JoeM

Catholic, conservative, ex-NYPD, constitutionalist, attorney, history enthusiast and classic film devotee

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

I’ve just finished reading Gad Saad’s book Suicidal Empathy.

It ranks, along with Chris Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything and Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s Cynical Theories, as the best take-down of the lunacy at the heart of the wokeist philosophy.

For Saad, empathy—in itself a perfectly decent trait—has become so grossly exaggerated that it threatens truth, reality, and justice.

Cases in point abound: so they won’t feel bad about themselves, we’ll allow biological men to compete in women’s sports and crush the dreams of thousands of young women; so as not to undermine the self-esteem of minorities, we will permit unqualified candidates to have positions in universities and the corporate world; so that everyone might feel included, we will characterize the meritocracy as “white privilege,” etc.

As I was making my way through Saad’s book, I kept remarking the sharp distinction between empathy and love.

To empathize is to enter profoundly into the experience of another and to endeavor not to hurt that person’s feelings. But to love is, as Thomas Aquinas taught, “to will the good of the other.”

As I said, in itself and all things being equal, empathy is a good thing. But it is not the same as love, which, depending on circumstances, can very much involve hurting someone’s feelings.

When a professor gives a student a “C” as an honest reflection of his work, he might well be insulting him, but he’s also telling him the truth and perhaps even urging him to try harder.

When, in the Confessional, a priest tells a murderer to turn himself in to the police, he’s undoubtedly making that person’s life more uncomfortable, but he’s also willing the man’s good.

Any decent parent knows that showing real love for her children means engendering all kinds of bad feelings in them.

In light of this distinction, we can understand why Jesus didn’t say, “have empathy for one another,” but rather “love one another.” And why St. John the Evangelist didn’t say, “God is empathy,” but rather “God is love.”

It occurred to me as I was reading Saad’s book that one reason Wokeism has seized the consciousness of so many in the West is that Christianity has faded as a cultural force and Christians themselves have forgotten what stands at the heart of their faith.

[Bruce Blakeman @NassauExec]

New Yorkers, don't forget: I'm within six points of Kathy Hochul, and I'm not letting up.

She's given you the highest taxes in the nation, rising crime, and a state people are fleeing.

When I am Governor, I'll bring Nassau's results, lower taxes and real safety, to all of New York.

[🇺🇸Steph🇺🇸 @StephsNY]

I have left messages and now I will alert the “elected” officials of NY here. Pass the Save America Act. It’s fundamental to securing our elections. @SenSchumer @SenGillibrand @RyeGSL @RepGLatimer remember - you work for THE PEOPLE.

[Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs]

Consider these words from 1920, written by French author Hilaire Belloc:

“The modern world imagines that it has outgrown religion. It has done nothing of the kind. It has merely forgotten it. And because it has forgotten it, it no longer understands itself. Men do not realize that the whole framework of their moral judgments, their political habits, and even their intellectual methods were formed within a Christian society and cannot exist long outside it. When that framework breaks, they will not find themselves enlightened, but bewildered; not free, but enslaved; not rational, but confused.”

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

For 250 years, America has been the greatest nation on Earth — and with God’s grace, it will be for 250 more.

Happy Independence Day!

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

What an appalling speech the Mayor of New York delivered for the 250th anniversary of the nation.

Sadly, it reflects the view of America propagated for years by Howard Zinn and his like-minded colleagues in the universities and believed by armies of the young: a dark, oppressive country where common people are denigrated by tyrants and oligarchs, where immigrants are treated with contempt, where those with “soft hands” hold the wealth created by those with dirty hands.

No sensible person would claim that our country is without flaws, but the relentlessly negative picture painted by Mayor Mamdani is just absurd.

And it is the fruit of the Marxism that, sadly, is all the rage today.

[John Rich🇺🇸 @johnrich]

Finally got to meet Upstate NY farmer, @alex_fasulo in DC today! She’s a real fighter🇺🇸 Thanks to @SecRollins for standing and fighting for American farmers and ranchers! Check this out…Volume UP👇👇

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Like many others, I have been alarmed by the success of certain politicians in our country who identify as extreme socialists or communists.

This is not a matter of classical liberals triumphing over standard-issue conservatives; this is the victory of people who stand athwart the fundamental principles that undergird our country.

There are many reasons why I detest Communism, but I want to draw attention to just one issue of supreme importance.

Karl Marx said that the first critique is the critique of religion. He meant that, before a complete re-working of the politics and economics of a society can take place, religion has to be taken down.

This is because religion, as he saw it, is the “opium of the masses,” a drug taken to dull our sensitivity to the suffering caused by economic exploitation. As long as the suffering populace is lured into complacency by fantasies about God's providence and the promise of eternal life, they will never rise up and throw off their chains.

But there is a second reason why the elimination of religion is of paramount significance for Marx.

Communism aspires to be a totalizing system, involving the government's control over education, entertainment, communication, politics, and especially economics.

What stands resolutely athwart this ambition is religion, which declares that all of these societal expressions are finally under the judgment of God. So, if you want Communism to succeed, religion has to be stamped out.

If you doubt me on any of this, I would encourage you to read the recent histories of China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Venezuela. Revisit those histories and tell me I'm wrong about the attack on religion.

Might I encourage my fellow believers in God not to be complacent in the face of this very troubling development in the American body politic?

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

I'm coming from France, from Europe — and for god's sake, don't do that.

I've already watched this movie. I know exactly how it ends. Let me run the tape for you.

We started at the same line. In 2008 the EU economy was actually bigger than the US — about 110% of American GDP. By 2023 it was down to 67%. Over that window the US grew 87%. Europe grew 13.5%.

Per capita it's uglier. European income was ~76% of American income in 2008. Today it's 50%. France — Descartes, the Concorde, the nuclear program — now has a GDP per capita below Arkansas, the 48th poorest US state. Germany sits around Oklahoma. Of the 50 largest tech companies on Earth, four are European. Four. No Nvidia, no Google, no SpaceX, no OpenAI. What we built instead is a regulator that writes a 383-page report explaining why we have no champions — and then implements 10% of its own recommendations.

This isn't bad luck. It's a system working exactly as designed.

Hayek explained the mechanism in 1944 and Europe didn't listen. The Road to Serfdom isn't a slogan, it's a machine. You start with the nicest intentions — fairness, equality, security. To deliver them the state has to plan. To plan, it has to override prices, contracts, individual choice. And when the plan fails — it always fails, because no central planner holds the knowledge that millions of free actors hold — the lesson is never "planning was the error." The lesson is "we didn't plan hard enough." So it takes more power. Then more. Every failure becomes the alibi for the next seizure. Socialism never arrives at its destination. It just never stops paving the road — and the road only goes one place.

Europe didn't go full Soviet. It went soft. It chose comfort over greatness, redistribution over creation, safety over risk — and the result is a continent that is rich, gorgeous, and quietly dying. Managed decline with excellent cheese. The wealthiest museum on Earth.

Now the part Americans need to hear, because you think you're immune. You're not.

Peter Thiel keeps warning about the Antichrist, and people imagine a movie villain. Wrong. The Antichrist never arrives promising war and tyranny. He arrives promising peace and safety. He's the universal manager who will protect you from every risk — climate, inequality, AI, each other — in exchange for one small thing: that nobody is ever again permitted to do anything new, anything dangerous, anything great. He's one-world stagnation enforced by fear. The final committee.

Socialism is his vehicle. It's the ideology that says risk is theft, that excellence is unfair, that the cure for every problem is more central control. It's the perfect on-ramp to a planet-wide regime of safety and stasis.

And here are the stakes nobody says out loud: America is the last engine. The frontier of compute, the people still trying to make us multi-planetary, the builders who'd rather escape the trap than manage it — almost all American. The product of the one place left on Earth that still rewards builders over bureaucrats. If America picks the European path, there is no second America to bail the species out. No frontier left. The engine of human progress switches off — not in a century, in a few years.

Why am I this certain? Because socialism doesn't merely slow you down. It rots everything it touches. It rots the economy — see the numbers. It rots incentives: punish building and reward grievance, and your best people stop building. It rots the culture: a society that resents winners eventually produces none. It rots the spirit: you trade the dignity of agency for the comfort of dependence and you call it progress.

I'm not throwing rocks from the outside. I'm writing from inside the wreckage, watching the most talented continent in human history vote, year after year, for its own anesthesia.

America — you are the control group. You're the thing the rest of us point to when we need to remember what's still possible. Do not become us.

For god's sake. Don't do that.

[JoeM @JoeM45815389]

Q

[Charles Gasparino @CGasparino]

Living in Manhattan, I know a lot of old-school NY Dems and not a day goes by that they express how theyre horrified by what is happening to their party. My advice: Look inward. It began with you and people you love and elected like Chuck Schumer, Andrew Cuomo, etc., the so-called moderate party leadership that for years appeased the leftist loons who occupied Zuccotti Park, or unqualified clowns like AOC, or de Blasio. You and your "leaders" never really tried to hold the line against the leftists in the state legislature. And now the lunatics are controlling the proverbial insane asylum. We have increasing fiscal and social chaos. Mamdani's budget is not balanced and will never be. It will require more tax increases. He's never going to stop demonizing Israel, or come to appreciate free markets as Jamie Dimon hopes, because he is who he is. With that, homelessness and urinating on the street has become a right, along with rioting after basketball games. It's not just Mamdani. You have Brad Lander touting Marxism; a comptroller, the so-called fiscal watchdog named Mark Levine who is placating the left and not signaling the disaster that brewing on the city's books. Remember that when you piss and moan about Trump; your lives are being destroyed not by his mean tweets but right here in NY by politicians you empowered. You have become piggy banks for an expanded welfare state and useful idiots to promote cultural Marxism at the private schools you think will help your kids get into Columbia to further their indoctrination. Good job

[Reza Chowdhury @RezaC1]

🇺🇸Hey @GovKathyHochul and @NYCMayor🇺🇸

It's odd that in the largest city in America there is almost no visible recognition of the approaching 250th anniversary of our nation's founding, beyond a handful of bus shelter advertisements.

Political disagreements come and go. Presidents come and go. But love of country should endure. One's visceral disdain for a president should not outweigh one's appreciation for the nation itself.

[Seth Cohen @OverReactor1776]

Now that I’m out of government, I can finally respond for myself: Get bent, soyboy. We didn’t do this for “Silicon Valley . . . companies.” We did this for you, for your family, your community, your state, your nation, and your species.

Nuclear energy provides the safest, highest density, reliable power available on our planet. My career colleagues at DOE and NRC inspired me to think about nuclear as a way to forge American steel and electrolyze aluminum without releasing particulate matter, to desalinate water in the Middle East and save humanity from resource wars. By rejecting the false narratives and Cold War hysteria, we can secure the next American century while raising whole countries out of poverty.

Do you really think I left an incredible career at Kirkland, paid out of pocket for an apartment in DC and dozens of cross-country trips, and left my family on the west coast because I wanted to enrich people I never met before taking this job? I came to D.C. to do something that mattered, to satisfy a driving curiosity (more on that later), and, most importantly, to serve.

As I learned more about nuclear energy and its history, I developed a conviction that one nuclear’s biggest issues was a culture of cynicism: nothing new or exciting could happen because it would end in disappointment, and that militated against rocking the boat even a tiny bit. The career staff in government and their industry counterparts lived through dark winters before and stopped believing that warm springs could bloom into summers.

I have two core philosophies. First, I believe in ruthless optimism. Rational decision making requires detached risk analysis. But we also cannot win if we believe we can lose. Merging the two requires orienting teams around driving missions. That way, when a real opportunity presents itself, you can take a huge swing.

If I take credit for anything—honestly, almost all of the success belongs to the incredible and dedicated people at @ENERGY and @NRCgov—it’s countering the cultural rot and morass that risked forfeiting American excellence. My colleagues and I gave cover to the scientists and engineers, which freed them up to focus on delivering safe power. And, as success materialized, they started to dream again. That’s why the pilot program succeeded, and why I feel confident about the future of NLICs and NRC reform. Nobody needs me anymore because they can innovate on their own.

My second core philosophy is to assume positive intent. Avi, I know that you heard about my real motivations from multiple people you interviewed when preparing your hit piece on me. Rather than telling that story, one which could help inspire another generation of people to use their talents for the greater good, you ignored them. Instead, you implied that Peter Thiel recruited me for nefarious purposes. (I’ve never met him, but, @peterthiel, if you’re reading this, I’m a huge fan!)

Nuclear regulation starts and ends with safety. I promised everyone I worked with that I would resign before doing or pushing for anything that could compromise public safety. But I also distinguished between real safety and performative bullshit. That’s what the careers came to embrace, too. We love nuclear, why would we do anything that could risk threatening its future?

America faces a crossroads. We can either trod a road of cultural decay or hike our way back to the peak of global innovation. Join me on the latter path. Correct the fear mongering and conspiracies and tell the story of America’s great reindustrialization. Tell the story of our public servants, our great entrepreneurs, our scientific dominance. Tell the real story about how DOGE went nuclear.

[katie wright @katiewr31413491]

This is positively hideous & horribly sad. Cutting down thousands of trees & killing Bald Eagles is NOT “green,” nor is solar insanity “saving the environment!” 👎👎👎👎 @SenatorHarckham @RachelMayNY @Bobby4Brooklyn @Emily4Assembly @LizKrueger @PatFahy46 @michellehinchey @ppsesa - All of u should b ashamed. NO ONE voted 4 (mass clear cutting of 200,000 trees & killing Bald Eagles) this!!!!!! @alex_fasulo @johnrich @SecRollins @epaleezeldin @Dr

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

I decide to leave Quebec/Canada because:

1) the taxation system is astounding, rendering it nearly impossible to accumulate enough money to truly retire
2) the government's open immigration policies have made it unsafe for my family to remain here (due to the exponential increase in Jew-hatred).

Today I found out that I shall have to pay a departure tax for exercising my right to leave, and the money that will be taken from me (because the obscene amount of taxes that I've already paid in full is not enough) will be given to new incoming immigrants who hate Jews. My taxes funded my forced exit and will fund the harassment of any remaining Jews in Canada.

It would take me 10+ more years of work to save the amount that is likely to be taken via the departure tax.

Is this moral? Ethical? Just? In any case, off to bed. Tomorrow is a new day.

[Nick Sortor @nicksortor]

🚨 INCREDIBLE! President Trump personally awards US Marine Maj. James Capers, Jr. with the Medal of Honor, 60 YEARS after he saved his ENTIRE team while badly wounded in Vietnam

Thank you for your service, Maj. Capers!

You’re a TRUE American hero! 🇺🇸

[DNI Tulsi Gabbard @DNIGabbard]

Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus’ lab-leak origins, and lied to Congress while under oath in 2024. It’s time you know the truth.

https://t.co/3YJSstB7d4

[Senator Ron Johnson @SenRonJohnson]

https://t.co/pPI52Hznwv

[American Anne @Anne8065]

NY Government is "getting in the way" of our personal safety! Repeal no cash bail laws that promote and protect criminals!
NY's sanctuary status must be repealed for citizen safety. That is also "getting in the way" of a properous NY. Illegal aliens are consuming our tax money at an alarming unprecedented rate!
NY is also "getting in the way" of our once beautiful environment with ugly inefficient solar and wind installations that the public has no input in.