Thursday, July 03, 2025

The End of Patriotism?

 

America has a major problem: nearly half of Americans -- 42% -- don't believe in America. According to Gallup, just 58% of adults say they are either "extremely" or "somewhat" proud to be American. That number has been in steep decline for a decade: In 2004, that number was 91%, and was still 81% as of 2016. Then it began to tumble, and it hasn't recovered.

The trend isn't equivalent across the political spectrum. Republicans have always been far prouder of their country: their pride number has never dropped below 84% in 2022, and currently stands at 92%. The serious decline is located among independents, who have dropped from 76% in 2013 to 53% today, and Democrats, who plummeted from 80% to 36% during that same period. Furthermore, Americans' age correlates highly with levels of American pride: 83% of the Silent Generation venerates the country, as do 75% of Baby Boomers and 71% of Generation Xers -- but just 58% of Millennials and 41% of Generation Z do.

So, what precisely happened?

The answer is simple: Republicans started winning, and Democrats spiraled off. President Donald Trump's victory in 2016 sent Democrats spiraling into an anti-American black hole, with their pride in America dropping off a cliff during the first Trump term, recovering only moderately during Joe Biden's term (62% in 2021), and then plummeting again this year. Democrats embraced a new and extreme anti-American point of view, reflected most obviously in the elevation of figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; and now New York Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani.

These figures, emblems of a new wave in the Democratic Party, are disaffected with America in general. If the promise of Barack Obama is that the vessel of the Democratic Party could be used to bottle the fire and fervor of the revolutionary left, these radicals believe that all bottles must be shattered -- that the institutions of the United States must be exploded entirely. They see the reelection of Donald Trump as indicative of a deep rot at the heart of the American experiment, and wish to eviscerate the fundamental ideas of that experiment. They champion the supposed virtue of the Third World and the supposed evil of the United States; the supposed beauties of socialism and evils of capitalism; the supposed virtue of transgressive social values and the supposed evils of traditionalism. They believe that America's unique Constitution is a framework for oppression; they believe that rights are mere guises for despotic power, and that duties are cynically placed fetters upon their true selves. They are, as I describe in my upcoming book, "Lions and Scavengers," scavengers: They are all about tearing down, not about building something new.

They have taken over the Democratic Party -- and they are making extraordinary inroads among younger Americans. Ironically, that's due to the failure of the very institutions the political left hijacked and misused for decades: Democrats heavily regulated and taxed the free market and then blamed the free market for recession or inflation; Democrats hijacked our educational institutions to pay off their union cronies and indoctrinate young people in their mindset and then blamed capitalists for failing to pay off young people's debts; Democrats abused our scientific and governmental institutions and then suggested that Republican resistance was actually Biblical fundamentalism rearing its ugly head.

Meanwhile, political independents grow increasingly discouraged by our politics. They see Republicans shifting the deck chairs atop the Titanic of state as Democrats eagerly drill more holes in the hull -- and they are increasingly depressed. They are not wrong to be. But they are wrong to believe that they can or should chart a middle course between those who love America and her founding principles and those who despise them. We should all be proud of America, the greatest country in the history of the world, with all of its faults and flaws. And we should work to correct those faults and flaws rather than seeking its overthrow, or despairing and throwing up our hands.

The Decline and Fall of Our So-Called Degreed Experts

 

The first six months of the Trump administration have not been kind to the experts and the degree-holding classes.

Almost daily during the tariff hysterias of March, we were told by university economists and most of the PhDs employed in investment and finance that the U.S. was headed toward a downward, if not recessionary, spiral.

Most economists lectured that trade deficits did not really matter. Or they insisted that the cures to reduce them were worse than the $1.1 trillion deficit itself.

They reminded us that free, rather than fair, trade alone ensured prosperity.

So, the result of Trump's foolhardy tariff talk would be an impending recession. America would soon suffer rising joblessness, inflation--or rather a return to stagflation--and likely little, if any, increase in tariff revenue as trade volume declined.

Instead, recent data show increases in tariff revenue. Personal real income and savings were up. Job creation exceeded prognoses. There was no surge in inflation. The supposedly "crashed" stock market reached historic highs.

Common-sense Americans might not have been surprised. The prior stock market frenzy was predicated on what was, in theory, supposed to have happened rather than what was likely to occur. After all, if tariffs were so toxic and surpluses irrelevant, why did our affluent European and Asian trading rivals insist on both surpluses and protective tariffs?

Most Americans recalled that the mere threat of tariffs and Trump's jawboning had led to several trillion dollars in promised foreign investment and at least some plans to relocate manufacturing and assembly back to the United States. Would that change in direction not lead to business optimism and eventually more jobs? Would countries purposely running up huge surpluses through asymmetrical trade practices not have far more to lose in negotiations than those suffering gargantuan deficits?

Were Trump's art-of-the-deal threats of prohibitive tariffs not mere starting points in negotiations that would eventually lead to likely agreements more favorable to the U.S. than in the past and moderate rather than punitive tariffs?

Would not the value of the huge American consumer market mean that our trade partners, who were racking up substantial surpluses, would agree they could afford modest tariffs and trim their substantial profit margins rather than suicidally price themselves out of a lucrative market entirely?

Economists and bureaucrats were equally wrong on the border.

We were told for four years that only "comprehensive immigration reform" would stop illegal immigration. In fact, most Americans differed. They knew firsthand that we had more than enough immigration laws, but had elected as President Joe Biden, who deliberately destroyed borders and had no intention of enforcing existing laws.

When Trump promised that he would ensure that, instead of 10,000 foreign nationals entering illegally each day, within a month, no one would, our experts scoffed. But if the border patrol went from ignoring or even aiding illegal immigrants to stopping them right at the border, why would such a prediction be wrong?

Those favoring a reduction in illegal immigration and deportations also argued that crime would fall, and citizen job opportunities would increase, given an estimated 500,000 aliens with criminal records had entered illegally during the Biden administration, while millions of other illegal aliens were working off the books, for cash, and often at reduced wages.

Indeed, once the border was closed tightly, hundreds of thousands were returned to their country, and employers began turning to U.S. citizens. Job opportunities did increase. Crime did go down. Legal-only immigration regained its preferred status over illegal entry.

Trump talked of trying voluntary deportation--again to wide ridicule from immigration "experts." But why would not a million illegal aliens wish to return home "voluntarily"-- if they were given free flights, a $1,000 bonus, and, most importantly, a chance later to reapply for legal entry once they arrived home?

Many of our national security experts warned that taking out Iran's nuclear sites was a fool's errand. It would supposedly unleash a Middle East tsunami of instability. It would cause a wave of terrorism. It would send oil prices skyrocketing. It would not work, ensuring Iran would soon reply with nuclear weapons.

In fact, oil prices decreased after the American bombing. A twenty-five-minute entrance into Iranian airspace and bombing led to a ceasefire, not a conflagration.

As for a big power standoff, World War III, and 30,000 dead, common sense asked why China would wish the Strait of Hormuz to close, given that it imports half of all Middle Eastern oil produced?

Why would Russia--bogged down in Ukraine and suffering nearly a million casualties--wish to mix it up in Iran, after ignominiously fleeing Syria and the fall of its Assad clients?

Russia usually thinks of Russia, period. It does not lament when tensions elsewhere are expected to spike oil prices. Why would Russia resupply Iran's destroyed Russian-made anti-aircraft systems, when it was desperate to ward off Ukrainian air attacks on its homeland, and Iran would likely again lose any imported replacements?

As for waves of terror, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis have suffered enormous losses from Israel. Their leadership has been decapitated; their streams of Iranian money have been mostly truncated. Why would they rush to Iran's side to war with Israel, when Iran did not come to their aid when they were battling and losing to the Israelis?

Has a theater-wide war really ever started when one side entered and left enemy territory in 25 minutes, suffering no casualties and likely killing few of the enemy?

As far as the extent of damage to Iran's nuclear infrastructure, why should we believe our expert pundit class?

Prior to the American and Israeli bombing, many of them warned that Iran was not on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon, and therefore, there was little need for any such preemptive action.

Then, post facto, the same experts flipped. Now they claimed, after the bombing that severely damaged most Iranian nuclear sites, that there was an increased threat, given that some enriched uranium (which they had previously discounted) surely had survived and thus marked a new existential danger of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Was Trump really going to "blow up", "destroy" or "cripple" NATO, as our diplomatic experts insisted, when his first-term jawboning led from six to twenty-three nations meeting their two percent of GDP defense spending promises?

Given two ongoing theater-wide wars, given Trump's past correct predictions about the dangers of the Nord Stream II pipeline, given the vulnerability of an anemic NATO to Russian expansionism, and given that Russian leader Vladimir Putin did not invade during Trump's first term, unlike the three presidencies before and after his own, why wouldn't NATO agree to rearm to five percent, and appreciate Trump's efforts both to bolster the capability of the alliance and the need to end the Ukraine war?

Why were our "scientific" pollsters so wrong in the last three presidential elections, and so at odds with the clearly discernible electoral shifts in the general electorate? Where were crackpot ideas like defund the police, transgender males competing in women's sports, and open borders first born and nurtured?

Answer: the university, and higher education in general.

The list of wrongheaded, groupthink, and degreed expertise could be vastly expanded. We remember the "51 intelligence authorities" who swore the Hunter Biden laptop was "likely" cooked up by the Russians. Our best and brightest economists signed letters insisting that Biden's multitrillion-dollar wasteful spending would not result in inflation spikes. Our global warming professors' past predictions should have ensured that Americans were now boiling, with tidal waves destroying beachfront communities, including Barack Obama's two beachfront multimillion-dollar estates.

Our legal eagles, after learning nothing from the bogus Mueller investigation and adolescent Steele dossier, but with impressive Ivy League degrees, pontificated for years that, by now, Trump would be in jail for life, given 91 "walls are closing in" and "bombshell" indictments.

So why are the degreed classes so wrong and yet so arrogantly never learn anything from their past flawed predictions?

One, our experts usually receive degrees from our supposedly marquee universities. But as we are now learning from long overdue autopsies of institutionalized campus racial bias, neo-racial segregation, 50-percent-plus price-gauging surcharges on federal grants, and rabid antisemitism, higher education in America has become anti-Enlightenment. Universities now wage war against free-thinkers, free speech, free expression, and anything that freely questions the deductive groupthink of the diversity/equity/inclusion commissariat, and global warming orthodoxies.

The degreed expert classes emerge from universities whose faculties are 90-95 percent left-wing and whose administrations are overstaffed and terrified of their radical students. The wonder is not that the experts are incompetent and biased, but that there are a brave few who are not.

Two, Trump drove the degreed class insane to the degree it could no longer, even if it were willing and able (and it was not), offer empirical assessments of his policies. From his crude speech to his orange skin to his Queens accent to his MAGA base to his remarkable counterintuitive successes and to his disdain for the bicoastal elite, our embarrassing experts would rather be dead wrong and anti-Trump than correct in their assessments -- if they in any small way helped Trump.

Three, universities are not just biased, but increasingly mediocre and ever more isolated from working Americans and their commonsense approaches to problem solving. PhD programs in general are not as rigorous as they were even two decades ago. Grading, assessments, and evaluations in professional schools must increasingly weigh non-meritocratic criteria, given their admissions and hiring protocols are not based on disinterested evaluation of past work and expertise.

The vast endowments of elite campuses, the huge profit-making foreign enrollments, and the assured, steady stream of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid created a sense of fiscal unreality, moral smugness, unearned superiority, and ultimately, blindness to just how isolated and disliked the professoriate had become.

But the public has caught on that too many Ivy-League presidents were increasingly a mediocre, if not incompetent, bunch. Most university economists could not run a small business. The military academies did not always turn out the best generals and admirals. The most engaging biographers were not professors. And plumbers and electricians were usually more skilled in their trades than most journalist graduates were in their reporting.

Add it all up, and the reputation of our predictors, prognosticators, and experts has been radically devalued to the point of utter worthlessness.

128 Democrats Reject Latest Trump Impeachment—Here’s the Major Reason Why

 

The Democrats, under kind of a volatile and unhinged Rep. Al Green, introduced articles of impeachment in an effort to impeach President Donald Trump for a third time.

Remember, there were two successful impeachments. But of course, they failed to get a conviction in the Senate during Trump’s first term.

And this one was strange because 128 Democrats of the House caucus voted against it. And so, Reps. Al Green and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and all of these people that were affiliates for “the squad” and the radical fringe couldn’t even get a majority of Democrats.

And you know why that was? Think about it for a reason. One of them was that Sen. Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who’s not speaker but she still has the influence on Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the speaker who voted against the resolution, said, “Wait a minute. You got to remember that if we do this, we’re going to get killed by clips every day during the midterms.”

And those clips are going to show President Barack Obama, in the single year 2016, he dropped 26,000 bombs. And it wasn’t just in Syria. It wasn’t just in Iraq. It wasn’t just in Afghanistan. He dropped them in Libya. He dropped them in Somalia. He dropped them in Yemen.

Twenty-six thousand bombs. And they all had one thing in common. He didn’t think he had to go to the Congress to ask permission. Why did he think that? I don’t think he was legally required to. But there was a political reason.

At that time, in 2016, he had no majority in the House. He was down over 40 seats. And he had no majority in the Senate. And had he gone and said, “I’m the Mad Bomber. And I’ve been bombing Libya from 2011 to 2016 without your approval. And I want to keep doing it. I’ve dropped 26,000 bombs this year. I want to keep bombing,” they would’ve said, “No. It’s partisan, maybe.”

And so, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries knew that that was hypocritical.

On the last day—as I said earlier—the last day that Barack Obama was in office, he knew that Trump was coming in. And he knew that he had to go out with a bang. So, he took the B-2 bombers, probably some of the same pilots, and he ordered them to take off from Missouri. And they flew 5,000 miles longer to Libya. And they bombed supposed terrorist elements of this Libya chaotic mess that he had created by bombing it earlier in 2011. Nobody in the House, on the Democratic side, said a thing.

So this opposition is really hurting the Democrats because it’s so hypocritical. But more importantly, it’s an act of omission.

You want to say to them: “Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, AOC, what’s the status of homeless people in your district? What do you want to do with illegal immigrants? You brought them in, 12 million of them. And they’re here illegally. Why would you have sanctuary cities that protect even the criminal element? Why would you not want to deport them when 54% of the American people do?”

In other words, they’re not paying any attention to what people want: affordable housing, affordable gas, affordable energy, safe streets, secure borders, deterrent foreign policy. None of that.

All they’re doing is saying, “If Donald Trump does something, we are going to be irate. We’re going to use pornography. We’re going to use smuddy language. And we’re going to oppose him. And now, we’re going to impeach him.”

And some people in that party said, “This is so unhinged. It’s so contradictory. It’s so paradoxical. It’s so hypocritical. It’s just fodder for campaign messages in every purple House race in two years. Don’t do it.”

So, it was a surprise.

And as far as people on the Right, to finish, we were told that 30,000 people were going to die, from some of our close friends in the MAGA group. We were told this was going to be World War III. And then you wanted to say to yourself: Well, who would do that? Who would do that? Who would start World War III? Russia? Russia’s bogged down in a theater-wide war. It’s lost a million dead, wounded. It’s not going to do anything.

Well, China? China. China. China’s got about 500 or 800 nuclear weapons. We have about 6,000 or 7,000 that could be deliverable very quickly. But more importantly, China’s oil comes outta the Strait of Hormuz. They don’t want to go in there. They don’t want to send anything to Iran.

And finally, our people who impeached Donald Trump should remember a great truth. One of the subtexts of this entire war—I should say two—Iran was a complete paper tiger. It had never any military ability. It had almost lost the war against Saddam Hussein from ’80 to ’88. It sued for peace. Its only method of hurting people was through third-party terrorists. It had no military capability to speak of. And yet, it scared seven or eight presidents. That was No. 1.

And finally, Iran is the most hated country in the world—the theocracy is. So, when we had this strike and the aftermath, the only people who were voicing support were people like North Korea, Venezuela. And that’s about it. Anybody else basically said, “Well, I don’t like the United States. And I don’t like Europe. But these people are crazy. And I do not want them to get a bomb.”

So, they have no support. And they weren’t militarily capable. And the only people who failed to see that—and indirectly, by this impeachment, were trying to help Iran—were whom? Our own Democratic Party—at least a minority of them.

Seventy-nine of our Democratic colleagues in the House wanted to embarrass Donald Trump and line up on the side with a few lunatic regimes that did not even include Russia and China and others of that ilk.

In the End, Everyone Hated the Iranian Theocracy

It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.

Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.

Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.

Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated U.S. President Donald Trump.

So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.

For Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.

A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.

As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.

A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last 50 years.

How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?

Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if necessary.

So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.

But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.

The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?

It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.

Russia? Its former Barack Obama-John Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.

It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.

Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?

No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50% of Chinese-purchased oil passes.

For Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.

The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.

So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.

As for Iran’s terrorist appendages, Hezbollah’s commanders are either dead, maimed, or in hiding.

Hamas has fled into a subterranean labyrinth.

The last Assad thug fled to Russia.

The crazy Houthis? They are reconsidering the idea of launching their last missile at the cost of their last port or power grid.

The anti-Trump Democrats and loony left?

Their talk of impeaching Trump for the supposedly “illegal” 35-minute, one-off strike will fade.

The Trump mission equaled less than one day of Obama’s predator drone strikes, targeted killings, or his five-year chaotic bombing in Libya.

Is the incoherent left furious that there is no more Iranian nuclear threat?

Mad that no Americans were killed last Saturday night?

Furious America likely killed few if any Iranians.

Or is it raging because Trump ignored Iran’s last-gasp attack and instead orchestrated a cease-fire?

Of course, in the Middle East, there is never a real end to anything.

We may see freelancing terrorists try to fill the vacuum of Iran’s decline. Or Iran itself may try to let loose a terrorist cell. It may later boast it has hidden away some enriched uranium.

But no matter.

The dimensions of this new Middle East will persist.

The new reality is that either Israel or the U.S. —if they keep their earned confidence within proper limits—can now ensure a non-nuclear Iran by easily blowing up its costly nuclear program as often as it is rebuilt.

Thursday, June 26, 2025

And With That Development, the GOP Should Fire the Dem Senate Parliamentarian

 

President Trump’s reconciliation package is on life support. Almost every major portion of the bill has undergone more surgeries than a transgender person at this point, and it’s due to the Democrat Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. She has applied the Byrd rule, which prevents ‘extraneous’ provisions from being logrolled during this process. These provisions now require a 60-vote threshold instead of a simple majority.  

The portion that reins in rogue federal judges was sliced off, and now welfare reforms tweaks got the hatchet treatment as well. Making the Trump tax cuts permanent was also a casualty of this Democrat leech, along with immigration enforcement measures. In short, this unelected Democrat is trying to usurp the will of the people, who voted for Trump and these legislators to enact these three key legislative goals. 

And speaking of transgender surgeries, this woman took a tomahawk to the tweaks we want for Medicaid. As PBS Newshour’s Lisa DeJardins noted, the ban on transgender care in Medicaid is out, along with these portions: