In his newsletter this week, @sullydish condemns the Christianification of Trumpism & the GOP. About the revolting Trump Bible stunt, he quotes me. /more But it's actually true! Voters like me really do have to weigh Trump's repugnance against the things we find wrong w/Biden. I don't like or trust either man, but Biden is for maximal abortion laws, transgender ideology (incl maiming children), and open borders. /more

This report from Politico EU about the expansion of Viktor Orban's influence into Brussels is a good example of why Orban is needed. 🧵

Take a look at the lede: 1/ politico.eu/article/viktor…
The Left (which includes mainstream media) either does not or cannot cede legitimacy to opposition. Orban has to be seen as an enemy of "civil society" and a "suppressor of media." If you point out to these people that Orban does more or less what they do, they don't get it. 2/

Appalling homily by Pope Francis at #BenedictXVI funeral! Can’t believe what I just heard. Not one word about BXVI’s immense legacy. Indeed, he barely mentioned the man at all, except briefly at the end, to say “Bye!” What a disgraceful act. A sign of immense disrespect. Anaxios! Compare it to Benedict’s fulsome and loving remembrance of John Paul 2 at his funeral: vatican.va/gpII/documents…

@MWauck @benedictus @TomsDigest Good grief, I’ve been Orthodox for 16 years now — three more than I was Catholic. How many times do I have to address this? Well, let’s go. Your response is standard trad cope. It’s not that I misunderstood the nature of the Catholic Church. I just ceased to believe it. /more @MWauck @benedictus @TomsDigest If you are Catholic, obvs you believe I made a mistake. Fine! I can live with that. But don’t patronize me by saying I didn’t understand Catholicism. I was an engaged, faithful Catholic for 13 yrs. I simply ceased being able to believe Rome’s claims. As for the “grass is /more

People blaming @zugzwanged for getting Achord fired. Not true! Not at all. I was told that the board of the school first ID'd the "smoking gun" post as having been made from inside the school. That's allegedly how they figured that Achord was behind the account, despite denial. Achord had been let go before Alastair (or I) even knew about this post. I learned abt it via texting w/ppl w/in the Seq community, saying I hope that Achord's defense was true. It's not, they said, then pointed to the smoking gun. I was shocked.

I deleted my Achord thread bec it occurred to me that @zugzwanged had done all the hard work on this story, & I didn't want to be guilty of stealing his thunder. I posted in anger after talking to folks back home abt the emotional devastation of the Sequitur school community 1/ It infuriates me that all the hard work of a decade by dedicated faculty and parents is now in danger bec of Sequitur headmaster's apparent secret life as an online racist, antisemite, misogynist. And I hate how his defenders are dogpiling @zugzwanged. 2/

I'd hoped that somehow there was a good explanation for the racist, antisemitic, misogynist tweets that he allegedly put out under the account @TuliusAadland. Yesterday Achord posted an essay saying he had been impersonated by a troll, and isn't guilty. I hoped it was true. 2/ I didn't really know him, but he always seemed quiet, modest, and kind. You don't want to believe the worst about ppl. But I knew his alibi was false when I saw this tweet on the Tulius account:

https://twitter.com/TuliusAadland/status/1230478360209477638

Drama at MIA airport. Mom rushing to catch a LGA flight dragged her three year old and left her sobbing face down on the concourse. Horrifying! Big mistake. Child was surrounded by angry moms who called the police. Now Mean Mommy is talking to cops. It's terrifying to see a child treated like that. The Mom is freaking out now, of course, because police are questioning her. But this entire gate is full of people who saw what she did, including moms who helped the sobbing and scared child.

As my summer in Europe winds down, it occurs to me that in my non-UK travels here, I kept meeting ppl who identified as conservative, and who would start a conversation with some variation of, "I used to be pro-American, but...". 1/ When the person saying so lived in a former Communist country, there was a visceral sense of pain in their voices, like someone who lost their religion. It is jarring for an American to hear this. I'm used to encountering anti-American feeling in Europe, but 2/

Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic onstage with Dave Rubin at NatCon. Isaac said he came to Christ early in hisNBA career. Says he loves ⁦@jordanbpeterson⁩ and talking about ideas. Laughing at himself for being at NatCon. Sweet guy; he owns this room right now! I don’t follow basketball, but man, this guy is such an impressive person. So humble and kind. Profoundly Christian. Radiates peace.

Pages from the graphic memoir "Gender Queer," which is controversially on the shelves of many US school libraries. 1/

Guy has a point here, one I wrote about in Live Not By Lies, quoting Czeslaw Milosz: always pay attention to the discourse of the intellectual elites, because you might find yourself living unhappily under their theories. Communism came to Central Europe via the Red Army /more

https://twitter.com/Vermeullarmine/status/1451945959534080005

Derrick Bell's crazy theories came to rule in large part because they built on powerful cultural forces. Once elites accepted these theories, there was not enough resistance left in the broader population. You cdn't resist Communism w/o risking your life. That's not the /more

Some of my friends think the NYT piece about the postliberal Right is a hit piece. I don't see it that way at all. Of course it's not favorable to us; the NYT never would be. And I take minor issue with the framing, e.g.,criticizing Soros is not necessarily antisemitic. But /more I think the piece puts forth our ideas fairly, and correctly portrays us as enemies of the status quo. I tried my best to point out to the reporter that the Left has become both illiberal and hegemonic, and an illiberal Right is to be expected. The NYT and those who /more

"Everything woke turns to shit." -- Trump, just now. Truest thing the man has ever said. Now he's going on about our "great generals." If Trump were in the White House, we would never, ever get a real accounting of the Pentagon's 20-year failure. We might not get it with Biden, either, but certainly not with Trump.

There's some large guy onstage at the DC rally named "Shofar So Great" (shofarsogreat.com/about-us/) claiming to be an Orthodox Jew who says his rabbi in Israel gave him permission to break Shabbat to support Donald Trump and blow the shofar at the Jericho March. Now he's blowing the Trump Shofar, especially made for You Know Who. This dude is like a wizard.

Maximo Alvarez, the Cuban refugee from Miami, is a fantastic spokesman for Trump. He's absolutely terrific. I'm near tears. "I may be Cuban-born, but I'm 100 percent American! This is the greatest country in the world." OK, I'm crying. What a great man.

A thread about Hungarian politics. Make of it what you will. In Budapest last week, I got into a conversation with a service worker at a business that caters to a large tourist clientele. We talked about Viktor Orban. He began by making fun of Orban. It was clear that [more] he was putting on a mask for the Westerner (me). When I told him that I wasn't going to judge him for his political views, he changed his story. He told me that he was an Orban supporter. Said that he knows that Orban's rule means a fair amount of corruption [more]

So: I began today before daylight in Vienna, and now I'm ending the day sitting at gate for Baton Rouge flight, listening to elderly Cajuns discuss pros and cons of wearing Crocs. I give them five minutes before they start on dem Tigahs. This is my life, and I'm happy with it. Now one of the ladies is talking about how her husband took the dog to the vet because she (the dog) ate a plate of spicy meat and rice that the husband fed her. ("She eats whatevah he eats." The dog sleeps between them too. ("She'll growl at me in da bed.") Dat man loves his dog

I'm one of those conservatives who has been listening to NPR all his adult life, and who has been a member (donor) off and on through the years. NPR is part of my family's culture; my 12 y.o. daughter *literally* wants to be an NPR correspondent when she grows up. So [more] it really hit me hard last week when I got so angry at NPR over its bias that I turned the car radio off twice. I don't have strong feelings about the immigration issue, but my god, NPR, does it even occur to you how one-sided your reporting is? [more]

I have a sincere request for folks who reach out, or who are thinking of reaching out, to journalists with their own stories of clerical abuse, corruption, etc. Journalists reporting on this are eager to hear your stories if you have good information /more It can be helpful to have background info, to better understand what's happening in a given situation. But here's what's really frustrating, esp for journalists (like me) who want to see bad things end and good things happen /more