Growing up just outside Galway City, life in the West of Ireland was exactly what the postcards promised. It was a beautiful place, with generous people and a great spirit.

I use the term was deliberately. That Galway, and the Ireland it represented, is officially dead and buried — a lot like the Irish language itself.

Liberals love to romanticize this migration by drawing parallels to Ireland's own history of exodus.

Galway recently elected its first black mayor, Helen Ogbu, a Nigerian-born former social worker. The local and international media immediately fell into a state of rapturous, celebratory euphoria, framing it as a textbook example of a modern, inclusive Ireland, complete with a self-congratulatory pat on the back for everyone involved.

But beneath the surface-level applause and the performative progressive high-fives, the mood on the ground isn’t exactly celebratory. These rapid-fire changes are fueling a deep dread about what being Irish even means any more, besides holding the right passport.

Demographic rewrite

While Rotimi Adebari, another Nigerian, became Ireland's first black mayor back in 2007 in Portlaoise, Galway’s latest civic milestone cements a broader trend. This is less a blending of cultures than a demographic rewrite.

For anyone who remembers the not-so-old days, these lightning-fast shifts feel like the systematic gutting of everything we used to call home. It’s a brutal reality that local broadcasters prefer to completely ignore, though American commentator Tyler Oliveira recently traveled to Ireland to document this unfolding madness firsthand.

As his dispatches note, almost a quarter of Ireland's population is now foreign-born. Watching the footage, it's impossible not to recall Donald Trump’s infamous 2015 declaration regarding immigration in America: "They're not sending their best," he said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems. ... They're bringing drugs; they're bringing crime. They're rapists.

Trump was speaking about the U.S. southern border, but looking at the insanity unfolding in Dublin and parts of the rural West, he might as well have been describing modern Ireland. The influx has brought an undeniable undercurrent of low-IQ degeneracy from parts of Africa and the Middle East, fundamentally altering the safety of communities that used to leave their front doors unlocked.

Locals only

Ireland is gripped by a crushing homelessness crisis, but if you look at the people actually sleeping in cardboard boxes in city centers, they are far less likely to be from foreign lands than born-and-bred locals.

There's a sickening irony to the history here. Our ancestors, including my own family in the West, fought, bled, and died to kick the British Empire out, only for the current generation to willingly open the gates to a different kind of conquest.

To be fair, it wasn't the ordinary Irish people who made this choice, but a political class utterly beholden to Brussels and the EU bureaucracy. When Angela Merkel opened the floodgates in 2015, a cowardly, compliant Irish government offered to take its share of the burden, setting off a chain reaction that has left the country unrecognizable.

The magnet pulling people in is a bizarrely generous welfare state. While working-class Irish citizens struggle to put food on the table, the system rolls out the red carpet for foreign arrivals. In Oliveira’s documentary, one migrant casually admits to receiving a €1,200 monthly cash allowance. To an outsider, €1,200 (roughly $1,400) a month might not sound like an extravagant fortune, but when it is paired with free housing, medical care, and education, it means you are essentially being subsidized by the Irish taxpayer to do absolutely nothing.

Kick me, I'm Irish

Liberals love to romanticize this migration by drawing parallels to Ireland's own history of exodus. When Conan O'Brien visited his ancestral home in Ireland, he spoke about the real courage it took for generations of Irish people to cross the Atlantic for a better life, noting, "People leave not because they think: 'Hey, I just want to go have fun in America.' They leave because they have to.” The pro-immigration lobby uses this exact sentiment as a shield, arguing that today's arrivals are just the modern equivalents of the 19th-century Irish.

They're not. That comparison is utter nonsense. The historical Irish diaspora weren't greeted by a waiting welfare check, free medical cards, and state-subsidized housing; they stepped off the boats into starvation, hostile "No Irish Need Apply" signs, and manual labor that regularly killed them. Furthermore, modern migration has become a cynical game of regional arbitrage. As Oliveira’s interviews reveal, many migrants openly admit to using Portugal as a soft entry point into the EU, obtaining papers there before immediately making a beeline for Ireland's superior welfare benefits.

What we are witnessing is the absolute, spectacular failure of Western liberalism. Notice that his toxic brand of pathological altruism doesn’t exist in Africa or Asia. It is an exclusively Western suicidal pact — a bizarre cultural mental illness where nations willingly subsidize their own erasure while smiling for the cameras. Ireland is simply the latest country to gladly sign its own death warrant, completely convinced that disappearing is the ultimate form of progress.

The end of 'elbows up'? Mark Carney makes nice with Trump

When Prime Minister Mark Carney recently accepted a civic scroll from the Mayo County Council in Ireland, he softened up the crowd with an anecdote about getting a gift from "another great leader."

The impression that followed was accurate enough that he never needed to utter the leader's name — Donald Trump — to score big laughs.

'It’s a cap,' Carney told Trump. 'A hard line. I thought you’d actually like that.'

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. This lighthearted aside underscored a broader reality confronting the Canadian prime minister: Campaigning against Donald Trump is one thing; governing alongside him is another.

That tension has become a recurring theme of Carney’s first year in office.

Canada strong

During the 2025 federal election, Carney embraced an “elbows up” message that portrayed resistance to Trump as both a political necessity and a point of national pride. In one speech, he argued that “many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become our weaknesses.”

More recently, however, Carney struck a markedly different tone before the Economic Club of New York, declaring that “Canada Strong will help Make America Great Again” and emphasizing the importance of North American cooperation in energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, and artificial intelligence.

The shift has not gone unnoticed by the opposition. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre recently posted the two statements side by side on social media under the caption: “Elbows Up Carney or MAGA Carney? Which one will we get next?”

The comparison makes for an effective political attack, but it may also reflect the realities of governing.

George Rose/Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Get along to go along

Canada sends roughly three-quarters of its exports to the United States, and the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement remains critical to the country's economy. Whatever slogans may have resonated on the campaign trail, any Canadian prime minister ultimately has strong incentives to maintain a productive working relationship with Washington.

Carney has had to face this reality often since assuming office.

Seven months after taking office, Carney visited the White House and described Trump as “a transformative president.” At the G7 summit, a hot microphone captured the two leaders discussing Canada's cap on Chinese electric vehicle imports in what appeared to be a friendly exchange.

“It’s a cap,” Carney told Trump. “A hard line. ... I thought you’d actually like that.”

“That’s good,” Trump replied. “I like it.”

'Worth it'

Carney’s response to the Iran conflict followed a similar pattern. While expressing concern that the initial military action appeared inconsistent with international law and noting that Canada had not been consulted, he later welcomed the resulting peace agreement and argued that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was "worth it."

Yet Carney's more conciliatory approach has not always produced visible diplomatic dividends. At the G7 summit, he departed without securing a formal bilateral meeting with Trump, a notable omission given the stakes surrounding trade negotiations and the future of USMCA. Carney brushed aside suggestions that he had been snubbed, emphasizing that the two leaders had spoken several times during the gathering.

Trump has also continued to revive his suggestion that Canada should become America’s “51st state” while maintaining pressure on trade and other bilateral issues.

The Ireland impression, then, is less significant than the political evolution it symbolizes. Carney campaigned as Trump’s foil, but governing has required him to cultivate a functional relationship with the American president.

Whether Canadians view that evolution as prudent statesmanship or an abandonment of the posture that helped elect him is ultimately a political judgment. But it illustrates a lesson many leaders discover after taking office: Running against a neighboring superpower is easier than running a country that depends on it.

UK officials’ worst fear about horrific near-beheading by African suspect: Racist backlash

An African migrant was arrested in Northern Ireland on Monday after allegedly attempting to behead a British national in Belfast. Locals incensed by the news of yet another savage crime committed on camera by a foreign suspect — this time a Sudanese national who entered Northern Ireland via the Republic of Ireland in 2023 — took to the streets in protest.

While there were initially peaceful demonstrations, things quickly went sideways.

'Politicians aren't listening.'

On Tuesday evening, multitudes of young men wearing masks and clad in black clashed with police, pelted migrant housing complexes with rocks, and torched several buildings and vehicles. There was "significant rioting" in the streets of Belfast again on Wednesday, where police liberally used nonlethal rounds and powerful water cannons — never before deployed in other parts of the U.K. — against protesters and made 16 arrests.

While some officials in the United Kingdom have acknowledged the unaddressed concerns and desperation underpinning the native population's recent violent outbursts, others appear more focused on how minorities might be feeling in this time of upheaval and "racist thuggery."

Hilary Benn, a member of Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party and the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, expressed outrage during a press conference on Wednesday over recent criticism in parliament of "alien cultures" and the uncritical acceptance of refugees from Sudan, stating that "there's probably a surgeon from Sudan operating on someone somewhere in the United Kingdom as we stand here this morning saving somebody's life."

On Thursday, Benn further evidenced the chief focus of his concern, stating in an interview, "It is really important to convey the sense of fear that has been created, above all, for those who were intimidated, burned out of their houses by masked thugs, on the basis of their skin. But talking to those community organizations, everyone else in Northern Ireland who is an ethnic minority is thinking, 'Well, is someone going to come for me?'"

Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

"There is no justification for the kind of violent thuggery that we have seen," Benn continued. "This is not the true face of Northern Ireland."

Prime Minister Keir Starmer similarly spoke out against the backlash with a vehemence not similarly present in his condemnation of 30-year-old Sudanese national Hadi Alodid's alleged blinding and near-beheading of Scottish national Stephen Ogilvie on Monday.

"There is no justification for the violence and disorder that we saw threatening our communities, nor for those who encouraged it, online or elsewhere," Starmer wrote. "It is clear that people were targeted last night because of their background and I will not tolerate it. Those responsible will feel the full force of the law."

Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O'Neill also focused on the backlash rather than on the trigger, stating, "Racism, intimidation and violence are wrong wherever they occur. There can be no excuse and no justification for these attacks tonight."

While not necessarily justifying the backlash, some Britons have provided critical context for why violence may be regarded as some citizens' only recourse.

Ron McDowell, a Trade Unionist Voice councillor in Belfast, said, for instance, in a statement on Wednesday, "Politicians who say, 'don't engage in violence, trust me and vote for me' have completely failed the people because they simply haven't delivered and there is now a massive chasm between the public and the political class who design and deliver their communities. As often happens when politics fails in Northern Ireland, violence exploits the void."

"We are at a critical tipping point," McDowell continued. "The void between politicians and the public is widening by the hour, and we must step up with genuine, accountable action to address immigration before violence steps in irreversibly."

A Belfast local identified only as Chris told CBS News that locals are becoming less and less surprised by the kinds of attacks seen on Monday, alluding also to the response to 18-year-old British teen Henry Nowak's barbaric murder by a Sikh man in December.

Chris suggested that locals "just want a sensible immigration policy, and for the people here not to be put last."

"This is what causes this: Politicians aren't listening, and people just feel like they have to make a stand and be noticed," Chris added.

Among the many lawmakers who condemned the violent response to the latest apparent display of imported barbarism, Carla Lockhart, a Democratic Unionist Party member of parliament, echoed Chris' sentiment, stating that "politics and the government have failed local communities."

Lockhart — who stressed to Starmer on Wednesday the need to address the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland — said, "People are angry and concerned for their safety. Therefore, they want the government to give answers around issues such as how many migrants, illegal migrants, have arrived in the U.K. via the Republic of Ireland land border. That, I believe, is one of the most important questions around all of this."

Chris Rose, a black environmental campaigner and Reform UK member, highlighted a difference in approach adopted in response to the Black Lives Matter riots and the riots in Belfast.

"I don't support rioting from anyone but when BLM did it, Labour said that MPs should speak to the black community and listen to the concerns," Rose wrote. "Following the scenes in Belfast, has any Labour MP mentioned speaking to white, working class communities to listen to their concerns?"

With the stated aim of restoring the status quo, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has launched the "Op Exposure" campaign — releasing images of protesters in order to "identify those responsible and bring them to justice."

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

African suspected of trying to cut white Briton's head off identified — while police fret about online critics

The Sudanese asylum-seeker arrested for the horrific attempted beheading that took place in Northern Ireland on Monday night appeared in court on Wednesday, where he declined to enter a plea.

In addition to being identified, the African has been slapped with additional criminal charges after the brutal attack he is accused of committing prompted a fiery night of rioting in Belfast as well as demands for transparency and a withdrawal from the EU Migration Pact from rightist lawmakers.

'We will be going after them.'

Now that the liberal establishment has pivoted from feigning horror over the attempted beheading to expressing outrage over the backlash, police are threatening to arrest online influencers who raised the alarm about the incident.

Quick background

A black male was caught on camera sitting atop a bloodied white male in the middle of a north Belfast street, shouting something in a foreign tongue, then carving with a knife into the victim's face and neck.

The attack was interrupted by a Good Samaritan armed with a wooden hurl stick who gave the attacker a good thwacking. Another two men rushed in to help — one attempting to pull the victim to safety and the other giving a few well-placed kicks to the aggressor's head.

The attacker, who was initially identified by a police as Somali but later confirmed to be a Sudanese national, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

L-R: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images; Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The victim, who has been identified as Stephen Ogilvie and a British citizen, was taken to the hospital in serious condition with grievous injuries to his face, neck, and back.

Suspect identified

Gavin Robinson, a member of the British Parliament for East Belfast, stated on Tuesday that the Sudanese suspect was living in the U.K. under a five-year visa.

Police subsequently confirmed that the suspect, 30-year-old Hadi Alodid, entered Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland in 2023, applied for asylum, and was granted leave to remain in the country until 2028.

The Telegraph reported that the suspect had "used a loophole" in the British asylum system — traveling from Sudan to Paris and then to Dublin, before taking a bus to Belfast and then claiming asylum.

In addition to the original charge of attempted murder, Alodid has been charged with possessing a knife in a public space and threatening to kill a woman who works as a radiographer for the National Health Service.

Alodid appeared at Laganside magistrate's court on Wednesday, where he communicated via an Arabic interpreter. The stabbing suspect — who allegedly left Ogilvie with no left eye, a damaged right eye, and deep cuts on his face and back — refused legal representation and declined to respond to the charges.

Alodid was denied bail at the urging of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Police told the court that the African's release posed a threat of further offenses and a flight risk and could lead to "significant public disorder," reported the BBC.

The suspect's next court date is July 8.

Failed containment

The PSNI implored the general public on Tuesday not to share footage of the horrific attack, but the British public evidently had other ideas.

To the great chagrin not only of police but of those leftist lawmakers who expressed concerns over the inevitable political fallout, the video — yet another damning reminder of the isles' disastrous immigration policies and failed dogma of multiculturalism — went viral with the help of remigration activist Tommy Robinson and others.

Belfast was subsequently rocked by protests and, on Tuesday evening, riots in which homes, cars, and a bus were torched.

Some of the hundreds of black-clad young men who roamed the streets of the capital city on Tuesday reportedly shouted, "Foreigners out!" and pelted asylum-seeker housing with rocks.

'F**k 'em.'

Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson of the PSNI said in a statement, "Sporadic pockets of disorder have broken out in a number of locations across Northern Ireland this evening, including incidents in which a number of vehicles have been set on fire."

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and various other lawmakers condemned the riots — in many cases more forcefully than they condemned the attempted beheading.

"The scenes in Belfast last night were shocking and completely unacceptable," Starmer stated on Wednesday morning. "There is no justification for the violence and disorder that we saw threatening our communities, nor for those who encouraged it, online or elsewhere. It is clear that people were targeted last night because of their background and I will not tolerate it."

Police have arrested several alleged rioters and are threatening to arrest online influencers over their provocative commentary regarding the attempted beheading.

"It’s very easy, these days especially, to look online and be persuaded, by people who know nothing about Northern Ireland, know nothing about the communities in Northern Ireland, know nothing about the history of Northern Ireland, to take actions that they otherwise would not take," said PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher. "Stop looking at this nonsense. Stop listening to these idiots. We will be going after them for the incitement that they’ve been doing."

"I'm not talking about individuals in this press conference, but people will know who were online last night and inciting this behavior. They will know what they were doing. We will be going after them," added Boutcher.

Despite this latest threat of a crackdown over online speech, Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, and Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe have not rounded their critiques or softened their rhetoric.

Robinson, for instance, wrote, "Stop importing rapists, murderers, and sex pests from savage third world countries who put young girls [sic] lives at risk. Once you have advocated for that, and the removal of unwanted illegal migrants from communities who never asked for or wanted them, then you can take the high road. Until then, keep your mouth shut."

Lowe wrote early Wednesday, "Millions must go," and "the Belfast victim has lost his left eye and has severe damage to his right eye. Hacked at the neck, with his eyes gouged. Men who inflict this brutal evil on others do not deserve to live."

Musk shared a post rejecting the calls for calm, then tweeted, "F**k 'em."

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

Ireland and the UK’s collapse from Christianity to liberalism could be America’s future — if we don’t wake up

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is sounding the alarm over what he sees as a cultural road map America could soon follow if conservatives fail to maintain the momentum of the Trump era.

“If we don’t get a Marco Rubio, or whoever is running and is the candidate, in line with what Donald Trump is doing right now — if we don’t get that, we’re going to be back here with a vengeance,” Beck warned.

“We’ll be right behind you,” he tells Peter McIlvenna.

McIlvenna, who grew up in Northern Ireland as well as in the Republic of Ireland in Dublin and Limerick, tells Glenn that he’s right — and that the cities there are “not Irish at all.”

“Ireland is an interesting test case, going from probably the most staunchly Christian Catholic country to now the most liberal country. What happened on the abortion laws was unbelievable. The rush to same-sex marriage so quick,” he explains.

“Part of that was the sex scandals that were in the Catholic Church were then used to destroy any remnant of Christianity within the country. Instead of saying 'this is happening in parts of Church; we need to address it,' the Church was decimated,” he continues.

The hypocrisy, McIlvenna points out, is when you point out that Islam has the same problems — or worse — the response is that it’s “a few bad apples.”

“It was a concerted attack on the Church, destroying the Church’s role as a guiding light for Irish society to now being dismissed and ridiculed and rejected,” he explains.

But it’s not just Ireland. The decline of Christianity and embrace of Islam are happening all over the United Kingdom.

“Islam presents itself as dominant and gives them an identity. And I think that’s the thing we are lacking as a nation. We don’t know our identity,” he says. “We have ripped out Christianity from the nation.”

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.

Why American culture still rules the world — and always will

The chorus has become deafening.

Op-ed pages and policy journals are saturated with self-appointed sages warning us that American soft power is finished, kaput, buried under the weight of Trumpism, tariffs, and the dismantling of USAID.

Soft power emerges from cultures people want to copy, and no teenager on earth is modeling himself on Xi Jinping Thought.

Foreign Policy’s Stephen Walt recently joined the funeral procession, lamenting that the Trump administration holds nothing but contempt for what his late colleague Joseph Nye called the power of attraction. Walt insists that hard power without soft power leaves America looking like Putin's Russia, with considerable muscle and all the magnetism of a DMV waiting room.

Scrambled eggheads

Walt writes from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the consensus among the faculty lounge crowd is that Trump has dropped the soft-power crown — only to have Beijing pick it up. What utter nonsense. The lounge, perched so high in the ivory tower, has lost sight of the actual world below.

I came of age in Ireland in the early 2000s, where my brother and I consumed inordinate amounts of American television. We watched "Prison Break" religiously on Network 2, arguing about whether Michael or Lincoln was the smarter sibling. We debated whether Jack Bauer could plausibly go that long without sleeping. We watched "Entourage" and fought over whether Ari Gold was a maverick or a monster. We were far too young for any of it, but my parents, overworked and underpaid, couldn’t keep the remote out of our tiny hands.

We saved up to buy Abercrombie shirts that cost three times as much as they did in New Jersey. We learned American slang from "Friends" reruns and pretended we understood Thanksgiving. My cousin in Cork wore a Yankees cap for two years before learning baseball existed. The local chipper added "curly fries" to the menu because someone had seen them on a sitcom. American culture was the water we swam in, repeatedly and without hesitation.

CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

Swift diplomacy

Twenty-five years after my Abercrombie phase, American culture still dictates global taste. Kids in Uganda quote Kendrick Lamar. Teens in Jakarta can't get enough of the UFC. The films Mumbai produces borrow from Christopher Nolan; the films Seoul produces dream of Oscars in Los Angeles.

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour pulled crowds in Tokyo, Sydney, Buenos Aires, and Singapore that no homegrown artist could ever muster. Netflix dominates streaming in 190 countries. Apple's logo carries more cachet in a Vietnamese teenager's pocket than any flag. American universities, despite their obvious failings, still receive applications from every corner of the planet, including from the children of the Chinese officials who publicly denounce them.

Yes, K-pop had a moment. BTS sold out arenas, "Gangnam Style" broke YouTube, and commentators declared a new cultural pole emerging from Seoul. Then the moment passed. "Squid Game" spawned imitators rather than a movement. South Korean culture spreads wide and runs shallow. It’s a garnish, a starter at best, but it never was and never will be the main course.

China viral

China presents the more entertaining case study. Beijing spends billions of dollars annually trying to manufacture soft power, opening Confucius Institutes, funding film studios, broadcasting CGTN into hotel rooms, where nobody watches. What did succeed was TikTok, a platform that broke through by hiding its Chinese origins and amplifying American content.

When was the last time a Chinese film conquered a multiplex in Berlin or Buenos Aires? When did a Chinese musician headline a festival in Mexico City? What Walt and the credentialed class miss is that soft power cannot be bought through state subsidy or willed into existence by Politburo memo. It emerges from cultures people want to copy, and no teenager on earth is modeling himself on Xi Jinping Thought.

If anyone deserves the soft power obituary, it's the country I know all too well.

London falling

Britain once exported culture by the truckload. Now it sends a parcel here and there.

The last British band to crack American consciousness was Coldplay, and even that is now like ancient history. British television still produces excellent dramas, watched by fewer Americans every year. The royal family generates tabloid fodder rather than genuine fascination, and the tabloids themselves are dying.

British fashion has lost its swagger, with London Fashion Week now an afterthought to Paris and Milan. British music charts are dominated by American acts, including country music acts.

No teenager in Lima or Lisbon is dreaming of a steak and kidney pie, while plenty are queuing for the new Shake Shack. No kid of sound mind in Manila is begging for a Cornish pasty, but many are heading to their local In-N-Out for a quick fix. American food, like American everything else, travels. British food sits at home, where it belongs.

Trump-proof

American soft power survives and even thrives in the Trump era for an unsexy reason that academics struggle to accept. It doesn't run on policy. It never has and never will. Instead, it runs on creativity, scale, language, and capital, all of which remain concentrated in American hands and American servers.

The presidency changes every four or eight years. Silicon Valley does not. The English language does not. American universities, American sports, American music, American food chains, and American technology platforms form an ecosystem so vast and self-replenishing that no single administration can dismantle it.

Walt's pessimism reflects a left-leaning gripe masquerading as a global issue. A teenager in Helsinki watching "Euphoria" on his iPhone, wearing Air Jordans, sipping a Coke, and biting into a Big Mac isn't thinking about China, the U.K., or any supposed contender. America's grip on the global imagination was never a government project. The funeral notices keep arriving, but the eulogies sound like the musings of people who hear "Drake" and picture a duck.

'Tribalism' is healthy — and America should embrace it

Somewhere between the 10,000th think piece about polarization and the hundredth talk on bridging divides, a strange consensus formed: Tribalism is democracy's deepest disease, its most persistent poison.

Professors and pastors warn of it. Columnists mourn it. Podcasters monetize their mourning. The diagnosis is always the same: Humans clustering together with their own kind is dangerous, primitive, a malfunction of the civic mind.

The people most loudly condemning tribalism tend to be surrounded by people exactly like them, at universities exactly like theirs.

Fine. But what if they're wrong?

Not partially wrong, but actually, foundationally, embarrassingly wrong — the way doctors were wrong about bloodletting or the way everyone was wrong about cargo pants being over.

Friendship by another name

Tribalism has an image problem. Many associate it with mob violence, ethnic cleansing, and mass unrest. But that's not tribalism. Not really. The base ingredient — people who share values and show up for each other — predates democracy, predates government, predates trousers. We used to just call it friendship.

My life runs on tribes. Boxing buddies on Tuesday mornings — punching things together turns out to be exceptional social glue. Drinks on Friday evenings with people who know my views, share my basic read on how the world should work, and will tell me honestly when I'm being an idiot. Football on Sundays: same faces, same complaints about the same referee.

These groups form through proximity, repetition, and the steady accumulation of shared in-jokes about Tom’s terrible parking. Nobody recruits anybody. The politics surface eventually, the way they always do — not as a pitch but as a mutual nod. Oh, you also think that. Good. Pass the beer.

Condescending critique

The anti-tribalism crowd conflates the existence of a tribe with hostility toward outsiders. But the two aren't the same thing, and they don't have to travel together. A group of friends who share values is not automatically a firing squad aimed at people who don't. The aggression that looks like tribalism is usually something else — fear, scarcity, manipulation by people with something to gain from the mob. The tribe itself is just the group chat.

There is also something condescending baked into the critique. The implication is that enlightened people transcend their loyalties. The sophisticated move is to float above any particular community, dispensing equal approval in all directions. This person does not exist. And if people like that do exist, nobody wants to live beside them, work with them, invite them to anything, or get stuck next to them at a wedding.

The people most loudly condemning tribalism tend to be surrounded by people exactly like them, at universities exactly like theirs, publishing in the same journals, citing each other's footnotes, all nodding along in perfect, oblivious unison. The irony apparently doesn't register.

Tribal to the bone

My ancestors were Irish. They were tribal to the bone, tribal by necessity, tribal the way people get when the alternative is disappearance. That tribalism — stubborn, clannish, occasionally violent, always inconvenient for the people trying to govern them — is precisely what produced the independence that eventually let them leave. Seven centuries of enthusiastic British imperialism tore Ireland apart. The tribe was the solution, not the problem.

America was the same story once. The founders were a tribe. So were the suffragettes, the labor organizers, the civil rights marchers. Every movement that actually changed anything was, underneath the rhetoric, a group of people who genuinely liked and trusted each other enough to take serious risks together.

As for the loneliness epidemic affecting the country, it didn't arrive because people had too many tribes, but because tribes became harder to build and easier to lose. Jobs moved. Cities got expensive. The bowling leagues, union halls, and neighborhood associations that once knit people into groups of mutual obligation slowly disappeared, and we got LinkedIn as a replacement.

Against this backdrop, telling people their tribal instincts are dangerous is useful the way a fire safety lecture is useful during an actual fire.

Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images

Believe in belonging

What tribalism needs — contrary to the credentialed, conspicuously left-leaning, remarkably group-minded people writing op-eds about its dangers — isn't elimination, but better PR and a little calibration.

Think of the happiest moments of your life. They almost certainly happened with the same handful of people, in the same handful of places. Some of those people aren't around any more. That absence is its own argument — not for giving up on tribes, but for holding them closer while you can.

The alternative — atomized individuals, each navigating life as a fully independent unit, allegiant to nothing, accountable to no one — isn't utopia. In truth, it's just lonely, and loneliness radicalizes. Belonging stabilizes. This isn’t a controversial finding, but it’s certainly inconvenient for the people whose careers depend on pathologizing friendship.

New Alzheimer's treatments bring hope — and reminders of those we have lost

Ten years have passed since I last spoke to my grandfather as himself. Not a day goes by that I don't miss him.

The man who forgot me isn’t the one I carry. I carry the other one. The one who took me for long walks, who collected acorns the way other men pocket loose change. He taught me never to speak ill of others, advice I have absorbed deeply and applied far less than he would have liked.

He never had a bad word to say about anyone. Not once. As an Irishman, this made him practically a medical curiosity.

We fed livestock together in the early mornings, breath visible, ground hard underfoot. He had a tenderness with cattle and sheep that I have never seen replicated . A slow hand to the forehead, a particular stillness, and the animal would simply decide to trust him. Even the wild ones. Especially the wild ones.

Unshakable faith

In the garden, he taught me to plant vegetables with something approaching ceremony. Potatoes pressed into drills with two hands, like an offering. Scallions in lines so deliberate they made the rest of existence feel approximate. Soil under the fingernail. The unshakable faith that what you plant will, in its own time, pay you back.

He taught me how to play piano and the Irish flute — hours of patient instruction that I traded, around age 13, for sports and the dubious pleasures of warm cider in a field. I stopped. He said nothing. I am still grateful and still guilty in roughly equal measure. He was the kindest man I have ever known.

He never had a bad word to say about anyone. Not once. As an Irishman, this made him practically a medical curiosity. We are, by temperament and long tradition, a people who can elevate mild inconvenience into competitive suffering. He never caught that particular bug.

A passing cloud

Then Alzheimer's arrived. Before it takes the body, it takes the person, which makes the grief savage in its specificity. You mourn someone still breathing in front of you, still drinking tea, still occasionally smiling, while the version you knew withdraws without a forwarding address.

The first time he didn't recognize me, I expected hesitation. What I received was blankness. Placid, absolute blankness. A face I had known my whole life, looking at me like I was a stranger who had wandered into the wrong room. For him, likely a passing cloud. For me, a clean line dividing before from after.

My grandmother outlived him by months. The official cause was a heart attack. The accurate cause was a broken heart, and I mean that with clinical precision rather than poetic license. She simply had no further use for mornings without him. Fifty years of reaching for the same hand, and when the hand was gone, she simply lost the argument for continuing. There is a particular brutality in watching love become a countdown.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Andia/Getty Images

A complicated picture

For decades, the dominant scientific theory treated Alzheimer's as a single-villain story: amyloid plaques accumulating in the brain. One cause; one target. It was neat and tidy.

It was also completely wrong. Researchers now describe a far more complicated picture. Tangled Tau proteins. Genetic vulnerabilities. Metabolic failures. Disruptions originating in the gut, of all places.

The brain fails as part of a longer story. The first forgotten name is never the beginning, but only the moment the beginning becomes impossible to ignore. Medicine, in other words, spent decades treating the final chapter as the only one worth reading.

Newer treatments show modest results. They slow the decline, but they don’t reverse it. They don’t put a man back at his kitchen table, telling a story his family has heard so many times they could recite it backward, about meeting his wife at a dance, and making it feel, on the 43rd telling, like something worth leaning in for.

The current scientific ambition, at least, has grown more honest: attack the disease across every front simultaneously. Target the proteins, the aging cells, the metabolic dysfunction, and the genetic predispositions. Treat the system, not the symptom.

Bone-deep

My grandfather would have grasped this without a single journal article. He understood, bone-deep, that everything connects. Soil quality shapes the crop. Weather shapes the soil. The animals depend on both. You can’t fix a failing field by fixating on one plant.

There is something resembling hope in this shift. It arrives too late for him and for her. But the possibility exists that fewer families will sit across from someone they love and watch recognition drain from a familiar face. Over 7 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer's. The people who love them number considerably more, and their suffering doesn’t appear in the statistics.

My grandfather carried me when I was too tired to walk and when I was too sick to stand. In return, I carry him. The man who never gave anyone a reason to be forgotten. It is the least I can do and nowhere near enough. And I will do it anyway, gladly, until I no longer can.

Parents: Let your kids out to play

My childhood had a simple structure: Leave the house, come back when hungry.

Nobody tracked my location. Nobody scheduled my fun. I roamed a small Irish village with a rotating gang of kids, knocking on doors to collect whoever was free, wandering fields we didn't own, climbing trees we absolutely shouldn't have.

Our treehouse was born from boredom. Three of us, on a long summer afternoon, with nothing to do.

Our treehouse — built from stolen timber, held together, technically, by two bent nails — would have given a structural engineer a full breakdown. We were enormously proud of it.

Bumps and bruises

There were scuffles. Real ones, occasionally bloody, always brief. Someone would throw a punch over some perceived injustice. A disputed goal, a broken rule, an insult that landed a little too cleanly. Five minutes later, we'd be back at it, whatever it was that day.

No adults mediated. No one processed feelings. The fight resolved itself because the game needed bodies, and everyone knew it. You learned, quickly, that holding a grudge cost you far more than swallowing it.

The point isn't that we were tougher or that children today are soft, although I would argue that both are true. The point I’m trying to make is that we were unsupervised, and supervision, it turns out, changes everything.

I say this not from a rocking chair but as someone who, at age 8 or 9, split his time between farm chores and disappearing into the village like a feral little fugitive. Less than 25 years ago. A blink of the eye, really, except apparently long enough to completely reinvent childhood.

Rationing daylight

Now, one in 10 parents say their young children play outside once a week or less. One week. Seven days. Imagine rationing daylight like that. Childhood has migrated indoors, onto screens, into carefully arranged playdates where two children sit in a living room while two adults hover nearby, making sure nobody says anything upsetting. The kids sense the performance. They behave accordingly.

Researchers from Denmark recently did something beautifully simple: They asked children what good play actually feels like.

Not what it teaches. Not what skills it builds. What it feels like from inside.

The answers were slightly embarrassing for every adult who has ever built a color-coded activity schedule. Children cared about the feeling of play. That loose, almost electric sense that something is genuinely alive. They cared about belonging — not polite, managed inclusion, but being genuinely wanted by the group. They cared about imagination running slightly off the rails. They even valued a certain productive chaos, the kind that adults instinctively shut down.

Adults, predictably, care about outcomes — cognitive development, motor skills, social learning they can point to and measure. Children care about none of this while they're playing. What they actually care about is whether it's fun, whether they're wanted, and whether there's the slightest chance that it might go delightfully wrong.

Screen police

Our games always went somewhere unexpected. A football match would mutate, mid-afternoon, into something involving a rope, an old mattress someone had dumped in a field, and rules nobody could fully explain afterward. The logic was impeccable at the time. The mattress did not survive.

Modern play environments iron out exactly these qualities. Soft surfaces, approved equipment, and an adult nearby to ensure fairness and prevent anything resembling genuine consequence. The result looks like play. Children sense that it isn't, the way you sense when a photograph has been retouched slightly too much. Something essential has been removed.

Screens fill the gap with surgical efficiency. Nearly a third of young children now engage regularly in what researchers call "media play" — a phrase that earns its quotation marks. Tapping a screen is not the same as negotiating who gets to be the villain or managing the social fallout when the smallest kid turns out to be the best climber and everyone has to begrudgingly update their hierarchy. Digital games have fixed rules, predictable rewards, and zero social friction. That's precisely their appeal. It's also precisely their poverty.

The consequences don't arrive with bruises or a note from school. They arrive later, wearing other disguises. Low frustration tolerance. Social anxiety with no obvious origin. A deep unfamiliarity with boredom, which is actually the raw material of invention.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Free range

Our treehouse was born from boredom. Three of us, on a long summer afternoon, with nothing to do. Within an hour, we had made a plan. Within a week, we had made something structurally catastrophic and deeply satisfying. Nobody told us to build it. Nobody approved the design. Nobody stood beneath it checking for hazards, which was probably wise given what happened to the second shelf.

Children need exactly that kind of space. Not the park for 15 minutes before the grocery run, but long, unscheduled stretches where the only available resource is other children and whatever the back yard contains. Boredom long enough to become uncomfortable. Discomfort long enough to force creativity.

They need, occasionally, for nobody to be watching.

We turned out fine, most of us. There were scraped knees. One incident involved a gate left wide open, a bull wandering into the street, and a level of collective amnesia that has never fully lifted. The treehouse was, after much deliberation, abandoned to the weather. The nails, I'm told, are still there.

Ditch The Leprechauns And Read The Real Story Of St. Patrick’s Day

Now, more than ever, we need to put the Saint back into St. Patrick’s Day!