• Should We Be Defending Left-wing Europe From Right-wing Russia?

    A 3D figure looking dejected with words like 'failure' and 'loser' surrounding it, representing feelings of defeat and disappointment.

    By Selwyn Duke

    While it was contrary to our Founders’ warning to avoid entangling alliances and European wars, we certainly can understand why NATO was created in 1949. The USSR, which President Ronald Reagan would later rightly call an “evil empire,” appeared a burgeoning force. Ensuring his post-WWII domination of Eastern Europe, Soviet despot Joseph Stalin saw to it that communist governments rose to power, by hook or by crook, in seven nations west of his own between 1945 and ’48. And Stalin’s armies became this domination’s guarantor.

    The USSR was also attempting to spread its dark creed worldwide. In fact, Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov estimated that 85 percent of the KGB’s resources were devoted not to espionage, but subversion. So stopping this aggressive leftism was a priority.

    In contrast, Western Europe still shared much with the U.S. back then. Though its faith was waning, it was still Christendom, as opposed to the “atheistic communist” persecutors of the Church. It was, to use our provisional political terminology, a classic right-left dichotomy.

    (Note: The right-left model is a poor way of defining reality; it reflects the relativism pervading our time. Yet if I speak of being orthodox vs. heterodox, few will know what I’m talking about. So our common political lexicon must suffice for the moment.)

    But that time is long past. Approximately a generation and a half ago now, the Berlin Wall fell. The USSR is Russia again and, whatever its faults, the Bear is not spreading communism or any brand of leftism. In fact, the “union” now thus guilty is the EU. This brings us to certain questions:

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  • Aspiring Hollywood Writer Rejected for Being White — but Still Doesn’t Blame Leftists

    A close-up of a chessboard with two white kings in the foreground and a lineup of black pieces in the background.

    By Selwyn Duke

    There’s a storm brewing, quite understandably, among millennial and Gen Z white men. Denied jobs over their race, they’re looking for remedy and reparation. Given this, it’s not surprising that a long essay documenting the problem with stories and stats has gained much traction. Appearing at the website Compact on Monday and penned by once-aspiring Hollywood writer Jacob Savage, it is informationally savage. It, as is said, brings the receipts. But does it bring the deeper reality?

    After all, the essay, titled “The Lost Generation,” seeks to put an onus on diversity, equity, and inclusion’s (DEI’s) authors and abettors. Yet many touting the essay identify the culprits as certain generations, not as who they are: those advocating ideological degeneration. These critics bemoan the identity politics that denies people jobs over an immutable, birth-determined group identity. Yet they, and Savage to an extent, are blaming that discrimination on people based on an immutable, birth-determined group identity.

    That is, the onus for DEI’s cultural depredations is being put on boomers and, in a measure, on Gen X. There is little if any mention of the fact that it is leftists, of all generations, who’ve enabled this rot. This is for an obvious reason:

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  • Does the West Lack That Prerequisite for Survival: A Reason to Get Up in the Morning?

    Image credit: Grok AI.

    By Selwyn Duke

    “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose,” noted Austrian psychiatrist/philosopher Viktor Frankl.

    Much has been written about the need for meaning, in recent years especially. Without it, a person can descend into a morass of addiction, degradation, and self-destruction. The same, however, is true of those large collections of people called civilizations. And of ours an apropos question can be asked.

    Does waning Western Civilization have a reason to get up in the morning?

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  • Just in Time for the Holidays: Islamic Terrorism Under the Tree (and Next to the Menorah)

    By Selwyn Duke

    It’s becoming a new Christmastime tradition: Islamic jihadist attacks on non-Muslim celebrations. We all now know of Bondi Beach, Australia, after two jihadists murdered 15 Hanukkah celebration attendees there on Sunday. The perps, father-son duo Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, were reportedly inspired by the Islamic State. (Apparently, dad and lad had rather unique ideas about a “bonding” experience.)

    Don’t expect such people to be deported, though, before actually doing violence. This is despite the fact that Australia did deport pro-Western journalist Katie Hopkins — for “Islamophobia.”

    Meanwhile, German police just detained five men in connection with a plot to replicate last year’s Magdeburg Christmas market attack. An “Islamist motive” is “suspected,” and one of the arrestees, an Egyptian man, is an imam (a Muslim religious leader).

    The authorities detained another man as well, also in Magdeburg, for plotting a separate Christmas attack on large crowds. The suspect, a 21-year-old Tajik, entered Germany last year on a visa for an au pair(!) stay. He was training to be a nursing specialist. In other words, he’s another “hard-working” immigrant who we’re told enriches your country — except for the whole killing-people thing.

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  • “Kill Babies, Superman”? New CHILDREN’S Book Calls Abortion a “Superpower”

    By Selwyn Duke

    “We’re not pro-abortion; we want it to be safe, legal — and rare.” That’s what the Left used to say, anyway. But that’s really now, well, so 2007. Since then, we heard Barack Obama campaigning in 2008 and talking about how, if his daughters “make a mistake,” they shouldn’t be “punished with a baby.” In 2015, we witnessed the “Shout Your Abortion” social-media campaign, which casts prenatal infanticide as a source of pride. And now a co-founder of that movement, Amelia Bonow, has taken the next step.

    She has written a brightly illustrated book for children age five to eight that calls abortion a “superpower.”

    Regarding its title, some people have said that family is everything. Others accept that God is everything. Bonow, however, appears to almost worship prenatal infanticide, calling her book Abortion is Everything. No, this is not satire.

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  • Quarter-zip Trip — Toward Tradition? Gen Z Moves “Right” With New Clothing Trend

    Two young men stand together, dressed in quarter-zip sweaters and a scarf, smiling and engaging in conversation.
    Image credit: ABC7NY/YouTube

    By Selwyn Duke

    It’s said that the “clothes make the man,” but do they also make the civilization? What’s for sure is that they reflect it, and America’s sartorial slouching these last decades hasn’t reflected well on her. As standards have dropped and laxity increases, we’ve seen deliberately frumpy young women and kids attending school in pajamas. But if a new fashion trend is any guide, there now may be a counterrevolution brewing against the bum look. If so, this change may end up being more than superficial, too. For a body of research (and common sense) shows that dress style actually influences human behavior.

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  • “Trumpism” Is Here to Stay: There’s Not “Going to Be a Return to Old Republicanism”

    Close-up of a speaking male figure in a suit with a pink tie, delivering a speech at a podium with the presidential seal. American flags are visible in the background.

    By Selwyn Duke

    Establishment Republicans may not like the MAGA movement. Establishment Republicans may want it to disappear. Establishment Republicans may hope it’s going to soon run its course.

    Establishment Republicans’ hopes are in vain.

    So says Dr. Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, one of America’s most influential think tanks. Who is he really, though, that we should put stock in such a prognostication?

    Answer: the latest in a long line of observers who’ve predicted likewise.

    “Trumpism Is The New American Phenomenon And It’s Here To Stay,” declared a July News X World headline.

    “Trumpism Is Here to Stay,” stated a June headline at the American Mind.

    “Trumpism Is Here to Stay,” proclaimed a 2021 headline at The American Spectator.

    “Why Trumpism is here to stay,” read a 2020 headline at The Hill.

    I don’t know who’s being original and who, if anyone, is being plagiarized but, well, you get the idea. There’s a chorus of voices. But assuming this Trumpism-staying-power thesis is correct, perhaps understanding why rests in grasping that it isn’t actually “Trumpism.” It’s far older.

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  • Affordability Crisis? Perspective and Propaganda

    Abstract illustration of a tree structure made of directional yellow signs pointing in various directions against a blue background.

    By Selwyn Duke

    Some politics wonks may remember 2010’s JournoList scandal. It was revealed that hundreds of left-wing journalists, academics, and political activists had been colluding via a private online gathering place and coordinating strategies and talking points. In other words, the “independent” media people certainly weren’t independent of each other; they were operating as a hive mind.

    Thus could we see revelatory video montages of liberal media figures all uttering the same lines — and thus do we still. And another example may be the now-common mantra about an “affordability crisis.”

    Interestingly, too, we didn’t hear this when the consumer price index (CPI, aka “inflation”) was 9.1 percent under Joe Biden. Yet we do now that it’s 3.0 percent under President Donald Trump.

    So what’s the truth? Is there really an “affordability crisis” — in particular, relative to the Biden years? Or is there just an ongoing honesty crisis in the once-mainstream media (which helps explain why it’s “once-mainstream”)? Commentator Bill O’Reilly examined this last week, offering the straight dope on what’s up, what’s down, and what’s, maybe, comin’ ’round.

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  • Man Who Said Men and Women Have Different Skeletons Jailed for Hate Speech

    An illustration of a giant businessman's shoe poised to step on a smaller man, symbolizing oppression and power dynamics.

    By Selwyn Duke

    When they found Ötzi, the Copper Age European whose remains were discovered in the Alps a few decades back, they nicknamed him The Iceman because they absolutely could identify him as having been a man. But maybe the forensic anthropologists making such determinations should be put in the pokey. That is, if the experience of a modern European, a hapless man named Emanuel Brünisholz, is any guide.

    After all, the Swiss wind-instrument repairman currently sits in jail for doing something related.

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  • Citizenship Clause Surreality: The Clause’s OWN Author Said it Doesn’t Include Aliens

    By Selwyn Duke

    Early in my commentary career, I found myself debating the meaning of one of my articles in an online chat with a woman who’d read the piece. Why the argument? Well, I was mischievous, I’ll confess, and, having a little fun, didn’t tell her I was the author. Towards our interaction’s conclusion she told me, quite confidently, that I didn’t understand what the writer was trying to say! (I lack self-knowledge, I guess.)

    At least, though, inherent in the exchange was the idea that original intent matters. I mention this because people today often behave as if it’s irrelevant. Just consider, for instance, the “birthright citizenship” issue, currently before the Supreme Court.

    Do you know that Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, a man who coauthored the Citizenship Clause, clearly explained what we’re all now arguing about? Read on.

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