Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

June 28, 2026

MONTY PYTHON AND THE MEANING OF SUDDEN RUSSIAN DEATH SYNDROME:

Posted at 10:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 28th, 2026

WE’VE LEARNED THIS MONTH THAT MUCH OF AMERICA IS PRETTY GREAT ALREADY:

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 28th, 2026

TOMMORROW’S GOP CAMPAIGN COMMERCIALS TODAY: TX Dems Drop a Campaign Banger: ‘We’re All Trans, Gay, Vegan … and Going to Hell for James Talarico.’ “Benjamin Flores is running for Land Commissioner in Texas. He was asked to speak at a rally for James Talarico and he obliged. Things got really, really weird:”

Posted at 9:30 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 28th, 2026

STEPHEN KRUISER: Sane People Aren’t Triggered by Elon Musk’s Wealth.

Their hatred isn’t distributed evenly among the super-rich, of course. No one in the Democratic Party is upset with George Soros, for example. We don’t hear many complaints about Bill Gates from them either. It’s more than Musk’s money that sends them spiraling though. They’re harboring a lot of resentment because Musk broke the stranglehold they had on the social media false narrative machine when he purchased Twitter. His work with DOGE at the beginning of President Trump’s current term was a direct attack on their god: the federal government.

And thus:

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 28th, 2026

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 28th, 2026

June 27, 2026

‘PEOPLE ARE GONNA DIE:’ Lefties Bewail the End of Protected Status for Haitians, Syrians.

When a Supreme Court ruling causes the mainstream media and Democrat politicians to dissolve into tears of fury, you know the decision was much more in favor of We the People and the Constitution than of woke judicial activism. And with two major immigration decisions going for the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, lefty media stooges are, of course, roaring like a Shakespearean tempest.

To clarify a few facts first, the majority opinion in Mullin v. Doe (which is causing particular fury) was in favor of acknowledging that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) should be just that — temporary. The Supreme Court also rejected the claim that the Trump administration was targeting certain racial groups or that hundreds of thousands of Haitians should receive TPS 16 years after the earthquake that triggered the designation. Syrians, likewise, face a concerning but different situation back home now than they did in 2012 when their TPS started. None of those facts is influencing the MSM and Democrat meltdown.

Naturally, Democrat politicians rushed to bewail this SCOTUS win for American workers and American taxpayers.

That’s nonsense. Why would Haitians want to leave their island paradise to come to America? I’m told it’s a beautiful country, and great already!

UPDATE: Between the “Haiti is Great Already” T-shirts above and the left’s hatred of America, America’s Newspaper of Record neatly sums up the left’s current triangulation on its immigrants:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2026

EUROPE IS PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1939 AGAIN: Our holiday landlord realized we were Jewish. What happened next was deeply troubling.

Many people imagine antisemitism only in its crudest forms: swastikas daubed on walls, abuse shouted in the street, threats and violence. Those forms are far too prevalent, and they are rightly and routinely condemned. But the prejudice we face today as Jews often presents itself in more subtle ways. It arrives wrapped in the language of human rights and social justice. It insists that it has nothing against Jews as such. It simply posits that all Jews must be regarded as suspect until they have proven their purity.

This is very familiar to us.

In medieval Europe, Jews were forced to prove their religious purity through conversion, baptism or public renunciation of their faith. The Nazis demanded a certain racial purity. Under oppressive regimes of various kinds, Jews had to demonstrate their political purity – that they were not either capitalist conspirators or communist subversives. In every case the perpetrators believed they were standing on some noble principle or cause.

That is why the lesson from this episode extends far beyond one holiday rental in France. It is a reminder that antisemitism, and indeed prejudice of any kind rarely announces itself as prejudice. It almost always arrives convinced of its own virtue. That can make it harder for people to see it in themselves.

But a society has crossed a dangerous line when a Jew cannot simply be a customer, a neighbour, a colleague, a student or a holidaymaker. The moment a Jew is first required to explain, justify or distance themself before being accepted, equality has already been abandoned. And when that happens, those who claim to oppose prejudice should have the courage to recognise it for what it is.

I’m pretty sure Gregory Peck didn’t make Gentleman’s Agreement as a how-to guide for managing hotels and Vrbos:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2026

JEFFREY BLEHAR: Darializa Chevalier and the Left’s Tea Party Moment.

For the professional cynic in me is positively inspired by the obscene absurdity of last night’s upset Democratic primary winner in New York’s 13th congressional district: the Mamdani-endorsed and spectacularly three-named Darializa Avila Chevalier. She is a career activist, police/prison abolitionist, open-borders fanatic, Hamas booster, and America-loathing communist. And that’s just the start.

Readers probably already know that Chevalier is a Democratic Socialist, without knowing what specifically that means beyond “wild-eyed, radical leftist.” So I cannot wait for every Democrat in the 120th Congress next year to be asked to answer for Chevalier’s many, many, many outrageous and outright bigoted statements over the years. (Credit where due: Many of these were unearthed back in late May/early June by the New York Post as well as inveterate archive-hound Andrew Kaczynski over at CNN.) It turns out that dear Darializa is not just your everyday “working-class Afro-Latina” — she’s a rabid true believer. A few select quotes and thoughts:

  • “F*** you. We’re gonna defund and abolish [the police]. You don’t get to water down our movements.”
  • “No. It means ending policing full stop. Period. No. more. police. at. all. ever. it’s very harmful to the work Black abolitionists have been doing for decades to dilute this movement.”
  • “A world without borders — just like a world without prisons or police — is possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward.”
  • “Abolish the border.”
  • “All deportation is wrong.”
  • “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my face on the American flag behind me.”

Elsewhere she casually accused both black and Arab men of being race traitors for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.” Some people deny Israel’s right to exist, but when asked in August of 2020 how she would react if Israel ceased to exist, Chevalier outwitted her social media opponent: “Trick question — Israel doesn’t exist!” During that same period, she accused Joe Biden of being both a “rapist” and a “war criminal” (and you thought National Review was hard on him).

All of which was known before the primary, and as is their wont, was deemed news that was unfit to print by the Gray Lady:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2026

IN THE MAIL: The Book of Mindset by Chris Harris.

Harris discusses the book with Dan Lappin on his Breaking Sales podcast:

 

Posted at 11:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2026

RECENT EVENTS HAVE MADE ME DOUBT THE ENTIRE WATERGATE STORY:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2026

IT’S BEEN A NICE PREAMBLE FOR AMERICA’S 250th ANNIVERSARY: World Cup Tourists See What Too Many Americans Have Forgotten.

Americans are routinely told that our nation is hopelessly divided, irredeemably flawed and perhaps even in terminal decline. Public polling reflects this pervasive frustration, pessimism and anomie. If someone halfway around the world only followed the polls, he might be forgiven for believing our republic is all but over.

But something remarkable is happening during the 2026 World Cup, which is jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. Fans from all across the world have arrived in America — and they are absolutely loving it. We too often take our way of life for granted, but many soccer tourists now here cannot stop marveling at what they see.

The unlikely symbol of this phenomenon is “Freddy,” a young German soccer fan who has become an internet sensation while documenting his first road trip across the United States. Freddy’s viral social media posts have attracted tens of millions of impressions because they reflect something both rare and refreshing: genuine, boy-like wonder. As he has crisscrossed the American South, Freddy has gushed at everything from Waffle House and Taco Bell to Buc-ee’s, Bass Pro Shops, sprawling football stadiums and the impressive size of regular, middle-class American homes. Americans, accustomed to taking all these things for granted, have watched with glee as a slack-jawed foreign visitor experiences it all for the first time.

But Freddy the German is hardly alone.

It’s been a fun month, hasn’t it?

Posted at 8:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2026

ROD DREHER: The Fascist Film That Plays As Prophecy.

Before I go further, I want you to understand clearly: I am not endorsing this film’s message, any more than Prof. Betz is endorsing civil war. Rather, I am telling you that “Citizen Vigilante,” written and directed by the German filmmaker Uwe Boll, is a sign of the times. Maybe the most potent sign yet. A move by the German authorities to ban it will only make it more popular — and will also reveal the extent of the judgment they have brought on themselves. (I expect other European governments will follow suit on the ban attempt, and that they will fail as well.)

I have been accused by well-meaning people — people who understand the problem — of somehow encouraging civil unrest by talking about it. They’re wrong. In fact, the outright refusal of those in power to talk about it, and to suppress and punish people who are trying, however crudely, to face the truth, makes propaganda works like this inevitable. And it also makes the fascist fantasy of the film likely to come true.

In fact, let me make this clear: “Citizen Vigilante” is a fascist film, in the sense that it valorizes lawless violence in service of restoring social order and an ideal of justice. It shows exactly why an exasperated people turn to fascism as a solution to a problem liberal democratic governments have proven unwilling or unable to solve.

If you don’t understand that, you will not understand the malign power of this film. Nor will you get why it will become an underground smash, no matter what the authorities do. “Citizen Vigilante” is also a fulfillment of Ross Douthat’s famous prophecy from about twenty years ago, that went something like this: “If you don’t like the Religious Right, just wait till you see the Post-Religious Right.”

Let’s begin.

Read the whole thing.

Roger Ebert used the F-word to describe Charles Bronson and Michael Winner’s first Death Wish movie:

The critic didn’t really care for Michael Winner’s 1974 revenge thriller, Death Wish, from a narrative perspective, at least. Starring Charles Bronson in all of his granite-faced glory as a vengeful family man exacting retribution on the people who tore his family apart, it came under heavy fire for celebrating vigilantism.

Ebert awarded the film a surprising three stars out of four, prefaced with the warning that it was a “quasi-fascist advertisement for urban vigilantes, done up in a slick and exciting action movie.” He appreciated the filmmaking and Bronson’s performance, though, despite labelling it as “propaganda for private gun ownership and a call to vigilante justice.”

Pauline Kael similarly dropped an F-bomb on Clint Eastwood’s first outing as Dirty Harry:

There is one virtuoso plot development: the maniac arranges to get him self beaten to a garish pulp, so that he can scream police brutality and pin the blame on Callahan. The San Francisco police, with their unenviable record of free-style use of the billy, should contribute to a memorial plaque for “Dirty Harry.”

On the way out, a pink-cheeked little girl was saying “That was a good picture” to her father. Of course; the dragon had been slain. “Dirty Harry” is obviously just a genre movie, but this action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced. If crime were caused by super-evil dragons, there would be no Miranda, no Escobedo; we could all be licensed to kill, like Dirty Harry. But since crime is caused by deprivation, misery, psychopathology, and social injustice, “Dirty Harry” is a deeply immoral movie.

San Francisco was just beginning its slow descent into Detroit by the Bay in 1972; New York was an urban hellscape throughout the 1970s and ’80s. That changed when Rudy Giuliani and Bill Bratton’s broken windows policing proved that it was possible to rescue a city from its descent into Hell. But like Ebert and Kael before them, the EU grandees who are raging over Elon Musk making Citizen Vigilante temporarily viewable in Europe don’t believe that everyday citizens deserve to walk the streets in safety, and are furious at anyone who spotlights the disasters they’ve created.

As Glenn has written, “the police aren’t there to protect society from criminals. They’re there to protect criminals from society.” But only when they’re allowed to do their jobs. When they aren’t, and enough people notice, Hollywood responds with Dirty Harry, Death Wish, and now Citizen Vigilante. 

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Since Ed is quoting me above, there’s also this:, “You don’t get Hitler because of Hitler — there are always potential Hitlers hanging around. You get Hitler because of Weimar, and you get Weimar because the people in charge of maintaining liberal democracy are too weak and corrupt to do the job.”

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2026

June 26, 2026

ROGER SIMON: Carville Speaks Up. Where Are Others?

James Carville lived up to his ‘Ragin’ Cajun’ nickname this week by taking on the newly elected Neo-Maoists (no, that’s not an exaggeration, at least not much of one) in his own party, who won legislative victories Tuesday.

Newser recounts the uproar in “I Want No Part of This Democratic Party”:

“Longtime figure on the right Tucker Carlson no longer wants to be part of the Republican party because of how it’s changing. Now longtime figure on the left James Carville no longer wants to be part of the Democratic party for the same reason. On the podcast Politicon, Carville said it’s time to openly consider splitting the party after three progressive candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, won House primaries in solidly blue districts on Tuesday, reports Mediaite.

“Lady, I ain’t in the same party as you,” Carville said of union organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, referencing her past comments that white people should not be in interracial relationships. “I’m sorry. I’m just not. And I actually do think it’s time for Democrats to talk the ‘s’ word: schism. I really do. Everybody’s always said, ‘No, no. We’re a coalition. We’re a big tent. And there’s just some s— I can’t be in the same tent with.” Avila Chevalier unseated Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s primary, while state Rep. Claire Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and former New York City comptroller Brad Lander easily beat Rep. Dan Goldman.”

The question of Zionism and Jews, of course, came up as it does ad nauseam, and Carville, though no fan of Netanyahu to put it mildly, was disgusted (his word) that these new so-called Democratic Socialists were more adamant about the complete destruction of Israel than they were about any domestic issue. “Free Palestine” was the main chant at Chavalier’s victory party.

Some exceptions do apply of course, particularly when Carville spots a candidate with the Reich Stuff:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 26th, 2026

OUT ON A LIMB: Self-proclaimed conspiracy theorist JD Vance has wild take on the ‘Deep State’s hand’ in Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

The vice president spoke at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California earlier this week as part of his media blitz for his latest memoir.

‘As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,’ Vance said when asked about the scandal.

‘The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.’

* * * * * * * * *

‘If you look at the story of how the ‘deep state’ took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration,’ Vance told the crowd.

‘There is a parallel.’

Vance, 41, also went on to compare himself to Nixon, who likewise became vice president in his early forties after serving as a senator from California.

‘Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media,’ Vance mused.

‘It kind of sounds like JD Vance. … I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.’

Well okay, but that’s not going to win Vance approval from the leftists at the New York Times and the Chicago Sun-Times (at least not until leaving office).

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 26th, 2026

WHAT IS A WOMAN?

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 26th, 2026

CHARLES COOKE: Thatcher and the Conservative Party, Fifty Years Later.

Margaret Thatcher was not perfect. She could be overly combative with her allies, which can hurt in a parliamentary system. On free speech, the right to bear arms, and due process, she was a throwback to the Victorian era rather than to the classical liberal epoch that informed most of her other views. And she probably stayed in office too long. However, imperfection is inherent in the nature of Great figures, and Mrs. Thatcher was undoubtedly one.

For reasons that I have never quite understood, the smart set within our illustrious cache of academic historians are allergic to the idea that history’s turning points can be attributed to the personal virtues or resolve of individuals who stepped up at the right moment. I dissent from this view. It is, of course, true that history is about more than birth certificates and obituaries, but even a cursory glance at the last three hundred years suggests that amorphous forces cannot account for all its jukes and contours. A world without George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan is a world that, in my estimation, would look profoundly different—even if one assumes that all the same societal desires and impulses remain. So, it is with Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher had the audacity to take over the British Conservative Party—thereby hijacking a vehicle that, before and after, was characterized by squishy “One Nation” capitulation and steering it toward the eternal maxims of Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises. She dared to take action that temporarily damaged the economy in the interest of a longer-term fix—thereby risking her re-election and, with it, the entire project. She refused to relinquish the Falkland Islands to a hostile foreign power simply because the bien pensant class thought she should—thereby creating a hostage to fortune that, had it gone wrong, would have put her approval rating into single digits. And, above all, she understood that political rights are ultimately won by argument, not by force.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 26th, 2026

FOR SIXTY YEARS, LEFTIES HAVE BEEN TRYING TO MAKE SOCCER POPULAR IN AMERICA. AND NOW? Democrats grapple uncomfortably with World Cup success.

The triumph of the World Cup’s first two weeks — boosting the U.S.’s global reputation with sold-out stadiums and few logistical complications — has forced Democrats who had criticized President Donald Trump’s role in preparations to grudgingly reconsider.

“I think that there was a little bit of like liberal wishcasting that this would maybe be a disaster to sort of stick it to Trump,” said Rob Flaherty, the digital Democratic strategist and soccer fan who attended the U.S. group-stage match with Australia. “It hasn’t yet been.”

Before the tournament, attitudes about the World Cup were polarizing, like so much else, along partisan lines, with Democrats confronting FIFA and the Trump administration over high ticket prices, shortfalls in public funding, and the government’s posture to foreign visitors. As the tournament approached, local officials in areas hosting matches, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, turned from critics to cheerleaders.

Now a prominent congressional Democrat is going even farther: praising the U.S.’s handling of tournament logistics — if not giving the Trump administration explicit credit by name.

This week, Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Philadelphia Democrat active in foreign-policy issues, called it a “remarkable success” and vowed to “do everything I can to get the World Cup back here as soon as possible” in an X post.

In an interview with POLITICO Thursday, Boyle said, “this has been a great moment, actually devoid of politics, and I think it would be best to keep politics out of it.”

It’s been largely devoid of the left’s politics. As a result: The World Is Re-Discovering America During the World Cup — and Loving It.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 26th, 2026

June 25, 2026

MARK FELTON: The Reichstag Red Flag — How the Soviets Faked An Iconic WW2 Image.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 25th, 2026

MONICA SHOWALTER: Democrats board the crazy train in New York Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

Complete amnesia about the horrible history of socialism and all its failed promises.

Democrats did nothing to combat that, and indeed went along with any nutty idea the far left put in front of them — defund the police, tax the rich, surveil and censor the conservatives.

Because they did nothing, they opened the door to the crazies coming in, and now the floodgate is opened. The addition of mass migration from hostile socialist and Islamist hellholes, rife with failed ideas from their homelands made it even worse, introducing antisemitism not seen since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

They did nothing to stop that, too. Now they are paying the piper. But what’s bad is that we all may pay the piper if heaven forbid, they take national power. It’s already obvious these bad trends which came from Obama’s and Pelosi’s tight little jurassic club are spreading — Democrats are raring to elect freaks in Maine and Michigan, and no amount of bad revelations about their pasts will stop these voters. Democrats are reaping what they’ve sown.

And as a result, John Podhoretz writes, “We’re in a Waking Nightmare:” “Imagine if I had said to you, on the morning of October 8, 2023, that in 32 months’ time, a Muslim anti-Zionist would be elected mayor of a city with 900,000 Jews who comprise 11 percent of that city’s population and would lead insurgent Democrats to victories over establishment incumbent Democrats in two of the city’s congressional districts fueled largely if not solely by their embrace of anti-Zionism and the idea that Jewish self-defense in the land of Israel constitutes a ‘genocide.’ I think you would have thought I was insane. But here we are. The Muslim anti-Zionist mayor of America’s most Jewish city sponsored three candidates for Congress, two in primary races against sitting left-wing incumbents, and pretty much secured for them the Democratic Party nominations in their districts.”

 

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 25th, 2026

STILL WAITING FOR BARI WEISS TO GUIDE CBS NEWS TO THE CENTER:

 

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 25th, 2026
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