“FOR it is this – the ‘positive’ conception of liberty: not freedom from, but freedom to – which the adherents of the ‘negative’ notion represent as being, at times, no better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny.”
Isaiah Berlin 1958   Two Concepts of Liberty

“Hell is other people.” 
-Jean-Paul Sartre 1944  No Exit

Of the two forms of liberty, positive and negative, that Berlin posits, the negative one – that protects against interference from the state and prevents collisions between the aims of individuals – is under increasing attack. Proponents of the positive one – the seemingly sacred right of ”being one’s own master” with the totalizing right to do all that he pleases – have for decades built up the state’s machinery to advance and enforce it. To the point that every individual must now be made free to do anything. If no other individual or legal constraint exists, the state must now make accessible all means of conveyance for everyone’s will to selfmastery.  

It’s this positive liberty – this liberty to – this will to collective power, that, unchecked has become exactly the “specious disguise for brutal tyranny” that Berlin foresaw.

And as Sartre explains about his own famous line,  “..when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves … we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves.”

Is this not implicit in the concept of “equity” promoted by the ever-metastasizing administrative state? Even Sartre the Stalinist understood this.
 
What is endangered by defining liberty according to the collective of other people? Autonomy. The creative will, itself.

During a recent interview on Glazov Gang, Hannah Faulkner alluded to current social upheaval being a means of population control, but time limitations precluded a detailed discussion. This essay takes a deeper view of the connection between “woke” immorality and environmentalism.

To begin, marriage is going out of style. Recent statistics show that 25% of forty-year-olds have never been married, an all-time high. So, why is marriage no longer fashionable? There are multiple causes, but one ideological reason is that is the radical environmentalist belief that the earth is overpopulated, and procreation is practically a crime against society. So it is that every Western society other than Israel has a birth rate well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman on average. This in turn serves another Leftist goal, namely that in order to have enough workers, we need to import millions of people from the Third World upon whom we can lavish taxpayer-paid benefits, grant amnesty, and sign up to vote for Leftist political candidates in perpetuity.

I found out this distressing truth in an article by Yudi Sherman in Frontline News which revealed that marriage avoidance is part of a depopulation plan designed by Planned Parenthood over 50 years ago in the Jaffe Memo:

In 1969 an economist named Frederick Jaffe devised a set of proposals to limit US population growth which continue to be put into practice today. Jaffe, who at the time was vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, had created the plan at the request of Bernard Berelson… the head of the Population Council, an organization founded by John D. Rockefeller III in 1952 to stem birth rates in the United States.

In 1969, Berelson was looking for ideas.

Jaffe rose to the occasion and responded with what would later become known as the Jaffe Memo. In it, Jaffe proposed a set of actions which he believed could suppress the US birth rate. He compiled them into a table titled “Proposed measures to reduce fertility by universality or selectivity of impact in the US.”

Some of those proposed measures were to “encourage increased homosexuality,” “to allow harmless contraceptives to be distributed nonmedically,” to “make contraception truly available and accessible,’ and to provide ‘abortion and sterilization on demand.”

Another measure was titled “Restructure family” and contained two parts: “(a) Postpone or avoid marriage,” and “(b) Alter image of ideal family size.”

These were listed alongside two of Jaffe’s other propositions, which were to drive women into higher education and to convince more women to join the workforce… [both of which reduce the desire to bear children].

Another part of the strategy is using gender confusion ideology to prevent mass births. Whereas men and women naturally breed, masculinizing women and effeminizing men—contravening “gender norms”—is an effective way to stagnate a population.

In addition, an article by Michael Clary on kings-domain.com cites other proposals, among the scariest of which are “compulsory sterilization of all who have two children except for a few who would be allowed three” and “confine child bearing to only a limited number of adults.”

Historically, when the Bolsheviks first took control of Russia, Lenin attempted to outlaw marriage, but strong popular disapproval caused him to back down. Nowadays, however, it seems that social media are a far more effective means of propaganda than Pravda. Thus, the Jaffe Memo has been extraordinarily successful, having had a powerful influence on government, media, and non-governmental organizations alike, as initiated by President Nixon’s creation of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (with Jaffe and Berelson among its members) that issued the 1972 Kissinger report, which concluded that further population growth was not in America’s interest. Implementing the Jaffe plan, Marxist feminists have encouraged women to act like men, putting career ahead of family, and have further portrayed men as oversexed cretins. This began in the culture with the character of Al Bundy on the 1980s sitcom Married with Children, and evolving to the point where any form of manhood beyond docility is viewed as “toxic masculinity.” Women are told that motherhood hurts their career; a literature search shows growing approval of having only one child, a trend accelerated by women’s increasing education levels. [I myself am an only child.] And for many in this self-centered age, children are an annoyance, a responsibility that interferes with other pursuits, to the point where there are now even reports of people marrying themselves, complete with a formal ceremony.

What we rarely hear about are the career women in their fifties who wake up to being alone at night, with no husband, no children—maybe a pet cat or dog for companionship, and a deficient sense of fulfillment.

America now stands at the edge of a precipice. If the moral and social rot that increasingly pervades our society is allowed to proceed unchecked, the ending is clear. Just look at the history of ancient Rome. What began as a republic with at least some degree of civic virtue degraded into an increasingly corrupt empire that eventually collapsed when its subjects, besotted by bread and circuses, were unable—and sometimes unwilling—to repel the barbarians at the gate.

Caleb Gannon’s attack on a pro-Israel activist is tied to the ideology of “settler colonialism,” which demonizes Western democracies and legitimizes violence. This ideology, fueled by Hamas’s October 7th attack, drove Gannon’s actions and destabilizes civil society.

While much of the world media and human rights groups are fixated on the war being waged on Israel by Iran and its Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthi proxies, Islamic jihadist terrorists continue to ravage Africa.

At least 40 Chadian soldiers were killed in a terrorist attack on October 26–27 on a military base in Chad’s Lake Region, according to a government statement that blamed the attack on the jihadist Boko Haram group. Reuters added:

Chad is an important ally for French and U.S. forces aiming to fight jihadists in the Sahel, which has become the epicentre of global terrorism under attack by factions loyal to al Qaeda and Islamic State.

The area around Lake Chad, which lies along the borders of Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger, is targeted by Islamist insurgencies—by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Boko Haram—which began a terror campaign in northeast Nigeria in 2009 and spread to Chad.

Boko Haram and ISWAP have, since 2009, created severe security problems in the region. They have sent suicide bombers across Nigeria’s border with Chad, and murdered many civilians and Chadian soldiers. On May 22, 2022, for instance, ISWAP terrorists abducted and murdered three Christians in Chad’s Litri region, near the border with Nigeria.

In 2020, the security situation in Chad took a drastic turn for the worse, according to the Africa Centre of Strategic Studies, with Boko Haram killing 98 Chadian soldiers and wounding dozens more in Bohoma, on March 23, 2020.

Following this attack, the Chadian armed forces launched an offensive aimed at eliminating the jihadist insurgents from Chad. However, continuing terrorist attacks since then suggest that Boko Haram and ISWAP are gaining force, posing increasing risks to regional stability.

Boko Haram, founded in northeastern Nigeria, has, since 2009, carried out countless assassinations and massacres there. The group seeks the universal implementation of Islamic sharia law. According to reports, since 2009, Muslims, inspired by Boko Haram, have murdered more than 150,000 Christians in Nigeria. According to the US government’s National Counterterrorism Center,

Boko Haram, which refers to itself as “Jama’atu Ahl as-Sunnah li-Da’awati wal-Jihad” (JASDJ; Group of the Sunni People for the Calling and Jihad) and “Nigerian Taliban”—other translations and variants are used—is a Nigeria-based group that seeks to overthrow the current Nigerian Government and replace it with a regime based on Islamic law. It is popularly known in Nigerian and Western media as “Boko Haram,” which means “Western education is forbidden” (the word boko is a holdover from the colonial English word for book). The group, which has existed in various forms since the late 1990s, suffered setbacks in July 2009 when clashes with Nigerian Government forces led to the deaths of hundreds of its members, including former leader Muhammad Yusuf…

Boko Haram’s capability increased in 2014, with the group conducting near-daily attacks against Christians, security and police forces, the media, schools, politicians, and Muslims perceived as collaborators. Boko Haram continued to raise its international profile in 2015, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in March—and publicly using the name “ISIL-West Africa Province” and similar variants—and conducting simultaneous suicide bombings in N’Djamena, Chad, in June—the first such attack in that country’s capital.

Boko Haram’s violence—including the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Borno State, Nigeria, in April 2014—brought international condemnation and in February 2015 provoked a large regional CT [counterterrorism] offensive against the group that displaced it from the majority of its strongholds in Nigeria. Nonetheless, Boko Haram remains resilient, conducting attacks in neighboring Cameroon, Chad, Niger, as well as Nigeria, emphasizing the threat it poses to Western and regional interests.

Chad, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger all struggle with jihadist insurgencies.

The epicenters of the violence and humanitarian disaster in Africa are in the Liptako-Gourma and Lake Chad basin subregions, notes a report by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Liptako-Gourma is in the central Sahel, in the borderlands of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. According to the report:

The persistent and growing strength of violent extremist organizations in the Sahel threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and spread instability across Africa, posing significant security and financial risks to the United States and Europe. The continuing collapse of international counterterrorism support, as well as weakening leadership in regional efforts, has created a vacuum in which violent extremism can expand. Organizations including Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP), and others have already taken advantage of that vacuum, using countries in the region as platforms to launch indiscriminate attacks on government forces and civilians alike…

Notable attacks targeting the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali, the Splendid Hotel in Burkina Faso, and L’Etoule du Sud Hotel in Ivory Coast in 2015 and 2016 demonstrated the extent of the Islamist threat to the Sahel and West Africa. In September 2016, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) surfaced in Burkina Faso, launching its first major attack on a border post near the Burkinabe city of Markoye.

In 2017, several al-Qaeda affiliates merged to form Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM). The emergence of ISGS and JNIM have intensified violence in the Sahel. Both JNIM and ISGS have pushed farther south in Liptako-Gourma, threatening the security of West Africa’s relatively stable coastal states. JNIM has more recently gained control over territory in northern and central Mali, while ISGS has been confined to northern Burkina Faso and western Niger due to clashes with JNIM that began in 2020.

Violent extremism in the Lake Chad Basin at the intersection of Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria prevailed in the same period with the reemergence of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.

Chad’s stability is intrinsically linked to the stability of neighboring nations. The ongoing civil war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, for example, poses a serious threat to Chad’s stability. As Sudan’s civil war escalates, it fuels further turmoil in the region.

“The conflict, which has spread to 14 of the 18 states in Sudan, has killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians, displaced nearly 8 million people and forced two million more to flee to neighboring countries,” according to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The civil war in Sudan has driven around 700,000 refugees into Chad, creating a humanitarian crisis and impeding trade between the two countries.

In the context of the escalating Boko Haram and ISWAP jihad in Chad, the security of Christians in the country is increasingly threatened, reports Open Doors, an international human rights organization:

These jihadist groups are known for targeting religious minorities, including Christians, in their quest to establish an Islamic State.

Christian women are subject to sexual violence by Islamic militants. A country expert explained: “There have been reports of Christian women being kidnapped and forced into marriage across parts of the nation where Boko haram militia have wreaked havoc. …[P]articularly in rural areas and in internally displaced people’s camps.”

Christian men and boys in Chad are most vulnerable to persecution from Islamic militant groups. Some have reportedly been abducted, forced to convert to Islam and be recruited to join the ranks of jihadist groups to serve as fighters.

According to a source, men and boys, particularly in Eastern Chad are “forced to organise self-defence groups, arming themselves primarily with spears, knives, poison-tipped arrows, etc. in order to discourage and defend against militia attacks in the absence of any substantial military or police presence provided by the Chadian government. Boys are also compelled to sleep in the open fields and watch over animals to try to prevent them from being stolen by armed militias.”

In addition to the jihadist insurgency, Christians in Chad also suffer from persecution on a societal level, according to Open Doors.

Islam first came to Chad in the 11th century but did not become a national religion until the 16th and 17th centuries when the country had become established as a route for the Islamic slave trade.

Although Chad is officially a secular republic, Islam is today the majority religion (56% of the population) and pervades the whole of society, causing some Chadians to show hostility and intolerance towards Christians, whom they regard as “infidels,” reports Open Doors. There are over 6 million Christians in the country (35% of the population). According to Open Doors:

The influence of Islamic extremism is quite pervasive in Chad. In collaboration with Arab nations, numerous schools, universities and mosques are being established to spread radical Islamic ideologies. This has catalyzed the radicalisation of specific segments of the population, creating an increasingly hostile environment for Christians…

The rise of Islamic militancy in the Sahel region has profound implications for Chad, particularly for its Christian population and other minority religious communities. This surge in extremism not only empowers militant groups but also influences other Islamic factions within Chad to adopt more conservative Islamic doctrine…

Unless there is a coordinated effort to implement comprehensive political, economic, and social reforms alongside military campaigns against Boko Haram, the extremist group’s ideology is likely to continue to gain ground.

As a result of jihadi violence by terror groups in sub-Saharan Africa, 16.2 million Christians have been forcibly displaced. An Open Doors report quotes Pastor Barnabas, who lives in a displaced persons camp in Nigeria:

Millions of Christians are displaced, here in Nigeria. Millions of Christians are displaced in Africa. The news doesn’t care about it, politicians don’t talk about it, governments don’t talk about it, global politics don’t talk about it. Nobody talks about it.

As Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, said in an October 27 interview with this writer:

Jihad groups in several countries in Africa confront and defeat government military forces on a regular basis. This raises several questions that no one seems able or willing to answer: Who is funding these groups? Who is arming and enabling them to the extent that they are more powerful than the forces of sovereign states? What powerful and monied entities are supporting the advance of jihad in Africa?

Way back when I was in college, I had to write an undergraduate thesis and I wrote about the Idea of the University. This work borrowed heavily from Cardinal John Henry Newman who wrote his own “Idea of the University” in the 1850s as he lectured in Ireland that universities were the place to find knowledge. My own version echoed many of Newman’s beliefs as I wrote that universities should be where students seek the truth. I still have the leather-bound copy of my opus in my bookshelves. Little did I know I would be writing about the same thing almost 40 years later.

When college encampments were all the rage in the spring of 2024, I wrote a “Letter to the Protestors.” Little did I know it would go viral.

When my grandparents were victims of pogroms across eastern Europe before emigrating to the United States in the early 1900s, and when my other relatives who were not as lucky were murdered in gas chambers in Nazi deathcamps, the world said “never again.” Little did I know my family, and Jews across the world, would say “never again is now” after October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel.

Little did I know it would be such a tumultuous year and that anti-Semitism would be everywhere on our campuses. There are moments when I no longer even recognize the world in which we are now living.

One thing, however, I do know: the world through Jewish eyes is decidedly different and decidedly anti-Semitic, especially virulently in our colleges and universities. We are fighting a well-organized and well-funded enemy who has been lying in wait, ready to pounce with their propaganda and partnerships with strange bedfellows (who would have ever contemplated jihadists and Marxists side by side?).

My slightly sarcastic tongue-in-cheek letter was originally meant only for friends and family. I had no idea it would thrust me into a media whirlwind, but I was grateful for the platform. My focus was to tell anyone who would listen about the protests and how wrong the encampments were. I am not against protests and all for students standing up for their beliefs. I claimed then and stand by those claims that most of the protestors had no idea what they were standing for and were, more importantly, unable to think for themselves.

I had tried to engage the protestors at the encampment where I teach, but to no avail.  Most of them were unable to answer some of my basic questions such as “Do you believe Israel has the right to exist?” They then resorted to chanting hateful tropes rather than have civil discourse with me. The “Idea of the University” was lost in these protests, replaced by propaganda and hate speech.

Like most Americans (and even most Zionists), I believe in free speech. I believe one death of anyone innocent is one death too many. But I did not see the call to return the innocent hostages at the protests. There were innocent American civilians—the same ages as many of the students at these protests—being held by Hamas in tunnels. No outcry about that. Just think if the students across the country would have used their collective voices to focus on releasing the hostages.

I did not see protests about the war in Ukraine, or the Uyghurs, or women beaten, arrested, or killed for not wearing hajibs in Iran. Or massacres in Syria and Yemen, or the war and famine in Sudan, or any other conflict in the world except for the one where the protestors could speak out against Israel and the Jewish people. All the previously hidden anti-Semitism somehow has become almost politically correct, enabled by universities allowing the encampments and the hate speech.

As a law professor, I was appalled by how most universities handled the protests that erupted after the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. At law schools, we teach students to spot the risks or the problems. But that is not all. We also try to teach students to solve those problems, usually creatively. To think through the issues and understand all the possible arguments and solutions. With that spirit in mind, rather than document further all the mind-boggling issues on our campuses, I am going to try to suggest some solutions to reclaim our universities. Most of these suggested potential solutions fall into the following buckets:

1. Follow the money
2. Teach your children well
3. Don’t give the mouse a cookie
4. You break it, you buy it

I could have also written at length about how too many professors have used their classrooms for their own political purposes and as their own pulpits. There is evidence from schools across the country where professors have given extra credit to their students who went to protests against Israel, or professors who have even cancelled class so they themselves can attend protests, or much worse. My personal beliefs are just that: personal beliefs and do not affect how, what, or who I teach.

While I do not think we should go back to the Salem witch trials or the McCarthy era trying to uproot and uncover hidden Communists, I do think that faculty members who are affiliated with known terrorist organizations do need to be rooted out and removed from the classroom.

Let’s look at the different recommendations which are practical and could be implemented immediately:

Follow the money

Following the money is an easy point to make given how surprised many seem to be at the level of funding from both foreign nations as well as other organizations at American universities. First, there is a lack of transparency which is only now starting to surface.  The actual U.S. law, the Higher Education Act, from 1965 and hardly ever enforced, requires U.S. universities to report donations from foreign governments of over $250,000. However, the law can be circumvented when the money flows through non-profits, other charitable (or otherwise) organizations, and third parties.

Money from the nation of Qatar alone is staggering. In many cases, this money is to establish satellite campuses and programs in Doha. Nonetheless, the fact that Qatar has harbored Hamas leadership and, as one example, given Cornell almost $2 billion alone might make your head spin, or might make you less likely to send your children or donate to a university taking in significant funding from a dubious source.

First, there needs to be enforcement of the law, and fines to universities who do not accurately report funding from foreign nations. Moreover, there needs to be total transparency. The amounts of money donated from foreign governments must be not only disclosed in an easy-to-understand format (perhaps mandated to be on every college and university’s website) but universities must also highlight exactly what such money is funding: endowing professorships or sponsoring specific lectures, etc.

Following the money is more than just disclosure and transparency concerning foreign funding sources. Such “free” money donated is hardly ever actually free. It usually comes with either spoken or unspoken strings. Nevertheless, it is too tantalizing for American universities to resist this level of financial support. The U.S. government needs to make such grants less desirable by pulling all federal funding from American colleges and universities that take money from foreign nations.

Teach your children well

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young said it (and sang it) first, but teach your children well.  Many of us have seen the videos of UNWRA-funded and -directed Palestinian kindergarten children mimicking terrorists killing Jews. A generation of Palestinians has been taught to hate. Yet we have now seen similar hate being taught to young Americans, both in college and even long before they set foot on campus. The concepts of white colonization, genocide, and even Zionism are now misunderstood and have indoctrinated young Americans into believing that Israel is a white colonizer, is committing genocide, and Zionism itself is evil.

While polls showing that an alarming number of young Americans believed the Holocaust to be a myth were later debunked, an equally alarming number of young Americans do not believe Israel has a right to exist. Young people are being taught a one-sided narrative. Our curricula have been infiltrated with this indoctrination. Even the Advanced Placement (“AP”) World History material promotes an anti-Semitic narrative that Jews were “occupying” Palestine during the Roman Empire. This false narrative is revising history. And the false narrative is systemic and institutionalized. In fact, I feel like the narrative has been lost when the Ayatollah, the Supreme Ruler of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is thanking American students for protesting.

Can the narrative be reshaped and regained? This will take time and a complete overhaul of the curricula throughout the American education system, even elementary school. The one-sided or rewritten histories must not be presented as the whole story. 

This indoctrination has taken years. We must catch up quickly to revise the revisionists. Perhaps a national task force on historic curriculum overhaul needs to happen—with universities and schools needing to be certified that they are teaching actual history, whether about the Middle East or own Civil War for example.

There are also other measures to take to teach our children well. Holocaust education should be mandatory in our secondary education system. I have seen the horrors of Auschwitz with my own eyes. Even 50 years after Auschwitz was operational, what I saw could never be unseen by me. Obviously, not every young person can have that same experience. As fewer Holocaust survivors remain to speak to young people about their experiences, we must find ways to tell their stories and make it real for them.

The BDS movement is often accused of being anti-Semitic and advancing the cause of not just boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning Israel but also the end of the Jewish nation. Many college and university students are jumping on the BDS bandwagon without understanding the issues or what this really means. Yale students recently approved a BDS referendum—but will they all abandon Apple, Google, Starbucks, medical technology that can save their lives, and even cherry tomatoes? The list of Israeli technological advances in all aspects of our lives is long and intertwined with many companies and products we all use and love. This information needs to be promoted and publicized so that students understand what they are actually protesting when they push a BDS agenda.

We also must make clear that resistance by any means necessary is wrong. For example, rape is not resistance, and in no moral universe should rape be considered justified as such. When I saw young women holding signs at a protest that said resistance “by any means necessary,” I had to challenge them. I asked, “Does that include rape?” Two young female undergraduate students told me, “Any means.” I was shocked, but I realized that, once again, these young women were only regurgitating the propaganda they had been taught. We must do better and teach that rape is not resistance.

Don’t give a mouse a cookie

I have written about this philosophy previously when a number of university officials were capitulating to the protestors on their campuses despite, in most cases, their flagrant violations of student codes of conduct. The classic children’s story tells us what happens if you give a mouse a cookie.  

If you give that mouse a cookie, the mouse is going to want a glass of milk!

You know this philosophy because it is the reason the United States supposedly does not negotiate with terrorists.

Too many universities gave in to the “terrorists” on their own campuses by dropping disciplinary actions. All this accomplishes is to empower those who broke the law and were arrested (or, at a minimum, violated student codes of conduct). Universities gave those mice cookies, and now the protestors know they can demand a glass of milk. There must be consequences and personal accountability.

As an example, Harvard initially disciplined students, but, while 13 of these students had their degrees withheld and could not participate in graduation, 11 of them had their status restored to good standing and were awarded their diplomas anyway only two months later. The lack of backbone and follow-through is evident not just at Harvard but also at other schools who reached “agreements” with students who violated the law and school rules.

You break it, you buy it

Defacing statues; ransacking university buildings; damaging university, administrators’, trustees’, or other affiliated parties’ property; and even “lesser” crimes like littering on university or public property must be punished according to existing university policies. There needs to be consequences and personal accountability! Related to the “if you give a mouse a cookie” approach above, if universities keep letting students break not only student codes of conduct but also actual laws, then the conduct will continue, and laws will continue to be broken and flouted.

Some of my friends have cheered when organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) or Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) have been suspended on campuses across the country. This is not enough! Suspending these organizations does little or nothing. Typically, they reorganize under a different name or plead discrimination and suspensions are lifted. Organizations with any ties to known terrorist organizations should be banned. But again, SJP is well-organized at both the student and faculty level and not going away easily. One of the pages out of their playbook, given seemingly to SJP chapters across the country—in addition to “globalize the intifada”—is their incessant chant “We will not stop! We will not rest!” They have money. They have manpower. They have attention from the media. And know how to use social media to their advantage. These organizations, even when suspended, are in no danger of disappearing.

There must therefore be personal accountability. The Ku Klux Klan members hid their identities and faces under their infamous white cloaks. Members of SJP are mostly out in the open, not in hiding. Well, they often do hide behind masks, but some states and schools have made wearing masks now illegal (see, for example, the University of Virginia’s revised policies). I am not suggesting doxing or not hiring affiliated students.  But when those organizations break the rules, the officers and members must be held accountable.

Universities need to prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone—students, faculty, administration, or even non-affiliates—who damages the university’s property. This includes those who vandalize the private property of university officials like what happened to a University of Michigan regent as one example. Recently, that same regent has been attacked (unbelievably) a third time, with mason jars of urine thrown through the windows of his home while his wife and children were inside, along with spray painting his family’s car with the words “divest and free Palestine.” At George Washington University, trustees were not only victims of pro-Palestinian, BDS-supporting, spray-painted graffiti at their homes as well, but their neighbors also apparently received letters stating that a war criminal lived in the neighborhood, complete with pictures of the trustees and their families. No matter what your views are about Israel or Gaza or even anything, these crimes must be investigated and those responsible must be held accountable.

We live in world with video surveillance; discovering perpetrators is just not that difficult.  Universities should, therefore, enhance video surveillance to ensure their campuses have the needed capabilities. This may sound a little “Big Brother-ish,” but, to echo the protesters, desperate times do call for desperate measures. Such surveillance may also act to deter future destruction of property.

Why should any university affiliates be able to get away without paying for any damage they cause? The University of California system supposedly spent $29 million on costs associated with the protests on their campuses. Most of this money was for additional security. At UCLA, just the clean-up costs from the encampment were $500,000. Who is funding these additional costs? In this case, if you live in California, you. Shouldn’t those who spray-paint graffiti and deface statues and cause destruction to buildings and the campus be responsible?

Summary

The infiltration of our universities and colleges started long before the October 7 attacks.  Most Americans were blissfully unaware of how students (and others) have been brainwashed to believe a one-sided narrative that has been sold by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Professors are allowed to use their platforms to indoctrinate students, and nothing happens to those professors.  Universities have stopped teaching students how to think critically.

In order to reclaim our universities and hold them to that ideal I wrote about when I was in college, where these institutions would be places where students seek truth and knowledge, the efforts cannot be piecemeal, with tinkering around the edges.

I have made a few small suggestions that (1) financing from foreign nations must be much more transparent and, if accepted by an American university, would then eliminate any federal funding of that institution; (2) one-sided narratives and revisionist history must be eliminated throughout all curricula in our educational system; (3) universities must not negotiate with terrorists or student organizations that have ties to known terrorist organizations; and (4) laws and student codes of conduct must be enforced to the full extent of the law.

These suggestions, if followed, would likely be insufficient. There will still be professors and teachers spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric. There will still be foreign dollars leaking into our universities through the back door. There will still be plenty of issues.  

But, when solving any problem, starting to talk about it is the first step, and starting to make concrete progress is, at least, a start.

November 5, 2024, was, for some Jews, a day of sadness. The defeat of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris—and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—seemed the repudiation of the kind of progressive politics many American and other Jews celebrated.

Both progressive candidates seemingly swung toward the center and reiterated their support for Israel, as had President Joe Biden. For others, former president Donald Trump’s re-election, with Ohio Senator J. D. Vance as his running mate, was a symbol of re-established security for Jews. Terrorism would no longer be ignored or supported. U.S.-Israeli relations would be strengthened once again. Israel could quickly achieve victory in its war on terror against Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Iran-backed proxies.

Yet, just as the lame duck period of Biden is unpredictable, in regards to support for Israel, so it is also an opportunity for Islamists in the West to launch further assaults on Israelis and Jews elsewhere—particularly after the degradation of Hamas and Hezbollah.

A pogrom just days before the commemoration of the Nazis’ Kristallnacht attack on the Jewish community has shaken world Jewry. Israelis visiting Amsterdam for a soccer game were attacked in a coordinated, premeditated campaign by Islamists. Disturbingly, the police seemed unable or unwilling to stop the attack, and many in the city—despite acts of heroism from some—refused to offer shelter to the victims. As if this wasn’t enough, the media predictably engaged in victim blaming, claiming that the Jews who were under attack provoked it by engaging in “Islamophobia.”

Luckily, nobody died, and many of the Israelis were successfully rescued. Numerous Dutch authorities condemned the incident and claimed to be investigating. Yet the problem remains, and likely will remain for a long time: unfettered migration of radical Muslims from unstable countries, with no interest in integration into Western society, and a visceral, systemic hatred against Jews. These migrants also pose a grave threat to women, the LGBT community, democracy, atheists, Christians, liberal Muslims, and, more generally, the Western way of life.

Yet, for whatever reason, the political and largely progressive establishment has ignored this problem—and the demands of its voters. We the People throughout the Western world have been warning of this grave threat for decades, oftentimes while also warning against the far-right’s demonization of Muslims as a whole. Yet our warnings have gone unheeded, allowing for the media to gaslight Jews, Zionists, and concerned citizens as a whole. And that has ushered in support for far-right political parties and organizations across the West.

I find it interesting that the attack happened just a day after Trump’s re-election. One of the central themes of the 2024 cycle, which appears to have gained the GOP full control of Congress as well, was that voters are tired of bad immigration policies. This isn’t a problem unique to the U.S.-Mexican border, however—it is one that too many on the political left have long kicked down the road. Unfortunately, there are early indications that the establishment has no intention of listening to voters and changing policies. Just listen to the alleged “expert analysts” on mainstream media outlets, who are continuing to blame “misinformation” or “racism” for the defeat of Vice President Harris. Democratic governors are vowing to “Trump-proof” their states from his future administration, essentially rejecting the democratic will of the voters—of which illegal immigration is a huge concern. Bernie Sanders suggests that Democrats lost due to arming Israel—basically, that the party did not move far enough to the left.

Some may ask why I am linking the Amsterdam attack to the U.S. election. The reason is that this is a deeper problem within the West’s establishment governments: they have surrendered to the far-left extremists in institutionalizing Islamism.

It is true that America leads, and so other countries will follow suit with many of our policies (in some cases). Yet it’s also true that the Democratic Party under the Obama administration brought far-left worldviews and policies to America from the European Union. Just consider the election analysts who prioritized the concerns of the Watermelon People over a substantially larger portion of the American electorate: Jews. Muslims and Arabs vote in lower numbers than Jews, historically, and already were hesitant to support the Democrats over the gender issue in K–12 public schools.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration was widely praised by American Jews—even right-leaning ones—for its initial support for Israel and Jews after the tragic events of October 7, 2023. Trump’s post-2020 shunning of Netanyahu, isolationism, poorly-timed statements criticizing Israeli military strategy against terrorists, and mysterious relations with anti-Jewish figures had already alienated the overwhelmingly Democratic Jewish American community.

Yet the Biden Administration began criticizing Israel much more harshly, prioritizing humanitarian aid to Gaza over freeing hostages (which include U.S. citizens) and destroying terrorism, and slow-walked weapons deliveries to the Jewish state in order to appeal to a small and unreliable segment of voters who were anyways unlikely to vote for the Democrats after their (tepid) support for Israel. The Democratic Party added further insult to the Jewish American community by downplaying campus anti-Semitism, placing the rampant anti-Semitism in the U.S. on the same playing field as “Islamophobia”—essentially “All Lives Mattering” the issue, while comparing Donald Trump to Hitler for the umpteenth time.

In the post-election analysis, one now suggestions that it was the anti-Democrat protest vote from progressive anti-Zionists and Muslims in Michigan that cost Harris her victory. In fact, it’s likely the fact that Jews voted in historic numbers in well-placed areas for Donald Trump based on his record on Israel.

The Democrats may have won most overall Jewish support, but no Republican has ever garnered as much as Trump just did. Harris’ refusal to choose the popular, moderate Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate due to the fear of alienating anti-Semites within the party was another serious concern for American Jews, who were already unsure if she would crack down on anti-Semitism in the U.S. and keep supporting the Jewish state. True, this may have been due to other considerations, yet Shapiro may have won her an important swing state. The fact of the matter is that the Jewish vote has been taken advantage of—something other minorities in the U.S. realized this time around when they supported Democrats by far lower margins.

Even now, many pundits suggest that the Harris campaign’s failure to more forcefully criticize Israel, compared to Biden, lost her the Michigan contest. There has been no serious widespread acknowledgement that abandoning Israel and marginalizing concerns over left-wing anti-Semitism bled support from the larger and more loyal Jewish vote from various blue and purple states and cities. And while perhaps there is some satisfaction in seeing this realization and political shift, however slight—as well as the understanding among many voters that the Watermelon Crowd betrayed them—the sad reality is that the Democratic Party will continue, in all likelihood, to support the normalization and institutionalization of Islamist ideology, in the academy, the government, and cultural spaces.

This is not yet as large of a problem as it is in countries like Canada or over in Europe, and perhaps the Trump administration will be able to prevent this from gaining traction. Yet, the fact remains that so many of our allies betrayed us anyways. One thing that is known for certain is that we as Jews can no longer allow ourselves to be gaslit and taken for granted. In fact, We the People more generally no longer can.

It was by the grace of G-d that the Amsterdam pogrom didn’t end up worse than it did, but the event was disturbing enough. If we are to truly prevent such attacks from occurring—whether by citizens on college campuses or new arrivals from foreign countries—then we must have the courage to demand not just better, but the best from our candidates and elected officials. Never again must mean never again, always.

“Shimon ben Shatah used to say: Examine the witnesses thoroughly, and be careful in your words, lest through them they learn how to lie.”

—Pirkei Avot 1:9

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

—Rahm Emanuel

As a metaphorical starting place, I want the reader to imagine being at the 1945 Trinity nuclear weapon test. The Manhattan Project scientists are under tremendous pressure not only because the fate of Western civilization seems to rest on their shoulders, but because they are totally and uniquely alone; for, only they can see in their minds’ eyes what is about to happen for the first time. Dark, apocalyptic thoughts explode into consciousness under such pressures. The scientists take bets on whether “The Gadget” will ignite the atmosphere. How do you place your bet? 

For Jews, this situation shares similarity with the controversy emanating from Springfield, Ohio. The controversy has many facets. Most important, if less obvious, is the inevitable fission that takes place when two very different cultures are slammed into one another by outside forces. The “initiator,” so to speak, is a near instant 40% increase in population. Fission then triggers other reactions, including the community’s fiscal, social services, and even physical, infrastructures, burdened to the breaking point. When the bonds that hold a community together suddenly break, it releases tremendous energies. These breaking bonds cascade and magnify, the impact of which is felt far beyond ground zero. 

The details of what has happened to Springfield, following the arrival of a large number of Haitian migrants, are well documented elsewhere, so there is no need to rehash them here (simply Google the topic). I want to, rather, look at a subsequent chain reaction. That is, how this “crisis” has been “an opportunity” for some. Specifically: The scandal surrounding Cary Kozberg, the rabbi at Temple Sholom in Springfield. Immigrant German peddlers chartered the temple in 1866 as part of the Reform movement. It is the last of several synagogues in Springfield. Membership has dwindled from a peak of about 150 to 35 families, who meet (at least) weekly in an oversized building which heralds a richer past. My wife and I, both in our early sixties, are among the youngest members. Such is Jewish life in the rustbelt.

In the wake of the bruhaha over the Haitians in Springfield, Jewish media approached Rabbi Kozberg (hereafter, “Rabbi”) for an interview. Rabbi told me he was hesitant, because he’s not a resident of Springfield, and so not the best candidate to speak on the topic. (His position at Sholom is part-time, his retirement job, and he lives a good distance from Springfield.) But, as the only rabbi in the community he felt obligated. Andrew Lapin then interviewed Rabbi for the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA). The JTA interview was reprinted in the Dayton Jewish Observer (DJO). (Just 30 miles away, Dayton is the fourth-largest metropolis in Ohio.) Marshall Weiss, the DJO’s publisher and editor, then published excerpts from a discussion he had with Rabbi, the temple president, and others.

The proverbial stuff hit the fan. Hate mail filled Rabbi’s in-box, including from other rabbis. I heard from my sister, on the West Coast, that Rabbi was the subject of her rabbi’s denunciatory Rosh Hashana sermon. No doubt other rabbis have given similar sermons. Lashan hara is difficult to stem, even among rabbis.

The proverbial stuff hit the fan. The headline of a Haaretz essay screams that Rabbi is “odious” and “an utter waste of rabbinic protoplasm.” Most of the commenters concur, though one challenges the author for “factual flaws” and “propagandizing rhetoric,” but lacks specifics. As one might expect, hate mail filled Rabbi’s inbox, including from other rabbis. Lashan hara is indeed difficult to stem.

Everyone who reads the articles is horrified. Those who know Rabbi are taken aback by his portrayal in the JTA as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transmogrifying into a rabid racist, like the kindly man who trains dogs to kill black people in Samuel Fuller’s White Dog (1982). I am no apologist for Rabbi, nor will I interpret what he said. I wasn’t present at any of the interviews, and Rabbi is perfectly capable of explaining himself. The question is, however: How are readers to make sense of an article that initiated such a powerful chain reaction, triggering headlines not just in the Jewish press, or the local or national press, but the international press? 

Fortunately, there are models, shall we say, for explaining such powerful texts. I would like to briefly describe three. Critical Theory—the dominant model in academic humanities and social sciences for many decades now—teaches us that everything can be understood as a “text.” A fellow graduate student proposed the novel dissertation topic of “reading” newborns as texts. Every text, moreover, is a kind of palimpsest, a page or canvas on which there are two layers of text or imagery. Although the second layer obscures the first, if we know what to look for, we can find traces of the first layer. That first layer, Critical Theory tells us, always “inscribes” power. Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (novel 1936, film 1939) are exemplars of American texts that inscribe white power over blacks.

Saul Alinsky (1909–1972) was a pioneer of radical rhetoric, providing keen insight into how to shape public discourse. Most famous is his Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971). We don’t need to read all thirteen of his rules. Two are sufficient.

Rule no. 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

Rule no. 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

I sent Marshall Weiss an email message expressing my concerns about the quality of Lapin’s journalism. In a response, Mr. Weiss made the following comment: “First rule of dealing with reporters: If you don’t want to be interviewed, say so, and don’t say anything else” (personal correspondence dated September 24, 2024, 1:33 pm). In other words, to be interviewed runs the risk of the adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Weiss, though, is telling us the press will inflict wounds if they think a story needs more blood. Credit where credit is due. Mr. Weiss gives us an honest appraisal of his own profession.

If what Critical Theory asserts is correct, that all texts attempt to aggregate power to the author or author’s group, then it must be equally true of Critical Theory texts, or texts by people schooled in Critical Theory. If we take Alinsky at face value, then honest public discourse in the pursuit of truth or for the good of the commonweal does not accrue power—which is all that matters. If what Weiss says is correct, then even well-intentioned public servants, broadly defined, are put into an inextricable bind. The press demands, hectors even, public servants to make themselves accountable to the people by giving interviews to the press, knowing full well it is a suicide mission. That is, the public servant submits to the interview knowing it subjects him or her to Alinky’s rules. Indeed, one of Springfield’s Haitian community leaders told Rabbi that he will no longer give interviews because he, too, is tired of being pilloried by the press.

Read through the lens of Critical Theory, Lapin’s article it is nothing but rules five and thirteen. Let’s consider just a few examples. Rabbi claims Trump did positive things for Jews. Indeed, a great many Jews consider moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords monumental achievements; yet, Lapin does not follow up on Rabbi’s claims. Rather, Lapin writes that Rabbi is “out of step with the vast majority of Reform Jews” [sic].

So what if he is out of step? Maybe that puts Rabbi in good company. Galileo, Lincoln, Eisenstein, and the German Jews who fled before 1938 were all out of step with “the vast majority of” their contemporaries, but history proved them right. Rabbi also asserts that traditional Judaism teaches tzedakah is given in “concentric circles”; which is to say: Charity begins in the home. Rather than verify this claim in the Jewish legal or sacred literature, Lapin finds another rabbi to argue instead that we must “welcome the stranger.” I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive, but that’s not the point. Lapin is cherry-picking, thus pitting one rabbi against another to force the reader to choose sides rather than ponder the nuances of their arguments. Lapin’s Manicheanism explodes nuance.

Torah demands a great many things that are unpalatable to our modern, genteel sensibilities; that we must annihilate Amalek for starters. The Haitians, Lapin tells us, “…are in the country legally.” Again, so what? Foreign tourists are here legally. The 9/11 terrorists were here legally. Springfield Haitians have Temporary Protective Status (TPS). They have not been “vetted,” (i.e., their claims of persecution have not been adjudicated) by Immigration Services. People on the TPS program receive benefits that are denied to people who have been vetted and have Alien Residency. Is that fair? Effectively, the government is incentivizing not applying for Alien Residency. Lapin covers none of this. Instead, he robs the reader of the opportunity to engage complex, ambiguous, and discomforting questions with false equivalencies.

If we look at Weiss’ article, it is not surprising that some in Springfield are backing away from the press. As Erik Berne describes in his seminal book, Games People Play (1964), there are some “games” you cannot possibly win, or in which one may even hope for a draw. Talking to the press is, as Weiss himself indicates, one of those games. Berne says the only thing you can do is walk away from such games. At first, Weiss’ article seems a straightforward and evenhanded accounting of events. Then the article turns on the question of whether “…what Kozberg said in the JTA piece [is] racist.” Racism is like pornography: It is something we can all easily recognize—if only we could agree on a definition. We’ve all said stupid things (I certainly have), but that does not make us stupid. Like asking someone “When did you stop beating your mother?”, Weiss’ implicit question (“Is what the Rabbi said racist?”) is a game you cannot win (see rule no. 5). Weiss also uses inflammatory adjectives strategically to, e.g., attribute “disdain[fulness]” to Rabbi. Weiss combines inflammatory language with guilt by association. Thus, the Rabbi’s “staunch support… for current Republican policies and… Donald Trump for president” (my italics) is inculpative evidence of thought crimes. The question of justice in Judaism, however, turns not on our beliefs or things we say in any given moment, but our actions and continued pursuit of truth over a lifetime. Weiss makes no effort to explore the issues Rabbi raises or the validity of Rabbi’s claims. More to the point, although JTA and DJO are nominally “Jewish” publications, neither Weiss nor Lapin contextualize Rabbi’s statements within the rich legal and philosophical traditions that are the bedrock of Rabbinic Judaism.

In the name of full disclosure, I met Rabbi once about ten years ago. I found him refreshingly candid for a rabbi, and better read in Jewish literature than any other Reform rabbi I’ve met. Three years ago, my wife and I joined his congregation. His congregation is committed and vibrant. Indeed, compared to other mid-west communities, relatively large numbers regularly attend Rabbi’s Shabbat and other services. Politics is never discussed in the sanctuary, if anywhere in the building. Rabbi and I disagree on many things, but always in the spirit of “arguing for the sake of heaven.” And there’s the rub. Lapin and Weiss argue for the sake of scoring ideological points—at the cost of other people’s reputations. 

Tellingly, the surname Lapin derives from the French word lapereau, for rabbit; which is treif. I say this not simply because I enjoy the irony but to illustrate the most interesting aspect of Lapin’s article. His article is sadly symptomatic of not just the state of journalism, but the current socio-cultural stresses that are driving Jews, especially Reform Jews, to attack one another.

The current historical moment is a bit like watching Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). If our current enemies had half a brain they’d just sit back and watch us fight each other until we have no fight left for them. Which is pretty much what led to the catastrophic events that ended in the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., and our subsequent millennia-long dislocation from our homeland.

Make no mistake: Donald Trump is not an ideal candidate. There are many people who would argue that he is not a very good person, let alone candidate—and that his personal flaws put him well past the line where an acceptable candidate must be. Fortunately, I’m not arguing the merits of Trump in comparison to Kamala Harris as the alternative.

Just for fun, we could accept the premise that Trump is such a horrible candidate that he actually does want to turn the country into a dictatorship. The interesting question, then, is whether or not such a thing is possible in these United States. What I am arguing is that it does not matter who runs for president; no single candidate could ever represent an existential threat to the republic.

Every election cycle seems to bring with it renewed fears that a candidate, once in power, will dismantle the structures of democracy and seize authoritarian control. With the 2024 election just around the corner, this narrative has once again surfaced around Trump. Critics warn that his personality—undeniably abrasive, with a tendency for polarizing rhetoric—signals an unprecedented risk to the republic. Yet, while Trump is certainly an unconventional candidate whose style is divisive to many, it’s vital to separate the personal from the constitutional.

Despite claims that he would refuse to step down, Trump indeed left office without resisting the peaceful transfer of power, even in the wake of the turbulent events of January 6, 2021. The Constitution’s structural checks and balances stood firm, just as the Founding Fathers intended, securing a system resilient to any one individual’s ambitions. Those structural checks and balances have not changed in the past several years.

The original vision: a strong but limited executive

The Founding Fathers knew well the dangers of centralized power as exercised by a strong executive authority. As they drafted the Constitution, they embedded checks and balances specifically designed to counteract any potential executive overreach. In Federalist No. 69, Alexander Hamilton drew distinctions between the American presidency and a monarchy, highlighting that, while a president would have authority, it would be restricted by the powers vested in Congress and the courts. The restriction is deliberate.

In Federalist No. 70, Hamilton argued for a “vigorous executive” that could act decisively in times of need. Yet, he emphasized that such vigor would remain bound by the Constitution. The executive’s role, he asserted, was to represent the people, not to wield unchecked power. The Founders crafted a structure of layered oversight, in which the president’s authority was robust yet carefully circumscribed by the—coequal—legislative and judicial branches.

Constitutional safeguards against presidential overreach

Three main pillars support the Constitution’s defense against presidential overreach: Congress, the judiciary, and federalism. These were specifically designed to withstand fluctuations in leadership style and temperament—even those of candidates as polarizing as Trump.

Congressional oversight: Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress, which controls government spending and has the authority to pass laws, investigate, and impeach. When Trump faced two impeachments, it was Congress exercising these powers, underscoring the legislative branch’s ability to check the executive. This robust oversight prevents any president from wielding absolute power, as every presidential action remains subject to congressional scrutiny and response. (It is up to Congress to wield its powers appropriately, but that’s a different topic.)

Judicial review: The judiciary has historically served as a significant counterbalance, empowered to assess executive actions for constitutionality. This role was evident in landmark cases such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, where the Supreme Court ruled against President Truman’s attempt to seize control of steel mills. Courts regularly review and can overturn executive actions that exceed lawful boundaries, providing an effective check on presidential authority.

Federalism: The Founders established a federalist system, dispersing authority across state governments to prevent centralized control. This state autonomy has proven effective in challenging federal mandates through the courts and shaping policy at a regional level. Regardless of a president’s aims, federalism ensures that states maintain significant sovereignty, effectively curtailing the power of any one individual.

January 6 + the peaceful transfer of power

The election protests of January 6, 2021, are often cited as evidence of Trump’s supposed dictatorial ambitions. The day undoubtedly marked a troubling moment in U.S. history, with protesters breaching the Capitol, leading to widespread concern and debate. Despite these events, however, Trump ultimately adhered to the Constitution’s mandates and relinquished his office. His departure showed that, even amid the tension, the constitutional system of a peaceful transfer of power prevailed, underlining the resilience of America’s democratic framework. In stepping down, Trump confirmed that the country’s founding principles remain strong, regardless of a president’s personal style, ambition, or appeal to certain factions of the public.

The reality of executive orders + limits of presidential authority

One of the frequent criticisms leveled against Trump involves his use of executive orders. Yet executive orders have been a standard tool of governance across administrations, designed to direct the actions of the executive branch within the bounds of the law. Unlike laws, executive orders are reversible by the judiciary, Congress, or subsequent presidents, underscoring the limits on presidential authority. Trump’s executive orders, like those of his predecessors, were often challenged in court, and several were blocked or limited—another reminder of the judiciary’s role in ensuring executive accountability.

Moral character, accountability + the constitution

Undoubtedly, Trump’s character—brash, unfiltered, and often confrontational—does not fit the ideal of moral leadership envisioned by figures like Washington and Adams. These Founders stressed that, while a strong character is preferable in a leader, the Constitution’s structure is designed to check and balance personal ambition. The framers anticipated that officeholders might fall short of ideal virtues; hence, they focused on creating a resilient system where the president, however flawed, remains accountable to the Constitution and its legal constraints.

The persistent myth of a “Trump dictatorship”

Which brings us to the current election season. The narrative that Trump would act as a dictator is largely a construct designed to stoke fear, but it does not align with constitutional reality. The American republic has weathered presidencies of diverse temperaments and political persuasions, and the Founders’ design has held firm. It is ultimately the Constitution’s structure, not any single personality, that protects against authoritarianism.

A constitutional system built to endure

The Founding Fathers crafted a framework designed to withstand ambitious leaders and turbulent political climates. Through rigorous checks and balances, they built a system that protects democracy from the ambitions or shortcomings of any single individual. While Trump’s personality may alienate some and galvanize others, his term in office—including the transition of power in 2021—illustrates that the constitutional system endures beyond any one presidency.

Ultimately, the 2024 election poses a decision for voters, but it does not pose an existential threat to the republic. The enduring strength of the Constitution lies in its design, ensuring that America’s democratic institutions remain resilient, safeguarding liberty against the concentrated power against which the Founders so carefully guarded. No single man, Trump or anyone else, can truly screw that up. Which is not to say we don’t have to put in the work to preserve the republic and our way of life—because we do. But, when it comes to Donald Trump, you can get off the fainting couch.

If it were possible to reconvene in the Independence Hall of heaven, I think it is fair to say that America’s Founding Fathers, peering down upon this moment in America—especially our political culture—might gallingly thunder, “This is not at all what we had in mind! What’s wrong with you people? Where is your independence . . . remember, the one we declared with that piece of parchment on behalf of the Thirteen Colonies, and all future Americans? We went to war over this, for God’s sake!”

The ghosts of those wigged, pointy-toed revolutionaries would be right. We deserve to be haunted by them and ashamed of ourselves. I don’t know about you, but failing our Founders is not how I would like to be remembered.

Independence for them didn’t just mean separation from the British Crown. It also included the freedom to exercise a set of newly defined liberties, and adopt liberal values, that had only recently emanated from the European Enlightenment. 

The Enlightenment was more instrumental in our founding than any other single event. It was the operating system for liberal democracy, and it provided the foundation for our own democratic self-governance. 

We were not alone. It spread to many Western nations that took on their own democratic character. Each had an Enlightened philosopher as north star: England with John Locke, Scotland with David Hume, Germany with Immanuel Kant, France with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the United States had Thomas Jefferson, among others in those and other Western countries.

This late 18^th century phenomenon became known as the Age of Reason, and Classical Liberalism became its political calling card. The people entered into a social contract with their government and consented to be governed.

No longer were rights granted through the good graces of monarchs. Citizens possessed natural rights—rights that inhered in nature itself. The will of the people determined their destiny, not the narcissism of kings. In addition to free speech, open discourse, civil debate and dialogue, and meritocracy, a free press –untainted by bias or favor—was necessary to the political process. Taken together these values made self-government and representative democracy possible. 

Independence of mind, freedom of thought, and rational decision-making was the essence of the new democratic order. And no nation did more with the fruits of the Enlightenment than these United States. We are the world’s oldest functioning democracy. Democracy is in our national DNA; the self-identification of an American begins with our democratic character. It was our big bang. And let us not forget that we fought for these liberties. They came at a cost. Ragtag colonialists took on the most fearsome military power in the world, and won. Such a victory should never be squandered, or its cause forgotten.

There are profound sensitivities surrounding American democracy. When anti-Trump voters invoke his return to the White House as the “end of democracy,” they know exactly how visceral such a charge lingers in an American’s mind. It presses all of our most patriotic buttons. 

To be an American means to be liberal: open to ideas, discerning of dogma, measured when faced with divergent views, insistent on the rule of law, and able to make fundamental distinctions between right and wrong. 

Republicans have always represented themselves as conservative in their outlook and politics. That doesn’t mean, however, that liberalism does not guide their thinking and inform their purpose. Democrats have always maintained that liberal politics in America was their milieu and mandate, with liberalism serving as the wellspring of their political culture.

As of late, however, I fear that the Democratic Party doth protest too much. Honestly, does the Biden administration in any way resemble a government committed to liberalism, in lockstep with the Enlightenment, in the good graces with America’s Founders? 

Here is the list of particulars that would suggest otherwise. Broken borders and rampant crime. Indoctrination and censorship. Equity over equality. The wholesale indictment of American history and an appalling lack of patriotism, exemplified by a pernicious national self-loathing, and blaming all the world’s problems on 250 years of America’s racist aspirations and its false democracy. 

What has been happening on the campuses of American universities over this past year is emblematic of the current Democratic Party’s organizing principles: the hysterical and unhinged charges of racism and colonialism, genocide and apartheid; the moral acceptance of terrorists; the self-righteous social activism that allows no room for disagreement and debate; the threatened boycotts and violent protests; the lawlessness and intimidation; and the casualness about anti-Semitism and the betrayal of our democratic ally, Israel. 

That’s what’s happening outside on the campus green. Inside its classrooms students are being indoctrinated—even in the hard sciences—with Critical Race and Queer theories, Decolonialization, and the renaming of Marxist marching orders as, “Intifada Revolution!”

What, specifically, is liberal about any of those lovely features of contemporary politics and culture? Forget the Founding Fathers, what we have today isn’t even your own father’s United States. 

The Democratic Party has eschewed liberalism for progressivism, engineering a quite clever bait and switch—advancing a progressive agenda having far more in common with Marxism than with anything an actual liberal believes. For instance, the “Politics of Identity,” a rallying cry of the progressive left, has little in common with liberal ideals. In fact, so much of it is avowedly illiberal. 

Liberals are interested in ideas that can be exchanged in a deliberate manner and respectful setting. But identity politics shuts off debate at the outset by claiming instantaneous offense. There is never anything to debate. Marginalized affinity groups are automatic winners in a sweepstakes of ideological conformity. Objectors are libeled as irredeemable racists. The consequence of nuance, the risk of holding a different view, can be disastrous: the denial of tenure, the termination of employment, the shunning of friends, the disowning of relatives, the cancelation of a once good name.

There is nothing “liberal” in any of those features of progressive politics. The hard-left fringe within the Democratic Party went from silent partner to full-blown Soviet- and Chairman Mao-styled autocracy. 

The Democratic Party somehow disappeared. Does anyone even recognize a semblance of its former self? 

Our old American mottos have become anachronistic and irreconcilable. They in no way symbolize our feckless foreign affairs and localized lawlessness. “Don’t tread on me.” Seriously? That warning has been converted into an invitation: “Please, walk all over us. Don’t worry. We’ll blame ourselves. Better yet, we’ll blame Israel, or our own Jews.” The Iranians don’t even bother to wipe their feet on Persian rugs after stepping all over us.

What about our state mottos: Alabama, “We Dare to Defend Our Rights”; Arkansas, “The People Rule”; Mississippi, “By Valor and Arms”; New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die.”

Sounds like the tough talk of some other country. The reason these rallying cries no longer represent our national ethos is because after being berated for our “white supremacy” and “systemic racism,” the concept of American Exceptionalism was renounced as both racist and a sham. America is no more exceptional than any other nation, so goes this more modern mantra. Really? All nations are exceptional? This is the same kind of moral relativism that has infected our universities. And it depends on a gullible audience that has lost its deductive reasoning and capacity to make moral judgments.

The idea of America’s specialness on the world stage began in 1630 with the words of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He referred to this new world as a “shiny city on a hill, … a beacon of liberty.” Others, including Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, have referred to that imagery in describing the nation they led. 

Does it hold true today? That sanctified city, shining like a beacon on a hill, nowadays has a broken taillight and for all practical purposes, has fallen into a ditch.

The Founding Fathers launched a new nation, and after nearly a dozen years of getting these United States in order, graduating from the Continental Congress to the Constitutional Convention, and after endless debates and the commentary that became Federalist Papers, they were quite certain that what they had achieved was quite exceptional.

Tell that to the Democratic Party, which takes exception to American greatness, and believes it is patriotic to imprison January 6^th rioters but not the violent actions undertaken by hoodlums affiliated with Black Lives Matter and Jewish Lives Don’t. Calls to defund the police and mothball the National Guard, cashless bail and the decriminalizing of crimes, the defacement of public monuments, the toppling of statues, flag burnings, and erasing the names of such notorious racists as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even Abraham Lincoln from school buildings across America—all of this, under the auspices and blessing of Democratic leadership. 

Meanwhile, Jesus Christ and George Floyd are depicted draped in the Palestinian flag with a keffiyeh covering their faces. You don’t have to live in Dearborn, Michigan, to know that the chants “Death to America!” has little to do Israel’s War in Gaza. These people have been in rehearsal for years, and they have a much bigger target in mind.

This intersectional rot of illiberal, anti-American, anti-democratic forces that has come to possess an inordinate amount of influence over the Democratic Party, along with mainstream media, museums, academia, and the cultural arts, is antithetical to America’s historical beginning. The Founding Fathers were patriots, after all. July 4^th was not an excuse for a cookout. They saw the United States as a land of opportunity, and not as a punching bag for the disgruntled. They imagined a melting pot for the newly assimilated, and not as a country fixated on ranking racists and deploring privilege.

These men of the Enlightenment behaved like the enlightened. They started and funded universities and newspapers: Benjamin Franklin (the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Gazette); Thomas Jefferson (the University of Virginia and the National Gazette); Alexander Hamilton (the New York Post.) Higher education expanded minds; college is not where students learn how to close them. They believed in the Great Books. The fact that some of the ancient Greek philosophers may have been gay did not mean they were endorsing Queer Studies. What made a book great had nothing to do with how and whether the writer chose to represent his or her identity.  

The Founders believed in civility and mutual respect. Differences could be settled without resort to violence. They judged people based on individual merit. Decisions were to be made deliberately, not impulsively, relying upon empirical evidence and not “personal truths” and sensitive feelings. Withholding judgment was a virtue. Shouting people down is not.

Very few of those values are in evidence these days. Given the way things are shaping up for this upcoming presidential election, it will be a miracle if we can manage to elude another civil war.

It is remarkable how far we have fallen from the august talent that drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence. The recent national conventions were mere coronations. Kamala Harris didn’t even receive the vote of a single delegate. The speeches couldn’t possibly be less inspiring. Donald Trump’s endless ad-libbing and pointless jabbing. Harris’ inane non-responsiveness to questions and clumsy dodging of issues. 

Oratory is one thing these candidates do not offer on the stump. Every four years, this is supposed to be the season of political persuasion. What we have instead is one candidate who would be far better off speaking less, and another who has been coached to plead the Fifth Amendment on the campaign trail and avoid saying the predictably wrong thing. You need not return to the days of Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster, or Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, to realize that even politicians of more recent eras offered more at the podium. 

The debates have been even more excruciating. Watch the first televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 and behold the deterioration of today’s presidential timbre. Candidates once read more widely, and did not confine themselves to opposition research. They immersed themselves in domestic policy and geopolitics. They actually debated ideas, and didn’t regurgitate canned answers that pivoted away from the original question.

The Founding Fathers regarded freedom of the press as indispensable to representative democracy. A better-informed public needs journalists to serve as unbiased truth-seekers and fact-checkers. And yet, now we hear speculation that the moderators for the debate at ABC News allegedly gave Kamala Harris advance notice of their questions, and promised not to challenge her facts?

This is how dysfunctional our democracy has become. Even if untrue, the allegation itself will only serve to deepen our polarizing divide.

But regardless of how one feels about the viability of the two-party system and the inadequacy of the choices we are presented with, one thing is surely true: the progressive takeover of the Democratic Party has rendered it inhospitable to true liberals and open-minded centrists. 

This is no longer the party of the Kennedy brothers, Scoop Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Joe Lieberman—political figures who epitomized the liberal values of deep thought and a democratic consensus. What we now have is the Democratic Party that Barack Obama wanted to lead—the president progressives believed they had elected back in 2008—but his timing was off. Who knows how much his influence found its way into the policies of the Biden administration.

The party of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is something else altogether. It personifies the Marxism of the faculty lounge, the smugness of social justice warriors, the grievances of the growing number of victim-cardholders, the obtuseness of coastal elites, the hostility of the Arab street, and the double-standard entrenched in diversity and inclusion. 

Sounds like a party where invitations got lost in the mail, and true liberals rejoiced.

“How can there be a left-Muslim alliance?” Jewish civil rights activist Charles Jacobs once asked an audience at Boston University. “How can people who like burqas align with people who like bikinis?”

The answer lies in the phenomenon often called the “Red-Green Alliance.” Both Marxists and Muslims (who truly observe the teachings of Muhammad) are united in a crusade to destroy Western civilization’s most crucial moral values: that only some ends justify some means; right is might; and that morality itself is more than just a political weapon.

Both ideologies envision utopian earthly paradises in which individuality is erased and omnipotent government removes suffering through confiscatory taxation and wealth redistribution. And both relish the terror required to keep their fantasy worlds’ perfection unpolluted.

The two of them together, therefore, have plenty in common, going back at least to the 1960s, when the KGB created the PLO and worked closely with Muslim terrorist groups to foment anti-Western jihad on the widest possible scale. Among their most important joint achievements was the Islamic Revolution against the openly pro-American and quietly Zionist Shah Pahlavi—a cataclysm perhaps haunting the world more than any other.

As the left—ranging in character from the KGB’s old “useful idiots” to technocratic power addicts—has conquered more and more of American life, Islam’s power, both worldwide and in the U.S., has grown comparably. And a shared commitment to the destruction of Israel, the United States, and the humane values they represent unites the post-modern and pre-medieval in a roaring blaze of raw, political passion worthy of both Marxism and Islam’s erotic visions of heaven.

With such co-habitation thus comes co-dependency. Increasingly, without Arab and Muslim voters, leftist parties cannot win elections; and without leftist parties, Islamic elements cannot build a non-Muslim power base ready to riot and demonize Islam’s good-faith critics on their behalf. Having fully exploited Marxist “victim group” ideology, Islam claims “victim” status on “racial” and “persecuted minority” grounds—as if Islam were either a race or somehow content (per Qur’an 9:33) with remaining in the minority (let alone out of the persecution business). The left’s lust for destruction and cynical yet psychotic obsession with victimhood—of which Islam makes such cunning use—is what manages to fuse the most lethal ideas of the 2020s with those of the 620s.

Today, therefore, it is not puerile partisanship to charge that the Democratic Party—which Marxists, beginning with the McGovern campaign in 1972, have successfully turned from “blue” to red—has become an institution overly friendly, not to mention beholden, to Islamic influence. Rather, as with its equivalent parties in Canada and the U.K., it is simply where the evidence leads. Mirroring its agenda of forcing Americans to submit to a government powerful enough to both giveth and taketh all away, the Democratic Party, since 2009, is far along the Khyber Pass of emulating its European counterparts in submitting itself to Islam.

“A New Beginning”

Ever since it was revealed in the months prior to the 2008 election that Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was an anti-American, anti-Israel racist and apostle of “black liberation theology,” the former president’s party has only moved in one direction. Despite slickly flinging his former spiritual teacher of more than 20 years (over 1,000 Sundays) under his campaign bus—a falling out for which Wright later blamed “[t]hem Jews”—“God damn America!” (if the divine Name is meant with any sincerity) has become a good description of the party’s platform.

As president, Obama vastly expanded pre-existing efforts to heavily discourage good-faith criticism of Islam. His famous Cairo speech of June 4, 2009, contained many concerning statements, including (de-contextualized) references to the “Holy Koran” and to his (unconstitutional) “responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” Also, in the same speech (“A New Beginning”), the man whose moral psyche was shaped by a pastor who would claim years later that “Jesus was Palestinian” malevolently distorted the history of Israel, referred to the “daily humiliations… that come with occupation,” and characterized “the situation for the Palestinian people” as “intolerable.”

His warm words to the Muslim world—spoken less than a month after bowing like a vassal to the Saudi king—were followed by still warmer deeds. These included, personally or through his administration:

• Abandoning the heroic anti-regime protesters in Iran during the 2009 uprising (many of whom were raped and murdered).
• Attempting (unsuccessfully) to have 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad tried in a civilian court in Manhattan—where a jury of his “peers” (jihad warriors) might acquit him—as opposed to by military tribunal.
• Openly supporting the “Ground Zero Mosque” initiative—a project headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a cleric who asserted that American “policies were an accessory to the crime” of 9/11.
• Demanding that Prime Minister Netanyahu destroy Israel’s national security by retreating to the (indefensible) “1967 lines,” in order “to advance a lasting peace.”
• Ordering the FBI to remove (accurate) descriptions—even mentions—of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, and jihad from Bureau training materials.
• Protecting Hamas supporter Nihad Awad, leader of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Brotherhood and Hamas front-group, from prosecution.
• Supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s short spell of rule over Egypt—not to mention ignoring the plight of the Coptic Christians they persecuted (and the women they sought to denigrate).
• Forcing Israel to accept a “ceasefire” in both its 2012 and 2014 wars against Hamas.
• Exclaiming that “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam,” after falsely blaming the infamous September 11, 2012, Benghazi jihad attack on an obscure video mocking Muhammad.
• Without the slightest evidence, smugly brushing ISIS off as but a “jayvee team.”
• Hubristically claiming that (said “jayvee team”) ISIS—whom his weak foreign policy had helped to grow—was “not Islamic.”
• Dismissing Americans’ disgust for ISIS’ (Islamic) brutality as “get[ting] on our high horse,” because “slavery and Jim Crow [were] all too often justified in the name of Christ”—not mentioning that both slavery and racial apartheid are permitted, and rampant, under Islam.
• Pushing for the disastrous (and unconstitutional) 2015 nuclear “deal” with the Islamic regime occupying Iran.
• Allowing the Defense Department to devote a 42-page report to dismissing the 2009 Fort Hood jihad attack as “workplace violence.”
• Demanding that the U.S. accept 110,000 Syrian refugees—people raised from childhood to hate Jews and Christians—because, Obama said, it was America’s responsibility to “help the world’s most vulnerable people.”
• Giving implicit approval to a U.N. resolution cataloguing “East Jerusalem”—wherein stands the Western Wall—as “occupied Palestinian territory.”

Not surprisingly, by the time he left office in 2017—to much of the country’s hysterical grief—the party of Obama showed no intention of refusing (and every indication of intending) to become the party of Islamic apologetics.

The jihad “Squad”

On January 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated, the so-called “Women’s March” descended upon Washington, led by the shrieks of “unapologetically Palestinian” Linda Sarsour. Sarsour—who lamented the fall and capture of Saddam Hussein, has defended known terrorists, has family members connected to Hamas, and wished on Twitter that she could remove Ayaan Hirsli Ali’s (already mutilated) genitalia—rocketed to prominence as part of the Democrat “resistance” (or, in her words, “jihad”) against the Trump presidency. Her hijab-enveloped face, covered in the thick make-up sternly forbidden in public under Islam, graced magazine after magazine, and appeared, without rebuke, in the mainstream (Democrat) media. Still, the vast bank of her vile comments, connections, and exploits—which included stealing money pledged to repair desecrated Jewish cemeteries—eventually trickled into public discourse, and she became too radioactive. By the spring of 2018, she and her three other original “Women’s March” organizers—two of whom were blushing admirers of Louis Farrakhan—had stepped down.

Nevertheless, while the Sarsour packaging eventually proved too abrasive and shocking for most outside Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns (representing the party’s youngest,  largest, and most energized minority), the Sarsour agenda was less so. Throughout the Trump presidency, Democrat party leadership mobilized fully against Trump’s temporary ban on travel from terrorist-infested countries, very nearly elected terrorist sympathizer and former Nation of Islam member Keith Ellison as DNC chair (before installing him as deputy), and collectively fainted upon the administration’s withdrawal from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.

Then the 2018 mid-terms brought a “new beginning” indeed to the legacy of Obamania. Sarsour’s fellow anti-Semites and allies of jihad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley from Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib from Michigan won House races and settled (for the foreseeable future) in the rich leather seats theoretically reserved for patriots.

Though bawdy, corrupt, dodgy, ignorant, juvenile, salty-mouthed, sleazy, and worse, the Islamo-Marxist “Squad,” as its members childishly named themselves, gradually began to force the party establishment to submit to its bratty orders. The most egregious incident was when, in 2019, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed Ilhan Omar to transform a House resolution meant to censure her for her own anti-Jewish rants into one condemning “Islamophobia” and “anti-Muslim bigotry” as well. Earlier that year, of course, Pelosi saw no issue with allowing Omar to lead the repeal of an 1837 rule against wearing hats in Congress, just so she could—in accordance with Islamic, not U.S., law—wear her hijab on the House floor.

Such sentiments seemed to catch on quickly, as the party then falsely accused Trump of being a racist when he suggested that Omar go back to her native Somalia due to her obvious hatred for the country whose taxpayers furnish her unearned prosperity. So, too, then-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed horror that Trump had implored Israel not to allow anti-Jewish racists like Omar and Tlaib to enter its borders, given their terrorist sympathies and connections—a suggestion the Israelis wisely implemented. Then, in 2020, the Democrats threw another tantrum that Trump did not forewarn them of Islamic regime mass murderer Qasem Soleimani’s assassination—perhaps because the White House took the scene they had made over discarding the Iran nuclear deal seriously.

Slouching towards Tehran

“America is back,” a blustering Joe Biden told the planet on February 4, 2021. To what exactly was unclear, in view of revelations that the “Million Muslim Votes” campaign, mobilized to defeat Trump in 2020, was organized by Emgage, a CAIR-style Brotherhood front-group.

Before his first 100 days in office ran out, the “Biden-Harris” administration—in line with a campaign promise to include “Muslims at every level of government”—had set about appointing and nominating a stream of anti-Semites, Democrat-first Jews, self-loathing Jews, and social jihad warriors to cabinet positions. A small selection of the most illustrious—all of whom were confirmed—included:

• Maher Bitar—former board member of Georgetown University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and BDS activist—as Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council (later elevated to Deputy Assistant to the President).
• Anthony Blinken—who opposed designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Islamic regime’s equivalent of the SS at home and ISIS abroad, as a terrorist organization—as Secretary of State.
• Reema Dodin—former leader of UC Berkeley’s chapter of the Muslim Students’ Association (a Brotherhood off-shoot) who called suicide bombings against Jews the “last resort of a desperate people”—as Deputy Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.
• Avril Haines—who signed a 2020 letter denouncing Democrats for being too pro-Israel—as Director of National Intelligence.
• Alejandro Majorkas—who served on the board of the “refugee” agency HIAS, which supports bringing Jew-hating Muslim migrants to the U.S. and works with the Hamas money-laundering “charity” Islamic Relief—as Secretary of Homeland Security.
• Robert Malley—who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal and condemned Qasem Soleimani’s assassination—as Special Envoy to Iran.
• Susan Rice—who presided over the Benghazi attack cover-up, scorned Israel for opposing the Iran nuclear deal, and demanded that the Trump administration restore funding to UNRWA (Hamas)—as Director of the Domestic Policy Council.
• Wendy Sherman—who downplayed suicide bombings against Israelis as but “nagging disruptions from the Palestinian side” and was a key Iran nuclear deal negotiator—as Deputy Secretary of State.

The administration’s ensuing policies expectably reflected its members’ backgrounds.

In 2021 alone, Trump-era sanctions against the Islamic regime occupying Iran were withdrawn in order to revive the nuclear deal; funding, halted at the Trump administration’s order in 2018, was restored to UNRWA; Israel was successfully forced into accepting a “ceasefire” in its fourth war against Hamas since 2009; major economic sanctions against the Islamic regime’s oil business were given up; the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan was completed, during which 13 American soldiers were killed and priceless weapons left for the hungry Taliban; the “Squad” (momentarily) defunded Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system; and Nigeria, which is conducting an Islamic genocide against its Christian population—some of whom are jihad slaves—was removed from the “Countries of Particular Concern” list.

In 2022, more sanctions against the Islamic regime were waived in another unsuccessful attempt to restore the nuclear deal; Elizabeth Fawley Bagley, who once complained of the “influence of the Jewish lobby” and “major money” on American foreign policy, was appointed ambassador to Brazil; Hady Amr, who had written that he “was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” was appointed “Special Envoy to the Palestinians”; aid to the terrorist Palestinian Authority was restored; and Israel, then led by its leftist “caretaker” government, signed an American-backed “mini”-Iran deal of its own: giving Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon rights to Israeli offshore gas fields.

By 2023, Robert Malley had turned out to be just as special an envoy as his title suggested when he was exposed as a likely spy for the Islamic regime in Iran. Biden also suddenly restored preferential trade deal status to Mauritania, a modern-day apartheid state in which Arab Muslims still own 149,000 black Africans as chattel slaves.

Then, after October 7, the gas pedal was screwed to the metal.

Hamas’s massacre of Jews elicited a superficially forceful show of comradeship with Israel, but—in line with every other recent Israeli war—as soon as the IDF actually began to fight back, the word “pause” appeared. Though Netanyahu protested as long as he could, by November, the White House had strongarmed Israel into submitting to one. Israel released 240 convicted terrorists (fraudulently labelled “women and children”) in exchange for 110 hostages. Emboldened, Hamas, understandably, fought on once the “humanitarian pause” was over.

Lost to some in the media chatter, however, was the memory of Biden’s 2021 Iranian oil sanctions relief. This allowed the Islamic regime, which controls Hamas, to once again get rich from oil sails, have $6 billion in frozen assets released less than a month before October 7, and then another $10 billion more just over a month later. Altogether, by the fall of 2023, U.S. sanctions relief likely earned the regime an estimated $80 billion in oil revenue.

Worse still, as the year turned, Israel’s enemies witnessed a growing groundswell of support for them inside the United States. Starting on October 8—before Israel had even mustered a full-scale counterattack—Marxist and Muslim political agitators launched riots across the country to demand a “ceasefire.” The protests, funded partially by the Islamic regime in Iran, then seized the nation’s campuses, and set off month after month of venomous, violent “occupations” which sympathetic yet check-mated (Democrat) administrators, at best, refused to discourage. Elected Democrats, of course, fearful of losing the (Hitler) youth vote, rarely condemned any of the protests. Even when Hamas itself praised the rioters and Iran’s theocratic dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i applauded them for being “on the right side” of history, their clearest denouncer was Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: “When you’ve won the Ayatollah, you’ve lost America.”

Standing opposite Johnson in tenor was Ilhan Omar, who visited the (illegally) encamped Columbia squatters and smarmily accused pro-Israel Jewish students of being “pro-genocide.” Interestingly, Isra Hirsi, Omar’s daughter, was suspended from neighboring Barnard College after she was arrested for taking part in the illegal encampment. Appearing on MSNBC with October 7 minimizer and protest defender Ayman Mohyeldin, Hirsi whined about being “locked out of my dorm,” “100% targeted,” and “sprayed” with “chemical weapons” (which turned out to be joke “fart spray”). Within days, her “suspension” mysteriously evaporated, as she appeared beside her mother at Columbia, of which Barnard is a subsidiary, when Omar visited the campus.

Such collegiate screeches for a “permanent ceasefire” and an end to the “genocide in Gaza” inevitably had an effect, causing U.S. “peace” pressure to never relent throughout 2024. In May, the administration ordered Israel not to attack the Hamas-infested Rafah area of southern Gaza, threatening to withhold vital weapons. Then, when Israel eventually did, and Biden agreed to send the weapons, the administration slow-walked them. Several months later, it approved $165 million for “heavy-duty tank trailers,” but with a (conveniently late) delivery date of 2027.

270 reasons to pander

Knowing that states with large Muslim populations like Michigan and Minnesota had to be won in 2024, the (increasingly “Harris”) administration had spent years battling the scourge of “Islamophobia.”

In 2022, the White House announced the formation of an “interagency group” supposedly to “combat antisemitism,” but which would also “coordinate efforts to counter Islamophobia in the U.S.” The following May, it held a “Listening Session on Islamophobia” in which Robert McCaw, a senior CAIR (Hamas) operative, participated. Later that month, it released the “First-Ever National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism”—which succeeded both in mentioning “Islamophobia” and including CAIR (Hamas) as a partner organization.

Then, after October 7, 2023, as unprecedented, genocidal Judeopathy erupted across the globe, the Oval Office instead chose to reiterate just how desperately its “national strategy” from back in May was needed. “For too long, Muslims in America,” White House spokesperson (and anti-Israel bigot) Karine Jean-Pierre said, “…have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks and other discriminatory incidents.” According, however, to the FBI “hate crimes” statistics Jean-Pierre conveniently omitted, American Jews, not Muslims, enjoy that particular distinction. What’s more, most reports of “anti-Muslim” incidents appear to originate from CAIR (Hamas)—casting titanic doubts over their validity to say the least.

Sadly for the administration, strategic difficulties soon emerged. In December, CAIR itself had to be disavowed after its leader, Nihad Awad, said that he “was happy to see” his colleagues in Hamas kidnapping, massacring, and raping Jews on October 7. And, as the new year loomed, some Muslim activists even expressed reservations about joining any White House coalition, feeling “unsafe and unsupported” due to Biden not being anti-Israel enough.

2024 marked crunch time to secure the critical (and slipping) “Muslim vote,” thus bringing with it new and more attempts at appeasement. On January 27 (Holocaust Remembrance Day), “Second Gentleman” Doug Emhoff met with the “interfaith” group NewGround—which partners with the Brotherhood-linked Muslim Public Affairs Council—in order to “address Antisemitism and Islamophobia in the United States and across the world.” On March 15, the White House released a statement to mark the “International Day to Combat Islamophobia,” saying (without citing evidence) that American Muslims “frequently endure baseless fearmongering, blatant discrimination, harassment, and violence in the course of their everyday lives.” On June 16, a “fact sheet” detailing how the administration would “take action against Islamophobia” and the “rise in harassment, bigotry and horrifying violence toward Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Americans” appeared. On June 26, the White House appointed longtime Muslim Brotherhood member and “interfaith” con artist Mohamed Elsanousi to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Then, on July 18, Emhoff proudly proclaimed that “an Islamophobia plan” would be “coming out soon.”

Joy

On July 21, 2024, President Biden announced that he would not seek re-election. Biden was smoothly swapped out for Vice President Kamala Harris, who had polled at 2% nationally when she ran in 2019. Despite never receiving one 2024 primary vote, the “Democratic” Party shoved her forward as its presumptive nominee and supposed leader until at least 2029. Overshadowed by her “historic,” “joy”-drenched (s)election was the reality that she would not only perpetuate Obama and Biden’s anti-Israel, pro-Islamic policies, but intensify them.

Four days after becoming the on-camera president, she met with Prime Minister Netanyahu to express “concern” that a “ceasefire” was not yet at hand, as pro-Hamas protesters had to be satisfied. “The images of dead children and desperate hungry people [in Gaza] fleeing for safety” wrenched her heart with grief so much that “I will not be silent,” she told the media. Not long after, she met with the Muslim mayor of Dearborn, Michigan—a city with a clear Muslim majority which has been called “America’s jihad capital”—and indicated openness towards an arms embargo against Israel.

Not only would she—who had spent years associating with a circle of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operatives—never pass up prayer rug-scraping for the sake of staying in power, but so would Biden. During what amounted to his “retirement” speech to the Democratic National Convention on August 19, Biden, 51 years in harness, barked that “Those [anti-Israel] protesters out in the street, they have a point.” While screaming pro-Hamas rioters ripped down pieces of the metal fencing protecting the convention center—reminiscent of their Brotherhood brothers in southern Israel 10 months and 12 days before—the now-dowager President of the United States confirmed they represented a demographic to be won and not repudiated. The tone was set for the rest of the DNC, during which the Israeli hostages were only mentioned once, and a Muslim Brotherhood imam was invited to bless the assembled delegates.

The last Walz

Shortly before the DNC, Harris announced her running mate: Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, whose heavily Muslim capital of Minneapolis CBS News called a “recruiting ground” for ISIS in 2014.

Walz was not only a confirmed liar, COVID tyrant, and Chinese pawn, but revealed to have fond ties to Islamic hatemongers, Ilhan Omar among them. For example, his administration had given over $100,000 in taxpayer money to the Minnesota branch of the Muslim American Society (a major Brotherhood front-group), run by Imam Asad Zaman. A man who once shared a link to a six-and-half-hour neo-Nazi pseudo-documentary, Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told, on his Facebook page. Walz had tenderly praised this literal Nazi, who celebrated October 7, as “a master teacher” before pretending that he had “no personal relationship with him” despite speaking previously of the “time we’ve spent together.” Even worse, the Minnesota state government had authorized more than $2 million over the course of five years to the Islamic Association of North America, another Brotherhood-linked organization, which fundraised for Rahma Worldwide, a group connected to foreign jihad organizations. Walz also spoke at a CAIR gala in 2019 and was photographed next to Hatem Bazian, founder of Students for Justice in Palestine.

Just as there had been no joy for any Jews unfortunate enough to be in college during the last school year, there was even less for Israel in the weeks after the convention. It was reported that U.S. trade with Iran’s Islamic regime had spiked 43% in 2023; Biden (Harris) had sent an envoy to pressure Israel into “land swaps” with Hezbollah in the hope of “averting a war”; and State Department officials had protected disgraced regime operative Robert Malley, whose role in strengthening the regime prior to October 7 has come under intense suspicion.

By contrast, the administration’s laxity in protecting its opponent with similar dedication to Robert Malley is far more disturbing given that two of the three known attempts on former President Trump’s life had Islamic regime connections, some distant, some direct. Even more egregiously, the regime had released a video in early 2022 depicting an animated scenario in which a drone strike killed Trump on his golf course in Palm Beach. The threat, made in revenge for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani two years earlier, was covered in major media, including Newsweek and the AP, yet the then-Biden-now-Harris administration did nothing. To use a now-familiar term, such negligence from a ruling political party towards another, in light of everything known, is worse than collusion.

Khomeini’s curse

The Democratic Party’s protracted 15-year quest for absolute power through submission to Islam echoes its economic fantasies: no price is too high, for money, as “capitalists” know it, will eventually be meaningless.

What most leftist Islamophiles may not know is that, after successfully cooperating in overthrowing the Pahlavi government and promising to share power, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s new junta systematically betrayed its Marxist allies. After Marxist groups revolted in 1988, the regime’s secret police rounded up thousands of communists and atheists from across the country who were then tortured and executed.

Islam regards its leftist allies with only the deepest contempt and, as it did in Iran, it will eliminate them on the day of its victory. The fact that the U.S. State Department offered “condolences” upon the death of regime “President” Ebrahim Raisi—the man who ordered the 1988 mass murder—will not change that outcome.

Having years ago completed the “long march through the institutions,” for no other reason than its own good, the Democratic Party must advance no further on the long march to Makah.

Our Republic was still young when the Democratic Party, then the favorite party of the American South, gave rise to the Confederacy, which, in turn, forced America into one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history. It did so by tolerating and running interference for something that even the Founders argued against but failed to rule on: the practice of slavery in America. Today, the Democratic Party is once again tearing at the fabric of the American Republic—this time by supporting the Palestinian cause, which does not and never will comport with America values and interests, primarily because that cause, being a joint Marxist-Islamist invention, is bound-up with a desire to not just bring about Israel’s destruction or gradual erasure, but America’s as well. 

Just as Democrats once manufactured the issue of states’ rights to justify their desire to maintain slavery in the face of a changing national-moral landscape, Democrats are now echoing anti-Israel propaganda in a rush to justify policies that leave America and her allies less safe, but help Democrats build political capital with those who give lip service to a ceasefire in Gaza, but whose true goals are the end of the US-Israel alliance and the destruction of the Jewish state. Biden doubled-down on his administration’s pandering to the Islamist-Marxist alliance when he closed the first evening of the Democratic National Convention by saying that protesters who were calling for an end to the U.S.-Israel alliance “have a point.” This came after Biden threatened to withhold all weapons from Israel should she pursue Hamas into Rafah and quickly rescue the hostages that were known to be there. When that threat was issued, six hostages, one of whom was an American citizen, were still alive. 

When anti-Israel protesters targeted past Democratic administrations, one could expect any of those administrations to affirm its commitment to the U.S.-Israel alliance while using terms such as “ironclad.” However, today’s Democratic Party falls in line behind its President when he suspends the shipment of heavy munitions to Israel midway through her battle with Hamas for control of Gaza while knowing full well that those munitions were needed to sever and destroy Hamas’ underground tunnel and bunker system. It was from those tunnels and bunkers that thousands of Israeli civilians were attacked on October 7^th and it was into those tunnels and bunkers that the hostages were taken. The Biden-Harris administration withheld those weapons not because Israel was failing to wage war in accordance with international humanitarian law, but because arming Israel against Hamas had become unpopular with an influential segment of the Democratic Party, a segment that had just promised to withdraw all support for whomever the party nominates to run in November unless the Biden-Harris administration ends all military aid to Israel forthwith and accomplishes a ceasefire, which is code for “rescue Hamas from total defeat and allow it hold onto some form of power in Gaza.”

When Lincoln faced similar pressure from those who wished to appease the South and ignore the injustice of slavery, he said this: “A house divided against itself cannot stand…I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” America is faced with the same choice now. That choice is to either tolerate those who would legitimize and give a lifeline to a terrorist organization that live-streamed the murders and kidnappings it committed on October 7^th or to heed Lincoln’s words and realize that we cannot be two things at once. Truly, a house divided cannot stand. As a society, we will either continue to tolerate and eventually conform to the nihilism of those who are protesting on behalf of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Ayatollah and be destroyed by it or we will overcome that nihilism. Not by ignoring it or viewing it as a passing political fashion, but by purging it from the American body politic while reclaiming values that G-d writes on every human heart, but that some, in their cleverness and anger, graffiti over.

By placing too much stock in its “big tent” strategy and admitting undeniably anti-American actors to its inner-circle, the Democratic Party is incubating something worse than the Confederates. Worse because the Confederates did not wish destruction upon America so much as they believed that the Constitution guaranteed them a right to secede. Had the Confederates won the argument over secession, the great injustice that is chattel slavery in America would have continued and the Confederates would have done what they could to reconcile with the Union. In other words, America would have gone on. Slavery would have also gone on, but not indefinitely. 

If some in the Democratic Party get their way now, our centuries-long pursuit of ‘a more perfect union’ and belief in our own exceptionalism will be replaced by an ethos that rejects that exceptionalism in favor of a world without borders and the ideas those borders contain and protect. Just as slavery was once promoted by the American South, the rejection of American exceptionalism is now being spread by a Democratic Party that views American power and influence as proof of imperialist intent only. Hence its steady and continuous efforts to destroy both since 2008, when then President Obama promised to reform American foreign policy toward the Middle East while transferring more responsibility for maintaining global stability to the UNSC, which has only ever functioned well under strong American leadership. Those reforms and that transfer of responsibility gave us the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a nuclear Iran that suddenly had wealth enough to offer more and better assistance to Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. As Ronald Regan said, “We maintain peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.” Mind you, this was said by a U.S. president who, for all his faults, believed in American exceptionalism, which is to say, that he believed that the America was, through the miracle of her founding, anointed to lead the nations through a darkness that blinds much of the world and is spreading from the places it was once contained in.

It’s time to recognize that the anti-American exceptionalism chickens have come to roost just as the Confederate did in 1865. Every “occupation” of an American college or university campus, march, demonstration and riot undertaken by keffiyeh-draped protestors (quite a few of whom are in the U.S. on visas) is an attack on the Fort Sumpter of the American collective consciousness. But that attack is not just virtual. Last July, thousands descended upon Washington D.C. to show their support for Hamas by desecrating national monuments, clashing with police and, at one point, breaking through a barricade to enter the National Gallery in a show of political violence. Because certain American politicians have expressed support for demonstrators who call for an American intifada, one would think that progressives would apply the same standard to those politicians and to that attack on America’s Capitol that was applied to President Trump and the January 6^th insurrection. What the Democratic Party did instead was invite that “protest movement” to take part in its National Convention. Even though that movement was not allowed to put a speaker before everyone in attendance, their keffiyehs and “not one more bomb” pins featured prominently in the media coverage of the convention. 

Having a tolerance for and an appreciation of a nuanced politics is insufficient to justify support for a party that does not regard the mass murder of Jews and support for such murder as a redline. Just as Lincoln once drew a line in the sand with regard to slave holders and their Democratic Party supporters, we must now resist any politics that invites Islamism and its terroristic nature into our national politics. No speech given to AIPAC or affirmation of ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ should distract us from the immorality of a party leadership that exchanges Jewish, Israeli, and American blood for Muslim and progressive votes and that, for its own gain, prevented an ally from entering enemy territory en force to rescue hostages and to kill or capture terrorists who carried out an attack that was every bit as brutal as 9/11. 
A generation ago, America promised to never forget the lessons of 9/11 just as she once promised to never again allow anyone or anything to divide her house and cause it to fall. Democrats holding power over their party and America’s national politics have betrayed us all on both counts.

In addition to welcoming anti-Semites into the progressive party base, the Democratic Party’s soft bigotry of low expectations is becoming normalized as mainstream policy. 

It is widely known–or at least, should be, by now–that the party of slavery and discrimination was historically the Democratic Party. This is not to say that there were (and are) no racist Republicans, or that all Democrats are (or were) bigots. Unfortunately, though, these historic roots are often ignored or brushed aside as “something from so long ago”—interestingly enough, given that modern-day Democrats repeatedly harp on the importance of centering “long-standing racial traumas.” But in an odd turn of events, it seems that we are coming full circle. Sadly, rather than both parties shunning bigotry and advancing toward a common brotherhood of man, the Democrats are returning to their racist roots, albeit through more modern means and methods. 

Years ago, before I entered college, I remember having the feeling that both parties would reverse course. The Grand Old Party, which does have a problem with radicalized bigots on its far-right fringe, would soon shun this group of voters and embrace a more diverse electorate. And the Democrats, who at the time were led by America’s first Black president, would cave in to their own discriminatory radical fringe. I can’t recall exactly what gave me this feeling, as it was years ago, but I am sad to say that I feel proven right.

A few years after that initial prediction, and as someone who voted for Hillary Clinton and was deeply concerned about a Trump Presidency, I was working as a cashier at a local grocery co-op. One woman was handing out “resistance cards” in the store to fellow customers, to organize an anti-Trump demonstration in downtown Philadelphia. As I heard her conversation with another shopper, I was stunned to learn of her concern about a potential deportation of illegal immigrants–not out of concern for their welfare, how practical such a policy would be, or out of any potential racial aspects to the policy. Her concern was mired in a potential price hike for avocados and how it would cost more for her to buy them if “illegals” were deported. I remember the constant yard signs of “Hate Has No Home Here” and “No Human is Illegal” being erected in my solid-blue, diverse suburb just outside of Philly. Many of the signs remain to this day, with even more variations of such slogans pertaining to human rights, feminism, Black Lives Matter, and even some decrying the fake “ethnic cleansing and genocide” in Gaza. And it is here where it struck me: much of the supposed concern for the “everyday voter,” and for minorities, women, and the LGBT community, is manufactured among a substantial portion of the Democratic Party. 

Consider how the tainted water supply of Flint, Michigan–a substantially Black town–was a major 2016 electoral issue, covered broadly by the mainstream media. Clinton pledged to fix the situation, and many down-ballot Democrats backed her. Following Clinton’s defeat, the issue was dropped from the news cycle. To this day, despite Democrats having been in power since 2021, Flint’s water remains undrinkable. In fact, it wasn’t even a major issue in the 2020 election cycle and has not even been discussed this time around either. 

The racism of the Democrats today is not the belligerent form embodied by hooded KKK members or marching Neo-Nazis with burning torches. It is a more kind, gentle, and subtle form of discriminatory views–what many have labeled the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Consider the environment following the George Floyd protests and the anti-racism movement. There has been a call to “dismantle the police” and bring an end to “cultural Whiteness,” whatever that means. Yet polling and research shows that “defunding police” is much more popular amongst progressive white voters than the communities the policy is allegedly supposed to help the most–Hispanic and Black voters. And apparently, much to the shock of professionals from a non-white background who take their careers very seriously, being on time is “White Supremacy Culture” and should not be expected of minorities in various professions. This isn’t limited to showing up on time to class, work, or an appointment, however. Having a “perfectionist” attitude, engaging in “the written word,” or even generally being professional, is all deemed to be racist and White Supremacist. Therefore, one should expect and celebrate any minority being late to class or work or speaking improper English. 

This dangerous and insulting belief system also extends to foreign policy. Consider how it is applied to the Middle East. In light of the current Gaza War, the Biden Administration has called for the Palestinian Authority to be “revamped and reformed” with more democratic institutions and less corruption. These are worthy goals, but what is preventing peace between the Palestinian Authority and Israel isn’t corruption or lack of elections. After all, Israel has established peace with six Arab countries—none of whom are democracies, and all of whom are rife with corrupt government officials. What is preventing peace between Ramallah and Jerusalem is the incitement to violence stemming from institutionalized anti-Semitism in Palestinian education and religious bodies. Strangely, there is no demand from the White House that these “reforms” should extend to ending support for racist terrorism. And as such, the Jewish state has rightly refused to end its war on Hamas or give the PA more power in the region. Simply put, Washington appears to believe that it is only natural that Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, are racist, anti-Semitic, and violent in nature, and therefore cannot be expected to behave like any other civilized or rational governing body. 

The soft bigotry of low expectations and “defund the police” protests have led to chaos in America’s cities. Crime goes unpunished, or with a light slap on the wrist, which is deeply harmful for business. Just look at San Francisco, Seattle, or Portland. Businesses are shutting down, homelessness and drug use are in plain sight, and people in need of mental health care are left to their own devices, either posing a danger to themselves or the wider public–indeed, often both. People are moving away, but nowadays, even the suburbs fall victim to the aftermath of these cruel policies. Sexual abuse and human trafficking have become far more commonplace as well, with the police either unable or unwilling to make much of a difference, for fear of punishment, lack of funds, or woke policies instituted by progressive local DAs. And much as Islamist terror often impacts the Muslim community more than any other, these crimes and shuttering of local businesses are extremely harmful to the communities of color the “defund the police” movement was most meant to help. Any minority who disagrees with the policy is either ignored or branded an Uncle Tom–itself an act of bigotry. 

Yet there is also what I call the Baskin Robbins racial hierarchy employed by the Democrats: the “flavor of the month” among the oppressed, and who should be prioritized in defending from the “Christian Right-Wing White Nationalist Mob.” A particular minority group, or perhaps a few, will be selected for repeated mention by the Democrats and left-leaning media as in desperate need of protection from conservative policies and, in particular, Donald Trump. Yet after a certain period of time–generally after votes are assured from that community, or a particular issue to said community is addressed–a new “flavor of the month” minority takes its place in the limelight.  In 2016 (and perhaps also now, in light of October 7th), it was Muslims or immigrants (particularly Hispanics). In 2020 and 2021, it was Asians and African-Americans. Now, it is anyone under the “queer” umbrella, though particularly non-binary folks. Yet beyond empty sloganeering, there was hardly anything truly done to protect any of these groups–and such “protections” often came at the expense of other groups desperately in need of advocacy. 

Anti-Semitism, for example, is seemingly at the bottom of the totem pole of concern for protecting minorities–unless it can be conveniently resuscitated in order to attack Neo-Nazis or Donald Trump. The anti-Semitism faced by Jewish college students, for example, by the far-left or Islamist activists is either ignored or excused. Other than the outrage over anti-Asian hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic, there has been little-to-no attention paid to discrimination faced by Asian-Americans. In fact, whenever the “minority vote” comes up in political discussions on the news, it almost entirely focuses on Black and Hispanic voters (with “the Muslim vote” recently gaining traction), as if Native Americans, Jews, and Asians are nonexistent. Groups perceived as “successful” even if being a minority have been termed “White-Adjacent.” Though “being successful” is a broad overgeneralization and gives no agency to these groups to define themselves–seemingly an important thing to do amongst the anti-racism crowd–it seems that those who have “made it” are to be villainized and punished, treated as though they have never faced hardship. 

This is bad enough, but the other problem with such labels or thinking is that Blacks or Hispanics are to be seen and defined primarily by a supposed victimhood, eternal poverty, and perpetual life of suffering, racism, and crime. This just reinforces stereotypes, while also forgetting that there is a rich history of Black and Latino wealth and success in this country. Even examining issues Democrats deem to be most important for these “votes” (criminal justice reform for Blacks, immigration reform for Latinos), there is an automatic perception that these communities are forever in need of saving, and that the concerns of “ordinary Americans” do not apply for them as well. For a party that claims to be engaged in various forms of non-binarism and “de-labeling” communities or people, it sure does love to put entire communities into broad and overgeneralized boxes. 

As this is all occurring–with segregated “affinity groups” at that!–there is a growing shift of certain minority communities toward the GOP. Democratic operatives have forgotten that for many minority communities, especially amongst immigrants, there is a basic level of conservative and even religious values that remain deeply important. This also holds true for many minorities living in the southern or central regions of the U.S. Sadly, instead of listening to the reasons why or even trying to come to some sort of middle ground, too many Democrats have once again declared such folks as “Uncle Toms” or paternalistically claimed they are “voting against their interests.” The Democrats have largely wedded themselves to a loud yet vocal minority of mostly elite and coastal white, far-left advocates–assisted by acolytes such as Joy Reid or Marc Lamont-Hill–whose values are not shared by a growing swathe of moderate and/or minority voters. And the belittling or shunning approach toward them will only accelerate this drift. It remains true that the GOP has much work to do in terms of isolating its own fringe extremists as well as broadening its appeal to moderate voters and minorities. But ultimately, with the way the Democratic Party is moving, it might not have to work as hard or gradually as it may once have. Most Americans do not want to be governed by a life of chaos that sells a depressing vision of endless racism and victimization. We want to be seen as individuals, listened to and heard (even if not always agreed with), given the opportunity to get the best education and jobs possible for ourselves and our loved ones. This is the American Dream, and it extends beyond racial or regional borders. The Democrats appear to have lost their way and, sadly, insist on doubling down on the woke playbook of four years ago just at the time most Americans have had enough. If they do not want to be seen as the bigoted, ignorant, and chaotic party once more, then they must swiftly change course and abandon the current path of discriminatory radicalism. 

It was a normally slowish June 1994 Saturday morning at KMOX radio St. Louis. The regular listener call-in show “The Morning Meeting” was chugging along uneventfully. 

But then the host got a shocking note; the next call was coming in from a passenger on a jet flying at 30,000 feet. 

That jet was Air Force One, and the caller was the President of the United States.

Yes, it was President Bill Clinton on the presidential jet on his way into St. Louis to do a fundraiser for longtime Democrat Rep. Dick Gephardt. But Clinton wasn’t calling in to tell Missourians to vote for Gephardt; his re-election that fall was never in doubt. He was calling in to try to fight against the tide of a severe drop in his own popularity that began almost the moment he took the oath of office 17 months earlier. 

And Bill Clinton was angry.

His anger was so palpable that it suddenly became even more surprising than the surprising fact of the call happening in the first place. For 23 remarkable minutes, the most powerful man on earth openly complained about all the “misinformation” against him and his policies. While that may have been simply a bit unseemly on its own, Clinton’s rant took a new and worse turn when he began to focus his anger on specific targets: the religious right and conservative talk radio. Then he named his targets more specifically, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh.

After assailing Falwell and questioning the sincerity of his Christianity, the president moved on to attacking Limbaugh and the “lies” the talk radio host was saying against him daily. Clinton even decried the fact that there was no “truth meter” that could ring out  live on the air every time Limbaugh said something untruthful about him. 

Again, Clinton’s emotional frustration about his self-described plight were evident as he raised his voice louder and louder. It was so noticeable that White House aides felt compelled to explain his volume away by saying he was just trying to speak over the sound of Air Force One’s engines. 

The incident is notable now for many reasons. First off, one can only imagine what a major national stir it would have set off in today’s social media and crowded TV news channel landscape. Thirty years ago, the story barely scratched the national surface. Even if you ask the most politically astute people who were old enough to know about it then, they will tell you they either forgot it or they never knew it happened in the first place. 

But if you listen closely to Clinton’s rhetoric, you can’t help but think something indeed sounds familiar. The reason it does is because that day – June 25, 1994 – was the day the seed was sown for the Democratic Party and the American left to shift from the camp of personal and cultural liberty, to a movement imbued with a ravenous disdain for the First Amendment and support for widespread censorship. 

To be sure, it took many years for those seeds to blossom. After taking an historic whipping in the 1994 midterm elections 5 months after his radio call-in incident,  Clinton actually re-adjusted his presidency cleverly by embracing more centrist economic and social policies. The wise instincts he had had in his successful 1992 presidential campaign kicked back in as he successfully appeared to be more conciliatory with conservatives and less radical on policy. By 1996 Clinton’s popularity, which had been at a low ebb in June of 1994, had recovered and he won a second term in November of that year by a healthier margin than his 1992 victory. 

But many other Democrats, and the left in general, were not on board with Clinton’s very public political calming exercise. Moreover, as Limbaugh’s continued success began to inspire dozens of popular radio copycats, FOX News, and much more, Clinton’s 1994 concepts of “truth monitoring” and even outright censorship only became more and more popular with leftists nationwide.

Also in the interim, Democrats joined with Republicans in the overwhelming congressional support for and passage of the Patriot Act. Something civil libertarians immediately decried but seemed to be doomed in their protests thanks to the newfound powers the political class was bestowing on itself. 

Though while there was always a will for more and more censorship and surveillance, there seemed to be less and less of a way. At first, the rise of the Internet presented only more apparently uncontrollable targets for leftist silencing campaigns. Perhaps it was this new landscape that persuaded Democrats and leftists to try to fight fire with fire with radio networks like the ill-fated “Air America” and the leftist bastion that MSNBC became as a counter to FOX News (after a few years of that channel starting out as a less partisan entity). 

Another speed bump on the left’s path to becoming pro-censorship was the election of Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajority, both in 2008. Just as Bill Clinton was most desirous of some kind of curbs on his critics’ rights when his polls were in the dumps, the Democrats were less interested in pursuing censorship when the polls were going their way. Of course, none of that stopped them from constant boycott campaigns against Linmbaugh, FOX News, and their existing and potential advertisers. 

Then a perfect storm occurred, one that can be simply summarized by three things: social media, Big Tech consolidation, and China.

With the emergence of Facebook, Twitter X, and Instagram, suddenly a new version of the old philosophical question “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really happen?” has emerged. It is now restated as: “If you say something but no one on social media sees it, does it really matter?” This scenario has presented censorship regimes with a much easier ability to at least silence the most effective speech in the world today. 

Big Tech consolidation, most specifically the fact that Google’s search engine domination has made it the Western world’s de facto only publisher, has also been incredibly helpful to those who wish to destroy the effective power of the First Amendment. Similar to the above rhetorical question about social media, one can ask if anything really exists if it’s not easily found in a Google search. Once again, this monopolization of content mapping makes it plausible to effectively silence that content as long as that monopoly is willing to cooperate. 

Then came China to show America and everyone else just how cooperative Big Tech could be. 

That trend began in the late 1990s with the infamous incident involving Yahoo’s collaboration with the Chinese government as it looked to use Yahoo’s user information data to find dissidents in hiding. Yahoo indeed cooperated, as a congressional investigation concluded years later. During a 2007 hearing about Yahoo’s actions, the now-deceased Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California), who was a Holocaust survivor, famously castigated then-Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and the company’s then-chief counsel Bill Callahan. 

Yet it appears many of Lantos’ Democrat colleagues were learning the wrong lessons. As Google grew to become more than 10 times more dominant in Internet search, Democrats began to realize the potential involved in working with the company to advance efforts to restrict speech it found politically threatening. 

Of course just such a collaboration took place during the early days of the Biden Administration when it came to COVID policies and vaccine efficacy. That came after the collaboration of the Democrats, intelligence services, the Biden campaign, and Big Tech to suppress and discredit true reports about the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop. All of the above is no longer a matter of debate.

But China’s role in this often is overlooked. Without the Beijing regime’s successful beta testing of a social media/Big Tech-based surveillance and censorship of the world’s largest population, perhaps America’s censorship demons wouldn’t have tried to emulate it. 

For a hint of just how much the left wing intelligentsia has long admired China’s ability to enforce policies they like, remember the argument promoted by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman years ago when he waxed jealously about how Beijing didn’t need to win over any voters to do good deeds like banning plastic bags.

Of course, the elephant in this censorship room is Donald Trump. While the 2000 election dispute and the post-Abu Ghraib Iraq War triggered the left in this country, nothing has caused leftist heads to explode more than Trump’s entrance to the political scene, election as president, and enduring political capital. Trump is the devil incarnate to the left, and all respect for the law has been tossed out in its pursuit of him, reminding many of this exquisite exchange in the play, (and then film), A Man for All Seasons:

SIR THOMAS MORE: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

ROPER: So! Now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: Yes! I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

While the above exchange feels most germane to the lawfare attacks on Trump in New York, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., it’s also sadly applicable to the rest of us when it comes to the erosion of our First Amendment rights, whether we support Trump politically or not. 

A solution to this mess exists in our laws, if only we could find someone in government to enact them. You don’t need to be a Harvard Law School professor to see that Google, Amazon, and other key Big Tech players are ripe for hardcore antitrust action that should result in breakups. 

But speaking of Harvard Law professors, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is one Democrat who has often proposed breaking up Google and other Silicon Valley giants. Yet she has conveniently clammed up at times in this crusade, in a way that begs suspicion that Warren chooses to publicize her breakup arguments based on when and how Google et al are cooperating with Democratic Party schemes. 

Would the Republicans or the right be just as willing to jump on the censorship bandwagon when and if they achieve power again in Washington? Undoubtedly, many members of the GOP political class would. But Trump’s embrace of the First Amendment rights movement, coupled with his new allegiance with Robert F. Kennedy Junior, has made widespread Republican complicity in this censorship trend less likely. 

That may or may not mean there are any consistent “good guys” in this war to restore basic liberties. It does mean there’s a sliver of hope. But as long as we have tens of millions of Americans on the left who believe censorship is an attractive tool to address their obsession with the ultimate evil they see in Trump and his supporters, this will be a very uphill battle indeed.

 Journalistic ethics revolves around a grid of truthfulness, impartiality, accuracy, fact-based reporting, and objectivity.  These words, with their overlapping but distinct meanings, are at the heart of what we think about when we evaluate the virtue of particular journalistic reporting. Unfortunately, none of these core standards are doing well in our era of extreme journalistic bias. 

There are other ethical considerations in traditional journalism as well.  The sensitivity with which sources are treated is one. The overuse of anonymous sources—which are, after all, sometimes legitimate and anonymous for legitimate reasons, but can easily be abused, especially in cases where the information is controversial and sometimes ultimately proved wrong—is an ethical consideration. 

The use of money—paying sources—which is not ethical, is generally not a problem in legitimate journalism. It happens mostly in the realm of extreme tabloid journalism. 

When it comes to bias, one of the great, if somewhat understated problems of our time, is that our national media functions as an adjunct to one of our dominant political parties, instead of being an independent voice keeping a check on politics, politicians, and government. This is a problem because a free people needs to know what those whom we elect, or are considering electing, are actually doing. And we need to know what government, which is always and everywhere inclined to overstepping what should be its boundaries, is actually doing. Our media is not doing its job of keeping honest tabs, technically or ethically.

 We see this clearly in an election season like the one we’re currently in. It is apparent when, for instance, the TV interlocutors at a presidential debate ask easy questions of one side and loaded ones on the other side; and fact check one side and let the other side’s untrue assertions slide. 

That is an egregious example of media bias, of course, since some number of voters rely on these media-sponsored debates to make up their minds about whom to cast their vote for.  But it is not the worst example of media bias toward Democrats. Worse would be the sins of coverage omissions, in which Democratic lawmakers are allowed to lie about the reality of their policies—what they are, and what they do. 

That happened over the course of the Biden Administration with the Biden/Harris open border, migrant invasion policy. (Also economic policy, in particular inflation.) Conservative FOX News reported on the border policy and how it was playing out—how many illegal immigrants were rolling across the border into Texas or California—from day one. The New York Post, which is owned by the same company, reported on the story.  But even the Wall Street Journal, also owned by the same company, was too “respectable” to report the story as it initially unfolded. So people at the border faced an invasion. And citizens in more northern, “blue” cities remained ignorant that this was happening because their TV news and local papers did not report it. 

The three major TV networks, most of cable, the New York Times, the Washington Post—the “elite media”—all ignored the fact that hundreds of thousands, then millions of military aged men from across the Third World, and then across the world itself, including China, were pouring into the U.S. across the unguarded southern border. Because of explicit policies at the Department of Homeland Security, many of these people were being flown or bussed to other cities and towns across the country. This included migrants with criminal histories, and many who had previously been expelled from the U.S. Many of these flights were scheduled, by the government, for the dead of night, into local, relatively quiet airports where they wouldn’t get a lot of attention. 

Not until two years in, when a red state governor sent a busload of migrants that had been shipped to his state, Florida, to the elite summer playground of Martha’s Vineyard, causing a stir on the island, and therefore in the media itself, did the elite media begin to report this story. By that time shelters in “sanctuary cities” were overrun with migrants living for free at four-star hotels, rejecting the food they were given, getting generous benefits, and starting to commit crimes in big numbers—so that local Democrat officials were starting to complain about federal policy.  But more than half the country was two years late to this story because the elite media had neglected to cover it, since it looked bad for the Biden/Harris Administration.  

These reporting choices by reporters and editors were deeply politically biased, both in favor of a Democrat administration, and in favor of an open border policy. 

It should be obvious, but the political biases of reporters and editors and TV anchors should be scrutinized regularly to keep them from affecting coverage of issues and stories. That is hard, given that all status incentives in mainstream journalism lead to biases toward Democrats and their policies. One way to deal with this would be to have reporters from both parties on your staff, including in positions of power. That would require radical restructuring of most elite newsrooms. It would require editors who are above the status incentives that keep the news biases toward Democrats. It is very unlikely that such a thing will ever happen. 

When we think about media ethics, we tend to think about the smaller incentives that affect journalists—personal gain, for one. Close relations with people whose actions should be covered, for another.  Those are important.  But, as we have learned in the extreme during the Biden/Harris Administration, failure to cover the actual actions of politicians, and the policies they promulgate and their effects, is the most serious failing. 

It is worth noting that this is a relatively new phenomenon. The news had a much more moderate left wing bias as recently as the Clinton Administration. Not no bias. There was certainly some. But news about Clinton era policies that were not popular, or that failed, made it through the choice barrier of editors.  For young reporters, it was understood that anything happening should be covered.  Until it wasn’t. Back in those days objective journalism was the only ethical standard.  Now it would be fair to say that there is no functioning ethical standard. 

It is also true that none of this happens by accident. It’s not a surprise that many members of the White House press corp, and the elite media in general, are married to people who staff the permanent government. Or to Democratic political aides and operatives and office holders. Or they’re married to people who work for leftist activist groups. Or they, themselves, come out of those activist groups.  That creates ethical problems. It’s not just that loyalties are affected. It’s that there are deep and inherent biases toward some information at the expense of other information, created in such relationships.  Is this a matter of ethics? Yes, conflict of interest is a matter of ethics. Journalists should not cover entities where their spouses are employed. That’s pretty straightforward, and most media companies are reasonably clear about this. But it happens a lot in Democratic administrations. 

But it’s larger than just specific jobs. Reporters should not be covering any politics if they have a spouse working in an administration.  The tendency to support that administration is too great, even if you are covering Defense and your husband or wife works at the Department of Education. 

The exception to these rules are editorial pages, or opinion-based talk shows, where it is legitimate to make a case for the policy or politics the institution supports. Though it is the case that the nation’s best editorial pages – I would nominate the Wall Street Journal for that honor – present the most fact-based analyses and arguments for their positions. Mere assertions of preference don’t go very far.  And their writers and editors are well versed enough in politics to be able to distinguish partisan hackery from what actually happened or was said by political players. That should be the editorial page standard, not the exception that it now is. 

In our time the most serious journalistic ethical breach is the deep political bias of our media. Can the problem be solved? In theory, sure.  But while it is theoretically solvable, the odds that that will happen are approximately zero, especially when figures as unpopular and easily criticized as Donald Trump are involved, and when Democrats have a serious stake in suppressing political stories about how they obtain and hold power. The more one side has to hide, the stronger the incentives to stick with now routine biases.  This, of course, is a tragedy, and a very serious political problem. We need the return of real, even handed, journalistic ethics for our two party system to work.

Over half a century ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans celebrated their freedom at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair’s Aquarian Exposition, or simply “Woodstock.” 

These young, peace-loving Americans were advocates of individual autonomy, limited government, laissez-faire economics, freedom of speech, and civil liberties under the rule of law. They were the “Liberals” of the day.

African American Jimmy Hendrix, Indian Ravi Shankar, Mexican Carlos Santana, Native American Robbie Robertson, the ten women and the three members of the LGBTQ community who performed at Woodstock did not depend on affirmative action or “Diversity & Inclusion.” Their invitations to perform were merit-based. And no one viewed the predominately white middle class audience as racist oppressors by birthright. 

The festival organizers had prepared for an audience of fifty thousand. Attendance was eight times that number. 

Highly volatile political issues were dominating the minds of the attendees and the creative consciousness of the performers. These included civil rights, the erosion of the environment, and  the raging war in Vietnam.  For some, this would be their last hurrah prior to being awarded a one-way ticket to Hanoi. Despite the explosive state of affairs, there was no violence and no one was burning flags, looting businesses, destroying property, or defacing historic monuments. 

On the contrary, these classic counterculture “liberals” honored the nation that afforded them liberation and freedom. According to the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, the most common injuries were foot injuries sustained by festival goers who took off their muddy wet shoes.

Jimi Hendrix’s psychedelic Star-Spangled Banner saluted the nation that afforded him success. Richie Havens led hundreds of thousands of handclapping, foot-stomping liberals in the chorus of his hit song, “Freedom.” Folk singer Tim Harden covered Bobby Darin’s “Simple Song of Freedom,” and visiting from across our northern border, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young paid homage to those who fought and died for freedom in their ballad, “Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground.” 

No anti-Semitic genocidal cries from the crowd silenced the performance of Arlo Guthrie, whose mother was Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt and whose distinguished Rabbi was the controversial Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League. No BDS groups called for the boycott of the festivities held on the occupied land of Jewish conservative Republican Max Yasgur who supported the war in Vietnam. “If the generation gap is to be closed, we older people have to do more than we have done.” said Yasgur, a dairy man like Tevye, in a New York Times interview. 

Among the hundred thousand or so university students in the crowd, none were praising the barbaric terrorism of the newly formed PLO, PFLP, or the Muslim Brotherhood, which gave rise to Hamas. And none of these real liberals were condemning Israel for their capture of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights after being brutally attacked by its neighbors (only to return much of it in delusional dreams of peace). 

By today’s standards, these “Woodstock Generation Liberals” would be considered right-wing conservative nationalists. They would be condemned by those who have hijacked and redefined the term “liberal” to soften their antiliberal Marxist agenda. The New Democratic Party’s left-wing “progressive platform” is frighteningly reminiscent of its early days. 

When Democrat Nathan Bedford Forrest served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, his paramilitary mercenaries served the Democratic Party’s interests. These politically motivated anti-Semitic masked cowards gathered to intimidate, inflict violence, and silence opposing viewpoints. 

Today, these same racist thugs have traded in their white hoods for keffiyehs and their perversion of Christianity for that of Islam. 

When Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated the Democrats, constitutional amendments abolishing slavery and granting of citizenship to freed slaves were passed with overwhelming Republican support despite overwhelming opposition from the Democrats. By the turn of the century, hundreds of Black Republicans were elected to state legislatures and 22 Black Republicans served in the U.S. Congress. The Democrats did not elect a Black man to Congress until several decades later. 

Fast forward to 2009. Barack Obama’s election should have marked a significant turning point in American history and the mitigation of racial disharmony. 

Instead, Obama’s socialist strategies, falsely labelled as “liberal,” widened the great divide. Americans became more deeply divided on race then they have been in decades, and the trend continues today under the guise of Affirmative Action, “DEI,” and Critical Race Theory. 

“If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.” 

The Big Lie Theory (German: große Lüge), often credited to German Nazi Party’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbel was first described in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It theorized that people could be induced to believe “a big lie” because they would not believe that someone, “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period,” lied President Obama when campaigning for support in his speech to the American Medical Association on June 15, 2009.

Obama’ s Marxist policies produced his doomed-to-fail-from-the start, “Affordable Care Act,” supported by 86 percent of Democrats, and one Republican. It was a boom for big pharma and big insurance companies and a bust for American citizens. 

Socialized medicine is not “liberalism,” it is socialism, and the easily predictable results of the Obama mandates are in:    

1. An increase in the cost of health care.
2. An increase in the cost of health insurance.
3. An increase in the cost of out-of-pocket deductibles.
4. An increase in Americans’ dependence on the federal government

Another “The government knows best” Marxist policy disguised as “liberal” was Obama’s Federal Housing Project, “The Home Affordable Modification Program” (HAMP). HAMP had a detrimental effect on Black wealth and did more for big banks than for homeowners. Nearly one-third of the recipients defaulted, and six million families lost their homes.

In contrast to the failures of America’s first Black president, under Trump’s Republican administration, Black poverty reached a historic low, almost nine thousand “Opportunity Zones” were created in minority communities,  a fund to deploy $1 billion in capital funding for minority-owned businesses was enacted, funding was increased for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and more than $500 million in loans was provided to HBCUs through the Capital Financing Program. In 2018, a budget deal was signed which forgave more than $300 million in debt owed by four HBCUs impacted by natural disasters.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them (our children) to do the same.” Ronald Reagan                 

Half a century ago, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev saw the light and succumbed to President Reagan’s challenge, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” 

The Harris/Walt team must have missed Reagan’s other proclamations declared at the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987. 

“To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet Expansion.” 

Almost a decade prior to Harvard’s Young Democratic Socialists (HCYDSA) joining forces with pro-Hamas activists in declaring that calls for Jewish Genocide are acceptable “dependent on their context,” the Harvard Crimson published a column penned by Laura Nicole. https://www.lauranicolae.com/

“Many in my generation have blurred the reality of communism… my classmates will graduate with the impression that communism represents a light-hearted critique of the status quo, rather than an empirically violent philosophy that destroyed millions of lives.”

Communism is a sociopolitical philosophy based on Marxism. It is a dangerous ideology which has tortured and enslaved millions of its enemies and is responsible for the death of over one hundred million people. It is a failed ideology. Karl Marx was an idealistic visionary whose theoretical philosophies were contingent upon absolute humanism: man is the supreme being. As such, the seductive plausibility of Marxism was predicated upon an atheistic world view. His sincere desire to make the world a better place for all humanity lacked a basic understanding of competition, rivalry, and greed. Karl Marx’s romantic dream has been proven to be a hellish nightmare.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” was leisurely coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson and defines Kamala’s inherited Marxism. Her father, Donald J. Harris, is “combative Marxist economist,” whose, “writings are sprinkled with obscurantist theorizing.”

While the Torah tells us that we are not responsible for the sins of our fathers, G-d also reminds us that children are responsible for their own unrepented transgressions (Ezekiel, Chapter 18). In Kamala’s case, let the truth be known, she was ranked the most politically left of all senators by the non-partisan GovTrack organization. Harris has promised government-mandated price controls disguised as “anti-price gauging,” she is offering a $25,000 gift to first-time homebuyers and supports $1.7 trillion in government handouts. These iterations are socialist policies designed to increase the power of the federal government, promote “wealth redistribution,” and take away state and individual autonomy. This is not liberalism. It is Marxism. 

Harris just does not get it: America’s free-market system is what makes America the land of opportunity. The toxic milieu promoted by price-control enthusiasts breeds endemic corruption and has damaged every nation where it was applied. It took Eastern Europe decades to recover from the devastation. Harris’ economic policies are more in line with China, Cuba, and Venezuela than the United States of America. 

German economist Professor Franz von Findelstein, an expert in Marxist-Leninist political economy, concluded that in Soviet Russia, “the Bolsheviks created a fiction of a new miracle-making economic system based on price controls.” They then exported this fantasy to America, “in the hopes of using it as an instrument for subversion” of capitalist systems. It rapidly took root in academia and left-wing political groups. 

After incubating for decades, Marxism has festered and flourished to become a prevalent American political agenda. These communist precepts disguised as “liberal visions” and “progressive policies” now control the economic platform of the Democratic Party. According to Spanish economist Dr. Bautista Quixano, Harris along with other anti-liberal leftists have adopted Lenin’s term “progressive” to describe their economic agenda. Lenin, too, labelled newer stages of economic and social development as “progressive”

“No Marxist will forget… The establishment of a separate and new state, of new frontiers, etc., resulting from a successful uprising, is progressive,” wrote Lenin in 1916. The 2024 “woke” agenda echoes Lenin’s progressive allusions to “equity” and “social justice.” Lenin recommended that the “Party” control the price of housing and food supplies. Under his watch, debt, waste, and a momentous economic crisis soon led to the collapse of the system. Hunger and poverty became the norm. 

The left-wing of the democratic party, its patrons, and its “squad” support, finance, and defend those who oppose classic liberalism. They have tolerated and encouraged Black Lives Matter riots, defunding the police, Anti-Semitic rallies on college campuses, and they unapologetically prioritize the plight of the Palestinians over the hell of the hostages. 

To add insult to injury, Kamala’s liaison to the Jewish community is anti-Israel Ilan Goldenberg. Her “Arab Outreach Director” is anti-Semite Brenda Abdelall who claims that Zionists control American politics (and whose mother founded the anti-Israel propaganda-spreading American Muslim Council’s Ann Arbor branch). Harris appointed veteran Israel critic Rev. Jen Butler to conduct outreach to the faith community and Harris’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon, is the subject of a congressional probe into his ties to members of an Iranian government influence network. The Kamala Anti-Semite of the Year award goes to her liaison to the Muslim and Arab Communities, Nasrini Bargzi. Among Bargzi’s accolades, she accuses Jewish students of “organized bullying” for suing universities for antisemitic harassment; she requested that the United Nations Human Rights Commission cease their investigation into campus anti-Semitism; and she recommended that marines who fought terrorists in Iraq be charged with murder.

Harris’s policies toward Israel are the antithesis of those of the previous administration during which time the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and brokered peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. In 2019, the “Combatting Anti-Semitism Executive Order,” which codified anti-Semitism under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. 

The Democrats Anti-Liberal Agenda: The Abolition of Political Freedom of Choice 

In America, those desiring consideration for the Presidency go through a series of interviews, town hall meetings, petitions, signatures, state primaries, and caucuses. Then, based upon the number of votes they receive from the electorate, they are assigned a certain number of delegates who will vote for them at their party’s convention. And voila! The winning candidate earns the privilege of representing their party in the national election. 

But not among the Democrats. At the DNC, there was no democracy, no fairness, no options, and no choice. Just Kamala Harris. And while the sweet nectar of joy overflowed from their goblets, their Kool-Aid filled cauldrons saturated the hall with anger and hatred culminating in President Biden being overthrown in a coup d’état.

The heinous history of the Nazi Regimes “Strength through Joy” campaign should serve as a cautionary tale, not as a role model to be replicated.

The Democrats Coalition of Catastrophe kick-off in Chicago was reminiscent of the Third Reich’s Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, or KdF) campaign. Harris did not need to directly quote the Nazi’s “strength through Joy” slogan. It is her deceptive propaganda policies which mirror the Nazi’s 1930’s labor organization marketing ploy. The stated goal of the Nazi campaign was to create a “joyous national community” based on Nazi ideals and loyalty to Hitler. 

That is what Harris’ campaign accomplished in Chicago. The DNC was not about selecting a candidate, economic policies, porosity at the border, geopolitical volatility, or rampant crime in the real world. While the partygoers were eating, drinking, and being joyful, there were seventy-four arrests, thirty shootings, a couple of stabbings, and six homicides in the area.

The Democrat’s manipulation of the media to market their conniving campaign of joy was another page borrowed from the Nazi propaganda playbook. 

NPR, the bastion of progressivism and breeding ground of Trump Derangement Syndrome declares, “Harris and Walz re-introduce Joy to the Democrats.” According to the New York Times, the Harris campaign is being “fueled by Joy.”  Vanity Fair proclaims that the “Harris-Walz Ticket wields Joy against Donald Trump.” Salon states that Kamala Harris is, “Bringing back the Joy,” while the Washington Post concludes that, “Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes.” Rolling Stone concludes that Kamala Harris,’ “New Politics of Joy is the Best Way to Fight Fascism.”

The DNC was reminiscent of the Third Reich’s censorship and celebrations of Jewish Genocide. While the Democratic Party was putting on the ritz at their high-priced Hollywood-style coronation of their queen, anti-Semitic pro-Hamas rallies were granted permits to congregate and protest outside the venue. 

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves” Abraham Lincoln

While Jew haters were granted the right to protest and spread Jew-hatred, permit applications from Jewish groups including the Israeli American Council (IAC) were denied. This is anti-Semitic censorship, as perfected by Hitler, Stalin, and now, The City of Chicago. It is no wonder that Kamala Harris’ Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson refers to the U.S. Constitution (which guarantees our right to assemble and speak freely) as the Founders’ “little piece of paper.” Every American should be outraged.

Marching alongside the celebrating Marxists and young, white, pro-Hamas “liberals” are various Antisemitic groups including Black Separatists and radical Islamists who have formed an Anti-Western, Anti-Liberal Coalition on a quest to abolish individual autonomy, economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) proudly waved their banners alongside the pro-Hamas supporters outside the DNC while their members rubbed elbows inside at the party. Meanwhile, Tim Walz declared in admiration of Lenin, “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” 

There is nothing “neighborly” about socialism. 

In June of last year in Washington, D.C. a conference sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America was titled, “How We Win.” Over 50 politicians attended, including senators, members of city councils, and those who sit on school boards while influencing the education, and manipulating the malleable minds of our children. Bernie Sanders addressed the group via Zoom.

“This is the largest gathering of socialist elected officials in decades,” exulted Maria Svart, executive director of the DSA Fund. The 100,000-strong DSA membership has elected over 150 socialists to govern in various levels of government. According to Svart, among their goals is learning, “how to shift power from the owning class to the working class.”

We as a nation must not confuse “Classic liberalism” with the “New Progressive Pseudo-Liberal Marxism” which makes a mockery of the term “Liberal,” is offensive to Classic Liberals, and is confusing to the malleable minds of our youth. 

To the Classic Liberal of the 60’s, “Woodstock signifies the coming together of all tribes,” proclaimed Carlos Santana. Conversely, today’s neoliberal woke progressives are Marxists whose platforms promote animosity between tribes, government tyranny, and economic collapse behind a façade of freedom and a smokescreen of joy. 

At the Woodstock Music & Art Fair’s Aquarian Exposition, over thirty artists and groups performed hundreds of songs, the vast majority of which conveyed messages of love, peace, and the “coming of the age of Aquarius.” 

“Don’t go ‘round tonight.
Well, it’s bound to take your life. 
There’s a Bad moon on the rise!”

In contrast, one prophetic song performed by John Fogerty’s Creedence Clearwater Revival serves as a warning to those seduced by false liberals promising a better world based on Marxism’s dystopian policies. 

“AFFIRM TRANS KIDS!” 
“MATHEMATICS OPERATES AS WHITENESS! DISMANTLE WHITE NORMATIVITY!”
“ABOLISH THE NUCLEAR FAMILY!”

These are the imperatives we are charged to heed if we are to listen to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Smithsonian Institute, and Black Lives Matters respectively.

There are four “core color groups” for K–12 students to learn as a prism through which to see the racialized minority peoples of the world (the P in “BIPOC”): African Americans; Asian American and Pacific Islanders; Chicanas/o/x and Latinas/o/x; and Native Americans. Arabs might be covered—under the Asian American group. And the unique plight of “Palestinians”—as an “indigenous people dispossessed of their land”—earns them a place with the Native American. But, as a separately marginalized minority worthy of inclusion in the spectrum of black, brown, and othered brothers and sisters in need of special recognition, the Jews are nowhere to be found. Israelis are named—but only as “colonizers.” That is, if we are to follow California’s State Board of Education’s “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.”

Flags of “Gay Pride,” Antifa, and BLM must be allowed to hang in public schools across America. But the “Appeal to Heaven” flag and the Gadsden flag, both dating from and designed to evoke the liberty-loving ideals of the Revolutionary War, as well as the American flag itself, should be banned as they may make some students feel “unsafe.”

These are just a few examples of the inversions, perversions, and divergence from the values that served to make the United States’ education system a paradigm for the world. In place of equality of opportunity as an aspiration for all, we are teaching “equity” of results as a requirement and on behalf of a few, their diversity extolled as a virtue in and of itself.

Where once we studied and distinguished natural rights vs. human rights, now we ignore and conflate them. Everything we want we deserve.

Instead of literature, history, philosophy, art, and the ancient languages that conveyed them—taught together as a coherent, integrated disciplinary system that singles out and promotes mankind’s accomplishments, and that made possible the developed civilization we currently enjoy (whose affluence allows us to quip about it at all)—we now have “multiculturalism,” which insists no preferences be made; and, nonsensically (and incongruously), we have “anti-racism,” which demands (racial) preferences be enforced.

With all its claims to ecumenicalism, egalitarian progress, openness, and accessibility, and all its professed goals of fairness, transparency, and sustainability, the “newthink” that pervades Western academia is ironically (if unsurprisingly and tragically) parochial.

The impending result is a generation of children indoctrinated with an anti-thinking, anti-idea ideology that says all actors are oppressed or oppressor, all action exploitation or resistance, all societies colonized or colonizers. It says all history is a progressive march toward justice—singular, inevitable, and violently ruptured and discontinued from all that came before it. It says, “Freedom is non-negotiable,” even as it qualifies the absolutes that safeguard freedom to “make up for past wrongs.” It says, “Obey,” because: reasons.

Another, unintended result is a generation of parents now disengaging from the groupthink and rejecting the forced decline of the once exemplary American public school system. Where they are turning instead is to the once revered, undeservedly discredited, classical education. And they are finding it in new institutions, mostly opened in just the last 20 years—in both private and public charter schools across the country.

Nashville Classical Charter School, Washington Latin Public Charter School, Hózhó Academy, and South Bronx Classical Charter Schools, are just a few examples. All of them rely on the (truly core) features of a classical education: teaching independent, critical thinking to apply oneself to the historically-based canon of time-transcending works either generated from or adopted by Western civilization. The goal is to build in students the value not just of proficiency but of excellence in reading writing, thinking, and discussing; and such virtues as self-reliance, responsibility, curiosity, sympathy, leadership, and (gasp) patriotism, inter alia.  

That a liberal arts curriculum being provided to primary school students in America should be, in the year 2024, “news” is, by itself, a problem. That the story is one of revival rather than disappearance makes it welcome news. And while there are existing prep schools that claim to teach the classics, that the attitude now being brought to these subjects is positive is a significant departure from the prevailing ideology elsewhere.

But what makes a few of these schools stand out especially is their inclusion of religious studies, not just as supplementary subjects, but fully integrated with, and supportive of, the secular American experience of which its student body is being prepared to be an active participant. In Michigan, Hillsdale Academy offers a “Christian classical education in the liberal arts and sciences with instruction in intellectual, moral, and civic virtue.” Civic virtue! This sounds like enough to get you booted from any number of institutions of “higher learning” making the news.

And, in Manhattan, Emet Academy opened its doors just weeks ago as a “Jewish preparatory school” proudly advocating the “perpetuation of Jewish, Zionist, and American exceptionalism,” and focusing “on the best of Western culture, the foundational ideas of Jewish civilization, and the advanced study of math, modern science, art, and music.” We’d be hard-pressed to arrive at a mission statement more at odds with the predominant antinomian sentiment currently posing as pedagogical “innovation.”

Emet Academy is a project of the Tikvah Fund, a think tank and educational institution creating student programs inspired by this very mandate at various levels from the 5th grade to post-graduate students. It’s perhaps unique among Jewish day schools in not being formally affiliated with any one denomination, while, at the same time, observing the Jewish calendar, and teaching Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings), Jewish history, and modern Zionism—all of which entail the teaching of Hebrew (Biblical and modern), under the rubric of “Jewish civilization.” Also required are Latin or Greek, to better engage directly in the study of non-Jewish, Western civilization, from the Socratic method and the origins of democracy through the Great Books, fine arts, modern science, and advance mathematics (without color). Sort of puts the “civil” in civilization.

While Emet is a first of its kind for New York City, it seems only a natural outgrowth for Tikvah’s defining strategy of Jewish education—elucidating the virtues and evolution of the modern liberal democratic state in which we live. That which stands at the apex of civilizational history, while revealing and probing the ancient and still-living core Jewish values that were so formative in that development.

All of which can be found, almost as a Tikvah introductory taster’s course, in the recently released six-part online lecture series, “The Artistic Legacy of the Hebrew Bible,” produced by Tikvah, and taught by Yeshiva University art historian Dr. Jacob Wisse. The course is intentionally accessible for anyone without an art or a religious studies background.

Rather than attempting a comprehensive survey of any one subject or period, in the six roughly 60-minute illustrated lectures, Wisse introduces a way of looking at art that equips the viewer for further investigation and consideration of the whole historical body of works that took as their starting point the texts of the ancient Hebrew Bible—the Tanakh. Wisse stresses the flexibility with which artists treat the same story. Some focus on the story, others use the subjects and figures for their own portraiture as characters. The effect is that we are treated not only to analysis of visual art, but also to a primer on Torah. And since the history of art is predominantly a visual anthology of Christian culture’s spreading influence on society, we encounter many key tenets of the Christian Bible, too.

For reasons obvious but very much still worthy of elaboration, the overwhelming portion of visual works—from ancient through medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and early modern art—rely on the landmarks and narrative highlights of the Hebrew Bible, but mostly as a point of departure to tell other stories, make other points, draw other conclusions than those with which the original texts started. What becomes clear from the investigation is that while artists and patrons did not intentionally conspire to alter the literal accounts of ancient texts, they did take license to reinterpret their meanings and significance. One of Wisse’s central contentions is that the familiar works that so frequently feature Biblical stories use them to show the chronological and epistemological continuity of the so-called “New Testament” with the older (newly renamed) “Old Testament.” If apostolic succession was not always the artist’s ultimate proof point, surely the events and derived teachings of Christian doctrine could be shown by this method to be preordained.

By this right, for example, the story of the Binding of Isaac as a source of numerous works can, in early Jewish contexts such as the murals of the synagogue at Duras Europos or the mosaics at Afra in the Galilee, be made to hold to the rabbinic discussions, interpretations, and priorities: the trials and struggles of Abraham and Sarah, the fears of Isaac, and the demands, the judgement, and the redemption of man by God among them. But when taken up by Christian artists centuries later, and from the very first works, even the title of the Binding of Isaac is transformed to the “Sacrifice of Isaac,” the better to serve as a “prefiguring” and parallel of the story of the crucifixion—the sacrifice—of Jesus. Where Isaac was placed on the altar to test the faith of Abraham and then spared, in Christian hands, Isaac is a symbol of what will be Jesus’s death and resurrection. In all the variety of interpretations, however, and in all the examples chosen by Wisse throughout the course, the protagonists, the plotlines, and the voluntary actions of man are probed for their significance.

Unsaid outright by Wisse but expressed succinctly in another of Tikvah’s online courses, this one entitled “The Four Pillars,” is the corollary suggestion: that Western artists didn’t just use the Hebrew Bible to serve as content creator; but, by its exposure and its use, it’s made itself structurally indispensable to the cultures of which it was a part. In every story of man’s wrestling with God and every instance of exegetical possibility about its meaning, there is light shined on the tradition of responsibility that the Hebrew people place on the individual, and the role of the community in man’s relationship with God. And, by those, the focus of the Hebrew Bible on the actions of man as a free individual. Whereas in Greece and Rome the story of man’s actions is entirely a function of Fate or the caprice of distant gods; for the Jew, a human’s life is what he makes of it.

This quietly underlying assumption of the material and the compelling lesson it draws out is what raises this lecture series above the typical Biblical Art class, and what spotlights the special sophistication into which Emet Academy’s new students will be initiated.

And that is that the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, unlike any other urtext of any other ancient religion, have served to inform not just Christianity and its reach across oceans and time, but the entirety of Western society’s lasting values, beliefs, and institutions.

In 73 C.E., the Romans, in their global conquest, were dealing their last blow to the Judeans. They had them holed up in Masada, and were closing in for their final strike. With this being the end for the Judeans, according to legend, the consensus was for everyone to take their own lives.

The sentiment was that, at least in their own hands, they knew what will happen to them, as opposed to being handed over to the Romans and enduring unimaginable horrors. Husbands did not want to witness their wives being brutally gang raped in front of them. Fathers did not want to see their sons and daughters tortured to death. No; it was better in their minds to die, still free, than to live in chains.

As the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus tells the story, a commander of the fortress, Elazar ben Yair, gave this final speech:

Since we, long ago, my generous friends, resolved never to be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice. …We were the very first that revolted… and we are the last that fight against them; and I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God hath granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom…

Learning about this immediately reminded me of the Africans who jumped from the slave ships in transport to the Americas. They drowned in the ocean, which was what they preferred to a lifetime of slavery.

This mindset—this resolve in the face of endless imprisonment—is one that resonated so much with me, and was another highlight of the spiritual link between Israel, Africa, and both diasporas, that I wrote a song about it. The chorus to the song came right away:

Take my life, you’ll never take my soul.
I will meet my Father face to face,
and see the new Jerusalem,
and see the new Jerusalem.

The melody itself seemed prophetic to me, as I wrote it to another set of words about 10 years before. It was originally a kind of love song. I never recorded it, and only performed it once. My reason for never recording it, and never performing it again, was that it seemed like I was putting the wrong words to the melody.

After about 10 years of the song lying dormant, reading about the Masada defenders brought it all back to the surface with the right words.

May we all strive for freedom, righteousness, and the G-d of both, even unto death.

The first months after the October 7th pogrom in Israel saw the embryonic forms of an anti-Semitic response in the United States. In light of the violence to come, they seem quaint. College shmoes tore down hostage posters and made Hamas-friendly statements. Filmed and called out on social media, some apologized with varying levels of credibility. This first wave crested as Ivy League presidents testified before Congress, bobbed and weaved on pointed questions and soon some lost their jobs. 

The apology literary genre faded as the pro-Hamas cohorts moved to direct action of building invasions, vandalism at college administrators’ homes, and of course the disruptive tentifada movement. They ain’t apologizing for nothing. However, the genre has now evolved from the poster rippers to businesses and institutions discovering that they face consequences for their anti-Israel actions.

The stakes are much higher in this new wave than when individuals dealt with the blowback. Reputational risk is enormous, through loss of donors and applicants at the university level, and customers, job applicants, and marketing partners for corporations. How effective are their apologies, or even non-apologies framed as statements, from a literary and communications perspective? Do they work as apologies or can they actually be counterproductive? 

Apologies on the family plan

One high-visibility case this summer drew an apology from those serial apologizers, the Hadid family. In the fall, Gigi Hadid did some explaining after posting on Instagram that Israelis raped, abused, and tortured Palestinian prisoners, and did organ harvesting. She wrote, “I shared something that I did not fact check or deeply think about prior to reposting.” Then, in July, German sportswear conglomerate Adidas hired her sister Bella Hadid to promote the sneaker company’s SL72 shoes, launched in 1972, the same year that Palestinian “Black September” terrorists massacred 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympics. The Hadid and Munich witches’ brew blew up on Adidas so—cue the multiple apologies.

Here’s what adidas had to say, as reported in People:

“We are conscious that connections have been made to tragic historical events—though these are completely unintentional—and we apologize for any upset or distress caused,” adidas said in a statement shared with USA TODAY Sports on July 18. “As a result, we are revising the remainder of the campaign. We believe in sport as a unifying force around the world and will continue our efforts to champion diversity and equality in everything we do.”

“Completely unintentional”! From a company whose factories made munitions for the Nazi war machine in World War II? Does adidas not have historians on staff to monitor such reputational matters? The carefully written statement looks on the positive side, but I can’t tell what the impact will be other than “we’ll try not to inexplicably connect our products to terrorism.” Grade: D– for credibility, B for coughing up the appropriate buzz words in its forward-looking conclusion. Unlike, say, the Bud Light marketing fiasco, this controversy doesn’t appear to have dented adidas or the Hadids.

For her part, Bella Hadid came out swinging on Instagram, in a statement that, like Gigi’s earlier apology, reflects her own voice without PR filtering, as reported in People magazine:

For those of you that do not know my heart, I want to make sure you’re hearing directly from me about my recent campaign with adidas. I would never knowingly engage with any art or work that is linked to a horrific tragedy of any kind. In advance of the campaign release, I had no knowledge of the historical connection to the atrocious events in 1972. I am shocked, I am upset, and I am disappointed in the lack of sensitivity that went into this campaign. Had I been made aware, from the bottom of my heart, I would never have participated.”

Hadid continued, “My team should have known, adidas should have known and I should have done more research so that I too would have known and understood, and spoken up. As I always have, and always will, speak up for what I believe to be wrong. While everyone’s intentions were to make something positive, and bring people together through art, the collective lack of understanding from all parties undermined the process. I do not believe in hate in any form, including antisemitism. That will never waiver, and I stand by that statement to the fullest extent.”

Bella Hadid spreads the blame around, including herself, and she protests she would have never done the promotion if she had known about the 1972 unpleasantness. After what happened to Gigi, did Bella and her people not learn to get the background on such an explosive topic? Like Gigi, Bella blames a breakdown in fact-checking and research. I can believe that given her “bottom of my heart” statements—and I’ll believe it the next time the Hadids need to apologize, too. Grade: B+ for personality. Potential for brand damage: zero.

Rutgers feeds the alligator

The dilemma of university administrators anxious to balance concern for Jewish students with genuflections to disruptive campus Hamas supporters and their faculty fanboys burst into flames at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in late May. Chancellor Christopher J. Molloy and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Research and Academic Affairs Francine Conway started with a statement on May 26 with the headline “Speaking Out Against Acts of Anti-Semitism.” It forcefully addresses violence against Jews head-on:

We are saddened by and greatly concerned about the sharp rise in hostile sentiments and anti-Semitic violence in the United States. Recent incidents of hate directed toward Jewish members of our community again remind us of what history has to teach us. Tragically, in the last century alone, acts of prejudice and hatred left unaddressed have served as the foundation for many atrocities against targeted groups around the world. If you have been adversely impacted by anti-Semitic or any other discriminatory incidents in our community, please do not hesitate to reach out to our counseling and other support services on campus. Our behavioral health team stands ready to support you through these challenging times. In addition, our Student Affairs Office is already working in close partnership with leaders of the Rutgers Jewish community, and meetings have been held with students to assess and respond to their needs. If you are aware of hate incidents on campuses or places that have been made unsafe due to expressed bigotry and other unacceptable and insensitive acts, please report them using the bias reporting system. 

Although we face many challenges and may have differing perspectives, we must condemn acts of violence and all forms of bigotry. We will continually strive to realize the aspiration embodied in President Holloway’s articulation of a vision for Rutgers as a ‘beloved community’—a community where we welcome and affirm humanity and find strength in our diversity.

The statement could be a model for outlining the problem and posing responses—not the kind of blunt arrest-and-expel response that might have an actual impact, but it shows that Jew-hatred is (or was) on Rutgers’ radar screen. While not an apology, it rates an A for timeliness and clarity, and an A for impact in contrast to supine administrators who dare not speak out.

Then they blew the gesture when faced with a demand from the Rutgers Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for an apology because the statement did not denounce Israel’s actions in Gaza. According to the Jewish Journal, “Rutgers SJP also accused the university of trivializing racism by also including condemnations of hatred against Asians, Hindus, Muslims and Indigenous peoples in their statement and criticized the university for not mentioning Palestinians.” (It should be noted the statement didn’t mention Uigurs, Tibetans, Copts, or Yazidis, but who cares about their struggles for survival?)

SJP’s bottom line: 

“We therefore demand an apology from Chancellor Molloy and Provost Conway for dismissing the voices and visibility of Palestinians and allies.”

And that they got with a groveling apology on May 27. Rather than ignoring the demand, Rutgers folded faster than a defective tent on the university lawn (bold added):

We are writing today as a follow-up to the message sent on Wednesday, May 26th to the university community. We understand that intent and impact are two different things, and while the intent of our message was to affirm that Rutgers–New Brunswick is a place where all identities can feel validated and supported, the impact of the message fell short of that intention. In hindsight, it is clear to us that the message failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community members. We sincerely apologize for the hurt that this message has caused.

Rutgers University–New Brunswick is a community that is enriched by our vibrant diversity. However, our diversity must be supported by equity, inclusion, antiracism, and the condemnation of all forms of bigotry and hatred, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. As we grow in our personal and institutional understanding, we will take the lesson learned here to heart, and pledge our commitment to doing better. We will work to regain your trust, and make sure that our communications going forward are much more sensitive. 

The apology earned scorn from Jewish groups. The Jewish Journal roundup ran this statement:

Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Abraham Cooper told the Journal that the apology was a “complete and utter disgrace.” “That’s not leadership; that’s appeasement of people who support the destruction of the state of Israel. It’s an appeasement of all of those forces that have embraced the Hamas talking points.”

Then the apology statement came down and a May 29 statement from President Jonathan Holloway went up:

Rutgers deplores hatred and bigotry in all forms. We have not, nor would we ever, apologize for standing against anti-Semitism.

Neither hatred nor bigotry has a place at Rutgers, nor should they have a place anywhere in the world. At Rutgers we believe that anti-Semitism, anti-Hinduism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism, intolerance and xenophobia are unacceptable wherever and whenever they occur.

I like the second sentence about never apologizing for standing against anti-Semitism. That shows some backbone in reiterating the first statement. Still, Rutgers gets an F for the apology that negated its statement of the day before; the apology showed that pro-Hamas groups get the heckler’s veto over any statement that doesn’t reflect its thinking. On the other hand, Rutgers’ apology wins an A+ for humbly submitting to SJP and vowing to “doing better” and being “much more sensitive and balanced.” President Holloway’s subsequent message was the icing on the apologetic cake. SJP couldn’t ask for more than that, and I’m sure Rutgers’ messages since then are exquisitely sensitive. Doomed defendants at Stalinist show trials in the 1930s could not show more terrified deference.

Did the apology calm down protests at Rutgers? No, protestors got back to business when class was back in session in August. Student newspaper The Targum reported that “Build Up Resistance Now (B.U.R.N.) took to the Busch Student Center during New Student Orientation (NSO) with chants, noisemakers, and a sign reading ‘Rutgers can’t stop student power’ in response to a protest-related exercise introduced during this year’s orientation programming.”

A statement from B.U.R.N. helpfully defined its gripe and agenda:

According to a press release detailing the event, one of the protestors said, “Students are encouraged to compromise, but how can there be a ‘compromise’ over something like a genocide? This isn’t about apartments and student centers. We don’t want to have a debate about whether or not Rutgers should be involved in dropping bombs on the Gaza Strip. We want it to stop completely.”

According to The Targum, organizers of the event then responded:

On the same day, incoming students who were involved in the NSO program received an email from program leaders issuing an apology for the event, which was referred to as “anti-Semitic rhetoric which is abhorrent and has no place on our campus” in the message. The email notes that the demonstration is currently under investigation.

Will Rutgers win back donors who started withholding donations even last fall? That’s for the alumni relations office to decide. The downward spiral will continue in New Brunswick.

A statement with ramifications

The case of New Paltz (NY) Deputy Mayor Alexandria Wojcik is instructive. Unlike past apologies and their aftermath, Wojcik’s story shows a direct line from statements to apology to political repercussions. Mid Hudson News has covered the story in depth, which began just after Rutgers launched its apology for being overly concerned about anti-Semitism.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz [JCNP], saying in part, that Wojcik shared posts on social media that use the phrase “geopolitical interests of Zionism,” which, according to the congregation, “alludes to baseless conspiracy theories rooted in centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes.” [Rabbi Adam Cerino-Jones] said, “These kinds of ideas have no foundation in reality and are used to scapegoat and discriminate against Jewish people.”

The congregation also stated that Wojcik repeatedly use[d] the word “intifada” which is a cause for concern. Intifada, according to the Jewish group, is a call to arms seeking an uprising against Jews. “Her language unnecessarily raises the temperature in our community, endangering Jews in the New Paltz area and putting our synagogue at risk,” the statement said. “In other words: her language makes our families less safe.”

Mid Hudson News then added a response from Wojcik:

Addressing the tone of her posts that offended Rabbi Cerino-Jones and the congregation, Wojcik said, “It is unacceptable for any New Paltzian, for anyone, to feel unsafe. My entire life I’ve strived daily to be always anti-antisemitic, anti-racist, anti-hate, anti-bigotry, in all that I do. I am sorry to learn that, unfortunately, some of my work has not landed the way I had intended. I sincerely appreciate JCNP for letting me know that is the case.”

Wojcik’s comments, while not an apology, are still baffling. If some of her work “has not landed the way I had intended,” then what was her intent, then? She gets a B+ for saying something, and, as we’ll soon see, backing them up with a pledge of action. 

That’s because Wojcik’s statement had ramifications after the apology. In August, Mid Hudson News reported she had “been found guilty by members of the Ulster County Democratic Committee Ethics jury after a complaint was filed by her fellow Dems over the use of racist or anti-Semitic language on social media… Wojcik said her posts had been misinterpreted.”

The article reports (bold added):

The committee did conclude, however, that “no evidence that Wojcik was personally racist or anti-Semitic or had ever expressed or held such views.”

Wojcik has been instructed by the ethics jury to continue making reparations to those she offended through her actions.

When asked about the ethics complaint and findings of the committee, Deputy Mayor Wojcik said “After witnesses and parties agreed that the ethics process would be confidential, the complainants seem to have forgotten the fundamental findings of the jury: I did not violate the Ulster County Democratic Committee bylaws, and the parties need to find common ground on our own time. My lines are open. I look forward to meeting with folks from the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz later this month, and hope to see all concerned about this topic at many phonebanks and canvass launches so together we can ensure actual fascists don’t come into power.”

I expect Wojcik will find an attentive audience at the synagogue, which is part of the Reconstructionist movement and describes itself as “a vibrant, egalitarian and intergenerational community, open to all Jews (by birth and by affiliation): singles, families, LGBTQ, interracial, interfaith couples and families.” If her statement and subsequent appearance before the “ethics jury” result in an honest exchange of ideas and insights, then I’ll judge her statement successful in impact far beyond anything adidas or Rutgers posted. I hope for the best for Wojcik and JCNP. 

Powerhouse Books: Zionist-adjacent is too much

The most recent institutional apology came from the murky matter of the cancellation of a discussion of the new book Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life by Joshua Leifer. Set to take place at Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn, the event teamed progressive journalist Leifer with Rabbi Andy Bachman in conversation. All systems were go until, well, somehow the event got cancelled because somebody involved at the store unmasked Bachman’s nefarious Zionist leanings and cancelled the event, leaving participants hanging around in front of the bookstore. 

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,

[Daniel] Power, the bookstore owner, agreed that the cancellation was wrong, and said he was not informed of the decision before it happened. He described the cancellation as the work of a rogue employee, whom he declined to identify. Initially, in a post on X, Power said Leifer’s publicist had canceled the event after speaking with the employee.

A week later Leifer and Bachman held the event at the Center for New Jewish Culture (in the building that once housed the Union Temple) in Brooklyn, pulling in an audience of 300, as the book’s sales pushed it high on various Amazon lists. 

The episode becomes relevant because Power posted a long statement on Instagram clarifying the sequence of events and how it contradicts everything a bookstore should be. His conclusion:

This incident does not define us. Opening our spaces, our minds, and our hearts to people of different religions, races, and cultures is not just a Powerhouse value. It is a New York value, an American value, and a humanistic value, plain and simple. There is always more work to be done, and we hope you will stand alongside us in disavowing all forms of othering, intolerance, and prejudice as we fight to uphold our fundamental principles of extending acceptance, dignity, and respect to everyone. We ask that you please recognize our genuine dismay over what transpired and accept our most heartfelt apologies for any harm that it has caused.

Power gets high marks for an A-level explanation, after the initial confusion about what happened. I’m now following Powerhouse on Twitter and, like many others, am highly curious about Leifer’s book—the event cancellation shows, once again, how the Streisand Effect of unintended consequences works. Power’s closing caps the statement well and apologizes. The statement is broadly based without getting into the politics of Zionism and opposition to it. I’m eager to see how Powerhouse might build on this unintended notoriety to bring in more feather-ruffling authors and moderators. In doing so, he could make lemonade out of what initially was a tall stack of lemons. Literary value: high. Impact: Exceptional. 

Where we are now

A year after 10/7, the name and shame process still plays out, but, at the poster defilement level, that’s satisfying but strategically pointless. That’s shoveling sand at the beach. The center of gravity of violent protests has created a new dynamic that requires more Krav Maga, anti-mask legislation and fearless frat bros. Institutional apologies will still happen, but the worst offenders will never apologize because in their minds their actions are always justified—until an apology is part of a felony plea deal. Nothing will change them until they face serious consequences. Based on the state of university administrators, Hamas (now Hezbollah) supporters still have a permanent free pass and nothing to worry about. 

Universities were historically established as bastions of enlightenment, knowledge, and freedom in a world of ignorance, bigotry, and oppression. The historic role of academia was to advance the frontiers of science and civilization through a free exchange of ideas. However, the rise of the radical left in U.S. and Western universities has resulted in a dramatic suppression of academic freedom and genuine diversity. Furthermore, the growing alliance between the radical left and radical Islam on campuses has created a toxic environment where anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Western sentiments are embraced in the name of “human rights” and “social justice.”

In this increasingly topsy-turvy academic world, the brutal Hamas October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis is justified and even celebrated on U.S. campuses as an act of “legitimate resistance” and “freedom.” However, the Marxist-Islamist mob’s current attack on Jewish students and supporters of Israel is merely a steppingstone towards the ultimate goal of silencing anyone on campus and beyond who disagrees with their totalitarian and bigoted ideologies.

What specific steps are needed to reverse the endemic radicalization of academia? How can universities eventually be turned back into institutions that embrace professionalism and genuine academic freedom?

1: Addressing the threat of undisclosed foreign donations in U.S. academia

The dramatic rise in undisclosed foreign donations has been a key factor in the radicalization of U.S. universities in general and Ivy League schools in particular. A Network Contagion Research Institute report published in November of 2023 identified a strong connection between billions of dollars in undisclosed donations to U.S. academic institutions and the rise of anti-Semitic incidents on campus. Much of these undisclosed donations originate from totalitarian Middle Eastern states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The report concluded that U.S. schools that received donations from Middle Eastern regimes “had on average, 300% more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not.”

“A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression,” the report stated.

The Qatari regime—which maintains close ties with the radical Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorist organization Hamas, and the terrorist state of Iran—has used significant donations to leverage its malicious influence on U.S. campuses.

Addressing the destructive impact of undisclosed foreign donations is a crucial step towards reclaiming the universities. This is a complex challenge that will require assertive action by the U.S. federal government and its legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Concrete steps could include:

• Legal demand for academic transparency in disclosing donations, especially from overseas.
• Restricting donations from totalitarian regimes that are considered hostile towards the United States.
• Imposing punitive fines on U.S. universities that refuse to disclose funds and have close ties with totalitarian regimes such as Qatar and China.

While private universities rely on funding, it is critical to end donations from malicious regimes that seek to undermine U.S. academic freedom and ultimately U.S. national security.

2: Tighter linkage between federal funds and protection of free speech

The First Amendment formally recognizes the right to freedom of speech and press in American society. However, in practice, many U.S. academic institutions limit free speech on campus by using “hate speech” to silence individuals with dissenting views. In 2019, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that links federal research funding to universities that protect free speech.

“Even as universities have received billions and billions of dollars from taxpayers, many have become increasingly hostile to free speech and to the First Amendment,” Trump stated at the time. “These universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity and shut down the voices of great young Americans,” the former president added.

Fast forward to 2024 under the Biden administration and free speech is rapidly becoming a fragile commodity in American universities. A tighter linkage between federal funds and the protection of free speech could improve the situation, at least at state universities that rely on federal funding.

3: Linking academic accreditation to genuine diversity

While radical leftists and their allied Islamist partners on campus claim to embrace diversity, they are, in practice, seeking complete conformity in academia. They are pursuing this anti-free speech strategy by attacking and bullying anyone who disagrees with them and their radical ideologies. This has been increasingly evident in the post-October 7 era when radical leftists and Islamists have escalated their anti-Semitic propaganda in an effort to silence Jewish students and individuals who oppose the terrorist militia Hamas or support the Jewish state.

While not all universities rely on federal funding, all academic institutions in America need formal accreditation. The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently proposed to end accreditation and federal support to universities that spread hatred against the Jewish minority.

“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said while addressing some 1,000 Republican Jewish Coalition donors.

Binding academic accreditation to free speech and genuine diversity based on mutual respect is a key component in turning universities back into institutions that once again embrace the critically important free exchange of ideas.

4: Stricter sanctions against professors or students who are guilty of incitement on campus

Radical leftist and Islamist ideologies continue promoting hateful bigotry on campus by artificially dividing humanity into “oppressors” and “oppressed.” Needless to say, “oppressors” and “racists” are anyone who disagrees with the radical left and the Islamists. More recently, radical professors have praised the Hamas October 7 slaughter of hundreds of Jews in Israel as an act of “legitimate resistance” against “colonialism.”

Joseph Massad, a radical professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University who opposes Israel’s very existence, articulated this widespread genocidal anti-Semitic ideology following the October 7 atrocities.

“Perhaps the major achievement of the resistance in the temporary takeover of these settler-colonies is the death blow to any confidence that Israeli colonists had in their military and its ability to protect them,” Massad wrote in an op-ed in the anti-Semitic Electronic Intifada publication, glorifying the Hamas invasion and massacre of over 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children in southern Israeli border communities.

While some professors have reportedly been dismissed, the overwhelming majority continue spreading this vicious anti-Semitic poison and other bigotry on campus. Freedom of speech is a fundamental American value. However, the abuse of freedom of speech to end freedom of speech and academic diversity is untenable. Imposing stricter sanctions on students or academic staff members who cross the line by embracing bigotry and glorify genocide is a key component towards restoring some measure of intellectual and moral sanity on campus.

5: Political diversification of academia

The American voting population is roughly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. According to an April Pew Center poll, some 49% of the U.S. voters are Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party while 48% of the voters are Republicans or lean to the Republican Party.

However, it is not a secret that American academia is currently disproportionally dominated by professors who identify with the political left. For example, a Harvard University survey in 2022 revealed that a whopping 80% of the 476 faculty members who participated responded that they identify themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal.” In contrast, only 1.46% of the faculty members responded that they identify themselves as “conservative.”

Needless to say, the dominance of the political left in American academia creates an unhealthy imbalance with U.S. campuses being increasingly detached from the politically diverse reality of mainstream America. The result has been the establishment of an overwhelmingly left-leaning echo chamber that undermines a genuine free exchange of ideas within academia.

The solution to this problem is to re-establish political diversity on U.S. campuses. This is a complex and long-term challenge that would require a combination of carrots and sticks. Some concrete steps could include:

• Passing federal legislation that demands political diversity in state universities.
• Conditioning accreditation to political diversification of faculties.
• Linking federal funding to universities that embrace genuine political diversity and unrestricted exchange of ideas.

6: A return to fact-based academia

There was a time in a not too distant past when academia was based on fact-based research. Facts are characterized as data that can be independently verified and are considered trustworthy. However, the rise of the radical left in academia led to a shift from facts to so-called “narratives,” a reference to stories and tales. Unlike verified facts, narratives are based on emotions and politicized interpretations of reality.

The embrace of narratives has become mainstream in social sciences, especially in departments dealing with gender and minority studies and in Middle East studies centers. The narrative-based approach has seriously undermined academic credibility and integrity by prioritizing ideologies over verified facts.

A return to traditional fact-based academia is, therefore, a critical component in turning universities back into institutions that embrace academic professionalism.

Defenders of narratives claim that they are more “inclusive.” However, as the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro famously : “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” Narratives have become so deeply entrenched in academia that it will require significant time and effort in returning to verified facts. Concrete steps that could facilitate this process include: 

• Linking accreditation to fact-based academic research.
• Conditioning federal funding on demonstrable academic professionalism and integrity.
• Firing professors who fail to adhere to professional academic fact-based research standards.
• Hiring professors who demonstrate adherence to fact-based research.

Reclaiming academia and returning to sanity 

Radical leftist and Islamist ideologies have in the last decades transformed many prominent U.S. universities from institutions that embrace academic professionalism into ideologically driven propaganda hubs. Reversing this extensive decay in academia will be challenging, and there are no magical solutions to this complex problem. 

A summation of potential steps towards reclaiming universities and returning to sanity includes:

• Legal transparency for undisclosed foreign donations to U.S. universities.
• Linking federal funds to protection of free speech.
• Linking accreditation to genuine diversity where all groups are respected on campus.
• Implementing sanctions against professors and students who are found guilty of incitement.
• Enforcing political diversification in academia.
• Return to fact-based academia and rejection of corrosive “narratives.”

The battle for the future of the universities is challenging and complex. However, turning universities back into their traditional role as beacons of academic professionalism and enlightenment would undoubtedly enhance genuine freedom in America and beyond.

A man has found himself between
Being alive and being free
He looks his captor in the face
Says “I’ll be buried in my grave.
Before you put me in those chains,
You can put me in the ground”

Take my life, you’ll never take my soul
I will meet my Father face to face
And see the new Jerusalem
And see the new Jerusalem

Three Hebrew boys are meant to choose
Between a lie and what is True
They stand up tall before the King
Said “you can throw us to the flames.”
It makes no difference what you do,
Cuz we will never bow to you.”

Long ago, we have resolved
To serve nobody else but G-d
To never fall into again
The deathly wicked hands of man
It seems we lost this war, my brothers
But I will not perish by their sword
I’d rather die in a state of freedom
Then hand my life over to Rome

Based on Eleazar ben Yair’s final speech in the Great Revolt against the Romans (66–73 C.E.):

“Since we, long ago, my generous friends, resolved never to be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice. …We were the very first that revolted… and we are the last that fight against them; and I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God hath granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom…”