They Let Revere Go

By David Randall   

April 18, 2025   Minding the Campus

Of course, Paul Revere was a hero as he rowed and rode to alarm the countryside around Boston: “The British are coming! The British are coming!” (“The Regulars are coming out,” the staid historians tell us were his actual words.) So too were the much neglected William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. We owe our independence and our liberty to their pluck and bravery.

But the Midnight Ride was also the last night of something like peace—the last night before we slipped into the bloody horrors of war, of civil war within the far-flung nations that comprised the British Empire. And no matter how good the cause, war is a horror—hell itself, as William Tecumseh Sherman would observe a century later. America soon, in mere hours, would witness the beginning of the mass bloodletting.

But not quite yet.

Read Revere’s own account, written not long after. Out he went to raise the country, and raise it he did. And then, halfway between Lexington and Concord, in the dead of night, a British patrol caught them. Revere braved the rather upset British soldiery. The British soldiers asked Revere what he had been doing and he said forthrightly, “He said they should not, they were only awaiting for some Deserters they expected  down the Road: I told him I knew better, I knew what they were after; that I had alarmed the country all the way up.”

With war about to start, the British were understandably on edge.

In an instant I saw four of them, who rode up to me, with thier pistols in their hands, said G-d d-n you stop. If you go an Inch further, you are a dead Man, immeaditly Mr. Prescot came up we attempted to git thro them, but they kept before us, and swore if we did  not turn in to that pasture, they would blow our brains out.

They would blow our brains out. The British soldiers said that to Revere several times.

One of them (whom I since learned was Major Mitchel of the 5th Regiment Clap’d his Pistol to my head, and said he was going to ask me some questions, if I did not tell the truth, he would blow my brains out.

He said to me ‘We are now going to wards your friends, and if you attempt to run, or we are insulted, we will blow your Brains out.’

They very often insulted me calling me Rebel &c. &c. after we had got about a mile, I was given to the Serjant to lead, he was Ordered to take out his pistol, (he rode with a hanger,) and if I run, to excecute the Majors Sentence.

But in the end, the British didn’t blow Revere’s brains out.

When we got within sight of the Meeting-House, we heard a Volly of guns fired, as I supposed at the tavern, as an Alarm: the Major orderd us to halt, he asked me how far it was to Cambridge, and many more questiones, which I answered; he then asked the Serjant, if his horse was tired,  he said yes; he Ordered him to take my horse; I dismounted, the Serjant mounted my horse; they cutt the Bridle and saddle of the Serjants horse, & rode off, down the road.

The British soldiers knew Revere had committed an act of rebellion—an act of treason—but that night, right before the fighting would begin at Lexington and Concord, they just let him go.

It isn’t so easy as all that to blow a man’s brains out. You have to work yourself up to it—say loudly that you’re going to do it, and work to convince yourself that you’ll do it. The British soldiers hadn’t quite done it yet. They would fire at rebel colonists the next day, but that night they rode away and let Revere live with his brains intact.

The British are a decent lot. And for the better portion of mankind, the horrors of war are hard to start, although all too easy to continue.

America’s cold civil war has remained cold because of the reluctance of decent Americans to resort to violence. Our barbarians who assault our liberty have committed election tampering, perjury, arson, theft, destruction of property, assault, riot, attempted murder, and the occasional murder—and decent Americans have done extraordinarily little in response. Perhaps decent Americans suffer from a touch of foolish complacence. But they also shrink from the horrors of war, with the spirit of those British soldiers who rode away from Revere in the night. God bless a people who are as reluctant as humanly possible to let slip the dogs of war.

And God bless the memory of the British soldiers who were kinder to Paul Revere than they needed to be, in the last hours before the shooting started.

Follow David Randall on X, and for more articles on the American Revolution, see our series here. 

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/04/18/they-let-revere-go/

---

Art by Beck & Stone

End US Taxpayer Support for the Higher Education Gravy Train

posted by Josh Hammer at Townhall 

One of the most important insights of public policy is the understanding that most laws are predicated upon a (stated or unstated) quid pro quo.

Take, for example, the roiling months long debate about President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda. Prior to the media uproar over the much-ballyhooed MS-13-tied "Maryland man," the since-deported Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia, there was a similar hullabaloo surrounding the arrest and initiation of removal proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil, the green card-holding Hamas sympathizer at Columbia University. Critics said that Khalil never committed an actual black-letter crime -- and perhaps he didn't. But he evinced clear support for at least one State Department-recognized foreign terrorist organization and contributed to a hostile campus environment for Columbia's besieged Jewish students. In acting as a subversive fool, Khalil abused the terms of his noncitizen legal permanent residence and forfeited his right to be here.

We might view it this way: Khalil violated his implicit "quid" (comport oneself as a generally decent human being), and accordingly he lost his corresponding "quo" (his remaining here at the behest and beneficence of the sovereign, We the People). Many similar examples abound throughout our legal fabric. Consider also Section 230, the oft-discussed 1990s-era technology law: In exchange for helping to "offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse," as the statute's preambulatory section stipulates, a given social media platform will not be treated as a "publisher" for purposes of defamation law. But Big Tech has repeatedly violated the "quid" (by engaging in politically driven censorship), and now a change to the statutory "quo" is appropriate.

It is only through this prism that we can understand the ongoing, and rapidly escalating, standoff between Trump's administration and Harvard University -- and Trump's ambitious agenda to rein in the fiscal and cultural excesses of elite American higher education, more generally.

For decades, American institutions of higher education have benefited from extraordinary taxpayer largesse. Federal government grants and other forms of direct taxpayer subsidizations of universities are legion. The federal government itself also has a near-monopoly on the market for economically ruinous student loans -- the very loans that are themselves disproportionately responsible for abetting the modern four-year college's misbegotten status as a necessary rite of passage to achieve the American dream. Capital gains of major university endowments are also taxed at the miniscule rate of 1.4% -- a fraction of the taxation rate to which the endowments would be subject were they operating as any other type of business or investment fund.

This favorable governmental treatment of higher education is the backend "quo." But policymakers predicated that "quo," long ago, on the corresponding "quid": American universities, in educating young Americans and instilling in them a love of their families, congregations, nation and God Almighty, conduce to the common good and therefore deserve direct public support.

The basic problem with this argument, in the year 2025, is that -- quite simply -- it is indescribably and laughably out of touch with reality.

American higher education, viewed as a whole, no longer conduces to the common good. Indeed, it has not done so for a very long time now. William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review, published "God and Man at Yale," a prominent cri de coeur against the liberal educational establishment, seven and a half decades ago. The rise of the Frankfurt School and rampant cultural Marxist indoctrination soon followed. The problem of institutions of higher education churning out not godly patriots, but decadent ingrates, has been with us for a very long time. But for too long, the higher education "quo" of extra-generous taxpayer treatment stayed constant despite the demonstrable collapse of the one-time "quid."

Trump, in seeking to condition federal taxpayer grants to elite universities like Columbia and Harvard on the universities' bare-minimum compliance with the nation's civil rights laws, is taking the smallest step possible to recalibrate the discombobulated quid quo pro that has defined the taxpayer-university relationship for decades. American universities retain full First Amendment rights to speak, instruct and promulgate however they would like -- but they cannot do so on the taxpayer dime when they engage in flagrant racial, ethnic or religious discrimination against applicants and students in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. There is also always the "Hillsdale College option" -- like Michigan-based Hillsdale, any Ivy League or Ivy League-equivalent school can simply opt out of federal funding. Perhaps they should!

Many notable Democrats, such as former President Barack Obama, have lined up to defend Harvard -- the Trump administration's most recent and outsize funding target. Truly, it is remarkable. The one-time party of the working class -- "lunch bucket Joe," as former President Joe Biden was once known -- has transmogrified into the leading partisan proponent of a status quo in which working-class men and women nationwide subsidize not necessarily the local technical training school but the distant Ivy League ivory tower. Democrats may not win back the Rust Belt any time soon, but they can at least bank on the Harvard and Yale faculty lounges. And maybe they're OK with that. I know I am.

X22, And we Know, and more- April 18

 

Pam Bondi and the Genesis of Black Lives Matter

posted by Joel Gilbert at American Thinker 

Pam Bondi’s ability to manage the Department of Justice has come under from the right.  File releases are delayed or mismanaged.  No apparent action is taken against subversive government officials.  And J6ers and other victims of a weaponized DoJ remain unsatisfied.

Many have raised the question of whether Pam Bondi was the right choice for MAGA attorney general.  Many more, including President Trump, would be questioning her bona fides if they knew about Bondi’s role in the creation of .

How Trump handles the DoJ will be crucial to the success of his second term.  His failure to take control of the Justice Department marred his first term.  Uncertain of his powers, Trump bowed to the media and Democrats, who screamed for the DoJ to remain “independent.”  He and his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, watched impotently as the Deep State subverted his presidency with the Russiagate witch hunt and prosecuted key advisers such as Paul Manafort, , and Mike Flynn.

Pam Bondi is no Jeff Sessions, but her history raises questions about her willingness to fight an entrenched opposition.  The case against her revolves around her mishandling of the prosecution of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

On that February night in 2012, Zimmerman was getting his brains beaten out by Trayvon Martin and screaming for help.  Eyewitness Jonathon Good would testify that he saw Martin straddling Zimmerman and pummeling him “MMA style.”  Choking on his own blood from a broken nose and fearing loss of consciousness, Zimmerman reached for his gun and fired a single shot.  After a thorough police investigation, Zimmerman was exonerated, as the local authorities concluded that there was insufficient evidence to refute his claim of self-defense.

Enter Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.  As protests starring the likes of Ben Crump and Al Sharpton grew in size and intensity, Bondi caved to the mob.  She could have told the protesters and the media that she’d looked at the evidence and concluded, as the police had, that Zimmerman inarguably acted in self-defense.  Instead, Bondi as the special prosecutor to investigate.  Yielding to mob pressure, Corey soon charged Zimmerman with .

As Florida attorney general, Pam Bondi publicly supported the investigation and offered her condolences to Trayvon Martin’s family.  She called Travyon’s negligent parents “amazing people” and described the family attorneys, including Crump, as “friends of mine.” 

“When I worked with Governor Scott to appoint State Attorney Angela Corey to the case involving Trayvon Martin, I did so with the full confidence that a swift and thorough investigation would be conducted,” Bondi said in a statement.  “Today, State Attorney Corey’s decision to press charges against George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon demonstrates Corey’s commitment to bringing justice to Trayvon’s family and allowing due process for Zimmerman.”

As I documented in my 2019 film, The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America, George Zimmerman was indicted by the State of Florida solely based on the deposition testimony of 19-year-old Rachel Jeantel.  Jeantel told prosecutors she was on the phone with Trayvon in his final moments.  She recounted an interaction that contradicted the physical evidence, the audio from the many 911 calls, and the testimony of eyewitness Jonathon Good.  Despite the contrary evidence, and despite Jeantel’s admission that she really knew nothing about the case, Zimmerman was charged with murder, and the case was set for trial.

As I discovered, the girl who was really on the phone with Trayvon just prior to the shooting was a different girl, the beautiful 16-year-old Brittany “Diamond” Eugene.  After meeting with Trayvon’s mother and Ben Crump, Eugene refused to lie to prosecutors.  This prompted Crump’s recruitment of fake witness Rachel Jeantel to pretend to be “Diamond Eugene.” 

Crump had told the media that Trayvon’s girlfriend was a “16-year-old minor child” and begged them not to contact her because she was underage.  Then, suddenly, 19-year-old Rachel Jeantel appeared on the scene, claiming she was Trayvon’s girlfriend.  The fact that she outweighed Trayvon by 150 or so pounds, and attended a different high school, apparently raised no alarm in the state attorney’s office.

However, sensing that something was amiss, the defense attorneys asked to depose Ben Crump and question him under oath about the minor girlfriend.  After a judge ruled against them, they appealed.  In April 2013, Pam Bondi put her thumb on the scale of justice.  In a 41-page legal response, Bondi asked the appeals court to agree with the judge’s decision, arguing that the deposition of Crump was unnecessary and could infringe upon legal privileges.  The defense request to question Crump was then denied by the court.

The Zimmerman case proceeded to trial.  In June 2013, Jeantel took the stand and tried to relate the story that Crump had fed her.  She failed miserably.  The mentally challenged Jeantel, who was in fact a special needs student who had dropped out of high school, could not keep her story straight.

Zimmerman was acquitted on July 13, 2013. He should never have been arrested.  He was a victim of a vicious, unprovoked assault.  Had he not shot Martin, he likely would have been beaten to death.

Sensing an opportunity in the acquittal, three longtime Marxist community organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — launched the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement the following day.

The BLM movement would later lead riots in response to the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and sparked global protests and riots in wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, in the process becoming one of the largest protest movements in U.S. history.

The Zimmerman case was a political prosecution.  Obama was up for re-election in 2012 and needed black support for a second term.  Against the woeful Obama economy as backdrop, the Democrats and media needed something to inflame the black community.  Obama jumped on board: “My main message is to the parents of Trayvon — if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”

The BLM movement owes a lot to Pam Bondi.  Without her caving to the mob, BLM would not exist.  There would have been no Ferguson riots and likely no George Floyd riots.  DIE would have just slogged along as an Ivy League campus sociology department phenomenon, right where it began.

Donald Trump campaigned on reforming a corrupt Department of Justice that had been weaponized against conservatives and himself.  Rather than breaking up the DoJ, Trump chose the path of reform through new leadership.  The question remains: Does Pam Bondi have the stones to achieve that reform?  Time will tell.  Keep an eye on her!

Democrats Will Always Side Against Normal People – Always

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

I want you to think carefully and see if you can come up with a single issue on which the leftist establishment sides in favor of normal Americans. Just one. Just one time when they prioritize the interests of normal people over the demands of weirdos, losers, mutations, illegal aliens, pinkos, perverts, and vegans.

I’ll wait. And by the time you get back to me, the sun will have burned out and Saturday Night Live will be funny again.

Many people have observed that Trump is always on the 80 side of the 80/20 issues; what’s surprising is how eager the left is to go all-in on the 20s. There’s something about the left that forces it, even against political common sense, to always take the side of the bad guys.

The American people have come out pretty clearly against this weirdness, but that won’t stop them. Every single time they have the choice between decent, normal American teenage girls and weird men who like to expose themselves to the same in the guise of being women themselves, the left supports the creeps. Every single time. And not just a little. It’s a pagan sacrament to them that some dude named Phil can pretend to be Phyllis and walk into a women’s locker room with the whole gang swingin’. 

The left could choose to be on the side of normal Americans who would prefer not to be raped and/or murdered by illegal aliens who shouldn’t be here in the first place. But the establishment left backs the illegal aliens who shouldn’t be here in the first place, even to the point of wanting them imported back into the United States when we finally get rid of them. Think about that –  they not only don’t want these people gone but they want us to bring them back. Moreover, under Biden, they were literally flying them into the country. Again, normal Americans have made it quite clear that they would prefer that illegal aliens who shouldn’t be here in the first place shouldn’t be here, but no. The establishment left must take the side of the Third World gang members and against the citizens of America who these monsters torment.

Of course, the left has always loved criminals. It’s never the fault of the scumbag thief or psycho killer. When you object to homegrown crooks looting and pillaging, it’s you being too attached to your property that you actually worked for and too attached to your body which is actually yours. They can’t wait to contribute to the murderer’s GoFundMe.

They always side with those who wish us ill, both here and abroad. They actively want defender of the West Israel to lose even after Hamas murdered Americans and still holds one of us hostage. Kamala Harris would not pick the smart choice (Jewish Josh Shapiro) over weak, neurotic, post-Christian mediocrity Femmy Le StolenValor because she did not want to alienate the active supporters of Hamas who make up a substantial chunk of the Democrat coalition.

Look at what’s happening in El Salvador. It once had the highest murder rate in the world. That was normal people being butchered by gang members. And then their new president came in, grabbed all the gang members, stuck them into a giant prison, and the murder rate dropped by about 90%. That’s the lives of normal people being saved. That’s countless robberies, rapes, and murders not being committed upon innocent citizens. And you know what the left wants? It wants those criminals back out on the street again. It would rather have normal people butchered than have an example set of what can happen if we simply have the will to act. 

We saw the same thing with the border, too. We were told by the left – and by spineless collaborators like James Lankford – that we were helpless and that we needed a whole bunch of new laws to shut down the border. The laws they offered would have, in fact, opened the border forever. Donald Trump came in and simply shut down the border. It’s now closed. The immigration crisis, in terms of Third World peasants flowing in, has ended. Of course, the establishment left is now doing everything it can to prevent Trump from reversing the flow of Third World peasants. 

How about terrorist sympathizers who come to our country on a visa and support concepts like eradicating Western civilization? One might expect the establishment left does not to want to be eradicated, but it seems to think it will get an exception and that it’s only us normal people who are going to be eradicated. Politically, how do you side with folks who literally announce they want to murder all of your countrymen? Look, I’m no political expert, but I would think that that’s a poor strategy. The Dem’s whopping 27% approval rating supports my contention. Hemorrhoids poll higher.

Of course, none of this is based on strategy. It’s not even based on ideology. It’s actually a weird religion for weak, neurotic, post-Christian mediocrities who, in past times, would have been culled via the principle of survival of the fittest. This is their cult, and we are their sacrifices. Take the climate change hoax, please. Their dogma commands that our prosperity must be sacrificed on the altar of Gaia, the angry weather goddess. The lives of normals must be made ever worse in order to expiate our original sin of not being weak, neurotic, post-Christian mediocrities, whether via DEI or low-flow shower heads. We can’t have meat, we can’t have trucks, we can’t have babies, and now we can’t even have dogs. 

Well, you’ll have to pry my corgi-golden retriever mix from my cold, dead hands. But, of course, that’s not going to happen. They can’t pry anything. These people can’t fight us. They’ve got no guns, and they’ve got no upper body strength, and they certainly don’t have the testosterone to come at us. They can’t force us to do anything. But they can attempt to browbeat, intimidate, and nag us into submission. That’s their strategy. They want to bring about this monstrous utopia and they intend to pester us into allowing it.

But we can say, “No.”

This is why Trump horrifies them so much. He says, “No.” He doesn’t care what they think, and he won’t do what they say. He’s no fey National Review columnist who demands that we honor the dead norms and guardrails our enemies have bulldozed. He won’t give up in the face of their incessant bitching on social media. He doesn’t feel guilty about protecting the interests of normal people. In fact, he actively and aggressively defends the interests of normal people, which drives the left establishment crazy. Remember, they can’t force us to do anything. They can only convince us to submit, and neither Trump nor those of us who support him are allowing that to happen.

That’s why they are going nuts right now. They are losing, and they know it.

So they are doubling down. Be ready. Everything they say is a lie and a scam. As Elizabeth Warren might say, they speak with forked tongues. That’s why, unlike the Fredocons,  you must be prepared to reject any argument they make. That includes their bad faith procedural arguments where they contend that we must give due process to monsters – because any due process we give them will never be enough and must be stretched out infinitely so it effectively means we can’t do anything to solve the problem. We must likewise reject their bogus substantive arguments that anything we choose to do to respond to their political and cultural assaults is morally wrong and beyond the pale. Again, the purpose is to convince us we are helpless in the face of their onslaught.

You need to understand that they hate you. You need to understand that they want only what is worst for you. You need to understand that every single time they will take the side of indecency, perversion, and murder – literally – against you and your family. That’s why you must be ready to govern yourself accordingly in this paradigm instead of shutting your eyes and covering your ears and pretending really, really hard that everything is OK. It isn’t. 

There’s no compromise possible with these people. They must be defeated comprehensively and in detail, and the only way we’re going do that is with the kind of cold ruthlessness that serious men demonstrate when they’re serious about crushing their enemies. 

It’s no time for wavering. It’s no time for whining. It’s no time for appealing to norms that don’t exist as an excuse to avoid doing the hard work of winning. Get that through your head. Understand that. Accept that. Act accordingly.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

Tucker Carlson Interviews Canadian Politician Maxime Bernier

Ahead of the upcoming election, Tucker Carlson interviews Canadian government official, Maxime Bernier.

In the background of the conversation the leading candidates for Prime Minister, Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre both hold similar trade and tariff views, both support a new alignment with the EU, and both support cultural Marxism.  Canada has their own version of the UniParty.  WATCH:

Chapters:

0:00 Who Was Justin Trudeau Really Working For?
7:53 the Invasion of Canada
9:19 Pierre Poilievre Is a Fraud
13:25 The Attempts to Destroy Christian Countries
15:51 The Trade War Between Canada and the US
20:03 The Canadian Government’s Ridiculous Climate Change Agenda
21:59 China’s Control Over Canada

28:50 The Corruption of Canadian Media
32:00 The Growing People’s Party
38:36 Is Trudeau Fidel Castro’s Son?
39:33 The Death of Canada’s Healthcare System
43:19 The Canadian Exodus
44:07 Canada’s Mass Gun Control
46:16 The DEI Initiatives in Canada
49:45 Is Canada Headed Towards a Revolution?
52:05 Who Is Mark Carney?
55:33 Canada’s Gold Crisis
1:03:17 What’s Happening to All of Canada’s Natural Resources?
1:08:51 Is Canada Fixable?

Republicans say Democrats don't have a message. They do, and it's destructive.

Republicans say Democrats don't have a message. 

They do, and it's destructive.

The biggest lie of all is told by Republicans who claim Democrats have no message.

By: David Horowitz

In the acrimonious climate of the current political debate, the biggest lie of all is told by Republicans who claim Democrats are in disarray because they have no message to persuade voters to support them. Actually, they do have a message. But it is a message so obvious, destructive, and forbidding that it offends Republicans so profoundly they would prefer not to recognize it – so they don’t.

Democrats do have a message, which is this: Every policy of the Trump administration designed to make America safer, stronger, wealthier, and more prosperous is a policy that must be resisted, sabotaged, and obstructed by any means necessary. Worse, its proponents should be demonized and marginalized as extremists.

What does this look like in the context of the real world and in America’s cold war with heavily armed nuclear adversaries and totalitarian enemies who have made no bones about their desire to destroy us? In this context, Democrats' divisive strategies weaken America, give comfort and aid to our enemies, and undermine our efforts to defend ourselves.

Among his first acts in office, President Joe Biden opened our borders to somewhere between 10 and 20 million mostly unvetted aliens, many on the terrorist watch list and still more with long criminal records. Many Democrats reject the mandate of Donald Trump's 2024 victory which showed the vast majority of Americans thought Biden's border policies dangerous and unwise. Democrats have dedicated themselves to obstructing the Trump administration’s efforts to deport the criminals who Biden welcomed and subsidized. This reflects poorly on Democrats' concern for the safety of their fellow citizens and projects weakness to potential enemies seeking to infiltrate our country.

Moreover, there is no indication Democrats have given serious thought to the negative impact of their policies on the welfare or security of American citizens, whether in regard to their obstruction of Trump's efforts to deport criminals, or their attacks on police, their demonization of America’s commander in chief and the undermining of executive authority in enforcing the law. If the commander in chief is dismissed as an "agent of chaos" what moral authority is left to defend us?

The posture of the Democrat Party is not focused on one nor even a cluster of policy positions. To the social justice warriors leading the Party, it is the American enterprise itself that is the villain. They see America as a nation created and still run by racist oligarchs who oppress people of color and with whom there can be no common ground. "Social justice" demands revolutionary solutions, and revolutionary solutions demand no compromise and disregard for the Constitution and the law.

Democrats understand their message is toxic. So they project their disloyalty to the Constitution onto Republicans, hoping to tar them with the same brush. 

Democrats hold protest signs as President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025. (Win McNamee/Pool via Reuters)

But do they believe it? We now know Biden's incompetence was known throughout the White House inner circle. With wars raging in Ukraine, Syria and the Middle East, it presented enormous dangers to America and to the West. Did any member of the Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment, which was specifically designed to remove the president if he was no longer competent to be commander in chief? On the contrary, too many denied and covered up his incompetence. Such was the contempt Democrats had for America's constitutional safeguards.

It's time for accountability and remedy. But when the Trump administration attempts this – unless Democrat patriots stand up – there will be an army of saboteurs working to resist them.

Brace Yourselves – Hermes Announces Price Increase Due to Trump Tariffs, $50,000 Handbags Now $55,000

Sundance reporting for CTH 

Folks, I know this is going to be hard, but we must remain steadfast in bearing the burden of new tariffs for our essential items.  Hermes has announced they will pass along the cost of President Trump’s tariffs to consumers.

Currently, Hermes branded purses ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 are purchased by a whopping 0.001% of Americans, yet 90% of wives for Wall Street hedge fund managers have them.

Yes, this is going to be a painful price increase; however, it is our patriotic duty to withstand it.  We can survive it.

NEW YORK – […] The Paris-based company — which manufactures the vast majority of its goods in France — will raise prices enough to offset any hit to growth from the current 10% tariff on the European Union, according to Eric du Halgouet, Hermes’ executive vice president of finance.

If Hermes adds the 10% tax, US shoppers could pay an additional $2,000 on a lower-cost model, or an extra $20,000 on a $200,000 handbag. (read more)

If you have any tips or advice on how to deal with increased emotional anxiety as a result of this horrific announcement, please provide your words of wisdom in the comments section.  If we lean on each other for support, we can get through this.

“Reciprocity! The nerve of that man.”

Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark (1969) - Parts 1 through 5

Civilisation—in full, Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark—is a 1969 British television documentary series written and presented by the art historian Kenneth Clark. The thirteen programmes in the series outline the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy since the Dark Ages. The series was produced by the BBC and aired from February to May 1969 on BBC2. Then, and in later transmissions in Britain, the US and other countries it reached an unprecedented number of viewers for an art series. Clark's book of the same title, based on the series, was published in 1969. Its production standards were generally praised and set the pattern for subsequent television documentary series. The New Yorker magazine described it as revelatory for the general viewer.

It's 4 hours or so ... I saved it to watch when I have time.

The medieval art is extraordinarily complex !

Politico: Guess Where Voters Are Getting Tired of La Résistance?

Politico: Guess Where Voters Are Getting Tired of La Résistance?

Ed Morrissey @ HotAir.com

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Voters, mind you, not Democrat Party leaders. The latter have offered voters almost nothing but La Résistance 2.0 since the moment that Kamala Harris called off her victory party in early November. It worked so well for them the first time around, they believe, and Democrat leaders either have nothing else to offer or simply refuse to accept reality. 

Voters, on the other hand, have had enough ... even in California. According to Politico's new poll, Golden State voters have no real interest in going to war with Donald Trump. Instead, they seem less enthused than ever about the state's one-party rule and the fruits it has borne:

In a dual survey of California voters and political professionals who are driving the state’s agenda, the electorate is strikingly more likely to want a detente with the White House. Voters are also more divided on issues like immigration and climate change, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers have asserted progressive ambitions that rebuff the president’s agenda.

A plurality of voters is skeptical of legal immigration, and less than half think the state should be able to set its own strict standards on vehicle emissions, an authority California has used for more than half a century.

The results suggest a disconnect between the policymaking class and voters in an overwhelmingly blue state where Trump made broad inroads in 2024 amid widespread frustrations over crime and a prohibitively high cost of living. Registered Democrats, however — who comprise nearly half the electorate — are more enthusiastic about progressive policies and more eager to challenge Trump’s Washington.

This might reflect the recognition by voters -- even in deep-blue California -- of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of La Résistance in either iteration. The first time around, Democrats launched their "resistance" on the false claim that Trump won office illegitimately through "Russia collusion." Voters eventually discovered that was a lie, and those who paid attention now know that the lie came from Hillary Clinton's dirty-tricks team and Barack Obama's FBI. 

This time around, there's no question at all about legitimacy. Trump stomped Harris in the election and won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, the firsrt GOP candidate to do so in 20 years. The election was completely legit and more importantly obviously so. Attempts to "resist" a legitimately elected president are a rejection of elections and democracy, not a healthy opposition based on policies and principles. Most voters won't sign onto hate campaigns, which is what La Résistance has been in both iterations, but again nakedly so in v2.0.

But there's more to this voter shrug than just exhaustion, as Politico hints. It turns out that Trump's policies are addressing real concerns that California voters have, and that California's Democrat leadership keeps ignoring. Even the auto emissions standards that California has championed for my entire life -- and which Democrats in other states attempted to impose elsewhere -- has seen support dwindle down to a virtual tie. Democrat leaders, however, support it by an 82/14 margin. Voters support legal immigration but want less of it, more control of illegal immigration, and more emphasis on assimilation; Democrat leaders push "diversity" and siloing instead. 

And this disconnect is in California. Imagine what the disconnect looks like across the country between voters and Democrat leaders. In fact, we don't have to imagine, because the latest poll from Harvard-Harris CAPSshows where American voters are on the policies that matter most to them:

This gets us back to the 80/20 phenomenon of La Résistance 2.0. In their rush to offer knee-jerk opposition to anything Trump proposes, Democrat leaders have aligned themselves with the political fringe on almost every issue. That's especially true on illegal immigration, nearly literally an 80/20 issue with voters and almost a 2:1 issue among Democrat voters. Democrat leaders are tripping over themselves to fly to El Salvador to stand in solidarity with an illegal alien who has a record of domestic-abuse allegations as well as significant evidence of being in an organized-crime ring operated outside of the US. 

That won't sell -- not in California, and not anywhere else, either. And yet Democrat leaders are so lacking in any answers to these issue sets that the only thing they can offer voters is rehashed Trumpophobia and Monty Python's Argument Clinic politics.