Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro is a bestselling author yet again with his latest book, “Lions &amp; Scavengers: The True Story of America (And Her Critics).” 
Shapiro reached the coveted New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2025/09/21/hardcover-nonfiction/">bestsellers list</a> shortly after the release of “Lions &amp; Scavengers,” cementing his place as one of the conservative movement’s top writers. This comes after Shapiro moved up the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lions-Scavengers-Story-America-Critics/dp/1668097885/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0">Amazon bestseller list at launch</a>. “Lions &amp; Scavengers” marks Shapiro’s third-straight book to hit the Times bestsellers list after the “Right Side of History” and the “Authoritarian Moment” became bestsellers in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2019/04/14/">2019</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2021/08/15/combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction/">2021</a>, respectively. 
The Daily Wire host called “Lions &amp; Scavengers” his “most important book.” The book was written following Hamas’ horrific attacks on innocent Israelis on October 7, 2023. The destructive “scavenger” mindset that Shapiro highlights in the book shows an issue even larger than recent gross antisemitism and attacks against Jews. 
“This is something different. It is a united, coalitional hatred of the West,” he says.
Lions, like America’s founding fathers, strive for the highest good, building systems that promote freedom, prosperity, and equality of opportunity. Meanwhile, Scavengers degrade these ideals, spreading resentment and entitlement that threaten to dismantle the foundations of Western civilization. The attacks on the West call for the lions to rise up and defend the traditions and values that we hold dear, Shapiro argues. Only if the lions triumph can America’s success continue to the next generation. 
“We need to be a civilization of Lions. We need to teach our children to be Lions, and to fight the Scavengers,” Shapiro writes. 
Signed copies of “Lions &amp; Scavengers” are still available at <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/products/lions-and-scavengers?utm_campaign=ben-book&amp;utm_content=20250902&amp;utm_source=slash-ben">Daily Wire Shop</a>.
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Lions & Scavengers NYT Bestseller

Ben Shapiro Hits NYT Bestsellers List With Roaring Success Of ‘Lions & Scavengers’

Ben Shapiro

Books

New York Times

Bestselling author Jodi Picoult went on a full TikTok tirade over the reactions to Charlie Kirk’s murder.
The 59-year-old fiction writer, who has sold more than 40 million copies of her 28 published novels and short stories, is receiving a significant amount of backlash for her angry rant.
“An undeserved violent death does not negate the terrible pain that he inflicted on others,” <a href="https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1967347462051704996">Picoult said</a>. “I&#8217;m not buying into the hypocrisy.”
“You won&#8217;t trick me into believing it&#8217;s just about respect for life when your side has cheered families being ripped apart, when your side has proudly supported Alligator Alcatraz merch,” the “My Sister’s Keeper” author continued.
Picoult went on to accuse conservatives of “immediately jump[ing] to blame trans people and targeting HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), even though — shocker! — the shooter was a cis, white man from a Trump-supporting family who was raised to love guns.”
“I have always condemned all gun violence and I will continue to do so, but, as usual, the right only cares about violence when it happens to them. So, you know what? Miss me with the fake self-righteousness.”
Her rant spread quickly on X, sparking fierce opposition. By Monday morning, the TikTok was still public, but once it went viral, Picoult locked it down to private.
“Totally unhinged,” Libs of TikTok replied to the clip.
“Jodi, you write novels where the bad guy always gets exposed in the end. Congratulations, you’ve just made yourself the villain in real life,” another commenter <a href="https://x.com/merikuh/status/1967347960976654797">wrote</a>.
“Another brainwashed liberal spreading lies about Charlie Kirk. You can guarantee these people never watched any of Charlie’s videos. They live in their echo chambers believing each other’s lies,” a third agreed, vowing to boycott Picoult’s books.
This isn’t the first time the woke side of the publishing industry has shown its blatant bias regarding Kirk’s assassination. Author Stephen King was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stephen-king-walks-back-lie-about-charlie-kirk-with-half-hearted-apology">forced to apologize</a> after falsely accusing Kirk of advocating for gay people being stoned to death. 
The horror writer admitted his statement was untrue and deleted the original after social media comments flooded in, with followers proving him wrong.

Jodi Picoult

Author Jodi Picoult Melts Down On TikTok, Lashes Out At Charlie Kirk Supporters

Author Jodi Picoult Directs TikTok Tantrum At Charlie Kirk Supporters

assassination

Charlie Kirk

TikTok

We&#8217;ve known for a very long time in this country that if you said the wrong thing about the trans issue, you could be canceled.
But now, finally, there are people — heretofore on the Left — who are acknowledging that the threat of cancellation has been real.
This is just one of the beautiful flowering fruits of the Trump administration: people are now free to say things they weren’t allowed to say before.
It’s not clear whether people are deciding that they want to say what is currently more popular or if they genuinely repent having been bullied into acceptance of the trans agenda.
On Wednesday, Malcolm Gladwell, a famous bestselling author, explained his amended point of view on transgender athletes, meaning men playing against women in sports. He was speaking specifically about a 2022 appearance at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where he moderated a panel discussion in which they talked about the path forward for the inclusion of trans athletes in sports, meaning men competing against women.
On Wednesday, Gladwell stated to 2022 panel co-host Ross Tucker, &#8220;I’m ashamed of my performance at that panel because I share your position 100%, and I was cowed. The idea of saying anything on this issue — I was, I believe in retrospect — in a dishonest way, I was objective in a dishonest way.”
That is honest. Many people were so scared of saying what was obviously true that they didn&#8217;t say it.
This happens all the time in politics. It happened in Great Britain during the Rotherham grooming scandal, when members of the media specifically decided not to cover the fact that there were Muslim grooming gangs, Muslim men, who were grooming underage white girls for sex and then passing them around.
People in the media knew about this, and they decided not to say anything, because to say something would have resulted in censure and public opprobrium as well as people in power suggesting that you were somehow in league with the Right.
And for a very long time in this country and the UK, being in league with the Right was code for being thrown out of public life.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2273-unspoken-truths-on-trans-can-now-be-said?elementPosition=1&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
I don&#8217;t believe that every view is equivalent. I&#8217;m not a moral relativist. I don&#8217;t believe that we should take every view with equal seriousness. I do think that there is an Overton window, meaning the arena of valuable discussion.
The problem is that the Left shut the Overton window so much that if you disagreed with the Left and fundamentally true principles such as “men are not women,” they would throw you out.
So, for many members of the Right, the question becomes: what do you do when Malcolm Gladwell says something like this? What do you do?
The answer is you probably should offer forgiveness. You probably should offer some form of generosity. While you can make the argument that what Gladwell did was cowardly, it’s more about the insane echo chamber that exists in so many of our elite spaces.
The reality is, if you said what Malcolm Gladwell now says in 85% of the country, you&#8217;d be totally fine; it is the mainstream view.
But if you were in the elite circles in which Malcolm Gladwell travels, you would have lost your social standing. You might have lost your job; people would stop reviewing your books. There was a real risk attached.
It is a credit to President Trump and the American people that the Overton window has been opened again. The American people didn’t want to do this anymore. They were done.
That’s not true in Great Britain, where cancel culture has been enshrined in government policy.
What prevents that from happening in the United States is not our magical adherence to First Amendment principles as a people. Unfortunately, there are many, many people in the United States who — if they had the opportunity —would vote to curb free speech. If you look at the polls of young people, young people overwhelmingly believe that hate speech should trump free speech. According to many polls, young people believe there should be legal limits on the kinds of speech one should be allowed to say out loud.
What protects us is the structure of the Constitution. It is the fact that the Constitution bars Congress from doing what the British government is doing in Great Britain. And the Supreme Court has made very clear that in deference to the Constitution, free speech must be protected at the highest possible level.
The Founders knew what they were doing.
And President Trump, by opening the Overton window and making it possible for those on the Right to be heard and not canceled, is paying tribute to the Founders in the best possible way.

Audible’s The Unusual Suspects With Kenya Barris And Malcolm Gladwell Live With Brené Brown – 2025 SXSW Conference And Festival

Unspoken Truths On Trans Can Now Be Said

Cancel Culture

Democrats

Leftists

Malcolm Gladwell

Opinion

Transgender

Transgender Athletes

Women's sports

Legacy media made another feeble attempt to malign Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the eve of the release of her new book. But contrary to the whispers of palace intrigue surrounding the Court’s Dobbs decision, her book, &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Law-Reflections-Court-Constitution/dp/0593421868/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ILSOy3KahPQkW1N9rrNO_q4yhhX-A5gHnGstjpJkVxIJEAnrRe9w_lF2EUAzY8ASQZ9CZqVDHgKZt8ve0nfVVfwqI92ZVk_q0-xS0_0MvGjhlohklgHmlqVEi16JQXap9StaJ9rMCJYS5c-zfbRU2u7nrMK7Ps-ryfWBC5LGZTDLoJ6JVQxpOU7zm2FeSFITwHaNi6WP9-IfOtCiQoJ3-HjnOJseV05XFTe7FBtb5Jo.5_511Qkt6JuwwSSsSnxDilB7c5pvyEXA08tcA6xNPMM&amp;qid=1757008559&amp;sr=8-1">Listening to the Law</a>,&#8221; is a window into the careful legal reasoning and conscientious commitment to the law that has defined her career. It reminds us that liberty depends on intellect, conscience, and the steady moral vision women of faith uniquely bring to public life. Barrett embodies these traits, and they are mirrored in women across the country who refuse to be cowed. 
Barrett’s convictions never wavered when she was maligned for her Catholic faith. During her Seventh Circuit confirmation, Senator Dianne Feinstein warned of the “dogma living loudly” in Barrett — a jab she met with intelligence, poise, and unflinching calm. Her Supreme Court confirmation displayed the same razor-sharp clarity. While many American women see in Barrett traits they recognize in themselves — dedication, moral clarity, and attention to conscience — there will only ever be one ACB. I recognized it in small, ordinary ways, too. A friend once gave me a coffee mug that read, “The Dogma Lives Loudly Within Me”—a playful badge of honor. Even when the mug was accidentally shattered by a child unloading the dishwasher, the sentiment remained intact, much like the enduring faith of women who live their convictions quietly but resolutely, holding conscience above convenience.
In &#8220;Listening to the Law,&#8221; Barrett reflects on family, faith, and the role of law in society. She recalls her great-grandmother, a widowed mother of thirteen during the Depression, noting that “No generation starts afresh; each is shaped by its predecessors.”
<div id="attachment_968825" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Law-Reflections-Court-Constitution/dp/0593421868/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ILSOy3KahPQkW1N9rrNO_q4yhhX-A5gHnGstjpJkVxIJEAnrRe9w_lF2EUAzY8ASQZ9CZqVDHgKZt8ve0nfVVfwqI92ZVk_q0-xS0_0MvGjhlohklgHmlqVEi16JQXap9StaJ9rMCJYS5c-zfbRU2u7nrMK7Ps-ryfWBC5LGZTDLoJ6JVQxpOU7zm2FeSFITwHaNi6WP9-IfOtCiQoJ3-HjnOJseV05XFTe7FBtb5Jo.5_511Qkt6JuwwSSsSnxDilB7c5pvyEXA08tcA6xNPMM&amp;qid=1757008559&amp;sr=8-1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-968825" class="size-large wp-image-968825" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Sentinel Books" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Sentinel Books</div>
She observes that “Law is but one piece of what it takes to make a healthy society, and it (like everything else in life) exists in the midst of relationships.” She underscores that the Constitution commits us to pluralism through protections like those guaranteed by the First Amendment, which “requires the government to tolerate all opinions and all religions.” To critics who “suggest that people of faith have a particularly difficult time following the law rather than their moral views,” Barrett reiterates her understanding that “the guiding principle in every case is what the law requires, not what aligns with the judge’s own concept of justice.” Such resolve, she shows, can be met exactly because of the humility that derives from faith. And her own grounding in a large, loving family shines through — the book is dedicated simply to “Jesse,” her husband — a tribute both understated and profound.
When it comes to safeguarding America’s first freedom, Barrett’s rigor is urgently needed. Sooner rather than later, the Supreme Court will revisit Employment Division v. Smith. Authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Barrett clerked, Smith held that sincerely held religious objections do not exempt people from complying with “neutral and generally applicable laws.”
In practice, Smith has often crushed religious liberty, particularly regarding anti-discrimination laws tied to sexual orientation and gender identity. Barrett’s careful attention to conscience — the “feminine genius” St. John Paul II celebrated—is precisely what the Court needs to craft a workable framework for protecting the free exercise rights of those whose beliefs are countercultural. The stakes are far from abstract: the religious convictions of real women hang in the judicial balance.
Consider Cathy Miller, a Christian baker from California, fined for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage, who has asked the Court to hear her case this term. Or the Little Sisters of the Poor, who still refuse to include abortifacients or contraceptives in their health care plans despite the authoritarian demands of the Affordable Care Act’s “contraceptive mandate,” holding fast to Church teaching. Lori Smith, a Colorado website designer, refused to create speech she did not believe in — and won at the Supreme Court. Jessica Bates, a widowed Oregon mother, was blocked from fostering children because she would not embrace gender ideology — until the Ninth Circuit, of all places, vindicated her. These women were not seeking to impose beliefs on others, but to defend the right of all Americans to live out their faith without government coercion. They stand as sentinels between the state and the citizen’s conscience.
Backing them are brilliant women lawyers and scholars who turn principle into action. Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, has argued multiple Supreme Court cases. Lori Windham of the Becket Fund shields institutions and individuals from government overreach. Legal scholars like Mary Ann Glendon, Nicole Garnett, Helen Alvaré, and Stephanie Barclay provide indispensable intellectual firepower. Protecting religious liberty is neither abstract nor optional. It demands moral clarity, expert advocacy, and strategic rigor.
&#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Law-Reflections-Court-Constitution/dp/0593421868/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ILSOy3KahPQkW1N9rrNO_q4yhhX-A5gHnGstjpJkVxIJEAnrRe9w_lF2EUAzY8ASQZ9CZqVDHgKZt8ve0nfVVfwqI92ZVk_q0-xS0_0MvGjhlohklgHmlqVEi16JQXap9StaJ9rMCJYS5c-zfbRU2u7nrMK7Ps-ryfWBC5LGZTDLoJ6JVQxpOU7zm2FeSFITwHaNi6WP9-IfOtCiQoJ3-HjnOJseV05XFTe7FBtb5Jo.5_511Qkt6JuwwSSsSnxDilB7c5pvyEXA08tcA6xNPMM&amp;qid=1757008559&amp;sr=8-1">Listening to the Law</a>&#8221; shows that defending liberty requires both intellect and conscience. Barrett’s reflections illuminate the careful reasoning and moral clarity she brings to public life. Just as the other women highlighted here confront cultural and legal pressures with courage and fidelity, Barrett’s reflections on the law remind us that protecting religious freedom — our First Freedom — depends on women of faith. Through courage, attention to conscience, and steadfast commitment to the common good and the rule of law, they ensure liberty endures for generations to come.
* * *
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer is Director of the <a href="https://conscience-project.org/">Conscience Project.</a>
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated Kristen Waggoner was the former president of Alliance Defending Freedom. She is, in fact, the current president of the ADF.

MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-28-PM-1170

The Dogma Still Lives Loudly: Amy Coney Barrett And The Witness Of Women Of Faith

Amy Coney Barrett

Dobbs

First Amendment

Supreme Court

Women

There are various types of what I call “scavengers.”
There are “leeches,” people who seek to tear down the institutions of free markets because they believe that they are entitled to the gains of others.
There are the “lechers,” people who believe that the traditional family, the church, have to be torn asunder because those things are an imposition from the outside.
And then there are the “barbarians.”
The barbarians are people who emanate from places outside the United States, outside the West. And they see themselves as representatives of civilizations that have been laid low by the West. They believe that all of their failures are the fault of Western civilizations.
As I write in my new book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lions-Scavengers-Story-America-Critics/dp/1668097885/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.tHy4SBp_hHF-vHhtJtJe1QIrxRz7s0Aj13eFEmYaXMkg9SrRHykHV_NHWW6XhQWoxW_rAOTa8CabDdBGhR-hiGxPlwULwtB0j0lCq6HTT435WCOIrExCNI18TVrbTwSf7166CTZarphzcNjpZCtlTA.3BzLBNx3TKfvkr_UgYlzL5F_NdZR1DsGAEXY3t63SrE&amp;qid=1756846409&amp;sr=1-1">Lions and Scavengers</a>”:
<blockquote>The barbarian is an outsider to Western civilization who believes that all of his own maladies and ills can be laid at the feet of the colonizers of the West. In fact, the barbarian argues, only violence against his purported victimizers can free him of the servile mentality that these very colonizers have instilled in him. The barbarian speaks in the language of mass-murdering communist monster Che Guevara —whose visage still graces the T-shirts of thousands of misbegotten American college students — championing the power of hatred: “Hatred is an element of struggle, unbending hatred for the enemy which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.</blockquote>
The barbarians never posit a moral justification for how the destruction of the Western order ought to operate at their hands. They never explain just how, for example, a Palestinian state is somehow a burgeoning wellspring of human rights, or how an America without American values would make the world a better place. The only thing that matters is the destruction of the West, for in that destruction lies the supposed reclamation of the barbarian identity.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2271-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Last Friday, there was a big gathering of barbarians over in Detroit, Michigan, called the People&#8217;s Conference for Palestine. It was attended by a sitting member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib along with a wide variety of people who talked about the evils of America. They talked about how the country they were sitting in, this place that has given them prosperity, that has given them freedom, was an awful place. All of its core values are evil and terrible and need to be destroyed because America is a bad place, and Western civilization is responsible for all the ills of the rest of the world.
If you&#8217;re wondering why there are so many people in the West right are now moving toward right-wing parties, it is because those right-wing parties are saying, “We don&#8217;t need more of these people in our civilization.”
We don&#8217;t.
One speaker quoted someone saying that “the average American will never understand the plight of the Palestinian person, because the State of Israel is a carbon copy of the United States, and therefore the thing to do is to destroy the idea of America in American&#8217;s heads so that they can see the humanity of everybody outside of the warping of American exceptionalism and imperialism and all these evil things. We have to dismantle this idea of American exceptionalism, of supremacy, of being beyond reproach.”
He continued, “We live in an evil country.”
So get out. You can leave any time now.
Remember, the people who are being defended here by this person are the terrorist group Hamas.
There was not a single speaker at this event who said that Hamas should surrender, go into exile, and disarm, thus ending the war in Gaza and simultaneously ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
That was never mentioned by any of these people, because, of course, the fault always lies with America. It lies with the West. It lies with Israel. Anyone successful in the world is supposed to be a repository of exploitation.
Another speaker intoned, “We wanted to globalize the intifada, to expose to the world that Israel&#8217;s policies have nothing to do with security, that Israel tries to tell the world, and that our governments also regurgitate gaslighting us. We thought that if we could get this message out, the world would wake up and not allow Israel to do this, to do what it&#8217;s doing. And I must admit, that was a bit of naiveté on our part. But we have and we will continue to globalize the intifada, and we will force our government to listen to us, because they want us to accept a world that is inacceptable.”
“Inacceptable?” You mean unacceptable.
In any case, putting aside the grammar, the bigger problem here is the fact that “globalize the intifada” is a phrase that calls for widespread violence. That is what an intifada is, a violent uprising. Anybody who claims otherwise is lying to you.
<div id="attachment_967927" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lions-Scavengers-Story-America-Critics/dp/1668097885/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.tHy4SBp_hHF-vHhtJtJe1QIrxRz7s0Aj13eFEmYaXMkg9SrRHykHV_NHWW6XhQWoxW_rAOTa8CabDdBGhR-hiGxPlwULwtB0j0lCq6HTT435WCOIrExCNI18TVrbTwSf7166CTZarphzcNjpZCtlTA.3BzLBNx3TKfvkr_UgYlzL5F_NdZR1DsGAEXY3t63SrE&amp;qid=1756846409&amp;sr=1-1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-967927" class="wp-image-967927 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-02-Sep-2025-03-58-PM-6584-1024x576.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-02-Sep-2025-03-58-PM-6584-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-02-Sep-2025-03-58-PM-6584-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-02-Sep-2025-03-58-PM-6584-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-02-Sep-2025-03-58-PM-6584-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-02-Sep-2025-03-58-PM-6584-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>DailyWire+</div>
This is happening on the soil of America, as I write about in “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lions-Scavengers-Story-America-Critics/dp/1668097885/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.tHy4SBp_hHF-vHhtJtJe1QIrxRz7s0Aj13eFEmYaXMkg9SrRHykHV_NHWW6XhQWoxW_rAOTa8CabDdBGhR-hiGxPlwULwtB0j0lCq6HTT435WCOIrExCNI18TVrbTwSf7166CTZarphzcNjpZCtlTA.3BzLBNx3TKfvkr_UgYlzL5F_NdZR1DsGAEXY3t63SrE&amp;qid=1756846409&amp;sr=1-1">Lions and Scavengers</a>.” It&#8217;s not just that barbarians come from abroad and they enter our gates because we are soft-headed and soft-hearted. It&#8217;s also the enormous number of Americans who then side with the barbarians, because they don&#8217;t have confidence in their own civilization. They don&#8217;t have the belief in their own ideas to actually stand up to this garbage.
Lions are reflexively self-critical. What I mean by that is that in the West, there is actual moral merit to admitting your mistakes, to exposing yourself to the shame and ridicule of acknowledging guilt. That is something that good people tend to do.
Lions tend to do that because, after all, we live in a civilization, a Judeo-Christian biblically-based civilization, in which repentance is part of life. You&#8217;re supposed to acknowledge your sins so you can get stronger and get better.
The problem is that the barbarians and their allies are not interested in your proclamations of guilt. They&#8217;re not interested except to use it as a way to destroy you. They are interested in you shaming yourself. They want you to shame yourself and kneel before them so they can claim dominance. That&#8217;s the entire goal.
The co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide, last seen being ushered out of Congress after yelling at Marco Rubio during his confirmation hearings, called for the “taking out” of anyone who opposes his pro-terrorism agenda, saying they “need to be neutralized.”
This was in Detroit. Not in Qatar, or Iran.
This culminated with Rashida Tlaib, a sitting congresswoman from Michigan, ripping America and saying, “We are in your Congress.”
We know. We understand that the barbarian mentality is quite prevalent in our Congress.
“They thought they could kill us, rape us, and imprison us, violently, uproot us from our olive tree farms, starve our children to death, and we would disappear. Well, guess what? Now we&#8217;re in Congress and we&#8217;re in every corner of the United States,” she threatened. “We are just getting started.”
Yes, we understand that you have infiltrated Congress. We understand that. We understand there is a wide variety of people who have decided to stand in solidarity with all of this.
What is going to tear down the West is not just a West not confronted by the scavengers, but a West that allows the scavengers in; that somehow believes it is an aspect of its own greatness to allow the supremacy of people who wish to destroy its civilization.
That is the danger that lies within.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Speaks To Press On Gaza Food Shortages

The Hate-America Barbarians Inside The Gates

Anti-Semitism

Congress

Detroit

Israel

Palestinians

Pro-Hamas

Western Civilization

It all started with one book reading being denied at more than 50 public libraries even as Drag Queen Story Hours across America were welcomed with open arms. This was enough for actor and author Kirk Cameron to go on a mission to create something different, and now, See You at the Library returned for its third year this past Saturday, August 16.
This year, over 200 story hours were hosted in libraries across the country, uniting families around timeless values like faith, family, and freedom.
The flagship gathering this year took place in the heart of Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress. The historic event featured special guest readers Kirk Cameron, “Duck Dynasty” alum Missy Robertson, and Daily Wire host Michael Knowles. Held in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education’s Center of Faith, the moment marked a turning point, elevating the event from a grassroots effort to a national movement.
Cameron spoke candidly about what was at stake, telling the assembled crowd, “At the end of the day, it is about us recognizing that it is our job, not his, not theirs, to turn our country back to what made her great in the first place — faith, moral integrity, and courage.” He said America will either experience a “great awakening” or a “rude awakening” depending on the moral courage of its people.
Robertson echoed his words, saying, “When we say we are coming back as a country, we are saying we are coming back to the values that God wrote on each of our hearts.”
<div id="attachment_962541" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-962541" class="size-large wp-image-962541" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Michael-Knowles-864x576.jpg" alt="Michael Knowles" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Michael-Knowles-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Michael-Knowles-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Michael-Knowles-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Michael-Knowles.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />See You At the Library</div>
Knowles said a love of reading is the future. “Cultivating a love of reading, a love of stories, and the written word, and the spoken word is not just about entertaining yourself or getting through school. It’s essential to our entire understanding of the world and how we live our lives.”
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See You at the Library is continuing to grow, despite the Left’s efforts to shut it down.

Kirk Cameron

Kirk Cameron’s Story Hour Lands At Library Of Congress, Featuring Michael Knowles

Drag Queen story hour

Faith

General

Library

U.S.

The following excerpt is taken from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495">The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer</a>,” by Daniel J. Flynn, (Encounter Books, August 19, 2025)
* * *
&#8220;For the ﬁrst time in the past few months I find myself viscerally as well as intellectually deeply concerned about the immediate future of the country,” Frank Meyer wrote in March 1968 to co-founder of National Review Willi Schlamm in Europe. “Between Vietnam, this summer’s projected insurrectionary riots, and the real threat to twenty years of economic stability that the monetary situation poses, almost anything could happen.”
Everything did.
Lyndon Johnson soon announced his decision to neither seek nor accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Days later, a career criminal on the run after escaping prison murdered Martin Luther King Jr. The tragedy, and the initial elusiveness of the murderer, fueled riots that killed dozens in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and points beyond. Uprisings that spring plagued campuses. Columbia, where student activists occupied university buildings and held administrators hostage, served as the focal point. In June, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant incensed over U.S. aid to Israel, murdered Robert Kennedy. All the while the Vietnam War reached peak violence; more than three hundred American men died in combat each week.
The chaos jarred Meyer. Even prior to Kennedy’s murder, the National Review columnist had described the times as the most fateful for Americans since Fort Sumter. The upheaval, he reasoned, emanated not from deprivation but abundance. This did not lead to a more contented society. Riots, campus takeovers, civil disobedience, crime, and other actions often vaguely or specifically linked to political demands counterintuitively followed. The more authorities rewarded disobedience, disorder, and disregard for law, the more disobedience, disorder, and disregard for law proliferated. The damage from nihilism and a West alienated from itself, he concluded, bore this bitter fruit of attempted civilizational suicide.
His articles adopted an ominous tone. More shocking to readers, his order-liberty emphasis flipped. He still articulated libertarian positions in opposing the draft and in shunning calls for gun control in the wake of the assassinations (“An unarmed citizenry is potentially the victim, ﬁrst of anarchy, then of tyranny and totalitarianism”). The holstered ﬁrearm spotted under his jacket at a Philadelphia Society meeting in Chicago, where American Communists knew him best, indicated he practiced what he preached. The times dictated a condemnation of freedom’s unsavory cousin chaos. In March, Richard Nixon identiﬁed order as the priority. Meyer followed that summer by telling readers that “order is the ﬁrst condition of civilizational existence, the only foundation of freedom and well-being for anyone and everyone.”
<div id="attachment_961609" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-961609" class="size-large wp-image-961609" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Encounter Books" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Encounter Books</div>
His son John’s attendance at Columbia amid the takeover and riots laying waste to his hometown of Newark the previous summer personalized the events. So did his own history. He had once stood on the other side of the barricades. If he regarded many antiwar protestors as effectively aiding the Vietcong, then he surely recalled his own role in the 1930s peace movement that had softened Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. Meyer the Communist had shouted down speakers, disrupted meetings, and scoffed at campus authorities the way Mark Rudd now did. He saw others reliving his life and wanted to stop them from inflicting the damage that he had once caused.
“The issue facing the United States this summer is the survival of a free society,” he told readers. “No society can exist in a state of endemic disorder. Specifically, a representative republic cannot function if its magistrates and its representative assemblies are subject to blackmail by mob violence.” From Death Valley Days came a sheriff to make things right.
Meyer saw in Ronald Reagan the ﬁgure to lead Americans out of the smoke, grime, and darkness of 1968 to a place more resemblant of America. Some regarded this as a pipe dream; others as unwise.
◆ ◆ ◆
HUGH KENNER wrote William F. Buckley, Jr., a private letter critical of his “Ronald Reagan: A Relaxing View,” an unusually long cover article. Kenner explained of his letter to Guy Davenport, “It is to their honor that they want it revised for print. Imagine, per contra, The Nation running a pro-Reagan piece.” Not everyone welcomed Buckley’s tolerance. And, because
of that, Kenner’s view of the magazine changed. “Communication from WFB just re[a]d from Switzerland says that my Nervous View of Ronald Reagan has been held over till April (!) at Frank Meyer’s (!!) intervention, in the interests of fairness, Frank having held that Reagan (!!!) should be given a chance to reply,” Kenner wrote Davenport. “If Reagan does not, the accompanying rebuttal will be by Frank (!!!!).”
Behind the scenes, a January editorial meeting resulted in the board’s endorsement of Meyer’s personally rebutting the anti-Reagan piece. In February, Bill Rusher supplied the Master — the sobriquet he had long ago given to Meyer — with a dossier. Jeffrey Hart later received the task of writing the Meyer-engineered counterpoint to an article preoccupied with Reagan’s treatment of the universities. This substitution, given that it negated one English professor’s charge of anti-intellectualism with another’s rebuttal, struck as a master stroke to anyone paying attention but too cute by half to anyone really paying attention.
When “A Nervous View of Ronald Reagan” ran in May as an “Open Question,” Kenner, though a major asset as a literary critic, appeared outside of his element. Unlike Davenport, who had threatened to resign in 1965 after being assigned to cover a Philadelphia Society meeting, Kenner did subscribe to the general tenets that animated National Review. Nevertheless, the University of California–Santa Barbara professor came off as a parochial cosmopolitan in portraying California’s governor as a philistine for supporting the ﬁring of the university system’s president, Clark Kerr, and for his periodic clashes with academia, which to many conservatives increasingly resembled a left-wing training ground. The philistinism, to them, occurred among the people perverting intellectual pursuits toward the service of narrow, ideological ends.
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Hart, on leave from both Dartmouth and National Review to write speeches for Reagan, authored the “Open Question” that appeared immediately after Kenner’s. He juxtaposed Reagan’s widely shared critique of the campuses with Kenner’s use of “zamindary,” a ten-cent word even by National Review standards. He wondered why Kenner must psychoanalyze his subjects as though the mind holds the answer for all questions. For Kenner this undoubtedly avouched philistinism’s further inroads on the intellectual right; for many readers, it likely contrasted California’s man of the people with yet another of its professors above all in an ivory tower. The byline did not fully obscure who lurked behind every word. As a bewildered Davenport had explained to Kenner, “Frank thinks that Reagan ought to be president of the USA.”
Kenner lost sleep. He went from gaining respect for the magazine to losing it. Buckley, though playing a passive role, allowed this to happen. He acted as godfather to Kenner’s daughter, paid for another daughter’s freshman year at college, and served as best man at the widowed Kenner’s second wedding. The active involvement of his other friend of more than a decade, the editor of his book reviews, sharpened the sting. So did yet another colleague’s mockery of him in print as an egghead. “I can sympathize with you,” Davenport wrote, “knowing how I would feel to be hee-hawed at by a cold bastard like Hart who can scarcely hide the fact that he has been called in to wipe a well-aimed egg off a politician, and to denounce the opposition with cultivated yelps and whimpers.” Meyer lost his section’s most accomplished literary critic.
He pleaded with Davenport to beg his friend back. The last issue in May listed Kenner as an associate. Any trace of him had disappeared from the masthead by June.
Meyer succeeded in shielding his favored candidate but at terrible cost. The tear revealed the frayed fabric holding together the two elements — the cynosure for conservatives and a citadel for reﬁned literary appraisal — that made National Review great. Meyer could play conservative pope. He could serve as keeper of culture. Could he play both? The question did not always yield an answer in the affirmative.
◆ ◆ ◆
THE SAME WEEK that National Review offset Kenner’s criticism with Hart’s rebuttal, The New Republic published Meyer’s “Why I Am for Reagan,” one in a series from supporters of the various presidential contenders. The magazine commissioned Meyer to write the piece for obvious reasons. His campaign for Reagan began the moment the campaign for Goldwater ended.
In December 1964, Meyer spotlighted Reagan as the Republican future. The veteran actor had delivered a compelling infomercial for Goldwater that aired a week before the election. He did not merely replace Goldwater’s scowl with a smile. He eviscerated Great Society liberalism with humor, anecdotes, and folksy logic. Reagan connected. One could almost see the studio audience, and Frank Meyer listening in his living room, wondering, “Why can’t I vote for this man?” People who knew him as a star nevertheless experienced a revelation that night that they had watched, well, a star.
Reagan parlayed that speech into a run for governor in the state that suddenly boasted the most people. He vanquished Nixon’s vanquisher. Weeks before Reagan assumed office, Meyer touted him as the next president. As with Goldwater, the enthusiasm masked a <a href="https://youtu.be/WBMWd49rtu8?feature=shared&amp;t=187">Johnny Bravo</a> quality. Ronald Reagan nevertheless ﬁt the suit better.
Reagan met the requirements of “a candidate who can stir conservative enthusiasm and behind whom a campaign for delegates to the Republican National Convention of 1968 can be launched,” “Principles and Heresies” maintained in 1966. “By the principled positions he has taken, and by his proven ability as a campaigner, demonstrated both in 1964 and this year in California, Ronald Reagan, should he prove the governor he promises to be, qualiﬁes for this role.”
Rusher shared Meyer’s enthusiasms. Buckley touted Reagan, too. Again, James Burnham opposed.
“I insist that Reagan is a serious candidate,” Meyer responded to Burnham’s insistence to the contrary. “Furthermore, if it were journalistically advisable to support a single candidate, it would unquestionably be our duty to make Reagan our choice with Nixon as our second choice.”
* * *
This excerpt from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495">The Man Who Invented Conservatism</a>,” by Daniel J. Flynn is published by permission of Encounter Books.
Daniel J. Flynn is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has authored seven books, including “Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America;” “A Conservative History of the American Left;” and “Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco.”
The views expressed in this excerpt are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

1968 Republican National Convention

The Man Who Backed Reagan Before Reagan Was Ready

Conservatives

National Review

Ronald Reagan

William F. Buckley Jr.

They say you should never meet your heroes, but that statement should come with an overarching disclaimer: “&#8230;*unless your hero happens to be Ben Shapiro.”
Few idols measure up in real life and almost none of them exceed your expectations, but the one glaring exception to this rule is the Daily Wire co-founder himself. Shapiro is just as impressive in real life as he is breaking down news headlines on his daily show, and now you and a friend have a chance to find that out firsthand.
Along with the release of his new book, “<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/ben">Lions and Scavengers</a>,” on September 2, Shapiro is hosting a contest for loyal fans featuring a grand prize that comes with eternal bragging rights. One lucky winner and a friend will have a chance to visit Daily Wire headquarters in Nashville to experience a live taping of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and meet the man himself. 
Entering this contest couldn’t be simpler. All it takes is pre-ordering “Lions and Scavengers” and registering that purchase at <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/ben">this link</a>. Everyone who registers will also receive the first two chapters of the book immediately.
Even if you don’t win the top prize, the runner-up gifts are pretty sweet. Ten runners-up will score a limited edition hooded sweatshirt. And five lucky winners will receive something even rarer: a personal phone call from Ben himself.
The best news of all is that everyone who pre-orders “Lions and Scavengers” will receive the book itself, which cuts through the noise to ask a question that might just define the future of America: Will we rise as noble Lions, or pick at the scraps as destructive Scavengers?
The New York Times best-selling author doesn’t just present these as provocative metaphors. Instead, he holds a mirror up to the modern West and forces us to face reality. 
Lions are brave, principled, and willing to do the hard work of building and preserving civilization. Scavengers tear it down, feeding on resentment, envy, and complaints. It’s a high-stakes choice, and Shapiro doesn’t shy away from saying exactly where he thinks our country is headed if we don’t choose the right path. 
With his trademark “facts don’t care about your feelings” clarity and unapologetic willingness to buck the status quo, Shapiro makes the case that inequality in a free society isn’t a sign of oppression, but is rather the natural result of differences in talent and work ethic. And while Scavengers complain, Lions try harder.
This isn’t just a book drop – it’s a moment to decide which side of the battle you’re on. The Lions are prowling. The Scavengers are circling. Where do you fall?  
<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/ben">Pre-order “Lions and Scavengers” now!</a>

Lions and Scavengers sweepstakes

Lion Or Scavenger? Win A Trip To Nashville To Meet Ben Shapiro

Daily Wire

Nashville

The following excerpt is taken from the new book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Thirty-Nine-Scientists-Scientific/dp/B0DWLP2VTZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22E4UEYSZLK9L&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7OpVlvjzAMkKLRoafpVC5BbfjWiiv_d1HNPN1kmFXABtw90xnU8oHEEAF-C1mFSw.m6gzq7MX5HeMeyZUsEzNWkKLTJiFGUtfa6NHjZv0eDw&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+war+on+science+lawrence+krauss&amp;qid=1754574679&amp;sprefix=the+war+on+sc%2Caps%2C111&amp;sr=8-1">The War On Science</a>,&#8221; edited by Lawrence M. Krauss (Post Hill Press, 2025), with contributions from Jordan B. Peterson, Niall Ferguson, Richard Dawkins, Gad Saad, and many more. 
* * *
<h3>The Archetypal Fate Of The Universities</h3>
The institutions of higher education in the West are administratively top-heavy, in precisely the manner allowing that very administration to prey upon the future earnings of the students they hypothetically serve. Furthermore, the faculty itself leans very heavily in the radical direction despite being the dubious beneficiaries of administrative expansion. Student-to-faculty ratios have increased dramatically. The status and autonomy of the faculty have been very badly compromised. None of this seems to have made the professors and researchers any more forthcoming in their resistance or any more skeptical about the self-righteous “progressive” ideals they advocate. Finally, the students themselves have been infantilized, as well as taught outright that progressive radicalism is identical to virtue. It is, therefore, very difficult to imagine anything approximating an across-the-board improvement in behavior at the universities, in consequence. There are no imaginable circumstances under which the extant Ivy League institutions, for example, would be likely to dispense with the 80 percent of administrative staff and a somewhat lesser but still high proportion of the faculty that would have to disappear for any real change in orientation to occur. 
There have been recent initiatives, most famously in the states of Texas and Florida, to push back against the diversity, inclusivity, and equity bureaucracy-mob, but a simple name change is no trouble for the serpentine Machiavellians of the radical fringe to manage. This means that the same old corrupt players can just change their ideational camouflage, and at the surface level, just as they did when the revelations of Communist excess became too self-evident to deny in the 1970s, and Marxism metastasized into the intersectional oppression idiocy of today. It is, therefore, highly possible that the academy in the West is rotting because it is, in fact, dead and cannot be revived in anything resembling its current form. In that case, the flame will have to be kept burning at new institutions, whether in the classic bricks-and-mortar and in-person guise, if that proves possible (and I doubt it), or electronically, if the major changes in the conceptualization of education and the technology necessary to offer mass higher learning prove capable of delivering on their obvious but by no means certain promise.
<div id="attachment_958091" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Thirty-Nine-Scientists-Scientific/dp/B0DWLP2VTZ/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uHHyjHn4r9-5D55ze0R9Gk-xy5AIFtAEK7qQ4oR-WpQLi51rBu79jgtR88ZY5U4VgKNq4guJpjpfz4JBsu0CN4ZKfzsmHlY2xOTX5ypfus0dPolpFU3YLRuD1JycE93FkmrEi8sJQT_-K9sN8c2aXpVu9KANTbLiCQ7kDTygeqz7Oh8iBp7BWNSPZkoE6i9QqlYnHbmAMe8OQScq8S7oi0FoZ5cX6CV4hwRSurj_rO8.zNhWL4XZiBpgI8rDMadnYyGjqoUHGwS4_vcJYlypv18&amp;qid=1754575409&amp;sr=1-1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-958091" class="wp-image-958091 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Post Hill Press" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Post Hill Press</div>
Is there a way out personally, psychologically, or conceptually? Or, more specifically, what is presently incumbent upon those who are currently or will in the future be engaged in the university teaching or research enterprise? We can turn, once again, to the Enuma Elish account to elucidate the archetypal pattern. It is always in the very darkest hour that the redeeming hero emerges. Deliverance comes to the faithless murderer-children of chaos and order in the story in question in the hero-form of Marduk, the Mesopotamian savior-son-of-God. After Cain and Abel, we are presented with the cataclysm of the flood, as well as the erection of the Tower of Babel, the totalitarian edifice which is a structure of value with the wrong value at its pinnacle. Those are the twin fates of the descendants of Cain, the parasites who will not sacrifice properly and who undermine what even they themselves most truly value and depend upon. What are these fates? The descent of the world into the primordial waters of chaos that reigned before the beginning; alternatively, the worship of the false idols of the Luciferian intellect that likewise produce disunity and confusion — in the latter case, the eventual inability of those who aim wrong to even understand or utter the same words. “What is a woman?” — indeed. What is the way forward in the biblical narrative — perhaps running parallel to the Mesopotamian story? 
Careless pride eternally comes before a fall, but the humility that is its medicament is the attention that leaves nothing out of its purview and can, therefore, perceive the proper course forward. We could consider the account of Jonah, the everyman alerted by his conscience to speak the words of truth that set society straight. He flees, initially, from the requirement — who wants to risk standing against the mob? — but upon encountering the abysmal consequences of maintaining silence when there is something that demands to be said, he reconsiders his cowardice, turns his voice over to the control of the divine, and redeems the corrupt city of his enemies. What is the moral of such stories for the timorous, ideology-addled professors of today — or for those who enable them through their silence or even “allyship”? What might be done by forthright and faithful believers in the redeeming quality of truth and sacrifice when the walls we relied on to protect us have been breached and the barbarians have entered the gates? And have they? Here’s a telling data point: it is none other than the despicable Michel Foucault, darling of the Luciferian radicals, who is by some accounts the most cited “scholar” in the world.
What might be done, indeed? We professors, scholars, and researchers could open the eyes and the mouths God has given us instead of continuing to take each of the thousands of small steps backward that have enabled the devouring ideologues at our institutions. We could forthrightly note the chaos that looms and identify and hold to account its purveyors and acolytes. We could do the duty required of us by the people who have charged the inhabitants of the academy with the responsibility of preserving and seeking the truth, and we could call out the frauds, hucksters, Machiavellians, and outright charlatan-psychopaths of the faux disciplines and idiot theories of oppressor and victim. We could, by so doing, speak the words of truthful magic that redeem the fragmented world and position the foundation back in its place. Alternatively, we could remain frozen in the corner like the petrified rabbits we have far too often revealed ourselves to be and let the parasitical rabble attain their temporary and inevitably self and society-destroying “victory.” What did the great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn say so effectively in his all-out and eventually successful assault on the predatory tyrants and parasites of the envious and ideology-possessed radical world? ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. The protected professoriate pays for the opportunity and protection historically granted by the community to the academic endeavor with the vow to protect what is true, beautiful, and good. If we once again found the courage to be the standard-bearers of such value, the mad and ideological mob would be rapidly defeated. 
Will we do what needs to be done? We have failed so far, and it would take a mad bit of optimism to suggest that the course could be reversed. Nonetheless, the situation is far from hopeless. Here is another bit of traditional mythology to consider with regard to such a situation. When Abraham is informed by God of the latter’s decision to destroy the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the great prophet objects, making the case that wholesale destruction is no temperate and proper response to the sins even of the many (Genesis 18: 22–33). God agrees to spare the threatened cities if even fifty righteous people might still be found dwelling within their walls. Abraham persists in his objections, even after receiving such consideration from God, bargaining the divine down to forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty — then ten. What does this strange story indicate? Nothing less than this: an entire polity, and all of its denizens, can be saved even from an impending, dire, and deserved fate if even a tiny number of its inhabitants remain willing to risk the great adventure of the truth.
The moral of the story for the current denizens of the academies of higher education? It would not take a great number of professors, researchers, and students even now to speak and turn the tide. The moral, even more specifically, even more personally? It is incumbent on each and every one of us engaged in such enterprise to risk being one of the redeeming ten. We should remember, too, when considering such things: it is indeed a risk to see what is in front of our eyes and to say what needs to be said. It is also true, however, that willful blindness and failure to speak when there is something to say are ventures with perils of their own. The ten in question may find themselves in trouble when they speak, but they are simultaneously saving themselves and all those around them from the invisible hand of doom, threatening the future. This is an existential fact, alluded to in the great story of Jonah. It is not by mere chance that the fleeing prophet finds himself drowning when he holds his tongue after being commanded to speak — and then, worse, devoured by the beast of the abyss. There is indeed a descent into hell that threatens, both psychologically and socially, when conscience is ignored. It is the wisdom of the ages that the risk of seeing and speaking, all things considered, is much less than the risk of hiding and silence. There may be a price that is to be paid for the former — but the price of the latter is both soul and society. The true spirit of the academy is the prophetic voice that redeems. We abandon that at our great peril and to the detriment of all that depends on education itself. 
See, therefore, and speak — or pay the inevitable price.
* * *
This excerpt is published by permission of Post Hill Press. “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Thirty-Nine-Scientists-Scientific/dp/B0DWLP2VTZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22E4UEYSZLK9L&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7OpVlvjzAMkKLRoafpVC5BbfjWiiv_d1HNPN1kmFXABtw90xnU8oHEEAF-C1mFSw.m6gzq7MX5HeMeyZUsEzNWkKLTJiFGUtfa6NHjZv0eDw&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+war+on+science+lawrence+krauss&amp;qid=1754574679&amp;sprefix=the+war+on+sc%2Caps%2C111&amp;sr=8-1">The War on Science: Thirty-Nine Renowned Scientists and Scholars Speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process</a>,” edited by Lawrence M. Krauss. (Post Hill Press, July 2025).
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-role-of-the-holy-spirit-distinguishing-between-your-will-and-gods-will" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Jordan B. Peterson</a> is a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. From 1993 to 1998 he served as assistant and then associate professor of psychology at Harvard. He is the international bestselling author of “Maps of Meaning,” “12 Rules For Life,” “Beyond Order.” Be sure to order his newest book, “We Who Wrestle with God” (Portfolio/Penguin).
Lawrence M. Krauss is an internationally renowned theoretical physicist, bestselling author, and acclaimed lecturer. A passionate advocate for science and reason, and the public understanding of science, he is the author of twelve popular books, including the international bestsellers &#8220;The Physics of Star Trek, A Universe from Nothing,&#8221; and his most recent book, &#8220;The Edge of Knowledge.&#8221; He received his PhD from MIT and then moved to the Harvard Society of Fellows. He is currently President of The Origins Project Foundation, Chair of the Board of the Free Speech Union, Canada, and host of The Origins Podcast.

Jordan Peterson

The Academy In The West Is Dead. Speak Anyway.

American Universities

Bible

College

Communism

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Marxism

Woke Culture

The following excerpt is taken from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Slacking-Guide-Ivy-League-Miseducation/dp/1641774592">Slacking: A Guide To Ivy League Miseducation</a>,” by Adam Kissel, Rachel Alexander Cambre, and Madison Marino Doan (Encounter Books)
* * *
Don’t trust the Ivy League to produce well-educated students.
The eight institutions that make up the Ivy League are among the most selective in the United States, and their graduates occupy the elite echelons of American life. Parents often spend $80,000 or more per year for their children to attend Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, or Dartmouth and have an opportunity to punch a ticket to the top.
But what really happens there? Do graduates really join “the fellowship of educated men and women,” as Harvard used to assert each year at its commencement ceremony?
Some do. Many don’t.
Like most American colleges, most of the Ivies grant signiﬁcant latitude in the undergraduate curriculum. (Columbia is the only exception.) Students not only choose a major — from as many as ninety options—but they also choose the content of their core curriculum. Core curricula historically guaranteed consistency for undergraduates, reflecting a wise faculty’s determination of the knowledge and academic skills most worth having. Today, however, most general education requirements in the Ivies are so general — some arts here, some sciences there—that they are simply another opportunity for undirected self-actualization. Hundreds of course options can fulﬁll each “requirement.”
These options, moreover, vary tremendously — from serious, rigorous, and open to challenge, to whimsical, activist, and tendentious. This variation is greatest in the humanities and social sciences. For every course seeking to develop a broader or deeper understanding of man, nature, and the cosmos, there are dozens preoccupied with pop culture, identity politics, progressive activism, or hyper-specialization.
<div id="attachment_953731" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-953731" class="wp-image-953731 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-384x576.jpg" alt="Cover Credit: Encounter Books/ Cooley Design Lab. William Shakespeare associated with John Taylor circa 1610." width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-11-19-AM-1249-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" />Cover Credit: Encounter Books/ Cooley Design Lab. William Shakespeare associated with John Taylor circa 1610.</div>
Writing requirements are even worse. Putatively about writing, such courses indulge the moral and political conceits of their instructors. At the other extreme, most courses that meet science requirements actually teach science, even though light courses are available for slackers. (At Cornell, the course discussing Disney films to learn about animals is an exception, and Columbia still offers Physics for Poets.)
A generation ago, the critique of Ivy League curricula was that a student could graduate without being required to take any Shakespeare, American history, or Western civilization. That complaint remains well-grounded. Today, the situation is worse: Can a serious student find even one core course on Shakespeare or America worth taking?
By not providing a content-rich core curriculum — a set of required courses in the arts and sciences — but instead allowing students to choose from a wide range of courses to fulﬁll vague distribution requirements, most of the Ivies risk having students graduate with what the American Council of Trustees and Alumni calls a “thin and patchy education, with no guarantee that they have mastered a core set of facts or skills.” Absent strong curricular requirements, universities cannot guarantee that students “learn what they need to know to be informed citizens, effective workers, and lifelong learners.”
Fortunately, a strong education remains available to Ivy students in most areas of general education. They will have to work for it and get wise advice. But by far, Ivy League students are offered, and thus receive, a truly substandard education by any reasonable measure. Dante or Cardi B? Every educated man and woman ought to know the difference.
* * *
This excerpt from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Slacking-Guide-Ivy-League-Miseducation/dp/1641774592">Slacking</a>” is published by permission from Encounter Books.
Adam Kissel is a visiting fellow for higher education reform in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Harvard, he served in the first Trump administration as deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs. 
Rachel Alexander Cambre teaches for Belmont Abbey College’s new Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education program. She holds degrees from Washington and Lee University and Baylor University and has held teaching and research postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and the University of Virginia.
Madison Marino Doan is a senior research associate in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Her work focuses on affordability and accountability reform in higher education and K-12 education choice initiatives. She graduated summa cum laude from Lamar University in economics and finance.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Yale University campus

From Dante To Cardi B? The Collapse Of Ivy League Curricula

From Dante To Cardi B? The Collapse Of Ivy League Curriculums

Brown University

Columbia University

Cornell University

Dartmouth College

Harvard

Ivy League

Princeton University

University of Pennsylvania

Yale University

In 2017, “Saturday Night Live” uncorked a riotous “‘Woke Jeans’ commercial” tied to the growing woke movement.
The clip proved an exception to the mainstream comedy rule. Woke was more or less off limits to “SNL,” Late-Night hosts, and film comedies, despite a dearth of material.
Insane cultural rules. Virtue-signaling politicians. Identity Politics gone wild. The comic possibilities seemed endless.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Levi&#039;s Wokes - SNL" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/adPXDTvADD0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
Nothing to laugh about here. Move along. Only Comedy Central’s “South Park” regularly targeted the cultural scourge via PC Principal, trans athletes in women’s sports, and related gags.
Now, things are changing. It’s suddenly acceptable to mock the progressive overreach.
The new movie “Eddington” takes direct aim at woke, along with COVID-19 restrictions, conspiracy theorists and BLM sloganeering.
Director Ari Aster’s film isn’t one-sided or brimming with lectures. It takes us back to May 2020, a time when the George Floyd riots were raging across America and government rules made citizens mask up to stop the virus’ spread.
<div id="attachment_955565" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-955565" class="wp-image-955565 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-11-14-AM-5738-1024x576.jpg" alt="Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in “Eddington” (2025) A24. Square Peg Productions. 828 Productions. IMDB." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-11-14-AM-5738-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-11-14-AM-5738-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-11-14-AM-5738-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-11-14-AM-5738-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-11-14-AM-5738-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in “Eddington” (2025) A24. Square Peg Productions. 828 Productions. IMDB.</div>
The story unfolds in a fictional small town in New Mexico, one about to be rocked by dueling social contagions.
It’s uncomfortable to watch and often hilarious, mocking both Alex Jones types and white teens desperate to be woke. The latter ape the progressive talking points of their big-city peers, desperate to fit in and appear cool.
Heck, one newly woke teen just wants to “get” with a pretty girl, and he’ll virtue all the signals he can to make that happen.
The film’s biggest laugh? A white teen explains his “privilege” to his parents, and his father snaps back at him.
“Are you a f***ing retard? You’re white.”
Aster’s films aren’t blockbusters, but his arthouse musings represent mainstream artistic values. And, yes, he went there. So much so that a New York Times <a href="https://x.com/matthewschmitz/status/1947120245329576009">film critic</a> literally <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/ny-times-eddington-director-mocking-blm/">cursed him out</a> for inserting those gags in his film.
<blockquote>“F*** you, Ari Aster. Really, seriously. It’s so easy to mock these things. People are still dying from COVID. We may no longer be living in a pandemic… I just don’t find it funny, and I find it really important for people to, I think white people should interrogate their f***Ing whiteness, and I think Ari Aster should start.”</blockquote>
Triggered.
<div id="attachment_955653" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-955653" class="size-large wp-image-955653" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2215538204-864x576.jpg" alt="CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 17: (L-R) Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, Ari Aster, Joaquin Phoenix and Austin Butler pose during the &quot;Eddington&quot; photocall at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 17, 2025 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2215538204-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2215538204-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2215538204-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2215538204.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Andreas Rentz/Getty Images</div>
The recent horror-comedy “Ick” from provocateur Joseph Kahn also tees-off on woke overreach. The story follows another small town where calamity strikes. This time, the danger comes from a mysterious plant-like substance that goes from benign to deadly.
The menace allows Kahn to satirize American culture, conspiracy mongers (again) and that woke mind virus. Virtue signaling takes it on the chin, as do students talking like an unproduced Lena Dunham sitcom.
It’s far from flattering.
Those eager for a deeper dive into woke excess can read “The Sandersons Fail Manhattan.&#8221; Author Scott Johnston’s biting satire follows a rich New York family caught up in the city&#8217;s progressive mania. A fancy prep school is desperate to recruit its first trans student, while the story&#8217;s patriarch must learn if his colleague is gay enough to satisfy key DEI requirements.
<div id="attachment_955657" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sandersons-Fail-Manhattan-Novel/dp/1250384788"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-955657" class="size-large wp-image-955657" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-384x576.jpg" alt="Cover Credit: St. Martin's Press" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-12-42-PM-5680-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Cover Credit: St. Martin&#8217;s Press</div>
While “Eddington” and “Ick” take shots at woke, “Manhattan” is a full-on assault against Identity Politics and its cultural tendrils. No apologies.
Even comedians can shred woke pieties from major platforms without fear of reprisal and tell jokes that the woke mob deemed off limits.
Last year, the comedy roast format roared back to life with Netflix’s “tribute” to NFL great Tom Brady.
More recently, stand-up comic Shane Gillis proved that anew. Gillis, starring in Netflix’s rowdy comedy “Tires,” is a walking, talking testament to woke’s cultural decline. The comedian got hired, and promptly fired, by “SNL” for crude comments tied to Asian culture. Rather than fade into obscurity, Gillis went back to work, rebuilding his career.
His star rose so high that “SNL” invited him to host the program – twice – without censoring his rebellious streak.
<div id="attachment_955665" style="width: 835px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-955665" class="size-large wp-image-955665" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225471382-825x576.jpg" alt="HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - JULY 16: Shane Gillis speaks onstage during the 2025 ESPY Awards at Dolby Theatre on July 16, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)" width="825" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225471382-825x576.jpg 825w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225471382-300x209.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225471382-768x536.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225471382.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 825px) 100vw, 825px" />Kevin Winter/Getty Images</div>
More recently, he emceed the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shane-gillis-destroys-the-espys-and-wokeness">ESPY Awards</a>, mocking woke sacred cows like former soccer player Megan Rapinoe, a progressive scold synonymous with virtue signaling.
“Megan Rapinoe could not make it tonight … nice.”
A few media outlets grumbled about his “problematic” material. No Cancel Culture-style punishment ensued, nor was he forced to make a “hostage”-style apology.
Now, a rare voice eager to mock the woke mindset returns to do more of the same. “Beavis &amp; Butt-head” creator Mike Judge took an early swing at woke with his failed 2009 ABC sitcom “The Goode Family.” The show proved ahead of its time, teasing a hard-Left clan who strained to be better than, well, everyone.
Now, Judge is using his “King of the Hill” reboot to satirize gender fluidity, cultural appropriation and more on Hulu starting August 4.
Judge isn’t as merciless as Johnston, but his “Hill” gags give the game away. One episode finds wokesters attacking Bobby Hill, now a young man and overseeing a fusion restaurant. The menu in question sparks cries of cultural appropriation, leaving the Hill clan confused and upset.
The show finds a resolution, albeit one that illustrates the wobbly nature of woke criticism.
Has the pop culture dam finally broken on all things woke? The re-election of Donald Trump pushed the pendulum, hard, in that direction. We’re seeing the fruits of that shift now in pop culture.
More may follow.
And, if “SNL,” late-night TV and mainstream comedies continue to avoid these juicy targets, their cultural clout will diminish even further. Just <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyc-were-with-colbert-rally-draws-tens-of-people-even-cops-go-home">ask Stephen Colbert how that works</a>.
* * *
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

MixCollage-01-Aug-2025-11-14-AM-5738

Triggered Yet? Pop Culture’s Woke Takedown Has Begun

Triggered Yet? Pop Culture's Woke Takedown Has Begun

COVID

Entertainment

Film

Film Reviews

Hollywood

Movies

Saturday Night Live

The following excerpt is taken from &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Preventive-State-Preempting-Cataclysmic-Preserving/dp/1641774401/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.EwYIZf0ARxwXjihNEAVurqOj_KuaDi1Nt-0DQX0nufJfh9kmaSx4otDskpQnN57lHj0dZWFI_RmUGu0cJPTLedRfLl7N6M-nJd56sP6w6C6da0GbxelDZPS2zE65jH3aCDUigadzpSMXkA252nt9Q06I5xw0MMSWEKrcMRdMWQY.RTvUDiVC9eJQmh-a3qAPRR8n2ni44pG6I_Eobznn194&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;hvadid=716170842428&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvexpln=67&amp;hvlocphy=9010927&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvocijid=8876619063180178686--&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=8876619063180178686&amp;hvtargid=kwd-2424739000475&amp;hydadcr=4601_13415321&amp;keywords=the+preventive+state+dershowitz&amp;mcid=e95ebf25385f3b8f97b53c139b72347d&amp;qid=1753724973&amp;sr=8-1">The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms While Preserving Essential Liberties,</a>&#8221; by Alan Dershowitz (Encounter Books).
* * *
The Secret Service should have five basic responsibilities: (1) short- and medium-term intelligence operations designed to predict and prevent in advance any threats; (2) securing of all venues at which protectees may appear; (3) identifying and preventing immediate threats by suspicious persons at or near the venues; (4) halting the event and the appearance of the protectee if there is any perceived threat; and (5) immediately responding to attacks by protecting the target from further attacks and neutralizing the attacker or attackers.
The first of these responsibilities — predicting and preventing future attacks — is the most difficult (and the most relevant to my book). It will necessarily require many false positives to prevent even one false negative, because attempted assassinations are such rare events over time. Many individuals and groups threaten — either explicitly or implicitly — presidents and other protectees, but very few actually act on these threats. All such threats should obviously be investigated, but not all suspects should be detained. It is a crime to threaten the president — an inchoate crime designed to reduce threats of future harms. But few potential assassins openly threaten and thus violate the statute. Some say and do things that increase the likelihood that they will actually try to attack. But even among those, only a small fraction will cross the line into action. It is the difficult — perhaps nearly impossible — job of the Secret Service to distinguish between true and false positives, while reducing false negatives to zero. It is unlikely that Crooks or Routh could have been identified before the days in question based on their words and deeds — without also identifying many individuals with similar predictive profiles who would never pose a real threat.
<div id="attachment_953155" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-953155" class="size-large wp-image-953155" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Encounter Books" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-01-24-PM-3258-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" />Credit: Encounter Books</div>
When I began to research the issues associated with predicting and preventing violence, including assassinations, I came across a category of detainees known as “White House Cases.” These cases involved individuals who sought entry to the government buildings, especially the White House, in order to talk to officials. If they appeared to be mentally ill or “disturbed,” they were referred to the Secret Service, which then sought their commitment to locked wards of mental hospitals. I studied one case that seemed to typify this category.
Bong Yol Yang, an American of Korean origin, appeared at the White House gate asking to see the president about people who were following him and “revealing his subconscious thoughts.” He also wondered whether his talents as an artist could be put to some use by the government. The gate officer called the Secret Service, which then had him committed to a mental hospital. Yang demanded a jury trial, at which a psychiatrist testified that he was mentally ill — a paranoid schizophrenic — and that although there was no “evidence of his ever attacking anyone so far,” there was always a possibility that “if his frustrations . . . became great enough, he may potentially attack someone.” On the basis of this diagnosis and prediction, the judge permitted a jury to commit Yang to a mental hospital until he was no longer mentally ill and likely to cause injury.
This was almost certainly an example of a false positive, who was confined in an effort to avoid even the slightest possibility that if released he would become a false negative — that is, an actual assassin whose deadly act was falsely not predicted and thus not prevented. The calculus for “White House Cases” was that it is better that one hundred or more non-assassins be erroneously detained than even one potential assassin be erroneously released.
The issue of false positives and false negatives also arose in the moments preceding the wounding of Donald Trump. According to reports, a Secret Service sniper aimed at Crooks and could have killed him before he fired at Trump, rather than immediately after. But what if Crooks had turned out to be an innocent twenty-year-old who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His death would have been a terrible false positive. So the sniper erred on the side of not shooting, with the result that it was a near-lethal false negative.
All of this could easily have been prevented if the Secret Service had secured the building, even with its slanted roof, before the shooter got near it. A false positive in unnecessarily securing a building that would not have been used to shoot is no big deal. A false negative in not securing a building that was then used to shoot is an enormous deal. So better one hundred buildings that would not be used be unnecessarily secured than even one building that would be used be falsely not secured.
Another example of how the desire to avoid a trivial false positive resulted in a disastrous false negative was the decision — or nondecision — by the Secret Service not to delay Trump’s appearance on stage until all doubts concerning the person deemed “suspicious” were resolved. There were several people who were deemed suspicious before the Trump shooting, as there apparently are at many events. Each such person should be investigated as soon as practical. Had Trump’s appearance been delayed or even canceled and the suspicious person had turned out to be harmless, that would have been a false positive that caused inconvenience. But failure to delay caused a near-fatal false negative.
Trump has said that “nobody mentioned” the presence of a suspicious person. “Nobody said there was a problem.” He went on: “And I could have waited fifteen—they could have said, ‘let’s wait for fifteen minutes, two minutes, five minutes, something.’”
This raises a related and complex issue. Under current law and practice, the protectee has the power to overrule the Secret Service and make the ultimate decision whether to delay or cancel an event deemed dangerous by Secret Service agents. And history shows that protectees have ignored the expert opinions of the Secret Service in several instances, placing themselves in danger. It must be recognized that when a protectee’s life is endangered by a possible assassin, more is at stake than the life of the protectee. The entire nation — indeed the entire world — is affected by a successful assassination, especially of a president or presidential candidate.
Perhaps the law ought to be changed to reflect this reality. The Secret Service should have more power to delay or even cancel events that in its view pose too great a danger to the nation. This will not be easy to implement in practice, but it could have an impact on the acceptance by the protectee of the more expert opinions of the Secret Service.
To summarize, the preventive intelligence aspect of the Secret Service’s role should favor many false positives — investigative leads that turn up empty — over even one false negative as in not pursuing a lead that could have prevented an assassination. The same is true of securing venues, questioning subjects, delaying the appearance of protectees, and surrounding a protectee. Detaining a suspect for more than a brief period should require some degree of probable or at least plausible cause. Shooting a suspected assassin requires a far different calculation, because it pits life against life.
These are the kinds of judgments that must be made by all preventive law enforcement agencies. The Secret Service has a mixed history in regard to this critical mission. To be sure, we do not know how many potential assassinations were prevented by the Secret Service. Neither do they. It is certainly possible that some of those arrested or detained might have gone on to try to kill a protectee. We know about attempts that were thwarted, as was the attempted shooting of President Ford by Squeaky Fromme, or the attempt on the life of President Truman by a Puerto Rican liberation group. But potential assassins who were deterred, or even those who were prevented by early interventions, are difficult to identify and quantify. The utter failure of the Secret Service to prevent or thwart the shooting of Donald Trump should be evident to all. The resignation of the then director was an important first step in the implementation of significant changes in approach to predicting, preventing, and responding to threats to protectees. These changes should reflect the costs of different types of errors — false positives versus false negatives in differing, but always crucial, contexts.
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This excerpt taken from &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Preventive-State-Preempting-Cataclysmic-Preserving/dp/1641774401/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.EwYIZf0ARxwXjihNEAVurqOj_KuaDi1Nt-0DQX0nufJfh9kmaSx4otDskpQnN57lHj0dZWFI_RmUGu0cJPTLedRfLl7N6M-nJd56sP6w6C6da0GbxelDZPS2zE65jH3aCDUigadzpSMXkA252nt9Q06I5xw0MMSWEKrcMRdMWQY.RTvUDiVC9eJQmh-a3qAPRR8n2ni44pG6I_Eobznn194&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;hvadid=716170842428&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvexpln=67&amp;hvlocphy=9010927&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvocijid=8876619063180178686--&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=8876619063180178686&amp;hvtargid=kwd-2424739000475&amp;hydadcr=4601_13415321&amp;keywords=the+preventive+state+dershowitz&amp;mcid=e95ebf25385f3b8f97b53c139b72347d&amp;qid=1753724973&amp;sr=8-1">The Preventive State</a>&#8221; is published by permission from Encounter Books.
Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard University. Mr. Dershowitz has been litigating, teaching, and writing about law and policy for more than 60 years. He has written 55 books and more than 1,000 articles. Many of today’s world leaders are among the 10,000 students he has taught. He has represented and advised presidents, prime ministers, and business leaders. Called “the world’s best-known lawyer” and its most prominent defender of civil liberties, he has litigated and won hundreds of cases in multiple countries. He taught at Harvard for 50 years, where he offered courses on issues ranging from criminal, constitutional, family, and Jewish laws to psychiatry, neurobiology, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and even baseball. His primary academic interest has been on prediction and prevention of harmful conduct, which he developed into a course and taught during most of his career.
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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