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U.S. Launches New Strikes Against Iran

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iran

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Protest

Revolution

For the first time in 47 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran is leaderless.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the regime’s 86-year-old supreme dictator — is gone. Eliminated following sustained American and Israeli strikes, his death has shattered the central pillar of Tehran’s theocracy.
The regime hurriedly announced an “Interim Leadership Council” composed of President Masoud Pezeshkian, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, and Guardian Council cleric Ayatollah Alireza Arafi. But there is no such thing as collective supreme leadership in the Islamic Republic.
The Supreme Leader is not ceremonial. He is the system. Under Iran’s constitution, he controls the armed forces, the judiciary, the intelligence services, the Guardian Council, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He sets ideology, arbitrates factional warfare, and guarantees regime survival.
You cannot divide that authority among three men and expect stability. What you get instead is rivalry, paralysis, and fear.
And fear is spreading rapidly in Tehran.
For years, rumors circulated that Khamenei intended to install his radical son, Mojtaba, as successor — a dynastic maneuver that would have formalized what many believed was already happening behind the scenes.
That does not simplify succession. It makes it far more volatile.
There is no obvious clerical heavyweight waiting in the wings. No consensus candidate. No undisputed center of gravity. The Assembly of Experts — the 88-member body responsible for selecting the next Supreme Leader — now faces a vacuum unprecedented in the Islamic Republic’s history.
When clerics cannot agree, power does not disappear. It shifts.
The most likely beneficiary of sustained instability is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC already controls major sectors of Iran’s economy, its missile forces, its intelligence networks, and its regional proxy militias. With the clerical hierarchy fractured and no dynastic successor available, the Guards may conclude that preserving the revolution requires sidelining the robes entirely. What began as a theocracy could harden into an overt military dictatorship.
That is why the strategic imperative is clear. If the objective is lasting change rather than temporary disruption, the pressure cannot stop with symbolic decapitation. The United States and Israel must continue dismantling the IRGC’s command structure — not just eliminating those at the top, but degrading leadership layers down the chain of command. Authoritarian systems regenerate from their mid-levels. If that layer survives intact, the regime reconstitutes.
In short, decapitation without systemic degradation is a pause button, not an outcome.
At the same time, a smarter strategy recognizes that not every official inside the Iranian state is a hardened ideologue with blood on his hands. Iran’s bureaucracy is vast. It includes technocrats and administrators who served the system but did not design its crimes.
There is an alternative path.
Preserve those who are not irredeemably compromised. Keep parts of the state machinery intact. Under sustained American and allied pressure, compel them to cooperate with credible Iranian opposition figures — including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah — to usher in a transition toward a more democratic and representative government. The terms would be simple: you can keep your life and you can keep your money — but only if you facilitate a peaceful transition and stand down from repression. Play ball, or face consequences.
Transitions succeed when they split regimes. They fail when they force everyone inside the system to fight to the death.
This is not Iraq in 2003. But we must also learn from Iraq in 2003. We cannot repeat the mistake of sweeping de-Baathification that stripped hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of their livelihoods overnight and drove many into the insurgency that bloodied Americans and Iraqis for years. A maximalist purge in Iran would risk creating the very instability we seek to prevent.
Totalitarian systems do not reform themselves. They either fracture from within or harden into something worse. As long as the Islamic Republic’s governing architecture survives intact — whether led by a cleric or a general — its core objectives will remain nuclear capability, ballistic missile expansion, regional terror sponsorship, and violent repression at home.
What makes this moment different is that the succession mechanism itself is cracking. The aura of inevitability is gone. Iranians have already taken to the streets celebrating Khamenei’s death. The regime looks vulnerable in a way it has not since 1979.
History has opened a narrow window in Iran.
It could close with the consolidation of a military junta. Or it could open into something transformative.
Mark Dubowitz is chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ben Cohen is a research fellow.

Anti-U.S.-Israel War On Iran Protest In Yemen 2026

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Democracy

IRGC

A growing number of parents are opting to exclude Santa Claus in children’s Christmas celebrations.
These people fear that convincing children of such a fantastical story and later revealing that it is, in a literal sense, false, will undermine trust between parents and children, cause children to doubt their faith, or even result in childhood trauma.
Of course, there are still plenty of people who hold that Santa Claus is a valuable part of an innocent, imaginative childhood. But the anti-Santa camp seemed especially vocal this year, particularly among religious conservatives.
Those people may be shocked to hear that they are on the same side as the radicals who perpetrated the French Revolution.
Consider the revolutionary: one who believes that individual reason is supreme, that tradition is questionable at best, and that beauty, mystique, and ceremony have no place in a rational society.
During the French Revolution, these radicals spurned their nation’s political, religious, and cultural history as impediments to man’s liberty. They tried to eradicate French Catholicism, abolished France’s ancient regional borders, and even created a new calendar. Devoted to their own individual “Reason,” they disregarded all ancestral wisdom and attempted to create a new France. Unfortunately, these cool, rational, dispassionate men succeeded only in unleashing decades of brutal war first upon France and then upon the rest of Europe.
How does Santa Claus fit into this? It’s all in the ideology. Many Santa objectors reduce a familial, cultural, and (if properly understood) religious symbol to a “lie.” In so doing, they implicitly align themselves with the rationalistic French philosophes and their Marxist successors, who held that truth must be observable, quantifiable, and physical. No poetic beauty, no metaphors, no affinity for man’s soul.
On the other hand, we have the Claus partisans. Like the great Irish statesman and opponent of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, they recognize the power of tradition, reverence, and beauty to shape a society. They recognize that man is spirit, not just intellect, and that to reduce him to his intellect is to dehumanize him. They recognize, in Burke’s words, that if “all the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off” and “the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination&#8230;are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion,” man will be reduced to a barbarian. Like all good conservatives, these Claus partisans recognize that human beings are passionate creatures who need to be trained, not only in their reason but in their affections, to be virtuous.
In a certain sense, those who object to Santa Claus are right: the historical Saint Nicholas notwithstanding, Santa isn’t real.
But nor are characters in poetry, folklore, or literature “real.” However, as Russell Kirk wrote in his masterpiece The Conservative Mind, “great myths are true in essence, however fanciful in detail.” G.K. Chesterton, too, was fond of arguing that fairy tales are, in a sense, truer than bald facts. They instill in children a sense of wonder, an appreciation for miracles, and a firm sense of morality.
The Santa Claus story is true in its essence of gratitude, wonder, and joy in the miraculous. It is merely presented to small children in an allegorical way, which they can understand. It was this manner of oral tradition and mythmaking that held together the societies of Ancient Greece and Rome and laid the foundation for Western culture. We would abandon it at our peril.
In this sense, is it not insulting to our children to think that they are capable of understanding only the most literal, mathematical truths? Is it not far-fetched to imagine that a fairytale, lovingly passed on from generation to generation, will undermine a parent-child relationship?
Not all Santa objectors are morally deficient successors of the Jacobins. Some parents believe that if they reveal the Santa secret to their children, the children will no longer trust what they have learned about Christ. And indeed, if Santa has managed to supersede discussions about Jesus in a Christian household, it may be best to discontinue the tradition.
But this is not an inevitability. If Santa is a fun addition for a few weeks every year, and Jesus is the center of family life throughout the year, there shouldn’t be any confusion between them.
Emily Claire Boulet is a student at the University of Dallas.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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If You Don’t Let Your Kids Believe In Santa, You May Be A Jacobin

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Editor’s Note: This is the third installment in the five-part series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.”
In Part II, Xi Van Fleet and Sasha Gong — both activists, scholars, and survivors of Mao’s communist uprising — broke down the endless cycle of victimization that fuels perpetual revolution, and has been embraced by the American Left.
Today, the authors take up the question of women. The American Left, it turns out, is not the first revolutionary movement to encourage androgyny and shame women for being traditionally feminine. Indeed, as our authors, show, destroying womanhood is essential to the revolutionary project.
*** 
The story of women under radical Marxist ideology is the story of beauty turned to beast.
Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing — known in the West as Madame Mao — was once celebrated as a symbol of feminine beauty. In 1930s Shanghai, the so-called “Hollywood of the East,” she gained fame as a rising movie star, embodying the glamour and grace traditionally associated with Chinese womanhood.
But Shanghai was also a hub for progressives, Communist sympathizers, and fellow travelers — and Jiang Qing was soon drawn into their orbit.
In 1937, at the age of 23, Jiang Qing — like tens of thousands of other progressive youths — traveled to Yan’an, the Communist stronghold in the loess hills of northwestern China, to join the revolution. There she quickly caught Mao Zedong’s attention, leading him to set aside his guerrilla fighter wife and marry the former movie star. 
As Jiang Qing bound herself to Mao and the Communist revolution, she began to shed her feminine image: cutting her long hair short, trading dresses for shapeless military uniforms, and abandoning the aura of a glamorous actress.
This transformation was not simply personal; it reflected a broader ideological demand. In Yan’an, and later in Beijing, the revolution required individuals to dissolve their identity into the collective. As Mao’s political power grew, Jiang’s own image moved ever further from the ideals of Chinese traditional femininity.
By 1966, when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, Jiang’s metamorphosis was complete. Elevated to unprecedented authority as “Chairman Mao’s greatest standard-bearer,” she emerged as a hardened, gender-neutral revolutionary warrior, wearing a distinctly masculine haircut and clad only in a Mao suit or military uniform.
Jiang Qing became the model for all Chinese women to emulate. Feminine qualities were denounced as toxic, bourgeois, and reactionary, and women were expected to abandon not only the ornaments of beauty but the very essence of femininity itself — as lovers, wives, and mothers. Mao himself praised this new ideal in verse: “China’s daughters hold uncommon resolve; they love not splendid ornaments, but the arms of revolution.”
Nowhere was this more stark than in the Red Guard movement: thousands of teenage girls, who might once have sung, studied, or courted love, instead shouted slogans, wielded clubs, and became torturers and killers.
The Red Guard was responsible for the first murder of the Cultural Revolution — the brutal beating to death of their principal at a Beijing girls’ high school — an act that unleashed the nationwide violence which would claim tens of millions of lives.
It was in that era that both of us passed through girlhood, adolescence, and the bloom of youth, devoid of all femininity.
We were told, and we believed, that women could hold up half the sky, and that whatever men could do, we could do even better. We strove to become Iron Girls — the Chinese version of the superwoman — taking on the hardest tasks while training ourselves to look, speak, and act like men. Family, children, and motherhood were pushed from our minds; all that mattered was proving ourselves as revolutionaries.
Sadly, defeminization left deep scars on the women of our generation, eroding many of the traditional Chinese virtues of womanhood: tenderness, modesty, nurturing, grace, and devotion to family. Our generation, unlike our Western counterparts, grew up without dreams of a fairytale love story or a perfect wedding. 
When some of us later came to the West, we shattered the stereotype of what an Asian woman was expected to be in the eyes of Westerners.
As survivors of Mao’s defeminization, we are horrified to see history repeating itself here in America. Although the process began decades ago with the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s, its pace has accelerated dramatically in recent years.
Radicalized young women — especially white female youth in search of identity — have taken defeminization to new extremes. The body itself becomes a canvas of protest against convention and traditional feminine beauty: blue hair, tattoos, piercings, and harsh attire announce open rebellion. One needs to look no further than the Antifa girls on the streets for living proof.
As in Mao’s China, defeminization is more than an outward transformation; in today’s woke culture it is a proud declaration of being the opposite of what family, culture, or faith once revered as good, beautiful, or sacred. In this sense, it is a total reordering of values, inscribed visibly on the body. 
What is even worse is that the defeminization of women is accompanied by the feminization of men — a topic for another time. Both trends aim to shake the very foundation of a functioning society.
READ MORE:
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/license-to-kill-what-turns-normal-people-to-political-violence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Maoists, Part I: License To Kill: What Turns Normal People To Political Violence?</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-wheel-of-misfortune-victims-victimhood-and-victimization?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Xi+Van+Fleet+and+Sasha+Gong&amp;category=Opinion&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=The+Wheel+Of+Misfortune%3A+Victims%2C+Victimhood%2C+And+Victimization">American Maoists, Part II: The Wheel Of Misfortune: Victims, Victimhood, And Victimization</a>
Xi Van Fleet is a survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, activist, and author of “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.”
Sasha Gong is a writer, scholar, journalist, and filmmaker. A dissident in Mao’s China, she holds a PhD from Harvard University and was previously Director of the China Branch at Voice of America.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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From Red Guard To Blue Hair: Why Leftists Destroy Womanhood

Communist China

Leftism

Transgender

Women

The Revolutionary Left is creeping into the mainstream.
The shooting of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, has unleashed a wave of evil from members of the Left. Thompson wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t even an advocate of death the way abortionists or euthanasia advocates are. (And murder of an abortionist or euthanasia advocate would be unjustifiable morally in a democratic system.) His great sin is that he was the head of a company that exists within a mixed private-public healthcare framework, and that he did his job.
But for the Left, if you hate the system, you are morally justified in murdering anyone who acts within the system. That means that if, like one Bernie Sanders follower, you believe that private healthcare “kills Americans,” you can murder Congressmen. It means that if you don’t like that health insurers often deny coverage for certain pre-existing conditions or non-covered doctors or medication, you can murder the CEO of a health insurance company.
This is revolutionary leftist evil.
It’s evil for a couple reasons.
First, violence is not justified in a democracy, where your say is part of the process. Revolution to overthrow tyranny is justified — but the tyranny must be real, and the violence must be the last resort. Neither is true in this case. If you do perceive America to be a tyranny and violence to be the proper response, that is a call for unending violence until the system itself is changed. It’s a call for revolution.
Second, violence against members of private industry isn’t even a protest of public policy. It’s a protest against the very system of free markets. Thompson was not responsible for America’s healthcare system any more than the head of CVS is responsible for America’s tariff system. Directing hatred against Thompson is not about shaping public policy. It’s about trying to threaten anyone who engages in free markets at all. This person could have just as easily shot a doctor who decided not to perform a surgery, or a bank worker who denied a loan application.
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This was the philosophy of the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They weren’t seeking a better world. They were seeking to tear down the world of capitalism on behalf of Marxist evil. They routinely quoted Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci; they called for revolution. Ulrike Meinhof, a Left-wing radical journalist, led the way, famously stating, “Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.”
That philosophy led the Baader-Meinhof Gang to engage in routine assassination of everyone from industrialists like Hanns Martin Schleyer to Dresdner Bank head Jurgen Ponto to American servicemen in Germany. These people can also become tools of enemy regimes, as Baader-Meinhof was. Baader-Meinhof worked with the Stasi and other Soviet agents to foment chaos, and coordinated with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestine Liberation Organization.
The origins of Baader-Meinhof came from the 1968 student protests in Germany. They were Marxist in orientation, influenced by radical race riots in the United States, and allied with radicals all over the globe; Meinhof wrote an essay defending the Munich Massacre of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists. Stefan Aust, who literally wrote the book on the Baader-Meinhof Gang, pointed out:
<blockquote>The Baader–Meinhof Gang drew a measure of support that violent leftists in the United States, like the Weather Underground, never enjoyed. A poll at the time showed that a quarter of West Germans under forty felt sympathy for the gang and one-tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police. Prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang&#8217;s righteousness [as] Germany even into the 1970s was still a guilt-ridden society. When the gang started robbing banks, newscasts compared its members to Bonnie and Clyde. (Andreas) Baader, a charismatic action man indulged in the imagery, telling people that his favourite movies were Bonnie and Clyde, which had recently come out, and The Battle of Algiers. The pop poster of Che Guevara hung on his wall, [while] he paid a designer to make a Red Army Faction logo, a drawing of a machine gun against a red star.</blockquote>
What do we make of the journalists and academics who proclaim soft support for the murder of Brian Thompson? That we are on the verge of something terrible. After all, this follows hard on the Black Lives Matters riots, which were indulged and even celebrated by many on the Left; the Hamas takeover of college campuses, again indulged and celebrated by Left-wing elite; and now, the not-so-quiet applause for the assassination of a private healthcare CEO.
The toxic brew of radicalism and violence that characterized the 1970s in Germany and the United States is bubbling again. And why not? Many of those who engaged in precisely that violence are now well-respected American academics: Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn found high positions in academia after spending years planting bombs with the Weather Underground.
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Certainly a desperate Left, spurred to action by constant talk of the “fascistic” takeover of Donald Trump, can be counted on to increase their support for violence. Two assassination attempts against Trump in the last six months are merely an indicator of just how deeply this rot is spreading.
This must be stopped. It can only be stopped by a widespread rejection on all sides of the aisle for this type of violence. The shooter in this case should be arrested and given the death penalty. Seedbeds for such Marxist-Leninist violence on college campuses should be defunded. Those like Taylor Lorenz should be rejected from polite society.
The Brian Thompson shooting is a bleeding edge indicator of where the country could be going. All it takes is someone with organizational capacity on the Left to launch America into a new era of domestic terrorism, with the tacit “moral” support of much of the journalistic establishment.

United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson Fatally Shot In Midtown Manhattan

The Evil Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder

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Thousands of protesters swarmed the Sri Lankan president&#8217;s home in Colombo and were seen cavorting in its swimming pool as anarchy engulfed the bankrupt South Asian island and the leader said he would step down.
Surreal scenes captured on cell phone video showed citizens watching television, eating, and roaming the halls of the palace as the presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa teetered on the edge of collapse. Millions have been unable to buy food, medicine, and fuel for months amid a devastating financial crisis that has pitted parliament against the presidency and reopened old wounds between majority Buddhists and minority Tamils.
“Gota go home,” the mob was heard chanting, using a popular nickname for the reviled leader. Outside the sprawling residence, barricades were knocked down and a black banner was raised on a flagpole.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
NOW &#8211; Protesters storm the presidential palace in Sri Lanka&#39;s capital.<a href="https://t.co/Wv6oQ10kBQ">pic.twitter.com/Wv6oQ10kBQ</a>
&mdash; Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) <a href="https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1545689501758111744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2022</a></blockquote>
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“I came here today to send the president home,” protester Wasantha Kiruwaththuduwa, 50, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/07/09/world/sri-lanka-protests-rajapaksa">told The New York Times</a>. “Now the president must resign. If he wants peace to prevail, he must step down.”
Rajapaksa, whose family has ruled the nation of 22 million for much of the last two decades, said Saturday he will step down July 13. His brother already resigned as prime minister in May after violent protests and three other members of the family were among 26 cabinet members who resigned en masse in April. Public anger has been directed at the family over claims of mismanagement and corruption.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over in May, has also been called upon to exit, even as he is scrambling to save the country&#8217;s economy through negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. In April, the nation said it would suspend repayment of foreign loans, which amounts to $51 billion.
&#8220;We are now participating in the negotiations as a bankrupt country,&#8221; he told lawmakers earlier this week. &#8220;Therefore, we have to face a more difficult and complicated situation than previous negotiations.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Just IN:— Protestors cool themselves in luxurious swimming pool of Sri Lanka president palace. <a href="https://t.co/3kP4p6zPto">pic.twitter.com/3kP4p6zPto</a>
&mdash; South Asia Index (@SouthAsiaIndex) <a href="https://twitter.com/SouthAsiaIndex/status/1545720103488323585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2022</a></blockquote>
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The economic crisis has ripped open old wounds in the nation, located off the southern tip of India in the Indian Ocean. Although a nearly 30-year civil war between the majority Buddhist Sinhalese government and the Tamil Tigers, the insurgent group that fought on behalf  of the minority Tamils, ended more than a decade ago, the division has re-emerged.
Rajapaksa won election in 2019 with a wave of popular support and a promise to end Colombo&#8217;s conciliatory approach toward minority groups including Muslims and Tamils.
“It is no secret that the majority who voted for me then were Sinhalese,” Rajapaksa told parliament in 2020. “They rallied because they had legitimate fears that the Sinhala race, our religion, national resources, and the heritage would be threatened with destruction in the face of various local and foreign forces and ideologies that support separatism, extremism, and terrorism.”
With the financial crisis undermining his popularity among his base and parliament demanding his ouster, Rajapaksa&#8217;s days as president appear to be numbered, experts say.

Protest Demand The Resignation Of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa In Colombo

WATCH: Mob Storms Presidential Palace, Swims In Pool As Asian Nation Teeters On Brink Of Collapse

WATCH: Mob Storms Presidential Palace As Sri Lanka Teeters On Brink Of Collapse

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Readers Pass – Horowitz – Heading Towards The Abyss16x9 copy

Horowitz: ‘Radicals’ Are Racist Criminals Driving America Towards The Abyss

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Nearly 20 cannons found in a Georgia river are believed by archeologists to be from British ships from the time of the American War of Independence. 
During an excavation job, workers uncovered 19 cannons that researchers believe to have been sitting at the bottom of the Savannah River, in Savannah, Georgia, for roughly 240 years. Experts believe that the cannons ended up on the river bottom after the ships were scuttled by the British around 1779.
“The mud- and rust-encrusted guns were discovered by accident. A dredge scooping sediment from the riverbed last year as part of a $973 million deepening of Savannah’s busy shipping channel surfaced with one the cannons clasped in its metal jaws. The crew soon dug up two more,” the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-savannah-us-navy-e64a3849bbba152fd2d3549ad401d18b">reported.</a> 
Historians note that before the siege of Savannah in 1779, it is likely that the British scuttled the ships with the cannons onboard around the time of the battle, which would last from September 16 to October 18 1779.
After closer examination of the cannons, historians ruled out that they were Confederate, which was the initial assumption, and then determined that they likely dated back to the Revolutionary War. 
“They’re in remarkably good shape,” Army Corps of Engineers archeologist Andrea Farmer said. “Many were buried in clay and covered by silt and debris that kind of protected them.”
Each of the cannons has been moved to a warehouse by the river over the past year, as archeologists work with officials from Georgia, the U.S. government, and Britain to create a display, with the Savannah History Museum being the likely final destination.
Logistics are complicated by the question of who actually owns the cannons, whether it be the U.S. or Britain, which is still in contention. 
“Everybody wants to keep the artifacts in Savannah,” Farmer explained, “because that makes the most sense.”
Farmer noted that, while researchers are confident that the cannons come from the war of independence, they still need official verification. Part of the verification includes examining other artifacts found in the river, including shards of a ship’s bell and anchor, to make the final determination. 
Historians say several of the cannons were likely made in France and ended up on two British ships, the HMS Venus and the HMS Savannah. They also explained why the British might scuttle their own ships. 
To prevent French ships from gaining access to the Savannah in 1779, the British scuttled several of their own ships to block up the river. “The land battle that followed was one of the bloodiest of the war. British forces killed nearly 300 colonial fighters and their allies, while wounding hundreds more,” the Associated Press explained.
The cannons are not the first artifacts from American history to be found in the Savannah River. Back in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/21/us/savannah-georgia-civil-war-ironclad/index.html">2015</a>, a Confederate ironclad ship, the CSS Georgia was pulled out of the water by Navy divers. Prior to its removal, the Confederate ship had been underwater for 150 years.

Sunken old cannon

Cannons Found In Georgia River Believed To Be From British Ships During The American Revolutionary War

Cannons Found In Georgia River Believed To Be From British Ships During American Revolutionary War

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The annual Met Gala is coming up on Monday, May 2, and this year&#8217;s announced theme — Gilded Glamour — has social media buzzing about just how tone-deaf the organizers must be.
&#8220;The Met Gala returns Monday. The fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art&#8217;s Costume Institute draws pop culture&#8217;s biggest stars to its red carpet — the true event of the evening,&#8221; The Associated Press reported. &#8220;This year&#8217;s theme? &#8216;Gilded glamour.’”
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The Met Gala returns Monday. The fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art&#39;s Costume Institute draws pop culture&#39;s biggest stars to its red carpet — the true event of the evening.
This year&#39;s theme? “Gilded glamour.” <a href="https://t.co/3RuconlUVq">https://t.co/3RuconlUVq</a>
&mdash; The Associated Press (@AP) <a href="https://twitter.com/AP/status/1519772630596861952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 28, 2022</a></blockquote>
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According to the Associated Press&#8217; <a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-met-gala-guide-338a825ce95e47df3cb37bfb6c3ba12f?utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_medium=AP">report</a>, the 2022 gala will be hosted by Regina King, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Vogue Magazine&#8217;s Anna Wintour will be running the show as she has for decades, joined by honorary co-chairs designer Tom Ford and Instagram&#8217;s Adam Mosseri.
The gala is always a who&#8217;s who of the richest and most famous from Hollywood, fashion, sports, politics, and every other possible arena — and while the glitz and glamour are kind of the point, a number of critics wondered whether saying so out loud was a little too on the nose.
&#8220;Gilded Glamour? They&#8217;re begging for the pitchforks, aren&#8217;t they?&#8221; RealClearPolitics co-founder and president Tom Bevan tweeted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Gilded Glamour? They&#39;re begging for the pitchforks, aren&#39;t they? <a href="https://t.co/WOWmI3XNNo">https://t.co/WOWmI3XNNo</a>
&mdash; Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomBevanRCP/status/1519788156807225346?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 28, 2022</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;I don&#8217;t see the word Equity here anywhere,&#8221; Washington Free Beacon contributor Noah Pollak <a href="https://twitter.com/NoahPollak/status/1519785698840092673">added</a>.
Amy Curtis joined a number of Twitter users who referenced &#8220;The Hunger Games,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/RantyAmyCurtis/status/1519798796389163014">adding</a>, &#8220;We are living in Panem.&#8221;
Mark Hemingway, senior writer for RealClear Investigations, noted that the timing of the event made the optics even worse. &#8220;The WHCA and Met Gala just a few days apart, right after today&#8217;s economic news. Just absolutely perfect optics for all involved,&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/Heminator/status/1519779195466956806">tweeted</a>.
&#8220;Impeccable timing,&#8221; David Burge <a href="https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/1519774679275388930">agreed</a>.
Some noted that only a few months had passed since the 2021 Met Gala, which was delayed from it&#8217;s regular date — the first Monday in May — until November due to ongoing concerns about the spread of COVID-19.
The guest list — which is kept largely quiet until the red carpet is rolled out and the celebrities start rolling in — is predicted to be around 400. That&#8217;s similar to the turnout from last November&#8217;s gala and slightly below the pre-COVID attendance of 500-600 guests.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) raised eyebrows when she attended the November gala — which is estimated to cost over $30,000 per attendee — <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/tax-the-rich-aoc-wore-450-earrings-600-shoes-to-met-gala-report/">wearing a dress</a> with the words &#8220;Tax the Rich&#8221; emblazoned on the back.

The 2021 Met Gala Celebrating In America: A Lexicon Of Fashion – Street Sightings

‘They’re Begging For The Pitchforks, Aren’t They?’: Met Gala Theme Announcement Raises Eyebrows

Met Gala's 'Gilded Glamour' Theme Provokes Social Media Response

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Celebrities

Entertainment

Fashion

Met Gala

We are flirting in this country with the darkest and most serious kind of civic disaster: the disaster of political violence. Not only the shameful and deadly fiasco in the Capitol building on January 6, but the merciless parade of arson, defacement, and slaughter that tore through our cities in the summer of 2020: these are like the first thunderclouds that pass over the air before a storm. If the storm comes, it will be the ruin of us all.
Our career politicians and their lackeys in the press grinned and cheered while Marxian revolutionaries ravaged our streets. They are now putting on a farcical display of mock principle, portraying the Capitol rioters as organized insurrectionists and issuing earnest calls to root them and their kind out of American society forever. The arrogant cynicism of aristocrats like this is a major root cause of the American people’s desperation and fury.
If people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris are pretending now to be shocked and appalled at the possibility of armed rebellion, remember that just last year Harris publicly <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bail-fund-backed-by-kamala-harris-and-biden-staffers-bailed-out-alleged-child-abuser" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bail-fund-backed-by-kamala-harris-and-biden-staffers-bailed-out-alleged-child-abuser&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHjfxYDGvDtobqHdbgjngZgnfP-JA">invited</a> donations to a bail fund for rioters in Minnesota. Just as much now as then, whether they fret theatrically about insurrection or egg it brazenly on, what people like Harris are out for is power. They are part of the problem and should be regarded as nothing more.
But the hard truth is, whichever faction of rioters seems most sympathetic to partisan eyes, mobs in the street and in the Capitol represent profound failure all around: failure of leaders to lead, failure of the people to respond maturely and wisely, failure of government to serve the men and women who employ it—failure, in a word, of the American regime.
I’m far from believing that the failure is permanent or fatal for the country. But it’s worth understanding this moment for what it is so we can take it with the seriousness it deserves: this is not about grandstanding or hot takes. This is an urgent crisis that requires mature reflection. It is a make-or-break moment for our society that will determine how we and our children’s children live going forward.
What Did the Founders Think about Revolution?
Beyond the screaming and the pontificating, beyond the dimwitted children at CNN stoking the flames, the question at hand is: when and why do people take up arms against their fellow citizens and against their government? Strangely, framing it that way gives some small hope for a path forward, because we have confronted these questions before. Our Constitution was written by men who believed deeply in the rule of law, and yet they had just fought a war to overthrow their rulers. Less than a hundred years after the revolution, America would turn in on itself and fight another gruesome war between the federal government and a rival army of American citizens. That war, awful though it was, would end slavery and let the nation come into its own.
So it’s not as simple as saying “political violence is never justified” and leaving it at that—if only it were. But political violence founded our nation, and there are times—times of extreme catastrophe and oppression—when it is tragically the only solution. I want to be as clear as possible at the outset that I do not believe this is one of those times. But I also want to seek some clarity, for all our sakes, about what those times are and how we should think about them. For that we can refer to the founders themselves, who were well aware of these complexities and reflected on them deeply.
If you read only one document about revolution and insurrection from the founding era, it should probably be <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed28.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed28.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFZGUmgu12O78MUcJtHsE_MKJFHZw">Federalist #28</a>. It was written by Alexander Hamilton in 1787, as the states were voting on whether to ratify the new Constitution which would eventually become the law of our land. Hamilton was reflecting on the dangers and the necessity of a national army, and arguing that a stronger central authority wouldn’t stop the people from exercising their rights.
Perhaps the first weirdly encouraging thing Hamilton says about clashes between the government and the people is: they happen. “Seditions and insurrections are, unhappily, maladies as inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruptions from the natural body,” he writes in the first paragraph; “the idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government), has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.”
Hamilton was thinking first about the need for the government to put down conspiracies and insurrections with military force. As Senator Tom Cotton wrote in a now infamous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHx5-UnqdQOvaMML8RuFwaMcVVmEA">Op-Ed</a> for the New York Times when Antifa and BLM were terrorizing urban centers, “the federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to ‘protect each of them from domestic violence.’” That is the practical consequence of what Hamilton was arguing.
Shortly before the Constitution was drafted, Massachusetts had faced an armed uprising now known as “Shays rebellion,” in which a veteran of the revolution and his supporters fought against increased taxation. The founders were appalled at the prospect that the revolutionary spirit might not have been satisfied by 1776: “The flames of internal insurrection were ready to burst out in every quarter&#8230;and from one end to the other of the continent, we walked on ashes, concealing fire beneath our feet,” said James Wilson looking back on the tense days of Shays’ Rebellion. It sounds familiar.
So Hamilton was keen to vest the government with power to stamp out anti-Constitutional insurrections. He wanted to ensure the stability of the government and protect the people from the horrors of sedition. It helped that Washington, whose revolutionary credentials were impeccable, had reacted with passionate “indignation” when a group of his own soldiers conspired to attack Congress and demand pay in the “Newburgh conspiracy.” The founders had learned the hard way, and taught explicitly, that violent revolution is something to be avoided if it’s even remotely possible.
When is it Justified?
And yet, there was—and still is—the fact that our own Declaration of Independence takes the possibility of justified revolution as a given. “When in the course of human events”—not if, but when—“it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” But how to know “when”? If revolution is such a painful, bloody, miserable thing—and it is—how can we know when to make the terrible decision of taking that cost upon ourselves?
Hamilton addresses this, too, in Federalist #28. What has been called the “right of revolution” may fittingly be invoked “if the representatives of the people betray their constituents.” In such a case “there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.” It would, Hamilton argued, actually be more feasible to rebel against the federal government than against state governments, because rebelling against the federal government would require a vast, coordinated, and carefully planned assault. “In a single state,” he explains, “if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource.”
That is a pretty apt description of the Capitol hill assault, which was a federal-level riot with a state or local level of disorganization. The motley crew of protestors and rabble rousers that flooded into the building were unruly, disorganized, and without a plan. They had concerns about election integrity—some of which I share—but the court cases attempting to prove that November 2020 was a fraud had failed. One would be hard-pressed to say what they wanted, or—if what they wanted was Trump back in office—how they realistically thought they were going to achieve it.
What Hamilton argues about real, justified rebellions is, in part, that they have to be thought through and given the gravity they deserve. The fact that the United States is a big, diverse, and centrally governed country actually helps ensure that any successful revolution, in the event of true federal usurpation, would have to be carefully considered. Its costs would have to be weighed, and its rationale would have to be defended persuasively before a large number of citizens. Anything less than that is unserious and juvenile—not to mention counterproductive. The riot on January 6 was all those things.
Taking Riots Seriously
In a funny sort of way, Hamilton’s arguments here mirror those of James Madison in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHYOUFLe40Cp9g1Ni8zubyU_s3Weg">Federalist #10</a>. This is one of the most famous Federalist papers—it argues that liberty and representative government can thrive in a large republic because it means the different interests and factions have to find ways of working together if they want to accomplish anything major at the national level. This forced compromise and collaboration is a national safeguard against “the cabals of a few.”
For Hamilton, true revolution means collaboration, organization, and coordination among a variety of Americans, all of whom agree that their country has been stolen from them. He goes so far as to say that a successful revolution will have to ally with some parts of the government—either state governments against federal, or vice versa:
<blockquote>
Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these will have the same disposition towards the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress.
</blockquote>
It is not my opinion that either the protestors at the Capitol or the rioutous mobs from summer 2020 have thought through and coordinated their efforts seriously enough to justify revolution. If there is any group of people who really have tried to coordinate insurrection in recent memory, it’s oligarchs like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/politics/george-soros-racial-justice-organizations.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/politics/george-soros-racial-justice-organizations.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFF1fsbn8pE5CoXunyuRsaMjIntlA">George Soros</a> and <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/jack-dorsey-bu-center-for-antiracist-research-gift/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/jack-dorsey-bu-center-for-antiracist-research-gift/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGrls2bolS0D8mVyNikyjGIlMODww">Jack Dorsey</a>, who have calculatingly funded and encouraged racialist agitators while silencing opposition. That kind of puppetry and deceit really does amount to something like a coup—though not one, God willing, that has yet taken full control of this country.
I imagine some will object that the tech magnates and their Democrat stooges effectively have staged a silent revolution of their own, one for which violent rebellion is the only available mode of redress. To this I respond: grow up. We have not even begun yet to pursue all our legal and nonviolent options for fighting back against Big Tech and Davos. Conservatives talk a big game about local politics, but do you know the name of your local representative? Do you know whether he or she really stands for what you believe in? How about your neighbors—do you have any idea what their politics are? Any chance you can work together with them to get someone good on the ballot? Any chance you’ve tried?
The Left has played a long and in many cases quite sinister ground game for decades—infiltrating the schools, funding election efforts, building infrastructure and connections that have enabled them to insinuate themselves and their psychotic ideas into the culture. We laugh at the Democrats’ <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gretchen-whitmer-stacey-abrams-prayer-candle" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gretchen-whitmer-stacey-abrams-prayer-candle&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1610731558671000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwXr2iQYudXNd9McydS4LOHewumw">worship</a> of the failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, but they know that her relentless local campaigning was a big part of what clinched the Senate when it all came down to Georgia.
We can—must—play the same ground game in reverse, substituting our good ideas for their bad ones. We have to get serious about building new schools for our kids, about seeking new servers for our digital communications, about making the local connections that will be the foundation of our new coalition. The alternative is more frantic, unpremeditated political violence, which won’t do what we want and will eventually make everything much, much worse. Count me out.
If, on the other hand, you’re ready to get serious about winning the ground game on the New Right—if you’re ready to start working yesterday for a more robust populist coalition, one that can win locally and, in time revitalize conservatism nationally—then I’m right there with you. Let’s get to work.
Spencer Klavan is host of the <a href="http://youngheretics.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://youngheretics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFegURPjAdNFJd0-_mKudXAgmAp5g">Young Heretics</a> podcast and associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwm82CEKe6gHOjTWwdZQOTR6iQow">Claremont Review of</a> Booksand <a href="https://americanmind.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://americanmind.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQm8tQMK1XoUSXLWkCl3KkGZJgrQ">The American Mind</a>. He can be reached on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/spencerklavan" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/spencerklavan&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1608237713152000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHzq-src8474zs7-nMknyLYtgJwCA">@SpencerKlavan</a>.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Protests As Joint Session Of Congress Confirms Presidential Election Result

The Threat of Revolution

The Federalist

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in mid-June in a discussion with former NATO Secretary Anders Rasmussen and Politico’s Ryan Heath, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?473232-3/copenhagen-democracy-summit-conversation-john-kerry">insinuated</a> that the Republican Party traditionally suppresses the vote of non-Republican voters and warned that it could precipitate a &#8220;revolution&#8221; in the United States. Kerry stated, “If people don’t have adequate access to the ballot, I mean that’s the stuff on which revolutions are built. If you begin to deny people the capacity of your democracy to work, even the Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, we have an inherent right to challenge that.”
Kerry stated that the voter suppression affected the Bush-Gore 2000 election, his own campaign against George W. Bush in 2004, and the Stacey Abrams gubernatorial candidacy in Georgia as he said, “I’m also concerned about something that affected my campaign in 2004; it affected Al Gore in 2000, and it has obviously affected other campaigns in our country in the last few years, including most recently in Georgia, where certain officials of a particular party purposefully make it difficult for the other party to vote where they control those matters.”
Kerry was asked, “How worried are you about the future of American political institutions?”
The man who was <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances/net-worth?cid=N00000245">reportedly worth $100 million</a> in 2013 replied with a class-warfare answer as he replied, “I’m worried. I’m worried. Right now our democracy is not working up to war. Very simple. Too much money in our system. Far too little sensitivity to the plight of a whole bunch of people who are living far more unequal lives. The disparity of wealth distribution in our country has grown worse and worse by the year.”
He continued, “So we have major challenges. If people don’t have adequate access to the ballot, I mean that’s the stuff on which revolutions are built. If you begin to deny people the capacity of your democracy to work, even the Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, we have an inherent right to challenge that.”
Kerry then celebrated that massive protests around the country in recent days as a “torrent of awareness” and 2020 as a “fascinating year”:
<blockquote>And I’m worried that increasingly, people are disaffected. What encourages me is this incredible spontaneous reaction to the killing of George Floyd by those police officers has unleashed a torrent of awareness that people see this unfairness now and it’s I think becoming a voting issue. It wasn’t a voting issue; it may now become one.
So this is going to be a fascinating year; we have not had a year like this in the United States since 1968 … I am more optimistic now that we’re going to see a massive response and perhaps real change for the better. That will strengthen America in the world; we’ll have greater credibility with countries all around the world, and if we get a new president who the world respects and is ready to listen to and believe, I think you’ll see a world of difference in other countries, too.</blockquote>
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers with the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe"> member</a>.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Campaigns In Iowa

John Kerry Accuses GOP Of Historically Suppressing The Vote, Warns Of 2020: ‘That’s The Stuff On Which Revolutions Are Built’

John Kerry

Protests

Voter Supression

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