Venezuela’s anthem pride put Team USA to shame



Anyone who watched the recent World Baseball Classic final in Miami — a thrilling matchup between the underdog Venezuelans and Team USA — saw a vivid display of national pride.

Before the game, both teams stood for the Venezuelan and American national anthems. Miami is home to the world’s largest Venezuelan diaspora community. The cheers were thunderous. Every Venezuelan player stood with his cap over his heart and sang every word with conviction. This from a nation scarred by decades of unrest, corruption, and more recently, liberation at the hands of U.S. troops sent by President Donald Trump. Through all that turmoil, they held fast to love of country. “It means everything. This is for our country,” starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez said afterward through tears.

A nation cannot survive on procedure alone. It needs loyalty, memory, gratitude, and a shared sense of belonging.

The contrast with the American team was hard to miss. Our players all looked stoic. No one sang. I wondered if they even knew the words.

That scene unfolded as the U.S. Senate debated the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID at the polls. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) framed the matter correctly. “Our republic was founded on a daring claim that free people could govern itself. Not that a free people could drift forever,” he said.

“Liberty is fragile and so it requires structure.”

America’s founders would have understood the point.

In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington urged Americans not only to respect the law but to love their country. “Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections,” he said. “The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.”

Benjamin Franklin believed immigrants should assimilate, learn the language, and adopt American customs if they wished to become good citizens. Thomas Jefferson tied citizenship to literacy, civic formation, and military readiness. “Every citizen should be a soldier,” he wrote. “This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.”

The SAVE Act may never reach President Trump’s desk. Common sense rarely enjoys smooth passage in Washington. But Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has at least shown some backbone. “We’re going to stay on this bill until it damn well passes,” he said, even if that means “many, many weeks” of debate.

If the MAGA base roars loudly enough, maybe it will.

But the deeper problem runs beyond election law. It concerns whether Americans still understand citizenship as something more than legal status. A nation cannot survive on procedure alone. It needs loyalty, memory, gratitude, and a shared sense of belonging.

RELATED: America’s founders risked the gallows. What are we risking?

Daniel Shirey/WBCI/MLB Photos via Getty Images

That is why the contrast on display in Miami matters. The Venezuelans played as men who still believed their country — mess that it may be — deserved their love. Too many Americans now act embarrassed by their own inheritance.

If we do not protect our elections from illegal votes, we weaken our sovereignty. If we do not insist that new citizens learn English, we weaken national cohesion. If we cannot teach our children to love their country, sing its anthem, and thank God for its blessings, we will hand the nation to elites whose only loyalty is to appetite, profit, and power.

I saw the alternative recently at a Hillsdale College seminar. Before each meal, a student led us in prayer. Then we stood together and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. I had not spoken those words aloud in years. The moment carried real force — 800 voices joined in gratitude, memory, and common purpose. It reminded me that patriotism is not an abstraction. It is a habit.

We should bring the pledge back to schools. We should teach the Bible again. We should teach Western history and literature without apology. We should make English the official language of the United States.

After Venezuela beat Italy in the semifinals, President Trump posted on Truth Social, “Wow ... statehood #51 anyone?” He understood something larger in the moment. America does not need another state. It needs more citizens with that kind of spirit.

These are the questions I explore in my new novel, “Trump’s Superpower: A Historical Novel About the Founding Fathers and One Founding Mother,” out in May. In it, the founders return for America’s 250th anniversary and confront what we have done with the republic they risked their lives to build.

Whether we still deserve it may depend on whether we are still willing to sing for it.

Shelby and Eli Steele’s new film goes straight at the white-guilt grifters



Are you guilty? That depends. Are you white? Then yes, you are guilty. But whiteness is no longer the only offense. Believe in God? Believe Christ saves sinners? Believe in objective morality, the rule of law, or marriage between one man and one woman? Then skin color hardly matters. You are guilty anyway.

Guilty of what? Guilty of the sins of history, the inequities of the present, and whatever new offense the racial racketeers invent tomorrow. At least that is what grifters like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo have spent years selling to America, often for staggering sums underwritten by universities eager to flatter the ideology. Arizona State University, where I teach, has offered classes on the problem of whiteness. ASU’s Barrett Honors College teaches the evils of settler colonialism.

You, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, are footing the bill for Struggle Session 101.

That is the backdrop for “White Guilt,” the new documentary from Shelby Steele and his son, Eli Steele, which premieres this week at ASU. Shelby Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and recipient of the National Medal of the Humanities, has spent decades writing about race, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. In his 2006 book “White Guilt,” he argued that racial moralism had become a tool for gaining power over others rather than a path toward justice.

The film appears at a moment when Americans have begun to see more clearly how much of the modern racial industry depends on intimidation, guilt, and fraud.

Steele understands the temptation from the inside. As a young man, he felt drawn to the black power movement. His parents had been active in the civil rights movement, and he wanted to help his community. But he came to see that race blame solves nothing. It degrades everyone it touches. Blame wielded by race remains racism, no matter who aims it or who absorbs it.

The better question, Steele argues, asks what it means to live as a free and responsible person. What happens when an individual takes responsibility for his own choices? What kind of life becomes possible when dignity comes from agency rather than grievance? That moral vision sits much closer to the American ideal than the racial spoils system now preached across much of higher education.

Steele rejects the fashionable claim that slavery was America’s original sin. The deeper sin, he argues, is the use of race to gain power over others. That temptation did not die with Jim Crow. It adapted. It migrated into institutions, party politics, nonprofits, and university bureaucracies. Today it thrives in classrooms where professors insist they do not teach racism while teaching students to judge one another by skin color, ancestry, and inherited guilt.

That fraud has paid well.

Black Lives Matter offered perhaps the clearest recent example. In the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, BLM became a moral brand for affluent liberals, activist professionals, and corporate America. Shelby and Eli Steele explored the lie at the movement’s foundation in their earlier film, “What Killed Michael Brown?” Their new film picks up a related question: How did the language of anti-racism become such a lucrative racket?

The answer is not hard to find. Much of the left’s social justice industry runs on a simple formula: Manufacture guilt, divide people by race, promise absolution, then collect money, influence, and institutional power. Sell moral panic to well-intentioned Americans, then invoice them for redemption.

RELATED: The campus isn’t ‘misunderstood.’ It’s mismanaged — on purpose.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Want to end racism? Write a check. Sign the DEI pledge. Sit through the seminar. Keep your head down while the consultants explain that your skin makes you complicit and your silence proves your guilt.

The strategy stays simple. Divide humanity into categories. Teach each group to resent the others. Tell people that the brokenness of the world is not a permanent feature of fallen life but the fault of their neighbors. Then arrive as the enlightened manager who can fix it all, for a fee. That formula has wrecked poorer countries for generations. Now left-wing elites have imported it into American life, dressed it up in therapeutic language, and sold it as virtue.

Anyone who has spent time around a university classroom knows the script. A professor begins with a banal truth: The world is filled with injustice. The class nods. Then comes the poisonous turn: Would you like to know who is to blame? Look around the room. Identify the oppressor. Assign the guilt. Require ritual silence from some students and ritual confession from others. Repackage humiliation as education.

And you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, are footing the bill for Struggle Session 101.

Instead of surrendering to this politics of racial hatred, envy, and managed guilt, Americans should recover a better ideal. Freedom means more than license. It means responsibility. It means building a life through choice, discipline, and moral agency rather than through grievance and tribal score-settling. Whether the world crowns that life a success or a failure, it still belongs to you. No race hustler can take that from you.

“White Guilt” premieres March 25 at 6 p.m. at ASU Tempe in Bateman Physical Sciences F Wing, Room 166.

FAKE CONSERVATIVES EXPOSED
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FAKE CONSERVATIVES EXPOSED

You Can’t Have A Free Country When The Government Makes Choices For You

Americans have an incredible array of choices for food and consumer goods, but government monopolies in education, health care, and energy are ruining our lives.

A free Iran starts with women in charge



The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled Iran with brutality for nearly four decades, has thrown the Persian Gulf country into a historic moment of uncertainty — and possibility. His welcome passing shattered the familiar, oppressive order and forces a question Iran can no longer postpone: What comes next?

That question arises as Iran sits at the center of a deeper shift that may prove historic and generational. Much remains uncertain: how change will unfold, how long it will take, and what form it will assume. One principle, however, should guide every serious observer: Lasting change in Iran must come from within, driven by Iranians themselves and their organized resistance. Anything imposed from abroad or engineered through outside force will fail.

Iran’s destiny will be shaped by Iranians: by students, workers, professionals, and above all by women who refuse to accept a future defined by repression.

For more than four decades, Iran’s clerical establishment has displayed many vulnerabilities. One stands out as both defining and revealing: institutionalized misogyny. This is not merely a social failing. It is a governing doctrine.

That doctrine has become the regime’s weakness.

Women have been among the primary victims of Iran’s repression. They have also become the most dynamic force challenging it. Across the country, women no longer merely participate in dissent. They drive it. In city after city, they confront the regime’s most repressive forces. In many instances, they do not just join protests; they lead them.

One striking feature of this movement is its intergenerational character. Observers rightly note the youth of Iran’s protesters. But mothers march alongside daughters, and that image captures something profound about Iran’s national awakening: The demand for freedom is no longer confined to one age group or social class. It has become a shared national aspiration.

In moments of historic transformation, leaders emerge whose lives embody a movement’s aims. In Iran’s struggle, one such figure is Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. For nearly half a century, she has been engaged in Iran’s fight for freedom. Her commitment is personal. She lost one sister to the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, and another under the rule of the ayatollahs while she was pregnant. Such losses would silence many. For her, they hardened resolve.

Rajavi’s significance lies not only in her story but in her vision. Over decades, she has helped cultivate a generation of women within Iran’s resistance — women who now occupy leadership roles, organize networks, and sustain activism under extreme repression. Tens of thousands of women affiliated with her movement have died in the struggle for freedom. That sacrifice, measured in lives rather than slogans, lends credibility to the movement she represents.

This is not symbolic inclusion. It is a structural transformation. Women at every level of opposition challenge the regime’s core assumption that power must remain exclusively male.

At the center of Rajavi’s platform is a 10-point plan outlining a democratic future for Iran. At its heart sits a principle the current regime finds intolerable: gender equality. In that vision, equality is not a concession. It is a foundation — essential to political legitimacy, economic progress, and justice. Women’s rights are not a peripheral demand; they are a declaration that a future Iran must break with decades of repression.

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Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

Sometimes a single image conveys what volumes of analysis cannot. Few signals would announce a new era more clearly than the emergence of a modern-minded Muslim woman as a central leader of democratic change. That would mark more than a political transition. It would signal renewal — a break with tyranny and a declaration that Iran’s future belongs to all its citizens.

History offers countless examples of societies that seemed immovable until, suddenly, they were not. Authoritarian systems often look strongest just before they weaken and most permanent just before they dissolve. The forces now stirring within Iran — especially the courage and leadership of its women — suggest the country has entered such a moment.

The lesson for the world is straightforward. Iran’s destiny will not be shaped by foreign intervention or external engineering — and it will not be served by fake leaders like Reza Pahlavi, who rely on social media and bots for relevance. Iran’s destiny will be shaped by Iranians: by students, workers, professionals, and above all by women who refuse to accept a future defined by repression.

Their struggle is not only national. It reflects a universal truth: The desire for freedom, once awakened, cannot be permanently suppressed.

The direction of Iran’s transformation is becoming clearer. And if history is any guide, when that transformation reaches its turning point, it will bear a defining hallmark: It will have been led, inspired, and sustained by women.

Virginians oppose Richmond's war on the Second Amendment: Poll



Afforded a trifecta in November and no longer kept in check by former Gov. Glenn Youngkin's vetoes, Democratic lawmakers in Virginia are poised to greatly limit gun rights in the state.

They are working to advance, for instance, a ban on the sale, purchase, manufacture, transfer, or importation of so-called "assault firearms" and magazines capable of holding over 10 rounds; a bill that would establish a five-day waiting period for all firearm sales; legislation that would impose an 11% tax on the purchase of any firearm or ammunition in the state; and a bill that would further limit where law-abiding Virginians can carry a gun.

'Someone feels that they have the right to infringe upon this.'

The Second Amendment's would-be curtailers in the General Assembly of Virginia — a state with the official motto Sic Semper Tyrannis, "Thus always to tyrants" — have a champion in Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), who made clear on the campaign trail last year, "I will sign commonsense gun violence prevention bills."

It turns out that Virginians are less than enthused about the Democratic regime's gun agenda.

A survey conducted from Feb. 16 to 17 by Quantus Insights found that registered voters overwhelmingly oppose the legislative proposals now being considered in Richmond.

Eighty-four percent of respondents agreed that "the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental freedom protected by the U.S. Constitution," and 65% agreed with the statement that "gun control laws mainly make it harder for law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, while criminals ignore the laws anyway."

RELATED: 'Fake Moderate’ Democratic governor demands local police cut ties with ICE

Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

When asked about a ban "on commonly owned firearms labeled as 'assault weapons,'" 60% of respondents signaled opposition. Only 33% said they would support such a ban.

Sixty percent of Democrats and 15% of Republicans said that they would support a ban.

When asked about a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds — a prohibition built into the Democratic bill passed by the state House in a 58-34 vote earlier this month — 58% of respondents signaled opposition.

An even greater percentage of respondents, 65%, said they opposed the proposed 11% state tax on firearms and ammunition.

Law enforcement leaders are among the loudest critics of the gun-control laws proposed by Democrats.

Amherst County Sheriff LJ Ayers, for instance, said in a video statement on Wednesday, "The Second Amendment grants us the right to bear arms — to protect ourselves, our homes, our property; to go with our children, our family, our friends out hunting, to enjoy God's given nature — and someone feels that they have the right to infringe upon this."

Ayers stressed that such efforts were "appalling" and emphasized that the Democratic legislation will only impact law-abiding citizens, not the criminals who'll inevitably find workarounds.

WSET-TV reported that sheriffs in Campbell, Henry, Appomattox, and Bedford Counties have similarly spoken out against the proposed gun-control laws.

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U.S. Defeats Authoritarian Communists On The Ice, Again

No other country in the world fights as fiercely for freedom as the United States.

It’s Not Racist To Say Muslims Can’t Tell Us To Reject Dogs

It's not about dogs. It's about Islam forcing Americans to change our habits and our way of life in order to accommodate Muslims.

Civil courts check the powerful. This Republican wants them weaker.



A new bill before Congress claims it will curb lawsuit abuse. It won’t. In reality, it will limit ordinary Americans’ access to civil courts.

The Protect Third Party Litigation Funding from Abuse Act, sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), would force plaintiffs in “any civil action” to disclose “the identity of any person (other than counsel of record) that has a legal right to receive any payment or thing of value” from the case.

Third-party funding is not clogging courts. It expands access to justice.

Plaintiffs would need to provide that information to defendants and the court. Anyone with a functioning brain can see what will happen next: The names leak, activists and corporate PR shops pick targets, and the people financing the lawsuit get punished for it.

If that sounds like a blackmail scheme, it is. And it would be perfectly legal.

Third-party litigation funding works like this: An individual, company, or organization advances money to a plaintiff or law firm to cover the costs of a lawsuit. In exchange, the funder receives a share of any judgment or settlement. If the plaintiff loses, the funder gets nothing.

The arrangement exists for a reason. Lawsuits can be expensive. Complex cases require investigators, expert witnesses, depositions, document review, and months or years of legal work. Deep-pocketed defendants know they can bury a plaintiff under delays, discovery fights, and endless motions while the meter runs at hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars an hour.

Litigation funding helps level that field. It gives plaintiffs a fighting chance against defendants who can afford to grind them down.

Issa calls this “abuse” because hedge funds and speculators sometimes fund cases in hopes of a return. “We believe that if a third-party investor is financing a lawsuit in federal court, it should be disclosed rather than hidden from the world,” Issa said when he announced the bill.

That sounds reasonable only if you ignore what trials are for.

A civil trial asks three questions: Did the defendant do what the plaintiff alleges? Did the defendant’s actions cause harm? If so, what were the damages (if any)? The identity of a funder does not help a jury answer any of them. If anything, it distracts from the merits and invites a side show: the defendant arguing the plaintiff is a puppet and the case is illegitimate because someone with money helped pay the bills. That argument deserves no special protection.

What counts is what the defendant did or didn’t do and whether it hurt the plaintiff. Who finances the plaintiff’s lawyers doesn’t change the facts of the case.

RELATED: A one-way national divorce: Anarchy for them, coercion for us

Cemile Bingol via iStock/Getty Images

A successful plaintiff also has the right to spend an award as he or she chooses, including paying debts and obligations incurred to bring the case. Issa’s bill would chill that option by scaring off funders through forced disclosure. The bill doesn’t touch defendants, who can hire every white-shoe law firm on the planet. It targets the side that usually needs help.

Issa’s bill also pretends it’s solving a crisis that doesn’t exist. The number of lawsuits filed each year in the United States, at both state and federal levels, has fallen by roughly one-third since 2012, according to Consumer Shield. Meanwhile fewer than 1% of state civil cases go to trial, and fewer than 2% of federal civil cases do. Most settle or get dismissed. Third-party funding is not clogging courts. It expands access to justice.

The bill also reaches far beyond any plausible federal interest. Federal cases account for only about 1.4% of civil litigation nationwide. States already have authority to regulate litigation funding — and some have. As of July 2025, seven states — Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — had regulations governing litigation funding, according to the Washington Legal Foundation. The fact that most states haven’t bothered tells you what lawmakers think: This isn’t a pressing problem.

The broader claim — that litigation funding drives frivolous suits — fails under scrutiny. A 2022 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found funders vet cases carefully and avoid interfering in litigation. They do that for a simple reason: They get paid only if the claim succeeds. The report put it plainly: “Funders select the most meritorious cases to fund because they only receive returns when claims are successful.”

Economic reality imposes its own discipline. Third-party funding does not “abuse” the system. It democratizes access to it.

Issa’s bill would do the opposite. By threatening people who finance lawsuits, it would tilt the playing field further toward big corporations and the ultra-wealthy — the parties most able to outspend and outlast everyone else.

Like it or not, civil suits help keep a free society free. They allow ordinary people to hold powerful actors accountable for harm. Restricting access to courts doesn’t stop abuse. It increases it — by giving the powerful more insulation from consequences. That’s the kind of “reform” Americans don’t need.