Frank Meyer’s fusionism combined free-market libertarianism and religion-friendly traditionalism to create the modern conservative movement. As a political alliance against the threat of communism, the movement served its purpose. But the principles that undergirded Meyer’s synthesis were not an adequate basis for attaining and sustaining national power.

The difference between the defeated Barry Goldwater faction and the victorious Ronald Reagan coalition was the vote of white Catholic Democrats alienated from their former party by its anti-anti-Communism and embrace of the three A’s: amnesty (for draft evaders), acid, and abortion.

We need a clearer, more uncompromising articulation of a pure MAGA doctrine that distinguishes our agenda from the libertarians and so-called principled conservatives.

Those former Democrats did not want smaller government, so Reagan preserved, for them and the country, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with generating ever-larger deficits.

Meyer’s synthesis, however, was not as new as is often claimed: In important respects, it represented 19th-century Bourbon Democracy spruced up for the post-World War II era. What distinguished the Bourbons from the Republicans (and from the populist Democrats) was their commitment to smaller government, free trade, and cheap labor. That meant unfree labor in the 1850s and more-or-less free labor once the South was successfully “redeemed” from Republican rule and black civil rights enforcement after the Civil War.

What America needs today instead is fissionism. We need a clearer, more uncompromising articulation of a pure MAGA doctrine that distinguishes our agenda from the libertarians and so-called principled conservatives.

MAGA in foreign and security matters means using American power to secure American interests. Foreign policy is not the application of abstract principles, which are worse than useless in international relations. What were Franklin Roosevelt’s principles or Andrew Jackson’s or Teddy Roosevelt’s? Their guiding star in foreign policy was not principle but the ruthless pursuit of results.

As for draining the swamp, the trench warfare over DOGE and U.S. attorney appointments proves that deconstructing the administrative state requires a pro-Trump Senate. But the current Senate remains beholden to the uniparty. If you are happy with your “principled conservative” senator obstructing the president, then you are on the other side.

Against those screaming for lower taxes and less government at all costs, protective tariffs are core to MAGA — and for that matter, core to the Republican Party before it was taken over by Reagan, a former Democrat and fusionist. MAGA demands an economic policy geared toward national greatness. It means an end to regulations engineered to cripple the U.S. economy in the name of DEI, apocalyptic climate alarmism, or the latest elite neurosis.

Targeted regulations and tariffs to onshore our supply chains and rebuild the American industrial base? Absolutely. That has been Donald Trump’s consistent agenda since he first started commenting on public affairs in the 1980s. If the “principled conservatives” fail to recognize this, that exposes their own ideological blindness, not a flaw in the MAGA platform.

RELATED: Will Republicans fight for the SAVE Act — or fold again?

Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images

Fundamentally, “principled conservatives” don’t want America to be stronger and freer if it means traditional Republican governance. They prefer Bourbon Democracy: small government, cheap goods, cheap labor (citizens and noncitizens alike), and dependence on others — once Britain or the North, now China — for industry, including vital defense-related manufacturing. As for the world, China can do what it wants. Anything else would require the old guard conservatives to compromise their precious “principles.”

People who don’t want the United States to be reliant on China, as Mississippi was on Manchester in 1850, or Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1890, should see “principled conservatives” as political opponents — allies of the Democrats. They are helping to destroy Trump and everything the president stands for.

Does drawing clearer partisan lines mean shedding potential support required for electoral victory? That is a very real risk. The compensating benefit is that once we know what we want, we can accurately identify our allies and band together to address the crises of our time.

A “principled conservative” administration would have preferred Big Pharma to RFK Jr. and MAHA. A “principled conservative” administration would make no room for a Tulsi Gabbard, an Elon Musk, or any other heterodox defector who wants to restore American foreign and security policy and advance American power, national honor, and national freedom.

Fissionism means drawing clear battle lines, dividing what was once the “conservative movement.” The “principled conservatives” can keep their pristine — and currently useless — “principles.” I am on the side of America, which means the side of Trump.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Frank meyers, Fusionism, Democrats, Ronald reagan, Donald trump, Nevertrump, Maga, Doge, Principled conservatives, Big pharma, Rfk jr, Opinion & analysis, Principles, The right, Republicans, Gop 

Millions recently read about normal-guy Paul Conyngham’s resourcefulness when it was revealed he did what doctors couldn’t in creating an effective, customized vaccine for his dog stricken with terminal illness, but far fewer caught the later-revealed fact that while ChatGPT was credited as the AI model Conyngham used to navigate the labyrinth of mRNA vaccine creation, it was actually Grok that produced the final, winning design.

Perhaps “normal guy” is an understatement. Conyngham is an Australian tech entrepreneur. When his adopted dog Rosie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he paid a lab $3,000 to perform DNA sequencing analysis on both Rosie and the precise cancer Rosie was fighting. Then, he used AI tools such as AlphaFold to process the sequencing analysis. Finally, he deployed Grok to design the bespoke mRNA vaccine, which was ultimately produced by university partners (evidently available for consult or perhaps inspired by Conyngham’s devotion to his dog).

What are the odds that this is all just going to spontaneously work out?

Despite his unusual skills and network, however, Conyngham didn’t go viral for those. Rather, his story resonated because his can-do sense of initiative is something anyone can tap into, with potentially lifesaving results. At the time of this writing, despite doctors’ predictions, Rosie the dog is alive and thriving. Her illness has not entirely abated, but her owner’s ingenuity and persistence, combined with his layman’s agility around LLMs, has reduced the most life-threatening tumors by 75%.

How then, from this straightforward set of events, did ChatGPT wind up taking the credit until the record was corrected weeks later? When I asked Grok (which, being made up of timelines, is pretty reliable in accessing and reassessing events), I got the rather noncommittal suggestion that the misattribution was due to institutional inertia.

Perhaps.

Hungry for more, I dug into a much deeper human analysis of the man-saves-dog episode. Jordan Hall, another tech entrepreneur-turned-philosopher, posted a series of viral X articles addressing the economic shift to a total, global AI underlayer to the economy (and thus, every aspect of human life). In his second installment, “The Great Transition: The Divine Economy,” Hall sketches his vision for a coherent implementation of AI into this overarching position of importance.

RELATED: Use an anonymous account online? AI can now reveal your identity.

Photo Credit Olga Novikova/Getty Images

Readers are strongly encouraged to read Hall’s series of articles in its entirety. It’s fascinating and endlessly ponderable. All told, in anticipation of a global upheaval of biblical proportions — yes, we’ve heard this for years; despite the wait, it’s coming — Hall suggests we’ll turn the wheel over to the Church.

“The Church has always been an economic institution,” he argues, “whether it acknowledged it or not. Mutual aid, vocational, formation, capital pooling, trust networks — these are ancient practices. What changes now is that AI collapses the constraints that made those practices uncompetitive against industrial-scale consolidation. On Earth as it is in Heaven.”

In the case of Rosie and her owner, just a few questions illustrate the complexity and potential for malfeasance in our AI age. Who owns the Grok-derived vaccine recipe? Who owns Rosie’s DNA? Can it be sold? Who should benefit? If DNA data is “scraped” in some manner similar to how novels, television shows, and musical recordings are more or less pilfered, what are the limits of DNA and data ownership, if any? Can it be simply destroyed, in the same way the owner of a patch of grass can burn it should he so desire?

Hall’s analysis implies that, in the end, these are spiritual questions that can only be answered spiritually — and people hungry for fast answers they can trust will turn to the place where such answers have been on offer for thousands of years.

For now, Rosie’s owner was able to slip through the cracks of institutional, veterinary, and judicial red tape using wit and, let’s face it, the collective human affection for dogs. Hall predicts a situation where the collective, decentralized power of human faculties — made hyper-potent via leveraging AI and functioning on the timeless spiritual foundation of the Church — robustly addresses the AI age’s vast issues of greed, misallocation, misuse, and abuse of resources. Restricted to the secular level, discussions about these problems almost always find themselves mired in the dialectic between Marx and Smith, communism versus capitalism. Unable to innovate our way out of the impasse, will our eyes turn at last to the divine economy?

If a few years pass, the AI compactor consolidating everything into data will likely squeeze out new, perhaps unimaginable forms of computational power. The fight to capture and control that power is raging right now. Looking at the brokers, politicians, and players, accounting for history and human nature, what are the odds that this is all just going to spontaneously work out — such that good-willed efforts like those of Conyngham continue freely, without surveillance or exploitation? We’ll soon see if we’re willing to adopt the forms of social organization it takes to keep cyberspace so free, open, and fruitful.

​Tech, Ai, Grok, Chatgpt, Artificial intelligence, Paul conyngham 

President Donald Trump has his own solution to solve the stalemate in Congress that is causing a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats sparked the partial shutdown on February 14, refusing to pass the FY2026 DHS appropriations bill while calling for reform at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

‘They will do Security like no one has ever seen before.’

The reform demands are a protest of the deaths of anti-ICE activists Alex Pretti and Renee Good, but they ignore the fact that ICE is already funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in 2025.

Still, Democrats have rejected a DHS funding bill (for the fifth time on Friday), withholding funds from TSA and FEMA.

With many TSA workers not being paid during the partial shutdown, the lack of staffing has had a trickle-down effect to travelers. For example, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, passengers faced screening wait times of up to two hours this week, according to CNN.

All the turmoil has President Trump brainstorming possible solutions, and on Saturday afternoon he suggested throwing ICE into the mix.

“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

RELATED: ‘Moral failure’: Pressure mounts as Congress prepares to leave town despite urgent DHS stalemate

Trump said placing ICE agents at airports will also mean that they will conduct “the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country,” pinpointing one nationality in particular.

There would be “heavy emphasis on those from Somalia,” the president wrote. He added that Somalians have “totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota.”

“I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports,” Trump concluded.

RELATED: White House offers concessions to end DHS shutdown — but Dems still choose illegal aliens over unpaid American TSA agents

Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images

According to Politico, lawmakers will remain in D.C. with a district work week looming from March 30 until April 10. This means DHS personnel could go unpaid for another three weeks if Congress does not quickly come to an agreement.

With over 61,000 TSA employees affected by the partial shutdown, at least 366 officers have quit, with many working unpaid. This has led to a record high 10.22% absentee rate set on Monday, according to CNN.

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​News, Trump, Ice, Tsa, Airports, Dhs, Congress, Democrats, Politics 

After years of a media-driven pressure campaign over pay and treatment, WNBA players have secured a significant salary increase. On March 18, the league and its players’ union (WNBPA) announced their verbal/tentative agreement on a new collective bargaining deal that will dramatically increase player salaries by tying pay to revenue shares.

But given that the WNBA has long been financially propped up by the NBA and has only recently started generating enough revenue to trigger player revenue sharing (and potentially turn profitable), Jason Whitlock sees the league’s new deal as undeserved welfare disguised as earned success.

“Nothing that happened with the WNBA and their CBA agreement had anything to do with proper business or these women getting what they’re owed or what they’ve earned or what they deserve. This is being given to them to execute an agenda,” he says.

On this episode of “Fearless,” Whitlock exposes the corruption behind this new WNBA agreement and calls out ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith for pandering to the “alphabet agenda.”

“They want the next group of leaders to all be in support of the alphabet movement, the disruption of the nuclear family, the destruction of the nuclear family, the destruction of a Christian culture, and so they are making alphabet mafia soldiers the heroes and leaders for your kids,” says Whitlock. “That’s what this is all about.”

He pokes fun at ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith for enthusiastically celebrating the landmark deal on a recent episode of “First Take,” during which he praised Nneka Ogwumike (Seattle Storm forward and president of the players’ union) for her leadership, telling her sister Chiney Ogwumike that Nneka “has set a standard,” “deserves to be applauded,” and that the agreement is “a damn good deal.”

But the truth, says Whitlock, is that this deal had nothing to do with Nneka Ogwumike or any genuine achievement.

“Two things are responsible for them getting overpaid: Caitlin Clark and the alphabet agenda,” he says.

“We just gave the welfare sport more welfare money. The WNBA is a welfare sport. It’s no different than women’s soccer. That was a welfare sport for 40 or 50 years,” Whitlock continues, exposing the pattern of “take money away from men, give it to women” to create “more lesbian feminist leadership.”

He accuses Smith of pandering to the WNBA: “He’s applauding it out of arrogance, foolishness, the desire to remain in power, the desire to remain in the good graces of the feminist and the alphabet mafia people that actually control his salary, control his platform.”

“This is what selling out looks like.”

To hear more of Whitlock’s commentary, watch the video above.

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​Fearless, Fearless with jason whitlock, Wnba, Nba, Stephen a smith, Wnbpa, Cba, Wnba cba, Blazetv, Blaze media, Whitlock, Jason whitlock, Espn, First take, Espn first take, Feminist agenda, Lgbtq, Alphabet mafia, Caitlin clark, Nneka ogwumike 

Everything you think you know about the function of the human brain is wrong — and Dr. Iain McGilchrist, author of “The Master and His Emissary,” is sitting down with BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre to explain why.

According to McGilchrist, the modern belief that the left hemisphere is “verbal and rational and dependable” while the right hemisphere is “air fairy,” “emotional,” and “not very dependable” is a farce.

“All of that is completely wrong. In fact, it’s almost the inverse of the truth,” he tells MacIntyre on “The Auron MacIntyre Show.” “The right hemisphere, as I will explain, is far more dependable, far more stable, and the left hemisphere is prone to emotional outbursts of a very narcissistic kind.”

“It is prone actually to anger and to disgust and self-righteousness and emotions of that kind,” he explains.

And because of how important the brain is to each and every living being, the science surrounding it deserves to be challenged — which is exactly what McGilchrist is doing.

“In the left hemisphere, you see things that you already know what they are and you know you want to get them. They’re fixed, they’re isolated, they’re in a way fragmentary, they’re decontextualized, and they’re examples of a kind,” McGilchrist tells MacIntyre.

“Meanwhile, the right hemisphere is seeing a completely different world. It’s seeing a world in which nothing is ever fully certain,” he says, adding, “It always might be something different.”

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The auron macintyre show, Auron macintyre, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Neuroscience, Iain mcgilchrist, Right hemisphere, Left hemisphere, Brain, Neurology, Neurologist 

Something revealing — and increasingly dangerous — shows up in the people who still react to Donald Trump as if he were mainly an offense against etiquette rather than a political fact. They study him the way Victorian naturalists might study a rhinoceros loose in the drawing room: with alarm, fascination, and deep concern for the upholstery.

The Iranian strike has brought it out again. After 47 years, Israel and the United States struck back. Trump moved hard, moved fast, and moved before the foreign-policy clergy finished the first round of throat-clearing. Then, after he acted, he turned and pressed allies and other beneficiaries of Persian Gulf oil to help manage the consequences.

Trump derangement syndrome now imposes a cost beyond mere foolishness. It has become a strategic liability.

To the establishment mind, that looks like barbarism. First you convene. Then you posture. Then you circulate papers. Then you hold a conference where several men with rimless glasses say “regional framework” and “off-ramp.” Only then — after adequate procedural embalming — may anything actually happen.

Trump has never shown much interest in being embalmed.

To the establishment, Trump isn’t merely wrong. His vulgar method offends them. He violates process. He makes the priesthood sweat through its linen.

But the plain truth cuts the other way: Many of the traits that make him unbearable to refined opinion make him effective in world affairs. In Iran, effectiveness isn’t a lifestyle preference. It decides whether we end a threat or let it metastasize from theoretical to fatal.

This moment changes the argument. It no longer turns on whether Trump’s style offends the salons of Washington, New York, Brussels, and Aspen. It turns on whether the United States will stop a fanatical regime from acquiring nuclear weapons and blackmailing the world through oil, terror, and fear. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, often critical of Trump, supports his actions against Iran because the alternative looks worse: Iran survives the confrontation with its nuclear ambitions intact and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz strengthened.

So what should we understand about Donald Trump?

He accepts risk. He will do things that may blow up in his face. Most public people spend their careers dodging blame and pinning it on rivals. Trump cares less about pleasing the people who write essays about “norm erosion.”

He’s a developer with a better feel for leverage than for liturgy. A man doesn’t conquer the Manhattan real estate jungle, build a brand out of his own name, or survive bankruptcies, tabloid wars, casino collapses, and the mockery of half the respectable class by worshipping tidy sequencing. His route to wealth didn’t resemble a ballet. It looked like a demolition derby with gold trim.

That history matters. Men shaped by bureaucracies tend to treat legitimacy as a product of process. Men shaped by dealmaking tend to treat legitimacy as a product of outcomes. One group asks, “Was this properly staffed?” The other asks, “Did we get it done?” Washington fills up with the first type and recoils from the second.

Trump also improvises. Washington treats improvisation like a vice. But improvisation belongs to people operating in the realm of consequence rather than memo circulation. Trump rarely arrives with a doctrine polished for a Brussels seminar. He arrives with an instinct, a pressure point, a threat, a phone call, and a willingness to revise in public. That horrifies people who would rather run a failed plan with perfect footnotes than run a messy plan that changes the landscape.

RELATED: While America fights, Europe loses its spirit

Andy Barton/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Trump’s critics call this incoherence. Sometimes it is. He can be erratic. He can be excessive. He can mistake motion for strategy. But his critics often commit the opposite error. They confuse caution with wisdom, process with seriousness, and rhetorical tidiness with strength.

And the stakes outrun Trump. Iran has pursued the bomb for years. It lied, concealed, dispersed, negotiated, cheated, and waited. The fairy tale that this menace sat safely contained until Trump disturbed the peace has worn thin. Tehran didn’t become dangerous because Trump acted. Trump acted because Tehran already posed a danger.

That’s why Trump derangement syndrome now imposes a cost beyond mere foolishness. It has become a strategic liability. When a domestic class hates one man so much that it prefers his failure to the country’s safety, it stops functioning as a normal political opposition. It becomes a hindrance to national self-preservation.

If Iran emerges from this conflict still able to terrorize the Gulf, still able to menace the Strait of Hormuz, still dreaming its nuclear dreams, America won’t merely have fought badly. America will have invited the next crisis on a higher rung of danger. A short war that leaves the central threat intact doesn’t qualify as prudence. It amounts to cowardice on an installment plan.

That’s why he makes them crazy. He walks around as a rebuke to the managerial fantasy that calibrated people with soft hands and impeccable credentials can safely “manage” history. Trump reminds them — rudely, constantly, and in public — that moments arrive when nerve beats nuance and the man willing to absorb disorder defeats the man who can only describe it.

And now the insult cuts deeper. He doesn’t just break their rules. In a moment when America can’t afford illusion, he may be right about what winning requires.

​Iran war, Donald trump, Never trumpers, Establishment, Operation epic fury, Operation midnight hammer, Nuclear weapons, Opinion & analysis