The U.K. Labour government unveiled a controversial plan this week to lower the voting age to 16 ahead of the next general election, in what many conservatives are calling a blatant attempt to sway the next election in their favor.
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform U.K., called the move “an attempt to rig the political system,” but warned they “intend to give them a nasty surprise.” While Labour currently <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2083204/nigel-farage-votes-16-Labour">leads</a> among 16-17-year-olds with approximately 33% support, Reform U.K.’s strong 20% showing suggests the plan could backfire on Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner defended the controversial proposal, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c628ep4j5kno">saying</a>, “I was a mum at 16, you can go to work, you can pay your taxes and I think that people should have a vote at 16,” according to the BBC.
The voting age change would affect approximately 3% of the U.K. population aged 16 and over. Labour insists the reform isn’t designed to benefit their party, with Rayner claiming, “This isn’t about trying to rig votes for a particular party. This is about democracy and giving young people an opportunity to have a say.”
Speaking in a video posted to X, Farage expanded on his criticism of the proposal.
“The problem with this is, not only do half of youngsters not want the vote, but they have to stay at school now until they’re 18,” Farage said in a video shared to X. “The educational establishment is full of left-wing prejudice, is full of anti-reform bias, and frankly, if 16- to 18-year-olds at school are going to be able to vote, we’re going to have to make sure that our education system is teaching kids to make their own minds up and not indoctrinating them.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote is an attempt to rig the political system. 
If this goes ahead, Labour could be in for a shock. <a href="https://t.co/CF9GYfRfFP">pic.twitter.com/CF9GYfRfFP</a>
&mdash; Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1945837816727908842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Conservative shadow minister Paul Holmes slammed the policy in the House of Commons, questioning why the “hopelessly confused” government believes “a 16-year-old can vote, but not be allowed to buy a lottery ticket, an alcoholic drink, marry, or go to war, or even stand in the elections they’re voting in?”
Reform U.K. already maintains significant influence among younger demographics on social media, with Farage commanding 1.3 million TikTok followers compared to Labour’s official account, which has just 231,300 followers.
According to Ofcom, 44% of British TikTok users who get news from the platform rely more on “other people they follow” than traditional news outlets.
YouGov polling from June showed that Labour support among 18 to 24-year-olds has dropped by 11% since last year’s general election, while Reform U.K. has seen corresponding gains in the same demographic, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2083263/keir-starmer-voting-age-nigel-farage">per</a> Lotti O’Brien of Express U.K.
The voting age change is part of a broader elections reform package introduced by Starmer’s government.
Other measures include expanding acceptable voter ID to include U.K.-issued bank cards and implementing an automated voter registration system that would share data between government agencies — policies the Conservative Party warns could “undermine the security of the ballot box.”
The government, if the legislation passes through parliament, as anticipated, expects to implement these changes before the next general election, which must take place by 2029, but could be called earlier.

Guests Arrive For The Andrew Marr Show

Nigel Farage Slams U.K. Labour Push For 16-Year-Old Voters, Plans A ‘Nasty Surprise’ For Starmer

Britain

Elections

Labour Party

Nigel Farage

Parliament

U.K.

United Kingdom

Voting

World

A <a href="https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Intelligence-and-Security-Committee-of-Parliament-Iran.pdf">report</a> from Great Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament stated clearly that they saw Iran as a “significant threat to the UK.”
“The Iran threat should not be underestimated: it is persistent and  — crucially  — unpredictable,” the report — which was completed before the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis and subsequent events occurred — declared. “Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity, which means it poses a dynamic and erratic threat. &#8230; it can escalate action sharply with little warning. This was seen following the 2022 protests in Iran, when there was a significant increase in the threat of a physical attack to individuals in the UK and the Middle East whom Iran perceives to be a threat to the regime.”
“Iran often operates through proxy groups — including criminal networks, militant and terrorist organizations, and private cyber actors. This provides it with a deniable means of attacking its adversaries with minimal risk of retaliation,” the report continued.
“The threat to the opponents of the Iranian regime residing in the UK is the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran.’ It is on a broadly comparable level to that posed by Russia,” the report asserted. “Iran uses assassination as an instrument of state policy — targeting dissidents is a high priority for both the Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the IRGC.”
“Iran proceeding with its nuclear weapons programme represents a critical threat to the UK’s national security,” the report warned. “The Supreme Leader of Iran (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) wields tremendous power — he is the ultimate decision-maker, setting the direction of Iranian foreign and domestic policy. In terms of the threat posed by Iran to the UK and its interests, the Supreme Leader is therefore key.”
“Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with,” the committee chair, Kevan Jones, said.
“Last year, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 said since January 2022, his service and British police had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots to kidnap or kill British nationals or individuals based in the United Kingdom regarded by Tehran as a threat,” The Times of Israel <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-poses-significant-threat-to-united-kingdom-british-lawmakers-say-in-new-report/">noted</a>. “In May, UK police<a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-arrested-iranian-nationals-were-planning-attack-on-israeli-embassy-in-london/"> arrested</a> eight Iranian men who were reportedly suspected of plotting to attack the Israeli Embassy in London.”

Daily Life And Economy In London

British Parliament: Iran Poses ‘Significant Threat To The UK’

Great Britain

Iran

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

England

Entitlement Reform

Europe

Federal Government

Keir Starmer

London

National Debt

Opinion

Welfare

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

Before it&#8217;s possible to discuss any policy position that&#8217;s supposedly &#8220;progressive,&#8221; the first step is always to escape the world of euphemisms and start talking, in explicit detail, about what&#8217;s actually happening. This might sound straightforward, but every single organ of the Left is committed to making sure you don&#8217;t do this. They would much rather you debate the abstract concept of &#8220;a woman&#8217;s right to choose,&#8221; for example, than discuss how children are dismembered and discarded like trash. They would also prefer that you use terms like &#8220;gender-affirming care,&#8221; instead of discussing chemical castration. And on and on. Euphemisms are one of the most potent tools these people have. They are everywhere, in every single debate on every issue. And in every case, they&#8217;re a gross misrepresentation of reality. They need to be neutralized immediately before any actual discussion can begin.
To that end, take <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/14/hungary-poised-to-adopt-constitutional-amendment-to-ban-lgbtq-gatherings">this headline</a> from the other day. It ran in The Guardian: 
<blockquote>Hungary passes constitutional amendment to ban LGBTQ+ gatherings.</blockquote>
The Associated Press ran a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hungary-pride-ban-amendment-orban-gay-rights-lgbtq-155ec12cbbde7cc6be0f96adb323de77">similar story</a>:
<blockquote>Hungary passes constitutional amendment to ban LGBTQ+ public events, seen as a major blow to rights.</blockquote>
The article explains that Hungary&#8217;s parliament just overwhelmingly passed an amendment that will outlaw, &#8220;public events by LGBTQ+ communities.&#8221;
If you&#8217;re just skimming these headlines, this might seem like a surprising development. You might wonder: What are &#8220;public events by LGBTQ+ communities,&#8221; exactly? And what precisely is an &#8220;LGBTQ+ gathering?&#8221; If you take these headlines literally, then it sounds like the government of Hungary has just made it illegal for gay people to appear in public, for any reason. It&#8217;s a total crackdown on figure skating, musical theater and art exhibitions. Gay people can&#8217;t even get together and watch “Glee” reruns on the couch without getting hauled to prison. This is the current state of Hungary, if you believe The Guardian and the Associated Press.
In reality, of course, Hungary has not banned gay people from assembling in public. What they&#8217;ve banned are disturbing and morally objectionable public displays of sexual hedonism that can easily be observed by children. That includes Hungary&#8217;s annual pride parade. Pull up any footage of this parade that&#8217;s posted online, and you&#8217;ll quickly see exactly what I&#8217;m talking about. Here&#8217;s some of it, or at least the parts we can play. This is from Budapest several years back:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Budapest gay pride" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hMLRsBLKnEU?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>
And again, this is the most sanitized footage I could play. This is what the corporate press means when they say Hungary has banned &#8220;LGBTQ events&#8221; and &#8220;LBGTQ gatherings.&#8221; This is the truth behind the euphemism. They mean that Hungary has banned public indecency that everyone — including children — can see. In fact, in many cases, these public displays are explicitly directed at children. This is what &#8220;pride parades&#8221; always entail, as we&#8217;ve discussed dozens of times on this show.
If you actually look at the text of the amendment that just passed in Hungary — and again, it was an overwhelming vote in Hungary&#8217;s parliament, passing by a margin of 140 to 21 — then you&#8217;ll immediately understand why it passed. This is not simply an amendment about &#8220;pride parades&#8221; or &#8220;gay gatherings&#8221; or anything like that. It&#8217;s not, as the Associated Press claims, an amendment that constitutes a &#8220;major blow to rights.&#8221; In reality, it&#8217;s the exact opposite.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1577-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
This amendment, with very forceful and unapologetic language, affirms the right of everyone — and in particular children — to enjoy public spaces without being confronted by someone else’s sexual obsessions. As far as I know, this is the first major piece of legislation, and certainly the first constitutional amendment, to explicitly state that gay and trans activists are not, in fact, the only people on the planet with rights that deserve protection. Until relatively recently, that didn&#8217;t need to be spelled out.
Here&#8217;s the National Review&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hungary-approves-constitutional-amendment-banning-public-lgbt-events/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">summary</a> of the amendment:
<blockquote>The amendment forbids LGBT pride parades that conservative lawmakers argued threatened the well-being of children. One of its provisions specifically declares that children’s rights to moral, physical, and intellectual development supersede the right to peaceful assembly and almost every other right, except the right to life. Hungarian authorities are also allowed to use facial recognition software to identify and potentially fine demonstrators at the newly prohibited pride parades if they are held in defiance of the law.</blockquote>
Yes, this amendment — which codifies a law passed by the parliament a few weeks ago — states that a child has a right to be protected physically, morally, and spiritually, and that this right supersedes the right of gay people to celebrate their sexuality in the town square. That&#8217;s exactly the right way to frame this situation. It&#8217;s certainly the honest way to frame it.
Virtually all of our cultural and political debates, regardless of the particular topic, ultimately come down to a battle of competing rights and interests. That&#8217;s not how you normally see policy debates framed, but it&#8217;s the truth. Even something as simple as a speed limit involves weighing various rights and interests. On the one hand, you have people&#8217;s reasonable interest in traveling to their destination quickly. On the other hand, you have people&#8217;s reasonable interest in not being killed in a high-speed car accident. These two interests are obviously in tension. If we wanted absolute safety on the highway, we&#8217;d set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. But we don&#8217;t do that, because we&#8217;ve decided that other interests are more important. Every functioning society has to weigh competing interests like this, in every single area of policy.
The only way to sort through this mess is to come to some kind of understanding about which rights are most fundamental. With this amendment, Hungary has decided that, apart from the right to life, the most fundamental right is a child&#8217;s &#8220;right to protection and care for their adequate physical, mental and moral development.&#8221; You can agree or disagree with this philosophical claim — and of course I strongly agree with it. But regardless of your particular stance on the issue, you can&#8217;t deny that, at the very least, they are dealing with these questions in a clear and coherent way.
The opponents of the amendment, on the other hand, are not responding coherently. Instead, they&#8217;re reacting in exactly the kind of hysterical manner you would expect. They&#8217;re lying about the content of the amendment, as we just discussed. They&#8217;re also setting off smoke bombs in Hungary&#8217;s parliament and blocking the entrance to government buildings. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 smoke bombs protests" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QSWKwOCVHOc?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>
This is the response you expect from people who know they have no actual argument. They&#8217;ll blockade buildings. They&#8217;ll spread propaganda that has no basis in reality. They&#8217;ll detonate smoke bombs in parliament. But the one thing they won&#8217;t do — because they can&#8217;t do it — is rationally explain why you&#8217;re wrong, and they&#8217;re right. In this case, these LGBT activists simply cannot articulate any reason to oppose this amendment. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One of the reasons, of course, is that these so-called &#8220;pride parades&#8221; are indefensible, morally and practically. Every sane person knows that they should be banned from public streets. Anyone who&#8217;s ever seen footage of one of these parades understands this.
But the more fundamental issue is that, even if the pride parades weren&#8217;t bizarre, explicit, and objectionable, these activists would still have a problem. Put simply, the Leftist conception of human rights gives no real basis for objecting to this constitutional amendment. These people believe that rights are social constructs, codified by the government. They generally reject the idea that rights come from God. After all, it&#8217;s hard to make the case that the right to abort a baby created by God somehow comes from God. But if rights are social constructs, then society can abolish a right just as easily as it creates it. And that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happened here. Hungary, through its democratically elected government, has decided that the absolute right to gay pride displays no longer exists in their culture. As a result, it makes no sense for the Leftist to object.
They can&#8217;t say that the rights of LGBT people are being infringed in Hungary. How could they? The right doesn&#8217;t exist anymore. There is no authority higher than society and government (according to them), and those authorities have spoken on the matter. That&#8217;s all there is to it.
In other words, gay activists are melting down in Hungary right now because they&#8217;re realizing, if only subconsciously, that their ideology can be erased just as quickly as it took hold. As it turns out, a fiction that&#8217;s maintained by a patchwork of laws and government policy can also be eliminated by law and government policy. And it&#8217;s not just the so-called LGBT community in Hungary that&#8217;s coming to this realization. In this country, as we&#8217;ve <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtFCCDy__os" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discussed</a>, &#8220;pride parades&#8221; are also facing serious problems, mainly because the major sponsors are pulling out and people are losing interest. They&#8217;re going door-to-door in San Francisco right now to cover a multimillion-dollar funding shortfall for their pride events this summer. In every respect, these people are now weak and desperate.
If there were ever a moment to implement a Hungary-style ban on &#8220;pride parades&#8221; in this country, now is that time. Yes, activists in this country would inevitably act out, just like they&#8217;re doing in Hungary. But there are some things that are a lot more important than the feelings of screeching Left-wing protesters. One of them is the right of children to grow and develop and have their innocence protected. Hungary is now finally enforcing that right. For the benefit of every child in this country, we should do the same.

Protest Against Amendment Banning Pride In Budapest, Hungary

LGBT Activists Panic After This Huge Move In The Fight To Protect Children

Hungary

LGBTQ

Matt Walsh

Parade

Pride

A French court has now banned Marine Le Pen, who is highly likely to win the next election in France, from seeking public office for five years. The court convicted her of misusing European Union funds.
&#8220;The court ruled that Le Pen and other members of her party illegally used 4.4 million euros, equivalent to $4.8 million, in EU funding that was earmarked for assistants helping lawmakers in the European Parliament with their work,&#8221; The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/frances-marine-le-pen-found-guilty-of-embezzlement-b8c42dac" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. &#8220;Monday’s sentence bars Le Pen from seeking public office for the next five years, thrusting her far-right party into limbo. Le Pen also received a four-year prison sentence. Half of that term was suspended, judges said, adding that she could serve the remaining two years by using an electronic bracelet or other alternatives to jail time. The ruling takes Le Pen out of contention for the 2027 race, unless she can win a swift appeal. Le Pen had been expected to enter that contest as a front-runner as President Emmanuel Macron will be term limited and other prominent contenders have yet to emerge.&#8221;
This is crazy — but this is part and parcel of the broader attempt by Left-wing judiciary activists across the globe to stop “populist politicians” from being able to run.
We saw it with President Trump, where the DOJ went after him for supposed crimes, the same crimes for which they let Joe Biden off the hook. We saw it in New York, where a New York attorney general filed a civil fraud lawsuit in an attempt to stop then-candidate Trump.
We have seen it in Brazil, where the entire judicial apparatus has been brought down on the head of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, in favor of Lula da Silva, who was then freed by that same exact judiciary.
We&#8217;ve seen it in Romania, where Cǎlin Georgescu won the election in 2024 and then the judiciary decided the election had been rigged by the Russians and annulled it. 
We have seen it in Israel, where the attorney general of Israel has been targeting Benjamin Netanyahu on specious charges for literally years, and the judiciary keep saying that Netanyahu can&#8217;t perform the basic functions of an executive, such as fire his attorney general or fire anyone in the executive branch.
And now we are seeing it in France.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2169-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
It is absolutely amazing to watch these unelected officials going out of their way to thwart the will of the people in supposed democracies. It&#8217;s really insane.
You want to talk about undermining democracy itself? This undermines democracy because the reaction to this is, “Okay, what if we just overthrow the judicial institutions?”
Why do I feel like this is a put-up job? Because it takes effect immediately. The point is to get her out of the elections. Thus they&#8217;re suspending her jail sentence but they are not suspending her ban from running.
Le Pen had denied the charges, “testifying in court that it was appropriate for the assistants to perform other party-related work because they were political aides, not direct employees of the European Parliament,” the Journal noted.
In other words, if the European Parliament didn’t want them focused solely on party-related tasks, perhaps it should have hired them directly, rather than paying the party to handle some of its work. That sounds like a strong defense.
Is the idea here that Marine Le Pen desperately needed a couple of million euros in order to pay off her political party? I feel like she probably could have raised it. Her party&#8217;s pretty big in France.
This is just the latest NATO member to reject a populist candidate by some sort of judicial intervention.
If you want to talk about undermining the argument that democracy must flourish in Europe, this would be a great way to do it.

FRANCE-POLITICS-JUSTICE-TRIAL-RN

Marine Le Pen Banned From Running

Ben Shapiro

Conservatives

Corruption

European Union

France

Judiciary

Leftists

Marine Le Pen

Populism

Prison

One of the easiest ways to tell you&#8217;re dealing with an honest person is seeing how they react when some of their most basic, fundamental assumptions are proven to be completely wrong. A few weeks ago, for example, we talked about how some Flat-Earthers responded when they went on a trip to Antarctica that debunked their entire belief system. They sat there and watched 24 hours of sunlight, and they realized that the Earth has to be rotating in space. And to their credit, a few of these Flat-Earthers admitted their mistake, on-camera. They said that, from that moment forward, they would be whatever the opposite of a Flat-Earther is. Sphere-earthers, I guess.
On the other hand, malevolent liars will never admit that they&#8217;re wrong. Even when they&#8217;re confronted with the reality of the situation — which is that everything they&#8217;ve been saying for years was actually wrong — they&#8217;ll find some way to deny it. They&#8217;ll absolve themselves of any responsibility for their deception. And if they can, they&#8217;ll blame you for challenging them. These are people who are not interested in the truth. They have no integrity whatsoever. And therefore they have no business being in any position of power or authority. Trustworthy leaders will admit their mistakes. Corrupt and incompetent leaders will obfuscate, deny, and double down.
With that distinction in mind, recent events have made it abundantly clear that our neighbors to the north in Canada are ruled by the latter group of people. These are people who have no interest in the truth. They are driven entirely by an ideology that, it just so happens, is explicitly anti-Christian and anti-American. And as I&#8217;ll explain in a moment, that has significant implications for the United States, as Canada becomes increasingly hostile towards our country.
But before I get into those implications, I need to explain what exactly the Canadian government has just done. As you may remember, for several years, Canada&#8217;s government, along with the country&#8217;s state media, has been advancing an extraordinary claim as if it&#8217;s the truth. They&#8217;ve said, again and again, that unmarked mass graves had been found at Canada&#8217;s &#8220;residential schools&#8221; — which were boarding schools for Indian children that existed for around 100 years, peaking in the early 20th century. And the discovery of these unmarked mass graves was significant, Canadians were told, because Christian churches were running these residential schools.
In other words, for years, the dominant narrative in Canada has been that Christian schools were so horrific that Indian children died all the time, and they were just tossed in unmarked graves when they expired. Therefore, Canadians were told that Canada is a genocidal state, and Christianity is bad. So predictably, dozens of Christian churches burned. And in response, the country&#8217;s outgoing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said the arson was &#8220;understandable.&#8221; They only made one arrest in the wake of those arson attacks on churches, by the way — some of which were within a few miles of the U.S. border. Canadians, for the most part, stopped celebrating their independence day, out of shame over this story. Canadian secondary schools put images like this one up on the wall:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-884523 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-432x576.jpeg" alt="" width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-432x576.jpeg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF.jpeg 1512w" sizes="(max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" /></div>
As you can see, it tells students that nearly 2,000 &#8220;unmarked graves&#8221; have been found. This has been an all-out, all-encompassing narrative in Canada. But to be clear, this narrative about the residential schools was not simply pushed by Canadian state media. In fact, the narrative actually had its origins in U.S.media — including in outlets that, we now know, were taking money from the Biden administration.
The New York Times, for instance, was one of the <a href="https://quillette.com/blog/2024/09/20/when-will-the-new-york-times-correct-its-flawed-reporting-on-canadas-unmarked-graves/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first outlets</a> to report back in 2021 that <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-year-of-the-graves-how-the-worlds-media-got-it-wrong-on-residential-school-graves" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;unmarked graves&#8221;</a> had been discovered in Canada. They did a whole series of reports on the topic over the summer, all of which were premised on the idea that &#8220;ground-penetrating radar&#8221; had discovered evidence of grave sites. 
Then &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; joined in, with reports like this one. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 60 Minutes Graves" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YKHM1uLs_zc?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>
So Anderson Cooper is very concerned about the hundreds of unmarked graves that have supposedly been discovered. He specifically mentioned the hundreds of graves that were allegedly discovered at a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. And Canada&#8217;s state media said much the same thing. The CBC for example <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-eml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>: &#8220;Preliminary findings from a survey of the grounds at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School have uncovered the remains of 215 children buried at the site, the Tk&#8217;emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation said Thursday.&#8221;
When you see television segments and news articles like this, you might assume — naturally — that some amount of vetting has been done to ensure that these claims are at least potentially accurate. These are obviously incendiary claims that are being made, so presumably, you might think that someone would have looked into them before publishing. But that was never true in this case. More than three years later, not a single body has been found in an unmarked grave at any residential school in Canada. And they certainly haven&#8217;t been uncovered in Kamloops. It turns out that, in fact, the alleged &#8220;unmarked grave site&#8221; in Kamloops was, in reality, a 2,000-foot long, 3-foot deep trench that was established in 1924 as a septic field to store sewage from the school. As the Dorchester Review <a href="https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/the-kamloops-discovery-a-fact-check-two-years-later?srsltid=AfmBOopXCdjxqY3JXETULV7I9BJZfAioMCrMF0Bv2anSJXCnX9tSnsUe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>, &#8220;Ground penetrating radar cannot distinguish between a trench lined with clay tiles and a putative child’s grave.&#8221;
This is the kind of information that, if you&#8217;re dealing with honest people, would lead to mass resignations and terminations, for starters. Obviously, no one with any self-respect in the Canadian media or in the Canadian government should keep their job after spreading an anti-Christian lie that caused dozens of churches to go up in flames. But instead of admitting they were wrong, Canada&#8217;s government is of course taking the dishonorable approach. They&#8217;re slowly slinking away like the cowards they are.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1545-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-4-years-of-searching-and-0-bodies-found-canada-cuts-funds-on-search-for-unmarked-mass-graves" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a> that: 
<blockquote>Canada is pulling funds from groups still searching for alleged bodies buried at Indigenous residential schools funded by Catholics and other Christians. An organization and a committee of experts formed to search for the elusive remains have both lost funding in the past month, following four years of searches that have found zero remains.</blockquote>
We&#8217;re talking about organizations that have received millions of dollars from Canada&#8217;s massive, 300 million-dollar &#8220;Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund.&#8221; These nonprofits have fancy names like &#8220;Survivors&#8217; Secretariat&#8221; and the &#8220;National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.&#8221; And now, after collecting millions of dollars in taxpayer money, they&#8217;re finally getting cut off, because it turns out that the entire animating idea behind their &#8220;nonprofit&#8221; was in fact a scam. The Canadian government is now rolling back its financial investments in this deranged and destructive lie. For all intents and purposes, the residential schools hoax is finally dead.
But that does not mean that the Canadian government is admitting, outright, that it was wrong. That would take an ounce of integrity that they simply do not have. So instead, both political parties in Canada are now rallying around the idea that no one should be able to question the narrative that they&#8217;re now retreating from. In other words, Canada has now entered a kind of reality distortion field, where everyone knows the government was wrong for the last several years, but no one can admit it.
This is footage from just a couple of days ago. It aired on CBC. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Conservative MLA" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/965JEm88974?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>
Those were conservative politicians in that clip. That&#8217;s Canada&#8217;s conservative party — supposedly the opposition to the liberals. They&#8217;re telling this politician to retract her factually accurate statement about unmarked gravesites in Canada. No one in that clip actually refutes anything she said. Instead, they just tell her that it&#8217;s inappropriate to state the truth about these unmarked graves, because it contradicts a broader narrative they want to establish.
As tempting as it may be to think that nothing in Canada affects us here in the United States, the truth is that we can&#8217;t ignore what&#8217;s happening there. And that&#8217;s not just because of the cruelty that&#8217;s been inflicted on Christian Canadians in recent years. That&#8217;s because, at the same moment that Canada is uniting behind malicious, anti-Christian defamation, the country&#8217;s leaders are desperately seeking to expand their power globally.
In particular, some of Canada&#8217;s most prominent politicians — like Chrystia Freeland, who could be the country&#8217;s next prime minister — are openly suggesting that Canada should join a nuclear alliance to handle the &#8220;threat&#8221; that, in her view, is posed by the United States. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Chrystia Freeland" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QujvvfrP4C4?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;
This is the same woman who gleefully froze truckers&#8217; bank accounts when they committed the crime of peacefully protesting her government&#8217;s unlawful COVID mandates. She cheered as journalists were arrested and elderly women were trampled with horses in Ottawa&#8217;s downtown core, as a result of her declaration of martial law. She was one of the leading proponents of the mass-graves hoax. And she&#8217;s never apologized for any of it. Instead, now she wants Canada to join a hostile military alliance with foreign powers, while she&#8217;s contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against the United States. And at the moment, it&#8217;s not a stretch to say that she could replace Justin Trudeau as the leader of Canada&#8217;s liberal party — a party that, as we just saw, isn&#8217;t much different from the conservatives.
What this means is that, while the conclusion of the mass-graves hoax was anticlimactic at best, Canadian leaders actually see it as a springboard for more authoritarian crackdowns and more overt anti-Christian, anti-American hostility. Whatever credibility Canada had as a staunch American ally, or a legitimately Christian nation, is now completely gone. Canadian leaders would rather lie than admit the truth that everyone can clearly see. No country can survive for long when it&#8217;s committed, to such a great extent, to the denial of reality. And though they don&#8217;t seem interested in admitting it, that is the commitment Canadian politicians have now made.

Liberal Party Of Canada Leadership Debate

The ‘Mass Graves’ Hoax Is Officially Dead, And No One Will Be Held Accountable

The 'Mass Graves' Hoax Is Officially Dead, And No One Will Be Held Accountable

60 Minutes

Canada

Christians

Hoax

indigenous

Justin Trudeau

Liberals

There was an attempt at a military dictatorship in South Korea in which the president of South Korea issued a command for martial law. It was reversed hours later, but what exactly was going on there? 
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is a member of a party that controls the presidency but is in the minority in the actual parliament of the country. He claimed the majority in the parliament (a party called the Democratic Party in South Korea) is basically a tool of the North Koreans, citing them to be crypto-communists preventing the functioning of the government. 
Essentially, the Democratic Party of South Korea, which represents a large majority in the National Assembly, has been threatening and attempting to impeach the state prosecutors who are looking into the Democratic Party leadership. The prosecutors were supposed to be looking into the family of the president of South Korea, and they had apparently decided to exonerate the president’s wife. Meanwhile, the same prosecutors were additionally looking into the leadership of the Democratic Party regarding corruption charges. In turn, the Democratic Party attempted to impeach these prosecutors. 
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2097-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
So, the South Korean president looked at the opposition party (which controls the National Assembly) and contended they were attempting to clean out the prosecutorial part of the government in order to protect themselves or weaponize it against him. Therefore, he would declare martial law. 
The South Korean parliament voted unanimously to defy the country&#8217;s president and lift his martial law declaration.  
But there’s something deeper happening here. 
This sort of constitutional crisis is now taking place in a variety of countries. It’s happening in Israel, where there are fights between the prosecutorial wing of the government and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. It&#8217;s happening in Hungary, where they&#8217;ve been fighting over state prosecutors. It&#8217;s happening in Brazil, where Lula da Silva, the authoritarian Left-wing leader of the country, is now attempting to militarize the justice system against Jair Bolsonaro, his predecessor. And, of course, there are shades of this in the United States. 
Why, exactly, is all this happening right now? 
To understand that, we must understand the role of the prosecutorial system in democratic republics, because that has changed over time. And this has implications, by the way, for everything, up to and including the Hunter Biden pardon and the Biden DOJ weaponizing itself against Donald Trump.
Democratic republics typically rely on checks and balances to prevent the government from engaging in authoritarianism; that is the basis of the United States Constitution. The House and the Senate check one another. Both are checked by the presidency, and all three of those bodies are checked by the judiciary and vice versa. 
Traditionally, one of the checks and balances to avoid tyranny was impeachment. If you didn&#8217;t like members of the government or you suspected that members of the government were corrupt, a bipartisan majority would work to oust those corrupt officials. 
This is obviously problematic when it comes to getting rid of corrupt officials because if the corrupt official happens to be a member of your party, then you are very unlikely to vote for their impeachment. 
In Democratic republics, the question of how to police corruption is a very real question if there is a corrupt public official. The United States Constitution says that person is impeached in the House, and then there is a full trial in the Senate. 
When the Constitution was designed, Alexander Hamilton and the rest of the Founding Fathers believed the Senate would be the most objective body. United States senators were not appointed by party or by public approval. They were appointed by the state legislatures, and they served six-year terms. The goal was for them to be more independent of the public passions than the House.
The judiciary could not do it because the judiciary could be hijacked. But the Senate was sort of half political: answerable but also indirectly answerable to the public — and thus more insulated from public pressure.
Hamilton pointed out that setting up a separate impeachment court (which we might now call the DOJ) wouldn&#8217;t actually solve the problem because that, too, could be politicized.
The problem is that over time, in a wide variety of countries, as democratic republics and their checks and balances have transitioned into administrative bureaucracies in which enormous power is centralized in the executive branch, checks and balances have atrophied until Donald Trump was impeached twice. The impeachment power was almost never used by the Congress of the United States, for example.
We made a decision at the outset of the 20th century that was echoed in other burgeoning democracies that law enforcement checking corruption was not to be done by the elected bodies of government. Instead, it was outsourced to so-called independent branches of government.
In the United States, that is the Department of Justice; in South Korea, it is the state prosecutor&#8217;s office; in Brazil, the prosecutors, the police, the judiciary; in Israel, the attorney general, and so forth.
There is a problem that happens here, and this is a problem with the administrative state. The problem is that state prosecutors can also be corrupted by politics, as we have seen in the United States. And then the solution isn&#8217;t to change the people in government anymore, because these are independent branches, and they&#8217;re unelected. It&#8217;s not a matter of replacing some people with other people.
If you fire some people, that&#8217;s considered interference with the magical “objective branch.” If you leave people in place and they target your political opponents, it&#8217;s weaponization.
That&#8217;s what leads to constitutional crises. Once the job of policing corruption from the elected branches of government — like the Senate of the United States or the National Assembly in South Korea — is outsourced to state prosecutors, sooner or later, state prosecutors will attempt to go after the wrong people, the legislature after state prosecutors, or the president after state prosecutors, in order to prevent weaponization.
This is the problem with sending up fake “objective legal enforcement” bodies. It creates constitutional crises because the only solution to a politicized law enforcement branch is to either overthrow the government for interfering with the system, which is what the president of South Korea attempted to do, or to call for the overthrow of the government for weaponizing the system.
Constitutional crises are the result of supposedly untouchable, nonpartisan institutions that can either be weaponized or interfered with.
This is happening across the West. It&#8217;s a major, major problem. It&#8217;s the problem with administrative governments. It&#8217;s a major problem in regards to the idea that it is the job of impartial legal bodies to police corruption.
So democracies are throwing themselves into crisis, specifically over this.
Let&#8217;s say that you are in the United States and you are really, really angry that Donald Trump became president in 2016. What do you do? You could try to impeach him, but it will probably fail if you don&#8217;t have the votes because it&#8217;ll break down along strictly partisan lines. 
What do you do instead? You rely on the DOJ; you rely on the FBI. You weaponize those institutions against Trump. And that prompts Trump, if he becomes president, to clean out those institutions, in which case he will be accused of weaponizing those institutions. And so the constitutional crisis just continues to roll on, all because this sort of bipartisan consensus around impeaching presidents who are guilty of crimes has gone away in the United States. 
You could say it died during the Clinton era. And the United States is now feeling the aftereffects. 
The same is true in Israel. In Israel, the attorney general&#8217;s office has put Benjamin Netanyahu under three separate prosecutions; all of them appear to be somewhat specious. The goal is obviously political. Netanyahu has been in power for some 14 of the last 15 years in Israel. He&#8217;s a masterful Machiavellian politician, just in pure, raw talent terms. And so the attorney general&#8217;s office has been weaponized against him, as claims Netanyahu, which I think is largely correct in a wide variety of cases. 
But every time he tries to mess with the prosecution, he&#8217;s accused of tampering with democracy.
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Once these institutions are set up as the final arbiter of guilt and innocence, then anyone who tampers with them on either side is then considered a threat to democracy, even if the person who is actually militarizing law enforcement is the person who is in power.
In Brazil, the law enforcement mechanisms have been weaponized by Lula da Silva against Jair Bolsonaro. That means as Lula is cleaning out the judiciary institutions, he&#8217;s being lauded as someone upholding the norms of democracy while he, at the same time, engages in widespread censorship. Instead of corruption being seen as a political issue to be answered by the political branches and eventually the people, because it&#8217;s been outsourced to law enforcement, the law enforcement branch can be routinely corrupted.
Not all that long ago Lula himself had been banned from running because of his own corruption convictions. Then, in 2021, a Left-wing Supreme Court judge annulled his corruption convictions and allowed him to run again. After he ran and won, the Brazilian police formally accused former President Bolsonaro and his aides of an alleged 2022 coup attempt. That happened just last week.
Bolsonaro has said he would fight the case. Meanwhile, Lula is openly consolidating power in the executive branch in wildly anti-democratic ways. But he has been praised by many members of the media as an anti-authoritarian politician. Yet the reality is that Lula has been a close ally of Venezuela&#8217;s Nicolas Maduro, who&#8217;s been a close ally of the Cuban regime. In fact, it&#8217;s rare to find some sort of authoritarian regime that Lula doesn&#8217;t like. From China to Nicaragua, from Iran to Russia, he has cozied up to authoritarians everywhere. But because he&#8217;s a Left-wing authoritarian, the perception is that he&#8217;s not really an authoritarian, even if he engages in widespread censorship.
This is what happens when democratic republics delegate the power to check political opposition to a supposedly objective, nonpartisan branch of government. It&#8217;s not real. It doesn&#8217;t work. Administrative states do not work for precisely this reason because they&#8217;re never dispassionate, ever.
It&#8217;s true in a wide variety of countries, from South Korea to Israel to Hungary to Brazil.
It&#8217;s always a problem.
Again, all of this breakdown is happening because so many people across so many Westernized countries have decided they no longer trust the mechanisms of checks and balances of the democratic republic and, instead, are going to delegate all power to these impartial institutions.
Then, those institutions break down.
And then, the entire country starts to break down.

South Korean Lawmakers Overturn President’s Declaration Of Martial Law

WTF Just Happened In South Korea?

Brazil

Democratic Party

Founding Fathers

Impeachment

Israel

Martial Law

prosecutors

South Korea

Vote On Terminally Ill Adults Bill Is Held In UK Parliament

The Dark Truth About Assisted Suicide Laws

Euthanasia

NZEALAND-POLITICS-TREATY

Why We Should Stop Apologizing For Our History

Australia

Colonialism

Crime

New Zealand

Reparations

Social Justice

Woke Culture

It&#8217;s no secret that, as Americans, we mostly focus on domestic politics in our own country. Unlike, say, Canadians, we don&#8217;t obsess over the daily comings-and-goings of other nations. It&#8217;s virtually impossible to find a single American who can name a Canadian Supreme Court justice or member of parliament, for example. I know I certainly can’t. By contrast, Canadians can tell you all about Clarence Thomas and Matt Gaetz and so on. This is a well-established phenomenon and it makes sense, because the United States is a lot more important than any other country.
But even with that in mind, every once in a while, something happens in the parliament of a foreign country that&#8217;s hard for us to ignore here in America. Maybe a lawmaker in Taiwan steals a bill and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1cugp94/a_member_of_taiwans_parliament_stole_a_bill_and/">runs</a> away with it, in order to prevent it from being passed into law. That&#8217;s something that happened, and was hilarious. Or maybe a member of parliament in India <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-26167129">pepper-sprays</a> his colleagues when they don&#8217;t vote the right way. Or maybe Italy&#8217;s parliament descends into a bench-clearing brawl, which requires one politician to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hpf9HnxIAo">leave</a> the chamber in a wheelchair. These are all well-documented incidents that may not always have a lot of direct relevance to us, but more often than not, at the very least, they&#8217;re entertaining to watch. It&#8217;s a whole genre on YouTube, actually.
The viral moment that just took place in the parliament of New Zealand, on the other hand, does have relevance for Americans. It&#8217;s one of the more important political stories of the year, even though it&#8217;s taking place thousands of miles from our borders. In case you missed it, several politicians in New Zealand just broke out in a primal, stone-age war dance called the &#8220;Haka,&#8221; to protest a piece of legislation that&#8217;s working its way through parliament. They won&#8217;t stop doing the chant, and eventually parliament has to be shut down. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 New Zealand Parliament" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qmUIOIlU-yQ?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>
This dance is very dangerous because it may cause everyone in the vicinity to die of secondhand embarrassment. It’s hard to watch this video and not have the same reaction that the speaker of parliament has. It&#8217;s painful to sit through. Thankfully a few people have dubbed the audio in various ways. There&#8217;s one remix that turns it into a jazzy little piano number from 1925. It actually works surprisingly well. 
Because it&#8217;s a Friday we might as well play it. Plus, it shows you another angle, so we can justify it that way. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="009 Hello my baby" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5-68PVfotiM?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>
It’s a lot less cringe when you dub in some real music, instead of the prehistoric grunting. Now, it&#8217;s a little hard to see in all the pandemonium, but they&#8217;re getting in the face of a politician named David Seymour, who introduced a bill they don&#8217;t like. The people doing the screeching identify as &#8220;Maori,&#8221; meaning they see themselves as the allegedly indigenous people of New Zealand. They&#8217;re chanting like barbarians and making gun gestures at David Seymour while saying something that apparently translates to &#8220;evil.&#8221; 
Before I get into the specifics about this vote and what it&#8217;s about, it needs to be reiterated that this whole &#8220;Haka&#8221; thing is silly and embarrassing. Maybe you&#8217;re not supposed to say that, but it&#8217;s obviously true. Everyone who sees it knows that and feels the same way. Yes, we&#8217;re supposed to pretend we find it somehow powerful and cool because it&#8217;s part of a non-white culture. We&#8217;re not allowed to have any negative opinions about anything that a non-white culture does. Even if it’s lame and stupid as hell, and we all know it.
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But the truth is, these people are embarrassing themselves. Always and everywhere, in every context, the &#8220;Haka&#8221; is cringeworthy to an immeasurable, painful degree. Here for example was the &#8220;Haka&#8221; that New Zealand&#8217;s basketball team performed at a tournament in 2014, just before getting blown out by double-digits by Team USA. Just look at the reactions during this:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Basketball Haka" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4omwD_5sXb8?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 nothing like a fearsome war chant before a basketball game where everyone looks at you like you&#8217;re crazy. And then you get completely destroyed. Honestly, it just doesn&#8217;t work. You can&#8217;t do a fearsome war dance on behalf of a conquered people, and then get conquered some more. It&#8217;s just sad at this point. The Maori have been doing this dance for centuries and just getting beaten every time, in every context, in every type of battle they’ve ever been in. I think it might be time to hang it up and call it a day. 
In any event, back to the viral clip everyone&#8217;s talking about. The so-called &#8220;indigenous&#8221; people had a meltdown in parliament over a bill. What you may not have seen is what preceded that moment. David Seymour laid out some rational and calm arguments in favor of his legislation. And then the so-called &#8220;Maori&#8221; politicians launched into a volley of personal attacks. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Treaty Principles Bill" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-vj4yCvi5CY?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>
Already, this is how you know these people have no argument. They&#8217;re only capable of shouting &#8220;shame&#8221; and resorting to personal attacks, to the point that they repeatedly get thrown out of parliament. Meanwhile David Seymour is sitting there calmly, saying he wants equality.
Admittedly, I&#8217;m not an expert on the finer details of New Zealand politics. So I went looking through some New Zealand outlets to try to get as complete a picture as I could.
It turns out that the concept of &#8220;equal protection under the law&#8221; is actually extremely controversial in New Zealand.
Here&#8217;s the background. Hundreds of years ago, around the late 13th century, Polynesian settlers arrived by canoe in New Zealand. They became the &#8220;Maori&#8221; people. Depending on who you ask, they were either the first to arrive, or they massacred everyone else who was there. In any event, before long, the Maori wiped out a different tribe called the Moriori, who were pacifists living in the Chatham Islands in the east. They got enslaved and beheaded and cannibalized by the Maori, because apparently that&#8217;s what civilized cultures do.
And to be clear, this kind of thing wasn&#8217;t out of character for the Maori. The Maori routinely enslaved and brutalized their enemies. The moment they acquired muskets from European traders, they fought a series of battles among themselves called &#8220;the Musket Wars,&#8221; which led to tens of thousands of deaths and even more slavery. These are wars that, of course, the Maori now blame the British for. They also bartered with severed heads, which they called &#8220;Toi moko.&#8221; They would cut people&#8217;s heads off, tattoo them, and then use them for trading. This is what Maori culture was all about. Cutting heads off and cannibalizing each other. 
Eventually the British came in and provided some stability with something called the Treaty of Waitangi. The idea was that New Zealand would become a British colony, but that the Maori would have their rights protected. They could keep their land and so on, to the extent that was possible. Then in 1975, New Zealand recognized this treaty in law for the first time. But there was still a big gray area as to what exactly this treaty required. It established tribunals and led to a lot of &#8220;rulemaking&#8221; by judges, but parliament mostly stayed out of it.
With this new bill, David Seymour is trying to change that. He&#8217;s proposing concrete legislation that will clarify that everyone in New Zealand — whether they&#8217;re &#8220;Maori&#8221; or not — is entitled to the full protection of the law. He also wants to make it clear that New Zealand is self-governing. The Maori are not a nation within a nation. Here&#8217;s how one New Zealand station describes the proposed clarifications:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 Specific Principles" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iw2sYrbrma4?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>
These are clarifications that, if you want to live in a modern civilization — instead of a backwards, third-world tribal hellhole — seem pretty reasonable. But it does mark a change from what&#8217;s happening at the moment.
Right now, New Zealand explicitly <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23518642/new-zealand-reparations-maori-settlements">provides</a> reparations to people who identify as Maori. In addition to affirmative action, they just announced a quote &#8220;financial redress of $30 million plus interest&#8221; to Maori tribes, along with a fund of more than a million dollars to assist with &#8220;cultural revitalization.&#8221; New Zealand politicians also regularly give lengthy apologies to the tribes, like this one. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="006 Crown Apologized" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pWxGRVv508I?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>
This kind of thing has been going on for decades in New Zealand. They fly the Maori flag, they apologize to them, they pay them millions of dollars. And in the end it&#8217;s not enough. The demands keep coming. As a result, now their news reports are barely comprehensible, because they&#8217;re all speaking a foreign language. 
Here for example is how that New Zealand television station explains what the Maori are so upset about:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="007 Autonomy" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nCqr4BSF2uM?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>
Yes, one of the main criticisms of the bill is — whatever that is. They have to translate it so that people in New Zealand can understand what&#8217;s even going on. So it turns out that the Maori want the ability to remain autonomous from New Zealand, which in a democracy seems pretty questionable. The opposition wants to put that up for a democratic vote, and of course the Maori are refusing. They don&#8217;t care what the people of New Zealand think about what should happen in New Zealand.
But the people of New Zealand should care. And we should care as well. What&#8217;s happening over there is a case study that we should pay attention to. New Zealand has bent over backwards apologizing for the alleged evils of &#8220;colonization.&#8221; They&#8217;ve paid out reparations and flown the Maori flag and everything. They&#8217;ve centered their whole society around &#8220;land acknowledgments&#8221; and so on. And now there are pagan chants breaking out in the middle of parliament. The Maori are explicitly campaigning against autonomy and equal rights. They&#8217;re threatening politicians who don&#8217;t agree with them. This is the sort of &#8220;enrichment&#8221; that western societies can expect when they start apologizing for their own existence.
And as Douglas Murray has pointed out, none of this makes any sense given the Maori&#8217;s history. If we&#8217;re going to play the game of generational guilt, they should be apologizing to all the people their ancestors have enslaved. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="008 Douglas Murray" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SlSZnYtrb9E?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>
So the Maoris were a violent, brutal people. They practiced cannibalism and many other forms of horrific brutality. But just because they made it to New Zealand a few hundred years before Europeans, we are supposed to see it as some great tragedy that the Europeans took over. In fact we&#8217;re supposed to blame Europeans for engaging in violent conquest over people who themselves engaged in even more violent conquest.
Keep this absurd, debasing spectacle in mind whenever you hear about &#8220;reparations&#8221; in this country, or about how oppressed some &#8220;indigenous&#8221; group allegedly is. Even if you give these people what they want, for decades, they will always want more. No matter how much you apologize to them and pay them millions of dollars, it doesn&#8217;t matter. The moment you suggest withdrawing some of their privileges, they will revolt. They will descend into primal chants on the floor of parliament. They will turn your entire government into an international laughing stock.
<h3><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH&#8217;S &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a></h3>
That is why the only approach to dealing with people like this — the one that New Zealand should have adopted a long time ago — is to deny them any special privileges in the first place. As the saying goes, &#8220;When you&#8217;re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.&#8221; At this point, now that stone-age war chants have broken out in parliament, it&#8217;s probably too late for New Zealand to correct their mistake. And that should be a pretty big clue to everyone in this country that — unless we also want to return to the stone age — we should take a very different approach.
We should affirm the greatness of western civilization. We should take pride in our heritage and our culture. We should reject false narratives about our history. That&#8217;s how you neutralize the grievance mongers and the guilt-merchants so that they have no power. They can do their stone-age chants in the shower. The rest of us will be doing what New Zealand is apparently now incapable of: We&#8217;ll be living in a functioning, self-governing democracy. 
And if there&#8217;s one lesson from these bizarre and embarrassing clips out of New Zealand, it&#8217;s that no one should ever take that for granted.

New Zealand’s Parliament Sits

This Is What Happens When Identity Politics Takes Control

Identity Politics

Gender ideology is a fickle friend.
Just ask Humza Yousaf. The Scottish premier used his “woke” credentials to ascend to power last year in a battle against more “common-sense” candidates – espousing an agenda to extoll trans-ideology as the highest driving value, and bulldozing anyone who raised concerns as a “hateful” bigot.
He won the top spot in governance. But what brings you up can tear you down twice as fast – so indicated by his resignation today.
Yousaf’s leadership of Scotland may have been bolstered by ideological adages that made for exciting soundbites. Indeed, his profile gained him support from the ultra-left Green Party, who governed alongside his Scottish National Party in a power-sharing agreement. 
One policy platform became more wildly unhinged than the next – from chilling conversations around the family dinner table about gender; to forbidding parents from objecting to their child cross-dressing. 
Yet every deceitful piece of lip service to an ideology founded on the claim that men can become women at will, will eventually hit the curb of reality. And when respected and established pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass released her high-profile, U.K. government-commissioned review of children’s “gender services,” she conclusively unveiled the distinct medical threat posed to children buying into the lie that their bodies are “wrong.”
The Scottish government had a conundrum to deal with. Cass’s review revealed an uncomfortable truth — that rather than merely allowing children “time to think” by delaying the onset of puberty, the vast majority of those treated with puberty blockers continued on a journey to cross-sex hormones. A conveyor belt of bodily confusion puts vulnerable young people at risk of serious and irreversible mutilation, as well as destroying fertility, among other life-altering consequences. Brain maturation may also be “temporarily or permanently disrupted” by puberty blockers, according to Cass’s findings. The impact of puberty blockers on mental health has not been fully explored, and some female patients experienced worsening depression or anxiety.
By affirming the belief that their bodies are “wrong,” the cheerful, rainbow-coloured party line of the Scottish government was going to destroy a troubled generation of youngsters whose lives had barely begun.
In an act of sheer necessity, Scottish authorities peddled back their extreme ideological drive a few weeks ago, pausing the distribution of puberty blockers to under-18s. But gender ideology isn’t a genie that can be shoved back into the bottle. This decision, paired with a further announcement scrapping unrealistic climate targets to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030, was enough to send the leftist alliance into a tailspin. Within days, the government SNP-Green pact broke apart, a motion of no confidence was filed, and Humza, jumping before he was pushed, was out on his ear.
It’s incredible that Humza found himself in this trap, considering the circumstances under which his predecessor left office. Nicola Sturgeon, who governed our country for almost a decade, also became a victim of her own puritanical virtue-signaling. Sturgeon clung so tightly to the mantras of modern sexual orthodoxy that she championed a policy of self-ID, which would have allowed any male in Scotland to access female-only changing rooms or rape crisis centers with little difficulty. When confronted with the reality that this could mean sending convicted double-rapists into women’s prison blocks, she had no ledge of common reason to grasp hold of to protect women’s basic safety. Her departure swiftly ensued.
“Woke” is an unforgiving and judgmental religion. It yields no grace for its most powerful adherents. Yet even this beast is no match for the power of truth. After two car crash leaderships, it’s time for a re-enlightenment in Scotland — a rediscovery of what it means to govern on the basis of reality. The Scottish people are neither blind nor docile. Women have spoken up, parents have voiced their concerns, and for too long, all who objected to the toxic ideology were branded “bigots.” It’s time for a government that hears and reflects the people. It’s time for a leader who upholds and safeguards the basic rights of women and children, and ends the madness that manipulates vulnerable people into rejecting their own bodies. The rest of the world, too, can learn from our sorry tale. This might be the government that “woke” broke; but we have every opportunity, at this juncture, to rise as the country that broke “woke.”
* * *
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.

Scotland’s First Minister And Leader Of The SNP Humza Yousaf Resigns from Office

Truth Has Toppled Another Woke Scottish Leader

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