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Iran is raining ballistic missiles down on Israeli cities. I support what Israel did, which I will explain later on. Trump knew Israel was going to do this and telegraphed his desire that the United States not get involved. However, because of Israel’s actions, the United States is being dragged into the kinetic phase World War III. As regular readers know, I am generally opposed to war unless conflict threatens the security of the United States (see The US and NATO in the Balkans; War Hawks and the Ugly American: The Origins of Bush’s Middle East Policy; Sowing the Seeds of Terrorism? Capitalist Intrigue and Adventurism in Afghanistan; History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War).

This is not an ideal time for the United States to get involved in another war in the Middle East. We’re trying to end a war between Ukraine (and by extension Europe) and Russia. We have 20 million illegal alien invaders that we have to get out of our country. Between Ukraine and open borders the Democrats have really put the United States in a terrible place. This was by design. The design? The managed decline of the American Republic.

I want to provide the background on this matter so readers can understand that there is something very dark going on the world that warrants the destruction of the Islamist regime in Tehran but that at the same time imperils Trump’s project to reclaim the American Republic for the People. Crucial to understand the situation is exposing the role Obama Democrats have played in building up Iran and enabling the development of offensive nuclear weapons in a terrorist nation allied with China. In effect, they set a trap for Israel and the United States.

The situation is yet another reason why Democrats must never be allow to regain power. This is not unconnected to what is happening in the United States with yet another color revolution aiming to undermine the second Trump Administration. All this is connected to the globalist project to dismantle the West in order to establish a transnational corporate state and usher in a neofeudalist world governed by technocrats. The global elite have know for some time that the only way to protect their power and privilege is to establish a post-capitalist world government by a New Aristocracy. Agentic artificial intelligence has hastened the time they have to establish the New World Order and so they are moving aggressively. Soon the world will be in crisis as billions of workers will have no productive value to the corporate elite.

I begin the background with the Islamic Revolution in Iran and steps the United States took to isolate the regime. Iranian funds were frozen in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah and led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. That same year, the US embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian students who took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for over a year. In response to the crisis, Jimmy Carter ordered the freezing of nearly 12 billion dollars in Iranian government assets held in US banks and their overseas branches. These included central bank reserves, real estate, and other financial holdings. The freeze was intended as both a punitive measure and a form of leverage during the hostage negotiations. (I will avoid a digression into why Carter failed to stop the Iranian Revolution, but you can read my thoughts here: Who’s Responsible for Iran’s Theocratic State? See also: Facing Down Evil.)

During the Clinton years, the administration viewed Iran as a sponsor of terrorism and an opponent of the US in the Middle East, particularly due to its support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and its opposition to the Oslo peace process. In 1995, Clinton issued an executive order banning all US trade and investment in Iran, citing Iran’s support for terrorism and its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. This was later codified in the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) of 1996, which threatened to sanction foreign companies investing more than 20 dollars million in Iran’s energy sector. The goal was to choke off funds that could fuel Iran’s nuclear or military ambitions. Though Iran was years away from a functional nuclear program, its nuclear ambitions were already a growing concern.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, George W. Bush gave his now-famous “Axis of Evil” speech, lumping Iran with Iraq and North Korea as regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorism. From that point forward, the Bush administration pursued a confrontational stance. In 2002, revelations emerged that Iran had secretly built nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak. This intensified fears that Iran was developing nuclear weapons capabilities. Bush supported international efforts to investigate Iran’s nuclear program and pushed for Iran to halt enrichment activities.

While the US was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, both wars I opposed (although I did advocate direct action against Osama bin Laden’s installation in the Tora Bora mountain range), it also pursued covert operations in Iran, including intelligence gathering and possibly sabotage. The Bush administration supported Iranian dissident groups and sought regime change. The 2006 and 2007 sanctions imposed through the United Nations Security Council—backed by US diplomatic pressure—were a turning point in formalizing international opposition to Iran’s nuclear activities. Bush also signed executive orders targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force.

All this changed with the election of Barack Hussein Obama. Under Obama, the US pursued a diplomatic agreement with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in 2015. The way the deal was presented was that it aimed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons by limiting its nuclear activities in exchange for relief from international sanctions. What did the deal do? It released Iranian assets that had been frozen for decades. These funds—amounting to roughly 100–150 billion dollars in total Iranian assets—were Iranian funds that had been held abroad due to sanctions. In addition to releasing frozen Iranian assets, the US delivered 1.7 billion dollars to Iran in cash: 400 million dollars—a decades-old payment owed for a failed arms deal from before the 1979 Iranian revolution—and 1.3 billion dollars in interest.

When Donald Trump became president in 2017, he took a starkly different approach. In 2018, he withdrew the US from the JCPOA, not only because it was a bad deal that empowered Iran, but because it had failed to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Following this, the Trump administration launched a “maximum pressure” campaign by reimposing and intensifying economic sanctions on Iran. These included sanctions on oil exports, banking, and other vital sectors of the Iranian economy. The goal was to economically isolate Iran and force it back into negotiations. Trump sought a peaceful solution to the problem of a nuclear Iran—but one that did not enable Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

These sanctions deeply impacted Iran’s economy, reducing its oil revenue and straining its currency. Critics argued this approach increased tensions in the region and pushed Iran closer to nuclear weapons development. On the contrary, it curtailed Iran’s regional aggression and economic strength—and made it difficult for Iran to continue its offensive nuclear weapons program. Trump’s efforts at work peace here and in other hot spots was confronted by Democrats who worked tirelessly to undermine his presidency. In 2020, they engineered a coup and installed former Senator are Vice-President under Obama Joe Biden as president.

Under Biden, the administration sought to revive the JCPOA. In 2023, a high-profile deal involved the US allowing $6 billion in previously frozen Iranian funds (held in South Korea) to be transferred to Qatar as part of a prisoner swap between the US and Iran. The Biden administration emphasized that the funds could only be used for humanitarian purposes (food and medicine). The Biden administration defended the move as part of a broader diplomatic strategy. This was not naïveté. It was a return to the Obama program to strengthen Iran. Critics rightly viewed this as effectively providing Iran access to funds that could free up resources for malign activities.

As a consequence, and in the wake of the terrorist attack on Israel in October 2023, on June 13, 2025, Israel launched a sweeping airstrike campaign across Iran, targeting over 100 military and nuclear facilities in a move aimed at crippling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. The assault, coordinated by the Israeli military and Mossad, struck key sites, including Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz, and reportedly killed several high-ranking Iranian officials and nuclear scientists. Iran retaliated with a barrage of drones and ballistic missiles, killing at least three Israeli civilians.

The attack followed heightened concerns from the IAEA over Iran’s nuclear activity and sparked sharp international debate—praised by US Republicans as a necessary act of self-defense but criticized by Democrats as dangerously escalatory. Indeed, the strike marks a dramatic escalation in Israel-Iran tensions and could reshape Middle East dynamics. More than this, it could spark a full-blown world war.

The day before Israel launched the attack, at the dinner table sharing a meal with my wife and youngest son, I said I thought Israel would launch a military strike against Iran the next day. I saw the signals. My son, who had been following the news, called to tell me I was right. As the news came in, I learned more details. I spent a day reflecting on the matter. I shared my thoughts on Facebook about why I support Israel’s actions. I want to share my thoughts—but first, I want to explain how I try to think about such matters.

I have taken to working from first principles. This has cleared up a lot of my thinking. It’s why I have changed my mind on several crucial issues, all of which I have discussed on this platform. By focusing on basic, fundamental truths—in this case, respecting a nation’s sovereignty, not initiating violence without good reason, and the right to self-defense—I feel we can extend clear and consistent ways to judge actions to foreign relations. This may help you decide where to stand.

Generally, it’s both legally and morally wrong for one country to attack another without a serious reason—and by serious, I mean something like an attack, an immediate threat, or something that could wipe out a country’s existence. This principle is there to prevent imperialism or unchecked aggression. It lies at the core of the Peace of Westphalia. However, imagine a situation where a country is building nuclear weapons, funding terrorist attacks, and openly calling for another state’s destruction. Here the principle of non-aggression pushes up against another important principle: the right to self-defense, which is a foundational right recognized in international law.

To understand this better, it helps to think about two kinds of mistakes in statistical reasoning: Type I and Type II errors. A Type I error occurs if Israel strikes Iran because it believes Iran is an immediate threat when it really isn’t. If that happens, Israel starts a war that wasn’t necessary, creates regional instability, hurts its international reputation, and provokes retaliation that may have been avoided. That’s the risk of acting when one shouldn’t. We call this a false positive.

A Type II error would be not acting, thinking the threat isn’t serious, when Iran is preparing a devastating attack or building weapons that could wipe out Israel. Then the threat goes unchecked and that could mean terrible consequences: Iran having nuclear weapons, terrorists emboldened, or even a direct attack causing mass casualties. That’s the risk of failing to act when action is needed we call a false negative. Crucially, Israel did not attack out of aggression—it acted out of necessity, to protect its people and its future. Moreover, the strike made have made the region safer by negating a growing threat: a terrorist state with nuclear weapons. Better to commit a Type I error here than a Type II error.

For years, Iran has made clear that it sees Israel as an enemy to be destroyed. Its leaders openly call for Israel’s destruction and back that up by supporting terrorist groups—Hamas, Hezbollah—which have attacked Israeli civilians repeatedly. Iran’s strategy of surrounding Israel with hostile proxies and destabilizing the region is very real. Tehran continues enriching uranium beyond what’s needed for peaceful use and has blocked inspections in key places. The danger isn’t just that Iran might use a nuclear weapon against Israel. Just having an offensive nuclear capacity would make Iran bolder and shift the balance of power in the region toward a hostile, fanatical Islamist regime run by clerical fascists. This isn’t only Israel’s problem—Iran is a threat to regional, even global security.

Given all this, Israel’s strike on Iran’s military and nuclear sites shouldn’t be seen as breaking international rules, but as an act of preemptive self-defense. Israel didn’t take this path lightly. But when faced with clear and escalating threats—when waiting could lead to disaster—the right to self-defense isn’t just justified; it’s an obligation. The people come first.

First principles tell us to respect sovereignty and avoid war whenever possible. But they also demand action when doing nothing means risking destruction. No country should have to wait for a catastrophe before defending itself. Israel wants peace. It’s not the aggressor. Iran is a terrorist state. Israel can’t risk the lives of its citizens hoping its enemies—a gang of religious zealots—will restrain themselves. In this case, failing to act is far worse than acting—and acting early.

Many believe we are in the early kinetic phase of the Third World War. Will Israel’s actions add to the growing intensity of national antagonisms? Perhaps. Will stopping a terrorist nation from developing nuclear weapons make the war less destructive? Imagine total war on the Eurasian landmass. Would it make the situation worse to have a nuclear Iran? Yes, I think so.

Hopefully Israel’s actions will force Iran to return to the negotiating table to deal with Trump and help build his vision of shared peace and prosperity. Perhaps the Israel-Iran conflict will embolden Iranians to rise up and overthrow the clerical fascist regime (that Carter stupidly allowed to come to power) and resurrect Persia, one of the great civilizations of history, today kept in darkness by the mullahs of Tehran. There are other points we might consider here. But the key point is that Israel had to stop a recalcitrant entity from getting its hairy paws on nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran is a nightmare par excellence.

But here’s where we must draw the line: while I support Israel’s right—and responsibility—to defend itself, the United States must not allow itself to be dragged into another Middle Eastern war that ultimately serves the interests of our enemies, both foreign and domestic. Trump was right to urge restraint. The instinct to stay out of this fight is not isolationism—it’s survival. It is the proper application of strategic nationalism.

Let’s be clear: Israel can—and must—defend itself. But that does not mean the American people should once again be conscripted—financially, militarily, politically—into someone else’s war. Especially not now. Under Biden, the US was on the brink: our economy was fragile, our borders collapsing, our institutions captured by globalist ideologues, and our military emasculated by woke bureaucrats. We cannot afford another war that bleeds our resources and distracts from the existential task at home: the restoration of the American Republic.

It’s no coincidence that the same forces pushing the US toward deeper entanglement in foreign conflict—Democrat elites, legacy media, transnational NGOs—are also the architects of our decline. These are the same people who sabotaged Trump, enabled Iran’s rise, armed terrorists, opened our borders, corrupted our elections, and now want to drag us into a catastrophic global conflict in the name of “defending democracy.” It is not democracy they defend—it’s their empire.

The truth is this: the war Israel is fighting is a just war, but it’s not America’s war to fight directly—certainly not under the leadership of those who have betrayed America’s national interest at every turn. If Trump chooses to engage based on a coherent, America First strategy that serves the Republic, then and only then can such involvement be reassessed. Trump must speak about this soon. We need to know what he is thinking.

My advice to the President: Let Israel act. Let her win. But let America not be sacrificed in the process. The first duty of a sovereign government is to its own people. The path back to American greatness is not through Tehran or Tel Aviv—it’s through Washington, DC, and the removal of the globalist regime that has led us to this precipice. We support our allies best not by fighting their wars for them, but by restoring the Republic at home so that peace through strength is possible once again.

Trump’s project is not merely political—it’s civilizational. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of ordered liberty in a world descending into chaos. The United States must be wise enough not to mistake support for servitude—and strong enough to defend its own future before extending its strength abroad. To be sure, these are not unconnected, but the way forward demands prudence. The greatest contribution America can make to peace in the world is the restoration of its own sovereignty. That cannot be sacrificed for Israel’s sake. They made the decision to go to war with Iran. We did not agree to go to war with them.

I reserve the right to change my mind on this. Nobody wants to see an Islamic regime in Iran. No rational person, anyway. Not just for the United States and Israel, but for the Iranian people. If this can be accomplished without spending another 6 trillion dollars (the total cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to the United States) and losing another 7,000 US service members (with many times more maimed and brains scrambled), then I am open to providing support to Israel’s efforts. But I fear it can’t, and so, for now, I urge the President to keep us out of war.

In 1976, the United States celebrated its Bicentennial with a wide range of events and ceremonies commemorating two hundred years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I was 14 years old and remember the excitement vividly. Just a decade earlier, Jim Crow segregation had been abolished, and the Voting Rights Act passed. Only seven years before, America landed a man on the moon. After several more missions, we established a continuous presence in space with Skylab, which hosted three crewed missions. A year before the big celebration, the Vietnam War had come to an end.

The Bicentennial was a nationwide celebration filled with patriotism and cultural reflection. Cities across the country hosted historical reenactments, fireworks displays, parades, and special concerts. The most prominent national event was Operation Sail in New York Harbor, where tall ships from around the world joined a massive naval review attended by President Gerald Ford. Yes, a massive naval review attended by President Gerald Ford.

Congress authorized the minting of special Bicentennial quarters, half dollars, and dollar coins, all featuring unique reverse designs and the dual date “1776–1976.” Philadelphia, where the Declaration was signed, was a focal point for celebrations, including the restoration of Independence Hall. The American Freedom Train—a traveling museum on rails—toured all 48 contiguous states, bringing historical artifacts and exhibitions to millions. Television networks aired patriotic specials, and new monuments and public projects were dedicated.

It was a big to-do—and for good reason. The Bicentennial was a unifying moment in a decade marked by economic and political turmoil: protests, riots, the war, the Church Committee hearings, Watergate. It gave Americans a chance to reflect on their shared history and national identity.

Now, we’ve arrived at another big moment: the 250th anniversary of the US Army. This milestone celebrates a quarter of a millennium of the Army’s history—from its founding during the Revolutionary War through its roles in every major conflict and peacekeeping mission since. Next year will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It’s significant that the Army was created in 1775, a year before the Declaration that launched the war for independence, where we threw off a king and established a democratic republic.

The first person to hold the title of General of the Army in the United States was George Washington. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and later given the rank of General. After leading the Continental Army to victory, Washington went on to become the first President of the United States. Unanimously elected, he served two terms from 1789 to 1797. His leadership—both on the battlefield and as president—helped lay the foundation for the new nation’s government and democratic traditions.

We could not have won the War of Independence—and thus established our country—without the Army. What we’re celebrating is an institution that predates our Constitution—an institution that made our Constitution possible. And that institution has sustained our nation through all these centuries: through civil war, two world wars, and now stands ready to defend and preserve this nation in the next global conflict. It’s the perfect moment to honor the tens of millions of men and women who have put their lives on the line to defend the American Republic.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” —Preamble to the United States Constitution

I want to make clear from the outset—those who regularly read Freedom and Reason already know this—that I am deeply committed to the First Amendment and the fundamental freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, and speech and writing that are the lifeblood of American democracy. The right to express dissent, to organize for change, and to gather in protest is essential, and I support lawful, nonviolent efforts to advocate for policy reforms even when I disagree with dissenters, protestors, and reformers.

The Vietnam War protests of the 1960s-1970s were a powerful expression of moral conviction, driven by a growing sense of injustice surrounding the war’s purpose, methods, and human cost. Protesters questioned the ethical legitimacy of US involvement in a distant conflict that claimed millions of lives, disproportionately affected the poor and marginalized, and was often justified with unclear or misleading government narratives. The moral righteousness of the protestors lay in their demand for accountability, peace, and challenging the notion that patriotism required blind support for war. The protests were an affirmation of democratic responsibility and of human dignity.

However, these rights that governed the actions of Vietnam War or any other protestors do not extend to actions that violate the law, obstruct lawful enforcement, or threaten the safety and sovereignty of the nation. Respecting the First Amendment means upholding both the right to protest and the rule of law—a balance that protects our democratic society from chaos and preserves the integrity of the Constitution itself. 

Indeed, we must protect our democratic society from chaos and preserve the integrity of the Constitution itself; the only reason we enjoy the freedoms of speech, association, and peaceful assembly is because we exist in a democratic republic with a constitution and a bill of rights. Other countries don’t enjoy these rights—and we won’t either if we let Democrats and their minions prevail in their current defiance of the Constitution and the popular will. The protests seek more than an end to ICE raids. They seek revolution. Indeed, these are not really protests but rebellion against the American Republic.

One of the central reasons the US Constitution was drafted to replace the Articles of Confederation was to address the federal government’s inability to respond effectively to internal unrest and maintain order—most notably demonstrated by Shays’ Rebellion in 1786–87. Under the Articles, the government lacked the power to enforce laws domestically. This exposed a fatal flaw: central authority was too weak to preserve domestic peace, enforce federal law, or suppress insurrection—all essential functions of a sovereign state.

The urgent need for a more effective national structure is what led to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Figures like Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and George Washington advocated a stronger federal government precisely to “ensure domestic tranquility,” as declared in the Constitution’s Preamble. Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the authority to call forth the militia to suppress insurrections, and the Insurrection Act of 1792 further codifies the power of the federal government to use military force to respond to domestic uprisings. (See my recent essay Quelling the Rebellion.)

After the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government the delegates had created. He famously replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Keeping the republic demands civic responsibility from the citizens and defense of the nation from threats external and internal. 

Today, we are witnessing what amounts to an insurrection both in the common understanding of armed rebellion and in the deliberate obstruction of federal authority. Deliberate obstruction is not often thought of as insurrection, but when city and state governments declare themselves “sanctuary jurisdictions,” refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and shielding individuals who are in the country unlawfully, they are not simply offering moral dissent—they are actively nullifying federal law. This undermines the rule of law, compromises national sovereignty, and constitutes a constitutional crisis. The Democratic Party today is not only fomenting rebellion—several of its leaders are actively engaged in insurrection. We may accurately describe Democrats as neo-confederates. 

In a way, the appeal to states’ rights is in the DNA of the Democratic Party, and today, just as in the past, Democrats make this appeal to protect the split-labor market and advance globalization. The labor of undocumented migrants in today’s US economy, for example in sectors like California’s agricultural industry, bears striking similarities to the forced labor of enslaved people in the antebellum South. While the contexts differ—most notably that migrants often come voluntarily, while enslaved Africans were forcibly taken (which is why it made no sense to deport them)—the economic function they serve within a capitalist system reveals a persistent pattern. Both systems rely on a subordinated labor class, stripped of full legal protections, to maximize profits for those who own the means of production.

In both historical and contemporary cases, the subordinate labor force performs the physically demanding, low wage (or in slavery’s case, unpaid) work that others “refuse to do”: picking strawberries or cotton, cleaning houses, caring for children, maintaining landscapes, and performing other undervalued agricultural and domestic labor. Their marginalized legal status—slaves as property with no rights, migrants working without documentation or secure legal standing—renders them exploitable and keeps wages suppressed. This dynamic ensures that a vast amount of essential labor remains cheap and excluded from the full protections of labor law.

This continuity reveals how capitalism, particularly in its most exploitative forms, depends on a tiered labor structure—where the most vulnerable perform the hardest work under the harshest conditions. While the systems of slavery and migrant labor are not identical, they are linked by their function: to create and maintain a workforce that exists outside the full boundaries of economic and legal inclusion, thus allowing capital to extract maximum value at minimum cost. The legacy of slavery haunts the fields and homes of today’s economy, a structural echo that continues to shape who labors, under what conditions, and for whose benefit.

Moreover, in both slavery and the exploitation of undocumented migrant labor, the presence of a hyper-exploited labor class exerts downward pressure on wages and working conditions for other workers, particularly those at the lower end of the labor market. This happens because employers use the availability of cheap labor to avoid paying higher wages or offering better conditions to native-born or legally protected workers. The very existence of a labor pool willing (or forced) to work under extreme conditions drives down wages, undermines collective bargaining, and weakens labor solidarity. The split-labor market is not only an economic strategy but a political tactic.

During slavery, free white laborers in the South often found themselves unable to compete with slave labor, which distorted local labor markets and contributed to long-standing divisions in the American working class. In the modern context, illegal aliens play a similar role. Migrants, often unable to report abuses or demand fair wages due to the threat of deportation, provide a convenient tool for employers to resist unionization, sidestep regulations, and fragment worker power. Thus, both systems not only provide cheap labor to capital, but also work to discipline and weaken the broader labor force by creating a class of workers who could be paid less, treated worse, and used as leverage against demands for better wages and conditions from others. This is a structural feature, not a side effect, of these labor regimes. The Democratic Party exists to maintain this political economic structure.

So we have faced this kind of internal crisis before. At its core, the Civil War was a confrontation over the limits of federal authority and the right of states to defy national laws. Southern Democrats sought to preserve their way of life, which depended on slavery, claiming the right to nullify federal mandates and ultimately to secede from the Union, insisting that their local sovereignty took precedence over the Constitution’s national framework. President Lincoln rejected that claim unequivocally, asserting that the Union was perpetual and that rebellion against federal authority was not merely dissent, but insurrection. The war was fought not just over slavery, but over the very idea of a unified, sovereign nation bound by a common Constitution. 

Today’s sanctuary policies and defiance of federal immigration law echo those same dangerous arguments for selective obedience to national authority—and for a similar reason: to preserve a way of life that depends on cheap labor. The question, “Who will pick the cotton?” has its parallel in the question, “Who will pick the strawberries?” Democrats say this unflinchingly, believing that nobody will note the parallel. However, as in the 1860s, we are once again confronted with the question of whether the United States is a nation of laws—or a patchwork of jurisdictions that obey only the laws they like.

To understand the gravity of the current moment, it is useful to contrast today’s protests against immigration enforcement with those of an earlier era—specifically, the Vietnam War protests, which I mentioned earlier. These two movements differ fundamentally in both principle and consequence. The Vietnam-era demonstrations targeted US involvement in a foreign conflict. While they were emotionally charged and politically polarizing, their effect—even if they helped bring about withdrawal from Vietnam—did not threaten the structural coherence of the American state. On the contrary, ending an unpopular and morally ambiguous war could be seen as reaffirming American values. I accompanied my parents to these protests—and my son accompanied me when I protested the Second Gulf War.

Today’s protests are of an entirely different nature. They target the internal operations of the state—most critically, the nation’s ability to regulate its borders and control who enters or resides within its territory. The protests are not just about immigration policy; it’s about national self-determination and the fundamental capacity of the United States to exercise sovereignty. If the government capitulates to demands that undermine or nullify immigration laws, it risks eroding the very framework that allows the state to govern at all. With that framework go all our immunities and privileges.

Both eras of protest faced accusations of foreign influence. During the Cold War, some charged that antiwar protestors were tools of communist regimes like the Soviet Union or North Vietnam. Today, protest movements—against immigration control, Israel’s actions in Gaza, etc.—are supported by foreign NGOs, international advocacy networks, and philanthropic organizations with globalist leanings that benefit from lax immigration enforcement. Whether or not these claims are exaggerated (and they aren’t in the case of the current protests), the key distinction lies in consequence—even if both movements stem from deeply held convictions, the outcome of today’s immigration protests carries existential weight: weakening the republic’s ability to enforce immigration laws amounts to weakening the republic itself.

One of the explicit goals of the current resistance to immigration enforcement is to raise the cost of federal action by creating zones of defiance where the government’s laws are openly ignored or obstructed. For example, the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has stated bluntly that violent resistance against federal government’s actions will stop when the federal government stops enforcing the law in her city. This is a direct threat from a state official against the federal government—a challenge that uses the threat of escalating civil unrest and violence to deter lawful federal activity. 

Such defiance echoes the rhetoric and spirit of neoconfederate arguments, which champion local or state sovereignty over national unity and federal law. Mayor Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom’s stances assert regional power in opposition to constitutional authority. This politicization of law enforcement by Democrats not only undermines the rule of law but fuels a constitutional crisis by encouraging the selective obedience of laws based on partisan or ideological preferences.

This is why the role of the US military—particularly its domestic presence—remains essential in keeping domestic order and suppressing insurrection. Critics of the military used in this way tell the public to worry about the militarization of American society and the erosion of civil liberties. The reason for this is not due to any real concern for the deployment of the military domestically. It’s rhetoric designed to generate public opposition to the federal governments duty to “ensure domestic tranquility.” Democrats don’t believe in the Constitution and they want the public to forget why the Constitution was established and the scope of its authority. 

Expect to hear at some point about the Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878, a federal law that prohibits the use of the US Army to execute domestic laws unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. Here’s the kicker: the law was enacted in the aftermath of Reconstruction, as Southern states pushed back against the continued use of federal troops in civilian governance. Democrats sought to draw a sharp line between military power and civil law enforcement for the sake of Redemption, i.e., reinstalling white supremacy as the normal order of things. As long as the federal government, including the military, was deeply involved in enforcing new civil rights laws and maintaining order in the South, Democrats could not reconstitute the racist system they had developed during the antebellum period. Federal troops were stationed throughout the region to protect newly freed blacks and to uphold the authority of the federal government against hostile local governments and terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Simply put, Posse Comitatus sought to make federal action difficult. 

I want to be very clear about this: it was the same states’ right sentiment that led the Civil War that also produced federal law limiting the use of the military in the suppression of insurrection and rebellions. White Southerners fiercely resisted federal military presence, viewing it as an occupation and an infringement on states’ rights and local control. They sought to prevent the federal military from being used to enforce laws domestically, especially in the South, where many wanted to reassert local control without interference from the federal government. But the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The Articles of Confederation were superseded by the Constitution.

Wouldn’t deploying the military against civilians be dangerous? Any act of force comes with risks. Deploying the police against civilians is dangerous. But consider a counterintuitive yet important argument from civil libertarian journalist Radley Balko, a fierce critic of police militarization. (I am a fierce critic of police militarization, as well. I lecture on this problem in my criminal justice courses, and I have in the past assigned Balko’s book The Warrior Cop to my students.) However, Balko argues that soldiers—particularly combat veterans—often make better law enforcement officers than traditional police. His reasoning is grounded not in a call for more militarization, but in the cultural and training differences between the two institutions.

Military personnel are trained under strict rules of engagement, a clear chain of command, and a heavy emphasis on restraint and de-escalation. They are conditioned to distinguish between civilians and combatants, often in hostile environments, while maintaining discipline under pressure. In contrast, many police departments have adopted the superficial aesthetics of militarization—armored vehicles, tactical gear—without the corresponding training in accountability, discipline, and judgment.

Balko contends that combat veterans are often less prone to panic, more likely to remain composed under stress, and more respectful of civilian lives and rights. They understand the seriousness of force and the importance of mission clarity. Many see their service as a form of public stewardship, not power projection. This is not an argument for expanding military authority or blending it with policing. Rather, it is a call to recognize that constitutionally grounded, lawful, and restrained enforcement of the law—especially in response to domestic threats—requires personnel who are serious about the Constitution, not just about control. In the current situation, deployment of the military is appropriate. 

This next piece is crucial (and this is why Kent State is such a bad analogy). Normally, civilians are protected under the laws of domestic governance and the principles of criminal justice. However, when a group rises in armed rebellion against the state (and arms are not just guns and grenades), those actively participating in the insurrection effectively assume the role of combatants opposing lawful authority. Under US law, insurrectionists can be treated as unlawful combatants or rebels because they are using force to resist or overthrow the government. This designation removes the usual civilian protections and justifies a military or law enforcement response to suppress the rebellion. This does not mean all citizens in a protesting population automatically become combatants—only those who engage in violence or armed resistance do.

The oath sworn by members of the US military is not merely ceremonial—it is a solemn vow to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This reflects a foundational commitment to lawful authority and constitutional governance. Soldiers are bound not to ideology, individual leaders, or party, but to the enduring principles enshrined in the Constitution. That oath demands a response to domestic threats to the republic, and it implicates not only individuals rioting in the streets, but also political leaders who institutionalize defiance of federal law.

Importantly, the government retains the authority to distinguish between lawful protestors exercising their First Amendment rights and those who cross the line into insurrectionary acts—such as attempts to nullify federal authority, obstruction of law enforcement, and violence. This distinction is critical to maintaining constitutional order and ensuring that force is used judiciously and lawfully. The military are particularly suited for such situations. This is why the Constitution was established and why Article I and Article II give Congress and the President the power to call in the military to quash rebellion. 

Trump’s actions are a response not merely to unrest and rioting, but by civilians engaged in rebellion and the deliberate refusal by California authorities to enforce federal law—particularly around immigration and public order. Rather than a failure or lapse in governance, the inaction of local officials reflects an ideological alignment with the protesters and a broader resistance to federal immigration enforcement, including efforts to prevent the deportation of illegal aliens (see The Resistance™ and Transnationalism). In this context, Trump’s deployment of federal agents is positioned as a necessary assertion of federal authority in the face of open defiance. 

But get ready for it. Regardless of intent, progressives will frame Trump’s moves as authoritarian, using the presence of federal force as visual and political ammunition to support that narrative. Patriots will have to resist the emotional pull of the progressive framing. Suppressing an insurrection is always ugly. But if the ugliness of military action keeps the people from acting to preserve the republic, then the progressives will win, and America will fall. This is what progressives want. The Vietnam War protests were about making America a better nation. The rebellion in our streets today and the resistance by members of the Democratic Party are about making America go away. Thus, it behooves us to remember Franklin’s words and act with the force of conviction. 

In The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment, playwright David Mamet—who appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room yesterday—argues that liberalism, once a worldview he embraced, has been co-opted by elites who manipulate culture, language, and media to consolidate power and erode traditional values.

Playwright David Mamet Walks Away From Left: “A Dedication To Feeling Rather Than To Reason, Led To Violence” pic.twitter.com/KZi71rlpjT

— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) June 9, 2025

Mamet contends that “disenlightenment” fosters a society driven by conformity and sentimentality rather than reason, transforming governance into an oppressive tool—akin to Circe turning men into swine.

I ordered Mamet’s book (which was just released) and look forward to reading it. Mamet summarized his critique on the program: the left’s emphasis on social consciousness has become a hollow performance that undermines individual freedom and meritocracy.

In contrast, Mamet champions a constitutional conservatism rooted in logic and personal responsibility. His shift, he explained, reflects a growing disillusionment with what he sees as the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its core principles—especially during the Biden years, when unelected bureaucrats wielded unchecked power.

I discussed some of these ideas in yesterday essay on Freedom and Reason: In the Shadow of Serfdom: Revisiting Liberalism in the Age of Progressivism. However, one point from the interview that I did not address, which I want to touch on here, involves the Jewish tradition of justice and the danger of mercy when it is allowed to displace justice.

Several years ago, a colleague gave me a copy of The TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures, the new JPS translation according to the traditional Hebrew text. It’s a wonderful translation. Mamet’s remarks prompted me to return to it, especially given the present context in which progressives increasingly defend the practice of “defining deviance down” in the name of compassion, humanitarianism, and mercy.

In Jewish tradition, the pursuit of justice (tzedek) is a foundational moral imperative. It is emphasized throughout the Torah and prophetic literature. The oft-cited verse from Deuteronomy—Tzedek, tzedek tirdof (“Justice, justice you shall pursue”)—underscores justice not merely as a legal standard, but as a sacred duty.

Yet the tradition doesn’t stop at justice alone. Mercy (rachamim) is also a divine attribute to be emulated. Jewish thought maintains that while justice ensures accountability and fairness, mercy tempers strict judgment with compassion—making space for redemption and rehabilitation.

This balance is key. Mercy must not replace justice. When mercy becomes unmoored from justice, it risks devolving into sentimentality and favoritism. The result is moral confusion, what I’ve called misplaced humanitarianism (see On the Problem of Misplaced Humanitarianism).

Indeed, the Talmud warns against excessive leniency that leads to injustice: “He who is kind to the cruel ends up being cruel to the kind.” Mamet reminded me of this scripture. When mercy is extended to wrongdoers at the expense of their victims, justice is not merely undermined—it is perverted. The consequence is not peace, but the empowerment of wrongdoing and the betrayal of the innocent.

Mercy without justice also corrodes social trust. A society that tolerates corruption, violence, or exploitation under the guise of compassion ceases to be one where the rights of citizens are protected.

Even God in Jewish theology is portrayed as balancing judgment (din) with mercy, illustrating that neither attribute is sufficient alone. True mercy must operate within the framework of justice—not apart from it. Detached from justice, mercy ceases to be virtue and becomes abdication.

Jewish tradition honors mercy only when it reinforces justice. True compassion does not ignore wrongdoing; it confronts it with both humanity and accountability. Justice ensures moral order; mercy ensures it remains humane. The danger lies in confusing one for the other.

This confusion is not abstract. It has concrete political consequences. In today’s progressive movement, mercy—lacking the foundation of justice—is often selectively applied: granted to those deemed marginalized or ideologically aligned, but withheld (or inverted into retribution) against those labeled oppressive or privileged. In a word: conservative, heterosexual, white.

This is not mercy within justice—it’s factionalism masquerading as compassion. By excusing criminality, erasing standards, refusing to uphold laws equally, and selectively prosecuting ideological opponents, progressives weaponize justice. Their so-called mercy becomes a mask for moral bias—a counterfeit justice rooted not in universal principle, but political allegiance. In doing so, they betray both justice and mercy.

There’s a reason they call it “social justice.” It is not about individuals judged by a universal standard, but about group identities arranged in an ideological hierarchy. In this worldview, some groups are inherently good, others inherently bad—determined not by actions, but by their place in the hierarchy.

So, it depends on who is rioting. If conservatives riot, it’s a “threat to democracy”—and indefinite detention, denial of bail, and harsh sentencing are rebranded as justice. No mercy for them. But when those deemed marginalized riot, we are told: “This is what democracy looks like.” Police, under progressive leadership, often stand down as property is destroyed and people assaulted.

Recall the summer of 2020. Now imagine the rioters were conservative. Hard to do, perhaps—conservatives don’t typically riot over election results or racially charged incidents involving white victims. But try. What would the progressive reaction have been? You don’t have to guess.

Why, when a group of black individuals assaults a white person—a common enough occurrence—is there silence from Democrats? When conservatives point it out, they’re accused of racial provocation. But if white individuals (a rare occurrence) assault a black person, it becomes national news, framed as “systemic racism.” And if riots follow, progressives hail them as a “just” and “mostly peaceful” uprising.

So, it’s not compassion, humanitarianism, or mercy that drives progressives to define deviance down. It’s rhetoric. False rhetoric. It’s ideologically applied “justice” in the service of corporate and political interests. There is elite utility in chaos and double standards.

This is the peril of mercy untethered from justice: it invites tyranny under the guise of virtue. Hence the term “virtue signaling.” It is not real virtue. It is a distortion of justice—and Jewish tradition warns precisely against such distortion.

Perhaps this is part of the reason progressives often show hostility toward Jews: the Jewish moral tradition stands in the way of their ideological program. This antipathy is evident in the Red-Green alliance that many progressives defend—and in which some actively participate.

True justice, pursued sincerely and consistently, does not ask who the accused is—it asks what the act was. Justice is blind not because it lacks compassion, but because it rejects favoritism. When justice becomes retribution dressed in political garb, it ceases to be justice at all.

I wrote about this problem in a recent essay: Deviance as Doctrine: The Post-Liberal Moral Revolution. Listening to Mamet, I found another compelling way of putting the matter.

This essay argues that progressivism, despite its stated aims of emancipation and empowerment, leads to coercion, dependency, and the erosion of personal freedom through its reliance on centralized state control and corporatism. It contrasts progressivism with classical liberalism, primarily as articulated by FA Hayek, which champions individual liberty, limited government, and spontaneous order, rooted in the principles of America’s Founding Fathers and Judeo-Christian ethics.

The argument unfolds by first critiquing progressivism’s expansion of state power, which fosters dependency and undermines autonomy, as warned by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty. It then distinguishes progressivism from socialism, defining the latter as worker-controlled, decentralized production, while portraying progressivism as a technocratic ideology serving corporate interests. The essay further explores classical liberalism’s commitment to liberty, contrasting it with progressivism’s positive liberty, which justifies state intervention and erodes the rule of law.

Finally, it examines issues like free trade, immigration, and nationalism, arguing that a civic nationalism aligned with liberal principles can safeguard freedom against the threats posed by progressive policies and unchecked globalism. I conclude by acknowledging Marxism’s insights into historical materialism and leverage those insight to advocate for a future that preserves liberty through decentralized, worker-driven systems in the aftermath of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

* * *

In The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment, playwright David Mamet, who was on Steve Bannon’s War Room yesterday, argues that liberalism, which he once embraced, has been co-opted by elites who manipulate cultural institutions, language, and media to consolidate power and erode traditional values. Mamet contends that “disenlightenment” fosters a society driven by conformity and sentimentality rather than reason, turning governance into a tool of oppression akin to Circe transforming men into swine.

I ordered Mamet’s book and look forward to reading it. In his discussion with Bannon, Mamet summarizes his critique: the left’s focus on social consciousness as a hollow performance that undermines individual freedom and meritocracy. Against this, he advocated for constitutional conservatism grounded in logic and personal responsibility. His explained that his shift reflects disillusionment with what he sees as the Democratic Party’s betrayal of its principles, exemplified during the Biden years, when bureaucrats wielded unchecked power.

However, I disagree with what Mamet describes as liberalism. What he is describing is progressivism. In modern political discourse, on the left and the right, the terms “liberalism” and “progressivism” are often used interchangeably, particularly in American contexts. Yet they represent distinct, and ultimately incompatible, philosophical traditions. Classical liberalism emphasizes individual liberty, limited government, and the rule of law. Progressivism, in contrast, champions state intervention to- ostensibly ameliorate inequalities, aiming to engineer societal outcomes in accordance with standards of justice—criteria progressives define and establish via control over policymaking and sense-making institutions.

While progressives often portray their policies as forms of emancipation and empowerment—expanding access to resources, reducing inequality, uplifting marginalized groups—the underlying logic of their ideology reveals a trajectory toward coercion, dependency, and the erosion of personal freedom. Progressives expand state control to achieve these ends, and expansion that involves bureaucratic oversight that limits individual autonomy and choice.

By positioning the state as the primary agent of justice and provider of welfare, progressive policies foster dependency, where citizens rely increasingly on government support rather than personal initiative or voluntary associations. Over time, this dynamic erodes the very freedoms progressives claim to protect, as the scope of individual responsibility shrinks and the power of centralized authority grows—an outcome that classical liberals like FA Hayek warn against as a subtle but inevitable path to servitude. Mamet admits to Bannon that his engagement with Hayek was one of the things that changed his mind.

The distinction between liberalism and progressivism is usefully articulated in the works of Hayek, particularly The Road to Serfdom (1945) and The Constitution of Liberty (1960). While Hayek does not refer to progressivism in his writings, when he speaks of socialism he is describing central economic planning, expansion of state control over the economy, and erosion of individual liberty through collectivist policies—the logic of the corporate state progressives advance and defend. Hayek offers a warning: that the well-intentioned interventions of such a state does lead not to liberation but to a form of servitude I have described as neofeudalism.

I do not agree with Hayek’s definition of socialism although I do agree that what he is describing threatens individual freedom because central planning—which progressivism moves from the state to the corporate oligarchy—inevitably concentrates power, suppresses spontaneous market order, and undermines personal autonomy. Hayek warned that even democratic attempts to implement this model would gradually lead to coercion, as the state would need ever more authority to enforce its economic decisions and resolve conflicts among competing interests.

In contrast, I define socialism as worker ownership and control of the means of production. In what we might describe as libertarian or market socialism, the people reject centralized state control and emphasizes decentralized, democratic control by workers. This vision sees socialism not as a technocratic state bureaucracy but as a radical democratization of economic life. In this framework, coercion and dependency are not inherent, but rather are what socialists seek to eliminate by dismantling corporate hierarchies and ending alienation in production.

Progressivism is the opposite of socialism. Progressivism is an ideology of corporatism. Thus, when I refer to progressivism throughout this essay (and across my work) I am not taking about something analogous to socialism as I have described it, but the praxis of technocrats in the service of the corporate state, which is a beast of late capitalism. To be sure, corporatism’s bureaucratic-managerial spirit has parallels to the state socialism of the Soviet Union, but in the latter arrangement social class was largely eliminated and the ruling class was political not economic. As for the state socialism of the Chinese Communist Party, here we see convergence with Western corporatism since China turned to capitalism to modernize its society in the late 1970s.

What do we mean by liberalism? Classical liberalism is rooted in the conviction that liberty is best preserved when government power is limited and individuals are free to pursue their own ends within a framework of general rules. The commitment to liberty among America’s Founding Fathers is the paradigm, evidenced in the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The Founders believed that liberty is not granted by government, but is an inherent right endowed by a Creator—the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God—and that government exists primarily to protect these rights. 

To preserve freedom, the Founders designed a system of limited government, rooted in checks and balances, federalism, and the rule of law. They feared concentrated power and understood that true liberty flourishes when individuals are free to pursue their own goals, provided they do so peacefully within a stable framework of general laws that apply equally to all. This vision gave rise to a republic in which individual enterprise, personal responsibility, and private property were celebrated as essential to human flourishing. And so has America flourished—to the extend that it has pursued the American System established at its founding.

Among the foundations that has made the United States so successful is the Enlightenment and its roots in the Judeo-Christian ethic. Hayek acknowledges the historical role of Judeo-Christian ethics in shaping the moral foundations of Western civilization and the rule of law. But his moral theory is more evolutionary than revelatory. In The Fatal Conceit (1988), Hayek argues that moral traditions evolve through cultural selection and that religion may serve a functional role in maintaining social order. Like many of the Founders, Hayek approached the matter from a secular perspective rather than one of personal religious conviction. 

By cultural selection Hayek means that customs, institutions, norms, and values evolve over time through a process analogous to natural selection in biology. Instead of genetic traits being passed on for survival advantages, cultural practices persist and spread when they help societies function more effectively or people adapt better to their environments. Many of our moral traditions—e.g., respect for contract enforcement, family structure, property rights, even religious codes—were not consciously designed, but rather evolved over generations. This was because they contributed to social stability and prosperity. Societies that adopted effective norms were more likely to survive and thrive, and those norms were passed down and imitated. We can judge the relative efficacy of normative systems by comparing them.

This evolutionary conception is a general principle for Hayek. What works in civilization comes from trial and error across generations—not from centralized planning. Cultural selection explains how spontaneous order arises: institutions and traditions that work are retained and those that don’t discarded, even if we don’t fully understand how or why at first. Useful social practices survive and spread not by deliberate design, but because they help societies succeed. It is our role as social scientists to describe and explain the development and success of institutions and traditions—not to elevate our status to that of world planner.

Liberty has proven itself to be central to social progress. In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek describes liberty not as a guarantee of outcomes, but as the absence of coercion by others—especially by the state. This negative conception of liberty—freedom from interference—requires an institutional and legal order that is impartial, non-instructive, and predictable. Such a system facilitates what Hayek calls the “spontaneous order” of society: a self-organizing system in which knowledge is decentralized and individuals, guided by their own purposes, contribute to a dynamic and adaptive social order.

The Founders’ experience with Christianity aligns with Hayek’s evolutionary model through their shared emphasis on moral traditions that foster social order and liberty. The Founders, steeped in Judeo-Christian ethics, viewed liberty as an inherent right endowed by a Creator, as articulated in the Declaration, and designed a system of limited government to protect it. Their Christian-influenced moral framework—emphasizing individual responsibility, property rights, and the rule of law—provided the cultural bedrock for a flourishing republic. While the Founders saw these principles as divinely ordained, Hayek viewed them as products of spontaneous order, selected for their functional benefits over time. Both perspectives converge on the idea that enduring moral traditions, whether seen as God-given or culturally evolved, underpin the institutions—such as constitutional checks and balances or respect for contracts—that sustain a free and prosperous society.

Progressives challenge the sufficiency of Hayek’s model arguing that freedom cannot be truly exercised by those who lack access to material resources or social opportunity. They advocate a positive conception of liberty—freedom through empowerment—often demanding redistributive policies, regulatory oversight, and state-managed welfare programs. Roberto Unger expressed this position in his concept of “super liberalism,” a critique of liberalism that pushes beyond its traditional boundaries, reimagining how individuals can interact in ways that transcend established norms of personal autonomy, rights, and social organization to recover human solidarity.

In Unger’s view, traditional liberalism emphasizes individual rights, personal freedom, and legal structures to protect individuals from interference. However, he argues that liberalism in this conventional form fails to address deeper issues of social inequality, economic disparity, and the limitations imposed by rigid institutional frameworks. This view is inspired by Isiah Berlin’s observation of the distinction between “negative” and “positive” liberty, which was anticipated even earlier by Erich Fromm in his Escape from Freedom (1941). For the record, Hayek doesn’t rule out all social programs for those who need it, rather he warns that central planning is fraught with unintended consequences.

On the surface, progressivism might sound like it’s resonating with Marx’s political project. Both criticize inequality and advocate reforms to improve the lives of ordinary people—at least progressives say this. But they’re very different standpoints. One might say that Marx had something a little more radical in mind. While progressivism has historically worked within the corporatist framework, indeed, it is an animal of capitalism, Marx envisioned a revolutionary restructuring of society—abolishing class divisions and private ownership of the means of production.

From the beginning, American progressivism sought to overthrow capitalism but to harmonize relations between business, labor, and government through expert-driven administration, regulation, and social programs. Rather than empowering the working class to take control of production, progressives aimed to temper capitalism’s excesses in order to ensure its survival—thus extending and entrenching corporate hegemony over the populace. Progressivism is thus a managerial and technocratic project, far removed from Marx’s call for proletarian revolution to end social class. In the progressive mind, the proletariat is organized by the state, with control externalized to corporate governance. For Marx, with the elimination of social class, the state goes away.

Hayek rejected all of this—except concerning the matter of free trade. Let me address this straightaway, since I recently critiqued Marx’s position on the matter (see Marx the Accelerationist: Free Trade and the Radical Case for Protectionism). Both Marx and progressives advocate free trade, albeit for very different reasons. Marx was an accelerationist, seeing in free trade a hastened end to capitalism as national pursued a race to the bottom. This would clear the way for communism—a classless and stateless world system where man would be emancipated from necessary labor (AI will accomplish this without a communist revolution). Progressives see in free trade a global world order where the world’s population would be under the thumb of a world state run by transnational corporations. Thus, for their own projects, both Marx and progressives are critical of protectionism.

Hayek supported free trade for a very different reason. He believed that free trade on the world stage was crucial for preserving individual liberty and limiting the scope of state power. He viewed protectionism not just as economically inefficient, but as a step toward nationalism and centralized economic planning—forces he saw as threats to freedom. By contrast, a global system of free trade encourages competition, innovation, and the efficient allocation of resources based on comparative advantage, which presumes imperialism is not transforming foreign economies. For Hayek, global economic interdependence acted as a constraint on national governments’ ability to manipulate domestic markets for political ends.

Moreover, as a sociological point that I will discuss forthwith, Hayek viewed the world market as a spontaneously ordered system—an emergent outcome of voluntary interactions across borders. Free trade, then, was not merely a technical policy preference; it was a reflection of his deeper conviction that human prosperity depends on respecting the limits of our knowledge and allowing decentralized systems, like global markets, to function without coercive interference. In this sense, free trade was part of his broader vision of an open, liberal international order that safeguards both freedom and peace.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the ethical core of Hayek’s standpoint. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek argues that economic planning and centralized decision-making, even when motivated by egalitarian aims, are fundamentally incompatible with individual liberty. When government assumes responsibility for securing particular social outcomes, it must necessarily infringe on the private choices of citizens, leading inevitably to a society governed by coercion rather than consent.

A central danger of progressivism thus lies in its implicit faith in centralized authority and technocratic expertise. To implement social reforms, redistribute wealth, and regulate markets, the state must gather information, prioritize among competing interest, and make value judgments—functions that cannot be performed impartially or without political bias. This necessarily undermines the rule of law, as state actions are no longer governed by general principles but by ad hoc decisions tailored to policy goals. The result is an administrative state that exercises discretionary power, often in ways that are opaque, unaccountable, and resistant to public scrutiny. The rule of law becomes the rule of bureaucrats. This is the very definition of bureaucracy: a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.

Moreover, Hayek argues that the expansion of the welfare state cultivates dependency and weakens the moral fabric of a free society. In The Constitution of Liberty, as suggested earlier, he acknowledges that a minimal social safety net may be compatible with liberty; however, as welfare systems grow more comprehensive and intrusive, they shift the relationship between the individual and the state. Citizens begin to look to government not as the protector of their rights, but as the provider of benefits. The paternalistic relationship fosters a compliant and passive public, eroding the virtues of initiative, personal responsibility, and self-reliance.

Progressivism thus redefines freedom not as the absence of coercion, but as access to goods and services deemed necessary by the technocrats. If one is charitable, he might say that this the unintended consequence of pursing positive liberty. Whatever the motive behind it, the end is destructive to liberty. This new vision of freedom requires constant interference with individual judgment, private property, and voluntary exchange. As more areas of life come under public control— education, employment, healthcare, even speech—the space for private decision-making contracts and freedom diminishes. The apparatus of the state grows not only in size but in moral authority, becoming the arbiter of fairness, inclusion, and even truth. 

The paradox is obvious: in the name of freedom, progressivism builds economic and political structures that reduce individuals to clients of the state, dependent on its favor and bound by its mandates. Liberals—real liberals—refuse to sacrifice freedom for illusory gains in equality or security, insisting that liberty is both the means and the end of a good society. A real liberal is what Mamet has become now that he has freed his mind from the progressive tribe. It is therefore disappointing that he has assumed the way the term is used by progressives to cover for the tyranny of progressivism.

The difference between liberalism and progressivism is not merely one of degree or policy preference, but of principle. Liberalism seeks to protect individuals from coercion; progressivism seeks to use coercion for what it deems the common good. What is the common good? What is good for the corporate elite. The social programs exist to control the masses. While progressives claim to empower individuals through redistribution and regulation, Hayek shows that such empowerment is an illusion—one that comes at the cost of liberty, leading to technocratic control and widespread dependency.

Returning the globalization problematic, as I explained in that recent essay I cited above, libertarians today are supportive of immigration which brings them into a strange alliance with Marx, for the same reason, namely wage suppression, albeit not with the same desired outcome. Both understand that driving down wages is what capitalist firms do: slash labor costs to maximize the surplus value in production. As Marx documents in Capital, displacement and impoverishment of labor makes difficult realizing as profit the value contained in commodities in the market, since it is by consumption that the worker completes the circuit—and all the cheap commodities in the world won’t mask the plunge in wages and disappearance of jobs. Libertarians reject Marx’s prediction, so full steam ahead.

Although Hayek favored open borders in principle, as do many libertarians, he acknowledged possible complications. In some of his later comments and writings, he recognized that immigration could raise issues if newcomers do not assimilate into the cultural or institutional framework of liberal society. Hayek was concerned in particular with the preservation of liberal institutions. If immigration brought in large numbers of people with illiberal values or expectations of a welfare state, this could pose a threat to a free society. While Hayek never advocated strong immigration controls as a solution to this problem, he was likely to argue that liberal institutions must be robust and that welfare systems should be designed in ways that don’t incentivize dependency.

Hayek is not alone in this concern. Classical liberals such John Locke (implicitly), and more recently thinkers such as James Buchanan and Milton Friedman have emphasized that liberal institutions require a stable framework of laws, norms, and values. If large-scale immigration introduces populations that do not share or support these norms (e.g., free speech, limited government, and property rights), it could undermine those institutions over time. Borders thus serve as a filter to ensure political assimilation and institutional continuity. Friedman famously argued that a society can’t have both open borders and a welfare state. Immigrants may vote for expanded government benefits or regulatory policies that classical liberals oppose. In other words, immigrants are likely to vote for progressives. From this perspective, some level of border control is seen as a way to prevent the political feedback loop that leads to more statism.

Some classical liberals, particularly those influenced by libertarian property-rights theory (e.g., Hans-Hermann Hoppe), argue that just as individuals have the right to control access to their own property, political communities should have the right to control who enters their territory. This is framed not as a collectivist claim but as an extension of voluntary association and contract. If citizens do not consent to the entry of outsiders, forced integration violates classical liberal principles of individual sovereignty.

Despite the default set on free trade, borders are viewed from this standpoint as necessary to uphold the rule of law, also a core tenet of classical liberalism. Liberty requires certain cultural preconditions: acceptance of pluralism, respect for norms, and rule-following behavior. These traits are not universally distributed, therefore societies must carefully manage immigration to preserve the cultural substrate necessary for freedom. Sudden or unmanaged flows of people overwhelms administrative and legal systems, leading to disorder. Borders ensure that migration is conducted through predictable legal processes, preserving the integrity of the legal order. Classical liberals who support borders do so not out of hostility to outsiders, but from a belief that liberty is fragile and depends on institutional and cultural conditions that can be disrupted by poorly managed migration. They view border controls as a prudential, not moral, safeguard for liberal democracy and limited government.

In light of the fact that progressives have weakened liberal institutions and established an expansive welfare state, Hayek’s view on open borders has to be reassessed. Nationalism, when grounded in civic identity rather than ethnic exclusion, can serve as a crucial force in preserving the cultural and institutional framework that sustains liberal societies. As Hayek recognized, liberal institutions—such as individual rights, limited government, and the rule of law—are not self-perpetuating; they rely on a shared cultural commitment to certain values like respect for pluralism, responsibility, and tolerance.

In a context of open borders, where large-scale immigration might introduce populations with illiberal norms or expectations incompatible with free market democracy, a cohesive national identity can help integrate newcomers into the liberal tradition. Nationalism, in this civic sense, fosters a common language of rights and duties, encouraging assimilation into the political culture rather than fragmentation into parallel societies. It acts as a social glue that maintains the trust and cooperation necessary for liberal institutions to function. Rather than being in tension with liberalism, a principled form of nationalism can provide the cultural continuity and civic loyalty that protect liberal societies from erosion—especially in an era of global movement and ideological divergence.

It might strike readers as a bit schizophrenic to profess liberal and republican principles and values while at the same time working from a historical materialist standpoint. I have said this before, but my view is that Karl Marx’s materialist conception of history should be the paradigm of the social science. Marx is to social history what Darwin is to natural history.

However, in many ways, Marx was a liberal, particularly in his foundational commitments to individual freedom and rational progress—core tenets of the Enlightenment. He saw capitalism as a dynamic and progressive economic force in history, washing away the old order of things and transforming the world. Marx believed in the transformative power of reason and history. And, like many liberals, Marx’s emphasis on individual freedom of thought and skepticism toward traditional authority brought him to a critical view of organized religion.

Marx’s critique of capitalism, while radical, was rooted in liberal ideals: capitalism had failed to deliver on the promises of quality and liberty liberals espoused. Social class was the obstacle. Marx advocated pushing liberalism to its logical conclusion—true freedom requires not just political rights, but collective control over the conditions of life. Marx’s vision of communism was not merely establishing economic equality but freeing individuals from alienation and enabling them to fully realize their human potential. He believed wiping away social class would make that possible.

As I implied above, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the coming of agentic AI will radically change class relations. Either humanity will enter a new Dark Ages where a dwindling population will be managed on high-tech estates controlled by corporate overlords or the people will take possession of the apparatus and use it to generate commodities and services in a new economy without value. Both Locke and Marx agree that labor is the source of value. It follows that all value disappears with the elimination of necessary labor. Ernest Mandel told us about this back in 1967 (see The End of Work and Value). The question of which end we desire depends on whether we wish to preserve liberty or live as serfs.

The Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll for Monday shows that 51 percent of likely US voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Trump was elected to deport illegal aliens. This is what democracy looks like.

CBS News just dropped this poll:

Pay attention to Democratic Party rhetoric. They’re saying that Trump is manufacturing a situation in California to justify authoritarian action. This is a false narrative. Many progressives presume Trump, a liberal businessman from Queens, is an authoritarian. The social media platform X is shot through with this madness. Madness confuses one’s sense of cause and effect.

Trump is lawfully deporting illegal aliens. Anti-American sovereignty movement—the street-level thugs for the transnationalist elite—are rebelling against the Republic and defying the rule of law. Trump is responding. He did not start this.

This is not the first time Democrats have blamed a Republican for creating a situation to justify intervention. Before the Civil War, Democrats blamed the Republican Party for creating a political and moral crisis to justify Northern intervention in Southern affairs.

Likewise, Orval Faubus, the Democratic Governor of Arkansas during the 1957 Little Rock situation, said that President Eisenhower’s decision to send federal troops to enforce school desegregation was a dangerous overreach of federal power. He framed it as authoritarian and militaristic. The federal government created the situation be enforcing desegregation.

Another Democrat, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, like Faubus, also denied black kids entry into public schools. He portrayed federal intervention in civil rights enforcement as authoritarian interference. The federal government was overreaching. States rights!

Returning to the antebellum South, we find another parallel with what is happening today. Democrats then argued that the Republican Party was hostile to the South’s way of life—particularly its slave-based economy. Democrats today are openly telling us that their way of live is its immigrant-based economy. Trump is trying to undermining California’s way of life just as Lincoln attempted to undermine the South’s way of life. How did that turn out for the South?

Why not employ citizens in California? It’s not as if there are no native-born workers there. What about the tens of thousands of idle blacks in California’s inner cities? As of April 2025, the unemployment rate for black Californians stood at around seven percent—and that just those who are actively seeking employment.

It’s impossible to find them work and liberate black Californians from crime and poverty? Or do Democrats need them dependent on welfare to secure the votes necessary to keep California under the Party’s thumb?

Think about it: Why do Democrats in California defend the exploitation of illegal immigrants while ghettoizing black Americans? California isn’t alone in this regard. Blue Cities across the country exhibit the same pattern.

In the run up to the Civil War, Southern leaders viewed Republican opposition to the expansion of slavery as a direct assault on their way of life. Framing the Republican agenda as provocative and radical, Democrats claimed that it was the Republicans who pushed the country toward disunion. It was Republican ambition—not Democrat intransigence—that justified Northern hostility and federal coercion.

Remember, it was the Democrats who started the war. They’re trying to start another one.

Same playbook, different era. Like I argued in a recent essay on Freedom and Reason, the Democratic Party hasn’t changed all these decades. Today they’re neo-Confederates, arguing for states rights to keep their super-exploited migrant workers.

If I’d been alive in 1957 I would’ve been 100 percent on the side of Eisenhower. We cannot allow states to defy the Constitution and the rule of law. Trump needs to be far more aggressive in confronting the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles. They are entirely out of line.

What we’re seeing is a rebellion against the United States. Trump needs to sign an executive order asserting the Insurrection Act and send the National Guard in full force into California. I wouldn’t rule out sending other military as well— as did Eisenhower, for the record. We cannot continue this way. The Democrats are driving us towards another civil war. Nip it in the bud.

Trump should’ve done this in 2020. He’s far too patient. He needs to fully assert his Article II powers. Bring the hammer.

* * *

Want to see more of recent content on this subject? Here are some essays:

Deviance as Doctrine: The Post-Liberal Moral Revolution

The Politics of Grievance: Primitive Rebellion and Rhetoric of Social Justice

Tesla and Propaganda of the Deed

The Serfs Want More Serfdom. When Do they Want It? They Want it Now

The Resistance™ and Transnationalism

In Los Angeles and across the country (Chicago, Denver, New York, and Seattle), anti-American sovereign agitators have taken to the streets to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions—surrounding federal facilities, physically obstructing agents and interfering with detainment efforts, erecting barricades, throwing rocks, and setting fires—to stop the removal of illegal aliens.

Federal agents have responded with riot police tactics—flash-bangs, rubber bullets, and tear gas—and made dozens of arrests. Officials have rightly labeled the actions of demonstrators as a rebellion against lawful authority. President Trump has deployed National Guard troops under federal Title 10 authority to support ICE operations. Federal officials warned that anyone assaulting officers or obstructing enforcement would face prosecution. The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that it’s tracking organized efforts on social media and through activist networks.

California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles’ mayor Karen Bass have criticized the raids as sowing chaos and terror in immigrant communities. However, rebellion and insurrection are not permitted under the Constitution—nor is the failure or refusal of state authorities to act in accordance with federal law. Newsom and Bass have failed to follow the law. They’ve made themselves obstacles to the popular will. Worse, they’re encouraging the anti-American sovereignty movement.

As a civil libertarian and Constitutionalist, I value both individual freedom and the legal framework that preserves it. The US Constitution is not merely a historical document; it’s a system of government designed to outlast the passions of any single generation. In this essay, I explain Article II powers with respect to the current uprising by anti-American forces. I also clarify the concept of insurrection.

Is there a right to use violence in the pursuit of justice—even to overthrow a government? It depends. The righteousness of revolution is situational, and enforcement of America’s immigration laws is not a situation that justifies rebellion. Moreover, there is no right to expect that because one believes he has a righteous cause that the government shouldn’t intervene to stop him from breaking the law. Call it civil disobedience if you wish; civil disobedience comes with consequences.

A constitutional republic embeds structural safeguards against both centralized despotism and mob rule. The Founders, notably James Madison, designed a system that checks impulses for abrupt upheaval through deliberative processes, enumerated powers, and judicial review (the latter presuming the judiciary respects Article I and Article II powers).

It is in this context that we understand the federal government’s role in preserving a well-ordered society—particularly through Article II powers that allow the President to use force, including federalizing the National Guard, and even to use other branches of the military, to suppress insurrection and rebellion. These powers are not arbitrary; they are constrained and defined by the Constitution and statutory law to uphold the rule of law in moments when it is most at risk. Open defiance of federal agents engaged in law enforcement tells us that we reached this point.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution obligates the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This clause, in combination with the role of the President as Commander-in-Chief under Article II, Section 2, provides the constitutional foundation for the federal executive to use military force, including federalizing the National Guard, to ensure the enforcement of federal laws and maintain civil order.

Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15–16: Gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” and to provide for the organization and regulation of the militia, which supports the executive’s use of state militias (now the National Guard) under federal command. Article II, Section 2 states: “[The President] shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” Trump has now called them into service.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 (10 USC §§ 251–255) is the primary statutory mechanism by which the President federalizes the National Guard or uses the Armed Forces domestically in response to insurrection, rebellion, or obstruction of federal law. Under 18 USC § 2383: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

What is an insurrection? It’s a violent uprising against an authority or government, especially with the aim of overthrowing or obstructing lawful governance. The elements of insurrection are violence, involving physical acts such as attacking officials, obstructing law enforcement through force or intimidation, or rioting. Action must be directed against the authority of the United States or its laws—not just a protest, but an attempt to defy or dismantle legitimate governmental authority. It may involve organized groups or conspiracies to resist the execution of law. The present circumstances meet all the elements of insurrection.

I expect some will cite 10 USC. § 251, the “State Request” clause, to suggest that the President may only deploy troops when requested by a state legislature or governor if the state is unable to suppress an insurrection. Crucially, the President can federalize the National Guard short of an insurrection—and he doesn’t need the permission of legislature or governor. In 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the desegregation of Central High School.

Eisenhower’s action came in response to Governor Orval Faubus’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Faubus had initially used the state’s National Guard to block the “Little Rock Nine” from entering the school. Citing his constitutional duty to ensure that federal law was faithfully executed, Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10730 to place the National Guard under federal control and restore order.

Eisenhower’s actions demonstrate the power of the federal government to act decisively to uphold the Constitution against resistance from state authorities. Trump is exercising the same authority. This power is clearly spelled out in the 10 USC § 252, “Enforcement of Federal Law” clause: “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.” Moreover, 10 USC § 253 states that the President may act without a request from a state if insurrection or domestic violence deprives any portion of the population of constitutional rights, and the state fails to protect those rights.

While civil libertarians are rightly skeptical of federal overreach, the Constitution recognizes that liberty requires order and that lawful force may, at times, be necessary to preserve constitutional government. The Insurrection Act is not a license for executive despotism; it is a tool of last resort, designed to preserve the civil and constitutional fabric of the nation. We are at the moment of last resort. If the rebellion is not quelled, it will only grow larger and more aggressive. Trump must intervene with military force.

What explains the violence of the anti-American sovereignty movement? Like a spoiled child, the left lashes out when it doesn’t get its way. The left lost the 2024 election in part because Americans want immigration control. Surveys by Gallup, Pew Research, and Rasmussen Reports over the past decade show that most Americans support strengthening border security, including the use of physical barriers and increased funding for enforcement agencies. There is strong bipartisan support for prioritizing deportation of illegal aliens who commit crimes. Most Americans oppose cities or states that obstruct federal immigration enforcement. They do not support open borders or the suspension of deportation. In other words, the left is out of step with the populace. So the left is attempting to achieve through violence what it failed to achieve at the ballot box: continuing the policy of open borders.

As I have explained, this is an odd position for the left to take in light of the pretense that those participating in the rebellion support the working class. The ongoing protests against the deportation of illegal aliens function to serve the interests of transnational corporations that benefit from open borders and mass migration. These corporations rely on a steady supply of cheap, easily exploitable labor to suppress wages and displace native-born workers, a strategy that aligns with their offshoring of manufacturing to low-wage countries.

It is deeply ironic that the political left—traditionally aligned with labor—now mobilizes to protect mechanisms that erode the bargaining power, job security, and standard of living of American workers. This movement is not grassroots activism; it is a coordinated effort by powerful elites and ideologically driven NGOs who seek to dissolve national boundaries for economic and political gain. What we are witnessing is not the will of the people, but an attempt to establish a tyranny of the minority—a campaign led by wealthy individuals and a vocal cadre of activists trained in anti-American, post-national ideologies, working to undermine lawful governance and national cohesion under the guise of humanitarianism.

Crucially, the protests and violence are not only over immigration. Trans activist factions have mobilized aggressively, often targeting public institutions and private businesses they view as complicit in policies they oppose. The vandalism of companies like Tesla reflects a growing hostility among ostensibly anti-corporate radicals toward high-profile entrepreneurs; in reality it targets those aligning with politically disfavored figures and movement, i.e., populists and the America First campaign. The pro-Palestine agenda demands an end to US support for Israel, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, advocating for what they describe as Palestinian liberation, often framed in terms that reject the legitimacy of the Israeli state.

These disparate movements are unified more by a shared opposition to America—and more broadly the West—than by a cohesive policy vision, which makes them useful towards transnationalist ends seeking to use confrontation and disruption as a means of forcing political and social change outside the democratic process. The disordered personalities on the street are pawns of globalists busy dismantling the international system and replacing it with world government under the thumb of transnational corporate power.

I also expect—and have seen as much on social media—those defending insurrection to raise the matter of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots. One might ask for consistency from the left, but this presumes that January 6 was an insurrection. From a civil libertarian and constitutionalist perspective, there is a credible argument that what occurred at the Capitol is more accurately described a police riot—an event in which law enforcement provoked, escalated, and mishandled a political protest to such a degree that they bear primary responsibility for the breakdown of order and the violence that ensued.

I have written about this before. The evidence I (and many others) have provided includes footage showing Capitol Police removing barricades, in some cases allowing protesters to move past checkpoints with minimal resistance. Rather than preparing for a large, publicly announced demonstration, law enforcement appeared under-resourced and disorganized—this despite the Trump Administration’s request for the presence of more law enforcement and National Guard troops (which was denied). Crucially, protesters were met with force—flash-bangs and chemical agents—before engaging in any physical confrontation.

Presuming that January 6 was an insurrection, one might point to the disparate treatment of political protests. During the 2020 BLM uprising, rebels were treated to a soft prosecutorial approach by local authorities. In contrast, January 6 defendants faced unprecedented federal charges and prolonged pretrial detention. Selective enforcement was based on political beliefs, not individual conduct. Indeed, the BLM demonstrations come far closely to meeting the terms of insurrection than the January 6 riot. In fact, none of the January 6 protestors were charged with insurrection.

To be sure, labeling January 6 as a police riot does not absolve individual lawbreakers of accountability. Rather it calls into question the integrity of the state’s response. For those committed to upholding the Constitution and civil liberties, it raises a crucial question: was January 6 a rebellion by citizens—or a moment when the state exploited chaos to expand its power? The question of whether what is unfolding on the streets of America today is a rebellion or a police riot is easily answered: this is an insurrection. The federal government needs to crush the anti-American sovereignty movement.

When Orval Faubus refused to allow nine black students from entering a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, President Dwight D Eisenhower federalized the National Guard to ensure that those students could enter the building. If I’d been alive in 1957 I would’ve been 100 percent on the side of Eisenhower. We cannot allow states to defy the Constitution and the rule of law. Trump needs to be far more aggressive in confronting the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles. They are entirely out of line.

We’re seeing is a rebellion against the United States. Trump needs to sign an executive order asserting the Insurrection Act and send the National Guard in full force into California. I wouldn’t rule out sending other military as well— as did Eisenhower, for the record. We cannot continue this way. The Democrats are driving us towards another civil war. Nip it in the bud. Trump should’ve done more in 2020. He’s far too patient. He needs to fully assert his Article II powers. Now. Big league.

I want to follow up on two essays I penned in July 2023 and October 2024, Ending Patronage and Co-optation: The Death of Affirmative Action is a Start and Co-optation and Negation: Understanding Corporate Hegemonic Strategy respectively, in which I discussed the hegemonic strategy of co-optation and negation. Throughout history, rulers have faced the challenge of governing diverse populations with competing identities, interests, and loyalties. One enduring strategy for maintaining authority and suppressing dissent is elite co-optation—the deliberate selection and incorporation of representatives from various ethnic, social, and tribal groups into the ruling apparatus. While often presented as inclusive or meritocratic, this method serves a deeper strategic function: to legitimize elite rule, entrench and perpetuate the concentration of power, and neutralize opposition.

In traditional imperial and monarchical contexts, elite co-optation involved granting prominent positions to token representatives from different groups within a realm. These individuals—chosen not for their ability to challenge power but for their willingness to align with it—were given administrative authority, court roles, privileges, and titles. Their presence in the ruling circle gave the impression of a unified, pluralistic society, even as real power remained concentrated in the hands of the king or imperial elite. This not only fostered loyalty among influential subgroups but also fragmented any unified opposition, as co-opted elites now had a vested interest in preserving the existing order.

Under colonial rule, this strategy became especially pronounced. Empires, such as the British, French, and Ottoman, leveraged colonial collaborators—educated elites, local chiefs, or religious leaders—to serve as intermediaries between the imperial center and the colonized populations. These collaborators helped administer imperial policies, collect taxes, and manage dissent, reaping personal benefits in return. They put a human face on foreign rule, while their elevation entrenched systems of inequality; their symbolic inclusion masked the exploitative nature of the imperial system, enabling empires to rule vast territories with limited direct oversight.

The legacy of elite co-optation did not disappear with the collapse of empires. In modern liberal democracies and capitalist economies, especially those with corporatist arrangements, the strategy has reemerged in subtler forms—for example in the deployment of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in corporate and state institutions. DEI programs aim to increase representation of historically marginalized groups, including along lines of ability, gender, race, and sexuality. DEI is less an instrument of justice than it is a tool of symbolic incorporation that deepens corporate state control over the populace.

Corporations and government bodies elevate individuals from underrepresented backgrounds into highly visible positions—as consultants on institutional diversity, on executive boards, in public-facing leadership roles—to put a human face on the corporate state. These figures become the modern equivalents of colonial collaborators: symbols of inclusion whose presence can deflect criticism and pacify broader demands for structural reform. By appearing progressive, institutions maintain legitimacy and public approval without necessarily redistributing power or altering foundational systems of inequality. Indeed, this is the core function of progressivism. While DEI offers opportunities for individuals from groups that have historically been excluded or marginalized, it traps those individuals within systems that expect them to represent their group while at the same time protecting the status quo.

Equity and equality of outcome are too often conflated on both the right and the left. They represent fundamentally different principles.

I have written about this matter before (see Equity and Social Justice: Rationalizing Unjust Enrichment; Decoding Progressive Newspeak: Equity and the Doctrine of Inclusion; Sacrificing Equity Upon the Altar of Inclusivity; The Disaster Politics of Equity) but it bears repeating.

Equity is about fairness—ensuring individuals have access to the opportunities and resources they need to succeed based on their specific circumstances. It acknowledges that people start from different places and seeks to level the playing field through targeted support.

Equity recognizes that individuals and groups face different structural and biological realities, and thus need differential support to achieve fair opportunities—not necessarily the same outcomes.

For example, people with disabilities may require assistive technologies, flexible work arrangements, or modified environments to participate fully in education or employment.

Similarly, sex classes—biological differences between females and males—can shape different experiences, for example in athletics. Equity respects these differences by tailoring policy and support to context, rather than insisting that men and women must end up in the same activities and roles.

This depends on working from a standpoint to objectively determine law and policy. A man declaring himself a woman is insufficient groups to allow him to participate in women’s sports.

Equality of outcome, in contrast, flattens these complexities and misrepresents fairness as sameness.

Fairness lies in recognizing and responding to real differences where they matter and where they do not compromise the liberties and rights of others.

Freedom depends on allowing individuals to make something of themselves—and suffer the consequences of not striving.

Equality of outcome seeks to guarantee the same results for everyone regardless of effort, which can overlook personal agency, ambition, or talent.

Equity preserves the integrity of individual differences while addressing group differences or systemic barriers, whereas equality of outcome imposed uniformity in results at the expense of fairness and freedom.

If you want to see what equality of outcome might look like you will find useful Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 “Harrison Bergeron.” It’s fiction, to be sure, but plausible.

I assign this essay in my class Freedom and Social Control. For those who have busy lives, I will briefly summarize the story here.

The context is a dystopian future where the US government has amended the Constitution to ensure that everyone is equal in every conceivable way—not just in opportunities or rights, but in beauty, intelligence, strength, and talent.

To achieve this, the government uses “handicaps” to suppress any advantage: intelligent people wear ear devices that disrupt their thoughts, strong people carry weights to weaken them, and beautiful people wear masks to hide their desirable features.

These arrangements are policed by the vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

The protagonist, Harrison Bergeron, is a gifted and rebellious young man who tears off his handicaps in an act of defiance, only to be executed on live television.

The story illustrates the authoritarianism that results from pursuing equality of outcome at all costs. Enforced uniformity crushes excellence, freedom, and individuality. Far from promoting justice, radical egalitarianism is tyranny.

Harrison Bergeron is not an attack on equity, but a warning: when equality of outcome replaces equality of opportunity, the result is not justice, but tyranny disguised as fairness.

Pride Month is here. I see on the news that the City of Green Bay kicked off the affair with a community-wide celebration on Sunday, featuring a Progress Pride flag-raising ceremony and a resource fair at Leicht Park in Downtown Green Bay. I have criticized the city in the past for raising the flag above City Hall, which should be reserved for the US and state flags (City of Green Bay Violates the First Amendment). I haven’t been out and about today so I don’t know whether it’s flying there now. But it is flying at Leicht Park, which is public grounds.

“As some of you might know, when I was elected, our score on the Municipal Equality Index, which is something that the Human Rights Campaign put together, was a lowly 28,” Mayor Eric Genrich told the crowd gathered in Leicht Park. “Now we are very proud to say that we have a 100. A perfect score for the City of Green Bay.” The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the largest and one of the most influential LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in the United States. Founded in 1980, its stated mission is to promote and protect the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people through education, litigation, lobbying, and public campaigns. Why is the mayor obsessed with getting a perfect score from an organization that has harmed so many people in the United States?

Green Bay Common Council Member Joey Prestley said at Leicht Park that it’s important to him to have a city that is supportive of the community and all its members. “The next thing I want to do, I want to see our city ban conversion therapy,” told a local reporter. “If Ryan (Spaude) and Amaad (Rivera-Wagner) can’t get it done at the state level, we’re going to do it here!” To be sure, conversion therapy is wrong with respect to gays and lesbians, since homosexuality is a natural thing; but it’s an odd demand with respect to trans-identifying individuals given that gender affirming care (GAC) is conversion therapy. Presumably Prestley was lumping gays and lesbians in with trans-identifying persons. After all, he did say all members.

Those who know me know that I have for decades supported the gay and lesbian struggle for equal rights (my whole life, in fact), even if I don’t partake in the symbology of the moment. Frankly, I’m not a fan of taking pride in immutable characteristics, though that’s separate from recognizing the legitimacy of the struggle (largely won at this point). “Black pride” is as objectionable as “white pride.” Both smack of racism. That said, I want to use the moment of Pride to underscore my support for gays and lesbians and my opposition to gender ideology. In other words, the “T” does not belong with the first three letters of the LGBT acronym.

First, on the matter of affinity, a video currently circulating on social media draws an analogy between the LGBT movement and the black civil rights movement. The comparison is apt when it comes to gay and lesbian equality. Both movements confront systems that irrationally deny equal citizenship based on immutable traits. Just as there is natural variation in phenotypic traits, same-sex attraction is a naturally occurring feature of our species—and of many other species as well. However, the push to put access to gender-specific opportunities and spaces, as well as access to medical care, under the banners of “equality” and “justice” is not analogous to the gay and lesbian civil rights struggle.

In the cases of gay rights and racial equality, the injustice lies in the enforcement of second-class status through legal and social mechanisms—such as segregation, denial of marriage rights, lack of employment protections, or social exclusion. “Separate but equal” fails in these cases because there are no countervailing group rights being infringed. Heterosexuals and white individuals are not harmed by the inclusion of gays or black Americans in public spaces or institutions. Today, the United States highly recognizes interracial and same-sex marriages acknowledging that there is no coherent moral or rational basis to treat gay and lesbian individuals as lesser citizens. Sexual orientation, like race—that is, the natural clustering of phenotypic traits—bears no rational relation to principles of group rights or equitable treatment. The pursuit of legal and social parity for homosexual individuals is a direct extension of the universalist ideals that animated the civil rights movement. Members of both groups should be treated as individuals, not as representatives of identity groups.

However, this analogy breaks down when applied to trans-identifying individuals. Unlike sexual orientation or race, gender identity is not an immutable, biologically rooted trait. Rather, it asserts a subjective sense of self that may conflict with the material realities of sexed bodies. This is a fundamental and qualitative difference. While males and females exhibit overlapping distributions across many traits—such as empathy, intelligence, and physical strength—certain sex-based differences are both statistically significant and biologically meaningful. These differences are not merely matters of degree; they reflect sexual dimorphism, which produces distinct physiological and psychological profiles between the sexes. Male and female are not simply two points on a spectrum but qualitatively distinct and exclusive biological categories. This typological distinction has important implications: in contexts where physical safety, fairness, or privacy are relevant—such as sports, prisons, or bathrooms—these differences matter.

If scientific truth is to be the basis for law and policy, this must be acknowledged. Objective criteria, not ideological or subjective self-conceptions, must guide the governance of sex-segregated spaces. Because biological sex remains relevant in various legal, medical, and social contexts, the pursuit of gender equity requires differential treatment between the sexes—not the erasure of sex altogether. Equity, in this framework, does not mean erasing gender distinctions, but rather acknowledging them to ensure fairness and safety in areas such as healthcare, privacy, and sports. Therefore, while gay and black civil rights movements rightly call for removal of irrational barriers to full inclusion, the transgender demand for the same raises distinct philosophical and policy questions that cannot be resolved by appeals to sameness. This distinction and standards derived therefrom are being elided across the United States, as seen, for example, in the encroachment of boys and men on opportunities and spaces reserved for women.

The trespass of males on female spaces is a major reason for Pride fatigue. What is Pride fatigue? The month is young, but if it feels like Pride Month 2025 is more subdued compared to previous years, your feelings are not betraying you. Broader cultural, economic, and political dynamics are influencing how Pride is celebrated and supported across the US. There is a noticeable retreat of corporate sponsorships. Major events like San Francisco Pride have experienced substantial funding losses, with companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, and Diageo withdrawing support. This trend isn’t isolated to San Francisco (though most surprising there). There is national pattern of reduced corporate backing for Pride events. Nationally, a Axios survey revealed that nearly forty percent of companies planned to scale back Pride-related engagement in 2025—with none intending to increase it. Because corporations support Pride for business reasons, the rollback of spending on the month indicates a general awareness of fatigue.

Pride fatigue is not merely a consequence of antipathy towards gays and lesbians among the general population. Really it is more the consequence of trans activists and various paraphilia normalization factions hijacking the gay and lesbian struggle to push their own agendas, agendas that works at cross-purposes with the struggle for equality in same-sex attraction, as well as the rights of women to expect gender segregation for opportunity, privacy, and safety. Many gay and lesbian individuals have voiced concern over the presence of overt kink and fetish displays at Pride events, especially when those events are promoted as family-friendly. While Pride began as a radical assertion of dignity and visibility in the face of oppression, some within the community feel that it has drifted toward exhibitionism that misrepresents the broader aims of the movement.

For the record, I first voiced concerns about this in the early 1990s. If gays and lesbians aimed to homosexuality as merely a sexual preference and not a perversion, why would they tolerate leather freaks and open sexual displays in front of children? That goes for Drag Queen Story Hour, as well. Trans activists and their allies tell us that this is a tired debate. They get angry over it the same way they get angry when you ask about Rachael Dolezal.

But the reality is that inclusion of paraphilias and sexualized displays in public celebrations reinforces harmful stereotypes about gay people as inherently deviant or hypersexual, undermining the decades-long effort to secure equal rights and social acceptance. Such imagery is incompatible with environments intended to be inclusive of families, and that it alienates potential allies—particularly those who support equal rights but are uncomfortable with the blending of adult sexual expression and child-oriented public space. It looks like grooming. This critique doesn’t deny the importance of sexual liberation in history but rather calls for context-appropriate boundaries, particularly when Pride is positioned as a civic, educational, or family-oriented event.

Finally, to return to the matter of conversion therapy, since gender is synonymous with sex, what is commonly called gender-affirming care (GAC) within the trans movement and medical establishment does not, in fact, affirm gender, but rather attempts to simulate it through medical intervention. Ranging from hormone treatments to surgeries, GAC attempts to reshape the body to conform to an internal subjective identity, making it a form of conversion therapy not an affirming practice. Trans advocates thus stand reality on its head when they label efforts to align gender identity with birth sex as conversion therapy. Genuine gender-affirming care would involve medical intervention to support an individual’s natural sexual development—such as treating a boy with insufficient androgen production to ensure typical male development—not interventions aimed at suppressing naturally occurring sex characteristics. The current practices of the medical industry with respect to gender dysphoria are

Using the opportunity of the Pride to raise awareness of the contradiction between homosexuality and gender identity and the harm the latter causes to children, women, and truth has become a necessity. The exploitation of Pride by transactivists to push for the same equality that gays and lesbians must be called out. While I do not like the rhetoric of allyship in this space, I feel compelled to advance the position many gays and lesbians have taken that “T” must be separated from the LGBT acronym in order to return to a politics of respectability, as well as prevent the harms of GAC, the actual practice of conversion therapy.