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Memorial Day means different things to different Americans. For some, especially those whose losses remain fresh, no national holiday is required to preserve memory. Grief already structures daily life; the formal rituals of remembrance — flags, ceremonies, cemetery visits — may still offer recognition, but the dead are hardly absent.

For others, the connection is more distant: a grandfather never met, a name on an old photograph, a relative spoken about only occasionally. The holiday can become less an occasion for immediate mourning than a meditation on inheritance and historical continuity.

Memorial Day, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, exists because modern war produces anonymity at a scale human beings struggle to comprehend.

Still other Americans may have no direct personal connection to war at all. For them, that distance is itself a kind of blessing. Memorial Day may register primarily as a feeling of generalized gratitude — gratitude for the country itself and for those who fought on its behalf.

Yet the holiday’s deeper purpose is more specific and, in some ways, more demanding. Memorial Day asks us to remember individuals whose lives were interrupted by war, individuals with whom we may have nothing in common but our shared nation.

In recent years, debates over immigration, national identity, and social cohesion have forced Americans to ask what citizenship actually means. Memorial Day offers one answer older and less ideological than many offered by contemporary politics: Citizenship implies obligations not only to the living, but to the dead. A nation becomes more than a marketplace or administrative zone when its citizens believe they owe remembrance to those whose lives became bound up with the country’s history.

Memorial Day is one of our few remaining holidays that ask us to remember strangers. Not celebrities or family members or ideological allies, but ordinary people, fellow Americans whose lives were cut short by violence that history inevitably turns abstract.

In an increasingly individualized society, that obligation can feel unfamiliar. Yet to remember our fellow citizens across distance, class, region, and even generations is to affirm that we belong to one another in ways deeper than convenience or self-interest.

These are a few of the many Americans we remember today.

James Robert Montgomery

When Drew Gilpin Faust wrote about the Civil War’s culture of mourning in “This Republic of Suffering,” she lingered over a bloodstained letter written by James Robert Montgomery, a 26-year-old Confederate signal corps soldier mortally wounded at Spotsylvania in 1864.

A former law student from Mississippi, Montgomery spent his last moments taking pen to paper and — in labored but still elegant script — composing a farewell message to his father:

“I write to you because I know you would be delighted to read a word from your dying son.”

The word “delighted” now feels shocking. Yet, as Faust observed, Civil War Americans placed immense importance on the final words of the dying. Even in agony, Montgomery worried about consoling those at home.

“I would like to rest in the grave yard with my dear mother and brothers but it’s a matter of minor importance,” he wrote, just before signing off as “your dying son.” “Let us all try to reunite in heaven.”

His final resting place remains in Virginia.

Bert Stiles

Before World War II, Bert Stiles was a Colorado college student obsessed with becoming a writer. The son of a Denver electrician and a music teacher, he spent summers working as a junior forest ranger in Estes Park, experiences that became material for his short stories. While attending Colorado College, he wrote constantly — stories, poetry, newspaper features — and briefly embraced the pacifist sentiments common on American campuses before the war.

In 1941, convinced he could become a serious writer, Stiles hitchhiked repeatedly to New York to meet literary agents who had shown interest in his work. He eventually found mentors willing to support him, and his stories soon began appearing in publications like the Saturday Evening Post.

For many celebrated American writers, war became a harsh but formative education — the crucible from which emerged figures like Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and James Jones. Looking backward, it can almost seem like a foregone conclusion that their talent would survive long enough to become literature. But for every writer history remembers, there were others swallowed by the machinery of war before their lives had fully begun. History offers no exemption for promise.

Stiles continued writing throughout his combat service, producing articles and journal entries while flying bombing missions over Germany with the Eighth Air Force. He completed a full combat tour in B-17 bombers, volunteered for a second tour flying P-51 Mustangs, and was killed in November 1944 during a dogfight south of Hanover. He was 23 years old.

Henry T. Waskow

War correspondent Ernie Pyle became famous during World War II not for writing about generals or battlefield strategy, but for documenting the emotional lives of ordinary American soldiers. His most enduring dispatch may have been his account of the death of Captain Henry T. Waskow during the Italian campaign in 1944.

Pyle wrote:

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

“After my own father, he came next,” a sergeant told me.

Pyle described soldiers bringing Waskow’s body down a mountain trail by mule under moonlight alongside other dead men. One by one, exhausted infantrymen approached the body, lingering beside their captain in silence.

One soldier looked down and muttered simply, “God damn it.” Another stood over him for a moment before saying, “I sure am sorry, sir.”

Then one man sat beside Waskow’s body, holding the dead captain’s hand silently for several minutes before gently straightening his shirt collar and rearranging the torn edges of his uniform around the wound.

Thomas Joseph Fox Jr.

After he was killed in action in 1970, Thomas Joseph Fox Jr. was remembered by friends as an easygoing Sacramento teenager who loved football, rock music, and cars.

One fellow artilleryman later recalled Fox borrowing his Creedence Clearwater Revival tapes at a fire base near Chu Lai. Fox talked often about home. When his tour ended, he said, he wanted to spend weekends at William Land Park waxing and polishing his car while watching girls drive by.

Another childhood friend remembered playing tackle football with Fox at East Portal Park just before he shipped out to Vietnam. After the game, Fox encouraged him to try out for the high school football team — a small moment the friend said he still carried with him more than 40 years later.

One friend who enlisted alongside him later recalled escorting his body back to Sacramento by train.

“I miss you, old friend,” he wrote decades later. “I think about you all the time.”

Marvin Winston Murray

Marvin Winston Murray had been in Vietnam less than two months when he died at 21.

A high school classmate from New York City remembered practicing relay handoffs with Murray during track practice in New York.

Years later, the memory still lingered with him. After unexpectedly encountering friends dressed for Murray’s funeral while home on military leave himself, he eventually visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to see Murray’s name etched into the black stone wall.

“I’m going to get a rubbing,” he wrote decades later. “So I can frame it.”

Dan Bullock

Dan Bullock was only 15 years old when he was killed in the Vietnam War in 1969, likely the youngest American serviceman to die there. He had enlisted in the Marines at 14 after altering his birth certificate to appear older.

Born in North Carolina and later raised in Brooklyn, Bullock talked about becoming a pilot, then a policeman, and finally a Marine. “Mostly he wanted to make his mark in life,” his father later said. “He wanted to be something.”

Bullock arrived in Vietnam in May 1969 and was dead just 21 days later after an attack on An Hoa Combat Base. The Marines around him did not know his real age, but many sensed something unusual about him. One recalled years later: “He was younger, and he didn’t belong.”

When a reporter visited the family’s home, they searched for his last letter home but couldn’t find it. The line his stepmother remembered poignantly captures a certain youthful bravado.

“He said he was fine,” she recalled. “He said he didn’t have any holes in him.”

Chance Phelps

Chance Phelps was funny, outdoorsy, and always on the move — “the kind of person who had to be in the thick of things,” as his mother later put it.

Raised partly in Wyoming and Colorado, Phelps loved football, hunting, fishing, and making people laugh. A former teammate remembered him as “kind of like a country boy,” always smiling and doing something goofy. Another friend later admitted that before Iraq, “I thought we were both invincible, that nothing could touch us.”

After the attacks of Sept. 11, Phelps told his mother he felt compelled to serve.

“I absolutely have to go,” he said. “I’ve got to do something.”

Phelps was 19 when he was killed near Ramadi in April 2004, barely a month after arriving in Iraq. When Marines came to inform his mother in the middle of the night, she later recalled being struck most by one detail:

“They were crying.”

Unknown

At Arlington National Cemetery, the remains of one unidentified American serviceman from World War I lies buried without a name. The tomb simply reads:

“Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.”

Memorial Day, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, exists because modern war produces anonymity at a scale human beings struggle to comprehend. Each grave, each name carved into stone is an attempt to resist that anonymity, to point to an ordinary human life of infinite value.

Today is our humble opportunity to come together as a country and proclaim: These people existed. They belonged to us. They should not disappear.

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While some believe that Christians should stay out of politics, Pastor Josh Howerton not only disagrees — he believes that they “have a spiritual responsibility to vote.”

“What the Scriptures teach is that God has ordered the world in terms of three. God has established three institutions: the family, the church, and the state,” Howerton tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”

“In the same way that it would be morally wrong for a husband to refuse to lead his family, and it would be morally wrong for a pastor to refuse to lead his church, it would be morally wrong for the leaders of a nation to refuse to lead the nation,” he explains.

“But this is what’s really important. We live in a constitutional republic. We do not live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional republic. In a constitutional republic … the elected officials are representatives of the people,” he continues.

“So in a constitutional republic, the voters are at the top of the org chart. So I think that’s something that I think a lot of well-meaning, but I’ll gently say, maybe a little naive, a lot of well-meaning but maybe naive Christians forget,” he adds.

Howerton points to Romans 13, which instructs that God has established the governments and governing leaders in our constitutional republic.

“If you are a voting Christian, God has placed you at this time, in this place, at the top of the constitutional republic org chart in which you find yourself,” he explains.

“And so, I would gently say in the same way that if a man won’t lead his family, we messed up. If a pastor won’t lead his church, we messed up. If the Christian voters of a nation refuse to lead that nation and abdicate their spiritual responsibility to lead,” he says, adding, “I think we’re messing up.”

And the reason it’s so important not to mess up is because “whatever God creates, Satan tries to co-opt.”

“In Genesis 2 and 3, Adam refuses to lead his family … so Satan does,” Howerton tells Stuckey.

“In Revelation 2 and 3 … you had some passive pastors who instead of leading their churches to repent of sin, they led their churches to tolerate sin. So they in their passivity, and Romans 2 and 3 literally say those churches became quote ‘a synagogue of Satan,’” he says.

“In the same way, if spirit-filled godly people will not lead their nation by voting,” he continues, adding, “godless people will.”

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As a boy in the early 1970s, I remember my father serving as a U.S. Navy Reserve chaplain in Atlanta. One of his duties was casualty notification, informing families that their loved one had been killed in military service, usually the Marines.

In winter, he wore his Navy service dress blues while accompanying other officers into some of Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods and housing projects. There were no cell phones, GPS systems, or easy ways to locate families quickly. The notifications were time-sensitive, and strangers in uniform were often met cautiously in neighborhoods already carrying more than their share of hardship. Some families hid at first because they thought the men approaching their doors were police officers.

This Memorial Day, a nation pauses to remember the Americans who never took off the uniform.

But my father carried a different burden: the worst message a family could hear.

In addition to preaching from a pulpit, he ministered on doorsteps.

He served for many years, eventually retiring with the rank of captain. But long before that, I watched him carry one of the hardest duties a chaplain could bear.

Memorial Day means more to me because of that.

Not all memorials are granite.

Some are folded into flags handed to trembling families. Others hang quietly in framed photographs or rest beneath white crosses overlooking distant oceans. And some are so small that readers almost miss them in Scripture.

One appears in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, Matthew records the lineage of Jesus carefully: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon.

But when he arrives at Solomon, Matthew writes something unusual: “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah” (Matthew 1:6).

Bathsheba’s name is not mentioned. Her husband’s is.

Uriah the Hittite.

King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged for Uriah to die in battle. Scripture does not sanitize David’s sin: “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27).

David repented. God forgave him. But the consequences remained.

Still, God preserved the name David tried to bury.

Every Memorial Day, I think about that.

Uriah has now been remembered for nearly 3,000 years, not because kings honored him properly. His own king had him killed. But God refused to let him disappear.

And Uriah was not even an Israelite by birth. He was a Hittite. Yet he served honorably even when his king acted dishonorably toward him.

Memorial Day reminds us that service is vital.

As America approaches 250 years as a nation, countless men and women have worn its uniform unto death. Some died heroically in combat. Others died through confusion, incompetence, training accidents, or the failures of leaders far from the battlefield.

War has always mixed courage with tragedy, honor with human failure. But generation after generation, Americans still stepped forward, willing to bear costs most citizens pray they never personally face.

Many of those never came home alive.

My own sons are now about the age my father was when he knocked on those doors in a Navy uniform, carrying news no family ever wants to hear.

Looking at my sons, I cannot imagine them carrying that burden repeatedly.

Yet those moments marked my father for the rest of his ministry. His faith was forged in living rooms where stunned families learned someone they loved was not coming home.

He carried both the duty of the nation and the ministry of the church into rooms shattered by grief.

His grave marker bears both his rank and his calling, a reminder that he stood beside grieving families in their darkest hours.

So this Memorial Day, a nation pauses to remember the Americans who never took off the uniform.

But in that pause, if you served beside a military chaplain, remember them as well.

Many spent their ministries carrying unbearable news to frightened families, fighting back tears while praying for those who could not, burying the dead, and offering words no one who hears them ever forgets:

“On behalf of a grateful nation …”

History forgets names. Monuments weather. Politicians fail. But God does not forget.

In the genealogy of Christ, God preserved the name of a faithful soldier. No service and no sacrifice poured out in duty escapes the sight of God.

Not all memorials are granite. Some are written where time cannot erase them.

​Chaplain, Faith, Grief, Honor, Memorial day, Navy, Opinion & analysis, Sacrifice 

More than 970 Americans honored our nation’s veterans this Memorial Day by participating in Run for the Wall, an annual 10-day coast-to-coast motorcycle ride from Ontario, California, to Washington, D.C.

RFTW, which started in 1989, was organized by Vietnam veteran Gunnery Sergeant James “Gunny” Gregory and a small group of fellow veterans to raise awareness for prisoners of war and those missing in action. It is the largest and longest-running organized cross-country motorcycle ride.

‘It restores my faith in America and in humanity.’

This year, riders departed from California on May 13 to take one of the RFTW’s three routes across the U.S. — Central, Midway, and Southern Routes — to reach the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in the nation’s capital on May 23, just a couple of days ahead of Memorial Day.

A fourth drive, known as the Sandbox Route, took riders from D.C. to the Middle East Conflicts Wall Memorial in Marseilles, Illinois, to pay respect to younger generations of veterans who served during the Global War on Terror.

As riders stop in cities along their routes, they are greeted by cheering locals who line the streets waving American flags. Gallup, New Mexico, a pitstop on the Central Route, hosts a large motorcycle parade through town, followed by a “Gathering of Veterans” ceremony and a dinner for the riders at Red Rock Park.

RFTW’s motto is “We ride for those who can’t.”

For each leg of the journey, riders honor the memory of a service member who was killed in action, missing, or held as a prisoner of war. They write the person’s name and branch of service in chalk on the ground and display a photo and a biography so others can stop by to pay their respects.

RELATED: A Marine’s Memorial Day message: Don’t forget the price

Image source: Run for the Wall

At the front of the pack, they ride in a Missing Man Formation, which involves five motorcycles with an empty space where a sixth bike should be to symbolize the missing serviceman’s absence. The photos and bios of the service members are brought to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and placed at the panel where their name is inscribed.

Ted “Boots” Kapner, the director of public relations for RFTW, told Blaze News that Memorial Day has taken on “a whole new meaning” for him since he started participating in the cross-country ride in 2017.

Kapner, who hosts the RFTW podcast, explained that during the show, he will read the biographies of individuals whose names are inscribed on a memorial wall.

“I feel like for every bio that I read on the podcast, I get to know them,” he stated, describing learning about their family and where they grew up. “I carry these bios with me and deliver them to the wall; it’s not just a barbecue and a celebration, it’s really a day of solemn remembrance.”

RELATED: Gold Star grief never ends — remember the fallen this Memorial Day

Image source: Run for the Wall

Kapner described reaching the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., with his fellow riders as “a cascade of emotions.”

“We’re all in tears, and we’re all there, arm in arm, supporting one another,” Kapner told Blaze News. “It’s a family. … It restores my faith in America and in humanity.”

“America is still a great nation, and it is our best hope. There comes a time when we all have to set aside our differences and know that we’re more alike than we are different,” he stated.

Kapner encouraged Americans to take time on Memorial Day to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.

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Move over, citronella oils and sound emitters. It’s time to take mosquito repellant into the space age.

When nets, spray, and anti-mosquito pills are just not working, one company says it is almost ready ship a mosquito defense system that seems like it should be fitted on the Death Star.

‘When used as directed, there is no risk to adults, children, babies, or pregnant women.’

Just when technology seemingly couldn’t get any crazier, the Photon Matrix is a new product hoping to ship to consumers worldwide this summer.

Labeled the world’s first portable laser mosquito defense system, the Photon Matrix Lab team says its light detection and ranging system combined with an electromechanical measuring instrument — called a galvanometer — is the answer to ridding one’s back yard, cottage, or camping trip of mosquitoes.

The company promises that its “precision laser striking system” delivers an automated and chemical-free way to zap mosquitoes out of the sky as soon as they are within range.

The product works by shooting its laser at objects within an approximately 19-foot radius that are between 0.08 and 0.8 inches in size.

The device cannot kill houseflies, roaches, wasps, or moths, because they are larger and faster than mosquitoes, the company says. Therefore, it is also allegedly safe for operation around bees or butterflies, which have different flight patterns that the machine does not recognize.

RELATED: This new laser farming technique could free us from pesticides — forever

– YouTube

With obvious safety concerns as the first question, this Chinese company out of Changzhou City, China, says if a large pet or human comes into the target zone, the device will automatically stop shooting.

At the same time, the company claims the laser is very low power with extremely short pulse duration, so it would not cause burns even in the “extremely unlikely” event of direct skin exposure.

The company wrote, “When used as directed, there is no risk to adults, children, babies, or pregnant women.”

RELATED: America’s next-gen weapons face a down-to-earth foe: The elements

Francisco J. Olmo/Europa Press/Getty Images

The product is expected to ship in Q2-Q3 2026, which is listed as approximately July-August, currently priced at around $650 USD.

It does require monthly cleaning; users are instructed to clean the laser’s optical window to prevent dust buildup.

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For many Americans, Memorial Day is nothing more than a welcome day off of work to kick back and relax and maybe host a backyard barbeque.

But the true meaning of this holiday should stir deep gratitude and empathy in every American citizen. Memorial Day is set aside not for leisure but for reverence. It is about honoring and remembering the men and women of the armed forces who died while serving in the military.

Two years ago, Glenn Beck delivered an unforgettable message that is worth revisiting on this important day.

– YouTube

Glenn starts by telling a common story that only the parents of fallen soldiers will truly understand.

“If you will, try to imagine this in the first person, through the eyes of someone I’m about to describe,” he begins.

“Your son has been in the United States Marine Corps for what seems like forever now. … What begins as extreme worry and then turns to panic, then helplessness, then all time seems to stop. It’s as if you’re stranded in the loneliest cold of winter, with no daylight to help tell you the passage of time. It’s just you, your worry, and no end in sight,” he narrates.

Unbeknownst to you, your beloved son suddenly falls in combat. This immediately sets a precise military protocol in motion.

“This is what’s happening behind the scenes,” says Glenn. “First a death notification. It has to be executed within eight hours. A discreet attempt to locate you, the next of kin, is initiated so the officers chosen to deliver the notification arrive at the right place at the right time.”

“Three individuals are typically chosen to arrive at your home: an officer at least one rank higher than the deceased, a chaplain, and someone capable of delivering medical help should the next of kin pass out or worse,” he continues.

The parent, already sensing the gut-wrenching news, listens in horror as the officer delivers the following message: “The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son John was killed in action on Friday, March 26. The commandant and the Marine Corps extend their deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss.”

“This is the nightmare that thousands have had to endure, thousands fear could happen to them at any time,” says Glenn.

“312 parents experienced what I just described in 2003 alone; in 2007, 847 military men and women died in combat; in 2008, 352; in 2009, 346 — and the list and the numbers go on and on,” he recounts.

This Memorial Day, as we gather with friends and family, Glenn hopes that we will take time to remember the true meaning of this somber holiday.

“I’m not trying to be a downer here, but there is a sacredness to Memorial Day that most of us just cannot understand,” he says.

Glenn concludes by reading John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

“This weekend, remember the honor, the love of country, the families. Together they represent the absolute best of all of us.”

To hear Glenn deliver this touching monologue, watch the video above.

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Rev. John Rosbrugh, the first U.S. Army chaplain killed in battle, was bayoneted 239 years ago in the midst of the withdrawal from the Battle of Assunpink Creek in the Revolutionary War.

In a 19th-century biography detailing the “life, labors, and death” of this “Clerical Martyr of the Revolution,” Rev. John Clyde emphasizes at the outset, “Amid all the light thrown upon his career socially, ecclesiastically, and politically — by tradition and historical record — nothing but the good he did lived after him, whilst the evil was interred with his bones — so far as known no blot rests on his fair name.”

‘Sabre slashes were made at his devoted head, three of which penetrated through the horsehair wig which he wore.’

Rosbrugh belonged to a Scottish family that migrated in the early 18th century to Northern Ireland. With his older brother William, Rosbrugh eventually moved to the American Colonies, settling in New Jersey, where at the age of 19, he married a woman named Sarah, who would tragically perish along with their baby during childbirth.

Although unable himself decades later to afford “that thorough education which was required of those who would enter the sacred office in his day,” the aspiring Presbyterian minister studied theology at the College of New Jersey — now Princeton University — with the help of financial aid and graduated in 1761.

Rosbrugh was ordained as a minister in 1764 at Greenwich Presbyterian Church in New Jersey.

The minister, whose recognition and responsibilities exploded in subsequent years, married again, this time to Jane Ralston of the Allen Township Presbyterian Church. Rosbrugh and Jane ultimately had five children — the eldest, James, would later serve as a militia captain in the War of 1812.

Long before his son would take up arms in defense of his country, Rosbrugh — “filled with the spirit of freedom” — decided to lead his congregants out of church and toward the battlefield.

According to Clyde, Rosbrugh assembled his congregation, urged them to satisfy the Continental Army’s request for reinforcements, quoted them Judges 5:23, and proposed that he join them as chaplain. The congregation was apparently keen to go — but only if he would be their commander. After some deliberation and receiving consent from his wife, Rosbrugh agreed.

RELATED: The crown laughed at our Declaration — but America got the last word

Gen. George Washington at the first Battle of Trenton. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

After penning his last will and testament, the minister “put a musket to his shoulder and marched out to the highway, and all fell into line and followed” Rosbrugh to join General George Washington in Philadelphia.

“The little boy James, rode the gray horse by his father’s side till they passed over the brow of the hill, just east of their home, as we suppose,” wrote Clyde. “Then the father took him from the horse, kissed him, and bade him go home to his mother, and be a good boy till he should return — he never saw his father’s face again.”

In Philadelphia, Rosbrugh assumed, as he intended from the start, the role of company chaplain and was replaced as commander by Capt. John Hays. The previous year, the Continental Congress authorized one chaplain for each regiment of the Continental Army with pay equaling that of a captain.

Rosbrugh’s tenure as a chaplain in Washington’s army was short-lived. Just days after the Battle of Trenton, where Washington — having just crossed the Delaware River — led a momentous victory against Hessian auxiliaries, the chaplain breathed his last.

Clyde noted that there are varying accounts of how the chaplain perished but held that the most trustworthy version has that the chaplain — whose company partook in the Battle of Assunpink Creek — unwittingly lingered behind at the eponymous site of the Second Battle of Trenton while the patriot army withdrew.

On Jan. 2, 1777, Rosbrugh tied up his horse outside a pub, then went inside for refreshments only to hear someone cry, “The Hessians are coming.”

The 63-year-old chaplain rushed outside to find that his horse had been stolen, then attempted to make his escape on foot, only to run into a small group of Hessians under the command of a British officer.

Clyde explained what reportedly happened next:

Seeing that further attempt at escape was useless, he surrendered himself a prisoner of war. Having done so, he offered to his captors his gold watch and money if they would spare his life for his family’s sake. Notwithstanding these were taken, they immediately prepared to put him to death. Seeing this, he knelt down at the foot of a tree and, it is said, prayed for his enemies. Now seventeen bayonet thrusts were made at his body, and one bayonet was left broken off in his quivering frame. Sabre slashes were made at his devoted head, three of which penetrated through the horsehair wig which he wore.

The stone monument erected in Rosburgh’s memory at Hanover Academy in Trenton states, “Clerical Martyr of the Revolution[.] Moderator of the Presbytery of New Brunswick 1776[.] Chaplain 3d Battalion Northampton County PA Militia December 25, 1776[.] Bayoneted to death by Hessians in Trenton January 2, 1777.”

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Before he became one of the 20th century’s most influential Christian writers, C.S. Lewis was a committed atheist who regarded religion with suspicion, irritation, and eventually contempt.

Christianity seemed to him a relic of humanity’s intellectual childhood — a comforting story for people unable to face reality without divine reassurance.

‘Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God.” … To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.’

Return to sender

Lewis’ loss of faith began early. Though raised in a nominally Christian household in Belfast, his childhood belief collapsed after the death of his mother from cancer when he was just 9 years old.

“With my mother’s death,” he later wrote in his memoir, “Surprised by Joy,” “all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life.”

Prayer seemed useless. God, if He existed at all, appeared absent and indifferent. Lewis later compared the experience to writing letters to someone who never replied.

As he grew older, his atheism hardened. Immersed in classical literature, philosophy, and modern rationalism, Lewis came to regard Christianity as one mythology among many — no more objectively true than the pagan stories he admired in ancient texts.

At Oxford, he became known among friends as a “foul-mouthed and riotously amusing atheist.” The horrors of the First World War only deepened his disbelief. After surviving trench warfare and seeing death at close range, Lewis later remarked with grim pride: “I never sank so low as to pray.”

Yet even at the height of his atheism, cracks had begun to appear.

Deeper longing

Lewis found himself haunted by experiences that materialism could not easily explain: sudden moments of longing triggered by music, poetry, memory, or beauty. Reading certain books or encountering particular images awakened in him what he later described as an intense, almost painful desire for something beyond ordinary experience.

“An unsatisfied desire,” he wrote, “which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy.”

If human beings consistently longed for something no earthly experience could fully satisfy, what did that suggest? Hunger points to food. Thirst points to water. Why should this deeper longing exist at all if reality were ultimately meaningless?

Lewis slowly began to suspect that the longing was not accidental. Just as hunger points to food and thirst to water, this deeper want revealed something essential about human beings. As he would write in “Mere Christianity,” “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

He also found that his outrage at injustice itself suggested a moral framework that preceded humanity.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?”

RELATED: Chuck Colson: Nixon loyalist who found hope in true obedience

Washington Post/Getty Images

Kicking and screaming

Lewis did not move suddenly from atheism to Christianity. He resisted all the way, considering himself “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

“Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God,’” he wrote. “To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.”

Eventually, the chase ended. But having acknowledged God’s existence, Christianity itself remained a stumbling block.

Lewis loved mythology deeply and still regarded the Gospels as one myth among many. The breakthrough came largely through conversations with friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien, who challenged his assumption that myth and truth were opposites.

Christianity, Tolkien argued, was the “true myth”: the story toward which humanity’s myths and legends had always pointed, but one that had entered actual history.

The truth of myth

The idea struck Lewis with enormous force.

Themes that echoed through pagan mythology — sacrifice, death, resurrection, redemption — were not evidence that Christianity was fabricated, Lewis came to believe. They were signs that humanity had been reaching toward the same truth all along.

Soon afterward, while riding in the sidecar of his brother’s motorcycle on the way to a zoo, Lewis realized the final barrier had fallen. “When we set out,” he wrote in “Surprised by Joy,” “I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”

That belief shaped the rest of his life, which he would devote to helping make Christianity intellectually serious and imaginatively alive for millions of readers.

​Faith, Christianity, Lifestyle, Conversion, Cs lewis 

AI is infiltrating the church, and most Christians have no idea.

A recent Barna study found that while only 1 in 10 pastors (12%) were comfortable using AI to write sermons, 2 in 5 (43%) believed it was OK to use AI to research and prepare for a sermon.

The study also found that 3 in 4 U.S. pastors (77%) agree that “God can work through AI,” and 58% said they “are comfortable using AI to assist in some form of communication.”

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is horrified.

“Spiritual maturity is not going to happen through telling ChatGPT, ‘Write me a three-part sermon on gratitude,’ and then reading that off to the congregation,” she comments.

“Plus, using ChatGPT or any AI to write your sermon is dishonest because everyone is assuming that that’s something that you wrote that God revealed to you through his word and through prayer,” she says. “But it’s not. It’s not revelation from God, a special revelation that we find in Scripture.”

“It is something that was summarized by a computer, and it is also taking someone else’s work. Again, all of these artificial intelligence machines are just taking ideas that have already been iterated by someone else,” she continues.

“It also bypasses the pastor’s own engagement with Scripture and the work of preparing the sermon himself. You want your pastor to be sanctified and washed in the word. You want him to be engaging with Scripture. … You want him to be further ahead spiritually than you are,” she adds. “And that cannot happen if he is outsourcing that sanctifying act to AI.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Pastor, The bible, Artificial intelligence, Scripture, Christianity, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

Cities are starting to reject the idea of having surveillance cameras that promise to curb crime, but there’s a long way to go.

In fact, the largest surveillance company in the United States says it’s under attack from activists who want to defund the police.

‘Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack.’

Citizens can now view a comprehensive map of Automated License Plate Recognition cameras that are popping up in cities all along the coastline and the Great Lakes region.

As it stands, there are almost 100,000 of these cameras in place in the United States. According to DeFlock Maps, the exact number is just north of 97,000, with a vast majority of them (80,000+) coming from one company: Flock Safety.

This tech and surveillance company out of Atlanta has about 1,500 employees and has been steadily building its network that promises a decrease in crime in communities that implement its systems.

On its website, Flock cites that it is trusted by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, providing examples like a 56% reduction in year-over-year crime in one California city and a 52% reduction in robberies in Cobb County, Georgia.

These solar-powered, AI-backed cameras are meant to operate as part of a complex grid of connected devices that allow police agencies to tap into surveillance inside stores, parking lots, and city streets to identify suspects and the cars they are driving; all to allegedly solve crimes.

However, some cities have rejected the service on grounds of citizen privacy.

RELATED: Meta’s Ray-Bans allegedly record your private moments — as contractors watch it all

Hyoung Chang/Denver Post

In addition to Bend, Oregon, where a comprehensive report about the surveillance capabilities appeared on CNet, Charlottesville and Staunton, Virginia, both ended their contracts with Flock and both received an email from the company that was described as “pouting.”

“That email was sent to every client that they had, including us,” Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis said. “I looked at it and just, honestly, chalked it up to an unprofessional email from a venting CEO. I just ignored it, I’ll be honest,” he told Cville Right Now.

Staunton Police Chief Jim Williams shared the email he received from Flock CEO Garrett Langley, which claimed the company was under “attack” from activists.

“Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack. The attacks aren’t new. You’ve been dealing with this for forever, and we’ve been dealing with this since our founding,” Langley wrote.

The CEO continued, saying the same activist groups “who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness” were behind critical YouTube videos and misleading headlines.

The letter, dated December 8, 2025, received a response from Williams four days later, which read:

“As far as your assertion that we are current[y under attack, I do not believe that this is so. … What we are seeing here is a group of local citizens who are raising concerns that we could be potentially surveilling private citizens, residents, and visitors and using the data for nefarious purposes.”

Just a week later, Staunton announced it was terminating its contract with Flock.

RELATED: ‘Everything on the internet is fake’: Social media marketers reveal that most online trends are fabricated

One of the organizations Langley may be referring to is the ACLU, which said last August that Flock was building a “dangerous nationwide mass-surveillance infrastructure.”

However, the ACLU’s main concern was that the resources were being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement against illegal immigrants.

Still, Langley is consistently stating that voting Flock out of jurisdictions will hinder the prevention of gun crime. The CEO cited a Mississippi city that allegedly saw violent crime decrease by 79% and homicide by 90% in one year.

Langley wrote on X, “When the loudest voices tell you to vote Flock out of your community, ask yourself: are they also the ones outraged by gun violence when a shooting occurs, or in this case 12?”

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​Ai, Charlottesville, Return, Surveillance, Tech, Immigration and customs enforcement 

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the American founding, it’s important to point out that the Declaration of Independence does not begin with politics. Before it speaks of rights, consent, or government, it makes a claim about the structure of reality itself.

The rights it asserts are not the product of historical circumstance or collective will. They are grounded in a prior truth: that human beings are created by God.

The Declaration’s appeal to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is not ornamental or rhetorical — it is the foundation on which its entire argument rests. The founders believed they were obligated to explain to mankind the reasons for their separation, and those reasons started with God and His law.

The Declaration of Independence is precisely that: a declaration of independence. It is not a confession of faith, a catechism, or a constitution.

With this foundation, we can then proceed to the Declaration’s most famous sentence — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Though it is often treated as a moral flourish or a proto-democratic slogan, it is in fact a tightly ordered philosophical claim that proceeds in three stages, each dependent on the one before it.

First, it makes an epistemological assertion: These truths are “self-evident.” They are not established by deduction, tradition, or positive law, but are known by reflecting on the observable world. Truths about God, human beings, and the good must be knowable if human beings are to be responsible for ordering their lives and laws accordingly.

To deny that such truths can be known is not merely to revise political theory, but to undermine moral accountability itself.

Second, the Declaration makes a metaphysical claim: Human beings are created and therefore possess a given nature. Equality is not asserted as a political preference but affirmed as a consequence of creation. It follows from the reality of a shared human nature, which exists because God created it. Human equality is intelligible only if there is something real that human beings equally are.

Third, the Declaration draws an ethical conclusion: Because human beings are created in this way, they are endowed with rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) that no just government may rightly violate. To say that human beings are created by God is to say that they possess a given nature grounded in divine intention, not in change, appetite, or contingency.

This sequence is as decisive as it is brilliant. Remove any part of it and the argument collapses. Without a grounding in self-evident truths, claims about rights become matters of opinion or will. Without creation, equality loses its grounding in nature and becomes a political assertion to be enforced rather than an a priori truth. Without both, liberty ceases to be a moral claim and becomes a grant of the state for licentiousness. What remains is a thinner conception of freedom — one incapable of sustaining either justice or joy.

The assumptions that creation is intelligible, that God is knowable, and that human beings are responsible for acknowledging both stand at the foundation of the American experiment. They are the stress points at which its coherence either holds or fails.

RELATED: Trump’s Supreme Court keeps finding ways to fail his voters

OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images

At this point, the Christian reader may be tempted to object that the Declaration does not go far enough. It speaks of God as Creator but says nothing of Christ. It appeals to natural theology but makes no reference to revealed religion. Does it leave us stranded with a Deistic account of God or a thin moralism that cannot sustain the claims it makes?

The concern is understandable, especially when the Declaration is contrasted with documents such as the Solemn League and Covenant that explicitly confessed allegiance to Christ the King. Yet this objection rests on a misunderstanding of both the Declaration’s purpose and the relation between natural and revealed religion.

The Declaration of Independence is precisely that: a declaration of independence. It is not a confession of faith, a catechism, or a constitution.

It has a specific and limited purpose: to justify political separation from Great Britain by appealing to truths binding on all human beings as such. The absence of explicit Christological language does not indicate theological indifference, but a focus on the specific political question at hand.

It is also worth remembering that many of the founders likely assumed that explicitly Christian commitments would find expression elsewhere. Nearly every state constitution in the founding era contained explicit Christian language, often including affirmations of Christianity or requirements that officeholders affirm specific Protestant beliefs.

The Declaration was never intended to bear the full theological weight of American public life on its own. It establishes a common foundation; it does not exhaust the moral or religious commitments of the people who affirmed it.

Just as Romans 1 demonstrates there is a clear general revelation that shows the reality of universal sin and then explains our need for Christ, the Declaration’s three-fold assertion of knowability, God, and what is good provides a basis for the path to salvation.

This points to a second consideration: The Declaration’s appeal to natural theology is not compatible with every religious or philosophical system. The Declaration’s affirmation of God the Creator excludes belief systems that deny God the Creator.

It presupposes that God is distinct from the world, that the world is created rather than eternal, and that human beings possess a knowable nature grounded in that act of creation. Natural theology, in this view, is neither trivial nor thin; it is full and clear. It tells us a great deal about God, about ourselves, and about the moral order.

RELATED: How to fix the woke teacher problem

H. Rick Bamman/Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

At the same time, natural theology is not redemptive revelation. Scripture does not merely restate natural truths more clearly or add moral instruction where reason falters. It answers a question that natural theology cannot answer on its own: how a just and holy God redeems sinners who suppress the truth they ought to know.

The founders were well aware of this distinction. The Bible was the most frequently cited book in their writings, and most took for granted that Christianity answered the question of redemption. Yet they also recognized that this answer could not be imposed by civil authority without corrupting both church and state.

They had no interest in adjudicating disputes among Protestants, much less between Protestants and Roman Catholics. The Declaration’s silence on these matters reflects not skepticism about Christian truth, but a judgment about political competence.

In this light, the Declaration’s appeal to natural theology appears not as a theological retreat, but as a principled boundary. It affirms all that reason can and must know about God and human nature, while leaving the work of redemption where it belongs: in the proclamation of the gospel and the ministry of the church.

The coherence of the American experiment depends on honoring both truths. Confuse them, and politics becomes a counterfeit religion. Separate them rightly, and both church and state are free to pursue their proper ends. This can serve as a call back to American Christians to remember the need for evangelical work if they hope for lasting positive change in America.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.

​Declaration of independence, Human nature, Natural theology, America 250, Founding fathers, American founding, Constitution, Opinion & analysis 

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey grew up listening to the Christian music group Avalon, whose song “Testify to Love” had become an anthem for Christians all over the country.

However, not even religious music is safe from the LGBTQ community.

“Here’s some bad news. Now, we are being told retroactively that ‘Testify to Love’ by the CCM band Avalon is actually an anthem of queer love,” Stuckey explains.

“I am not joking that this is now an LGBTQ-affirming anthem,” she says.

Former member Melissa Greene wrote in a substack post on the topic: “’Testify to Love’ drops today, originally recorded by Avalon, re-recorded by Michael Passons, Ty Herndon, and me. On Wednesday, we shot the music video. At the end of it, the three of us looked at each other, proud, and ultimately saying LOVE is for everyone.”

“She went on to talk about, in her Substack, her collaborator on the track, Passons, another former Avalon member who was removed from the group after he identified as gay many years ago,” Stuckey explains.

“In 2020, Passons appeared on an episode of a podcast and said that his bandmates visited his home and told him he was no longer allowed to be in the group because he was homosexual,” she continues.

While Greene now regrets viewing “some love as acceptable” and others as not acceptable, Stuckey explains that actually, some love is unacceptable.

“If you are talking about a grown-up loving a child in a way that is inappropriate, that kind of love is unacceptable. I’m not even making the comparison of pedophilia to LGBTQ right now. That’s not the point. I’m just saying that in principle, like you understand, the logic that some love isn’t acceptable actually does hold water,” she says.

Greene also wrote that Passons “never needed to be redeemed.”

“Uh-oh,” Stuckey comments.

“This phenomenon of believing that we are actually nicer than God, that we’re wiser than God, that we’re more compassionate than Him, that Romans 1 is too mean, that Genesis 1:27 is too cruel, that 1 Corinthians 6 is just too harsh, that passages that positively affirm the holiness of marriage between one man and one woman and the exclusive holiness of sexual activity within that marriage between one man and one woman,” she says, “it’s just too much to bear.”

“The truth is that we are not nicer than God. We don’t know better than Him. We’re not more compassionate than Him. And if something to us seems wrong or seems cruel or seems confusing when we go to the word of God, the problem is not with God,” she continues.

“It’s not with His word. It’s with us,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Avalon, Testify to love, Michael passons, Ty herndon, Melissa greene, Christianity, Lgbtq 

In the past, assassination attempts against a president were fairly simple, Glenn Beck says.

“It looked like one guy, one gun.”

But those days, he argues, are “absolutely gone.”

Today, assassination attempts — especially those against President Trump — look “really different.”

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck program,” Glenn exposes a terrifying pattern behind the numerous attempts on Donald Trump’s life.

The first attempt to assassinate Trump occurred in 2016 at a rally in Las Vegas when a young man tried to grab a police officer’s gun with the stated intention of shooting and killing Trump.

“That’s the old model,” Glenn says.

But in 2017, things began to take a darker turn.

In September of that year, during President Trump’s visit to a refinery in Mandan, North Dakota, a man stole a forklift and tried to enter the presidential motorcade route with the intent to flip Trump’s limousine and kill him.

“To me, this is the difference between planting a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center and then that not working, and then trying to fly airplanes into the side of the building five years later,” Glenn says, highlighting the growing desire for “spectacle.”

In 2020, things progressed again when a Canadian woman mailed a letter containing homemade ricin (a highly toxic poison) addressed to then-President Trump at the White House.

“Distance now is entering the picture,” Glenn says. “You don’t need access; you just need to find a way to get proximity.”

Then came the closest attempt in 2024, when at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from a rooftop with an AR-15-style rifle, grazing President Trump in the ear.

“This is no longer chaotic. This is … well-planned and calculated,” Glenn says, drawing attention to all the “warnings” leading up to Crooks’ attempt, most notably the numerous sightings of Crooks on a strangely unguarded rooftop.

Two months later at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh hid in bushes along the course with an AK-47-style rifle and a scope, lying in wait to shoot President Trump while he was golfing, but was spotted by Secret Service agents before Trump arrived at that hole.

“This is not anger anymore. Now they’re stalking him,” Glenn says.

“Behind the scenes, federal prosecutors uncover a plot tied to individuals linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. … Not just Trump, but several U.S. leaders are targeted,” he continues.

“Now, that’s a different category. … That’s geopolitical; that’s foreign terrorism.”

And finally, the latest attempt on President Trump’s life occurred just last month when armed gunman Cole Tomas Allen allegedly tried to storm the security perimeter at the Washington Hilton where President Trump was hosting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He allegedly fired multiple shots in an attempt to kill Trump and other Cabinet officials, but Secret Service tackled and arrested him, preventing any casualties.

“I want you to think about the target. It’s not a rally; it’s not a golf course. It’s a room full of the leadership of the United States,” Glenn says. “That’s not an assassination. That’s destabilization. … That is the constitutional order being disrupted.”

Why have these assassination attempts become more organized and common?

Glenn answers that question by recapping three stories just from this month:

During a CNN interview, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow (Mich.) drew parallels between Nazi Germany and what’s happening under the Trump administration, citing an “authoritarian slide.” Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Raymond Chandler (Penn.) was arrested after allegedly leaving voicemails threatening to slit the throats of a Republican congressman and his young daughter, and making threats against President Trump.Mohamed Abdou, a former Columbia University professor who was fired in 2024 after publicly praising Hamas, Hezbollah, and the October 7 attacks, spoke at Virginia Tech as part of his “Death to the Akademy” tour. During the event, he openly declared support for Hamas/“Palestinian resistance”and explained the slogan “Death to America” as meaning a total end to the U.S. empire and the destruction of America as a “settler-colonial” project.

“What’s happening here, America? What’s changed?” Glenn asks.

“Everything,” he answers.

“It used to be one guy walking in behind President Lincoln and shooting him. … Now it’s layered. You have the lone actors; you also have the ideological extremists; you have the distance attacks, the mail, the surveillance, the infiltration,” he explains.

“But you also have something else. You have the failure points; you have the security gaps; you have the missed warnings; you have systems that don’t seem to be adapting, or at least not fast enough. But you also have, on top of that, foreign intelligence plots,” he continues.

But the media is silent on these matters.

Glenn pleads with his audience to “connect the dots.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​Glenn beck, The glenn beck program, Donald trump, Assassination attempts 

Whenever I see or hear the phrase “customer service,” I have to roll my eyes. Customer service? In the United States? No such thing.

There used to be. I remember it because I experienced it as a customer and I practiced it as a retail staffer.

The unspoken but obvious ethos is: ‘The customer is always wrong, and also he is oppressing me, a poor proletariat worker.’

We can get it back, but that requires understanding how we lost it. It also requires laying out the unspoken assumptions that drive the current “the customer is always wrong” attitude.

McDonald’s, Best Buy, Home Depot — sub in your favorite — all of them operate on these unspoken assumptions, and that’s why the “service” at all these places is nonexistent at best and hostile too often.

Service with a stare

First, let’s describe the problem with two anecdotes.

1. I walked into Tractor Supply. I asked the 19-year-old girl slouching against the counter where the kerosene was kept. “If we had any it would be, like … over on one of those aisles,” she said, waving her hand in a direction.

I said, “Are you able to check your system to find out where and if you have any in stock?”

She responded: “I can’t leave the register.”

That’s not what I asked. A second employee walked me to the aisle after (wait for it) logging into the register and checking the stock list. When I told him about the lazy response from his front-counter worker, he immediately defended her, with no apology: “Yeah, but she’s new.”

2. I went to a “casual dining” restaurant. It was the kind of local place that sells burgers for $19 along with local beer on tap. The waitress took our order, dropped the food on the table, and walked away. There was no silverware. No napkins. No salt and pepper. No plates for the shared dishes. It didn’t even occur to her.

When I asked, “May we have some silverware, please?” she stared at me with that blank look, turned around, got the silverware, and set it down. Yes, I’m saying she gave me the silent treatment; it’s common these days.

Communicating contempt

I’m going to stop at those two stories; they stand in for hundreds of similar transactions over the past 10 years or so. It doesn’t matter if it’s a chain restaurant or a corporate outlet store. Any time the staff are younger than about 40, this is what happens.

Several decades ago, I was a young staffer in my teens and 20s. I worked mall retail, then spent about a dozen years as a busboy, waiter, and barback. From my first job at 15 to my last retail job at 28, I would have been fired on the spot if I had behaved the way those employees did.

Why? Because it’s incompetent. It’s lazy. It’s not doing your job; it’s standing there getting paid while neglecting your work. And worst of all, it communicates contempt for the customer.

How did we get here?

I suspect we got here by the same means that brought us young adults who can’t do arithmetic, can’t write a topic sentence for a paragraph, and can’t sound out the word silhouette. That route can be called “lack of parenting” and “lack of teaching in public school.” Examining that is for a different article.

Whatever the reason, this is where we are today. It’s something we need to fix — and can fix, if we decide to.

Workers of the world … be polite!

When I was in retail, there was a too-hard bias toward the idea that “the customer is always right.” Too often, staff were expected to tolerate abusive behavior from customers — name-calling, lying to get free food, and so on — while the manager handed them their order for free.

But over the past decade or so, the pendulum hasn’t merely swung back toward protecting workers from abuse. It has swung toward a deeper assumption: that the customer himself is the problem.

Now we’ve reversed it in the other direction. The unspoken but obvious ethos is: “The customer is always wrong, and also he is oppressing me, a poor proletariat worker.”

The Marxist lens of “oppressed/oppressor” has seeped so far into our cultural fabric that restaurants openly admit they pay waiters low wages, then guilt customers into “remembering” to tip. If I had even hinted at that message when I was a waiter, I would have been clocked out and sent home permanently.

RELATED: The four Americans who just restored my faith in ‘customer service’

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Going off-script

Along with the customer-hostile attitude, modern retail tries to lock down employees’ actions with rigid steps. Maybe it’s fear of liability; maybe it’s not wanting to pay competent managers; maybe it’s something else. But the reason every customer-staffer transaction feels robotic is because it is. Businesses no longer allow staff to exercise judgment. You can hear it when the cashier works hard to recite the script verbatim. You can tell they’re not allowed to think, because if you ask a question the script hasn’t anticipated, they get flustered — and that part isn’t their fault.

Compare today with this McDonald’s training video from 1992.

– YouTube

First, marvel at how much emphasis they put on making sure employees are pleasant to customers.

But more surprising, the trainer in the video explicitly encourages staff members to use their own judgment and alter what they say based on context. That happens around the 1:47 mark: “I was talking to [an employee] a little bit earlier, and he said that he was feeling really stiff having to say, ‘Welcome to McDonald’s, welcome to McDonald’s,’ over and over again,” she said. “So I told him what we tell our people all the time: Say what feels natural. But say it with a warm, sincere smile.”

Customer feedback

Sound crazy? It used to be normal. And we can bring it back if we make that choice. Customer-employee interactions don’t have to be fraught and robotic; the business world chose this.

Here are some guidelines every retail establishment should return to, none of which cost a single cent:

Make eye contact with every customer who approaches you. Greet every customer, and do it pleasantly. Prepare your workstation before customers arrive. Put down your phone; that’s not for work time. Think like a customer and figure out what they’ll need. Do not write verbatim scripts for employees. Walk them through customer service basics and answer their questions. Act it out. Role-play. Encourage employees to use reasonable discretion. Tone and personality vary from person to person; successful customer service depends on adapting to the person in front of you. If you don’t trust your staff to have the wiggle room to modify the exact words they use with customers, you’re either hiring bad people or you don’t know how to run a business. If that’s the case, find another trade.

This is a taller order for employers in 2026, because it’s sadly true that a large percentage of young staff today are badly socialized — or not socialized at all. Employers shouldn’t have to do what parents failed to do, but they’re going to have to if they care about the quality of their service. Good luck.

​Mcdonald’s, Culture, Customer service, Lifestyle, Manners, Marxism, Retail, Intervention 

For years, Americans were told newer cars would be harder to steal.

Smarter security and keyless entry were supposed to usher in a new era for car owners. Instead, car theft is becoming faster, quieter, and far more sophisticated.

Consumers shouldn’t have to rely on 1990s anti-theft devices to protect vehicles loaded with modern technology — but that’s where we’ve arrived.

Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., recently charged six people tied to an international theft ring accused of stealing more than 100 vehicles in the D.C. area.

No smash and grab

It’s how they did it that should make us all concerned: a simple handheld device that can reportedly program a new key fob directly into a vehicle’s system — sometimes in about a minute.

No broken window, no smashed ignition, no dramatic Hollywood-style escape.

Just unlock the vehicle, program a key, and drive away.

Handheld device

According to prosecutors, the group used a device known as an Autel to bypass vehicle security systems and generate working keys on the spot. These are tools designed for locksmiths and dealerships, but criminals are now using them to steal cars with alarming speed.

And this wasn’t random street crime.

Investigators say stolen vehicles were moved into parking garages and other “cool-off” locations where VIN numbers were altered, tracking systems disabled, and identifying information changed before the cars were shipped overseas — often hidden inside containers labeled as furniture.

The Autel MaxIM KM100 is commercially available online for a few hundred dollars. It’s small enough to fit in one hand and reportedly works on hundreds of vehicle models.

Automakers spent years selling convenience features as progress. But every layer of convenience also creates another possible vulnerability — something that criminals figured out quickly.

RELATED: Why Tesla’s latest road test could be BAD NEWS for Washington

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Daily drivers

The vehicles targeted in this case included mainstream models like Chevrolet Camaros, Corvettes, and Honda Civics — not rare exotics sitting behind gated mansions. This isn’t just a luxury-car problem anymore. It’s becoming a mainstream problem tied directly to how modern vehicles are designed.

When vehicles become easier to access electronically and harder to track once they disappear, organized crime adapts fast. And investigators believe this case may only expose part of a much larger network.

So what actually works now? Ironically, some of the best protections are old-school.

Police departments are once again recommending steering wheel locks and Faraday pouches because modern theft methods depend on speed. A visible steering wheel lock adds time and attention — two things thieves don’t want.

Consumers shouldn’t have to rely on 1990s anti-theft devices to protect vehicles loaded with modern technology — but that’s where we’ve arrived.

Automakers have raced to add more connected features, more apps, and more digital access points. Security hasn’t always kept pace, and now the industry is dealing with the consequences.

There’s also a growing debate over devices like the Autel system itself. These tools absolutely serve legitimate purposes for repair shops and locksmiths. But critics argue there are too few restrictions on who can buy them and how they’re used.

That conversation is only going to get louder as these thefts continue spreading.

The next time you park your vehicle, the real question may not be whether someone can break into it.

It’s whether he can simply program his way in.

​Law enforcement agencies, Lifestyle, Align cars, Car theft, Tech 

Following redistricting in the South, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) delivered a passionate speech on voting rights and political organizing in Alabama, where she called on activists from northern states to “pull up” on their southern neighbors.

During the speech, AOC argued that protecting voting rights leads to better schools, expanded health care, and broader political representation, while warning supporters that opponents fear people “coming together” across state lines.

“It is time for the North to pull up to the South,” AOC yelled, “It is time for New York to pull up to Alabama. It is time for all of us to come to Georgia, to Louisiana, to Tennessee, to Mississippi and let them know exactly what they have uncorked with this injustice.”

“Because when black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded. When voting rights are protected, health care gets expanded. When voting rights are protected, our country moves forward,” she said.

“And Montgomery, that’s what they’re actually afraid of. They’re afraid of us coming together. They’re afraid of us protecting one another. Alabama is the crucible. Georgia is the crucible. Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi is the crucible,” she continued.

“It is time to pull up. Because what they thought was the final blow is actually just the opening silo,” she yelled.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray laughs, saying, “Of course, she means salvo. It’s ‘the opening salvo.’”

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Pat gray, Alexandria ocasio cortez, Voting rights, Redistricting, Aoc, Alabama, Pat gray unleashed 

Trump may be president, but his anti-woke approach isn’t saving Hollywood from itself — as some of its latest releases have been met with heavy criticism.

Most recently, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” has gotten the second-worst Rotten Tomatoes score in the “Star Wars” franchise — coming in at a barely fresh 65%.

BlazeTV hosts Stu Burguiere and Dave Landau don’t believe it’s much of a mystery as to why that is.

“Well, Pedro Pascal’s in it. He was in my colonoscopy I had two weeks ago. The least s****y thing he’s done,” Dave jokes.

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Stu points out that “they’re going to the extremes on it,” which is too much for the fanbase.

“It’s a lot. The whole Mandalorian concept was like, ‘Hey, what if we did an adorable, puppy-dog version of Yoda?’ Like, it’s pathetic,” he says.

“I think it sucks,” Dave agrees.

“And Pedro Pascal sucks,” Stu adds.

The film “The Odyssey” from Christopher Nolan is also facing scrutiny for casting choices — specifically, for casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.

“I guess she’s pretty,” Dave says. “She’s not really the face that launches a thousand ships.”

“She’s more the face you get frozen yogurt with once. You know, the Tinder face that you match up but never meet up with. That sort of face,” he continues.

Dave also notes that because of the color of Nyong’o’s skin, she adds value to the Hollywood crowd.

“The Academy … they have mandated all this stuff,” he says, adding, “You have to have certain people in certain roles. So he’s just stacking the deck in his favor.”

Want more from Stu and Dave?

To enjoy more of Stu and Dave’s lethal blend of wit, humor, and insightful commentary subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Christopher nolan, Hollywood, Pedro pascal, Star wars, Stu and dave do america, The odyssey, The mandalorian and grogu 

Mary, a veteran Silicon Valley marketer who can’t find a job, considers herself a victim of an H-1B visa program run amok.

Her story, a U.S. native replaced by a foreign-born employee who is willing to work at a significantly lower wage, has become commonplace, particularly in the tech industry. Adding insult to injury, she says, her CEO, who hails from India, told her to train the man he selected to replace her before laying her off.

Despite stints at Google and Cisco and two years of job-hunting, Mary can no longer compete in a job market saturated with foreign-born H-1B visa holders. “I had experience. I should have walked right into these corporate jobs, but I didn’t. Why? Because Silicon Valley is flooded with people who work for two-thirds of the price, or even half price,” said Mary, who asked to be identified only by her first name.

Companies, on average, save nearly $100,000 per worker over six years by hiring an H-1B worker rather than an American.

U.S. tech workers like Mary are at the center of a battle brewing in Washington, D.C., over reforming the troubled H-1B visa program, which is designed to fill highly skilled positions when qualified American workers can’t be found. The controversy pits tough-on-immigration Republicans and some Democrats against the most formidable of opponents — Big Tech, the primary beneficiary of a program considered by critics to be little more than a pipeline of cheap labor.

In the last few decades, the California dream has gone global, as U.S. tech firms have filled their ranks and C-suites with employees born abroad. Intel is no longer the company of its founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, but of Malaysian-born Lip-Bu Tan, its CEO since March 2025. Microsoft is led by Satya Nadella; Alphabet Inc. by Sundar Pichai; Adobe by Shantanu Narayen; IBM by Arvind Krishna; and T-Mobile US by Srinivas Gopalan — all of whom were born in India.

All told, a remarkable two-thirds of the Valley’s nearly 400,000 tech jobs are now held by those born abroad, according to a 2025 report from the think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Today, more tech workers were born in India (23%) and China (18%) combined than in the U.S. (34%).

Low-cost talent

The influx of low-cost Asian talent has clearly helped fuel profits in one of America’s most influential sectors. But there is a downside to this tech boom — the sidelining of U.S. workers thanks to the H-1B visa program. Created in 1990, the federal program has morphed into a vehicle for employers, particularly in the nation’s tech centers, to recruit much cheaper foreign labor at the expense of U.S. tech workers, according to Harvard economist George J. Borjas.

While the H-1B program spans multiple industries, it is overwhelmingly concentrated in tech. Last year, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Tata Consultancy, and Google were the biggest visa users, with Amazon alone recording more than 13,000 applications. These companies find the savings from hiring foreign workers hard to resist. The job of software developer, for instance, accounts for 38% of all H-1B visa workers, according to a 2026 paper by Borjas. And these foreign software developers earn about 30% less than their U.S. counterparts, the economist estimates.

Since many of these tech jobs pay six figures, the savings quickly add up. Borjas estimates that companies, on average, save nearly $100,000 per worker over six years by hiring an H-1B worker rather than an American. The arrangement “redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants,” Borjas wrote in 2016. That, in turn, helps account for the soaring stock prices of Big Tech since the 2008 financial crash.

RELATED: America should eliminate the H-1B and replace it with THIS

El Nuevo Herald/Getty Images

False rationale

The vaguely written H-1B law has been easy for companies to exploit. Hassan Abdullah, an immigration attorney and H-1B advocate, said the supposed congressional basis of the law — to fill highly skilled jobs with foreigners if Americans aren’t available — has always been a fiction. “The actual regulations don’t necessarily say that’s required,” said Abdullah, who helps companies get the visas. “Throughout all my years, I’ve never had to even consider that as a factor.”

One of the most glaring weaknesses of the law, critics say, is that most companies applying for these visas are not required to demonstrate that they were unable to find qualified American workers. Only companies with more than 15% of their workforce on H-1Bs must make small efforts to recruit U.S. citizens.

Companies are required to pay foreign workers at least the “prevailing wage” for the occupation and region, a provision that should theoretically reduce the incentive to hire employees from Asia. But the process relies on self-reporting and has been easy to manipulate because salaries are calculated using broad regional averages that often fail to reflect real market wages in the technology sector.

As a result, the number of H-1B visa workers has skyrocketed. 2025 was a banner year, with 406,348 approved visas, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Seventy percent of those visas were issued to Indians. That compares with a total of 275,317 visa approvals in 2015.

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, who is part of the MAGA wing of the GOP, reacted to these numbers on X, calling the program “a national security nightmare. Enough. No more flooding the market with 400k+ H-1B visas while our people and our sovereignty gets screwed.”

After foreign-born employees take on leadership roles, including CEO, they attract and hire more foreigners by tapping their own professional and social networks.

With criticism of the visas dovetailing with broader anti-immigration sentiments, the Trump administration has made the most serious move yet to restrict the program. Six months ago, USCIS announced a new $100,000 fee that companies must pay per new H-1B worker living outside the U.S. While official figures have not yet been released, some immigration experts estimate that the fee may lead to a 30% to 50% decline in new visa applications.

“This is the first year we have not filed any H-1B visas for people outside the U.S. because tech companies don’t want to pay the $100,000 fee,” said immigration attorney Navdeep Meamber, who is based in Silicon Valley.

But companies have found a work-around. Meamber said she has seen an increase in the number of clients filing for the visas for workers already in the U.S., particularly those such as students who transferred from other visa types to H-1Bs.

“The $100,000 fee is discouraging some employers from bringing in brand-new H-1B workers, but it is not reducing the numbers, because foreign students, especially those who get on the Optional Practical Training program, can move into the H-1B pipeline without paying that fee,” said attorney Rosemary Jenks, a campaigner for immigration reform with the Immigration Accountability Project. “So there are still plenty of H-1B visas being issued every year.”

American ingenuity

Silicon Valley wasn’t always dominated by foreigners. Some claim the true birthplace of Silicon Valley can be found in a garage at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto. It was there that David Packard, a native of Colorado, and Bill Hewlett of Michigan founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939. Robert Noyce, a native son of Iowa and co-inventor of the integrated circuit, critically made from silicon, gave name to the valley after the substance. With his colleague, Gordon Moore of San Francisco, they founded Intel in 1968.

Throughout the postwar years, America’s booming tech industry was largely pioneered by natives. By the 1980s, however, concerns were raised about the dwindling number of young people available to fill STEM jobs in the future. Erich Bloch, director of the National Science Foundation, told the American Council on Education in 1985: “The pool of potential students from U.S. schools will become smaller. Demographic projections, of which you are all aware, show the number of 18- to 24-year-olds declining by about 20% over the next decade.”

The 1990 Immigration Act created the H-1B visa, a temporary work visa lasting a few years aimed at filling the labor shortages Bloch had warned about. Since then, tech firms have sometimes struggled to find employees, particularly specialized engineers, during times of rapid growth. But whether the industry faces a persistent shortage of American workers is a matter of debate among economists and labor analysts.

Major technology companies reject the criticism that the H-1B system is primarily a source of cheap labor. Executives stress that the program allows American firms to recruit engineers and researchers with advanced technical expertise in areas where qualified talent can be scarce.

They also contend that many H-1B workers are paid high salaries and that access to global talent helps keep American companies competitive against rivals.

Critics of the visas point to waves of layoffs accompanied by the growth in H-1Bs as evidence that a labor shortage is nothing more than a fig leaf. Michael Capuano of the Federation for American Immigration Reform wrote in a blog post last year,

Google laid off 951 U.S. employees in 2024, but found room for 1,058 new H-1B workers. Apple laid off 735 people in 2024, but signed on 864 new H-1B employees. Microsoft laid off 3,426 workers from 2022 to 2024 and hired 3,259 new H-1Bs during that same period.

A 2023 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute similarly found that the top 30 H-1B employers hired more than 34,000 new H-1B workers in 2022 while laying off at least 85,000 employees during the same period.

In addition to cheaper talent, critics say H-1B visas also provide a captive workforce. Because employers can sponsor visa holders for permanent residency, many workers become heavily reliant on keeping their jobs in order to remain in the United States. Critics argue that this dynamic discourages employees from changing companies or demanding higher wages, with some likening the system to a form of indentured servitude.

Tribalism at play

Critics say favoritism has also contributed to foreign dominance of the tech sector. After foreign-born employees take on leadership roles, including CEO, they attract and hire more foreigners by tapping their own professional and social networks.

Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, argues that “professionalism doesn’t exist in these IT departments any more,” adding that “when you look at the hiring, it gets very tribal. It’s really India versus the rest of the world.”

Microsoft saw the number of decisions on H-1B applications rise from 2,983 in 2014, when Nadella became CEO, to 6,258 in 2025. Google’s numbers jumped from 2,309 in 2015, when Pichai took the top job, to 7,868 in 2025. During these years, these companies also grew, making it hard to know if the percentage of foreign workers increased. At IBM, H-1B decisions have remained consistent since Arvind Krishna was named the leader.

Meamber, the immigration lawyer, disputes the idea that companies run by foreign-born leaders are more likely to rely on labor from their home countries. “The CEO doesn’t even know who is being hired. … These decisions are being taken at a lower level by the HR team and by the recruiters,” she said.

Stephen Vivien, an engineer, said he witnessed Indian employees helping each other get hired by sharing interview questions when he worked at Google. “There were a lot of H-1B workers … there’s a network.” he said.

“When one Indian guy would be coming up for his interview; the other Indian guys who had [already] gotten hired would call and share the questions.”

RELATED: America didn’t lose its tech edge — globalist CEOs gave it away

Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In April, a New York jury found New Jersey-based Cognizant Technology Solutions liable for $8.4 million after a former executive sued the company, which was founded in India, for discrimination against non-Indian and non-South Asian workers. The executive argued he was passed over for a promotion and was later fired for raising concerns about bias against non-Indian employees.

The decision follows a separate successful lawsuit brought by three other employees against Cognizant in 2017, all similarly claiming discrimination against non-Indian workers, though the company is appealing and denies all allegations. In both lawsuits, juries found in favor of claims that Cognizant had used the H-1B program as a tool to discriminate against American workers. Since 2009, the company has received tens of thousands of H-1B visa approvals.

Reformers vs. Big Tech

While restrictions to the program have yet to meaningfully slow its growth, some Republicans have called to abolish it. In February, Florida Rep. Greg Steube (R) introduced the EXILE Act, which would end the H-1B visa program entirely.

A proposed reform that might gain more bipartisan support targets the ineffective prevailing wage requirement that allows firms to underpay foreign workers. One idea floated by Republicans would create a minimum salary requirement for H-1B workers that is much higher than the current pay scale, thus removing the financial incentive to replace U.S.-born workers.

Ro Khanna, the Democrat congressman representing much of Silicon Valley, said on the “All-In” podcast last year that “there’s definitely abuse. … It needs to be corrected” in the H-1B program. Khanna said a new prevailing wage standard would be a reform he could support.

But legislation that would raise labor costs would be opposed by Big Tech, armed with its war chest of money and influence in Washington. Jenks, the lawyer, said H-1B reformers face a tough fight. “The donors on this issue include all of the high-tech companies, whether it’s Microsoft, Facebook, all of them,” she said. “They put millions and millions of dollars every year into lobbying.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire. The article was reported in conjunction with a GB News documentary, which can be viewed here.

​H-1b visa, Immigration, Trump administration, Big tech, Foreign labor, American jobs, Tech layoffs, India, Google, Facebook, Opinion & analysis 

“You’re a traitor to your race!”

Hearing this insult made me realize I was not truly a moderate, but a conservative who needed to be more vocal.

When I was a 1L at Rutgers-Camden in my constitutional law class, we discussed issues such as affirmative action and disparate impact theory. I expressed the opinion that the law should be colorblind and merit-based, and that Asians were often harmed by these policies.

The left only celebrates minority success when it serves progressive grievance.

We also covered the Japanese internment camps. As a member of the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association, I reminded the class that the Japanese people at the time followed their political leadership with near-religious devotion and that it could be reasonably argued the camps were necessary at the time. I noted that while the internment camps were wrong, they did not rise anywhere near the level of the German death camps.

I was used to seeing dismay from students and professors when a minority student expressed conservative beliefs. But during this conversation, I first heard someone question my relationship with my mother’s heritage solely because of my political views.

To the best of my recollection, this statement came from a white law student who once bragged about working on Senator Ted Kennedy’s campaign on Martha’s Vineyard. I was a mixed-race student who had worked as a bartender while attending Penn State and as a roofer during summers just to make ends meet.

Identity politics has produced more division than unity. It becomes discriminatory by enforcing ideological litmus tests within racial groups. Those who prioritize colorblind merit, individual responsibility, and limited government are labeled traitors or inauthentic.

The liberal media and Democratic rhetoric claim to champion minorities while viciously attacking prominent minority conservatives personally — often without engaging their arguments on policy or evidence.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a black conservative who rose from poverty in the segregated South, embodies the self-made success story that identity politics struggles to accommodate. Rather than debate his skepticism of race-based policies, critics frequently resort to personal attacks and racial slurs. More recently, Charlamagne tha God called Justice Clarence Thomas a “coon” on “The Daily Show.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been one of Trump’s most popular cabinet members, recently gave a passionate defense of the American dream. It’s a dream he has long believed in, but Rubio has long been labeled a traitor to his own culture primarily because of his policy positions on immigration and economics.

Kash Patel is an Indian-American FBI director. He has been a victim of personal attacks and racist death threats, yet little has been offered to criticize his results on crime and national security. Identity politics won’t allow it.

Even prominent black voices in sports and entertainment take risks when they deviate. Stephen A. Smith has faced fierce backlash for simply suggesting black voters consider voting Republican or for criticizing certain Democratic policies.

Economist Thomas Sowell, one of the most influential black thinkers of our time, has been repeatedly smeared with terrible racist attacks for documenting how culture, incentives, and policy explain disparities better than systemic racism narratives. Refusal to conform comes at a personal cost.

RELATED: Democrats love free speech — until conservatives get some

Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images

A glaring example of this selective outrage appears among prominent Asian-American Democratic politicians. Senator Andy Kim (D-N.J.), the first Korean-American U.S. Senator, frequently highlights his identity as the son of Korean immigrants and advocates greater Asian-American representation in politics.

Yet when the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) that race-based admissions policies violated the Equal Protection Clause — policies that data showed penalized Asian applicants with higher academic standards — Kim expressed dismay and pivoted to criticizing legacy admissions rather than the clear anti-Asian discrimination.

In contrast, retired Navy Captain Hung Cao, a Vietnamese refugee and decorated veteran recently appointed acting secretary of the Navy, was immediately mocked by the Democratic Party’s official X account. (The post has since been deleted.)

These examples reveal identity politics’ discriminatory core: The left only celebrates minority success when it serves progressive grievance. When Asians or other minorities succeed through merit, service, and conservative principles, that success becomes a problem.

These Democrat lawmakers embrace group-based advocacy when it aligns with progressive causes — pushing for representation and condemning hate when politically convenient, and supporting affirmative action frameworks that benefit some minority groups. Yet when high-achieving Asians suffer from the very racial preferences identity politics demands, the commitment to fighting discrimination evaporates.

Identity politics demands loyalty to the liberal ideologies above consistent principle or the specific interest of their communities.

True equality comes from judging individuals by character and content, not enforcing racial political blocs.

​Affirmative action, Clarence thomas, Hung cao, Identity politics, Kash patel, American dream, Minorities, Democrats, Opinion & analysis 

An Arizona woman known as “GrammaCrackers” said she will not give in to the haters who called in a dangerous “swatting” call on her while she was livestreaming online.

Sue Jacquot has hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube, but she got a shock on Monday during a 24/7 livestream campaign she ran to raise money to pay her grandson’s cancer bills.

‘They’re not going to tell me what I can do. They’re not going to make me afraid to do that.’

Jacquot had posted videos of herself playing Minecraft with her grandsons, Jack and Austin Self. Then one of the kids was diagnosed with cancer.

“He’s had 200 chemo treatments in like a year and a half, and that’s a lot of expensive bills that the insurance company won’t touch,” the 81-year-old said to KPNX-TV.

The family was planning to livestream for 15 days when the cops showed up at their doorstep.

“We got a call that Jack shot his grandma and killed her and that he was going to kill himself, and right then, I was like, ‘Whoa,'” Jack Self said. “It was kind of like a punch to the stomach.”

Swatting is a very dangerous tactic where police are falsely alerted to a violent crime at a victim’s home in the hope that the victim might be harmed during the emergency police response. Some of these incidents have resulted in lethal shootings.

More than a dozen Queen Creek police officers reported to the home and swarmed the residence after the call. The livestream showed police waking up Jacquot from her bed.

“They just sort of escorted me out, and they were apologizing,” GrammaCrackers said. “I just wondered what my grandkids had done.”

RELATED: Romanian man pleads guilty to orchestrating online ‘swatting’ campaign against US lawmakers, including an ex-president

Police said they are investigating the incident, but Jacquot says she won’t let the startling incident stop her.

“They’re not going to tell me what I can do. They’re not going to make me afraid to do that,” she said.

Jacquot recalled the swatting incident in a video on her YouTube channel, where she said she had never gotten so many hugs and attention from her grandsons afterward.

“It was kinda fun!” she said.

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​Swatting, Cancer bills, Livestream gamer, False police reports, Crime