As government deficit spending diminishes economic growth, it pushes the nation’s economic output, the GDP, well below its potential.

S.T. Karnick | May 29, 2026

The U.S. national debt has crossed an ominous threshold, rising above 100 percent of national gross domestic product, or GDP. This is the first time since World War II that debt has been so high a percentage of national economic output.

That is a big problem because the federal debt undermines the value of the U.S. dollar and diverts investment from the wealth-creating private sector. The rising debt and its pressure on the nation’s economy will force the federal government and Federal Reserve, the latter led by newly confirmed chair Kevin Warsh, to make hard decisions they have put off for decades.

Many among the public will suffer as a result, especially the elderly, who rely on Social Security and Medicare.

GDP is the total amount of spending in the nation’s economy. At the end of March, federal debt held by the public was $31.265 trillion, and GDP in 2025 was $31.216 trillion.

The rise of debt-to-GDP is accelerating because the federal budget is structurally unsound. The government “is spending $1.33 for every dollar it collects in revenue, and the budget deficit this year is projected at $1.9 trillion,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Over the past two decades, the annual federal budget deficit has expanded far beyond what was normal from 1950 to 2007, which was about 25-45 percent. The federal debt quadrupled from 1970 to 1990, tripled from 1990 to 2000, and has doubled in each decade throughout this century.

Federal revenue has continued to increase. The problem is that spending is rising much more rapidly, pushing the annual budget deficit up to almost 6 percent of GDP, accelerating the increase in the national debt. As a result, the debt-rise trendline is becoming much steeper.

This is the first time the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio has been so high without a major crisis such as a war or pandemic. There is no excuse for the recent increases in the federal debt. The federal deficit decreased by 63 percent between 2020 and 2022, erasing all the pandemic increase. Discretionary spending hikes have pushed the deficit up since then.

The numbers show that the federal government has spent the period since 1974 borrowing enormous amounts of money to spend on vote-buying with ever-greater income-transfer payments.

This politically motivated overspending has eroded the value of the U.S. dollar through inflation, which reached a crisis in 2021 through 2023 when the Congress and President Joe Biden expanded spending rapidly while greatly tightening federal regulation of the economy. Economic growth has slowed.

As government deficit spending diminishes economic growth, it pushes the nation’s economic output, the GDP, well below its potential, which further increases the deficit and debt as a percentage of GDP. The only thing that can stop such a fiscal whirlpool is a major cut in spending. That is as true for governments as it is for any household or business.

To be sure, the debt-to-GDP ratio is not some sort of magic number. GDP measures economic activity, not wealth, and net worth is the real measure of the capacity to carry debt. The United States remains the world’s wealthiest nation by far, holding 35 percent of the world’s net worth. Other than China at 19 percent, no other country has even five percent of global wealth.

The U.S. federal debt amounts to 5 percent of the nation’s total assets, according to economist John Rutledge. Although that is far, far more debt than is either advisable or justifiable, it is a little less than half the average American household’s debt, which Rutledge calculates at 10.2 percent. As Rutledge notes, “the future of our economy will be determined by the stability of our enormous balance sheet.”

That is true. Free people can create wealth by using limited natural resources and unlimited human ingenuity. The United States has an abundance of both.

Government, by contrast, can only take from what the people build, and every government extraction or regulatory impediment reduces that output. Rutledge believes that we are “about due” for a credit crisis, as do I. Americans, however, always find a way through these government-imposed predicaments as people readjust their priorities to realign with reality.

The real crisis that lies ahead is not bankruptcy of the American people but an insolvent federal government.

That is good news. If the federal government loses its ability to borrow money ever-more frenetically as massive sovereign debt pushes up interest rates, the government’s ability to borrow will collapse a few years from now, at most.

The ensuing choice between repudiation of national debt (directly or through very high inflation) or huge spending cuts will disrupt the economy badly and diminish people’s reliance on the national government.

The American people, however, can and will survive and thrive, probably with a much smaller government on the other side of the commotion. That last part sounds beautiful.

We could avert a fiscal crisis by cutting spending and regulation. We will not do so, however, because presidents and members of Congress cannot bear the idea of being held responsible for tens of millions of Americans’ loss of freebies paid for by other taxpayers. No number of dire warnings and symbolic thresholds will change that.

S.T. Karnick is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and author of the Life, Liberty, Property weekly e-newsletter.

There are several reasons to think we won’t see a blue wave in this year’s midterm elections. A basic one is that the Democratic party simply isn’t very popular. In late May, Donald Trump’s approval ratings in the RealClear polling aggregate stood around 40 percent, which sounds bad. Yet Trump is more popular than his party – approval of the Republican brand was in the vicinity of 38 percent. And the Democrats’ ratings were even worse – standing, or one might say wilting, at about 36 percent.

Those figures are not to be confused with “generic ballot” polling, which asks voters which party they would prefer in the forthcoming election. Democrats have lately enjoyed a lead of some seven points over the GOP in that category. Normally a number like that would portend enormous gains for the Democrats in November.

But normal isn’t what it used to be. Four years ago, Joe Biden’s approval ratings were low, prices in the supermarket were high, and Republicans had the edge in the generic ballot. They expected to do very well – but didn’t. The GOP lost a seat in the Senate and won only a thin majority in the House. Republicans had relied on economic conditions to do their campaigning for them.

Democrats misread their own good fortune, however. They assumed it augured well for 2024, which is one reason they were in no hurry to dispose of an already-deteriorating Biden. They were utterly unprepared for Trump’s electoral resurrection.

This year, the Democrats are following the playbook that disappointed Republicans in 2022. Rather than making a case for themselves, they’re hoping Trump’s lackluster approval ratings and the economic impact of the Iran war will defeat the GOP by default. Yet it’s not only the 2022 midterms that suggest these calculations are wrong. In 2020 – not a good year for Trump, to say the least – Republicans actually gained more than a dozen seats in the House. In 2020 and 2022 alike, House races proved less sensitive to the prevailing winds than experts had imagined.

There were no dramatic changes in 2024, either: Republicans lost two House seats, despite Trump’s success in winning every battleground state and a popular-vote plurality. This year, whatever losses the GOP might be set to suffer will be blunted by the mid-decade redistricting that’s added about ten seats to the red column.

Democrats are praying November midterms follow the pattern of 2018’s, which did produce a wave for their party. Their strategy is the same: make the election a referendum on Trump. Democrats may have no strong proposals of their own, and they may enjoy even less public approval than Trump does. But as long as the focus is on him, not them, their own deficiencies will go unnoticed. The party can succeed merely by defining itself as anti-Trump.

Yet that’s not a safe bet, either. The grand narrative that Trump’s opponents don’t think to question assumes that the President’s coalition is splintered and weakened, while anti-Trumpism inspires more passion than ever. Even as Trump-endorsed candidates won primary after primary this spring, his enemies insisted on interpreting the results as signs of weakness rather than strength.

Every victory supposedly meant the MAGA movement was shrinking, as if fewer factions inside a party were obviously a bad thing. This isn’t the tale that’s told whenever any faction the media doesn’t sympathize with gains ground in the Democratic party – or in the GOP, for that matter. And if Trump’s candidates had lost their races, wouldn’t the narrative have been that the President’s grip on his party is slipping and every defeat makes him weaker? The more natural read on Trump’s endorsements is that they are exactly what they appear to be – indications of party unity and party-building success.

On the flipside, however, what about anti-Trump sentiment? Does it seem as passionate as it did in 2018, when the Washington Post was blazoned with the slogan “Democracy dies in darkness”? The Post hasn’t had a change of ownership, but its owner has had a change of heart, or at least judgment: Jeff Bezos has chosen not to define his newspaper as simply anti-Trump. He tried the anti-Trump experiment and found it to be a dead end.

While Bezos may be an unrepresentative figure in many respects, sheer fear and hatred of Trump no longer seem to be the animating forces they were eight years ago, for nearly anyone. The fire just isn’t there –it’s been replaced by acceptance. Trumpism isn’t going away, and anti-Trumpism has become rote rather than fervent. Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Maine, is a perfect illustration of this.

Platner has many of the qualities the President’s critics claim to find objectionable about him – though Trump, unlike Platner, has never had to alter a purported Nazi tattoo. Platner has, at one time or another, said something to offend almost every group that might consider voting for a Democrat. Yet his outrageousness has not made him a pariah within his party. The Democrats have shifted from trying to present Trump’s words and behavior as politically unacceptable to accepting someone who is far more offensive. They’ve given up – instead of trying to police Trumpism, they’re now trying to ape what they once found highly objectionable.

The Democrats are unpopular, ill-defined and divided. At some point in the not-too-distant future, a culturally leftist variation on populism will probably reshape the party and reorder its priorities as drastically as Trump has changed the GOP. The Republicans certainly are heading into the midterms under conditions highly unfavorable to them. But the party, remade in the image of MAGA, is better adapted to the landscape of the 21st century than the Democrats are.

If Republicans suffer a setback in November, they’ll recover quickly, much as Trump bounced back from the 2020 election. Democrats shouldn’t expect a wave – they should worry about being swept away by the tide.

The Spectator

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have gotten a lot of attention over the past decade. In these pages, we’ve often lamented that universities’ focus on superficial measures of diversity undermines merit and overlooks viewpoint diversity.

A new book by Duke professor Adrian Bejan, Diversity Through Freedom, emphasizes a different kind of diversity: the organic, inevitable, and beneficial diversity found in nature. He calls it “a phenomenon that has a mind of its own” that can’t be “shoehorned into a few distinct (antagonistic) classes.”

The Martin Center sat down with Professor Bejan to discuss his book and its implications for higher education. This transcription has been edited for clarity and length.

Martin Center: Let me start by asking you about the core argument of your book. You say diversity comes from freedom, not from top-down efforts to engineer it. What does that mean in plain terms, especially for universities?

Bejan: To let people be free to come up with ideas and gather voluntarily around ideas that are better. And then if you want to admire the association, you’ll be admiring natural diversity. The engineered diversity is not to be confused with the natural diversity. Engineered diversity is something that is a very old practice in human society. It goes by many names. The most common is the class struggle in which the different things are two: oppressed versus oppressor or proletarian versus factory worker, or underrepresented and overrepresented, minority versus majority. It’s always two antagonistic groups. And yes, if you want to make a mixture of, for example, milk and coffee, you would go for mixing two things. But nature has a mind of its own. It’s basically the constant evolving movie of anything goes. And amazingly, the diversity that happens naturally is impossible to measure.

It is so enormous and constantly changing. And if you want to pay attention to that constantly or permanently, [it’s] surprising how relentless the change really is. And I like to say that, in fact, this whole thing began with the activity of design, which, even without education, is the act of striving toward perfection. Well, perfection, you can imagine it, but it never comes. What comes is the unexpected, which is the diversity of imperfect things that approach the performance of the perfect, but they’re good enough to be kept, adopted, and used as stepping stones or trampolines to new and even more promising ideas.

People make careers out of proclaiming that the world is evolving toward greater and greater complexity.Diversity, on the other hand, you cannot imagine it, but it always comes. That’s why everything that surrounds us is so diverse that people make careers out of proclaiming that the world is evolving toward greater and greater complexity, which is a statement of admitting defeat because you cannot make a drawing of something complex. Complex means twisted together in its origin. Again, the discovery that led to this book is the physics of diversity, natural diversity, which is what happens when something good, meaning a good promise called perfection, is put in front of people. And that comes from one idea, from one individual, and then, those who are attracted, they come with. They are capable of approach[ing] that sort of design. But they necessarily miss the mark, just like in target shooting, nobody hits one point. Everybody hits an area which is small, but it’s an area, and everybody gets top marks for hitting a disc, not a point. And all of them together are the diversity of winners. It is why, at the end of every competition in the Olympics, you see new faces on the podium, even though their records are essentially unchanged from the previous edition. That is diversity, natural diversity. The diversity in athletics is in this particular book; the diversity of universities in the so-called rankings is also there, it’s predictable.

Humility in the face of nature comes from realizing that your ability to predict something exactly is a pipe dream.Everything that moves, obviously, is driven by the natural tendency toward the easier movement and more economical and farther, longer-lasting meaning, longer lifespan. All these things make nature itself act as a flow, trying to elbow its way in front of others. I grew up on the Danube. I’ve seen this growing up. I got a feel for the fact that the so-called inanimate has a mind of its own. If you do not respect that you’re swept away by the waters, especially in springtime. So humility in the face of nature comes from realizing that your ability to predict something exactly is a pipe dream, but just like nature, the individual is well advised to go with what works and move on. And that way, you get ahead, because you save time. You save time to cook up a better idea and to surprise even yourself with the fact that you did not think outside the box. You actually thought inside the box. And you found things that most people have been overlooking for decades.

Martin Center: When you look at higher education right now, where do you think institutions are getting this wrong?

They’re getting it wrong because the idea of the class struggle is Karl Marx 100 percent.Bejan: Well, they’re getting it wrong because the idea of the class struggle is Karl Marx 100 percent. It is attractive to the ignorant. And of course, the students are easy prey for people who preach that failed philosophy. How many hundreds of millions of victims of communism do you need in human history to alert people to the importance of saying, “Never again. Never again”? It is a pipe dream, and the results are well-documented in history. In fact, they don’t need history. [You just] have to look around and talk to people who came from somewhere else, and they’ll tell you what happened to their grandparents, to their parents, to themselves, actually, which is why they emigrated. What happened to the house they built? What happened to the little shop that they built on the corner of the street? Expropriation, dehumanizing effects, getting fired from jobs, being sent to the labor camp to die, not to come back.

All these things are very well documented. And the numbers are enormous. Stalin is famous for joking that one death is a tragedy. 1 million is a statistic. People don’t even shrug their shoulders when they hear about the 100,000 dead or a million dead. But the family and the descendants, they know. They feel the pain forever. But the important thing is, for those who have had contact with the tragedies of this kind, they are well advised to stop being quiet and to talk about it. In my own environment, academia, I know professors who know what I’m talking about, but most of them are keeping quiet. I decided that the time has come to express not an opinion, but the physics of it, and the physics is this: that what is not useful is destined to fade away or to die, and yes, if you are stupid enough to try communism again, be sure that you’ll fail, because soon enough, that dictatorship will be overthrown. It will be. In fact, the writing is on the wall. Today, every dictatorship is a police state. Without the police state, it would not exist.

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May 15, 2026 Jenna A. Robinson

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Diversity, equity, and inclusion have gotten a lot of attention over the past decade. In these pages, we’ve often lamented that universities’ focus on superficial measures of diversity undermines merit and overlooks viewpoint diversity.

A new book by Duke professor Adrian Bejan, Diversity Through Freedom, emphasizes a different kind of diversity: the organic, inevitable, and beneficial diversity found in nature. He calls it “a phenomenon that has a mind of its own” that can’t be “shoehorned into a few distinct (antagonistic) classes.”

The Martin Center sat down with Professor Bejan to discuss his book and its implications for higher education. This transcription has been edited for clarity and length.

Martin Center: Let me start by asking you about the core argument of your book. You say diversity comes from freedom, not from top-down efforts to engineer it. What does that mean in plain terms, especially for universities?

Bejan: To let people be free to come up with ideas and gather voluntarily around ideas that are better. And then if you want to admire the association, you’ll be admiring natural diversity. The engineered diversity is not to be confused with the natural diversity. Engineered diversity is something that is a very old practice in human society. It goes by many names. The most common is the class struggle in which the different things are two: oppressed versus oppressor or proletarian versus factory worker, or underrepresented and overrepresented, minority versus majority. It’s always two antagonistic groups. And yes, if you want to make a mixture of, for example, milk and coffee, you would go for mixing two things. But nature has a mind of its own. It’s basically the constant evolving movie of anything goes. And amazingly, the diversity that happens naturally is impossible to measure.

It is so enormous and constantly changing. And if you want to pay attention to that constantly or permanently, [it’s] surprising how relentless the change really is. And I like to say that, in fact, this whole thing began with the activity of design, which, even without education, is the act of striving toward perfection. Well, perfection, you can imagine it, but it never comes. What comes is the unexpected, which is the diversity of imperfect things that approach the performance of the perfect, but they’re good enough to be kept, adopted, and used as stepping stones or trampolines to new and even more promising ideas.

People make careers out of proclaiming that the world is evolving toward greater and greater complexity.Diversity, on the other hand, you cannot imagine it, but it always comes. That’s why everything that surrounds us is so diverse that people make careers out of proclaiming that the world is evolving toward greater and greater complexity, which is a statement of admitting defeat because you cannot make a drawing of something complex. Complex means twisted together in its origin. Again, the discovery that led to this book is the physics of diversity, natural diversity, which is what happens when something good, meaning a good promise called perfection, is put in front of people. And that comes from one idea, from one individual, and then, those who are attracted, they come with. They are capable of approach[ing] that sort of design. But they necessarily miss the mark, just like in target shooting, nobody hits one point. Everybody hits an area which is small, but it’s an area, and everybody gets top marks for hitting a disc, not a point. And all of them together are the diversity of winners. It is why, at the end of every competition in the Olympics, you see new faces on the podium, even though their records are essentially unchanged from the previous edition. That is diversity, natural diversity. The diversity in athletics is in this particular book; the diversity of universities in the so-called rankings is also there, it’s predictable.

Humility in the face of nature comes from realizing that your ability to predict something exactly is a pipe dream.Everything that moves, obviously, is driven by the natural tendency toward the easier movement and more economical and farther, longer-lasting meaning, longer lifespan. All these things make nature itself act as a flow, trying to elbow its way in front of others. I grew up on the Danube. I’ve seen this growing up. I got a feel for the fact that the so-called inanimate has a mind of its own. If you do not respect that you’re swept away by the waters, especially in springtime. So humility in the face of nature comes from realizing that your ability to predict something exactly is a pipe dream, but just like nature, the individual is well advised to go with what works and move on. And that way, you get ahead, because you save time. You save time to cook up a better idea and to surprise even yourself with the fact that you did not think outside the box. You actually thought inside the box. And you found things that most people have been overlooking for decades.

Martin Center: When you look at higher education right now, where do you think institutions are getting this wrong?

They’re getting it wrong because the idea of the class struggle is Karl Marx 100 percent.Bejan: Well, they’re getting it wrong because the idea of the class struggle is Karl Marx 100 percent. It is attractive to the ignorant. And of course, the students are easy prey for people who preach that failed philosophy. How many hundreds of millions of victims of communism do you need in human history to alert people to the importance of saying, “Never again. Never again”? It is a pipe dream, and the results are well-documented in history. In fact, they don’t need history. [You just] have to look around and talk to people who came from somewhere else, and they’ll tell you what happened to their grandparents, to their parents, to themselves, actually, which is why they emigrated. What happened to the house they built? What happened to the little shop that they built on the corner of the street? Expropriation, dehumanizing effects, getting fired from jobs, being sent to the labor camp to die, not to come back.

All these things are very well documented. And the numbers are enormous. Stalin is famous for joking that one death is a tragedy. 1 million is a statistic. People don’t even shrug their shoulders when they hear about the 100,000 dead or a million dead. But the family and the descendants, they know. They feel the pain forever. But the important thing is, for those who have had contact with the tragedies of this kind, they are well advised to stop being quiet and to talk about it. In my own environment, academia, I know professors who know what I’m talking about, but most of them are keeping quiet. I decided that the time has come to express not an opinion, but the physics of it, and the physics is this: that what is not useful is destined to fade away or to die, and yes, if you are stupid enough to try communism again, be sure that you’ll fail, because soon enough, that dictatorship will be overthrown. It will be. In fact, the writing is on the wall. Today, every dictatorship is a police state. Without the police state, it would not exist.

Martin Center: In your book, you make a strong case for both merit and hierarchy as natural features of thriving systems. How should universities think about merit today, given all the debates? Merit gets a bad name. How should universities approach this?

Bejan: Well, it’s ironic, actually, it’s funny. The word “merit” is not spoken, yet the university wants to achieve a higher ranking. But the people who engage in this kind of narrative don’t think it’s funny. They think that they’re preaching to the choir. The fact is that we’re all different. And that is why society is a very impressive living body. It has powers and abilities and ideas that one individual does not have, and that is why the society outlives the individual, and yes, the society can take one idea and move it to greater heights. And this is all pretty well documented. And one university, with its merit and fame, is perceived by others as being better than other universities. And that is the mother and father of the rankings that are obvious to most people who pay attention.The word “merit” is not spoken, yet the university wants to achieve a higher ranking.

It’s about ideas, and the ideas do not come uniformly from the members of the university. Some members are individuals to whom ideas occur more frequently, even better, meaning, even more different. There are some individuals whose ideas arrive in not only greater diversity, but greater audacity. Audacity or ability to shake the boat. And it is those ideas that put the university on the map. People ask, “Where was Richard Feynman professor? Where was Einstein a researcher [when] in the States?” They talk about time and place, not only one name or one group. This is what people remember, and this is why, to this day, regardless of the news of the day, Harvard University is famous. MIT is famous. It is for this reason that it attracted and protected, meaning it housed and cared for gifted individuals who came up with ideas, many ideas, not just science and other things. Impressive characters such as Aldrin, who was the second man on the moon, is an MIT PhD. Things, meaning behavior and achievement, belong to valuable players, like on a football team. The value of the player and the play is not distributed uniformly, because those are individuals with a built-in notion that they’re on earth to make a contribution and not to be sheep. That’s the reality. And if a student today does not resonate with what I just said, well, that’s his fault. He will end up not being a producer of things that change the world. What I’m telling you is particularly valuable in engineering, because engineering is the science and the profession of making things that did not exist before. So, the engineer is the creator. And if you are not able to dribble the ball, then you’re not part of the game.They’re on earth to make a contribution and not to be sheep.

Martin Center: You’ve been very critical of what you call artificial diversity. How do you see that showing up at universities? Do you think it’s showing up at all in the growth of administrative offices and all of these programs we have on campus?

Bejan: Yeah, that’s right. So, the evolution to which you refer is of an older vintage. It began right after Sputnik in the late 50s. That is when the government in this race for outer space became very busy in getting involved in shaping the research activity in the university, and decade after decade, the monies that came from the government ballooned the administration, the administering of that flow also became a university of its own at all levels, from government all the way down to the university. So we have here people who handle the money, we have in Washington, people who distribute the money, but the people who are making the decisions at all levels are failed academics. They’re not the ones doing the research. I’ve seen them, and it is mind-boggling that, say, Adrian is required to convince people who basically are not players. But they do the deciding, and they decide the initiatives or categories of projects that should be sponsored, as opposed to other categories, such as free thinking, that I think are more valuable, meaning the least expected idea should be encouraged. All of that is just foreign to research based on planning. Well, that is the USSR: research based on planning. And remember, I grew up in communist Romania, so I know what I’m talking about.I grew up in communist Romania, so I know what I’m talking about.

Before I left the university where I got my start for the first two years, there was a directive that arrived from the Ministry of Education that a professor, an honest person, shared with people in the classroom. Can you believe here’s this document from the Ministry of Education, telling us the 20 inventions that need to be made. Yes, I read them to you. They are listed, 20 inventions to be made. That is planned, not planned economies, but planned scientific research, which is, of course, nonsense. If you know the question, the ball game is over, you know, because getting the answers is child’s play, and so that is what’s going on. And then the ones who come up with ideas while not being sponsored by the government are very few, but they are the free people who still exist. At a recent conference in my domain, which is called constructal law of design in nature, a participant a little bit older than me, said, “Now in retirement, I’m doing the kind of thinking that I knew that I was capable of doing. I can actually write what is important without looking over my shoulder.” And I said, “Well, I think you know that the challenge that I face is to behave like you, even though I’m not retired.” Science at this rate is doomed. Science, my field, for example, thermodynamics, is in trouble because of nothing new, and then an invasion of bowing and scraping. These are the copycats. They keep repeating things that, as I said, failed academics have the power to support.Thermodynamics is in trouble because of nothing new, and then an invasion of bowing and scraping.

Martin Center: You answered my next question before I even asked it, which was going to be about freedom and creativity. It sounds like you think faculty today are not very free to pursue ideas.

Bejan: They may be free in their own bedrooms, but in public, they’re joiners. They form big groups because the government favors collective proposals, with 10 or more co-authors, in the belief that size makes better ideas, which is the complete opposite of what collectivization has demonstrated in history. It began with the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR in the late 1920s, and it spread all the way to 1989—the fall of communism. It created everything: poverty, of course, but also hunger, and the exodus of the few capable farmers. Farmers from the village, they left. They ran. They ran for a better life in the city as laborers, meaning unqualified laborers. I’ve seen them. They left the countryside vacant and rotting. That’s the effect of collectivization.

There’s a cacophony of publishing where everybody writes, and nobody reads.In research, for example, there is research going on with extremely low ROI, return on investment. You have large groups that are getting paid. They publish papers, research articles with 20 or 30 or more co-authors. You don’t know who did what in that particular report, but everybody got paid. And by the way, nobody reads the article that’s published. Today in science, there’s a cacophony of publishing where everybody writes, and nobody reads. Not long ago, it took effort to write something by hand, then to have it typed, then to put it in a yellow envelope and lick a stamp and mail it to a publisher, and then in return, you got the three envelopes with the reviews mailed the same way with stamps, and that was an activity that made everybody honest, and it kept the numbers of participants small. It was reduced to a small number of real players in this kind of flow of ideas. Machine writing, machine publishing, all of this has created this Tower of Babel of Science, where, as I said, everybody writes and publishes, but nobody reads. By the way, this is where you come in. They watch a few podcasts or episodes on YouTube. And so, yes, that’s very important, the work that you do, which is why I jumped at the opportunity to contribute and to be heard. But writing a book is one way to stick to the old game, which is harder work because it takes a lot of effort to publish a book these days.All of this has created this Tower of Babel of Science.

Martin Center: I will ask you one last question, and that is, if you were speaking directly to students or to young faculty watching this video, what would you tell them to focus on if they want to do meaningful, creative work?

Bejan: I just finished my lecture, and I told them exactly what you’re fishing for. I tell them to value and protect their individuality and to think, first of all, to recognize that every moment of the day, things surprise them, that it is their duty to question them, to connect the dots, and to come up with a good question, which is their question. The ball game, meaning the opportunity to score, is not in finding an answer; it is in discovering a new question, and that is your baby. And then you also immediately know the answer, if not right away, you’ll know it tomorrow morning when you wake up, because that is when the better ideas that took shape during the night occurred to you. [You should] value those images and do justice to them, and never lose sight of the fact that there’s only one like you. You’re an individual. And I also told them, “Do not join. Just stay true to your own thinking and your own imagination.” And I know that they like me, but this kind of message is best transmitted with the personal example, with an unrestrained book like this one, “Diversity through Freedom,” and with other books of that kind that I published in the recent past. They all come from this attitude that I’m on earth to make a contribution, not to be a copycat, and certainly not to be a plagiarist or a thief or a sheep.

Jenna Robinson is president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. 

I recently heard from a friend that Talarico’s leftist church – the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas — told its parishioners to throw away their Bibles and purchase the “Inclusive Bible” by the Priests for Equality, which was quite an odd translation of the Bible.

I first confirmed Talarico preached there:

I then confirmed it uses the Inclusive Bible:

I then looked up that “bible” and whoa, is it weird:

I flipped through it just briefly:

Adam is an “it” the “first creature” until Eve is created, the first human.

Marriage is not between a “man and woman” but between “two persons”.

God is seldom “the Father” but “your Parent”.

Well, except for garbage like this:

“It is God the only Child, who is close to the bosom of the Father-Mother…” (“~John” 1:18) (or in the later version “bosom of Abba”) “Abba” literally means “daddy” in Aramaic/Hebrew, but I guess it’s OK to use non-English words to hide that. They probably think it’s kinky.

Proverbs, which is largely about young men’s proper behavior, is so gutted and weakened I can’t make heads or tales of it.

The Holy Spirit (which is technically an “it” in the Greek, so any gendered English translation has issues) is a “she” throughout the Gospel of John. I guess that’s no less accurate than “he”, but that’s the female gender bias throughout.

And this female-centric bend continues throughout. Women are generally listed before men in genealogies, for example.

Or like this in “~Genesis 1:27” the phrase “male and female” becomes “female and male”. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. But why the change from the original Hebrew? Equality? Or because women are better?

In fact, women are generally elevated over men throughout the translation. It’s not “inclusive”. It’s misandrist. For example, Paul address in letters is changed to “sisters and brothers”.

And men are generally erased:

“Son of Man” becomes “the Human One”.

“Son of God” becomes “the Chosen One”.

“Don’t call anyone on earth your ‘Mother’ or ‘Father.’ You have only one Parent—our loving God in heaven. (The original text says “Father”.)

Ephesians had this gem “to those of you in a committed relationship” and erases both male and female. (It’s supposed to be about marriage. My only surprise is it didn’t say “top” and “bottom”.)

I can’t even figure out what 1 Peter instructions for a household says. I think it says “the woman is the boss”.

The “Whore of Babylon” is, well, go read it (or not) yourself.

TLDR: Talrico’s preferred Bible does its best to erase men or sex. Promotes women over men. And is super gay and weird. It’s like if Disney under Kathleen Kennedy wrote the Bible: “put a chick in it and make it gay and lame.”

In 1955, a British historian named C. Northcote Parkinson published a short, sardonic essay in The Economist about why government departments keep growing regardless of how much work they actually have. It was meant as satire.

The idea was this: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Seventy years later, I’d say this observation has never been more relevant.

I can confirm it, personally. Not in some abstract, applies-to-everyone sense. I mean it in the specific sense that the day I give myself eight hours to do four hours of work is, reliably, the day that takes eight hours or more.

I am a freelance writer who works mostly from home and coffee shops. Nobody tells me when to stop. And remote work, for all its obvious advantages, has a hidden cost: the flexibility is the trap.

Perhaps, in an office, it’s easier. In an office, you have signals. Colleagues put on their coats. The building empties. The commute home functions as a hard boundary between work and the rest of the day.

When you work remotely, none of that exists. The day just continues. There is always one more thing to read, one more sentence to tighten, one more tab to open. Work finds the space you give it.

The counterintuitive thing is that remote workers often tell themselves the opposite. All that flexibility, the thinking goes, means I can be more efficient. I can fit work around my life rather than the other way around. And this is partly true — but only if you impose some structure on it. Without the structure, you don’t work less. You just work differently, and you work more, but not necessarily better.

I have about three hours a day of writing that is actually worth anything before quality slips. The remaining hours are not wasted — there is research, correspondence, editing — but they are not the core work. They are fill. And without a hard stop, fill expands.

Here’s how to give work less room: 

Set a hard stop — and set it before you start

Most advice about hard stops gets the timing wrong. People say: pick a time to stop. And they mean it as something you decide during the day — at three in the afternoon you resolve to wrap up by six. But by three in the afternoon, Parkinson’s Law is already running. You have committed the time. Work has expanded to fill it.

The hard stop has to be decided before you open the laptop. Not as a calendar event you might reschedule, but as a genuine boundary — the end of the working day is already fixed, and the only question is what gets done before it arrives.

The blocks don’t need to be elaborate. They need to be specific: this task, this window, this end point. When the block is over, you move on — whether the task feels finished or not. Most of the time, it is. And if it isn’t, you know exactly how much more it actually needs.

Parkinson’s Law is not a productivity hack. It is a description of something that happens on its own when you are not paying attention. Work fills the space you give it. It always has.

The only move as far as I can see is to make the space smaller.

Mal James

Mal James is a writer at Space Daily covering self-development, productivity, relationships, and the psychology of work. He is also an entrepreneur and former teacher, and brings both perspectives into his writing on the Mind & Meaning pillar. Mal’s pieces focus on the practical — how people change behavior, build better habits, and navigate the parts of life that don’t come with instructions.

For liars, truth is relative.

J.B. Shurk | May 29, 2026

We are living through an age that has abandoned the dedicated pursuit of truth.  Our politicians and news personalities talk about “the narrative.”  Our academies teach young minds to accept “expert opinion.”  Our philosophers argue that truth is “subjective.”  Social theorists argue that truth is an “illusion” that powerful people use to control others.  

Whenever I hear Democrat Senator Cory Booker all riled up on television, he’s talking about “her truth,” “his truth,” or even “their truth” — as if a hundred conflicting descriptions of the same event could all be truthful.  

During Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, Democrats called Dr. Christine Blasey Ford to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Ford claimed that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in 1982 when both were in high school.  Kavanaugh vehemently denied the allegation and argued that many parts of Ford’s story didn’t add up.  When Kavanaugh told the senators that the whole thing was a political spectacle being used as a weapon to derail his confirmation, Senator Booker shouted, “Are you calling her some kind of political operative?”  Kavanaugh calmly pointed out, “The witnesses who were there [the party at which Blasey Ford claimed the alleged assault occurred] say it didn’t happen.”  Kavanaugh then stated that, although Blasey Ford’s allegations were false and harmful, his “family has no ill will toward her.”   

This is how Booker responded to Justice Kavanaugh’s total denial of the allegation against him: “She came forward.  She sat here.  She told her truth.”  Her truth.  Not the truth.  The “truth” that was most likely to help Democrats “Bork” Kavanaugh’s nomination — just as then-Senator Joe Biden and fellow Democrats tried to do during Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings back in ’91 when they brought in a witness who claimed that Thomas had made “unwelcome sexual comments” when the two worked together, a charge Thomas similarly and furiously denied.  

What was revealing about Booker’s made-for-TV moment was his disregard for whether Kavanaugh had actually done anything untoward forty years earlier in his life.  He didn’t care.  The lack of any evidence that could credibly support Blasey Ford’s allegation didn’t matter.  Nor did it matter that Kavanaugh flatly denied the allegation.  For Booker, the only “fact” that mattered was that Blasey Ford was willing to testify to something that might sink Kavanaugh’s nomination.  “Her truth,” even if false, made it compelling.

Booker’s flippant disregard for the truth was reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s rationalization to a grand jury that he never lied about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky when he told his staff, “There’s nothing going on between us,” and Jim Lehrer of PBS, “There is no improper relationship.”  As everyone who recalls Lewinsky’s stained blue dress knows, Clinton’s statements were lies.  But when Clinton testified before members of a grand jury, this was his truth:

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.  If the — if he — if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing.  If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.…Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said ‘no.’  And it would have been completely true.”  

At that moment, President Clinton proved to Americans that he had no interest in truth.  He did not care if he lied.  He cared only whether the American people might catch him in a lie.  Whether Clinton had “plausible deniability” mattered.  Whether he could confuse enough jurors over the meaning of “is” mattered.  But the truth?  Well, the truth is for rubes and suckers.  Clinton’s dissembling and Booker’s disregard for what actually happened in 1982 are symptoms of the same disease: our dishonest age’s abandonment of — and even hostility toward — what is true.

Politicians lie.  That’s hardly breaking news.  What is newsworthy, though, is that our society does not even pretend to pursue truth anymore.  

During COVID, we were forced to follow government mandates that made absolutely no sense.  Why was it safe for Walmart to remain open when small businesses were forced to close?  How could paper masks, arrows painted on the floor, plexiglass walls, or six feet of space save us from microorganisms that don’t care about such things?  Why should schools be closed when the virus posed the least threat to young people?  Why should healthy people who had already acquired natural immunity be forced to take an experimental injection?  The public was right to ask so many valid questions.  Yet our government-run health organizations responded with juvenile insouciance: We’re working at the speed of science!  That was the “scientific” equivalent of, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

We’re fifteen years into this gender-bender madness during which “experts” (including too many with M.D.s) claim that biological sex is not real and that what we perceive as male or female is nothing more than a self-imposed social construct.  People who have refused to play this delusional game have been fired from jobs.  People looking for jobs tell obvious lies.  

During Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn asked, “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?”  The newest member of the Supreme Court replied, “No, I can’t.”  “You can’t?” Blackburn asked incredulously.  The jurist who holds one of the most powerful offices in the United States claimed, “Not in this context.  I’m not a biologist.”  This is where we are now.  A judge with two Harvard degrees can’t tell the American people whether she is actually a woman.  

A few days ago, reporter and columnist John Stossel noted that twenty years have passed since former Vice President Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was released in theaters.  Along with a short five-minute video that includes research scientists from the Heartland Institute debunking the pseudoscience behind “climate change” fearmongering, Stossel summed up Gore’s lies thusly: “NONE of his scary predictions have come true.  Mt. Kilimanjaro still has snow and Glacier National Park still has glaciers.”  Yet included in that short video is a litany of celebrity “experts” and Democrat politicians all parroting the same lie: We have only twelve years left to live.

The “global warming” liars spent the last twenty years scaring children all over the world by telling them that they would die before being old enough to drive.  Now some of those scared kids have children of their own, and the “climate change” con is still going.  Prominent Democrats such as Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Richard Blumenthal have even supported legislation that would prohibit funds to federal agencies that “challenge the scientific consensus on climate change.”  In other words, Democrat politicians wish to outlaw the Scientific Method.

Our society does not doggedly pursue truth.  It pursues ideological compliance. 

Truth does not require President Joe Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board to arbitrate reality for the public.  Science is never “settled,” as President Barack Obama claimed in his 2014 State of the Union Address.  People without PhDs are quite capable of defining a “woman” and deciding for themselves whether to wear paper masks.  To pretend otherwise is just another lie.

Here’s the real problem, though: When our politicians, scientists, educators, and philosophers spread the lie that there is no objective truth, they transform our existence into gooey meaninglessness.  Because if everything is “true,” then nothing is true.  And if nothing is true, then politicians will decide what is “true” for us.  

Pursuing truth does not mean that we ever obtain it.  It is the vigilant pursuit of truth, though, that gives us sufficient wisdom to recognize the lies and liars among us.  In an age when liars rule, question everything.

The number of American men in the workforce are at its lowest level in two decades — with about one in three American men having stopped working as of 2026, new labor statistics show.

Just 66% of men were employed or actively seeking a job as of April, a nearly 20-year low from 73% in 2006, according to data the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released earlier this month.

The current number — covering men aged 20 and over — is almost exactly as low as it was after the 2008 recession, when rates first plummeted by seven points in about a year.

Employment rates slowly eked up across the 2010s — before being gutted during the 2020 pandemic, when just 59% of men were employed.

Rates partially recovered within two years but then began a trickling decline that’s persisted into the current lows.

And trends are still pointing downward, with male employment dropping as of April by a full point year over year from 2025, the Labor Department showed.

Numerous labor trends are fueling the rates, including male-heavy industries like transportation, manufacturing and other labor-intensive fields shedding jobs in the last year, according to the Washington Post.

Increasing numbers of retirees and male students have also narrowed the working population.

But men who are no longer working because of a disability make up the majority who have left the labor force.

“If me and my mom weren’t living together, I would have a really hard time living a life,” said 51-year-old Andy Breedlove, who had to quit work as a gas station manager in 2018 because a bone condition kept him from staying on his feet for long periods of time.

The West Virginian now stays at home to care for his aging mother, and lives off about $1,000 a month from government assistance.

“I’d much rather be working,” he told the Washington Post. “I’d make a lot more money.”

Even some young folks have found themselves forced out over disability.

“I have a lot of trouble doing day-to-day stuff sometimes,” said Cordell Loll, a 25-year-old who’s never had a job because of chronic stomach problems and mental health struggles. Loll spends his time keeping his health in check and playing video games at home, while living off disability checks.

“The thought of working seems very impossible,” he said.

Rates of women leaving the workforce have followed roughly similar trends over the past two decades, though with much less severe ups and downs.

Employment among women dropped by just 2 points during the 2008 recession, as opposed to the 5-point drop men experienced.

There was also a fractional decline since female labor force numbers picked up after the 2020 pandemic, but they haven’t dropped below 56% point since 2022.

The raw numbers of women in the workforce have historically been lower than men.

Deregulation, tax cuts, and a fundamental trust in the power of private enterprise across the Atlantic stand in sharp contrast to the sluggish, apathetic-socialist policies of Germany and the European Union — and not in Europe’s favor.

Thomas Kolbe | May 29, 2026

While German industry is pulling up stakes and heading for greener pastures, the United States is experiencing a small investment miracle. Through its deregulation agenda, the American government is proving the thesis that prosperity is created exclusively in the private sector — not through state regulation.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz appears disoriented, whiny-apathetic, and remarkably weak in leadership these days. Perhaps the chancellor senses that the project of his political generation is entering its final phase. Is he aware that the construction of eco-socialism has failed? That both his reckless debt policies and Germany’s rapid deindustrialization are consequences of this ideological insanity? The fact that Friedrich Merz still found the audacity — despite the catastrophic domestic political and economic situation at home — to publicly accuse U.S. President Donald Trump of lacking strategy in the Iran conflict speaks to an almost immeasurable degree of stubborn arrogance and self-delusion.

There he was again: the German know-it-all. The type of politician who once lectured Europe’s neighbors over debt problems while failing to compare his own actions with the present condition of his own country.

Merz would have done well to take a look at the American economy and the U.S. labor market before stepping onto such embarrassingly thin rhetorical ice.

In April, the private sector in the United States created 115,000 new jobs. During the opening months of the previous year, another roughly 180,000 jobs had already been added. The U.S. economy has now delivered four strong months in a row, signaling that America is rapidly gaining momentum and — unlike the European economy — is not being derailed by the Iran crisis. These are phenomenal numbers at a time when the world is fighting over scarce capital, know-how, and access to cheap energy resources.

The contrast with Germany could hardly be greater. During the first year of the Merz government, the German public sector was bloated with another 205,000 more-or-less useless jobs, while Donald Trump’s administration cut 300,000 positions from the overstretched state apparatus. During the same period, the American private sector created a net total of more than 750,000 jobs since Trump returned to office, while the German economy eliminated roughly 200,000 positions.

Deregulation, tax cuts, and a fundamental trust in the power of private enterprise across the Atlantic stand in sharp contrast to the sluggish, apathetic-socialist policies of Germany and the European Union — and not in Europe’s favor.

How strongly the American economy is currently developing can be seen in an interesting media phenomenon.

April 29, 2026 — a Wednesday — may one day prove to have been an important turning point. On that day, outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell appeared before the press for the final time to announce the latest decision on U.S. interest rates. The fact that the Fed left rates unchanged within a range of 3.5 to 3.75 percent came as no surprise. What was striking, however, was the deafening silence inside financial newsrooms, which normally inflate Fed rate decisions into mega-events for the markets and American capitalism itself. This time, the waters remained perfectly calm.

Two developments lie behind the media’s sudden disenchantment with Fed meetings. First, there is the policy of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who used legislation such as the Genius Act and the Clarity Act to establish the framework for U.S. dollar-based stablecoins, thereby shifting a significant portion of money creation back into the hands of the private banking sector — where it once resided before the creation of the Federal Reserve. Second, the higher policy rates compared to the Eurozone appear to indicate that the U.S. economy is far more robust than European politicians and media figures would like to admit. So the attitude has become: best not to talk about it too much. Otherwise, people might start noticing that the Eurozone economy itself is incapable of surviving positive real interest rates.

Donald Trump’s second presidency has so far delivered 15 months of determined deregulation and a noticeable liberation of the energy sector from the strangling regulatory activism of climate fanatics. Until Trump’s election victory, Washington had been ideologically subordinate to Europe. Back in 2009, the Europeans succeeded in pushing Barack Obama into effectively adopting Europe’s climate policies wholesale in the United States. But the hope that America’s collapse would somehow conceal Europe’s own decline has now evaporated. Behind the strength of the U.S. labor market stand massive forces of private-sector investment.

This is where the ideological divide between the United States and the European Union truly lies. While the EU — driven in large part by German political pressure — has constructed a green redistribution machine that functions as a state within the state, siphoning resources out of productive sectors into the political economy and green transformation bureaucracy, Americans understand something Europeans have forgotten: prosperity is created exclusively through investment in deregulated free markets supported by a functioning price mechanism that reflects relative scarcity.

The effect of Trump’s deregulation wave can only be estimated in rough numbers. In the first quarter of 2026, gross private investment in the United States rose 8.7 percent year-over-year. Investment in equipment and industrial structures increased by 10.4 percent during the same period. These are extraordinary figures at a time when nations are competing aggressively for know-how and resources.

Now compare that to Germany: after years of eco-socialist degrowth policies, overregulation, and energy-policy suicide, Germany’s net investment ratio has slipped into negative territory. In plain English, the German economy is consuming itself. Whatever industrial substance remains is being eaten away and financially leveraged by the state wherever possible. While German industry is tearing down its tents, the United States is writing a genuine reindustrialization story. If the American economy succeeds in maintaining technological leadership over China and secures dominant positions through massive investments by U.S. tech giants in artificial intelligence, robotics, medical technology, aerospace, and mobility, the geopolitical balance of power will shift accordingly.

More than 400 major industrial projects are currently being developed across the United States. These include new nuclear power plants, gigantic data centers, traditional automobile manufacturing facilities, and even aluminum smelters. They are being financed through investments from the Arab states, Japan, and other parts of the world that President Trump brought home from his numerous foreign trips. But domestic demand and America’s internal investment engine are also running at full speed. Something is brewing in the United States — perhaps even a small economic revolution.

From a European perspective, this makes the situation all the more dramatic because the entire ideological failure of globalist politics becomes far more obvious in contrast to the United States.

If ideological hardliners, committed statists, and central planners remain in power in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris, the old continent is likely to sink into a prolonged economic coma — tired, aging, and increasingly weak. Hope for the future, entrepreneurial innovation, and economic dynamism will only return once a younger generation of European free spirits awakens from this comatose winter.

I am convinced that one day a generation of Europeans will clear away the ideological mud of the past with a cold smile on their faces, astonished by the arrogance and ideological blindness of their predecessors. In the end, civilization and humanity’s desire to improve its living conditions will prevail.

American Thinker

An Alabama probate judge was reportedly suspended after a judicial ethics complaint accused her of making a racially charged comment regarding a white court clerk and other offenses.

Jefferson County Probate Judge Yashiba Blanchard faces seven charges tied to allegations ranging from racial comments to mishandling involuntary commitment cases, the New York Post reported, citing a complaint from Alabama’s Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC). The complaint alleges that Blanchard’s conduct disrupted court operations, made conditions difficult for staff and posed a “threat to public safety,” 1819 News reported.

Blanchard allegedly made a racially charged comment about Chief Clerk Amanda Reid, a white woman, according to the complaint. A court staff member told Blanchard on her first day that she liked Reid, which prompted the judge to allegedly respond, “Oh, I forgot you all like kissing white ass.”

The complaint further alleges Blanchard tried to fabricate insubordination and performance concerns against Reid by kicking her out of her office and restricting her access to necessary documents and tools, according to WBRC. The judge allegedly moved Reid’s desk into a cubicle positioned directly before a bailiff as retaliation for her obeying a subpoena.

Blanchard allegedly showed up to court late regularly, the New York Post reported. She did not hear an involuntary commitment hearing for the first nine months of her term as judge, resulting in mentally ill patients remaining in hospitals, the JIC alleged.

Hospital staff allegedly said one patient remained hospitalized for two additional weeks because hearings were postponed or canceled, according to WBRC. The complaint also claimed Blanchard told staff she was late to an involuntary commitment docket because she “had three dogs to walk,” 1819 News reported.

An attorney cited in the complaint allegedly pleaded with the court not to reschedule a hearing because he feared his client “is going to die.”

As of January 2026, mental health officers alleged that roughly 120 patients remained in the community and were not able to be committed since Blanchard did not convene hearings in a timely manner as caseloads grew, Inquisitr reported. One probate matter was rescheduled four separate times, the complaint alleged.

Blanchard had not responded officially to the complaint as of May 22, according to WBRC. She was suspended from her post Thursday, according to 1819 News.

The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission declined to provide further comment to the Daily Caller regarding the matter. The Daily Caller also reached out to Judge Blanchard for comment.

Ann Rodgers, Daily Caller

In Leo XIV’s new society, ‘the poor, the sick, the migrants and the least among us — will become the cornerstone’ and not Jesus Christ.

On May 8, 2025, Leo XIV spoke these words from the loggia of St. Peter’s:

We want to be a synodal Church.

Now, on May 25, 2026, he has published a detailed manifesto for its construction.

Magnifica Humanitas is a blueprint for the construction of a new society, which Leo variously calls the “city,” “Jerusalem,” and a “civilization of love.” The words “building” and “rebuilding” are used 40 times in the text.

This “Jerusalem” is not the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ, or is the term used to refer to the heavenly Jerusalem to come. In fact, the term “Catholic Church” does not appear even once in Magnifica Humanitas. Leo XIV does use the term “synodal Church.” ^[1]

Leo XIV’s new “civilization of love” is founded on the rationalistic principles of liberalism that have been progressively imposed on Christendom over the past two centuries while being continually condemned by the Catholic Church.

Magnifica Humanitas is a massive document. Indeed, with more than 40,000 words, five chapters, and 245 paragraphs, it is better described as a short book – a book that is also a manifesto for the destruction of the Catholic Church.

In this initial article, I wish to give an overview of its most destructive elements; further detailed examination of individual sections will follow later.

Leo XIV sets out his agenda

The first two paragraphs of the text reveal Leo XIV’s agenda, with the opening sentence introducing two images that will repeat throughout the texT.

“Humanity,” Leo writes, “is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” ^[2]

The “Tower of Babel” is the present world, moving in directions that give Leo XIV grave cause for concern. The “city in which God and humanity dwell together” is the alternative way of living that Leo proposes to us.

This city, however, is quite different from the “city of God” as conceived in traditional Catholic thought, that is, as the Catholic Church and the Christian social order that is the fruit of her teaching and her sacraments.

On the contrary, Leo tells us that every generation “inherits the task of shaping its own era” and of “guiding history” to “become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible.” ^[3]

In this first paragraph, Leo establishes that his society has a natural rather than a supernatural end. In Leo’s vision, man, not God, is in the driving seat of history, and the world he is called to build is a “fraternity” centered on man. ^[4]

In the second paragraph, Leo XIV assures us that “the powerful and mysterious action of the Holy Spirit” allows us to “diligently contribute to every initiative that builds a more just world, and we can call others to collaborate in promoting the integral development of every human being.”

For Leo, the “integral development of every human being” is the goal, but there are few grounds for thinking he considers such development as reaching beyond the bounds of this life.

At no point in the document does Leo make reference to man’s true destination – eternal supernatural union with God in the beatific vision of heaven – which is the very meaning and purpose of his life. Or does the document in any way allude to the possibility of eternal separation from God in Hell. ^[5]

The word “spiritual” is occasionally found. It is never used with reference to the spiritual life as understood by the Catholic Church but always in a way which embraces a wide variety of meaning and could be used by people of all religions and none. Indeed, Leo states that there are many “great spiritual paths” to be found among the religions of the world. ^[6]

The preaching of the faith replaced by ‘dialogue’

The Church’s contribution to man’s integral development is to be found in “dialogue,” Leo writes, in the document second introductory paragraph:

We wish to engage in dialogue with all men and women of our time, with whom we share in the events, questions and aspirations of humanity. Together with them, we seek to identify new paths for the common good and for promoting a dignified life for all. Indeed, openness to dialogue is an integral part of the Church’s vocation because, constituted in Christ as “a sacrament… of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race,” she recognizes history as the place where the Gospel challenges and directs human experience.

This paragraph introduces two major themes that will run through the document.

First, Leo identifies “dialogue” as an “integral part of the Church’s vocation.” However, the Church was not established by Jesus Christ to dialogue with the world but to judge it. Our Lord entrusted His Church with the “Great Commission” to preach the gospel. He instructed His Apostles:

Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. (Mk 16:15-16)

The Catholic Church teaches with authority truths that have been revealed by God. These are not matters for dialogue, but doctrines that must be obediently received by mankind, and that are necessary for our salvation.

The salvation of souls is the core mission of the Church. It is why she was founded. Yet this is the mission excluded from consideration in Magnifica Humanitas.

Secondly, the Church can only be considered “a sacrament … of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” to the extent that men are united with Christ in His Mystical Body, which is none other than the Catholic Church.

Unity in the Catholic Church strictly requires three conditions: baptism, public profession of the faith proposed by the Magisterium, and obedience to the legitimate authority of the hierarchy.

Yet, as we will see, this need for unity is precisely what Leo XIV does not require in his “Jerusalem,” his “civilization of love,” or his “synodal Church.”

Fatal threads that run through the text

The first two paragraphs of Magnifica Humanitas introduce two key approaches that run throughout the text: (i) the substitution of a natural end for the “church,” (ii) the avoidance of the “church’s” claims to possess a body of true doctrine that must be taught with authority. These errors, found in seed in the introduction, bear abundant bad fruit as the document proceeds.

I speak of the “church” because the society described by Leo in Magnifica Humanitas cannot be the Catholic Church. Indeed, as noted above, Leo does not even use that term. Leo’s “church” is better described by the term that he used on the day of he was chosen to succeed Francis and that he repeats in this text, that is, “synodal Church.”

Leo’s secular liberal Jerusalem

In the next section of this article, I will give some idea of how these ideas develop as the document proceeds. The examples given in the next section are far from being comprehensive. In future articles, specific errors will be examined in more detail.

In the ninth paragraph of Magnifica Humanitas, Leo reintroduces the image first presented to us in the introduction, namely the choice between “constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is here identified with “fraternal coexistence” rather than the Church. ^[7]

The next paragraph further emphazises that this “rebuilding” refers to “the possibility of building together, of transforming diversity into a resource and of making listening and dialogue the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity.” ^[8]

The role of Christians in this process is, “through the practice of synodality,” to become “the space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end.” ^[9]

Leo XIV notes that “in the Book of Revelation, John sees the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2) as a gift for all humanity.” ^[10] But for Leo, the “new Jerusalem” is not the Church Triumphant. On the contrary, in the next sentence, he explains that “this vision of grace is an invitation for us Christians to work together in order to foster a peaceful, just and dignified life in community within today’s ‘cities.’” ^[11]

Leo clearly replaces a vision of our eternal life with God with one of an improved life on this earth.

In the next paragraph, Leo makes clear that building this new Jerusalem “means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected.” ^[12] Conversion, therefore, will not be required. Indeed, in paragraph 13, he makes clear that all “faith communities” have “their own section of the wall.” ^[13]

This new society does have “standards of discernment,” but they are of a purely natural, temporal kind: “the dignity of the human person, the universal destination of goods, the preferential option for the poor, care for our common home and peace”. ^[14]

Leo’s “city” will “translate these standards into practices such as responsible planning, the assessment of human and social impact, the inclusion of the most vulnerable, the promotion of digital literacy and guiding research and industry toward justice and peace.”

This is a technocratic vision of secular human society and one in which Leo wants all mankind to merge. In paragraph 16, Leo addresses his appeal to join this new city to all mankind: “to all the Catholic faithful, to all Christians and to all men and women of goodwill.” ^[15]

The cornerstone of this new society will not be Jesus Christ but rather “the “rejected stones” — the poor, the sick, the migrants and the least among us — will become the cornerstone, and a solid, welcoming common home will emerge on the earth.” ^[16]

The Synodal Church replaces the Catholic Church

For the new society, there will be a new church. The age of the Catholic Church, established by God and exercising divine authority, is over. Leo’s church is one which carries out “her particular vocation of listening, dialogue and service, and of being responsive to everything concerning the lives of contemporary men and women.” ^[17]

This church “stands alongside the world without overpowering it” because its doctrine is not “a handbook of principles and norms to be applied, but a process of shared discernment.” ^[18] It is “committed to reflecting on the concrete reality of historical situations, rather than abstract concepts.” ^[19]

This church has the “mission” of “transforming the structures of society from within and forging paths toward a greater humanity.” ^[20]

Such a church cannot, of course, be the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ, hence Leo XIV gives it a new name: “a synodal Church, a Church that ‘walks together,’” ^[21]

He calls on us to transform ourselves into the new church through “the adoption of a synodal style.” ^[22] He urges Catholics to carry out an “examination of conscience” to “ensure that the principles outlined in this chapter are applied, especially within its own structures.” ^[23] These include “a synodal approach for mission.” ^[24]

What will the Synodal Church look like?

Paragraphs 118-126 are among the most dangerous of the whole text. It is here that the real nature of the “synodal Church” is made clear. In a future article, I will examine them in more detail, but a summary can be given here.

For Leo XIV, religion does not consist in shared faith and worship but rather in the cultivation of internal religious experiences. This is the religious approach of Modernism. I have already explored its relationship with synodality here, and with the teaching of Francis here.

Religion, for Leo XIV, comes from within, from our internal experiences, and finds its expression not just in worship but also in art. Leo finds “an almost prophetic significance” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica and Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. ^[25]

In paragraph 123, Leo praises humanity for being “capable of creating institutions that protect our shared life,” but the institutions named are not Catholic institutions but the Red Cross and the United Nations. ^[26]

The document mentions the word “sin” only three times. Two of these occasions are in reference to “structures of sin” rather than individual sin. ^[27] The third is a statement that sin does not remove human dignity. ^[28] There is no reference to sin with relation to the offense caused to God or to its eternal consequences. “Moral corruption” is mentioned in paragraph 121, but only as something that harms humans and society.

Leo XIV’s religion has in fact lost its “religious” character. It is nothing more than secular humanism. Everyone is welcome in his “civilization of love.” Among the individuals presented as examples for us are Nelson Mandela, Benazir Bhutto, and Martin Luther King Jr. ^[29]

These are secular saints for Leo XIV’s new secular religion.

Leo XIV tries to preempt his critics

Leo XIV was clearly aware that his introduction to the document, discussed in some detail above, would raise alarm bells in readers who still possessed some sense of the authentic Catholic faith.

Therefore, as early as the third paragraph of the document, he tried to preempt criticism by associating himself at the outset with the great pontiff Leo XIII. “Criticize me,” he seems to say, “and you criticize him.” Leo XIV writes:

When some objected that the Church should not waste energy on worldly matters, but instead focus on communicating the message of eternal life, Leo XIII responded with realism and wisdom, saying that the proclamation of the Gospel cannot overlook the concrete lives of people. ^[30]

However, consideration of the teaching of Leo XIII only reveals the stark contrast between the two men. While Leo XIV completely neglects the eternal welfare of mankind, Leo XIII places it at the center of his teaching. His great encyclical Rerum Novarum was indeed focused on social and economic problems, but the Holy Father was careful to place his social doctrine in its proper context.

Leo XIII taught:

The working man, too, has interests in which he should be protected by the State; and first of all, there are the interests of his soul. Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. ^[31]

He continued:

What advantage can it be to a working man to obtain by means of a society material well-being, if he endangers his soul for lack of spiritual food? “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” This, as our Lord teaches, is the mark or character that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen. “After all, these things do the heathen seek … Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.” ^[32]

He went on to place his entire teaching on the economic order in the light of these eternal principles:

Let our associations, then, look first and before all things to God; let religious instruction have therein the foremost place, each one being carefully taught what is his duty to God, what he has to believe, what to hope for, and how he is to work out his salvation; and let all be warned and strengthened with special care against wrong principles and false teaching. Let the working man be urged and led to the worship of God, to the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, to the keeping holy of Sundays and holy days. Let him learn to reverence and love holy Church, the common Mother of us all; and hence to obey the precepts of the Church, and to frequent the sacraments, since they are the means ordained by God for obtaining forgiveness of sin and for leading a holy life. ^[33]

These are the salutary truths that the Church was founded to preach and that Leo XIV fails to transmit.

Conclusions

In his encyclical Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII, like Leo XIV, made use of St. Augustine of Hippo’s language of two cities. Commenting on a quotation from the saint, he wrote:

“Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.” At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardor and assault. ^[34]

The Vicar of Christ continued:

At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it were possible, of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Savior. ^[35]

Pope Leo XIII’s age is our own. We are still living out the battle between the City of God and the City of modern, liberal man.

Magnifica Humanitas of Leo XIV represents the next stage of Satan’s assault on the Catholic Church, aiming for its complete destruction and the ruin of what remains of Christian civilization. In its place, Leo XIV will continue to build the “synodal Church” to keep the true Catholic Church in eclipse.

This is not a conspiracy theory; it is a plan laid out in the pages of Magnifica Humanitas.

It is also a plan that is ultimately doomed to fail.

In Humanum Genus, after exposing out the diabolic scheme in which the enemies of the Church were engaged, Pope Leo XIII directed us to a remedy that will not fail:

So vehement an attack demands an equal defense — namely, that all good men should form the widest possible association of action and of prayer. We beseech them, therefore, with united hearts, to stand together and unmoved against the advancing force of the sects; and in mourning and supplication to stretch out their hands to God, praying that the Christian name may flourish and prosper, that the Church may enjoy its needed liberty, that those who have gone astray may return to a right mind, that error at length may give place to truth, and vice to virtue. ^[36]

And he entrusted our cause to “the Virgin Mary, Mother of God … who from the moment of her conception overcame Satan” to “blessed Michael the prince of the heavenly angels, who drove out the infernal foe,” to “Joseph, the spouse of the most holy Virgin and heavenly patron of the Catholic Church,” and to “the great Apostles, Peter and Paul, the fathers and victorious champions of the Christian faith.”^[37]

With heavenly intercessors like this on our side, we may be confident that the synodal Church will never prevail against the Catholic Church, no matter the earthly powers with which it may align.