The moral imperative behind the rescues in Iran



U.S. Special Forces recently rescued a pair of downed airmen in Iran. As the stories begin to be disseminated, many in the audience — but sadly, not all in the West, or in America — will listen and read with awe, pride, and patriotism. Most will do so at least until the next exciting event comes along.

Where does the moral imperative of 'no one is left behind' come from?

The day after the rescue, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated President Donald Trump and the Americans who pulled off this daring, high-risk mission. Netanyahu said, in part:

All Israelis rejoice in the incredible rescue of a brave American pilot, by America’s dauntless warriors. This proves that when free societies muster their courage, and their resolve, they can confront seemingly insurmountable odds, and overcome the forces of darkness and terror. This rescue operation reinforces a sacred principle: No one is left behind.

The prime minister’s words were appropriate and inspiring. He stated, as have other early reporters, that the Israelis and Americans share “a sacred principle: No one is left behind.” But so far, has anyone — including Netanyahu — made an effort to convey what I suggest to be the single most important piece of information relevant to this — or to any — rescue mission?

Where does the moral imperative of “no one is left behind” come from?

It comes directly from the Book of Genesis. There we read — no less than four times — that God created man in His own image.

In these passages, mankind is said to bear the Imago Dei, the image of God. This means that the individual person, regardless of status, wealth, merit, or demerit, possesses inherent value and dignity. That is why in the West — where the Jewish and Christian scriptures historically were foundational — our rock-solid commitment has been to ensure “no one is left behind.”

If one doubts this assertion, look no further than the military traditions in the non-West — though some in the non-West have adopted Western military values (if not civil values in certain cases), particularly in the Far East.

The reality has been, historically, that outside of the West where the cultural understanding of the Imago Dei was foundational, individual persons were valued only insofar as they were of some use to the community, society, or the state.

In the military context, it was perhaps not surprising that in the Korean conflict, the Soviet military placed rescue as a low priority for its MiG-15 pilots.

Among the many danger signs in the West for decades has been the adoption and implementation by governments of ideas and practices grossly antithetical to the scripture-based teachings of individual dignity, which flow from the image of God in man — from abortion and euthanasia to the depriving of liberty of conscience and freedom of religion.

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The neo-Marxist-based diversity and cancel culture movements have contributed their share to this destructive trend.

So while most once-traditional markers of the West are losing ground, the “sacred principle” expressed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, for now, remains compelling among certain Western militaries, especially America and Israel.

This no-one-left-behind principle was prominently displayed in the air for the first time during the Korean conflict, by which time technological advances made combat rescue a realistic option. The foremost technological advance for this mission was the same type of aircraft that rescued our two Airmen in Iran — the helicopter.

During World War II, as my mentor, friend, and noted air power historian Dr. Earl H. Tilford Jr. wrote, “An aircrew member downed behind enemy lines was virtually certain of capture or death.” But in Korea, a few years later, the young U.S. Air Force’s Air Rescue Service demonstrated with employment of its H-5 and H-19 helicopters and SA-16 amphibian fixed-wing aircraft that combat air rescue was viable.

It was also in Korea that the Air Rescue motto and the Rescue culture were born. Every Rescue member understood that should the unthinkable happen to a U.S. or U.N. airman, and he was forced to leave his aircraft over enemy territory or the adversary’s waters, Rescue crews would risk their lives to fulfill their motto, “That Others May Live.”

But to return to the moral imperative once more. As I wrote in 2020:

In one rescue attempt in December 1969, a total of 336 sorties were flown in support of one F-4 navigator downed near Tchepone, Laos. One pararescueman died, several others were wounded. Of 10 helicopters damaged in the operation, five never flew again. As [Tilford] wrote, “Yet no one asked if the life of one man was worth all the effort.” The question was unnecessary.

The question was not required because the Western culture of the day — though it was beginning to fade — affirmed the inherent dignity of the individual, created in the image of God.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

The judgment behind the abortion numbers



For decades, we have been told that we may not be able to end abortion, but we can reduce it. Political reality requires patience. Incremental laws, strategic compromises, and careful coalition-building will, over time, bend the curve downward.

Fewer abortions this year than last. Fewer still the next. This is what we’ve been told, but the numbers are not bending in the right direction.

The same movement that insists on the humanity of the unborn defends strategies that refuse to treat that humanity as legally binding.

In 2020, the United States saw roughly 930,000 abortions. By 2024, annual abortions had surpassed 1 million again. Monthly averages have continued to rise, moving from roughly 88,000 per month in 2023 to nearly 100,000 per month by 2025 — estimated at over 1.1 million abortions a year.

This is not the trajectory we were promised.

Even in a post-Dobbs world — after decades of work, millions of dollars, and countless political victories — abortion remains not only legal in much of the country, but increasingly accessible.

According to the standard used to justify compromise, the results of our efforts have been thoroughly unimpressive.

If compromise is justified because it reduces abortion, what happens when it does not? If the entire framework rests on pragmatic outcomes, then those outcomes must be honestly measured. If they fail, the justification collapses with them.

The central question, though, was never whether compromise works. The central question is whether compromise is obedience.

Scripture is not silent on this. “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). That statement assumes that what is right is already understood — and then confronts the refusal to act on it.

That is where the abortion debate now stands.

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For decades, the pro-life movement has argued — rightly — that the unborn child is fully human. Not partially or potentially human. Not a life that becomes valuable later. A human being, made in the image of God, from the moment of conception.

And yet, that premise is not applied in law.

Equal justice is withheld. Justice is knowingly delayed. Entire classes of human beings are acknowledged in rhetoric and denied in practice — through heartbeat bills, 20-week bans, and fetal pain bills.

The same movement that insists on the humanity of the unborn defends strategies that refuse to treat that humanity as legally binding.

To know that a child is fully human and yet defend a legal framework that allows that child to be killed is not a lesser evil. It is a greater evil — because it is compounded.

Scripture goes further. When knowledge increases, so does accountability. When leaders teach truth, they are bound to it. And when they fail to act on what they teach, they do not merely err — they invite judgment.

We have been told to evaluate abortion policy on outcomes alone. But Scripture does not separate outcomes from obedience. It ties them together. God does not bless disobedience because it is politically strategic.

When disobedience is institutionalized — when it becomes the operating principle of a movement — the results should not surprise us.

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Abortion does not decrease under compromise because compromise is not a neutral tool. It is a moral decision. It trains a culture to tolerate the very evil it claims to oppose. It teaches legislators to delay what they confess is urgent. It forms a people who say that the unborn are fully human, while structuring their laws as though they are not.

This is why the numbers do not tell the story we were promised. Not because the strategy was insufficiently refined, but because it was fundamentally misaligned. The issue is not that we have failed to compromise enough. It is that we have compromised at all.

God does not require political feasibility. He requires obedience.

Obedience does not ask how much injustice can be tolerated while we make progress. It asks what justice demands — and then establishes it.

Until that shift is made, the pattern will remain. More laws, more campaigns, more assurances of progress — and the same or worse results. Not because we lack the power to change it, but because we refuse to apply what we already know to be true. Until we do what is right, we should not expect the numbers to change — because God does not bless disobedience. He judges it.

That is why we must fight to establish equal justice under the law for our preborn neighbors — not by regulating abortion, but by abolishing it.

Trump is keeping his word on health care costs



For years, Washington insiders from both parties talked a big game about lowering health care costs. Yet somehow, the bills kept rising, families kept struggling, and the real power players in the system kept getting a free pass. Not anymore.

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is finally taking aim at one of the biggest and most overlooked drivers of high health care costs: anticompetitive contracting by dominant hospital systems.

Hospitals are businesses first and foremost — and like any business, they’re out to maximize profits.

The recent lawsuits against giants like New York Presbyterian and Ohio Health are a clear signal that the era of unchecked hospital power is coming to an end.

Let’s be honest about what’s been happening. In city after city, hospital markets have quietly consolidated until competition barely exists. When nearly all metro areas have highly concentrated hospital systems, those systems use their leverage to lock in contracts that guarantee them top-tier placement in insurance networks while blocking efforts to guide patients toward more affordable care.

These so-called “anti-steering” provisions might sound technical, but their impact is simple: higher prices and fewer choices for American families.

When insurers and employers cannot design plans that reward lower-cost, high-quality providers, patients are forced into more expensive options whether they realize it or not. Workers pay more in premiums. Businesses face higher costs. Taxpayers pick up the tab through government programs.

What makes the Trump DOJ’s actions so important is that they are willing to challenge institutions that have long been treated as untouchable. Hospitals often enjoy a halo effect in their communities, and many do lifesaving work. But that does not give them the right to use their market dominance to shut out competition and inflate prices.

Hospitals are businesses first and foremost — and like any business, they’re out to maximize profits.

By going after these restrictive contracts, the administration is restoring something that has been missing from health care for far too long: real competition. When plans have the flexibility to exclude overpriced systems or steer patients toward better-value options, the entire market starts to work the way it is supposed to.

We already have evidence this works. Plans that avoid the most expensive hospital systems can significantly reduce costs — without negatively impacting the quality of the care being delivered — and even modest steering can deliver meaningful savings. In a system as large as American health care, those savings translate into billions of dollars and real relief for families.

Predictably, the corporate hospital industry is pushing back, claiming these lawsuits are misguided. But that is what you hear whenever someone finally challenges entrenched interests. The same voices that benefited from the status quo are now being asked to compete on a level playing field, and they do not like it.

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Instead of protecting powerful institutions, the Trump administration is standing up for patients, workers, and employers who have been footing the bill for far too long. It is a reminder that markets only work when competition is protected, and that means enforcing the rules when they are violated.

For decades, Americans have been told that health care costs are just too complicated to fix. But sometimes the problem is simpler than the experts admit. When a few dominant players can write the rules, everyone else loses. President Trump and the Department of Justice are finally rewriting that script.

Draining the swamp is not just about Washington politics. It is about rooting out the hidden arrangements and insider advantages that drive up costs across our economy, including in health care.

By taking on anticompetitive hospital contracting, the Trump administration is proving that no industry is above scrutiny.

That is a win for competition, a win for affordability, and most importantly, a win for the American people.

Does the DHS meme strategy actually work?



Growing up, Republicans treated deportations like a topic that required careful handling. Under presidents such as George W. Bush, the language was softened, the messaging was restrained, and the emphasis was placed on policy rather than persuasion. The assumption was that if the argument was sound, the public would eventually come around to it.

That assumption turned out to be wrong.

The goal is not to explain policy in a traditional sense, but to normalize it through repetition, familiarity, and shareability.

Consider the sympathetic yet stern immigration pivots Republicans such as former Texas Governor Rick Perry had during the 2012 GOP primary. Back then, the media and liberal pundits painted Perry as hardcore and extremely right-wing. Compared to Republicans in office now, however, he would be considered passive and extremely soft on the issue.

The assumption that the independent and flip-voter public would buy in to the GOP stance was not because the policy case for enforcement lacked merit, but because the conversation was happening somewhere else entirely.

Opinions were not being decided based on press briefings or white papers. They were being shaped on TV screens, social media feeds, comment sections, and viral content ecosystems where tone and format mattered as much as the substance.

Jeremy Knauff, founder of the PR firm Spartan Media, puts it this way:

Public relations plays a far larger role in policy than most people realize. It’s not enough just to educate the public any more — today, lawmakers need to engage in a more direct effort to influence public perception. The government has always done this to some degree, but the left has been significantly more active and effective in this regard. But now we’re starting to see a measurable shift from the right.

What we are seeing now from the Department of Homeland Security’s social media team represents a break from that old model. Simply put, they’re playing to win.

The kids want memes

The DHS, along with the White House and ICE, has been using memes, viral audio, and internet-native content to promote deportation policy and immigration enforcement. This includes Christmas-themed deportation memes, TikTok-style videos set to trending music, and stylized content designed to travel well beyond traditional government channels.

Keep in mind that Millennials (roughly ages 27-42) spend an average of nearly three hours per day, or approximately 17 to 20+ hours per week, on social media.

These aren’t your father’s government employees figuring these things out on the fly, looking sloppy and rushed. The content they’re putting out isn’t just quality; it is the type of content you would see on the feeds of the most viral social media content creators. They’re in the major leagues of viral political content.

One viral video posted by the DHS, captioned 'Gotta Catch ‘Em All,' showed ICE agents blowing in doors and handcuffing and leading away undocumented immigrants to the theme song from the "Pokemon" cartoon. It certainly tugged on Millennial heartstrings, because that clip alone has been viewed 75.5 million times.

The backlash has been as immediate and intense as you would expect. Critics say this approach is dehumanizing, that it trivializes serious issues, and that it reflects a level of insensitivity that should not be associated with government communications.

CNN has gone so far as to claim that "underlining" DHS recruitment posters "are undertones that historians and experts in political communication say are alarmingly nationalist — and fraught with appeals to a specifically White [sic] and Christian national identity.”

Supporters see it as effective and long overdue after years of what they view as overly cautious messaging from the right.

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Focusing only on whether the memes are appropriate misses the larger point. What is happening here is not primarily about humor or tone; it is about control over how the issue is framed and where the framing takes place.

Knauff says, “The people who are criticizing this approach are only doing so because they can see that it’s effective. And their complaints are disingenuous because it’s the exact same thing they’ve been doing for decades.”

The cool kids in control

For the better part of the last decade, conservatives did not lose the immigration argument on substance. They lost it on distribution. They had policies and data on their side, but they failed to communicate those ideas in the environments where younger voters and low-information audiences were actually forming opinions.

Put plainly, they were boring and unwilling to defend their position with the same passion as liberals.

The polling makes the gap impossible to ignore. Multiple 2026 surveys show that younger Americans are far less supportive of Trump’s immigration policies than older voters, especially Boomers who largely consume cable news.

A February PBS/NPR/Marist poll found that just 18% of voters under 30 approved of the administration's approach to deportations, while 69% disapproved. A CBS/YouGov survey in mid-January similarly found that 60% of respondents under 30 believed Trump was doing “too much” to deport illegal aliens.

This issue isn’t cut and dry. Trump was delivered a mandate in 2024, but now that optics are changing, the question is whether to keep the foot on the pedal or not.

The picture is clear though: Younger voters are not instinctively aligned with the administration’s immigration agenda, even if they support individual enforcement measures in isolation. So what to do? Keep the memes coming.

The current strategy appears to be an attempt to close that gap by meeting the audience where it already is. Instead of trying to pull younger users into formal policy discussions, the DHS is embedding its messaging inside the formats the youth consume on a daily basis.

The goal is not to explain policy in a traditional sense, but to normalize it through repetition, familiarity, and shareability.

Propaganda? Only call it that if it's boring.

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It’s all about virality

What we’re seeing represents a significant shift in how the government communicates. In the past, agencies relied on press releases, official statements, and media intermediaries to convey their message carefully and cautiously. Now, the message is being delivered directly to the public in the same formats used by influencers, creators, and online communities.

The distinction between political communication and internet culture is becoming increasingly blurred.

There are clear risks to this approach. When complex policies are reduced to highly shareable clips, the conversation can quickly become polarized.

At the same time, the old model was not getting the job done. Staffers with communications degrees did not win over younger audiences, did not reshape cultural perception, and did not prevent immigration from becoming one of the most emotionally charged issues in our society today.

Backtracking to a more restrained style of messaging would not solve anything. It would only surrender the digital battlefield once again.

What makes this moment notable is not just the content itself, but what it signals about the future of political communication. The DHS is operating less like a government agency and more like a savvy political campaign, prioritizing reach, engagement, and narrative control over neutrality.

Weapons of meme destruction

The DHS’ use of memes is an indication that the rules of engagement have shifted. Political power is no longer exercised solely through policy decisions or legislative victories, but through the ability to shape perception at scale.

Republicans spent years trying to win arguments in spaces that fewer and fewer people were paying attention to. Now, they appear to be adapting to the environment as it actually exists. Whether that approach proves sustainable or backfires politically remains to be seen.

Knauff explains it like this:

I believe this strategy will not only continue to be effective, but also become more effective as time goes on. Right now, it’s novel and exciting, but as the new car smell wears off, the impact will remain — if we have the discipline to stick with the mission. Public relations requires time to create the desired outcome. It’s not something you can rush. The left had decades to slowly leverage this strategy, so the right needs to be just as patient in their execution.

If the GOP maintains its majority in Congress, Republicans might joke about how the memes saved them. If they lose, expect the old guard to say the memes were too mean.

What is clear is that the next phase of political communications will not be conveyed primarily through speeches, press conferences, or media panels. It will be fought through content and the side that understands that reality will have a decisive advantage.

May the side with the best memes win.

The collapse of conservatism nobody wants to admit



From its earliest days, the United States saw itself as a nation with intense purpose. Not a static country, not a museum of inherited customs, but a project. Alexander Hamilton envisioned a commercial republic that would rival the great powers of Europe. The doctrine of manifest destiny pushed that ambition across a continent. After World War II, the same impulse extended outward into global leadership.

America, in other words, has always kept its eyes on the horizon.

But once the frontier had been settled, the U.S. seemed to turn inward, focusing its boundless energy and notion of destiny toward a social crusade. The progressive civil rights movement became the story Americans told about themselves more than any other. A nation built on outward expansion turned inward. The energy that once drove settlers westward and engineers skyward was redirected into a different kind of project: a moral and social crusade at home.

This narrative is so powerful that it now dominates both the conservative and liberal mind. This means that the U.S. no longer really has a conservative movement, but rather two competing versions of the same progressive teleology that only disagree about the pace at which the social revolution should be pursued.

Restless people settled the US; we barely complete the conquest of one challenge before some group splinters off to brave the next frontier.

The philosopher Aristotle is famous for his discussion of telos — the end or purpose of a thing. Many modern thinkers have discarded this notion of ultimate purpose in favor of a more materialistic understanding of the world, but Aristotle is right, and they are wrong. America was always a nation in tension, recognizing the need to solidify its identity as the first true product of the New World even as it was immediately compelled forward by ambition. Restless people settled the U.S.; we barely complete the conquest of one challenge before some group splinters off to brave the next frontier. The American advance has always been relentless. Our nation is one of great purpose and great energy that will be directed toward whatever end we put our minds to.

For most of its history, America’s telos was expansion. Not merely territorial, but civilizational. A restless people moved outward, solved one problem, then immediately sought the next. This produced enormous dynamism. It also produced tension. The country had to define itself even as it constantly outgrew its previous definitions.

The civil rights myth

North America is the natural domain of the United States, but once the West had been truly settled, there was nowhere left for that pioneering spirit to expand. World War II proved to be the nation’s most radical period of transformation, during which it emerged as one of only two real superpowers dominating the globe. There were attempts to redirect that impulse. The space race briefly reopened the horizon. The competition with the Soviet Union offered a global stage. But these proved temporary. The deeper shift was happening at home.

The civil rights movement had begun as a reasonable request for legal equality, but was quickly merging with hippie culture and anti-Vietnam protests into a full-blown revolutionary deconstruction of America. The story of the civil rights movement was no longer the effort to seek a temporary solution for a wrong done to a specific group. Instead the movement fully embraced the progressive and Marxist themes of its contemporaries. America was no longer a great nation that needed to make some adjustments to integrate black citizens better; it was an eternal oppressor that had to be entirely reconstructed.

That shift matters because it supplied a new telos. If the old purpose had been expansion, the new one was equality, understood not as a condition to be achieved, but as a process without end. Every disparity became evidence of unfinished work. Every institution became suspect. The project could not conclude because its logic required constant renewal.

Conservatives initially stood against the civil rights revolution. Barry Goldwater famously opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not because he supported Jim Crow, but because he understood the legislation as a revolutionary attack on states’ rights. Many conservatives initially objected to Ronald Reagan enshrining the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday into law because they still remembered that King was a communist sympathizer and serial adulterer who supported what we would later call DEI.

It was very clear that the CRA had already mutated well beyond its initial purpose and that civil rights law was expanding to consume every area of American life. But every movie, television show, novel, and news broadcast was selling the civil rights revolution as the new story of America. Conservatives never stood a chance.

The new telos of America was one of equality. The framers had written that “all men were created equal,” and it was now the purpose of the U.S. to make that a reality. While Thomas Jefferson may have penned those famous words, it is very clear that neither he nor most of the founding generation meant them in the way modern Americans do today. The continuation of slavery is the obvious example, but early American immigration laws restricted naturalization to whites of good character.

Alexis de Tocqueville, author of "Democracy in America," famously argued that American blacks and Anglos were incompatible and that a race war would likely come before any national civil war. Even Abraham Lincoln was not optimistic about the integration of black and white America, with plans to send former slaves back to Africa once the Civil War was concluded. Whatever previous generations meant by that famous phrase, they obviously did not believe in a never-ending quest to remake society in the name of equality.

Predictably, leftists took the revolution as far and as fast as they could. America’s original sin was slavery, and the country’s entire purpose was now a never-ending mission to atone for this great evil. The suppression of black Americans was systemic, so the United States had to deconstruct all previous hierarchies to avoid oppression. First race, then gender roles, then marriage, then religion, then the concept of biological sex itself. No matter how absurd the exercise proved itself to be, the hunt for one new oppressed minority to grant civil rights to became the telos of America.

Conservatives are the Washington Generals

Conservatives assumed their classic position as beautiful losers. They rejected the speed and intensity of the revolution but accepted the premise. Republicans went from rejecting MLK Day to worshiping the communist as some moderate paragon of the civil rights revolution. The conservative movement rapidly came to believe much of what the left was already asserting, but wanted the revolutionaries to drive the speed limit. Yes, the founders were racist. Yes, they had failed in their promise. Yes, the story of America was its eternal reinvention to achieve social equality. But also, the military and baseball are good, and maybe we can keep some of the Christianity because that also seems important.

This created a strange phenomenon: two competing progressive teleologies, one extreme and one more moderate, came to dominate the American mind. The conservatives began to manifest this ideology in areas of life where they held power. American foreign policy became one of eternal liberation, where our country would conquer the world in the name of liberal democracy.

Despite theoretically opposing feminism or gay rights in the U.S., conservatives would also cite violations of these civil rights as reasons to invade and control other countries. American churches, even conservative ones, began to center their message on race relations, liberation of the oppressed, and care for illegal immigrants. A real right wing no longer existed in America; the new frontier was the eternal civil rights revolution, and the only question was how far and how fast it should go.

This dynamic has created something of an identity crisis for the American right. On one hand, conservatives want to limit the excesses of the left; on the other, they have bought entirely into the progressive premise. American conservatives do not really want to return to the intention of the racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs of the founders. They like the progress, they approve of the revolution, and they are ashamed of their past.

This subversion of the American vision is unfortunate, but it does not have to remain permanent. Instead of wasting our blood and treasure trying to turn every authoritarian backwater into a flourishing Jeffersonian republic, we could once again turn our eyes to the stars. Instead of trying to stamp out every form of inequality in our society, we could embrace hierarchy and the pursuit of greatness.

Instead of being ashamed of our founders, conservatives could follow manifest destiny to Mars and beyond. That requires rejecting the idea that the nation’s highest purpose is to endlessly remake itself in pursuit of abstract equality. It means accepting that hierarchy, excellence, and difference are not pathologies to be erased, but features of any functioning civilization. Before we can pursue the frontier once more, we must believe that we are a people with a purpose, a nation that deserves not just to survive, but to thrive.

You don’t have to engage with crazy



There was a time when James Carville was one of the sharpest political minds in the country — quick, blunt, and effective. He could take a complicated moment and reduce it to something people could carry. That skill is what makes watching him now so unsettling.

Sitting alone, looking into a camera, and unleashing a stream of profanity and rage, it feels less like strategy and more like something unraveling in public. The volume is high, the emotion even higher. It’s completely out of proportion to the moment.

Someone willing to torch his career, his reputation, or even his freedom is not waiting around for your argument.

There’s a sadness to that. Somewhere along the way, he decided this was necessary. You can almost trace the descent, step by step, to a place where that kind of display felt reasonable.

But this isn’t just about one man.

We used to have a line. Not perfection or agreement, but a shared understanding that how we conduct ourselves matters.

That line has eroded, and most people can feel it. This didn’t start yesterday. We’ve been coarsening for a long time.

Years ago, if you were furious, you wrote it out, read it, said it out loud, and then burned it.

Now we broadcast what used to be processed privately. And once it’s out there, it multiplies.

Some people don’t just brush up against this behavior. They live in orbit around it.

Family caregivers know this terrain in a way most people don’t, not because they’re wiser, but because they’re required to learn. Addiction. Dementia. Chronic pain. They discover that not every situation can be reasoned through.

And those lessons transfer.

What you learn sitting across from someone in addiction or confusion applies when you’re standing in front of someone screaming in a parking lot or filming themselves in a rage they can’t govern.

There is a moment where something crosses a line. The defensiveness sharpens. The aggression follows. The reaction no longer fits the moment.

And in that moment, you realize you are no longer dealing with the issue in front of you. You are dealing with something underneath it.

There’s a story behind it, which is why, if it’s hysterical, it’s historical. At that point, you are not in a conversation. You are standing in front of something that will not respond to reason.

Someone willing to torch his career, his reputation, or even his freedom is not waiting around for your argument.

It is a tug of war.

If you win, you end up on your back. If you lose, you end up on your face. Either way, you are in the dirt.

So do not pick up the rope.

That runs against our instincts. We want to engage, correct, and win. But if you take hold, you are no longer engaging a person. You are engaging the disorder or the wound. That is a fight you cannot win.

I have learned this lesson the hard way. I have leaned in, pressed harder, and tried to force clarity into moments that could not hold it. All it did was pull me deeper into the chaos.

So you learn to do something different. You slow down, take a breath, and create space.

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Sometimes that space is physical. Sometimes it is emotional. Sometimes it is simply refusing to engage. You do not have to comment, respond, or show up for every fight you’re invited to.

Scripture speaks to this. The apostle Paul wrote, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).

If possible.

Sometimes it is not. Sometimes the other person has already decided otherwise. But you do get a vote on how you conduct yourself. That is where self-control comes in.

Self-control is not passivity or cowardice. There are times to confront and times when authority must be exercised, even forcefully. But even then, you are not called to function out of rage. You are called to do what is necessary.

And we are seeing more and more people choose escalation. A routine traffic stop becomes a standoff. A disagreement on a plane becomes removal from the aircraft. A minor infraction becomes handcuffs.

Crazy doesn’t let go, but that does not mean you have to hold on.

You don’t have to pick up the rope. You don’t have to match the volume. You don’t have to join the unraveling.

In a culture that rewards outrage, the rarest strength is self-control. And self-control may be the only thing that allows you to walk through chaos without joining it.

Denaturalizing and deporting terrorists should not be complicated



In 2015, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized American citizen born in Sierra Leone, traveled to Africa and met with ISIS in Nigeria. He began communicating with a terrorist online who, thankfully, was an FBI informant. Jalloh was arrested and convicted for providing material support to ISIS and was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

Jalloh should have been denaturalized and deported after his conviction. That should have been the end of the story. However, as a naturalized citizen, he was allowed to remain in the country.

In 2024, he was released from prison early, and on March 12 of this year, he walked into a classroom at Old Dominion University and opened fire, killing Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a retired Army officer.

We cannot allow our immigration system to be wielded as a weapon against our nation.

Shah was from Staunton, Virginia. He enlisted in the army in 2003 and flew an Apache helicopter over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. He survived 600 hours of combat in the Middle East only to be gunned down by a terrorist as he taught a class here in the American homeland.

This horrific attack should never have happened. When a foreign-born terrorist is convicted of conspiring against our homeland, no American should ever have to worry that he will attack again.

My new bill, the Denaturalization and Expulsion of Persons Who Orchestrate Radical Terrorism Act, will guarantee that it never happens again.

The DEPORT Act makes it clear that any naturalized citizen who commits an act of terrorism, plots to commit an attack, joins a terrorist organization, or otherwise aids and abets terrorists is denaturalized and deported. In other words, Jalloh’s conviction for supporting terrorists would have been his last act on American soil.

Naturalization is intended to allow immigrants to pledge total allegiance to the United States. Terrorism is the antithesis of that pledge. This treasonous act represents everything we stand against. Any naturalized citizen found guilty of terrorism-related charges was never loyal to our country and should be removed from our homeland immediately.

Most Americans are understandably shocked to learn that this is not already the law. However, as FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X recently, denaturalizing terrorists is “extremely difficult.” To do so, the government must prove that the person in question fraudulently obtained his or her citizenship.

Under current law, joining a terrorist organization after naturalization is treated as prima facieevidence of such fraud, but only if it happens within five years of becoming a citizen.

The DEPORT Act extends this five-year window for denaturalization to 10 years. It creates a new pathway to denaturalize lone-wolf terrorists — those inspired by online propaganda and foreign extremist ideology who act without formally joining a designated terrorist organization.

RELATED: Austin’s ‘Property of Allah’ shooter is immigration failure made flesh

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Critically, the bill also directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to revise the application for citizenship to include an attestation requirement that will force every future applicant to swear under oath that they have no intent to commit terrorism against the United States. If this had been the law when Jalloh was naturalized, he would easily have been deported upon his conviction.

Passing this legislation would be common sense at any point in American history. We cannot allow our immigration system to be wielded as a weapon against our nation. But it is especially sensible today, as more than 50 million people currently living in the United States were born in foreign countries. This represents almost 15% of the total U.S. population.

Tens of thousands of these immigrants hail from countries with active terrorist networks. Worse yet, many were welcomed to America with little to no vetting under the Biden administration.

Jalloh’s terrorism is not an isolated incident. Ndiaga Diagne, the shooter who attacked a beer garden in Austin, Texas, on March 1, was a naturalized citizen from Senegal. This gunman, who wore a “Property of Allah” shirt, killed two people and injured 14 others.

Similarly, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the Lebanese-born man who reportedly rammed his pickup truck into Temple Israel in Michigan last month, was a naturalized citizen.

The status quo is untenable.

Ensuring that our nation has the ability to denaturalize and deport convicted terrorists isn’t radical. It is the bare minimum we can do to claw back our sovereignty and protect American citizens against the ticking time bomb within our borders.

West Virginia Republicans are betraying their voters for AI special interests



There is a reason why most red-state Republican leaders fail to reflect the political values of their constituents. They represent the special interests they work for rather than the whole of the people.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the ravaging of West Virginia by generative AI data centers, promoted by people like House of Delegates Speaker Roger Hanshaw, who legally represents special interest groups fighting poor, local communities in court.

The same man who was instrumental in stripping localities of their ability to block data centers is now representing the people behind those data centers in court.

Remember the provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 that originally attempted to strip all state and local governments of any ability to block data centers from being built? Well, last year, West Virginia enacted just such a ban at the state level. Hanshaw shepherded HB 2014 to Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s desk.

Among many special tax and regulatory favors offered to data centers, this bill removed local jurisdiction over the siting, zoning, and operating of certified high-impact data centers and microgrids.

Thus, companies like Google, Meta, and OpenAI could work with state politicians bought into their pay-for-play and force their way into any community. And what better person to be fighting for them than the speaker of the House?

While serving as speaker, Hanshaw filed a notice of appearance in the appeal to the Department of Evironmental Protection’s Air Quality Board on behalf of his client MGS CNP1 LLC, which is an affiliate of Houston-based Fidelis New Energy working on a data center project in Mason County.

This was in the middle of the session and just one week after the state House of Delegates passed legislation making it easier for these projects to obtain certification with the Department of Commerce.

Then, just two days after the session ended, Hanshaw took on a case through his work at Bowles Rice for Fundamental Data, the company working on powering the data center bonanza in Tucker County.

So the same man who was instrumental in stripping localities of their ability to block data centers is now representing the people behind those data centers in court against local community groups appealing the DEP’s permit issuance.

It was the Tucker County fight that led me to speak out nationally against this mindless business model of raping red-state land, power, and water for a form of generative AI that serves nothing but chatslop and the surveillance state.

Last August, I vacationed in Tucker County, home to the gorgeous Blackwater Falls State Park and Canaan Valley. A county that voted for Trump by a 50-vote margin, these people are the forgotten men that MAGA was supposed to represent.

RELATED: How to power the AI race without losing control

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I spoke with several locals who were irate beyond words about the injustice occurring in a state with barely any Democrat elected officials.

What’s worse is that West Virginia is also being violated with endless transmission lines to power the blue-state “data center alley” in northern Virginia. According to a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysts, West Virginia energy consumers will be expected to pay $572 million in higher rates to fund the rope to hang themselves.

What is so offensive is that these projects are not even creating jobs. According to the February JOLT report from BLS, construction remains in the greatest recession since the Great Recession, despite these so-called data center projects. Oracle, which is at the center of the cloud computing in the data centers, is laying off 18% of its workforce.

Shockingly, Henshaw and his minions attempted to pass even greater handouts for data centers offered to no other industry, in addition to what was in HB 2014.

This session, they introduced SB 623, which offered a complete property tax exemption and sales tax exemption on all data center equipment. They also introduced HB 4013, which would have created a new tax credit available to data centers to offset all state income, sales/use, franchise, and payroll withholding taxes based on capital investments, construction costs, and wages.

How many jobs did they have to create to qualify? Just 10! Which, of course, is a tacit admission that these behemoths don’t create many jobs, despite their enormous footprint, cost, and consumption of power.

In other words, Agenda 2030 is being fulfilled right under our noses in a state where Republicans control both houses of the legislature with 32-2 and 91-9 majorities.

What West Virginia, with its mind-numbing GOP majorities, shows is that the lack of conservative outcomes under GOP control is not due to a lack of power or votes but too much access to money and special interests.

Veterans shouldn’t have to worry about lawyers taking their benefits



I served in combat with the U.S. Army. Like many veterans, I know that men and women who come home carrying the physical and mental costs of war rely on disability payments to maintain mortgages and keep their families afloat. These funds help people rebuild lives that were permanently changed during their years of service and sacrifice.

Benefits are meant to help families recover from the physical and mental costs of war, yet they too often become a revenue stream for law firms that specialize in VA appeals.

Navigating the VA's disability system is rarely simple. Many veterans are already coping with serious injuries, mental health challenges, or financial stress as they transition back to civilian life. Confronting a complicated bureaucracy on top of that can feel like fighting another battle — which is why veterans should have access to a range of options for help.

The current system often leaves veterans with limited options, partly because when disability claims are delayed and pushed into drawn-out appeals, attorneys are allowed to collect a percentage of the veteran’s eventual award. The longer the process drags on, the larger the payout.

The Department of Veterans Affairs paid $394.7 million to accredited attorneys over the past year — money taken directly from veterans who fought to earn those benefits. The CHOICE Act (H.R. 3132) would help ensure that those benefits stay with the veterans who earned them, not the lawyers who see them as a payday.

Federal law limits attorney fees in most VA disability cases at 20% of a veteran’s backpay award. Those guardrails exist for a reason: Without them, veterans’ benefits risk becoming just another profit center for the litigation industry.

Organizations representing trial lawyers spend millions lobbying Congress each year on issues affecting litigation and attorney compensation. Veterans’ disability claims are no exception. When legislation like the CHOICE Act seeks to limit attorney fees and protect veterans’ benefits, the trial bar mobilizes to protect its financial interests.

This opposition raises a simple question: When the debate is about veterans’ benefits, whose side are these lobbyists really on?

Does increasing the share of benefits that go to legal fees serve those who wore the uniform?

Benefits are meant to help families recover from the physical and mental costs of war, yet they too often become a revenue stream for law firms that specialize in VA appeals.

RELATED: The trial lawyers come for online free speech

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Veterans deserve strong advocates. The system should prioritize protecting them, not increasing the financial incentives tied to their benefits in an already strenuous process.

The complex VA benefits process can attract bad actors looking to profit from veterans navigating a complicated bureaucracy. Reputable companies that assist veterans with disability claims have been among the loudest voices calling for stronger oversight and clear rules to eliminate those abuses.

The CHOICE Act would establish guardrails that veterans deserve, including stronger consumer protections, limits on fees, and accountability for providers that violate the rules.

Congress must put veterans and their families first. The priority should not be filling trial lawyers’ deep pockets, but ensuring the system truly serves veterans’ best interests. When powerful lobbying organizations treat those benefits as a potential revenue opportunity, the system risks losing sight of whom it is meant to serve.

Our country made a promise: If you serve, and if service leaves you injured or disabled, the nation will stand behind you. The benefits belong to the veterans who earned them and not to the lawyers or lobbyists who see them as a revenue stream. Congress should pass the CHOICE Act and ensure those benefits serve the veterans they were meant for.

How to power the AI race without losing control



The artificial intelligence revolution is here, and it arrives charged with the capacity to fundamentally change society for better or worse.

America is currently leading the world in AI development. U.S. companies are building the most advanced models, attracting the most capital, and designing the infrastructure that will shape the next century. But there is one increasingly obvious constraint standing in the way: electricity accessibility.

The political consequences of rapid automation could be just as transformative as the technology itself.

Energy scarcity is only half the story. Even if we succeed in generating the power required to fuel the AI revolution, we must confront a deeper challenge. The same technology that promises medical breakthroughs and economic growth also carries profound societal and even existential risk.

If America wants to win the AI race, we will need to consider a massive expansion of energy production and an equally massive expansion of vigilance.

The energy bottleneck

Modern AI models are trained and deployed in massive data centers packed with tens of thousands of high-performance graphics processing units running continuously. Training a single frontier model can require weeks or months of nonstop computation, while everyday AI tools used by millions of people must process queries around the clock.

These facilities consume electricity at industrial scale, rivaling entire cities in their power demands. In fact, the hyperscale Stargate data center in Saline Township is projected to consume the same amount of electricity as 1.17 million homes.

The understanding of just how much energy is needed to power the AI revolution is still unfolding across the industry. Just a few years ago, Silicon Valley leaders were still thinking in megawatts.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, speaking on a podcast less than two years ago, said his company would build larger AI clusters “if we could get the energy to do it,” describing 50-to-100-megawatt facilities and speculating that 1-gigawatt data centers were probably inevitable someday.

Today, 1-gigawatt facilities are on the smaller end of planned AI infrastructure, with projects up to 5 gigawatts already in motion throughout the United States, including but not limited to the following:

And this list barely scratches the surface. Dozens more large-scale facilities are planned or under construction across the country, and every single one of them will require enormous flows of reliable electricity to operate.

Elon Musk recently stated at Davos that “the limiting factor for AI deployment is, fundamentally, electrical power.” He warned that while AI chip production is increasing exponentially, electricity generation is not.

“Very soon, maybe even later this year,” Musk said, “we will be producing more chips than we can turn on.”

In Santa Clara, California, reports indicate newly built data centers may sit idle for years because the local grid cannot handle the load.

According to a report published by the global consulting group McKinsey & Company, U.S. demand for AI-ready data center capacity could grow from roughly 60 gigawatts today to 170 to 298 gigawatts by 2030.

The International Energy Agency reports that data centers consumed more than 4% of total U.S. electricity in 2024. This amounts to 183 terawatt-hours. IEA projections suggest this number could increase by 133% to 426 TWh by 2030.

To put that in perspective, 426 TWh is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of more than 40 million American homes.

The dilemma is obvious. If we do not have reliable energy, AI innovation will be compromised and could potentially migrate elsewhere. Worse, American households could find themselves competing with Big Tech for increasingly scarce power, driving up electricity costs for families and small businesses.

But energy is only the first layer of this story.

RELATED: States should work with AI, not against it

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The promise and the disruption

AI is not your typical technological advancement. It is a general-purpose intelligence system capable of transforming nearly every sector of society. In the coming years, AI could accelerate drug discovery, personalize medicine, supercharge logistics, automate research, and unlock new materials and engineering breakthroughs, just to name a few potential benefits. The economic upside is staggering.

Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool and a dangerous weapon. While promising efficiency and innovation, AI also threatens disruption on a historic scale. Job displacement could occur faster than previous technological revolutions. Entire professions, from legal research to software development, could be reshaped or automated.

If widespread job displacement occurs, there will inevitably be calls for sweeping government intervention. The political consequences of rapid automation could be just as transformative as the technology itself.

Exponential technological developments have changed political operations throughout history. As a recent example, social media algorithms have dominated political discourse over the past decade. Political polarization has subsequently skyrocketed as people on all sides of the aisle are trapped in online echo chambers and subjected to a panopticon of surveillance.

Artificial intelligence has the frightening capabilities of supercharging mass surveillance while baselessly boosting preconceived biases without an objective basis in truth.

There is certainly reason for concern about the potential bias and coercive nature of AI. In recent years, we have already witnessed how tech companies can shape narratives and suppress viewpoints on popular media platforms. Embedding ideological bias into AI systems would mean embedding that bias into education, finance, health care, and governance.

If AI becomes the invisible infrastructure of society, who writes its rules? Who determines its boundaries? And who holds it accountable?

Playing with probabilities

Beyond economic and cultural disruption lies an even deeper uncertainty.

We are introducing a form of intelligence that even its creators admit they do not fully understand. There are already documented cases of advanced AI systems behaving in deceptive or strategically manipulative ways. In controlled environments, some models have been observed lying to human evaluators, scheming to achieve assigned goals, or resisting shutdown instructions.

OpenAI’s stated ambition is to create artificial superintelligence — systems that surpass human capability across virtually every domain. There is no telling where this path may lead. Humanity has never had to grapple with the prospect of a man-made intelligence that is superior to our own.

And remarkably, some of the leading figures in the field openly discuss the possibility of catastrophic outcomes.

Elon Musk has suggested there is “only a 20% chance of annihilation.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has estimated roughly a 25% chance that AI development goes “really, really badly.” Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the “godfather of AI,” has placed the odds of extinction-level consequences somewhere between 10 and 20% over the coming decades.

Those numbers still imply that positive outcomes are more likely than not. But when the downside is losing human civilization itself, percentages matter.

We are advancing a technology with transformative power while relying largely on overzealous corporate discretion to steer its trajectory. Humanity finds itself fiddling with the key to Pandora’s box, and we have no rational means of gauging what will happen if the box is opened.

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Power and prudence

As stalwart advocates for smaller government, we hesitate to call for slamming the brakes on AI development, but it is important to have sober discernment moving forward. America is in a strategic competition with geopolitical rivals who would gladly dominate both this field and us if we retreat.

Reliable energy production is necessary to promote competition and American innovation. Yet it is arguably more important that society engages in serious dialogue surrounding this emerging technology. Government cannot, and should not, be the only voice in this conversation.

Independent institutions dedicated to transparency, accountability, and the defense of individual liberty need to rise and challenge the current trajectory.

Technological revolutions have always reshaped society. The difference this time is scale and speed. AI is a decision-making engine that may soon operate faster and more broadly than any human institution.

America can power the AI revolution. The real question is whether we can power it without surrendering control over our economy, institutions, and ultimately, our freedom.

The future may well belong to artificial intelligence. But whether that future advances prosperity or undermines humanity depends on the vigilance we exercise today.