Charlie Kirk Helped Combat The Epidemic Of Campus Loneliness
Into the dark web of campus ignorance stepped Charlie Kirk, a joyful warrior of immense spirit and optimism.Into the dark web of campus ignorance stepped Charlie Kirk, a joyful warrior of immense spirit and optimism.America’s rights come from God — not from Tim Kaine’s government
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) recently delivered a lecture that should alarm every American. During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, he argued that believing rights come from a Creator rather than government is the same belief held by Iran’s theocratic regime.
Kaine claimed that the principles underpinning Iran’s dictatorship — the same regime that persecutes Sunnis, Jews, Christians, and other minorities — are also the principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence.
In America, rights belong to the individual. In Iran, rights serve the state.
That claim exposes either a profound misunderstanding or a reckless indifference to America’s founding. Rights do not come from government. They never did. They come from the Creator, as the Declaration of Independence proclaims without qualification. Jefferson didn’t hedge. Rights are unalienable — built into every human being.
This foundation stands worlds apart from Iran. Its leaders invoke God but grant rights only through clerical interpretation. Freedom of speech, property, religion, and even life itself depend on obedience to the ruling clerics. Step outside their dictates, and those so-called rights vanish.
This is not a trivial difference. It is the essence of liberty versus tyranny. In America, rights belong to the individual. The government’s role is to secure them, not define them. In Iran, rights serve the state. They empower rulers, not the people.
From Muhammad to Marx
The same confusion applies to Marxist regimes. The Soviet Union’s constitutions promised citizens rights — work, health care, education, freedom of speech — but always with fine print. If you spoke out against the party, those rights evaporated. If you practiced religion openly, you were charged with treason. Property and voting were allowed as long as they were filtered and controlled by the state — and could be revoked at any moment. Rights were conditional, granted through obedience.
Kaine seems to be advocating a similar approach — whether consciously or not. By claiming that natural rights are somehow comparable to sharia law, he ignores the critical distinction between inherent rights and conditional privileges. He dismisses the very principle that made America a beacon of freedom.
Jefferson and the founders understood this clearly. “We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,” they wrote. No government, no cleric, no king can revoke them. They exist by virtue of humanity itself. The government exists to protect them, not ration them.
This is not a theological quibble. It is the entire basis of our government. Confuse the source of rights, and tyranny hides behind piety or ideology. The people are disempowered. Clerics, bureaucrats, or politicians become arbiters of what rights citizens may enjoy.
RELATED: If Tim Kaine’s right, America’s founders were wrong
Gifts from God, not the state
Kaine’s statement reflects either a profound ignorance of this principle or an ideological bias that favors state power over individual liberty. Either way, Americans must recognize the danger. Understanding the origin of rights is not academic — it is the difference between freedom and submission, between the American experiment and theocratic or totalitarian rule.
Rights are not gifts from the state. They are gifts from God, secured by reason, protected by law, and defended by the people. Every American must understand this. Because when rights come from government instead of the Creator, freedom disappears.
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COVID wasn’t the only virus. Arrogance infected public health.
America doesn’t have a science problem. It has a trust problem.
The collapse of trust didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because the people running our institutions — government agencies, public health bureaucracies, and elite media — chose fear over facts, power over principle, and silence over accountability.
Truth alone won’t restore trust. We need courage. We need accountability. And above all, we need to stop pretending that silence keeps the peace.
I’ve spent more than three decades in life sciences, investing in innovation and funding companies that bring real cures to market. Bureaucracy can slow progress. But during COVID-19, the damage went farther. It wasn’t just red tape. It was arrogance, censorship, and the collapse of debate inside institutions once devoted to transparency and truth.
We told Americans to “trust the experts,” then changed the story every few weeks. We locked down playgrounds while allowing political protests. We shut down small businesses while rewarding massive platforms. We punished skepticism, not misinformation. We arrested surfers, fired nurses, and drove policemen and military personnel out of their jobs for refusing a vaccine. Where were the “my body, my choice” voices then?
Now Americans don’t just question mandates — they question everything: the data, the motives, the science itself.
Who can blame them? Childhood vaccination rates are falling because public health failed. An entire generation lost precious developmental time in isolation. Families grieved alone. And the same bureaucrats behind those mandates persuaded us to blame COVID, when in fact it was their decisions that did much of the damage. No one has been questioned. No one has been punished. Not one county health official has been held accountable.
A recent Gallup poll showed trust in institutions like the CDC and FDA has collapsed by more than 30 points in just a few years. That trust won’t be restored by press conferences or new slogans. It will only be restored when real leaders tell the truth about what went wrong and take responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Dr. Scott Atlas put it plainly: The lockdowns weren’t the result of the virus. They were the result of decisions — decisions made by people who ignored known data, silenced dissent, and wielded authority like a weapon. And they got it wrong. Pretending otherwise only guarantees the disaster repeats.
So where do we start if we want to rebuild trust?
End the illusion of absolute authority. The CDC, NIH, and FDA must return to their proper role: advisory. They don’t make laws. They don’t issue mandates. They provide information — period.
Impose term limits on public health leadership. No more 30-year bureaucratic dynasties. Power without turnover hardens into ideology.
Ban conflicts of interest. No royalty payments to government scientists from the very companies they regulate. No revolving door between regulators and pharma.
Demand transparency. Every agency meeting, vote, and decision should be public and immediate. If they work for us, we should know what they’re saying.
These aren’t partisan talking points. They’re common-sense reforms. The stakes are too high to shrug and “move on.” Parents who lost a year of their children’s development, the elderly who died alone, the small business owners who lost everything — they deserve accountability. This isn’t about public policy. It’s about principle.
RELATED: No perp walks, no peace
And here’s the deeper truth: Fixing this mess isn’t just government’s job. It’s up to us — the entrepreneurs, innovators, parents, doctors, investors, and voters — to become stewards of truth. Not because we crave power, but because we believe in clarity. Because we still believe in the ideals America was built on.
I came to the United States at 15 after fleeing war in Beirut. I’ve seen what happens when fear and control override freedom and reason. I’ve spent my life betting on better — on ideas, on people, and on this country.
Truth alone won’t restore trust. We need courage. We need accountability. And above all, we need to stop pretending that silence keeps the peace.
It doesn’t. It only postpones the next disaster.
Here’s A Pile Of Evidence Lockdowns Would Never Have Happened Without Corporate Media
Our government and media coordinated to lie to us about reality and thereby light millions of lives on fire.The Russia hoax and COVID lies share the same deep-state fingerprints
“Conspiracy theory” is the go-to smear against those of us who questioned any aspect of the government’s authoritarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the great Austrian economist Murray Rothbard once observed, the smear serves one purpose: to divert the public’s attention away from the truth.
“An attack on ‘conspiracy theories,’” Rothbard writes in “The Anatomy of the State,” means that the subjects of a regime “will become more gullible in believing the ‘general welfare’ reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions.”
The democratization of information means that censorship just doesn’t work as well as it used to.
“A ‘conspiracy theory,’” he continues, “can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state’s ideological propaganda.”
The more I dig into the origins of the COVID pandemic, the more “despotic” our state seems to become — and the more “conspiratorial” I get.
Unsettling the system
I am trying to put together the final pieces of the puzzle of what I consider among the greatest public policy scandals of my lifetime — not only who did it, but more importantly, why would they do it?
A few months ago, I spent a day with Matt Taibbi, the iconoclastic muckraker and “Twitter Files” reporter, for the latest episode of my BlazeTV investigative series, “The Coverup.”
As he dug through the trove of emails and texts, Taibbi discovered the conspiracy to blacklist and silence Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the subject of the first episode of “The Coverup” and now the head of the National Institutes of Health. Taibbi soon learned that the same tactics and tools — and even many of the very same deep-state actors — have their fingerprints all over both the Russia collusion hoax and the COVID cover-up.
A precedent for censorship
Recently released documents from Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard reveal that the so-called Russia collusion hoax wasn’t just wrong — it was deliberate. The Obama administration orchestrated the fabrication, pushing U.S. intelligence agencies to leak a report suggesting Vladimir Putin had helped Donald Trump steal the 2016 election.
That leak, repeated endlessly by the press, fueled a national narrative branding Trump’s presidency as illegitimate — despite those same agencies having already dismissed the claim.
This kind of manipulation would be outrageous if it weren’t so familiar.
Five years after the COVID lockdowns stripped millions of Americans of basic liberties, we’re still uncovering how the deep state used propaganda to silence dissent. Throughout the pandemic, scientists and doctors raised alarms about the damage lockdowns would cause — and did cause. Some of the world’s most respected experts signed the Great Barrington Declaration to oppose the government’s heavy-handed response.
But the public never heard from them. Bureaucrats and media allies moved swiftly to smear, suppress, and sideline these voices using one of the oldest authoritarian tactics: control of information.
In fairness, public health agencies didn’t have to twist many arms. The legacy media followed their lead willingly — even when the guidance contradicted itself or defied basic logic.
But unlike the days of Project Mockingbird, when the CIA could shape coverage by nudging the New York Times or CBS, controlling the old guard wasn’t enough. The rise of social media — decentralized, fast-moving, and open to anyone with a computer or phone — posed a new challenge. The administration needed a more aggressive strategy to dominate the narrative.
Strong-arming social media
In episode 5 of “The Coverup,” I ask Taibbi how they pulled it off. As one of the first journalists to dig into the Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed the machinery behind the censorship regime. Americans suspected that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were suppressing dissent during COVID. But the Twitter Files confirmed what many feared: They weren’t acting alone. They took orders from the FBI directly.
And these weren’t polite requests, either. When the government “suggested” something, tech companies treated it as a command.
It all traces back to — surprise, surprise — the Russia hoax.
In 2017, Congress hauled tech executives into hearings and accused them of letting Russian disinformation run wild. Essentially, they were given an offer they couldn’t refuse: Allow the government to play a role in content moderation or prepare to be regulated into submission.
RELATED: On the 9th anniversary of Russiagate, the hoax is finally crumbling
Their surrender gave U.S. intelligence agencies de facto control over what Americans could say online. The feds told platforms which posts to delete, which users to silence, and how to suppress the rest. You could post your opinion — as long as no one could see it. “Shadow bans” became the preferred method of censorship: clean, quiet, and deniable.
The silver lining
Thanks to Taibbi — and a handful of journalists who still value truth over access — we now see how the government sold Americans on fiction. Russia hacked the election. COVID came from a bowl of bat soup. Question either and you’d vanish from the digital public square.
Millions believed these lies. And under their influence, they did real damage — locking down schools, closing businesses, and sowing doubt about fair elections.
But truth has a way of leaking out.
It’s taken time, but the lies are unraveling. And that’s the silver lining. In a world where information moves faster than censors can keep up, suppression doesn’t work like it used to. So long as we have truth-tellers willing to dig and defy — like Taibbi — the regime won’t have the last word.
We won’t get fooled again.
Episode 5 of “The Coverup” premieres Thursday, July 31.
Time to redraw America’s borders — cities, counties, and beyond
Maps of the United States haven’t moved much lately. They should.
A cursory glance at historical maps over time — whether in the U.S. or globally — shows the dynamic movement of political boundaries. Since the birth of the United States, new states have been carved out of existing ones, county lines redrawn, and so on. Nowadays, though, aside from the occasional annexation or incorporation, boundaries have become relatively static.
Next time a state like Illinois comes crawling to Congress for a bailout, federal lawmakers should make border reorganization part of the deal.
That’s a sign of stagnation, not dynamism. And it needs to change.
Similar to how failing public schools precipitated the school choice movement, the failure of municipalities is spawning a growing movement for secession, annexation, and political reorganization.
Liberating red America
The municipal secession movement already has its “Lexington and Concord moment” in Baton Rouge and St. George, Louisiana. Fueled by failing schools and rampant crime, a section of East Baton Rouge Parish began its long, litigative battle for secession. In 2024, its work paid off. The parish successfully seceded from the consolidated county government, forging the new city of St. George, Louisiana, which is now the fifth most populous city in the state.
It won’t be the last.
Several local secession movements are emerging in conservative regions across the nation that are under the thumb of Democrat governments, with little hope of initiating regime change at the ballot box due to current districting laws.
The “Greater Idaho” movement, for example, is growing in conservative Eastern Oregon, now encompassing 13 counties that have approved measures to secede from deep-blue Oregon and be annexed by Idaho.
In rural Illinois, 33 counties have passed referenda seeking to leave the state entirely. Some want to form a new state, and others propose annexation by Indiana. Lawmakers in Indiana even established a formal boundary adjustment commission earlier this month to explore the idea.
Northern California’s long-standing movement to form a new “State of Jefferson” could one day merge with similar efforts in Southern Oregon.
Unchaining red municipalities
At the municipal level in large, deep-blue cities, purple-red neighborhoods like Staten Island in New York City or Buckhead in Atlanta could lead the charge for de-annexation.
Even in ultra-liberal cities like Austin, the de-annexation movement is gaining ground. The Lost Creek neighborhood, forcibly annexed in 2015, had had enough. Higher taxes, dismal city services, and left-wing pathologies drove residents to demand freedom. The Texas legislature intervened, passing a bill that allowed Lost Creek to vote itself out. It did — and won. More neighborhoods may follow.
This is the way it should be done, with the state stepping in to rescue disaffected neighborhoods from mismanaged cities.
Where cities have collapsed — Detroit and Baltimore come to mind — state governments should consider carving up failed urban zones and allowing them to reorganize under fresh charters. Let those areas be resettled under new leadership, new institutions, and new expectations.
In places where Democrat stronghold cities dominate entire counties — often electing radical officials who impose their ideologies on rural areas — states must step in.
In Harris County, Texas, radical leftist Lina Hidalgo runs the show from Houston. In Travis County, home to Austin, Soros-backed District Attorney José Garza applies “justice” as his donors see fit.
County residents who live outside of the big cities calling the shots would be much better served by county officials who reflect their values — not the radicals deeply planted in their city halls. They deserve a way out.
Bankruptcy poses an opportunity
States and municipalities filing for bankruptcy pose a tremendous opportunity to redraw the lines. In 2023, for example, Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled legislature bailed out bankrupt Milwaukee. The legislature could have liberated neighborhoods that never wanted to be annexed by Milwaukee in the first place. They missed the opportunity, however.
RELATED: ‘Municipal conservatism’ offers hope to crime-ridden blue cities
Next time a state like Illinois comes crawling to Congress for a bailout, federal lawmakers should make border reorganization part of the deal. Downstate counties could be annexed by neighboring red states. Bailout in, blue control out.
During the Civil War, when Virginia seceded from the Union, West Virginia was born — its counties carved out and reorganized under federal protection. Today, as California’s officials promise to defy federal law and actively rebel against national authority, it may be time to ask: If rebellion defines California’s government, why not liberate its non-rebellious counties?
Beyond the US
Even national boundaries are up for reconsideration, too. That may sound radical, but it’s happened before.
Canada’s strange political experiment is showing signs of collapse. The ruling class in Ottawa derides the very existence of their country — obsessed with “stolen land” narratives and hostile to their own national culture. Their last remaining shred of civic unity is anti-Americanism.
But not all Canadians share that view.
The prairie provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — stand apart. Their culture, economy, and values are more closely aligned with those of the American Midwest than with those of Toronto or Quebec. Suffocating under anti-energy, anti-farmer policies, Alberta, in particular, is ripe for annexation.
Let’s add another star or two to the flag. The cowboy provinces would be a better fit in the U.S. anyway.
No borders are forever
Existing city, county, state, and national borders are not sacrosanct. If history is any guide, they will eventually change.
The only question is whether we’ll wait until the change is forced upon us — or whether we’ll act while there’s still time to do it peacefully and deliberately.
The map will change. Let’s make sure it changes for the better.
JD Vance: Rekindling statesmanship to secure America’s golden future
California generally and the Claremont Institute in particular have produced some of the most profound and revolutionary conservative thinkers of the last half-century.
And for a great many of them, it’s because they understood what’s at stake if we abandon our American identity.
This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless, extraordinary people across many generations, a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty. But more importantly, it’s home.
And we’re lucky enough to have a few of them, like Michael Anton, now working in the administration with us.
Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams asked me to speak a little bit about statesmanship and, more to the point, about how to respond to some of the challenges our movement will need to confront in the years to come.
It’s an interesting question. And I think it’s useful to reflect on the state of the left in 2025 America.
Mamdani: A harrowing zeitgeist
On July 1, a 33-year-old communist running an insurgent campaign beat a multimillion-dollar establishment machine in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary.
I don’t want to harp on a municipal election, but there were two interesting threads that I wanted to highlight. The first is that it drives home how much the voters in each party have changed.
If our victory in 2024 was rooted in a broad, working- and middle-class coalition, Zohran Mamdani’s coalition is the inverse.
Look at his electoral performance, which the left is already talking about as a blueprint for future electoral success. The guy won high-income and college-educated New Yorkers — and especially both young and highly educated voters — but was weakest among black voters and those without a college degree. He did better in Bangladeshi areas of New York and worse in Chinese areas.
Mamdani’s strongest vote share was in New York’s gentrifying neighborhoods, like Ridgewood and Bushwick.
His victory was the product of a lot of young people who live reasonably comfortable lives but see that their elite degrees aren’t really delivering what they expected. And so their own prospects, with all the college debt, may not in fact be greater than those of their parents.
And I think in the results, we can start to see the future of the Democrats: as the party not of dispossession, but of elite disaffection.
RELATED: Exclusive: Vance on Mamdani: ‘Who the hell does he think that he is?’
The party of highly educated but downwardly mobile elites who compose a highly energetic activist base — one, critically, supplemented by carefully selected ethnic blocs carved out of the electorate, using identity politics as the knife.
That, by the way, explains all of Mamdani’s bizarre appeals to foreign politics intended to signal to one diaspora community or another in New York.
Why is a mayoral candidate in our nation’s biggest city whining about banning Bibi Netanyahu from visiting and threatening to arrest him if he tries? Or attacking Narendra Modi as a “war criminal”? Why is he talking about “globalizing the intifada”? What the hell does that even mean in Manhattan?
But what might seem like a contradiction makes sense if you peel back the onion a bit. Consider: a movement that rails against the billionaire class despite the fact that the billionaire class remains firmly in its corner. It idolizes foreign religions even as it rejects the teachings of those faiths. It rails against white people even as many of its funders and grassroots activists are privileged whites.
America in 2025 is more diverse than it has ever been. And yet the institutions that form culture are also weaker.
I was once comforted by these contradictions. How could privileged whites march around decrying white privilege? How could progressives pretend to love Muslims despite their cultural views on gender and sexuality?
But the answer is obvious, isn’t it? The radicals of the far left don’t need a unifying ideology of what they’re for, because they know very well what they’re against.
What unites Islamists, gender studies majors, socially liberal white urbanites, and Big Pharma lobbyists? It isn’t the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or even Karl Marx. It’s hatred. They hate the people in this room, they hate the president of the United States, and most of all, they hate the people who voted for him.
This is the animating principle of the American far left. It isn’t true of most of the people who vote for Democrats, of course. Most of them are good people, even if they’re misguided in their politics. But pay attention to what their leadership says outside glossy campaign ads or general election-tested messaging, and it’s obvious that this is what animates the modern Democratic Party.
Defining the modern left
The far left doesn’t care that Black Lives Matter led to a spike in violent crime in urban black neighborhoods, because it also led to anarchy in middle-class white neighborhoods.
The leftists don’t care that Islamism hates gays and subjugates women, because for now, it is a useful tool of death against Americans.
They don’t care that too many pharmaceutical companies are getting rich from experimental hormonal therapies, because it destroys the “gender binary” that has structured social relations between the genders for the whole of Western civilization.
They don’t care that deporting low-wage immigrants will raise the wages of the native-born, because they don’t mean to create higher living standards for those born and raised here — black, white, or any other skin color. They mean to replace them with people who will listen to their increasingly bizarre ethnic and religious appeals.
They are arsonists, and they will make common cause with anyone else willing to light the match. It’s why Mamdani himself is such an appealing instrument to the left. He captures so many of the movement’s apparent contradictions in a single human being: a guy who describes the Palestinian cause as “central” to his identity, yet holds views — abortion on demand and using taxpayer money to fund transgender surgeries for minors, for example — that would be incomprehensible on the streets of Gaza.
This politics doesn’t make sense as a positive political program. But it’s very effective at tearing down the things the left hates.
The right’s answer: Create
One task of statesmanship is to recognize what the left wishes to do to American society. But the most important thing is to be for something. And that’s the second thread I want to touch on today: If the left wishes to destroy, we must create.
The most obvious way to do that is to ensure that the people we serve have a better life in the country their grandparents built. This is why the president cares so much about tariffs — in a globalized economy, we must be willing to penalize those who would build outside our own nation.
And it’s why he worked so hard to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — if tariffs are the stick, then lower taxes and regulations are the carrots. We want to make it easy to save and invest in America, to build a business in America, and most of all to work a dignified job and earn the kind of wage that can support a family in comfort.
But this is not a purely material question, because we are not just producers and consumers. We are human beings, made in the image of God, who love our home not just because we earn a living here but because we discover our purpose and meaning here.
Every Western society has demographic problems. There is something about Western liberalism that is socially suicidal or parasitic — that tends to feed off a healthy host until there’s nothing left.
The radicals of the far left don’t need a unifying ideology of what they’re for, because they know very well what they’re against.
America in 2025 is more diverse than it has ever been. And yet the institutions that form culture are also weaker. We are confronted with a society that has less in common than ever and whose cultural leaders seem totally uninterested in fixing that.
Just four years ago, we had people promoting alternative national anthems at one of the few remaining national pastimes that transcend ethnic and cultural differences. Too many of our current crop of statesmen remain unable to break out of that moment, destined to erode the very thing that makes Americans put on a uniform and sacrifice their lives for something.
Part of the solution — the most important part of the solution — is to stop the bleeding. This is why President Trump’s immigration policies are so important. Social bonds form among people who have something in common. If you stop importing millions of foreigners, you allow social cohesion to form naturally.
But even so: If you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, very few of our leaders would have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America?
That definition is overinclusive and underinclusive. It would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of foreigners. Must we admit them tomorrow? But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people the Anti-Defamation League would label domestic extremists, even though their own ancestors were here at the time of the Revolutionary War.
What American citizenship means
So perhaps the most pressing thing to build now is the meaning of American citizenship in the 21st century.
The right needs to do a better job of articulating what that means. And while I don’t have a comprehensive answer for you, there are a few things I’d suggest off the top of my head.
For one, it means sovereignty. More precisely, American citizenship must mean belonging to a nation that guards the sovereignty of its people, especially from a modern world that’s hell-bent on dissolving borders and differences in national character.
That means having a government that vigorously defends the basic qualities of sovereignty — that secures the border from foreign invasion; that protects its citizens and their enterprises against unfair foreign tax schemes; that erects tariff walls and similar barriers to protect its people’s industry; that avoids needlessly entangling them in prolonged, distant wars.
It also means preserving the basic legal privileges of citizenship — things like voting, including in state and local elections, or access to public benefits like certain state-run health care programs — for citizens. When states start handing these out to illegal aliens, they cheapen the very meaning of citizenship. And a nation that refuses to make that distinction won’t stay a nation for very long.
I’d also say that citizenship in the 21st century necessarily means building.
America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.
Our ancestors realized that to carve a successful nation from a new land meant creating new, tangible things. New homes, new towns, new infrastructure to tame a wild continent. That attitude enabled us to build the world’s greatest cities, its tallest skyscrapers, the most impressive dams and canals.
Over time, it expanded the horizons of what we even thought possible as human beings, with Americans taking our species into the air and, just a generation later, into Earth’s orbit. Our innovations revolutionized communications, medicine, and agriculture, extending human life spans decades at a time.
None of that would be possible if our citizens believed we lived in a postindustrial era. Or an era when our finest minds just went to what are essentially speculative trades or to writing software that makes us more efficient consumers.
We need to build. We need to make great things here, for the betterment of our fellow Americans but also for our posterity. We need to continue to invent groundbreaking innovations and to leave homes and libraries and factories that our descendants will look at someday and feel awe.
This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless extraordinary people across many generations, a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty.
And we need to build together. Getting to the moon required a lot of brilliant scientists working on what were effectively pocket calculators. But it also required a national system of education that produced that level of genius and inspired young graduates to want to design new rockets on behalf of their nation. And it required a ton of phenomenally talented engineers and welders and custodians to manufacture cutting-edge engines and keep the facilities that housed them spotless. It was a national project in the truest sense of the phrase.
To be a citizen in the 21st century, I think, should mean seeking out similar projects. Citizenship should mean feeling pride in our heritage, of course. But it should also mean understanding milestones like the moon landings not only as the product of past national greatness but as an achievement we should surpass by aligning the goals and ambitions of Americans at all levels of society.
Lastly, I’d say citizenship must mean recognizing the unique relationship, and especially the unique obligations, you share with your fellow Americans.
You cannot swap 10 million people from anywhere else in the world and expect America to remain unchanged. In the same way, you can’t export our Constitution to a random country and expect it to take hold.
That’s not something to lament but to take pride in. The founders understood that our shared qualities — our heritage, our values, our manners and customs — confer a special and indispensable advantage. A decisive one, even, in rebellion against the world’s greatest military power at the time.
That means something today. Citizenship — true citizenship — is not just about rights. In a world of globalized commerce and communication, it’s also about obligations, including to your countrymen. It’s about recognizing that your fellow citizens are not interchangeable cogs in the global economy, nor, in law or commerce, should they be treated that way.
And I think it’s impossible to feel a sense of obligation to something without having gratitude for it. We should demand that our people, whether first- or 10th-generation Americans, have gratitude for this country. We should be skeptical of anyone who lacks it, especially if they purport to lead it.
And that brings me back to the likely next mayor of New York. Today is July 5, 2025, which means that yesterday we celebrated the 249th anniversary of the birth of our nation.
The person who wishes to lead our largest city had, according to media reports, never once publicly mentioned America’s Independence Day in earnest. But when he did so this year, this is what he said.
America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better.
There is no gratitude here. No sense of owing something to this land and the people who turned its wilderness into the most powerful nation in the world.
Zohran Mamdani’s father fled Uganda when the tyrant Idi Amin decided to ethnically cleanse his nation’s Indian population. Mamdani’s family fled violent racial hatred only for him to come to this country — a country built by people he never knew, overflowing with generosity to his family, offering a haven from the kind of violent ethnic conflict that is commonplace in world history.
And he dares, on its 249th birthday, to congratulate it by paying homage to its incompleteness and to its, as he calls it, “contradiction.” Has he ever read the letters from boy soldiers in the Union Army to parents and sweethearts they’d never see again? Has he ever visited a gravesite of a loved one who gave his life to build the kind of society where his family could escape theft and violence? Has he ever looked in the mirror and recognized that he might not be alive were it not for the generosity of a country he dares to insult on its most sacred day?
Who the hell do these people think they are?
Make America Great Again
Yesterday, I visited the construction site for the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library. We went hiking in the badlands of North Dakota. My 5-year-old so desperately wanted to see a buffalo, and he saw a dozen of them. My 8-year-old spotted a bald eagle perched on a low cliff. And my 3-year-old brought me a dandelion.
Her little lungs weren’t strong enough to send the dandelion seeds over the hillside, so she asked me to do it. Watching her face light up as she watched those seeds blow over the hills, I felt a profound sense of gratitude for this country. For its natural beauty, the settlers who carved a civilization out of the wilderness. For making the love story of that little girl’s mother and father possible. For the common yet profound joy of watching a 3-year-old’s beautiful eyes light up as she watches a dandelion’s seeds dance in the wind against an ancient rock formation.
This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless extraordinary people across many generations, a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty. But more importantly, it’s home. For the vast bulk of Americans, it’s where we’re born, it’s where we will raise our children and grandchildren, and it’s where we ourselves will one day be buried. And when that day comes, I hope my kids can take solace in knowing that their inheritance as Americans is not some unfinished or contradictory project, but a home that provided their parents shelter, and sustenance, and endless amounts of love.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Editor’s note: This article was adapted from JD Vance’s address to the Claremont Institute on July 5, 2025, and published originally at the American Mind.
Trump bets big on AI to make America dominant again
The Trump administration is preparing to launch a sweeping series of executive orders aimed at securing America’s position as the world’s leader in artificial intelligence. If carried out properly, these efforts could help spark a new era of economic prosperity and technological dominance.
The forthcoming executive actions would radically streamline federal approvals for AI-related infrastructure, vastly expand energy resources devoted to artificial intelligence development, and prioritize the construction of new transmission and data projects critical to powering America’s AI future.
Artificial intelligence could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.
It is a remarkable development — and one desperately needed.
Trump’s AI infrastructure revolution
The expected executive orders outline sweeping changes. One key measure would create a national Clean Water Act permit tailored to speed up environmental approvals for AI-related infrastructure — especially energy and data facilities.
Another directive would push the federal government to prioritize “shovel-ready” transmission projects, helping the electric grid expand quickly enough to meet the demands of AI growth.
The orders would also unlock federally managed land for rapid development of the infrastructure needed to power and support artificial intelligence operations.
Finally, the administration plans to increase dramatically the energy resources dedicated to AI development, treating the technology as a national priority.
These changes aim to eliminate major regulatory and logistical obstacles slowing AI advancement. By streamlining permitting, securing energy access, and opening federal land, the orders would lay the groundwork for building and deploying large-scale AI systems nationwide.
A critical change
Each of these reforms matters. The numbers make that clear.
An article published earlier this year in MIT Technology Review summarized estimates from multiple researchers analyzing AI’s future impact. One study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projected that by 2028, powering AI in the U.S. could require between 165 and 326 terawatt-hours of electricity annually.
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That would exceed the total power consumption of all U.S. data centers today. It’s enough to supply more than 20% of American households.
Put another way, the article noted that AI’s energy demand could create emissions equivalent to driving 300 billion miles — roughly 1,600 round trips between Earth and the sun.
This isn’t a modest technological shift. It’s an industrial revolution, and it’s already under way.
The global AI race
China’s leaders understand the potential benefits and costs of artificial intelligence, too, which is why they have approved dramatic increases in energy development in recent years.
In May, the Chinese government approved a plan to build 10 new nuclear reactors at a cost of $27.7 billion. If implemented, it would make China the planet’s largest generator of nuclear power by 2030.
China also invested more than $900 billion in renewable energy sources in 2024, nearly matching global investment in fossil fuels.
China is taking its energy needs seriously, and the Trump administration appears committed to ensuring that the United States doesn’t fall behind.
AI’s $13 trillion opportunity
Artificial intelligence is not just a futuristic novelty. It is the key to unlocking one of the greatest economic booms in modern history.
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that AI could generate as much as $13 trillion in additional global economic productivity by 2030. That is the equivalent of adding three new economies the size of India’s. Nations that lead in AI development will enjoy a productivity surge, revolutionizing manufacturing, logistics, transportation, health care, finance, and nearly every other sector.
For the United States, this means the potential to revitalize American industry, re-shore critical supply chains, and create millions of high-wage jobs. AI could supercharge small business growth, empower entrepreneurs, and streamline government services. It could give America the edge in military technology, scientific research, and global competitiveness.
In short, it could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.
But to get there, America needs to act quickly. Building the infrastructure necessary to power AI’s massive growth, both physically and digitally, will require bold and aggressive leadership. That is exactly what Trump’s new executive orders represent.
Protecting liberty
Artificial intelligence will transform nearly every part of American life — our economy, schools, military, and medical system.
The upside is immense. With the right leadership, AI could spark a new American golden age, driving productivity and innovation beyond anything in living memory. That’s the future President Trump aims to deliver. If his initiative succeeds, it could define America’s 21st-century revival.
But the risks are real.
So far, Congress and most state legislatures have done practically nothing to safeguard Americans’ basic freedoms in the age of AI. No national guardrails exist to stop this technology from being used to suppress free speech, erode religious liberty, or undermine economic independence.
Without decisive action, the very tools that promise prosperity could become the greatest threat to liberty in American history.
That’s why the Trump administration and Congress should tie any pro-AI legislation to strong protections for individual rights. If America plans to lead the world into the AI future, it must lead with freedom front and center.
You were built for meaning, not cheap pleasure
For most of human history, scarcity was the enemy. Territory, calories, energy, and land all had to be fought for, hoarded, and rationed. Wars were waged and innovations forged to survive deprivation. But the material hardship that once united societies in common struggle has largely faded in the affluent world.
Now we face a different enemy: artificial abundance.
The future belongs to those who reject the simulacrum and embrace reality.
In the wealthiest nations, human beings are no longer selected for resilience in the face of scarcity. They’re selected for their ability to resist the seductions of abundance — synthetic food, fake relationships, dopamine on demand. The danger isn’t hunger or want, but the numbing comfort of simulated satisfaction.
Loaded with empty calories
Once, entire civilizations rose or fell depending on their ability to produce and preserve food. Famines routinely devastated societies, and most people spent their lives just trying to eat.
Now, calories come cheap and easy. Factory farming, food science, and global logistics mean even the poorest Americans can gorge on processed junk. A trip to McDonald’s or a few bucks at Walmart buys a week’s worth of empty calories.
But artificial flavorings and chemical fillers are no substitute for real food. They simulate nourishment, but slowly poison the body. Calories are now so available that obesity, not hunger, is the largest threat to the well-being of the poor. The need has been met — and subverted.
Sex and glory, sold cheap
The same dynamic has corrupted sexual desire. Historically, sex drove men to build civilizations, conquer enemies, win wealth, and rise in status. Today, that drive is short-circuited. Men can now simulate conquest and fulfillment without risk, pain, or purpose — through pornography and video games.
Why fight for honor or love when you can get the illusion of both from a screen? Instead of greatness, many young men settle for a life of digital masturbation — and that’s how the system likes it. Young men remain trapped in a kind of eternal adolescence: satisfied just enough to avoid rebellion, addicted just enough to stay quiet.
Fake attention, real loneliness
Social media and dating apps have similarly distorted the lives of young women. Women crave connection, validation, and community — roles they once fulfilled in family, faith, and friendship.
Now they chase attention online, deluding themselves into believing that likes and comments are the same as love and loyalty. Social media simulates female community and male desire, but gives neither. Depression rises. Real-life relationships crumble. Women fear male attention in person but crave it online, where they feel in control.
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What results is a dysfunctional, hypergamous dating market. Men won’t approach. Women hold out for the fantasy of the “perfect man” who never arrives. Both sexes lose.
Lockdowns revealed the lie
COVID-19 lockdowns showed us the true danger of attempting to simulate every aspect of human experience.
During the lockdowns, social interactions from school, church, work, and even bonding with friends over a meal became impossible. School, church, work, friendship — all of it was forcibly digitized.
The results were catastrophic: soaring depression, stalled childhood development, and broken education.
But the worst part? People stayed in their digital cages even after the doors opened. Simulated connection became easier than real interaction. And easier won.
The real thing is harder — and worth it
Reality demands effort. Family, community, faith, and responsibility are hard. They hurt. They risk rejection. But they matter.
Left alone with simulated choices, most people will pick the path of least resistance. That’s why society must rethink what it rewards. Because the simulations aren’t harmless distractions — they’re traps.
The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “simulacrum” — a copy with no original. A cheeseburger that isn’t food. AI “friends” that aren’t human and virtual “communities” that cannot possibly relieve loneliness. A porn star who looks and behaves nothing like a real woman. Online attention that ruins offline romance. Video game violence that replaces true heroism.
An evolutionary filter
We face an evolutionary bottleneck as serious as any in human history. But instead of favoring the strong, smart, or adaptable, survival now depends on who can say no.
Can you say no to simulated sex? Simulated success? Simulated community? Can you hunger for meaning, not just comfort?
Those who make it through this filter will be the ones who choose austerity over ease — who hunger for the real thing. The future belongs to those who reject the simulacrum and embrace reality.
Artificial intelligence will only make these temptations worse. But those who refuse to be pacified will also be the ones who endure.
Choose meaning. Teach your children to do the same. The future depends on it.
‘How could they be that stupid?’ They aren’t — that’s the problem.
In 2013, I published an article at American Thinker titled “How Detroit Almost Killed My Business.” It drew attention — enough to earn me a spot on Fox News Radio. The theme was simple: Government actions drive up costs until businesses can’t survive. I had to leave Detroit in 1984, along with hundreds of other business owners facing the same pressure.
The title of that article could just as easily have been: “How Could These Government Officials Be So Stupid?”
None of it makes sense — until you realize it isn’t stupidity. It’s sabotage.
Detroit finally declared bankruptcy in 2013. But looking back now, I realize my premise was wrong. The politicians weren’t stupid. They knew exactly what they were doing.
That same year, Diana West released her remarkable book “American Betrayal.” In a book that is part thriller, part tragedy, West exposed the depth of communist infiltration in the U.S. government — a war between those hiding the truth and those trying to expose it. Her research, though controversial, convinced me that America had long been the target of a coordinated effort to destroy it from within.
If America fell, the rest of the free world would follow.
With that lens, I reconsidered Detroit. The people running the city weren’t incompetent. They were executing a plan — to destroy the greatest industrial marketplace the world had ever seen. And they succeeded.
So when I now ask, “How could they be that stupid?” I catch myself.
How could anyone in 2020 vote for a man clearly not in his right mind? How could Americans allow COVID to justify the most extreme restrictions on freedom in modern history?
Masks, social distancing, lockdowns, mandatory shots — all of it was wrong. We know that now. And yet it was pushed with religious fervor.
How could they be that stupid?
How could the government open the borders and let in waves of illegal immigrants — including violent criminals from foreign prisons? Why did we pay to fly migrants in from distant countries, give them EBT cards with monthly refills, and house them in luxury hotels?
How could they cripple energy production, restrict how much water we use to wash dishes, and mandate what kind of car we can drive? What free government tells manufacturers what to build, regardless of market demand?
How could they decide diversity quotas matter more than competence? Why target the military for destruction?
None of it makes sense — until you realize it isn’t stupidity. It’s sabotage.
And now we have Zohran Mamdani, a self-described Democratic Socialist, poised to become the next mayor of New York City. His platform includes rent control, government housing, social policing, city-owned grocery stores, and free public transit. Every one of these policies has failed before.
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Under socialism, living standards always fall. It’s never been otherwise.
How could Mamdani be that stupid?
From my vantage point as an exile from Detroit, I know exactly what’s coming. I watched a government plan hollow out a once-thriving city. Now New York, the world’s financial capital, is in the crosshairs.
Businesses are already preparing to leave. Can you blame them?
Shakespeare wrote, “What’s past is prologue.” Twelve years ago, I warned what would happen to America’s industrial heartland. Now the ruling class has trained its sights on its financial one.
The question isn’t whether people like Mamdani are sincere. The question is: How can we be that stupid?
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