freedom and reason

I did some banking yesterday. As I sat and waited to see my banker (joined by an elderly woman who complained to me about the modern age), the video wall told customers about the bank’s close relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. I then noticed the table across the room with the Pride Progress flag and a cup with thematic pens.

My bank’s displays are always quite something. I had, on earlier occasions, remarked upon the four-panel display behind the tellers, which included a photo, taken from the perspective of a person sitting in the backseat, of a black couple returning from snowboarding, putting a plastic sled full of snow into the back of the SUV.

Why would people put a snow-filled sled in their car? That’d be like getting in the car after a day at the beach without washing the sand off your feet. It took another second to understand why: How would I know that the couple had been snowboarding if they had shaken out the snow first?

At any rate, the Pride Progress flag displayed at the bank was notable. The flag symbolizes the inclusive acronym. But the acronym is incoherent, since it attempts to pair gay, lesbian, and bisexual pride with a range of mental and physical disorders, along with a political project, namely Queer, an offshoot of anarchism.

Most customers wouldn’t know that the Pride Progress flag is not the Pride flag. And soon, the Pride Progress flag will be the only flag any of us will know. We will believe that it alone represents Pride. It will replace the Pride flag not only because Pride is scheduled for erasure, but because, if the Pride flag is displayed, the queer community will demand to know why trans people are left out.

“I support the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community.” “Yeah? Well, what about trans people?” I have actually had this conversation.

Well, what about them?

The point of the Pride Progress flag is to make people reflexively conflate two entirely different things: homosexuality and gender identity, the first having to do with romantic attraction, the second with kinks, mental illness, and the politics of transgression.

I avoided the recent Pride celebration in Green Bay because it was festooned with Pride Progress flags. I also worried about harassment had I attended, given my reputation as a notorious transphobe. I am not imagining this, since I have been the subject of harassment by trans activists.

But more troubling than harassment is that the conflation of these things allows queer activists to frame psychological and psychiatric treatment of mental illness as “conversion therapy,” as if it’s the same as treating homosexuality as a mental illness. This not only allows the industry to valorize gender affirming care, but it also hides the fact that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital surgery to produce simulated sexual identities are the most obvious forms of conversion therapy in modern medicine. Gender affirming care is actually the medical practice of denying gender. It is a regression to alchemy.

While we wait for the Supreme Court to finish its term (I am especially anxious about the pending birthright citizenship decision), a ruling issued a few months ago is worth noting. The Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Chiles v. Salazar on March 31, 2026.

Following the decision, the Colorado General Assembly passed an updated, viewpoint-neutral law on May 7, 2026, to align its youth protection policies with the Court’s strict speech standards.

Before the Court’s ruling, Colorado and more than twenty other states restricted therapists from trying to change the gender identity of clients under eighteen. Colorado banned what the trans lobby terms “conversion therapy,” thereby attempting to deceive the public into believing that an intervention that treats gender dysphoria as a psychological disorder rather than affirming the concept of gender identity is similar to an intervention that attempts to change sexual orientation.

But gender affirming care is conversion sui generis. Conversion is defined as the process of changing or causing something to change from one form to another. In the case of gender affirming care, the process attempts to change a man into a woman, or vice versa. Conversion therapy in the case of sexual orientation is an attempt to change a gay man or a lesbian into a heterosexual. In this instance, the attempt is to modify a natural disposition with respect to sexual attraction. In the case of gender affirming care, the attempt is to modify a natural body.

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, filed suit in 2022 over Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with Chiles, rejecting a Colorado law that prohibited mental health professionals from denying the construct of gender identity. The Supreme Court’s reasoning was that the law, as applied to talk therapy, represented an “egregious assault” on the First Amendment.

“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the eight justices in agreement. “But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

The lone dissenter was the justice who could not tell Senator Marsha Blackburn during her confirmation hearings what a woman was. “The Constitution does not pose a barrier to reasonable regulation of harmful medical treatments just because substandard care comes via speech instead of a scalpel,” Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown argued. The decision, according to her wisdom, “risks grave harm to Americans’ health and well-being.”

Is it not incongruous for a justice who does not (strategically, to be sure) know what a woman is to pontificate on what constitutes substandard care? What’s harmful in this case is gender affirming care, not a therapist helping a confused child, one with no medical condition, feel comfortable with his body.

The person who feels they’re not what they are, that their self-image is distorted, or their identity is trapped in a body, suffers from a range of disorders, e.g., borderline disorder. One feature of this particular disorder is self-mutilation, such as cutting oneself. The sufferer does this to regulate emotional pain (which is why the underlying cause is often identified as emotional dysregulation), relieve feelings of emptiness or numbness, express distress that feels hard to put into words, or regain a sense of control or reality.

I raise the matter of borderline personality disorder because Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and gender dysphoria (GD) often appear together, with studies finding a higher prevalence of BPD traits among transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) populations, often linked to elevated gender minority stress, trauma, or identity confusion. BPD is one of the most common personality disorders found in so-called gender-diverse populations. Studies find that the prevalence of personality disorders in patients with gender dysphoria is as high as 80 percent. Indeed, some research suggests BPD-related identity disturbance overlaps with GD, that is, that GD is not a distinct condition. 

When psychiatry constructs a diagnosis, as in the case of gender identity, it calls into existence a reality. When it normalizes the reality it conjures, some will feel they have finally found a stable identity and demand that others affirm it. “I never knew what was wrong,” the thought process goes. “Now I know: I was trapped in the wrong body. I have always been trans.” The individual revises her biography in light of the revelation, blames others for not recognizing her true self all along, and then claims that this is the source of the trauma she experiences. Not only does she now know what she “really” is, but she has somebody to blame for it. And it’s the wrong person.

Typically, a teenage girl (three-quarters of borderline cases are female) who, with the help of her therapist or an online community, “discovers” that she is actually trans, blames her parents and those around them who should have known what was going on, or worse, for denying their real identity because they didn’t want a trans child. This imagined experience leads to family dissolution, the act of going “no contact,” or similar ruptures. Everything in their life is interpreted through the new frame of trans identity. She believes she has found her authentic self. But for how long?

What underpins borderline disorder and other disorders of a similar nature is an unstable identity, the feeling that one’s identity is not aligned with what she sees in the mirror or how other people respond to her. The disorder often comes with body dysmorphia, that is, a perceived distortion of the body.

One sees this in anorexia nervosa and other similar conditions. Unlike anorexia, however, which no doctor would treat using weight-loss drugs or bariatric surgery, properly reserved for those who suffer actual obesity, doctors treat a distorted gender identity using puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries such as phalloplasty.

One can expect pushback when putting the matter like this. Many sociologists will paradoxically argue that treating gender identity as a disorder “medicalizes” the problem. Psychiatry agrees, which is why it dropped GID from the DSM and identified the phenomenon of GD to put in its stead, defining the problem not as misperception of one’s gender, but as the distressed experiences at the perceived incongruence between the subjective sense of gender and the actual gender of the patient.

Extending the logic of this rationalization, referencing the DSM about borderline or other Cluster B personality disorders, delusional thinking, and so forth, would constitute medicalizing, specifically psychiatrizing, the “authentic self.” This is the influence of postmodernist thinking, specifically queer theory, in which psychiatric categories concerning gender are expressions of gender oppression—as if nature itself were an oppressor.

Those who know me—and certainly students who sit through my sociology classes—know that I am a fierce critic of medicalization. One would not be wrong to identify me as anti-psychiatry. I’m a fan of Erving Goffman (Asylums), Thomas Szasz (The Myth of Mental Illness, The Manufacture of Madness), Ivan Illich (Medical Nemesis), and Michel Foucault (Madness and Civilization). I find their arguments compelling. At the same time, I do recognize mental illness. I’ve seen too much of it to believe it’s merely a definition of a situation. This is why I oppose the administration of puberty blockers and hormones and genital surgery—we ought not be subjecting those with mental disorders to the ordeal of overly medicalized bodies.

Even the most ardent critic of psychiatry wouldn’t deny that there are conditions that have a medical basis. These conditions are not constructed by the diagnosis; rather, the diagnosis is determined by a process of abduction from the observation of symptoms. Nobody would deny that schizophrenia is an organic brain disorder, or that bipolar disorder likely has some biological basis.

Any number of other disorders could fit with this understanding. Body dysmorphia itself may result from the brain wrongly mapping the body, at first in an obscure way, then in a specific way once the experience is given a name. If these phenomena are determined to have a physiological basis, then they are properly medicalized. The question then is: what is the appropriate line of care?

The idea that a doctor would surgically alter bodies or give puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to address the process via the wrong sort of medicalization. It treats an emotional, mental, or personality disorder not only as if it has an organic basis like those other conditions, but as a medical problem that may be treated hormonally or surgically.

Such an intervention would not be ruled out in the case of a teenage boy with gynecomastia, which is the abnormal enlargement of glandular breast tissue in males caused by a hormone imbalance. Intervention in this case is actually gender affirming care, since males normally do not grow breasts. But in the case of gender identity, such interventions constitute gender denying care. They are not treating aberrations but distorting normal bodies. An endocrinologist prescribing leuprolide acetate (Lupron) to a young girl with precocious puberty is not the same as prescribing this drug to a young girl who does not want to experience a phase in the normal development process.

Instead of pursuing psychotherapy to teach an individual how to negotiate the incongruence experienced, as any ethical doctor or therapist would for a distorted body image or dissociative disorder, the doctor working from gender identity is opting for radical medical intervention.

Is trans identification always the result of a psychiatric disorder defined in this way? No. It can be other things. Much of the transgender phenomenon is explained by the problem of social contagion. It’s a fad or a fashion. For others, it’s a fetish or a kink, falling under a different psychiatric classification, namely, a paraphilia, an atypical sexual behavior, or sexual deviation. For those who are genuinely suffering from distress over their bodies, it is a delusion or distorted perception. But in all these cases, the individual is not really the other gender. What they think they are, or what they would like to be, or how they would like others to regard them, does not align with reality.

What has confused the person suffering from GD is this: a definition has been constructed by authorities and, by authority, what is defined is made to seem real. The identity is defined into existence by the words used to describe it—a thing that doesn’t exist. That is a definition of a situation. Sure, an underlying disorder may exist, but the idea of a “brain” or a “soul” trapped in the wrong body is an impossibility.

This is what is known in science as reification, that is, treating a concept or an inventory of attributes or characteristics as if it were a real thing, a thing independent of the mind. But it is ever only conceptual, at best intersubjective, and what it claims to describe does not exist apart from the mind that believes it.

A common justification for gender affirming care is that it will ameliorate symptoms and, therefore, it is an act of compassion. Whatever the individual is suffering from, he is suffering; the intervention helps him manage the suffering. If it works, then the intervention is justified.

This is the source of the language surrounding the phenomenon, that of affirmation and kindness. But affirmation here means validating something a person believes without reason, a perception without evidence. This is not kindness. It’s analogous to telling a person who has cancer that they don’t because knowing one has cancer causes distress. In every other case, that’s not an appropriate thing for a doctor to do. So why this one?

There are other reasons. The person wants to legitimize an identity they believe they are. In this case, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the person who truly suffers from gender dysphoria and the person who wants to become the thing they desire. Either way, they want to be this thing, so they need everybody to affirm that they are this thing, and if affirmation is not forthcoming, they experience distress. They believe all their problems will be solved by transitioning, and their certainty of this precludes reason. They need affirmation because they have doubts that they really are the thing. They’re asking everybody to participate in a deception. This expectation is unkind to everyone around them—and society at large.

Another reason is that it generates billions of dollars in revenue for big corporations. The motive of doctors—we should say the medical industry, because it forces doctors to accept this. It’s not an act of compassionate care, but rather a practice that advances the financial interests of powerful medical corporations. These corporations work with psychiatrists, endocrinologists, and others to change definitions to suit their avarice. The disorder is redefined, and the new definition is upheld to advance material interests at the expense of the suffering person. That makes this an instance of institutional malpractice, and we should call it out.

When people ask me why I care about this issue so much, it’s for the same reason I care about corporate crime and medical malpractice, especially when it’s institutionalized. As a criminologist, I research and lecture on these topics all the time. It would be ideological for me to resist making this argument simply because it is politically unpopular. I’ve spent so much time on it because this is a particularly egregious example. This is the greatest medical scandal in my lifetime.

The fact that natural history has produced conscious and social animals doesn’t mean there is an ethereal realm where gender identities wander about untethered from biology. On the contrary, it should dispel such a notion. A mammal is either one or the other gender. A mammal cannot change gender, nor can it be both genders at once (unless it is a true chimera).

Here’s how those who subscribe to gender identity doctrine can know they’re wrong—or at least know that they subscribe to a neoreligion:

When a claim is made about gender, it can either be an empirical claim or an appeal to faith. If it is empirical, then testing the claim involves reference to chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive anatomy. If an article of faith, then by definition, there is no objective way to know or determine its validity. One may hold such a belief, but it’s not a scientific or true fact.

The demand for “affirmation” proves that gender identity doctrine is a neoreligion. If the claim that a man can be a woman were true, it could be demonstrated empirically. But since it cannot, those making the claim demand affirmation of the claim’s truth. “Transwomen are women. Say it! Use the pronouns!” (O’Brien to Winston, “How many fingers am I holding up?”)

The reality is that “gender affirming care” is gender denying harm, since it alters the body to represent a faith-based claim about the self that is contrary to the facts of one’s gender. Gender denying care is a type of conversion therapy. It is deceitful because it claims to make the impossible possible.

The trans body is a simulated gender identity. It can never be the thing it claims to be. True identity is what a thing really is, the thing-itself, and its truth is not determined subjectively or by affirmation or rituals, but by reference to empirical reality. Everything else is an appeal to faith. And faith here is not a stand-in for what we cannot know. A man remains an adult male human, regardless of what he believes about or does to his body.

Time Magazine reported in June 2017 that the National Park Service had to drain and clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after discovering that a parasite in the water killed eighty ducklings. Necropsies on the poor little things conducted by the US Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center found that a parasite growing in snails living in the pool had been killing the ducklings since May of that year. Why did President Trump allow snails to invade the reflecting pool?

The 2017 Time Magazine story has faded from the memory of the handful of people who happened across the short article at the time. I never knew about it. I stumbled upon it looking for something else (I will get to that in a moment). Now, with the 250th Anniversary of the Republic rapidly approaching, algae has become a problem at the reflecting pool, and finally, the media is paying attention.

Why Trump’s killing of ducklings at the reflecting pool was not on a continual “Breaking News” loop is the only mystery I discuss in this essay. Of course, Trump didn’t kill ducklings. The parasite is common to snails. Snails are common in water. Swimmers have long suffered itchy skin from swimming in bodies of water where the snails are present. I framed the episode at the start to bring to the fore the absurdity of the media frenzy over algae at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after Trump renovated the attraction in preparation for America’s 250th anniversary.

Algae have also been a problem at the reflecting pool. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool controversy is indeed absurd, but, sadly, predictable.

Obama’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was far more costly ($44 million in today’s dollars) and was soon plagued by algae. There were no scrolling “Breaking News” alerts about Obama’s “green reflecting pool.” I did locate a story about the algae in a Google search, but there was no hint of a scandal. Perhaps it was a slow news day. As with the death of eighty ducklings, the reporter simply noted the presence of algae in a short article.

Today, Obama’s presidential library, a work of brutalist architecture, is the toast of the town. What one may gather from the open house is that the public is supposed to pine for the good old days when Americans were sleepwalking through life. Just look at the photos of Obama’s perfect family. No scandals, we’ve been told.

That’s not what I remember. I distinctly remember Obama’s 2011 drone killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen in Yemen. A year earlier, Obama joked during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner that, if the Jonas Brothers got near his daughters, he had “two words” for them: “predator drones—you will never see it coming.” Abdulrahman never saw it coming.

Then there was the 2011 torture murder of Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi. Remember when–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted in her notorious cackle to the news of Gaddafi’s murder with, “We came, we saw, he died”?

The MSM cannot be bothered to report that the Obama Presidential Center was built on Jackson Park, altering historic public space, or that subcontractors are owed money (Trump is dogged for stiffing subcontractors).

I thought we would never hear the end of the temporary UFC structure on the South Lawn of the White House. Obama’s monstrosity is a glorious, permanent reminder of the days of a scandal-free presidency.

In addition to the algae, the blue paint coating the bottom of the reflecting pool is peeling. President Trump blames vandalism. The algae and peeling paint come with the chemical etching of “8647”—a sign to kill the president—on the Washington Monument grounds (West Lawn area). That nefarious forces were behind the peeling is plausible. More than plausible, actually, considering that there are vandals with tools at the pool, hauling up pieces of it. Law enforcement is investigating, there are many witnesses, and several arrests have been made.

A prebunking campaign circulated a hoax that Antifa dumped aggressive Georgia algae in the pool to sabotage the Trump Presidency. This framed Trump’s claim of vandalism.

If all this feels orchestrated, don’t be too quick to dismiss that feeling. However, sabotage by left-wing activists is hardly necessary when the corporate media stands ready to turn everything Trump does into a scandal.

I don’t recall whether the reflecting pool was green the last time I traveled to Washington, DC. That was when George W. Bush was president. There were more concerning developments at the time, like the Second Persian Gulf War and the entrenchment of the Surveillance State. I was more interested in the monuments and American history. My visits to the Pentagon and the Vietnam Memorial were remarkable. I will never forget the vigilant owl in the courtyard of the home of the War Department. Algae at the reflecting pool would not have stuck me as remarkable.

Speaking of the War Department, how about some reporting on transnational corporate power and the degradation of military readiness by outsourcing industrial production to the Chinese Communist Party under previous administrations? Americans might be interested in hearing about that and other developments important to their lives.

I am confident that they would be interested in this (not unrelated matter): On her last day in office at the Office of National Intelligence, Director Tulsi Gabbard shared documentation confirming what I already knew: that COVID-19 was fabricated in the Wuhan bioweapons lab under the direction of Anthony Fauci. The Biden administration sought to conceal this by granting Fauci a preemptive pardon, framing the matter of protecting those Trump would pursue as part of his “Retribution Tour.” (Biden justified pardoning his family using this frame.)

I have only seen short news briefs or wire-service summaries about Gabbard’s revelation wrapped in muted language: “Gabbard alleges…,” “Documents purport to show…,” “No independent verification…,” etc. There is no viral narrative about the revelation, even though, alongside Trump pressuring the state of Israel to stop defending itself from Iranian proxies in south Lebanon, Gabbard’s revelation is the biggest news story of the day.

As I documented in my last essay on this platform, delegitimizing Israel is useful to the Establishment. Exposing Fauci’s involvement in producing a bioweapon that shut down the world and led to Biden being installed as president is not.

What should be breaking news occurs at the same time the legacy media and social media accounts have organized the viral media campaign about an algae bloom at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, even though algae have plagued the pool since it was completed in 1924, more than a hundred years ago. The narrative persists. It remains among the top stories in the Google news aggregator this morning.

The ODNI revelation is news. The COVID-19 pandemic affected everybody’s lives. People were told to stay in their homes, stay away from others, avoid crowds (except those rioting over the long-debunked myth of “systemic racism” in lethal civilian-police encounters), not travel (my wife could not be with her dying mother in Sweden), and wear cloth masks over their faces. They were, moreover, shamed for not submitting to an experimental mRNA shot—and worse, employees were fired. Those who objected were censored and deplatformed. Doctors lost their privileges and reputations for refusing to valorize the Pandemic narrative.

An algae bloom at the reflecting pool is not news. Photosynthetic microorganisms, such as cyanobacteria (often called blue-green algae), have existed for at least 2.5–3.5 billion years. Eukaryotic algae (the organisms most people think of as algae) have been around for at least one billion years and probably longer. Few things are as common to the experience as algae in standing pools of water.

As I noted above, there was no prominent MSM coverage of the algae bloom that followed Barack Obama’s renovation of the reflecting pool. That is because algae blooms in the reflecting pool are commonplace. It’s why I don’t remember algae when I visited Washington, DC, more than two decades ago. Here’s the point: Obama is an Establishment operative. Donald Trump isn’t.

* * *

Reporters are present at the reflecting pool covering the algae bloom, yet the vandalism commands very little of their attention. It’s not because they cannot be bothered with it. It’s because they’re there for algae and peeling paint and placing the responsibility for these developments squarely on Trump’s shoulders. I know about it because right-wing accounts on X are covering the vandalism, and there are police records of detentions and arrests. Vandals are being charged with crimes. The vandals are damned lucky they don’t live in North Korea.

Remember the burning police cars and precincts behind reporters covering the George Floyd riots described as “mostly peaceful”? Remember Lieutenant Frank Drebin standing in front of an exploding fireworks factory in the comedy Naked Gun, telling onlookers, “Nothing to see here”?

The George Floyd riots would be comical if not for the dozens of people murdered by “protestors.” As for the reports of violence that did break through, Chris Cuomo, then with CNN, demanded, “Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” Never mind that the First Amendment to the US Constitution protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” (emphasis mine).

The MSM is not news. It is Establishment propaganda. If you cannot see this, then your eyes are wide shut. The business of the MSM today—indeed for the last decade—is to delegitimize Donald Trump because Trump is not an establishment figure. He is an outsider whose policies disrupt globalization and the progressive agenda. Fauci was an operative of the Establishment. Any revelations about his involvement in the manufacture of a lethal virus that affected our lives must be marginalized.

There’s more to the Wuhan story that the MSM is not reporting. In October, 2014, the Obama White House announced a “pause” on funding for gain-of-function research. Experiments that potentially increase the transmissibility or virulence of certain pathogens were deemed too dangerous to conduct in the United States.

But the weaponization of viruses did not stop. Gain-of-function experiments were moved to China under the direction of Fauci and a network of interested parties. It was in China, at the bioweapons lab in Wuhan, overseen by the Chinese military, that COVID-19 was manufactured. It “escaped” from the lab just in time for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

A coincidence? The hysteria over the overdose death of George Floyd, fueled by the Democratic Party and the MSM, was organized just in time for Trump’s 2020 reelection. Was that a coincidence, too? How many “coincidences” does a person need to detect a pattern?

You are not to think about any of that. If you talk about it, you risk being labeled a “conspiracy theorist.” You are to focus on an algae bloom and peeling paint at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Pay no attention to vandals. And don’t forget the ducks and their babies.

Some have suggested that chlorine might address the algae problem. But Chlorine is harmful to ducks. I can see that. Chlorine stings my eyes and makes me see halos around everything. Why do we use this chemical in our pools if it is so harmful to animals? Why do we let children swim in chlorinated pools?

In addition to algae, Chlorine also keeps ducks out of pools (but not those snails). Do we really want ducks swimming in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? Ducks are indeed cute, but there are several ponds and wetlands in Washington, DC, where ducks can safely swim and preen. The ponds are public, so if people want to see ducks, they can. Those are much better places for our web-footed friends to deposit their slippery turds. At least when I go for a walk on the trail at the river near my home, I know to step over them. It’s part of the deal. More objectionable is charging and hissing geese.

But I digress. To get back on point, to those who have not yet been awakened by the obvious, how much longer are you going to walk zombie-like through the world with your eyes wide shut?

I awakened this morning to find that the Islamic state has announced that it is closing the Straits of Hormuz once again. Even though Israel was not a party to the Islamabad MoU, Tehran cites continuing hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon as the reason Iran is not honoring its side of the agreement.

At the direction of Tehran, the Trump administration is pressuring Israel to quit its operations in Lebanon. Israel is a sovereign nation-state. It has the right to defend itself against foreign aggression. Ultimately, Iran is behind the aggression. Why should Israel honor an MoU that does not guarantee its security? Why is Iran dictating US foreign policy? Why has Trump made a pawn of Israel? (So much for the theory that Israel runs US foreign policy.)

Thursday afternoon on this platform, I published Trump’s Very Bad Deal With Iran and the Troubling Rise of Islamophilia Among Younger Conservatives. At first blush, the parts of that essay may strike readers as two rather distinct essays. I wish that were the case. They appear together because they describe parts of a whole.

Understanding why the Trump administration would appease Iran to the detriment of Israel, developments on the home front need attending to. The Midterms are approaching. If anger over the cost of living causes Trump to lose the Republican majority, then his second-term agenda will be ground to a halt. Gas prices are part of it. But there’s more to it than that. Trump’s base is fracturing over the Middle East.

The neocons are imperfect allies, to be sure, but on Iran, their criticism of the Islamabad MoU is essentially correct. I don’t like finding myself in agreement with a man like Robert Kagan. Kagan argues that the war outcome and subsequent diplomacy reflect a US strategic defeat and erosion of American leverage. His view is that the agreement locks in unfavorable realities rather than reversing them.

My disagreement with Trump over Iran hails from a different standpoint, but neocons are not always wrong, and they can arrive at the right conclusion even if their objectives differ from mine. In this case, the neocons are right.

The vocal rejection of Trump over the Iran war by the “Blue Hat” America First crowd—my term for right-wing isolationists inclined to challenge and constrain Donald Trump’s foreign policy—cannot have gone unnoticed by the President. Tucker Carlson, Candice Owens, and their ilk and crowd were instrumental in helping Trump return to the White House. The MAGA hurricane had gathered strength amid lawfare and the disastrous Biden years. The hurricane is blowing itself out.

The Blue Hat’s highly public break with the movement’s mainstream over Iran rests on the claim that Trump has abandoned the America First principles that once defined his appeal. It must be particularly galling to Trump to hear the isolationists accuse him of aligning himself with the very neoconservatives he long denounced.

The far-right mind works from the theory of Jewish manipulation of American institutions. To obscure their antisemitism, Jews are accused of using the charge of antisemitism to silence those who expose the cabal. Readers have heard the complaint: “Jews always wrap criticisms of Israel in the charge of antisemitism. But we are criticizing Israeli behavior and Zionist racism!” But is this not itself an expression of antisemitism? It boils down to this: Jews run the world and accuse those who notice of Jew-hatred. The distillate reeks of antisemitism.

He’s doing the rationalization thing. Sad. Had high hopes for him. pic.twitter.com/GNmJAuuLEI

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) June 20, 2026

It appears this mentality has some purchase among administration officials. Vice President J.D. Vance made the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism in that tortured way in a recent interview with The Blaze. But the double standard applied to Israel is a hallmark of antisemitism. Every country has the right to respond to foreign aggression. Israel is being assailed from every front. Yet they are told to behave differently from every other country. Treating Israel differently implies that Jews are the aggressors in the region. It is not opposition to a Jewish state in the Middle East that lobs missiles into Israel, but Jewish aggression in the region that demands a response. If Israel were to quit Lebanon, the conflict would end. How did that work out in Gaza?

🚨 WOW! JD Vance is DIRECTLY calling out Israeli cabinet members for their personal attacks on President Trump

"Donald J. Trump is the ONLY head of state in the ENTIRE WORLD who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state… pic.twitter.com/0H9yGH8ubL

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 18, 2026

At a White House news conference Thursday, Vance delivered a blunt message to the Israeli government, urging it to support President Trump’s agreement with Iran. “I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” he said of the Jewish nation. Israel, he continued, “needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.” This is rhetoric that isolates Israel and shirks America’s responsibility to stand with the only country in the region that shares our values—at least the values true patriots still stand by.

The Islamabad IOU has not just concerned Israel. The Gulf states are troubled, as well. Iran is their enemy, too. Why would the Trump administration make Israel’s operations in Lebanon part of the Iran MOU? Israel isn’t a party to the agreement. They’re a sovereign nation-state. Compelling Israel to quit Lebanon strengthens Hezbollah.

Then there’s that damned ceasefire in Gaza. Trump’s pressure on Israel allows Hamas time to regroup. Surely the administration knows this. They know this, too: both Hezbollah and Hamas are proxies for Iran’s war forever against Israel. Iran’s aggression imperils the entire region. Are Israel and the Gulf States not our allies?

And what about Russia? I have long been a critic of those who claim that Trump colludes with Putin to weaken the rules-based international order. Moreover, I am sympathetic to Russia’s motive for the Ukrainian action (see History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War; Pushing Through the Panic and Propaganda in a World at War). But Russia is not a friend, and the MoU benefits Russia in several ways.

The Islamabad MoU benefits Russia mainly through military cooperation and sanctions evasion. Iran supplies Russia with drones, the new face of modern warfare. Defensive cooperation fuels the Ukraine war. Both countries work to bypass Western sanctions by developing alternative trade and financial channels.

To be sure, the relationship between Iran and Russia is pragmatic rather than a formal alliance (the world beyond the West doesn’t work in exactly the same way). Nonetheless, strategically, Iran gives Russia greater leverage in the Middle East. By not merely allowing the Islamic Regime of Iran to escape annihilation but to enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars in development funds, and tying the agreement to weakening Israeli efforts to secure safety for its people, Trump has greatly strengthened Russia’s hand in the region.

Given NATO support for Ukraine, European leaders’ celebration of the MoU might seem a bit of a mystery. However, it should be noted that China also benefits from a strengthened Iran, and that’s good for the globalization project. More than a reliable energy source for China, ties with Iran expand China’s influence in the Middle East, support initiatives like the Belt and Road, and give it greater geopolitical leverage in the region. Here, again, the partnership is pragmatic rather than a formal military alliance.

I had considered that, behind the preemptive attack on Iran’s military apparatus, and possibly regime change in that country, Trump was disrupting the de facto China-Russia alliance (see Beyond Regime Change: Iran, the Rise of China, and the Trump Doctrine). The two countries cooperate closely in several areas, albeit without the binding mutual-defense commitments that define a formal alliance. The MoU strengthens that relationship. To what end?

Europeans applauded the MoU at the G7. Perhaps Europe pursues two objectives at once: containing Russia by bogging that nation down in a forever war with Ukraine (Ukraine be damned), while strengthening China by preserving its path to the Middle East. Could this be, at least in part, because it delegitimizes the Trump populist-nationalist vision of a restored Europe? (See Donald Trump’s Grand Vision: Make Western Civilization Great Again.) Has the President abandoned the doctrine? Was he ever dedicated to it?

The President is a sensitive man. Too sensitive. He likes the crowd. The loud rejection of Trump over the Iran war by the Blue Hats cannot have escaped his attention. Their dramatic exit from the movement’s mainstream hinges on their characterization of Trump as having abandoned America First. It must sting the President that the isolationists accuse him of breaking bread with the neoconservatives. The Blue Hats must be overjoyed at neocon consternation over the MoU.

In leaving MAGA, Russiophilia became prominent in the far right’s rhetoric, as I document in The Dark Heart of Antisemitism: Separating the Haters from the Critics. and The Woke Reich and the Enemy Within (although, while it struck me at the time as rhetorically clever, I am not sure “woke” is the best word to describe this tendency). But more than Russiophilia, Islamophilia has also emerged on the far right. This development is driven by antisemitism.

This development cannot please Europeans. They have a problem on their hands: nationalism. Nationalism is the biggest obstacle to globalism and its stepping stone: regionalization. Populism threatens the transnationalist project because it is a manifestation of patriotism. It appears, however, that Europeans elites are realizing that, while they cannot stop the rise of populism across the EU by branding the right as “fascist” and “racist,” they may be able to co-opt it, at least rhetorically, by throwing bones to ziophobes.

The EU has, moreover, moved to tighten immigration controls. On March 26, 2026, the European Parliament voted on a major part of the EU’s migration reform known as the Return Regulation, which is part of the broader Migration and Asylum Pact. The vote speeds up deportations of people without a legal right to stay in the EU, allows longer detention periods in some cases, creates or permits so-called “return hubs” or detention/processing centers outside the EU, and expands cooperation with non-EU countries for returns and removals.

These are fallback positions. The positions of the European elite are not really a mystery. Such developments require elites to finesse the situation. If anti-Israel sentiment animates the opposition, then give the ziophobes a false sense of affinity while decrying antisemitism. “We hear you, comrades.”

For elites, antisemitism is strategic. For antisemites, it is heartfelt. Co-optation won’t work. Ziophobia is core to far-right ideology. A visible elite is not nearly as attractive as a cabalistic one. Epstein’s Island was a Jewish plot. 9-11 was a Jewish plot. AIPAC commands our elections. And so on. It’s a mindset. And a reflex. Antisemitism lies at the core of MAGA exit.

For the balance of this essay, I want to focus on developments on the domestic side, since these function to strengthen the transnationalist project. It seems a paradox. But the problem here is not intent, but effect. The Blue Hats are not eager agents of globalization. Antisemitism functions as a means to this end, nonetheless.

As much as I would like to believe that the Blue Hats are a fringe phenomenon, they are a problem that nationalists cannot ignore. These are not our allies. They are useful idiots working at cross-purposes with the project to restore nationalism. The rise of Russiophilia and Islamophilia on the American right, if it sways Trump, weakens his doctrine and strengthens the globalization project.

* * *

On June 2, Glenn Beck published “The Russian influence operations targeting Candace Owens and you,” an analysis penned by Ryan Mauro, a counter-extremist and national security expert. Beck followed this the next day with his own commentary on the matter.

I do not follow Beck’s content, but these pieces caught my attention because, the day before Mauro’s analysis appeared, I published an essay about the problem Mauro identifies, introducing readers to the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin and his Fourth Political Theory (see The Left-Far Right Convergence and Notes on the Fourth Political Theory). Mauro’s article deepens our understanding of the movement Dugin represents. I am not the only one who has seen the peril of the Fourth Political Theory. Readers need to see it, too.

Candace Owens taking a "suspicious trip to Russia" is NOT the real story. It's only proof that Russia and Alexander Dugin's massive propaganda operation is working.

Dugin is right about what is happening to the West. It is evil. But that's the trap. His "solution" would destroy… pic.twitter.com/1s9wE3ooeg

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) June 4, 2026

Read Mauro’s analysis, by all means. But I’ll summarize it here. Mauro argues that Russia is executing what may be one of the most effective foreign malign influence operations in modern history, blending rebranded Tsarist Orthodox Christianity, Russian nationalism, and conspiracy narratives to undermine the West, particularly the United States and Christianity itself. The problem was never Trump’s subservience to Putin. Yet, today, he is backing into Russian machinations to destabilize the West.

The effort is rooted in Soviet-era strategies to revive communism by fusing it with Orthodox theology and nationalism. I leave that history to Mauro and others. What is important for the moment is understanding that the nexus of the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, state-backed outlets like the Strategic Culture Foundation, and ideologues such as Alexander Dugin. Those who once identified themselves as Trump’s strongest allies domestically are a principal target of the nexus.

The operation promotes a messianic vision of Russia as a “holy” defender of traditional values, framing the West as satanic and positioning Moscow’s influence as a spiritual imperative. This has attracted the far right in America, especially those subscribing to right-wing sides of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We hear it not only in ziophobia but in anti-Protestant rhetoric (see What Jesus Told the Pharisees and the Jewish Roots of Christianity).

The ideology Mauro is describing mirrors Islamism in key ways: a drive for civilizational unification (the “Russian World” is akin to the Ummah), justification of “holy war,” promises of spiritual redemption for fighters, blasphemy protections, and strategic alliances with Islamist actors against shared Western enemies. It is not merely a mirror image but a de facto alliance. These tendencies have converged to produce a geopolitical force. Increasingly, it is more cross-fertilization than convergence.

According to Mauro, Dugin, and others, work to reconcile Christian and Islamic eschatologies to sustain this partnership through an envisioned apocalyptic battle. The practical strategy, drawn from the Russian philosopher’s writings, focuses on exploiting Western divisions—isolationism, moral decay, racial and social conflicts, and separatism—to weaken the US from within, laundering narratives through non-Russian voices and influencers. Protestantism is the root of the Enlightenment and liberalism; the Reformation is condemned. This is where Candice Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentez, and others come in.

For Maduro and Beck, Candace Owens’ undisclosed activities and appearance at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum serve as a concrete example of how this influence reaches American audiences. Her engagements align with networks tied to Russian intelligence, propaganda figures, and the Russian Orthodox ecosystem, amid a pattern of amplification by state media like RT and earlier cultivation by Russia-linked operatives.

Mauro frames this not as an isolated incident but as evidence of a broader cognitive warfare campaign that uses anti-Western rhetoric, conspiracy themes, and the rhetoric of “family values” to draw conservatives and Christians toward a false choice: prioritizing a declining and immoral West or embracing an authoritarian, Moscow-centered “rescue” of faith and tradition. The desire for Christian theism aligns with the Islamic project of a global order founded on Sharia.

To be sure, the West is in decline. Its moral fabric is tattered and torn. But Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and liberalism are not the culprits. What lies behind the decline are globalization and progressivism. These are the forces denationalizing the West. The Blue Hats are working for these forces.

I’m not suggesting that Russiophilia is in the service of globalization by delegitimizing the Trump presidency. The Blue Hats are committed ideologues. They seek to undermine Trump for their own perverse reasons. Nonetheless, the tendency effectively weakens MAGA and derails the very project those who have abandoned Trump ostensibly support: strengthening the nation-state against the transnational project.

The Blue Hats may simply be stupid (that they still think after everything that has transpired that Jews run the world indeed suggests stupidity). It is, moreover, obvious that they are social influencers cultivating an audience. However, stupidity and grifting are not mutually exclusive. That the influencers are affecting things is obvious. They are not a fringe element. And it appears they’re getting to Trump.

Action confirms sentiment. If the Blue Hats weren’t antisemites, they would have thrown their support behind a preemptive war in Iran and used their influence to encourage their followers to see higher gas prices as a necessary burden in achieving a safer future for the West and freedom for Persians, a noble people who deserve the civilization of their ancestors.

The Blue Hats would have had to suffer the neoconservatives, but standing shoulder to shoulder with the perpetrators of the Second Gulf War entails no permanent alliance. One can still oppose PNAC’s invasion of Iraq while supporting preemptive war—and even regime change—in Iran. Iraq and Iran are not analogues. The Ba’athist regime in Iraq posed no existential threat to Israel and the West. Iran is an entirely different story, especially since the Islamic Republic comes with strategic alliances with Russia and China.

But the blue hats are disordered by Jew-hatred. It is that ancient hatred that aligns them with Islam and ultimately the transnationalist project. They will never grasp the reality that they betray their own cause of national restoration. They cannot because, deep down, they oppose the Protestant foundations of the American Republic. They derive their ethics not from Nature’s God, but rather from a desire for the divine command of a patriarchal God, a deity manifest in the hierarchical structuring of life that leaves little room for individual liberty.

Ironically, the churches they attend mimic the highly ritualized and priest-dictated religious experience that marks the old monarchal Judaism, an atavistic system Jews long ago transcended. At the same time, they reject the practical culture characteristic of Jews that Protestantism elevates. They mean to come not only for Jews, but for Protestants, as well, and that entails coming after the very constitutional order upon which the American Republic rests.

The Blue Hats are fascists. They didn’t have to be. But it is what they have become. To the extent that this crowd holds any sway over Trump, they taint his presidency. To the extent that Trump allows them to shape his policies, he undermines himself—and the nation.

* * *

Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. erred in allowing affirmative action for diversity goals in the landmark 1978 Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. I recognize that he compromised to get that decision (his was the controlling decision). But given that diversity adds no value, it should not have been allowed. The Court has since remedied the Bakke error in several ways, but in the meantime, the nation suffered for far too long. Powell’s decision sanctioned the rise of DEI, which remains determined to shape the future of millions—Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding. Bakke shaped the environment that corrupted higher education.

Powell got this part right, however: a university can neither use racial preferences to remedy societal discrimination (presuming this is a meaningful concept) nor provide compensation for historical wrongs. Privileging groups viewed as victims of societal discrimination, he argued, does not justify disadvantaging individuals who were not responsible for those harms. Seems obvious enough, but at the time, discriminating against whites in the present was deemed an appropriate remedy for past discrimination.

The importance of abolishing such a controlling principle cannot be exaggerated. To tell a white kid that he has to meet a higher standard than a black kid, or that he has to give up his place in line for a black kid who is not as accomplished or talented as he is, punishes the white kid for something someone else did. Affirmative action is like arresting a random black man for homicide because a black man somewhere murdered somebody. That is race-based discrimination, a practice antithetical to the colorblind principle at the heart of the Constitution.

As I have explained in several essays (see, e.g., Justice Harlan’s Color-Blind Constitution and the Abolition of Racial Gerrymandering; Our Colorblind Constitution: What Justice Harlan Can Teach Justice Jackson About Equality and Fairness; The Constitution is Colorblind—So Why Do Democrats Insist that the Country is White Supremacist?), equal treatment and individual justice are foundational to a free society. Treating individuals as if they are personifications of an abstract group is regressive (isn’t it weird that people calling themselves progressives advance regressive law, policy, and process).

Collective punishment is tribal. Modernity transcends such primitive thinking—at the very least, it shouldn’t codify it into law and policy. Affirmative Action should never have happened. Racial gerrymandering should never have been allowed. These practices are un-American. The Executive should compel all institutions to end all diversity programming based on suspect categories today. The only justification for treating individuals in terms of groups should be reserved for natural categories, such as age, gender, or disability, since treating individuals differentiated by biology or accident creates inequality. On grounds of class, ethnicity, or race, it is inherently discriminatory and unjust.

Despite doing something, Powell did not do enough. Perhaps in the moment, this was all he could do. But this is always the problem with compromising principles for expediency: it leads to half-measures that often compound problems in need of solving. Powell gave the tribalists time to institutionalize the doctrine of identitarianism to the detriment of millions of deserving Americans over time. And now we have to blast it out of our institutions, while facing accusations of racism for doing the right thing.

True, the 300 billion dollars in the US-Iran memorandum of understanding is not coming from US taxpayers. Democrats and the media are lying through their teeth about that. But, ultimately, it’s a distinction without a difference. The problem is the 300 billion itself. Iran will use the 300 billion to restart their nuclear weapons program. The Islamic Republic is evil. It cannot be trusted.

Trump’s deal is a bad one. It doesn’t help that he signed the Iran MOU at the Palace of Versailles, where, on June 28, 1919, German representatives signed the treaty with the Allied powers formally ending World War I.

The Islamic Republic should get nothing. It’s bad enough that Trump is leaving the regime in place. For forty-seven years, we’ve put up with clerical fascism in Iran. I wanted my sons to live in a post-Islamic Republic world. It should not fall to Israel to confront Iran and its proxies—Hamas and Hezbollah. We had an opportunity to change the course of history. Trump walked away from it.

I like Trump, but he has made a monumental mistake. If the MOU were a stable ceasefire that opened the Straits of Hormuz to get Republicans past the Midterms, that would be one thing, but wrapping negotiations in a Security Council guarantee that handcuffs the US in future action tells me that it isn’t merely an electoral strategy. I am disappointed in the President.

The stock market is booming. The price of oil is dropping. Every county in northeast Wisconsin is back under $3.95 per gallon on average. Prices in Green Bay are down around 67 cents a gallon from a month ago. I’d much rather have higher gas prices than see the Islamic Republic of Iran survive.

Trump is too sensitive to criticism. Doing the right thing sometimes comes with hardship. I don’t accept his rationalization about heading off depression and all the rest of it.

I am also disappointed in my fellow Americans. So many of them wanted Trump to end hostilities with the Islamic Republic. What happened to the patriotism that saw us through WWII? Can we not count on the younger generations to fight for our Republic? It’s their Republic, too.

* * *

Much of the sentiment against preemptive war in Iran is driven by a shift in attitudes towards Israel among younger conservatives, who are increasingly questioning the decades-old status quo of the US-Israel relationship, arguing that unconditional support for Israel (a false premise) contradicts America First foreign policy principles. 

Recent surveys, including data from Pew Research and the IMEU Policy Project, indicate that as much as 57 percent of young Republicans hold an unfavorable view of Israel.

Younger conservatives sound like progressive leftists. https://t.co/vLWIK02ZDB

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) June 17, 2026

As I have shown in several articles on this platform, changing attitudes towards Israel among younger conservatives are not so much about America First (any true America First paradigm would mind international threats) but are much more rooted in a resurgent antisemitism, the same ancient hatred animating the progressive left.

Rampant ziophobia comes with growing support for Islamism. Increasingly, younger conservatives are seeing an alliance between Christians and Muslims against the Jews. Bizarrely, they resort to progressive left arguments that Muslims are flocking to the West because the West is assaulting the Middle East.

That’s not why the Muslims are invading the West. They’re invading the West to make it Islamic. Younger conservatives are increasingly adopting the postmodernist standpoint of postcolonial theory, and they appear unaware of it. Moreover, they are oblivious to the fact that the transnational corporate elite is behind it. The Red-Green Alliance and its backers are enjoying the rise of a third column in America.

It’s truly frightening that younger conservatives would shift to Islamophilia. Antisemitism famously brought the Muslims and the Nazis together. The growing affinity between younger conservatives today and Islamization is a bad sign. It signals that the far right in America is developing fascist sympathies. These sympathies are already present in the Red-Green Alliance. Will the right become what they are already accused of being?

Jew-hatred is the glue that holds this monstrosity together. The idea that the Jews are a greater threat to the West than Muslims reveals a profound idiocy among younger conservatives that they cannot dismiss by asking why Boomers support Israel.

Boomers support Israel because they grasp the danger Islam poses to the world. Boomers have the wisdom of awareness and experience. Forty-seven years is a long time.

President Trump recently appointed Bill Pulte, currently the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as the acting Director of National Intelligence, following Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation to care for her ailing husband.

The appointment has the Washington Establishment out of its mind. The Deep State is terrified by what Pulte will find at ODNI—because they know what’s there.

Tulsi Gabbard recently confirmed the existence of biolabs in Ukraine that the Deep State denied.

Today, I’m releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine.

In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function… pic.twitter.com/RkPHnAbka9

— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) June 12, 2026

Remember when, during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Victoria Nuland, then Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Biden Regime, and wife of Robert Kagan, cofounder of the neocon Project for a New American Century (PNAC) that designed Bush and Cheney’s foreign policy, was asked by Senator Marco Rubio whether Ukraine had biological or chemical weapons?

Nuland replied that Ukraine operates biological research facilities and said she was concerned that Russian forces could attempt to seize control of them. That answer served a dual purpose: a limited hangout reframed as disinformation.

The existence of biolabs was one of the reasons Putin invaded Ukraine. Putin saw what happened at Wuhan. Rubio put the question to Nuland less than two weeks after the Russia invasion.

Was Gabbard prepared to confirm election rigging before her husband’s cancer diagnosis drew her away from her duties at ODNI? Gabbard was in Fulton County, Georgia, because the suspicion that the 2020 election involved espionage by foreign powers is reasonable.

The Deep State needs Jay Clayton, current United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, whom President Trump recently nominated to oversee ODNI, to keep a terrible truth secret—that our elections are engineered. This is why the Senate rushed his nomination. Nothing else makes sense. Trump smartly pulled back the reins.

Trump needs to give Pulte time to see the classified files and report back to the American people about what he found there.

But Pulte does not have the experience and security clearance to assume that role. Nobody questions that Pulte has experience. Moreover, no individual has national security clearance until they get it. The argument that Pulte doesn’t have security clearance is self-evidently fallacious.

Do we even know the status and extent of Jay Clayton’s security clearance? It doesn’t matter. Senators need Clayton at the ODNI to prevent Pulte from assuming that office. The Senators, who do have security clearance, don’t want Pulte to have access to secrets because they know what those secrets tell.

Is John Brennan still running the intelligence apparatus? It seems so.

Remember the open letter released on October 19, 2020, signed by fifty-one former intelligence officials, stating that the release of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation? Now Brennan is all over the corporate media, decrying Pulte’s appointment.

We certainly know the first question Mark Warner, the Senator from the corrupt state of Virginia, which just passed a law to award Virginia’s 13 electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, not the candidate who wins Virginia itself, will ask Clayton whether the 2020 election was legitimate. We know because he tells us. He is adamant that the Senate must prevent Pulte from assuming command of ODNI. That tells us that an overriding concern is that Pulte will confirm the steal and God knows what else.

The Establishment is treating Trump as if his office is subordinate to the Senate and the current occupant of the White House is a mere custodian. They hate Trump because they hate the people. But the Republic is for the people. The Constitution is not ambiguous. The President is the Commander-in-Chief, the Chief Executive, and the Chief Magistrate. Moreover, the Vice-President is the President of the Senate. The President and the Vice-President should throw down. The Founders wisely gave the Executive Branch awesome power. Use it.

There are signs that Trump is finally moving in that direction. He has declared that there will be no confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton until John Thune pushes the Save Act through the Senate.

Good start. Do this next: The Senate dares to hold FISA over Trump’s head. Trump should hold FISA over the Senate’s head. The Senate wants it so bad, let them fight for it. For these Senators, the Deep State is everything. This is the Swamp Trump promised to drain.

That Democrats are out in front defending the Deep State tells us everything we need to know about the Party. That some Republicans are integrated with the Establishment is confirmed by this frenzy.

This was why electing Donald Trump was so vital to the future of the Republic. Who owns this country? The intelligence services and the transnational elite? Or the people? Trump has the opportunity of a lifetime to return the Republic to the people. With the Midterms rapidly approaching, if Democrats take the House, they will straitjacket Trump. The President needs to act decisively, and he needs to act now.

The Senate is thwarting Trump’s nominees and won’t allow recess appointments. They won’t allow Trump and his allies in Congress to clean up our elections. Trump made 2024 too big to rig. But this was an exceptional case. Now they want to rush Clayton’s nomination to prevent Pulte from taking the helm at ODNI. If people can’t smell a rat, the infestation will continue. The people have tolerated the rats for far too long.

For many, our 250th anniversary is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate America’s declaration that a free society is not governed by a king but by a government that affirms the rights of man given to him by the Creator and the Laws of Nature. This was the promise of the Revolution, and decent people should keep their promises. And, despite a long and winding path, we have kept them. An anniversary is a moment to reflect on such things.

Sunday Night was UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn, one of many events commemorating the Founding. It was yet another reminder that the original No Kings movement featured brave men in combat, whether on the battlefield or in The Octagon. I anticipated the event with an essay at the end of May, Manly Arts at the White House, providing readers with a historical note about President Teddy Roosevelt and his love for boxing and Jiu-Jitsu. Amid the hysteria over the pending Trump birthday event, triggered by the erection of the Claw, I thought it useful to provide context. Boxing is one of America’s great pastimes.

Trump honored this tradition with a celebration of excellence and masculinity. Justin Gaethje won the main event by handing Ilia Topuria his first UFC defeat to claim the undisputed lightweight championship. After receiving a frightful beating, Topuria retired on his stool, hiding his battered face from the camera. Trump also honored America’s soldiers and first responders. The walks, Gaethje’s starting his from the Oval Office after staring for a while at a copy of the Declaration of Independence, flanked by these mighty public servants, punctuated the spirit of 1776.

But Americans were to not spend a moment thinking about the greatness of their nation. Instead, they were to be filled with ressentiment. How dare jets fly over Washington, DC, when the public is paying higher prices for the sake of ZOG’s Greater Israel project! Many social media accounts were upset because tens of millions of dollars were being spent on gladiatorial sports when that money should be spent instead on “free” health care and a bunch of other “free” stuff. (For the record, the event was, for the most part, privately funded. And the stuff being bitched for is never free.)

I was fortunate to be alive in 1976 when we celebrated our 200th anniversary as a country. I was fourteen years of age. For a young person, it was a significant moment to pause and reflect on our greatness. I had no idea then how much money the government spent commemorating the Bicentennial. I now know that it was a massive, multi-year public program involving federal, state, and local funding. The federal government alone spent on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars in 1970s dollars, with total nationwide Bicentennial-related spending (public and private) reaching into the billions. In today’s dollars, the costs of the 1976 celebrations were somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15-20 billion dollars.

To address another complaint from the progressive crowd, this was at a time when the inflation and unemployment rates were much higher than they are today. Inflation in 1976 was roughly 5–6 percent. Unemployment was around 7–8 percent. Today, both figures are just over 4 percent. To be sure, there was criticism then—about cost, fairness, and priorities—but it was eclipsed by widespread public enthusiasm. The Bicentennial was not seen as a scandal or fiscal failure; by and large, it was well received by Americans proud of their country. I still have some bicentennial coins. Unlike his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who had resigned from office less than two years earlier, the president at the time, Gerald Ford, was hardly a figure who provoked vitriol.

Perhaps those complaining about the costs of last night’s event are ignorant of this. Or perhaps they had forgotten. The media wasn’t going to remind them. Not with Donald Trump as president. If a Democrat were president, we’d be grandly celebrating the 250th anniversary, only not with motorcycles and prize fights, but with rainbows and unicorns. We wouldn’t see men in combat sports in displays of masculinity with Old Glory waving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but autogynephilic men with fake tits out twerking on the South Lawn in front of a White House festooned in Pride Progress colors.

I was with my two sons Sunday evening when I plopped down the nine bucks to see the event on Paramount+. However much they appreciated it (I know one of them did), I was proud to share this moment with them. I wore one of my many USA T-shirts. The motorcycles jumping from ramps, the jets screaming overhead during the National Anthem, the bloody spectacle of Mixed Martial Arts—it was exciting. I thought of Evel Knievel at Ceasar’s Palace, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the Thrilla in Manila. Americana and the delights of the working class. One had to work hard to not appreciate it.

Meanwhile, progressives were in a frenzy on social media, madly posting about tackiness and white trash, expressions of elitism from those who think themselves an aristocracy while decrying billionaires and kings. Flanked by the construction site for the Grand Ballroom, the Claw made the White House grounds a trailer park.

I confess: I monitored the moral panic in real time, pleased to see so many snobs triggered. Yet another accurate prediction. But an easy one. How could they not work so hard? I even intervened to taunt a few of them about what a strange place it must be to not want to feel good about America. For days, people had been twisting themselves into knots trying to rationalize their dislike for the country and gathering energy for outrage. Why not just say it straightforwardly? Why try to portray seething over American greatness as patriotism itself?

To cap off an evening of patriotic obnoxiousness, with Trump and his extended family in The Octagon standing alongside the victorious Gaethje, who had just profusely honored the troops and first responders, the event let fly a truly massive fireworks display at 2:00 AM. I delighted in imagining the outrage of DC residents who had spent their evening grumbling about the damage to the South Lawn and the destruction of the East Wing. “Oh my God, they let MMA fights march to the Octacon from the Oval Office! They defiled our sacred White House.” Looks like they plopped down their nine bucks, too.

You’d think that the excesses of Andrew Jackson—a Democrat!—would have tugged at their hearts. Alas, they probably never learned that when Jackson took office in 1829, he invited the public to an open house-style inauguration celebration at the White House. Thousands of ordinary citizens were allowed inside. Crowds rampaged through the mansion. Furniture and curtains were damaged. Food and drinks were spilled everywhere. Reports had Jackson escaping through a window to avoid the chaos. Now that was a party!

One of my sons has always expressed nostalgia for a time he could not live through—the 1970s, the zenith of American culture. Art. Music. Fashion. Crumb. Led Zeppelin. Hip huggers and halter tops. He got a taste of that spirit last night. All for measly nine bucks. You can’t watch a retreaded DEI-coopted movie or cheer on one of your favorite bands for that price.

“Judge not, that you be not judged”—the Gospel of Matthew

When I was growing up, everybody who saw a grown man dressed as a little girl—outside of a comedy skit—immediately recognized it as pathological behavior. We all saw a problematic person. Rightly so. There is no bigotry in fearing for the safety of children or expressing intolerance for perversion. We did not then deny the signals of danger. Like other animals, humans have an evolved capacity for threat detection. It is not a burden but a gift from nature.

It’s troubling that, today, millions of people see Danni and fail to recognize that he is disordered. It is just as troubling—perhaps more so—that millions recognize his behavior and its associated thoughts as abnormal, yet resist identifying it as such because they think doing so is being judgmental. But Danni’s public expression is a burden on the rest of us. So, too, is the burden of the pathological empathy that excuses him. These are burdens we need not suffer.

No responsible parent would trust their children with such a person. Yet parental irresponsibility has become widespread in contemporary society. This is why Drag Queen Story Hour is so objectionable. A healthy society would not allow this practice. We should all be horrified to see children sitting pretzel-legged around a man in womanface reading from a book designed to confuse them about gender. The performance is designed to disrupt the natural grasp children possess of the distinction between females and males. More generally, any person with a right mind would not want this man around anybody.

“Stay away from Danni. Something is not right with him.” That instinct is protective of normative standards, which are not mere social constructions. Normative systems are rooted in our nature. Yet, we are told to suppress our instincts and scolded when we don’t. The objective of Drag Queen Story House is to disable at an early age the natural proclivity to see gender. The linguistic trick of “preferred pronouns” is meant to disrupt this instinct in all of us by shaming us for recognizing gender. The project is designed to condition the population to think that gender is a subjective matter. It’s not. The project means to train people to lie.

I hear the objection. I am failing to distinguish between “is” and “ought.” I have moved from description to normative. But the Humean dichotomy denies naturalism. The fallacy of “the appeal to nature” must accept Hume’s distinction to be valid. I don’t accept the distinction. Moral facts are discoverable empirically by observing the structure and operation of normative systems in the natural world. Human beings and other organisms exhibit organized patterns of evaluation, regulation, and response—such as cooperative behavior, pain avoidance (which is conditional), reward learning, and social sanctioning—that together constitute normative systems.

Moral systems are not merely descriptive mechanisms but are the very phenomena from which moral facts are induced: morality is grounded in the observable features of how such systems function and stabilize behavior over time. Rather than treating “is” and “ought” as fundamentally separate categories, “oughts” are features of reality embedded in these systems and accessible through empirical investigation. Moral knowledge is continuous with scientific inquiry into natural processes, with normativity understood as an aspect of the world’s structure rather than an externally imposed evaluative layer.

Drag Queen Story Hour and preferred pronouns (an Orwellian inversion) advance the queer praxis of transgressing boundaries, arrangements we ought to observe because it is in our nature to do so. It is not that boundaries are always good, since some boundaries are not natural. Those imposed to normalize injustices, such as de jure racial segregation or the strict Islamic dress code imposed on women, are properly subject to criticism. However, it is also the case that normative rules preserving boundaries are generally necessary for the perpetuation of a good and decent society, that is, a social arrangements that promote safety and thriving, which are objectively determinable. Those actions that undermine these are therefore harmful to them.

The anarchist and the nihilist—these are the pathologies that lie behind queer praxis—do not seek to disorder norms for the sake of justice, but to establish inorganic “norms,” i.e., patterns of destructive behavior, that empower the few over the many. Those few do not have society’s best interest in mind, but rather seek a situation where they can freely impose their fetishes on others. They wish to involve all of us in their perversions to subvert the normative order. That’s part of the kink. It’s not enough to dress like a little girl and masturbate in front of a mirror. Danni needs an audience, and he needs the audience to applaud him.

The rot of queer praxis goes deep. Surely, as I suggested earlier, a great many people who defend such behavior and identity also see it as pathological. But they tell themselves that the virtuous person tolerates deviance—even accepts it. More than accepting it, they celebrate it. They take their children to Drag Queen Story Hour to signal their virtue. Some take their children to strip clubs to stuff dollar bills in the thongs of drag queens writhing about in front of them. They describe themselves as “allies.” The problem is with whom they ally. They ally with those striving to normalize abnormality. Because of this, the “norms” of anarchism and nihilism are being generalized. No society can survive these tendencies at scale. This is why we cannot tolerate them at our local public library. It is not a little thing. It’s everything.

Today, many people have been conditioned to wince at the words “abnormal” and “deviance.” Conditioning is a part of animal nature, and this evolved capacity is being wielded against us to override our instincts. To define our terms precisely, in psychology and psychiatry, abnormal refers to patterns of behavior, emotion, and thought that deviate significantly from social or statistical norms and are associated with distress or impairment; deviance is essentially a synonym for abnormal. Historically, the term is common to sociology and its subfields, criminology and deviance studies more broadly.

In sociology, deviance refers to behaviors, beliefs, or characteristics that violate the norms and expectations of a society or social group. The field developed to understand why some actions are labeled as normal while others are treated as criminal, immoral, or problematic. Over the last thirty years, as a professional sociologist, I have watched the controversy in my discipline over the concept of deviance grow, with many of my colleagues arguing that identifying deviant behavior reinforces the very judgments it seeks to analyze.

The assumption is that judgment is problematic. But is the problem judgment or the behavior that people judge? It seems odd that sociologists of all people would smuggle a vulgar interpretation of Matthew 7:1 into the discipline. Woke sociologists assume the “is” and “ought” distinction, and are thus rooting the latter not in naturalism and the emergent social order, but in an arbitrary transcendent moral ontology; without nature, the presumed moral order becomes entirely preferential and subjective (I will have more to say about this in a forthcoming essay). This corruption is inherent in the utilitarian variety of consequentialism.

To be sure, what counts as deviant is neither fixed nor universal; it varies across cultures, historical periods, and power structures. That is well established in sociology and its sister discipline, anthropology. This had led to the development of labeling theory, its practitioners pointing out that institutions such as courts, the media, medicine, and schools often have the power to define certain groups as deviant, sometimes in ways shaped by class, gender, politics, race, and sexuality. All this is true. But it does not mean that everything is arbitrary. Rather, it points to the necessity of determining what is arbitrary and what is not. Making this determination is not itself arbitrary.

Behaviors once widely classified as deviant—such as same-sex relationships—have been reevaluated and, in many societies, decriminalized and destigmatized. Sometimes this is for the better. This is true of homosexuality. Same-sex attraction is a natural fact. However, contemporary sociology tends to emphasize that deviance is a socially constructed category with no basis in nature. Here, the key question becomes not simply “Why do people break rules?” but “Who makes the rules, whose interests do they serve, and how do labels of deviance affect people’s lives?” Again, these are important questions, but while sociology can be political, it is a science, not politics. If it were politics, then what sort of politics should it be? The answer to this question lies in determining moral facts.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed in his influential essay “Defining Deviance Down,” a subtle critique of the social constructionist project published in the early 1990s, that downward redefining of standards is associated with rising crime and disorder. He recognized the liberal concern with upward redefining and the potential injustice this brings to individuals. I share the liberal concern (which also concerned the founders of the American Republic). But I also share the concern that conservatives have over downward redefining and the injustice this brings to society at large (this, too, concerned the Founders). Moynihan was likewise sympathetic to both concerns.

Moynihan notes Émile Durkheim’s distinction between the normal and the pathological. In his 1895 book, The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim, who saw social facts as objective (ways of acting, feeling, and thinking that are external to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion), argues that deviance is ever-present and that controlling it is functional by creating social solidarity. In this sense, some deviance is expected, even inevitable. However, deviance becomes pathological when it reaches excessive levels or reflects a breakdown in social regulation, a condition he famously described as anomie. In such cases, norms lose their guiding power, social cohesion weakens, and individuals may experience confusion or normlessness.

Thus, while moderate deviance is functional, deviance at scale, rather than signalling healthy diversity, signals instead instability in society’s regulatory structure. Crucially, for Durkheim, normative systems are not mere projections of power, as postmodernists would have it, but emergent systems generally conducive to human thriving. The moral system is a social fact. A free society tolerates individualism, but it also holds individuals responsible for the harm they cause others and society generally. A healthy society does not tolerate socially pathological deviance.

A major form of regulation in human society is shame and stigma. Yet, there is a push in psychology, psychiatry, and sociology to reduce shame and stigma in the areas their respective fields study. Some faculty and students have come to view the word “abnormal” as implying that people with mental disorders are somehow fundamentally “abnormal” as persons. Are there not abnormal people? Is society supposed to tolerate abnormality when it compromises its ability to protect individuals? By analogy, this is well illustrated in the immigration debate, where, when the problem of illegal alien presence is raised, one is told that “no one is illegal.” Plainly, they are; they are where they are not supposed to be, and there is a criminal statute regulating this. Likewise, men in spaces reserved for women are an illegal object. They are a harmful deviant.

It might be supposed that the concept of “psychopathology” in psychology shifts the emphasis toward the study of pathological psychological processes rather than labeling individuals. Yet the practice of identifying psychopathology in persons necessarily comes with labels. Psychopathy is not independent of the psychopath. Those with narcissistic personality disorders are by definition malignant narcissists. We label them to confront the problem. The distinction between psychopathy and abnormality is one without difference.

Some psychology programs have changed the name of the course “abnormal psychology” to “psychopathology.” What does that accomplish? Pathology is identified, but what is being sold beneath it is the idea that describing behavior and thoughts as “abnormal” is a bad thing. Yet, this in itself is a bad thing because it suggests that people who need help are told their problems are not in them but in those who notice them and treat them concretely. Is antisociality not an objective phenomenon? Are there no antisocial types? Is the problem not the man on the subway threatening to behead passengers, but the passengers who fear for their lives as any conscious animal would? Antisociality is no mere abstraction; the antisocial man is a person who disregards societal rules and harms others.

Moynihan was accused of shifting attention away from structural problems toward culture-based explanations, as if the shift were disallowed. Whatever one might think from a political standpoint about sociological theories that root social problems in the various structures to which the discipline has traditionally attended, the pathological behavior in blue-city tolerance of open-air drug use, defecation, urination, masturbation, etc., is largely the result of downward defining. The scientist must go where the facts lead him. He must avoid ideological thinking.

What lies behind this, whether intentional or in effect, is a creeping anarchism, and, while social science necessarily comes with political interests (because social scientists are people, and people are political), it is not a political project to undermine protective normative systems. At least it shouldn’t be if science is a universal system of discernment. The humanist side of social science should guide its disciplines in identifying and explaining social phenomena, and in proposing ways to address social problems in the interest of human flourishing. It should not deny social problems by reducing them to a standpoint.

Social science has never refuted the common-sense understanding that no society that allows individuals to follow their own rules, when these rules undermine the normative order, can long survive. Perhaps some societies should not survive, but this is a matter of whether they promote safety and thriving. Freedom also depends on normative systems, but normative systems must be structured to promote the freedom necessary for self-actualization. If normative systems are oppressive, then they are judged inadequate because they are contrary to this end. This is universal: all sustainable social arrangements devise rules governing individual conduct, many of these rooted in natural history. Tolerance for diversity of behavior and thought is a good thing—within reason. A society can’t tolerate everything.

Society certainly shouldn’t accept what we see in the image shared at the top of this essay because it is pathological. Men with the desire to publicly appear as women or children, apart from a performance where the role calls for it, should feel shame for their desire. This is why norms are internalized. Otherwise, upholding norms becomes regulation—outside forces compelling obedience to expectations. It is not that regulation is itself a bad thing. However, the need for external regulation is largely obviated by the development of conscience, that is, self-regulation. A man who cannot regulate himself must be regulated by others.

External regulatory systems can make people behave one way or another. But it does not make them good people. Immanuel Kant was right in saying that being “good” is not primarily about producing good outcomes or having good feelings; rather, it is about acting from duty in accordance with moral law, using reason. The good person avoids bad behavior in part because he would feel guilty if he did otherwise; feeling guilty or uneasy about doing something wrong can be a sign that one’s conscience is sensitive to moral law. But at its core, moral goodness depends on whether a man chooses not to do wrong because he recognizes it as his duty to be good, not simply because he feels bad about it. It is this duty that also causes him to protest unjust social arrangements.

Alas, not everybody chooses to be good; some individuals require regulation. Shame and stigma are, in the end, indispensable for reproducing the good society. Those who are made to feel this way by others, or who have internalized the generalized other, are aware of the norms conducive to prosocial behavior. Danni did not fully internalize such norms. And he has rejected his duty to be good. It’s possible that he feels shame but is encouraged by those who tell him he should not feel this way. He needs help from those around him, not their affirmation; his failure to observe norms should not be positively sanctioned. It is not cruel to shame him. On the contrary, it is cruel to affirm his abnormality. In his right mind, he would not want this burden for himself. Nor would he wish to impose it on others. It is harmful to children and society more broadly to allow him to behave as if his perversion were normal. And it is harmful to Danni. He needs help to be a good person, and that begins by making sure he knows he is not.

Durkheim is correct that there will always be deviance. Regulation will always be necessary. But pathological levels of deviance risk social disintegration, and the degrees of regulation needed to reintegrate individuals under conditions of widespread anomie potentially come with their own pathologies. It is far better to prevent chaos rather than bring order to it. The police are necessary, but a police state is undesirable; such a situation indicates that the people have lost the capacity for self-regulation. And heaven help us if the anarchists are the ones policing us.

There is no assurance that a better order will be reestablished in the wake of the one that has served us well. It is not as if the jury is out on the question of whether anarchism or socialism is a suitable replacement for liberal capitalism. There may be a better order, but it has not been presented to us, and the evidence that we would be better off under a different system would have to be demonstrated before upending the present social order (which itself has been warped by corporate power). The goal of queer praxis is that what will replace the present order will not be one conducive to human thriving, but will allow pathology to reign.

The future of a free society depends on ensuring that society never accepts Danni and his ilk as normal, for if pathology is normalized, then the society itself becomes pathological. This is what the queer movement seeks: to make us all destructive deviants.

Have you seen this meme? It is highly misleading, which is typical of anti-Jewish pro-Islamic propaganda.

Tehran opened a metro station dedicated to Maryam-e Moqaddas. It’s located near the Armenian Christian community and Saint Sarkis Cathedral. The station was decorated with Christian-themed artwork, including images of Mary and Jesus, reflecting the presence of Iran’s officially recognized Armenian Christian minority. Cleaning the decoration is an example of routine maintenance of public transportation.

Note that Muslims extend this privilege to Christians. Christians do not have religious liberty in the way it is understood in free societies. The Islamic Republic determines which Christian faiths are protected. Iran reserves parliamentary seats for recognized minorities, including Armenian and Assyrian Christians, as a method of controlling Christian voices.

Iran is an Islamic republic with Twelver Shi’a Islam as the state religion. Christians generally cannot hold certain top state positions. Churches face government oversight and restrictions. Evangelizing Muslims is treated very harshly. Persian-language Christian services are restricted because authorities associate them with conversion efforts.

With respect to Jews, the mass migration of Iranian Jews was fueled by the political and social upheaval that followed the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Although the new Islamic Republic officially recognized Jews as a protected religious minority, many Jews rightly feared for their safety and future after the execution of prominent Jewish businessman and community leader Habib Elghanian, restrictions on travel, the confiscation of “abandoned property,” and the rise of anti-Israel rhetoric that blurred into suspicion of Jewish loyalty (a problem Jews also face in the West).

Political uncertainty, the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War, and concerns about diminished economic and professional opportunities further encouraged emigration. As a result, tens of thousands of Iranian Jews left for Europe, the United States, and Israel (hence the importance of the Jewish state) over the ensuing decades, transforming one of the Middle East’s oldest Jewish communities into a much smaller minority. 

As for the meme’s image from Israel, I am sharing Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” to make a point. Serrano is a practicing Christian and Catholic. Serrano defends his work not as an attack on Jesus, but as a critique of the commercialized “Christ-for-profit” industry and the cheapening of spiritual values.

The exhibit shared by the poster, “McJesus,” a sculpture by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen, is in the same spirit. The work was (note the past tense) displayed at the Haifa Museum of Art as part of an exhibition called “Sacred Goods,” which explored themes of consumerism, branding, and religion. It was not endorsed by the Israeli government. Leinonen is not a Jewish artist. The Arab Christian community in Haifa protested its display (as did Christians with Serrano’s work). Israel is a liberal democracy and upholds freedom of expression, so art is allowed to be expressed.

Something like this would never appear in the Muslim world, where merely depicting Muhammad is a crime. Not just the Muslim world. Muslims killed cartoonists in France for drawings mocking Muhammad. In 2015, men raided the offices of the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo and killed a dozen people for publishing cartoons offensive to Muslims (see Threat Minimization and Ecumenical Demobilization). I noted in a 2023 essay (see The Continuing Problem of Compelled Expression) that this was the only time I ever featured another country’s flag on my social media profiles.

It’s worth remembering that, elsewhere in the Muslims world, religious icons are routinely defaced. Defacing an image of Jesus reflects Islam’s extreme aniconism. They blow up statues of Buddha, etc. While the United States and Israel allow for maximum religious freedom, Muslims impose their religion on others. Don’t let propaganda confuse you.

Christian hate for the Jews—not all Christians, but an alarming number of them—is rising again in the West. Antisemitism among Christians strives to disconnect Jewish law from Christian ethics. It supposes that, more than a paradigm shift from a practical religion to a salvation faith, Jesus represents a clean break from Judaism. Even more than this, Judaism is oppositional to the gospel of Jesus. The Jew becomes the enemy of the Christian. One must wonder why Christians include the Old Testament at all if it is Jewish law. What is one to make of the fact that, if Jesus were a historical person, he was a Jewish person?

The New Testament traditionally attributes 13 letters, or epistles, to Paul. His contributions are to be taken seriously. Christians are indebted to his vision and works. According to Paul, Gentiles who became followers of Jesus were not required to take on the full obligations of the Jewish law, for example, the practice of circumcision, to belong to God’s people. Paul argued that people are made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ rather than through “works of the law.” He pointed to the example of Abraham, who was counted as righteous because of faith before the giving of the law.

In those letters, Paul insists that requiring Gentile believers to become Jews would undermine the significance of Christ’s work. Paul describes Jesus as existing “in the form of God,” taking on “the form of a servant” and becoming human, with the power to perform miracles and open the path to salvation. According to Paul, Christ is the “image of the invisible God,” the one in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” This is high Christology, emphasizing divine presence in Christ. Paul’s position became a defining feature of the Christian movement, opening the faith to non-Jewish converts without requiring full adherence to the Mosaic covenant.

If the Jewish question weren’t so important to the early Church fathers, then they would never have debated whether Christians should follow Jewish law, such as the dietary rules, or whether Christians should circumcise their male children, and so on. The clear meaning of the New Testament is that Jesus’s purpose was to pour God’s love into the world, and that meant accepting Gentiles, as well as Jews, the descendants of Abraham, whom God commanded to settle the Promised Land. After all, God created the first man and woman, from whom we are all descended. For Christians, people come to the understanding willingly. And they may leave the faith without Earthly penalty. The Creator permits free will.

There are different kinds of law in the Old Testament. The faithful need to understand which laws a Christian is obligated to follow. In Judaism, the “law” generally refers to the commandments of the Torah, which divides into several overlapping categories: moral laws (ethical commands such as prohibitions against dishonest, murder, and theft), ceremonial laws (regulations concerning dietrary rules, festivals, ritual purity, sacrifices, and worship), and civil or judicial laws (rules governing community life in ancient Israel, such as penalities and property disputes).

In Christian teaching, believers are not considered bound to the full Mosaic Law as a covenantal system. Instead, Christians are taught to follow the “law of Christ,” understood as living by faith, guided by the Holy Spirit. Many Christians hold that moral teachings of the Old Testament remain relevant insofar as they are reaffirmed or fulfilled in Jesus, while ceremonial and civil requirements tied to Israel’s temple-based covenant are not binding on Gentiles.

Plainly, Gentiles are not Jews. However, the moral code set down by God is the Christian path. The practical side of Judaism is affirmed in the Protestant faith (more on this in a moment). Historically, Catholics and Orthodox Christians do not affirm Judaism in this way. Most of the Jew-hatred we see today emanates from the latter. This is not to say all Catholics or Orthodox Christians are antisemites, only that the unreformed are more likely to take up this hatred.

All Christians would do well to remember what Jesus told the Pharisees. The stories of Jesus interacting with the Pharisees are told primarily in the four Gospels of the New Testament, which come after Paul’s epistles. Jesus told the Pharisees that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Christianity is thus the salvation phase of Jewish prophecy. One can read the Old Testament differently, to be sure. Most Jews don’t accept Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy. But from a Christian standpoint, Jesus is the fulfillment, and the Old Testament is included in the Christian Bible across all the divisions I earlier noted. Put another way, Jesus does not negate the law; he makes the law possible for anyone prepared to accept it.

Those who doubt the centrality of Judaism to Christianity would also do well to read Max Weber’s two works, Ancient Judaism and the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which I have written about extensively on this platform. It suggests that Protestantism liberates Judaism by allowing Christians to engage in this-worldly (Earthly) endeavors, albeit works imbued with an other-worldly purpose. As I have noted numerous times in these essays, a young Karl Marx anticipates Weber’s thesis by several decades (see Anticipating Weber: Revisiting Marx and the “Jewish Question”).

Don’t let the mention of Marx’s name put you off. Weber was not a follower of Marx. However, the young Marx was a liberal and a republican. His ideas influenced those who formed the Republican Party, which Abraham Lincoln led through the crisis of Southern secession and the Civil War initiated by the Democratic Party. Kneejerk anticommunism has made it impossible for reactionaries to consider what Marx said on the matter, and thus robbed them of the insight that Protestantism is the logic underpinning world capitalism, which has, in turn, brought Catholics and Orthodox Christians into modernity. (I do not spare Marx in my criticism; see Marx’s Misstep: Human Nature and the Limits of Class Reductionism.)

As a result, antisemitism has, for most Christians, fallen away. This explains why the antisemitism we see today on the far right is marked by criticism of the Protestant faith. The reactionary rejects reformation because of its Jewish character. This leads him also to reject the liberal foundations of American civilization. It has misshapen some so badly that they can no longer tell the difference between liberalism and socialism. (See The Left-Far Right Convergence and Notes on the Fourth Political Theory.)

Marx’s 1843 essay “On the Jewish Question,” a response to Bruno Bauer, does more than anticipate Weber. The main point of the essay concerns who should be included in the sphere of citizenship, a debate occurring in Prussia at the time. I cover this matter in other essays on Freedom and Reason (see, e.g., A Humanist Take on Marx’s Irreligious Criticism). However, it is relevant here. To briefly summarize, Bauer had argued that Jews could not be fully emancipated in Germany unless they abandoned Judaism. To make this personal for Christians, he argued the same for them. In his view, a truly secular state required citizens to give up religious identities in the public sphere. By contrast, Marx argued that political emancipation does not require individuals to renounce their faith or deny their identity.

Marx pointed to countries such as the United States, where citizens could enjoy political rights while remaining religious, to illustrate the principle of religious liberty. Rather than demanding that Jews cease to be Jews, Marx argued that the state itself should cease to be confessional altogether—that is, it should no longer be a specifically Christian state. As a matter of civil liberties, then, individuals enjoy a right to their religious beliefs. Far from calling for the end of Christianity, Marx affirms the stance of the founding fathers of the American Republic. So impressed was Marx with Lincoln that he wrote to the President to praise him for pursuing war against the Southern slaveowners. For Marx, the fate of the working man was bound up in that righteous war. (See The FAR Podcast Episode # 21 Marx and Americanism: From One Revolutionary to Another.)

The Christians who portray the Jews as the enemy of Christians have not merely forgotten their Bible, but they have forgotten the history and animating spirit of the American Republic. Perversely, turning against Jews, they have expressed an affinity with Muslims, who, along with them, loathe Jews and the Enlightenment. They appear oblivious to the fact that Muslims came long after the Resurrection and plagiarized the Bible for their own political aspirations. Are they unaware that Muslims deny the divinity of Jesus? In allying with Islam, they also reject the principle that a man who comes to God on his own accord can freely leave Christianity. A patriotic Christian cannot find affinity with such people. Yet we see far-right influencers hitching their wagon to the Islamist cause.

I can hear the objection that Jews deny that Jesus was the Son of God. This objection is terribly misguided. The reluctance of Jews to see in Jesus the fulfillment of the prophecy God delivered to them is very different from the Islamic denial of Jesus as divine. In Judaism, Jesus is generally not accepted as the fulfillment of prophecy because Jewish expectations of the Messiah—such as restoring Israel, fully reestablishing Davidic rule, and bringing universal peace—were not seen as accomplished in his lifetime; therefore, his role is not recognized as divinely definitive within Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

In contrast, Islam, while explicitly affirming Jesus as a major prophet and messianic figure, rejects the Passion as central to salvation history; God does not become incarnate or share divinity with any human being. Jews do not deny God’s power, but do not see the fulfillment of prophecy in Jesus. Muslims claim to know what God can and cannot do. Islam admits that God is manmade. Yet it pretends to be a transcendent faith. While Judaism’s hesitation is primarily about whether Jesus fulfills specific prophetic criteria, Islam’s rejection of divinity is rooted in a broader doctrinal principle about the nature of God and prophecy itself.

Islam rewrites the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity and projects the Muslim faith backwards onto all of history. Islam teaches that earlier scriptures—the Torah, Psalms, and the Gospel—have been corrupted. Corrupted by whom is not clearly articulated, but it is not difficult to guess who Muslims think was behind it. Revision history clears the path for Islam as the one true religion. Muslims portray the Qur’an as the final and integral revelation that confirms earlier truths while correcting what they claim are deviations in previous scriptures.

Despite these obvious facts, the far right finds affinity with Muslims while rejecting Jews, the very people whose religion forms the foundation of Christianity. Rejecting history, far-right Christians share with Muslims an antipathy towards Jews. However, while anti-Jewish sentiment is inherent in Islam, it is not intrinsic to Christianity. The far-right antisemite is a man corrupted by a hatred foreign to Christianity. He loses his authority to speak as a Christian.

As I have stated many times on this platform, I am not a Christian. I do not subscribe to any religion. This is not about me. This is about professed believers. Whether one is a believer or not, the correct position on such matters is discernible to anybody with a brain and a clear and honest mind. Christianity is rooted in Judaism. The earliest Christian movement was almost entirely Jewish in origin. Jesus himself was Jewish, as were his first disciples, and the first community in Jerusalem described in Acts was made up of Jews who believed Jesus was the promised Messiah. These early believers continued to worship in the Temple and observe many Jewish practices while also teaching that Jesus’ death and resurrection marked the fulfillment of God’s promise.

Those who established the Islamic movement were obviously not Jews. Nor did they regard Jews as friends. Jews were “tolerated” as long as they subjected themselves to their Muslim masters. The many conflicts between the early Muslim community and Jewish tribes in seventh-century Arabia testify to this fact. Jewish tribes who defended their autonomy were expelled from Medina. The men of tribes not expelled were beheaded, and the women and children were enslaved and dispersed among the Muslims. I know that some will point to instances in the Old Testament where similar patterns appear; however, the matter of one’s choice of comrades forces one to contextualize what is presented as a one-to-one correspondence. Christianity makes clear appropriate comradeship. Moreover, no civilized person subscribes to ancient practices. Muslims do, however, subscribe to ancient practices. Following the model of Muhammad yields very different results than appealing to Jesus as one’s guide.

Paradoxically, Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity (especially Eastern Orthodoxy) may appear to be generally closer to Judaism than most forms of Protestantism—emphasizing a communal, ritualized, and liturgical form of worship, with fasting cycles, set prayers, sacred calendars, and strong continuity of tradition. Yet, as noted, rigid rituals were not required of early Christians; Christianity began as a Jewish movement with a reduced legal requirement for Gentiles. Over time, it evolved into a distinct religion with its own set of rituals and institutional forms—different in content, but sometimes sociologically similar in structure to Jewish communal life.

What is most relevant here is Christianity’s relationship to antisemitism. I discussed Orthodox Christianity in this regard in a previous essay. It will suffice to say here that many on the far right are enamoured by this church. I will now note that Catholicism has the longest and most institutionally embedded historical association with antisemitic structures in Europe. Whatever antisemitism was carried forward after the Reformation, the Protestant movement moved toward stronger philo-Semitic views, particularly in modern times. To be sure, some of the Founding Fathers were not Christian; however, the ethical system that guided their actions is rooted in the Protestant faith. Defending the American Republic requires recognition of the path these men trod to establish the greatest country in world history and reaffirming a commitment to keep it.

The far-right Christian is on the wrong side of the faith to which he feigns loyalty, even if he is convinced of his righteousness. This betrayal concerns me as an atheist, because modernity is rooted in Christian ethics and practical Judaism. I don’t have to be religious to recognize the importance of the practical side of Judaism and Protestantism to the Enlightenment and the liberal principles Western men derived from development and legacy. If I were a religious man, I would take to heart the history that finds obstacles thrown into the path of Jews with the expectation that they overcome such dialectical moments to rise to a higher positional unity. Christians should open the Old Testament and reconsider what they read there in those terms. Then they might understand that the story of Jesus is also a dialectical moment in which elements of Judaism are retained to produce a higher unity, one that makes Jews comrades instead of enemies.

Does this make me a Christian Zionist? Of course not. I am not a Christian. But I am a man of the West. I regret that some Catholics and Orthodox Christians will take offense at this critique. I mean no offense. These churches are part of the West. But there is no room in the West for antisemitism. As I stressed earlier, most Orthodox Christians and Catholics are not antisemites. But some are, and the congregants of these churches who are reviving that ancient hatred must push this corruption from their hearts and minds. This is the point of my intervention. And this: there is no room for Islam here. For the life of me, I don’t see a path for reformation for this religion. It should remain in the East. (See Defensive Intolerance: Confronting the Existential Threat of Enlightenment’s Antithesis; Epic City and The Muslim Problem: Confronting the Presence of Exceptional Doctrine in American Society.)