Why Our Systems Collapse thumbnail

Why Our Systems Collapse

By Victor Davis Hanson

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

When merit is replaced with ideology, fires rage unchecked, killers walk free, and fragile systems collapse—leaving lives and cities in ruin.

America has a lot of built-in safety backups and redundancies.

But every once in a while, when tradition, science, time-tested protocols, and common sense are ignored, a fragile system utterly collapses.

Usually, an iconic event reveals how vulnerable the entire country has become, and predictably occurs when suicidal ideologies and nihilism, in perfect-storm fashion, wreak havoc.

The media, academia, the bureaucracy, and higher education can mask the dangers of their political agendas—at least until their sheer incompetence or toxicity can no longer be hidden or excused, and a predictable disaster ensues.

Take the January 4-5, 2025, Pacific Palisades fire that destroyed an entire historic neighborhood of Los Angeles. The embers had not even cooled when we were lectured that “climate change” was responsible for the historically predictable annual autumn and early winter Santa Ana winds that whip up horrific fires before the first winter rains arrive—a phenomenon documented for over two centuries.

The media, in reporting the conflagration, downplayed human culpability. But over the next few weeks, outraged former homeowners and independent journalists began cataloging the real symptoms of a total system failure that turned the normal end-of-year fire season into a catastrophic inferno.

A lot of things had to go wrong to utterly destroy an ancient, coveted neighborhood. But DEI managed to do all of that with ease.

First, we learned that the incompetent mayor, Karen Bass, had cut the fire budget. Then, despite warnings of dry hillsides, underfunded fire protection, and predicted high winds, Bass was nowhere to be seen during the most dangerous weeks of the year.

Why? She was junketing in Ghana, an African nation rarely considered vital to the running of the third-largest city in the United States.

The now-convicted felon, Deputy Mayor Brian Thompson, was under house arrest for phoning in a bomb threat to the city hall. So a mayoral apparatus did not exist.

Next, the clueless and vastly overpaid Janisse Quiñones, the CEO and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, was likely hired based on diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria despite a prior uninspiring record in her administrative roles at PG&E. She was utterly unprepared for the fire.

When the fires swept in, a key reservoir that might have saved the community had been bone dry for months while under superficial repair. Dozens of fire hydrants were nonfunctional.

Unhinged environmental mandates had prevented homeowners from clearing nearby combustible brush on the hillside, the proverbial fuel of the Santa Ana wind-powered fires.

The chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Kristin Crowley, had bragged about her diversity hiring but had done little to ensure her firefighters had enough water to put out the fires.

In other words, the wages of electing, appointing, or selecting officials on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, or making policy on the basis of radical green orthodoxy, rather than proven meritocracy and empiricism, finally came due in a systems collapse of the city government, utilities, fire protection, and prevention.

There have been lots of Palisades events in the past. And there will be far more to come in the future, as our ever more complex society that requires meritocratic operators cannot afford social engineering and ideological agendas at the expense of lives and property.

Similar to the Palisades disaster was the train of events that led to the needless murder of a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, Iryna Zarutska, on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

DeCarlos Brown, a 14-time felon, was out on cashless bail, despite his lengthy record of violent offenses that should have ensured imprisonment. He was homeless with a lifelong record of recidivism.

Who let him out? And why? A magistrate, Terese Stokes. She had never passed the bar but seemingly enjoyed impunity from apparent conflicts of interest by sentencing the convicted to an alternate treatment center in which she and her partner had financial interests.

Why would the state allow those with little legal certification to become de facto judges? Why would their records of freeing dangerous criminals not come under scrutiny?

The result of those unanswered questions was that DeCarlos Brown entered a train with a knife, silently jumped up, and lethally slashed the throat of Ms. Zarutska in the seat ahead. She had no idea she was sitting in front of a career, violent, and released felon from a family of violent felons—and was now to become the prey of a cold-blooded, racist killer.

Four passengers sitting adjacent to, ahead of, and behind Brown did nothing as he attacked Zarutska. Nor did they render her aid, as they callously sidestepped her in her death throes. He seemed to have muttered, “Got the white girl,” as he walked away from that lethal attack and got off the train.

The system was now breaking: why did riders not have to buy tickets to enter the train? Why was there no security on the train? Why did not one nearby passenger intervene either to stop the attack, render assistance to the dying Zarutska, or seek to apprehend Brown for the police?

And then the broken system utterly collapsed—as happened in Los Angeles, where fires raged, no official either cared or had any solution, and nine months later, the charred ruins sit mostly untouched.

Once disgraced Mayor Bass tried to restore her reputation by hogging TV microphones and blasting the Trump administration for arresting and deporting violent and criminal illegal aliens, living exempt and free in her city, as the ruins of an entire neighborhood sit mostly untouched.

Almost immediately after the Zarutska murder, the left-wing media nexus was confronted with a dilemma. The light rail video had already been released by the police. Yet left-wing mayor Vi Lyles immediately lectured the public not to blame the homeless Brown. She urged the video not be seen so it would not stir up animosities. She called the evil work of Brown a “tragedy” and pontificated that arresting people would not be a solution.

North Carolina Governor Josh Stein was silent too long about the murder, despite posting all sorts of extraneous news stories. In contrast, he had earlier been quick to editorialize upon the death of George Floyd.

Once popular rage forced his public statement, Stein blabbered about all the anti-crime bills he introduced, but the former Attorney General of North Carolina kept quiet about his state, which allows an incompetent Stokes, with zero legal training, to release lethal criminals onto the public.

Add up the systemic failures to find the common denominator.

An “honor system” that requires no paid ticket to ride the public train is a prescription for disaster, especially when there are no nocturnal security officers on it. No city official seemed concerned about it.

It does no good to bar passengers from carrying concealed weapons if they are never at least superficially searched as they enter the train or surveilled by guards while on it. No city official cared about that either. In a climate of defunding the police, cashless bail, and the ending of stop-and-frisk, no such preemptive action apparently was warranted.

Stokes should never have been a magistrate. She was untrained, unqualified, and had possible financial conflicts of interest that should be investigated. She will not be because she feels her DEI status got her a job without the requisite qualifications and will ensure it when evidence argues otherwise. Anyone who tries to fire her will be demonized as a racist, homophobic bigot.

Brown should have been in prison for the rest of his life for the string of felonies he had committed. He was not because university-spawned, foundation-funded, and politician-empowered “critical race theory” and “critical legal theory” argue, as the mayor alluded, that arrest, conviction, and incarceration do not work and are somehow unfair and not the answer to crime. His freedom can be seen as a symptom of reparatory justice, as was the fate of his inevitable future victims.

The four nearby passengers together might have stopped Brown from murdering Zarutska, or they could have at least rendered first aid, even if in vain. Yet they knew well the unpredictable nature of inner-city crime, and the recent demonization of the heroic Daniel Penny. The nearby passengers also represent a societal moral collapse. If they were fearful of their own safety in letting Brown murder Zarutska, then they had no such reasonable subsequent fear of the departed Brown when they got up and walked by the dying young woman.

Mayor Lyles does not care about innocent passengers murdered by career criminals. She is assured instead that she had been elected and reelected by DEI/woke/leftist orthodoxy. In this case, she accordingly on spec claimed arrests do not work, the homeless bear no culpability, and videos that show reality lead to politically incorrect conclusions. Those orthodoxies overrode any humane concern for the victim or future innocent victims to come.

She correctly understood that any moral outrage expressed against freed felons, the homeless epidemic, or racially based crime would entail political risks, since her constituents preferred to hear her therapeutic gobbledy-gook.

The dominant and left-wing legacy media suffocated the story because it judged Zarutska’s death as mere collateral damage that was acceptable as the price of maintaining a narrative that there is not really a Black inner-city crime problem. And to the extent such daily violence makes that narrative untenable, the media either must suppress the evidence or manipulate it, as did the mayor, to indict society at large for inordinate crime.

America’s inner cities are veritable war zones, as evidenced by a Ukrainian refugee fleeing her war-torn homeland only to be murdered in a supposedly safe and peaceful America. The crime rate is falling only because it has recently dipped from unsustainable highs of three years earlier and is thus seen in relative, not absolute, terms. In addition, big city police departments are under political pressure either not to report violent crimes to the FBI’s nationwide monitoring departments or to reclassify them as nonviolent offenses.

Very few columnists or opinion journalists dealt with the racial nature of the killings because to do so, despite the plethora of evidence, was seen as either career-ending or, in a cost-benefit analysis, not worth the smears of “racist!”

The commentator Van Jones’ postmortem blasted the late Charley Kirk as a racist for identifying racist elements in the killing. But to do so, Jones conveniently did not mention why the utterly unqualified Stokes was a judge in the first place, why she let Brown out, why she co-ran a treatment center to which she sentenced criminals, why African-American Brown attacked Zarutska and not any of the four male and female black adjacent passengers (80 percent of those passengers in his immediate vicinity), why he likely uttered, “I got that white girl” after he cut her throat, why the four black passengers simply sidestepped the dying Zarutska, why the mayor claimed arresting criminals was not the answer, and why the media smothered the story.

The one common denominator again was DEI, a toxic ideology that recalibrated accepted norms for purposes of race-based social engineering. It filters throughout society as a victim/victimizer binary in which professed victims believe they are either entitled to exemption from legal consequences or deserving of race-based preferences for perceived oppression.

In truth, the Charlotte systems’ collapse, like the Palisades fire, is a textbook case of ideology, chauvinism, and DEI destroying meritocratic norms and empiricism.

As such, it can turn anything from a fire season in Los Angeles to a nocturnal train ride in Charlotte into an utter collapse of civilizational norms.

Such landmines exist in the thousands nationwide, from the illegal alien truck driver who was given a special California license without knowing English and then dispassionately U-turned his truck and killed three innocents (and was supported by millions of signatures pleading for a special exemption for his felonious behavior) to the left-wing and media support of illegal alien Obregón Garcia. His antisocial crimes and harm he did to society at large were also seen as acceptable collateral damage to the greater crusade for open borders and mass illegal immigration.

That Garcia was a proven wife-beater, likely human trafficker, probable gang member, and certainly a serial illegal alien under suspended orders of deportation apparently matters little, given his DEI credentials of being a minority, illegal, and a deportee.

The final tragic irony is that all of the above derive from racial and ethnic essentialism and chauvinism, masked as victimhood, ensuring critics are recast as victimizers.

*****

This article was published by American Greatness and is reproduced with permission.

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The Terrible Smallness of Public Killers thumbnail

The Terrible Smallness of Public Killers

By Rachel Lu

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Editors’ Note: Although the author has written an accurate description of those committing political violence, there is little discussion of several major transformations in our society over the decades. America and the West have become increasingly secular with a breakdown in faith-based family life. Many of our youth are consequently nihilistic, magnified greatly by their addictions to the omnipresent and often sick social media with its focus on self. Public education was captured by the progressive left long ago and the subsequent breakdown in the quality of education and the indoctrinating and activist nature of our faculties at every stage of education are contributors to the civil discord and increasing violence. The horrific consequences of a more recent government Covid ‘justified’ shutdown of our society have undoubtedly played a role in recent years of the profound and violent breakdown in civil discourse and behavior.

Public murder tends to push existential questions to the forefront of people’s minds. It is so deeply malicious, so shockingly depraved, that it snatches away the sense of normalcy that sustains most people in the day-to-day. We are jolted into an awful awareness of civilization’s fragility. That’s terrifying, so we grasp frantically at solutions. What will it take to end the malice, restore normalcy, preserve civilization from the lunatics and monsters? We’ve been having a lot of those conversations of late.

Charlie Kirk’s murder was a terrible thing. It’s obvious, but still healthy to keep repeating it, affirming the visceral outrage. Oddly, it is partly because so many people have echoed this obvious-but-crucial sentiment that the ensuing conversation has in some respects been unusually uplifting, even despite the depraved minority that openly celebrated his death. More than usual, in the aftermath of a tragedy, there is a palpable willingness to discuss the deeper cultural maladies that spawn such malevolence. Some even seem to feel chastened. 

It’s interesting to consider the reasons. Usually, public shootings send the political left racing to their mental safe space: gun control. There must be a way to dramatically reduce violent death through gun-related legislation. Although the overwhelming obstacles to this strategy (both constitutional and practical) have been explained again and again, a large share of the population still seems to believe that the magical lever marked “No More Guns” is out there somewhere, presumably heavily guarded by representatives of the NRA. In any case, that debate is familiar, and frightened people crave familiarity. By the time we’ve finished discussing the definition of “assault weapon,” examining data from Switzerland and Finland, and revisiting the 1996 Australia buyback program, the aura of horror has dissipated somewhat, and most people go back to their lives. It’s not a fitting way to honor slain innocents, but then, these are not decorous times.

Kirk’s killing was different. In its aftermath, the gun debate has been comparatively muted, more of an undertone to a significant public discussion of political violence, radicalization, and the value of civil discourse. It could be relevant that Kirk was murdered with a bolt-action rifle (clearly not an assault weapon by anyone’s standards). It’s almost certainly true that the awfulness of the people who cheered Kirk’s murder as a case of “poetic justice for gun nuts,” deterred the humane and decent from even approaching the subject. But give Kirk credit. The main difference-maker was truly the man himself. In a time when most people slide into comfortable bubbles of the like-minded, he made it his life’s work to engage the not-like-minded in civil debate. It was his passion. Then one of them murdered him.

At such a moment, one does not object to endless iterations of the same obvious message. It’s good that so many influencers converged on this point, condemning the killing, begging for decency and restraint, and reminding all Americans that violence isn’t the answer. I agree. But I do have a follow-up. What’s the question?

Political violence is terrible, for reasons that have been articulated so well over the past several days. It attacks not just a particular victim, but also society at large, undercutting the very conditions that make it possible for people to live together. In this sense, Kirk’s assassination seems like a quintessential example of political violence. He was literally killed by an angry detractor who wanted to silence him. And there have been other public murders in recent months that likewise seem “political” in an obvious sense. Elias Rodriguez killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim “for Gaza”; his victims were presumably selected because they were Jewish. Vance Luther Boelter appears to have murdered Minnesota’s House Speaker Melissa Hortman for the crime of being a Democrat. Luigi Mangioni killed a corporate CEO because he was enraged about the state of insurance and healthcare. Thomas Matthew Crooks had almost no political profile until he shot a presidential candidate at a campaign rally, but if that’s not “political violence,” what is? Truly, all those murders seem clearly “political” in the sense that the killers’ worldviews were deeply shaped by political paradigms. They themselves would undoubtedly explain their motives in political terms. 

Nevertheless, there is another sense in which these killings are very much atypical of what we might, in other contexts, understand “political violence” to be. In some eras, people would assume that “political violence” is committed in the service of a political cause or end. The end could be sympathetic or not, of course, and the violence itself may or may not be an effective mechanism for reaching it. Most of us could probably find at least some sympathetic strands in the rhetoric of the IRA, while the Weather Underground were basically radical communists out for blood. Both, though, had some notion of where they wanted to go. The efficacy of different strategies is likewise variable: Religious fundamentalists presumably factor supernatural help into their broader narrative, while others, like ecoterrorists or anarchists, may see the collapse of civil society itself as a step towards the desired end. But they all seem to have some sort of manifesto or creed. All had some idea (even if deranged and utopian) of what they hoped to achieve. Did Thomas Matthew Crooks have that? Did Tyler Robinson?

Looked at from a certain angle, the space between Robinson (a top high school student from a good family), or Boelter (a successful middle-aged professional), and more obviously-unstable assassins like Robert Westman or Decarlos Brown Jr., doesn’t necessarily look so large. Nor do these figures look particularly “political,” at least not in the way that IRA terrorists or Weather Underground members would. Several of them seem to have killed for very recently acquired beliefs. Their own friends or nearest relations are quoted saying, in shocked confusion, “I have no idea why he did this.” These are not men of purpose and conviction. They are alienated misfits, and everyone knows it.

I think everyone does really know, even the ghastly cheer squads that pop up online after each atrocity. We’ve reached the point where we hardly probe a public killer’s motive in any depth; we only look for the source of derangement. We want to know what kind of household they grew up in, how they voted, how their parents voted, which rallies they attended, which websites they retweeted. Once that’s been aired, most people are satisfied that that’s all there is to know. We don’t go looking for some deeper credo, or expect to uncover a cloak-and-dagger initiation into a secret brotherhood. These aren’t “brotherhood” sorts of people. The Feds tell us that a killer “probably acted alone,” and we nod and shrug, because what else would we expect? Our modern-day killers always seem to be alone.

Some time back, I had a conversation with one of my sons, who was asking me questions about what I remembered of the violent outbreaks of my own middle and high school years. Stacked up together, there were really a shocking number: the LA riots, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, all the unrest surrounding the O. J. Simpson trials. In my junior year, my native Boulder was rocked by the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, and then I went off to college, and almost immediately, a school I used to rub shoulders with at debate tournaments was devastated by a horrific massacre. (Yes, that was Columbine High School.) My young life was scarred by appalling violence, apparently! My son commented on how “the world sure was crazy” back in my day, which prompted a grim laugh.

It’s a tiny bit comforting, perhaps, to be reminded of earlier periods when I had that “peering over into the abyss” feeling, and came through it. But there are still interesting contrasts. The events of my teen years prompted endless angst and speculation about shadowy connections, conspiracies, and underground networks of domestic terrorists. Could Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols really have acted alone? Were racist miscreants cooperating to frame O. J.? Vigilante groups, white nationalists, religious zealots, Black Panthers, ecoterrorists, and the like flitted through our dystopian nightmares. We had some sizzling conversations about them on the school bus.

Today’s killers already know violence isn’t the answer, at least not to a question a healthy person would ask. Their murders are more like malicious suicides.

Today we have Antifa, Proud Boys, conspiracies like QAnon, and so on, but these are not our main sources of terror. When someone bars a church door and starts murdering children at prayer, we hardly consider that he might be part of a terrorist group. He was alone. Obviously.

There’s no simple solution to this kind of violence. Gun laws certainly won’t fix it. Condemnations of political violence are good, but it’s hard to say how much impact they will have, given that today’s public assassins aren’t really looking for solutions. They already know violence isn’t the answer, at least not to a question a healthy person would ask. These murders are more like malicious suicides. The killers want to destroy themselves—and hurt others along the way. 

One thing at least we should resolve: First, do no harm. Hardly any of our present troubles can be effectively addressed through tighter state control. There is always a temptation demand this when people are angry and afraid, and the past few days have unsurprisingly seen many calls, from different corners, to crack down on this or that movement or ideological camp. The reasoning is obvious, but it’s a mistake. If alienated rage is the core problem, we can’t expect to fix it by shutting down dangerous ideas or disrupting ground-level associations. We need people to talk and associate more, not less; a loveless nihilist can be radicalized by a thousand different things, while meaningful activity and healthy human relationships are protective against all manner of ideological evils. Meanwhile, a quick glance at our British friends across the Atlantic should amply illustrate how things are likely to go when a society tries to turn down the temperature by getting tough on thoughtcrime. 

If we really want less violence, we need to renew our efforts to build up civil society, creating more common spaces where conversation can happen. Even more, we need to do better by our kids, perhaps especially our sons, who clearly need more direction, purpose, and community. This is not primarily a question for public policy; it has far more to do with the bedtime stories, the camping trips, and more broadly, making a higher priority of building the kinds of communities that are good for our kids. Communities shouldn’t just be outlets for our own projects and pet causes. It’s a big ask in a busy, breathless world, but we have to find a way.

“When you stop having a human connection with people you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group.” That was Charlie Kirk, in a clip widely circulated after his death. I personally had paid very little attention to him before his murder, but he certainly looks large in hindsight: firm, magnanimous, a man of conviction. His killer looks small, weak, pitiful. But that is the modern public killer.

We can hope, at least, that that stark contrast will inspire young men to imitate Kirk and not Robinson. If so, much good could flow from it. Kirk valued faith and family. He loved freedom. And he championed civil conversation, not just in rhetoric but in action. We should honor his memory by holding tighter to all of those things.

*****

This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

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MIKE BENGERT: What Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Says About The State Of Our Schools And Culture thumbnail

MIKE BENGERT: What Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Says About The State Of Our Schools And Culture

By Mike Bengert

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

A young Christian man named Charlie Kirk was shot—simply for speaking his mind. A husband, a father, a voice for the next generation. Lord, why did it happen this way? How dare they steal the breath from a faithful man?

Charlie was not a violent agitator, not a man bent on tearing down, but one who stirred the hearts of the young. He spoke boldly where others remained silent, reminding his peers that they were created for more. He gave them courage. And for that, he was silenced.

“How dare they?” we ask. Indeed. Yet the truth is more sobering: they dare because of the cultural environment we now live in—an environment shaped, in part, by radical ideologies that have seeped into our schools, our politics, and even our everyday conversations. And right here in Scottsdale, that environment has been nurtured by leaders like Superintendent Menzel, current and former board members, and others who have steered the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) away from academic excellence and into ideological experiments.

The Shift Away from Education

SUSD leaders claim to promote critical thinking, yet what they push is a one-sided agenda built on misinformation and half-truths. Instead of focusing on the basics—reading, writing, mathematics, science—SUSD has embraced policies that undermine families and confuse students. Here are a few examples:

  • Telling children they can change their gender without parental involvement.
  • Promoting Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in place of foundational academics.
  • Teaching that America is a fundamentally racist nation.
  • Undermining parental rights while telling families to “trust the experts.”
  • Blocking parents from curriculum discussions while approving controversial materials, sometimes in violation of state law.
  • Replacing qualified teachers with social workers and counselors.
  • Conducting constant student surveys on mental health, sowing confusion rather than providing clarity.

This is not the recipe for a high-achieving school district. It is the foundation of a crisis.

The Failed Promise of Social Emotional Learning

Superintendent Menzel and his allies argue that focusing on student “emotional well-being” will, in turn, unlock academic achievement. This theory, rooted in social-emotional learning, posits that removing a child’s psychological “barriers” will allow them to thrive in the classroom.

But does it work? The evidence suggests otherwise. Independent researchers, particularly outside the U.S. educational establishment, have found little to no link between widespread, non-targeted mental health interventions and improved academic outcomes. In fact, research shows these programs may worsen student mental health.

In medicine, the term for this is iatrogenic harm: unintended damage caused by treatments meant to heal. In mental health, it refers to harm that arises from interventions that destabilize rather than stabilize. The endless surveys, the focus on fragility rather than resilience, and the substitution of therapy for instruction can actually make students more anxious, less confident, and less academically capable.

If SUSD’s policies worked, our students would be excelling. Instead, they are struggling.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Let’s look at the hard data under Menzel’s leadership.

  • Instructional spending: Down to 54.4% in 2024, compared to 54.6% in 2023, and trending toward a historic low. Over the past five years, instructional spending has dropped 1.7%.
  • Student support spending: Up 2.6% over the past 5-year period.
  • Administrative spending: 15% higher per student than peer districts.
  • Enrollment: Down 8.4% over the past 5-year period.
  • Staffing: In FY24, the district cut 59 instructional positions but added 71 student support staff and 44 administrative positions.
  • Test scores: Math proficiency fell from 57% in 2019 to 55% in 2024. Science dropped from 64% to 41%. English Language Arts rose slightly, from 56% to 61%, but overall performance represents a 12% decline since 2019.

So: fewer teachers, lower academic spending, higher administrative costs, declining enrollment, and worse performance.

SUSD recently held its second mental health fair and sponsored a suicide prevention event. After 125 years of SUSD history, why is it only now that we need districtwide events to address student mental health and suicide? Could it be that the very programs meant to fix mental health are feeding the crisis?

The Culture War in the Classroom

The failures of SUSD are not isolated. They are part of a broader cultural radicalization. Across the nation, schools are less focused on knowledge and more focused on ideology. Students are taught to distrust their parents, question their identity, and view their country as irredeemably broken.

We see the results not only in academic decline but also in growing instability—emotional, social, and even violent.

This instability was on display here in Scottsdale when conservative board member Carine Werner was allegedly overheard making a disparaging comment, and leftist groups who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death, seemingly collaborated to paint her in a bad light. Protesters immediately called for her resignation, parading signs that read “Protect Children: Werner Must Resign,” and “Ban Bigots, Not Books.”

But labeling Werner “ignorant” or “bigoted” ignores her record. As a state senator, she championed laws to make schools safer from predators and supported pay raises for law enforcement. As a board member, she pushed to remove sexually explicit material from schools, opposed social studies curricula that included anti-police rhetoric and glorified activism over academics, fought for stronger school security, introduced a common-sense policy that kept boys out of the girls’ bathroom, and even stood up to a transportation contractor after one of its employees sexually assaulted a student.

That’s not bigotry. That’s leadership.

The Consequences of Demonization

So how did we get here, where speaking truth—or even raising common-sense concerns—can cost you your reputation, your job, or even your life?

We’ve been told the problem is “radicalization on the dark web.” But you don’t need the dark web. Just watch mainstream media or scroll social media. From the highest levels of government on down, leaders tell us anyone who disagrees is a racist, a fascist, or a threat to democracy. Politicians openly encourage people to “get in their faces” and drive dissenters out of public life.

For someone already struggling with confusion, addiction, or emotional instability, this narrative can justify hostility—even violence—against those who dare to think differently.

That’s what happened to Charlie. He stood for free dialogue, for open exchange of ideas—values once core to American identity. For that, he was killed.

Diversity of Thought—or the Illusion of It

SUSD claims to celebrate diversity. But it is not diversity of thought. Instead, there is one sanctioned narrative: accept it, or be labeled hateful. We are told tolerance is a virtue, yet intolerance is practiced against anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy.

We cannot allow this inversion of truth. Lies are not compassion. Half-truths are not education. And intolerance cannot be the foundation of a healthy community.

A Call to Parents

Superintendent Menzel and the SUSD Governing Board may not be directly responsible for Charlie’s death in Utah, but their policies contribute to the kind of environment where such tragedies become possible.

Parents, it is time to wake up. Our children are not experiments. Our schools are not laboratories for ideological reprogramming. The mission of education must return to the basics: truth, knowledge, critical thinking, and resilience.

We must demand accountability from school leaders. We must replace ideologically driven programs with proven academic strategies. We must protect our children—not only from physical threats but also from the corrosive cultural forces undermining their mental, emotional, and intellectual well-being.

Charlie’s voice has been silenced. But ours has not. If we remain quiet, more voices will be lost. If we speak boldly—as he did—we can reclaim truth, restore education, and protect the next generation.

The question is: will we dare?

*****

This article was published by AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.

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For Charlie

By Conlan Salgado

The Prickly Pear supports Patriot Mobile Cellular and its Four Pillars of Conservative Values: the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Right to Life, and significant support for our Veterans and First Responders. When you switch to Patriot Mobile, not only do you support these causes, but most customers will also save up to 50% on their monthly cellular phone bill. 

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The Conservative Chorus: Erika Kirk, Martyr for Charity

By The Editors

Friends, Jesus calls us to love our enemies.

Today, I was struck by Erika Kirk’s granting of forgiveness to the man who killed her husband—a breathtaking moment of the Gospel on full display. pic.twitter.com/EoPoqf8zI0

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) September 22, 2025

The Conservative Chorus: Erika Kirk, Martyr for Charity”>/by

I was one of the 100+ thousand people who appeared in Phoenix yesterday to mourn Charlie Kirk, murdered on Sep 10 for the cause of Christian conservatism. The Left, tirelessly loyal to their indecent obsession for power, characterized the memorial variously as Nazi, Nazi-like, and Nazi-esque. Considering the public etiquette of political leaders for at least 3 decades, the most rare aspect of this particular event was the overt Christianity, the regular appeals to theology and Christian example; every single member of the Administration Cabinet quoted scripture or cited an event from the New Testament.

601 1177 The Editors 2025-09-22 17:46:19 The Conservative Chorus: Erika Kirk, Martyr for Charity

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Turning Point USA Chapter Requests Explode Following Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

By AZ Free News

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Requests to establish Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapters exploded in the days following the assassination of its CEO and founder, Charlie Kirk.

Kirk, a devout, professed Christian and Phoenix native, was a month shy of turning 32 years old at the time of his death. Kirk left behind a wife — CEO of Proclaim Streetwear and Bible in 365, and former Miss Arizona USA, Erika Kirk (née Frantzve) — and two young children.

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer for “The Charlie Kirk Show,” said on Sunday that TPUSA received over 37,000 requests for new chapters.

Prior to Kirk’s assassination, TPUSA reported having approximately 900 college chapters and 1,200 high school chapters, or about 3,500 chapters total.

“The organization has received over 32,000 inquiries in the last 48-hours to start new campus chapters,” said Kolvet. “Charlie’s vision to have a Club America chapter (our high school brand) in every high school in America (around 23,000) will come true much much faster than he could have ever possibly imagined.”

Kolvet also reported to Fox News that he personally received “hundreds of offers” to work or volunteer for TPUSA.

Many have reported witnessing a massive increase in church attendance the Sunday following Kirk’s assassination, accompanied with online postings of baptisms directly influenced by Kirk. 

Donations also poured in to support Kirk’s widow and two children.

One GiveSendGo for the Kirk family sits at over $4.9 million as of Monday, with a goal of $6 million. ALP Pouches, a nicotine pouch company, organized the fundraiser.

Another GiveSendGo organized by TPUSA has raised over $1.8 million. TPUSA is also soliciting donations to continue its work and grow.

Another GiveSendGo was launched by conservative pundit Glenn Beck as a resurrection of the 912 Project. That fundraiser has raised over $500,000.

Several smaller fundraisers have also cropped up online and collected thousands: over 200 on GoFundMe as of Monday. The fundraisers pledge money to the Kirk family, TPUSA, or creating memorials.

Kirk was shot and killed on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University during another one of his viral campus debates, part of his “American Comeback Tour.”

Several days following Kirk’s death, law enforcement arrested Tyler Robinson, 22, for the assassination.

Per the FBI, Robinson had an “obsession” with Kirk and “hated” the conservative evangelist. FBI Director Kash Patel said that Robinson told another individual ahead of the assassination via text that he had an opportunity to kill Kirk and would do so because of Kirk’s Christianity.

“He had a text message exchange with another individual in which he claimed that he had an opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk — and he was going to do it because of his hatred for what Charlie stood for,” said Patel.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Fox News that it was “fairly obvious to everyone” that Kirk’s assassination was “an ideologically motivated attack.” 

In addition to the messaging evidence, ammunition recovered at the assassination site indicated allegiances to transgender and anti-fascist ideologies. Robinson’s romantic partner, his roommate, was an individual who identified as a “furry” and a transgender woman.

*****

This article was published at AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.

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Can We Finally Admit The T In LGBT Stands For Terrorism? thumbnail

Can We Finally Admit The T In LGBT Stands For Terrorism?

By Hayden Daniel

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The perpetrators of these heinous tragedies and those who cheer them on couldn’t be any clearer as to what their motivation is or who their targets are.

The assassination of conservative icon Charlie Kirk proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the “transgender” movement is, in fact, a serious domestic terror threat to Christian conservatives in this country.

The revelation that the suspect in Kirk’s assassination was romantically involved with a man who identifies as a woman came as both a shock and as an all-too-common addendum to yet another tragedy.

It came as a shock because it’s a seemingly bizarre twist in an already perplexing account of the suspect, his upbringing, and the details of his plot. Yet it also came as an almost expected feature of this tragedy because transgender-identifying people have become a staple in recent high-profile crimes against conservatives.

The alleged assassin engraved his ammunition with expressions linked to transgender and Antifa ideology. A text message exchange revealed that the alleged assassin had confessed to his boyfriend that he killed Kirk early on in the manhunt. Though he is now reportedly cooperating with the authorities, as far as we know, the boyfriend made no attempt to contact law enforcement while the manhunt was ongoing. Instead, the suspect’s father turned him in.

Kirk’s assassination came just two weeks after the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. The attacker, a man who identified as a woman, killed two children and wounded 21 other innocent people before taking his own life.

While the mainstream media played dumb and claimed the shooter’s motive was “a mystery,” the shooter himself spelled it out, literally, on his weapons and in his journal. The shooter’s journal also contained demonic drawings, mocked Christians, and reveled in the thought of inflicting violence on children.

In both YouTube videos posted prior to the attack and in his journal, the shooter documented his struggle with his trans identity. “I regret being trans. I wish I was a girl I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have today. I also can’t afford that,” he said.

Instead of mourning the deaths of innocent children like decent people did, trans-identifying cretins practically fell over each other in their rush to celebrate the tragedy and call for further violence. “MORE DEAD CHRISTIANS LOL” and “Take the fight to their kids so they can feel what it’s like to be attacked for your identity” were just a couple of the vile comments uncovered.

And only a couple of years ago, back in 2023, another gender-poisoned shooter took her self-hatred out on innocent schoolchildren at The Covenant School in Nashville, killing six people.

After years of obstruction from the FBI, newly released pages from the shooter’s journal reveal a mind just as disturbed and hateful toward conservative Christians as the Annunciation shooter’s. On one page, the shooter declares, “My church doesn’t accept gay people, so therefore I hate all of you.” While she wrote on another, “I just wish to switch genders like a clownfish.”

She also wrote extensively about being possessed by demons, even dubbing herself “the Devil’s apprentice.” She also said of the devil: “He is infesting my mind with revenge on a grand scale, to [sic] great for my own ability. If I am to one day commit the most infamous school shooting, I will need the Devils [sic] powers.”

Trans-identifying people have been in the vanguard of violent left-wing activists for years now. “Punch a TERF” — an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminists — became a popular slogan after some otherwise liberal women, perhaps most famously J.K. Rowling, began to push back against the radical left’s gender madness. They don’t shy away from doxxing, harassing, and straight-up physically attacking people who refuse to bend reality to suit their mental and moral illness. And much like the act of transitioning itself, each new violent act receives nothing but raucous applause from those already lost to the transgender cult. They revel in attacking that which is true and good.

Just look at the avalanche of posts online celebrating Kirk’s assassination — a high percentage of them come from trans-identifying ghouls. Several of said ghouls have been publicly reprimanded for their posts, but a whole host of gender mutants continue to scuttle about on the internet, taking demonic delight in Kirk’s death.

But they’re more than just online trolls. The Zizians are a militant cult-like organization, made up mostly of trans-identifying “rationalists” who have been connected to several murders, including that of a Border Patrol AgentDavid Maland on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s second inauguration. “After speaking with them on an urgent matter, I’m not sure the FBI fully grasps what’s at hand here regarding the trans terror cult linked to killings across the country going back years. The extremism was in the open and this cell has members at large right now who are armed,” reporter Andy Ngo said alongside a video about the cult posted on X.

The FBI and the Department of Justice must reckon with the growing and undeniable threat posed by radical, violent trans-identifying people.

The FBI and the Biden administration clearly didn’t hesitate to categorize Catholics who practice the Latin Mass or scheme to label concerned parents who spoke out at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists. They’ve also consistently spread the demonstrable lie that the “most persistent and lethal” domestic terrorism threat in the United States comes from “white supremacist” and “anti-government” groups — i.e., the left’s favorite euphemisms for conservatives.

The FBI shouldn’t hesitate to label and prosecute real threats with the same fervor. Under Director Kash Patel, it should investigate organizations that amplify transgender ideology, go after the people who fund the transgender movement, and consider trans-identifying people who spew violent rhetoric as potential domestic terrorists. The Trump administration should shut down websites that have acted as breeding grounds for transgender radicalism (like the platform Discord), and Attorney General Pam Bondi should prosecute individuals who incite violence in the name of transgenderism, not for so-called “hate speech” but for fomenting domestic terrorism.

While the propaganda press tries in vain to obscure the motive behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the recent school shootings, the perpetrators and those who cheer them on couldn’t be any clearer as to what their motivation is or who their targets are. Transgender degenerates want conservative Christians dead or otherwise intimidated into silence. That’s literally the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism. As long as we delay in acknowledging that transgender radicals are a deadly threat to normal Americans and refuse to treat these brutes like the domestic terrorists that they are, heinous attacks on conservatives will certainly continue.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: The Federalist and Wikimedia Commons

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How the Left Programmed Young People to Hate thumbnail

How the Left Programmed Young People to Hate

By David Betz and Michael Rainsborough

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

In the spring of 1975, the Red Army Faction, more popularly known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, stormed the West German Embassy in Stockholm and murdered two of its staff before setting the building ablaze. In its aftermath, a British tabloid printed a headline whose bluntness masked its profundity: ‘So, Who’s Sick?‘

It was less a headline than a rhetorical diagnosis, reflecting the bewilderment at these seemingly senseless acts of terror. Was it the bourgeois world condemned as corrupt by these self-styled revolutionaries, or was it the revolutionaries themselves, who in their righteous fervour appeared possessed by demons?

The question was never one that admitted an easy answer in that moment, and it remains just as piercing in ours. For when, half a century later, Charlie Kirk was struck down in the midst of civic debate, and when voices on the ‘progressive’ Left respond not with horror but with unholy glee, we are forced once again to confront the same ambiguity. Who is diseased? Who is truly sick? The question still hangs in the air, accusing its audience as much as its subjects.

The Eclipse of Compassion

The murder of Charlie Kirk was barbarous enough, but what followed was more chilling still. Social media, that great theatre of contemporary sentiment, resounded with elation rather than grief. Where the natural response should have been mourning and sober reflection, there was instead celebration, applause, even exultation. The old pieties of compassion and human dignity were trampled beneath a chorus of malevolence.

If we return to 1975, we can discern that the spectacle is hardly without precedent. The chronicler of the Red Army Faction’s rise and fall, Stefan Aust, described the psychosis that fuelled its violence as the Baader-Meinhof Complex: a toxic brew of revolutionary ideology, middle-class angst and personality cultism, in which politics fused with pathology. Terror and bloodshed were the logical expression of this worldview.

Jillian Becker, in her study of the same phenomenon published in 1977, placed the emergence of the Baader-Meinhof gang within an extended historical frame, tracing how West Germany’s post-war radicals were the children of those who had lived through the Third Reich — parents whose relationship with Nazism was often ambivalent, sometimes unrepentant. Their children judged them guilty of complicity or cowardice. In turn, they felt they had no tradition to receive let alone uphold, no cultural authority to embrace as their own. Becker memorably described them as Hitler’s Children, who expressed their alienation in violence against the very society that had given them life and often prosperity.

The parallels with today are clear. The obnoxious, jeering, bratty mobs on social media and their elevation of spite into virtue: these too are not simply political stances but symptoms of generational breakdown. Becker’s ‘lost children’ of post-war Germany were orphaned by the silence and ambiguities of their parents’ Nazi past. Today’s youth, though shaped by different conditions, are estranged in an analogous way — heirs to a liberal order that preached emancipation but delivered only deracination.

Children of the Void

Becker’s account of Germany’s post-war radicals was of a generation forsaken by history — children who, faced with no inheritance they could accept without shame, turned their fury against the civilisation that had produced them. That revolt finds its echo 50 years later.

The YouTube channel Richard The Fourth, one of the few voices to offer measured and calm reflections on our troubled times, spoke in similar terms of those TikTokkers, X users and BlueSkyers who rejoiced in Charlie Kirk’s murder. “Who are these lost souls? Where did they come from?” he asked. They were, he suggested, “the lost children of the boomer generation”, alienated by the failures of a secular progressivism that promised transcendence through empathy and emancipation from tradition, but in the end gifted them only spiritual vacuity.

These people are not monsters by nature; they are the offspring of a culture that extolled compassion while detaching it from justice, that proclaimed liberation even as it erased the sources of meaning. The progeny of flower power have become the children of a void, and in that void, savagery takes root.

The historical parallels, then as now, are evident: youth cut adrift from their cultural moorings find themselves drawn less to renewal than to destruction. Then as now, dislocation breeds violence and scorn rather than reflection. Becker’s Hitler’s Children and Richard’s “lost souls” are separated by time and circumstance yet bound together by the same pattern: a society that cannot pass down its traditions to its successors is liable to be repudiated by them.

If Aust diagnosed the Baader-Meinhof Complex and Becker revealed the deeper dereliction that sustained it, Richard The Fourth’s reflections illuminate the pathology of our own time. The cheering at murder and the inversion of empathy into its opposite are the symptoms of a Liberal Nihilism Complex: a syndrome in which the promises of modernity collapse into petulance and hostility, leaving only a cohort of ‘feral goblins’, mocking and howling into the abyss.

Creating the Land of Hatred

Contemporary academics, especially in the social sciences, have little of real value to offer humanity, but the few decent ones — those who write for this outlet, of course — still have the capacity to bring depth and perspective to some of our present predicaments.

We are neither spiritualists nor psychologists and cannot claim to have a greater window into the minds of these lost souls than anyone else. What we can offer, though, is decades of engagement with the study of strategic conduct: the motives and means of those who resort to violence in pursuit of political ends. And it is here that we wish to advance a thesis that goes further than viewing the collapse of empathy as an unfortunate by-product of social confusion.

What we are witnessing is not a mishap. Whatever the spiritual degradation and cultural dispossession of these young minds, they are, nevertheless, instruments of history. The way they have been psychologically programmed is no quirk of fate; it has been done with intent. They have been conditioned for a purpose…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Daily Sceptic.

David Betz is Professor of War in the Modern World, King’s College London. Michael Rainsborough is a former Head of the Department of War Studies, King’s College LondonImage Credit: Daily Sceptic

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The American Vocation

By Conlan Salgado

The American Vocation”>/by

The American vocation, conceived of as a personal political project, consists primarily in perfecting oneself to live as a self-governing individual, practicing freedom of speech to make famous the truth, the right to bear arms to protect oneself and one’s family, the freedom of religion to search honestly for the True God, and the right to own property to cultivate a wealth that may be passed down to one’s children. The American Vocation belongs exclusively to the right, and in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, it ought to be understood that in many public spaces, the American vocation cannot be lived out. . . .

1410 2126 Conlan Salgado 2025-09-16 09:21:23 The American Vocation

What Killed Charlie Kirk thumbnail

What Killed Charlie Kirk

By Liel Leibovitz

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

And, more importantly, can we stop it?

What can you say in the aftermath of a national tragedy like Charlie Kirk’s assassination?

In the 24 hours or so [now five days] since Kirk was gunned down in Utah by a shooter who, as of this writing, is [was] still at large, we’ve been treated to a torrent of predictable responses: outrage and hurt from those who knew and loved him, sadistic glee from many who didn’t, and, from the vast majority of Americans in-between, some version of the following sentiment: We can’t allow this sort of thing to happen in America.

Amen, selah. But to stop the next shooter we need to understand where this one came from first. And for 24 hours or so, we’ve been offered nothing but heaps of twaddle on this singularly crucial question. To hear our politicians and pundits—left, right, and center—tell it, the shooting occurred in a politically charged climate, committed by some coward who chose to end the debate with a bullet. Toss in some lip service to mental health and the obligatory lip-pursing about gun violence, and you have the consensus vision of what went wrong. And it’s a strangely comforting one at that, because it casts the shooter as a horror movie monster, terrifying but singular in its ghoulishness, the one meanie who emerged from the toxic swamp of bad but curable social phenomena. All you have to do, then, is find him, catch him, deter others from getting any crazy ideas, and our long national nightmare will be over.

But the nightmare, sadly, is far greater than that. If we’re being honest and level-headed, it’s not too hard to understand that the tragedy was imminent. It didn’t happen in a vacuum, and it was no freak aberration. Charlie Kirk was shot because great forces spent decades reshaping social norms and institutions and creating vast cadres of Americans ready to do great violence to anyone they were led to believe was their enemy. This isn’t hyperbole. In a grim coincidence, just a few hours before Kirk’s assassination, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released a survey of 68,000 students in 257 universities nationwide; one in three said it was acceptable to use violence in response to offensive speech.

Like all complex and still unfurling stories, the account of how we got here is intricate and contains multitudes. But we must look at this straight in the face, and attack the problems head on.

Let’s start, fittingly enough, with births. Over the last few decades, American birthrates have plummeted precipitously, and are projected to reach 1.6 births per women in the next three decades, well beneath the 2.1 births per woman replacement rate. This should come as no surprise, because Americans, it turns out, have also stopped having sex. In 1990, according to the Institute for Family Studies, 55% of Americans reported having sex on a regular basis. The number now stands at 37%, and it’s dropping even faster for younger Americans: In 2022, the Kinsey Institute found that one in four members of Gen Z had yet to have sex with a real, live, human partner.

How did we become a sexless society failing to reproduce? The answer is simple: by design. For 30 years at least, we’ve all been treated to a carefully orchestrated campaign against embodiment, or the idea that biological realities matter and that they have something profound to do with who we are. It began with abortion, which we were told was a human rights issue and, besides, was to be kept safe, legal, and rare. Then, before we knew it, we had entertainers like Michelle Wolf celebrating abortion as an all-out good on Comedy Central. Then came the tide of transgenderism, which began with the silencing of a Brown University professor whose research proved that kids were declaring themselves trans because of peer pressure emanating in large part from the culture and social media platforms. Before too long, we were told that though every cell in the human body has its own sex-specific chromosomes, gender is a social construct that could be changed at will, and that biological males should now be allowed to compete in women’s sports or choose to be incarcerated in women’s prisons.

Those who objected to this lunacy were silenced, or, if they were unfortunate enough to be British, arrested. Entire generations of children grew up being taught that it was right and good to deny obvious biological reality. Entire swaths of doctors were trained to say that cutting off the breasts of a healthy young child was called “gender affirming care” and was entirely virtuous…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Tablet Mag.

Image Credit: Grok AI

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No Birthday Cake For Margaret Sanger thumbnail

No Birthday Cake For Margaret Sanger

By Ken Braun

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Editors’ Note: We wonder how many “feminists” really know the background of one of their heroes. There is even an Arizona connection. Sanger moved to Tucson in 1934 and remained a resident for decades. During this time, she helped found clinics that would later evolve into Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona.  There were legislative fights in 1991 after her placement in the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame.  There was another partisan attempt to remove her in 2021, and Republicans and Democrats usually line up differently when it comes to government funding of the organization she founded, Planned Parenthood. Moreover, the birth control pill was funded by a supporter of Sanger, Katherine McCormick, the heir to the McCormick reaper farm implement fortune.  These two were close collaborators throughout their lives. We observe a familiar pattern in the history of great wealth and intellectuals engineering social change, often with unintended consequences.  Parenthetically, McCormick Ranch in Scottsdale is also connected to the same family, making for another Arizona intersection. While “the pill” has given women greater control over reproduction, it is undeniable that there have been consequences that might seem perverse.  The long-term health effects are still not fully understood.  Changes with basic hormones can alter moods, as any woman can tell you.  It also appears the well-educated women whom Sanger felt were fit to have children to improve society are the ones not having children, and often those not to Sanger’s liking are those having the most children. Moreover, an extraordinary number of children, especially among those she deemed unfit,  are now being born out of wedlock, and those being born don’t have the benefit of stable families and fathers. This is the problem when you have a racist, top-down, central planning view of society. Progressives always talk about being nonjudgmental, but when you want to play God, you first must remove God from the picture. And, at least in Judeo-Christianity, all humans are considered children of God. None is “inferior”. Their moral character, not their lineage or race, determines their “value”. That was decidedly not the view of Margaret Sanger, a racist and eugenicist of the first order. The result has been moral chaos, and Sanger’s racist ideas have produced more severe problems than the ones she originally intended to deal with.  And that view would be the charitable view of things.  Socialists have long despised the nuclear family and marriage and felt its destruction was necessary for the revolution to overthrow capitalism.  As a socialist herself, she undoubtedly was steeped in such thinking. Perhaps these perverse outcomes were not unintended consequences of her worldview, but in fact, intended consequences.  In either interpretation, she left the world worse than she found it. While her efforts have provided women with more autonomy, this has come at a cost. She has killed more humans,  or prevented their existence,  than any other person in history.  And what is left of the American family is pretty much a mess.

The racist founder of Planned Parenthood doesn’t have a history worth celebrating.

It’s hard to work up a “Happy Birthday” for someone who wanted so few of them. But Saturday (September 14) will be the anniversary of the 1879 birthday of eugenicist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.

The InfluenceWatch profile of Sanger begins with this overview:

Margaret Sanger was a prominent advocate for contraception, eugenics, population control, and abortion best known for founding the American Birth Control League, the immediate predecessor of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA).

Sanger popularized the term “birth control” as central to her larger philosophy of Birth Control (later called “planned parenthood”), which hinged upon control of women’s reproduction and countering problems of global overpopulation. As an early advocate of Birth Control philosophy, she aligned herself closely with the cause of eugenicists in establishing “racial betterment” policies meant to improve the welfare of women and stop reproduction of people she deemed “unfit” to have children. Sanger published much of her views of sexuality and birth control in Woman Rebel, a magazine she formed in 1914.

A political radical, she was a member of the Socialist Party, which advocated for a government takeover of private property and the U.S. economy.

The profile also explains how she came to name her movement:

She conceived the term “birth control” (later “planned parenthood”) in January 1914 after considering suggestions by European population control advocates involving “limitation” and “family control,” which she rejected. “We tried population control, race control, and birth rate control,” she later wrote. “Then someone suggested ‘Drop the rate.’ Birth control was the answer; we knew we had it.”

In tandem with her desire to liberate women’s sexuality from reproduction, Sanger also expected her population control plans to improve the human species by reducing the creation of individuals she found undesirable. The InfluenceWatch profile quotes Sanger as saying her aim was that “civilization may hope to protect itself and the generations of the future from the allied dangers of imbecility, defect and delinquency.”

The profile also provides this longer quote from Sanger, in which she predicted a “terrestrial paradise” would ensue from weeding out the “delinquent classes” from the species:

Let us conceive for the moment at least, a world not burdened by the weight of dependent and delinquent classes, a total population of mature, intelligent, critical and expressive men and women. Instead of the inert, exploitable, mentally passive class which now forms the barren substratum of our civilization, try to imagine a population active, resistant, passing individual and social lives of the most contented and healthy sort. Would such men and women, liberated from our endless, unceasing struggle against mass prejudice and inertia, be deprived in any way of the stimulating zest of life? Would they sink into a slough of complacency and fatuity?

No! Life for them would be enriched, intensified and ennobled in a fashion it is difficult for us in our spiritual and physical squalor even to imagine. There would be a new renaissance of the arts and sciences. Awakened at last to the proximity of the treasures of life lying all about them, the children of that age would be inspired by a spirit of adventure and romance that would indeed produce a terrestrial paradise.

The profile also covers the ongoing controversies over Sanger’s history:

In 2015, a group of black pastors and the pro-life group ForAmerica called for a bust of Sanger to be removed from the National Portrait Gallery, a public museum in Washington, D.C., on the grounds that Sanger should not be honored since she advocated for eugenics and sterilization of “inferior” people. In a letter to the Gallery, the group wrote, “Perhaps your institution is a victim of propaganda advanced by those who support abortion. Nevertheless, a prestigious institution like the National Portrait Gallery should have higher standards and subject its honorees to higher scrutiny.”

The pastors and activists were supported by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who called the bust “an affront both to basic human decency and the very meaning of justice” in a publicly circulated letter to other members of Congress. The Gallery ultimately refused to remove Sanger’s bust, with a spokeswoman saying the exhibit didn’t ignore “the less-than-admirable aspects of [Sanger’s] career.”

Other Capital Research Center and InfluenceWatch reports on Sanger and Planned Parenthood (many written by former CRC researcher Hayden Ludwig) include the following:

  • The InfluenceWatch profile of Planned Parenthood.
  • At least three extensive reports on the history of Sanger’s movement:

The Legacy of Margaret Sanger

Birth of the Abortion Industrial Complex 

Going Green for White Supremacy: Review of Defending the Master Race

  • And several short essays covering Sanger controversies, such as:

Planned Parenthood: the Biggest Bastion of Eugenics and White Supremacy in America

Margaret Sanger Is a Hero to the Left. Here’s Her History of Ugly Views.

*****

This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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The Conservative Chorus: Charlie, American Original thumbnail

The Conservative Chorus: Charlie, American Original

By Conlan Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

I don’t know if anyone fought as hard as you did day after day, campus after campus, schooling and winning over the younger generations for Trump. I watched all your streams and learned so much from you. Thank you, Charlie. 👏🏻🙌🏻♥️ pic.twitter.com/nJcvPrFXTa

— ♥️ Joy Reborn ♥️ (@RedRising11) November 6, 2024

Charlie Kirk was what Rush Limbaugh might have called “an American Original”. An American Original, according to my understanding, is what America would be if America were a single person, instead of a nation–an individual human being instead of an individual country.

What if the impulse for liberty, disciplined by virtue, were a person, instead a “national spirit?” What if the impulse to replace language with violence were a human being, instead of a “national spirit.” What if the rights to property, freedom, life, and Christian Salvation were one man, instead of “the principles of a nation.”

My considered guess is Charlie Kirk.

He was Christ-obsessed; he married young, had children, made himself millions of dollars through honest work, cultivated the practice of civil debate, and through his activism, ensured the election of the most representative politician since Ronald Reagan.

His murder was sinful in the sense of anti-Godly, or Satanic, but it was also symbolic.

It articulated all of the contradictions of the Left, showing them to be versions of bizarre irrationality: an ideology which enabled the murder of a civil debater is calling for “civil debate”; the ideology which explains away its enemies as “Nazis, Fascists, garbage, deplorables” is pleading: tone down the rhetoric.

Do not say to us “Lord, Lord”; by fruits we will know you.

Civilization exists to the extent that language has replaced physical violence as the primary means of organizing and uniting people, and resolving their disputes. On Sep. 10, violence replaced language, so it is TECHNICALLY correct to say Leftism is a form of barbarism.

The response to this evil is predictable from the left, stellar advocate of wickedness that it is (abortion, transgenderism, etc).

What must be calibrated is the response from the right.

There will be the few, the tone deaf, who babble about “prudence”, restraint, caution. There will be the few who return us nothing but platitudes.

We must make sure the few are not the powerful.

The problem is not rhetoric. American politics has always involved verbal aggression; it has not always involved an explanation of why one’s political enemies have the moral worth of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels.

Leftism is, per se, a justification of violence. Any Leftist who isn’t committing violence is someone who has not followed their beliefs to a logical conclusion.

What must follow, nevertheless, is a suppression of barbarism.

Here is my unoriginal list: seizing the assets of BLM and ANTIFA; RICO prosecution of George Soros et al; mass firings of those who celebrate, condone, justify, contextualize, or excuse the idea that difference of opinion is a capital crime (i.e. the re-invention of polite society); total legal accountability for those (ANTIFA) who have instructed others in terror tactics, led terror tactics seminars, or recruited others for the purpose of domestic terrorism.

That will be a beginning.

Regarding the caution-mongers, allow me to translate: shut up and wait for the next assassination.

We will not wait. We will not be cautious. We will institutionalize the truth so belligerently, our enemies will want to kill us.

Then we will be worthy of Charlie Kirk’s legacy.

Then we will have honored him.

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Tucson Is the Canary in the Homeless Shelter thumbnail

Tucson Is the Canary in the Homeless Shelter

By Craig J. Cantoni

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

The reasons why the homeless in Tucson and other cities are living and dying on the street like animals

A recent news story by KVOA in Tucson was another daily reminder of personal and societal costs of homelessness and the nation’s embarrassing inability to remedy it.  

The story was about a mother and her kids who were attacked by a deranged homeless guy in the outdoor section of the Children’s Museum in downtown Tucson. 

The attacker was arrested, charged with misdemeanors, and quickly released. 

If Mom had taken the kids to a city park instead, it wouldn’t have been any safer. She would’ve had to make sure that the kids didn’t step on drug needles and human feces or be accosted in a restroom.

Well, at least mom and kids weren’t attacked by a deranged guy with a hatchet, as recently happened at a downtown bus stop.

Downtown Tucson, like many downtowns across the nation, has been turned into a spiffy office and entertainment oasis, but without first addressing the severe socioeconomic problems that swirl around the island and often enter the utopia, hatchet in hand.

There is no need for Tucsonans to ride a rollercoaster to be frightened to death. They can just ride a city bus. You see, Tucson’s kind, caring, and altruistic politicians have made bus rides free in the city, which means that riders can be terrorized at no cost by the deranged people who ride the buses and hang out at bus stops. 

I’m an expert at being terrorized, having acquired my expertise by riding the El and other public transit when I lived in Chicago for ten years, as well as by living for five years in the barrio of San Antonio, where I was once shot at by gangbangers. I’ve wondered ever since if advocates for public transit and walkable cities have ever taken public transit or walked in a sketchy area at night.  

It sounds like a cliché, but problems can’t be solved without first agreeing on their root causes.  There is little agreement on the root causes of homelessness among social scientists, politicians, journalists, the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, the left, the right, or the middle.

Some say that poverty and a lack of affordable housing are the root causes of homelessness. Others put the blame on drug addiction and/or mental health problems. Still others say that many of the homeless like to live on the street, or at least prefer it over living in homeless shelters.

Interestingly, almost no one says that a high divorce rate and a decline in the traditional nuclear family have left a large number of Americans without a family support network, not even a cot in the basement of a relative’s house.

It’s also interesting to reflect on what was done during the Great Depression to help the impoverished and the unemployed, and to ask if this would work today. 

Consider:

The Civilian Conservation Corps put three million men to work over the nine years of its existence. Unmarried and unemployed men ages 17 to 29 could join the CCC, and in return for building infrastructure in rural areas, receive food, clothing, and barebones shelter in work camps, along with a monthly wage of $30 (equivalent to about $800 today), 80 percent of which had to be sent home to their families.

There was a smaller program for women, known as She-She-She Camps. 

The Works Progress Administration put millions more to work in building parks, roads, schools, bridges, airports, and housing. It had a separate division that gave work to artists, musicians, writers, and actors.  

The CCC and WPA did such quality workmanship that much of the resulting infrastructure still stands today and can be seen in and around Tucson and other cities. 

Call me cynical, but I doubt that such programs would be effective today in helping the homeless get on their feet.  The programs would be rife with crime, drugs, divisiveness, and loafing. Also, both the left and right would find reasons to oppose them. The left would say that the jobs don’t pay a living wage, should be unionized, and are demeaning to the disadvantaged. The right would say that the programs smack of socialism. 

In any event, the problems of mental illness and drug addiction would still need to be addressed.

The challenge is how to get the afflicted into treatment programs and, if necessary, institutionalized without violating real and perceived civil liberties. Additionally, there is the issue of a lack of such programs and facilities, as well as a corresponding lack of funding for them.

To get around concerns about civil liberties, one idea is to offer drug rehabilitation instead of jail to the homeless when they are arrested for lawbreaking. But the problem with that is the fact that it is common for lawbreakers, whether homeless or not, to be released for minor infractions. 

Over 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy secured a bill to establish humane mental health facilities nationwide.  Funding was stopped after his assassination. At the same time, it had become the policy, oftentimes at the direction of courts, to release the mentally ill into the community, due in part to the awfulness of the few older mental health hospitals that remained. The 1975 movie, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” helped to turn public opinion against institutionalization.

Regarding the contention that homelessness is primarily a problem of poverty and a lack of affordable housing, color me skeptical. But even if the contention is true, the conventional wisdom on these subjects isn’t very wise.

Take affordable housing. The old idea was to build public high-rises for the poor, such as the infamous Pruitt-Igoe in my boyhood hometown of St. Louis and Cabrini-Green in Chicago. Most of these turned into incubators for crime and have since been torn down.

Then there was the idea of mandating that a portion of new housing developments be set aside for low-income housing, an idea spurred by a New Jersey Supreme Court decision in 1975, known as the Mt. Laurel decision.  

In the late 1980s, my wife and I lived near a large development in Bedminster, NJ, which was built in compliance with the decision. It became easy to identify which homes were the affordable ones, judging by their condition. More cops had to be hired by the police department to handle the increased crime.  

A new idea to achieve affordability has been adopted by states and cities, including Arizona and Tucson. It is to loosen zoning regulations and building codes to facilitate the building of multi-story apartments in neighborhoods of single-family homes and to allow homeowners to build rental houses, or casitas, in their backyards.

Along with the goal of increasing population density, there is the companion goal of getting people to take public transportation or walk instead of being reliant on cars. To facilitate this, and to theoretically make construction less expensive, zoning has been revised to require fewer parking spaces per unit.  

As an avid walker who dislikes the ugliness that the auto has wrought on American cities, I hope it works; but evidence suggests that it will not. As New York City demonstrates, housing costs increase with higher population density and with vertical living in tiny apartments. Affordability has become such a hot-button issue in New York that an avowed socialist will probably become the next mayor. 

The odds are that big-time operators will build the new apartments in cities such as Tucson and charge big-time rents.  One reason for this is that small-time landlords are finding it difficult to make money, due to a plethora of regulations restricting their ability to deal with bad tenants and to increase rents enough to cover their costs.

What about backyard casitas? Well, they are very expensive to build, even with more permissive building codes. Rosie Romero, the host of “Rosie on the House” and a longtime contractor in Arizona, says that it can cost $400 a square foot to build a backyard casita that meets the fire code and has the proper hook-ups for electricity, water, and sewer.

Most discussions on housing affordability skip over the role that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies and the federal government’s housing policies have played in driving up the cost of houses. The policies have benefited existing homeowners over prospective homeowners, as well as benefiting the wealthy over the poor.

Regarding the theory that poverty is a cause of homelessness, a question comes to mind: Why has homelessness increased over the decades in tandem with increases in social-welfare spending and a decrease in poverty?

Poverty is a very controversial subject, and disagreeing with the conventional wisdom can trigger name-calling.  Still, it shouldn’t go unmentioned that there is considerable evidence that the official poverty rate in the US overstates poverty by a factor of four. That’s because the official rate doesn’t include many transfer payments and tax credits that accrue to lower-income Americans. When these are counted, Americans in the bottom fifth of reported income actually have more income, on average, than the next fifth and almost as much as the fifth after that. (Wealth is a different matter.) This argument is made and backed up with compelling statistics in the book, The Myth of American Inequality, by Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund and John Early. 

That’s not to say that solving the homeless problem can be done without spending a lot of money, especially on mental health facilities, drug rehab, and temporary shelters. For sure, bromides, platitudes, Band-Aids, silver bullets, and tropes won’t solve the problem.

I’ll go further and say that something is wrong with the nation’s priorities when Americans are living and dying on the street like animals while other Americans don’t seem to notice as they pass by in their $50,000 cars and trucks. At the same time, billion-dollar sports stadia are being built at public expense across the country, and while Bill Belichick is being paid a million bucks to coach a college football team as he makes a fool out of himself by dating a woman who looks young enough to be a college coed.

Maybe with different national priorities, a mother could take her kids to a museum or park without the fear of being accosted.

*****

Image Credit:Shutterstock

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Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Should Herald The End Of The American Left

By John Daniel Davidson

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

The left has always been a violent, revolutionary movement, incompatible with ordered liberty. Politics isn’t possible with the left.

Back in April, Charlie Kirk posted on X about how assassination culture is spreading on the left. He cited a recent survey that found 48 percent of liberals think it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk, and 55 percent think the same of President Trump.

“The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response,” Kirk said. “This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.”

His words then now seem darkly prophetic in light of his assassination Wednesday at Utah Valley University. If the left was a ticking time bomb before Kirk’s murder, we can now say that the bomb has gone off. The assassin reportedly engraved transgender and antifascist slogans on the bullets in the rifle he used to kill Kirk, confirming what everyone already knew, that Kirk’s assassination was motivated by radical leftist ideology. This dark fruit came from the deliberate cultivation of violence by the institutional left as a political strategy.

That’s what Kirk was getting at in his X post. Those in positions of authority — in public schools and universities, in the media, in the Democratic Party, in Hollywood and Silicon Valley — have for many years encouraged and themselves engaged in violent political rhetoric, and at times openly endorsed political violence. Why? Because violence is at the center of the left’s political project.

As my colleague Mark Hemingway detailed earlier this week, former President Barack Obama’s disingenuous statement that “We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk,” rings hollow precisely because Obama’s entire political career sprang from his close association with violent, unrepentant left-wing terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of The Weather Underground. Obama might pretend not to know what motivated Kirk’s assassin, but he certainly knew what motivated Ayers and Dohrn, and he not only didn’t have a problem with that, he also didn’t think his association with them disqualified him from mainstream Democratic politics. But now we’re supposed to take Obama’s denunciations of political violence seriously? I don’t think so.

There is no place in this country for Obama-style political leftism that pretends to abhor violence while tacitly and rhetorically embracing it. It’s not an overstatement to say that the politics of Ayers and Obama and the mainstream political left in America created the shooter who killed Kirk. Left-wing politics in this country has always been violent. As Hemingway noted, for an 18-month period in 1971-’72, left-wing terrorists set off nearly five bombs a day in American cities. That’s in addition to armed attacks like the 1981 Brink’s truck robbery The Weather Underground carried out with the Black Liberation Army, killing two cops and a security guard in the process.

Eventually, this rash of left-wing terrorism came to an end — not because the leftist radicals were beaten, or because they mellowed out, but because they won. They infiltrated and took over our institutions, the universities and the media and corporate America, and eventually put one of their disciples, Obama, in the White House.

The violence and intolerance of the left, in other words, isn’t confined to a radical fringe. It’s foundational to the left’s entire revolutionary political project going back more than a half-century in this country. As Kirk himself saw, assassination is now considered a justified response by half of all self-identified liberals. It’s a mainstream view on the left. That’s why you see so many liberals outright celebrating Kirk’s assassination on social media. That’s why you see left-wing media figures like Matthew Dowd on MSNBC essentially justifying or excusing Kirk’s murder on the grounds that he spread “hate speech.” These are the same people who cheered when Trump supporters or vaccine skeptics died of Covid, or celebrated when Hamas slaughtered Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. Some of these leftists are members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who loudly protested a moment of prayer on Kirk’s behalf as he was dying.

They do this not because of substantive disagreements over Covid or Palestine or anything Kirk believed. Those disagreements are pretexts for the sadism and violence inherent in the left-wing political project. As one anonymous X user put it, “The sadism is there a priori, looking for a home. All of those things are little holding compartments for it.”

The sadism itself arises from an approach to politics that is apocalyptic and millenarian. For the left, politics is a religion — not like Christianity but more like Islam. If you submit, you’ll be permitted to live. If you don’t, you must be destroyed.

A famous quote from the late Charles Krauthammer helps illustrate the problem this represents for our country. He said, “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” If you think someone is stupid, or just wrong, you do what Kirk did and try to persuade them to change their mind. But if you think someone is evil, then there’s a lot you will justify in an effort to stop them, including violence. And, because they are evil, you can revel in the violence the way many on the left are now doing over Kirk’s assassination.

So what are we on the right supposed to do about this? Calling for revenge assassinations or street violence is both morally wrong and politically foolish. Tit-for-tat violence and escalation will just feed the chaos in civil society and hence serve the interests of the left, for whom chaos is an essential ingredient in their social and political revolution.

And yet something must be done. The feckless GOP congressional leaders who are now shrugging their shoulders and acting helpless in the wake of Kirk’s assassination are, in their cowardice, playing a dangerous game. The only thing that will prevent escalation and vigilantism at this point is a vigorous response from legitimate, duly-constituted authorities. Absent that, some on the right will likely conclude that their government can’t or won’t protect them, and they will respond accordingly. Once that happens, it will be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to contain the escalation.

So how should the right respond? On the formal institutional level, The Trump administration should dismantle the entire ecosystem of left-wing political activism in America. Antifa and BLM groups need to have their assets seized and donor lists scrutinized. The left-wing billionaires who fund these organizations need to be criminally investigated and charged if possible. Groups tied to transgenderism, Palestine/Hamas, socialism and other radical leftist causes should be targeted using every tool available to the Justice Department and federal law enforcement agencies. The law should be applied maximally to these groups and the individuals who lead them and fund them.

If the Democratic Party and Democrat leaders are implicated, so be it. It might be that the DNC and the Democratic Party itself need to be destroyed, root and branch. In the near term, Democrat politicians like Rep. Ilhan Omar, who mocked Kirk after he was killed, should be expelled from Congress by the Republican majority.

Walter Kirn said this week on X, “This thing has a roots system, don’t be fooled. And gardeners in the media and other realms who water and tend to it.” The garden has to be destroyed, and the gardeners have to be held accountable.

This is not an extreme position, given where we are now. This entire left activist ecosystem spent a decade demonizing Kirk, smearing him as a Nazi and a racist and a fascist. They created twisted moral justifications for violence against him and every other conservative who believes what he believed. And now that their rhetoric has come to its full fruition, we find ourselves in a new place in America, where a new response is required from the right.

In a moving piece about Kirk’s assassination for The American Mind this week, my friend Joshua Treviño wrote that, “We are now in the realm of fundamental politics, which is concerned with the nature of the nation and the wielding of power for the common good.”

That’s absolutely right. Part of what it means to be in the realm of fundamental politics is that the ordinary rules of partisan politics no longer apply. It’s not necessary for the president or Republican leaders to issue statements about “turning down the temperature” or “coming together in this difficult time,” as Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did this week. Schumer in 2020 openly threatened Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, warning they would “reap the whirlwind” if they overturned Roe v. Wade. Less than two years later, when Roe was overturned, an assassin tried to kill Kavanaugh in his home.

So it no longer matters what people like Schumer say. You cannot “turn down the temperature” with such people, still less make common cause with them. Their cause is revolutionary and inherently violent, and if we don’t stamp it out completely it will consume and eventually destroy this country. We can be a constitutional republic of free citizens or we can be ruled by a leftist revolutionary regime. We cannot be both, which means we can no longer tolerate the violent leftist radicals among us. As Lincoln famously said of slavery in 1858, our country will cease to be divided: “It will become all one thing or all the other.”

*****

This article was first published at The Federalist and is reproduced here with permission

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Charlie Kirk, Martyr

By Joshua Treviño

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

“For they killed him in his kindness.”

This is who they chose to kill: the affable man whose main act was having good-faith political debates with college students. The man who, since fatherhood, was turning more toward Christianity as both a purpose and a theme. He was a partisan to be sure, but he was nowhere near the outer limits of the American tradition, especially given his relentless fixation on Lincolnian persuasion as a stabilizing force in a slowly disintegrating polity. The ones who kept losing debates with him didn’t feel that way, of course, but they were only the instrument, not the object, of his work. The object was the millions of Americans who watched, learned, and saw who won again and again—and decided that they wished to side with the winner.

In this way, Charlie Kirk was perhaps the closest thing to Socrates in the American public square. The leftist intellectuals who sneered at him—the rube peddling his simple lines, his crass sophistry, his heartland aw-shucks certainties—would guffaw at the parallel, but it is no less true. He argued—amiably, fairly, relentlessly—until they couldn’t stand it any longer. And like Socrates, they had him killed.

Also like Socrates, his students will now do more for his cause after his martyrdom than they ever did during his life. The Socratic vindication was in his deification through literature at the pens of Plato and Xenophon. Millennia later, everyone remembers the philosopher, but vanishingly few know who ended his life.

The armies of Charlie Kirk, martyr, will be much more vast: not a handful of Athenians but millions of Americans. Their work will not be in philosophical literature but in the politics of the years to come. Whatever benefit accrues to the Republican Party is merely incidental. We are now in the realm of fundamental politics, which is concerned with the nature of the nation and the wielding of power for the common good. The generation of Americans that Charlie Kirk molded will be drawing conclusions about both from his life and his death alike.

This may mean that the art of persuasion to which Kirk dedicated his public life experiences a revival. Perhaps an entire generation turns wholly from the Left and tradition, conservatism, and the Right become for the first time in a century the vanguard of the youth’s future. Millions of Kirk’s disciples may conclude that no politics is possible with an antagonist that reserves murder as its redoubt when argument fails.

None of these conclusions would be wrong.

When those conclusions are reached, the movement that helped precipitate Charlie Kirk’s murder may realize its error. They may finally understand that Kirk, Trump, and everyone else whom they hate with a blinding, intense passion were the moderates, the ones they could live with, the ones who didn’t wish to eradicate them. They may tell tales to their children of a time when the ascendant Right was perfectly happy to have a debate. They may say they wish it had never happened, that they weren’t for killing the man, that a lone extremist with a rifle was in no way representative of the whole.

When they do, we will remind them that on the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated, leftist members of the United States House of Representatives objected to a moment of prayer on his behalf.

What happens next has several templates, some more probable than others. There is the hunt for the shooter. Then there is the reckoning for what created him—a reckoning that’s long overdue.

We have too many martyrs now. Before Kirk there was a president who nearly suffered the same fate. Before Kirk there was a woman who just wanted to ride the train home. Before Kirk there were little children at Mass, praying as a killer opened fire.

American liberty requires sacrifice, and it requires martyrdom too. But the martyrs in our tradition should be afforded the choice of their fate. We celebrate the men of the Alamo and Corregidor. We find by contrast something horrific and unjust in death unsought and undesired. One is war, the other is crime.

Charlie Kirk chased the better angels of our nature. His killers herald the end of angel-chasing. What’s left is Melville:

For they killed him in his kindness,

In their madness and their blindness.

And his blood is on their hand.

There is sobbing of the strong,

And a pall upon the land;

But the People in their weeping

Bare the iron hand:

Beware the People weeping

When they bare the iron hand.

*****

This article was first published at American Mind, and is reproduced here with permission

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The Left Has Martyred Civilization thumbnail

The Left Has Martyred Civilization

By Conlan Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The most important facts about Charlie Kirk are that he was a husband, father, and Christian, because these are the human facts, the facts that tell us about the most fundamental dimensions of his existence.

He was a loving partner to a Christian woman; he was the advocate, protector, source of wisdom, guide, comforter, and provider for two vulnerable, toddler children; he was a man who worshipped the One, True God, pursuing rational virtue and Holy Grace.

Yesterday, a murderer deliberately made a woman lonely for the rest of her life; yesterday, a murderer deliberately created an existence for two children which is less comforting, less friendly, less wise, less protected, less plentiful than it otherwise would have been. Be mindful of the latter when the Left excuses their hate-mongering by red herring mentions of school shootings.

Yesterday, Charlie Kirk was martyred.

That the Left celebrates his martyrdom is expected, but difficult to witness nevertheless.

It is eerily illuminating how similar the mindset of the internet Leftist is to, say, the gunman who recently executed two children at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis.

Robert Westman was at pains to document–indeed he wrote it down–how the Church was a peculiarly hateful institution, which symbolized the persecution of queer people, trans people, and the other varieties of the meta-proletariat. Because the Church was such a staunch bastion of hatred and phobia, it was justified, he reasoned, to murder those who believed, enabled, and supported the Church.

Charlie Kirk, it is reasoned likewise, deserved his death, for he also institutionalized hatred and intended Fascism for America.

In a way, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that the Left now consists of those who are willing to murder their political opponents, and those who are willing to defend the murderers.

Leftism is a murder ideology, a theory of dehumanization. Because its inheritance is postmodernism, it does not recognize any sphere of human activity that transcends politics, which is the organizing of power.

As a consequence, there is no strictly human dimension to Charlie Kirk according to Leftism; his fatherhood was an expression of his fascism, as was his Christianity, his friendships: his tota existentia.

Postmodernism, being a perverse Christian heresy, believes that power is akin to sinfulness; those who hold power are sinful in proportion to the power they hold. Thus, the real human beings, the people without corrupted natures, exist on the margins. Insofar as a non-marginalized person is an champion of those on the margins, he redeems himself, clothing himself in the victim nature–earning his humanity.

Insofar as power is redistributed to the marginalized, it is transformed from sinfulness to a redemptive energy, a form of grace.

Insofar as a non-marginalized person is an antagonist of the proletariat, he remains corrupted, without purity and humanity. He is, to that extent, non-human, a degraded creature.

Charlie Kirk, in the view of the postmodernist, was one of the most inhuman among us, not in a metaphorical sense, but quite literally “uber-non-human”, or “ultra-non-human.”

It is an unsurprising irony that, contrarily, Charlie Kirk was one of the most civilized amongst us. Civilization exists to the extent that language has replaced violence as the primary means of bringing people together, governing them, resolving their disputes.

A stable, virtue-countenancing regime of Free Speech is the peak of human civilization.

The more that language is replaced by violence as a means of uniting and governing people, the closer looms a state of anarchy, or even barbarity.

Charlie Kirk used language against those he opposed because he believed in the reality and promise of civilization; his opponents used bullets against him because they did not.

The message was crystal, and it would be immoral not to comprehend it: the Left does not intend to use words, nor do they understand words as the appropriate method for resolving our conflicts.

The West has dealt with barbarians before. We know how. The Government must begin preparing.

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The Democrat Party Is A Domestic Terrorist Organization thumbnail

The Democrat Party Is A Domestic Terrorist Organization

By Breccan F. Thies

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

After a long history of condoning, advocating, and participating in political violence, it is time to designate the Democrat Party a domestic terrorist organization.

Decades of extreme language, calling conservatives “Nazis,” claiming existential threats are around the corner in order to feed an assassination culture, and justifying the aftermath has brought a level of violence that is only one-sided: The left tries to murder or maim their political enemies.

On Wednesday afternoon, a shooter took the life of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, just as he was answering a question about left-wing violence in the United States.

Left-wing commentators at corporate media outlets — the mouthpieces of the Democrat Party — were quick to justify the violence, suggesting it was justified or that Kirk brought it on himself, even going as far as to suggest it was really a Trump supporter firing a gun in “celebration.”

Democrats have a long history of calling conservatives the most vile things our culture can think of, and their friends in the media spread the message to anyone who watches them.

Democrats have recently been saying they “cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore.”

Just yesterday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said in an interview, “Our only opportunity, our only chance to save our democracy, is to fight fire with fire.”

Murphy brushed off “the fact that we’re blowing up norms,” adding that if you spend any more than “two seconds … being sorry for the fact that the old world doesn’t exist, then your democracy is gone.”

“We’re in a war right now to save this country, and so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary in order to save the country,” he said. Murphy’s media pal salivated over the sentiment, wondering if there were enough people who believe it.

What do Democrats think is “necessary?” Well, perhaps it is bringing a knife to a “knife fight,” in the words of Democrat National Committee head Ken Martin.

After all, as Kirk pointed out earlier this year, 48 percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justifiable to assassinate Elon Musk, and 55 percent say the same about President Donald Trump.

“The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response,” Kirk said at the time. “This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.”

The left-wing penchant for egging on and justifying violence has long been a staple of their political movement.

Democrats did everything they could to make Trump seem like the most evil person on the planet for years, so it was no surprise when Trump was shot last year and a second gunman attempted to shoot him only weeks later.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., said recently that “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace,” and then in the aftermath of Kirk’s death blamed Trumpfor the assassination.

All the way back in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson suggested that if Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater were to win, American families would be annihilated by nuclear weapons. He ran an extraordinarily on-the-nose campaign ad saying as much.

The 1960s was full of left-wing political violence.

President Bill Clinton granted clemency to Puerto Rican FALN terrorists who bombed and murdered their way across America, and President Barack Obama pardoned them. President Joe Biden granted clemency to those convicted of murdering police officers.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., threatened Supreme Court justices, and a man with a gun showed up outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house intent on murdering him.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., existential threat language led one of his supporters to shoot at the Republican members of Congress practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game in 2017, nearly ending the life of now-House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.

In 2013, a man intent in killing as many people as possible at the conservative organization Media Research Center went there with a gun and killed a security officer after disagreeing with the group’s stance on gay “marriage.”

Left-wing violence in Nashville, Tennessee, saw Covenant Christian School attacked by someone claiming to be “transgender,” and the Biden administration attempted to cover up the shooter’s writings, which exposed her motive.

More recently, children at Annunciation Catholic School were gunned down while they were praying by another person claiming to be “transgender” with a similarly demonic motivation.

But the left celebrated when Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down a healthcare CEO, and they cheered even harder when Black Lives Matter brought death and destruction to America’s streets.

In the world we live in now, there is no time to try to convince the left to “tone down” their extreme rhetoric. They need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.

*****

This article was published at The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

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Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Shows We Cannot ‘Come Together’ If We Cannot Even Coexist thumbnail

Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Shows We Cannot ‘Come Together’ If We Cannot Even Coexist

By Nick Freitas

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

I don’t know exactly what will happen next. I just know that it won’t be the same as what has happened in the past.

I don’t know exactly what will happen next. I just know that it won’t be the same as what has happened in the past.

The truth is we haven’t been for some time now, and there is really no point in pretending anymore, if there ever was.

We are two very different peoples. We may occupy the same piece of geography, but that is where the similarities seem to abruptly end.

I convinced myself for a long time that whenever the left called me a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a fascist, a “threat to democracy” for even the most innocent of disagreements, that it was simply hyperbolic rhetoric done for effect.

And now the “effect” is a widow and two orphaned children, because the left couldn’t bear the thought of a peaceful man debating them and winning.

I don’t think they realize it yet, but murdering Charlie Kirk is going to be remembered as the day where we finally woke up to what this fight really is.

It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose.

Charlie tried to win that fight through argumentation, through discussion, through peaceful resolution of differences.

And the other side murdered him.

Not because he was “extreme” or “inciting violence” or any other hyperbolic slur they hurled at him. They murdered him because he was effective. Because he was unafraid. Because he inspired others and made them feel like they had a voice, that they were not alone. And he did it at the very institutions which have fomented so much hatred toward conservatives.

I don’t want to “stand in solidarity” with the other side of the aisle. I want to defeat you. I want to defeat the godless ideology that kills babies in the womb, sterilizes confused children, turns our cities into cesspools of degeneracy and lawlessness — and that murdered Charlie Kirk.

Social media is aflame right now with leftist celebration of Charlie’s death.

I wonder if any among them understand what has just happened. If there is a Yamamoto somewhere in their midst warning, that all they have done is awoken a sleeping giant.

I doubt it. I think they gave up such introspection and self-awareness long ago.

I don’t know exactly what will happen next. I just know that it won’t be the same as what has happened in the past.

There will be thoughts and prayers — Charlie would have wanted prayers. Not for himself but for those left behind and for the country that he loved.

But then there will be a reckoning.

My Christian faith requires me to love my enemies and pray for those who curse me. It does not require me to stand idly by in the midst of savagery and barbarism — quite the opposite.

So every time I feel tired, every time I feel discouraged or overwhelmed, I am going to watch the video of a good man being murdered in Utah. I will force myself to watch it and then I will return to the work of destroying the evil ideology responsible for that and so much more.

Rest with God, Charlie, your fight is over. Ours is just beginning.

*****

This article was published at The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

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Say Her Name thumbnail

Say Her Name

By Conlan Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Editor’s note: As the author suggests, there is something darkly ridiculous about the fact that this innocent woman survived the worst war zone since WWII, but could not survive American Public Transportation. The most terrifying aspect of contemporary urban violence is its increasing randomness. There are no logical measures to be taken to keep one safe: Iryna was small, non-threatening, keeping entirely to herself, not even looking at anybody. There was not a hint of provocation or aggression in her behavior: she was killed because she existed, and her existence was deemed offensive by a ultra-violent career criminal. This is the total perversion of Justice: the innocent are murdered for offending the criminally guilty, while the offenders are released strategically onto the streets to cultivate the cycle of violence. Much speculation concerns why, in the face of all evidence, magistrates like Teresa Stokes continue to release grave criminals on the “promise” that they’ll show in court. Perhaps she’ll release Decarlos again on the promise that he won’t stab more Ukrainian refugees. The fact of the matter is that Teresa Stokes is an accomplice to murder: she created the conditions under which the murder was possible in the first place; she FACILITATED the murder, if you will. The leaders and practitioners of Leftism have long hated America and what they see as its primary beneficiary: white people. When they said in 2020 “No justice, no peace”, it wasn’t a catchy slogan. It was a concise declaration of war. Violent acts such as Iryna’s murder are seen by these people as legitimate acts of revenge against a corrupt, white privilege, capitalist system designed to exploit and exclude victims such as Decarlos Jr. If you are puzzled about why our young women are being stabbed to death, allow me to alleviate your bafflement: it’s part of the plan. It is intended. Why? Because they hate us. 

President Donald Trump should discuss the murder of Iryna Zarutska in blunt and honest terms

The savage murder of Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina last month has laid bare the daily terror of American urban life, the hypocrisy of the American mainstream media, and the negligence of the American political elite.

On Monday, President Donald Trump briefly addressed the murder during a speech on religious liberty. “When you have horrible killings, you have to take horrible actions,” Trump said. “There are evil people. We have to be able to handle that. If we don’t handle that, we don’t have a country.”

I agree with the sentiment. My basic philosophy of law and order is this: Someone’s head is getting bashed. The only question is which heads will be bashed and who will be doing the bashing. Personally, I think we’ll all fare better if the heads belong to bad guys and the bashers have police badges.

But the president should do more to highlight the Zarutska murder, discussing it in blunt terms to seize the political advantage, kick off an honest conversation about violent crime in America, and restore public safety. A Truth Social post he published later on Monday was a great start, and the Trump administration needs to keep up the pressure on the Democrats and liberal media.

A Ukrainian refugee who fled her war-torn homeland in 2022, the 23-year-old Zarutska was stabbed to death last month by Decarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old black man, on a light-rail car in Charlotte. Zarutska entered the car a little before 10 p.m. after finishing a shift at the pizzeria where she worked. She sat in front of Brown, looked at her phone, and made herself most unobtrusive, tiny arms and ankles crossed.

That proved too much for Brown to handle. A career criminal whose numerous past convictions include armed robbery, felony larceny, assault, and breaking and entering, Brown rubbed his forehead and shifted in his seat before stabbing the young woman repeatedly with a pocketknife from behind. In a clip that went viral on X Monday evening, Brown stumbles through the car, blood dripping from his blade, and appears to mutter “I got that white girl.”

The grisly murder had remained an obscure local story until surveillance footage hit social media this weekend, sparking outrage and forcing Charlotte’s Mayor Vi Lyles to respond.

In a statement released Saturday morning, Lyles lamented the “heartbreaking attack that took Iryna Zarutska’s life” and thanked “media partners” for not reposting the footage. “I’ve been thinking hard about what safety really looks like in our city,” Lyles said.

No evidence has emerged that Lyles is capable of thinking clearly about safety in the city she nominally governs. In late August, days after the Zarutska attack, Lyles said the episode highlighted the importance of creating support services for people like Brown, the murderer. “We will never arrest our way out of issues such as homelessness and mental health,” she said. “Mental health disease is just that—a disease like any other that needs to be treated with the same compassion, diligence and commitment as cancer or heart disease.”

Brown seems to suffer from a strange affliction that predisposes him to inflict astonishing violence on the small and the weak. This was the same malady suffered by Jordan Neely, the “Michael Jackson impersonator” who in May 2023 harassed and threatened passengers on a New York City subway until a courageous rider, Daniel Penny, subdued and accidentally killed him. Depicted in the mainstream media as a kind-hearted “dancer,” Neely in fact had a history of accosting children, women, and the elderly before encountering Penny, a former Marine.

Penny was ultimately exonerated of negligent homicide after being released on $100,000 cash bail, facing up to 15 years in prison, and having his name sullied. Since Penny is white and Neely was black, the act of civic heroism was treated like a modern-day lynching. Brown, by contrast, was released without bond by a magistrate judge this January after he made a “written promise” to return for a court hearing.

To be fair, Brown had been arrested for a crime that, by his standards, was rather minor: misusing the 911 emergency system. During a welfare check, Brown told police officers that a “man-made” substance had been implanted in his body to control its basic biological functions. After the officers explained they didn’t handle that sort of thing, he became frustrated and called 911.

But a sane criminal justice system would have seized the opportunity to keep Brown off the streets, considering the great lengths to which he had gone over many years to demonstrate the extreme danger he posed to others. Alas, the judge, Teresa Stokes, instead showed Brown the kind of “compassion” that Lyles has since called for, and she let him go.

Perhaps Stokes developed her deep reserves of empathy for human predators at the Second Chance Services “treatment facility,” where she serves as operations director. Brown, given yet another “second chance,” used it to steal an innocent person’s only life.

The silver lining in this dreary affair is that concerned Americans are demanding better from their nation’s elites.

Over the weekend, several MAGA influencers not only lambasted the Charlotte city government, but also contrasted the mainstream media’s breathless coverage of the accidental killing of Neely with its despicable silence on the brutal stabbing death of Zarutska.

Under rising pressure, mainstream outlets on Monday finally acknowledged the latter case—with apparent reluctance and even agitation. “Stabbing video fuels MAGA’s crime message,” blared an Axios headline. The reporter, Marc Caputo, wrote:

Influential conservative social media accounts accused major national news outlets of not covering the racial dynamics of the Charlotte killing — a white victim and a Black suspect — with the same intensity as they did in the case of Daniel Penny.

The whole report—down to the inconsistent capitalization of “black” and “white”—almost seems designed to vindicate those pesky conservatives it covers.

You might think the case would command sympathetic headlines, given the shocking nature of the murder and the human interest of a young, beautiful Ukrainian war refugee being brutally murdered in an unprovoked attack while simply going about her socially productive activities.

Yet Caputo all but apologized for even writing the story, and seemed, like Charlotte’s mayor, to resent the availability of surveillance footage. “The rising number of surveillance cameras in public spaces, including on Charlotte’s light rail, has become a big accelerant in these cases,” he wrote. “The video is easily shared or leaked, and can instantly pollinate across social media — a visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases.”

Clearly, conservatives are right to condemn racial bias among political and media elites.

Incredibly, prominent Republican politicians lately have been more inclined than their Democratic counterparts to engage in explicit anti-white rhetoric. “All of these protesters are white,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas sneered on X after a demonstration in DC against a federal crackdown on crime.

Trump and his team should take a different approach and treat the Zarutska murder as an opportunity to do so. The case illustrates several themes the president has emphasized—urban violence, woke politics, fake news, and the worsening plight of working-class whites—and it has galvanized his most influential online supporters while backing the media into a corner.

Most importantly, it vividly demonstrates the delusional character of modern liberalism on matters of race and criminal justice, which Caputo might have understood had he more closely inspected those crime statistics he cited. The delusion must be ruthlessly exposed if we are to solve the problems that led to the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a woman who escaped high-intensity war in Ukraine but could not survive public transportation in America.

*****

This article was first published at American Conservative, and is reproduced here with permission

Image credit: Wikipedia files

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Has Technology Made God Impossible?

By Conlan Salgado

Has Technology Made God Impossible?”>/by

In 1945, progress as a reality went extinct. The spread of communism, which claimed over 200 million lives, proved to be the greatest atrocity in history, surpassing even the Holocaust as the exemplum perfectum of the ambitions of human evil. Nevertheless, the Holocaust–one of the uber-atrocities of the post-God world–became the most influential event since the crucifixion of Christ, totally re-creating society in its image, as Christianity did two millennia prior. . . .

337 509 Conlan Salgado 2025-09-08 21:38:05 Has Technology Made God Impossible?

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