The Past Is a Guide — and It Points Toward Freedom

By Timothy Harper

Sunday, June 21, 2026

 

One hundred years ago, to celebrate America’s 150th birthday, President Calvin Coolidge gave a now severely underappreciated speech in which he responded to the new political movement of the time: progressivism. Progressives argued that social progress required abandoning the — as they viewed them — outdated principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Coolidge responded that those principles were universal and final.

 

“If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final,” Coolidge said. If one were to abandon the Declaration’s principles, “the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.” Justice Clarence Thomas, in a recent speech celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, summarized Coolidge’s point: “Progressivism . . . is retrogressive.”

 

Yet members of today’s progressive left, echoing their communist and socialist 20th-century forefathers, continue to promise that, if granted power to implement their preferred policies, they will usher in utopian improvements to American life. And now, a new progressivism, ostensibly of the right, is forming, too. Rather than promising movement forward, this “new right” seeks to return the nation to an imagined past.

 

Whether promising progress toward Utopia or toward Eden, these two groups agree that America’s founding principle — the fundamental liberty and equality of every individual — is an obstacle to their agenda. While the futures that these two groups promise are superficially different, in practice the outcome would be the same: regression to the principles of a time before widespread liberty and prosperity.

 

Unlike today’s progressives — who either yearn for a return to an imagined past or seek to establish a secular heaven on earth — America’s Founders used their understanding of historical reality to guide the creation of a government that would ensure human dignity, equality, and liberty. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he was not engaging in strictly abstract philosophy. He was expressing the principles derived from millennia of human experience. These principles were true — and the evidence for this was that societies that did not respect them decayed into violence, destruction, poverty, and suffering. Thus, when Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, the principles they espoused were real and personal.

 

“Governments are instituted among men,” according to the Declaration, to “secure” the God-given rights of all people. Thus, years later when the First Congress met and considered constitutional amendments that became the Bill of Rights, its members drew again on their experience of history.

 

The First Amendment, for example, protects the “free exercise” of religion against government abuse. Why? Because the members of the First Congress knew the history of religious persecution in Europe, including in England, where religious wars killed countless people over the centuries. They knew that religious persecution destroyed peace and prosperity.

 

Article I of the Constitution, drafted earlier in Philadelphia, likewise prohibits the states from passing laws “impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” Why? Again, because, from experience during the pre-constitutional period, the Framers knew that state legislatures could and would use the power to nullify or undermine contracts to the benefit of some at the expense of others for political gain. The Framers saw not only the fundamental injustice of such laws but their deleterious effects on state economies.

 

The Framers knew from experience, too, that a society that recognized the dignity of all people required legal structure and processes that recognized and protected that dignity regardless of identity. Human dignity, in short, required a just legal system that ensured equal liberty and justice for all.

 

To accomplish this goal, the Constitution divides the powers of the federal government among three branches. The Founders agreed with Montesquieu that “there can be no liberty” where the powers of the government are exercised by the same person or body. As James Madison would later explain in Federalist No. 47, it was “facts,” specifically the British constitution, “by which Montesquieu was guided” to this conclusion.

 

In looking to the British constitution for lessons, moreover, Montesquieu and the Founders were looking to history in practice. The British constitution, unlike America’s written Constitution, was and is a set of legal principles that grew out of centuries of human experience and reflection.

 

Similarly, the Founders looked to the experience of the classical societies of Rome and Greece to further inform their understanding of human nature and its relationship to government and liberty.

 

The men who drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights had learned from history and experience that a government not founded on liberty is a government that crushes human dignity.

 

Today, Americans are asked to abandon not only the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution but to forget the history that informed those world-shaking documents. In exchange, they are promised either progress toward a perfect future or regress to an Edenic past. But as Coolidge knew and Thomas clarified, whatever the guise, an invitation to abandon our constitutional principles is an invitation to retrogression — to a world of less peace, less prosperity, and less human dignity.

 

The true past is a guide, and it leads to liberty. The false past is a siren song. America’s Founders and the Framers of the Constitution understood the past as it was and experienced historical events themselves. That experience allowed them to create for us, the dreamed-of “Posterity” of the Constitution’s preamble, a shining city on a hill. We would be foolish to abandon it.

Does Presidential Character Matter?

By Thomas Dichter

Friday, June 19, 2026

 

In 2000, two psychologists researched the question of character. They looked at how seven major world religions define it, as well as much literature and philosophy on the topic, and came up with six virtues (e.g., courage, humanity, temperance, wisdom, transcendence, and justice) and 24 “strengths,” among them judgment, perspective, fairness, self-regulation, perseverance (as in finishing what one starts), love, and curiosity. Academic research aside, most of us know character when we see it. We generally admire the traits identified above; they are what we want in our best selves, and throughout our history, from George Washington almost to the present, we have usually wanted leaders who reflected that ideal—so much so that when a president’s lack of character became evident (Richard Nixon and Watergate, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky), Americans reacted with widespread disdain, if not outrage.

 

With Donald Trump, something has changed.

 

The president has regularly disparaged war heroes and people with disabilities, and has shown outright glee at the death of public figures. In mid-March, on hearing of Robert Mueller’s death, Trump said “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” On Easter Sunday this year, Trump initiated a full week of profanity and sacrilege, falling so far short on the character front that virtually none of the above-mentioned psychologists’ six virtues or 24 strengths was evident. On Truth Social, Trump posted an expletive-filled threat to Iran, and then began a week-long attack on Pope Leo XIV, something that prompted the Wall Street Journal, in a lengthy history of America’s relationship with Rome, to point out: “Never before, even at the height of U.S. anti-Catholicism, has a sitting president attacked the pope like this.”

 

When the Wall Street Journal asked whether Catholics approved of the president’s behavior, one 29-year-old computer scientist and devout Catholic was reported as having “voted for Trump in 2024 because one of [his] top political issues is his opposition to abortion. He said he cast that ballot unenthusiastically—he didn’t like the president’s character.”

 

We have been hearing for some time about this kind of “hold-your-nose” support of Trump; many who support him see his character failings clearly. In fact, many Americans, according to numerous polls, do not see Trump as a moral person. As his second term continues, even once fervent supporters have begun to question his character; Tucker Carlson has gone so far as to call Trump’s behavior “evil.”

 

While moral character apparently still matters to many of us in our own lives—in our choice of romantic partners and friends, for example—we seem to have reached a point in recent years where it matters considerably less in our choice of leaders. As one 2016 analysis of elections from 1952 to 2012 concluded: “the electorate’s focus on candidate attributes has declined substantially.”

 

In 2016, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler wrote that, in the 1990s, “evangelicals largely spoke with solidarity on the centrality of character in leadership, and of character as something essential to the credibility required of one who would hold a major position of leadership, in particular, one who would be elected President of the United States.” In a 2017 article, The Dispatch contributing writer Alan Jacobs cited Mohler and went on to debate the degree to which “pragmatic virtues” won over that earlier evangelical position. Indeed, Americans have been generally pragmatic about character; we understand that no one is perfect and have accepted, within limits, character flaws in our presidents. But something has changed with Trump.

 

Beginning with George Washington, Americans had an almost mythic view of presidential character, and during the following five presidencies (John Adams through John Quincy Adams), good character was taken for granted. All six of our first presidents carried with them the noble aura of the Revolution and the Founding. From then on, even when “the issues” were what the electorate focused on, an assumption of decent character still lived in the background; it still mattered. If in the past a candidate for president had publicly expressed glee at the death of an opponent or openly exhibited blatant dishonesty, hatred, greed, vengefulness, mean-spiritedness, and so on, it is difficult to believe that he could have been elected. 

 

Of course, we have accepted imperfect presidents. Abraham Lincoln played fast and loose with the law (and, arguably, the Constitution) on occasion. Ulysses S. Grant—while gifted with courage, perseverance, and humility—was a bit short on temperance. John F. Kennedy, who symbolized courage and, to some extent, justice, and tried more often than not to act on principles, did not always exercise good judgment. We have also had less-than-great presidents who nonetheless embodied good character. As the 1961 book A History of the American People put it: “In the years following Grant’s two terms as president, the American Presidency was dominated by mediocrity. Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Benjamin Harrison were essentially colorless men who believed that the president was an executive agent rather than a vigorous leader … Honest but plodding, dull and unimaginative, they kept the rigging on the ship of state in adequate repair, but they seldom displayed any desire to sail into uncharted waters.” Even James Buchanan, perennially ranked by scholars as the worst president, was not lacking in character.

 

In 1920, in part as a rebound from World War I and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, Americans overwhelmingly voted for Warren G. Harding and his promise of “normalcy.” While a man who was said to “look like a President,” Harding was not seen as a man of great character.  He was described by some as “a jovial, easy-going, shallow man,” and was said to have “brought to the White House the moral code of the hangers-on around a rural county courthouse.” Given the bad memories of the war and the pandemic, it would seem that much of the country wanted nothing more than to be jovial, easygoing, and shallow. Still, almost no one would have characterized Harding as “evil.”

 

Other presidents whose character flaws were readily apparent nonetheless exerted admirable leadership and accomplished desirable things. FDR was wily, opaque, obfuscating, and manipulative, but he steadfastly led America through the Depression and the Second World War. LBJ was neither honorable nor honest, but he made unprecedented progress on civil rights.  Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon was not seen as altogether trustworthy, but his bold moves on China changed the calculus of the world’s economy. All three were flawed men, but they each left the White House having increased America’s standing internationally or improved the lot of underserved Americans at home. Even then, character still mattered, and when presidential character flaws became too blatant to ignore—as with Nixon’s cover-up of Watergate or Clinton’s lies about Lewinsky—there were consequences.

 

Looking back at how presidential candidates have been marketed, it is clear that symbols of good character have been important to American voters. An early example is the William Henry Harrison–Martin Van Buren campaign of 1840, when Harrison’s campaigners handed out all manner of merchandise, from pitchers to neckties to whiskey decanters, depicting Harrison as a “man of the people,” an image that was reinforced by using the motif of a log cabin (the campaign was, in fact, called “The Log Cabin Campaign.”) As a brave war hero, resolute leader, and “man of the people,” we see an almost complete amalgam of positive character symbols that continued well into the 20^th century.

 

Though Harrison was not born in a log cabin, seven U.S. presidents were; the use of the log cabin in campaigns resonated with voters as a powerful symbol signifying “man of the people,” someone who has risen from humble beginnings. Lincoln was perhaps the ultimate log cabin candidate, with his ruggedness as a man of the soil and his integrity in walking miles to return a borrowed book. Such symbols and stories reaffirm who we think we are, as much as they reflect who we think the candidate is. 

 

Similarly, it is no accident that we have had a preference for soldier presidents. Of our 45 presidents, 31 served in the military. The character traits associated with military service—patriotism, courage, and devotion to duty—were important to voters. Thus from 1788 to 1992, the nation has elected soldier presidents like George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William H. Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and George H.W. Bush—all of whom not only served, but saw combat.

 

The cowboy is another powerful shorthand for good character, and two presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, benefitted from that imagery. As W. Lloyd Warner put it in his 1959 study of Christian life in America: “the cowboy… on his great horse nobly rides forth to battle, to kill and be killed, to rescue pure womanhood from villainy. Honor and self-sacrifice dominate his thoughts and control his actions.”

 

In some of our elections, certain presidential character traits mattered because of their contrast with the preceding president. Jimmy Carter, who promised to “never lie to you,” might not have been elected if the country had not still been reeling from the dishonesty of  Watergate. Following the scandals of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge’s image as “Silent Cal” and the “reticent prudent Vermonter,” was reassuring and conveyed integrity (the 1924 election slogan was “Keep Cool with Coolidge”).

 

Again and again Americans seemed to want to see their presidents as good, solid, honest men of the people. In Robert and Helen Lynd’s famous 1929 study of Muncie, Indiana, the word “square” summed up the elements of good character:  

 

…in [Muncie]’s traditional philosophy, it is not primarily learning, or even intelligence, as much as character and goodwill which are exalted. Says Edgar Guest, whose daily message in [Muncie]’s leading paper is widely read and much quoted:

 

“God won’t ask you if you were clever,

 

For I think he’ll little care,

 

When your toil is done forever

 

He may question: Were you square?”

 

The authors go on to link this to political campaigns: “Rarely do campaign speakers mention the special ability of a candidate for office; they extol him as ‘a man of the people,’  ‘four-square,’ a ‘real American.’ … in the popular mind … What they want is a good, plain, common sense man of the people.”

 

But let’s be clear: Along with character, the “pragmatic virtues” have always been a part of what Americans want in our presidents. As was so in Muncie 100 years ago, being able to “deliver the goods” sometimes mattered as much as, or even more than presidential character: “A local business leader, speaking at a church forum about the mayoral race, says that ‘The first qualification for our mayor is that he must be a Christian.’  ….the next speaker said: ‘I don’t care if that man is a Christian or what he is so long as he can deliver the goods.’”

 

Trump’s supporters, exercising their pragmatic side, may have seen him as capable of delivering the goods on issues like immigration, taxes, the economy, and government spending. But Trump’s base has barely budged in its support for the president, despite diminishing purchasing power, the economic disruption of the Iran war, and the lack of promised support for pro-lifers. A rational calculus cannot adequately explain this. Character, and in Trump’s case, the lack thereof, may be where we need to look to understand this paradox.

 

Given Americans’ rising distrust of institutions like the media, and the apparently easy  embracing of "alternative facts”  among many MAGA voters, it is possible that many of Trump’s supporters simply do not notice his policy inconsistencies or his mean-spiritedness.  For those who do see Trump’s moral failings, these may be excused either as theater or as “that’s just Trump being Trump.” A 2024 survey involving 25,000 adults in all 50 states found that more Trump voters than Democrats get their news from friends, family, and nontraditional news media. One of the researchers raised the possibility that negative reports about Trump “just never reached people.”

 

But a better explanation is the surprising force and staying power of MAGA anger and resentment. It seems possible that many deeply pro-Trump followers are so fearful of the future, so grieving of their sense of lost status and confidence, so sure they have been cheated of something, however ill-defined but profoundly felt, that they want a president who will even the score, someone who will promise to give them back what they feel they have lost. Thus, the character trait that counts for them the most is embodied in the iconic “fight, fight, fight” reaction Trump displayed after being shot in 2024. It is a power-filled gesture not just of defiance, but of anger and revenge.

 

With Trump’s supporters, anything that symbolizes power seems to be what counts most. Trump’s blatant grabs for what he wants—whether a golden eagle-topped arc of triumph, a gigantic new White House ballroom, his name on a class of ships, or his overt corruption—all mark the power inherent in defying established norms. Like a child testing the rules to see what they can get away with, many of Trump’s moral lapses can be seen as admirable displays of defiance, signalling strength and boldness. As such, he fulfills an irrational but very real need felt by millions of frustrated Americans; an almost Freudian fantasy of extreme control meant to compensate for the loss of it. To be blunt, Trump gives the finger to a world that has snubbed him, and in doing so acts on behalf of many Americans who feel similarly ignored.

 

Can Thomas Hobbes’ “war of all against all,” which seems to fit the Trumpian regime, really be what many Americans want in a president? While it may well be true that “the perception of moral decline is an illusion,” as a recent Columbia University study put it, the view from where we stand now of our president’s “character,” and those who seem to mirror it, is a dark one indeed.

Sports Journalists Jettison Their Affection for Silent Protest

By Becket Adams

Sunday, June 21, 2026

 

You’ve got to hand it to Major League Baseball: Like sports journalism, it has an uncanny ability to upset everyone.

 

The San Francisco Giants held a Pride Night recently in which players were expected to wear ballcaps featuring the team’s logo in the colors of the current rainbow pride flag, which includes the colors of the trans movement. Because who doesn’t, over some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, want to pay respects to a hypersexual political entity that encourages gender dysmorphia in children?

 

As it so happened, four Giants players were none too keen to honor the rainbow mafia.

 

So, in silent protest, three players affixed to their ballcaps the scriptural reference “Genesis 9:12–16,” which refers to the rainbow as the symbol of God’s covenant with humanity. A fourth player, Sam Hentges, simply wore his normal season hat.

 

What happened next was entirely predictable: The players were condemned as villains, particularly in the sports press, for refusing to wear the ribbon — er, for “defacing” and “desecrating” the pride flag.

 

(It’s worth noting that in much of the backlash and media coverage, Sam Hentges gets lumped with the three pitchers who sported the Genesis verses. So, the next time that someone tells you the pride-themed gear was purely optional and the Christian ballplayers simply chose to make a spectacle of themselves, remember Hentges — who wore his standard season cap and is still drawing heat for it.)

 

What’s amusing about this situation is that it wasn’t so long ago that sports journalism was positively delighted by a not-quite-so-silent sports protest, and in the same city, no less.

 

Recall the Colin Kaepernick phenomenon, in which the mid-tier NFL quarterback was declared a civil rights hero for his refusal to stand for the national anthem (no one has yet explained how kneeling before the flag is an act of defiance rather than reverence, but we’re long past that point). It was bold! It was truth-telling! Against the world, this quarterback, this man who had only middling success in the league, this sudden international icon was willing to say: No, I can’t honor my country, not like this.

 

I don’t have to quote you the fawning coverage. You likely remember it all too well, including when Kaepernick won Sports Illustrated’s Muhammad Ali Legacy Award in 2017, as presented by Beyoncé, or when he won GQ’s Citizen of the Year award.

 

Now compare the handling of that conspicuous protest in opposition to America, its history, the police, and/or violence to a handful of ballplayers’ quietly putting scriptural verses on their caps in protest of a political movement representing only 4.5 percent of the U.S. population.

 

It’s good to stand up – or kneel – for your principles. Oh, wait! Not like that!

 

Writing in the New York Times, senior sportswriter Grant Brisbee condemned the silent protest as a “tone-deaf response to what should have been a moment for community unity.”

 

“They made the night about ‘us versus them,’” he fumed. “That’s the only thing they could see.”

 

For good measure, Brisbee also included a little emotional blackmail, claiming that unless everyone affirms and supports events such as Pride Night, “LGBTQIA+ individuals are much more likely to be told that they are without value. They are likelier to be abused, to self-harm, to get kicked out of their homes, to be bullied, to be assaulted.”

 

He concluded his column by demanding the Giants ballplayers “do better.” And just in case the subtlety of his demand was missed, he demanded a second time in the same article that the ballplayers “do better.”

 

Elsewhere, San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ann Killion published an article titled, “Giants pitchers alienate fans and San Francisco by defacing Pride hats.”

 

“Some of the snowflakes on the Giants, the pitching staff specifically, decided to say a giant F-you to a good chunk of their fan base,” she wrote. “On a night that was supposed to be about inclusion, they hijacked the event for their own purposes. In the name of Christianity, they took a decidedly un-Christian stance of exclusion and judgment.”

 

To prove that everyone is indeed upset, she authored a follow-up column in which she quoted purported fans from the comment section and her email inbox, including “Deborah,” who said, “You signed a contract to play baseball in a city that is known to be very open and accepting of all people, and then you decide that your faith is more important. That, my friend, is being a big fat hypocrite.”

 

You will not be surprised to learn that both Killion (“I support his right to protest, which was a very intentional act.”) and Brisbee (“Kaepernick was trying to start conversations that would never have happened before. And he did it.”) had very different reactions to the Kaepernick protests.

 

For an even greater lack of imagination and creativity, we turn to the Associated Press, which went with the ultra-lazy “pouncing” model: “MLB warned players about altering Pride Night caps, and Republicans took notice.”

 

The report reads: “Efforts by Major League Baseball teams to promote LGBTQ+ inclusivity during Pride Month haven’t been embraced with open arms by some of its rank-and-file players, and the league’s response is prompting criticism from prominent Republican politicians.”

 

This brings us to the league itself, which has managed somehow to upset everyone.

 

Following the quiet protest last week, the MLB put the “offending” Giants players on notice, saying in a statement, “The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations.”

 

The league had to run that one back, though, issuing a clarifying statement that said, “To be clear, this routine verbal warning not to wear the hat in future games is not disciplinary and had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message.”

 

It added, “We respect players’ right to free expression. However, writing of any kind, with any message, is prohibited per Major League Baseball’s uniform regulations.”

 

The Giants ballclub, meanwhile, attempted to walk the fine line of placating the mob while not attacking its players directly, saying in a statement, “We also respect that individuals may make personal choices about participating in team activations. We understand that the choices by individual players have caused pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community and we are sorry for that.”

 

Unsurprisingly, the statements by baseball officials have placated no one and angered everyone.

 

On the right, Senator Josh Hawley has already suggested hauling MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred before Congress to discuss potential antitrust violations by the league, which currently enjoys an antitrust exemption. As the senator explained, if the league is going to threaten players for putting scriptural verses on their hats while also allowing league teams to put on gay-pride nights, then perhaps lawmakers will take a good, hard look at that privilege.

 

The senator has so far demanded the league provide his office, and then potentially the Senate Judiciary Committee, with examples dating back to 2020 of when it warned, fined, or disciplined players for violations of uniform regulations. Hawley has also requested records from when the league allowed its uniform regulations to be relaxed for the “Black Lives Matter” and “United for Change” causes.

 

As for some self-described gay Giants fans, they’re evidently not going to be happy until the offenders are fired or severely punished beyond a mere reprimand (as is generally the demand for these sorts of things).

 

“The Giants’ milquetoast response about ‘pain and anger’ just doesn’t cut it,” reads a letter from a fan published and promoted by Outsports. “You’re making an excuse for the players’ homophobia. It’s unacceptable.”

 

It added, “I’d like to know what you plan to do to recover from this embarrassing situation. The Giants should host a press conference and community forum to discuss what actions they will take moving forward.”

 

Well done, MLB leadership. You fed the mob, and now it’s hungry for more. And sports journalism as an institution is all too happy to lead it.

Mark Rutte Needs to Stop Talking

By Robert Kagan

Friday, June 19, 2026

 

Can Mark Rutte please just stop talking? The NATO secretary general, who infantilized an entire continent last year by referring to Donald Trump as “Daddy,” continued his campaign of flattery at the most recent meeting of the G7: “The U.S. action to prevent the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and degrade its ballistic-missile capability improves security for us all,” he told reporters.

 

Diplomats are paid to lie for their country, but this may be the greatest and most obvious falsehood ever uttered by a diplomat not named Sergey Lavrov. Even the most enthusiastic backers of Trump’s war do not believe this nonsense. The one thing we can be sure of is that the U.S. action did not improve security for anyone, except possibly for Iran, and certainly not for Europeans.

 

Not only have Europeans suffered from higher energy prices, but the result of the war is that Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz and will for the foreseeable future. That means that European nations, like the Gulf States and every other nation dependent on access to the strait, will be at Iran’s mercy. Never mind the new “fees” that everyone is going to have to pay Iran for use of the strait. Any nation that currently maintains sanctions on Iran is going to have to drop them quickly. When Tehran tells, say, the U.K. that the queue to get in and out of the strait is awfully long, and that the paperwork it provided the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–controlled strait authority is not quite right but could probably be fixed once sanctions are dropped, what is London going to do?

 

If Rutte’s self-debasing flattery of Trump actually worked, that would be one thing. To help save NATO: That is Rutte’s rationale for his toadying. Unfortunately, Trump takes servile flattery as his due. Giving it to him satisfies his need to feel superior and dominant, but it buys you nothing. Trump will turn on an “ally” or “friend” in a heartbeat and with stunning viciousness. The latest victim is, of course, Bibi Netanyahu, who had much more reason than Rutte or any European to believe that Trump was reliably on his side. Rutte’s latest fawning occurred just as practically the entire nation of Israel was crying out in shock at its sudden abandonment by Trump.

 

And the Trump administration’s response to Rutte’s absurd flattery? The very next day, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking at NATO headquarters, informed the allies that Washington was beginning a six-month review to “examine America’s force posture and basing in Europe” with the clear intention of continuing what has already been a significant and steady drawdown of U.S. forces on the continent. He took the occasion to chastise the Europeans, again, for failing to help in the Iran war that the Trump administration undertook without consulting allies and which has now turned into a debacle. Rutte’s response? “I’m happy he does this.”

 

We all understand the predicament Europe is in. It needs time to adjust to the fact that the United States is no longer a reliable security partner, to say the least. It doesn’t want to pick a fight with the United States, and possibly face even worse punishment, while making that transition and at a time when the risk from Russia seems to be growing. Above all, it doesn’t want to jeopardize what little remaining support the United States provides Ukraine. European leaders also live in fear of additional punitive tariffs.

 

Yet one thing ought to be clear by now: Trump tends to capitulate when faced with determined opposition—whether it’s China’s trade retaliation, Iran’s unbowed belligerency, or the resistance of ordinary American citizens in Minnesota. Those who appease him, however, find themselves on a never-ending treadmill of concessions and self-abasement, because whatever you did for Trump yesterday is forgotten today.

 

Europe’s approach from the beginning has been appeasement. Instead of collectively lining up to retaliate against Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs last year, for instance, Europe, with an economy as large as China’s, caved. Instead of responding to the Trump administration’s bullying and insults with the defiant self-respect befitting proud nations, the European approach has been Thank you, sir. May I have another?

 

This strategy is not going to work. In fact, it’s having the opposite of the desired result, as Hegseth’s latest proclamation shows. Europeans need to understand that right now and for at least the next couple of years, they live in a world of three predatory empires. Trump is as likely to seize Greenland in the next two years as Xi Jinping is to take action against Taiwan. The Europeans will either become vassals of those empires or learn to stand on their own.

 

What Europe does matters to the rest of us. As the United States slips deeper into authoritarianism, likely culminating in the Trump administration’s attempt to nullify the results of this fall’s congressional elections, Europe right now may be the last best hope for liberal democracy. Those of us who care about keeping liberalism alive need Europeans to start defending it against all of its enemies—in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington.

Donald Trump Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Catfighting with Our Allies

By Jeffrey Blehar

Saturday, June 20, 2026

 

Donald Trump has never been the most temperate-minded of men. Even during his first term, his emotional volatility — particularly toward anyone perceived as an erstwhile ally — was legendary, and his capacity to hold on to grudges unending. But during his vastly more unmediated second term? Trump acts increasingly like a gambler on tilt, pushing as many of America’s chips as he can get his hands on into the center of the table while deliriously barking at anyone who tries to tell him not to riskily — indeed, foolishly — wager things which are not his to gamble with in the first place, only to steward. (To name but one timely example: America’s geopolitical credibility.)

 

I wouldn’t dare accuse the president of losing control of his mental faculties in his old age — though he was notably slump-shouldered and droopy at this year’s G-7 meetings — but it certainly does seem like he is letting his id run rampant in all things because he knows the ride is going to be over fairly soon. Hence the rush to rename buildings after himself and “Trumpify” whatever government property he can get his hands on.

 

And hence his from-the-hip spray-gun approach to foreign policy. I suspect that somewhere in recesses of Trump’s brain, he is aware that someone else is going to have to come along and clean up whatever foreign policy messes he makes, but he clearly doesn’t care that much: He’s going to wield this amazing power right now, while he retains it. He had the power to launch a war to try and destroy the Iranian regime, so he used it. He failed, and that is a problem for other people, not Dealmaker Donald. As for what comes three years from now? That’s not his department.

 

And if Donald Trump wants to go to rhetorical war with the leader of an allied NATO country, what’s to stop old Lear in his dotage from angrily rattling his scepter? Yes, I thought I was done discussing Trump’s ridiculous dust-up with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday, when Trump farcically dismissed her as a drooling superfan desperate to grab a picture with Earth’s Most Beloved Politician in order to boost her national popularity ratings. (Trump currently sports a cool 7 percent approval in Italy.)

 

In reality, Trump is in deep denial about how unpopular he is with world leaders right now – surprise, turns out Iran just “closed” the Strait of Hormuz again! – and is constitutionally incapable of doing anything except deflecting and turning it into a dominance-game. When Meloni shot back at Trump in a video and accused him of betraying our allies, there was little chance Trump would be able to let the matter go.

 

And so, dear readers, he’s back at it again! Early this morning, what was Trump doing but “Truthing” out yet another intemperate attack on Meloni:

 

Italian Prime Minister Gigiorgia [sic] Meloni asked, over and over, for a picture with me during the G-7 meeting in France. She is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, possibly because she turned down the United States of America, a Country that truly loves and protects Italy, when it came to denying Iran from obtaining or developing a Nuclear Weapon (But so did NATO, for that matter!). She wouldn’t even let us use Italy’s landing strips or runways, a great logistical inconvenience, and this despite the fact the U.S. contributes hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year to protect Italy, and other “so-called” NATO Allies. Now, after the United States defeated Iran militarily, she wants to be friends again in order to get her “numbers up.” No thanks!!! President DJT

 

At a certain point, I almost begin to wonder whether this is all pro-wrestling kayfabe. For while it is true that Meloni is unpopular — she has a 40 percent approval rating currently, the eventual fate of all Italian prime ministers — she could only stand to benefit from the public disdain of Donald Trump, a man arguably less popular in Italy right now than most militant North African boat refugees.

 

But I think Trump is genuinely deluded. His personal constitution simply does not permit the acknowledgement of failure — thus, ironically enough, this is the first time he has hit true “failure mode” himself. There will be no “recovery” from this error. Trump is incapable of making the moves that might save him — and certainly save America trouble in the long run — because they’re simply not coded into his political or personal DNA. This is merely a small token of that reality. Expect worse in the future.

End the Dad Slander

By Christian Schneider

Sunday, June 21, 2026

 

At lunch a few years back, a friend of mine mentioned that another mutual friend of ours had recently begun dating a woman who worked at a delicatessen.

 

“At least he’ll never be prov-alone,” I said.

 

I rose from the table, expecting a standing ovation from the diners at nearby tables. I had, after all, cracked the code and told the greatest joke of all time. I immediately thought of the famous Monty Python sketch about the joke that was so good, it immediately killed anyone who heard it. I figured maybe I should check whether the people around us were still breathing.

 

But then my friend uttered the most poisonous words I could hear.

 

“Nice dad joke.”

 

No comedy historian has yet defined exactly what a “dad” joke is. The typical understanding is that it is a simplistic attempt at humor, often the most obvious joke that can be made in any situation. One doesn’t have to have sired children to tell dad jokes — a woman in her 20s, for instance, can rip off a groaner just as easily. But if you are a man of a certain age, any levity provided by a one-liner will automatically be slandered with the “dad joke” calumny.

 

And it doesn’t stop there. In modern American culture, the “dad” label has become a catch-all dismissal, a scarlet letter of cultural irrelevance applied before the subject can even mount a defense. The Wall Street Journal recently declared that “dad books” — meaning books aimed at men who prefer narrative history, biography, and military nonfiction over whatever Elena Ferrante acolytes are assigning each other — are a dying breed. Watch any of Taylor Sheridan’s shows, like Yellowstone, Tulsa King, or Land Man? Congratulations, you are watching “dad TV.” Do you enjoy Wilco, Pearl Jam, or Van Halen? You are apparently marooned in the nostalgic backwaters of “dad rock.”

 

(A recent article included Metallica in a list of “dad rock” bands, so congrats — your goofy, simple-minded dad might enjoy songs about people being burned alive. There is more going on in his brain than you might expect.)

 

Everything labeled “dad” is devalued, as if fatherhood itself removes one from the world of complex concepts and behaviors. The common perception is that dads are generally embarrassing, out of touch, and resistant to change. They think less deeply, letting the simplicity of a movie wash over them without interrogating its gender politics. They’ve been through the wringer and don’t need anything too challenging. They are, in short, dismissed.

 

But here’s the thing about dismissal: it usually says more about the dismisser than the dismissed.

 

Consider what the “dad” label actually describes. A man who reads books about D-Day or the fall of Rome isn’t intellectually incurious — he’s interested in the actual organizing events of human civilization. A man who watches Yellowstone isn’t intellectually deficient; he’s drawn to a show about land, loyalty, family, consequence, and the collision between tradition and modernity. These are not trivial themes. Meanwhile, the people rolling their eyes at “dad culture” are typically those who consider prestige television about unlikable rich people having affairs to be sophisticated viewing.

 

Further, think of all the dads who continued to achieve after becoming parents. Abraham Lincoln had his first son, Robert, in 1843, when he was still a struggling Illinois lawyer with a thin political résumé. The presidency, the Civil War leadership, and the Emancipation Proclamation all came after he was already a father several times over. Mark Twain penned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and many other great works after raising children. Winston Churchill managed to sneak both parenthood and saving the world into his work-life balance.

 

And sure, maybe dads take fewer risks and tame their weirder impulses once they have mouths to aid in feeding. In college, I used to get drunk and, as an inebriated public service, wash all the cars on my street at three in the morning. When you’re 22, such an act earns you the goodwill of your neighbors. When you’re 50, it should earn you a restraining order.

 

The cultural dismissal of dads also conveniently ignores the sheer weight of accumulated knowledge that fatherhood tends to produce. A dad who fixes the furnace, negotiates a mortgage, coaches youth soccer, files his own taxes, and still manages to grill a respectable flank steak has developed a broader applied intelligence than is usually credited. He’s not failing to engage with the world. He’s engaged with the actual world, rather than the performed version of it.

 

What you often see from dads is simply traditional masculinity doing its quiet work. They aren’t flashy. They don’t need to attract attention to themselves, don’t require external validation for every minor decision, and generally resist the therapeutic impulse to narrate their inner states at length for an appreciative audience. They want to do their jobs, raise their children, and, yes, watch a documentary about Stalingrad.

 

That turns out to be a fairly coherent set of values. The books and documentaries about Hitler, after all, are not escapism — they are an attempt to understand one of the most catastrophic and morally complex events in human history, filtered through the experience of men who endured unimaginable conditions with varying degrees of dignity. That a middle-aged man sitting in a recliner finds this compelling does not mark him as culturally stunted. It marks him as a person interested in the stakes of human existence.

 

The “dad” insult, at its core, is condescension dressed up as critique. It assumes that the cultural preferences of men who’ve embraced fatherhood as they leave their own youth behind are self-evidently inferior to whatever the current arbiters of taste have decided is worthwhile, and that the men who hold those preferences are too dull to know what they’re missing. In other words, it’s a kind of snobbery.

 

Dads, for their part, are largely unbothered. And that’s what makes them great.

How Do America’s Enemies Think About the Iran War?

By Noah Rothman

Friday, June 19, 2026

 

The president clearly hopes that his memorandum of understanding with the Islamic Republic will put the Iran war in the rearview mirror. It might, although it is by no means a given that Tehran, emboldened by America’s retreat, will refrain from testing Donald Trump’s commitment to pusillanimity.

 

For now, however, the conflict has cooled to the point that there is space to thoroughly evaluate the war, the “cease-fire,” the peace (such as it is), and how it all reflects on America’s tactical capabilities and strategic thinking. The United States won’t be the only nation conducting after-action assessments. America’s adversaries abroad will draw their own lessons from the war.

 

After an embarrassing 70-day cease-fire that only the United States observed — a mortifying spectacle that culminated in the even more humiliating MOU — Americans might be tempted to dismiss the kinetic phase of the war as inconsequential. But America’s near-peer competitors cannot afford to ignore American tactics even if they conclude, with good reason, that the U.S. has no stomach for its own grand strategy. For Beijing and Moscow, the 40-day combat phase of the war was surely a sobering experience.

 

Strategists inside the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai were probably familiar with the pre-war scenarios forecasting how bloody and destructive a U.S.-led war with Iran would be. They were therefore equally likely to have been impressed by the U.S. military’s performance, which exceeded even the most sanguine projections.

 

The Iran war was a contingency sparked by Tehran’s slaughter of tens of thousands of protesters in late December and early January. There was no nine-month buildup ahead of Operation Epic Fury, as there was prior to the invasion of Iraq. Trump began filtering assets into the theater only in late January, with combat operations beginning on February 28. In the space of just six weeks, the U.S. projected overwhelming air and naval power to the other side of the earth and sustained that exercise in power projection for weeks. That’s a feat no other nation on earth could match.

 

Equally unnerving for America’s enemies was the way the war began: with decapitation strikes that neutralized Iran’s senior civilian leaders and much of its ranking military and intelligence officials. Decapitation strikes are difficult to pull off, as the outset of the Iraq War attests. They are successful only when real-time intelligence-collection initiatives are matched by overwhelming technological supremacy. Again, none of America’s enemies or even a coalition of them could achieve that.

 

And we know from evolving nuclear weapons doctrine during the Cold War that the threat of decapitation clarifies the thinking among the cadres that govern totalitarian states. Conveying in no uncertain terms to the Soviet leadership that it would not survive a nuclear confrontation with the United States was key, for example, to disabusing the Kremlin of the emerging notion that the Soviets could “fight and win a nuclear war,” as Richard Pipes explained in an influential 1977 essay.

 

America’s tactical prowess during the combat phase of the Iran war was no less impressive.

 

At the war’s outset, Iran had a missile arsenal in the thousands, and it retains much of its pre-war ballistic missile capabilities. But missile launches declined by 92 percent by the end of the war because Iran could not deploy them. Even in a “use it or lose it” scenario, logistical bottlenecks limited Iran’s capacity to rain ruin down on U.S. assets or the Gulf’s civilian infrastructure — bottlenecks to which no military is immune.

 

The U.S. Navy’s performance during this engagement was equally impressive. America’s enemies have watched the U.S. wage several land wars over the course of this century, but they have not had the opportunity to assess how America conducts combat at sea. The rapid dismantling of the Iranian navy, in which the U.S. disabled or destroyed over 60 vessels, including each of Iran’s most modern Soleimani-class warships, is certainly of keen interest to Beijing.

 

So, too, was the alacrity with which the U.S. established air superiority over Iran. Just as was the case in Venezuela, U.S. Air Force and Navy jets rapidly disabled Russian and Chinese anti-air and stealth radar assets. From there, American airpower crushed the Iranian air force and crippled its air bases and runways. That allowed U.S. forces to transition rapidly away from “exquisite, stand-off munitions” (e.g., cruise missiles) toward cheaper, more abundant precision-guided gravity bombs.

 

Iran secured its own battlefield victories, of course. The enemy always gets a vote. But its successes were tempered by American martial acumen.

 

Yes, Iran managed to shoot down one F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet, stranding its two pilots deep inside enemy territory. The rescue operation that followed was nothing short of astounding. It was a massive operation involving almost every branch of the armed forces as well as U.S. intelligence services, and it culminated in the establishment of a forward operating base on the ground inside Iran utilizing a clandestine airstrip developed by U.S. Special Operations forces.

 

Iran downed several U.S. aircraft over the course of this conflict, but it was deprived of American captives each time; the U.S. even used unmanned vehicles in one rescue operation, signaling a shifting U.S. doctrine on the use of unmanned platforms for contingencies like that.

 

All of this must be taken into account by any great power that would directly challenge the U.S. military. That’s what makes Trump’s MOU so maddening. The weakness it projects will tempt America’s enemies, and the precedents it sets are likely to outlast the memory of America’s victories on the battlefield.

 

Donald Trump has proven, once again, that America is a fair-weather friend with no stomach for a prolonged fight. Between this capitulation and Joe Biden’s bloody withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. inconstancy has become a reliable, bipartisan tendency.

 

Iran has demonstrated that even the modest application of force to a contested waterway is sufficient to close it to maritime traffic indefinitely. Moreover, the economic disruptions that closure produces do all the necessary negotiating on the aggressor’s behalf. China is almost certain to test this proposition in the Taiwan Strait with more sophistication and more firepower.

 

It is clear that our democracy — or any democracy, for that matter — is so sensitive to economic conditions that its leaders can be expected to turn against its embattled allies, as Donald Trump and his administration are turning on Israel. That’s bad news for the nations, like Taiwan or the Baltic states, in the shadow of expansionist powers. The threat to their independence is now so acute that some elements within their governments must be wondering whether their best course would be to make accommodations with their aggressive neighbors at America’s expense.

 

Of course, the munitions shortages America experienced during the war — particularly the newest class of ballistic missile interceptors — have been a wake-up call for policymakers, and not just those in Washington. America will adapt, innovate, and rearm, but a window of American vulnerability is now open. It won’t stay open for long. That factor, in combination with this president’s reluctance to sustain a fight to a durable conclusion, will alter thinking in adversarial capitals.

 

These competing influences — America’s tactical prowess versus its strategic ineptitude — are likely to inspire heated debates within the Chinese and Russian defense establishments. One of the two will prove more persuasive. The Iran war’s ambiguous end is likely to encourage miscalculations. And big wars can result from miscalculations.