The BLT that broke my brain (and exposed a bigger problem)



When the system can’t make a sandwich, what else is it failing to do?

My wife had just come out of her 98th surgery. It was 10:30 p.m. She hadn’t eaten in nearly 24 hours — and all she wanted was a BLT.

Something simple. Familiar. A sandwich she’s ordered many times before from the patient menu when things ran on schedule.

But this time, the kitchen had closed.

She’d been NPO for nearly 24 hours. (That’s short for nil per os — Latin for “y’all don’t eat or drink nothin’.”)

No food. No coffee. No comfort. Just waiting around with dry lips and an empty stomach until anesthesia wears off and the all-clear is given.

So she turned to me and asked, “Can you go down to the grill and get me one?”

I went downstairs to the hospital’s after-hours grill — the one that stays open for staff and visitors — and asked the cook, “Hey, could I get a BLT?”

Fixing this begins by teaching people that they’re allowed to see the person in front of them.

Let me paint the picture for you.

There was a giant pan of cooked bacon right in front of me. Tomatoes. Lettuce. Bread. All present. All visible. All just sitting there.

But instead of a sandwich, I got a blank stare — followed by: “That’s not on our menu. We don’t have a way to charge for that.”

I even tried to explain: “I’ve got money. Please. Just make the sandwich and charge me whatever you want.”

Nothing. Just more blank stares and quiet helplessness — as if I had asked them to get Prince Harry back into the will.

That was the moment bureaucracy made me want to walk into the sea.

And I was in Colorado!

A little humanity, please

I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I wasn’t asking for seared ahi tuna with a drizzle of truffle oil. I was just trying to bring a woman — who had just survived her 98th surgery — the comfort of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at the end of a long, painful day.

They had the bacon.

They had the bread.

They had the hands.

But because there wasn’t a billing code for it, it could not be done.

I didn’t argue — much. I didn’t throw a fit. I just didn’t have it in me.

Sure, I could have ordered the bacon cheeseburger and said, “Hold the burger and cheese.”

RELATED: When the soul flatlines, call a ‘Code Grace’

  LattaPictures via iStock/Getty Images

But I was tired — besmirched by 13 hours of hospital noise and fluorescent lights. I wasn’t thinking like a work-around guy. I was feeling like a husband who had just watched his wife survive another operation — and who just wanted to bring her comfort food before midnight.

The manager on duty saw me trying to explain — saw the look on my face, probably — and graciously had mercy on me.

No forms. No debate. Just a sandwich.

I left with a BLT, deep gratitude for that manager — and a sigh. One person made it right, but the system still made it harder than it should have been.

If we can’t make a sandwich for a post-op patient, what else aren’t we doing?

The bigger problem

That moment wasn’t just about a sandwich. It was a snapshot of the country we’re living in — where solutions exist, but systems won’t allow them.

  • You want to fix a clerical error with the IRS? Good luck.
  • You want to talk to a live representative? You might have better odds getting RFK Jr. to share an Uber with Anthony Fauci.

America was built by people who hated “we can’t” — and yet we now tolerate “that’s not how we do it.” And somehow, we’ve come to accept this as normal.

There’s something spiritually corrosive about a system that erases people to elevate process.

We see it everywhere — health care, government, schools, even churches.

But what if “good enough for government work” isn’t good enough any more?

Where reform begins

Systems don’t change just because we complain. They change when people remember how to care.

The problem isn’t just that the forms are too long (which they usually are).

It’s that no one feels responsible.

Of course, deflection of responsibility goes all the way back to the garden — where Adam and Eve tried to pass the blame instead of owning their failure.

Fixing this doesn’t begin with a new workflow diagram or a subcommittee hearing.

It begins by teaching people that they’re allowed to see the person in front of them. See the need. See the moment. See the opportunity.

When Jesus saw people, He didn’t ask if they had a referral or a code. He didn’t ask what department handled the lepers.

He stopped. He touched. He healed. He saw the person, not the system.

If we want to model that — whether we’re surgeons, pastors, nurses, cashiers, representatives, senators, or grill cooks — we start by doing the simplest, most human thing: We see the person in front of us. And we make the sandwich.

Even if it’s not on the menu.

Where the left gets its rage against borders



The street chaos that erupted in Los Angeles last month — when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents moved to arrest illegal-alien criminals — wasn’t random. Anyone surprised by the outburst hasn’t been paying attention.

The moral fervor driving these riots doesn’t come from thin air. Just look at the rhetoric in far-left media coverage of immigration. One outlet in particular, In These Times, offers a window into the revolutionary mindset of the #AbolishICE crowd and the broader young left. I reviewed dozens of the outlet's immigration pieces. What I found wasn’t cherry-picked — it was consistent, radical, and dangerous.

Illegal aliens are the oppressed. ICE is the villain. Any action — including violence — is excused as righteous resistance. It’s about fighting evil.

The left’s project has always aimed to smash moral, legal, and natural distinctions. That same instinct was on full display in L.A. earlier this month. As G.K. Chesterton warned: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.” The left wants all fences gone.

Erasing distinctions

To a doctrinaire leftist, distinctions between rich and poor, citizen and foreigner, criminal and non-criminal, man and woman, even adult and child are “oppressive.” In immigration, the lines between legal and illegal, citizen and noncitizen, felon and guest worker get erased. Right-leaning Americans may only just be waking up to this. The rioters in Los Angeles already live it.

In These Times doesn’t hide its radicalism. A few representative quotes from its pages:

  • “We must stop thinking about citizenship for [illegal] immigrants in terms of who deserves it. Individuals should be granted citizenship simply because they are human and they are here.”
  • “Having our [legal and illegal immigrant] community arbitrarily divided into those deserving of rights and those who are expendable reflects a system that never was meant to acknowledge our community’s full humanity in the first place.”
  • “[Restrictionists falsely claim] job competition would slack off [with reduced immigration], and wages would go up because ‘they’ wouldn’t be taking ‘our’ jobs.”

The message is unmistakable: If you support immigration enforcement, you oppose humanity itself. Never mind the stolen Social Security numbers or the abuse of American goodwill. Illegal immigrants, we’re told, deserve the same rights as citizens — simply for existing. This rhetoric escalates quickly.

One article chastises American workers for blaming illegal immigrants for undercutting strikes: “Blaming Mexican workers for lost strikes is playing the employers’ game. ... In a previous era, there would have been accusations against Black workers, or Italians, etc.”

Elsewhere: “We will need to resist local and national immigration enforcement against all marginalized communities.”

This isn’t about labor or policy. It’s about framing illegal aliens as the next great oppressed class — and erasing the moral and legal categories that make self-government possible.

Twisting moral language

At the AFL-CIO convention, In These Times published a poem titled “america” (lowercase intentional), written by the daughter of an illegal immigrant. It closed with a familiar cudgel from the left:

“While my father’s hands blister from work all day
and he doesn’t feel like he has a say
in this nation dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal.”

The left routinely abuses that line from the Declaration of Independence to indict “hypocritical America” — meaning anyone who disagrees with the left. Enforcement of immigration law becomes the new Jim Crow. Homeland Security agents are cast as the KKK.

Another article accuses the Trump administration of using deportation raids to intimidate “Black and Brown” voters and suppress turnout — echoing the claim that the DHS was “race-baiting” by displaying wanted posters of criminal aliens.

Righteous violence

In this framing, the old civil rights movement becomes the template for modern street violence. Hollywood, legacy media, and academia glamorize past “moral” resistance. The left applies the same playbook to immigration.

Illegal aliens are the oppressed. ICE is the villain. Any action — including violence — is excused as righteous resistance. It’s not about the law. It’s about fighting evil.

RELATED: California cities cancel 4th of July events to shield illegal aliens amid anti-ICE madness

  Photo by Jon Putman/Anadolu via Getty Images

Manufacturing a narrative of suffering also requires hyperbolic language and imagery, which In These Times employs in droves. Making the not-uncommon comparison of ICE to Nazis, one piece quotes a Jewish anti-borders activist from a group called Never Again Action: “Imprisoning people in concentration camps, vilifying and rounding up people who are deemed ‘outsiders,’ and turning away asylum seekers and immigrants hits close to home for Jews. … We’ve seen this before, and we won’t wait for it to get worse to take action.”

Another calls U.S. immigration enforcement “ethnic cleansing,” “crimes against humanity,” and a system “designed to brutalize.” Yet another calls deportations “state violence.” ICE, we’re told, merely enforces “unauthorized” immigration. The goal, of course, is to abolish ICE and “the entire deportation and incarceration system.”

Stripping responsibility, shifting blame

In another rhetorical sleight of hand, the left denies all moral responsibility for illegal immigrants. Even President Obama’s “no fault of their own” line about Dreamers isn’t enough. In These Times insists that no illegal alien — child or adult — is to blame for anything. Poverty and violence “left them no alternative.”

Even criminal aliens get a pass. The outlet laments that while the left now emphasizes conditions for detained women and children, “there is a glaring failure to examine the violence against men, including those with criminal convictions.”

Illegal immigrants, it turns out, are “disposable” in the eyes of the U.S. government. Obama said “felons, not families,” but In These Times calls even that distinction unjust.

Amnesty proposals that carve out special treatment for “essential” illegal workers aren’t good enough either. According to Shannon Gleeson and Sofya Aptekar: “We believe all undocumented people, regardless of where they work — or whether they work at all — should be eligible for the same path to citizenship.”

Gleeson and Aptekar even reframe the looting during the 2020 George Floyd riots: What if you’re “building a more just America by helping organize the Black Lives Matter uprisings”?

America made them do it

To square the moral circle, Gleeson and Aptekar — who are university professors, naturally — assign blame to America itself. Why are illegal aliens here? Because we were there.

Illegal aliens “are here because we were there,” they contend. “Their need to leave their homes can be traced to the United States — its corporations, its government, its military, and its enormous footprint in the climate crisis.”

Immigration becomes “restitution.” Another open-borders activist writes: “People from Europe and the U.S. crossed our borders to come to Guatemala, and took over our land and economy. … Now it’s our turn to cross borders.”

Don’t call this immigration. It’s revenge masquerading as justice. Illegal immigration is really just “fighting back.”

Obliterating order

By inventing past and present grievances, the left justifies lawbreaking as moral resistance and calls it justice. Amnesty becomes the “long-overdue first step.” What’s at the root of all this supposed suffering? Us.

The idea that illegal immigrants are “owed” citizenship — that lawbreakers are the victims — is morally perverse. But it’s vital for a movement bent on erasing the line between citizen and noncitizen.

The left doesn’t want to stop at amnesty. The left wants the obliteration of law, order, borders, and the moral framework that makes all of that possible.

Chesterton’s warning about fences applies now more than ever. The left tears down every distinction without asking why it existed in the first place. Whether it’s gender, citizenship, or the rule of law, nothing is sacred — only power.

From prison to pier: The unlikely wisdom of a catfisherman



Back in the 1990s, not too long after my college days were over, I often made the couple-hour drive to the Texas coast to do some bay fishing. Sometimes I went with friends, and other times I went alone. The Copano Bay State Fishing Pier was my favorite destination — a former highway bridge spanning the mouth of Copano Bay. Any fish swimming in or out of Copano Bay swam beneath that pier.

On this particular trip, I went by myself. I set up my poles and chair under a light and had a successful night of fishing for speckled sea trout. In the wee hours, I returned to my car, pointed it east, reclined the driver’s seat for a few hours of sleep, and with the rising sun, I returned to the pier for a little more fishing before heading home.

‘If I hadn’t gone to prison, I might even be dead now. Who knows.’

The fish were no longer biting, so I kept moving farther out on the now-empty pier until settling in at the end. Lost in thought, I was surprised by a big strike on the line. While reeling in, I realized I now had company. A weathered man of indeterminable age was watching me.

The fish turned out to be a hardhead catfish, a junk fish that steals bait and is armed with a wicked dorsal fin. I removed the hook and threw the fish back into the bay.

“Why’d you throw it back?” the stranger asked.

“Just a hardhead,” I replied.

“What’s wrong with a hardhead?”

“Lousy eating.”

“Ever ate one?

“No.”

“Then, how can you know? Shouldn’t you try one first?”

I laughed and told him I probably should try one someday, but for now, I’d keep pursuing trout and flounder. Still serious, he asked me, “Ever gone hungry?”

“No,” I replied, to which he didn’t respond.

He then returned to his poles, which were leaning against the rails behind me and a little way down the pier. Not too long after, I hooked another hardhead. The stranger was watching me. I was not going to keep this fish, but it seemed that offering a hardhead catfish to him was a pathetic form of charity. I’d rather have caught a respectable fish or just given him a trout from the cooler in my car.

“Want it?” I asked. He took it and thanked me as he dropped it in his bucket.

“One more, and my dad and I will have enough for supper.”

“Here with your dad, are you?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Left the women behind?” I tried to joke.

“Not exactly. Mom’s dead, and my ex left me a long time ago.”

“Where are you staying?” I followed, trying to make light conversation.

“We got us a trailer in Fulton. Dad’s sleeping in.”

About then, I caught another hardhead and again offered it to the stranger. He took it and then asked if he could throw his line on my side of the pier. I was happy to oblige, since catching hardheads wasn’t providing me any satisfaction.

“Where’re you from?” he asked.

“Austin,” I answered. “How about you?”

“All over, I guess. Huntsville for most of my adult life.” (Huntsville is home to the Texas State Penitentiary.)

“Work at the prison?” I asked.

“No. I was incarcerated there.”

RELATED: Vibe shift: Christians must seize this cultural moment

  Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

At that moment, I realized it would not only be tacky to pursue the line of conversation (“So what were you in for?”), but I also did not want to discuss a criminal’s record — alone at the end of a long, empty pier. Not knowing whether he was a car thief or a murderer, I could assume the best, quickly concede that the trout just weren’t biting, pack up, and go. It suddenly felt unsettling to recall I’d slept alone in my car at the pier.

The quiet was a little awkward, so he spoke. “You’re from Austin. You a Longhorn fan?”

“I am. I went to UT a couple years ago,” I replied. He made an expression of acknowledgement but didn’t respond.

“Don’t hold it against me,” I joked.

He now responded, “Hell, you were smart to get an education. The third time they sent me to Huntsville, I didn’t know if I was ever coming back out. I decided to use their library. Either I’d die in prison a smart, old man, or I’d learn enough to get by on the outside if I was ever released.”

“I suppose there’s plenty of time for reading." (“Third time?!” I was thinking.)

“Time for lots of stuff if you put your mind to it. That last time, I decided to set some goals for myself while I was there.”

“Goals for life after prison?”

“Yeah. And in prison.”

“Like what?”

“I didn’t want to be just another drug dealer staring at TV.”

(“Just another drug dealer,” I thought. Whew.)

“What were your goals, then?” I asked.

“Learn the law. Learn who helps the guys who want to stay clean after prison. Help those guys avoid coming back. Keep myself away from the gangs and the really bad guys. Make friends with guys who’d look out for me. Guys who study do OK in prison. I got by OK.”

I was no longer afraid of him, and he was comfortable talking about prison, so I was now curious to learn a little more about him. “So you thought you might not get out this last time?”

“Three drug convictions was a life sentence in the ’70s. All I sold was marijuana.”

“How’d you get caught?”

“Bein’ stupid.” He felt no need to elaborate beyond that.

I thought about how devastating it would be to be locked up for so many years of early adulthood. “Does it make you bitter?” I asked.

“Sometimes I want to, but you can’t let it. It’ll eat at you like a cancer. And you know what, the law was clear back then, and I broke the law. I may not have agreed with it, but I understood the consequences. If I hadn’t gone to prison, I might even be dead now. Who knows.”

“What do you do now?” I asked.

“I mow lawns, some handyman jobs, but mainly, I just look out for my dad. We can live pretty cheap.”

He went back to fishing and caught himself a hardhead. He threw it in his bucket, then started packing up to leave the pier.

“You know,” he said, “my biggest regret isn’t those lost years. It’s how it hurt my folks. They had to always try to avoid talking about family. They stopped going out much. It hurts to have to say, ‘My boy is in prison in Huntsville.’ Mom died while I was in prison, and I missed her funeral. I’ve paid my debt to society. I think I’ve overpaid. By looking out for dad, I can try to repay a more important debt.”

As he started to walk back toward land, he smiled at me and said, “If you’re ever hungry, you oughtta try a hardhead.”

I’ve caught a lot of hardhead catfish since then, and I’ve thrown every one back. But catching a hardhead always recalls the gentle ex-convict whose path in life briefly intersected with mine one morning on a South Texas pier.

TikTok trauma queens are scaring off decent men for good



Let’s stop pretending we don’t know why men are done with marriage. They’re not “afraid of commitment.” They’re not “toxic.” And they’re certainly not “intimidated by strong women.” No, men have just finally figured out what the rest of us should’ve admitted years ago: It’s a terrible deal. Not for women — oh no, we’ve gamed it beautifully. For men.

And now, they know it.

Any man who walks away from marriage isn’t afraid of commitment. He’s just smart enough not to sign up for a state-sanctioned mugging disguised as romance.

According to research from the Marriage Foundation, between 70% to 80% of divorces are initiated by women. Among college-educated women, that number jumps to 90%. Translation: The more educated she is, the faster she realizes she can exit stage left with the house, the kids, the 401(k), and a monthly check. All she has to do is say, “I’m not happy,” and a judge will handle the rest.

And what a show it is! He loses his kids, his paycheck, and often his sanity, trying to keep up with court-mandated payments while living in a sad little apartment, granted visitation rights so limited he needs a calendar app and a court order just to see his own kids. Meanwhile, she’s posting #SingleMomStrong like the children are accessories she won in the divorce. How exactly is this empowering for anyone?

Women’s emotional garbage cans

It’s not just the divorce itself — it’s what leads up to it. Modern women have traded femininity for feral instinct, egged on by a culture that rewards emotional instability and calls it “empowerment.”

Think I’m exaggerating? Just spend five minutes on TikTok. You’ll find women screaming into their phones about “healing energy” and “divine feminine rage,” sipping boxed wine in a bathtub surrounded by crystals and court summonses. These women don’t want to love a man — they want to fix their daddy issues with a living, breathing human wallet.

They call it love, but what they really mean is trauma alchemy: “If you loved me, you’d fix me.” No, sweetie. You fix you. Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll attract a man who doesn’t have to call his therapist after every date.

This epidemic of emotional dysfunction isn’t accidental. Many of these women were raised in homes where masculinity was vilified, fathers were absent, and mothers were so bitter they could curdle milk with a glance.

These girls were handed generational rage and told it was feminism. They didn’t heal; they weaponized their pain and waited for the first man dumb enough to step into range. And if he’s not dumb? He’s the enemy. Because how dare he not offer himself up as a sacrifice on the altar of her unprocessed trauma.

Courts eat men alive

Family courts, of course, are the handmaids of this dysfunction. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that less than 20% of custodial parents are fathers, despite all evidence that children need both parents. But try telling that to a judge who thinks “fatherhood” is a weekend hobby and “child support” is a government-backed extortion racket.

Many states rake in billions through Title IV-D incentives, meaning the more money the state extracts from fathers, the more it receives from the federal government. It’s not justice — it’s a racket. It's a taxpayer-funded kickback scheme that rewards broken families and punishes paternal love.

RELATED: Democrats can’t mock masculinity and expect men to vote for them

  Ivan Rodriguez Alba via iStock/Getty Images

Worse, child support is often calculated not on what a man actually earns but on what the court believes he should earn. That’s called “imputed income” — and it’s how you turn a plumber into a felon because he couldn’t pay child support based on the fantasy that he’s a brain surgeon. If he misses a payment, he goes to jail. If she violates a custody order, she might get a warning. Maybe.

This isn’t equality. This is Turner v. Rogers in action. The Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that authorities can lock a man up for not paying child support without providing him a lawyer. Land of the free, indeed.

Here’s what’s wild: Women still don’t get it. Men aren’t angry at women — they’re done with them. Like this woman said, men are done negotiating with feral energy. They’re not trying to win an argument anymore. They’re exiting the game. Quietly. Permanently. And still, the same women who created the chaos stand around wondering, “Where did all the good men go?”

Honey, they’re over there — dodging alimony, living in peace, and thanking God they never married you.

‘Empowered’ women, depressed men

Here’s the kicker: We’re not even ashamed of it. We brag about it. We meme about it. Divorce glow-up. Trauma bonding. “Soft girl era.” Meanwhile, the men are just trying to stay out of court and off antidepressants. Feminism? Please. This is narcissism with a publicist.

Men want peace. They want loyalty, partnership, and respect. They want what their grandfathers had — a woman who had their back, not a woman who records their fights for social media clout.

But those women are rarer than ever. We’ve traded homemaking for hot-girl summer, traded character for chaos, and traded companionship for control. And then we expect men to marry us?

Newsflash: Men don’t marry liabilities.

We told them they weren’t necessary. We told them masculinity was toxic. We told them they owed us emotional labor, financial support, and full-time access to their phones. And when they refused, we called them weak. Now, they’re gone. And we still have the audacity to act confused.

Maybe it’s time we stop blaming men for not wanting us and start asking if we’re actually worth wanting. Until we clean up the emotional landmines, stop weaponizing the courts, and remember what being a woman actually means, we’re not a risk worth taking.

And any man who walks away from this mess isn’t afraid of commitment. He’s just smart enough not to sign up for a state-sanctioned mugging disguised as romance.

The era of managerial rule is over. Long live the sovereign!



There’s a world before President Trump’s descent down the escalator, and there’s a world after it. The recent No Kings protests transmitted the idée fixe of the pre-2015 world. That idea was hostility to personal authority, or personal power — hostility to the notion of sovereignty, to the power once exercised by kings. Donald Trump, the figure who has dominated politics since 2015, is its most visible sign of contradiction. In that sense, the protesters weren’t entirely wrong. Trump’s success marks the passing of the world of the latter half of the 20th century, which was defined by hatred of personal authority.

Successive generations demolished the concept of sovereignty, casting suspicion on the notion that a leader’s decisions can legitimately reshape political or social life. This shift began in the United States when the intelligentsia promulgated the concept of “the authoritarian personality.” They found this personality in the working classes, their churches and associations, their families and fathers, and the politicians who represented them. Where there was the whiff of authoritarian character traits, fascism probably lurked.

All the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The anti-authority impulse then extended to challenge the authority of elected bodies. Popular sovereignty became dangerous. In the late 1950s and '60s, on matters such as school prayer, unctuous judges and administrators tied the hands of potentially reactionary legislatures and frog-marched them toward secularism.

In the 1970s, the target was popular sovereignty as embodied in the office of the president. The American Constitution enabled an energetic executive or administrative presidency, traces of the monarchical form. But the president’s authority was decapitated in the great act of regicide — otherwise known as Watergate.

The ‘golden straitjacket’

Sketching the gloomy landscape of the 1970s, the sociologist Robert Nisbet saw in the twilight of authority the rise of impersonal forces; administrators touting “best practices” stepped into the breach. Therapists, managers, and other experts became increasingly important. They coordinated with economic, social, and legal networks to constrain human agents who might otherwise upset progress.

That’s what globalization was all about. At the peak of the era of what Thomas Friedman called “the golden straitjacket,” sovereignty was outré. Successful politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair dazzled their electorates with the bullion of cheap credit and narratives of an impending gilded age while tightening the bonds ever further. They weakened the power of their offices, distributing it to central banks and international agencies.

Their actions clarified the vocation of right-thinking people. Stigmatize the authoritarian personality. Banish any individual or group that displayed its signs from the helm of government and public life. Spin an ever-tighter web of legal, administrative, and economic networks that could remove the risks of exercising personal human control over government — the risks of an energetic executive — once and for all.

All that changed with Trump’s descent down the escalator. “The golden straitjacket” had numerous critics, but no major public figure exposed its hatred of political, personal power as aggressively and abruptly as Trump did. In 2015, he thrust personal authority back to the center of public life. It’s been there ever since, an example to imitate — in enthusiasm or envy.

Restoring the executive

As president, Trump has fought hard to restore the bloodied Article II of the Constitution. His executive and legal actions on behalf of presidential power even won over skeptics in the conservative legal world. Not only did he challenge the presuppositions of government via the administrative state, but he also exposed the overreaching deep state that is devouring the American Constitution.

Indeed, No Kings could very well function as a pro-Trump slogan. Prior to Trump, American presidents largely functioned as kings. Like the monarch in Great Britain, U.S. presidents had long held power in theory as the “dignified” branch, while other actors in the security state made the real decisions — the “efficient” branch. Trump has been his most republican when he has upset this double government.

RELATED: The hidden motive behind the anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ protests

  Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

To be sure, anti-Trump No Kings protesters are more troubled by another phenomenon: Trump’s personal style of leadership. They’re not wrong to draw attention to it, but they’re wrong about its significance.

Authority depends on a person’s capacity to command in order to reshape politics. Trump mastered the new fragmented media environment, in which entertainment — rather than solemn statements — wins attention and deference. Trump made his personality an issue. His critics attacked him for it, claiming his persona was a manifestation of the dreaded authoritarian personality. But all the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe — rhetorical and physical aggression, incivility, scorn for discourse and discussion, brashness, maleness, unwillingness to apologize or express guilt, bluntly demarcating between American winners and losers, claiming the exceptional power to fix America’s problems — have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The importance of character traits such as “caring for people like me” or “experience,” which had mattered so much in late 20th-century mass democracy, faded away. Swaths of the electorate would of course still look for their “therapist in chief” or “expert in chief.” But more wanted a boss who asserted control and expected those under him to follow his lead.

The reassertion of personal authority, after decades of opposition to it, has been a messy affair. It’s risible to think that Trump ever intended to abolish elections, set up a dictatorship, or establish a hereditary monarchy. But his style did help accelerate the collapse of institutional authority, such as that once held by the media. Although many of his more dramatic promises have been unrealized (stymied by a variety of forces), the symbology of authority has remained key for gaining and wielding legitimacy.

The twilight of liberalism

A numinous connection has developed between an electorate that confers sovereignty upon its chosen figure and the figure who exercises it. The acoustic and visual symbols this connection generates are all the more potent because, at this point in the 21st century, as Mary Harrington has argued, a culture of mass literacy has vanished. This culture was essential to transmit the symbols associated with the print ideals of liberalism (for instance, the importance placed on the freedom of the press, or on discourse itself). As print culture goes, so go the symbols of liberalism. Other symbols step into their place.

Trump’s more subtle critics, who are troubled by the twilight of liberalism, noticed this transformation. They sense something has changed and single out Trump as the chief villain. But wielding the symbols of personal authority is one area in which Trump has long ceased to be exceptional. Even those who are very far from Trump ideologically and politically still inhabit his symbolic universe, in which personal authority, hierarchy, and one’s capacity to reshape political life are of critical importance.

RELATED: Trump gave Americans what they didn’t know they needed

  Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Emmanuel Macron’s predecessors, fearing being labeled authoritarians by the May ’68 generation, adopted a deliberately understated, egalitarian style. Macron shocked the French political system by embracing the persona of “Jupiter.” He seized the opportunity that Trump’s descent down the escalator made possible.

Pope Francis began his papacy in a conversational, freewheeling style, akin to a Clintonian or Blairite doing one’s best to manage the media narrative. But after the first few years, he also imitated Trump as his supporters embraced the theology of an imperial papacy.

Joe Biden likewise leaned into a “Dark Brandon” iconography of authority to create the impression that he was in charge, the simulacrum of a functioning presidency.

Politicians who can’t successfully embody the symbolism of authority, such as Biden, or those who shy away from it, such as Justin Trudeau, end up as failures. Trudeau launched his political career by an act of physical prowess, beating up a Conservative Party senator who was too lazy to train for a boxing match. It was a crude but effective way of legitimating Trudeau’s claim to lead the Liberal Party and Canada.

Even in an extremely progressive country, primal assertions of authority win admiration. But Trudeau forgot the underlying lesson. In office, he preferred the symbolism of colorful socks, and his unpopularity forced him to resign in ignominy. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s successor, who invokes the physical, masculine iconography of hockey fights to win votes, has returned to more visceral politics. The liberal norms of national civility go nowhere; it’s the brash Trumpian traits that are deployed to gain victory.

Slashing the straitjacket

The resurgence of authority is why there’s no chance of reverting to globalized, impersonal power — at least how the pre-2015 world conceived it. As candidates compete for personal authority, those vying for power repudiate the notion that economic, social, and legal networks should constrain human agents. The capacity to take back control over these networks is what matters. This helps us understand the deeper unity behind Trump’s signature policies.

All the major themes that Trump hit on when he descended the escalator — an end to mass immigration, free trade, and regime-change missions abroad — were on one level anti-globalization topics: They slashed away at the golden straitjacket.

Anti-globalization themes are now so mainstream that even Keir Starmer imitates Trump’s symbology by talking tough on border control. On one level, it’s a policy victory. But the success is more profound than that. To effect that agenda demands the reassertion of the personal, political will to effect social and political change. Faced with the diminishing returns of the old regime, that’s what more and more people are looking for.

In our new world, leaders rise and fall by how well they can speak the language of authority. Whatever the full implications of this paradigm shift may be, the longing for sovereigns shows no signs of letting up.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally as “A New Birth of Authority” at the American Mind.

One declaration sparked a nation. The other sparks confusion.



This week, my university emailed a Fourth of July reflection that caught my attention. It claimed the “backbone of our independence” is entrepreneurship and praised secular universities as the seedbed of innovation — and, by extension, democracy itself.

I’m all for business. Enterprise, creativity, and free markets foster prosperity and reward initiative. But business doesn’t create liberty. It depends on liberty. Markets flourish only when justice, rights, and human dignity already exist. In other words, business is a fruit of independence, not its root.

Our freedoms — legal, political, scientific, and economic — grow best in soil nourished by the belief in human dignity grounded in something greater than man.

As we celebrate Independence Day, it’s worth remembering the true foundation of American freedom. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t just announce our break with Britain — it explains why that break was just. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” it says, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

That single sentence tells us where rights come from: not from governments or markets, but from God. Human equality doesn’t rest on ability, wealth, or status — qualities that always vary. It rests on the shared reality that each of us bears the image of the same Creator.

This truth isn’t just historical. It remains the cornerstone of liberty. Without it, terms like “human rights” or “justice” collapse into slogans. If rights don’t come from God, where do they come from? Who gives them? And who can take them away?

Contrast our Declaration with the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document says people “have” rights — but doesn’t explain why or where they come from or why rights matter. It invokes no Creator, no image of God, no natural law, no self-evident truth or moral source beyond political consensus. Rights, it suggests, are whatever the international community agrees they are.

That’s a dangerous idea. If rights come from consensus, consensus can erase them. If governments or global committees grant rights, they can redefine or revoke them when convenient. There is no firm ground, only shifting sands.

Many Americans now prefer this softer, godless version of human dignity. They invoke justice but reject the Judge. They want rights without a Creator, happiness without truth, liberty without responsibility. But rights without God offer no security — and happiness without God dissolves into fantasy. It’s a mirage.

This project of cutting freedom off from its source cannot last. Our freedoms — legal, political, scientific, and economic — grow best in soil nourished by the belief in human dignity grounded in something greater than man.

RELATED: The most memorable epocha in the history of America

  ivan-96 via iStock/Getty Images

We live in God’s world. That distinction matters. A society built on contracts negotiates rights. A society built on covenants honors obligations to the truth. The difference isn’t just theological — it’s civilizational.

By rejecting the Creator, we don’t advance progress. We erase the foundation that made progress possible. C.S. Lewis put it this way: “You cannot go on 'explaining away' forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away.”

Explain away God, and you explain away the reason rights exist.

So this Independence Day, remember what liberty really means — and what sustains it. We’re not free because we said so. We’re free because we answer to a law higher than any court or committee. We are created equal because we are created — period.

Entrepreneurship has its place. But the American experiment wasn’t born from a business plan. It began with a declaration that acknowledged God. If we want that experiment to endure, we must not forget what made it possible in the first place.

The founders were young and so is America — really



Although America’s 250th birthday is still one year away, there is a fun, unique, and mathematical fact about this year's 249th birthday that will help illustrate just how young America is as a nation.

To do that, we can start with the age of President Thomas Jefferson on the day he died — significantly enough, on the day America was celebrating its 50th birthday: July 4, 1826. Jefferson was 83.

Just three 83-year-olds living back-to-back-to-back takes you to the year our nation was founded.

As an interesting aside, our third president was not the only commander in chief whose life was historically tied to America's birthday. President John Adams also died within five hours of Jefferson on July 4, 1826. Five years later, on July 4, 1831, our fifth president and founding father James Monroe also passed away.

Not to be too maudlin, one president was actually born on the Fourth of July. In 1872, Calvin Coolidge came into the world and would grow up to become America's 30th president.

RELATED: Yes, Ken Burns, the founding fathers believed in God — and His ‘divine Providence’

  Wynnter via iStock/Getty Images

 

So what does Jefferson’s age of 83 have to do with this year’s national birthday celebration? Well, if you find an 83-year-old person living in America and go all the way back to the year he was born, you would find yourself in 1942. Now, in 1942, find a person who was born 83 years in the past, back to 1859. Finally, find a person born 83 years before that, and you arrive at ... 1776!

Just three 83-year-olds living back-to-back-to-back takes you to the year our nation was founded.

And while we're pondering this age business, it's also fun to look at the relative youth of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, keeping in mind that 56 delegates representing the 13 original colonies actually put their very “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” on the line when they signed their John Hancock on the document (and, yes, one of them was indeed John Hancock).

Also, with present-day controversy in mind, it is worth noting that none of the representatives signed using an auto-quill.

  

The average age of the document’s signers was 44 years, which happened to be George Washington's age at the time. And Washington's nemesis across the pond, the other George, King George III of England? He was 38.

The oldest signer of the Declaration was (no surprise) Benjamin Franklin, age 70.

Finally, by now you have probably done the math to figure out the age of Thomas Jefferson — the document’s chief author — when he signed: 33.

Now, enjoy the celebrations and get ready for the biggest one of all, next year’s 250th!

Editor's note: A version of this article appeared originally at American Thinker.

The soul of the republic still belongs to Washington



As we celebrate Independence Day, it’s worth reflecting on America’s founding character — especially the man who defined it: George Washington.

Washington didn’t build his legacy on grand speeches. He led with silence, sacrifice, and restraint. He may not have written poetry, but he lived it — with grit in war, grace in peace, and great wisdom in his letters, journals, and Farewell Address.

This Fourth of July, as fireworks fill the night sky, let’s also make room for silence — for healing, for grief, for endurance.

He didn’t just fight for a nation — he helped shape its soul. Washington understood that a country isn’t defined only by its victories, but by how it makes meaning out of its wounds.

In our time of division and disillusionment, we would do well to reclaim the legacy Washington embodied. Resilience isn’t the denial of pain but rather transformation through it. And the only vision worth holding on to is the one that unites us in building our future as a nation.

Trauma doesn’t end the story. Often, it begins the most meaningful chapters. That’s true in my life — and in America’s. Growth has never come from comfort. It comes from hardship, from wounds we don’t hide from but confront. Psychologists call it “post-traumatic growth.” It’s the idea that suffering, when faced and integrated, can lead to deeper purpose, stronger relationships, and a more grounded sense of self.

I guess most Americans would just call it “history.”

I led soldiers into Iraq in 2003 and returned to a nation largely untouched by the war I had lived. But my reckoning came later — when a brief Wall Street career collapsed, when a home invasion shattered my sense of safety, and when therapy forced me to face what I had tried for years to outrun: trauma, guilt, grief.

What followed wasn’t just recovery. It was transformation — a quiet strength rooted in humility and meaning. Post-traumatic growth teaches that suffering, when faced honestly, can lead to deeper purpose, stronger relationships, and a more grounded self.

That truth doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to us all.

From Valley Forge to Gettysburg, from the Great Depression to Ground Zero, America has been forged in fire. Our greatest progress has rarely come in peacetime. Lincoln didn’t rise when things were easy. The Greatest Generation wasn’t shaped in comfort. Renewal always follows rupture.

We’re in such a moment again. Pressure is building — on our national identity, our personal stories, our sense of unity. But pressure can forge something stronger, if we let it.

We must reject the lie that trauma equals weakness. PTSD is real — often invisible, often devastating. But it’s not the end of the story. Alongside post-traumatic stress, we can teach post-traumatic strength. The kind Washington lived. The kind America has always needed.

That’s part of why I wrote “Downriver: Memoir of a Warrior Poet.” Yes, it tells a story of trauma — from childhood instability to the battlefields of Iraq, from Wall Street collapse to personal unraveling. But more importantly, it traces the long road of healing — not as a tidy comeback story, but as a messy, hard-earned path toward growth and integration.

RELATED: The prayers that shaped a nation can save it again

  Wirestock via iStock/Getty Images

The journey is not reserved for veterans alone. It belongs to survivors of addiction, loss, illness, injustice, and personal collapse. It belongs to first responders, caregivers, and ordinary Americans living through extraordinary hardship.

But growth isn’t guaranteed. It requires honesty. It requires community. It demands a culture willing to honor both the warrior and the poet — the one who endures and the one who reflects, the one who fights and the one who heals.

Too often, we swing between denial and despair. But what if we told a different story? What if we treated our national wounds not as signs of weakness but as calls to deepen our roots?

We’ve done it before. The post-9/11 generation gave us new models of service and empathy. The scars of the COVID-19 pandemic will never fully heal, but they can teach us lessons about connection, community, and what really matters.

The question isn’t whether we’ve been wounded. We have. The real question is what kind of country we’ll become in response. Will we let trauma divide us further — or use it to rediscover what binds us together?

This Fourth of July, as fireworks fill the night sky, let’s also make room for silence — for healing, for grief, for endurance. Let’s honor not only what we’ve won but how we’ve grown.

That’s the path of the warrior poet. That’s Washington’s legacy. And it can be ours, too.

The crown laughed at our Declaration — but America got the last word



John Adams believed America’s independence should be marked with “pomp, shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations.” He got his wish. Within a year of the Declaration’s signing on July 4, 1776, celebrations had become a colonies-wide tradition.

The reaction across the Atlantic, however, struck a very different tone.

This wasn’t just about taxes or trade policy. It was about the belief that free men could govern themselves.

The British response was not stunned disbelief or deep introspection. It was mockery — and, ultimately, a grave miscalculation.

The war didn’t begin with the Declaration. A year earlier, in August 1775, King George III had already issued a Proclamation of Rebellion. The crown had stopped viewing the dispute as a matter of political redress. It now saw open revolt.

But the Declaration shifted the terms. What landed in London by mid-August 1776 wasn’t a petition or compromise. It was a bold, philosophical argument for national divorce. In British eyes, it was treason.

A declaration dismissed

British newspapers published the Declaration widely. The London Chronicle printed it, along with other major papers. But few took it seriously. To them, it was just another provocation from unruly colonials.

The elite mocked Thomas Jefferson’s talk of “unalienable rights.” Gen. William Howe, sent to crush the rebellion, called the Declaration “extravagant and inadmissible.” The British state responded accordingly.

RELATED: July 4 exclusive: What we love about America

  LeoPatrizi via iStock/Getty Images

Within weeks, more than 32,000 British troops — including 8,000 German mercenaries — sailed into New York Harbor. It was the largest overseas force Britain had ever fielded. Howe aimed to stamp out the uprising before year’s end.

The campaign nearly succeeded.

George Washington’s army suffered defeat after defeat, narrowly escaping destruction on Long Island. By autumn, the American position looked hopeless.

France’s revenge

But while Britain saw a dying rebellion, France saw a chance to strike.

Even before 1776, French agents had begun quietly arming the colonists. The Declaration gave them a pretext to go farther. Though Louis XVI had no love for democracy, he did have a long memory — and Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War had come at France’s expense.

With the Declaration in hand, France could cloak strategic revenge in the language of liberty.

Formal recognition wouldn’t come until 1778, but the shift had begun. French arms, cash, and eventually troops transformed the conflict. What began as a colonial revolt became an international war.

Back in London, the American cause began to attract sympathy in Parliament.

In 1777, future British Prime Minister William Pitt took to the House of Lords to warn his colleagues: “You cannot conquer" America.

He was right.

Not just a rebellion — a revolution

What Britain failed to grasp was that America hadn’t simply declared independence. It had declared a new theory of government: one grounded in consent, not inheritance.

The crown mistook revolutionary conviction for rhetorical flourish. Britain's government believed the colonists would fold in the face of overwhelming force. But this wasn’t just about taxes or trade policy. It was about the belief that free men could govern themselves.

Ideas like that can stand up to empires — even the most powerful in the world.

The reality behind this week’s One Big Beautiful Bill spectacle



Well, there it is. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is on its way to President Donald Trump’s desk for a big, beautiful Independence Day signing.

It took many sleepless nights and hard days to get here, and it wasn’t remotely a sure thing when it all began a few months ago. Much has changed since then. And for the past few weeks, you could bet big that the bill would cross the finish line. The last few days have been nothing but faux brinkmanship and political theater.

Think of the process as a game of musical chairs.

Passing the administration’s ambitious agenda — tax cuts, border security, and gang deportations — took serious effort. The president held dozens of meetings and made hundreds of calls to push Congress across the finish line. He was backed by a sharp legislative affairs team, including Stephen Miller, the media point man; James Blair, the relentless deputy chief; and James Braid, the director one senior White House official called “the man on the wall.” These were the point men guiding the bill through months of legislative gridlock, fielding reporters’ questions, and driving the message to the public.

Then there were the chamber’s leaders as well as the committee chairmen and all their staff, who fought, negotiated, sweet-talked, and fine-tuned the bill. The expression in Washington is “herding cats.” It’s criminally overused, but it’s not wrong.

The parameters were set by the House of Representatives before dawn on May 22. Over the next five weeks, the Senate tinkered, toyed, and went about the basic work of the U.S. Senate: making House bills worse. There were serious setbacks, social media calls to break down the minority-protecting filibuster in the name of this cut or that pet project, and a lot of angry tweets from the senators themselves.

But the game was on.

When it came time to vote in the Senate last weekend, there were wins and losses, but from the start, the result was clear. The bill would pass and head back to the House for agreement, a little less pretty than it had once been.

Think of the process like a game of musical chairs: When it comes time to vote, maybe three Republicans can make a scene and vote no — but not four. That’s how it works when something actually matters. Few lawmakers are willing to do what the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) did: tank a major, party-defining bill out of personal or political animus.

What you see instead are protest votes — safe gestures of opposition, where members cross their arms, cast a defiant “no,” and sit down, confident that they won’t derail the outcome.

That’s not to say the brinkmanship doesn’t matter. In the House, factions like the blue-state SALT Caucus and the conservative Freedom Caucus shaped the bill early on. In the Senate, serious negotiations and amendments made the legislation better — or worse, depending on your view. But that phase wraps up long before the final vote.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), king of libertarian banner-waving, secured himself a seat in the game. He basically squats in that chair, telling anyone who still cares that he’s just waiting for the perfect bill that fulfills all his dreams and desires before he can get to yes.

Then you invariably have Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a blue-state Republican and a red-state bargainer, respectively, plus whatever wild cards the Senate typically hides.

This bill’s wild card was Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who decided to self-immolate and retire to a high-paying corporate gig instead of continuing the charade of getting along with his colleagues or the president. He took the second “no” seat and was not moving, so Collins and Murkowski would have to figure out between them who got the last one.

Collins’ state went for Kamala Harris by eight points, so she really wanted it. Murkowski floated a couple of wild ideas, like “Can you make it so that X rule applies to every state but mine?” and “How about we start this whole thing over and do it different?” but settled for money for tribes and fisheries. She is deeply transactional.

There were certainly a couple of senators upset that they didn't get to vote no. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) had written about a hundred mean tweets about the bill since it all started and even wavered throughout the final hours, but it was too late. That was that! No more chairs. So he voted yes, Vice President JD Vance came down and broke the tie, and off it went to the House of Representatives.

The House was heap big mad too. The moderates were worried about the cuts. The conservatives were angry about the spending. Mean tweets abounded! But again: There are only so many chairs. Sure, they could change the bill and send it back to the Senate again. Sure, they could delay. Members of both chambers pointed out the president’s July 4 deadline was “arbitrary,” but the reality is that it’s only as arbitrary as the deadline set by the most powerful man on the planet, the most popular politician in Washington, and the head of Republican Party. So it wasn’t arbitrary at all.

Once again, only three seats were available for House Republicans who wanted to vote no. And as expected, not a single Democrat crossed the aisle. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) filled over eight hours with rhymes and rambling about bipartisanship and illegal immigrants. It was mildly entertaining — if only in a D.C. inside-baseball kind of way — but accomplished nothing beyond setting a new nerdy record and keeping his colleagues awake on camera. When he finally stopped talking, his fellow Democrats clapped and hugged him like he had delivered something more than a filibustered footnote.

By the time the House reconvened Wednesday morning, the bill was already a runaway train — no brakes, just spectacle. Now that it’s passed, small businesses can make tax plans for 2026, waiters and hourly workers can finally catch a break, tax cuts are locked in for the rest of us, and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have the tools and funding to keep doing their jobs.

It’ll be a good day at the White House. And an excellent Independence Day.

Blaze News: Trump notches 'big, beautiful' win following Jeffries' drawn-out spectacle

Blaze News: Trump fighting 'unconstitutional power grab' by Obama judge who reopened the floodgates

Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter
Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford’s newsletter.