Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

The late philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that the power of toxic ideologies, like fascism and communism—once they take hold—can prove impossible to reform. Now add apocalyptic theocracy to that fascism and you have a rough understanding of Iran’s leadership. The West, and hopefully many in the Trump administration, are learning that now.

As the Wall Street Journal and others reported, Iranian leadership plotted its third assassination on President Donald Trump last week.  This, after the United States had already decimated Iran’s military.  Federal courts have previously identified two other plots to assassinate Donald Trump, as well as several of his former cabinet officials.

While many Americans recoil at notions of regime change in Iran, Iranian leadership has no such compunction about trying to affect regime change in America—and via assassination.  And: It appears almost nothing will shake Iran’s fascist theocracy into moderation or civility.

This is who and what we are fighting in Iran.  Let’s complete the job and help make gentler the life of this world.

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Graham Platner ended his bid to represent the people of Maine in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday night.

He would have done well to begin his consideration with earnest engagement with the Bible.

Really.

Specifically, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, verse 17, where it says: “For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.”

Now more than ever, every candidate must be warned again about this truth and then again and again. Indeed, it’s inevitable for every candidate in every race in which any opponent has the means to dig deep.

Every would-be candidate ought to subject himself or herself first to the gauntlet of self-scrutiny and then to a gauntlet of “friendly” professionals who specialize in digging up “opposition research.”

If an unflattering story exists, it can be found, and it will be found. And it will be on every front page.

Platner’s saga is already a tale worth telling.

“Nothing that is secret will not be revealed.”

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Talking politics with your average young male these days, chances are you will hear all kinds of odd theories coming from the Pied Pipers of Podcastistan. You will hear them mentioning “experts” nobody heard of until about 10 minutes ago or until they were discovered by these podcasters because of their contrary, and often, conspiratorial thinking.

Young men, especially, are attracted to this novel “wisdom,” and they are so prone because, as they will tell you, mainstream institutions have been untruthful over the years. But because some institutions that we used to rely on and respect have been taken over by partisanship and been wrong doesn’t mean that all normative thinking and scholarship is a lie or cannot be trusted, or that people nobody have ever heard of are the replacements of true wisdom.

We dismiss and ignore this fallacious thinking at our collective peril.

The task of the serious is to be able to discern truth from fiction and greatness from mediocrity. In these critical times, that task has never been more important than now.

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What happens when the Left plucks a ‘working class man’ from obscurity and pushes him for high office? In an era of Democratic desperation, mainstream media creates narratives to protect him, even at the expense of their stated values.

Graham Platner’s rise and fall stains all the institutions of the Left. Democrats and the media tried to bury or downplay Platner’s checkered past, including his Nazi SS tattoo, his record of disturbing public comments and his moral depravity.

Don’t be fooled by the sudden shift in media coverage. Everything that outlets like Axios and the New York Times reports as “news” today had been reported weeks and months ago by independent media. The Times cooked its own report in early June to protect Platner. Every elite media outlet perpetuated the “working class” lie about a man who lives off his wealthy parents.

The insistence by Democrats and media to make excuses for Platner exposes the corruption of both.

The Nazi tattoo told us all we needed to know.

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Teaching Constitutional Law is a joy.

Every semester since 1996, my students hear that Con Law ought to be their most interesting class during their three years of law school.

This year the Court issued 67 majority opinions.

Because district court judge issue bolts-from-out-of-the-blue on a regular basis, there’s a perception abroad that the judiciary becoming politicized. Our highest court, however, is an enormous force for stability in the country that just turned 250 years old.

The most significant of this term’s cases may well turn out to be NRSC v. the FEC, which held that the provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act restricting the amount of money a party can spend in direct coordination with a candidate’s campaign, those restrictions were unconstitutional, and that breathes much-needed life into the two major political parties which indeed need the lift.

The Supreme Court has gone about its work successfully and will be back at it in October. The “republic of laws not men” carries on.

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