Portland’s Moral Masquerade

In Portland, politics has become performance art. Crowds gather at ICE buildings not to debate policy or seek reform, but to block federal officers from enforcing laws they don’t happen to like. It’s not civil disobedience — it’s self-indulgence wrapped in the language of virtue.

The city’s leadership allows it, of course. Defiance is easier than discipline, and moral theatrics make better headlines than honest governance. They speak of compassion while turning a blind eye to violence, chaos, and the quiet citizens caught in between.

What strikes me most about these protests is the smug certainty of those involved — people convinced that the depth of their outrage is proof of their righteousness. They denounce law enforcement but demand the protection of law when it suits them. They call for justice but reserve none for those they disrupt, harass, or injure.

The result is civic hypocrisy at its most refined: a city that demands federal dollars while rejecting federal authority, that rails against “lawlessness” in Washington while applauding it at home. It’s the politics of moral exemption — a belief that one’s feelings confer immunity from the rules binding everyone else.

What we’re seeing in Portland isn’t progress or principle; it’s a tantrum elevated to policy. When a city decides that laws are optional and consequences negotiable, it ceases to be self-governing.

A republic cannot survive if each faction enforces only the laws it likes. It’s not just Portland’s problem — it’s a preview. And unless we relearn the simple discipline of equal law, we’ll all be living in someone else’s version of righteous anarchy soon enough.

After reading a recent column by Mark Steyn, I found myself reflecting on something Henri de Lubac observed during the upheaval of the 20th century: “Without God, man can only organize the world against man.” That sounds melodramatic—until you look around.

Steyn’s point, drawing from de Lubac, is that secularism is not the future. It’s the present — a culture suspended in immediacy, unable to transmit purpose or meaning across generations. As belief recedes, ideologies rush in to fill the void. They promise identity, grievance, even transcendence — but deliver little more than moral confusion and the politics of the self.

At the recent memorial service for Charlie Kirk, something unusual happened: political figures spoke openly and fervently about faith. Not in the vague “thoughts and prayers” sense, but in ways that would be unthinkable in Europe’s political class — where public expressions of belief are treated as faintly embarrassing.

This, Steyn argues, is not a trivial difference. The West is hollowing out, not from without, but from within. Its old gods are gone. Its new ones wear lab coats or activist sashes.

You don’t need to be religious to sense that something foundational is missing. Belief — in God, in order, in anything enduring — isn’t just a private matter. It’s civilizational infrastructure. Remove it, and eventually even the plumbing backs up.

Wealth and technology can buy time, but not purpose. If the West no longer remembers how to believe, it may soon forget how to survive.-RDW

Gavin Newsom wants five more Democratic House seats. But here’s the problem: he’s running out of Californians to represent.

Over the last few years, millions of Americans have packed up and left places like California, New York, and Illinois. They’re not moving for politics — they’re moving for survival. Taxes are high, rent is brutal, streets are rough, and schools are either closed or confusing kids more than educating them.

From 2020 to 2024, California alone lost 1.4 million people. Florida and Texas, meanwhile, saw huge gains — along with Utah, Idaho, Arizona and the Carolinas. Families are choosing places where they can afford to live, send their kids to school without getting a lecture on America’s supposed original sin, and maybe even open a small business without drowning in red tape.

Even immigrants — long claimed as Democratic territory — are skipping out. Only about a third of those who moved to California since 2010 actually stayed. Turns out, they want the same things everyone else does: decent schools, safe neighborhoods, affordable gas, and a shot at owning something. That’s a tough sell when the gas is $5 a gallon and a one-bedroom apartment costs $2,500.

Yes, Democrats still control the maps in states like California and New York. But you can’t draw a district around an empty house. Gerrymandering can’t stop moving vans.

The Census may fudge the numbers, but real life doesn’t. And if trends hold, red states will gain House seats — and electoral power — while blue states keep losing people, votes, and eventually, relevance.

Newsom can redraw the lines. He just can’t stop the exits.

Rick Wagner

Why Trump must build a nuclear reactor on the Moon

Too Many Stars, Not Enough Wars”

Once upon a time—say, World War II—we had 12 million troops and about 2,000 generals and admirals. That’s one star-per-6,000 troops. You know, when generals generally commanded armies.

Today? The U.S. military is down to 1.3 million active-duty personnel… and nearly 900 flag officers. That’s one general or admiral for every 1,400 troops. We’ve downsized the warfighting but upsized the management.

Once, admirals led fleets and generals took hills. Today, they lead “cross-functional task forces” and take Zoom calls. Some command bases; others command PowerPoint. If a war breaks out, half the senior staff will be too busy coordinating their “leadership priorities matrix” to show up.

This rank glut isn’t about strategy—it’s about bureaucracy. Promotions are currency and it’s easier to give someone a star than a mission.

And while enlisted ranks are stretched thin, the general corps keeps expanding—like a balloon of self-importance. We deploy senior officers faster than drones.

Don’t get me wrong: many of these officers are talented, decorated, and honorable. But we’ve built a force where there are more leaders than followers, and more admirals than ships.

Rick Wagner

Northern Exposure or Northern Infiltration?

So seven men—five Iranians, two Uzbeks—crossed illegally from Canada into northern New York. Again. Arrested by Border Patrol in Mooers Forks on July 1st, after prior attempts. In any sane world, that’s called a “pattern,” not a coincidence.

But this isn’t a sane world—it’s Biden’s border policy.

These aren’t desperate refugees fleeing war-torn terrain with babies on their hips. These are military-aged males from regimes with a habit of targeting Americans, showing up at a sleepy northern checkpoint like it’s a travel itinerary from a “Sleeper Cells Abroad” brochure.

Plus-they’d already been caught before. But thanks to the “welcome mat” doctrine of 2023-24, they were allowed in. Now, finally, under Trump 2.0, they’re behind bars—where they should’ve been the first time, not browsing upstate maple syrup stands en route to who-knows-where.

When former FBI agents warn about “sleeper threats hiding in plain sight,” this is what they mean. Tehran doesn’t need jets when it has joggers with backpacks and a compliant immigration system.

Remember, this gang didn’t even cross the famously porous southern border. No, they came in through Canada—land of the hockey stick, carbon credits, and apparently, jihadist carpool lanes.

Rick Wagner

No Crime, No Consequence?

There’s a peculiar notion making the rounds—chiefly among people far removed from its effects—that illegal immigration isn’t really a crime. Not in the moral sense, they say. It's more like an ambitious clerical oversight. A lapse in paperwork wrapped in noble intentions.

Of course, this theory tends to sound best in places far from the border, far from overcrowded schools, underfunded hospitals, or neighborhoods absorbing population surges without proportional support. In those environments, belief becomes a luxury. So does denial.

The legal framework of a nation isn’t something you set aside because the violator had their heart in the right place. If that logic held, we’d no longer prosecute shoplifters so long as they were hungry—or speeders so long as they were in a rush to better themselves.

What’s overlooked—often deliberately—is that law is not about motives. It's about boundaries. Physical, civic, national. And when a state begins excusing violations based on sentiment, it invites not compassion, but incoherence.

Meanwhile, the people living with the real consequences—ranchers along the southern border, local governments straining to meet demand, working-class communities watching wages flatten and housing grow scarce—they’re not dealing with theories. They’re dealing with outcomes.

There’s no public hearing for these Americans. No sympathetic op-ed. No waiver on their property taxes because a federal failure dumped new burdens in their laps.

This isn’t a screed against immigration. Just honest accounting. Because policies that bypass the rule of law don’t exist in a vacuum—they accumulate. They send signals. They reward circumvention and punish compliance. And they place the cost-on those who had no say in their implementation.

The people most affected by illegal immigration are not the ones being invited to the conversation. They’re expected to remain polite, patient, and compliant while the system grinds down their expectations of order and reward.

Eventually, that conversation will happen. But it won’t be on cable news or in a university panel. It will be at the ballot box, at the town hall, or when people decide the law is no longer mutual, and the deal is no longer fair.

Consequences don’t disappear because we redefine them. They only arrive later, and with interest. -Rick Wagner

Waving Others Flags, While Demanding Rights Under Ours

There is a peculiar species of protester — abundant on college campuses, city squares, and social media echo chambers — who passionately waves the flag of a country they would never dream of living in. They shout their demands in English, backed by Wi-Fi, beneath banners of regimes whose chief export is misery and whose greatest technological achievement remains functional plumbing.

They hold up the flag of Cuba, while sipping Starbucks. They chant in support of Venezuela, then DoorDash Chipotle. They wear keffiyehs stitched in sweatshops from nations where women can't drive and journalists often "disappear." It is a theater of allegiance where the actor refuses to join the cast overseas. Call it revolutionary cosplay — minus the danger, the draft, or the consequences.

Now, I don’t care what flag you wave. You could wrap yourself in the Bolivian Navy’s banner and declare it your truth — good for you. That’s the beauty of America: we let the confused remain verbose. But it becomes high comedy when the same people crying for a “decolonized world” shriek in horror at the idea of repatriation. If the homeland is sacred, why not go?

And herein lies the chewy center-they don’t love these countries, they love the idea of loving them. They worship struggle like a lifestyle brand, and foreign suffering as a stage prop. But do they apply for visas? Do they buy one-way tickets? No — because the air conditioning’s better here.

What we are witnessing is not genuine solidarity but performative dissent — the flag as fashion accessory, rebellion without risk. It’s the political equivalent of a vegan who only fasts between cheeseburgers.

The irony is so thick you could pave potholes with it. These are the same citizens who decry nationalism, then hoist the colors of someone else’s nation with fervor that borders on spiritual. They abhor the American flag as a symbol of oppression, but will wave the emblems of far more oppressive states while protected by the very freedoms they detest.

Now, I’m not advocating we start issuing travel vouchers and exit papers. This is America, after all — home of the free, land of the dramatically confused. But perhaps the next time someone waves the flag of a place they’d never live, we simply ask, politely: “When’s your flight?”

Because patriotism, like real estate, is best proven by moving in — or moving out.

Rick Wagner

Standing up to bullying, unscientific transgender activist mob By Douglas Murray

The Rogue’s New Gallery of Left-Wing Scoundrels - Victor Davis Hanson

"But recently, during the LA riots, the left went completely crazy as the entire Democrat Party and California state officials sided with violent protesters and illegal aliens."

ABC News fires Terry Moran days after veteran anchor’s social media outburst at Trump aide Stephen Miller

Mission: Highly Improbable Every Tom Cruise Movie Ever Made

A little something different and fun for the weekend, some good humor from writer Dave Barry – Ed

Socialism’s Return: A Familiar Mistake in a New Suit

There was a time — not so long ago — when socialism’s failures were considered a matter of historical record. From the ashes of the Soviet Union to the unraveling of Venezuela, central planning and collectivist economics had earned their place in the “ideas we’ve tried and abandoned” file. And yet, here we are — watching it reemerge on American soil, dressed not in drab uniforms but in hashtags, slogans, and campaign platforms.

This isn’t a fringe movement. It’s a deliberate reframing of socialism as compassion rather than control. Today’s version promises free college, free healthcare, and guaranteed income — with little mention of cost, accountability, or consequences. These appeals are emotionally potent but economically hollow.

Worse still, the new socialism conflates equality of opportunity with equality of outcome — a shift that undermines the very ethos of American liberty. What begins as wealth redistribution often ends in thought regulation. In the name of equity, individual achievement becomes suspect, and dependence institutionalized.

The cultural institutions meant to defend liberty — the press, the university, civic education — too often amplify these ideas without critique. The result is a generation unfamiliar with the consequences of centralized power.

The answer is not reactionary outrage, but clarity: a renewed commitment to constitutional principles, personal responsibility, and historical truth. Liberty does not sustain itself. It must be taught, understood, and defended — every generation.

-Ed

The So-Called Trump-Ramaphosa ‘Ambush’ - Victor Davis Hanson

Brains, Bots, and Bureaucrats: The Talent Gap That Could Tip the Balance

In the grand theater of 21st-century power politics, forget tanks and tariffs for a moment — the real war is being fought in classrooms and laboratories.

China now churns out over 4.7 million STEM graduates each year, a feat of technocratic central planning that would make even the ghost of Khrushchev blink. The U.S.? A respectable but comparatively quaint 800,000 — many of whom are headed not to particle accelerators, but to startups building the next viral sandwich app.

While America freestyles its way through an education system held together by duct tape and district boards, China’s is a precision-guided pipeline, calibrated to feed engineers directly into AI labs, chip foundries, and space programs. It’s not subtle — but it’s working.

And here’s the kicker: technical literacy among China’s industrial workforce stands near 60%, versus an estimated 35% in the U.S., where the idea of vocational training is often treated as a kind of educational exile.

Of course, America still leads in frontier innovation, much of it powered by imported brains. But when the visa dries up and the curriculum leans more on “critical feelings” than critical thinking, one starts to wonder how long the edge can hold.

Because make no mistake: the next arms race won’t be fought with missiles — it’ll be coded, soldered, and spun up on silicon.

-Rick Wagner

From One Fake Left-wing Hysteria to the Next-Victor Davis Hanson

Trump is a Large Hadron Collider

"The usual yardsticks don’t apply. President Trump isn’t trying to run Washington better than other politicians, he’s setting out to remake it."

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End US Taxpayer Support for the Higher Education Gravy Train

Your tax refund is a total scam — that blinds us to Washington’s spending addiction

Let them eat woke

"The organizing principles that have defined the Democratic Party since the 1930s are now exhausted and near the grave."

Elon Musk And DOGE Team Interview With FNC's Bret Baier

In case you missed it. It really is worth watching-Ed

California and Its Collapsing Blue-State Democrat Model -Victor Davis Hanson

Autopen on Autopilot

"Did Biden know what he was signing and if not, who had control of the autopen and was it used without Biden’s approval? Provided Biden didn’t physically sign these documents, are they legally binding?"

Trump’s Democratic ‘Allies’-Victor Davis Hanson

"So, a once top Democratic strategist has gone from his 1992 iconic campaign reminder, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to smearing Trump as a fat slob with syphilis. Carville’s descent sums up his entire party."

Freedom of speech in Europe is very, very under threat

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"Three recent but completely unrelated events illustrate the deranged hatred of Donald Trump and his supporters continuing now even into a second decade. And yet the venom only further marginalizes the left."

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"The shock for the informed is not that Trump declared the Mexican state a narco-regime, but that it didn’t happen years ago"

Mexico—Friend, Enemy, Neutral, or Something Else? - Victor Davis Hanson

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"His rapid actions are meant to change the nation’s direction and underscore that change"

AMERICA IS BACK

The Great Dumbing Down of American Education

Woke DEI + Green Nihilism = Dresden in California-Victor Davis Hanson

"Add it all up, and the woke socialist state has been eagerly deindustrializing, decivilizing, and retribalizing its way into what is now a veritable peacetime Dresden on the Pacific."

Escaping from LA and the rest of California