Those of us of a certain age will remember America’s 200th birthday well. It was a year-long celebration with pageantry and even commercials celebrating our patriotism everywhere. Now, months away from the date of our 250th birthday, all seems rather quiet on the Western civilizational front.

Our Founders weren’t so sure we’d last anywhere near this long—and yet, here we are 250 years later. What changed in the last 50 years? The media and the academy, both of which have trained millions of pupils and teachers and citizens to view America as a down-market commodity. History professors literally sneer at efforts to restore and remind about the very field they supposedly care about: teaching American history. And a great socialist effort to undermine the exceptionalism of America, and pride in it, has taken over an entire political party.

The great Czech writer Milan Kundera, put it that “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory.” And that’s been the progressive effort here. We must know of it, we cannot let it prevail.

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The United States has allies in this battle with Iran, though you’d be hard-pressed to prove it from coverage in mainstream media.

Israel has fought valiantly beside us, absorbing the blows that the enemy wishes it could rain down on our country. We in America ought to at least bring their stories forward.

Israel has been at war with Iran since its proxy Hamas launched the attack on October 7, 2023, and the massacre that followed.

Right now: The American and Israeli militaries are methodically smashing the military that the Iranian radical regime has built up over 47 years. If it was a boxing match, the referee would stop the fight. But it’s a war, and the target list is long and it’s not done.

This battle is the story of this decade, and its outcome one of those very few-and-far between hinge points of history that are obvious as they occur, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Our legacy outlets ought to be telling the story. The whole story.

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We learned in recent days that Leo Radvinsky, the owner of the vast website known as OnlyFans, had died at age 43 of cancer.

OnlyFans is one of the most significant purveyors of pornography in all of human history.

Through Radvinsky’s leadership, the site exploded to 377 million users, bringing in more than $7.2 billion in revenue in a single year.

It’s not really possible to comment on this adequately without reference to theological terms: What we see here is the power of sin, the power of human depravity matched with human ingenuity.

The OnlyFans platform was—and it is—a deeply diabolical plan and strategy. And—obviously—at least in financial terms, it works.

But we know: It doesn’t work.

It is sin and depravity and lust coupled with manipulation and oppression and enslavement.

This week’s headlines give us the opportunity to state the truth and to say that what I hope are clear and unequivocal terms.

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