The prophet Isaiah warned a wayward nation: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.” Right was condemned as wrong, and what darkened the soul was repackaged as enlightenment. Isaiah cautioned that rejecting God’s word would bring devastation. The warning still stands. Two developments last week expose the warning’s timeliness. For years, activists in media and government have advanced a gender ideology that tells even children they can choose an identity opposite of their biological reality. That confusion is not benign. In Minneapolis, a gunman opened fire during a school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church, killing two children and injuring many others. Police identified the attacker as Robert Westman, who identified as transgender and, in notes posted before the attack, expressed regret and anger about “being trans” and deep confusion about identity. This is not isolated. Recall the Covenant School massacre in Nashville, and now we have Minneapolis—both carried out by individuals who identified as transgender. The point is not to stigmatize anyone; it is to confront a reality our culture keeps trying to deny: ideas have consequences and masquerading a lie as the truth can be deadly. Yet rather than pause to reassess the narrative, legacy outlets scolded themselves for “misgendering.” NBC News even issued a correction after its initial report used what it called the wrong pronoun when referring to Westman as “he.” “She used female pronouns,” NBC sycophantically stated. This, despite law enforcement identifying the killer as male. What a commentary on the press. Apologizing for mistakenly telling the truth reflects a deeper malady: trading evil for good and darkness for light. And when this deception is celebrated, children suffer. A civilization cannot protect what it refuses to name, and language becomes a veil for violence. Still, the media is not the fountainhead of this confusion; they are its amplifiers. The deeper problem is philosophical. If truth is now established by feelings, then law must enforce the feelings. That brings us to this week’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., berated a State Department nominee for affirming the American principle that our rights come from God, not government—calling that view “very, very troubling,” and likening it to the ideology of Iran’s theocracy. Think about that: the creed of the Declaration recast as dangerous and akin to the rule of the Ayatollahs. Our Founders knew better. Thomas Jefferson wrote that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Alexander Hamilton insisted the “sacred rights of mankind” are “written, as with a sunbeam, by the hand of the Divinity itself” and cannot be erased by mortal power. Governments secure rights; they do not invent them. And when government presumes to redefine reality—whether human nature or human rights—it imperils the very people it claims to protect. So here is the choice: return to first principles—truth over ideology, reality over rhetoric, the Creator over the state—or keep stumbling in the dark while calling it light. For the sake of our children and our country, choose the true light—and live by it. Originally published by The Washington Stand We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Democracy Dies in Denial appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Is Net Zero Ideology Dying?

Deinosuchus had a dino-based diet.

In his 1967 interview with the CBC, media and communications theorist and devout Catholic Marshall McLuhan said: “I think a great deal of the confusion and misery of our time is related to the fact that people are still trying to find goals in a world that is moving so fast that no possible goal can remain in focus for 10 seconds.” He's even more right now than he was then.And from our vantage, it's now clear the solution to McLuhan’s conundrum is to pick a goal, make it deep, and never let go.But how and at what cost?Right up front: As our technological society’s hyper-speed intimates danger, violence, even annihilation, one must redirect the urgency, the anxiety to one goal. Pick one with heart measured against timeless wisdom. Pick the goal, re-evaluate in a year, refine the focus. Let go of the idea that they know something you don’t.What’s not going to work is mere adjustment in program or technique. Technique is proving to be difficult to control. Psychological technique is not spiritual athleticism. Sorting out your dopaminergic addiction may be helpful, but withdrawing from addiction is not an affirmative act, certainly not one of prayer, pilgrimage, or liturgy. Fortunately, anything we do can become a form a prayer. Castaneda called this the act of power. Prayer is going to help you refine, flex, and adapt for the long haul. Yes, it's a spiritual problem: The mass, scale, and terrifying velocity of the technologized world have reduced whole populations to amnesia, abulia, and apathy. Surprised? Why? AI creators have no idea how their creation works, but the whole of our social organizations are nonetheless committed to it, and its data centers are positioned to terraform our very living environment. Let go of the idea that they know something you don’t. Tongue planted in cheek, Cormac McCarthy once said, "Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing." Gallows humor is appropriate to the odds involved in securing your orienting goal. Pick one you might never reach but toward which you can certainly make steady progress. RELATED: 'Transhumanist goals': Sen. Josh Hawley reveals shocking statistic about LLM data scraping Photo by Nurphoto / Contributor via Getty ImagesLike the stone carver, chip away. Let the chipping away become prayer. McCarthy chose art, McLuhan held it together with his religion. This nexus holds all the good goals. Raising the goal to art directs the energies toward God. There’s a model here. The same center-pivot of our contested civilization — the cross — holds the key to never letting go of your chosen goal. The crucifixion, while itself a tremendous sacred mystery, is also the single most defiant act in all history. Earthly rulers defied divine law. Divine law repossesses earthly rule. Christ, the God-Man, defies our fallen condition by submitting to the whole ordeal. The cosmic order is remade. Perhaps the selection and perseverance toward a goal is not so far from martyrdom. It’s better than being someone else’s human resource. The initial costs are extensive, levied mostly against self-delusion. But social and financial frictions will also require renegotiation against the value of your goal, your commitment. Clarity gained in defiance compounds, however, and on the back end, there is genuine value: something measured in blood, spiritual weight. Everything shed as cost is related to pride and external validation. We’re emerging (hopefully) from about 70 years of mind-control operations — our validation metrics are guaranteed to be garbage. Your soul is required in this process, no doubt. Yet here again, inner value arises in relation to integrity and trust. Let it never be said that the prescription here (grab a goal and hold on for dear life) is easy, or should be. The claim is only that it works. Noetic value is mined or generated via consistency. It reforms human experience at depth. You exist as a living example for others to seek their own contribution of value. In the end, choose your fighter, or choose both and remix. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." William Blake said that “if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.” OK, so pick a worthy goal with heart, and accept the terms. The costs will be heavy up front but light on the back end, and you’ll go out with full awareness of your life’s work. The alternative is rolling over to die and/or living your life in constant anxiety — and potentially, in service of evil. You make the call.

With Rep. John James (R-Mich.) turning his sights to the governor's mansion in Michigan, some conservatives have been on the hunt for someone who can take James' place representing the 10th district of Michigan in Congress. And they think they've found their man — Captain Mike Bouchard, son of longtime Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.Back in July, the super PAC Draft Captain Mike Bouchard announced a list of those who hope to entice the 31-year-old Michigan Army National Guard captain to run as a Republican for the seat James will vacate at the end of this term. The 19 initial names on that list included: his father, Sheriff Bouchard; Macomb County Prosecutor Pete Lucido; and Macomb County Treasurer Larry Rocca.'He’s a true American warrior.'That list has since grown to 32 supporters, including rock legend Ted Nugent, former Michigan Gov. John Engler and his wife, and former state Attorney General Bill Schuette, according to a press release given to Blaze News.Sheriff Bouchard, who took the reins at the Oakland County Sheriff's Office in 1999, expressed enthusiasm for his son's candidacy."My son ... is an amazing person and is very qualified to do this," the sheriff told Blaze News."He wanted to be in the Army from the time he was tiny," the proud dad continued. "... He feels very strongly about serving this country, and I think the next step in his mind would be to serve in a different capacity where his experience and knowledge could help.""He's just wanting to make a difference."RELATED: Rep. John James hammers Michigan GOP over political failures: 'What are we even talking about?' Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesSheriff Bouchard has been a familiar name in Michigan and Republican circles for more than 30 years. He spent nearly a decade in the Michigan legislature before turning to law enforcement. He was named the Ferris E. Lucas Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriffs' Association in 2016, the sheriff of the year by the Michigan Sheriffs’ Association in 2022, and the sheriff of the year by Major County Sheriffs of America just this year.Captain Bouchard, a full-time operations officer with the Michigan National Guard, is currently deployed to the Middle East but is expected to return home sometime this fall. He could not be reached for comment.Other conservatives are also hopeful he'll agree to jump in the race."While playing a sold-out concert in Macomb County, I heard the news that Army Captain Mike Bouchard may be running for Congress," Nugent said, according to the press release. "I couldn’t be more excited! He’s a true American warrior, currently serving overseas, and I know he’ll be a relentless fighter for us in Washington.""I am proud to support Captain Mike Bouchard for Congress," added a statement from Schuette. "I served in Congress. I know what it takes to succeed and to serve Michigan — and Mike Bouchard has exactly the right skills and talent to get the job done."In response to a request for comment about Captain Bouchard's possible candidacy, a spokesperson for Rep. James told Blaze News, "Given the current dynamics and potential candidates in Michigan's 10th District, John's confident [Republicans] will hold the seat."Other Republicans who have expressed interest in running for the 10th congressional district of Michigan, covering an area just north of Detroit, include state Rep. Joe Aragona, assistant prosecutor Robert Lulgjuraj of Sterling Heights, and former Oakland County GOP Chairman Rocky Raczkowski of Troy, the Detroit News reported.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

It arrived in July under the kind of blandly aspirational title that Washington favors for its grand designs: America’s AI Action Plan. The document, running to over 90 federal actions, spoke of securing leadership, winning a global “AI race,” and ushering in a “new golden age.” One imagines the interagency meetings, the careful calibration of phrases meant to signal both urgency and control. It uses the peculiar dialect of American power, a blend of boosterism and threat assessment, and tells a story not just about a technology, but about the country that produced it.At its heart, the plan is a declaration of faith, a very American conviction that the future, however unnerving, can be engineered. The document is laced with a sort of technological patriotism, the belief that American ingenuity, if properly unleashed and funded, is the presumptive solution to any problem, including the ones it itself creates. The rhetoric is that of a race, a competition we are destined to win. One is meant to be reminded of other races, other moments when the national project was fused with a technological imperative. The Apollo program, with its clean narrative arc of presidential challenge and triumphant splashdown, is the obvious touchstone. The plan is a testament to the enduring belief that American leadership is allied with American technology, that to export one is to secure the other. The plan’s talk of a “roadmap to victory” is Kennedy’s moonshot rhetoric retooled for the age of algorithms. But the echoes are older, deeper. They resonate with the hum of the first power lines stretching across the Tennessee Valley, with the clatter of the transcontinental railroad, with the foundational belief in a frontier to be conquered. The AI frontier, the plan suggests, is simply the latest iteration of manifest destiny, a digital territory to be settled and civilized according to American norms. The plan refracts the national character through policy. There is the profound distrust of centralized control, a legacy of the country’s founding arguments. The strategy frames the government’s role as that of an “enabler,” not a commander. The private sector will “drive AI innovation.” The government will clear the way, removing “red tape and onerous regulation,” while also suggesting that federal funds might flow more freely to states with a more permissive regulatory climate. It is a philosophy of governance as groundskeeping: tend the soil, remove the weeds, and let a thousand private-sector flowers bloom. This is the American way, a stark contrast to the European impulse to regulate first and ask questions later, or the Chinese model of state-directed, top-down command. RELATED: Europe pushes for digital ID to help 'crack down' Photo by Nurphoto / Contributor via Getty ImagesThis impulse extends even to the vexing question of truth, a concept that has become distressingly fluid. The plan insists that AI models must be “free from ideological bias.” It directs federal agencies to shun AI systems that engage in social engineering or censorship. One could see this as a noble commitment to objectivity. One could also see it as a maneuver in the country’s raging culture war, embedding a particular vision of neutrality into the machines themselves. The plan calls for scrubbing terms like “misinformation” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from official AI risk frameworks, quietly acknowledging that the machines are not just calculating, but inheriting, our arguments. The concern is palpable: that AI, in its immense power to sort and present information, might become an Orwellian tool. The plan’s promise to avoid that future attempts to reassure a public deeply suspicious of the selective amplification or suppression of particular voices. Beneath the policy directives lies a familiar foundation of steel and concrete, or rather, silicon and fiber optics. The second pillar of the plan, “Build American AI Infrastructure,” is a 21st-century update to the great nation-building projects of the past. Its ambition is breathtaking. To power the immense computational thirst of AI, the plan calls for a wholesale modernization of the energy grid, even urging the revival of nuclear power. It seeks to accelerate the construction of semiconductor fabs and data centers, those anonymous, humming cathedrals of the digital age, by streamlining environmental reviews. The message is clear: The AI revolution will not be stalled by paperwork. Just as the Industrial Revolution demanded coal and the automotive age demanded highways, the AI age demands an enormous supply of electricity and processing power. And it needs people. The plan recognizes a coming shortage of electricians and HVAC technicians, the blue-collar workforce required to build and maintain the physical shell of this new intelligence. This is a telling detail, a reminder that even the most ethereal technology rests on a bedrock of manual labor. The final pillar extends this project globally, recasting diplomacy as a form of technological export. The plan advocates for a “full AI technology stack” to be pushed to allies, a Marshall Plan for the digital age. By exporting American hardware, software, and standards, the U.S. aims to create an ecosystem, a sphere of influence. The logic is one of interdependence: Nations running on American AI will be more amenable to American norms. This is techno-diplomacy, a great-power competition played out in server farms and source code. It is a strategy of pre-emption, an attempt to ensure the world’s operating system is written in a familiar language, before a rival power can install its own. The plan is a testament to the enduring belief that American leadership is allied with American technology, that to export one is to secure the other. It is a vision of a world made predictable through the careful management of a powerful new tool. And it is a wager, a very American wager, that we can shape our tools before they shape us.

The singer proves capable of handling everything from traditional and modern folk to Brill Building tunes and rock. The post Marianne Faithfull Box Collects Singer’s 1960s Recordings: Review appeared first on Best Classic Bands.

Sam Stein’s Latest Lie: Smearing Kavanaugh with a Bogus Racial Profiling Claim

Karen Bass ‘Dissents’ With Supreme Court ICE Ruling, Trump to Restart Sweeping Deportation Raids in L.A.