freedom and reason

In his Davos address yesterday, President Donald Trump offered a sharply critical assessment of Europe, arguing that the continent is “not heading in the right direction” and that parts of it have become “not recognizable” in recent decades. He attributed Europe’s economic and social difficulties to a mix of policy choices—especially expanding government spending, green-energy priorities, and what he called “unchecked mass migration”—and contrasted this with what he described as an American economic resurgence under his leadership.

Trump framed large-scale immigration as economically and socially disruptive, contending that importing new populations had undermined growth, living standards, and social cohesion across the West, while insisting that tighter borders, cultural integrity, and a move away from transnationalism and a return to traditional economic policies were central to restoring prosperity, stability, and Western identity. This is what global elites did not want the working classes of the Western nations to hear. This is why those elites are in a panic: populist-nationalism is on the rise, and the fascistic apparatus of the corporate state has failed to contain it.

Have you ever wondered why the machinery of the corporate state—the academy, the administrative bureaucracy, the culture industry, legacy media, the judiciary, and the donor networks of both major parties—reacted with such alarm when Donald Trump rose to power? Trump was a media darling before the dramatic moment in June 2015 when he descended the gilded escalator in Trump Tower to announce his first presidential campaign. For decades, they had asked him when he was running for President. Now he was, and it was the worst fate to befall the world since the appearance of Adolf Hitler. In fact, it was exactly that. A switch was flipped, and millions of people lost their minds.

These institutions mobilized to label Trump’s policies as authoritarian and fascist, even as previous presidents, such as Barack Obama, were able to expand executive power (or, more accurately, more fully exercise the inherent powers of the office), pursue foreign interventions, and carry out mass deportations of illegal aliens, with little public fanfare or moral condemnation. The difference is not in the legality or scale of the actions themselves, but in their alignment with the corporate state. Trump’s populist agenda, backed by mass political support outside the elite consensus, threatens the carefully managed hegemony that sustains the corporate state, provoking a coordinated pushback from every institutional channel that protects it.

This essay, synthesizing analyses and arguments presented over several years on this platform, explores how the structure of the US federal government, while embedding deep corporate influence across culture, administration, and law, nonetheless preserves enough democratic mechanisms to allow such an outsider as Trump to govern—albeit precariously and under constant institutional resistance. Readers must understand that, while the Founders separated powers to establish a government resistant to fascist formation, the scheme requires a strong national leader and a movement of determined patriots who believe in the American system to fight the corruption of elite power that threatens that separation.

The contemporary United States is best understood not as a fully pluralistic democracy, but as a regime in which real governing power is exercised by what can be described as a corporate state. This corporate state is composed of large corporations and financial interests, the donor class embedded in both major political parties, legacy media institutions such as linear television and radio, the culture industry of film, music, and publishing, public education and the modern academy, the permanent administrative bureaucracy, and substantial portions of the judiciary.

These institutions need not conspire explicitly to act in concert; their unity emerges organically from shared career pathways, ideological assumptions, material incentives, and professional norms. Indeed, the situation is to a significant extent the result of a convergence of interests, as well as structural inertia. These streams form a coherent governing class whose interests and worldview dominate public life. But Leviathan is also the result of elite machinations—the transnational corporate agenda manifest in organizations like the World Economic Forum.

This arrangement is what we call corporatism, a defining structural feature of fascist systems, in which nominally private institutions are functionally integrated into state power. Political authority is exercised not primarily through elected representatives accountable to voters, but through a dense web of bureaucratic, cultural, and managerial forces and personalities that operate beyond direct democratic control.

While Europe is almost lost, America differs from the consolidating fascism of European history in a critical respect: it cannot as of yet permanently close itself off from popular participation. This is the genius of the founders’ design of the American system. Constitutional requirements such as federalism, regular elections, and separation of powers compel the regime—with strong leaders and engaged patriots who love the Republic—to preserve democratic processes, even if those processes are constrained and steered by emergent structures antithetical to a democratic republic.

Before Trump, the system could maintain the appearance of democracy while limiting the scope of popular influence. After its marginalization in the wake of the Great Depression, the Republican Party, established in the previous century to rejuvenate the American system and liberate the South from its backwardness, came to play a central role in suppressing the popular will. For most of the postwar period, it functioned as an institutional intake valve for dissent, absorbing popular frustration with elite governance and redirecting it into safe, controllable channels. Bureaucratic resistance, donor influence, and party discipline ensured that this dissent did not translate into fundamental challenges to the corporate state. Republicans so inclined are often referred to as RINOs—Republicans in name only. When RINOs control the Republican Party, the party’s role is controlled opposition.

When the Democratic Party governs, however, the system approaches de facto one-party rule with gusto. During periods of Democratic control of the executive branch, the corporate state’s major elements—academia, administrative agencies, culture, media, and much of the judiciary—align almost entirely with the governing party. Appealing to the false doctrine of agency independence, bureaucratic agencies exercise maximal autonomy, insulated from electoral accountability, while judicial interpretation increasingly reflects the progressive consensus.

Beyond the forces of campaign finance and corporate lobbying, beyond the administrative state and regulatory capture, beyond the judiciocracy, ideology plays a major role in shaping the popular sphere. Opposition voices are not merely contested but delegitimized, framed as immoral, irrational, even dangerous. They are censored, deplatformed, marginalized—even targeted by the weapons of lawfare.

Under these conditions, nearly all substantive elements of fascism are present: the fusion of corporate and state power, ideological conformity enforced through cultural authority, governance by managerial elites, and the marginalization of opposition rather than popular sovereignty. What remains absent is permanence—because elections still exist. To be sure, the efficacy of elections in conveying the popular will can be weakened by ceding sovereignty to transregional and transnational institutions and relations, as we see in the case of the European Union, and to some extent, in the American case. The republican institutions of the United States remain robust in comparison. Yet our status as one of the few democratic societies in the world is in jeopardy.

This robustness explains how somebody like Donald Trump can ascend to the White House. Trump and the populist movement represent a genuine threat to the antithesis of the corporate state. This is not because Trump opposes capitalism as such—he is himself one of the more successful entrepreneurs in history—but because he rejects elite managerial control, globalized economic priorities that subordinate national interests, cultural authority monopolized by elite institutions, and bureaucratic governance detached from voters that is the administrative state. Trump’s political power derives directly from mass democratic support rather than institutional endorsement, which makes him uniquely threatening to a system designed to manage and contain popular influence.

The aggressive reaction to Trump and populism follows logically from this threat. The culture industry and legacy media saturate the public sphere with negative framing and moral condemnation, shaping public perception and narrowing the bounds of acceptable discourse. The academy supplies intellectual justification for exclusionary practices and extraordinary measures. The administrative state delays, obstructs, or nullifies policy through procedural resistance, while the judiciary constrains executive authority through expansive and selective interpretations of law. This resistance does not require a centralized conspiracy; it is the predictable self-defense of an entrenched ruling order seeking to preserve—and reestablish—its hegemony. The desire for a New World Order is not whispered in corners. They tell us who they are and what they want

Populism can govern at all only because democratic mechanisms have not been entirely dismantled. When an outsider like Trump captures the Republican Party, which is more open to mavericks than the Democratic Party (which isn’t really open to any, as we saw with the marginalization of Bernie Sanders and Robert Kennedy, Jr.), and is backed by a broad social movement (MAGA), the Common Man can override donor influence and compel even reluctant Republicans, including establishment figures, to align with the movement to remain electorally viable. However, such governance is fragile; it operates under constant constraint from administrative, cultural, and judicial power centers that remain outside popular control. Even members of Trump’s party want to move on from him. The RINOs are desperate to get back to the status quo. This is why they resist leading Congress to codify the American First agenda.

Every American election must be understood not merely as a contest between two parties, but as a struggle between corporate state hegemony and popular sovereignty. Trump and the patriots who stand behind him represent the movement of the Common Man. This is the leader the working class has been waiting for. They watched the First Family descend that golden escalator with entirely different eyes. Yet, while the people can assert their will electorally, that will is immediately checked, constrained, and filtered by non-electoral institutions, the institutions of elites who have a different plan for America—they mean to make America go away. Democracy exists, but only as a contested space rather than a governing principle.

Put simply, permanent fascism in America is prevented not by elite restraint or glittering generalities about democracy, but by the incomplete closure of the system, buttressed by constitutional structure, and enforced by mass participation. All of this is held together by what remains of republican virtue. As we celebrate our 250 years as an independent nation, patriotism is as much of an imperative today as it was in 1776. We cannot allow Democrats to retake power on November 3. Vote like Donald Trump is on the ballot. Even if your Representative or Senator is a RINO, punch his ticket. We are the bulwark against permanent fascism.

Update (January 22): According to reporting by The New York Times, two of the members of the mob that interrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota. Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen have been taken into custody by the FBI.

Is there a tension in contemporary Christian discourse between Jesus’s injunction, “Judge not, lest you be judged,” and the claim that Christianity constitutes a moral system? At first glance, these positions can appear incompatible, and they are often treated as such—especially within progressive Christian contexts, where moral judgment is displaced rather than abandoned. I will argue that progressive Christianity enforces standards grounded less in coherent ethical principles than in shifting criteria of affinity and power, both personal and collective. By contrast, within a classical framework of Christian ethics, no such tension exists.

Morality, by definition, involves judgments about how people ought to act, distinctions between good and bad behavior, and standards by which actions are evaluated. If these standards are to be universal, they must appeal to an objective ontology.

As I explained in essays at the end of last year (Moral Authority Without Foundations: Progressivism, Utilitarianism, and the Eclipse of Argument; Epistemic Foundations, Deontological Liberalism, and the Grounding of Rights), progressivism is relativist and utilitarian; as such, it eschews defining a moral ontology. In short, there is no moral substance to the woke church; there is only a rhetoric of virtue, one exuding indignation, self-righteousness, and egoism.

To be sure, the woke Christian invocation of “do not judge” can appear to function as a blanket prohibition on moral evaluation, but this reading mistakes a situational admonition for a universal forbiddance. In contemporary progressive discourse, moral judgment itself is often portrayed as inherently exclusionary, harmful, or oppressive. Taken at face value, however, this understanding departs sharply from the role judgment plays within the New Testament and within rational Christian theology more broadly. In its original context, the command to “judge not” does not abolish moral discernment—the capacity to recognize, reflect upon, and decide what is good or right in particular circumstances—but rather presupposes and disciplines it.

In the same discourse, Jesus calls out hypocrisy—appearing righteous outwardly while acting unjustly in practice; judging others harshly while denying one’s own fallibility; using religion for status rather than genuine devotion to God. In the light of Christian ethics, the progressive Christian is the antithesis of Christianity because he denies each of these sins in himself (see Standing King’s Dream on Its Head: The Nightmare Antithesis of the American Way).

On Sunday in St. Paul, Minnesota, a mob of around 40 members of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, the Racial Justice Network, and allied community leaders entered the sanctuary of Cities Church and disrupted the service. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a longtime Minneapolis attorney, self-proclaimed civil rights activist, and community organizer, as well as an ordained minister, led the intrusion. With her were other local figures—Monique Cullars-Doty (BLM Minnesota co-founder), Chauntyll Allen (St. Paul public school board member and activist), and Satara Strong-Allen (community leader)—and outsiders, former CNN host Don Lemon and combat veteran and social media influencer William Scott Kelly, who goes under the handle “DawokeFarmer.”

Armstrong and Lemon, in particular, reinforced by memes comparing their actions to Jesus’ purification of the temple, have claimed in interviews to represent true Christianity. Lemon was brought along to create a video record of the cleansing, so the world could see the righteousness of the mob—a feature of its madness (see The Phenomenon of Progressive Brain-Locking and Its Role in the Madness of Crowds). Desperate to be seen, Lemon took his turn atangonizing churchgoers.

This is not what they were doing. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus, teaching in the Jerusalem temple, which he declared to be “my Father’s house,” affirmed its sacred purpose as a place of prayer for all nations by dramatically cleansing the temple by driving out merchants, money changers, and their animals, condemning them for having turned a house of prayer into a den of thieves, which symbolized how religious authorities had distorted worship through exclusion and exploitation. Jesus’ actions helped prepare the grounds for his prosecution.

The egoism of the mob betrayed their appeal to faith. Jesus taught that religious devotion should be sincere and directed toward God rather than performed to impress others. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your unseen Father. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” He contrasted this with praying publicly for show, warning against hypocrisy and empty repetition.

The crux of this teaching is that the faith the world would come to know as Christianity is about a genuine, humble relationship with God, not public display or social approval. Jesus cleansed the temple as the Son of God, not as a self-proclaimed righteous man who justified destructive and terrorizing action based on that holiness. Moreover, he instructed his followers to obey civil law—to never use their devotion to God as a license to transgress statutes of the secular authority.

Armstrong, Lemon, and Kelly not only appealed to the authority of God, but also to the United States Constitution to justify entering the sanctuary of a church and harassing the congregation as the exercise of free speech and protest action. This was the framing by The New York Times, which covered the story with the headline “Protest at Minnesota Church Service Adds to Tensions Over ICE Tactics” (transparently lamenting the possibility that BLM action might delegitimize the insurrection against the federal government).

Yet the First Amendment does not warrant harassment or trespass in a place of worship—or any other place immune from the heckler’s veto. Moreover, that amendment guarantees religious liberty. Protest is about expressing advocacy and opposition while respecting others’ rights to safety and worship. Once the goal or effect is coercion, fear, or interference, it crosses the line from protest into criminal behavior, regardless of the cause being claimed. There were children in attendance on Sunday, and Lemon’s camera captured the terror in their faces. This wasn’t a protest action; this was mob intimidation. A congregation of peaceful Christians was terrorized.

We have been here before. Across many communist revolutions in the twentieth century, independent religious institutions—especially Christian churches—were treated as inherent threats to revolutionary authority and were therefore subjected to coercion, intimidation, and suppression. Because churches represented alternative sources of communal loyalty and moral authority, they were seen as rival power centers incompatible with movement or state control. As a result, revolutionary regimes in countries such as the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and across Eastern Europe routinely invaded or closed churches, harassed or imprisoned clergy, and terrorized congregants through denunciations, political reeducation, and surveillance.

The aim was not merely secularization, but the consolidation of ideological monopoly, in which moral formation, social organization, and ultimate allegiance were redirected from religious communities to the revolutionary regime itself. What we witnessed in Stl Paul on Sunday was the radical desire to replace traditional Christian authority with an authoritarian reorganization of society wrapped in a rhetoric of Christian love. The dress was see-through, the body of hate clearly visible.

Jesus also speaks of recognizing people “by their fruits.” Such a teaching presupposes the ability, indeed the necessity, to evaluate actions and character. One cannot identify hypocrisy, bad fruit, or moral failure without making judgments about action and behavior. The prohibition is not against moral reasoning itself but against a particular kind of judgment: hypocritical, self-righteous, or condemnatory judgment that assumes the prerogatives of God.

Mob intimidation by those on the left in the name of Jesus assumes the perogatives of God, transgressing the laws of a nation founded upon Christian ethics and natural law by falsely appealing to the righteousness of Christian moral authority. They demand Christian love to make themselves immune to judgment by those who love Christ.

They, moreover, appeal to Christian justice to make themselves immune to legal consequences. But when asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the Roman government, Jesus replied, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” affirming a legitimate place for civil authority, even under a pagan and unjust regime, while also observing that obedience to the state does not replace devotion to God.

Yet, in Jesus’s teaching, devotion to God is not a license to disobey civil law. His instruction to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” assumes compliance with lawful civil authority, even when that authority is imperfect or unjust. Jesus himself paid taxes, respected legal processes, and did not encourage resistance or lawbreaking in God’s name—a devotion to secular power necessary for crucifixion!

For Jesus, faithfulness to God expresses itself within the bounds of civil order, not outside it. For this reason, Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated peaceful civil disobedience, the legal consequences of which must be accepted by his followers (see The Rule of Law and Unlawful Protest: The Madness of Mobs).

In Christianity, God’s authority does not justify coercion, disruption of others’ rights, lawlessness, or terrorism. On the contrary: devotion to God calls for humility, peace, and respect for law. When one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter, drew a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Malchus, Jesus stopped him, saying, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” He then healed the servant’s ear, demonstrating his commitment to peace and mercy, even in the face of violence.

Religious conviction is never a blanket justification for civil disobedience, and it forbids righteous violence against authority. Disobedience to the state must always be principled and grounded in Christian ethics—and a last resort. Violence, especially, is always an action of last resort. Even if we take the mob that entered Cities Church on Sunday at its word, that it was led by Christians, there is no basis in Christianity to trespass and terrorize the congregation in a religious sanctuary. Nor is there any basis to do so in the secular laws of the American Republic. On the contrary, the secular law defends religious liberty.

The secular law is clear in this case. Beyond the First Amendment, in addition to reproductive health facilities, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (18 USC § 248), commonly called the FACE Act, makes it a federal crime to use force, threat of force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person exercising their religious freedom at a place of worship. This includes entering, leaving, or participating in worship services at churches, synagogues, and mosques.

Many observers have asked us to imagine a mob of Christian Nationalists entering a mosque and intimidating the congregation. What would Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison say about that? We may soon know, as several top Minnesota political leaders have been subpoenaed by federal authorities as part of an ongoing investigation into the chaos in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Federal prosecutors, including the Department of Justice and the FBI acting through a grand jury process, have issued subpoenas to, among others, Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, and Attorney General Ellison. While these subpoenas seek documents and communications related to interference with and obstruction of federal law enforcement efforts, scrutiny of the state’s failure to charge and prosecute the Sunday mob will likely become part of the inquiry.

* * *

The modern progressive resolves the tension noted at the top of his essay not by clarifying types of judgment, but by collapsing them. Moral discernment and moral condemnation are treated as indistinguishable. To judge actions is equated with harming persons, but only for the progressive’s choice of comrades. The progressive man condemns ICE for frightening children when deporting illegal aliens (an unfortunate consequence for the choices of parents who have no right to be in America), but he claims righteousness for his own action of frightening children. Really, he does not regard children at all, but uses them either to affirm his moral character (such as it is) or as targets of his rage.

It is not the case, therefore, that the progressive operates without moral pronouncements; rather, the progressive Christian appeals to an ideological framework dressed in faith that, in truth, operates outside Christian ethics and natural law. Wokeness does not eliminate judgment; it merely redefines its grounds and redirects its energy.

This should be obvious: progressive Christian discourse issues strong moral judgments against “judgmentalism,” traditional doctrine, exclusion, and perceived harm, while, at the same time, judging others based on ideological notions—critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and queer doctrine. These notions are prettied up with the language of “kindness,” but beneath the makeup lies ravenous swine. (See The Problem of Empathy and the Pathology of “Be Kind”.)

The reality is that it is not whether judgment exists, but who is permitted to judge and be judged. Without a moral ontology, this becomes entirely arbitrary, manifested either by mob action or totalitarian command. This is the moral relativism of progressivism: the targets of judgment are not based on an objective ethical system, but on power, personal or collective. It dresses itself in the raiments of salvation and manufactures its own Christs, elevating those who obstruct and resist civil authority to the status of martyr—Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd, and now Renee Good. The Sunday mob chanted “Hands up, don’t shoot” and, in a call and response, “Say her name!” “Renee Good!”

Classical Christianity addressed the tension coherently by distinguishing between judging actions and condemning souls, between moral correction and final judgment. Christians were called to name sin while acknowledging their own fallibility, to correct others with humility, and to leave ultimate judgment to God. This framework preserved moral clarity without claiming moral omniscience.

In the modern period, Christian ethics, emerging from rational Christianity and natural law, sources from which the Founders formed the moral order underpining the American Republic, universalizes moral judgment for every citizen, each equal before the law. Faith becomes a personal matter, while law applies to everyone, the state possessing the sole authority to enforce the law with violence where citizens fail to follow it.

The core problem, then, is not judgment itself, but confusion about its nature. This confusion is intentional. A moral system that forbids judgment cannot survive; it negates the very standards that make morality possible. Christianity remains morally intelligible only by distinguishing kinds of judgment, not by judging arbitrarily or abolishing judgment altogether. Crucially, Christian judgment can only be the law of a secular society when it is universal and detached from Christian theism (since people are free from the imposition of faith as a matter of the ethic itself).

America cannot allow mobs of left-wing activists to impose their novel and cynical interpretation of Christianity over the law or the personal rights of Christians. When that distinction is lost, an artificial vocabulary of morality emerges—“social justice”—and gives way to zealotry; and the edict to “judge not” becomes less a moral principle than a rhetorical shield against moral (and legal) accountability.

If Christians are instructed not to judge, how can Christianity meaningfully function as a moral framework at all? It can’t. Progressive Christians offer the world no moral system, for no moral system can be found in relativism or utilitarianism, where morality is whatever power says it is, or where the means are rationalized by desired ends with no moral purchase.

Indeed, progressives suck the morality out of Christian ethics, scattering the Gospels of Jesus into a jumble of cherry-picked scriptures arbitrarily selected to justify harassment, intimidation, and violence in pursuit of decadent ends. The social justice warrior leverages the name of Jesus as a cudgel to attack conservative and liberal Christians and the American Republic. It is not only un-Christian—it’s un-American.

Christianity has always been unavoidably moral. It names certain actions as sinful, calls for repentance, and demands moral transformation. Concepts such as sin, repentance, forgiveness, and redemption lose all meaning if no behavior can be judged right or wrong, or if such judgments are made in bad faith. A Christianity that forbade judgment in every sense or judged from an ideological standpoint would cease to be a moral system and collapse into moral incoherence. Such a Christianity would be no Christianity at all. And this is the Christianity to which the Sunday mob appealed. These are fake Christians.

The BLM mob can escape neither religious nor secular judgment for its actions on Sunday. Those who comprise it must be made an example for others who would cynically leverage religious faith to justify mob intimidation and collective violence. Bring the hammer.

* * *

Note: A journalist cannot claim immunity simply because he is documenting a crime. While observing or reporting on illegal activity is generally protected under free press principles and the First Amendment in the United States, these protections apply only when the journalist does not himself engage in illegal acts. If a journalist encourages, directly participates in a crime, or provides material aid, he can be prosecuted as a principal, accomplice, or accessory, even if his intent includes documenting or reporting the event. In short, the act of reporting does not shield someone from criminal liability when he actively participates in the crime itself. Don Lemon is in trouble.

“Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.” —Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

I want to share with you today something I teach in my college course, Freedom and Social Control. I believe this observation is broadly useful right now, in light of the unfolding insurrection in Minneapolis and the promise of more rebellion in other cities across the United States. Insurrection is a social contagion, one with a quasi-religious character, and without a reason to rise against the government, and for the sake of collective sanity, the contagion must be interrupted.

In The Future of an Illusion (1927), Sigmund Freud argues that religion is a collective psychological construction arising from deep human wishes („Wunscherfüllung“): the desire for protection, transcendent meaning, and a benevolent father figure, especially in the face of civilization’s constraints (necessary to check das Es, or the it or Id) and nature’s dangers and uncertainties.

While religious doctrines are ontologically false, Freud contends they persist because they fulfill profound emotional needs and help maintain social order. Like Karl Marx (in the Preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” published in 1844 in Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher), Freud is sympathetic to religion, even if he does not personally believe in God, because he recognizes the comfort and moral structure it provides (Marx is sympathetic for other reasons, while also highly critical of false consciousness as a manifestion of alienation).

Central to Freud’s thesis is the distinction between delusion and illusion. A delusion is a belief held in contradiction to evidence, reality, and reason (e.g., believing that gender is interchangeable), whereas an illusion is a belief motivated by wish-fulfillment—false, perhaps, but not defined solely by its falsity. Religion, Freud insists, is an illusion because it arises from universal human desires rather than a psychotic denial of reality. This makes it distinct from delusion, which is a personal subjectivity incongruent with the objective reality around the person. Delusion is pathological for this reason.

Freud predicts that as scientific rationality advances, humanity will gradually outgrow religion, replacing it with a more sober, reality-based ethic. Yet he demonstrates a profound understanding—or Verstehen, in the German sense—of religious belief: religion provides moral guidance, psychological comfort, and, perhaps, necessary social control at this stage of cultural development, especially for those who cannot tolerate life’s anxieties without it. Here, his idea intersects with Marx’s notion of religion as a painkiller—the “opiate of the people” („das Opium des Volkes“).

In my lectures, I situate Freud in a larger discussion of Paul Ricœur’s 1965 “Master of Suspicion” thesis (“les trois penseurs de la suspicion”), alongside Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of religion, the “Death of God” thesis („Gott ist tot“, an observation that also influenced Max Weber, as noted in previous essays on this platform). Freud claims to avoid Nietzsche systematically, confessing that he feared he might discover ideas too close to his own—but the overlap is striking. German intellectuals were swimming in Nietzschean waters, so the man’s influence over Freud (as well as Weber and others) was likely inevitable.

Both Freud and Nietzsche understood religious belief as a human projection: religion sublimates unconscious drives over rational self-understanding, and morality is historically contingent rather than divinely grounded. Nietzsche’s critique of religion as a response to human weakness and suffering parallels Freud’s account of religion as wish fulfillment. Nietzsche’s psychological style of conveyance anticipates Freud’s method: interpreting beliefs as symptoms rather than truths.

In lecture, I often recall Nietzsche’s line from Beyond Good and Evil (quoted at the top of this essay). Overstated perhaps, but strikingly relevant today: what counts as madness in an individual—cruelty, irrational beliefs, self-deception—can become normalized, even revered, when shared collectively. Social scale can convert pathology into “morality” and “truth.” (Did the man call it or what? Whatever one thinks of Nietzsche, that his perception was high-powered is undeniable.)

Nietzsche’s insight anticipates Freud’s treatment of religion as a mass psychological phenomenon: not private psychosis, but a culturally sanctioned illusion that persists because it is shared. Their approaches diverge, however: Nietzsche frames these beliefs as mass psychogenic illness; Freud frames them as a universal, developmentally understandable aspect of the human condition. Nietzsche emphasizes decadence, herd mentality, and social power; Freud emphasizes the psyche’s readiness to accept comforting illusions. Nonetheless, both recognize culture’s capacity for collective irrationality.

This is why I emphasize in lectures and public pronouncements the moral imperative to tell the truth and avoid leading impressionable people astray—whether accidentally or intentionally; one has an ethical responsibility to know what’s going on. A man can be charitable, compassionate, and understanding, but when belief becomes pathological and destructive, he must criticize it. Reforming character at scale requires identifying the vulnerabilities that make people susceptible to harmful illusions—and those who take advantage of those vulnerabilities. This demands brutal frankness and the courage to offend even those we hold close.

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution grants authority to the federal government:

“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”

Article II, Section 2 grants this authority, among others, to the President:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

This is the office that calls the military into national service.

Article VI, Clause 2—the Supremacy Clause—states:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

The Tenth Amendment cannot plausibly be interpreted to grant states the right to thwart the authority or laws of the national government. There is no such thing as “states’ rights.” States are granted powers; people retain their rights. State power exists only at the pleasure of the national government. The rights of the people are limited only by reason.

This constitutional framework provides all the authority the President needs to nationalize the Minnesota National Guard—or the National Guard of any other state—when necessary to provide troops for a legitimate federal purpose.

However, if there is any question about this authority, Congress made it explicit in the Insurrection Act (10 USC §§ 331–335, enacted in 1792).

Section 331 — Federal aid for State governments states:

“Whenever there is an insurrection in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.”

Leaders of states in rebellion against the national government often emphasize the phrase “upon the request of its legislature or of its governor,” while ignoring the subsequent sections, which override state consent.

Section 332 — Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority states:

“Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

Section 333 — Interference with State and Federal law further states:

“The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it—
(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State and of the United States within the State that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity; or
(2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.
In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

What is occurring in Minneapolis constitutes an insurrection. Minnesota is in rebellion against the national government. The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, are failing to defend the civil rights of the citizens of that state and of the Republic. The state is interfering with the execution of federal law.

The President not only has the authority to deploy the military into Minneapolis—he is obligated to do so. Failure to act would constitute a failure in the President’s core duties as Chief Executive of the United States. History regards as heroic those Presidents who act:

In 1871-72, President Ulysses S. Grant used federal troops to suppress domestic insurrection carried out by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. Acting under the Enforcement Acts of 1870–1871, particularly the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, Grant declared martial law in parts of South Carolina, suspended habeas corpus, and deployed federal troops to arrest hundreds of Klansmen. The KKK was effectively dismantled for a generation. Grant justified these actions because state authorities were either unable or unwilling to protect the civil rights of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution, making federal intervention both lawful and necessary.

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had used the state National Guard to block the integration of Little Rock Central High School. Eisenhower responded by removing the Guard from state control, placing it under federal command, and sending active-duty troops to protect Black students. Eisenhower acted under Article II authority and the Insurrection Act, making clear that state defiance of federal court orders would not be tolerated.

In 1962-63, President John F. Kennedy used federal force to enforce civil rights during confrontations in Mississippi and Alabama. In 1962, when Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett resisted the court-ordered enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and deployed U.S. Army troops to restore order after violent riots erupted. In 1963, Kennedy again federalized the Alabama National Guard to enforce desegregation at the University of Alabama over Governor George Wallace’s objections. In both cases, Kennedy acted on the principle that when states obstruct federal law and deny constitutional rights, the President not only may act—but must act.

On November 5, 2024, I voted for a man of action. I voted for law and order. I voted for the United States Constitution. I have regretted some of the votes I cast in the past. I do not want to regret this one. Action is needed now. If the President does not act, the nation risks descending into civil war. History will judge harshly Trump’s failure to act in this moment.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” —Preamble to the United States Constitution

Today, we mark the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Whatever his personal failings, King loved America enough to hold it accountable to its ideals, insisting that equality and freedom are not abstract aspirations but binding commitments. The torch of his dream helped guide the country out of contradiction. An assassin’s bullet made sure he did not live to see America thrown back into it.

Standing at the Lincoln Memorial, King reminded the nation that the American experiment is measured not by its words alone, but by whether it fulfills its promises to all its people. King’s dream did not reject America—it called the country to become itself, to judge individuals not by their identities, but by their character. The man came bearing republicanism, the belief that a nation’s power derives from the People, exercised through representative government, with citizens’ virtue and the common good as its foundation.

The Democratic Party stands King on his head. Indeed, the party of slavocracy and Jim Crow subverted America’s promise from its inception. The party now openly channels anti-American sentiment. As the Good Book teaches us, God places challenges or adversaries—sometimes symbolized as Satan—in a nation’s path to test it. These obstacles are meant to push the people to confront injustice, overcome both external and internal evils, and achieve a more righteous, perfected nation.

The answer to the polling question asking whether ICE should be abolished is a proxy for the deeper question: Shall we have open borders? A CNN poll finds that more than three-fourths of Democrats effectively want open borders—hardly unexpected. Only a little more than one in ten Republicans do.

But there is an even more profound question underlying that one: whether one believes a nation should have borders at all, which is another way of asking whether there shall be nations. The answer to this question is everything.

The divide between Democrats and Republicans is wide and unbridgeable. It has always been substantial, to be sure, but the gulf between the parties today is as deep as it was when the nation stood at the threshold of the Civil War in the late 1850s. The parties represent two different conceptions of the future: either an American future or a future without America.

This is tragic, given that we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—the document that put absolutism and monarchy on notice. Instead of a year spent reflecting on the greatness of the American Republic, we must devote our energies once again to confronting forces that seek to disunite us. I worry that the patriots no longer have the energy required to stand up for the nation. I fear that decades of emasculation and America-bashing have rendered too many men impotent. This moment will test whether America still has the stones to overcome obstacles thrown in its path.

I have been arguing since 2020—when it became obvious to anyone with open eyes and ears that the country was in deep trouble—that the real divisions in politics are not superficial or partisan, but profoundly moral and philosophical: populism versus progressivism, nationalism versus transnationalism, individualism versus collectivism, democracy versus technocracy, and republicanism versus corporatism.

The opposing sides of these binaries together constitute a larger binary: American versus anti-American. Each pair marks an axis of political identity. Together, they form a political grammar: to speak in one term is already to reject the other; to locate oneself on one end is to be positioned against its opposite.

These are not neutral preferences but rival camps. One cannot inhabit both sides at once. These are not positions along a spectrum but lines of division—populism or progressivism, nationalism or transnationalism, individualism or collectivism, democracy or technocracy, republicanism or corporatism.

This follows from the three foundational laws of logic.

The Law of Identity holds that whatever exists has a determinate identity; a thing is itself and not another (this is why, e.g, the transgender individual is an impossible individual).

The Law of Noncontradiction holds that the same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect; a claim cannot simultaneously affirm and deny the same predicate. For example, the alleged fusion of populism and progressivism is a falsehood.

The Law of the Excluded Middle establishes bivalence: every proposition is either true or false, with no third option between them. In short, either the people govern themselves, or they are governed by something else.

Consider what Democrats want (they confess this openly): big, intrusive government; control over the socialization of our children; administrative and corporate control over our bodies and choices—the medicines we take, the foods we eat, the media we consume, the words we say; the privileging of selected ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities over the rights of the individual; a disarmed population; bargain-basement wages for workers; the diminishment of Western culture through the imposition of multiculturalism; and global governance.

There is a word for what Democrats want: authoritarianism. Indeed, there is more than one word for it: totalitarianism, serfdom—many words apply. However, the following words appear in the Party literature and pronouncements only as glittering generalities: autonomy, democracy, freedom, and justice. Their plans will cancel the substance of each of them in action. In fact, as the record of history makes clear, they have already weakened all of these.

The Statue of Liberty was conceived by French abolitionist Édouard René de Laboulaye and designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi as a celebration of liberty and republican government, a tribute to the American Revolution, and a symbolic nod to the end of slavery after the Civil War. Its full original name makes this clear: “Liberty Enlightening the World.”

Lady Liberty is a republican symbol. She had nothing to do with immigration. In France, the female personification of republican liberty is called Marianne. Emerging during the French Revolution, Marianne embodied the ideals of liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity)—a civic, secular figure representing the sovereignty of the people rather than monarchy or empire.

This shared republican imagery forged a deep symbolic connection between France and the United States: when France gifted Liberty Enlightening the World to America in the nineteenth century, the statue fused these traditions—Marianne’s revolutionary spirit with America’s own Lady Liberty—affirming a transatlantic commitment to republican self-government, popular sovereignty, and the universal aspiration toward freedom. America’s own Columbia guided the founding and expansion of the Republic.

Like Columbia in the United States, Marianne served as a symbolic guide for a new republic, appearing in art, coins, and public buildings as a reminder that the nation derived its authority from its citizens. Its torch burned out; France lost its way. We mustn’t allow the nightmare antithesis of progressivism extinguish the flame of liberty in America.

Those who would put out liberty’s light have been at it for a long time. In 1903, transnationalists—cultural figures, philanthropists, and writers who elevated the message of an 1883 poem by Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”—repurposed the statue, mounting a plaque with Lazarus’ poem inside its pedestal. The poem was not commissioned as the statue’s mission statement. It was not displayed on the statue at the dedication (which occurred decades earlier). The plaque reflected Lazarus’s personal humanitarian views, not the views of the nation.

What did the country think? A few decades later, in the 1920s, the nation, with populists and nationalists—in a word, patriots—leading the way, would sharply restrict the flow of immigration for more than forty years. The nation needs another forty years. The antithesis smears the patriots with invectives—“anti-immigrant,” “bigot,” “chauvinist,” “intolerant,” “nativist,” “racially prejudiced.” To hell with the antithesis.

Progressives are going full fascist right before our eyes. The street elements leverage anarchist and communist symbology, but the function is corporate statist. (Remember, Hitler called his politics “socialist,” too.) The neoconfederate attitude among Democratic Party leaders is the mark of the managed decline of the Republic. Those in the streets and those in the suites seek either the dissolution of the Union or a one-party state. The racist element is obvious in anti-white bigotry. The opposite of the American thesis could not be more explicit.

Whatever the problems one may have with the Republican Party—and I have a few—the choice in November 2026 is clear if one wishes to keep the United States of America. This does not mean we cannot have a system with multiple political parties. It does mean that the core of each party must have the foundational principles of the Republic at the core of their respective platforms. A stable constitutional republic can tolerate neither a movement nor a party that stands in the way of American greatness.

Many of us have seen these videos—or perhaps readers have experienced this personally, tragically, sometimes, even with a loved one—where a person shouts repeatedly phrases like “Fuck off!” or “Go kill yourself!”

You may have noticed that the phenomenon is almost exclusively associated with woke progressive types, especially trans-identifying individuals. I say “almost” to be charitable; I’ve never heard conservatives or liberals do this (strong executive function). There may be some, but there’s a reason why this is characteristic of those who identify as queer or woke, which I will come to.

The phenomenon has features indicative of mental illness, which may or may not be organic. Have you ever heard of perseveration? This is a state in which a person’s speech (or thought) becomes stuck in a loop, causing them to repeatedly chant the same phrase, often at the top of their lungs in monotone (or internally, such as in cases of selective mutism, which sufferers attest to).

This happens when executive control over language breaks down. Instead of choosing words deliberately, the brain locks into automatic, high-emotion speech patterns that repeat without flexibility. This feedback loop is a sign of dysfunction in the frontal lobe. It can result from a structural defect or chemical imbalance, external triggering in defective or primed individuals, or intoxication.

Brain-locking instances occur during intense emotional arousal, such as panic, rage, or stress, or when the deep animal part of the brain is disinhibited. We can call it “panic-chanting” or “rage-chanting” for shorthand. In these moments, the brain’s threat system overwhelms the parts responsible for inhibition and reasoning, causing speech to become aggressive, primitive, and repetitive.

Emotionally charged phrases like “Fuck off” or “Go kill yourself” are especially likely because they’re easy to produce and carry strong emotional force, even though the person may no longer be consciously intending their meaning (trance states often accompany the phenomenon).

In humans, such phrases are emotionally high-salience, socially aggressive, and conditioned through past use; the person deploys them whenever confronted by triggering stimuli. We see this in other mammals, as well, such as stressed cats howling. It signals that the mammal is potentially dangerous, but it also signals danger in primates, as well—even those with big brains. When a physically restrained detainee chants, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” “Don’t touch me!” “I’m disabled!” or any number of other phrases common in police encounters, one must be especially cautious. The police understand this, which is why they deploy restraint holds or devices.

A person in a brain-lock cannot control their actions, obviously. This was why straitjackets and tranquilizing drugs and devices (which immobilize the person) have been part of institutional psychiatry for decades. Indeed, the phenomenon often suggests neurological injury or a psychiatric condition. When I cover the history of this in my course Freedom and Social Control, students often gasp, “How could we have been so cruel?” But the reality is that these interventions work; what is unleashed by internal dysfunction can be contained by external restraint. What appear as torture devices have a calming effect. Not wanting to experience them again builds in self-control (although some seek out weighted blankets and the like).

"Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off"

My wife heard this from the other room and said "It sounds like a chicken".

A classic example of a white liberal boomer female not minding her own business. The comments from the guys are priceless. pic.twitter.com/qXov8hhwoV

— Martyupnorth®- Unacceptable Fact Checker (@Martyupnorth) January 15, 2026

We see this in anti-ICE protests and transactivism (sometimes manifesting in the latter as literal barking), but we also see it in other public settings, such as the recent video of a woman who objects to men duck hunting. Have you seen this video? The hunters laugh it off, but it’s disturbing to watch.

We also saw it in a recent video in a park where a woman, after being asked a question by a reporter, David Zeer, childlike chants a limited catalog of short, insulting phrases. It can weird out even normal people. Zeer tries to reason with her, but it’s only by getting away from the situation that the woman calms down. She appears normal again at a distance. Even for otherwise normally appearing persons, when triggered, intrusive thought loops in humans collapse vocabulary into repetitive high-charge phrases. The phrases are simultaneously command-like, insulting, and profane.

REPORTER GETS HECKLED: "THIS IS THE STATE OF THE US RIGHT NOW"

RAV's @DaveZere getting harassed as he is trying to be very respectful to protestors in MN. pic.twitter.com/NQila8WYMJ

— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) January 10, 2026

Alcohol or drug intoxication can increase the likelihood of this kind of speech lock. Many observers have wondered whether the woman triggered by the Zeer in the park is intoxicated. Zeer encountered other people with this tendency that day, one of whom he was actually able to calm with his relentless calm demeanor (Zeer is a remarkably patient man). You can see that many in the park that day are emotionally dysregulated individuals.

This is not Tourette’s or coprolalia (involuntary utterance of obscene or aggressive phrases), but more like echolalia-like looping (repeating others’ words), only auto-generated.

As implied by the foregoing, the loop can continue until interrupted by an external distraction. Sometimes it resolves with a shock intervention, such as overpowering command voice, macing (CN gas) and pepper spraying, or flashbangs (stun grenades), but not always. Fatigue can also resolve the loop; I have seen people exhaust themselves incessantly repeating the same phrase. However, some people are almost indefatigable, which stresses out everybody around them, amplifying the danger.

Cops are human, too, which is why anti-ICE demonstrators blow whistles (I have taken to calling them “cicadas,” those annoying insects prominent in the southern United States where I grew up). The whistles are not to warn “neighbors” of ICE operations but to trigger a reaction from cops, which can then be used for anti-government propaganda. The chanting often begins as a tactic to provoke officers, then brain-locking follows.

Woman dragged from car by ICE in Minnesota ID’d as LGBT and racial justice activist https://t.co/M3DvzpfEuY pic.twitter.com/tmsUEcto32

— New York Post (@nypost) January 14, 2026

Physical removal from the situation allows for emotional cooling, which is why police are quick to separate such individuals from reinforcers in the environment, putting them in the back of a patrol car. It’s sad to see. It’s tough to watch. But intervention or removal is often necessary for the sake of the person. The recent instance of a woman pulled from her car is presented by the media as overreach by law enforcement, but you can see all the signs of brain-lock in the video. The repetition is self-reinforcing: hearing the phrase triggers it again, creating a loop, which is why action is often necessary.

Another reason for removal is that brain-lock is often triggered in mob situations where it becomes contagious. A crowd of people can be swept up in the chanting—what we know as mass psychogenic madness—even those who do not suffer from whatever is disordering the brain-locked. Such is the madness of crowds.

If readers will permit me a moment of digression, which will become significant at the end, The Madness of Crowds was the title of a book by Douglas Murray published in 2019. Murray argues that modern Western societies have descended into a form of collective hysteria driven by identity politics, particularly around the topics of gender, race, sexuality, and transgender issues. He posits that these discussions, once grounded in the pursuit of equality and justice, have devolved into rigid, unforgiving orthodoxies that stifle nuance, free speech, and rational debate, often fueled by activist movements and social media platforms.

The phrase “the madness of crowds” originates from the 1841 book, in three volumes, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, an early study of crowd psychology that chronicled historical examples of mass hysteria.

Murray structures his critique around metaphors like “hardware” (biological realities) and “software” (cultural constructs), contending that misapplications of these concepts lead to societal divisions, victimhood hierarchies, and a “grand derangement” where facts are subordinated to feelings and power dynamics. He calls for a return to universal humanist principles to counteract what he sees as divisive, quasi-religious fervor in progressive causes, warning that such madness risks undermining the very progress achieved in civil rights. 

In such cases of mass hysteria, especially after triggering, it’s no longer necessarily a deliberate attempt to communicate or insult, but a sign that emotional and speech systems are running without higher cognitive control. Mobs are especially dangerous, as we have seen in the anti-ICE protests or witnessed during the 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. It’s why Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to interrupt the train before it reaches the station. (He should have invoked the Act early in the Antifa/BLM riots, but he got bad advice from those around him during his first term as President. See Send in the Troops.)

This is yet another reason why the manipulation of fragile people by Democrats is so objectionable. Democrats are quite cruel in this regard, especially when they affirm the delusions associated with people prone to chanting—delusions they often put into the heads of people they seek to control and weaponize. These are the people who are flooding our streets to protest ICE and Trump. You can see the depth of ideological indoctrination when leftists irrationally insist that Trump is a “fascist” or a “king.” It’s typical of the disorder we recognize as Trump derangement syndrome (TDS). You know from experience that such persons are impossible to reason with. The reasoning part of the brain is suspended. The vulnerable are primed with TDS.

One sees the derangement when woke types claim that abstractions are real without evidence, such as with the claim of “systemic racism” or “white supremacy” attributed to conservatives, while ignoring the best case for systemic racism, namely Democratic control over America’s central cities (the “Blue City”), where they impoverish and make dependent minorities with predictable results, such as high levels of crime and violence. (I have published several essays on this topic on this platform over the years.)

One of the early indicators of a person susceptible to chant-triggering is the constant re-telling of the same stories—not over time or in different settings, but after having already told the story in the same setting. Most of us have met these types of people. I’m not telling many readers something they don’t already know. I could give examples, but out of respect for their identity and reputation, I won’t.

Such vulnerable types, many primed by indoctrination, others primed by unresolved trauma, are perfect subjects for the New Fascism, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, where progressives were eager to see the state engage in a wide range of authoritarian action against those they are instructed to find disagreeable for one reason or another.

These types are drawn to cult-like movements. It’s why progressives seek affinity with Muslims. They fit perfectly the diagnosis detailed by Erich Fromm in his Escape from Freedom, where he specifies the authoritarian personality type. In previous essays, I have characterized such individuals as “zombies,” walking around chanting “Brains! Brains!” Or, alternatively, “parrots,” squawking things like “Trump’s a felon! Trump’s a felon!” or “Trump’s a pedo! Trump’s a pedo!” (See “Hey, Ma. The Zombies are Marching Again”; “Trump is a Felon!” The Squawking of Party Parrots.)

Some of them even come on my Facebook posts and chant and squawk like this. However, the platform X is full of zombies and parrots. I have had to systematically ignore transactivists who repeat the same phrase incessantly. “Trans women are really women!” or “Trans rights are human rights!” repeated a dozen or more times as a list. This happens in other settings, as well. Have you seen the woman? This goes on for several minutes. It is uncomfortable to watch.

This is hard to watch. https://t.co/PA2rSK3c5H

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) January 17, 2026

I’ve been asked by Facebook friends why I don’t unfriend them. It’s because I’m charitable and tolerant. I pity them, frankly. However, I confess, I’m tempted to, and occasionally I do unfriend them. On occasion, I have had to block them. I had to do it with one individual during the Paris Games during the controversy over male boxers allowed to compete in the women’s sport. The man kept chanting insults. I banned him as much for the sake of others as for my own sake. Some individuals are insufferable and, unlike the police, I don’t have to deal with them on the street. The police have the patience of saints. I don’t have that much patience. But I try.

Earlier, I said that I have not personally seen conservatives or liberals do this. I also noted the phenomenon of the madness of crows. Reflecting on these observations, I want to close with a personal anecdote.

In 2011, during the protests over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and state Republicans eliminating collective bargaining rights for teachers (Act 10), I was caught up in crowd madness (I reflect on my participation in those protests and compare them to what occurred on January 6 here: The Relative Ethics of Occupying Capital Buildings). I had yet to shed the progressive influence on my politics, but my liberal core remained; nonetheless, after waiting in the cold for hours waiting for Walker to show up at a business meeting in Green Bay, after most of the crowd had gone home, Walker finally showed up (strategically late, I suspect), I joined the mob in chasing Walker’s convoy to the gates, which were closed by security, leaving the mob to chant “Recall Walker!”

There was a cadence to the chant that entrained me, and I felt the rational part of my brain retreat, leaving me in a trance-like state with Id exposed. Even though I opposed the government’s action (I believe in organized labor, albeit its co-option by progressivism has admittedly greatly weakened my sense of solidarity), I left for home feeling deeply ashamed at having allowed myself to get caught up in the madness. I was ashamed not only because, as a sociologist who teaches the problem of the mob abstractly, I should have known better, but as a man who strives to be reasonable, I should have concretely known better. As readers might imagine, Douglas Murray’s 2019 book helped quite a bit here. As did Mattias Desmet’s The Psychology of Totalitarianism, published in 2022 (see The Future of a Delusion: Mass Formation Psychosis and the Fetish of Corporate Statism for an application of that work).

I had never behaved that way before. And I have never behaved that way since. It was a wake-up call. Indeed, shaken by this moment, I began my journey back to liberalism, sparking a process of self-deprogramming by purging progressive elements from my thought (it took me nearly a decade to get all the nonsense out of my head). I, too, am a mammal, I recognized. But I also recognized that I have a capacity for reason. Because I am a higher-order mammal, I forgave myself, but only after making sure that I would never again allow my capacity for reason to be diminished by the madness of crowds. So ashamed by this, I have apologized publicly to family and friends, making enemies of those angered that I left the tribe. To my credit, except for heavy metal concerts, I only ever chanted once. Chanting with others to call back Judas Priest for an encore is getting my money’s worth. Chanting with crowds of radicalized others is dangerous business.

“ICE is made up of white males who were similar to Hitler’s brown shirts of the 30’s. They were disaffected by the results of the reparations of WWI, and felt powerless. 47 has given them purpose, which is extremely dangerous.”

I won’t disclose the identity of the person who wrote this because this is one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever heard anybody say (hint: it is a Facebook user from Green Bay, Wisconsin). But it’s the premise in operation on the progressive side. As I have shown on this platform, rank-and-file progressives don’t deal in logical argumentation or facts; it’s all emotion and hyperbole with them. But those who control them know it’s a fallacious premise. There is no comparison to be made here. Hitler was a white supremacist who was eliminating ethnic and racialized minorities who had long been part of the German nation.

Addressing the factual claims made in the quote, the reality is that 45 percent of ICE agents are, to use the Democrat term of art, “people of color.” About 20 percent of ICE agents are Hispanic. Another 20 percent are black. And 5 percent Asian. Essentially, the argument is that Orange Hitler has a racially and ethically diverse paramilitary force rounding up your neighbors. Weird for a Nazi, don’t you think? It’s absurd on its face.

To appreciate the absurdity of this way of thinking to its full extent, let’s hook up these facts to some other facts. I don’t know if readers know this (I have documented this on this platform), but Trump has a very poor record when it comes to deportation. Barack Obama, the president most beloved by progressives, deported far more illegal aliens than Trump. (See What Lies Behind the Double Standard on Deportations? for a detailed analysis. See also Mass Immigration—Double Standard? Or a More Intensive Phase of Globalization?)

We’re not talking here about turnarounds at the border. We’re talking about going into American cities, identifying illegal aliens embedded in communities, and detaining and deporting them. Obama removed more ensconced illegal aliens than either Bill Clinton or George Bush. The thought of a Black Hitler with a racially and ethically diverse paramilitary apparatus forcibly rounding up your neighbors and deporting them is a difficult one to form in a rational mind, I know, but that’s apparently what happened—if we are consistent.

This brings us to another memory-holed fact. The recent news that has progressives running around with their hair on fire is that the ICE budget under Trump is greater than all the other federal law enforcement agencies combined. That might sound like a remarkable fact, except that that was also true under Obama.

Everything novel is ordinary. Only the perception is different. Donald Trump is Orange Hitler. Barack Obama is the most wonderful president of them all. Never mind that Black Hitler bombed and regime-changed the crap out of black and brown people around the world—even drone bombed American citizens. The Obama family portrait appears on social media platforms and the nostalgia hits hard: “Gosh, if we could just go back to this time.” Right, yes, because then we could deport millions of illegal aliens and progressives wouldn’t be out in the street showing their ass, attacking cops, and raving about Hitler.

But what about “Show your papers?” Isn’t that the master sign? Isn’t an ICE officer asking for papers “Naziism”? In the alternative universe progressives live in, sure, I guess. But in the real world? No. Not even close. If you’re an immigrant, you are required to carry proof of immigration status. There is no inherent right to be in the United States unless you are a citizen (even then, if you’re a naturalized citizen, you can be denaturalized and deported for cause).

Similar to the requirement during a traffic stop to present one’s driver’s license and vehicle registration (and, in 49 of 50 states and Washington DC, proof of insurance) , an individual over the age of 18 who is lawfully detained and suspected of being unlawfully present in the United States is required to produce immigration documents. 8 U.S.C. § 1304(e): “Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration.” The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination does not protect a detainee from disclosing their immigration status.

This is not an invention of the Trump Administration. It is a long-standing immigration law, upheld by the Supreme Court. If you’re telling immigrants that they don’t have to provide immigration status to an ICE agent, then you’re not only making ICE’s job more difficult (which you are not allowed to do), but you’re also making the life of those illegal present more difficult by increasing the likelihood that they will resist the officer, which puts them at risk of harm and further charges. It also puts the officer at risk, which we have all seen.

I hear that the RINOs (“Republicans in name only”) are telling Trump that he should back down and talk about amnesty. Wasn’t that the plan all along—foment rebellion against the federal government, force Trump to act, accuse him of authoritarianism, and confirm the false premise that Trump is a Nazi? But the historical comparison is not 1930s Germany. It’s the 1860s United States (see The New Confederates and the Return of States’ Rights). The Democrats are in rebellion against the Union. Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, JB Pritzker, Brandon Johnson—they’re leading an insurrection against the federal government. They’ve even turned the children against the Republic—the second coming of Mao’s Red Guard—closing schools and leading them in protests. That loudly tells us that it’s time to once more bring down the hammer. Send the military to Minneapolis. We cannot tolerate civil war. mae an example of Walz and Frey.

The MSM is warning its audience that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act to declare martial law and stop the mid-term elections. They’re spreading mass psychogenic madness. The Act exists because it is necessary (which is why Democrats endeavor to weaken its authority; see Posse Comitatus and the Ghosts of Redemption). 10 USC §§ 331-335, Sec. 332, concerning the use of militia and armed forces to enforce federal authority: “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

Sec. 333, elaborates: “The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it—(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, the beta male who wept before the golden coffin of the persistent life-course criminal offender George Floyd, has said the quiet part out loud: two governments are at war with each other. “We are in a position right now that we have residents that are asking the very limited number of police officers that we have to fight ICE officers on the street,” Frey said, to the astonishment of the city’s police chief Brian O’Hara standing beside him. “We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another. Why are we put in this position?”

The answer to the question is not the one Frey gives. The reason for the conflict is straightforward: Democrats are obstructing the federal government in its obligation to secure the integrity of the American Republic and to protect American citizens and legal residents.

In this war, there can be only one victor: the Union. Traitors cannot be allowed to win. Ever. The Supremacy Clause in Article VI, Clause 2 of the US Constitution declares that the Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties constitute the “supreme Law of the Land.” Federal authority overrides any conflicting state laws or constitutions. Moreover, it binds state judges to apply federal law. By establishing federal preemption—where federal law prevails in cases of conflict—the clause is a foundational element of American federalism, promoting national unity and consistent enforcement of law across all states.

This isn’t fascism. This is constitutional republicanism. This is what democracy looks like. This is foundational law, applied in many circumstances across the nation’s history to save the nation from those who undermine the authority of the federal government. (See Our Constitution and the Federal Authority to Quell Rebellion; Concerning the Powers of The US Constitution—And Those Defying Them.)

“Americans hate what’s going on in Minneapolis,” the polls say. “They think Trump is too heavy-handed.” How did the rebellion against the American Republic work out for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern and his party in 1972? What did Richard Nixon say about the “great silent majority of my fellow Americans” in that November 3, 1969, televised address—the majority that gave him the largest popular-vote margin for a Republican nominee in US presidential history? Beware the polls, Democrats. Ask why they’ve consistenly wrong for you for so long. The polls, lawfare, assassination attempts—none of this stopped the people from returning Donald Trump to the White House.

“But ICE is shooting people in the streets!” The police kill between 1,000 and 1,300 civilians every year, the vast majority of them US citizens. Whether the police were prepared to kill “one of their own” was never a question. You know what got those citizens killed? They threatened the lives of others. Why should it be different for those who are not our own? These are not our neighbors. They come here and establish ethnic enclaves. From their sanctuaries, they defraud and subvert the United States—more accurately: Democrats use foreigners to defraud and subvert the United States. (See Do Actions Have Consequences? Double Standards on Liberty and Separation.)

Those fatalities and injuries are legally justifiable because they occur in response to a perceived threat to the safety of law enforcement and the public. On average, fewer than eight police officers per year are charged with manslaughter, and very few of those cases result in convictions. As for the deaths occurring in the context of immigration enforcement, Renee Good, an American citizen, tried to run over an ICE agent. He defended himself. He almost certainly won’t be charged with manslaughter—but Renee’s partner, Becca, likely will. (See Loretta and Richard: The Renee Good Shooting and Correct Attribution of Blame.)

The three men—Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna, and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma—who attacked an ICE agent in north Minneapolis were Venezuelan nationals; all three are in the United States without legal status. Sosa-Celis, the target of the operation, fled a traffic stop, crashed his vehicle, and struggled with an ICE agent, after which Ajorna and Hernandez-Ledezma emerged from a nearby apartment armed with shovels and broom handles and joined the attack. The men struck the agent, leading the agent to fire a defensive shot that wounded Sosa-Celis. Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg. Isn’t that what progressives want? “Why can’t officers shoot them in the legs (or tires)?” There you go. And still they scream “oppression!”

What we see is a handful of shootings taken from a universe of shootings and presented as an extraordinary event. Renee Good’s case isn’t the first time a woman has been shot by police because she weaponized her vehicle. And Kamikaze Karens aren’t the only ones weaponizing cars against ICE agents. The two individuals shot by border control agents in Portland, Oregon, Luis David Nico-Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, both Venezuelan nationals in the US, weaponized their vehicle against the agents. Both are associated with Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational criminal gang. See a pattern? Get the corporate state media out of your headspace, and you likely will.

Despite the fall of legacy media, the propaganda organ of the globalists, The New York Times, most notably, still has enormous influence in America—indeed, in the world. They’ve even deluded European observers (who are themselves rapidly losing their nations). China and Russia are eating it up. The reporters of the MSM have seen the videos. They know the facts. They know what the videos and facts show. They’re gaslighting the public. You’re being told to disbelieve what you see plainly before your eyes. George Orwell’s words in Nineteen Eighty-Four haunt us: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” But, like the devil, the Party only has the power you give it.

The corporate state media is highlighting these particular cases, which are a tiny fraction of the total, because they are pushing an anti-American narrative and using weaponized empathy to mobilize the brainwashed (see Poet Mother v. ICE Barbie: The Art of Emotional Manipulation). They’re turning the public against their own nation. See what you see. (“Hey, Ma. The Zombies are Marching Again.”)

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” Have you heard this (commonly attributed to G. Michael Hopf, from his 2016 novel Those Who Remain)? They say it’s not always true. But it’s true enough. Beta males and Kamikaze Karens are determined to stop the strong from making the nation great again by making the government weak. Did a weak nation win the Civil War and WWII? How did Americans build the freest and most technologically advanced country in modern history? With weakness? (See Wokedom and the Problem of Lethal Altruism.)

We’re better than this, comrades. The rank-and-file progressive needs to go home and let patriots save a nation. They can watch history unfold on their screens. If they won’t, then the federal government must make them. This isn’t the Civil Rights struggle. Social justice is a cover for the managed decline of the American Republic. The left has been co-opted and deranged.

“Toxic masculinity!” Whatever. It’s toxic empathy that’ll bring down a nation. We can’t let this happen. Send in the troops.

It’s weird when people tell me I’m a fascist because I say civilians should obey police commands. “You mean lawful commands.” No, I mean commands.

Who determines what a lawful command is? The detainee? Do they know the law better than the cop? Maybe. Hardly ever. Certainly not according to the cop.

My wife and I watch cop videos all the time where detainees tell officers they have no authority to treat them that way. As someone who understands a bit about criminal law and procedure, almost all the time they’re wrong—and it gets incredibly tedious watching them be wrong almost all the time.

“Don’t touch me” and “let go of me” are especially annoying. Resisting never goes well. They end up with more charges when, had they simply obeyed commands, they might have been able to leave the scene. Even in the rare instance where a detainee breaks free and runs (which mostly happens when the officer is female), they’re eventually caught, and it goes much worse for them.

There are lots of other annoying objections.
“What did I do wrong?” Something, probably, since you’re interacting with an officer.
“I don’t have to show you my license.” Were you driving? Then you absolutely do—and your registration, and most likely proof of insurance. (Keep these items in a plastic baggie so you don’t have to dig around in your car.)
“I’m not getting out of the car.” Yes, you are.
“Don’t break my window”—followed by shattering glass and lots of screaming. WTF? You didn’t get out of the car, dude.
“Give me my phone.”
“I need to call my father.”

“I can’t breathe” is the classic. I can’t give you an exact probability, but you will almost certainly hear this during an evening of cop-watching, especially if the detainee is Black. I never knew so many people had asthma. My wife and I look at each other and telepathically share the same thought: You’re talking an awful lot for someone who can’t breathe.

Sometimes, the person just wants to cause a scene and force an altercation. This happens a lot. I’ve seen detainees go into full histrionics and exhaust themselves in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant or in a ditch by the interstate. I’m like, aren’t you embarrassed? Then some seem inexhaustible. I watch drunks struggle and wonder how that’s possible. When I’m drunk, I’m a worthless struggler.

And then there’s the obvious Cluster B personality disorder. My God, there are a lot of those. “Go fuck yourself” or “kill yourself,” delivered with that truly hateful face, is the dead giveaway. Police officers have the patience of saints with these people. There’s no reasoning with a Cluster B type. I feel so sorry for the parents. You know their life was—and probably still is—a living hell.

When the civilian is right, it’s usually about First Amendment issues—and these are professional auditors (YouTubers) who understand the law because they need to, so they can mess with rookies for content and clicks.

There are also times when police act inappropriately. But in most of those cases, the person being detained or arrested isn’t objecting to that; they’re objecting to something the officer is actually getting right. I think to myself, that wasn’t cool—but the detainee has no idea he’s being screwed over.

The point is that a detention or arrest is generally not the time to get into a discussion about criminal law and procedure. Things go much more smoothly if the civilian obeys commands, makes mental notes about what’s said or done, and raises objections later—with a supervisor, a defense attorney, a DA, or a judge—after tensions have cooled.

The problem is that people think they know far more about the law and procedure than they do. Even if they have a hunch they’re right, they’re unlikely to express it in a cogent or persuasive way. Hate to break it to you, but often cops are smarter than you are. And however smart they are, police officers are generally not interested in entertaining arguments—no matter how cogent or persuasive.

This interaction means a lot to you. To the cop, how many times has he dealt with someone like you? All the time. Like all humans, cops rely on typifications to reduce the complexity of a noisy world. If you feel like a number, that’s because you are—the fourth disagreeable asshole tonight. Don’t be a disagreeable asshole. Don’t add to the noise.

When I’m called a bottlicker for advising people to obey commands, I ask what the world would look like if every detention or arrest turned into an in-depth academic debate about law and procedure. It would be like dealing with a child who never accepts hierarchy or cooperates with authority. Does that irritate parents? Have you ever been a parent? Will a kid get more out of childhood by being a good boy—or by being a squirmy little jerk who collapses on the discount-store floor every time he doesn’t get what he wants? Do we really have to go through this again?

The cop knows more than you—or at least you should presume he does. He’s probably right that you did something stupid or wrong. Let him think whatever. Follow his commands. You’ll get more out of life by being a good boy than by being a squirmy little jerk.

So here’s how to interact with police officers so you can either go home—or go to jail—without a busted mouth, a broken arm, or worse.

• Stay calm and be polite. Even if the cop is an asshole. A command voice can feel like assholery—let it go. Be a Vulcan. Don’t talk much—or at all.
• You have the right to remain silent. Shut the fuck up. You cannot help yourself by talking. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Nothing you say has to be used to help you.
  Exceptions: “Do you have any guns in the car?” Answer that question—truthfully—with your hands on the steering wheel and the interior light on. Turn the light on as the officer approaches. If you haven’t, ask permission before doing so. Don’t reach for anything unless instructed. If you are a non-citizen, federal law (INA §264(e)) requires non-citizens over 18 to carry proof of immigration registration. ICE can demand to see those documents, and you must show them if you have them.
  “Do you have any drugs in the car?” Do not answer. Don’t answer any other questions.
• You have the right to refuse searches. Say: “I do not consent to searches.” The officer may search anyway, but you’ve preserved the objection, which may prove useful at trial.
• Keep your head about you. Officers will say things to get you talking. They may delay arrest to avoid reading Miranda. Anything you say—Mirandized or not—can be used against you. Officers can lie. They will gaslight you.
• If you’re with someone, warn them. If you have time, say: “Dude, don’t say anything. Cops will split us up and lie about who said what. If you value your freedom, shut up.” Say it fast.
• Ask if you’re being detained or free to go. If you’re not free to go, you’re being detained. Don’t hassle the officer. He has a tough job, and you’re probably not the first person tonight to annoy him. “That’s his problem”? No—it’s yours. You’re his problem. Don’t be one.
• Don’t attract extra suspicion. Keeping a low profile is wise. “Profiling is wrong.” So?
• Don’t run. Don’t resist. Don’t fight. Don’t even look like you might run, resist, or fight. The cop wants to go home alive, and he’s not waiting to see what you’re about to do. You want to go home too, right? Righteous indignation is a poor substitute for breathing. Your pride will recover.
• Never touch a police officer. “You can’t touch me.” Yes, he can. “Then I’ll touch him back.” No. Touch him and it’s a felony—if you’re lucky.
• Be a good witness and report misconduct later. Observe quietly. Don’t be the guy demanding names and badge numbers in the moment. Just look and remember.
• You don’t have to let police into your home without a warrant. Ask if they have one. If they don’t, they can’t come in. If you invite them in, they’ll go wherever they want and won’t leave until they’re satisfied—or until they find your stash. Cops are like vampires: once invited, they’re in.
• Finally, police can pat you down for weapons. It’s not a search. It may feel humiliating. What—have you never flown before?

These rules are derived from this little video. Watch it. Share it with your friends. Be a good citizen: follow the law and cooperate with the police.

Follow these rules. https://t.co/5wiWWnEf0i

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) January 14, 2026

From the same publications that led with would-be cop killer Renee Good’s beach-and-sky pregnancy photo, here’s People magazine’s obituary for Scott Adams.

Victoria Edel penned it. She triggered a firestorm. People magazine apparently just changed the authorship of the obit from Edel to “People Staff.” Edel has locked her X account. People are rightly upset at her. Adams meant a lot to a lot of people.

To be sure, Edel wrote these words, but it was People magazine who signed off on the obit. They’ve not taken it down (yet). So this is how People magazine wants you to remember Adams: the “disgraced Dilbert creator.”

From a universe of good and useful deeds, the magazine took a few minutes of Adams openly and honestly expressing shock at the fact that, in the context of surging black-on-white crime under the Biden regime, nearly half of all blacks surveyed by Rasmussen said that it was not okay or were not sure whether it was okay to be white, and made that the headline. Adams was connecting action with opinion, inferring that white people are not as safe as they might have felt they were. The public isn’t supposed to make connections like that, so Adams must be forever remembered as “disgraced.”

That’s not the only reason the establishment cancelled Adams, of course. The establishment used Adams’ remarks that day as an excuse to punish him for supporting Donald Trump—the same way they used a tweet by Roseanne Barr to cancel her show (see Canceling Roseanne Barr; see also Democrats’ Closing Argument: Comedians We Don’t Like are Racists). Had Adam’s occasional deviations from official narratives mattered, they would have cancelled him for asking how the Holocaust narrative settled on the number it did. Even emphasizing that he didn’t doubt the Holocaust happened, asking about the number is usually enough to get a person tossed out of polite society. At least one woke scold rushed to the comment section, encouraging readers to look into Adams’ alleged “Holocaust denialism.”

Progressives still insist that cancelling is not a real thing. But Scott Adams was literally cancelled. His Dilbert cartoons were pulled from syndication for his sin of political incorrectness. Roseanne Barr was literally cancelled because she was politically incorrect. They not only deplatformed Barr on Twitter (this was before Elon Musk saved free speech by purchasing the platform), but also cancelled her television show. The establishment disgraced them both (and many others) because they had opinions that ran afoul of the elite-appointed commissars.

If the public didn’t like Adams’ observation, they didn’t have to read Dilbert. If the public didn’t like Barr’s tweets, they didn’t have to watch her show. But we know that they would have continued reading Adams and watching Barr because the majority not only like a good laugh (which is why late-night television is moribund and surely going away soon), but also because they share Adams and Barr’s sentiments, even if they are afraid to say them out loud, their speech constrained by the woke scolds surrounding them. Figures like Adams and Barr spoke for those who are afraid to speak for themselves in public (Barr still does, but on a much smaller platform).

Adams and Barr’s sin is that they expanded the scope of mutual knowledge. And for that, corporate power is prepared to give up millions of dollars in revenue in the same way they’re prepared to lose money on the hack comedians they put before the public of late-night TV (Kimmel, Fallon, Colbert). Censor the voice of the people; amplify the voice of the establishment—that’s the formula of hegemony. Thankfully, it’s losing efficacy, in part because people like Scott Adams and Elon Musk have made themselves useful.

Scott Adams left the world with parting words, which I share below. Some will find his conversion to Christianity to be the most significant. For me, his charge to “be useful” is the takeaway. Usefulness is not just about helping other people. Since I decided to be useful, I’ve been much happier. Adams sacrificed a great deal to be useful. You can tell that he believed it was worth it. It was for me; Adams was an inspiration. I appreciate that he changed his mind last summer and decided to hang on for a while longer. I will miss his coffee talks. I will miss him.

Scott Adams left the world with these parting words. Some will find his conversion to Christianity to be the most significant. For me, "be useful" is the takeaway. Usefulness is not just about helping other people. Since I decided to be useful, I’ve been much happier. Adams… https://t.co/07Tnd0mf26

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) January 13, 2026

“The media may not always be able to tell us what to think, but they are strikingly successful in telling us what to think about.” —Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality

“The law should be like death, which spares no one.” —Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

We have to address the double standard that’s in play on the progressive left—and in the media that organizes the corporate state narrative. There is a constant barrage of propaganda from progressive leaders, including those in public office, that ICE is coming into communities, taking illegal aliens into custody, and breaking up families. It’s ugly, these leaders note, and the mass media is supporting the narrative by highlighting its ugliness. Behind this is a double standard that deceives the public about law enforcement activities and family separation.

I warned you that when Trump came into office and started enforcing immigration law as promised (why the public returned Trump to the White House in a landslide), it would be ugly. How could it not be? People are taken into custody against their will. There’s a great deal of crying. Screaming. Going ragdoll. Sometimes those taken into custody resist, and force is used. Sometimes people get hurt.

However, when a citizen breaks the law, if he is apprehended, he is taken into custody and, if charged and convicted, often sent to jail or prison. Here, too, is drama. The drama happens every day in America—hundreds and thousands of times a day. Sending parents to prison breaks up families. Loss of liberty and family separation are consequences of breaking the law. They are an inherent part of the criminal justice process. It’s the decision of the lawbreaker that causes his loss of liberty and separation from family. The alternative would be not to enforce the law.

One could never grasp the extent of family separation among the citizen population from watching the media. But, from a statistical standpoint, family separation caused by the US criminal justice system dwarfs that caused by immigration enforcement. Each year, police make roughly 7.5 million arrests, and about 1.9 million people—overwhelmingly citizens—are incarcerated at any given time, routinely separating parents from children through arrest, pretrial detention, and imprisonment.

By contrast, ICE arrests are on the order of around 150,000 per year, with tens of thousands in immigration detention at a time. Even accounting for large numbers of border “family unit encounters” (which Trump effectively stopped with his border control measures), immigration enforcement operates at a vastly smaller scale.

Ordinary Americans can’t know this because, while family separation is a common and normalized consequence of criminal law enforcement for citizens, it receives no media or political coverage. Instead, they are bombarded today, every day, all day, with linear and social media images and reels of the ugliness of immigration enforcement.

“If the press cannot mold our every opinion,” writes Michael Parenti in his 1986 Inventing Reality, “it can frame the perceptual reality around which our opinions take shape.” This is a significant observation: “Here may lie the most important effect of the news media: they set the issue agenda for the rest of us, choosing what to emphasize and what to ignore or suppress, in effect, organizing much of our political world for us.”

Beneath the mediated perceptions, the same principle is in operation in both instances: there are consequences to breaking the law, and family separation is a potential consequence. If one works from principle, then either he believes that all civilians, whether citizen or immigrant, should be held accountable for lawbreaking, or he believes that no civilian, regardless of immigration status, should be held accountable for lawbreaking. There is no choice from the established principled position. It is an either/or. Which is it?

If you assert a principle I am unaware of, and believe there should be a double standard, that citizens should be held accountable but not immigrants, then the question you must answer is why immigrants should be granted immunity from the consequences of breaking the law, while citizens should be denied such immunity. Why would you believe this? What explains the double standard you advocate? What is the principle in operation? The principle needs to be announced and explained, and the public needs to agree that the principle makes sense, before it can be allowed to determine policy. This is a democracy operating under the rule of law. So why should the rule of law be suspended for immigrants?

To all those who support immigration enforcement in the abstract but are troubled by the ugliness of law enforcement action, ask yourselves: if you were to see a glut of media reports showing the ugliness of citizens being taken into custody and families separated, then would you conclude that we should stop all law enforcement? To be sure, there are those on the fringe who advocate for the abolition of policing in principle, but that’s probably not you.

If you say “no,” which I think most of you would, then you mustn’t let emotions carry you away when you see illegal immigrants taken into custody. Progressive leaders and the mass media have selectively weaponized empathy to lead you away from principle. They are programming you to react emotionally and not logically. You have already agreed that lawbreakers should be held accountable. Work from the rational part of your brain, not the emotional part. This does not mean that you shouldn’t have compassion and sympathy for the plight of people taken into custody. It means you put principle over reaction.

If you say “yes” after a gut check, then you don’t really believe in immigration law even in the abstract, because you don’t believe in policing generally. You’re a functional anarchist who is putting the safety of his own family in jeopardy, since the certain result of leaving illegal aliens to reside in the United States will be an increase in crime and violence in your neighborhood. And it you move to depolice at scale, then your neighborhood will descend into anarchy.

Expect the rationalization from progressives that citizens have a higher rate of crime than immigrants. You might ask whether that comparison is between citizens and illegal aliens, not immigrants overall. However the fact is specified, even if it were true, it is immaterial to public safety, since it is certain that a percentage of immigrants will break the law, and that means that more immigrants will increase the volume of crime.

Moreover, many illegal immigrants are, by definition, criminals. Under federal law, Title 8 USC § 1325, it is a misdemeanor to enter or attempt to enter the United States at an undesignated place or time, to elude immigration inspection, or to enter by false or misleading statements. Title 8 USC § 1326 makes it a felony for a person who has previously been removed or deported to reenter, attempt to reenter, or be found in the United States without authorization, with penalties that increase based on prior criminal history. That covers a great many illegal aliens.

To be sure, mere unlawful presence, such as overstaying a visa, is generally a civil violation rather than a crime, though related conduct may be criminalized under other statutes, including 8 USC § 1324 (harboring or transporting undocumented persons), 8 USC. § 1306 (failure to register), and 18 USC §§ 911 and 1546 (false claims to US citizenship and immigration document fraud), but violation of civil law is still illegal conduct. Just because an action is not criminal does not make it legal.

To close the loop on this, although unlawful presence may be a civil matter if no criminal activity is present, the law is still enforced by ICE, authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act, codified in the same title: 8 of the US Code. 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B) provides that any noncitizen present in the US in violation of law is deportable, forming the principal basis for civil removal proceedings initiated by ICE.

It doesn’t stop there. Title 8 USC § 1182(a)(9)(B) imposes civil consequences for accrued unlawful presence by rendering a noncitizen inadmissible for three or ten years after departure, depending on the length of unlawful presence. DHS’s authority to inspect and determine admissibility derives from 8 USC § 1225, while the procedures governing civil removal proceedings are outlined in 8 USC § 1229a. ICE’s authority to arrest and detain noncitizens pending removal is provided by 8 USC § 1226, and related civil registration requirements appear in 8 USC §§ 1302–1304, all of which operate within a civil, not criminal, enforcement framework, but nonetheless fall under ICE’s purview.

Another rationalization one hears is that ICE officers are glorified mall cops, or, alternatively, private contractors. ICE agents receive their foundational training primarily at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia, which serves as the main academy for other federal law enforcement agencies.

Training differs depending on the agent’s role. Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers, who handle immigration arrests and removals, complete an eight-week program that covers immigration law, constitutional protections, de-escalation techniques, firearms safety and qualification, defensive tactics, emergency driving, and physical readiness. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents, who focus on criminal investigations such as human trafficking and smuggling, undergo a longer pipeline that combines the Criminal Investigator Training Program at FLETC (around 12 weeks) with agency-specific HSI training (around 13 weeks), providing more in-depth instruction in investigative techniques.

Across all programs, ICE training emphasizes constitutional and statutory law, investigative skills, firearms and defensive tactics, fitness and physical readiness, and de-escalation strategies. After academy graduation, officers enter a supervised field training phase and continue receiving ongoing education, refresher courses, and specialized instruction throughout their careers. So, not mall cops or private contractors. Federal law enforcement officers.

There’s no way to rationalize one’s way out of this. If you are an alien who is not authorized to be in the United States, your illegal presence is subject to law enforcement action. Any attempt to interfere with law enforcement action is criminal, as I showed in yesterday’s essay, Loretta and Richard: The Renee Good Shooting and Correct Attribution of Blame. And be aware that they use real bullets.

Those separating ICE from other law enforcement bodies are arguing from a false dichotomy. They’re assuming or demanding a double standard without a principled reason for their demand. So, the next time you are arguing with progressives, demand from them the principle in operation. If they have one, then tell them to elect representatives who will codify the double standard. Until then, hitting the streets to interfere with ICE operations is the same as interfering with any other law enforcement activity. It’s a crime. Those doing the interfering should be rolled up with the illegal aliens with whom they ally—personal liberty and family separation be damned. Actions have consequences.