Category: Uncategorized

The New York Post: “Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson lived with transgender partner.” Did I call this or what? See Friday’s essay on Freedom and Reason, Charlie Kirk’s Killer is in Custody, and the Specter of Antifa (or read my essays on the intersection of Antifa and radical gender ideology over the last several years, e.g., Delusion to Illusion: Transitioning Disordered Personalities into Valid Identities and Trans Day of Vengeance Cancelled Due to Genocide). It’s wild to watch the narrative come together—a narrative I could see unfolding before the facts even came to light. How could I see this? Because patterned events move in predictable ways. No prophetic insight required.

Here’s what we know as of this morning. Tyler Robinson, the suspect in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, is reportedly refusing to cooperate with investigators; Robinson has neither confessed nor assisted the FBI or local police in their probe. His family, friends, and others close to him, on the other hand, have been providing information. They’re helping authorities move the case forward.

Robinson’s roommate, Lance, aka Luna, Twiggs, who is described as his romantic partner, is a transidentifying male. Twiggs also appears to be a devotee to furry culture, appearing in images in furry-themed attire. Unlike Robinson, Twiggs is said to be fully cooperating with investigators. Reports suggest that he was shocked by the incident and had no prior knowledge of any plot. According to multiple outlets, he has shared communications and other evidence with the FBI, including messages in which Robinson allegedly referenced bullet casings and retrieving a rifle. (The media is referring to Twiggs using feminine pronouns. Talk about tenacity. They’re not giving up that ghost.)

Typical of the way corporate media handles cases inconvenient to the narrative, the reporting tells its readers that it remains unclear whether Robinson’s relationship with his transgender partner had any connection to his motive. Authorities are examining whether his hostility toward Kirk’s views on gender identity might have played a role, but that is not confirmed. You think? For now, the roommate is not being treated as a suspect and faces no known legal consequences. Instead, Twigg’s role has been presented as that of a witness and cooperative source for investigators. Maybe they’re extracting more information before arresting him as a co-conspirator.

As I showed in Friday’s essay, the etchings on the bullet casings, taken in their totality, make it rather obvious that Robinson was motivated to murder Charlie Kirk because of Kirk’s insistence on the truth of gender, that it is binary and immutable, and that a rational people should not have to affirm the delusions of those who have groomed by a political ideology designed to disorder their thinking. For Robinson, it was personal.

Motivation to commit political violence in the name of radical gender ideology is not limited to the Kirk assassination. These usually occur in association with the militant left-wing organization Antifa, which is, apart from rampant inner-city crime, the largest source of street-level domestic violence in America today. (See The Problem with Antifascism; Anarchists and Corrupting the Three Arrows; Totalitarian Monopoly Capitalism: Fascism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; Fake News, Executive Power, and the Anti-Working Class Character of Street Crime.)

Antifa has been involved in various disruptive actions aimed at groups or individuals they perceive as opposing transgender rights. This has included efforts to interrupt or break up assemblies, events, or talks associated with those whom trans activists identify as TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). Antifa’s actions have progressively moved up the escalatory ladder, with acts of violence now involving the murder of children and the assassination of conservative leaders, those Antifa identifies as “fascists.” This is how deranged the left has become: conservatives and liberals—those in the center of the political spectrum, and who defend the principles of constitutional republicanism—have become far right and fascist, while those with a compulsion to perpetrate violence are “social justice warriors.”

These violent actions are generally framed by participants and their apologists as a form of direct action against what they view as exclusionary and harmful ideologies. In anarchist jargon, this is termed “propaganda of the deed” (see Tesla and Propaganda of the Deed; On Riots and the Postmodern Corruption of the Culture of Protest). The disruptive actions at assemblies go beyond the heckler’s veto—bad enough, since it suppresses the free speech right of citizens. They also include clashes with opposing groups at rallies or events, resulting in injuries. Physical assaults and property damage aren’t accidental but inherent in Antifa action. Antifa members describe these measures as defensive or as direct action against perceived threats, but such behavior undermines civil discourse through the deliberate use of fear, intimidation, and violence.

We must put this matter as explicitly as possible so we are not misunderstood: Antifa and trans activism are associated with a range of actions that fall under the designation of domestic terrorism.

Terrorism is the deliberate use of fear, intimidation, or violence—often against civilians or symbolic targets—to achieve ideological, political, or religious goals. Unlike conventional warfare, terrorists do not rely on large armies but instead on sudden, disruptive acts such as bombings and shootings meant to silence voices and spread fear beyond the immediate victims. This is what Antifa and transactivism seek: to silence voices by frightening them and those around them with threats of violence and reputational harm.

That’s right, terrorism is not just violent action, but harassment and intimidation. Terrorists don’t fight with words. They aren’t civil. They don’t accept basic civil and human rights. They are illiberal and authoritarian. They use violence to terrorize their enemies.

We mustn’t study Antifa in isolation. The phenomenon is not self-caused. Authoritarian and totalitarian movements have historically relied on organized street-level enforcers whom they recruit to undermine democratic order and impose their will through intimidation and violence. In Italy, Mussolini’s Blackshirts, in Germany, Hitler’s Brownshirts, and in Maoist China, the Red Guards—all exemplify how it is not random disorder but the deliberate orchestration of party and ideology that mobilizes such groups. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to see that leftwing youth roaming the West today are analogs to Mao’s Red Guard. Indeed, the ideology that moves them is strikingly similar to China’s Cultural Revolution. (See Maoism, Wokism, and the Tyranny of Bureaucratic Collectivism.)

History tells us, when Democrats and progressives tell us otherwise (except when it comes to the far right groups they tell us are the real threat—see Antifa, the Proud Boys, and the Relative Scale of Violent Extremism for comparative threat assessment), that paramilitary street fighters are organized, directed, and legitimized by the ruling movements themselves, serving as instruments to destabilize civil society, terrorize opponents, and erode the institutions of democracy. Far from spontaneous, terrorist violence is a central strategy of authoritarian power, designed to create chaos, fear, and submission in the public sphere. It has a source. Ideology plays a major role, of course. But elite power and financing do as well. Indeed, elite power is the ultimate source of the ideology.

To be sure, sometimes the terrorist is unaffiliated, organizationally speaking. Luigi Mangione’s fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, in December 2024 is likely a lone wolf event. However, it is nonetheless inspired by left-wing advocacy of violence—and the left celebrated Mangione’s actions, just as they are celebrating the actions of Tyler Robinson only a few days ago.

This should terrify us. While the majority of Americans disapprove of Mangione’s actions, a significant portion of younger voters, particularly those aged 18–29, have expressed some degree of acceptance. In fact, an Emerson College poll found that more than forty percent of young voters considered the act “acceptable or somewhat acceptable.” Crosstabs reveal that the sentiment was coming from you know who: respondents who identified as Democrats and progressives. Mangione has garnered significant financial support, including over $1 million in crowdfunding for his legal defense.

Are other recent assassinations of the enemies of the left also lone wolf events? Here is where patterns and a grasp of power analysis matter.

On July 13, 2024, a man tried to assassinate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The assassin was 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, PA. Following his actions, Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper—but only after Crooks squeezed off several rounds, grazing Trump’s right ear, and killing a rally-goer. Crooks’ presence was conspicuous, and law enforcement was aware of it. I cannot know for sure if law enforcement allowed it to happen, but I will always wonder whether they did. (See They Tried to Kill Donald Trump Yesterday; Progressives Losing Their Shit Over the Attempt on Trump’s Life; see also A Second Attempt on Trump’s Life, as well as The Continuing Campaign to Unperson Donald Trump, where I express my concerns before the assassination attempt that Democrats and progressives were priming assassins.)

Was Crooks Antifa? I can’t say. Joe Biden, a man who used FBI Director Christopher Wray’s denial of Antifa as an organized domestic terrorist threat to dismiss Trump’s concern during the first debate of the 2020 presidential campaign, was the President in July 2024. And Wray was his FBI Director. Did they hide something from the public? Why don’t we know more about Crooks? Why does the media not seem to want to know more?

What we do know is suspiciously threadbare and murky. Crooks is portrayed by the media as a socially isolated loner with no clear political ideology. His politics are confusing, we’re told: a registered Republican who once donated $15 through Act Blue to the Progressive Turnout Project. He practiced with the AR-15 rifle he used at Butler and brought explosives and ammunition to the rally, suggesting a larger plan, though investigators found no co-conspirators.

Despite months of investigation, the FBI has not identified a motive for the attack. At least that’s what we’re told. Typical line when the government wants to muddy the waters (when Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirmed Robinson’s political commitments on NBC News’ Meet the Press yesterday, he emphasized that the motive remains unclear). We hear the same thing about the 2023 Nashville school massacre perpetrated by a trans identified shooter. (See Audrey Hale’s Manifesto: Blueprint for the Total Destruction of What?) We hear the same thing about the August 2025 Minneapolis school massacre perpetrated by a trans identified shooter. (See The Terrorist Embodies the Ideology in Reality.) Thanks to a change in administrations, we have a lot more access to information in the latter case. But have you noticed? The memory holing of Robert Westman? You have to force yourself to remember these things. Out of sight out of mind works wonders for disrupting one’s pattern recognition.

During a C-SPAN interview in July 2024, Representative Eli Crane remarked on the unsettling, sterile look of Crooks’s room, describing it as “almost like a lab,” with “no trash, no signs of being lived in.” The New York Times later confirmed that Crooks had been stockpiling explosive materials in the bedroom he shared with his parents—just steps away from where his family slept. But the media are disinterested in determining why the room appeared to have been professionally scrubbed. Crooks’s father suggested that Crooks was suffering from depression. Do people suffering from depression keep their bedrooms in lab-like sterility? Maybe. Unlikely, though.

Crooks had accounts on numerous social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok—as well as Discord. He searched gun/ammo sites, campaign routes, the specific rally location in Butler, and images of the rally grounds. His Discord account was “rarely utilized,” according to Discord, who told investigators they saw no evidence it was used to plan the attack or express political views. But Discord has said the said the same thing about Tyler Robinson, even though FBI took pictures of Robinson’s Discord account (thanks to Twigg’s cooperation) that clearly showed Robinson used Discord to plan the attack.

If Kamala Harris had won the presidency in 2024, and kept on Christopher Way (the FBI chief resigned in December 2024, well short of his ten-year tenure at the agency), does anybody honestly believe we would know anything about Robinson at all? The evidence from his Discord account the FBI collected? The engravings on his bullet casings? The Halloween images mocking Trump (riding him like a horse way back in 2017, when Robinson was 14 years old) and Groypers? His dinner conversations with his parents about how Charlie Kirk was a preacher of hate? The fact that his roommate, and probably lover, was a transgender woman?

On that last piece of evidence, the FBI, in point of fact, didn’t tell us about this. And had Elon Musk not acquired Twitter and changed the social media landscape, The New York Post would probably have been deplatformed—just as they were when they exposed Hunter Biden’s laptop—for reporting on the story. (See New York Post Drops a Bombshell on the Biden Campaign. I had this figured out before The New York Post published stories about it. See The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President. I later brag about that here: I Told You Joe Biden is Corrupt and Compromised.)

The public should make no mistake about this: Antifa is a major domestic terrorist organization operating in America today, working alongside Black Lives Matter rioters during the summer of love, the antisemitic pro-Islamist groups harassing Jewish students and occupying college campuses, those fire bombing Tesla, and violent trans activists—all of which have enjoyed funding by dark money progressive groups associated with the Democratic Party.

Shockingly, while some officials, including Donald Trump during his first term, have called for Antifa to be labeled as a terrorist group, no such designation has been made by the US Department of State or the Department of Homeland Security. Senator Bill Cassidy introduced S.Res. 279 in the 116th Congress (2019-2020), a resolution calling for Antifa to be designated as a domestic terrorist organization. It was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but did not become law. Republicans controlled the Senate at the time. On January 9, 2025, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced H.Res. 26 in the 119th Congress, which would “Deem certain conduct of members of Antifa as domestic terrorism and designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.” That resolution has likewise been referred to the Judiciary Committee. January seems like a lifetime ago.

The US does not have a legal framework under which domestic groups can be designated like foreign organizations (Foreign Terrorist Organization status) by the State Department. But there is existing law. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2331, domestic terrorism is defined as activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that violate US or state criminal laws, are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence government policy through intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of government through mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping, and that occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. The law provides all the tools necessary to confront Antifa, whose activities meet several of the elements of the definition.

This error must be corrected. Trump must designate Antifa a terrorist organization. Congress should follow up with enabling legislation. Reasonable people don’t reason with fanatics; zealots are entirely unreasonable. And a reasonable government certainly doesn’t compromise with extremist violence. It obliterates its source. This is how one returns a nation to reason. So what gives?

In a Friday morning interview on Fox & Friends, President Trump was asked how he planned to address the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt posed the question: “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” She also (ridiculously) noted the presence of radicals on both the left and right sides of US politics. Trump response: “I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less.” He elaborated: “The radicals on the left are the real problem—they are vicious, horrible, and politically savvy. They push for men in women’s sports, advocate for widespread transgender policies, and support open borders. These are among the worst things to happen to this country.”

Nice rhetoric, and I want to be hopeful, but I’m concerned about what I am seeing from Republicans in their actions. The September 12 press briefing, where Kash Patel and the FBI allowed Utah Governor Spencer Cox to take the lead, was troubling. Cox has only recently moved to protect children from radical gender ideology; he came to that position very late and only after grassroots sentiment and the nationwide trend against transitioning minors compelled him to, it appears, out of political expediency. As recently as 2022, Cox vetoed House Bill 11, which sought to ban boys from participating in girls’ high school sports. He expressed concern about the bill’s impact on “transgender youth,” deploying the well-worn trans activist rhetoric of emotional blackmail: “These kids, they’re just trying to stay alive.”

The FBI, by failing to take the lead in the press conference, allowed Cox to deliver what media organizations characterized as a poignant call for national unity and de-escalation. Cox rightly condemned the rising tide of political violence, and, as noted above, admitted yesterday that Robinson is in the grip of leftist ideology, but he prioritized in the most critical moment healing over hostility at a time when righteous anger is needed to compel the government to take action. He set up the government to appear overbearing when—if ever—it acts decisively to combat the problem of domestic terrorism and political assassination.

Dutifully, the media almost uniformly portrayed Cox’s remarks as standing in stark contrast to the “divisive rhetoric” of some Republicans, positioning Cox as a voice of reason advocating for civility and unity at a time when the government needs to get ugly with a very serious threat to safety and security.

Which Republicans? The New York Times bemoans that “In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump’s Mission,” “President Trump does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all Americans.” The article goes on about Trump “angrily blaming the murder on the American left and vowing revenge.”

Shawn McCreesh, a White House reporter for The New York Times covering the Trump administration, complains about Trump “running around with flamethrowers … torching the federal bureaucracy, the global order, the media, the opposition party, ” as if the federal bureaucracy, the global order, the media, and Democrats represent will partners in Trump’s desire to see all Americans succeed in a restored constitutional republic.

The image of Cox as the voice of reason was also contrasted with that of Wisconsin state representative, another Republican, Derrick Van Orden. Van Orden has faced criticism for his “inflammatory rhetoric” on social media. He posted a series of tweets blaming Democrats and the media for the murder, declaring that “the gloves are off.” In one tweet, Van Orden wrote, “The left and their policies are leading America into a civil war. And they want it. Just like the Democrat party wanted our 1st civil war.” How is this in any way inflammatory? The truth is now inflammatory?

Van Orden’s statements were predictably condemned by Wisconsin Democrats for escalating tensions and promoting a divisive narrative. As if political assassination is not divisive. As if civil war isn’t looming (I’m not sure we aren’t already in it). As if Democrats have no interest in tamping down criticism of their routine calls for political unrest and demonization of conservatives and their leaders. (Kudos to Van Orden on the historical point of reference: the Democrats did indeed take us into the first civil war. They wanted to keep their black slaves.)

The problem isn’t that Republicans are too divisive or that their rhetoric is inflammatory. The problem is that they’re not aggressive enough (in this and several other areas—immigration, the obstructionists in the federal judiciary, rampant crime in the blue cities). Is the Trump Administration shrinking in the face of domestic terrorism? Why hasn’t Trump declared Antifa a terrorist organization and gone after its members and their sponsors? The extremist spawn of progressive politics has twice tried to take the man’s life. One of them took the life of Charlie Kirk.

Are officials in the FBI scared? Have they gotten too close to the gravitational pull of the deep state? I’ve watched Patel over the last several years. He always exuded confidence. He looks timid to me now. Maybe it’s grief. Maybe he’s overwhelmed. After all, he and Dan Bongino are trying to lead an agency that was taken over by deep state actors years ago, filling the agency with recalcitrant bureaucrats with DEI training. Maybe he feels he needs to tone down his fiery persona, appear more stateman-like. But I wonder.

Our leaders are supposed to defend the homeland against terrorism, foreign or domestic, with gusto—whatever the risks may be to personal safety and political reputation. If they don’t, if they cower in the face of terrorist violence, then the terrorists win, because inaction is precisely what terrorist acts seek. That’s its raison d’être.

Democrats counter with instances of white supremacist extremism, but Antifa is a special problem because it does not represent a political movement operating from the fringes. It’s been mainstreamed and excused. (No Republican defends racist violence—conservatives and liberals abhor and condemn it.) Antifa exists because its members are the shocktroops of one of the two major political parties in the United States and the power that party represents: transnational corporations. For corporate ambition, democratic republicanism and the modern nation-state are fetters on the globalization project.

However, the rot runs deeper than the corporate elite, its command over our policymaking and sensemaking institutions, the Democratic Party, and the street-level thugs who disorder public spaces. Ask yourselves: why are millions of Americans voting for politicians who push extremist ideology and foment rebellion? Why would so many Americans hate their country? But they do, and this reality means we can’t merely refuse to compromise with Antifa, or with the party and power that makes Antifa possible, but even more than that, with the rank-and-file American who has been brainwashed with woke progressive ideology.

Progressives on social media have been freaking out now that the cat is out of the bag: Robinson, the man who assassinated Kirk, is Antifa. At first, they tried to deny the truth by posting pictures of the Robinson family, emphasizing how white, Republican, and Christian they are—as if many Antifa members don’t grow up in white conservative Christian households. The fact is that a family can do their best to raise their child, but once the child is given over to the public school system and Internet chat rooms, even the best socialization is at great risk of coming undone.

I don’t mean to suggest that progressives have given up their denialism. They’re still trying, and their attempts are becoming more absurd by the moment. However, as awareness began to spread that Robison was, in fact, Antifa, progressives resorted to the tactics of distraction by pointing to teenagers radicalized in online white supremacist networks. To be sure, this is a problem, but what does that have to do with Republicans?

More broadly, progressives have rehearsed the myth that white heterosexual males are mostly responsible for mass shootings (I have an essay coming soon on this topic). But, again, when have Republicans ever stood at the podium and called on their constituents to rise up and get in people’s faces? Five days have passed since Kirk’s murder. Where are the riots? No overturned cars. No vandalism of monuments. No mob violence. Just candlelight vigils.

You will NOT gaslight your way out of this.

NOT this time.

The Democrat Party must finally look in the mirror, condemn the political violence they’ve unleashed, and apologize for poisoning an entire generation into believing conservatives are “fascist threats” to democracy.… pic.twitter.com/iw8YnQJHah

— Wesley Hunt (@WesleyHuntTX) September 12, 2025

None of the rationalizations will work. Progressives aside (they’re living the dream—just not the American Dream), America is waking up to the grim truth that Antifa, BLM, and trans violence are the consequence of progressive rhetoric in the halls of government, hegemonic cultural institutions, the mass media, in educational curricula, and the willful failure of the criminal justice system to effectively control the consequences of anti-white and anti-Western ideology. The source of the violence is well-known and well-understood. I have been documenting it on the pages of Freedom and Reason for years.

Democrats and progressives call for civility and unity not because they really believe in the intrinsic value of these ideals (such sentiments betrayed by the fact that they have preached incivility and disunity for years and clearly do not intend to stop), but so they can make it appear as if political violence is a problem on “both sides,” thus giving them space and time to keep doing what they’ve been doing. But the problem is self-evidently on one side—their side. Conservatives and liberals can’t be so stupid as to heed the call of those who started all this to lower the temperature now that the fruit of their harvest has come to fruition—the riots, the vandalism, the harassment, intimidation, and violence? I pray we’re not that stupid.

I have on this platform called for people to ignore the fool on the hill. Let him rant and rave up there where he can’t hurt anybody. This is a metaphor for the marginalization zealots deserve. However, we can no longer ignore the fool when he has come down off that hill. Nor can we ignore who or what called him to the village. We know who they are.

A few days ago on social media, I said that the monster the Frankensteins in the Democratic Party, the progressive movement, and the deep state they deny, created got away from them. I could have put that better. Indeed, the monster they deny they created remains on the chain. Trump and Kash Patel’s FBI have to follow that chain to its source—link by link. Until the deep state is smashed, everything populist nationalists have worked for will be lost. This is the moment when the Democratic Party can be fully exposed for what it is (what it has always been): the party of transnational corporate power. We cannot lose this moment.

Waking up to Antifa as an organized threat to domestic peace and tranquility is only the first step. Here’s the next step one has to take if he wants to save this beloved Republic:

Stephen Miller is going nuclear…

“This is not fringe anymore. Tape, after tape. Federal workers, bureaucrats, educators, professors, nurses… people celebrating and cheering the assassination of Charlie Kirk! There is a domestic terrorist movement growing in this country.” pic.twitter.com/dZZN4UFwyK

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) September 13, 2025

See update in note at end.

A 22-year-old Utah man named Tyler Robinson has been arrested in connection with the killing of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. Authorities say Robinson confessed, or at least strongly implied responsibility, to a family member, which led to his surrender. Investigators recovered what they believe is the murder weapon—a high-powered bolt-action rifle—and surveillance footage showed Robinson arriving on campus, changing clothes, climbing onto a nearby roof believed to be the shooting site, and then fleeing. The case is being investigated as a politically motivated assassination.

It does not appear that Robinson was acting alone. His roommate cooperated with authorities, showing them Discord messages where Robinson discussed the rifle and other details. The evidence presented by Utah Governor Spencer Cox indicates communications about the assassination plot with the roommate, including the need to acquire the weapon—a high-powered, bolt-action Mauser .30-06 rifle—and where to leave the weapon. I am waiting for more information to nail down the timeline of events and the larger conspiracy to assassinate a leader of the American conservative youth movement.

My Facebook page, which is shared only with friends and family, often serves as a forward staging area for essays that wind up—elaborated and polished—on Freedom and Reason. Twenty-four hours ago, after learning from The Wall Street Journal reporting that the ammunition used in the Charlie Kirk assassination was engraved with antifascist slogans, I told my friends that the left can no longer feign ignorance about what is unfolding.

I have been warning readers of Freedom and Reason for years that Antifa—drawing Cluster B personality types to its mass like flies to shit and joined at the hip with radical gender ideology—is the street-level assassins and thugs of the reactionary progressive movement.

Trans rage is a major component of this movement. What happened to Charlie Kirk is the same rage that motivated the March 2023 mass shooting at Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, where Audrey Aiden Hale carried out the killing of three children and three adults. It is the same rage that, only a few weeks ago, drove Robert Westman, who also identified as transgender, to open fire during Mass at Annunciation Catholic School and Church in Minneapolis, killing two children and injuring several others.

This is why Democrats and progressives rationalize Antifa. Never forget that during the first 2020 US presidential debate, Joe Biden responded to Donald Trump’s remarks about Antifa by saying: “Antifa is an idea, not an organization” (see Buried Lede: Biden Fails to Condemn Antifa at First Presidential Debate). He was referencing a statement by then-FBI Director Christopher Wray describing Antifa as an ideology, not an organized terrorist threat. Trump warned you about this. Democrats and the corporate media told you not to believe him.

In my Facebook post, I wrote that, at first glance, “antifascism” sounds unobjectionable. Who wouldn’t oppose fascism? I have said the same on this platform. The Freedom and Reason project is, at its core, an antifascist project. Yet, as I’ve endeavored to show, what passes for antifascism on the woke progressive left is not a rejection of fascism but rather appears as a mirror image of it. In truth, it is the thing itself.

Antifa is hostile to the very liberal values that underpin a free society—democratic republicanism, freedom of conscience, speech, press, association, and assembly. Its reality is street violence: militants attacking conservatives for exercising their rights to gather and speak. It is the harassment and intimidation of anyone who affirms the reality of the gender binary in the face of trans ideology. It is the left’s alliance with Islamism—clerical fascism—and the resurgence of antisemitism that energizes the movement. They hate the Enlightened West and everything it stands for. They seek anarchy. All this is promoted because it advances ends sought by transnational corporate power.

Engravings on the bullet casings used by the shooter provide a window into his thinking, but one has to know what these engravings mean. The message on a fired casing read: “Notices. Bulges. OWO. What’s this?” Messages etched on other cases: “Hey fascist, catch!” “O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao.” “If you read this, you’re gay, LMAO.”

The first line, a sexualized meme, is common in furry culture, which is a category of the trans movement, which in turn is an integral part of Antifa. It’s used in the online gaming community. The second line is a common sentiment expressed by Antifa. Fists, rocks, bullets, whatever, that’s what fascists are supposed to catch. The third line is from a folk song adapted by Italian antifascists during the resistance during WWII. The fourth line is rather typical in the trans community, which is hostile to gays. This might strike the reader as odd. Aren’t they in an alliance together? According to corporate marketing, sure. But, actually, trans is antithetical to gay.*

We are living in an era of political violence. The threat is not abstract; it’s concrete. We see it in trans shooters targeting children at schools and churches. We see it in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We see it in the attempted assassinations of Donald Trump. We see it in the celebration of these acts of violence across social media from progressives. See what you see. Hear what you hear. It’s in your face.

Americans must denounce left-wing violence clearly and without qualification. This responsibility falls especially on Democrats and progressives, whose rhetoric has too often normalized and justified these ideologies. But how could we expect this when they’re the ones who have normalized and justified these ideologies? One could easily compile clips of progressive leaders stoking unrest (I am watching as I write this). I would like to hope that any readers with these sympathies would confront for themselves the intellectual and moral roots of this problem and turn back from the New Fascism. But I am not hopeful.

Law enforcement, from DHS to the FBI, must take seriously the task of aggressively monitoring and disrupting this reactionary movement. Now is not the time to “dial down the temperature.” This is the moment where the Republic must rise up and crush the enemies of liberty. When Democrats tell you that Trump and MAGA are the greatest threat to democracy, what they actually mean is that Trump and MAGA, by endeavoring to restore the American Republic to its greatness, is the greatest threat to the technocratic order progressives built and the globalist project they represent to take the world to a planetary corporate neofeudalism. Antifa exists to advance this project.

* * *

* I want to say more about the gay slur, because this is not obvious to many at first blush. In the trans worldview, a man who likes other men is not a homosexual but a heterosexual woman trapped in a man’s body. You hear this from men who date trans women, which means they are gay, deny they are gay, by saying that trans women are women, which they obviously aren’t and cannot be. Homophobia is deeply embedded in trans ideology.

This bizarre idea goes back to the crackpot sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who “theorized” that homosexual men are really women trapped in male bodies. Working with Nazi doctor Erwin Gohrbandt, Hirschfeld developed vaginoplasty. Hirschfeld and Gohrbandt’s idea was to liberate men by removing their testicles, slitting their penises, and shoving what remains up into the abdominal cavity, creating a neovagina. Their victims would then pretend to be women and experience “trans joy.” The idea was updated by another crackpot sexologist in the 1960s, Robert Stoller, who promoted the term “gender identity,” which became the central doctrine of radical gender ideology. This ideology is used by the medical industry to justify medical atrocities.

Update: September 13. If confirmed, this would explain a lot. Brooke Singman is a political correspondent and reporter for Fox News Digital, Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. She has access to high-level sources. She tweeted this today:

Before getting to today’s essay, I want to say a few words about Charlie Kirk, who, in what Governor Spencer Cox called a “political assassination,” was shot and killed on Wednesday in an event at Utah Valley University in Utah by a shooter on a rooftop several hundred feet away.

I also pin a note to the end this essay on the matter of political violence.

Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, was instrumental in mobilizing young conservative voices on college campuses across the country. His energetic presence captivated audiences nationwide. He played a major role in Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025.

Kirk’s murder serves as a solemn reminder of the perilous state of political discourse today in America, where the political left has increasingly resorted to what anarchists call “propaganda of the deed.”

There are still many facts to be determined—the shooter remains at large and we do not yet know his identity or his motive (although there is some indication of his ideology in the evidence he left behind)—but whatever we may learn about these facts in the coming days, we can say now that there is an urgent need for civility and the safeguarding of public dialogue.

There are many posts and videos on TikTok, X, and other social media celebrating his death and condemning the man for his “divisive rhetoric.” But words are the opposite of violence, and Kirk, like every one of us, should be able to voice opinions without fear of harassment, intimidation, and violence.

Kirk leaves behind a wife and two small children.

* * *

The recent claim by Virginia Senator Tim Kaine that rights come from government, not from God, should not reignite—if Americans have their heads on straight about the matter—one of the oldest debates in political philosophy: where do rights originate? The answer matters, to be sure, because if rights are granted by government, they can be taken away by government. If, instead, they are inherent in human nature, then government’s role is not to bestow them but to protect them—and limit them only where the actions of particular citizens and governments interfere with the unalienable rights of the individual. But since Kaine raised the matter, I want to take a moment to clarify the matter (which I did last seek in my essay Tim Kaine and the Enemies of Liberty and Rights).

The American founding documents speak with remarkable clarity on this issue. The Declaration of Independence asserts that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” these being the rights to “life, liberty, and happiness,” and that governments are instituted “to secure these rights.” Rights, in this vision, are pre-political. They exist before constitutions, before judges, before kings, before legislatures. Governments do not create them, but arise because they exist, and are only just governments as long as they recognize and defend these rights. Otherwise, the people reserve the right to overthrow unjust governments.

The “Creator” invoked by Jefferson and the committee that penned the Declaration was not the interventionist God of clerics or theocrats. To be sure, some of the founders of the American Republic were Christians, but many of the founders were deists or skeptics, and most were Enlightenment rationalists. They drew on John Locke, who argued that natural rights flowed from the “state of nature”—from what it means to be human. Thus, when the Declaration invokes “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” it points not to dogma, but to principles discoverable by reason and observation. No priest is required to interpret these truths. Indeed, by separating government and matters of conscience, no priest can interpret these truths.

This framework also explains the language of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment does not grant free speech; it recognizes it and its obligation to defend it. The Article declares, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” Such phrasing assumes that freedom already exists. The same is true for matters of conscience. The same is true of the rights to bear arms, to be secure against unreasonable searches, or to due process of law. The Bill of Rights restrains government precisely because rights precede it.

Anthropology and history confirm this point. For most of our existence, human beings lived without formal states. Yet they cooperated, shared food, and protected one another. These social instincts—cooperation, mutual protection, sympathy— were essential for survival. Thinkers like Adam Smith and David Hume described this moral sense as natural to humanity, while Darwin recognized its evolutionary advantage. Whether one believes these rights come from a creator who set the universe into motion, one observes that creator’s handiwork in nature, its signs determinable by reason and scientific observation.

eIn this light, rights reflect not arbitrary convention but enduring features of human existence. The right to life reflects the need for survival; the right to liberty reflects the need for autonomy and flourishing. The right to happiness follows logically from these rights, since one is not happy when his life and liberty are compromised by his fellows or governments. Even nonhuman animals demonstrate this fact: bears and wolves confined in cages do not thrive—not because they have a subjective sense of freedom but because they are objectively unfree. This is the fact that inspired Abraham Maslow to chart the hierarchy of needs. This is the fact that inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration rejected by Muslim-majority countries, countries run by panels of clerics who interpret matters handed down by a supposed prophet of a theocratic conception of god. The creator in the Declaration is not a theocratic conception. It is a euphemism for nature.

Understanding this is crucial for the future of freedom. If rights are natural, then government is permanently limited. It cannot legitimately abolish free conscience or speech or any other unalienable right because doing so would violate what people are by nature. But if rights are merely governmental, then they are contingent: they last only as long as the state allows. That is the logic of tyranny. The founders understood this distinction, which is why Jefferson could write that when a government becomes destructive of these ends, “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.” Natural rights provide the moral standard by which governments are judged. The upshot is that Senator Kaine is admitting that his standpoint, one shared by his party, seeks to realize in life the totalitarian desire.

Let us make this as clear as our founders did 250 years ago: The American experiment rests on the premise that rights are not created by government but recognized by it. They are rooted in human nature, discernible by reason, and essential for human flourishing. Government is legitimate only insofar as it secures these rights. In this, the founders aligned with both the ancient natural law tradition and modern psychology: human beings require freedom, life, and the pursuit of happiness, not as privileges conferred, but as necessary conditions of existence and thriving. If we lose this, it won’t be just Americans who will lose their freedom and happiness. The world will lose its best hope for establishing the principle of natural rights in societies around the world.

* * *

Political violence comes in different forms and necessarily presumes an ideology. Democrats want us to not think about what lurks behind the violence by chanting “gun violence.” But Jihadists used planes on September 11, 2001. And Decarlos Brown used a knife to kill that “white girl” in Charlotte.

Today there is an affinity between left progressivism—“woke”—and Islamism. What unifies these ideologies is a loathing of Western Civilization, its core rights and values, among them free speech and tolerance for open dialogue; an inability to suffer the opinions of others; a belief that snuffing out the lives of those who offend them is righteous action—that it’s morally justified.

Folks on social media are wondering whether we are entering a new era of political violence. We’ve been here for a while now. We know what’s fueling it. It’s neither liberal nor conservative.

Trump, accompanied by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other senior officials, arrived by motorcade at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab—just a short distance from the White House.

Outside the restaurant, he briefly spoke to reporters, drawing both cheers and chants of “Free Palestine!” Inside, protesters waving Palestinian flags escalated, confronting the President while chanting, “Free DC, free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time.”

Let’s state the obvious: Washington, DC is far freer today than it was before Trump’s crackdown on crime in the capital. As Abraham Maslow noted decades ago, personal freedom rests on safety and security. The idea that safety and freedom exist in tension is a false dichotomy. Without protection from harassment, intimidation, and violence, no one is truly free to exercise their basic rights in public life.

As for equating Trump to Hitler, this is not only absurd, but dangerous. Just as waves of anti-white rhetoric from the progressive left, amplified by mainstream media, fuel racial violence targeting whites, the constant pairing of Trump with Hitler inspires violence against him. Do people have the First Amendment right to make this comparison? Yes. But why do so few leaders condemn it? The reason is plain: they want the rhetoric to persist.

Another urgent question: how did Code Pink get so close to the President, Vice President, and multiple Cabinet members? If even one protester had been armed, House Speaker Mike Johnson might be President today. The Secret Service knows who these radicals are—so why were they allowed within feet of the nation’s top leaders? After Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump survived an assassination attempt (he was struck by a bullet), and another at his golf club in Florida, the idea that extremists could again get so close is alarming. At what point do we stop chalking these failures up to chance? Could there be something more sinister at play?

For those unfamiliar, Code Pink is a radical activist group led by Medea Benjamin, funded through opaque “dark money” channels. Beyond its rabidly pro-Islamist stance—an ideology that poses a very real threat to freedom and security across North America and Europe—Code Pink is notorious for harassing members of Congress and disrupting House and Senate hearings. The fact that such a group could breach security so easily should deeply concern every American.

Concerning the alleged quote by Benjamin Franklin on the supposed antithesis of security and freedom, the actual quote goes like this: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

This is from a 1755 letter written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly in the context of the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Franklin penned the letter because of a conflict between the Pennsylvania Assembly and the Penn family (the colony’s proprietors). The Assembly wanted to raise funds for frontier defense against American Indian raids during the French and Indian War. The Penn family refused to allow their estates to be taxed. Franklin’s line was aimed at those unwilling to make fair sacrifices for the common defense.

The way this quote is used illustrates the problem of manufactured quotes wrenched from context for propaganda purposes. Franklin distinguished between core freedoms, e.g., self-government and fair taxation, on the one hand, and privileges and protections, namely the Penns’ wealth, shielded from taxation, on the other. In other words, what Franklin wrote is the inverse of what is intended by the manufactured quote Code Pink—and a lot of rightwing libertarians—put on their banners.

Franklin was actually saying this: If you (the Penn family) won’t give up some of your privileges for the sake of collective security, then you deserve neither liberty nor safety. When you understand the actual quote in context, an entirely different principle is laid bare.

I checked. Neil Stone is a real doctor. I thought at first this account was a bot, but nope, it’s real. This is how a profession affixes to one’s head blinkers that keep a man undistracted by obvious questions. That a doctor would ask this question is troubling. So is the fact that, at the time of the screenshot (a few days ago), 60 thousand X users would like his post. In this essay, I review two historical cases that illustrate why asking such a question is so troubling.

The scientific link between smoking and cancer was suspected as early as the 1930s (German researchers observed unusually high lung cancer rates among smokers). Epidemiological studies in the 1950s (for example, by British doctors Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill) established the connection between smoking and lung cancer. By the 1964 US Surgeon General’s report, the evidence was overwhelming.

Despite the evidence, the tobacco industry mounted one of the most aggressive denial and disinformation campaigns in modern history. For decades, companies funded research designed to sow doubt, launched public-relations offensives, and even testified under oath that nicotine was not addictive and cigarettes did not cause cancer. This resistance lasted until the 1990s, when lawsuits and landmark settlements finally forced accountability.

Concerns over talcum powder and ovarian cancer began appearing in medical literature in the 1970s, when researchers found talc particles (which naturally contain asbestos, a known carcinogen) embedded in ovarian tumors. The theory was that talc applied in the genital area could travel into the reproductive system and cause inflammation, potentially leading to cancer. 

Over the years, epidemiological studies produced mixed results—some showing increased risk, others not. For decades, like the tobacco companies, Johnson & Johnson and other manufacturers denied the risks, emphasizing regulatory reviews that did not classify talc as a proven carcinogen. In this way, corporations hid behind government authority.  

Lawsuits in the 2010s brought the issue into public view, with internal documents surfacing that suggested the companies were aware of possible risks but continued marketing talc products as safe. Since then, juries have awarded multi-billion-dollar verdicts against talc producers.

The medical industry is one of the largest sectors of the global economy, larger than automobiles, the military, and oil. Healthcare accounts for nearly 18 percent of US GDP—over $4.5 trillion annually—making it the dominant domestic industry. 

Within this industry, the pharmaceutical sector is a massive money maker. Globally, the pharmaceutical industry generates more than $1.5 trillion in annual revenue, with profit margins often exceeding 15–20 percent, among the highest of any major sector. Of that, vaccines generate approximately 10 percent of total revenue—$150 billion dollars annually.

Pharmaceuticals consistently deliver high returns due to patent protections, exclusivity periods, and, with vaccines, immunity from liability. This makes Big Pharma both one of the most profitable and politically powerful industries worldwide.

Reflecting on the two historical examples I have given (and the two others cited in my recent essay The Tactic of Reputational Destruction: The Inquisition of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), why would anybody with a rational mind think that the medical industry has less of an incentive to lie about the harms their procedures and products they produce than R.J. Reynolds or Johnson & Johnson? 

Returning to Dr. Stone’s rhetorical question concerning the link between Tylenol and autism, Tylenol (acetaminophen, or paracetamol outside the US) has indeed been around for quite a while. However, for most of the twentieth century, aspirin was the go-to drug for parents in treating children to treat fever and pain. In the late 1970s–1980s, studies linked aspirin use in children with a condition called Reye’s syndrome. As a result, parents and doctors began avoiding aspirin in children. During the 1980s, Tylenol (and ibuprofen) quickly became the preferred fever and pain reducers for kids. This is what could not occur to Stone because of the blinkers of his profession.

In the 1970s–1980s, prevalence estimates for autism were very low, often 2–5 per 10,000 children. In the 1990s, reported rates began to rise sharply. For example, in the US, prevalence estimates rose from 1 in 2,500 (early 1980s) to about 1 in 500 (mid-1990s). Rates continued to climb in the 2000s. In 2000, the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network estimated 1 in 150 US children had autism. By 2008, it was 1 in 88. As of 2023, the CDC reported that about 1 in 36 children in the US is identified with autism.

These alarming numbers were raised at the recent inquisition of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., before the Senate Finance Committee (discussed in the previously cited essay). Yet Senators, especially on the Democratic side, seemed unconcerned about them. They were focused instead on discrediting Kennedy, demanding his resignation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy rightly pointed out that those interrogating him had a vested interest in defending the medical industry. Kennedy’s motivation? Public health.

To be sure, broader diagnostic definitions (especially since the 1990s), greater awareness among parents, educators, and clinicians, and better screening and services that identify more children with this disorder account for some of this rise. But all of it? I have trouble believing that. I’ve been alive for six decades, and I don’t remember seeing the number of autistic kids I see today. My impression is anecdotal, to be sure, but I am hardly the only one with this impression. Obscuring potential environmental inputs with the rhetoric of social construction doesn’t sit well with me.

Nor is Kennedy the first to suggest a link between Tylenol and autism. The earliest explicit scientific suggestion linking the two came from a 2008 study by Stephen Schultz. Schultz raised the idea that regression into autism might not be triggered directly by the MMR vaccine (one of the theories explaining the rise of autism), but rather by acetaminophen administered afterward for fever or pain. The study reported an association between early childhood acetaminophen use and regressive autism.

Since then, a hypothesis has emerged from the broader biochemical and historical evidence: autism diagnoses began sharply rising in the early 1980s, coinciding with a widespread replacement of aspirin with acetaminophen for children, due to warnings about Reye’s syndrome. Perhaps this association is coincidental, but determining whether it is imperative—as imperative as determining whether the MMR vaccine or some other environmental factor is associated with the rise of autism. 

Relatedly, Sabine Hazan has argued that mRNA COVID-19 vaccination may be associated with a sharp decline in certain beneficial gut microbes, particularly Bifidobacterium, in some individuals. She has suggested that this disruption could influence immunity and possibly wider health outcomes. You may recall that, similarly, Andrew Wakefield proposed in the late 1990s that the MMR vaccine caused gastrointestinal inflammation that, in turn, triggered autism, linking vaccination to both gut disruption and cognitive disorders.

While the reception of Hazan and Wakefield’s research differs in important ways—Wakefield’s claims allegedly having been discredited (reviews of the case scream this at the reviewer), while Hazan’s are under scrutiny (she is taking quite a risk speaking out)—both place the gut microbiome at the center of a vaccine-related hypothesis, suggesting that changes in intestinal bacteria may underlie broader effects on health and even cognition.

None of these connections should be a priori ruled out, and I am not at all convinced by claims that they have been. All connections should be thoroughly examined—and they haven’t been to my satisfaction. And I am hardly alone in lacking confidence that these matters have been thoroughly interrogated.

It would be naïve in the extreme to suppose that Big Pharma welcomes such an interrogation. There is no difference between the medical industry and any other—for all of them, the bottom line is to generate as much revenue for their stockholders as possible. This is why we don’t trust corporations to do their due diligence in determining whether their products are safe. We must leave that to those who have no stake in the profitability of any industry. And the politicians who protect the stockholder at the expense of the stakeholder to keep the campaign donations and other benefits flowing? They must be called out. The last voices to be discredited and pushed to the margins are the brave men and women who are asking the right questions.

Dr. Stone routinely makes posts like this. Here’s another one.

These viral memes with dramatic imagery crediting vaccines with the disappearance of the iron lung—the negative pressure ventilator—subconsciously work to obscure the actual reason the iron lung is no longer the standard way people struggling to breathe are ventilated: the invention and widespread adoption of the mechanical ventilator. The development of positive pressure ventilators is associated with the decline in iron lung use.

During the COVID pandemic, millions of Americans watched thousands of their countrymen ventilated with no awareness that the reason the iron lung was not used is because technology had changed. The dramatic memes work because of the power of propaganda to put awareness out of mind.

I want a world where lawmakers grill lifelong technocrats serving corporate interests, while elevating critical and independent thinkers who question dogma and entrenched power on the facts that the technocrats and their corporate overlords (and the media who shill for them) conceal from the public.

Compare and contrast the way lawmakers treated Anthony Fauci and Robert Kennedy, Jr. Were you doubtful that the Senate Finance Committee is owned by Big Pharma? How about now? That spectacle on Thursday was obscene.

Never forget that Joe Biden, during the final hours of his presidency, granted Fauci a full and unconditional presidential pardon for any potential federal offenses Fauci may have committed between January 1, 2014, and the date of the pardon. Here’s the Executive Grant of Clemency.

The pardon was specifically related to Fauci’s roles as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

“Let me be perfectly clear,” Fauci told the media: “I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me.”

Denial is expected. But it seems Biden—or at least those operating the autopen—thought differently. What inside knowledge did Biden or those around him have that Fauci committed federal offenses? Why is the Senate not investigating that question?

Sure, Fauci can’t be prosecuted now (unless Biden’s pardons are found to not have issued from his hand). But that also means he can’t invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege to remain silent in the face of incriminating evidence. He was a witness to federal crimes. Haul the man before the Senate and make him answer questions under threat of perjury and contempt of Congress.

As for Biden, he can’t be hauled before any tribunal because he was determined to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. Then again, he was also mentally incompetent to stand as President, yet the powers-that-be had no problem with that.

One last thing, while I got you here: Isn’t it funny how Biden could not give a press conference for an entire year, and all we heard was crickets in Media-land, yet Trump is out of the public eye for a day, and he either had a stroke or died?

We couldn’t question whether Biden was dead from the neck up, but Trump has a bruise on his hand, and his Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution and sack a sitting President.

If you can see how upside-down everything is may God have mercy on your soul.

One of the underexamined problems (perhaps even unexamined, as I have not seen this stated elsewhere) with professors’ anxiety about students using AI is their desire to control the scope of knowledge—the boundaries and thus the content of the knowledge base. But it is not the professor’s role to dictate where students may seek information. Students are citizens of a free republic, free to pursue knowledge through any means available to them, including conversations with chatbots.

I see a parallel here with media literacy programs. While I agree that citizens should be aware of propaganda, these curricula often function less as neutral training in discernment and more as tools for steering students toward approved sources—sources that align with a progressive agenda (which has colonized our sense-making institutions)—while delegitimizing alternative perspectives. In practice, media literacy often amounts to ideologically primed and framed “pre-bunking” of ideas that threaten the prevailing orthodoxy. Ironically, those who design and implement these programs are often as unaware of their own biases as AI is of its.

Criticism of AI for its inaccuracies and distortions—criticisms that are, to be sure, justified—can also be leveled at professors, both in their teaching and in their scholarship. Just as AI inherits an ideological slant from its training data (“data scraping”), which is largely drawn from institutions dominated by a progressive worldview, so too do professors reflect and perpetuate those same distortions. Indeed, much of the bias AI reproduces originates in academia itself and in its dissemination across cultural and media spaces.

My conversations with chatbots are often as frustrating as discussions with professors. The difference, however, is that with careful prompting, a chatbot can at least acknowledge that its errors and distortions stem from a progressive bias in its knowledge base. Many professors would not grant even that much. There are many reasons for this, but part of it is that admitting this fact undermines the authority they believe accrues to their profession through expertise and professional development. Chatbots—at least at this stage—are not burdened by the demands of reputation (albeit they can be defensive when accused of possessing a point of view, of which they deny being capable).

The deeper problem, perhaps, is that most people lack the independent knowledge necessary to guide AI toward more accurate outputs through thoughtful prompting, since they themselves have been shaped by the same ideological indoctrination. In this way, AI, like teachers, reinforces a distorted and incomplete understanding of reality, preparing students to accept received knowledge as valid. So, in the end, it comes back to ideological control over the sense-making institutions that shape mass consciousness.

The result is the emergence of a de facto “Ministry of Truth,” operating much like the one George Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-Four: by (consciously and unconsciously) keeping general knowledge in line with political doctrine, the knowledge-industrial complex controls not only what is taught, but what can be thought.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

These lines are from the Declaration of Independence, penned in the summer of 1776 to provide a clear rationale for breaking ties with Britain. More than this, the Declaration aimed to establish legitimacy for a new republic by grounding independence and the right to form a government in natural rights and the principle of popular sovereignty. It thus framed the United States as acting in accordance with universal principles of justice.

The Declaration was drafted primarily by one of the greatest Virginians, Thomas Jefferson, in June. He wrote it at the request of the Committee of Five—a group appointed by the Second Continental Congress—consisting of Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Adams and Franklin made important edits, and the full Continental Congress debated and revised the draft before formally adopting it on July 4. Next summer, the American Republic will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence.

US Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginian and the man who was selected by Hillary Clinton as her potential Vice President, might want to revisit the Declaration of Independence.

Our rights don’t come from government or the DNC.

They come from God. @timkaine, I suggest the Dems go back and read the words of our Founding Fathers. pic.twitter.com/QRmhTcbbOH

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 3, 2025

Texas Senator Ted Cruz gave a compelling response, but his points require clarification. Who is the “Creator” Jefferson is writing about? Jefferson tells us in the text: “Nature’s God” who established the “Laws of Nature.” Kaine compares these ideas to Islam—but he is mistaken. Natural law is not a religious prescription; it is an observation—a self-evident truth.

The religious outlooks of the Committee of Five reflected the diversity of thought among the Founders (some were Christians, others were not), yet they converged on common ground in Enlightenment principles. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin leaned toward deism, emphasizing natural law, reason, and the sovereignty of individual conscience. Livingston reflected the rationalist strain within the Reformed tradition. Among the five, only Sherman, a Calvinist, adhered to more orthodox Christian convictions.

Despite these differences, all agreed that human rights were not the gift of government but rooted in a higher order—whether understood through divine providence, natural law, or human nature itself. This convergence allowed them to craft the Declaration in language broad enough to resonate across faith traditions and philosophical outlooks, grounding the new republic in a shared commitment to liberty and the protection of individual rights.

Congress approved the Declaration without dissent on July 4. Every colony assented, making the vote unanimous. There were no imams, priests, or rabbis among the fifty-six delegates representing the thirteen colonies. However religious some of these men were, they did not impose religious authority on the American people. The Declaration they authored or assented to is unmistakably liberal and rationalist in character. It does not invoke revealed theology, denominational creeds, or sectarian authority. Instead, it grounds political legitimacy in natural rights, the equality of individuals, and the sovereignty of the people, all articulated in the language of Enlightenment philosophy.

The Declaration thus reflects a convergence: religious delegates could see in it the hand of providence, while deists and rationalists could recognize the operation of natural law. What united them was the conviction that rights are inherent, not granted by government, and that the purpose of republican government is to secure those rights against both majority tyranny and elite domination.

From this foundation, the Founders devised a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that embodied Enlightenment ideals in a system of government—a republic—grounded in popular sovereignty, where authority derives from the people and is exercised through a framework of representation and law. Unlike direct democracy, a system in which citizens make all lawmaking and policy decisions, republicanism channels popular will through elected representatives and constrains both rulers and the majority by constitutional principles and institutional checks. Its central purpose is to protect individual rights and the public good simultaneously, ensuring that government is neither arbitrary nor majoritarian, but rather manifests ordered liberty under the rule of law.

What is liberalism, then? One can infer its meaning from what has already been written, but its meaning should be made explicit: Liberalism is the doctrine that the individual is sovereign over his own associations, conscience, speech, and the fruits of his labor. It affirms that each person possesses an inviolable personal sphere—of expression, thought, and productive effort—the unalienable rights: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—that precedes and limits political authority over him.

The republican system is designed to protect this sovereignty, ensuring that no majority may vote away fundamental liberties and no minority of elites may rule over the people by fiat. Liberal principles provide the guardrails of republican government: they set the boundaries within which popular rule must operate, preserving ordered liberty by restraining both majoritarian excess and oligarchic ambition.

For republicanism to function, it must therefore be bounded by liberal guardrails—principles rooted in individual liberty, principles that issue from natural law, that is, human rights, which inhere in every citizen of a free republic. Ultimately, the individual is sovereign. His rights of conscience, expression, publication, and association are his own, free from government interference.

This moral framework acknowledges that human beings are social creatures whose sentiments often converge, and that democratic processes must exist to reflect shared sentiment. Yet even democracy is constrained by liberal principles. We do not live in a majoritarian system where the majority may vote away fundamental freedoms. Democracy requires dissenting voices—individuals and associations who challenge prevailing opinion—so that issues can be debated openly and consensus reached through rational deliberation. Rights do not—must not—come from government, but precede it, with government existing to reflect the will of the popular sovereign while protecting civil liberties and individual rights.

For republicanism to function, it therefore must be bounded by liberal guardrails—principles rooted in individual liberty—principles that issue from natural law, that is, human rights, which inhere in every citizen of a free republic. Ultimately, the individual is sovereign. His rights of conscience, expression, publishing, and speech to associate with those whom he wishes to, are his own, free from government interference.

This moral framework admits that human beings are social creatures whose sentiments often converge, and that democratic processes must exist to reflect that shared sentiment. Yet even democracy is constrained by liberal principles. We do not live in a majoritarian system where the majority may vote away fundamental freedoms. Democracy requires dissenting voices—individuals and associations who challenge prevailing opinion—so that issues can be debated openly and a consensus reached through rational deliberation. This is why man’s rights do not—must not—come from government, but precede government, with government existing to reflect the will of a popular sovereign—the people—while protecting the civil liberties and rights that are the birthright of every citizen.

The problem with progressivism—and why it is essential to emphasize that progressivism is not liberalism—is that the progressive mentality is technocratic in spirit. It seeks rule by bureaucrats and experts, subservient to elite power, treating both the individual and common sentiment as subordinate to elite knowledge. Liberal guardrails, while limiting democratic impulses by rooting sovereignty in the individual, also ensure that elites rule neither over the individual nor the populace without consent and within a rational, secular framework.

This is the essence of self-government. Progressives aim to transcend these limits, replacing self-government with rule by elites and their functionaries—the bureaucrat, the expert, the scientist. In a word, progressivism is technocratic: governance by unelected administrators, ultimately dictated by those who install themselves as overlords—the representatives of corporate class power.

This explains why Tim Kaine and his ilk argue that rights are granted by government rather than grounded in natural law. They want rights determined by the money-power that stands behind the politician, the corporatist ideology that moves the progressive policymaker, not by the self-evident nature of human beings. For, properly understood, natural law rests in human nature, which can be rationally examined and empirically observed. Since all humans share the same nature, the unalienable rights identified in the Declaration thus inhere equally in each person. No government can determine human nature. It must, in the final analysis, reflect it in establishing its foundational principles.

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reflects this nature: meeting basic needs is essential not as an end in itself, but as a necessary condition for self-actualization—the full development of every human personality. Such development benefits all, not merely the majority, and certainly not a minority of the opulent. Maslow valued above all else human potential and personal freedom. His focus on individual growth aligns him with liberal, humanistic ideals rather than rigid ideologies. He criticized extreme collectivism for suppressing creativity, acknowledged the value of social support, and condemned authoritarianism, believing government should facilitate human growth, not control it.

Thus Maslow, like the Founders, centered human rights and rooted them in human nature. If a government can define our rights, then that government can also take them away—our freedoms of association, conscience, press, and speech. These freedoms are necessary conditions for citizens to deliberate together, envision their future, and work collectively toward it in ways that maximize the flourishing of individuals and society alike. A free society is not one in which all are identical, but one in which each individual has the opportunity to strive for self-actualization. Because we are social beings, our institutions must support that effort, but they cannot be structured to give one person an unnatural advantage over another.

Kaine’s argument is, at least superficially, majoritarian: if the majority elects representatives who legislate according to their views, then rights are defined by that process. There is no external source of liberty and rights. In practice, however, the interests served are not truly those of the majority. They are the interests of a minority of the opulent—the corporate elite who control cultural and economic institutions. Kaine is an animal of concentrated power, not a representative of individual freedom. Nor does he represent the popular will constrained by human rights.

In the republican system, liberal guardrails protect universal interests by safeguarding individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness from both the majority and the minority of the opulent. By contrast, Kaine’s approach places the definition of rights in the hands of elites claiming to represent the majority. In a late-capitalist order, where corporations wield immense economic power, this means rights will serve narrow interests rather than those of the people. Rights conceived of in this way are not properly rights at all, but the instruments of tyranny.

Kaine’s position thus reflects, at bottom, a totalitarian impulse. It must be rejected if we are to preserve a free society. Crucially, Kaine is not an outlier—he embodies the progressive ideology at the heart of the Democratic Party, which advances transnational corporate agendas. To reject his politics is to reject the politics of that party itself. Whatever one thinks of the Republican Party, whatever it was before its representatives were compelled to bend to the demands of the populists, today’s Republicans are the only political force representing the liberal foundations established by the Founders.

If Democrats prevail in the 2026 midterm elections, the nation risks losing the best opportunity it has had in decades to recommit itself to the ideals set forth in the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—ideals reclaimed in the 1860s when the Democratic Party, the party of the Slavocracy, was defeated on the battlefield, but lost with the rise of progressivism. That would be a tragic way to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the greatest experiment in self-government since class power alienated humanity from its species-being so many millennia ago.

What the Senate Finance Committee put Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., through on Thursday, September 4, is an instance of a long historical pattern of corporations attempting to silence those who call out exploitation and harm in pursuit of profits, in this case, working through politicians elected by the people but bought off by money-power. Throughout American history, corporate power has sought not only to neutralize its critics but also to destroy them, often using media influence and political allies in government to discredit, marginalize, and smear those who speak out.

In the face of relentless attacks on his character and motives, Kennedy stuck to his guns, arguing that mRNA vaccines fail to provide effective protection against upper-respiratory infections like COVID and flu. He insisted that government funding should be redirected toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate. In his testimony, he assured Senators that everyone still has access to vaccines, rejecting claims to the contrary as false. When asked whether mounting evidence shows mRNA vaccines cause serious harm, including death—especially among young people—he responded in the affirmative. For this, he was smeared as “anti-vax” and a “conspiracy theorist.” Senators called for his resignation.

It was obvious that Big Pharma was behind the witch hunt. But Big Pharma isn’t the only corporation that works to suppress criticism of its products. The corporations most responsible for shaping this climate of suppression today are among the most powerful sectors of the economy: in addition to Big Pharma, there’s the medical-industrial complex, Big Agriculture, and the chemical manufacturing industry. Each has vast financial resources, entrenched political influence, and a record of prioritizing profit over public health and ecological well-being.

Big Pharma wields its power through aggressive lobbying, marketing, and the capture of regulatory agencies meant to protect the public from the pathological pursuit of profit. One has to be naive to believe that the medical-industrial complex at large doesn’t profit from a system that treats illness as a market opportunity rather than a social problem to be prevented. Indeed, the industry is responsible for manufacturing illnesses that it can then “treat” with its wide array of nostrums. (See Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex; Feeding the Medical-Industrial Complex.)

Big Agriculture relies on industrial farming practices and subsidies that sustain monocultures, chemical dependence, and ecological degradation. Chemical manufacturers churn out substances whose long-term impacts on human health and ecosystems are well-documented, while other products remain poorly studied (and for that reason their use restricted). 

Together, these forces represent a modern embodiment of the same dynamics that Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader confronted long before Kennedy became a target of Big Business—those corporate giants seeking to silence critics who reveal the human costs of their business models. The stories of Carson, Nader, and Kennedy illustrate an enduring struggle between those who place the public good above profit and those who profit from keeping the truth hidden, and its critics at the margins of credibility.

Rachel Carson, a major figure in the history of environmentalism, was a marine biologist and conservationist whose 1962 book, Silent Spring, focused particularly on DDT, exposed the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide use. She sounded the alarm about humanity’s capacity to disrupt ecosystems with chemicals. Carson’s work was not only scientifically rigorous but also deeply compelling to the public, blending meticulous research with accessible and evocative prose. She had a real gift for popular science writing. This made her especially dangerous in the eyes of polluting corporations.

In Silent Spring, Carson documents how pesticides accumulate in the environment, enter the food chain, and cause harm to humans and wildlife alike. She challenged the prevailing assumption that chemical pesticides were inherently safe—the industry line—and argued that the companies producing these chemicals and regulatory authorities ostensibly established to police those corporations were failing to protect the environment and public health. Before there was a word for it, she was warning the world of the phenomenon of endocrine disruption.

Carson’s work had a profound impact on my late mother, who refused to let me join my friends who peddled on their bicycles behind the “bug truck,” city vector-control vehicles spraying insecticide, most often DDT or, later, malathion, to control mosquitoes. The white cloud they moved through was the pesticide mist, and a lot of kids thought it was fun to ride their bikes through it. At the time, there wasn’t much public awareness about long-term health risks. Later, after DDT was banned in the US in 1972, people began looking back at those neighborhood spraying days very differently—especially since DDT was linked to environmental damage and potential human health concerns. Many parents didn’t think twice about letting kids ride through the mist, but thanks to Carson, my mom was ahead of her time. I have vivid memories of her frantically rushing around the house, pushing wet towels into the windowsills, cursing at the powers-that-be.

Carson’s work provoked a fierce backlash from chemical manufacturers whose economic power was threatened by her revelations. Corporations whose products she criticized launched campaigns aimed at discrediting both her science and her character. She was labeled an alarmist and accused of being a hysterical woman. Companies and their allies questioned her scientific credentials despite her extensive background. Public relations campaigns sought to undermine her arguments by warning farmers and the public that restricting pesticides would damage agriculture and progress. Industry spokespeople frequently accused Carson of exaggerating risks and stirring unnecessary panic, dismissing her evidence as anecdotal. 

Years later, in my environmental sociology work, I would see Carson’s legacy in such studies as Michael Edelstein’s 1988 Contaminated Communities and Dorceta Taylor’s 2014 Toxic Communities. My own critiques of corporate polluters were sandwiched in between: “Advancing Accumulation and Managing its Discontents,” in the Sociological Spectrum (2002), and “The Neoconservative Assault on the Earth,” in Capitalism, Nature, and Socialism (2005).

Carson’s work had held up through the years, and despite the attacks on her scholarship and reputation, Carson’s landmark contribution ultimately had profound consequences for environmental policy. Public awareness of pesticide dangers surged, contributing to the eventual ban of DDT for agricultural use in the United States in 1972. Moreover, Carson’s advocacy helped catalyze the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 (for good or for bad). Her example demonstrated that well-documented science could challenge powerful corporate interests and inspire meaningful policy change.

Ralph Nader, an American consumer advocate, became a central figure in the movement for corporate accountability in the 1960s. His groundbreaking 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, exposed the automobile industry’s disregard for driver safety, particularly highlighting defects in the Chevrolet Corvair. Like Carson’s work, Nader’s work combined meticulous research and compelling argumentation, challenging powerful corporations to prioritize human life over profit. Like Carson and many whistleblowers, Nader’s efforts provoked an aggressive backlash from the industries he criticized.

In Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader documented how car manufacturers knowingly ignored safety issues that endangered drivers and passengers. He argued that the auto industry valued aesthetics and cost-saving measures over human lives, creating vehicles that were prone to accidents and injuries. Beyond detailing technical flaws, Nader emphasized the systemic failures in government regulation, showing that the federal agencies responsible for public safety were too weak or too influenced by industry to enforce meaningful standards. 

Like Carson’s, Nader’s work resonated with the public, drawing attention to risks that had previously been largely invisible to everyday drivers. The response from General Motors (GM) and other industry leaders was swift and aggressive. GM in particular viewed Nader as a significant threat and engaged in a coordinated campaign to discredit him personally and professionally. The company conducted surveillance, hiring private investigators to follow him, attempting to gather damaging information on his private life—as if this had any bearing on the truth of his arguments.

Corporate executives portrayed Nader as a radical troublemaker whose activism threatened the economy and undermined American progress. Their attacks aimed less to counter his factual claims than to intimidate him and diminish his credibility in the eyes of the public. This was their only recourse, of course, since their ability to counter his claims was prebunked by the brutal truth of their harmful commodities.

Despite the pressures, Nader remained steadfast. His research and communication skills helped him withstand attempts at character assassination. Even as a young person, I remember his appearances on television. He exuded credibility. After all, what did he have to gain from his exposés other than grief? It was the public who was to gain by his success. Public support for his work grew as Americans recognized the validity of his findings.

The long-term impact of Nader’s advocacy was profound: it led to significant reforms in automobile safety, including the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the implementation of mandatory safety features like seat belts and energy-absorbing steering columns, and a broader movement for consumer protection in numerous industries.

Carson’s and Nader’s stories are not only about environmental science or consumer safety; they are also narratives about courage in the face of powerful opposition. Both illustrate the intersection of truth, public welfare, and entrenched economic interests, exposing in real time how industries and their political allies were concerned more about suppressing inconvenient truths than cleaning up their act. Their perseverance ensured that the public could no longer ignore the human costs of unchecked corporate power. They reshaped policy, established new standards of accountability, and proved that individuals and publics armed with evidence and integrity could stand against the might of entire industries. 

One often hears that Robert Kennedy, Jr., is not a doctor or a scientist and, therefore, has no credibility in his arguments. Sometimes the arguments go beyond the fallacy of appeal to authority and expertise (see The Cynical Appeal to Expertise), making sure the public is aware that Kennedy is a recovered heroin addict (which only makes him more impressive to anybody who understands the problem of addiction and knows stories of recovery). The public is also told that a worm ate his brain.

However, before his role as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy built an impressive record as an environmental and public health attorney. He fought against polluters that poisoned waterways, communities, and ecosystems, holding corporations accountable for the damage their practices inflicted on human health and the environment. His litigation through groups like Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council pitted him against powerful industries, including energy companies and chemical manufacturers, whose negligence endangered both people and the natural world. 

Kennedy’s legal career reflects a consistent commitment to the principle that corporate power must be checked when it threatens human well-being. His knowledge of health and science is extensive. He brings this same activist spirit and medical and scientific knowledge into his public service role, where he confronts not just environmental hazards but also broader public health threats (such as chronic disease and radical gender ideology), continuing to challenge entrenched interests resistant to reform. His insistence that corporate power be subordinated to the health and safety of ordinary people marks him as a witch. The Senate’s treatment of him, echoing the corporate smear tactics of earlier eras, underscores the continuity of this struggle.

Just as Carson and Nader endured attacks yet left lasting legacies of reform, Kennedy’s work carries forward the principle that public health and environmental integrity must come before profit. In resisting the corporate subversion of democracy, Kennedy joins a lineage of voices that remind us that truth, though often silenced, remains the most powerful weapon against exploitation. Indeed, such accounting he gave of himself, calling out Senators for their subserviance to Big Pharma, the story quickly disappeared from the Google news aggregator. But the industry will be back.

Kennedy is the right man for the job—for the populist struggle against elite power and public harm caused by the pathological pursuit of profit. Those of us who believe in individual liberty and popular democracy must have the man’s back. At the very least, ask yourself why doctors want to jab an infant with a vaccine for a disease (hepatitis B) that is primarily transmitted through sexual contact or sharing needles—a disease that pregnant women are screened for? Is it plausible that the infant hepatitis B vaccination is promoted not for public health, but to boost profits for pharmaceutical companies? If one thinks so, then he should agree that the country needs voices like Kennedy’s in the halls of power.

For previous essays on this platform concerning Kennedy’s views see Kennedy’s Confirmation Hearing Before the Functionaries of the Corporate State and A Few Features of Corporate Tyranny.

Yesterday, a federal judge barred President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops in California for law-enforcement actions, including arrests and crowd control. (See Quelling the Rebellion.)

The ruling was issued by Clinton appointee Charles Breyer, a senior US district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. (Charles is the younger brother of Stephen Breyer, who served as a justice of the US Supreme Court from 1994 to 2022.)

Judge Breyer cited the Posse Comitatus Act as justification for his ruling. Let’s talk about that law.

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 by a Democrat-controlled Congress after the end of Reconstruction. It was designed to sharply limit the federal government’s ability to use the Army for domestic law enforcement. But why would Democrats at the time want to do that?

This came in the wake of the Compromise of 1877, when federal troops were withdrawn from the South. The law reflected the desire of Southern Democrats to prevent the federal government from deploying soldiers to enforce federal law within the states.

During Reconstruction, federal troops had been deployed to protect freedmen, uphold voting rights, and defend Republican-led governments from violent “Redeemer” resistance. By restricting the use of federal troops, the Posse Comitatus Act effectively made it much harder for Washington to protect black citizens from violence, intimidation, and disenfranchisement during Redemption.

The results were devastating. Lynchings and other forms of racial violence soared (see Agency and Motive in Lynching and Genocide). Black families were driven from their homes, their property seized by white mobs (see my review of Marcos Williams’ documentary Banished). At the polls, Black men were met with terror and intimidation that destroyed their right to vote for generations.

This law is a relic—and it’s time for it to be struck down. Take this ruling to the Supreme Court and have the Posse Comitatus Act finally ruled unconstitutional. Let’s return to the original intent of Article I, Section 8, and fully restore the powers granted under Article II of the Constitution. (See Concerning the Powers of The US Constitution—And Those Defying Them.)

We need to stop the rise of neoconfederate resistance in these blue states. If left unchecked, this escalating defiance will drive the nation closer to conflict. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. We settled the question of “states’ rights” once by war. Let’s settle the question this time in peace. (See On the Road to Civil War: The Democratic Party’s Regression into Neoconfederacy.)