I am picking up a subject about which I have already written in an article entitled “Wokism: The New Pagan Morality.”^[1] We now live in an increasingly post-Christian society. Interestingly, 56% of American voters deemed the term “woke” to be positive, associated with being informed and educated, while just 39% deemed it negative, likening it to censorship and being overly politically correct.^[2] In his book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Left Conquered Everything,^[3] Christopher Rufo traces the origins of CRT/Wokism, showing how America has been quietly taken over by the ideological heirs of 1960s radical neo-Marxists.^[4] In his ground-breaking research of contemporary Western culture, he discovered a “hideous face of revolution” that is “a rot spreading through American life. The country’s foundations are starting to shake loose”. If this is true, we all need to know about it. 

We now live in an increasingly post-Christian society, easily seduced by false notions of reality. One recent study found that the median number of people in a Christian congregation in America in 2023 is 60. That’s less than half of what it was 20 years ago, when the number was 137. This steep decline has been called the “Great De-churching” of America.^[5]Any respect for or worship of the Creator/Redeemer God is virtually absent. ^[6] People cannot live without morals, since God created an ethical universe. Those who do not want to respect God’s morals are busy normalizing the LGBTQ philosophy, eliminating the nuclear family and living according to the moral norms of neo-Marxist Wokism. Marxism is thoroughly anti-Christian, denying the being of God and seeing matter as ultimate. It worships the creature (matter) rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25). Marx had a close friendship with the radical New Testament scholar, Bruno Bauer, who claimed that the Christian gospels were forgeries. Marx himself believed that it was necessary to “recognize as the highest divinity the human self-consciousness itself,”^[7] thereby dismissing God. Today’s Critical Race Theory is a modern form of atheism that derives from Marxism, as we shall show. CRT believes in the Postmodern “truth,” which does not come from God but is rather an expression of human power. Many, even Christians,^[8] are abandoning their personal faith in the God of Scripture and seeking a new source of morality. Wokism’s false morality plays on the sensitive conscience of young Americans.

White supremacy argues, in Marxist fashion, that society is always divided into oppressors (owners) and the oppressed (workers). In today’s context, whites are the oppressors and minorities are the oppressed (particularly Blacks, women, illegal aliens, and LGBTQ). Biblical morality is seen as oppressive because of its standards of sexual behavior. 

As noted in my previous article, Stanley Ridgley has done an excellent job researching the semi-religious movement of Wokism in his book, Brutal Minds (2023).^[9]His subtitle describes what he has seen: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities. He saw the decided intention of university administrators not only to undermine a student’s ability to engage in classical academic thinking but to give them a serious case of “religious” guilt. I have often wondered why the history of the West and of America in particular are not taught in American universities. Jesse Jackson’s 1987 rallying cry at Stanford University springs to mind: “Hey ho, what d’ya know, Western civ has got to go.” We see now that, indeed, it got up and went!

Wokism is a progressive political program that has infiltrated our American culture in its government administrations, its companies and its educational facilities, where “diversity officers” of DEI (“diversity, equity and inclusion”) will “cancel” anyone who does not follow the new rules. This “hideous system,” to use Rufo’s term, is dangerous because it proposes itself as good, seeking social justice and opposing racism. 

Authors who seek to understand present-day culture find its roots in the Sixties Cultural Revolution. Rufo points out that in the Sixties, some radical intellectuals turned away from the violent actions of racial groups like the Black Panthers and attempted to change the culture ideologically. They abandoned racist violence in the streets in favor of “a long march through the institutions,” that would make cultural revolution an attractive philosophical novelty, to be developed in the universities and bureaucracies. This was the original work of the Frankfurt School of German Jewish Marxists, who, seeking to escape Hitler’s Germany, moved to Columbia University, where they pursued their study of contemporary neo-Marxism. One of them, Herbert Marcuse, moved to the West Coast, and exercised great influence on the radical students of the Sixties. Marcuse and Marxist radical Rudi Dutschke (who invented that phrase— “the long march through the institutions”) worked together as early as 1966. Marcuse wrote to Dutschke in 1971 agreeing with this strategy: “Let me tell you this: that I regard your notion of the ‘long march through the institutions’ as the only effective way.”^[10]

The modern Left is currently fulfilling Marcuse’s prophesy that if Western society could be liberated from capitalist repression, the “oppressive” moral and religious foundations of the West would collapse and the populace would discover true freedom. Rather than proposing a dictatorship of the proletariat (in the old Marxist style), he proposed “a dictatorship of the intellectuals”. This neo-Marxism is the origin of Critical Race Theory.

Herbert Marcuse is also the source of contemporary “cancel culture,” the denial of free speech. Before that term was invented, he defended the notion of “repressive tolerance,” that is, the notion that the free expression of ideas ought to be repressed. Only tolerance for progressive (Marxist) ideas should be allowed—which is classic one-sided expression of Marxism. Liberalism, which respects free speech, has lost its way. It was challenged in the Sixties by “Boomer radicals…. By the eighties it was meaningless, by the ‘noughts’ (2000s) no one believed it, and by twenty-twenties, it’s a marginal belief held by a few college professors at odds with society.”^[11]The Marxist Marcuse decided that the new proletariat should use race rather than class to overturn society”. Thus racism as a revolutionary ideology was born and has moved from the margins to the center. As Rufo shows, they have sought to change the language, the law and the historical discourse. They have succeeded in controlling the institutions and redefining public orthodoxy.

Almost by accident, I came across a little known fact that is crucial for understanding the attacks on white supremacy, white privilege and white anger.^[12]It shows that CRT is a Marxist plot, and the accusation of racism is a classic Marxist idea. Read on!

The origin of white racism was described, not by Rufo, but by an African-American first-hand eye witness, Manning Johnson, in his book Color, Communism and Common Sense (1958). He describes a broad and deliberate attempt by Soviet and American communists in 1934–35 to undermine faith in American institutions through a massive program that would expose America as deeply racist. The goal was to create “a common front against the white oppressors.”^[13] Johnson documents that the plot to use “Negroes as the [expendable] spearhead” to undermine America was created by Stalin in 1928, ten years after the creation of the Comintern (the World Organization of Communism), whose goal was to wipe out Western civilization. This tactic was employed also by “the top white US communist leaders” hypocritically promoting the idea of racial conflict in “a cold- blooded struggle for power” to “advance the cause of Communism” in America.^[14]

The goal was “to make the white man’s system, the white man’s government, responsible for everything.” He noted: “Smear is a cardinal technique,” seeking to “divide America” that can only be called “a propaganda hoax.”^[15]“Black rebellion was what Moscow wanted. Bloody racial conflict would split America. During the confusion, demoralization and panic would set in.”^[16] At the same time, apparently, the anti-racists had little time for black people. According to the recently deceased Walter Williams, Marx dismissed the black race as much closer to the animal kingdom.^[17]Robert Robinson, Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union, observed: “I can say as an expert that one of the greatest myths ever launched by the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus is that Soviet society is free from racism.”^[18]

Marxism insists that whiteness is a malevolent invisible force that produces cultural sickness.

In 1972, Marcuse argued that the only path to liberation was a socialist regime, the end of which was traditional Marxism. According to Marti Gurri, a former CIA analyst who studies media and politics, “nothing like the woke DEI ideology has transpired since the conversion of Constantine.” Nearly every major American institution—including federal, state, and local governments,^[19]universities and public schools, hospitals, insurance, media and technology companies and major retail brands—has accepted the DEI social justice, which pedals a false morality based on hatred and revenge. The driving ideology claims that such an infrastructure is essential to the nation’s proper health and function. Most leading companies and the universities have bought into the ideology that claims moral power by rejecting white racism while supporting minority groups such as LGBTQ movements and women’s reproductive rights (abortion). From Amazon to Walmart, most major corporations have created and staffed DEI offices within their human resources bureaucracy. So have sanitation departments, police departments, the military, and government departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education and energy. Employees can be instantly fired if they dare to challenge the DEI definition of equity. We see the beginning of fascism that joins state, media and business. Last year, a proposal was made to put in place a Disinformation Governance Board that would have the power to “cancel” the speech of ill-informed citizens. The Board failed miserably since the person in charge of judging speech, Nina Jankowicz, came under relentless attack for her partisan and biased opinions. The political attempt to control speech came too early—but, if things continue as they now are, we may see such a board return in the future to “cancel” free speech.

“Everything we have seen in the Soviet Union will inspire us in our own struggle…”, said the radical racist, Angela Davis. She hailed Marcuse as “the intellectual leader of the new Left’s revolution and stated: ‘We cannot combat racism until we have destroyed the whole system’”. What we need is a “total and complete change in the structures of society” —thus tying wokist racism to Marxism.

Political control of behavior and speech (the goal of CRT/Wokism) is a significant stage in the arrival of full-blown cultural Marxism. Though Rufo does not consider religious issues in his book, he states on his substack page that the future of America concerns the rejection of both religion (Christian morals) and of political liberalism (that is, constitutional law): “The problem I see is that abandoning a Christian moral framework and a liberal political framework means abandoning the United States as a whole….[it]would mean that we are in a Weimar scenario, with radical movements across the political spectrum vying for the regime”^[20]. In Germany, the Weimar Republic led to the Hitler regime.

To survive in God’s world, human beings need at least a knowledge of God’s law, so it is the responsibility of Christian believers to make God known both as Creator and Redeemer, to preach the Gospel, yes, but also the law, as the Apostle Paul says so eloquently in 2 Cor. 4:6:

For God (the Creator), who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (the Redeemer).

We may feel extremely discouraged as we see the direction of our country, and we are not promised peace and tranquility. Yet the stunning intricacy of God’s creation still makes thoughtful people sit up and take notice. Those who are ready to acknowledge the Creator may well be drawn to the beauty, power, and love of God the Redeemer, who receives anyone who puts faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Marxism insists that whiteness is a malevolent invisible force that produces cultural sickness.

In 1972, Marcuse argued that the only path to liberation was a socialist regime, the end of which was traditional Marxism. According to Marti Gurri, a former CIA analyst who studies media and politics, “nothing like the woke DEI ideology has transpired since the conversion of Constantine.” Nearly every major American institution—including federal, state, and local governments,^[19]universities and public schools, hospitals, insurance, media and technology companies and major retail brands—has accepted the DEI social justice, which pedals a false morality based on hatred and revenge. The driving ideology claims that such an infrastructure is essential to the nation’s proper health and function. Most leading companies and the universities have bought into the ideology that claims moral power by rejecting white racism while supporting minority groups such as LGBTQ movements and women’s reproductive rights (abortion). From Amazon to Walmart, most major corporations have created and staffed DEI offices within their human resources bureaucracy. So have sanitation departments, police departments, the military, and government departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education and energy. Employees can be instantly fired if they dare to challenge the DEI definition of equity. We see the beginning of fascism that joins state, media and business. Last year, a proposal was made to put in place a Disinformation Governance Board that would have the power to “cancel” the speech of ill-informed citizens. The Board failed miserably since the person in charge of judging speech, Nina Jankowicz, came under relentless attack for her partisan and biased opinions. The political attempt to control speech came too early—but, if things continue as they now are, we may see such a board return in the future to “cancel” free speech.

“Everything we have seen in the Soviet Union will inspire us in our own struggle…”, said the radical racist, Angela Davis. She hailed Marcuse as “the intellectual leader of the new Left’s revolution and stated: ‘We cannot combat racism until we have destroyed the whole system’”. What we need is a “total and complete change in the structures of society” —thus tying wokist racism to Marxism.

Political control of behavior and speech (the goal of CRT/Wokism) is a significant stage in the arrival of full-blown cultural Marxism. Though Rufo does not consider religious issues in his book, he states on his substack page that the future of America concerns the rejection of both religion (Christian morals) and of political liberalism (that is, constitutional law): “The problem I see is that abandoning a Christian moral framework and a liberal political framework means abandoning the United States as a whole….[it]would mean that we are in a Weimar scenario, with radical movements across the political spectrum vying for the regime”^[20]. In Germany, the Weimar Republic led to the Hitler regime.

To survive in God’s world, human beings need at least a knowledge of God’s law, so it is the responsibility of Christian believers to make God known both as Creator and Redeemer, to preach the Gospel, yes, but also the law, as the Apostle Paul says so eloquently in 2 Cor. 4:6:

For God (the Creator), who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (the Redeemer).

We may feel extremely discouraged as we see the direction of our country, and we are not promised peace and tranquility. Yet the stunning intricacy of God’s creation still makes thoughtful people sit up and take notice. Those who are ready to acknowledge the Creator may well be drawn to the beauty, power, and love of God the Redeemer, who receives anyone who puts faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dr. Peter Jones

Dinesh D’Souza, a very smart and brave man, wrote this on Twitter/X:

“The Left is freaking out over the fact that Trump intends to do to them exactly what they’ve been doing to us.

Two can play at this dangerous #PoliceState game. If they win in 2024, it might be the ruin of us. But if we win, it might just as likely be the ruin of them.

Get ready!”

Faulty premise in this post: If it’s true that we are already living under a police state (and we are), then the people in charge of a police state will not permit their opponents to win. However we might overturn this tyranny, it’s not going to be through another rigged election run by the tyrants.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

I simply cannot believe how clueless the conservative media is. They keep reporting that Trump is headed for an electoral college win, so long as he carries Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. “He didn’t win these in 2020, but this time he will.”

Hello!? Democrats easily pulled off fraud last time. Unless you actually believe that Trump was ahead and that suddenly, after the counting stopped and resumed the next morning in the aftermath of water pipe breaks and data dumps and suddenly discovered mail-in ballots (all of which went for Biden)… well, you know the rest.

Expecting Democrats not to repeat the fraud that was so successful last time is like expecting shoplifters and killers to stop committing crimes once released by Soros-funded district attorneys.

If conservatives are this stupid, how are they to rescue us from the most evil tyrants since the Nazis?

***************

Speaking of clueless, new Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is reportedly using Nancy Pelosi’s method of budgeting so Congress can run up the national debt more than ever.

Mr. New Speaker: You don’t fight socialism with socialism. You fight socialism with defunding. Abolish their programs & agencies.

It’s not going to happen. We only have a Uniparty. America is going socialist, whether at 80 mph or 70 mph. As Hillary Clinton would say: What difference does it make?

Speaker Johnson also promises that impeachment of Biden won’t be “rushed.” In other words: It won’t happen.

Same s**t, different Speaker.

You cannot reform a malignant system. We need a revolution, not an election. We’re not getting an honest election, anyway.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Israel Police questioned perpetrators and interviewed victims and others, shedding light on the sadistic nature of the Islamic terrorists. Itsik Saban

(November 10, 2023 / JNS) A month has passed since the Oct. 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered some 1,400 Israeli residents, but the shocking testimonies are only now emerging as the Israel Police’s special felony unit, Lahav 433, continues with the meticulous documentation of the atrocities.

The detectives have been processing statements of perpetrators and survivors. One of them is a chilling testimony of a young woman who hid with her boyfriend in a shelter, where she witnessed the rape and murder of another Israeli woman.

“I saw them forcing her to bend forward and then someone rape her,” the testimony reads. “They were dressed in olive-toned fatigues, she was alive, and then she fell silent. She was raped and then killed.”

For the first time, the investigators were exposed to messages from ZAKA—Disaster Victim Identification volunteers describing the horrifying scene as they collected bodies and body parts. These testimonies will be used in legal proceedings in the future against Hamas and also as a way to remember the atrocities.

The ZAKA testimonies are graphic and include descriptions of the horrors the volunteers saw when they arrived at the massacre sites to collect the remains of the victims. They, too, confirmed that Hamas terrorists committed sexual offenses against women before killing them.

‘It was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman’

According to the testimonies of the volunteers, there were also sexual abuses against some of the men who were found. In some cases, the victim’s private parts were mutilated. One volunteer said that in many cases, “it was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman.”

Unit Lahav 433 is closely collaborating with the Shin Bet and other security agencies in the interrogation of captured terrorists. Through their investigations, the police aim to assign collective responsibility for the massacre. In one of the investigations, a Hamas operative described how he killed a man and a woman with a hammer.

As part of building the case against the Gaza Islamic terrorist group, the investigators have been collecting testimonies from survivors. “It is challenging to establish contact with people who have undergone such trauma,” members of Lahav 433 said. “It requires emotional and mental intelligence.”

The unit is relating to the atrocity as the biggest case Israel has ever seen, even more significant than senior Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s prosecution for his role in orchestrating the Holocaust. In the case of prisoner exchanges, the testimonies and evidence could also be used in international lawsuits.

One of the horrifying calls that reached the police during the massacre was from a teenage girl.

“I’m a 15-year-old girl, I have school tomorrow,” the girl said on the phone just before the terrorist holding her took her device. The police officer who took the call tried to beg for the girl’s life, but it was in vain, and she was killed.

“A significant portion of the murders were committed by civilians [who crossed the border from Gaza],” the detectives of Lahav 433 disclosed.

The investigators want to prove that the Hamas atrocities were systematic and premeditated. Furthermore, the investigators succeeded in monitoring Hamas groups on Telegram, where terrorists sent some of the documentation of their crimes to encourage one another.

It was revealed in the investigation that for every team of terrorists, there were documenters who recorded the atrocities on GoPro cameras and used smartphones to livestream the massacre to their commanders in Gaza.

At the top levels of Lahav 433, they say that some social networks like Facebook and Instagram cooperate with them, while others have been less cooperative. “Not everyone has shifted to a war mode,” said the police, adding that they estimate it will take many more weeks to collect all the material.

At this stage, the police refuse to disclose whether individuals from within Israel assisted the Hamas attack, but they do say there is evidence that non-residents of Gaza participated in the massacre.

Survivors have reported that they had heard Hamas terrorists speaking among themselves in Persian.

One of the Hamas operatives who was captured said in his interrogation that each cell had a mission, and the terrorists were divided into squads for training. He described how they trained for years. Each cell received a battle plan, and to prevent leaks only the cell leaders were briefed on the actual missions.

The terrorists had ambitious plans, one of which was to take over a community and hold the residents hostage.

You can’t save a person from himself. You can’t rescue a person who doesn’t wish to be rescued. The same applies to a nation. If a nation — even a great and special one, such as America — does not wish to be rescued, or to rescue itself — then nothing will change. It will simply have to play out.

Even if we had honest national elections, we could not vote our way to rationality. You have to be rational to know HOW to vote. Ignorance has led a majority of people to conclude that either they don’t need freedom, or that freedom will always exist because — well because it’s America. They fail to realize how rare and vulnerable freedom is.

Elections will not turn magical thinkers into realistic thinkers. Magical thinking and ignorance got us into this mess. Elections will not matter, and politics will not matter, until people start to think rationally and intelligently.

The bad news is that most are not at present, and have not for some time, thought especially rationally or intelligently. The good news is that the choice to do so is always there. It will be a painful process of hitting bottom. Many will not come through. But some will, and things will someday be better. When? Only time and the choices of people will tell.

***************

New Hampshire is considering writing secession into its Constitution, once the federal debt goes above $40 trillion. Vermont and Texas are also considering secession.

Is the USA breaking apart?

Here’s what I think will happen: The U.S. debt will continue to rise. At some point, the federal government will be inoperable, if the wokesters, climate alarmists and medical fascists don’t wreck it all first. Hyperinflation may render the American dollar worthless, or at least impoverish much of the middle class by present standards. Lots of things can happen. When it does, secession will almost be beside the point. It will be economics that brings about the end of the American republic.

We will probably see a bunch of different little republics in places that used to be a unified republic. Socialist Vermont — they will have old school socialism. California will be an American version of Communist China. New York will split into red and blue. NYC will be all out dystopian, as is already happening. Pennsylvania and Illinois will similarly split between urban and rural. Ditto for the Pacific Northwest, which will split rural vs. Communist urban. States like Texas will be semi-capitalist, semi-free with religious overtones, although the cities of these former red states will reject religion and be more socialist. Who knows? There may be some good to it all. We will certainly see diversity. Crime will be horrible in the cities and contained in rural, conservative areas via local militias and well-armed citizens.

One thing is for sure. Look at Washington DC. Look at Congress, and even much of the Supreme Court. Fauci, the Deep State. It’s a mess! It’s the fall of the Roman Empire on steroids. Biden could be our puppet Nero. We cannot and will not go on like this. This country is just one nasty recession or depression away from an irreconcilable breakup.

Right now, it’s basically Social Security and Medicare holding the federal union together. Without national borders or any remote consensus anymore on the Bill of Rights, even the First and Second Amendments, it’s hard to see a republic lasting another century or even 50 years. America, even now, seems more like an abstraction than a reality.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

In between all the activities that characterize our summer beach resort, it helps to stand back and take a look at what matters (and what doesn’t matter) to you. In fact, this sort of self-reflection should be a part of your everyday life, especially after experiencing a crisis or difficulty. This recommitment to meaningful things might take some time and conscious effort, but it’s worth it.

A friend of mine, an active, energetic man in his 80s, was recently involved in a car collision. He was slightly injured and more than a little shaken, and his car was totally demolished. Suddenly without transportation, he lost much of his cherished independence. Family and friends helped out, but he deeply missed his daily routine.

After a few weeks of isolation and boredom, he realized that he had to recommit to his priorities. He asked himself if it was still important to live his life as he had previously, and if so, then what was he going to do about it. By the time he got over the initial trauma, he had made the crucial decision to not withdraw from the world, to confront the situation, find a new car, and bring back his favorite pleasures.

There are issues uniquely associated with aging, such as deciding at what point you’re not able to do the things you used to take for granted. But the issue of recalibrating priorities applies to all of us. Crisis doesn’t have to be negative. I’ve written about how people choose to retire and live an easier life, and then experience an emotional upheaval because they don’t know what to do with their days. Another example of this is a newly graduated college student who experiences a crisis about “where to go from here.”

A lot of this stems from not having a clear idea of what to do with your life, which can result in not knowing what to do with your days. My elderly friend knows that he wants to be independent. He wants to avoid assisted living, and he wants to drive. Because he’s basically healthy, the issue of knowing what to do is common sense. But when it comes down to the everyday decisions of how to spend his days, practical choices must be made. Should he live as a shut-in, skulking around with the blinds closed and feeling sorry for himself? Or should he demand more, reestablish his routines, and drive back out into the world? His overall goal of independence was unchanged by the temporary upheaval, and by refocusing, he figured out how he wanted to spend his day-to-day existence. All that was left was to make it happen.

A similar thing can take place with our hypothetical college graduate. He or she has quite literally spent his or her entire life in school. It provided structure and routine. Suddenly, they hear over and over, “You have your whole life ahead of you!” But lacking that structure, next month and next year can be difficult to face.

My point is this: Making decisions requires that you first know your priorities. Regular readers of this column know that I urge people to “introspect” by having a serious conversation with themselves about what makes them happy. This is vital to identifying and shaping our priorities.

Will you immediately get everything you want? Maybe not. Possibly our graduate will have to do something for a while that he doesn’t want to do. Maybe my senior friend will have to rely on grocery deliveries for a few more weeks until he finds a car he likes. But if the priorities remain firm, life will flow steadily in the right direction. From a psychological point of view, any alternative will almost certainly result in anxiety.

My experience counseling people over the years has proven that individuals who know what they want are happier than those who don’t. Nobody knows you better than you do, and nobody can (or should) make life decisions for you. The saying “freedom requires responsibility” might be even better stated: “Having choices means being responsible for knowing what you want.” We’re all responsible for evaluating what we want and how we plan to get it. The self-confidence it brings will be well worth the effort.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

There are many reasons for any sane person to regret the existence of Hamas, the savage Sunni Muslim militia that controls the Gaza Strip in Southern Israel. Founded in 1987, the group has specialized in terror attacks against Israelis while maintaining vigorous side-concessions fomenting anti-Western sentiment and keeping their own populace in a state of wretched poverty.

Such are the convoluted workings of providence, however, that the world may eventually find itself grimly grateful for what one percipient observer called “the Sabbath Massacres”: the barbaric slaughter perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which left some 1,400 dead, thousands wounded, and more than 200 kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.

The main reason to be grateful for this horrific carnage follows from the revelation it afforded. In the first place, by acting with such savage and sanguinary abandon—deliberately targeting the young and helpless, the old and infirm, raping, mutilating, beheading—Hamas in effect signed its own death warrant.

We’ve seen all the usual suspects fulminating against Israel, “the Zionists,” “the Jews.” A prominent Hamas spokesman called Ghazi Hamad said in an interview that the Sabbath Massacre of October 7 was only the start, that there would be many more and similar attacks “until Israel is annihilated.”

But that is idle, impotent imprecation, of a piece with King Lear’s aposiopetic rant against his daughters [I somehow wrote “sisters”: thanks to an alert reader for that correction]:

– No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall – I will do such things, –
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.

One of the most brilliant spokesman for the the Israeli Defense Force, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, was right when he described Hamad as a “rotten, vile, and cowardly terrorist.” Doubtless Hamad would slit the throat of any Israeli he chanced across. But he is likely to chance across very few, if any. As Conricus has explained in patient if steely detail, the IDF is going to dismantle Hamas piece by piece, tunnel by tunnel, terrorist by terrorist.

The Israelis will, as they have always done—and in sharp contrast with the procedure of Hamas—proceed deliberately and methodically, taking care to minimize civilian casualties wherever they can, but without bowing to the illegal emotional blackmail of using civilians a human shields, a regular practice of Hamas, which, in blatant contravention of the Geneva Conventions, builds command centers and rocket launchers under or adjacent to hospitals, schools, mosques, etc., and which employs ambulances as taxis across war zones, another violation of the rules of war.

But the main point is that, in sharp contradistinction to the many other times that Israel has responded militarily to Arab or Palestinian aggression, this time all signs are that they will finish the job. In the past, Israel has been cowed by “world opinion,” that marshy will-o’-the-wisp that emanates from such sinkholes as the United Nations and the news rooms of such discredited entities as The New York Times and CNN. But this time I predict, the extreme savagery of the October 7 attack—an attack that killed more Jews than any episode since the Holocaust—has put steel in the Israeli response. Hamas’s days are numbered, and the number is not large.

That is one real if paradoxical reason to be grateful for the attack by Hamas. They did not heed Gertrude Stein’s sage admonition to know how far to go in going too far. They went all the way, and they will pay the ultimate price for their horrible bloodletting.

The other chief reason that this grisly event may inspire gratitude alongside revulsion is that it seems to have shaken the world awake, disrupting the pathetic radical-chic infatuation with this species of violent, anti-Western guilt mongering. Yes, Western colleges and universities, especially the richest and most pampered of them, are full of anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian animus. From Harvard to Stanford, from Columbia and Cornell to Georgetown and the University of Pennsylvania, students and faculty are making fools of themselves by mouthing such goads to genocide as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”

But these little eructations, along with the carefully coordinated mass rallies in major cities throughout the Western world, conceal an inexorable process of disenchantment. Much publicized has been the withdrawal of financial support by scores of major donors to the university industrial complex. The loss of money may sting at some few campuses. For most, it will be but a rounding error. What will matter much more is the loss of that much more precious form of spiritual currency, legitimacy.

Whatever else it accomplished, the murderous attacks perpetrated by Hamas tore the mask off the “poor, suffering Palestinians” and revealed the entire operation as the bloodthirsty, anti-civilizational impulse we have long known it to be. For that, at least, we must be grateful for this excruciating moment of clarity.

Roger Kimball

Tuesday, November 5, 2024, is barely a year away. How will it look?

Not long ago, Election Day found hundreds of millions of Republicans, Democrats, and independents with heads full of knowledge about candidates and causes. Beyond the infirm and the absent, Americans walked with dignity into their precincts at schools, firehouses, and libraries. And on one glorious autumn day, we decided en masse — in Congress and the White House.

Today, the same crowd that cannot tell a man from a woman has demolished this beautiful picture, too.

Election Day teeters on extinction. Americans now vote across Election Quarter. Elections start about Labor Day and end around Black Friday.

Not good!

But this need not be. And Americans who want to restore Election Day have as a powerful weapon: The Law.

Federal elections are required to occur on “the Tuesday next, after the first Monday in November.” This date is not based on something that Mark Twain whispered to Ulysses S. Grant. It is neither optional nor suggested.

According to 2 US Code § Section 7, that Tuesday “is established as the day for the election…of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress.”

Under 3 US Code § 21 “election day” “means the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November,” for choosing the President and Vice President except “as necessitated by force majeure events that are extraordinary and catastrophic.”

Those caveats were shoehorned in last Christmas, amid the Yuletide spending orgy co-hosted by senators Chuck Schumer (D – New York) and his loyal manservant, Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky).

So, absent total calamities, all of today’s early-voting nonsense violates not one but two federal statutes.

Early voting is against the law! 

GOP attorneys should be in every state, banging on the doors of federal judges, and demanding they scrap every Democrat-inflicted “temporary,” COVID-era, early-voting scam.

• Down with mass-mailed, no-excuse absentee ballots!
• No more drop boxes!
• Goodbye, ballot harvesting and vote trafficking!
• Sayonara, early voting — as many as 40 days before Election Day in Michigan and 46 days in Minnesota!
• Farewell, late voting, with absentee ballots blowing into tabulation rooms like autumn leaves, until damn-near Thanksgiving.

(GOP employment of such methods must be necessary, temporary, and swiftly prohibited.)

Thanks to Public Interest Legal Foundation for filing a federal lawsuit in North Dakota to require that all ballots arrive for counting by the time polls close on Election Day.

It’s bad enough that votes get stuffed into ballot boxes. They should not get stuffed into turkeys.

America must reinvigorate Election Day, which is when citizens voted until Obama & Co. started to demolish this hallowed tradition, just as Democrats grind their rusty cleats into every neck they can find.

Democrats will whine that restoring Election Day is a Right-wing, Mega-MAGA Republican plot to suppress black votes and steal elections.

Yaaaaawn

When Democrats spew this lie, Republicans should remind them that such racists as Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, LBJ, JFK, and FDR all won the White House — and their Democrat comrades held Congress — while they followed the same Election Day rules that they would denounce as pure bigotry today.

Conservative activists, donors, leaders, and groups should adopt this cause.

Republicans should deploy battalions of attorneys to unleash this strategy to the GOP’s advantage. A level playing field would cripple modern Democrats.

I hereby volunteer to assist anyone who will litigate this vital matter.

Specifically, I would be thrilled to be the lead plaintiff in relevant federal lawsuits. I would be honored to be the Clarence Earl Gideon, Ernesto Miranda, or Dick Anthony Heller on the lawsuit that finally obliterates the Democrats’ election-theft machine. (RELATED: DEROY MURDOCK: Biden’s Busted Border Is A Giant Red Carpet For Terrorists)

If GOP lawsuits fail, they fail.

But if Republicans win, they win — big league!

Republicans will know neither loss nor victory until they try. The GOP needs to fight this all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If not, Democrats will keep stealing elections until they achieve the one-party neo-Marxist dictatorship that they crave.

Republicans have everything to win. What the Hell do we have to lose?

Make Election Day Great Again!

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.