Conservative

Tuesday

Joshua Topham

What Medhi Hasan should have told the New Right

Progressive journalist Mehdi Hasan recently went viral for his “debate” with 20 so-called conservatives on the popular YouTube channel Jubilee. The program is formatted such that Hasan makes a claim, and then his opponents, seated in a circle around him, race each other to the chair opposite Hasan when they wish to refute a claim. When the claim, “Donald Trump is defying the US Constitution” came up, contestants lunged for the chair – not to deny the claim, but to dismiss the Constitution outright. Hasan, it seems, was ready to argue that Trump is defying the Constitution, but he was utterly unprepared to defend the document on its merits. We shouldn’t read too much into this gathering of the chronically online.

Sunday

Cockburn

Can ‘anti-woke’ boycotts fix the obesity crisis?

Conservatives just discovered the surest cure for America’s obesity epidemic: boycotts.  On Tuesday morning, Chick-fil-A became the latest casualty in the Bud Light War when a Twitter mob began calling for a boycott of the fast food chain gone “woke.” The outrage followed a viral tweet highlighting that the company had hired a vice president of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. “We have a problem,” tweeted conservative commentator Joey Mannarino on Monday. “Chick-Fil-A just hired a VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. This is bad. Very bad. I don’t want to have to boycott. Are we going to have to boycott?” Cockburn certainly does not want to give up his weekly chicken sandwich!

chick-fil-a boycotts

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

The Christian movie finally finds its niche

When Mel Gibson’s ultra-violent, ultra-religious Passion of the Christ made $612 million worldwide, it was not earning its money from teenagers looking for a night out. Despite its R rating, churchgoers were being bused to theaters by the millions, thanks to the heavy support it received from evangelical Christian groups. Everyone from Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell to Pat Robertson and Chuck Colson came out in support of the film, although the Pope’s supposed endorsement — "it is as it was" — was denied by the Vatican. Yet faith-based films have quietly been big business in Hollywood for decades now.

Friday

Ben Domenech

How taxpayer money was used to silence speech

Here's a simple question: how much American taxpayer money is being spent to silence, censor, and blacklist opinions? Legacy media reporting on the House Oversight Committee's initial look into the actions of Twitter during the 2020 elections focused mostly on questions surrounding Hunter Biden's laptop. The committee's investigative reports, however, ought to hone in on the most disturbing aspect of this story: social media giants were routinely directed and coerced into censoring and silencing American citizens by entities funded by those same taxpayers.

tax dollars free speech censorship disinformation

Tuesday

Bobby Miller

Why it’s time to end the debt ceiling and fund the IRS

Amid the much-anticipated debt ceiling imbroglio, it’s become clear that our national debt can't keep growing like this. To tackle this issue, we need to start by admitting the problem: about 70 percent of federal spending is mandatory, meaning it grows automatically without congressional input. Unfortunately, most of this is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other politically popular entitlement programs. Cutting the benefits these programs dole out is a political third rail most self-interested political actors won’t dare to touch. Luckily, we don't need to eliminate these programs. What entitlement reform supporters want is to secure these programs’ solvency and make sure they’re there for future generations.

Wednesday

Matt Purple

The generation war and why millennials are drifting leftward

The war between the generations is on, and the battle lines have been drawn. The baby boomers don't like the millennials because they can't understand why the millennials won't just buy a house already. The millennials don't like the boomers because, as they've explained, a house no longer costs $75 with a couple coupons like it did back in 1972. And lately the millennials and Generation Z have been mixing it up as well, over such important issues as hair partings and emojis. So a fractured conflict, this one, a bit like Lebanon's civil war except with more awful Facebook posts. Yet if you're looking to really understand the social media-fueled rifts between the generations, then you have to start with the main combatants, the boomers and the millennials.

crime debate themes matt walsh

Wednesday

Ben Sixsmith

Dave Rubin’s lazy new book

I didn’t want to review Dave Rubin’s Don’t Burn This Country. One Dave Rubin book seemed like enough — arguably too many — for a lifetime. Yet like a burglar who retires from his life of crime only to pass a mansion with its doors wide open and the glint of jewels beyond the hallway, I was pulled in again. Just one more job. In case anyone has never heard of Mr. Rubin, he is an interviewer and commentator who began as a mildly left-wing contributor to the Young Turks and then drifted towards the “anti-woke” realms of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” where his talk show became a hub of the phenomenon as he interviewed anyone and everyone who didn’t like “safe spaces” and blue-haired transsexuals.