What we may not realize is when we give to others, we actually receive something in return. The things that we receive when we give are often more valuable than anything that we could give to yourselves.

courage and conviction

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A

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An episode of Lego’s Ninjago that originally aired in 2022 is suddenly drawing backlash after the social media account Libs of TikTok recently posted screenshots on X highlighting pride flags embedded in several scenes of the children’s show on Netflix. The viral post, which included one image from a 2022 episode and another from a subsequent 2022 music video, has reignited concerns that leftist gender ideology is becoming subtly normalized in children’s entertainment. The controversy centers on pride flag imagery presented in episode 10 of Ninjago: Crystalized, titled “The Benefit of Grief,” which aired on May 20, 2022. In the episode, a minor character named Sally drives the ninja characters through the desert in her father’s van, with a Progress Pride flag affixed to the rear of the vehicle. Inside the van, Sally’s guitar case is also adorned with a bisexual pride flag. The symbols are never referenced in dialogue and serve no clear narrative function; instead, they exist as environmental details placed squarely within view. The flag imagery aligns with Sally’s arc in the episode, which mirrors a familiar coming-out framework. She is running away from home, struggles with emotions she wishes she could suppress, fears her parents’ reaction, and ultimately returns to be embraced and forgiven. The character, featured in a show rated as suitable for children aged 7 and older on Netflix, is described as “bisexual” according to a fan wiki page.   The messaging was not solely contained to that episode. In October 2022, the Lego Group released a YouTube music video called “Inner Steel (Sally’s Song),” which again centers on the one-off side character. In the video, Sally is depicted playing a guitar emblazoned with a Pride Progress Flag. The character sings ambiguous lyrics, such as  “Nothing’s ever how you thought it would be. Easy for some, harder for people like you and me,” in the first verse. Later lyrics reference “blinders shut and not a thing to see,” culminating in the line, “I’m ready to come right home.” Supporters of the gender ideology in the children’s show responded to the controversy on X. They wrote, “Oh no! People exist that are different from me! The horror!” as well as “For all it’s [sic] corporate bulls***, LEGO is pretty based with social issues and has always been. Nice s***.”   Critics had a different perspective. “Welp, add another one to the LIST,” one critic wrote on X, above a picture of a list of companies that decided to “Go Woke, GO Broke,” while another critic said, “[T]argeting children like this is a crime.” Gender ideology themes were not isolated to 2022. Ninjago underwent a major reboot in 2023 with Ninjago: Dragons Rising, which features several characters whose plotlines involve their identity or sexuality. Fans and critics alike have pointed this out after the new controversy. As they observe, Cole, a main character of the show since 2011, has been written into an implied homosexual relationship with a purple troll man. Together, they are shown to have three adopted children. One core plotline in the reboot revolves around one of the adopted kids, Bonzle, a skeleton girl who is considered a “spell” and the key to saving the world. When her witch-mother reunites with her, Bonzle remarks, “You recognize me? Even in my [new] physical form? I was so afraid you wouldn’t accept me for who I am now.” The witch-mother affirms the skeleton girl and says, “I always hoped you would be different.” Ninjago’s reboot features a new main character, Sora, an inventor who left home after being mistreated by her parents and her hometown. Sora is stylized as a “gamer girl,” wearing cat-ear headphones and an outfit colored similarly to the transgender flag. In the series, her first story arc involves rebelling against her parents to embrace her true identity. One scene shows her arguing with her parents in a pro-trans allegory. Imploring their daughter to come home, Sora rejects them and gives a speech: “You abandoned me. I thought I had to prove myself to you, but you should never have to prove your worth to your own parents…. I have a new family, one that loves me for who I really am.”  Her parents, meanwhile, are depicted as unquestioning loyalists to an authoritarian leader revealed to be a villain, a contrast that reinforces a familiar ideological framing around President Donald Trump.  Chris “Doc” Wyatt, a lead writer for this newest Ninjago reboot, makes his leftist views explicitly known online. “Unconstitutional. Un-American. Tyrannical. Treasonous,” Wyatt wrote on Bluesky, in response to an NBC news article about Trump “seeking a third term.” Lego has been explicit about its intentions. In a post published on the company’s website, Matthew Ashton, vice president of design at the Lego Group, described the “Everyone Is Awesome” Pride set as a deliberate statement meant to “represent the broad diversity of everyone within the LGBTQIA+ community.” Ashton wrote that “representation is so important,” recounting his own experience as “a gay kid” growing up during the AIDS crisis. He explained that the set deliberately includes the pale blue, white, and pink colors of the transgender flag, along with a “purple drag queen” figure, calling the design a statement of Lego’s values. “This is what we stand for at The LEGO Group,” Ashton stated. He added that he was proud to work for a company that “wants to have a voice on topics like this.” Despite America’s rejection of gender ideology, the Lego group seems more interested in pushing their political agenda onto children and acting as their employees’ medium for trauma therapy than selling a good children’s toy.

When faced with a crisis, the ancient Romans sometimes turned to plagiarism. Take, for instance, the Second Punic War: Hannibal had managed to cross the Alps with his famous elephants and had promptly descended into the neighborhood of Cannae, where he slaughtered some tens of thousands of Roman men in one of the most brilliantly orchestrated battles in history. There was, practically speaking, nothing much stopping him from approaching Rome. Since offering sacrifices to their own pantheon wasn’t quite doing the trick, the Romans (per Livy) turned to a little known goddess from somewhere else named Cybele. As one might imagine, her specialty was war. From a Roman perspective, the tactic worked: In 202, Scipio managed to decisively defeat Hannibal, and a little more than 50 years later, the Romans salted the Carthaginian earth. Cybele might have disappeared quietly, known only by Livy’s reference to her. But she didn’t. (READ MORE: Catholics Blast Notre Dame’s Promotion of Abortion Activist) Cybele, you see, was good at something else the Romans were struggling with at the time: fertility. At the time the Blessed Virgin was raising the Christ Child, Caesar Augustus was using the law to try and persuade Roman women to have more than three children — given that skeletons of elite women in Herculaneum suggest they were having less than two children on average, those measures were easily justified. On the religious and propagandistic front, Cybele remained prominent. That seems ironic for an empire whose doctors happily employed more than two hundred abortifacients to rid Romans of their unwanted children. While Romans apparently recognized that children are a critical component of preserving a civilization, individuals weren’t all that interested in having children themselves. Unsurprisingly, their city and their empire eventually collapsed. I’m not the first person to tell this story — plenty of writers and pro-life thinkers have noted that ancient Rome’s population problem is very similar to our own. But despite knowing how that story ended, our birth rate remains a problem we haven’t solved. Last month, the Congressional Budget Office adjusted the population prediction it had made just last year. Taking into account lower immigration levels (until 2029) and the way birth rates have continued to plummet, it estimated that its original prediction for peak population was too high by eight million people. At this point, it looks like the death rate in the U.S. will overtake its birth rate in 2030 and that we’ll start seeing population decline sometime in the mid-2050s. The new predictions are, as Daniel Di Martino from the Manhattan Institute said, both the most “pessimistic and realistic of any government agency.” They may still be too high. They assume that our country’s plummeting fertility rates will stabilize at 1.5 births per woman sometime around 2036, and stay constant ever after. It would be inaccurate to suggest that we’re walking into this crisis unknowingly and without trying to avert it. Public figures like Elon Musk have frequently commented on it. Many on the Right (like Charlie Kirk) have attempted to inspire people to live the kinds of lives that would avert it. Inspiration is great, but ultimately, reversing population decline is going to require more than just inspiration. We can debate cultural and economic factors endlessly, but the fact is our government’s public policy directly ends hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and that’s going to require some legal changes — changes the Trump administration seems loath to make. (READ MORE: New York State Serves Up Insanity on Egg Freezing) Earlier this month, some Senate members attended a closed-door briefing with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. One of the topics of conversation? The abortion pill, mifepristone. Apparently, the briefing didn’t go super well. The FDA is in the process of doing a safety review of mifepristone, but according to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Makary couldn’t give a timeline on that review. He didn’t explain what it would involve. He didn’t even say whether it was underway. When Politico reached out to the FDA for comment, they were referred to a previous statement. It should be noted that the safety review is rather important. Last year, the Ethics and Public Policy Center used insurance claims to determine that “the rate of life-threatening complications due to mifepristone is at least 22 times higher than what the FDA … suggest[s].” The analysis found that more than one in 10 women who received chemical abortions experienced potentially life-threatening events, including “emergency room visits, hemorrhage, sepsis, infection, and/or follow-up surgeries” within 45 days of taking the pill. Despite the danger, mifepristone is responsible for well over half the abortions taking place in the United States. There are, from a moral perspective, two paramount issues with the abortion pill. The most important is that it is designed to take the life of an unborn child; the second is that it frequently inflicts harm on that child’s mother. Tragically, neither of those moral issues has been sufficient to galvanize the government into action. Perhaps this lesser issue will. Mifepristone is partly responsible for the coming population crisis — both because the drug actually kills babies and because its ease of access perpetuates a culture of death. If we want to avert it and preserve our civilization (something Secretary of State Marco Rubio admirably defended in Munich this past weekend), we’re going to need to ban the pill. READ MORE from Aubrey Harris: Olympic Athletes Fail at Their One Job