April 21, 2026

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Exit quote: America “evolved in a very different direction, and upon separation, with some struggle, arrived at our own form of governance. With an emphasis on individual freedom our fellows in the greater Anglosphere lack. Once you notice all of that, a lot of it starts to make more sense.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THEODORE DALRYMPLE: We Shall Not Fight on the Beaches.

In 1973, Jean Raspail, who died aged 94 in 2020, published his dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints, for which he is now mostly remembered (certainly outside of France, though he was the author of many other well-considered novels and travelogues, and narrowly missed election to the Académie française). The Camp of the Saints is a book that refuses to lie down, so to speak, despite attempts to render it invisible or make it go away.

* * * * * * * *

Immigrants are not just immigrants. What they bring with them is as important as what they are offered by the host country. If what they bring with them is an evangelizing religion that claims, however fatuously, to be the answer to all of mankind’s little problems, a religion moreover that has a very strong hold over them and that is maintained by an effective system of social ostracism in the event of dissent, they will obviously have more difficulty integrating than if they have no such religion.

Raspail’s flawed novel is an illustration of an elementary political principle. For a liberal democracy to work, there must be a demos; for there to be a demos, there must be something more in common among them than living geographically cheek-by-jowl (without at the same time demanding an absolute uniformity). To import huge numbers of people who do not share, and indeed are resistant to sharing, the minimum that holds a demos together is inimical to liberal democracy.

In this most important sense Jean Raspail was visionary, even if he did not correctly identify the source of the greatest threat. Perhaps the most revealing thing in the book is his account, in the essay that precedes the novel, of how prominent political figures either ignored or repudiated The Camp of the Saints in public, but agreed with it in private. It proved to be a disastrous disjunction.

It’s the good Dr. Dalrymple, so read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Éric Zemmour’s The Suicide of France. The definitive account of France after de Gaulle is now available in English.

UPDATE (4/21/26): The same lefties who rail against banned books everywhere rejoiced yesterday when Amazon banned the paperback edition of Ethan Rundell’s 2025 translation of The Camp of the Saints. Amazon has since made the book available for purchase again: Amazon Didn’t Ban The Camp Of The Saints Because It’s ‘Offensive’ But Because It Resonates.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION:

Posted at 2:02 pm by Stephen Green

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM… LOTS OF THEM, ACTUALLY:

If the Islamic Republic wants war, that’s what it’ll get.

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green

EVEN SAN FRANCISCO CAN SELF-CORRECT… EVENTUALLY:

What a shame there will be no accountability for the people responsible for the mess now being cleaned up.

Posted at 12:58 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE: “Alan Dershowitz … Republican? Yes. Not independent. Not disaffected. The famed appellate attorney and Harvard con-law professor has not just renounced his lifelong political affiliation, but Dersh has signed up for the other team. What happened?”

October 7th and the Corbynization of the Democratic Party spreading like wildfire are what happened. Read the whole thing.

For a contrarian take, Christopher Rufo has you covered:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

A DATA REPUBLICAN THREAD ON THE COLOR REVOLUTION HERE AT HOME:

Read the whole thing, but this part stands out: “The color revolution playbook has one tool for security forces: social pressure through professional networks to induce defection. Driscoll is embedded in those networks. He can be pulled away. Hegseth isn’t.”

Aside from Trump, Hegseth might be the most important individual in the entire executive branch, and for reasons most Americans can’t even imagine.

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green

HMM: Are We Seeing the Makings of an Iranian Civil War? “So we see that when Iranian President Pezeshkian, who seems, as a rule, more pragmatic than the IRGC, signaled he’s ready to be reasonable and will negotiate, the IRGC didn’t follow along, but rather launched a war against Iran’s civilian government. It is the IRGC who have been working against every diplomatic channel that Pezeshkian has been trying to open.”

Posted at 12:12 pm by Stephen Green

WHO PAYS FOR FEDERAL WASTE AND FRAUD? All of us do, because hundreds of billions of tax dollars are lost every year to waste and fraud in the federal bureaucracy. It’s one of those issues on which everybody pretty much agrees, but nobody has bothered to quantify its cost to individual Americans. Until now, that is.

James Agresti and his colleagues at Just Facts did a deep data dive on the issue and, as I report today for The Washington Stand, found that every one of this country’s 132 million households will in the normal course of things lose more than $140,000.

And because that figure only applies to losses due to fraudulent activities like Medicare benefits going to non-existent hospice patients, the ultimate total will grow when the impact of losses due to waste and other forms of irresponsible management are calculated.

Posted at 12:02 pm by Mark Tapscott

AID AND COMFORT? YOU MAKE THE CALL:

UPDATE (Charlie): Regular readers know I’m suspicious of most cries of “treason” for all the reasons stated in Federalist 43 and various SCOTUS rulings. But then there’s ex Parte Bellmon (1807): “To constitute that specific crime [of treason] war must be actually levied against the United States.”

I think the current unpleasantness makes treason a colorable claim.

UPDATE (From Ed): In 2023, the local Fox affiliated reported “Murphy pushes back against Senate Republican resolution that targeted LGTBQ+ kids.” Today, he’s rooting for the side that hangs gay people from construction cranes. That’s one serious case of TDS running amok.

Also apparently Murphy approved:

MORE (From Ed): Predictably, Murphy falls back on the “botched joke” get out of jail free card:

Posted at 11:50 am by Stephen Green

OBAMA MADE EVERYTHING WORSE. EVERYTHING:

Posted at 11:25 am by Stephen Green