Socialism’s favorite bait-and-switch



The Democratic Socialists of America are no longer hiding the ball.

In July, the organization published a manifesto calling on the United States to "establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.”

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

That is not a proposal for higher taxes, tighter regulation, or a larger welfare state. It is a demand to replace private ownership of America’s largest companies with government ownership.

The language is designed to sound appealing. Why should a handful of billionaires control enormous corporations while everyone else gets left behind? Why shouldn’t “the people” own those companies instead?

No more greedy executives collecting fortunes while workers earn far less. No need to nationalize every business — only the “essential” industries deemed too important to operate for profit or remain in private hands.

It sounds reasonable. It sounds as though power would finally be taken from wealthy corporations and returned to society.

But that is nearly how Fidel Castro sold communism to the Cuban people.

History shows that “ownership by the people” usually means control by the government. The public does not acquire power. Politicians and bureaucrats do.

Castro did not introduce himself as a communist promising state control over every part of Cuba’s economy. He said he was fighting corruption, inequality, and concentrated wealth. Private property and capitalism became the villains. The solution was to place the country’s most important industries under the control of “the people.”

The rhetoric sounded fair and humane. Wealthy owners would lose power, and ordinary Cubans would gain it.

The first part happened. The second did not.

RELATED: From helping hand to five-finger discount

Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Power was taken from private owners, but it never reached ordinary Cubans. It accumulated in the hands of the state. Today, Cubans live under political repression, chronic scarcity, and widespread poverty.

“Nothing belongs to you. It all belongs to the government,” Rosa Garcia, a survivor of Castro’s Cuba, recalled in an interview with Young Americans Against Socialism.

Garcia watched the transformation firsthand. She remembers Castro assuring Cubans that his revolution was not communist. Many believed him. Some hung signs on their doors reading, “This house is yours, Fidel.”

As government control expanded, private property rights disappeared. So did the ability to obtain goods, build wealth, or make basic economic choices without permission from the state.

When Garcia’s family later applied to leave Cuba, government officials came to their home and inventoried everything they owned to ensure they took nothing with them. Utensils, clothing, and household possessions all belonged to the government.

That is the reality behind the dreamy language of collective ownership. What supposedly belongs to everyone is controlled by the people who run the state.

Public ownership also carries enormous economic costs.

Private property gives people a reason to create, invest, innovate, and serve customers. Every smartphone, laptop, lifesaving medicine, digital platform, and other product we rely on exists because someone had the freedom to take a risk and the opportunity to profit from success.

Before Castro’s revolution, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s more prosperous countries. Today, it is one of the region’s poorest, with nearly 90% of its population living in severe poverty.

Take away private ownership, and you do more than redistribute wealth. You weaken the incentive to build businesses, develop technology, create jobs, and produce the prosperity those activities generate.

Supporters of democratic socialism will reasonably object that modern America is not revolutionary Cuba. The United States has stronger institutions, a different political culture, and constitutional protections Cuba did not preserve. Public ownership of one enterprise does not automatically produce a one-party communist state.

That distinction does not eliminate the underlying danger.

Nationalization begins with the easiest targets: highly profitable companies, billionaires accused of earning too much, and industries politicians label too important to remain privately owned.

RELATED: Who wants to eat a trillionaire?

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Once society accepts the principle that government may replace private ownership whenever politicians decide an owner is too rich or a company is too important, no clear limiting principle remains.

Why stop with the largest corporations?

Every industry placed under public ownership gives government officials more authority to decide how resources are used, which services are available, and who receives them.

Cuba’s history shows how quickly control of a few “key industries” can become a broad assault on private property. America would be foolish to assume the same principle could be embraced here without the same temptation to expand it.

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

Trump is continuing JFK’s war on communist subversion



When President Trump reposted a video featuring President John F. Kennedy warning about subversion in America, he renewed focus on a threat we have long ignored at our peril.

Spotlighting JFK’s admonition is part of the administration’s all-out attack on foreign subversion — an effort that has no presidential precedent. Its designation of Antifa and certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist organizations was a first. The revocation of visas for foreign subversives, if carried out on a larger scale, will be unmatched in scope.

Kennedy understood that peace through strength was broader than deploying military power or international diplomacy. But he never had the chance to deliver that warning.

During the July 16 Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and other officials made clear that the Trump administration would use every tool of statecraft to dismantle the decades-old subversive networks operating in the United States.

This effort has also refocused attention on an older — but no less potent — enemy: communist subversion.

The State Department published a 100-page report “Cuba: The Capital of 21st-Century Communism,” detailing how Cuban communists have worked for decades to overthrow the United States. It names names, past and present.

Cuba, of course, brings us back to President Kennedy. Despite his failed effort to remove Fidel Castro’s communist regime, Kennedy frequently pointed out how communists abused constitutional protections and infiltrated U.S. institutions — the news media, labor unions, academia, and the government itself.

JFK’s words still apply today to surviving Soviet spin-offs like the Cuban regime, critical theory and critical race theory, cultural Marxism, and democratic socialism.

As a new senator, at the height of Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s investigative hearings, Kennedy warned in successive speeches that the greatest foreign threat would rely on “the weapons of subversion, economic disintegration, and guerrilla warfare to accomplish our destruction, rather than the direct assault of an all-out war.”

Kennedy warned every possible audience — schoolteachers, university professors, community leaders, newspaper editors, women’s clubs, union leaders, military personnel, veterans, business groups, political fundraisers, civil liberties leaders, church groups, and the general public — about the communist threat right up to the last day of his life.

Kennedy recognized the danger posed by American traitors who sought, through subterfuge and collaboration with the foreign enemy, to corrode Americans’ belief in their country and the principles of their nation’s founding. He praised some American labor unions for ridding themselves of communist subversion.

Defending President Eisenhower’s counter-subversion approach in 1957, Kennedy nonetheless chided his fractured and squabbling Republican opponents. Republicans, he said, “found that their chief concern was with questions of disloyalty and subversion — not within the Federal Government but within the Republican Party.”

That was just three weeks to the day after Joe McCarthy’s death. JFK never publicly criticized McCarthy, who had been a welcome guest of his father at the Kennedy Compound on Cape Cod. “Half my people in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero,” he once said.

RELATED: The socialists are coming for the Senate

Kid-a/Getty Images

Infiltration and subversion

Kennedy repeatedly warned of what he called “nonmilitary avenues of Soviet advance”: “I fear our emphasis on the dangers of missile attacks may cause us to forget. For their thrust is more subtle,” and “the task of opposing them more formidable.”

Among those threats were “economic and political penetration, intimidation, and subversion,” he said in 1958. “There is little value in rushing new billions in defense expenditures to fight total wars ... if we are unprepared to prevent continued Soviet advances through ... subversion and intimidation.”

As he was preparing his presidential run, Kennedy mused during a speech at a civil liberties conference that the public had been so subjected to subversive attacks that they no longer shared the civic principles that once united them.

On the campaign trail in 1960, Kennedy raised the topic of subversion even before audiences asked about it. As the Democratic nominee for president, Kennedy became more critical of the Eisenhower administration for focusing on massive military buildups at the expense of a predictable pattern of communist ideological conquest made easier by America’s weakness in counter-subversion:

In other words, there is every chance that the pattern of conquest of the communists will not be military action, but will be by subversion, by fear, by persuading the people of those countries and their leaders that the communist system represents the way of the future. I don’t believe the administration has recognized that danger. ... I don’t believe that our influence has increased as fast in recent years abroad as that of the communists.

In his last weeks of campaigning, Kennedy even called the communist threat more challenging than dealing with the Nazis. “I must say that the problems we will face in the next 10 years are far more complex than any that Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman faced, particularly in the field of foreign policy,” he said to supporters in Ohio. “What has happened in the last two years in the field of foreign policy indicates a whole technique of subversion and infiltration, which will be extremely hard to counter.”

That subversion, he continued, “will require a far great[er] subtlety, far more constant vigilance, far greater personnel, far greater foresight than we have ever shown before.”

Unaware of President Eisenhower’s plan for toppling the new Fidel Castro regime that he would inherit, Kennedy tore into U.S. unpreparedness that led to Cuba becoming “a base from which to carry communist infiltration and subversion throughout the Americas.”

Kennedy was alone in bringing up subversion during his fourth debate with Vice President Richard M. Nixon, which was striking since Nixon had become a national political figure while serving on the House Un-American Activities Committee.

What you can do

Kennedy hammered away at the threat of communist subversion in the first minutes of his presidency. In his inaugural address, he vowed “to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas” — the same speech in which he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

He warned in a 1961 emergency address to Congress that “nuclear weapons cannot prevent subversion.”

He and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had no love for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, but they worked closely with him to investigate and disrupt communist infiltration of the civil rights movement. JFK, like Eisenhower before him and Lyndon Johnson and Nixon afterward, treated it properly as a counterintelligence problem.

On the day of his assassination in Dallas, President Kennedy was ready once again to warn about subversion. The president’s remarks as prepared read:

I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our society because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship. For this nation’s strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained, nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice. Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. Formal pacts of alliance cannot stop internal subversion.

Kennedy understood that peace through strength was broader than deploying military power or international diplomacy.

But he never had the chance to deliver that warning. More than six decades later, President Trump and his team have fortunately picked up where he left off, reviving a neglected part of Kennedy’s legacy. It’s time to follow President Kennedy’s lead and uproot domestic subversion in America once and for all.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at the American Mind.

State Department Report Reveals How Cuba Equipped The American Radical Left For 60 Years

A clear-headed American foreign policy should focus on vindicating American interests and defeating Cuba’s revolutionary activities against us.

The cure for liking socialism? Visiting a socialist country



One of the reasons I am alarmed by the socialist/communist trends in my own country is that I visited such countries in my youth.

My first look at communism was at Checkpoint Charlie in West Berlin in 1984. There, you crossed into East Berlin (the communist side) through a barbed wire, land-mined, machine gun-guarded, no-man’s land.

The bite wound — on her hand — appeared serious enough to require an antiseptic. But where could they find that, late at night, in Havana?

People had died trying to cross it.

Once inside East Berlin, you immediately saw why. The city was lifeless, poor, and depressing. The people were ugly and not safe to interact with. The general misery was suffocating. It was a huge relief to get back to West Berlin.

In the following years, I had other experiences in the “democratic socialist” countries of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, which were also chillingly prison-like and horrific.

After several decades of communism, all the normal people in these countries had escaped or died. Only the creeps, criminals, and mentally enfeebled remained.

I always believed that if Americans could see for themselves what “democratic socialism” looks like, they would be instantly dissuaded from supporting or advocating for it.

But as I’ve learned, that is not always the case.

Americans abroad

My favorite example is when an American friend (35) and her mother (61) visited Cuba in the 2010s. They were an adventurous duo and fairly seasoned travelers.

They were also very liberal. They both donated to NPR. They were both ardent fans of Rachel Maddow. And they would later suffer from severe cases of Trump derangement syndrome.

So what did they think of socialist Cuba? And its poverty, corruption, and lack of economic opportunity?

They loved it. They thought Cuba was great.

RELATED: Liberal critics hate 'The Wizard of the Kremlin' — that's how I knew it was worth a watch

Curiosa Films

Royalty among the peasants

Now, I have traveled to third-world countries myself, and I have been impressed by the resilience of the people. There is something romantic about such cultures, something satisfying about the simplicity and earthiness of their lives.

Part of the enjoyment of such places is that all standards are lowered. The locals are poor and uneducated. You are practically a philosopher-king among the peasants. You can relax and enjoy your superiority.

Havana moon

When my friend and her mother returned from Cuba, she told me about their trip: the great food, the picturesque street life. The two had gone to nightclubs and danced to incredible live music.

The locals fawned over them. A kindly Cuban woman invited them to her house for dinner. They bought peasant skirts, handmade hats, and local jewelry.

It was all very romantic. Everyone was so nice to them. The locals appreciated their interest in Cuban culture.

Straight from the horse’s mouth

They did have one problem though. The mother, while strolling along the promenade in Havana, was bitten by a horse.

The bite wound — on her hand — appeared serious enough to require an antiseptic. But where could they find that, late at night, in Havana?

No pharmacies were open. So they found a sympathetic bartender who doused the wound with vodka and wrapped it in a bar towel as best he could.

In the morning, it was worse. They had to find a doctor, which was not easy to do.

Finally, they found an English-speaking doctor, who was eager to help them once he found out the mother was married to a doctor in America.

He properly dressed the wound but mostly peppered the mother and daughter with questions about doctors in the USA. How much did they make? What kind of car did they drive? How big was their house?

The doctor hounded them for contact information. He was plotting his own escape. Fortunately, he had not escaped already and was there to help the mother with her horse-bitten hand.

Socialists love their socialism

I don’t mean to be critical of my friend, but this trip demonstrated why left-leaning liberals don’t see any problem with a socialist government.

To them, the slower pace of life is spiritually enriching. Not to mention the delicious food. And the soulful music.

If only Americans could be more like the Cubans. If only we weren’t such money-grubbing workaholics and could just relax and enjoy those sultry nights and the gorgeous Havana moon, which shone so bright in the sky (mostly because there was no electricity for street lights).

No, socialists love their socialism. Or rather their dream of socialism. I noticed that my friend was very happy to be back in the suburbs, to get back to her yoga class and her air-conditioned Suburu.

Trump DOJ files to strip Jamaican fraudster, Indian H-1B scammer, Haitian pervert, and 14 others of US citizenship



Federal officials filed a total of 305 denaturalization cases between 1990 and 2017 — an average of 11 per year. Like the first, the second Trump administration appears keen to make those previous numbers look like child's play.

The Trump Justice Department announced on Monday that it filed denaturalization actions in a handful of federal courts against 17 individuals accused of various crimes including child sex abuse and fraud.

'American citizenship is a privilege, and it must be earned honestly.'

Those now facing the possibility of having their U.S. citizenship revoked hail from various nations including China, Colombia, Congo, Cuba, Haiti, India, Jamaica, and Somalia.

"When criminal aliens exploit the naturalization process by breaking the law, there are consequences," acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement obtained by Blaze News.

"Criminal aliens are lying about their past crimes, including drug dealers, sexual predators, and fraudsters," continued Blanche. "Gaining U.S. citizenship is a privilege, and under the steadfast leadership of President Trump, this Department of Justice maintains a zero-tolerance policy for the abuse of this process."

Among those targeted under this leg of the administration's denaturalization campaign is 50-year-old Neeraj Sharma, a native of India who ran a staffing company in New Jersey, where he filed 11fraudulent H-1B visa petitions with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Sharma, who became a U.S. citizen in late 2017, has been convicted of fraud and misuse of visas. The DOJ seeks to strip him of his citizenship for having allegedly "procured his naturalization by: (1) failing to disclose unlawful acts; (2) providing false testimony; and (3) concealment of a material fact and willful misrepresentation."

RELATED: The case for denaturalization

Joshua Lott/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Foreigners who manage to naturalize can have their citizenship revoked in civil proceedings under Section 1451(a) of Title 8 of the U.S. Code if a court finds that the certificate of naturalization and citizenship order were either "illegally procured or were procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation."

To establish that an individual illegally procured citizenship, the government must show that "the naturalized citizen must have misrepresented or concealed some fact, the misrepresentation or concealment must have been willful, the fact must have been material, and the naturalized citizen must have procured citizenship as a result of the misrepresentation or concealment," according to the U.S. Supreme Court.

There are other grounds for denaturalization, including affiliation with an organization that is opposed to organized government or favors totalitarian forms of government; conviction of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before Congress on alleged "subversive activities"; and dishonorable discharge from the military, if naturalization was conditional on service in the military, reported the Congressional Research Service.

Jamaican native Talman Harris is also facing possible denaturalization. Harris was found guilty in 2016 of wire fraud and conspiring to commit securities fraud and wire fraud and sentenced to prison the following year for his role in a penny-stock fraud scheme that resulted in a $39 million loss to investors. This scheme took place over an eight-year period, including during Harris' naturalization proceedings.

The DOJ alleges that during the period in which Harris was pursuing naturalization, "he was statutorily required to demonstrate good moral character, he committed a crime involving moral turpitude, committed unlawful acts that adversely reflected on his moral character, and falsely testified about his crime."

Armando Medoza, a 39-year-old originally from Mexico, might also be sent packing for claiming during his naturalization application and interview that he had never committed a crime or offense for which he hadn't been arrested when in fact he had been receiving sexually explicit images of children for years — a crime to which he pleaded guilty years later.

Another pair of depraved individuals on the DOJ's denaturalization list are Jean Claude Alfred, a 68-year-old Haitian native convicted in 1996 of sexually abusing his minor daughter at the same time that he was pursuing naturalization, and Tahir Lekaj, a 43-year-old from Yugoslavia who was convicted of sexually abusing a young child the year before he applied to naturalize.

Abdikadir Ali Kadiye's days as an American citizen may also be numbered. The Somali native admitted to a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent that he had used two identities for admission to the country, according to the DOJ. After he was unable to secure immigration benefits under one name, Kadiye tried again, this time with some success.

"American citizenship is a privilege, and it must be earned honestly. If you come here, break our laws, and lie in your immigration proceedings, you forfeit that privilege," said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "DHS will not stand idly by while Americans are harmed by criminals including sex offenders, perpetrators of fraud, and drug traffickers who have exploited our generosity and gamed our immigration system."

There have been signals in recent months that the Trump administration intends to file far more denaturalization actions in the coming months.

For instance, internal guidance reportedly issued to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices obtained by the New York Times in December asked that they "supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month" throughout the remainder of fiscal year 2026.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Pro-China Rich Guy Neville Roy Singham Draws Growing Scrutiny Over Far-Left Activism

Spending American-made money from Shanghai as a far-left activist, Singham supports a wide range of narrative-influencing operations.

Hasan Piker is a pawn in THIS foreign regime's 'ideological warfare' against America



It has never been easier for hostile foreign powers to weaken the United States, and leftist influencer Hasan Piker is a great example of why that is.

“The Cuban regime wanted him in Cuba,” Blaze media co-founder Glenn Beck says. “Not just as a tourist or, you know, a curious American. According to Hasan himself, the Cuban government reached out through the embassy contacts and essentially said, ‘Hey, if internet access is the problem, we’ll provide it.’”

Piker discussed the situation during a recent podcast appearance, explaining that the Cuban government “hit [his] contact” and told him that if the “only thing stopping [him] from coming to Cuba was the consistent internet access,” the government could “make it happen.”

“So they want him over there now. Why? This is a communist dictatorship,” Glenn says. “A regime that jails dissidents, kills them, censors free speech. A regime that has survived decades through propaganda, intelligence operations, anti-American agitation.”


"You’ve got hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Cubans living here in the United States that escaped this monstrous regime. And they wanted to facilitate one of America’s biggest online political voices,” he continues.

Glenn points out that hostile governments don’t accidentally invest in Americans with large political platforms.

“Cuba’s not calling me and going, ‘Oh, you want a landline? We’ll get you a landline,’” he says.

“Let me be really clear on something here. That does not make Hasan Piker a Cuban spy, OK? More of a useful idiot,” he says, explaining that it’s more “about influence networks.”

“This is about how foreign states cultivate narratives inside free society. And America’s been asleep at the switch while this has been happening for years,” he continues. “The Soviet Union understood this. China understands this. Iran understands this. Cuba understands this. Hell, America, our CIA — we probably invented it.”

“And what we all learned is you don’t defeat — especially America — tank versus tank any more. You have to weaken trust. You fracture identity. You radicalize citizens,” he says.

“You convince young Americans that their country is evil, irredeemable, racist, colonial, genocidal, corrupt beyond repair, whatever the popular thing is this week. And once you get enough people believing that, then the republic just begins collapsing from the inside voluntarily,” he explains.

“That’s ideological warfare,” he adds. “And that’s what is happening.”

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Zohran Mamdani Humiliated as Billionaire Responds w/ Warning of His Own
play icon

Zohran Mamdani Humiliated as Billionaire Responds w/ Warning of His Own

Hasan Piker tests the line between dissent and enemy aid



Hasan Piker has built a lucrative career denouncing the United States from inside the United States. That arrangement has always carried a certain comic hypocrisy. But his reported subpoena over a March trip to Cuba raises a question far more serious than one streamer’s revolutionary cosplay.

When does anti-American activism become aid to America’s enemies?

The academy may discover that Americans have grown tired of funding institutions that teach students to despise the nation that sustains them.

The latest controversy surrounding Piker is not merely another internet spectacle. It touches an old constitutional question: What limits apply when political activism moves from criticism of American policy into support for regimes hostile to the United States?

Investigators with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control have reportedly subpoenaed Piker and CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin over their March trip to Cuba as part of the “Nuestra América Convoy.” The investigation concerns possible violations of U.S. sanctions law, including the financing, coordination, and delivery of goods to the Cuban regime.

The details remain incomplete, and a subpoena obviously is not a conviction. But the story matters because it exposes a broader issue universities, politicians, and media elites have avoided for years.

What counts as “aiding America’s enemies”?

Coordination is key

According to reports, investigators seek financial, logistical, and communications records related to the trip. The inquiry reportedly centers on whether activists coordinated with Cuban government entities or violated sanctions restrictions administered through OFAC.

Piker has framed the investigation as an attempt to silence criticism of the United States and Israel. He has defended the convoy as humanitarian relief. He has also praised communist Cuba while enjoying the freedoms and opportunities of the United States. He did not, apparently, spend much time asking Cuban-Americans why they fled the island.

Cuba is not merely a tropical backdrop for revolutionary aesthetics. It remains a communist dictatorship and a longstanding U.S. adversary. American sanctions against Cuba arose from decades of geopolitical conflict, expropriation of American property, intelligence operations, and alliance with hostile foreign powers.

That is why the law treats this area seriously.

In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on providing “material support” to designated foreign terrorist organizations, even when that support took the form of training or coordinated advocacy. The court reasoned that seemingly benign support can legitimize hostile organizations and free resources for more dangerous activities.

The key legal principle is coordination.

RELATED: Woke ‘Squad’ member appears to confess to undermining Trump embargo on Cuba

Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

Independent speech criticizing America remains constitutionally protected. Americans may denounce foreign policy, oppose wars, criticize sanctions, or defend unpopular causes. But direct coordination with hostile foreign entities belongs in a different category. Logistical support, fundraising, organized assistance, and coordinated propaganda can cross the line from protected dissent into unlawful support.

That distinction is vital. It also leads to a question much larger than Hasan Piker.

From scholarship to treason

For years, professors at publicly funded universities have argued that violence against the United States is morally justified because of colonialism, slavery, capitalism, or American support for Israel. Some have praised political violence abroad as “resistance.” Others have defended Hamas rhetoric as “decolonial struggle.” Still others have trained students to view America itself as an illegitimate regime founded on oppression.

At what point does this cease to be scholarship and become ideological assistance to America’s enemies?

The modern university loves to invoke “academic freedom” as though the phrase ends all debate. But academic freedom was never meant to shield every form of political agitation from public scrutiny. Nor does it require taxpayers to subsidize institutions that teach students to despise the constitutional order that protects them.

A professor at a public university holds a privileged position funded by taxpayers and entrusted with forming the minds of future citizens. That status does not erase his constitutional rights. But it does heighten the public’s interest in what universities reward, protect, and promote.

Can a tax-funded professor argue that Americans deserve violent retaliation? Can he encourage students to view foreign terrorist organizations as morally justified revolutionaries? Can he defend armed resistance against the United States as a legitimate response to “settler colonialism”?

Universities have spent decades pretending these questions do not exist. Many of the same institutions that warn endlessly about white supremacy tolerate faculty rhetoric that justifies violence against Americans, Israelis, and other supposed oppressors in the name of liberation.

They have built entire departments on ideological hostility to the American constitutional order. Students learn that the United States is fundamentally illegitimate, that Western Civilization is inherently oppressive, and that power — not truth or justice — determines morality. Under those assumptions, violence becomes easy to rationalize as liberation.

Campus activism has repeatedly celebrated anti-American movements abroad while denouncing America itself as uniquely evil. Faculty members increasingly blur the line between analysis and activism, between scholarship and revolutionary agitation, all from tax-funded offices under institutional protection.

RELATED: Democrats don’t have a fix for their extremism problem

Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The contradiction is striking. Universities often police ordinary constitutional patriotism while tolerating rhetoric sympathetic to regimes hostile to the United States. Professors may face investigation for questioning DEI orthodoxy or praising MAGA politics, while admiration for Marxist revolutionary movements often receives the protection of “academic freedom.”

The Hasan Piker subpoena exposes this double standard.

An overdue reckoning?

The issue is not whether Americans may criticize their government. Of course they may. The First Amendment protects dissent because free societies tolerate disagreement.

But the First Amendment does not require public institutions to pretend that all forms of anti-American agitation carry the same civic meaning. A democracy may distinguish between criticism of its policies and organized sympathy for hostile regimes. It may distinguish between unpopular speech and material coordination. It may distinguish between scholarship and indoctrination.

Universities should have drawn those lines long ago.

If professors encourage students to sympathize with anti-American violence, defend revolutionary movements hostile to the United States, or justify armed resistance against the constitutional order, taxpayers may reasonably ask whether public universities are subsidizing ideological warfare against the nation itself.

For years, universities dismissed these concerns as paranoia.

Now federal subpoenas may force the country to revisit them in public.

And the academy may discover that Americans have grown tired of funding institutions that teach students to despise the nation that sustains them.

‘They’re Up My Ass’: Everything You Need To Know About Feds’ Probe Into Left’s Favorite Influencer

Piker called the investigation 'bullshit'