Iran Is Losing This War, and the Global Balance of Power Is Shifting

 

We’re approaching 60 days of the so-called Iran war, and we’re still getting these loud voices that Donald Trump has failed, that the war’s not going well.

It’s completely nonempirical. It’s antithetical to the evidence. 

Here we are at 60 days, and Iran is losing about $500 million in input per day. It’s running out of storage space in a week or two for its daily output of oil, at which point they either have to stop pumping or they’re going to have—if they don’t stop pumping—their wells will collapse. 

They either have to stop pumping, or they have to build, as fast as they can, storage facilities, which will be known to us and we can take out. 

So, they’re at the brink economically. They have no military ability. The course of the war, how it ends, is entirely in the hands of the United States. It depends on whether you want an unconditional surrender and you want to pay an extra price—maybe another month or two—with economic strangulation, or you want to use air power to take out bridges, and you can do that. 

What I’m getting at is it’s not a military problem like Afghanistan and Helmand Province, or the Marines having to go into Fallujah in Iraq. It’s entirely a political problem. It’s not a military problem. The military problem has been solved. It’s just a question of how much political price does President Donald Trump—or risk, I should say—want to take to get an unconditional surrender and the removal of the regime. 

He doesn’t need to do that. That was not one of his prewar agendas. The prewar agenda was to neutralize the nuclear proliferation of Iran, the missile and drone force, to attrite its military so it was not capable of conducting war, to stop the subsidies to its terrorist proxies, and to make sure it no longer attacked Americans and our allies as it has for 47 years. These have mostly been met—not quite, but mostly. 

So, what are the ripples strategically? Well, just recently, OPEC has announced—I should say the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Oman as well—that they don’t want to be in OPECopens in a new tab. Remember about OPEC: It was formed in 1973, and the whole purpose was to drive up the price of oil, and they did that by not pumping what they could pump. 

So, right now, they have each individual country has a quota, and that’s only about 70% or 80% of what they could pump if they were not in the cartel. That is what the United States is pumping right now—maximum. Russia will probably be pumping at maximum very soon. Venezuela will be pumping at maximum very soon. 

But what you’re talking about is 2 million barrels, maybe, from the UAE alone. Maybe if Saudi Arabia gets out, they can pump another 20%. What I’m getting at is the long-range strategic value of the Straits of Hormuz are going to decline because all of these countries, once they see one person getting out and taking advantage of these high prices, they will swarm to get out. 

But once they get out and pump more oil—and they’re immediately capable of pumping more oil—the price will drop, and the Straits of Hormuz will not be so important. And that will not be good for Iran if it has oil wells at all in two or three weeks. 

The other thing to remember is China. Everybody talks about, “Well, China, China, China.”

China hasn’t come out well. It had threatened to go into Taiwan all of the Biden administration. Year after year, it issued videos of bombing Japan, threatening to take out Taiwan, lecturing people: “Don’t tell us that we can’t take it.” 

Pundits saying that they were emboldened by the Russians. I never understood that—Russia is in a Stalingrad-like quagmire. But once they looked at this type of war—an air war in a gulf—and they were thinking, we have to transmit, what, 300,000 troops or so across 110 miles of open sea. And from what we can see from the Americans, the Israelis, these Western powers have enormous ability to flood the zone with drones, with missiles, sophisticated air defenses, submarine drones, surface drones. It could be a nightmare. 

And that’s not talking about the Taiwanese ability to defend themselves as well. So, in a cost-benefit analysis, I think the message is the United States can pretty much do what it wants militarily, and China will be somewhat deterred. 

Remember that it has lost its hold in Venezuela and in Iran. It was basically, along with Russia, controlling the Maduro regime, buying their sanctioned oil for a discount, selling them arms, trying to spread their influence in Latin America—the Panama Canal was a good example. 

And the same was true of Iran. They were buying sanctioned oil at a discount and then flooding Iran with sophisticated weapons and hoping Iran would use those weapons to hamper or neuter Israel and attack United States installations, as they did in Syria and Iraq. And then China wanted Iran—which they did—to supply Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. 

That’s going to be over with. Iran is broke. The people will not stand for—or the government won’t be so stupid when they’re impoverished—to start giving, what, $50-$60 million a month to Arab terrorists just so they can cause havoc when the people are starving. 

And they’ve lost probably a half a trillion dollars of a 50-year investment in their military, industrial, and nuclear industries. 

So, China’s on the losing end. Russia had lost the Assad regime. They were kicked out of the Middle East. They have a temporary little blip because the price of oil is going up. But as I said, with the breakup of OPEC and the increased production in Venezuela and the United States, as soon as this thing calms down, the price of oil is going to crash, and Russia will be a big loser in this. 

More importantly, they saw, again, a demonstration of U.S. air power, and maybe by extension, they correlated it with NATO proficiency. So I think they will try to get out of the war and get as much territory as they can along the existing battlefield today—maybe call it a DMZ. But they’re running out of people and money. They’ve lost a million and a half soldiers. 

And so, this war probably reminded them that they don’t have very many strategic options elsewhere, and they can’t develop them as long as they’re tied down in Ukraine. 

Europe was a big, big, big loser. They had forged a relationship with Donald Trump. They had agreed for a 2% and had met that 2% investment of GDP in defense, but they were talking about 5%. NATO had called Trump “Daddy,” and then all of a sudden Trump assumed they were normal allies. 

So, when he went in there, he didn’t want to disclose what he was going to do because he felt the U.S. Left and the Congress, or the Europeans would tell—and they would have revealed any type of surprise. 

But more importantly, he felt that the Spanish, the Italians, the British, the French—all of them—would just say, “No comment,” or “This is a United States effort. We support our NATO ally,” and then call him up and say “Donald, were not going to talk about it but use our airspace, use out NATO bases you pay for most of them. And this is what were gonna do but were gonna do it under the radar.”

No. Instead, they pandered to their Islamic constituencies, their left-wing constituencies. In Spain, even in Italy with Meloni, they said: No bombers in Sicily. No planes in Spain. Can’t fly over France. Can’t use Diego Garcia unless it’s for defensive purposes. 

What is a defensive strike? What does that mean? We’ll let you have a missile battery if somebody tries to destroy our base—we’ll allow you to defend our base—but don’t take off anywhere and attack anybody. 

It was absolutely ridiculous. Europe came off really badly—really badly. 

And then they made it worse when they said they were going to patrol the strait and then they realized the Strait might be kinetic, and they would have to use some force if we were to turn it over to them and they don’t have that force. So, it’s all talk, talk, talk, and it’s based on envy and anger at the United States. 

And it’s a very dangerous game they’re playing because at some point the United States says: We love you. Europe’s a great place. You’ve got problems—just settle them yourself. Maybe we’ll have a coalition of the willing, just like you did in Serbia. 

You went into Serbia—that wasn’t a NATO country. Kosovo—you weren’t protecting a NATO country. You went into Libya—those people weren’t in NATO. But you freelance all the time—in Chad, in the Falklands you people—and we always help you. And then when we want to freelance, you’re reluctant. 

So, go ahead, do what you want, but count us out. 

And finally, the American Left kept saying the war was lost—the war was lost—the war was lost. Donald Trump blew it. 

Don’t count him out. We have six months before the midterms. The price of oil could crash. A lot of the things Donald Trump put into practice—with the big, beautiful bill, deregulation, tax cuts, enormous amount of foreign investment—all of that has plenty of time to kick in in August or July and have a stronger economy than we do now, with cheap oil. 

More importantly, he can say that in his regime, his realm, his tenure, he neutralized the threat from Venezuela. It’s not spreading communism throughout South America—Latin America, and he neutralized the Middle East in a way that all seven prior presidents had dreamed and had never done.

The Iran War: Collapse, Chaos, and What Comes Next

 

We’re in the eighth week of the Iran waropens in a new tab, and things are starting to heat up even though there’s not kinetic action. What do I mean by heating up? The Iranian government has ceased to exist. We don’t know, and the Iranians don’t know who holds power. 

There is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. There is the theocracy, there is the elected people in Parliament, and there is a regular military. And those four groups operate in schizophrenic fashion.

Sometimes they freelance and appear very hard line and give press releases that they’re not going to negotiate and anybody who negotiates is a sellout and blah, blah, blah, because they are afraid each faction of being called by the other too pro-Western or not hard enough on the United States. 

By the same token, sometimes they give off signals that they would like to negotiate because that is predicated on popular resistance. When you get rumors, which are increasing, that the people are getting more and more restive, some of them are being armed, then people think, well, given the crimes that we have committed, should this revolution next time around succeed, we’re all going to have a collective noose around our neck. 

So, the bottom line, we can’t figure out who’s saying what. We were supposed to negotiate this weekend, and Donald Trump was going to send Mr. [Jared] Kushner and [Steve] Witkoff over all the way to Pakistan. I think all of us are a little bit dubious, given Pakistan’s long history that’s checkered with the United States, and it’s an Islamic country, a very impoverished country. 

But Donald Trump has very good relations with the foreign minister, the head of defense and the president. But nonetheless, he canceled that because he couldn’t get any negotiation that offered any chance of success from this motley group. 

So, what are we gonna do now in week eight? We’ve got a little over six months from the midterms. The war, even though it’s been spectacularly successful militarily, people want it over, even though Wall Street has adjusted. 

And we’re at record highs now with stocks, which suggests a lot of brilliant people think not only is the war gonna be over very soon, but it’s gonna be especially beneficial to the West in general and to the United States in particular, and especially since we’re making enormous profit selling oil to anybody who can get ahold of it. 

That said, what do we do at this point? There is a blockade. Time is on our side. The Iranian’s strategy has been delay, negotiate, delay, lie, backpedal, go forward, confuse, delay, delay, delay. Why are they trying to do it? They’re hoping that public opinion in the United States on the side of the Left, as we’ve said before, when you have Sen. [Chris] Murphy saying it’s awesome when he digests propaganda from the Iranian Ministry of Information and says that boats have broken the blockade, he likes that. 

They pick up on that, they absorb it, and that gives them confidence to keep delaying. They feel that they can last for six months. They cannot last for six months. The blockade is working, the de-banking is working. Their oil wells are reaching a critical point in a week or so, where they either have to shut down with irreparable damage or they have to find some cast-off tankers or somebody to store this oil that’s coming out of the ground, or maybe just to dig holes and pump it in. 

But they are desperate. They’re losing $400 million to $500 million in economic input, and it’s starting to hurt all four of these cliques that claim they represent the government.

So, what are we supposed to do about it? I would suggest that Donald Trump does not differentiate these PT boats, whether they’re laying mines or boarding ships. 

Whatever they are doing, they should not be in the Strait of Hormuz. We should have an ultimatum that says any boat, for any reason, that’s a military craft that leaves an Iranian port should be considered an enemy engaged in hostile action. Whether it’s boarding tankers or it’s laying mines, and they will be destroyed. 

That’s all they have. That’s the only military arm that matters now. We’re not gonna go in there on the ground and fight their army. Their air defenses are shot. Their navy otherwise is destroyed, as is their Air Force. Just finish the job and say nobody gets in any ship that’s a military craft and gets into the Gulf. 

And then at some point, in two weeks, I would give a week or two, and if these demands are not made—that they surrender their enriched uranium, they surrender their ballistic missile fleet, and they cut off the subsidies to their terrorist proxies—then the United States says these are the targets that are going to be hit. 

And then we’re gonna go home. We don’t have to say we’re gonna go home, but we should just go home. And those targets would be a series of bridges, transportation hubs, media and television stations. And if you want bridges that have dual use for the military. They don’t have to be done all at once. 

They just say, if you’re not gonna negotiate and you insist on retaining the possibility or the chance or the real viability of a nuclear weapons program, and you’re still going to build drones and ballistic missiles and attack your neighbors and disrupt the oil supply of the Gulf and attack Israel and kill Americans, then this is what’s going to happen. 

We are going to systematically start to hit things to accelerate the economic blockade, and I think very quickly they will concede. If they do not concede, we should systematically go down the list of targets. And then when we reach a point in which our military feels that we’ve so crippled the military-industrial complex and the nuclear complex of Iran, that we can go home, we can leave a carrier on rotating duty near the Gulf—the Persian Gulf—and go home and concentrate on the economy.

And I think Iran will look at themselves and they’ll see that we have no economy, we’re flat broke, we’ve lost 50-year investments, probably a half a trillion dollars of military infrastructure and weapons of arsenal. And the people will take care of the rest—the Iranian people

Trump's Dinner

At the White House Correspondents' Dinner, President Donald Trump was the target of yet a third assassination attempt — this time in full view of the Washington press corps.

The event was presented as a spirited night with Trump. After 11 years of avoiding the predominantly left-wing media event, he decided to revisit the dinner. He anticipated that he would be the object of ridicule inside the hall — and that he might see possible violence outside it.

Indeed, protesters ringed the hotel. In grimly prescient fashion, the usual sort of crowd that night was channeling John Wilkes Booth — sic semper tyrannis — with placards reading "Death to Tyrants."

They again almost got their wish.

All three of the would-be Trump shooters — along with Charlie Kirk's murderer — fit the predictable profile of arrested-development, deranged leftists. They apparently sought to reify the popular Democrat hatred of Trump and his supporters, thereby imagining themselves entering the pantheon of revolutionary heroes.

So too, not long ago, did the would-be killer of Trump, Austin Tucker Martin, storm Mar-a-Lago in search of the absent president.

This time, the latest assassin, Cole Tomas Allen, left a manifesto repeating the old saw of Trump as "Hitler" and sought to kill the president and his Cabinet members. Indeed, his incoherent screed read like a Petri dish of all the supposed sins of Trump, drawing on left-wing conspiracies about Russian collusion, lawfare myths, and the Epstein files.

Allen's attempt was another fantasy of mass murdering, not unlike that of former Bernie Sanders campaign aide James T. Hodgkinson. He tried to take out Republican congressional leaders — wounding four, including House Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalisen— in a baseball practice in Washington.

Other than the fact that the shooter nearly reached the doors to the auditorium, the Secret Service performed brilliantly — despite the Democratic effort to shut down the Department of Homeland Security.

Apparently, the Left's mindset is that the security of elected officials — Trump especially — and of American citizens is not nearly as important as ensuring that foreign nationals who entered the country illegally are not legally returned to their countries of origin.

Assassins are motivated by all sorts of impulses, but certainly they do not act in a void.

From the trickle-down world of social media, the internet, and street theater, would-be killers absorb elite signals. This messaging becomes especially baleful when celebrities, governors, senators, and politicos amplify the claim that Trump is a fascist, a Nazi, a monster who is destroying the country and who must be stopped "by any means necessary." Late-night comedians joke about past assassinations or assassination attempts; others have even claimed that Trump staged his first assassination attempt — and this one too!

So deep runs their hatred.

For over a decade, the Left has escalated its rhetoric of violence against Trump. Each politico, actor, celebrity, or billionaire seems to vie with the next in imagining new ways to kill or assault him.

Had that sort of rhetoric been directed at former presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden, it would likely have put many of them in jail.

Count the Ways of Ending Trump?

So, how many ways have our elite leftists dreamed of beating up or murdering Trump?

Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, and Robert De Niro all preferred punching him out. The now-infamous Kathy Griffin opted for beheading. So did Marilyn Manson.

The New York actors of Shakespeare in the Park turned Julius Caesar into Trump and staged his mass stabbing.

Mickey Rourke fancied clubbing; Snoop Dogg, shooting.

The late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain's choice, predictably, was poisoning.

"Comedian" George Lopez seconded the Iranian idea of a bounty killing. Pearl Jam offered the macabre vision of a bald eagle feeding on Trump's corpse.

Larry Wilmore dreamed of suffocating Trump. Do we remember Moby and Madonna, who opted for blowing up Trump?

Rosie O'Donnell tried to be original by envisioning Trump being thrown off a cliff.

Johnny Depp joked about a John Wilkes Booth-style Trump assassination. Epstein friend and billionaire Reid Hoffman preened, "Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr."

Do we recall Biden's boast to his donors: "So, we're done talking about the debate. It's time to put Trump in a bullseye."

In that regard, he-man Biden simply reverted to his earlier bullyboy boasts: "If we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him," and "The press always asks me, 'Don't I wish I were debating him? No, I wish we were in high school — I could take him behind the gym. That's what I wish."

For all the praise of the Secret Service's quick reaction, there is no excuse for the shooter having pranced into his hotel room with weapons and then meandering through the lobby armed. During the Biden presidency, the Secret Service was derelict in the first two close-call Trump assassination attempts.

Do we even remember that Biden denied Secret Service protection to candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. out of pique that his original Democrat challenger might weaken him and help put Trump back in the White House?

In 2024, January 6 Committee Rep. Bennie Thompson (MS-2), crafted a law — ridiculously entitled the "Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act" — to strip away Secret Service protection for then-former President Trump?

What was Thompson's wish?

Hitler Trump?

Do we remember the New Republic cover where Trump was photoshopped as Adolf Hitler?

When called out, The New Republic doubled down, offering no apologies for its sick messaging.

"Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, 'He's damn close enough, and we'd better fight.'"

And so you encourage fellow leftist comrades like Cole Tomas Allen, Ryan Wesley Routh, and Thomas Matthew Crooks to "fight" — to eliminate your Trump-Hitler, allegedly another mass murderer of six million.

The now media-orphaned Joy Reid repeatedly and ad nauseam invoked Trump-Hitler memes: "Then let me know who I got to vote for to keep Hitler out of the White House." Rachel Maddow sermonized that she was studying Hitler in order to understand Trump.

Those who tried to kill Trump — and murdered Charlie Kirk — likely assumed they would eventually be canonized for ending the "Nazi" threat.

Indeed, Trump is now the only U.S. president in history to be the target of three assassination attempts involving gunfire — with more than two years to go in his tenure as a target.

Since the Trump inauguration, ritualized left-wing street violence has become the norm — torching Tesla dealerships and cars, swarming ICE officers and facilities, and violent campus demonstrations on behalf of Hamas, usually characterized by overt antisemitic rhetoric and harassment of Jews.

ICE officers are routinely attacked, pelted with rocks and bottles, and doxxed — the street-level version of the Democrat-elected officials who slander them as Nazis and fascists and promise to arrest them for the crime of enforcing federal immigration law, deliberately undermined by the Biden administration.

Piker Sickness

The latest left-wing heartthrob podcaster, the affluent Hasan Piker, just gave a gushing interview to affluent New York Times reporter Nadja Spiegelman and affluent New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino.

The two adoringly nodded as Piker matter-of-factly declared it was perfectly fine to rob stores — and anyone and anything that he arbitrarily defined as part of the oppressor class. "Yeah, I think it's cool. We gotta get back to cool crimes like that. Bank robberies. Stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature." So spoke the multimillionaire Piker.

More disturbingly, Piker has more or less suggested that the cold-blooded assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Thompson, Brian Luigi Mangione, had understandable cause to kill — under the Marxist defense of "social murder" against purported enemies of the people.

I mention Piker because, earlier in 2025, at a public event, he referred — with a wink and nod — to killing Trump. Indeed, he declared, "Someone has to do it. See, when I say that, everyone knows exactly what I mean."

Of course, they did on cue. His giddy interviewer, Taylor Lorenz, later highlighted Piker's Trump threat in a video.

The Democrat Addiction

Post facto, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries commendably urged lowering the political temperature. One good way would have been for Jeffries not to have attacked Trump's prior "Big Beautiful Bill" while posing with a baseball bat.

Or Jeffries might have politely advised congressional Democrat women not to cut a "Choose Your Fighter" video in which they shadowbox and throw punches to stop Trump. Or he might have advised his Democrat colleagues, such as Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Bernie Sanders, and Jasmine Crockett, to stop smearing Trump as a fascist.

For years, we were lectured by the Left that "words matter," in defense of their efforts to censor "misinformation," "disinformation," and "hurtful language." But all that now appears to be abject projection, since it is the Left's verbiage that has lowered the bar on the violence and encouraged killers to come out of the shadows to save us from supposed "fascists" and "Hitler" types.

Do we also recall the would-be assassin Nicholas John Roske, who joined left-wing protestors crowding the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices — a felony — and was planning to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the perennial target of hysterical left-wing attacks?

Not long ago, Minnesota governor and former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz flew, in a time of war, to address a socialist, anti-American audience of Trump haters in Barcelona. Once there, Walz trashed Trump as a fascist — for the sixth time.

On two occasions, Walz's running mate Kamala Harris referred to Trump as a fascist — this from Harris, who, in 2020, live on television and in the midst of the George Floyd riots in Washington, encouraged the demonstrations by saying, "They're not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they're not gonna stop . . . They're not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they're not gonna stop after Election Day . . . Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they're not going to let up--and they should not. And we should not."

And they never did stop, Kamala.

In the last 22 months, Trump has survived three assassination attempts. At the present rate, sadly, we should expect another three or four efforts before he leaves office.

Why?

The hardcore left-wing establishment believes this sort of Hitler/Trump rhetoric, combined with the normalization of street violence, generates ever more protests, fuels anti-ICE fury, unites congressional Democrats, and — most importantly — drives down Trump poll numbers. In their view, it is a lot more effective than merely outlining an alternative agenda.

So expect far more, not less, of this left-wing violent madness to come.

America at 250: Still Dominating the World—and Here’s Why the Left Won’t Admit It

 

This year, on July Fourth, will be the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, as exemplified in the ratification, signing of the Declaration of Independence. A lot of people ask ourselves, why are we so exceptional? 

Are we exceptional, or is this just American braggadocio? Well, if you look at some major indicators, it’s pretty clear that America stands like a colossus over the world today. Look at the economy. The U.S. economy is roughly a $30 trillion nominal economy in goods and services. It’s one-third larger than the Chinese economy. We hear a lot about Ascendant China, but it essentially means that one American is producing as many goods and services as four Chinese counterparts. 

It’s a third bigger than the EU, which has about 70 million more people than the United States. If you look at its culture, if you look at Netflix, streaming entertainment, Hollywood, even in its decline, popular music, it accounts for about 75% of international box office receipts of all sorts. 

Educationally, there’s a lot of global indices and they usually have the United States with eight to nine out of the top 10 universities. That kind of mimics the same economic standards that show that, at the top 10 companies in terms of international market capitalization, I think eight of them now are American. 

In the case of the educational surveys, it’s usually Caltech, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc., in the top 10. But at the top 50, 40 of them are American. 

If you look at politics, the U.S. Constitution is the oldest surviving blueprint for democracy-republic. All the others have either faded or they come in and out of existence, but ours is that continuity of one particular consensual government, and its foundational document is unprecedented. 

Finally, militarily, we have about 13,000 combat aircraft and their logistical support craft. That’s larger than China, the EU, and India put together. We have 11 fleet carrier groups. China is struggling to get a third. No other country has a fleet-size carrier and a carrier group. They have smaller carriers. 

But then, in addition to our 11, we have nine amphibious carriers that are about the same size as most other countries’ fleet carriers. And we spend more money than most of the world combined in terms of defense budgetary. 

Why did we enjoy all of this preeminence? Is it just because we have a continent-size country? Well, actually, Russia, then China, then Canada have larger territories than we do. Many countries have two oceans that border them. So it wasn’t just that we have a large area and we have natural resources. 

Other countries have as many or more than we do. There has to be a secret that explains this global preeminence, and one of them, as I mentioned, is the Constitution. No other country has been able to emulate successfully our Constitution. It’s a very rare document. 

It assumes that power will be collected in one particular person or one particular area, given human nature, and therefore it’s gonna check the accumulation of inordinate power through the legislative and judicial branches as being separate, each with power over the other to stop their aggrandizement of authority and power. 

It has a Bill of Rights. Very few countries have a bill of rights that protect individual liberty against the state, which is outlined in the Constitution proper—the state’s authority—and then the Bill of Rights, refines or hones that in and gives precedence to the individual in terms of free expression, the sanctity of his home from search and seizure, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, etc. 

In addition to the Constitution, the United States is not founded on a class system. There are no dukes or earls, where you’re born, who your parents were, how much land your grandfather had. That doesn’t really matter very much, or at least as much as talent. 

We are a meritocratic society, and we value someone, I suppose, based on their net worth more than we do their title. That sounds kind of plutocratic, but actually our system of rewarding individual success—measured by materialism or good works or philanthropy—is a much more effective barometer of talent than inherited privilege. 

And so that, that lends a message to the people that anybody can make it in America in a way impossible in many of the European countries and, of course, elsewhere in the world. 

We have, until recently, had a long tradition of the melting-pot, meritocratic immigration, and that meant that if you came legally and immigrants were diverse and they were of numbers of a size that could be assimilated and integrated, then it was a wonderful thing. 

I mentioned the eight or nine companies in the top 10 by market capitalization. I should say that of those American eight or nine companies, four of them were founded by immigrants. So, it’s been a great boom to the United States. 

And finally, we have a can-do individual culture. There’s two types of envy in the world: the envy of emulation—the good envy—and the bad envy of, anger or resentment that someone has more than you do. 

The old morality tale that an American sees a Cadillac and asks somebody how he got it, rather than kicks in the tires or keys it like someone in another country would do in anger that someone has a nicer car than he does. But that does explain, encapsulate the American ethos of emulating people who are accessible rather than trying to tear them down. 

We also are the largest really devout Western country in terms of the Judeo-Christian tradition that offers a brake on the appetites. When you have leisure and affluence that are the bounties of market capitalism and constitutional government, you can get decadent. You can get complacent. 

In other words, our religious tradition—maybe emblemized by the Sermon on the Mount—says just because something is legal and just because somebody has the ability to do it, you should not necessarily do it because of moral and ethical considerations. 

Are there dangers to this great American experiment of 250 years? Absolutely. An affluent and leisured society, unless it has familial or religious or community brakes upon the appetites, can become self-indulgent, lethargic—the lotus-eater syndrome—and fall into a slow decline. 

We’ve seen that happen in Europe, the foundation of the Western tradition that is really descendant now in terms of economics, politics, culture, and its military. 

Another great worry is fertility. The United States fertility rate has fallen just in 30 years from 2.1, the replacement rate, down to 1.6, as if life is too valuable, too fun, too enjoyable to waste it raising kids. 

Any society that has a low fertility rate, the population ages, it shrinks, and it becomes risk-averse. 

We also owe $30 trillion in aggregate national debt. We are running $1 trillion to $2 trillion annual deficits and, until recently, a $1 trillion trade deficit. These are unsustainable. 

And they’ll require, first of all, a major cutback in entitlements and unfunded liabilities. And how we do that when we have a bread-and-circuses attitude, that people think the government owes them something rather than they owe the government, I don’t know, but it’s something we’re gonna have to deal with. 

And finally, immigration’s gone haywire. We traded in the successful centuries-long, melting pot for the salad bowl—DEI. We have reverted to tribalism. 

If we continue down that pathway, that your superficial appearance determines who you are, that it’s essential rather than just incidental to you, your identity as a human, then we’re gonna end up like every tribal society, which is failure and pre-civilization reversion.

From Tip O’Neill to Chaos—What Happened to Democrats

 

person 1: , before we get to Mark Kelly, I did want to mention this news. There are too many names here, but these—Michigan had a Democrat convention yesterday, on Sunday. 

person 2: Yes. I saw that. 

person 1 And Amir Makled, who is a lawyer, a guy from Dearborn, and a Hezbollah praiser. He defeated—Democrats have the right to appoint a regent to the University of Michigan board. And the incumbent was Jordan Acker, who is, I’m assuming, Jewish because his house and his car were vandalized with antisemitic graffiti. But the Democrats of Michigan nominated this radical guy to sit on the board of the University of Michigan. So, this party that was the party of Dan Rostenkowski and Tip O’Neill and even Bill Clinton—this is dead and over. 

person 2: Yeah, I think they’re captive of a very small but apparently very influential group of people who are Islamic, and they vote a straight ticket, apparently. Because—I say that because the—is it El-Sayed, the candidate in the same state for the Senate? 

person 1: Right. 

person 2: He had a hot mic on where he said that he had to be careful about expressing any opinion about the death of Khamenei, this cruel, horrible dictator in Iran who had butchered 40,000 of his own people. Because it might not go well with his constituency. Meaning they were pro-Hezbollah. 

person 1: Yeah. 

person 2: And we had that person that tried to ram the synagogue, and he was an active—his family were active Hezbollah terrorists. 

So I don’t know what’s happened to the Democratic Party, but one of the worst things that historically happens to a party or a group or a nation when they spiral down into suicidal hatred, tribalism, is antisemitism is one of the first—it’s kind of like, you know, a sore throat when you know you’re getting very ill. And when you see it everywhere—and I see it everywhere—and it has so many manifestations. 

In Tucker’s case, it’s just the sheer volume. If he were to do one show every five or every ten on Bibi, or one in every eight on Israel, then you could argue that he’s just critical of Israel and the support that it garners. But it’s about 70% of his shows. And they’re all negative. And he had never done that before. 

And then when you see these random attacks on Jews, and you have nothing happening, you get the impression that either the majority of the Democratic Party agree, or they’re afraid to express opposition or objection because they’re going to be, themselves, targeted. So, they wanted to cut off aid. Most of the Democrats, with few exceptions, wanted to cut off aid to Israel right when it’s in its existential war with Iran. 

I think that Europe is pro-Hezbollah. It’s pretty clear they are. France was, until they lost a French soldier. Now, all of a sudden, they’re worried. 

But if this doesn’t stop, this momentum—and I never thought I would say that about the United States—you’re going to see Jews that are targeted. Just everyday Jews. And they’re going to be—it’s going to be like, at the elite level, it’ll be like Gentleman’s Agreement, the Gregory Peck movie about that you politely don’t hire Jews or you don’t recruit them. 

person 1: We don’t have a reservation at the restaurant or at the hotel, yeah. 

person 2: And given Jewish meritocracy that dominated the Ivy League—30% or 40% in some years—after the antisemitic restrictions were removed. And then we went to the SAT meritocratic equality-of-opportunity admissions. It’s down to about—I think the Jewish numbers are way, way down by almost—they’ve decreased by two-thirds. And so, I don’t see a new young generation of Jews emerging from this country without having to be targeted by mostly people who are Islamic and the people who aid and abet them. 

And it’s going to be—I predict, unless somebody comes out and stops it—it’s going to get worse and worse and worse. All we can do as people is—each person, according to your station—is to demand that you treat people as an individual and not a collective. And you don’t pander and you don’t criticize, but when you hear people attacking Jews, you speak up against it. 

If you don’t, then you’re part of the problem. 

person 1: There’s a great piece on that, if I just may make a note, Victor, to our, our, viewers and listeners who are very intelligent people. There’s a great online magazine called Tablet Magazine, and it

person 1: It is—it’s excellent. I saw that article. Are you referring to the woman who was a Ph.D.? She’s a veteran and— 

person 2: Yes. Meghan Mobbs, and she— 

person 1: “What to Die For”? 

person 2: “The Things Worth Dying For,” yeah. 

person 1: That was a wonderful article. It was so rare to see somebody that was so brave and so persuasive. 

Right. And she’s also a Catholic, and it was an interesting thing about this journal. You know, they’re—I don’t want to say eclectic—but it’s that they allow these other kinds of voices to write for them. 

Yeah. I think that’s one—I remember, I think I told you once I was at my graduation and there was a person at this—I had won this award, and the awardees were at the table with the provost. And this woman was attacking the United States in World War II. 

And she kept going, going, going, and saying we were war criminals. And my father and my mom watched him drink one glass, two glasses, three glasses. And then I said to my mom, hey Mom, I think the fuse is lit. And then he got up and said, I didn’t fly 40 missions over Tokyo and my first cousin didn’t get killed in Okinawa for me to sit and hear this. Now you’re going to hear something. And then he let loose. So, I feel that way about all the people who fought. That’s what her point was in the article. They didn’t fight and die and risk everything that so the University of Michigan could select somebody whose principal qualification was that he hated Jews. And he was pro-ISIS and Hezbollah and the whole bunch and was not shy about it. 

And so why I always think that, given our ethos, that a person who comes from a different country, if he qualifies for citizenship—he or she—and he’s a citizen, then they have as much right as somebody that I’ve been here on my mother’s side from the 18—I don’t know—20s. My father’s from 1870, ’80. 

But my point is they are just as much American. But that being said, if you do come over here and then when you arrive and you go full Ilhan Omar and you call it a trashy country and a dictatorship, then that allows people who have been living here to say to them: We didn’t die on Iwo Jima. We didn’t die at Belleau Wood. We didn’t die at Gettysburg for you to come over here and tell us that we’re no good. And we’re not going to take it. I’m sorry. And we need that attitude a lot more. So the immigrant has really changed. 

When we had Max Nikias, he was the ideal immigrant. He’s the ideal immigrant. He loves the country. He contributed so much to it. And yet that profile that he and millions represent—had once represented—is under attack now. I think it’s because of the indoctrination in the university. And the DEI component, that if you’re a DEI qualifier, you feel that you’re exempt from criticism and you have a right or a duty to trash your host country as white, racist, heterosexual, a whole bit. You know?

And I think it will continue until people say, You know what? You’re absurd. We’re not going to listen to you anymore. If everybody would say that, no matter what your particular background is, I think it would stop very quickly. 

Fowler: Someone was mentioning at the Philadelphia Society meeting, which I was at in Tampa this past weekend, about Peter Schramm, who I think you must have known Peter. 

person 2: I met—yeah, I knew him a lot. I spoke in Ohio. Was it Ohio he was at? 

person 1: He was at the Ashbrook Center. Yeah. He ran that. And Peter was born in Hungary and his family escaped during the ’56 revolution. But he asked his father, Why here? And essentially the father said, We were always Americans. We just weren’t born there. And I do think there are a lot of people that think like that and feel like that and are pat—but there are many, many more like Ilhan Omar and others who are still Somalians and still Pakistanis and Afghanis and whatever the heck. And do not like this place, yet they are big welfare recipients. 

person 2: I don’t know. I’m really upset, though, because I was looking at some of the—Steve Hilton now claims, by the way, that the fraud in California has gone up to 400 billion. Billion. 

I mean, that would almost cut 25% of the deficit. And when you look at that and you look at the names that are coming in, a lot of them are naturalized citizens or they’re here as green card hold—I don’t know. But the reason I mention that is the immigrant has a special onus on him that his host was generous and allowed him to come in—just like a guest into somebody’s home. In that, you have to behave extraordinarily well. So, when these people say, Well, he only had a DUI, why deport? 

You shouldn’t have any crime. You should be exemplary because this country bent over backwards to allow you to be a guest. And then when you come in here as the Somali community did, in many cases, and you defrauded the country, then you should be deported. Get a fair trial, adjudicate the evidence, and get out. Because you’ve abused the hospitality. And you rewarded our magnanimity with contempt. 

And so I’m getting really sick of all of this. And, you know—oh, immigrants, immi—immigration has been the backbone of the country. But there was a demonstration that said immigrants built the country. Well, they did in the sense that we only had a small population and we were immigrating here from 1820, 1810, even before. 

But that’s not what the sign meant. It meant that only people who were illegal had built the country. And that’s not true. It’s not true.