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It’s funny because for the longest time, it was conservatives who were faulted for embracing retrograde notions and ideas. But in 2025, it seems, the retrograde people are mostly on the Left. Not solely, though. There is a contingent of people who call themselves conservatives who are, without a doubt, retrograde. We’ll get to that in a minute. But first, let me echo the excellent points made yesterday here at The American Spectator by David Catron, who castigated what he rightly called the “ridiculous” No Kings rally on Saturday. The rally, which supposedly drew some $294 million in funding from the Usual Suspects on the Left/Democrat side to turn out what its organizers claimed was seven million people (in actuality, it was more like one tenth that many) at some 2,700 sites, was a collection of nasty, unhinged, and bitter people, a seeming large majority of which were exceedingly old. (RELATED: The Ridiculous No Kings Protest) These people sure were ready to talk a lot of smack for folks who couldn’t defend themselves against air in a kinetic fight. Quite strange, the No-Kingsers. These people sure were ready to talk a lot of smack for folks who couldn’t defend themselves against air in a kinetic fight. When overweight, unhealthy five-foot-two elderly women are out in public talking about killing Donald Trump and the people who work for him, it really does call into question what kind of out-of-touch mass psychosis we have allowed to infect the elderly in this country. I don’t warrant that these pathetic boomers in their tie-dyed t-shirts and slip-on Skechers screeching for Trump’s head are representative of a whole generation. In reality, they’re more like half. But they certainly represent the worst of that generation’s thinking, and their perspective represents the establishment of that generation. (RELATED: Unraveling the Woke Left’s Bombast) If you read my first political book, The Revivalist Manifesto, or any number of my columns in this space on the subject, you’re familiar with the theory of the Fourth Era. I’ll quickly run through this — we’ve had three distinct political eras in American history; the first began with Thomas Jefferson’s Revolution of 1800, and it ended, and the second era began, with Abraham Lincoln’s electoral victory in 1860. And the third era began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first election in 1932. That third era was marked by a number of things that are no longer true, which is why I’m theorizing that last year began the fourth political era in American history. (RELATED: The Revivalist Era Begins) One is the power of mass media to shape public opinion. Another is a public consensus around the size and scope and purpose of government, established as it was by the New Deal and Great Society regulatory and welfare states. Things like mass immigration, forbearance toward crime, increasing sexual permissiveness, globalism, and acceptance of Marxism with respect to culture and environmental conservation are hallmarks of that third era. Talk to people whose worldview was set into stone in, say, 2000, and they’re no more equipped to process the reality of 2025 than were the dinosaurs roaming the Yucatan when that meteor hit. That’s what you saw with the pathetic old farts at those No Kings rallies. They think spewing charges of “racism” and “sexism” and the like at Trump or his supporters still has power. It doesn’t. The rest of us laugh at those things. We laugh at global warming alarmism, at the idea that a government shutdown is catastrophic, at the managerial class and its ESG/DEI dogma. (RELATED: Racism, Victimhood, and Louisiana v. Callais) But the aging screechers at the No Kings rallies, willing dupes of Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America and the rest of the subversive rotter organizations who teamed up to put those fiestas on, can’t process the idea that America is moving on from their pieties. And they especially can’t process that all of the things they’ve insisted on have been proven not to work. Most of the rest of the country is wise enough to recognize that successful politics is utilitarian, and while certainly core principles should be preserved, their application has to fit the times. For example, when there is a national labor shortage that we as a country are no longer willing to paper over with mass immigration (and particularly mass illegal immigration), the presence of a massive welfare state no longer makes sense. But don’t tell that to the septuagenarian leftists loitering in the public parks on Saturday, or they’ll accuse you of bigotry toward the poor. Because 30 years ago, such an accusation would leave its victim in a state of catatonic reputational fear. Now? Meh. Nobody cares.   Nobody cares about the No Kings people. The smart money has it that the Democrats in the Senate are about to cave on the Schumer/Sombrero Shutdown because those protests were such a fizzle and a waste of money and effort. And the Democrats caving on the shutdown is all but the end of their party as a relevant political entity; what comes next is anybody’s guess. (RELATED: The Democrats Again Perform a Self-Own in Federal Shutdown) We already know what came next in the Republican Party. The bulk of it moved on from third-era old-fart thinking. Republicans of the third era were the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters. They fell for every gag, let themselves be tied in knots, and made a virtue of constant defeat. The great Sam Francis, who was called a bigot and a racist and every other terrible name for having refused to play along with the party’s failure theater, once referred to these people as the “beautiful losers” of American politics. Sometimes the beautiful losers actually won. Other than in the case of Ronald Reagan, they generally managed to lose even when they did win. Little wonder, after the post-Reagan stewards of conservatism drove the movement to such depths that the GOP was nominating John McCain and Mitt Romney for president, that someone like Donald Trump could mount a hostile takeover of the party with a little bit of media savvy and a lot of boldness. Trump gave the people, particularly on the Right, what we were looking for. And in doing so, he routed the third-era “conservatives,” the people I call the Bush Republicans, out of the party’s power centers. But they’re still around, on the periphery of power. And just like the elderly dead-enders at the No Kings rallies, they’re screeching from the sidelines in favor of old-fart thinking which hasn’t been relevant in a generation. Take, for example, former senator John C. Danforth of Missouri, whom I bet you’d forgotten all about. Danforth, who is the better part of 90 years old, put up a guest column at the Wall Street Journal pushing some consultant-driven grift of an NGO by trashing Trump and MAGA and claiming that if the GOP just went back to being the Washington Generals all will be well. “America’s center has collapsed. But it can be restored if Republicans return to their roots.” That’s actually how this thing started. The Left is in the streets demanding Stephen Miller’s assassination and celebrating Charlie Kirk’s, they’re burning down Tesla dealerships and taking pot shots at ICE agents, and somehow it’s Republicans who bear the blame. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk and the Shame of the ‘However’ Progressives) Danforth goes on… Both political parties have gravitated toward their extremes, but given our backgrounds, our primary concern is the GOP, which is firmly under MAGA’s influence. MAGA Republicanism is an incoherent form of populism — sometimes leaning right, sometimes left. It isn’t the responsible, conservative party America needs. Yeah, OK, gramps. We believe that a responsible, conservative party in this country can be defined by five key principles that Republicans have historically championed, whatever their other differences. MAGA has turned these tenets upside down. But they are our party’s foundation, and we have adopted them for Our Republican Legacy — a nonprofit advocacy organization we established last year as a home for Republicans in exile. Danforth goes on to enumerate these five principles that MAGA has turned upside down. The first one, he says, is the rule of law, grounded in the U.S. Constitution. And Trump and MAGA are responsible for the loss of the rule of law in this country. Not the myriad abuses of Barack Obama and his weaponization of government, not the abject chaos of our Democrat-run cities, not the Fani Willises, Tish Jameses and Jack Smiths of the world, not the partisan-hack judges issuing national injunctions. It’s MAGA’s fault. (RELATED: The Judicial Coup Is Collapsing) Then he assails MAGA for trashing American unity by taking on “identity politics” of the straight white male. After a half-century of open hostility to straight white men as our culture crumbled, Danforth thinks the answer is to stick his head in the sand and ignore the LGBT Alphabet mob, the snarling third wave feminists, the Black Lives Matter communist cats-paws and the other cultural revolutionaries, every one of whom have steeped themselves in identity politics, for the damage they’ve done. (RELATED: Away With the Absurdity That the Left and the Right Are Equally Vicious) Then comes a dissertation on Trump’s fiscal irresponsibility, as though Danforth and the Bush Republicans have any room to talk. They helped build the welfare and regulatory states which are the source of that irresponsiblity. Danforth even has the temerity to assail the Big Beautiful Bill as making the deficit worse while the Democrats are keeping the government shut down out of a demand for $1.5 trillion in spending the bill made go away. (RELATED: Democrats Think Trump Is Vulnerable on the Economy. They’re Wrong.) It’s one thing to be unsatisfied with current efforts at deficit reduction. It’s something else for third era Republicans to whine about the fiscal mote in anyone else’s eye. He gives the old advocacy of strong defense, as though this is somehow a failing of MAGA. And finally, Danforth says MAGA is the party of big government because of Trump’s tariffs and the fact that the federal government has taken non-voting stakes in various corporations as compensation for favorable trade policies (which is something of debatable utility, but at worst it’s a side effect of the trade policy decisions themselves). Danforth is assumedly a “free trader” in making these objections, but one reason the Bush Republicans are such dinosaurs is that their policies put American industry at such a terrible disadvantage vis-à-vis a predatory Chinese adversary raking in rapacious profits using slave labor and 19th-century environmental protections that civilized nations wouldn’t allow. (RELATED: Trump Proved ‘Experts’ Wrong About Tariffs) And he throws out this churlish line: “no administration should direct what universities can teach, where law firms can practice, or whom comedians can mock.” As though the elected head of the federal government is outside of his power deciding who that government will do business with. Let the Globetrotters goaltend, travel and shoot from out of bounds. That’s what the public paid to see, right? Except the public didn’t pay to see it, which is why Trump was elected, to Danforth’s regret. Danforth’s column is pimping for something called Our Republican Legacy, which is “the conservative alternative to MAGA populism.” In actuality, it’s a grift intended to fleece aging Republican donors into the idea that electing more gormless John C. Danforths is the way to do battle with the AOC’s, Adam Schiffs and Zohran Mamdanis of the world. The third era is over. That doesn’t mean dead-ender old-fart thinking won’t try to keep it around a little longer. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Feminism, the Nose-Ring Theory, and Our Potential Extinction Racism, Victimhood, and Louisiana v. Callais Maria Corina Machado Getting the Nobel Peace Prize Is Just Fine

It’s eerie. Gaza 2025 and Berlin 1945 are so uncannily alike. It’s not just the ruins everywhere. What grabs and shakes your attention are the executions. In April 1945, the end of Nazi Germany was inescapable. The Red Army was smashing and raping its way westward towards Berlin. The Brits, the Americans, and the Canadians controlled the air, their armies had crossed the Rhine and broken through the Siegfried Line, and Patton was surging through Bavaria and nearing Czechoslovakia. The Nazi empire of death was being exposed to the world as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald fell into Allied hands. The end of the Third Reich could come any day. But the diehard Nazis refused to do anything other than double down on death. They executed anyone they thought was responsible for betraying them, anyone who seemed ready to welcome the swiftly approaching end of Hitler’s regime. Lists were drawn up of prisoners of conscience who were killed when liberation was only days away, taking away people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Wilhelm Canaris. Less famous people were targeted as well. Children were being shanghaied to fight, and those who tried to evade were slaughtered. Lampposts were decorated with the hanged, men, women, and children, often festooned with a sign spelling out their capital heresy. (RELATED: Truth & Treason: A Tale of Moral Courage) “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” Today, we see the videos of Hamas, still trying to play for time, not disarming, using every remaining second of their rump empire in service of their cult of death, hauling out Gazans from their homes and executing them in the streets for disloyalty to Hamas’s cult, doing what is their goal and their method at once – spreading death. (RELATED: Surprise! Hamas Has Already Doomed Peace) Hitler was what stared back from the bottom of Nietzsche’s abyss. He knew people needed a faith, and he took the place occupied in the West by the God of life and brought in his God of death. He preached Darwinian victory and led his followers in an ecstasy of killing to almost achieve it. But in casting aside civilization and by unleashing death on a massive scale, he knew that the surest victor was, in the end, death itself. Piers Brendon caught the essence of what Hitler’s followers either embraced in him or ignored, but never confronted. Hitler’s path of glory led to the grave, to the final catastrophe which had long haunted his mind, to the twilight of the gods. Soaked in the romance of Wagner, whose great opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen culminates in Wotan’s burning Valhalla, Hitler seemed to relish the prospect of ending his days in an inferno of fire and blood. Shortly before becoming Chancellor, he adumbrated that terrible conclusion: in defeat “we shall never capitulate — no, never… We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world down with us — a world in flames.” And he hummed a motif from Götterdämmerung. Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, professed a similar embrace of death and scorn of those who, following the teaching of the God of Israel, choose life: “We love death as much as the Israelis love life.” This idea was enshrined in Hamas’s 1988 charter, which said of itself: “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” No Wagner for these fellows. They famously used the Nova Festival as an occasion to rape, torture, and murder a few hundred young Israeli music lovers. (RELATED: The Failing Cease-Fire) Why might Trump have negotiated a deal with people who clearly are Hitlerian in every essential, proving again and again that death is their goal above all? (RELATED: The Trump Peace Plan: Promise, Pause, or Illusion) A hint may be found in Churchill’s words as, in 1939, Parliament prepared to declare war on Germany following its invasion of Poland: The responsibility of the terrible events that are now taking place rests upon one man — the German Chancellor, who has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery to serve his own ambition. His Majesty’s Government, by their patience and perseverance in seeking every avenue of peace, have preserved the moral strength and unity of the nation. The preservation of moral strength and the unity of the nation. If we did not know it before, Vietnam showed us that democracies cannot successfully make war if their nation does not have a united sense of the moral necessity to oppose evil. Until Hitler showed that his word meant nothing by his rapid dishonoring of the Munich agreements, Britain and France shied away from war, even when it was clear — to Churchill then and to us all in hindsight — that a tough stance, timely taken, could have averted the unparalleled misery of World War II. The God-shaped hole in the heart of civilization is larger now than it was in the 1930s. Even more than then, a case has to be made that massacring babies, raping women, kidnapping hundreds, and celebrating the deaths online, on phone, and in orgasmic crowds abusing a half-naked woman’s corpse is actually morally problematic, and that a disciplined military campaign razor-focused on eliminating the ability of Hamas to fulfill its pledge to continue doing such outrages is morally sound. Thus, enough people must see that the murders go on, as death must be worshipped by all accounts until Hamas at last gets its “loftiest wish” to die for what they call god. We trust the people have souls to see. We trust in that spark of the God of life in them all, even when it seems hidden or fast asleep. We must help that spark to grow, help awaken the sleepers from their slumber. We must demonstrate the highest of aims, help it to resonate in their souls. And so we must hold open the door for the return — the return of all to their own spark of holiness, the image of God granted to all. We defy the deification of death with the message of return to life. What a miracle it would be if the death-lovers testified to the truth of the God of life! Central to the Bible is that there is something higher than law, acknowledged by law itself as superior. Called teshuva in Hebrew, meaning returning, it means that we can always return from our failings if only we choose to do that. As Ezekiel put God’s message so succinctly millennia ago, “I do not desire the death of those who die — instead, return and live!” To the degree that we can do that without gravely endangering ourselves and the innocent, we must point to the pathway of teshuva, of return, even to the wicked. What a miracle it would be if the death-lovers testified to the truth of the God of life! Trump this last week was not sanguine. “They will disarm or we will disarm them,” he said. If they hear the message of life, what a celebration will be in order. If not, Trump has committed nonetheless to help them achieve their ardent desire with the cleansing hand of force applied righteously. In either case, the world will be better. Let’s pray for the best of the options, while thanking God in either case for enabling the end of a vile and malignant movement and the emergence of a genuine hope for the lasting and true peace that is the very substance of victory. READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: We Must Have Diversity and Unity The Religious Foundations of Freedom and Democracy Empty Words From Western Allies

If California politics were a circus, Katie Porter would be the clown who sets the tent on fire, then berates the audience for watching. Once touted as the Democrats’ “suburban supermom,” she’s now better known as the rage that roared — and roared again. Her campaign for governor is circling the drain, and the only surprise is that it took this long to swirl. There’s a special kind of irony in a politician who built her brand on moral righteousness turning out to be morally rancid in person. Porter’s now-infamous meltdown — caught on camera, of course — was less a momentary lapse than a revelation. In a fit of fury over a staffer wandering into her live shot, she unleashed a tirade that made Gordon Ramsay look saintly. Her excuse later? I’m only human. True, but humanity usually involves a conscience, or at least a filter. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Glorious Return of the 5QT) There’s a special kind of irony in a politician who built her brand on moral righteousness turning out to be morally rancid in person. Porter once waved whiteboards on Capitol Hill like stone tablets from Mount Virtue, peddling transparency, fairness, and dignity. But off-camera, the halo slipped, the fangs appeared, and the mask of maternal benevolence melted into meanness. She’s the PTA mom who eats her young — the smiling face of progressive fury. Her implosion is more than a personal meltdown; it’s a mirror of a deeper decay within her party. The modern Democratic elite loves nothing more than to sneer at normalcy while showcasing counterfeit compassion. They call it empathy; it’s really elitism with better PR. Porter’s downfall is the natural end for a movement that mistakes condescension for compassion. (RELATED: The Ideologies of Western Suicide) That habit of righteousness revue was already on full display in 2023 when Porter solemnly declared that a “trans genocide” was taking place in America — one of the most reckless sound bites of the decade. It was a claim so detached from reality it bordered on performance art, the kind of hyperbole meant not to inform but to inflame. I wrote a rebuttal at the time, laying out what anyone with a grip on facts could see. There was no genocide, no systematic extermination — just a politician auditioning for sainthood in the church of hysteria. Porter’s words were calculated. They weaponized fear to signal compassion, proof that in today’s politics, emotion trumps evidence every time. (RELATED: Emotional Terrorism Doesn’t Work Anymore, and That’s a Real Problem for the Left) Her crassness is legendary even among colleagues. Staffers share stories of volcanic outbursts, aides reduced to tears, interns fleeing meetings like refugees. The woman who claims to fight for “everyday Californians” reportedly can’t stomach everyday humans. She treats the public like props in her performance of power, not partners in it. Porter’s politics always came wrapped in sanctimony — the kind that smells faintly of sanitizer and superiority. And Californians are catching on. Once seen as a “fighter for the people,” she now just looks like someone who fights people. Voters don’t want a governor who confuses scolding with strategy. They already have one who mistakes vanity for vision. Most sane Californians don’t want Gavin Newsom 2.0, and Porter looks like the beta version: just as smug, half as camera-ready, and twice as combustible. Watching her try to explain her temper was like watching a malfunctioning robot short-circuit in real time. Somewhere in Sacramento, Newsom probably grinned. For once, someone else was making him look human. (RELATED: Gavin Newsom’s New Low) It’s fitting that Porter hails from a party now defined by its disdain for the very people it claims to protect. Democrats once styled themselves as the party of the working class; now, they treat the working class like a lab specimen. Something to be poked, pitied, and promptly forgotten Porter’s implosion exposes the Democratic disease in its purest form: ethical exhibitionism masking everyday cruelty. Behind every sermon about “equity” lurks a petty tyrant, and behind every “I care” tweet, an eye-roll for the help. The modern progressive performs sincerity like it’s scripted. And Katie Porter deserves an Emmy. Her fall from grace will be written off by the pundit class as sexism or media bias, of course. It always is. The party that preaches accountability is allergic to it. But this time, even loyalists are cringing. The viral clips aren’t “taken out of context.” They are the context — a glimpse into what happens when piety puts on a power suit Her campaign’s collapse is richly deserved. Californians have endured blackouts, tent cities, water crises, and lectures from multimillionaires who live behind gates. The last thing they need is a governor who bullies her staff and belittles her base. Katie Porter’s political obituary won’t be tragic. It’ll be comic —  a cautionary tale about what happens when ego’s behind the wheel and reason’s in the trunk. The Democrats’ darling of decency turned out to be just another hall monitor with a God complex. Now, more than ever, Californians need discipline. Katie Porter, bless whatever’s left of her heart, needs decaf. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: The Most Dangerous Woman in Philanthropy How to Write About Christianity While Knowing Nothing About It Why Are So Many Young Americans Killing Themselves?

This is one of the strongest pro-life arguments

The Worst Clubhouse Meeting I Ever Attended ??️

Former Sen. John E. Sununu, a Republican, is believed to make a comeback attempt in the 2026 midterm elections. Sununu, the older brother of former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, was the youngest member of the upper legislative chamber from 2003 to 2009. He also served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2003. The Republican lost his re-election bid in 2008 to former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, who previously announced she would not seek re-election in 2026. New: Former New Hampshire Senator John E. Sununu who is the brother of former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, is expected to announce he is running for the 2026 New Hampshire Senate Race this week pic.twitter.com/NgkJ6IY6Lr — The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) October 20, 2025 POLITICO has more: He has been in contact with the White House and is expected to visit with President Donald Trump soon, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to disclose details. Trump’s endorsement will be critical in the GOP primary, even though the state’s broader electorate rejected him for president in all three of his campaigns. Sununu has long opposed Trump, serving as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign and backing former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley in 2024. He penned an op-ed ahead of the state’s GOP presidential primary last year lambasting Trump as a “loser.” Trump went on to win that primary by 11 points. Still, the scion of a prominent Republican political dynasty in the state — his father is former governor and White House chief of staff John H. Sununu and one of his brothers is former Gov. Chris Sununu — would likely give the GOP its best hope of flipping the Senate seat. New Hampshire is among the Senate races Republicans think they have the best chance to flip a seat from blue to red. New: With John Sununu expected to announce his bid for Senate as soon as this week, a memo is being circulated among Senate Republicans arguing he's a better candidate than Scott Brown.https://t.co/zpw60OpBNO — Reese Gorman (@reesejgorman) October 20, 2025 NOTUS explained: A memo circulating among Senate Republicans argues that if former Sen. John Sununu is the nominee for New Hampshire’s Senate seat, the race would shift from “competitive to a top pickup opportunity” for the GOP. Republicans are also underscoring former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s vulnerability in the race, hoping to avoid a messy primary. Brown, who lost to Jeanne Shaheen in 2014, jumped into the race for the Republican nomination earlier this year. Senate Republican leadership has been working to recruit Sununu since it was clear his brother, former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, wasn’t going to run. Majority Leader John Thune has led the charge in recruiting Sununu to run, and placed the first call to him gauging his interest earlier this year, a source familiar with the matter told NOTUS. Thune, along with former Senate Leadership Fund Chair Cory Gardner, both urged him to enter the race, multiple sources said. The memo, dated Oct. 15 and obtained by NOTUS, looks at an aggregation of public polling data and is being circulated among Senate Republicans. It comes as Sununu is expected to launch his candidacy as soon as this week. It lays out the public surveys that show Sununu within striking distance of Rep. Pappas, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, in the race to replace retiring Sen. Shaheen.