freedom and reason

Whatever one thinks of the moral underpinnings of conquest, the new moral sensibility that weaponizes history and finds the living guilty of the deeds of their ancestors, a sensibility feeding on ressentiment, to the extent that the accused confess to alleged sins and make amends, ceding land or altering their way of life, in an expression of what Canadian psychologist Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. Yet the question of legitimacy in any present moment is determined by whether the society in question is good or bad, not whether responsibility for the evil deeds (having accepted that they were indeed evil) escapes the grave. Surely we have matured enough as a species to not hold children accountable for their father’s sins.

All nation-building features demographic transformation. The United States would not exist if it were not for conquest and the reordering of the continent. North America was not empty when the English (and other Europeans) arrived. The shape of the country is the result of expansion and war. Following the Mexican-American War, the United States took control of 500,000 square miles of land. This territory became the present-day states of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, as well as most of Colorado and parts of Wyoming. Some Mexicans still claim the territory belongs to them. But they would have to take it. And the US would—and should—stop them if they try.

Benny Morris, associated with the “New Historians,” a group that reexamined Israel’s founding using declassified archives, has defended aspects of the Arab displacement as historically necessary for the creation and survival of a Jewish state in the context of the 1948 war and continuous Arab hostility. Given the existential nature of the conflict, a stable Jewish-majority state may not have emerged without the large-scale displacement of Arabs living in mandatory Palestine. Morris compares this to other historical cases of violent nation-building (for example, the American Republic vis-à-vis American Indians). To be sure, one can have compassion for those who were displaced—hundreds of thousands of Jews, as well, expelled from Muslim-majority territories across the Middle East and North Africa—but history cannot be changed. Only the fruits of history may be enjoyed or suffered.

Why don’t we see Jews demanding land in Iraq, even though Jews had lived there for centuries? The practical life requires moving on from history. What’s done is done. Attempts to rectify the misdeeds of those who rot in graves only mistreat the living. This is why reparations in America are a non-starter. It’s why white South Africans have a right to their farms—and to use lethal force to defend them. There are generations of white South Africans now. It’s their land. I’d be disappointed if either Jews or Africaners opened public meetings with land acknowledgments. I always cringe when this happens at public meetings in the United States. I’d rather we just get to the agenda so I can enjoy the rest of my day. Frankly, I don’t appreciate the tone of voice. “Historical trauma” is emotional blackmail.

Dwelling on past injustice, even when we agree that an injustice occurred, is the quasireligious practice of conjuring ghosts to haunt the living—a rhetoric designed to motivate the envious to upset present reality with unjust law and policy, and, inevitably, theft and violence. Once valorized as a historical victim in a world where cross-generational reparations—in whatever form they may take, up to and including revenge—are recast as “justice,” the “oppressed” become liberated from obedience to conscience. The individual regresses to the primitive tribalist. The justice that results is retributive.

What is rationally addressed with respect to the modern understanding of justice is the current conflict between Israel and the Arabs, and here what is at issue is, most immediately, Islamic terrorism, and, more systemically, the ambitions of the barbarians who surround the Jewish state. The aims of those who call themselves Palestinian are not really rooted in rectification of an injustice—few today were alive then—but in a pathological hatred for the Jewish people and a burning desire to seize their land. Hamas’ express goal, like the Nazis before them, is to eliminate the Jews. Indeed, in many ways, the Nakba is the fallout from a failed genocide. Arabs would like a do-over. But Arabs have plenty of countries they call their own.

* * *

In light of the recent past, which many living persons have experienced, the one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict seems the most attractive. The two-state solution is unworkable. Incorporate Gaza and the West Bank into Israel proper. Those Arabs who want to leave can do so (they already have a state called Jordan—the flag is the same, absent the star). Those who want to stay can be integrated with Israel, as were other Arab populations living in Israel during state formation.

The agitators would like you to forget this, but Israel did not expel all non-Jews from its territory. Twenty percent of the population of Israel is Arab. Most Israeli Arabs are descendants of those who remained within Israel’s borders after 1948 and became Israeli citizens. They vote in elections and have political parties and representatives in the Knesset. Arab judges have served on the Supreme Court of Israel. Arabs work as doctors, journalists, lawyers, pharmacists, and professors throughout the country. There are many Arab businesses. That’s not ethnic cleansing. That’s integration. Israel today has vibrant Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Bedouin communities. Israel is a multiethnic, multiracial, and multifaith nation substantially based on civic nationalism. It is a diverse country.

If history matters to people so much, then Israel’s opponents would, if honest, have to acknowledge that Jews have lived on this land for thousands of years, long before Arabs were even a people with a language. Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. King Solomon ruled the United Kingdom of Israel in the tenth century BCE. That was a long time ago. And Jews have had a continual presence there ever since (and long before Solomon and David). Today, as then, Israel is a Jewish state. The government did not manufacture that truth, but merely formally recognized it. Is this ethnonationalism? Sure. Most nations are rooted in ethnonationalism—prioritizing cultural, demographic continuity, linguistic commonality—with a core ethnic group that defines the nation.

* * *

Years ago, I opposed the idea of a Jewish state because of a reactionary stance towards ethnonationalism generally. But after a lengthy spell of reconsidering many of my positions, I could find no moral objection to inclusive ethnonationalism. Swedes can allow non-Swedes to immigrate to Sweden. But Sweden should remain majority-Swedish, and those who find the situation intolerable should go home. Why wouldn’t they deport themselves and return to the culture that suits them? (Who wants to be where they’re not wanted? Answer: colonizers and invaders.) Observers were aghast when, at the big rally of patriots this weekend, Tommy Robinson, when asked what he would do if he were UK prime minister, said he would institute a policy of remigration of Muslims. A great many Brits agree with him.

Many ears hear Robinson’s words and find them racist. But what they really hear is their own hypocrisy (anti-Islamic sentiments are not racist anyway). The English are the indigenous population of that archipelago’s mainland. The ethnic Swedes are an indigenous population of Scandinavia. They have lived there since the last Ice Age. The principle that nations are a people’s vehicle for self-determination is a human right, rooted in natural law. Would anybody suggest that China is a racist state because it wishes to remain majority-Chinese? Of course not. So why are Western nations held to a novel and different standard? White Europeans are only eight percent of the world’s population, yet mass perception uniquely regards them as unworthy of a homeland and cultural integrity. Tolkien’s Hobbits didn’t mind friendly visitors, but I see no evidence they would have invited strangers to live in the Shire.

Significantly, the charge of ethnonationalism is rarely leveled at non-Western nations. There’s a reason for this. Accusations of “islamophobia,” “nativism,” “racism,” and “xenophobia” are weapons targeting Western patriots with the intent to silence them and disorganize the instinct to defend one’s way of life. However, like Satan’s eternal subservience to God, words only have the power we give them. A man may not like the feel of raindrops on his head, but eventually he will be dry again, and the rain will stop. Once a man stops caring about whether he is a racist in the eyes of those who are robbing him of home and hearth, the charge of racism has no effect. Must a privileged man hand over his wallet to the robber who demands it? Perhaps if the robber is armed, or has the state at his back. But then, the privileged man can arm himself, can’t he?

There is a project behind all this. The robber does have a state behind him, or more precisely, a state-in-formation. That state will not suit the Swede or Englishman. Accusations of bigotry are designed to selectively delegitimize national self-determination to reincorporate the peoples of the West into a transnational corporate order. That is the purpose of the regional projects like the European Union—to rob the peoples of that region of their sovereignty and self-determination. The rhetoric of multiculturalism is designed to denigrate their respective ethnic identities. The people who brought freedom to the world are accused of tyranny.

* * *

The Third World is being weaponized by elites against the First World. Antisemitism is a species of anti-whiteness generally. To be sure, it is the more virulent strain, but at its heart is loathing of the Enlightenment values of discipline, progress, and reason, and the wealth that flows from these in action. And Jews had a lot to do with that. Those who loathe the Jews do so because they are envious of Jewish success—and the success of those who have adopted their ways. Rather than seeing Jews as a people to be emulated, the resentful decide that it is not worth the effort and instead take what they won’t work for. Since Western civilization is ultimately founded upon Jewish ingenuity and practicality, the loathing is generalized. Envy and resentment lurk behind the project of cultural disorganization and the managed decline of Western nations.

Those who resent Jewish success cannot allow themselves to attribute that success to Jewish discipline and ingenuity. They have to rationalize their lack of effort and talent. Those who are poor find their rationale in victimhood. And victims must have oppressors. Of course, the sneakiest oppressors are those who pull strings without being seen. Hence, the conspiracy theory that Jews secretly control the United States and, by extension, the world. This antisemitic trope has roots dating back centuries, gaining modern traction through fabricated documents like the early twentieth-century Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which the Hamas charter presents as evidence in making their case. The Protocols is a hoax.

It is not just the Arabs who advance the theory. Those on the far left and far right in the West claim that a shadowy global Jewish cabal manipulates banks, governments, Hollywood, mass media, and foreign policy (e.g., U.S. support for Israel). The Jews have implemented a program of cultural erosion, financial exploitation, or world domination. It is not that these agendas don’t exist. I have documented the reality of globalization in numerous essays on this platform. What is false is the belief that this is the work of Jews string-pulling. Propagandists for transnational corporate power smartly use the existence of antisemitism to deflect from the agenda to establish a new world order. They accuse critics of their ambitions of imagining a Jewish conspiracy behind them to avoid scrutiny. Useful idiots on both the left and the right do their work for them by embracing the trope.

It feels almost silly to note that the theory lacks credible evidence, relies on cherry-picked anecdotes, obnoxious stereotypes, and confirmation bias. However, its effects are nonetheless destructive. The Jewish cabal myth has historically fueled pogroms and ongoing hate crimes. Jewish Americans (around two percent of the population), like other successful ethnic groups, participate in various influential sectors proportionally to their small population. They hold no monolithic control over institutions or global events. Given the influence of other ethnic groups in our society, that Jews would get all the attention is itself an indicator of the deep-seated hatred and loathing.

Hysteria over the Israel lobby is a case in point. Extremes on the left and the riot raise the specter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. What about the Saudi lobby? Saudi Arabia spends enormous sums on defense relationships, elite access, lobbyists, PR firms, and Washington consultants. China’s influence is enormous, as well. Business lobbying, corporate relations, supply chains, technology markets, university/research ties—all these sway political and policy decisions. Half a million Chinese nationals are studying in the United States. Taiwan has established a massive Washington presence around anti-China alignment, defense cooperation, and semiconductors. Armenia, Cuba, Greece, India, and Ireland all have lobbies. Crickets.

Because Jews are portrayed as evil, Israeli laws and policies are straightaway perceived not merely as exceptional but inherently wicked. For decades, Israel’s security arrangements have been described as apartheid. Arab hostility towards Israel necessitates the arrangements that limit the movement of people in the “occupied” territories. As with Israel’s just retaliation for the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Arabs are the authors of their own restrictions in the West Bank. The Nakba occurred in the context of Arab armies attempting to end Israel’s project for statehood. Israel erred when it pulled its soldiers and citizens out of Gaza almost two decades ago. That situation, like so many others, could be resolved if hostilities against the Jewish people stopped. But there are too many recalcitrant Arabs living there. And they do the work of those not living there.

This business about genocide against the Palestinians? There are more Palestinians now than before Israel was established. A lot more. Right before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arab Palestinian population in Mandatory Palestine was roughly 1.2–1.3 million people. Today, in the West Bank and Gaza, there are around 5.5 million. Usually, with genocides, the opposite is true: the numbers go down. On the eve of World War II in 1939, the global Jewish population was about 16.5–16.6 million people. By the end of the war in 1945, the worldwide Jewish population had fallen to roughly 11 million. The Holocaust wiped out about one-third of the world’s Jewish population. There are still fewer Jews today than there were before the Holocaust. If readers are searching for actual cases of genocide, the Holocaust is the paradigm. There is no genocide against Palestinians. There are no concentration camps. If rubble troubles you, just take a look at pictures of German cities after Allied bombing during WWII.

The horror of the collapse of the Jewish population in Poland speaks to the horror of genocide. The Nazis were relentless in their extermination program. However, the Arab population soars after the creation of the state of Israel. Arabs were drawn to Mandatory Palestine with the rise of Jewish affluence. The claim of genocide against the Arabs in Palestine is mythical. Did some Arabs leave their towns and villages during the wars initiated by the surrounding Arab countries? Yes. It is not uncommon for civilians to flee their homes during the war. The security situation made it difficult for them to return home. This, too, is common in such situations. Like every other nation-state, Israel has a right to collective self-defense and to maintain the internal security of its citizens.

The question people need to ask themselves is why the historical perception is so distorted for so many people. Why would anybody not know the chart I first shared is accurate? For those who think Jews control the narrative, they have to ask why Jews would portray themselves as genocidal, when in fact they integrated the Arab population into Israel, except for those Arabs who refuse to join the state of Israel and pose a security threat to the Jewish nation. Somebody else is pushing the genocide narrative. Who do you think that is? This is, in part, a rhetorical question. But I still think the answer is important for educational purposes, since the well-educated make better political choices.

Arabs have been given multiple opportunities to establish their own state on Jewish land. They have instead pursued the ethnic cleansing of the territory that, during the period of Roman imperialism, was renamed Palestine to disempower the Jewish population living there. “From the River to the Sea” is the rallying cry of ethnic cleansing. Short of a state, the Arabs have had enough chances to establish peaceful relations with Israel. They have made it abundantly clear that they will not establish peaceful relations with Israel. A two-state solution would only result in a continuation of hostilities. Enduring peace for the Israeli people requires abandoning the idea of a peaceful Palestinian state on Jewish land. That idea was always a bad one, as President Truman admitted in clips recently put in circulation on the Internet. Those who wanted cheap oil from the Arab states demanded a compromise and pressured Truman into postponing the inevitable. There is no peaceful coexistence with those who seek to exterminate you.

* * *

In moments like these, Christopher Hitchens comes to mind. Among other things, Hitchens was a fierce critic of religion, and Islam in particular. Would Hitchens have toned down his anti-Muslim rhetoric because two teenagers attacked an Islamic Center? Not a chance. Watch this video, and you’ll see what I mean.

I was asked recently what explains antipathy towards the Jews. The subtext was that Jews have brought Islamic terrorism on themselves. I left the insinuation aside and noted that, among many reasons, is the efficacy of Jewish culture in promoting success across the life course. People are jealous of Jewish affluence. However, I did not discuss in my answer why the civilized world has turned against the Jews. But I will address it here: widespread antisemitism among Third World people is useful for aligning those people with the transnational project.

Worldwide, there are roughly 16 million Jews compared to approximately two billion Muslims. But Muslims are not the only problem. Antisemitism is not unique to Islam. The project to transform the world requires conscripting the world’s population into the new world order. Antisemitism provides a common cause. And that means that the security of the Jews is negotiable. The interests and reputation of a relatively tiny population are sacrificed for the sake of the transnational project.

The resurgence of virulent antisemitism in the world disproves the thesis that Jews are behind globalization. It is because of globalization that the world Jewry is exposed to the peril of Oriental culture. The clash of civilizations is brought about by economic integration, opening avenues for mass migration and spreading backwards and destructive ideas and practices. The long history of Jewish survival suggests that they are the last population to pursue collective suicide. Indeed, the very tenacity of Jews in perpetuating their presence in history in the face of obstacles tells us about their collective will to live and thrive.

* * *

Yesterday, two teenagers killed three Muslims at the Islamic Center of San Diego before turning their weapons on themselves. I talk about this phenomenon in my criminology classes when I cover the work of French sociologist Émile Durkheim, relating crime and suicide. Some mass shootings—especially school shootings involving adolescent or young adult males—are closely tied to suicidal intent. A substantial share of mass shooters either die by suicide during the attack or expect to be killed by police, which is known as “suicide by cop.”

Cases involving pairs of young men, such as the Columbine High School massacre, and today’s shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, fit a pattern researchers sometimes describe as “dyadic” or “peer-reinforced” violence. The typical scenario is two alienated teenagers or young men mutually intensifying fantasies of notoriety, manufactured grievances, and nihilism. Over time, violence becomes a shared project. They seethe over perceived slights, conjuring the spirits of revenge and retaliation. (Durkheim would classify this as “egoistic” suicide.)

Fascination with prior mass shootings, identity crisis (teenagers and young people are prone to this, especially in the absence of status transition rituals), social isolation, and suicidal ideations, the dynamics of male bonding around aggression and status that entrain them—the perpetrators in such cases are not merely homicidal but fundamentally self-destructive. The pair dynamic lowers inhibitions because each participant validates the other’s worldview (if we can even call it that; they are young, their brains are not fully developed, so their gaze remains much like that of a child), and this creates a sense of destiny or performance. I assure students that this phenomenon remains statistically rare, even among troubled young men. That doesn’t bring any comfort to the families affected by it.

But social media accounts yesterday (and I expect the theme will continue today) exploit the San Diego tragedy to call for the critics of Islam to tone down the rhetoric. Even though no pattern of anti-Muslim terrorism has been established, unlike anti-Jewish violence, which is rampant and rising, patriotic resistance to the Islamization of the West is blamed for the killing. The same accounts suggesting stochastic terrorism spew the most virulently antisemitic bile imaginable. I have yet to see condemnation for the massacring of Jews coming from them.

The police have suggested that, in light of some writings, the teenagers were motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry. I detailed the phenomenon of dyadic violence above to open the way for consideration of the possibility that these males found a rhetoric to give their actions meaning. Explanation is not justification. My job is to understand why people do bad things. But if the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) thinks an extraordinary event will shame the critics of Islam into returning to their long slumber, they don’t grasp the depth of Western opposition to the Islamization of their societies. This doesn’t justify mass shootings, but Westerners are justifiably worried about the future of their civilization.

Muslims have become quite adept at exploiting the language of religious tolerance to suppress criticism of Islam. But Islam is an ideology just like Fascism, National Socialism, or Communism. If a pair of teenagers were to target members of the Ku Klux Klan, would the nation amplify the pleas of Klansmen to tone down the rhetoric? Would the demand go up for those criticizing white supremacy to abandon their speech against it? On the contrary, some hope that their speech will move people to take up arms and target racists with violence. “Punch a Nazi in the nose.” “This machine kills fascists.” We know that a great many people hope that antisemitic rhetoric will provoke violence against Jews (and weirdly, they are often the same people who call for violence against Nazis).

https://t.co/kQcKlXrUvL

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) May 19, 2026

“We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.” —Charles Péguy, “Our Youth” (1910)

Maeve Halligan, co-founder and president of the Cambridge University Society of Women, gave an eloquent speech at the Cambridge Union on May 14. Do not misunderstand me when I say this: I am not suggesting Halligan visits Freedom and Reason, but I must note that our arguments on this topic march in lockstep, especially of late, as I have ramped up my passion over this issue. The more I know about the madness that has colonized our professional and sense-making institutions, the more strident my tone becomes. I must tell what I see. That I hear my arguments in the words of others indicates a frequency out there, and that a growing number of people are tuning in to it.

Here is Halligan’s speech for those who haven’t yet seen it:

"No, I don't subscribe to this 'kindness' – I'll tell the truth instead."

I spoke at the Cambridge Union last night about LGBs, children's safety and women's rights. Full video here: pic.twitter.com/XpUFS4hYjU

— Maeve Halligan (@MaeveHalligan) May 15, 2026

Among her debate opponents was Helen Webberley, a demon about whom I have addressed in previous essays on this platform (see An Ellipse is a plane figure with four straight sides and four right angles, one with unequal adjacent sides; The Problem of Empathy and the Pathology of “Be Kind”). Why am I demonizing a fellow human being? Because we have to question whether she is, in fact, a human in the moral sense of that term. A poster on Mumsnet, after watching the debate, put it well: “I remember once thinking the criticism directed at [Webberley] by GC [gender critical] women was excessive, especially the claim she was ‘pure evil.’ After hearing her speak, I no longer think that.”

Opportune time to repost this. https://t.co/rQR9XwZIVv

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) May 16, 2026

Four years before dying in the early days of the Second World War, French poet Charles Péguy encouraged us, above all else, to “see what we see.” All it took for me was watching Webberey’s appearance on the Andrew Gold podcast, Heretics (see the link above). The woman exudes evil. One hears wickedness not merely in her words (which horrify the good and decent person). Watch her eyes. They are black holes. The thinnest sheet of paper could not slide between her and Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s personal physician and the Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation. 

Halligan did not let the opposition interrupt her. However, she had to yield to a point of information from an audience member, a trans-identified male and former patient of hers, who stood and gave his account of how he had been treated under Webberley’s “care.” It was as if this man were talking about Magus Hirschfeld, the German physician and a founding father of sexology, who, with surgeon Erwin Gohrbandt at his side, mutilated the genitalia of men who served Hirschfeld on his estate, a menagerie of disordered personalities—an Island of Misfit Toys. (See Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix: Monstrosity and the Deceits of Trans Joy; The Persistence of Medical Atrocities: Lobotomy, Nazi Doctors, and Gender Affirming Care; Medical Atrocities Then and Now: The Dark Continuity of Gender Affirming Care.)

Known as the “Einstein of Sex,” Hirchfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Although Hirchfeld was forced into exile by the Nazis, Gohrbant was rehabilitated and put in charge of live human experimentation at the Dachau concentration camp. However, the madman was not prosecuted at Nuremberg (the Doctors’ Trial). On the contrary, he became a celebrated surgeon. In 1950-51, he was made chairman of the Berlin Surgical Society. Gohrbant pioneered vaginoplasty, an operation where the “patient” is castrated and his penis inverted and pushed into the open wound between his legs (often reinforced with a piece of the man’s colon). Webbereley’s black eyes see what Hirshfeld and Gohrbant saw, a gaze directed by sexual sadism.

If readers have ever wondered how butchers and sadists could persist in the shadow of the Holocaust, the answer lies in understanding the power of ideology to corrupt and grasping the methods by which madness is institutionalized. I have devoted numerous essays to the matter, interrogating the methods and exposing the ideology. You can search for the essays on Google, which—after years of shadowbanning—has finally indexed Freedom and Reason. Google can blame Gemini for that.

What lies behind more than a century of medical atrocities, euphemized as “gender affirming care,” is the obsession among trans activists and the medical industry with altering physiology, erasing secondary sex characteristics, and mutilating genitals to produce simulated sexual identities. This is the spirit of transhumanism. At the heart of the ideology is an obsession with cosmetic surgery, the profession organized around profiting from personal preference (shaped by manufactured insecurity) to enhance aesthetic appearance rather than addressing medical problems to restore normal bodily function and health, genetic engineering (i.e., eugenics), and technological augmentation of bodies. Transhumanism is an anti-human ideology rooted in loathing of the results of natural history and the amassing of wealth—and of power.

Among the grand battles of the Twenty-First Century—antisemitism, demographic transformation, the feminization of boys and men, Islamization, transnationalism—is the struggle against gender identity doctrine, a neoreligion denying the gender binary and the immutability of sex. Indeed, these are all pieces of a whole, a project to negate the moral foundation of the West and usher in a global technocratic order in which species-being is extinguished. Such a project needs Frankenstein, and demons like Webberley are eager to step into the role and make monsters of the deranged and vulnerable.

Air Force One is on its way home after the President’s state visit to China. Donald Trump’s account of the meeting is that it went well. But Xi Jinping said a disturbing thing during his speech—he raised the specter of the Thucydides Trap. The Thucydides Trap, a concept popularized by Harvard professor Graham Allison, describes the structural tension that occurs when a rising power (in this case, China) threatens to displace an established ruling power (the US). The reference suggests the US is afraid of China. It warns of war. Xi is subtly threatening America.

I agree with Jack Posobiec, a former intelligence officer who appeared on yesterday’s morning edition of the War Room. Observing the moment, Posobiec said that Trump should get on Air Force One and return home. He also suggested that the White House cancel the visas of Chinese students and send them back to China. I also agree with the War Room’s host, Steve Bannon, that the US Navy should send a carrier battle group to the South China Sea. On second thought, Bannon may have been the one who suggested canceling visas. At any rate, the sentiment was that America Xi should not speak to us in that tone. I agree. The Chinese are keen on saving face. Trump should have made them lose face. But Trump is polite, so he let it go. I hope at least he filed away the reference.

Among the other objectionable things Xi said to the President’s face was his claim that the US is only 250 years old (a dig at our anniversary), while China is thousands of years old. However, the Chinese Communist Party has been in power for less than a century, roughly the same timespan as the Soviet Union. The CCP is no more the legitimate government of China than the Islamic Republic is the legitimate government of Persia. The CCP was a Leninist creation. And Xi is a Stalinist. Chinese communism (With Islam in tow) has replaced Soviet communism in the East-West divide, replacing an old existential threat with a new one. On comparative terms, the new threat is worse. The CCP cuts the organs out of living bodies and sells them on the international market. It has forced millions of women to abort their babies. It runs concentration camps. And it is integrating with the transnational corporate order. Evil is striving to become planetary.

If China is a rising power, it is only because the Democrats and transnationalism have built China into a superpower. Richard Nixon’s disruption of the Sino-Soviet alliance in the 1970s opened a path to globalization that Democrats walked the US through. The Democratic Party is the party of globalization. Globalization has undermined the fortunes of American labor and, if allowed to succeed, will end its freedom, as well. This is not inevitable. China’s economy is in decline. They lack a consumer class with purchasing power to buy the cheap commodities they produce. They depend on the US market to move product. Cut them off. Isolate them. The question today is whether Trump will do what must be done.

During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan pursued a strategy of increasing economic and military pressure on the Soviet Union through geopolitical competition, higher US defense spending, and technology restrictions, believing the Soviet system was economically weaker than it appeared. The CIA concluded California’s economy was larger than the Soviet economy. The agency assessed that the Soviet economy was stagnating, inefficient, and burdened by military costs. The Soviet Union had become far less productive and innovative than the United States and increasingly unable to compete with Western technological and consumer prosperity. Reagan used that knowledge to shape the collapse of a totalitarian system.

Will Trump do the same? Technology issues were discussed at the summit, especially around artificial intelligence, export controls, semiconductors, and supply chains. Reporting indicates that China pushed for easing US restrictions on advanced semiconductors and chip-making technology. For its part, the United States focused on AI safety discussions, strategic guardrails, and export controls tied to national security. US officials are downplaying China’s emphasis on chip export controls. It is unclear whether Washington agreed to significant technology concessions. Trump is a polite man when dealing with authoritarians, so we await our debriefing, hoping the assessment will be forthcoming and transparent.

In the final analysis, the West must dump the CCP in the history’s toilet, just as Reagan did with the Soviet Union, and flush it to the sewer. The United States should center its strategy regarding the rise of communist China on supporting the liberation of the lǎo bǎi xìng—the ordinary Chinese people—from totalitarian rule, enabling that ancient civilization to build a future worthy of its cultural heritage and free the world from the pressures of authoritarian state capitalism. It will then be a worthy partner in world affairs. The Chinese people are decent and kind. Integration with the world capitalist economy will not change the character of the current regime. Communism is incorrigible. Integration will only embolden the CCP. Worse, it will expose the rest of the world to the logic of authoritarian state capitalism and everything that entails—concentration camps, total surveillance, and the final negation of species-being.

A good parent doesn’t coddle their children or excuse their bad behavior. They want their children to be conscientious, resilient, self-reliant, and responsible. Children with good character and self-discipline are more successful in life, enjoy greater emotional and psychological stability, and are less likely to violate others than those who lack good character and discipline.

Democrats are well-known for their paternalism. This goes back to the days of slavery, where Democrats treated slaves as children, most obviously in restricting their autonomy. The party still treats blacks this way. This is why they infantilize and down-talk to blacks.

Are readers familiar with the work of researchers at Princeton, Cydney Dupree and Susan Fiske, who identify what they call “competence downshift”? It’s what turned Batya Ungar-Sargon from a progressive into a liberal. Dupress and Fiske found that white progressives, when interacting with black people, tend to use simpler, less “competence-signaling” language than they used with white audiences. The researchers interpreted this as a subtle form of patronizing behavior rather than overt hostility. This is an example of Democrat paternalism.

The unfortunate reality is that, in their paternalism, Democrats are bad parents. They establish conditions that make blacks dependent on their party and then excuse the bad behavior that results from those conditions.

Long ago, psychologists identified what they call “locus of control.” This concept was introduced by Julian Rotter in the 1950s. There are two types: internal and external. A person with an internal locus of control is self-starting and prepared to take responsibility for his actions. People with an internal locus of control believe that success or failure mostly depends on behavior, choices, and effort. Taking initiative can change circumstances. People with this orientation are more successful in life.

By contrast, those with an external locus of control tend to be helpless and irresponsible. They blame others for the situation their choices put them in. People with an external locus of control tend to believe that “Things happen to me” rather than “I make things happen” or “My actions influence outcomes.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, sociologists like Peter Berger and C. Wright Mills helped validate the external locus of control orientation. Their intent was not to promote helplessness or formally defend what psychologists called an “external locus of control.” Rather, they criticized what they saw as overly individualistic explanations of human behavior. Whatever their intentions, progressive social engineers saw in the critique a justification for government intervention in the lives they sought to manage. Thus, social critics participated in a project to diminish the agency of those who face hurdles in life.

It took a while to realize that conservative and liberal critiques of progressive social policy are correct, but I get it now. Progressive policies reinforce a fatalistic worldview. Academics built around this an intellectual justification with critical race theory and pressed it into the education system. CRT feeds social justice warriors a rhetoric. Its advocates target those who believe their circumstances are not their fault. Millions of people now believe somebody else is responsible for the situation confronting blacks.

This restricts poor people’s political strategies—or, more accurately, directs political energy towards supporting policies that are not in their best interests. Rather than insist on a more robust pro-worker economic strategy and the values of hard work and striving, progressives affirm a self-fulfilling prophecy and deepen it into structural dependency. They cultivate what is known as “learned helplessness.”

There is a political strategy behind this. Democrats did this knowing that those who are dependent on government will vote for the party that puts them in that situation and makes them that way. It’s like the child who is given everything at home: there is no reason to leave what amounts to a comfortable prison. Freedom is retranslated from the experience of the rough-and-tumble to having “free” food, housing, and medicine. The spoiled child lives in the basement. He does not bite the hand that feeds (although those with spoiled children know that is not always true). It is not that there is no role for the government in helping people in need. The problem is making able-bodied citizens helpless.

Excusing behavior complicates the problem. When those whom progressive social programs made dependent on government break the law—which is an inevitable entailment of such policies, since dependency breaks down personal responsibility and undermines the family, the primary unit and source of any integral social order—Democrats, the bad parents that they are, step in and prevent accountability for the unruly. They excuse their behavior and shift the blame. It’s not their children’s fault. They have elevated bad parenting to bad government.

It certainly isn’t the parents’ fault. They’re the ones who have the children’s best interests at heart. They’re sympathetic to the plight of the poor. Their heart is in the right place. They are good and decent people, compassionate and loving. Rather, it’s the billionaire’s fault. It’s the Republicans’ fault. They insist that the situation is the result of centuries of capitalist inequality and white supremacy. It’s the conditions, they say, not the behavior and choices of the poor. We have to study the root cases, we are told, as long as progressive policies are not identified as the root cause.

The situation of blacks is not merely the creation of the welfare state. There are structural forces behind the creation of the ghetto. Structure is not entirely irrelevant in understanding problems confronting people. This historical development lies at the feet of Democrats, as well. Behind the welfare state is the destruction of the American economy by globalization.

As I have argued in numerous articles on this platform, Democrats have always sought to undermine the American System. Developed by Alexander Hamilton during the Republic’s first presidency under George Washington, the American system was designed to protect domestic industry and jobs. Democrats obviate this system to pit the American worker against foreign competition. (See History as Ideology: The Myth that the Democrats Became the Party of Lincoln; Will They Break the Peace of Westphalia or Will We Save National Sovereignty for the Sake of the People?)

Economic nationalism created the most powerful nation in world history. Today, after decades of globalization, America’s greatness is diminishing. Representing the narrow interests of the corporate state, progressives pursue free trade, offshore jobs, and, in the 1960s, open the country to mass immigration. As a result, America suffers a vast surplus population of able-bodied persons, disproportionately black. The burden of administering life for those displaced by the transnationalist project has been placed on the taxpayers’ backs.

* * *

To get a bit more technical, in criminology, we distinguish between integration and regulation. Integration aligns with the psychological concept of internal locus of control. A person who is integrated with prosocial norms controls his or her own behavior. The well-integrated follow the law. They are law-abiding strivers. Those who are less well integrated in society, on the other hand, require external control.

Here, sociologists have attempted to validate their antisocial and unruly behavior. In the late 1930s, for example, Robert Merton redefined crime and deviance as “innovation” and “retreatism” and theoretically reconceptualized these as “adaptations” to unchosen circumstances. Those who innovate (crime) and retreat from society (drugs and homelessness) are then regulated, governed by external forces. This is where law enforcement enters the picture—if progressives would allow cities to use it. The point is that big government becomes necessary to manage the innovation and retreatism. And big government inevitably manages everybody. In this way, the external locus of control is generalized.

At the core of Merton’s anomie/strain theory was the premise that social structures can pressure people toward deviance when cultural goals are emphasized but legitimate means are unequal. This spawned a school of thought that became dominant in the 1960s, exemplified by the advocacy of Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven. This idea underpinned the logic of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which engineered government dependency in black communities and expanded government, already greatly expanded by previous Democratic presidents, as seen with Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party thus actively undermines both requirements—integration and regulation—for a decent and orderly society. Their policies disorganize families and communities. The result is generations of people who are poorly integrated with prosocial norms. This produces criminogenic conditions. On top of that, Democrats weaken the regulatory function that exists to manage the societal disintegration progressive policies produce.

As a result, crime, disorder, and violence are commonplace in communities governed by Democrats. Tragically, these effects, given the progressive command of society’s sensemaking institutions (education, mass media), have become widely perceived as normal.

It’s the normality of social pathology in Democrat-controlled cities and states that leads many people to assume crime, disorder, and violence are intrinsic to the nature of blacks. History shows otherwise. Before the Great Society, black families were as stable as white families. While there was crime and deviance (there always will be some, as Émile Durkheim long ago taught us), these pathologies were nowhere near the levels they would reach during and after Johnson’s presidency. But few people study history. Instead, many assume this is just the nature of those living in those communities that progressivism has disorganized. Indeed, some conclude that it is the nature of blacks that disorganized those communities in the first place. In this way, Democrats perpetuate the racism they engineered to justify slavery and Jim Crow.

Despite representing themselves as antiracists, Democrats are responsible for creating the negative perception that many have about black Americans. Not only have they made blacks dependent on the government, and not only do their policies undermine the policing function (which imperils everybody living in and near the ghetto), but progressives have also engineered the attitude and behavior that has damaged the collective reputation of black people.

* * *

Democrats attempt to deflect attention away from this reality by blaming the situation on “white privilege” and “white supremacy.” But the reality is that Democrats are the culprit. This tragedy is compounded by the fact that they get a lot of help from black leaders. Instead of encouraging black Americans to demand what’s right for their communities, to find a way to transcend their circumstances, progressives conditioned them to expect a life dependent on big government. Those close to the community encourage them to defend this way of life. The result is perpetual poverty and servitude, and neighborhoods rife with crime and deviance.

The point of antiracism in the progressive worldview can only be about power. Suppose we agree that anti-black prejudice and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow explain why life is difficult for black people. How does it help a black child to tell him that he will never get ahead because of prejudice and history? Do Jews let antisemitism disable their children? Or do they teach them to see prejudice as an obstacle to overcome? Are Jews paralyzed by an ancient hatred? Or do they choose resiliency and striving? We know the answer. Jews are successful because they are resilient strivers. One would only tell children to give up, to be a victim, excuse bad attitudes and choices if one wants to keep blacks down, to make them dependent on government and subservient to power. Who is teaching black children defeatism and fatalism? We know the answer.

Should we be sympathetic to the situation of black Americans? Of course. That’s why I penned this essay. Sympathy is a crucial element in compassionate human relations. However, being charitable to those who apologize for those who accept dependency and excuse deviance, sympathy without discernment and wisdom very easily becomes pathological. When people excuse destructive behavior, when they affirm disordered personalities as part of normality, they betray those they say they love and imperil communities.

Adam Smith, grasping as clearly as anybody the nature of humans, told us to mind the “impartial spectator,” the fair-minded observer inside us whose perspective we use to evaluate our own behavior. Smith understood that people are naturally biased, emotional, self-interested, tribal, and vain. But we also have the capacity to step outside ourselves mentally and ask: “Would a reasonable outsider approve of what I’m doing?” We use this sense to judge others on the same terms. We do ourselves and others no good when we bury the impartial spectator. Indeed, we demagnetize our moral compass. We demoralize the self and find ourselves rationalizing deviance and perversion. The derangement and weaponization of sympathy follow.

Sympathy’s derangement and weaponization lie at the heart of the project of managed decline. Progressivism, the politics of corporate statism and transnationalization, and those of the resulting administered life, drive the project. Progressives replaced the American dream with a nightmare from which Americans need to be awakened. We don’t need a vast state that generalizes the principle of parens patriae. On the contrary, we need a small, less intrusive government that promotes liberty, families, and personal responsibility. To the extent that the state gets in the way of anything, it should only get in the way of those forces that threaten the American way of life. Democrats put big government in the way of freedom and self-actualization.

In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon!” House Democrat Ro Khanna took to the floor to call for term limits on Supreme Court justices and to immediately expand the Court from 9 to 13 justices. Democrats seek to thwart justice by packing the Court. (They have also suggested defunding the Supreme Court.) Democrats must believe their party will win the midterm elections and replace the executive branch with a Democratic Party-led administration. They may not have realized it, but they just gave Republicans another plank for their 2026 platform.

History buffs will remember that Franklin Roosevelt attempted to pack the Court in 1937. His Judicial Procedures Reform bill failed thanks to principled Democrats in the Senate. The JPR rejected Roosevelt’s plan by a 10-to-8 vote. Roosevelt’s scheme explicitly aimed to neutralize conservative opposition to his New Deal programs, i.e., the vast project to expand the administrative state (which, unfortunately, was largely successful in institutionalizing the corporate state). The proposal was an egregious violation of the separation of powers.

The reality is that no rights have been taken away from black people. The Democrats are telling an absurd lie. Every adult black man and woman who is a citizen and hasn’t committed a felony can register to vote and participate in our democracy. But Democrats don’t think in terms of individuals. They’re tribalists. They always have been. The same mentality that justified racial slavery and Jim Crow rationalizes organizing the vote by race. This style of identitarian politics has no place in a nation founded on personal liberty, where each citizen is equal before the law.

The Constitution is colorblind. It privileges no class of people. Has Khanna not read Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)? He should—and learn which side of history a moral person stands on. (See Justice Harlan’s Color-Blind Constitution and the Abolition of Racial Gerrymandering.) But he does not seem to be well-read. And he and his brethren are certainly bereft of principle.

Democrats were beside themselves when the Supreme Court overturned racial segregation in schools in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). It took the Civil Rights Act (1964) to put an end to the apartheid Harlan found so repugnant. Ro Khanna’s party filibustered the CRA in the Senate. Remember that? One of the filibusterers, a former Klan leader, Robert Byrd, Exalted Cyclops of the West Virginian Klavern, went on to become the Senate majority leader. No evil deed goes unrewarded in the Democratic Party.

Once more, the Supreme Court had to step in and stop the Democrats from obviating the foundation of the American Republic. Just like their party ancestors, Democrats see Louisiana v. Callais as a setback. Of course they do. Unprincipled partisan power drives the logic of their politics and policies. So does the paternalism that infantilizes black Americans (which I analyze in a forthcoming essay on this platform). Racial gerrymandering is the same genus of racism as affirmative action and DEI. Those days are over—if good and decent people have anything to say about it.

Democrats can dress their racism in any clothes they like, but the threads are always imaginary, and we can see nakedness. Mutual knowledge has removed the dark shroud of the Democratic Party’s ambitions of one-party rule. One of the greatest mistakes in the history of this nation is allowing Democrats to survive Reconstruction. They deserve the same treatment that the Nazi Party received in Germany after WWII. They should be thankful for the First Amendment they seek to limit and weaponize in a myriad of ways.

Zionism emerged in Europe in the nineteenth century as a response to widespread antisemitism and persecution of Jews. The goal of the movement was to secure the Jewish homeland. This led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, following the National Socialist attempt to exterminate the Jews in Europe. But Israel existed long before then. Jewish presence in the land that the Romans later called “Palestina” goes back more than 3,000 years. Zionism is, at its core, the fight for Israel as a Jewish state. The Arabs and Muslims have dozens of states. Jews have only one—and theirs is the oldest. It is also the best in the region.

Anti-Zionism is plainly an expression of antisemitism. It seeks not only to deny Jews their homeland but to deny Jewish existence as a people. This is the mission of Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations, many of which are funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The threat is not just to Jews. The threat is to Western civilization, which is grounded in Jewish law and sensibilities. Christians, whose origins lie in the Jewish faith, whose ethical system is based on that ancient religion, must be involved in the struggle against Israel and the West. Jews and Christians must be a united front against Islamism and the reactionary politics on the left and the right. Those Christians who turn their backs on Israel turn their back on their own culture and religion.

When people tell you that they are not antisemitic but anti-Zionist, they may be speaking from ignorance. However, what guides them to this denial is an ancient antipathy towards the Jews. This antipathy is amplified by the convergence of far-right ideology and Islamophilia on the left. Islamophilia is itself an expression of antisemitism. Third Worldism at the United Nations has infected that body with this ancient hatred. The threat Jews face has been continual for millennia, and today it is reaching yet another fever pitch.

Is it ever okay to criticize the Israeli government? Of course. All governments are subject to legitimate criticism. But opposition to Israeli efforts to secure their nation and to defend it against external and internal threats is never a valid criticism unless one regards antisemitism as a moral position. Opposition to the collective self-defense by the Jewish state is therefore straightforwardly antisemitic.

In the lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Justice John Marshall Harlan articulated one of the most enduring principles in American constitutional law: the color-blind ideal. “Our Constitution is color-blind,” Harlan wrote, “and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” He continued: “The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the constitutional amendments are involved.”

Readers of this platform know that I am a fan of Harlan’s dissent in Plessy. I have written about his opinion before the recent panic over the abolition of racial gerrymandering. There, I focused on affirmative action and the doctrine of diversity, inclusion, and equity (see Colorblindness and Blindness to Color; 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?). I also applied the facts of Plessy in critiquing the absurdities of transgenderism and transracialism (see The Strange Essentialisms of Identity Politics). I don’t agree with all of Harlan’s opinions, but there are a number of them I wholeheartedly agree with.

In addition to Plessy, the “Great Dissenter” disagreed with the Court’s decision declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, arguing that Congress had the authority to prevent private individuals from discriminating against black citizens. In Lochner v. New York, Harlan opposed the Court’s decision to strike down state economic regulations limiting labor hours, rejecting the use of “substantive due process” to invalidate worker protections. He also dissented in Downes v. Bidwell, arguing that the Constitution and Bill of Rights should fully apply to residents of newly acquired US territories.

Where I disagree with his judgment most stridently is in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which Harlan wrote the majority opinion upholding a state law mandating vaccinations during a public health outbreak. He argued that individual liberty is not absolute and that states may enforce reasonable health regulations to protect public safety. This decision was used later in Buck v. Bell, which upheld compulsory sterilization laws for people labeled “unfit.” That opinion was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and became infamous for the line, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Harlan was no longer alive when that decision was handed down, so I cannot say for sure he would have agreed. But he did establish the precedent that made the decision possible.

At any rate, in Plessy, Harlan rejected the notion that the state could impose racial classifications that divide citizens into separate legal or social categories, even under the guise of equality. Harlan got this one right. So should we; we should all reject this notion. The justice warned that such distinctions stamp one race with a “badge of inferiority” and arouse race hate by embedding racial consciousness into law. Today, Americans are rejecting racial classifications. And Southerners are leading the way.

The resistance to equality of suffrage is fierce. The resisters—the party of the Slavocracy and Jim Crow, and today the Administrative State, that is the Democratic Party—tell us that the color-blind idea is racist. Antiracism, they insist, requires subjecting the fate of individuals to racial classification. If the inversion sounds familiar, that’s because it is. We have heard such things before. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” That was the pigs’ slogan in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In his Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell suggested more: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.”

The principle of colorblindness, rooted in the Reconstruction Amendments and the ideal of equal citizenship, provides a powerful framework for critiquing modern racial gerrymandering—particularly the deliberate creation of majority-minority voting districts. When electoral maps are drawn to ensure that a racial or ethnic group constitutes a numerical majority in a district, the state engages in precisely the sort of racial classification Harlan condemned. It sorts citizens by skin color, assigns them to political categories, and allocates opportunities for representation on that basis. Far from transcending race, such practices institutionalize it as the central feature of the electoral process.

* * *

Harlan’s logic rests on a fundamental rejection of racial castes in civil and political life. We must pursue his logic. The Fourteenth Amendment, he argued, elevated all citizens to equal status before the law, erasing the legal relevance of prior servitude or racial origin in determining citizenship rights. Voting and fair representation are quintessential civil rights. To draw district lines so that one group is “packed” into majority-minority districts while others are dispersed is to treat voters not as individuals but as members of racial blocs whose interests are presumed to be monolithic and permanently divergent.

To accomplish this, the government must first identify citizens by race and hypostatize the resulting categories—an inherently divisive enterprise (not to mention fraught with imprecision)—then engineer boundaries to achieve racially predetermined outcomes. This process transforms elections from a contest of ideas and individual preferences into racial bean-counting. But this is not merely a fallacious enterprise. The racial bean-counting is about obtaining and perpetuating partisan political power. (See Democrats in Full Meltdown Over Tennessee’s Redistricting Law; The Project to Establish Voting Rights on Rational Grounds Thwarts Progressive Power Grab; Louisiana v. Callais and the Politics of Selective Collectivism.)

Such districts reinforce the very racial consciousness Harlan sought to eliminate. By implying that black voters need “black districts” to achieve effective representation, the practice suggests that cross-racial coalitions are insufficient and that political destiny is tethered to ancestry. It echoes the caste system Harlan opposed: separate political spheres for separate races. Traditional districting principles—compactness, contiguity, respect for political subdivisions, and communities of interest defined by shared economic or social concerns rather than skin color—are subordinated to racial quotas. The result is bizarrely shaped districts that prioritize race above all else, as the Supreme Court recognized in Shaw v. Reno (1993), when it subjected such plans to strict scrutiny.

Proponents of majority-minority districts argue that they remedy past discrimination and ensure minority voices are heard in a system historically dominated by majorities. Yet the color-blind principle, if integral, does not bend for remedial purposes. The Constitution, on his reading, forbids racial classifications in the allocation of civil rights regardless of the benevolent intent behind them. Moreover, we are first and foremost individuals.

Using race today to engineer outcomes risks entrenching the very thinking the Reconstruction Amendments aimed to eradicate. It tells citizens that the government views them primarily through a racial lens and that fair play requires perpetual racial balancing. This perpetuates division rather than fostering the common citizenship Harlan envisioned, in which “the humblest is the peer of the most powerful” without regard to color. But progressives want Americans to see the world through a racial lens. This is why they decry color-blindness as racist. They presume racism and then wield racism to right the wrong they presume.

Harlan did not deny the reality of historical injustice or racial prejudice. Nor do we. But like the justice, we believe that the proper constitutional response is to forbid the state from acting on race categories, not to embed them more deeply in law. A color-blind approach to redistricting prioritizes race-neutral criteria, allowing natural political coalitions to form across racial lines as individuals pursue shared interests. Representation then arises from voters choosing candidates in integrated electorates, not from government-engineered racial enclaves—or ethnic or religious enclaves, a real possibility if the indentitarian scheme established by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were generalized. I ask the reader to imagine Muslim-majority voting districts.

In an era still grappling with the legacy of race in American life, Harlan’s dissent offers a principled path forward. Southern dissent from the scheme of racial gerrymandering walks that principled path. Opposition to majority-minority districts doesn’t reflect indifference to minority participation; it reflects fidelity to the ideal of a Constitution that “neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”

By treating voters as individuals rather than racial representatives, we move closer to the color-blind republic Harlan defended—one in which political rights are secured without regard to race, and government draws maps for citizens, not for racial groups. We have already missed out on sixty years of progress in this regard. To be sure, we have made progress despite such practices, but not all the progress we could have made. We are now correcting a grave error we inherited from our recent ancestors by leaning into a constitutional principle established by our forefathers.

A Threads user recently noted that Michael Jackson nicked the moonwalk—and other moves—from Bob Fosse. A commenter responded by asking whether they also criticize Elvis for “stealing black music.” My reply: “Why are you racializing this?”

This is the progressive mind in action. It racializes everything, then either condemns or mocks whites for their cultural expressions. It is identitarian to the hilt—not identity in terms of civilization or national culture, but identity in tribal terms. Black Americans are part of our national culture. We are all citizens of this republic.

Rhythm and blues is not “black music.” It comes from a place, and that place is America. Elvis came from that place. So do I. The idea of “cultural appropriation” presupposes that culture belongs exclusively to a race or ethnicity. But no culture is exclusive. Since the dawn of man, cultural transmission has been one of the primary drivers of human progress—and, at times, regression.

Human populations adopt what works for them and discard what does not. When people are forced to embrace what works against them, they are diminished. This is true both of what emerges within a culture and what comes from outside it. But none of this applies cleanly to rhythm and blues, which is a distinctly American phenomenon. Rhythm and blues is for everybody.

Who invented the guitar? Europeans. Who invented the electric guitar? Americans. Who invented the string bass? Europeans. Who invented the electric bass guitar? Americans. Who invented the fiddle? Europeans. Who invented the bass drum pedal that organized the modern drum kit? Americans. The saxophone, the trumpet, and countless other instruments emerged from European civilization.

Yet nobody I know accuses black rhythm-and-blues musicians of “cultural appropriation” for using European inventions or for building music on the 12-tone scale. These inventions exist for the world to use. If someone can take them to a higher level, all the better.

No serious person argues that white people invented these things, and therefore they are “white” inventions that others should not touch. I am sure there are CRT professors somewhere making that argument, but they are not serious people.

The Poles wore plaited hair centuries ago. They were white. Ancient Egyptians wore dreadlocks. They were white (caucasian, at least). Why, then, are white people accused of “cultural appropriation” for wearing dreadlocks? Why did activists insist on laws protecting what they called “black hairstyles”?

The charge of “cultural appropriation” is ultimately a political weapon. Its purpose is to divide Americans along racial lines in pursuit of power. And it does not stop at culture. The idea that certain racial groups should have exclusive spaces—including race-based congressional districts—rests on the same logic of engineered racial division. It is time to move beyond that mentality.

People are pointing out Michael Jackson’s debt to Bob Fosse to recognize Fosse’s contributions to dance, not to diminish Jackson. And I’m sure Fosse borrowed from others as well. There is nothing wrong with that.

Not for themselves or their affluent friends, but for the rest of us, Democrats treat Americans—black and white—like second-class citizens in our own country. They do this in several ways, most obviously in the progressive projects to relegate white Americans to minority status through mass immigration and keep black Americans under the thumb of the welfare state and trapped in impoverished inner-city communities. Paternalism is inherent in progressive thinking, and they see Americans as children to be corralled and managed.

Former Chairman of the RNC (from 2009-2011), Michael Steele, now co-host of The Weeknight on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), and, embarrassingly, adopting the dialect of the black ghetto dweller appropriate to his new gig as token host, is threatening whites with the coming majority-minority America. White people will rue the day they ended racially gerrymandered districts, he more than suggested recently.

CNN’s Abby Phillip launched into a similar rant last night, declaring: “We are in the depths of Hell.” As I note in my X post, what Phillip is advocating is, at its core, racialist. I carefully say “racialist” and not “racist,” because racism requires an ideology rooted in the belief of racial superiority. If Phillip believes in black superiority, she hasn’t said so, so I will give her the benefit of the doubt. The point is that Phillip is not about voting as individuals, but as racial tribes. Blacks will lose their representatives when racial gerrymandering goes away, she claims.

What Phillip is advocating is racist. She is not talking about voting as individuals, but as racial tribes.

Blacks will lose their representatives when racial gerrymandering goes away, she claims. But removing majority-minority districts does not prevent individuals of any race…

— Andrew Austin (@andrewwaustin) May 9, 2026

Phillip’s argument only works if you accept the premise that voting should be organized around racial categories and not individual citizens. Removing majority-minority districts does not prevent individuals of any race from voting for the candidate of their choice. And that’s a problem for Democrats. The abolition of racial gerrymandering means that the citizens get to choose their representatives rather than the representatives choosing their citizens. This is the way it should be in a society founded on individualism and personal liberty. For Democrats, free elections threaten the Party’s hold on power. Moreover, in the long term, race-neutrality undermines the identitarianism that the Party has used for decades to isolate populations and make them dependent on welfare and racially-selective privileging.

One can see the problem of representatives choosing their constituency in the situation in West Tennessee, where racial gerrymandering has led to a white male Democrat being reelected numerous times by black constituents (see last week’s essay Democrats in Full Meltdown Over Tennessee’s Redistricting Law). Steve Cohen has held that seat for two decades. Charlotte Bergmann, a black Republican, ran against Cohen in 2024. Cohen received more than 70 percent of the vote. The arrangement Republicans just dissolved effectively prevented conservative black voters in that district from having a reasonable chance of electing a candidate reflecting their aspirations.

That’s the design of racial gerrymandering. Majority-minority districting is a strategy of control, not by the people, but by a political party that sees the world in terms of group power. This is a key feature of progressivism (not to be confused with liberalism). If progressivism were actually progressive, it would be at the forefront of eliminating racial tribalism. But progressivism is, in reality, a regressive ideology. Racial politics is atavistic. Bergmann is running again in 2026, and the new arrangement makes it more likely that she will prevail. This explains the cable news and social media meltdown: the competitiveness of race-neutral districting makes it difficult for Democrats to win. Race-neutral districts are more politically diverse, and that is not the diversity Democrats seek.

Phillip is obviously in the Democrat camp. Whatever his party affiliation is today (he claims he is still a Republican), Steele is the epitome of a RINO—that is, “Republican in name only.” RINOs are controlled opposition, loyal to the donor class and the establishment. The Republic is secondary for this class of politicians. It is thus noteworthy that Steele was defeated in his reelection as RNC chairman, not only for his public gaffes and controversial comments (for which he was notorious), but because many in the Republican Party were already moving away from the neoconservatism of the Bush era. The lack of enthusiasm for John McCain and Mitt Romney was an indication of this. The rise of the Tea Party also signalled the change. Steele was no longer useful. His reputation as a RINO and his loud criticism of Donald Trump, who took advantage of the split in Republican loyalities, made him the ideal (apparent) partisan for MSNBC, which put him on its payroll in 2025.

Steele is smart enough to know that ending race-based districts is not just for the sake of the colorblind principle at the heart of our civilization, which progressivism has corrupted with tribalism, but also for reclaiming our American Republic for our children. To achieve the ends that RINOs like Steele abhor, patriots must marginalize the Democratic Party. This may be our last shot to save the country. Steele is no patriot, and so he is useful to those forces seeking to bring down Trump (Phillip has always been useful in this way). Nominal Republicans like Steele are there to make millions believe that MAGA is a racist movement (fascist, as well) and to keep some Republicans in the fold. The trick isn’t working so well these days. As Steve Bannon of the War Room puts it: “the people have had a bellyful of it.”

* * *

Who are the first-class citizens in the eyes of Democrats? Progressive elites excepted, they aren’t even citizens. They’re black and brown foreigners—set against not only whites, but established minorities. The coming majority-minority America is not accidental. Demographic change is strategic. It is intentional. At the heart of the project is what is known as “managed decline.” Elites pursue the same agenda in Europe. As I have noted in previous essays, Third Worlders are colonizing the nations of the West. But they are not the only colonizers. Transnationalists have colonized our institutions, as well. Indeed, the barbarians would not be inside the gates if it were not for the transnationalists in our midst. We’ve been betrayed by our own people.

This is why images of our blue cities look like they were taken in Third World countries. Democrats don’t wait for Third Worlders to create these neglected and rundown conditions after arrival. They create those conditions and force black and white Americans left behind by globalization—which Democrats engineered—to live in them. Progressives and social democrats across the transatlantic space have prepared the conditions that foreigners are used to living in. At their invitation, Third Worlders flock there, reorganizing American and European cities by establishing ethnic enclaves and no-go zones. The Administrative State diverts our tax dollars to these enclaves by force and fraud and weaponizes empathy to subvert the national interest. Trump is undoing all this.

This is a grand strategy organized by the Democratic Party, obvious in its development and effect. Democrats make the new arrivals dependent on the government, just as they did to the black and brown Americans they’ve impoverished for decades. They do this so that they will become loyal to the Democratic Party. They get free health care, housing, and cash transfers. This is the paternalism I noted earlier. But progressives are not responsible parents. There is no demand to behave appropriately or fix the things their children break and neglect. Those who misbehave are not held to account. Instead, their behavior is excused by appeals to “root causes,” that is, the very conditions Democratic social policy has created. Progressives have destroyed the black family and cultivated a culture of disorder and violence. Woke judges release offenders from jail to prey upon the innocent. Why? “Racism.”

I am sure readers are familiar with Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, released in 1776, the same year American colonists declared their independence from the British monarchy. But seventeen years earlier, Smith wrote a lesser-known work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This book was his most important endeavor. There he writes, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” His point was that unchecked compassion for wrongdoers undermines justice and harms society. He argued that true justice sometimes requires severe punishment to prevent greater harm. He called for prioritizing comprehensive compassion for society over (misplaced) sympathy for the disordered. Why should there be mercy for the predator? What of his victim? Progressives have so demagnetized the moral compass of millions that now a large portion of the population sympathizes not with the victim, but with the victimizer.

This attitude is intrinsic to woke ideology. Progressives ally with the civilization destroyer and pit him against the creators and those whose labor makes better ideas a reality. Progressives manufacture instead docile and reactionary bodies—and import even more. The presence of such bodies is the fruit of their labors. Woke programmers disrupt the capacity of reason early on by teaching children that men can be women and that they must misgender those who demand affirmation for their delusion. They teach children to hate their nation by indoctrinating them with a revised history of America. They tell the white children under their command that they are privileged and owe non-whites an apology—and their future. Those who object are accused of bigotry and smeared with racial epithets.

* * *

Talking heads like Steele exist to manufacture the perception that level-headed Republicans agree with the warped worldview he promulgates. Steele and his ilk appeal to “moderation.” MAGA is extreme, the public is told, and good Americans reject extremism.

Remember the Arizona Senator and libertarian fundamentalist Barry Goldwater’s famous line, delivered in his 1964 Republican National Convention acceptance speech? “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!” The presidential hopeful followed that with this: “And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” The corporate media used those lines to manufacture a moral panic that helped Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society scheme ascend to power. But the people now see what that was all about. The worm is turning. The people have had a bellyful of it.

Bannon put the situation brilliantly on Saturday morning on the War Room: American citizens are in steerage on their own ship. I will add to Bannon’s metaphor that the ship’s captain is a transnationalist. Such a captain does not care about his passengers. And he cares only about his crew as long as they follow commands. Pursuing this metaphor to its necessary end, it’s time for mutiny. Our ship is headed for the rocks. Those who believe in the promise of America have to assume command of the vessel and right the ship. There is no room for moderation in this struggle. Republicans in the Southern states must be ruthless in their mapmaking. If this appears extreme, it is only because the extremism of those who have tribalized us, who have walked the nation well down the path to serfdom, has made ruthlessness necessary.

Democrats are in full meltdown over Tennessee’s new congressional map. Are they fomenting Summer of Love 2026? A color revolution just in time for the midterms? (See my earlier essays on the manipulation of electoral maps for partisan political power: The Project to Establish Voting Rights on Rational Grounds Thwarts Progressive Power Grab; Louisiana v. Callais and the Politics of Selective Collectivism.)

Under the old map, the ninth congressional district in Tennessee, which covers Memphis and the surrounding area, has given Steve Cohen, an old white male Democrat, twenty years in Congress. Because of redistricting, a black female Republican may be elected to the seat Cohen has held for far too long.

The public is told that the new map is racist. That it represents the return of the Confederacy. Predictable. But the reality is that competition has come to West Tennessee. This is happening in other areas across the South. For years, Republicans have largely controlled the South, and the party is ensuring that citizens in many of those states are even freer to vote for the political party of their choice.

Nothing prevents voters in the ninth district from voting for Steve Cohen or whoever represents the Democrats in and around Memphis in the future. No black person has lost the right to vote. But, for Democrats, that’s the problem. The party wants to guarantee a Democrat win. It doesn’t matter what color the candidates are. The only thing that matters is partisan political power. This is not about race, but party.

Democrats lost the South with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Southerners like small government. They like Republicans. Once Jim Crow was abolished, Southerners switched parties (they began shifting even before this). So Democrats weaponized electoral maps to retain a toehold in the South. They just lost that strategy. And that’s why they’re losing their mind.

There’s a principle here. We don’t reserve voting districts for Democrats or for ethnic and racial groups in America. Not anymore. At least not for many Southern states. The Voting Rights Act was, in principle, a bad idea. We’re now more than sixty years on from that moment. It’s time to leave tribalism behind.

During Reconstruction, black men were elected to public office at the local, state, and federal levels. There were no majority minority districts drawn to make that happen. Reconstruction was a regime established by the Republicans in the South to protect the rights of newly freed slaves. Redemption drove the Republicans out. Now the Party of Lincoln is back—this time by choice, not by force.

The public is also hearing an old argument again. Democrats are once more harping on the overrepresentation of the South in receiving federal spending, as if they owe the rest of America subservience to identity politics. They don’t want the public to know the reason for that overrepresentation. But here’s the reality: Roughly 55-60 percent of black Americans live in the South, concentrated in states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and urban areas throughout the region. Most blacks live in Democratic-controlled cities. In these cities, blacks have been ghettoized and made dependent on welfare.

This dependency allowed the Democrats to cultivate a voting bloc of Americans whose free food, housing, and medicine depended on the Democrats’ hold on power. Democrats have for decades kept a segment of the population that votes for a living rather than works for a living. Those made redundant by Democratic economic policy now have a chance to demand jobs and a higher standard of living. Blacks now have a real chance to pursue autonomy instead of dependency.

The Great Society created the conditions that destroyed the black family and cultivated a culture of disorder. They idled black Americans by pursuing globalization. Reversing the Democrat strategy will, in the long run, help black Americans break free of the chains progressives put on them, regaining their independence and dignity. But redistricting is not just a win for blacks. Redrawing maps in Tennessee and elsewhere creates the potential for all Southerners to liberate the region from administrative rule.