Speaking to the rise of socialist candidates within the Democratic Party, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) warned that “the barbarians are inside the gate.” He went on to explain, “We are fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic… or go down this dark road of death to communism.”

The Speaker isn’t crying wolf; the threat is real. But the battle to preserve the Republic will not ultimately be won in Congress. There will be legislative fights. There will be elections where your vote could determine the balance of power and whether socialist policies further undermine our freedoms. But if the barbarians are already inside the gate, we need to ask: How did they get in? And how do we get them out?

Congress reflects culture more than it creates it. Laws can restrain evil, but they cannot create virtue. A constitutional republic depends on citizens with the moral character to govern themselves and families that instill virtue in the next generation. Culture is ultimately shaped by what people believe about God, truth, and morality. When those foundations erode, political institutions follow.

To understand how this ideological and spiritual challenge gained traction in America, we have to look beyond politics to the forces that shape a nation’s character.

In his 1983 book “The Gravedigger File,” author and social critic Os Guinness warned that secularization was hollowing out the institution that had long guided Western civilization: the church. As Biblical faith weakened, society’s moral foundations weakened, creating a vacuum secular ideologies would inevitably fill.

A little more than a decade later, Judge Robert Bork approached the same crisis from a different direction. In “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” he argued that America’s moral and cultural foundations were being eroded by radical individualism and radical egalitarianism, weakening the institutions upon which constitutional government depends. Nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987, Bork was rejected because of his originalist view of the Constitution. Though writing as a constitutional scholar rather than a theologian, he arrived at a remarkably similar conclusion.

After coming to Washington, I hoped to meet Robert Bork. I invited him to lunch, and he graciously accepted. During our conversation, I asked for his prognosis of America’s future.

He replied, “The culture is too far gone for the country to turn around.”

For a moment, I thought there was no hope.

Then he added, “There is one thing that could save the country, a genuine renewal of religion in America. But unfortunately, the church has been, and continues to be, in decline.”

So how did the barbarians get inside the gate? Through the church’s loss of its preserving influence as the salt of the earth. And how do we secure the gate once again?

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth.” Salt preserves what would otherwise decay. History has confirmed what Christ taught. The decisive battle for America’s future will not ultimately be won in Congress, but in the church as it once again shapes the nation’s moral character. Change the nation’s character, and its politics will follow.

“In God We Trust” cannot remain merely a motto etched in stone. It must once again become the conviction written upon our hearts and reflected in how we live.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand. He also served two terms as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and served as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Source: As Socialism Rises In America, Mike Johnson Warns That ‘The Barbarians Are Inside The Gate’ – Harbinger’s Daily

Analysis of Democrats’ challenges and Republicans’ advantages leading to 2026-2028 elections.

Here’s my minority position – I think Republicans are set to do surprisingly well in the 2026 midterms and very, very well in 2028. Oh, I don’t put it beyond the Republicans to screw up any advantage they’ve been handed. Republicans have the uncanny ability to squander a good thing, but what the Democrats are handing over is pure electoral gold. If you look at the relative positioning of both parties in terms of future electoral success, there is zero question that the Republican Party is much better situated to begin a lengthy sojourn in power. The Democrats have walked themselves into a minefield, and they’ve got no map.

The first land mine is an obvious one, but that’s not going to stop them from stomping on it. The Democrats are going harder and harder left. Right now, the success of the socialist insurgents has been limited to deep blue districts. Where they try to do it in more purple areas, they have more mixed success. In Virginia, they managed to elect a sociopath as AG who wants to kill the kids of Republicans to teach them to be good people. It didn’t work in Maine, though; Herr Platner got punted after he was accused of going a rape too far.

Normal Americans don’t like the weird stuff Democrats are getting into. There’s the transsexual stuff, of course. Normal Americans are getting tired of that freak show, but Democrats are doubling and tripling down on it. It’s become a litmus test for them, depriving them of crucial flexibility. They need to reach out to normal people who don’t think some dude should be sporting his turgid pride as he walks through a girl’s locker room. But also, there’s their whole thing about criminals. Normal people are against being murdered. Democrats are going to get painted as enabling the worst of social pathologies, just like they did in the 70s, which helped Ronald Reagan and the GOP take over until Bill Clinton came along and was able to lead a Democrat Party back to at least a semblance of sanity.

Another land mine is the swap out at the top of the Democrats’ racial hierarchy. Democrats have always been about constituencies, knitting them together to form a majority. But it’s always in flux. The white working class used to be a big piece of the puzzle, and the Democrats dumped them. In the last few cycles, Democrats have lost their headlock on Hispanics, who don’t appreciate weirdness, and many of whom have personal experience with communism. There’s a lot of talk about how Dems grabbed the affluent college-educated whites who used to be Republican voters, and that’s true, to an extent. But a lot of these are wine women, particularly single ones and including young ones, and they’re psychotic and will further alienate normal people (married women still prefer Republicans).

But the big problem for Democrats is their biggest and most loyal constituency, blacks. We’re already seeing the fallout in Texas, where the darling of the faculty/Chardonnay set, heretical imp James Talarico, defeated noted particle physicist Jasmine Crockett in the Senate primary. Well, Jazzy C and black Texans aren’t taking that very well. They believe, not without merit, that they have been ripped off. And they have been. Democrats take blacks for granted, which is the fault of blacks because they’ve allowed themselves, until now, to be taken for granted. But a black woman just roasted Talarico at one of his rallies, bringing this to a head. He’s already a problem because, well, blacks tend to be religious, and this guy is a blasphemous demon in human form who spreads satanic lies that will lead the unwary to eternal damnation. Black folk aren’t down with that. And it’s only going to get worse for the Democrats because blacks across the country are going to demand their share of the power, power that the ascendant leftists want for themselves.

There is another land mine, the baby bomb. Democrats aren’t breeding like conservatives. A lot of them are single women who have no intention of settling down and having children; when they do get knocked up, abortion remains readily available in blue states, and they make use of it. This blends with another problem for the Democrats, which is that a lot of their boomer base is aging out. If you recall those rallies for the Nazi tattoo guy, behind him on stage were always a bunch of gray crones who all looked like Billy Jack’s girlfriend. They’re not going to be around that much longer, and they are some of the Dems’ most devoted voters. Gen X is much more conservative; we have the advantage of being around for another couple of decades.

And there are other effects that come from Democrats not reproducing, besides upping the average IQ and attractiveness of Americans. The birth dearth means fewer kids being indoctrinated in grade schools and colleges. Academia is where the Democrats not only found places for their members to get paid but gave them a chance to corrupt our youth. But fewer kids mean fewer unionized teachers paying union dues, while a lot of colleges are going away in the bankruptcy. That’s fewer dollars and fewer worker bees making mischief. Combined with new technology that is making old education methods obsolete, as well as cost considerations and conservative attention that is going to work to undermine the leftist hold on these institutions, academia writ large is going to stop being so influential. Democrats have become fatally over-invested in their own version of the buggy whip industry.

Here are some other things that the Democrats might find blow them up. The mainstream media may dismiss the government handout fraud stuff that we’ve been seeing, but fraud resonates. From California’s high-speed rail that’s cost billions of dollars and built about 15 inches of track, to massive Somali learing center schemes, to corrupt USAID payoffs to leftist NGOs and beyond, the crackdown is both going to starve the Democrats of money looted from the treasury and laundered into the pockets of the left and closely associated Democrats with fraud in the minds of the voters.

Then there’s something they really can blame on the Jews. The Dems will have to deal with Jews’ sense of self-preservation as the Democrats fully embrace their new Hamas constituency and work to ensure Israel and the Israelis are annihilated. That’s not putting it too harshly – if you’re Jewish, you can’t take any threat too seriously, and this is a threat. Jewish Democrats are enormous donors to the Democrat Party, and that flow of dollars is going to shrink to a trickle that’s not going to be made up by a bunch of new Dems just imported from Goatbangistan. The money might not go to Republicans – that’s a bridge too far for a lot of liberal Jews – but it isn’t going to the Palisimpian Democrats. We’ve seen massive shortfalls in Democrat donations this cycle, and that was before half of the House Democrat caucus voted to render Israel defenseless in the face of the psychopaths who committed the October 7th attacks.

And when that grotesque regime’s collapse accelerates, a lot of DI officials are going to want to ensure that they don’t swing from a lamppost or worse. I married a Cuban–they’re not a forgiving people, and they’re going to make the people who oppressed them pay. So, if you’re a high-ranking DI officer, you’re going to want to make American intelligence an offer it can’t refuse to save your worthless hide, and that means trading stolen records on the DI’s intelligence network in the United States that includes prominent Democrats. That’s going to happen, and it’s going to be earth-shattering. People throw the word “treason” around a lot, but working with the communists to subvert the United States is literally treason, and it’s been happening. Do not expect the Trump administration to forgive and forget, and even the regime media is going to be unable to hide the indictments. The Democrats will, correctly, be painted as the party of traitors.

Let’s also not forget the collapse of captured institutions. We mentioned academia’s decline, but look at the mainstream media and Hollywood. Both are going away. Moreover, the decades of corporate footsie with Democrats will end as the business world realizes that the DSA types can’t be bought off like the old school Pelosi Dems could be. Plus, there is a generalized anti-woke counter-reaction that places PC Democrats with their spouting off on woke nonsense outside of the zeitgeist. Their own base won’t let them moderate; they’ll be telling us dudes can menstruate for another decade even as over-it normals shake their heads in disgust.

But then again, we are Republicans, and the fact remains that the Republican Party is the only party that can summon up enough dumb to squander these advantages.

Kurt Schlichter  | Jul 23, 2026

Source: Democrats Are Walking Into a Minefield