The Democrats are using the Jan 6 Capitol riot to crack down on conservatives (and other stories)

A roundup of news from across the interwebs.

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Globally, we’re in the midst of a massive “baby bust” brought on by the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our collective Western birthrate was already dropping before now; as with so many other trends, the pandemic is merely accelerating it.

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The Daily Caller has published an excerpt from a new book titled Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency by The Hill’s Amie Parnes and NBC’s Jonathan Allen. It describes a meeting between former President Barack Obama and a number of Black donors, in which Obama explains that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg didn’t have a host at winning the presidency because “he’s gay” and “short.”

This was obviously not intended as a slur—Obama was (and is) very supportive of the LGBT agenda. What Obama was referring to is the dirty little secret of the Democratic coalition: the vast majority of Black voters are uncomfortable with a gay candidate, and many oppose same-sex marriage. Just as the GOP has an awkward and failing coalition between Big Business and social conservatives, the Democrats have an equally awkward coalition made up of white progressives and largely socially conservative minorities. That’s why Buttigieg failed to even register with Black voters, and the Democrats—and Obama—knew it.

This is precisely why, as I wrote over at The American Conservative, it is time for social conservatives to forge a new coalition. It’s there for the making and the taking.

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David French has an interesting article over at The Dispatch on “How to be pro-life in Joe Biden’s America,” explaining how different policies can reduce the abortion rate. And then there’s this, from The Public Discourse, on why “Child Allowances Reduce Abortion”:

One feature of Mitt Romney’s Child Allowance proposal has been critically under-billed: the extremely high likelihood that it would reduce the abortion rate. Conservatives arguing that a rise in single parenthood is an unacceptable cost of a child allowance are necessarily arguing, as a corollary, that some of those children instead being aborted is an acceptable cost of the current policy regime. But if abortion is murder, then keeping single parenthood down by murdering the infants is surely not an optimal anti-poverty policy.

As I noted in TAC this month in my interview with Eduard Habsburg, these policies have achieved much success in Hungary. We should consider them in North America, as well.

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The unparalleled Anthony Esolen, one of the best cultural writers alive, has a sobering essay over at The Imaginative Conservative titled “The suicide of a civilization.” An excerpt:

They who would crush, dismember, or fry in salt that astonishingly beautiful child in the womb surely will not scruple to invade the haven of a child’s blessed innocence, during the time when his sexual desires are dormant or latent, that long time that boys and girls need to learn who they are and what they are, destined to grow up to be confident husbands and fathers, wives and mothers. Jesus has hard words to say about those who would offend against the little ones, but, since nothing is sacred, the people of a dying culture will be eager to have children join them in corruption and meaningless hedonism, festooned as always with euphemism, like lipstick and false hair on a skull. A horrid drag queen instructing little boys on how to tuck their testicles into their bodies and bind them there—death, boasting of death.

Read the whole thing. It’s chilling.

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Glenn Greenwald has a scathing condemnation of the fear-mongering the Democrats are trying desperately to keep alive in the wake of the riot on Capitol Hill on January 6. The Dems want to use this event to define conservatives for a generation, and thus they must pretend that there is an ever-present threat to the republic. As Greenwald’s piece highlights, this is cynical—even dangerous—nonesense.

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Also on Substack, Bari Weiss reveals that many private schools have gone so woke that parents can only discuss these developments in secret in “The miseducation of the American elites.” An excerpt:

Parents who have spoken out against this ideology, even in private ways, say it hasn’t gone over well. “I had a conversation with a friend, and I asked him: ‘Is there anything about this movement we should question?’” said a father with children in two prep schools in Manhattan. “And he said: ‘Dude, that’s dangerous ground you’re on in our friendship.’ I’ve had enough of those conversations to know what happens.”

That fear is shared, deeply, by the children. For them, it’s not just the fear of getting a bad grade or getting turned down for a college recommendation, though that fear is potent. It’s the fear of social shaming. “If you publish my name, it would ruin my life. People would attack me for even questioning this ideology. I don’t even want people knowing I’m a capitalist,” a student at the Fieldston School in New York City told me, in a comment echoed by other students I spoke with. (Fieldston declined to comment for this article.) “The kids are scared of other kids,” says one Harvard-Westlake mother.

Read the whole thing. It’s pretty mind-blowing.

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More soon.