A brief trip back to my native Britain the other week was a depressing experience.
There has been widespread rioting in cities across England following the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/more-than-a-dozen-people-mostly-children-stabbed-by-17-year-old-male-in-u-k-multiple-fatalities-reported" target="_blank" rel="noopener">murder</a> of three young girls in Southport at a Taylor Swift dance class.
A large number of Brits, I think it is fair to say, are extremely <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/people-have-finally-had-enough-of-the-illegal-immigration-takeover" target="_blank" rel="noopener">agitated</a> about uncontrolled (often illegal) immigration. Tens of thousands of migrants have been allowed to flood into the country on small dinghies from France. 1 in 27 people now living in Britain arrived in the past two years. 4 in 10 foreign-born people in Britain have arrived in the past decade. 
There is a palpable sense that nothing in Britain runs the way it should, least of all the criminal justice system.
The number of <a href="https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recorded rapes</a> in England and Wales in 2023-24 was three times higher than in 2013-14. A recent investigation discovered that across much of the country, the police had not identified a single suspect for neighborhood crimes over the previous three years. Only a few weeks before the unrest erupted, the authorities announced that even violent offenders would be released from prison after serving a mere 40 percent of their sentences.
Then came the riots, and the authorities suddenly discovered that it is possible to arrest and prosecute criminals after all. Prosecutions that would normally take months to come to court were undertaken within a few days. That, plus the return of British rain, seems to have dampened the spirits of the troublemakers.
Instead of clamping down on immigration, or addressing some of the underlying concerns about Muslim integration (or lack thereof), the authorities seem to find it easier to clamp down on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-uks-orwellian-crackdown-on-free-speech-could-be-headed-our-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener">free speech</a>, prosecuting people for obnoxious opinions about either immigrants or Muslims expressed online.
The most senior official in charge of public prosecutions in Britain declared that he has a team of “dedicated police officers scouring social media” to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/uk-police-chief-suggests-he-would-arrest-americans-for-highlighting-british-riots-online" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arrest people</a> for posting things that are “insulting” or “abusive”. He even threatened to extradite people to the UK for sharing such material online.
All of this has helped contribute to the now widely held idea that Britain has a “two tier” criminal justice system.
Having cheerfully announced that they would be letting violent criminals out of prison after completing less than half their sentences a few weeks before, the authorities now threaten people with jail time for expressing idiotic views. In Cheshire, the police boasted of arresting a woman for what they called “an inaccurate social media post”.
In order to fully understand why Britain is in such a sorry state it is essential to appreciate what has gone wrong with the country’s judiciary.
Mass immigration has become an explosive issue in Britain because judges have routinely thwarted attempts by successive governments to control it. In 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019, Brits voted repeatedly to end mass immigration. It has not happened because judges have systematically prevented elected governments from controlling the country’s borders.
British judges only ever seem to rule in favor of those who enter the country illegally being able to remain, ruling on the basis of what they think the law should be, not the laws Parliament has passed. 
  
Britain, a once orderly, high-trust society has become increasingly lawless because judges have routinely failed to apply sentences that ordinary Brits would regard as just. It is so commonplace for violent robbers and rapists to be given community sentences, rather than go to prison, it is seldom even reported anymore.
Why are British judges so awful? Because they are unaccountable to the public.
In Britain, judges are appointed, not elected. Until 2006, at least the appointments were made by an elected minister, meaning there was a degree of democratic oversight. 
  
Since 2006, Britain’s judges have been appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission, a body obsessed about diversity, equity and inclusion, rather than justice. Thanks to Human Rights law, judges are not merely unaccountable. They regard judicial activism as part of their job.
Liberty and order in Britain are collapsing as a consequence.
At some point, we must all hope a new Margaret Thatcher emerges in Britain, someone with the vision and principle to save the country from decline. On its current trajectory, Britain is drifting towards the abyss of a sectarian society.
In 2001, there were one and a half million Muslims in Britain. Today there are 4 million. If even a small percentage of British Muslims adhere to the Islamist teachings of Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian father of modern violent jihad, the country has a massive problem. Far from addressing the problem, right now Britain is a country that cannot even talk about the fact that it might have a problem.
Any new Thatcher must, as she did, address an underlying British economic malaise. Thanks to net zero energy policies, extraordinary restrictive regulations, high taxes and excessive public spending, the UK has had remarkably little per capita growth over the past decade.
But far more important than fixing the economy, Britain needs a state machinery capable of addressing issues of culture and cohesion. Old assumptions, and long established precedents governing citizenship, will need to change.
For that to happen, the next Thatcher needs to recognize that much of the machinery of the British state is dysfunctional. Reform is overdue.
Judges need to come under some sort of democratic oversight. Senior civil servants must no longer be afforded the luxury of deciding whether to implement policies that clash with their preferences. Those elected to Parliament, not unelected officials, need to be able to decide if the country can afford to cut taxes.
Britain can only be pulled back from the brink by a leader that recognizes that it is time to treat the judiciary and the administrative state as Thatcher once treated the trade unions.
* * *
Douglas Carswell is the President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. He was previously a Member of Parliament for 12 years and never lost an election.
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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On October 7 last year, ordinary civilians in Israel were the victims of extraordinary savagery. Hamas terrorists killed young people at a music festival, often in gruesome ways. Families were slaughtered in suburban homes. By any civilized moral standards, there ought to be overwhelming sympathy for a country subjected to such savagery.
Instead, throughout the Western world, we have witnessed endless anti-Israel protests. Why?
Part of the reason is demographics. In Britain, for example, in 2001 there were one and half million Muslims. Today, there are almost four million.
That is not to say that every — or even most — British Muslims are anti-Israel. But it does explain the scale and size of some recent protests.
So, too, on American university campuses. There have been frequent anti-Israel student protests, often at so-called elite universities. It is perhaps not a coincidence that there has also been a rapid rise in the number of students with Middle Eastern backgrounds at such universities.
Again, not every student from the Middle East is necessarily anti-Israel. But the reservoir of potential anti-Israel student protesters is certainly larger than before.
The rise in anti-Israel sentiment in the West clearly can’t only be about demographics. Many, if not most, of those protesting against Israel are not those with a Middle Eastern background, but those on the political Left.
Why then do those on the Left have such animus towards Israel? Why do they seem to suspend ordinary moral standards whenever Israel is involved?
When it comes to Ukraine, for example, those on the political Left – correctly in my view – see Ukraine as a brave country, rightfully taking a stand against a vastly bigger aggressor.
So why don’t they see Israel that way?
Israel wasn’t just attacked on October 7. From the Six Day War to the Yom Kippur War, Israel has been on the receiving end of relentless aggression.
Israel, a country smaller than Vermont, is surrounded by larger foes intent on destroying her and eradicating her people, as Hamas showed us a few months ago.
Progressive opinion in America and Britain is of the view that the government of Ukraine must not try to accommodate Russia or make concessions. So why do they demand that Israel call a ceasefire?
London, Washington and Berlin are full of leaders who want to supply Ukraine with weapons. Why then do many also demand that America and Europe stop giving Israel the tools to defend herself?
The last time there was unequivocal support for Israel in the West was during the Entebbe raid in Uganda in 1976. I remember the morning of the Entebbe raid well. A young child at the time, I happened to be living close by in Kampala.
When Israel pulled off a daring rescue mission, freeing the trapped hostages from the hijacked Air France plane at Entebbe — where Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan lost his life — there was rejoicing across the political spectrum.
Today, when Israel attempts to rescue her hostages in Gaza she is treated by many media outlets with scorn. Look at how posters of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been torn down in cities throughout Europe and America.
As my friend Douglas Murray has pointed out, when a cat or dog goes missing in London or Paris or New York, people will often put up a poster about the missing pet. If we saw someone take down a poster about a missing pet, we would be offended. We’d know it was wrong. Where is the outrage against those removing posters of the Bibas kids?
One reason Israel is held to a different standard is anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is a famously shape shifting virus. At one time, Jews were hated for their religion, then for their race. Today, it seems to me, it is for their nation.
Israel is loathed by many progressives because as a country, Israel embodies the notion of national self-determination. For many centuries, Jewish families toasted each other at Passover with the phrase: “Next year in Jerusalem.”
And then in 1948, almost miraculously, it came true.
National self-determination offends elite opinion formers. They revere supranationalism instead. They venerate the UN, the ICC and the EU.
Progressives prefer laws made by international treaty over those passed by elected national legislatures. Progressives prefer fealty to rules made by the global community over obligations to an actual community.
Israel’s success offends the Left not only because she is a national state, but because she demonstrates the success of Western society.
If all cultures were of equal worth, why then does a small state that could fit inside Vermont produce so much enterprise and innovation?
If there is an equivalence between cultures, why has post 1948 Israel seen such success amid a sea of Middle Eastern failure and autocracy?
Those who loathe Israel don’t just hate the Jewish nation state, they despise all nation states – including another phenomenally successful Republic, started not in 1948 but in 1776.
If they merely hate Israel, why do they burn the American flag?
America and the Western way of life is their intended target.
Whether we like it or not, those of us who love America, who see Western culture as a sublime human achievement, have no choice but to side with and support Israel, against those who seek to destroy us all.
Those who hate Israel hate us too.
* * *
Douglas Carswell is the President &amp; CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
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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Woke ideology is everywhere. Over the past thirty years, it has captured many American institutions.
Like many people, I once assumed that young Americans who dabbled in a little political correctness at college would soon grow out of it when they left.
I was wrong. Rather than change when they entered the world of work, they changed the workplace. Today there is hardly an HR department in corporate America that is not committed to promoting Diversity, Equity &amp; Inclusion (DEI).
A generation ago, corporate America did not know what a preferred pronoun was. Today you cannot apply for a job without declaring yours.
DEI means that Martin Luther King’s vision of a color blind meritocracy is in danger of slipping away. Obama’s election to the White House was supposed to herald a post-racial America. America today feels like it is increasingly re-racialized.
If you had told me at the time of the Iraq war that American students would be protesting in support of Hamas in 2024, I would not have believed you. So prevalent are the extreme Left on campus it’s seldom considered newsworthy today.
Conservative America needs to launch a concerted effort to fight back. It is not enough to hope that Congress passes legislation. I’m done hoping my governor gets around to issuing an Executive Order to defeat DEI.
We need to take action ourselves by ensuring our own families are immunized against the woke mind-virus.
Born in Britain and raised in Uganda, I came to America by choice. Shocked at how social media and progressive professors often teach young Americans to think the worst of their country, I did not want my young daughter to grow up seeing things that way.
So, I started to tell my daughter what I felt she needed to know about her new home.
America, I explained, was founded in liberty. Sure, I joked, the first Americans might have beaten Brits like us at Yorktown, but the important thing is that liberty that won. 
Returning from a trip to Washington DC, we talked about why the US Constitution was one of the best systems of government in the world. The Founders, we discussed, borrowed from both the English and the Roman tradition (There’s a reason the Senate is called the Senate). 
America might be a superpower, I wanted her to understand, but America has for the most part used that strength wisely. The United States has not built an empire, but used her might to set other people free.
Talking in our kitchen one day, I pointed at all the everyday objects around us – light bulbs, microwaves, a passing airplane – to illustrate that Americans are remarkably inventive.
Discussing <a href="https://tourosynagogue.org/history/george-washington-letter/washington-seixas-letters/">George Washington’s letter</a> to the congregation at Touro synagogue one evening, I explained that Jewish and Christian beliefs are the key to understanding Americans’ strong sense of individualism.
As we celebrated our first Thanksgiving, I told her it was a chance for every American to feel gratitude for being here, whether your ancestors arrived at the end of the last ice age, or like our family, a few months earlier.
No matter how carefully we raise our children, it is inevitable that as they grow up they will be exposed to the “woke” mind virus. Teaching them these basic truths about America, I believe, will give them an antidote against it.
When our children come across progressive professors, or leftist ideas on social media, or through friends of friends, knowing the truth about their country will prove important.
If we do not teach our families these truths about America, TikTok and progressive professors will fill the void.
That’s why I decided to take these six lessons and turn it into an illustrated children’s story book, “<a href="http://meganandmiles.com.">What Makes America Special</a>.” I want every child in the country to be able to draw from the lessons I taught my daughter about our new home.
We all take for granted the things we are familiar with. It is human nature to overlook what we have always known. So take it from me as an immigrant when I tell you that this is an extraordinary country.
America’s success is not a question of having lots of natural resources. The American achievement cannot be attributed to geography or the climate. This country is exceptional not because the laws of physics are any different over here.
The United States has flourished because of decisions made in a courthouse in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, which hardwired freedom into the DNA of the young Republic. So long as America stays true to that tradition, each generation of Americans will bequeath an even greater country.
It is essential we pass on knowledge of that tradition to the next generation.
* * *
Douglas Carswell is the President &amp; CEO of the <a href="https://mspolicy.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mississippi Center for Public Policy</a>. He was previously a Member of the British Parliament.
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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The Best Antidote To Wokeness Is Knowing The Truth About This Country

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Progressives in Washington are intent on pushing through a $1.4 trillion covid relief bill, the so-called American Rescue Plan Act. Full of special interest spending, the bill will have little, if any, effect on the trajectory of the Covid virus.  It will, however, have a dramatic impact on the level of government debt, making future federal tax hikes inevitable.
What can conservatives do about it?  Unless Americans are prepared to sit back and watch their country morph into a European-style social democratic state, they need an alternative. The good news is that individual states can show us how different things could be.
For example, here in Mississippi, plans are advancing to eliminate personal income tax entirely.  A bill prepared by House Speaker, Philip Gunn, seeks to phase out income tax within the state over the next decade, starting this summer.
At present, anyone earning over $10,000 in Mississippi pays 5 percent to the state government.  Under the Gunn plan, no one would pay any income tax on their first $47,400 a year and married couples would not pay any state income tax on their first $95,400. If this proposal passes, the majority of households will be exempt from paying state income tax in just a few weeks.
The Mississippi model for eliminating income tax is an illustration for conservatives across the country of how it can be done.
Some conservatives in Mississippi are understandably wary about the plan because they see it as a tax swap.What Mississippians are given in terms of an income tax reduction, they fear, could be taken away with an increase in taxes elsewhere.
Some of these concerns are not unfounded, with a concurrent proposal to raise the sales tax from 7 to 9.5 percent. But it is not a straight swap. The change is not tax neutral and the overall tax burden for Mississipians will still fall by about $2 billion.
Normally, the more you tax something, the less of it you get. State governments understand this when they increase taxes on tobacco to discourage us from smoking.
So why tax incomes when doing so means you end up with fewer incomes? Moving the tax burden away from income towards consumption means more jobs and greater personal freedom for individuals who now get to decide how they spend their own money.
Conservatives looking to set out an alternative to Washington’s high tax agenda should seek to switch the burden of taxation away from taxes on income towards taxes on consumption.
Of course, whenever anyone tries to shift the tax burden, those that benefit from the change generally keep silent, while those who might lose out from the change make their voices heard. That is why when making structural changes to the tax system, it is often wise to ensure targeted tax breaks to ensure no one is worse off. This is precisely what Mississippi is proposing to do, with a gradual cut in taxes on groceries, until their eventual elimination.
America, it is often noted, is divided between blue states and red states. As a recent arrival to the United States, I have been struck by the extent to which people, businesses, and innovation, seem to be flowing out of the blue states and into the red ones.
Americans seem to be leaving high tax states like California and New York, and moving to low tax states like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, New Hampshire and even South Dakota.
Instead of drawing the obvious lesson from that mass migration, those that run the federal government seem determined to make the rest of America like California and New York. Our mission as conservatives is to show, state by state, that another America – one that remains true to the Founding ideal of limited government – is not only possible but works better.
Douglas Carswell is the President &amp; CEO of the Mississippi Centre for Public Policy.  He was a British Member of Parliament for twelve years.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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How States Can Lead America Back Towards Lower Taxes And Less Government

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‘Freedom’, warned Ronald Reagan, ‘is never more than one generation away from extinction.’ Almost 32 years to the day after Reagan left the White House, it is clear what he meant.
Today the ideas of liberty — which are the essence of American exceptionalism — are under attack.
A radical New Left is in the ascendant. Today in Congress sit representatives intent on imposing ruinous tax rates on America. An administrative state has arisen that risks stifling innovation. On university campuses across the country, young Americans are taught to despise their country’s past, belittle her present and despair for her future.
Being a Brit, I am often in awe of the American achievement. It is not just that America rose from being a collection of 13 British colonies to becoming the greatest republic the world has ever known. Despite today accounting for a mere 4 percent of the global population, the US economy is the world’s largest and most innovative. America leads the way in everything from developing vaccines against Covid to the science of super computing and space travel.
Over and above such material accomplishment, are America’s moral achievements. American exceptionalism has not only elevated the United States. By extension it has helped lift the cause of humankind.
Twice in the past century, America intervened to help save the world from militarism and Nazism. It was American resolve during the Cold War that overcame the threat of Communism. Can you imagine what the world might look like today if on any of those occasions the anti-American side had prevailed?
Following the defeat of Soviet communism, the past thirty years has witnessed the greatest increase in global prosperity in any period in human history. This global progress is underwritten by American leadership.
As you read this, millions of people around the world are benefiting from a GPS navigation system developed by the US — and offered to the rest of the world at no cost. Technology developed by Apple and others right here in the United States has put into the pockets of millions of people across the planet more computing power than NASA had the day they landed a man on the moon. Bill Gates has ploughed billions into eradicating malaria in Africa, doing more than any government ever managed to improve the lives of Africans.
The one thing that most surprises me about American exceptionalism is the refusal of America’s elites to see it.
Instead of taking pride in America’s past, millions of Americans have been taught to despise their own country. To be sure, America has not always lived up to the founding ideals of liberty. But that is no reason to reject the founding principles as the ‘woke’ left insist.
Far from appreciating what makes America so exceptional, many seem to think it is a badge of intellectual sophistication to repudiate anything that sets America apart. “Woke” ideas are flaunted by those seeking to signal their supposed superiority.
Those of us who believe that the United States is one of the greatest forces for good in the world have a fight on our hands. The battle for freedom, which many of us assumed had been won a generation ago when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, needs to be fought and won again.
I believe that the best way to win the fight for freedom in America is to take the initiative at the state level, in places like Mississippi. This is why I have taken on the job of President &amp; CEO at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
It is at the state level, not in DC, that the best public policy ideas seem to emanate. In the 1990s, Wisconsin showed the way with welfare reforms. It was local states that pioneered Charter Schools, and more recently, it has been southern states, like Florida and Louisiana that have led the way on school choice. Taxes have been not just cut, but abolished, within various states much more often than ever seems to happen in DC.
Over the next few years, it will be in places like Mississippi that an alternative to the big-government-knows-best approach must be developed.
One lesson I learned from the Brexit campaign in Britain is that big change is possible. For years, those of us who wanted to re-establish Britain as a self-governing country were told we were wasting our time. There was, it was often explained to me, no point in trying to change things that had long ago been settled.
Today in America the progressives want you to believe that there is something inevitable about the relentless growth of big government and the socialisation of the American way of life.
The constant erosion of American exceptionalism is only unstoppable if you choose not to help stop it. Do nothing, and in the words of Ronald Reagan, we really will &#8220;spend our sunset years telling our children and our children&#8217;s children what it was like to once live in the United States where men were free.&#8221; Act now and this is a fight we can win — American exceptionalism can endure.
Douglas Carswell is the new President &amp; CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.  He co-founded the Vote Leave campaign that won the Brexit referendum.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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