American Spectator

Debunking the American Left’s Favorite Lie | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Political Hay

Debunking the American Left’s Favorite Lie

The historical contradiction at the heart of America’s favorite political smear.

by J.T. Young

June 30, 2026, 11:13 PM

The American Left’s most favorite lie is that Nazis and Fascists were conservatives. They were not; instead, they were cut from the same socialist cloth that America’s Left idolizes and increasingly personifies. The reason for the Left’s false equation of Nazis and Fascists with conservatism is that America’s Left needs it to advance their ends — and, as in the case of Democrats’ Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo, they want America to ignore the obvious.

6/30/26

Real Clear Politics

Legacy Versus Reality: America’s Jews and the Democrat Party | RealClearPolitics

Legacy Versus Reality: America’s Jews and the Democrat Party

COMMENTARY

By J.T. Young

June 30, 2026

How long will it take for America’s Jewish population to begin politically realigning? Israel is the sticking point: It has stuck America’s Jewish population between Democrats’ increasing opposition to Israel and American Jews’ historical support for Democrats. This divergence of reality from legacy has real implications for American politics.

AI is the outer limit of human intelligence. What the computer did for our powers of intellect, AI is doing for computers. And more. We have created it, but what it will do with this power, we do not truly know.

Like a satellite, we are launching it on a voyage that will send it beyond the limits of what we know. AI is truly an awesome force; as such, it is an awesome testament to the power of human understanding that created it.

The span of Homo sapiens has been short. Science tells us just over 300,000 years. “Thinking man,” for that is what the Latin name means, has been and is a creature without equal. Our ability to reason and create has separated us from all other species. Sadly, it is also the most effective means of separating us from our creator.

The apple in Eden. The tower of Babel. Countless discoveries and inventions since. Each has closed the gap between our species’ comparatively humble physical attributes and those of the other species. Our created tools have allowed us to surpass other species, even in attributes—speed, flight, strength, sight—that they originally surpassed us in.

In many cases, they have allowed us to control the very forces of nature.

These have made us powerful. They have also made us prideful. What need we of God when we have made ourselves like gods? The result has been falling levels of belief and faith. And falling most where we are most well off; where the return of humanity’s intelligence has been most fruitful.

Now, we are poised to take the next intellectual leap. Likely a quantum one. Into the unknown.

We are already treating our AI creation like ourselves. People talk to AI as though to people. They imbue it with images that AI creates. AI has become for many more real than reality itself. Teens are said to reveal their true selves to it.

Yet in the end, and although we may choose to ignore it, we know AI is not “real.” Yes, it is real technology. Yes, it is really powerful. Yes, we can veil it with the trappings of reality—making it look, sound, and seemingly reason, like us. However, we “feel” in the end it is not “real.”

But if it is arrayed with our characteristics, how do we know it is not “real?” For many, it is. Increasing numbers of people cannot tell the difference between AI images and the real thing. An AI-generated fight scene between images of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt sent Hollywood into paroxysms of angst over its level of quality. To many viewers, it’s already indistinguishable. And with AI still in its infancy, it will only get better at replicating human attributes of creation and presentation.

There are also consumers of AI who do not care that its creations are not human-made. Recently, The74 published an article with a headline that read “Survey: Young People Turn to AI to Be ‘Their Real, Unfiltered Selves.” The article quotes Alison Lee, one of the authors of a March 2026 study based on data from a nationwide survey of over 2,000 Americans aged 13 to 24. The survey found that roughly one in seven “young people are in relationships with ‘personified AI’ characters.” The survey also found “18% use AI for personal and relational support, such as venting about a tough day, seeking relationship advice and processing emotions.”

Of course, AI is likely to have greater penetration into the younger segments of society, who are the most technologically attuned. However, AI’s perceived ability to address the needs many of the young feel are hardly limited to that age group alone.

So, we come back to the question: What makes AI unreal?

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For those with faith, the answer is simple: AI can produce seemingly unlimited intelligence but not the ineffable quality of a soul. For those without faith, the difference between humans and AI, between the real and the unreal, is far harder to answer. They must search for a quality in the rapidly decreasing number of things that separate humanity from AI. Eventually, they will be driven to find a name for that ineffable quality—between real and unreal—standing between it and us.

Throughout humanity’s existence, the greatest strength that God has given us—the gift that the Old Testament tells us Solomon requested (1 Kings 3:1-15) from God—wisdom has been a dual-edged sword for us. If properly used, it drives us to seek God and find him in the multitude of wonders and mysteries of his creation. As the Book of Proverbs (1:7) states in its opening: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Yet, it can also serve us so well that we take undue pride in it. And in ourselves. If misused, it can drive us from God: the beginning of knowledge becoming a cessation of a fear of the Lord.

It is no surprise that religion is least important among the most affluent societies. To their minds, they have provided for themselves; what need have they of outside intervention—an intervention, which if acknowledged, will only diminish their appraisal of their perceived accomplishments.

This brings us back to AI, the apex of our intelligence and a ramp that could take us beyond our own intelligence. Yet for all our value of intelligence and the wonders that humanity has wrought with it, there remains that ineffable thing that it cannot do. Neither it, nor we, can create a soul. And if AI, with its seemingly infinite ability, cannot, then neither can humanity. Only God can.

While we can create in our own image, only God can create us in his. As the Book of Wisdom (15:9-11) chides the maker of idols who “counts it his glory that he moulds counterfeit gods…because he failed to know the one who formed him and inspired him with an active soul and breathed into him a living spirit.”

There is more than irony that our greatest example (AI) of our greatest strength (our intellect) also reveals to us our ultimate limit: Divinity’s imprint, the pinnacle we cannot attain.

AI’s unexpected triumph will be if it brings us back from our own hubris in our wisdom and makes us search again for an answer to the question of what is greater than it. Greater still if it also reminds us that while our intellect is our greatest strength, it is not our greatest attribute. This greatest attribute remains our soul. For although other species reason, no other has a soul. This is something we alone have and something—perhaps soon to be the only thing—we cannot create.

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America's Socialist Left, published by RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

Townhall

Democrats Ask: Obama Who?

Democrats Ask: Obama Who?

J.T. Young | Jun 27, 2026

Last week, Democrats came to Chicago to erect a cenotaph to their past. In the words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, they did not come to praise Obama as much as to bury him. They did so because they had already buried the party that nominated him twice.

In Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection victory, he received the votes of 17 percent of conservatives. Just twelve years later, in 2024, Kamala Harris received nine percent of conservative voters. And of that nine percent, a good many were undoubtedly not voting for Harris but were “never Trumpers” voting against Donald Trump.

The point is: Obama once had a significant appeal to conservatives. That no longer holds for Democrats.

The reason is that Democrats are not what they once were—or at least the moderates they were able to successfully pose as being. According to Gallup polling, only 42 percent of Democrats have a positive view of capitalism; 66 percent view socialism positively.

The Democratic Socialists of America increasingly lead the Democrat Party. Via the Democrat Party, democratic socialists have been elected mayors of New York City (Zohran Mamdani) and Seattle (Katie Wilson). Washington, D.C., is poised to do so (Janeese Lewis George).

Bernie Sanders (I-VT) long claimed the “democratic socialist” label as he declared himself an “independent” while caucusing and voting with Democrats and running for the Democratic presidential nomination twice (nearly winning in 2016). He has been joined by growing numbers taking the socialist label since. The Squad had U.S. Democrat Reps. AOC (NY-14) and Rashida Tlaib (MI-12). Others, such as U.S. Democrat Reps Greg Casar (TX-35) and Summer Lee (PA-12), have since arrived. More, such as Nazi-tattooed (“Nazi” was the shortened form of Germany’s National Socialists) Graham Platner of Maine, is seeking to do so this November.

Virtually no one in the Democrat Party is willing to raise an alarm against the DSA’s penetration of their party. They won’t because “socialism” is now their party’s energy; “democratic” is merely its legacy.

So far from where they were when Obama led their party, Democrats had to erect a mega building to see his legacy across the vast ideological distance existing between now and then.

It was widely reported that Obama had to evolve on gay issues. Today’s Democrat leadership opposes blocking biological boys from competing against girls, despite the American people—and a majority within their party—overwhelmingly supporting it.

When Obama first ran in 2008, the central part of his agenda was expanding health insurance and promising that you could keep your plan. The mantra of today’s far-left Democrat vanguard is “Medicare for All.”

As President, Obama ordered the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in a third-party country (Pakistan). Today’s Democrats opposed the capture of Nicolas Maduro (alive) in his home country and bringing him to the US to stand trial. They also oppose the conflict with Iran, a country that supported bin Laden.

Obama supported deporting illegal aliens. Just four years after Obama left office, his former VP Joe Biden would open the border—and keep it open throughout his term. Of course, Biden owed little to Obama. This is because Obama had passed over his Vice President in favor of Hillary Clinton for the 2016 nomination.

While in office, Obama supported extending the Bush tax cuts. Today’s Democrats want a wealth tax. They pursue it in every jurisdiction where they have significant numbers—in Congress, in California, and in a growing number of states.

Obama saw Israel as a staunch U.S. ally, calling America “your strongest ally and your greatest friend.” Today’s Democrats see Israel as perhaps the world’s most oppressive state. Within their party, only one in four supports Israel now.

“Moderate” was the word used to describe Obama. In fact, Joe Biden once (in)famously gushed over him for Obama’s ability to project that image to America. Moderate was then a selling point. Then, too, it was believable to many—even 17 percent of conservatives in 2012.

For today’s Democrats, “moderate” is only a transparent codeword for “electable.” Abigail Spanberger successfully employed it in Virginia in 2025. Democrats rewarded her with the rebuttal to President Trump’s SOTU this year. Just months later, Spanberger and her fellow Democrats would attempt to implement America’s most partisan gerrymander in Virginia.

While “moderate” can still move the electorate for Democrats, it is “socialist” that increasingly moves Democrats themselves. The fact is that Obama (much less any of his Democratic presidential predecessors) could never run and win a primary in the party that now pretends to lionize him. What today’s Democrats want is to keep Obama’s image but entomb all that he supported—as well as any pretext of being moderates.

J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

The deal is really just a Memorandum of Understanding: an understanding as to how negotiations will proceed. Even that is deceptively detailed. Fourteen points laying out a seemingly smooth path for immediate actions and sixty days for more detailed negotiations now underway.

There is a lot to take in; I have read and reread it, and it’s still hard to know what to make of it. Some elements allow all sides to claim victory for themselves and defeat for others; perhaps this is the fate of any negotiated deal rather than an unconditional surrender.

That a negotiated deal of some type was going to occur became evident early, when Iran’s theocracy did not collapse despite the death of its Supreme Leader and much of its top leadership. Such a decapitation worked in Venezuela with Maduro’s capture; it did not work with Iran’s radical extremists.

As to the deal itself, there are (or should be seen to be) more questions than there are answers. Those questions remain even after the deal’s signing. Will it hold? What will happen if each country does not adhere to it to the other’s satisfaction?

Iran is a habitual violator of everything except adherence to its radical ideology. It cheated on the 2015 nuclear deal; it is hard to have more faith in this one or in Iran’s theocracy. What of the nonparties to the deal—Israel and Hezbollah—is a reason the MOU was not signed as originally scheduled?

So instead of trying to see into the announced deal or see around the many corners it will have to turn, the best course is to look back at what brought us to the deal.

What Has Been Learned?

First: thousands died; the Iranian theocracy’s leadership was decimated from the top down; Iran’s conventional military capability was essentially destroyed; its nuclear aspirations have been set back indefinitely; its already weak economy was reduced even further. By all normal standards, the “conflict” was over as soon as it started. None of these matters to Iran’s theocracy.

Second: The Iranian theocracy’s ability to project power in a conventional sense is at its lowest level since it seized the country in 1979. Always a menace in the Middle East, it is now truly a pariah. It has turned on virtually every regional neighbor it can reach and whose harm could in any way be mistaken for leverage in the current conflict. Essentially, every action it has taken in the region has been counterproductive and will have long-term consequences for Iran—none of these matters to Iran’s theocracy.

Third: The Iranian theocracy is more isolated than ever. Even before the conflict, Iran’s theocracy had few “friends.” Instead, it associated primarily with the world’s other miscreants. When conflict came, all, with the exception of Hezbollah (which is fighting for its own continued existence in Lebanon), abandoned it. Truly, “there is no honor among thieves;” when “push came to shove,” all shoved off. None of these matters to Iran’s theocracy.

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Iran’s theocracy has not only been stripped of any religious veneer of legitimacy internally; its true self has been laid bare externally as never before. The theocracy has unmasked itself and reduced the nation of Iran to a statewide terrorist organization. It cannot defend itself; it cannot seize others’ territory; it can only lob destruction far and wide—internally to its opponents and externally on its perceived enemies.

Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions: To hear President Trump tell it, Iran has renounced these. But we have heard that before. Unless forcibly stopped, Iran cheats, and nothing in this conflict has dissuaded Iran’s theocracy from believing it needs nuclear weapons to prevent its devastation and humiliation from occurring again.

What the current experience has underscored to Iran is the cost of procuring nuclear weapons. Absent its pursuit of these, the current conflict would not have occurred. Even if the U.S. does not inflict this cost, Israel has shown it can and will do so.

Time will tell what Iran takes from these points. How will its surviving rulers evaluate these? How will those who will replace them? There is a clear deal to be “had” allowing for the theocracy’s survival. Will Iran’s terrorist theocracy take it?

The Middle East has learned that the U.S. can and will project awesome power. However, America is risk-averse and cost-sensitive. The region has also learned that Iran is to be avoided; a workaround for the Strait of Hormuz is critical.

China has learned that its vulnerability to an oil shock is real. China also needs a workaround to Hormuz and its dependency on far-flung energy.

America has learned the resiliency of evil. Americans are still innocents in true evil’s presence. Though we are sadly becoming ever more familiar with it, we still do not truly know it. Or understand it.

Absent direct attack, Americans are still isolationists by inclination. Absent attacks such as those on Pearl Harbor or 9/11, we undertake military involvement reluctantly.

America has also learned how hopelessly divided we are. No longer does “politics stop at the water’s edge.” Democrats will hamstring President Trump in a heartbeat and do so over anything. At present, even the evil that is Iran cannot unite us.

Of all the participants, Israel has learned the least; this is because it knew the most going in. It has been on a figurative “frontline” with Iran for almost half a century. If there is one thing it has learned, it is that it has few friends in the Democrat Party and even fewer among America’s Left.

So, we are left with a nonanswer in the Middle East. Perhaps, too, a nonagreement. Considering the region and its seemingly intractable conflicts, it is not surprising that this should be another. But it remains disheartening. All we know is what has happened, but even here, we do not know how the parties involved will respond to these events.

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America's Socialist Left, published by RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

USA Today

Does Iran’s peace bring it a greater threat than war? | Opinion

Iran’s unrest didn’t start with war. Will it end with peace? | Opinion

Peace may prove more dangerous for Iran’s theocracy than war. The gap between what its rulers can deliver and what Iranians want is harder to manage without a war to blame.

J.T. Young

Opinion contributor

June 20, 2026, 4:01 a.m. ET

Peace may prove more dangerous for Iran’s theocracy than war. The gap between what its rulers can deliver and what Iranians want is harder to manage without a war to blame.

6/17/26

The Hill

Midterm history gives Republicans a fighting chance in November

Midterm history gives Republicans a fighting chance in November

Comments:2

by J.T. Young, opinion contributor - 06/17/26 1:00 PM ET

Link copied

FILE – A voter places a ballot in an election voting drop box in Mesa, Ariz., Oct. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

It is nearly axiomatic that every sitting president’s party loses seats in midterm elections. It is how America’s political tides run. Presidential elections swell voter turnout, and the winning candidate’s party benefits. Midterms see the voter turnout tide recede, and the ebb costs the president’s party votes and seats in Congress.

6/17/26

American Spectator

AI: Technology the Left Love to Hate | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Political Hay

AI: Technology the Left Love to Hate

As the consequences of decades of bad policy come due, the Left has found a new villain.

by J.T. Young

June 16, 2026, 11:34 PM

AI is the bete noire of America’s Left. The Left loves to hate it because it absolves them of their failures and enables their proclivities.

Blaze Media

The left’s icons keep face-planting in public | Blaze Media

Opinion

The left’s icons keep face-planting in public

J.T. Young

June 11, 2026

Scott Pelley, Stephen Colbert, and woke Hollywood are not martyrs. They are symptoms of cultural institutions that forgot how markets work.

As their cultural icons fall, leftists cannot accept reality or responsibility. The reality is simple: The market for their increasingly radical beliefs is shrinking. The responsibility is theirs. They moved far away from the American public and then blamed the public for refusing to follow.

So the left does what it always does. It refuses to blame its fallen icons. It refuses to change its beliefs. Instead, it turns its icons into martyrs.

The left makes martyrs of the people and institutions falling from their pedestals. That is easier than admitting the left was wrong.

6/9/26

Real Clear Politics

Vance and GOP’s Golden Political Issue: Federal Fraud | RealClearPolitics
Vance and GOP’s Golden Political Issue: Federal Fraud

COMMENTARY

By J.T. Young

June 09, 2026

“Border Czar” was among Vice President Kamala Harris’ greatest liabilities; “Fraud Czar” could be VP JD Vance’s biggest asset.

If Vance and Republicans are smart, they will ensure that it is.

For some time, Iran was looking for additional leverage that would allow it to be an untouchable pariah state and pursue its terrorist aims undisturbed. North Korea was its model: insulated from all, including its patrons (China and Russia), and free to be as reprehensible as it desires.

But Iran always had leverage North Korea didn’t: oil and access to a major channel through which oil flowed. Iran could hold the world hostage if it chose. So, the world and the Middle East region absorbed the bloody cost of Iran’s terrorism in return for its oil, and even more, for Iran allowing oil to flow unimpeded.

Then Iran’s clients went too far—Bashar al-Assad in Syria and even more Hamas in Gaza on October 7, 2023. Iran’s clients raised the cost of their terrorism beyond acceptable/tolerable levels. Al-Assad was toppled. Israel struck back with a ferocity that shattered the status quo: Hamas has been destroyed as an effective fighting force; the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has almost complete freedom of movement in Gaza; Lebanon invaded, and Hezbollah pushed back to the greatest extent in a generation.

Iran was also struck directly, repeatedly, and severely by not only Israel but the U.S., and it was utterly isolated in the Middle East. Iran found that it had quickly lost its conflict militarily.

Cornered and existentially threatened, the terrorists struck back with the only ways they know: more terror, not just through client proxies but directly as a state. Iran was no longer just a state sponsor of terrorism but a state perpetrator of it. And Iran became more isolated still. So, it reached for the lever it has always had: the Strait of Hormuz. It did so to broaden its conflict with the U.S. and Israel beyond the military one it had already lost—to make its military defeat only a short-term one and allow it to regroup to wage it anew later.

However, by pulling the economic lever that has always been within its reach, it has now reached its level of deepest isolation.

Iran’s “Hormuz play” is to inflict global pain to a level the world will refuse to endure and thereby convince its adversaries to stand down. Iran calculated that it could force its people to endure more suffering (even to the greatest extremities) than a lesser amount that the world would willingly tolerate.

The U.S. and Israel clearly misjudged the level to which Iran’s regime would (or could?) take this; the level that the Iranian people would tolerate without revolting; and the time needed to take both, or either, to the breaking point.

So, the siege continues, and like all sieges, the suffering is greatest among the weakest as the besieged warriors divert increasingly constricted resources to themselves. The same thing is happening in Cuba. The same thing happened before in Venezuela. The same thing has been happening for decades in North Korea. Putin’s Russia, too, could be added to this list.

All involved have learned something. The world has learned that Iran has no limits. It is even more dangerous and despicable than it was thought and tolerated to be. That Iran means its rhetoric. “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” are not just orchestrated slogans chanted on cue. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) means “Death,” and it means it far more broadly and brutally than the region or the world imagined. And the IRGC is more than willing to start the “Death” among its own people.

Yet Iran should be learning something too. Assuredly, there are limits at which its terror will not be tolerated. But, too, a deeper, unfolding lesson: Markets have a power of their own.

The problem—as Iran is learning and will learn increasingly in the future—with an ace is that you can only play it once.

The world now knows Iran and the Strait of Hormuz are unreliable. The Strait is insecure and cannot be completely secured. And the Houthis can do the same thing to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

A workaround must be devised. And because the commodity in question is so valuable—and the current conflict has only underscored its value—the world will devise one.

Iran is not only not going to gain nuclear weapons, but its conduct in this conflict has only proven why it cannot be allowed to do so; it is losing the leverage it had when it entered this conflict. The Strait of Hormuz will never be allowed to be the chokepoint it once was.

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Pipelines for oil already exist. More will be built and are already being proposed. Overland routes exist for other materials. More will be devised. New areas will be turned to for these materials: Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and the U.S. Yes, prices will begin at higher levels; however, as more resources are poured into developing these alternatives, prices will fall. And all these alternatives will offer greater security and reliability: things that others will be willing to pay for.

Just as Iran overplayed its terrorist hand, it has overplayed the Hormuz ace it held in its hand. Because the greatest value of an ace in the hole lies not in playing it but in holding it—not in the trump, but in the threat.

The upshot of the current conflict is: Not only will Iran not obtain the nuclear weapon it wanted and have its military power seriously degraded, but it will also find that the leverage it once had—its ability to block the Strait of Hormuz—is also greatly diminished.

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America's Socialist Left, published by RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

American Spectator (also in Real Clear Politics)

Meet the Post-Biden Democrats: Biden’s Democrats | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Political Hay

Meet the Post-Biden Democrats: Biden’s Democrats

The failed president still defines the Democrats’ 2028 field.

by J.T. Young

June 2, 2026, 11:04 PM

Despite being desperate to put Biden behind them, Democrats can’t do it. Both Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg are routinely topping Democratic primary polling, and both are defined by Biden.

6/3/26

Townhall

When Businesses Leave, They Likely Won’t Be Back

When Businesses Leave, They Likely Won’t Be Back

J.T. Young | Jun 03, 2026

Democrats are playing a “game of chicken” with their tax base that they’ll ultimately lose. And won’t recover from. The reason is that the economics that have kept businesses in uncompetitive jurisdictions will be an even bigger barrier to their return.

What’s happening in the far corner of St. Louis’s Busch Stadium is the “Tarps Off” phenomenon, where a bunch of men and boys are taking off their shirts, waving them overhead, screaming their lungs out, and having a grand time at America’s pastime.

If you haven’t heard about it, then you’re not a baseball fan. However, you should hear about it, because once you have, you are likely to become a baseball fan—or even more of one than you already are.

St. Louis’s “Tarps Off” trend started with the visit of Stephen F. Austin University’s club baseball team (not the actual varsity team, mind you, but college boys who love playing the game) to a Friday night game on May 14, as a break from their nearby club baseball tournament. One of the boys took off his shirt, and as any college student knows, others followed.

A shirtless trend was created; shirts were waved; a phenomenon was born. That the actual MLB game being played before them ended with a walk-off win on a hit by St. Louis’s most underdog player only added to the mystique.

The Cardinals’ manager got into the spirit and lauded the boys. He bought tickets for the section, pledged to buy more, and the club boys were invited into the Cardinals’ locker room and loaded with souvenirs: college club players meeting MLB players—a union of baseball love across the vast talent gap separating them.

“Tarps Off” has not stopped. It has continued in Busch and continues to gain national attention and national adherents.

Make no mistake: the Cardinals need this. This is a team with a rich history but recent hard luck. It has suffered unaccustomed mediocrity and flagging attendance (for baseball-crazed St. Louis) of late. It resides in a small market. Last season’s television contract collapsed.

The Cardinals drastically trimmed payroll. They were not expected to compete. However, they nonetheless are. And now they have caught lightning in a bottle in their outfield. The media attention their right field stands are garnering is the stuff you can’t buy—even if the Cardinals had the money to buy it.

St. Louis needs this. However, baseball needs it even more. Forget all the slick promotions. The calculatedly scheduled special days. The new technology.

There is something gloriously real in “Tarps Off.” It is unscripted: Just a bunch of fellas having fun, truly the Boys of Summer. It is an absolute throwback to bleacher seats, where people could catch a tan (more likely a sunburn and a hangover) and perhaps a baseball.

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In an age of overpriced teams, prima donna players, and ahead of a year that may well see no MLB baseball at all, we have underdogs waving their outerwear and whooping it up over their Field of Dreams: No, check that, Field of Screams.

Who knows how long it will last? Who cares? To care would be to put your shirt on, sit sedately, clap politely, and look at your phone. This is raucous, spontaneous fun. The thing that has lured fans—real fans, these shirtless wonders—to ballparks across America for generations.

We can only hope that this trend is not “partisan-ized” or analyzed in a way that the joy is wrung from it. These minors have brought fun to the Majors and the past into the present. It’s beautiful. And as the song goes, “I don’t care if I ever get back.”

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America's Socialist Left, published by RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

Real Clear Markets

A Case For Why the U.S. Has Outperformed Great Britain | RealClearMarkets

A Case For Why the U.S. Has Outperformed Great Britain

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By J.T. Young

May 29, 2026

Britain is already a case study on what happens when governments interfere with markets. Now, their Labor government is thinking about giving the world a refresher course.

5/28/26

Blaze Media

The left spots fake reality only when Hollywood gets hurt | Blaze Media

opinion & analysis

The left spots fake reality only when Hollywood gets hurt

J.T. Young

May 28, 2026

Actors and writers understand that artificial substitutes can destroy livelihoods. Women and girls deserve the same realism when male athletes enter female sports.

The left has developed a strange blind spot when it comes to artificial substitution. In entertainment, its leading voices warn that AI threatens to replace real actors, writers, voices, and images. In women’s sports, many of those same voices insist that biological reality can be redefined without consequence.

5/27/26

American Spectator (Also in Real Clear Religion)

The Left Don’t Love Leo (They Simply Hate Trump) | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Political Hay

The Left Don’t Love Leo (They Simply Hate Trump)

Pope Leo XIV’s honeymoon with the Left has an expiration date.

by J.T. Young

May 26, 2026, 10:13 PM

The Left will soon tire of Pope Leo XIV. This is so certain that we can even affix the day by which it will happen: Jan. 20, 2029. That’s the day Donald Trump will no longer be president.

Getty Images: Link English comedian and actor Peter Sellers (1925 - 1980) as Inspector Clouseau in 'The Pink Panther Returns'. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Image

According to the FEC’s official 2024 presidential election results, the 77,302,580 people who voted for Donald Trump could have told (in fact, they thought they had) Democrats what they got wrong about their party’s last election effort.

A substantial total of the 75,017,613 who voted for Harris in 2024 could also have told the party what it did wrong. Many high-level Democrats—former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), strategist James Carville, and more—have been telling the party for some time: Ditch the woke, lose the elitist buzzwords, stop the extremism, and quit chasing the progressive tail on the donkey.

Instead, Democrats waited a year and a half to put together a report on their 2024 roadkill of a campaign. According to Politico, the Democratic National Committee did so only after CNN released a copy.

The long-awaited release finally came after a stop-and-start process that began when DNC chairman Ken Martin committed to releasing a document in January 2025. Months ticked by, but no report was forthcoming. By December 2025, Martin backed away from his earlier commitment. This move touched off an internal firestorm over why the document was being withheld. Reflecting shades of their Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theorizing, Democrats saw it here, too. Complaints rained down.

With its hand finally forced, Martin and the DNC slapped a header in red and italics atop each page stating: “Disclaimer: This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”

Martin also sought further distance with a Substack post: “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it. But transparency is paramount. So, today I am releasing the report as I received it – in its entirety, unedited and unabridged – with annotations for claims that couldn’t be verified.”

By so doing, the DNC obviously sought to distance itself from the by-now no-win situation it faced. With that, the DNC threw the draft document (replete with typos) overboard and its author (Democratic operative Paul Rivera, though unnamed in the report and no longer working for the DNC) under the bus.

Why it was not released earlier and the reason for the reluctance to release it now are immediately clear. The report itself is no more than a 192-page draft document that is a Swiss cheese filled with holes (leaving out the Hamas attack on Israel and many Democrats’ extremist reaction to it, as well as President Joe Biden’s decision to seek reelection and his equally awkward later removal from the ticket) and typos. Despite interviews with hundreds of Democrats across all fifty states, neither transcripts nor a list of the people interviewed were turned over to the DNC.

This report was clearly not ready for release but was rushed out to quell a mounting internal furor. Even if judged solely on this last point, the report is a massive failure. Democrats exploded, and the further to the left they were, the greater their explosions. Former DNC vice chairman David Hogg, who had earlier launched an effort to target incumbent Democrats he deemed too moderate, called for Martin’s ouster: “This cannot be the best person to lead us in this moment.”

The report did acknowledge some of the Left’s responsibility for pushing Democrats in an extreme direction and the electoral repercussions of doing so. And while even such obvious admissions stirred up the Left, the report backed off fully connecting the dots to Democrats’ structural problems.

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Of course, the entire effort is like doing an autopsy on Julius Caesar’s death. “These 23 stab wounds certainly look suspicious. Perhaps they could have something to do with it?”

The hardest thing about the Democrats’ exercise is not figuring out why their 2024 campaign was so bad, but coming up with an alternative explanation to the obvious—the glaring holes in the nearly two-hundred-page report.

First off, they can’t blame nominee Kamala Harris because (wait for it) they may want to nominate her again. Yes, that’s just what the Democrat party needs: to run again someone that country has already passed its glaringly negative verdict on.

Recall that the 2024 campaign was intended to reintroduce Harris then and refurbish her image after a disappointing vice presidency. Nor has she done anything to refurbish her image since her November 2024 drubbing. For Harris, the fact remains that she has been unable to grab a race’s brass ring anywhere outside of California: She dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary in 2019; in 2024, Democrats allowed her to skip the primary process altogether and then saw her lead the campaign that prompted them to do a report on why the party did so poorly. Giving America more time to get to know someone they’ve already rejected (as Democrats did in 2019) isn’t going to solve either her or the party’s problems.

Second, the report couldn’t blame Democrats’ failure on being outspent. According to the report, Democrats’ campaigns had almost a $2 billion advantage in “dollars spent by or for their campaigns”: “Democrats had nearly 7.5 billion dollars spent by or for their campaigns, while Republicans had nearly 5.6 billion dollars spent by or for their campaigns. This does not account for billions more spent through PACs, Separate Segregated Funds, or non-connected committees.”

Harris outspent Trump by almost $1 billion: $2.3 billion to $1.3 billion. And Harris still got trounced.

They can’t blame their myriad extreme positions: mega spending over four years, Green New Deal (embraced by their furthest lefties even as climate “guess-timators” now say their earlier extreme consequence projections are unrealistic), trans-insanity, open borders, abolishing ICE, defunding the police, high taxes, wealth taxes, inflation that started in March 2021 (peaking at 9.1% in June 2022), almost as soon as Biden took office, or a supine foreign policy, woke policies, antisemitism, DEI, anti-school choice, and more.

They also can’t blame their holdover bad apples who were ostensibly in leadership at the time of their 2024 debacle: Nancy Pelosi (D-CA, but soon to be retiring), Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY, but likely soon to be retired by lefty darling AOC), and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

Nor can they point to the accelerating extremism as even more radical party candidates have been elected to office of late, such as Zohran Mamdani in New York City, and Katie Wilson in Seattle. Even from their two 2025 so-called “moderate” governorship wins, Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger flamed out with her recent attempted far-left redistricting power grab.

When you can’t blame the people, and you can’t blame the policies, then that leaves you with the president at the time: Joe Biden.

The one person who can’t defend himself would be the Democrats’ seemingly perfect scapegoat. Yet even here, the report largely takes a pass, mentioning Biden’s name just thirty times. Said the report somewhat obliquely: “Having Kamala Harris on the ballot actually helped down-ballot Democrats maintain part of their base support. Had Biden remained on the ballot, down-ballot Democrats might haven (sic) faced even steeper challenges.”

The hardest part of the Democrats’ explanation for 2024 is to come up with one that doesn’t identify the obvious reasons. So, they come up with a bumbling investigation, and even in releasing its unfinished draft, they fumble this.

What Democrats should have done was to blame President Trump for the report’s release—after all, they blame him for everything else. Also, Republicans certainly had the strongest motive for this report going public, because it makes the Democrats look so bad. And Republicans would certainly like nothing better than for Democrats to believe its contents.

Really, Democrats don’t need to have a 2024 report at all. They just need a mirror.

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

For all the rhetoric about inclusion, the prevailing focus in society today is on differences, exclusion, and separation.

Of course, secular society’s first exclusion is that of the individual. The individual is excluded and replaced by a person’s inclusion in certain defined groups. A person is viewed and categorized as belonging to certain groups, rather than as an individual with a diverse combination of traits that makes him or her unique. Rather, the person is distilled down into memberships in certain sets of groups.

Secular society’s second exclusion comes among groups themselves. Not all groups are equal. Some are welcomed. Some are not. Of course, there is no greater criterion for a group’s exclusion than how it thinks — the trait that most defines human beings is now facing the severest litmus test for acceptability. Once you are assigned to your groups, you may find that one or more of them are unwelcome, and, along with them, you may find yourself in a second layer of exclusion.

If we do not accede to being categorized as a secular society, we are deemed benighted. We are told that our background, our race, our heritage, our age, and our thinking on specified topics all indeed comprise who we are, whether we believe it, submit to it, or not. And even if we do not accept our categorization, we are nonetheless assigned to various groups.

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Just as some assigned groups may not be accepted, we are, in turn, encouraged to ostracize other unacceptable groups, while simultaneously being told to recognize and reflect on our differences. In today’s secular society, the only diversity that counts is the diversity that lies without, not the diversity that lies within each individual.

The whole process is dehumanizing. And atomizing. We are deconstructed and then reconstructed according to the traits society deems salient: pieced and parceled together into a repackaging of selected characteristics until the individual is lost in the amalgam.

This parceling of people leads to a painfully alienating society of separatists. It keeps us apart, allowing us only to interact as members of groups rather than as real individuals. Not as real people. As “who” each of us truly is.

Predictably, there is a spiritual dimension to this secular separation. And as dangerous and damaging as this secular separation is societally, it is even more dangerous spiritually.

Over time, this way of seeing ourselves does not remain merely political or social. It inevitably shapes how we understand morality, meaning, and ultimately God Himself.

Succumbing to secular society, many religious groups have become more secular than spiritual. They preach the secular and by doing so seek to transform it into the spiritual. Their focus becomes today’s causes, not the cause Eternal.

At its worst, our secular obsession with defining differences carries over to God Himself. Saddest of all, many allow perceived differences with God to separate them from Him.

If we focus on looking for differences with God, we will not have to look hard.

He is unlike me in many ways.

Even by referring to God as “Him,” “He,” or “Father,” some feel alienated. If we accept Jesus as God, more divisions follow: He definitively took the form of a man; He was a carpenter; He was sinless; He lived in a different era and, some therefore argue, can have no relevance to the issues of their world; He was Jewish; depending on one’s politics, He was conservative — or liberal. If we see Moses as God’s ultimate prophet, many of the same differences apply.

Once again, for all our secular society’s talk of diversity and inclusion, these often disappear when it comes to people’s spiritual relationship with God.

Instead, today’s secular world tells us — commands us, even condemns us if we refuse — to seek a God who is like us. Who looks like we do. Who thinks like we do. Who believes like we do.

Secular society takes the book of Genesis — “So God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27) — and turns it on its head:

Once started, the process rarely stops. People continue shaping God in their own image until they eventually come to worship themselves. Before long, everything they do becomes justified. They become self-satisfied because they have first become self-defined.

Today’s secular world encourages and reinforces this. After all, it is already done to people throughout society until we all exist in tribes. Why would religion remain untouched?

Because it is deeply harmful.

In secular society, it separates us from each other. Despite being far more alike than different, we increasingly seek and accentuate uncommon ground while retreating from our greater common ground.

In religion, the same exclusionary process separates us from God. This is far worse.

We have an innate need for an intimate connection with God. And we have an invitation from God for that connection. We are made in His image. Rejecting God, therefore, becomes, in part, a rejection of ourselves — of the best and most eternal part of ourselves.

It leaves many searching for temporary substitutes to fill an eternal void.

We pour more of the world into the vacuum we have hollowed within ourselves. We move from one temporal stimulus to another, one mental exercise to another, one belief to another. Yet we are never filled. Instead, we often come away emptier still — more frustrated in our unfulfilled longing.

This spiritual separation feeds on our secular separation and leaves us even more alone. It drives us deeper into categories and pigeonholes until we are neither fully ourselves nor fully God’s people.

Ultimately, what unites us is far greater than the categories that divide us.

And ultimately, we as people are most alike in our union with God. By failing to seek that union with Him, we lose some ability to recognize it in one another. In doing so, we lose the deepest common ground we possess — the ground that both completes us and holds us together.

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

Townhall

The Fall of Virginia’s Icarus

The Fall of Virginia’s Icarus

J.T. Young | May 12, 2026

No one had more riding on mid-decade redistricting than Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger. Staking everything, she went for broke to impose the nation’s most highly leveraged partisan House redistricting map. Now, following Virginia’s Supreme Court decision striking down her effort, Spanberger’s left with nothing to show for it… especially her credibility.

5/12/26

Real Clear Politics

The Midterm Horse Race Six Months Out | RealClearPolitics

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

The Midterm Horse Race Six Months Out

COMMENTARY

By J.T. Young

May 12, 2026

Currently, Democrats hold the inside track for the House and the outside track for the Senate. In horse racing and politics, where you’re running matters; however, it’s no guarantee of where you’ll finish.

Other than Iran itself, no one is a bigger loser in the current U.S.-Iran conflict than China. It has been shown to be unable to project either soft or hard power in a region where power commands respect above all else.

Power is the Middle East’s local currency, and China stands there with its pockets turned inside out.

The Middle East tolerates power in any form. From Israel to Iran, from democracies to monarchies to client states, to dictatorships: All may not be equally welcomed, but all exist in the region, and all, albeit begrudgingly in some cases, tolerate and are in turn tolerated because of power. It is only when such existential realities are ignored—as with Iran and Israel—or when the levels of power change—as with the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria—that the region is upended. The existing levels of power must then reassert themselves, or the new levels of power must find their equilibrium.

Power. In the Middle East, you must have it. And if you are not “of the region,” then you’d better bring it with you when you come.

The French and the British brought it when they came. The Middle East accommodated them accordingly. And when the French and the British lost their power, the Middle East accordingly ushered them out.

Israel unquestionably has it. Israel has proved it repeatedly since its very founding. As much as other countries in the region wanted Israel gone, it has been repeatedly made clear to these countries that they cannot accomplish it. So, they accommodate Israel because they respect its power.

The U.S. has power and, of late, has demonstrated its willingness to use it forcefully. The Middle East recognizes this, which is why so many in the region want America there now. They are not welcoming the U.S. because of its values—the changing and content of which must continually befuddle the Middle East—but because of its demonstrated power.

China would like to have a place in the Middle East. As its current dependency on oil makes clear, China even more needs a place in the Middle East. The problem China faces is what it brings as it seeks a place.

If America’s values can befuddle the Middle East community, China’s primary one—communism—is a nonstarter there. The Middle East is probably the least receptive region in the world to communist ideology. Seemingly, every other region of the world has at least dabbled in it before descending into its dystopian dysfunction; not so in the Middle East.

[The last attempt was in South Yemen; it lasted from the late 1960s until 1990. The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen was heavily dependent on subsidies from other socialist countries. When many of these countries fell with the U.S.S.R., the PDRY was not far behind.] State-run and authoritarian? Yes. But communism? No.

Of course, China is the world’s second-largest economy and therefore a major purchaser and supplier. However, as the current conflict has shown, the Middle East is not lacking for purchasers for its primary product.

As far as being a supplier, the current conflict has hardly increased demand for China’s military wares. Iran’s reliance on these saw its military trounced from the get-go. As for everything else China imports, the Middle East’s oil revenues enable it to obtain these from many sources. And they hardly need financing to help pay for their purchases.

China has also demonstrated no diplomatic leverage in the region. For one thing, it has repeatedly backed the losing side. Al-Assad in Syria is gone. Hamas has been pulverized. Iran has not only been drubbed, but it has alienated every country in the region during the conflict, taking China’s reputation along with it.

Nor has China shown any ability to rein in Iran: either to stop it from attacking other nations or accept the reality of its position in the current conflict. These have occurred despite China’s real dependence on the region and its resulting need for this conflict to end, for oil to return to flowing unimpeded, and for oil prices to return to pre-conflict levels.

The result is that China sees its position in the Middle East significantly eroded. Instead of taking a bigger place in the Middle East, China finds itself looking to the region’s periphery for a spot: a base on the Horn of Africa near Djibouti and close to the Red Sea.

China needs to save face. In its culture, this is important. Appearances matter. However, the important thing in the Middle East is much more visceral. And there, China needs to save a body part far more important than just its face.

Not only can China not project power in the Middle East, but its support for Iran has also helped bring it down. Iran’s attacks on its neighbors have lowered Iran’s reputation in the region; China, as a major backer of Iran, has suffered collaterally as well.

Simply, China’s ability to project power in the Middle East is greatly diminished. Nothing in China’s recent performance—unable to either protect or influence its allies—in the Middle East will cause nations in the region to come rushing toward it.

Instead, the current conflict has underscored China’s dependence on oil. And thereby in the Middle East.

China has neither oil nor a secure route to attain it. Conversely, the U.S. is more firmly ensconced in the region: The Middle East wants and needs the security that only the U.S. brings; it neither wants nor needs the insecurity and the terrorism that China has helped foster in Iran.

As a result of the current conflict, in just a few short months, China has lost ground in the world’s most strategic region—a region of the highest strategic importance to China—and has no clear path to regaining it.

For China, the current conflict has shown that China needs the Middle East, but the Middle East does not particularly need China. Following China’s support for Iran and its performance (or lack thereof) in the current conflict, it’s unclear how much the Middle East will want China in the region in the future. The Middle East will certainly take China’s money, but will it take China’s presence?

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

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Real Clear Markets

How Blue States Go From Rent Seeking to Rent Losing | RealClearMarkets

How Blue States Go From Rent Seeking to Rent Losing

By J.T. Young

May 06, 2026

Blue states’ new wealth tax proposals aren’t really taxes at all; they’re rent-seeking behavior. These proposals are nothing more than an attempt to increase the states’ share of wealth without creating new wealth. Ironically, they are destined to do just the opposite and become “rent-losing” behavior.

5/5/26

The Hill

California’s voter ID referendum gives Republicans a genuine shot at reform

Opinion>Opinions - Campaign

California’s voter ID referendum gives Republicans a genuine shot at reform

by J.T. Young, opinion contributor - 05/05/26 10:30 AM ET

Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio speaks at a press conference on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif., to announce a campaign to require voter identification in California. (AP Photo/Tran Nguyen)

California’s upcoming voter ID referendum gives Republicans their first statewide election opportunity in years. At least it does if Republicans can keep opponents from twisting this issue as Democrats just did in Virginia’s recent redistricting election.

4/30/26

Townhall

Ilhan Omar: The House Houdini’s Last Act?

Ilhan Omar: The House Houdini’s Last Act?

J.T. Young | Apr 30, 2026

Like Houdini, U.S. Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-5) has often extricated herself from the seemingly inescapable. She has skirted scandals that would entrap lesser mortals. However, as with all escape artists, there comes a “fix” that exceeds even your enhanced powers. For Rep. Omar, that fix may have finally arrived.

4/28/26

American Spectator

America’s Might Is on Display in Iran | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

America’s Might Is on Display in Iran

And our external enemies have noticed, even if our internal ones remain willfully blind.

by J.T. Young

April 27, 2026, 10:22 PM

The Iranian conflict is giving a view of America’s global might. That is, unless you are blind or refuse to see.

In its four-year war of unprovoked aggression, Russia has harvested its young men to the point that its “manpower field” is being reduced to stubble. With heavy casualties (now over one million casualties, killed and wounded combined) and a battlefield stalemate (recently, Russia has been losing territory in Ukraine), Russia began deploying North Korean soldiers in late 2024.

The North Korean troops have suffered a nearly 50 percent casualty rate, with an estimated 6,000 killed. What’s more, some of those who died did so at their own hands by “self-blasting.” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently praised soldiers “who unhesitatingly chose the path of self-destruction and suicide to defend great honor.”

Essentially, North Korea is now harvesting its young men for Russia in a gruesome exchange of blood for defense technology. Russia is no longer simply harvesting its own young men and Ukrainian civilians; it is now paying to harvest North Korea’s young men as well.

This is just the latest example of the world’s authoritarian states showing their utter disregard for their populations.

Not simply based on its recent sickening revelation of battlefield ethos, North Korea deserves to be at the top of this pariah’s list of disregard for its people. North Korea has horrendous gulags where it houses political prisoners. However, the entire country is little more than a statewide gulag, and North Korea was long before it revealed itself also to be an abattoir.

Iran should be near the top of the list. It has killed tens of thousands of protesters, it is holding public executions as the current conflict rages, it has cut off internal and external communications to the extent it can (and executing people attempting to circumvent this), and it continues allowing its economy to be destroyed (something that began well before the current conflict and prompted last year’s massive protests). Of course, it has also indiscriminately targeted other nations throughout its 50 years of state-sponsored terrorism. It continues to do so in the current conflict.

Cuba earns a place for its utter impoverishment of its population and its jailing of political opponents (something all the authoritarian states do at enormous levels). That impoverishment well predates the current impasse with the U.S., going back decades to its adherence to socialist economics and accelerating after the end of subsidies from nations including the U.S.S.R. and, more recently, Venezuela.

Venezuela, under its socialist dictators Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, also belongs on the list. Both allowed the economy to be destroyed, held fraudulent elections, and imprisoned opponents.

And we cannot forget China. In 2024, a survivor of its forced organ harvesting recently shed new light on this ghoulish twist to human trafficking. Its treatment of the Uyghurs and Tibetans, which was once widely condemned, is now routinely glossed over. Its one-child policy prevailed nationwide for decades. Externally, there was the seizure of Hong Kong; today, there is its blatant threat to do the same to Taiwan.

All these states routinely violate their citizens’ rights. They do so to such an extent that these violations can hardly be seen as violations at all, but rather as signals that their populations have no rights. These absences of rights are often manifest in unimaginably hideous ways.

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These authoritarian states’ practices should be a reminder to us: If these states have so little concern for their own populations, how are we to imagine they have any for those of other nations? The answer is tragically and routinely made manifestly clear. These authoritarian states’ practices not only explain their actions internally but also their approach to external relations: people are meant to serve the state’s ends, and “people” includes those of other nations too.

These practices are also a reminder to the world’s unctuous who routinely use forums to call out the U.S., Israel, and the West in general for “crimes,” yet ignore the blatantly habitual ones from authoritarian nations that unabashedly pursue such practices as their normal course of conduct.

These authoritarian nations, which routinely support each other because no other nations will, have in common practices that amount to harvesting their populations: reaping them, raping them. The only difference is that Russia is openly paying North Korea to do so literally.

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

Every Iranian action underscores why this regime cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. During the current conflict’s two months, Iran has managed to make its opponents’ case for them. And it has done so time and time again.

With so much news being generated daily about the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, it is easy to become distracted by debates over every single point examined: the amount and accessibility of Iran’s uranium cache, the level of degradation of Iran’s military weapons, its leadership’s functioning (or lack thereof), the exchange of negotiation proposals, whether the Strait of Hormuz is open—and if so to whom and for how long.

As we proceed, and each tree comes in view, we tend to increasingly lose sight of the forest engulfing us. It is therefore worthwhile to stop and look around at the whole. In this conflict, Iran has made it clear with each action why it wants nuclear weapons, what it would do with nuclear weapons, and on whom it would turn them. Taken together, we see one thing that rises above all the conflict’s debate points: The regime currently in charge of Iran must never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

To understand why, simply look at what Iran’s regime has done throughout this conflict and before.

First, Iran has refused to simply renounce its intention to obtain nuclear weapons. This intention brought on the preemptive strike that buried much of Iran’s nuclear material under heaps of rubble last year. Yet, the U.S. and Israel’s resounding denial of the regime’s nuclear weapon ambitions was not enough. The sane response would have been to walk away from an intention which had been categorically denied to them. They would not. Their continued intention to pursue nuclear weapons brought on the current conflict now moving into its third month. Despite their military’s destruction to an extreme degree, Iran’s leadership still refuses to simply renounce their intention to pursue nuclear weapons, relinquish their capacity to produce them, and end a conflict that is devastating them militarily and economically.

Second, Iran has used the weapons at its disposal, mostly ballistic missiles and drones, with little concern about civilian casualties (nine in one attack on Israel; Iran has also used cluster bombs) and a maximum concern for disruption. These have been fired in enormous quantities at virtually every target in the region: Israel (of course), nations with U.S. bases, and even its neighboring countries. The end goal of Iran’s use of these weapons is not military in nature but to inflict any damage it can on those at whom it aims them. To prove the point, consider the outcome: None of Iran’s massive firings of these missiles and drones have improved its position militarily or diplomatically. Iran has only been more decimated as it has fired its missiles and drones, and the countries in which weapons these have landed have moved even further away from Iran than they were before. The result has only been terror; the same terrorism that Iran once sponsored through its myriad proxies, it now pursues baldly on its own. That is how it has chosen to use its military capability.

Third, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is an economic version of its military tactics. It is an indiscriminate use of an economic weapon against any and all parties within reach. It is designed to inflict as much pain as possible on these parties—primarily those residing half a world away from the conflict. Iran’s regime is wielding it to force the afflicted to pressure the U.S. and Israel to accede to its demands. It is simply another version of terrorism.

Fourth: Putting Iran’s military and economic tactics together and you get a straightforward strategy: terrorism.

Fifth, as Iran hemorrhages losses—militarily, economically, and diplomatically—it continues to slaughter its own people and subjugate them even more. Of course, there was the massive slaughter of tens of thousands of protestors during the uprising that occurred between the U.S. and Israel’s preemptive strike on its nuclear material and the current conflict. The public execution of regime opponents has continued apace. To continue keeping its undoubtedly growing internal opposition disorganized, it has done all it can to severe all internal and external communication: The result is that the rest of the world is unable to see even more of the atrocities that the regime is committing against its own people.

Sixth, Iran’s goal in all its so-called peace proposals is to begin negotiations that will buy it time and allow it to continue the pursuit of its objective: obtaining nuclear weapons. To offer as a goal, later negotiations over an outcome that has already been clearly denied militarily, economically, and diplomatically is to not offer to negotiate at all. It is merely a device aimed at those who want to believe the unbelievable. Plus, if a deal is reached, Iran has cheated on its deals before.

Seventh, in its diplomatic attempt in the current conflict, Iran has approached none other than Russia. If ever there was a nation with less credibility regarding peace it is Putin’s Russia which is embroiled in a four-year war of aggression against its Ukraine neighbor and during which it has pursued the same indiscriminate attacks against civilians that Iran has over the last two months. The terrorist state that is Iran has essentially turned to look in the mirror for advice.

What the surrounding forest should tell us is clear:

· Iran wants nuclear weapons at any cost—to itself, to its people, to the rest of the world.

· If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will use them the same way it has used the weapons it currently has at hand—indiscriminately, as either terrorist weapons or for greater leverage to inflict terror on anyone it sees fit to target with conventional terrorist attacks. Just as it has had no compunction on inflicting slaughter now—through its terrorist proxies, directly during the current conflict, or on its own people—it would have none inflicting slaughter on anyone who would oppose its goals later.

· With nuclear weapons, Iran will use them for every means of leverage—military, economic, and diplomatic. Just as it has sought to use every sort of leverage during the current conflict. In every future dispute with this Iranian regime, its nuclear capability would at the least be in the background.

· Terrorism remains the Iranian regime’s ultimate end and nuclear weapons its ultimate means of pursuing it.

Just over two months into the current conflict, even the most weak-kneed now know these things. There can be no mistaking what Iran wants, why Iran wants it, what Iran would do with it if attained, and how Iran would wield what it fanatically seeks.

Appeasing Iran will mean arming Iran; arming Iran will mean nuclear weapons; nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands will mean them being threatened or used against anyone who opposes its terrorist goals; and should this regime obtain nuclear weapons it will do everything possible to increase their reach with them.

Combined this would mean global subjugation to a terrorist state and its emboldened proxies on a level unprecedented even in the context of this regime’s prior hideous half century of terrorism.

While we can, and many undoubtedly will, continue to debate over each and every tree we pass, we cannot ignore the dark forest we are in with Iran.

The Gospel of Luke (24:13-35) tells the story beautifully. The prosaic, a simple trip by two simple men to a village just seven miles from Jerusalem, is interwoven with so many human elements that it rises to the level of poetic in the reading.

We know the name of only one of the two disciples making the journey: Cleopas. They are going to a village only a short distance away (“about seven miles from Jerusalem”). They are traveling on foot. They are sad (“they stood still, their faces downcast”). They are conversing (“they were talking with each other about everything that had happened”). They are not moving fast (they are overtaken by another traveler who “came up and walked along with them”).

We can assume that they have been in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They honored the Sabath the day before their trip. We can assume that they had some business that occupied them this Sunday morning, the first day of the Jewish week, but because the journey is so short, they are making it in the afternoon. They are dejected by the crucifixion of Jesus on Friday, two days before. However, as we discover, they have heard some alarming news: reports that the body of Jesus is missing from the tomb and that others in their company verified that Jesus’ body was indeed missing.

Of course, the man who overtakes them on the road is Jesus, “but they were kept from recognizing him.” This stranger asks the two disciples a simple question: “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” To this question, Cleopas replies rather dismissively: “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened in these days?” In other words: Have you been living under a rock? The stranger, Jesus, is not put off and asks simply: “What things?”

The two men reply with a very summarized story of the Passion from Friday to Easter morning. Then Jesus repays their earlier blunt answer with his own: “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” He then proceeds to give them undoubtedly the best sermon on Easter ever delivered.

So overcome, the two disciples “urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.’” When they are at table, Jesus blesses the bread and “then their eyes were opened and they recognized him” before “he disappeared from their sight.” So overcome, from the walk, the talk, the appearance and disappearance, the two reverse course, then and there, and walk seven miles back to Jerusalem to give their miraculous story! Although not dwelt on in the recount, this is incredible; we can presume that, if the day was almost over when they first decided to stop, it is now dusk at best. Travel at night was not a good idea and therefore not done: It was the reason that they had urged the stranger to stop with them in the first place. Of course, when they get to Jerusalem, they are told an even more miraculous story before they can get theirs out: “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”

Painting by Caravaggio, 1601, Located in the National Gallery London. Wikimedia Commons

It is fitting that we read so close to Easter this story of a simple trip by simple men to a simple place that turns into an unbelievable miracle. We are, after all, on our Easter journey too. Our trip lasts fifty days, admittedly, a bit longer than the two disciples’ trip to Emmaus. However, in the context of the entire year, less than a seventh—so not that far off from the percentage of the week that the two disciples are traveling.

It is fitting too because the early church, in fact the earliest church, is also beginning its journey. These members do not even know they are a church yet. Initially, they do not realize that they have anything to be a church around at all. They are just journeying, going where they think they know but really don’t, confused, depressed, frightened, and oh so few in number. Only the guidance of Jesus in the guise of another fellow traveler can give our two disciples a clue—many, many clues—which they do not understand until after the sermon is over and they are about to eat. For this early church, and throughout its subsequent two-millenia history, there will be many twists and turns, trials and tribulations, tragedies and triumphs.

The Road to Emmaus is fitting for us as well. It is because we too are on a journey. Ours too will have many twists and turns, trials and tribulations, tragedies and triumphs. On it, we will, like Cleopas and his companion, feel lost (though we think we know where we are going), confused, depressed, frightened, and alone. Yet like the two disciples, we are not alone. Jesus will be with us but, like the two disciples, we will fail to recognize him in our presence. We may also rebuff him, as the two disciples initially do. We can be rude. We are often hurt. Disappointed. We yearn but do not comprehend. Like them, we need to listen, to look, to discover him in our midst.

The Road to Emmaus is a beautiful story in itself. It is a powerful story. It is also OUR story. We are on a journey, whether we know it or not. Like the two disciples, we know its direction but not its conclusion.

Those who would be disciples are reminded to listen, to look, to seek. To find. Because we are never alone in our journey. And when we discover that we are not alone, and who it is with us, we are uplifted as were Cleopas and his companion: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” So much were they that they quit their meal and set back out on the road they had just trudged along. Only this time it is the road to Jerusalem—in Hebrew “Place of Peace.”

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

Blaze Media

Democrats’ ‘Sergeant Schultz strategy’ on Chavez and Swalwell | Blaze Media

opinion & analysis

Democrats’ ‘Sergeant Schultz strategy’ on Chavez and Swalwell

J.T. Young

California Democrats refuse to notice predators on their side.

No one should believe Cesar Chavez’s and Eric Swalwell’s stories were unknown to Democrats. Far more likely is that the details behind both men’s downfalls were not unknown to Democrats; they were simply unacknowledged. There’s a big difference, and it makes all the difference. Second only to the scandals themselves is the fact that Democrats stayed silent about them while letting the men who generated these continue to ascend. California values strike again.

4/17/26

The Hill

Only months in, Spanberger and Democrats are losing their shine

Opinion>Opinions - Campaign

Only months in, Spanberger and Democrats are losing their shine

by J.T. Young, opinion contributor - 04/17/26 9:00 AM ET

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivers her State of the Commonwealth address before a joint session of the Virginia General Assembly at the Capitol Monday Jan. 19, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

In a mere matter of months, a Democratic rising star appears to be falling. A recent poll shows Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) dropping dramatically. It could not come at a worse time, as she is also the face of a highly partisan redistricting attempt by Democrats in the state.

4/17/26

Real Clear Markets

AI May Well Be the Answer to the Developed World’s Productivity Question | RealClearMarkets

AI May Well Be the Answer to the Developed World’s Productivity Question

By J.T. Young

April 17, 2026

Despite the negative histrionics, AI could potentially solve the developed world’s population/productivity dilemma. Currently, the developed world is trapped between two opposing forces: Economics demands that productivity increase if living standards are to rise; however, demographics in developed nations show population growth falling below levels needed to sustain its growth, as well as the number of workers to nonworkers falling. AI has the potential to increase productivity enough to offset developed nations’ rapidly increasing need for it to do so.

4/17/26

Real Clear Religion

Catholicism is Filling Progressivism’s Void | RealClearReligion

Catholicism is Filling Progressivism’s Void

By J.T. Young
April 16, 2026

Catholicism’s rise in America is a reaction to, and a rejection of, the Left’s relativism. Today, self-styled “progressives” are in the vanguard of America’s Left and at the core of progressives’ agenda is a vacuous relativism.

First, regarding the conflict’s origins, the U.S. and Israel didn’t start this one with Iran. Iran has been waging one against the U.S. and Israel for almost 50 years.

Often, this almost half-century conflict has been waged through Iran’s proxies, but the proxies’ principal backer has never been in doubt. Even if you ignore “the monograph” that is Iran’s terrorist history and look only at its “current chapter” that began with the U.S. and Israel’s February 28 strikes against Iran’s terrorist masterminds, those strikes merely accelerated a conflict that Iran wanted to use to threaten others on its own terms.

Iran wanted to take its modus operandi to a higher terrorist level. It needed nuclear weapons to do this and was, and remains, (which is the only reason the conflict’s current chapter continues) determined to get them.

The current chapter of this half-century conflict has proven what Iran would do with nuclear weapons if it obtained them: Use them for terror, just as in this chapter of the conflict, it has used all the means remaining at its disposal for terror.

Iran believed that North Korea’s nuclear deterrent model was the way to insulate itself from global retaliation and sought to replicate it. The problem for Iran is that while it sought to replicate North Korea’s nuclear deterrence, it could not duplicate North Korea’s geography: Iran does not have China on its doorstep, and China cannot project its military power beyond that limited contiguous range.

Bottomline: The Middle East and that portion of the world not allied to Iran’s terrorist theocracy should be grateful that this conflict came on the U.S. and Israel’s terms, not Iran’s.

Second, Iran wants the current ceasefire to hold. Iran has had plenty of excuses it could have used for ending the current ceasefire. There are Israel’s military actions in Lebanon. Yet Iran didn’t measurably break the ceasefire over these. Failed negotiations with the U.S. are another reason Iran could have used. The U.S. blockade of Iran’s ports is a third excuse. Again, Iran has allowed the ceasefire to hold. Iran could have shattered the ceasefire at any point; it could even have blamed the breakage on rogue elements within its terrorist ranks.

That this hasn’t happened to a significant degree says a lot.

For those who argue, and in some cases sadly want to believe otherwise, Iran has little to no leverage in this conflict. What little conventional leverage it does have—surrogates, continued strikes with its own missiles and drones—it’s using in diminished numbers.

The Strait of Hormuz is essentially its only card.

We will see how that holds up under blockade.

It’s also a short-term one: Already, buyers are looking for other oil sources and shipping routes. The Strait closure has diminishing returns for Iran and constitutes a long-term loss. Since Iran’s actions there, does anyone have the same confidence for this supply route with Iran’s theocracy remaining in place? No.

Third, China is this conflict’s second biggest loser, and China knows it. For all China’s ballyhooed military buildup, China cannot project its military power to its strategic imperative: Its oil supply.

China has also lost by seeing its military equipment be twice tested in combat and now, twice bested. Iran and Venezuela both used it. U.S. forces went through it like butter. And for those who think the Chinese would be better adept at using their own equipment, remember: China hasn’t fought a shooting war in almost 50 years; it was hardly a success; it lasted a month; and it was with Vietnam. To fight it, China only had to roll across its southern border, not sail, much less sail across a contested waterway, and even less, thousands of miles.

For the reasons above, Taiwan looks more secure than previously thought. And this appraisal does not take into account today’s drone-oriented fighting, which seems particularly suited for Taiwan’s defense against a seaborne invasion across the 100-mile-plus Taiwan Strait.

Fourth, terrorism is an even blunter instrument than the world thought: It is of limited to no use on defense. It is far more effective as a threat than a tool. Once pressed, Iran’s defense collapsed.

Terrorism has not succeeded in rolling back the stranglehold on Iran, despite Iran lashing out at all it could strike with everything it still has. Because it has not worked, it has been tried on a diminishing scale. What it has accomplished is for its victims to hit back all the harder and further degrade Iran’s already diminished conventional military capabilities.

What’s more, Iran’s vaunted network of proxies has been largely MIA. Those who haven’t, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, have suffered the same disproportionate defeats Iran itself has. Others haven’t even shown up at all—and for good reason.

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Fifth, the Middle East is desperate for peace, and this conflict has helped reinforce that desire in these countries not named “Iran” and those groups not pursuing terrorism. There is no better advertisement for the importance of a peaceful relationship among the civilized countries of the region than what Iran has tried to inflict on them.

It is not simply the means, terror, which Iran has sought to harness to remake (or unmake) the Middle East that is out of date; Iran’s entire goal of unleashing a fundamentalist jihad and exterminating Israel is the stuff of a half-century ago. Most obvious among the reasons is that it’s totally unrealistic: Israel has definitively proven that if anyone is going to wage war effectively in the Middle East it’s Israel.

No one wants a piece of Israel; instead, everyone (with any sense) wants a peace with Israel. And all these Middle East countries would like that peace to come quickly and without Iran’s terrorist theocracy. Not only can these other countries live with Israel; they know they can live better with Israel, because Israel can do what they cannot: stamp out the state sponsor of terrorism that threatens them all.

Sixth, the world’s strategic fulcrum is, once again, the Middle East. Our attention has been shifted all over the globe: Historically, it has been fixed on Europe; recently, it has been diverted to South America with the U.S.’s actions in Cuba and Venezuela; Europe again grabbed our attention with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago; Asia seemed preeminent with China’s continued rise and belligerence. However, the Middle East controls Asia’s oil—in particular, China’s—and global oil prices.

If there is a vulnerable choke point, it’s the Middle East. Control that, and the rest of the world is thrown off-kilter because it lacks the fuel that powers it: oil and natural gas. Sorry, green energy adherents, but the world’s economy will not shut down without solar panels or wind turbines.

Seventh, Israel and the U.S. control the Middle East, or they can if they want to, and they can exert pressure there whenever they desire without serious resistance. And there’s nothing the rest of the world can do—regardless of how dependent they may be on the region.

How do we know? Because they have not.

If ever there was a time for China to strike across to Taiwan, this would be it. If ever there was a time for Russia to widen its war in Ukraine or pose a bigger threat to Europe, this is it. But these haven’t happened.

Why? It’s not self-restraint; it’s because these countries have neither the means nor the place (at least that they can reach) to apply such leverage.

Eighth, Europe isn’t just a zero to the U.S.; it’s shown itself to be a liability. Europe is not only no longer a strategic imperative to protect, but its prohibitions on the U.S. sending military aircraft to support our efforts in Iran show that it is a negative: The U.S. has a huge amount of military assets positioned in places that serve only Europe’s interests, not the U.S.’s.

To accentuate that point, Europe has further curtailed its value by saying that these U.S. assets can be used only with its permission. Why place so many resources far away from strategically important areas and in countries where we can’t even use them for our own purposes? Europe has effectively neutralized a large amount of U.S. military might. A good portion of these resources need to be moved closer to strategic areas—our strategic areas—and placed where the U.S. can use them.

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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing.