September 16, 2026

MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE KENNETH CLARK ALL OVER AGAIN:

Classical reference in headline:

 

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

ALL THE SOROS DISTRICT ATTORNEYS MUST GO:

Posted at 8:20 am by Stephen Green

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: The Lie About Islam, Europe, and the Dangers We Face.

On the cover of its latest edition, The Economist promises to uncover “the truth and the lies” about “Islam in Europe.” The story it presents is, for the magazine’s readership, a reassuring one: a crisis of two extreme fringes fighting across a sensible middle. But this is a false framing that betrays the complexity of Islam in Europe it promises to untangle, just when honest understanding is urgently needed. Allow me to explain why.

The editors offer a soothing symmetry: on one side, a small minority of Islamist extremists; on the other, a small minority of far-right extremists. “Islam poses no serious danger,” declares the accompanying editorial. “But Islamism and the fear of Islam do.” Both are dangerous. Both must be resisted. In this formulation, the vast majority of Muslims and the vast majority of native Europeans are peaceable people caught between two fringes. The task of the responsible commentator is to condemn both fringes with equal force, while warning against the temptation to blame whole communities for the actions of its extremists. This is presented as the fair, balanced, and non-paranoid position, making The Economist the sober grown-up in the room who refuses to be drawn into the ugliness of either side.

Unfortunately, that symmetry does not reflect reality, and by insisting on it, The Economist puts its elite readers in a box and discourages them from looking beyond it. Consider what would have to be true for the symmetry to hold. There would have to be, on the European far right, a creedal architecture of comparable depth to Islamic scripture and tradition: a body of texts venerated by a fourth of humanity, taught in seminaries across dozens of countries, printed in hundreds of millions of copies, and read by every serious adherent of the faith as an authoritative source of guidance. There is not. The European far right has no scripture. It has memes, manifestos, a handful of self-published tracts, and a scattering of ideologues who cite one another. It has no holy book or equivalent of the Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim hadiths. It has no equivalent of the four Sunni legal schools. It has no equivalent of a 1,400-year-old exegetical tradition.

There would have to be a recruitment base of comparable size. On the Islamist side, the recruiting field is the young men of a global community of about two billion people, of whom the middle classes alone number in the hundreds of millions, all of them potentially reachable through mosques, Quran schools, satellite channels, and university Islamic societies that exist in every European city. On the far-right side, the recruiting field is a scattering of subcultures made up of football-hooligan networks, online gaming communities, and obscure political parties that have never, in any European country, produced a mass following since the 1930s. They are aggressively policed by every European state, security service, employer, and mainstream media outlet. The two recruiting fields are not remotely comparable.

Found via Rod Dreher, who tweets, “This is one of the most important essays I’ve read all year: @Ayaan ripping into The Economist for its lies about European Islam and the so-called ‘far right.'”

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

MIDDLE EAST: Houthis enter US ‘kill box’ after seizing Red Sea ‘cork,’ former Pentagon official warns.

The island’s capture came after a month-long offensive along Yemen’s western coast that killed more than 1,500 soldiers and forced Yemen’s government to acknowledge a “painful” defeat, according to The Associated Press.

“With Perim, they have gained what we could call the cork in the Red Sea bottle,” Morgan Murphy, a former Pentagon press secretary and Navy Reserve captain, told Fox News Digital.

“But they’ve put themselves into a kill box. They’re nowhere near the capability of the United States and if the president so chooses, he can wipe them off the face of that rock pretty easily,” Murphy warned.

And the Saudi Air Force could have gotten the job done over the weekend, but has been largely MIA against a force choking off Saudi energy exports.

Very curious.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green

JUSTICE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

IRAN HITS BRIC WALL: That’s “BRIC” as in the alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which met earlier this week in New Delhi (members in addition to those founders include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran).

The big news out of the summit, however, was, according to Richard Pollock, what the delegates did not do, namely, adopt a resolution urged by Iran to condemn the U.S. and Israel for the current hostilities.

“The summit’s refusal to condemn Washington and Jerusalem wasn’t merely a victory for the United States and Israel – it also was a rebuff to America’s critics of the war. Democratic socialists, progressives and the elite New York Times may prefer to attack Israel and the Trump administration over the war. But front-line Middle Eastern countries that attended the conference understand that Iran is the genuine enemy,” Pollock writes.

Posted at 6:57 am by Mark Tapscott

September 15, 2026

AS USUAL, ERIC S. RAYMOND NAILS IT:

Posted at 9:55 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ILHAN, GO HOME:

Posted at 9:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ADMIT IT, YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO BE TOLD THIS:

Posted at 8:32 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WOKE 0.0 WAS CRAZY: Smithsonian’s dark take on America exposed: Washington dubbed ‘town destroyer,’ Revolutionary War ‘dangerous.’

A Smithsonian museum in Manhattan presents a sharply critical account of George Washington, the Revolutionary War and America’s early years, while some historical context that complicates that narrative is omitted or given less prominent treatment, Fox News Digital found.

The findings come as the Smithsonian faces heightened scrutiny from the Trump administration over how it presents American history. President Donald Trump has ordered a review of the institution’s exhibits and educational materials as part of an effort to change what his administration says is an overly negative portrayal of the country’s history.

Fox News Digital visited the Manhattan branch of the National Museum of the American Indian earlier in September and found exhibits that emphasize the destruction suffered by Native communities while offering comparatively little context about the conflicts and events surrounding American military campaigns.

One display near the center of the museum’s “Native New York” exhibit features an illustration of Washington’s profile — similar to the one that appears on quarters — over a label that reads “town destroyer.”

The description underneath the image recounts how “American armies destroyed 40 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) towns and burned their harvests while residents fled,” noting that “the Haudenosaunee still call George Washington and all U.S. presidents Hanadahguyus. The name means ‘town destroyer.’”

The panel does not mention the raids on American settlements that led to the campaign or explain why Washington ordered the attack.

As the kids say these days, the graphics look “Metal AF:”

And maybe that’s the goal! I’m sure Martha Washington got a contact high from the burning structures. I’m sure any statues or totem poles toppled were done using the techniques recommended in Colonial Popular Mechanics. Any theft that occurred followed the techniques in the earliest draft of In Defense of Looting. CNN would likely describe the sacking as a fiery but mostly peaceful town destruction. After all, as they say at Reuters, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

All in all, it’s good to see the Smithsonian lightly refreshing George Washington’s image to make him relevant once again to the 2020 generation.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

JIM TREACHER: Sydney Sweeney Is Jiggling All the Way to the Bank.

Last year, liberals were all angry at Sydney Sweeney for wearing blue jeans. Now they’re angry that she’s not wearing blue jeans. Or anything else.

She’s naked again. She just did an ad for some sports betting app, I think. I don’t know. Not anything I’ll ever use. But in the ad, she’s butt-nekkid, with strategically placed sporting equipment covering her naughty bits. I’ve never seen any of the movies or TV shows this woman’s been in, but you cannot miss her ads.

* * * * * * * *

When I was young, it was always people older than me saying that kind of stuff: “How can Madonna do this? What does this say about our society? Shame on you people!” Well, now the shaming is coming from people younger than me.

There will always be killjoys. There’s always gonna be jealousy and resentment. People are always gonna try to ruin a good time.

By the way, Sydney Sweeney’s Instagram has 25.7 million followers. So if she lost 200,000, that’s… 0.78%. Which is good enough for a Variety headline. I think she’ll be okay.

There’s a theory that this woman keeps triggering these people because she’s not a liberal. Or at least not an outspoken one. Her relatives were seen in MAGA hats at one point, I think. That’s how it all started.

That could be part of it, I guess. I think it’s just women hating a woman for being more attractive than they are. If they could get a lucrative endorsement deal for lounging around in the buff, they would. But they can’t, so they rage at somebody who can.

Haven’t any of these people heard of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue? That’s been around since I can remember.

In response to the popularity of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Disney-owned ESPN Magazine launched “The Body Issue” in 2009. Disney-owned ABC News has forgotten about it — or their links to it over the years:

 

Ace of Spades adds: Feminists and Media Scolds Continue Melting Down Over Sydney Sweeney.

I have my own mild objections to the ad campaign. First of all, I’ll admit what these nasty scolds won’t and say that part of my objection is due to simple prudery and a preference for modesty. My preference is for covert sexiness rather than in-your-face over sexiness, at least in public. I like when a woman is riding that line between modest and sexy so she can claim “Ooops, it was an accident, I had no idea that when I leaned over I showed a flash of cleavage.”

My other mild objection is about attention-getting. The media and media-personalities are constantly demanding the attention of each of us. I prefer these demands to be made more subtly. Yes, Sydney Sweeney has an amazing body but I would like my own Male Gaze to decide when to gaze.

But feminists have decided that attractive women are not allowed to show they are attractive in public because of Equity. Unattractive women do not draw positive attention in public, and therefore attractive women should be hated, shamed, and clucked to death by angry hens in the name of Sexual Equity. If we can’t all be gorgeous Sex Symbols, than nobody can.

Note how they never admit that they’re engaging in the ancient art of female sabotage/smear-campaigning against rivals they’re sexually jealous of. They always have to pretend their obvious middle-school sexual jealousy is actually some high-minded campaign for Women’s Empowerment.

Sweeney’s ad campaign is a repeat of ESPN Magazine from 2009 to 2019 (when Disney decided to stop printing it on dead tree). But the backlash to it by the left is an extension of their pressure campaign on Taylor Swift starting around 2013, demanding that she go on the record as supporting their causes, or be constantly described as some sort of crypto-Nazi. Swift eventually capitulated to the relentlessness of it all. Will Sweeney?

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll