From Carthage To Berlin, A Modest Proposal

The First Punic War began in 264 BC, lasted 25 years, and was fought between the Romans and the Carthaginians, a civilization in what is today modern Tunisia. The Carthaginians were the most powerful and prosperous force in the Western Mediterranean and North Africa, while the Romans were a growing power on the Italian peninsula. After two decades, with both sides financially and demographically exhausted, Rome prevailed. Carthage ceded Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and paid substantial reparations.

The Second Punic War lasted from 218 to 201 BC. This is the war that saw Hannibal attack from the north, taking his war elephants across the Mediterranean, then down over the Alps, becoming the scourge of the Italian Peninsula for more than a decade. Across the Italian mainland, Hannibal would go from city to city, winning virtually every engagement, including Cannae, which almost ended Rome. Rome recovered, however, and pursued a cat-and-mouse strategy with the goal of tiring Hannibal’s army.

In one of history’s great mysteries, after a decade of winning almost every encounter and with virtual free rein over most of the Italian mainland, for some reason, Hannibal never attacked Rome to deliver the death blow that kept the Romans awake at night. Eventually, Publius Scipio, known to history as Scipio Africanus, would bring the war to Carthage itself, which would lead to Hannibal being recalled.

Unable to overcome the Roman cavalry advantage, Hannibal would be defeated, and Carthage would sue for peace. Again, Carthage would pay substantial reparations, concede wide swaths of land, and this time lose much of its autonomy.

The Third Punic War, begun in 149 BC, would be the shortest and the last. Using a Carthaginian response to an attack by the Numidian king and Roman ally Massinissa as a pretense, Rome declared war. Three years later, the city of Carthage lay in ruins as the Romans destroyed virtually every structure.

This would be final. Tired of having to fight the Carthaginians, Rome would obliterate them. They subsumed everything the Carthaginians had, declared it illegal to rebuild the city, and sold off its remaining population into slavery. As intended, Carthage would never again pose a problem for the Romans.

Fast forward two millennia, and you see echoes of one of the greatest conflicts in history. In 1914, the Germans launched Europe into World War I. For three years, the sides would largely battle over inches as soldiers looked at one another across the hundreds of miles of trenches dug on front lines that rarely moved. By 1918, the Germans were defeated and the allies—mainly France & the UK—imposed the draconian Treaty of Versailles, which included staggering reparations and strict military limitations.

Two decades later, Germany, once crippled by reparations and limitations on industry and its military, would launch a second world war. For the previous decade, it had slowly but consistently pushed the limits of what it was allowed to do under the Treaty of Versailles, and usually found little or no resistance. As such, Germany kept pushing until it was strong enough that the allies could do little to prevent its expansive designs. And thus began a true world war that would fully engulf half the planet, and it would take half a decade for victory to come.

Fast forward another eighty years, and the world once again finds itself in a crisis. A different crisis, to be sure, but one that threatens civilization every bit as much as the two world wars.

What crisis? Why the immigration crisis, of course. And why is it an existential threat to civilization? Because the West has been the primary driver of the advance of civilization around the world for the last 500 years.

The list of things Western civilization is responsible for that are central to the world today, while not endless, is very long. Flight, telephony, harnessing electricity, nuclear power, plastic, television, air conditioning, automobiles, the best of modern medicine, space travel, MRI machines, advanced agriculture, and much more, not the least of which was virtually ending slavery worldwide.

This Western civilization was built on Christianity, individual freedom, freedom of speech, religion, and the press, capitalism, liberal democracy, and relatively free markets. Other than that first foundation (Christianity), most of those elements developed into keystones over the last three centuries.

Today, all are at risk, and once again, the catalyst is Germany. In particular, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In 2015, as the leader of what was then the most economically powerful nation in Europe, she essentially dictated that the continent open its borders to “migrants” from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. While ostensibly humanitarian, this policy was suicidal. Europe had been failing to integrate immigrants for decades, and now Merkel had opened the door to the entire Third World.

The consequences have been extraordinary. Thirty million, mostly undocumented male, military-aged “migrants” from the third world have inundated Europe over the last decade, overwhelming services, straining budgets, and committing crimes.

Today, across the West, there is a growing ideology that is anathema to free speech, freedom of religion, free press, women’s rights, and more. And it’s violently so. At the current rate of demographic change, native Europeans will be a minority in Europe soon after the middle of the century, and Western civilization will not be far behind, if it survives that long.

If it were just Angela Merkel, we might be able to give Germany a pass, but it’s not. The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen and the WEF’s Klaus Schwab are both also spawn of Germany and were Merkel’s fellow travelers when she was in power—and maintained her cancerous ideas once she left.

At the end of the day, from giving us Karl Marx to facilitating the Bolshevik revolution by returning Lenin to Russia, to beginning two world wars and shepherding the current collapse of the West, Germany has been the fount of more strife and more bloodshed over the last 200 years than any nation on the planet. And it’s not even close.

It’s likely too late for Europe to save itself, although it’s possible that Western civilization could survive the collapse of the place of its origin. Nonetheless, while the odds are against it, there is hope, but it will take drastic measures.

The West should do to Germany what the Romans did to Carthage. Not in the literal sense of razing it to the ground, of course. Instead, it should split it into a dozen or more autonomous nations. Separately, these tiny states would spend so much time trying to survive that they couldn’t lead the world off another cliff.

Sure, you can say this proposal is insane, and maybe it is, but so too is leading the charge to destroy the most successful civilization in history. In thrall to the climate change hoax, Germany recently shuttered the last of its nuclear power plants and is well on its way to collapsing its economy.

It’s a statecraft version of someone who wants to commit suicide and decides to take as many others with him as he can. The West should not allow it. We know what the collapse of Western civilization looks like: It’s somewhere between Afghanistan and Communist China. Both spell the end of freedom and prosperity. If the West wants to avoid that fate, the first step is to eliminate the führer / Pied Piper leading the way. Maybe then it will be possible to focus on saving what’s left...

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The Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Far Bigger Than Jeffrey Epstein

Last week President Trump took umbrage to a question about the Justice Department’s assertion that there are no Epstein tapes, there is no client list and there is nothing more to be released.  Yesterday he made some more inane comments on the subject.  The Twitterverse has been brutal towards AG Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and his #2 Dan Bongino.  Many people were saying they felt betrayed given the fact that before the election we were told that the files would be released and the criminals held to account.

The president has a point.  There is a lot going on in Washington. There are natural disasters with dozens dead across Texas.  There are continuing ICE protests across the country.  There are budgets that need to be attended to as well as rouge judges who need to be corralled and numerous conflicts outside our borders that need to be midwifed.  And all of that besides the basic blocking and tackling of running the government and trying to advance the administration’s rather ambitious agenda.  And taking the time to talk about some files from a guy who’s been dead for six years seems like it might distract from all of that.

But, you see, here’s the thing.  People want answers that seem logical, that provide rational explanations to obvious questions, that provide proof that the speculation is wrong.  This is particularly true when the people now saying there’s nothing there were the very people who promised answers, transparency and accountability would be coming when they won.  Well, they won, and we’re getting the same obfuscation.

The truth is, if this was just a matter of a senator cheating on his wife with a lobbyist for some industry he regulates, it wouldn’t really matter in the big picture. If this was some bureaucrat taking bribes to sign a service contract for some shipping company nobody would really care.  Sure, the first is an ethics question and the second is illegal, but beyond the participants themselves they aren’t very important in the grand scheme of things. 

The problem here is that this is all happening in an environment where Americans are coming to believe that no one is ever accountable for their actions.  We see city centers across the country imploding as stores and shops and hotels close because of the crime where hoodlums and thugs and drug addicts can basically take or destroy whatever they want with impunity. We see judges issue injunctions against the administration despite SCOTUS specifically ruling they can’t.  At the same time we have politicians, Antifa and activists undermining, and hindering and assaulting ICE agents who are trying to deport criminals, and the chances of them being held accountable for these crimes is almost nonexistent. Nobody seems accountable for anything.  It seems in 2025 in America it’s only the fools who actually obey the rules because everyone else seems to do whatever the hell they want. 

Now add to all of that the fact that we’ve just spent much of the last 15 years watching politicians and the politically connected do whatever the hell they wanted and never face a reckoning. Remember Lois Lerner targeting Tea Party groups? Prosecution?  Of course not.  How about Eric Holder being in Contempt of Congress?  Jail time? Nope.  Compare that to Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.  How about Hillary wiping her computer or Hunter Biden breaking basically every law in the book and getting a pardon from his daddy. Or Lisa Page and Peter Strzok not only not getting charged, but getting millions of dollars from the Justice Department after conspiring to keep Donald Trump out of the White House? And the list goes on.  In modern America it seems as if no one is ever held accountable for their actions.

And so it is onto this backdrop the Trump administration tells us that 1) Jeffery Epstein killed himself, and 2) there was no client list and there are no videos. 

And when reporters ask about it the President gets indignant. 

The problem with that is the Epstein case no longer has much of anything to do with Jeffery Epstein, per se.  The guy’s dead and he’s not coming back. None of the crimes for which he was responsible can be undone. But Americans have heard rumors that rich and powerful men, from politicians to tech billionaires to justices to high priced lawyers and Hollywood stars were all clients of Epstein in his sex trade with minors, yet they remain free as birds. The one person who was clearly demonstrated to have a connection reportedly settled with his accuser for millions of dollars.

We were told Epstein had logs and tapes that chronicled all of it and used them to blackmail his powerful clients.  Indeed, in February AG Pam Bondi said she hoped to release a "lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information" on Epstein and said of the material "It's sitting on my desk right now to review." Then of course there’s the fact that Epstein’s “assistant” Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking of a minor as well as transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He himself was convicted of procuring underage prostitutes in 2008  Then the guy conveniently “committed suicide” in 2019 after being arrested on child trafficking charges, and the video of his cell was “accidentally erased” or the cameras “malfunctioned” or the video was inconclusive. His lawyers claimed that the particulars of his death were far more consistent with murder than suicide, and many Americans agreed.

And if all of that were not enough, Jeffery Epstein was once a money man for the CIA and Ghislaine Maxwell’s father was reported to be a Mossad agent and then killed by them. 

So here is where we are.  A high flying millionaire with connections to the CIA and possibly the Mossad and MI6, who owned an island in the Atlantic and who is reported to have used it as a honey trap for the rich and powerful ends up dead and suddenly the people who were telling us they were going to expose the entire thing when they were on the outside are now telling us that there’s nothing to tell now that they’re on the inside. 

The reality is the Jeffery Epstein case is far more important than Jeffery Epstein ever was. There is credible evidence that Epstein was an asset for one or more intelligence agencies who were very possibly blackmailing powerful men in government, finance and elsewhere and Americans feel like they have a right to know. There is a great deal of smoke around the Epstein case and Occam's razor suggests that it is likely to be exactly what it looks like: A honeypot operation set up by the CIA / Mossad / MI6 as a blackmail vehicle.

This case may not be as important as others on the President’s desk, but it’s a far bigger deal than I think he understands. He promised transparency and accountability.  We are getting neither and the more his administration obfuscates the less people are going to trust him on those bigger issues. Americans want to know we’re moving back towards no one being above the law.  This case exemplifies exactly that.  How the President chooses to handle it will tell us a lot. 

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With Zohran Mamdani On The Cusp of Becoming Mayor, NYC Embraces Its Own Demise

As a child of the Cold War with the Soviets as America’s enemy, when the wall came down and the threat of Communism faded, I was under the illusion that the world had inexorably turned a corner and that history was on the march to bring freedom, Capitalism and prosperity to the whole world…

The events of September 11 exposed that illusion for what it really was, a delusion.  There were actually people out there who wanted to start a war with the United States.

With 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq Islam went from an almost nonexistent issue for most Americans to front and center.  Suddenly Islam and Muslims are in the news on a daily basis, doing unspeakable things to one another and others. 

Knowing nothing of this threat and wanting to know more I picked up books like Dore Gold’s Hatred’s Kingdom and Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims, and even a copy of the Koran, which honestly, I couldn’t get through. And I read a lot more online from guys like Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer and David Horowitz.

Over the following years you had everything from the Shoe Bomber to the Ft. Hood shooter to the San Bernardino attack and countless others.  And elsewhere in the west you had everything from the murder of Theo Van Gogh to the London 7/7 attacks, the Charlie Hebdo attacks and others.  It seemed like Islam was at war against the entire world.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the news, despite everything we were seeing with our own eyes, the blood, the carnage, the innocent victims, we were told that Islam wasn’t the problem, but rather the individual terrorists who just happened to be Muslim. “Islam isn’t violent” we were told despite the fact that most of the wars going on in the world involve Muslims and the Koran itself both directs and allows killing in Allah’s name.  Seemingly we see Muslim violence everywhere but we’re told that there’s no connection to Islam, despite the fact that most of the time the perpetrators actually invoke Allah’s name during their attacks.

So the west, seeking to demonstrate their lack of “Islamophobia” decides to open the floodgates to Muslims from around the world with blind expectation that they would integrate into their societies – despite decades of proof of the exact opposite. And that held for the United States as well. You visit places like Dearborn, Michigan or Minneapolis, Minnesota or increasingly even places as far afield as Texas and it sometimes feels like you’re not actually in America.    

But if one looks, it’s not hard to understand why.  For the west, for most of the last 500 years there have been two poles seeking to influence life, the state and the church. The result of that pull between the state and Christianity is a civilization with extraordinary scientific and economic advancement, unprecedented levels of individual freedom and the miraculous levels of prosperity that came with them.

But for Islam, there is no such separation.  There is one law and it covers everything.  Freedom of speech and religion don’t exist. Both are tolerated when the numbers of Muslims are small in a nation, but once the numbers grow, they’re strangled.  About 15 years ago Evangelist Peter Hammond demonstrated how this works:

1)         As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens.

2)         At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.

3)         From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarkets to feature halal on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply.

4)         When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions.

There’s more, but you get the point. Couple that with the fact that Islam has basically been on a 1400 year quest to take over the world and one wonders why western leaders have not only opened up their countries to followers of an ideology that literally seeks their destruction, but funds them a well! 

Islam’s not a religion, it’s a supremist, expansionist and tyrannical ideology that is anathema to the very foundations of western civilization. Don’t take my word for it, take the words of Imams across the west.  They seek to use demographics to overwhelm natives politically then impose a caliphate.  Very soon western leaders are going to have to confront the fact that they have injected their polity with a virus that seeks to kill it. 

Europe successfully defended itself from the first Islamic invasion in 732 in behind the leadership of the French Duke Charles Martel at Tours.  It did so again in Vienna in 1683 following King John III Sobieski of Poland.  Those men were true leaders. Today, with few exceptions, the west is led by cowards and traitors to their civilizations, more interested in being feted by their fellow globalists than defend their heritage.  Indeed, today Europe isn’t even fighting for itself.  It’s invited the enemy into its bosom and allowed him to thrive.

Why?  White guilt, of course.  To the point that the west will literally sacrifice their daughters so as not to be called Islamophobic. Across the west we’ve seen Hammond’s observations play themselves out. Sweden, formerly one of the safest countries in the world is today overwhelmed with rapes and bombings, and native Swedes aren’t responsible. Is any western city better off for having invited in hundreds of thousands of Muslims?  London?  Paris?  Amsterdam? No. The story is the same across Europe, yet most “leaders” pretend otherwise. 

Winston Churchill, a son of Britain and America understood the threat.  While he admitted “Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities” he knew the score.  “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”

And why does any of this matter? New York, of course. One need only to look at the dystopian nightmare that London has become to understand what lays ahead for New York. Once America’s greatest city, the disaster it already is has been driven by grievance, victimization and illegal immigration.  And now the guilt ridden college educated whites have essentially elected a terrorist supporting Communist as mayor. 

This does not bode well for freedom, prosperity, New York or for America. Freedom of speech and religion are literally written into our founding documents. They are fundamental to our nation.  Islam, tolerates neither.  At the end of the day, Islam is not a religion, it’s an ideology that seeks to overthrow the west.  It’s well on its way in Europe.  We should not allow it to do so here.     

The Danger Of A Successful Society: Absurdity

I spend a lot of time talking about how western civilization – in particular as driven by the United States – is easily the greatest that mankind has yet created.  If one looks at it objectively, it’s not even close.  The list of things that are part of the everyday life of people around the world is basically a list of things that were invented or developed in the west.  From cars to planes to advanced agriculture to elevators to plastic and mobile phones and computers and DNA and much, much more. 

But every now and then something happens that makes me question that.  A couple of years ago I watched Matt Walsh’s “What is a Woman” where he spends most of the movie talking to leftists and doctors trying to get a definitive answer to the question of the title.  Most of the time he’s unsuccessful.  The most interesting part of the movie however didn’t take place at a feminist conference or in a studio, but rather in Africa when he was speaking with Maasai tribesmen.  When asked a simple question about whether a man can become a woman, he was quickly given a definitive “No”.  Straightforward, no debate, no hedging. Essentially 180 degrees from the insanity that Matt encountered in the United States.

This was brought back to me last week when reading about Justice Thomas’ destruction of the “expert class” in Skrmetti.  The Justice took direct aim at the notion that Americans must ignore their common sense, relinquish their lives and give up their Constitutional rights to those the elites have pronounced as “experts”.  As we all learned during COVID, with the Hunter Biden letter, and have been seeing with climate scares for decades, “experts” are rarely that, and often are simply shills for this or that monied interest. 

Justice Thomas stated clearly that the government can no longer use such “experts” to manipulate and control the lives of citizens.  Although the specific case had to do with the butchering or harming confused or coerced minors, it applies everywhere else as well.

Which is a very good thing. Because there’s a danger in success – as in a successful civilization.  It breeds complacency, entitlement and most importantly, the loss of a functional memory of how things work and how they became successful in the first place… which leads to an over reliance on “experts”. 

I frequently mention Cyrus McCormick as the man most responsible for the rapid advance of western civilization.  Of course people can argue that others, like Isaac Newton, Jethro Tull, James Watt, J.D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford or any number of others could wear that badge.  I choose to award it to McCormick because he almost single handedly helped 85% of Americans and substantial numbers of others around the world, escape the farm.  Not that there’s anything wrong with farming, obviously, but because of the efficiencies McCormick brought about, 95% of Americans work at something other than farming while in his day that number was in the mid-teens.

So basically he freed up 80% of the nation to go out and be everything from baseball players to scientists to doctors to entrepreneurs to inventors to, sadly, social media “influencers”.  It’s basically division of labor on steroids, where people focus on what they want to do, are good at, or can make a living at, while paying others do the things they can’t or don’t want to do.

That works well when the choices of options are shoemaker, baker, blacksmith, farmer, soldier, etc., i.e. things society actually needs.  It even works when options include things that society wants, like literature or sport or art.  Baseball may not be as critical to the continuation of society as say, electricity generation or infrastructure maintenance, but there’s a demand and people are willing to work for money to pay for it out of their own pockets.

Where it breaks down is when options include things that no one actually wants or needs, yet they get produced nonetheless, or get produced in quantities that make no sense. Things like gender studies graduates, therapists and lawyers. Shakespeare talked about lawyers (as a bulwark against the masses) so we don’t need to.

The fact that gender studies even exist in the first place tells you how far America has moved from the fundamentals of a successful society.  In a normal, functioning universe such things wouldn’t even exist.  While one can at least make an argument that being gay is at least theoretically natural – if still deviant – a universe where men are women, women are men and the difference between the two is “fluid” is a fiction created by people who have too much time on their hands and no connection to how the real world functions.  We’ve strayed so far from the time when 85% of the people worked on farms and did things that actually helped society that we now have people who create an illusion and then set about trying to force society to accept it as normal. 

Another example of this a disconnect between actual demand and supply is therapists. Before the late 19^th century therapists didn’t exist. (Well, they sort of did, but they were your friends.) Today tens of millions of Americans go to “therapists”, mostly women, and white women at that.   Essentially 40% of white women receive mental health treatment in the form of anti-depressants and or therapy.  If you look deeper you’ll see that the numbers skew towards college educated, as in liberal, white women.  Has our ostensibly successful society somehow become so bad that fully 40% of the women of the majority population are now sufficiently damaged that they need mental health treatment? Or are they suffering from a mass psychosis of grievance and guilt created by people being too prosperous and having too much time and money on their hands?  They say that idleness is the devil’s workshop and there is perhaps no better example of the truth than that. While there are certainly people who are in need of mental help, the fact that 40% of any ostensibly normal demographic needs either anti-depressants or therapy is absurd. 

But that’s what happens when society veers so far from the fundamentals of society and common sense that many see a future in pursuing nonsensical fields like gender studies, political science (my major…) and countless others where there is no real demand in society beyond that generated by government fiat. More importantly, without the individual feeling of accomplishment that goes with doing something that actually benefits society, not the least of which is raising good children, people create the absurd in order to fill the void, and then demand society congratulate them for their “courage”.   

Thankfully, we may slowly be coming to the point where the larger society recognizes that absurdity is no longer acceptable, or worse, compelled.  Justice Thomas and Matt Walsh are actually addressing the same thing. Common sense should have to be discarded just because “experts” say it must.

The world is a challenging place with dangers of all sorts around every corner, the sooner America gets back to being a place ruled by common sense rather than absurdity, the better we will be prepared to deal with them…

Guest Post: Martha Careful - Of Art and Immigration

I first visited Paris 25 years ago. While I saw all the things one expects to see, easily the most captivating was the Louvre. It was simply extraordinary and one wouldn’t even need to go inside in order to fall in love. The facades of the erstwhile royal palace are breathtaking.  Overseen by statues of France’s great men, topped with the sleek slate roofs and with walls covered with allegories and columns and carvings, it’s simply magnificent. 

Then of course there’s the inside. My personal favorite is the Marie de' Medici cycle, a series of 24 giant paintings by Peter Paul Rubens chronicling the life of Marie de' Medici, the widow of French King Henry IV.  There is also Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, and paintings by everyone from Rembrandt to Jacques-Louis David to Raphael.

But, as everyone knows, the most famous and the most sought after artwork in the Louvre is Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.  I remember walking in the room that held her. There were a lot of people, but it wasn’t crowded per se.  You could easily walk around and eventually you could get fairly close and try and examine her famous smile. 

Since that first visit I’ve been back to Paris many times, including a few visits to the Louvre itself. About a month ago I went once again, this time with my sister and brother-in-law.  The first thing I have to say is that the throng of people in the museum was extraordinary.  The line just to get through security was more than two hours! 

Once inside, as the Mona Lisa was on the top of my sister’s must-see list, we headed there.  The museum was as crowded as I’ve ever seen it, but you could mostly navigate around. But when we arrived at the room with da Vinci’s masterpiece it was like something I’d never seen. It was simply insane. You were shuttled through ropes towards the masterpiece and then out on either side before actually getting within 10 feet of her.  What’s worse, almost every single person was holding up their phones to take a picture or a selfie so it was virtually impossible to get even a good glimpse of the presumed Italian beauty. 

The experience was simply sad.  The building I had experienced a quarter century before was the same. The works were largely the same. But the museum experience was… not.  No, now there were so many people in the museum that the thing one remembers is not standing there pondering what was behind that enigmatic smile, but rather feeling like a steer in the middle of the cattle drive being prodded along with no focus on anything other than not getting trampled. (It’s gotten so bad that two days ago the museum had to shut down as employees went on strike because of overcrowding.)

I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s the goal of any museum. The goal of allowing ever more people in, while egalitarian, actually diminishes the experience for everyone.

So too with the west.  By any measure, western nations have built the most free, prosperous and advanced civilization in human history.  Everything from cars to flight to nuclear power to advanced agriculture to television to computers to MRI machines and more, western culture has been almost exclusively behind the advances civilization has made over the last 500 years. The result has been the creation of nations that are largely more free, prosperous and functional than any in the world.  Which is of course why people want to come here.

But the problem is, like the Louvre and the Mona Lisa, too many people simply overwhelm the system and destroy the experience for everyone. But at least at the Louvre visitors buy tickets with money that is then used to maintain the museum and pay for its operations. Not so with nations.  Most of the illegal immigrants crossing rivers and seas and borders to move to the west are not paying to maintain them. No, in fact, not only do western nations have to support them, but most bring with them values and cultures that are anathema to the very ideas that made western civilization successful in the first place, i.e. Christianity, individual freedom and Capitalism. It’s the equivalent of visitors being allowed to sneak in the back door of the Louvre then painting graffiti everywhere before starting barbecues in the rooms and using the artwork as kindling.  Eventually the museum would not only run out of masterpieces to burn, but once everything was gone, the building itself would be taken apart piece by piece and carted off. Thereafter the progeny of the legitimate visitors and the vandals alike would be left standing by the River Seine looking at the ruins and wondering what used to stand there.  Would anyone say that such a scenario would be a good thing?  That somehow the Louvre benefited from its new “undocumented” or “irregular” visitors?  The answer is clearly “No”.

Just as is true on the small scale, it applies equally, if not more on a larger scale because while the Louvre’s works are generally displayed in the museum itself, the west has not only created a civilization that benefits itself, but it’s created one that has helped bring billions of people around the world out of abject poverty. 

It’s understandable that westerners have sympathy for the conditions others experience.  The sad reality is that poverty, scarcity, war and tyranny remain a problem for many places, as they have for most of the world throughout human history.  That’s troubling and most people who are relatively better off would feel some pull to try and help.  But the question is, does allowing tens of millions of people from failed or war-torn or dysfunctional nations to enter the west make the world a better place?  For those who escape to the west it most certainly does. But for the west itself, not so much.  Overwhelmed schools, hospitals, governments, communities, trillions of dollars of debt spending and increased rates of crime and social discord. Clearly not better.

The French national motto is “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” or Liberty, equality, fraternity.  The west has taken the idea of equality and made it first among equals in terms of objectives over the last half century, and they’re well on their way of achieving it.  But not in the way our leaders promised.  No, rather than helping to bring freedom and prosperity to the rest of the world, they’re making the world equal by destroying those very things within their own countries, the outliers that escaped the history of man.

This should be obvious to anyone paying attention, but the elites, living in their gated communities, with their bodyguards and their Swiss bank accounts never have to actually interact with the unwashed masses who live with the realities driven by their policies. No, they get private tours of the Louvre, fly on private jets and enjoy private club memberships, all while making policies the consequences of which they never actually have to experience. 

For anyone who loves art, the Louvre becoming a cattle drive is not a good thing.  For anyone who loves liberty and prosperity, the west becoming a borderless society is a terrible thing. 

Originally posted:  https://thefederalist.com/2025/06/20/mass-migration-destroys-the-west-like-crowd-controls-destroy-the-mona-lisa/ 

Judges Gone Wild is Not a Good Look For a Nation of Laws

There's been an event that occurred since this was originally published.  And it's big.

Real constitutional crises are relatively rare in American history.  In 1803 Chief Justice John Marshall could have sparked one with his decision in Marbury v. Madison where he deftly asserted that the Supreme Court had to power to invalidate laws or actions it saw as unconstitutional. The main reason that that assertion didn’t cause a crisis in the fledgling nation was the fact that it came in a decision that supported the position of the Jefferson administration, and as such they were not inclined to protest. 

Then of course there was FDR’s Court Packing scheme in 1937.  In 1936, in the face of continuing 5-4 decisions going against his New Deal legislation FDR’s Attorney General, Homer Cummings proffered an idea penned by one of his predecessors in 1914, James Clark McReynolds, that for every justice over 70 a new justice should be appointed. Ironically, in 1936 McReynolds was a 75 year old Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

FDR’s legislation died in committee but it would likely not have survived even if it had made it out of committee as it faced a great deal of bipartisan opposition. But then it didn’t really matter because Justice Owen Roberts, who had been a thorn in the side of much of the New Deal legislation joined the liberals in upholding West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish in 1937 and became a relatively reliable New Deal supporter going forward.  History calls that vote the “Switch in time that saved Nine” but the timing doesn’t quite line up.  Although the decision was handed down in March of 1937, it was argued in December of 1936 and Roberts had made his decision before FDR’s plan became public.  That doesn’t mean however that the supposition that Roberts changed his voting pattern due to external events was wrong.  It just means that the timing doesn’t allow for a quid pro quo. 

Crisis might not be the right word in either of those situations because, despite their long term implications for the government, neither imminently threatened the functionality of the government. It most certainly is the right word for what America and the Trump administration is facing right now, and indeed it imminently threatens the functionality of the government. 

The Trump administration has faced an unprecedented number of nationwide injunctions from federal courts on a wide range of issues from deportations to firings of federal employees to paying for sex change surgeries for military members and more.

It seems as if across the country and in virtually every area of government federal judges have suddenly decided that their role is to micromanage every element of the Executive branch. The first Trump administration faced an unprecedented number of injunctions and the first five months the second has faced even more. 

It appears as the federal judiciary has declared war on the Executive Branch, and that is literally a constitutional crisis.

By continuing to face this crisis with appeals to higher courts, the president is bringing a knife to a gun fight. He should instead bring a howitzer. He should make it clear that his administration does not recognize these courts’ power to issue nationwide injunctions and they will no longer be recognizing them as legal.

Tucked away in the bowels of the travesty that is the Big Beautiful Bill is one golden nugget that attempts to obviate the problem.  It states that courts cannot use appropriated funds to enforce contempt citations for failure to comply with injunctions or temporary restraining orders.  That’s an interesting strategy, but it’s a band-aid approach to an artery that’s been cut.  It still leaves the option for courts to continue to micromanage policy from the bench and simply include the funding caveat in the orders themselves or otherwise find funding sources for enforcement.

No, the president needs to face this crisis head on and make it perfectly clear that the courts are acting unconstitutionally and he will no longer be bound by them.   

The obvious consequence of this policy will be the gnashing of the teeth of the left and much of the swamp infested GOP.  “Tyrant” they’ll call him.  “Dictator” they’ll brand him.  “He thinks he’s a king” they’ll claim.  But, frankly, there’s nothing new in any of that. 

But beyond the shrieking however, something more substantial will result of the administration’s new clarity.  It will force Congress and or the Supreme Court to act. 

The reality is, there is no basis in the Constitution for these nationwide injunctions and courts playing the role of executive. These rouge courts have undermined the legitimacy of the judicial system and with it the larger government as a whole.  Once the administration makes it crystal clear that they do not recognize the legitimacy of these rouge courts Congress or SCOTUS will have to step up and provide clarity.  Whether legislative action by Congress or direction from SCOTUS, something will have to be done to begin to repair American’s confidence in the judiciary. 

And that’s actually quite important in a nation of laws like the United States where citizens are largely free and most obey laws because they respect the legitimacy of the government. If that legitimacy is undermined then social order follows suit.  Look no further than cities across the country where the police have been demonized and local governments operate like banana republic grift machines. Crime and corruption are rampant as law abiding citizens and for profit businesses abandon them for safer, more functional environs.

The ideal solution is Congress passing legislation that makes explicit that lower courts have no jurisdiction beyond the immediate cases before them and cannot impose injunctions beyond those specific cases.  This clarity would at a minimum put an immediate end to the tyranny of unelected judges seeking to elevate themselves above the Executive. More broadly it would return to the political realm the work of legislation and policy implementation.  No more would plaintiffs who represent a sliver of the population or hold views far outside the Overton Window be able to venue shop for extremist judges and use the court to impose their ideas on the entire nation.  There’s nothing wrong with being a sliver of the population or having ideas outside that window, but the place to debate ideas is in the public square, not the dark corners of judicial chambers.

This crisis exists today because the left has moved so far to the fringe of society that they can no longer convince Americans to vote for their positions at the ballot box.  But that’s where the Constitution says they should be debated.  If President Trump wants to have any chance of a successful second term he will force Congress’s hand and explain to the American people why he’s doing it. 

 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

First published on June 10, 2025

https://thefederalist.com/2025/06/10/trump-should-force-congress-and-scotus-to-stop-rogue-judges-by-ignoring-unconstitutional-injunctions/

A Lesson From Rome: You Cannot Welcome Armed, Unassimilated Enemies and Expect to Survive

In the Louvre there’s a famous painting by the French Artist Jacques-Louis David depicting the Intervention of the Sabine Women. In it the Sabine men, whose daughters were stolen by and then married to Romans in the mid-8^th century BC, returned to avenge Roman treachery and retrieve their offspring.  The scene depicts a woman standing between the belligerents, imploring them to cease fighting:  "If you are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds, then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans."

The men stopped fighting and eventually the Sabines became Roman citizens. This strategy of conquest and integration would characterize Rome for much of the next 1100 years. Other than perhaps Egypt, most conquered lands became essentially Roman. This is demonstrated by the extensive Roman ruins found in places like Britain, Portugal, Algeria, Turkey and more.  Although most would never become Roman citizens, their lives would have had similar characteristics throughout the Empire. What’s more, when armies would attack Rome, when they were defeated, which they almost always were, the Romans would sell the women and children (who sometimes traveled with armies) into slavery and the men, if not sold into slavery, would be conscripted into the Legions, but sent to regions far from their native lands.

The result of this was that for most of its history Rome faced relatively few consequential internal rebellions beyond civil wars between rival generals. With the 4^th century AD however, that would change. As the Huns moved east from the steppes they began attacking various tribes who would then plead with Rome for asylum. Sometimes willingly and sometimes not, the Romans allowed the Goths, Vandals and others to move into the Empire. But what was different now was that rather than breaking up these foreign powers and disbursing their members throughout the Empire, the Romans allowed them to settle intact on Roman lands. Armed groups living in their own communities, separate from the Romans and maintaining their cultures with no assimilation demanded.  This would be a recipe for disaster and Rome, which, having lasted for more than a millennium, was gone within a century. 

The leaders of the United States and the EU should have paid a little closer attention in history class because they’re mimicking the Roman Empire of the mid-4^th century…

In both places politicians have either tolerated or encouraged an open border for much of the last quarter century with the result being that the United States today houses upwards of 30 million illegal aliens while in Europe the number may be half that.

In both cases, most of the immigrants crossing the borders come from countries with far higher crime rates, far lower income levels and much different cultures.  In the United States illegal immigrants largely come from Mexico and Latin America while in Europe they come from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries in Asia and Africa. 

As immigrants have often done throughout history, when they move to a new place they seek out brethren from their home countries or people which whom they share customs or languages.  Indeed, that’s exactly what the Italians in New York did at the turn of the century. 

The difference here however is that when the Italians moved to New York or the Irish moved to Boston, their goal was to integrate and become Americans. Today’s immigrants to the United States don’t seem to have that same desire.  They may want to become citizens so they can stay permanently, but that doesn’t mean they want to be American.  Indeed, half of American Hispanics are from Mexico and a significant portion of them believe that America’s Southwest is stolen land that rightfully should be returned to Mexico.  At the same time, most of Europe’s newly arrived are from Islamic nations and their allegiance is to Islam, not their new homes.

That’s a problem because successful societies are built around core, fundamental values that are shared by the overwhelming majority of the population. Ideas such as free speech and freedom of religion, individual rights and private property – to various degrees, while they were not always core tenants of western civilization, are so today, or at least were until quite recently.  Without those shared fundamental notions it’s difficult for western nations to function properly. 

It's one thing for a nation to have competing powers within the existing framework, think Democrats and Republicans, but it’s another thing all together if the competing power wants to split off a quarter of the nation or wants to impose Sharia law. 

Recent events have demonstrated exactly how deep the problems are. Across Europe over the last two years there have been giant pro Hamas demonstrations, some of which devolved into violence.  Across the United States Donald Trump’s attempt to begin to ramp up deportations has been met with violence against ICE agents and in California, it devolved into riots with law enforcement members being pelted with rocks, bottles and various incendiaries while cars were set afire, stores looted and the LAPD headquarters attacked.

Of course, demonstrations and riots happen in any country, but when they are symbols of a bigger fissure that’s a problem. 

In both cases these illegals and their predecessors, many of whom have been legalized, seek to fundamentally change the nature of the countries they now call home. Of course invaders always want to change the nature of the place they invade, just as the Romans did as they were growing their empire.  The difference is when the Romans invaded a new land the people already there usually fought them to maintain their culture. They usually lost, but at least they had enough pride in their culture to fight for it. What we see across the west today is just the opposite.  From Sweden to the UK to Spain and the US, leaders have for years worshiped at the altar of guilt and sought to repent by welcoming millions from cultures far different than their own.  Most of these leaders have been under the delusion that if they welcome these invaders with open arms, give them shelter, food, phones and more that they’ll somehow respect the culture of their new homes and assimilate accordingly. 

Not only did they not do so, but rather many attacked the very people and culture that welcomed them. From skyrocketing rapes and bombings in Sweden to knife crime and rape rings in the UK to drug dealing and taking over apartment complexes in Denver, these illegals have made it perfectly clear that they see their new homes not as refuges from some dysfunctional dystopia, but rather as fertile ground to be exploited. They have no intention of assimilating, and in reality, who can blame them?  If a nation doesn’t care enough about its citizens and its culture to protect them, why should anyone else? 

Here in America we finally have a leader who understands the danger and is doing something about it.  If the leaders of Europe don’t follow Donald Trump’s lead soon they may find that it’s too late.    

 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

First published on June 11, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/learn_from_the_romans_you_cannot_welcome_armed_unassimilated_enemies.html

No, the United States did not Steal California from Mexico

We’ve all heard the claims that the United States stole California from Mexico and therefore in reality it belongs to Mexico.

That’s not quite… right.  California, like most of the world, has a history that’s slightly more complex than will fit on your average bumper sticker.

Prior to the Spanish arrival in 1565 there were over 100 different tribes inhabiting what we know as California. Most were small and the total population of the area is estimated to be approximately 300,000. 

Although there were some minor explorations, and small settlements, California remained  largely unexplored and unsettled by Spain for most of the next 200 years. This was due to a combination of factors such as the distance from Spain, the strained Spanish finances but also the fact that there were no pack animals, little agricultural tradition, and a food supply that was less than appealing to Spanish palates. 

By the late 18^th century however the Spanish decided they needed to better organize their North American territories to preempt incursions from other European powers, particularly the French and Russians. As a result Spain began a more robust exploration of the state and would slowly colonize it, setting up missions along the vast coastal areas. 

By the early part of the 19^th century however Spain’s fortunes were changing, the empire was stretched too thin and after a decade of fighting, Mexico gained its independence in 1821. The new nation included what is today Mexico as well as California and much of the American Southwest, stretching east to Texas and north to Colorado.  And here’s where the rub in the argument that the United States stole California begins.

The population of California in 1800 was approximately 300,000 – almost all natives – essentially the same as it had been for centuries. By 1848 however it had dropped to half of that due to disease, which was responsible for 60-80% of the decline and the working to death or killing of the natives by the Spanish.

California at the time of Mexico’s independence was already sparsely populated, with just 200,000 people and that number was rapidly shrinking.  (For perspective, that’s ½ of 1% of today’s 40 million inhabitants.) Add to that the fact that Mexico could barely be called a functioning country as in the 27 years from 1821 to 1848 it had literally 40 different governments. As would seem obvious, the governments were dysfunctional, had an incredibly large land mass to govern, little tax revenue coming in and very limited finances with which to field an army to secure it, nevermind carry out the minimum responsibilities of a government. 

To better understand how dysfunctional and empty Mexico was at the time take a look at Texas.  In 1835 Texas had a population of less than 45,000 people, 30,000 of whom were Anglo settlers who’d been given permission to settle the lands by the Mexican government.  The remainder included approximately 7,000 Mexicans and 5,000 black slaves. Because of conflict with the Mexican government on issues from slavery to religion, in October of that year Texas started a war for independence and by March 1836 it had declared itself the Republic of Texas.  That could never have happened had Mexico been able to populate the area on its own or keep it from breaking away.  But it couldn’t, so Texas was born. 

The American annexation of Texas a decade later in 1845 was the catalyst that brought California to the United States. When the US annexed Texas there was a dispute with Mexico as to exactly where the southern border was. The Americans said it was the Rio Grande while the Mexicans said it was the more northern Nueces River. After negotiations failed to reach an agreement American troops marched to the Rio Grande to bolster the American claim. The Mexicans, seeing this as an encroachment on their land, attacked the American troops and the United States then declared war.

The war, like the Texas war for independence, was short lived, with hostilities ending in September of 1847, and resulted in Mexico ceding California and much of what is today the Southwest of the United States, as well as relinquishing all claims to Texas. At the same time the Americans paid Mexico $15 million and assumed $3.5 million of debt owed to Americans by Mexico.  After negotiations of terms, The Treaty of Hidalgo ending the war was signed in February 1848 and California was admitted to the Union in 1850. 

At that time California had a population of approximately 150,000, the majority of whom were the remnants of the native Indian tribes. Over the next twenty years that native population would decline to approximately 30,000, with diseases being the main cause, but with upwards of 20-25,000 being the result of intentional killings by the new settlers.

The year of 1848 was of course an important year for California for another reason, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, and the resulting whirlwind would bring over 300,000 prospectors and would be treasure hunters into the state from across America and elsewhere.  By the 1860 Census the population of the state was recorded as 379,000, 90% of whom were white.

And here we get to the most interesting part of this argument. If it were truly the case that California belonged to the people who lived there previously, it most certainly wouldn’t be Mexicans. When California became a state there were very few Mexicans living there and 50 years later that had not changed. According to the Census of 1900, California had a population of 1,485,000 people, of which only 8,086 were from Mexico. That’s less than 1% and only 2% of the foreign born. Compare that to Brits at 85,000, Germans at 72,000, Chinese at 40,000 and half a dozen other countries who had more than Mexico, including Italy, Ireland, France, Sweden and even Switzerland with 10,000. Certainly some of the 1.1 million native born Californians may have had Mexican heritage, but based on the 1860 Census, not very many did. 

Which brings us to modern day California. Today 40% of the state’s 40 million people are Hispanic, and if we suppose that 65% of those are Mexican or of Mexican heritage, that would mean about 10 million people living in California are of Mexican heritage.

Ten million is a big number, but the reality is, it doesn’t do a single thing to support the notion that California belongs to Mexico or that they are the original natives to California. They are clearly not. Almost all of them, or their parents or grandparents came to the United States within the last century, most likely during the last half century. 

The reality is, Californians of Mexican heritage not only have no more claim on California than anyone else, they actually have much less than white and Asian families that go back to the 19^th century. And Mexico itself has no claims against California because their country was too weak and dysfunctional to even maintain it, nevermind defend it. 

The United States won California as a result of winning a war, the way lands have changed hands for virtually all of human history.  This latest attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the United States in general and its western states in particular is disingenuous at best and an outright lie at worst. But of course leftists never let facts get in the way of a good victimization story…

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Originally published on June 14, 2025

https://thefederalist.com/2025/06/13/the-claim-that-america-stole-california-from-mexico-is-an-ignorant-lie/