Right v. Left: the Constrained Vision versus the Unconstrained Vision. By Emile Phaneuf.

Why do beliefs cluster the way they do?

If someone believes that only police and military should have guns, why is that person also likely to support socialized healthcare and a government-imposed minimum wage, and be unsupportive of school vouchers? In his 1987 book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, economist Thomas Sowell put forth two conflicting visions of man that he believes explain many of the underlying reasons for the clustering of beliefs.

In what he terms the “constrained vision,” man is by nature flawed, selfish, and limited.  Under the constrained vision, man seeks to deal with his flaws and excesses by establishing institutions of restraint: the separation of powers, constitutions, etc. Those who employ the constrained vision see abuses of power by leaders like Napoleon Bonaparte as inevitable. For this reason, limitations must be placed on power and on the institutions themselves so that it is more difficult for any individual to abuse them. The idea is to decentralize power so that man’s flaws are not catastrophic.

The “unconstrained vision,” by contrast, sees abuses of power as being caused by not having chosen the right leaders or established the right kinds of institutions. “Implicit,” writes Sowell, “is the notion that the potential is very different from the actual, and that means exist to improve human nature toward its potential, or that such means can be evolved or discovered, so that man will do the right thing for the right reason rather than for ulterior psychic or economic rewards.” And central to the unconstrained vision is the notion that human beings are highly malleable; they can be trained in the service of some ideal.

Steven Pinker’s 2002 book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature builds on much of Sowell’s work. He refers to Sowell’s constrained and unconstrained visions as the “tragic” and “utopian visions,” respectively. Pinker argues that much of the Unconstrained Vision is rooted in the false belief that individuals are born with no pre-programmed software (or innate human nature). This blank slate (or tabula rasa) belief, Pinker claims, was often based on good intentions; after all, if we are born equal in every way, this could also eradicate social and economic concepts of inequality, but the problem is that human behavioral sciences have already demonstrated that the human mind does, in fact, come with certain innate biological programming, which is unique for every individual. …

None of this is to say that a given person cannot hold political beliefs characterized by both visions, as is often the case.

Obviously the unconstrained vision is leftist idealism (really fantasies the left use to manipulate their way to power), while those on the right believe the more realistic constrained vision.

The uniparty buys into the unconstrained vision, and in recent decades here in Australia we have seen the center right party, the Liberals, adopt much of the unconstrained vision.

Last night at the Perth CPAC I heard Andrew Hastie argue that the Liberal Party should abandon the unconstrained vision, and move back to being the champion of the constrained vision. Very impressive! He was light years ahead of the primitive exhortations of the other two Liberal politicians who spoke.

 

Surprisingly thoughtful, delivered a meaty speech that proposed a successful path forward for the Liberal Party

 

A bit more on the two visions:

Constrained Vision

A worldview rooted in the belief that human nature is inherently flawed, self-interested, and limited in wisdom and virtue. This vision, also referred to as the “tragic vision,” holds that these limitations are unchangeable and thus must be managed through institutional structures rather than attempted moral or social transformation.

Key characteristics of the constrained vision include:

• Human Nature: People are naturally self-interested and prone to error; moral improvement is not easily achievable through societal design.
• Institutions Over Individuals: Trust is placed in time-tested systems like the rule of law, tradition, markets, and constitutional constraints to manage human flaws.
• Procedural Justice: Emphasis is on fair processes and equal opportunity, not guaranteed equal outcomes.
• Spontaneous Order: Belief that complex social systems—like markets—evolve organically and are more effective than top-down planning.
• Skepticism of Power: Deep caution toward concentrated authority; checks and balances are essential to prevent abuse by leaders or elites.
• Trade-Offs Over Solutions: Acceptance that all policies involve trade-offs; the goal is to minimize harm and maximize stability rather than achieve perfection.

Prominent thinkers associated with this vision include Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The constrained vision underpins much of classical liberal and conservative political thought, emphasizing empirical evidence, decentralization, and incremental change over radical reform.

Unconstrained Vision

A worldview that sees human nature as malleable and perfectible, believing that people can be guided toward moral and intellectual excellence through education, reason, and enlightened leadership. This vision, also referred to as the “utopian vision,” holds that societal problems stem not from inherent human flaws, but from flawed institutions, unjust systems, or inadequate policies. Advocates of the unconstrained vision trust in expert-driven, top-down solutions and believe that complex social issues — like poverty, inequality, or war — can be eradicated through rational planning and deliberate reform.

Key characteristics include:

• Belief in the potential for human improvement and the idea that people are fundamentally good.
• Disbelief in the inevitability of conflict, trade-offs, or systemic limitations.
• Preference for centralized decision-making by knowledgeable elites or experts.
• Emphasis on equal outcomes rather than equal rules.
• Faith in articulated rationality and abstract moral ideals over tradition or spontaneous order.
• View of institutions as problems to be redesigned, not as evolved systems of wisdom.

Sowell associates this vision with utopian ideals, often linked to progressive or left-leaning ideologies. He critiques it for dismissing the complexity of social systems and underestimating unintended consequences.

Sowell refers to those who embody the unconstrained vision as the “self-anointed” — individuals who believe they possess superior insight and moral authority to shape society. This vision often underpins calls for radical social change, social justice as a moral imperative, and policies that seek to eliminate disparities through redistribution or regulation.

Iran’s Surging Missile ‘Shield’: The Cause for the Hurry. By Fred Fleitz in American Greatness.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a March 2 press conference that Iran was producing over 100 missiles per month.

Rubio also told reporters that Iran was building up its arsenal of drones and missiles to create a missile “shield” that, within 12 to 18 months, would put Iran “in a place of immunity where the damage they can inflict on the region would be so high that no one can do anything about their nuclear program or their nuclear ambitions.”

Hudson Institute Research Fellow Zineb Riboua expressed the same assessment this week in an excellent Substack article in which she said Iran was on track to double its missile inventory from 2,000 to 4,000 missiles by 2027 and increase it to 10,000 by 2030. Riboua believes the increase in Iran’s missile and drone arsenal was due to stepped-up massive support from China of advanced missile electronic components and rocket fuel chemicals since the 12-Day War. …

Iran’s marked shift in recent years toward the offensive use of its missile arsenal — moving well beyond any plausible defensive posture — combined with its unprecedented direct strikes on Israel in 2024 and its large-scale attacks throughout the Middle East and beyond, constitutes a powerful justification for President Trump’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury. At the same time, Iran’s aggressive buildup of missile and drone forces to create an impenetrable “missile shield” around its advancing nuclear weapons program underscores how narrowly timed the U.S. action was — and how President Trump’s decision may ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.

Violent Migrants and Equal Rights. By Alexandra Marshall.

If government officials are afraid that standing up for Western values will incite migrants to violence — then those migrants need to be deported.

Anyone who thinks violence is a suitable response to criticism of their religion and culture is not compatible with Western society.

I’ve had enough of politicians pandering to fear of the violent, un-Australian mob instead of making that mob afraid of arrest.

And:

Australians want equal rights. Multiculturalism and identity politics has taken away these rights.

We now live in a hierarchy of identity and victimhood where the descendants of the people who built this country have the least rights, pay the most taxes, and are censored the hardest.

This cannot continue. Our politicians sold our rights out for electoral advantage.

Commenters:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali told us years ago that, if people come to your country and don’t appreciate and assimilate to the hosts culture, you must ask those people to leave , if they refuse, you must make them leave. …

Fear of confrontation with Islam just makes the inevitable conflict bigger. …

Our career politicians, copying the UK, are harvesting Muslim votes without caring that these people are committed to undermining the democratic principles that grant our politicians trust, influence, authority. The current AU gov. are destroying themselves and us. …

The mass unvetted migration of people who hate Westerners, our culture, and our religions is madness. Many are radicalized and dangerous. They want you to change your culture, laws, and religions, and they will use force. …

It’s ironic, with all the talk recently about ‘social cohesion’ – identity/group-based politics has the opposite effect. It highlights differences and turns society into tribal hunger games.

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia, where she embraced Islam and strove to live as a devout Muslim. But in 1992 Ayaan fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage.

 

Apologists say the Quran verse (9:5) that instructs Muslims to kill non-Muslims is a misinterpretation, taken out of context. Apparently many Muslims also take it out of context:

Nearly 50,000 attacks since 911, in which at least one non-Muslim died in an attack carried out in the name of Islam. All documented here. Attacks by all the other religions put together? Maybe a dozen.

Hizb ut-Tahrir’s reign of hate ends under hate group laws. By Sarah Ison in The Australian.

Radical Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned under Australia’s new hate group laws.

Labor confirmed late on Thursday evening that it had officially listed Hizb ut-Tahrir as a prohibited hate group, which threatens those who continue to be involved in the organisation with up to 15 years in jail. …

Several other countries have banned the organisation, including the UK, with Australia following suite after Sydney-based Hizb ut-Tahrir figures dramatically ramped up their messaging following the attacks of October 7, 2023, in describing Jews as the “hidden evil” and calling for a “jihad against the Jews”….

 

 

What do Hizb ut-Tahrir say?

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which intelligence and security officials have feared for years was engaging in active radicalisation of Australian youth, has frequently threatened legal action over any crackdown on their organisation.

Its spokesmen have likened banning Hizb ut-Tahrir to banning Islam, arguing the group was “neither hateful nor violent”.

If they are only preaching what’s in the Koran, then yes they are right — banning them is like banning Islam.

Iran’s Food Supply. By David Archibald.

40% of the inputs to [Iran’s] food supply system are imported. … [There is currently enough food] for four months of consumption. The Iranian government had better step up importing now to ensure continuity of food supply to their population, who hates them.

Otherwise, desperate people could become yet more desperate. As the saying goes, there are only seven meals between civilisation and anarchy.

Having attacked most of its neighbours on its western flank, and with the Straits of Hormuz closed to shipping, Iran’s best chance of resupply is from Russia via the Caspian Sea. This should be easily doable. Kazakhstan, a big wheat producer, is also on the Caspian Sea. …

By the way:

Indonesia recently reneged on the purchase of 24 F-15EX to go off and chase some other aircraft. We should put our hand up to take those 24 F-15EX. With a combat radius of 2,000 km married up to a missile with a 2,000 km range, the combination will be able to sink ships in the Taiwan Strait, and everywhere in between, after being launched from Darwin. This is quite a positive development. We just have to seize the opportunity.

Could This Be the Start of World War III? By Niall Ferguson at The Free Press.

Four years ago, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, people wondered if it was the beginning of World War III. Today, seven days into the latest war with Iran, the same concern has reemerged. It is not a foolish question.

Unlike World War I, which began in 1914 when all the European empires more or less simultaneously activated their war plans, World War II was in truth a series of regional conflicts that did not converge into a unitary global conflict until the end of 1941. Japan’s attack on China escalated slowly from 1931. The German challenge to the post-1918 European order began in 1936 and did not trigger war for three years, at which point the Soviet Union was on Germany’s side. The war in the Mediterranean did not begin until June 1940, with Italy’s declaration of war against the United Kingdom and France.

We have seen war break out in Eastern Europe in 2022 and then in the Middle East in 2023. The most recent U.S.-Israeli onslaught on Iran may look to future historians like a staging post to a global conflagration.

But I stress “may.” Because they may also simply write about Gulf War III. And the better ones may see that this war can be understood only in the context of Cold War II. …

How long will this war last?

The best way to look at this question is through the lens of energy. If this conflict drags on, and with it the disruption of the global oil market, the worst-case scenario is that we risk reenacting the 1970s. …

So how long will this last? According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, “You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three.” That’s fair. But wars that last, say, six days have happened in the Middle East. On the other hand, George W. Bush’s war lasted eight years. One report on Thursday said the Pentagon thinks this could go on until September. That would be bad.

Do the allies have enough firepower relative to Iran?

Blitzkrieg only works if you don’t run out of Blitz. Much depends on how long the U.S. and Israel can sustain their intensive bombing campaign and how quickly they can suppress Iran’s ability to fire missiles and drones. …

I was a little uneasy, I confess, when the president insisted on Tuesday that “the United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better.” That did not read exactly like, well, Truth. However, Iran’s firepower appears to be fading rapidly. It is below what we saw in last year’s 12-day war. The number of ballistic missiles being fired at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has declined steeply since the first day of the war. That is a sign that the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian launchers are succeeding. …

The problem is not the missiles, but the Shahed drones. Everyone ignored the Ukrainians at Davos when they screened a simulation of Russian Shaheds hitting Paris, Brussels, and Davos itself. No one in the Gulf was able to imagine them hitting Dubai or Riyadh — a strange failure of imagination considering the Shahed was invented in Iran. …

 

 

How long can the GOP sustain this domestically in a midterm year?

The president’s only real domestic-political headache is the ever-widening split within the MAGA movement. Former Fox News anchors Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are among those arguing that the United States has been duped into waging war on behalf of Israel. Implausibly, their case was also made by The New York Times. This surely misreads the evidence. It’s true that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long favored the assassination of Khamenei and the destruction of the Tehran regime. But it is not in Trump’s nature to do favors for other world leaders, especially when it involves serious economic and political risk.

The reality is that Trump himself has been consistently hostile to Iran for his own good reasons. He never believed in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He never trusted the Iranians when they were “talking and talking and talking.” And if MAGA has serious doubts about this venture, it’s odd that it was Vice President J.D. Vance who advised Trump to “go big and go fast.” …

The reality is that the U.S. and Israel have mounted their joint operation because each has an interest in terminating the Islamic Republic. The Israeli interest is regional. The American interest is global.

What does the war against Iran mean for other actual or potential conflicts?

The United States is waging Cold War II with China. …

Inevitably, the United States is drawn toward three regions of the world, each of which exerts its own gravitational force.

1. Europe or the North Atlantic.
2. The Middle East or the Persian Gulf.
3. The Far East or the Indo-Pacific.

In practice, because resources are finite and Ferguson’s Law places an effective ceiling on the defense budget, the U.S. cannot be actively engaged in all three theaters at once. Indeed, these days it can handle only one war at a time.

So the war against Iran is not, from an American perspective, a regional undertaking for the benefit of Israel. It clearly does not help other American allies and friends. For the Europeans, India, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan — all major hydrocarbon importers — every day of this war imposes a heavy cost in the form of more expensive oil and gas. The war therefore makes sense only as part of the U.S. global cold war with China.

Does it help bring peace closer in Ukraine, where Russia can be considered as a Chinese proxy (inasmuch as Beijing has kept President Vladimir Putin’s war machine going with vast deliveries of dual-use technology)? Sadly, no. I asked a Ukrainian friend in the defense technology business what he thought.

“People don’t understand that Dubai is about to look like Kyiv like in 10 days,” he texted back, “and Iranians make 3,000+ shaheds [drones] per month. U.S. made 650 PAC3s [Patriot missile interceptors] last year and in the end this is going to majorly fuck Ukraine because nobody will give Ukraine any air defenses because Gulf will just buy it all.” …

Oil and missiles:

38 percent of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz went to China in Q125. At the same time, Iran’s aggressive missile-building program was a Chinese-enabled project, entirely reliant on Chinese components, machine tools, and technical guidance …

Consider this war from Beijing’s perspective. First the United States ousts Nicolás Maduro and ends Venezuela’s role as a Chinese client and source of sanctioned oil. Then the United States offs Ali Khamenei and ends Iran’s role as a Chinese client and source of sanctioned oil. Quite a flex, isn’t it? No mean power play ahead of the summit between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing at the end of this month.

Unless the war drags on.

China is far less reliant on Gulf oil than America’s Asian allies because it has been busily building up its strategic petroleum reserves. As of March 2026, China holds around 1.3 billion barrels in storage — enough to cover over 100 days of imports if the Strait of Hormuz stays shut. Japan relies on the Strait of Hormuz for approximately 31 percent of its total energy needs, South Korea 30 percent, and Taiwan 38 percent. For China the figure is 10 percent.

A prolonged war in the Gulf would also be a serious problem for American deterrence in the Indo-Pacific as it would run down stocks of all kinds of American weaponry that is expensive and slow to replace: not only PAC-3 magazines but also SM-6 missiles, for example. The race is on to replenish U.S. capabilities in Asia with the next generation of lower-cost, faster-made weapons: what the military men call “cheap kill.” Hypersonic missiles like Castelion’s; airframes like Divergent Technologies’; futuristic supply planes like JetZero’s; autonomous drone swarms like Auterion’s. But it is a race. And the faster the United States runs to apply the lessons of wars in Ukraine and now Iran — above all, the need for low-cost, large-scale weapons systems — the greater the risk that China decides to make its move against Taiwan now. Before we are ready.

Interesting times.

How the Republican Party failed white America. By Alden Whitfeld at Heretical Insights.

Affirmative action:

For years, Republicans denounced it (rightfully) as discriminatory. They framed it as a moral outrage against meritocracy. But when they made their case publicly, they rarely spoke about discrimination against white applicants. Instead, they foregrounded Asians as the primary victims. …

After Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, elite admissions did not suddenly become purely race-neutral in spirit. The Asian share rose dramatically. Black and Hispanic shares remained stable. White representation declined. As Helen Andrews noted: …

“Harvard did not stop discriminating by race, it simply stopped doing so against Asians. Affirmative action continues, but now it is entirely at the expense of one race instead of two.” …

Non-black Democrats support anti-white discrimination, but the Republicans don’t call out their hypocrisy:

There’s another uncomfortable data point: nonblack Democrats show ambivalence and reluctance toward affirmative action when told it disadvantages Asian Americans. But when the same policy is framed as disadvantaging white Americans, support remains strong.

In other words, the coalition that supports race-based preferences does not oppose it as a general principle when framed as disadvantaging other groups. It adjusts its moral rhetoric based on the group affected. …

Dehumanization of other races is mostly by non-whites and lefties:

In a paper by Petsko & Kteily (2023), political dehumanization was measured along two axes: viewing opponents as “immature” versus viewing them as “savage”.

Conservatives tended to see liberals as immature, whereas liberals were more likely to view conservatives as savage.

Both sides roughly understood how the other perceived them. But here is the imbalance: liberals overestimated how much conservatives dehumanized them, while conservatives underestimated how much liberals dehumanized them. Additionally, the absolute level of dehumanization flowed more strongly from left to right than the reverse.

Another paper, Casey et al. (2023), conducted four studies and found a similar asymmetry in empathy. In both the U.S. and U.K., liberals were less likely than conservatives to extend empathy toward the suffering of political opponents. They judged opponents’ moral character more harshly and were more inclined to view them as actively harmful. …

Too nice to be effective:

There is something admirable about extending the benefit of the doubt. About refusing to demonize fellow citizens. About believing that most disagreements are misunderstandings rather than malice. But politics is not a monastery. It is a zero-sum contest of interests. If one coalition systematically views the other as morally dangerous, and the other coalition systematically views its opponents as merely mistaken, the result is predictable.

One side mobilizes with urgency. The other side moderates itself. And that pattern maps uncomfortably onto the broader Republican approach to race and identity. …

Republicans always negotiate from behind because blacks ses other race as core identity whites not so much:

If you assume that racial resentment is merely a request for inclusion, you will not anticipate demands for structural transformation and national debasement. If you assume goodwill while your opponents assume danger, you will always negotiate from behind….

The Republican Party speaks the language of race-neutral individualism. Judge people as individuals. Stop obsessing over identity. We’re all Americans. But it only works if it’s reciprocated. And it hasn’t been:

 

 

Race is less important to Republicans:

Survey data also shows that white Americans — across political lines — are more likely to say being “American” is central to their identity than being “white”.

 

 

For black Americans, racial identity ranks higher. For Hispanic and Asian Americans, race and “American” identity are roughly equal.

And this pattern persists across generations. It is not simply a first-generation immigrant phenomenon that dissolves over time. The idea that assimilation is rapid and automatic is false and overly generous …

Colorblindness is for chumps:

Colorblindness is not a magic incantation. It is a social contract. And a contract requires multiple signatories. But the only signatory to this contract has been whites.

In recent experimental research on sentencing and pardoning decisions, white Republicans were the only demographic group that showed no measurable racial bias when evaluating black and white defendants. By contrast, white Democrats, black Democrats, and even black Republicans displayed significant anti-white/pro-black bias in their judgments. …

There is a strange moral asymmetry in modern American politics. Being the only party bound by “fairness”, especially when the other side targets the main demographic group that supports you, is self-defeating.

Which brings us to something Republicans rarely interrogate: their fixation on building a “multiracial coalition”. But coalitions are not abstract art projects. They are built on shared interests. White Americans remain the only racial group that is consistently net Republican at the national level. Black voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic, even when they agree with Republicans on individual policy questions.

Patriotism and free speech are mostly white American values:

Speaking of civic virtues, there is another irony here, and it is one that Republicans rarely say out loud. When it comes to patriotism, whites are the most likely to feel ‘very patriotic’.

And these differences are not merely a function of some other demographic variable, such as gender, age, and income. When these variables are controlled for, the difference in likelihood of giving a patriotic response with non-Hispanic whites as the reference group is -17% for Hispanics, -48% for blacks, and a whopping -89% for Asians. And free speech? That’s also very much a white American value:

 

Immigration:

There is only one America. For many white voters, it is not just a country but an inheritance. A continuity. A story that binds generations. You do not maintain that story by pretending everyone relates to it the same way.

And then we arrive at immigration, the issue that exposes the Republican contradiction most clearly. …

If immigration changes the country in measurable ways — economically, politically, culturally (all of which it in fact does) — then policy considerations should not hinge solely on paperwork status. The characteristics of immigrants themselves matter. National origins, human capital, assimilation patterns, political preferences — these are the real variables, not some legal technicality. …

If white Americans are

• the only group that consistently votes Republican,
• if they are the most attached to American national identity,
• if they are the strongest defenders of constitutional continuity, and
• if they receive little reciprocal political protection in return,

then a question must be asked: what, precisely, is the Republican Party offering its own base?

Political parties exist to represent interests. Not to manage appearances. Not to win applause from hostile commentators. Not to signal virtue while hoping for eventual equilibrium.

The Republican Party has only ever had one demographic group it could reliably count on to keep it viable and to uphold its cherished values, and it cannot even articulate how its strategies tangibly serves them….

Just because the GOP currently remains the best hope for white America (if only because the Democratic Party is brazenly anti-white) does not mean white Americans should sit idly by and passively accept all of its failures.

The Australian parallels are obvious.

 

Not all immigrants are the same. By End Wokeness.

Over 99.5% of the refugees admitted to the US since October were Afrikaaners fleeing South African persecution.

 

Over 99.5% of the refugees admitted to the US since October were Afrikaaners fleeing South African persecution.

Before you ask: Yes, I voted for this. pic.twitter.com/a3ZDmjEwU0

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 5, 2026

 

 

 

How many of these immigrants are going to be on welfare in two years time?

Peace is made by those who fight wars in the correct order and at the right time. By Flat White in The Spectator.

Let’s talk about world war three, and how some of the most intelligent military minds in the world are preventing it on our behalf.

If Tehran switches allegiance, and leans West instead of East, China’s ability to wage war in the Pacific, centred on Taiwan, is severely hindered. …

America has the military strength to deter a full-scale war from either China, Russia, or the Middle East. It cannot fight a war on three fronts simultaneously.

And as for its allies, they are woefully unprepared so we may presume the US bases its predictions largely on military assets it controls.

Ukraine:

This predicament is one of the uncomfortable reasons why the US is dragging its feet on Ukraine. Not only is the European conflict not really America’s responsibility, America benefits strategically from every asset Russia pours into Ukraine. Putin is currently weakening himself as a partner for China even though an eventual victory would translate into strength (after a lengthy recovery). The longer this takes, the better. This calculation infuriates Europe, but Europe made a mistake neglecting its collective military responsibility whilst having full knowledge of Russia’s intention. With the money paid by the UK alone into the European Union, they had more than enough resources to take care of their military needs. They spent it on bureaucrats. …

Iran:

Iran’s funding and spreading of Islamic terror, regionally and into the West, was merely one part of its plan to destroy Western nations such as Australia. Even considering this alone, Iran presents a major risk factor in a future global conflict that could weaken America internally with attacks while it is trying to fight an external war.

Khamenei made this mission very clear and repeated his violent intentions frequently. Iran was not a stable entity. It was an expansionist force in the worst possible way.

Now!

Crucially, Iran was not ready for a full-scale war.

America forced it into one prematurely with the assassination of Khamenei and at least a dozen of the leadership’s officials. … By the end of the week, the military assets of Iran will be of little strategic use to China or Russia. …

Soon:

As the dust settles, the US is looking at a situation with Russia partially exhausted from its war against Ukraine, Iran in a tailspin, and China facing a logistic nightmare.

China is in more of a bind than originally thought. As a large, complex, and energy-hungry entity, it will have to do a lot of reshuffling to keep itself functioning internally, let alone contemplating a military offensive on Taiwan. It is dealing with the very real possibility that its oil and gas supplies from the Middle East could be destroyed, delayed, or flipped over into Western control. All of this shortly after it lost its power in Venezuela.

Trump and the AI money:

Everyone thought I was crazy when I said Trump bestowed almost a trillion dollars on the Middle East under the heading of ‘AI’ to keep them onside in any potential conflict with Iran. They sat on their hands with Trump’s first anti-nuclear strike, and now they’re actively sheltering US forces. It was a deal that most people missed. …

A passive peace with insufficient preparation is the road to extinction:

The truth of human civilisation is that peace is not determined by the peacemakers. It is set out by those nations bent on war and expansion, and those who successfully thwart them.

Leaders like Trump know that a war will be fought. No matter how much money is used to pad the conversation. War is certain.

The question Trump and the West had to ask itself is … what sort of war do they want to fight?

A true third world war with a full-strength Iran, China, and Russia allied with a network of dangerous friends (such as the ‘stans’ and North Korea)?

That’s a war the West loses. That’s a war that sees even Australia, pretending to be Switzerland, overrun. That’s a war that manifests when pacifists and wets are left in charge. It’s the marble tiling of ‘good intentions’ lining the foyer of hell. …

Nations that sit on their hands, close their eyes, and hum quietly to themselves are not smart, modern, civilised, or sensible. They are placing their citizens in danger by failing to acknowledge military reality. And commentators who refuse to accept the approach to war by Islamic and communist regimes do themselves a major disservice.

Glenn Reynolds:

This isn’t war, but collective self-defense on the part of the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and several other countries, which is explicitly allowed by Article 51 of the UN Charter.

David Archibald:

Iran had a plan. It was to make a lot of ballistic missiles and then one day fire a whole lot of them off at Israel.

Amongst the conventional warheads would be 20 or so nuclear warheads. If each nuclear warhead killed 20,000 people, that would be 400,000 dead-odd.

Lefties reflexively oppose any improvement in the world.

Possible related, but funny in any case:

Calla Walsh, Warren’s old staffer, speaking in Iran:

“Glory to all the martyrs, glory to the axis of resistance. May we see victory within our lifetimes. Death to America!”

pic.twitter.com/fD6wRDnau7 https://t.co/dQwPLdh8hh

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 4, 2026

Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on the climate gravy train. Where’s the pushback? By Rei Takver at The Guardian.

As Donald Trump assaults the legal foundation of America’s ability to regulate global warming emissions, climate deniers have been privately celebrating what they claim is the “silent” acquiescence of billionaires, Democrats, climate activists and even reporters to the president’s aggressive pro-fossil-fuel agenda. …

“The Trump administration just marched in and destroyed the crown jewel of climate science in the United States,” Robert Brulle, a professor of environment and society at Brown University, told me, referring to the Trump administration’s dismantling of the country’s premier climate research center, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in December.

“And nothing happened. There wasn’t even a whimper.” …

“I think the climate movement in the United States has failed. It has flat failed, and that means we need to rebuild this movement in a completely different manner,” he said. …

Instead of pushing back on this blitz, many Democratic party representatives have retreated from talking directly about the climate crisis across social media, podcasts, speeches, and in Congress. …

The growing “climate hush” is not limited to the US — a silence about the climate crisis has expanded across the globe.

At Davos in January, world leaders across business and government talked noticeably less about addressing climate change than in previous years.

Joanne Nova:

Donald Trump has driven a poleaxe through the Climate Voodoo Machine — destroying the legal basis for climate activism, pulling out of 66 Globalist agencies, setting the dogs of DOGE onto the climate cheerleaders and threatening the cabal of Banksters. Yet, despite all that, there are no hordes in the streets begging for carbon credit schemes.

Could it be that no one really ever cared?

Even the devoted billionaires can’t manage a press conference from a private yacht to “save the world”.

The people have figured out that climate change was a scam and The Democrats know it. They don’t want to talk about climate change in case they turn off the voters. …

The Guardian has no idea, but Climate Change is dying for all the right reasons. The public figured out that their electricity bills would never go down, and the believers were always wrong. So in the US the voters voted for Trump, and the firestorm that unleashed was exactly what they wanted.

Instead of protesting, Bill Gates dropped everything he used to say and suddenly said we should worry about other environmental issues. And BlackRock and the bankers are more interested in AI. Everyone was more interested in AI, and the datacenters ate the business case for unreliable energy for breakfast.

The climate scare is dying because people have noticed:

1. The climate predictions have failed to come true. (Yes the planet s warming, but not even as much as the minimum warming rates originally predicted — even according to their dodgy temperature measurements that exaggerate the warming).
2. The temperature and climate data prior to 1990 was thrown out and completely revised by the CO2 people. History was flatly contradicted and changed.
3. The temperature measurements of today are made in opaque fashion by the CO2 people. Self-interested, what?

I could tell you precisely what is wrong with the climate models and why they are wrong (but basically unfixable, given today’s state of knowledge), but no one is interested and I’d rather stay out of trouble.

I could also point you to my study using advanced maths of the relationship between the Sun and temperatures on the Earth’s surface, which accounts for the warming since 1650, the little ice age before that, and the medieval warm period before that. In 2015, I predicted a temperature peak in about 2017 then mild cooling for the next decade. That prediction is coming to pass, with the notable caveat that in 2022 an underwater volcano called Hunga Tonga threw up a lot of water vapor high into the stratosphere, which warned the planet dramatically but is now fading as the water vapor gradually falls out of the stratosphere — which will take about five years. (Water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. It is most potent when in the stratosphere, but normally the stratosphere is basically free of water vapor. By the way, jet aircraft emit water vapor in the lower stratosphere where they cruise, and global warming is mainly a northern hemispheric phenomenon.)

Wikilaundering. By X Freeze.

The “Wikilaundering” scandal is finally blowing wide open and it’s worse than we thought …

You do not get information. You get propaganda…. articles manipulated by the highest bidder, billionaires, PR firms, and woke activists …

📍 Shadow Network: London-based PR firms like Portland Communications run secret “black hat” editors and middlemen to bypass every rule

📍 Reputation Scrubbing on Steroids: They delete scandals, human rights abuses, and even controversial Epstein files for powerful politicians…… while scrubbing migrant worker deaths and slave labor scandals for Qatar, covering up ties to terrorists, and burying corporate crimes for billionaire clients

📍 The Price of Truth: Billionaires and corporations pay huge money to bury failures and push lies while their “achievements” sit at the top

📍 Gatekeeping at Scale: A tiny insider group controls what billions see as “fact”

Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It’s a bought-and-paid-for propaganda brochure run for the elite and woke activists

This is exactly why Elon was hell-bent on creating Grokipedia…….the exact opposite: information that can’t be corrupted, altered by price, and is written by real AI that delivers raw data and unfiltered truth instead of the sanitized woke lies sold to the highest bidder

 

By Claire Wilmot.

Wikipedia has been subject to shady, paid-for edits ordered by partners at an elite London PR firm with links to Downing Street. And the clients who benefitted from this “wikilaundering” are some of the world’s richest and most powerful people.

The firm in question is Portland Communications, whose founder Tim Allan is now the director of communications for Keir Starmer. And it has been busted once already for this practice, which is in breach of the British PR professionals’ code of conduct.

But after the firm was exposed, former employees told us, it simply started hiring middlemen instead. As one of them put it: “No one said, ‘We should stop doing this.’ The question was how we could keep doing it without getting caught.”

• Portland’s subcontractors have polished the public image of Qatar by burying references to critical reporting ahead of the 2022 World Cup, according to the firm’s insiders.
• They have also obscured mentions of a major terrorist-financing case involving Qatari businessmen
• Scrubbed evidence that a billion-dollar Gates-funded project failed in its mission; and
• Promoted one side of Libya’s post-Gaddafi government over the other.

Often, however, their changes were more subtle: burying bad press under descriptions of a client’s philanthropic work or swapping out critical news references with something more positive. …

With the rich and powerful ever more eager for their pages to cast them in the best possible light, the demand for Wikipedia editing has never been higher. And that demand is being met by a thriving cottage industry of illicit editors.

Is there nothing money or ideology cannot corrupt? Thank Heavens for X.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump are effective politically because they are so rich. They cannot be bought off, but can do what they think is right without being influenced by offers of payments.

John Cleese Declares “I’m Afraid They Are Going To Have To Arrest Me”. By Jonathon Turley.

In a recent interview, Cleese [now 86] observed that the government’s new speech standards would classify many citizens, including himself, as presumptive criminals for criticizing certain policies.

He observed that: ”As I am an Islamosceptic, I’m now worried that the Labour government may categorise me as a terrorist…”

The government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has continued its headlong plunge into the criminalization of speech. The guidelines include a section on cultural nationalism, stating that such views are now the subject of government crackdowns. To even argue that Western culture is under threat from mass migration or a lack of integration by certain groups is being treated as a dangerous ideology.

Cleese responded by saying, “I’m clearly a terrorist, so I’m afraid they are going to have to arrest me.” …

The United Kingdom has eviscerated free speech in the name of social cohesion and order. …

Yo can be sent to prison in the UK just for having illegal views:

Last year, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

While most of us find Brock’s views repellent and hateful, they were confined to his head and his room.

Yet, Judge Peter Lodder QC dismissed free speech or free thought concerns with a truly Orwellian statement:

“I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” …

Even though Lodder agreed that the defendant was older, had limited mobility, and “there was no evidence of disseminating to others,” he still sent him to prison for holding extremist views.

After the sentencing, Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE), warned others that he was going to prison because he “showed a clear right-wing ideology with the evidence seized from his possessions during the investigation….We are committed to tackling all forms of toxic ideology which has the potential to threaten public safety and security.”

Now apply the same standard to the Koran.

In the UK, words that disagree with the globalist narrative are now increasingly being treated like kiddie porn.

That school in Iran that got hit? Iranian rocket. The media and left lied. By Chaya’s Clan.

A failed missile launch in Iran caused the projectile to fall on a school. Images captured the moment it failed, fell back to ground, and struck.

The Iranians — just like the Palestinians in Gaza at the beginning of that war — immediately claimed it was a missile fired by the United States or Israel.

And the Western media ran with it without checking, because it suited their narrative. Girls (and still some guys), how about carefully reporting just all the relevant the facts, or is that too boring or difficult now?

The elementary school is attached to an IRGC naval base.

And here’s a leftist politician retelling what he almost certainly knows is not true:

🚨 🇺🇸 BREAKING — NEWSOM:

“Why did we help Israel kill little girls?” pic.twitter.com/MHr5HptNT6

— ✦✦✦ 𝙿𝚊𝚖𝚙𝚑𝚕𝚎𝚝𝚜 ✦✦✦ (@PamphletsY) March 2, 2026

 

Mark Twain? Winston Churchill? —  A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on.

 

Is College Making People Stupider? By Rob Jenkins at Minding the Campus.

Recently, I overheard my granddaughter reciting this old rhyme:

Girls go to college
To get more knowledge
Boys go to Jupiter
To get more stupider.

The obvious anti-male bias aside, this is a clever little ditty, at least to a nine-year-old. But I fear she may have it wrong. From what I see on campus and in the country at large, too many people who go to college these days — boys and girls both — do not, in fact, acquire more useful knowledge; they just get stupider. And the worst part is, they don’t even know it.

The poster person for this phenomenon is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has a degree in economics and politics yet doesn’t know the first thing about either. Her monumental ignorance, which is exceeded only by her smug confidence in her own intellectual superiority, was on full display last week at the Munich Security Conference, where, among other things, she claimed that Venezuela is south of the Equator and disputed Marco Rubio’s observation that Spanish explorers introduced horses to the American Southwest.

As the great Thomas Sowell put it, “There have always been ignorant people, but they haven’t always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well-informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes.” …

These days, it appears that for many people, having a degree — or multiple degrees — is counterproductive: they literally become stupider as a result, or at least more ignorant. Perhaps that is because, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, they “know” so much that isn’t true.

Example:

Consider the COVID-19 “pandemic,” when tens of thousands of college students were convinced that the virus was a deadly threat to them, that wearing a cloth mask could protect them from it, and that the mRNA “vaccines” would end the pandemic. None of those things turned out to be true, and at least the first two were known to be false as early as the spring of 2020. But college kids believed the lies they were told not just by the media but by faculty and administrators at their institutions.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones. Millions of Americans were fooled. But you would think people with college degrees, or at least pursuing degrees, would be better at finding information, thinking critically, and reaching logical conclusions. Apparently not. If anything, the more “education” a person had, the more likely they were to buy into the nonsense.

Example:

Then there were the pro-Palestinian “protests” that erupted on campuses across the nation during the spring and summer of 2024. Numerous “man-on-the-street” interviews, like this one, revealed that many of the students chanting “from the river to the sea” could not identify either the river or the sea in question. Nor did they realize they were calling for the eradication of the Jewish state. They didn’t know that there was no such country called Palestine or that Jews had lived in that region for thousands of years. They also had no idea how the modern nation of Israel was formed.

And keep in mind, these protests took place mostly on “elite” campuses, supposedly reserved for the best and brightest among us.

It’s not what you know, it’s signaling your virtue and oppressed status that counts. Such a change in the last few decades, from what made the West so successful.