Sometimes a news event comes along that is so chillingly horrific that it confirms the presence of the devil in our midst. Thursday’s murder of a young woman by the state through euthanasia certainly qualifies.
This particular case also contains a warning: it is happening in Europe as a result of societal trends that are also gathering speed in America. These include family breakdown, secularization, the growth of the state, and the resulting embrace of a culture of death by the bureaucracy, the media, and the Left.
And this was not a one-off. Noelia Castillo Ramos, in Spain, is the second young woman in less than three years to be euthanized by a European state.
In fact, the two cases are alarmingly similar. Noelia and Milou Verhoof, who was euthanized in the Netherlands in 2023, were both raped as mere girls, understandably fell into depression, and eventually asked the state to help kill themselves. And the state was only too happy to oblige.
The case of Noelia — killed at a hospital near Barcelona — has drawn worldwide attention online, which is itself proof that the desire to cling to life is a basic human instinct.
Noelia suffered a lot in her life. The Spanish government took custody from her parents 12 years ago when she was just 13, after they divorced, fell into hard times, and lost their house. Her father, Gerónimo, drank at the time, according to news reports.
The Catalan regional government, of which Barcelona is the capital, then placed her in a state-supervised youth center. It was there that Noelia was gang-raped by three young men who were reportedly illegal aliens.
Nothing happened to her aggressors, but Noelia was never the same. She plunged into a severe depression, and suffered as well from borderline personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In 2022, Noelia tried to end her life by throwing herself from a fifth-floor window. She survived, but ended up a paraplegic, stuck in a wheelchair and suffering great pain.
She then demanded euthanasia, which Spain’s current government of Socialists and communists legalized in 2021. Noelia’s father opposed it, arguing that her many disorders prevented her from making an informed decision, and pursued the case till the end in the courts.
On Thursday, a Barcelona judge denied a last-minute request to halt the proceedings. Around 6:00 pm, doctors at Hospital Residència Sant Camil in Sant Pere de Ribes, near the Catalan capital, gave her a lethal injection that stopped her breathing and her heart.
Noelia, in other words, was asphyxiated by the same state that took her away from those who loved her — and then either could not or would not protect her.
For the Left, this was a victory. The newspaper El País wrote caustically about the Abogados Cristianos, the Spanish Foundation of Christian Lawyers, which worked with Noelia’s father to stop the euthanasia. In typical lapidary style, the paper wrote:
<blockquote>For a year and a half this organization [Abogados Cristianos] has been behind the father’s legal battle to prevent the assisted death of Noelia, who suffers from paraplegia. … Advised by the ultra-Catholic group Abogados Cristianos, the man has entangled his daughter in a legal maze that has kept her alive, against her will, for 601 days.</blockquote>
For Spain’s main leftist newspaper, this was about “dying with dignity.” The court battle “prolonged the suffering of a young woman who has never wavered in her decision and who has received scientific endorsement from the independent professionals who make up the Catalan Guarantee and Evaluation Commission (CGAC).”
And this has indeed been a battle between those who believe that the state, led by technocrats, has the right to impose its choices on the family, even to make life-and-death decisions, and those who believe in a higher order. Good and evil, some might say.
Bestselling Spanish author Irene Gonzalez, a friend and insightful observer of Spanish life, called it a “state execution.&#8221; She wrote on X:
<blockquote>The State separated her from her parents — who loved her — yet failed to protect, shelter, or provide her with psychological or emotional support. She was a vulnerable young woman whom the State left in a state of absolute defenselessness; its solution is simply to get her out of the way. Euthanasia appears to be the execution — the final step in a case involving abduction and torture — carried out with the haste of a system eager to erase the traces of what the “State” is truly doing in the name of a dignified death.</blockquote>
America, look at Europe — and beware.
* * *
Mike Gonzales is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

A Barcelona Judge Refuses For The Third Time To Suspend Euthanasia For Noelia Castillo

The State Took Her From Her Family. Then It Decided She Should Die.

Child rape

Europe

Euthanasia

Heritage Foundation

Immigrants

Rape

Spain

Women

In current foreign-policy debates on the Right, some have pushed for dividing the world into “spheres of influence.” The United States would get the Americas, the People’s Republic of China would be granted sway over Asia, and Vladimir Putin would have carte blanche to intervene in European affairs. Far from being steely-eyed “realism,” splitting up the world in that way might actually not take the national interest seriously enough.
The “spheres of influence” gambit has a superficial logic. By some measures, the United States is a smaller portion of the global economy than it was fifty years ago. It faces growing fiscal burdens. Its industrial infrastructure has withered. Some of its longstanding allies have hit economic and demographic slumps. The growth of other regional powers means that the geopolitical landscape has become more multipolar. Yet withdrawing from much of the globe would hamper the ability of the United States to respond to those changed circumstances and would also undermine the policy aims of American populists. International networks will be critical for renewing American industry and reinforcing national sovereignty.
While some European partners need urgent reforms (from cutting red tape to hiking defense budgets), the continent remains a major global economic hub. The White House’s recent <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf">National Security Strategy</a> observed that Europe “is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions” and that it retains robust manufacturing and technology sectors. A full-scale American withdrawal from Europe could close down a crucial market for American industry (including defense sales) and could also threaten regional stability. Ending NATO and shuttering American military bases would create a power vacuum in that continent and also hurt the ability of the United States to project power abroad.
Nor can the United States afford to ignore Asia. Responsible for about half of <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/media-center/cusp-of-new-era-in-asia">global manufacturing output</a>, Asia has become the workshop for the world. The People’s Republic of China is already a manufacturing powerhouse, and it could consolidate industrial dominance if the United States severs its commitments to allies in the Pacific. That is especially the case for the advanced technologies that are the building blocks of the digital economy. A link in countless international supply chains, Taiwan produces about <a href="https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/taiwan-semiconductors-including-chip-design-ai">90%</a> of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. If the People’s Republic of China conquered that island, it would have a chokehold on the American and global economies. It could cut off the chips that are needed for cars, computers, missiles, and phones. Beijing is already trying to use its control of key market sectors to influence policymaking in the United States. Responding to American tariffs and industrial policy, China has floated restrictions on some critical minerals, including those that are essential for <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-new-rare-earth-and-magnet-restrictions-threaten-us-defense-supply-chains">defense technologies</a>.
Populists have rallied around the claims of national sovereignty, but allowing the Chinese Communist Party to cut off the American economy at a whim is the antithesis of national independence. While building out American domestic semiconductor production is a national-security imperative, that’s also a very long process. The United States cannot afford to surrender economic self-governance for the indefinite future while it waits for some eschaton of economic autarky.
Conversely, coordinating with allies in Europe and Asia can bolster economic agency. For example, the PRC is responsible for over <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-tungsten.pdf">80%</a> of the global annual production of tungsten, which is used for drills, computer chips, aerospace, x-rays, and more. The United States has not even mined tungsten commercially in over a decade. In addition to bringing back domestic tungsten production, American allies could help de-risk the tungsten market. Australia has massive tungsten reserves, and South Korea’s <a href="https://www.mining.com/sangdong-tungsten-mine-in-south-korea-returns-to-production-after-30-years/">Sangdong Mine</a> has returned to production for the first time in decades. Accessing those resources will require keeping Pacific alliances strong — and not surrendering that region to Beijing.
Likewise, allies in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East will continue to be important for American national-security aims. Even as it has stressed the need to reform certain geopolitical arrangements, the Trump administration’s foreign-policy strategy is premised on the United States being a global great-power. Losing the hard power that backs the dollar’s reserve-currency status would cause an immediate economic crisis at home, but a global defense infrastructure also helps target American foes abroad. The Jacksonian tradition of foreign policy — which prioritizes the targeted use of military force to defend the national interest — has achieved a renewed prominence in the Trump presidencies. Jacksonianism could be a way of rebalancing global commitments by keeping America’s rivals off-balance without tying down the United States. International alliances can help optimize such Jacksonian exertions of force.
From its very founding, the United States has prioritized having access to global markets. When the Barbary pirates threatened American ships, Thomas Jefferson sent frigates to Tripoli. To open up Japan, Commodore Matthew Perry brought the United States Navy to Edo Bay. The network of alliances in the aftermath of World War II could be seen as an extension of a long-term strategic imperative: that the Stars and Stripes should be able to move freely throughout the world and that those who live under that banner should be safe from both foreign and domestic threats.
We now face a very different political landscape from 1946 or 1999. Implementing “liberal democracy” in a country is a lot harder than getting an Amazon package there. If policymakers had sought to integrate the world into some post-historical bazaar, their dreams have been sorely disappointed. Great-power competition is back, and populist movements have roiled political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic. Those changes indicate the need to rethink international alliances without abandoning them entirely.
Yes, the United States needs to recognize the limits of power and to try to defer existential conflict with its competitors. It also needs to understand the interests of those competitors. At the same time, the United States needs to understand its own interests. Cutting itself off from allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere would squander a major geopolitical advantage and undercut efforts to build a stronger nation at home.
* * *
Fred Bauer is a writer from New England. Find his work at National Review, City Journal, The Atlantic, UnHerd, and The Washington Post. @fredbauerblog

Strategic world map with shipping infographics, flags and dice

The Plan To Split The World Into Spheres And What It Means For America

The Plan To Split The World Into Spheres And What It Could Means For America

China

Economics

National Security

Opinion

Russia

U.S. Military

U.S. Navy

When the European Union adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), officials insisted that the sweeping regulation was necessary to tackle “illegal content,” “disinformation,” and other harmful online activity. The message was that responsible regulation would make the internet a safer place. The reality, however, is that the DSA grants the EU enormous <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-europe-plans-to-strangle-american-free-speech?author=Lorcan+Price&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=How+Europe+Plans+To+Strangle+American+Free+Speech">censorship powers</a> that endanger free speech in the digital public square, in Europe and across the world.
Now, for anyone wondering what kind of speech these powers might ultimately be used to suppress, the answer is becoming clearer. On March 5, the European Commission adopted its new <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-equality-strategy_en">Gender Equality Strategy</a>. The document leaves no doubt about the EU’s highly ideological direction, which has positioned it to become the world’s online censor through the DSA.
In the strategy, the European Commission states plainly that the DSA “recognises gender-based violence as a systemic risk, which providers of very large online platforms… have to assess and mitigate”. But what exactly is “gender-based violence”? 
According to the Commission, “online violence” includes acts that cause “psychological” harm or “suffering to women”. What this means is that if the ideological NGOs tasked with patrolling online content under the DSA object to a social media post on the grounds that it is “likely” to cause “harm” to women, major online platforms like X and Meta would be pressured to remove it as “violence”.
The nebulous definition of “online violence” put forward by the new Gender Equality Strategy makes it little more than a vehicle for digital censorship. The strategy presents itself as a roadmap for advancing equality across Europe. Yet what it reveals is a metastatic, habitual tendency on the part of EU institutions to embed contested ideological positions into policy and then frame any dissent as a threat. 
One notable passage in the strategy frames opposition to gender ideology as dangerous, warning that “anti-gender narratives … threaten the EU’s democratic space”. The strategy explicitly identifies “<a href="https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/1f5fa936-9fba-4435-93f5-32fa220bac82_en?filename=gender-equality-strategy-2026-2030.pdf">LBTIQ+</a> women” as a protected group and links gender equality efforts with other EU initiatives focused on sexual orientation. It also adopts an “intersectional approach,” asserting that sex and gender intersect with multiple forms of discrimination and should therefore be addressed through overlapping identity-based policies.
The strategy explicitly supports so-called “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” referencing a recent pro-abortion European Citizens Initiative. This signals continued normalization and support for abortion access on the part of the EU, which it has no authority to promote.
In the strategy, the European Commission refers to the Neil Datta report <a href="https://www.epfweb.org/node/1144">&#8220;The Next Wave&#8221;</a> as a trustworthy study identifying “well-resourced global movements, and increasingly exploited through foreign information manipulation and interference”. But what this “report” does is identify <a href="https://www.epfweb.org/node/1152">pro-life NGOs</a> and research centers promoting biological reality as radical, anti-gender, conservative, and religious extremists.
It does not take much imagination to see how this framework could be deployed in the world of online censorship.
In place since February 2024, the DSA gives the European Commission unprecedented power over the world’s largest online platforms, requiring them to remove certain content and manage “systemic risks” on their services. When authorities view legitimate criticism of gender ideology as part of “anti-gender narratives” threatening democracy, the next evident step is censorship in the name of “content moderation”.
Consider the prosecution of Finnish Member of Parliament <a href="https://adfinternational.org/campaign/free-speech-on-trial">Päivi Räsänen</a> under Finland’s national “hate speech” law. With the legal support of ADF International, Räsänen, a medical doctor, grandmother, and parliamentarian since 1995, has spent more than six years defending herself against criminal charges for posting a Bible verse on Twitter in 2019. She posted the verse to support her Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Despite being acquitted twice by Finnish courts, the state prosecution has relentlessly pursued the case, which now awaits a decision from Finland’s Supreme Court. Under the DSA, we should expect to see more aggressive censorship for the simple expression of traditional Christian views like Räsänen&#8217;s.
Of course, the EU can, and should, advance authentic policies to promote equality between the sexes. But this is not that. There is no doubt that the Gender Equality Strategy strengthens the censorship regime created by the DSA. Democratic societies depend on open debate to promote true equality, not the suppression of views that challenge elite orthodoxy.
Platforms that fail to comply with DSA censorship directives face enormous fines, as evidenced by the €120 million fine levied against X, an American platform, last December. Although the penalty was formally tied to procedural violations, the platform was targeted for its pro-free speech stance, which it is now <a href="https://adfinternational.org/news/x-challenges-e120m-fine-under-eu-censorship-law">appealing</a> before the Court of Justice of the EU.
Both in Europe and across the world, including in the United States, the DSA creates powerful incentives for platforms to remove lawful content subjectively deemed problematic or suffer the consequences, which can range from crippling fines to suspension of services.
Europe has long presented itself as a defender of fundamental rights and democratic values. Yet the trajectory of its speech policies increasingly points in the opposite direction. Make no mistake about it: the EU is coming for your free speech, regardless of where you live, and it’s taking no pains to hide the kind of speech it’s after.
* * *
Dr. Adina Portaru is senior counsel, Europe, for legal advocacy organization ADF International, which is supporting X’s legal challenge before the General Court of the EU.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Symbol of transgender and female and male gender symbols

The EU’s Censorship Regime Has A New Gender Strategy And It Threatens Free Speech Everywhere

The EU's Censorship Regime Has A New Gender Strategy And It Threatens Free Speech Everywhere

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

European Union

Gender

gender ideology

The White House turns green today as Ireland’s prime minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin arrives for his annual St. Patrick’s Day meeting with the president. Every March, Americans put aside political differences and raise a pint of Guinness to the ballads, jigs and reels, and the rolling hills of their common ancestral homeland. In Chicago, the river turns green. In New York, the city shuts down for the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world. And in Boston – well, Boston is Irish all year round.
The last time the American media reported on Irishmen in Washington was only last month. Free speech expert Lorcán Price and comedian Graham Linehan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-europe-plans-to-strangle-american-free-speech?author=Lorcan+Price&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=How+Europe+Plans+To+Strangle+American+Free+Speech">testified</a> before the House Judiciary Committee on the mass censorship regime sweeping Europe through its big tech hub in Dublin, Ireland. The American nostalgia of St. Patrick’s Day remembers a wholesome, Christian, culturally rich country that is now close to extinction. Ireland today is a left-wing, globalist hub and it offers a warning about the direction left-wing policies will lead the United States if the American Left regains control in Washington. Ireland’s fall from grace demonstrates how unelected bureaucracies and mass-immigration can reshape a nation.
<div id="attachment_1060857" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1060857" class="size-large wp-image-1060857" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-864x576.jpg" alt="DUBLIN, IRELAND - OCTOBER 31: The sun shines on a pint of Guninness that is being poured as people enjoy a drink in a bar in the city centre on October 31, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland. The city of Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, is located on Ireland’s east coast at the mouth of the River Liffey and is a popular destination for domestic tourists and with international visitors. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Matt Cardy/Getty Images</div>
While Elon Musk’s DOGE made some headway last year in exposing and trimming some of the worst excesses of America’s deep state, Ireland’s deep state is firmly embedded. There are <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2024/10/19/why-so-many-charities-and-ngos/">32,000 NGOs</a> in Ireland — that’s one for every 155 people in the country. Despite the label “non-governmental,” this sector receives $7 billion (€6 billion) every year, not including additional funds from the European Union, USAID, and other governmental bodies around the world.
These organizations, for the most part, implement policies created by the European Union — another unelected bureaucracy — that are passed with little-to-no real scrutiny by the Irish parliament. In fact, according to an Irish member of European Parliament, <a href="https://gript.ie/fine-gael-mep-70-of-legislation-comes-from-europe/#:~:text=Many%20people%20in%20Ireland%20today,what's%20decided%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.">70% of Ireland’s legislation</a> is created in this way.
The American Left would love to see that level of unaccountable NGO rule in the United States. The House DOGE Subcommittee <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/doge-subcommittee-chairwoman-greene-opens-hearing-on-ngos-use-of-federal-funds-to-advance-radical-agenda">found last year</a> that the Biden-Harris EPA had directed $20 billion to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This provided taxpayer funds to NGOs to implement the Green New Deal. If Republicans lose in 2026, we can expect Democrats to push even larger sums of taxpayer dollars through similar programs with little oversight.
In Ireland, the government openly advertises that it reserves special benefits for <a href="https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving-country/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/services-for-asylum-seekers-in-ireland/direct-provision/#:~:text=Direct%20provision%20is%20the%20name,protection%20and%20are%20waiting%20for:">illegal immigrants who come to its shores</a>. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ireland announced it would take in every Ukrainian refugee that arrived at Dublin Airport, with no upper limit. The government still provides housing and a weekly stipend many times larger than any other European country, but refuses to run any background checks on these alleged refugees. Dr. Eoin Lenihan explains in his book, Vandalising Ireland, that between 2022 and 2023, 8,975 individuals arrived in Ireland to seek asylum with no valid identification. Only one was prosecuted.
In 2022, a 23-year-old Irish schoolteacher, Ashling Murphy, was brutally stabbed 11 times in the neck while out for a run. Her murderer, Jozef Puska, was unemployed and receiving funds from a social welfare program. As an EU citizen (Puska moved from Slovakia in 2013), he had an automatic right to live in Ireland, despite being unemployed. Puska was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but he remains in the country without a deportation order. Ashling’s boyfriend, Ryan Casey, was accused of “incitement to hatred” by the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yg0ee65eqo">BBC</a> for raising concern about the unmitigated immigration regime that led to her murder. To date, the system has not been reformed to prevent similar tragedies.
<div id="attachment_1060839" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1060839" class="size-large wp-image-1060839" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-865x576.jpg" alt="TULLAMORE, IRELAND - JANUARY 18: Pupils from Ashling Murphy's class hold photographs of her and red roses ahead of her funeral at St. Brigid’s Church, County Offaly on January 18, 2022 in Tullamore, Ireland. The murder of the beloved 23 year old school teacher has caused widespread anger and shock in Ireland, with tens of thousands of people attending vigils in recent days. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Charles McQuillan/Getty Images</div>
The United States has seen similar tragedies as a result of the disastrous Biden-era immigration regime. Young girls like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Kayla Hamilton bore the brunt of this policy. A new Democratic administration will certainly re-open the border and cause more pain and suffering, precisely because open borders — not the safety of young women — has become a defining policy priority of the Left.
Ireland’s Christian heritage has been politicized and defeated in a woke crusade. The last decade brought with it a wave of referendums that ripped Ireland’s conservative safeguards out of the constitution. Ireland voted in large numbers to create constitutional rights for same-sex “marriage” and abortion (with no restrictions). In 2024, the ruling parties put forward a vote to remove the word “woman” from the constitution and define “family” as any “durable relationship.” Only in a last-minute polling turnaround that indicated the Irish people are finally waking up to the destruction of their culture, did the government lose the vote. The star of that 2024 campaign, Maria Steen, was unceremoniously <a href="https://lawliberty.org/ireland-at-rock-bottom/">blocked from running for President</a> last year.
A nation’s politics necessarily impact its culture. The Irish culture Americans celebrate every March is deteriorating rapidly. The Gaelic language is confined to rural villages, and less than <a href="https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/pressreleases/2023pressreleases/pressstatementcensus2022resultsprofile8-theirishlanguageandeducation">2% of the population</a> speak it on a weekly basis. This year, the government perverted the celebration of the Irish Catholic St. Brigid by <a href="https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/ireland-is-playing-with-holy-fire/">casting her as a pagan goddess</a>. In the aftermath of the George Floyd debacle in Minnesota, Ireland eagerly joined the cancellation spree. Trinity College Dublin “denamed” (renamed) its Berkeley Library, previously named after a significant Irish-born philosopher, due to alleged ties to slavery.
While the United States has never passed a popular vote to create constitutional rights out of thin air, it repeatedly elects politicians who seek to protect made-up rights, misuse the law, and sell out their Christian faith. The last administration attempted to codify Roe v. Wade. It succeeded in codifying parts of Obergefell v. Hodges with bipartisan support in the “Respect for Marriage Act.” Thirty-four felony convictions nearly blocked Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024. In the United States, Christian faith is becoming increasingly politicized. Daily Wire’s Megan Basham has catalogued this bastardization of Christianity in the United States in her book, &#8220;Shepherds for Sale.&#8221; Renaming libraries and toppling statues has also become common under Democrat governance.
Ireland’s transformation did not happen overnight. It happened through bureaucrats, state-funded NGOs, and cultural elites who slowly replaced national identity with global ideology. Americans celebrating St. Patrick’s Day should remember: the country they toast tonight is not the one that exists today. Ireland shows what happens when elites, bureaucracies, and ideology override national identity. As Americans celebrate 250 years of independence, they should reflect on their own national identity as they head to the ballot box this year. After all, Ireland is the future the American Left wants.
* * *
Roger Berkeley works with mission-driven organizations to develop their political and communications strategies. Now based in Washington, DC, Berkeley has been politically active in his native Ireland since 2016, driving change on free speech and life issues.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Aerial view of St. Anne’s Church of Ireland in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, surrounded by cemetery and lush countryside, Traditional rural church architecture and Irish cultural landscape for editorial and travel use

Ireland Is The Future The American Left Wants

Censorship

Globalization

illegal immigrants

Ireland

Leftists

St. Patrick's Day

The West is in trouble.
One of the reasons is that the West has fundamentally failed to distinguish between tolerance of one another&#8217;s traditions and lifestyles on the one hand, and the bizarre bend-over-backward celebration that accompanies the undermining of traditions unique to the West.
A perfect example is what&#8217;s happening in Germany now. It seems like a small story, but it is indicative of a broader mindset that has been setting in throughout the West for generations.
In Germany, McDonald&#8217;s decided on an ad campaign. The German population is roughly 6.5% Muslim at this point. Muslims celebrate Ramadan around this time of year, which means they are fasting from sunup to sundown.
Fine. That is the Muslim tradition. There are a lot of Muslims who live in the West who are perfectly fine Western citizens.
McDonald’s is not halal, meaning food that religious Muslims can eat. If you are a Muslim who is celebrating Ramadan or commemorating Ramadan, chances are that you are eating halal in your non-Ramadan hours and in your non-fasting hours, because if you&#8217;re religious enough to actually not eat all day, you probably don&#8217;t go at sunset and find a rasher of bacon and eat it.
But McDonald&#8217;s decided to put up an ad campaign in Germany. The ad campaign removes the food from the billboards during Ramadan hours out of respect for Islam. The food appears on the billboard after sunset, but it disappears during the day, presumably so as not to tempt Muslims to feel hunger pangs.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2376-wth-mc-donald-s-celebrates-ramadan"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
That is Bizarro World. It’s weird and self-defeating, and it bespeaks of something that lies at the heart of the cowardice of a lot of both corporations and people in the West.
It&#8217;s Bizarro World because McDonald&#8217;s is not halal. The people who are presumably going to be very moved by these billboards are not going to head over to McDonald&#8217;s after dusk and start chomping down on their cheeseburgers.
So what is McDonald&#8217;s doing? According to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mcdonalds-new-ad-campaign-empty-boxes-no-food-ramadan-germany-11578866?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Newsweek</a>: 
<blockquote>The campaign was created by the German agency Scholz &amp; Friends, whose concept centers on removing McDonald’s most recognizable visual element—its food—as a gesture of respect for those observing Ramadan.</blockquote>
This is strange. The reality is McDonald’s is a food company that sells food, and the vast majority of the food that you sell is not to the people to whom they’re trying to appeal.
Who exactly is McDonald&#8217;s appealing to? Who&#8217;s the target audience?
The answer is: The dullards in the West who believe that it is a mark of virtue to subsume your own values beneath the values of other cultures.
That is the problematic part. It is a strange form of cultural reparation that somehow the West owes it to other cultures to participate in their religious activities while subsuming its own interests.
I don&#8217;t think McDonald&#8217;s cares all that much in Germany about whether or not Muslims like McDonald&#8217;s. I think what German McDonald&#8217;s cares about is that there are a lot of people in Germany who see this as a form of left-wing social virtue signaling, in the same way that in the United States, you have major corporations that every year decide they&#8217;re going to signal for Black History Month or Gay Pride month.
But the basic idea is not that you are going to earn vast oodles of cash from doing that. The idea is you&#8217;re appealing to left-wing people in the United States who will give you more money because they believe that you share their values.
The reason that you see all these companies doing DEI in the United States is absolutely not because they think it&#8217;s going to be good for their balance sheet. Hiring on the basis of non-merit is always bad for the balance sheet.
The reason these companies do it is because they believe they can appeal to an entire group of consumers who have warm feelings toward them if they take their own corporate business interests, throw those aside, and start signaling their politics.
This is a major problem. It&#8217;s not unique to Germany and is a widespread symptom of a disease that is spread across the West, where you are supposed to be overtly apologetic about not celebrating Ramadan.
This is not a sign of cultural respect.
It&#8217;s a sign of cultural disintegration.
It would be the same thing as if companies in the UK decided that they were suddenly going to take female models and suddenly cover up their faces out of respect for radical Islam.
It&#8217;s saying something, but it&#8217;s not the thing they think they&#8217;re saying.
There is an assumption that in the Trump era, DEI is basically dead, that we&#8217;re never going back to a time when corporations were virtue signaling like this, when policy did not reflect this idea that the dominant American culture ought to be put under the foot of splinter cultures.
But the reality is that it can very easily come back.
It doesn&#8217;t take a lot for it to come back. All it takes is a group of people who see it as a mark of virtue to yell at their own culture and pretend that it is somehow inferior and owes it to other cultures to demonstrate its own inferiority.
There&#8217;s a piece from Time magazine titled “<a href="https://time.com/7377439/donald-trump-cant-kill-dei/">Why Donald Trump Can&#8217;t Kill DEI</a>.” The point the piece makes is that the anti-DEI era, which is a backlash to the Barack Obama/Joe Biden era, will be followed by a backlash to the backlash, and that all this stuff will come back with a vengeance.
The piece states:
<blockquote>Ideas of inclusion and diversity also permeate everyday institutions, including schools, universities, foundations, nonprofits, and corporations. &#8230; Many companies have retreated from DEI under legal and political pressure. What makes fewer headlines is that most companies that have sidled away from the acronym continue to affirm the values of DEI under a different name. &#8230; 
Boeing stated that it maintains “procedures aimed at encouraging an equality of opportunity.” Lowe’s has proclaimed that it remained “committed to fostering an environment where individuals are treated fairly, valued, respected, safe, and inspired to serve customers and the communities where we live and work.” These statements sure sound like diversity, equity, and inclusion to us. &#8230; The education sector is equally if not more committed: a 2025 review of 262 colleges and universities found that 245 of them still maintained DEI offices and programs.</blockquote>
This is only going to continue. What does it mean?
It means this will come back if Republicans lose the forward momentum.
I know that we&#8217;re also riding high on the horse right now because Donald Trump won and because Republicans are in charge of the legislative branches of the government.
But if you think this stuff can&#8217;t come back, you’re wrong.

Germany’s Milder Recession With Stimulus Offsetting Shutdown

WTH?! McDonald’s Celebrates … Ramadan

advertising

Ben Shapiro

Germany

Islam

McDonald’s

Muslims

Woke Culture

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1917-assassin-storms-mar-a-lago-to-try-to-kill-president-trump">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
One of the most common talking points you hear from the Left — and you’re going to hear it a lot heading into the midterms — is that America has terrible health care. We’re told that every civilized country in the world has universal, socialized medicine, and that we’re backward, retrograde, clinging to some barbaric capitalist system while enlightened Europeans enjoy cradle-to-grave care.
You hear it constantly: America is a disgrace. We need socialized medicine.
Now, before we go any further, let’s acknowledge something the Left rarely does: we already have a substantial amount of socialized medicine in this country. We have it for illegal aliens. We have it for the very poor. We have it for the elderly through Medicare. We have a massive social safety net.
But here’s the part they leave out: the only reason any of that works at all is because it’s sitting on top of a heavily capitalist health care system that funds the entire apparatus. The “free” part only functions because something productive underneath it is paying the bills.
Still, we’re told we should scrap the whole thing and go full European.
How about we take a little look at some of the socialist health care systems around the world? Let&#8217;s start with Europe.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1917-assassin-storms-mar-a-lago-to-try-to-kill-president-trump">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show on DailyWire+</a></h3>
A horrifying story recently came out of the United Kingdom. According to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15582277/Woman-dead-floor-home-told-wait-ten-days-ambulance.html?ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_campaign=1490&amp;ito=social-twitter_mailonline">The Daily Mail</a>, a 97-year-old woman, Babette Burge, was found nearly dead on the floor of her home after being told she would have to wait ten days — ten days — for an ambulance. Not ten days for surgery. Ten days just to be transported to a hospital.
<blockquote>Just five days earlier, a paramedic from a local GP surgery had attended Ms Burge&#8217;s home to assess her condition and found that her leg was &#8216;shortened and rotated&#8217; &#8211; a sign of a fractured hip.</blockquote>
She was nearly 100 years old, lying on the floor with a broken hip, and was told she’d need to wait ten days for an ambulance.
She was later discovered barely breathing. Then she died.
This is what we’re supposed to envy? “Everybody gets health care” in the UK — assuming you can get to the hospital. The catch is that no one comes to get you. Universal coverage is lovely in theory. In practice, however, if you can’t secure transportation, it doesn’t matter how free the surgery is.
Meanwhile, in Canada, a prominent Canadian writer — very much on the Left, by her own description — recently admitted something chilling. She said she was offered medical assistance in dying (MAID) instead of care.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I’m about as far left as you can get… but we do have problems with MAiD in Canada.
How do I know? It was “offered” to me in lieu of care.
I’m disabled, I was alone, my conditions expensive.
Yes I was allowed to say “No”, but no alternative care was offered.
That’s coercion. <a href="https://t.co/LvCWd55esk">https://t.co/LvCWd55esk</a>
— Kelly (@broadwaybabyto) <a href="https://twitter.com/broadwaybabyto/status/2025364112348188828?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @broadwaybabyto/X.com
That’s not compassion. That’s coercion.
And this isn’t an isolated anecdote. Canada has dramatically expanded medical assistance in dying, or MAID. In parts of Europe — particularly in countries like the Netherlands — similar policies are spreading. Elderly people, disabled people, chronically ill people, and even young people struggling with “seasonal depression” are increasingly being told that death is a “treatment option.”
Think about that.
In a system where the government is paying the bills, patients are not just patients — they’re line items. They’re costs. And when waitlists grow long and budgets grow tight, the incentives get dark very quickly. The cheapest patient is the one who isn’t there anymore.
On the one hand, American leftists insist we’re the only country in the civilized world without socialized medicine. On the other hand, you look at some of these “civilized” systems and see 97-year-olds waiting ten days for an ambulance and disabled citizens being nudged toward suicide because their care is expensive.
That’s not health care. That’s the opposite of health care.
Now, is the American system perfect? Of course not. It’s expensive. It’s complicated. It’s frustrating. But it is also the system that produces the vast majority of the world’s pharmaceutical innovation. It is the system that subsidizes global research and development. It is the system that people from all over the world come to when they need cutting-edge treatment.
It is not, however, a system where the government routinely suggests that you kill yourself because you’re inconvenient. There’s a reason that countries with fully socialized medicine struggle with wait times and rationing.
So before we swallow the talking point that America is uniquely cruel because we don’t have cradle-to-grave government medicine, it’s worth looking at what that actually looks like in practice. A nearly 100-year-old woman dying on the floor because no ambulance is available. A disabled Canadian writer being offered euthanasia in lieu of care.
Beware the supposedly greener grass on the other side of the fence. Especially when that fence is our northern border, separating us from the snow Mexicans.

Motion blur ambulance United States

Waiting 10 Days For An Ambulance — The Dark Side Of ‘Free’ Health Care

Waiting 10 Days For An Ambulance — The Dark Side Of 'Free' Health Care

Assisted Suicide

Canada

Death

England

Health Care

Hospitals

Michael Knowles

United Kingdom

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday. It was attended by a wide variety of politicos, both from the Trump administration and from the Democratic side of the aisle.
He was the adult in the room.
Marco Rubio is the most well-spoken member of the Trump administration. And when it comes to foreign policy, it’s not even close.
He gave a truly tremendous speech about the relationship between America and Europe.
If you recall, last year, Vice President JD Vance also went to Europe. In Davos, he proceeded to give a speech blistering the Europeans: some parts for good reasons, some parts that weren’t so great.
His speech appeared to draw the hackles of a bunch of Europeans because it was basically saying, “Guys, you seem to be on your own. America is drawing back.”
That is not what Rubio said. What Rubio said is that we have strong bonds, centuries-long bonds with the many European countries, and we also are going to have common interests with those countries, but we need strong allies to stand up for themselves.
He attempted to draw out a definition of what it meant to be in consonance with Europe in a way that Vance, in some ways, failed to advance.
Rubio received a standing ovation for this, which is a good thing because his defense of the Trump administration policy was quite muscular over at the Munich Security Conference.
Rubio suggested that the United States and Europe have a great history of cooperation:
<blockquote>Together we rebuilt a shattered continent in the wake of two devastating world wars. When we found ourselves divided once again by the Iron Curtain, the free West linked arms with the courageous dissidents struggling against tyranny in the East to defeat Soviet communism. We have fought against each other, then reconciled, then fought, then reconciled again. And we have bled and died side by side on battlefields from Kapyong to Kandahar.</blockquote>
Rubio said we definitely need strong allies, that it can&#8217;t just be the United States picking up the check for everybody else. You can&#8217;t build gigantic welfare states on the back of American taxpayers. You need to be strong, because strong alliances require strong allies, and those strong allies are capable of providing deterrence against, for example, a wayward Russia.
“We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker,” he said. “We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.
Rubio noted problems that the continent has brought upon itself, ranging from subjecting itself to the Green Revolution,, to the mass migration that it brought upon itself largely through a bizarre sort of blood-guilt, the idea that Europe, because it had destroyed so much of the world during World War II, somehow owed it to the rest of the world to open its borders and bring everyone in.
In the key section of his speech, he talked about the values that are supposed to bring together the United States and Europe.
<blockquote>The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.</blockquote>
What are the ideas that unite that civilization? He said, “Armies don&#8217;t fight for abstractions.” I beg to differ a little; armies do fight for abstractions. Armies have fought for communism; there are armies that fight for Islamic fundamentalism; there are armies that are fought for Catholicism and for Protestantism. There are armies all over the world that fight for ideas.
The question is, what are the ideas of Western civilization that are worth upholding and preserving? Because if you don&#8217;t know what it is you are defending, it is very difficult to fight for it.
The truth is that Europe itself is a bit of an idea. There are times when members of the European continent have been fighting each other tooth and nail in bloody, centuries-long wars.
What exactly is the concept of Europe? What is the common ideological heritage that actually counts between America and Europe? If you&#8217;re going to talk about Europe as a holistic concept, you have to define your terms. If you&#8217;re going through the history of Europe all the way back to the Roman Empire, what you&#8217;d see is that the Roman Empire was its own civilization. It considered the outlying areas to be barbarians. The word barbarian comes from a Latin root, which means people who speak gibberish. At that time, it applied to the Germans. The Germans were the barbarians. Now they are considered part of European civilization.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, what rose in its wake was Christendom, which was basically the idea of Catholic dominance of the European continent. That grew over the course of the Carolingian Empire and over the course of the subsequent centuries, up until the Protestant Reformation. 
The Protestant Reformation ushered in an era of religious warfare that lasted well over 100 years, and ended with the Peace of Westphalia when the medieval concept of Christendom was replaced by the modern system of nation-states. There was a new concept of Europe that was formed in the aftermath.
The question is always in opposition to what? Whenever you are defining a civilization, civilizations have an internal definition, and then they have a definition with regard to others.
The reality is that the Roman Empire was not only defined as that which was under the sway of Rome, but also in opposition to other empires and armies, German armies, Assyrian armies, Persian armies, or whatever the case may have been.
Christendom was largely forged in opposition to Islam in the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire, because Islam was actually a dire threat to Europe and had spread deep into Europe, all the way into France, after the Peace of Westphalia.
About a century later, we saw the rise of the Enlightenment, and then the West became identified with these Enlightenment ideas, a history of Christianity that bled over into a sort of secularized version of many of the key values of Christianity, but with a critical eye toward the idea that religion could answer all questions, and therefore a sort of Aristotelian approach towards science that looked at evidence first.
You got the separation of church and state in many of these countries. You got the rise of the scientific revolution, the rise of the industrial Revolution, the rise of free economies, and all the rest.
And then the West tore itself apart, enduring two world wars.
We saw a West redefined in opposition to Soviet communism and in the aftermath of Soviet communism.
So what is the West? What are these values that we hold dear? It is not just a matter of “common heritage.” It is not just a matter of “common language.” It is not “cultural inheritance” because there are similarities in culture, but also pretty significant differences in these cultures.
To pretend that Europe doesn&#8217;t exist as a concept or as a civilization is silly. It has a shared Christian history that grew out of Christendom, but it also has an Enlightenment history, and it has shared values.
And if those values wane, so too will the alliance between the old world and the new.
Those values include the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, property rights, democracy, and small republicanism.
This is one reason among many why Russia has never quite ever entered the world of Europe, and has always sort of existed on the fringes of Europe. Integrating the Russian Empire into Europe has always been a failed experiment.
All of this means Europe needs to uphold its own values. It means the United States needs to uphold its own values, and we all need to understand that a shared history, a shared experience, and a shared set of values are all necessary in order to have an increasingly powerful alliance.
He concluded: 
<blockquote>I am here today to leave it clear that America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends. We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive.
We should be proud of what we achieved together in the last century, but now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new one – because yesterday is over, the future is inevitable, and our destiny together awaits.</blockquote>
This is the right approach for the Trump administration to take.
And Rubio did a phenomenal job of expounding it.

Marco

Rubio’s Muscular Defense Of Western Civilization

Marco Rubio

Trump Administration

Western Civilization

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/p/why-more-weimar">The New Jerusalem</a> on Substack.
* * *
In the minds of most journalists, all human history can be summed up with the words, “Rome fell, then Hitler came.” A few more accomplished scholars among the chattering classes might be able to distinguish between the fall of Rome’s republic, followed by the empire, and the fall of the empire, followed by a thousand years of hideously faith-infused darkness. But basically, to journalists, all signs of political or cultural decadence — whether it’s a Republican being elected or some other Republican being elected — are omens that American Rome is about to collapse followed by the rise of American Hitler.
“A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment,” reads a headline in The Dispatch. “We must not let the shooting of Charlie Kirk become Trump’s Reichstag fire,” writes a genius at The Guardian. “Welcome to Weimar 2.0,” headlines a book excerpt by the catastrophist Robert D. Kaplan in Foreign Policy. And that’s not even counting the continual Hitler forecasts on cable TV. One could almost feel sorry for der old Führer, his psycho ass getting dragged out of hell every ten minutes to serve as a warning to us all.
And look, yes, it’s true, the United States is in one of those periods of dissolution and transition that come upon every nation from time to time. So too was Weimar, the unstable republic that rose up in the wake of Germany’s crushing defeat in World War I. Such periods are often marked by polarized politics, destructive sexual profligacy wrongly celebrated as liberation, and art forms informed by and infused with the general cultural decay. So with America. So with Weimar.
Beyond that, however, the comparison is a shallow one. For one thing, the image of Weimar among our clerisy is skewed with bias. Watch any movie set in the era — the musical Cabaret is a good one — or any television series — Babylon Berlin is my favorite — or read histories like Peter Gay’s famous Weimar Culture. You’ll get the sense that you’re learning about a time of delightful but doomed sexual and artistic creativity, with benign but hapless socialists slowly falling beneath the darkening Nazi shadow.
But no. The undisciplined sex lives, the anti-freedom politics of both the left and the right, and the shocking but ultimately ephemeral cultural productions were all one thing, all part of the same process of decay. Weimar — and the world wars that preceded and followed it — marked the end of a civilization — the greatest civilization that has yet existed on planet Earth — the civilization that was Europe from around 1345 to 1914. It was this, in fact, that gave Hitler his rhetorical super power: he diagnosed the decadence correctly. He just didn’t realize he was its ultimate manifestation. Ah well. Even a mass murdering racist lunatic can’t be right all the time.
<div id="attachment_1044519" style="width: 745px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1044519" class="size-large wp-image-1044519" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-735x576.jpg" alt="Charles Chaplin movie art for the film 'The Great Dictator', 1940. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)" width="735" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-735x576.jpg 735w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-300x235.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-768x602.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px" />Charles Chaplin movie art for the film &#8216;The Great Dictator&#8217;, 1940. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)</div>
So the United States is in a decadent state and so was Weimar, and decadence anywhere looks like decadence everywhere. History does repeat itself.
But it repeats itself for a reason. It’s the same reason a person’s life tends to repeat itself. The human race, like each of its individual members, has a nature, a character. Like everything that exists, character is bounded by its defining limits. Those limits cause it to express itself in a finite number of patterns. Over time, those patterns are certain to reassert themselves in recognizable forms.
The patterns of a healthy society or person will be shaped something like a rising spiral. Certain arcs of activity will recur over and over, but they will recur in increasingly wise, creative and productive ways. There will be periods of dissolution but they will be what is sometimes referred to as “chaos leading to a higher plane.” You can trace such a pattern in the plays of William Shakespeare. You can find it in the history of England between Elizabeth and the end of World War II.
The history of a rotten society or person will form a descending spiral, the repeated arcs of foolishness and evil growing ever darker and more self-destructive. The life of every tyranny is like this. The life of every addict too.
Then there’s the history of an ignorant or neurotic society or person. This will simply look like a circle. The subject goes round and round on a level track while uttering occasional gasps of wonder at having found themselves at a place they’ve passed a hundred times before but have a hundred times forgotten. You know people like this. Every now and then, they announce they’ve had some smack-the-forehead revelation that will change their lives forever. Then they return to the exact same ideas and behaviors they’ve had before. Perpetually primitive tribes are also like this, no matter how we want to romanticize them.
In short, times of dissolution will indeed be followed by a transition. But Hitler — get ready for it — is not the only possible outcome. The time surrounding the French Revolution in Great Britain showed many of the usual signs of decadence, but the Victorian era that followed was arguably Britain’s greatest age. So with the United States in the 1920’s and 30’s. Those decadent days led to the mighty 1950’s and a new American half century. As with each individual, what follows a nation’s dissolution all depends on the essential health of the nation’s character.
Where then are we?
It seems obvious to me that the primary cause of our current decline is the falling away of the Baby Boomers. My age cohort has dominated the political and cultural landscape for seventy years. Now, we’re played out and heading for the exits. Our accomplishments were many. We made hypocritical virtue signaling an art, introduced self-destructive drug use to the general population, slowed the rise of black Americans by burying them under the smothering dependencies of the Great Society, and wasted all the money accumulated by every generation before us along with some money that will be accumulated by the generations to come. We also popularized the personal computer so, like, yay for us.
What the United States will become when we are gone is, of course, not yet clear, but it’s a good bet it will be defined by the way we use the new forms of communication that have been and are still being generated by technology. Who or what will dominate those engines of culture is largely what all the current division, panic, bullying and violence is intended to decide.
Periods like this are often resolved by the rise of a powerful personality. Will this person shape the coming Zeitgeist or merely ride its wave? Your answer will depend on whether you agree with Thomas Carlyle that “the History of the world is but the Biography of great men,” or with Tolstoy who said, “great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event.” Like the question of nurture or nature, this question is impossible to resolve, probably because, like the question of nature and nurture, the binary itself is an illusion. But as I say, contra the journalists, Hitler is not the only model for such era-defining personalities. George Washington and Queen Victoria are far more benign examples of the breed. Luther and Napoleon were mixed blessings. History is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
When we scan the horizon for the coming definitive personality, it’s pretty hard to see the horizon with the gigantic Donald Trump standing in the way. So yeah, maybe he’s the guy. He has no coherent ideology so his effect may not be a lasting one. But he does bear all the marks of a Tolstoyan Godzilla. Like that monster created by nuclear blasts, Trump is the product of our generation’s eruption of materialist vulgarity. But he is also the avatar of the American everyman in our time. Like that character — much maligned by the elites who feed off his bounty — he is blunt, common sensical, creative, independent and bold. If he uses these traits to blast away such fatal nonsense as open borders, transgenderism and socialism — if he restores our simple patriotism and can-do spirit — the imprint of his nature may well be Trump’s legacy to the new age.
But this is still America. Perhaps the great figure that will shape our 21st Century is not Trump or any other individual, but we, the people. In that case, Weimar, with its sexual libertinism, its artistic Dadaism and its polarized politics, actually does serve as a guide — a guide to what each and every one of us should not do.
Let we, the people, then, like healthy men with healthy minds, eschew the habits of decadence.
Get your sex life in order. Give up porn and feminism and other such perversions, and yoke your desires to their natural purposes: the creation of families, the solidifying of marriages and the maintenance of self-governing homes.
In politics, murder your isms. Follow the facts instead. Do what works, what keeps people free, what makes free people happy, what encourages the wealthy but protects the poor. Our founding principles are still the best guides ever invented to achieving those ends. Use them. Make our leaders use them too.
And in the culture, forget the overrated shock of the new. In the arts as in life, follow one rule: Make something beautiful. Whether it’s a movie or an invention, a business or a family, a community at peace or simply a life lived lovingly and well. Turn your back on every ugliness and cruelty. Head down the path of beauty and, like the prodigal son, you will see your Father running to greet you from afar.
And that’s another thing — one last thing — love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind. In general, they neglected to do that in Weimar and ended up worshipping the devil instead. No matter what anyone tells you, those are the only two choices. Choose right, and I guarantee you, Hitler will stay in hell — or on cable TV, which amounts to the same thing — where he belongs.
* * *
This article originally appeared in <a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/p/why-more-weimar">The New Jerusalem</a> on Substack.
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

President Hindenburg

Why More Weimar?

Adolf Hitler

Andrew Klavan

Nazi Germany

Roman Empire

Social Issues

Western governments accused the Russian state on Saturday of assassinating opposition leader Alexei Navalny using a rare toxin derived from South American dart frogs, rejecting Moscow’s long-standing claim that the Kremlin critic died of natural causes in prison.
The findings, announced at the Munich Security Conference by officials from the U.K., Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany, leave little doubt about the cause of Navalny’s death. For two years, questions lingered over whether his death was a natural consequence of imprisonment or a calculated act of state violence. Now, with scientific evidence confirming what Navalny&#8217;s widow and new leader of the Russian opposition, Yulia Navalnaya, and her allies long suspected, the focus has shifted to the Kremlin’s responsibility and the broader implications for Russia’s treatment of political dissent.
The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-by-the-uk-sweden-france-germany-and-the-netherlands-on-alexei-navalnys-death">statement</a> released by the European governments says forensic analysis of biological samples taken from Navalny’s body confirmed the presence of epibatidine. “There is no innocent explanation for the presence of this toxin,” the British Foreign Office said, adding that epibatidine is “not naturally found in Russia” and originates from poison dart frogs native to South America.
Navalny, 47, died on February 16, 2024, while serving a 30.5-year sentence in a high-security penal colony above the Arctic Circle. Russia’s prison service claimed at the time that Navalny collapsed after feeling unwell during a walk and could not be revived.
Western officials now say that explanation does not withstand scrutiny.
“Only the Russian government had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin against Alexei Navalny during his imprisonment,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, in the U.K.&#8217;s own <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-confirmsrussia-poisoned-navalny-in-prison-with-rare-toxin">statement</a>. “By using this form of poison, the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition.”
The toxin identified, epibatidine, is estimated to be up to 200 times stronger than morphine. Officials said it remains unclear how the substance was administered, though they stressed that access to Navalny was tightly controlled by Russian authorities at the time of his death.
Navalny’s widow said the announcement was welcomed as closure, that it confirmed what she had believed since the moment she learned of her husband’s death.
“I’m satisfied,” Navalnaya said in an <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/international-telecasts/russian-opposition-leader-yulia-navalnaya-speaks-to-politico-at-munich-security-conference/673394">interview</a> following the announcement. “It’s difficult for me to say that it’s good news, because my husband was killed. He was very young — he was less than 50.”
Navalnaya said she never believed the Kremlin’s account that Alexei Navalny died suddenly of natural causes. The day before his death, she said, they spoke by video link and he appeared healthy.
“We saw him just one day before — yes, by video connection — but he was laughing. He looked absolutely healthy,” Navalnaya said. “So it was obvious to me that something horrible happened to him.”
From the outset, she said, she believed responsibility lay with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I was sure that it was Vladimir Putin who killed him,” she said. “And it’s not the first time.”
Navalnaya pointed to a 2020 assassination attempt, when Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent while traveling in Russia. After recovering in Germany, he returned home and was immediately arrested — a move widely condemned by Western governments.
“It was obvious to me that he was poisoned, that he was killed in this penal colony,” she said. “We didn’t know how exactly, and we knew it would take a long time to discover how it happened.”
That uncertainty, Navalnaya said, has now been resolved.
She said she was “very grateful to the governments of the U.K., Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany,” adding that “all the uncertainty is now dismissed.”
“This is not just our investigation,” she said. “This is an investigation based on very, very scientific sources.”
Navalnaya has since assumed a public leadership role in Russia’s opposition movement, vowing to continue her husband’s anti-corruption work despite mounting personal risk. For her, the Western findings represent an official, <a href="https://x.com/yulia_navalnaya/status/2022652772500316538">evidentiary record</a> of what she says the Kremlin tried to erase.
Moscow had delayed the release of Navalny’s body for more than a week. Thousands of mourners later attended his funeral in Moscow, while hundreds more were <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/hundreds-detained-in-russia-while-mourning-death-of-alexei-navalny-vocal-putin-critic">detained</a> across Russia for laying flowers in his honor.
The joint European governments have formally notified the Organisation on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons of their findings, alleging that Russia breached the Chemical Weapons Convention. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot <a href="https://x.com/jnbarrot/status/2022683063637946838">said</a> the findings showed that Moscow was willing to use prohibited weapons against its own citizens to maintain power.
Throughout his imprisonment, Navalny remained the most prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, exposing corruption and calling for democratic reform. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed allegations of wrongdoing, characterizing Western accusations as politically motivated.
As of publication, Russian officials had not commented on the latest findings.

COMBO-GERMANY-RUSSIA-POLITICS-NAVALNY

Western Allies Say Alexei Navalny Was Poisoned With Frog Toxin, Accuse Putin’s Kremlin Of Political Murder

Alexei Navalny

Global Politics

Vladimir Putin

World

What does European censorship look like, and why should Americans care? I answered that question before the <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/europes-threat-american-speech-and-innovation-part-ii">U.S. House Judiciary Committee</a> this week.
The last time I <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/europes-threat-american-speech-and-innovation">testified</a> before the Committee in September, I highlighted the censorship potential of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which at the time still seemed theoretical. My message then was that this EU law controlling online speech was poised to censor lawful expression beyond Europe, including in the United States.
Many were not convinced.
But now we have moved from theory to practice. There can be no doubt now that the DSA is the tip of a massive censorship industrial complex with global implications.
I testified yesterday before the Committee that the enormous fines recently levied on X by the European Commission prove beyond all doubt that the EU means to strangle free speech by a systematic assault on US companies. This is corroborated by the Committee’s incendiary new <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/new-report-exposes-european-commission-decade-long-campaign-censor-american" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a>, which shows that American companies are already having to adopt EU content moderation policies.
The EU has a multi-pronged strategy to open a slew of investigations, to add more and more regulations, to impose crippling fines, and, ultimately, to either break up or ban companies such as X, which are pro-free-speech.
Free speech is such a threat to European elites that they intend to either cripple X with fines and investigations or force them to bend the knee at the altar of censorship. I hope X stands strong because we need free speech in Europe more than ever.
But it goes deeper; this censorship campaign is not just aimed at destroying free speech in Europe, it’s about imposing European Union speech laws globally.
Make no mistake, Europe’s draconian speech laws are being imposed across the world via global content moderation rules.
The EU’s obsession with eliminating free speech means that they are deploying a global campaign to ensure that all speech online bans “illegal content” and “prevents systemic risk” to the “discourse”.
And the costs are borne by real people, like my client Päivi Räsänen, a longtime Finnish parliamentarian, who has spent more than six years criminally prosecuted for peacefully expressing her Christian beliefs in a 2019 Bible verse tweet. Räsänen also testified alongside me before the Committee on her ordeal, as she awaits a verdict from Finland’s Supreme Court for “hate speech” charges under the national law for “war crimes and crimes against humanity”. Of course, “hate speech” has no meaning except speech that European elites hate.
This is what European censorship looks like in practice: the process itself becomes the punishment, designed to chill speech, exhaust dissenters, and warn others to stay silent. And if this is what happens to a sitting parliamentarian in a Western democracy, Americans should have no illusion that either American companies or their citizens will be spared if these censorship regimes are allowed to normalize globally.
* * *
Lorcán Price is an Irish barrister and legal counsel for ADF International.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Uncle Sam

How Europe Plans To Strangle American Free Speech

Elon Musk

Social Media

Twitter

Police raided the Paris offices of Elon Musk&#8217;s social media company X on Tuesday amid a wide-ranging probe into allegations that X has allowed sexually explicit deepfakes on its platform and has abused its algorithms.
The Paris prosecutor&#8217;s office sent a cybercrime unit to X&#8217;s offices and summoned Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino to appear for a hearing in Paris on April 20, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/paris-prosecutors-cybercrime-unit-searches-french-office-musks-x-2026-02-03/">reported</a>. France&#8217;s investigation into X began last year with the European country looking into alleged bias in the social media platform&#8217;s algorithms. That investigation has now expanded as prosecutors in Paris are investigating allegations that pornographic deepfakes, including child pornography, and Holocaust denialism have been allowed to spread on X.
Prosecutors are also seeking to interview X managers to gain more information into the platform&#8217;s operations, NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/france-paris-prosecutors-x-office-elon-musk-sexual-deepfakes-holocaust-rcna257202">reported</a>. The European Union&#8217;s law enforcement agency Europol also commented on the raid, saying it involved &#8220;a range of suspected criminal offenses linked to the functioning and use of the platform, including the dissemination of illegal content and other forms of online criminal activity.&#8221;
X&#8217;s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, has been criticized for allowing users to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-chatbot-diaries-how-ai-sex-is-getting-mainstreamed">generate</a> sexually explicit images and videos. The chatbot also allows users to upload images to alter or to make into videos. Musk&#8217;s platform warns users against &#8220;depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner.&#8221;
Musk has not commented on the Paris raid directly, but the X owner shared multiple posts from other X users who slammed France over the raid. Musk also shared a House Judiciary GOP <a href="https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/2018683758006665352">report</a> on Tuesday, which found that the European Union began pressuring American social media companies to censor political posts that it opposed as early as 2015. House Judiciary GOP <a href="https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/2018683797630276083">said</a> that in the past ten years, the European Union &#8220;successfully pressured social media platforms to censor true information in the United States; Targeted U.S. political content for censorship; and Interfered in elections across Europe.&#8221;
The raid on X&#8217;s offices in Paris comes as European countries continue to pressure American social media companies to crack down on certain posts. In December, the European Union <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/engaging-in-censorship-european-union-hits-elon-musks-x-with-massive-fine-draws-white-house-ire">fined</a> X $140 million under its expansive internet accountability regulations. The European Union accused X of failing to meet advertising transparency requirements in violation of the Digital Services Act, which was put into place to clamp down on what the bloc views as illegal content and misinformation on social media.
Europe&#8217;s actions have also drawn criticism from President Trump and his administration. After the European Union fined X, Trump told reporters that &#8220;Europe has to be very careful.&#8221;
&#8220;They’re doing a lot of things. … Europe is going in some bad directions. It’s very bad for the people,&#8221; he added.
In December, the State Department announced that it would bar some of the people involved in Europe&#8217;s tech censorship effort from entering the United States.
&#8220;For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,&#8221; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

Elon Musk, X

French Police Raid X’s Paris Offices As Part Of Investigation Into Elon Musk’s Social Media Company

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