Given his pathetic performance as Secretary of War [sic], Hegseth might consider whether what follows, in Isaiah 6: 9, applies to himself: Ever hearing, but never understanding; Ever seeing, but never perceiving.

When did @JonahDispatch become David French 2.0? There’s a real discussion to be had here on the question of America’s Christian roots, but you can’t have it when the tone is smirking elitism. Let’s try anyway: Was the United States founded as a Christian country? To read Goldberg here, it was founded on “theological diversity,” a concept he takes from twilight Western civilization and grafts onto 18th century thought, an idea alien to that time. Jonah wrote for National Review. I can well imagine another contributor to National Review, the late eminent American historian Forrest McDonald (who guided my graduate thesis) thundering a contemptuous verdict on such thinking. He would say Jonah is reading the past through a contemporary lens. Diversity, as it is currently defined, had no place in their thinking. No one saw it as a source of cultural strength (and, historically speaking, diversity has never made any nation great). It finds no place in early American slogans nor in our founding documents. Diversity was precisely what they were trying to overcome. The right word is tolerance. Of Christian and European descent to a man, the Founders weren’t thinking in terms of creating a touchy-feely country built on “theological diversity.” They were thinking of the intolerance of Christians toward other Christians. They knew well the horrors of The Peasant Rebellion, the Thirty Years War, Bloody Mary, and so on. Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus didn’t enter into it. They were thinking of an Elizabethan-style arrangement where the state was a noncombatant in theological disputes. Let’s return to our original question: Was the United States founded as Christian country? Short answer: no. I get uncomfortable when I see the David Bartons and, dare I say it, the Charlie Kirks arguing otherwise. That this is so is obvious. Had that been their intention, they would have codified it. It would be embedded in our Constitution. It isn’t. Moreover, America’s founding was deeply influenced by both the English and French Enlightenments. The English Enlightenment was profoundly Christian; the French Enlightenment was decidedly atheistic. One gave us Christians like Washington and Adams and the other gave us Jefferson and Payne. Fortunately, the influence of the English version on our development was greater. Let’s unpack the nuances of this. Militant secularists have long interpreted the above as a proof that the United States was meant to be irreligious bordering on atheistic. That’s nonsense. And Goldberg seems to think the authors of our Constitution were inspired by a mixture of Zen Buddhist bullshit or Hinduism’s 33 crore gods or the wicked Quran in addition to some vague Christian ideals. This, too, is nonsense. Just as Christianity gave rise to democracy, capitalism, science, and the West in general, it also gave rise to the United States. And yet, America was not founded as a Christian state. That said, @megbasham was right to say that it was founded by a “99%” Christian people. The distinction is important. The authors of the Constitution were self-consciously creating a new nation that was inspired by uniquely Christian ideals, but there would be no religious tests. Common ground would be found in what all Christians saw as self-evidential truths: human dignity and rights flowing from a gracious God. A final word on where this started: the influx of Indians (i.e., Hindus) and Goldberg’s faux outrage that @SteveDeaceShow saw it as culturally counterproductive. As I pointed out in an interview with John Stossel, the idea that human equality is “self-evident” is incoherent outside of a Christian context. Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi points out that Hinduism is predicated on human inequality. @SteveDeaceShow’s point stands. I conclude with this: while I understand why they didn’t, I wish the Founders had created a broad religious test for citizenship. That they didn’t may be our undoing.

That's because you don't know your history. Roosevelt was an avid eugenicist. Roosevelt was closely allied with Madison Grant and William Temple Hornaday, who founded the Bronx Zoo and put a black kid named Ota Benga in a zoo cage and displayed him as a subhuman species. The child later committed suicide. Roosevelt wrote a glowing endorsement of Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler kept under his bed and referred to as his "Bible." Roosevelt's endorsement: "The book is a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize. It shows an extraordinary range of reading and a wide scholarship. It shows a habit of singular serious thought on the subject of most commanding importance. It shows a fine fearlessness in assailing the popular and mischievous sentimentalities and attractive and corroding falsehoods which few men dare assail. It is the work of an American scholar and gentleman; and all Americans should be sincerely grateful to you for writing it." Opposition to scientific racism and eugenics was mainly raised by Christians at the time, and was dismissed by Grant as "sentimentality." Roosevelt strongly opposed "unfit" races being freely available to reproduce, in keeping with Darwin's prescription in his book The Descent of Man, and he advocated for forced sterilization of those deemed unfit to reproduce. He was a product of his time, and eugenics was mainstream thought back then. We shouldn't judge too harshly. But Hitler got his ideas from the U.S. eugenics movement. Calling Roosevelt "Proto Hitler" is not altogether unfair. Pictures below: Teddy Roosevelt at the St. Louis World's Fair, where African pygmies were put in a zoo display as "missing links" in evolution. Also pictured: the zoo display.

BREAKING: WHITE HOUSE LABELS H-1B AND GCC (GLOBAL CAPACITY CENTERS IN INDIA, USED FOR MASS OFFSHORING) AS A "NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT" whitehouse.gov/presidential-…

Three years ago, @UnPopulistMag asked why I was trying to warn people about the Gen Z populists Claremont Institute, Heritage Foundation and Conservative Partnership Institute was propping up as the future of conservatism. My answer still applies today. theunpopulist.net/p/the-bull…

Exclusive: More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the data. wapo.st/4xtFlaf

No, we're calling you guys racists for saying that Americans with foreign ancestry who assimilate to American culture & claim loyalty to our country don't belong in America.

Trump’s mass deportation agenda is killing jobs, driving up prices and making it easier for employers to exploit workers. Our new report from @AFLCIO and @ACLU shows why a broad path to citizenship would raise wages and strengthen our economy. aclu.org/publications/citize…

Did it ever occur to you that MAGA is on the brink of entering the very cultural and political wilderness you describe?

Actually, while it is true that the foreign-born share of the population hit a record high in 2025, it's actually not significantly higher than where we were for half a century between 1860 & 1910. Those immigrants & their children were Americans then, too.

This story is actually insane. Stay with me because there are a lot of pieces here. Travis Kelce was just named in court as a victim of a $35 million Ponzi scheme. The guy who ran it, Siddharth "Sid" Jawahar, is an illegal immigrant from India who has been in the US since 2005. Yesterday he got an 11 year sentence and was ordered to pay $31.35 million in restitution to his victims. That’s not even the weird part.

Erick’s piece did little beyond rehash a bunch of Guardian smears and malicious insinuations. That may meet your standard for “journalism,” but it doesn’t exactly call for a point-by-point refutation. As for your “Beltway insider” comment, I’m not sure what that has to do with my point or the source of Erick’s resentment.

The main thing I kept thinking while reading this is that classical liberals are going to need to wake up and learn how to defend their position again. They’re like astronauts who have been in space for too long and can no longer walk on solid ground. When I post something on here saying, “hey, let’s explore the downsides of universal suffrage” they all think it’s like 1995 or something and all they have to do is point and sneer and laugh and call me a crank. No need to make arguments. No need to defend your position. No desire to honestly engage critics. Neither the courage nor the confidence to say, you know, yes, there were of course downsides, but here’s why it was all worth it. And in between bouts of laughing and sneering, you get the occasional dour Substack article wondering what the hell is happening and why are all these young men moving to the right? They’re all still living in some end-of-history dreamworld in which the debates have been had and the fight is over. And they appear to find the existence of any opposition at all bewildering and disorienting. But you talk to young liberals today and they believe the stupidest, craziest things. They have no idea how to defend their positions. They’ve spent their entire lives being told that they’re a great fighter with truth on their side, but they’ve never actually entered the ring, never actually felt a fist hit the bridge of their nose and understood beyond any doubt what Mike Tyson meant when he said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” You need to go back to basics. Because people are increasingly unhappy with the world as it is. And this is the world liberalism built. So you need to explain why it’s the best possible arrangement relative to the alternatives. And you might want to ask yourself tough questions like, “is all this mass immigration actually worth it? Boy, it sure does seem to push a lot of people to the right.” We’re all kind of counting on you, because, honestly, I don’t think it’s the far right who wins when you fail to do this. I think it’s probably the communists. And if I’m ever forced to choose between those two extremes, the decision is not a difficult one.