In a recent piece, the great <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/21/democrats-10-part-strategy-to-stopping-trump-at-any-cost/?utm_source=TDS_Email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=MorningBell&amp;mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGZXFVF8EiGHTOyBnThyW4grIVUl7BZT15Afcq-EIHg2MlGbVXGiYW0vNjgf4M2VoXDCfdVx3aPXat1HzDwjX0OzlMzAiZsyuw1NrKva4F7ED5RIRjnxQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Victor Davis Hanson</a> apologized to his readers for previously contending that Democrats were both disorganized and without a plan. Upon reflection, he now sees a very clear and organized ten-point plan largely focused on continued demonization of President Trump and Elon Musk, the opposition to any federal budget cuts or the deportation of anyone, continued promotion of open borders, support of radical Palestinians, the Ukraine war, DEI initiatives, and chaos, and an amplification of hysteria in all of their communication. Their actions thus far would indicate that he is spot on.
It is a truly audacious plan — audacious because it involves, in many ways, simply doubling down on the messaging from the losing 2024 presidential campaign, and audacious because with each of these issues, the Democrats are on the opposite side of the fence with regard to public sentiment, in some cases dramatically so. Nonetheless, their aim is to change that public perception on at least enough of those issues to overcome their opponents in the midterms and ultimately regain power. What would make them think they could pull that off?
The answer is likely that the Democrats have grown accustomed to having a very finely tuned, powerful and successful network for public influence at their disposal.
In 2019, author and researcher Dr. Robert Epstein<a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf"> testified before Congress</a> about the dangers posed by just one piece of that network — Google. He concluded that Google represents a dire threat to both democracy and human autonomy, and provided numerous examples from his extensive data collection going back to 2016, including this one: “In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton (whom I supported). I know this because I preserved more than 13,000 election-related searches conducted by a diverse group of Americans on Google, Bing, and Yahoo in the weeks leading up to the election, and Google search results – which dominate search in the U.S. and worldwide – were significantly biased in favor of Secretary Clinton in all 10 positions on the first page of search results in both blue states and red states.”
However, the Tech players are only one part of the larger Democrat propaganda apparatus. The revelations from the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2877184/twitter-files-have-exposed-the-unholy-alliance-between-democrats-the-fbi-big-tech-and-the-media/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter/X Files</a>, from DOGE regarding <a href="https://www.newstarget.com/2025-02-08-usaid-funds-6000-journalists-1000-platforms-worldwide.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">USAID</a> and other governmental funding have laid bare the indisputable <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/governments_collusion_with_social_media_is_worse_than_you_realize.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unholy alliance</a> of the Democrat party, key governmental and non-governmental agencies, and factions of the mainstream and social media.
We now see that these entities have worked together to simultaneously push false narratives and censor truth — often demonizing and punishing those parties that interfered with this process in any way. Michael Shellenberger warned and testified to Congress about “<a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/shellenberger-testimony.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Censorship Industrial Complex</a>.” He observed: “The censorship industrial complex combines established methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the U.S. Military during the Global War on Terror, with highly sophisticated tools from computer science, including artificial intelligence. The complex’s leaders are driven by the fear that the Internet and social media platforms empower populist, alternative, and fringe personalities and views, which they regard as destabilizing. Federal government officials, agencies, and contractors have gone from fighting ISIS recruiters and Russian bots to censoring and deplatforming ordinary Americans and disfavored public figures.”
Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom and former State Department official Mike Benz refers to the entities behind much of this clandestine activity as simply “<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/09/24/mike_benz_the_history_of_the_intelligence_state.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Blob</a>.” In describing the blurring of the lines in our intelligence state he says: “This means that when the U.S. government provides funding or assistance, suddenly the churches they were working with are no longer simply churches — they are instruments of statecraft. The nonprofit charities are no longer simply charities; they become instruments of statecraft. The media is no longer independent; it becomes an instrument of statecraft. Hollywood becomes an instrument of statecraft, and organized criminal mafias do as well.” 
He describes the technological methodology of state narrative control in his presentation “<a href="https://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MikeBenzCensorhip070924.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Whole-of-Society Censorship Framework”</a> saying, “This is why I refer to these AI super weapons as Weapons of Mass Deletion. They effectively did for internet censorship what weapons of mass destruction did for war. You didn’t need a standing army anymore of a million soldiers ready to go. You could have a few lines of code take out an entire political organization.”
In his piece <a href="https://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2025/03/06/the_artificial_culture_1095413.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Artificial Culture</a>, Mathew Gasda refers to this political/governmental/media cabal as “the propaganda regime.” He asks and answers, “Why did newspapers, universities, publishing houses, record labels, and movie studios uniformly fall in line behind Trump Derangement Syndrome, Russiagate, cancel culture, COVID safetyism, dogmatic gender ideology, and other authoritarian ideological certainties? Because key figures in public and private institutions across the globe — literally — were being paid to propagate these narratives; this much we now know.”
Call the alliance what you will; the Democrat complex is an extraordinarily powerful, technologically sophisticated, and overwhelmingly partisan machine — not like a mere airplane to use a simile, but more like an F-47 Stealth Fighter.
This fighter jet has a storied track record of success in getting most or enough Americans to ignore the facts that surround various issues and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-2024-election-was-a-referendum-on-reality" target="_blank" rel="noopener">embrace a preferred alternative narrative</a> — at least for a while. From Obamacare, to Benghazi, to Russiagate, to Covid, to belief in multiple genders, to the activities of the <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Biden Crime Family</a>, to the authenticity of <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/10/19/its-been-two-years-since-51-intelligence-agents-interfered-with-an-election-they-still-wont-apologize/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hunter’s laptop</a>, to border security, to a host of specific individuals, the Democrats’ warplane inflicted massive damage on their enemies and got them through turbulence and countless battles with shockingly low casualties.
It is perhaps understandable that with this impressive history of success, party leadership would be hesitant to abandon this awesome weapon. They will look earnestly for alternative explanations for the 2024 election result. Perhaps the pilot, whoever that was, had the wrong flight or battle plan for the aircraft? Perhaps the pilot didn’t understand and adequately maximize the sophisticated evasion and engagement capabilities of the aircraft? In fact, perhaps the pilot didn’t even employ or fully engage the aircraft’s most powerful weapons, or focus them on the correct targets?
Sure, a jackbooted DOJ may no longer be part of the arsenal (although the judiciary certainly isn’t on the sidelines), Twitter/X has now fallen to the enemy, and it looks like the plug is being pulled on some of the funding for sycophant NGOs, so the Democrat warplane has taken a bit of flak and may be down to only five or so of the eight engines. But those are big engines, and five of them still garner a lot of power — maybe more than has yet been shown. So it will obviously require more than the results of a single election to convince them that their combat-tested warbird needs to be mothballed. They’re going with pilot error, not aircraft design.
* * *
Greg Salsbury, Ph.D. is former president of Western Colorado University and Board of Advisor member for <a href="https://starrs.us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">STARRS.US</a>. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Senators Meet For Policy Luncheons Ahead Of Government Funding Deadline

As Democrat Warplane Takes Flak, Audacity Remains Intact

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U.S. Politics

Victor Davis Hanson

The following is an excerpt taken from the new book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Gold-Radicals-Traitors-California/dp/1546008039">Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, And Traitors Who Killed The California Dream And Now Threaten Us All</a>” By Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter. (Center Street/Hachette, March 2025)
* * *
The Failed Progressive Vision
Under Newsom’s watch, violent crime in California has skyrocketed. Homicides jumped by 33.9 percent and aggravated assaults by 25.3 percent in 2022, with gun‑related homicides and aggravated assaults soaring by 37.7 percent and 61.1 percent, respectively. The actual rates are likely much higher. Crime data only captures incidents reported to police, and many crimes go unreported.
The rapidly rising crime rates didn’t just occur in a vacuum. They directly correspond with Newsom’s decade‑plus‑long progressive experiment with criminal justice reform, which has resulted in far lighter sentences and the premature release of violent criminals from jail. After Newsom released tens of thousands of prisoners during COVID, ostensibly to prevent the virus from spreading among California’s incarcerated criminals, the state prison population dropped from 160,000 in 2011 to around 91,556 by mid‑2024. As we discuss in Chapter 4, Newsom has been accused of releasing these prisoners under a false premise. COVID death rates in the state­ corrections system have been markedly lower than in the outside population. Even as crime surges, Newsom’s administration estimates the prison population will drop to roughly 86,000 by 2028.
Newsom is not only emptying prisons; he is also shutting them down. His administration has closed or is closing four state prisons, and has plans to “reimagine and transform” San Quentin, the state’s oldest and most notorious prison (and previous home to the largest “death row” in the United States), into a rehabilitation center. “We are literally tearing down walls to reimagine our prison system, incentivize true rehabilitation, and end cycles of violence and crime,” Newsom said in a 2024 press release. “Brick by brick, we’re building a new future that will make all of us safer.” But Newsom cited no evidence that the state is growing safer because there is none. As we will explain in Chapter 5 the state’s corrections agency won’t disclose rehabilitation results for the years Newsom has served in review copy office. Again, Newsom and the progressives’ failed COVID policies exacerbated the problem. During the pandemic, when millions were out of work and the state had the highest unemployment in the nation, flash mobs of masked robbers stormed through the doors of Nordstrom and other high‑end retailers in San Francisco and Greater Los Angeles, stealing thousands of dollars of purses, clothes, and jewelry. This type of organized retail theft has become such a massive problem that many retailers are closing their doors for good. By mid‑ 2024, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Old Navy, Office Depot, 7‑Eleven, and Denny’s all announced plans to close stores in downtown San Francisco or nearby Oakland. Starbucks and Target have also closed locations.
<div id="attachment_890669" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Gold-Radicals-Traitors-California/dp/1546008039"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-890669" class="size-large wp-image-890669" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/91tKIgq7KIL._SL1500_-384x576.jpg" alt="Cover copyright: 2025 by Hachette Book Group, Inc." width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/91tKIgq7KIL._SL1500_-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/91tKIgq7KIL._SL1500_-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/91tKIgq7KIL._SL1500_-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/91tKIgq7KIL._SL1500_.jpg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Cover copyright: 2025 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.</div>
Newsom attributes business closures in downtown San Francisco to “macroeconomic” shifts, not rampant theft, drug use, and violent crime. In August 2023, downtown San Francisco was such a hotbed of crime, homelessness, and drugs that the US Department of Health and Human Services advised employees at the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in the Tenderloin District to work remotely “for the foreseeable future.” Showing up for work at the building had become just too dangerous.
In January 2024, California’s homegrown, beloved burger joint, In‑N‑­Out Burger, announced that it would close a store for the first time in its ­seventy‑five‑year history, citing crime. The franchise no longer considered the store near Oakland International Airport safe for operation. “We feel the frequency and severity of the crimes being encountered by our customers and associates leave us no alternative,” the company said. “Despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our customers and associates are regularly victimized by car break‑ ins, property damage, theft, and armed robberies.”
Southern California isn’t faring much better. More and more businesses in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, even on once tony and vibrant Wilshire Avenue, have boarded up due to vandalism, crime, and homelessness scaring customers away.
“Mayor, we need your help. We need your help in this area,” Sean James, an independent contractor who runs a business in Santa Monica pleaded in an interview with a local Fox News affiliate.
The surge in violent murders, rapes, organized retail thefts, and other crimes that shock the conscience are directly the result of Newsom’s failed progressive vision and can be laid squarely at his feet. Back in 2014, when Newsom was lieutenant governor, he was the highest‑ranking official pushing the specific progressive ballot measure responsible for the chaos: Proposition 47. This was the George Soros–backed policy that decriminalized drug, property crimes, and even certain sex crimes. Prop. 47 turned theft of items valued under $950, and some drug offenses, from felonies to misdemeanors. Newsom vocally supported the progressive activists and organizations pushing Prop. 47, while his boss, then‑Governor Jerry Brown, remained quiet. The measure passed by a wide margin.
Despite the bedlam that has ensued, Newsom now seems in denial over the disastrous effects of Prop. 47. In early 2024, he revealed that he witnessed a shoplifter steal from Target without workers intervening to stop. When he confronted an employee about it, the woman blamed the California governor for passing laws that emboldened criminals — before realizing he was in fact the governor. “Why didn’t you stop him?” Newsom recalls asking the Target employee. “The governor lowered the threshold &#8230; there’s no accountability,” the employee said. Newsom’s description of the encounter was widely ridiculed for his failure to recognize the obvious truth in the Target employee’s accusation. 
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the new book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Gold-Radicals-Traitors-California/dp/1546008039" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fool’s Gold</a>” by Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter. Published by permission of Center Street/Hachette Book Group. Copyright © 2025 by Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter.
Susan Crabtree is senior White House and national political correspondent for RealClearPolitics.
Jedd McFatter is the director of research at Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

California Governor Newsom Announces New Funding For Los Angeles Communities Affected By Wildfires

Newsom Let Thousands Of Prisoners Walk During COVID. Then Crime Skyrocketed.

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The Democrats Hilariously Fall Apart During The DNC Meeting

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TOPSHOT-US-WEATHER-FIRE

The Real Reason L.A. Is Burning — And It’s Not Climate Change

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Karen Bass

Los Angeles

As a Gen Z, pro-life woman, I voted for President-elect Donald Trump. It’s crystal clear why he won: the political Left’s empty platitudes and hollow tolerance talk was a façade, and the election results shredded their mask. My post-election experience thus far consists of being mobbed or threatened on campus, proving the hypocrisy of the Left’s claims of acceptance of all lifestyles. I identify as Pro/Life.
I’ve been fighting for pre-born lives for my entire college and adult career, debating abortion supporters’ &#8220;pro-woman&#8221; abortion arguments. I’m no stranger to ostracization from my peers, hateful messages, and even death threats. Maybe it’s because these people support an industry that kills pre-born babies to keep their doors open.
Two days after the election, the abortion Left’s chaotic response at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to my campus tour, “Abortion is Violence,” proved my point about abortion supporters.
These “pro-woman” abortion zealots quickly surrounded me, yelling, spitting at me and my crew, stealing flyers and other display materials, leading to one arrest by campus police.
The conduct during my speech wasn’t much better; I walked into a room at full capacity of 160 people with more protestors waiting outside. Abortion supporters held signs with my face on them. They mocked, shouted, and insulted me, even telling me I should’ve been aborted.
One pro-abortion man came up to me and yelled:
“You should be eradicated! You should rot in the bowels of hell! You should die!” When a nearby person pleaded for civility, saying, “That’s a woman, respect the woman,” he replied, “My respect for women is very selective.”
Whatever happened to “I’m with her?”
And these same people wonder why Vice President Kamala Harris lost.
They say they support women, but only those women who agree with killing pre-born children, or perhaps men who identify as women who feel the same.
They want the freedom to spit, steal, and scream but don’t want Americans they disagree with to speak peacefully and engage in public discourse.
They say women should have the truth and resources to “make their own choice,” but blatantly lie about miscarriage care, Chemical Abortion Pill side effects, and fetal development.
Fortunately for us, people saw past the spin, and it cost Harris and the Democratic Party the Presidency, U.S. House, and U.S. Senate.
Voters had the choice of voting for the most radical, pro-abortion ticket in world history, and said NO. A majority of voters don’t want abortion up until birth, nor do they appreciate the senseless propaganda around it.
<ul>
<li><a href="https://studentsforlife.org/2024/01/16/new-sfla-sflaction-yougov-poll-shows-the-youth-vote-open-to-pro-life-perspectives-supports-services-for-mothers-rejects-the-biden-administrations-radical-agenda/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nine out of ten</a> youth voters want safeguards around Chemical Abortion Pills.</li>
<li><a href="https://lozierinstitute.org/pregnancy-centers-provided-over-350m-of-services-goods/#:~:text=Of%20the%20over%2016%20million,Knights%20of%20Columbus%E2%80%93Marist%20Poll." target="_blank" rel="noopener">91% of Americans</a> support Pregnancy Help Centers.</li>
<li><a href="https://harvardharrispoll.com/key-results-november-3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seven out of ten</a> Americans are against abortion after 15 weeks.</li>
</ul>
Late-term abortion extremism is not a winning argument, which is why abortion zealots don’t want civil conversation and critical thinking to spread nationwide. If open dialogue occurs, then people can clearly see how radical these beliefs really are.
At VCU, as I talked with students willing to listen, an aggressive mob of more than 200 abortion supporters shouted down the free speech of others. The online death threats I continued to receive became too severe for me to remain on campus, requiring my security as well as police to escort me to safety. Students took more of my flyers and ate them in my face as I walked through the mob.
Despite securing my physical safety, the online attacks continued as pro-abortion students made viral videos on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY1SBYm3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TikTok,</a> flooded by Instagram with horrific messages, and got my TikTok permanently banned.
But their efforts to silence my voice for the voiceless prove my point: these tactics wouldn’t be necessary if abortion extremism was popular. Their actions and insults against decent and good people solidify their perception as loudmouths who are intolerant of the beauty of life.
I’ve received countless messages from people saying I’ve helped change their minds on abortion. Millions of people have seen my content from my tour stops and seen the pro-life movement challenging the pro-abortion narrative shoved down our throats.
Even though the abortion Left’s ire rings loudly, the pro-life movement treks forward victoriously, with the hopes that Trump will stand up for our free speech rights so we can continue to protect the pre-born.
* * * 
<a href="https://studentsforlife.org/people/lydia-taylor-davis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lydia Taylor Davis</a> serves as a Spokesperson and Social Media Coordinator for Students for Life of America (SFLA). She tours college campuses nationwide speaking against intentional abortion &amp; creates pro-life social media content viewed by millions of people. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Young woman leading a demonstration using a megaphone

Pro-Abortion Mobs Threatened To Kill Me After The Election

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One of the most basic assumptions about climate change that you&#8217;re told to accept is that, if you give the government enough power and make enough personal sacrifices, you can help change the weather. You can make natural disasters less likely. You can save beaches and endangered species and even entire countries. All you need to do is pay more in taxes to fund more government bureaucracy, and give up your car and your gas stove and airline travel and maybe your entire livelihood. And then everything will be fine.
There&#8217;s no other country on Earth that&#8217;s internalized this way of thinking more than our neighbor to the north, Canada. They&#8217;ve declared a &#8220;national climate emergency.&#8221; They have a constantly-increasing national tax on carbon, which raises the cost of living for pretty much every household in the country. They&#8217;ve banned plastic straws. They&#8217;ve shut down oil and gas permits off their Pacific coast. If you&#8217;re an insomniac and you pull up a video of a debate in the Canadian parliament to help you sleep, there&#8217;s a good chance they&#8217;ll be debating climate change in some way or another.
So how&#8217;s all that working out for Canada? What exactly have all of these taxes and regulations accomplished, aside from hamstringing Canada&#8217;s economy for the past decade? Surely we can assume that, at the very least, Canada&#8217;s carbon emissions are much lower as a result of all of this government bureaucracy. After all, Canada&#8217;s not even a top-20 country by population. Their GDP barely ranks in the top-10. It shouldn&#8217;t be hard for them to rank relatively low on the list of global carbon emitters, especially since they&#8217;ve been trying so hard and punishing their citizens so much.
As it turns out, however, Canada is currently one of the biggest carbon emitters on the planet. They&#8217;re setting new records in the wrong direction. They&#8217;re adding more of that dreaded carbon into the atmosphere than countries three times their size. And it&#8217;s all because of a series of wildfires last year that the Canadian government clearly could not control. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Canada Wildfires" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mnnl2sBw4lg?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;
All told, the 2023 wildfires contributed more than four times as much carbon into the atmosphere as everything else that Canada did last year, put together. So the plastic straw bans and the taxes and industry-crushing regulations were completely undone, four times over, by these wildfires.
If you check in with the experts, of course they&#8217;ll tell you that the wildfires were only so severe because of climate change. Supposedly the one-degree rise in reported global average temperature from 2022 to 2023 could be the reason the wildfires burned more of Canada than any other wildfire season in recorded history. Therefore, we need to redouble our efforts to ban fossil fuels and so on. That&#8217;s the line they&#8217;re going with.
As MIT Technology Review <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/28/1103186/canada-wildfire-emissions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">put it</a>: 
<blockquote>Fires are part of natural, healthy ecosystems, and burns on their own don’t necessarily represent a disaster for climate change. After a typical fire season, a forest begins to regrow, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it does so. This continues a cycle in which carbon moves around the planet. &#8230; While climate change doesn’t directly spark any one fire, researchers have traced hot, dry conditions that worsen fires to the effects of human-caused climate change. The extreme fire conditions in eastern Canada were over twice as likely because of climate change.</blockquote>
The MIT Technology Review concludes with this: 
<blockquote>It was already clear that we need to stop emissions from power plants, vehicles, and a huge range of other clearly human activities to address climate change. Last year’s wildfires should increase the urgency of that action.</blockquote>
What&#8217;s striking about explanations like these is that they conveniently absolve the government of all responsibility for managing the forests, which is the single most direct way to prevent wildfires from spreading out of control like they did last year. And even the Canadian government admits that. I went on the website of Canada&#8217;s National Resources Department and found that, in addition to blaming fossil fuels, they acknowledged that they <a href="https://natural-resources.canada.ca/simply-science/canadas-record-breaking-wildfires-2023-fiery-wake-call/25303" target="_blank" rel="noopener">could do more</a> to prevent wildfires from spreading: 
<blockquote>As wildfire risks will continue to intensify as the climate warms, Canada needs to &#8230; adapt fire management and mitigation strategies. There are different ways to manage wildfire risk, including controlled burns, revised forestry guidelines, and procedures to manage fuel around communities and infrastructure. It’s a balance of these techniques that can help deal with future challenges.</blockquote>
One scientist with the Canadian Forest Services put it this way: 
<blockquote>A changing climate means a proactive approach must be taken. Studies like this can offer important lessons to be better prepared for the next time a devastating event like this occurs.</blockquote>
They don&#8217;t mention that preventing arson is another way to stop these fires, even though that&#8217;s true as well. While the majority of these fires were apparently caused by lightning or some other natural event, there was at least one guy who pleaded <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/16/canada-wildfires-conspiracy-man-pleads-guilty-arson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">guilty</a> to arson for setting more than a dozen separate fires in Canada last year. But even if you set that aside, there&#8217;s a glaringly obvious solution here, which Canada&#8217;s government acknowledges. And that solution is for the Canadian government to do a better job preventing and containing wildfires by improving their first management capabilities.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1433-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
That brings me to the broader lesson from this disaster in Canada, which is that the government, in general, should focus on doing basic things competently. They shouldn&#8217;t set out to save the planet with complicated carbon cap schemes and climate emergencies, which is what Canada is doing. Preventing and containing forest fires is a very tangible and straightforward responsibility for the government. When you get the basics right, then very often you don&#8217;t need the more convoluted schemes at all.
Not that a convoluted scheme to control the weather makes any sense in the first place, because we actually have very little control over our environment. We don&#8217;t have the capacity to &#8220;fight climate change&#8221; in the way they&#8217;re suggesting. All of the climate change activism in the world can’t change the fact that forests go up in flames all over the world every year, as the MIT Technology Review admitted. And volcanoes erupt, too — like the one I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/climate-alarmists-panic-over-heat-wave-turns-out-it-was-caused-by-a-volcano" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talked about</a> last year that drove temperature changes all over the world. Remember that? The eruption sent 40 trillion gallons of seawater into the stratosphere. Researchers called it an “unprecedented water vapor injection&#8221; that trapped a lot of heat — and that may have contributed significantly to global warming. No one was responsible for that eruption. It was a natural event. And sometimes those happen, and we have to accept that they happen.
<h4><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a></h4>
But there are no indications that the Canadian government is going to accept that they can&#8217;t control the weather, or that they&#8217;re seriously going to revise their forest management or take any responsibility whatsoever. Instead, predictably, they&#8217;re turning the wildfires into yet another opportunity to harp on racial grievances and divide their country even more. 
True North <a href="https://tnc.news/2024/08/28/muslims-indigenous-wildfires-racism-colonialism/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a> this week: 
<blockquote>The Public Health Agency of Canada wants to review the way wildfire evacuations are conducted because they supposedly disproportionately impact minorities. Part of this impact is that evacuating people from First Nations communities traumatizes Indigenous people due to &#8216;colonialism&#8217; and the history of residential schools. A rapid review released by the agency in July included an &#8216;intersectional analysis&#8217; arguing that wildfires disproportionally impacted First Nations groups, minorities, women and non-binary people.</blockquote>
Yes, they&#8217;ve turned their worst wildfire season on record into an opportunity to complain once again about &#8220;non-binary people.&#8221; In the face of an actual, concrete problem — forests burning down and people dying — the Canadian government is worried about a small and highly narcissistic subset of its population with an imagined identity. 
Here&#8217;s a couple of lines from the Canadian government&#8217;s report to give you some idea how unhinged the country has become: 
<blockquote>The impact of wildfires on Indigenous Peoples is influenced by colonialism and has forced many Indigenous Peoples to live in isolation or in communities that are isolated from the rest of society. &#8230; The evacuation measures conducted in Indigenous communities served as traumatic reminders of being taken away to residential schools and/or the Sixties Scoop as some were forced onto buses and separated from family.</blockquote>
Not that you needed it, but this report is your admission from the Canadian government that they don&#8217;t actually care about climate change or preventing wildfires. Their only concern is to preserve and expand their power at every available opportunity. And they&#8217;ve determined that dividing people with crude racial guilt is the best way to do that.
That&#8217;s why Canada — for all its promises to save the world from carbon emissions — is now one of the single biggest carbon emitters on the planet. It&#8217;s a perfect illustration for why no one, anywhere in the world, should ever trust politicians who say they can control the weather, if only you give them a little more power and influence. They&#8217;ll happily take the power and influence; that&#8217;s a guarantee. And then, as your country is burning down around you, they won&#8217;t do anything about it. Instead, they&#8217;ll call you a racist. They&#8217;ll demand even more power to fight &#8220;climate change.&#8221; And then, before you know it, you&#8217;ll wake up one day and you&#8217;re living in a country a lot like Canada. And by that point, it&#8217;ll be too late to do anything about it. Unless you&#8217;re an indigenous nonbinary shaman, no one will care what you think.
If Canada serves any purpose whatsoever, it&#8217;s to provide cautionary tales like this. We can either pay attention and accept that there are some things we can&#8217;t control. Or we can choose to make the problems we do have much, much worse.
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a>

TOPSHOT-CANADA-WILDFIRE

When Wildfires Strike, Canada Blames Racism Instead Of Taking Action

Canada

Climate Change

Wildfires

The US presidential <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/2024-election" target="_blank" rel="noopener">election</a> is shaping up to be one of the most “heartland” themed campaigns in recent history. Donald Trump’s VP selection of Ohio Senator JD Vance checked the Rust Belt box for Republicans, and Democrat Kamala Harris countered with her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. 
With camo hat always on hand, Walz’s political brand is tied to his <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91168539/tim-walzs-first-job-was-working-on-a-farm">first job</a> working on the family farm in Nebraska. Farmers across Minnesota are <a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2024/08/06/minnesota-farmers-union-president-stalled-farm-bill-weather-extremes-walz-veepstakes">abuzz</a> about Walz&#8217;s agriculture record both as a congressman and as governor, and it’s mixed. Walz speaks the language of Minnesota farmers but shares the sentiments of California and European progressives when it comes to food and environmental policy.
Environmentalist groups like Greenpeace and Pesticide Action Network have never had potential allies in the White House quite as aligned as Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Walz’s record indicates he would entertain the kind of utopian visions that have guided the European Union on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dutch-farmers-spread-manure-on-streets-as-new-emissions-rules-threaten-to-close-down-livestock-farms" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policies</a> such as gas taxes on farm equipment and sweeping pesticide bans. The same policies which sparked massive <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/here-s-why-farmers-are-protesting-in-europe/7494997.html">farmer protests across Europe and Canada</a>.
As recently as July, Walz announced $200 million from the EPA to flow into Minnesota for the advancement of “Climate-Smart Food Systems”, meaning the replacement of gas-powered farm vehicles, new standards around refrigerators, and soil practices. Several years back, Governor Walz <a href="https://www.farmforum.net/story/news/agriculture/2016/08/18/minnesota-rep-tim-walz-visits-organic-farm-listens-to-concerns-of-organic-farmers/49239667/">visited organic farms</a> in Minnesota to give voice to their concerns about pesticides, saying “There’s still more we can do to make things easier for organic farmers.”
What did those organic farmers want? Nothing related specifically to their operations, but instead a total ban on aerial pesticides used by conventional farms statewide, which they claim travels by air and impacts all farms. Walz’s position was, “We need to build coalitions with the public and fellow politicians and get them on board with this stuff.”
Americans have been fortunate, as these progressive experiments in rolling back high-yield farming have not hit the political mainstream. That could soon change. 
The European Union <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/02/06/von-der-leyen-announces-withdrawal-of-contentious-pesticide-law-the-first-defeat-of-the-gr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">abandoned</a> its own attempts to boost organic farming after the farmer protests, learning over many years that its rules and regulations led to a less productive and more expensive food system for consumers.
But you’ll find that no EU member state has endured a famine, and that’s the result of Europe’s trademark caution and incrementalism. Nations that have been inspired by Europe’s failed policies but lack their bureaucratic restraint have seen actual starvation when modern farming systems were upended.
The case of Sri Lanka, a small island off the coast of India, is only the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sri-lankas-president-flees-the-country-amid-mass-uprising" target="_blank" rel="noopener">most recent example</a>. Until 2019, Sri Lanka had been the planet’s top tourism spot for a decade, but regulatory change in agriculture <a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/food-crisis-sri-lanka-likely-worsen-amid-poor-agricultural-production-price-spikes-and-ongoing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">threw it back</a> into the ‘dark ages’.
All it took was seriously implementing the ideas of progressive environmentalists and food production critics.
In Sri Lanka&#8217;s 2019 election, now former-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised a 10-year transition away from conventional farming practices to “organic agriculture”. It was on the advice of an Indian environmentalist, Vandana Shiva, that Rajapaska believed chemical fertilizers and pesticides needed to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/apr/28/fighting-giants-eco-activist-vandana-shiva-on-her-battle-against-gm-multinationals" target="_blank" rel="noopener">outlawed</a>. Shiva cared little for the steady gains in agricultural productivity in Sri Lanka in the 21st century.
During COVID, President Rajapaska banned all imports of chemical fertilizer and pesticides, effectively forcing two million farmers to go organic. The plans have since been abandoned but still created a devastating ripple that has yet to be undone.
Sri Lanka&#8217;s domestic rice production <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has dropped</a> by 20% due to the lower agricultural output of organic farming compared to conventional methods, despite political promises. Food prices rose by a third. Tea production, a crucial domestic and export commodity, decreased by 50%, as foreign consumers were unwilling to pay premiums. Nine out of every 10 Sri Lankan families were reported to have <a href="https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-china-india-asia-c9a49428e9bad5c0bb087534c0d310f8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">skipped meals</a> and waited for days at a time in lines for fuel.
Rubber and coconut producers faced similar challenges, as obtaining imports on short notice proved nearly impossible despite the lifting of the ban on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Half a million individuals fell back into poverty after decades of real progress. Sri Lanka has been left to rely on foreign food assistance from neighboring India. On top of all that, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62104268" target="_blank" rel="noopener">protestors in 2022 stormed</a> the Prime Minister&#8217;s office and the President&#8217;s residence, forcing the government to resign in disgrace.
Sri Lanka still grapples with grinding inflation due to the devaluation of its currency. As of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/3/22/economic-conditions-in-debt-stricken-sri-lanka-improving-imf-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">March,</a> inflation sat at 5.9%, down from a peak of 70% in 2022. The island country has seen an <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/6/20/fed-up-doctor-exodus-bleeds-sri-lankas-healthcare-after-economic-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exodus</a> of doctors as well as parents being forced to pick <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64158513" target="_blank" rel="noopener">which of their children can attend school</a>. All ripple effects of a deep economic crisis that has hobbled the country, stemming from the all-in pursuit of progressive’s food production agenda.
None of this is to say that Tim Walz and Kamala Harris are going to bring famine and pestilence to the United States, but should emphasize that the food systems Americans take for granted are indeed fragile. Ideological reformers have persuaded many of America’s trade partners to pursue the kinds of policies that have broken nations, starved families, and produced massive political blowback from hardworking farmers.
Food systems are fragile, and both Kamala Harris and Governor Walz should be asked tough questions about these global farming trends, as well as their records while in office. Walz has more farming knowledge than any presidential or vice presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter, but Americans need to know where he really stands on these debates. It can be a matter of life and death.
* * *
Bill Wirtz is senior policy analyst at the Consumer Choice Center, where he focuses on agriculture and trade. He has published “No Copy-paste: What Not to Emulate From Europe’s Agriculture Regulation.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Tim Walz

Governor Walz Needs To Answer For Failed Progressive Food Policies

2024 Election

Agriculture

Ben Shapiro

Farmers

Farming

Kamala Harris

Readers Pass

The American Federation of Teachers&#8217; 88th National Convention centered not on workplace conditions or the resolution of deep issues rampant throughout the nation’s classrooms but underscored the union’s longstanding devotion to progressive politics, culminating in a resounding endorsement of presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
The convention, which hosts AFT delegates from across the nation to vote on resolutions which guide the union’s internal operations for the year ahead, was markedly partisan as the infamously progressive union preps its members for election season.
Resolutions passed by this year’s delegates covered a swath of hot button political issues:
“The AFT <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/committing-end-lifetime-alert-physical-and-psychological-violence-against-lgbtqia-youth" target="_blank" rel="noopener">will</a> recommit resources,” for example, to “support LGBTQIA+ affirming and inclusive school environments and curriculum,” according to a resolution regarding “physical and psychological violence” against queer youth.
Another <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/opposing-overreach-us-supreme-court" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resolution</a>, “Opposing the Overreach of the U.S. Supreme Court,” details the union’s commitment to “reverse the decisions” of those Justices AFT accuses of “eliminating guarantees of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the American people.”
According to a <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/what-stake-2024-elections-democratic-republic-committed-liberty-and-justice-all" target="_blank" rel="noopener">third</a>, “the basic institutions and principles of U.S. democracy…are under attack” by “Donald Trump and the ultra-right MAGA faction.” In addition to democracy, AFT writes, Republicans have attacked public education through “voucher schemes,” reproductive freedom through “draconian anti-abortion laws,” and “the very humanity of marginalized and stigmatized communities.”
But the key <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/endorsement-kamala-harris-president" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resolution</a> passed by the AFT was the union’s “Endorsement of Kamala Harris for President.”
“Kamala Harris has a clear record under the Biden-Harris administration to compare with Donald Trump’s, offering voters a stark choice,” AFT explained. The union pledges to mobilize its members in support of Harris’s presidential campaign, plus join the rest of Big Labor in its “collective effort to elect Kamala Harris.”
Amid talk of a variety of progressive topics, AFT’s support for Harris was constant.
Before delegates arrived in Houston, the union’s executive council preemptively <a href="https://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-executive-council-unanimously-endorses-kamala-harris-president" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pushed</a> a unanimous call on AFT members to ratify its endorsement of Harris for the American presidency.
AFT President Randi Weingarten’s keynote address amplified strong support for Harris, through which “progress is possible.” “But so is the eradication of the rights and progress we hold dear,” continued Weingarten, through former President Donald Trump, who poses an “existential threat to democracy and freedom.”
Throughout the convention, among the <a href="https://www.aft.org/news/convention-sneak-peek-were-fighting-better-life-all" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speakers</a> who addressed the union in support of Harris included United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Harris, whose address was the convention’s grand finale, again emphasized the responsibility of educators to vote in support of her dedication to “freedom, compassion, and rule of law,” in opposition to Right-wing “chaos, fear, and hate.”
A vote against her campaign, Harris emphasized, would “return America to a dark past.”
AFT’s longstanding devotion to progressive causes and candidates is nothing new. For years, the union has <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/teachers-unions-spend-big-democrats-ahead-midterm-elections" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transferred</a> millions directly from the pockets of dues-paying teachers to its Democratic friends.
Though American teachers continue to <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/teachers-union-membership-drops-by-59000-across-the-nation/#:~:text=The%20National%20Education%20Association%20and,member%20loss%20the%20previous%20year." target="_blank" rel="noopener">flee</a> AFT in search of refuge from the progressive agenda included in membership, this year’s convention emphasizes that the union’s loyalty to the left-wing will not fade anytime soon.
According to a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/04/04/teachers-views-on-the-state-of-public-k-12-education/#:~:text=A%20majority%20of%20public%20K,or%20lean%20toward%20the%20GOP." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pew Research survey</a> of over 2,500 public K-12 school teachers, a significant percentage of teachers presumably disagree with their union’s endorsement. The AFT, however, couldn’t care less.
For the AFT, it seems as though disregarding the inconvenient interests of teachers unsupportive of union ideology is a worthy sacrifice in pursuit of the political agenda that continues to dominate Big Labor’s priorities across the board.
* * * 
Aaron Withe is Chief Executive Officer of the Freedom Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.

Vice President Kamala Harris Delivers A Keynote At The American Federation of Teachers’ 88th National Convention In Houston

‘Democracy Under Attack’: Teachers Union Convention Backs Progressivism, Endorses Kamala Harris

'Democracy Under Attack': Teachers Union Convention Backs Progressivism, Endorses Kamala Harris

American Federation of Teachers

Houston

LGBTQ

Randi Weingarten

Teachers Unions

Radical progressive group Justice Democrats blamed House Minority Leader <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/hakeem-jeffries" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hakeem Jeffries</a> (D-NY) for the blowout loss handed to Squad-aligned Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in Tuesday&#8217;s primary election — and Jeffries&#8217; spokesperson fired right back.
Bowman, who leaned into the anti-Israel protests after October 7th and was backed by other far-Left members of Congress like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/far-left-democrat-jamaal-bowman-loses-primary-after-becoming-full-scale-anti-semite" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lost to George Latimer</a> by 17 points.
According to New York&#8217;s Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/nyregion/jamaal-bowman-squad-left.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reason for Bowman&#8217;s loss</a> was simple: &#8220;The voters in this district, and in other districts across the country, frankly, are just not buying some of the things that these candidates are selling. And now, moderate voters are getting engaged, they’re paying attention and they’re coming to the polls.&#8221;
But Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, told The New York Times that the real problem was Jeffries — in spite of the fact that he had endorsed Bowman ahead of the primary.
&#8220;Jamaal Bowman is a model, not a warning, for what political leadership can look like,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The outcome of this election is a reflection on his leadership and whether Hakeem Jeffries stood up to Republican megadonors.&#8221;
Jeffries&#8217; spokeswoman Christie Stephenson fired right back, arguing that her boss&#8217; tenure would be judged based on whether he delivered a majority in the House in November. &#8220;The so-called Justice Democrats stated back in 2017 that their goal was to destroy the Democratic Party,&#8221; she said, noting that they had even threatened to primary Jeffries. “They have failed miserably in every way. Is anyone surprised?&#8221;
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1712932862202000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0plT8RRdMy9XUpIhocnjQS">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
Bowman is not the only Squad-adjacent Democrat whose House seat is in jeopardy. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who also aligned herself with the anti-Israel protesters in the aftermath of October 7th, is facing a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jamaal-bowman-isnt-the-only-squad-member-on-the-chopping-block" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tough primary challenge</a> from St. Louis prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Radical Progressive Group Blames Hakeem Jeffries For Bowman Blowout — Jeffries Spox Has Thoughts

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Congress

Cori Bush

Hakeem Jeffries

Jamaal Bowman

Politics

The Squad

What is the secret to a happy life? Is there a secret? Is there only one secret? These are the questions that, at the most foundational level, everyone asks throughout life. They are a part of the human condition.
I consider myself a relatively happy person, and I love and am grateful for my life. I believe gratefulness influences happiness, so I make practicing gratitude a habit. Conversely, people who live in a constant victimhood mentality (one that seems to be overtaking our culture) are, without a doubt, not happy. While we don’t need science to prove to us these people are unhappy, science just did. 
In a poorly typed tweet, the <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/lifestyle/woke-people-more-likely-to-be-unahppy-anxious-and-depressed-new-study-suggests/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Post</a> shared the results of a study which suggests “woke” people are more likely to be unhappy. Of course, we didn’t need those results to be “suggested” because we know they’re true.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
‘Woke’ people more likely to be unahppy, anxious and depressed, new study suggests <a href="https://t.co/25RQn08ouR">https://t.co/25RQn08ouR</a> <a href="https://t.co/QDHcGadc8D">pic.twitter.com/QDHcGadc8D</a>
&mdash; New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1769483261728657609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The study was conducted in Finland where researchers examined the progressive ideology that has now infiltrated their culture. First, they created a social justice scale with a list of truisms, or principles of progressivism, to ask participants of the study whether they agreed or disagreed with those statements. Then, they compared the results with other behaviors based on the responses to those statements. The study’s final Critical Social Justice Attitude scale included <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/lifestyle/woke-people-more-likely-to-be-unahppy-anxious-and-depressed-new-study-suggests/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_source=twitter">seven truisms</a> of woke people: 
<blockquote>In the end, their final Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale identified seven truisms of woke people:
<ul>
<li>“If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of racism.”</li>
<li>“University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors.”</li>
<li>“Microaggressions should be challenged often and actively.”</li>
<li>“Trans* women who compete with women in sports are not helping women’s rights.” (reverse scored)</li>
<li>“We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin.”</li>
<li>“A white person cannot understand how a black person feels equally well as another black person.”</li>
<li>“A member of a privileged group can adopt features or cultural elements of a less privileged group.” (reverse scored)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
For the people who agreed with these principles, identifying them as the things they are concerned with on a daily basis, it is no wonder they’re unhappy. The <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/lifestyle/woke-people-more-likely-to-be-unahppy-anxious-and-depressed-new-study-suggests/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_source=twitter">conclusion researchers drew</a> is the same conclusion we all could have told them without even doing this study:
<blockquote>However, the most concerning finding was the relationship between mental health and agreement with the scale. Specifically, researchers found a high prevalence of anxiety and depression in people who believe the statement “If white people have on average a higher income than black people, it is because of racism.” More broadly, they found that those who identified as left-wing were most likely to report lower mental well-being.</blockquote>
That’s correct: “They found that those who identified as left-wing were most likely to report lower mental well-being.” Color me shocked.
Although researchers noted that we should not assume this is the case in every society and country, we know that it basically is. Finland can take these results and expand them to other countries because this is truth — and it’s certainly not isolated to Finland. Columbia epidemiologists have acknowledged depression rates <a href="https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/why-depression-rates-are-higher-among-liberals#:~:text=American%20adults%20who%20identify%20as,inducing%20topics%20like%20racial%20injustice%2C" target="_blank" rel="noopener">are higher among liberals</a>; American Affairs, a journal of public policy and political thought, has evaluated the <a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“well-being gap”</a> between liberals and conservatives; and the New York Times has analyzed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/opinion/progressive-sadness.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sadness among progressives</a> and its self-destructive effects. This is not new information.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/woke-people-are-less-happy-it-s-a-fact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Comments Section with Brett Cooper</a></h4>
Evidence for why the Left’s mental well-being is lower is evident on television, in the news, or on social media: The Left constantly eats their own. They are friendly with you — until they aren’t. You can be the champion of all their current stances and you can wave all the flags, but if you ask one wrong question or so much as step a little bit out of line, they will rip you to shreds. They will cancel you, insult you, and kick you right out of their group, which is the definition of a toxic relationship and an unhealthy environment.
The Left also promulgates a victim-centric attitude, an attitude that leads to mental illness. Psychologists have studied that fact for years, yet that exact attitude has utterly taken hold of our society. The replies to <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1769483261728657609">the Post’s tweet</a> brought up these points over and over.
<div id="attachment_747795" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747795" class="size-full wp-image-747795" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/23-tr.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="260" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/23-tr.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/23-tr-300x152.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
<div id="attachment_747807" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747807" class="size-full wp-image-747807" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/24-ty.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="213" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/24-ty.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/24-ty-300x125.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
Meanwhile, the people who quote tweeted told a completely different story than those who replied. They seemed to want out of the comment section to tell their own story without anyone around to disagree with them. For example, one person said that the list of progressive truisms “are also correlated with higher intelligence,” meaning that people who agree with them have a better “understanding of how society and the world works.”
<div id="attachment_747811" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747811" class="size-full wp-image-747811" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/25-yy.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="126" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/25-yy.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/25-yy-300x74.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
In actuality, science is split on that. On the one hand, numerous reports have been published explaining that intelligent people are miserable and unhappy because of the unbearable weight of the world; on the other, countless reports explain that intelligent people are actually incredibly happy for a myriad of reasons, usually due to their worldview, attitudes, and what they believe in terms of happiness and fulfillment. How an individual chooses to live their life has a great impact on those outcomes.
Another quote tweet said that those who are “aware of the problems” are the ones who will be upset about them.
<div id="attachment_747813" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-747813" class="size-full wp-image-747813" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/26-yu.png" alt="Screenshot. X." width="512" height="75" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/26-yu.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/26-yu-300x44.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X.</div>
To be clear, conservatives are not unaware of the problems that exist in our society. We aren’t walking around in ignorant bliss and therefore not upset. Listen to any Republican or conservative give a speech and you’ll hear a Right-winger ragging on about some problem or other. (When this happens, the Left critiques us, saying we are just trying to pull society backwards by disliking everything in the modern world — which is obviously not the case.)
No, it is not that conservatives have not identified problems; rather, conservatives see different problems. We do not find problems for the sake of having a pity party and an opportunity to complain — something which, by and large, is what many people on the Left resort to. Rolling around in self-pity and complaining just to complain create feelings of powerlessness and anger, leaving them spinning in a cycle of victimhood.
People on the Right, however, are realists. I would argue that we are solution-oriented, an attribute critical to happiness. Conservatives and psychologists alike agree on this. We have hope, we’re positive, and we genuinely want conditions to improve. I genuinely care about everybody in this country, and I want them to thrive and be successful, not be dragged down by their own attitude about the world. I hope that for everyone because it benefits our society as a whole.
In an article published in the National Post titled, “<a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/gad-saad-of-course-conservatives-are-happier-they-believe-society-is-worth-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Of Course Conservatives Are Happier — They Believe Society Is Worth It</a>,” well-known Canadian psychologist and professor Gad Saad explains this phenomenon, saying: 
<blockquote>By definition, conservatives believe that there are values, beliefs, attitudes and ideas worth conserving. Hence, they wake up every morning with a sense of existential glee; they recognize that their society, whilst far from perfect, contains many tried and tested ideas worth preserving. Liberals and progressives on the other hand wake up with a dark cloud of existential doom because their society is apparently racist, sexist, transphobic, Islamophobic and ableist. Canada supposedly sits on stolen land. Capitalism is an exploitative system that rapes Mother Earth. We have less than 15 minutes to go because of the existential crisis associated with climate change. Hence, from the perspective of the Noble Progressive, we must dismantle the current system and fight for Unicornia, which lies just around the corner. How could one be happy when there is so much ugliness in the world?</blockquote>
Saad’s contrast of conservatives and progressives is succinct, yet impactful. Conservatives have a hopeful and positive reason to wake up in the morning — and that changes everything. We have goals. We believe in the best of society and the best of what it can be. We have values outside our political ideology, which the Left often does not, and it is those values, like faith and family, that propel us forward and fulfill us. Saad’s acknowledgment that we “believe that there are values, beliefs, attitudes and ideas worth conserving” is accurate, in that we have solid, tried and true values that have stood the test of time. They are far more stable than the values of the Left, which change daily based on their emotions or the current trend. The fact that we have a strong foundation to stand on — that we know what we’re fighting for, that we know what works — speaks volumes.
Perhaps most importantly, we understand and accept personal responsibility, which is something many on the Left lack. We know we are responsible for our own happiness, for our outlook, and for our response to the world around us. We are responsible for our values and the circle of people we surround ourselves with. This is all intertwined with happiness. And while conquering and owning personal responsibility is difficult, it is also incredibly empowering.
Ultimately, that is why we are happier.

DW_CommentSection_pt2_8264RT copy

The Key To Creating A Happy Life — And The Science That Proves It

Brett Cooper

Conservatives

Mental Health

New York Post

Psychology

If you don&#8217;t remember &#8220;Car Talk,&#8221; it was a radio show that lasted more than three decades on NPR, until it ended in 2012. The idea was that people called in with practical questions and dilemmas relating to their cars, and then the hosts dispensed advice — whether it was about car maintenance or repair or whatever. The show no longer exists, though, because the NPR that broadcast that show for 35 years no longer exists. The idea of a show that actually addresses people&#8217;s problems in real life, based on knowledge of how markets and automobiles or anything else actually works, has been unthinkable to the management of NPR for some time. Shows that cover the news from an objective factual perspective, to the extent possible, are also out of style. Instead, for the past decade, NPR has been controlled by activists who have devoted themselves to two primary pursuits. 
The first pursuit is blanketing the airwaves with identity politics at every conceivable opportunity. That&#8217;s why they run segments on diverse gender representation in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104266396/lgbtq-communitys-battle-for-the-dinosaur-emoji-key-moments-from-jan-6-hearing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dinosaur emojis</a> for example. 
The second pursuit has been shutting down stories that are inconvenient for the politicians who are voting to spend your money to finance NPR&#8217;s operation. Infamously, NPR&#8217;s executive editor, Terence Samuel, claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal wasn&#8217;t a &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/status/1319281101223940096" target="_blank" rel="noopener">real story</a>.&#8221; He said it was a &#8220;distraction.&#8221; And instead of firing Samuel, NPR promoted him. American University even invited Samuel to deliver a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFvV24PWfF4&amp;lc=Ugz7bLd9ECugl009UZF4AaABAg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lecture</a> entitled, &#8220;How Journalism Can Save Itself and Democracy.&#8221;
It&#8217;s harder to think of a better way to summarize what NPR has become. They aren&#8217;t simply bumbling propagandists. They&#8217;re also incredibly self-satisfied and narcissistic. They believe that they alone can save American democracy. And they think that, in order to do that, they need to control what kinds of information you can see. It&#8217;s not that they thought the Hunter Biden laptop story was &#8220;unvetted&#8221; or &#8220;Russian disinformation&#8221; or whatever the excuse was. They always knew it was factually accurate. But just because something is factually accurate, in NPR&#8217;s eyes, doesn&#8217;t make it true. According to NPR, truth is subjective; whatever&#8217;s most expedient politically for them is what&#8217;s true.
For a long time now, this position — which really amounts to nihilism — was unstated at NPR, at least publicly. But now it&#8217;s explicit, thanks to a new CEO and president by the name of Katherine Maher who recently took over at NPR. Maher very clearly does not believe that the truth is objective. She also doesn&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s worth trying to find out what the truth may be. This is an extraordinary position for the chief executive of a publicly funded news organization to have, but it&#8217;s what Katherine Maher believes. 
This is a speech of hers that&#8217;s been making the rounds this week. It&#8217;s from back when she was running Wikimedia, which is mainly known for Wikipedia. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Truth" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WWEiwvNwsGM?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>
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This is what passes for good public speaking these days. But she speaks in a robotic, sing-songy voice that makes it sound like she’s a kindergarten teacher lecturing a bunch of 5-year-olds. She has the tone of someone who believes firmly in the superiority of her own intellect, even though what she’s saying is so abjectly stupid. 
She says truth is subjective, and that everyone in the room has his or her own &#8220;truth.&#8221; But here&#8217;s the problem. Truth exists because reality exists. Either something is a part of reality or it isn&#8217;t. To deny objective truth is to deny reality. And you can&#8217;t even deny reality without asserting a reality — the reality that there is no reality. So the relativistic view is not only false, but so false as to be incomprehensible if you think about it for more than two seconds.
Maher&#8217;s remarks are the same idiot relativism that you can hear from any freshman philosophy student, but she goes to great pains to make her take seem nuanced and innovative. She talks in circles and ends back at &#8220;there are many different truths.&#8221; She says this even after acknowledging that the truth exists. Again, those are two contradictory ideas, but that doesn&#8217;t bother Maher for a second. Like most of our overeducated elite class, she&#8217;s incapable of speaking without a parade of cliches while making tedious and absurd ideas sound far more complex than they really are. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1350-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Also according to Maher, we have &#8220;glorious chronicles to the human experience in many different cultures&#8221; because we have &#8220;many different truths.&#8221; But that&#8217;s not what these &#8220;glorious chronicles&#8221; show us. Instead, they show us that the truth is objective and eternal. Different cultures and people across time have had different ways of perceiving the truth — talking about it, accessing it, embracing it, or rejecting it, yes. But the truth remains the same. That is what makes the study of history, and different cultures through history, so fascinating. It is precisely because all of these different people across time and space lived in the same reality, and yet had wildly different ways of existing in it, and responding to it. 
Katherine Maher doesn&#8217;t seem to understand this, or at least she pretends not to. She repeats her theory of truth at every possible opportunity. Here&#8217;s some more footage from a conference two years ago. Maher begins by explaining that Galileo was prosecuted for saying that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun, which is a basically accurate if wildly oversimplified retelling of that historical episode — although it doesn&#8217;t prove what Maher seems to think it does. Then she makes an incredible statement. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Truth is Changing" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dP5g369_nvs?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>
&#8220;The truth, by definition, is malleable,&#8221; says Maher. Really? By whose definition exactly? You can make the case that postmodernists thinkers and their precursors — like Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Rousseau — might agree with that statement. But you won&#8217;t hear many traditional thinkers (prior to, say, Heidegger) saying that the truth is &#8220;malleable.&#8221; So why should we adopt the postmodern belief and not the traditional one? There has to be some reason to side with one school of thought and not another.
In any event, if truth is merely &#8220;malleable&#8221; — if there&#8217;s no knowable, essential structure to it — then definitions themselves are just language games. There&#8217;s no significance to any of it. It&#8217;s just a power struggle. When you get down to it, that&#8217;s really what Maher is saying. She&#8217;s asserting that &#8220;the truth&#8221; is &#8220;malleable&#8221; as an act of political will because she doesn&#8217;t believe in any objectively true definitions. She keeps saying, over and over again, the words &#8220;the truth,&#8221; only to make it clear that she has no idea what that is.
And from that very shaky foundation, Maher starts to derive some very shaky corollaries. At one point, Maher implies that people don&#8217;t trust the media anymore not because the media lied to them, but because people have different mistaken &#8220;truths&#8221; that they&#8217;re clinging to. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Misinformation" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IqICz5BBR5A?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&#8217;s another revealing statement that Maher makes without any justification. She&#8217;s implying that democracies aren&#8217;t (or can&#8217;t be) xenophobic or nationalist. But the Greeks were both. Greek democracies were very much “xenophobic” — if that’s how you want to put it — and nationalist in nature. There&#8217;s no doubt about that. So why is democracy the goal here? Is that even her goal?
Really, her only given justification for thinking our traditional conception of truth is inadequate, and needs to be reworked, is that the &#8220;truth&#8221; we have now is the product of a history which is also political. &#8220;History is written by victors&#8221; is one of the many cliches she invokes throughout her speeches. And she says that excludes various potential sources of knowledge like &#8220;indigenous&#8221; perspectives and practices, or women with their &#8220;emotional intelligence.&#8221;
But that&#8217;s not incompatible with the reality that &#8220;the truth&#8221; is real, is universal, and many aspects of it have been uniquely uncovered by Western thought, science, and technology. Even if you bought into Maher&#8217;s talking points about a “plurality of perspectives” being better than &#8220;one alone&#8221; for getting at &#8220;the truth,&#8221; the fact remains that it took 2,000 years of Western, Eurocentric, supposedly white supremacist, heteronormative, misogynist history for us to reach the point at which these minor tail-end improvements she&#8217;s suggesting could be made. 
It took 2,000 years of history to create the civilization that Maher is now critiquing. And if she thinks this new approach will cause some kind of &#8220;scientific revolution,&#8221; it won&#8217;t. The more likely outcome is that it will destroy the civilization that was built over thousands of years. That is the point after all. And this is the essence of what we call wokeness. The Left likes to put conservatives on the spot by demanding a definition of “woke.” Well, here it is — the rejection of truth as a category. That’s what wokeness is, when boiled down to its most fundamental parts.
As for Maher, it&#8217;s tempting to dismiss all of this footage as the ramblings of a single woman who has no idea what she&#8217;s talking about. But it&#8217;s a bit more significant than that. Maher was selected to lead NPR, after an allegedly careful vetting process. There&#8217;s no way that NPR didn&#8217;t scrutinize her beliefs, which Maher has expressed many times over the last few years in public social media posts and numerous speeches.
On Twitter, Chris Rufo has exposed some of the more deranged posts from this woman. There are really too many to mention, but suffice it to say, she&#8217;s like a woke AI bot that churns out the least original woke liberal woman talking points you can possibly imagine. She uses the word &#8220;folx,&#8221; with the &#8220;x&#8221; at the end. She says &#8220;Latinx.&#8221; She called Donald Trump a racist and cried with joy when Biden took office, of course. She wrote that she once dreamed of going on a road trip with Kamala Harris eating &#8220;nuts and baklava.&#8221; She expresses her happiness when she logs into the public WiFi at a COVID clinic and the password is &#8220;HeSheThey,&#8221; recognizing the lived experience of nonbinary patients. She calls the Internet &#8220;sexist.&#8221; 
At one point, she apologized for using the phrase “people who identify as women,” because it&#8217;s a form of “trans-erasure.&#8221; She writes about the importance of &#8220;transit justice&#8221; and vegetarian Thanksgiving, and rants about the &#8220;male gaze&#8221; and &#8220;late-stage capitalism,&#8221; even as she drew a salary of $800,000 a year. There are many more examples; Chris Rufo&#8217;s feed has categorized many of them.
To burnish her intellectual credentials even further, Maher even <a href="https://x.com/njhochman/status/1780638504097022442">sat on a panel</a> with Lizzo at a Ted conference where tickets cost more than $10,000. The name of Lizzos&#8217; talk was, &#8220;The Black history of twerking — and how it taught me self-love.&#8221; 
But Maher doesn&#8217;t need lessons on self-love, she has that covered. What she&#8217;s looking for now is power. 
In a video posted by the Atlantic Council and unearthed by Rufo, Maher explains that the First Amendment — which you&#8217;d think journalists would support, since it&#8217;s the one thing keeping journalists out of prison — is not a sacred constitutional principle. Instead, she says, it&#8217;s a &#8220;challenge&#8221; to be overcome. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 Katherine Maher Vs First Free Speech" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MGpZJt5uU2s?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>
The only people who view the First Amendment as a &#8220;challenge&#8221; are government censors who want to shut down any dissent by force. And now that she&#8217;s running a state-funded media outlet, that&#8217;s exactly what Maher is. She&#8217;s a state-funded censor.
To that end, she no longer believes in transparency. The irony is that, when she was running Wikimedia, Maher kept talking about the importance of showing people everything that&#8217;s going on inside the company. Every edit on Wikipedia, she said, is public for a reason. Disclosure is sometimes &#8220;painful,&#8221; she said, but it&#8217;s necessary. 
Transparency is key, she said at the time. But apparently this is one of the malleable &#8220;truths&#8221; that Katherine Maher has decided to discard. As you&#8217;ve probably heard, she just forced out an NPR whistleblower who <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/media/npr-editor-uri-berliner-resigns-after-bombshell-expose-reveals-networks-pervasive-left-wing-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> a damning <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust" target="_blank" rel="noopener">column</a> in the Free Press about the organization&#8217;s corruption and overwhelming bias. She <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-suspends-editor-who-accused-network-of-bias-issues-final-warning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suspended</a> this 25-year veteran of NPR without pay because he pointed out that the organization is now completely one-sided. 
For example, the whistleblower wrote:
<blockquote>Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.</blockquote>
That&#8217;s not the kind of transparency that the new NPR CEO appreciates, apparently. She&#8217;s happy to talk about how NPR employs too many white men. But she definitely doesn&#8217;t want to talk about political bias, or how useless NPR has become. It used to be that NPR at least pretended to be embarrassed about this. In 2011, NPR&#8217;s CEO at the time, Vivian Schiller, resigned after a Project Veritas sting exposed what she thought about conservatives in the Tea Party movement. To summarize: she didn’t like them. Schiller had to resign once her views came to light. Back then, NPR believed that the appearance of fairness was at least a little important.
But that was the &#8220;Car Talk&#8221; era of NPR. Now they believe their CEO can categorically reject the idea that there&#8217;s any truth to report on. This is a belief system that&#8217;s now in vogue in newsrooms all over the country. It&#8217;s a big reason for the rise of transgenderism, COVID hysteria, and all the media&#8217;s lying we had to endure under the previous administration. 
This is the belief system that insists that men can become women, because the meaning of the words &#8220;men&#8221; and &#8220;women&#8221; are subjective. And it will spell the end of Western civilization unless we reject it. That is, of course, the point of everything Katherine Maher is saying. In the absence of truth, there is only a struggle for power. And right now — and hopefully not for much longer — it&#8217;s people like Katherine Maher who have that power.

Day 2 – Web Summit 2019 Lisbon

New CEO Of NPR Is Everything Wrong With The News Media

Activists

Leftism

Legacy Media

National Public Radio (NPR)

Woke Culture

Western civilization has a major problem: Every societal ill that had been taken off the table by generations of received wisdom has now come back and come roaring back to life stronger than ever. 
The latest example of this is exemplified in a <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/im-28-and-im-scheduled-to-die">piece</a> by Rupa Subramanya in Bari Weiss’ Free Press that speaks of the spates of suicide and euthanasia growing in the West. 
The piece speaks of Zoraya ter Beek, 28, who expects to be euthanized in early May and plans to be cremated:
<blockquote>She said she was hobbled by her depression and autism and borderline personality disorder. Now she was tired of living—despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats. 
She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that “there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.” At that point, she said, she decided to die. “I was always very clear that if it doesn’t get better, I can’t do this anymore.”</blockquote>
She is not the only one, unfortunately. Euthanasia is becoming incredibly common across the West. 
In the United States, euthanasia has jumped from 2018 to 2021 by 53% and in Canada by 125%.
Increasingly, the West is legalizing euthanasia for people who are clearly not terminal. For example, Lauren Hoeve. As the piece explains: 

<blockquote>On November 30, 2022, Hoeve, a Dutch YouTube creator who was then 27, took to her newly created blog, Brain Fog, to <a href="https://hersenmist.wordpress.com/2022/11/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announce</a> that she wanted to die. She explained that she had autism, ADHD, ARFID (a.k.a. avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder), depression, anxiety, a “history of complex trauma,” and, since 2019, myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome. She added that she had registered with the <a href="https://expertisecentrumeuthanasie.nl/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Euthanasia Expertise Center</a>, in The Hague, to get the ball rolling.</blockquote>
She then committed suicide. She was 28. 
This sort of stuff is becoming more and more common. 
And it&#8217;s not just this social malady that is plaguing the West. Drug abuse is plaguing the West. 128 million Americans report having used marijuana at some point in their lifetime. It&#8217;s worth noting that marijuana today is significantly more addictive and more dangerous than marijuana when you were a kid. 
Pornography is not only widespread in its availability, but also in its use and its addiction. The latest stats show that about 70% of American men view pornography. 24% of American women say they view pornography as well. The number of people who admit to being addicted is actually quite high. The impacts of pornography on the human brain are very much like drug addiction. There&#8217;s a dopamine release, it wears off, and then people want more of the dopamine. And so they go back to the pornography. 
This empties out relations. It destroys the relationship between men and women. Men begin to see women as sexual objects in a way different than would normally be the case. It disconnects them from other human beings.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1939-our-unaliving-civilization-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
We see this with regard to major societal issues like family formation and childbearing. 31% of women aged 30 to 34 in the United States are childless now, which is much higher than ever in the United States. When it comes to LGBTQ+- identity, fully 22.3% of Gen Z say they are LGBTQ+- .
That has tremendous societal impact. It turns out that when one-fifth of your population suggests that they are no longer going to engage in monogamous heterosexual relationships with the goal of family formation, it has a major impact on your civilization. 
So what exactly is going on? Why are all of these social maladies suddenly cropping up? Social epidemics are spreading through the population like wildfire. But in order for that epidemic to actually take hand, the systemic immunity of a society has to be compromised. 
What was the immunity to all of these sorts of bad ideas? The answer for literally hundreds of years was religion. Not just because people believed in God, but because there are two particular facts about religion that are deeply necessary to understand the beneficial and salutary effects of religion on a society. 
One: Religion takes certain moral matters off the table. It says, “God says X, therefore don&#8217;t do X.” Why is that important? It&#8217;s important because when you&#8217;re talking about time-tested wisdom, one reason why any society might say something like, “God says &#8216;thou shalt not murder&#8217;” is because it takes the subject off the table for debate. Once God says it, you don&#8217;t need to come up with an independent rationale as to why it&#8217;s not okay to murder. 
The reality is that when it comes to the vast majority of rules we abide by in society, those are rules not because somebody sat somewhere in a cave and came up with a rationale for the rule, but because over trial and error, over evolutionary long periods of time, those are rules that have been found to be effective. 
You don&#8217;t have to explain why it works. You just have to know that it does work.
One of the great lies that the Enlightenment told us is that every single thing that was good required a rationale. 
That’s not even the same way that science typically works. People tend to think that science works by having a theoretician in the lab who comes up with a theory and then the theory has practical ramifications. 
Very often it&#8217;s the reverse. Very often the inventions that we use come from someone tinkering in their garage and doing trial and error until something worked. They may not even know why it worked. They just know that it did. 
That’s the first thing religion does. 
The second thing it does is to create the social fabric necessary to enforce those rules without a top-down state. It creates the intermediate institutions of society that act as an enforcement mechanism. 
If you violate the rule of society, for example, that says that you should get married and have kids and live within the boundaries of the church, the rest of the members of the church might not want you at the church. You&#8217;re not going to be part of that particular social fabric. 
That is necessary. Any society has to have rules that are enforced by social censure.
But both of the things religion provided have been dissolved. We have become the “touch the stove” civilization. 
When you teach your very young kids to avoid touching the stove you don&#8217;t explain, “Certain objects are hot. When you touch a hot object, you get burned.” You say, “Don&#8217;t touch the stove. And if you touch the stove, there will be a consequence.” 
We as a society have decided that anything we can&#8217;t explain requires us to touch the stove. So we&#8217;re going to touch the stove on everything. 
So things that we&#8217;re just common-sense propositions — such as “It is good that you get married and have children” — we as a society decided to ask, “Why not alternatives? What&#8217;s wrong with alternatives? Why can&#8217;t all alternatives be treated as perfectly equivalent?” 
The answer to that is that it fails. Society fails when you don&#8217;t have man, woman, child. End of story. Societies that don&#8217;t focus on man, woman, child fall apart because that is the basis of every functional civilization. But we decided because we couldn’t come up with a rationale, why we shouldn&#8217;t we have man, man, no child, or woman, woman, no child?
We touched the stove. The result is widespread childlessness; breakdown in family formation, destruction of existing families, children born into families where they&#8217;re not really families, just a mom and a kid, because dad is nowhere to be seen.
That has resulted in many more social maladies. We had to touch the stove when it came to drug use. We as a society had decided that it would be bad if huge swaths of the population ingested hallucinogenic drugs.
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And then we decided, well, what if we tried it? What if we touch the stove? Maybe it&#8217;ll be fine. How do we know? 
And so the time-tested wisdom that favored sobriety was thrown out the window in favor of something different. Has it been salutary in its effect on young Americans? I would suggest the answer is no. 
We used to say that engaging in pornography ought to be illicit, that it is bad that when you view pornography, it does something to your brain that is not good, it perverts your view of the opposite sex, of sex itself and of relationships. And then we decided, “Oh, but really, is it going to be that bad? What, are you just a prude, man? Can you find a rationale for your prudishness?”
The response used to be, “I don&#8217;t have to find a rationale. It&#8217;s gross and bad and you shouldn&#8217;t do it. It&#8217;s bad for your soul, and it&#8217;s bad for you.”
And that was accepted wisdom for literally hundreds of years.
And then we decided to touch the stove and find out what happens.
This has had incredibly negative effects on our civilization.

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