Editorial O’ The Day – Page 4

Can the Dark Ages Return?

Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece.

But what re-emerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets – what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.

The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model.

For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread Western culture, eventually to be inseparable from Christianity.

From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and Danube to the Sahara, there were a million square miles of safety, prosperity, progress, and science – until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.

What followed was a second European Dark Age, roughly from 500 to 1000 AD.

Populations declined. Cities eroded. Roman roads, aqueducts, and laws crumbled.

In place of the old Roman provinces arose tribal chieftains and fiefdoms.

Whereas once Roman law had protected even rural people in remote areas, during the Dark Ages, walls and stone were the only means of keeping safe.

Finally, at the end of the 11th century, the old values and know-how of the complex world of Graeco-Roman civilization gradually re-emerged.

The slow rebirth was later energized by the humanists and scientists of the Renaissance, Reformation, and eventually the 200-year European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age.

But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law?

Historians cite several causes of societal collapse – and today they are hauntingly familiar.

Like people, societies age. Complacency sets in.

The hard work and sacrifice that built the West also creates wealth and leisure. Such affluence is taken for granted by later generations. What created success is eventually ignored – or even mocked.

Expenditures and consumption outpace income, production, and investment.

Child-rearing, traditional values, strong defense, love of country, religiosity, meritocracy, and empirical education fade away.

The middle class of autonomous citizens disappear. Society bifurcates between a few lords and many peasants.

Tribalism – the pre-civilizational bonds based on race, religion, or shared appearance – re-emerge.

National government fragments into regional and ethnic enclaves.

Borders disappear. Mass migrations are unchecked. The age-old bane of antisemitism reappears.

The currency inflates, losing its value and confidence. General crassness in behavior, speech, dress, and ethics replaces prior norms.

Transportation, communications, and infrastructure all decline.

The end is near when the necessary medicine is seen as worse than the disease.

Such was life around 450 AD in Western Europe.

The contemporary West might raise similar red flags.

Fertility has dived well below 2.0 in almost every Western country.

Public debt is nearing unsustainable levels. The dollar and euro have lost much of their purchasing power.

It is more common in universities to damn than honor the gifts of the Western intellectual past.

Yet, the reading and analytical skills of average Westerners, and Americans in particular, steadily decline.

Can the general population even operate or comprehend the ever-more sophisticated machines and infrastructure that an elite group of engineers and scientists create?

The citizen loses confidence in an often corrupt elite, who neither will protect their nation’s borders nor spend sufficient money on collective defense.

The cures are scorned.

Do we dare address spiraling deficits, unsustainable debt, and corrupt bureaucracies and entitlements?

Even mention of reform is smeared as “greedy,” “racist,” “cruel,” or even “fascist” and “Nazi.”

In our times, relativism replaces absolute values in the eerie replay of the latter Roman Empire.

Critical legal theory claims crimes are not really crimes.

Critical race theory postulates that all of society is guilty of insidious bias, demanding reparations in cash and preferences in admission and hiring.

Salad-bowl tribalism replaces assimilation, acculturation, and integration of the old melting pot.

Despite a far wealthier, far more leisured, and far more scientific contemporary America, was it safer to walk in New York or take the subway in 1960 than now?

Are high school students better at math now or 70 years ago?

Are movies and television more entertaining and ennobling in 1940 or now?

Are nuclear, two-parent families the norm currently or in 1955?

We are blessed to live longer and healthier lives than ever – even as the larger society around us seems to teeter.

Yet, the West historically is uniquely self-introspective and self-critical.

Reform and Renaissance historically are more common than descents back into the Dark Ages.

But the medicine for decline requires unity, honesty, courage, and action – virtues now in short supply on social media, amid popular culture, and among the political class.

Well, all they really know is grandstanding Kabuki theater, so what should we expect?

Democrats’ performative anger on guns offers no real solutions

Even while law enforcement officers hunted for the gunman who murdered two students and wounded nine others at Brown University in Rhode Island last week, gun restrictionists unleashed their typical unhinged rhetoric. Take the reliably partisan Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT): He blamed President Donald Trump for engaging in a “dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country.”

The anger is performative and cynical.

After all, Rhode Island already features every gun regulation Democrats propose we pass nationally. Like everywhere else in the country, all gun purchases go through an FBI background check in Rhode Island. The state has closed the so-called “gun-show loophole.” There’s a waiting period to obtain a gun. Felons are banned from owning firearms. Rhode Islanders must take safety training to obtain “blue permits” to own handguns even in their own homes. “Assault weapons,” the concocted classification Democrats have given scary-looking semiautomatic rifles, are banned. There’s also a ban on magazine capacity above 10 rounds. Citizens have a duty to retreat for self-defense rather than a right to stand their ground. Rhode Island has one of the lowest percentages of gun owners in the country.

One of the popular rejoinders from restrictionists when you point out all these laws is to tell you that passing “safety” laws means little if neighboring states have permissive gun regulations. So, for instance, Chicago politicians are perpetually blaming Indiana for crime, even though Indiana has lower crime levels. Well, Rhode Island is surrounded by states with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, Connecticut and Massachusetts. All three states have passed restrictions that go well beyond any bill that could conceivably pass national or, likely, constitutional muster.

Besides all those constraints, guns are also effectively banned in all Rhode Island schools and universities. Brown University is a “gun-free zone.” Or, in other words, staff, professors, and students are expected to cower in fear and wait for police or security to arrive as the murderer walks around with impunity. Parents trust administrators and professors to house, feed, and educate their children, but not to have a concealed carry permit and possibly save students in case of tragedy.

In any event, the idea, often pushed by the Left, that people have unfettered access to guns is a myth. There are somewhere around 40,000 laws restricting guns on the books in the United States. No constitutional right is nearly as regulated. It’s exceptionally likely that the Brown shooter broke a slew of laws before he murdered anyone.

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BLUF
The infrastructure of American decline is operating at full scale right now. The mechanisms are completely visible to anyone willing to look. The solutions are clear and well-defined. The only remaining question is whether enough Americans will demand action before the window of opportunity closes permanently.
Which will America choose?

How America’s Education System Became a Weapon Against Itself
Manufacturing Hatred: How $13 Billion Taught a Generation to Despise Jews and Their Country

When college students tore down posters of kidnapped Israeli children in October 2023, parents asked: where did this come from? The answer lies in curriculum materials developed at Brown University. These materials reached approximately one million students annually in roughly 8,000 high schools across America. What teachers didn’t know, and what parents never learned, is that the professor who shaped these materials was funded by a Middle Eastern government. His purpose was to advance one specific narrative: Israel as a settler colonial project. Not to debate it. Not to present multiple perspectives. To establish it as fact.

“This is not a debate,” Professor Beshara Doumani told a Brown audience in 2016. “And it’s not meant to be a debate.”

This is the root of American antisemitism’s resurgence. But antisemitism is just the visible symptom of something larger. The same infrastructure that taught a generation to hate Jews is now teaching them to hate America. The same foreign funding mechanisms that delegitimized Israel are delegitimizing Western civilization itself. America is being systematically dismantled. One classroom at a time. One algorithm at a time. One generation at a time.

The Hidden Infrastructure

Eleven Middle East Studies centers at America’s elite universities receive $260,000 each annually from the Department of Education under Title VI. That totals $2.9 million in taxpayer funding (National Association of Scholars, 2022). The Cold War-era program was originally designed to develop regional expertise for national security purposes. It became a pipeline for foreign influence when universities discovered they could supplement these federal grants with something far more lucrative.

Since 1981, American universities have accepted $13.1 billion from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait (Bard, 2024). Qatar alone contributed nearly $6 billion. Roughly 73% of these contributions are worth approximately $10.7 billion. None of these billions have any publicly stated purpose despite federal disclosure requirements (Bard, 2024).

The scale is staggering. Cornell received $2.3 billion. Carnegie Mellon took $1.05 billion. Georgetown and Texas A&M each accepted over $1 billion. When you look at Georgetown’s records, you find more than $1 billion with no stated purpose. Just blank spaces where explanations should be.

Here’s what we do know. Saudi Arabia gave Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center $20 million. The funding was structured to “follow” the center’s director. This gave the Saudi government effective control over who held the position (Middle East Forum, 2020). Qatar Foundation International sponsored K-12 teacher training sessions. They covered travel and expenses for American educators attending workshops on Middle East history (Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, March 2025). At least one donation explicitly funded a Palestinian Studies professorship at Brown. The position went to someone who supports boycotting Israel (Bard, 2024).

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The Reality of Nationwide Gun Control
the math behind the policy

A mass shooting occurred at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, on the evening of Saturday, December 13, 2025.

If you think the lesson of what happened there is that we need nationwide gun control, I want to persuade you of something uncomfortable but important: you really don’t want that.

I promise that you don’t, and if you keep reading, I think I can explain why.

I’ve been to that campus a couple of times, so I followed the news more closely than I normally would. And in the midst of the usual commentary, I started seeing a familiar argument repeated in various forms. The commenter would acknowledge that both the state of Rhode Island and Brown University itself already have very strict laws and rules governing firearms.

From there, the conclusion followed naturally: therefore, we need nationwide gun control. These local restrictions are said to be meaningless because a would-be killer can simply go to New Hampshire or Vermont and buy a weapon with ease.

I understand why this argument feels compelling. But before accepting it, we need to be honest about what “nationwide gun control” would actually require in the United States as it exists, not as we might wish it to be.

I want to address this argument, but not in the usual ways. I’m not going to invoke the Second Amendment. I’m not going to point out that people willing to violate laws against murder are not ideal candidates for obeying other laws. None of that.

Instead, I want to talk about the cold, pragmatic reality of what people who think they want nationwide gun control are actually asking for.

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The DOJ Says It Will Challenge Unconstitutional Gun Policies. Maybe It Should Stop Defending Them.
The Justice Department’s litigation positions are at odds with its avowed intent to protect Second Amendment rights.

The Justice Department recently established a “Second Amendment Section” within its Civil Rights Division. On its face, that move is a welcome development for defenders of the constitutional right to armed self-defense—an impression reinforced by the alarm the new initiative has generated among gun control advocates. But the section’s mission statement raises doubts about its commitment to Second Amendment advocacy. So does the Justice Department’s ongoing defense of constitutionally dubious federal gun laws.

“I’m really excited about this,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division, told Fox News. “For the first time, the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the DOJ at large will be protecting and advancing our citizens’ right to bear arms as part of our civil rights work….As Attorney General Pam Bondi has said, the Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and I couldn’t agree more with my boss.”

Dhillon said the Justice Department will challenge obstacles to obtaining concealed carry permits such as “multi-thousand-dollar costs” and “unreasonably long delays.” Another potential target, she said, is state bans on “guns that should be protected by the Second Amendment” under “recent Supreme Court precedent,” by which she presumably meant “assault weapon” bans. In a recent Supreme Court brief, the government’s lawyers suggested that “cases involving state laws banning AR-15 rifles” provide good “vehicles for clarifying the appropriate framework for discerning what types of arms the Second Amendment protects.”

So far, so good. But the Justice Department’s description of the Second Amendment Section’s agenda should give pause to anyone familiar with the litigation inspired by the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which clarified the Second Amendment test for gun control laws and cast doubt on the constitutionality of many longstanding firearm restrictions.

The Second Amendment Section aims to protect “the natural firearm rights of law-abiding American citizens and ensure that such rights to keep and bear arms will not be infringed,” the Justice Department says. “The mission of the 2nd Amendment Section is to ensure that law-abiding American citizens may responsibly possess, carry, and use firearms.”

That “law-abiding” qualifier does not appear in the text of the Second Amendment. Nor is it “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test established by Bruen. And taken literally, it excludes millions of peaceful Americans from exercising “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” which is in fact the upshot of policies that the Trump administration defends.

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BLUF
They assume they are exempt from following the law because they believe they are our moral and intellectual superiors.

And so for the next four years, they will once again insist they can ignore or violate with contempt any federal law they please—as the nation is heading toward widespread civil insurrection of the left’s own neo-Confederate making.

Insurrection Chic

Who is the real, or fictional, inspiration for the new insurrectionary wing of the Democrat Party?

The fictitious Hollywood insurrectionist, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “James Mattoon Scott” (Burt Lancaster), who in the 1964 film Seven Days in May attempted to overthrow the presidency?

Or perhaps Jefferson Davis? He ultimately ordered the attack by South Carolina state forces against the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, which ignited the Civil War.

Or is the better inspiration the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door?” Alabama Governor George Wallace likewise vowed to use his state’s law enforcement to nullify a federal law.

Yet how odd that the left, which had lectured us so often about a January 6th “insurrection”—a charge that not even the Javert-like special counsel Jack Smith ever lodged against Donald Trump—now talks frequently about the proud nullification of our nation’s federal laws.

The New Confederacy

Democrats weirdly boast of the subordination of the Constitution to international statutes. Our governors and mayors in blue states and cities take neo-Confederate vows to oppose the national government’s right to protect its own property, to direct its own employees, and to enforce our shared federal laws.

Over a decade ago, some 600 “sanctuary cities” declared that they were immune from the full enforcement of federal law. They further boasted that they would not hand over illegal aliens, detained by state or local authorities, to federal agents.

These were strange threats. Not long ago, at the 1992 and 1996 Democratic conventions, liberal grandees like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi had vowed to stop all would-be illegal aliens from unlawfully entering the U.S. Apparently, they all flipped to open borders when spiraling numbers turned the undocumented into a new Democratic constituency.

Moreover, being the left, their loud nullificationist vows were, of course, purely political and never principled.

Once, an exasperated Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, had beseeched the Obama administration in vain to enforce its own federal laws at the southern border. In frustration, she finally sought ways to use her own state’s resources to do what Obama refused.

And the reaction of the Obama administration?

It was certainly not gratitude for Brewer’s efforts to enforce federal law. Instead, the Obama crowd sued her. It successfully sought out left-wing judges to stay her state’s efforts.

How strange that our current “principled” district judges once ruled that states could not interfere with federal border policing—even in cases where the federal government was illegally refusing to enforce its own laws.

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The Islamist Hillbillies

Fred Aaron

When I was a kid, one of my favorite shows was the Beverly Hillbillies. This farce was about a bunch of uneducated, backwards country folks who fell assbackwards into tons of money when the patriarch of the clan, Jedd Clampett, found oil on his property while hunting a raccoon for dinner. Called Texas tea, the family of poor mountain folk were suddenly millionaires (which, adjusted for 2026 dollars, but put them in the same place as the Al Thani and Elon Musk). The comedy in the series came from the fact that all that money didn’t change the Clampetts. They were still the same old hillbillies wearing country attire, eating possum, and driving their banker friends nuts.

In all humor, there is a kernel of truth, and with the Beverly Hillbillies, it showed what could happen if you found wealth through no real efforts of your own. Instead of working for it, the money is just given to you. As a result, you don’t develop in the same way you would if you had earned a professional degree, moved up in the ranks of a trade, invested well, invented something, or excelled in the arts, athletics or entertainment. Those kind of experiences change a person, and when it happens at a societal level, it advanced a culture.

So what happens on a cultural level? We actually know the answer to that question. Until oil became big commerce at the turn of the 20th century, most of the Muslim world was in decline. In fact, it had been in decline since the failure of the Ottomans at the Siege of Vienna. While Europe, Asia and the Americas went through an industrial revolution, the Muslim world stagnated. Trapped with a 7th century ideology, limited resources, and a massive chip on their shoulders, the Muslims were going nowhere fast. Until oil. That black gold changed everything.

Suddenly, the Muslim countries found themselves literally sitting on a mountain of money. However, it was money that was completely unearned, it was just the happenstance of geography and geology, combined with the internal gas engine beating out electricity to power vehicles. Oil was cheap and plentiful, and the Muslims found themselves sitting upon its largest reserves.

And just like the Beverly Hillbillies, they didn’t change a damn thing about themselves. They still wore the same clothes, bore the same grudges, followed the same ideology. They hadn’t undergone any cultural development. They hadn’t learned the life lessons that come from sweat equity. They didn’t get the development that comes from education.

So this is why we are in this situation today. A people with a 7th century ideology and a vendetta against the West suddenly found themselves with untold riches. But they continue to live like it is the 7th century. At the same time, practically everyone in their midst who tried to modernize things, drag the Muslims kicking and screaming into the 20th century wound up dead, like the Shah and Anwar Sadat.

The key difference is that the Beverly Hillbillies were well meaning. They didn’t hurt anyone (except a stray raccoon or possum that ended up in Granny’s stew pot). Sure, they drove Mr. Drysdale and Miss Hathaway crazy (they were the Clampett’s beleaguered bankers). But they didn’t send out suicide bombers, oppress other religions, and use their wealth to undermine the West. The same cannot be said for the Islamist Hillbillies. Where the Beverly Hillbillies was comedy, the Islamist Hillbillies are tragedy.

Mamdani and His Jewish Supporters
Jewish Naïveté in the Age of Mamdani

My apologies to my Jewish brethren. But, to those who voted for socialist Zohran Mamdani this is unfortunately an exercise in deep self-deception.

First of all, Jewish naïveté didn’t begin on New York’s election night. No. Jews have been in the forefront of many campaigns for social and revolutionary change, only later to shockingly face betrayal by the very movements they helped to foster.

As many readers know, I started my Substack column looking at history, particularly American New Left history. I once was an avowed Marxist and was a roommate with Chicago 7 defendant Rennie Davis.

As might be expected, I personally met and collaborated with many so-called “revolutionary” New Left leaders in the 1970’s from Abbie Hoffman to Jerry Rubin. I was an idealistic romantic about the many benefits of socialism. And I’m Jewish.

History is replete with Jews who were naïve about socialism and socialist ideas.

One of the biggest Jewish leaders who embraced the Leninist Soviet dictatorship is a long-forgotten Jew named Grigori Zinoviev. That’s how he was publicly known. But his original name was Hirsh Apfelbaum. He was a Jew.

Zinoviev became one of the biggest global salesmen for communism after Vladimir Lenin appointed him as the President of the Soviet COMINTERN, known as the Communist International. He traveled to Europe and the United States to propagandize about the wonders of socialism. He also served as one of the troika with Joseph Stalin in governing the Soviet Union.

Zinoviev foolishly thought he was advancing the socialist revolution for the Russian working class. But after decades of being a loyal and an enthusiastic communist, Stalin prosecuted Zinoviev. He sent the Jewish leader before one of his despicable “Show Trials.”

Then in 1936 he sent Zinoviev – or Apfelbaum – before a firing squad. Despite claiming his innocence, he was executed in August of that year.

As the moderate Jewish organization Aish noted about Zinoviev in a 2024 article titled, “For Jewish Anti-Semites, A Cautionary History Lesson: “Yet, for all of his devotion to the cause and his role in giving Stalin the leadership position, his idealism would reveal itself to be naive. At the end of the day, as far as the enemies of the Jews were concerned, a Jew is a Jew.”

Aish further observed that, “As far as his fellow Jews, Zinoviev did not use his influence to help them. He spent his life building the regime that would utterly destroy the Soviet Jewish community.”

Zinoviev, like many of today’s progressive Jews, turned his backs on Judaism. He really didn’t care about his religion or about the Jewish people living in the Soviet Union. Today, many of the Jewish-born pro-Mamdani supporters also elevate their progressive socialist ideas over their affinity toward Judaism. Many also reject Israel outright.

According to exit polls, one out of three New York Jews were ecstatic about Mamdani and voted for him. They did so even though Mamdani is openly anti-Israel, has embraced many antisemitic tropes, along with dogmatic Islamic edicts.

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The Armed Awakening of America’s Radical Left
When moral outrage meets live ammunition.

Unless you live under a rock — or teach gender studies — you won’t be surprised to find that people with strong left-leaning political attitudes score far higher on traits like neuroticism and psychopathy than many of their conservative counterparts. These psychological signatures — emotional volatility, heightened threat sensitivity, and explosive aggression — are more pronounced the further left you go. Add to that the recent murder of Charlie Kirk, the attempts on Donald Trump’s life, and a surge in gun purchases by self-styled progressive activists, and the picture turns even darker.

The same movement that once mocked the Second Amendment is now shopping for suppressors.

The same movement that once mocked the Second Amendment is now shopping for suppressors. From trans shooters to queer collectives and “rainbow rifle clubs,” the left’s new hobby isn’t mindfulness and manifesting — it’s marksmanship. Conservatives tend to buy guns to defend their families; leftists now seem to buy them to prove they can. The mood has shifted, from preachy to predatory.

It wasn’t always like this. During the George Floyd riots of 2020, the radical left burned cities and, yes, cracked a few skulls along the way. Innocent shopkeepers were beaten, officers ambushed, and neighborhoods torched. Yet for all the carnage, most of the movement’s foot soldiers weren’t locked and loaded. They fought with fists, bricks, and stupid slogans. But times have changed. What began as “defund the police” has metastasized into “arm the resistance. The irony writes itself: the same people who argued that no one should own a firearm now brag about their “community arsenals.”

The pandemic made everything worse — politics, paranoia, and people. Isolation fermented into delusion. Online echo chambers turned into pressure cookers. Every disagreement became a moral emergency, every rival a fascist. Locked indoors and glued to screens, millions mistook outrage for purpose. Those who once feared guns now fear obscurity. For a movement built on emotion, weaponry has become the new therapy — something cold, mechanical, and finally under their control.

But something more dangerous is happening right now: ideology is mutating into insurgency.

The post-Floyd left has convinced itself it’s fighting for survival. To question its dogmas is to threaten its existence. That’s why dissent within the ranks is punished with medieval brutality. But something more dangerous is happening right now: ideology is mutating into insurgency. The left has discovered that it likes the smell of gunpowder.

And why not? The rhetoric has been primed for years. “Punch a Nazi.” “Burn it down.” “No justice, no peace.” It was only a matter of time before soundbites became strategies. While conservatives debate calibers and carry laws, progressives are turning their causes into armed crusades. The so-called “John Brown Gun Club” trains members to prepare for civil conflict. What was once fringe is now fashionable.

Again, to be very clear, the modern left is not just angry — it’s unwell. Anxiety and depression rates among self-described progressives have skyrocketed, especially among the young. To those on the far left, Trump and his supporters aren’t political opponents but existential threats. They are embodiments of evil to be eradicated, not engaged. When politics becomes pathology, violence stops feeling like a crime and starts feeling like self-defense.

For decades, the right was caricatured as paranoid doomsday preppers. Now it’s the left that’s preparing for the apocalypse. Once, revolution was an aesthetic — Che Guevara shirts and campus protests. Now it’s a lifestyle brand with tactical vests.

Meanwhile, conservatives — those caricatured as the violent barbarians — are mostly watching this unfold with disbelief. They’ve always known that guns aren’t inherently evil; intent is. What terrifies them isn’t the weaponry but the warped conviction behind it. A man protecting his family is predictable; a lunatic avenging an ideology is not.

We are entering uncharted territory. The United States has seen political assassinations, riots, and radical groups before — but never with this cultural reach. The internet ensures that every grievance finds both a trigger and a target. Fury is now networked, outrage algorithmic. And unlike the extremists of old, today’s radicals don’t hide in compounds. They scroll beside you, shop beside you, share your workspace, and sleep next door.

You can’t mix apocalyptic language with live ammunition and expect harmony. A society can survive hypocrisy. It cannot survive hysteria with high-capacity magazines. Every revolution begins with the belief that violence will heal what politics can’t. It never does. It only creates new tyrants with a taste for blood.

Perhaps, in some dark corner of their minds, the new progressives believe they’re the heroes in history’s next great moral war. They forget that history has a habit of eating its heroes. It also has an excellent memory. It remembers every bullet, every boast, every cause that mistook fury for faith. And it will remember who called it justice when they started killing the innocent.

The Politics of Anarchy: Socialists regard disorder as a means to an end: government control.

Anarchists detonated a bomb in 1920 at J.P. Morgan & Co.’s headquarters at 23 Wall St., killing 38 and wounding more than 100. Scars from that bombing are still visible today. So are anarchists. As the little girl said in “Poltergeist II,” “They’re back.”

Will new socialist New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani lead to disorder? Free party buses and no cops! Here’s a hint: He tweeted in 2020, “Taxation isn’t theft. Capitalism is.” How about a 100% tax rate, comrade?

Anarchy is in the air. Alex Soros celebrated the New York mayoral result by tweeting, “The American dream continues!” His father’s Open Society Foundations have a history of funding anarchy-producing criminal-justice reforms and antipolice movements. Some American dream.

Why anarchy and destruction of social order? Always ask: Who benefits? The breaking down of society is a means to an end—the long game of political control. Citizens scream, “Save me!” This isn’t new. The Reichstag fire. Food shortages driving a Bolshevik uprising. Pandemic riots. Anarchy works. I have no love for czars, but control often passes to political systems that are much worse. Socialism. Communism. Authoritarian control. Only the new rulers are better off.

But wait, isn’t society crumbling? Haven’t you heard that costs are skyrocketing, jobs are hard to find, late-stage capitalism is failing and the source of all evil? Many youths think, “Socialism, save me!” But there’s always economic upheaval. Unlike anarchy, economic chaos is driven by creative destruction, and productivity is a long-term plus. It generates societal wealth by breaking down a sclerotic status quo and bringing better living standards. Anarchy destroys wealth to grab power.

The 1970s were dismal. In 1976 the Sex Pistols released “Anarchy in the U.K.,” which goes: “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it / I wanna destroy passersby.” In “God Save the Queen,” Johnny Rotten sang, “No future, no future for you.” It resonated. Jobs were scarce, inflation was roaring, unions ruled, schools failed to educate. Sound familiar?

Today undereducated (and economically illiterate) youths, along with a quieter illegal-immigrant population, are complaining about no future. Will socialists and anarchy save them? Hardly. It wasn’t anarchists that ended the ’70s malaise. It was a different type of voter-frustration regime change that upended the status quo: free-marketers like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Constructionists, not anarchists.

Still, disorder sells. I’ve noticed the New York Times now labels the 2020 George Floyd riots as “broadly peaceful protests” because CNN’s “mostly peaceful protests” was ridiculed so badly. Anarchy ruled in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in 2020 and in the smelly Occupy Wall Street encampments of 2011. Add to the list the Jan. 6, 2021, mouth breathers who stormed the Capitol.

The recent (partially funded by Iran) campus protests and progressive support of Hamas terrorists in Gaza and further Middle East unrest is all about anarchy. Same for Greta Thunberg’s Omnicause of grievances. Europe was left behind because of green spending. Anarchy, especially during cold winters. Again, why? Who benefits?

Now New York, Chicago, Portland and gerrymandered California are headed in that direction. Statists and soft-on-crime weak-knees enable anarchy. Like Orwellian newspeak, they instill nonsense like pregnant men and an existential climate apocalypse until even Bill Gates calls bull hockey.

Open borders and sanctuary cities create more anarchy. Anarchists are antieducation. Antigrowth. Antiprogress. Anticapitalist. Bring on a new social order, it takes a village, we’ll make the decisions, not you. Trump tariff chaos has a whiff of this. Maybe it’s why the left hates him so much—he’s executing their game plan better than they are.

It feels like the desired endgame is an overthrow of existing regimes for a more squishy communal paradise. That’s been tried, and instead autocrats take over and crush dissent, boots on throats.

Yes, we need change. Society always does. Progress never sleeps. But we need change driven by the next wave, which has its fits and starts. And those who were left behind: Luddites. Buggy-whip manufacturers. Local department stores. Phone operators and bank tellers. And now artificial-intelligence-threatened graphic designers, coders, teachers, lawyers and doctors.

Some confuse this for anarchy. It isn’t. Instead of entropy (physicists’ definition of disorder) you get productivity and enthalpy (more energy) in the form of societal wealth and progress.

Anarchists want to tear society down and revert to a more feudal world. Will we see the equivalent of New York’s early-1990s crack dens? Hope not. Instead, let entrepreneurs and capital markets thrive, build order and create opportunities for everyone from the lowest to highest rungs of the economic ladder, and move society toward a higher purpose. Health, wealth, happiness. Work hard, play hard instead of asking for free stuff. It’s better than “No future for you.”

More stand your ground lies

By Mike McDaniel

Since the Trayvon Martin case—my home blog Martin case archive is here–the racial grievance industry has endlessly claimed “stand your ground”—SYG—laws allow white racists to murder innocent blacks at will. Never mind that SYG was not implicated in that case and that neither the prosecution nor the defense raised it. An unmistakable case of self-defense, the local prosecutor refused to prosecute. So racially charged was the political atmosphere, then Florida AG Pam Bondi appointed a corrupt special prosecutor who lost the case.

The anti-liberty/gun industry continues to lie about SYG laws, and the Wall Street Journal has jumped on the creaky bandwagon:

The premise of the WSJ story is that Stand Your Ground laws have led to a 59% increase in the number of justifiable homicides in some states between 2019 and 2024, and that the law is allowing some folks to literally get away with murder.

As we discussed yesterday, though, none of the anecdotal cases cited by WSJ in support of that premise are slam dunk examples of murders that were deemed justified as a result of SYG laws. The data set used by the paper is also suspect, since it did not include the significant number of states where Stand Your Ground exists in common law but not specifically in statute.

The WSJ is, at least, misleading:

Even using the WSJ’s own flawed dataset, the percentage of homicides deemed justified in SYG states has climbed from about 2.8% in 2019 to 3.8% in 2024. We don’t know how many self-defense claims were raised in the 96.2% of homicides that were deemed murder, but we know the number isn’t “zero.” Stand Your Ground laws aren’t a “get-out-of-jail free” card for armed citizens, despite the slanted reporting from the WSJ and Gifffords’ wild suggestion that many or all of these justifiable homicides are actually murder.

Just because a state has a SYG law doesn’t mean SYG is implicated in every murder or justified instance of self-defense. All SYG laws do is remove any legal requirement that people unlawfully attacked run away before defending themselves. If they are legally present when and where attacked, they may “stand their ground” and defend themselves. That’s it. The legal criteria for the use of deadly force remain, and the good guys, not Democrat’s criminal constituency, have the advantage.

Keep in mind I’m not an attorney. I’m providing only general information available by reading the use of force statues of most states. Visiting attorney Andrew Branca’s Law of Self Defense site is also helpful.

Generally, one may use deadly force if a reasonable person in like circumstances would believe they are facing an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death. Whether those elements are fulfilled is the job of the police to determine. No detective is going to simply take a defender’s word for it.

They’ll exhaustively interview all witnesses. They’ll find and collect all video from the area—almost everything is recorded these days. They’ll determine if the defender’s account is supported by physical and forensic evidence. They’re required to investigate every unattended death, even if it initially appears to be an obvious case of self-defense, as a murder until they can conclusively prove otherwise.

In the Martin case, that’s just what they did and discovered George Zimmerman was telling the truth. Ambushed out of the dark by Martin, who broke his nose, knocking Zimmerman to the ground and straddling him. Ruthlessly beating him in “MMA ground and pound” fashion as a witness recounted, Martin repeatedly beat Zimmerman’s head on a concrete sidewalk. Unable to defend himself, Zimmerman managed to draw his legally carried handgun. One round ended the attack.

Would a reasonable person in Zimmerman’s position, pinned to the ground and being viciously beaten, unable to fight back, believe he was facing serious bodily injury or death? The jury, applying Florida law, thought so and so should any reasonable person.

SYG didn’t apply because Zimmerman couldn’t run even if he wanted to. All the evidence supported Zimmerman’s account.

Claiming people can “shoot first and ask questions later” or all people have to say is “I feared for my life officer,” and that SYG laws require nothing more is either a complete misunderstanding of the law or an outright lie. In the Martin case, that lie tried to further anti-white racism. Now, Giffords and the WSJ are trying to deprive Americans of their Second Amendment rights and necessary legal protections, which would only worsen criminal violence.

Both are as predictable as they are despicable.

Eric’s 26 Inconvenient Truths

Eric Florack

I’ve been refining this list for several years now. Earlier revisions have been posted in other venues, although most of them are gone now. Even Rush Limbaugh had his 35 Undeniable Truths. As for me — cough, cough — being somewhat less influential, I only have 26.

Buckle up, kids.

There is no such thing as civilized warfare. War is, by definition, the lack of civility and the lack of rules. The rules and the definition of civility are invariably decided by the victor.
Remember that everything Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong did, including the millions of deaths, was absolutely legal according to the laws of their respective countries. Law, therefore, is not the final arbiter of what is and is not moral.
At the same time, morality is not, and can never be, an individual choice.
People are far too easily fooled by the label of “compassion.” It often isn’t.
When speaking the truth becomes objectionable, be very suspicious about those who object.
Donald Trump did not bring division to this country. He was elected because division was already here, brought on by decades of the establishments of both parties moving in precisely the wrong direction.
Heaven has walls, gates, and a very specific set of rules for anyone wishing to enter. You must be of a specific mindset. Hell, meanwhile, has an open-borders policy and will take anyone regardless of their mindset.
The biggest single mistake that we have ever made as a country, a culture, and a people was to turn the education of our young over to the government. Does anyone expect a taxpayer-funded, government-run education system to properly teach the founders’ vision of limited government?
People who are not taught the value of individual freedom, and its relationship with prosperity, morality, and limited government, will never believe in it and will eventually work to destroy it.
Socialism and globalism have historically been rejected by the people subjected to them whenever they’ve had the power to do so. There’s a reason for that: neither actually works to the advantage of the people.
Just because concepts like socialism or global warming have been disproven several times over does not mean their backers will stop pushing those ideas. It’s all they’ve got to go with.
If you want to know who runs your life, look directly at those whom you may not criticize.
Today’s feminism isn’t feminism. For proof of this one need look no further than the large number of self-proclaimed feminists who spend a great deal of time trying to look like men.
The reason most feminists claim to hate men is because they surround themselves with liberal men who, in the final analysis, are not men at all.
There are two sexes: male and female. You can have all the operations you want, but it won’t matter: your DNA is not going to change. The surgical blade is not a means by which one can run away from the reality of one’s self.
Claims to the contrary not withstanding, because one is of the Republican Party does not make one a conservative. Consider the number of establishment Republicans who have been fighting Donald Trump on every point. Remember, also, that the establishment GOP wasn’t too happy about Ronald Reagan winning elections either and have subsequently gone well out of their way to erase his legacy.
The purpose of government, any government, should be to nurture, protect, and, if possible, extend the influence of the culture that gave it life.
Nothing is for free. Someone must pay for its being available.
Our freedom and our rights come from God, not from government.
The American culture is unique and worth fighting for. It is the basis of our prosperity and our very way of life.
John F. Kennedy wouldn’t want anything to do with the Democratic Party of today. Indeed, it’s a wonder that the Democrats hold Kennedy to be an icon of the party at all. Think: When’s the last time you saw a Democrat mention the man?
The proximate cause of most of our problems is the establishment of both parties, who have come to love the power of government more than is good for the upkeep of the principles put forward in the American Revolution. We desperately need these principles to return if we are to survive as a nation, a culture, and a people
The most glaring lesson taught to us by Donald Trump being elected twice is that both parties’ rank-and-file are rejecting their own establishments.
Ninety percent of what gets passed off as racial issues are actually cultural in nature.
A nation without borders ceases to be a nation almost immediately. That is in fact the goal of pushing for open borders.
Experience has taught us that the cause of world peace would be best served by the dissolving of the United Nations. There is no fixing it.

Enemies of the People

In 1993, I stood in front of someone and swore my oath of enlistment. I’d joined the United States Navy and vowed then and there to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

During my time in Uncle Sam’s Yacht Club, I was never called upon to defend against foreign enemies. However, now that I’m in civilian life, I keep finding myself needing to defend us from domestic enemies.

We call them the Democratic Party, unfortunately.

In recent weeks, the insanity has reached a fevered pace. We’ve got everything from former presidents calling for the regulation of what people say to some reality TV personality from Bravo threatening literally everyone who isn’t as rabidly leftist as she is. We’ve got a sizeable chunk of the Democrats’ base threatening to loot if they don’t get their free food money they did nothing to deserve from the government, even.

This follows weeks of celebration of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and generations of pushing to restrict our ability to resist a tyrannical government.

And yet, they try to present themselves as the people who can be trusted with the reins of power?

Let’s not even get into their own calls for “lowering the temperature” on rhetoric after Kirk was killed, which weren’t even directed toward their own side, but toward us.

These are not people interested in being our countrymen and women. They see us as scum that they must purge from society through whatever means available to them or, at a minimum, who must be suppressed into silence.

What else was cancel culture but an attempt to make everyone too afraid to say what they really wanted to say?

Now, it’s violence. They want us scared, not for our livelihoods this time, but for our very lives.

Reality stars on C-tier cable networks are more than willing to talk big on “going after” anyone who thinks violence isn’t the answer without any pushback from others on the Left, likely because they agree with her.

I don’t want to see violence from either side. I’d rather we battle things out with ideas and words than bullets and bombs.

But I won’t pretend that the people who want me dead are anything but my enemies. More than that, considering the direction the Democratic Party is going, even their own base is likely to be viewed as enemies at some point or another, simply because they’re not willing to completely destroy the country from within.

They are the enemies of not just conservatives or libertarians. They’re the enemies of the American people.

Simply put, we need to not just defeat them in elections, but we need to dismantle the entire governmental infrastructure they want control of so that they can put the screws to hardworking Americans who simply want to be left alone in peace. Take it apart, and they’re powerless no matter what they want to do.

Don’t, and they’ll just keep building it up until no one can stop it from destroying the greatest nation in history.

It doesn’t seem like a hard choice now, does it?

The Future of the Second Amendment: A Nation Divided, Armed, and at a Crossroads

The assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has once again thrust the Second Amendment into the national spotlight. In the aftermath, media outlets and politicians are already seizing on the tragedy to rehash the same tired talking points about “common sense gun reform.”

But before we rush to legislate away rights, it’s worth revisiting what the Second Amendment actually says, and what it means.

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

That single sentence, just 27 words, has done more to preserve freedom, individual autonomy, and resistance to tyranny than perhaps any other in human history.

The Real Debate Isn’t About Repeal

Despite what some pundits might imply, there’s no realistic effort underway to repeal the Second Amendment. Both sides know it’s a constitutional cornerstone, one that would require near-impossible political consensus to remove.

Instead, the modern debate focuses on how far the right to keep and bear arms should extend. Should “arms” include semi-automatic rifles? High-capacity magazines? Concealed handguns? To many Americans, Charlie Kirk among them, the answer is simple: freedom comes with inherent risk.

As Kirk once said, “It’s worth the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

He understood a truth that too many forget: that liberty isn’t free, and disarming citizens doesn’t make evil disappear.

Continue reading “”

Why Armed Women Are Safer: What Gun Control Activists Won’t Admit

I recently read an email from Moms Demand Action that led with a chilling statistic: more than 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month in the United States.

As someone who has spent the last several years teaching other women how to properly and safely use firearms, that number is heartbreaking. Every one of those stories is tragic. But what troubles me is how that statistic is being used to convince women that their safety depends on being disarmed, which is the opposite of empowerment.

Domestic violence is a horrific reality. I’ve looked into the eyes of women who’ve lived through it. Many of the women who come to my classes aren’t “gun people.” Some have never touched a firearm before. But they show up because they know that calling for help isn’t always enough when danger is already present inside the home.

As a matter of fact, I am a survivor of domestic violence. So, I hope that anyone who doubts my opinions or convictions on my personal right to keep and bear arms hears this message with absolute clarity.

The world is full of unexpected threats, not in the woods, but in our homes. Not strangers in dark alleys, but people we know.

Moms Demand Action claims that women are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser has access to a gun. What they leave out is that a woman who is trained and prepared to defend herself with a firearm is far less likely to be a victim in the first place.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I wanted nothing more than to own a handgun. However, my anti-gun home state had other things in mind, and I was legally prohibited from pursuing my concealed carry weapons permit as a means of self-protection, a tool that may have prevented my assault.

According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 90 percent of perpetrators of sexual violence against women are men. In terms of domestic violence, statistics show that at least 85 percent of domestic violence victims are women.

Domestic violence is a choice that abusers make, regardless of laws and prohibitions. Abusers choose to abuse. Guns don’t cause abuse. Abuse starts in the heart. Taking firearms away from law-abiding women doesn’t make violent men less dangerous; it only makes their targets less capable of fighting back.

I have no doubt that many members of groups like Moms Demand Action mean well. They use the language like “gun safety” and “preventing domestic violence.” But the leaders of that movement and the billionaires who fund them are making women less safe by restricting our ability to choose the most effective means of protection.

Almost every woman knows someone who has been a victim of abuse, if not having been one herself. Guns are not the cause of abuse. Abusers are. The tool doesn’t create the intent; it’s the intent that seeks out the tool.

Instead of promoting disarmament and dependency, we should be promoting empowerment. Gun owners already lead the way in safety training and responsible ownership. The statistics bear this out. With hundreds of millions of firearms in the U.S., children under the age of five are far more likely to die from drowning, poisoning, suffocation, or auto accidents than from firearms.

Here’s what else they don’t tell you. The vast majority of defensive gun use never even makes the news. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention un the Obama administration has acknowledged that Americans use firearms defensively up to 3 million times every year. Most of those cases end without a shot being fired, because the presence of a gun stops the crime before it starts.

This October, during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I don’t want to see another campaign that paints women as helpless and firearms as the enemy. I want to see one that teaches women how to be their own first responders.

Because the real crisis isn’t that too many women own guns, it’s that too many women are told not to.

At Empowered 2A, a project of Gun Owners of America, we believe America needs more firearms education and training, not more fear. We need more women at the range learning safety, confidence, and accuracy, not more laws that make them criminals for wanting to live how they choose. And we need policymakers who trust women to make their own choices about their own defense.

Not every woman will make the same choices I have. Some will choose a firearm, others won’t. That choice should be hers alone, not that of Washington politicians who are surrounded by some of the best-armed security on the planet, with a billion-dollar annual price tag.

If Moms Demand Action truly wants to save women’s lives, they should start by trusting women with the same tools police officers rely on to protect themselves. Because our lives are no less valuable.

And to the women involved in Moms Demand Action, I’d ask you to consider what you’re asking the government to do. You are asking your own government to take away your best means of self-protection and trade our essential liberty for the false promise of safety.

This October, I will wear purple for Domestic Violence Awareness Month in hopes that more women stand up and defend themselves rather than be disarmed waiting for help that isn’t coming. I will also carry responsibly. Not because I want to use my firearm, but because I never want to need it and not have the choice.

What Academics Consistently Miss When Examining America’s Gun Culture.

Fourteen years into my personal and sociological journey through American gun culture, I am constantly reminded of how difficult it is to find scholarship on everyday firearm use. Despite the longstanding presence of a robust legal gun culture, the social scientific study of guns is dominated by criminological and epidemiological studies of gun violence.

To be fair, criminologists study crime, and public health scholars study pathology. Sociologists tend to study what’s wrong with society rather than what’s right. We teach courses on “Social Problems” and “Deviant Behavior”; the unproblematic or nondeviant often remain unexamined. Studying the positive aspects of guns and of the communal life organized around their use falls out-side sociology’s analytic wheelhouse.

I understand the prevailing disciplinary view, to a point. Guns are, in fact, lethal tools. This is “a feature, not a bug,” as tech people say. Firearm lethality explains why, although the United States has only a moderate overall suicide rate compared to other developed countries, it has a firearm suicide rate that substantially exceeds these other nations. When people attempt suicide using guns, they die in up to 90% of cases. Firearm lethality also explains why, although the United States is not exceedingly violent or criminal, its criminal violence is more deadly.

The reality that 80 to 90 millionAmerican civilians own an estimated 400 million of these lethal tools means that guns will play a role in negative outcomes like suicide and homicide. But understanding the fun and community that can emerge from the responsible use of firearms is an important part of the story, too—and one that sociologists have neglected to tell.

In my analysis, guns resist simple categorization as either universally good or bad, dangerous or protective, fun or frightening. Instead, they are best understood through a “kaleidoscopic view,” considering the issue from multiple angles. To be sure, this requires maintaining a clear-eyed understanding of the lethal capabilities of firearms. But an exclusive focus on firearms-related harms fails to acknowledge—much less appreciate—the complex social realities of guns. As with other “serious leisure” activities, we need to appreciate the individual and communal pleasures associated with shooting—the pleasures that led me to fall for guns.

— David Yamane in How I Fell for Guns

Gaza On the Brink of A Civil War?
Palestinian Clans Are Battling Hamas

There now are warning signs that the Gaza Strip may be on the verge of a full-blown civil war.

Mayhem is reported to be occurring throughout the Strip as Hamas has begun to launch vicious assaults against its own Palestinian citizens. And local Palestinian clans are fighting back.

If an outright civil war does emerge, Palestinian citizens could dramatically alter their history of oppression at the hands of Hamas. And it appears that in various parts of the Gaza Strip, many Palestinians are seeking genuine liberation.

But the fight is going to be ugly and murderous for those who have the courage to stand up to the terror group. Could we see a bloodbath by Hamas as it tries to suppress the open rebellion?

Today, the British Telegraph reported on the brutal display of public executions by Hamas. According to the Telegraph’s Henry Bodkin, “Hamas has carried out a mass execution in the streets of Gaza as part of a series of bloody reprisals following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from key urban areas.

“Footage has emerged appearing to show around eight kneeling, blindfolded men, bearing signs of beatings, being shot dead in front of a crowd,” he wrote.

For months, there’s been ample evidence of a rising Palestinian rebellion against Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip. My own Substack post from last May highlighted various clans that were mobilizing against the terror group.

But even as yesterday’s international conference in Sharm El-Sheik promised to end the power of Hamas, the terror group has decided to strike back by launching murderous street battles across the Strip against rebellious Palestinian clans.

Yesterday, it appeared that President Trump gave Hamas temporary “approval” to still use its security forces to keep public order. But today in a White House meeting with the Argentine President, he seemed to reverse himself, saying, “If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. And it will happen quickly and perhaps violently.”

But Hamas is used to its power to behave with total abandon and without any international restraints. As Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip acutely know, Hamas has ruled with a mafia-style grip that threatens and murders all of its opponents.

The Jerusalem Post’s Seth J. Frantzman observed the current state-of-play: “Hamas will want to settle scores and also show that it is still in control. Hamas will not remain in the shadows, it is already deploying men with AK-47s in areas of Gaza. It will want to show that it still has a mafia-like grip on power. It won’t want any of the various clans, tribes and militias to get any ideas. It will want to cement itself in power before any new interim administration is appointed. Then it will hand a fait accompli to anyone who thinks they can remove Hamas from Gaza.”

Even the BBC confirms Frantzman’s report, arguing that Hamas is seeking to “reassert control over Gaza as fears of renewed internal violence emerge following the withdrawal of Israeli forces. The mobilization has been widely anticipated as uncertainty grows about who will govern Gaza once the war ends – this is a key sticking point for later phases of Trump’s plan.”

The latest reports of pitched, murderous battles against the Palestinian clans also were filed yesterday by the Saudi state-run news agency Al-Hadath.

The Saudi news service reported that explosions were heard in the Gaza City neighborhood of Sejaia. Hamas claims it is launching a “large campaign” against rebelling clans.

The BBC also reported other battles in the Strip: “Masked Hamas gunmen exchanged fire with clan fighters near the city’s Jordanian hospital, witnesses said.”

The British news agency reported on eyewitness accounts of the clashes that erupted in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in southern Gaza City. The BBC stated, “a Hamas force of more than 300 fighters moved to storm a residential block where Dughmush gunmen were entrenched.”

Their reporter recounted stories of sheer mayhem: “Residents described scenes of panic as dozens of families fled their homes under heavy gunfire, many of them displaced multiple times during the war.

“This time people weren’t fleeing Israeli attacks,” one resident said. “They were running from their own people.”

According to another report about the Doghmush clan fighting in Gaza City was from the Israeli outlet Ynet. They stated that 52 members of the Doghmush clan were killed, and 12 Hamas terrorists died in brutal battles.

The outrage expressed by local Palestinians opposed to Hamas is palpable. The Jerusalem Post quoted Hussam al-Astal, the commander of an armed group that’s fighting Hamas in Khan Yunis. He published a defiant post on his Facebook page, harshly attacking the organization, according to the Post.

“To all the Hamas rats,” he wrote, “your tunnels are destroyed, your rights no longer exist. Repent before it’s too late – there is no Hamas from today onward.”

Clearly, the clans also are gunning for major Hamas figures. The infamous Hamas “influencer” and blogger Salah al-Ja‘farawi was one of the most prominent pro-Hamas voices in the Gaza Strip who celebrated the butchery of October 7. He was found dead, reportedly shot in the head.

Interestingly, the wife of New York Democratic mayoralty candidate Zohran Mamdani, Rama Duwaji, mourning his killing. She shared an image of al-Ja’farawi on her Instagram post, accompanied by four broken-heart emojis, according to the Daily Caller. The Caller added she also shared a separate post referring to the “beloved Ja’farawi.”

Also killed by the Palestinian rebels was the son of a senior Hamas military intelligence official, Basem Naim.

The clans clearly are challenging the international narrative about life in Gaza under Hamas. Wrote one clan member, “We are trapped. They arrested all the youths, lined them up against walls, pointed weapons at their heads. There is a massacre here.”

“Children are screaming and dying, they are burning our houses,” another clan member told the Israeli news outlet, Ynet.

The British Telegraph reported in an exclusive interview with Khan Younis clan leader Hossam al-Astal who describes how he and others who hate the terror group await the moment to liberate Gaza.

“It was in the streets of Khan Younis that Hossam al-Astal, a sworn enemy of Hamas, gathered his men for battle against the terrorists after they had attacked the neighboring al-Majayda clan,” the Telegraph reported.

The British news agency further noted, “The bloody battle was the first serious clash between Hamas and the rebel leader’s militia, which he calls Strike Force Against Terror.”

The Telegraph added that the hate for Hamas was deep: “‘No place for Hamas dogs’ reads a slogan emblazoned on a social media picture of the militia leader alongside eight heavily armed men, which was posted around the same time as last week’s battle.”

There are a number of key clans that are leading the uprising. One is Yaser Abu Shabab, a clan leader who I wrote about in my previous Substack. He commands groups of armed men in Gaza’s Rafah area. They patrol and protect aid convoys while openly challenging Hamas’ power.

“Call us counter-terror forces. Our goal is to protect Palestinian human rights from Hamas terrorism,” he has said.

Another is the Doghmush clan whose members were killed this week by Hamas. The clan is large and has weapons. Hamas is gunning for its defiant leaders.

A third is the al-Mujaida clan, one of the largest clans in Gaza’s south. BBC reported that, “The southern Gaza city of Khan Younis has witnessed one of the fiercest internal confrontations since the war began, between a Hamas security force and gunmen from the al-Mujaida clan.

Then there are the community-grown rebel centers like that created by Hossam al-Astal.

Hamas won’t admit that Palestinian unrest is due to the opposition from local clans that are fed up with the terror group. Instead, they’re issuing the ever-weakening claim that Palestinians who oppose Hamas are “collaborators with Israel.”

It’s unclear how quickly an outside security force by Arab states can be mobilized to disarm Hamas and bring some calm to the Strip. This is part of the “second stage” of the 20-point agreement written by President Trump and supported by European and Muslim nations.

Until then, expect Hamas hopes to brutalize those who challenge it. They will probably intensify their killing spree.

Might the Gaza Strip become the Cambodia killing grounds from the 1970’s when communist leader Pol Pot murdered 1.5 to 2 million of its citizens – about a quarter of the country’s population? Might a brutal civil war engulf the small strip before international forces can replace the murderous Hamas?

Only time will tell

My latest Substack essay: The Insurrection Act: A short guide to President Trump’s options.

With resistance to ICE in many blue cities, there’s been a lot of talk about Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. There are other, lesser statutes that he can employ, but this is the big gun. It intentionally gives the President enormous freedom and power to put down resistance to the law.

This is the relevant part of the Insurrection Act:

§252. Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority

Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.

So first, it’s discretionary to employ: “Whenever the President considers.” This language leaves no room for judicial review, by design; it’s up to the President to determine when the predicates for invoking the Act apply. Second, this phrase, “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” seems to fit perfectly with what’s going on in places like Portland or Chicago.

Third, discretionary language again: “as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

It’s entirely up to the President under the statute. You may think it’s a bad idea — I’m not so sure it is, because I don’t think it’s a good idea for state and local governments to have a veto on federal law enforcement actions — but it’s entirely lawful. And, properly understood, not subject to judicial review. (The Insurrection Act, once triggered, also overrides the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibition on using the military for law enforcement purposes.)

Invoking the Insurrection Act wouldn’t be unprecedented — it’s been done thirty times in the history of the Republic, or a bit less than once every 8 years. A state actively resisting federal authority could be met with the full power of the U.S. military — and the President could even recognize a competing, alternative state government. There’s no meaningful opportunity for judicial review under the Insurrection Act as its invocation is a “political question” and hence non-justiciable. (The same is true, as the Supreme Court held almost 200 years ago, in the case of Luther v. Borden, of recognizing one of two competing state governments as the legitimate government of a state).

“Political question” just means that the decision is left to one or both of the political branches of the government, leaving no room for judicial resolution. There is discipline, just not judicial discipline; instead it comes ultimately from voters.

And invocation of the Insurrection Act carries a special political resonance, though how much of one depends on how it is used. Using it to send troops to Portland to control a mob isn’t likely to be too controversial. Using it to replace the government of California, or to support a breakaway state of “New California,” would be more so.

Unless pushed, I don’t think Trump will go very far with this. Politically, it suits him to have Democrats, who yammered about “insurrection” for the past several years, acting loudly insurrectionary. And he seems to be able to accomplish a lot with threats — a threat to send the National Guard in to Chicago produced a sudden flurry of action from the Illinois State Police.

As Clay Whitehead used to say, the value of the Sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it falls. That may be the case here, too. But if the sword of the Insurrection Act falls, it can fall very heavy indeed.

Cynical Publius

🔥MRS. DR. PUBLIUS ALERT🔥

To the women of the Western world – I have a sober urgent message.

Please listen carefully. For those of you who believe the toxic rhetoric of the left -PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY.

You must stop this nonsense – raging war against Western civilization. Western men do not (as a cultural norm) rape children or adjudicate cases of rape by allowing the rapist to marry the victim as reparations. That’s not our cultural norm.

Western women, we must use our voices and platforms wisely. Our entire culture is under attack – our real enemy will be the implementation of Sharia law. Please investigate the tenets of Sharia law for yourself- don’t take my word for it. Step back and look at the situation. Even without a profound understanding of history, we must look beyond today’s headlines and think strategically.

I’ve spent several months reading from different resources describing what Sharia law really means for non-Muslim, Western women. With certainty, you WILL lose all of your independence/autonomy – you will lose control over your own body – you will lose control over your own life – things you currently possess in our culture. These things don’t exist for Muslim women.

STOP listening to the left – they don’t care if you become subjugated against your will. Look at the Christian churches being burned in Nigeria or in Sudan’s North Darfur- Christians are being killed or young girls are being stalked and raped by rape gangs in the UK – all at the hands of Muslim men. This is the Muslim community’s idea of tolerance. If we in the West don’t reverse course – stand up and state the obvious truth – the numbers don’t lie – our culture will succumb to the will of people who desperately do not share like values with us. This is our very survival.

Women, it is the preservation of our constitutional rights that gives us true equality with men – and it is Christianity that reflects this authentic equality most clearly in our modern world. I don’t care if you are offended by that – history confirms my stance.

This needs to be said – the left is waging a war of distraction while the real travesty of what illegal immigration has done to Europe (and to a lesser extent the US) is being obscured – this policy is engulfing Western civilization because Islam does not practice tolerance of other religions/cultures in its home countries. This isn’t about “working families,” healthcare is a right, or any of the corrupted rhetoric of the left to engender class warfare – neither is the offensive racist rhetoric against white men. The left only pulls these sound bites out for their convenience.

I understand Islam is a religion and in the U.S. people have a right to practice their religion (unless it infringes on the rights of others), all because our Constitutional rights are the great equalizer. However, once Muslims take over our government at all levels by sheer numbers – they will implement Sharia law – this is why Islam is incompatible with our constitutional republic. Under Sharia law, Muslims may mislead non-Muslims in order to benefit the spread of Islam. So today, the left touts an ephemeral alliance with Muslims against Israel, but under Sharia law, these same neo-Marxists will be executed for being homosexual or transgender or having sex outside of marriage, and Christians will be enslaved, reduced to dhimmitude and/or executed for their faith. Convert or die – that will be the only choice – that is the reality.

So, that’s what awaits us if we don’t STOP this nonsense now and if we don’t change course, the perpetrators who engineered this catastrophic collapse of Western civilization will be enjoying their Mai Tais on their private islands while our culture lay in ruins.

Even the globalists who think they will still be in control when Western civilization has imploded are truly deceived – because they will face the irrational hoards of Islamic jihadists thirsting for their severed heads.

The women of the left have alienated the very culture that would have defended them. Please consider my arguments, and reverse course while there is still time.

Peace and prepare.

Cynical Publius

I’d like to add my own 2c here, A lot of Americans think what my missus is saying is hyperbole. Ask any veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan if this is all true. Ask anyone who has ever lived or worked in a Gulf state if this is all true. Not only will they confirm it, but they will tell you Mrs. Dr. P. Is holding back.

@TonemanLives

What are the real reasons Dem leaders do not want Trump to send in reinforcements to clean up these dangerous drug filled, crime ridden cities?

The first reaction is, they don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to look weak and or be exploited for their wrongdoings

But there is a reason for all of it. The lack of policing, lack of arrests, lack of protecting the people.

These corrupt loud mouth corrupt politicians aren’t worried about being embarrassed. Hell, they’re Democrats and never show or feel any shame.

What they are truly worried about is Trump coming in and cleaning up their shitholes. Why? Because these dirty scumbags need this. All of this to survive.

I’m talking about the Dem leadership needs these areas for political control. The worse the area the more money gets pumped in. The more money that comes in the more money they get to control. Just look at the war chests of every one of these politicians in these disgusting 3rd war cities.

It’s right out of the Dem playbook. Money and control. Dems would rather rule over the ashes as long as their money flow continues

The Dems never care about the people. Show me any instance anywhere, where the Dems went in and did something good. Show me a place that the Dems made safer or a place where they are taking criminals off the streets and incarcerating them for long periods of time.

You won’t find any because there aren’t any. The Dems thrive on crime. Crime is good for business. Crime is good for politics.

The Dems are masters at playing with crime numbers and know exactly what it takes to keep getting voted in. They purposely keep the numbers down and are in control of their police departments. They tell them who to arrest and who not to bother. Their control goes beyond the people, it also goes to every state agency they are a part of

You lie about how much you care for the people, you continue to give them crumbs just to survive. You promise as long as you are there you will take care of the people. Then you lie about the crime numbers and tell the people that crime is down even though none of them feel it.

It’s called control. As long as things are bad these politicians thrive. They are masters at it and have been doing this for many years.

What do the scared citizens do? They go out and continue to vote for these same recycled scumbags.

They are afraid of change, and afraid to lose what little they get from these corrupt scumbags. There is a reason this has been a rinse and repeat operation for all these years. It keeps their political carousel turning. It keeps them getting reelected.

Now look at the other side of the equation. Trump comes in and what couldn’t be done in decades because the Dem leadership made them all believe that lie, Trump comes in, conquers and cleans up their shithole in a couple of weeks.

What happens next? The people who were lied to and told what couldn’t be done is not only all of a sudden fixed but they suddenly realize they have been lied to the entire time.

They realize the cities they fear to live in didn’t have to be that way. For the first time in their lives they will know what safety is, what drugs taken off the streets feels like, what living their lives and walking safely down the streets feels like.

Trump coming in and doing a major cleanup in these battle ridden cities is bad for business for the Democrats. It is bad for their party. This is what they fund off of. People living in fear. Once Trump eliminates the fear, Dems are no longer wanted. In fact these lost Americans will finally find their way. They will finally be contributing to society, a society they were all taught they would never be a part of.

Trump is decimating the Dems in more ways than one. These cities which are predominately black are all opening their eyes and it is all because of Trump. That is why Trump’s popularity is at all time highs with the black community. Trump is getting it done. Trust the process. My two cents