Friday, July 31, 2026
Leftists Really Love Forced Labor
This claim, though, is based on a fundamentally broken understanding of how those "basics" come to be. None of them merely exist in nature; each of them is the product of somebody's labor, and when you make the claim that everybody has a "right" to them, it is equivalent to saying that they have the right to others' labor.
Food doesn't just appear. Houses and apartments don't just grow out of the ground. Medical care is not magically produced in the air. All these things are produced, and one reason they are unevenly distributed is that some people and some systems are far better at producing them than others.
Industrial capitalism is extraordinarily good at producing them—so good, in fact, that the burden for giving them away is relatively small and people are willing to give them away without thinking that much about them. Some of that is out of the goodness of their hearts, and some is just a practical decision based on the fact that we don't want to be stepping over drug addicts who poop in the streets.
Whatever the reason, it's not that the recipients of others' largesse have a "right" to the labor and efforts of others. And if we rearrange our societies based on the mistaken notion that they do, it turns out the very system that produces all that extra wealth we are generally happy to share collapses.
It's not theoretical that this is the case. Socialism has been tried in many forms and many places. The Nordic countries, which many socialists wrongly believe are socialist, gave up on the idea back in the 80s and 90s and are now free-market systems (in many cases freer than our own, which has become bogged down with excessive government regulations) with a high level of social insurance.
One of the reasons why all these countries are working mightily to kick migrants out is that they treat that social insurance as a "right" to state support and thus abuse the system, which is supposed to be for the aged, infirm, and those in temporary distress. When people demand something for free, they are really demanding that others do all the work while they get to consume the product of others' labor.
Commies Are Resentful Life-Losers
Let's stipulate up front that no requirement exists for radical socialists to mooch off their parents. However, it certainly correlates strongly, and for good reason. Radical socialists resent employment in the free market as well as paying bills, which is actually an agenda item on the Democratic Socialists of America platform. Like any communist platform, the DSA wants to seize all property and means of production to then ration goods and services from an authoritarian central-planning government.
Pathetic Does Not Begin to Describe John Patterson
Then the Chief of Police, John Patterson, spoke. Chief Patterson unfortunately collapsed in his role as the leader of the police department.
His demeanor was pained and passive. His remarks were peppered with sighs as he slouched and focused down at the podium or the ground. The lack of command presence was simply, sad.
Rather than comment on the difficult day his department had Wednesday, the challenges Ruiz created or provide an update on the condition of his officers, Chief Patterson chose to lament that a “member of the community” had lost his life during an encounter with his officers.
And:
Then, just six minutes into his comments, the chief passively allowed an activist to literally force him away from the podium and take over the press conference for 15 minutes — calling Patterson’s officers “pigs” and demanding their immediate arrest.
It was one of the most feckless responses I’ve seen by a law enforcement leader — one deserving his serious consideration of resignation. The performance has no doubt destroyed any respect Madison police officers had for their chief, and that could cascade into serious problems for the agency and for public safety in Madison going forward.
Via John Hinderaker.
What An Obnoxious Little Twit
And you may remember this clip of Moraff [who incidentally has the most annoying voice of all time] being asked about the vetting he did. He said he didn't see anything that concerned him so he just moved forward without checking any further into his background.
I'm sorry, this uptalking commie beta is harassing women??
There's Nothing Working-Class About the Resentful Bolsheviks
A working-class neighborhood in the Bronx? The deuce you say. Has the famously working-class socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoken up to defend her constituents? Perhaps she is also defining bourgeois downward as well, although one has to wonder what both AOC and Mamdani think of their mentor Bernie "Three Houses" Sanders these days.
Savages Gonna Savage
Of course, you have the same problem now as you did back in the late 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, and going all the way back to the days before Israel was even founded: there's nobody on the other side willing to negotiate. They don't want an end to the conflict; they want to drive the Jews out, and with any luck, do so by killing them.
Every intermediary who has tried to resolve the conflict has discovered to their chagrin that the problem is not the Jews in Israel; shockingly, it's the people who tell you every day they are determined to kill them all. "From the River to the Sea" is not just a slogan. It is a mission statement.
Palestinians didn't invent terrorism, but they mastered the art and turned it into a lifestyle, along with a grievance and hate culture that is second to none.
The "Palestinian" identity is built on grievance; it is what makes a Palestinian a Palestinian. For all the talk of the "refugees" (nobody is a refugee after 75 years) being indigenous to Palestine/Israel, the truth is that most of the people who left during the first war against Israel came from elsewhere and were migrant workers.
Surrounding Arab states supported the Palestinians for decades for a variety of reasons, but every single one that did regretted it. Palestinians are poison everywhere they wind up because their ideology is driven by hate and a desire for power. The Lebanese Civil War was caused by Palestinians, and the country, which used to be majority Christian and peaceful, has lived to regret its willingness to accommodate Palestinian refugees.
During the latest Gaza war, no Arab country opened its arms to take in refugees. They aren't stupid, you know. Many of them are informally allied with Israel these days because they think the Iranians and Palestinians are nuts and dangerous.
Spoiler Alert: They Won't Disarm
So for Hamas, feigning cooperation could be worth billions of dollars in Western aid. I am not a cynical person, but no one who has observed Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies over recent decades would dream of taking any representation by them at face value. So we will see how this plays out, but I am not holding my breath.
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Third World-ism
And there is a name for that ideology: Third World-ism. It's a dystopian zeal for barbarism over civilization. And these days, it's the name of the game for the activist left. We see it everywhere.
Third World-ism explains the activist left's support for the butchers of Hamas over the free people of Israel. Third World-ism explains the activist left's support for punitive environmental regulations that engender economic degrowth. Third World-ism explains why the activist left wants us to have fewer children. Third World-ism explains why the activist left speculates that maybe America actually deserved 9/11. Third World-ism explains why the activist left wants the anarchy of open borders, not the ordered liberty of the nation-state. Third World-ism explains why the activist left sides with illegal aliens and not victims of illegal alien crime. And Third World-ism explains why the activist left sides with criminals, in general, and not victims of crime.
There's Nothing Left to Cut in the Budget!
We can debate where the boundaries of “America First” lie with regard to foreign policy, but I think we can all agree that keeping Nepalese transgenders gainfully employed does not lie within the federal government’s constitutional ambit. Stories like this one also raise the question: do reporters for left-wing outlets like the Associated Press have any idea how normal people respond to their articles?
It's News to Bolshevik Gender Studies Majors
Of course it can’t accurately model the power system! Wind and solar are intermittent, weather-dependent electricity sources. There is no way to predict, or to control, when they will produce electricity and when they will not. This has been obvious to everyone for a long time, but apparently it took a “confidential report” and a “whistleblower” to bring the facts to the attention of the British public.
Time to Choose
JD Vance will have to decide whether he wants to continue to cozy up to a lunatic who wants his boss to be tried for treason. Going full-on anti-Semite may be a viable political strategy in the Democratic Party, but it is not in the Republican Party. So Vance will need to either abandon his disreputable friends, or switch parties.
Ugandan Trust Fund Baby Wisdom
New York City's equivalent of a callow student body president just discovered yesterday that he can't actually fulfill his promises to end homework and get better food in the cafeteria, let alone arrest foreign leaders who travel to his city under diplomatic immunity. Last night, Zohran Mamdani attempted to cover up his humiliating retreat from his campaign promise to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, finally acknowledging that he had no idea what he was talking about, by demanding that Donald Trump let him off the hook.
Fatigue
All of this has combined to play into other cultural phenomena now being openly talked about: the so-called "black fatigue" and a similar, as-yet-unnamed, queer fatigue.
People are done with the victimhood claims, and the bad behavior that gets enabled and excused by references to unearned victimhood. People claim victimhood while having tantrums, and the increasingly outrageous behavior by black teens on the streets is fueled by the rhetoric.
Don't like shoplifting? You're a white supremacist. Teen takeovers get you down? You want to lynch people. Don't want to kowtow to the pronoun police? You support "genocide" and want to "erase" people.
A lot of people are over it. The case for changing attitudes and practices regarding race and gender—and it is a great case—is that people should be judged by how they act, not what group they happen to belong to. Skin color or sexual preferences are not the core of one's being, or rather the "content of their character," right?
Foreign Judges
Who is Araceli Martínez-Olguín? When she was nominated to the federal bench by Joe Biden, her background was that of a left-wing activist. After working in the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, she was the Managing attorney of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, and then served as a Supervising attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. I think it is fair to say that her brief career has largely been spent as an advocate for illegal immigration.
Born in Mexico City. Shocker.
Don't Question Their Patriotism!
In order to avoid recognizing Independence Day or the 250th Anniversary of America, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has discontinued the practice of issuing proclamations altogether. I’m not kidding.
Item Number One
Zohran Mamdani’s obsession is another reminder that anti-Semitism is not just a stray plank in the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform, it is agenda item number one for them, just as it was for the National Socialist Party in Germany.
It's a Bold Strategy
Don’t let the facts get in the way when you want to blame the Jews. I’m sure President Trump appreciated Vance stirring the Epstein pot. That was equally well done.
Cotton Gets It
You may have heard Vice President Vance’s latest line about the government of Israel undertaking a secret influence operation to undermine Vance’s brilliant work on the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. Dana Perrino asked Senator Tom Cotton about it on FNC’s America’s Newsroom this morning. Senator Cotton bluntly denied knowledge of any intelligence to support Vance’s braying. Thank you, Senator Cotton.
Anti-Capitalism
The Democrats have become a socialist party.
Some say that numbers like these are misleading, since a great many people don’t know what socialism is. That is true. But whatever they think it is, it is being contrasted with capitalism, and lots of people say they prefer the alternative. In my opinion, this is a four-alarm fire.
A Few Names Come To Mind
It is unfortunate that Trump dallied with the mullahs for something like three months. By doing so, he lost the benefit (the political benefit, anyway) of a brilliantly successful military campaign. I have no idea who in his administration convinced him that this was a good idea. Maybe the plan was Trump’s all along. But I hope he remembers who on his team understood Iran, and who didn’t.
They Just Say Stuff
This is not just bigoted, it is delusional. Every industry is dominated by a monopoly? That is an absurd claim. To cite just one example, what monopoly dominates the automobile industry? How can there be a sentient being, who presumably participates in our economy to some extent, who actually believes that every industry is a monopoly?
I think what is going on here is not just garden-variety stupidity. I think, rather, that Mamdani is exhibiting fealty to Marxist doctrine. Karl Marx taught that free markets inherently tend toward consolidation, and that the resulting monopolies would lead to the collapse of what he called “capitalism.” Vladimir Lenin elaborated on this theory, describing a final phase of “monopoly capitalism” that inevitably would replace the competitive markets that he actually observed.
Obviously, that hasn’t happened. But to a socialist like Zohran Mamdani, reality is less real than Marxist dogma. Marx and Lenin said that every industry would be dominated by a monopoly, so it must be true. The evidence of his eyes counts for nothing.
Jefferson's Genius
The famous second sentence of the Declaration of Independence enumerates three “unalienable Rights.” The first is life, naturally. The second is liberty. Those concepts are rather standard. But the third—the pursuit of happiness—is not. It is an expression of Jefferson’s genius, I think, and it contains the seeds of what has made America unique. You will find it [in] no other national charter, in no international human rights document. It is solely American.
What does it mean? It means that the individual is paramount, that every person has the right of self-determination. That every American can make his own judgments, chart his own course, choose his own goals, live out his own values, measure success by his own yardstick, and dream big. He owes no accounting to the government or to his fellow citizens for the way he chooses to live his life.
Replacement
As a result of third-world migration—some say, invasion—much of Western Europe is no longer recognizable. Mass third-world immigration is unpopular nearly everywhere, but European elites, being unhappy with their populaces, seem determined to replace them.
Democrats Have a Major Criminal Fetish
For Tou Vang, child rape is “normal in his culture.” Then let us each act according to our national customs and deport Vang back to his homeland, where he can practice his cultural traditions as he sees fit, and see where that leads.
The details of the Vang case are horrific enough. But now we have the added outrage of Democratic politicians trying so score points against “Trump” by preventing the deportation of this monster.
I wrote about a similar case in May involving an armed robber. Minnesota is host to another large, monolithic-voting ethnic community, this one involving Southeast Asians. As with the state’s Somali community, without huge turnout in the Southeast Asian voting block, Democrats could not win elections in Minnesota.
As with any large group, a few of its members have run afoul of the law over the years and have been threatened with deportation. For the first time ever, we have a President (Trump) willing to carry out deportations, and home nations (Laos, Vietnam, etc.) newly willing to take back their own citizens.
To prevent these deportations, Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison have been issuing “emergency” pardons that they hope will prevent the execution of final deportation orders filed against these criminals.
Saturday, July 04, 2026
America 250
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Declaration 150 And 250
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.-President Calvin Coolidge
(First posted on July 6, 2011.)
