The fabled “diploma divide” reveals a darker truth about a pervasive belief in a “right to rule” among Democrat elites.

The commentariat has made much lately of the fabled “diploma divide” in our politics and the propensity of “highly educated” voters to cast their ballots for Democrats. Their fascination with this statistic reveals a belief that the modern conservative movement – “America First,” “MAGA,” whatever you want to call it – is little more than a peasants’ revolt against the so-called elites who now dominate most of our institutions.

Democrats have never been particularly good at masking their disdain for Americans who don’t share their progressive sensibilities. Perhaps the most infamous example is Hillary Clinton’s 2016 remark about “deplorables.” But Barack Obama also smeared voters who are “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion,” while Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage” and various other Democrats have slandered Trump and his supporters as “racist” and “fascist,” ad infinitum.

The clear pattern that emerges is that liberal elites simply think that they are better than everyone else and thus have an inherent right to rule over them. This sentiment is why Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, appeared recently on the Radio Atlantic podcast and declared: “The Republican Party has to be defeated, and I think MAGA specifically, I want to defeat it and then salt the Earth with its ashes.”

Such vitriol is the product of sheer loathing for ordinary Americans and reflects real fear that the Republican coalition is now building on the working-class base that defected from the Democrats in 2016.

Democrats hope to replace those voters with college-educated voters. But there’s a problem with that plan – college-educated voters are not all trending Democrats’ way. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, college grads went for the Democrat presidential nominee by 21 points in 2016 and 24 points in 2020, but only 16 points in 2024.

Even among white college grads, Democrats’ advantage declined from 17 points in 2016 to 15 points in 2020 and then 12 points in 2024. Meanwhile, Trump’s advantage among non-college educated voters steadily grew from seven points in 2016 to eight points in 2020 and 14 points in 2024.

The only educational group among whom Democrats enjoyed a consistently large advantage was voters with postgraduate degrees. They won this cohort by 37 points in 2016, 35 points in 2020, and 32 points in 2024.

In short, Democrats have bet the house on courting voters with advanced degrees – particularly those in nebulous fields such as “gender studies.” These degree-collectors took out loans for exorbitant sums to buy diplomas with no real economic utility. This is why we have as of late seen a groundswell of support within the Democrat Party for student loan forgiveness and “tax the rich” schemes that would redistribute wealth to this impoverished class of advanced degree holders.

The number one concern of this group of voters is locking the rubes out of power – starting with Donald Trump who, despite being a New York billionaire, has more than any other politician in recent memory channeled the frustrations of the working class.

Consequently, if the Democrats retake the House in November, they will impeach the President again. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who would likely become Judiciary Committee chairman, recently told NBC’s Meet the Press that Trump has “undoubtedly” committed impeachable offenses. This echoed a press release he issued last year discussing impeachment:

“Impeachment is a critical means of political and constitutional self-defense that the people have available to use against a lawless president who acts like a king and commits high crimes and misdemeanors against the people.”

Raskin was, of course, a major driver of the two previous Trump impeachments and was the lead House manager in the second Senate impeachment trial. The second trial was so farcical that Chief Justice John Roberts, who would normally preside over such proceedings, refused to participate.

A third impeachment would likely be just as ridiculous, but securing a conviction wouldn’t really be the point. The real object of the game would be to crush the morale of the peasants’ revolt against the brave new world established by the Obama and Biden regimes and only interrupted by Trump.

It is difficult to overstate the shock to the system that was caused by Trump’s 2016 victory. Hillary Clinton was Obama’s anointed successor, and she was meant to serve her two terms consolidating Obama’s nascent one-party autocracy. Thus, when the hoi polloi got above themselves and put Trump in the White House, his destruction became the primary objective of Washington’s self-appointed optimates.

The evidence for this was released to the public by then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard on July 18, 2025:

“The issue I am raising is not a partisan issue. It is one that concerns every American. The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government. Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.”

After months of investigation into the conspiracy, DNI Gabbard discovered that President Obama ordered DNI James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director Andrew McCabe to manufacture a fraudulent Intelligence Community Assessment based on the notorious Steele Dossier. This bogus assessment was used by these people as the basis for launching a years-long attempt to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.

The same assessment was also used as the basis for the infamous Russia Hoax and the interminable Mueller investigation – which never found a scrap of evidence that Trump or any of his associates had colluded with Vladimir Putin to somehow rig the 2016 presidential election.

Despite having been thoroughly debunked, sections of the dossier were nonetheless used by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the pretext for launching the first impeachment inquiry and the 2020 impeachment trial. DNI Gabbard wrote this about the Obama cabal:

“Their egregious abuse of power and blatant rejection of our Constitution threatens the very foundation and integrity of our democratic republic. No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. The American people’s faith and trust in our democratic republic and therefore the future of our nation depends on it. As such, I am providing all documents to the Department of Justice.”

All of which, oddly enough, brings us back to the diploma divide. What do Barack Obama, James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, and Andrew McCabe have in common? They are all “highly educated” elites with advanced degrees from Ivy League universities.

William F. Buckley famously said, “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”

Buckley was obviously on to something. It is hardly a secret that most elite schools have become leftist indoctrination camps and their diplomas are nothing more than participation trophies. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) graduated from Boston University with a B.A. in international relations and economics. Have you ever heard her discuss either topic without laughing aloud?

If the MAGA movement is a peasants’ revolt, power to the hoi polloi. The republic can’t stand any more “elites” like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or their bumbling enablers.

David Catron, AMAC Newsline

Perhaps yesterday was not the best day to schedule a halal food festival in the Philly suburbs?

Lynne Lechter | September 20, 2026

If it wasn’t so serious, the latest Islamic attack on America’s Jewish and Christian foundation would be comical

As has been recounted by various American Thinker writers, the Islamic pernicious offense marches on, mostly unabated.  The lack of serious pushback, to date, is scandalous.

Many if not all rabbis, of every Judaic denomination, assert that they do not want to infuse negativity into Jewish classes or religious services.  But what about during the rest of the time?  And it appears the Christian world has ignored this growing encroachment as well. 

While our population is being coddled with a dearth of danger warnings, many Islamic youths and adults are trained in martial arts and inundated with continuing lies regarding Middle East history.  Specifically maddening are the global lies that persist regarding the horrific events of the Hamas attacks against mostly Israeli civilians on October 7.  Defying logic, after about 1,200 Israelis were gang-raped, burned alive, and murdered, and over 200 kidnapped, some already dead, their bodies paraded through the streets of Gaza as trophies, the world blamed and continues to blame Israel.

Islamic tactics do not change.  Yesterday, September 19, 2026, was the day before the start of the Jewish most sacred religious holiday: Yom Kippur.  For 24 hours, Jews do not eat or drink.  They repent of anything they have done to hurt another human being and ask him and G-d for forgiveness. 

However, in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, a unique event occurred at the mammoth mall there, owned by the Simon Company.  In an outside parking lot area, stretching for blocks, a halal food festival was permitted.  Such an event is a first.  The area was filled with what appeared to be over 100 tents, with merchants purportedly selling food and merch.  Due to the configuration of the tents, and lines of people waiting to get in, it was impossible to know if propaganda materials were also present.  People stood in line for blocks to enter, and more hijabs were worn than normally seen. 

The most flagrant oddity is that for whatever reason, the mall permitted an event not previously open to any other group.  Moreover, true to type, Muslims selected the halal festival date the day before the most sacred Jewish holiday. 

America must wake up.  All one needs to ponder is the creep of Islamic political growth occurring in the U.K.

For those who observe Yom Kippur, I trust you have an easy fast.

American Thinker

Iran has conveyed seven conditions to Washington for the start of any negotiations, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei said Saturday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether to resume major attacks on Iran.

“The United States, if it wants to extricate itself from the predicament it has created, must accept Iran’s rights and conditions,” Rezaei wrote on X, saying the seven demands had been communicated to Washington.

He did not spell out all seven in the post. Earlier Saturday, however, Rezaei told Al Jazeera that Tehran was demanding an end to the war “on all fronts,” the release of frozen Iranian assets and an end to the US naval blockade as conditions for a settlement.

He said a Qatari mediator had conveyed Iran’s terms to Washington and that Tehran was awaiting Trump’s response.

Iran and the United States have remained engaged in indirect diplomacy throughout months of fighting and since the collapse of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding.

The memorandum, signed in June after Pakistan-hosted talks, was intended to halt the fighting and pave the way for a broader agreement. Both sides later accused the other of violations, and it expired in August without producing a lasting settlement.

Trump told Axios on Thursday that he had a “big decision” coming over whether to resume large-scale attacks on Iran, while saying Tehran remained in direct contact with Washington and wanted a deal. He is due to discuss the war with leaders of six Persian Gulf states in New York next week.

Pakistan, another key intermediary, is sending Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi to Tehran on Sunday. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the visit was focused on bilateral ties and previous agreements between the two countries and that he was not aware of any specific US message or proposal due to be conveyed.

Baghaei acknowledged Pakistan’s continuing mediation role, saying it was natural for Islamabad to pursue diplomatic efforts, but said he had no information about any particular initiative attached to the visit.

Rezaei meanwhile struck a harder military tone, saying Iran had changed its strategy toward Washington after the United States withdrew from the memorandum. He said Tehran had recently tested an anti-ship missile near a US aircraft carrier and claimed Iran was better prepared to confront American air attacks after identifying weaknesses in the US military.

Nuclear pressure

On nuclear policy, Rezaei said Tehran remained committed to the late supreme leader’s fatwa against nuclear weapons and had not changed its nuclear doctrine, though he added that “we do not know what will happen in the future.”

He said Israeli and US actions already provided grounds for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but Tehran had not made such a decision and any move would depend on Washington’s conduct.

Last month, Rezaei suggested Tehran could reconsider its longstanding rejection of nuclear weapons, arguing that US attacks on Iran have strengthened the case for acquiring an atomic bomb as a deterrent.

Rezaei told the state TV Washington had demonstrated that adherence to the global nuclear non-proliferation system offered countries little protection from military attack.

US President Donald Trump’s war on Iran has made nuclear weapons more attractive worldwide by demonstrating that neither the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nor membership in the International Atomic Energy Agency offers protection, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security… pic.twitter.com/RNSSxOulAI— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) August 23, 2026

Saudi-Yemen escalation

In his Saturday interview, Rezaei also said Iran wanted the fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen to end and believed the Yemeni side also sought an agreement with Riyadh.

Hours earlier, an air attack struck a jet-fuel storage facility at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, marking the first direct assault on the Saudi capital in months, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Houthis later claimed two operations using missiles and drones, saying they struck “sensitive and important” targets in Riyadh and Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu. Military spokesman Yahya Saree did not explicitly identify the airport as a target.

Iran International

President Trump said on Sunday that he has agreed to convert plans for a massive triumphal arch into a “top grade Military Complex,” equipped with snipers and drone storage.

“At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Work on the 250-foot-tall arch was expected to begin this month, with plans to start excavation on the site across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., on a traffic circle near Arlington National Cemetery. The arch is proposed to be clad in granite and topped with three golden statues and have an observation deck.

The president said Sunday that the arch would “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas,” along with holding “large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

Mr. Trump said there will be “no facility like this anywhere in the World.”

“Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all!” he added.

The administration has said that the arch’s development, which comes as part of a broader effort by the president to put his architectural stamp on the nation’s capital, will recognize the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this year. But it’s drawn pushback amid concerns that the monument’s height could interfere with sightlines between major D.C. monuments and Arlington National Cemetery, along with its proximity to Ronald Reagan Washington International Airport.

The Federal Aviation Administration determined on Friday that the arch poses no hazard to flights coming into and departing from the nearby airport, despite concerns from Democratic lawmakers that the project would further complicate an already complex airspace.

Kaia Hubbard, CBS News

Gov. Gavin Newsom, currently polling 4th in the 2028 Dem presidential primary behind AOC, took another victory lap claiming that he protected California from ‘election interference’ especially from the federal government, by signing a bunch of illegal laws banning examination of ballots.

Three of these are especially problematic.

AB 282 (Pellerin) – Makes it a felony 1) to seize or cause or assist in the seizure of ballots, election records, or certified voting technology before election results are certified by the elections official and 2) for any person with authority to direct another person subject to their supervision or authority to seize ballots, election records, or certified voting technology before election results are certified.

AB 1664 (Jackson) – Requires a local agency, political subdivision, or elections official to provide notice to the Secretary of State and the California Attorney General immediately, but no later than one calendar day, after becoming aware of any warrant, subpoena, or active law enforcement investigation pertaining to the search, seizure, or retention of any election records or certified voting technology.

SB 1418 (Cervantes) – Makes it a crime to take election materials or voting technology from the custody of election officials and expands the types of materials required for preservation if an election contest or criminal proceeding is ongoing.

These are all, based on the public statements from Newsom, AG Rob Bonta and other top officials, intended to block federal election oversight.

“Donald Trump won’t stop until he can exert dictatorial control over your free vote and disenfranchise millions of people this November. California will stop him at every opportunity. We have no bigger task than fighting to protect the right to vote from interference and meddling – the future of democracy is on the line. These bills today build upon the wall California has built to safeguard our electoral process.”

Governor Gavin Newsom

California previously got away with blocking cooperation with federal law enforcement on immigration, including by threatening local law enforcement with penalties for cooperating with federal law enforcement. This secessionist stuff is now being boosted by also blocking cooperation with federal election oversight.

Now, personally, I think that federal election oversight is controversial, but this precedent was created through civil rights act enforcement and Dems were quite enthusiastic when it was happening in southern states, not in southern California. Too bad, the precedent is there, and it can be used.

Passing state laws to block federal investigations is creeping rather close to a Fort Sumter moment, but Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Dem supermajority decided to bypass creeping towards Fort Sumter and went right to racing towards it because this fourth bill takes the treason cake.

Governor Newsom signs bill to protect California’s sovereignty and guard against unauthorized military deployments

LOS ANGELES – Strengthening control over out-of-state military forces on California soil, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed a bill that would prohibit other state militaries from entering California without the Governor’s explicit permission.

At a time when the Trump administration is increasingly treating states as targets rather than partners, Senate Bill 1354 by Senator Bob Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera) makes clear that California will not surrender its constitutional role, its values, or the rights of the nearly 40 million people who call this state home.

This new law gives the Governor — as commander in chief of California’s militia — a defined role in determining when out-of-state military forces may enter California for state missions.

The new law prohibits military personnel from another state, territory, or the District of Columbia from entering California to perform military duty or law-enforcement functions without the permission of the Governor. The bill preserves an exception for forces lawfully called into active federal service under Title 10 and acting under the authority of the President or Secretary of Defense.

While this law does not apply to federal active-duty personnel operating under federal Title 10 authority, with the Governor’s signature of this bill, it closes a legal loophole where other states could have deployed their military under Title 32 — even at the President’s suggestion

It’s not a legal loophole. Governors grant permission to National Guard deployments. And insisting that any use of the National Guard has to be under Title 10 unless it’s directly authorized by Newsom is either senseless or a slippery slope towards an Insurrection Act confrontation.

Passing laws like this seems utterly senseless unless a state is preparing to resist federal authority using military force.

At some point when a state has passed a whole raft of laws trying to block federal law enforcement, federal election and now federal military deployment, we have to consider it to be in a Fort Sumter scenario and actively trying to secede from the United States of America.

And respond accordingly.

Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine

The Skeptic Research Center’s 2024 study of over 3,000 U.S. adults showed majorities of Hispanic (59%), Black (69%), and Asian (55%) women, plus many men in those groups, selected ‘true’ for the statement, compared to lower rates among white respondents. Liberal millennials led at 55%, while even 31% of graduate degree holders agreed; the same group held misconceptions about incomes and college admissions. Slavery existed for millennia worldwide, from ancient Mesopotamia to Africa and the Americas, long before the race-based transatlantic trade driven by Europeans. The findings spotlight gaps in understanding slavery’s global history amid America’s pivotal role in its abolition.

Skeptic Research Center

The average American is politically ignorant.  And, by and large, they have no interest in learning about it.  Just take a look at all the people that hate President Trump–they’re completely and hopelessly mindless, every blessed one of them.  The Artful Dilettante

In spring of 2021, a man visits a small storefront in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He tells the woman at the desk – the business owner– that he wants a nursing degree.

What happens next, captured on undercover video, helps unravel one of the largest healthcare fraud schemes in recent U.S. history, operating heavily in South Florida’s tight-knit Haitian immigrant networks. 

The con secretly recruited and collected money from people who wanted to buy, not earn, nursing diplomas.

Isaac Bledsoe is a federal Special Agent in Charge of the Inspector General’s Miami office at Health and Human Services. He says his agency got onto the fraud through a tip.

“So believe it or not, we had an individual whose family member had reached out to them, asked if they could borrow somewhere around $16,000, that if they had the money, there’s a school in South Florida that will give them a nursing diploma,” Bledsoe recently told Full Measure, in explaining the scheme. 

“So we started off with an undercover immediately, where we had an undercover reach out to one of these schools in South Florida, put themselves out as an individual who has no healthcare background but looking to buy, wants to be a nurse, looking to buy a nursing diploma and ‘what can they do?’”

The video shows the undercover agent talking to fraudster Geralda Adrien about buying a nursing degree with no training or classes required.

“It depends on how ready you are,” Adrien tells the agent who is posing as a wannabe nurse. “Because if you’re ready to go now, I have a way of getting you tested in a school in New York. It is the easiest state for processing. You don’t have to go to New York, you can test here [Florida] but you just get processed through the board of New York.”

Adrien’s companies functioned as brokers for the entire racket, conspiring with the owners and operators of actual accredited Florida nursing schools that issued fraudulent diplomas and transcripts. The undercover agent was able to buy his fake diploma for $16,000.

Bledsoe says the group of fraudsters sold $250 million in fake diplomas across the country to 15,000 “nurses.” Many of them have disappeared into America’s health care system.

Meanwhile, prosecutors say the thieves lived lavishly off their proceeds, using the cash for luxury homes, cars and travel.

Forty-three people have been charged and, so far, all have been convicted. They are serving anywhere from four to six years in prison.

Among those convicted: Adrien; Johanah Napoleon, owner of the Palm Beach School of Nursing; Eunide Sanon, owner of Siena College of Health; and Carleen Noreus, owner of Carleen Health Institute. 

Noreus pleaded guilty mid-trial in June to selling nearly 3,000 diplomas. She was ordered to forfeit nearly $4 million. The others are ordered to give up millions more.

Meantime, the real world fall-out continues. Unqualified nurses treating vulnerable patients – in hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics – a direct threat to patient safety.

Bledsoe says the feds didn’t go after the phony nurses because buying bogus degrees isn’t a federal crime. 

Today, the names of two dozen Florida nursing schools, now shut down, are posted on nursing board websites as states take steps to root out the impersonators and revoke licenses.

Just the News, Sharyl Attkisson

I’ve known and supported President Trump for many years, and I offer these thoughts in the spirit of friendship and concern.

Sometimes the strongest thing a leader can do is say less, listen more, and let his actions speak for themselves. I’m praying for our President, as I hope all Americans will, and I’m asking him to remember the example of Ronald Reagan: humor, courtesy, respect, and a presidential manner even in difficult times.

Mr. President, I say this as a friend. For just a little while, try being quiet. You may be surprised how loudly that silence speaks.

Pat Boone/X

Jesus is not your campaign surrogate.

By Spyridon Andrews

don’t normally comment on political races, but when I see someone who is as fundamentally full of sh-t as James Talarico, I believe it is my duty to say something about it. James Talarico is now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Texas, having defeated Jasmine Crockett in the 2026 primary. He has discovered a political instrument more powerful than a Super PAC, more versatile than a focus group, and considerably harder to interview: Jesus Christ. After generations of right-wing Protestant pastors hijacking the message of Jesus and turning him into some kind of political football, you have to hand it to James. After all, he is shameless enough to say, why not me?

Down in the backwater leftist stronghold of Austin, Texas, Talarico is selling progressive politics with a halo. He has shamelessly transformed Jesus into a mouthpiece for leftist progressivism. But that same feeling that we used to get when we watched the PTL Club pervades his aura. I have to hand it to American Protestantism; despite its amazing versatility, it can still make you feel dirty, cheap, and used.

Talarico’s maneuver is a simple one for the simple-minded. He selects biblical passages that he can bastardize and put into the service of leftist progressivism, as if it were a direct command from the Lord Jesus Christ to the White House and the U.S. Senate. Jesus becomes a mouthpiece for the massive expansion of government, open borders and illegal immigration, and NGOs. However, the clarity of his stance rolls into the fog the moment that the fate of an unborn child enters the discussion.

It would be too simple to call him a political whore. But I have to say that hearing him speak makes me nostalgic for Jasmine Crockett. Talarico has shamelessly peddled the God-loves-abortion argument that was vomited out by his professors at the far-left seminary he attended in Austin. Just a quick review of the course catalogue puts the “seminary” in the same political hotbox as any American progressive propaganda center these days. As a survivor of Harvard Divinity School, I can recognize all the usual fluff: Activism and the Old Testament Scriptures, Womanist and Feminist readings of the New Testament, Immigration and the Old Testament, Communication for Ministries of Social Justice. At Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, there is not even a pretense to read the Bible through anything other than a Marxist, feminist lens. The historical texts never stood a chance.

The faculty includes Cynthia Rigby, who is a constructive theologian, as in “makes sh-t up.” I studied under a “constructive theologian” named Gordon Kaufman all the way back in 1980, back when “constructing the concept of God” was an off-the-wall idea posited by professors desperately trying to be provocative to obtain tenure. Now it’s mainstream. It’s the same old eggheads treating the Christian tradition as oppressive and patriarchal and all the usual crap, using a version of analysis that posits that everything they believe now is wonderful, and everyone else in the entirety of human history is simply not as smart or as evolved as they are. It’s aggressively stupid.

One of the other professors over there is a guy named Gregory Cuéllar, whose books include Resacralizing the Other at the US-Mexico Border: A Borderland Hermeneutic and Empire, the British Museum, and the Making of the Biblical Scholar in the Nineteenth Century: Archival Criticism. His research concerns Global Justice within the framework of border enforcement. What the hell any of this has to do with the actual proclamation of Christ, who was decidedly apolitical and steadfastly refused to get into politics, we’ll never know. But Cuéllar, like his colleague Rigby, seems to like to make stuff up.

What is especially loathsome about these seminaries is that they seem to barely read the printed word and have no real interest in what the Gospels actually say. Their efforts have been directed toward “demythologizing” the gospel (Rudolf Bultmann), finding the secular meaning (Paul van Buren), secularizing the message (Harvey Cox, The Secular City), or drawing a picture of God to their liking, literally conjured up from thin air (God the Problem, Gordon Kaufman). Then there are the feminist wackos like Mary Daly, the “theologian” who despised all men, would not accept men into her classroom, and would only refer to God as “Goddess.” For any serious scholar who actually wants to study Augustine, Aquinas, Athanasius, Luther, or the actual Bible, stay the hell away from a mainstream Protestant seminary. They wouldn’t know a Bible if it fell off the shelf and hit them over the head. They haven’t even lifted their heads out of Das Kapital for the last 75 years.

So this helps explain Talarico, who wandered out of this environment into progressive politics, which is tame by comparison. Talarico is what we would call a “liberation” theologian, which means that he accepts as true all the presuppositions of Karl Marx and Lenin and then mixes in a few Bible passages as necessary. We are all supposed to be one big global community with no borders, with a bunch of bureaucrats running everything, splitting everyone’s candy bars into perfectly equal geometric squares so no one person gets more than another, before they are sent back to live in their climate-controlled cube.

The point they miss is that giving to the poor, loving your neighbor, and loving your enemy does not mean that a nation cannot police its borders from drug cartels and rapists who traffic children. I might even agree, as I have written before, that we should find a way to welcome law-abiding, hard-working families into the country in a way that does not penalize those who played by the rules. 

But there is nothing in the Bible that exhorts us to ensure that federal agencies lose contact with hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors at the border, some of whom end up involved in sex trafficking or worse. Moreover, I must have missed the part about the Bible prohibiting showing a government ID when voting.

All of this would be enough to call Talarico a fraud and a demagogue, but his argument on abortion is even more astounding for its duplicity and lack of shame. Talarico has now engaged in an acrobatic sleight of hand that advocates a “double consent” on the part of the woman before giving birth. For Talarico, the original sex act is not consent to give birth. How he arrives at this, f-ck if anyone knows. Perhaps in Austin they are still figuring out whether the act of coitus has anything to do with conceiving a child. I suppose that’s entirely possible. No, even after having sex, now the woman has to consent to have the child. The only one in the whole deal who never has a choice is the kid whose life is up in the air while his mother is determining whether to conceive the child or kill him so she won’t have to miss a month or two of yoga.

How does Talarico come to the conclusion that this is “biblical”? Well, in one of the biggest asshole moves of all time, he decides to pollute the story of the Annunciation of the Virgin—one of Christianity’s most sacred narratives—and turn it into a decision point as to whether or not to have an abortion. Because Mary is informed and delighted that she will bear God’s son, Talarico makes the leap to argue that this reaction demonstrates that she “consented” to have God’s son. Luke 1 does contain Mary’s response—“Let it be with me according to your word”—which Christian traditions frequently understand as assent to a divine blessing. The narrative does not say Mary was choosing between continuing or terminating an existing pregnancy, and such a reading is ridiculous. A “divine right to abortion” isn’t even remotely what is offered in the Gospel of Luke. And this interpretation is so extraordinarily half-cocked that I would bet anyone a Starbucks Venti Latte that he heard this kind of idiotic argument from one of his professors over at the seminary.

We could be cruel and say that Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary likely contains no learning, no faith, and no serious Christians. But let’s be charitable and say that it has a roving theological imagination that appears to be uniformly one-directional. Finding a conservative in the place is probably even more difficult than finding a conservative in Austin. Or better yet, they are in the business of trying desperately to translate leftist progressive Marxist politics into the Christian vocabulary. Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is about as far away from teaching the Christian proclamation of love, life, and sacrifice as the white-shoed preachers who proclaim that the promises of God will make you rich. It is a factory that produces biblically illiterate, historically illiterate arch-leftists who preach a message as alien to Christianity as Mao’s Little Red Book.

I would be remiss if I did not also call out Talarico’s fraudulent claim that he is a champion against billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians. Despite his claim that it has all been done with $100 donations, there is the little matter of the widely reported $6.2 million his Senate campaign raised in its first 20 days, along with significant outside spending by super PACs supported by wealthy donors. Talarico has accepted donations from the Texas Sands PAC, linked to who else, billionaire arch-abortion advocate and casino owner Miriam Adelson. The Texas Tribune reports that Texas Sands PAC was funded by Adelson; the verified figure is $59,000 from that PAC during Talarico’s 2024 Texas House campaign.

Talarico wants voters to believe that he has rescued Jesus from the Republican Party, but what he really did was recruit Jesus for the Progressive Leftist Democrats, assign him a communications director, and limit his personal appearances to approved campaign stops. Talarico directs Jesus to what desks he wants him to overturn in the Senate, and you can bet it won’t be Chuck Schumer’s. He may be the first candidate in history to turn the Annunciation into an abortion brief, but he won’t be the first candidate who has turned the Gospel into campaign literature. That’s been done before.

This guy is nothing new. He’s just a little sneakier than some of the others.

American Greatness

About Spyridon Andrews

Spyridon (Don) Andrews is a Greek American writer, lawyer, and lifelong jazz musician. In his writing, he draws on his Hellenic roots, as well as his love of Renaissance Humanism. A graduate of Harvard, he writes works that blend history, travel, philosophy, and comedy. Most recently, he wrote Manuel and Me: Looking for the Soul of America in the Heart of Italy.