Hebrew Scripture has many accounts of great victories, such as Joshua’s conquest of the Holy Land and King David’s many successful battles against his enemies all around. But its pages are also filled with accounts of defeat, destruction and exile.  All are part of sacred history.  The Biblical texts teach defeat was a result of our own failings, whatever else might be going on. Conquerors like Nebuchadnezzar are not excused, but our first responsibility is not their evil, but our own. The Abraham Accords give real hope that we all may choose life .. and so help the cults of victimhood … die a swift, painless, and, natural death. Why should the Bible not focus on the greater evil of the Babylonian emperor? It is because it is teaching us a great lesson — even in defeat, one still has agency that no conqueror can ever take away. Even in defeat, we justify what happened as an act of Providence from which we may recover and even gain if we learn its hard truth. The alternative is to be stuck in rationalizations and excuses that keep us subservient to something other than truth and truth’s Author.  The late Professor Bernard Lewis pointed out that defeat and persecution were suffered in the formative years of the Jewish and Christian faith communities. Lewis compared this to Islamic history. Islam knew only victory for nearly a century after its founding. It established an empire that stretched eastward, northward, and westward from its birthplace in the Arabian Peninsula, until it stretched all across northern Africa and into Europe. Only there, after a hundred years, was its expansion decisively checked for the first time at Tours, France. This proved only a breathing spell. Islam survived the brief setback at Tours and later of the Crusades.  It recouped from its loss in the Holy Land and went on to expel the Christian kingdom from there. By the middle of the 15th century, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and ended the Roman Empire that had been officially Christian for more than a thousand years. Constantinople became the home of the caliphate and the conquering Ottoman armies forged on ever deeper into the middle of Europe until it was, at last, twice turned back at the gates of Vienna, in 1529 and again in 1683. Vienna was the highwater mark of the Ottomans empire and of Islamic empire. Driven by intense civilizational development, Christian Europe began a prolonged ascendancy as the worldly power of Islam entered into a long decline.  Lewis argued that because its formative years were years of triumph and expansion, Islam was ill-equipped to deal with defeat, decline, and exile. The extended decline in power that stretched from the late 1600s deep into the 20th century had no precedent in its history. Its culture preserved few lessons on spiritual wrestling with defeat, and little sacred history of communal self-examination and spiritual regeneration. For centuries, the subservience of Christians, Jews, and others to the Islamic power was attributed to Islam’s being the supreme expression of God’s will. Faced with defeat, and with no model of how to deal with it, believers look to find a powerful culprit to blame for the defeat. The crushing cognitive dissonance of belief in Islam’s superiority and the reality of Islamic political and economic decline and (often) political subservience weighed heavily on the community. This proved a rich loam for the growth of conspiracy theories.  These metastasized when Jews began to return in numbers to their ancient Jewish homeland, one of the first of Islam’s conquests beyond its Arabian birthplace. That the Jews, whose long exile had begun centuries before Islam’s emergence in the 600s, should successfully forge an independent state in one of the earliest Islamic conquests seemed to some nothing less than satanic. Lewis traces the growth of this kind of thought in his scholarly works, and shows how it dovetailed well with the demonic antisemitism that was offered as the explanation for Russian misery under the Tsars and for German defeat after World War I. (Modern observers tell of the ubiquity of European antisemitic fabrications such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and of Nazi literature in Hamas homes and in bookstores throughout the Middle East.) When one is fighting Satan, the gloves go off. Satan has destroyed the natural order by defeating the True Religion. Therefore, the upholders of the great God are justified in setting aside every restraint in battling God’s enemy.  Such attitudes are known to Jewish and Christian history as well. Case in point: the Reformation. To the militant reformers, the Catholic church had become the Whore of Babylon; to the counter-reformers, the Protestants were heretics deserving of sudden death in the night, doors marked for death on the night of the St. Bartholomew massacres. The decades of battle that began with the Reformation did not end until the Peace of Westphalia. What rescued Europe from mutual annihilation over religion was the discovery of a deeper organizing principle within the religious tradition itself that allowed it to embrace the diversity that inevitably results from freedom. Hugo Grotius’ scholarship leaned on the Jewish tradition of the Seven Noahide Laws — a basic framework of common laws observed by all, while  reserving to nations the freedom to work out the rest of the details by themselves.  However unsatisfactory to some, however imperfectly, Europe forswore the drive for a total victory to affirm religious truth. The Jewish tradition had provided the cornerstone for this new structure, and it is easy to understand why. Dealing with defeat, learning how not to be defeated by setbacks, was a central part of the Scriptural message.  A particularly good example of this is found in Jeremiah. The prophet addressed the defeated Jews as they went in exile in Babylonia about 2500 years ago. Speaking in God’s name, he instructed the exiles to build a regular life and to be helpful and positive participants in the life of the place where they will live: Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, do no decrease. And seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its prosperity, you shall prosper. No brooding over the evil that has overtaken them. Go build your lives again, not only with God’s blessing but as a divine task. Plunge into the basics of ongoing life, and so to regain yourself from internalizing victimhood and destroying your life from within. Jewish life has taken that moral imperative of Jeremiah’s message and expressed it in legal terms as well. The principle in Jewish law is “dina demalchuta — the law of the kingdom is binding by force of Jewish law.” There are exceptions: when the kingdom is so corrupt that it is more like a band of brigands, or if the kingdom decides to use its laws to persecute Jews and suppress Jewish practice. But the rule that applied most of the time was that, with the force of the Torah itself, one follows the law of the sovereignty in which one finds oneself. This principle guides Jewish communities from within, directing them on Judaism’s own terms to offer their host community exactly what Washington asked of the Jews of the Newport congregation in 1791 — to offer at all times their effectual support. And there is a marvelous historical track record of Jews making major contributions to the life of their host countries whenever they were allowed the chance, both in the Christian and Muslim worlds. When Lewis pointed out that Islam’s lack of experience with defeat left it prone to conspiracy theories of the most fantastic sort, his desire was to give a roadmap towards something better. He believed in our ability to find a way to peace. For him, there is no reason why Muslims will not develop their own distinctive way forward. Many have already done just that, in full fidelity to their tradition and to God. The example of the Abrahamic religions project in the UAE is a sterling example of this, and it is sad that the professor didn’t live to see it. But Prof. Lewis’ scholarship continues to allow us to understand why the difficulties that modern times have brought have generated movements that view Christian and Jewish cultures and nations as satanic, why they justify intolerance, intransigence, dissembling, and a commitment to whatever is necessary to re-establish Muslim rule wherever it once had been and to spread it everywhere else.  Progressive academia has a major hand in our continuing ignorance. The academic Left rejected Lewis’ scholarship in favor of the work of Edward Said, whose narrative of colonialism was much more to their taste. The result has been our inability to comprehend the violence and identify the reality of the comprehensive conspiracy-haunted paranoia driving it. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in response Keir Starmer’s milquetoast cliches offered as a response to the Jihadi assassination of Jews in Manchester on Yom Kippur, Britain stands at a fork in the road. But the choice is not, as Starmer claimed, between “decency” and “division.” It is between delusion and decision. It is between barbarism and civilization. We have not yet learned sufficiently. Without the insight of people like Lewis, like Hirsi Ali, we don’t know how to combat the aggressive rationalizations of those celebrating the deaths of the murdered Jews in Manchester or in Israel. We fear they must have something right.  But there is a piece missing, the same piece missing in Hitlerism or tsarism or Communism — the piece that enables one to suffer defeat, learn from it, and grow. The piece that enables us to always be free even when outwardly conquered. The piece that enables us, even if victimized, to refuse to define ourselves in the end as victims. The piece the violent Islamists and their fellow travelers are missing. Identifying the truth here is what enables a great civilization to regain and exceed its former greatness. The Abraham Accords give real hope that we all may choose life, as God implores us to do, and so help the cults of victimhood and their terrible paranoia die a swift, painless, and natural death.  Read a little of Lewis. Try Semites and Antisemites as a starter. The truth within it can help anyone be a powerful agent for change in a world that needs that very much. What confronts us in the Middle East and on our cities’ streets becomes more understandable. When we understand what we face, we can forge intelligent policy that moves away from delusion and toward real peace. READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: From Berlin to Gaza, the Cult of Death Marches On We Must Have Diversity and Unity The Religious Foundations of Freedom and Democracy  

Mass immigration and rising godless progressivism have resulted in a surge of hostility and violence against Christians in Europe, but the same could happen in America if American Christians aren’t careful. José Luis Bazán, a consultant to Europe’s Catholic bishops, recently issued a report on the phenomenon, documenting roughly 1,600 attacks against Catholic Churches in France and Greece, as well as similar attacks in Spain and Italy. “These attacks reflect a climate of ideological hostility toward religion,” Bazán told Catholic News Agency. “Attacks or acts of vandalism against places of worship are pandemic,” he emphasized. “We have fragmentary elements here and there, but if you put them all together, you realize the upward trend.” Meanwhile, America’s Catholic bishops prattle on about anti-racism and the need to welcome foreign hordes from the third world into our nation. Much of the violence is fueled by the influx of Muslims Europe has been victim to over the past several decades, which is often permitted and even welcomed by secular, progressive authorities. Similar trends have been noted by watchdog organizations like the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe). Over the course of 2023, OIDAC Europe reported, cases of hostility and violence against Christians soared, with Islam-inspired attacks and hate crimes more than doubling. A few recent examples of that hostility include the vandalizing of a Catholic Jesuit church in Germany, the firebombing of an evangelical church in Switzerland, acts of defilement and vandalism against a German Protestant church, the vandalism of Catholic churches in Munich, death threats against a German pastor, the murder of an Assyrian Christian in France, an arson attack against a French Catholic church, a rash of theft and vandalism targeting Catholic churches in Italy, and vandalism and arson attacks targeting a church in Spain. Those are just a few examples from August to early this month. Yet European authorities continue to promote progressive, anti-Christian ideologies and welcome violent Muslim insurgents, all while deriding Christians. A recent European Union report, for example, labeled Catholics “religious extremist actors” due to the Catholic Church’s age-old position opposing abortion, but Islam was mentioned only once. The situation may not be quite so dire for Christians in America — yet — but it may quickly become so. Already, the targeting of Christian churches and organizations is becoming increasingly commonplace. Catholic churches across the U.S. have been attacked and vandalized over the past several years, particularly during the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 and in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. According to CatholicVote, nearly 540 American Catholic churches have been targeted since May of 2020, with attacks ranging from vandalism and property destruction to firebombing and arson. Additionally, civil authorities have targeted Catholics. Then-president Joe Biden’s FBI oversaw a program to illegally infiltrate and spy on American Catholic traditionalists, labeling them “ethnically motivated violent extremists,” based largely on information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Numerous Christian pro-lifers found their homes raided and themselves arrested, prosecuted, and even jailed for their commitment to defending the innocent unborn. Notably, Christian husband and father and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated last month, a tragedy which leftists celebrated online. Meanwhile, America’s Catholic bishops prattle on about anti-racism and the need to welcome foreign hordes from the third world into our nation. If the bishops enjoy walking the streets outside of their often-borderline-palatial residences, attending swanky fundraising dinners, or even just preaching from the pulpit without being stabbed, shot, run over, or firebombed by Muslims, they may want to ease up on the immigration rhetoric. As for those of us who must sit in the pew as our bishops deliver diluted diatribes on the thinly-veiled social justice theme of the day, we must be aware of the present state of our nation and work and vote to empower leaders who love the Christian faith and have the courage and strength to defend our nation’s spiritual heritage. If we do not, we may soon follow in Europe’s bloodied and bruised footsteps. READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: How Islam Conquered Catholic Spain — Again The Life and Death of the Traditional Latin Mass How the SPLC Targets Catholics and Other Christians  

Just ninety miles from Florida, China has begun its most audacious experiment in the West. On October 23, 2025, the Chinese Foreign Ministry reaffirmed that Beijing “firmly supports the Cuban people in safeguarding sovereignty and dignity, and in opposing external interference and the blockade.” In Beijing’s language, “sovereignty” now means the right to wire, watch, and instruct the island into alignment. Cuba is no longer merely friendly with China, it is being rebuilt in its image. Havana is only the first link. In 2025, Beijing expanded its infrastructure footprint in Jamaica, Antigua, and the Dominican Republic. The evidence is visible from orbit. Between 2024 and 2025, analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported in China’s Intelligence Footprint in Cuba that four Chinese-linked listening posts ,Bejucal, Wajay, Calabazar, and El Salao – had expanded dramatically. At the same time, Newsweek published satellite imagery revealing a 175-metre antenna ring at Bejucal — a precision-engineered ear capable of intercepting high-frequency radio across the American Southeast. At El Salao, forty miles from Guantánamo Bay, a companion array rose beside Chinese-funded industrial projects. The pairing was no accident: industry hides the intelligence. U.S. officials confirm that China “has access to intelligence facilities on the island.” Technicians from Huawei and ZTE have been seen entering restricted zones. They are not fixing phone masts; they are extending Beijing’s listening range. In 1962, Cuba threatened the United States with Soviet missiles. In 2025, it does so with Chinese receivers. If Bejucal listens, ETECSA, Cuba’s state telecom monopoly — transmits. Its routers, towers, and switching systems are Chinese-made, and Huawei’s eSight software manages connectivity and censorship alike. During the 2024 protests, the government throttled the internet within hours. By this year, more than 80 per cent of the island’s digital backbone was Chinese-built, Western analysts say. Every Cuban message now travels through Beijing’s circuitry. The partnership was formalized under a 2023 “Cyber Sovereignty” agreement that Beijing said would “safeguard information integrity.” In practice, it imported China’s firewall logic, surveillance, shutdown, control. For Cuban dissidents, every post or call now passes through Beijing’s algorithm of obedience. In August 2025, China’s spy chief Chen Yixin hosted Cuba’s Interior Minister in Beijing and pledged deeper “intelligence sharing and security cooperation.” Weeks later, Xi Jinping and Miguel Díaz-Canel declared a “community with a shared future.” By October, Granma, the Communist Party’s paper, reported that a delegation from China’s Communist Party History Museum had arrived in Havana to study “the history of their revolutions and communist parties.” Intelligence at the top, doctrine in the middle, ideology at the base: a complete ecosystem of control. For the first time in the Western Hemisphere, China’s Ministry of State Security is effectively working through a partner ministry. Control endures longest when it educates. Since 2024, the Confucius Institute Havana has expanded into provincial universities, teaching Mandarin alongside “Chinese governance and development theory.” In May 2025, the China–Cuba University Consortium linked Havana’s leading faculties with Beijing Normal University and the Central Party School for seminars in “Marxism-Leninism with Chinese characteristics.” Dozens of Cuban students now train in China in joint programmes blending artificial intelligence and political ideology. They return not as translators but as administrators of a new system. The classroom, once Soviet in accent, now speaks fluent Beijing. Propaganda follows infrastructure. In October, Granma echoed the tone of the Global Times: a “shared revolutionary destiny” defying “U.S. coercion.” Cultural exchanges, journalism courses, and museum collaborations replay the same script, Cuba the noble victim, China its faithful defender. Beijing doesn’t bankroll Havana’s narrative; it ghostwrites it. Solidarity has become authorship. Money secures the manuscript. With Russia drained and Venezuela bankrupt, China has become Havana’s banker and builder. As Reuters reported in June 2025, Beijing pledged $7 billion in new infrastructure and energy projects across Cuba and the wider Caribbean. Fifty-five solar parks are under construction; Chinese cargo ships unload steel, panels, and telecom hardware at Mariel and Santiago. Each delivery powers Cuba’s grid by day, and China’s influence by night. Ports modernized with Chinese funds can receive Chinese vessels. Networks financed with Chinese loans transmit Chinese data. Dependency is not collateral damage; it’s the goal. Havana is only the first link. In 2025, Beijing expanded its infrastructure footprint in Jamaica, Antigua, and the Dominican Republic, building ports, laying 5G cables and training security forces. Confucius Institutes now dot the region under the euphemism of “South-South cooperation.” The pattern repeats: build, train, integrate. Aid by day; access by night. The Caribbean is becoming China’s warm-water classroom — and, when required, its forward operating system. For now, Washington is watching more than acting. Donald J. Trump, back in the White House since January, has promised to “stand up to China,” but 90 miles from Florida, Beijing isn’t listening. While the administration tweets resolve, China is building facts on the waterline. The silence, in effect, is policy. Thread it together: new antennas at Bejucal, a half-built array at El Salao, Huawei’s cyber spine, Chen Yixin’s August pact, the October Party-history mission, billions in dual-use investments and universities exporting ideology. This isn’t cooperation; it’s conversion. Cuba’s systems now speak in Beijing’s dialect. The transformation has unfolded in plain view — and almost within America’s sightline. This is not solidarity; it is statecraft. Not friendship, but franchising. Beijing has built more than bases and businesses in Cuba — it has drafted a new manual for influence within sight of U.S. shores. What is emerging across the Straits of Florida is not a fortress but a reflection — and that reflection is unmistakably Beijing’s. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Germany Revoked a Terror Supporter’s Citizenship. Why Can’t America? Poland’s Fusion of Hard Borders and Human Duty The Business of Borders: The Economy of Virtue

The other day, someone asked me why I thought the great epic by Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, no longer seems to be remembered by anybody outside of Italy. I was the man to ask, because I had brought up the subject, and I had translated the epic into English verse, published in 2000. In reply, I said that we have little notion of how genuinely multicultural the poets, artists, and composers of the nineteenth century were. I noted that almost all of this sort of mutual enrichment was soon to be lost. Magical Keys come in the “conservative” variety too, or, perhaps more accurately, in the classical liberal variety. I then gave examples of how it used to be. Longfellow, as a young man, spent a year or so in Europe to learn the modern languages, and he ended up translating The Divine Comedy, and reading the Finnish epic Kalevala, whose meter he adapted for his own legendarium, The Song of Hiawatha.  The Hawthorne family went to Italy when a change in administration cost Nathanael his job at the custom house, where they met and befriended Robert and Elizabeth Browning, and the ancient art Nathanael saw there inspired his novel The Marble Faun, while Robert went on to write some of his greatest works as set in Italy, including his book-length masterpiece, The Ring and the Book.  Gaetano Donizetti composed his opera Lucia di Lammermoor, based on The Bride of Lammermoor, by Sir Walter Scott.  Giacomo Meyerbeer, a German, composed L’Africaine, a French opera, inspired by one of the love stories in Tasso’s Italian epic.  Dostoevsky uses “Schiller” as a tag for any idealistically liberal young man — and assumes that his readers will get the allusion to the German dramatist. Both he and Tolstoy, who hated each other, said that Charles Dickens, the Englishman, was the greatest novelist of the century. I have read a long article, part biography and part appreciation, in the American magazine The Century, on the life and the poetry of the Provencal, Frederic Mistral, whom the author visited and spoke to, in Provence. Edward Fitzgerald translated — or paraphrased, but whatever he did, the result was brilliant — the Rubaiyat, the masterwork of the medieval Persian mathematician, poet, and philosopher Omar Khayyam, and so popular was Fitzgerald’s translation, that as late as The Dick Van Dyke Show, you could echo one of the best-known stanzas and expect to be understood: “I’ve got the jug of wine and the loaf of bread, but where’s the thou?” So then, what happened?  Why was it lost? At which some anonymous commenter said that it was lost “because slavery and colonialism disappeared, and people had actually to work to put bread on the table.” Don’t try to figure that out.  Don’t wonder what colonialism and slavery have to do with an Italian composer’s encounter with the novels of the Scotsman, Walter Scott. Don’t knit your brows and try to trace a path from colonialism and slavery to Longfellow’s interest in a Finnish poem. Don’t ask why an article from July, 1885, written for an audience in the United States, on an elderly poet in Provence, writing in a language that few people outside of his region could read, was made possible by colonies the United States did not have, and slavery which had been abolished. There is no disproving such a silly claim, but that is not my point, either.  Something about that century brought Englishmen who as schoolchildren had studied Latin and sometimes also Greek into contact with Frenchmen and Germans and Italians and others who had done the same, and who then turned their skills toward the modern languages.  Suddenly, too, it was easier for people to travel overland, what with the railroads, and that meant that once you got to the mainland of Europe, the continent was laid out before you. Whatever it was that powered such a fruitful interaction of cultures, it would require some careful consideration. You might examine the curricula at the better schools. You might ask what it cost to go by sea from the United States to Europe. You should check out what the many educational societies — the Lyceum, Chautauqua, the YMCA — did in this vein. I own a book, endorsed by prominent American authors, educators, politicians, and even a President or two, that proposes to teach you, simultaneously as it were, Latin, Greek, Italian, German, and French. How popular were such books?  Or we might turn the matter the other way around, and ask how likely it was that if you lived in a large city in the United States or any nation of Europe in those days you would regularly encounter people whose mother tongue was not English but Italian, or not Italian but German, or not German but Russian, and so forth. The Keys to Understanding All The point is that the commenter’s remark was both stupid and depressingly familiar in form. We have not the patience for genuine historiography, so we slap together a pastiche of slogans, employed as if they were Magical Keys to Understanding Everything. Education has become, apparently, the practice of handing out the Magical Keys. Why did women not excel in writing long narrative or epic poems? Out comes the Magical Key, the “patriarchy,” or housework, or “social expectations,” or something that evades the question, while giving the key-holder the satisfaction of being in the know. Why did P. T. Barnum sponsor a tour of the United States by the brilliant and lovely Swedish soprano, Jenny Lind, and why was it such a success? Out comes the Magical Key: he did it only for money, and the richer segment of the American public wanted to show off how sophisticated they were. Hard to explain, then, the incident in a Rochester inn, when six Onondaga chiefs paid Lind a visit and she sang Swedish folk songs for them, to which they showed their solemn appreciation. Whenever you see a Magical Key, you do best to ignore it. For some people, the Magical Key to the economic success of the United States was slavery. They then have a hard time explaining why the more industrialized north had left the south behind in technological innovation and in the improvement of roads and waterways. Or rather they do not explain it, but invoke, as with a magic wand, the vague idea that the benefits of slavery accrued to the north so bounteously that without them, one presumes, the railways would never have been laid at all, or the fields of the Great Plains sown with wheat, or the Erie Canal dug, to link New York City and the Atlantic with the Great Lakes and the great continental river system flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. What moved men to build the staggeringly majestic and beautiful cathedrals and churches of medieval Europe? Out comes the Magical Key, that the Church had all the wealth (she certainly did not, and that was why many a church took a century or more to complete), or another Magical Key, that it was all due to ignorance and superstition (it is hard to call “ignorant” masons who built such soaring laceworks of stone and glass without the benefit of diesel-powered machines or computer analyses, and anyone who invokes “superstition” to confront the Abbot Suger, credited with inventing the Gothic style, had better be up on his ancient philosophy and theology). Magical Keys come in the “conservative” variety too, or, perhaps more accurately, in the classical liberal variety. What brought about the economic superiority of the United States over the nations of Central America and South America?  “The Protestant work ethic,” some say, or “economic freedom guaranteed in liberal laws,” others say, looking askance at the mostly Catholic nations to the south. No doubt it is good for people to be industrious, and fair economic laws enforced without ubiquitous bribe-taking and influence-peddling will go a long way toward developing the wealth of a nation. But the Catholics also had a long tradition uniting work with prayer — that was, after all, the heart of the monastic life. And the United States has been fortunate in its geographic location and terrain. We did have the Great Plains. We had huge deposits of coal and iron ore. We had plenty of hardwood timber. We had those inland waterways. And the men who came to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to work in the foundries, the mines, the quarries, and the factories, came mainly from such Catholic countries as Italy and Poland. How do you keep students from being vulnerable to the peddlers of Magical Keys? We might as well ask how you get to know anything deeply human, including another person. That happens by spending time, taking care, considering a thing from various vantages, seeing how it is like but unlike something the less careful person might confuse it with; it is a habit that abhors clichés, that is comfortable with both subtlety and with the admission that one does not know enough to make more than a tentative judgment, if that. It also welcomes testimony from past ages, as the past is now our great storehouse of cultures and their wisdom. Read Plato. Read Confucius. Read. Travel, then, to a far country in your mind, a country whose people read old books, who refrain from expressing dogmatic opinions about things distant from their direct experience or their careful study, and who understand that the really ineducable person is not someone who knows little, but someone who is too satisfied with his supposed knowledge to consider it worth his while to ponder. READ MORE from Anthony Esolen: At the Tip of Your Fingers Keep the End in View Love and Reason in the Ruins  

This week the nation’s premier museum on the American Revolution in Philadelphia unveiled its landmark exhibition Declaration’s Journey, tracing how America’s founding text traveled — physically and ideologically — far beyond Independence Hall. For anyone who loves liberty’s global story, it is a must see. The exhibit, arriving just ahead of America250, reminds us that Thomas Jefferson’s words once stirred imaginations well beyond the young United States — even reaching lovers of liberty in a small Central European kingdom under Habsburg rule. Parallel Struggles Across Continents In the late eighteenth century, Hungarians faced a familiar dilemma: defending hard-won local rights against an ambitious imperial ruler. Just as Britain levied new taxes and governors, Emperor Joseph II tried to centralize power, abolishing Hungary’s county assemblies and imposing German as the language of administration. Kossuth toured the United States in 1851–52 … Coins struck in his honor called him … the “George Washington of Europe.” Reformers like economist Gergely Berzeviczy drew inspiration from America’s Revolution. In 1789, he told fellow Freemasons: “England, the home of liberty … still treated its American colonies with oppressive tyranny. The results are validated. For us, the Americans are the embodiment of a courageous free people.” Owning a copy of the Declaration of Independence, he argued that the Habsburgs had broken their implicit “contract” with Hungary, echoing Jefferson’s observations about when it “becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” Vienna’s “long train of abuses and usurpations” mirrored Britain’s. József Hajnóczy, a Lutheran reformer, took particular interest in Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He attached his own Latin translation to a 1791 constitutional tract so legislators could study it firsthand — no small act in an era of Habsburg censorship. A Travel Book That Shook a Generation By the 1830s, America was no longer an experiment but a beacon. Transylvanian writer Sándor Bölöni Farkas toured the United States, then published Journey in North America (1834), which contained the first Hungarian translation of the Declaration — appearing even before Democracy in America reached Europe. He marveled that Jefferson’s text “summons Americans to a political creation, to the framing of a just government.” His book sold out two editions before censors banned it, but not before shaping an entire generation of Hungarian reformers. Count István Széchenyi, dubbed “the Greatest of the Magyars,” devoured Bölöni’s account. Mocked in Vienna as der Amerikane for often citing Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, he longed to see “the Land of the Future.” When a Milanese manufacturer called him “the Washington of Hungary,” he replied wistfully: “If it were only true, Sir.” Hungary’s Own Declaration When revolution erupted in 1848, Jefferson’s writings became a template. Lajos Kossuth’s 1849 Hungarian Declaration of Independence mirrored America’s: a lofty preamble, a litany of Habsburg abuses, and a final claim to Hungary’s natural rights. Critics mocked him for copying Jefferson; he shrugged and sent a copy to U.S. President Zachary Taylor, hoping for recognition. Though the revolution was eventually crushed by Russian armies, the symbolic bridge to America was built. Memory and Meaning Exiled, Kossuth toured the United States in 1851–52, drawing massive crowds from New York to St. Louis. Coins struck in his honor called him the “father of European democracy” and the “George Washington of Europe.”  Americans compared him to their own Founding Fathers; he in turn thanked them for proving liberty could not only be declared, but sustained. Decades later, Hungarian Americans raised funds for a bronze statue of George Washington in Budapest’s City Park (unveiled 1906), a monument to shared ideals and one of the most elegant tributes to America’s first president abroad. As Declaration’s Journey invites visitors to see Jefferson’s text anew, it is worth recalling how deeply those words once penetrated other parts of the world. For Hungarians, the Declaration was never just parchment in a distant land; it was proof that a people could claim their natural rights, daring to be free. That story still binds Philadelphia and Budapest across centuries and continents, as well as languages and cultures — a shared heritage for future generations to cherish. READ MORE: Nature and the God of the Declaration of Independence The Cynical Talk About a ‘Constitutional Crisis’ The Real Meaning of Independence Day George Bogden is a Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute and the Steamboat Institute, as well as Senior Counsel at Continental Strategy. Anna Smith Lacey is executive director of the Hungary Foundation, a Washington-based cultural and education foundation.

Baseball’s most illustrious player, two-way star Shohei Ohtani, is once again in the spotlight — coming off perhaps the most incredible performance in the game’s history. In his Los Angeles Dodgers’ 5–1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the NLCS, Ohtani struck out ten batters and hit three home runs, leading his team to a second straight World Series appearance. In an age of noise and spectacle, Ohtani’s mastery offers something radical: quiet excellence. Here’s the historic stat line: first leadoff home run by a pitcher in MLB history; first postseason multi-homer game by a pitcher; first game in MLB history in which one player hit three home runs and threw ten strikeouts; and first player with two career games featuring two or more home runs and ten or more strikeouts. With that, the Dodgers are back in the World Series — again — and Ohtani has redefined what greatness looks like. We have never seen his like before, and we may not again. We are witnessing the greatest baseball player of all time. The case for Ohtani is overwhelming. He’s a dual threat — an elite pitcher and hitter. Babe Ruth flirted with this combination; Ohtani perfected it. Sure, there’s Cobb, Aaron, and Mays, but they stand in the shadows of Ohtani’s rare combination of power, precision, and poise. He’s so good that comparisons to the past seem futile. Yet Ohtani’s brilliance feels understated. His greatness is rooted not in domination but in precision — his game is unmistakably Japanese, reflecting a culture that values refinement over showmanship. From Ichiro Suzuki’s breathtaking swing to Hideo Nomo’s majestic windup, Japanese players use repetition to produce baseball art. Japanese players are guided by the philosophy of kaizen — continuous improvement through discipline and patience. That philosophy cultivates a kind of detachment in which the body moves without the ego’s interference. Combined with Ohtani’s raw power and athleticism, these qualities produce the mind-bending numbers that make him singular. Ohtani’s brilliance is never loud. It’s measured, restrained, composed. He embodies a rare exactitude that speaks directly to the Japanese baseball tradition — a tradition that produces calm focus and selfless execution. It’s the athletic expression of mushin, or “no mind,” drawn from Zen practice: the condition in which action flows without thought or tension. Watch Ohtani closely and you can see it — his movements feel coolly purposeful, every motion an act of balance and intent. His style also exudes quiet gentleness. Everything about him — his swing, his delivery, even the way he walks on and off the diamond — is balanced and clean. The casual fan might be lulled into thinking there’s nothing remarkable about him, especially on the rare occasions when he doesn’t dominate. But to the trained baseball eye, there is greatness even in his pop-ups, his strikeouts, his off nights on the mound. I saw him play against the Phillies this summer at Citizens Bank Park, and the feeling was the same. Even in warmups, he seemed composed in a way that made the field feel smaller around him. Watching him was like watching an artist at work — fluid, deliberate, complete. In an age of noise and spectacle, Ohtani’s mastery offers something radical: quiet excellence. His humility and precision are a kind of rebellion against our swaggering sports culture. So as the Fall Classic begins, pull the kids over to the screen and tell them they’re witnessing something rare — something they’ll tell their own children about someday. Shohei Ohtani isn’t just redefining baseball; he’s refining it in real time. READ MORE from Pete Connolly: The New York Times Op-Ed on HBO’s Task Highlights Our Two Americas. AI Can Save Education Real Leadership in the Unsung Men of the Armed Forces

Donut sales in America are up — way up. Nearly $4 billion worth of fried dough changed hands last year, proof that no matter how many diets come and go, no matter how many oat-milk smoothies promise enlightenment, Americans remain gloriously loyal to their sugary circles. In an age of kale chips and conscience, the donut has become a quiet rebellion. A glazed middle finger to moderation. The donut is circular because the craving never ends. Eat one, swear it’s the last, then start the cycle again. And I get it. I could mock the addiction, but that would make me a hypocrite. This isn’t mockery. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s admiration — an ode to the loyal circular. I grew up in Ireland, where donuts were more punchline than pastry. They were dense, dry, and dusted with despair. You bought one mostly for comic effect, the way you might buy a rubber chicken. Then, at seventeen, I came to New York. I was a pale boy with big dreams and a bigger appetite. Within hours, I’d discovered real pizza, the Cheesecake Factory, and, most fatefully, the American donut. My first was a glazed Krispy Kreme. I remember the bite — soft, warm, faintly holy. It wasn’t food. For me, it was revelation. Ireland had given me poetry, but America gave me pleasure. I returned home rounder, happier, and suspiciously evangelical about icing. Americans don’t eat donuts for energy. They eat them for emotional stability. Coffee might keep them awake, but donuts keep them alive. Together, they’re the fuel that powers capitalism — the breakfast of believers in both God and the free market. You can trace a nation’s mood through its bakery aisle. When times are good, people flirt with novelty — maple bacon, matcha glaze, lavender drizzle. When times are rough, they run back to the classics: plain ring, powdered, chocolate frosted. Stability you can eat. It’s no wonder the industry’s booming while everything else wobbles. Donuts used to be simple; now they’re edible art. There’s the “Biscoff Cocoamazing” — a Belgian chocolate-topped, cookie-butter-filled donut that sounds less like breakfast and more like coping in confection form. Krispy Kreme teamed up with Dr Pepper, Dunkin’ flirted with watermelon jelly, and somewhere a marketing executive whispered, “What if we made Pop-Tart donuts?” and nobody stopped him. It’s chaos, but beautiful chaos — innovation through indulgence. America may not build cathedrals anymore, but it still builds donut empires. Back home, people now boast about “artisanal donuts.” They cost more, weigh less, and taste like irony. You’ll find them in cafés where people discuss mindfulness while licking frosting from their fingers. But they’ll never match the American originals. Only here could a pastry be both humble and heroic — bought by cops at dawn, CEOs at noon, and teenagers at 2 a.m. The donut doesn’t discriminate. It’s democratic fried dough. I’ve come to believe every donut tells a story. The jelly-filled is optimism — messy but rewarding. The Boston cream is ambition — thick, rich, slightly over the top. The plain glazed is stoicism — simple, reliable, unsung. People often say America’s problem is excess. I disagree. Excess is its superpower. The same impulse that builds rocket ships also builds donuts with cookie butter and sea salt. Moderation never built an empire, and it certainly never invented sprinkles. Whenever I return to the States, I tell myself I’ll behave. I’ll eat salads, jog along the Hudson, perhaps detox. Then within 24 hours, I’m in a diner, shades on, hood up, ordering “just one.” The waitress asks, “You want it warmed up?” I say yes. Because every sinner deserves a second heating. What fascinates me most is the donut’s permanence. It hasn’t been canceled, rebranded, or digitized. You can’t download a donut or swipe right on one. There’s no “donut drop” in the metaverse, no limited-edition NFT baked for the algorithm. To enjoy it, you have to do something almost radical: leave the house, touch it, risk the sugar on your sleeve and the shame on your soul. It demands presence, not pixels — an act of faith in flour and fat. Take it in hand, feel the weight and the warmth. That’s intimacy no simulated sweetheart could ever fake. And that’s why sales keep rising. Donuts are more than nostalgia — they’re resistance. They remind people that base-level bliss doesn’t need justification. The French may have croissants, the Italians tiramisu, the Japanese mochi, and the Turks their syrup-soaked baklava. But only America had the audacity to deep-fry desire and eat it at 7 a.m.. While others perfected delicacy, America perfected decadence — a kind of gleeful gluttony that turned sweetness into a civic duty. The donut is circular because the craving never ends. Eat one, swear it’s the last, then start the cycle again. It’s basically Buddhism in batter form. Desire, indulgence, regret, repeat. Philosophers chase meaning; pastry chefs solved it centuries ago. Life, like the donut, offers no straight lines, only loops of longing laced with the little lies we tell ourselves. So yes, donut sales are soaring. Of course they are. America runs on them — literally and metaphorically. In a nation that keeps reinventing itself, the donut remains steadfast: sweet, sticky, and slightly scandalous. And if loving that makes me part of the problem, I’ll take another dozen. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: Is the Right Pining for Racial Purity? The Myth of the Radical Young Right Katie Porter and the Art of Political Self-Immolation

When a Catholic university appoints a president who openly dismisses core Church teachings, it signals more than just a shift in mission — it reflects a deeper erosion of moral and spiritual integrity. This appears to be the case with Georgetown University’s decision to hire Eduardo Peñalver, a leader who has publicly criticized Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and expressed concern over the societal impact of the Dobbs decision, despite its role in protecting unborn life through the overturning of Roe v. Wade. His previous leadership at Seattle University, where Catholic identity was often subordinated to secular priorities, raises serious concerns about the direction Georgetown may now take under his presidency. The goal of Blatty’s petition had been to revoke Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic unless it complies with Church teachings.  Obviously, it failed. In an article entitled “Another Gay Teacher Fired by a Catholic  School” published on August 7, 2013 in Commonweal, Peñalver responds to the firing of a longtime teacher at the Catholic St. Lucy’s Priory High School in Los Angeles, after photos of his wedding to his same-sex partner appeared in a local newspaper. Peñalver critiques the decision, questioning whether Catholic institutions should — morally or prudentially — enforce such dismissals, even if they technically have the legal right to do so. Penalver points out a troubling pattern: Catholic schools often target marginalized groups, such as gay teachers, while seemingly ignoring similar violations of Church teaching by divorced and remarried heterosexual teachers. Peñalver challenges the consistency and fairness of these employment decisions and invites readers to consider whether such actions truly reflect Catholic values. Peñalver of course reminds readers that the views expressed are his own and not those of the Jesuit Seattle University, where he was serving as president at the time but suggests that Catholic institutions should adopt a more inclusive and compassionate approach.  Peñalver concluded that he wanted to “separate the question of whether Catholic institutions have the right to do this sort of thing from the question of whether they should, on either moral or prudential grounds,” He challenged readers to consider whether such firings reflect the Church’s values or simply target those who are more easily marginalized. When the Dobbs decision was handed down in June, 2022 — striking down the pro-abortion Roe v Wade — Peñalver appeared to criticize the pro-life decision by issuing a statement warning that the Dobbs decision would have far-reaching consequences, especially for low-income women, women of color, LGBTQ individuals and society at large.  Although he called for “thoughtful and respectful dialogue” he lamented that some in the community are “mourning an erosion of the autonomy of those experiencing unwanted or unsafe pregnancies or those whose rights may be undermined in the coming years by the sweeping scope of the court’s reasoning.” It should surprise no one who has been paying attention to the erosion of the Catholic identity on many Catholic campuses throughout the country that Georgetown would choose someone like this to lead their school.  In 2013, the late William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist and one of its most distinguished alums, filed a Canon Law petition with the Vatican in asking that Georgetown University be denied the right to call itself Catholic. Blatty had been making life difficult for Georgetown for more than a decade before filing his petition after he became convinced that the university had abandoned its Catholic mission.  In fact, he concluded that his alma mater “takes pride in insulting the Church and offending the faithful.” Calling Georgetown a “Potemkin Village,” Blatty declared that Georgetown is the leader of a pack of schools that are failing to live up to their Catholic identity.” Blatty was especially critical of what he saw as Georgetown’s hypocrisy: “At alumni dinners, they will make sure there is a Jesuit in a collar at every table, like the floral arrangement.” Blatty’s 200-page papal petition contained more than 480 footnotes, 99 appendices, and 124 witness statements. It also included a commissioned 120-page institutional audit of Georgetown. According to Manuel A. Miranda, who served as Blatty’s counsel, “We have documented 23 years of scandals and dissidence — more than 100 scandals in the most recent years alone.”  The petition asked Pope Francis to require that Georgetown implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 papal document requiring all Catholic colleges to teach “in communion” with the Church. The goal of Blatty’s petition had been to revoke Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic unless it complies with Church teachings.  Obviously, it failed. Today, Georgetown is one of the most elite universities in the country. Committed to creating political players — most of whom who will remain unencumbered by Catholic teachings — Georgetown has made several missteps in its hiring history.  In 2014, when Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, was teaching at Georgetown as an adjunct professor, Breitbart reported, “Someone using the name of then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden created a profile on the Ashley Madison dating website for extramarital affairs.” Worse, the Hunter Biden profile describing himself as a fan of “Anything Goes” with women was created on the Georgetown University campus during the time Hunter Biden was teaching there. Following the Biden scandal, Georgetown hired disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok in 2020 to teach an undergraduate course in “Counterintelligence and National Security” in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. Strzok, who was fired from the FBI in 2018 for “undermining the public confidence in the non-partisanship of the bureau and federal law enforcement,” is most famous for the embarrassing text messages documenting his extramarital affair in 2016 with co-worker Lisa Page and his pivotal role in the alleged coup to remove President Donald Trump from office.  It is likely that Georgetown was hoping that the Strzok faculty appointment works out better than the Hunter Biden faculty fiasco. Georgetown University’s appointment of Eduardo Peñalver as president is emblematic of a broader crisis facing Catholic higher education — a crisis not merely of leadership, but of fidelity to the Church’s mission. Georgetown University — as the first Catholic university in the country — is failing to maintain that mission and appears to have lost its soul. READ MORE from Anne Hendershott: Algorithmic Restraint: Artificial Intelligence Refuses to Acknowledge Violent Transgender Perpetrators When Hate Finds a Bulletin Board at Georgetown Can Artificial Intelligence Reduce the Left-Wing Bias in University Classrooms?

Zohran Mamdani, self-proclaimed socialist and New York City mayoral frontrunner, is no fan of market prices.  Mamdani, for instance, agrees with that notorious New York City mayoral candidate of yesteryear that the “rent is too damn high.” He also thinks that wages are too low, grocery prices are too high, and childcare is too expensive. Listen to Mamdani for a few minutes, and you’ll develop a sneaking suspicion that he thinks most other prices aren’t right either.  Good intentions notwithstanding, the sad consequence of the minimum wage is to render the most vulnerable among us unemployable. You wouldn’t either if, like Mamdani, you thought prices are as arbitrary as winning Powerball numbers or the WiFi password on the back of your router. For socialists like him, market prices are little more than annoying obstacles that stand between you and the food, clothing, and shelter you’re entitled to.  It naturally follows that the arbitrary sequence of digits we call “price” can be arbitrarily swatted away with little to no consequence. If prices are as meaningless as Mamdani insists, why not simply make them disappear, then conjure up whatever prices you deem “fair” to replace them? Voilà! Problem solved; scarcity eliminated.  Even better, this vanishing act can be massaged into a snappy campaign slogan. Enter “$30 by 2030,” a pithy Mamdani promise that captures his intention to gradually ease New York City’s minimum wage from its meager $16.50 an hour in 2025 to $30 an hour by 2030. And how convenient that the “right” price, the just price, for low-skilled labor — $30! — occurs in the year 2030, resulting in a slogan that fits perfectly on the width of a standard bumper sticker! His supporters may call this happy coincidence “serendipity.” Economists might choose from a different family of names: palmistry, or perhaps, idiocracy.  The more inquisitive among us might even raise a few polite questions for the presumptive mayor. If $30 an hour is good public policy, might $31 be even better? One dollar might not sound like a lot, but let’s do some quick back-of-the-envelope math. At eight additional hours per day, while working (say) 50 weeks a year, this measly one dollar an hour balloons to $2,000 more per year! Plus, it will hardly break the banks of New York City’s fat cat employers.  True, raising the minimum wage to $31, instead of $30, would ruin the “$30 by 2030” bumper sticker. That’ll surely impose a real cost on the Mamdani campaign. Some poor campaign aide will have to go back to the marketing drawing board. But isn’t that a fairly small sacrifice to give lower-class New Yorkers a $2,000 annual raise? For someone as compassionate about the poor as Mamdani, it seems like a no-brainer.  But then it also seems like a no-brainer to ask, “Why stop at $31?” In fact, “$300 by 2030” would also fit on a bumper sticker, and now we’re finally talking real money. While we don’t claim any political expertise, we suspect “$300 by 2030” would poll better with focus groups. While we’re at it, though, why not just make it “$2,030 by 2030?” After all, we needn’t let something as arbitrary as a price be confined by something as arbitrary as real estate on a standard-length bumper sticker. There is another flaw in Mamdani’s plan. His proposal only gradually increases the minimum wage over the next five years. Again, the more compassionate among us might wonder: Why must we wait until 2030 to bestow this long-overdue raise on the deserving poor? Is there anything metaphysically sacrosanct about 2030, other than that it nicely lends itself to a memorable catchphrase? Mamdani never shies away from calling New York City’s poverty rate and spiraling cost of living a “crisis.” Imagine the New York Fire Department learning of a burning building, and responding by alerting the occupants that it will be there … in 2030.  What, then, explains Mamdani’s reluctance to tack an additional zero or two onto his slogan? What explains his hesitation to implement this raise on his first day in office?  We don’t know for sure, but we suspect that deep down inside every economics-denier is someone who knows that reality always has the final say. Blood pressure monitors and thermometers display numbers that every sane person agrees are more than “sound and fury signifying nothing.”  No sane person, if they’re sick, responds by smashing the thermometer because they don’t like the readout.  No sane person treats prices that way, either. Except here, the results of a “Hulk, smash!” approach are arguably worse. If you smash a thermometer, your fever will probably abate in a few days anyway. If you smash prices by forcibly overriding them with executive fiat, you wind up hurting the very people you’re trying to help.  Ask yourself: ‘Who would hire me if they had to pay $2,030 an hour?’ There are a few superstars worth millions a year, but most of us aren’t. Sadly, the same result applies to numbers less than “2,030,” including “30.” Good intentions notwithstanding, the sad consequence of the minimum wage is to render the most vulnerable amongst us unemployable.  Curiously, there is one price Mamdani often deems “right” — free! From health care to child care, groceries to busing, politicians like Mamdani love to promise voters the proverbial “free lunch.” But buyer beware — you just might get what you pay for.  READ MORE: Some ‘No Kings’ Protesters Don’t Like Capitalism, but Are Republicans Practicing It? Railroads Must Keep Pace With the Economy Democrats Decry Another ‘Crisis’ They Caused

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