1) “Andrew Breitbart, Mark Zuckerberg and the Two-Way Politics-Culture Street” (Josh Hammer, Jewish World Review)
From the article — Breitbart, a native Angeleno who frequently inveighed against the fetid rot in his nearby Hollywood, was a culture warrior to his core. He correctly observed — and lamented — the immense power that comes with left-wing dominance of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the academy and sundry other formative civil society institutions. The message of the Breitbart Doctrine was simple: Win the culture, and you win the war. If you control America’s key opinion-sculpting institutions, then you will eventually control opinion itself. And that, in turn, will inevitably translate into victory at the ballot box.
In all this, the sage of Brentwood was correct. But what if the Breitbart Doctrine wasn’t actually complete? What if it was missing half the picture? While politics is downstream of culture, it ought to be self-evident that culture is also downstream of politics. For millennia, Western rulers have understood that political (and judicial) power and rhetoric can, and do, affect the culture and the ways that people think.
2) “American Free Speech vs. European Censorship” (Drieu Godefridi, Gatestone Institute)
From the article — But then, you might ask, why can’t the two concepts of expression — free in the USA, censored in Europe — coexist, each in its own way, on our respective continents?
The problem is that the European Union has an imperialist conception of its regulation. The EU does not regulate Europe; it seems to think it regulates the world. True to the rich German and French legal traditions, the EU sees itself as a kind of legislative model for the planet. Not only is the EU taking the initiative to regulate sectors that were not regulated before, it also seems to expect the rest of the world to follow suit.
Better — or worse, depending on your point of view — the EU is backing up its global regulations with sanctions no less global. Apple was recently hit with a landmark $2 billion EU antitrust fine. Breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA) are punishable by penalties calculated as a percentage of revenues — not profits — received by the company concerned not just in Europe, but all over the world. In the case of companies such as Meta (Facebook) or X, we are talking about EU fines running into billions of dollars. Since they seem not to be able to innovate — anyhow, they haven’t — they tax Americans, who have.
3) “The Biggest Peacetime Crime — and Cover-up — in British History: The serial rape of thousands of English girls went on for many years. Few in power cared. Then Elon Musk started tweeting.” (Dominic Green, The Free Press)
From the article — Britain now stands shamed before the world. The public’s suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions, calls for a public inquiry, and demands for accountability. The scandal is already reshaping British politics. It’s not just about the heinous nature of the crimes. It’s that every level of the British system is implicated in the cover-up.
4) Video — Victor Davis Hanson cuts through the leftist spin on the horrific southern California fires. (My note — Guys, we need to do what we can to communicate these critical truths to our friends and family who are going to hear only the Democrat excuses, spins, and misdirections from the old guard media.)
See also — “How the Los Angeles Fires Became So Devastating: A climate scientist explains the causes and offers potential ways to reduce future risk.” (Patrick Brown, City Journal)
5) “Carter Hagiographers Are 100% Wrong” (David Strom, Hot Air)
From the article — I appreciate the impulse to not speak ill of the dead–and I am not going spend a piece ranting about just how awful Carter was. As a man, he was probably above average for a politician, but as a president, he was every bit as awful as people remember and even more than most seem to think.
Carter’s domestic record will garner the most negative attention and his foreign policy the least. This has his legacy exactly backward. Domestically, Carter was dealt a bad hand, and he played it poorly, but later in his term, he made moves that freed some parts of the economy. That is about as nice a thing as I can say about him…
But on the international stage, Carter was nothing short of a disaster. His defenders will point to the Camp David Accords–which no doubt helped stabilize Israeli-Egyptian relations–but they soft-pedal his real legacy: an Iran that for nearly 50 years has been exporting terror and destabilizing the Middle East and the world.
The current chaos in the Middle East is Jimmy Carter’s legacy most of all. The Iran-Iraq war? He did that. Hamas? Thank Carter. The Houthis? Carter. Hezbollah? Jimmy did that, too.
See also — “The Under- and Over-Estimated Jimmy Carter, RIP” (Steven Hayward, Power Line)
6) “Trump and the Panama Canal: Why He Should Invoke the Monroe Doctrine” (John Too, Civitas Institute)
From the article — Trump clearly intended to do more than merely complain about the fee structure that Panama imposes on US shippers. He was undoubtedly aiming at China, which in recent years has sought to fashion a hold on the Canal – a scenario that Trump regards as a disturbing threat to US national security. Indeed, Trump’s warning may have carried an even deeper message, implicitly suggesting that his Administration would consider reviving the Monroe Doctrine. In short, Trump’s statements may convey powerful signals about his overall strategic intentions, both in this hemisphere and globally.
7) “Remember The Snail Darter? It Was Never Real” (David Strom, Hot Air)
From the article — As with all such construction projects, the Tellico Dam was controversial. A lot of people didn’t want it built, but they had few tools to stop it. Political support for its construction was substantial–Congress eventually passed a law specifically to enable its construction. However, the opposition found a new tool in their toolbox with the passage of the Environmental Protection Act. Conveniently, during its construction, a local zoologist “discovered” a new species of darter fish, which he dubbed the “Snail Darter,” which the EPA rapidly declared a protected species.
And voila!, the lawsuits began, and construction of the dam was stalled…Congress did eventually pass legislation that allowed the construction to move forward, but the whole fiasco meant increased costs, massive delays, and the ignition of a political firestorm over the Environmental Protection Act. Did it go too far? Well, certainly, in this case, it did. There is no such thing as a snail darter. It was a convenient fiction.
Think of this as the equivalent of the New York case against Trump, which turned a (if you stretch it) single misdemeanor committed many years ago into 34 felonies through legal maneuvering and facts created out of thin air. The desired result was specified, and a case was built to get that result regardless of whether the facts supported the conclusion.