Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson

Posted on October 23, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” —Thomas Jefferson

The No Kings Rallies

Posted on October 23, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

As Bill Maher once laid bare, “For Millennials, the word socialism doesn’t conjure up images of Stalin and Castro, it conjures up images of naked Danish people on a month-long paid vacation…it’s not such a jarring proposition when socialism comes along and says you are entitled to free stuff.”

That casual humor hides a grave reality: a growing portion of Democrats embrace an ideology they do not truly understand, mistaking state control and economic tyranny for harmless perks. This misunderstanding has transformed socialism into a seductive fantasy rather than the system of central planning and bureaucratic dominance it actually is, and the implications for America are profound, multi-generational, and deeply worrisome.

The recent “No Kings” rallies underscore the danger of this ideological drift. The Communist Party USA openly co-sponsored the protest, aligning with other groups to oppose President Donald Trump. In New York, the CPUSA’s hammer-and-sickle insignia was featured on official “No Kings” literature. That’s a brazen signal of how far-leftism is being mainstreamed under the guise of righteous protest.

Prominent Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democrat Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, and Senator Cory Booker marched. Indeed, “No Kings” was broadly supported by Democrats at all levels of government, activism, and media.

For many Americans, the rallies were more than a spectacle—they were a revelation. What the left presents as “resistance” is, in reality, a Trojan horse for subversive forces bent on undermining capitalism and personal liberty. This is not abstract theory. Polling confirms a seismic shift within the Democrat base: a Gallup survey shows 66% now view socialism positively, outstripping the 42% who support the capitalist principles that have generated American prosperity.

Another survey from Data for Progress indicates 53% of Democrat voters prefer far-left figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over moderates, signaling an ideological takeover that threatens the entrepreneurial spirit and economic growth that millions rely on daily.

The peril lies not only in enthusiasm but in ignorance. Only 34% of Democrats correctly identify socialism as state ownership and central planning, while nearly half equate it with free healthcare, education, and other government handouts. Gallup data further reveal that 60% of Democrats see socialism positively for its promise of “free” services, blind to the suffocating control it imposes over work, innovation, and wealth creation.

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The result is a populace eager for handouts, unaware that each perceived benefit comes at the cost of opportunity, productivity, and personal freedom.

History offers stark warnings. Nations that flirted with socialism as an experiment have endured catastrophic consequences. Venezuela’s GDP has contracted nearly 25% since 2013 under socialist rule, paired with hyperinflation and mass shortages. Greece, after embracing socialist economic policies post-2008, saw GDP plummet by over 25% and unemployment surge above 27%.

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These are not abstract lessons. They are vivid illustrations of what happens when good intentions collide with the harsh realities of centralized economic control. Yet the Democrat embrace of socialism persists, driven by a base lulled into believing generosity equates to freedom.

“The point is if you add up all the free things that the under-40 crowd is used to getting from…being able to sit in Starbucks all day for the price of a scone, from music to wi-fi to birth control—it’s not such a jarring proposition when socialism comes along and says you are entitled to free stuff,” Bill Maher observed, concluding that what’s desired is “not really socialism” but “Santa-ism.”

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That was almost a decade ago. His words ring true today, and their echo amplifies with every passing election cycle. To many, socialism offers the illusion of manna falling from the sky, while the rivers flow with milk and honey. In reality, socialism spells the end of America’s first world economy. Dependence replaces initiative, government replaces community, and freedom is subordinated to bureaucracy.

The stakes are not partisan. They are generational. America’s prosperity, built on the principles of capitalism and the protection of private enterprise, faces a credible threat from policies designed to redistribute, control, and centralize wealth. Socialism is not merely a policy preference. It is a long-term strategy to crush standards of living so despots can rule over ruins.

If left unchecked, it shall leave future generations with diminished opportunity, stunted economic growth, and an entrenched government class controlling the levers of daily life.

For those who care about sustaining the American Dream, the warning is clear: the Democrat party’s embrace of socialism is more than a political quirk. It is a deliberate pivot toward an economic ideology that history shows inevitably fails, a fantasy of free services that hides the harsh reality of governmental oppression, and a gamble with the nation’s multi-generational prosperity.

Understanding socialism is not optional. It is essential to defending the freedoms, innovation, and opportunity that have made America extraordinary.

Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto is the creator, host, and producer of News Sight, delivering sharp insights on the news that shapes everyday life. He also provides affordable, results-driven consulting for business, management, media, politics, and the economy. During the 2024 presidential race, he developed the Five-Point Forecast, which accurately predicted Donald Trump’s national victory and correctly called every swing state. Cotto holds a doctorate in business administration and is a Lean Six Sigma Certified Black Belt.

Image: Michaelwuzthere, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.

Related Topics: Democrats, Leftists, Communism

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The Left Isn’t Just Marching Through Our Institutions, It’s Imploding Them

Posted on October 22, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

When the long march through the institutions gives destructive and ridiculous people control of the institutions, the institutions become destructive and ridiculous, and then they become destroyed and ridiculous.

The law professor Glenn Reynolds has talked for years about the premise, in public policy, that people can be brought into the middle class if you give them the markers of middle-class status. Having a college degree is middle class, so make it easier to get a college degree. Owning a house is middle class, so lower the barriers to homeownership. 1.) Make it all much easier. 2.) Give people way more free stuff. 3.) Larger middle class!

“But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class,” he writes. “Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”

Mistaking the markers for the substance, for the things that cause the creation of the desired thing, gives us this: [X post at link]

The idea behind the “long march through the institutions” is that the capture of the symbols of cultural authority is the same thing as the capture of cultural authority. The markers are the substance. See, people listen to their ministers and their professors, so if we get jobs as ministers and professors, people will listen to us. The job title is the authority. “As your minister, I advise you to embrace socialism and get a lot of abortions, and I direct you to notice that I am wearing a clerical collar, so.”

This language is ubiquitous in 21st-century America. It’s status markers all the way down. Experts say. Officials say. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is dismantling the CDC, and that’s very dangerous, because our health authorities are the experts. A lot of very important professors are telling you to do [insert thing here]. You can’t advise your child against gender transition — you don’t even have the right credentials.

Antonio Gramsci, and the New Left activists who followed him, looked at institutions like churches and universities and concluded that they had authority because they were churches and universities. They looked like authority, they performed the symbols of authority, they made authority noises, and so people followed.

Chris Bray, The Federalist

A Bright New Energy Dawn In The UK

Posted on October 22, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

It Vladimir was just a couple of weeks ago — October 3 to be precise — that I reported that the long-running “net zero” political consensus in the UK was finally “crumbling.” In the intervening two-plus weeks, the slow crumbling has turned into a rapid collapse.

The biggest roadblock for opponents of a green energy transition in the UK has been that the Conservative Party, which should have been the natural home of opposition to net zero, has instead long (and foolishly) allied itself with the net zero cause. In June 2019, the Conservatives (under Prime Minister Theresa May) put through an ambitious amendment to enhance the net zero targets of the 2008 Climate Act, and then proceeded to a general election that December where they won a substantial majority of 365 seats (in a parliament of 650). In subsequent years, a parliamentary faction in the House of Commons called the Net Zero Scrutiny Group struggled to get to about 50 or so Conservative members, who were far outnumbered by the opposing faction of the same party called the Conservative Environment Network. The UK voters had surely demonstrated their climate virtue.

But unfortunately things did not work out quite as they had anticipated. Energy bills accelerated until, as reported in the Telegraph on September 30 and then here on October 3, UK electricity bills have become the highest in the world. De-industrialization has set in and worsened. Britain’s last primary blast furnace steel works at Port Talbot closed in September 2024. A final rolling mill at Scunthorpe, now under Chinese ownership, threatened to close earlier this year until the government intervened. Similar reports of factory closures come regularly from all energy-intensive industries.

On October 6, immediately after my prior post, the Conservatives held a party conference in Manchester. One of the speakers was Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary. Her speech was an incredible breath of fresh air, and marked a dramatic u-turn from prior Conservative energy policy. The title was “Energy Is Prosperity.” Some excerpts:

In the last few decades, we’ve lost sight of a simple truth. Energy is a good thing. Conservatives know that great eras of British growth and prosperity happen when we have an abundance of cheap, reliable energy. . . . [E]nergy is not just part of the economy. It is the economy. It feeds into the costs of every business, every journey, every loaf of bread. . . . That’s why right now, the cost of energy is one of the biggest problems we have. It’s a stealth tax that is making us all poorer. And it’s killing our industry.

The Conservatives have finally figured out that the net zero agenda is a program to make the people poorer in sacrifice to the climate religion. More from Coutinho’s speech:

[H]ere’s the problem with the Left – they’re infected with a poverty mindset. They believe that Britain has a duty to make itself poorer on the altar of Net Zero. And they think that ordinary people should be the servants of their climate targets. So, take air conditioning. In America, nearly every single home has air con. Here in Britain? Just 5%. But Sadiq Khan’s London Plan effectively bans air con in all new homes – why? Because it uses too much energy. Rather than people fitting into the Government’s policy on energy, I believe a Conservative energy policy should serve the needs of the people.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I suspect that opposition to a program of intentional impoverishment of the people ought to be an electoral winner. The Labour Party and its Energy Minister, Ed Miliband, continue even now to claim that building more wind turbines will make electricity cheaper. But that claim is based on pretending that huge costs of intermittency, backup, storage, and transmission don’t exist. It has taken a long time for the reality of those costs to become clear, but the truth is now out.

The change in direction from the Conservative Party has come none too soon. On October 10, Bretibart News reported that the UK’s grid manager, National Energy Systems Operator, was forecasting reduced safety margins for electricity generation this winter, at the same time as the Labour government proceeds with dynamiting coal plants that could still be used for backup. The headline is “‘Tight Days’ For Electricity This Winter Says Network Operator as UK Presses on With Dynamiting Potential Backup Power Stations.” Excerpt:

Most notable was the revelation that the gas supply margin this winter is the lowest in years and down by 34 per cent over last year, a change [National Gas] attributes to the dwindling supply of gas being extracted from the North Sea. . . . 1960s-vintage power plants were brought online on command to cover tight margins several times in recent winters. Yet they have now all powered down for good, cut off from the national grid and are being demolished. Indeed, just days before today’s announcement of potential “tight days”, fresh footage of some of the final coal-powered power stations in the UK being dramatically dynamited was published.

I’m not going to predict that Britain will definitely experience major blackouts this winter. But the risk is far higher than it was just a few years ago, and that risk will continue to increase in coming years, until Britain can get itself to build more dispatchable generation, which in anything less than 15 years means natural gas or coal.

And it is not just the Shadow Energy Minister who has caught on. In today’s New York Post there is an op-ed by Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative Party leader and prospective PM should the Conservatives win the next election. (It is not obvious that they will do so, since the next election could be years away, and another party called Reform UK — also net zero opponents — leads both Labour and the Conservatives in the polls.). Ms. Badenoch’s op-ed covers multiple topics, including immigration and the Middle East as well as energy. Here are some things she has to say on the topic of energy:

[A] place I agree with this White House is on energy. Cheap energy is the foundation of a growing economy. No serious politician can talk about putting money in people’s pockets if they’re also doing things that make energy bills more expensive. . . . [I]n Britain, Labour ministers are so obsessed with chasing net-zero targets that they’re making life harder for ordinary families. . . . We’re sitting on North Sea oil and gas, yet the government refuses to grant new licenses. We’re now in the crazy position of importing gas from our near-neighbors Norway, who are getting stuck into those same oil fields in the North Sea.

The Conservatives came close to destroying the party by joining the Left’s net zero crusade. The current u-turn may or may not be enough to save the party. However, adding the Conservatives’ position in the polls to that of Reform UK would indicate that opposition to net zero is now close to if not an absolute majority electoral position. That represents an enormous swing in a few short years.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

Western Civilization Depends on Men and Masculinity

Posted on October 22, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

For centuries, men built and defended Western civilization — from its farms and cities to its laws, its art, and its moral order. But in just a few generations, that foundation has been shaken. Masculinity, once honored as the engine of strength, protection, and leadership, is now treated as a social problem. The very qualities that sustained families, communities, and nations are being redefined as “toxic.” Today, masculinity itself is treated as something to be “reformed” or “re-educated.”

What happened? How did the very qualities that built the modern world become objects of suspicion and ridicule?

The truth is simpler: Western civilization depends on men and masculinity — and it cannot survive without them.

The Quiet War on Manhood

Since the mid-20th century, Western culture has undergone an ideological shift that redefined traditional masculinity as something outdated, even dangerous. The cultural shifts of the 1960s promised liberation but gradually replaced personal responsibility and family order with self-gratification and state dependence. Where strong families once formed the backbone of the West, an alliance of ideological radicalism and excessive consumerism has turned both men and women into disconnected individuals — easier to manipulate, easier to control.

This erosion of masculine identity didn’t happen by accident. It was shaped through decades of social conditioning that cast male authority as oppressive, fatherhood as optional, and discipline as cruelty. In recent years, even government agencies have launched programs to ‘redefine’ masculinity, echoing language once confined to activist circles. The result is a culture where men are encouraged to suppress their natural instincts — their drive to lead, protect, and provide — in favor of emotional conformity. The modern man is expected to apologize for being male.

That truth — the structural bias against authentic masculinity — became the foundation for my book, The War on Men: How the New Gender Politics Is Undermining Western Civilization. Written not in resentment, but in plain clarity, it exposes how systems once meant to protect families and society have been twisted by new gender politics.

The Vanishing Father

The collapse of fatherhood lies at the heart of this crisis. A century ago, the father served as the moral and practical anchor of the household. Today, millions of boys grow up without one. The results are measurable: higher rates of crime, depression, and academic failure.

Without fathers, young men struggle to define what strength, honor, and leadership even mean. The vacuum is filled by media caricatures — the bumbling sitcom dad, the toxic aggressor, or the passive nice guy who never offends anyone.

It’s no coincidence that as male leadership has declined, so has family stability. When men are removed from their natural roles, the entire social structure weakens. Feminist academics and bureaucrats claimed this would “liberate” women. Instead, it left both sexes adrift — men deprived of a clear sense of purpose, and women burdened with expectations that conflict with their natural strengths.

From Strength to Shame

Modern education and media condition young men to doubt traits that were once honored — assertiveness, risk-taking, competitiveness, and stoicism. The ideal of the strong, self-reliant man has been replaced with the sensitive conformist who fears giving offense more than failing his responsibilities.

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This inversion of values has consequences far beyond gender. A society that discourages strength and rewards compliance eventually loses its ability to defend itself — morally, culturally, and even militarily.

Civilizations rise when men are encouraged to lead; they fall when men are shamed for doing so.

The Spartan Mindset

What does authentic masculinity look like today? It’s not about wealth, dominance, or bravado. True manhood begins with integrity — the courage to face reality, take responsibility, and act according to principle, even when it’s unpopular.

The ancient Spartans understood this. They didn’t chase comfort or approval; they pursued mastery over themselves. That’s the essence of the “Spartan mindset”: realism over optimism, truth over illusion. Modern culture tells men to “stay positive,” to avoid confrontation, and to seek validation. But strength is not built in comfort. A man becomes strong by facing hardship honestly — by learning discipline, self-control, and purpose in the face of adversity. When it comes down to optimism or pessimism, I always choose realism.

A Feminized Culture

Western civilization has become, in many ways, a feminized culture. Emotional comfort is prioritized over truth; feelings take precedence over facts. Public debate is now policed by fear of offense. The phrase “my rights don’t end where your feelings begin” has never been more relevant.
Even federally, in January 2025 the U.S. government declared it a matter of state policy that there are only two sexes and that gender ideology must be rejected — a formal backlash to decades of shifting norms around masculinity and gender.

This preference for sentiment over reason has spread through politics, media, and education. Policies are increasingly designed not for long-term stability but to appease emotion-driven constituencies and align with UN-style governance models that echo centralized planning. The result is widespread moral uncertainty and civic stagnation.

The Masculine Virtues We Lost

Courage, restraint, loyalty, and honor — these virtues once defined manhood. Today, they’re rarely taught in a school system dominated by new gender politics, let alone celebrated. Yet these are precisely the qualities that sustain a civilization. Masculinity, properly understood, is grounded not in domination but in responsibility — the duty to protect, provide, and uphold truth even when it’s costly. The decline of those virtues has produced generations of anxious, uncertain men — products of a system that rewards compliance over conviction.

In schools, boys are medicated for restlessness; in DEI workplaces, masculine ambition is branded as aggression; in media, masculinity is reduced to parody. It’s no wonder so many young men feel lost.

A culture that derides masculine virtue produces dependents, not leaders.

Reclaiming Balance

The solution isn’t a return to harshness or domination, as critics of ‘patriarchy’ often claim. What’s needed is balance — a renewed respect for the masculine and feminine as complementary forces, not rivals. Men and women are different by design, and that difference is the foundation of family and community life. Denying that truth has made both sexes less happy, less stable, and less fulfilled.

The West needs men who are strong without tyranny, disciplined without indifference, and honest without apology. The current generation of men have been denied what their ancestors took for granted — that freedom and civilization depend on masculinity, courage, responsibility, and the willingness to lead.

The Way Forward

It seems clear that the revival of authentic masculinity won’t come from a political culture dominated by new gender politics — so where should men look instead? The revival of masculinity begins in personal conduct. Every man can reclaim strength by mastering himself — by rejecting the passivity and self-pity our culture encourages. Masculinity isn’t harmful; it’s essential. The real harm lies in the ideology that teaches men to distrust their natural instincts.

When men rediscover purpose and principle, families heal, communities strengthen, and nations endure. The West was built by men unafraid to lead, to protect, and to speak the truth — and it will endure only if such men rise again. If Western civilization is to survive, it must once more honor, strengthen, and respect its men.

Mark Keenan is the author of The War on Men: How the New Gender Politics Is Undermining Western Civilization (recently updated) and Climate CO2 Hoax. A former UN technical expert, he writes on culture, law, science, and the ideological forces reshaping the modern West.