Even with the unpredictability of evil actors in matters of war, a normalcy bias that developed after World War II has enveloped the minds of many policymakers involved with U.S. war-fighting strategy. American approaches to war for the last 70 years have been characterized by a normalcy bias that war conduct should be guided by the goal of reaching negotiated compromise outcomes rather than achieving victory and total defeat of the enemy.

Douglas MacArthur was relieved of duty as Commanding General of the U.S. Army Forces-Far East on April 11, 1951, almost a year into the Korean War. A week later, he gave his farewell address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, a speech that was coined as the "No Substitute for Victory in War" speech. MacArthur's full quote on the essential importance of victory in that speech was, "War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war, there is no substitute for victory."

The current war with Iran that started on February 28, 2026, has not been conducted by the MacArthur maxim. Rather, similar to previous conflicts, it has been carried out through cycles of intense strikes -- ceasefires and lengthy "peace" negotiations -- truce breakdown

From Wikimedia Commons: Capitol at Washington D.C. (Augustus Kollner, 1839)

The federal architecture of the United States has always carried a burden heavier than mere utility. From the earliest days of the republic, the design of public buildings served as a deliberate assertion of national identity, a visible claim to civilized continuity with the deepest sources of Western political wisdom. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson understood this with clarity rare among statesmen.

Washington and Jefferson conceived the capital on the Potomac as a New Rome, a city whose forms would declare that the American experiment rested upon the enduring achievements of antiquity rather than upon the transient enthusiasms of the moment. The classical vocabulary that they employed—porticoes, colonnades, pediments, and domes of measured proportion—was no ornamental affectation. It constituted a public language of civic virtue, republican restraint, and institutional permanence.

Pierre Charles L'Enfant's plan for Washington embodied the ambition of his employers in urban form. A regular grid was overlaid with broad diagonal avenues that recalled the processional ways of Rome and the axial compositions of the European baroque. Public buildings were placed upon

The platform and policies of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are presented as bold, modern solutions to the economic challenges facing Americans today. But in reality, their ideas are not new. Their central complaint—wealth inequality—has echoed through political movements for centuries. Their rallying cry for the "working man," their insistence that capitalism is inherently exploitative, and their promise that government redistribution will create fairness are all familiar themes in political history. The DSA frames its agenda as a moral correction to the greed of capitalism, but it is simply the latest iteration of a very old argument.

The DSA platform centers on expansive government control over economic life: free college, free healthcare, free housing, guaranteed income, elimination of private profit in essential industries, and heavy taxation of the wealthy to fund these programs. They argue that capitalism rewards greed, exploits workers, and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few. Their solution is political redistribution—taking from those who have succeeded and reallocating resources through government programs. It is a vision of society organized from the top down, guided by planners who claim to act on behalf of the working class.

But this narrative is not unique to the DSA. It

Jewish patients, physicians, health care staff and medical organizations are a target of a medical Jihad.  Christians are being targeted by this medical Jihad as well.

Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, there has been an alarming rise of Jew hatred in the field of health care. Medical professionals described this, in a briefing on Capitol Hill on December 17, 2024. Michelle Stravitz, CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, said that Jew-hatred and anti-Israel bias pervade medical schools and professional medical associations. Eveline Shekhman, the CEO of The American Jewish Medical Association, testified that:

Jewish healthcare professionals are … being abandoned by the unions and administrations meant to protect them, and their patients are paying the price.

One way that patients are paying the price is by becoming so afraid of medical practitioners that they hide their Jewish identity or put off medical care.

In one case, medical practitioners found it necessary to hide a patient's identity.  Bondi Beach terror attack victim Rosalia Shikhverg was treated in an Australian hospital.  She was struck in the head by shrapnel and began bleeding heavily before she was admitted to Liverpool Hospital under her real name, with her surname and Jewish

While Germany's debt spiral is accelerating ever faster, Argentine President Javier Milei is steering his country in the opposite direction. Germany's statists will soon be left looking foolish once it becomes obvious that the German model has failed.

Only contrast reveals one's own mistakes. Javier Milei is the antithesis of Germany's political class, and the comparison could hardly be starker. While Germany continues to expand the state, Argentina is slashing subsidies and radically reducing the size of its public bureaucracy. While Berlin piles up enormous amounts of public debt, Buenos Aires is posting a primary budget surplus. Friedrich Merz believes in the healing powers of state intervention, whereas Milei is deregulating markets and paving the way for an investment boom.

Argentina has achieved an economic turnaround while Germany continues its economic decay. Argentina's economy is growing steadily, private-sector employment is expanding, and the poverty rate is falling rapidly.

At a time when Germany is doubling down on debt, the arms industry, and green state planning, Milei appears like a comet defying both political gravity and conventional doctrines of government.

The Argentine president's latest initiative is the so-called "Grillete Fiscal" -- literally, the "Fiscal Shackles."

Behind the martial name lies what amounts to a fiscal

I have long wondered if those who lived in pre-Revolutionary America knew somehow that they were living in capital-R Revolutionary times.  What were they feeling in 1765, 1770, 1775?  Did they know somehow, on some level, that a can't-turn-back tipping point was near?  The troubles were certainly ongoing.  It's not like they just woke up one day and wrote the Declaration to piss off King George.  It had been building for quite a while, in very real and very lethal ways.

Are we in those times right now?  And would we even know it if we were?  Heaven knows our troubles have been brewing for a while.  It's almost daily that we are greeted with confirmation of corruption we pieced together years ago, but are only now getting official paperwork on.  It's as if the machinery of power is belching it out, too full for the table.

I thought it might be instructive to review just some of the treachery we've endured that's gone unanswered.  Mind you, this is just a partial list but it certainly reads like a "pre-Revolutionary" list to me.

2011:  We learned about the ATF "gun walking" scandal Fast and Furious, when Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder

If the Trojan War were being fought today, the Greeks would not need to hide inside of a big, wooden horse and hope to be dragged inside Troy's city gates.  They'd simply disseminate all kinds of lies on social media and wait for the Trojan people to fight each other.  Such is the power of corrosive ideas: They can destroy a civilization before its defenders understand that they are under attack.

Information warfare is the name of the game today.  It exists all around us.  Soundbites attack us from every phone, computer, tablet, and television screen.  Succinct messages ripple through social media platforms until people from opposite sides of the world repeat the same words without knowing why.  

The most powerful bits of information are the ones that sound unquestionably true.  "Believe all women."  "Black lives matter."  "Build back better."  Their simplicity assists their deception.  We certainly shouldn't distrust women, right?  Who wants to argue that black lives mean nothing?  Surely nobody wishes to build something worse than it was before.  People hear the soundbites, nod their heads, and repeat those words to their friends and neighbors.  Some place signs in their yards with those three-word messages, as if they were brilliant expositions of fundamental truths.

Successful information warfare propagates ideas without triggering in those who

From Wikimedia Commons: Grand session at the Jacobin Club (unknown artist, 1792)

In both the lecture halls and quads of America's elite universities, a disturbing paradox unfolds. The youngest generations of students, beneficiaries of unprecedented material prosperity and intellectual liberty, actively suppress or deny the grim ledger of socialism as it was brutally implemented across the twentieth century. This phenomenon is due partly to ignorance and partly to a cultivated historical amnesia—one that imperils the very freedoms that the West still possesses, however precariously.

Forced collectivism, in all its variants, has consistently delivered the opposite of utopia: the systematic annihilation of individual dignity, including the suppression of speech, the abolition of private property, engineered famines, gulags, and mass graves. From the Soviet Union to Maoist China, Cambodia's Killing Fields to North Korea's prison colonies, the human cost has been staggering—balanced estimates of excess mortality ranging from 55 to over 80 million people. By comparison, in his book Death by Government (1994), political scientist and statistician Rudolph Joseph Rummel estimates that communist regimes killed around 148 (high-end) million people during the period 1917–1987, with French historian Stéphane Courtois, editor

The modern Democrat party has built its political power on promising government solutions to problems that its own policies often perpetuate. Whether the subject is foreign aid, hunger, unemployment, failing cities, or dependence on public assistance, Democrat politicians rarely ask what caused the problem or whether decades of government intervention have actually made it worse.

Instead, they use suffering to demand more spending, more programs, and more centralized control. The result is a self-perpetuating system in which government failure becomes the justification for still more government.

Many potential 2028 Democrat presidential candidates spoke at the National Urban League's 2026 conference in Nashville. Among Kamala Harris's sound bites was her claim that more than 600,000 people around the world had died because of President Trump's USAID budget cuts.

Her estimate is extremely difficult to prove, as is often the case with political rhetoric. It is conjecture, a guess, or even a lie, crafted for

(Note: This essay is not a call for armed resistance. Instead, it examines historical situations that justify such resistance, as well as the non-violent values and actions conservatives can immediately use to prevent the need for armed resistance from arising.)

Throughout history, free societies have wrestled with an uncomfortable question: Is there ever a time when citizens have a moral duty to resist their own government? The question matters because America is not immune from decline. We are retreating, overtaken by what increasingly resembles a cult, one built around the destructive moral impulses Gad Saad describes in Suicidal Empathy.

Not only are the barbarians and lunatics at the gate; many now seemingly seek their "leadership."

Rigor, reason, and resolve can only take us so far. There comes a moment when simply talking about our problems isn't enough, and our best thinking virtues can no longer ensure our survival. As a society, we preach one thing and practice another when it comes to applying force to defend essential virtues.

Resistance should not be defined as dissatisfaction with elections, taxes, policies, or political opponents. A free society depends upon vigorous disagreement, constitutional processes, and the peaceful transfer of political power. Neither is resistance the