Americans don’t understand just how special they are, how much light the American revolution brought into the world, and how much all the great competing revolutions of the past 300 years have been a darkness and a blight on the world that has only ever been pushed back by America’s example or American power.
The communists and Islamists and others never liberated a single soul or brought anyone out of destitution into prosperity or helped anyone turn democratic. Only America, with all its faults and fissures and self-doubt, ever did that.
I was asked several times over the past day what I thought of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I didn’t answer because I was confused by my own reaction, by how deeply and powerfully it affected me.
I thought at first it was because he supported Israel’s existence at a time of normalized bigotry, and that’s probably part of it. But I couldn’t imagine feeling quite this strongly for most other defenders of my people’s right to exist. This went deeper.
Maybe I was sympathizing with the prevailing mood among American conservative friends over the past 24 hours. Maybe. But it felt deeper still.
It felt personal.
Which is strange, because I have no strong views or meaningful knowledge of most of the issues and culture wars Charlie took part in. America’s great debates on gun control, abortion, gender or healthcare are all mostly foreign to me. Yet I felt like I personally lost something in Charlie’s death.
And then it hit me.
Steven Pinker and many others have made this point a million times before, this essential point about America, about the American-led world, and, despite America’s obsessively discussed failings and imperfections, how infinitely better this world is than the world before America.
And Charlie, who hailed from a generation almost defined by its loss of faith in the West, became a kind of engine of renewed faith in Americanness - in the America that any Jew who knows their history can’t help but love.
My people, my own children, could live and thrive in the world Charlie believed in, the world America made, sometimes with its power but mostly by its example.
Charlie was a political pugilist. People may disagree bitterly with him on a dozen issues I scarcely understand. I can only comment on this one small thing - this very big, defining thing - that I know something about.
Charlie believed in the good that America brought to the world, believed it was still America’s fundamental story, and carried that gospel into the American culture wars with the earnestness of the evangelists of old.
May his death, like his life, raise a generation of new believers in that American promise. It isn’t fashionable to say it nowadays, but the truth isn’t always fashionable: The future happiness of humanity still, despite everything, depends on it.
Purdue football was in the Big Ten Championship game on December 3rd, 2022. With one hire, it took Mike Bobinski and Tiffini Grimes less than 2 years to completely destroy the program.
And now, instead of taking ownership on hiring the worst football coach in Purdue history, rumors are saying they’re going to double down. Bring this clown back for another year. But don’t worry, they’re going to bring in an all-star cast of assistants to surround him with! So, Walters failing so miserably hiring his own staff of friends instead of experienced coaches isn’t a fireable offense at Purdue? You get another chance for being a horrendous head coach? What other program is giving this dude another year? Idk about division 1 but I’m sure as shit no other P2 program is.
And what assistants are going to come work under this lame duck HC? No one worth a damn. All because of a $9 million buyout. How much is it going to cost to revamp the entire staff just to maybe go 2-10 next year? That’s hiring 10-ish new assistant coaches. Big Ten schools start receiving $65 million per year in tv revenue next season and Purdue is still being cheap ole Purdue over $9 million that wouldn’t even be paid out as a lump sum.
$9 million lol, what a giant F U this would be to its fanbase. The same fanbase that knew Hazell was done during year 2 and watched him still get years 3 and 4. ND alum Bobonski would retire on time than bother fixing the trainwreck he caused. And if grimes is the next AD and gets to make that football hire, we are SCREWED. Get them both out of here with Walters and bring in someone competent who wants to treat Purdue and its fans like the Power-2 program it is.
You can win at Purdue. Brohm did it 17 times in his final two seasons. Own the mistake and go get a proven winner. Purdue is the only power-2 job that would be opening, will the AD take advantage or keep being an unserious, national embarrassment?
NEW: The owner of Peanut the squirrel explains how New York officials raided his house, took Peanut and his raccoon, and k*lled them.
7-year-old Peanut and Fred the raccoon were euthanized after anonymous complaints.
“Officers raided my house as if I was a drug dealer. I was sat outside my house for five hours. I had to get a police escort to my bathroom.”
“I wasn't even allowed to feed my rescue horses breakfast or lunch. I was sit, sat there like a criminal after they interrogated my wife to check out her immigration status.”
“Then proceeded to ask me if I had cameras in my house. Then proceeded to go through every cabinet, nook and cranny of my house for a squirrel and raccoon.”
“They got a search warrant for departments, and a judge signed off on a search warrant for a squirrel in a raccoon. And then they took them and k*lled them.”
Video: @TMZ
@carlquintanilla Comparing the US’s financial obligations to an FDIC insured bank’s depositors to its military obligation to protect a non-NATO country is ridiculous.