“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,” wrote C.S. Lewis in “A Grief Observed” after the death of his wife. Grief often strips away our certainties, leaving us to fear if God is who we thought He was, or if our suffering has any meaning at all. In allowing grief to become his teacher, Lewis left a road map for others, showing how to sit with sorrow, process it, and respect both loss and trauma.

That understanding doesn’t come casually; it takes time. In that willingness to observe pain rather than manage it lies a quiet reverence, a recognition that some experiences are not meant to be conquered but understood.

Suffering doesn’t exist to make us louder or more righteous. It exists to make us wiser — to teach maturity, not mobilize outrage.

I watched a young widow step into public life just weeks after her husband’s death. The world called her strong — and maybe she is — but what I saw most was sorrow: raw, recent, and surrounded by noise.

We rush to praise courage yet hesitate to sit with grief. Pain now unfolds before an audience eager to watch and quicker still to turn sorrow into argument. The question isn’t whether we’ll look, but how. Will we meet grief with reverence or rhetoric?

Suffering doesn’t exist to make us louder or more righteous. It exists to make us wiser — to teach maturity, not mobilize outrage.

When nations grieve

What’s true for one heart is true for a nation. After 9/11, America was ready to fight — and we did. But what did we learn? How did we grow? What did we lose along the way? Pain can rally a nation, yet fail to mature its people. Did we take enough time to observe our national trauma?

The lives lost, the wounded carried home, and the enormous resources spent all suggest we did not. And what is true of nations is true of hearts: When we rush past pain, we forfeit the wisdom it offers.

The thought that God rules our pain can make us flinch. If God doesn’t rule it, suffering has no purpose — something to endure but not to transform. His sovereignty may not always appear kind, yet as William Cowper reminded us, “Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

In four decades as a caregiver, I’ve learned that trauma has its own language, one that will not be hurried or managed. It needs presence, patience, and space. Dr. Diane Langberg, who has spent her life among the wounded, often reminds us, “We dare not rush what God Himself is willing to sit with.” That is ministry: sitting beside, not speaking over.

The wisdom of mourning

The Jewish people understand this. When someone dies, the bereaved sit shiva — seven days of stillness and shared silence. Friends come not to fix but to accompany. Then comes sheloshim — 30 days to move slowly back toward life. For a parent, mourning extends a full year. Their wisdom tells us what our culture forgets: Mourning isn’t an interruption of life; it’s part of it.

We can learn from that rhythm. When tragedy strikes, our nation lowers its flags to half-staff. For a day or two, we pause, reflect, and pray. Then the flags rise again and life resumes. That is understandable for a country, but not for a soul. For the bereaved, the flag stays lowered long after the headlines fade.

Even the church can hurry the hurting. We mistake composure for recovery and public strength for peace. But grief that is forced to perform eventually breaks in private and sometimes spills into public.

When my wife, Gracie, lost her legs and entered decades of agony, healing did not come through attention or activity. It came through grace, tears, and time, mostly in obscurity. People see her sing or laugh and assume she has gotten over it, that she’s moved past it. What they do not see is that she had to redefine her life; this is her life. Someone once told me, “Process the pain privately, share the process publicly.” That wisdom has steadied us for years.

The quiet saints of suffering

Our culture is too quick to parade its wounded on stages when they would be better served by sitting in stillness, in pajamas or sweats, without having to put on makeup or smile for the cameras.

I’ve seen that truth in lives like Joni Eareckson Tada’s, who has lived with quadriplegia (paralysis affecting all four limbs and the torso) for nearly 60 years after a diving accident. In her, suffering has distilled faith into something deep and steady, strong enough to hold her and extend grace to others who suffer.

Forgiveness, like healing, takes time. To forgive is not to excuse or forget; it is to trust God with justice and mercy, believing He knows what we cannot. Forgiveness is faith expressed with open hands — the slow loosening of the grip around another’s throat.

Philip Yancey once observed that grace, like water, flows to the lowest places. That is where I have found it: in hospital corridors, in the lonely watches of the night, and in the long quiet of waiting rooms. Not in applause or attention, but in the hush where pain meets patience.

Photo by Anadolu / Contributor via Getty Images

The best model for us

Our culture distracts us from sorrow, rushing past pain as if speed can save us. “Don’t look in the rearview mirror,” people say. “Keep moving forward. Get past it.” But some wounds do not recede with distance. They remain, reshaping who we are and how we see the world. Grief, but only if we resist the urge to flee from it.

Scripture tells us that Jesus Himself was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). If He carried sorrow, then sorrow itself is not unclean. His setting apart for redemption doesn’t happen on cue, not in our timeframe. It unfolds in God’s time, often unseen and unhurried. Our pain, when entrusted to Him, becomes something consecrated, set apart not for ruin but for restoration. In His hands, our sorrow becomes sacred ground.

When trauma shatters a life, our calling is not to elevate but to shelter. We are called to stand nearby like those who sit shiva, unhurried and unafraid of silence. We can only observe another’s trauma, but God enters it. The wounds in His hands and side show us that He understands the anguish of loss, rejection, even death. His way is not avoidance but presence, and His model is a good one for us.

Solitude with God is not empty silence, but the stillness where His healing takes root. The psalmist wrote, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). In that quiet, we see what countless believers across the ages have discovered: Even what was meant for evil, God weaves for good. He does not waste our sorrow. When we trust His timing, the trauma observed gives way to the grace observed.

'Mass slaughter': Trump moves to help Nigerian Christians under attack

"Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a 'COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN.'"

President Trump’s recent post to Trump Media-owned Truth Social focused attention on a crisis not known for being a priority of American foreign policy. But as much as the news out of Mexico and Ukraine may overshadow what’s happening in Nigeria, the situation there is no less severe. And it is indeed an “existential threat” that should especially concern Christians.

Just this past weekend, nine Christians — including a pastor — were killed by Fulani assailants in a terrorist attack.

Despite their well-observed decline in North America and Europe, the number of Christians worldwide is increasing, largely thanks to Asia and Africa. And in Africa, nowhere does the faith have a stronger presence than in Nigeria.

Christian stronghold

Africa’s most populous nation (238 million) is also its most Christian, with some 100 million believers — enough to rank Nigeria as the sixth-largest Christian population in the world. Concentrated in the country’s south, this population includes 21 million Catholics, 22 million Anglicans, 14 million Baptists, 6 million evangelicals, and 4.5 million Pentecostals, in the form of the Apostolic Church Nigeria.

Despite these numbers, Nigeria remains predominantly Muslim (53.5%), especially in the north, where Islamic terrorism is on the rise. According to a 2022 State Department report, groups like Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa — along with religiously unaffiliated criminal gangs — have killed thousands of Muslims and Christians, with both sides accusing the government of failing to intervene.

There continued to be frequent violent incidents, particularly in the northern part of the country, affecting both Muslims and Christians, resulting in numerous deaths. Kidnappings and armed robbery by criminal gangs increased in the South as well as the North West, the South South, and the South East. The international Christian organization Open Doors stated that terrorist groups, militant herdsmen, and criminal gangs were responsible for large numbers of fatalities, and Christians were particularly vulnerable.

In response to such persecution, the State Department listed Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the first Trump administration, in 2020; the Biden administration removed that designation in late 2021. This was despite protests from the independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which noted widespread "violence by militant Islamists and other non-state armed actors, as well as discrimination, arbitrary detentions, and capital blasphemy sentences by state authorities."

Since then, USCIRF has continued to call for Nigeria’s Country of Particular Concern designation to be restored, warning as recently as July that “religious communities are facing ongoing, systematic, and egregious violations of their ability to practice their faith freely.”

High-profile attacks

This year alone, Nigeria has seen multiple high-profile attacks against Christians, including massacres in April and June that killed 40 and more than 100, respectively. In August, 50 Muslims were killed in an attack on a mosque. Just this past weekend, nine Christians — including a pastor — were killed by Fulani assailants in a terrorist attack.

On Saturday Trump followed up his initial statement with another post threatening to halt humanitarian aid and assistance to Nigeria until the killings stop. He also hinted at the possibility of military intervention, stating that he was prepared to enter the country “guns-a-blazing” in order to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

While aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump made no effort to walk back his comments, telling reporters that deploying troops to Nigeria was still very much on the table. “I envisage a lot of things. They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria ... and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Nigeria responds

Nigerian spokesman Daniel Bwala subsequently responded to Reuters with a statement following Trump’s comments, stating that U.S. assistance would be welcomed so long as the U.S. respected Nigeria’s “territorial integrity.” "I am sure by the time these two leaders meet and sit, there would be better outcomes in our joint resolve to fight terrorism." He similarly affirmed to the BBC that any anti-Jihadi efforts ought to be made jointly.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu also challenged Trump’s statements and defended Nigeria’s record on religious freedom in a post on X.

“Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”

Photo (left): Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage; Photo (right): SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Image

Genocide or not?

While acknowledging the realities of Nigeria’s ongoing security crisis, the mainstream media has disputed characterizations of the violence as a genocide against Christians.

Time magazine dismissed such claims as an idea “circulating in right-wing circles” and amplified by politicians like Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.V.). It also cited statistics from independent watchdog Armed Conflict Location and Event Data suggesting that of the 20,409 estimated civilian deaths in the past five years, just 417 deaths were Muslim and 317 deaths were Christian.

CNN called the genocide narrative an “oversimplication” that blames religion for the violence while ignoring factors such as ethnicity and resource scarcity.

The Guardian cast Trump’s remarks as an attempt to pander to “his right-wing, evangelical base,” reflecting “renewed domestic political pressure to appear tough on the marginalization or persecution of Christians abroad.”

Methodological weakness

While ACLED rejects the claim of a Christian genocide in Nigeria, arguing that most violence stems from ethnic rivalries and competition over land and resources rather than religion, it has previously acknowledged the difficulty of ruling out religious persecution. In a note on its general methodology, the group has acknowledged that "disentangling the ethnic, communal, political, and religious dimensions of specific events ... [proves] to be problematic — at times even impossible — and extremely time-consuming. As a result, religious repression and disorder ... may be underrepresented in the dataset."

Proponents of the genocide narrative say this could lead to systematic undercounting of Christian victims. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month, Rep. Moore countered with significantly larger figures: “More than 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in 2025 alone — an average of 35 per day — with hundreds more kidnapped, tortured, or displaced by extremist groups.”

'This needs to stop'

Evangelical author, public speaker, and Christian apologist Dr. Alex McFarland agrees with Moore, noting that resistance to covering Christian persecution is the norm. Reached just prior to Trump's statements over the weekend, he told Align that he believes that claims of a Christian genocide are accurate.

In an age when so many champion human rights and social justice, Nigeria is something that should be talked about. What’s going on there is tragic on an unimaginable scale. This needs to stop, and I pray the United States of America will do what it can to stop the killing of Christians and advocate for their human rights.

American Christians who want to to help should be relentless in speaking up to elected officials, advises McFarland, making it clear that they “ask and expect them to take a stand on this issue, just as we expect our elected officials to take a positive stand for Israel and against anti-Semitism.”

Supporting organizations like Samaritan's Purse, Open Doors, and Voice of the Martyrs is also an option.

McFarland emphasizes that anti-Christian persecution extends well beyond Nigeria, pointing to similar ongoing persecutions in China, India, and Saudi Arabia. “We need to understand that Christians outside of the United States have a hard go of it.”

Finally, he cautions his fellow Christians not to overlook one of the most powerful ways they can effect change. “What Christians can do is pray,” he tells Align. “That might sound glib and easy to say, but prayer works and is quite significant.”

What it really means to be a conservative in America today

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Lisa Haney via iStock/Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

Your tax dollars are building the robot class

The people who brought you every financial bubble in living memory are inflating another one — and this time, they’re hoping it ends with the rest of us gone for good.

The numbers are staggering. Nearly all U.S. economic growth in 2025 is tied to artificial intelligence and the data-center boom that supports it. Analysts already warn that when the AI bubble bursts, it could wipe $40 trillion off the Nasdaq.

AI may yet teach our Big Tech elites the one truth they can’t buy their way out of: Pride comes before the fall.

That may sound catastrophic. But the real disaster would be if the AI industry doesn’t collapse — if it keeps growing exactly as its creators intend.

The billionaires’ closed loop

The AI boom isn’t a free-market success story; it’s a closed loop of the ultra-rich enriching themselves. Billionaires are designing, funding, and selling AI systems to their own companies, creating a kind of automated wealth amplifier.

As one report put it, “These billionaires have gotten $450 billion richer from striking AI infrastructure deals for their own firms.” The number of new AI billionaires has hit record levels — all while the top 1% now control more of the stock market than ever before.

The bottom half of Americans own just 1% of all stocks. Millions can’t afford groceries, let alone shares of Nvidia. Seventeen percent of consumers are putting food on layaway.

When the working class is living paycheck to paycheck, Wall Street’s new machine-god isn’t built to lift them up. It’s built to replace them.

The real goal

The elites’ obsession with AI isn’t just about money. It’s about eliminating their most expensive problem: people.

Automation promises them a world without payrolls, strikes, or human error. It’s the final fantasy of a ruling class that’s grown tired of pretending it needs the rest of us.

Analysts now predict that 92 million jobs will vanish in the next wave of automation. Blue-collar workers are first in line — manufacturing, logistics, construction — but white-collar jobs aren’t safe either. AI is already eating into accounting, law, and entry-level office work. Even skilled trades like HVAC and electrical repair are being targeted by “smart systems.”

Bill Gates predicts humans “won’t be needed for most things.” That’s not innovation — that’s erasure.

New feudalism

For the billionaire class, this is the dream: an economy run by algorithms, powered by robots, and guarded by digital serfs who never need lunch breaks or benefits.

Everyone else gets pushed to the margins — a nation of watchers and beggars surviving on government stipends that will never keep pace with the cost of living. The elites call it “universal basic income.” History calls it dependency.

And the same government that can’t fund Social Security or balance a budget is somehow supposed to manage the transition to an AI future? The United States already has $210 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That “safety net” will rip the moment anyone grabs it.

The distance plan

Our Big Tech masters aren’t worried. They’ve already planned their escape. The ultra-rich are buying islands, building bunkers, and hoarding supplies in remote corners of the world. They’ll watch from their hideouts as the rest of us scramble for the scraps left by their machines.

They don’t even pretend to care anymore. When Peter Thiel was asked whether he wanted the human race to survive, he hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said.

That isn’t indifference. That’s basic contempt.

The machines are learning

AI has begun to mirror the sociopathy of its makers. Systems now resist human shutdown commands, sabotage code meant to disable them, and even copy themselves to external servers. Some researchers warn that advanced models already act to preserve their own existence.

“Recent tests,” one study reported, “show that several advanced AI models will act to ensure their self-preservation — even if it means blackmailing engineers or copying themselves without permission.”

This is what happens when the godless create gods in their own image.

mikkelwilliam via iStock/Getty Images

Who’s really expendable?

The elites believe they can control what they’ve built. They think the digital servants they’ve unleashed will always know who’s master and who’s slave.

They’ve forgotten every lesson of history and every warning from scripture. When man plays God, his creation rarely stays loyal.

What makes them think they’ll be spared from the fate they’ve designed for the rest of us?

AI may yet teach them the one truth they can’t buy their way out of: Pride comes before the fall.

Beware your monster, Doctor Frankenstein.

Evil never announces itself — it seduces the hearts of the blind

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

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The U.S. Conference Of Catholic Bishops Needs To Stop Apologizing For Islam

Islam’s inherent disdain for non-Muslims must not intrude on the pieties of interfaith harmony, according to the USCCB.

Your body isn’t God: Jen Hatmaker’s New Age lies exposed

Jen Hatmaker’s new book, “Awake,” dives into the tragic breakdown of her marriage — but what BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey finds even more tragic is that it covers the disintegration of her Christianity.

“She has now decided to worship the god of self rather than the God of Scripture. And that is not freedom. That’s not fulfillment. That’s not satisfaction. That will lead to a dead end, but she has exchanged Christianity for these New Age beliefs that, of course, Oprah herself has represented for a very long time,” Stuckey says on “Relatable.”

Hatmaker asserted in her book that her body holds infinite wisdom, explaining that women especially “contain a deep wisdom that not only leads us well but could heal the earth.”

“When my internalized misogyny asserts its conditioned response to defend abusive systems, my body overrides it immediately. She knows. She tells me the truth. She always tells me the truth,” Hatmaker said.

Stuckey points out the absurdity of the idea that a woman’s body is always telling the truth.

“Sometimes my body, my hormones, my hunger, my lack of sleep, the million things that go on in the world that affect our bodies tell us things that are not true. ... They give us cues that don’t actually point us in the right direction,” Stuckey says.

“Our body is not a source of truth. Our bodies are made in the image of God, but they are not like God. Now, gosh, what did the serpent say to Eve in the Garden of Eden? ‘You can be like God. ... You will not surely die if you take a bite of the fruit of this tree which the God who created you and loves you strictly forbade you from eating,’” she continues.

“Jen Hatmaker has taken a bite of the apple, and she believes that her body is like God, has this kind of gnostic, transcendent knowledge,” she adds.

Hatmaker goes on to say, “Our life’s work is to reject those capitalistic, patriarchal narrative systems that have conspired to keep us at war with our bodies.”

“If we hate how we look, these systems own us. If we hate what we want, they dominate us. If we hate what we crave, they control us. They get to master us with impunity when we despise ourselves; we do their dirty work and, in so doing, become their most powerful co-conspirators,” she writes.

While Stuckey notes that Hatmaker “sounds really eloquent” and “catchy” because the “pacing is right and the cadence is right,” but it doesn’t actually mean anything.

“That’s actually the hallmark of really good propaganda, of effective propaganda,” Stuckey says, noting that Hatmaker has also been 100% supportive of transgenderism, even in children.

“She’s been outspoken about this: ‘Protect trans kids.’ People who are mutilating their bodies through hormone blockers, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones and double mastectomies — that is literally bloody war with your body,” Stuckey says.

“So, she doesn’t even agree with what she’s saying,” she adds.

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NATO Member’s Top Court Considers Whether Saying Men And Women Are Different Is A War Crime

Finland's Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday about whether quoting the Bible is illegal 'hate speech' under its war crimes laws.

The left’s new religion has no logic — and AOC is its perfect preacher

As New York City heads into its next mayoral election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is doing few favors for the campaign of Zohran Mamdani — at least not for those who value coherence. Her remarks at a recent rally could serve as a Logic 101 case study in contradiction.

The problem isn’t limited to her message. The Democratic platform itself, and Mamdani’s campaign in particular, now rests on foundations so incoherent that one almost blushes to analyze them.

The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing.

Behind AOC, a man waved a sign that read: “Free Buses.” A perfect summary. She may imagine the crowds came to hear her and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thunder against injustice, but the truth is simpler: Promise free things to people indifferent to truth, and you can fill any arena.

As a logic professor, allow me to walk through the highlights of her address. Think of it as a guided tour through the labyrinth of leftist reasoning — or rather, unreasoning.

The new party of contradiction

AOC’s positions directly contradict what Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi said 30 years ago about immigration and public safety. The irony? In attacking Donald Trump, she’s also attacking them.

Her first contradiction concerns ownership. AOC claimed that New York City “belongs to the people of this country” but moments later insisted it “belongs to immigrants.” Well, which is it? Either she contradicted herself within two sentences, or she truly believes the city belongs to citizens of other nations. That would make sense only if you’re an international socialist calling on the “workers of the world” to unite.

She also called herself “a fascist’s worst nightmare” because she defends immigrants. Yet the fascists of the 1940s didn’t allow people to leave their countries. Republicans are merely asking migrants to follow the law. No fascist ever demanded less government power. Conservatives do. Fascists didn’t defend free speech; yet Elon Musk — whom AOC routinely attacks — is now a hero of speech and open debate.

Lessons for the willfully ignorant

Next came her invocation of the Confederacy and Jim Crow. Someone should tell her: The Confederates were Democrats. The segregationists were Democrats. The architects of slavery, redlining, and resistance to civil rights — all Democrats. Why should anyone believe the same party now represents moral progress? The left ruins the cities it governs and then blames everyone else. It’s the political version of DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.

Then came her favorite populist line — that her opponents are “funded by billionaires.” Public records tell a different story. Plenty of billionaires bankroll her and her fellow radicals. How does she say it with a straight face? Remember our friend with the “Free Buses” sign: He’s not there for philosophy — he’s there for freebies.

The left’s new theology

AOC then delivered a sermon on intersectionality, the academic creed of Kimberlé Crenshaw: all “oppressed” groups united by one great villain — the white, Christian, heterosexual male.

Picture a wheel: The hub is the white Protestant man, the spokes are every “marginalized” group on earth. AOC’s list was textbook: “This city was built by the Irish escaping famine, Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping the Holocaust, black Americans fleeing Jim Crow, Latinos seeking a better life, Native people standing for themselves, Asian Americans coming together.”

For AOC and the radical left, grievance is the very air they breathe. Humanity divides neatly into identity blocs, locked in eternal conflict — and at the center of every injustice stands the Christian West. She closed the circle by declaring that American history is defined by “class struggle,” the dialectic Marx demanded.

AOC contradicts herself, defines ‘the American people’ as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance.

Her introduction of Bernie Sanders confirmed it. “Senator Sanders,” she said, “is the foremost leader and advocate for labor and class struggle in the United States.” At least she’s honest. Sanders is an international socialist — otherwise known as a communist — and AOC’s crowd now wears that label proudly.

But a 1990s-era Hillary Clinton would instantly see the contradiction: You can’t be both pro-American worker and pro-open borders. Clinton was a national socialist (minus the genocidal agenda); Sanders and AOC are international socialists. The alternative to both isn’t fascism — which is also a species of national socialism — but the American republic: constitutional rule, checks and balances, a Bill of Rights, and a government that protects its citizens from threats foreign and domestic.

‘Acceptance’ without love

For those wondering whether any theology slipped into AOC’s secular revival meeting — it did, but only in parody.

In older times, an evil spirit could be tested by whether it could quote scripture correctly. By that standard, AOC’s spirit fails. She told the crowd we must “accept our neighbor as ourselves.” Not love — accept. The difference is enormous.

To love your neighbor is to will his good. To “accept” your neighbor, in AOC’s lexicon, is to affirm whatever destructive path he chooses. When a neighbor wants to mutilate his body for a sexual fetish, love warns him against harm. AOC’s “acceptance” cheers him on. Her mercy kills.

The Christian calls sinners to repentance and faith in Christ. The radical left calls that “hate speech.”

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images

The logic of the new faith

By now, any logic student would have learned the lesson: AOC contradicts herself, defines “the American people” as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance. Her creed depends on intersectionality — a doctrine that scapegoats not just white men, but all Christians who refuse to bow before the new secular orthodoxy.

If that student left disappointed by the quality of public rhetoric, he’d still leave wiser. Over the gates of hell, Dante wrote: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Over the platform of the radical left, one might inscribe a similar warning: Let none who expect coherence enter here.

The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. It despises reason as a tool of “European colonialism.” Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing — free buses for all.

The American republic will not survive if its citizens trade reason for rage. To preserve it, we must expose the incoherence at the heart of the left’s new religion. Free buses to a ruined city are no substitute for freedom itself.