New massacre, old problem: How Syria can protect its religious minorities



As Syria’s Christian community mourns its dead, we are compelled to confront the barbaric act committed against the Orthodox Christian community and the persistent dangers facing other minorities in the region. To understand this tragedy and chart a path forward, we must first revisit the turbulent history of Syria and the Levant.

In the early 20th century, Syria stood at the crossroads of empire and identity. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I gave way to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which carved up the Levant into spheres of European influence.

In Syria, federalism could succeed if implemented with fairness, robust minority protections, and international support to prevent external meddling.

Syria fell under French mandate in 1920, a betrayal of promises for an independent Arab kingdom. Instead, it became a colonial outpost shaped by European interests rather than the aspirations of its diverse peoples: Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, and others. The French exploited sectarian divisions to maintain control, sowing seeds of mistrust that would linger for generations.

When Syria gained independence in 1946, it inherited a fragmented society with no clear framework for governing its complex population. The decades that followed were marked by coups, political instability, and the rise of the Ba’ath Party, which promised secular socialism but delivered authoritarianism instead.

Hafez al-Assad’s ascent in 1970 cemented a dynastic rule that concentrated power in a narrow, Alawite-dominated elite. While the regime claimed to protect minorities, it often sidelined or suppressed other ethnic and religious groups, fostering resentment beneath a veneer of secular nationalism.

A brutal turning point

The Arab Spring of 2011 shattered this fragile order. Peaceful protests against authoritarianism were met with brutal repression, igniting a civil war that drew in foreign powers and fractured the nation.

Amid the chaos, extremist factions like ISIS emerged, targeting religious minorities as enemies of their radical vision. Christians, whose presence in Syria dates back two millennia, faced systematic persecution, with historic churches destroyed and communities displaced.

This past year, the trauma deepened. Last month, a suicide bomber opened fire during Sunday mass in a small church in western Syria, killing 22 worshippers and wounding 63 in an attack reminiscent of ISIS’ atrocities in Qaraqosh and Maaloula.

The Druze minority in the south faced similar threats from Islamic groups within the coalition that ousted the Assad regime. To their credit, the Druze, with support from Israel, armed and defended their communities. The Alawite minority endured revenge killings in the wake of regime change, while the Kurds, battle-hardened but geopolitically isolated, remain vulnerable due to Turkey’s hostility.

These incidents underscore a grim reality: Syria’s minorities are pawns in a larger geopolitical game, their survival perpetually at risk.

A new solution: Federalism

This is not a moment for empty platitudes. Syria needs to confront a painful truth: A unitary, centrally governed state has repeatedly failed to protect its people, especially its minorities. The alternative, however, is federalism.

A federal Syria would not mean partition but rather an organized decentralization of power. Regions could govern themselves according to their cultural, ethnic, or religious identities, while national unity would be preserved for issues like foreign policy and defense. Christians, Druze, Alawites, and Kurds could administer their affairs, ensure their security, preserve their heritage, and rebuild trust in governance.

Such a system would empower local communities to protect Christian populations, preventing the decimation of ancient communities as seen in Iraq after 2003. A federal structure would foster resilience against external threats, allowing minorities to safeguard their futures.

RELATED: Syria’s new rulers: From jihadist terror to ‘moderate’ media rebrand

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Federalism, though imperfect, has stabilized other post-conflict, multiethnic societies. Iraq’s Kurdish region, despite challenges, enjoys significant autonomy. Bosnia’s power-sharing model, while complex, has maintained peace. Even Switzerland’s federal system, rooted in linguistic and cultural diversity, provides a blueprint for striking a balance between local autonomy and national cohesion.

In Syria, federalism could succeed if implemented with fairness, robust minority protections, and international support to prevent external meddling.

A break from the past

Pan-Arab nationalism and centralized rule, imposed after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, failed to deliver either stability or pluralism. Syria’s latest church attack adds to a long history of betrayals against its minority populations.

To survive as more than a failed state, Syria must adopt a structure that protects the vulnerable and manages its divisions, not one that tries to crush them. Federalism won’t solve everything, and many will resist it. But Syria has already tested the alternative — consolidated power, endless violence — and that path led to ruin.

Why I won’t celebrate Juneteenth as a federal holiday



Expect a wave of corporate media pieces today, all aiming to elevate Juneteenth’s importance in the American consciousness. These articles are sanctimonious, astroturfed exercises in progressive virtue signaling — gaslighting the public into believing Juneteenth deserves equal or even greater recognition than the Fourth of July.

But Juneteenth neither marks the beginning of slavery nor its end. Activists have hijacked the holiday to undermine the moral clarity of Independence Day.

Juneteenth has been weaponized to fracture America’s identity through deception and denigration.

Juneteenth commemorates the day Union Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and declare the end of slavery in the state. Early celebrations called it “Jubilee Day,” marking the delayed but welcome fulfillment of the Constitution’s promise and the Declaration’s revolutionary spirit — at least in Texas.

For decades, Juneteenth remained a Texas tradition. It held official status as a state holiday for 41 years and an unofficial one since 1866. But in recent years, radical activists have repurposed it as a tool to advance a racialist rewrite of American history.

A ‘George Floyd’ holiday

Before George Floyd's death in 2020, few progressives were even aware of Juneteenth's existence. But after Black Lives Matter-led riots caused over $1.5 billion in property damage and left at least 20 dead, the left seized the cultural moment. Activists bullied lawmakers into submission — both figuratively and literally.

That year, members of Congress knelt in kente cloth as a gesture of obedience. The Pentagon renamed military bases to satisfy a new moral order. Corporations slapped critical theory slogans on products. The so-called “black national anthem” was played at sporting events, eclipsing the actual national anthem.

And then came the crowning gesture: the creation of a new federal holiday. Juneteenth became the woke sacrament, signaling America’s supposedly unending racism.

It was ludicrous then. It’s borderline insane now.

Juneteenth is Texan — and that’s all

Texas has every right to honor Juneteenth. The holiday commemorates the fulfillment of America’s founding ideals and the abolition of one of humanity’s most enduring evils. But beyond Texas, it holds no national significance.

Juneteenth doesn’t fall on the date of the Emancipation Proclamation. It doesn’t mark the actual end of slavery in the United States. Activists howl in protest, but the truth remains: Juneteenth has been repurposed to challenge and eventually replace Independence Day.

Most of the people writing solemn op-eds about Juneteenth don’t know its history — and they don’t care. What they do care about is creating a “new” Independence Day, one that fits a progressive narrative. Its placement on the calendar — just weeks before July 4 — is no accident.

This is part of the left’s long march through American institutions. National holidays shape national identity. And Juneteenth now functions as a tool to fracture that identity under the guise of moral progress.

Under the Biden administration, some military installations flew flags calling Juneteenth “National Independence Day.” The Department of Defense distributed official guidance using that exact phrase. Nikole Hannah-Jones, architect of the historically illiterate “1619 Project,” uses Juneteenth to promote her claim that America’s true founding began with the arrival of African slaves, not the signing of the Declaration.

Divide, rewrite, replace

As a former Marine and combat veteran, I recognize these tactics: divide and conquer, rewrite and replace. They follow a playbook.

Juneteenth’s federal recognition aims not to celebrate American emancipation but rather to distract from the actual Independence Day. The broader goal is to erode national unity and advance a Marxist agenda: divide Americans by race, replace shared history with grievance, and erase what came before.

RELATED: We should scrap Juneteenth, aka George Floyd Day, for a holiday commemorating America’s 1865 rebirth

  Blaze Media Illustration

I lived in Texas for many years. I’ll celebrate Juneteenth as a Texas holiday. The end of slavery deserves celebration. I would even support a national holiday that commemorates the abolition of slavery, honestly.

But I won’t join in the farce that Juneteenth represents America’s independence. Too many Americans gave their lives to preserve our constitutional republic and the revolutionary idea that all men are created equal and endowed by God with unalienable rights.

Independence Day remains the foundation of this nation. It paved the way for emancipation, the defeat of fascism, the collapse of communism, and the rise of the most prosperous country in world history.

The radical left understands this. That’s why it has targeted Juneteenth as a cultural wedge. Leftists expect Americans to bow at the altar of wokeness and pretend not to notice. And if we object, they call us pro-slavery.

I reject that lie.

I refuse to bend the knee to a movement that seeks to destroy everything good and true about this country. The stakes are too high — and the truth is too important to surrender.

Why is Gavin Newsom going full Jefferson Davis?



What triggered the American Civil War were state officials who refused to honor federal law and instead boasted of their open defiance of Washington.

That precedent appears to be the incendiary model for the increasingly erratic behavior of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

Has Newsom accepted the polls and decided to end his political career in a blaze of ideological glory?

He now backs the often-violent protesters in Los Angeles resisting federal enforcement of immigration laws. Newsom labeled President Trump’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain those here illegally “reckless,” “chaotic,” and “eroding trust.”

Does he imagine that this rhetoric is calming the situation or building public trust? Or is he consciously following the model of Confederate President Jefferson Davis?

Does Newsom also support the defiance of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), who nearly called for official resistance to federal law, declaring, “We will not stand for this”?

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Bass — who was junketing in Ghana as large swaths of Los Angeles burned in January — used the term “we.” Does she mean the entire city? The LAPD? Will Bass direct city police to block federal officers lawfully enforcing federal immigration statutes?

Does the governor understand that his reckless rhetoric about “states’ rights” empowers violent protesters who torch vehicles, assault civilians, and attack officers?

Consider fellow California Democrat Rep. Norma Torres. She issued a vulgar message to federal immigration officers: “Get the f**k out of L.A.”

Does Torres now believe Los Angeles should become the 21st-century South Carolina, circa 1861, defying the federal government outright?

Is she echoing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who recently boasted he would “identify” endangered ICE agents and publicize their personal information? His words: “Every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will of course be identified.”

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Does Torres view ICE officers — outnumbered, undermanned, and increasingly under siege — as modern-day incarnations of the federal troops cornered at Fort Sumter?

Newsom didn’t stop at siding with street protesters who resist federal authority. He also lashed out again at the Trump administration for warning California that it must comply with federal Title IX executive orders prohibiting biological males from competing in women’s sports.

Trump, in this case, followed the precedent set by the Obama administration, which also threatened to cut off funding from schools to schools that refused to follow its Title IX interpretations.

Here’s how Newsom responded: “Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it’s time to cut that off.”

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Cut that off?

Has Newsom read the Constitution?

Is he actually calling for Californians to stop paying federal taxes? Does he understand he just implicitly endorsed felony tax evasion under 18 USC Section 2?

States have no legal authority to withhold federal income taxes from their citizens. In 1861, rhetoric like that nearly destroyed the Union.

RELATED: Lies, flags, and firebombs: Just another ‘mostly peaceful’ riot in LA

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And does Newsom really believe that California’s supposed $80 billion “contribution” somehow bankrolls the federal government? That surplus amounts to just 1.5% of the $5.5 trillion in federal revenue this fiscal year. Hardly enough to “pay the bills.”

California taxpayers are American citizens first, Californians second. Newsom, with his history of championing sanctuary cities and nullifying federal law, increasingly resembles a modern-day George Wallace.

But Newsom, Bass, and Torres aren’t just echoing Confederate-style defiance. They’re also swimming against public opinion.

Despite media theatrics and left-wing outrage, even CBS’ own polling found that 54% of Americans support deportation as a legitimate enforcement tool.

Meanwhile, Newsom’s political stock continues to plummet. Just 2% of Democrats in one recent poll want him as their 2028 nominee. In a broader average of 30 polls, only 27% of Americans view him favorably.

So does Newsom think violent lawbreakers — some burning the American flag while waving foreign ones — are winning over the American public?

Does he understand that 97% of Americans in a Pew Research survey said they favor deporting violent criminal aliens like those seen sowing chaos on the streets of Los Angeles?

Or has he accepted the polls — and decided to end his political career in a blaze of ideological glory?

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally on X.

A Marine’s Memorial Day message: Don’t forget the price



This weekend, we observe Memorial Day, a national day of remembrance first established by General John A. Logan’s “General Order No. 11,” issued on May 5, 1868, by the Grand Army of the Republic. The order declared:

The 30th day of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers and otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.

Logan’s order codified a practice that was already widespread across the country. In the years following the Civil War, Americans from both the North and South began gathering to honor the fallen. Logan provided that instinct with formal significance and established a national calendar.

In 1998, while serving as a professor at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, I had the honor of delivering the city’s annual Memorial Day address at City Hall. In those remarks, I warned that the true meaning of the holiday was slipping away.

Memorial Day permits us to enlarge the individual soldier’s view — giving broader meaning to the sacrifice that was accepted by some but offered by all.

Memorial Day had become little more than a three-day weekend. For many, it marked the start of summer — just another excuse for a cookout. But that was never the intent.

The holiday was established to solemnly reflect on the lives lost in service to the country. It offered catharsis for those who fought and survived. And it served as a national promise to remember those who gave everything so that the republic — and the principles that sustain it — might live.

A long history of sacrifice

I argued that Americans have forgotten how to honor their war heroes and remember their war dead. My friend and fellow Marine “Bing” West made the point forcefully in his powerful book on Fallujah, “No True Glory.” Stories of battlefield courage, he wrote, must “be recorded and read by the next generation. Unsung, the noblest deed will die.”

During my remarks, I recalled acts of heroism from the Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam. I spoke about a grieving mother who had written to me after her son — one of my Marines — was killed in Vietnam in May 1969. I asked, rhetorically: Why do men like those Marines under my command willingly fight and die?

Glen Gray offered one answer in “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle”:

Numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other abstract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves, they would expose their companions to greater danger. Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale.

Gray’s insight matches my experience. In the heat of combat, soldiers don’t talk about ideology. They think about each other. They fight to protect their brothers.

And yet, while the individual soldier’s focus narrows to survival and loyalty, Memorial Day offers us the chance to widen that lens. It helps us see the larger meaning of sacrifice — accepted by some but offered by all.

Memorial Day gives the nation a chance to recognize those sacrifices and validate them through the only lens that matters: the founding principles of the American republic.

‘Mystic chords of memory’

I noted in 1998 that Pericles, in his famous funeral oration during the Peloponnesian War, gave meaning to the Athenian dead by praising the excellence of Athens. He honored their sacrifice by affirming the civilization they died defending.

President Abraham Lincoln did something similar four months after the Battle of Gettysburg. At the dedication of the cemetery there, he expanded on what he had previously called the “mystic chords of memory” in his first inaugural address — those chords stretching “from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land.”

Lincoln gave universal meaning to the particular deaths on that hallowed ground. He allowed Americans to understand Memorial Day through the lens of Independence Day — to see the end of those soldiers’ lives in light of the nation’s beginning and the purpose of the American republic.

I argued that the deaths at Gettysburg, throughout the Civil War, and in all of America’s wars must be understood in relation to the founding principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence. Throughout history, countless brave soldiers have died fighting for causes that were unjust. Americans, by contrast, are fortunate. We can anchor the sacrifice of our fallen to a moral proposition: that all men are created equal.

Some critics accused me of glorifying war — of sentimentalizing conflict, justifying unjust campaigns, and trivializing death. But that critique misses the point. Soldiers enlist for many reasons. But almost all are motivated, at least in part, by a sense of duty, honor, and love of country.

That love of country — patriotism — is under constant attack. Critical race theory and the 1619 Project insist that America’s founding was corrupt and its principles invalid. But they’re wrong. A country built on decent principles, however imperfect its journey, remains a cause worth defending — and, if necessary, dying for.

My intention was never to trivialize individual loss. The death of a soldier marks the end of youth, promise, and joy. No speech or philosophy can console the family left behind. The mother who wrote to me after losing her Marine son in Vietnam carried a grief no words could ease.

Her anguish reminded me of Kipling’s “Epitaphs of the War,” especially the fourth verse, “An Only Son”:

“I have slain none but my mother;
She (blessing her slayer) died of grief for me.”

Kipling, too, lost his only son in World War I.

But as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in his Memorial Day address of 1884:

Grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death — of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

So by all means, have that burger this weekend. Enjoy the cookout. Go to the beach. But also take some time to remember to honor those who died to make your weekend possible.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Learn From Our History’ — Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves Stands By Confederate History Month

'Both the good times and the bad times'

Trump Should Restore The ‘Reconciliation Memorial’ To Arlington National Cemetery ASAP

Trump's worthy efforts to restore historical markers must include Moses Ezekiel’s 'Reconciliation Memorial' in Arlington National Cemetery.

Weekend Beacon 3/16/25

Last week, while Trump hosted Ireland's prime minister at the White House, the parish of St. John the Beloved, just across the river, held its annual Irish-Italian cookoff. The competition is closer than you think—one side is a cornucopia of potatoes, corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes (did I mention potatoes?) and the other side is a sea of red.

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An American Hero, No Longer Unsung

Born in Massachusetts in 1823, Higginson was a crusader for many causes, encouraged by his mother’s wish that he set himself "on a course that will lead to perfection." A boxer in his teens and a graduate of Harvard by 17 (he later returned for his graduate studies), Higginson dedicated his life to fighting for what he called a "Sisterhood of Reforms" that would enable America to live up to the promise of its principles. Though he was the descendant of New England’s first white settlers, he, as Egerton puts it, "cast his lot with the persecuted and oppressed." Along the way he interacted and often befriended his era’s most seminal figures. He mentored a young Emily Dickinson, sipped tea with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and maintained close ties with Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau. He debated abolitionist strategies with Frederick Douglass, hosted Ralph Waldo Emerson, and had frequent dinners with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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Why coexistence with the left is impossible



President Donald Trump’s MAGA Supreme speech to Congress on Tuesday made one thing clear. After a Democrat responded to the speech who promotes trans propaganda and MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace attacked a kid with brain cancer, it is clear: We can’t share a country with these people.

Another generation of my family was born last year, and I want to be able to tell them honestly that they can pursue their dreams in the greatest country on Earth. But that vision feels increasingly out of reach when much of our culture appears to sympathize more with a fired federal worker than with a girl who was raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant or with a young athlete harassed by a troubled boy in her sports team’s locker room or bathroom.

These people hate us. There’s no point in pandering to them, no point in negotiating, and no point in making concessions. Just defeat them.

Trump’s speech sharply underscored the real problem: If we can’t live peacefully with our neighbors and don’t trust our institutions, how can we maintain a country?

This issue goes far beyond theoretical debates in political science 101. Democrat women attended Trump’s speech dressed in all pink to promote so-called women’s rights, despite every Democrat in the U.S. Senate recently voting against protecting female athletes from transgender terrorism.

This absurd and unsustainable reality was a point we drove home to weak-kneed Iowa Republicans who were poised to block efforts to remove gender identity from Iowa’s civil rights protections. My show called out about 10 of them by name, exposing how their actions aligned more with the governor of Maine’s betrayal of girls than with the interests of Iowans. In less than 24 hours, a potentially close vote turned into a landslide victory.

If you agree with Democrats on their insanity, just be honest and switch sides. But never bow to people who will never vote for you, no matter how many woke boxes you check while keeping an “R” next to your name. The math is simple now, and it doesn’t matter if it makes you uncomfortable. This is Thunderdome: Two enter, one leaves. Which side are you on?

As bloody and terrible as it was, the European countries that fought each other in World War I had far more in common with each other than a Blaze News subscriber has with modern progressives. It’s not even close. Life in early 20th-century Berlin wasn’t much different from life in early 20th-century London. They shared similar values, the same ruling families intermarrying, and even the same DNA strands. Yet they still went to war. Meanwhile, a century later, modern blue-state Americans let politicians like Boston’s mayor offer empty thoughts and prayers for a lunatic who had to be shot by an off-duty police officer to stop him from stabbing innocent bystanders at a Chick-fil-A.

The cosmic gap between worldviews and the duties of citizenship in America has grown so vast that it’s hard to imagine so-called Americans — like the 45 U.S. senators who can’t figure out the difference between male and female — ever agreeing on enough to fight alongside us in a war. Our fundamentals aren’t just different; they’re in direct opposition. The debate over women’s sports is just the starting point for a much larger battle about the very nature of reality and whether we can continue to coexist.

Have we become existential enemies? Our opponents seem to think so. That’s why they constantly label us as racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and homophobic bigots at every opportunity. Those are the kinds of accusations you throw when the time for compromise has passed and the only thing left is to fight for the best possible outcome. These people hate us. There’s no point in pandering to them, no point in negotiating, and no point in making concessions.

Just defeat them. No apologies, no remorse. Have some dignity and do what needs to be done, for the love of God and the future of your children. Take back this country — and do it now, before it’s too late.

Lincoln, Davis, and a Biography Divided

The American Civil War was a war of dualities—North and South, Union and Confederate, slave and free—and never less so than when it comes to dual biographies. Pairing personalities—Lee and Grant, Lee and Jackson, Grant and Sherman, McClellan and Lincoln—has been one of the most unusual features of the limitless literature of the Civil War. Inevitably, the two wartime presidents, Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, have garnered their own large share of such double-barreled studies: Brian Dirck’s Lincoln and Davis: Imagining America, 1809-1865 (2001), Augustin Stucker’s Lincoln & Davis: A Dual Biography of America’s Civil War Presidents (2011), Bruce (and William) Catton’s Two Roads to Sumter (1963), Bruce Chadwick’s The Two American Presidents: A Dual Biography of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis (1999).

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