REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Conservative: Iran Flinches at Trump’s Return
“There’s a little-noticed dramatic change in Iran’s stance toward the US that deserves our attention,” cheers National Review’s Jim Geraghty.
Over the weekend, the UK Daily Telegraph reported that commanders of Iranian-backed militias have “been instructed to maintain defensive positions while avoiding any actions that could be interpreted as aggressive by US forces or regional allies,” out of fear of provoking President Trump.
Geraghty continues: “One of the few silver linings to the Iranian mullahs being such brutal bastards for a generation is that they make a lot of enemies,” and “right now, Iran’s enemies are like sharks that smell blood in the water.”
“US policy under Joe Biden was defined by an irrational, paralyzing fear” of escalation.
“Finally, some of America’s enemies are now worried about provoking or escalating conflicts with us.”
Eye on Albany: The Electric-Buses Farce
New York state rules force school districts to “buy electric buses at more than double the upfront cost,” argues the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin, which “left school bus prices rising automatically.”
It’s “the largest unfunded mandate in a generation,” yet in typical Albany fashion state officials “never issued any sort of cost estimate on the electric bus policy before approving it as part of the fiscal 2023 state budget.”
Nor have those officials “estimated the total added grid-related costs” as it’ll cost “tens of millions of dollars” for “substation upgrades.”
It’ll be hard for Albany to blame “the Trump Administration for forcing them to postpone the electric bus mandate” when the state “didn’t first determine the policy’s cost or feasibility.”
Culture critic: Auschwitz Disneyfied
“Eighty years on, millions of young people in the West know nothing about Auschwitz or indeed the Holocaust,” laments Frank Furedi at Spiked.
Per polls, “less than half of young Americans firmly believe the Holocaust actually happened.”
Auschwitz itself is “becoming Disneyfied,” stripped of its unique “historical significance” as “an industrialized extermination campaign singularly directed” at Jews.
Worse, the Holocaust has been “weaponised by anti-Israel zealots”: “Every act of apparent war, aggression or victimization invites the label of a Holocaust.”
“ ‘Pro-Palestine’ protesters” characterized Israel’s post-Oct. 7 defense as Nazi-like aggression and compared Gaza to “Nazi concentration camps.”
The “warping of the historical record is breathtaking”: “Anti-Israel zealots are not merely robbing the Holocaust of its horrific reality, they are also hollowing out its moral significance.”
UK beat: Much Ado About Knives
“After a murderous attack by a violent, radicalized assailant,” marvels Reason’s J.D. Tuccille, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has “decided the problem is access to knives.”
“Axel Rudakubana, who admitted murdering three girls and injuring others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year,” had been thrice “referred to a program intended to divert people from radicalization and terrorism before authorities lost interest in him.”
“But Starmer focused not on officials’ failure to pay attention, but on knives,” with plans to require ID for sales.
That UK “officials are now in a frenzy over knives should be a warning to the rest of us of just how bad the state can get when it uses its own failures as excuses for extending its authoritarian reach.”
Iconoclast: Cutting Through DEI Bull
What do DEI workers like those Donald Trump is axing from the federal workforce actually do?
Per Ryan Zickgraf at UnHerd, they “make their superiors feel important,” “create the appearance that something useful is being done, when it emphatically isn’t,” make “extra work for those who don’t need it” — and help the powerful “wallpaper over bad behavior.”
In other words, a production par excellence of the “lanyard class in board rooms, college campuses, and nongovernmental organisations all over the country.”
“The longer your job title is, and the harder it is to explain what you do to a stranger, the greater the chance that your job is superfluous.”
So “now that the blue-collar sector is hot, maybe it’s time to tell ex-DEI workers: learn to hammer.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board