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="(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="(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

Books

Communism

Documentaries

England

Entertainment

Great Britain

We are not solving our deficit problem.
You can see what&#8217;s going to happen to the United States down the line, because no one takes this problem seriously. Most Republicans don&#8217;t. Most Democrats don&#8217;t. The American people certainly do not. 
All you have to do is take a look across the ocean at Great Britain. On Wednesday, there was a shocking and fraught moment that happened there. The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/britains-chancellor-in-tears-as-investors-turn-on-government-22aee17f?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAjZpkxEZH_qTxXcl-zvbi7np_J3qYRtV5gD99cAFFKx9W04z7JDoMWZ-xkzK3w%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6866caec&amp;gaa_sig=0k3E5u5VSkXj7mYSs0Q3EQLJqtEknleCqra4ptlRa79N59RLrBTHOVLmsAPH4A3zsL6rpF65FSo9B8cDPH9nDA%3D%3D">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Investors sold off British government bonds and the pound fell sharply on Wednesday after the Labour government abandoned plans to cut ballooning welfare costs and the country’s Chancellor of the Exchequer was seen crying in parliament. The selloff came hours after the government of Prime Minister <a href="https://www.wsj.com/topics/person/keir-starmer">Keir Starmer</a> shelved a plan to cut disability payments following a rebellion by Labour’s own lawmakers. 
The U-turn raised the prospect of the government hiking taxes or issuing more debt to fund its welfare system. It also casts doubt over the future of Rachel Reeves, the U.K. chancellor, who took the job just over a year ago promising a return to economic stability in Britain by<a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-live-01-23-2025/card/u-k-will-stick-to-fiscal-rules-reeves-tells-wsj-lyApDGigeve1oDWxyzwP?mod=article_inline"> sticking to strict spending rules. </a> The pound sank in value, losing more than 1% to trade at $1.36. U.K. government bonds, too, tumbled in price, sending the yield on 10-year gilts up 0.12 percentage point to 4.581%. That far outpaced the more muted gains for yields in the U.S. and in other major markets. 
“Markets have latched onto the idea that Reeves’s departure might be much more imminent,” said Mark Dowding, chief investment officer for fixed income at RBC BlueBay Asset Management. “That is unsettling investors in terms of what that means of the Labour government’s commitment to the fiscal framework.” </blockquote>
Of course, the Labour Party didn&#8217;t have any commitment to the fiscal framework; they are a far-Left party. They were never going to be fiscally responsible.  
This is demonstrative of a crisis that is eventually going to face every Western government, including the government of the United States. “The government’s climbdown points to a broader truth for governments across Western Europe, where weak economic growth means countries are struggling to raise enough revenue to pay for rising costs from an aging population, the Journal stated “With voters largely wary of spending cuts, that leaves higher taxes, which could hurt growth further, as the most likely outcome.”
“Britain is already on course to register the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/britains-labour-party-bets-on-big-taxes-borrowing-to-boost-economy-5d3eba82?mod=article_inline">highest tax burden</a> since World War II thanks to big spending during the pandemic and paying out for energy subsidies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile its growth prospects remain meager,” the Journal noted.
If you look into the future for the United States, this sort of thing could happen here, too. The United States is demographically growing only because of immigration.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2231?elementPosition=5&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
The reality is that the fertility rate in the United States is actually below replacement levels, at 1.66 births per woman. The United States is not replacing its own population. The only way we are able to do that is through large-scale immigration, which we have stopped, which means we have a shrinking tax base, an aging population, just like Western Europe, slower but similar.
We also have the possibility of serious economic stagnation, absent a massive breakthrough in AI that suddenly translates into higher productivity.
If all of that materializes and we don&#8217;t cut any of the massive welfare state that we have built, we are going to end up inflating our way out of this. That&#8217;s the reality. As I&#8217;ve said myriad times, there are only three solutions to massive debt: inflation, massive tax increases, or austerity. Our population is so used to its benefits that they do not want austerity.
But eventually, the West is going to have to grow up and recognize that the welfare state has costs attendant upon it. And those costs are going to have to be paid for by someone; they can&#8217;t be kicked down the road indefinitely. You can&#8217;t just magically manufacture money and hope the economy is going to continue to sail forward.
So, what does the United States need? It needs massive economic growth, and eventually it&#8217;s going to need some real cuts to the size and scope of government.
The kind of cuts in the Big, Beautiful Bill are not going to do it. They need to be a lot larger than that.
I know that&#8217;s an unpopular view. It also happens to be an economically sane view that very few people in politics are willing to take because most people don&#8217;t want to hear it.
But we must be willing to listen to reality, even if it’s painful, for one reason, and one reason alone: In the end, reality always wins.

NATO Leaders Attend 2025 Summit In The Hague

Reality And The Fiscal Wake-Up Call From Britain

Entitlement Reform

Europe

Federal Government

Keir Starmer

London

National Debt

Opinion

Parliament

Welfare

The Fourth of July must be very hard for the British.
I mean, imagine fumbling a sizable chunk of your empire, watching it grow into the greatest country in the world, and then having them celebrate the breakup every year with pyrotechnics? Not even 250 years is long enough to get over that.
So, I don’t begrudge our pals across the pond for finding ways to cope when Independence Day rolls around. Like the good chaps over at JL Partners, who commissioned a poll that found that one in five Americans want to replace the president with the British monarch. Or their fellow expatriate, POLITICO’s Jack Blanchard, who <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2025/07/03/congress-caves-again-00438202?nname=playbook&amp;nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&amp;nrid=00000155-9c90-dad1-ad7d-fed474bb0000" target="_blank" rel="noopener">printed the poll results</a> in this morning’s Playbook.
“You heard me right,” Blanchard writes. “Polling and strategy firm JL Partners asked 1,000 U.S. voters if they support or oppose replacing the current president of the United States with the British monarch. The survey found 19% of Americans supported the idea.”
This support was “even higher among certain groups,” JL Partners’ James Johnson told POLITICO, noting that “more than one in three 18-29-year-olds back the idea.”
Does Gen Z really yearn for a return to the monarchy? Well, not exactly.
<a class="c-link" href="https://get.dailywire.com/freedom/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=freedom&amp;utm_content=freedomeditorial" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://get.dailywire.com/freedom/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=freedom&amp;utm_content=freedomeditorial" data-sk="tooltip_parent">JULY 4 SALE: Get Six Months Of DW+ Free</a>
Johnson confirmed to The Daily Wire that JL Partners collected information through an online, opt-in poll. According to the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pew Research Center</a>, these polls “can produce misleading results, especially for young people.”
The issue, it seems, is that young people who opt into these polls and click through quickly, “with as little effort as possible to earn money or other rewards.” The result? “Studies have shown that bogus respondents can cause opt-in surveys to overestimate rare attitudes and behaviors.”
Pew tested this theory by asking online opt-in respondents if they were licensed to operate a nuclear submarine. Twelve percent said yes. The actual proportion of Americans licensed to do? Less than 1%.
In other words, you can pretty much get 18-29-year-olds to say yes to anything, if you ask. This is why there’s still a market for Chappell Roan singles, or nonalcoholic beers.
And Gen Z isn’t perfect. Just <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/692150/american-pride-slips-new-low.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">41% of them say</a> they’re “extremely or very proud to be Americans,” according to Gallup.
But that doesn’t mean young Americans want King Charles to swoop in and hand them a cup of tea. In fact, Gen Z is moving <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/414266/republican-conservative-two-gen-z-young-voter-trumpier-progressive." target="_blank" rel="noopener">more and more to the Right</a>. And why wouldn’t they? We’re entering a new American golden age.
The economy is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-effect-u-s-adds-147k-jobs-beating-projections-for-fourth-straight-month?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Catherine+Maxwell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=TRUMP+EFFECT%3A+U.S.+Adds+147K+Jobs%2C+Beating+Projections+For+Fourth+Straight+Month" target="_blank" rel="noopener">booming</a>. Iran’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pilots-who-bombed-iran-will-come-to-white-house-on-fourth-of-july?author=Mary+Margaret+Olohan&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Pilots+Who+Bombed+Iran+Will+Come+To+White+House+On+Fourth+Of+July" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on the ropes</a>. The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-met-the-pope-it-was-amazing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pope</a> is from Chicago. Joey Chestnut’s back at Coney Island.
And what’s happening in England? Rappers are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-revokes-bob-vylans-visa-as-agency-drops-him-and-u-s-tour-is-canceled" target="_blank" rel="noopener">calling for jihad</a>, and people are <a href="https://x.com/ByDobson/status/1936014831003615621" target="_blank" rel="noopener">losing their minds</a> about the 78-degree heat. Yeah, no thanks.
At the end of the day, you can never trust the polls. They said <a href="https://x.com/ByDobson/status/1936014831003615621" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trump would lose</a> in November, and look how that turned out. But we don’t need statistics to know how Americans feel about monarchy. As Americans, we know deep down that we would never, could never have a king. That ship sailed long ago — long before we even declared independence in the first place.
As John Adams <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6854" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> to Hezekiah Niles in 1818: “What do We mean by the American Revolution? Do We mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.”
That Revolution lives on in the hearts and minds of today’s Americans. And, whether they know it or not, it lives on in the hearts and minds of today’s Brits, too.
In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Freddy-Fredericka-Mark-Helprin/dp/0143037250" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Freddy and Fredericka</a>, Mark Helprin, one of America’s greatest living novelists, imagines a modern-day Prince of Wales who must reclaim “the colonies” before he’s crowned king. As he crosses the United States to complete his mission, Freddy grows to love and understand the country he’s meant to reconquer, eventually coming to this conclusion:
<blockquote>“America does not need and cannot have a king, for it is majestic in itself as perhaps no country has ever been. And its great majesty is not the splendid landscape or the long and sunny coasts, not the Mississippi or the snows of the Pacific Crest. Its greatest majesty, its gift to the world, is that it has carried out God’s will to make each man a king, subservient only to Him. From the beginning, this has been the underlying force of every footfall, smile, and blink of an eye in this country.”</blockquote>
So, the monarchists can poll all they want, and journalists can print the results. It doesn’t matter to us — we’re too busy not having a king.

Independance day

Dear England: We Still Don’t Want Your King

America

Declaration of Independence

Fourth of July

Gen Z

United Kingdom

The British House of Commons narrowly approved an “assisted dying” bill on Friday, as critics warned the legislation contains weakened safeguards that could endanger vulnerable patients.
Catholic priest John Howard, who led people in prayer outside parliament, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/british-lawmakers-vote-landmark-assisted-dying-law-2025-06-19/">called</a> the bill’s passage &#8220;a dark day for our country.&#8221;
The legislation, which passed with a narrow 314-291 vote, would allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults in England and Wales with six months or less to live to choose to end their lives with medical assistance.
Critics note that support for the bill has weakened since November&#8217;s initial vote of 330-275, as some lawmakers withdrew support after safeguards were diluted.
The original plan requiring court approval for assisted deaths has been replaced with a requirement for review by a panel including a social worker, senior legal figure, and psychiatrist.
British Health Secretary Wes Streeting <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/assisted-dying-cost-nhs-wes-streeting-gmbfh63gv">warned</a> that the bill in its current form could lead to a “chilling” scenario in which the cash-strapped National Health Service (NHS) could pressure terminally ill patients into an early death to save NHS money.
Care Not Killing released a statement calling the bill &#8220;deeply flawed and dangerous,&#8221; and CEO Gordon Macdonald slammed the process, criticizing the fact that &#8220;[m]embers of Parliament had under 10 hours to consider over 130 amendments to the Bill, or less than 5 minutes per change.&#8221;
&#8220;Does anyone think this is enough time to consider changes to a draft law that quite literally is a matter of life and death?&#8221; Macdonald continued.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer voted in favor of the bill, which now proceeds to Britain&#8217;s upper chamber, the House of Lords, for months of further scrutiny.
The unelected Lords are traditionally reluctant to block legislation passed by elected members of the House of Commons. However, insiders <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/opponents-plan-to-thwart-assisted-dying-bill-in-house-of-lords-jft97r0zs">told</a> the Times this bill has many critics in the House of Lords, and could lead the upper chamber to break this norm.
One source told The Times there were “plenty of black arts that could be used to kill the bill off,” and that they could “not imagine how it could get through.”
Another peer concurred: “This bill is still going to have an extremely difficult path to the statute book. There are enough peers in the Lords who are vehemently opposed to it becoming law and more than enough opportunity for them to thwart it. It is far from a foregone conclusion.”
However, many in the U.K. celebrated the bill’s passage despite flaws pointed out by critics.
Emma Bray, a 42-year-old mother of two with motor neuron disease who has been given six months to live, celebrated the vote result.
&#8220;This result will mean that people will not have to go through the same suffering I have faced,&#8221; Bray told Reuters, revealing she had been planning to starve herself to death next month to relieve her pain.

MPs Vote On the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

‘Dark Day’: U.K. Parliament Greenlights Assisted Suicide Bill

Assisted Suicide

Global Politics

U.K.

World

There is a philosophy that has now become dominant on the Left and even parts of the center. It&#8217;s throughout the West.
The deeper roots of this philosophy bear a deadly fruit.
Let’s begin with a bizarre and hilarious spectacle. Great Britain’s King Charles III was visiting the Canadian Parliament and decided that it would be worthwhile to offer a land acknowledgment.
This is hilarious because King Charles is the King of Great Britain. The only reason the Canadian Parliament exists is because of the settlement of Canada by British citizens. That’s why he is there in the first place.
Charles doing a land acknowledgment and taking that seriously would amount to essentially disestablishing Canada, the United States, Australia, South Africa and a bunch of other countries, because all of those countries were originally created as functioning polities by the British Empire.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=memorial&amp;utm_content=editorialmemorialday" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Get 40% Off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
This bizarre idea that Charles can arrive on Canadian territory and start apologizing to the indigenous people for the presence of white people in this particular area is absurd, especially coming from King Charles, who is the greatest beneficiary on planet Earth of the imperialism of the British Empire.
There are human universals, such as migration, settlement, annexation, and conflict, and they are not unique to white people, Westerners, or Europeans; it&#8217;s just that white people, Westerners and Europeans, have been much better at it than other parts of the population on planet Earth. They&#8217;re more successful, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, but that does not mean that there is some unique sin that attends to whiteness, being Western, or being European.
Charles said, “I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. This land acknowledgement is a recognition of shared history as a nation. While continuing to deepen my own understanding, it is my great hope that in each of your communities, and collectively as a country, a path is found toward truth and reconciliation, in both word and deed.”
Of course the land is unceded, because the nature of human conflict is that when people migrate from one part of the Earth to another part of the Earth, conflict tends to arise, and then someone wins and someone loses. And it is a very good thing that the British Empire won in Canada.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2208-the-trump-2026-victory-plan?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Here’s the basic idea: The world is better off because of the British Empire. The world is better off because of American power and the spread of European ideals. That is obviously true. The spread of things like property rights, due process of law, capitalism, freedom of religion, all of which are not human universals — those are the legacy of the West.
There&#8217;s always an attempt to take human universals and then project them as West-specific problems. That is not true.
The problems of murder and raping and looting and slavery are human universals.
What is unique about the West is all the other stuff. Reversing that polarity and suggesting that the West is somehow uniquely sinful because it was better at war than others, or because Westerners were better at settlement than the Algonquin who lived on the land where Canada&#8217;s parliament now sits, and that is a human tragedy, is not, in fact, a human tragedy.
Bad things happen throughout human history. The bad things are tragedies. But overall, in the broad scope of history, it is an absolutely wonderful thing that Europeans ended up on the North American continent.
Anyone who doesn&#8217;t believe so should probably leave. If you don&#8217;t believe that, you probably should go back to your dingy apartment and cede it back to the natives from whom your ancestors took it.
All of this ties into a deeper and more deadly philosophy.
The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited the White House and was asked about the “Kill the Boer” chant, which has become common at some rallies, targeting the Afrikaner farmers who originally settled in the area of South Africa as early as the 17th century, fought for hundreds of years, and were responsible at one point for tremendous racism against black people.
But the solution to that is not genocidal chants. Yet there’s an idea that as long as the people who are shouting the genocidal chants are not white, European and Western, it suddenly becomes okay.
Why? Because the rules don&#8217;t equally apply in this left-wing philosophy, where the sins of the West are unique and the West is unique in its evil.
What that means is that the West has to be destroyed. This has deadly consequences. And it doesn&#8217;t matter whether you call this stuff anti-white or anti-Semitic or anti-whatever. The problem with this generalized philosophy is that it is simply evil.
When you separate the world into victims and victimizers and you suggest that anyone who&#8217;s been uniquely successful is the victimizer and anyone who is not is a victim, what you get is victimizers with the moral impetus and the moral weight to kill people.
What you end up with is actual terrorism, actual violence, actual overthrow of the institutions that made the West great in the first place.

The King And Queen Visit Canada – Day 2

Why The West Must Not Apologize For Its Success

Ben Shapiro

Boers

Canada

Colonialism

History

King Charles III

Murder

South Africa

Western Civilization

This Woman Was Just Sent To Prison For Posting A Mean Tweet

Immigration

Matt Walsh

Muslims

Prison

Social Media

Stabbing

Twitter

There have been a lot of changes in the second Trump administration, as we all know. But there was one change from the very beginning that hasn&#8217;t gotten nearly as much attention as it should. It&#8217;s when Trump stood up during his inauguration speech and invoked the idea of Manifest Destiny, which is of course deeply rooted in the idea of American exceptionalism.
For the first time in many generations, a U.S. president felt no shame in proclaiming that America is the greatest nation on the planet. And crucially, Donald Trump didn&#8217;t make this proclamation as a platitude. He wasn&#8217;t seeking to get a quick sound bite out of it, by reminding people of history class when they heard terms like &#8220;Manifest Destiny&#8221; and American exceptionalism. Instead, Trump meant it, in a practical sense. We&#8217;re the best nation, he said. And therefore we can do what we want. We can impose tariffs and force everyone to the negotiating table. We can deport criminals and ignore corrupt judges who tell us otherwise. In a matter of weeks, we can eliminate bureaucracy, talk about acquiring Greenland, and become energy independent — which is no small thing when the entire continent of Europe teeters on the verge of a blackout.  We can do all of these things because, in very real terms, we are unique. Period. We have a fighting spirit that no other nation on the planet can match.
If you attended college in the last 50 years, you&#8217;ve probably been conditioned not to say things like this. You&#8217;re told it&#8217;s gaudy, or a relic of colonialism or something like that. But it happens to be true. And every day, we&#8217;re reminded it&#8217;s true. We can see, right out in the open, that other nations are inferior to our own. Look closely enough, and you&#8217;ll see that they&#8217;ll admit it. They are preoccupied with their own destruction.
Let&#8217;s start with the UK, which is allegedly one of our closest allies. A couple of weeks ago, you might remember, we <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg3G_P1jO_c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talked about</a> the Netflix show &#8220;Adolescence,&#8221; and how it&#8217;s essentially taken over the entire country. 
&#8220;Adolescence&#8221; is a mini-series in which a white 13-year-old boy named Jamie stabs a girl to death after the girl rejects his advances. The &#8220;hook,&#8221; if you can call it that, is that the show blames online culture for the killer&#8217;s actions, at least to some extent. The victim had bullied the 13-year-old boy on Instagram, for example. He had been called an &#8220;incel&#8221; and so on. The point of the show is that &#8220;male rage&#8221; is fueled by online misogyny and bullying, and that children are liable to become murderers at any moment, even if they live in a loving, stable two-parent household. That&#8217;s the message the showrunners wanted to convey, even though it flies in the face of common sense and every data point we have. Beyond that, there wasn&#8217;t anything very interesting about the show. The cameraman is doing more interesting things than any of the actors, since everything is supposedly shot in one take.
So it was reasonable to assume that, after the initial hype died down over this mini-series, that the UK would move on pretty quickly. That&#8217;s the normal trajectory that shows like this tend to follow. And indeed, that&#8217;s what many in my audience said would happen. I received dozens of comments on my last monologue on &#8220;Adolescence&#8221;, where several people who live in Britain explained that, actually, the show isn&#8217;t that popular over there to begin with. Additionally, as we discussed, there was an infamous interview broadcast on the BBC, where the anchors grill a conservative politician about the fact that she hasn&#8217;t seen the show. They were stunned, for the entire interview, that she hadn&#8217;t watched it. And no matter how much the politician tried to explain to these anchors that the show isn&#8217;t real, they kept doubling down. When we played that footage two weeks ago, it seemed like it was safe to assume that the obsession over this show had officially jumped the shark. It seemed too absurd to continue. Everyone, even fans of the show, would certainly walk away slowly and find something else to fixate on.
But that hasn&#8217;t happened in the UK. Instead, &#8220;Adolescence&#8221; isn&#8217;t simply dominating political discussions anymore. Now the show is being used to justify new legislation that would dramatically curtail free speech rights in the country — almost as if that was the point of the show all along. In fact, the show&#8217;s creators just testified in parliament to demand this new legislation. Yes, the government held an entire hearing on a fictional television show, in which the show&#8217;s writer testified as an expert before the government&#8217;s &#8220;Women and Equalities Committee.&#8221; That is the very dire and hopeless state of the so-called United Kingdom at the moment.
We&#8217;ll start at the beginning of the hearing, when a member of parliament named Sarah Owen begins questioning Jack Thorne, who&#8217;s the creator and executive producer of &#8220;Adolescence.&#8221; And this member of parliament is very interested in knowing more about Jamie, and why he snapped and decided to kill a girl. But there&#8217;s a bit of a snag, because the politician clearly doesn&#8217;t understand what the creator of the show was getting at, which leads to this mildly amusing exchange. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Discussing fake character" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SlPhT8p7xqU?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>
There&#8217;s a couple of layers of embarrassment here. First of all, of course, they&#8217;re talking about a fake person as if he&#8217;s real. He&#8217;s saying it would take him &#8220;nine years&#8221; to unpack the brain of a fictional character named Jamie, who, because he doesn&#8217;t actually exist, does not therefore have a brain, or a history, or emotions. And for her part, the politician — who apparently chairs this committee in parliament — keeps pressing for more information about this fictional individual. She&#8217;s really determined to understand what makes him tick, even though he doesn&#8217;t exist. This went on for something like two hours, by the way. The hearing was full of moments like this.
As it went on, it became clear that Jack Thorne is especially concerned about &#8220;conspiracy theories,&#8221; as he calls them. And at one point in the hearing, Thorne elaborated on the term &#8220;conspiracy theories.&#8221; It turns out that — stop me if you&#8217;ve heard this one before — a conspiracy theory is something that&#8217;s completely true, but highly inconvenient for the political Left. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 conspiracy" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_pNtI0EQBpg?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>
That&#8217;s his response, when he&#8217;s asked about the race-swap in &#8220;Adolescence.&#8221; He&#8217;s asked about a conservative politician who pointed out that, unlike what you see on Netflix, white kids from stable households are not stabbing many people in the UK. That&#8217;s the truth. It&#8217;s kids from broken homes, along with jihadists, who are doing most of the damage. And in response to that point, which is obviously true, Thorne states that the conservative politician must be &#8220;consuming&#8221; the wrong content online. The implication, of course, is that anyone who tells the truth about knife crime in the UK — and violent crime in general — should be censored. You&#8217;re required to think that it&#8217;s young white kids from loving two-parent households that are knifing everyone, and you&#8217;re supposed to ignore the literal jihadist with an Al Qaeda training manual in his backpack who murders young girls at a dance studio.
Again, this is the state of the UK — a country that we once had a lot in common with. But this is what they&#8217;re reduced to. I want to show one more clip from this hearing, because it just kept getting more and more comical as it went on. Eventually Jack Thorne left, and he was replaced by a bunch of self-described &#8220;experts&#8221; and government officials who — supposedly — would provide some hard evidence in support of more online censorship. 
But then, a funny thing happened. 
When they were asked for evidence that misogyny is on the rise in the UK, they didn&#8217;t have any data. They couldn&#8217;t point to any objective, verifiable information about all the young white men who are going out and killing women because of Andrew Tate or whatever. Instead — and I&#8217;m not making this up — the experts turned around and cited the show &#8220;Adolescence,&#8221; and the testimony from Jack Thorne. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Experts cite show" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8KCdtC9tgIU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
So they don&#8217;t have any data, actually. They just have the show &#8220;Adolescence,&#8221; and the testimony from its &#8220;executive producer.&#8221; According to the government expert, that qualifies as &#8220;evidence&#8221; in the UK. Time to pass a law eliminating free speech on the internet, I guess. But the point here is not to mock the UK, as entertaining as that would be. The point is that this kind of embarrassing spectacle is not very surprising for them. There aren’t very many people left in that country to speak out against it. There isn’t much of a &#8220;right wing&#8221; in the UK, or almost anywhere else in the western world outside of the United States.
And if you don&#8217;t believe that, look at the election that just <a href="https://barsoom.substack.com/p/post-mortem-for-the-canadian-election" target="_blank" rel="noopener">took place</a> in Canada. After ten years of destroying Canada&#8217;s economy and opening the borders to hordes of foreign nationals, the Liberal Party was just re-elected. Voters once again handed the Liberal Party control of government, even after the Liberals froze the bank accounts of peaceful protesters, arrested journalists in the street, trampled old ladies with horses, disarmed the entire population, and effectively banned independent journalists from posting their content on social media platforms. Canadians saw the government declare martial law over a bunch of truckers who didn&#8217;t want to be compelled to take an experimental shot, and they said, &#8220;we want more of that.&#8221; And also, of course, they want more taxes so that they can stop the weather from changing.
I&#8217;m not going to pretend to be an expert on the ins-and-outs of Canadian politics. If you&#8217;re interested in a more granular breakdown, there&#8217;s a Substack <a href="https://barsoom.substack.com/p/post-mortem-for-the-canadian-election" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> from someone named John Carter that goes into some detail about what happened in this week&#8217;s election. Here&#8217;s how it begins.
<blockquote>Have you ever noticed how election results are regularly broken down geographically, as well by the demographic categories of age, sex, and – depending on the country – race, yet we almost never see the results separated into taxpayer vs tax-eater status? &#8230; It is absolutely no surprise that Ottawa voted solidly for the Liberal Party of Canada, whose base consists of three primary groups: migrants, public sector workers, and baby boomers, all of whom are regime client groups, and all of whom are tightly packed into the nation’s capital. Perhaps it’s that it’s tax season and I’m in a grumpy mood because I just got the bad news, but I can’t help but wonder about how electoral politics would change if only taxpayers were allowed to vote.</blockquote>
That&#8217;s a useful framework to look at what just happened in Canada, especially as you hear a lot of people blaming Donald Trump and tariffs and so on. In Canada, very few young people can afford homes. There aren&#8217;t many good jobs. The only really viable aspects of Canadian society are the public sector — which is sustained through taxes and borrowed money — and retirees. The public-sector employees are the ones who celebrated when truckers were beaten by the police in Ottawa a few years ago. They resent the working-class. Their only interest is seeing their pensions vest. Meanwhile, older Canadians have made their money, and they don&#8217;t seem to care about what happens to their country going forward.
Take a look at this chart, which is making the rounds:
<div id="attachment_914325" style="width: 692px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-914325" class="wp-image-914325 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/e5df823e-f7b0-4335-ad69-cdc16a1a914e_1240x1048-682x576.webp" alt="Abacus Data. Substack, John Carter." width="682" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/e5df823e-f7b0-4335-ad69-cdc16a1a914e_1240x1048-682x576.webp 682w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/e5df823e-f7b0-4335-ad69-cdc16a1a914e_1240x1048-300x254.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/e5df823e-f7b0-4335-ad69-cdc16a1a914e_1240x1048-768x649.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/e5df823e-f7b0-4335-ad69-cdc16a1a914e_1240x1048.webp 1240w" sizes="(max-width: 682px) 100vw, 682px" />Abacus Data. Substack, John Carter.</div>
It shows the &#8220;most important factors&#8221; in people&#8217;s votes, broken out by age. It&#8217;s from Abacus Data, which is a Canadian polling firm. Notice that, for most young people under the age of 44, &#8220;reducing the cost of living&#8221; is the top issue. But for Canadians over the age of 60, the top issue was &#8220;dealing with Donald Trump.&#8221;
In other words, Canadian seniors are not even pretending to be interested in the internal affairs of their own country. They&#8217;re not concerned about the fact that young people are overdosing at increasing rates, or that many of them are well into their 30s, sharing tiny apartments with roommates just to make ends meet. What they care about, instead, is &#8220;dealing with Donald Trump&#8221; — an elected official from a different country, who hasn&#8217;t caused a single ounce of the misery that Canada has been enduring for the past decade.
In this country, by contrast, older voters were mostly <a href="https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-2024/election-analysis-older-voters.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">concerned</a> about the economy in the last election. In Michigan, for example, the AARP found that &#8220;24 percent of older voters cited the economy and jobs, and another 24 percent cited inflation, as top concerns.&#8221; So nearly half of these voters are interested in things that every American should be interested in — which is creating a stable and functioning economy so that people can buy homes and raise children.
But in Canada, as in the UK, the priorities are different. That&#8217;s why these countries are spending their time talking about Netflix shows, and electing globalists who promise to send mean tweets to Donald Trump or whatever.
It&#8217;s a sobering realization, but it&#8217;s true: These countries, which are supposed to be great allies who we have a lot in common with, do not have a functioning conservative movement at all. One that respects the sanctity of life from the moment of conception, one that values the importance of economic growth for everyone, and one that understands the distinction between fiction and reality. With every election that takes place in Canada, and every humiliating hearing on &#8220;Adolescence&#8221; that the UK is subjected to, the truth becomes clearer by the day. It&#8217;s time to admit it, because it&#8217;s unavoidable at this point: The future of conservatism, and thus of Western civilization, is in our hands — and our hands alone.

“Adolescence” Special Screening – Arrivals

UK Parliament Hosts Incredibly Embarrassing Hearing Over Netflix Show ‘Adolescence’

Migrants

Netflix

Teenagers

Woke Culture

MixCollage-14-Apr-2025-05-21-PM-3053

Matt Walsh Breaks Down The Deceptive Propaganda In ‘Adolescence’ Netflix Show

Crime

Movies

Violent Crime

A female nurse in England is suing after she says she was investigated and disciplined by her hospital for accidentally addressing a trans-identifying male pedophile as “mister.”
Jennifer Melle, 40, was treating the criminal, referred to as Patient X by media outlets, after he was sent to the St. Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey, from a men’s prison to receive treatment for a urinary problem, The Telegraph <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/23/nhs-nurse-punished-for-calling-transgender-paedophile-mr/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Melle addressed the inmate as “mister” and “he” without knowing he identified as female.
Melle said she called the patient a male when discussing with another medical professional about the need for a male catheter to be removed.
“This was a real-life medical scenario that required accurate terminology to avoid any doubt between medical professionals,” she said.
The patient overheard this conversation, and that’s when he became enraged.
When she did so, Patient X took issue, and Melle told him that she could not refer to him with female pronouns because “it’s against my faith and Christian values but I can call you by your name.” The patient then allegedly began an angry and aggressive tirade against Melle, calling her the “n-word” three times.
“Imagine if I called you n*****? How about I call you n*****? Yes, black n*****,” the patient yelled, according to the outlet’s review of Melle’s lawsuit.
The patient also lunged at Melle despite being restrained and threatened to file a complaint against her, Melle alleged in her lawsuit.
“It was terrifying. I’d never been called that word before. And I thought I was going to be attacked,” she told the outlet.
Despite the patient’s outburst and alleged attack, it was Melle who suffered the consequences. She was investigated and disciplined by her hospital in October 2024, and received a final warning and a referral to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Telegraph reported. Last month, she received a letter from that Council, saying it was assessing her ability to continue practicing as a nurse.
The Council’s code of conduct tells nurses they cannot “express your personal beliefs (including political, religious or moral beliefs) in an inappropriate way.” The Council told Melle that, although she “felt unable to identify Patient X using the preferred pronouns due to her religion&#8230; it could be perceived that [Ms Melle’s] actions could… be seen as a potential breach of the code.”
Melle said in her lawsuit that she did not believe she violated the Council’s code and noted that a white colleague also called the patient a male but was not investigated or disciplined. She believes her Christian beliefs could be to blame.
“Ever since I have expressed my Christian beliefs under extreme pressure, I have been a marked woman,” she said, according to the Telegraph.

Transgender Flags

Nurse Says She Was Investigated After Being Attacked By Trans-Identifying Male For Saying ‘Mr.’

Nurse Investigated After She Was Attacked By Trans-Identifying Male Pedophile For Saying ‘Mr.’

Nursing

Transgender

Since Churchill’s time, America and Britain have spoken of their “special relationship” – even if the affection has been somewhat unilateral in recent years, as the US has recognised the UK’s increasing irrelevance on the world stage as it descends into economic decay, social disintegration, and democratic suppression.
You might think this an exaggeration – and I do not intend to imply that dissenting British voices receive the same treatment they might receive in China or Cuba. But that is not the right question. The question is whether dissenting voices in Britain are free.
We have all seen the evidence that they are not. The first act of Bridget Philipson, Keir Starmer’s Education Secretary, was to <a href="https://freespeechunion.org/phillipson-tried-to-pull-plug-on-new-free-speech-law-days-after-election/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">try and revoke</a> the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, even after it was passed by Parliament. That this is not merely a position, but even the top priority, of our new government is chilling. This, despite the fact that <a href="https://adfinternational.org/en-gb/news/uk-students-feel-censored-on-campus-poll-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nearly half</a> of UK students are scared to express their views.
Whether people are <a href="https://www.gbnews.com/news/christian-lecturer-sacked-from-methodist-college" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fired from their jobs</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-64786856" target="_blank" rel="noopener">referred to terrorist watchlists</a>, secretly put on registers for “non-crime hate incidents” (<a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/children-as-young-as-nine-investigated-by-police-for-hate-incidents/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">even as children</a>), or even <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/article/police-criticised-over-arrest-for-gay-swastika-post-0dj6j0007">arrested</a>, freedom of speech is increasingly a luxury commodity in Britain – and saying what you think is increasingly seen as criminal. “Hate speech” is increasingly seen as a legitimate constraint – with <a href="https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/bible-hate-speech-survey-rewrite" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1 in 4 young people</a> open to banning the Bible itself if they believed it included “hate speech”.
Yet free speech is not the only casualty of recent years. Multiple people have been <a href="https://adfinternational.org/en-gb/cases/isabel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arrested or charged</a> merely for praying silently in their heads in the vicinity of an abortion clinic (which, in one case, was not even open), with an army veteran <a href="https://adfinternational.org/en-gb/news/guilty-army-vet-convicted-for-praying-silently-near-abortion-facility" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recently convicted</a> for silently praying for his unborn son. Thoughtcrime is no longer Orwellian fiction.
When asked if the UK should be included among other human rights abusing regimes, however, congressmen in the US ordinarily reply that “we are allies, we can’t do that”. The UK is enough of a friend to the US that it escapes any significant accountability.
But true friends do not let each other make serious mistakes without challenge: that is politeness, not friendship. So the question is: can the UK be enough of a friend to receive accountability?
We all know what tough love means: that if you really seek the best for someone, you confront them with reality, whose content or consequences may be acutely painful – but ultimately needed for our flourishing. And the reality in this case is clear: the British people desperately need a restoration of their civil liberties before we are too far down the slippery slope. If the US really cares for our country and its citizens, you must speak – and act – in favor of our freedom, whoever you offend in the process. Vance’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOsgfINdKg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speech in Munich</a> was a fantastic start – but now action is needed.
There are many ways to achieve this, but here is one idea: the freedom tariff. The UK is desperate for a trade deal with the US after Brexit. Trade is one of the few areas where nations can be genuinely held accountable beyond stern letters or phone calls – which are routinely ignored. Freedom tariffs would provide genuine leverage over the UK with a simple addition: include a clause stipulating that insofar as the UK restricts the most basic freedoms – speech, assembly, conscience, religion, and thought – it will pay for those restrictions with tariffs.
This is hardly coercive: why should America give us free trade when we won’t give our own people free speech? We either believe in freedom or we don’t. If we don’t, we can hardly expect its benefits from others. The deal is up to us to take or not.
America imposing “freedom” on other countries has understandably come under fire in recent decades. But rather than intervening militarily in intractable Middle Eastern political disputes, tariffs are entirely non-violent. And here’s the extra good news: this tough love need not be painful at all. All the UK would have to do is stop firing, blacklisting, and arresting people for thinking and saying the wrong things. Give free speech, get free trade. It is really that simple.
Of course, this problem is not unique to the UK. In France, a TV channel was <a href="https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/french-tv-channel-fined-for-calling-abortion-the-worlds-leading-cause-of-death" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fined 100,000 euro</a> for stating that abortion is the leading cause of death worldwide, while in Finland, a sitting parliamentarian has been on <a href="https://adfinternational.org/en-gb/campaign/free-speech-on-trial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criminal trial</a> under the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity sections of their penal code – launched by the attorney general – for years, simply for tweeting a Bible verse (a bishop has faced similar persecution).
The European Union’s deleterious approach to open discourse on social media has been widely publicized by Vance and Musk, among others. Perhaps freedom tariffs are benefits that can be extended beyond the Special Relationship.
* * *
Calum Miller is a research fellow at University of Oxford and a registered medical doctor.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-TRUMP

President Trump Should Impose ‘Freedom Tariffs’ On Europe

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Free Speech

President Trump

Social Media Censorship

A teenager in Southport, England, who fatally stabbed three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class has been sentenced to life in prison.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, received his life sentence on Thursday and must serve a minimum of 52 years, meaning he will be 70 years old before he has a chance to be freed, The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/23/southport-attacker-axel-rudakubana-jailed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Rudakubana was 17 when the attack took place.
The judge in this case said Rudakubana would probably “never be released and he will be in custody for all his life” following the “savage” murder of three girls and attempted murder of eight more people, including two adults who intervened to try and stop him.
The Guardian also revealed that Rudakubana’s parents had called the police on him four times in the past six months due to his behavior. In one incident, he had a knife with him on a bus, but police officers merely took him home and told his mother to keep him away from knives.
The court on Thursday also heard how Rudakubana had stabbed some of the victims dozens of times, in some cases with enough force to break their bones. He also chased some of the young girls as they ran from him. Bebe King, 6; Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7; and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9; each died due to the attack. Crown Prosecutor Deanna Heer told the court that the attack on two of the young girls could only be described as “sadistic.”
Though Judge Julian Goose said it was unlikely Rudakubana would ever be released from prison, he wasn’t sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole because he was nine days short of his 18th birthday when he attacked the young girls in July 2024.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?_gl=1*1lail3r*_gcl_aw*R0NMLjE3MzIyMDEyNDkuQ2owS0NRaUEwZnU1QmhEUUFSSXNBTVhVQk9JSkM0VnNsMFVreURxYXUxVWVEVWdOdjZkNzR2Y1pEeEZQeHVBcGl2R3BLaTdBMjVzT1p5TWFBdG1nRUFMd193Y0I.*_gcl_au*NDUxNDQ0NzYwLjE3MzY3ODI2NDY.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczNjk1NzYwMy4zNDAuMS4xNzM2OTU3NzE2LjYwLjAuMA.." target="_blank" rel="noopener">CELEBRATE #47 WITH 47% OFF DAILYWIRE+ MEMBERSHIPS + A FREE $20 GIFT</a>
Rudakubana interrupted the sentencing twice, loudly proclaiming to need medical assistance. In one incident, he claimed his “chest is hurting” and needed “to speak to a paramedic.” When the judge tried to proceed, Rudakubana interrupted him by yelling, “Don’t continue! Don’t continue! Don’t continue!” according to The Guardian.
On the day of his sentencing, the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cvg49wxq0pjo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">released</a> a taxi dashcam video showing Rudakubana heading to Southport prior to the attack. He refused to pay for the cab and can be seen wearing a hoodie pulled up over his head as well as a surgical mask.
Before the sentencing, Briain’s Prime Minister Kier Starmer released a statement saying a review of “our entire counter-extremist system” would occur, The BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9p39kez7o" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
In the wake of the stabbing, the suspect was falsely accused of being a Muslim asylum seeker, even though he was born in Cardiff, Wales, and moved to Lancashire, England. The belief that an asylum seeker committed the vicious attack led to riots against the influx of immigrants across Britain. Those who initially believed Rudakubana was an asylum seeker believed this in part because authorities took so long to identify him, something that is typically done when a protected class commits a crime.

Axel Rudakubana

U.K. Teen Who Killed Three Young Girls At Taylor Swift-Themed Party Sentenced To Life In Prison

Children

Vote On Terminally Ill Adults Bill Is Held In UK Parliament

The Dark Truth About Assisted Suicide Laws

Euthanasia

Menu