Category: Uncategorized

KARE 11 is the NBC-affiliated television station serving the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota. In its reporting today on the mass shooting that occurred just hours ago at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where a gunman opened fire, killing two children aged 8 and 10 and injuring 17 others, including 14 children, the author, Samantha Fischer, refers to the shooter using “she/her” pronouns. This confirms what I gathered from the information I’ve been collecting on the case—that our nation has suffered yet another instance of trans violence targeting children.

“KARE 11 investigative reporter A.J. Lagoe reported the shooter was 23-year-old Robin, formerly Robert, Westman. Law enforcement sources said Westman grew up in Richfield and that her mother was an employee at Annunciation School.” (Emphasis mine. You can read the article here: “Minneapolis Catholic school shooter: What we know.”) From other sources, I have learned about court documents showing that, when Westman was 17, he and his mother, an employee of Annunciation (she retired in 2021), applied to change his birth name from Robert to Robin. That request was granted in January 2020. It appears that Westman attended Annunciation as a student for at least some time.

The shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound outside the church. He—not she—legally purchased the firearms used in the attack and had no significant criminal history. It’s shocking that his mother could not have known that her son was a deeply troubled young man—and before that teenager. She knew he was trans, and a cursory look around his room should have told her that he was a profoundly disturbed individual. Investigators are examining a manifesto and online videos—items which I reviewed before they were scrubbed from the Internet—which, they say, suggest a possible motive related to anti-Catholic sentiment. The FBI is treating the incident as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics. 

I can tell readers that, based on the materials I reviewed, it’s a lot more than anti-Catholic sentiment. From Westman’s writings, the videos, and the symbology on his notebook, weapons, and around his room, the ideology that moved him is in line with the more radical expressions of progressivism—anti-Semitic (not just anti-Jewish sentiment but a shoutout to Muhammad Atta and the word Mashallah, which means “What Allah has willed” in Arabic) and anti-Christian, as well as Trump Derangement Syndrome. I noted a great deal of Cyrillic script in Westman’s notebooks and scrawled on his weapons. (There is talk on social media about the script being Russian. However, Ukrainians use the Cyrillic script for writing their language, as well. The modern Ukrainian alphabet is distinct from Russian Cyrillic in a few letters and pronunciation rules. I don’t know either language, so I can’t tell.)

On one of Westman’s notebooks is a sticker of the Pride Progress flag with an AR-15 on it. Etsy sells these at $4.50 a pop. In fact, the image I shared above is the image Etsy uses in its marketing. It could just as easily be an image from Westman’s bedroom. This sort of imagery in trans activist messaging—images of guns and knives in tandem with calls to defend and protect the ideology—is typical of the movement and its commercialization. Prominent politicians have donned this symbology. Below is an image of the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan, wearing movement paraphernalia to a rally supporting radical gender ideology. Westman’s notebook also sported a sticker of a Pride unicorn.

These images might feel discordant when paired with anti-Semitic messaging, but if you’ve been paying any attention to movement politics of late, the alliance of queer activism and pro-Hamas advocacy is blatant. These politics are also anti-Christian and pathologically obsessed with Trump. The glue that holds all this together is transhumanism. Transhumanism is an anti-human moment. A significant proportion of our youth is in the grip of this species of nihilism, marked by profound self-loathing and misanthropy. They hate themselves—and from this self-hatred flows hatred for others, with children often paying the toll. Given the significant correlation between trans identification and (other) serious psychiatric disorders, such messaging is triggering to those affected by these disorders. Corporations peddling trans paraphernalia might consider that.

The elite did a good job of scrubbing the memory of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, so I will inform you about that case so you can better understand the emerging pattern of terrorism in America and the ideology that grooms young people to commit these terrible acts of extreme violence. I have written about the Covenant School case before, but I will summarize it here for convenience.

The Nashville shooting occurred in March 2023. The perpetrator was 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a transgender female (i.e., a woman with delusional beliefs about her gender) who had previously attended the school. Hale entered the school armed with two rifles and a handgun, fatally shooting three 9-year-old children and three adults before being killed by police officers. Like Westman, Hale had meticulously planned the attack for months. The media, to the extent that they covered the story, described the motive as a desire for notoriety, with Hale expressing intentions to inspire future attacks and leave behind a legacy. Unlike the Weston case, the investigation concluded that the attack was not religiously motivated. The public was told that Hale’s writings, found in sixteen notebooks, contained incoherent and violent content. However, with leaks here and there, the notebooks have, for the most part, been kept from the public. (See Audrey Hale’s Manifesto: Blueprint for the Total Destruction of What?)

We will learn more about Westman in the future. The authorities will have a much more difficult time memory-holing this massacre than they did with the Hale case, thanks to the quick work of observers in preserving images and videos. But what is clear enough at this point is that the path that took Westman to this moment is the same path Audrey Hale walked. It’s not an untrodden path; other trans identifying youth have walked the path with murderous consequences (see From Delusion to Illusion: Transitioning Disordered Personalities into Valid Identities). Crucially, those who walk the path did not prepare it. Others did. Nor will the path be abandoned if those who made it continue paving it with their hatred and lies.

There will be a call for gun control (the calls have already begun). But guns don’t shoot themselves. People shoot guns. And the motive in these types of massacres—as in acts of Islamic terrorism— is prepared by ideology. The terrorist embodies the ideology in reality. If the world desires less terrorism, then its residents need to condemn the ideology that drives it, not wear T-shirts that normalize it.

One last observation before I hit “Publish.” Upon learning that Robin is a “woman,” what will progressives say after having spent so much time today on social media spinning the shooting as yet another instantiation of “white male pathology”? It’s a pathology, to be sure, but not in the sense they wish it were.

Trump’s executive order making US flag desecration a criminal offense is specific about the context in which such an act would be adjudicated as such, namely, incitement. He is trying to skirt Supreme Court precedent.

That said, I have always opposed making flag desecration criminal, seeing it as a free speech matter. I should be able to burn a US flag that I purchased or that somebody gives me. Burning someone else’s flag without permission is wrong, of course, but that falls under theft and property destruction. Moreover, those burning flags should be mindful of the danger that burning anything presents.

This was my position when Hillary Clinton cosponsored legislation criminalizing flag desecration in 2005. She was a New York Senator at the time, and the bill was called the “Flag Protection Act.” It would have made it a crime to desecrate the US flag with the intent to incite violence or disturb the peace. It stopped short of advocating a constitutional amendment (which would be necessary to get around the Court precedent).

Given the freak out over Trump’s EO, I am reminded of how little was made of Clinton’s advocacy for exactly what Trump is being condemned for. Like Trump, Clinton framed the proposal as a way to balance respect for the flag with free speech protections, particularly after the Court’s 1989 Texas v Johnson decision, which held that flag burning is protected under the First Amendment.

Clinton’s bill didn’t pass. It’s highly unlikely that Trump’s EO can pass constitutional muster. Let’s hope it doesn’t.

For the record, I have never had a double standard on this matter. I disagree with Trump now just as I disagreed with Clinton then. I would never burn a flag, but I defend the right of others to do so. Same with the New Testament or the Koran. Or a Pride Progress flag. And so on. Again, as long as it’s your property, it falls under the First Amendment. Nothing is so sacred that it stands above the right of the individual to express an opinion. (I wrote a short essay on this in 2009: The Strange Case of the Upside-Down Flag.)

Decades ago, in an argument with somebody about flag desecration on a listserv, I asked whether eating a flag cake was desecration. No, was the reply. I then asked whether, if I should crap a flag after having eaten one (on chance, highly improbable but not zero, albeit much closer to zero than Trump’s EO overturning precedent), it was okay to flush it. I didn’t get a response. I thought it’d make an interesting title for the essay. So now you know.

* * *

For those who view the US flag as a sacred symbol, there is a flag burning case that is sure to get provoke anger. There was some attention to this case when it happened, but even a concerned civil rights observer like yours truly, this was a case that, at the time, that escaped mine. This is the case of Adolfo Martinez, a 30-year-old resident of Ames, Iowa, who, in June 2019, stole a Pride flag from the United Church of Christ and set it on fire outside a bar.

Martinez told local reporters that he opposed homosexuality and burned the flag to express that opinion. In December 2019, he was sentenced to sixteen years in prison. Fifteen of those years were for an act of arson classified as a hate crime. The hate-crime designation was applied because his actions targeted the LGBTQ community. His sentencing was enhanced—tripled—due to his status as a “habitual offender.” Martinez had two prior felony convictions. Additionally, he got one year for reckless use of fire and 30 days for harassment.

What were the offenses that triggered Iowa’s habitual offender law? They were unrelated to the flag burning. Records show past charges for driving under the influence, possession of marijuana, and driving with a suspended license. These prior offenses were nonviolent (and rather trivial, in my view), but they met the statutory threshold to drastically increase the potential sentence for his arson charge, raising the maximum from five years to fifteen years. That means, even without the enhancement, he was still facing five years for burning a flag.

Supporters of the ruling predictably argued that the act was a dangerous hate crime, targeting a marginalized community and thus warranting a strong legal response. LGBTQ activists emphasized the importance of sending a clear message that hate-motivated crimes would not be tolerated, particularly when such acts risk inciting further violence.

Is burning a flag an act of violence? He received a year for reckless use of fire (which seems excessive). That should have covered any violence prosecutors might ascribe to his actions.

As the foregoing suggests, my view is that the very concept of hate crime legislation raises First Amendment concerns. The Constitution protects even hateful or offensive speech, including symbolic expression such as flag burning. This was established in the aforementioned Texas v Johnson ruling.

The standard rationalization is that hate crime laws do not criminalize the belief or speech itself; instead, they enhance penalties for criminal conduct—such as arson, assault, or vandalism—when motivated by bias against a “protected group.”

In the case of arson and particularly assault, this can and should be considered violence, or at least potentially harmful interpersonal action, as in the case of arson. But there is still the specter of thought crime. I can understand the question of motive in physical violence against persons, but in damage to property? Who decides what hate one can express? What if I burn a Confederate or a Nazi flag? That is motivated by hate. I can’t hate Nazis? To be sure, I cannot freely assault a Nazi, but I can’t express my hatred of his beliefs and practices?

Whatever justification hate crime enhancement we can think of, rationally speaking, such an enhancement is punishing thought or viewpoint, which requires some entity to define what is an unacceptable expression of hate (since an object of hate is in principle limitless), and thus requires the government to endorse a viewpoint while selectively protecting some groups and not others, thereby effectively criminalizing a belief or ideology rather than just action, which is all the law is supposed to reach—if it is to avoid establishing the totalitarian construct of thought crime. The notion that such laws are constitutional because they address the impact of bias-motivated crimes on targeted communities, not the speech alone, strikes me as a rationalization.

Why I raise this case today is because, yesterday, in Lafayette Square, directly across from the White House, a man—who identified himself as a 20-year Army combat veteran—set fire to an US flag in protest of Trump’s EO. You can watch the video here. In the video the veteran denounces the order as unlawful, asserting it violated First Amendment protections. Law enforcement agents, including Secret Service and US Park Police, quickly extinguished the flames and arrested him—not for flag burning per se—but for violating federal regulations banning fires in national parks.

I get the protest. He is expressing a viewpoint. He is not doing this out of hatred of a protected class of people but rather out of his love of the First Amendment. At the same time, there is a problem with lighting fires in public spaces—whatever one is burning. Are there fire pits or grills in this space? That’d be one thing. But on the sidewalk? Accelerant. Fumes. Folks can’t light fires just anywhere.

Should he spend years in prison? No. Not even a year. Is it possible that some will view his actions as hatred of America? Yes. Was his action a hate crime? Who ultimately decides? Who shall we appoint to serve as commissar? I can’t think of a person or a group of persons I’d trust with a job that shouldn’t even exist.

Finally, if you agree with Iowa regarding the burning of a Pride flag, then you have no valid reason to oppose Trump’s EO. The double standard makes you a hypocrite.

Update: Stuart Stevens, of the Lincoln Project, said this about National Guard deployment in Washington DC: “The murder rate of Jackson, Mississippi is three times that of DC.” (Not exactly, but close enough.) He then goes on to say that “the whole thing is complete fraud.”

Here’s what Stevens doesn’t say that needs to be said: Jackson is more than 80 percent black, whereas DC is around 43 percent black. As I reported in today’s essay, even a cursory glance at crime statistics finds blacks drastically overrepresented in homicide perpetration. That’s true for the victim class, as well.

Black lives matter, right? Apparently not, which is why it is white progressives and their black collaborators bitch about law and order (the mayor of Chicago embarrassed himself under interrogation by Joe Scarborough this morning), while black residents are demanding it.

Not only do these types of comparisons skirt the issue of the overrepresentation of blacks in homicide, working from rates obscures the fact that, in 2024, there were 187 homicides in DC. If DC were a state (as some wish), it would be the WORST state in the country for homicide. If that amount of killing doesn’t warrant government action, what does?

As for Jackson, they need the National Guard there, too. Homicide is off the hook in Jackson. Jackson is a big part of the reason Mississippi has the highest murder rate per 100,000 in the nation.

There is another thing Stevens doesn’t say: Local politics in both DC and Jackson are dominated by Democrats in city-wide elections. As I document in today’s essay, the problem of homicide in America is a blue problem.

* * *

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s assertion that eight of the ten states with the highest murder rates are red states is backed by data from a recent analysis. But there’s a catch. According to a 2024 report by the think tank Third Way, per-capita murder rates in states won by Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections were 33 percent higher than in states won by Joe Biden in both 2021 and 2022, marking the 23rd consecutive year of this trend. Specifically, in 2022, eight of the top ten states with the highest murder rates had voted for Trump. States like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, which are consistently Republican-leaning, frequently top the lists for highest murder rates.

The catch? Newsom is hiding an important truth: Urban areas, disproportionately black, concentrated in the most violent inner-city neighborhoods, account for the high homicide rates in these states; the party that governs and polices these urban areas is the Democratic Party. To suggest that Republican-made law, policy, and enforcement explain Third Way’s findings is disingenuous.

A few examples: Jackson, Mississippi, is run by Democrats. New Orleans, Louisiana. Run by Democrats. St. Louis and Kansas City Missouri. Democrats. Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. Democrats. Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama. Democrats. (By the way, Washington, DC, has a higher homicide rate than any of states in Third Way’s top ten. DC is run by which party? Democrats.)

Homicide is largely an urban problem. Below is the list of the worst cities for homicide. Democrats control all of them.

Third Way tries to rationalize away the problem in its report by removing the largest blue city in each red state and recalculating the statistics. It doesn’t change the gist of their claim. The attempt admits the problem. In many red states, the largest city isn’t the only city with high murder rates. One can, for example, remove Kansas City while leaving St. Louis in the calculation—the city with the worst homicide rate in the list. To make the point obvious: some smaller blue cities have higher murder rates than the largest city in each case.

Moreover, Third Way does not control for the proportion of young black males distributed across the states. Black males comprise a much larger proportion of the populations of red states in the South than they do in blue states. In fact, roughly half of all blacks live in the South. A cursory review of the UCR and the NCVS finds blacks drastically overrepresented in serious crime, especially violent crime.

What does Third Way blame frequent homicides on? Absent or poor social services, lax gun laws, and poverty. Concerning lax gun laws, I show in my recent essay The Law and Order President and His Detractors—Who’s Right? that this claim is false. There, I cite the work of John Lott, the author of More Guns, Less Crime, who makes a compelling argument that legally owned firearms serve as a powerful deterrent to crime. Criminals prefer unarmed and vulnerable targets, so when potential victims are armed, the risks of committing violent crimes increase, leading to fewer such offenses. To be sure, guns are used to commit most murders, but guns don’t shoot themselves. People shoot guns.

Absent or poor social services and poverty plague many communities in the United States, not just those in urban areas. There are, in fact, more poor whites than poor blacks—a lot more—and the murder rate is lower for poor whites than for poor blacks—a lot lower. There are more than 18 million poor non-Hispanic white Americans, whereas there are just over 9 million poor black Americans. Whites make up the vast majority of the rural population, about 80 percent, whereas roughly 80 percent of black Americans live in urban areas. Higher rates of violent crime, especially homicides and aggravated assaults, characterize urban areas. FBI data shows urban homicide rates are routinely 3–4 times higher than they are in rural areas. Poor rural communities have their problems, to be sure, but high homicide rates are not among them.

Bottom line: Third Way and Governor Newsom are lying with statistics. Crime is a blue problem in America.

* * *

Since we’re on the subject of Third Way, the think tank has developed a categorized list of words Democrats should eschew in public communications if they want to avoid alienating the public (Was it Something I Said?).

The jargon identified is ubiquitous in educational institutions and at professional conferences. Some of these words appear in official policy documents. Editors insert these words in manuscripts under review. So I am quite familiar with these terms. Know that I inwardly roll my eyes every time I hear or read them. George Orwell had a term for jargon like this: “newspeak.”

My personal favorites: “microaggression” and “progressive stack.” But there are a lot of good ones in the list, which I reproduce below. As noted, they’re organized into categories. The category names are not mine. Third Way came up with these.

Third Way tells Democrats to think about it this way: “As the catastrophe of Trump 2.0 has shown, the most important thing we can do for these people and causes is to build a bigger army to fight them.” How will Democrats do this? “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”You think? (What catastrophe is Third Way talking about?)

Here are the words:

In May of this year, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed House Bill 819 into law, restricting the display of flags representing political standpoints on government property, including public schools and state buildings. The law prohibits flags expressing a “political viewpoint, race, sexual orientation, gender, or political ideology.” As a result, Pride and related flags are now banned from display on or within public school campuses and government facilities. Montana’s actions reaffirm the true spirit of the First Amendment.

As visitors to my platform know, I have long advocated for such action (see Civic Spaces and the Illiberal Desire to Subvert Them; City of Green Bay Violates the First Amendment; Flying Pride Again—Or Are They?). The public square should not be a space where movement politics enjoys the privilege of government endorsement. In a free society, government institutions must remain politically neutral, fostering an environment where citizens can express their views freely, without fear of implicit favoritism (see Public Spaces Are Supposed to Be Ideologically Neutral Spaces—and We Must Make Them So).

Unfortunately, not all politicians in Montana treat the First Amendment as sacrosanct. In what some have called a “creative workaround,” the Missoula City Council voted in June 2025 to designate the Pride flag as an official city flag, attempting to sidestep the state law. Missoula’s tactic is not unique. Cities in Idaho and Utah have attempted similar maneuvers in response to laws restricting political symbols on public property.

In Idaho, lawmakers passed House Bill 96 in April 2025, prohibiting government buildings from flying “non-official” flags. The law limits displays to the U.S. flag, military flags, official university banners, and other approved government flags. Despite the restriction, Boise city officials kept the Pride flag flying at City Hall even after the law went into effect. In early May, the Boise City Council voted 5–1 to designate the Pride flag as an official city flag, making its display legal under the law’s exemption for city-approved banners. State Attorney General Raul Labrador has warned lawmakers that stronger enforcement mechanisms may be introduced in the next legislative session to close the loophole.

In Utah, a similar conflict unfolded. In March 2025, Utah became the first state to impose a comprehensive ban on Pride and other “unsanctioned” flags on government property and public school grounds. Under the law, which took effect in May, violators face fines of up to $500 per day. Only a narrow set of flags—such as the U.S., state, military, tribal, Olympic, and city or county flags—are permitted. In response, Salt Lake City officials unanimously voted in May to adopt three new official city flags: the Sego Belonging Flag (rainbow colors) and the Sego Visibility Flag(transgender colors). The council thus legally sidestepped the state ban by making these banners official city symbols.

Like Missoula, Boise and Salt Lake City have employed this “creative workaround” to preserve Pride symbolism and maintain their commitments to “diversity and inclusion.” Supporters argue these moves affirm local values, while Republican lawmakers in these states have criticized the tactic as political theater and warned of potential legal or legislative pushback. These disputes highlight the tension between state-level efforts to enforce strict neutrality on public property and cities’ attempts—as proponents of such flags put it—to reflect the values of their local communities.

There should be no such tension. Officials should ask themselves: Is every resident of the city they represent a member of the LGBTQ+ community? Does every resident embrace radical gender ideology? Of course not. What about gays and lesbians who do not see themselves as part of a broader community that includes transgender-identifying individuals and others? What if they reject the tenets of queer politics (as many homosexuals do, since it politicizes their sex lives)? Yet city governments have chosen to elevate one political symbol above others, effectively telling dissenting citizens that their views do not matter. Moreover, even if every resident did identify with the community as imagined by queer activists, the First Amendment does not permit the tyranny of the majority on matters of political expression.

And that is what this is: ideological tyranny. Ideological tyranny is a condition in which a particular belief system or ideology is imposed on others, suppressing freedom of choice, expression, and thought. It occurs when a dominant group—whether or not it represents a majority—uses cultural, economic, legal, political, or social power to coerce conformity or marginalize dissenting viewpoints. It reflects a concentration of control over discourse and policy, coupled with a sense of moral absolutism that treats the dominant ideology as an unquestionable truth. In such environments, individuals risk professional consequences or social stigma for expressing alternative perspectives. This phenomenon not only applies to overtly authoritarian regimes but also to subtler contexts where dominant narratives silence dissent.

In response to Missoula’s move, Representative Braxton Mitchell, the sponsor of HB 819, announced that lawmakers plan to amend the legislation in the next session to prevent municipalities from adopting political symbols as “official” flags. Idaho’s Attorney General Labrador has likewise suggested that the 2026 legislative session may add enforcement mechanisms; currently, the law lacks penalties, allowing the flags to remain in place for now. In Utah, Governor Spencer Cox criticized the situation, dismissing the new flags as “dumb,” but no legal or legislative action has been taken to override Salt Lake City’s workaround as of mid-2025.

Pursuing legal action or clarifying legislation would be the correct course. The US Constitution guarantees every state a republican form of government (see Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution, known as the “Guarantee Clause”), and the Supreme Court has affirmed that the First Amendment applies across all levels of government in every state. The foundational case establishing this was Gitlow v New York (1925), in which the Court held that the First Amendment’s free speech protections limit state government power. Subsequent cases further incorporated other First Amendment rights: Near v Minnesota (1931) incorporated freedom of the press; Cantwell v Connecticut (1940), the Free Exercise Clause; and Everson v Board of Education (1947), the Establishment Clause. States not only have the authority to restrict these symbols but also the responsibility to prevent cities from trampling on the rights of their residents. Municipalities should be required to remove Pride flags and restore displays that represent all residents equally—in a neutral manner. That is, governments should not endorse any particular ideological viewpoint.

If there were ever a need for clear evidence that progressive activists prioritize ideology over constitutional principles, the situations in these cities provide it in spades. These officials don’t care about neutrality or the civil rights of all citizens—they care only about enforcing movement politics through government platforms. The residents of those cities may want their officials to do this, but it is not up to them. The United States is not founded on majoritarianism. It is a constitutional republic with a Bill of Rights designed to protect the liberty of all citizens from majoritarian desire—or the desire of a powerful minority. Each state’s constitution must uphold the same principle.

The claim that removing Pride flags is “anti-LGBTQ+” is profoundly mistaken. Not flying the Pride flag simply means that the government has correctly decided not to endorse a particular political standpoint. The desire for government endorsement of an ideological position should be anathema to anyone who values a free and open society—because it is, at its core, an authoritarian impulse.

Bottom line: When a government entity displays a flag or other symbol tied to a political movement, it sends a message of endorsement—chilling the expression and speech of those who disagree. Because the government represents all citizens, only official symbols of the state and the United States should be displayed on government property.

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

Nietzsche used madness as a metaphor for the irrationality of collective movements, herd behavior, or mass delusion. Today’s woke progressivism around culture, gender, and race is the paradigm (see Explaining the Rise in Mental Illness in the West). Their derangements command far too much power. These derangements find their expression in Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

TDS describes strong emotional reactions to two-time US President Donald Trump. Characteristic of this disorder is irrational thoughts and extreme behavior, specifically overreaction to Trump’s actions, statements, or policies, while dismissing facts and eschewing logical reasoning. The condition is marked not only by a pathological obsession with Trump. Those with TDS are likely to trust mainstream public health messaging, for example, during the COVID-19 pandemic (lockdowns, masking, vaccine mandates), support trans rights, advocate for immigrant protections, or endorse ideas associated with critical race theory. (See The Future of a Delusion: Mass Formation Psychosis and the Fetish of Corporate Statism.)

This essay argues that TDS can be best understood as a clash of background assumptions that shape worldviews. People do not process political events or leaders in a vacuum; their perceptions are filtered through deeply held beliefs and values about culture, gender, government, media, morality, race, and society. Ignorant of these underlying frameworks, observers of a particular worldview react emotionally, often hysterically, to Trump’s presence, pronouncements, and policies, because they do not have access to the deeper understanding necessary to form a rational argument. Instead of logical argumentation, reflex leads to mocking Trump’s intelligence, manner of speaking, and physique (the latter betraying their rhetoric of body positivity). By making explicit these often-unspoken assumptions, this essay explains why reactions to Trump have been so polarized and why mutual understanding between opposing sides has been so difficult to achieve.

It’s crucial to do this because the dominant sensemaking institutions—academia, the corporate media, the culture industry, and the Democratic Party—depend on popular ignorance to advance the transnational project. Behind the strategies globalists use to disorganize the population—historical revisionism, multiculturalism, racial and ethnic antagonism, and radical gender ideology—is the project to dismantle national sovereignty for the sake of transnational corporate and financial powers. By incorporating a mass of the population into the progressive worldview, elites can produce mass hysteria when it is functional to their ends. TDS is the paradigm of deep propaganda work.

In the modern world, there exist two competing narratives about how people ought to organize their economic, political, and social lives. The first of these is the system born out of the Peace of Westphalia and later embodied in the American System—a system of sovereign nation-states, each jealous of its independence, cautious of foreign entanglements, but free to cooperate through alliances when necessary (see Will They Break the Peace of Westphalia or Will We Save National Sovereignty for the Sake of the People?).

This was the vision of Alexander Hamilton, carried forward by Henry Clay, and later defended by Abraham Lincoln (see With Reciprocal Tariffs, Trump Triggers the Globalists; Tariffs, Trade, and the Future of the American Worker; Why the Globalists Don’t Want Tariffs. Why the American Worker Needs them; History as Ideology: The Myth that the Democrats Became the Party of Lincoln). It is grounded in classical liberal principles of free enterprise, individualism, and republican governance. Economically, it finds expression in national industrial development, protective tariffs, and policies designed to secure the independence of citizens from foreign domination. In this vision, the sovereignty of the people is inseparable from the sovereignty of the nation.

Opposed to this stands the second vision: the transnational order, rooted in the technocratic speculations of French philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon (the derangements of French philosophy inform much of the progressive worldview) and nourished by European intellectual currents. Here sovereignty is not preserved but sacrificed—subsumed into larger, unelected, bureaucratic, and corporate arrangements that dictate to nations and their peoples.

This is the ideology of progressivism, an ideology that clothes itself in humanitarian rhetoric but ultimately strips free peoples of their independence in favor of managerial elites. Its institutional forms are the European Union, the IMF, the WTO, and countless other transnational organizations that presume to legislate without the consent of the governed. (See Taking Back Our Country from the Globalists; Protectionism in the Face of Transnationalism: The Necessity of Tariffs in the Era of Capital Mobility; Marx the Accelerationist: Free Trade and the Radical Case for Protectionism.)

Its cultural forms are multiculturalism, first articulated by Horace Kallen as cultural pluralism in the early twentieth century, which gradually erodes the shared civic identity upon which true self-government depends, and the inversion of the historic racial hierarchy (which a truly liberal person seeks to dismantle altogether). Its economics are free trade without limit, mass immigration without assimilation, and the wholesale transfer of industry to foreign shores.

What is too often missed in the heat of contemporary debate is that the progressive adherents to this second narrative are largely unconscious of the architecture of their worldview. They live inside it as fish in water, operating from unexamined assumptions about “global interdependence,” “diversity,” and “inevitability.” Thus, when they encounter a figure like Trump, their opposition is almost entirely superficial: they dislike his manner, his bluntness, his appearance, his defiance of polite technocratic norms. Rarely do they engage his policies at the level of ideas, for to do so would expose the fact that Trump, like Hamilton, Clay, and Lincoln before him, stands within the older and truer American tradition—the tradition of national independence, protective tariffs, and a government that serves its citizens rather than distant managers.

The irony is that the progressive worldview, in its zeal to appear cosmopolitan and humanitarian, aligns with the very Democratic Party that once stood for slave democracy, free trade, and later Jim Crow segregation. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, in its origin, was born as a protest against the economic and political degradation of that Democratic vision. It sought to restore the American System, to defend national industry, and to protect the working man from being undercut by cheap labor and cheap imports. To ignore this continuity is to misread both the present and the past.

As noted above, Nietzsche famously remarked that insanity in the individual is rare, but in groups, parties, and ideologies, it is the rule. Progressivism, with its hollow cosmopolitanism and technocratic faith, is precisely such a madness—a system that promises liberation while delivering dependence, that preaches diversity while eroding unity, that invokes democracy while undermining sovereignty. Against the madness stands the sober realism of the American System, which insists that free people can only remain free if they control their own borders, their own industries, and their own political institutions. This is not a relic of the nineteenth century but the perennial truth of rational self-government. (See Populism and Nationalism; Progressivism Hasn’t Been Betrayed—It’s Been Installed; Richard Grossman on Corporate Law and Lore.)

I’m an atheist, but I recognize that not all religions are the same. Some are far more harmful than others. But we are told that religion is relative to a culture and that it’s wrong to judge another’s culture. We’re called bigots and xenophobes if we do.

Have you seen the meme below? It’s the blunt truth. But there is an error. What one sees here is indeed about control. But it is also about religion. The religion of Islam. If you see this image and have trouble bringing yourself to judge that religion, then you must do better. What’s holding you back is some degree of cultural relativism.

The doctrine of cultural relativism has been one of the worst ideas to ever emerge from big heads in Western civilization. It’s a concept that has shielded barbaric practices from critique and placed oppressive traditions beyond the reach of morality and reason.

To clarify, cultural relativism is the idea that the beliefs, practices, and values of others should be understood based on their culture rather than judged by the standards of another. On the surface, this seems reasonable. But the problem arises when understanding becomes an excuse for moral abdication.

Should we judge the culture of Nazi Germany based on the standards of National Socialism? It doesn’t take very long to see how reckless the demands of cultural relativism truly are. By the same logic, we could excuse slavery in the American South, foot-binding in China, or apartheid in South Africa simply because those societies once endorsed them.

This idea of cultural relativism is basic to anthropology and sociology, two disciplines in which I was professionally socialized (I teach in a sociology and anthropology program at a state university). Every introductory sociology text aims to condition students to believe in the inherent goodness of cultural relativism. Students are trained to think that the suspension of moral judgment is not just intellectually sophisticated but also morally virtuous. It does this while constantly dragging the West. My conservative students object. I am not a conservative, but I agree with them.

What I am conveying in these remarks is heresy in my profession. But I have never been comfortable with the doctrine of cultural relativism. And, as you may have picked up on, I am instinctively a heretic.

More broadly, we were all taught—and today’s youth still are—to believe and promote intercultural and interfaith tolerance (the spirit of ecumenicalism) and avoid the sin of ethnocentrism (or chauvinism), defined as the tendency to see one’s own culture as superior or as the default. This moral reflex—to recoil from judgment—is so strong that even when faced with clear injustice, many people will remain silent for fear of being labeled intolerant.

To further clarify the matter, there are two main types of cultural relativism.

Descriptive cultural relativism refers to the observation that different cultures have different moral codes and social norms. This is obvious and unproblematic. Who wouldn’t acknowledge the fact that, in the Islamic realm, women are subjects of male domination? Women wear burqas, their bodies and movements controlled, their voices silenced. They are second-class citizens by design.

If you asked some of these women whether they approve of this arrangement, many would likely say yes. But their affirmation cannot be taken at face value. They have been socialized from birth to see obedience as virtue, and fear of reprisal makes dissent dangerous. The deeper question, the objective question, is whether such subjugation is good or justifiable. Whether an individual says yes or no does not determine the objective moral status of the practice.

This observation necessarily takes us to the second type: moral or normative relativism. This is the belief that no culture’s morality or values are inherently superior to another’s. In other words, right and wrong are culturally dependent. (There is an inherent racism suggested here, but I will leave that to the side for now.) The upshot: We’re taught that, if a society considers a practice moral, then it is moral within that society.

See the problem? If we accept the premise of universal human rights, scientifically determinable on a close examination of species-being (and science—uncorrupted by ideology—is universal), then some cultures are, in fact, superior by default. We can put it this way: if normative systems meet Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then they are superior. By the same token, if they don’t, they are inferior.

Consider the example of female genital mutilation (FGM). In many patriarchal societies, the clitoris is removed, depriving women of sexual pleasure. The cultural rationale is that women should be chaste, obedient, and free of sexual desire. Men, of course, have also been subject to genital mutilation through circumcision, which in some dulls sexual pleasure to some extent. But every man knows that sexual desire is not entirely under conscious control. Erections happen, sometimes involuntarily, because we are animals with biological drives. And while societies have long tried to suppress this “animality,” the biological fact remains: pleasure is part of our evolutionary design.

That is why science—empirical, objective, and universal—provides a standard by which we can judge these practices. Evolutionary biology tells us that sexual pleasure is not purposeless. It serves a function. Pleasure reinforces the behaviors necessary for reproduction and the propagation of the species. Practices that mutilate or repress this function violate something deeply rooted in human nature.

Perhaps this example is more persuasive than the one about women’s rights in general. The first example, about women in burqas, is too easily dismissed by those who have internalized cultural relativism. They may rationalize women’s subjugation as a “different but equal” arrangement. But when confronted with the physical mutilation of a child’s body—when confronted with irreversible harm—the relativist dodge becomes harder to sustain.

And yet, even this example reveals something troubling: the legacy of patriarchy in our own culture. The resistance to recognizing women’s freedom as an objective good suggests that many still unconsciously accept a hierarchy where women’s suffering can be rationalized as culturally legitimate.

And there’s this: The example of female genital mutilation, and male genital mutilation, leads naturally to contemporary debates about transgenderism and so-called “gender-affirming care” (GAC). Here we see how a superior culture’s moral order can be corrupted by ideology and, in our case, by greed as well. Children are put on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or undergo surgeries with lifelong consequences, all in the name of affirmation. We are told that questioning this is hateful. It’s hateful to ask whether permanently altering a child’s body, often before full cognitive maturity, meets any objective moral or biological standard?

The moral paralysis of relativism is at work in this case, as well. Those of us who oppose genital mutilation are accused of imposing our morality on others. But it is not our morality we are imposing. It’s the morality of universal human rights. It is wrong to mutilate the genitalia of children, to sterilize them, to rob them of their ability to act as sexual beings. We object to acts of dehumanization. We are criticized for describing the barbaric acts of GAC as mutilation.

Yet GAC is no different than FGM—except that it’s framed as a compassionate act in Western societies. FGM is practiced mainly in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but it also occurs in immigrant and diaspora communities around the world, including in Europe, North America, and Australia. In Africa, FGM is most common in countries across East Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan); West Africa (Gambia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone); and parts of North Africa, such as Egypt and Djibouti. In the Middle East, the practice is found in countries like Iraq (particularly in the Kurdistan region), Oman, Yemen, and in some communities within the United Arab Emirates. In Asia, FGM is reported in countries such as India (especially among Bohra Muslim communities), Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and parts of Thailand. Due to migration, cases are also found in many Western countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and across Europe.

According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 230 million girls and women worldwide have undergone FGM, and an estimated 4.3 million girls are at risk of being subjected to the practice each year. Most procedures are carried out on girls between infancy and the age of 15, often before they reach puberty, making it a major global health and human rights concern.

There was a great outcry over this many years ago, but over the past several years, media coverage of FGM has noticeably diminished. This decline reflects broader cultural and political shifts. In the 1990s and early 2000s, FGM was more frequently covered in mainstream outlets, often framed as a clear-cut human rights issue. Since then, cultural relativism and a deepening of multiculturalism have encouraged more cautious discussions around practices associated with specific cultural or religious communities.

Increasing sensitivity toward Muslim communities, particularly in the post-9/11 era (why sympathy for Islam followed 9/11 is a curious phenomenon), has made public discourse around issues perceived as tied to Islam more delicate. Fear of fueling stereotypes, Islamophobia, or xenophobia has led media outlets and commentators to downplay or avoid extensive coverage of the issue, especially when cases emerge in immigrant communities. Readers may recall the 2017 case in Michigan, where members of the Muslim community were prosecuted for performing FGM on girls—the first federal prosecution of its kind. Since then, discussions around FGM in the US have been more confined to advocacy, healthcare, and policy circles.

But the cultural relativism of the progressives who downplay the problem of FGM—and one suspects it has a great deal to do with normalizing genital mutilation associated with GAC—is not apparent in criticisms of American culture, which is condemned for being transphobic and white supremacist.

Ever been told that an “ought” doesn’t follow from an “is”? Nonsense. Acorns ought to become oaks under optimal conditions. Just as children thrive when their needs are met. And so they ought to. How will the species propagate otherwise? Why would any man with a conscience and a basic grasp of human development tolerate children with small brains and low IQs? (Yet, men do.)

There are things one ought not to do, and this isn’t a matter of opinion. When I was in high school, I remember some of my classmates proclaiming that morality is personal. No, it’s not, I would respond. Humans exist in moral orders, and some are better than others. Just ask a woman in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Or don’t. She may feel compelled to lie to you. Better to just see what you see.

Given the descriptive definition, cultural relativism has some merit, such as encouraging cross-cultural understanding when the beliefs and practices are not harmful, for example, in one’s tastes in food or music. You can still not like it or partake in it, but such things usually don’t harm you.

However, beyond cuisine and aesthetic sensibilities (rather trivial matters, I think, although some of it is quite tasty and pleasing), cultural relativism can lead to moral paralysis, where harmful practices like heterosexism, misogyny, and slavery cannot be condemned because such condemnations are ethnocentric.

Obviously, taken whole cloth, the concept of cultural relativism complicates arguments for universal ethical standards and human rights. This is to put the matter mildly. In fact, at its core, the demand from cultural relativists that we eschew moral and normative standards, which we must do if we are to be nonjudgmental and inclusive, is nihilistic. Put another way, then, cultural relativism, in its full sense, is suicidal.

Consider that Muslims don’t practice cultural relativism (why would they?). And they like it very much that Westerners do, since it allows Islam to colonize the West while demanding we adhere to the value of cultural relativism. Does that mean that we should be intolerant like Muslims? Sure. But our culture is superior.

Have you noted the weird paradox in all this? If we should not draw an “ought” from an “is,” then why is there an ethical prescription that we shouldn’t judge the adequacy of other cultures (or subcultures)? On what grounds ought we not make determinations about moral and normative adequacy?

Cultural relativism sounds like a political project designed to morally paralyze us, doesn’t it? And the fact that the doctrine is arbitrarily applied makes that possibility all the more likely. Yeah, I think we’ve been conned. I know we have.

What about judging individuals as such? We can’t. Humans are culture bearers. That is, they bring their cultures with them. If they’re prepared to denounce their faith, then we can welcome them into the community of equals. But if they cling to their barbaric practices, then we can’t tolerate their presence. Not without sacrificing our moral integrity.

The “Four Kings”—Roberto Durán, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, and Ray Leonard—became immortal in boxing history because of the way their careers intertwined and because each became household names. They all faced each other during the 1980s and 1990s in a series of high-stakes bouts. Yet some fans and historians have long argued that there was a fifth king: Puerto Rican prodigy Wilfred Benítez. After all, Benítez was a three-division world champion, the youngest ever to win a title at just 17, and shared the ring with Leonard, Hearns, and Durán—beating Durán in 1982 and pushing both Leonard and Hearns in competitive fights.

The reason Benítez is usually left outside the “Four Kings” mythology perhaps has less to do with his ability than with narrative. He never fought Hagler (despite competing at middleweight), his prime was shorter than the others’, and he lacked the same US mainstream profile that made Durán, Hagler, Hearns, and Leonard legendary names in the public mind. By the mid-1980s, the Puerto Rican’s reflexes had declined, while the other four were still at their peaks, engaging in their legendary round-robin of rivalries. Still, many in the boxing world—Steve Farhood among them—have called Benítez “the forgotten King.”

In this essay, I will consider whether Benítez should be reckoned among the fighters tagged the “Four Kings.” I will chart the paths of these fighters in chronological order, beginning with the Panamanian great Robert Durán, whom I place in my top five greatest fighters of all time, alongside Sugar Ray Robinson, Henry Armstrong, Willie Pep (sometimes including Sandy Saddler, since their four matches are etched in history), and the great Mexican fighter Julio Cesar Chavez.

Debuting in the late 1960s, Durán beat Scotland’s Ken Buchanan in 1972 to win the lineal lightweight title. Durán met Puerto Rican Esteban DeJesús that year in a non-title fight and lost for the first time. Knocked down in the first round, Durán couldn’t impose his will on DeJesús, and DeJesús was awarded a 10-round decision. This set up a title fight in 1974 in which, after being knocked down again in the first round, Durán clawed his way back into the fight and dominated the later rounds, stopping DeJesús in the 11th round.

In 1975, De Jesús challenged Panamanian Antonio “Kid Pambelé” Cervantes for the WBA light-welterweight title. Cervantes dropped De Jesús three times en route to a 15-round unanimous decision. The next year, Durán was stripped of the WBC lightweight title, which De Jesús claimed, defeating Japan’s Guts Ishimatsu by unanimous decision. De Jesús would successfully defend the WBC title twice, establishing himself as the next best fighter in the division after Durán.

In 1976, Puerto Rican Wilfred Benítez defeated Cervantes for the WBA light-welterweight title, successfully defending the title three times: Tony Petronelli, by unanimous decision; Emilio Valdés, by knockout in round 15; and Carmelo Negrón, by unanimous decision. Benítez would move up in weight in 1979 and capture the WBC welterweight championship on a split-decision over American Carlos Palomino.

In 1978, Durán and De Jesús met for a third time to unify the lightweight title. Durán dominated and stopped De Jesús in the 12th round. It was Durán’s final title fight at lightweight, having successfully defended his championship twelve times, with only one of these bouts going the distance. (A few months later, De Jesús would attempt to win the light welterweight title again, but Saoul Mamby stopped him in the 13th round, effectively ending De Jesús’s career.) Durán retired the lightweight title in 1979 and moved to the welterweight division.

As noted, having also moved to the welterweight division, Benítez defeated Palomino for the WBC title in 1979 on a split decision. Palomino, who had held the title since 1976, had seven title defenses under his belt and was highly regarded. The fight was close, and Palomino remained a top contender. Benítez defended the welterweight title successfully against Harold Weston Jr., a fighter with whom he had drawn in 1977, before accepting the challenge of Ray Leonard. Leonard was ahead on points on all three scorecards when referee Carlos Padilla stopped the fight with seconds to go in the 15th and final round, handing Benetiz his first loss.

The 1979 fight between Benítez and Leonard was a doubleheader, preceded by the controversial world middleweight championship fight between Italy’s Vita Antuofermo and American Marvin Hagler. The fight ended in a 15-round draw. Most observers favored Hagler (as I did) based on his dominance over the first ten rounds of the fight. However, Antuofermo’s tenacity impressed the judges and he retained his title.

The next year, in 1980, Hagler finally reached the summit of the middleweight division, stopping Brit Alan Minter (who had defeated Antuofermo) in three rounds in Minter’s home country. Not leaving it to the judges this time, Hagler dispatched Minter in brutal fashion. Wembley Area erupted in violence, and Hagler had to be hastily ushered to his dressing room, robbing him of his moment to celebrate his victory in the ring.

A few weeks before that bout, Durán won a convincing 10-round decision over Palomino, dropping the former champion in the sixth round, thus setting the stage for the first Leonard-Durán clash. Leonard and Durán would meet in Montreal in 1980. Leonard had a successful title defense under his belt, a spectacular 4th-round knockout of Dave “Boy” Green of Britain. Durán had proved he was a legitimate welterweight with his commanding victory over Palomino. Durán was the aggressor throughout his bout with Leonard, winning a close but unanimous decision. Five months later, Leonard regained his title when Durán quit in the eighth round.

That same year, Thomas Hearns knocked out Mexico’s Pipino Cuevas in two rounds to win the WBA version of the welterweight title. Hearns would successfully defend his title three times—knocking out Luis Primera, Randy Shields, and Pablo Baez—before facing Leonard in 1981 in a title unification bout. Leonard prevailed in a come-from-behind 14th-round stoppage. Leonard had picked up the WBA light middleweight title a few months earlier by knocking out Ayub Kalule. Leonard defended his welterweight title for a fourth time (against Larry Bonds) before retiring due to a detached retina. Anticipating a big-money fight, Leonard’s retirement left Hagler crestfallen.

Meanwhile, Benítez had won the WBC light middleweight title in 1981 by knocking out the Brit Maurice Hope. Benítez would successfully defend his title twice with 15-round decisions over Carlos Santos and Durán, before losing the title in 1982 on a majority decision to Thomas Hearns. Benítez continued to fight on, but never regained his form, suffering losses to Mustafa Hamsho, Davey Moore, and Matthew Hilteon, among others. He retired in 1990 with a record of 53-8-1 (32). He lives in Chicago under constant care from post-traumatic encephalitis.

Hearns would successfully defend his light middleweight title four times over the next several years. One of those defenses was against Durán, who was coming off a 15-round defeat to Hagler for the middleweight title in 1983. Durán had worked his way back into contention after his defeat to Benítez by stopping Cuevas in four rounds and brutalizing Davey Moore over eight rounds to win the WBA light middleweight title, both bouts also in 1983. Hearns and Durán met in 1984, and Hearns knocked the Panamanian out in two rounds. Hearns’ other title defense came against Luigi Minchillo, Fred Hutchings, and Mark Medal.

In 1985, Hearns challenged Hagler for the middleweight championship, losing on a third-round knockout. Going into that fight, Hagler had defended his title ten times, knocking out or stopping Fulgencio Obelmajias (twice), Antuofermo, Hamsho (twice), Caveman Lee, Tony Sibson, Wilfred Scypion, and Juan Roldan, as well as decisioning Durán. That next year, on the same card, Hearns knocked out American James Schuler in the first round, while Hagler defended his title for the twelfth time against Ugandan John Mugabi, knocking him out in the 11th, setting up a rematch between Hagler and Hearns.

However, that fight Hagler-Hearns rematch would never occur. In 1987, Hagler would lose the middleweight title in a controversial 12-round split decision to a returning Ray Leonard. It would be Hagler’s final fight, retiring with a record of 62-3-2 (52), with twelve successful title defenses, putting him on Durán’s level in terms of dominating a weight class. Hagler had sought a rematch with Leonard, but Leonard declined and, with his hopes of surpassing Carlos Monzon’s record of fourteen uninterrupted title defenses having been dashed, Hagler walked away from the sport. Hagler died in March of 2021 from natural causes.

In 1987, Hearns would defeat Roldan (whom Hagler had defeated in a title fight in 1984) on a 4th-round knockout, winning the vacant WBC middleweight title. Just prior to that fight, Hearns had won the WBC light heavyweight title, knocking out Brit Dennis Andries in the 10th round. Hearns vacated the light heavyweight title shortly afterwards, and Hearns would lose the middleweight title on a 3rd-round knockout to American Iran Barkley in 1988. A few months later, Leonard would stop Canadian Donnie LaLonde, winning the WBC super middleweight and the WBC light heavyweight titles.

Barkley would lose the middleweight title in his first title defense in 1989 to Durán, who had clawed his way back into contention. Flooring Barkley in the 11th round, Durán won a split decision. This set up a rubber match with Leonard, who outpointed Durán over twelve rounds for Leonard’s WBC super middleweight title. Just prior to this match, Leonard had drawn over twelve rounds in a long-awaited rematch with Hearns, also for Leonard’s WBC super middleweight title. The draw was controversial, with most observers (including Leonard) believing Hearns deserved the nod.

Durán would fight on with considerable success. However, he lost in a bid for the WBA middleweight title in 1998 against American William Joppy and retired in 2001 with a record of 103-16 (70).

Leonard and Hearns would fight on. Leonard would fight two more times, first in a failed attempt to win the WBC light middleweight title against American Terry Norris in 1991, losing by decision, In 1997, in an ill-advised comeback against Puerto Rican Hector Camacho in a minor middleweight title fight in 1997. Camacho, having outpointed Durán nine months prior, stopped Leonard in the fifth round. Leonard retired that year with a record of 36-3-1 (25).

Hearns continued to have success, shocking the world with a unanimous decision over long-reigning WBA light heavyweight champion Virgil Hill in 1991. Hearns would lose the title in 1992 to Barkley in a hard-fought 12-round split decision. Hearns moved up the cruiserweight division (winning a minor title) before finally retiring in 2006 with a record of 61-5-1 (48).

An argument can be made that Benítez should stand with the other four in terms of his record and quality of opposition. Benítez won the WBA light welterweight title and successfully defended it three times, relinquishing the title undefeated after winning the welterweight title. He successfully defended that title before losing to Leonard in a close contest (unfairly, in my eyes, stopped by the referee with seconds to go in the match). He then won the WBC light middleweight title, successfully defended it twice, including a 15-round unanimous decision over Durán, before losing to Hearns on a majority decision.

Let’s compare that record to those of the others.

Durán was world lightweight champion (unifying the WBA and WBC titles after being stipped of the latter), the WBC welterweight champion, WBA light middleweight champion, and WBC middleweight champion. While he never successfully defended these later titles, he did successfully defend his lightweight title twelve times, which puts him in an elite class. Durán would lose the WBC welterweight title, twice in attempts to win the WBC light middleweight titles, in challening for the middleweight and WBC supermiddleweight title.

Leonard twice won the WBC welterweight title, added the WBA welterweight title in a unification match, won the WBA light welterweight title, won the world middleweight, WBC super middleweight, and WBC light heavyweight titles. He successfully defended his welterweight title four times and his WBC super middleweight title twice. He only lost one title in the ring, his WBC welterweight title to Durán (although, reckoned in lineal terms, an argument could be made that he lost his middleweight title to Norris, but that requires a complex examination that is beyond the scope of this essay).

Hagler was not a weight jumper (although world light heavyweight champion Michael Spinks challenged Hagler to a fight at the catchweight of 168 lbs in 1983). Hagler was a solid middleweight throughout his career, posting twelve successful title defenses across seven years in a deep field. He held wins over Durán and Hearns, and, many will argue (including me), over Leonard, as well. Hagler has the distinction of never being knocked down (no, Roldan did not knock down Hagler in their match) or stopped in 67 fights. Hagler may be the best middleweight in boxing history and is in my list of the ten best boxers of all time.

Hearns held the WBA welterweight title, the WBC light middleweight title, the WBC light heavyweight title, the WBC middleweight title, and the WBA light heavyweight title. Hearns would defend his welterweight title three times and his light middleweight title four times. Had Hearns had better whiskers and stamina, he might have very well been the best fighter of his era. But his knockout losses to Hagler and Barkley, and his gassing out in the later rounds against Leonard keep him from that status.

The “Four Kings” era is rightly remembered as a golden age. Benítez stands just outside its pantheon. Benítez had the talent and résumé to bring him close to that circle. He did beat Durán, but not having faced Hagler is significant. Moreover, his short prime goes against him. Part of what matters in these assessments is longevity.

As for how the “Four Kings” rank in my estimation, I have the order: Durán, Hagler, Hearns, and Leonard. Readers may wonder why Leonard is fourth given his wins over the other three (as well as Benítez). The reason for this is that Hearns was beating him rather easily in their first match before gassing out, and Hearns deserved the nod in the rematch, dropping Leonard twice in the fight. Despite losing to Leonard twice afterwards, Durán dominated Leonard in their first match. Hagler deserved the nod against Leonard. Excluding Durán’s reign as lightweight champion, the order changes, but I am assessing each fighters entire career.

Understand what the neologism cisgender is meant to convey. It’s not a minor detail—it’s a significant matter.

Queer activists tell us that a trans woman is a type of woman. What, then, is another type of woman? A “ciswoman.”

Cisgender first appeared in academic and activist circles in the 1990s and gained wider recognition in the 2000s. It was coined to describe people whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were “assigned” at birth. The term provides a linguistic parallel to transgender without implying that being cisgender is the default or “normal” way of being.

In the early twentieth century, German physician Ernst Burchard, an associate of Magnus Hirschfeld, coined the term “cisvestitism” to describe individuals who presented themselves in a manner consistent with their gender. German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch (who studied under neo-Marxists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) used the prefixes “cis” and “trans” in the context of gender identity in the early 1990s—building on the concept of gender identity, a construct introduced into psychiatry by sexologist Robert Stoller in the 1960s. In English-language discourse, the term “cisgender” was coined in 1994 by Dana Defosse, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. From there, the construction quickly spread among feminist and LGBTQ+ academic circles.

In reality, adding the prefix cis- to “woman” is redundant. A woman is, by definition, an adult female human. There is no other kind. Yet tautology is part of the ideological purpose behind the term. The goal of promoting “cisgender” is to normalize the concept of a trans woman as a type of woman by affirming the premise, thereby persuading people to accept the claim that a trans woman is not a man, even if exclusively he is.

This is the propaganda function of the neologism: legitimizing transgenderism and the construct of the “trans woman” through specialized language. George Orwell would recognize it as newspeak—the deliberate reworking of language for ideological purposes (as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where 2 + 2 = 5 because the Party says so).

Activists often insist that objections to cisgender are overreactions. They claim it merely describes someone who identifies as a woman. But identity is not a matter of what one thinks; it is a matter of what one is. People can imagine themselves in all sorts of ways: some think they are dogs, for instance. If they truly believe this, it is a psychiatric condition.

Consider this analogy: a cat raised among dogs may act like a dog. Its owner may say, “She thinks she’s a dog.” But the cat remains a cat. There’s no such thing as a “cis-cat.” The same principle applies to humans: a trans woman is not a woman in the exclusive and objective sense; he is a man.

Or take a squirrel raised by cats that “purrs.” The squirrel imitates feline behavior and produces sounds reminiscent of purring. But any reasonable observer knows it is still a squirrel. It cannot become a cat simply through imitation or socialization. There is no such thing as a “trans-cat.” You don’t need to be a biologist to recognize that.

Objecting to cisgender is not overreacting; it’s a rational response to an ideological effort that uses language to destabilize clear thinking and promote falsehoods. Promoting the neologism is essentially encouraging people to lie—to themselves and to others. If normalizing deception is acceptable, nothing else would be objectionable.

This is the broader objective of queer rhetoric. It is not only about transgenderism or redefining womanhood. The larger project is a kind of transhumanism: preparing people to accept their own dehumanization. By insisting on certain language, activists manipulate people into estranging themselves from objective reality and the truth of their identity. They seek to disrupt natural cognition, to distance humans from their animality.

This is precisely what must be resisted.

Remember about a decade ago when a white woman named Rachel Dolezal identified as black? She claimed to be “transracial.” Using queer logic, this means that someone identifying with the race they were “assigned” at birth would be “cisracial.” Why hasn’t this neologism caught on? Perhaps because rigid racial categories are functional to progressive politics in a way the gender binary isn’t?

There’s a very dishonest meme making the rounds on social media. It falsely suggests that President Trump told Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, that the thousands of missing Ukrainian children had nothing to do with the meeting’s business.

That is simply not true. In fact, Trump himself raised the issue with President Zelensky and others, even sharing a letter the First Lady had written on the subject. Far from dismissing it, he made it central to the discussion.

Here’s the actual exchange the meme distorts:

Von der Leyen: “I want to thank you also that you mentioned the thousands of Ukrainian children that have been abducted. And, as a mother and grandmother, every single child has to go back to its family. This should be one of our main priorities also in these negotiations.”

Notice—Von der Leyen explicitly says Trump was the one who raised the issue.

Trump: “Thank you. And we did. I was just thinking we’re here for a different reason. But we, just a couple of weeks ago, made the largest trade deal in history, so that’s a big thing. And congratulations. That’s great. Thank you very much, Ursula.”

Trump’s remark—“we’re here for a different reason”—was not directed at the plight of missing children. It was a segue into his next point, about the recently concluded US-EU trade deal. Read in context, it’s obvious:

“I was just thinking we’re here for a different reason. But we, just a couple of weeks ago, made the largest trade deal in history…”

If you saw the meme and concluded Trump was brushing off missing children without checking the context, then you’re part of the problem. Assuming he’s that callous says more about your bias than about what he actually said.

This is the same playbook we’ve seen before—whether it was claims about “bleach injections,” “very fine people on both sides,” or “suckers and losers.”

Misquotes thrive because people believe the caricature they’ve built, not the record of what was actually said. There has never been a US President who has ever been treated this way.

Last week, PBS published a story titled “Fact-checking Trump’s claims about homicides in DC.” I doubt PBS intended their report to come across this way—yet, in effect, they conceded the point. They acknowledged that Washington, D.C’s homicide rate is alarmingly high (even if reducing murders to near-zero would be difficult in a nation as large, diverse, and unruly as the United States).

“Washington, D.C’s homicide rate isn’t even the highest in the U.S.,” PBS tells its readers. “Per the February Rochester Institute of Technology report, the district has the fourth highest homicide rate in the U.S. after St. Louis, New Orleans and Detroit.”

Fourth? Our nation’s capital ranks behind only St. Louis, New Orleans, and Detroit. DC is worse than Baltimore? Chicago? Kansas City? Memphis? The seat of the federal government sits among the top four most violent cities in America—an outlier even by First World standards, with crime levels more commonly associated with the developing world.

This hardly undercuts Trump’s case for making DC safer. If anything, it underscores the urgency.

Corporate media outlets, echoing progressive academics and politicians, consistently stress that crime rates nationwide are declining. They cite recent FBI statistics and local police reports showing drops in certain categories—property crimes or homicides in select cities—as evidence that public fears of rising lawlessness are overstated or politically motivated.

The message is clear: America is safer than in previous decades, and concerns about crime spikes are either temporary fluctuations or distortions amplified by conservative media.

Against this backdrop, Donald Trump’s push to reintroduce a hardline “law and order” agenda—expanding police powers and imposing tougher sentencing policies—is portrayed not only as unnecessary but also as dangerous. Critics argue his rhetoric stokes fear, reinforces racialized narratives of urban disorder, and reflects an authoritarian impulse: prioritizing control and security over addressing social drivers of crime, such as inequality, housing shortages, or mental health challenges. (At least, that is the progressive framing.)

But the premise is flawed. Crime did not fall under the Biden administration. At best, it stabilized after sharp pandemic-era increases, with stabilization occurring only toward the end of his term. Yet a plateau offers cold comfort to ordinary Americans still facing daily risks of victimization. A neighborhood plagued by break-ins, shootings, and theft is no safer simply because the crime rate stops rising.

The public knows this instinctively. Citizens witness armed robberies on security cameras, shoplifting in broad daylight, smashed car windows, and neighbors or coworkers becoming victims. They do not need sanitized headlines to judge their own safety. They need effective public safety measures—and many recognize they cannot rely on Democrats to deliver them.

The progressive insistence that crime is “down” amounts to lying by omission: cherry-picking statistics, dismissing victims’ lived experiences, and ignoring persistent, real-world danger.

I will focus here on the cherry-picking. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects data directly from households, shows that a large share of crimes never appear in police reports. Between 2020 and 2023, only about 38 percent of violent victimizations in urban areas were reported to police—lower than in suburban (43%) or rural (51%) areas. With at best half of all crimes reported, media and expert claims about falling crime deserve extreme skepticism.

Systematic underreporting means official sources, like the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program or the Crime Data Explorer (CDE), present a highly incomplete picture. When Americans hear that crime is “falling,” they are hearing only about reported incidents—not the full scope of lawlessness.

Historically, NCVS and UCR trends moved roughly in parallel: crime peaked in the early 1990s and then declined, with NCVS estimates typically 2–3 times higher than UCR counts. However, between 2020 and 2023, NCVS data show a notable increase in serious violent crime, while FBI-reported crime decreased. The divergence suggests a shift in reporting or recording practices rather than a true decline in criminal activity.

However, between 2020 and 2023, serious violent crime as measured by NCVS increased notably. During that same window, FBI-reported violent crimes decreased. Thus, while NCVS suggests a significant rise in victimizations, particularly those not captured in police data, UCR indicates a decline in reported violent crime—highlighting a widening gap, in this case diverging in opposite directions. This tells us that something has changed in the way the FBI measures crime.

While UCR data may show, for example, a certain number of aggravated assaults in a given year, the NCVS consistently finds that far more such assaults occur but are never reported to law enforcement. This means that the apparent decline in some categories of crime may not necessarily be the result of fewer assaults, but rather the result of fewer victims reporting incidents, whether due to cynicism, fear, or frustration with a justice system they no longer trust.

The gap between official statistics and victim experiences represents a serious flaw in the narrative being advanced by progressive commentators and politicians.

Victims avoid reporting for many reasons. Some distrust law enforcement, influenced by years of rhetoric depicting police as corrupt or racist. Others fear retaliation in neighborhoods where enforcement is lax. Some citizens, even when reporting, experience inaction: police may decline to investigate property crimes, prosecutors may drop charges, and officers may be discouraged from proactive policing to avoid political backlash. Residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods recognize these dynamics.

Underreporting by victims is compounded by the reality that agencies from our most crime-ridden neighborhoods, i.e., the Blue City (urban areas run by Democrats), withhold data from the federal government because these data make their cities look bad. This is not speculation. The FBI’s UCR makes clear which agencies report, and the politicization of data is undeniable.

The incentives are obvious: reporting crime exposes high-crime areas, and because black Americans are overrepresented in crime statistics, it also raises uncomfortable racial questions. Public narratives that criminal justice disparities reflect systemic racism have influenced perceptions, but many Americans—what some call experiencing “black fatigue”—recognize that crime remains disproportionately committed by young black males, even if the majority of black Americans are law-abiding.

Reflecting on the discrepancies, I stress this paradox to my criminal justice students: rising arrests or reports can indicate better policing, while falling crime in UCR may not mean fewer crimes—but simply fewer reports or fewer arrests. Effective crime reduction requires both active policing and citizen engagement. Put another way, solving the problem of crime in America (as in any society) takes a whole-of-society approach.

Persistent crime is not solely a policing issue. When offenders are apprehended but prosecutors fail to pursue charges, or judges release criminals quickly, public safety is further degraded. More police—and, if necessary, the military—can deter crime, but prevention requires aggressive prosecution and incarceration. Those taken off the streets must remain off the streets to achieve real impact. Offenders cannot victimize others if they are in prison.

Deterrence and incapacitation were the primary drivers of the dramatic drop in crime from its historic highs in the 1980s and 1990s: more police on the streets, aggressive law enforcement, harsher penalties, and the expanded use of prisons.

Progressives have long criticized the large US prison population, yet they resist social policies that could alter the dynamics in our most crime-ridden neighborhoods. And this isn’t about taking guns off the street (more on that shortly). The issues are deeper: broken families, a subculture of idleness and violence, and conditions stemming from deindustrialization, ghettoization, mass immigration, and the rise of the welfare state.

The progressive abandonment of law and order policies set against the backdrop of idleness and welfare dependency, further complicated by anti-police and prison abolitionist rhetoric from the progressive left, is what led to the return of significant crime and violence after 2014. Whether one relies on the NCVS or the UCR, the return of serious crime is not in dispute.

Who suffers the most because of all this? Black Americans. Blacks are far more likely to be the victims of crime and violence perpetrated by other blacks in the neighborhoods into which urban elites have directed and in which they have trapped them over the decades.

The failure to protect blacks in crime-ridden communities is a phenomenon Randall Kennedy calls “racially selective underprotection.” Indeed. It puts the lie to the “Black Lives Matter” slogan. It also prompts a rational person to ask: Who are the real racists here?

Now, about guns. This is an important piece in all this since politicians and progressives say the problem of crime (homicide, robbery) can be dealt with by diminishing the public’s access to firearms, a right protected by the Second Amendment. It’s part of the argument PBS makes in the story that inspires this essay.

I must note that, paradoxically, taking guns off the street would require a vast expansion of the law enforcement apparatus, given the number of guns in America and the reluctance of citizens to give up their most effective means of self-defense. Indeed, more strident gun control would lead to more crime, not less.

John R. Lott Jr. (More Guns, Less Crime) makes a compelling argument that legally owned firearms—carried by law-abiding citizens—serve as a powerful deterrent to crime. Criminals prefer unarmed and vulnerable targets, so when potential victims are armed, the risks of committing violent crimes increase, leading to fewer such offenses.

According to Lott’s careful analyses, states that adopt “shall-issue” laws making it easier for citizens to carry concealed weapons generally experience less violent crime. While some criminals may shift toward lower-risk property crimes, the overall effect of legal gun ownership is to reduce victimization.

Gun control thus disarms law-abiding individuals rather than criminals, thereby undermining public safety. In this case, what feels intuitively true is empirically sound.

I used to be on the other side of the gun argument (see The Truth About the AR-15 and The Sandy Hook Shootings: What Really Happened). My error was due to a category error. A gun cannot be guilty of murder. Yet progressives treat guns as if they have agency. But guns don’t shoot themselves; people shoot guns. People have agency. (I apologize for my error here: Guns Don’t Shoot Themselves.)

But supposing that guns themselves are a problem, is it true that more guns mean more violence? Let’s look at the facts.

From the 1960s through the 1970s, US gun ownership rose to roughly 40,000–60,000 firearms per 100,000 people as production increased, with gun homicides peaking around 7 per 100,000 in 1974.

In the 1980s, ownership climbed to an estimated 60,000–80,000 per 100,000, while the overall homicide rate averaged about 8.7 per 100,000, plateauing or gradually declining by the decade’s end.

We are approaching the peak of violent crime in American history in the 1980s, driven by demographics (more young men in the population) and the fruit of progressive policy hollowing out America’s industrial base and destroying the black family. Gun proliferation is not driving the crime problem. Indeed, it is likely a response to the experience of rising crime.

While the 1990s saw ownership reach about 74,000 per 100,000 (192 million guns for a population of ~260 million), the average homicide rate declined to around 8.1 per 100,000. Gun homicides had peaked in the early 1990s (the absolute zenith of criminal violence in America) before falling nearly 49 percentage points by 2010, even as ownership continued to grow.

This sharp decline was not thanks to the so-called assault weapons ban (1994-2004). As I have explained before on this platform, rifles account for a small proportion of guns used in homicide. More people are killed with feet and hands than are killed with rifles. Most gun deaths are perpetrated with handguns (more than half).

In the 2000s, the gun stock likely reached 90,000–110,000 per 100,000 people, while the homicide rate averaged 5.6 per 100,000, with overall gun deaths declining (with suicides making up the largest share).

By the 2010s, ownership had stabilized between 110,000–120,000 per 100,000 (roughly 40–45 percent of households owning guns), and the homicide rate averaged 4.9 per 100,000, continuing the long-term downward trend.

If guns explain homicides, then more guns should be associated with more homicides. But gun ownership has increased over the last several decades, while the homicide rate decreased during the same period. Thus, it would seem that the causal relation is the inverse of what PBS’s expert claims: more guns means fewer homicides.

What explains this? The likelihood that an armed citizen is a deterrent to those who wish to inflict harm on him explains a lot of it. But it’s also because a more expansive criminal justice system saves lives, since police presence deters violence and incarceration keeps violent offenders away from the general public.

If America locked up 2.3 million people and didn’t reduce crime, then one would have reason to doubt the efficacy of incarceration. But the reality is that homicide was reduced because of deterrence and incapacitation effects. So were car thefts, etc. Law and order work. Progressive approaches to crime and disorder don’t. Indeed, they make the situation worse (for obvious reasons).

Remember, during the BLM craze, when the police were told to stand down, and the prison population declined, thus allowing more violent offenders to operate more freely on our streets? What happened? What any rational person would expect: Homicides increased. Car theft increased. Etcetra. As Lott likes to say, this isn’t rocket science.

One other thing, and this is crucial for understanding the false claims gun grabbers make. Approximately 46–47 percent of American adults who report owning a gun live in rural areas, which have much lower rates of homicide than urban areas. Suburban areas? About 28–30 percent of adults say they personally own a gun. Again, not areas with a lot of homicides.

But Urban areas? Roughly 19–20 percent of adults report owning a firearm, yet many inner-city neighborhoods are killing fields, including DC. Why? Not because of the amount of guns, but because the people there are much more likely to murder people.

Democrats don’t want Trump to stop the killing. Weird, right? And conservatives and their guns are somehow to blame for crime. More weirdness.

To put the matter bluntly, crime reporting in the mainstream media is garbage. It’s a pack of lies promulgated by those who are simultaneously striving to make guns the problem, while excusing the consequences of progressive social policy—not only in the area of criminal justice, but in the areas of economic policy and the welfare state.

It’s time to get back to what works: law and order. Public safety is a human right. Liberty lives where people are safe to go about their business and their lives.