Gods, Heroes, and the Golden Rule

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, July 24, 2026

 

There is a reason it’s not called the “Pretty Good Canyon” or the “Better Than Average Canyon.” If anything, the Grand Canyon undersells it. As awesome as the view is from the rim, the view from below is even more humbling. I’ve never been someplace where for days on end the view in every direction is so staggering and intimidating. Eventually it starts to feel foolish to keep taking pictures because it becomes a kind of arbitrary choice. Simply everything is scenic.

 

I am what you might call a great indoorsman, so there’s much about camping in general, and expeditions into blisteringly hot desert canyons in particular, that isn’t really for me. Without ever really thinking about it, I’ve organized much of my life to avoid not just rattlesnakes and scorpions, but crapping in buckets. Nonetheless, it was worth it.

 

There’s a wonderful scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the alien Ford Prefect walks into a pub. He buys a pint and tells the barman to keep the change. “The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn’t understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth.”

 

Having grown up in New York City, culturally—or perhaps psychologically—the Grand Canyon arouses a similar sensation in me. After quizzing my river guide about what would be involved in hiking to the nearest rim (which would entail an epic desert hike before scaling and rappelling one cliff after another), it became clear that, for vast stretches of the canyon, humans simply couldn’t reach that spot – or that spot, or that plateau, butte, cliff, cave etc –  without descending from the belly of a helicopter or climbing from below. It dawned on me that, in every direction I looked, there were spots—many, many spots—where no human had ever set foot. That’s a wild—literally and figuratively—revelation, particularly about arguably the most famous national park in the United States.

 

As best we can tell, when the Spanish—the first Europeans to “discover” the Grand Canyon—encountered it, they didn’t describe it with romantic awe and marvel at the beauty and grandeur of it. They described it as an absolutely impossible obstacle to cross. Indeed, the closer they got to the bottom—which they never reached—the bigger the thing got. A group that got about a third of the way down discovered that they hadn’t comprehended the scale of the thing. “Those who stayed above had estimated that some huge rocks on the sides of the cliffs seemed to be about as tall as a man, but those who went down swore that when they reached these rocks they were bigger than the great tower of Seville.”

 

When John Evelyn successfully traversed the Alps in 1646, he described the “strange, horrid, and fearful crags and tracts.” Indeed, the Alps were considered ugly until the 18^th century. In 1724, Daniel Defoe described the Lake District—now one of England’s poshest natural retreats—as “all barren and wild, of no use or advantage either to Man or Beast.” No less than Samuel Johnson, upon finally visiting the Scottish Highlands in 1773, wrote, “An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of matter incapable of form or usefulness, dismissed by nature from her care and disinherited of her favours, left in its original elemental state, or quickened only with one sullen power of useless vegetation.”

 

I could make a number of political or ideological points here, some of which I agree with and some I disagree with. For instance, I might point out that our appreciation for natural beauty—and the desire to protect and conserve it—is a product of wealth and prosperity. When we needed forests for fuel or construction material, we saw forests as resources to exploit. When we got rich enough, we saw the beauty of the forests without getting hung up on the decreasing economic value of the trees. Or, I might channel a certain strain of environmentalist, anti-Western, or anti-capitalist thought, and note that we only see nature as a thing to conquer and extract value from.

 

But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I think is more interesting is how our understanding of nature, including human nature, has evolved. There was a time when being pale was considered the height of aristocratic beauty, while being tanned suggested you were a peasant who toiled in the beating sun. When the lower classes left the fields and entered the factories, having a tan became a mark of leisure while being pale was a sign of laboring like dwarves in the mines or factories.

 

When the fictional Robinson Crusoe is stranded on an island, the author just says he started a fire. When Tom Hanks’ character finds himself similarly lost on a desert island, some 20 minutes of Castaway are dedicated to the heroic struggle to start a fire. When he succeeds, Hanks celebrates like he is a demigod: “Look at what I have created! I have made fire!” No doubt both characters would have welcomed the “luxury” of defecating in a National Park Service-approved bucket, never mind sleeping in a rainproof tent. Today, sleeping in such a tent—certainly for me—is “roughing it.”

 

But as Homer writes in The Odyssey, “A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.”

 

Of Homer and Nolan.

 

Which is the best I can do for a transition from my odyssey along the Colorado River to the movie I saw in Las Vegas when I finished.

 

I liked the movie. I didn’t love it the way John Podhoretz did, nor did I hate it the way a lot of social media jabronis who probably didn’t see it claim to. Nor did I think the movie was “silly” as The Economist does.

 

But The Economist’s review does address a related point to the above. The Odyssey is the second-oldest work in Western literature, and The Economist is right that the film is “emblematic of its time.” I don’t think that’s the insult that it seems to intend. After all, I am a huge admirer of Christopher Nolan, but I don’t think even he could manage to depict a hero who slaughters and butchers people the way Homer’s version does. You can say it’s “woke” to leave out the hanging of female slaves, or you can simply admit that modern audiences would struggle to keep rooting for a protagonist who does such things unapologetically.

 

You can also argue that Nolan is a creature of the Christian revolution in Western civilization and that pre-Christian, explicitly pagan conceptions of heroism and morality are consigned to the vault of antiquity.

 

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether Nolan has smuggled in Christian morality under the guise of “Zeus’ law.” In the movie, this is a form of “the Golden Rule.” Treat strangers well, because they could be a god in disguise. As many have noted, “Zeus’ law” is an invention of Nolan’s not found in the text, but the Greeks definitely had a concept of the Golden Rule called xenia, a divine exhortation to treat strangers well. I’m no expert in xenia or ancient Greece, but I do know that Thales of Miletus, one of the founders of ancient Greek civilization, advised that one should “Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.” Indeed, Christianity didn’t invent the Golden Rule—it’s an ethical standard found, to one extent or another, in countless civilizations and traditions. It’s all over the place in Judaism. As Hillel famously said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the commentary; go and learn.”

 

That said, no force in human history did more to establish the primacy of the Golden Rule as an ethical standard than Christianity. This is why Ben Shapiro argues that “a lot of conservatives are missing the Biblical forest for the woke trees in Nolan’s Odyssey.” Nolan’s Odyssey treats Zeus’ law as a Christian conception of the Golden Rule. I think Ben overstates his case, but there’s merit to it. Yes, xenia is a major theme in Homer, but Homer would never dream of suggesting—spoiler alert—that Odysseus should feel guilty for his Trojan Horse maneuver.

 

Still, there’s a big difference between Zeus’ law and Jesus’ Golden Rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As suggested in the movie, Zeus’ law amounts to an admonition against getting your a— kicked (or being turned into a toad) by a p—ed off god in disguise whom you treated poorly. Jesus’ instruction rests on the idea that we are all made in the image of God.

 

That’s a big difference. But that difference is made smaller because Nolan uses the law of Zeus like it’s closer to Jesus’ version than Homer’s.

 

Now, as Nolan has explained in interviews, his case for the Golden Rule is less theological than it is practical. “It’s the only way society can function,” he told the New York Times. “That became very important to the film, and as soon as you start drilling down on it, you realize nothing’s changed. That’s everything in terms of holding civilization together, or even defining civilization.”

 

I think this is wrong. That’s okay. If Homer can nod, so can Nolan. I agree that civilizations need some notion of Golden Rule-ish reciprocity, but the world of the ancient Greeks was very different from the modern world, and Nolan’s film demonstrates that.

 

“Although later generations of Greeks could treat the gods as metaphors or personified forces,” Tomer Persico writes in In God’s Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea, “during Homer’s time and beforehand, the pantheon on Mount Olympus was thought to exist as a straightforward reality. Moreover, for these ancients, the gods not only existed and not only influenced world events, but they also influenced people’s feelings and decisions. It was the gods who suffused warriors with courage, stoking their confidence to run into battle.”

 

In Nolan’s time, humans, or at least heroes, have more agency. They do good and noble things not because a mischievous god put (one might say “incepted”) the idea into their heads, but because they choose to do them. If I had more room, I’d meditate on how a lot of modern psychobabble is pagan because we dismiss so many willfully wrong or evil acts as the products of “root causes” or “structural inequities” or decisions made by long-dead people whose choices are the ghosts in the machines of modern institutions. But heroes? Heroes are people of will and agency who choose to be heroic. Indeed, the truth is, it’s both/and not either/or. Odysseus’ journey is the point, but so is the destination. The former—both in Homer’s and Nolan’s telling—gives meaning to the latter. This has been the case in nearly every great epic tale of adventure and triumph in the Western canon.

 

An even more modern—or even postmodern—trope is that the greatest struggle for heroes is conquering not an enemy or landscape, but their own doubts and demons. That’s Nolan’s Odysseus in a nutshell. The gods become psychological demons, rather than real deities. The cliché “it’s the journey, not the destination” has much truth to it. But the reverse can often be true. Sometimes, the journey is less important than the destination.

 

There’s stuff to lament about this turn in Western culture, but there’s also much to celebrate. The pre-Christian world took it as a given that our fate was in the hands of others and that cruelty could be tightly bound up with notions of glory and virtue. Save for a small (but sadly growing) group of Mao, Hamas, and Hitler fans, most Westerners accept Judeo-Christian morality, even those who struggle to admit that their moral and ethical views are shaped by Judeo-Christian ideas.

 

I see this as a form not just of moral evolution, but of moral progress. I want to live in a world where we see nobility and beauty in heroism—both in the triumph over external evils and in victory over internal demons—just as I want people to see the Grand Canyon or the Scottish Highlands as sources of beauty and awe. I want us to live in a world where we see the forests, not just the trees.

The Real Bernie Sanders Always Stands Up for What’s Wrong

By John Fund

Friday, July 24, 2026

 

There are very few politicians who are poorer judges of character than Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator ignored warnings and defended fellow socialist and sex pest Graham Platner through multiple scandals for almost a year. Platner withdrew from the Senate race only after a serious sexual assault allegation.

 

This week, video surfaced that Bernie’s blindness has a long history. His old communist ally, 80-year-old Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, announced there would no longer be any elections in his country — no doubt to ensure he would be succeeded in office by his 75-year-old vice president and wife and eventually his son.

 

Ortega has ruthlessly run Nicaragua for 19 years, having returned to power in 2007 after his Sandinista regime was ejected by voters in 1990. He has since jailed almost all of his political opponents. Over 300 people were killed by his security forces during protests in 2018, and the left-wing Human Rights Watch concluded, “High-level Nicaraguan officials bear responsibility for grave, pervasive abuses.”

 

At the time, Sanders did express concern over the “anti-democratic” drift of Nicaragua. But he has been almost completely silent since then. That’s because back in 1985, he traveled to Nicaragua at Ortega’s invitation to celebrate his regime. While there, he called Ortega “an impressive guy” and said that, while Fidel Castro wasn’t “perfect,” Americans shouldn’t forget that “just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people, doesn’t mean that people in their own nations feel the same way.”

 

Amazingly, Sanders acknowledged that his views could lead to him being “attacked by every editorial writer in the free press for being a ‘dumb dupe.’” He then proceeded to prove that this was exactly what he was doing: he said that Cubans appreciated Castro’s rule because he “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed the society.”

 

Now, 40 years later, Bernie has become the Pied Piper for the Democratic Socialists of America, whose adherents range from Zohran Mamdani to AOC and are pledging a “total transformation” of American society.

 

One thing is clear: Bernie is always certain of his moral superiority and always wrong as to what it leads to.

JD Vance’s Coalitions Are Coming to Blows

By Corinne Cowan

Saturday, July 25, 2026

 

The last six months have marked a shift in public sentiment regarding artificial intelligence. A June study by Pew Research revealed that Americans predict that AI will have more negative than positive effects on society, and young people — future voters — are more likely to be AI skeptics. About 63 percent of respondents believe that AI is moving “too quickly.”

 

For conservatives who have aligned themselves with tech interests, popular skepticism of AI and other disruptive technology is a warning sign. Two of the most important interest groups in the modern “New Right” movement that won Trump the presidency in 2024 are the “tech right” and the right-wing populists. One group is techno-optimist, and the other is becoming increasingly tech-skeptical. In the second year of President Trump’s second term, tensions between these factions began to emerge. Things are shifting.

 

Vice President JD Vance has a foot in each camp, and as the (very early) front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, he’s being watched. History tells us that those who embrace new technology are often the ones who survive, and Vance has emerged as the most pro-tech Republican leader. But if he wishes to keep himself in the spotlight, the next few years will be a critical test for his coalition.

 

At the time of the 2024 election, Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate solidified the alliance between tech leaders and right-wing populists. This compromise was also a testament to Vance’s life story. Born and raised in working-class Middletown, Ohio, Vance worked his way up the ladder through the Marines to Yale Law School. Post-grad, he spent about a decade in the worlds of Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., immersed in the political and technological elite of American society. Vance worked at Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital for several years before beginning his political career. He later earned Thiel’s financial support for his 2022 Senate campaign. Vance is the product of two worlds. If Trump’s goal was to fuse together the interests of the tech sector and rural, industrial America, Vance was his man.

 

Trump’s 2024 win was aided by the financial support of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks. Their influence extended beyond the election, as many now occupy official or unofficial positions in the Trump administration. Today, the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) is home to tech CEOs galore: Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin. Compare this to Biden’s choices for the PCAST, who were mostly academics.

 

Many of these tech billionaires haven’t always been aligned with the right. Under the Obama and first Trump administrations, Silicon Valley was seen as a liberal haven dominated by a lax, bohemian culture that balanced out Wall Street’s stiffness. Technological progress was seen as synonymous with the social progress of the 2010s.

 

Only under the Biden years did many tech entrepreneurs begin to stand behind Trump. I’ve heard different versions of the story from different Silicon Valley insiders: They blame the shift on Biden’s skepticism of AI, or Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan’s antitrust actions, or online censorship issues. Regardless of the tipping point, Silicon Valley revealed its true colors as CEO after CEO began to associate with Trump. Elon Musk was the most prominent supporter, but names in the association ranged from Bill Ackman to Howard Lutnick.

 

When I asked the White House about business interests in the administration, a spokesperson denied any unethical dealings.

 

“The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people. President Trump campaigned on cementing America’s innovative dominance in cutting-edge technologies of the future, and he also campaigned on reshoring manufacturing, creating jobs, and ending lopsided trade deals that have unfairly benefitted corporations at the expense of workers. The Trump administration is committed to delivering on both,” Liz Huston said in a statement to National Review.

 

The tech right is much more libertarian than any other faction of the New Right coalition. It is deeply skeptical of overregulation and bureaucracy, celebrates technological progress, and encourages economic growth.

 

By contrast, the populist wings of the Republican Party champion the common man. Driven by dissatisfaction with globalism, a nativist sentiment, and frustration with America’s elites, right-wing populists ascended in 2016 and were a major cause of Trump’s election. Much to the chagrin of the neoliberals and the Reagan conservatives, the Trump-era GOP is increasingly willing to use government intervention to protect conservative interests. Economic nationalism and tariffs are one thing, but many in the New Right also want to try central planning in the realm of social issues, to help falling birth rates rebound and inculcate conservative values.

 

On a theoretical level, a populist ideology built around the “common man” and a techno-libertarianism that elevates the worthy will always contain tension. Silicon Valley is oriented toward merit, disruption, and the triumph of the powerful and intelligent. Its framework is Nietzschean — an obsession with the “overman,” the need for superior individuals to rise above the herd (progressive managerialism), and the creation of new values that disrupt the status quo.

 

Meanwhile, populists are concerned with the livelihood of the average American. If the techno-libertarians are the Übermensch, the populists are Nietzsche’s “last man,” representative of a society that is captured by stagnation and comfort and devoid of true passion. Marc Andreessen makes the reference explicit in his 2025 essay “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” which labels the last man as his “enemy.”

 

Vance is fully aware of these contradictions. As a member of both worlds, he has tried to keep their interests aligned. At the 2025 American Dynamism Summit, Vance explicitly rejected what he viewed as a false dichotomy between business and working-class interests in a speech.

 

“This idea that tech-forward people and the populists are somehow inevitably going to come to a loggerheads is wrong,” Vance said.

 

That speech was one year ago. As long as AI remains a central point of disruption in American life, ideological tensions will remain.

 

In 2026, data centers emerged as a top point of contention. Seven in ten Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their local area, a May poll from Gallup shows. Democrats’ opposition leads over Republicans’, but right-wing disapproval still registers at 63 percent. When New York passed a statewide moratorium on large data centers this month, some on the right lauded the move.

 

Trump’s rise to power in 2016 hinged on support from working-class Americans who were frustrated by free trade agreements and the loss of manufacturing jobs. Proponents of data centers argue that their construction is a positive step toward the reindustrialization that these supporters desire.

 

“If you look at the areas of where data centers are being built, they’re often in areas of former industrial capacity,” Joshua Levine, director of Technology and Statecraft at the Foundation for American Innovation, said in an interview. “These are all constituencies that people oftentimes point to as being left behind by the China shock.”  Levine’s views do not necessarily represent those of other FAI staff members.

 

But when you consider the New Right’s affinity for cultural renewal and communitarianism, the issue becomes more complicated. Anti-globalists and protectionists will often blame free trade agreements for hollowing out America. Their argument is essentially that these economic interests can provide for citizens materially but that conservatives should be more cautious about the ways in which unfettered free-market capitalism deprives Americans spiritually. If cultural preservation and GDP are different metrics of human flourishing, the populist right is inclined to observe the former, while the tech bros are fixated on the latter. Regardless of the actual threat that data centers pose to local communities’ livelihoods, there’s a perception that they will disrupt the American way of life.

 

Back in the White House, negotiations are ongoing. The administration’s tech policy is skeptical of regulation, which a July report from the Office of Science and Tech Policy confirmed. This is an area where Vance’s background undoubtedly has influence, yet it also displays his pro-worker vision of America. Part of this is motivated by Vance’s populist influence, and part by his Catholic faith.

 

Vance is a recent convert, and here again, this year has shown Vance to be caught in the middle between factions. Another one of the coalitions in the New Right are the “post-liberals,” mainly Catholics who want to de-emphasize freedom and revive traditional social structures. Catholic academics like Patrick Deneen have helped to shape Vance’s thought.

 

If anything, the Trump administration’s public feud with Pope Leo XIV this year is illustrative of the conflict between a nationalist, America-first movement and a transnational authority. It’s reminiscent of the administration’s skepticism with other institutions like the United Nations and NATO. This time, Vance has remained loyal to his boss. It’s unclear what moves he may make if his coalitions come into conflict again. If the Vatican continues to draw the Trump administration’s ire, it could spell trouble for his base.

 

Divergence between different groups within the MAGA coalition could make or break the next few years of the conservative movement. To bridge the gap, Vance and his tech friends have tried to paint themselves as an elite willing to advance the interests of the working class. Vance’s ally Chris Buskirk, who founded the right-wing firm 1789 Capital, has aimed reach the average voter through a method he calls “aristopopulism,” the Washington Post reported last year.

 

Popularized by Deneen in 2023, aristopopulism is a concept in which a virtuous elite guides the interests of the working class. Accordingly, Buskirk and Vance co-founded the Rockbridge Network in 2019, which aims to unite the financiers and the base of MAGA. The Rockbridge Network epitomizes the way in which business interests have been guiding American policy in the last few years. As Rousseau described the role of the “legislator” in The Social Contract, Vance and his allies serve to “enlighten” the interest of the common people with their wisdom.

 

The idea of an elite network that leads the people toward a common good is nothing new. Like much of the New Right, the aristopopulists draw on ancient and modern political thought, from Aristotle to Machiavelli. Vance’s link between a tech aristocracy and the working-class populists is reminiscent of the political thought of his mentor Peter Thiel.

 

Thiel’s essay “The Straussian Moment” was published in the early 2000s and draws from the work of German-American philosopher Leo Strauss. For Strauss, a political society will always be hostile to certain truths — the trial of Socrates proved the natural tension between politics and philosophy. Thus, it’s implied, closed-door operations by the wise and enlightened are necessary. Thiel cites Strauss’s conviction that esotericism and espionage must be used to steer society in the correct direction.

 

Around the same time Thiel’s essay was published, he founded Palantir. The data analytics and intelligence company, which is oriented toward American interests, has become another point of populist skepticism over surveillance.

 

For what it’s worth, I think this “aristopopulistic” approach to politics is probably the correct one. Populism can rally Americans and turn energy into action, but it rarely results in intelligent policy. The problem with Buskirk and the rest of the tech guys is that he was open about his political involvement. The MAGA base is defined by its opposition to just about every status quo in American politics. Once tech interests become a new status quo, what’s to stop the base from revolting?

 

The 2026 midterms will shine a light on public opinion that’s needed to understand Vance’s coalition. If he wants to remain central to the conservative movement, he needs to be able to negotiate. Compromise has been made before — the tech interests received favorable deregulation, and in return the MAGA base secured restrictions on high-skilled immigration. Compromise will need to happen again, especially if public opinion on technology turns even worse.

I Was Targeted by Germany’s Speech Police

By Rainer Zitelmann

Saturday, July 25, 2026

 

Is free speech under threat in Germany? Most conservatives, center-right supporters, classical liberals, and libertarians in the country believe that it is. After facing criminal accusations for violating Germany’s laws limiting free speech myself, I can tell you firsthand that Germany’s free-speech problem is real — and it’s a warning to anyone who cares about the right of free expression.

 

For many years, those on the political left vehemently denied that Germany had a free-speech problem. Their standard argument was: “You can say whatever you want — you just have to expect others to disagree with you.” Yet for years, opinion polls have shown that many Germans no longer feel free to express their views on certain issues without fear. According to a 2025 Allensbach survey, only 46 percent of Germans believe they can freely express their political opinions, while 44 percent say it is better to be cautious about speaking openly.

 

The terms “cancel culture” and “political correctness” have become widely used not only in the United States but also in Germany. Over time, however, these concepts have lost much of their impact. When people not on the left are routinely labeled “Nazis” or “fascists,” such accusations eventually lose their effectiveness. And as those terms lose that power, the next stage in spreading fear and intimidating dissenters has been the increasingly open use of police and the justice system. This is a sign of weakness, reflecting an inability to prevail through argument.

 

The growing restrictions on free speech are now acknowledged even by critical left-wing journalists and legal scholars. Ronen Steinke, a senior political editor at the center-left newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, recently authored a book on the subject, in which he writes: “Germany has always been the Western country with the greatest number of speech taboos and the strictest criminal laws governing mere words.”

 

According to Steinke, between 2015 and 2025, Germany took action to crack down on political speech: “Parliament expanded and multiplied criminal provisions. The offense of incitement to hatred has been broadened in several respects, and the offense of publicly approving criminal acts has been extended to such a degree that people can now be punished for endorsing acts that exist only in the imagination.”

 

In addition, Steinke argues, many public prosecutors have made the fight against so-called hate speech a top priority, creating new and powerful investigative units. His conclusion is unequivocal: “Never before have there been so many criminal investigations in Germany over mere words.” For some offenses, according to Steinke, the number of investigations has increased tenfold, and in extreme cases even a hundredfold.

 

In one widely publicized case, police arrived at a retiree’s home at 6 a.m. to carry out a house search after he had shared on X an image referring to the then–federal minister for economic affairs, Robert Habeck, as “Schwachkopf” (idiot).

 

Another retiree came under criminal investigation after calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz “Pinocchio” on Facebook. That case was later dropped.

 

Such investigations are possible in part because of Section 188 of the German Criminal Code, which grants politicians special legal protection. The number of criminal investigations for insulting politicians has doubled every year since 2021, rising from 748 to 4,439 in 2024, Steinke writes.

 

Well-known classical liberal and conservative journalists have also been reported anonymously to the police through so-called reporting centers.

 

Complaints have repeatedly relied on Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, which prohibits the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations and provides for penalties of up to three years in prison.

 

At the beginning of February 2026, I too received a letter from the police. For the first time in my life, I was accused of committing a criminal offense. Someone had filed a complaint against me through one of these reporting centers simplybecause I had reposted an image on X that showed a historical photograph of Adolf Hitler on the left and a contemporary photograph of Vladimir Putin on the right. A speech bubble attributed the words, “Give me Czechoslovakia and I won’t attack anyone else,” to Hitler, while Putin was shown saying, “Give me Ukraine and I won’t attack anyone else.”

 

I have never been particularly fond of Hitler analogies. Perhaps that is because I spent ten years of my life studying the subject and earned my doctorate with a dissertation on Hitler. From that scholarly perspective, I see how many such comparisons are historically inaccurate. They often serve more to shut down debate than to illuminate it.

 

Yet since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I have been struck by clear parallels between the arguments advanced by Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin, as well as similarities in the West’s responses to both dictators. During the Sudeten Crisis of 1938, Hitler repeatedly claimed that the Sudetenland was his final territorial demand in Europe. Shortly afterward, the Munich Agreement forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland. As is well known, Hitler did not stop there. Only a few months later, he occupied the remaining territories of what had been Czechoslovakia.

 

Numerous media outlets in Germany and abroad reported on my case, and I received a great deal of solidarity. As an entrepreneur who has become financially successful, I was also able to afford the approximately $7,000 required to hire an excellent lawyer. Many others cannot. Two months later, my case was dropped.

 

But even though that legal threat is in the past, the erosion of free speech continues to deeply concern me. I have increasingly come to the conclusion that the danger posed by allowing the state to decide what people may or may not say is far greater than any danger that could arise from the dissemination of even the most absurd opinions.

 

 

The Bankruptcy Option

By Nick Catoggio

Friday, July 24, 2026

 

Several times in the last 60 years, the United States fought a war in which it not only failed but came to realize long before the fighting ended that it was likely to fail—yet fought on anyway.

 

Vietnam is the most notorious example, Afghanistan (and to a lesser extent Iraq) the most recent. Those are the “forever wars” to which the president contemptuously alluded as a candidate in 2024 when he attacked Washington’s liberal foreign policy consensus. And so one of the few virtues of a second Trump administration, we might have surmised, would be that it wouldn’t get sucked into a conflict whose initial rationale has decayed into an elaborate sunk-cost fallacy.

 

His personal history almost guaranteed it. In his career as a developer, Donald Trump declared corporate bankruptcy no less than four times. When the going gets rough on an endeavor, the president is used to cutting his losses and leaving others to clean up the mess.

 

His aversion to using infantry also reduced the risk of a “quagmire,” to borrow a media cliche for military stalemates. Deploying thousands of ground troops in the “forever wars” I mentioned earlier gave the White House and Pentagon an argument for extending the fighting indefinitely: Our boys can crush this insurgency. All they need is more time.

 

But the president sticks to air power, which has the upside of minimizing American casualties and the downside of being a blunt-force object. Once an air campaign is reduced to bouncing the rubble, having failed to break the enemy’s will or ability to resist, the case for staying the course and continuing the bombardment collapses. One would think.

 

Put all of that together and you might have reasonably assumed back in February that there was no scenario in which the United States would end up fighting on in Iran aimlessly. Either the regime would quickly be brought to its knees or Trump, finding himself stymied, would bug out. He’d take the bankruptcy option and leave others to clean up the mess, as he threatened to do when the agony in the Strait of Hormuz first began to confound him.

 

You would have been wrong. Remarkably, in less than five months, we’ve arrived at a point that it took many years to reach in Vietnam and Afghanistan: Strategic defeat seems assured, yet the United States sees little choice but to keep going.

 

As I write this on Friday morning, all signs point to escalation. The Pentagon is surging soldiers and weapons to the Middle East in case the president opts for all-out war, replete with special operations forces this time. And despite warnings from his own intelligence deputies that more bombs won’t break the regime, Trump is rattling his saber. “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before,” he told Axios on Thursday, insisting that the Iranians “haven’t received enough pain yet.”

 

The president “believes that the only thing Iran understands is military force,” the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a senior administration official. Allegedly he’s now in “revenge mode” against the Iranians for spoiling his peace deal, “calling them scumbags and lunatics, and unleashing a series of expletives” in a recent Oval Office meeting.

 

But amid all the rage and bluster, he seems to grasp the futility of what he’s doing. Apparently the White House quietly reached out to Iran with a new ceasefire offer this week—and was rebuffed. The regime, or at least its most hardline factions, is now more eager to keep this fiasco going than the United States is.

 

Unless the U.S. naval blockade in the strait forces an unexpected capitulation, in record time the president will have ended up maneuvering himself into one of those unwinnable wars he despises. He got elected promising not to start any foolish conflicts that drag on for years before ending with America losing; what he meant, it turns out, is that on his watch we’d lose those foolish conflicts much more expeditiously.

 

And there’s no bankruptcy option for him this time.

 

‘A politically impossible situation.’

 

“What Trump should do is walk away,” Jonathan Last wrote a few days ago at The Bulwark. “Swallow the loss, regroup, ‘liberate’ Cuba, get into an online slap fight with the Spanish national team. Whatever. Take the L and all of the geostrategic consequences that come with it. Yet for some reason he doesn’t seem able to do that. Why?”

 

Last’s theory is that the president, consumed as he is with dominance, lacks the self-discipline to choose submission even when it’s in his interest to do so. Normally you can’t go wrong with theories about psychological problems when trying to explain Trump’s behavior, but I don’t know in this case: Wasn’t the terrible peace deal that he embraced last month tantamount to submitting to Iran in hopes of walking away?

 

The man was so plainly elated to have been given an apparent exit ramp from this conflict that he turned into a sort of military spokesman for the regime for a few days. He’s willing to abase himself publicly, it turns out, when the political pain of not doing so gets intense enough.

 

There’s no doubt that Trump would have walked away months ago if not for Iran’s gambit in the strait. All of the original grounds for war, from regime change to finishing off the country’s enrichment program to destroying its ballistic missile capabilities, faded in importance once the closure of Hormuz began to bite—to the point that the White House began treating reopening it as the start of an entirely separate conflict. Despite failing to achieve his initial objectives, Trump could have and would have called it a day and declared victory had he managed to restore the status quo in oil traffic. Once gas began climbing toward $5, he couldn’t.

 

If it were 2028 instead of 2026, I suspect he would have walked away from the war even with the strait closed. With his presidency winding down, the prospect of Republicans being annihilated at the polls due to the knock-on effects of soaring oil prices wouldn’t have bothered him. As long as he faced no consequences personally from having Iran in control of Hormuz, Trump would be content to leave someone else—his party and its new presidential nominee—holding the bag. That’s the whole point of declaring bankruptcy, no?

 

But it’s 2026. He will face personal consequences if the strait doesn’t open, starting with having to spend his last two years in office fending off corruption investigations by a new Democratic-controlled Congress. Whatever’s left of his economic legacy after 18 months of tariffs and inflation will also crumble: Unlike in 2028, when he could have pawned off a Hormuz-driven recession on his successor, that misery will land in his own lap. And he knows it.

 

It already has to some extent. A Politico poll published a few days ago found that Americans understand that Trump’s war is the reason gas has grown more expensive. Overall, 63 percent cited the conflict when asked why fuel prices are up, including 57 percent of self-described MAGA voters. The same survey found support for the war deteriorating within the GOP, with just 21 percent of non-MAGA Republicans now willing to say that they believe it’s worth paying more for gas to see it through.

 

That’s in line with new data from Fox News that finds Trump’s approval on Iran down to 37-63 among members of his own party who don’t identify as MAGA.

 

All of this is to say that the president would happily choose the bankruptcy option, I’m sure, if only the Iranians would offer it to him. By signing last month’s humiliating peace agreement, he showed that he’s willing to accept the public embarrassment of admitting that a project he championed has failed, as bankruptcy requires. But bankruptcy is supposed to release him from the financial obligations created by that project, which in this case would mean oil commerce returning to prewar levels in the strait before November’s midterms. And the Iranians simply refuse to do that.

 

When there’s no bankruptcy option available, all he can do is continue to plow money into the project and hope for the best. If his choice is between being ruined economically while looking weak and being ruined economically while looking somewhat tougher, why not keep bombing?

 

One person close to the White House framed the situation starkly for Politico. Trump and his team are “at a maximum level of frustration right now, and I was told by very senior people that the president is now fully aware that the only way to the victory that he wants is completely politically impossible,” the source said, alluding to a massive ground force. “The American people just will not support the kind of escalation it would take at this point. We’ve got more dead Americans and a politically impossible situation.”

 

“Politically impossible” is the right term. Especially for congressional Republicans.

 

To fund?

 

For Republicans in the House and Senate, the only silver lining to the war is that their predicament could be worse. They could be J.D. Vance.

 

My guess is that the vice president wanted to lead the White House’s diplomacy with Iran, believing that doing so would reassure dismayed postliberals that he was still a proud member of Team Peace. He plainly hoped to parlay the agreement the sides reached into something more lasting too, declaring excitedly last month that “the coolest thing about the progress we’ve made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system … say, ‘You know what? We may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust. But we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake. Let’s try something else.’”

 

He looks like a Grade-A schmuck today, particularly with the man whose endorsement he needs in 2028 reduced to cursing a blue streak in the Oval Office about Iranian “scumbags and lunatics.” Right-wing hawks have predictably turned Vance into a punching bag as the war has resumed, partly because they dare not blame the president himself and partly because they’re eager to wound the Tucker Carlson wing of the party before the battle over post-Trump Republican foreign policy heats up. There’s even evidence that the VP’s role in the peace process has begun to hurt him with GOP voters, with one recent New Hampshire poll showing Vance’s lead over Marco Rubio in a hypothetical primary way down since February.

 

“I just don’t think they’re serious about making a deal,” one prominent Trump official said yesterday of the Iranians. “These guys, the problem with them is you can’t make a deal with people unless they’re going to keep it, and these people make deals and then they break it almost immediately, or they decide, oh, let’s change the deal. That’s not how deals work.” Those comments felt like a thinly veiled rebuke of Vance’s naivete about the enemy. Guess which prominent Trump official made them.

 

Few Republicans will be as wounded by Trump’s war as J.D. Vance but all of them will be wounded. (Except maybe for the secretary of state, weirdly, even though he’s nominally in charge of foreign relations.) Republicans in Congress now face a “politically impossible” dilemma of their own: Do they vote to fund this spiraling fiasco or do they block funding in hopes that swing voters will reward them for trying to stop an unpopular war?

 

If they fund it they’re meekly submitting to the most audacious executive power grab of the Trump era, a presidential war of choice with momentous military and economic consequences that began without so much as a courtesy heads-up to Congress. That would be pitiful even by the standards of America’s pitiful postliberal Duma-fied legislature, especially given the shenanigans to which the White House has stooped to hide the costs—human and otherwise—of its project.

 

An administration that cares more about pretending that it’s fighting an entirely different war than it was in February than it does about properly honoring fallen U.S. troops doesn’t deserve to be rewarded with a financial lifeline.

 

Appropriating new money for the war could have unwelcome ramifications too. The Justice Department has argued in the past that Congress’ decision to fund a war that it never authorized initially amounts to de facto authorization of the conflict. On that view, voting to support operations now would mean that Republican lawmakers have taken ownership of the war not just politically, as will be the case in Democratic attack ads, but legally.

 

And of course there’s a prudential reason not to fund it, namely, that Trump is Trump. As much as he’d like to declare bankruptcy in this war and get out, there remains a chance that our “very stable genius” will do something not so stable or ingenious as the conflict spirals and further inflames his rage. Better to pull the plug on him sooner rather than later.

 

On the other hand.

 

Or not to fund?

 

Blocking funding would bring his wrath down on the heads of wayward congressional Republicans and risk alienating the right-wing voters without whom they stand no chance of winning in November.

 

It would also get them accused of strengthening the enemy’s leverage, with some justification. The U.S. election calendar has already given the Iranians an incentive to fight on, as they surely know that the war is unpopular here and that Trump will suffer in November if it persists. A bipartisan push in Congress to defund operations would boost that incentive: The clearer it becomes that America’s will for war is weakening, the more willing Iran should be to refuse a mediocre peace deal and hold out for more.

 

There’s a prudential reason for Congress to keep the money flowing as well. How would any lawmaker, Republican or Democrat, rationalize defunding the war as long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed? Trump’s solution—more bombs!—is dumb but there’s at least a hypothetical endgame in which Iran cries uncle and lets oil tanker traffic resume. Defunding the war would force him to walk away with the strait still bottled up, at which point the plan is—what? To tell oil companies to pay whatever ransom Iran is demanding from them, knowing what that will do to gas prices?

 

Besides, if you’re a House or Senate Republican, aren’t you going to own this war whether you fund it or not? How many people will walk into the booth on Election Day furious at Trump for what he’s done to the cost of living yet scrupulously conscientious about not faulting the local Republican congressman for the president’s policies without first inspecting his or her voting record?

 

In the same way that there’s little the president can feasibly do to stop the war if Iran insists on continuing it, there’s little that congressional Republicans can do to stop the war if Trump—at Iran’s behest—insists on continuing it. The bankruptcy option is no more realistic for Article I in this case than it is for Article II.

 

So my guess is that congressional Republicans will end up doing what they usually do, making guttural noises about independence and accountability before finding excuses to dutifully carry out the president’s wishes. Take Utah Sen. John Curtis, who boldly declared this week that “I think it’s clear that it is time for Congress to act” before quickly clarifying that that “doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily acting, constraining the president, but in fact defining what this looks like.” Curtis seems to want Congress to authorize the war, albeit possibly on terms narrower than Trump might like.

 

And what will happen if and when the president violates those terms, daring Curtis and the rest of his conference to do something about it? Nothing, of course.

 

Even more pathetic was the reliably pathetic Sen. Thom Tillis, who has nothing to lose by standing on principle against the president in light of his looming retirement yet who continues to find ways to make Trump happy. Tillis told reporters this week that he’s serious about the rule in the War Powers Act that (supposedly) limits presidents to waging unauthorized war for no more than 60 days. The senator intends to enforce that rule—on September 10, when the 60-day time limit on the “new” Iran war we’re allegedly fighting runs out.

 

Yes, really: Thom Tillis, whose career was ended by Trump, is abetting the White House’s preposterous claim that the 60-day rule hasn’t already been violated because we’re in an entirely separate conflict now. That’s how eager he is to avoid an uncomfortable floor vote despite the fact that he’ll never face a primary electorate again.

 

If you couldn’t understand before how America ended up stumbling into a crisis in which our options consist of (a) a gigantic ground invasion, (b) letting Iran hold the global oil supply hostage unto eternity, and (c) continued bombing to no obvious effect, you should be able to now. Federal leadership has been completely bankrupted by hubris, stupidity, cowardice, and partisanship. Americans elected that bankruptcy, and this time they won’t be let off the hook.

How Bad Policy Fuels Wildfires

By Jason Hayes

Saturday, July 25, 2026

 

People throughout the Midwest and many Eastern states were recently reacquainted with the consequences of poor forest management as smoke from Canadian wildfires filled the skies. Green activists leaped into action, claiming that climate change is driving North American wildfires to dangerous new levels and that we must forgo essential energy sources such as fossil fuels to stop the smoke. But the inevitable results of their policies — higher taxes and a crippled economy — won’t stop wildfires, and they certainly won’t change the climate.

 

That’s because a changing climate isn’t the source of these wildfires. For the most part, people and lightning are.

 

Whatever its source, fire plays a natural and important role in forest ecosystems. It reduces “fuel loading” by removing dead and diseased trees and plants, clearing out densely treed areas, creating new openings, and renewing plant communities that provide vital habitat and browse for wildlife.

 

But fire can also be destructive and dangerous, especially when it threatens human lives and infrastructure. We saw this recently when wildfire smoke caused Detroit to experience the “worst air quality in the world.”

 

Over the past several decades, forest management practices have created the perfect conditions for large fires and greater risks to human health and well-being. Regulations governing the use of public lands have created a one-two punch: preservationist policies that lock people out of the natural environment and Smokey Bear-style efforts to extinguish every fire immediately.

 

The move to keep people out of natural areas was based on the mistaken notion that humans are inherently destructive. It led to vast areas of public lands being closed off and designated “untrammeled” wilderness. Human activities, such as cutting trees or mining for critical minerals, were made taboo by moneyed and powerful environmental groups. Though public lands were originally set aside for multiple uses, these groups would only approve low-impact activities, such as hiking.

 

At the same time, we compounded the problem by adopting the strategy of immediately extinguishing every wildfire and building more homes and businesses in the “wildland urban interface.” By banning the wise use of public lands and forests while continuing to live in and around them, we have enabled the fuels that feed wildfires — dead and dying trees, shrubs, and grasses — to accumulate. Consequently, when a fire hits, the damage can be expensive. (For example, see California earlier this year.)

 

This year, as in 2023, warm, dry conditions mixed with tens of thousands of lightning strikes in Canadian forests to ignite the wildfires that choked our skies with smoke and ash. Natural Resources Canada (NRC) and the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System reported that, as of July 22, roughly 900 active fires were burning, while more than 3,900 fires had burned approximately 8.2 million acres so far this year. Firefighters have responded heroically and the situation remains serious. The NRC’s weekly report for July 15 predicted “continued fire growth” as “hot and dry weather and lightning” continue to pressure many provinces.

 

In comparison, the United States is experiencing a busy but not record-breaking season. As of mid-July, the National Interagency Coordination Center reported 72 large active fires, with more than 21,000 firefighters assigned to fight the over 41,000 wildfires that have burned more than 3.9 million acres so far this year.

 

The reports coming out of Canada are undeniably concerning. However, while media figures and activists argue that the wildfires prove the existence of an existential climate threat, it’s important to remember that fire seasons like this are not unprecedented. We have seen similar reports before. North America experienced much larger fires and more intense temperatures long before we became concerned about potential human influence on the climate.

 

The 1825 Miramichi Fire, for example, burned 3 million acres across New England. In October 1871,  the Peshtigo Fire, described as “the most devastating forest fire in American history” by the National Weather Service, burned 1.5 million acres across northeastern Wisconsin and killed over 1,200 people. On the “Dark Day” — May 19, 1780 — thick smoke from massive fires in the Canadian province of Ontario turned day into night across New England. Frightened Connecticut legislators at the time believed that the smoke “signified the Day of Judgment.”

 

Green activists will argue that solving the wildfire challenge requires abandoning essential energy sources such as gasoline and natural gas. But decades of on-the-ground experience tell a different story. The most effective methods of mitigating wildfire damage involve basic management techniques.

 

First, scale up fuel-reduction activities, especially near human communities and infrastructure, and focus on proactive management rather than reactive fire suppression.

 

Second, streamline permit approvals to encourage active forest management and allow activities such as harvesting, spacing, thinning, and the reintroduction of prescribed fire into forest ecosystems. This will allow these essential management activities to take place under controlled conditions, creating jobs and encouraging the use of renewable forest products.

 

Finally, ground forest management in silviculture, related forest sciences, and long-term fire regimes rather than green feelings and anti-human sentiment. Sticking to the green plans that discourage the use of forest products, lock people out of the natural environment, and prioritize the reduction of CO₂ — which, as we all learned in grade school science, is plant food — will address only the symptoms, not the underlying causes.

The Most Irresponsibly Stupid Column of the Year

By Jeffrey Blehar

Friday, July 24, 2026

 

The Women’s National  Basketball Association is once again in the  news, a bit like a recurring flare-up of gout: You have no idea where it comes from or why it strikes so randomly, but when it does, it’s the only thing you can talk about. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham — she of the magnificently memetic pointed finger — is apparently now on trial by underemployed left-wing controversialists and bored Bluesky types alike for her repeated public expressions of TERF-like bigotry and exclusion. At least I’m told that’s what they are; her comments read to me like common sense, politely phrased, but that’s why I let others do the thinking for me.

 

Then of course there is Cunningham’s superstar teammate Caitlin Clark. I’m willing to bet that if my readers know anything at all about the WNBA, it is either directly or indirectly related to her. She is widely believed to be one of the best players in the game and is beyond a doubt the league’s marquee attraction. When she went down with injuries last season, ticket sales for away games plummeted along with the league’s already meager ratings.

 

So I have never understood why sports columnists, as well as much of the league itself, seem to hate her. Perhaps it’s jealousy. But it sometimes results in true verbal atrocity, which brings us to what I will label — in July, mind you — the Most Irresponsibly Stupid Column of the Year. Come on down and collect your prize, Nancy Armour of USA Today!

 

Armour’s column is so stridently deranged that its title announces up-front that you’re taking a temporary trip to the moral funhouse: “It’s Time to Stop Pretending That Caitlin Clark’s Flops Are Harmless.” First off, for those prone to misusing the phrase “begging the question,” here is a perfect example of a title that does just that: it assumes that what we’ve seen are flops. I see a woman who has, quite frankly, been kicked around the court like a hackeysack by opposing teams for several years and is complaining to the refs about not getting foul calls, as players often will. How is that harmful?

 

Because in Armour’s moral world, the real threat here is not to Caitlin Clark’s right quadricep but rather to the dignity and safety of the black women who play against her. As Armour describes it, if Clark “flops” during a game . . . she’s apparently encouraging her white fans to take justice into their own hands and lynch the hated blacks. I’m not kidding about this, though I wish I were:

 

It shouldn’t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of “defending” white women. The irony of the WNBA’s All-Star Game is that it’s happening this weekend in Chicago, the hometown of Emmett Till, who became an icon of the civil rights movement after his tragic murder. The local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn’t been lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the broader implications of her actions being weaponized.

 

First off, marvel at that rhetorical stretch. Emmett Till was killed in Mississippi by Jim Crow racists in the Fifties, which is just like Caitlin Clark complaining after being fouled at next week’s All-Star Game . . . and it’s all connected because Chicago. (This one fact alone meant I had to write this. Somehow it’s always MAGA country’s fault.) Then step back further and gaze with disbelief upon the neo-Stalinist moral logic: because others might react badly to her public disapproval at being abused, she must remain silent (and take more abuse). It is howlingly, outrageously wrong — a complete inversion of all accepted principle.

 

Armour dashed off an apology yesterday morning for her “inartful comparison,” but she didn’t apologize for her moral logic. I don’t expect her to. I would like to know why the media participates in these deranged attacks against the league’s most popular player. I already know why the players dislike Clark: everybody understands the phenomenon of crabs in a bucket. But why on earth would the media join them in that? I could go into a lengthy disquisition here about the fundamental sociological differences between groups of women and groups of men, but that would probably get me dismissed from polite society altogether — and I’m barely allowed in here in the first place.