J.B. Shurk

In 2025, there is no part of the world that is safe for Christians.  Leftist prosecutors in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States criminalize fundamental tenets of the Christian faith as discriminatory forms of “hate speech.”  Chinese communists replace images of Jesus Christ with portraits of Xi Jinping.  Hindus beat and murder Christians in India.  Islamic nations sentence Christian converts to death.  Nigerian Muslims attack Christian churches during prayer services and torture and murder so many Christian worshipers as to constitute genocide.  The assassin who murdered Christian martyr Charlie Kirk allegedly did so because he believes that Charlie’s Christian teachings were “hateful.”  

It is a dangerous time to be a Christian.  Michael Snyder wrote an illuminating article a couple weeks ago entitled “Most of the Population of the World Lives in a Nation Where Christians Are Being Persecuted.”  In a sober analysis, he takes the reader on a tour of Christian persecution, torture, and mass slaughter around the planet.

Children in China are prohibited from attending Christian church services, and the Chinese Communist Party rewrites Bible verses to support official pronouncements from the State.  Sharing the gospel online is a crime, and Christian pastors are regularly arrested and “disappeared.”  In India, Hindu terrorists set Christian churches and Bibles on fire and beat up and murder Christian parishioners.  Muslims in Indonesia hunt down Christians as if they were animals.  Muslims in Nigeria have massacred or abducted a hundred thousand Christians over the last six years and have destroyed some 20,000 Christian churches and schools.  Islamic governments in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran discriminate against Christians, punish them ruthlessly for their beliefs, and execute anyone brave enough to convert to Christianity.  In North Korea, Christianity is outlawed, and practicing Christians who are discovered are summarily executed or condemned to death in labor-intensive concentration camps.

The corporate news media do not report on the systematic persecution and killing of Christians around the world.  On Friday, President Trump attempted to do journalists’ jobs for them by addressing the ongoing genocide of Christians in Nigeria.  On Truth Social, the president wrote, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.  Thousands of Christians are being killed.  Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. … The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries.  We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”  Nigerian Christians desperately hope that President Trump will find a way to save their brothers and sisters.

Muslims’ slaughter of Christians in Nigeria is so horrific that even left-leaning commentator Bill Maher describes it as a genocide much worse than anything that is happening in Gaza.  “They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country,” Maher told his studio audience a few weeks ago.  “Where are the kids protesting this?”

The “kids” are nowhere to be found.  Their college professors brainwashed them to see “systemic racism” everywhere it is not but to view Christians as “fascists,” “nationalists,” and even “Nazis.”  Leftist billionaires and taxpayer-funded NGOs organize riots to “protest” Israel, “climate change,” duly elected conservative politicians, and “white supremacy.”  Those same billionaires and NGOs are completely silent as Christians are massacred because, for many leftists, Christians are the “enemy.”

Western universities and institutions have discriminated against Christians for so many years that leftist lawmakers and leftist voters now openly endorse anti-Christian bigotry

A new California law mandating that foster parents “affirm a child’s self-identified sexual orientation or gender identity” effectively bans Christian couples from helping children in need.  The state of California argues that Christians who object to the “trans” ideology are a “danger” to kids.  In other words, only Californians who embrace chemical castration, bodily mutilation, the enabling of mental illness, hormone poisoning, and made-up pronouns are considered sufficiently stable to look after children.  As Kevin Snider of the Pacific Justice Institute warns, “there is now a very small step for the state to deem any parent as unfit to raise [his] own children if the family holds a view that contradicts the state’s ideology on gender and sexual orientation.  This could result in a visit by Child Protective Services with tragic consequences for the home.”  California is coming for Christians’ children.

In Finland, government prosecutors continue to harass Christians for quoting the Bible.  In 2019, Päivi Räsänen — a medical doctor, longtime member of Parliament, Finland’s former Interior minister, and the wife of a pastor — used a Bible verse to criticize Finland’s state church for sponsoring an LGBT “pride” parade.  After the prominent Finnish Christian publicly stated that males and females are biologically different, police investigators interrogated her for some thirteen hours, forced her to justify her Christian worldview, and demanded that she publicly apologize and recant her Christian beliefs.  Because she would not do so and instead defended the authority of God’s Word, she was criminally charged for illegal “hate speech.”  Prosecutors have repeatedly asked Finnish courts to “wipe the internet” of Räsänen’s media appearances and writings, in which she has used her medical education and Christian faith to distinguish men from women and to promote the Bible’s moral teachings.

Although two lower courts have acquitted her, prosecutors have appealed and now argue before Finland’s Supreme Court that quoting the Bible should be considered a criminal offense under the country’s war crimes laws.  One of Räsänen’s attorneys, Lorcán Price, argues that the outcome of the case will reverberate across Europe because it addresses directly whether a Christian can publicly express the tenets of Christianity.  “Can you speak the truth as you see it freely, even if it might offend somebody, or will you be prosecuted for hate speech?”

However Finland’s Supreme Court decides, governments across Europe continue to persecute Christians and criminalize Christianity.  In addressing the implications of Räsänen’s ordeal in Finland, The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann noted recently that citizens in the United Kingdom are regularly arrested for praying silently near abortion facilities, citizens of the Netherlands are arrested for publicly expressing a pro-life worldview, and the mayor of Brussels mobilized riot police last year to shut down a conference whose scheduled speakers recognize the scientific reality of two distinct biological sexes.  Free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association are under sustained attack in Europe.  Censorship and discrimination against Christians are pervasive.

If there is a silver lining to this global campaign of persecution against Christians, it is this: Lukewarm Christians and even non-Christians have begun to recognize that they cannot hide and hope for the best during the worldwide war against Christians.  The battle between good and evil does not spare the cowardly, the weak-willed, or the naïve.  Those who champion the toleration of sin or advocate for the acceptance of incompatible beliefs lay down a red carpet of moral relativism that invites evil to triumph.

One Christian pastor in Ohio, Michael Clary, wrote an essay in which he describes how Charlie Kirk’s assassination roused him from hypnotic conditioning to be “inoffensive” and made him realize that only bold defenses of the Christian faith can confront and defeat evil.  Weak Christians not only invite sin into the world, but also invite greater persecution against Christians.  What Charlie Kirk proved through his short time on Earth is that Christi,an courage and strength must be renewed.  Or, as writer Michael Austin eloquently observes, “Christian leaders must pave the way in confronting the works of darkness with the gospel of light, without compromise or cowardice.”

Christ’s followers are suffering around the world.  They are hunted, beaten, raped, burned, hanged, and slaughtered.  The governments of formerly Christian countries insist on making Christ’s teachings a crime.  Chinese, European, and American officials wish to censor the Bible.  Christians must find faith and courage to face these evils now.  Because much worse is sure to come.

J. B. Shurk, American Thinker

Patriots, the storm has broken.  For nine years, the Deep State cabal led by Barack Obama has slithered in the shadows, peddling their Russia hoax like a venomous serpent to poison the well of American democracy.  But now, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has hurled the thunderbolt of truth, declassifying ironclad documents that lay bare the full scope of their betrayal.

This isn’t some dusty footnote in history.  It’s a full frontal assault on the Republic, a treasonous conspiracy engineered to rip the presidency from Donald J. Trump’s grip and hand it back to the Clinton machine.  The evidence screams: Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Rice didn’t just meddle; they waged war on the voters who roared for Trump in 2016.

Flash back to that fateful December 9, 2016, in the bowels of the Obama White House.  Fresh off Trump’s landslide — 306 electoral votes to Hillary’s whimpering 232 — the outgoing regime couldn’t stomach the people’s verdict.  So they convened a war council: CIA spook John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, FBI boss James Comey, national security adviser Susan Rice, and a parade of other swamp creatures.  Obama himself issued the kill order: Forge a new Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that flips the script.  Pre-election intel?  Crystal-clear — Russia lacked the chops or intent to hack votes or tilt the scales for Trump.  But post-election?  They twisted it into a fairy tale of Putin puppeteering the election to crown his American asset.  The ICA, dropped like a dirty bomb on January 6, 2017, just days before Trump’s inauguration, declared with “high confidence” that Moscow had meddled to boost Trump.  Lies, all of it — manufactured from the bogus Steele dossier, a Clinton-funded fever dream peddled by foreign hacks.

Gabbard’s declassification, starting with the July 18 bombshell and escalating through the HPSCI oversight report on July 23, rips the veil off this farce. These aren’t cherry-picked scraps – they’re over 100 pages of emails, memos, and whistleblower testimony proving the fix was in. Pre-ICA assessments from August and September 2016 flat-out stated foreign adversaries couldn’t “covertly overturn the vote outcome.” Clapper’s own talking points in December admitted no cyberattacks altered the election infrastructure. But Obama demanded a rewrite, and his henchmen delivered. They buried dissenting voices from the FBI and NSA, who pegged their confidence in Russian leaks at “low.” They laundered junk from the Steele dossier – unverified trash that even the ICA’s footnotes dismissed as “credible but uncorroborated” – to paint Trump as Putin’s pawn. This wasn’t intelligence; it was intel porn for the media lapdogs waiting to lap it up.

The fallout? A blitzkrieg on Trump’s America First agenda.  That poisoned ICA ignited Crossfire Hurricane, the Mueller witch hunt, two sham impeachments, endless leaks, FBI raids on Mar-a-Lago, and a relentless barrage of smears that turned patriots into “insurrectionists.”  It subverted every executive order, paralyzed appointments, and cost billions in taxpayer dollars chasing ghosts.  Obama and his crew didn’t just undermine a president; they declared war on 63 million voters, shredding the sacred transfer of power to cling to their globalist throne.

The Constitution’s Article III doesn’t mince words: levying war against the United States or aiding its enemies.  This cabal aided the enemy of democracy itself — its own unquenchable thirst for control.

Gabbard didn’t stop at exposure; she charged into the fray with criminal referrals straight to the DOJ, naming Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rice, and their enablers like Andrew McCabe and Loretta Lynch.  “No matter how powerful, every person involved must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she thundered on July 18.  By July 21, A.G. Pam Bondi had confirmed receipt, and whispers from FBI sources confirm probes into Brennan and Comey for perjury before Congress.  A dedicated strike force is mobilizing, subpoena power locked and loaded.  Justice isn’t whispering anymore.

The swamp’s predictable counterpunch?  Whining from Democrats like Jim Himes, who branded it “baseless” rehashing, and fact-check mills like FactCheck.org and the AP sputtering that the docs “don’t disprove Russian interference.”  Bull.  Russia’s meddling was real but aimed at chaos, not crowning Trump.  Early assessments proved it.  The ICA’s fraud was in the targeted twist to delegitimize the vote, suppressing exculpatory intel to fuel the coup.

Obama himself dodged with a mealy-mouthed statement on July 22, claiming that it “doesn’t undercut” the hoax.  Translation: We’re busted, but change the subject.  Even Brennan, in a New Yorker snivel, admitted that Obama hushed pre-election intel to “ensure a fair vote” — code for letting the hoax ripen post-loss.

On X, the firestorm rages.  Verified voices like Newsmax blast Gabbard’s interview: “It’s not difficult to determine Obama engaged in treasonous conspiracy.”  Rasmussen polls echo the fury — voters smell blood.  Trump himself torched Obama on Truth Social: “He’s guilty… This was treason, every word you can think of.”  From @NEWSMAX to @TaraBull, the feed erupts with calls for handcuffs.  “The dam is breaking,” thundered @JimFergusonUK.  Even whistleblowers risk all, as Gabbard revealed on July 25, exposing how Clapper’s team doctored drafts to bury the truth.

This is our Rubicon, warriors.  The Obama coup wasn’t a glitch; it was the Deep State’s blueprint for every subversion since: 2020’s steal, January 6’s frame-up, and the endless lawfare against Trump.  But Gabbard’s blitz has cracked the fortress.  Prosecutions will cascade like an avalanche, starting with Comey and Brennan for their perjury parade.  Obama?  Immunity be damned — history will judge him the architect of America’s darkest hour.  Trump, unbreakable, stands taller: “It’s time to go after people.”

The Republic fights back.  Demand the trials.  Flood the streets with this truth.  The cabal’s empire crumbles under the weight of its own forgery.  Justice isn’t coming — it’s here.  Lock them up, and let freedom thunder eternal.

Amil Imani, American Thinker

The only hope for Communism? That ignorance of any alternative becomes so widespread, that nobody on earth will know there’s anything better.

In places like New York City, that ignorance may already be in place. The few remaining smart people in the doomed Big Apple will flee.

But so long as freedom still exists in part of America, Communism will have a problem.

Maybe Mamdani will build a wall to keep people inside his prison pen. Maybe he will succeed where Stalin, Mao and so many others ultimately failed.

But I doubt it.

Keep the fight against totalitarianism and evil alive. Never let the fire die out.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

…the fake news isn’t reporting on Operation Arctic Frost. It’s not that they’re trying to cover it up. . . but that they actually think it was totally normal and legitimate.” — Hans Mahncke.

Surely you’ve noticed in recent years just how gruesome the Halloween townscape has become with our competitive yard displays of giant skeletons, shrieking ghouls, corpses seeming to emerge from the crabgrass, and miscellaneous body parts strewn about the property. The symbolism seems pretty overt: America yearns to become a death cult.

The world has seen this before and it generally doesn’t end well. Something in their equivalent of the zeitgeist drove the Aztecs to sharply ramp-up the scale of their human sacrifices in the years just before Hernán Cortés came to their capital city, Tenochtitlán. Bernal Diaz, a foot-soldier in Cortés’s legion, later wrote:

“I remember that they had in a plaza, where there were some shrines, so many places of dead skulls, which could be counted, according to the concert as they were set, that when they appeared they would be more than one hundred thousand; and I say again about one hundred thousand. And in another part of the square were as many rows of bones without meat, bones of the dead, that could not be counted; and they had in many beams many heads hanging from one part to another. And keeping those bones and skulls were three priests, who, as we understood, were in charge of them. . . . “

Cortés had arrived in Mexico in April of 1519 with an expeditionary force of about 500 soldiers and by August of 1521, it was all over. He defeated the empire of a million Aztecs and commenced the systematic demolition of their monuments, including the horrifying great rack-of-skulls (tzompantli) where they displayed their thousands of trophies.

Something — more precisely, some cabal of somebodies — is attempting to systematically demolish the social scaffold of our country now. It can’t just be the Soros network of NGOs. The best we can do to identify the central animating agent is the Deep State or Blob, a malignancy within our own organs of national management. It’s shaping up as a kind of American Armageddon, a battle between the forces of darkness and light, death and life. The battle has been going on for at least ten years, since Mr. Trump invaded the body politic — rather like when Cortés entered Mexico and set off a chain of events that ended the cruel and despotic culture embedded there. We’re acting out something along those lines now.

The death cult is vividly on display in our time and place. Minneapolis is poised to elect the skeletal-looking Somali Omar Fateh as its next mayor. The once-emblematic city of Garrison’s Keillor’s “above average,” relentlessly “nice” prairie folk was wrecked in 2020 in tribute to BLM’s patron saint, George Floyd, and has never recovered, written off as a national sacrifice zone for the sake of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Omar Fateh styles himself as a “Democratic Socialist.” This is the next new thing.

Likewise, New York City is about to elevate the Ugandan Marxist Jihadi (and self-styled Democratic Socialist) Zohran Mamdani into the top job at city hall. As usual with this brand of insurrectionists — that is, persons bent on destroying our society — the label is yet another language game meant to scramble your brain.

You have probably not failed to notice the incessant recital of the phrase “our democracy” by Democratic Party field marshals starting with “Joe Biden” in the final months of his, uh, late performance. “Our democracy” has nothing to do, really, with citizen participation in governance. The phrase is a cover for their desperate power-seeking — for instance, the “nomination” of Kamala Harris with zero democratic voting procedure — in the service of preserving a vast empire of rackets that siphon taxpayer dollars into multitudinous NGOs and countless government programs that provide jobs and free stuff to an ever-growing class of parasitic dependents in the party’s thrall.

So, the next ploy upcoming will be the sequel to the “No Kings” demos of recent months: “The Fall of the Trump Fascist Regime” mass protest event planned for Washington, DC, on November 5, following election day. The stated idea is to surround the White House with millions of shrieking “Resistance” warriors to exorcise President Trump. The unstated idea is to provoke the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and thus, supposedly, demonstrate that he is a tyrant to their satisfaction.

More likely, if things get out of hand and violence erupts, the Resistance warriors and their Antifa shock troops — sure to be on-hand — will only prove that they are the actual insurrectionists. In which case, this time, expect arrests and indictments of the folks behind the extravaganza, with the prospect of pretty harsh penalties. (Are you listening, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, and friends?)

Meanwhile, the emerging scandal around the “Arctic Frost” scheme executed under “Joe Biden’s” DOJ to harass and persecute his admin’s political adversaries, takes shape as “worse than Watergate,” in the words of Senate Judiciary Committee chair Charles Grassley. Fresh evidence about this nefarious activity only reinforces the developing seditious conspiracy case that will be prosecuted out of the Southern District of Florida encompassing the entirety of treasonous acts from RussiaGate forward amounting to a long-running coup that never did manage to succeed, no matter how they keep at it.

You know the names of most of the major players involved, and ever more members of the supporting cast, lodged in the Deep State, are being revealed daily. Think of them when you see the ghouls and skeletons on display in America’s yards this Halloween eve.

James Howard Kunstler

Let’s say you paid top dollar to go to a fancy, five-star restaurant, and the waiter served you warmed-over McDonald’s. Would you ever go back?

Maybe, if you didn’t know any better.

I started thinking about that after I recently changed my residency from Virginia to California (for reasons I won’t go into) and noticed that my state income taxes had gone up by more than 33%.

Over the course of the year, I will pay California $2,115 more than I’d been paying in Virginia, which is hardly a low-tax state (Virginia has the 14th highest income tax burden in the country). Not only are income taxes higher, California’s sales tax is 66% higher, and the gasoline tax is almost double Virginia’s. Those are just the ones I know about.

So, I decided to look into what exactly I’m getting for the five-star cost of California’s government for basic services governments are expected to provide.

It’s infuriating. California is ripping off its taxpayers big time. Consider:

Crime: Despite having roughly the same number of police officers per capita, California has a “crime index” that is 47% higher than Virginia’s, and California has the sixth-highest rate of violent crime of all 50 states. Virginia has the 14th lowest.

Education: If you’re a teacher, California is a great place to live. They are the highest paid in the nation and have the fourth-lowest student-to-teacher ratio. But if you’re a parent? Your children are getting screwed. Eighth-grade reading, math, science, and writing scores are significantly below the national average, while Virginia’s are significantly higher. Virginia ranks 7 in average SAT scores, and California comes in 23rd.

Infrastructure: Despite having the nation’s highest gasoline taxes, California ranks in the bottom three when it comes to road conditions, with more than 25% of its roads in serious need of repair. In Virginia, just 9% of its roads are in poor shape.

Opportunity: How much economic opportunity are California’s sky-high taxes buying? None. The state ranks dead last in U.S. News and World Report’s “opportunity” ranking. And it ranks 47th in the Rich States, Poor States ranking of economic outlook.

It has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%, the most people on welfare, and the most homeless people.

It has the most progressive income tax yet is the fifth-worst state when it comes to income inequality. (Virginia comes in 29th on tax progressivity and 22nd on income inequality.)

It is the least affordable state for housing. Virginia is 35th.

Fiscal responsibility. Incredibly, despite the fact that California is one of the highest-tax states in the nation, it ranks No. 42 in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking for fiscal stability.

And it’s getting worse as out-of-control costs and the flight of hundreds of thousands out of the state have left yawning budget gaps. A new Reason Foundation study finds that California is almost half a trillion dollars in debt, which is more than twice New York’s. (Virginia is $35 billion in debt.)

And then there is the criminal amount of waste and fraud.

Gov. Gavin Newsom spent $37 billion to fight homelessness only to see the number of homeless climb from 151,000 in 2019 to about 187,000 today—prompting a federal criminal investigation.

The state’s Medicaid spending nearly doubled in six years, and almost one-half of that was due to free health care given to illegal immigrants.

The state lost $20 billion in COVID-19-related federal unemployment money—the most of any state.

In 2014, California voters overwhelmingly approved a $7.5 billion water bond proposal, nearly $3 billion of which was set aside to build new reservoirs. More than a decade later, not a single new reservoir has been built.

In 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a $1 billion bill that was supposed to improve land management to “prevent catastrophic wildfires and protect Californians.” In 2019, Newsom’s wildfire “strike force” said, “Over the next five years, the state will commit over $1 billion for critical fuel-reduction projects to support prescribed fire crews, forest thinning, and other forest health projects.”

Apparently, that money was completely wasted, as anyone looking at the burned-out Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods can attest.

And just this year, the state decided to dump $282 million it doesn’t have for a special election to gerrymander its congressional districts—a completely pointless exercise that will disenfranchise California voters and have no impact on the control of Congress. And then it spent another $2 million to correct a typo in its original voter guide.

So, the question I have for every Californian is: “What is wrong with you? Why do you put up with this? Why are you content to let California be a one-party state?”

Most of your leaders should be in jail, not winning reelection.

It’s true that over the past four years, more than a million more people moved out of the state than moved in. But what about those who can’t or don’t want to leave?

Why do you keep electing the same class of criminals to steal your money?

I think part of the problem is that Californians don’t know how badly they’re getting screwed, because, while everyone knows which restaurants are worth the price, it’s not easy for average citizens to make direct comparisons between life in one state and another.

I can leave the state just as easily as I came. But most can’t pick up and move. Nor should they have to. California is a beautiful state with enormous potential. Its citizens just need to refuse to pay Wolfgang Puck prices for Hamburglar-quality service.

John Merline, Issues and Insights

When Democrats today say they want to “save democracy,” conservatives often counter that the United States is not a democracy but a republic. Both sides are right in their own way—but they’re talking about two very different visions of government.

When Democrats use the phrase “save democracy,” they mean it quite literally: rule by the majority. In that system, whoever gets the most votes wins, and the will of the majority is considered the highest form of legitimacy. This especially applies to the presidency, where Democrats argue that whoever wins the most votes nationwide should occupy the Oval Office. To them, anything else—like the Electoral College—is unfair, outdated, or anti-democratic.

But the Founding Fathers rejected that very idea. They had seen what pure democracy produced in other nations, including in England’s parliamentary system, where a temporary majority could seize control and rule without restraint. They saw that the passions of the moment could sweep away the rights of the few, and that policy would swing wildly with every shift in public mood.

The Founders admired some parts of the British system—its respect for law, its experience with limited monarchy—but they also saw its instability. In Parliament, the majority is the government, and once it has power, there are few checks to stop it. The rights of citizens exist only as long as the majority allows them. To the Founders, that was too fragile a foundation for liberty.

They built something different: a republic. A system where the people still govern, but through layers of representation, separation of powers, and constitutional limits. It was designed to slow things down, to force deliberation, and to prevent fleeting majorities from remaking the nation in a moment of passion.

The Electoral College, the Senate, and the division of powers between states and the federal government all serve this purpose. They make sure that every region and every class of citizens has a voice, not just the biggest population centers. Without those safeguards, states like California and New York would decide every election, and the smaller states might as well not exist.

So when Democrats say they want to save “democracy,” they mean majority rule. When conservatives insist on preserving the “republic,” they mean constitutional balance—the system that protects everyone, not just the loudest or largest group at any given time.

The Founders didn’t reject democracy because they disliked freedom. They rejected it because they understood human nature: that passion and power need restraint, and that liberty endures only when even the minority has rights that the majority cannot touch.

CIB-173RDABN

The political earthquake in Europe just went nuclear. Geert Wilders, the firebrand Dutch nationalist, has shattered the illusion of EU unity, turning the Netherlands into the latest flashpoint of revolt against Brussels. His rise isn’t just a national upset — it’s a full-blown rebellion against the bureaucrats who dictate everything from migration to green mandates.

For Brussels, this is the nightmare scenario: a domino moment that could spread across Europe. From Paris to Warsaw, populist leaders are watching Wilders’ surge as a signal that citizens are done being ruled by faceless Eurocrats. The Dutch revolt may just mark the beginning of Europe’s next political revolution.

The pattern is clear. Wherever citizens feel ignored by elites, nationalism rises. Italy, France, Hungary, and Poland have all seen populist movements gain traction by opposing Brussels-mandated policies. These are not ideological shifts alone — they are reactive. Citizens want policies that reflect national priorities, not one-size-fits-all mandates imposed from afar.

The United Kingdom adds another dimension. Reports of illegal migrants entering the country and later committing violent acts (some verified, some unconfirmed) have fueled public frustration. The government’s perceived response — attempting to silence discussion rather than address the problem — has amplified anger. Citizens feel unprotected, and when people feel threatened and ignored, nationalist leaders gain credibility as defenders of local communities. Brexit was the first major example of this reaction in action.

Across Europe, the domino effect is clear: policy disconnect, economic or security pressures, elite defensiveness, and political reaction. The more governments dismiss citizen concerns or insist on central control, the faster nationalist backlash spreads.

Observation: Nationalism is not just ideology; it is a response to being ignored. Citizens want local priorities respected, borders secure, and a government that listens. If Brussels and national governments fail to heed this, the next wave of political upheaval in Europe may be closer than anyone expects.

Anonymous

What is the source of the wealth of a nation? That’s actually the question addressed by Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations.” Smith doesn’t put it in these exact terms, but his answer lies in some combination of hard work of the people plus figuring out how to work more efficiently through specialization and exchange.

And then there’s the other theory that the wealth just appears somehow, by luck or magic (or maybe by oppression of marginalized peoples). Which theory you buy into has everything to do with what you might think are appropriate public policies.

At Hot Air on October 16, David Strom embeds a clip of Bernie Sanders and AOC appearing together the previous day on CNN with host Kaitlin Collins. In the clip, Sanders launches into a rant, where he starts by declaring that in the U.S. we have a “housing crisis” and a “healthcare crisis” and an “education crisis.” And then he gets to this key quote:

We’re living in the richest country in the history of the world. Right. Alright, you tell me why we’re the only nation not to guarantee healthcare to all people. The only nation, not to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Why We have a $7 25 cents an hour minimum wage.

Bernie clearly thinks this is shameful. That conclusion follows from a worldview where the country’s wealth came not from hard work and specialization and exchange, but rather from luck or magic or something like that. Apparently, Bernie has never stopped to consider that maybe we are the richest country in the world precisely because we don’t have the government dragging down the productive economy by raising taxes to provide, as an example, free healthcare to “all people,” which is a term that includes not just the poor but also the well off and the productive and even the rich. Instead, we provide the free healthcare only to the poor (with a very broad definition of that), and expect the majority of the citizens who are capable of doing it to provide for themselves. That’s how we free up resources to enable the people to apply them to productive uses and make the country wealthier.

If you look around, you can find endless examples of politicians — mostly of the Democratic persuasion — proceeding on the same assumption that wealth has come from luck or magic and now the only thing left to do is to issue government orders to achieve fairness and justice. For a second example today, I’ll take New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill and her views on electricity generation.

Here’s some background on the Sherrill situation. Back in June the electric utilities in New Jersey increased rates by what they say is an “average” of 17-20%. Here is a piece from the Regional Plan Association reporting on that event. An average of 17-20% is high to begin with, but many New Jersey residents have reported that their own increases range up to a doubling of rates, or close to it. Unsurprisingly, many are upset. Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has been making some headway blaming the increase on the current Democratic Governor, Phil Murphy.

And in fact Ciattarelli is completely right. Murphy has gone all in on the intermittent renewable energy fantasy, apparently never bothering to read the 50 or more posts at this website explaining in excruciating detail why increasing intermittent wind and solar generation would inevitably multiply the cost of electricity to consumers. Here is a piece from Philly Voice on October 19 explaining the basics of the Murphy energy and electricity policy as his term winds down. Excerpt:

Murphy’s energy goals were always ambitious. In successive pronouncements, the governor called for New Jersey to draw 100% of its energy from clean sources, first by 2050 and then by 2035.

So New Jersey built lots of solar farms, and shuttered plants that used fossil fuels. Meanwhile, ambitious plans for offshore wind did not materialize (they would only have made things worse):

Murphy presided over a broad expansion of solar power in New Jersey, his greater plans to produce thousands of megawatts in offshore wind generation ultimately failed to create any new power, even as some existing power plants were shuttered, reducing the electricity New Jersey sends to its multi-state grid. . . .

Not mentioned in the Philly Voice piece, but covered in the RPA write-up, is that as it closed power plants New Jersey has had to buy more power in auctions from its regional grid, PJM. Of course, it now needs power when the intermittents aren’t working, which means it must buy just when everyone else wants to buy, and thus pay premium prices at the auctions.

So what is Sherrill’s answer? Declare a “State of Emergency” and order a freeze of utility rates! Here is Sherrill’s webpage laying out her “plan,” if you want to call it that. Some key quotes:

Utility costs are out of control in New Jersey. Families are spending almost their entire budget just to pay the electric bill this summer. It’s time for action, because people just can’t wait any longer. So on Day One as New Jersey’s next governor, I’m going to declare a State of Emergency on Utility Costs and freeze your utility rates. . . .

Then there’s chasing down the hoarders and wreckers or other hobgoblins who are making the electricity expensive:

I’ll immediately open up [the utilities’] books to see where rising costs to families are going, . . . I will instruct my Attorney General to take Trump and New Jersey’s grid operator, PJM, to court — in coordination with governors in our region — to force them to end their mismanagement. . . .

And don’t forget building more of those fantasy solar panels and battery farms that, after all, provide the “cheapest” electricity:

This means immediately breaking ground on new solar and battery storage projects. . . .

To her partial credit, Sherrill does concede a need to keep some natural gas and nuclear in the mix, at least for now. But the overall thrust of her approach is that producing electricity is an easy job to be done by the little people. If rates are going up it can’t because of counterproductive government policy, and therefore it must be because bad people are ripping the consumers off behind their backs.

Good luck to New Jerseyans if you elect this half-wit. If you do, you will be in for a fate not so different from that of New York, or Germany.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

Pop psychology (mostly in the vast wasteland of daytime TV) loves to tout psychotherapy as “dealing with the past.” At least part of that comes from the feel-good prattle that pervades shows like Oprah and the like. But when the TV’s off and the chips are down (in a therapist’s office, for example), what does “dealing with the past” actually mean? If it just means talking about the past, then, yes, I sometimes do that with my clients. They tell me about their parents, their siblings, and how things were for them while growing up. We talk about the impact this had on them, up through and including the present. In solution-focused or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, this takes a session or two at most.

Those who feel that “working through the past” is important usually assume that years and years of this is necessary – complete with the stereotypically bearded Freudian, dozing in an overstuffed chair while cradling his empty notepad. But if somebody asks why and how this is the case, no answer is given. It just … is. And the cartoon psychoanalyst continues to doze. There are tens of thousands of books and interviews premised on the opinion of “experts” peddling countless years of therapy spent analyzing the past – but nobody has ever explained why.

I don’t approach mental health advice – or life – that way, and my clients appreciate it. From time to time I’ll see a client whose spouse feels he or she should be “working through the past.” When they bring it up, I say, “OK, let’s talk about your past.” We do so, and it’s usually quite productive — for about 20 minutes. And then, wouldn’t you know it, we’re back to the issue of right now and what brought them to see me in the first place.

It isn’t the past alone that shapes us. It’s our ideas and attitudes that shape us. Two people could have the same childhood, and come out of that childhood with different ideas. Johnny could grow up with dysfunctional parents and siblings. Yet Johnny grows up thinking, “My family members were strange. I don’t like the way they were. Not everyone is like them. I don’t have to be like them.” Suzie could have grown up in the same family, but might develop the attitude, “People are not to be trusted. People are weird. I guess I am too. I’ll never really be close to anyone.” Of course, there are always variables, but the most important one is attitude. That’s the difference between Johnny and Suzie.

In the above example, Suzie needs therapy more than Johnny. She needs to look at how she allowed her childhood to shape an attitude that is now causing problems for her as an adult. It doesn’t matter if her feelings are an accurate reflection of how her family was. If she looks at the issue objectively, isn’t it possible for her to expect different behavior from herself and others? Can’t she discriminate among those with whom she chooses to associate? Suzie’s therapy should focus on these questions in the here-and-now, and not so much on her past. The past is done. It’s over. Talk about it all you want; it’s not going to change. It’s time to get on with life and be happy as an adult.

The past does not determine our present. The past shapes our attitudes and beliefs, but as thinking human beings we have the power to change faulty attitudes and beliefs. If you deal with the past at all, you learn to let it go and to move on.

Michael J. Hurd

This isn’t something you hear often, but Andrew Cuomo is right. Yesterday, Townhall reported that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are using the Democratic Party to infiltrate American elections and usher in the socialist takeover of the United States.

Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, is the trial balloon.

Radical Leftists have also been taking over the Democratic Party for years; they’re likely the reason the Democrats haven’t voted to reopen the government. As Scott Jennings noted, the Democratic leadership is afraid of this increasingly violent, radical base.

“The truth is, there’s a quiet civil war going on in the Democratic Party right now,” Cuomo said. “You have an extreme Left, radical Left. Bernie Sanders, AOC. Mamdani is just the banner carrier for that movement. Versus the mainstream moderate Democrats.”

Cuomo continued, “They now call me moderate. They used to call me liberal. Now I’m a moderate because the whole party shifted. And that’s what this election is all about. It is that civil war. I believe that far Left will destroy the Democratic Party. I believe it will destroy the Democratic Party nationwide if that far Left becomes dominant.”

On the Straight Shooter podcast, Cuomo reiterated that Mamdani would be the death of the Democratic Party.

“It would be the death. It would be the death of the Democratic Party. The Republicans are licking their lips, hoping this kid Mamdani, wins, because they can pick him up and carry him around the country and say, ‘Here’s the Democratic Party! 34-year-old, never had a job. Wants to decriminalize prostitution. Doesn’t like the police. Defund the police, abolish jails. Literally a socialist! Anti-business, anti-corporate, government should control the means of production.’

“That’s Marxism,” Cuomo added. “So, this socialist wing wins? The Democratic Party dies, in my opinion.

Amy Curtis, Townhall