Progressivism isn’t just an ideology; it’s also becoming a mental health condition.

Spiraling past the tendentious spin and lies that have long shaped American discourse on both sides of the aisle, the loudest voices on the left are losing the capacity to grasp reality. As a character in a recent Wall Street Journal cartoon put it: “You’ve got it all wrong. What I’m saying isn’t misinformation. It’s denial.”

Take Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s recent denunciation of “White House senior aides” for “sowing fear, intimidation and vision” by, among other things, calling Democrats “fascists.” Given not just his party’s but his own frequent use of such rhetoric – comparing ICE agents to Nazis who disappear immigrants and vowing that Republicans “cannot know a moment of peace” – the jaw-dropping irony of his complaint was lost on no one, except, apparently, Pritzker and his allies. It raises the question: How did he think he could get away with this?

He is not alone. In recent weeks, progressives have been assailing President Trump’s very real attacks on free speech, without wrestling with the fact that they have long been the driving force behind cancel culture, hate speech codes, and broad-based censorship efforts.

They have been attacking Trump for weaponizing the justice system against his political enemies without coming to grips with the fact that they did exactly that during the Biden administration.

These efforts seem darker and more disturbed than the old political tactic of telling small lies to achieve larger truths. More than simply Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids, they reflect the progressives’ flight from reality, into a world of their own making, a belief that the visions inside their heads are truer than what the rest of us can plainly see. Where sane people try to work through the ineluctable contradictions.

They have been attacking Trump for weaponizing the justice system against his political enemies without coming to grips with the fact that they did exactly that during the Biden administration.

These efforts seem darker and more disturbed than the old political tactic of telling small lies to achieve larger truths. More than simply Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids, they reflect the progressives’ flight from reality, into a world of their own making, a belief that the visions inside their heads are truer than what the rest of us can plainly see. Where sane people try to work through the ineluctable contradictions of their own thoughts – which many of the right are struggling to do in response to Trump’s overreach – progressives have abandoned this mental effort.

Poisoned by leftist arguments that there is no truth, only power, they believe they can make things so simply by saying them – which is crazy. How else to explain:

• An August article in the New Yorker that stated: “Liberals used to be the counterculture; today, they’re the defenders of traditional norms and institutions.” That, of course, might come as news to those who disagree with the liberal view that sex is assigned at birth and who always thought equality, not equity, was the foundation of American liberty.
• A September column in the New York Times that quoted a University of Pennsylvania historian who claimed that Obama and Biden “didn’t think they had the power to disregard statutes passed by Congress and the text of the Constitution. They didn’t think they had the power to do things like treat the presidency as an office that permits its occupant to use the power of the state to reward friends and punish enemies and engage in self-dealing and enrichment.” Evidently, Professor Kate Shaw is unaware of the multiple cases brought against Donald Trump and his allies, the business dealings of Hunter Biden, or the first son’s pardon.

Consider Jimmy Kimmel’s infamous claim that Charlie Kirk’s left-wing assassin was actually MAGA. Given the mountains of evidence to the contrary, including the killer’s own words, it boggles the mind that anyone would come to this conclusion, much less say it in front of millions of people. But the talk show host was, in fact, articulating an unmoored view embraced by many voices respected on the left. Kimmel wasn’t simply trying to spin the news to help his side, he was repeating a story that makes sense if you have convinced yourself that only right-wing people engage in political gun violence and that your side is inviolately virtuous.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon gets even more troubling. As fears of political violence have intensified since Kirk’s murder, the New York Times has posted several pieces assassinating his character. One of its star content creators, Ezra Klein, for example, provided little pushback on a recent podcast as the racialist writer Ta-Nehisi Coates repeatedly labeled Kirk a “hatemonger.” The newspaper also published a long essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, who led the paper’s controversial 1619 Project which tried to put slavery at the center of American history, which repeatedly called Kirk a bigot.

Her only evidence to support this inflammatory portrayal is one 168-word paragraph in a 2,568-word piece that cherry-picked, out-of-context snippets – he said ‘there’s a war on white people in this country’ he referred to a transgender athlete as an ‘abomination’ – to cast Kirk’s opposition to the woke agenda, gender affirming care and his concerns about black crime and Islam as “unabashed bigotry.”

To assess the quality of evidence, note that she repeats the long-debunked claims that Trump “called the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., ‘very fine people.’ ” To demonstrate that her views have wide currency, she writes that “Last year, The Washington Examiner, a conservative news outlet, published a column calling the organization Kirk co-founded, Turning Point USA, ‘one of the most destructive forces in Republican politics.’” What she ignored was that the author of that piece, Ben Rothove, published a short piece in the New York Times 16 days before her essay was published that declared, “I was wrong about Charlie Kirk.”

Hannah-Jones is, of course, entitled to her views – but not her own facts. It is telling that she and her editors thought it was appropriate to print a piece that made no effort to contextualize Kirk’s statements, or to try to understand why so many people in the world admired him. Their goal, instead, was to demonize an adversary by assertion. This is our truth. Perhaps more disturbing are two quotes in the piece that suggest Kirk’s murder was acceptable. “I cannot have empathy for him losing his life when he put mine at risk,” one black educator told Hannah-Jones.

“I firmly believe that no one should be killed for their beliefs, no matter how harmful those beliefs might be,” another person told her. “But we are watching our rights being stripped away. 

Such views, of course, resonate with those of thousands of others who celebrated Kirk’s murder; just as many progressives have cheered Luigi Mangione’s cold-blooded murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson last December.

I hesitate to say that the Times was sanctioning Kirk’s assassination. But it is clear that progressives are proceeding down a dangerous path where facts, truths, and human decency are being overwhelmed by their dark desires.

J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. Follow him on X @jpederzane.

Trump’s 20-point Gaza Peace Plan, backed by Arab states and Israel, could rebuild Gaza and sideline Hamas—even if Hamas rejects it.

Although it appeared, as this article went to print, that Hamas would not accept President Trump’s historic 20-point Gaza Peace Plan without substantial changes, the beauty of this plan is that it may bring peace to the Middle East and initiate a process to rebuild Gaza, regardless of what Hamas decides. This is because, due to President Trump’s leadership, Arab states, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel support this plan; the war will soon end, and a process to rebuild and secure Gaza will proceed, even if Hamas rejects the plan.

Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar support the 20-point plan. Even the Palestinian Authority (PA), which rejected previous peace plans as insufficient, has accepted this plan. European states have voiced their support. Although the Israeli government is uncomfortable with some provisions of the plan, it has accepted it.

Some of the provisions of the 20-point plan are similar to previous plans that failed due to Hamas’s opposition. The plan calls for a cease-fire, the release of all hostages held by Hamas, and the release of almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Hamas will be disarmed and its weapons will be destroyed. Hamas will be barred from playing any role in the future governance of Gaza. Hamas members who pledge to live peacefully and support coexistence with Israel will be offered amnesty. Those who refuse will be provided safe passage out of Gaza.

The plan includes some new ideas involving Israeli concessions that address previous stumbling blocks. Israel will not annex the Gaza Strip, and Israeli troops will gradually withdraw and be limited to a perimeter presence.

A temporary international stabilization force will be deployed in Gaza to oversee security, demilitarization, and reconstruction in Gaza following a ceasefire and the disarmament of Hamas. This force will reportedly be staffed mainly by troops from Gulf Arab states. A Palestinian Authority police force will eventually be deployed after the PA is reformed and deradicalized.

A Board of Peace will be established as a temporary international oversight body to manage Gaza’s transitional governance and redevelopment. President Trump will chair this board. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will be a prominent member. Arab and European members will join them. The board will eventually be dissolved and replaced by the PA after it undergoes substantial reforms and deradicalization.

Finally, the plan keeps the door open to a future Palestinian state, albeit as a distant Palestinian aspiration. According to the plan, “when Gaza’s redevelopment has been advanced and the PA reform program has been implemented, the conditions may be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood, which is recognized as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.”

The idea of any role for the Palestinian Authority in administering or securing Gaza and proposals for a Palestinian state have been anathemas for Israeli officials in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre against Israel. However, Israel’s grudging acceptance of vague provisions on these ideas was crucial to winning the support of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE. Coupled with Netanyahu’s apology to Qatar for violating Qatari sovereignty in Israel’s recent airstrike, Hamas now has no Arab support in opposing the Trump plan. This may set the stage not just to rebuild Gaza but also to expand the Abraham Accords.

President Trump, on September 30, gave Hamas three or four days to accept the 20-point plan or the U.S. would support the Israeli military’s campaign to finish off Hamas. Although Hamas had not given an official response as of October 2, Hamas officials told reporters that the terrorist group thought the plan was too anti-Hamas and pro-Israel and would demand significant changes. Hamas’s rejections reportedly will include a full and immediate Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, keeping “defensive” weapons, not immediately releasing all hostages, rejection of the temporary international stabilization force, rejection of the board of peace, and rejection of the post-war Gaza leadership plan.

Hamas has killed previous peace plans with similar objections. However, this plan differs not only because of its broad Arab support but also due to provisions that allow for its implementation despite Hamas’s objections.

Under the 20-point plan, the international stabilization force will be deployed even if Hamas rejects the proposal, but this would occur in “terror-free” areas that have been cleared and handed over from Israeli Defense Forces control to the stabilization force.

The plan also states that scaled-up aid operations—including infrastructure rehabilitation—will be implemented in the secured zones, along with economic development initiatives to create a “New Gaza” through international investment, job creation, and the establishment of a special economic zone.

This means that Trump’s 20-point peace plan could be the last peace plan for Gaza. If Hamas insists on unreasonable changes and refuses to end the war, the world will move on without it to build a “New Gaza.”

The 20-point peace plan is a masterpiece. Even David Ignatius, a noted liberal foreign policy columnist for the Washington Post, acknowledged this when he wrote, “Trump laid a strong foundation for [peace] with his plan Monday to end the nightmare war in Gaza and begin the transition to a stable day after.”

It is essential to understand how this peace plan masterpiece came about. It is the result of a president who reestablished U.S. global leadership, stubbornly pressed for peace in the Middle East, and is trusted by Arab states and Israel. While European states recently were appeasing Hamas by offering to recognize a Palestinian state without any concessions from the terrorist group, Trump’s diplomatic team, in collaboration with its Arab allies, was devising a plan for long-term Middle East peace and the rebuilding of Gaza that ensures Israel’s security and sets a course for a deradicalized Palestinian leadership that excludes Hamas.

Although there are many ways this plan could fail, it could blaze a path for a similar bold plan to end the war in Ukraine. And it more than qualifies President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, a CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member. He is the Vice Chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security

CNN’s Jake Tapper confronted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Wednesday about Medicaid funding for “noncitizens,” as the Democratic lawmaker argued his party was trying to save healthcare.

Tapper asked Jeffries about the extension of Obamacare subsidies after the government shut down on Wednesday when Democrats and Republicans in the Senate failed to reach a spending agreement before the end of fiscal year 2025 on Sept. 30.

The CNN host said Republicans “characterize it as you want to give health insurance to undocumented immigrants. I understand that’s not really an accurate depiction.” Jeffries responded, “It’s a lie.”

“It’s a lie, but what you support does bring back funding for emergency Medicaid to hospitals, some of which does pay for undocumented immigrants and people who don’t have health insurance. And also, there is this provision, and it’s not about undocumented immigrants. It’s about people with asylum seekers and people with temporary protected status, et cetera, et cetera, but about their ability to get Medicaid. So they’re noncitizens. They’re not undocumented. They’re not illegal. Why even include that in a bill, knowing that they’re going to seize right upon that and use that to message? I understand that when you retake the House, you can get whatever you want passed, but at this point?” Tapper asked.

Jeffries insisted Democrats were fighting against the “largest” cut to Medicaid ever, pointing to the Republican-backed “big, beautiful bill.”

“You’re talking about the subsidies again, but I’m talking about the noncitizens,” Tapper pushed back.

The House Minority leader argued again that Democrats were trying to save healthcare for 14 million Americans.

Hanna Penrick

Can anyone dismantle the administrative state?

Only one president has had both the desire and opportunity to crush and disable the administrative state, but more importantly, end the Marxist dialectic that has infected and subsumed this nation and post-modern Western civilization.

Nixon wished to shrink the federal bureaucracy, but enemies inside the government would never allow him the opportunity, while Nixon himself, at the same time, enlarged the administrative state by creating the EPA. Reagan could have engineered the opportunity, but never gave his Office of Management and Budget director, David Stockman, enough power to go beyond just designing tax cuts and small-ball regulatory reform.

President Trump and his Office of Management and Budget chief, Russ Vought, have maneuvered and neutered the opposition, positioning the so-called government shutdown, allowing Trump and Vought to seize nearly unlimited Article II power and prerogative to eliminate half of the federal workforce and erase the bureaucracy to levels not seen since Calvin Coolidge.

If not Donald Trump, then who?

How did we get here? And why is this the moment to fulfill the counter-revolutionary dialectic reversing Karl Marx’s force of destiny?

Marx’s struggle actually wasn’t between the propertied class and the proletariat, according to the late sociologist Alvin Gouldner in his work, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class.

The proletariat were mere pawns in the real war for power between the property-owning class and the upcoming rival—the mercenary technocrat and intellectual class, as Professor Darren Stallof remarks in his YouTube reading of Gouldner’s argument.

Further, since FDR, this intellectual class has gradually elbowed its way to power in enlarging, controlling, and manipulating the administrative state, according to retired UNLV sociologist Professor John Marini, in two podcasts with Steven Hayward at Powerline (here and here).

Marini says this intellectual class has dictated rules and norms to the propertied class, and nearly everyone else. It’s an incremental, subtle coup in the takeover of private property and the means of production while dismantling the US Constitution by obviating the separation of powers.

The Marx and Engels “clash of the titans” never actually benefited the working class. Instead, it only enabled the intellectual elitists, the cultural bourgeoisie, the revolutionary technocrats in exploiting the working class to seize state and economic power—ostensibly only temporarily—to facilitate the redistribution of wealth and power to the common man.

Engels expected the proletariat takeover would lead to the evaporation of the temporary central state. Except in the real world, following Nietzsche’s Will to Power, once it acquired central state power, the intellectual class never relinquished it.

Reversing the destructive force behind the administrative state and dismantling it requires more than just a hygienic cleansing. It must be a transforming demolition, leaving neither surface nor cavity behind to let the toxic state hibernate, survive, and re-populate. Instead, we need a politico-governance nuclear winter, leaving only a salted bunker-busted pile of rubble.

A government shutdown doesn’t have to be another inconsequential, flaccid, fleeting mini-drama. It can be the beginning of our own dialectic.

Trump now has the opportunity to make the government shutdown permanent. The big question is whether he has the will?

Geoffrey Hunt, American Thinker

Be careful what you wish for. I’m not just referring to the enthusiastic Zohran Mamdani voters who believe that the failed rapper and nepo-baby is the person best suited to run this city. Nor am I referring to the fashionistas at Vanity Fair who this week swooned over Mamdani’s apparently “Kennedy-like charisma.”

I am referring to some Republicans who are starting to see a silver lining in the socialist’s Mayoral run.

Since Mamdami won the Democratic primary for Mayor in July it has been whispered in Republican circles that there may be a positive in Mamdani’s projected arrival in Gracie Mansion.

This week that whispering became public conversation.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview: “I kind of like Mamdani winning, because the worst thing in a way would be when [Andrew] Cuomo comes back in, you just keep losing a little bit of altitude for four or eight more years, and they kind of hold it together, and more people leave. So if you could just say, ‘OK he’s a shock to the system, and there’s a chance you can come back from it.’ ”

Conservative guru George Will has looked at things in a similar way. Speaking on Bill Maher recently, Will said of Mamdani: “I want him to win,” continuing, “Every twenty years of so we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again.”

This week the Commander in Chief spun a similar line. Posting on Truth Social on Monday President Trump said: “Self-proclaimed New York City Communist Zohran Mamdani, who is running for Mayor, will prove to be one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party.”

To which I would again reply, “Careful what you wish for.”

And I don’t just mean because some of us still have to live in this city, and don’t like the idea of being in a permanent political petri dish.

The President and others mentioned above have an uncanny ability to see around corners. But still it is hard to see around several corners. Especially when it comes to the way in which young, socialist-leaning, poorly over-educated young voters might react to Mamdani’s undoubted failures were he to get in.

It is perfectly possible, practiced little demagogue that he is, that Mamdani will be able to turn any turning off of this city’s money-spigot as being evil DC doing its thing. Or wicked Republicans punishing New Yorkers.

It is perfectly possible that when his free buses and free shops and free everything else don’t materialize his voters will not blame him but “the system.”

Remember that one of the greatest evils of communism and socialism is that they can always pass on the blame for their own failings. That is why even now — after a blighted twentieth century in which this evil ideology was tried out in country after country — the true believers still say, “But it hasn’t been tried yet.”

You will notice that there aren’t people going around saying, “Fascism is a perfectly good idea. It just hasn’t been tried properly yet.”

That is because — to understate matters a lot — fascism failed to produce the perfect societies that it promised. It lead to catastrophe in country after country.

Yet the socialist and communist myth is based on the idea that everywhere it has been tried it didn’t have a good enough chance. Cuba — still the near-perfect society for the radical left — is not believed by its foreign supporters to have failings because of its system. Any failings that the left cannot explain they say are the fault of the American blockade or other foreign interference in Cuba. As though if it hadn’t been for the US, Cuba would be even more of a paradise than they currently believe it is.

And there is one other objection. Which is that I have seen this line of thinking before.

You will notice that there aren’t people going around saying, “Fascism is a perfectly good idea. It just hasn’t been tried properly yet.”

That is because — to understate matters a lot — fascism failed to produce the perfect societies that it promised. It lead to catastrophe in country after country.

But Corbyn did win the Labour leadership election and in a snap election in 2017 the radical, Britain-hating socialist came uncomfortably close to actually becoming Prime Minister. He came closer than any such person ever should have done to real power.

Last decade the Labour party in the UK had a seismic shock when a rabid, socialist, anti-Israeli boor called Jeremy Corbyn ran for the leadership of the left-wing party. When he got through to the final round a group called “Conservatives for Corbyn” boasted that they had joined the Labour party in order to vote for Corbyn as leader and thus consign the Labour party to the dustbin of history.

The Conservatives for Corbyn kept pretty quiet after that.

Besides which, the party did not learn the lesson that Bessent and others assumed that American voters would learn. Having flirted with the worst of their side the British left then did a quick change of makeup, elected somebody slightly less socialist who then — looking moderate in the eyes of the electorate — was promptly voted him in as Prime Minister. Since Keir Starmer’s election there has been a massive flight of capital and talent from the country.

So as I say, be careful. Because electorates don’t always come to the conclusions you think they will. And people who have learned nothing from history aren’t necessarily going to learn anything from the present either.

Hegseth’s positive vision for military

I was pleased to see Secretary of War Pete Hegseth address a gathering of American military top-brass this week. His speech caused fits of the vapors in all the usual places, with talk of an address to the troops being somehow ominous.

Douglas Murray, New York Post

After President Donald Trump announced plans to deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland, organizers are planning an “emergency” naked bike ride in protest.

The organization, an offshoot of the World Naked Bike Ride group, made the announcement in an Instagram post on Wednesday, writing, “Emergency World Naked Bike Ride coming up in response to the militarization of our city. Plans are being worked on.”

While this “emergency” bike ride is in response to the National Guard deployment, generally, the World Naked Bike Ride aims to promote body positivity and encourage decreased reliance on fossil fuels. In Portland, the event splintered after the original organizers decided not to host one in 2024. A smaller group hosted their own version instead, resulting in two separate events last year. The upcoming event is hosted by an offshoot group of World Naked Bike Ride.

“As a longstanding protest, we believe strongly in the power of people, and love that Portlanders use bikes (and sometimes their bodies) to stand up for justice and community,” the official Portland World Naked Bike Ride said in a statement on Thursday.‘Oregon has no choice’: New SNAP requirements will impact over 313K residentsThis comes after President Donald Trump announced on TruthSocial on Sunday that he planned to bring troops to Portland with the intent to use “full force” and claims “Antifa and the radical left anarchists” have been attacking federal officers outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

Following Trump’s TruthSocial post, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum calling 200 members of the state’s National Guard into federal service.

During a press conference Monday, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek shared that the Portland Police Bureau is managing the protests outside of Portland’s ICE facility while complying with sanctuary city laws, which state that officers will not aid federal immigration enforcement efforts. In text messages to the president, the governor called the deployment “unlawful” and “unwarranted.”General to National Guard on Portland mission: ‘We don’t get to pick and choose’

The Oregon Military Department told KOIN 6 News that the city could see boots on the ground as early as Thursday; however, military officials later said that timeline could be delayed.

In response to the deployment, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a temporary restraining order on Monday, challenging the president’s call for federal troops in Portland, saying the decision is “unlawful” and poses a “substantial risk” to its residents.

Michaela Bourgeois

Communist California Governor Gavin Newsom — who, like every Democrat in America, is running for President — has called President Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a “fascist.”

Ouch! That hurts, coming from such a pillar of integrity like Gavin Newsom, doesn’t it?

So interesting to be called a “fascist” by people who support gun confiscation and social media censorship; to be called a “racist” by people who support Black Supremacy terrorism sponsored by Black Lives Matter; to be called “domestic terrorists” by people who applaud the assassination of Charlie Kirk and fund snowflake teen thugs hilariously labeled “Antifa.” Never in human history, even with all the authoritarianism that has plagued us, have you ever witnessed the hubris, duplicity and craven dishonesty of today’s ruthless, psychopathic, totalitarian Left.

When their demise finally arrives, I hope to be around to witness it, because it will be spectacular.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Only a week before Charlie’s gruesomely broadcasted killing, a young Ukrainian immigrant, Iryna Zarutska, was stabbed to death by a repeat violent offender on public transportation in North Carolina. She bled out, terrified and alone, in front of train passengers.

Underneath the surface of economic betterment and the herculean efforts of the Trump administration to root out the rot, it’s clear that the body politic has a metastasized cancer that threatens the life of the republic. Time is short.

Thousands of Americans rejoiced at Charlie’s death. This systemic psychopathy is horrendous to behold. One flippant girl said to her dad on camera, thinking her empathetic father was the problem, “What do I care that this bad person is dead?”

TV commentators also expressed sympathy for the killer of Iryna Zarutska, with CNN’s Van Jones saying, “[W]e don’t know how to deal with people who are hurting in the way this man was hurting.”

The following passage from the book of Isaiah comes to mind:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20, New International Version)

The backdrop for this murderous rage isn’t malnutrition, hunger, or the deprivations of war. The people fomenting the violence are living, by nearly any historical measure, decadent lives. They are overfed, psychologically indulged, technologically sophisticated, and materially rich. Most have families who love them. And yet, simmering rage and grievous resentment infect their minds and their actions. The violence within is spilling over and they kill with callous disregard, while their compatriots cheer them on — uploading TikToks of themselves grinning with glee — so confident are they that they’re right, justified, and, worse, that everyone agrees with them.

The faces of the murderers are not sad or regretful. They’re not ashamed. They’re confident and defiant.

There will be more targeted killings of conservatives. The killers believe they’re killing “fascists” and feel entirely justified in doing so. 

Remember COVID? Remember how nearly half of Democrats were willing to take children away from their parents if the parents weren’t vaccinated? Remember how leftists imposed mandates — in workplaces ranging from the military and government to hospitals and private businesses — requiring employees to submit to an untested vaccine or be fired? Even so-called conservatives and libertarians made the argument that Americans did have a choice — it was their choice not to have a job. Those in power hated anyone who refused to comply, and, if someone died, they shrugged and took pleasure in it.

This anti-American, anti-Christian malady is not new. It is not isolated. It is not exclusive to young, disturbed trans kids.

We have a nation of rich, spoiled, aggrieved people. Teachers — from preschool instructors to college professors — along with the media and Democrat leadership have encouraged this wrath and inculcated young minds with communist propaganda disguised as DEI. Leftist organizations, including Open Society Foundations, Tides, Ford, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as funders like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Reid Hoffman, have helped shape and mold these disaffected people. 

Antifa is now militarized, organized, and present in every state. Black Lives Matter destroyed cities, and now their founders live in luxury. SSRI-addled aging hippies, looking to recreate their halcyon youth, fuel this insanity — bowing to BLM, protesting government firings, and parading around in pink pussy hats. The whole of the Left — from the Democrat Party, which is increasingly overtly socialist (hello, Mamdani), to the militarized activist wing — is insane. Most have been diagnosed with mental disorders and are medicated. It’s not helping.

America is also now home to millions of unassimilated illegal and legal aliens. The Trump administration has been heroically expelling the criminal element, and illegal immigration has largely been halted. But what to do about the legal immigrants who, rather than become Americans, cling to their own ideologies and refuse to assimilate?

The Biden administration — the third term of Obama — did incalculable damage. The scope and breadth of it is overwhelming. Tens of thousands of children who entered the country illegally and unaccompanied did not show up for their court dates. Many were found as sex slaves and indentured servants “working off” their trip to America. 

Democrats were importing slaves. Read that sentence again.

How do you combat the minds that believe this is acceptable? This is a spiritual problem with heinous real-world implications.

The first thing a doctor must do when a patient is sick is prevent death. The Trump administration is going after root causes, but it must also dismantle and stop Antifa, as well as go after its associated organizations and funders, immediately. Just as there are thousands of criminal illegal immigrants and thousands of hardcore criminals in major cities, there are brainwashed Antifa militants who have instigated violence, committed violent acts themselves, and been let go by the Democrats in power. These psychopaths need to be rounded up, tried federally, and put in prison. And their funders need to be rounded up and tried under RICO laws.

We face domestic enemies who hate America and everything she stands for. Charlie Kirk embodied these values: Christian, married, a devoted father, a defender of free speech, and a promoter of American values. He was killed because he was those things.

America cannot survive if this metastasizing rot is not stopped and removed. Here’s the thing: The cancer has spread for so long, and so much of the body is affected, that the body will inevitably be harmed in the process. It cannot escape damage. Too much healthy tissue has already been lost to the disease. What will remain after this surgery will be scarred, misshapen, less mobile, less energetic, and exhausted. Already, many on the right fret about civil liberties. They’re right to worry. But what has been occurring is not freedom. American citizens have cowered before these woke, DEI, communist bullies, and now they see Catholic children, a refugee, and Charlie Kirk murdered. They see that words cannot combat this violence.

The alternative to dealing with this demon is death.

I don’t think the center Right grasps the implications of this. While conservative influencers fight over the legacy of what Charlie Kirk built and inveigh that they will continue his courageous work on college campuses, they risk ultimate failure because they are only addressing those who share the fundamental belief in free speech and the power of persuasive words. While the Right has succeeded in winning thousands of hearts and minds — as shown by the worldwide outpouring of grief and solidarity in the wake of Charlie’s death — many on the left reject this premise entirely. They believe that hurt feelings and what they perceive as “mean words” deserve violence and death. If you disagree with me, they reason, you hate me, and you deserve to die.

When Charlie Kirk is talking and the political opposition is shooting, civil authorities who are unwilling to deal with the terrorist cells producing these killers are no different from Redcoats standing in careful formation, flummoxed by motivated Americans using guerilla tactics they dismiss as “uncivilized.” Tut-tut, how dare you? 

The enemies of Western civilization are uncivilized, godless heathens. Accept this. Do not pretend that the demon-possessed can be reasoned with or persuaded by words.

Majorie Taylor-Greene has proposed a national divorce — she concludes that the two worldviews of the Left and the Right cannot coexist and so need to be separated. But how could this be done? Our country is utterly intermingled. We are one body, for better or worse. The heinous violence on the left will not be stopped with words alone.

A demonic spirit is at work. The corruption affects the minds and actions of these killers. When Jesus met the demon-possessed, he talked to them, but then he acted, casting the demons out and sending them into pigs at their own request. The demons promptly drove the pigs over the cliff to their deaths. They want their hosts to die. To them, death is more meaningful than life.

In journal entries posted on YouTube, the Minnesota church assassin expressed regret over his decision to transition, anger at his mom for not approving of his life choices, and, ultimately, resentment at the truth: His mom had been right. Rather than admit his mistake and change his life, he chose the path of Judas: betrayal and murder, and then suicide.

Charlie Kirk’s killer had his whole life ahead of him. All good things were within his reach. He is smart, good-looking, and utterly nihilistic. Killing Charlie Kirk gave his life meaning. Rotting in jail or death by firing squad is preferable to making a life.

The enemy determines the battlefield, and they are using bullets. They have been entreated to talk, and some respond to grace with murder. To be clear, I am not seeking vigilantes or street justice, but those will come if Republicans and the president who leads them do not take these dangerous Antifa elements seriously. Rather, it is time to fully grasp that the America that the America First voters seek will not come through persuasion alone, but through elected leadership and the power of the state to impose that vision and crush violence. The Left came close to achieving total domination, and Trump’s election does not mean they have given up. Now, instead of creating CHAZ units in Portland, some are carrying out target assassinations.

But it is risible that the American people, seeking relief, will likely get none from the people they elected because those leaders lack the internal fortitude.

Reflect on this passage from Jeremiah, chapter 6:

“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:13–15, NIV)

What will happen if the sickness of progressive ideology is allowed to advance unchecked? We don’t have to wonder. Nearly every Protestant denomination has been hollowed out from within by cultural Marxists. The churches convulsed internally, and a small but dedicated minority took them over, filled them with heresy, and destroyed them in the name of gay marriage and women preachers.

Ultimately, America has a spiritual problem. It started as a Christian nation, giving glory to God and standing firm in her convictions, and a good half of the nation remains Christian today. Charlie glorified Christ in word and deed. He fought for Trump’s election, believing that Trump would use his divinely given power to steer the country back onto a healthy path.

Where Charlie was naive is that he believed persuading people toward liberal values would be enough — that this would mean conservatives in positions of authority would be willing to use the power of the government to stop the violence of the radical Left. There are limits to this approach. Jesus had to actively cast out the demons for the bodies to heal (Matthew 8:28). 

Our elected leadership must get down to the business of casting out. It is what the people voted for. This, for a time, is going to escalate social pain, but it is necessary to heal America. We must also acknowledge that America will not remain the same. It will be harmed in the process, but it will live.

Without this sort of reckoning, America is lost.

So while there is good news all around, it’s delusional to ignore the poison within. Cultural Marxists are destroying the vestiges of what made America great. And if the movement’s violent elements are not stopped by the government, in an official capacity, the country will eventually be in civil war because average Americans have far more courage of their convictions than their elected officials.

Before concluding, it’s also worth noting that the FBI did not catch Charlie Kirk’s killer. The FBI — who sat in Catholic churches and perhaps still does, who entrapped hapless rednecks to manufacture a kidnapping plot, and who sent their khaki-clad minions marching around to intimate being right-wing goofballs — could not find a killer sitting in his parents’ home. This is concerning. Is it incompetence? Is it malice? Or are the remaining agents still loyal to their Marxist masters rather than the American people?

Targeting Antifa, arresting lawbreakers, and destroying their funding mechanism: This is what MAGA voted for. Will President Donald Trump deliver? If he doesn’t, I fear that America will get a true tyrant, or that the American people will take matters into their own hands.In the meantime, the solution is to prepare one’s heart. To pray. To seek God’s face. To see clearly and not pretend. In times like these, when seeing is so difficult, that alone is an act of courage.

Melissa Mackenzie is Publisher of The American Spectator. Melissa commentates for the BBC and has appeared on Fox. Her work has been featured at The Guardian, PJ Media, and was a front page contributor to RedState.Melissa commutes from Houston, Texas to Alexandria, VA. She lives in Houston with her two sons, one daughter, and two diva rescue cats.You can follow Ms. Mackenzie on Twitter: @MelissaTweets.

Mark C. Ross

Hitler was originally democratically elected — not by a majority, but rather by a plurality, as allowed by the Weimar Republic’s constitution.  It was a turning point for all of world history.

The Nazis, being ambitious tyrants, leapt at any possible opportunity to expand their grip on Germany.  So, on February 27, 1933 — just four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as chancellor — the fire that struck the German parliament building was at least partially blamed on Bolshevik agitators.  Sound familiar?

Germany’s then-president, Paul von Hindenburg, issued a decree suspending all civil liberties in order to facilitate the rounding up and disposal of communists.  And thus, Hitler became an absolute dictator.

Today’s American Democrats have not been quite so lucky.  Hitler’s Germany was rife with a profound sense of betrayal, since the German people had been continuously told by their government that they were winning the world war.  This was added to the subsequent misery that came with Weimar’s catastrophic inflation — which was ostensibly intended to screw the Allies out of their reparations, which were defined in German marks.  This is well described in Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, in the chapter aptly titled “Waiting for Hitler.”

The days after January 6 have seen anything other than a leftist surge in the USA.  How so?  Short answer: This is America, land of the free.  No two-bit public official can suspend our civil rights, to say nothing of the obvious political incompetence that has infected today’s Democrat party.  Also, we have not been as softened up as the German people had been in the early thirties.  However, the possibility of some staged event to push us into surrendering our personal sovereignty remains in the background.

Ninety-two years after the fact, suspicion still lingers as to the details of the cause of the Reichstag fire.  Did Hitler’s minions assist in making it such a big deal?  The same is already true for the January 6 event.  FBI director Kash Patel recently confirmed that about 300 federal agents were present at the scene on that day.  Their ostensible purpose was crowd control.  Really?

Without hesitation, the Democrats moved heaven and earth to showcase January 6 as a prime example of right-wing violent extremism.  Did that impact Trump’s re-election attempt?  Wink, wink.

It is entirely reasonable to expect continuing revision of the particular details of January 6.  The dozens of alleged participants, who’ve faced criminal charges as a result, will remain as focal points of this process.  As the future of the Democrats dims, they will act out of increasing desperation.

What’s next?  Far be it for me to have any specific idea, but it can be safe to assume that whatever is in the offing will be even more stupid than what has been put out in public thus far.

Democrats fell into Trump’s trap. They are used to blaming shutdowns on Republicans. The media will always portray it that way. But what if a sizable and growing portion of the population simply doesn’t care what happens to the non-essential part of the government? Shut it down and leave it shut down. Fire them permanently. So what? It only matters to the parasites and profiteers living off the labor of others. President Trump speaks for that sizable and growing portion of the population, the ones fed up with the graft, the wealth redistribution, the two-tiered society: those who produce, those who take from the government.

Have fun with what you’ve started, you socialistic leftists.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason