Streetwise Professor

Yesterday SecWar/Defense Pete Hegseth made something of a splash with an announcement eliminating tenure at service academies. Well, the headlines were somewhat misleading. What he did was announce that in the future the academies would not offer tenure. This, of course, because existing tenure is a contractual commitment that cannot be revoked absent some rather egregious misconduct.

The effect of the change is also less than it appears because tenured or tenure track civilian faculty are non-existent at the Air Force Academy (USAFA), and a small proportion of faculty at West Point (USMA)–27 percent to be exact. Only at my alma mater, Navy (USNA) are civilians a majority of faculty, and most of those are tenured (about 70 percent). So if anything, this is aimed at Navy first and foremost.

Navy has long had a civilian-heavy faculty, and alums point to it as an indication of the greater academic rigor of USNA relative to its peers. (Perhaps that’s what really exercises Hegseth). Indeed, the “Father of the Naval Academy”-William Chauvenet-was a civilian, and responsible for its academic curriculum and hiring in its earliest days 180 odd years ago.

Chauvenet’s history is illuminating on the subject of civilian instructors. He was hired, as a civilian, to teach math to midshipmen on ships, before there was an academy. So even crusty old salts recognized the comparative advantage of civilian instruction. His dismay at the level of instruction midshipmen received led him to advocate the formation of an academy. Originally a two-year institution, he pushed to make it a full four year school. And he wanted it to be academically rigorous, and hence was a strong advocate of hiring civilian instructors. Chauvenet set the course for USNA (no pun intended), and it has sailed that course ever since. That course is fundamentally different from USMA and USAFA (which reflecting the Air Force’s origin in the Army is far more like USMA than USNA).

Chauvenet’s reputation in American academia was stellar. Yale tried to hire him, but eventually he became the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, where he established it as a leading academic institution.*

The age of steam, with its novel engineering challenges, was fundamental in transforming the school and its curriculum. Under steam pioneer Benjamin Isherwood, the Academy became primarily an engineering school. Isherwood was a career officer, but civilian appointments in engineering positions at USNA were common, and remain common today.

So Navy is different, and has always been different. The civilian-heavy instructional staff is reflective of that.

Even at Navy, there is less to Hegseth’s announcement than meets the eye: there is a stock-flow issue. Tenured faculty will decline one retirement (or funeral) at a time, meaning that in the remainder of this Trump term the order will have little effect on faculty composition. Since it well may be reversed under a future Secretary, the effect may be trivial. (I wonder what SecNav nominee Hung Cao, a USNA grad, thinks about this. BTW, there are rumors about that he doesn’t like Hegseth).

The reasons Hegseth gives for his order are eye-rolling:

“To ensure our educational institutions remain firmly focused on this warfighting mission, we must address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality.” . . .“academic stagnation, faculty complacency, and institutional inability to adapt to emerging needs . . . . contributes to curriculum that drifts from the mission of educating our warfighters to the research priorities of the tenured academics.”

“Academic stagnation” and “faculty complacency” are things Adam Smith wrote about 250 years ago, and are hardly accurate characterizations of the civilian faculty I knew. Insofar as “research priorities” interfering with curriculum drift and impeding adaption to emerging needs, Hegseth is spouting nonsense. For one thing, the Academies are teaching schools, with heavy teaching loads where research input and output are low as compared to true research institutions. For another, especially with respect to technical fields in particular (which represent the bulk of civilian faculty at Navy), remaining research active actually facilitates, rather than impedes “adaption to emerging needs.” Hegseth’s statement is a slur on civilian profs at the academies.

Hegseth’s references to “lethality” and “warfighters” suggests the reasons his misguided opinions, and how they are particularly misguided with respect to Navy, where many junior officers spend their early careers managing equipment and technology or managing people who operate equipment and technology rather than pulling triggers.

That contributes to lethality. Indeed, the contribution is vital. If weapons or sensors or engineering plant don’t work, even Alexander the Great can’t make them lethal.

The irony here is that Hegseth claims to be technology-focused, with AI being a prominent example. (More on that story in the future). Well, mightn’t it be a good idea to have some officers educated in this? Wouldn’t the quality of this education be improved by faculty who are specialized in the field and who have a long term commitment to an institution where they teach it?

The only thing that saves Hegseth from his own stupidity here is the limited impact it is likely to have.

But of course there are very online Hegseth throne sniffers who offer their own stupid takes on his stupid policy:

Service academies are not, and should not try to be, butched-up colleges.

If you want the college experience as a student, the be like ‘ole Sal and go NROTC.

If you want to get a tenure track professorship, then look elsewhere to pursue that goal. https://t.co/t2Un49MGdf

— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) September 29, 2026

Er, nobody-and I mean nobody-goes to an Academy to pursue an academic professorship. In fact, one pretty much has to leave an academy if one’s interests lie in that direction. Like me, for instance.** So Jeez, if you are going to try to suck up to Hegseth, at least try to make sense.

The more important part of Hegseth’s announcement is not the tenure piece, but this:

He directed the secretaries of the military departments to develop hiring plans prioritizing “institutional flexibility and contributions to the warfighting mission.”

This is problematic because hiring plans are well downstream from curriculum and curriculum design. Given the existing curriculum, there are at least two strong reasons to lean towards more, rather than less, civilian personnel.

The first is that teaching is a skill. My decades in academia have shown me that most people suck in their first couple of years in the classroom, no matter how great their domain knowledge. At the very least, it takes a few years to develop as teachers even if they don’t suck right off the bat. There’s a lot of learning by doing. Rotational military faculty (which dominate at USMA and USAFA) leave just about the time they hit their stride.

The second is specialization. The old adage about those who can’t do, teach, has something to it. Let eggheads specialize in teaching, and warfighters specialize in fighting wars, rather than having warfighters cosplay as teachers–something that is inimical to Hegseth’s stated objective.

Less flippantly, specialization offers other benefits. Specialists in a field have more domain knowledge and are on average more able to convey it than someone who parachutes in from the Rangers or whatever for a couple of years. Even more prosaically, teaching (especially with the heavy loads at academies) involves appreciable prep/setup time. Those costs are largely sunk for experienced civilian faculty teaching the same course for years. Every rotational faculty member has to incur them, and that happens every couple of years. Is that how Hegseth actually wants “warfighters” spending their time?

And just how, exactly, does one advance warfighting in Calc II? Beginning each class with a hearty “ooh-rah”? (My memories of uniformed profs at Navy–mainly in professional courses–are that they were hardly gung-ho.)

So given the curricula at the academies, reducing civilians in the ranks of professors doesn’t make sense. To the contrary.

Meaning that Hegseth should actually be focused on curriculum, rather than who delivers it. But that’s probably expecting too much from our Pete.

So the real issue is: should the academies have curricula that are comparable to rigorous civilian universities and colleges, with a considerable dollop of military-specific courses and training on top? I think the answer is yes, for several reasons.

The first is that rigorous, non-military education offers other benefits. It is a signal for intelligence and diligence. Done right (something increasingly rare these days) it trains people how to think critically and analyze, generalized skills that are clearly applicable in the military.

The second is that although each offers non-technical degrees (I was an econ major!), the bulk of midshipmen and cadets major in technical fields. (The jocks are an exception–but that’s a whole different subject). The very technical change that Hegseth talks about is a compelling reason to retain this orientation, especially since graduates are very technology facing during the early part of their service.

And even the “softer” fields provide things that advance the military mission of “lethality.” Economics, for example. One of the principles of war is “economy of force”–the efficient allocation of scarce resources to achieve objectives. That’s fundamentally a statement of economics generally that applies at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. As a specific example, constrained optimization is fundamental to economics–and directly applicable to military problems. (Linear programming was developed to optimize the allocation of ships to convoys during WWII). Logistics is in many ways applied economics, and logistics wins wars.

Perhaps if Hegseth understood constrained optimization better, he wouldn’t have shot off a goodly proportion of our scarce weapons in fighting Iran.

An appreciation of history is also a vital war fighting skill. Many great commanders (Napoleon among them, but more recently Norman Schwarzkopf) have been students of history and applied the lessons to win battles. And to win wars–something the US has not been particularly expert at in the last 80 years. Maybe having some more liberally educated officers would help address that problem.

I use “liberally” in that sentence in its traditional sense of “liberal education.” But I have a sneaking suspicion that another sense of the word liberal is what really drives Hegseth’s hostility to civilian faculty: specifically, civilian faculty, even at academies, are politically liberal.

There’s a podcast out there somewhere in which Victor Davis Hanson describes his experience as a visiting history prof at Navy, and his shock at learning how politically liberal the faculty were. When I interviewed for the Admiral Crowe Chair at Navy (which I was offered but declined), I was taken aback at the politics of the economics faculty (and their disdain for many Midshipmen).

But here’s the thing. Most of the faculty I interviewed with were my profs when I was a Mid. Yet I had no idea of their politics, although conditional on their cohort (getting doctorates in the 1960s) it should have been pretty obvious. They taught down the middle, and didn’t poison young minds with liberal dogma. (I’m living proof of that!) Classrooms weren’t politicized by civilian profs in the 1970s. Maybe it’s different now, but I doubt it.

In sum, Hegseth’s initiative is mid-witted and ignorant, and wrapped up on bravado. But I guess at this point, that shouldn’t be surprising.

* I seem to have a weird way of following around prestigious USNA professors, Chauvenet being one and Robert Michelson being the other. After teaching at Navy (where he commenced his speed of light measurements) he went to the University of Chicago, where he spent decades. Both men have academic buildings at USNA named for them. They were pretty new when I was there.

**From time to time during a deposition, opposing counsel thinks there is a dark secret underlying my departure from Navy. So when asked why I left the academy, my stock reply is: “Because I figured out I was more cut out to be a scholar than a boat driver.”

News of socialism on the march comes daily. For example, 50 percent of Democrats view it favorably. It’s actually worse than that, because the energy in the party clearly comes from socialist true believers.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, it is particularly prevalent in the “educated” (i.e., indoctrinated) young. Case in point:

Clara Mattei brilliantly debunks a century of capitalist propaganda by explaining how capitalism is unnatural, has existed for only 0.1% of human history, took control of the world through violence, and is maintained by coercion and the superficial facade of liberal democracy. pic.twitter.com/eNb9SZWYkD

— Power to the People ?? (@ProudSocialist) June 20, 2026

So confident in her mastery of the grand sweep of history, and of her superior grasp thereof in contrast to economists, who are “profoundly ahistorical.”

But in fact she is a poster girl for the Dunning-Kruger effect. She vastly overestimates her intelligence and knowledge.

I’m being kind. She’s a blithering idiot.

To begin with, her whole analysis is predicated on a fallacy–the naturalistic fallacy specifically. Natural does not imply good, unnatural does not imply bad. Hume’s Guillotine (“is does not imply ought”) also applies.

And the statistic she cites–that capitalism has existed .1 percent of human history–demonstrates the orthogonality of nature and worth. That .1 percent of human history also corresponds to the period in which much of humanity escaped abject poverty. The “natural” human state was, as Hobbes put it, brutish, nasty, and short. And to which must be added–profoundly poor.

What changed that? Capitalism. And the parts that didn’t escape grinding poverty were not capitalist. (South African economist William Harold Hutt often pointed out that the poorest regions in the world, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, were the ones least touched by the “highest stage of capitalism,” as Lenin called imperialism).

To believe that “natural” implies “good” requires you to believe that crushing poverty is good.

And who has shown this? Economists. Maybe Clara should read economic historian Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Trilogy. The whole point is how the bourgeois revolution–i.e., the rise of capitalism–propelled Hobbesian humanity into a far more prosperous existence.

And as for economists being historically ignorant, there are many very accomplished economic historians. Robert Fogel, Douglas North, and Joel Mokyr, economic historians all, have won economics Nobels.

And Clara might actually learn something if she read them (and McCloskey) too. For they render risible her situating the beginning of capitalism to the enclosure movement in England. McCloskey in particular decenters (how’s that for prog speak!) England, arguing that the Dutch commercial republic was truly decisive.

The profoundly weird part of her discourse is the full on embrace of Rousseauian noble savage romanticism and her belief that the institutions which she imagines prevailed pre-capitalism would be remotely feasible in a post-capitalist, socialist world.

I say imagined, because she makes things out of the whole cloth. She says that pre-capitalist indigenous societies were egalitarian, consensual, and peaceful. Hardly. She offers a single example–the Cherokee. They had warriors, right? Who were they fighting? Not to mention that they practiced slavery.

Although anthropologists have striven mightily to show that indigenous people lived in a Rousseauian state of nature, the honest ones have often described societies that would make Hobbes blanch. And Steven Pinker has persuasively argued that violence was far worse in the “natural” period of human history than it is in the modern–and capitalist–era.

But even putting that aside, pray tell how we can return to Eden? Path dependency is a thing–you’d think that someone who claims superior knowledge of history would get that. Or maybe she thinks she can actually put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Moreover, a socialist, especially one of the Marxist persuasion, would believe that social organization and institutions are adapted to technological conditions, and that technology shocks drive social change. As Marx put it: “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.”

So even if Mattei’s characterization of societies during 99.9 percent of human history were correct, we can’t go home again. A Marxist would conclude that those social organizations were adapted to the subsistence agricultural, pastoral, and hunter-gatherer production technologies, and are completely maladapted to modern information and industrial technologies.

Meaning that the passionate advocate for socialism doesn’t understand socialism.

Unfortunately, she is hardly alone. I surmise that she is all too typical of western socialism fans, especially the young and “educated.”

But here we are. Mattei and those like her embody the dynamic force in the Democratic Party. She and her ilk will exert substantial influence if Democrats prevail in November, and especially in 2028.

Now they will fail. That’s inevitable. But the damage they can inflict in the process of failing staggers the imagination.

It’s been a little over a week, so enough time to get a better idea of how we got here and where it’s going.

• The mullahs have been fucking around for 47 years. They are finding out, with interest. As someone who came of age during the Hostage Crisis, all I can say is it’s about time.
• So is it just revenge? Hardly.
• So why, and why now? There are many layers to this onion. The outermost one is that it has long been US policy that Iran not obtain nuclear weapons. And for good reasons, not the least of which is that there is a non-trivial probability that as Twelver fanatics they want them to unleash an armageddon that will bring back the 12th Imam. But even if you discount that, it is indisputable that Iran is a revisionist state that wants to completely revolutionize the Middle East, and destroy Israel as a part of that. Nuclear weapons would be both a shield and a sword that would advance that agenda.
• The June 12 Day War (ironic number, there) seriously set back Iran’s nuclear program. Trump then entered into negotiations with them, the objective of which (for the US) was a credible, verifiable Iranian commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. Not only did Iran reject this, it is clear that they were doubling down on their program, and also on their ballistic missile program.
• Iran has long said “America can’t do a damn thing against us.” After June 2025, Khamenei said: “Our response to the US nonsense is clear: they cannot do a damn thing in this matter.” Apparently they repeated that mantra during the negotiations.
• That the mullahs would believe this after 47 years of American fecklessness is understandable. Our bipartisan failure to deal with the problem has emboldened them, and led to this. (Those mocking “TACO” Trump probably further emboldened them).
• Trump obviously concluded that negotiations were never going to achieve US objectives, and that delay would make it more difficult for the US to achieve said objectives. Hence, let slip the dogs of war! Bombs away!
• The opening salvo was apparently somewhat opportunistic, with Israeli and US intelligence providing information that Ayatollah Khamenei and many top regime officials would be meeting for breakfast. What was on the menu? A decapitation strike.
• This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for regime change.
• But although it is clear that the US would welcome regime change–to anything less fanatical than the mullahs–it is similarly clear that the US does not have regime change as a primary objective. Instead, the objective is regime (whatever it is) emasculation.
• That is, to deprive whoever ends up in charge of Iran the capacity to project force beyond its borders. This means, certainly, denying them the capacity to make nuclear weapons. But it also means eliminating their existing ballistic missiles and destroying their capacity to make more. This includes, obviously, their existing missile fabrication facilities, but also the economic foundation necessary to fund it. Hence strikes on oil refineries.
• Thus, we are seeing the most intense aerial campaign since WWII, and given the precision and capacity of American and Israeli weaponry, arguably more intense than even that. Curtis Lemay would be beaming.

• The air campaign is obviously proceeding in stages. First the standard SEAD component (or, more accurately DEAD–destruction of enemy air defenses), combined with stealth and missile strikes at very high value targets and fleeting ones (like Khamenei and the leadership of the IRGC). Now that air supremacy has been achieved, less stealthy but extremely devastating platforms–notably B-52 BUFFs (Big Ugly Fat Fuckers) and B-1 BONES–can roam at will and systematically dismantle anything we choose using JDAMs.
• The media commentary on the campaign has been predictably idiotic.
• The campaign demonstrates, yet again, that Chinese/Russian/Chinese-Russian copycat air defense systems are ineffectual. Their main use is to provide targets that must be disposed of before the real work commences.
• Speaking of China, this is another, deeper layer. Following hard on the heels of Venezuela, Trump is systematically destroying the main plinth of Chinese strategy in the Middle East. Although most commentary focuses on Iran as an oil supplier to China, that’s a secondary role. Iran-China (and Iran-Russia) is a conspiracy of revisionist powers aimed at overturning a US-dominated world order. Iran’s location at a vital energy producing region makes it an exceptionally valuable player in that game. Emasculating it is a serious blow to China’s strategic agenda.
• And eliminating Iran as a threat in the Middle East allows the US to concentrate its military and naval focus on China.
• So, like all things Trump (tariffs, Greenland, Venezuela) this is all about China too.
• The main military issue right now is the Straits of Hormuz. More by threat than action, and with the connivance (witting? unwitting?) or Lloyds of London, ship traffic through the straits has been throttled.
• The destruction of Iran’s navy is part of the US plan to deal with that, but it’s not the most important part. The main threat is from anti-ship missiles and drones. There has been little visibility into what the US (and presumably this is a US Navy/carrier air job) has been doing to Iranian SSASMs.
• Trump has mooted escorting ship traffic, but that has not started. This suggests that the missile threat is still present. Drones will be more difficult to suppress, but they are not as dangerous as missiles, especially to large tankers and freighters.
• This is particularly important because Trump’s main political pressure point that could undo his campaign is energy prices.
• Iran has attempted a Samson strategy, launching ballistic missiles at any nation supporting the US campaign, mainly through basing US military assets and personnel. This has not been particularly militarily successful, and politically it has if anything strengthened the resolve of Gulf nations to see the job through.
• The performance of the US’s erstwhile allies, especially in Nato, has been disgraceful. Leading the Parade of Shame is the UK, which deprived the US of the use of bases in Diego Garcia and the UK. And then changed its mind when the Iranians launched its missiles–as if that was a totally unexpected development. The UK then proved itself utterly impotent militarily, unable to dispatch even a single not-very-capable ship to defend places like Cyprus (which hosts UK bases).
• Spain similarly publicly denied the US the use of Rota (although US planes still land and take off there, so it is hard to know whether this is posing, or a split between the defense minister and the PM, or what).
• As an aside, this forcefully demonstrates a point I made with regards to Greenland: access by agreement is far less reliable than access by ownership. One can readily see the Danes pulling some Starmer- or Sanchez-esque stunt.
• One has to marvel at the depths to which the UK is fallen. John Quincy Adams once warned against the US becoming a “cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war.” Now Britain is more like a kayak in the wake of the US, and is paddling pitifully on an opposite course. Starmer is of course the face of this, but it is the Labour Party more generally that bears the responsibility. Supposedly, the execrable Ed Miliband and other hard core leftist cabinet ministers pushed the 21st century’s “Boneless Wonder” (to reprise Churchill’s description of Ramsay MacDonald) to his passive-aggressive approach. How much the dependence of Labour on Muslim votes had to do with this is an interesting subject for speculation.
• The media (and social media) have been disgraceful, as should be expected. The NYT is all but openly rooting for an Iranian victory.
• The sinking by a US Los Angeles class SSN of an Iranian ship probably captures the media and social media idiocy better than anything. It was in international waters! Er, most sinkings of belligerent vessels are. It was sunk without warning! Uhm, that’s what submarines do. The crew was not rescued by the sub! Yeah. So? FFS, (a) warships have never been subject to “prize rules” that require warning and crew evacuation before sinking, and (b) prize rules for merchant shipping went by the boards in about 1915-6. The US in particular ruthlessly employed submarines in WWII and sunk both warships and merchantmen without warning and without pity. The Iranian ship should have known it was at risk, and interned itself–as another Iranian ship did, apparently learning the lesson from the sinking.
• So where to next? We are at that stage of the war where the original shock (and awe) have worn off to a considerable degree, and the military campaign grinds on. It is likely that the main objectives of destroying Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, aviation, and naval capabilities, and the ability to replace them, will be achieved in relatively short order. The main sticking point, as noted above, is restoring navigation in the Straits of Hormuz.
• As for what happens politically in Iran–who knows? But the important thing is–who should really care? In the US, anyways. A regime, no matter how malign in intent, poses no threat to American interests if its military capacity has been destroyed.
• This relates directly to the bleating–especially from certain elements of the MAGA right–about another forever war. These people should actually be gratified at Trump’s apparent indifference to political outcomes in Iran. Unlike the administrations that waged war in Iraq or Afghanistan, Trump quite clearly does not believe that eliminating a threat from a particular country requires remaking it in our image. Blowing the shit out of it suffices. (Venezuela provides another example of how Trump is willing to accept a regime that is less than savory, as long as it does our bidding).
• This also relates to the media drumbeat that strategic bombing has never resulted in regime change. Again–so what, if the regime is incapable of putting its malign intentions into action? And I would also note that bombing can bring about the end of wars, Vietnam being the best example. The Linebacker campaign (the Christmas Bombing) is what brought North Vietnam to the table. And it was Congress’s elimination of a threat of a resumption of such bombing that gave North Vietnam the confidence to resume the war two years later. NB: the campaign we are seeing in Iran now is Linebacker on steroids. It is the Dick Butkus (or Lawrence Taylor) of air campaigns.

Minnesota governor Tampon Tim Walz inadvertently says the quiet part out loud: there’s insurrection in Minnesota, analogous to the Secession Crisis of 1860:

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz worries that the violence in his state could produce a national rupture:

“I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” https://t.co/yStkbVyqJS

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) January 29, 2026

Yes, Tim. Yes it is. And you are leading it, you rebel you.

By the way, what’s the Minnesota Yell? “Ya, hey”?

The remarkable thing about Minnesota is the dogs that aren’t barking. That is, the near total absence of Minnesota-level chaos and violence in the rest of the country, including places (like Chicago), where ICE is active, and indeed fairly aggressive.

This means that it’s not ICE qua ICE that is the issue here. It is Minnesota-specific.

Indeed, it is localized to Minneapolis.

Almost certainly because Antifa and Antifa-esque elements have decided to concentrated their forces and efforts there. And why? Almost certainly because of state and Minneapolis city officials’ acquiescence at the very least and likely active cooperation.

Walz and Minneapolis mayor (and Somali cuisine gourmand) Jacob Frey and state Attorney General Keith Ellison have channeled the spirits of Southern States Rights advocates from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (cf. Virginia and Kentucky Resolves), John C. Calhoun, Orval Faubus, and George Wallace, invoking the 10th Amendment to declare that the writ of Federal law does not extend to Minnesota, at least with regards to immigration law.

Walz is the Temu W. H. Gist (SC’s governor in 1860). Gist’s son, by the way, was named “States Rights”. (States Rights Gist was one of the six Confederate generals slain at Franklin on 30 November 1864).

Great company there, guys!

Although the ideological polarities of Walz and Calhoun et al seem diametrically opposed, if you look at things at the correct angle you’ll see perfect alignment. States Rights ideology rears its head precisely when Democrats lose control of the Federal government. The Crisis of the 1850s and the Secession Crisis that followed for example, coincided with the looming loss of Democratic control over the Senate due to the likely admission of more free states, and the election of the “Black Republican” Lincoln.

And 175-165 years later, the election of Trump and the resulting exercise of Federal muscle to enforce Federal law has caused Democrats to raise the standards of States Rights and insurrection again.

This presents both an opportunity and a danger to the Trump administration. The opportunity is that the leftists’ decision to concentrate their efforts in Minneapolis should make it possible to take down a significant portion of their insurrectionist muscle and more importantly the financial backers thereof. The street muscle’s indiscriminate use of communications should allow the US to employ its awesome technical means to identify, map, and roll up the insurrectionist network.

Look at the resources and technical means the US government deployed to round up J6 “insurrectionists.” Do the same here. Indeed, it is beyond puzzling that the Trump administration has apparently shied away from doing so until now. Certainly they have not taken actions that would make one believe that they have.

The danger is in the information warfare aspect of the battle. Confronting the useful idiots like Renee Good and Alex Pretti on the streets plays into insurrectionist info ops. The likes of them, and most importantly, their organizers and financial backers, must be accosted at night, at their homes, with no more warning than a loud bang on the door and shouts of “Open up! Federal agents! We have a warrant for your arrest!” Their public appearances should be in shackles, doing the perp shuffle.

And it may come to the point where Walz, Frey, and Ellison are the ones answering their doors–or cowering in fear when they get beaten down.

The administration, and DHS in particular, have done a poor job at managing warfare. Confrontations on the streets apparently intended to demonstrate Federal power have played right into the left’s standard victim-oppressor framing.

Don’t fight on your enemy’s chosen battlefield, which in this instance is the streets of Minneapolis, or using the weapons they prefer, namely firearms and pepper spray. Fight them on the ground you choose–their command and control nodes–using the weapons advantage you have–signals intelligence and other information collection methods.

PS. Tim’s grasp of history is rather weak. He evidently doesn’t realize which side of Fort Sumter he is on. But this isn’t the only illustration. Some weeks ago he invoked the memory of the famous charge of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg. Not only was the charge carried out by Federal forces against insurrectionists, Tim said it happened in response to Pickett’s Charge on 3 July 1863. It occurred, in fact on 2 July, and was directed against Wilcox’s Alabama Brigade. Some social studies teacher, that Tim. But that’s probably a fitting testament to American public education.

Well it looks like the latest outbreak of Trump-y-steria is abating. Smelling salt, rubber sheet, adult diaper, and fainting couch salesmen hardest hit.

The source of the outbreak was, of course, Greenland. Trump made a series of blood curdling threats–curdling Euro blood, anyway. Greenland is vital to American security. Sell it to me or we invade.

The end is nigh! Nato is dead! America is a rogue state! We must surrender to China! (Tell how that is supposed to help, exactly). (Macron has been the surrenderer in chief, which I guess makes sense).

(Macron rocked Davos in aviators. Presumably because his wife rocked him upside the head again).

Scott Bessent joined in smacking around Macron for his poseur act on Greenland:

“If this is all President Macron has to do when the European, when the French budget, is in shambles, I would suggest that he focuses on other things for the French people,” Bessent said.

Then shortly after Trump torched the assembled “elite” in a Davos speech, thereby further amplifying the hysteria (as hard as that is to believe), he and Nato head Mark Rutte announced an agreement on a “framework” for Greenland. In essence, the US will gain control over relatively small parts of the island, including sites for the “Golden Dome” missile shield as well as locations for other installations that allow the US to project power into the Arctic, and crucially to constrain Chinese and Russian access there. Further, the US will obtain access to mineral resources–and China will not.

In other words, everything Trump wanted. And the price: zero.

The Art of the Deal. When will the bedwetters actually read the book?

The outcome suggests the process went something like this. Trump asked for these things, in private, sometime back. The Danes demurred. Trump asked more insistently, and publicly. The Danes continued to refuse, and the rest of the European sob sisters leapt to Denmark’s side. So Trump started to threaten publicly, and turned the threats to 11. After stalwart declarations of Never!, the Danes and the rest of the Euros folded.

Of course the usual idiots are saying “TACO” because Trump didn’t carry through on his threats. No, morons. He didn’t carry through on his threats because he didn’t have to. They worked.

They could have spared the world the drama if they had just played ball. But with them behaving like recalcitrant mules, sitting on their haunches and braying loudly, Trump felt compelled to hit them between the eyes with a 2×4. To get their attention. Which he clearly did.

The Euros have acted like the injured party throughout this contretemps. But it takes two to disagree. There would have been no threat to Nato if the Danes and Europeans had been more cooperative earlier this year, or back in 2019 when Trump first indicated that he views Greenland as vital to US security, and that Europe cannot be relied on to provide that security. (How could he ever get that idea?)

The Euros have shamelessly shirked on their sworn collective security obligations for decades. Giving in on Greenland would be a reasonable gesture of contrition and gratitude. But no. They fought their benefactor, ungrateful bastards that they are.

So Trump had to prove that the old adage (attributed to Al Capone) is true: “You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” But it came to that because of the Europeans.

The Euro deployment to Greenland was performative idiocy that was totally counterproductive. It no doubt infuriated Trump. Further it showed the exact opposite of what they intended. It didn’t show their ability to defend Greenland. It showed their utter incapacity to do so.

The UK sent a troop. Not troops. One officer. The Germans sent a token deployment–for a couple of days. They had to fly a Polish commercial jet to get there. Just how, exactly, could Europe sustain any deployment, no matter how small, to defend against the Russians or whomever? Without the US, they would be starving and frozen within a few days.

And it was clear that their rhetoric at the time suggested that they were showing solidarity with Denmark and would defend the island against . . . the US. Which has defended them for 80 years.

Denmark and many Euros dismissed Trump’s warnings about growing Chinese penetration into the Arctic. “No Chinese ships have been there.”

Really? Tell Danish intelligence.

Here's the report. Definitely worth a read.https://t.co/BCos5u1X0N

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) January 22, 2026

And the Chinese are crying.

Look who's crying. Tells you all you need to know.

Cry more. Please. https://t.co/GPgZhHtz0o

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) January 22, 2026

If they didn’t care about Greenland, they wouldn’t be.

The Arctic has become the cockpit for great power rivalry. Greenland occupies the central location in that great power rivalry. This is especially true in a world of ballistic missiles with trajectories over the Arctic, and with more open water in the Arctic. Its strategic importance to the US is manifest.

Note that the US seized Greenland in the immediate aftermath of the German invasion of Denmark. It played a vital role in the war, not just as an important air base used in the Battle of the Atlantic, but as a location of weather stations that were vital throughout the war, including notably the weather forecast on which the D-Day invasion hinged. The Germans attempted to infiltrate Greenland on multiple times.

Greenland’s strategic importance to the US is greater now than it was then. And since in protecting itself the US also defends Europe, and since Europe cannot secure Greenland like the US can, it is in Europe’s interest to give the US a free hand there. Their recalcitrance and belligerency is self-defeating. They have been slitting their throats to spite Trump.

I’ve been saying “Europe.” I’ve left out Canada. That is a grave oversight. American suzerainty over Greenland bolsters Canadian security more than any other nation’s, given that nation’s huge Arctic coastline.

Yet despite this, Canada’s smarmy, execrable PM Mark Carney pledged his nation to defend Greenland . . . against the US. He (as noted in a prior post) outdid even Macron in toadying up to China pour epater les Americains. And he capped it off with a supercilious speech in Davos which declared the death of the Rule Based Order and called for a coalition of “middling nations” to operate in opposition to the great powers–and pointedly the US.

Of course, he received nothing but hosannas for his rhetoric–empty though it was.

For one thing, yes, the New World Order is now the Dead World Order, but Trump didn’t kill it. He’s just been delivering an acerbic obituary, and moving forcefully to position the US in a Westphalian world contending with revisionist powers. For another, the idea that the middling nations are able, let alone willing, to be a counterweight is farcical.

What the hell is the EU but a coalition of middling nations (and piddling ones)? Its primary characteristics are weakness and indecision. They have not contributed to Nato anywhere near commensurately with their population or economic weight due to free rider problems–which will not go away.

And Canada is the most egregious free rider of all. The once proud and powerful Canadian military, which was stalwart during both World Wars, is now a complete joke.

I have obtained highly classified footage. https://t.co/ySe0ncV05S pic.twitter.com/LtYnQVh16x

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) January 20, 2026

In sum, all this drama over Greenland was completely unnecessary. And rather than being the victims of American bullying, they brought it on themselves. If they had acted in their own interests, rather than behaving like ungrateful brats hanging on to their glory days and resenting their (self-inflicted) power deficit with the US, the same result would have been achieved, to the benefit of both sides, minus the hysteria.

The Eurotwerp meltdown continues.

I blame global warming.

Actually, we all know it’s Trump’s fault.

This German Budestag member is emblematic of the hysteria.

For the first time since WWII, the US is not on our side in Europe. It has sided with the aggressor against UKR and EUR security, seeking to mediate with Russia. The US no longer sees itself as NATO’s leader and treats Europe as a strategic target.
https://t.co/O9X0owL5pr

— Norbert Röttgen (@n_roettgen) December 13, 2025

Such complete bilge. The basic idea is that by forcing Europe to accept reality, the US is siding with the aggressor. Here’s the way the NYT article that Rottgen links to (and is quoted in) puts it:

The future of Ukraine is at the heart of the debate. Mr. Trump is pressing for a settlement to the war on largely Russian terms, and the Europeans see Ukraine as crucial to their own security and are encouraging Kyiv to fight for a better deal.

So, what “better” terms are feasible, actually? We repeatedly hear about “we can’t let Putin win,” the implication being that any end state that does not restore the pre-2014 borders is a grave threat to European security.

OK. Riddle me this: how do you plan to get there? How many Ukrainians will die while Kyiv “fight[s] for a better deal”–that it has no chance of getting? What are the odds that continuing to fight will produce an end result that is worse for European security than what Trump is proposing?

Saying that only the impossible is acceptable and that the US is betraying you by failing to go along is exactly why Trump–and Rubio, and Vance, and virtually all of the administration, and most Americans generally–have had it with you clowns.

In this vein is an article from the FT.

On the one hand, Europe is petrified by the prospects of a Russian invasion–prospects that are completely delusional given the wretched Russian military performance in Ukraine. On the other hand, somehow “strategic stabilisation with Russia” is unacceptable. Er, stabilization would reduce the already de minimis prospects for a Russian invasion of Europe even further. Cold War-esque stasis would be a great outcome for Europe.

That this stasis would involve Russian rule over a blasted, mine- and UXO-strewn, depopulated slice of Ukraine hundreds of miles from the core of the EU is irrelevant. Russian control of a devastated shi!thole (Donbas) has zero implications for Nato. And BTW, Russia already controls 80+ percent of it. Extending the war increases the likelihood it will take more of Ukraine than the Donbas.

In other words, there is no scenario on a set of positive measure that dominates what a cosmically unjust but actually achievable deal in Ukraine would achieve. Indeed, every alternative realistic scenario is worse. For the US. For Ukraine. And for Europe. But they are too idiotic to understand.

Real life often boils down to choosing the least bad option. This is a reality that Europe fails to grasp.

Europe also fails to acknowledge the fact that by letting Russia fuel it, Europe has fueled Russia’s aggression by more than it has supported Ukraine. From the time of Putin’s first incursion in 2014 through 2022, Europe spent between €750 billion and €1 trillion on Russian oil, gas, and coal. Since the 2022 invasion, those expenditures have dropped, but still total around €80 billion. (Some estimates are higher–that’s from ChatGPT). In contrast, European military assistance to Ukraine amounts to a mere €66 billion.

NB: Trump attacked European reliance on Russian energy during his first term. The European (specifically German) response? Supercilious smirking:

Who’s smirking now, bitches? You were warned, but you made your choices. And now you squeal about being forcefully reminded of it. Too bad. Cry more.

Europe complains of having deals done over its head. Er, this is happening because it (again mulishly defying Trump warnings) so underinvested in the military that it is so short on hard power that everything is over its head.

But boys can dream!

I want a EU that strikes fear in Hearts of our enemies
A EU built by Steel & AI
A EU with a heart of Iron 5.0
A EU that lets your fire rise pic.twitter.com/oeqdmcz5B8

— Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn (@GunterFehlinger) December 13, 2025

And I want a super yacht crewed by the Swedish Bikini Team.

My odds are way better than Gunther’s.

An article in Politico (unintentionally) admits what is really going on here:

Hard-right and far-right politicians now lead the polls in France, the U.K. and even Germany. 

Here’s how the power of populist hardliners differs across European countries ? 

? https://t.co/Qdds7Xr6Yy pic.twitter.com/O3zGfyybAL

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) December 12, 2025

The European ruling class is besieged. The peasants are revolting, and the ruling class is channeling its Wizard of Id:

All the while mouthing pieties about “democracy,” the ruling class is doing everything possible to squelch government by the people, from suppressing speech to cracking down on non-ruling class parties. It is deeply insecure, with good reason.

And by speaking bluntly, the Trump National Security Strategy stokes those insecurities. Indeed, the panicked and hysterical European “elite” reaction (which is what you get from X or the media) betrays their sense of weakness and fear. In their hearts, they know he’s right, but to admit it would be a confession of abject failure.

An X follower (@bigwheels89) asked me to post on Ken Burns’ new The American Revolution-An Intimate History documentary. I was planning to anyways, but the nudge got me over my usual tendency to procrastinate. So here it is.

Overall summary: decent–not great–with high variance and frequent eye roll triggers.

To start on the positive. The coverage of the military campaigns was very good . The animated maps in particular were very informative. The war was not characterized by a lot of battles–with the combat in the north being pretty much over by summer 1778 and concentrated in 1780-1 in the south–and the documentation on them is much thinner than for the Civil War, but the documentary succinctly summarizes the major engagements.

One interesting military-related discussion was that relating to the differences in the socio-economic composition of the American army between the ~1775-7 period and the post-1777 years, with the army of the former period having more high status, prosperous men, and the latter being dominated by the economically marginal. My family provides an illustration, with one direct ancestor joining the Virginia Continental Line in February 1776 and another joining the Maryland Continental Line in 1778. The former was a descendent of people who had come to the colonies in the 17th and early-18th century, and who owned property. The latter was a late immigrant (1775) who came as an indentured servant.

Visually, the film is quite striking. This is not a surprise, given Burns’ expertise in the medium. But he deserves extra credit here because he lacks the extensive photographic record of the Civil War, which makes finding the right images far more challenging.

Now for the not so positive. Again not surprisingly Burns constantly genuflects to leftist political pieties, especially relating to race and sex. In so doing, he gives a distorted, and indeed biased, depiction of the remarkable people and events of this remarkable revolution.

And he does so right from the get go, with a recitation of the ludicrous myth that the Iroquois Confederacy was the inspiration for the collective American revolt against Britain and the model for American democracy.

Insofar as democracy is concerned, (a) all colonies had some form of self-government dating back to their founding, and didn’t need instruction from the Iroquois, and (b) the Iroquois Confederacy was a pact between different tribes which were not themselves democratic. It was not a model for a confederacy of independent republics.

With respect to providing a model for the United Colonies and/or United States, it’s hardly as if the Iroquois were the only, or even primary, example of a confederation of league of independent states who united in a common cause without sacrificing their sovereignty. The very words “confederation” and “confederacy” make this clear, both being derived from the Latin confoederatio. If it’s Latin, it’s an old idea. The Old Swiss Confederation dates from the 1350s. And the history of Europe is sprinkled with various “leagues” (another meaning of confoederatio). Hell, there were obviously famous leagues in ancient Greece (e.g., the Delian League).

Burns quotes a Benjamin Franklin reference to the Iroquois Confederacy to support his claim. But Franklin’s statement was pretty snarky, basically saying “look, you idiot Americans, even savages can do it–why can’t you?”

Indians play a prominent role in the documentary beyond their supposed inspiration of ‘Merica. This is reflective of historiography of the last 40 odd years, which does elevate the importance of Native Americans. That is largely justified, but one can go too far, and I think Burns does here. For example, he hypes the importance of the Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act, which put trans-Appalachia off limits to American settlers. Yes, it was an irritant to the colonists, but it was just one such and arguably one of the least important.

As the documentary makes clear-and everyone with the slightest knowledge knows, Massachusetts, and particularly Boston, were the epicenter of the Revolution and that events there were the primary driver of the independence movement. Boston’s ferment had virtually nothing to do with Indian lands in the West. The Revolution started in one of the eastern-most, most oceanic world-facing colonies. The main Native American shading of Boston’s revolutionary fervor was that the participants in the Tea Party dressed up (badly) as Indians.

And of course there is an obsession about race. Again, the black experience and black contribution to the Revolution were traditionally underplayed, but Burns goes overboard in trying to make up for that.

Yes, it’s good to inform people of the fact that up to 10 percent of the Continentals were African American. But the repeated reminders (e.g., in the part about the Marblehead Regiment (14th Connecticut Continental Line) rowing Washington’s beleaguered army from Long Island to Manhattan after the disaster at Brooklyn Heights) are an irritating narrative tic.

As is Burns’ apparent conviction that it is necessary to remind the viewer after every quotation from an American speaking about “liberty” or “freedom” that this did not apply to “enslaved people.” (Eschewing the word “slaves” is itself a PC tic).

Yes. We know. We’ve known for a long time. Hell, they knew it at the time. Saying it once or twice is perfectly fine but the now-for-a-word-from-our-sponsor regularity is unnecessary and annoying.

It also obscures the fact that the colonists’ desire for self-government and individual liberty was sincere, genuine, strong, and almost unique in the world. And if it was tinged with hypocrisy, so be it: what human endeavor is not? And what’s more, a necessary condition for eliminating human bondage is a belief that “all men are created equal.” Without that belief, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the political dynamic that eventually ended slavery would never have played out.

That is, by obsessing on the hypocrisy Burns denigrates the ideal that (some) Americans were hypocritical about. It thereby obscures the truly remarkable and world-changing nature of the Founding and the Founders, their beliefs, and their actions. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and by hyperventilating over imperfection Burns buries the good.

Along these lines are the repeated references to Lord Dunmore’s proclamation freeing slaves that fled their masters. Burns insinuates that this put the British on a higher moral plane than the Americans.

Hardly. Dunmore’s act was hardly in conformity with, say, Kantian ethics. He was using blacks as a means to achieve his own and his government’s ends. It was pure military expediency with no moral element at all (as Dunmore’s previous acceptance of slavery demonstrates). The persistence of the even more brutal slavery in the British sugar islands further demonstrates that the British could claim no moral superiority over the Americans. Yes, some blacks benefited (though as Burns does note most did not, either dying from smallpox and other diseases or returning to slavery), but this was clearly an unintended consequence of the act.

It would have been OK if the film had checked the diversity boxes and moved on. But too often the diversity boxes overwhelm the truly important narrative.

The Revolution was truly an epochal event. It produced a nation and a government that like all human endeavors were imperfect, but which represented a stunning advance beyond anything seen on earth before. No successor revolution produced anything so remarkable. Indeed, the two most prominent–the French and the Russian–are most notably for the political chaos they unleashed, and the rivers of blood that they caused to flow.

Burns should have taken his cue from someone he claims to admire–Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was acutely aware of the fundamental defect of the founding, and spoke about it often and eloquently. But he also admired intensely the Founding, the Founders, and the foundational document of the Revolution–the Declaration of Independence–written as it was by a slaveholder.

Lincoln knew that the ideal at the heart of the revolution was universal and eternal, and that much of American history up to his day was devoted to trying to realize that ideal. That is why he spoke of forming “a more perfect Union.” That framing acknowledges imperfection. But that involved living up to the ideals of the Revolution–which were unique in human history.

That is, Burns’ documentary is severely undermined by severely misplaced emphasis. He underplays what is truly revolutionary about the Revolution, and overplays the all too human behavior of those who made it. The Founders–and we–deserve better.

X follower A Roehart apparently not only knows me, but can read my mind:

I’m sure @streetwiseprof has written on the travails of the USN. Shocking.

— A Roehart (@JAH5198) November 27, 2025

I say read my mind because on today’s agenda was writing a post on this latest US Navy clusterfuck of a shitshow: the cancellation of the Constellation class frigate program with two ships partially completed.

Yes, I knew they were late. Yes, I knew they were over budget. What isn’t in the USN? But this made my head explode: “Weight growth reduced the speed to below 25 knots.”

25 knots? RUFKM?

I say again: 25 knots???

Great! They could keep up with battleships launched in 1912! A nuke carrier or an Arleigh Burke? Not so much.

To put things in perspective, a WWI era four stacker could make 35 knots with 300 psi boilers.

Who would even think about proceeding with construction of a ship class that is so overweight Ozempic couldn’t fix it?

The basic lesson here is that every aspect of Navy shipbuilding (and per A Roehart’s point, procurement generally) is broken, from design to construction.

The supposed genius of the Constellation program was that it would be based on a proven foreign design. Then the Navy would do a few tweaks to improve, and voila! A reliable class that could be churned out quickly and (relatively speaking) inexpensively.

But nooooo. Tweak was layered on tweak, which was layered on more tweaks, until the sleek foreign frigate became an American fatso frigate that gets out of breath when breaking 20 knots. And all that tweaking took time and money.

No doubt the Navy wanted the perfect frigate. But the perfect is the enemy of the good. And even a faulty frigging frigate is better than no frigging frigate at all. Which is what we have, after the expenditure of much treasure and time.

In WWII, the US was renowned for producing adequate but not stellar armaments, but doing so in huge numbers and low cost. In contrast, the Germans were renowned for producing state-of-the-art weapons in low numbers and exorbitant cost. Think of the M4 Sherman vs. the Tiger or Panther.

Remind me: who won?

The US has evidently adopted the German philosophy, and jettisoned its own. No more so than in the Navy.

Or put differently, as Stalin (supposedly) said “quantity is a quality of its own.” The US Navy needs hulls in the water. Functional, pragmatic ships (Nimitz always bridled at calling Navy ships “vessels,” which reminded him of chamberpots).

Moreover, since the dawn of naval warfare it has been recognized that the optimal fleet consisted of specialty types with relatively narrow functionality that performed complementary functions. A combination of high end and low end, with frigates (from the days of sail, for crissakes) being at the low end. The Oliver Hazard Perry class of FFGs introduced in the 1970s are an excellent example of this.

But the Navy has instead tried to create ships that do it all and end up doing nothing. Not least because they don’t get built.

Who is to blame? Everybody. Generations of Navy brass and civilian leadership, of course. But also Congress and the defense contractors.

How to fix it? With some accountability, to start with. Who has ever been held accountable for past fiascos, e.g., LCS or Zumwalt? Indeed, if anything there has been negative accountability. How many military officers or Pentagon bureaucrats have moved into cushy jobs at contractors?

The more this happens, the more attractive the Admiral Byng corrective (“pour encourager les autres”) appears.

If you deem that too extreme, then Commander Salamander’s suggestion of defenestrating everyone RADM and above, and their Pentagon civilian counterparts, is a good start. They are products of a diseased culture and the culture must be purged to be (in Sal’s words) “baseline reset.” Yes, it is collective punishment, but the collective is at fault.

I am ambivalent about Pete Hegseth, but one thing he has done that deserves support is his recent initiative to reform defense procurement. Alas, it is an initiative, not a fait accompli. Whether it is even possible to reform so thoroughly broken a system is, alas, highly uncertain.

At the front end of a trip to speak at a conference at Nantes University (a talk titled “PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE–Manipulation Through the Ages”) I did a day trip to see American World War I battle sites along the Marne and in the Argonne.

With the exception of Belleau Wood, where German positions are still visible, for the most part there’s little physical evidence of the titanic battles. However, in the aftermath of the war the United States (and several individual states) created truly stunning, massive monuments, and the US established beautiful and haunting cemeteries.

Here are some photographs of them from my trip.

Chateau-Thierry is the biggest:

Chateau-Thierry was the site where the US Third Infantry Division (“The Rock of the Marne”) helped stop a German offensive in the Second Battle of the Marne.

Montfaucon:

Montfaucon was a dominating German position that was the objective for the American attack on the first day of the Meuse-Argonne offensive. It was taken, but at heavy cost.

Belleau Wood–a small memorial, but evocative.

This is where the Marines won eternal fame, and earned from the Germans the epithet “Devil Dogs.” In the background you can see captured German field pieces, displayed like trophies.

As for the cemeteries, here’s the chapel at Aisne-Marne. (All of the American cemeteries have elaborate chapels).

The chapel at the biggest cemetery (bigger than Normandy, in fact), the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery in Romagne.

It’s a challenge to photograph these edifices because they are all so damn large.

Chateau-Thierry and Meuse-Argonne have very tasteful and informative museums. Chateau-Thierry’s tells the story of the entire war, with a focus on the US involvement. Meuse-Argonne is more focused on the offensive bearing that name. Both are definitely worth spending a good amount of time at.

All of the monuments and cemeteries are in immaculate condition. The stone looks like it was quarried and finished last week. No graffiti or other defacements. They are very fitting memorials to those who fought. The American Battlefield Monuments Commission, established in the 1920s and responsible for stewardship of the sites to this very day, has done and continues to do a remarkable job to preserve and manage these edifices.

The US was heavily engaged in WWI for a matter of mere months. Virtually all US casualties were incurred between late-May and 11 November, 1918, a period of less than six months. This is quite remarkable when you consider the US total deaths in WWI were about 1/4th of those sustained in WWII, despite the facts that the latter war lasted over 7 times as long; US population was significantly smaller in 1918 than 1941-5; and that WWII casualties occurred across the globe, whereas those in WWI were concentrated in an area that I traversed by car in a couple of hours.

The casualty rates were sobering. The Chateau-Thierry memorial states that the US casualty rate in the Second Battle of the Marne was 33 percent. That is high for an individual regiment or division. It is extremely high for an entire army.

America was–for a time–proud of its contribution and its accomplishments, and deeply mourned its dead, and therefore found it fitting an necessary to honor its soldiers in stone. Hence these incredibly moving and imposing monuments and cemeteries. They dwarf anything the US did after WWII.

Thus, the monuments are as interesting as sociological and historical statements as they are as records of deeds that are, alas, largely long forgotten. They are a testament to American attitudes and beliefs in the era when the nation truly emerged on the world stage. The 1920s were an era of unbounded optimism and national pride, and 100 years later these monuments testify to that fact.

I also visited the area where one of my heroes, Alvin York, performed his incredible deeds during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in October, 1918. I took the “Alvin York Trail” leading from Chatel-Chéhéry. This trail purports to follow York’s route when he killed 28 Germans and captured 132 more.

I say “purports” because there is a bitter dispute over where he actually fought. Two teams have excavated the hills near Chatel-Chéhéry, and claim to have found evidence (e.g., cartridge cases, US unit badges, German unit badges) showing that THIS was where York was–but the sites are some distance apart.

Overall, I think that the claim of the Tennessee team, described in this book, is the more plausible. Unfortunately, the trail was marked by the other team, led by LTC (Ret.) Douglas Mastriano, and there is no equivalent route to the Tennessee team site.

But I can say that I was definitely in the neighborhood, and in the walk from Chatel-Chéhéry I could get an idea of the terrain traversed by the attackers from York’s 82nd Infantry Division, and a sense of the strength of the German position.

World War II eclipsed World War I in the American memory, albeit understandably. But it is good to remember America’s role in the Great War, and it is a blessing that it is possible to do that in the confines of a short November day in France, due to the monuments that a grateful nation erected in an effort to see that we would never forget.

Trump declared Antifa a terrorist organization. Which–I hope you are seated before you read this–sent Democrats into paroxysms of rage. Because Antifa doesn’t exist!

NY Representative and all around scumbag Daniel Goldman’s take is representative:

Name one member of “Antifa.”

If it “explicitly” calls for the overthrow of the USG, where can I find that statement?

Trump is trying to suppress opposition by labeling anyone who dissents as a “domestic terrorist.”

Do not be fooled: This is lawless and unconstitutional. https://t.co/KmPYrAQew8

— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) September 23, 2025

But of course Goldman is just one in a long line of Dems who have denied Antifa’s existence, and claimed that Antifa is merely an idea. These include Joe Biden, Jerold Nadler, and Christopher Wray among many others. (And yes, I definitely peg Wray as a Democrat).

Of course Antifa exists. It was on the streets of Eugene, Oregon yesterday:

Breaking: Antifa has surrounded the federal building in Eugene, Oregon, to protest ICE.

The domestic terrorist group is posted up at the entrances/exits, pounding on doors and windows.

Sources inside say employees are having to find alternative exits. pic.twitter.com/T4guyJDVzZ

— Katie Daviscourt ? (@KatieDaviscourt) September 23, 2025

There’s even a handy “handbook”:

(That by the way is another scumbag, Keith Ellison, Attorney General of the People’s Republic of Minnesota).

In the aftermath of Trump’s announcement, there has been much chin pulling over how it is possible to attack Antifa without violating rights of association. (Unasked is how people are associating in something that doesn’t exist). Or how it is even possible to attack an idea, something that does not have corporeal form.

This isn’t hard. Although the Democrats may hate the comparison, Antifa bears marked similarities to the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, Antifa and the KKK are doppelgängers. The horseshoe of domestic terrorists.

The United States government aggressively attacked the KKK twice. If the USG can legally and Constitutionally dismantle the KKK, as it did, twice, it can dismantle Antifa.

There were basically three iterations of the KKK: during Reconstruction (“KKK 1.0”), during the 1910s-20s (“KKK 2.0”), and during the 1950s-60s (“KKK 3.0”). KKK 1.0 and 3.0 were identical to today’s Antifa in all relevant dimensions.

From Wikipedia (yes, I know, but this is accurate):

 The Klan sought to overthrow Republican state governments in the South, especially by using voter intimidation and targeted violence against African-American leaders.The Klan was organized into numerous independent chapters across the Southern United States. Each chapter was autonomous and highly secretive about membership and plans. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks and pointed hats, designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities.

The only real difference is that Antifa “costumes” are rarely colorful. They are almost always black. But the two groups have “highly autonomous,” “secretive,” and “[hiding] identities” in common. Also common to them is “targeted violence” aimed at government overthrow.

You could say that KKK 1.0 was the reificaton of an idea–the idea of white supremacy and white control over state and local governments in the South. Antifa differs only in what idea it reifies–communist revolution, rather than white supremacy.

Klan 3.0 was very similar to its post-Civil War antecedent. Like KKK 1.0, it consisted of “local chapters with little or no central direction.” Like KKK 1.0, thse local chapters relied on secrecy and terror to commit local violence to achieve similar outcomes throughout the South.

And of course the US government targeted the Klan during Reconstruction. In 1871 a federal grand jury found that the Klan was a “terrorist organization” and handed down hundreds of indictments. President Ulysses S. Grant used the powers granted by the Civil Rights Act of 1871, commonly referred to as the “KKK Act,” to suppress Klan 1.0. Historian Eric Foner states: “By 1872, the federal government’s evident willingness to bring its legal and coercive authority to bear had broken the Klan’s back and produced a dramatic decline in violence throughout the South. So ended the Reconstruction career of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Although parts of the law allowing the Federal government to prosecute for murder and assault were found unconstitutional, other parts remain in effect and have been codified into US law. Moreover, the USG has legal means that allow criminal prosecution of the parts declared unconstitutional in 1872. For example murders or attempted murders of federal officials (like ICE agents), destruction of Federal property, and the like can be prosecuted under US law.

The US government used these powers to crush Klan 3.0. As a result of this aggressive campaign, it is a pathetic shadow of its former self.

What it comes down to is that the Federal government can prosecute individuals who commit violations of Federal law. It can focus its efforts on organizations or associations whose members commit such violations, or are highly likely to. It cannot prosecute members just for being members, but it can prosecute them for crimes they commit, and indeed, it can prosecute them under Federal conspiracy statutes. Such prosecutions can cast a wide net that catches many members of an organization.

Historically the Federal government has focused on the KKK, used myriad means to infiltrate its various autonomous entities, and prosecuted those who commit crimes under its banner. (NB: Antifa literally has a banner). It has twice, nearly a century apart, crushed the Klan.

It can do the same with Antifa–if it decides to. It can use the exact same playbooks it has employed against the Klan and other groups–if it decides to. All Trump is saying is–he has decided to.

What is striking is that previous administrations decided not to, and did so quite deliberately. And indeed, they claimed that there was nothing to go after, despite the evidence of Antifa’s existence and malignity that was in plain sight.

This raises the question of why, and the answer is most likely a disturbing one. And again, there are echoes with the Klan.

Foner wrote: “In effect, the Klan [1.0] was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy.” The same was true of Klan 3.0. A colorable case can be made that today one can substitute “Antifa” for “the Klan,” and the statement holds with equal force today. Another way in which the Klan and Antifa are doppelgängers.

If you find this comparison over the top, then riddle me this: why is the Democratic Party so determined to shield Antifa from attack by Federal law enforcement, and so hell-bent on denying its very existence? Perhaps people like Daniel Goldman don’t actively conspire with Antifa, but their efforts to defend it strongly suggest that Antifa serves their interests. It is useful to have around, so they want to protect it.

An article in the Washington Examiner compared the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein to Antifa and the Democratic Party, respectively. The comparison is an apt one. The Provisional IRA was a terrorist organization that shared political objectives with the political organization Sinn Fein.

I think the administration should play up the Antifa-Klan comparison. The similarity in methods and structure justify action against Antifa: if the threat posed by the Klan justified a concentrated Federal effort to destroy it, the similar threat posed by Antifa does the same. Further, making the Klan comparison is a simple way of demolishing the various objections that have been raised to the feasibility of targeting Antifa. And it puts the Democrats in the position of trying to deny that Antifa exists even in the face of the evidence that an aggressive campaign against it will inevitably produce.

But of course that is what they will do. Deny. Gaslight. Obfuscate. And let them. That will only cement in the public’s mind the connection between Antifa and the Democratic Party, just as their pathetic objections to more aggressive prosecution of crime cements the connection between them and criminality.