
He’s going to rope-a-dope with them until the midterms are over. He needs to get gas prices down, get the economy in general up, and starve the Democrats and their media co-conspirators of events that can be used against him. He’ll navigate Iran bad news like he navigated ICE bad news—not just get it off the front burner but get it off the stove entirely by letting as little as possible happen until after the midterms. He not only expects Iranian perfidy but also hopes for it to keep the rope-a-dope going. He also knows things we don’t know about the power struggle within Iran. You must wonder if a lot of guns are being smuggled to the Iranian people as we speak.
Once past the midterms, the final solution for Iran—internally orchestrated permanent regime change—will begin in earnest. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that he and Netanyahu have already agreed to this, but have decided to appear divided before the world to throw the dogs off the scent. Once the Iranian government is pro-USA, the Middle East Arab states will cascade like falling dominoes into a rich economic union with Israel. They already know that it’s in their best interests and inevitable, but feel they must wait until the political environment makes it safe to move.
Trump is methodically, relentlessly, tirelessly inching his way toward making that happen.
Donald Trump will go down in history as one of the great leaders and statesmen of all time. He will almost single-handedly reshape the interactions of nations around the globe and, consequently, the world order, with the USA dominant. And like the other greats, he will do it to the constant noise of the deafening cacophony coming from the yaps of thousands of little mutts who are paid to hector and subvert him.
How do Americans respond to the economic and political system known as socialism? For a decade or two after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe countries and other nations, the idea became untenable. Now, however, socialism has regained popularity among many, in particular Democrats, as the June I&I/TIPP Poll demonstrates.
In the latest online national poll, taken from May 26 through May 28, 1,589 voting-age respondents were asked the following question: “In general, do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of socialism?”
Those answering the poll, which has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points, were surprisingly sanguine in their views: 33% said they were either “very favorable” (12%) or “somewhat favorable” (21%) toward socialism, compared to just 44% who said they were “somewhat unfavorable” (19%) or “very unfavorable” (25%) toward socialism.
Another 23% said they were “unsure.”
So one out of three voters in America thinks socialism is a good system.
But who are they? Mostly, Democrats. Among members of the Democratic Party, a plurality of 46% find socialism favorable, versus 32% unfavorable. Independents are slightly less, at 27% favorable, 44% not favorable, a plurality but not a majority.
Only among Republicans does an actual majority not like socialism: 26% favorable versus 58% unfavorable. But note also that even among GOP members, the conservative party of our tripartite system, one in four find socialism favorable.
It goes beyond party affiliation, with sharp splits by age (18 to 24 years, 44% favorable, and 25 to 44 years, 42% favorable), dropping with advancing age (45 to 64 years, 27% favorable and 65 years-plus, down to 21% favorable).
Men and women also split: Men (38% favorable) lean more toward socialism than women (28% favorable), though a plurality of both still find socialism unfavorable. Similarly, white Americans (29% favorable) are somewhat less pro-socialism than African-Americans and Hispanics (39% favorable).
A bigger shock: 44% of investors feel favorably toward socialism, but just 28% of non-investors do.
This wasn’t the only question. I&I/TIPP also asked: “Which economic system do you believe offers Americans a better future?”
Once again the answer surprised: only a third (33%) responded “capitalism,” while 16% said “socialism” and 26% opined “both equally.” Nearly a quarter (24%) said “not sure.”
How could this be? Again, Democrats. That party’s members picked socialism (21%) over capitalism (20%), with 35% saying both equally. By comparison, independents chose capitalism (32%) over socialism (16%) and both equally (26%). Republicans selected capitalism (49%) by a wide margin over socialism (12%) and both equally (20%).
So the only group actually to prefer socialism is the Democratic Party.
But why? We asked Americans: “Which comes closer to your view?”, followed by three choices.
The first possible response, “More Americans support socialism because they believe the economic system is unfair to working people,” won 23% support; the second possible response, “More Americans support socialism because they want greater government benefits and programs,” also won 23% backing.
But the big winner was “Both equally,” at 29%, while “neither” picked up just 11% support.
What does all this say? Perhaps that capitalism needs a new ad agency.
Calling the rise of socialism among Democrats “stunning,” CNN’s poll analyst Harry Enten recently notes, “Capitalism has absolutely fallen through the floor.”
But it should be clear: Even while 46% of Dems in the I&I/TIPP Poll find socialism favorable, 26% of Republicans and 27% of independents do too. That means not just Democrats are cooling on capitalism, but GOP and indie voters are also.
This trend has been developing for a while. A poll by the left-leaning Data for Progress group and reported by Politico found that “more than half of likely Democratic voters prefer socialist-aligned figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani to establishment politicians like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi.”
While Americans seem unbothered by the prospect of socialism, do they know what it actually is?
Economist Daniel Mitchell, president of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, notes the traditional economic definition of socialism: 1. “Government ownership of the means of production.” 2. “Central planning to determine the allocation of labor and capital.” 3. “Price controls as a necessary consequence of items #1 and #2.”
Are those what voters mean when they say “socialism”? If so, it is a matter of economic history that none of those policies have ever worked in actual practice. Indeed, they’ve led mainly to poverty and economic decline, as multiple studies have shown.
In its poll, Data for Progress defines Democratic Socialists as those who believe “that the government should take a more active role to improve Americans’ lives. They generally support higher taxes on corporations and high-income earners, support regulations that protect workers and consumers, and want more public ownership of key industries like housing, healthcare and utilities.”
But they believe in a lot more than that.
As the City Journal reported, the Democratic Socialists of America recently passed a “Workers Deserve More!” policy statement platform that “commits DSA to scrapping the U.S. Senate, ‘abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,’ defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and ‘replac[ing] the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.’”
In other words, an end to America as we now know it.
That goes far beyond their economic proposals. Even so, as the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows, Americans appear to have edged closer to thinking socialism is an acceptable alternative to capitalism — even though the latter has an unmatched record for creating wealth and freedom, unlike socialism.
Which raises a question: Thirty seven years after the collapse of communism and socialism in 1989, have we forgotten how awful socialism was?
And the toxic waste it emits isn’t chemical but intellectual sludge, in the form of racial bigotry, antisemitism and crude Marxism.
“It’s amazing,” constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro said a few days ago in testimony to a committee of the US Commission for Civil Rights: “The heart of antisemitism in America lies on campus, among the most educated and progressive people in the country.”
This isn’t the workplace bias and schoolyard name-calling that once marked antisemitism in this country — it’s now reached the performance stage.
Like the recent incident in which antisemitic Cornell student Austin Franco rejected a job offer from a Jewish-owned startup with the hateful message “Not interested in working for a Jew” — then raised more than $20,000 from equally antisemitic goons on a crowdfunding site.
Franco attends the same campus where antisemitic students this semester trapped the university’s president in his car, holding him hostage after he hosted a civil debate over Israel.
Violence, threats and taunts have hit Jewish students on campuses across the country, from Columbia and Yale on the East Coast to UCLA on the West.
Why have universities been so limp-wristed in addressing this unvarnished hatred?
One reason is money: Arab sheikdom Qatar has pumped tens of billions of dollars into US universities in recent years — and in the academy, money talks.
But another reason is that our universities have been the Petri dish in which this nasty ideology is cultured.
Law schools and humanities departments have embraced Critical Race Theory, which views everything through the lens of oppressor versus oppressed.
No crime, however vile, is treated as beyond the pale if those committing it are classified as “oppressed.”
Meanwhile, those seen as “oppressors” can do nothing right: Their very existence is an offense.
This worldview got a double shot of espresso during the 2020 George Floyd hysteria.
And the toxic waste it emits isn’t chemical but intellectual sludge, in the form of racial bigotry, antisemitism and crude Marxism.
“It’s amazing,” constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro said a few days ago in testimony to a committee of the US Commission for Civil Rights: “The heart of antisemitism in America lies on campus, among the most educated and progressive people in the country.”
This isn’t the workplace bias and schoolyard name-calling that once marked antisemitism in this country — it’s now reached the performance stage.
Like the recent incident in which antisemitic Cornell student Austin Franco rejected a job offer from a Jewish-owned startup with the hateful message “Not interested in working for a Jew” — then raised more than $20,000 from equally antisemitic goons on a crowdfunding site.
Franco attends the same campus where antisemitic students this semester trapped the university’s president in his car, holding him hostage after he hosted a civil debate over Israel.
Violence, threats and taunts have hit Jewish students on campuses across the country, from Columbia and Yale on the East Coast to UCLA on the West.
Why have universities been so limp-wristed in addressing this unvarnished hatred?
One reason is money: Arab sheikdom Qatar has pumped tens of billions of dollars into US universities in recent years — and in the academy, money talks.
But another reason is that our universities have been the Petri dish in which this nasty ideology is cultured.
Law schools and humanities departments have embraced Critical Race Theory, which views everything through the lens of oppressor versus oppressed.
No crime, however vile, is treated as beyond the pale if those committing it are classified as “oppressed.”
Meanwhile, those seen as “oppressors” can do nothing right: Their very existence is an offense.
This worldview got a double shot of espresso during the 2020 George Floyd hysteria.
And it’s informed campus thinking — and by extension, all of leftist culture — with a bigoted, frankly racial perspective on everything.
Jews are coded as oppressors — even though Israel was founded as a refuge for victims of the Holocaust — and that justifies rape, torture and murder by “oppressed” Palestinians.
The sickness isn’t limited to race: Academic feminism has divided the sexes and introduced poisonous views of masculinity and femininity as “progressive,” when they’re really just prejudice and hate.
The poison has spread from universities into government and the corporate world through the insidious mechanism of federally enforced “anti-discrimination” rules.
Meanwhile, schools of education turn out teachers who are literally more interested in indoctrinating students in social justice than in teaching them how to read or do math.
Specious academic theories of education have turned out to be far less successful at actually educating children than old-fashioned methods like phonics and drills.
Worse yet, academia has instilled in its graduates an undeserved sense of superiority simply because they attended college.
Yet plenty of smart people don’t have a college degree — and plenty of college graduates didn’t learn much.
Test results confirm that: A major study of 2,300 students not long ago reported that 36% of them showed no improved learning after four years of college.
And much of what students learn isn’t so.
For example Marxism, which has never worked in the real world, remains stylish on campuses — still treated as a hot new concept, though it hasn’t changed much in over a century.
Racism, sexism, antisemitism and destructive economic ignorance, all from a huge and vastly expensive system that was supposed to make our society better.
It’s time for a change.
In this country, we don’t (or at least we’re not supposed to) censor people’s views, however noxious and, frankly, evil they might be.
But as more Americans recoil from higher education’s foul products, taxpayers, legislators and parents will increasingly wonder why they’re supporting it.
No wonder Congress is considering multiple bills to defund colleges and universities that are being undermined by big bucks from adversaries like Qatar and communist China — and no wonder the Trump Justice Department is suing schools like UCLA that let antisemitic violence and discrimination fester.
About time, too: No other industry this toxic would have gotten away with its pollution for this long.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 