Month: June 2024

There’s a well-known saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Many don’t know that the phrase was inspired by a Roman poet named Sextus Aurelius Propertius, who once wrote, “Semper in absentes felicior aestus amantes,” “Always toward absent lovers love’s tide stronger flows.”

It was a difficult sentiment for me to relate to, visiting my alma mater, the College of the Holy Cross, this past April, nearly a year after my graduation.

Walking through the halls of the place I had called home for four years, I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling of unfamiliarity. Of course, reuniting with old friends was more than enjoyable, and reminiscing on the past had its moments. Yet I knew things were massively different. 

Since my departure in May 2023, the classics department at Holy Cross has imploded. Once revered as “one of the largest and most active undergraduate programs in the country,” Holy Cross has become just the latest victim of dangerous DEI groupthink. In the name of “inclusivity” and “diversity,” decades-old standards have been done away with for more “accessibility” and “equity.”

The trend arguably began in 2021, when Princeton made the news for dropping classics majors’ language requirements. The “classics” track of the major was eliminated altogether (which required intermediate proficiency in either Latin or Greek to enter) and the general requirement of taking Greek or Latin was removed. These changes were reportedly instituted in order to create a more “inclusive” and “equitable” program of study, according to the members of the department.

As John McWhorter of the Atlantic wrote at the time, “This is a typical example of a university rushing to make policy changes under the guise of promoting racial equity that are as likely to promote racism as to uproot it.” Yet other universities have since followed suit, emboldened by Princeton. Howard University, one of the largest historically black colleges in America, actually dissolved its classics department in 2021. Holy Cross has now officially joined the loser club.

When I started college in 2019, I already thought the requirements to be a classics major were too skimpy. Back then, Holy Cross required eight courses in Latin and Ancient Greek (getting up to the advanced level in one and at least the intermediate level in another), along with two “culture classes” in order to graduate with a major in classics. 

According to some ancient lore shared by a professor when I was a junior, the department had, once upon a time, also required survey courses in both Greek and Roman history—one was taught in the fall, the other in the spring each year. However, after co-education was introduced in 1972, the professors in the department felt as if they needed to extend a more welcoming hand to women interested in the classics major. Over time, the history courses that apparently “appealed to straight, white men” were dropped, and, by the time I got there, had disappeared from the course catalog altogether. 

But language requirements are different, aren’t they? One could argue that straight-up history courses are not necessary for the education of a classics major (it’s a wrong argument, but one that could be made), but a classics major without a strong grasp of ancient Greek and Latin is like a Spanish major who doesn’t speak Spanish or a French major who is unable to read French. 

Rumors that Holy Cross would change the major requirements have been floating around since the pandemic. I used to joke with friends that every year we grew closer to becoming the “Ancient Mediterranean Studies Department.” That joke doesn’t seem particularly funny anymore.

Language courses were arguably the most difficult to teach in a virtual classroom. When translations exist online and student accountability is out the window, it is almost impossible to hold students to the same standards as in person. Thus, the gateway was opened for the institution of a “completion-based” grading system throughout many introductory-level language courses. This system essentially allowed students to have second chances on homework assignments, quizzes, and tests. If they made a mistake the first time around, the professor would write which questions needed to be corrected and the student could try again. Additionally, most assignments became take-home and open book, making it much easier to avoid memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules—difficult but important stepping stones to translating advanced texts.

Then came the cries of oppression. Trigger warnings were instituted in various upper-level seminars (such as for mentions of slavery, excuse me, “enslavement”), homework assignments became suggestions rather than demands, and students were allowed to skip class without question if they felt “uncomfortable” engaging with the day’s material. A minority of students claimed that the texts being taught in upper-level seminars were not diverse enough and that secondary literature projecting a modern-day lens on the ancient world should have a larger role in seminar courses. 

A new club perverting the Latin phrase SPQR was established, “Spectrum of [neuro]diversity, People of color, and Queerness Reimagined” (rather than Senatus Populusque Romanus), as “a safe space for students fascinated by Classics that also want to see their own identities explored,” according to its inaugural email. Professors implored students to attend, even if they just fit the category of “ally.”

Student-faculty dinners to “facilitate discussions” on the conundrums facing the department became commonplace in the final months of my senior year. Professors all of a sudden had become apologetic. Rather than defending the classics, the field of study they chose to spend their lives studying and teaching, they decided just to let it die.

Rumors turned into reality in the fall of 2023, when the department officially told students that a rehaul of the language requirements for the classics major was in the works. The news sparked intense outrage, and students came together to write a letter in protest. The letter, shared with The American Conservative, was signed by 23 students (more than half of current majors) and was also supported by a large network of alumni. An excerpt from the letter reads: 

Languages are the lifeblood of this department. It is incredibly important to develop proficiency in both Greek and Latin to acquire familiarity with the Classical world. The amount of cultural nuance that an original text loses by being translated is impossible to quantify in such a short piece of writing… Students should be encouraged to take as much Latin and Greek as possible. 

Students organized meetings with professors to relay how devastating the decision to lower the language requirement would be. None of it was taken seriously. According to a student who spoke to TAC under conditions of anonymity, a professor was heard in the hallway of the department laughing at how silly it was that students expected to have a say in the process. 

In the spring semester, the classics department faculty voted to make the curriculum change permanent. According to students present at this vote, the option to keep the curriculum the same as before was not even on the table. The department voted for the following new requirements: 11 courses, including three “CLAS” or “culture” courses, three courses in one language, two courses in another language, and three miscellaneous other courses. Additionally, the classics department would now offer courses in other Near Eastern languages such as Hebrew and Ugaritic.

Current students have the option of continuing their major requirements uninterrupted, but the class of 2028 and onwards will be subject to the new rules. Enrollment in advanced seminars, especially in ancient Greek, is already dwindling due to widespread apathy among students towards their professors and course options. 

I decided to speak to a few current students to get a better grasp of how they are navigating this new, “more equitable” environment.

A rising junior at the college interested in pursuing a graduate degree in classics wrote:

The most unfortunate consequence of the new curriculum change has been the loss of the spring advanced Greek seminar, a class which many of us students have a strong desire to take. This is especially tough in light of the fact that for several years the Classics Department has not offered courses in Greek and Roman history. When I first applied to Holy Cross, I was told that the Classics Department was the strongest in the country, and now for the first time in the history of Holy Cross, advanced Greek will not run. 

Alexandra Berardelli, a rising senior and devoted classics student, wrote: 

Without going through the process of learning either Latin or Greek to the proficiency level, the student might as well study history or literature. Time and time again, what makes Classics students better thinkers is this critical training in the language, not mere knowledge of history and culture. Under the new curriculum, a student who wishes to pursue higher degrees in the Classics may have new difficulties. Most graduate programs require a supreme degree of proficiency and excellence in Latin and ancient Greek. With decreased emphasis and requirements of the languages, students will not be considered as highly competitive applicants for such programs. 

All of the students say they have been made to feel as if their professors and Holy Cross as an institution think they are unable to handle difficult subjects. Students also doubt these changes will make the department more welcoming to diverse students. After all, what kind of “diverse groups” is the department realistically trying to appeal to at a small, New England, liberal arts, Jesuit school that is over 70 percent white? 

As one of the aforementioned anonymous students told TAC, “The quality of education has rapidly decreased, and students are no longer challenged to rise to high standards because the standards set by professors are so low. We are becoming extremely satisfied with mediocrity.”

Why should ordinary Americans care about the downfall of a small Jesuit school in Worcester, Massachusetts? 

I recently attended a conversation between Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center, and Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, at the CATO Institute on Rosen’s new book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. 

Rosen argued that studying classical virtue is essential for self-mastery and the pursuit of true happiness. Using the past as a guide for the present was why the founders studied classical figures and events. Rosen pointed to the example of Julius Caesar: “The reason they founded the constitution to slow down deliberation is because they think, unless citizens can find virtuous self-mastery and can overcome factious emotions like anger and greed and avarice, they’ll succumb to demagogues. And Caesar will come in on horseback, offering cheap luxuries in exchange for liberty.”

Poliakoff suggested studying classics helps us to answer age-old questions such as “What does it mean to be a human being? How do we make ourselves better?” He likened those who decry the classics as racist to witch hunters “taking people to the stake instead of opening up the dialogue.” He added, “Of course the classics are not racist. They get us to quintessential human truths.”

The slow but steady demise of classics in the West serves as a microcosm of a wider problem spreading throughout our globalist world—a refusal to come to terms with and appreciate the lessons of history. The witch hunters calling students racists for appreciating Latin and ancient Greek are ironically like the Caesar the founders feared all along. 

The path ahead for the survival of the Western tradition seems dire. But for every Caesar, let’s hope there is a Brutus to stand in his way.

The post A Requiem for Classics appeared first on The American Conservative.

On the 200th anniversary of Lord Byron’s death, many celebrated him as the archetypal rake, romantic hero, ne’er-do-well playboy, and gifted poet. Less appreciated is the fact that he was arguably our first modern tourist. From Venice to Albania to Athens and Istanbul, Byron partied his way across the Mediterranean world, reveling in exotic sights and customs, dressing up in local finery, and chasing lovers of both genders along the way. A typical British stag party carousing through the streets of modern Budapest may be less refined, but its priorities are not appreciably different. 

Byron’s example inspired waves of imitators. After the Greek War of Independence, an enterprising Scottish publisher started printing regular editions of Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Greece to reassure distraught Victorians that the flea-infested inns and run-down tavernas they encountered were living links to the world of Pericles, Aristophanes, and Plato. Today, smartphone-wielding travelers of all nationalities have supplanted upper class Brits on continental tours, but the aim of modern tourist traps is much the same as their comparatively primitive 19th century antecedents, namely fleecing affluent foreigners as gently as possible. 

Seasoned travelers go to great lengths to avoid such places, but tourist traps at least try to remind visitors, albeit in crude and over-the-top ways, that they are in a foreign country. Sometimes this leads to unfortunate misunderstandings involving novelty drink specials or garbled English menus. In Hungarian, “paraszt konyha” roughly translates to “peasant kitchen,” meaning a restaurant that serves traditional countryside dishes. Divorced from this context, “paraszt” is a serious insult, a bit like calling someone a “bastard” in English. Something to keep in mind the next time you’re looking for traditional Hungarian fare in Budapest. 

Still, the occasional misunderstanding can be a useful lesson in the culture of your host country. The multi-layered connotations of “paraszt,” which, depending on the context, might mean “serf,” “farmer,” “bastard,” or an adjective to describe something traditional, actually says something interesting about Hungarians’ complicated relationship to the countryside. On the one hand, rural Hungary is still seen as the source of all things traditionally Magyar, from good wine to hearty meals. On the other hand, rural visitors to bustling, cosmopolitan Budapest sometimes resent their big city cousins. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, himself a country boy, has found a great deal of political success playing on rural Hungary’s inferiority complex. 

Inadvertent crash courses on foreign taboos may soon be a thing of the past. A new mode of travel has emerged in recent years, pioneered by a wave of affluent, tech-savvy young people who seek to iron the awkwardness out of foreign sightseeing. These are the digital nomads, and the influence of their peculiar subculture can be felt everywhere from visa policy to the coffee menu at a typical Eastern European cafe. 

Digital nomadism is not quite traditional tourism, nor is it the same as moving to a foreign country, learning the language, and adapting to local habits and customs. Nomads tend to stick to their own enclaves and interact mostly with fellow expatriates or well-heeled Anglophone locals. Nomads might stay in one place for a year or two, or they might quickly relocate in search of better weather, more favorable visa policies, or a different “vibe.” Anyone with a smartphone and a remote job can aspire to the lifestyle. Digital nomadism was popularized on American social media and is enabled by a suite of technologies developed by American companies. 

Armed with ride-sharing apps, QR codes, booking websites, and sophisticated machine translation, a visitor to Paris, Berlin, or Prague can handle travel arrangements with nothing more than a smartphone and internet access. These features insulate visitors from all but the briefest scripted encounters with locals. And if your Uber driver or food delivery guy is too chatty or insufficiently deferential, you can immediately leave a negative review. Instant technological feedback is training a generation of foreign service employees on the social hang-ups of American millennials.

The app that exemplifies this model is Airbnb, an online booking service that originally sold itself as a more authentic way to travel, the idea being that your host would also serve as a personalized concierge for his city or neighborhood. Now Airbnb bookings are frequently outsourced to agencies that manage multiple properties. Instead of handing you a key in person, your host is just as likely to send you a code to a dropbox. Communication is done remotely via the Airbnb app or website, which naturally includes a translation feature. All of these interactions can be conducted without a single face-to-face encounter. 

Digital nomadism has spread rapidly from Phnom Penh to Perth, but its heartland is continental Europe. Indeed, traveling the European Union in the 1990s and early 2000s was a bit like being a digital nomad avant la lettre, thanks to the dissolution of internal EU border controls, cheap Eurail passes, and widespread English fluency. 

Now apps and social media, in addition to making travel much easier, have exported the aesthetics of Brooklyn and San Francisco across the Old World. Go to a trendy cafe in any major European city and you’re likely to encounter the same menu of cappuccinos, iced lattes, and cortados, with oat or almond milk if you happen to be vegan. Playlists are algorithmically selected to be vaguely hip and welcoming without being objectionable (or memorable). Interior decor tends toward raw wood tables, exposed brick walls, and other features popular on Instagram. Many places don’t even bother to include the host country’s native language on the menu because their customers, even the locals, all speak English. 

For young Americans, digital nomadism has certain obvious advantages. You can travel across Europe with a minimum of hassle, all while continuing to enjoy a salary that is considerably higher than what you would make if you permanently relocated. You also enjoy the many benefits of European social democracies, from cheap and reliable public transportation to free health care. For decades, wonks searched in vain for a formula that combines a generous European-style welfare state with America’s dynamic private sector. Nomads have actually cracked the code. 

European tourism is already being reshaped by the practices and preferences of the nomad class. Italy, Portugal, and Croatia, all heavily dependent on foreign visitors, now offer special visas for remote workers with incomes above a certain threshold. Others are less enthused by this new mode of travel. Airbnb’s transformation from a way for locals to make a bit of extra cash to a professionalized rental racket has hollowed out entire neighborhoods, causing Florence and Barcelona to restrict online booking services. 

Funnily enough, many nomads have borrowed a symbol previously associated with a less glamorous class of traveler. Once the province of sailors and other dangerous or vaguely disreputable professions, tattoos have become almost standard for younger sightseers. Inked motifs, symbols, and messages still invoke romantic notions of foreign adventure, though their bearers have done everything possible to remove friction and uncertainty from the equation. Ubiquitous tattoos bring to mind another British writer with an international background. Joseph Conrad once wrote that, to sailors, all foreign ports are identical. The same can be said of the bars, cafes, and neighborhoods that cater to digital nomads.

The post Down With Digital Nomads appeared first on The American Conservative.

Journalists aren’t safe in Nicaragua. Under the Sandinista regime, they are hunted like vermin, with most non-state-stenographers being either jailed or exiled. To enter the country, therefore, I lied to the border guards about being a journalist, posing instead as an economist.

The few remaining journalists work clandestinely, omitting their bylines. I stand with them and the Nicaraguan people yearning for liberty, so after two months wandering around half a dozen Nicaraguan cities I proudly sign this article with my name as a defiant gesture to President Daniel Ortega’s regime: I will write whatever I damn well please about your tinpot pseudo-Marxist dictatorship.

The worst part of the country, unequivocally, is the capital and biggest city, Managua. There is nothing to do in Managua; everyone is depressed and hates it; if you speak to locals, they immediately tell you to leave, to go somewhere better, why are you here? It’s a dilapidated, depressing Third World city choked with traffic. Due to my blond hair, locals would yell jeers and taunts at me as I walked down the street. Don’t go outside at night.

I left Manauaga as soon as I could. Beyond this urban purgatory (most tourists only swing by for a night to use the airport) lie many pockets of resplendence. Nicaragua is a very rural country: its rural population as a percent of the total (40 percent) is more than twice that of the United States (16 percent). The country is covered in verdant jungle, sprawling farms, backpacking meccas, beautiful beach towns, yoga retreats, surf camps, mountains, and volcano hikes. These scenes are undoubtedly less charming for impoverished locals struggling to survive in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where two-thirds of the people live on a dollar a day. But for those who can afford $14 per night for a luxury hostel, paradise beckons.

Yet it’s a paradise ruled by a tyrant. Daniel Ortega presides over a regime that claims “Leninist-Marxist” principles, but this is mostly just rhetoric. In reality, Ortega has maintained moderate economic policies and courted big international businesses, with his main goal being to retain power. Nicaragua is best understood as a capitalist nation pretending to be Marxist, much like China. It’s also an oligarchic kleptocracy like Russia, where communist rhetoric is cynically used to perpetuate a Cold War mindset. Nicaragua’s national rhetoric seems to be stuck in the 1980s, nostalgic for the era of Iran Contra when they were relevant on the world stage. Throughout the towns I visited, murals adorn the walls portraying the CIA as the enemy, a testament to the existential struggle against perceived oppressors.

First rising to power in 1979 as the guerilla leader of the revolutionary junta, Ortega was re-elected as president in 1984, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021, and, along with his wife who serves as vice president, controls every aspect of life in Nicaragua. Much of the internet is censored (this article will be blocked from Nicaraguan readers), and the regime aggressively monitors and crushes all dissent. The appearance of democracy is upheld through rigged elections. Ortega’s Sandinista Party shamelessly stole the 2008 Managua mayoral election via vote rigging, and he has expressed a desire to “rule forever.” Known as “Comandante Daniel” by his supporters, Ortega arrests anyone who dares to run against him in presidential elections, including at least five presidential candidates in the most recent one, often under the pretense of fabricated charges such as money laundering. 

Daniel Ortega’s stepdaughter has repeatedly publicly accused him of raping her when she was just 11 years old. In any Western country, this would have ended a politician’s career. However, Ortega’s immunity as a member of parliament has shielded him from prosecution or investigation. “Sexual violence against girls is so brutal and so normalized in the country that it is considered normal, and machismo underlies it all,” says activist Mayte Ochoa.

Recent statistics are unavailable or unreliable, but a decade ago, one in five girls reported suffering sexual violence in the past year. Nicaragua has the highest rate of child marriage in Latin America, ranking 16th globally, with 43 percent of girls married by 18, and the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Latin America, with 28 percent of women giving birth before 18. (Abortion is completely banned in the country.) In 2013, forensic doctors examined over 6,000 sexual assault victims, half of them under the age of 14.

To combat sexual violence, in 2012, Ortega’s government passed Law 779, the Comprehensive Law Against Violence Toward Women, which established special courts for crimes of sexual violence. However, this law is widely referred to as papel mojado (wet paper) by the population. Catholic Bishop Abelardo Mata colorfully condemned it: “The new number of the beast is not 666, but 779.”

The Catholic Church in Nicaragua has been called the fifth branch of government because of its historical influence. Last year, Nicaragua severed all relations with the Vatican, shuttered its diplomatic headquarters, expelled the Society of Jesus, and confiscated all of the Jesuits’ property and assets.

In 2023, the government arrested Rolando Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa, sentenced him to 26 years in prison on charges of treason, and stripped him of his citizenship. Since 2018, a total of 97 priests and bishops have been expelled from the country, and—much like the Trudeau regime in Canada with the truckers—Ortega’s regime has frozen the bank accounts of priests. Regular citizens fear attending weekly Mass. Pope Francis condemned this ongoing crackdown as “Hitlerian.”

In Nicaragua, the Jesuits have long been at the forefront of higher education, founding most of the country’s universities. Since 2021, the Ortega administration has closed down at least 26 of these institutions, accusing them of harboring terrorists and enemies of the state. The most notable closure was the University of Central America, the top school in the country, which counts Ortega and three of his children among its alumni. It is now open again under a new name, and large black and red Sandinista flags fly over the campus. “The University was the last bastion of freedom in Nicaragua,” mourns Enrique Pumar, a sociology professor.

The crackdown on universities was triggered by a student uprising in 2018, which was brutally suppressed by masked paramilitary forces. Protestors were shot in the street, resulting in 355 deaths, over 2,000 injuries, hundreds of disappearances, and the imprisonment of 1,614 individuals as vendepatrias (traitors). The vendepatrias were deemed “not worthy of medical care” and over 400 doctors were fired for “failing to follow Ortega’s mandate not to deliver medical aid to injured and dying protestors.’’ A report from the U.S. Department of State found that police carved Sandinista inscriptions into the flesh of prisoners, and ”prison officials forced female prisoners to squat naked and beat them on their genitals to dislodge any supposed hidden items.” Ortega defended his actions by asserting that the uprising was a coup orchestrated and funded by the United States.

When the U.N. Human Rights Commission concluded that this massacre of students amounted to “crimes against humanity,” Ortega responded by expelling the U.N. from the country. In a broader crackdown on foreign influence, all international NGOs were expelled and the Red Cross had its assets confiscated and transferred to Ortega’s Ministry of Health. 

Nicaragua is beautiful. Its landscapes are stunning, and its people are warm. But the struggle for freedom and justice goes on under a cloud of fear and control. As I left the country, I was reminded of the precariousness of my own safety. Border officials seized my passport and made me wait for an hour, filling me with dread that my critical article on “Comandante Daniel” might be discovered, which would have resulted in over a decade in prison. I departed safely, but the fate of those who remain is uncertain.

The post Paradise and Oppression in Nicaragua appeared first on The American Conservative.

Democrats keep warning that if Donald Trump gets a second term he will be an authoritarian president. They also claim his first term was authoritarian.

Trump did once attack the Second Amendment by wanting to confiscate Americans’ guns before due process. He’s also said during this campaign that he would be a dictator for a day.

Legitimate concerns. But is Trump’s alleged authoritarianism the only kind that should be feared? If a president skirting the law and toppling American democratic norms and standards to carry out his agenda is bad, why do Trump’s critics seem to not mind when Joe Biden does this?

Because that’s definitely happening. Right now.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines authoritarianism as “relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.”

Last week, Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in New York City in what many considered a partisan, banana republic–style trial built on the shakiest of grounds by the allies of Joe Biden. The District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, is backed by the billionaire leftist George Soros. The judge who oversaw Bragg’s case, Juan Merchan, is a Biden donor whose daughter works for the president’s re-election campaign.

There are more to these curious partisan alliances of Trump’s prosecutors, but let’s just end with the fact that the former president’s recent trial violated some of the most basic constitutional due process principles.

If “favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people,” is a textbook definition of ‘authoritarianism,’ and Merriam-Webster says it is, then it’s hard to imagine a more thorough example of this than what went down in that New York City courtroom last Friday.

Was it not an unconstitutional thwarting of democracy when Democratic elites in some blue states simply decided to throw Trump off their ballots earlier this year? We don’t have to wonder, because a unanimous Supreme Court declared this unconstitutional in March.

Throwing one’s political opponents off of ballots is an authoritarian act no matter how sadly some tried to rationalize it.

In late 2022 and 2023, when the ideologically diverse and professionally credible reporters behind the “Twitter Files” revealed a mountain of evidence that the Biden administration and other government officials had tried to force private social media platforms to manipulate and even censor Americans’ speech, there was no uproar among Democrats that the federal government had so flagrantly ignored the First Amendment.

No, instead, Democratic politicians and the establishment media attacked the reporters for bringing any of this to light. In a perfect example of “it’s-not-authoritarianism-when Biden does it,” Democratic elites defended the idea of authorities cracking down on “hate speech,” “disinformation,’ and ‘misinformation.”

So devout had (have) Democrats become to the inherent righteousness of censorship and the dangerousness of free speech, in 2022 the Biden administration even proposed a new federal agency: The Disinformation Governance Board, to exist under the Department of Homeland Security.

In other words, an actual Orwellian Ministry of Truth.

That’s authoritarian as hell.

Imagine if Trump tried to do this. Imagine if he tried to spread his propaganda by using government agencies to bully social media companies. Imagine if Republicans tried to throw Biden off state ballots.

Imagine if Trump allies in the legal system invented unprecedented new legal standards and ignored a bunch of old ones to go after Biden.

Those would all be unquestionably authoritarian acts. Democrats don’t have a problem with authoritarianism at all, and in fact are often the most enthusiastic supporters of it.

They have a problem with Donald Trump and do not hesitate to resort to authoritarianism to take him down. Raw power. By any means necessary. The Constitution be damned.

To the question: Is Joe Biden’s authoritarianism okay with Democrats? Their silence is the answer, and that answer is yes.

The post Where Is Democrats’ Outrage at Biden’s Authoritarianism? appeared first on The American Conservative.

A British court ruled that Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, can appeal his extradition to the U.S. How Assange’s case plays out may change both the way the 1917 Espionage Act cases are defended and the deeper relationship among the Act, the 1A, and a free press.

The U.S. charged Assange multiple times under the Act for an alleged conspiracy to take possession of and publish national defense information. Had the British court ruled in the U.S. government’s favor, Assange would have exhausted all legal avenues in the UK. Instead, he can now fight the extradition to the U.S. from the relative safety of Britain.

The allegations stem from 2010 when WikiLeaks released half a million classified documents, focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, that were leaked to the site by Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, an Army intel analyst. Included in the leak was video from Iraq showing American helicopters gunning down Iraqi civilians, later dramatized in the film Incident in New Baghdad. Assange’s legal team argues the case is a politically motivated form of state retaliation for embarrassing the United States.

Following charges by the U.S. government, Assange was granted asylum for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange was then arrested by British authorities for skipping bail, and has spent the last five years in a dank British prison fighting extradition to the United States. His spouse calls it “punishment by process.”

In February, Assange’s lawyers submitted grounds for a possible appeal. The High Court in response directed the U.S. government to provide assurances that: a) Assange would not face the death penalty; b) he would be treated no differently than a U.S. citizen; and c) he would be protected under the First Amendment. The U.S. government provided such assurances in a letter. The British court was unconvinced, and will allow Assange to appeal the extradition request.

Of the three conditions, the key issue is whether or not Julian Assange can raise an effective First Amendment defense against the Espionage Act. Could Assange claim, for example, that his right to publish the leaked materials was protected as a publisher and journalist under the First Amendment, in the public interest?

The Justice Department previously told a British court the First Amendment doesn’t apply to anyone “in relation to publication of illegally obtained national defense information giving the names of innocent sources to their grave and imminent risk of harm.” Use of a 1A public interest defense by Chelsea Manning was blocked and her attempts to speak to the American people directly were stymied by seeing her entire trial classified.

“The short answer is that being able to ‘raise’ a defense is different than being able to ‘rely’ on one,” said former Assange attorney Jesselyn Radack, who heads the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR, at Expose Facts) speaking with TAC. “In Espionage Act cases, the government has literally done motions to preclude the use of the words ‘First Amendment.’ I can easily see that happening here, as well as motions to preclude 1A related words like ‘journalist’ and ‘publisher.’ Assange can raise the First Amendment. He can raise a herd of goats if he wants. The better question is whether Assange would be allowed a 1A defense.”

Under such circumstances any British court willing to accept a USG assurance Assange would have First Amendment rights in any practical sense is being played as a fool.

But the Assange case begs a bigger question the British court might ask if it was concerned about fairness to Assange: why is it only him, and not outlets like the New York Times, which also published the leaked material, on trial? Why not also the Guardian, the Washington Post, and NBC News?

Under the Espionage Act, the unauthorized possession of classified materials alone would ensure a guilty verdict, irrespective of intention. The Act does not distinguish journalism and, well, espionage. Assange would be found guilty and simultaneously be denied the chance to defend himself based on a free speech defense.

Assange poses a dilemma for the United States in its ongoing muscle-tussle in balancing the power of the government to protect classified information, the guarantee of a free press, and the broader concept of the need for an informed populace to challenge their government and make this democracy work in practice.

At what point does the need for the people to know something outweigh any laws allowing the government to keep it from view? If punishment appears necessary, should the leaker be punished, should the journalist who publishes be punished, or should neither, or both? In the digital age, where physical documents no longer need to be copied one-by-one and there is less restraint than in the traditional media, these questions have become more pressing.

A complex history precedes Assange. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. At that time, no one had ever published such classified documents before, and the senior staff at the Times feared they would go to jail under the Espionage Act.

The Supreme Court instead handed down a landmark victory for the First Amendment in New York Times Company v. United States. The Times won a Pulitzer, but Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act. His case was ultimately dismissed for gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering. The underlying issues, most prominently Ellsberg’s defense that he was morally compelled to leak to the Times, were never addressed.

Looking at the Times case through the lens of Wikileaks, law professor Steve Vladeck points out “Although the First Amendment separately protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press… the Supreme Court has never suggested that the First Amendment might protect a right to disclose national security information. Yes, the Pentagon Papers case rejected a government effort to enjoin publication, but several of the Justices in their separate opinions specifically suggested that the government could prosecute the New York Times and the Washington Post after publication, under the Espionage Act.”

The Supreme Court left the door open for the government to prosecute both the leaker (by dismissing the Ellsberg case without setting a precedent) and the journalists (with a narrow focus prohibiting the government from exercising prior restraint on the Times.)

What has happened since has been little more than a dance around the 500 pound gorilla loose in the halls of democracy. The government aggressively prosecutes whistleblowers under the Espionage Act while choosing not to prosecute journalists for publishing what the whistleblowers hand over to them. Assange’s case seems to stand as an outlier.

Did Assange commit journalism? He wrote nothing alongside documents on Wikileaks, did no curating or culling, and redacted little information. Publishing in his case consisted simply uploading what had been supplied to him. It would be easy for the government to frame a case against Assange that set precedent he is not entitled to any First Amendment protections — clicking upload isn’t publishing and Assange isn’t a journalist they could say. The simplest interpretation of the Espionage Act, that Assange willfully transmitted information relating to the national defense without authorization, would then apply. Guilty, the same as almost all of the leakers and other canaries in the D.C. coal mine.

Yet like the Times, Wikileaks sidestepped the restraints of traditional journalism to bring with immediacy the raw material of history to the people. That is the root of an informed public, through a set of tools never before available until the Internet and Julian Assange created them.

The British court needs to carefully weigh any faux U.S. promises of 1A rights for Assange, and ask itself instead: is he being singled out for punishment, criminalizing journalism? President Joe Biden is already considering an Australian government request to drop Julian Assange’s charges. The British court should stay the extradition and ultimately release Assange for doing nothing but what the New York Times and others have done before him.

The post Will the First Amendment Save Assange? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has claimed that Donald Trump is preparing to round up his political enemies if he wins election in November.

The Congresswoman made the remarks during an appearance on journalist Kara Swisher’s podcast, named On with Kara Swisher.

“I mean, it sounds nuts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy threw me in jail,” she said. “He’s out of his mind. I mean, he did his whole first campaign around ‘lock her up.’ This is his motto.”

Ocasio Cortez- added that Trump would “round up” his political enemies once in office and that she was strongly supporting Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.

She continued:

I take him at his word when he says that he’s going to round up people. I take him at his word when he threatens journalists. I take him at his word. I feel like what we saw in his first presidency was an amuse-bouche to what his intentions are. He has learned from his mistakes of appointing professionals, and he will not make that mistake next time.

…

Trump does absolutely have a chance to win. That is why I have thrown my support behind Biden early and I support it vociferously. It is unequivocal that if Donald Trump wins, we are looking at the potential dissolution of democracy in the United States of America and the question about what would happen to me or the Democratic Party is a joke compared to the question of what is going to happen to our country.

The New York Congresswoman is far from the only elected Democrat warning that Trump will lock them up them on his return to the White House, while others have even speculated that he is planning to assassinate people.

Back in April, California Rep. Adam Schiff said he was taking the prospect “seriously” that Trump would send him to prison and making preparations for a potential prosecution.

“We’re taking this seriously because we have to,” Schiff said at the time. “We’ve seen this movie before … and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator.”

The post AOC Says Trump Will ‘Round Up’ His Political Enemies, Throw Her In Jail If He Wins appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A new CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday found that 62% of Americans support a national program to deport all of Joe Biden’s millions of illegal aliens.

Earlier today CBS polling expert Anthony Salvanto broke the news to Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation that 62% of Americans want all illegal aliens rounded up and deported.

Anthony Salvanto: “We tested that in a general way in principle. Would you support a new government program that would deport all people living in the U.S. illegally? And that finds majority favor. That finds six in 10. It’s strongest among folks who are MAGA. It’s strongest among Trump supporters, but also from some Democrats as well.”

The news stunned the far left CBS host.

Margaret Brennan: So, unpack that a bit, because this 62 percent of Americans favor deporting all undocumented immigrants.

So, Homeland Security says that President Biden has already deported or repatriated more people in the past year than any year since 2010. And then, depending on the details of what’s talked about on the campaign trail, some of what Mr. Trump talks about could be illegal. It doesn’t seem practical, in some sense, to round up children.

And then we know that the courts have questioned whether local authorities would have the ability to do it, and federal authorities don’t have the resources. So what exactly do people think they’re supporting?

That’s when Salvanto disrupted her world.

Anthony Salvanto: Well, when you measure public sentiment on this or really just about any policy, you’re getting a sense of direction. You’re getting broad brushstrokes.

But those kinds of details, well, that’s often up to the legislatures and the courts later on. We tested even the idea of, should local law enforcement be involved in this? And a lot of folks do say yes. Again, the details of that, the specifics, you’re not going to pick that up in an aggregate public opinion.

Leftists hate it when the country catches on to their treachery.

The post New National Poll Finds 62 Percent of Americans, Including Democrats, Support National Program to Deport ALL Illegal Aliens (Video) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

After a week where the polls didn’t give the Biden-Harris ticket the bump Democrats were hoping for, Vice President Kamala Harris escalated her criticism of presumptive GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump on Saturday, arguing his conviction on 34 questionable felony counts in a Manhattan court ought to be “disqualifying.”

The speech, given at a Democratic Party dinner Saturday in Detroit, gave Harris the opportunity to up the rhetoric over what she termed Trump’s “attacks” on the justice system, according to Politico.

“You know why he complains? Because the reality is, cheaters don’t like getting caught,” Harris said in a copy of the speech Politico reviewed in advance.

Politico noted that the vice president, “who has long highlighted her prosecutorial record and service as California attorney general on the campaign trail, outlines in the remarks how a jury made a unanimous decision to convict the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records.”

“She notes that Trump’s defense was able to participate in selecting both jurors and witnesses, in a rebuke of his allegations that he was not treated fairly.”

“Simply put, Donald Trump thinks he is above the law,” Harris said during the speech.

“This should be disqualifying for anyone who wants to be president of the United States.”

And, as for conservative allegations that the Biden administration had been tacitly trying to influence the outcome, Harris called these “lies.”

Since we can expect to hear this a lot over the next few months, we should probably go over exactly why this is arrant bunkum.

First, defendants who believe they were unjustly convicted have every right to speak out against the conviction. In this case, it was a politicized case that could have been brought any time over the past few years but — and here’s a surprise — just so happened to take place during the heat of the presidential season. No coincidence whatsoever.

And yet, the Biden administration continues to insist that Trump and his allies accept the Manhattan kangaroo court verdict, saying Trump only taking issue with it because “cheaters don’t like getting caught.” These are the kinds of things that happen in dictatorships and kakistocracies that are nominally democratic —  not in the United States of America.

As for the fairness of the trial, yes, Trump’s attorneys were afforded the same rights as any other defendant — I mean, except for an openly politicized prosecution only identifying what a large part of the alleged crime actually was during the closing stretch of the trial, the openly biased judge instructing the jury that its members didn’t even need to agree on which crime Trump allegedly committed to find him guilty, and the fact that the venue was one of the most virulently anti-Trump, anti-Republican jurisdictions in the country.

But other than that …

Meanwhile, as for whether the Biden administration had any involvement in this, we haven’t had a proper explanation as to why a Department of Justice official under Biden joined Bragg’s prosecution team straight from the DOJ. Or why the White House held a rally near the courtroom with actor Robert De Niro as a surrogate.

Then, as for this being “disqualifying,” apparently Kamala’s expertise is in prosecution, not the Constitution. There’s nothing disqualifying about being found guilty of a felony, particularly if there are solid grounds for appeal, if one wants to run for president. Most famously, socialist Eugene Debs ran for president from prison in 1920, and took home a not-insignificant 4 percent.

This is a feature, not a bug, from our Founders: They realized the possibility of kneecapping the political opposition via political prosecutions. In retrospect, we should probably be shocked it took over 200 years for an administration to work up the gumption to actually do it.

Now, as for why Kamala is banging on about how the verdict was “disqualifying,” she — and everyone else in the White House — has seen the first wave of post-conviction polling, and it’s not looking good for the ticket — in fact, it’s looking like a disaster.

Particularly worrisome for Team Biden is a pair of polls out of Nevada and Virginia, two marginally swing states that tend to go Democrat in presidetial elections. In the Fox News polls, Trump was up in Nevada by five points and the two were tied in Virginia.

In both cases, the polls were taken after the guilty verdict was handed down in Manhattan. And they underscore just how

You can guess why the lies are coming like an Obama-era gun-walking program: Fast and furious.

All of the vice president’s rhetoric, in other words, is ringing hollow for anyone who isn’t among the faithful. For the rest of us, this has been a giant waste of time, resources and democratic credibility.

But by this point, she doesn’t have much else. That’s what should be disqualifying.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Kamala Harris Wants Trump Disqualified as Conviction Fails to Save Biden’s Election Disaster appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The body of British TV presenter Dr. Michael Mosley was discovered Sunday.

The discovery concludes a five-day search and rescue mission, which began late Wednesday after the television personality, known for giving health tips on British television, was reported missing on the Greek island of Symi.

The cadaver was located in a stony place close to Agia Marina beach, The Independent reported. In other words, Mosley was agonizingly close to help.

The U.K. outlet notes that Mosley was “just metres from safety.”

Authorities have begun extricating the 67-year-old’s corpse and are planning to dispatch it to the nearby island of Rhodes for identification and autopsy, CNN reported.

“We had an incredibly lucky life together,” Mosley’s widow Claire Bailey said, according to CNN.

“We loved each other very much and were so happy together,” she added.

Mosley “did an incredible climb, took the route and collapsed where he couldn’t be easily seen by the extensive search team,” the widow said.

“Michael was an adventurous man, it’s part of what made him so special,” Bailey further said, according to The Independent.

Mosley was last spotted Wednesday afternoon at approximately 1:30 p.m. when he had embarked on a walk along Saint Nikolas Beach without taking his cell phone with him, the newspaper reported.

When Mosley did not return after his excursion, Bailey filed a missing persons report with local law enforcement, who initiated a search operation.

Firefighters, policemen, and volunteers comprised the search party, which scoured the island’s mountainous terrain for five days to find Mosley in temperatures that went as high as 98 degrees Fahrenheit, The Telegraph reported.

Each day kept yielding disappointment, according to the newspaper, until the island’s mayor and rescue personnel decided to examine a network of tunnels and caves known as the “Abyss” on Sunday.

Before the search in and around the “Abyss,” The Telegraph reported, security camera footage showed Mosley walking down a mountain near the fence of the resort he was staying at.

Mosley hosted many science shows on British radio and television, including the BBC series ‘Trust Me I’m A Doctor’ and the BBC podcast Just One Thing.

Mosley also co-authored the book The Fast Diet with Mimi Spencer, making the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet popular, according to CNN and The Telegraph.

Several celebrities shared their tributes to Mosley, The Independent reported.

“In person he was very much the sort of figure that you would see on television: immediately likeable, genuinely funny, enthusiastic, he had this innate enthusiasm about life and he was always very generous with his time,” Spencer said, according to the newspaper.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that over the years Michael’s insights – especially his revelation that you can reverse type two diabetes – will have extended, and even saved, the lives of countless readers,” Daily Mail editor Ted Verity said, The Independent reported.

Mosley used to write columns for the newspaper.

According to CNN, Mosley is survived by four children and his wife.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Body of Missing TV Personality Found Just Feet Away from Safety appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

On June 9, Benny Gantz, the leader of Israel’s National Unity Party, left Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition along with his ally Gadi Eisenkot. The move has been anticipated since May 18, when Gantz gave Netanyahu an ultimatum concerning the war in Gaza. Gantz and Eisenkot felt that Netanyahu did not have a plan to rescue Israeli hostages held by Hamas, end the war, or create a successful plan for the post-war governance of Gaza.

While Gantz had planned to leave the coalition on June 8, his departure from the coalition was delayed by a day due to the rescue of four hostages on Saturday. 

Gantz had earlier put forward his own post-war plans for Gaza, which included having both the U.S. and EU administer Gaza alongside the Palestinians and Israelis. 

The effect of Gantz’s move is complex.

Gantz on Sunday made clear he backed the proposed hostage deal with Hamas. “I demand Netanyahu to stand clearly behind it and do everything in order to make it happen,” he said, implying his rival was standing in the way.

But Gantz has in certain respects appeared more aggressive than Netanyahu; it has been reported that he supported immediate retaliation after Iran’s April 13 missile strikes on Israel. Netanyahu reportedly opposed such retaliation. 

But Gantz has built his political career on a fairly conventional foreign policy in the Israeli context. Like Netanyahu, Gantz has backed West Bank settlement blocs. But Gantz condemned Netanyahu for lobbying for the end of the Iran Deal. “Netanyahu’s push to withdraw from the nuclear deal hurt the fight against the Iranian nuclear program. He did it without proper preparation with the security establishment,” Gantz said in 2022.

In a point of distinction, Gantz has backed plans to allow civil marriage in Israel, which would also serve as state recognition of gay marriage. Netanyahu is considered personally secular, but has long countenanced alliances with social conservatives as a matter of political expediency.

Before he entered politics, Gantz served as the Israeli attaché to the United States 2005–09, during the height of the Iraq War, and was the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff 2011–15, ironically with the unanimous approval of Netanyahu’s cabinet. He was succeeded as chief of staff by Eisenkot. 

The post Netanyahu Rival Gantz Leaves Israeli War Cabinet appeared first on The American Conservative.