In our household, we lean more Carrie Underwood than Taylor Swift. It’s nothing personal — though, I’ll admit, it sometimes feels personal when celebrities use their platforms not only to sing but also to lecture half the country. Taylor Swift has been explicit in her support of President Biden and left-leaning causes. Travis Kelce, for his part, was the face of a national campaign telling Americans to roll up their sleeves and get the COVID shot. So, let’s be clear from the outset: their politics aren’t mine, and their cultural influence often points in the opposite direction of what I want for my family and this country.
And yet, here we are — celebrating their engagement. And celebrating is exactly the right word.
Because while my ideological Venn diagram doesn’t perfectly overlap with “Swiftie Nation” or its new hubby, there is one place where the circles meet in the middle: the enduring institution of marriage. Two people at the absolute height of their careers, perhaps the most famous singer and the greatest tight end to ever wear an NFL uniform, have chosen to stop, look each other in the eye, and say: “This is the person I want to commit my life to.” That is worth applauding.
Swift commands more than 280 million followers on Instagram alone. Kelce has over seven million. Combine their reach, and you have a cultural juggernaut — bigger than most cable networks.
Young people study their lives like Scripture. So, when two such figures choose marriage — not another “situationship,” not cohabitation without vows, not endless serial dating, but marriage — they are broadcasting a message stronger than any new single or touchdown dance: love is worth binding. Commitment is worth celebrating.
That matters in a culture where marriage is often delayed, derided, or dismissed altogether. Divorce rates may be down, but so too are marriage rates, with many young people opting out of family life altogether. Celebrities, more often than not, model instability rather than stability. Swift and Kelce choosing marriage provides an image of permanence at a time when our culture too often glorifies impermanence.
Make no mistake: this isn’t an argument that either of them has suddenly found their inner Ronald Reagan. I’m not suggesting Taylor Swift is about to record a country ballad praising the Second Amendment or that Travis Kelce will do the Trump dance after his next touchdown. Their politics are what they are. But we conservatives don’t need to agree with someone on everything to recognize when they’ve taken a step toward timeless truth.
Marriage is older than the United States. It predates kings, constitutions, and pop charts. It is the bedrock of civilization. Even when cultural elites mock or minimize it, they cannot erase the reality: when a man and woman bind themselves together in marriage, they are creating the most time-tested foundation for family and community that the world has ever known.
That’s why this engagement — between two people we wouldn’t consider political allies — is so instructive. It reminds us that truth has a stubborn way of showing up in places we least expect it. It reminds us that marriage is attractive even to those who don’t share our worldview. And it reminds us that conservatives should not be shy in celebrating when culture, however briefly, affirms what we’ve known all along.
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Taylor Swift has sung about breakups for nearly two decades. Now she’s signaling something far more meaningful than another heartbreak anthem. Travis Kelce has been praised for toughness on the field; now he’s showing a different kind of courage off of it — the courage to commit. For young people watching — and let’s be honest, tens of millions of them are — this story has the potential to shift the narrative. Instead of “just keep swiping,” the message becomes: “choose one, and choose forever.”
There’s a deeper point here for conservatives. Too often, we — myself included — reduce culture to a scoreboard of “us versus them.” Who endorsed Biden? Who took a knee? Who did the Bud Light ad? That matters, yes. Ideas have consequences, and politics shapes the future. But not everything has to be reduced to the partisan trenches. Sometimes, culture reminds us that God’s design still resonates even when people don’t recognize it as His design.
Marriage is one of those reminders.
So no, I don’t expect Taylor Swift to headline CPAC anytime soon. And no, I don’t expect Travis Kelce to start quoting C.S. Lewis in the locker room. But I do expect that their engagement will make some young people pause and reconsider the script they’ve been fed — that career comes first, that love is temporary, that vows are outdated. Seeing the most famous woman on the planet say yes to marriage — and seeing one of the NFL’s biggest stars embrace that same choice — undercuts the lie that commitment is uncool.
We don’t have to be Swifties to be happy for them. We don’t have to endorse their politics to endorse their vows. In fact, it is precisely because we disagree with them on so much that celebrating this moment becomes even more powerful. It shows that conservatives can recognize and affirm the good, even in those who don’t see the world as we do.
And maybe — just maybe — Swift and Kelce will discover that the overlap between their world and ours is bigger than they think.
For now, let’s give them this: congratulations. Marriage is still worth singing about.
* * *
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

2025 Stanley Cup Final – Game Four

Love Wins: Even When We Don’t Vote The Same

Conservatives

Dating

Gen Z

Liberals

Marriage

Opinion

Taylor Swift

Travis Kelce

In the most recent flashpoint in the culture war, American Eagle showcased actress Sydney Sweeney in an advertisement with the caption “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
The ad is overtly sexual, with the camera highlighting sexual features more than the denim itself, with suggestive poses that frame Sweeney as an erotic object of desire.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” Sweeney says, back arched, while zipping up her pants. “My jeans are blue.”
The reaction to the ad was a Rorschach test. The Left, locked into a hermeneutic of suspicion with a reflex to read nefarious messaging into things that seem anodyne at a cursory glance, were outraged at the perceived fascist signaling of the ad (Sweeney is thin, blonde, and blue-eyed). Some on the Left interpreted it as a dog whistle for eugenics and white supremacy.
The Right, which often settles for cultural scraps, celebrated the ad as a win against “woke” culture for featuring an attractive, thin white woman after years of brands being influenced by the Left’s ideological fixations with inclusivity. One commentator <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-war-on-hot-women-why-the-woke-mob-hates-sydney-sweeney/ar-AA1Jz1Vf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed</a> the ad was a sign that “the American people are done with ‘woke,” and another said it meant that “woke is dead, and beauty is back.” The X account <a href="https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1948383505974510061" target="_blank" rel="noopener">End Wokeness</a>, juxtaposing a picture of an American Eagle ad featuring a heavy-set black woman with a picture of Sweeney immodestly posing, commented, “woke is dead.”
For us social conservatives, much of the Right’s reaction was a bleak cultural bellwether. One can argue that the big-budget designers who created the ad knew exactly how the “great jeans” innuendo would be received, and that it was intended to create the media buzz it has. I personally don’t believe that American Eagle, which has a <a href="https://www.aeo-inc.com/inclusion-diversity/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pride flag on its website</a>, is engaged in Nazi dog-whistling.
The Right’s reaction, however, should alarm conservatives who are concerned with the erosion of family-friendly culture. The celebratory reaction to the ad demonstrates just how steeped in liberal paradigms and assumptions the American Right is today. The ad treats sexuality as public, performative, and consumable. It’s revealing and immodest, something I would try to shield my children from seeing at the mall. It’s not a rupture from “woke” in the slightest, rather an embrace of the liberal anthropology that detached sexuality from marriage and procreation during the 1960s sexual revolution.
Much of the contemporary Right now swims in these waters, too steeped in liberalism to even realize that by cheering the American Eagle ad as an “anti-woke” victory, they’re participating in and enabling a culture that the left created.
The ad demonstrated the triumph of liberalism and its assault on the religious right in particular, which, through different kinds of grassroots activist groups, has long campaigned against the kind of sexualized media that brands like American Eagle promote because of the harm it inflicts on families and children.
At the heart of Christianity is the belief that each person is made Imago Dei, in the image of God, and that the human body is not an object of consumption. Pope Saint John Paul II expresses this in “Theology of the Body,” a set of teachings he delivered between 1979 and 1984. He explained how sexual pathologies like pornography distort human dignity and invert the body’s purpose of self-giving love. When this fundamental truth is rejected, it comes as no surprise that the prevalence of sexualized media<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496?src=recsys&amp;journalCode=hjsr20" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> leads to</a> consequences like higher levels of body dissatisfaction, a greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women, and diminished views of women’s humanity.
For social conservatives who believe moral guardrails are necessary for human flourishing, mainstream culture is still hostile terrain, and the American Eagle Sydney Sweeney ad exposes the cultural captivity of much of the Right.
Being “anti-woke” is not enough, even if the campaign against wokeness generally aligns with the objectives of any socially conservative movement.  Anyone serious about making the public square welcoming to children and families must work to reclaim modesty as the standard cultural norm, and they must have the courage to oppose the liberal foundations of our sexualized marketplace itself.
Marlo Slayback is the Executive Director of the Collegiate Network for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
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The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Sydney Sweeney

Sex Sells, And The Right Bought It: The Hollow ‘Victory’ Of The Sydney Sweeney Ad

advertising

Christianity

Liberalism

Wokeness

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

1968 Republican National Convention

The Man Who Backed Reagan Before Reagan Was Ready

Books

National Review

Ronald Reagan

William F. Buckley Jr.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration will &#8220;make a determination over the next few weeks&#8221; on whether to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug.
During a press conference in the White House Briefing Room, Trump was asked about a Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-marijuana-federal-drug-classification-01a73b8c?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAgpZ8UL7Mw6HKwBVKPjsmn_wP6A2h8SNZiG41aF9hPed4QVwq2_gG6R&amp;gaa_ts=6897fc20&amp;gaa_sig=Nm9TnTCPjVnNlMv_P1PaH_NVhN3Nn8RbA8H9lDEnLY0FBfl1b_Sd78D-SH_icaL7fTnMQ1iwaisKOLJA0cNS5g%3D%3D">report</a> stating that he was considering a possible marijuana reclassification, an issue that has caused some division among Trump&#8217;s base. The president acknowledged that marijuana reclassification is a &#8220;very complicated subject.&#8221;
&#8220;Some people hate the whole concept of marijuana because if it does bad for the children, it does bad for people older than children,&#8221; Trump said.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a very complicated subject, the subject of marijuana,&#8221; he added. &#8220;I&#8217;ve heard great things having to do with medical [marijuana], and I&#8217;ve [heard] bad things having to do with just about everything else.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
President Trump on marijuana: &#8220;We&#8217;re looking at reclassification and we&#8217;ll make a determination over the next few weeks.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/GTiYKogmuA">pic.twitter.com/GTiYKogmuA</a>
— CSPAN (@cspan) <a href="https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1954928772991291413?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
Trump reportedly floated the idea of reclassifying marijuana during a fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club earlier this month in front of guests that included Kim Rivers, the CEO of Trulieve, one of the largest marijuana companies in the United States. The discussions within the Trump administration focus on whether weed should be reclassified as a Schedule III drug, which would drop certain restrictions on marijuana without completely legalizing it, according to the WSJ.
While some states have passed laws legalizing recreational and medical marijuana use, it is still <a href="https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/orangebook/c_cs_alpha.pdf">listed</a> as a Schedule I drug under federal law. Schedule I <a href="https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling">means</a> a drug has &#8220;no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.&#8221; Reclassifying marijuana as Schedule III would put the drug in the same category as drugs that have &#8220;a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.&#8221;
Marijuana reclassification was pursued by the Biden administration, but it wasn&#8217;t achieved before President Joe Biden left office in January. Trump signaled his support for recreational marijuana last year when he voted to legalize the drug in Florida last year, pitting himself against conservatives such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The marijuana amendment push in Florida received 56%, falling just short of the 60% needed to pass it into law.
A senior White House official told the WSJ that Trump wants to take on issues like marijuana that are viewed as “80-20 cultural issues.” Trump&#8217;s inroads among independent and younger voters could also make the reclassification push more attractive to the Trump administration as Republicans seek to hold onto the momentum gained in the 2024 election as the 2026 midterm elections approach.
The campaign to downgrade marijuana&#8217;s drug classification also receives a lot of money. Marijuana companies have donated millions of dollars to the American Rights and Reform PAC, which <a href="https://www.americanrightsreform.com/">pushes</a> to &#8220;end the war on medical cannabis.&#8221; Consultants working for Trulieve have presented Trump&#8217;s team with polling that shows that more than 80% of independent voters support reclassifying marijuana, the WSJ reported.
“This is not calling for decriminalization or legalization but simply knocking it down a few notches on the criminal scale,” Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz told the WSJ. “It’s probably targeted more to a younger demographic, where the president has made great headway.” Bruesewitz was paid $300,000 by the American Rights and Reform PAC to work on social media and advertisements.
Some independents and conservatives, however, strongly oppose the effort to reclassify marijuana and want the federal government to ramp up enforcement of existing laws on marijuana.
&#8220;Our society thrived when everyone was smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey. We became the most powerful nation in the world with liquor and nicotine. No country of potheads has ever thrived, or ever achieved anything at all,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1954264828626780162">wrote</a> Daily Wire host Matt Walsh. &#8220;Every city that legalized it became an even bigger s***hole basically overnight. The entire history of western civilization tells us that marijuana is far, far worse for society.&#8221;
Walsh <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1954225938113126716">added</a> that the federal government should be doing &#8220;exactly the opposite&#8221; of what the Trump administration is considering.
Other independents and conservatives also chimed in, expressing their disapproval of reclassifying marijuana.
&#8220;Marijuana mass normalization has been a disaster for the United States,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/esaagar/status/1954633873486495964">said</a> Breaking Points host Saagar Enjeti. &#8220;Our cities stink, our kids are literally being poisoned and made stupid, DWIs are skyrocketing and the promised revenue doesn&#8217;t even come close to making up the mass social chaos.&#8221;
&#8220;Weed is a scourge, rewarding some of the worst elements of society while sapping the will and productivity of far too many citizens, especially young men,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/CortesSteve/status/1954513837668925493">added</a> conservative commentator Steve Cortes. &#8220;MAGA must focus on quality of life issues &#8212; we can do so much better than cities that reek of disgusting smoke.&#8221;

Donald Trump/Marijuana

Trump Sparks Debate With Comments On Reclassifying Weed

Donald Trump

Drugs

Marijuana

Trump Administration

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Left can’t meme, but can only scold the Right for memeing well.
This dynamic was once confined to esoteric feuds among terminally online partisans. Now, it’s playing out in the open — between government agencies and what remains of the legacy media — and the stakes are increasingly tangible.
The Trump administration’s social media accounts have spent their summer appropriating classic images of Americana, notably J.M. Flagg’s famous<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Montgomery_Flagg#/media/File:I_Want_You_for_U.S._Army_by_James_Montgomery_Flagg.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 1917 Uncle Sam poster</a>. But things really hit a fever pitch when the Department of Homeland Security shared three seemingly innocuous images: <a href="https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1948150126494482555" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Gast’s 1872 “American Progress,”</a> with the caption “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.” <a href="https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1940164863793549747" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thomas Kinkade’s “Morning Pledge”</a> with the caption “Protect the Homeland,” and<a href="https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1944875154745778525" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Morgan Weistling’s “A Prayer for a New Life”</a> captioned “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.”
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Protect the Homeland.
“Morning Pledge” by Thomas Kinkade <a href="https://t.co/JLs26R3VlO">pic.twitter.com/JLs26R3VlO</a>
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1940164863793549747?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
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According to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/07/29/trump-dhs-immigrants-social-paintings/">Washington Post</a>, “the art world is not happy” with these posts because they are “part of an effort to rewrite the past with an exclusionary view of American history,” one in which there are clear standards of good and evil.
The Post doesn’t attempt to show why ordinary Americans should care about this. But while the Post’s freakout may be amusing to behold, it also gets at something important. Liberals are right to panic about these posts — and conservatives should pay attention.
The second Trump administration is staffed with right-wing Zoomers. These staffers are digital natives: born in the memeworld, molded by it, and in many cases more radically opposed to the leftwing hegemony that reached its apogee during their formative years than those of us who remember the days when cable news still dictated the terms of national conversation.
Those days are gone. Millennials like JD Vance and Stephen Miller hold high office. The aesthetic sensibilities of the Zoomers on their staff are shaping the administration’s narrative warfare, providing unprecedented air cover to the administration’s ground operations. Their social media habits are a visible sign of just how far the Left has fallen from its media and, thus, meaning-making monopoly.
The recent dustup about Homeland Security posting Americana paintings is just a minor skirmish in the larger war that is being waged for the sensibilities of the American people. Liberals have long realized that he who controls the production, distribution, and regulation of images controls the hearts, minds, and imaginations of the population.
Despite their confusion over other fundamental truths such as the difference between a man and a woman, liberals grasp this reality — and in it, something essential to the human condition.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.
American Progress &#8211; John Gast <a href="https://t.co/agU6bl8TZ8">pic.twitter.com/agU6bl8TZ8</a>
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1948150126494482555?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2025</a></blockquote>
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We are imaginative as well as rational creatures, embodied as well as capable of abstract thought. Our reasoning about right and wrong, true and false, never gets very far without referring to something particular we’ve experienced, either directly in our own lives or vicariously through the testimony of others — including stories and history. “Music,” in the classical and comprehensive sense of “the arts of the Muses,” matters.
In ancient Greece, the nine Muses were the daughters of “Memory” and presided over the arts. Mythology and biography, parable and narrative, have always been the primary means of moral and political education, and they remain so today. Americans in general still recognize the power of the “Muse-ical arts,” mainly in the potency of historical narratives such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement.
We would do well to recover the sense of power contained in other forms of “Music,” especially the storytelling power of films. Newer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/watch/movies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ventures</a> on the <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/07/20/2025/founders-films-aims-to-remake-hollywood-with-patriotism-palantir-and-ayn-rand" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Right</a> are beginning to do this.
But we still have a long way to go. Even the artists whose work the Trump administration is now using aren’t safe from the Left’s appropriation.
The Kinkade Family Foundation, scandalized by the Trump administration’s use of his work, <a href="https://www.kinkadefamilyfoundation.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declared</a> it was “deeply troubled to see this image used to promote division and xenophobia associated with the ideals of DHS” and pledged solidarity with “our communities who have been threatened and targeted by DHS, especially our immigrant, BIPOC, undocumented, LGBTQ+, and disabled relatives and neighbors.” Weistling, the only artist of the three still alive, took to his <a href="https://www.morganweistling.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a> to distance himself from the politics of the moment: “The recent DHS post on social media using a painting of mine that I painted a few years ago was used without my permission.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.
New Life in a New Land &#8211; Morgan Weistling <a href="https://t.co/nFL61Nljbw">pic.twitter.com/nFL61Nljbw</a>
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1944875154745778525?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Still, there is a virtually inexhaustible store of classic works of mythology, literature, and history, ancient as well as American, waiting to be adapted by artists who love rather than revile our inheritance.
There is a lesson here for older conservatives. Liberal donors have long appreciated the political utility of culture. As a class, they have lavished funds on all manner of artistic ventures, sowing seeds broadly in the expectation that just a few of their investments will blossom into captivating cultural products. As a result, they have dominated the culture for generations — not because young people are naturally more liberal (Zoomer men are currently disproving this myth) — but because their cold, hard cash has helped drag the next generation leftward.
Conservative donors are more comfortable running a business than patronizing the arts. They tend to focus their charitable giving on well-defined causes with short-term returns on investment. They have thereby won discrete battles — winning this election, pushing that policy through Congress — while losing the broader war for the soul of the nation.
That the unembarrassed Americanism of artists like Kinkade and Weistling has enjoyed commercial success while swimming against the tide of liberal cultural hegemony is a sign of just how high a demand remains in the American public for non-leftist cultural products. Liberal hegemony is cracking up, and as the Trump administration gets serious about winding down its taxpayer-funded power bases, from NPR and PBS to elite universities, the crack-up is bound to continue.
The emergence of an energetic and effective American Right has far more to do with digital disruption than with a strategic change in the conservative donor class. Conservatives who are serious about reclaiming American culture, and consigning the most anti-American elements of the Left to the dustbin of history, should put a shoulder to the wheel — not just in lobbying and campaign donations, but in directly patronizing the artists, educators, and other culture creators who celebrate rather than denigrate our civilizational heritage.
Pavlos Papadopoulos is Associate Professor of Humanities at Wyoming Catholic College.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

American Progress

Americana Posting And The War For Culture

Department of Homeland Security

Painting

Washington Post

I lock my front door every night. Not because I despise the families who live down the street, but because I cherish the three sleeping heads under my roof.
That impulse — to guard what we love — lies at the heart of the conservative case for a secure border. Too often, we let opponents cast us as people against something (immigrants) when, in fact, we’re actually: for our children’s safety, for working-class wages, for the fragile civic glue that lets strangers treat one another like neighbors.
Polling shows the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/15/how-americans-view-the-u-s-mexico-border-situation-and-the-governments-handling-of-the-issue/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mainstream agrees</a>. Eighty percent of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, say Washington is mishandling the migrant surge, and immigration now tops Gallup’s <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“most important problem”</a> list.
Conservatives are right to sound the alarm. We just need to explain that we&#8217;re doing so out of a sense of stewardship, not spite.
History backs the prudence of timed, purposeful immigration. During the American Revolution, foreign-born allies such as <a href="https://www.history.com/articles/6-foreign-born-heroes-of-the-american-revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener">France’s Lafayette and Prussia’s von Steuben</a> arrived with artillery drills, engineering skills, and diplomatic muscle that an infant republic simply lacked; without them, Yorktown’s surrender may never have come. The young nation welcomed outsiders for a specific mission: win independence and teach the citizen army how to march, aim, and dig trenches.
Fast-forward to the wreckage after Appomattox. The Civil War killed more than 600,000 Americans and scorched the rail lines meant to reunite the continent. Rebuilding demanded manpower the battered South and draft-depleted North no longer possessed. Thousands of Irish and German laborers <a href="https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?psid=3147&amp;smtID=2&amp;utm_" target="_blank" rel="noopener">laid the ties and pounded the spikes</a> of the transcontinental railroad, knitting markets back together and jump-starting a devastated economy. Immigration in that moment was not charity. It was the scaffolding of national recovery.
The same pattern repeated when smokestacks crowded city skylines. By 1920, immigrants and their children supplied <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2760060/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over half of all manufacturing workers</a> — two-thirds if you count grandchildren — allowing American factories to roar at a scale native labor alone could not have matched. The message is clear: when the nation needs fresh shoulders, controlled immigration can be a patriotic tool.
Yet prudence also means knowing when the job is done. After the industrial boom settled, Congress judged the house full and passed the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Johnson-Reed Act of 1924</a>, limiting visas to 2% of each nationality’s 1890 population, and virtually closing the door to Asia. Even a country famous for welcoming immigrants understood that unending inflows can outrun assimilation, depress wages, and strain public trust.
We are living through another such inflection point. The crisis is not a shortage of bodies but a shortage of babies. America’s fertility rate hovers well below replacement while housing prices, classroom head counts, and entitlement programs all creak under existing loads. Before we import millions more people, we should ask why so many citizens feel they cannot afford to start or grow a family.
Conservatives aren’t anti-immigrant. We are pro-family, pro-fairness, and pro-order.
When we do invite guests, we open the front entrance — offering lawful visas to people who follow the rules — rather than waving strangers through a broken window. Securing the southern border, finishing reliable fencing, and speeding up deportations for criminals are not acts of hostility but of hospitality rightly ordered. They protect wages for citizens at the bottom rung, preserve classroom resources for kids who are already falling behind, and honor the millions who waited in line.
Positive reform flows from the same ethic. Conservatives can champion faster asylum rulings so genuine refugees are sheltered quickly while false claims end swiftly. We can simplify legal work visas tied to market demand, not political patronage, and insist those visas come with a date certain to go home or a clear path to stay that includes English proficiency, tax compliance, and civic education. We can tighten E-Verify so employers cannot undercut American labor, and we can steer foreign aid toward church-based charities that fight cartel terror in place — reducing the push factors long before migrants reach the Rio Grande.
The test for our movement is tone. Instead of saying, “We’re against immigration,” say, “We’re for the American worker, for the rule of law, for assimilation strong enough to turn strangers into compatriots.” Tell the single mom in El Paso that a porous border lets fentanyl and traffickers hunt her kids. Tell the legal immigrant in Phoenix that respecting the line he stood in is an act of justice. Tell the Honduran father that a stable, self-confident United States is the best gift we can offer the world, because chaos here would slam every golden door shut.
Someday my children will ask what we did with the inheritance our grandparents secured — ordered liberty, decent wages, a common language of rights and responsibilities. I want to tell them we acted as guardians, not gatekeepers; that we said “yes” to a future large enough for newcomers and natives, but only after we repaired the foundation already cracking beneath our feet.
Conservatives are right on immigration because we refuse to trade short-term sentiment for long-term stability. We are not building a wall of hate; we are stewarding a border of love. And love, like any good father knows, sometimes says “stop” today so it can say “welcome” tomorrow.
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

American flag

Conservatives Are Right On Immigration. We Just Need To Say It Better. 

Illegal Immigration

Polls

Southern Border

As conservatives, we’re fond of praising marriage and family, and for good reason — marriage is both a cornerstone and a hallmark of a healthy society.
The conservative movement can’t seem to get its fill of telling young people to marry, settle down, and have kids. That’s fair enough. But unfortunately, eager to marry everyone off, conservatives tend to skip over one crucial detail: how exactly you get there.
For all their discussion of marriage, most conservatives don’t seem to touch the topic of dating with a 10-foot pole.
And to the extent they do discuss it, that discussion typically centers on the beginning of dating. They encourage men to make the first move and ask women out, or warn women against making the first move themselves. Or, their discussion centers on what not to do: don’t have sex before marriage, and definitely don’t move in together.
But no one talks about what healthy dating should look like. There’s no practical discussion of how to date in a way that’s likely to lead to marriage, or how to get to know someone and discern whether you should marry them while also maintaining healthy boundaries in the understanding that you aren’t yet married.
This leaves young conservatives caught between two flawed views of dating.
On the one hand, they’re faced with the destructive habits of their peers — hookup culture, casual dating, or even long-term dating relationships with no intention of marriage.
On the other hand, they’re confronted by the romanticism of the older generation and the ideal of the knight in shining armor, a perspective that mainly consists of strictures for the man to open the door, pay for dates, or show up with flowers, and for the woman to be “feminine” — bonus points for wearing a sundress.
While some of these principles have value, none of them address the actual day-to-day or week-to-week of dating, and it’s easy for them to turn into pressure to act a certain way simply to meet certain standards.
Perhaps it’s this black hole that accounts for the fact that, while <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw11y2CTM9KUJuVUXxIYfD1v">69%</a> of those ages 18-34 who have never been married say they hope to be married, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">a full 50%</a> of singles aren’t currently looking to date or enter a relationship.
Trapped between a hookup culture that leaves people feeling empty and broken and a romantic idealism that places performative pressure on both parties, many may decide dating is too difficult and that they have <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">“more important priorities.”</a>
For those who do decide to date, there’s a relative dearth of older role models who exemplify healthy marital relationships, let alone healthy dating relationships. In <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1t_puy52HWeCinUKRP1O3C">recent years</a>, overall marriage numbers have declined; divorces among older couples have increased; and the number of couples, including older couples, cohabitating with an unmarried partner has increased.
Add to that the chronic pervasiveness of utterly flawed dating perspectives online, and you’ve got a recipe for the current situation: one in which well-intentioned young people are left on their own, groping in the dark for wisdom to guide their dating lives.
This leaves many struggling to successfully navigate relationships. According to one survey, 67% of “daters” say their dating life is either <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">not going too well</a> or not going well at all.
As a result, many relationships otherwise full of potential end up amounting to nothing, falling prey to miscommunication, social pressures, or other issues — many of which could be easily remedied with a dose of wisdom from an elder.
If conservatives are serious about wanting young people to get married, it’s time to stop simply preaching the merits of marriage and start offering practical advice on how to get there.
That starts at the individual level: older, happily married members of a community (like a church, for example) should come alongside younger members of that community, making themselves available to answer any questions those younger members may have.
This isn’t to say people don’t do that already. I’ve personally been blessed to have several members of my church walk with me in this manner.
But the same should also be practiced in society more broadly. Dating isn’t going to look the same for everyone—so influencers, commentators, and others in healthy marriages should share their personal stories of how they approached dating, offering examples of the ways to approach dating wisely.
Without these kinds of examples, we may stay stuck where we are now: a society where most people hope for marriage but few are capable of taking the necessary steps to achieve it.
Mary Mobley is an Editorial Fellow in the Strategic Communications department of the Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Couple getting married in church

What Conservatives Miss About Marriage 

Chip and Joanna Gaines, whose public embrace of their Christian faith has made them especially popular among American Evangelicals, are facing new allegations of hypocrisy.
The “Fixer Upper” stars serve as producers for &#8220;Back To The Frontier,&#8221; a new show on HBO Max in which three families attempt to live as 19th-century homesteaders. One of the couples, Jason and Joe Hanna-Riggs, are gay men with adopted children. Their inclusion in the show has caused some Christians to accuse the reality stars of failing to live up to the values they have publicly espoused.
Ed Vitagliano, vice president of the American Family Association, also publicly called out the couple for disappointing their fan base.
“This is sad and disappointing, because Chip and Joanna Gaines have been very influential in the evangelical community,” Ed Vitagliano, vice president of the American Family Association, <a href="https://x.com/AmericanFamAssc/status/1943747871985025097">said</a> on X.  &#8220;In the past, they have stood firm on the sanctity of marriage regardless of the personal cost that has entailed.&#8221;
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Chip and Joanna Gaines’ new show on their Magnolia Network spotlights a same-sex couple and their two sons, drawing concern from Christians who expected the network to uphold biblical values.
“This is sad and disappointing, because Chip and Joanna Gaines have been very… <a href="https://t.co/LKMupgB6o3">pic.twitter.com/LKMupgB6o3</a>
&mdash; American Family Association (@AmericanFamAssc) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmericanFamAssc/status/1943747871985025097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Chip Gaines responded to the backlash on X.
“Talk, ask [questions], listen.. maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never,” he wrote on Sunday. “It’s a sad sunday when ‘non believers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian.”
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Talk, ask qustns, listen.. maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never
It’s a sad sunday when “non believers” have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian💔
— Chip Gaines (@chipgaines) <a href="https://twitter.com/chipgaines/status/1944344464215957561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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“On our way to church,&#8221; the father of five wrote in a follow-up <a href="https://x.com/chipgaines/status/1944378161732485352">post</a>. &#8220;Y’all enjoy this beautiful Sunday!”

Chip and Joanna Gaines

Fans Accuse Christian TV Stars Chip And Joanna Gaines Of Hypocrisy With New Reality Show

Chip And Joanna Gaines Slammed For Including Same-Sex Couple In New Series

Entertainment

Evangelicals

Joanna Gaines

LGBT

Social Issues

Television

U.S.

President Trump Delivers Address To Nation On Iran Military Operation

Trump Bombed Iran. What’s Next?

Democrats

Iran

Iran Nuclear

Israel

JD Vance

Matt Walsh

Middle East

President Trump

Republicans

Editor&#8217;s note: A previous version of this article included social media posts that falsely claimed that the Penske Media Corp had contributed more than a million dollars to political organizations associated with Donald Trump. Those donations came from the Penske Corp, which is a different entity. The story has been updated. 
&#8212;
Some Taylor Swift fans have theories about why she didn&#8217;t attend the American Music Awards (AMAs) on Monday despite being nominated for six awards.
One anonymous <a href="https://x.com/repgirlypop/status/1927194423063884012?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1927194423063884012%7Ctwgr%5E07e6f1f2ea34d03e62a6bfb9bc43b867e301bf77%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.dailywire.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D926219action%3Dedit">X post speculated</a> that the pop star might have skipped due to politics, suggesting that it could be because Billboard Magazine, which is affiliated with the award show, was owned by conservatives. But the post, which has amassed hundreds of thousands of views on X, appears to confuse Jay Penske and his Penske Media Corp with Penske Corp, a company owned by his father, the billionaire former race car driver Roger Penske. 
The younger Penske does not appear to have made any donations to Trump, or any affiliated political groups. His media group, Penske Media Corp, owns several prominent entertainment news outlets, including The Hollywood Reporter and Rolling Stone.
Jay Penske maintains a politically neutral public persona. His father, Roger Penske, formally endorsed President Trump in 2020 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019 . Penske Corp, according to a review of <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/penske-corp/summary?id=D000036594">campaign finance records</a>, has made several donations to Trump and other Republicans. 
Trump is on the mind of Swift&#8217;s fans due to his recent barb, in which he renewed criticism of the singer he once said he hates.
“Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’” the president shared with his followers on May 16.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=memorial&amp;utm_content=editorialmemorialday">Get 40% Off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
While some fans believe Swift skipped the ceremony due to Trump drama, another theory says the singer did not attend because of the ongoing legal drama between her friend, Blake Lively, and Justin Baldoni.
Swift was subpoenaed in one of the lawsuits, but the court order was later withdrawn. An unnamed source told <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14754785/Taylor-Swift-AVOIDED-AMAs-keeps-low-profile-boyfriend-Travis-Kelce.html">The Daily Mail</a> that the legal issues were the real reason Swift skipped the AMAs.
&#8220;She avoided the AMAs because she didn&#8217;t want to deal with 1000s of questions about the Blake Lively saga,&#8221; a source told the outlet.
&#8220;It is all anyone wants to talk about, and Taylor is really tired of it,&#8221; the source added.
Other <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/real-reason-taylor-swift-skipped-143737766.html">fans have speculated</a> that Swift&#8217;s absence had to do with rumors that an engagement to NFL star Travis Kelce is on the horizon.
Swift currently holds the record for most AMA wins in history with 40. Winners of the AMAs are determined by fans voting on social media and through an online platform.
With Swift&#8217;s absence, performers at the AMAs included Benson Boone, Gloria Estefan, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, Reneé Rapp, Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani, Rod Stewart, Alex Warren, and Lainey Wilson. Lopez’s performance raised some eyebrows as she proceeded to kiss both a male and a female dancer on stage, as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/desperate-viewers-react-to-jennifer-lopez-making-out-with-dancers-at-amas?author=Amanda+Harding&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=%E2%80%98Desperate%E2%80%99%3A+Viewers+React+To+Jennifer+Lopez+Making+Out+With+Dancers+At+AMAs">reported</a>.

Fans Speculate Why Taylor Swift Skipped AMAs

Fans Speculate Why Taylor Swift Skipped AMAs, Blame Trump And Conservatives

Music

Few artists loathe the music industry quite like Tom MacDonald.
The rebel rapper takes glee in taunting labels on his social media platforms. He recently posted a troll video in front of Sony Music headquarters, name-checking industry pariahs like R. Kelly and P. Diddy with a broad grin on his face.
And despite repeatedly crashing the Billboard music charts he’s refused to go corporate for a bigger promotional wallop.
MacDonald is solo to the core, with an assist from his girlfriend/video director Nova Rockafeller. No managers. No publicists. Just the music and his sizable social media flock.
The mind behind “Fake Woke,” “Snowflakes” and “American Flags” still felt influenced by mainstream superstars, from their branding efforts to songs that purport to dig deeper into their personal lives.
<div id="attachment_891745" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-891745" class="size-large wp-image-891745" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: YouTube/Tom MacDonald &quot;Facts&quot; feat. Ben Shapiro" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-2048x1153.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: YouTube/Tom MacDonald &#8220;Facts&#8221; feat. Ben Shapiro</div>
“As an independent artist, we’re all watching what the biggest artists in the world are doing and what they sound like,” he says. “Even if you’re somebody like me who detests the major label system, you’re taking information in. You’re being indoctrinated … they must know what’s best.”
It took a while to shake free from that thinking, something he accomplished on his latest album.
“Proud to Be a Problem” finds the Canadian native opening up about his life in ways he never did before.
“I’ve never really been good with processing my emotions and explaining the way I’m feeling to other people… it’s the reason why I make music,” the California-based musician says.
<div id="attachment_915575" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-915575" class="size-large wp-image-915575" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-574-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: YouTube.com/Tom MacDonald." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-574-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-574-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-574-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-574-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-574-2048x1153.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: YouTube.com/Tom MacDonald.</div>
Time and maturity have let him tap into something vital and deeply personal, witness tracks like “Hell &amp; Back.”
<blockquote>I&#8217;ve been called a loser since first day of 2nd grade 
I&#8217;ve been an alcoholic with one foot inside the grave 
And I&#8217;ve been brave enough to say that I&#8217;m afraid I&#8217;m not okay 
And I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ll survive another day</blockquote>
Other tracks, like “Man in the Sky,” merge MacDonald’s protest-singer DNA with heartfelt pleas for empathy. He’s an imperfect vessel in an imperfect world.
The musician’s flaws, like his signature tattoos, are visible to all. <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/goodbye-joe-god-bless-the-usa-top-digital-song-sales-chart-after-election-1235825769/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">So are his successes</a>.
His post-election song “Goodbye Joe” gave him his <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/goodbye-joe-god-bless-the-usa-top-digital-song-sales-chart-after-election-1235825769/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fourth number-one ranking</a> on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart, following “Fake Woke,” “Ghost” and “You Missed.”
His YouTube channel boasts 5 million subscribers and most videos eclipse the million-view mark in days, not weeks.
MacDonald, whose recent pairings include songs with Roseanne Barr (“Daddy’s Home”) and The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro (“Facts”), sounds a little different on the new album. He isn’t giving up on rap, but the newer material offers a rootsy feel, brimming with acoustic guitars.
<div id="attachment_915573" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-915573" class="size-large wp-image-915573" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-57-AM-7387-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: YouTube.com/Tom MacDonald." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-57-AM-7387-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-57-AM-7387-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-57-AM-7387-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-57-AM-7387-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-57-AM-7387-2048x1153.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: YouTube.com/Tom MacDonald.</div>
That singing style hearkens back to his earliest days as a musician. He remembers riding in the car with his father as a boy when he came up with a jingle for Ford.
“[My Dad] was bewildered … where did that come from?” MacDonald recalls. 
He started writing music more often, but he felt he didn’t have the classic rock voice, a la Robert Plant or Joe Cocker, to execute the material. “I had to do something else. I was writing poetry, a primitive form of rap. That’s how the rap thing started,” he says.
“Problem” found him more confident in his singing, allowing him to expand his sound in the process.
“I know where my boundaries are and what I’m capable of singing on a song &#8230; if I don’t do it right now I won’t have a good enough excuse to give it a good shot [later],” he says.
Fans can pick up “Proud to Be a Problem” at MacDonald’s official web site, <a href="https://hangovergangofficial.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HangoverGangOfficial.com</a>. That’s part of his indie approach, lashing out at a streaming landscape that pays little to participating artists.
“I have such a big chip on my shoulder for the music industry,” he says, recalling a brush with a major label earlier in his career that ended in rejection. “I’ve done enough for these streaming platforms.”
“A big part of the reason I put the singles on streaming is we keep going to no. 1 on Billboard [charts] … it’s a giant f***ing middle finger to the music industry,” he says.
<div id="attachment_915581" style="width: 334px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-915581" class="wp-image-915581 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-12-10-PM-5842-324x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: Instagram/@TomMacDonaldOfficial" width="324" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-12-10-PM-5842-324x576.jpg 324w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-12-10-PM-5842-169x300.jpg 169w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-12-10-PM-5842-768x1365.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-12-10-PM-5842-864x1536.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-12-10-PM-5842-1152x2048.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-12-10-PM-5842.jpg 1440w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 324px) 100vw, 324px" />Screenshot: Instagram/@TomMacDonaldOfficial</div>
That solo spirit extends beyond the music on “Problem.” He designed the merchandise around the released, mailed signed LP copies of it to fans personally and oversaw every part of the production.
“It hasn’t been touched by Hollywood. That’s the way I want it,” he says.
He shared his feelings about sending out signed copies of “Proud to Be a Problem” to fans on his <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DJIdKXgPXX0/?img_index=1">Instagram account</a>:
<blockquote>I gotta tell y’all &#8211; people didn’t care about me for most of my life. I was one of the forgotten people whose voice was drown out by the noise of the world. Every single day I’m shocked that you guys care about me enough to want my album and my signature. I’m shocked…but I’m thrilled. I felt like a “nobody” for so long that every day I wake up expecting to be forgotten again. Every day that y’all remember me, you prove me wrong. And you absolutely make my day. No one should ever feel like a nobody. But it happens.</blockquote>
That personal connection reflects being a music fan growing up in Canada. He fondly remembers lining up at the local record store and waiting for the newest albums to go on sale.
“When you got that album .. you felt like you might be one of the only people in the world who had it,” he says. “You could hold on to it, a physical product … That’s the way I want my music to be experienced.”
Record labels still reach out to MacDonald about potential deals, and he sometimes will listen to the conversation. Then, he’ll share his reactions on Instagram.
“I’ve been trolling these people for years and years,” he says. “I’d rather roll around on broken glass [than sign onto a label].”
<div id="attachment_915577" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-915577" class="size-large wp-image-915577" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-5929-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: YouTube.com/Tom MacDonald." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-5929-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-5929-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-5929-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-5929-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/MixCollage-03-May-2025-11-58-AM-5929-2048x1153.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: YouTube.com/Tom MacDonald.</div>
MacDonald leveraged new media and a collective mistrust of the mainstream to power his music career. Somewhere a fledgling singer/songwriter might want to follow in his shoes, avoiding corporate overlords to make music on their terms.
MacDonald has some clichéd but honest advice for the next generation of indie musicians.
“Just be yourself … there’s always gonna be a better producer, a better rapper, a better singer. You’re the only person on earth who can do you better than anybody else,” he says. “The entire world is fake and bulls*** and disingenuous. The best way to cut through all that noise is to be honest and scream your truth at the top of your lungs … people gravitate towards the truth and what’s real.”
* * *
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.

Millions Of Views And Fiercely Independent. Inside The Mind Of Tom MacDonald.

Music Industry

Rapper

Tom MacDonald

Normally when some influencer posts a video that I find annoying and I feel the need to respond to it, I save it for my Daily Cancellation segment. Today, however, I am going to break that rule. I am going to begin with a video from an allegedly conservative influencer named Emily Wilson.
What makes this video relevant, aside from the fact that it just simply annoys me, is that it echoes a message we’ve been hearing with increasing frequency from women on the Right with, in some cases, very large platforms. Emily’s platform isn’t very large, but it is sizable enough. She has half a million followers on Instagram. I’m sure she’s a nice person. I don’t know her and have no issue with her personally. But she represents a growing, or at least increasingly evident, problem on the Right. The problem, in a word, is feminism.
Feminism is not compatible with any meaningful definition of conservatism. Whatever conservatism is trying to conserve — like marriage, the family, western civilization itself — feminism militates against. And yet many feminists have become mouthpieces in the movement, and are accepted as such, as long as they wear a MAGA hat and say that they don’t like illegal immigration or whatever.
So with that in mind, let’s listen to just the latest submission to the ever expanding conservative feminist genre:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Not to pick on <a href="https://twitter.com/emilysavesusa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@emilysavesusa</a> because I’ve been seeing a lot of girls on the right counter signaling the ‘trad’ stay at home mom lifestyle lately also, but I think this message is ridiculous.
Being a SAHM is not being ‘trapped’ by a man. That’s feminist BS. It’s also not… <a href="https://t.co/2iiwnYCb0T">pic.twitter.com/2iiwnYCb0T</a>
&mdash; Sarah Stock ✟ (@sarahcstock) <a href="https://twitter.com/sarahcstock/status/1917844165893018047?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
Well, I am cringing. But not because of the trad wives. I’m cringing at this lame, half-baked attack on stay-at-home moms. And I’m cringing even more at the fact that women with these kinds of views are still embraced as “conservative.”
Try to imagine the opposite of this. Imagine a Left-wing influencer who advocates for every Left-wing policy under the sun but then comes out one day and says, “You know what? I think a woman’s proper place is in the home, raising her children.” It’s impossible to conceive of any Left-wing woman ever saying such a thing. And if she did, she would be immediately excised from the movement. That’s because leftists understand that supporting so-called traditional gender roles is fundamentally antithetical to their worldview. You literally cannot be a leftist and hold that view.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1588-member-exclusive?elementPosition=1&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
The same is logically true in the reverse. Attacking gender roles is fundamentally leftist. Which means you cannot be conservative if you hold fundamentally leftist views. You have every right to express those views. But you should not be embraced as a conservative, much less listened to as a spokeswoman for the movement. 
Now let’s go through some of the specifics here. Emily says that a woman should have a job and her own income so that she isn’t “trapped” by a man. She envisions the relationship between husband and wife as inherently competitive. Marriage is a zero sum game where both husband and wife are competing for control. Again, this is a fundamentally leftist conception. It is a recipe for divorce. There is nothing in and of itself wrong with a wife earning money. As I’ve conceded many times, a family may feel that they need two incomes in order to survive. Or they may want a second income. Or the wife might have a job that doesn’t require leaving the house and going to an office every day. But if she’s earning money as an escape hatch because she doesn’t want to be “trapped,” that is a very bad sign.
If you want to understand why it’s a bad sign just imagine how it would sound if a man adopted this philosophy. A woman on X commented yesterday that a wife needs a “backup in case their man can’t fulfill his providing roles.”
Well what if a man decided to have a back up in case his woman didn’t fulfill her wifely duties? Most people would find that objectionable, for good reason. The whole point of marriage is that you are devoting yourself entirely to your spouse. Two become one flesh. It is not possible to make that level of commitment while at the same time actively building yourself a nest egg just in case you want to leave. Saying the vows and pledging yourself to your betrothed means not having an exit plan. It means you burn the boats like Cortés and turn towards that wilderness and journey into it together, come what may.
She also says that men want to be mentally stimulated. The implication is that stay-at-home moms are too stupid to provide that sort of stimulation because all they think about is their “sourdough bread.”
This is absurdly dismissive and insulting to millions of good, godly, intelligent women who, while staying home with the children, are also capable of having intelligent conversations with their husbands. It also assumes that a woman who sits in a cubicle all day will somehow have more interesting things to say to her husband at the end of the day. Having a job as a woman does not make you smart or interesting. I hate to break it to the working women of the world, but your husband is almost certainly not intellectually stimulated by your job or your stories about your job. If he was able to choose between listening to a story about your office drama or listening to a story about what you did with the kids that day, he would prefer to hear about the latter. This is the sort of thing you would know about men if you listened to them when they try to tell you what they want, instead of declaring what you think they should want.
But the biggest problem — and the objection you hear most often from these feminist types — is the claim that somehow the stay-at-home mom arrangement is implausible, or even impossible. Emily declares that your chances of finding a man who can provide for you while you stay home and raise the children are, “Slim to none. Actually none,” she says. There&#8217;s no chance that it works out for you. There’s no chance that it works out for you or anyone you know. And yet it has worked out for countless people. It’s worked out for my wife. It’s worked out for many families that I know personally. It’s worked out for billions of human beings across the globe and through history since the dawn of civilization. Emily has written off the most normal and historically common practice as not just difficult but, according to her, literally impossible. And not just impossible, but also absurd and grotesque.
There’s a lot of this kind of thing going around. During my conversation with Tucker Carlson this week, we talked about the absurdity of gay adoption and gay parenthood.
Here&#8217;s a clip of that exchange that Tucker&#8217;s team posted:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Should gay couples be able to adopt? Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson discuss. <a href="https://t.co/q3I5vRRzVF">pic.twitter.com/q3I5vRRzVF</a>
&mdash; Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) <a href="https://twitter.com/TCNetwork/status/1918058750692180235?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
Plenty of people on the Right, or Right-adjacent, took great exception to this. Glenn Greenwald is one of them. He tweeted in response: 
<blockquote>One has to be morally deranged — or totally ignorant of the grim realities of kids lingering without parents in orphanages, shelters and foster care, only to be expelled at 18 with no support — to believe that that dark hell is better for kids than being adopted by gay couples.</blockquote>
Morally deranged, he says. The view that two men should not be allowed to adopt children was held by nearly everyone in this country, and everyone across the world, until very recently. Barack Obama was against gay adoption when he first ran for president. So was every other elected Democrat. Any elected Democrat over the age of 50 was probably, at one point, opposed to both gay marriage and gay adoption. In fact, gay adoption was so obviously wrong to so many people for so long that it wasn&#8217;t even discussed. It wasn&#8217;t debated. It was just intuitively understood that children need a mother and a father. We won’t let two men adopt children for the same reason that we wouldn’t let a polyamorous polycule adopt a child. Children need a mother and a father. We are not going to deliberately put a child into a disordered environment where he is not only deprived of a mother or a father, but the role of mother or father has been replaced in an unnatural and confusing way.
This was always understood. Now, in the blink of an eye, what was always understood is &#8220;morally deranged.” The thing that everyone believed forever until approximately last Tuesday is not just wrong but shocking and upsetting and baffling. This is the game that&#8217;s played. And I, for one, am entirely sick of it.
Not everything that is old or traditional is automatically good, of course. Slavery is old and traditional — and still practiced in non-western countries. It&#8217;s also very bad. But there are basic truths about how human society is fundamentally structured. Truths that have withstood the test of time. Truths that have, while civilization held fast to them, it flourished and advanced in remarkable and seemingly miraculous ways. Truths that, minutes after our society abandoned, immediately led to decline and chaos and confusion. One of those truths is that a child needs a mother and a father. Only a man and a woman can have a baby, or should. Another one of those truths is that men and women are different, and so have different roles in the home and in society. This was an idea so basic that there wasn&#8217;t even a term for it. We only started labeling it &#8220;gender roles&#8221; at the moment that we decided to abandon it. And I would say that the results of that decision have not been good. Divorce, broken homes, declining birth rates, 60 million dead babies. And those are just the early returns.
That’s why we cannot be embarrassed to hold to a system that is ancient and timeless, and proven, tested, and vindicated by the testimony of our ancestors and by thousands of years of human experience beyond that. As conservatives, if that is not worth conserving, then nothing is.

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