Mike Rowe defends America’s aspirational spirit against Kimmel’s plumber insult, highlighting career flexibility and the American Dream.

As only TV personality and host Mike Rowe can, he embodied what makes America great. The American Dream is not just about a certain achievement like buying a home or being promoted to a particular vocation: It’s about the opportunity to dream big and aspire to higher things — or just different ones.

Of course, Rowe’s incredibly insightful commentary, which he posted to X on Sunday, was born from unfunny comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s joke that maligned the fact that a plumber — that would be former plumber, former U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, and current Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin — is now heading the agency in charge of combating terrorism.

Rowe began:

If you haven’t heard, and even if you have, Jimmy Kimmel said this about Markwayne Mullin, former Senator from Oklahoma, and our newest Secretary of Homeland Security:

“We have a plumber now protecting us from terrorism.”

Apparently, there has been some backlash. Plumbers were offended, obviously, as were parents of plumbers, spouses of plumbers, children of plumbers, and millions of people who have had a plumber show up when they needed one. Comedians were also offended, (the funny ones, anyway,) along with a surprising number of terrorists – especially those with access to hot and cold running water. However, in spite of the ensuing kerfuffle, @jimmykimmel doubled down.

Yeah, Kimmel loves to do that, because he knows he’s bulletproof. Remember when people called for his job, and two of his syndicators stopped airing his show, after he made those terrible comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination? All Kimmel did was send out the Bat Signal, and his leftist friends in Hollywood cried censorship. Kimmel gave a half-baked fauxpology, then went right back to business as usual: being a terrible comedian, but a great left-wing activist.

Here’s how Kimmel doubled down on his stupidity.

“I’m not upset that the head of Homeland Security was a plumber,” he said, “I’m upset that he isn’t still a plumber.” He further elucidated by adding, “I wouldn’t put a plumber in charge of Homeland Security for the same reason I wouldn’t call a five-star general to pull a rat out of my toilet, OK? We all have our areas of expertise.”

 

Rowe makes a great point on this: Being offended is always a choice, and from my perspective, we live in an age where people think having thin skin is a badge of honor. Rowe is Gen X like me, so insults like this roll off our backs. But Rowe does make the point about what he did find offensive about Kimmel’s ignorant opinion.

But I am a tad butt hurt by the suggestion that skilled workers should never evolve into something new, and that competence is somehow limited to one vocation. Obviously, expertise and skill are important. If I need a new kidney, I’d prefer a doctor do the surgery, not a late-night talk show host. But if the doctor in question used to host a talk show, why would I hold that against him?

Exactly. Dr. Ben Carson was a brilliant brain surgeon, but he chose to stop doing that and enter the political space, running for president in 2016, becoming Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump administration, and now serving as a special advisor in this second Trump administration. So, is Dr. Carson any less competent at any of these professions because of his choice to aspire to be something different?

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) won her seat in 2018 after working in sales and retail fashion, and then founding her own marketing and event management company that she successfully ran for over 30 years. Blackburn is the first woman to have been elected as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee. That’s a huge aspiration, and she achieved it. After winning re-election in 2024, Blackburn decided she aspired to become Tennessee’s governor, and if the winds hold, she may just achieve this. So, does Kimmel wish to insult her for moving ably from being a successful businesswoman to U.S. Senator, and now potentially a governor?

He really needs to go sit down.

Rowe brought his point home with the 2016 presidential debate, when then-Senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio responded to a debate question by saying that “America needed to get shop class back into high schools,” and “What our country needs are more welders and fewer philosophers.”

Rowe continued,

I don’t think the current shortage of welders has anything to do with an overabundance of philosophers. In fact, I think it’s a mistake to promote one vocation at the expense of the other. What we really need in this country, are more welders who can talk intelligently about Aristotle, and more philosophers who can run an even bead. More Generals, in other words, who can fix their own toilets, and more plumbers who can hold a powerful government job.

Amen to that. Then Rowe laid out Mullin’s trajectory, something that Democrats and the Left always omit when complaining about his ascension.

This is what Mullin did. He was a private citizen who mastered an essential skill and then turned that skill into a multi-million-dollar company that employed a lot of people and served a lot of customers. That gave him the freedom to do other things with his life, including a career in public service which got him into Congress, where he’s spent the last eleven years doing whatever Congressmen do. Now, he has a very consequential position in the Cabinet of the current administration.

Boom. If anything, Mullin is the embodiment of someone who not only aspires to become more, but also to be a person of agility and flexibility. As the adage goes, “Blessed are the flexible, because they’ll never be broken.” If Kimmel did finally get fired from his gig, he probably wouldn’t know how to pivot to anything new or different. He’s a small man, and small people only see their little elitist box.

Rowe brings it home beautifully. It’s not about a profession or competence in that profession: It’s about the American Dream, a dream that you can continue to pursue until you draw your last breath.

Is that not the embodiment of the American Dream? I get that Jimmy Kimmel might have a problem with Mullin’s politics, but what possible objection could he have about the trajectory of his career, or his desire to do more than one thing with his life?

The only sensible thing to do in the wake of a moment this tone deaf, is remind America that the skills gap is wide, and getting wider. The shortage of skilled tradespeople is now headline news and closing it is nothing less than a matter of national security. This year, my foundation has set aside $10 million dollars to help train the next generation of plumbers, and lots of other essential workers. I’m talking about hundreds of thousands of AI-proof, six figure jobs that don’t require a four-year degree, waiting to be filled. The money is currently available to anyone who wants to master a useful skill at https://mikeroweworks.org. Apply today.

As for those of you genuinely offended by Kimmel’s comments, consider expressing your disappointment with a modest donation to mikeroweWORKS. Our work ethic scholarship is making a real difference, and your money will be well spent, I promise. The donate button is big and red and hard to miss, at https://mikeroweworks.org

Excellent way to promote the power of aspiration, and how anyone who pursues their dream can always benefit from a little help.

That is what I love about being an American and pursuing my American Dream. My maternal grandmother and grandfather were sharecroppers who decided they wanted to aspire to a better life. Those aspirations took them out of the fields into working the “better” jobs at that time for Southern Blacks: a maid and a bellman. They moved from Tyronza, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee, and then to Chicago, Illinois, joining that Great Migration from South to North that many took during that time because they aspired to something more. I am a product of that aspirational push, and I am always dreaming bigger and reaching higher. While the golden handcuffs of being a software and document specialist in law firms might be fine for most people, I knew from a young age I wanted to be a writer, and through fits, starts, and many detours, that is what I am doing today.

Always aspiring to go higher is what the American Dream is all about. People like Mike Rowe, DHS Secretary Mullin, and I get it. Poor souls like Jimmy Kimmel never will.

By Jennifer Oliver O’Connell  | 7:24 PM on March 29, 2026

Jennifer Oliver O’Connell (As the Girl Turns) is a contributor at Redstate and other publications. Jennifer writes on Politics, Pop Culture, and the American story, with occasional detours into Reinvention, Yoga, and Food. You can read more about Jennifer’s world at her As the Girl Turns website. You can also follow her on X and Facebook.

Story leads: info@asthegirlturns.com.

Source: Mike Rowe Hits It on the Head: Kimmel Didn’t Insult Plumbers; He Insulted America’s Aspirational Spirit – RedState

Conservatives are not being hypocritical when they say it’s okay for Cesar Chavez statues to go, but other civic statues to stay standing.

I’ve previously written that the United States should cancel Cesar Chavez and remove his images from the public square. Regardless of the alleged heinous crimes against women and children, he was a dedicated leftist committed to the union labor movement against farmers (and consumers) who didn’t respect free enterprise or free trade among the citizenry.

For me, this blunt decision brings up a larger question: If we should feel no compunction about tearing down Chavez, does that make conservatives in particular and common-sense Americans in general hypocrites because we opposed leftists removing other statues?

What’s the standard? Where do we draw the line? To form a more perfect union, should we scrap all the statues?

The slippery slope of social policy is real. We shouldn’t idly tear down everything we don’t like today just because our standards, knowledge, or public opinion have changed over the decades or even centuries past.

Furthermore, we must not ignore the subversive undercurrent about statute removals: Marxist agents in this country want to wipe out our entire history. Consider George Orwell’s devastating yet accurate maxim from 1984:

He who controls the present controls the past

He who controls the past, controls the future.

The important point, then, is to remember the past, not erase it. The same communistic miscreants who tried to erase two and a half centuries of American history also push climate alarmism, open borders, LGBT ideology, and collectivist ownership of property. They cannot succeed if the American people remember and revere their country, past and present.

In 2020, communists exploited the George Floyd Riots to erase America’s history, accomplished symbolically by damaging and destroying statues and monuments throughout the country. Even the Boston memorials recognizing President Abraham Lincoln and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War did not escape vandalism. Under the guise of erasing white supremacy, left-wing goons trashed, demolished, and destroyed our nation’s heritage, including those who undermined the perverse notion that one man’s value depended on his skin color.

What about the Confederate statues, conservatives? Should they have remained? That discussion certainly brings up complex issues!

Lincoln Project critics of Trump mocked the outrage from conservatives about the tearing down of statues. They posted a painting of colonists tearing down the statues of King George III at the outbreak of the American Revolution, then mockingly called them “Antifa” to deride the rest of us who didn’t want our country’s heritage removed. In effect, they dismissed the robust opposition to our nation’s heritage getting torn down, suggesting that it’s part of the American character to topple the monuments.

So, what should the standards be? We cannot—nor should we—remove all the statues, monuments, and commemorations. And yet we should have no problem with the removal of Cesar Chavez from the public square?

Here’s how I look at it:

One. We need to commemorate and celebrate those individuals and groups who built our country. Christopher Columbus is a no-brainer. He literally found the Americans!

Our American Founding Fathers should also remain. Establishing this great Republic on principles of ordered liberty, they pledged their lives and their sacred honor.

Critics will fault some of them for owning slaves during their fight for America, but we are not honoring demi-gods. Rather, they are heroes of our nation who accomplished great deeds despite their failings. Furthermore, some of the Founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, took great pains to try to end slavery before, during, and after the American Revolution. As the colonial governor of Virginia, he passed legislation to ease the process for the manumission of slaves. Unfortunately, a future governor repealed his efforts, but the will and hope of Jefferson and the patriots of his age pressed for the abolition of slavery.

Two. We should celebrate historical figures who improved the United States, or who helped steer this country from crisis to restoration. The Abolitionist movement and its adherents deserve our respect. President Abraham Lincoln should not be removed, either, but rather honored, even more than George Washington, in my view, because while Washington laid the groundwork for a new country, Lincoln overcame the contradiction of slavery to its eradication, and he kept the country together despite violent efforts to achieve its disunion.

Three. People of service who loved America should be honored. I don’t think this needs a great deal of explanation.

So, in general, when is it appropriate to tear down the statues?

One. If the man or woman being honored engaged in heinous crimes (heinous at the time they were committed, unlike slavery, which was legal), which were then covered up and revealed only later to the public—and those crimes are of such a horrific magnitude that no one would have commemorated them if everyone had been aware of those deeds.

There’s nothing wrong with tearing down the Cesar Chavez statues, presuming that all the allegations are true. Also consider when Penn State University removed the statue of famous football coach Joe Paterno after the horrid truth about his assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, came out. That would-be philanthropist had abused thousands of children, all while running volunteer services for kids, and reports indicated that JoePa knew all about it and covered it up.

Frankly, it seems odd to me that any institution would put up statues honoring someone still alive. At least wait until the person of interest has passed away, when a committee or a historian can review his life and work and decide whether to honor him.

Two. When tyrannies fall and the corrupt, oppressive regimes of those dictators collapse, every citizen should gleefully demolish their former rulers’ physical tributes.

When the citizens of the Eastern Bloc countries were freed from communism, right away, they began tearing down and throwing away all the icons of Communism. To this day, I love looking at the trash cans and dustbins filled with portraits and busts of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, all the other vile collectivists who wrought a veritable hell on earth. This principle justifies our American forebearers tearing down the statues of King George III, as well—So take that, Lincoln Project!

Three. If the man or woman being honored did not actually accomplish anything, or if the mythos around the individual is false. Most Americans are not ready for this tough discussion, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not the freedom fighter, civil rights hero, or upstanding Christian minister that history (or rather progressive PR) makes him out to be. The whole truth about the man would fill another article. For now, follow historian Chad Jackson on Instagram to learn more.

One thorny question: the statues of the Confederate forces? Should they be torn down?

Those commemorations were erected in part to help the country heal. American military barracks received the names of Confederate generals for this reason, too.

Those memorials should remain as a testimony—and a reminder—that the Greatest, Freest country on earth held together despite a horrific civil war. Most countries never survive such a terrible conflict.

But we did.

That’s what statues and monuments are for: to remind us of our history, remember the good, and inspire us for future great exploits.

Arthur Schaper | March 30, 2026

Arthur Schaper is the Field Director of the International Pro-Family Group MassResistance.

In his spare time, he is a writer and commentator on topics both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A life-long Southern California resident, Arthur currently lives in Torrance, CA.

Source: Which Statues Should Stay? Which Should Go? – American Thinker

We are capable of winning this fight.

When I write about threats to Western civilization, I struggle to find the sweet spot between describing the myriad problems we face and my firm belief that we are capable of winning this fight.  I do not think all is lost.  I do, however, think that it is important for as many people as possible to recognize what our enemies are doing.

When we are being attacked from all sides — culturally, politically, economically, socially, parentally, morally, religiously, psychologically — it is sometimes difficult to recognize that these attacks are all connected.  Those who wish to destroy Western civilization use every available weapon to hurt us.  When we concentrate on nothing but “bad news,” though, we talk ourselves into premature defeat.  We psych ourselves out.  We give our enemies greater power over us than they have.

We cannot bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening.  We also cannot allow what is happening to intimidate us into silence or cow us into submission.  Ideally, we will become more vocal in articulating exactly what our enemies are doing, find comfort in the growing chorus of voices urging resistance, and become only more confident in our defense of Western civilization.

Sounding the alarm is not a call for surrender.  Nor should hearing the alarm cause us to tremble.  This is the time for courage and determination.  When our Western ancestors faced similar dangers in the past, they did not hide or run away.  They prepared themselves for hardship.  They prayed.  They retrieved hidden swords from thatched roofs, straw beds, and bales of hay.

In broad strokes, we know what’s happening.  Open borders policies in North America and Europe are sabotaging social cohesion.  Christianity is under attack.  Reason, rationality, and scientific inquiry have been abandoned.  Our shared history is continuously rewritten in ways that turn our ancestors into villains.  Enlightenment ideals fostering individual sovereignty, personal freedom, and maximum liberty have been eroded by the pernicious encroachments of collectivism, Marxism, socialism, and communism.  Virtue is mocked, while sin is celebrated.  Unchecked desire, envy, and instant gratification have supplanted temperance, humility, and self-restraint.  The indulgence of personal fantasy has superseded the pursuit of eternal truth.  Schools, governments, and cultural institutions preach a false and destructive religion requiring Westerners to repent for their “climate change sins” and embrace the doctrines of “multiculturalism” and “diversity” as tenets of leftism’s “faith.”

Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek spoke for many Westerners who have mourned Ramos’s death when she wrote: “The system didn’t fail her, it actively betrayed her.  This girl’s tragic story is a perfect illustration of how the establishment feels about European women.  They first endanger you and then when you need help and cost them too much money, they push you to your grave.”

Discarding the moral and intellectual enlightenment obtained over centuries of work and contemplation, today’s governments have abandoned the hallmarks of Western civilization and reanimated the rotting corpses of paganism, hedonism, idolatry, and child sacrifice.  While Western citizens desperately seek civilizational renewal, Western governments do nothing but fan the flames of the growing inferno.

Criminals who have no legal right to be in the United States — including those who fled criminal prosecutions in their native homelands — go on to commit new crimes while here.  Violent foreign nationals who should not be here have raped and murdered far too many Americans.  Negligent foreign nationals who should not be here have killed far too many Americans while driving cars and commercial trucks across the country.  Far too many schools have been forced to figure out how to teach illegal alien children who cannot speak English or easily assimilate.  Far too many towns and cities have been forced into insolvency while providing ever-expanding social services for illegal aliens whom American taxpayers cannot afford.  Far too many hospitals are overrun with illegal alien patients who delay treatment for and drive up the healthcare costs of Americans.  And now the Democrat Party wants to pay the tens of millions of foreigners who illegally reside here “reparations” for feeling “unsafe.”

In responding to the pro-foreigner / anti-American policies of Representative Jayapal and her Democrat colleagues, one online commenter concluded, “Sometimes seems like only a civil war will save this country.”  That’s a sentiment widely held throughout the West these days.

Last week, a European Parliament conference concluded that the whole continent is headed for civil war.  One professor argued that “the foundations of Western self-belief, prosperity, and competency” are now broken and that Europe is “on a track for a peasant revolt.”  In response to Western governments’ betrayal of Western civilization, there will be an “uprising in which the ruled seek to punish their rulers for violating their obligations under the social contract, and for changing the rules of the game against their wishes.”  Most of the politicians and academics who participated in the conference do not believe that Europe will survive this century.  Although they expressed various opinions about how the coming chaos will unfold, they reached a common conclusion: “It will be bloody.”

Those of us who wish to defend the West should not scurry and hide.  We should recognize the moment and prepare ourselves accordingly.  Our enemies are everywhere.  That’s okay.  We are everywhere, too.

J.B. Shurk | March 30, 2026

Source: Defending Western Civilization from Its Domestic Enemies – American Thinker

Imagine your daughter being pulled out of math class by a school official and told she must leave her faith at the door – while the very same school encourages other students to walk out for anti-ICE protests.

That’s not hypothetical. That’s exactly what happened to our client at a middle school in Washington state – in a district with a troubling pattern of violating the Constitution.

And we know this district well – because the ACLJ has already held it accountable once before.

Years ago, when our client was just a second grader in this same district, school officials searched her backpack every morning, treating Christian materials like contraband. Simply sharing her faith was enough to trigger daily inspections.

We stepped in. We took action. And we forced the district to back down.

After we sent a demand letter, the school district entered into a formal written agreement – explicitly affirming our client’s constitutional right to share her faith.

However, during a recent math class, the vice principal entered the room, pulled our client aside, and told her she was not allowed to distribute Christian Gospel tracts – even to willing classmates.

Our client responded with a question that cuts to the heart of this issue: Why are other students allowed to express their views – but she is not?

The vice principal’s answer was stunning in its candor, telling our client directly that students may share opinions, but not religious beliefs. 

We’ve seen this thousands of times at the ACLJ, yet it never fails to shock. A public school official – in the United States of America – told a child that her faith is a category of speech that the school can simply exclude. This is textbook viewpoint discrimination, and it is flat-out unconstitutional.

But it gets worse. In the very same conversation, the vice principal pointed to the school’s practice of allowing students to leave campus during school hours to participate in anti-ICE protests as an example of perfectly acceptable expression. Political protest – permitted. Quietly sharing a Gospel tract with a classmate who asked for one – forbidden. The double standard could not be more explicit – or more illegal.

The First Amendment does not allow public school officials to pick and choose which viewpoints deserve protection. The Supreme Court has made this unmistakably clear: Students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” 

Viewpoint discrimination – treating speech less favorably because of the perspective it expresses – is among the most serious constitutional violations a government actor can commit. And this school has now committed it twice against the same child.

The ACLJ sent a formal demand letter to the school superintendent. We are requiring the district to respond in writing and that response must include immediate, unequivocal written assurances on two points: First, that our client will be permitted to share her faith and distribute tracts to willing classmates during non-instructional time without any further interference from school officials; and second, that she will be allowed to form and operate a Christian student club on the exact same terms and conditions that apply to every other non-curriculum-related student group on campus.

Jordan Sekulow | Mar 27, 2026

Source: SHOCK: Christian Girl Subjected to Daily Backpack Searches, Scolded for Sharing Her Faith in Jesus

Take action with the ACLJ. Add your name to the petition: Defeat the Left’s War on Freedom.

On Sunday, a new statue of Christopher Columbus was placed on the White House grounds. It’s a 13-foot-tall, one-ton marble masterpiece now sitting just outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the West Wing.

In announcing the news, the administration stated on X, “In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he’s honored as such for generations to come.”

Designed and crafted by Maryland sculptor Will Hemsley, the statue is a replica of the one that anarchists threw into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the summer of 2020. Back during that rage-fueled season, unhinged provocateurs were lashing out over cultural claims of racial injustice. Along with the desecration and destruction of the Columbus statue, more than 30 monuments were torn down or removed.

Ronald Reagan was president in 1984 when the original monument was dedicated. During his remarks just outside the “Gateway” to Baltimore’s “Little Italy,” he stated:

When Columbus discovered America, he set in force a motion mightier than the world had ever known. People came here from every corner of the planet to be free and to improve their lot and that of their family. Well, we got off course a few years ago, but now we’ve set the good ship Columbia back sailing in the right direction. And I thank you for letting me be here to help you honor the man who started it all, Christopher Columbus.

History revisionists with an agenda shade truth or ignore inconvenient facts altogether. One of the popular anti-Columbus narratives is that the sailing explorer was driven by greed and a desire to exploit others. In fact, he was a devout believer in Jesus Christ. He saw himself as a missionary in search of new people and new pathways to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Those goals and Columbus’ pioneering accomplishments make the mere mortal man worthy of becoming a monument.

In the early days of America, modest monuments were constructed to acknowledge both people and turning points in history. The Bunker Hill Monument marked the beginning of the American Revolution. Engraved on the 221-foot granite obelisk is a phrase taken from Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation. It reads, “His hand that made all things of nothing.” It’s taken from his larger observation that God can do great and mighty things from very little.

The Washington Monument obelisk was intended to honor America’s first president and his noble ideals, especially his commitment to freedom and independence. At the very top, facing east to receive the day’s first rays of sunshine, are two Latin words: “Laus Deo” or “Praise be to God”.

Not every statue or monument is intended to communicate such firmness of faith, but many of the men and women carved out of stone or whose images have been hewn out of metal were strong and unapologetic Christian believers. In most cases, those testimonies were not ancillary to their greatness but the driving force behind it.

Replacing or restoring statues that were vandalized or recklessly torn down is a helpful step in reminding Americans about the heroes on whose shoulders we stand. But simply returning to the status quo by putting back up old monuments won’t necessarily tell the full story of America’s storied history.

That’s why President Trump, in conjunction with America’s semiquincentennial, has announced plans for the “Garden of American Heroes” in Washington, D.C. in an area just south of the National Mall. It would include 250 life-size statues made of marble, granite, bronze, copper and brass.

Officials have stated historical figures like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin will be featured, but the Garden will also include a broad spectrum of other personalities ranging from Harriet Tubman to Babe Ruth to Walt Disney and Thomas Edison.

As Christians, we recognize that Jesus of Nazareth was the one and only perfect person who has ever walked the earth. As such, we don’t bow down or make idols of anyone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge, honor, and learn from the achievements of others.

In an era when historic monuments and statues have been toppled or torn down in protest, the rising generation deserves to know more about the men and women whose faith and sacrifice helped build our country.

by Paul Batura | March 24, 2026 | Culture

Source: Making Statues Great Again – Daily Citizen

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

Source: Faith and Grades: Could Religion Be the Missing Piece in Student Success?

Waiting for accountability in Trump’s second term.

For nearly a decade, Americans were told that powerful institutions had been weaponized against a sitting president and his supporters. Intelligence agencies, federal law enforcement, and political operatives were accused of bending the machinery of government toward partisan ends.

The promise from President Donald Trump was clear: expose it, clean it up, and drain the swamp.

A recent Rasmussen Reports survey suggests that frustration may be growing. Approval ratings for FBI Director Kash Patel are slipping. Only 40 percent of likely voters view Patel favorably. Even more striking, just 32 percent believe he is performing better than previous FBI directors, while 37 percent think he is doing worse.

For the mainstream press, this is just another fluctuation in Washington approval ratings. For many Trump supporters, however, it reflects something deeper — the growing perception that promises of accountability have yet to materialize.

It’s transactional.

He later documented what he viewed as systemic corruption in his book Government Gangsters, arguing that unelected bureaucracies had accumulated enormous power with little public accountability.

In other words, Patel understands the problem.

That’s precisely why expectations for him are so high.

For years, Trump and his allies faced a barrage of investigations, subpoenas, indictments, and televised hearings. The Russia collusion probe. The Mueller investigation. Two impeachments. Criminal indictments. The unprecedented FBI search of Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago conducted by the FBI.

Supporters watched these events unfold in real time.

Yet controversies involving Hillary Clinton’s email server, Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, and Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop appeared — at least to critics — to receive far gentler treatment.

Whether one agrees with that interpretation or not, millions of Americans clearly believe there was a double standard.

Trump returned to office promising to correct it.

But visible accountability has been scarce.

There have been no sweeping prosecutions tied to the origins of the Russia investigation. No major trials involving alleged surveillance abuses. No public reckoning for the officials accused of misusing federal power.

After years of relentless investigations aimed at Trump, the lack of reciprocal accountability is glaring.

Trump’s political base doesn’t want rhetoric.

It wants results.

But the frustration goes beyond the Russia probe.

During the campaign, Trump promised unprecedented transparency on a series of long-running controversies that many Americans believe were never fully explained.

These include the still-classified records related to the September 11 attacks, unanswered questions surrounding the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, the long-promised audit of America’s gold reserves at Fort Knox, and the complete investigative files surrounding convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his mysterious death inside a federal jail.

There are also lingering questions about the two assassination attempts against Trump during the 2024 campaign — incidents that shocked the country but remain only partially explained.

Each of these issues carries its own history of secrecy, redactions, and incomplete disclosures.

Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” created the expectation that Americans would finally see the full record.

So far, that reckoning has not arrived.

That helps explain Patel’s declining numbers. It is not necessarily distrust.

Many supporters still see him as one of the few people in Washington who genuinely understands how the system works — and how it may have been abused.

But that familiarity invites an obvious question:

If he knows what happened, why hasn’t anyone been held accountable?

To be fair, there are institutional constraints.

The FBI cannot arrest people simply to satisfy political impatience. Cases must withstand courtroom scrutiny, often before judges who may already be skeptical of politically charged prosecutions. A weak case would collapse quickly and likely strengthen the very institutions critics believe have been corrupted.

There are also legal realities. Many of the controversies that inflamed political debate occurred eight or nine years ago. Federal statutes of limitations may already have expired for some offenses unless prosecutors can prove continuing conspiracies or obstruction.

Those constraints make sweeping prosecutions far more complicated than campaign speeches suggest.

Still, politics operates as much on perception as on procedure.

Trump was indicted. He was fingerprinted. His home was searched — even his wife’s personal belongings examined during the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Supporters saw the spectacle firsthand.

When no comparable accountability appears on the other side, restraint can easily be interpreted as protection rather than prudence.

Patel may believe the FBI must first be stabilized before it can be transformed. Internal reforms, new investigative standards, and rebuilding institutional credibility may matter more than prosecutions that look backward.

That approach may be prudent. But it is not what many voters expected.

In politics, timing matters.

If Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterm elections, many investigative efforts will stall. Should the White House change hands in 2028, the likelihood of additional disclosures would disappear entirely.

Files will be sealed. Witnesses will fade from public view. Political priorities will shift.

History shows that Washington has an extraordinary ability to bury uncomfortable truths beneath layers of bureaucracy.

And once buried deeply enough, they rarely reemerge.

The Rasmussen numbers should be viewed less as a verdict on Kash Patel than as a warning flare. Trump supporters elevated him precisely because they believed he understood how federal power had been misused. If accountability never arrives, voters may conclude that the system cannot be reformed from within.

For millions of Americans who spent years watching investigations aimed at one side of the political aisle, the question is becoming unavoidable.

If the swamp was supposed to be drained, why does it still look so healthy?

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D. is a Colorado ophthalmologist who writes frequently about medicine, science, and public policy.

Follow Brian at Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack. Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph and email brianjoondeph@gmail.com.

Brian C. Joondeph | March 23, 2026

Source: The Swamp Still Looks Pretty Healthy – American Thinker

Ruth’s Chris enforces a business casual dress code, sparking online debate about manners and standards.

“David! Take off that Plotch!”

Orders were only given maybe twice in my life to me by my mother because if I didn’t take my hat off, I would feel the consequences, if you know what I mean.

Ruth’s Chris Steak House simply reminded their guests that they run a kind of high-end place, not a dive bar, asking for business casual attire. No gym wear, no tank tops, and no offensive graphics. Oh, and take your bloody hat off in the dining room or sit at the bar.

They’re not asking anything crazy, just basic respect for the atmosphere people are paying a fortune to enjoy.

And guess what happened?

The left and the internet had a total meltdown. People acted like  Ruth’s Chris had just banned breathing. Then Chili’s jumped in with a snarky post saying their only dress code is that guests must be dressed.

A chain restaurant built around burgers and margaritas took a shot at a steakhouse for having standards. The hypocrisy is thicker than their queso.

Ruth’s Chris made clear their policy reflects the experience they intend to provide, which includes maintaining an environment that matches the price point and expectations of their guests.

This entire episode exposes how deranged parts of our culture have become. To many of our friends on the left these days, I’m apparently a male chauvinist because I open doors for women, help carry heavy bags, and still say, “Please, may I?” and “Thank you.”

I taught my daughters those same habits without even realizing how much it mattered. Years ago, we stopped for gas in southern Ohio during a wedding trip. They used proper manners with the cashier, who stopped what she was doing, praised how well-mannered they were, and credited their upbringing. That moment sticks with me because it shows how rare basic courtesy has become.

I can’t take credit for the upbringing because, quite frankly, my parents quietly demanded politeness, so that’s how I live, and my girls paid attention.

Captain Cons, writing at Barstool Sports, praised Ruth’s Chris for pushing back hard against the slide and trying to bring standards back into everyday life. This reaction resonated because it tapped into something people recognize but rarely say out loud.

I, for one, am thrilled about this even if it’s been a rule for a while. Unless you’re new around here, you know I am in favor of enforcing guardrails on our society. I don’t need to dive deep into the sociological impacts of how we speak, dress, and act, but plenty of folks far smarter than me have done the research. The research says if we comport ourselves better in public, society improves.

I am not out here trying to be the manners police or the fashion police or the gentleman police.

It isn’t accidental that standards have largely disappeared; they’ve been chipped away, mocked, and treated as optional until almost nothing remains.

The loudest critics of the dress code often demand respect in every other setting, where they expect rules, accommodations, and sensitivity when it benefits them. Ask for a simple level of effort in return, like dressing appropriately for a near high-end restaurant (I know there are very high-end food places, but I’m not sure where Ruth’s Chris rates—for me, very high-end!), and suddenly it becomes oppression, back of the bus, y’all. That contradiction doesn’t need analysis; it speaks for itself.

Ruth’s Chris didn’t create a problem; leadership enforced a standard that used to be understood without explanation, a choice that exposed how far expectations have slipped.

Chili’s can keep posting jokes, and social media can keep spinning, but none of it changes the core issue: standards only disappear when people stop defending them. The reaction to a basic dress code says more about the critics than the restaurant.

And it’s not flattering.

David Manney | 8:15 PM on March 22, 2026

Source: Ruth’s Chris Asks Adults to Dress Like Adults, and the Internet Has a Full Meltdown – PJ Media

Graphic: Photograph of a Workman on the Framework of the Empire State Building. National Archives and Records Administration. Public Domain.

To restore the American mind, we must first restore the American hand

In every age, a nation reveals its true priorities not by what it proclaims, but by what it preserves. Today, as American education drifts further into abstraction—into identity, narrative, and self-construction—one domain remains stubbornly anchored to reality: the trades.

Here, in workshops and training yards, in welding bays and engine rooms, a different philosophy endures. It is older than the university, older than the credential, older even than the republic itself. It is the philosophy of making—of confronting the world not as an idea to be interpreted, but as a force to be engaged.

The modern educational system has largely abandoned this philosophy. Over the past several decades, vocational training was quietly demoted, then stigmatized, and finally displaced. The message was clear: success lay not in building, but in credentialing; not in mastering a craft, but in acquiring a degree. High school shop classes disappeared. Apprenticeships faded. The transmission of practical knowledge—once passed from hand to hand, from generation to generation—was broken.

In its place arose a new model of advancement: one centered not on competence, but on presentation. Students are now trained to curate themselves—to assemble identities, narratives, and affiliations that signal value within institutional frameworks. The question has shifted from What can you do? to How can you position yourself?

But reality has not changed its terms.

This is why the trades have become something more than a career path. They have become a refuge—a last institutional bastion where truth is still enforced by the material world itself.

It is precisely this confrontation with reality that produces the qualities once associated with American know-how: precision, discipline, resilience, and self-reliance. These are not abstract virtues. They are forged through repeated engagement with resistance—through trial, correction, and eventual mastery.

Today, much of that ecosystem has eroded. Regulatory complexity, economic consolidation, and cultural shifts have reduced the number of pathways through which practical knowledge can be transmitted. In many places, trade schools now serve as the primary remaining institutions where these skills are taught in a structured and accessible way.

At the same time, the broader economy is beginning to reveal the consequences of their decline. Employers across multiple sectors report persistent shortages of skilled labor. Technical roles go unfilled. Projects are delayed. Costs rise—not because demand has vanished, but because competence has become scarce.

This scarcity is not accidental. It is the result of a system that has systematically deprioritized the development of real-world skills in favor of more easily measured and more easily signaled attributes.

And yet, there are signs of reversal.

A growing number of students are turning away from the traditional college path, not out of rejection of learning, but out of recognition that the promised return on credentialing has weakened. Rising tuition costs, coupled with uncertain job outcomes, have forced a reevaluation. Trade programs are experiencing renewed interest. Wages in skilled trades are rising. A new generation is rediscovering the dignity and utility of work that produces tangible results.

This shift reflects more than economic calculation. It reflects a deeper correction—a reordering of priorities.

In a culture increasingly oriented toward identity and narrative, the trades stand as a reminder that some domains remain governed by objective constraints. They reintroduce a simple but powerful standard: reality itself.

This standard has implications beyond employment. It speaks to the health of society as a whole.

A nation that loses its capacity to build—literally and figuratively—loses more than productivity. It loses its grounding. It becomes dependent, fragile, and increasingly detached from the conditions that sustain it. Conversely, a nation that cultivates competence strengthens its resilience. It restores a connection between effort and outcome, between knowledge and function.

This is not an argument against intellectual life, nor against the study of history, philosophy, or literature. The great texts that Allan Bloom sought to revive still matter. They illuminate the human condition, sharpen judgment, and provide a framework for understanding the world.

But they cannot substitute for the ability to act within that world.

The restoration of American education will not come from choosing between thought and skill, but from reintegrating them—anchoring intellectual development in practical competence and grounding abstract reasoning in real-world application.

The trades, in their current form, offer a model of that integration. They demand both understanding and execution. They reward not what is claimed, but what is demonstrated. They cultivate individuals who are accountable not to narrative, but to result. In this sense, they represent more than an educational pathway. They represent a philosophical corrective. They restore a hierarchy in which competence is not secondary, but foundational. In doing so, they preserve something essential—not just for the workforce, but for the nation itself.

Even the most celebrated figures of the digital age emerged not from the culture of credentialing, but from the culture of making. Bill Gates wrote code before institutions could define him. Mark Zuckerberg built systems that had to function or fail in real time. Elon Musk forced ideas through the discipline of physics, where rockets either launch or explode.

None advanced through narrative. They advanced through reality. The tools have changed—but the law has not. The digital veneer of the branding age is thin, and the ‘fiat identities’ we have minted are already devaluing in the marketplace of reality. We cannot narrate our way out of a crumbling bridge or an unstable power grid. In the end, a civilization is not remembered for the stories it told about itself, but for the stone it laid and the steel it tempered.

To restore the American mind, we must first restore the American hand. When we teach a child to build, we are not just giving them a career; we are giving them a tether to the truth. A nation that forgets how to build will eventually forget how to stand, but a nation that masters the material world secures its place in history. The tools change, but the law remains: we are what we create, not what we claim.

David DeMay | March 19, 2026

Source: The Last Apprentices of Reality: Trade, Truth, and the Restoration of American Know-how – American Thinker

Explore how God’s design influences culture, biology, energy, economics, justice, and life amid modern ideological conflicts.

There is a thread that runs through nearly every major debate consuming our culture today. It shows up in conversations about gender, energy, economics, justice, foreign policy—even the very meaning of life itself.

At the center of all of it is a single, unavoidable truth: God’s design works.

And the modern Left can’t stand it.

That’s not hyperbole. It’s not partisan chest-thumping. It’s the unavoidable conclusion drawn from watching how these debates actually play out in the real world. Because over and over again, when humanity aligns itself with the way God designed things to function, life flourishes. And when we rebel against that design, things fracture, decay, and ultimately collapse.

Start with the most personal and volatile debate of the moment: the human body itself.

For thousands of years, every civilization understood something simple and profound: male and female are not arbitrary categories. They are foundational realities embedded into the very fabric of human existence. Modern biology hasn’t undone that truth—it has confirmed it at the cellular level. Every cell in the human body carries the imprint of sex. XX or XY. It is written into our DNA.

And yet, in defiance of both ancient wisdom and modern science, we are told that identity can be declared apart from biology—that surgical alteration and hormonal intervention can override what is literally encoded into every cell.

But reality doesn’t bend.

Study after study has raised serious concerns about long-term physical and psychological outcomes tied to aggressive medical interventions, particularly among minors. The human body was not designed to be dismantled and reassembled according to ideology. It was designed with intention. With purpose.

Affirming that design leads to health, coherence, and stability. Rejecting it leads to confusion, fragmentation, and harm.

The same pattern emerges when you step into the energy debate.

For centuries, human flourishing has depended on reliable, scalable energy. Entire civilizations have risen on the back of it. And yet today, we are told to abandon the very systems that power modern life—not because viable alternatives are ready to fully replace them, but because ideology demands it.

The result?

Energy shortages. Rising costs. Strained infrastructure. Nations forced to make desperate compromises just to keep the lights on.

God’s design for the earth included abundance—resources to be stewarded wisely, not rejected blindly. When we pursue innovation within that framework, we thrive. When we attempt to override it with utopian fantasies detached from reality, people suffer.

Look at economics.

There are moral underpinnings to how economies function best—principles that echo biblical truths: honesty, stewardship, personal responsibility, reward for work, protection of property. These aren’t just nice ideas. They are the foundation of every prosperous society in history.

Undermine them—through corruption, redistribution schemes detached from productivity, or the erosion of accountability—and what happens?

Because economic systems are not immune from moral reality. They depend on it.

Justice tells the same story.

At the heart of true justice is the concept of the imago Dei—the belief that every human being is made in the image of God and therefore possesses inherent dignity and worth. That idea has shaped Western legal systems for centuries. It is why we value life. Why we pursue fairness. Why we punish wrongdoing.

But strip that foundation away, and justice becomes something else entirely.

It becomes selective. Political. Weaponized.

We’ve seen it play out—where theft of public resources is excused, where law enforcement is undermined, where victims are forgotten, and criminals are rationalized. When justice is no longer anchored in the inherent value of every human life, it stops being justice at all.

It becomes power.

And then there’s peace.

Peace is not achieved by appeasement. It is not sustained by weakness. History has proven that time and time again. Real peace comes through strength, clarity, and moral conviction—the willingness to confront evil and restrain it.

Scripture understood this long before modern geopolitics ever existed.

“Blessed are the peacemakers” does not mean blessed are the passive. It means blessed are those willing to do the hard, often costly work of establishing and maintaining order.

We are watching that principle play out on the world stage even now.

And finally, there is life itself.

Populations don’t survive by accident. They survive when families are formed, when children are welcomed, when communities are built around love, sacrifice, and continuity. Every civilization that has thrived has honored those truths in some form.

But reject them—devalue family, diminish the importance of children, redefine the very structure of human relationships—and the consequences are immediate.

Birth rates collapse. Loneliness rises. Societies age and weaken. Life withers. Because life flourishes when it aligns with design.

All of this points to a reality that many would rather avoid: this isn’t ultimately about politics.

It’s about authority.

God’s design stands as a constant, unchanging reference point. It doesn’t shift with cultural trends. It doesn’t bend to ideological pressure. It simply is. And that presents a problem for any worldview that insists on self-definition above all else.

Because if God’s design is true, then we are not the ultimate authors of reality. And that is the tension at the heart of it all.

The anger. The insistence. The relentless push to redefine what has always been.

It’s not just disagreement with other people. It’s resistance to the One who designed it all.

But here’s the part that should give every one of us pause—and hope.

God’s design is not arbitrary. It is not restrictive for the sake of restriction. It is ordered toward life, toward flourishing, toward love.

When we live within it, we don’t lose freedom—we find it.

When we honor it, we don’t diminish humanity—we elevate it.

And when we reject it, the consequences aren’t just philosophical.

They are painfully, unmistakably real.

Because in the end, reality always wins.

And reality, whether we acknowledge it or not, still belongs to God.

Kevin McCullough | Mar 18, 2026

Source: God’s Design: The Left’s Nightmare

The implications could be significant.

For years, the public has been told that the science of climate change is settled.  Governments, media outlets, and international organizations frequently assert that the evidence for dangerous planetary warming is overwhelming.

Yet one of the most important measurements supporting that claim is now being challenged by new scientific research.

An international team of scientists has published a study arguing that the primary method used to estimate global ocean heat content — a central metric used in modern climate assessments — may be fundamentally flawed.  If their analysis is correct, one of the pillars supporting claims of a steadily warming planet could be far less certain than widely believed.

The implications could be significant, because ocean heat measurements play a crucial role in the conclusions reached by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Why Ocean Heat Matters

In recent years, climate scientists have increasingly focused on the oceans when trying to determine whether the Earth is accumulating excess heat.

According to IPCC assessments, the Earth is currently accumulating energy at roughly 0.065 watts per square foot of the planet’s surface.  That number may sound small, but spread across the entire globe, it represents an enormous amount of heat.

But measuring something as complex as the heat content of the entire global ocean is far from simple.

The Global Network of Floating Sensors

Many of the data used to estimate ocean heat content come from the international Argo Program.

The Argo system consists of approximately 4,000 autonomous floats drifting throughout the world’s oceans.  These instruments periodically descend into the water column, measuring temperatures at various depths before resurfacing every ten days to transmit their data via satellite.

But the new study argues that the way these measurements are used to estimate global heat accumulation contains several serious weaknesses.

Vast Areas of Ocean Remain Unmeasured

Although 4,000 instruments may sound like a large number, the world’s oceans cover more than 930 million square miles.

Argo floats are typically separated by distances of 125 to 300 miles.  This means enormous regions of the ocean are never directly measured.

Instead, scientists estimate conditions in those regions using mathematical interpolation — essentially filling in gaps with computer models.

The floats themselves also introduce additional uncertainties.  While submerged, they drift with ocean currents and do not know their precise location.  Their positions are recorded only when they surface to transmit data.

As a result, temperature measurements may be assigned to locations that differ significantly from where the measurements were actually taken.

The floats also generally measure temperatures only down to depths of about 6,500 feet.  Yet much of the ocean lies far deeper.  Roughly half the ocean’s volume remains largely unobserved.

Polar regions present further difficulties, since sea ice prevents floats from operating normally.

Taken together, these limitations raise important questions about how accurately current observations represent the true thermal state of the global ocean.

The Problem of Uncertainty

The new research examines how these measurement gaps and uncertainties affect estimates of global ocean heat content.

The IPCC’s widely cited estimate suggests the Earth is gaining energy at about 0.065 watts per square foot.

But when the researchers recalculated the uncertainty surrounding that figure, they found something striking: The true uncertainty may exceed ±0.09 watts per square foot.  In statistical terms, this means the estimated warming signal could be indistinguishable from zero.

That does not prove the Earth is not warming.  But it does mean that current observational data may not be capable of measuring the planetary energy imbalance with the precision often claimed.

A Deeper Scientific Issue

The paper also touches on a more fundamental theoretical problem that has been debated among physicists for years.

Temperature describes the state of a system at a particular location and time.  Averaging temperatures across vastly different regions of a complex system that is not in thermodynamic equilibrium can produce numbers that may lack clear physical meaning.

The Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are precisely such systems.

Some researchers have long argued that global temperature averages and related metrics may therefore be less physically meaningful than commonly assumed.

The new study extends this critique to calculations of global ocean heat content.

The Policy Implications

Why does this matter?  Because climate policy is increasingly being built on the assumption that scientists possess precise measurements of the planet’s energy balance.

Governments are redesigning energy systems, imposing regulations on industry, and directing trillions of dollars in investment based on those assessments.  If the foundational measurements behind those assessments turn out to be far more uncertain than believed, the policy implications could be substantial.

Scientific debate should not be viewed as a threat to science.  Measuring data is how science progresses.  Yet the public discussion of climate change often discourages open examination of underlying assumptions and measurements.

When new research raises fundamental questions about key metrics used in climate assessments, those questions deserve serious attention.

The climate debate is often presented as settled.  But as this new study illustrates, some of the most important measurements used to support that conclusion may still be subject to significant scientific uncertainty.

Mark Keenan | March 18, 2026

Mark Keenan is a former United Nations technical expert and an independent writer on science, technology, political economy, and human freedom.  He is the author of Climate CO2 Hoax, Godless Fake Science, The AI Illusion, and The Debt Machine.  He publishes essays at markgerardkeenan.substack.com and comments on X (@TheMarkGerard).

Source: New Study Challenges Climate Establishment’s Key Warming Metric – American Thinker

An analysis of recent U.S. terrorist attacks highlighting concerns over Islamist extremism and national security.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A doddering old sock puppet from Delaware takes the podium and, with a straight face, alleges that the greatest threat to America comes from white supremacy. And, get this… half the country believes him!

Hilarious, right?

Let’s review the threat from “white supremacy” from the last two weeks alone.

On March 1, the college bar district in downtown Austin was attacked by Ndiaga Diagne. Diagne is from Senegal. Or, as NPR put it, he is a man “who lived in an Austin suburb.”

This man “who lived in an Austin suburb” had snuck in on a tourist visa under the Clinton administration. Almost immediately, he began racking up a criminal record. But he was never deported. Instead, he was granted citizenship in 2013 under the Obama administration. His social media feed was full of pro-Islamic, anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Jewish rants. He committed the attack while wearing a “Property of Allah” shirt.

On March 7, a pro-civilization protest in New York City was attacked by ISIS-inspired terrorists Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi. Balat is the son of Turkish immigrants. Kayumi is the son of Afghan immigrants. Or, as local news put it, they are “Bucks County men.”

Both of these “Bucks County men” traveled extensively to Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the months leading up to the attack. Both pledged allegiance to ISIS, and one of these “Bucks County men” shouted “Allahu akbar” before throwing an improvised explosive at the peaceful protestors.

This past Thursday, an ROTC meeting at the University of Virginia was attacked by Mohamed Bailor Jalloh. Jalloh is from Sierra Leone and has connections with ISIS; he yelled “Allahu akbar” as he gunned down a professor. Or, as USA Today put it, Jalloh was a “former member of the Army National Guard” who had enlisted “out of a patriotic desire to give back to his adopted country.”

His “patriotic desire” notwithstanding, Jalloh was imprisoned in 2017 under the first Trump administration for attempting to carry out a terrorist attack. He was released in 2024 under the Biden administration. No attempt was made to deport this convicted terrorist. His “patriotic desire” must have moved the deportation judge to tears.

The very same day, the Temple Israel synagogue and preschool in West Bloomfield, Michigan, was attacked by Ayman Mohamed Ghazali. Ghazali is from Lebanon. He was let into the country and granted citizenship by the Obama administration. Or, as the New York Times put it, Ghazali had was a “naturalized citizen” who had “worked at a popular restaurant.”

Aww, a citizen who works hard at the local diner to pay for grampaw’s dentures. Who hasn’t heard that rags-to-riches, as-American-as-apple-pie story? Several other news outlets rushed to cover for Ghazali’s terrorist attack by explaining that some relatives of his were killed in Lebanon by a recent IDF counterattack.

Spare me. You know who else had relatives killed just a few days ago in the ongoing conflict? The families of Army Captain Cody Khork, Sgt. 1^st Class Noah Tietjens, Sgt. 1^st Class Nicole Amor, Sgt. Declan Coady, Major Jeffrey O’Brien, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, and Sgt. Benjamin Pennington. These soldiers were killed by Iranian drone attacks on bases across the Middle East.

Do you know how the families of these murdered soldiers reacted? I can tell you what they didn’t do. They didn’t plow a car into a mosque and then attempt to mass murder dozens of Muslim preschoolers.

Ndiaga Diagne, a Muslim from Senegal.

Emir Balat, a Muslim from Turkey.

Ibrahim Kayumi, a Muslim from Afghanistan.

Mohamed Jalloh, a Muslim from Sierra Leone.

Ayman Mohamed Ghazali, a Muslim from Lebanon.

That’s quite an accurate cross-section of your run-of-the-mill white supremacists, isn’t it?

To be fair to the friskier elements of the Religion of Peace, there have been plenty of white terrorists over the past few years. There are plenty of homegrown terrorists raised and incubated in the cult of transgenderism victimology, and they’ve wreaked almost as much havoc across America as have their Islamist brethren.

It’s a good rule of thumb to assume that if a Christian school is attacked, the attacker is a transgender lunatic. If a Jewish school is attacked, the attacker is an Islamic supremacist.

But getting back to my original point, it is well past nigh to come out and state clearly the plain truth which is being obfuscated by deceptive headlines. The problem isn’t Bucks County men, or men who live in Austin suburbs, or former guardsmen, or dedicated restaurant busboys.

The problem is Islam.

Islam and the West have proven totally incompatible with one another. There is nothing “phobic” about this statement. This isn’t an attack or a defense of one race or ethnicity at the expense of another. This is an obvious conclusion about two diametrically opposing systems of values and worldviews.

The West is a civilization founded on Judeo-Christian principles of freedom of conscience, grace, tolerance, forgiveness, humility, equality under the law, and the God-given divine value of every human being. Islam is a civilization founded on genocidal conquest and coerced conversion, and rests of the principles of ideological supremacy, misogyny, censorship, and forced submission with the stated goal of world conquest.

Fourteen hundred years of history has proven that these two opposing systems cannot coexist peacefully in the same sphere, and that the influence of one expands in direct proportion to the retreat of the other. And don’t think this inability to coexist is a result of a lack of effort. For the past half-century, the West has bent over backwards trying to accommodate Islam. The efforts have not been reciprocated, to say the very least.

It’s both hard and insensitive to try to find a silver lining to terrorist attacks that leave innocent people dead. But if there is a silver lining to be found in the past two weeks, I think it is this:

People are sick of it.

Whether they are conservatives who say it aloud, liberals who say it only to themselves, or “independents” who finally found a spine and are finally taking a side, everybody is sick of it.

We’re sick of the constant coddling. We’re sick of the cultural concessions. We’re sick of our leaders’ placating, unwarranted apologies. We’re sick of being told we need to understand things from their perspective, rather than asking them to understand things from ours. We’re sick of the double standards.

We’re sick of the migrant invasions of military age male “refugees.” We’re sick of seeing more and more Muslim slaves women at shopping malls and public swimming pools wearing the full head-to-toe beekeeper suit and having to pretend that it’s completely normal. We’re sick of ignorant troglodytes who come here from third world Islamic s***holes, benefit from our welcoming generosity, and then behave in a manner so ungrateful as to defy all bounds of human decency.

We’re sick of the knives, the guns, and the bombs. We’re sick of the subway attacks and the concert attacks and the church attacks and the synagogue attacks and the festival attacks and the Christmas market attacks and the school attacks and the vehicle attacks and the random street attacks.

And we’re sick of noticing all the terrorism, noticing the patterns that underlie it, and then be told that the act of our noticing makes us bigots.

I have my ideas about what a solution to this problem would entail. But before we can solve the problem, we need to come to a collective agreement on what the problem is. Even back in 2024, majorities of both Republicans and Democrats viewed terrorism as a major threat. As this was at a time when Sleepy Joe was imploring us to pay no attention to the guys in the white pajamas and to keep looking for the guys in the white hoods.

I’m not sure if America is at the tipping point yet, but we are trending in that direction.

UPDATE: As I was prepping this article for submission, news came through that an Iraqi-born man named Muhi Mohanad Najm had been able to enter an elementary school in Texas wearing a fake security uniform and brandishing a loaded firearm. He was unable to get past the secure vestibule and left the scene, only to be arrested minutes later.

Something very bad is going to happen. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Stay locked and loaded, America.

A.J. Christopher | 7:14 AM on March 14, 2026

Source: A ‘Michigan Man,’ a ‘Virginia Man,’ and a ‘New York Man’ All Walk Into a Bar… – PJ Media

All ‘authorities’ should be challenged.

Occasionally I hear credentialed professionals with prestigious titles whine about the so-called “war on expertise.”  It really bothers people who see themselves as “experts” that a growing share of society ignores them.  A psychologist might intuit something revealing from the lack of self-confidence plaguing our “expert” class.  If all the fancy degrees, voluminous curricula vitae, and lofty career positions have failed to instill a resilient modicum of self-esteem, then perhaps all those things are not the true measures of a person’s worth.

“Experts” do not like to be challenged.  They say things such as, “I have a PhD in this,” or, “I get paid a lot of money to talk about that,” and expect everybody listening to stop thinking and immediately agree with everything the “expert” has to say.  I once witnessed a young “race studies” professor intrude into an online debate and tell everyone that she was correct and everybody else was wrong.  Her evidence?  She cited the costs of her education, her recent promotion, and her new annual salary.  Traditionally, that’s considered a specific kind of logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority.  When appeals to “expertise” replace reason and rationality, false conclusions are more easily justified.

We have been living in an era rife with appeals to authority masquerading as truth.  In fact, I came across something hilariously unsurprising as I was writing this essay.  Because Internet search engines no longer operate as research tools but rather as propaganda aggregators, I often have to peruse many pages of search results before I find topical and pertinent sources.  Leftwing disinformation index Wikipedia routinely receives prime placement for any online query.  I decided to check how the propagandists at Wikipedia describe appeals to authority these days, and the editors did not disappoint (someone as cynical as I):

“While all sources agree this is not a valid form of logical proof, and therefore, obtaining knowledge in this way is fallible, there is disagreement on the general extent to which it is fallible — historically, opinion on the appeal to authority has been divided: it is listed as a non-fallacious argument as often as a fallacious argument in various sources.”  My sides, they hurt so much as I laugh uncontrollably!  Then Wikipedia’s meaningless equivocation ends with this gem: “Some consider it a practical and sound way of obtaining knowledge that is generally likely to be correct when the authority is real.”

There you go, kids!  So long as the “authority” is “real,” it’s quite “practical” and “sound” to hand your brain over to the resident “expert” or AI machine and let he/she/it do your thinking for you!  It’s not a “logical fallacy” if the “authority” says it’s not!  How very twenty-first-century of the 1984-like censors, history rewriters, and information warfare specialists who manage the world’s “free” encyclopedia.  Wikipedia may be “free,” but it still levies a steep tax.  The “price” of offshoring one’s thinking to “experts” is a life filled with few cogent thoughts.  That’s too high of a cost for any human seeking wisdom.

Appeals to authority are often absurd.  Since the mid-twentieth-century, most of the handsome or beautiful news anchors who tell the world what to believe have been empty-headed script-readers with subpar intellects (Hello, Dan Rather!).  According to renowned climate scientist Al Gore, Miami and Manhattan should have spent the last decade submerged under ten feet of water.  At the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, then-fifteen-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg told world leaders that they were “not mature enough to tell it like it is.”  Those world leaders — prone to lean directly into appeals to authority themselves — immediately told the planet’s youngest generations to listen to the Swedish teenager if they wanted to survive the carbon apocalypse.  Similarly, noted virologist Bill Gates (I forget: Does he have Nobels in both chemistry and medicine?) assured us that we would all die unless we allowed his corporate friends to inject us regularly with experimental serums and did everything government officials say.  All the very smartest people spent at least two years telling us that only totalitarianism and censorship could save us from COVID.

It may be absurd to mindlessly trust the “expertise” of Dan Rather, Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and Bill Gates, but it’s no less dangerous to mindlessly trust the “expertise” of someone whom Wikipedia would no doubt describe as a “real authority.”  Dr. Anthony Fauci has all the credentials that people who enjoy credentials salivate over.  He has a medical degree.  He has a trophy room full of awards.  He’s a member of the best institutions.  He was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly forty years, for goodness’ sake!  Wasn’t he even the highest paid employee in the federal government?  Money, accolades, social status — Fauci has it all.  His prestige drips with prestige.

Yet he told us that COVID couldn’t possibly have come from a Chinese bio-lab (that he and his associates partially funded).  He told us that experimental mRNA “vaccines” would prevent infection…er, reduce spread…er, make symptoms less severe.  He told us that natural immunity was no good (because the pharmaceutical companies can’t profit from that).  He told us to wear one mask (cloth or paper or whatever), then two masks, then three masks, then three masks and a plastic shield.  He told us that small businesses should close their doors, but that “critical” businesses — such as Walmart — should remain open.  He told us that kids should be kept out of school…but perhaps they’d be safe behind plexiglass walls…so long as the powerful heads of public school teachers’ unions thought that “science” was sound.  And plenty of people around the world (including America’s cult of “authority”-worshiping Karens and government-worshiping Democrats) admired Fauci’s lustrous prestige, ignored his illogical and contradictory pronouncements, and did whatever he said.

That’s the danger with appeals to authority.  When you hand your brain to third-parties, don’t be surprised to discover that “experts” value your life less than you do.

Europeans are learning this lesson the hard way right now.  For decades, the “elites” have shunned hydrocarbon energies and made their economies too dependent upon unreliable wind and solar alternatives.  European “authorities” decommissioned nuclear power plants, even though doing so meant that European industries became more dependent upon Russian natural gas.  Then came the War in Ukraine and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.  Eventually, Ukraine’s martial-law-holdover-president/dictator, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, blocked oil deliveries from Russia through the Druzhba pipeline to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Germany.  And President Trump’s strikes on Iran made it much more difficult for Europe to obtain critical hydrocarbons from the Middle East.

European “authorities” have spent decades using the “global warming” hobgoblin to scare the public into accepting expensive and unreliable sources of energy whose use will do nothing to “save the planet.”  Those “authorities” have managed, however, to cripple most European industries and make Europe’s cost of living prohibitively expensive.

Inevitably, whenever I even passingly mention Ukraine President/Dictator Zelenskyy, some unhappy readers call me names.  Regular commenter “Megan Draper, M.S.” recently wondered, “how much money the Russian government” must be giving me.  Another commenter going by the handle “asherpat” implied that I am “a Russian influencing agent.”  Putting aside their casual libel, I will point out that both commenters employ another kind of logical fallacy: appeal to ridicule.  Although besmirching my character is one way to counter my arguments, it is not one based on solid reasoning.

I suggest that all authorities be challenged regardless of their credentials.  Just as degrees are incomplete measures of one’s education, titles of “authority” are poor substitutes for wisdom.  It is our capacity for reasoned debate that helps us separate the wheat from the chaff.

J.B. Shurk | March 13, 2026

Source: ‘Experts’ Know Less than They Think – American Thinker

Is the Rapture real? There’s always debate around this topic.

Let’s start with the obvious: the Rapture sounds crazy. Jesus descends from Heaven, dead people rise from their graves, and living believers are suddenly caught up into the sky—like the world’s strangest episode of “Stranger Things.” Sounds like the stuff your uncle mutters about after three cups of church coffee. Except—the Rapture is right there in Scripture. Paul says it. John says it. Jesus says it.

Opposing Views 

Now, critics like to pounce: “But the word Rapture isn’t even in the Bible!” Neither are the words Trinity or even Bible. And yet, here we are, still believing in all three. The word comes from the Latin rapturus, which translates the Greek word harpazo—meaning “to snatch up, grab by force.” Imagine a parent reaching out and pulling their child away from danger just in time. That’s the picture Scripture gives us of the Rapture.

Some say, “Oh, the Rapture is just a modern invention, some 19th-century gimmick.” Nonsense. Yes, J.N. Darby helped popularize it in more recent times, but long before him, the early Church Fathers like Irenaeus and Cyprian wrote about believers being “snatched up” before judgment.

It’s not new—it’s biblical.

The Rapture in Scripture

We also hear about the Rapture straight from Paul, Peter, James, and most importantly, Jesus Himself: “‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also’” (John 14:3 NKJV).

The most familiar passage on the Rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:16–18: “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

And if that sounds far-fetched, remember Enoch—who literally walked off the face of the earth into God’s presence—and Elijah, who rode to Heaven in a fiery chariot. The prototypes are already in the Old Testament.

Why the Rapture Matters

Here’s why this isn’t just a fun theological parlor game: the Rapture gives hope. Paul calls it the “blessed hope.” When you’ve buried a loved one, you don’t need vague talk about them being “in a better place.” You need the solid promise that in one split second you’ll be with them again. Parents reunited with children. Husbands with wives. Brothers and sisters together again. And at the center of it all—Jesus Christ Himself.

And it does more than comfort grief. It motivates godliness. If you really believe Jesus could return at any moment, maybe don’t binge sin like it’s Netflix. You wouldn’t invite your best friend into a house piled with dirty laundry and Taco Bell wrappers. Don’t greet your Savior that way either. You want to be ready—walking with Him, keeping your spiritual house in order.

When Will the Rapture Happen?

People get themselves into trouble trying to date-set the Rapture.

Jesus made it pretty clear: “No one knows the day or the hour” (see Matthew 24:36). Which, funnily enough, includes you, me, and that guy on YouTube with the chart and the whiteboard. Yet, periodically, there’s always that someone with their calendar: “88 Reasons Jesus Will Return in 1988!” Let’s just stop with the speculation.

The Rapture isn’t about prediction—it’s about preparation.

The Takeaway

What do we do with all this? We wake up. We stay alert. And we stop living like the world is a Vegas buffet that never closes. Paul said: “The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here…” (Romans 13:12). Translation: Time is short. Knock it off. If you’re a believer, live clean, live holy, live hopeful. If you’re not—well, get right or get left.

Because one day, maybe in our lifetime, maybe tonight—in a blink, in the twinkling of an eye—everything changes. Loved ones raised. The Church caught up. Judgment delayed until after the Bride has been rescued.

It’s not escapism. It’s not fantasy. As C.S. Lewis reminded us, looking forward to the eternal world is one of the things a Christian is meant to do.

So, laugh if you want. Roll your eyes. Write your snarky post. But the Rapture is real. And when it happens—when the shout comes, when the trumpet blows—mockery won’t matter. Only hope will.

Greg Laurie is an evangelist, author, and the senior pastor of Harvest Riverside.

Source: Roll Your Eyes All You Want… The Rapture Is Real – Harbinger’s Daily

Insightful analysis of Venezuela’s political future and key figures shaping its path to democracy.

On Monday, after hosting the historic first Shield of the Americas Summit in Doral, Fla., Donald Trump stopped by a Venezuelan restaurant, El Arepazo, on his way to the airport to fly back to Washington, D.C. He was greeted with cheers and applause and chants of “Trump!” and “USA!” The crowd loved him, as they often do during these types of appearances, but this one was, potentially, a bit more meaningful.

Sometimes referred to as “Dorazuela,” the city of Doral has one of the largest Venezuelan diaspora communities in the United States. The president owns a hotel here — it’s where the summit, which was focused largely on rallying like-minded Latin American leaders to come together in the name of regional security and combating the cartels that plague every country in the Western Hemisphere, took place just days before.

At the restaurant, Trump shook hands, chatted with staff and patrons, and even took some Venezuelan food back on the plane for his staff. Those who were there said it was one of the warmest political appearances they’ve ever seen, which doesn’t surprise me. Whether they live in Doral or Caracas or somewhere else in the world, the Venezuelan people love Donald Trump. On January 3, he did more for that country than almost anyone else probably ever has.

But the language he uses leaves many wary and understandably so. The constant praise of Delcy Rodríguez and saying she’s doing a good job is tough to hear when you know that she’s just as bad and every bit as much as corrupt as Nicolás Maduro was. She’s a communist by birth and was radicalized even further when her Marxist father died in police custody after being arrested for kidnapping a business executive from the United States. After his death, she vowed to go into politics as her own form of personal vengeance.

“Delcy Rodríguez knows how to present herself as a ‘moderate,'” Venezuelan opposition-aligned lawyer Estrella Infante told me earlier this year. “That is why she has always handled international negotiations. She has extensive global connections, and many actors prefer her continuity because it protects their interests. That is her power.” (For what it’s worth, those global connections are largely our adversaries — Iran, China, Russia, Cuba, etc.)

The thing is, Delcy has a little help with maintaining her “moderate” reputation, and it comes from the United States. If it’s not the New York Times literally calling her a “moderate” and writing a glowing review of what a great leader she’d be, it’s what Venezuelan lawyer and writer Emmanuel Rincón calls the “hidden lobby war against Venezuela’s democratic transition.”

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Times, Rincón asserts, “Alongside the brave men and women who genuinely fight to end the socialist dictatorship, there has emerged a growing ecosystem of false opposition figures, fake activists, opportunistic lobbyists and self-proclaimed ‘conservatives’ who have found a way to profit from Venezuela’s tragedy.”

Here’s more:

From Day 1, certain groups have tried to persuade President Trump and key conservative policymakers that the leadership chosen by Venezuelans themselves is ‘inconvenient,’ ‘too radical’ or ‘not viable,’ and that accommodation with elements of the dictatorship would somehow be more ‘pragmatic.’

That is not pragmatism; it’s surrender disguised as strategy.

The money behind these efforts is murky. Not every initiative aimed at weakening Venezuela’s democratic transition is openly coordinated, but the outcome is the same: Divide the opposition, fracture its leadership, and weaken the possibility of a real break from socialism.

The motives vary. For some, it is money. For others, political ambition. For others, ego. For a smaller but destructive group, resentment and envy.

Thankfully, despite the language he uses publicly, Trump hasn’t been persuaded. Thankfully, he has the man in U.S. politics who knows more about Venezuela than anyone else whispering in his ear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Rubio’s fingerprints have been all over this entire operation, and they were long before everyone else was paying attention, long before Maduro was sitting in the Metropolitan Detention Center. For every time Trump praises Delcy, Rubio or another cabinet member comes behind him and reminds us all that she’s temporary. Trump himself even said at the Shield of the Americas Summit that he’s only praising her because she’s doing what he’s telling her to do, and that if she wasn’t, that wouldn’t be the case.

You see it in the media notes released by the State Department. You see it in the legal paperwork at the Department of Justice.

“Our engagement is focused on helping the Venezuelan people move forward through a phased process that creates the conditions for a peaceful transition to a democratically elected government.”

Delcy is not running the show. The United States is. As I like to say, the Marxist woman didn’t suddenly see the light on January 3 and decide to become a proud partner of Trump and U.S. ally. She saw the writing on the wall. She saw Delta Force. She saw a United States president with the ability and cajones to do whatever the heck he pleases to make the world a better place. She just agreed to be the puppet, the pawn who would handle everything to save her life.

Despite the fact that most of us understand this now, much of the U.S. media and some of the other people within that “hidden lobby war” seem determined to make Delcy the focus, when the real story is María Corina Machado. The U.S. mainstream media has spent two months now pretending that she’s irrelevant, that Trump and Rubio have “jilted” her or cast her aside. But again, if you get past the rhetoric and look at the physical evidence, you see a different story.

Since escaping Venezuela and accepting her Nobel Peace Prize in December, Machado has been in Europe and the United States, meeting with political leaders, business leaders, investors, and think tanks. She’s the one who is advocating for Venezuela. She’s the one securing the country’s future. She’s the one who has impressed Trump and countless others.

As I reported over the weekend, it was rumored that she’d had a secret meeting with Trump, Rubio, and Susie Wiles last Friday. Machado herself has since confirmed it. They meeting lasted nearly two hours, and she’s expected to return to the White House in the weeks to come for more talks. That doesn’t sound like someone who has been jilted to me.

Over the weekend, after the Shield of the Americas Summit, Trump was having dinner with some of his team and actually pulled out his phone and called Machado. “Everyone loves you here,” he said as he put her on speaker. And on Wednesday, she was a guest of honor as the new Chilean president, José Antonio Kast, was sworn in. Delcy didn’t receive an invitation. Video from the event shows Machado meeting with everyone from everyday Venezuelans who gathered outside to the numerous leaders and heads of state who were in attendance, and she was treated like a freaking rock star. She may have even overshadowed Javier Milei, and that’s hard to do.

Machado was the favorite to become Venezuela’s president in 2024 before Maduro banned her from running. Polls out of there today show that nothing has changed. If anything, people are losing their fear and speaking up even louder in support of her. She’s the most popular politician in a county where the opposition is more united than anything I’ve ever seen. She’s ready to return home and have elections as soon as possible, so that her country can be free and its people safe and prosperous.

That’s exactly why the bad actors that Rincón mentioned are ramping up their game. “…if one’s true objective is to end the socialist dictatorship, then attempting to sabotage the opposition’s bridge to the White House or to American conservative allies is politically irrational,” he said. “A country that cannot consolidate around strong leadership during a liberation struggle becomes easy prey not only for its internal oppressors but also for foreign actors seeking leverage. Dividing leadership strengthens the regime.”

“Those who cannot understand this, who prioritize headlines, applause or proximity to power over liberation, are either profoundly naive or knowingly serving the interests of the regime. Experience suggests the latter is far more common than the former,” he continues. “Today, Venezuela stands closer to freedom than at any other point in recent years. That is not accidental. It is the result of alignment between Venezuelan democratic forces and American leadership that understands the stakes: Socialism in our hemisphere is not merely a Venezuelan issue; it is also a strategic threat.”

He’s exactly right. None of this would have happened if Machado hadn’t rallied her country. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t connected with Rubio, and he hadn’t taken a vested interest. And none of this would have happened if Donald Trump was not president and hadn’t hired Rubio as his secretary of State. And the only way it will continue toward liberty is if these connections continue. And they will.

“First, we must have a country. Only then can we argue about how to govern it,” Rincón says, and he’s right about that, too. You don’t undo decades of dictatorship overnight. But when that time comes to decide how to govern it, there is no doubt in my mind that Machado will be the one to lead, while Delcy, if she’s lucky, lives out her years somewhere across the Atlantic.

Sarah Anderson

Source: And the Next President of Venezuela Will Be… – PJ Media

Most Americans are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet.

Watch TV, scroll social media or listen to politicians, and the verdict seems clear: Americans are hopelessly divided and increasingly hateful.

• It’s a ubiquitous, emphatic, verifiable … lie.

Why it matters: Most Americans are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet. They work, raise kids, coach Little League, go to a house of worship, mow their neighbor’s lawn — and never post a word about any of it.

• The hidden truth: Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again.

Oh, but you’re so naive, so delusional and detached from reality. Everywhere I look, I see dispute and decline!

But it’s the terminally online news junkies who are detached from the actual reality.

• We’ve been manipulated by algorithms and politicians amplifying the worst of humanity. Our feeds and screens spread a twisted, inaccurate view of America.
• It makes it seem like the nation is hopelessly broken … Political enemies are evil … Facts are no different than fiction … Morality, honesty and service don’t matter … And salvation can only come from magical technologies or a powerful few.

What if we told you it’s a big lie that makes you stop believing your own two eyes?

• Every day, people battle over outrageous things said on X. Did you know that four out of five Americans don’t use X, and therefore don’t see what you see? Pew Research Center found last year that only 21% of U.S. adults use X, and just 10% visit it daily. The loudest platform in politics reaches barely one in five Americans.
• But what about the wacky claims made on cable TV? Did you know that during most hours of most prime-time nights, less than 1% of the country watches Fox News, CNN or MS NOW, combined?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the very people on these platforms who are the crazy ones.

• Maybe, just maybe, most people are simply normal, sane, real.
• A Gallup World Poll out last week found Americans are more anxious about their political system than citizens of almost any other country — yet the data consistently shows this anxiety is driven by the noise, not the neighbors. The system feels broken. The people are not.

Here’s a good test: In a given year, you see hundreds of people frequently enough to appraise their character. Are they good people? Would they help shovel after a snowstorm or lift groceries for an aging neighbor? Do they volunteer and give to others?

• We bet the answer is a resounding yes. This is America’s Super Majority.

The numbers back this up. Americans gave $592.5 billion to charity in 2024 — a record, with individuals accounting for two-thirds of it.

• Over 75 million Americans formally volunteer each year, and 130 million informally help their neighbors. Gallup research out last month found that 76% of U.S. adults gave money to a religious or other nonprofit organization in the past year, and 63% volunteered their time.
• This isn’t a broken nation. This is a generous one, where the vast majority quietly do the right thing every single day.

The bottom line: The next time your screen tells you America is broken, close it. Walk outside. Talk to your neighbor. Coach the team. Go to the town meeting. That’s the real America — and it’s a hell of a lot better than the one being manufactured for clicks, clout and cash.

📱 Watch our “Behind the Curtain” YouTube on America’s big lie.

• Jim VandeHei,
• Mike Allen

Source: Behind the Curtain: The big lie warping America

Analysis of Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 inaugural address emphasizing religion, government, and American virtues.

On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson delivered his inaugural address as our third president. Here is part of what he said:

“Enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter. With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned…”

Let me provide a brief analysis of his words.

1. “Enlightened by a benign religion…” He obviously meant Christianity, for it was nearly universally practiced in early America. Notice: true Christianity “enlightened” the country, and was “benign”—not harmful to anyone.

2. “Professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms…” Meaning: the many denominations of post-Reformation Christendom, none of which could become an “established religion,” i.e., a national church like England had (First Amendment).

3. “Yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man.” Yes, this is the essence of the true, original teachings of Jesus. Obviously, such would be beneficial to any society. But now, thanks to the atheistic, Marxist Left, the world has known 100-plus years of dishonesty, lies, uncontrolled radicalism, murder, ingratitude, and the hatred of mankind. Un-enlightenment and malignancy in the name of “progressivism.”

4. “Acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence.” The virtues Jefferson listed (honesty, truth, etc.) are indeed “enlightening” and are taught to us by the “Providence” (God) who rules. If followed faithfully, the blessings of a successful society will surely develop. Any wise person will recognize and acknowledge this, and the early Americans certainly did. Those Americans, though far from perfect, still acknowledged this God Who gave them the wise counsel they should follow, and all, including Jefferson, accredited His “overruling” guidance.

5. “Which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter.” The bounty which all the earth is blessed with—evident in Jefferson’s day and ours—was used by the president as evidence that “Providence” (the guidance and direction of God) wished for man to be happy here and in the hereafter. Whatever the intellectual Jefferson meant, in his own mind, by “Providence,” he was smart enough to realize that his fellow citizens, adherents of Christianity almost to a man, would believe he was talking about their God and their religion.

6. “With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people?” What lack we yet? What responsibilities has this Providence given us to make sure we fully obtain the happiness and prosperity that we have access to through the blessings available to us?

7. “Still one thing more, fellow citizens—a wise and frugal Government.” “Wise” and “frugal”? Wise? Is there an ounce of wisdom in Washington, D.C., today? None at all in the Democratic Party, minuscule in the Republican. Frugal? Don’t make me laugh. “Wisdom” and “frugality” don’t buy votes, Tom, and power is the only game in town now. Our politicians learned well—or didn’t, depending on how you look at it—Benjamin Franklin’s warning, “When the people discover they can vote themselves money from the Treasury, that will herald the doom of the Republic.” That trumpet blast has been sounding, at least since the New Deal, and there appears to be no recovering from it. “Democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy,” (Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler). The trumpet has sounded, but the army is not marching.

8. “Which shall restrain men from injuring one another.” That is the purpose of government: to protect our personal property, starting with our lives. Look at America’s big cities to inquire if government is doing its job. Chicago, anyone?

9. “Shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.” Notice the idea here of “industry.” People should work for a living, not sponge off others, and government is intended to be structured to encourage such positive behavior. Not only “industry” but “improvement”—growth in beneficial virtues which will advance a society, not retard or degrade it. Government is to incentivize “industry” (hard work) and “improvement” (moral advancement), not encourage slothful, debauched, perverted behavior.

10. “And shall not take away from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Another joke. There was no income tax in early America. The “frugal” government only received its income from land sales and tariffs. People got to keep the money they earned from the sweat of their brow and hard work.

Enter Karl Marx and the Left. And when that happened, Jefferson, God, a “benign” religion promoting “honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man”—virtues which an “adored” and “overruling Providence” supplied for our guidance and well-being, went flying out the window. And were replaced by malignancy, debauchery, profligacy, murder, mayhem, sexual hedonism and perversion, and a government that steals from its citizens rather than protects them. And that is on both sides of the aisle.

Thomas Jefferson told us, 225 years ago, what America needed. We haven’t listened. The country is virtually unrecognizable from what it was founded to be. We must return to these Jeffersonian virtues before it is too late. Such a return must begin with a restoration to its proper place of that “benign” religion which once “enlightened” us, but disastrously, is the bane of the Marxist, atheistic, murdering Left. Time is running out.

Mark Lewis | Mar 04, 2026

My substacks are a little unique. Not just current events, but history, our Founding Fathers, what America was meant to be, and Biblical exegesis. Check them out. “Mark It Down! (mklewis929.substack.com) and “Mark It Down! Bible Substack” (mklbibless.substack.com). Both free. Follow me on X: @thailandmkl. Read my western novels, “Whitewater,” “River Bend,” “Return to River Bend,” and “Allie’s Dilemma,” all available on Amazon.

Source: March 4, 1801

Western globalists won’t last long.

Thirty-five years ago, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama made a name for himself by advancing the proposition that the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union promised the ascendency and universalization of so-called Western liberal democracy.  As a Marxist-Hegelian who saw the progression of history as an evolutionary process with a natural and predetermined conclusion, Fukuyama envisioned Western-styled liberalism as both “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the final form of human government.”  Expecting all human struggles to barrel toward a state of imminent equilibrium and future peace, Fukuyama stated out loud what many other late-twentieth century thinkers also believed: Humanity had reached the end of history.

After the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks in the United States, two decades of the “Global War on Terrorism,” communist China’s expansive “Belt and Road Initiative,” immigration-fueled social strife, the collapse of public trust in government institutions, the prevalence of pre-civil war conditions across Europe, the rise of Indian economic power, the emergence of Donald Trump’s nationalism as a counterbalance to the World Economic Forum’s vaunted globalism, the return of the Russian Federation as a major source of European angst, the growth of “multiculturalism” and its attendant fracturing of national unity, the “great powers” competition for hydrocarbon energies and other natural resources, the new geopolitical race to project strength in the Arctic, and the ever-present discussion of an impending World War III — just to name a few of the numerous global conflicts of the first quarter of the present century — Fukuyama’s “end of history” argument has probably reached the end of its usefulness.

Before the curse of humanity’s short memory stores Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis in the cupboard until it can be retrieved, dusted off, and recycled for practical use next century (just as Fukuyama had done with the historical conceptions of Hegel and Marx), it is worth noting how much of the academic world bought into this argument.  I remember listening to two young political science professors discussing Fukuyama’s work after the 9/11 terror attacks, and even then — in the midst of such a horrific rebuke to the proposition that a globalized form of Western liberalism was preordained — both academics were staunch believers in the “end of history” and disagreed only about whether Professor Fukuyama was worthy of so much praise for having merely stated what was glaringly obvious.

I was around another man at the time named Samuel P. Huntington, and he had written an essay and book that took Fukuyama’s thesis to task.  In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Professor Huntington argued that unbridgeable cultural conflicts would continue to remake the world.  Although critics called him “racist,” “Islamophobic,” “ignorant,” and even “Hitlerian” for dismissing the unifying effects of “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” Huntington’s predictions for a volatile twenty-first century were much more accurate than anything coming from the “end of history” camp.  Still, even after death, the man who dispassionately forecasted a civilizational clash and an emerging period of global uncertainty is still maligned as “prejudicial,” “white supremacist,” “bigoted,” and “imperialist.”

Is there any conflict raging in the world today that can’t be described in terms of competing cultural values?  Israel and its Islamic neighbors have been in a perennial state of war for eighty years.  Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims remain at each other’s throats.  Christianity and Islam have added fuel to fiery tribal conflicts that continue to rage across the continent of Africa.  Armenia’s Christians and Azerbaijan’s Muslims struggle to maintain peace.  The Balkans remain a potpourri of combative cultures and ethnic groups whose simmering passions can quickly boil over.  Burma, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos fight against each other and themselves as civilizational loyalties turn ancient resentments into recurring bouts of violence.  The War in Ukraine centers around the contested Donbas region whose people more closely align with the language, religion, and culture of Russia than with the historic identity that unites the people living in the western two-thirds of Ukraine.

Everywhere in the world, battle lines are drawn around civilizational identity.  Religious conflict, historic grievance, and cultural incompatibility drive violence around the planet.

Yet Western globalists in Europe and North America pretend not to notice.  They organize annual conventions where members of the World Economic Forum or the Council on Foreign Relations or the Royal Institute of International Affairs can bloviate about “multiculturalism,” “open borders,” “established norms,” and the “rules-based international order.”  They speak about “nationalism” and “patriotism” as if they were diseases requiring quarantine for those showing symptoms.  They like Islam and are willing to imprison anyone seen as violating Sharia Law or causing offense to Muslims.  But they generally despise Christians and Jews and don’t mind when medieval cathedrals mysteriously burn to the ground or Hamas terrorists rape Israeli women and kill Israeli babies.  They pray fanatically at the altar of their “green energy” religion, while replacing entire domestic industries with the coal-powered, slave-labor-produced, government-subsidized exports of the Chinese Communist Party.  White, Western globalists prefer to ignore the threats of Islamic jihad and Chinese totalitarianism, sip from glasses brimming with crisp Sauvignon blanc, and stew in the intoxicating vapors of their own haughty uselessness.

One might think that the last twenty-five years of global volatility would have given globalism’s biggest promoters some measure of pause as the “end of history” arrived and passed.  But Western “elites” generally suffer from cerebral deficiency, shameless incuriosity, and pathological stubbornness.  According to the blue bloods on both sides of the Atlantic — such as Canada’s banker-turned-prime-minister Mark Carney, France’s banker-turned-president Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s BlackRock-board-member-turned-chancellor Friedrich Merz, and the European Commission’s noble-aristocrat-turned-installed-president Ursula von der Leyen — “multiculturalism” is our future, “diversity is our strength,” and “cultural nationalism” is a “terrorist ideology” that breeds “hate.”

Even after President George W. Bush’s failed “nation-building” gambit to bring “democracy” and “women’s rights” to Afghanistan and the Middle East, Western globalists insist that civilizational clashes aren’t real.  Even after the exposure of Muslim “rape gangs” trading local girls as sex slaves in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France, Western globalists insist that “diversity is our strength” and “multiculturalism” is our future.  Even after communist China’s increasingly provocative saber-rattling regarding Taiwan, pervasive espionage and sabotage within the United States, and public promises of world domination, Western globalists insist on transferring huge sums of national wealth to the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for China’s lip service to “international norms.”  What Talleyrand said of the Bourbons applies equally well to the West’s suicidal cult of self-hating globalists: “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

As we enter the second quarter of the twentieth century, the world is about to receive a harsh education in the persistent reality of civilizational conflict.  The “end of history” tripe was always a figment of self-deluding theoreticians who envision themselves as philosopher kings.  In the real world, values matter.  Culture matters.  Religion matters.  The past matters.  Honor matters.  Violent conflict does not disappear in a puff of smoke when Marxist-Hegelians hold up their dog-eared copies of Das Kapital and declare it must be so.  In the real world — where bullets fly faster than words — theories written on scraps of paper are rolled up into cigarettes or left under a rock near the trench latrine.  In the real world, people fight.  Cultures compete.  And civilizations clash.

Western globalists who refuse to learn the basics won’t long last.  From the Arctic to the Antarctic, battle lines are being drawn and redrawn everywhere.  The past informs the present.  The present informs the future.  The rest of history is just now beginning.

J.B. Shurk | February 25, 2026

Source: The Clash of Civilizations Restarts History – American Thinker

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke in Munich last week about the necessity of preserving Western Civilization, critics labeled his remarks “far right” and “sugar coated racism.” While that reaction is nearly reflexive for the modern left, it avoids the point Secretary Rubio was trying to make: Western Civilization is good and worth preserving.

This is not a remotely racist thing to say because Western Civilization is not an ethnicity. It’s not a genetic inheritance passed down through European bloodlines or a cultural preference for pastries and Bach. It is, at its core, a set of ideas about human dignity and the purpose of government; all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights that precede government itself. Because of this, the West determined that good government would serve the individual when the historical norm was that people served their government. The result has been unprecedented freedom and prosperity, but it still has serious competition.

Islamic theocracies believe the proper role of government is to compel submission to Islamic law for believers and infidels alike. In its most rigid forms, this produces governments with little respect for individual liberty—which explains why the most strictly Islamic nations rank among the world’s most oppressive.

Progressivism presents perhaps the most insidious challenge to Western ideals because it speaks the language of justice and equal rights while fundamentally rejecting Western principles. Where the West sees individuals, progressivism sees group identities. Where Western thought enshrines equal treatment under law, progressivism demands equal outcomes.

Under progressivism’s framework, government always takes the side of “the oppressed” who are to be believed and even obeyed regardless of facts, character, or competence. If you say you are a woman, then you are. Meanwhile, those deemed “oppressors” can expect to have their concerns ignored, their feelings dismissed, and their possession redistributed in the name of “equality.”

While these are not the only civilizational models, they illustrate that civilizational values can be mutually exclusive. You cannot merge Western Civilization and an Islamic theocracy. While it’s necessary to peacefully coexistence with people who are different than you, some differences are irreconcilable. Someone heading north cannot accommodate a travel companion determined to go south. At some point, we must agree to the same destination or part ways.

The disproportionate flow of migration into Western nations suggests there is something uniquely good about what the West has built.

None of this is racist.

Yes, Western Civilization developed in Europe, but the ideas on which Western Civilization is built have been embraced by people of every ethnicity because they’re good, true, and beautiful. The notion that we should reject these principles because of their European heritage is the actual racism—judging ideas not by their merit but by the skin color of their earliest proponents. Condemning Western Civilization because long-deceased Europeans did bad things is like refusing to use electricity because Thomas Edison mistreated animals in some of his experiments. It’s virtue signaling to your own detriment.

Does this mean Western Civilization is intolerant? In a sense, yes. If Western civilization is worth preserving, then we must oppose efforts to destroy it. But this is the productive intolerance of an immune system fighting disease, not the arbitrary bigotry of prejudice. It’s the kind of intolerance wisdom demands and survival requires.

None of this means Western Civilization is static. The arrival of an Indian restaurant is not a sign of civilizational collapse. In fact, the disproportionate flow of migration into Western nations suggests there is something uniquely good about what the West has built. But the kind of diversity that strengthens rather than destroys requires an understanding of why some places are better than others and a willingness to help move in that direction. Provided the people who love curry also come to understand that God made us in His image and gave us rights the government is obligated to protect, their curry makes us stronger.

Marco Rubio wasn’t engaging in coded racism last week. He was acknowledging and reasserting the choice every society must make: Which foundational principles will guide us? Refusing to have this conversation doesn’t make the question disappear—it simply ensures we’ll end up somewhere on accident. Despite the well-document imperfections of the people involved, Western Civilization represents humanity’s best answer yet to the question of how people should live together.

Defending that isn’t bigotry. It’s wisdom.

Joseph Backholm is senior fellow for Biblical worldview and strategic engagement at the Family Research Council.

Source: Defending Western Civilization Is Not Bigotry, It’s Wisdom – Harbinger’s Daily

The Derrick, a historic small-town newspaper in Oil City, PA, ceases publication after 150 years amid industry decline.

OIL CITY, Pennsylvania — The Derrick will be no more.

Derrick Publishing Company, publisher of The Derrick and The News-Herald, announced on Feb. 5 that it will cease publication. Employees were told the decision was driven by the long-term decline in support for newspapers, along with regional losses in employment, retail activity, advertising revenue and readership.

The last day of publication of both newspapers will be March 20.

Founded in 1871 as the Daily Derrick by C.E. Bishop & Company, The Derrick earned an international reputation for the quality of its reporting. Its correspondents’ dispatches and wire stories were circulated around the world, including its authoritative publication of oil spot prices — set in Oil City — as well as widely used annual statistical compendiums.

By 1871, this region was firmly established as oil country, a transformation that began just 13 years earlier when Edwin Drake struck oil in what had been the rugged wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a land of dense forests and more bears than people.

People who lived here in the mid-18th century always noticed the green-black oil that lingered on the top of Oil Creek. Aside from using it for a primitive medical salve, locals mostly ignored its presence.

At the time, the nation stood on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, but meeting the growing demand for reliable illuminating oil posed a major challenge. Whale oil had become prohibitively expensive, and whaling was rapidly depleting the population. Alternatives such as lard oil, tallow oil and coal oil distilled from shale existed, but none were yet abundant or affordable enough to meet the country’s needs.

The shortage of affordable lighting fuel was slowing both industrial expansion and urban growth. Without reliable light after dark, factories stood idle, and businesses closed their doors at sunset.

That changed when Drake successfully drilled for oil — the first person to deliberately extract it from beneath the earth’s surface. His breakthrough sparked the oil boom and made kerosene a practical, widely available commodity.

Land prices soared, and boomtowns such as Pithole City sprang up almost overnight. Speculators drilled wells wherever they could, sometimes erecting derricks directly beside, or even atop, one another. Fortunes were chased at a fever pitch, with little regard for the toll on the land or on rival workers. Conditions in the fields were perilous, and accidents were frequent, often fatal.

Fortunes were won, lost, won again, and lost sometimes forever as these wildcatters would try to make sense of the fluctuations of the price of oil.

At the time, nowhere else in the world was drilling for oil. The region’s economy exploded with growth, but the boom came at a steep cost as vast stretches of lush, green wilderness were cleared and scarred in the rush for petroleum.

And until The Daily Derrick began reporting on it, there was little sustained coverage of the industrial engine transforming the region — the oil trade that fueled the rising steel centers of Pittsburgh and Cleveland. There was also scant attention paid to a Cleveland bookkeeper named John D. Rockefeller, whose financial discipline and business instincts would eventually allow him to dominate the industry as founder of Standard Oil.

As energy author Bob McNally put it in his 2017 book “Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices,” “The Derrick’s the sole source for continuous reporting on prices, news, and fundamentals for the early decades of the modern oil industry.”

The Derrick’s reporting, research and daily documentation of the oil industry became an essential source for Ida Tarbell, the famed muckraking journalist, as she chronicled the “oil wars” of the 1870s.

Tarbell, whose family life was affected by the domination of the industry because her father had been an independent oil man, is known by journalists for her 19-part series “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” published from November 1902 through October 1904 in McClure’s Magazine and published as a book in 1904.

Her work brought national attention to the untapped impact industrial monopolies would have on American businesses and was considered a catalyst to the Supreme Court’s decision to break up the Standard Oil monopoly.

Without the reporting of The Derrick, she may have never been able to write her serial or her book.

In a month, it will be gone. Its passing will likely draw less attention than the possible closure of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 90 miles to the south, the 300 jobs recently cut at The Washington Post 300 miles away, or the 50 positions eliminated at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution 800 miles from here.

It is part of a crisis no one seems able to solve. Last year alone, more than 135 newspapers across the country shut their doors, the latest chapter in a two-decade decline. Since 2005, the number of newspapers published in the United States has fallen from 7,325 to fewer than 4,500.

Today’s front page of the Derrick featured a story on tempers flaring at a Sugarcreek Borough meeting, alongside coverage of township council sessions and local school board debates. It also included reporting on the everyday issues shaping life in the region — snow removal, flooding, road closures and legislation in Harrisburg that could affect residents’ lives.

That kind of coverage will now disappear. So will the ability to speak truth to power. The power here may not be what it was in the 1870s, but someone still needs to hold water authorities, county commissioners and school boards accountable — and soon, no one will be left to do it.

It’s troubling when a major city such as Pittsburgh or a powerful hub like Washington, D.C., loses local journalism. But it may matter even more in a small community such as Oil City, where the loss creates a true news desert, weakening the region’s social fabric, eroding its sense of connection, and leaving those in power with no guardrails at all.

In small towns especially, the loss can depress local voter engagement and open the door to government corruption and incompetence when no one is left to hold officials accountable.

There are no easy answers. Newspapers, long sustained by benevolent — and often wealthy — owners, have seen the revenue streams that once supported them evaporate: legal notices, classifieds, major retail advertising and paid print subscriptions have all declined in the internet era.

But the loss of local newspapers doesn’t just affect the journalists who worked there. It harms residents too — people who may never learn that a water authority decision could raise their taxes, or that there was even a public meeting where they could have voiced objections.

    Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.

Salena Zito 2:00 PM | February 21, 2026

Source: One of the Most Important Small-Town Papers of the Industrial Age Closing – HotAir