Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro talked with Somali-born author, human rights activist, and former Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali about the strange alliance between the Left and radical Islam and asked her about the biggest challenges facing the West during the latest edition of “The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.” Ali was born into a devout Muslim family in 1969, but fled to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage to one of her distant cousins. The Somali woman has since become a fierce free speech and human rights advocate. She converted to Christianity after being a prominent atheist in part because of Christianity’s positive influence on Western civilization. “I want to start with what may be the biggest crisis facing the West and there are really two aspects of this. One is a failure of the West to understand itself, and one is a failure of the West to understand other parts of the world,” Shapiro said before asking Ali to share her thoughts. “Let me start by the first part of your question,” Ali replied. “Which is ‘what’s the biggest challenges facing the West?’ And in my view, the biggest challenge by far is the West’s insecurity about its own legacy, about its own Judeo-Christian traditions, about the institutions it has built, about its own prosperity, and the values that led to that prosperity.” Ali then dove into what she believes is the culprit behind Western society losing its Judeo-Christian traditions. “At some point, the West has allowed itself to feel guilty and that guilt was weaponized against it,” she said. “So why do you think that the West has lost its way?” Shapiro asked. “There are a lot of people who posit that it’s a loss of religious faith. There are a lot of people who posit that in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the West basically has no confidence in its own ability to shape the world. But where do you place the blame for the West having lost its confidence?” “It’s both. But I think that the loss of faith and the loss of faith in the Christian core,” Ali said, adding. “I think that is a very, very important point that was neglected and maybe so neglected to the point where we literally are on the brink of losing everything.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP Later in the interview, Shapiro and Ali discussed how the West straying from its Judeo-Christian roots has resulted in the culture witnessing an alliance between the far Left and radical Islam, which has been especially noticeable in the recent anti-Israel protests on college campuses across the U.S. “The only commonality between the far-Left and radical Islamists is their desire to tear down the civilization,” Shapiro said. Ali agreed, adding that there is a disconnect between the younger generation and the faith and principles that guided most people throughout the history of Western civilization. “I think most of them maybe didn’t grow up with faith and don’t really know what their roots are. That’s not just faith … they’ve also been guilt-tripped,” Ali said. “So they’ve been left to the wolves to pick on their minds and culture — their minds, their hearts, their souls. And that method of fighting is proving to be much more effective than the use of military tools alone.”

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When it comes to using the word supergroups in the title of an article, fans instantly think of bands like Asia, Traveling Wilburys, Cream, etc… However, rock and roll history is filled with many supergroups that excited fans over the possibility of endless albums of pure rock and roll bliss and then broke up for many different reasons. This list will look at those supergroups that only released one studio album. Some of these bands recorded songs for a second album but broke up before the sequel was released. Record companies often release that extra material as bonus tracks on The post 15 Rock Supergroups That Released Only One Studio Album appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

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Most women assume that balancing motherhood and a professional career is a modern challenge, but that’s not quite right.Meditations on this theme reach back to classical antiquity. Some prominent women, such as Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi brothers), are recorded as virtuous exemplars. Others, such as Livia (wife of the Emperor Augustus) are remembered for scheming and treachery on behalf of their children. The French portraitist Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun (1755-1842), took this to a new level by making motherhood the centerpiece of her professional identity as an artist.For all of us who are trying to achieve that elusive “life-work balance,” it can be comforting to realize it was as much a challenge in the 18th century as it is today.Vigée-Le Brun was a pioneering woman in a field that had been historically dominated by men. In the Renaissance, however, some female artists had started to break through, and by the time of the French Enlightenment, a number had become international celebrities.Vigée-Le Brun’s father, Louis Vigée, was also a portraitist, so she had access to the technical artistic training that was denied to so many women at the time. Although he died when she was young, she recorded in her memoirs, or “Souvenirs,” that Louis was the first to recognize her skill and proclaim her future as an artist. As she matured, Vigée-Le Brun developed a close relationship with Marie Antoinette and attempted to rehabilitate the unpopular queen’s public image through official portraits with her children, which were supposed to give an informal, humanizing impression of the monarch.Unfortunately for Marie Antoinette, who was guillotined during the French Revolution, it would have taken much more than a portrait to save the monarchy. But Vigée-Le Brun survived and even thrived as an artist and began to make a specialty of self-portraits to shape her own image.In our selfie-obsessed age, it may come as a surprise that self-portraiture is itself a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back to 16th-century Europe. Indeed, there is no equivalent either in the ancient world or in any other tradition. For the West, however, it became an established genre of interest not only to the artists themselves but also to collectors.Vigée-Le Brun married the collector and art dealer Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813). He was related to Louis XIV’s favored painter Charles Le Brun — so the very addition of her husband’s surname would have added to Louise’s artistic pedigree. Husband and wife would wind up on opposite sides of the gathering revolution, and their marriage ended in divorce in 1794, but they did have one child, Jeanne Julie Louise Le Brun (1780-1819). Print Collector/Getty ImagesAs Jeanne grew older, Vigée-Le Brun captured herself and her daughter in a close embrace for self-portraits. The images of the two of them together were designed to sentimentally tug at the heartstrings of viewers, while at the same time to impress them with the skill of the painter who was simultaneously participant in — and recorder of — the tender, intimate scene between mother and child.For the first time, the role of the artist as mother was not the stuff of the nursery or boudoir but rather the subject of important, high-end oil paintings sold in a fashionable gallery to aristocratic collectors. “Brunette,” as Jeanne was known, stayed with her mother after her parents’ divorce and showed artistic promise of her own — at least according to her mother’s memoirs. The relationship between Louise and Jeanne was not always smooth, but their legacy of turning motherhood — particularly of daughters — into a central pillar of artistic identity was groundbreaking.As both a mother and a professional, I have always found Vigée-Le Brun’s navigation of the treacherous waters of her career, tumultuous political events, and motherhood in a world not very welcoming to women fascinating. For all of us who are trying, however imperfectly, to achieve that elusive “life-work balance,” it can also be comforting to realize that it was as much a challenge in the 18th century as it is in the 21st.Vigée-Le Brun’s example of a mother fashioning her own identity both from her parent and her child is a wonderful inspiration this Mother’s Day. She established that having children need not negate professional success but rather can be a key component to it. In that spirit, I would like to pay tribute to my mother for inspiring me to tackle both motherhood and career and to thank my children for having given me back so much more than I will ever be able to give them.

A mystery surrounding the Mona Lisa has reportedly been solved by a geologist and Renaissance art historian. The discovery has to do with the location that features so prominently in the background of the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. Ann Pizzorusso claims she has finally discovered the Italian landscape that has been the subject of a centuries-long debate, according to the New York Post. Pizzorusso is also the author of the 2014 book, "Tweeting Da Vinci."According to the report, Pizzorusso claims Da Vinci depicted parts of the city of Lecco in the Mona Lisa, on the shore of Lake Como in northern Italy. She went on to suggest she located the bridge, mountain range, and the lake the features in the legendary painting's background. She also mentioned that she spotted the Alps that overlook the area and Lake Garlate, which is located in the south of the city. "We know from his notebooks that he spent a lot of time exploring the Lecco area and the territory further north," Pizzorusso said.Da Vinci was known to have visited the area — which is about 250 miles north of his home region of Florence. "I'm so excited about this," the art historian said. "I really feel it's a home run."She said it was important for her to have an understanding of geology and art history to solve the puzzle. "Geologists don't look at paintings and art historians don't look at geology.""We know from his [Da Vinci's] notebooks that he spent a lot of time exploring the Lecco area and the territory further north," Pizzorusso said. — (@) Other theories about the location has made the rounds over the years, such as a 2011 claim that a bridge and a road in the Mona Lisa were from Bobbio, a town in northern Italy, according to the Guardian. A 2023 hypothesis claimed that Da Vinci painted a bridge located in the province of Arezzo.But Pizzorusso said focusing on just the bridge was not enough to conclude the location. “The arched bridge was ubiquitous throughout Italy and Europe and many looked very similar," she said. "It is impossible to identify an exact location from a bridge alone. They all talk about the bridge and nobody talks about the geology."“Art historians said Leonardo always used his imagination, but you can give this picture to any geologist in the world and they’ll say what I’m saying about Lecco. Even a non-geologist can now see the similarities.”Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Israeli singer Eden Golan had been booed during her final performance in the Swedish city of Malmö.