Doug Wilson Explains the Future American Christian Theocracy

Pete Hegseth's pastor and mentor says the United States should ban public Masses, Marian processions, and Corpus Christi devotions. Hegseth invited the anti-Catholic preacher to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon on February 14.

From here.

Video here.

The Good Old Days

Discontent fueled the 2025 New York City mayoral election and Zohran Mamdani’s victory. A common theme echoed across the five boroughs: New York is a hard place to live. “We are overwhelmed by housing costs,” said Santiago, a 69-year-old retiree, outside a Mamdani rally. Those opposed to Mamdani had their own complaints. María Moreno, a first-time voter from the Bronx who supported Andrew Cuomo, lamented, “Now everything’s dirty, and our neighborhood does not feel safe.”

Today’s voters have legitimate grievances. The city’s housing costs, quality-of-life issues, and perceptions of disorder weigh heavily on residents’ minds. But it’s important to keep things in perspective. Different voters may romanticize different eras, but many seem to share a sense that if they could travel back far enough in time, they’d find a New York that was once clean, safe, and affordable. When Americans were polled in 2023, almost 20 percent said that it was easier to “have a thriving and fulfilling life” hundreds of years ago. Across the country, as one writer put it, people are engaged in an “endless debate around whether the pre-industrial past was clearly better than what we have now.” In fact, Mamdani’s politics are grounded in an ideology that first arose from the frustrations of the early industrial era.

If Americans could go back in time to preindustrial New York City, however, they’d likely be horrified and possibly traumatized. Despite today’s real challenges, most New Yorkers would not trade places with their predecessors.

Long before the rise of factories and industry, New York City was a bustling port, founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam in order to trade furs in the early seventeenth century. As early as 1650, local authorities enacted an ordinance against animals roaming the streets to protect local infrastructure—but to no avail. Then, in 1657, according to the Dutch scholar Jaap Harskamp:

New Amsterdam’s council attempted to ban the common practice of throwing rubbish, ashes, oyster-shells or dead animals in the street and leave the filth there to be consumed by droves of pigs on the loose. When the English took over the colony from the Dutch, pigs and goats stayed put. . . . Pollution persisted. The streets of Manhattan were a stinking mass. Inhabitants hurled carcasses and the contents of loaded chamber pots into the street and rivers. Runoff from tanneries where skins were turned into leather flowed into the waters that supplied the shallow wells. The (salty) natural springs and ponds in the region became contaminated with animal and human waste. For some considerable time, access to clean water remained an urgent problem for the city. . . . The penetrating smell of decomposing flesh was everywhere.

Into the early twentieth century, urban living in the United States felt surprisingly rural and agrarian, with an omnipresent reek to match. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, pigs roamed freely through New York City streets, acting as scavengers, and nearly every household maintained a vegetable garden, often fertilized with animal manure.

Indoor air quality was no better. A drawing from Mary L. Booth’s History of the City of New York depicts a seventeenth-century New Amsterdam home with smoke from the fireplace swirling through the room. Indoor air pollution remains a serious problem today in the poorest parts of the world, as smoke from hearths can cause cancer and acute respiratory infections that often prove deadly in children. One preindustrial writer railed against the “pernicious smoke [from fireplaces] superinducing a sooty Crust or furr upon all that it lights, spoyling the moveables, tarnishing the Plate, Gildings and Furniture, and Corroding the very Iron-bars and hardest stone with those piercing and acrimonious Spirits which accompany its Sulphur.”

Read the rest here.

The Making of a Forever War in Iran

President Donald Trump has plunged the United States into an open-ended war with Iran, lacking clearly defined and achievable objectives, a discernible endgame, or a viable exit plan. This is a war of choice—Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and the White House is now scrambling to devise a strategy for a war already underway and proving more difficult than anticipated.

The war will likely escalate as Iran digs in and hawkish voices push Trump toward maximalist—and largely unachievable—aims. By setting this crisis in motion, the Trump administration is repeating the same failures that have long defined US Middle East policy. Absent a course correction, the United States is on the path to another forever war.

Trump’s ostensible justifications for this war have shifted repeatedly, as have the stated objectives.

Prior to the initiation of Operation Epic Fury, the stated casus belli for military action provided by the Trump administration was fluid and contradictory. They oscillated between targeting Iran’s nuclear program (which Trump insisted he had destroyed last year during Operation Midnight Hammer), destroying its ballistic missile program, and liberating the Iranian people. Despite polling showing that the vast majority of Americans opposed and still oppose such a war, Trump proceeded undeterred.

The stated rationales have been no less fluid and contradictory since the war began. When announcing the war, Trump claimed Iran posed an “imminent threat” to the United States and openly embraced regime-change in Tehran as his objective, urging the Iranian people to “take back” their country. Since then, the Trump administration initially walked back its intentions, rhetorically distancing itself from regime-change—even after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but recently claimed Trump needed to be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader.

Read the rest here.

DOJ seeks tighter grasp on state bar ethics probes

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is turning its focus to state bar associations in its quest to clamp down on the weaponization of the justice system. 

As DOJ lawyers face piling complaints, the government is seeking greater control over the ethics probes that can result in disciplinary actions including disbarment.  

It has prompted a firestorm of questions about the agency’s bid for a tighter grasp on the consequential investigations. 

“It is a DOJ power grab,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics scholar at New York University School of Law. 

In a notice posted online in the Federal Register, the Justice Department proposed a new regulation that would let it intervene in state bars’ disciplinary investigations, including with the authority to review any allegations against DOJ lawyers first.  

It would amount to a request for state bar authorities to suspend their probes until Attorney General Pam Bondi completes her own, though DOJ itself could not force the state bars to halt their reviews. DOJ declined to comment on the matter Thursday.   

Such investigations can eventually lead to disbarment, but the process can take years to complete.    

The Justice Department casts the proposed rule as an extension of President Trump’s day-one directive to end perceived weaponization of the federal government.  

The notice suggests that “political activists” have used bar complaints and probes to target DOJ lawyers, and that state bars’ willingness to investigate those complaints are “troubling.” Trump’s “broad pronouncements” necessitate a review of how Bondi manages and disciplines DOJ lawyers, it says. 

“This unprecedented weaponization of the State bar complaint process risks chilling the zealous advocacy by Department attorneys on behalf of the United States, its agencies, and its officers,” read DOJ’s submitted overview of the proposed rule. “That chilling effect, in turn, would interfere with the broad statutory authority of the Attorney General to manage and supervise Department attorneys.” 

Since Trump’s return to the White House, several of his top Justice Department officials have faced such complaints from watchdog groups, including Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, the former No. 3 DOJ official who is now a federal appellate judge. Rank-and-file prosecutors have also faced complaints.  

Read the rest here.

The UK is a Warning to the Rest of the World

HT Blog reader Kurt.

I had never heard of this guy before but found the arguments presented to be cogent and well backed by sources and statistics. 

Yes, it's a 'War of Choice,' and a Bad One

"The war on Iran is not a war of choice," huffs New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, who since President Donald Trump launched massive airstrikes on the Islamic Republic last week has had it up here with the "Democrats and their media handmaidens" describing the conflict as anything other than strictly defensive (leave aside for the moment the high-profile conservative critics of the war).

Goodwin's umbrage is widespread among those supporting the war as not only justified but initiated just in the nick of time. Eschewing any defensible definition of imminent, the Harvard-educated Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) avers "the president was right to act" because "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) echoes those thoughts, announcing, "The United States has been in a forever war with Iran since the late 1970s" and thanking Trump for "taking decisive action to defend America from the Iranian terroristic regime."

These are ridiculous, nonsensical formulations—especially the notion that Iran was mere hours or days away from turning the American homeland into a nuked-over parking lot. Even President Donald Trump declared last June that "Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated—and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News." Similarly, a Defense Intelligence Agency report from last year concluded Iran wouldn't have missiles capable of reaching America until 2035. Recall also that U.S. officials were in active negotiations with Iran and that administration officials "told congressional staff in private briefings…that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the U.S."

So prior to last Saturday, Iran didn't have nuclear weapons, was years away from possessing missiles that could reach the United States, and wasn't about to launch a sneak attack. Such basic facts completely undercut the whole idea that the president needed to act immediately and, not uncoincidentally, without any sort of congressional authorization.

Read the rest here.

In the News 03/06/26

Trump says no deal with Iran to end war without ‘unconditional surrender’

U.S. crude oil tops $90 per barrel

Withheld Epstein files with accusations against Trump released 

Miami Republicans, university rocked by report of racist group chat

GOP anxieties rise in Texas after Talarico victory

Noem’s answer on ‘sexual relations’ with Lewandowski was ‘final straw’ for Trump

Massive war price tag could be a problem

Trump hints U.S. will turn to Cuba after Iran

The Implications of the Convert Surge in American Orthodoxy

Medical Associations Trusted Belief Over Science on Youth Gender Care

American advocates for youth gender medicine have insisted for years that overwhelming evidence favors providing gender dysphoric youth with puberty blockers, hormones and, in the case of biological females, surgery to remove their breasts.

It didn’t matter that the number of kids showing up at gender clinics had soared and that they were more likely to have complex mental health conditions than those who had come to clinics in years earlier, complicating diagnosis. Advocates and health care organizations just dug in. As a billboard truck used by the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group GLAAD proclaimed in 2023, “The science is settled.” The Human Rights Campaign says on its website that “the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary youth and adults is clear.” Elsewhere, these and other groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, referred to these treatments as “medically necessary,” “lifesaving” and “evidence-based.”

The reason these advocates were able to make such strong statements is that for years, the most important professional medical and mental health organizations in the country had been singing a similar tune: “The science” was supposedly codified in documents published by these organizations. As GLAAD puts it on its website, “Every major medical association supports health care for transgender people and youth as safe and lifesaving.”

But something confounding has happened in the last few weeks: Cracks have appeared in the supposed wall of consensus.

After expressing concerns about the evidence base in 2024, on Feb. 3, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons became the first major American medical group to publicly question youth gender medicine since its widespread adoption. The organization published a nine-page “position statement” advising its members against any gender-related surgeries before age 19 and noting that “there are currently no validated methods” for determining whether youth gender dysphoria will resolve without medical treatment. (The document also acknowledged a similar level of uncertainty surrounding blockers and hormones, though that’s less directly relevant to the practice of plastic surgeons.)

The next day, the American Medical Association — which has long approved of such procedures — announced that “in the absence of clear evidence, the A.M.A. agrees with A.S.P.S. that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”

These statements were released days after a woman named Fox Varian became the first person to win a malpractice case after undergoing gender transition care and later regretting it. Ms. Varian and her lawyer argued that her psychologist and plastic surgeon in suburban New York, despite her serious mental health problems and apparent ambivalence over her transgender identity, failed to safeguard her by going forward with a double mastectomy when she was 16. (Many gender medicine practitioners and advocates believe that to carefully scrutinize or even explore claims of a transgender identity is to engage in de facto conversion therapy.) The jury’s $2 million award will most likely give pause to hospitals and clinics that continue to provide these treatments without substantial guardrails.

Read the rest here.

Draw the Line Now Against a Trump Election Takeover

“Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” reports the Washington Post. The executive order would decree various changes to election law that Trump has been conspicuously unable to convince Congress to enact. These could include a ban on no-excuse mail voting, “requiring voters to register anew for the 2026 midterms with proof of citizenship,” and giving various federal agencies answerable to the president “a role in identifying ineligible voters.”

It won’t work. Measures of this sort, assuming there is no other problem with them, have to be enacted by Congress using its Article I, Section 4, powers. Under our constitutional order, changes to election law cannot be imposed on states by executive whim, whether or not some supposed national-security rationale is proffered. 

Per the Post’s reporting, the draft executive order is being pushed by some eccentric characters who have previously promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that have been uniformly rejected by courts and disproved by impartial investigation. In most administrations, such conspiracry theories wouldn’t get an audience at all; however, Trump is an obvious exception, as one of the nation’s leading promoters of election falsehoods and as one who has hired bitter-end “Stop the Steal” officials to fill key jobs relating to election policy. He has also repeatedly floated the idea of attempting at least a partial election takeover without going through Congress. 

To paraphrase a high official of this administration: We can do this the easy way or the hard way. 

Read the rest here.

Hours & Primatial Divine Liturgy, Sunday of Orthodoxy, Sunday, 2026

Vigil, Sunday of Orthodoxy, 2026

Normal blogging will resume sometime in the next couple of days. Despite my efforts to shut out the news over the last week, some has gotten through and obviously the world did not stop turning out of respect for the first week of Lent.

Matins, St. Raphael of Brooklyn

Great Compline with Canon of St. Andrew for Clean Thursday, 2026

Hours, Typica, Presanctified Liturgy, for Clean Wednesday 2026

Nocturns, Matins, First Hour, Clean Tuesday 2026

Great Compline with Canon of St. Andrew for Clean Monday