Friday, October 31, 2025
To Bukele
As Bukele, and to a lesser but still significant extent, Trump, have shown is that so-called "intractable" problems are not insoluble, but rather require intestinal fortitude to solve.
We don't need to adopt the tactics that Bukele was forced to use to rebuild his broken society, but unless we get our act cleaned up, we (and Great Britain) will have to one day or face the collapse of our society. Britain is much farther along the path to societal collapse due to its even more enthusiastic embrace of Islamists and coddling of their sensibilities, but if we follow the path of our liberal elites, we may someday face the choice of severe crackdowns that will make raids on Home Depots look quaint.
Further, as El Salvador and, again, to a lesser but significant extent, America show, the longer you let problems fester, the harsher one has to be to solve them. Bukele's success in cleaning up El Salvador required using extraordinary means, but the result has been a much freer El Salvador despite the necessity of using harsh tactics.
The same has been true for solving our border crisis. Weakness caused the crisis, but Trump has shown that all the tools were available as long as the executive was willing to use them. The biggest obstacle to success has been our elite, not the inability of our institutions to do what needed to be done.
Societies are much more fragile than the elite seems to think. One of the things our Founders and the people who built our country understood was that building and maintaining a free society was hard and took real maintenance. Our current elite has inherited a society that was built over generations and is squandering the inheritance at an alarming rate, assuming that it exists as a permanent structure, and not a carefully balanced practical project.
We Have to Destroy the Environment to Save It!
The American people, and others around the world, have been sold a bill of goods on wind and solar energy. These electricity sources are intermittent, unreliable, and ridiculously expensive. Those defects supposedly were outweighed by their environmental benefits. But are there, in fact, any environmental benefits?
The reality is that both wind and solar energy are terrible for the environment. This is because they are absurdly low-power energy sources, so they require vast quantities of materials (mining, manufacturing, transportation and construction) and land to produce minimal amounts of electricity.
Judicial Authoritarians
Federal district court judges are considering orders to compel Pres. Trump to violate the section of the constitution reprinted above. They want him to “draw from the treasury” to pay for food stamps, in the absence of an appropriation passed by Congress, in violation of his oath of office.
The real problem with all of this lies in the fact that there IS no money in the treasury. America is more than $38 trillion (with a “t”) in debt.
To pay for the food stamps needed for the next month to feed the 1 in every 8 residents who are incapable of feeding themselves, the government must borrow billions of dollars from the Chinese, or from as-of-yet unborn generations of Americans.
This can’t go on.
World War 2 Rules
The world can't wish Hamas away any more than it could wish away the Nazis or the bushido cult in Japan in 1945. Time for an old-fashioned end of a war rather than the modern approach of freezing conflicts for the benefit of terrorists. "Unconditional surrender" worked best to rid the world of poisonous ideologies in an all-out war 80 years ago, and it's time to apply the same principle to the same kind of evil now.
The 1491 Project
The premise behind the land acknowledgment craze is that everything that’s happened since 1492 was a ghastly error that must be completely reversed. All arrangements must be returned to the status quo ante of 1491. Call it “The 1491 Project.”
Take, as an example, my own complicated lineage. It turns out that my ancestors came from across Europe. Unfortunately for me, lands my ancestors had occupied in Germany, France, and Wales are now the property of the newcomers, which have fled to Europe in recent years seeking “asylum.”
Since that fateful date, western civilization in the misnamed “New World” sits on land stolen from the “rightful” aboriginal owners. The true owners were those in place as of 1491, notwithstanding the events occurring in the prior 21,000 years.
The immediate conflict comes in reconciling that goal with the system of property rights within the English-speaking world dating back at least 800 years, to Magna Carta (1215).
Extending this logic, all of the “settlers” and their descendants must return to their aboriginal lands so that the aboriginal peoples of what is misnamed as North America can re-occupy their rightful property.
It turns out that in Europe, the property claims of the newcomers outrank the property claims of the native inhabitants, and far outweigh any claims made by the diaspora of the aboriginal Celtic and Germanic peoples of western Europe and the British Isles.
My only recourse would then be a “return” to Poland, a nation I have never visited where they speak a language I do not know. Again, unfortunately for me, the “Poland” my ancestors left occupied a land several hundred miles east of the nation’s current location.
Of course, at the time my ancestors left, “Poland” was controlled by the Russian Empire. So, should I “return” to Russia? Or should I go all the way back to the Eurasian Steppe, the land from which my most distant ancestor’s likely emerged?
Okay. Who do I get to kick out of Europe?
Little Intelligence
It is no secret that Mamdani is anti-law enforcement and anti-Israel. What I want to point out is the stupidity of his assertion about the IDF. What is it even supposed to mean? How is the “boot” of the New York Police Department “laced” by the IDF? It makes no sense.
A great many liberals are prone to speaking, as Mamdani does here, in metaphor. Sometimes they do this to provide plausible deniability as to their real meaning. Here, the metaphor is simply nonsensical, and betrays a man of many prejudices but little intelligence.
It's Not a Free Speech Issue At All
Perrino's view is that the First Amendment is a codification of a universal right to free speech, and in principle, I agree. However, where we differ is the extent to which the United States government is obligated to protect that universal right for the entire world and everybody who resides within it.
Clearly, we have no obligation to invade every country and impose our notion of human rights everywhere and always. That would be quite a burden and likely counterproductive. There are, we all know, practical limits that all human beings face. Few of us manage to follow God's laws perfectly in our own lives; perfecting the world is not in the cards, nor should we try.
But surely we can at least ensure that a universal human right applies to everybody within our borders, right? That, it seems, is Perrino's point, and it is worth pondering.
The answer, I think, is clear: no, it is not right to expect that the protections afforded US citizens apply universally to everybody within the borders of the United States. In fact, the idea is absurd, and it is also codified in US immigration law.
The US government exists to defend and promote the rights of US citizens. WE all understand--well, many people don't understand, but should--that the First Amendment protects our ability to call for the destruction of the US government. It protects our right to be offensive, to argue for communism or fascism, to become a member of the DSA, and even run for Mayor of New York City. We can donate to candidates of our choice, have other rights such as those provided by the 2nd Amendment, and so on.
Visitors to the United States, on the other hand, are here at our sufferance. They are guests. Visa requirements specifically limit the rights of foreigners in ways that the federal government can't limit those of US citizens, and is very clear on the matter.
There are plenty of US citizens who work tirelessly to destroy the government of the United States. Many are, wrongly, actually underwritten by subsidies provided by the US government to universities and colleges. The author of the Antifa Handbook is a professor at Rutgers, although he has absconded to Europe now that Antifa has been classified a terrorist organization.
Our taxes have helped pay his salary. I disagree that we were obligated to do that, but I agree he has a right to promote Antifa as an idea, if not an organization.
But no citizen of another country can or should have the right to do the same. We need not import revolutionaries from other countries to preach the destruction of the United States government, or other offensive or dangerous ideas. Doing so is a choice, because nobody has an inalienable right to be here.
Booting somebody out of the United States is not a violation of their inalienable free speech rights--they are not being tossed in jail, after all, for their speech. They are being booted from the country, where they have no right to be in the first place. They are guests.
We're Well Beyond Due Process
Hold on. Abrego has stated that he is a political prison in the United States, singled out for persecution for partisan reasons and subjected to inhumane and abjectly cruel treatment that represent unprecedented human rights violations.Why the hell is this guy still in the country??
But he is seeking asylum so he can remain…in America? Wut?
I’m guessing that Abrego’s case will still be in court come New Year’s Day, as the judge holds hearing after hearing on the appropriate thread count for the sheets in Abrego’s taxpayer-paid, beach-side villa in Costa Rica.
So much due process.
The Barbarians Are Inside the Gates
The truth is that, since 9/11, there has been a massive campaign by the elite to suppress what would be a natural distrust of Islam. The Muslim population in the United States has skyrocketed since 9/11, and Muslims have taken over entire cities. There is a taboo against criticizing Islam or Muslims in elite circles, despite the obvious fact that vast numbers of the Muslim immigrants are quite clear that they despise our laws, our culture, and want to Islamize our society.
It's the Norm Macdonald joke. No matter how much hate or how much damage Muslims do, we have to protect Islam from criticism.
It's pathological. Many Arab countries designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, but Western countries don't want to appear to be bigots, so they don't. Countries like the United States and Great Britain bend over backward to accommodate the most outrageous demands by Muslims, while working mightily to suppress any criticism aimed at Islam.
How Things Are Supposed to Work
Here’s how I understand the system to work. U.S. Attorneys—appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate—bring criminal cases against defendants. Judges then preside over cases as prosecutors and defense lawyers duke it out.
U.S. Attorneys can, and do, bring cases against individual immigration officers when they break the law. But judges do not have the power of arrest. Judges cannot file cases against defendants.
The world gone mad.
Equity in Action
Parker's defense has argued that she did nothing wrong that day, but as I argued yesterday, I think there is likely a racial issue at play in this case that no one wants to talk about. Why didn't Parker act? I believe it's because the child, who had been in trouble at school before including choking a teacher the previous year, was black. Parker, as a black principal, was probably concerned about the so-called school to prison pipeline. If she had searched the backpack and found a gun she would have been obligated to call the police and this incident would have followed that student for years to come. I think she was hoping to avoid all of that, essentially for equity.
