One day to remember, 364 to prove you meant it



Monday night the grill cools, the flag comes down, and you crash on that “half-off” mattress you never planned to buy. By Tuesday morning, America is already scrolling to the next thing. But the moms in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery aren’t scrolling — and neither should we.

Treating Memorial Day like a red, white, and blue props department proves a sad stat from a poll conducted by the National World War II Museum a few years ago: Barely one in five Americans could explain what the holiday is actually for.

We must teach the next generation to remember on purpose. If your kids can quote Marvel but not MacArthur, that’s on us.

So let’s talk about Tuesday morning in America and the 364 days that follow. What does it look like to honor our war dead all year long?

We must price-check freedom — every day. Scripture is always an appropriate place to start. In John 15:13 the Bible teaches us, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” This verse is memorialized on headstones form sea to shining sea.

President Reagan reminded the nation at Arlington in 1982 that “freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden.” That burden extends beyond military service. It demands vigilance. It requires raising children who understand why our flag is folded 13 times — not just how many “likes” a TikTok dance racks up.

We must finish the unfinished work.Abraham Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg was delivered five months after that battlefield fell silent, long after the trending topic had shifted. He challenged the living “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Our unfinished work today is cultural: defending truth in classrooms, fostering marriages that can withstand deployment, protecting girls’ sports from idealogues who would erase biological reality, and pushing back when elites sneer at patriotism as passe.

We must guard the souls who come home. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ most recent suicide-prevention report still lands with a thud: An average of 17.6 veterans take their own lives each day. We flunk Remembrance 101.

RELATED: ‘So that others may live’: The true meaning of the holiday

APCortizasJr via iStock/Getty Images

We cannot claim to honor the fallen if we abandon the brothers- and sisters-in-arms who made it home only to fight invisible wars. That means supporting faith-based counseling (which bureaucrats keep trying to sideline), turning the VA paperwork morass into a mission, helping veterans find meaningful and rewarding post-service careers, and checking on the veteran down the street instead of waiting for Washington to do it.

We must restore the faith they fought for.According to Pew Research, eight in ten Americans now believe religion is losing influence in public life, and roughly half say that’s a bad thing.

The men and women we memorialize took an oath to defend a nation “under God.” When pastors self-censor, when corporate America flies a Pride flag over Old Glory, and when our schools swap the Bible for the 1619 Project, we’re torching the spiritual scaffolding those soldiers died to protect. God bless America.

We must teach the next generation to remember on purpose.If your kids can quote Marvel but not MacArthur (“No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation”), that’s on us. Take them to a war memorial in July, not just on the last Monday in May. Tell them why “Taps” is 24 notes of holy silence. Ask a Gold Star family to dinner and let the conversation run long. The goal isn’t to glorify war; it’s to glorify virtue — courage, duty, sacrifice — so that when the recruiters call, our sons and daughters know what they’re signing up to defend.

We must live gratefully and live out loud.Gratitude is not a Hallmark feeling; it’s a muscle you flex in public. Fly the flag correctly (sunrise to sunset, illuminated at night). Stand for the anthem even when the stadium lump next to you kneels or leaves his hat on. Support companies that still believe in America like Blaze Media and my podcast, “We the People with Gates Garcia.” And pray for our leaders — yes, even the ones making it hard.

We must trade hashtag for habits. Hashtags flicker; habit forges character. Start small: Write a letter to a deployed Marine, sign up for a volunteer shift at the VA hospital, make a family pledge to read one military biography a year; and if you are blessed with means, cut a check to a veterans’ nonprofit organization. Imagine 20 million American households stepping up to do that. The culture would shift faster than Congress could rename the next great American holiday.

The 365-day test: I love a good cookout more than anyone. That’s part of the freedom they bought us. But the measure of our gratitude isn’t how loudly we celebrate on one Monday — it’s how deliberately we lie on all the rest. Reagan’s challenge, Lincoln’s unfinished work, and Christ’s supreme definition of love converge on a single question the fallen silently ask us every dawn: Are you living a life worthy of my sacrifice?

One day a year it’s fine to say, “Happy Memorial Day.” But on those other 364, make sure you live like you’re worth that sacrifice.

Let’s build a statue honoring Pat Buchanan



The life of an unheeded prophet rarely ends in comfort and often courts danger. Pat Buchanan endured both with the resolve of a warrior. As the most prominent paleoconservative in American politics, Buchanan stood so far ahead of his time that today’s MAGA agenda looks like a photocopy of his 1992 presidential campaign platform. From the culture war to working-class economics and immigration, Buchanan served as the American Cassandra — right about nearly every major question yet scorned by Republican elites.

Republican pundits and politicians dismissed him as a bigot, a racist, an anti-Semite — even likening him to a Nazi. Many of the loudest voices came from within his own party. But Buchanan never bent. He held the line. Decades later, nearly all his predictions have come true. He kept the torch of paleoconservatism burning when no one else would — and that torch lit the fire of the MAGA movement.

Buchanan took on the thankless task of warning his party and his country about the real dangers ahead, long before anyone in power was ready to listen.

Born in 1938 in Washington, D.C., Buchanan rose to prominence as a newspaper columnist and editor before joining President Richard Nixon’s White House as a speechwriter and political strategist. He later became a fixture on TV with shows like “Crossfire” and “The McLaughlin Group” and did a second tour at the White House as Ronald Reagan’s communications director from 1985 to 1987.

Buchanan could have coasted on that résumé. He didn’t. Instead, he broke with the GOP’s managerial, globalist consensus and challenged it head-on. In 1992, he ran against George H.W. Bush in the Republican primary, furious over the president’s betrayal of his “no new taxes” pledge. But Buchanan’s campaign wasn’t just about tax policy. He warned against endless foreign wars, the abandonment of Christianity, the hollowing out of American industry, and the long-term consequences of mass migration.

In his famous “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan didn’t just warn Republicans. He challenged the entire direction of the American ruling class.

“My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are,” he said. “It is about what we believe and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”

After two more failed presidential bids, Buchanan returned to writing and commentary. He published several influential books, including “The Death of the West” and “Suicide of a Superpower,” launched the American Conservative, and penned columns for VDARE. At every turn, he tackled controversial topics — foreign intervention, demographic transformation, and the destruction of the American middle class. While neoconservatives dominated Republican politics, Buchanan stood firm, laying the groundwork for the civil war now raging inside the GOP.

Most voters aren’t driven by ideology. They want a politics that serves their families, communities, and country. Conservatism shouldn’t revolve around abstractions but should exist to preserve a way of life. Despite the “conservative” label, Republican leadership made clear it cared only about cutting taxes and waging endless wars.

Then came Donald Trump, who bulldozed the GOP establishment by campaigning to secure the border, protect American workers, and end the forever wars. Trump won on Buchanan’s platform.

As Millennial and Gen Z conservatives came of age under Trump, many sought intellectual roots for the movement. They found them in the paleoconservatives: Paul Gottfried, Samuel Francis, and, most of all, Pat Buchanan. Clips of Buchanan’s speeches and passages from his books now go viral across social media, revealing a man who diagnosed America’s decline with uncanny foresight. He has become, retroactively, the elder statesman of the New Right — an inspiration to a generation of conservatives eager to challenge the party line and reclaim their country.

Buchanan’s return to prominence hasn’t gone unnoticed by establishment conservatives or the legacy press. Neoconservatives have taken to calling Trump supporters the “Buchanan right” — a clumsy insult aimed at discrediting the movement by association. The Atlantic recently ran a hit piece titled “The Godfather of the Woke Right,” recycling the slur peddled by James Lindsay. The article begrudgingly acknowledged “Suicide of a Superpower” as a formative text for the MAGA right but framed this influence as toxic — an engine of xenophobia and racism.

In a time when the GOP sold out to neoconservative globalism, Buchanan held the line. He took on the thankless task of warning his party and his country about the real dangers ahead — mass migration, national decline, foreign entanglements — long before anyone in power was ready to listen. For his efforts, he was ridiculed, condemned, and cast aside.

That must never happen again. We won’t let it happen again. The term “Buchanan right” shouldn’t be a smear — it should be a badge of honor.

While the left tears down statues of America’s founders, the right should start building. We must erect monuments to the men who stood firm when it mattered most. The first should be Pat Buchanan. We can no longer elect him president — but we can honor him now, while he’s still here to see it. Let’s build the monument he deserves — one that pays tribute to the man who carried the torch through the wilderness and lit the way for the movement that would Make America Great Again.

America needs prudent power, not globalist delusions



In the first major shake-up of Trump’s second term, Michael Waltz has been removed as national security adviser. The White House gave no explanation, but sources say Waltz drew fire for adding Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic, to a Signal chat with other national security officials about a recent U.S. strike on Houthi targets in Yemen.

But Waltz’s ouster likely runs deeper. It reflects a growing internal struggle over the direction of national security policy — a familiar pattern in American politics. From Hamilton’s Federalists to Jefferson’s Old Republicans, the fight over foreign policy priorities has shaped administrations since the founding.

Good strategy requires focus and discipline. The United States must prioritize its goals, not squander its power on open-ended crusades.

In a recent American Enterprise Institute essay, Hal Brands identified five competing foreign policy factions jockeying for influence under Trump. The two most influential camps are the “global hawks” and the “come home, America” bloc.

The Global Hawks — often dismissed as neocons — include Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They insist on maintaining U.S. primacy to preserve global security and stability. This faction champions aggressive containment of adversaries like Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea. It also defends long-standing U.S. alliances, though now under pressure to renegotiate the terms.

The other faction, often called the “disengagers,” frames U.S. strategy through the lens of “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their primary goal is to avoid further entanglements in the Middle East by scaling back U.S. military involvement. They also oppose military aid to Ukraine, citing the risk of escalation with Russia. Vice President JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard stand out as leading figures in this camp.

Brands identifies three additional factions: the “Asia firsters,” the “economic nationalists,” and the “MAGA hardliners.” The most consequential alliance may be the one forming between the “come home, America” bloc and the “MAGA hardliners.” That coalition threatens to upend decades of Republican foreign policy — to the country’s detriment.

Force without strategy

Since the Vietnam War, the GOP has generally stood for national security: strong defense, reliable alliances, and a forward-leaning military posture. President Trump largely embraced that tradition during his first term. His national security strategy took a clear stance, particularly on South Asia, replacing President Obama’s unfocused approach to Afghanistan with a more coherent plan.

Yet, as H.R. McMaster notes in his memoir “At War with Ourselves,” Trump often strayed from those principles. While many of his instincts were sound, he frequently abandoned them when challenged — or simply deferred to whoever had his ear last.

Some observers see Waltz’s ouster as a sign that the “come home, America” faction is gaining influence within the White House. That remains uncertain. But one thing is clear: Abandoning the traditional Republican defense posture would be a mistake.

The core issue isn’t military force itself — it’s the use of force without a coherent strategy rooted in defending U.S. interests. Too many in Washington treat national security as a tool for serving some imagined “international community.” That’s how the Obama-Biden team, and even George W. Bush, stumbled: They lacked prudence.

Prudence, as Aristotle defined it, is the political virtue essential to statesmanship. It’s the ability to match means to ends — to pursue what’s right with what works. In foreign policy, that means setting clear objectives and taking deliberate action to apply power, influence, and, when needed, force.

Return to what works

Since the 1990s, U.S. foreign policy has often shown hubris rather than prudence. Clinton, Obama, and now Biden have placed their faith in global institutions, believing U.S. power exists to uphold abstract international norms. Their goal has been to build a “global good” — a corporatist globalism detached from national interest and patriotism.

These Democratic administrations have repeatedly failed to distinguish allies from adversaries. Nowhere was this clearer than in Obama’s tilt toward Iran, which came at the expense of both Israel and Sunni Arab states. Biden has doubled down with his disgraceful treatment of Israel, undermining one of our closest allies while appeasing their enemies.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush pursued his own misguided vision — an effort to remake the Middle East in America’s liberal image through force. That project collapsed under the weight of religious conflict and tribalism in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while Washington obsessed over exporting democracy, China quietly rose — unfazed, unchecked, and happy to let us believe it would someday play by our rules.

The best way to secure America’s liberty, safety, and prosperity is to return to a strategy that resembles the one that won the Cold War — one that brought the Soviet Union to collapse and elevated the United States to unmatched global power.

Ronald Reagan summed it up in three words: peace through strength.

I call it prudent American realism. This approach blends principle with power. It recognizes that the internal nature of regimes matters. Thucydides understood this over 2,000 years ago. In “The Peloponnesian War,” he noted that both Athens and Sparta sought to promote regimes that mirrored their own values — democracies for Athens, oligarchies for Sparta.

The lesson? A nation is safer and more stable when it is surrounded by allies that share its principles and interests.

Two sides of the same coin

Prudence also demands restraint. While regime type matters, trying to spread democracy everywhere is a fool’s errand — one the Bush administration disastrously pursued after 9/11.

Resources are limited. Good strategy requires focus and discipline. The United States must prioritize its goals, not squander its power on open-ended crusades abroad.

Reagan’s foreign policy understood a timeless truth: Diplomacy and force go hand in hand. Too often, American policymakers — steeped in the fantasies of liberal internationalism — act as if diplomacy alone can achieve strategic goals. But as Frederick the Great put it, “Diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.”

A sound U.S. strategy treats diplomacy and force as two sides of the same coin.

President Trump should follow Reagan’s lead. That means maintaining a forward defense posture with the support of reliable allies, projecting strength through presence, and defending freedom of navigation around the globe.

Strategically, the goal must be clear: Preserve the U.S. maritime alliance that defends the “rimlands” of Eurasia — a term coined by Nicholas Spykman. This system exists to contain any aspiring hegemon, whether it’s Russia or China.

This approach has served the nation well before. Trump should carry its lessons forward.

The revolutionary who switched sides — and never wavered



David Horowitz, the ex-radical firebrand who spent the last 40 years of his life exposing the left’s lies, hypocrisies, and crimes, died on April 29 after a long battle with cancer. He was 86.

A former Marxist intellectual and New Left insider who became one of the most prolific and pugilistic conservative writers of his time, Horowitz was many things: essayist, agitator, memoirist, mentor, and iconoclast. But above all, he was a political street fighter of the first order. He saw himself on a battlefield of ideas — and he had no interest in compromise.

Horowitz spent the second half of his life warning Americans about the first half. And he never, ever backed down.

He was also my first boss.

Born in Forest Hills, New York, in 1939 to Communist Party members, Horowitz was steeped in ideological certainty from the cradle. He earned degrees at Columbia and UC Berkeley, gravitated toward literary criticism, and helped lead the radical journal Ramparts in the 1960s. By the early ’70s, he was deep in the orbit of the Black Panthers, whose criminality and murder of Horowitz’s friend Betty Van Patter all but obliterated his faith in the left.

That trauma marked the turning point and the beginning of a long journey rightward. He completed his break from his old comrades in 1985, when he and his longtime friend and collaborator Peter Collier published a scorching essay in the Washington Post Magazine with the cheeky title “Lefties for Reagan.”

“One of the few saving graces of age is a deeper perspective on the passions of youth,” they wrote. “Looking back on the left’s revolutionary enthusiasms of the last 25 years, we have painfully learned what should have been obvious all along: that we live in an imperfect world that is bettered only with great difficulty and easily made worse — much worse. This is a conservative assessment, but on the basis of half a lifetime’s experience, it seems about right.”

Horowitz would later write in his autobiography that his “moral conscience could no longer be reconciled with the lies of the Left.” If it could kill and lie and justify it all in the name of justice, what the hell kind of justice was it?

Horowitz’s political evolution was more than a turn — it was a total break. And once broken, he threw himself into the cause of exposing the radicalism, corruption, and totalitarian impulses of his former comrades. He brought to the right a kind of inside knowledge and rhetorical ferocity that few others could match.

In the late 1980s, he and Collier (who died in 2019) launched the Center for the Study of Popular Culture — originally just a room in Horowitz’s house in the San Fernando Valley. “The name identified its focus,” Horowitz wrote, “but also made it harder for the Left to attack.” It wasn’t a think tank like Heritage or Cato. “Our combative temperament was hardly suited to policy analysis,” he admitted. The CSPC would become the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 1998 — what Horowitz proudly called a “battle tank.”

I started working there in 1994, fresh out of college. David and Peter gave me my first real job. I wasn’t there long — only a couple of years — but the lessons stuck. When I gave notice to join the Claremont Institute, Peter warned me: “I certainly wish you luck. I don’t think David will take the news very well, though.” Oh, boy, was he right.

“JESUS CHRIST! HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME?” was David’s immediate, explosive reaction. Such outbursts were legendary in the office — others had gotten the same treatment — but after a talk, he settled down. I finished my two weeks, and he shook my hand and wished me well as I left.

It took me a while to understand his wild response. But as he admitted in “Radical Son,” he had “a strain of loyalty in me” and “an inability to let go of something I had committed myself to.” That loyalty was fierce. And once you were in David’s circle — whether as comrade or colleague — he expected you to stay. Nothing mattered but the cause. “I would not run when things got tough,” he wrote of his hesitation to break from the Panthers. It was personal for him, always.

Peter once described his friend to me as “four-fifths of a human being.” That was generous on some days. Horowitz could be cold, irascible, and prone to volcanic rage. But he also had a great heart, one which bore scars from a lifetime of tragedy and regret. One of his most affecting books is “A Cracking of the Heart,” the 2009 memoir of his rocky relationship with his daughter Sarah, a gifted writer in her own right, who died suddenly in 2008 at the age of 44. It’s the reflection of a fully formed human being.

I was proud to publish David’s work years later. It always tickled me when he pitched articles — my old boss, pitching me — but I was pleased to publish them out of gratitude for the start he and Peter gave me.

While David became famous for his political transformation, in some ways he never changed. “You can take the boy out of the left,” one wag quipped, “but you can’t take the left out of the boy.” Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, David’s son, put it even more precisely: “While David became known for his change in views, in a sense he never changed at all.” His method of ideological engagement — fierce, unrelenting, totalizing, moralistic — remained constant. Once an ideologue, always an ideologue.

And thank God for that.

David launched and encouraged the careers of many others, including Donald Trump’s domestic adviser Stephen Miller and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. His Freedom Center helped shape the new generation of conservative activists — and sharpened the right’s sense of urgency and resolve. Though he often complained that Republicans lacked the stomach to fight, he lived long enough to see another political pugilist from Queens take and retake the Oval Office.

His nine-volume “The Black Book of the American Left” was arguably his life’s last great project, modeled in part on “The Black Book of Communism.” Where others flinched or equivocated, Horowitz named the threat. The left wasn’t simply wrong — it was dangerous, deceitful, and, at its root, totalitarian.

David Horowitz is survived by his wife, April, four children, and several grandchildren.

He spent the second half of his life warning Americans about the first half. And he never, ever backed down.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at Chronicles Magazine.

Female Black Hawk pilot didn't follow orders before horrific crash: Report



An Army VH-60M Black Hawk helicopter on a training exercise collided with a PSA Airlines plane operating an American Airlines flight near D.C.'s Ronald Reagan National Airport on Jan. 29. Sixty-seven people were killed, including three Army soldiers, 60 airline passengers, and four airline crew members.

As emergency responders futilely searched the frigid Potomac River for survivors, questions began to proliferate about how such a crash was possible, especially when Black Hawk helicopters routinely operate flights in the highly controlled air corridor around the airport without incident. Many suspected human error — and when the Army initially refused to name the female Black Hawk pilot, some critics hypothesized that DEI hiring practices might be indirectly at fault.

On the basis of government documents, interviews with relevant experts, and audio recordings of the air traffic controllers leading up to the collision, the New York Times delineated the "missteps" that led to the fatal January crash in a damning report on Sunday.

'PAT two-five, do you have the CRJ in sight?'

It turns out that Captain Rebecca Lobach — the doomed helicopter's pilot whose name was withheld at the outset — failed to heed her instructor's orders moments before flying into the inbound jet, and there is no indication she was suffering any health issues that may have been to blame.

The liberal publication appeared keen to displace the reason for the crash across multiple factors and mistakes, noting, for instance, that:

  • the relevant tower controller was working double duty;
  • the controller was unable to watch the helicopter's movements in real time via the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Out because the confidentiality of the Army aircraft's mission precluded the use of the system;
  • the controller made the uncustomary decision of asking the ill-fated jet to land at Runway 33, one of the airport's ancillary runways;
  • the vertical distance between the landing slope for a jet making its way to Runway 33 and the maximum permissible altitude for a helicopter along the route taken by the doomed Army aircraft would be a measly 75 feet;
  • the helicopter was flying well over the mandated maximum altitude;
  • the Army crew may have failed to catch a critical piece of information provided by the tower;
  • the helicopter crew requested, then bungled a "visual separation" exercise, where the "pilot is meant to see neighboring air traffic, often without assistance from the controller, and avoid it by either hovering in place until the traffic passes or by flying around it in prescribed ways"; and
  • the tower's alleged failure to notify both aircraft they were on a collision course.

Lobach, the highest-ranking soldier on the helicopter but far from the most experienced pilot aboard, was behind the controls as the helicopter neared the airport.

Cockpit voice recordings revealed that sometime after assuming control, Lobach announced an altitude of 300 feet. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Lloyd Eaves, her instructor, responded within a space of 39 seconds that they actually had an altitude of 400 feet — not only double the maximum height permissible near Runway 33 but 100 feet over the altitude mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration for that part of the route.

The Times indicated that as the helicopter approached the Key Bridge, from which the Army aircraft would head south along the river, Eaves indicated the helicopter was at 300 feet and descending to 200 feet.

Eaves apparently saw the need to repeat his instruction, telling Lobach that the chopper was at 300 feet and needed to descend.

'It could have well changed the outcome of that evening.'

While Lobach reportedly said she would comply, over two and half minutes later, she still had the helicopter at an altitude of over 200 feet — "a dangerously high level" according to the Times.

Moments later, the tower notified the Army crew that the inbound jet was "circling" to Runway 33 — a piece of information investigators believe was missed because someone aboard the helicopter was allegedly holding down the microphone key to speak, thereby blocking incoming communications.

Roughly two minutes before the collision, Eaves noted, "PAT two-five has traffic in sight." He then requested and was granted visual separation.

Nearly 20 seconds before impact — as doomed Flight 5342 made its turn toward Runway 33, flying at roughly 500 feet and now within a mile of the helicopter — the tower asked the Army crew, "PAT two-five, do you have the CRJ in sight?"

There was no response from the Black Hawk.

The controller then told the helicopter crew to "pass behind" the airplane, but Lobach kept flying directly at the inbound jet.

Two seconds after the controller's "pass behind" directive, Eaves said, "PAT two-five has the aircraft in sight. Request visual separation."

Inside the helicopter, Eaves told Lobach 15 seconds before the collision that air traffic control wanted her to turn left, toward the river — which would open more space between the Black Hawk and the jet, now at an altitude of approximately 300 feet.

Lobach reportedly did not heed the instruction, thereby guaranteeing the deaths of 66 people and herself.

At the time of the collision, one air traffic controller can reportedly be heard in a recording taken at the time saying, "Crash, crash, crash, this is an alert three."

"I just saw a fireball, and then it was just gone," said a controller. "I haven't seen anything since they hit the river, but it was a CRJ and a helicopter that hit. I would say maybe a half-mile off the approach end of 33."

Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the Army's director of aviation, told the Times, "I think what we'll find in the end is there were multiple things that, had any one of them changed, it could have well changed the outcome of that evening."

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AmeriCorps Is Being Used to Indoctrinate Participants With DEI In Violation Of Trump’s Executive Order

Training programs to enter AmeriCorps have been indoctrinating participants into having an anti-American worldview.

Weekend Beacon 3/9/25

The Lenten season has begun, which for Catholics is a time of prayer, fasting, and abstinence. A friend suggested I give up alcohol for Lent. And maybe I can give up breathing too. I jest—people have given up far more and for a lot longer. 

Which brings me to Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik, who reviews Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig by Jordan D. Rosenblum.

The post Weekend Beacon 3/9/25 appeared first on .

The administrative state’s castle keep is finally under siege



What a few weeks it has been since Donald Trump returned to the White House! Much of the recent controversy stems from the work of the Department of Government Efficiency team, led by Elon Musk, whom some have called a modern-day Einstein.

Musk’s team of engineers uncovered significant government expenditures, including $10 million sent to Al-Qaeda and $100 million allocated to Egypt for cultural sites. The DOGE also reported that FEMA spent $59 million on luxury hotels for illegal aliens, while the Department of Health and Human Services spent $22.6 billion on illegal immigrants between 2020 and 2024.

Who wouldn’t vote for a party that hands out billions — to itself?

The DOGE investigation prompted a House committee hearing, chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). During the hearing, Haywood Talcove testified that organized thieves stole $1 trillion in pandemic relief funds, with much of the money flowing to foreign criminals who used it to fund drug trafficking, human trafficking, and even terrorism.

The hearing also revealed that systemic taxpayer fraud has persisted for years. HHS’ Medicaid program has reportedly misallocated $100 billion annually for several years. The fraud rate for public funds stands at 20%, meaning that for every $5 in taxpayer money spent, $1 is wasted. While many Americans are alarmed by these findings, Democrats have defended the existing system.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) led a “Save the Civil Service” protest, rallying supporters by asking, “Are you ready to push back against Elon Musk’s unlawful orders?” Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) accused Trump and Musk of breaking the law, while Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) called on Democrats to “bring actual weapons” to the “fight for democracy.”

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) took a more measured approach, stating that he joined the oversight committee “to save our democracy and to uphold my oath to defend the Constitution.” Meanwhile, Democrats have filed more than 55 lawsuits in an effort to halt the DOGE initiative.

Why are the Democrats so angry?

They’ve been attacking the Constitution for over a century to build a fortress of wealth and power for their party. Now, those walls are crumbling.

Woodrow Wilson expanded the administrative state by establishing broad, unconstitutional powers and funding them by stripping wealth and authority from individuals, local governments, and states — concentrating power in Washington, D.C. Franklin D. Roosevelt then created a vast network of federal agencies that further removed decision-making from the people’s elected representatives and placed it under the control of the executive branch.

Today, more than 400 federal agencies exist, deliberately constructed over the past century as a Democratic stronghold. Unlike elected officials, who serve at the people’s discretion, those who control the administrative state maintain wealth and power indefinitely.

As President Ronald Reagan famously said, “The nearest thing to eternal life is a government program.” As a conservative, Reagan attempted to shrink the administrative state, but he failed — largely because lukewarm Republican lawmakers sided with Democrats.

How Democratic is the administrative state? In the 2020 election cycle, 96% of donations from the American Federation of Government Employees went to Democrats. The Democratic Party and the administrative state have become virtually interchangeable.

Many assume that the House of Representatives controls government spending, but that’s not entirely true. Most federal agencies receive funding through block grants. If an agency is allocated $1 billion — a relatively small sum for a federal department — it has full discretion over how that money is spent.

The administrative state directs its funding toward programs and nongovernmental organizations that align overwhelmingly with Democratic Party ideology. These budgets are rarely cut and have continued to grow automatically for the past century. Now, however, cracks are beginning to form in the castle keep.

For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development has drawn attention for its questionable spending priorities. The agency allocated $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia and $2 million for sex-change operations in Guatemala. But the problems run deeper — USAID reportedly spends an estimated 50% of its budget on overhead, a figure that suggests a significant number of Democratic-aligned employees.

Of the $142 billion in awards granted by USAID, officials could not account for $71 billion in overhead costs. Without clear bookkeeping, it is reasonable to assume that much of this money benefited Democrats and their friends.

Let’s take another example. The DOGE effort has cut 89 Department of Education contracts totaling $881 million and revoked 29 DEI training grants worth $101 million. No wonder Democrats are outraged — nearly $1 billion in taxpayer funds that were earmarked for ideological indoctrination and Democratic Party interests are now gone.

For decades, the education system funneled money into programs designed to make American children hate their history, identity, and country. These programs also financially benefited the Democratic Party. Who wouldn’t vote for a party that hands out billions — to itself?

Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin uncovered a previously unknown Citibank account funded by the Environmental Protection Agency in the final days of the Biden administration. The account held a staggering $20 billion in taxpayer money. One EPA administrator, caught on camera, admitted, “They were throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”

For Democrats, preserving their financial fortress takes priority over the well-being of the nation. They would rather see the country sink than lose control over their stronghold of wealth and influence.

How Trump Could Transcend Reagan To Be The Greatest Life-Affirming President Ever

As dramatic as Trump’s possible pro-life enlightenment may sound, it has happened in the Oval Office once before.

Family Betrayal Is A Democrat Specialty And A Totalitarian Tradition

Gratuitous public displays of family betrayal are part of the fallout of the Democrat Party’s constant promotion of identity politics and political correctness.