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

Ben Shapiro

Books

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="auto, (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)

Leftists

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="auto, (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.
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&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="auto, (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="auto, (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="auto, (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="auto, (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="auto, (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.
* * *
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.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-VOTE

On Preventing Presidential Assassinations

Alan Dershowitz

assassination

assassination attempt

President Trump

Secret Service

The following excerpt is taken from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Persistence-Ideological-Lie-Daniel-Mahoney/dp/1641773731">The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now</a>,” by Daniel J. Mahoney (Encounter Books).
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<h3>The Crisis Of The West Reconsidered</h3>
From Sydney to London to untold numbers of American college campuses, we hear incendiary cries for destroying the Jewish state, for a new Jihad or global intifada, all in the name of a purportedly noble and just “anticolonialist” struggle. Tens of thousands march in major European cities and with frenzied glee defend the indefensible. “From the river to the sea,” cry the mobs of Islamists, Palestinians, activists, and radicals, shamelessly announcing their own genocidal sympathies and intent.
The so-called crisis of the West is nothing new. In 1949, the political philosopher Leo Strauss lamented that the main currents of social science in the United States, and in the Western world more broadly, could not understand tyranny for what it was since they were blindly committed to the absurd position that “facts” had nothing to do with “values.” He added that a social science that could not speak reasonably — and forcefully — about the evil that is tyranny (especially in its modern ideological forms) was no better than a medical science that could not name and describe cancer. In the following decade, Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt brought the full arsenal of political philosophy to bear on the “novel” form of tyranny that was totalitarianism and, in the process, mourned the indulgence of so many intellectuals toward it.
In 1964, James Burnham published a still-potent and relevant book called “The Suicide of the West,” where he took aim at Western self-hatred, romanticism about what would soon be called the Third World (some of which came to resemble “Caliban’s kingdoms,” in the striking and provocative words of Paul Johnson), and the degeneration of a once-noble and hardy liberalism into rank sentimentality, free-floating compassion, and a suicidal preference for our murderous and tyrannical enemies over our sometimes-imperfect friends and even our own country and civilization.
<div id="attachment_953015" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Persistence-Ideological-Lie-Daniel-Mahoney/dp/1641773731"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-953015" class="wp-image-953015 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Encounter Books/Studio Dixon" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-28-Jul-2025-10-13-AM-1245-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Encounter Books/Studio Dixon</div>
By 1970, the great English writer and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote with eloquence and biting wit about “The Great Liberal Death Wish” in a seminal 1970 essay by that same name in Esquire. Muggeridge saw in the decayed liberal mind a perverse preference for nihilistic self-flagellation that led to the systematic “depreciating and deprecating” of “every aspect of our Western way of life.” God and all moral certitudes were dethroned even as a “Praetorian Guard of ribald students, maintained at the public expense,” were “ready at the drop of a hat to go into action, not only against their own weak-kneed bemused academic authorities, but also against any institution or organ for the maintenance of law and order still capable of functioning, especially the police.” These words could have been written in the summer of 2020 amidst the violence, mayhem, and ritualistic self-flagellation that followed the death of George Floyd, or in the hours and days after the savage Hamas assault on Israeli innocents on October 7, 2023. Muggeridge went on to opine that if and when the West falls, it will not be the result of a barbarian invasion nor the murderous enmity of Communists, fascists, and Nazis, but because of the suicidal death wish of a liberalism gone badly awry. It is hard to say that Muggeridge was wrong.
The better liberals, humane and decent people, are rightly shocked by professors, students, and activists who celebrate or apologize for the savage nihilism of Hamas or who think that these cruel ideologues and terrorists, heedless to the lives of their own people, whose deaths they relish for the propaganda value, somehow represent the legitimate interests of the Palestinian people. But what reason do we have for being surprised? English departments everywhere have given up teaching literature and humane letters and now specialize in the hate-filled jargon that defines “postcolonial” studies and discourse (more on this to come). “Intersectionality” is the order of the day — everyone who desires to be ideologically correct must unthinkingly parrot demands for CRT, gender ideology, abortion on demand, environmental extremism, sympathy and support for radical regimes and ideologies, contempt for religion and traditional morality, and a hatred of the West — above all for Israel, which is freely and ludicrously compared to apartheid South Africa and, most obscenely of all, Nazi Germany. DEI departments on most campuses enforce this new regime in a totalitarian spirit that is hardly “soft” or benign. For too long, economistic and anti-intellectual conservatives thought this had little to do with the “real world” and still proudly sent their children to utterly corrupt but still-prestigious universities and liberal-arts colleges. But as the journalist Andrew Sullivan likes to say, “We are all living on campus now.”
Political correctness has been omnipresent for many years now, but somehow former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, the quintessentially “moderate” politician, just noticed: after witnessing the temerity of the University of Pennsylvania’s response to its mob of anti-Semitic agitators, he decided he could no longer be a benefactor of the corrupt institution. He is a decent human being, and I am glad he is appalled by the fact that UPenn was incapable of truly, unequivocally condemning what Hamas so brutally did to innocents on October 7, 2023. But why precisely was he surprised? UPenn was only being itself when it shamelessly indulged the enemies of Israel — and Western civilization. This is a university that took down, as if in a parody of political correctness, a picture of William Shakespeare in its English department. It regularly encourages every manifestation of crude, ritualistic anti-Western and “anticolonial” ideology.
The institution has long hounded conservative and other independent-minded faculty (and students) for not toeing the party line. Progressive ideology requires absolute fealty to the cause. To be sure, many Arabs and Palestinians (and their Western sympathizers) casually give way to Jew-hatred. But progressives hate Israel mainly because they hate themselves and the Western world of which they are a part, though that self-loathing has quickly given way to fierce and crude anti-Jewish rhetoric and behavior. A figure long at the head of this charge, the radical intellectual and celebrated linguist Noam Chomsky, once accused Cambodian refugees of exaggerating the “excesses” of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and wrote a foreword to a book by the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. Chomsky had no real deep affinity for monstrous regimes, but he was adamantly committed, and remains committed, to the view that the United States, and the Western world more broadly, is the primary author of evil in the world. Chomsky embodies the reductio ad absurdum of self-flagellating radicalism. On the left, he is still perversely celebrated as a courageous truth teller.
Writing in “The Abolition of Man” in 1943, the Christian apologist and man of letters C. S. Lewis wondered why our contemporary “men without chests,” who had abandoned both reason and faith, who confused moral judgment with mere emotivism, and who belittled the virile virtues and the essential connections between reason and a spirited regard for liberty and civilization, were surprised by the inevitably destructive consequences of their doctrines. In words that stick to memory and that are as relevant as ever, Lewis writes:
<blockquote>In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.</blockquote>
Those false liberals who actively supported the progressivist degradation of our colleges and universities ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Those who marched with the totalitarian Marxists and Maoists of BLM (and who now predictably cheer Hamas on) in the summer of 2020 — including foolish white progressives such as Senator Mitt Romney — are complicit in the madness that has taken hold of our political culture. They are also fools, naïfs.
As the Russianist Gary Saul Morson argued in a powerful piece that appeared in The Wall Street Journal (“Dostoevsky Knew: It Can Happen Here,” October 18, 2023), those ideologues and intellectuals who justify the unjustifiable would do it to us if they had the chance. As Morson argues, the militant “anticolonialism” that is regnant today on our campuses and in bien-pensant intellectual circles is only the latest totalitarian ideology to justify the destruction of their “designated enemies.” And the soft leftists — the naïve fellow travelers — always go first. One thinks of the politically correct bourgeoisie in Saint Petersburg, as described so vividly in Solzhenitsyn’s “The Red Wheel” (March 1917), who proudly wore red and waved red flags (for two hundred years the color of the radical Left) to display their fine feelings and progressive leanings. They were the first to be condemned as class enemies and marched off to the camps in Lenin’s new totalitarian dispensation. It is high time for their American counterparts to be mugged by reality before it is too late for them — and for the rest of us.
* * *
This excerpt from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Persistence-Ideological-Lie-Daniel-Mahoney/dp/1641773731">The Persistence of the Ideological Lie</a>” is published by permission from Encounter Books.
Daniel J. Mahoney is professor emeritus at Assumption University (where he taught from 1986 until 2021), senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and senior writer at Law and Liberty. He has written extensively on statesmanship, French political thought, the art and political thought of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, conservatism, religion and politics, and various themes in political philosophy. His 2022 book, “The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, And Moderation” (Encounter Book was awarded the Paolucci Prize for Conservative Book of the Year by ISI in 2023.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-US-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-EDUCATION-DEMONSTRATION

How The Liberal Death Wish Birthed A New Totalitarianism

Conservatism

Liberalism

Universities

Western Civilization

There is something chilling about watching Angel Studios’ documentary “Live Not By Lies!” 
It is not merely a recounting of history, though it does that with remarkable clarity — testimonies of men and women who survived totalitarian communism in Eastern Europe echo across the decades with a resonance we ignore at our peril. 
What is most unsettling about the adaptation of Rod Dreher’s bestselling work, however, is the gnawing realization that their warnings have already become our reality.
The film introduces us to brave Christians who, under Soviet rule, faced surveillance, intimidation, and prison — simply for refusing to pretend that evil was good. As they share their stories, one can’t help but feel the familiarity of it all: the demand to affirm ideologies we know to be false, the punishment for dissent, the slow corrosion of the conscience. The question is no longer “Could it happen here?” but “How far has it already gone?”
The same dynamic Dreher exposes—state and cultural forces colluding to crush dissent — is alive in the contemporary West.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Live Not By Lies | Official Trailer | Streaming April 1 | Angel Studios" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lJh8wJKAnm8?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>
Consider Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a woman who was arrested not for vandalizing property or committing acts of violence, but for the silent crime of praying in her head near an abortion facility in Birmingham, England. No slogans, no placards — only the private communion of her thoughts with God. She was questioned by police, searched, charged, and brought before a court. She was found innocent – but promptly arrested again weeks later for the very same thoughts in the very same place. Thankfully, after a long and grueling investigation, Isabel won compensation from the police with support from ADF International.
Then there’s Adam Smith-Connor, an army veteran who stood silently and imperceptibly in prayer near another facility in Bournemouth in memory of his lost son. He too was interrogated by police and criminalized for the contents of his conscience – worse, leading to a conviction and a criminal charge. Adam was ordered to pay £9,000 to the court – amounting to perhaps the most expensive three minute prayer in history.
<div id="attachment_624329" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-624329" class="size-large wp-image-624329" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-1024x574.png" alt="Credit: Alliance Defending Freedom." width="1024" height="574" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-1024x574.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-300x168.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-768x431.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-1536x861.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-2048x1148.png 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Alliance Defending Freedom.</div>
These cases are the canaries in the coal mine. They warn us of what happens when the state arrogates to itself the power to police interior conviction. In the novel “1984,” George Orwell called this “thoughtcrime.” Today in Britain, it is called a “buffer zone,” but the principle is identical: certain beliefs must not merely be suppressed — they must be eradicated from the public square.
“Live Not By Lies!” is a clarion call to rediscover moral courage. Dreher draws on the legacy of Vaclav Havel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and countless ordinary Christians who refused to live by the lie. They were forced to pretend that the Party was infallible, that Marxism was inevitable, that the State was God. Today, our cultural commissars demand our allegiance to a different set of dogmas — that biological sex is a construct, that unborn life is disposable, that faith belongs behind closed doors and never in public life. But the impulse is the same: bow, or be broken.
The documentary is a reminder that resistance begins not with grand gestures, but with the refusal to speak untruth. When the authorities came to interrogate believers in Prague, they demanded not only compliance but confession: “Say that you agree. Say that you believe.” Many would not. For this, they lost jobs, were blacklisted, even imprisoned. Yet their refusal to say what they did not believe was the seed from which freedom eventually grew.
<div id="attachment_943085" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.angel.com/watch/live-not-by-lies"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-943085" class="size-large wp-image-943085" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-407x576.jpg" alt="Angel Studios" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" /></a>Angel Studios</div>
How many today are willing to pay that price? We like to imagine ourselves as different — more sophisticated, more democratic, more tolerant. But the evidence mounts that our culture is simply addicted to a softer form of totalism: enforced conformity through the threat of professional ruin, reputational assassination, or — if you dare to pray silently — criminal prosecution.
There is no more potent illustration of this drift than the prosecutions of Vaughan-Spruce and Smith-Connor. In each case, the state claimed to be protecting “vulnerable women,” yet no evidence was presented that these individuals harassed or intimidated anyone. The real issue was that their mere presence — and their silent prayers — expressed a conviction the state deems intolerable. The Soviets called it “anti-Soviet agitation.” We call it “interference.” In both cases, the thought itself is the crime.
Some will say these comparisons are overwrought. They are not. For the Christian who believes God is Lord of both conscience and public life, there is no partition between belief and expression. The attempt to criminalize that wholeness — to tell a person they may think but not manifest their convictions — is precisely what totalitarian systems have always done. Dreher’s work, and this film, make clear that it begins with a creeping fear to speak, and ends with a culture that cannot remember how.
If we are to resist, we must start by telling the truth. No law should compel a citizen to lie — whether about the humanity of the unborn, the nature of marriage, or the sanctity of prayer. And no government has authority over the secret dialogue of the soul with its Creator. To surrender this is to surrender everything.
* * *
Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a Scottish commentator and Senior Legal Communications Officer for Alliance Defending Freedom UK.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Propaganda poster : Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin and Stalin, 1953.

‘Live Not By Lies’: A Documentary Whose Warnings We Dare Not Ignore

Angel Studios

Documentaries

England

Great Britain

As we celebrate July 4, it’s important to go back a few weeks and recall what happened on June 14. On that day, we saw one portion of our country take time to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of our nation’s army, and a different portion protest what they seem to believe is a rising monarchy in our nation’s capital.
Now, there have always been differences of opinion among Americans. It’s one of the characteristics of a functional democracy. Over the past five years, however, we have experienced a fundamental division in our nation that must be confronted.
About 30 years ago, Jerry Porras and Jim Collins wrote a book called “Built to Last,” chronicling their research on organizations that thrive and survive over long periods of time. One of the most important durability-inducing elements they cite is the adherence to a small set of core values, inviolable traits that define the principles and behaviors around which the company’s founders built the organization. To reject or violate those values is to advocate for the organization’s demise.
While a country is not synonymous with a company, I am convinced that the same concept can be applied to a nation that wants to thrive and survive. I’m also convinced that a difficult conversation about America’s core values is long overdue.
It’s worth noting that core values are not the drivel that some companies produce using marketing jargon and wordsmithing to come up with a list of sugary, generic adjectives that will be palatable to just about everyone. Core values are the authentic principles that underlie the character of an organization — or a nation — over time.
For the better part of the past 50 years, the U.S. has been struggling with an increasing sense of confusion around its core values. Recently, however, that confusion has morphed into a serious and dangerous division, calling to mind Abraham Lincoln’s reference to the words of Christ, reminding Americans that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
More and more people, like me, are concerned that our country will not be able to stand if we remain so divided. We cannot continue to go forward simply agreeing to disagree, or worse, not even acknowledge our disagreements and allow ourselves to be torn apart. It’s time that we, as a nation, face and answer a few basic questions before it’s too late.
What are those questions, the ones that underlie our values? Here are the most obvious ones.
<h3><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/freedom/">JULY 4 SALE: Get Six Months Of DW+ Free</a></h3>
Are we founded upon Judeo-Christian values and dependent on God’s providence, or are we a nation that is essentially agnostic, removing faith in God from public life, education, and the military? It can’t be both.
Do we believe in freedom of speech, press, and religion, or are we willing to allow elected and unelected influencers to determine what are and are not acceptable words and beliefs? Again, these are incompatible.
Do we believe in a limited central government, or do we prefer a powerful, singular federal provider of rules and services? Pick one.
In light of these questions, I see two ways to move forward.
First, we can go back and honestly embrace the core principles that the founders believed would hold us together and keep us united, and then recommit to those principles, without apology. It’s as simple, and sometimes difficult, as that.
Or, second, we can dismiss the ideals of our founders and decide, after 249 years, to create a new country. We can roll the dice and bet that we can conceive of a better model than Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson and the others did.
What we can’t do, and what we’ve been doing for too long, is avoid these questions and let our core principles, and an entire nation, die a slow death as we drift further and further apart while the media, academia, and creative judges determine what America really is. We are a democracy, still, and we must choose our own path, or it will be chosen for us.
Now, there are many differences between companies and countries, not the least of which is the inability of countries to “fire” their own citizens, or even simply facilitate their departure. An organization’s CEO, on the other hand, can say to employees who don’t want to adhere to its core values that it’s time for them to work somewhere else. A nation cannot do that, and rightly so. However, if that nation wants to survive, it also cannot overly accommodate or apologize to those who oppose its values.
It’s worth noting that this challenge we face today existed at the very beginning of our nation, though to a lesser extent. Even then, there were those who had sided with the British or who would have preferred a monarchy, perhaps one led by George Washington. They were not all forced to leave the country, but they were required to come to terms with the principles of this experimental nation if they wanted to stay.
So, if we decide to recommit to our founders’ ideals — and I’m certainly in favor of that path — then we must politely and unequivocally say to citizens who dislike the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or any foundational aspect of American life: “You don’t have to believe what we believe, practice any particular faith, or even celebrate the freedoms upon which we are founded. You don’t. But you do have to make peace with the reality of our core values and ideals, which are based on those things. Or you can make plans to live somewhere better suited to your preferences.” 
That is neither intolerant nor snarky; it is clear. And clarity is kind.
We must stop allowing people to pretend that the nation’s values are something other than they are, because there is nothing kind about that.
It&#8217;s ironic that the nations in the world today that have the most intolerant and unkind values are the ones that won’t even let people opt out and leave. Just look at North Korea and Cuba, though there are others. This is, of course, absurd.
But for a free nation like ours to bend over backward to accommodate those who hate what we stand for is equally absurd. So let’s make a decision so that we can reverse the trend toward divisiveness and disunity, and get back to rebuilding a nation around the values that have served us for 250 years.
* * *
Patrick Lencioni is one of the founders of The Table Group and is the pioneer of the organizational health movement. He is the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Patrick-M.-Lencioni/author/B001ILFMB2?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2&amp;qid=1751571498&amp;sr=8-2&amp;isDramIntegrated=true&amp;shoppingPortalEnabled=true&amp;ccs_id=3de65105-8f38-4be0-90f1-d7c66bb8daa2">author of 13 books</a>, which have sold over 10 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Fireworks on the Fourth of July, Washington, D.C.

Can We Still Agree On America’s Core Values? A Nation Divided On Independence Day

Democrats

Founding Fathers

Liberals

Opinion

Republicans

United States

The following excerpt is taken from the new book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Proportionality-Israels-Just-Gaza/dp/B0F841ZJTX">Beyond Proportionality: Israel&#8217;s Just War In Gaza,</a>&#8221; by Thane Rosenbaum (Wicked Son/Post Hill Press, May 2025).
* * *
<h3>INTRODUCTION: “J’accuse!” — The Case Against Israel</h3>
At the turn of the nineteenth century, a political scandal in France galvanized public opinion all over the world. Known as the Dreyfus Affair, at its root was the inexorable display and mass hatred of Jews. This same antisemitic fervor, which a few decades later would materialize into the Holocaust, had been around for two millennia. Occasionally, it would manifest itself in pogroms and mass expulsions. Along the way, it went from latent to lethal, and emanated from a lie.
This time, however, the antisemitism was organized, sanctioned by the government, fueled by the press, and openly embraced by many people who regarded themselves as highly cultivated and civilized. Artists and intellectuals took a special interest in joining the mob. And it came pre-packaged with an easily disproved conspiracy theory involving a treasonous Jewish military officer.
Jews in France had long enjoyed the full panoply of civil rights. Indeed, during the French Revolution, France had become the first European nation to emancipate its Jewish population. For nearly a century, French Jews had participated in every facet of cosmopolitan life among the professional classes and cultural elite. But suddenly, they found themselves facing a backlash unlike anything they had experienced before.
The Dreyfus Affair made the unspoken hatred of Jews not just acceptable but fashionable. Seemingly overnight, Jews in France went from being socially accepted and having a sense of security to being on the receiving end of wild denunciations for their clannishness, duplicity, greed, and dual loyalty.
And much like Nazi Germany, the nerve center of these societal convulsions burned brightest on university campuses, in the pages of the mainstream press, and wherever artists and writers congregated. The fact that it all originated from an easily disprovable lie was of little concern. The case against Dreyfus was merely a pretext to something far worse.
<div id="attachment_942309" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Proportionality-Israels-Just-Gaza/dp/B0F841ZJTX"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-942309" class="size-large wp-image-942309" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-407x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Post Hill Press/Wicked Son" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" /></a>Credit: Post Hill Press/Wicked Son</div>
Captain Alfred Dreyfus was an officer on the French military general staff accused of passing state secrets to Germany — the despised aggressor nation that during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 had humiliated France and annexed Alsace and Moselle. Someone had to be blamed, and Dreyfus, a high-ranking Jewish officer, fully assimilated yet perceived as a foreigner, was an easy fall guy even though there was no actual evidence of his wrongdoing. The French legal system relied upon forged documents — manufactured by military counterintelligence — to falsify his guilt. The letters were not even in Dreyfus’ handwriting.
That’s not to say there was no spy within the ranks of senior military officers. But it wasn’t Captain Dreyfus. Two years after he was court-martialed for treason and shipped off to Devil’s Island, a notorious tropical hellhole where many prisoners died of disease and malnutrition, the French Army uncovered evidence implicating the true culprit — Major Walsin Esterhazy, who had sold secret documents to the German Embassy. But by then the nation was awash in anti-Jewish bigotry. Dreyfus should have been exonerated instantly. Instead, he was returned to France to face a new trial, where he was once again convicted and given an enhanced sentence.
Newspapers around the world covered the trial and its aftermath. A slogan representative of the times referred to Dreyfus as “the Jew who is everywhere but belongs nowhere.” It should come as no surprise to learn that the Dreyfus Affair roughly coincided with the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another forged document, this one alleging a Jewish conspiracy to conquer the world.
Events shifted dramatically when one of France’s leading intellectuals, the novelist and playwright Émile Zola, wrote a lengthy front-page essay — famously titled “J’Accuse&#8230;!” — in which he charged the French government and legal system with a coverup. Zola wrote, “Here&#8230;are the facts which explain how a miscarriage of justice could be made; and the moral evidence, the financial circumstances of Dreyfus, the absence of reason, his continual cry of innocence&#8230;the hunting for the ‘dirty Jews,’ which dishonours our time.” Given the public embarrassment to the nation’s institutions, Zola himself was brought to trial and convicted of libel. He fled to London.
Eventually, the obsession with Dreyfus dissipated. The French government and its people finally came to recognize that they had been handed a convenient excuse to shift blame away from France’s military and rest it instead with a familiar villain. National regret ensued, and by 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated, and his rank restored.
But anyone familiar with these events can’t help but see the parallel with what is happening today. The global reaction to Israel’s eighteen-month-long war in Gaza has had many of the same elements: heightened emotions, irrational arguments, distorted histories, the rejection of obvious truths, forged documents, falsified facts, misapplied laws, antisemitic stereotypes, and worldwide anti-Jewish rage. But instead of a single Jewish officer serving as the focal point, this time it was the Jewish state, and its professional military, who stand falsely accused — and with much the same imagery. Thus, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is often depicted as drinking the blood of Palestinian children.
Such fabrications are all the more paradoxical given the events that preceded and fully justified Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas. These sensationalized condemnations completely overlook and ignore what started the conflict in the first place. On the morning of October 7, 2023, southern Israel was invaded — by land, air, and sea — by six thousand Palestinians from Gaza. Most were terrorists with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but many were ordinary civilians. It was a planned and coordinated attack that lasted several hours and targeted the concert-goers at the Nova Music Festival, most of whom were young peace-loving Israelis.
* * *
<div>
<div class="a-cardui-content a-cardui-uninitialized _about-the-author-card_carouselItemStyles_peekableContent__hWM3i" data-a-max-height="80">
Thane Rosenbaum is an essayist, law professor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction titles, including the novels, &#8220;How Sweet It Is!&#8221;,&#8221; The Stranger Within Sarah Stein,&#8221; &#8220;The Golems of Gotham,&#8221; &#8220;Second Hand Smoke,&#8221; and &#8220;Elijah Visible.&#8221; His articles, reviews and essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Huffington Post and Daily Beast, among other national publications.
</div>
</div>
This excerpt from &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Proportionality-Israels-Just-Gaza/dp/B0F841ZJTX">Beyond Proportionality: Israel&#8217;s Just War In Gaza,</a>&#8221; by Thane Rosenbaum is published by permission from Post Hill Press/Wicked Son.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT

When Lies Turn Deadly: The Century-Old Script Behind Today’s Anti-Israel Fury

Anti-Semitism

France

Gaza

Israel

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Jewish

Middle East

October 7

The following excerpt is taken from the new book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Butler-Untold-Assassination-Americas-Heartland/dp/1546009140/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38ZQJ31BTXE78&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yBjqsViUcuzSmJ0JQfFO_9pbEehSi-8OfBIfkv9uv-Eg2YesGVnshEb31LRcm_VyNV90yUlv9buV5-Eg4h3ANjvLeboA5BuUjGHF1yBXHxfXZoSn8Vchp7NkJJKFCPPN0JdICFPkw8GWPPCc2BBMMPqe_qSkBWh_hh_CkKUxGhVJA_Ayn3SjyWBemTcvmDq42l4iaEdSi5Ih0Lab_rtq0w.UQCO-toWBwgEMYzS_IK8UvoFWqL6oOP4CgnKEYfwSsE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=salena+zito+butler&amp;qid=1751464363&amp;sprefix=salena+zito+butle%2Caps%2C170&amp;sr=8-1">Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America&#8217;s Heartland,&#8221;</a> by Salena Zito (July 2025, Center Street/Hachette Book Group)
* * *
<h3>They Shoot Presidents in Butler</h3>
George Washington was less than pleased.
It was December 26, 1753, well past dusk and the temperature had dropped dramatically as darkness fell. Thanks to the drop in temperature, the mix of sleet and snow would make travel perilous in the deeply forested wilderness of what is now present-day Butler County.
But Washington and his guide Christopher Gist were left with little choice; they had to move, and move quickly.
They needed to make their way to the forks of the Ohio River. Days later, Washington, then a young major in the Virginia militia, would write in his journal that fear coursed through his veins and spurred the urgency of their flight after he was nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet that whizzed past his ear just hours earlier.
Both he and Gist knew his assassin would be back to finish the job.
<div id="attachment_942151" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/salena-zito/butler/9781668649909/?lens=center-street"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-942151" class="wp-image-942151 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-407x576.jpg" alt="Cover credit: Center Street/Hachette Book Group" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" /></a>Cover credit: Center Street/Hachette Book Group</div>
At twenty-one years old, Washington was on his first diplomatic mission, with direct orders from the Crown tucked in his saddlebag to basically tell the French to get off King George II’s land or face war with England.
In 1753, the British and French Empires were in the early stages of clashing over their colonial possessions. Britain’s North American colonies were mostly packed along the Atlantic coastline and then moved westward toward the Allegheny Mountains.
France’s colonial holdings were in the center spine of the country that began in New Orleans and ran up along the Mississippi River into the Great Lakes region toward the St. Lawrence River. Both empires claimed control of the vast expanse of what was then known as the Ohio Country, which began in present-day western Pennsylvania and West Virginia and spread due west across the states of Ohio and Indiana.
Washington was at the center of that clash of royal aspirations, which were largely spurred by greed in the form of an immense royal grant to the Ohio Company, whose largest investor was Robert Dinwiddie, Virginia’s royal (lieutenant) governor and the man who sent Washington on the mission.
The young Virginian’s destination was Fort Le Boeuf, just fifteen miles south of Lake Erie. In Washington’s possession was a note from London, signed by King George II, that read: “If the French were found to be building forts on English soil, they should be peacefully asked to depart. If they failed to comply, however, we do hereby strictly charge and command you to drive them off by force of arms.”
The trip from Virginia had been a daunting 250 miles of untouched wilderness. It involved scaling high ice-crusted ridges, slogging through thick brush, swamps, and dense forests with mounds of heavy snow, and navigating icy waterways. The journey was as difficult as one could imagine, not just because of the terrain but also because of a weather system that had pummeled Washington and Gist the entire way.
Washington arrived at Fort Le Boeuf on December 11. The fort system was rudimentary at best, made of scrap bark and planks and consisting of four buildings. The young soldier and French commander Capt. Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre had a cordial, diplomatic conversation despite Washington’s delivery of the Crown’s demand that the French vacate the Ohio Valley immediately.
Saint-Pierre made clear that he was not intimidated by the British and retained every right to arrest their traders who were poaching on French territory. “As to the summons you sent me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it.”
Four days later, Saint-Pierre handed Washington a sealed message for Dinwiddie. It was then that Washington discovered that, although Saint-Pierre had filled Washington’s canoe with a generous amount of supplies for the journey home, the French commander had also bribed Washington’s Indian guides with food and drink to stay behind.
Washington was furious. He had not only been deceived by Saint-Pierre; he had also observed enough during his four-day wait for the commander to respond to Dinwiddie to know that France was building a large-scale fort system throughout the disputed territory. He also observed that they were building a formidable military operation, which was prepared to defend the land the French would take over.
Washington and Gist set off, anxious to deliver the news to Dinwiddie. However, their horses were so debilitated by the journey to Fort Le Boeuf that the men had to abandon them and continue on foot.
On the journey toward the outpost known as Murdering Town (in present-day Butler), they were heavily burdened by their backpacks. Along the way, they encountered several French Indians who quickly — probably too quickly, in hindsight — offered to help get them to the forks of the Ohio River. The battering snow and sleet, freezing cold, and rough terrain had worn Washington down, and when one of the Indian guides offered to carry his backpack, he took him up on it.
Gist, a skilled surveyor and frontier guide, immediately sensed something was off about the situation. He wasn’t wrong. As soon as the group came to a clearing, one of the Indians sprinted ahead of them into a meadow and then turned to face the two men before firing point-blank at Washington from fifteen paces.
The exact amount by which the French-aligned Indian missed Washington is unclear. Washington’s diary entry is vague, but the intent was obvious. The Indian guide wanted the young Virginian dead.
If muskets had contained rifling — grooves inside the barrel to make a bullet travel more accurately — 270 years ago, everything in the world would have changed at that moment.
There would have been no skirmish several months later in present-day Fayette County, Pennsylvania, between Washington’s regiment and French soldiers — a skirmish that led to the first shots fired in what would quickly escalate into the French and Indian War. It was a war that ultimately led to the Revolutionary War, when the British Crown tried to tax the colonists to pay for debt incurred during the first true world war.
There would have been no General Washington, no President Washington, and we might not have the country we call America today if that bullet had been only an inch closer.
* * *
Salena Zito is a veteran political reporter with more than twenty years of award-winning experience in print and broadcast journalism. With her trusty Jeeps that have clocked well over 400,000 miles on their odometers and a refusal to travel on interstates, Zito is a reporter who harkens to an older generation of journalism, one who listens to the stories of everyday Americans in places far outside the artificial bubbles of Manhattan and the Beltway. One of the last scribes of middle America, she famously popularized the root cause of their failed coverage and underestimation of Donald Trump by the phrase coined by Brad Todd saying, “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” Zito is a national political reporter for the Washington Examiner, and a special contributor to the Washington Post. She has been a columnist for the New York Post and has contributed to The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
Excerpted from &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Butler-Untold-Assassination-Americas-Heartland/dp/1546009140/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38ZQJ31BTXE78&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yBjqsViUcuzSmJ0JQfFO_9pbEehSi-8OfBIfkv9uv-Eg2YesGVnshEb31LRcm_VyNV90yUlv9buV5-Eg4h3ANjvLeboA5BuUjGHF1yBXHxfXZoSn8Vchp7NkJJKFCPPN0JdICFPkw8GWPPCc2BBMMPqe_qSkBWh_hh_CkKUxGhVJA_Ayn3SjyWBemTcvmDq42l4iaEdSi5Ih0Lab_rtq0w.UQCO-toWBwgEMYzS_IK8UvoFWqL6oOP4CgnKEYfwSsE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=salena+zito+butler&amp;qid=1751464363&amp;sprefix=salena+zito+butle%2Caps%2C170&amp;sr=8-1">Butler,</a>&#8221; by Salena Zito. (Copyright 2025) Used with permission from Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA – July 13: Former president Donald Trump r

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A Leftist California bookstore is banning J.K. Rowling&#8217;s &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; series but remains committed to sending &#8220;queer, affirmative&#8221; titles all over the country through an anti-book banning nonprofit.
Booksmith is located in San Francisco&#8217;s renowned Haight-Ashbury neighborhood — the epicenter of the 1960s hippie counterculture and the Summer of Love. It stopped selling &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; books after Rowling announced the creation of the J.K. Rowling Women&#8217;s Fund. The fund <a href="https://jkrwf.org/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKdvNljbGNrAp26GGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAGJyaWQRMVhFYkVUMVlETmNnb3NRM2YBHpCylZCyqT-dSAcjqzcghgBSrl8tIO_sNX3dgcFvY5leoMkcTzlQEUHionpy_aem_HyMGvqrZM5nRn93ZKNrRMg">says</a> it &#8220;offers legal funding support to individuals and organizations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.&#8221;
Its website never mentions transgender-identifying individuals, but Booksmith <a href="https://www.booksmith.com/NotHP">claims</a> the fund is &#8220;dedicated to removing transgender rights.&#8221;
&#8220;With this announcement, we&#8217;ve decided to stop carrying her books. We don&#8217;t know exactly what her &#8216;women&#8217;s fund&#8217; will entail, but we know that we aren&#8217;t going to be a part of it,&#8221; a sign in the bookstore reads.
But ironically, Booksmith — a self-described &#8220;group of queer booksellers&#8221; — participates in the Books Not Bans program, which is dedicated to <a href="https://www.booksmith.com/BnB">mailing</a> &#8220;crates of queer, affirmative, necessary books all over the country,&#8221; it says, that are actively being banned.
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&#8220;These are going to people who desperately need them but who live in book deserts and communities where new book bans are rolling out daily,&#8221; the store&#8217;s announcement said. &#8220;We don&#8217;t need to tell you things are serious out there: this is a lifeline for people whose lives and wellbeing are in danger. &#8221;
Books Not Bans, now a separate nonprofit, started at a different San Francisco <a href="https://www.fabulosabooks.com/#/">bookstore</a>, Fabulosa Books, that &#8220;[specializes] in LGBTQ+ books.&#8221;
Fabulosa Books also stopped selling Rowling&#8217;s work, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DLV4dvcyXYY/?hl=en">saying</a> on social media that the author &#8220;is devoting her life to nastiness.&#8221;
Books Not Bans has sent more than &#8220;2200 books to community groups around America,&#8221; according to a social media <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DJvD5hUzNhs/?igsh=aGduY25yYWM4NDl5">post</a>.
One popular shipment is &#8220;All Boys Aren&#8217;t Blue,&#8221; which has been at the center of fights to keep sexually explicit books away from children, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-the-fight-to-shield-kids-from-graphic-material-in-a-deep-red-state">reported</a>. The book includes <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/its-time-to-unite-against-the-real-enemy">graphic descriptions</a> of anal rape and incest.
&#8220;[&#8216;All Boys Aren&#8217;t Blue&#8217;] was recently named the most banned book in America,&#8221; Books Not Bans said in a social media post. &#8220;We’ve sent &#8216;All Boys Aren’t Blue&#8217; to 20 different organizations all over America.&#8221;
Rowling has drawn criticism for her commitment to protecting women and women&#8217;s spaces, but the bestselling author has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-years-ago-j-k-rowling-took-a-stand-against-trans-activists-she-hasnt-backed-down">refused</a> to back down or apologize. In December, she celebrated the social media post that resulted in her becoming a global icon for women&#8217;s rights.
&#8220;Five years ago today and my only regret is that I didn&#8217;t speak out sooner,&#8221; Rowling <a href="https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1869544832370344245?s=43&amp;t=BDz6oekueqrSVJ50bM62xw">said</a> on social media. &#8220;To every girl and woman who&#8217;s paid a heavy price for fighting to retain their rights and boundaries, to every person striving to halt an appalling medical experiment on minors, I salute you. We will win.&#8221;

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