6 books to fall in love with history: 1) Rubicon by Tom Holland

They found a rat when uncovering the roses, so they deployed the tactical assault cat.

#Comics #TheFarSide #Cows 🐄

We need some form of fascism to stop communism is the oldest trick in the book.

You can be globally compassionate as a person and still feel that your society should have careful borders and that local cultures matter, and should be preserved if they're clearly doing well. These actually aren't in contradiction.

“Most loved?” Yikes. People are shockingly misguided and misinformed. And almost everything we learn about history in school is a lie.

The equality worth fighting for is equality before the law, not equality of outcomes. It means no one is born with the right to rule another, and no one is born obligated to serve another. It protects your freedom to differ in ambition, ability, wealth, and achievement without granting anyone superior rights or claims upon your life and property. And it protects you from being forced to finance the government's preferred conception of equality. True political equality protects everyone's equal rights, including the right to be unequal in every other respect.

Pope Francis, 2024: “All religions are paths to God.” I guess the Catholic Church forgot to read the Bible. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” — John 14:6

My lifelong support for draconian gun control laws was weakened during the 2020 riots when, watching helicopter footage of mobs roaming freely through Philly neighborhoods and attempting to enter homes, a journalist reported that homeowners had told him that when they called police begging for protection they were told that law enforcement personnel were overwhelmed and homeowners were "on their own."

I believe religious liberty is one of America’s most important principles. I say that as a Christian who believes there is a jurisdictional boundary around the human conscience that no government has the right to cross. I oppose religious coercion whether it comes from Islam, integralism, or Christian nationalism. My concern about Sharia is its enforcement as a system of government. When religious doctrine becomes compulsory civil law—when it determines who enjoys full citizenship, restricts women’s rights, punishes people for leaving their religion, or subordinates nonbelievers—it’s coercive. And incompatible with a constitutional republic committed to religious liberty and equal citizenship. Islamic authority demands subjugation and you cannot dismiss religious domination as an imaginary concern. Calling those demands religious does not place them beyond criticism. Sharia is a political system. As such it’s a threat to religious liberty. And this is the most complicated and challenging piece of how we’re going to go forward as a society in a constitutional republic.

The Catholic Church is making the same mistake Bibi Netanyahu made. Bibi rightly realized that giving the Palestinians a state could be suicidal for the State of Israel, so he looked the other way while Qatar funded and empowered Hamas. He seems to have believed that Hamas’s ugly face would make the case against Palestinian statehood for him, while Israel would still be able to contain Hamas and prevent the damage from spilling into Israel. The result was multiple wars, including October 7, followed by a global campaign against Israel after October 7, which also became a vehicle for the Islamo-leftist war against the West. The Catholic Church is making the same mistake. The Church has been weakened in Europe and has become increasingly irrelevant. European society has become largely secular, and the Vatican’s authority is now primarily symbolic. So, in my opinion, the Catholic Church is encouraging policies that bring more immigrants into Europe, particularly immigrants from Muslim-majority societies, in the hope that their presence will pressure European societies to rediscover their Christian identity and perhaps restore some of the Catholic Church’s former cultural influence. I might be mistaken, and this could simply be a conspiracy theory, but as far as I can see, I struggle to find another explanation for the Catholic Church’s posture toward Europe’s immigration crisis. Perhaps the Catholic Church believes that because it is built upon the rock of Peter, the gates of hell will not prevail against it, unlike the non-Catholic Eastern churches and Christian communities that were devastated or erased under centuries of Islamic rule. If that is true, then the Catholic Church is making the same mistake Bibi made when he believed Israel would be able to contain Hamas. Islam in Europe may begin its assault using the language and political machinery of the left, but it will not remain subordinate to the left forever. Eventually, Islam will pursue its own religious and political objectives. And if Europe continues down this path, even the Basilica of St. Peter may one day face the fate of churches elsewhere that were converted into mosques. I pray that the Catholic Church realizes that we are living in the real world and stops relying on humanly orchestrated political schemes to save the Church. Let the God of the Church take care of His Church. Your responsibility is to do your part to preserve the civilization the Church built.