The Free Press adapts Ben Shapiro's recent speech at Turning Point USA's "AmericaFest", where he played Obi-Wan Kenobi to a crowd that may have contained a lot of Anakin Skywalkers: Only Cowards Tolerate Conspiracy Theorists.
It's a well-organized and thoughtful screed against today's know-nothings. Just an excerpt:
Emotive accusations, conspiracy theories, and “just asking questions” is lazy and stupid and misleading. None of them are a substitute for truth. So when Candace Owens says, “I don’t know know, but I know,” that’s retarded, and we are all more retarded for having heard it. When Steve Bannon, for example, accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country, he’s not actually making an argument based in evidence—he’s simply maligning people with whom he disagrees. Which is par for the course from a man who was once a PR agent for Jeffrey Epstein.
Our duty to provide you evidence means we must do much more than “just ask questions.” Just asking questions is what my 5-year-old does. And it’s cute when it comes from a 5-year-old. But when grown men and women spend their days “just asking questions” without seeking answers, they’re lying to you. In fact, they’re doing something worse: They’re seeding distrust in the world around you, and enervating you in the process.
So, for example, if Tucker Carlson gets onstage here at TPUSA and claims, without evidence, that Epstein was running a Mossad rape ring being covered up by the Trump administration, they are not uncovering a conspiracy or effectuating a solution. They are claiming a special provenance to information they won’t let you see, which builds their power and leaves you with none. They are also implicating in their speculation actual human beings, like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi, and yes, the president of the United States, even if they are too pusillanimous to say it. And that means you won’t trust any of those people in the future. You haven’t gotten smarter. You’ve just been manipulated.
Since I am not Richard Hofstadter, I don't believe that "our side" is uniquely susceptible to conspiracism; it's just a misfeature of human psychology. Grifters and charlatans of all political persuasions take advantage of it. Ben deserves credit for calling it out.
Also of note:
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I guess irony can be pretty ironic, sometimes. Jeffrey Blehar notes a recent case: Instead of Draining the Swamp, Trump Starts Renaming It After Himself. (archive.today link)
On Wednesday Donald Trump unveiled his newest addition to the White House, a series of presidential plaques featuring Trump’s own highly ungrammatical (and wildly undignified) opinions on his predecessors, engraved for posterity’s sake and put on public display. I wrote about it on Thursday morning, thinking I’d said enough about Trump’s attention-seeking and glory-thirsting outbursts for one week.
Two hours after that piece was published, Trump announced he was renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. It felt like getting slapped with a backhand after having already taken the forehand.
To be technically accurate, it was the Trump-appointed board of the Kennedy Center Foundation that voted “unanimously” to rename what was once Washington’s fanciest concert venue, but something tells me they may have acted at their dear leader’s behest. Karoline Leavitt’s announcement reads as if it was written by Trump for her — and given how distinctive Trump’s writing style is, that’s not a bad bet:
I have just been informed that the highly respected Board of the Kennedy Center, some of the most successful people from all parts of the world, have just voted unanimously to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center, because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building. Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation. Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur.
How long before Karoline starts referring to her boss as "Dear Leader"?
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Sorry, President Rosenberg. Last year, I read “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” by erstwhile president of Macalester College, Brian Rosenberg. One of the regrettable parts of the book was his cavalier dismissal of free expression among inhabitants of academe as "the right simply to act like a jerk." His footnote-example of jerkiness was Stuart Reges; his sin was to include a mock "land acknowledgement" in his University of Washington computer science course syllabus claiming that "by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington."
This was at odds with UW's recommended boilerplate wording. Punishment from higher-ups was swift.
But the latest development is good news for free expression, bad news for wannabe college-president censors. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression reports: VICTORY: Court vindicates professor investigated for parodying university’s ‘land acknowledgment’ on syllabus
SEATTLE, Dec. 19, 2025 — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today delivered a decisive victory for the First Amendment rights of public university faculty in Reges v. Cauce. Reversing a federal district court’s opinion, the Ninth Circuit held University of Washington officials violated the First Amendment when they punished Professor Stuart Reges for substituting his satirical take on the university’s preferred “land acknowledgment” statement on his syllabus.
The decision gets remanded to the district court, which (I guess) will decide appropriate penalties for UW. Hope they are steep.
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Yale nearly GOP-free. Jonathan Turley reports on a recent Study: Yale Has Eliminated All Republican Faculty from 27 Departments.
Yale has finally achieved liberal nirvana. According to a recent report from the Buckley Institute, there is now not a single Republican found across 27 of 43 departments at Yale University. In a nation roughly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats (with a slight advantage to the GOP), only 3 percent are Republicans across all Yale departments.
Jonathan doesn't elaborate on the Buckley/Yale connection going back to 1951, when recent graduate William F. Buckley published God and Man at Yale, a searing critique of his collectivist/secular alma mater.
In the 74 years since, Yale has managed to get worse, ideological monoculture-wise.
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Could be a cool idea. Alex Tabarrok suggests: Bring Back the Privateers!
Senator Mike Lee has a new bill that encourages the President to authorize letters of marque and reprisal against drug cartels:
The President of the United States is authorized and requested to commission, under officially issued letters of marque and reprisal, so many of privately armed and equipped persons and entities as, in the judgment of the President, the service may require, with suitable instructions to the leaders thereof, to employ all means reasonably necessary to seize outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and its territories the person and property of any individual who the President determines is a member of a cartel, a member of a cartel-linked organization, or a conspirator associated with a cartel or a cartel-linked organization, who is responsible for an act of aggression against the United States.
SECURITY BONDS.—No letter of marque and reprisal shall be issued by the President without requiring the posting of a security bond in such amount as the President shall determine is sufficient to ensure that the letter be executed according to the terms and conditions thereof.
Interested? You'll want to check out Alex's paper: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Privateers
My major gripe is that the enumerated power to "grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal" is Constitutionally assigned to Congress. Senator Lee's bill seems to simply punt that power over to the Executive. Don't they do enough of that? Isn't that a pretty bad idea?
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