These Democrat Narratives Are a Lame Excuse for an Agenda

 

I’d like to talk about Democratic talking points. By that, I mean, these memes, these topics, these themes that they use. But they seem to be divorced from reality.

Take the Epstein files. Remember, Epstein files? Epstein files. Epstein files. Gotta have the Epstein files released. They all said that Trump was hiding things. And rational people said the Democratic administration had the files for four years. Given what they had done to Trump with lawfare, you would’ve thought that if there was anything incriminating, they would’ve released it.]

And then, of course, there were rumors that 80% to 90% of the people mentioned in the files were Democrats. And then there was also an investigation, through leaks, that Donald Trump ostracized Jeffrey Epstein—and here’s the key point—before he was convicted of sexual crime. So, there was nothing there. And yet, as soon as Trump comes in, Epstein files, Epstein files. Epstein files. So, he releases them. And what does it show? Exactly what everybody knew and what the Democrats, themselves, knew. Did they say, “We’re sorry, we cooked this all up, there was nothing in the files”? No. They went on right to Obamacare.

Affordable Care Act. Let’s shut down the government. Republicans will not give us all this money. Multi-billion-dollar subsidies. And then people said, “Well, come on, you guys. You publicize it as the new health care plan. Only 25 million Americans are in it. A small fraction. It doesn’t work. You, yourself, said that they needed subsidies. And you were willing to put a time limit on it. And the subsidies ran out. And they weren’t even enough.”

It’s just constant, constant, constant. This isn’t the issue. Yes, it is. Affordable Care Act. Affordable Care Act. That’s all that matters. Affordable care—and then the government was shut down, for the longest time in history. Forty days. And now it’s open. Has anybody heard anybody talk about the Affordable Care Act? I haven’t.

And then it was Trump’s health. Trump’s health. Trump’s health. He’s got spots on his arms. He has cankles. He’s limping. He looks bad. He’s losing his mind. Everybody said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You people hid the demonstrable cognitive decline of Joe Biden for four years with a very strange White House media conspiracy. Now you’re suggesting that Trump is non compos mentis? But he just took a health exam. An MRI body scan.” No, no, no, no. He’s cognitively declined. So then, he releases it. It shows that he is in perfect health for someone his age. Does anybody talk about Trump’s health? No. No. No.

And then it’s affordability. Affordability. Affordability. That’s what it’s all about. Affordability. Well, wait a minute. During the Biden administration, there was a cumulative inflation of 21%. That averages out to 5.2% per year. Per year. When Donald Trump came in, Jan. 20th, 2025, it had dipped to 3%. But given all the things that Trump has done, it’s still 3%. He has not increased inflation. He has brought in $10 trillion, at least, of foreign investment. There’s going to be enormous stimuli next year, as far as oil and gas production at record levels, the Big Beautiful Bill’s deregulation, tax cuts. And do we hear about affordability? Affordability? Affordability? Not really. I mean, there’s no real issue. The inflation rate is lower, this year, than in any year on average of the Biden administration. And it’s going get better next year.

So, what am I trying to get at? What’s going on? Why do they fixate on these themes, and then they just drive it, drive it, drive it? And the fact is, their acts of commission and omission, they feel that they can create chaos. They can make people angry. They can bomb Tesla dealerships. They can shut down the government. They can stop ICE. They can tell soldiers to disobey orders. But that’s a negative message. What is omitted? That’s the committed message.

But what is omitted? Do they say, “Here’s my alternate plan for immigration. I want one million, two million, three million illegal. I want to go back to the Biden [administration], two million illegal aliens a year”? No, nothing. “Obamacare: Here’s how we’re going to solve it so we don’t need subsidies. A, B, C.” Nothing.

Trump’s health: “We introduce legislation that every president has to have an annual physical, every year. And everything has to be transparent.” If that had been true, Biden would’ve been 25th Amendmented the first year of his term. Do they have a crime initiative? Do they have a foreign policy initiative? Do they have any initiative? No. So, what they try to do is: A, create chaos so we’ll all lay down in the fetal position, say, “Please stop it. I don’t want it.” Or they’re going to talk about affordability, affordability, affordability, without ever mentioning that under their auspices, the DEI, the ESG, The Green New Deal, it was all regulate, regulate, restrict, slow down. And we had 21% inflation. We had low GDP. Do we want to go back to that?

So, they don’t talk about it. So don’t pay any attention to Epstein files, Obamacare, Trump’s MRI, affordability. These are all just excuses for the absence of 51% on the issues. And a lack of a systematic, comprehensive, alternate agenda, that they can present to Donald Trump. That all this is absurd does not mean it doesn’t work. I mean, we have a candidate who, in Virginia, running for attorney general, said that he wanted his opponent dead and his children dead. And he won. He won. We had a candidate for the mayoral race who said he wanted to seize the means of production. And [Zohran] Mamdani won.

We have all these races where crazy things happen. But that doesn’t mean that we have to accept them, as not crazy. They’re crazy. And don’t pay any attention to them because it’s just an excuse for the lack of a serious agenda.

The Blue State Baby Bust

 

person 1: The last symptom that we want to talk about today, Victor, is fertility. And we know that the university and the rhetoric in the United States is—

Person 2: Yes, and climate too.

person 1:   Yeah, because of climate, we don’t want to have children. 

person 2: Didn’t [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] say that?

person 1: AOC said that the world was going to end in like 10 years or something.” I don’t know what it was. Who listens to her?  https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=THEDAILYSIGNAL9229032385

person 2: She said she wasn’t going to have kids and have more AOCs, and I thought, “Promises, promises.” [Editor’s Note: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said it is a “legitimate question” to ask if it’s OK to have children due to the climate crisis. She did not rule out having children of her own.]  That’s a problem. I’m not just being in jest. If you look at fertility in the 20 so-called blue states, it is about one point. We average everybody about 1.73. Just in 1999, we were 2.1. I’m talking about people who were born in the United States, the fertility rate. It was about 1.71. But in blue states, it’s about 1.4. And in red states, about 2.1. 

So what’s happening, all you people in Arizona, Florida, Wyoming, Utah, you’re having like two to three kids, and four million people a year are joining you. And you people in blue states, like where I am, we’re having about 1.4 kids and nobody’s coming here. Everybody’s leaving. Our congressional districts, we’re going to surrender unless we cheat like we’re trying to in California. And they’ve stopped Texas from trying to cheat for their conservatives. We’re going to lose all of our congressional districts, and our economies are going to be backward. But we’ve got to keep doing it. We’ve got to keep getting left, left, left, left. Climate, climate, climate. 

So, fertility is a big problem and Europe is worse. It’s not averaging 1.7. It’s averaging about 1.4. In some countries like Italy and Germany, I think it’s almost 1.2. And why is that? I have got to be very careful how I say that, but traditionally, declining fertility is commiserate not just with health. 

Childhood diseases killed most people. If you were in ancient Greece, a woman would have to be pregnant 10 times to deliver four births to have the three births be successful out of the four and to have two children survive puberty. Maybe 20 pregnancies later, but with the industrial revolution, modern sanitation, health care, that’s not true.

But usually it’s the emancipation of women that makes the fertility go down because they want to get in on the good life with men and have a say in things and child rearing for affluent people, men and women, but particularly women, because it puts more of a—I don’t want to use the word burden—but more responsibility to physically have children and to nurse them. It’s a drag, they think. That’s what they’re told in college.

If you went to college and you said, “Hi, I’m Suzy Smith. And I’m from Utah. And I just want to say in this class on American history that I’m here to do my patriotic part. I want to marry one of you guys in class. I want to get my B.A. in American Studies. And I plan on having three to four children and raise them up to be good old red-blooded patriotic Americans and law-abiding. And that’s my goal. And if I can do that, I made a wonderful contribution.”

I’m not mocking that. That is a noble thing to say, and that person will be demonized and told, “Get out of here.” If you said, “Hello, I’m Samantha Joan. You know, I’m just here because of the patriarchy. It’s so oppressive. And after six or seven boyfriends this year, I was so upset at them. They were just losers, and you know that my women’s studies professors have suggested that because Donald Trump is going to try to take abortion away from us, I have to be very careful. And I’m considering transitioning, but I haven’t decided Firyet.” That’s the alternative. It’s kind of like the difference between Karine Jean-Pierre at the podium and Karoline Leavitt, you know what I mean? It’s Miss Sunshine bouncy happy and has already had one baby and probably will have two more. 

person 1: And super smart and right on top of it and responsive to the press. 

person 2: Yeah. To get serious for change, I mean I’m serious, but I was too mocking. It is the barometer of a healthy society. When Rome had its greatest problems in the first century AD and the third century AD and you look at the Italian birth rate, it really plummeted. And you can see glimpses in the description of women in Plautus and Terence, but especially, as I said, in first century BC and AD literature that there’s not an emphasis on the Italian agrarian model of kids and family and all that anymore. It’s just not, and the same thing happened in Greece. And I think all of us just think, wow. 

My grandmother was one of 11 children. My grandfather was one of three boys, my maternal. My paternal grandfather was one of four boys. I don’t know about my paternal grandmother, because she died before I was born, but I think she had four sisters. 

My parents had three of us. One child was lost, my sister, at an early age. And then my aunt and that family had two. Then my other family, my parents had my mom who had four deliveries, three survived to adulthood. And then her sister had two and her other sister was crippled and couldn’t have children. So that’s the story. Each generation gets smaller children. And then we say, “Well, we’re going to have immigration. That’ll keep up for two.” It would be energizing if it was, as I said, diverse and legal and integrated and assimilated and skilled. 

Why Gen Z Men Are Struggling

 

The current generation “Z”—those now roughly between 13 and 28 years old—is becoming our 21st-century version of the “Lost Generation.” Members of Gen Z are often nicknamed “Zoomers,” a term used to describe young adults who came of age in the era of smartphones, social media, and rapid cultural upheaval.

Males in their teens and 20s are prolonging their adolescence—rarely marrying, not buying a home, not having children, and often not working full-time.

The negative stereotype of a Zoomer is a shiftless man, who plays too many video games. He is too coddled by parents and too afraid to strike out on his own.

Zoomers rarely date supposedly out of fear that they would have to grow up, take charge, and head a household.

Yet the opposite, sympathetic generalization of Gen Z seems more accurate.

All through K-12, young men, particularly white males, have been demonized for their “toxic masculinity” that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia.

In college, the majority of students are female. In contrast, white males—9% to 10% of admittees in recent years at elite schools like Stanford and the Ivy League—are of no interest to college admission officers.

So they are tagged not as unique individuals but as superfluous losers of the “wrong” race, gender, or sexual orientation.

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Gen Z men saw themselves scapegoated by professors and society for the sins of past generations—and on the wrong side of the preposterous reductionist binary of oppressors and the oppressed.

Traditional pathways to adulthood—affordable homes, upwardly mobile and secure jobs, and safe and secure city and suburban living—had mostly vanished amid overregulation, overtaxation, and underpolicing.

Orthodox and loud student advocates on campus—climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Palestinians—had little to do with getting a job, raising a family, or buying a house.

During the Joe Biden years, white males mostly stopped enlisting in the military in their accustomed overrepresented numbers.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, they had died in frontline combat units at twice their percentages for the demographic. No matter—prior Pentagon DEI commissars still slandered them as suspects likely to form racist cabals.

Gen Z males seemed bewildered by women and sex—and often withdrew from dating.
Never has popular culture so promoted sexually provocative fashions, semi-nudity, and freewheeling lifestyles, and careers of supposedly empowered single women.

And never had the rules of dating and sexuality become more retrograde Victorian.

Casual consensual sex was flashed as cool everywhere on social media. And when it naturally proved in the real world to be selfish, callous, and empty, males were almost always exclusively blamed as if they were not proper Edwardian gentlemen.

Soon, young men feared sexual hookups and promiscuity as avenues to post facto and one-sided charges of harassment—or worse.

For the half of Generation Z who went to college, tuition had soared, rising faster than the rate of inflation. Administrators were often more numerous than faculty. Obsessive fixations with race determined everything from dorm selections to graduation ceremonies.

Zoomers were mired in enormous student debt.

Yet they soon learned that their gut social science and “studies” degrees proved nearly worthless. Employers saw such certificates as neither proof of traditional knowledge nor of any needed specialized skill set.

Unemployed or half-employed Zoomers then ended up with unsustainable five-figure student loans, and the insidious interest on them. Their affluent, left-wing tenured profs, who had once demonized them as oppressors, could have cared less about their dismal fates.

Add it all up, and Zoomers puzzled their parents. And they found scant guidance from the campus.

Instead, they sought needed spiritual inspiration from a Jordan Peterson, entertainment and pragmatic advice from a Joe Rogan, but sometimes toxic venting from a demagogic, antisemitic Nick Fuentes.

What would shock the lost generation back into the mainstream, barring a war, depression, or natural catastrophe?

One, an end to DEI hectoring and blame-gaming, and a return to class rather than race determining “privilege.”

Two, some sanity in the war between the sexes. When women represent nearly 60% of undergraduates, why does gender still assure an advantage in admissions and hiring?

Three, the federal government needs to stop funding $1.7 trillion in student debt, often for worthless degrees, and wasting away one’s prime 20s and 30s.

Let universities pledge their endowments to guarantee their own loans. They should graduate students in four years. And they must slash the parasitical class of toxic administrative busybodies who cannot teach but can hector and bully.

Four, society needs to stop granting status on the basis of increasingly meaningless letters and titles after a name.

Skilled tradesmen like electricians and mechanics are noble professionals. And their status and compensation should reflect their value to society—far more so than a bachelor’s degree in a- studies major or years vaporized in off-and-on college.

Finally, incentivize building homes, rather than overregulating and zoning them into unaffordability.
If the lost Gen Z is not found soon, the result for everyone will not be pretty.

America’s About to Have a ‘Rendezvous’ With Europe’s Immigration Disaster

 

I’d like to talk about immigration, legal and illegal. Under President Joe Biden, we let in an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants and about 1 million legal immigrants. We’re starting to see some of the consequences that happen when you don’t vet people at the border.

We have, over the years, a massive Somali expatriate population in Minnesota. Now we are learning that during the COVID-19 period, when there were not audits and scrutiny, as there should have been, a lot of Somali expatriates, both legal citizens and green card holders and illegal aliens, ran a massive fraud against their adopted country, perhaps multibillion.

And Rep. Ilhan Omar, the self-appointed representative and the elected representative of the Somali community, has denied anything was wrong. Tim Walz, who is the governor of Minnesota, doesn’t wanna talk about it. That entire community abused the hospitality that was accorded to them.

Now we hear that an Afghan refugee who came in, largely unvetted, they say he was militarily vetted, but that doesn’t—that’s not the same criteria for someone that we want to bring in and accord enormous generosity to: give him a subsidized apartment, let him, his wife, and five children have access to it and subsidies with it ahead of normal U.S. citizens.

And he repays that gratitude with what? He drives across the country and executes a young National Guardsman from West Virginia and almost fatally wounds—seriously wounds—his companion. Murders one and tries the murder of the other, who’s in critical condition. As what? Thanks for the generosity that was accorded to them?

Almost daily, we hear of an illegal alien who is involved in a DUI and kills innocents on the road. We hear about murders. And we’re kind of tired of it, and we’re reexamining immigration.

We all understand that illegal immigration is clearly wrong. You cannot come into the country without legal authorization, and if you are here illegally, then you should return to your home. I think all Americans agree with that. They may disagree about the tactics of finding illegal immigrants. It’s much easier to destroy the border and allow 10,000 people to come across a day than it is the hard work of finding them and then rounding them up when they don’t wanna go back home, and then having the Left champion them as if they’re saviors or heroes or something for breaking the U.S. immigration law.

But I want to get back to just a larger issue of immigration. Something is wrong with all of this because we are not inculcating immigration—talking about it in the way that we used to talk about it. We’re talking about it in the salad bowl, not the melting pot.

We’re assuming that people that come in here, when—the moment they arrive, they have grievances against this country. They’ve been victims of oppression. We don’t really audit them legally. We don’t say to them, “We want you to know English. We want you to respect our laws. We want you to be acquainted with our traditions and customs and history, and we insist that you acculturate, you integrate, and you assimilate and do full American citizenship.” We don’t do that.

And so, we have truck drivers who are here both legally and illegally who don’t speak English, they don’t read English. And yet, out of our kindness, our naivete, or stupidity, we give them driver’s licenses. And the result is they’re killing people on American freeways. And yet, we can’t object because we feel that we’re going to be illiberal.

So, what is the solution? The solution is to rethink legal immigration. It should be much smaller, maybe 200,000 or 300,000, a number that we feel we can comfortably and easily assimilate. They must come in with knowledge of the English language. They should have some skill sets, so they do not become wards of the local, state, or federal government.

And most importantly, we have to have a civic education program in K-12 and outreach to them that explains, “You wanted to come to our country. We don’t wanna go to your country. You made the decision. You said that you wanted to give up your homeland, your customs, everything about it, and transfer across the ocean to the United States. If you wanted to do that, then we can accommodate you, but it’s going to be brutal. You’re going to be an American citizen first and a Somali or an Indian or a Mexican or a Guatemalan second. You’ll be fully assimilated. But don’t come over here and then congregate in a community where you speak your native language and you break our laws, and you feel that you can do so with impunity, as if you’re some victim on a Marxist binary of victim/victimizer, oppressed/oppressor. It’s not gonna work.”

Yes, we are a nation of immigrants*. We’re a nation of legal immigrants whose first mission upon arrival in America was to be a better American than a native-born American. And many millions were. I don’t think that is the case now, and the fault is not just with the immigrant, it’s with us.

We ask nothing of the immigrant. So little confidence, perhaps, we had in our own culture and civilization, we were derelict. And it’s the 11th hour, and if we don’t change rapidly in our approaches to legal immigration, we’re gonna end up and have a rendezvous with the European disaster and tragedy.

Democrats Want to Distract You From This Before Midterms

 

The November 2026 elections will be determined, fairly or not, largely on the status of the economy. The Left knows that.

They know two things. One, the enormous, projected gain in oil and natural gas production. Two, the deregulation and tax cuts involved in the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that will kick in in full in 2026 and some $10 trillion in foreign investment, even if that’s maybe only half of what’s promised, but that’s an enormous amount, seven or eight times more than President Joe Biden received in his last year of office.

You add all of that up: An economy right now that is doing well, and Black Friday, following Thanksgiving, had almost $11 billion in online sales. That was a record, not just better than last year at this time under the Biden administration, but better than in any time in history.

So, the economy is already strong, and you can imagine that these catalysts and this stimuli that are coming—deregulation, tax reduction, massive foreign investment, expelling 2 million people from the United States per year who were probably on social assistance, involved in many cases of crime. You can see what’s going to happen. The economy is going to boom in 2026, and the Left knows that.

So, what is their strategy?

Don’t talk about the Trump economy.

And we’ve seen what? Go after Tesla. Firebomb Tesla dealerships. Drive Tesla automobiles off the road because Elon Musk was the prince of darkness, and he was involved in the Department of Government Efficiency. Demonize DOGE.

Go after Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Have street theater. Have riots. Call them Gestapo. Say they’re worse than Hitler.

Go after the National Guard that has cleaned up Washington, D.C. Encourage massive resistance. Call it illegal.

Shut down the government. Shut down the government for longer than any period in history—40 days. Shut it down for no purpose. It gained nothing. Supposedly, it gained nothing. Shut it down.

Have major senators on the Democratic side and representatives cut a video. Have them tell the American soldiers, all 1.3 million active-duty strong, you don’t have to obey an order. If, in your legal wisdom, your vast knowledge of jurisprudence, if you’re a private and he says, “Go over that hill,” I don’t have to do it. It’s illegal.

Create disruption.

And the piece of resistance, the Epstein files.

You had the Epstein files for four years under Joe Biden, Democrats. You knew that President Donald Trump expelled him from his circle of friends before he was convicted of anything.

But there are about 80% or 90% of people in the so-called Epstein files—these are emails. These are text messages. These are transcripts from court proceedings. These may be IRS files. But 80% to 90% are Democrats. That’s why it was not released during the Democratic administration.

But no matter, just say, “Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files.” And so, Donald Trump finally says, “OK, they’re released.” And what do we hear? Crickets. Maybe a little bit about Larry Summers, Democrat, but silence.

Why doesn’t the Left demand that every single name be released? Because they have more Democratic donors than Trump has Republican donors that are mentioned in it.

So, the Epstein files, like the shutdown, like the street theater, like all the videos, like all the smuddy language, they were designed for one point, one reason, one goal: Keep your mind off the economy. Create a word called “affordability.” The real message is: We Democrats raised prices by 21% when we were in power, 5.2% per year. We had enormous budget deficits. We ran the debt up by $8 trillion. We had a $1.1 trillion deficit. Don’t talk about that. Just say that Donald Trump, in 10 months, has a 3% inflation rate, the same as when he entered office, and therefore, he’s responsible for the 21% that we ran up, and we’ll call it affordability.

My message to the Trump administration and all of you listening is: Tune out all of the street theater, all the pornography, all the smuddy language, all the insurrectionary activity, and just focus on the economy and talk two points. Two points: how much better it is already than the average of the four years prior, but more importantly, demonstrate why it’s going to be booming in 2026 and why the Democrats don’t want you to think about that.

The Fallacy at the Heart of Ken Burns’ ‘American Revolution’ Documentary

 

person 1: rote a long critique and a somewhat harsh critique of Ken Burns’ new documentary on the American Revolution. I’ve not seen it, and maybe I’ll get to it eventually, although I’ve come a long way from being a fan of Ken Burns. His original Civil War series was terrific and everything since is quite woke. But Dan’s headline for his article, I’m not going to read anything from it, is “Ken Burns ‘American Revolution’ woke series overemphasizes Iroquois, the Indians, influence.” I thought that we were about the Founding Fathers and Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin. And I guess it was the upstate Iroquois Indians that we have to thank for our democracy. Anyway, Victor, your thoughts on this. 

person 2: Well, I should say that I know Ken Burns. I’ve known him for 10 years. He’s a friend. And I see him each year. And I disagree with him on a lot of things. And I do say, I think I said it to him, the Civil War documentary was a work of genius. I have not seen this [new documentary], so I don’t feel qualified. All I know is I’ve read two or three reviews about it, and there was this one issue that’s dear to my heart, and that is this myth that the Iroquois Six Nations tribes created the democratic model, at least one of the major ones, for the Founding Fathers.

That is based on an early line in Benjamin Franklin’s corpus of quotations that he mentions the Six Nations. And I think it’s in the Federalist, I don’t know if it’s [Federalist No.] 8, 9, or 10 or what, but there’s a mention. But here’s the point. 

If you collate in the Federalist Papers the work of [Alexander] Hamilton or [John] Adams, and the intellectual pedigree of our Constitution, and you count up the references to this is what Cicero says, this is what the Greeks did, this is what the Roman Republic was like, this is the later influence of the Magna Carta, all of that, the Glorious Revolution, all that stuff, and you compare it to a reference to the Iroquois, it’s about 99 % to one. It really is.

And if you look at our Constitution and you compare it with two different alternatives, here’s a bunch of people who have different tribes and the tribes say, “Well, what do you think? Well, what do you think? Well, what do you think?” And you say, “Well, vote on it.” That’s not democracy or constitutional republics. I’m sorry. 

I think Plato has a part when he’s talking about democracy in bastardized form, and he says, when people rob a bank and they want to split up the loot, they vote by majority vote. So, five guys, they all rob a bank and they say, “Well, how are we going to split it up? Let’s just split it up in five parts and we’ll vote on it.” Oh, they’re models for the Constitution. No. So, the Iroquois did something that was practical. Not all of them did it, and they should be commended for it, but it had very little, if any, influence on the Founding Fathers.

And what were the influential texts? It was not even passages in Thucydides or Plato, especially not Plato, but a little bit in Aristotle, but most of it, almost all of it in the ancient world came from Cicero’s De Legibus and philosophical works and then the Magna Carta, the idea of everybody has particular rights versus the monarchy. But most of all, the French thinkers and the British enlightenment, John Locke, but also people like Montesquieu who really took the ancient idea of checks and balances and said, I’ve got the spirit of laws. There should be a judicial. There should be an executive and there should be a legislative and they should each have equal power so that power cannot be aggrandized.

And we took the name Senate from the Latin senatus, the older. And that’s why we said you had to be 30 years old. I don’t know if it was originally 35 or 30, but it was older than the House, which is 25, I think, and you get a longer term. That was modeled after both the earlier Greek, the Gerousia, which in Latin became the Senate, and they had special privileges over the assembly. And then there was an executive, an archon in Greece and two consuls. And then there was a judiciary.

There was the ephorate in Sparta and then there were tribal court jurisdictions in, I shouldn’t say tribal, but there were judicial councils and judges, prefects and legates and things like that. My point is that the tripartite system came from the ancient world. It was refined by Montesquieu and the Founders read vociferously in European literature. And that’s where we got our system. 

To the extent that people said, “Hey, Native Americans, this isn’t that weird. They kind of vote.” Well, that was just mentioned in passing. But under the DEI aegis, all of a sudden, the exception, the insignificant anecdote became canonized. “We owe Native Americans everything because, you know, they created democracy.” No, it’s not true. We have democracy every day in our lives, you know what I mean? You out on the playground and you say, “Let’s choose teams. Well, let’s vote on how we should choose the team.” That’s not democracy. It’s just a way of settling a dispute. And democracy involves a written constitution and checks and balances and a tripartite government and a constitutional republic, more so. They had none of that. 

Anybody who says that that it was a prime influence on Alexander Hamilton or John Adams or James Madison or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson is sorely mistaken. 

person 1: Well, Ken Burns is a man of the left, yes? 

person 2: Yes, well, he gave a talk at Stanford graduation that was pretty fiery. The graduation, not too long ago. And I know him. I mean, I respect his work. I always really respect his work because I think the Civil War that he did was the finest documentary I’ve ever seen produced in America. And that’s pretty high praise. 

person 1: Yeah, I would agree with that. But it’s just that, you know, historians of the Left thinking about our founding. 

We’re not going to say America is 1776, it’s 1619 and it’s evil. And in this case—again, I haven’t seen it either—but we are sure as h— not going to take the … PBS, the official government entity, is going to produce something related to America 250. But what we’re going to say is not going to recognize a bunch of old white men. We’re going to talk about some upstate New York Indians. 

person 2: Yes, and they get in very tricky territory, though. And this is what the Left can’t figure out, because I followed this “Iroquois created the founding” for 30 years. It came in during the Bill Bennett, Saul Bellow, University of Chicago, all that fight under [Ronald] Reagan. 

person 1: Excuse me, could you just say what it is, the Iroquois Nations, just so that everybody knows? 

person 2: The Iroquois Nations were Indigenous people in, I guess you’d say, the Atlantic northern states. And there were six versions of them, or tribes, subgroups. And they had a council, a federation, in which they adjudicated common concerns by assembling. 

And each of the six nations then were not autocratically told what to do, but each member then weighed in, and they supposedly voted under an executive. And what I’m saying is that that had been known to the Founders. And as I said earlier, and I’m quoting by memory now, but Benjamin Franklin compiled a book years before where he mentioned famous quotes about consensual government and he said then the Indians also had the Iroquois Nations. And then in the Federalist Papers, when they are talking about all the different [consensual governments], what they’re trying to say is what we are doing is the right tradition in history and other people have fought for their liberty. 

And here’s what happened in Greece, which they knew, in Rome. And here’s what happened in England. And here were the philosophers. And that’s about 99 % of the reference. And then, I think in two or three places, they said even the Iroquois Nations had a conference where people voted. And somehow that got into, “Wow, that gave them the idea.” No, it didn’t. It did not. It did not. It was just a few passing remarks to find support for this radical idea of constitutional government that they were introducing against a monarch.

And the irony is that the Left can’t decide whether the foundation of this country was purely evil or it was wonderful, but it wasn’t a bunch of white men. It was Native Americans who invented our system. Well, if they invented our system, then are you going to continue and say, “Well, Native Americans had slaves and they tortured people. So Guantanamo Bay is a legacy of the Iroquois because they tortured people. And a lot of indigenous people had servile practices and serfs and slaves. So I guess slavery came from the Iroquois, didn’t it? 

No, they only pick and choose a certain thing. And I think what they basically said, “This was an evil country, but it could have been good because we had originally a Native American idea of democracy.” 

NY Uses Tax Dollars to Pay Former Criminals to Mentor Youth. Guess What Happened Next.

 

There isn't a government program that Democrats won't waste money on, no matter how ridiculous. Instead of creating a culture that puts criminals in prison (that would be racist) and teaches children that they will face consequences for bad behavior, Democrats insist on funding social programs that never work, but are sure to make them feel good.

In New York, the Strategic Neighborhood Understanding and Guardian (SNUG) Program pairs former criminals with youth to dissuade them from entering a life of drugs and violent crime. But two men paid by that taxpayer-funded program were just busted for...dealing drugs and carrying weapons.

They were originally busted in earlier this year and were apparently on the clock when they were selling the drugs.

Here's more from the original story.

They were hired to stop crime and now, they’re accused of fueling it.

Two Syracuse men working for a state-funded anti-violence program are now at the center of a drug investigation.

A year-long probe led to the shocking discovery and a 24-count indictment.

Just steps away from the Southwest Community Center in Syracuse where they were paid to steer young people away from violence, prosecutors say Cassieum Pitts and Ahmed Abdi, were selling drugs.

“And they’re accused of doing this on the clock?” NewsChannel 9’s Rachel Polansky asked. 

“Yes,” Senior Assistant District Attorney, Alphonse Williams, said.

Now those two men, Ahmed Abdi and Cassieum Pitts have accepted plea deals in this case. Abdi will be in prison for six years; Pitts will serve nine.

Prosecutors said Abdi and Pitts were wearing orange safety vests and on duty when they sold cocaine and methamphetamine to a confidential informant.

"It's honestly crazy, right?" said Alphonse Williams, the Senior District Attorney in Onondaga County. "You can’t miss those bright orange vests. And you’re like, man, this is actually happening in our city,” Williams also called video of Abdi and Pitts "discomforting" and did damage to the community, especially the kids they were hired to mentor.

"When the youth see that, they’re like, if you’re not taking it seriously, I’m not gonna take it seriously. I’m gonna be like you, and I’m gonna continue to do the things that are plaguing our community at large. It’s the youth that they’re supposed to be serving that gets hurt by this."

Governor Kathy Hochul was a proponent of SNUG. During a March 2022 press conference, she said, "This is an important program because I know that it works. I want to continue investing in what we know has a proven track record of accomplishment." In February, she said the state would spend $20 million on SNUG, with almost $2 million going to the Syracuse site. That announcement came shortly before Abdi and Pitts were arrested.

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In a statement, Lateef Johnson-Kinsey, a spokesperson for the mayor, said, "Every organization has bad apples, no matter what the organization is. It was two individuals, not 20. Two individuals does not stop what we are doing as a community."

Here's a List of What Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick Allegedly Spent Stolen FEMA On

Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (FL-20) is in a boatload of legal trouble. Last week, she was charged with stealing $5 million in FEMA funds after a billing error resulted in an overpayment to a business she's affiliated with for a COVID-related vaccination staffing contract.

Cherfilus-McCormick also faces censure in and possible expulsion from Congress for her involvement. For her part, Cherfilus-McCormick claims she's innocent and played the race card, accusing prosecutors of "attacking minorities."

Now, a report shows exactly what Cherfilus-McCormick allegedly spent that money on, including a six-figure, three-carat yellow diamond ring.

The list of spending is long and expensive. It includes $2.4 million to Cherfilus-McCormick's consulting company, $1.2 million to a bank account managed by relatives of Cherfilus-McCormick, $830K to a different bank account on which Cherfilus-McCormick is an authorized user, $334K to Nadege Leblanc, who is "accused of having coordinated straw-donor contributions to Cherfilus-McCormick," $190K to a bank account tied to Cherfilus-McCormick's brother's consulting company.

The ring, according to a Tiffany & Co. client advisor, appears to be a "Tiffany Fancy Yellow Single Row Celeste, and the Victoria Band ring." Cherfilus-McCormick is wearing the ring in her official portrait.

Yesterday, a Florida judge set a $60,000 bond and placed travel restrictions on Cherfilus-McCormick, who had to surrender her personal passport. She is allowed to travel from Florida to D.C., Maryland, and the Eastern District of Virginia. She is also allowed to keep her Congressional passport to do certain aspects of her job. A spokesperson for Cherfilus-McCormick said she has no intention of resigning from her office.

Warren Tried Criticizing Duffy's Call to Restore Travel Etiquette. Here's How the Secretary Responded.

 

The Democratic Party really has a problem with Americans being told to act civilized while traveling. Last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told those heading home for the holidays that the Golden Age of Travel begins with us, and recommended things like being polite and dressing appropriately to go to the airport.

California Governor Gavin Newsom attacked Duffy for it, and complained about the Trump administration canceling fines for airlines that canceled or delayed flights.

Now Elizabeth Warren is doing the same thing:

Of course, we don't expect Democrats to understand that airlines simply passed the costs of those fines onto consumers through higher ticket prices. They truly believe big corporations will eat the costs Democrats impose on them. That's not the case, of course.

On top of that, delays or cancellations of flights are sometimes safety issues. This writer can only speak for herself, but she'd rather wait a bit to make sure the aircraft is in shape to fly than end up dead in a fiery crash.

But Secretary Duffy wasn't going to let Warren's accusations go unaddressed. He pointed out that she voted against a bill that would have spent $12.5 billion to modernize America's air traffic control (ATC) system.

Duffy is correct. President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) had allocations for ATC upgrades and infrastructure. That was described as a "modernization down-payment" for radar and telecom upgrades, as well as new control centers and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) recapitalization.

One X user asked the question this writer was thinking, "Is her reason to not upgrade the system because she doesn't like people not receiving cancellation money?"

That could be part of it, but as the funding was part of the OBBB, she would have voted against it even if it cured cancer and gave every American a puppy.

That's part of why they object to the civility angle of Duffy's travel pitch. They like the chaos and societal breakdown.

Warren is one of the most feckless Senators, and that's quite the achievement.

Democrats Who Told Military Not to Obey ‘Illegal’ Orders Are ‘Not Being Honest’

 

person1: These six Democrat Congress members, one of the most interesting, odd examples of political performance art. They concocted this video, encouraging, warning, urging members of the military not to follow illegal orders. Wow, Victor, it was just so weird. Your thoughts on it. 

person 2: We have 1.3 million soldiers on active duty, and there are representatives, six of them Congress people and senators, who say on this video, and they all say we have served, we’re veterans, and you don’t have to obey an unlawful order, OK? And it’s in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The idea is that [President] Donald Trump is issuing unlawful orders. They don’t cite one, not one. So, really, the message then becomes, “Hey, you 1.3 million soldiers, you all are lawyers. So, when your commanding officer says, ‘Get in the helicopter, fly through the fog, and look for the downed pilot,’ you say, ‘That’s an unlawful order. I’m not going to.’” 

That is the message. If the message is, “Wink, nod, Donald Trump has been giving unlawful orders, but we don’t want to specify which ones,” there’s a reason for that. And we’ve heard that it’s unlawful to use military force abroad without a congressional authorization. False. [Former President] Barack Obama killed dozens of people with Predator drones, including a U.S. citizen. He joked about it at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he said, “If you want to date my daughter, it’s called Predator, P-R-E-D-A-T-O-R.” OK. 

George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Harry Truman, they’ve all used it. If it’s you can’t send federal troops into a city that’s under siege, [Secretary of State] Colin Powell begged to use 5,000 Marines for the Rodney King [riots], he did. And we’ve had, I think, seven instances where presidents have sent troops in: World War I veterans, Civil War draft, you name it. 

So, they can’t list one thing. And then they say, Uniform Code of Military Justice. OK, Mr. Left-wing Representatives, go look at Article 90 and 92. And it does say you can obey, but then it has lawful and unlawful orders. And you go look at the instances when you can, it’s almost impossible. You have to be absolutely sure that you are being told what … if you read that thing, what an unlawful order is, it’s something like shoot the prisoner, something like that. It’s not what they’re imagining.

And that is highly ironic because in the first term—we have Article 88, since they want to quote the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it says generals, admirals, high-ranking officers shall not disparage, demean, basically smear the commander in chief, the vice president, Cabinet people. And this applies, it says, whether they’re active or retired and subject to recall. We had, I think it was eight or nine four-star admirals who said he was a liar, he was Mussolini, he acted as if he was Hitler, he was a comparable, I think that was General [Michael] Hayden who flashed pictures of Auschwitz, said that Trump was doing the same thing on the border. I could go on. 

So, they’re not being honest. But what’s even worse is—very quickly, and Sami and I talked to some others about it, this insurrectionary idea that Gen. [Mark] Milley, for example, because Trump is so evil, can diagnose him as unstable, then call his Chinese counterpart in the People’s Liberation Army and warn him that he will be contacted if he has any order, Milley, any order, or he can break the chain of command, which he’s not supposed to do, and interfere between theater commanders and the Department of Defense’s secretary, which he did. And he told them all to consult him first.

Or you have Rosa Brooks, 11 days after Donald Trump was inaugurated, saying we’ve got to get rid of this guy. There’s three ways to do it. We either have the 25th Amendment or we impeach him—too slow—or you can have a military coup. Military coup, she said.

And then we had two lieutenant colonels, one was very decorated, Lt. Nagl and said, Gen. Milley, you’re gonna have to remove him. He won’t leave. And he has his little green men. And I tell you what, man, when the 82nd Airborne goes and confronts Trump. he’ll back down. So, he’s basically calling for an OK Corral shootout between the Secret Service or somebody in the 82nd. So, what I’m getting at, Jack, is this is not new. 

And when you add this to the 600 sanctuary cities where they’re defying federal law, it’s like Fort Sumter. Or you have [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi saying, we’re going to arrest any ICE officer in our state that we think breaks one of our laws. They don’t know what the Constitution says, that the superiority lies with the federal government when it is enforcing federal law anywhere in the 50 states.

And yet they keep doing it. And they don’t even believe it, what they’re saying. Because when Jan Brewer was the governor of Arizona, and Obama would not, would not, would not do his federal responsibility and close the border, she tried to. And they sued her. And our liberal judges then said, no, Gov. Brewer. That’s state’s rights. You can’t interfere. And she said, well, he’s not doing his job. It doesn’t matter. Immigration is federal. Those same judges are now saying, yes, we can interfere because before the federal government could not be challenged by the state because it didn’t want to enforce the law. It was derelict and that was wonderful. Now, when the federal government is dutiful and wants to enforce the law, yes, you can interfere. 

I don’t know who their heroes are. Jefferson Davis, John Calhoun, George Wallace, Gen. Scott, [played by] Burt Lancaster in “Seven Days in May.” I don’t know. But it’s one of those. They’re insurrectionists. And we’re going to get a situation—mark my words: We’re going to get a situation next year as the midterms and everything heats up when some crazy blue state governor or mayor is going to tell his local police force to stop an ICE officer. Whether the ICE officer is in the process of arresting somebody or chasing somebody through the woods, as we saw in that tape. And you’re going to have a confrontation. And then we’re going to be Bleeding Kansas 1854. 

And I don’t know how it’s going to end, but this is really dangerous. And the Left keeps pushing the insurrection button. And these people who are telling soldiers to disobey commands if they feel and they’re considered opinion that they can is really bizarre, but it has a precedent. If the chairman of the Joint Chief says that as Dr. Mark Milley with my sophisticated background in psychiatry I tele-diagnosed our commander in chief is unstable, then that gives me a right to disobey any order that he gives and beyond that to contact the Communist Party in China and warn them that we might attack them. And I give them advanced warning.

And that theory is the same thing. 

You soldiers can diagnose your commanding officer as crazy, and he gave you a wrong order. So just disobey it. And then they cloak that in patriotism and their service. I’m a veteran. I’m getting really tired of that too. I really like veterans. I grew up in a family of veterans, and I think it’s a wonderful thing to serve. Everybody I met in the military is wonderful. But when these people say that they’re going to hide behind being a veteran. That’d be like me saying you can’t talk about food policy, Mr. Senator. Have you ever been on a 285 Massey for 12 hours? Have you? Have you ever sprayed dimethoate for six hours in a field? You don’t know anything about farming. You have no right to talk about food policy. 

Everybody has a right to talk about military policy, especially when the military veterans set themselves up to be advocating civil disobedience, which is what they’re doing. They really are, or actually military disobedience.

person 1: I’m glad you mentioned “Seven Days in May,” Victor. I saw it recently. It is a terrific movie, even though it’s a liberal movie. No question, it was made from a liberal perspective. But you wait 60 years, and it’s an indictment of the current liberal sense. 

person 2: It is, it is, it is. Everybody, I want to be very clear: The Left is not principled. They don’t have a position on states’ rights or federal superiority in a constitutional sense. They don’t have a position on sanctuary cities. That is just for the moment because it’s conducive to their larger agenda of acquiring and expanding their power. 

And I’ve said this before, but if you’re some guy and you’re a developer, let’s say in Salt Lake City, and you want to build a condo and you see a three-winged blackbird and you say, that blank-blank blackbird nest is right in the way of my bulldozers. And then somebody says, “Well, you know, it’s on the endangered species list.” “I don’t care. The federal government has no jurisdiction here in Utah.” 

Or you’re in Wyoming, you get your cowboy boots stereotype, you go in and they say, “We can’t sell you that .45.” “Well, I don’t follow the federal gun laws. This is the state of Wyoming. It’s a sanctuary gun city.” They would go ballistic, ballistic. “This is insurrection. You have to follow federal law.” They just pick and choose because they have no principle. Everybody needs to know that. When they get up, like Gavin Newsom, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this about sanctuary cities, if you’re here illegally. 

And then you have Karen Bass and Los Angeles officials deliberately creating apps and trying to work with illegal aliens to resist the rule of law as practiced by federal ICE agents. But believe me, sometimes a federal government is good when the protester is conservative, and that very rarely that happens. 

And so that’s what’s really scary about these people. They’re French Revolutionary Jacobins. They’ll do anything and say anything at any time. And I was really angry about that video. I thought, wow. 

You hide behind your service and then you, for cheap political purposes, you get up there and you send this message to over a million soldiers that there’s going to come an occasion where they’re going to get an illegal order, and they’re going to have the constitutional right to resist it when you don’t tell people, “This is how many orders were resisted in the military the last five years per year, and this is what happens to people who resisted that order.” 

Why don’t they give that information out? 

person 1  Resist and you’ll be a hero, but don’t have a vaccine and we’ll can you. It’s amazing.

person 2: 8,500 people.

Insurrection Chic—Democrats’ Dangerous New Fad

 

I’d like to talk about insurrection chic. By that I mean this phenomenon of the Democrats in particular, and maybe the Left in general, it’s talking about ways of undermining the jurisdiction of our own federal government.

I don’t know what their model is. Is it Jefferson Davis, who ordered South Carolina State Troops to fire on the federal fort at Fort Sumter in 1861 that ushered in the Civil War? Or maybe it’s George Wallace, huh? Standing in the doorstep of the University of Alabama, saying, “We’re not going to, here in Alabama, obey state law on segregation and racial discrimination.”

Or maybe, did you ever see the movie “Seven Days in May” (1964) about an officer, General Scott? I think he was played by Burt Lancaster. And he said, basically, we’re going to nullify the presidential directives and not abide by a treaty of the federal government—try to, essentially, overthrow the government.

This is very ironic because the Left lectured us on insurrection, insurrection, insurrection, even though special counsel Jack Smith never charged President Donald Trump with insurrection. But what’s going on now is quite scary. And it’s not new.

In the first term, we had a number of four-star retired admirals and generals who violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It said even retired flag officers were subject to the statute that says you shall not disparage the president of the United States. Yet, they called him Mussolini. They said that he was analogous to the people at Auschwitz, he was a liar.

We had one officer who said, the sooner the better, Trump should be removed. We have elections for that. We don’t talk like that. We had two lieutenant colonels that said they bragged that the 101st Airborne would beat the Secret Service and force Donald Trump to get out of the White House. It’s pretty awful.

Now, lately, it’s getting very scary. We’ve had—the mayor of New York says that federal law essentially doesn’t exist in the city of New York. When he takes over, it’s international law. And that he will arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under diplomatic protection, as a foreign dignitary visiting the U.N. What’s he going to do? Order the NYPD to stop the Secret Service that may be protecting Netanyahu when he arrives as a guest?

We had Mayor Brandon Johnson in Chicago say that he was not going to obey federal law. In fact, he was going to oppose it. That wasn’t just—I don’t know—theoretical because when Immigration and Customs Enforcement was trapped, a convoy of ICE agents were trapped, the Chicago area police force did not come to their aid, by explicit orders not to.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass said that city officials are conspiring, working to tip off illegal aliens against the efforts of the federal government, to stop them.

In California, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who had called the president of the United States the most vile creature in the world, the worst creature in the world, a vile creature, and who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV, she said that state law enforcement might arrest federal officials who were enforcing the immigration statutes. What? Would that be a shoot-out? Or what would that be? It’s getting very, very scary.

And then, most recently, we had a number of Democratic Congress people and senators say in a video that they were addressing soldiers, and they said, you have the right to disobey an order, if it’s unlawful. They never gave one example of any order, of any order, that Donald Trump or any member of the administration or any senior officer had issued anyone that was deemed illegal. What was the point of that? What was the point of telling 1.3 million soldiers that are now on active duty that you have the right to disobey a superior’s order?

Did they quote Article 90 and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice? No. It outlines specifically the very, very, very, very rare conditions under which a soldier can say, “What you ordered me is unlawful.” And you know what they are. They’re things like using violence in an improper way against another person or desertion. But there’s no example that they can give. None at all.

We have 600 jurisdictions in which blue cities and states say that the federal law no longer applies in their jurisdiction. That’s sort of neo-Confederate nullification that’s prompted the Civil War. And you know, when Jefferson Davis, when he ordered South Carolina troops to fire on Fort Sumter, all he was doing was saying that the federal government is at war with the state. That’s what our mayors are doing in these blue jurisdictions.

Do they believe that that is a principle that they would extend to everybody? No. If a county in Utah said, “We’re conservative, we don’t believe in the”—I don’t know—“the Endangered Species Act. We’re not gonna stop construction for a newt.” Would they say, “That’s fine, you can nullify federal law”? No, they wouldn’t.

If somebody in Montana said, “I don’t like federal gun registration, it just hampers the people in our county. It doesn’t apply here,” would the Left say, “Yes. That’s what we do with immigration. Congratulations”? No.

So, what’s going on? Why are they nullifying federal law? Why are they advising protesters in Portland how to avoid arrests by federal authorities?

Why are they telling people in all of these blue jurisdictions that they will appeal to a higher authority, the United Nations? Mayor Johnson says he’ll call in the U.N., the Commission on Human Rights. Is he going to abide by that commission that in the past has had members like, I don’t know, Communist China, North Korea, Iran?

Is that who he thinks have a higher authority than the Constitution? Does he understand the president of the United States was elected by a majority of the population who voted?

So, this is getting very, very scary. And why are they doing it? The Left has no power in the legislative, executive, or judicial branch of government. Their agenda is one that most people do not want. And they want to create as much Teslas. In the past, that has included firebombing Tesla dealerships. That has involved street protests that turned violent against ICE. That has involved social media celebrating assassins and violence.

And now it’s the nullification of federal laws that, in the Constitution, take precedent over local and state laws, when federal officers are trying to protect federal property, as they are now, and enforce federal statutes, as they are now. In other words, the Left is neo-Confederate and insurrectionary. And it should stop before we get into 1861, again.

‘We Did That’: Baby Boomers’ ‘Generational Betrayal’

 

person 1: So, Victor, let’s talk about this generational warfare. I have two things I want to read. Sorry, folks who are listening. This is a post from Benny Johnson, the conservative social media commentator. I used to be his boss once upon a time at National Review for a short while. He posted on X the other day:

“This is generational betrayal. What Boomer will have the backbone and humility to admit this, apologize and spend their final years and energy to right this wrong. I hear nothing. A generation voting and regulating themselves, lavish riches, and closing the door on the way out.”

This has to do with home ownership: the lack of home ownership by young Americans and the increased home ownership by the elders.

Just bear with me, folks, and then I’m going to shut up and Victor will share his wisdom.

So, Michael Brendan Dougherty, my old colleague at National Review, wrote a piece the other day, “Boomers Didn’t Pass on the American Dream.” And it ends like this:

American men are less fit, less likely to be married, less likely to have children, less likely to own a home, and consequently, more likely to be addicted to a drug, more likely to be marred in medical debt or on a disability, and more likely to be politically alienated. To the extent that political conservatism has in any way sanctified these results, telling Boomers that they did it all by their own virtue, or assuring them that posterity failed them, rather than that they failed to pass on their country in a better condition than they inherited it, it must repent. To the extent that conservatism pats itself on the back for victories so long ago in the past that they’re not a living memory for the majority of its citizens, it is losing the fight for the future. Fifty-year mortgages will only compound the idiocy of indenturing the young for the profit of elderly asset holders. The idea that young Americans, blocked out of ownership of real assets, most especially the ornaments of middle class and familial life will seek to conserve the very institutions that dispossess them is a joke only an overfed ideologue could believe.

Pretty powerful claims, charges, and worth your commentary because, Victor, this is spreading in social media.

person 2: Yeah, I think boomers who are listening to this are trying to sort it out. They see the two arguments. The argument that Dougherty made was, kind of, we got ours and we inherited certain values that were inculcated into us. We inherited a 4% gross domestic product per annum growth. We inherited a less regulatory society, a more can-do. We had a house.

I went to University of California, Santa Cruz. I think it was about $900. There was no tuition. There was just $300 a quarter for fees. And then once we got ours and our homes and everything, we regulated, we were going to create Nirvana. We were going to create all these elaborate procedures in health and home buying. And the result was we regulated to death. And then this young group suffered the consequences.

That’s his argument. And it’s both that we changed the structure of America to the detriment of these young generations. And then we created an ethos, or we didn’t pass on the Depression-era, World War II ordeal that our parents did. There’s a lot to say for that. I agree with that. Absolutely.

That being said, a lot of you are gonna say, “Hey, Victor, not so fast.” And what they mean by that is, have you ever asked any of your kids if they’ve had Spam? I don’t think they’ve ever eaten Spam, do you?

person 1: Me? No. They’ve never eaten Spam. I’ve eaten Spam. I have, but yeah.

person 2: Yes, we’ve all eaten Spam. I can remember being 7 years old and eating things that were almost surplus at the cafeteria in a rural school. I can remember it was pretty poor. I can remember that. If you were in the late ’50s or ’60s and you were middle to lower, middle class, and you wanted to drive 200 miles to the Bay Area, it was sort of like sailing on the New World, Santa Maria. I mean, when I was a student, I broke down at least seven or eight times trying to get 200 miles.

Remember carburetors, distributors, cars. And if they were used, and I had a used old Volvo, it was just a wreck. Then, of course, when you’re growing up, you share your bedroom with your sibling or two siblings. I think at one point we had three of us in there when my cousin moved in.

person 1: I had five in my bedroom.

person 2: Well, I never had a single bedroom. I had a twin brother. We always shared it. But my point is that, and then you know, something called “chores.” Do you think that these young people, I don’t know. I don’t think that on weekends they picked walnuts up for eight hours a day and then their parents had to scrub their hands, even though we wore mittens because walnut stain made our hands almost black. But we did all of that stuff, and you know what we were told? We were told correctly, so that this was a joke compared to what our parents went through.

My father said, “I moved into the barn at 12 years old. There was no electricity. I wired a hot wire over to the house. I had one cold water pipe. I had an outhouse. That’s where I lived so that my sister could have one of the two bedrooms: my parents, and she had that.” And I looked at that house, it was about 800, 900 square feet, and that was considered really nice.

What I’m getting at is that generation did not—I think Doughtery was right, that we did not pass on that generational depression, that unique nexus of depression in World War II. And the idea of the ordeal they went through. We were the beneficiaries of that, and yet we didn’t pass on that. It’s sort of like that old classical idea that Athens had the Marathon Men. They created the Periclean class, and then the Periclean destroyed Athens by producing the third generation.

Or as my grandfather always said, he’d point out to a house, and he said, “See that right there? That’s a big fancy house. The guy who built that came from Armenia, and he had nothing, nothing. He lived in a shack. He worked from the dawn up to sunset. He worked seven days a week. And when he died, his whole land was paid for, and he had money in the bank, and his son, who’s a good farmer, and he built a beautiful home. But I worry about that family because they don’t work.” Like I said, “Well maybe the son’s a businessman now, he understands the food market.”

And then the third generation before my grandfather died. “So that boy that’s your age came out to see you the other day. He’s gonna destroy that whole legacy because he doesn’t even know who his grandfather was and how hard he worked.” It’s true. So that this Generation X or Z, or what are they? Zs?

person 1: I lost track.

person 2: I don’t even know what they are anymore, but they’re out. They vote for [Zohran] Mamdani, and they can’t do this, and they can’t do that. But you know what? When you turn 18, I’ve never played a video game in my life. How many hours have you spent on video games? And what if you had not spent that time on video games?

I’m not talking at 12 or 13, I’m talking at 16, 17, 18. Maybe you could have taken an online course in electricity. Maybe you could have taken an online course in roofing. Why not do something like that? And then, when you think that you’re taking three units here and six units there, why do that?

Just get it over. Just take the loan and then take 15 units and get out. But don’t do this, and then kind of do that, and kind of do this. I never lived at home after I was 18, 17. I went to college. I came back and then I came home and farmed, and my parents called up and said, “Your grandmother’s 91 years old and we are not living on the farm, and would you please come home for a summer and take care of her? And she’s all by herself.” And I did. And then my mom would say, “The house is falling apart. Would you stay?” And I said, “I’m leaving. I’m going to get a job back East. Part-time, by the way.” And then I stayed because the house was falling apart. But my point I’m making is, both sides have it. We are culpable for not passing on the values that our parents taught us in many cases.

And we altered the roles of the economy and the way the United States functioned, the school system especially. And yes, because when I went to UC Santa Cruz, I took something called “Introduction to the Western Civilization,” and I had a guy named Jasper Rose who taught art history. And another young [professor], a woman, I’ll remember her name, Mary, and they were fantastic teachers of art history.

I don’t think they have that demanding curriculum. And we did that. Our generation destroyed that curriculum. So, they go to college now and it’s the poetics of masculinity or toxic masculinity, or the racial colonial settler, or development of the Oregon Trail or something like that.

They’ve just polluted everything.

Why the Green Agenda Is Crumbling

 

For most of my life, at least for the last 35 years, we have accepted the climate change orthodoxy. We used to be global warming, and then, when things were not always warming, but they were cooling, they changed the name to climate change to suggest that whatever the temperature extreme was, it was all due to carbon emissions caused by, in general, humans, but in particular, Westerners, who were polluting the planet with heat.

That was the dominant narrative. I didn’t think in my lifetime that I would see an end to that dominance, even though there were inconsistencies.

The planet is 4 billion years old. And man has only been here for 300,000 years. And we only have accurate record-keeping of temperature fluctuations for the last 150 years. And even within that period, we have cyclical changes between decades of abnormal temperatures, whether too hot or too cold. And before the Industrial Revolution, in some cases, by tree rings and ice in the Arctic sampling.

There was always debate. But the dominant narrative said, “No, we have to radically change our economy and move away from fossil fuels to renewable,” and that was usually wind and solar.

And then something’s happened lately. King Gustaf XVI, the hereditary monarch of, you know, figurines, as it is, not an actual person in power, in Sweden kind of mused openly the other day—he’s known as a rabid environmentalist. He said, why are you—basically, I’m not quoting him literally. He said, why are we ruining the economy of Europe by having exorbitant power cost, electricity cost, when we only contribute to 6% of global warming worldwide?

Then Bill Gates shocked the world when he said he no longer believes that there is an impending climate change crisis. This was followed by a lot of other people who said, “Let’s take a different look at this.” And of course, the second tenure of President Donald Trump has people in it, in energy, interior, treasury, who were saying, “You know, we’re not gonna subsidize this anymore.”

And this is collated with the disasters that were caused by global climate change worries or Armageddon, such as the high-speed rail program in California that was supposed to replace automobiles—$15 billion, $20 billion. Not one foot of track laid. The solar plant down in the desert of California that is being dismantled. Or the battery storage in Moss Landing, near Monterey, that has caught fire twice. I could go on.

So, there was a lot of skepticism, both by individuals who were influential and by the general public, for good cause.

What is causing this? Well, the first thing is, in reference to Bill Gates, is artificial intelligence. It’s going to require an unprecedented level of electrical generation. It takes huge amounts of electricity. We don’t have it. And we will not get it by subsidizing wind turbines and solar panels.

Sam Altman, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, said, if the United States wants to achieve preeminence in the field—and this seems to be the greatest technological breakthrough since the Industrial Revolution—we’re gonna have to build 100 gigawatt, 1-gigawatt plant, that’s the size of a large nuclear reactor, a thousand megawatts. We’re gonna have to build, he says, a hundred per year or the equivalent of clean coal or natural gas.

So, that influenced Bill Gates. That shook him up. That’s not compatible with his prior green idea that we’re gonna supplant fossil fuels.

Another reason is geostrategic. People are starting to become aware that Russia is a bad actor and Iran is a bad actor. And they depend on oil exports and, therefore, the high price of oil to fuel their military ambitions.

The United States became the largest producer of fossil fuels during the first Trump administration, then President Joe Biden, for all of his green rhetoric, pivoted in his third and fourth year, so he could win the election, and began pumping oil again. Donald Trump took that 12 million to 13 million barrels, has increased it to 14 million. And the price of world oil is going down. And that hurts Iran. And that hurts Russia. And that benefits our allies, like Europe and Japan, that would like more liquified natural gas shipped from the United States. And so, there were geostrategic reasons.

Let’s be frank. Everybody has sort of seen what China’s doing. It’s playing the West. It talks a great game about global warming: “You guys, we all have to reduce our admissions.” And then what does it do? Two things.

It subsidizes cheap export of solar panels and wind turbines, below the cost of production, to bankrupt competing industries in Europe and the United States to get the West hooked on solar and wind, even though it is a very expensive and unreliable source of electricity. Meanwhile, as we get hooked on Chinese exports, they build two to three coal or nuclear plants per month, affordable energy that will give them a competitive edge over the West.

Then there’s the Third World that has been telling us for the last 20 years that we are culpable for global warming, even though the two greatest heat emission areas in the world are China and India.

Nonetheless, governments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia say: You people owe us because you started the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century. And you’ve been polluting the planet ever since. And you create all of your industries and your affluent lifestyles by burning fossil fuels. And therefore, you should pay us. Not we pay you, or we don’t have to cut back, we’re late to the game.

And we should say to them, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We burned more fossil fuels in the past because we created the Industrial Revolution. And we do today. We provide you the cars, we provide you the industrial plants, we provide you the plastics. If you want us to stop, we won’t export it to you. And then, maybe we’ll pay reparations. And you can do your own industrialization. Don’t take stuff from us that requires fossil fuels that’s essential to your economies and then tell us that we have to pay an added tax on it because we’re warming up the planet, as if it’s only for our purposes as well as yours.”

Then there’s the, I guess it would be—what would we call it? The hypocrisy. The people who have been the avatars of climate change never suffer the consequences of their own ideology.

Former President Barack Obama said the planet would be inundated pretty soon if we didn’t address global climate change. Why would he buy a seaside estate at Martha’s Vineyard or one on the beach of Hawaii if he really did believe that the oceans would rise and flood his multimillion-dollar investment?

Why would John Kerry fly all over the world on a private plane and then tell the rest of us that we’re flying too much commercial when his carbon imprint was a thousand times more than the individual American?

Why would people on the California coast say, “We have to have wind and solar, and we have to get kilowattage up to 40 cents a kilowatt—the cost—because we want to use less fossil fuels”? And then the temperature from La Jolla to Berkeley is between, what, 65 and 75 year-round, where here in Bakersfield or Fresno or Sacramento it can be 105. And poor people can’t afford to run their air conditioners.

Add it all up: the inconsistency of the global warming narrative, the self-interest in the people who promote it, and the logic that they have not presented, empirically, the evidence that would convince us that we have to radically transform our economies on the wishes of a few elites that do not have the evidence, but do have a lot of hypocrisy in the process.

When Common Sense Is Under Siege: The Erosion of Rational Leadership

 

al overreach. Senator Tim Kaine once remarked that "God-given rights" are dangerous — a statement that defies the very premise of American liberty. Our nation was founded on the belief that rights are inherent, not granted by government. To call that dangerous is to misunderstand the essence of constitutional democracy.

These kinds of statements aren't just intellectually lazy — they're politically reckless. They fuel division, distort public understanding, and distract from real issues. They also raise serious questions about the judgment and fitness of those who make them. In a time when our country faces complex challenges — from economic uncertainty to global conflict — we need leaders who can think clearly, speak honestly, and legislate responsibly.

The consequences of abandoning common sense are already visible. Girls are losing scholarships and competitive opportunities to biologically male athletes. Parents are being silenced when they raise concerns about privacy and safety. And voters are being told that their desire for fairness is tantamount to hate.

We saw this firsthand when Virginia Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears addressed a group of concerned parents about the need to protect their daughters from an adult male who had entered girls' locker rooms and exposed himself. As she spoke, a protester held up a sign that read, "Hey Winsome, If Trans can't share your bathroom, then Blacks can't share my water fountain." The comparison was not only absurd — it was a grotesque distortion of the real horrors of Jim Crow segregation. Equating parental concern for their daughters' safety with racial apartheid is not just intellectually dishonest; it's morally bankrupt.

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This is not progress — it's regression masquerading as inclusion.

To be clear, transgender individuals have constitutional rights like everyone else. But those rights must coexist with the rights of others — not override them. A truly inclusive society finds ways to accommodate diversity without erasing boundaries that serve legitimate purposes. That's the balance we must strive for — not the false equivalence peddled by politicians like Reeves.

It's time for voters to demand better. We need representatives who understand the difference between compassion and capitulation, between inclusion and intrusion. We need leaders who can defend fairness without fear, and who recognize that protecting girls' sports and spaces is not an act of exclusion — it's an act of integrity.

The stakes are too high to tolerate intellectual shortcuts or ideological extremism. When lawmakers compare locker room policies to segregation, or dismiss foundational rights as dangerous, they reveal a worldview that is not just misguided — it's incompatible with the principles of a free and rational society.

Let us be clear: common sense is not hate. Biological reality is not bigotry. And protecting children is not oppression. 

If we want to preserve freedom, fairness, and reason in our public institutions, we must start by holding our leaders accountable — not just for what they do, but for what they say. Because words matter. And when those words betray logic, history, and truth, it's not just a gaffe — it's a warning.

Let's heed that warning. Let's restore common sense to the public square. And let's ensure that the next generation of leaders is guided not by rage or rhetoric — but by reason, responsibility, and respect for the truth

Congress Should Pass a Discontinuing Resolution

 

Unfortunately, the Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives in that election and maintained it throughout Reagan's presidency. Yet Reagan still proposed closing the Department of Education.

In a radio address delivered on March 12, 1983, he explained his education agenda. "I'd like to talk to you today about one of the most important issues that touches our lives and shapes our future: the education of America's children," Reagan said.

"(I)n recent years, our traditions of opportunity and excellence in education have been under siege," he said. "We've witnessed the growth of a huge education bureaucracy. Parents have often been reduced to the role of outsiders. Government-manufactured inflation made private schools and higher education too expensive for too many families. Even God, source of all knowledge, was expelled from classrooms."

"Federal spending on education soared eightfold in the last 20 years, rising much faster than inflation," he said. "But during the same period, scholastic aptitude test scores went down, down and down."

What remedies did Reagan propose?

He called for bringing prayer back to public schools, abolishing the Department of Education and providing parents with tuition tax credits and vouchers to help them send their children to private schools.

"Can we not begin by welcoming God back in our schools and by setting an example for children to abide by His Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule?" said Reagan.

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"But better education doesn't mean a bigger Department of Education," he said. "In fact, the Department of Education should be abolished."

He then offered some proposals aimed at helping "parents reestablish control and to assist them in meeting education costs."

"First, tuition tax credits, which we've already sent to Congress, will soften the double-payment burden for those paying public school taxes and independent or parochial school tuition," he said. "This proposal will help those who need help the most -- low- and middle-income families."

"Second," he said, "we're proposing a voucher system to help parents of disadvantaged children. We want to give states or individual school districts the option of using federal education funds to create vouchers so these parents can choose which school, private or public, they want their children to attend."

"Third," he said, "we're proposing a system of educational savings accounts to help families save for college education."

Reagan was unable to get these ideas through a Democrat-controlled House. But after the Republicans took control of Congress in the 1994 election (when former Democratic President Bill Clinton was in office), they did enact legislation creating 529 plans that allowed families to save money for tuition payments in accounts where the earning were not taxed.

As reported by Americans for Prosperity, 18 states as of this June had enacted "pro-school choice bills."

In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the secretary of education to, "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely."

But the department remains open.

In fiscal 1988, Reagan's last full fiscal year in office, the Department of Education spent $18.246 billion, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement. In fiscal 2024, former President Joe Biden's last full fiscal year in office, it spent $268.353 billion.

Republicans in Congress should work to pass legislation permanently discontinuing this department before Trump completes his last fiscal year in office.

Our Golden Age

 

We media types obsess about America's problems.

But we should acknowledge that today, life in America is better than life has been anywhere, ever.

For most of history, the norm was hunger, disease, illiteracy, slavery, and war.

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There were a few exceptions (from some of those problems) -- so-called golden ages, Ancient Athens, Rome, the Renaissance, etc.

In our new video, historian Johan Norberg, author of the new book "Peak Human," looks at the miracle of the Roman Empire, which at one point extended throughout most of Europe, and parts of Africa and Asia.

Ancient Rome inspired our form of government, a republic with a system of checks and balances.

"There is a reason why we have a Senate and they meet in the Capitol," explains Norberg. "We borrow these ideas from the Romans."

The Romans were ferocious warriors, but so were many at the time. The Romans were able to create an empire because they tried new things:

"They gave people among the subjected the ability to have a second career in Rome," says Norberg. "They made them citizens and allowed them to do business, to have a career in the military. Some of the subjected people could even end up being emperors!"

"The conquered -- some became emperors?" I ask.

"The son of a freed slave eventually ended up on the throne of Rome. That tells you something about the power of meritocracy and of openness. You'll get the best brains if you're open to more people."

Rome thrived because the Romans took ideas and talent from all over the world.

They didn't do it to be kind.

"Tolerance was a weapon, often literally a weapon," Norberg explains. "They got their swords from the Spaniards, ships from Carthage, new business models from other groups. Because Rome was such a huge integrated free trade area, you could source the best material, the best technology from any part of the empire. Therefore, they could become the masters of the world."

Of course, eventually, Rome fell.

There were many reasons. Disease, barbarian invaders, and one reason that modern societies should fear: entitlement spending.

Norberg says Rome collapsed because of:

"Bread and circuses. The emperors wanted to become popular by handing out free stuff to people. Originally, this started small. You just handed the very poor means of subsistence. But it was popular, so the group that lived on the public's expense grew larger all the time. Emperors complained about this. Everyone from Caesar and onwards said, 'We've got to reform this system because it means that we have fewer people working and more people consuming.' But no one succeeded."

It reminds me of the unsustainable promises we see today: Social Security and Medicare in the U.S., absurd retirement promises in other countries -- welfare plans going broke.

"Once you have an ever-expanding system of entitlements that you can't afford," says Norberg, "that's often the beginning of the decline and fall ... Romans could conquer the world, but they couldn't do entitlement reform."

Instead, Roman emperors did what modern governments do: printed more money.

Actually, since they used coins, not paper money, they devalued their currency by putting less gold and silver in each coin.

"Inflation was much worse than barbarian invaders," says Norberg. "The emperor blamed greedy businessmen -- something that we hear today. He imposed price controls on 1,000 goods. But obviously, it all failed. Prices kept rising and undermined the Roman Empire completely."

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Today, America is one of the richest and most inventive countries in the world. Will our "golden age" continue?

"One of the most worrying signs in history is you begin to take wealth and comfort for granted," says Norberg. "You forget what made it possible to begin with. I see a lot of worrying signs right now. We have a backlash against things that keep our society innovative, like trade, migration, unsustainable debts ... But that doesn't mean that we're doomed ... It's not automatic, this decline and fall phase. You can unleash new waves of innovation and progress. There is still time. We can still save this golden age."

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of "Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines."