The American dream now comes with upgrade fees



Over the last few decades, many industries discovered they could grow their customer base and profits by selling a cheaper, inferior version of their product while degrading the experience for everyone. Air travel and theme parks are obvious examples. Both learned that the advantages of scale could outweigh the obligation to deliver a high-quality experience.

That philosophy did not remain in the realm of economics. It spread slowly but surely into American public life. The United States government increasingly treats the country the same way: expand the customer base, maximize throughput, then sell people a tiered version of the American experience as the baseline crumbles.

An America designed for everyone eventually becomes an America belonging to no one in particular.

The old theme-park model was simple. You paid one admission price and had roughly the same access to rides and attractions as everyone else. The problem was capacity. If too many people entered, everyone spent the day standing in line.

The solution was brilliant. Sell more tickets, let the lines grow, then charge customers extra to escape the congestion the company created. Premium passes make the park tolerable for people willing to pay, but they do not fix crowded restaurants, bathrooms, sidewalks, or parking lots. The park serves more customers, earns more money, and becomes less pleasant.

The fast-pass system is especially revealing because the premium product is not really a new attraction. It is relief from the congestion created by admitting more customers. The company first degrades the common experience and then monetizes the escape hatch. That is the genius of the model. The wealthy do not merely buy more; they buy protection from the consequences of scale. Everyone else gets longer lines and is told that broader access represents progress.

Air travel followed a similar path. Flying was once expensive enough that many Americans rarely did it, but the experience was more comfortable and predictable. Low-cost carriers expanded the market by packing more seats into cabins and turning ordinary features into add-ons. Legacy airlines copied the model. More people could fly, but the customer experience became a maze of fees, cramped cabins, crowded airports, security lines, and delays.

This democratization was celebrated as progress, and in one obvious sense it was. Schoolteachers and retail workers could travel more cheaply and more often. But scale always has costs. When capacity expands faster than the infrastructure supporting it, abundance in one measure can produce scarcity in another.

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The United States has applied the same logic to immigration. For decades, political and business leaders treated population growth as an economic good in itself. Illegal immigration and expansive legal immigration increased the supply of workers and consumers. Employers gained labor, investors gained demand, and headline economic measures such as GDP benefited from a larger economy. But a larger economy is not automatically a better country for the people already living in it.

Housing, roads, hospitals, schools, water systems, and power grids do not expand automatically with population. In places where growth outruns capacity, prices rise and service deteriorates.

Housing is the clearest example. The National Association of Realtors reported the median first-time buyer reached age 40 in 2025, though other estimates put the figure lower. Whatever the exact number, Americans are buying homes later, delaying marriage and children, and paying more for less space.

Labor markets create another conflict. Immigration can lower costs for employers and raise overall output while imposing concentrated costs on particular workers. Those effects are especially visible in lower-wage industries but also appear in sectors such as technology, where companies have long used and abused visa programs to expand the labor pool.

The costs are not purely economic. Large and rapid immigration can slow assimilation, especially when newcomers settle in concentrated communities large enough to reproduce the language, institutions, and customs of the countries they left. The result is not always conflict, but it can weaken the expectation that immigrants adapt to a common national culture.

The same sorting mechanism appears geographically. Families with enough money move away from crowded schools, failing services, and disorder, while people without that option absorb the consequences. Political leaders can then point to aggregate growth while the public realm fractures into radically different experiences depending on zip code and income.

The national statistics improve even as ordinary life becomes more expensive, more crowded, and less coherent. The public system remains available to everyone, but equality of access increasingly conceals inequality in the actual experience. That leaves Americans with a familiar arrangement: The baseline experience declines, while affluent people purchase private substitutes.

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Want a quiet neighborhood? Buy into a gated community. Want orderly schools? Pay private-school tuition. Want safety? Hire private security. Want enough space to raise a family? Move farther from the economic centers where you work. The things that once arrived as part of ordinary middle-class American life increasingly become premium upgrades.

The university completes the joke. It teaches students the moral case for ever-greater replacement migration while providing the credentials needed to earn enough money to avoid many of its consequences.

Other countries already show where this can lead. Brazil has wealthy neighborhoods, excellent private schools, luxury shopping, and first-world amenities alongside dangerous and dirty favelas. People with money can buy back pieces of civilization through walls, guards, private education, and exclusive enclaves.

That is not the American dream.

The American ideal was never perfect equality, but it did promise a broadly shared public world: safe streets, functional schools, attainable homes, reliable infrastructure, and a national culture recognizable to the people who inherited it. A nation cannot maximize scale forever without asking what, exactly, it is scaling. GDP is not a civilization. A labor market is not a people. A proper country cannot be reduced to an economic zone whose success is measured by how many workers and consumers it can process.

An America designed for everyone eventually becomes an America belonging to no one in particular. If we want the country to remain a nation rather than a marketplace, we will have to value continuity, capacity, assimilation, and the welfare of existing citizens more than endless growth.

The continuing diversity obsession



Dozens of “gap” statistics have become so deeply embedded in our political discourse that we hardly question whether unequal outcomes are actually evidence of discrimination. “Women make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.” “Hispanic students make up a disproportionately small percentage of university graduates.” “Black women must work into the following July to catch up to what white men made the previous year.”

In our equity-obsessed age, each one of these “gap stats” has a grimy underbelly, made up of individuals who are unfairly denied the fruits of their talents because institutions have tried to force equal outcomes: men who work longer hours on average; Asians who have higher SAT scores on average; Millennial and Gen Z white applicants who get passed over at work because they don’t add to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Though no example exists anywhere of a world without disparities, it seems that most American institutions — government agencies, universities, and corporate workplaces — cannot tolerate the reality of their existence.

We are living through a decade of wokeism in which racial favoritism has graduated from an ostensibly temporary thumb on the scale for the almost-qualified to the kind of unqualified frenzy that attracts grifters and con artists. And, correspondingly, the discrimination against the disfavored has gone from ambient to so intense as to bar advancement in culturally prestigious industries.

Contra to dismissive talking points from purveyors like AOC, Woke 1 has done real damage to many lives.

Think, for example, of the nameless crowd of people denied the sinecures, positions, and honors bestowed on Cambridge’s former “youngest black professor,” Jason Arday. He was a serial fabulist and plagiarist and tragically died by suicide earlier this month.

In addition to the coveted position from which he resigned, Arday had a lucrative book deal in an industry in which just three of the 70 National Book Awards nominees in the past decade were white men, a shift that happened far too suddenly to have occurred naturally.

The Arday debacle shows that the quest to eliminate disparities has turned hiring into a de facto racial spoils system. Despite every remedy applied against them, disparities persist everywhere — in every profession, school, boardroom, prison, scientific award category, sports field, and socioeconomic tier for reasons that are cultural, political, family-based, genetic, religious, and natural.

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Sometimes the reasons are even historically arcane. The majority of nail technicians in the United States are Vietnamese, even though they make up just 0.75% of the population. It turns out that this particular disparity can be traced to a single American actress, Tippi Hedren of "The Birds" fame. She visited a refugee camp near Sacramento after the Vietnam War and paid her manicurist to provide training, which then spread like wildfire throughout that community.

Disparities of a thousand hues are the norm. As Thomas Sowell wrote in "Discriminations and Disparities" back in 2018, “Neither in nature nor among human beings are either equal or randomly distributed outcomes automatic. On the contrary, grossly unequal distributions of outcomes are common, both in nature and among people.”

Though no example exists anywhere of a world without disparities, it seems that most American institutions — government agencies, universities, and corporate workplaces — cannot tolerate the reality of their existence, even where there is no evidence that they arise from discriminatory practices.

University of San Diego School of Law professor Gail Heriot, an experienced civil rights lawyer and author of the aptly titled article “Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal,” regularly challenges audiences to come up with a single hiring criterion that does not produce disparate outcomes on the basis of some protected characteristic — that is, race, sex, religion, or national origin.

She has never received a satisfactory answer, even after offering a cash reward.

The ubiquity of disparities allows government agencies to choose their victims at will. No government body tasked with enforcing laws against workplace discrimination has ever investigated whether requiring a bachelor’s degree for entry-level office work causes disparities among different demographic groups. Instead, the government seeks to root out all disparities against protected classes.

During the Biden administration, the EEOC sued the grocery store chain Sheetz for screening out potential employees with certain kinds of criminal records. The government admitted that Sheetz had no intention of discriminating against black and Native American job applicants. But because a higher percentage of job-seekers from those backgrounds had criminal records, it had the effect of constituting illegal discrimination.

Welcome to disparate impact liability, a branch of the law now declared dead for the time being — and potentially unconstitutional — by the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel.

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When the law presumes that these gaps exist because of discrimination, it places defendants in an impossible position: When the inevitable disparities appear in your organization, you can either accept them — and open yourself to litigation — or discriminate against unprotected classes to make the numbers even out — and open yourself to litigation.

As I testified before the House Oversight Committee in July, our universities, corporations, and public institutions have been “at war with the reality of disparities” for decades. In their effort to vanquish them, often under shapeshifting terms, they’ve turned to actual discrimination against “overrepresented” groups in a way that is both deeply unjust and illegal under U.S. law.

For too long, even those on the right were defensive about the existence of these disparities.

They went beyond the laudable goal of reforming the K-12 education system to make it function better for all students to promising that their reforms would “close the gaps” and selling them as a way to render affirmative action at the university level unnecessary.

But the problem with DEI, and before that affirmative action, is simple: It tries to impose a Harrison Bergeron dystopia of equitable outcomes at mass scale. But doing that in a real world full of disparities requires discrimination against individuals.

As a multiethnic republic, we can no longer tolerate a system that institutes a legalized hierarchy of favored and disfavored classes. We can either enforce civil rights laws equally for everyone, which the Trump administration has done an admirable job of pursuing, or we can continue to degenerate into balkanized bloc politics marked by increasing resentment.

For the good of everyone, we must kill the god of the gaps: equality under the law for all, special favor for none, and let the disparities fall where they may.

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

Gloria Steinem is gone. Lindsay Clancy is still here.



Everything that lives will eventually die. The problem is that in the spring of our youth, the end of our lives feels far away. Because of that, we become cocky and self-assured, casting aside belief in the consequences of the kind of regret that puts things in perspective and, at the end of our lives, reminds us of what was really important.

Two women are in the news right now. Gloria Steinem, a writer and journalist who just died at 92, and Lindsay Clancy, on trial in Massachusetts for the murder of her three children.

It will be interesting to see whether what began in a courtroom that at times resembled a women’s rally will elevate a mother with postpartum depression into a feminist icon.

Steinem was a feminist in the 1960s and ’70s, when it wasn’t popular to be one. She went on to spend her life redefining peace, justice, and racial fairness and fighting for women’s liberation, which came to primarily mean a woman’s right to choose to dispose of her offspring.

In the eyes of many, Steinem was adored as an activist, even though her idea of equality was rooted in her belief that men, marriage, and children were oppressive because their presence in a woman’s life could deter her from achieving loftier goals.

At an abortion awareness rally in 1969, Steinem listened to other women’s abortion stories. At the time, unless a woman’s mental or physical health was in danger, abortion was illegal in the U.K. This is somewhat how, at the moment, the seriousness of child murder is in danger of being downplayed if mental illness is identified as a motive.

Steinem venerated the doctor who, like Henry VIII, approved of Anne Boleyn climbing the scaffold to be beheaded by the man assigned to wield the sword. The doctor referred Steinem for the execution of her unborn child in the womb by a practitioner willing to perform the procedure.

In language that is now regarded as heroic and liberating, before doing the deed or referring her to a female doctor who did the deed — either way — the willing accomplice made Steinem promise two things: “First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.”

Nearly 60 years after her child had been killed, Steinem dedicated her memoir, “My Life on the Road,” to her hero, Dr. John Sharpe.

Around that time, Steinem was widely viewed as a crusader for abortion rights, calling it “reproductive freedom,” a watered-down slogan she thought would make the subject more palatable in political discussion and a phrase that continues to be used in abortion debates to this day.

But now, Steinem is dead, and her legacy will be credited with having spent the lion’s share of her earthly existence downplaying the value of life while exalting a woman’s right to dispose of her children.

RELATED: Did Lindsay Clancy lose her mind — or her free will?

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Gloria Steinem, in life and now in death, will be idolized as an icon for women who embraced the idea that liberation is the right for a woman to snuff out life in the womb.

Her glowing death announcement states that she “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her.” It is stunning that someone gets to pass away peacefully after spending a lifetime advocating the slaughter of the unborn.

The sad truth is that the “many who loved her” circling her bed did not include the son or daughter who would have been entering the seventh decade at the time of their mother’s death. What that touching announcement didn’t mention was whether she finally felt the regret she admitted she couldn’t muster for 69 years over the decision to sacrifice her child on the altar of ambition.

Despite all the books, speaking engagements, and accolades laid at Steinem’s feet, as the totality of her life flashed before her eyes, the son or daughter over whom success took precedence, whether she was capable or willing to admit it, may have been the last thing to cross her mind before passing into eternity.

Surely her progressive contribution to advancing a woman’s right to decide whether life inside her womb survives is Gloria’s legacy.

Now, nearly seven decades after Steinem’s backroom abortion, another woman with the potential to be a progressive pioneer in the fight for a mother’s rights over the lives of her children has been sitting in a wheelchair in a courtroom in Plymouth, Massachusetts. At the time Steinem terminated her child’s life, it was illegal unless a woman was physically or mentally ill. Today, mental illness is exploited as a defense in a trial where three children were executed by their mother.

Although it might not look like it, the female support surrounding Lindsay Clancy is similar to the support Steinem received in 1969, when women rallied because they felt no one understood their plight. At this juncture in the Clancy trial, although Clancy’s children, unlike Gloria’s, were outside the womb, the willingness to call her innocent hinges solely on her mental state: guilty if she had her wherewithal, exonerated if mental illness drove her to murder her babies.

In Clancy’s case, the thoughts and feelings of her children concern not whether they had regrets, but rather what kind of terror a confused preschooler, toddler, and infant experienced as their mother, for whatever reason, decided they no longer had the right to life.

How different is what Lindsay Clancy did — for whatever the reason — from Gloria’s youthful decision to benefit herself?

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As these thoughts come full-circle, it’s important to consider the impact Gloria Steinem had on the deaths of more than 65 million unborn children and how she’s being celebrated and mourned, in light of the potential Lindsay Clancy’s defense might have as an excuse to deny the right to life to those of us outside the womb.

Steinem’s actions helped reshape the nation’s views on abortion. In the same way, Clancy could change the nation’s views on maternal filicide. And after postpartum psychosis is accepted as an excuse to kill three children, what’s the next step in the progression for those who move through life like a horse with blinders?

If the progressive impulse to excuse the killing of children in the womb extends to children outside it, Lindsay Clancy’s case could have consequences far beyond her trial — potentially eroding the right to life even more profoundly than Gloria Steinem’s abortion activism did.

Gloria Steinem is gone. Lindsay Clancy is still here. It will be interesting to see whether what began in a courtroom that at times resembled a women’s rally will elevate a mother with postpartum depression into a feminist icon who moves the needle from excusing child murder to finding any other excuse to dispose of human life because societal mores demand it.

Steinem’s opportunity to influence the culture is over. Cases like Lindsay Clancy’s may only be beginning.

Not again: British cops arrest another white victim of violence rather than minority assailant suspects



The British public and the world at large have been provided with yet more evidence that the U.K. justice system holds whites — white men in particular — to a different standard than virtually every other group.

Damning footage shows a group of six black individuals hectoring a young white man on Broad Street in Birmingham, England, on June 21.

'The police have lost the benefit of the doubt.'

As the voices grow louder, the individual focus of the mob's rage — a 20-year-old white man who has been identified as Cody Harper — turns his head to address someone to his left, video shows.

Apparently seizing upon the distraction, a man from the mob dressed in a black jacket makes a cowardly attack from the right, knocking Harper to the ground. The victim of this sneak attack attempts to stand up, but a different coward rushes in, this time punching Harper in the back of the head.

Harper attempts once again to regain his footing — only to be tackled against a nearby wall by a female police officer who was apparently disinterested in the attackers now fleeing the scene.

Disoriented after having been thrown to the ground, then sucker-punched, Harper blindly throws a punch in self-defense — but succeeds only in brushing off the officer's cap.

The female officer — who failed to identify herself as police — lunges for the Harper's neck then proceeds to handcuff the victim.

After Harper points out both that "they're tryin' to smack me up" and that he was just trying to "go home," the female officer appears to call him a "dick."

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"You're under arrest for assault on police," says the female officer, who — with another female police officer — proceeds to march Harper over to a police car. A male cop then shoves Harper into the police cruiser, and more female cops are later gathered in the area, video shows.

A witness off-camera explains to one of the officers: "Someone clotheslined him, then someone hit him from behind, and that's when you went in. All I can say in his defense is he probably thought you were one of the attackers at that moment."

The woman nods comprehendingly and replies, "Right. OK. So someone assaulted him first, right? OK."

After the footage of this incident went viral online, Birmingham Police said in a July 2 statement, "We are aware of footage showing the arrest of a man after a disorder on Broad Street at 1.30am on 21 June. Officers found a group of men fighting. As the incident was dealt with, an officer was punched. One man was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer."

In addition to characterizing a violent, seemingly unprovoked mob attack on a single individual as a "fight" and claiming their lady officer was in the right, Birmingham Police implored the public not to share video of the incident — just as police in Northern Ireland asked the public last month not to spread video evidence of a beheading attempt, allegedly by a Sudanese asylum-seeker.

"The incident has been reviewed, and we have no concerns over the officer's actions and we are satisfied that they were reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances," the police department said in its July 2 statement. "We would ask that footage is not further shared to allow the legal process to take its course."

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British police officers in Birmingham, England. PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images

The official response by police exacerbated the public outrage over the incident, including from lawmakers.

James McMurdock, a Reform UK member of Parliament, wrote, "I can’t let this go unchallenged. That young man was, in my opinion and based on the video below, the clear victim of an assault. The video shows, for reasons that are entirely beyond my comprehension, the officer steaming directly into the victim."

"The officer made no effort to prevent the attack or apprehend the men who had just administered the violence. What I see in the video is the officer using speed and aggression at the moment of peak danger and confusion against the victim," continued McMurdock. "The victim then controls himself the moment he realises it is now a police officer attacking him and not one of the multiple men who were attacking him a fraction of a second earlier."

McMurdock said that Birmingham Police should drop the charges and put questions to the female officer about "why she went for the victim on the ground and not the attackers!"

Robert Jenrick, another member of Parliament for Reform UK, said that "it’s baffling that he was arrested while the two black men who attacked him weren’t."

In addition to raising concern about "the clear unequal treatment" by the female officer, Jenrick took issue with Birmingham Police's characterization of the attacks as a "fight."

"This wouldn’t be a one off incident either. We saw two-tier policing by Hampshire Police when they came to the scene of Henry Nowak. We saw it for decades across the county with the Grooming Gangs that went unpunished," wrote Jenrick. "The police have lost the benefit of the doubt in the eyes of many. They’ve had enough."

After similar critiques, the Birmingham Police issued a revised statement on July 3, this time expressing interest in an "assault." The revised statement refers to the arrest of a "20-year-old man," presumably Harper, but does not suggest he is the victim of the assault.

'Our commitment to racial equity means producing equality of policing outcomes.'

"We are carrying out an investigation to identify people involved in an assault in Birmingham city centre," said Birmingham Police. "We are aware of footage on social media showing the incident before the man is arrested. Recognising that an assault has taken place, we are now carrying out active enquiries to identify those involved."

Birmingham Police noted further that "although officers were in the area when this assault took place, they were involved in the arrest of another man at the time."

Cody Harper is set to appear at Birmingham magistrates' court on July 23.

This incident took place just weeks after Southampton police released bodycam footage showing their two-tiered approach to the scene of the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak.

After fatally stabbing Nowak in an unprovoked attack on Dec. 3, a knife-wielding Sikh named Vickrum Digwa told police that he was the victim of a racist attack.

When police from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary arrived on the scene, they reflexively adopted Digwa's framing of events and treated Nowak as a racist and a criminal as the teen lay dying — handcuffing him and brushing off his repeated complaints about having been stabbed and being unable to breathe.

The officers instead took a sympathetic approach to Digwa, never once handcuffing him even after discovering Nowak's stab wounds.

Officers' approach to Nowak and Harper may be informed, in part, by the anti-racism guidance issued by the National Police Chiefs' Council, which explicitly calls for treating people differently on the basis of race:

Our commitment to racial equity means producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances, and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm. It does not mean treating everyone "the same" or being "colour blind" (racial equality).
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The Declaration is not a relic. It is a warning.



A century ago in Philadelphia, July 5, 1926, Calvin Coolidge gave America the speech it needed on its 150th birthday. He did not flatter the country. He did not scold it. He reminded Americans that the Declaration was not a museum piece or a political slogan, but a spiritual document rooted in permanent truths. On our 250th birthday, his warning looks less like history than prophecy. Read this excerpt slowly. Then ask whether we still believe it. Editor's note: This excerpt has been edited and condensed.

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the 4th day of July.

Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years, the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgment of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound.

Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history.

Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if it roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions.

Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws that creates the character of a nation.

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About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.

But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.

If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson still can’t define ‘woman,’ yet rewrites sex law



How many years of graduate biology did you need to learn the definition of “woman”? Zero. Children grasp the difference between male and female before they can spell either word. Yet liberal Supreme Court justices and the lawyers who argue before them now treat that distinction as unknowable.

This confusion did not happen by accident. Once a culture rejects God’s creation and natural law, nonsense fills the vacuum.

If you cannot define the subject, you cannot defend it. If you cannot name what a woman is, you cannot decide a case where the law turns on protecting women as a class.

God created the world with real distinctions. Those distinctions do not depend on feelings, desires, or political fashion. When people refuse to think according to what is, scripture describes the result as a “darkened mind,” a mind that cannot grasp even basic truths.

This week, the Supreme Court confronted that reality. The cases before it, arising from West Virginia and Idaho, ask whether biological males who identify as female may compete in women’s sports. The exchanges between the justices and counsel revealed more than legal disagreement. They exposed an unwillingness to define the very terms the law requires.

Several of the court’s conservative justices asked what should have been the most basic question: What does it mean to be a man or a woman?

Justice Samuel Alito pressed an attorney for the ACLU on that point. The attorney conceded that he could not offer a definition of “man” or “woman.” He even admitted his notes warned: “Don’t define sex.” Alito then asked the obvious next question: How can a court determine whether discrimination “on the basis of sex” has occurred if no one will say what “sex” means?

That exchange should have ended the argument.

Congress wrote Title IX in 1972. “Sex” meant biological sex. It did not mean “gender identity,” self-conception, or an internal psychological state. It meant male and female. Everyone understood that because everyone lived in that reality.

Yet one attorney urged the justices to avoid deciding the case on the definition of sex, arguing that Title IX’s purpose was not to define sex accurately but to prevent discrimination. That move should make every American nervous.

Discrimination with respect to what? Opportunities based on what? You cannot prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex while refusing to say what sex is. That is not legal reasoning. That is verbal fog.

RELATED: ‘That would have to apply across the board’: LGBT radicals panic as SCOTUS signals win for girls’ sports

Photo by Oliver Contreras / AFP via Getty Images

Justice Sonia Sotomayor leaned into the confusion by suggesting that excluding a biological male who identifies as female from women’s sports is “by its nature” a sex-based classification requiring heightened scrutiny. Notice what happened. The argument claims no one can define sex, yet it demands courts treat sex as a controlling legal category. A category of what, exactly? The reasoning collapses under its own weight.

This is what a darkened mind looks like in public office. People use words after they drain them of meaning. They demand that others affirm a contradiction and call it clarity.

Human beings have understood the difference between boy and girl across centuries and civilizations. This is not advanced biology. It is ordinary knowledge that undergirds family, language, and society.

So what changed?

The distinction between male and female did not become complicated. It remained simple and permanent. That permanence blocks any ideology that tries to rebuild reality around will and self-definition. God created male and female. No court can repeal creation.

Progressive jurists increasingly treat being “assigned” a sex at birth as oppression. The individual must claim sovereignty over reality. The self becomes god. Identity becomes law.

This worldview also reveals hypocrisy. Liberal justices demand that society submit to one person’s internal feelings about identity, while dismissing the concrete concerns of women who do not want to compete against men in zero-sum athletic contests.

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Photo by Oliver Contreras / AFP via Getty Images

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson exposed that contradiction when she questioned why the “fear” of women should govern policy. That question reveals the priority system: One set of feelings can redefine reality and restructure competition; another set — concerns about fairness, safety, and equal opportunity — counts for little.

Justice Jackson famously said she cannot define what a woman is, yet she presents herself as a defender of women’s rights. That contradiction matters. If you cannot define the subject, you cannot defend it. If you cannot name what a woman is, you cannot decide a case where the law turns on protecting women as a class.

Natural law has been pushed aside. The created order is treated as optional. What remains is raw will — whatever a judge, an activist, or an institution demands at the moment. That is not law. It is power dressed up in robes.

The consequences extend beyond sports. Women lose opportunities. Men receive rewards for denying reality. Courts move from recognizing truth to enforcing ideological compliance.

Scripture teaches that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). What we witnessed from liberal justices was the opposite: fear of acknowledging God’s created order. When leaders refuse to name basic truths, they do not climb toward enlightenment. They descend into madness.

When justices on the highest court in the land cannot say what a woman is, the problem is no longer sports. The problem is spiritual.

DEI hustlers lash out after Trump official solicits discrimination complaints from white men



In his damning Dec. 15 article in Compact magazine titled "The Lost Generation," Los Angeles-based writer Jacob Savage detailed the disenfranchisement of white male Millennials and their systematic exclusion from various industries, especially academia, entertainment, medicine, the news media, and tech.

While America has long been reckoning with the fallout of the DEI war on meritocracy, Savage's viral article — which journalist Matt Taibbi indicated was initially accepted by the Atlantic on the condition that it avoid making the bigger societal point — crystallized for many, with the help of statistics and personal accounts, the extent and true impact of that racist campaign.

'This was an injustice, plain and simple.'

After Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the article and the discrimination discussed therein, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairwoman Andrea Lucas released a video on social media imploring white men to seek damages — a video that Vance subsequently shared.

"Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws," said Lucas, a Republican critic of DEI and mother of two who was appointed to lead the EEOC by President Donald Trump in January.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to probe and litigate against private companies for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination.

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Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Image

Lucas, who previously noted that Savage's article told "a story chock full of unlawful discrimination," said in the video that it was imperative that those keen on taking action contact the EEOC as soon as possible, as "time limits are typically strict for filing a claim."

The EEOC chairwoman also noted in a follow-up message, "You may have waived your right to money, but you still have the right to blow the whistle and participate in the EEOC process — and EEOC can sue on behalf of a class."

— (@)

Lucas has made no secret of her contempt for DEI.

In a May 2024 speech — nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard/UNC, banning race-based college admission — Lucas stated:

Race or sex cannot be even a plus factor, a tiebreaker, or a tipping point in the employment context. People sometimes think that race or sex can be part of the equation for an employment decision if race or sex is not the sole factor, the exclusive factor, or the deciding factor. That is dead wrong. If race or sex was all or part of an employer's motivation, that violates federal employment law.

She noted during the Q&A following her remarks that "many employers, by doing lazy, high-level virtue signaling, paint-by-numbers DEI, have mass discrimination."

Proponents of the DEI regime were evidently prickled by Lucas' latest remarks.

David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, told the Associated Press that Lucas' recent posts demonstrate a "fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is."

"It's really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you're bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups," Glasgow said. "If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn't really been doing a very good job at achieving that."

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Photo by Tom Brenner-Pool/Getty Image

Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chairwoman who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, similarly complained, suggesting it was "problematic" for Lucas to speak out about the disenfranchisement of white men.

"It suggests some sort of priority treatment," said Yang, who served as deputy assistant to former President Joe Biden for so-called racial justice and equity. "That's not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all."

Hours ahead of Lucas sharing her video to social media, Vice President JD Vance noted on X that Savage's article was "an incredible piece that describes the evil of DEI and its consequences."

"A lot of people think DEI is lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at NFL games," Vance wrote. "In reality, it was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men."

"This is why the Trump administration has so dedicated itself to eradicating racist discrimination. We've eliminated funding for DEI, required government grantees to certify that they're not engaged in DEI, fired a number of DEI employees, and asked the great [Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon] to aggressively prosecute all forms of racial discrimination," the vice president continued. "For too many Democrat leaders, racial discrimination was bad unless it targeted white men. This was an injustice, plain and simple."

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Do you want Caesar? Because this is how you get Caesar



Political solutions feel increasingly out of reach in the United States. Congress cannot pass a budget and has offloaded most of its legislative duties to lobbyists and the permanent bureaucracy. The judiciary spends more time blocking lawful presidential action than interpreting law. Executive agencies drag their feet under activist judges and rebellious career staff. Inflation continues to punish households, the health care system teeters, and American workers watch themselves replaced by imported labor.

In moments like these, people look for someone who can simply make the system function again. That is how you get a Caesar.

Caesar does not appear because the existing powers pushed too far, but because they refused to act decisively when action was needed.

Though “dictator” carries a purely negative meaning today, the term originally described a legitimate emergency office in the Roman Republic. Rome elected two consuls who shared executive authority, but when a true crisis struck — invasion, rebellion, famine — Roman law allowed the temporary selection of a dictator who ruled alone for six months. The point was efficiency during existential danger.

Rome famously revered figures like Cincinnatus, elected dictator twice, who relinquished power immediately when the crisis ended. His restraint, not his authority, made him a civic hero. Tradition demanded this behavior; violating it meant disgrace and, often enough, assassination. George Washington consciously modeled his own two-term limit on this Roman example.

The end of the Roman Republic is often associated with Julius Caesar being named dictator for life. The underlying crisis, however, predated him. Rome’s elites consolidated land, squeezed citizens out of ownership, imported a large slave class that drove down wages, and ignored the growing unrest. The Senate refused to act and violence broke out. Does any of this sound familiar?

Caesar marched on Rome, won a civil war, and took power. He reformed the calendar, overhauled the justice system, cut welfare, and enacted land reforms. He was popular with the public but enraged the ruling class by destroying their privileges. His assassination ended his rule, but not the transformation he initiated. The republic was finished.

Spengler’s forecast

In “The Decline of the West,” Oswald Spengler argued that civilizations follow a life-cycle: birth, growth, decline, and death. In the late stage, societies fall under the control of bureaucratic oligarchies powered by money. Rules remain on paper, but decisions always serve wealthy interests. Economic mobility collapses. The public is effectively locked out.

These eras are marked by deep cultural divides. A decadent, urban elite begins to live in ways utterly foreign to the people they rule. Wealth concentrates in cities. Cosmopolitan values take hold. Citizens no longer recognize their own country.

When legislative bodies fail, bureaucracies grow unchallengeable, and moneyed elites block ordinary people from their own society, Spengler argued that a Caesar figure reliably emerges — a leader who sweeps aside gridlock and imposes order. Not necessarily a tyrant in the cartoonish sense, but a figure who commands enough power to break the stalemate.

The danger is obvious: Once such a leader accumulates that power, nothing guarantees he gives it back. Caesar may save the nation, transform it, or accelerate its decline. What is certain is that once he arrives, the political order changes rapidly.

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Blaze Media Illustration

America’s crossroads

It is hard not to look at today’s United States and see a similar pattern emerging. Donald Trump is not Caesar, but he has been forced to govern through executive orders because Congress refuses to act and the bureaucracy works to undermine him. Activists hold No Kings rallies while Steve Bannon urges Trump to return in 2028. Passionate positions create momentum, and what begins as rhetoric can become a real possibility.

Once an idea becomes a constant point of reference — even in opposition — it gains a form of inevitability. That is the nature of political hyperstition.

If Americans want to avoid a real Caesar, the only solution is to fix the problems that make one appealing. Caesar does not appear because the existing powers pushed too far, but because they refused to act decisively when action was needed.

The borders must close. Replacement labor through expanded visa programs must end. Inflation must be crushed. Foreign adventurism must stop. Policy must shift away from elite wealth extraction and toward enabling young Americans to buy homes and start families. The cultural divide must narrow, and shared values must be restored.

None of this is easy. All of it is essential. If these challenges remain unanswered, no one should be surprised when Caesar finally arrives.

'WE F**KING DID IT': Man wins 'all-female' video game tournament backed by US milk companies



An all-female video game tournament was turned on its head when it allowed a male to compete and win an enormous cash prize.

A Fortnite gaming tournament called the Milk Cup says that it was created to provide women with more opportunities to succeed in video game competitions.

"It's a space designed for women to compete at the highest level, for serious money," the company says. However, it took just one year since the tournament's inception for it to become dominated by a male.

'It felt crazy to lift that trophy.'

The 2025 Milk Cup in San Diego, California, boasted a $300,000 prize pool and alleged $78,000 first-place prize. This year's top prize was award to a duo of gamers going by "XSet" Nina Fernandez and allegedly transgender gamer Vader, a male who believes he is female. The pair placed second in 2024.

Vader celebrated the win on his X page, exclaiming, "1st ($78,000) at [Milk Cup] LAN WE F**KING DID IT."

Nina and the tournament organizers similarly celebrated the victory online.

Vader's X profile seemingly lists him as "18" years old, with a transgender flag next to the age. A gamer ranking website also lists him as born in July 2007. His Twitch profile describes him as using "she/her pronouns."

"[Our win at Milk Cup] shows you can be your true self and not be apologetic about it," Vader said on a post-match press panel, per ESports Insider. "There are spaces for everybody, so never give up."

"It felt crazy to lift that trophy," Vader added, saying he wanted to "prove people wrong."

"Anybody can participate in esports. Don't let people stop you. Don’t let comments get to your head. Believe in yourself."

While online communities often cater to such delusions, it may come as a surprise that the tournament itself is backed by a nonprofit organization that operates under the United States Department of Agriculture.

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The website "Gonna Need Milk," representing the organization behind the tournament, claims that "in a world where male athletes take center stage," the organization is "redirecting the spotlight to women."

The company further explains it is making an effort to, perhaps ironically, "drive awareness to gender inequality in sport."

The bottom of the page denotes that the website is maintained and funded by MilkPEP, the Milk Processor Education Program, which came into existence after the creation of the Fluid Milk Promotion Act of 1990. The USDA's National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board sponsors both MilkPEP and Gonna Need Milk.

At the same time, MilkPEP boasts that the tournament is run by a collaboration of all-female teams and that its program is "funded by the nation's milk companies."

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Dan Wheldon celebrates his winning of the 89th Indianapolis 500 by drinking milk. Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images

Blaze News reached out to MilkPEP and Gonna Need Milk to see if they took issue with a male gamer winning the all-female tournament; neither entity responded.

The USDA was also asked if the inclusion of the male violated federal orders. A representative for the USDA said the agency could not provide a response to the question within a reasonable time frame due to "the ongoing government shutdown."

Gamers Vader and Nina were also asked to comment on what the determining factors should be regarding allowing a male in the female category and whether they had a response to the backlash; neither responded.

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