On Thursday, August 21, at 4:30 p.m., my wife, my youngest daughter, and I stood in the soft light of an overcast day at Villanova University’s welcome Mass. She had earned the right to call herself a freshman. The class of 2029 also carries a distinction: the first freshman class to attend the alma mater of a pope.

Pride did not fully prepare us for what came next.

Everything is an education. Courage, the first of the virtues, does not mean reckless bravado. I learned something about it.

At 4:34 p.m., phones around us buzzed with a NOVA Alert:

ACTIVE SHOOTER Incident Warning
ACTIVE SHOOTER on VU campus. Move to secure location.
Lock/Barricade doors. More info to follow.

My daughter showed my wife the text. As they puzzled over it, the crowd shifted. Chairs toppled with a sound like rain. I briefly imagined a cloudburst pushing people indoors.

The murmur swelled into a surge. People dove to the ground. I had not yet seen the alert. Gunfire? I heard none. A vehicle attack? Lightning? A tornado? A wild animal?

Ancient Greeks saw their gods and the gods of their enemies amid the terror of battlefields. In that instant, the mind supplied its own agents of terror in the convulsing crowd at Villanova.

“Dad, run!” my daughter shouted. She and my wife had already bolted. I jogged after them, but the walkways churned like rapids and they disappeared in the current. I moved into the open at Connelly Plaza to search. Moments later, my daughter called from inside the Connelly Center, urging me to stop standing outside and get to cover. I geolocated my wife’s phone; it registered inside Dougherty Hall.

A heavily armed officer and several others strode past, asking for the library. I pointed as best I could. Someone inside Dougherty waved me in with insistence.

Inside, I found my wife’s purse and phone. Some thoughtful person had picked it up and brought it in. She soon called from a stranger’s phone to say she had reached the Ithan parking garage a little further off. I took up a post with four or five other dads at the glass entrance to Dougherty and waited for the all-clear. It came an hour and a half later.

Everything is an education. Courage, the first of the virtues, does not mean reckless bravado. I learned something about it that afternoon.

Panic spreads faster than any bullet. Faces around me looked as if they had witnessed a threat firsthand. The truth is that most had only read the alert and then seen fear and panic in other people’s faces. That fear became the source of multiplying bad information.

RELATED: America can’t survive on lies and make-believe morality

invincible_bulldog via iStock/Getty Images

“Tune our hearts to brave music,” St. Augustine prayed. Villanova’s staff did exactly that. They acted with calm and helped people reach safety. Even so, the hoaxer exposed vulnerabilities. If you have not witnessed immediate danger, move safely and deliberately to a secure place. Don’t fuel the stampede.

Augustine may have also said, “Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” The hoaxing continued that weekend — one call to the University of South Carolina, another to Villanova. The intent is obvious: inflict physical and psychological harm by weaponizing the consensus response — run and shelter in place.

The threat, paradoxically, comes from hijacking the security system by crying wolf. The remedy must make that hijacking harder, verify and communicate information faster, and reduce harm when the system gets abused. That requires careful thinking about methods and messages — and about courage.

Courage steadies the hands that send the alerts, guides parents and students to act with discipline, and keeps us from trampling one another in a fog of rumor. I watched it in real time from Dougherty Hall. It will be needed again.

​Opinion & analysis, Courage, Virtue, Fear, St. augustine of hippo, Villanova, Pope leo xiv, University, Hoax, False alarm, Mass shooting, Panic, Safety, Mob mentality, Mass hysteria, Crowds, Misinformation, Malinformation 

Now, that’s funny!

Jimmy Kimmel, soon to inherit Stephen Colbert’s throne as king of clapter, is standing tall for free speech.

Crime in DC? What crime? Union Station remains a utopian vision of progress, just don’t mind the junkies waving dirty needles in your face.

Yes, the late-night clown who said nothing about the Twitter Files, cancel culture, Scary Poppins, sensitivity readers, and more is spittin’ mad about one First Amendment issue: Colbert’s dismissal from “The Late Show.”

Yes, despite no evidence to back it up, Kimmel says Trump got the far-left Colbert fired:

If Joe Biden had used his muscle to get Sean Hannity kicked off the air, you may be surprised to learn that I would not support that. I would, in fact, support Sean Hannity in that situation, because I thought one of the founding principles of this country was free speech. But people don’t seem to care about protecting it unless you agree with them.

Give Kimmel a little credit. It doesn’t appear he teared up while pushing this horse manure …

Force majeure

The Force is female!

So sayeth “Star Wars” overlord Kathleen Kennedy, both via T-shirt proclamations and via the product she peddles.

How did that work out again? Don’t ask.

Well, someone at Disney is asking. The Mouse House is scrambling to win back young male audience members, according to a new report.

Leadership at Walt Disney Studios has been pressing Hollywood creatives in recent months, multiple sources tell Variety, for movies that will bring young men back to the brand in a meaningful way. “Young men” is defined here by sources as ages 13-28, aka Gen Z.

Yes, the same company that took male-centric brands like “Star Wars” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe and woked them into oblivion wonders why young men aren’t keen on Disney fare.

Here’s a free tip. Make a “Star Wars” spin-off featuring twin sisters whose mothers are space witches. You could call it “The Acolyte,” and the story could brim with female empowerment. The boys will come running before you can say, “It’s a small world after all!”

RELATED: Colbert gets canceled — by CBS, not conservatives

Photo by Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images

Laugh riot

Look! Another installment of Comedians Against Comedy!

This time, it’s the mind behind “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Phil Rosenthal created the smash show with star Ray Romano that ran for nine seasons on CBS.

Rosenthal went on to create “Somebody Feed Phil,” an unconventional cooking show airing on Netflix. He spoke to Fox News about comedy and cancel culture, and he shared a curious take on the toxic trend.

“I think it’s good to be sensitive. It doesn’t mean you can’t be funny; it just means you don’t do jokes at other people’s expense, maybe, no matter who they are, unless you’re punching above your class, right? You want to punch up, not down.”

Rosenthal’s brand of humor is generally light and inoffensive. Nothing wrong with that. Still, putting up silly rules for others to follow, especially the absurd “punching down” nonsense, suggests he’s trying to pull the ladder up for his successors.

Or he’s afraid of being canceled for not being woke enough. Either way, it’s the opposite of funny …

Wrong track

It takes a special something to anchor an MSNBC (MSNOW?) show, and Lawrence O’Donnell has the goods.

O’Donnell, hoping to scare people about a less crime-ridden D.C. under President Donald Trump, turned to a movie that’s more than 85 years old to hammer home his point.

Crime in D.C.? What crime? Union Station remains a utopian vision of progress, just don’t mind the junkies waving dirty needles in your face. At any rate, said O’Donnell, how dare Trump’s crime-busting sully the memory of:

The iconic Amtrak railroad station through whose glass doors Jimmy Stewart first saw the Capitol Dome when he arrived in Washington. In Frank Capra’s classic film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” there were no soldiers in the shot when Jimmy Stewart’s character, the newly appointed Senator Jefferson Smith, arrived at Union Station. And there have never been troops at Union Station.

Denying reality to own President Donald Trump? Nobody does it better than O’Donnell …

Blake’s back

Embattled star Blake Lively has landed a new gig. And no, it’s not a legal thriller or MeToo drama.

The “It Ends with Us” starlet’s new film is an action rom-com called “The Survival List.” She’ll play a reality TV show producer who gets stranded on an island and learns the survivalist who anchored the show in question is a fraud.

We’ll have to see if Lively can bring the action and rom-com thrills, but we can expect everyone on the set will be wearing GoPro cameras as much as possible to avoid future litigation.

​Hollywood, Entertainment, Culture, Donald trump, Jimmy kimmel, Stephen colbert, Blake lively, Movies, Late-night tv, Toto recall 

Beheaded statues and threatened parishioners, shattered stained glass and spray-painted walls, ransacking and arson, urine in holy water and feces in infants’ baptismal water, a murdered priest and a dynamited altar. Now, the United States can add an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old murdered as they prayed at Mass during their first week of Catholic school, along with 17 others wounded, including 14 children.

These are just some of the attacks on American Catholic churches this year. There have been 42, according to a list compiled by CatholicVote, an activist organization co-founded by Brian Burch, the current U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.

These are not random crimes. They are deliberate assaults on the Church and its faithful.

Forty-two. That’s an incredible number, given that you’ve likely heard little if anything about it.

Anti-Catholic vandalism and violence have reached every corner of the country in recent years. Since 2020, more than 520 attacks have been recorded. The motives range from pro-trans and pro-abortion activism to hostility toward marriage and outright hatred of the Church.

Democratic leaders haven’t exactly been silent. Attacks against Catholics and our faith have poured in from ostensibly Catholic and non-Catholic Democrats alike. These include former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and California Rep. Ted Lieu (D) challenging the church’s pro-life stances and authority over moral matters. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), still a U.S. senator, joined several of her colleagues in attacking the Catholic faith of multiple judicial nominees, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The late California Sen. Dianne Feinstein infamously said “the dogma lives loudly within you” when challenging Barrett’s fitness for the bench.

The Los Angeles Dodgers hosted Our Lady of Perpetual Indulgence, a stridently anti-Catholic, demonic trans and drag group, at one of their games. The bones of St. Junípero Serra had to be moved from their Carmel, California, mission resting place after anti-Catholic rioters toppled several statues of him and threatened to hurl his remains into the Pacific Ocean. Sixty ostensibly Catholic Democrats signed a “Statement of Principles” challenging Church teachings on life in a direct response to San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s public rebuke of Catholic politicians supporting abortion.

California has seen the most incidents of the anti-Catholic violence, but no state is safe. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have reported attacks on Catholic churches and institutions. The latest victims are the teachers and schoolchildren of Minneapolis.

Police have identified the killer, who shot himself before police could apprehend him, as 23-year-old Robin M. Westman. He changed his name from Robert Paul Westman in 2020 while still a minor.

Catholic imagery has long been the preferred target in American culture. Even in a Protestant-majority country, authors and Hollywood directors reach for the Catholic Church’s ancient symbols and rituals when they want to depict Christianity. The sacraments stand apart from the secular world, and they confront evil more clearly and beautifully than any other tradition.

That’s why the devil hates the Church, its sacraments, and its symbols. That’s why the Church is the choice of anti-Christian musicians, the rich and famous, and traveling drag groups to mock and defame in their fashion, music videos, and performances. It’s why the Church is a target in an America where people shout their abortions, politicians flout their bishops, Christian values and believers are under attack, and evil isn’t afraid to show itself in daylight.

After the shooting, prominent Democrats were quick to even attack prayer — the very act the children were engaged in when the murderer opened fire. Only more of their policy prescriptions could help!

Minnesota offers no refuge. The state has some of the most permissive abortion laws in the country and bans counseling children away from gender transition — all signed by Democrat Gov. Tim Walz.

When COVID-19 hit, Walz kept the Mall of America and other retailers open at 50% capacity, but capped churches at 10 people. Only under threat of civil disobedience did he raise the limit to 25% occupancy.

He also signed a law blocking Catholic school students from earning college credits available to their peers in public schools. Worse still, he signed a bill allowing the state to remove children from homes if parents refuse “gender-affirming care.”

This hostility is not unique to Minnesota. Across the country, governors and presidents have targeted Catholic hospitals, adoption agencies, and crisis pregnancy centers, forcing many to close permanently.

A nation that openly attacks the Church cannot pretend those attacks won’t turn physical — and they already have. These are not random crimes. They are deliberate assaults on the Church and its faithful. Priests and parishioners must summon the courage to name the evil plainly and demand that politicians do the same.

Blaze News: Democrats lash out over prayers for Christians murdered in devastating Minnesota shooting

Blaze News: FBI investigating rampage as anti-Catholic hate crime

Bedford in the Federalist (2021): Hate crimes against Catholics are multiplying (but politicians and media don’t want to talk about it)

Bedford on Fox (2021): Media activists ‘want to destroy Christianity’ while egging on Church attacks

Daily Caller: ‘Patently anti-religious’ Tim Walz has history of restricting faith-based institutions

Catholic News Agency: Gov. Tim Walz’s abysmal record on Catholic issues

Blaze News (2024): Ashes and accountability in the aftermath of Canada’s unmarked Indian graves sham

Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter
Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford’s newsletter.

​Opinion & analysis, Politics 

A brutal attack in Baltimore that involved a screwdriver stabbing was caught on security video, and two illegal aliens were arrested for the incident, Maryland police said.

The video from the security system at Bmore Licks, a popular ice cream store, captured the barbaric assault of a 20-year-old man on a scooter in the intersection as stunned bystanders looked on.

Seconds later, one of the attackers tried to drive his motorcycle over the victim’s legs.

Court documents obtained by WBFF-TV said that the victim told police he was riding his scooter with friends when he was hit by two men also riding a scooter. His friends ran off, and the two men began punching and kicking the man.

Bystanders looked on and cars drove by, but no one intervened.

At one point, the victim was able to get away and run toward the ice cream shop before he was dragged out by his attackers, and one stabbed him with a flathead screwdriver. Seconds later, one of the attackers tried to drive his motorcycle over the victim’s legs.

Police said that an officer later noticed scooters that fit the description of those in the attack, and he followed their riders into a McDonald’s parking lot. The two were identified as 23-year-old Winston Rivero-Aliendo and his brother, 27-year-old Wilson Rivero-Aliendo.

One of the brothers admitted to police that they had attacked a black male, but he claimed that he was recovering a scooter that had been reported stolen from a delivery driver at a Popeye’s restaurant. He also admitted to hitting the man with his hands, feet, and a screwdriver.

An unnamed third person told police that the owner of the scooter had organized a group of Venezuelans to search for the stolen vehicle with the aid of a GPS tracking device.

RELATED: Mother hid from home invader in closet with her baby — then shot thug in the head, police say

The victim, however, claimed to have purchased the scooter on Facebook Marketplace and later learned that it had been stolen.

The Rivero-Aliendos were charged with attempted first-degree murder and second-degree murder as well as numerous charges of assault.

They were also identified as illegal aliens who might have ties to the vicious MS-13 criminal gang.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Illegal alien brothers attack, Baltimore scooter attack, Winston rivero-aliendo murder, Wilson rivero-aliendo murder, Crime 

“KPop Demon Hunters” is the latest Netflix hit to hypnotize a generation of children — and it’s one that BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” will not be letting her own children watch.

The animated movie is about a KPop girl group, HUNTR/X, who double as magical fighters that battle demons with their music.

“I don’t know if I would say it’s part of, like, the very dark trend of trying to get kids into the demonic. You could maybe argue that. I’m not totally sure that I would say that when it comes to this particular movie,” Stuckey says.

While Stuckey notes that there are “no explicit LGBTQ themes,” she does point out that there are very androgynous-looking characters and that a young child would not be able to understand the characters and story.

“A teenager might be able to decipher, okay, fiction, nonfiction, obviously not biblical. But honestly, before the age of, like, 13, 14, I do not think so. I think that it is very spiritually, theologically confusing,” Stuckey says.

She also believes it would be confusing to a young Christian as the film “draws heavily on shamanism,” which is a folk religion.

“It is based on this idea that shamans can connect with the spiritual world through ceremonies. They can foresee people’s futures using the Chinese calendar. They can assist with tasks like naming children, arranging marriages, or choosing lucky dates for events like weddings, moving homes, starting businesses,” Stuckey explains.

“Korea has a long cultural history of female shamans who use music and rituals to drive away evil spirits, which the movie mirrors in HUNTR/X’s demon-hunting song,” she continues. “So there is explicitly a religious motivation and pagan ideology that undergirds this.”

“It’s not just, ‘Oh, Christians are looking for things, and they’re taking things too seriously.’ No, the film is actually based on this pagan idea of shamanism that there are these mediums that can communicate with the other side and that can fight off evil spirits and really encourage this kind of paranoid superstition that so many people of all different kinds of religions fall into,” she adds.

Stuckey also takes issue with the way the demons are portrayed.

“They’re scary-looking, but they’re also bumbling idiots. … And so, on the one hand, you get the impression that these are very scary individuals carrying out the task of trying to steal your soul, but also that they are harmless, that they are powerless, and that there is some kind of human figure with the power to stop these demons if we worship them,” she says.

“But the people that are demanding our worship, these HUNTR/X people, are obviously human beings with supernatural powers, not the only person who does have the power to defeat demonic activity and Satan himself—Jesus Christ,” she continues.

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, Allie stuckey, Anime, Blazetv, Christian podcast, Christianity, Conservative, Crtv, God, Jesus, Korean cinema, Kpop, Kpop culture, Kpop demon hunters, Kpop demon hunters reaction, Lgbtq, Netflix, News, Politics, Relatable podcast, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable with allie stuckey, Sony pictures, Taylor swift, Taylor swift engaged, Taylor swift travis kelce, Taylor swift travis kelce engaged, Taylor swift travis kelce engaged reaction, Theology, Travis kelce, Video, Youtube.com 

I usually enjoy David Harsanyi’s critiques of the left. But in a recent column, he drew a distinction I can’t accept. Quoting Rahm Emanuel’s plea for Democrats to rally behind “Build, baby, build!” Harsanyi praised politicians he believes embody a centrist alternative to the party’s radicals: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein.

Harsanyi presented these figures as the future of a Democratic Party that might rediscover moderation. He contrasted them with open socialists like New York City’s Zohran Mamdani, whom he regards as the party’s worst tendencies made flesh. In his telling, Beshear, Spanberger, Shapiro, and Stein represent a kind of Democratic “loyal opposition” that conservatives should welcome.

Abigail Spanberger shows how the Democratic ‘moderate’ label works: not as a rejection of cultural radicalism but as a smoother delivery system for it.

That picture collapses under scrutiny. On social questions, the supposed moderates fall squarely in line with the party’s most zealous activists. Beshear, though personable and pragmatic on some issues, is an LGBTQ fanatic who promotes woke causes across Kentucky. Spanberger has been a reliable ally of the gender-identity movement and has now gone so far as to support biological men competing in women’s sports. Stein in North Carolina vetoed four separate bills meant to curb DEI excesses and limit radical gender programs in his state.

These aren’t minor disagreements tucked around the edges. They reveal a deeper truth: The “moderates” whom Harsanyi and Fox News commentators now flatter are not moderates at all. They dress the same ideology in calmer rhetoric. Spanberger, the supposed pragmatist, sounds indistinguishable from Tim Walz or Mamdani when she explains her social positions.

So why do some on the right elevate them? Because these Democrats don’t call themselves socialists, don’t chant slogans for Hamas, and don’t traffic in the same racial agitation as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, or Omar Fateh. But the distinction is cosmetic. On gender, DEI, and race politics, the so-called moderates embrace the same policies.

This misreading exposes a larger problem on the right. For years, the Republican establishment avoided direct confrontation on cultural issues, preferring to rally donors around national defense, Israel, or deregulation. On marriage and gender, Republicans surrendered the ground years ago. When the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, Conservatism Inc. shrugged. Now, some seem relieved to pretend “moderates” in the Democratic Party represent a saner alternative. They don’t.

And the Democrats know it. Clinton-era strategists at the Third Way think tank now tell their party to tone down the woke jargon and talk more about housing or infrastructure. But Third Way doesn’t advise abandoning cultural radicalism — only camouflaging it. The goal is simple: Keep core constituencies like college-educated white women and black urban voters while soothing independents with bread-and-butter messaging. Beshear, Stein, Spanberger, and the others know their futures depend on that balancing act.

This is where Republicans must stop indulging illusions. They will be forced to fight on this terrain whether they like it or not.

RELATED: Radical left poised to redefine America’s cities

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

In Virginia, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — a black conservative who supports Trump’s immigration policy and holds traditional views on marriage and gender — trails Spanberger despite Spanberger’s increasingly open embrace of the left’s cultural program. In Northern Virginia’s suburbs, her positions do not hurt her. They energize her base. The clearer she becomes, the more firmly those voters rally to her side.

That is the lesson Republicans cannot ignore. Spanberger shows how the Democratic “moderate” label works: not as a rejection of cultural radicalism but as a smoother delivery system for it. Sears, to her credit, understands the stakes. She knows she cannot avoid the social questions. If she does, she loses. Her only path forward is to expose Spanberger’s record and force voters to confront it.

What’s happening in Virginia is the same fight Trump is waging nationally — against a cultural left entrenched in the administrative state, NPR, and the universities. These battles connect. They will not fade, and the right cannot win them by pretending “moderates” exist in the Democratic Party.

If Republicans cling to that illusion, they won’t just lose a governorship here or a Senate seat there. They will lose the defining fight over culture, identity, and the moral core of the nation. The Democrats’ so-called moderates are not the antidote to radicalism. They are the mask that allows it to advance.

​Opinion & analysis, Elections, Moderate democrats, Myth, Democratic party, Conservatives, Conservatism inc, Obergefell v. hodges, Republican party, Virginia gubernatorial race, Virginia, Governor, Abigail spanberger, Winsome sears, Woke, Third way, Marriage, Family, Donald trump, Josh shapiro, Josh stein, Lgbtq, Andy beshear, David harsanyi, Rahm emanuel, Transgender athletes