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‘Peace Through Strength’ as a Revolt Against Nature

“Peace Through Strength” has been a Republican mantra for decades. The slogan holds that peace can be achieved by maintaining a powerful military capable of deterring potential adversaries. It is said that sufficient military power – occasionally showcased by stomping on those who would seek to question its overarching authority – instills fear in America’s adversaries, leading to peace and safety.

While this concept of statecraft can be traced back centuries, its modern interpretation in the Republican lexicon was popularized by President Ronald Reagan. His version of the strategy focused on maintaining military power, and using it as a tool to credibly deter nations – in his time, the Soviet Union – from expanding and spreading their negative influence.

“American strength is a sheltering arm for peace and freedom in an often dangerous world,” Reagan explained. “And strength is the most persuasive argument we have to convince our adversaries to give up their hostile intentions, to negotiate seriously, and to stop bullying other nations.”

This view of foreign policy has been expressed by Republican politicians and talking-heads all throughout the almost four decades since Reagan’s departure from power. However, if we honestly assess American foreign affairs post-Reagan, peace has been hard to come by.

The way that Reagan originally described his doctrine – build a strong military to deter enemies, thus achieving a lasting peace – is far different from how later Republicans interpreted the concept. The “Strength” portion of the slogan has served as a justification for military intervention, while “Peace” remains the promised destination that never quite arrives. Having already presumed that peace can only be achieved by strength, those who use this slogan risk becoming the proverbial hammer, to which every conflict looks like a nail.

The United States has been involved in a rolling series of military conflicts for decades, all while invoking “Peace Through Strength” as its justification. Whenever a new war begins, we are assured by our GOP political and media elites that the military action is in service of a broader peace effort. “A war to prevent another war,” if you will.

This reasoning has been used just this year, as President Trump and the Republicans have sought to justify this latest adventure in Iran. As is always necessary when selling the populace on a new war, the GOP must create a narrative, one which presents the American people with a false binary: launch this war or face certain attack. We are told that the enemy, equipped with a totally random hatred for freedom and the American way of life, is arming up to preemptively attack us. Therefore, the only rational option is to strike first.

As the war – which was based on provable lies – rolls on without an end in sight, the “Peace Through Strength” message has persisted, with the slogan being used by Republicans to reassure the war-weary public that peace is the end goal.

However, peace has remained elusive for modern American presidents.

The problem is that Reagan’s vision rests on a set of assumptions about government that are difficult to reconcile with the incentives inherent in political power.

“Peace Through Strength” requires some key presumptions in order to logically make sense. For it to work, it must be the case that we live in a system where those in power genuinely, through good faith, seek a peaceful world. Put simply, those with the legal authority to create war must be willing to forgo the temptation.

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US Troops Leak New Iran War Photos Of Gulf Bases: ‘Major Damage Hidden From American Public’

As we’ve been documenting, it is clear that major damage has yet to be communicated to the American public regarding Iran’s major retaliation on US bases in the Gulf and Mideast since the start of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury. 

During the same week that a long awaited Pentagon/Department of War Inspector General’s report was released covering the first four months of the Iran War, new leaked photographs have emerged of never-before-seen base damage.

“New photos obtained exclusively by CBS News reveal for the first time the widespread damage and destruction of buildings and vehicles at multiple U.S. positions across the Middle East, as a result of Iranian missile and drone attacks,” according to a bombshell Tuesday CBS report.

The outlet describes that the photos have been submitted by US service members under strict secrecy and anonymity – given the Pentagon has sought to enforce a crackdown on troops sharing the extent of damage, and amid orders aimed at maintaining operational security. But critics say the Pentagon and Trump administration are engaged in a cover-up and propaganda. 

“This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public,” an actively deployed unnamed service member said to CBS News.

The service member added: “We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.”

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Democrats Still Don’t Know How to Read Charts

Democrats can be unintentionally hilarious sometimes. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) reposted a chart on X Tuesday claiming housing prices are “the most unaffordable in history,” and that it was Trump’s fault.

There was just one huge problem.

The chart Newsom shared showed that the housing affordability gap actually widened during Joe Biden’s presidency, and X users noticed almost instantly, flooding his replies with screenshots of the very data he’d just posted as though it helped his argument. It didn’t take long for the pile-on to turn Newsom’s own post into a meme about his reading comprehension.

But the funny thing about it is that Democrats keep doing this. In July 2025, the Democratic National Committee posted a chart that they thought proved grocery prices were spiraling out of control in Trump’s second term.

The chart told a different story. It showed a huge spike under Biden. The DNC had unwittingly undermined its own attack on Trump. Social media users mocked the party within hours, dissecting the chart line by line, forcing the DNC to quietly delete the post… not that that stopped us from making fun of them anyway.

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Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm Over Trump’s Planned ‘Largest Transfer Of Ordinance In Modern History’

After the US was essentially forced to conduct a major and rapid draw down of forces from the Gulf and Mideast region in the wake of Iran’s ‘unexpectedly’ large retaliation for Operation Epic Fury, it seems all that Washington is left to do is arm regional allies to the teeth and wish them the best.

Early this month the US approved two potential Saudi defense packages valued at a whopping $5.75 billion. The forthcoming deals will reportedly focus on transferring extended-range precision bombs and bolstering Abrams tanks in the kingdom.

Ironically this comes at a moment that Saudi-backed coalition forces in Yemen – with all its military tech – are getting rolled back by Ansar Allah fighters in sandals.

Naturally, next on the list comes Israel.

On Tuesday, over a week since the planned Saudi sale was reported, The Washington Post reveals the following:

President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to sell to Israel a munitions package worth $2.8 billion, which will include tens of thousands of highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, according to a U.S. official familiar with the sale.

The planned sale, which has been informally communicated to relevant congressional committees who weigh in on large arms sales, includes 20,000 MK 84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.

WaPo calls the package “the largest” planned sale of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel in years.

Just prior to initial reporting of this dropping at around midday Tuesday, Tucker Carlson revealed on X: “According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history.”

Carlson put it in perspective in the following commentary:

How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing. Nor is there a justification. The government of Israel is not fighting World War Two, or even a war. It is engaged in periodic skirmishes with a guerrilla force in Lebanon, and it is working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza. Neither front requires modern 2,000-pound bombs.

The former Fox host further warned this portends Israel could soon go even more ‘gloves off’ and unleash further hell on Gaza and Lebanon, or possibly even Iran – at a moment the US seems to be trying to find an exit from the hot phase of the conflict.

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FDA Using Taxpayer Dollars to Buy Young Baboons for Infection Experiments in Maryland

The Food and Drug Administration is buying up young baboons with taxpayer dollars so researchers can infect and kill them for research in Maryland.

White Coat Waste Project has released a new report detailing how the agency issued a $368,626 purchase order on August 31 to buy 20 baboons for pertussis experiments at its Maryland primate laboratory.

An active protocol allows the lab to use up to 48 animals.

Some of the baboons will receive experimental vaccines or antibodies. Others will get no protection at all. Then researchers will pump the bacteria that cause whooping cough into their windpipes and noses.

The primates will be subjected to violent coughing, vomiting, breathing problems, fever, weight loss, nasal discharge, and weeks of illness.

Staff will draw blood and swab noses and throats again and again.

Some of the animals will be killed and dissected so researchers can examine their lungs, windpipes, and lymph nodes.

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Democrat Jon Ossoff Staffer Embraced Reparations in Gates Foundation Grant Study He Coauthored

Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff’s data and analytics director received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study how to shame white Americans into embracing reparations.

A summary of the grant reads as follows:

Racially restrictive housing covenants – used by white homeowners to prevent migration of people of color into their neighborhoods – contributed to contemporary patterns of residential segregation, social stratification, and inequality. Yet, policy proposals to correct these historical wrongs have not gained broad support. Political scientist Bryant Moy will investigate whether awareness of racially restrictive housing covenants bolsters support for reparations. He will conduct a nationally representative survey experiment for his study.

Bryant Moy, who has been hired to Ossoff’s campaign ahead of the 2026 midterm election, also serves as an associate professor at New York University.

Additionally, he is a principal investigator at the Urban Politics Lab, where his biography states in part:

He studies urban and local politics, with a focus on racial inequality, local governance, and public opinion. His research uses large-scale datasets, survey and field experiments, and modern methods of causal inference to understand how local institutions produce—or undermine—equity and democratic responsiveness in multiracial communities.

Moy explains on his personal website that he wants to fix white Americans’ lack of support for reparations.

“Public support for reparations among white Americans remains divided…  This study examines whether informational and visual interventions that present the structural roots of racial inequality can increase support for reparative policies,” an explanation on his website of one of his studies outlines.

The study, titled “Can Knowledge of Racially Restrictive Covenants Increase Support for Redress?”  is listed as “under review.”

In August, a Fox News report unearthed a 2019 interview in which Ossoff himself said he supports reparations, saying “there is a debt unpaid.”

In the exchange, Ossoff agreed with paying reparations: “There is a debt unpaid. I think it is a very, very difficult question: how to pay it,” he said.

“But see, that should be the question — not if it should be paid,” the host responded.

“Exactly,” Ossoff replied.

The Fox News report added that far-left progressive groups like Movement for Back Lives (M4BL) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have made reparations a part of their platforms.

In the 2019 interview, Ossoff also said, “Forty acres and a mule was never paid out,” but has declined to sponsor Democrat Sen. Cory Booker’s legislation to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals.

That bill, introduced most recently on January 9, 2025, has 20 cosponsors, all of whom are Democrats with the exception of Independent Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats. The list includes Sens. Mazie Hirono (HI), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Adam Schiff (CA), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI).

Ossoff faces Republican Rep. Mike Collins in November. Polls have shown Ossoff with a steady, but somewhat declining lead. Outgoing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has formally endorsed Collins.

“Jon Ossoff’s far-left agenda doesn’t represent Georgia values, and the future of our state and country demands a different direction,” Kemp said in a statement.

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Beware Contrived Scares And False Flags In Europe

On the evening of August 4, an airport employee at Leipzig/Halle noticed a small drone resting on the apron near a parked Ukrainian Antonov freighter. It carried an explosive charge and a detonator. The charge did not go off. A bomb-disposal robot rolled out across the tarmac, and by the account German officials would later give, the device had gone unnoticed for roughly four hours before anyone found it. Then the airport reopened and the country moved on.

Twenty-eight days later, on September 1, the German government told its citizens who had done it. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stood together in Berlin and named Russia. The consulate in Bonn would close on September 18; the lease on Berlin’s Russian House cultural centre would be torn up; more Russians would be proposed for European Union sanctions lists. The attribution was delivered as settled fact. The evidence behind it was not.

Five days after that, on September 6, the voters of Saxony-Anhalt went to the polls with the Alternative für Deutschland polling around 41-43%, within reach of an absolute majority in a state the entire German establishment had spent months trying to deny it. The sequence is worth holding in the mind as a single object. A device found in early August, a public silence lasting four weeks, and then an official enemy announced in the final days of a campaign. Nothing about that ordering is illegal, but nothing about it is accidental either.

Dobrindt’s case, as he laid it out, does not rest on a single piece of proof. It rests on three strands said to point the same way: police forensics, the resemblance of the device to earlier operations, and intelligence reporting. “Taken together,” he said, the investigations, the pattern and the intelligence findings established Russian responsibility. He named no GRU officer. He named no unit. He said the people who carried out the plan appeared to be “low-level” agents acting on behalf of unspecified “Russian state entities.”

What the public was given, then, was a conclusion and a description of the kinds of evidence that produced it—not the evidence. An independent observer cannot test the chain. Even sympathetic accounts noted the gap: the ministers named the state but kept most of the underlying material out of view. NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte pronounced the evidence “clear” without any of it being made public, and welcomed the German measures. The European Union’s foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas went further still, telling reporters in Ireland that the incident bore “all the hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism.”

This is the ordinary grammar of attribution in the sabotage era. A government states that its services and their partners have reached a judgement, allied governments affirm the judgement, the proof stays classified; and the citizen is invited to supply the trust that the missing evidence would otherwise earn. It may be that the classified material is overwhelming. It may be that it is thin. The structure is identical either way, which is precisely the problem. A public asked to accept an attribution on faith has no way to tell a strong case from a convenient one.

The load-bearing sentence in the German case is not about forensics at all. It is about familiarity. Wadephul said the drone’s configuration, its components, its explosives, and its ignition technology were “familiar to us from other Russian hybrid operations and from Russia’s war against Ukraine.” Dobrindt used almost the same words: elements “known to us,” a device of “high technical expertise” assembled with care. Recognition, in other words, is doing the work that a signature would normally do.

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Brussels’ Version of Democracy: Pick a Bird

Europeans finally get to vote! Brussels has discovered democracy. Do they get to vote on the war in Ukraine? No. Immigration? No. Sanctions on Russia? No. The endless climate regulations coming out of Brussels? No. Do they get a referendum on whether they even WANT the European Union to continue swallowing national sovereignty? Certainly not. But the European Central Bank has graciously decided that the people may express their opinion on what pictures should appear on the next euro banknotes. This is what democracy has been reduced to in Europe. You may not decide the policies that govern your life, but please select your favorite bird.

The ECB is currently allowing the public to rank ten preselected designs for the next generation of euro banknotes. The choices have already been narrowed to two themes: “European culture” and “Rivers and birds.” More than 1,200 designers originally applied, 25 were invited to produce designs, and an independent jury of 21 experts selected the ten finalists. Now the public gets its little moment of participation before the ECB Governing Council makes the FINAL decision around the end of 2026. The ECB itself says public opinion will merely be one of several inputs alongside the jury’s conclusions and a technical assessment. So even when they finally allow you to vote on the appearance of your own money, THEY STILL HAVE THE FINAL SAY.

Christine Lagarde declared that euro banknotes are “one of the most tangible expressions of Europe” and that the new designs will reinforce a “shared identity.” There is the entire problem in two words: shared identity. What identity? Europe is not a nation. It never has been. A Greek is not a Finn. An Italian is not an Estonian. A Spaniard is not a German. Europe contains different languages, histories, cultures, religions, traditions, economies, and national experiences stretching back centuries. Brussels has spent decades attempting to manufacture a single political identity from the top down, and even designing a piece of paper exposes how impossible that project really is.

Look at what they have selected for the “European culture” notes. Maria Callas appears on the €5, Beethoven on the €10, Marie Curie on the €20, Cervantes on the €50, Leonardo da Vinci on the €100, and Bertha von Suttner on the €200. Immediately you encounter the problem Brussels can never solve. Where is YOUR country? Where is YOUR history? Where is the person your nation believes represents its culture? Twenty countries use the euro, and this proposed series has only six denominations. Somebody will be excluded because there is no such thing as a single national European culture that can be represented on six pieces of paper.

They have already stumbled into controversy over something as basic as Marie Curie’s name. Polish MEP Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus objected to the way the ECB identified her and pressed the institution to recognize her Polish heritage and birth name, Skłodowska. Lagarde eventually responded that the ECB would refer to her as “Marie Curie (born Skłodowska)” while it continued considering how names might appear on the notes. There you have it. They cannot even put ONE famous European on a banknote without immediately encountering national identity because national identity actually EXISTS.

This is why the alternative is birds and rivers. The ECB’s own research found that people considered nature “neutral,” “safe,” “borderless,” and unlikely to create controversy. They have been forced toward politically neutral wildlife because depicting actual European civilization exposes the fact that Europe is composed of independent nations.

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Kash Patel Defends New FBI Hiring Policy On Bestiality

The process of reforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation (”FBI”) has proven to be a daunting task for its director, Kash Patel, since he took over the United States’ preeminent law enforcement agency. Marred by concerns over his personal conduct, an exodus of thousands of personnel, an ensuing staffing shortfall, and a collapse in public perception largely due to the agency’s handing of the Epstein Files, Patel continues to face inescapable questions over his ability to successfully lead the bureau. The latest instance of this crisis of confidence came following the revelation that the Patel-led FBI has chosen to lift hiring restrictions on applicants for special agent positions who have previously engaged in bestiality.

Changes to the FBI’s hiring policy were discretely initiated on February 28th, 2025, just eight days after Patel was confirmed as its director by the Senate, when the bureau chose to lower the standards it uses when conducting background checks on applicants. Under the new hiring standards, prospective employees would no longer automatically be ruled ineligible for employment if they were found to have engaged in bestiality so long as the act took place before they turned 18 years old. An internal memo circulated on June 16th, 2026, when the new standards went into effect, explained that the change was made in an effort the FBI deemed necessary to implement a hiring policy designed to consider the context of why acts like bestiality were committed by prospective hires instead of rigidly treating the incidences as automatic disqualifiers for employment. Previously, the FBI listed “engagement in prostitution or bestiality” as automatic disqualifiers as part of its hiring requirements for special agents.

Although the change to the FBI’s hiring requirements policy had largely gone unnoticed, it became the subject of intense public scrutiny during testimony from Patel that took place during an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Patel faced pointed questions from bipartisan members of the committee on the decision to relax the FBI’s hiring requirements in such a confounding manner.

Louisiana Republican senator John Kennedy, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, grilled Patel on the decision. “I’m trying to understand why you did this,” Kennedy said to Patel. “We’re having a tough time attracting agents, good quality agents we all can trust….Why would you even get into bestiality?” he asked.

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FBI Foils ISIS-Inspired Mass-Shooting Plot in Butler County, Pennsylvania — Same County Where a Gunman Tried to Assassinate President Trump

An ISIS-inspired terror attack was reportedly stopped in Pennsylvania before innocent Americans could be harmed.

Jonathan Hunter Kramer, 21, of Valencia, Pennsylvania, was arrested by the FBI on September 12 after investigators allegedly caught him taking final steps toward a violent attack in support of ISIS.

The U.S. Department of Justice charged Kramer by federal criminal complaint with receiving a firearm and ammunition while knowing, or having reason to believe, they would be used to commit a felony or federal crime of terrorism.

According to federal authorities, Kramer operated online under the alias “Hamza Al Rashid.” Investigators say the account claimed affiliation with ISIS, offered to share explosive manuals, and discussed preparing for a “mission” while saying he was only missing a weapon.

The FBI had reportedly known Kramer since 2023, when he was a minor.

In 2023, while still a minor, he was investigated after using Telegram under names including “Nikolas Cruz” and “@ShootIntoACrowd.”

Agents searched his parents’ home and found a recording of him pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pennsylvania authorities adjudicated him delinquent for his role in a mass-casualty plot and for possessing child sexual abuse material. He was sent to a juvenile facility in Oil City and released in March 2026, NBC News reported.

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