(The below essay of mine was recently published in the Marshalltown, Iowa Times-Republican.)

ICE means American safety                      

Anecdotes favorable to American law enforcement abound. They tell of neighborhood residents protected from criminality, businesses safeguarded, and of society's lowest being grabbed up and accorded the harsh justice their crimes merit.

(I love it when American justice lands hard on evildoers.)

And there are other stories: Lost children located. Homicides solved. Sex offenses punished. Robbers, con men, and violent attackers sealed away in the graybar hotel. Cooperative efforts with fire, medical, and other rescue personnel to rush to the aid of victims of accidents or natural disasters.

Indefatigable agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are no less heroic members of that noble body than any other uniformed friend of the innocent. They uphold laws duly passed by bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate. These laws were structured and enacted to advance legitimate public interests.

No citizen is well-served by hospital waiting rooms jammed wall-to-wall, schools awash in non-English speaking outsiders, or housing costs skyrocketing as the buyer-market expands. Additional ills that real citizens suffer include employment opportunities going to low-wage illegals, social services being overwhelmed, and the splintering of our cultural mileau. 

A February message from Prager U to supporters minced no words: "ICE is not the villain—it’s a law enforcement agency essential to our nation’s safety and sovereignty. These agents work every day to stop human trafficking, fight drug cartels, arrest violent criminals, and enforce our nation’s immigration laws."

Miseries suffered by illegals sneaking toward the United States turn good peoples' stomachs: A reported 31% of women on that path are raped, some repeatedly. Accounts tell of "rape trees" here and there along the way, in which shredded, silently screaming intimate garments wave in the breeze.

Too, one hears of foreign families giving birth control pills to minor females prior to the trek, knowing vile assaults are likely.

Children are smuggled for unspeakable horrors. Deadly fentanyl and other fatal substances are brought in, causing thousands of American deaths. Gang-affiliated, illegal gun-wielding miscreants laughingly swagger, chins high. 

And as other countries empty their prisons and asylums of 'undesirables,' as President Trump warns, vicious assaults are perpetrated on vulnerable American women like Mollie Tibbetts, Megan Bos, Rachel Morin, Dr. Linda Davis, Maria Pleitez and her daughter Dayanara, and Laken Riley.

Add to that sorrowing roster innocent American men, women, and children killed in highway traffic by illegal semi drivers (who can't decipher road signs), given licenses by "progressive" Democrat governors.

And still, there are voices advocating that the above terribleness be allowed to flourish, unchecked. The brain boggles, and the compassionate heart laments left-wing cruelty.

By rightly deporting illegals, ICE counters the Democrat magnet of 'Come one, come all - free everything!' Agents' deportation work is what protecting the public looks like. And since they enforce laws that resulted from established political processes, their activities are very much what democracy looks like.

If more news organizations reported the positive aspects and accomplishments of American law officers, interference in official acts might dwindle. (That's assuming pro-crime rioters aren't cashing checks.) 

Elementary schools once imparted the importance of officers maintaining law and order in civilized societies. And how we all benefit, when officers are allowed to do their jobs without being swarmed by jeering, cursing, doxxing mobs shoving cell-phones in their faces. 

During a recent Fox News interview, White House border czar Tom Homan made his and ICE's mission clear: "'Prioritize public safety threats and national security threats' doesn’t mean to forget about everybody else. I’ve said it from day one, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table. We’re looking for you, and we’ll remove you when we find you.”

Two Iowa newspapers recently ran essays of mine. Yesterday, the Waterloo Courier ran Why Hollywood Hates President Trump. And this morning, the Des Moines Register published Democrats Trumpet Their Intolerance and Turn Off Americans. Since each is behind a paywall, I've added them below.

From Waterloo Courier: Why Hollywood hates President Trump

 

 

It's fashionable in mentally disheveled circles to revile and disrupt President Trump, America's ICE agents, and law enforcement in general. Doing so is symptomatic of the subversive impulse. 

Barely a week passes without some entertainer voicing anti-Trump poison into the nearest microphone. This includes both active (and interchangeable) camera-junkies and industry has-beens desperately grabbing for contemporary relevance. None will be named by this writer, who doesn't wish to aid miserable lost souls' quests.

And despite the objective sorrowfulness of Christian conservative Charlie Kirk's assassination last year (and prior attempts on President Trump's life), no small number of red-carpet fops donned party hats at the direful news. 

It's true, of course, that entertainers are as much citizens as any of us, and have no less right to opine on significant events and officials. I don't dispute that. And some show business successes are inarguably talented. They merit respect for that.

Dismayingly, though, many have exploited their platforms to inveigh against America's duly elected president and our foundational liberty spirit. 

While I appreciate their superior creative ideas, I certainly do not value their inferior political ones. Often, though some may be skilled at stagecraft, their skulls seem jam-packed with yellowish diarrhea, when they speak on matters of cultural or political import.

The ability to galumph about under lights and effect pratfalls does not automatically confer wisdom as to weighty matters. A rancid opinion remains just that, regardless of the speaker's renown in an unrelated area.

I believe there are two reasons some marquee names acquit themselves despicably.

First, celebrities prioritize profit in grubby calculations. Unfortunately, a hatred market does exist. And just as there are garbage-hearted buyers, there breathe conscienceless show-business graspers with big eyes. Whether someone is selling a movie ticket, TV program, or recording, market viability is surely a consideration. 

Potential sales-chart downturns from foul public brayings would be negligible. A star's audience yesterday likely already knew his leanings. New anti-American rants might even heighten ardor in desired precincts. 

Persons previously outside a celebrity's base - well, they were already not in the equation. Save for this: Non-fans who vocalize criticism play as much of a role in stoking fame as do rah-rah fanatics. Controversy means headlines. Headlines mean sales.

"Why do you think Frank Sinatra punches some driver in the mouth?," Alice Cooper manager Shep Gordon asked writer Bob Greene, in the seventies. "To get into the straight press - which is hell of a lot harder than getting into the entertainment press."

From Gtreta Garbo donning slacks in the 1920s, to the Sex Pistols cursing on 1976 UK television, to current Pop and Rap annoyances hurtling toward cameras and bellowing PR agent-blueprinted venom, celebrity has often been a schemed contrivance, not an organic product.

Too, audiences want to believe they and an idolized celebrity are as one. That the person on screen or stage shares their opinions. Surely, that is especially the case for callow enthusiasts. Their generational contrarianism is a knee-jerk animal. Many, I suppose, are eager to shout or do absolutely anything to antagonize the world at large. To feel significant. 

And they will spend monies on those stars that claw most visibly at existing mores. 

Important to remember is that spotlighted sorts may say one thing in public - to curry fan approbation - but seize opposite voting levers when in a booth's secrecy.

Of course, there is a second possible explanation for celebrities' stated terribleness: They may truly be terrible people.

Waterloo's DC Larson is the author of That a Man Can Again Stand Up and Ideas Afoot.  He counts among freelance credits Daily Caller, The Iowa Standard, and American Thinker.  His political blog is American Scene Magazine.

From Des Moines Register: Democrats Trumpet Their Intolerance and Turn Off Americans

I've not only caucused for President Trump, but cast precious votes for him each time he's sought the Resolute Desk. I don't hold conservative opinions because I'm not familiar with alternatives, but because I am.

In 1996, after having always been a Democrat (and a volunteer for numerous of that party's candidates), I became an independent. I voted for independent presidential hopeful Ralph Nader, and volunteered for him in 2000. The same year, I co-founded the Iowa Green Party. I served as its Media Coordinator for years, also serving on the national Greens' media committee.

By 2004, I was a paid state representative for Nader. I traveled our state, and gathered petition signatures which helped get him on the ballot. I also attended protests in various Iowa cities, as well as in Washington, DC.

Those were conducted lawfully. No vandalism, no attacks on law enforcement, no screaming at passersby. 

I champion untrammeled speech as vigorously now as I ever did. But increasingly Marxist Democrat activists do not respect others' expression. They blow whistles, beat tattoos on sauce pans, shout down disfavored speakers, block roadways, perpetrate property destruction, and otherwise disrupt civil order.

Too, having always opposed racial bigotry, I despise and condemn anti-white hostility, just as I've always done regarding all other forms of that odious prejudice. All are equally wrong and immoral. 

Contemporary Democrat voices like Ibram X. Kendi, though, argue present and future hate is justified by historical wrongdoing. As Sen. John Kennedy might say: That dog don't hunt. Aged injustices are to be dispensed with, not reversed into perpetuity.

In 2026, it is Republicans that genuinely safeguard women's rights (including to life itself). Democrats won't even acknowledge that femininity is strictly biological and cannot be manufactured. (An advanced case of this madness is Biden-appointed / Democrat-approved Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.)

Members of both major parties, I long ago believed, loved America equally. They simply left in different directions from that shared foundation. Boy, was I wrong. While that might once have been true, it is not, today. Conservatives hold fast to our Constitution, unifying language and culture, and unique character. But many on the left loath the same, denounce this nation as the inherently wicked cause of global suffering, and advocate non-vetted immigration for all the world's peoples.

(Too, liberals often rail against billionaires, while leaving unmentioned their own, like Bill Gates, Neville Roy Singham, Mark Cuban, and George and Alex Soros. The hypocrisy shouts as it cartwheels. Of identical cloth are celebrities spewing "stolen land" claptrap, whilst lolling in walled-off mansions guarded 24/7 by private armed militias.)

It was my return (some 13 years ago) to the Catholicism of my youth and acknowledgement of our Supreme Creator's authority, that put me on the Trump path. Progressives tend to wave toward downward stairs. The recent, Don Lemon-led invasion of a church (when a constitutionally-protected worship service was underway, attended by innocent men, women, and children) hardly recommended the Democrats. Especially given the hearty salutes that the anti-Christian crime subsequently received from the left's bleachers. 

(Lemon would later smear church attendees as "white supremacists," though he knew none of them.)

Conservatism offers respect for our traditional national identity, values, and customs. Again, I don't currently hold conservative, pro-Trump opinions because I'm not familiar with alternatives, but because I am.

Waterloo's DC Larson is the author of That a Man Can Again Stand Up and Ideas Afoot.  He counts among freelance credits Daily Caller, The Iowa Standard, and American Thinker.  His political blog is American Scene Magazine.

Art and the beholder 

If the notion that art (even when spectacularly crude) is responsible for consumer wrongdoing sounds familiar, it should. Politicians and firebrand crusaders have long exploited it, in attention-seizing variations.

Sculptures, paintings, various musical genres, literature, pornography, and public speakers have all suffered censorial attempts.

The undergirding 'causal link' supposition is easily put away by reflecting that the overwhelming majority enjoys creativity without misbehavior resulting. And critics who blame expressions for causing harms have consumed the same, also without tragic consequence. 

We are not robots, incapable of exercising autonomous judgment. Ultimate responsibility for pulling a trigger lies with the gunman, not a message he encountered. (Besides, were responses Pavlovian in nature, there would be more love in the world; historically, much art has spoken of it.)

Creative conceptions and vogues certainly can impact attitudes --advertising can be influential, after all -- but they cannot compel healthy consumers to act in ways that conflict with their fundamental characters.

If someone does perpetrate horrible violence after playing an online game, watching a film, hearing a song, or reading a book, they had a predisposition toward it, or at least a weakness that cannot reasonably be assigned to art.

There should never be a child safety cap on creativity. No one should be expected to fashion only works so elementary and flavorless as to be appropriate for even the psychologically disheveled.

Think out loud

Free thought and speech can challenge popular views. But supporting ideas can be risky. Persons who wave high their banner, despite establishment penalties and street-level threats, do so in the spirit of American independence. 

They need not hide their lamps beneath a bushel. Yet.

The few candles in the modest home gave dim, soft light. Several friends and family members huddled on the living room floor. An old man opened a Constitution booklet.

“We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect --”

One nephew heard a vehicle. He crept to a window, and saw a black van under a streetlight. Three masked and black-clad figures disembarked.

“Justice Keepers!”

The mother pulled a veil over the wall crucifix. And the old man opened a floorboard hiding place, secreting the historic words.

In 2026, that scene seems ridiculous. But remember that progressivism moves gradually. “Hate speech” codes already exist, as do “Hate crimes” laws. We now face the perils of ‘Hate thought’ and intellectual and moral ‘right thinking’ theories.

America-based social media corporations hew closely to European Union speech guidelines, abandoning our nation's traditional ideal of safeguarding voices, in favor of private gain. And pro-repression progressives here in the United States applaud England's siccing police on disfavored internet speakers, and slamming cell doors behind them.

Should progressives' desired attitudinal uniformity become a standard, most citizens would likely pretend at acquiescence. One can imagine employers subjecting job applicants to values and ideological screenings. Industries might maintain blacklists. Anyone wishing paychecks would be required to bend a knee at the unholy altar of groupthink.

Perhaps landlords would deny housing to those refusing such litmus tests. Places of public accomodation might devise suitable requirements, lest they seem insufficiently woke and alienate a customer bloc. (One already reads of anti-ICE protesters putting up rackets outside agents' hotel rooms, and of chains acquiescing.)

Teachers might discipline students for expressing ‘wrongthink.’ And what of religious faith? Would traditionalist Catholics like this writer be sent to re-education camps?

The spectacle of massive financial institutions denying business associations on political bases has already loomed - even for President Trump.

The greatest minds of Western Civilization gave us logic, reasoning, and philosophical articulations of inestimable value. A man’s right to believe and proclaim what seems correct to him, and best reflects his values and faith, is fundamental to the promise of our American Constitution.

More importantly, it is Divinely bestowed. And no weapon formed against it shall prosper.

Remember mad doctors? Meet mad judges.

They contrive monstrousness, though not in cobwebbed and moldy-stoned laboratories. Rather, it is behind upraised judicial benches and in stately chambers' solitude that they lurk.

Meet thirteen members of the ungainly kick line of black-robed quislings, presently doing dirt to the American people. 

- The Charlotte, North Carolina train stabbing of Iryna Zarutska, allegedly by Decarlos Brown Jr, was made possible by Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes. Though Brown had some 14 prior arrests, including for violent crimes, Stokes threw wide the freedom door for him, accepting his pledge that he would return for further proceedings. Poor Iryna had fled Ukraine's warfare, and sought safety in the U.S. 

- Californian Nicholas Roske was convicted last year of attempting to kill U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavenaugh. The West Coast evildoer had flown across the country, armed and intent on fatal crime. Justice.gov quoted AG Pam Bondi as remarking “The attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a disgusting attack against our entire judicial system by a profoundly disturbed individual,” While the Trump Department of Justice advocated the would-be assassin receive a 30-years-to-life sentence, Judge Deborah Boardman gave Roske a mere 97 months.

- In late January, Obama-appointed District Court Judge Richard Boulware II ordered the release of illegal alien and MS-13 miscreant Harvey Laureano Rosales. Critics charged Boulware hoped Rosales could then evade deportation. According to Las Vegas CBS affiliate 8 News Now, Rosales "was convicted of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, use of a firearm, and possession of a firearm by an ex-felon, all deemed gang-related, in 1997. He received multiple life sentences, spent more than 25 years in prison, where he joined the Mexican Mafia prison gang, and was granted parole in November 2022, court documents show. Immigration authorities civilly detained Rosales by April 2023, according to court documents."

Others who've let down American justice, instead favoring partisan political interests and exploiting positions to forestall President Trump's initiatives, include James Boasberg, Jeffrey Sutton, Tanya Chutkan, Juan Merchan, Gonzalo Curiel, Beryl Howell, Jon Tigar, Berman Jackson, and James Robart.

And remember now-former Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan? She misused her authority by attempting to aid Eduardo Flores-Ruiz evade ICE apprehension - though he was an illegal alien, reputed MS-13 member, and wife-beater. (Ruiz already had a deportation history)

I don't mean to imply that principled judges haven't answered our country's call for fair-minded and wise arbiters of Constitutional propriety. Such exist nationwide, and we are all indebted to them for maintaining American founders' vision of equality under the law. (Great inspiration for which came from England's Magna Carta.)

They perform tasks crucial to the ideal of fairness, and mete out appropriate punishments for those proven to have violated standards to which good men hold fast. There could be no civilized order without them.

But their cracked-mirror opposites act as agents of a larger dark effort. One that has as its motivation - indeed, raison d'être - impeding any progress the Trump administration might make. His are fine goals that a roaring majority of American voters (myself included) endorsed. 

Electoral and lawfare skullduggeries were undertaken, as was a rigged, so-called " J6 investigation," but all fell to ruin. President Trump and the patriots of MAGA vanquished opponents. 

Enter corrupt jurists, who elevate Orange Man Bad prejudices above sacred ideals. They've turned their minds to devising manners in which the popular will might be cast into the gutter.

"If you don't impeach the corrupt judges, you cannot fix the country. They will form a cartel and block all reforms, protecting the systemic corruption that put them in their seats."

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele once uttered those words in seconding Elon Musk's warning of ethically wayward jurists. President Trump agrees.

Loosing repeatedly-apprehended violent criminals and sexual predators into American neighborhoods poses great danger to the public. Plainly, judges who do so are indifferent to (and seemingly contemptuous of) the citizenry whose safety should be among their highest concerns.

The Constitution offers a judicial impeachment mechanism. And, were there enough congressional officials of honor, efforts would already populate headlines.

Some judges are elected. Others are appointed by office holders. In old Hollywood scare-cinema, mad doctors fell to torch-wielding villagers. Americans' November 2026 votes must be wielded toward identical end.

Learn to listen, listen to learn      

Some of the most instructive and entertaining videos accessible online are slightly dated ones that present late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk's campus travels. 

Students lined up to challenge the esteemed Christian conservative thinker. At times seeming nearly bored, he batted aside inferior arguments he'd probably encountered innumerable times.

It was not uncommon for wet-eared radicals to interrupt Kirk and shout over him. Of course, students striving to make theirs the only postures evident were denying others' free speech rights. Fear that listeners exposed to contrasting views might be swayed bespeaks weakness.

(Anyone thinking it was unfair of adult Kirk to debate college kids should consider his reasoning that, as he and they were all voters with equal influence, comparing stances was legitimate.)

In any nation where citizens exercise control (at least, theoretically), conversation about issues, candidates, and elected officials is crucial to richer understanding and, hence, more responsible voting. Even heated debate between ideological partisans can prove beneficial. 

But to be productive, such exchanges must be respectful. All speakers should be allowed to articulate positions fully. Then, both participants and observers can weigh divergent perspectives - considering each for strengths and flaws - and arrive at informed conclusions. 

Admittedly, in intense debate moments, I've interrupted adversaries.  Erroneous claims and personal smears deployed in rapid succession warrant examination and rejoinder. But blocking others' speech as a tactical device is illegitimate. 

Ad Hominem broadsides, feigned guffawing, shouting over opponents in order to prevent them from being heard - those are strategies of the playground (or cable news panelists' food fights). They hint strongly at agitators' likely self-awareness of position frailty. If they were able to mount sound arguments, if they had firm evidentiary support, they wouldn't resort to misbehavior.

Debates are never won by bratty carryings-on. Not in the estimation of intelligent witnesses. Victory belongs to those who present superior reasoning and facts. For some, though, objective facts simply are not allies. 

Too, there is the fascistic attitude that opponents' contentions do not deserve fair treatment. ("Wrong has no rights.") Cuban dictator Fidel Castro executed citizens who'd inveighed against that country's communism. His rationale was that national self-defense interest justified killing speakers who threatened repressive orthodoxy.

Untrammeled American political speech is now reviled as a threat to be quashed (even violently) in intolerant, woke circles. Tactics employed include denying platforms to voices, blowing whistles to drown out speakers, and campaigns to pressure advertisers into dropping support for contrary radio and television programs.

Often, participants in progressive events are instructed by organizers to ignore investigating questioners. One is struck by their inclination to hide ideas and activities from outside attention.

A blood relative of those is the blocking of independent cameras to prevent the recording and transmission of illicit demonstrator activities - including incitement, vandalism, arson, and attacks on law enforcement. 

Liberals once championed fair debate in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' "marketplace of ideas." Then, Marxists took the wheel. Having now traveled three stop-lights past crazy, they seem convinced yesterday's wrong is the new correct.

Perhaps the lamented Charlie Kirk could have turned them around. But they'd have had to to listen to learn.

(A shorter version of this ran in the Cedar Rapids [IA] Gazette, last August.)