Failed the Test: Victor Davis Hanson Brutally Takes Down Jake Tapper Over His ‘Journalistic’ Cowardice

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A new book traces the genealogy of extremist racial ideas that have gone mainstream.  The post How America Went Crazy on Race appeared first on The American Conservative.…

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Chevron’s license to operate in the Venezuelan oil fields will lapse soon—or will it? The post The Fight Over American Involvement in Venezuelan Oil appeared…

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Shorenstein Center shows how leftist academic and media collusion undermines journalism and threatens free speech. The post The Harvard Institution Stoking Left-Wing…

Political commentator Victor Davis Hanson pulled no punches when recently exposing CNN’s Jake Tapper for what he truly is. Hanson checks off every ‘journalistic’ failure Tapper has participated…

Culture Let the Haudenosaunee Play The Iroquois are ready for LA28. Memorial Day weekend is the perfect opportunity to get together with family and friends to celebrate the burgeoning summer: a three-day weekend full of great food, great music, and, depending on your interests, great lacrosse.  For those who love the fastest game on two feet, Memorial Day weekend is the culmination of the NCAA lacrosse season. This year’s event will feature powerhouses Syracuse, Cornell, Maryland, and the outsiders from Penn State, who rallied from down 6 against Notre Dame this past weekend to punch their ticket to the Final Four. It will be only the Nittany Lions’ third appearance in the final weekend of the lacrosse season. Lacrosse has, for most of the modern era, been a Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic game played by the elite prep high schools and colleges of our United States. In its most recent years, the game has spread to the Rockies and beyond, with the University of Denver becoming the first college team west of the Mississippi to win a national championship when the Pioneers achieved the feat in 2015. Today, lacrosse is booming in England, Ireland, Japan, Australia, and Israel.  But long before that, before national titles were won and stats were kept, back when lacrosse sticks were still made of wood, the game belonged to the Six Nations tribes who invented it on this continent nearly 1,000 years ago. Formerly known as the Iroqouis, the Six Nations comprise the Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Tuscarora Nations. Today, they’re known as the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee for short. Some of the best to ever play the sport have been born and raised inside the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Cody Jamieson of the Mohawk Nation led the Syracuse Orangemen to a national title in 2009, scoring the game-winning goal in sudden-death overtime. Sid Smith, an indigenous defender born in Six Nations, Ontario, was also a major part of that Syracuse championship team. Tehoka Nanticoke, Austin Staats, Cory Bomberry, the Powless family, and many, many others have paved the way for young members of the Confederacy to find success in the modern era of the sport. But none have had perhaps as deep an impact on the game itself as the Thompson brothers from the Onondaga Nation, who lit the lacrosse world on fire in the 2010s. Lyles, Miles, and Jeremy each left his mark on the game in a way that continues to be honored to this day. Lyles, specifically, is considered to be one of the greatest to ever play the sport. He holds the record for most points ever scored by a player and won the Tewaaraton Award, the nation’s highest honor for collegiate players, in 2014 and 2015. The trophy itself is a bronze sculpture featuring a Mohawk native playing lacrosse. “It’s traditional that we’re given [a lacrosse stick] in our cradleboard as a youngster, as a young little boy growing up you’re given one,” explained Jeremy of the Thompson clan. “When we leave this place, this earth, we’re given it in our coffin. So as you can see, from birth to death, it’s with us, spiritually.”  Lacrosse will feature in the Olympic Games for the first time since 1948 when the event takes place in Los Angeles in the summer of 2028. As of today, the Haudenosaunee, who are ranked as the third best team in the world, are on the outside looking in. To participate in the Olympic Games, a nation must satisfy two major criteria: recognition by the international community and the creation of a National Olympic Committee. The Haudenosaunee possess neither.  The International Olympic Committee has its reasons for including lacrosse in the games but excluding its creators. There is a valid concern that the Haudenosaunee’s presence could lead to separatist movements and auxiliary nations around the world to seek similar exemptions to participate in future editions of the Olympics. But that fear overlooks the special reality of lacrosse, its inventors, and a rich tradition within America’s sporting culture.  This is not the first time the Haudenosaunee have faced hurdles in its mission to achieve an even playing field at the international level. The Haudenosaunee have struggled to take part in the World Lacrosse Championship and the Lacrosse World Games, a six-on-six competition created in anticipation of the game being included in the 2028 Olympic Games. In 2010, the Haudenosaunee qualified for the World Championships in England but ultimately did not play in the event after the British rejected their passports. Members of the U.S. government offered the Haudenosaunee expedited U.S. passports but the team refused, insisting on traveling and playing as their own nation.  “I would never play for Canada or the U.S.,” Lyle Thompson told the New York Times.  The former president Joe Biden and former prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau backed the Haudenosaunee’s 2028 Olympic bid with a joint statement in January of this year, only days before Biden ceded the White House to President Trump.  “Given the unique and exceptional circumstances of the Haudenosaunee’s historic connection to this sport, and their Men’s and Women’s teams continuously ranked participation in international competitive lacrosse for almost half a century, we believe that a narrowly scoped exception is appropriate,” read the statement signed by both men. An Olympics in America featuring the return of a sport created in present-day America but without the participation of its unique founders would miss a pivotal point of the games—to bring together the whole world in top-level competition while celebrating the differences, both vast and minute, that differentiate the peoples of the world. Watching the Haudenosaunee lacrosse players walk across the Olympic stage with the Hiawatha Belt flag waving in the California breeze would be a small but not inconsequential moment bridging the ever-present gap between the United States and its people before. “Lacrosse is a medicine game, first, before it was a secular game,” says indigenous lacrosse legend Rex Lyons. “It was for the vitality, the health and wellness of the community, the nation, the families, and the clans.” Speaking to the game’s healing power, Lyons pointed to news that lacrosse is now being played in Iran of all places. “There’s still hope for the world. They’re playing our game in Iran, that’s the medicine.”  If there was ever a place that needed medicine, it’s Los Angeles. The IOC should see this moment as the opportunity it is and allow the Haudenosaunee to play.  The post Let the Haudenosaunee Play appeared first on The American Conservative.

Books How America Went Crazy on Race A new book traces the genealogy of extremist racial ideas that have gone mainstream.  Redefining Racism: How Racism Became Power + PrejudiceBy Joseph (Jake) Klein, Black Sheep Press (September 2024), pp. 252, $14.99 America is obsessed with race. Every day, the media reports on a new front in the conflict over racial preferences and racial grievances.  The obsession seems to have abated somewhat, at least for now. With the reelection of Donald Trump and the ensuing corporate flight from DEI and other openly discriminatory practices and policies, the racialist craze may have crested, but more waves are surely on their way. And no one can forget the extent to which race dominated the news, culture, and basically all of life in 2020 and beyond.An historical trajectory that had seemed to many like tremendous progress towards a country that judged people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin, somehow ended up in a place where not judging someone by their skin color is considered racist and white supremacist. How did we get here? How did we go from optimism about race relations in the wake of Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008 to profound pessimism just over a decade later? And how did race become such a dominant factor in many areas of life? Jake Klein’s new book, Redefining Racism, strives to solve a major portion of that puzzle by exploring how the meaning of racism changed from the everyday definition of “racial prejudice or discrimination” to instead include considerations of social and institutional power—sometimes called “structural” or “systemic” racism. Klein identifies this alternative definition as a major source of worsening racial relations. The purpose of the book, Klein writes, is to demonstrate “that the ‘Power + Prejudice’ definition of racism, and its associated ideas spread via Racism Awareness Training, are making things much worse.”To that end, Klein revisits the foggy early beginnings of the racial grievance industry to trace, from its origins, the racialist zeitgeist that has upended society. Klein’s archival research is impressive, with meticulous footnotes serving as a testament to deep dives into dusty texts that have been long forgotten, despite their extreme relevance to today’s zeitgeist.  Klein identifies the first major use of the “power + prejudice” definition of racism in a curriculum developed by high-school teacher Pat Bidol, who included it in a list of definitions of racism with no citation or indication where this novel idea had come from. Notably, Klein’s genealogy refutes the appeal to authority made by contemporary racial-grievance mongers who insist the definition arose out of the rigorous scholarship of eminent academics.  But Bidol didn’t invent the definition de novo, as Klein shows. Rather, it was developed in large part by a black radical communist, Stokely Carmichael, a figure so extreme that even the Black Panthers kicked him out.  Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. Today’s racial-grievance industry, which has accumulated tens of millions of dollars in the wake of the mad summer of 2020, is basically operating on the same playbook developed back in the late 1960s by shameless race-baiting profiteers.  In much the same way that the riots and disorder of 2020 fueled attention and investment in people claiming to be experts in “anti-racism,” Carmichael’s fringe ideology got a boost from the 1967 Detroit race riot that featured arson, mass looting, and 43 deaths, and that was only ended after the national guard deployed tanks and machine guns to the scene. Eager to avoid another such catastrophe, the Detroit mayor and Michigan governor organized a meeting with business and community leaders, the result of which was the formation of the New Detroit Committee. Klein traces how this committee was soon captured by violent black separatists who did not represent anything close to the mainstream of black opinion at the time, and who essentially used the committee as a way to extort “riot insurance” from local businesses. These funds were then distributed to the organizer’s cronies and their own radical organizations to promote revolutionary racial ideology.  From the start, Carmichael’s radical ideology—laundered by educators like Bidol, a variety of activist groups, the NEA teacher’s union, and even the military (the Trump administration should probably take a look at what the Pentagon’s Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute is up to)—led to an increased focus on race. “Racism awareness training” and other similar programs began to spread throughout society. Foreshadowing things to come, these trainings amounted to struggle sessions, with participants who failed to toe the racialist line getting browbeaten or pathologized. Klein documents many instances where participants concluded their trainings with much worse mental health and outlooks than they had before. It’s not hard to see why. Whites were told that being white is an incurable affliction, while blacks were taught that they had little to no power to improve their lives in the face of structural forces. Studies at the time noted the similarities of these practices to psychological torture used on American POWs in the Korean War.  Redefining Racism is an engaging read that succinctly, yet thoroughly, explores the roots of bad ideas that are shredding America’s social fabric and wrecking the country. By exposing the extremist origins of today’s mainstream racialist ideology, he thwarts the usual attempt to shroud these obviously bonkers ideas in academic respectability, and he helps us to build true racial progress on firmer ground.  Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build than to destroy, and one can expect much time to pass before American racial relations can be redirected to a promising trajectory that leads towards harmony and peaceful coexistence, rather than seemingly intractable conflict and strife. The post How America Went Crazy on Race appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics The Harvard Institution Stoking Left-Wing Media Bias The Shorenstein Center shows how leftist academic and media collusion undermines journalism and threatens free speech. Credit: Marcio Jose Bastos Silva/Shutterstock Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy has long served as an anchor for the alliance between left-wing academia and mainstream media, prioritizing liberal narratives over objective reporting. The center conspires with media, liberal think tanks, and Big Tech to shut down opposing viewpoints to further damage journalism’s integrity. Founded in 1986 with ties to liberal media elites, the Shorenstein Center evolved into a hub for liberal narrative control and coordination. The parents of the deceased journalist Joan Shorenstein, the center’s namesake, even removed the name of her widower, Michael Barone, from the center’s name because he became a conservative pundit.  Its advisory board includes liberal figures such as Katie Couric and the former Washington Post editor Marty Baron. Liberal donors include George Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Former Shorenstein fellows include prominent liberal journalists like NPR’s Ann Cooper, CNN’s Brian Stelter, PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff, Newsweek’s Alexis Gelber, and the New York Times’s Jennifer Preston. The center’s Journalist’s Resource website reflects this liberal influence in its goal of “bridging the gap between journalism and academia.” It sends weekly email blasts to over 50,000 subscribers, whom it describes as journalists, policymakers, and educators. The Journalist’s Resource’s articles advise journalists on covering news topics by summarizing relevant academic studies with a left-leaning slant. For example, the managing editor Denise-Marie Ordway once advised journalists to highlight academic findings favoring Democrat school-board victories while subtly suggesting journalists emphasizing teachers union endorsements could halt the political influence of conservative groups like Moms for Liberty. The center’s shift toward overt partisanship became more pronounced after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election. Its postelection report criticized media for treating Clinton and Trump as equals, arguing critical coverage of politicians in general “helps the right wing.” In 2018, it hosted an event claiming Russian interference secured Trump’s victory.  The center also became increasingly obsessed with the idea that “misinformation” drives the public to elect right-leaning politicians. It sought to collaborate with other universities, liberal think tanks, the entrenched bureaucracy, and Big Tech to find ways to amplify liberal establishment narratives and shut down online free speech.  Its Misinformation Review labeled right-leaning media consumers as prone to “inaccurate beliefs” and claimed Democrats consume “more reliable” media. After the January 6 riot, Shorenstein faculty repeated the 2016 accusation that mainstream media wasn’t biased enough. Research Director Joan Donovan—who recently helped to inspire the violent “Tesla Takedown” campaign—blamed social media companies for not censoring the right. The center’s censorship efforts included collaboration with programs like First Draft News, which it hosted in the run-up to the 2018 midterms. Founded by Google News Labs and funded by Soros and eBay’s left-wing founder Pierre Omidyar, First Draft’s CrossCheck program coordinated with journalists to shape breaking news narratives and trained thousands to counter “misinformation.”  The Twitter Files later revealed First Draft’s role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.  Similarly, the center’s Information Disorder Lab, led by Cameron Hickey, tracked online “disinformation” and fed “non-partisan” research to newsrooms. Hickey later started a “Civic Listening Corps” at the Algorithmic Transparency Institute to train citizens to monitor private group chats for politically incorrect speech. The center’s Technology and Social Change Project, under Donovan, treated “misinformation” as a public health crisis. It hosted a workshop with academics, left-wing think tank scholars, and taxpayer-funded bureaucrats, comparing “far-right” Americans to 9/11 terrorists and seeking ways to counter conservative movements globally.  Likewise, the Center’s Digital Platforms & Democracy Project advocated government regulation of social media to curb “hate speech” and “misinformation.” The academic-media collusion that the center facilitates starts with the assumption that journalism’s purpose is to defend the leftist ideals behind academia’s warped view of democracy. It began as a base to reinforce liberal media narratives with leftist academic research. After Trump’s election showed that the internet can overcome institutional gatekeeping, the center panicked. This resulted in institutional collaboration with other leftists, crafting methods from deeper narrative collusion to private sector censorship of online speech. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and Trump’s hostile takeover of the intelligence agencies greatly undermined the left’s ability to gatekeep online discourse. Still, the Shorenstein Center remains a potent force on the institutional left—backed by Harvard, the only Ivy League university to resist the Trump administration’s reforms targeting left-wing discriminatory practices. Its collaboration with media elites, funding by leftist authoritarians, and continuing role as a media narrative architect show the dangers of institutional collusion between left-wing academics and mainstream media. The post The Harvard Institution Stoking Left-Wing Media Bias appeared first on The American Conservative.

Latin America The Fight Over American Involvement in Venezuelan Oil Chevron’s license to operate in the Venezuelan oil fields will lapse soon—or will it? Credit: ded pixto/Shutterstock The Trump administration is sending mixed signals about the future of the American presence in Venezuela’s oil fields. Special Envoy Ric Grenell told Steve Bannon Tuesday on the latter’s War Room program that President Donald Trump had authorized an extension of Chevron Corporation’s license for oil extraction in the South American country, where it runs a joint operation with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA. That assertion was contradicted the next day by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stated in a post on his personal X account that “The pro-Maduro Biden oil license in #Venezuela will expire as scheduled next Tuesday May 27.” Chevron’s presence in Venezuela has been a matter of some controversy for the administration, as the confusion surrounding the expiration of the license this past week demonstrates. Both Trump administrations have taken a hard line towards the repressive Maduro government, including imposing sweeping sanctions on the country in 2019 and asserting early this year that it is cooperating with the prison gang and drug cartel Tren de Aragua in perpetrating an invasion of American territory. The Chevron license, on the other hand, is a product of then-president Joe Biden’s failed attempt to achieve cooperation from Maduro by loosening the restrictions on American companies’ operations in Venezuela. When Trump returned to office in 2025, his “maximum pressure” strategy on Venezuela seemed to have returned as well. The administration announced in March that it would be revoking Chevron’s license for Venezuelan drilling effective May 27. But that decision has received sharp pushback from some quarters. Within the administration, Grenell has provided the most public support for a more transactional approach to the Venezuelan government. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Grenell met with Venezuelan officials and freed 6 Americans being held prisoner by the government, as well as obtaining an agreement that Venezuela would accept U.S. deportation flights. This week, Grenell also secured the release of American prisoner Joseph St. Clair, an Air Force veteran, as part of negotiations which reportedly included the possibility of extending Chevron’s operations in the country, potentially in exchange for the government accepting further repatriation flights. (The Trump administration recently revoked Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans living illegally in the U.S., meaning hundreds of thousands will be eligible for deportation). Support for a new approach to Venezuela outside the administration has come from figures in right-wing media, including Bannon and Laura Loomer, as well as those in the oil industry like the former Florida Republican Party Finance Chair Harry Sargeant III, whose company, Global Oil Terminals, also operates in Venezuela. In an op-ed posted to X on May 8, Loomer contended that terminating Chevron’s license in Venezuela would simply turn Venezuelan oil fields over to China while depriving the U.S. of an important energy resource and squeezing domestic consumers. This is sharply opposed by proponents of Trump’s oppositional “maximum pressure” strategy towards Maduro. Rubio, who asserted that Chevron’s license will expire as planned, has strongly supported a confrontational stance towards Maduro, as does Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone. In Congress, the approach has the backing of the three Cuban-American representatives, Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), and Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who aggressively lobbied the incoming administration to revoke Chevron’s license earlier this year. Those who support ending Chevron’s drilling operations with Venezuela argue that the company provides a significant source of financing for the autocratic government. Chevron’s ventures contribute over 200,000 barrels of oil daily to Venezuela’s production, nearly one quarter of all oil produced in the country. That production is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually to cash-starved Venezuela.  Chevron’s modern and efficient fleet is also much better equipped to operate the fields than its state-owned partner, PDVSA, which struggles with corruption, poor management, and the disruption caused by American sanctions. The gap left by Chevron could potentially be filled by Chinese companies, but China has pulled back significantly on investments in Venezuela in recent years. (It previously sank billions of dollars into the country between 2008 and 2017, but the economy of the country has crumbled and put returns on Chinese projects and financing at risk.) At time of writing, Trump has made no comment on Chevron’s license, leaving its future in limbo. The next several days will be an important test of the administration’s position on Venezuela going forward: Will the license expire as planned, confirming a continuation of the “maximum pressure” approach of Trump I? Or will the administration follow up Grenell’s movement towards a more transactional approach to the Maduro government? The post The Fight Over American Involvement in Venezuelan Oil appeared first on The American Conservative.