Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

June 23, 2026

COFFEE AND CLICHES: Lefty owner of anti-Israel NYC coffee shop calls US ally ‘Nazi Germany of our time’ in hateful online outburst.

The radical leftist owner of a woke Brooklyn coffee shop that boasts about discriminating against pro-Israel Jewish customers on social media has a history of deranged anti-Israel LinkedIn posts — including accusing the Jewish state of genocide and comparing it to Nazi Germany.

Parviz Mukhamadkulov, founder of Poetica Coffee in Park Slope, regularly engages in comment threads under posts about Israel or the horrors committed by Hamas, in which he justifies the terror group’s atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.

“Israel is the Nazi Germany of current time,” he wrote in response to a video posted by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Curiously though, Tucker Carlson is no fan of Israel, and neither is world’s biggest Totenkopf stan:

UPDATE:

Jim Treacher writes that “Poetica Coffee has now taken down their Facebook page and all their other social media:”

They’re getting clobbered on Yelp. Oh, and they’re being investigated by the Department of Justice. So that was a big Sunday for them.

I’m not a big fan of Dan Goldman, but it’s not because he’s a Jew who believes Jews have the right to exist. I’m with him on this one.

Fortunately for Poetica Coffee, the press — most of the press — will go easy on him because they’re left-wing antisemites.

Not at the Washington Free Beacon, though. They’re reporting that:

The coffee shop is owned by Parviz Mukhamadkulov [I hope I’m pronouncing that wrong], an immigrant from Uzbekistan who is a donor to far-left Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner…

On its website, Poetica incongruously touts its “radical hospitality” and proudly notes that guests are “sacred” and “the door is open to everyone…”

They also owe the state of New York almost $400,000 in unpaid sales tax. So that’s something. And I guess they’ve had a bunch of sanitation problems. Go figure.

Now, a lot of people on both sides of the aisle seem to agree with these bigots at this coffee shop. I’m not one of them. I hope you’re not either.

Exit quote: “Do you want Nazis? Because this is how you get Nazis.”

 

Posted at 2:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2026

CAPITALISM, THE UNKNOWN IDEAL:

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports:

Offer not valid for OnlyFans stars:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2026

IT’S A GOOD START: Andy Ngo: North Texas Antifa Terror Cell Members Sentenced to Combined 450 Years in Federal Prison.

The New Republic describes this as a mostly peaceful “noise demo” with a mere soupçon of violence:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2026

MAXIMUM KUBRICK-A-BRAC: Criterion to Release Stanley Kubrick Box Set with All 13 of His Films, Including ‘The Shining’ International Cut.

The Criterion Collection is about to give Stanley Kubrick fans everything they’ve asked for: All 13 of the director’s features in one box set.

As the company has done with the likes of Wes Anderson and Ingmar Bergman, Criterion’s “The Complete Kubrick” brings together all the director’s movies in 4K, with the set hitting shelves on October 20, 2026. Watch a teaser for the box set below.

The films are “Day of the Fight” (1951, in both original and RKO versions); “Flying Padre” (1952); “Fear and Desire” (1952); “The Seafarers” (1953); “Killer’s Kiss” (1955); “The Killing” (1956); “Paths of Glory” (1957); “Spartacus” (1960); “Lolita” (1962); “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1962); “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968); “A Clockwork Orange” (1971); “Barry Lyndon” (1975); “The Shining” (1980, in both theatrical and international versions); “Full Metal Jacket” (1987); and “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999).

Notably, the international cut of “The Shining” is rarely available on home video or widely seen in North America; it’s shorter than the theatrical version by about 20 minutes, removing several pieces of exposition to create an even more ambiguous (as if!) suffocating atmosphere of dread.

I have a number of these films in Blu-Ray or 4K already, so I’m not sure if I’m going for this, but I might have been enticed if Criterion had managed to find the original extended cut of 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Shining, before Kubrick shorted these films not long after their original versions had been shipped to theaters. The original ending of The Shining in particular would be fun to see:

After its premiere and a week into the general run (with a running time of 146 minutes), Kubrick cut a scene at the end that took place in a hospital. The scene shows Wendy in a bed talking with Mr. Ullman, who explains that Jack’s body could not be found; he then gives Danny a yellow tennis ball, presumably the same one that Jack was throwing around the hotel. This scene was subsequently physically cut out of prints by projectionists and sent back to the studio by order of Warner Bros., the film’s distributor. This cut the film’s running time to 144 minutes. Roger Ebert commented:

If Jack did indeed freeze to death in the labyrinth, of course his body was found – and sooner rather than later, since Dick Hallorann alerted the forest rangers to serious trouble at the hotel. If Jack’s body was not found, what happened to it? Was it never there? Was it absorbed into the past and does that explain Jack’s presence in that final photograph of a group of hotel party-goers in 1921? Did Jack’s violent pursuit of his wife and child exist entirely in Wendy’s imagination, or Danny’s, or theirs? … Kubrick was wise to remove that epilogue. It pulled one rug too many out from under the story. At some level, it is necessary for us to believe the three members of the Torrance family are actually residents in the hotel during that winter, whatever happens or whatever they think happens.[44]

The general consensus among those who saw the first few shows was that the film was better without it because keeping it would weaken the Overlook’s threat to the family and reintroduce Ullman, who had barely had a leading role in the story, into the conflict.[123] Co-writer Diane Johnson revealed that Kubrick had a certain “compassion” from the beginning for the fate of Wendy and Danny, and in that sense the hospital scene would give a sense of a return to normality. Johnson, on the other hand, was in favor of a more tragic outcome: she proposed the death of Danny Torrance. For Shelley Duvall, “Kubrick was wrong, because the scene explained some important things, such as the meaning of the yellow ball and the role that the hotel manager played in the intrigue.”[123] Kubrick decided that the film worked better without the scene.[124]

Still though, for somebody who wants an immersive deep dive into one of the 20th century’s greatest film directors, many wonders (and questions) await here.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2026

YOU WERE ONLY SUPPOSED TO BLOW THE BLOODY OARS OFF!! Michael Caine’s AI-Generated Voice to Narrate The Odyssey Audiobook Ahead of Christopher Nolan’s Movie.

The sprawling nature of Homer’s epic “Odyssey” poem makes it understandable why a Hollywood studio would shell out hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it to life on the screen. But in ElevenLabs‘ AI audiobook version, all it requires is four producers, several AI tools and a replica voice of Christopher Nolan stalwart Michael Caine.

The AI audio firm is using Caine’s voice to anchor a new, roughly 13-hour version of “The Odyssey” weeks before Nolan’s upcoming film hits theaters. Released on Tuesday through the company’s ElevenReader audiobook app, the new audiobook version was created entirely by AI tools, including voices on ElevenLabs’ voice library along with sounds and a score generated through the firm’s music generator. The firm hopes the AI audiobook serves as a complement to Nolan’s film, one that lets readers catch up on the source material ahead of Nolan’s epic.

“Our version of it is another retelling of it that we think is really strong — it does justice,” Dustin Blank, ElevenLabs’ head of partnerships, told Variety in a recent interview. “It has a cast of 20 characters, all from our voice library, and Michael Caine is a legend. He is a national treasure, and his voice means so much to so many people, and we thought that he, as the narrator, would be the perfect person to help tell this story for his part in it, and I think he does.”

Caine’s affiliation with ElevenLabs isn’t new, as the Oscar winner licensed his voice and likeness last year to the firm’s “Iconic Marketplace,” its collection of characters that companies can pay to use for commercial purposes. But this partnership expands the arrangement, one Blank said is rooted in “consent and compensation.” ElevenLabs pays creators every time their voices are used in ElevenReader, and in Caine’s case, he was specifically consulted about the project and approved the marketing materials, Blank said. (Whether he’s heard the final project, however, couldn’t be determined.)

I hope that ElevenLabs listened to the finished product very carefully; AI narrators have a habit of mispronouncing common words and abbreviations, betraying their synthetic nature.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2026

CHUCK TODD: People Only Think Obama Was Liberal Because He’s Black — He Governed More Closely To Bush Than Trump.

CHUCK TODD: Obama radicalized the far right; it was the same thing. The far right viewed Obama as some left-winger when Obama was basically a degree more liberal than Bill Clinton.

CHRIS CILLIZZA: Temperamentally a moderate, right? Probably liberal on policy, but temperamentally a moderate.

CHUCK TODD: What policy was he that liberal on, Chris?* It’s one of the biggest–

CHRIS CILLIZZA: It was because he was black.

CHUCK TODD: Thank you. The only reason people think he was liberal is because he’s black.

Like it’s this, he governed more closely to George W. Bush than Donald Trump.

* Almost 20 years later, and NBC News alumni still pretend to still be baffled by Obama’s worldview and politics: Tom Brokaw on the eve of the 2008 presidential election: “We don’t know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2026

June 22, 2026

UNEXPECTEDLY: CNN Ignores UK Migrant Crisis in Keir Starmer Resignation Coverage.

Over the last few days, American news networks have failed to make any mention of a massive report about the rampancy of migrant rape gangs in the UK. Now, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned under colossal political pressure surrounding the migrant crisis, Monday’s CNN News Central had only continued to avoid mention of the terrifying report and the other consequences of mass migration in the U.K.

During the morning’s CNN News Central, there was hourly coverage of Starmer’s resignation from the role of Prime Minister. Only once did they go into the reasons behind his resignation, with CNN correspondent Clare Sebastian saying this about the troubles facing the U.K.’s political leadership:

Why, you might ask, can the UK not hold on to prime ministers? Well, there’s a number of different reasons. But ten years ago this week, the UK voted to leave the European Union and the turmoil that has followed, the economic turmoil, the political turmoil, certainly has contributed to some of this. There’s other economic reasons as well. The big surge in inflation that we saw after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine has really hurt people here, and they are looking for radical change.

Sebastian was very vague about the conditions surrounding Starmer’s resignation, shifting the blame onto U.K.’s exit from the E.U., the Ukraine war, and COVID, things which occurred years ago. She avoided mention of the actual current disaster facing Starmer’s administration: the UK migration crisis.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party (and thus Labour Party) operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

Evergreen:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: OK fine… Let’s Argue About The Odyssey.

Perhaps you’ve heard that director Christopher Nolan has a new movie coming out in July based on Homer’s manly epic “The Odyssey.” Until a few months ago there was nearly universal excitement over this prospect. The anticipation was riding so high that when advance tickets went on sale, a furious arbitrage market sprang up, one in which lucky ticket holders were selling the best seats on the best days for many multiples of face value.

But all that changed almost overnight after anonymous trolls looking to farm social media engagement scanned the cast list on IMDB and found Lupita Nyong’o and Elliot Page’s names listed there without any indication of which characters they were playing. These same trolls then decided (without evidence, as the liberal media might say) that Page and Nyong’o must be playing Achilles and Helen of Troy, for no other reason than those were among the only high-profile Homeric characters not spoken for on the cast list.

And so, just as Helen of Troy’s face once launched a thousand ships, this unsubstantiated casting rumor launched a million online hot takes, most beginning with a word which, here in the social media era, has come to symbolize pure unadulterated bullshit…

“BREAKING”

In the waves of outrage that followed, hardly anyone stopped to wonder if A) the rumors were true or B) whether or not it matters who might be cast in two minor roles which have almost no part to play in the story.

Within hours of the first “BREAKING” post, Nolan’s new movie found itself labeled “woke” by much of the online right and a long list of additional outrages, most of them every bit as unsubstantiated as those first rumors about Page and Nyong’o sprang up like weeds in an unsupervised lawn. Online critics even seized on one line from a 2025 interview Nolan gave in which he spoke positively about a controversial feminist translation of Homer’s epic, and decided this must mean Nolan based his entire film on that translation. Once again, as with the casting rumors, this conclusion was reached without any real supporting evidence.

I’m tentatively waiting for the reviews to roll in before deciding to go see the film; in the meantime, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Question asked and answered:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

“I’M OUT:” Tucker Carlson says he’s done with the GOP.

“I’m out,” Carlson said on an episode of the “Can’t Be Censored” podcast that aired Thursday but gained traction online Monday.

  • “And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.”
  • “I would not support the Republican Party. There’s no chance I would support the Republican Party,” Carlson said, adding that the GOP has “betrayed” voters by prioritizing Israel’s national security over America’s.
  • “How could I or any American voter support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States. That puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens. It’s not possible to vote for people like that, and I’m not going to.”

Zoom in: Carlson says he’s been a fierce defender of the GOP for 35 years, but can no longer do so.

  • He says he also won’t support Democrats and is unsure how he’ll vote moving forward.

Is the German American Bund still a going concern?

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

CALIFORNIA DYING:

How Skid Row got to this point has been a long time in the making, with many guilty parties. In the 1970s, an unholy alliance of trade unions, business, activists and nearby nimby’s agreed on a ‘containment’ plan, that focused all homelessness, medical drug support and NGO activity to the area, with vagrants heavily discouraged from leaving that area.

At around the same time, then-Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, signed a bipartisan state bill that did for mental illness institutionalisation what that other notable leftie, Enoch Powell, did in Britain in the 1960s. It was scaled it back enormously and the area flooded with the former inmates of asylums.

Reagan was likely influenced by his alcoholic father and the belief that they should have been treated as patients, not prisoners. Cost cutting, too, played a part. Regardless, having so many unwell people “unhoused”, in the new nomenclature, went as badly as one can imagine with the benefit of hindsight — despite the fair weather.

Waves of further damaging factors followed. Crack, as cheap as it was addictive exploded in popularity in the 1980s. In the mid-noughties, hospitals were caught discharging patients onto the streets of Skid Row itself. And all the while, actual rooms to house these people in the area decreased.

Most recently, fentanyl has supercharged the drug problem and led to huge fatalities, often by contaminating other drugs and pulling more people into the hell now visible to the world through shocking videos on X. Having now seen the real thing, I can tell you that the footage of these fentanyl zombies doesn’t come close to capturing the awfulness it causes in people already near rock bottom.

Recent efforts by the Democrat super-majority in the city have been built around principles of housing first and harm reduction. It would be another cliché to tell you that I saw a blue haired woman, pride lanyard around her neck, an NGO worker looking over her total and utter policy victory. It reminded me of the line Tacitus gave to Calgacus attacking Rome: “They make a wasteland and they call it peace”. No one can say that this experiment has not been given a long trial time.

Just this weekend, a drug addict died on a Skid Row livestream. By some claims, that fatality will be one of 6 a day. The obvious truth is that these people need to be incarcerated in custom facilities that provide long-term rehabilitation and cold turkey programmes. And that crucially removes them from the mainstream population.

Exit quote:

Tweet concludes, “He went to report it, but was told it looked like it done by homeless, and the city doesn’t report petty thefts by homeless. (Crime is down!) Hope the Bass/Raman voters enjoy their free beer.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

RIP: Clive Davis dies at 94: Music executive titan responsible for careers of Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen passes away.

Clive Davis — who was responsible for the careers of many legendary musical acts including Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, and Carlos Santana – has died at 94.

The longtime music executive and founder of Arista Records and J Records passed away at his home in New York City on Monday.

Just last month, he was hospitalized in his home state for a upper respiratory infection and was discharged days later.

Davis was a titan of the music industry as he also helped shape the careers of Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Alicia Keys, Carrie Underwood, among many others.

Davis was president of CBS Records from 1967 to 1973, an era when the record label ran its infamous “But the Man Can’t Bust Our Music” ad in 1968:

The text read:

The Establishment’s against adventure. And the arousing experience that comes with listening to today’s music.

So what?

Let them slam doors. And keep it out of the concert halls. Nothing can stop great sound makers like Ives, Riley, Stockhausen, Varese or the Moog Synthesizer.

They’re ear stretching. And sometimes transfixing. And The Man can’t stop you from listening. Especially if you’re armed with these.

On Columbia and CBS Records

Considering how those at CBS News today have to pretend they’re still a bulwark against the establishment as they fight Bari Weiss’s efforts to produce content that’s remotely objective, surprisingly little has changed there in 60 years.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

RADICAL CHIC AND MAU-MAUING THE FLAK TOWER:

UPDATE: Bill Maher shuts down Rep. Ro Khanna as he fawns over Mamdani: ‘He pals around with terrorists!’

Alas, he’s not the first Democrat to do so.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

NEW AIR FORCE ONE UNVEILED: U.S. Air Force Officially Unveils VC-25B Bridge Aircraft.

While the U.S. Air Force has said the VC-25A type will remain in service for the foreseeable future to support Presidential Airlift Group and other VIP operations, these tributes likely indicate that the primary VC-25A will soon be 82-8000 – returning to service shortly after an overhaul and upgrade period – with 92-9000 moved to a backup role.

As we have known for some time, the aircraft wears a controversial new paint scheme. It is a modified version of the one chosen by President Trump for the VC-25B in his first term. This decision was reversed by the Biden administration in favor of an updated variant of the iconic light blue and white livery worn by the current VC-25As, then reversed again by the current Trump administration.

I like the red, white, and blue paint scheme, but I assume the first president with a (D) after his or her name will have it repainted in Raymond Loewy’s early ’60s paint scheme, which worked fine when Air Force One was a 707, but was stretched to silly proportions on a 747:

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

BRENDAN O’NEILL: Good riddance to Keir Starmer’s tyranny of greyness.

Everything Starmer did was about ‘lowering the temperature’ of the public. His rule laid bare the calculated authoritarianism of a ruling class that considers management of the masses to be the highest goal of public life. From his attack on trial by jury to his mad insistence on bringing in a new definition of ‘Islamophobia’ to his allergic reaction to the public fury over Henry Nowak, he was always driven by a patrician impulse to subdue the popular will. To neutralise political contestation itself in order that the mythical competence of his kind might enjoy free rein. All the civil unrest we’ve seen these past two years – some of it democratic, some of it violent and ugly – is best understood as a fuming reaction against the rule of the boring and its black dream of public disenfranchisement.

And now we have the prospect of prime minister Andy Burnham, the man who edged Starmer out of Downing St with his victory in the Makerfield by-election last week. The elites want Burnham to do what Starmer failed to: quell the ‘mayhem’ of Britain’s resurgent democratic spirit. Only where they thought Starmer’s dearth of charisma might achieve that, now they hope Burnham’s much-hyped charisma will. They’ve tried boring us into submission, now they’ll try Burnhaming us into submission. They’ve learned nothing. Ten years since Brexit and we’re still lumbered with an expert class that is breathtakingly dumb.

And dangerously malevolent:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

DOWN GOES STARMER! DOWN GOES STARMER! DOWN GOES STARMER! Starmer resigns as Prime Minister.

In an emotional resignation speech in Downing Street on Monday, Sir Keir said he would bow to pressure from Labour MPs with “good grace” and trigger a leadership contest.

An election would take place this summer, allowing a new prime minister to be installed by Sept 1, he said.

Addressing the media in front of No 10, Sir Keir listed his achievements in office and in opposition, saying he had “changed our party” by tackling anti-Semitism and “restoring trust in the economy, defence, and national security”.

But he added: “I know the question being asked now is not ‘who was best placed to change the Labour Party to take us into power and to begin the vital work of improving lives for millions of people?’ Those questions have been answered.
“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election.

“I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”

Meet the likely new boss, same as the old boss:

(Apologies to Howard Cosell for the headline.)

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: “The minute they think they have an opening, you’ll be demonized in the ugliest ways imaginable, your family and supporters will be harassed, and you’ll face a brutal primary against some unemployable twentysomething snotnose communist hand-picked by DSA casting and backed by millions in NGO money. This is your party now. So, why bother playing along anymore?”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2026

June 21, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY AND MALIGNANT NARCISSISM: Criminal Minds Star Paget Brewster Tells TV Journalist to ‘Work at a Shelter’ After Mixed Review, Sparking Outrage From Other Critics.

“Criminal Minds” star Paget Brewster lashed out at ScreenRant staffer Shealyn Scott over X on Saturday afternoon for her story lamenting the changes Paramount+ has brought to the long-running procedural drama.

“Hello critic Shealynn Scott,” Brewster wrote in the since-deleted post. “You’re young. You don’t know that bad pics and bad reviews can lead to 350 people losing their jobs. Sell vintage. Work at a shelter. Do something better than what you do now. Because right now you suck.”

Film and TV critics were quick to hit back in the replies. David Rooney, chief film critic at The Hollywood Reporter, wrote in his response to Brewster, “This is a very bad look. An actor on a long-running show attacking a young reviewer who contextualizes her respectful criticisms with obvious knowledge of the material — says way more about u being thin-skinned than it does about her professionalism. ‘Work at a shelter,’ really?!”

I know this is crazy talk, but isn’t the purpose of the critic to judge the product so that consumers can make a more informed decision about what to watch during their leisure time? Or to put it another way:

At The New Criterion, when we hear the name “Woody Allen,” we think first not of his movies but of an anecdote that Hilton Kramer, our founding editor, liked to tell.

Attending a dinner at the old Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street, Hilton was pleased to find himself seated next to an attractive and agreeable young woman. Woody Allen was also in attendance, but he was on the opposite side of the table facing a large window that looked out upon the street. Of course, the window also looked in upon the diners. Allen announced that he could not abide being seen by anonymous passersby and insisted that he change places with the young lady.

Settling into his new chair, he asked whether Hilton ever felt embarrassed when he met socially artists whom he had criticized in print. “No,” Hilton replied, “Why should I? They are the ones who made the bad art; I just described it.” Allen, Hilton recalled, lapsed into gloomy silence. It was only on his way home that Hilton remembered that he had written a highly critical piece on [1976’s] The Front, a PC movie about the Hollywood blacklist in which Allen acted.

That anecdote encapsulates something essential about Hilton’s practice as a critic: his focus was always on the work, not on the personality of the artist. It also encapsulates something essential about the querulous and brittle narcissism of the filmmaker.

—“Cancel culture comstockery,” the New Criterion, April 2020.

Posted at 6:23 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 21st, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE FLAK TOWER:

Nonsense! I can think of at least 36 Obama speeches which featured a line so memorable, even the lefties at “PolitiFact” dubbed it “The Lie of the Year” at the end of 2013:

Posted at 4:39 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 21st, 2026

NIXON’S THE ONE! NOW MORE THAN EVER: How The Kids Learned To Love Richard Nixon.

It’s especially clear why Gen Z would be excited about this prospect. They learned the standard “Nixon bad” narrative from teachers who themselves only knew this one-dimensional Nixon. But more generally, Gen Z has every reason to question the “truths” they’ve been fed. They came of age during COVID lockdowns and peak woke, and have now seen those movements and the people who pushed them collapse in disgrace. Their generation’s drive to question authority and push the bounds of acceptable thought has led them to embrace people like Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes, figures whose ideas threaten the foundation of our democracy.

But this has also led them to praise the aura of a self-made California Quaker who dedicated his life to public service and remained in the arena even after the people and country he fought for rejected him time and again.

Richard Nixon always seemed like something from a bygone age, always just a few steps behind where America was trending. But perhaps, like so much else about Nixon, we got it wrong. Maybe Nixon wasn’t a relic come too late, but a visionary come too early. Maybe his time is now.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 21st, 2026

FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT, CALL YOUR OFFICE!

If only there was a parable about broken windows written 175 years ago to describe the above tweet.

UPDATE: Downside Detected: “Sadly, a fall in gun violence has led to layoffs in the East Bay mortuary business.”

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 21st, 2026
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