Year: 2025

The pioneering criminologist, Edwin Sutherland, introduced the field to the concept of white collar crime, challenging traditional notions that crime was primarily the domain of the poor. In expanding upon this work, criminologists (in particular Raymond Michalowski) developed the idea of analogous social injury, i.e., corporate and political behaviors that, while not always legally defined as crimes, carry harmful consequences paralleling those of conventional offenses. They involve the use of force and fraud in pursuit of material gain. 

In this way, the harmful practices of elites are normalized despite their detrimental effects on society; the actions of powerful political actors may not always result in criminal prosecution, yet they inflict harm comparable to crimes like assault, theft, and even murder—in many cases are precisely this in substance but are not recognized as such in the criminal law. Similarly, political corruption, such as bribery, or the undue influence of corporate money in elections through campaign finance, operates in legally gray areas that nonetheless erodes democratic integrity just as surely as outright election fraud.

The normalization of these behaviors, as well as the organized concealment of them, illustrate how power structures shape legal definitions of crime, shielding elite offenders while criminalizing marginalized or oppositional groups for lesser offenses. By examining corporate and political actions through the lens of analogous social injury, we can thus better understand how systemic harms persist and why legal frameworks fail to hold the most powerful actors accountable.

The present obsession with Ukraine provides a ready example with which to interrogate this question. So does the organized resistance to auditing the federal government by Democrats, unions, and progressive courts, a large-scale project currently being carrying out by the Trump presidency and DOGE, an auditing service headed by Elon Musk.

There is a deep motive behind the defense of US involvement in Ukraine by Democrats and RINOs, those Republicans who remain captured by globalization, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism (i.e., Cold War progressivism). One could see the motive in December 2019, when Trump, the chief magistrate of the federal government, was impeached for trying to get to the bottom of the Biden crime family and its association with Ukrainian oligarchs (see The Urgent Necessity of Purging the Government of Deep State Actors and Warmongers with links embedded to previous essays covering this topic in depth).

The impeachment was designed to obscure the graft of former vice-president Joe Biden and his bagman Hunter Biden, whom, as president, Biden pardoned for all crimes Hunter committed between 2014 and 2024—along with several other Biden family members. Democrats were desperate to cover up graft in Ukraine because it could lead to all their other schemes, so they portrayed Trump’s actions as illegal, when in fact he was honoring his duty to expose crime and corruption in our politics. 

Hiding graft is the same motive that causes the corporate state to organize a color revolution not only abroad, but at home, as well as bureaucratic and judicial resistance to Trump and DOGE’s audit of government agencies (see The Sinister Plans Behind Auditing the Federal Government; Victims of Their Own Design: DOGE and Progressive Panic; There Will Be Pain: The Deconstruction of the Administrative State is Here). Have readers ever wonder why members of Congress, despite earning a $174 thousand dollar salaries, are worth millions of dollars? They cannot openly take money from the taxpayer or oligarchs, so they have created a system of graft that launders the money they use to enrich themselves and families.

One graft strategy Democrats use is to set up non-governmental organizations (NGOs), pass laws that appropriate money to agencies and departments that interlock with those NGOs, and then depend on ideologically-captured federal bureaucrats in those agencies—politically aligned with big corporate and progressive interests—to push out those appropriations to the NGOs, which in turn enrich those politicians and their families, whose members are in senior positions in these organizations. This is why it is so important to deconstruct the administrative state (see Federal Employee Unions and the Entrenchment of Technocracy).

This scheme represents a vast money laundering operation leveraging the administrative state to direct dollars into their bank accounts. The scheme operates on a planetary scale. It’s why Democrats and RINOs push free trade and globalization: it opens the world up to graft networks. It’s why they oppose tariffs, which, as an external source of revenues, cuts into the graft (I will be publishing an essay very soon on tariffs). They push instead for internal taxation (income taxes, inheritance taxes, property taxes, sales taxes), i.e., soaking the American worker instead of taxing foreign companies. They do this because internal taxation diverts through obscured circuits the revenue stream that returns to them via the transnational system of corruption.

Ukraine is one of the most sought-after nations because it is one of, if not the most corrupt nation on the planet. This is why Biden arranged for Hunter to sit on the board of Burisma, a large energy-focused holding company in Ukraine. This is why, when he was vice-president, Biden threatened to withhold billions from the Ukraine government if they did not fire a prosecutor who was looking into this arrangement. (see The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President; I Told You Joe Biden is Corrupt and Compromised.)

Over the past two decades, corruption has remained one of Ukraine’s most pressing challenges. This is on purpose. Corruption in Ukraine is desired. Corruption is deeply embedded in its economic, judicial, and political institutions. This is not a bug but a feature. However, while Ukraine is marked by particularly egregious cases of political graft and oligarchic control, it is important to recognize that corruption is not unique to Ukraine—many developed nations grapple with systemic corruption. The United States is one of them. The party of corruption is the Democratic Party.

Because of the hysterical desire on the part of Democrats and RINOS—and their European counterparts—to continue hurling Ukrainian bodies at the Russian front (there is another motivation in all this), I focus on the relation between Ukraine and the West. What millions of well-intentioned people have come to see as a noble cause in Ukraine, represents unwitting support for corruption on a global scale. I will at the end of this essay explain how so many millions can be deceived in this way. 

The modern era of Ukrainian corruption gained global attention following the 2004 Orange Revolution, which was driven by widespread election fraud. Hopes were high that the new leadership under Viktor Yushchenko would dismantle entrenched corrupt networks. That’s what they were told. But the situation worsened under President Yanukovych (serving from 2010–2014), whose administration became infamous for kleptocracy. His extravagant estate, Mezhyhirya, symbolized government excess and the unchecked power of oligarchs who manipulated policy for personal enrichment. This widespread corruption fueled public outrage, culminating in the 2014 Euromaidan protests and Yanukovych’s eventual ousting.

I have written about how the 2014 overthrow of the democratically elected government in Ukraine was orchestrated by the United States (History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War). In the years that followed, anti-corruption efforts intensified, with the establishment of independent anti-corruption agencies and increased public scrutiny. However, these institutions continued to face political pressure, and enforcement has been inconsistent, to say the least—indeed, more performative than substantive, as corruption is woven into the warp and woof of Ukrainian society, again, which explains why Democrats and RINOs and their European counterparts are so eager to incorporate Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence. 

Western nations, despite their apparently strong legal frameworks, contend with their own forms of corruption, including corporate fraud, financial crimes, lobbying influence, and regulatory capture. The 2008 financial crisis exposed massive corporate misconduct in the US and Europe, yet few executives were held accountable; meanwhile, the crisis was exploited to shift billions of dollars to people in need to the rich and powerful. Political lobbying, while legal, results in policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the public interest. Scandals involving conflicts of interest, money laundering, and tax evasion routinely emerge in Western democracies, proving that corruption is a global issue, not just a Ukrainian one. Democrats and RINOS have effectively legalized corruption and normalized pathological relations—and the system is transnational. 

While the Ukrainians continue to struggle with corruption, their challenges should not be viewed in isolation. The focus on Ukraine and its noble structure is deliberate, meant to distract attention from what that conflict is truly about: perpetrating the system of corruption, as well as feeding the ravenous maw of the war machine. Recognizing this broader context helps observers avoid overly simplistic comparison between Ukraine and Western nations, allowing for a more nuanced discussion of systemic corruption worldwide. Indeed, it explains the situation in Ukraine. 

Knowing this, how do we address the problem? We must vote against corrupt politicians and deconstruct the administrative state that enables the graft. To do this we must expose them. We have to deconstruct their tactic of virtue signaling and stand up to their fear mongering. That is the work of Freedom and Reason. I am not alone in this work. On the positive side, we must return to the American system, the system of external revenue generation and protection of domestic industry and the working class, as well as end entanglements with foreign nations. Again, this is the subject of a forthcoming essay, so stay tuned. It will suffice to say here, that the Trump agenda is the right one if we are to dismantle the global system of corruption that is breaking the United States of America.

Federal employee unions and the administrative state present a fundamental challenge to democratic governance. Federal courts have joined them to thwart the will of the people by preventing elected government from shrinking the size, scope, and influence of an intrusive bureaucracy. If left unchecked, this trend threatens the integrity of our democratic republic by entrenching a technocratic elite unaccountable to the electorate.

One need only look at the military to understand why unionization within government structures presents a conflict of interest. The military operates under a strict hierarchy that demands discipline, obedience, and readiness for national defense. This hierarchy falls under civilian command, with the President of the United States serving as the commander in chief. Unionizing the military would create conflicts between command structures and service members, undermining cohesion, military effectiveness, and operational security. Imagine a scenario in which a commander issues an order, only for soldiers to refuse, citing a labor dispute. The consequences of such an event on national security would be catastrophic. For this reason, laws such as 10 USC § 976 explicitly prohibit military unions to maintain order, prevent disruptions, and ensure that command decisions remain free from labor negotiations.

Yet, at both the state and federal levels, unions within government agencies wield enormous political power, shaping policies in ways that often contradict the public interest. Correctional workers, for example, are permitted to unionize and, as a result, exert significant influence over criminal justice policies. These unions lobby for laws that maintain or expand prison populations because their job security and funding depend on incarceration rates. They have opposed sentencing reductions, parole expansions, and decriminalization efforts, instead advocating for “tough-on-crime” policies, such as mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws. These measures contribute directly to mass incarceration, often at the expense of broader societal efforts to implement rehabilitative and community-based alternatives.

The ability of correctional unions to shape legislation that benefits their own job security, even when it contradicts public policy goals, raises a broader question: should government employees be allowed to form unions that can actively obstruct the will of elected officials? If the military is prohibited from unionizing due to concerns over national security and hierarchical integrity, why should other government institutions—many of which hold immense power over public policy—be granted such influence? To be sure, government workers have a first amendment right to advocate for such things as cannabis prohibition, but what right to they have to carry out their own agendas when in the service of the American taxpayer? If you cite associational rights, then why can’t service members unionize?

The problem is not confined to correctional facilities. Across federal agencies, entrenched bureaucrats have developed mechanisms to resist the agendas of elected leadership. These agencies have been effectively colonized by ideologically aligned career employees who use their unions and the courts to shield themselves from oversight. When elected officials attempt to implement reforms that challenge the entrenched bureaucracy, these unions mobilize to sue the government, leveraging judicial intervention to block change. The result is a system where unelected officials subvert the policies of duly elected representatives, undermining democratic accountability.

The consequences of this dynamic are particularly evident in many of our cities, where progressive policies have led to widespread dependency and social disorder. Welfare dependency, idleness, and broken families have become endemic, exacerbated by policies crafted by federal agencies that, past and present, prioritize government intervention over personal responsibility and community-based solutions. These agencies, often working in tandem with public-sector unions, assert independence from elected officials and use legal challenges to resist reforms, further entrenching the administrative state. How can the American people put an end to government paternalism if the bureaucrats are going to continue the status quo?

In recognizing this problem, one must distinguish between private sector unions and public sector unions. While private sector unions operate within the constraints of market forces and collective bargaining with employers, public sector unions negotiate with the government—securing benefits at taxpayer expense while reinforcing the power of unelected bureaucrats advancing a progressive political ideology. The rapid decline of private sector union membership contrasts sharply with the expansion of public sector unions, highlighting a shift where the bureaucratic state now holds greater power over the working class rather than serving it. It’s almost as if growth in one is associated with decline in the other. Does that have anything to do with the decades long war corporate state war on labor?

This bureaucratic apparatus, deeply embedded in government institutions, has become a vehicle for corporate statism and transnationalism, advancing policies such as offshoring and open borders. These institutions socialize future generations into accepting a system that prioritizes bureaucratic governance over democratic republicanism. As this structure strengthens, it increasingly repels efforts by the electorate to reclaim control over their government. It is “we the people,” right?

We are not yet in a position where elections are mere formalities, as was the case in the Soviet Union, but we are moving in that direction, despite the tremendous victory popular forces secured on November 5, 2024. The growing power of the unelected bureaucracy, insulated by unions and protected by the courts, represents an intermediate stage in this transformation. The progressive left speaks frequently of “democracy,” but what they truly advocate is technocracy—government by bureaucrats who share their ideological commitments. When the electorate chooses leaders with whom they disagree, they resort to mass protests and legal obstruction, leveraging their control over the administrative state to resist change.

The American people must recognize that the struggle to reclaim their government is not only a battle against bureaucrats working at cross-purposes with elective officials, but a counterrevolutionary struggle against the imposition of a revolution-from-above, driven by corporate and bureaucratic interests. The administrative state and technocratic elite have become the primary instruments through which corporate power has eroded the republican system envisioned by the Founders. If we fail to confront this reality, we risk losing our democratic republic altogether. 

* * *

Update (March 4): After publishing this essay I remembered that Franklin D. Roosevelt, while generally supportive of labor unions in the private sector, was opposed to collective bargaining and strikes by federal employees. In a 1937 letter to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), FDR made it clear that while he believed government workers had the right to join employee associations and advocate for better working conditions, they should not have the right to bargain collectively or strike.

His reasoning was that public service is fundamentally different from private industry because government employees work for the people, not private employers. Public worker are accountable to the public. He argued that allowing federal workers to negotiate wages and conditions in the same way as private-sector unions could interfere with government functions and the interests of taxpayers. The logic of his argument follows from the argument against unions in the military.

Federal employees should still have the right to join associations to present their views to the government, he argued. However, FDR had strong views on federal employment and job protections, which are relevant to modern debates about shrinking the size of government. While he supported fair treatment and merit-based hiring for federal workers, he also believed that government jobs existed to serve the public interest, not as a guaranteed right for employees. 

Roosevelt was a strong supporter of the civil service system, which ensured government jobs were awarded based on merit rather than political loyalty. He expanded civil service protections to prevent political corruption, but he did not believe in absolute job security for federal workers. Government jobs could not be permanent entitlements. This is a crucial point, and FDR made it clear in his letter: that the public service existed to benefit the public, not the employees themselves. This strongly suggests he would not have supported rigid job protections that prevented a president from restructuring or reducing the government workforce if it was deemed necessary for efficiency. If he did, then he would contradict the logic of his argument.

While FDR supported worker protections against political retaliation or unfair treatment, he also recognized the need for flexibility in managing the federal workforce. During his presidency, he expanded agencies, but he did not advocate for indefinite job security—only fair treatment under civil service rules. Given this, it is unlikely he would have supported court interventions blocking a president’s ability to reduce the size of government through workforce reductions. His approach suggests he would have expected federal employees to accept reductions if they were made for legitimate governmental purposes.

Today, federal employee unions often argue that reductions in workforce violate civil service rules or labor agreements, leading to legal challenges. However, under current law, the president does have authority to reduce federal employment levels, though it must be done within civil service protections (e.g., through buyouts, early retirements, or reductions in force (RIFs)).

On March 20, 2003, George Bush and Dick Cheney, on the basis of known lies, invaded Iraq, killed and injured scores of people, and left a country wrecked. Since that date, the US has spent more than six trillion dollars on the “War on Terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria.

A few days before the invasion, on March 4, in a talk titled “Bush’s Dream of a Democratic Middle-East,” delivered before a sizable crowd in the student union at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay—the Plea for Peace teach-in, the progressive students who organized the event called it—I received rousing support from those opposed to war. I told them what the impending war was about. I believed they understood. I now have doubts.

There were conservatives in the audience who thought otherwise, and the College Republicans launched a harassment campaign against me, which included, among other things, the sharing of recordings, either from my talk or from classroom lectures, on right-wing media. The campaign was an attempt to delegitimize an untenured professor with whom they disagreed. Faculty rallied around me and I was awarded tenure two years late.

The night before the invasion, a group of us held a candlelight vigil in the park at the corner of East Mason and Webster Ave here in Green Bay. My eldest son was there, eight years old at the time, wearing his white nightdress (very Swedish) and holding a candle. The next day, he same into the living room and saw the bombs dropping on Baghdad. “Shock and awe,” they called it. He asked me what was happening. I told him. He said, “But I thought we held a candlelight vigil to stop that.” Fighting back tears, I told him a hard truth about the world: warmongers don’t listen to peacemakers.

Here we are twenty-two years later and the warmongers are still at it. And the thing about this reality that’s so striking to me is that those professing the same beliefs as the progressive students who applauded my talk at the teach-in are reacting to Trump and Vance in the same way the conservatives reacted to me when I exposed the forces pushing a nation into war—the desire for a new world order and to feed the war machine with bodies of men, women, and children.

I have watched the progressive movement that called Bush “Hitler” melting as the Obamas embraces that warmonger, now a cute ruddy-cheeked little man who crudely paints landscapes and can’t figure out how to don a plastic disposable raincoat. I watched on a few months ago as they shared videos of Dick Cheney embracing Kamala Harris and his daughter Liz stumping for the Democrat candidate. This is why we need Harris for president, they said.

My principles are the same. I haven’t wavered from my opposition to the Iraq War (either of them), or the PATRIOT Act, or Barack Obama’s drone bombing of civilians, or Hillary Clinton masterminding of the torture murder of Muammar Gaddafi that turned Libya into an open air slave market. I hate war. I hate globalism. What happened to those progressives of 2003? In the 1990s they were violently protesting globalization. Where did those people go?

This is why I have always had an uneasy feeling about progressivism. After all, it was Cold War progressivism that took us into Vietnam and, rebranded as neoconservatism, took us into Iraq. It’s the Party of War. All that “Bush is Hitler” jazz was really about partisan party loyalty. Bush was a Republican, therefore bad. Cheney was “Dr. Evil” until Democrats re-embraced neoconservatism. Cold War progressivism has come home (it came home a long time ago). And, so, Donald Trump is “Hitler” because he opposes neoconservatism and seeks peace instead of war. Today, progressives are praising those who sabotaged Trump’s meeting with Zelensky. They are celebrating the European elites who double down on war.

This is the difference between principled politics and partisan commitments. The former navigates using an enlightened moral compass. A man may be wrong from time to time, but he will course correct and get back on the righteous path. The latter standpoint is amoral. It’s all partisan politics. All the time. This is why it moves from this to that on command. There is no core belief, only following. This is how you can see people who profess the antiwar sentiment within a generation monger for war. You’ve heard it, “Blue no matter who.” That’s the attitude that allows the power elite to lead good people like pigs with nose rings into war. They have emptied the vessels to fill them with just-in-time propaganda.

I just watched video of a march in Beverly Hills. It was thousands strong. The protest line was festooned in yellow and blue. But they weren’t marching for peace. I remember when folks marched for peace. Now the very people who drew inspiration from those images of young American protesting the Vietnam war, who pined for a humanitarian moment of their own, are marching for war. I brought my son to a park to plea for peace. They bring their sons to the streets to march for war.

All this confirms what I have been saying for years. But it still breaks my heart. And it troubles me greatly to think about what this reality brings to the world we are making. Character of this type can never truly choose the right path. It only follows the Party into collective madness.

Such displays are those of Orwellian nightmares. Remember that line from Nineteen Eighty-Four: “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia?” The people of Oceania believed that because the Party told them to believe it. Winston Smith knew that Oceania had only recently been in alliance with Eurasia. He suffered terribly for doubting the Party. He could never bring himself to believe that “2+2=5.” I don’t want to believe Winston did that. I always regarded his final act of conversion to be an exercise of bad faith. The Party broke him.

A progressive might object, “We are not a monolithic bunch!” Perhaps. Here and there, sure. But I don’t see progressives standing with Trump and Vance and their plea for peace. If they are, where are they? Why don’t they speak up? What I am seeing across social media instead are progressives gleefully hoping that Xi Jinping brokers a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine and wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Because then Trump won’t.

“A common criticism of Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous Friday performance in the Oval Office is that he failed to read the room,” notes Michael Goodman in Saturday’s The New York Post. “Actually, the Ukrainian president did read a room—but it was the wrong room.” Indeed. “Before meeting Trump,” Goodwin writes, “Zelensky met with anti-Trump Democrats who advised him to reject the terms of the mineral deal the president was offering, according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).”

Goodwin quotes Murphy: “Just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington. He confirmed that the Ukrainian people will not support a fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements for Ukraine.” But the warmongers in Washington are not the only one desperate to prevent peace. “Unfortunately for [Zelensky], there is an audience egging him on. Beyond Washington Dems, the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, wrote on social media that ‘the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge. We stand by Ukraine.’”

Goodwin ends his essay with the matter succinctly put: “Sure, Europe stands by Ukraine—and will continue to stand by as it gets carved up by Putin’s war machine.”

Here’s Goodwin’s piece: “Disaster in the Oval Office: Dems lead Zelensky, Ukraine off a cliff with pressure to reject mineral deal.” You should read it. Goodman knows what’s going on. He gets it. I watched this unfold in real time. You could see it coming days weeks ago (see Vance and Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference). Zelensky was sent to the Oval Office by neoconservatives to reject Trump’s deal. Why? To keep the conflict going to generate more profits for defense contractors and continue the project to break the will of nations who remain aloof from transnational vision of a one world corporate state.

Remember when the warmongers sent UK prime minister Boris Johnson to Ukraine to scuttle the peace deal being negotiated by Zelensky and Russia? In April 2022, Johnson played a key role in scuttling a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. During a visit to Kyiv, Johnson urged Zelensky to reject any agreement, promising him that the West would provide military support instead (this was during the Istanbul peace talks). After Johnson’s visit, the negotiations collapsed, and the war escalated. Who sent Johnson on this mission? The transnationalists with the military-industrial complex with NATO wrapped around them.

The warmongers in Congress did the same thing, February 28, 2025. The Europeans and American neoconservatives will do whatever they can to keep the war going. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions more will die, but that’s not important to the transnationalists and the military-industrial complex. A one-world corporate state is the end they seek. Millions of lives are worth this end to these psychopaths. 

All these progressives with Ukrainian flags in their profiles and their posts attacking Trump and Vance for seeking peace in Eastern Europe—they stand with the War Pigs. Like those robots in that old Fleischer Superman cartoon, the signal goes out from the villainous mastermind, their antennae sparkle, and they turn zombie-like from one thing to the next. Masks. Vaccines. Black Lives Matter. Trans rights. Palestine. Ukraine. And continually: Trump is a Nazi. Musk is a Nazi. Rinse and repeat—the brainwashing cycle. 

Have you even seen that cartoon? The Mechanical Monsters (1941). In the flick, the villainous mastermind creates a fleet of towering, humanoid robots to carry out daring heists across the city. The villain controls the monsters remotely from his secret laboratory, allowing him to rob banks and jewelry stores without ever leaving his lair. At one point, the villain sends out a command signal, and the antennae on the robots’ heads begin to spark and flicker as they receive his orders. In perfect synchronization, they march into action, crashing through buildings and vaults to seize piles of loot. Smash and grab in Art Deco. Only Superman can stop them.

Remember MK-ULTRA? The Cold War CIA mind-control project? The project’s primary goal was to develop methods of controlling human behavior. The CIA funded programs overseen by Sidney Gottlieb (hired by Allen Dulles, director of the CIA—mastermind of Bay of Pigs and controlled the Warren Commission in the wake of JFK’s assassination). MK-ULTRA conducted experiments on people in collaboration with hospitals, research institutions, and universities. One of the goals was creating individuals who could be remotely controlled, akin to “zombies.” Experiments aimed to alter or erase memories, implant false information, and create individuals who could be programmed to perform tasks without conscious awareness. Due to its secretive nature, participants were unaware they were subjects of government experimentation.

Just saying. (Look up Operation Mockingbird.)

For those who aren’t zombies, ask yourselves why are you supporting Ukraine? I told readers of this blog a few days after the conflict started who these people are and the goals of NATO and the US deep state in regime change and provoking war with Russia (History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War). This is neoconservative warmongering (i.e., Cold War progressivism), which has a long history of working with rightwing authoritarian elements around the world (see, also War Hawks and the Ugly American: The Origins of Bush’s Middle East Policy). Russians are right to look at history and wonder why the West is so obsessed with their country. Americans would do well to ask themselves the same question. 

During the Great Northern War, King Charles XII of Sweden invaded Russia. He was decisively defeated at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. After Charles was defeated at Poltava, he fled to the Ottoman Empire where he tried to persuade the Ottomans to declare war on Russia. He was rebuffed. (Rumor has it that Chuck was fragged at siege of Fredriksten Fortress there in Halden, Norway.) But that’s not the end of the West’s obsession with Russia. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia during the Patriotic War, suffering a catastrophic defeat in the end, presaged by his pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Borodino (Moscow) in 1812. Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire invaded Crimea during the Crimean War against the Russian Empire (1853–1856). During World War I, Germany invaded the Russian Empire and occupied significant territory in the west. Britain, France, the United States, Japan, and other countries intervened in the Russian Civil War, supporting counterrevolutionary forces (1918–1922). Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the largest invasion of Russia in history, but was ultimately defeated by the Soviet Union in 1945. 

And now Ukraine—a proxy for war on Russia. The West wanted this war. Obama and Biden and NATO countries created the context and provoked Russia by pushing NATO ever eastward, betraying guarantees the West made to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Neo-Nazis, with the help of the CIA, harassed Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas. When Putin told you there were Nazis, he wasn’t lying. In 2014, the USA overthrew the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. The American taxpayer spent billions of dollars on the project—not just the CIA, but USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. The US installed a puppet government, handpicked by the neoconservatives in the White House. 

“Under Obama and Biden? What? That didn’t happen!” Yes, it did. Neoconservatism originates in the Democratic Party. You didn’t know that? Ever hear of Scoop Jackson? Ever hear of Victoria Nuland? No? You should investigate things. Or do people even bother to study history to find out whether a Ukrainian flag in their social media profile is the right symbol with which to virtue signal? Monkey see monkey do? It’s zombie politics (see Zombie Politics: the Corporatist Ideology of Antiracism). 

I’d suggest the pro-Ukraine progressives with their blue and yellow flags go throw their own bodies at the Russians on Ukraine’s front lines, but I think walking back WWIII is probably the better option. That’s what Trump and Vance are trying to do: prevent WWIII. Whether they know it or not, those who make this about either supporting Ukraine or being a Putin puppet want war. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a big part of the driver. 

There’s another option—and it’s the best option: secure a peace treaty that makes concessions to Russia and provides security guarantees with Ukraine in exchange for mineral rights that allow us to get back all the billions our psychopathic overlords spent on this folly. Make Ukraine and the Europeans pay for it. Either that or quit the damn thing and watch Russia steamroll Ukraine. The question reasonable people must ask themselves after confronting the truth (if they can even admit it afterwards) is which of the beds they made for themselves are the softest to lie down in. Do they really want to keep feeding Ukrainians to the war machine? Let me put this another way: do they have a conscience? Or are they like the psychopaths driving this conflict?

Seeing so many Americans choose Ukraine over America and peace disgusts me, frankly. These are the same people who run down America all day long. You’ve seen it. They’re constantly self-flagellating: “We’re white supremacists!” “We’re colonialists!” “We’re imperialists!” “Trump’s a fascist!” Is Trump invading Russia? Does he desire to continue exploiting Ukraine as a proxy to make war with Russia? Or is he trying to make peace? Fascist? Really?

The image of the Ukraine soldier is not an incidental hand gesture. And there’s plenty more helmets (and tattoos and insignia) where that one comes from. (Look up Azov Battalion while you’re looking into it.) That those who decry fascism resemble the fascists they decry is a feature of the zombie politics that have infected so many American and European brains. 

An official language? “That’s not inclusive! That’s ‘language as oppression.’ It’s ‘linguistic white supremacy!’” No, it’s maximally inclusive—and it’s not racist at all. A common language fosters inclusivity by ensuring that everyone can communicate effectively, sharing the same meanings and usages to convey thoughts with accuracy and precision. Don’t know English? Want to live in America? Learn English.

There is nothing unusual about a nation having an official language. Does Sweden have an official language? Yes, it does—Swedish. Norway? Norwegian. Denmark? Danish. France? French. Germany? German. These and many other nations have official languages. Ukraine? Ukrainian. Moreover, approximately thirty American states already recognize English as their official language. Now, it will be all fifty states. Today, President Donald Trump signed an executive order making English the official language of the Untied States.

Having an official language will aid in the necessary process of assimilating foreign populations into American culture and law, which is rooted in English common law. Assimilation or integration—same thing—is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. It sustains the shared attitudes and values necessary for maintaining the legal and normative framework that defines the American Republic and the American Creed.

Cultural pluralism, today known as “multiculturalism,” has always been a bad idea. However, because multiculturalists have gained control of our sense-making institutions, generations have been indoctrinated to believe that assimilation is nativist (as if this were inherently bad) and racist. Racist? We are a multiracial country with a colorblind Constitution. Moreover, race is not culture. To think otherwise is racist—it assumes that culture is a product of race, a biological construct.

This morning, I reviewed statements from writing departments across America’s university system. These statements are truly bizarre. I knew the situation was bad, but I did not realize the full extent of it. Writing departments have been overtaken by the crackpot ideas found in the work of identitarian demagogues such as Ibram X. Kendi. MSU Denver, decrying “linguistic white supremacy,” calls on its faculty to “reject standard American English.” The University of Maryland declares, “Discriminatory and Unconstitutional: English Only in US.”

Over on X, many people were shocked to learn that English is not the official language of the nation. They simply assumed it was. Now, it will be. Will progressive groups sue the administration to try and stop this? Probably. That will be interesting to see—and revealing.

We are only a little over a month into Trump’s common-sense presidency, and the multiculturalists and progressive ideologues are panicking because American orthodoxy is being pressed into the institutions they thought they had permanently captured. This is what populist-nationalism looks like. If you follow the best polls, you must know that this movement is here to stay.

Rasmussen reports today that more Americans approve of the job Trump is doing than don’t (Trump is holding at 50 percent). As seen in the Harvard poll shared in a recent essay on Freedom and Reason, large majorities support the President’s agenda. The polls used by legacy media are biased, but most Americans have grown wise to the deception. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for some others.

I am seeing on legacy and social media hysteria being whipped up about Trump assuming dictatorial powers in the United States and establishing a totalitarian fascist state. I don’t see it I see the opposite), but supposing this was his ambition, could fascism happen here in America? 

First, here’s an example of the hysteria:

Jeff Jarvis, a professor at Stony Brook University just said on CNN that we are in the "middle of a totalitarian fascist coup."

The left just gets crazier by the minute. pic.twitter.com/oRZhlZsHrb

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) February 27, 2025

In both Italy and Germany’s parliamentary systems during the rise of fascism, the head of government (Prime Minister in Italy, Chancellor in Germany) could not unilaterally dissolve parliament. However, the structure of these systems allowed leaders like Mussolini and Hitler to consolidate power and effectively control the dissolution process. Once Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister in 1922, through the Acerbo Law (1923) and later changes, he manipulated elections to ensure his Fascist Party dominated parliament. By 1925, Mussolini had effectively sidelined the legislature, making it a rubber-stamp body for his dictatorship. In Weimar Germany, the Chancellor did not have the direct power to dissolve the parliament. However, under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, the President (Paul von Hindenburg at the time) had the authority to rule by emergency decree and dissolve the parliament. Article 48 was exploited by Hitler after he was appointed Chancellor in 1933 to establish a totalitarian state. 

The US system does not allow the President to dissolve Congress. Even in emergencies, the President cannot bypass or dismiss the legislative branch, ensuring that executive power remains checked. Indeed, the structure of the US government, rooted in the Constitution, federalism, and the separation of powers, offers several protective mechanisms against the rise of fascism or authoritarian rule. These safeguards prevent the centralization of power in a single leader, and make it difficult for one party to establish hegemony over the nation, helping ensure that democratic institutions remain resilient even in times of crisis.

Unlike Italy and Germany, where parliamentary systems allowed authoritarian leaders to consolidate power quickly, the US government distributes authority among three coequal branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. Each branch can check the actions of the others, making it difficult for any one branch to dominate. Congress, particularly the Senate, can act as a roadblock against executive overreach, and the judiciary serves as a check on unconstitutional actions, preserving democratic republican governance. Moreover, the US benefits from a fixed presidential term system, which prevents indefinite rule by one leader. Unlike parliamentary systems where governments can fall and be replaced rapidly, US presidents serve fixed four-year terms, ensuring stability and regular electoral transitions.

The Bill of Rights safeguards individual liberties, including freedom of speech, press, and assembly—rights, albeit much less robust in Italy and Germany than in the United States, that those authoritarian regimes quickly suppressed. A strong, independent judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, ensures that these rights are upheld against government overreach. Federalism further reinforces these protections by decentralizing power between the national and state governments. This division makes it more difficult for an authoritarian movement to take full control, as states maintain legal and political authority separate from the federal government. Elections, law enforcement, and policy implementation are largely handled at the state level, creating multiple layers of governance that prevent rapid, sweeping changes to the system. Moreover, the military’s subordination to civilian leadership also serves as a crucial barrier to authoritarianism. The US Constitution ensures that the armed forces remain under civilian control, reducing the risk of military-backed takeovers.

Thus, unlike the fragile democracies of interwar period Italy and Germany, the US benefits from long-established democratic-republican traditions and an active civil society. So, while no system is entirely immune to political extremism, the US Constitution and governmental framework make an authoritarian takeover significantly more difficult.

However, totalitarianism can be achieved another way, and this is the way Trump’s actions are circumventing—just in the nick of time. I have written before about Sheldon Wolin and his concept of “inverted totalitarianism,” which contrasts with classical totalitarianism as seen in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Instead of a single leader or party openly seizing absolute power, Wolin argues inverted totalitarianism emerges more subtly within democratic structures, where bureaucratic and corporate interests dominate governance without direct oppression.

One of the key mechanisms of inverted totalitarianism is the administrative state—a sprawling, unelected bureaucracy that controls much of the policy-making process. While traditional totalitarian regimes rely on direct state control over the economy and society (with corporate power at the state’s back), inverted totalitarianism functions through a highly specialized and opaque network of agencies and departments, regulatory bodies, and technocratic decision-makers. These institutions, though ostensibly part of a democratic government, operate independently of public oversight, making it difficult for citizens to hold them accountable. Policies are driven less by electoral mandates and more by entrenched bureaucratic structures that serve elite interests.

A defining feature of the phenomenon in American history after the Civil War is the corporate-state arrangement, where large corporations exert significant influence over government decision-making. Corporations shape policies through campaign financing, lobbying, and regulatory capture, ensuring that the state primarily serves their interests rather than those of the public. Moreover, the structure of the administrative states reflects the social logic of corporate power. This dynamic leads to what Wolin calls “managed democracy,” where elections continue to exist, but political outcomes are largely controlled by elite financial and corporate forces.

This has been know for many years. In 2014, in “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” published in Perspectives on Politics, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page showed found: “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.”

Ultimately, inverted totalitarianism erodes genuine democratic participation by replacing public engagement with media manipulation, passive consumerism, and technocratic governance. Citizens are not openly repressed but are instead politically disengaged, distracted by spectacle, and conditioned to accept decisions made by elite institutions. This is what Antonio Gramsci called “ideological hegemony.” This creates a system where effective authoritarian control is exercised through administrative and economic dominance rather than overt coercion, making resistance more difficult and less obvious.

This is the style of totalitarianism sought by the Democratic Party, and for years the Republican Party, as well. The reason Democrats and progressives are fomenting hysteria is that Trump’s agenda of deconstructing the administrative threatens the elaboration of the inverted totalitarianism they seek and have substantially established, as everybody is finding out in real time. As noted at the outset, Trump is thus doing the opposite of establishing a fascist dictatorship; he is accomplishing this by dismantling the administrative state and the technocratic apparatus—that is big, intrusive, and paternalistic government. With DOGE, Trump is bringing back transparency to government, exposing waste, fraud, and abuse by federal agencies and departments. 

Deconstructing the administrative state involves raising consciousness about the ideology that has captured technocratic apparatus. Who constitutes the permanent political class in the federal government? What is their party affiliation? The above chart documenting contributions to political parties by American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is provided by Open Secrets, an independent and nonprofit group whose mission is to provide information on the role of money in American politics. Who is AFGE? According to their website, “AFGE proudly represents 800,000 federal and D.C. government workers across the United States and the world. Members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) can be found in almost every federal agency and every function of government.” 

Federal workers are represented by other employee unions, as well. For example, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) represents around 150,000 employees across 34 federal agencies, including the IRS, Customs and Border Protection, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to Open Secrets, in 2021-2022, almost 99 percent of NTEU political contributions went to House Democrats. During that same period over 93 percent of contributions made by NTEU were to Senate Democrats. As of January 2025, the federal government employed approximately three million civilian workers. Although the majority of federal employees work outside of Washington DC, federal employees constitute over 43 percent of the District of Columbia’s workforce. The District is overwhelming progressive Democrat.

It might make sense to increase compensation for Congress and senior government employees to reduce the forcing function for corruption, as the latter might be as much as 1000 times more expensive to the public

pic.twitter.com/ajsNbL9YMO

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2025

I urge you to follow @DataRepublican on X. Watch the interview above to get a taste of what she does. This is her website: DataRepublican. She has a Substack, as well. The work of DataRepublican shows that corruption in the federal government is enormous. It’s a rigged system, and the rigging will be further exposed by DOGE, which has already exposed a great deal of it. DataRepublican documents that members of Congress pass laws that enrich their families. They depend on the administrative state to push out these appropriations to themselves via non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It’s a massive money laundering scheme. And it’s your money. The elite is terrified at the unraveling of the scheme, which is a key part of inverted totalitarianism. This panic is what lies behind the manufacture of hysteria.

The efforts by the administrative state and the Democratic Party (Trump has fundamentally changed the Republican Party) are contrary to the will of the people. A recent poll by Harvard CAPS-Harris finds that the majority of the country backs Trump’s agenda. Below are selected items. In addition to these items, 60 percent of those surveyed support direct US negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine. The people are taking back their government thanks to the populist-nationalist movement. The movement is spreading to Europe, as well, where, for example in Germany, the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany placed second in the 2025 election, exceeding twenty percent of the electorate.

As most of you know, I am a sociologist. I teach subject courses in one of my areas of specialization (criminology), but I also teach foundational social science courses—social theory and research methods. In the later, I begin the semester by reviewing the inventory of cognitive errors and fallacies in logic and argumentation. One important sociological concept (central to symbolic interactionism, social constructionism, and related approaches) is what we call the “Thomas theorem.” The Thomas theorem bears on a serious problem in science: confirmation bias.

I have shared my thoughts on the Thomas theorem before on Freedom and Reason (see, e.g., The Definition of the Situation: Elon Musk and the Gesture; A Fact-Proof Screen: Black Lives Matter and Hoffer’s True Believer; Why Aren’t We Talking More About Social Contagion? The Field of Dreams of Childhood Trauma; On the Pains of Testing and Contact Tracing. It’s Worse than Folly), but I want to expand on my thoughts and explicitly connect the Thomas theorem to confirmation bias. I then want to apply the comparison to the real-world problem of progressives seeing Nazi salutes when conservatives and liberals make incidental gestures superficially resembling the salute but not seeing it when progressives make these gestures. I have discussed the hysteria about these gestures before (see the essay on Musk), as well, but here I want to illustrate how sociology can explain biased interpretation of signs and symbols with a longer treatment of these concepts.

The Thomas theorem and confirmation bias both relate to the way perception shapes reality, but they operate in different ways. The Thomas theorem states that “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” emphasizing how (inter)subjective interpretations of reality influence responses. The concept highlights the power of belief in shaping behavior and social dynamics. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms preexisting beliefs, often leading to distorted reasoning and resistance to evidence that disconfirms prior belief.

While the Thomas theorem focuses on how subjective definitions of reality create real-world effects (what sociologists sometimes refer to a “societal reaction”), confirmation bias explains how individuals reinforce their existing perspectives, potentially leading to self-fulfilling prophecies that align with the Thomas theorem’s premise.

When conservatives make an ambiguous gesture that resembles a Nazi salute, those who already associate conservatism (and liberalism) with authoritarianism or extremism (itself a false association) often define the action as intentional, leading to real political and social consequences such as public backlash or deplatforming.

We are seeing this error play out routinely these days. Elon Musk, and more recently Steve Bannon, are only the latest causalities of progressive panic (remember what the authoritarians did to Laura Ingram in 2016?). In contrast, when a progressive makes a similar gesture, it is not interpreted in the same way, because progressives are generally not perceived as having Nazi sympathies. Nobody interpreted AOC’s recent gestures resembling the salute as indicating Nazi sympathies. Everybody knows AOC is not a Nazi.

This difference in interpretation is reinforced by confirmation bias, which causes people to selectively perceive and remember information that aligns with their existing beliefs. Because progressives believe Bannon is a Nazi, his incidental gestures confirm prior belief.

For the record, Bannon is a democratic republican with classical liberal commitments (albeit held in tandem with his Christian faith). His heroes are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. On the anniversaries of key battles in the European theater in which American forces defeated those of the Nazis, the War Room becomes special commemorative programs in which Nazis are portrayed as one of the greatest existential threats to free and open societies. But for those who see conservatism as inherently linked to extremism, these facts are eclipsed by bias. Progressives are thus more likely to view an ambiguous gesture by a conservative as intentional. (They are also prone to believe that condemnations of Nazi sympathies are made to hide Nazi sympathies. “That’s what they want you to think.”)

It’s important to note that, for many progressives, the facts I provided regarding Bannon’s politics and content on the War Room are unknown to them. They have never bothered to find out what Bannon believes. They never watch the War Room.

The War Room is on four hours every weekday (split into a morning and afternoon show) and two hours on Saturday morning. I have watched or listened to thousands of hours of the War Room since the winter of 2020 (it’s a graduate seminar in international political economy). I have also listened to many of Bannon’s speeches. I have been criticized for this, in fact. “Who would listen to a Nazi?” For some, listening to Bannon is what turned me into a right-winger (which I am not). Those who think Bannon is a Nazi either ignore disconfirmatory evidence or practice what I have called “cerebral hygiene.”

As for the latter, self-imposed ignorance (with assistance from those who shame people for watching the War Room), is a mix of what is called “poisoning the well” and “begging the question” (or circular reasoning). Poisoning the well occurs when a person preemptively dismisses a perspective by labeling it as bad or evil, stopping himself from engaging with its actual content.

This type of thinking is circular because the man assumes the perspective is wrong without examining it, thus reinforcing belief without questioning. As such, this is a form of thought-stopping or dogmatism, where rigid beliefs prevent critical self-examination. As a result, the person abstains from learning about the perspective not because of its content, but because of an a priori assumption that it is inherently bad and therefore should not be watched.

George Orwell called this “crimestop” in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Here’s how he put it: “Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [Ingsoc is the socialist government of Airstrip One, a fictional city in Orwell’s dystopian nightmare world], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.” This is the practice of cerebral hygiene.

While there are conservatives who practice cerebral hygiene, the problem is far worse among progressives. By Leagues. Indeed, a lot of conservatives engage with progressive content—which is hard to avoid because progressivism is hegemonic in academia, culture, and media—and criticize that content based on its ideas and advocacies.

Libs of TikTok is a good example of an information center for conservatives (but hardly the only one). Libs of TikTok is run by Chaya Raichik. The account, which started on Twitter, amplifies content from social media platforms, often content focusing on LGBTQ+ issues, education, and progressive politics. (Last spring, when I was accused of transphobia and racism, part of the case against me was my practice of sharing Libs of TikTok videos on X, which is ironic since it’s progressive content; you’d think they appreciate others amplifying their ideas.) Raichik does not usually critique the content but more often simply shares progressive content so that the public is exposed to that worldview. Libs of TikTok thus builds mutual knowledge.

Meanwhile, progressives want censorship of conservative content and urge the deplatforming of those who provide it. Unlike Libs of TikTok and similar content, which conservatives push out on social media, progressives don’t want to see—and they don’t want others to see—conservative (or liberal) content (and really they don’t want others to see their content since it’s so cracked).

One obvious exception is showing images and video clips of prominent conservatives and liberals making incidental gestures that progressives portray and interpret as indicating Nazi sympathies. It’s a tick with them.

In this way, the progressive reflex mirrors the Islamic reflex. While media hailing from the Islamic point of view spreads cartoons depicting Jews as demonic (antisemitism is rampant in the Islamic world), Muslims don’t tolerate cartoons in which Muhammad is cast in an unfavorable light. Muslims take to the streets to protest books, cartoons, and documentaries critical of Islam and mocking (even simply depicting) their prophet, sometimes resorting to violence against those who produce this content. Some European governments join in, punishing those critical of Islam. (Islamization is not merely the zealot’s desire.)

Remember Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine with a long history of publishing controversial content, particularly caricatures of religious figures, including the Muhammad? Recall that, in 2015, Muslims attacked its offices in Paris, killing a dozen people, including cartoonists and editors. The attack was in response to the magazine’s publication of caricatures of Muhammad. Despite the attack, Charlie Hebdo continued publishing and reaffirmed its commitment to free speech. Yet you won’t see their cartoons carried in mainstream media on either side of the Atlantic. Even an academic book on the topic did not publish the cartoons at issue. The reader had to imagine them. Charitably, this is self-censorship (although I think the motivation is even darker than this).

Or recall Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was assassinated in 2004 by a Muslim for his film Submission, which criticized the treatment of women in Islam. The filmmaker was shot and stabbed on an Amsterdam street, the killer leaving a note threatening others, including the film’s scriptwriter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. These are only the more extreme expressions of the desire to suppress content critical of ideology. (In an act of bravery, I gave a talk on clerical fascism in a sociology of religion session at a professional conference several years ago. The anxiety in the room was palpable. After I finished, there were no questions. I, too, was nervous.)

Progressives are notorious for engaging in and promoting the practice of deplatforming, doxing, and censoring content critical of Critical Race Theory (CRT), DEI, transgender ideology, vaccine skepticism, etc., justifying these actions as necessary to combat harmful rhetoric, hate speech, and misinformation. They use doxing—the public release of private information—to intimidate individuals with opposing views (this how we learned that Chaya Raichik was behind Libs of TikTok). (The more extreme form of this is swatting, which involves calling the police to falsely report violence occurring at the address where an enemy resides).

Deplatforming involves removing individuals or groups from academic institutions (I have been a casualty of this on more than one occasion), employment, and social media to limit their influence. Censorship can take the form of content moderation, demonetization, or outright bans on platforms that view certain ideas as violating community guidelines (before Musk bought Twitter, its internal Trust and Safety group kicked the president of the United States off the platform). These are the desires of authoritarians.

As with acts of Islamic terrorism, and state action punishing Islam’s critics, these progressive tactics suppress free expression, create and entrench ideological echo chambers, and prevent open debate on complex issues. Progressives maintain that restricting what they judge to be harmful speech helps protect marginalized communities and prevents the spread of misinformation. In fact, what they seek is the entrenchment of progressive dogma by excluding content that delegitimizes progressive ideology. Resist it while you can.

“[I]f we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted. In order to make the method of selection by elimination work, and to ensure that only the fittest theories survive, their struggle for life must be made severe for them.” —Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism

On February 14, Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference sharply critical of European nations for their restrictions on free speech and association (I have appended video of the speech to the bottom of this essay). He highlighted instances such as Sweden convicting a Christian activist for burning a Quran, and the European Union threatening to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment its censors spot what they judge to be “hateful content.” Vance argued that these actions undermine democratic values and warned that the US might reconsider its support for countries that do not uphold fundamental freedoms. (See my recent essay covering the conference here: Vance and Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference: Two Visions of a Future Order of Things. See also The Emperor is Naked: The Problems of Mutual Knowledge and Free Feelings.)

Two days later, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired a segment featuring German prosecutors discussing the country’s stringent laws on online speech (I have appended video of the interview to the bottom of this essay). The interview highlighted that, in Germany, public insults and the dissemination of false information online are criminal offenses, with authorities arguing that such measures are necessary to protect democracy and maintain civil discourse. This approach contrasts sharply with the United States, where the First Amendment safeguards a broader spectrum of speech, including expressions considered hateful or offensive, not trusting such designations to an office of the commissar. By confirming the truth of Vance’s speech, CBS underscored the differences between the two nations regarding the boundaries of free speech and the role of government in regulating online content.

The defense of free conscience, speech, association, and assembly is not merely a philosophical commitment to natural rights (a point I have frequently emphasized in previous essays on Freedom and Reason); it is a practical necessity for the pursuit of truth. Science, the most reliable method for understanding reality, depends on open inquiry, unfettered debate, and competition of ideas. It cannot function in an environment where authorities dictate acceptable thought, speech, or association. Any law or policy that restricts these freedoms does not just infringe on individual rights—it undermines the very process by which knowledge advances. When authorities suppress dissenting views, however mistaken they may seem at the time, they stymie the correction of error, the refinement of theories (explanations, predictions), and the discovery of new truths.

In Germany, hate speech laws at the federal level prohibit incitement to hatred against protected groups, including trans identifying individuals, while defamation (Section 186 StGB) and insult (Section 185 StGB) laws can apply to cases of “deadnaming” and “misgendering” or if deemed deliberately harmful. Scientifically, gender identity has the same ontological status as angels or thetans; punishing a person for deliberately using the appropriate pronoun is thus an act of suppressing accurate language for the sake of an ideology. The law wraps itself in moral language about forbidding intentional affronts to personal dignity, but in doing so, it elevates ideology over science. Defenders of the laws will clarify that deadnaming and misgendering are not blanket criminal offenses; they fall under existing legal provisions if used maliciously. But that’s the problem: how does one insisting upon accurate language avoid the appearance of malice given the assumptions upon which the law is grounded? We should put the matter bluntly: In Germany, one is not allowed to be a bigot—and the German state will define what counts as bigotry.  

This is an intolerable situation. A society that punishes certain thoughts, forbids discussions on certain topics, or compels individuals to adopt a doctrine does not merely limit personal liberty; it criminalizes the tolerance necessary for intellectual progress and rational action. The history of science and philosophy testifies to the power of controversy—today’s heresies often become tomorrow’s orthodoxies—and this transformation only happens when dissent and heterodoxy are allowed. When institutions impose ideological conformity, they do not just silence individuals; they sabotage the mechanisms that allow truth to emerge from error. And some truths will hurt some feelings. Free expression and association are not merely moral goods—they form the foundation upon which all genuine knowledge rests.

As a libertarian, I regard the suppression of speech, thought, and association as markers of the authoritarian condition—a situation that is incompatible with both freedom and reason. While we are obliged to tolerate arguments, conversations, and opinions, including those favorable to or advocating for authoritarianism, we must not tolerate or abide by laws and policies that suppress either libertarian or authoritarian viewpoints. To do so would be to accept the very premise that authority may dictate what is permissible to think or express.

I want to take care here to differentiate my stance from that of Karl Popper and his paradox of tolerance thesis. My argument is that we should tolerate all ideas in open discourse but refuse to comply with laws that make genuine tolerance impossible. The proper response to authoritarian controls on speech is not submission but resistance—precisely because the preservation of an open society depends on our dissent. Popper’s paradox, outlined in his 1945 The Open Society and Its Enemies, argues that unlimited tolerance leads to the destruction of tolerance itself. Specifically, he contends that a tolerant society must be willing to defend itself against intolerant forces that, if left unchecked, would suppress tolerance altogether. He asserts that while all ideas should be debated in an open society, if intolerant ideologies seek to abolish debate through force or coercion, they should not be tolerated. Popper’s defenders will object that he does not argue for suppressing mere advocacy of authoritarian ideas; rather, he warns against tolerating those who would use force to eliminate freedom. To my ears this sounds like a distinction without a difference.

My critique of Popper’s argument is thus: If a society claims the authority to suppress “intolerant” views, the next question becomes: Who decides what is an intolerant view? If the answer is the state, then we empower precisely the kind of authority that suppresses free speech and open discourse under the guise of protecting tolerance. Popper’s argument is therefore paradoxically authoritarian itself—by advocating for the suppression of certain ideas, he effectively grants a governing body the power to determine which ideas are too dangerous to be expressed. This favors some speech over others, and that judgment falls to those whose ideology determines what speech is favorable and what speech is not. 

This logic manifests in contemporary German law, where the government criminalizes certain forms of speech, including Holocaust denial, Nazi symbolism, and offensive speech deemed harmful to public order. While Germany justifies these laws as necessary to prevent extremism and protect democracy, they nonetheless rest on the assumption that the state can and should regulate discourse to prevent certain ideas from gaining traction. The result is a legal framework where authorities punish people not just for direct incitement to violence (which is not protected speech even in the United States) but for expressing opinions the state deems dangerous—an approach fundamentally at odds not only with a strict libertarian defense of free speech but also with the very freedom required for a legal and institutional framework for the conduct of science and other knowledge production.

Thus, from a libertarian standpoint, any attempt to police speech—even speech advocating authoritarianism—is itself authoritarian. The principle of free speech only holds if it applies to all viewpoints, including those some find abhorrent. Once the state begins deciding which ideas are too intolerant to be tolerated, it assumes precisely the kind of power that libertarians argue should not exist. My argument goes beyond Popper’s paradox: I am not merely calling for resistance to authoritarian policies; I am rejecting the very legitimacy of the state’s role in adjudicating which ideas may be expressed at all. The state in a free and open society must defend free speech and assembly; otherwise, it is an authoritarian state, and society is no longer free and open.

I recognize that critics will argue that libertarianism is itself an ideological framework with assumptions about the state’s proper role in society. My point is not that libertarianism is a singular truth, but rather that it affirms the singular truth that authoritarianism negates free and open society. You cannot simultaneously proclaim support for a free and open society, on the one hand, and then, on the other, restrict arguments, ideas, opinions, and assembly. Several principles undergird the libertarian position, such as non-aggression and individual sovereignty, which constitute the necessary preconditions for a free society, but the paradox I am identifying is incontrovertible.

History abounds with examples of how laws and policies suppressing speech hinder scientific and intellectual progress. I have often pointed to the suppression of Galileo’s heliocentrism by the Catholic Church and how that delayed scientific progress. In that case, restrictions on speech aimed to entrench religious dogma. Another example, particularly relevant given Germany’s restrictive attitude towards speech and association, is how the Nazi regime weaponized speech restrictions to consolidate power and eliminate dissent. After rising to power in 1933, the Nazis swiftly enacted laws criminalizing criticism of the state, which they used to suspend civil liberties, for example, the Editors’ Law of 1933 forbade non-Aryans from working in journalism.

The Reich Press Chamber, operating under the German Propaganda Ministry, took command of the Reich Association of the German Press, the professional body governing journalism in Nazi Germany. With the implementation of the Editors Law, the association maintained strict records of journalists deemed “racially pure,” systematically barring Jews and individuals married to Jews from the profession. To practice journalism, all editors and reporters were required to register with the Reich Press Chamber and adhere to the ministry’s directives. Officials demanded absolute compliance, dictated content, and enforced censorship. Paragraph 14 of the law explicitly prohibited editors from publishing any material that could be perceived as undermining the strength of the Reich, either domestically or internationally.

The strict control over journalism under the Reich Press Chamber and the Nazi Propaganda Ministry enabled medical atrocities to continue without widespread public knowledge or dissent. By monopolizing the press, the regime suppressed reports of unethical human experiments, euthanasia programs, and other crimes against humanity, while propaganda justified what was known about these actions as necessary for national health and racial purity. The exclusion of oppositional journalists ensured that dissenting voices were silenced, and instilling fear in those who remained, knowing that they risked severe punishment for disobedience. With the press fully controlled and access to international reporting restricted, most Germans had no access to independent accounts of the horrors occurring in concentration camps, hospitals, and psychiatric institutions. Even those who suspected wrongdoing had little means to confirm or share their concerns. As a result, the regime’s control over journalism directly facilitated medical crimes such as the T4 euthanasia program, allowing large-scale atrocities to continue in secrecy with minimal risk of exposure or resistance.

By controlling speech, the Nazis ensured that dissenting voices—whether from intellectuals, ordinary citizens, or political opponents—remained silent, preventing any meaningful resistance from forming. This censorship did not protect society; rather it created an environment where propaganda thrived unchallenged, reinforcing dangerous myths and justifying atrocities. By the time overt acts of persecution escalated, from the Nuremberg Laws to the Holocaust, public discourse had become so tightly controlled that opposition was nearly impossible. 

Given this historical context, how can the contemporary German state rationally defend its speech codes while acknowledging the dangers of authoritarianism—all in the name of defending democracy? One might object that contemporary German law in this area is not as severe as German law under the Nazis, but the objection is beside the point. If restrictions on speech helped enable one of history’s most repressive regimes, why should we believe that similar restrictions (and the similarity is growing stronger over time) will prevent rather than facilitate authoritarian control? After all, contemporary restrictions are themselves markers of authoritarianism! The burden of proof lies with those who claim that suppressing speech is necessary for a free society. What proof could possibly justify negating civil liberties? History clearly demonstrates the opposite.

I recently ranted on Facebook about the Swedish Parliament having voted in favor of sending its eighteenth and to date largest military support package to Ukraine. “Between this and mass immigration Sweden is drowning in the deep waters of misplaced humanitarianism,” I said. “I always held Sweden in very high regard,” I continued. “When I was a young man it was for me (and many others) a model society, enlightened and democratic. My heart aches over the developments there over the last several years. Indeed, most of Europe has been captured and corrupted by transnational corporate power. My country helped liberate Europe from war and authoritarianism. More than a hundred thousand Americans died in action in the European theater during WWII. I truly hate to see this.”

In this essay, I want to expand on what I mean by “misplaced humanitarianism.” Some of those who claim to embody humanitarianism are driven by the egotistical need to signal virtue. Virtue signaling leads to many harmful things, as we saw during the pandemic with parents subjecting their children to mRNA gene therapy. We see this also with parents captured by gender ideology who misgender their children. Virtue signaling is mostly a problem on the woke progressive left. However, there are thoughtful people who pursue humanitarianism for its own sake but have nonetheless come to fetishize immigrants to the detriment of their fellow countrymen.

In the latter case, one find well-meaning people who don’t take into account the impact mass immigration has on the citizens of their own country. Their fellow countrymen also have aspirations and needs, and true humanitarianism would extend to them, as well. Indeed, it would prioritize them for reasons I will come to. Humanitarianism is the ethical commitment to promoting human welfare and reducing the suffering of people. But it must also respect national sovereignty, territorial borders, and cultural integrity. Advocates for open borders do so in the name of compassion, but open borders harm the people its advocates claim to help and harms their fellow citizens, particularly the most vulnerable members of society. One’s fellow citizens also deserve compassion and consideration.

One of the things missing from their argument is why a nation opens its borders or fails to deport those who are in the country illegally. They assign to all immigrants the status of refugee, when in fact the vast majority of illegal and legal immigrants are not fleeing oppression but seeking opportunity and relief from the conditions of their home country. Most immigrants come to the US primarily to improve their life chances rather than fleeing persecution. Refugees and asylum seekers constitute a small percentage of immigrants compared to those migrating for education, family reunification, or work.

Economic migration is the largest category, with many immigrants, particularly from Asia and Latin America, seeking better living standards, expansive social welfare systems, higher wages, and jobs. This includes both legal immigrants on employment-based visas and illegal aliens crossing the border. Family reunification is another driver of immigration, as a significant portion of legal immigrants receive green cards through family sponsorship by US citizens or permanent residents (a practice that needs to be significantly curtailed). Additionally, some immigrants arrive for educational reasons, coming on student visas to study at US universities, while others enter through investor visas or other special programs.

As for refugees and asylum seekers, the US government admits a limited number of such persons each year. Many asylum seekers face lengthy legal processes, as they should; coached on how to present their cases as if they were authentic asylees, many are in fact undeserving of that status. The point is that, while humanitarian migration is real and important, the majority of immigrants come for reasons other than escaping persecution, including those who seek asylum. In the cases of economic migrants, those overstaying their visas, or those seeking the superior social welfare systems the US has developed over many decades, humanitarianism doesn’t apply. It is therefore misplaced. It is also misplaced when applied to those who falsely claim refugee status.

What many people either don’t know or resist recognizing are the pull factors that incentivize migration. I am not blaming people for wanting to come to the United States. We’re a great nation (one does not often see even the poorest people in the US trying to escape to other countries). It’s understandable that those living in poor countries would seek to enter the United States given its standard of living. But what those who defend open borders need to know is that corporations promote weak immigration laws and seek lax enforcement of those laws do so for the sake of profit. Capitalism is a system of labor exploitation, in which the value produced by labor is appropriated by the capitalist and then realized in various markets as profit. This is the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and it motivates corporations to push for open border policies.

Capitalists seek higher rates of surplus value, that is value relative to variable capital, i.e., wages, competition, and benefits, to increase the potential for profit generation. Maximizing surplus value production is pursued in two basic ways: absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. Absolute surplus value is generated by extending the working day beyond the necessary labor time required to reproduce workers’ wages, often accompanied by efforts to reduce wages. This strategy is pursued in labor-intensive sectors. Offshoring production to regions with lower labor costs serves as another strategy to maximize surplus value by reducing wage expenditures. Relative surplus value, on the other hand, is created by increasing productivity through technological advancements or efficiency improvements, such as automation and mechanization, reducing the necessary labor time while keeping wages constant, thereby expanding surplus labor within the same working hours.

Immigration functions as a mechanism to lower variable capital costs, aligning with the same globalization strategy that underpins offshoring. By allowing capitalists access to pools of migrant labor willing to work for lower wages, employers can suppress overall labor costs and increase surplus value without relocating production. This is particularly evident in labor-intensive industries such as agriculture, construction, and low-wage service sectors, where an influx of immigrant workers creates downward pressure on wages and weakens labor bargaining power. Just as offshoring enables firms to exploit lower labor costs abroad, domestic labor markets are similarly restructured through immigration policies that supply a steady flow of cheap labor. In both cases, capital seeks to minimize labor expenses while maximizing profitability, demonstrating the flexibility of capital accumulation strategies in response to shifting economic and political conditions. Another way of putting this is that globalization is a strategy for the super-exploitation of labor that is external and internal neocolonialism.

Immigration pursued for such purposes is not humanitarianism; indeed, calling this humanitarianism is propaganda organized to conceal the exploitative means of globalization, i.e., serving the interests of corporations that exploit cheap labor. The propaganda causes many good people to fail to recognize the suffering of those populations for which they otherwise express sympathy. For example, the practice of driving down wages for working-class Americans disproportionately harm black and brown communities. It increases economic insecurity, strains public services, and undermines job opportunities for those already struggling. A policy that benefits corporate elites while impoverishing American workers cannot be called humanitarian. One can easily show that, while corporations may be legal persons, they are a person with the personality profile of a psychopath (using diagnostic criteria from various manuals organized by the psychiatric industry—motivated purely by self-interest, with no regard for the social consequences of their actions. A truly humanitarian approach rejects economic models that treat human beings as expendable labor, especially when it prioritizes non-citizens over the struggling citizens of a country.

The consequences of globalization are uncontroversial. To be sure, over the last fifty years, poverty and inequality in the US have evolved in complex ways. However, while absolute poverty has declined due to economic growth (albeit slowing), social programs (vastly expanded), and technological advancements, inequality has worsened significantly. Income distribution has become increasingly skewed, with the wealthiest Americans capturing a growing share of economic gains while wages for much of the working have stagnated (adjusted for inflation). Despite rising productivity, real wages have not kept pace, meaning that most workers have seen little benefit from overall economic expansion. This expansion is the result of globalization, which is pursued in an attempt to reverse the falling rate of profit. In fact, globalization is a major reason why the profit rate is falling.

Wealth inequality has followed a similar trajectory, as asset accumulation—especially through stocks and real estate—has overwhelmingly benefited the capitalist and the upper-echelon of the professional managerial classes, widening the gap between the rich and the rest of society. At the same time, the erosion of unions and policies favoring capital over labor have further exacerbated disparities. The erosion of unions is a result of globalization (union density in the private sector is now under six percent). So, while material conditions for many have improved in terms of technology and access to goods, the relative divide between economic classes has become more pronounced, making upward mobility increasingly difficult for those at the bottom. And when we turn to the dependent populations of the ghettos maintained by progressive politicians and policymakers we see extreme poverty and neighborhood disorganization. As a result, crime and violence are overwhelming a problem of black- and brown-majority communities.

Growing inequality weakens a democratic republic, and a strong nation-state based on this principle is necessary for true humanitarian efforts. Wealth concentration is associated with the concentration of power and influence. Without popular power, law and policy increasingly favors the rich and power. The rule of law, national security, and cultural integrity, when these represent the popular will, ensure that humanitarian policies do not lead to exploitation or social disorganization. Mass immigration is rooted in exploitation and associated with social disorganization.

The US Constitution establishes the people as sovereign and guarantees fundamental rights such as freedom of conscience, speech, association, privacy, and self-defense—all without regard to race, I hasten to add. But these rights are only preserved and realized within a stable, functioning nation that defends the cultural integrity necessary to equip the working class to marshal the power they have to resist the concentrated power associated with capitalist accumulation. That popular power is found in solidarity. Without cultural integrity, the shared values and principles that sustain our secular system of democratic-republicanism are undermined. A nation that abandons its cultural foundations in the name of unrestricted immigration risks losing the very framework that protects liberty and promotes justice for its citizens and those legally residing in the country. We see the consequences of social disorganization not just in the United States, but across Europe.

A truly compassionate and responsible approach to humanitarianism must do the following: It must respect borders and national laws. Aid and relief should be delivered in a way that complements, rather than disrupts, a country’s cultural fabric and the social structures that promote opportunity. It must preserve national sovereignty and cultural integrity. A true humanitarianism strengthens nations rather than erases national distinctions. A strong, sovereign state is far better equipped to help both its own people and others in crisis. Multiculturalism is a tactic to undermine cultural integrity and disorganize the nation for the sake of globalization. A true humanitarianism must therefore prioritize orderly and legal immigration. Refugee and immigration policies should be lawful, structured, and sustainable, ensuring that host nations can integrate newcomers without harming their own citizens. That means manageable numbers at a gradual pace. Immigration policy must take particular care not to harm the vulnerable within the nation.

Humanitarianism is an ethical and moral practice. Because the people are sovereign, a nation’s first moral duty is to its people, particularly the poor and working class, who are most impacted by globalization. A nationalism adequate to human thriving must promote self-sufficiency and social stability. Instead of fostering dependency, humanitarian efforts should empower struggling communities—both domestically and abroad—to build stable, self-sustaining societies. The emphasis must be on the citizen since this is the raison d’être of the modern nation-state. The nation-state is one of great advancements of humanity. National borders are the sine qua non for a safe, stable, and sovereign nation-state.

It follows from this that humanitarianism should never be used as a pretext to weaken the nation-state or exploit vulnerable people for economic gain, since this negates the ethnical and moral core of the practice. True humanitarian policies must balance compassion with responsibility, ensuring that helping others does not come at the cost of a nation’s own citizens, stability, or cultural identity. A strong, secure, and self-sufficient nation is not only better for its own people but also more capable of providing meaningful aid to others—on its own terms, without being coerced into crises that threaten its survival.

Humanitarianism and national sovereignty are therefore not opposing forces; they are complementary. A nation that preserves its strength, security, and cultural integrity is one that can best extend real, sustainable aid to those in need—both at home and abroad. Nationalism is not a bad thing. It has been portrayed as bad because nationalism is a problem for globalists who seek a borderless world, the governance of which will be delegated to the transnational corporations and world banks. Will this world protect Americans’ rights to free conscience, free speech, free press, freedom of association, freedom to assemble, the right to privacy, the right to keep and bear arms, and all the other rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Not if there are no longer any nations, formally or effectively.

This is what I mean by misplaced humanitarianism. Those who defend open borders and oppose immigration restrictions and mass deportations, for whatever reason, mis-specify humanitarianism in the context of the modern nation-state. They fail to recognize that it has only been with the rise of the modern nation-state that organized humanitarianism on a grand scale has become possible. If we allow globalists to co-opt the rhetoric of humanitarianism to pursue corporate ends, then we will undermine our capacity to be effective humanitarians. We will be left only with its rhetoric. This is why I tell people that, without a valid theory of how the world works under global capitalism, one may find themselves advocating for law and policy that in reality works at cross-purposes with the ends they actually seek.

It can help readers to understand all this by considering that the United States is our home. When we scale the importance of home down to the household it is obvious that, while one may wish to help out others, the household can only help so many. It is destructive to a household to stretch its finances thin. Moreover, it is destructive to allow people into one’s home who disrupt the life of his family or make members of the household unsafe. This is why protection of home from intruders is an inherent right. It is why there are walls and doors and windows that lock. It is why we have right to keep and bear arms. At a certain point, if charity is pursued at the expense of thriving and security, it becomes a pathological thing. In the same way, misplaced humanitarianism endangers our national home.

There is another matter those who defend open borders should consider. The reader might ask himself whether those who seek to flee their countries due to difficult conditions should instead stay and work toward making their homeland more adequate to safety and human thriving. A good citizen is a patriot; he cares about his country and his fellow countrymen and wants to see his country thrive. Doesn’t the patriot have a responsibility to his family, his community, and future generations? When individuals abandon their country, particularly those with ambition, education, and skills, they take with them the resources that could drive change and improve their country. The departure of the good among the population weakens their national home, betrays their countrymen, depriving it of the energy, innovation, and leadership necessary for progress. If those who desire a better life channel their efforts into reform rather than escape, they can transform the conditions that once seemed insurmountable.

Leaving one’s country risks perpetuating a cycle in which problems remain unsolved because those who could fight for solutions choose to start over elsewhere. While fleeing may offer personal relief, it does not address the structural issues that compel people to leave in the first place. These we call the “push factors.” Change does not come easily, but history has shown that movements for economic reform, justice, and political freedom are led by the good among a population who refuse to abandon their homeland to tyrants. The fight to improve one’s own country may be difficult and slow, but it is the only way to build a lasting foundation for future prosperity, rather than merely seeking refuge elsewhere. As for the bad among them, we don’t want them here.

Finally, to bring the essay back to the brief rant shared at the start, Sweden has experienced a significant rise in gang-related crime and violence in recent years, particularly in the form of shootings and bombings. Rape has also become a very serious problem in Sweden. The surge in crime and violence has been driven by conflicts between rival gangs involved in drug trafficking and other illicit activities, and these are associated with immigrant-dominated suburbs in major cities such as Göteborg, Malmö, and Stockholm. This situation developed from Sweden’s misplaced humanitarianism, ramped up during the migrant crisis of 2014. While Sweden was once considered one of Europe’s safest countries, it has become on the worst-affected nations in the region in terms of serious crime and violence.

The Swedish government has acknowledged the severity of the crisis. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (of the Moderate Party) has called the crime and violence there a “systemic threat” to the country. Efforts to combat the problem have included stricter penalties for gang-related offenses, more aggressive policing, and discussions about implementing surveillance and intelligence-gathering measures. Swedish academics, policymakers, and politicians advocate long-term solutions, such as broader social reforms, including better integration policies, education initiatives, and economic opportunities for marginalized communities. However, this neglects the reality that people are culture-bearers, which means they bring with them their culture, and some cultures are resistant to integrating with the host culture. This problem is compounded by multiculturalists who rationalize their resistance. Indeed, pseudo-humanitarians in Sweden defend the presence of incompatible cultures by making nationalists in Sweden out of be a greater systemic threat than those from such foreign cultures. On the contrary, the nationalists are Sweden’s saviors.

One of the objections I frequently encounter is that immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens. But this claim ignores two key facts. First, immigrants who are in the United States illegally are criminals. You may hear the objection that illegally crossing the border is only a civil violation. This is a falsehood. If a person overstays his visas, then it’s a civil penalty. But if persons cross the border without authorization violate 8 U.S.C. § 1325 or § 1326, thus committing a criminal offense. Second, if one takes any time to examine crime statistics, they will soon learn that the identity of many of those who perpetrate the most serious crimes—aggravated assault, burglary, murder, rape, and robbery—is unknown or not specified. And while defenders of open borders in the United States may be able to obscure the identity of perpetrators because of the nation’s diversity, the experience of Sweden and other ethnically homogenous European countries definitively demonstrates that crime is mostly, or at least disproportionately, perpetrated by those who have migrated to those countries from African, Arabic, and Eastern European countries.

Misplaced humanitarianism, whether driven by the desire to virtue signal or by rigid ideological commitments, ultimately places the well-being of their fellow citizens at risk in the pursuit of open-border policies. While compassion and aid for those in need are noble aspirations, policies that prioritize non-citizens without regard for economic stability, national security, and social cohesion undermine the very foundations of a functioning and just society. A government’s foremost duty is to its own people, ensuring their safety, prosperity, and cultural integrity. When this duty is cast aside in favor of unchecked immigration, it is the average citizen who bears the consequences—economic and social strain, rising crime and disorder, and cultural disintegration. A valid humanitarianism strikes a balance between empathy and pragmatism, recognizing that sustainable and morally-appropriate generosity is only possible when a nation safeguards its own stability and puts its own people first.

Both Democrats and Republicans have played significant roles in integrating China into the global economy. However, the Democratic Party has played the principal role in developing and implementing laws and policies promoting economic interdependence—with help from the neoliberal-minded Republicans.

It was under President Bill Clinton that the US granted China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) in 2000, paving the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) the next year. PNTR accelerated offshoring and economic integration, undermining the standing of American workers and weakening national security. Under his presidency, George W. Bush deepened the economic ties that Democrats had forged under Clinton. As explained in a recent essay on Freedom and Reason, this ilk of Republicans are globalists who align with the progressive transnationalist project to integrate China into the global economy.

As US Senator, Biden played a key role in developing policies that facilitated China’s integration into the global economy, including its accession to the WTO. Biden was fond of bragging about how close he was to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. As President, during the 2024 campaign, in response to Trump’s criticism of reliance on Chinese commodities, Biden shifted toward a more protectionist stance, implementing tariffs on Chinese goods. For instance, in May 2024, his administration imposed a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. But, as with his election-year change on open borders (largely fake at any rate), had Harris been elected, Democrats would have switched back to their longterm goal of enabling the rise of China.

For those who may not know, China is a totalitarian corporate state that not only oppresses the Chinese—the Laobaixing or “old hundred names”—but other ethnic groups, seen in the internment of Uyghurs in concentration camps and the practice of harvesting organs from prisoners and the Falun Gong (the Uyghurs and the Falun Gong are religious minorities in China). As Americans are beginning to find out (why were they kept in the dark about this?) Chinese companies have gained significant influence over the operations and infrastructure of the Panama Canal. And they are very interested in Greenland. In fact, they’re interested in everything.

The handover of the Panama Canal from the US to Panama occurred at the end of 1999. This was under the terms of the Torrijos-Carter Treaty signed in 1977, which saw Carter selling the canal to Panama for one dollar. Since then, China has expanded its economic presence in Panama, particularly through state-linked companies, e.g., Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based firm that operates major ports at both ends of the canal. While the Panama Canal itself is not officially part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Panama joined the BRI in 2017, after establishing diplomatic ties with Beijing and cutting ties with Taiwan, thus effectively putting the canal under Chinese control. Since then, China has invested heavily in infrastructure projects in the country, including ports and logistics hubs. China is using economic leverage in our hemisphere to gain strategic influence over one of the world’s most critical maritime assets.

President Donald Trump has recently taken actions to counter China’s influence in Panama. In early 2025, he demanded that Panama return control of the Panama Canal to the United States, citing concerns over Chinese involvement in the canal’s operations. Corporate-state media depicted Trump’s move as an instantiation of his authoritarian personality. However, the pressure Trump exerted led Panama to announce its withdrawal from BRI in February 2025. Moreover, citing national security concerns, Trump is scrutinizing CK Hutchison. These actions are part of a broader strategy by the Trump administration to curb Chinese investment in and influence over strategic global infrastructure.

The corporate-state media has also depicted Trump’s interest in Greenland as an expression of authoritarian desire. What the propagandists do not explain (why would they?) is that China has shown significant interest in Greenland due to potential Arctic shipping lanes, rare earth minerals, and strategic location (i.e., in close proximity to North America and Europe). Chinese companies have attempted to invest in mining projects, particularly for lithium and uranium, which are crucial for global supply chains.

Trump’s interest in Greenland is not a new thing. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, a Chinese state-owned company tried to build three airports in Greenland, raising security concerns in Denmark and the US, which ultimately pressured Greenland to reject the deal. Wary of China’s influence in the Arctic, Trump proposed buying Greenland from Denmark in 2019, though the idea was dismissed by Danish officials. Trump is right to be concerned. China has continued to pursue economic and political influence in Greenland by establishing scientific research stations (i.e., military installations) and infrastructure investments as part of its broader Polar Silk Road initiative, an extension of BRI aimed at increasing China’s presence in the Arctic. Greenland is moreover strategic with respect to Russia. (See Monroe Doctrine 2.0)

Why would the Democratic Party, which claims to represent labor (really public employee unions), aggressively pursue law and policy that makes the United States ever more dependent on China? Why would it promote policy that offshores American manufacturing and other production to China, where commodities are produced under conditions aptly described as slave labor? Why would Democrats, and aligned neoliberals in the Republican Paty (who are thankfully becoming a rare breed in the era of MAGA), undermine the national security of the United States by promoting economic development that allows China to elaborate and modernize its military capabilities?

How is it that progressives still believe Democrats have the interests of workers in mind or concern themselves with the national security threat posed by a totalitarian corporate state with a population comprising nearly twenty percent of the world’s population with a expanding capacity for war-making? Why would a significant proportion of the US populace continue believing that legacy news reporting is telling them truth about what is occurring and what Trump is doing about it?

There has really been only one voice over the last decade who has told Americans the truth about China: Donald Trump. His plan—and this is why he’s putting the spotlight on our hemisphere—is to re-shore and near-shore industry, provide jobs for American workers, and cheaper products manufactured in this hemisphere, thus weakening China’s ability to wage economic and kinetic war on the West.

The Democrats present Russia as the great threat to US security while, along with European elites, antagonize that state by pushing NATO up against its borders (see History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War; Is War With Russia Inevitable?). They wish to keep alive the Cold War. But the real threat resides the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the latter, the emerging consensus is that China is the only power that can challenge the “Great Satan.” For its part, China is ramping up investments in Iran, and not only in the energy sector. China seeks a strong presence in Iran, not only in its competition with India (whom Trump is pulling closer), but to counter the West.