Be glad if you didn’t see it. Luxury fashion house Balenciaga won the race to the bottom with its recent ad campaign. It featured children posing with bondage-styled bears and included a page with a Supreme Court ruling on child pornography.

Fashion advertising strives to be “hip” and “edgy” and “transgressive.” But what Balenciaga did is way too far. It isn’t bold—it’s deviant. It’s a concerted effort to destigmatize the sexualization of children. That’s evil and it’s wrong.

The good news is that Balenciaga has gotten a lot of blowback for what they did. And that’s key. Because the only way radicals will stop pushing the envelope is if the rest of us say to them: Enough. Hands off the children.

It’s every adult’s job to protect the young and vulnerable from predators—even if they’re trendy fashionistas at Balenciaga, to their eternal shame.

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Recent market volatility has led some to claim that markets themselves are inherently unstable. But the data do not back them up. 

The up and down of “risk on” and then “risk off” sentiment is associated with the instability created by our own central bank—the Fed—which has grown into a financial colossus starting with its reaction to the Great Recession. It’s now the single largest player in our financial markets. 

That's a problem in and of itself, but the other problem is that the Fed has an inherently unstable “dual mandate” from Congress. 

It has the job of fighting inflation by selling investments to drive down prices and also the job of fighting unemployment by buying investments to stimulate consumer sentiment. 

Every day, investors are forced to comb through the news and figure out which of the two contradicting mandates the Fed will follow next.

The Fed should stick to its original mandate, sound money, or be replaced with something that will.

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The origin of Thanksgiving goes back to the Plymouth plantation, founded by the Pilgrims in 1620. You may have learned that in school, but I bet you didn’t learn this in school: the original Thanksgiving came after the settlement abandoned socialism in favor of capitalism.

It appears that the original charter adopted a form of communal ownership and required equality of income. You’re probably not surprised that this led to starvation and, as a consequence, plague. After two years, the colonists did something which few socialists since have done—they learned from their mistake, and instituted private ownership. The starving times ended, the colonists traded their surpluses with the Natives and the new abundance was celebrated with a day of Thanksgiving.

It’s not just about food, it’s about freedom. Socialism is en vogue again today, but maybe this time around we can learn from history before we repeat its errors.

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As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, it’s a good time to be reminded about the true history of the holiday.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that in an increasingly secular America, there’s confusion about the origins of Thanksgiving. Some kids are now actually taught that the Pilgrims held a feast to thank the Indians. Afraid of appearing too religious, some are now calling it “Turkey Day,” as if it all comes down to poultry.

The facts speak for themselves: In 1621, the Pilgrims celebrated what they called “the goodness of God” as they feasted with local Indians. In 1789 President Washington declared the first national day of Thanksgiving—asking Americans to “unite in most humbly offering our prayer and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations.”

So much for a secular holiday. These Americans knew to whom they were praying.

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The 2022 election was certainly disappointing—especially for the cause of life, as we saw pro-abortion ballot initiatives pass while pro-life ones failed.
 
But there were bright spots—and we can learn important lessons from them. 
 
In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine won by 25 points after signing a heartbeat law. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis won by 19 points after signing a pain-capable law. Senator Marco Rubio was re-elected by 16 points after expressing strong support for a federal pain-capable law. Governors Brian Kemp in Georgia and Greg Abbott in Texas both won decisive victories after signing heartbeat laws.
 
When pro-lifers highlight how extreme the pro-abortion Left is, pro-lifers win.
 
As we head into the 2024 contest, we need to persuade our neighbors about the dignity of the life in the womb, and we need candidates who pledge to protect life at both the state and federal levels. Most important, we need to highlight the abortion extremism of the Left.

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After the 2020 election, Joe Biden and Democrats mistook a narrow presidential victory—and a loss of seats in the House—as a mandate for a sweeping progressive agenda that they couldn’t possibly pass, let alone make work. Two years later, two-thirds of Americans believe that the country is going in the wrong direction thanks to raging inflation, high crime rates and a border crisis.

Republicans narrowly won control of the House as a result. GOP leadership should learn a lesson from the last two years and focus on what they can plausibly get done rather than raise expectations. A promise to repeal the massive IRS expansion on Day One, for instance, could fuel voter cynicism when reality intrudes and Republicans fail to meet their own boasts.

Voters gave Republicans only enough authority to stop excesses from Biden and other Democrats for the next two years, and to investigate all of the improprieties of the previous two. 

Stick to those promises, and voters may well expand their mandate in 2024.

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There are a lot of reasons the Red Tsunami turned into a Red Trickle. In some places, one of them might have been the candidates.

Anyone willing to run for office deserves our appreciation. It isn’t easy to be the man—or the woman—in the arena. But sometimes, in our enthusiasm, a party’s base can fall in love and forget that politics is a game of addition. Deep red candidates, for example, rarely win a blue or purple state without demonstrating crossover appeal.

You can bet that appeal is going to be limited if a candidate hasn’t even been able to lock down his or her own entire party.

It’s important to nominate principled candidates. But it’s also rather important to win. That’s why William F. Buckley—no slouch in the principles department—created the Buckley rule: Nominate the most conservative candidate Who. Can. Win.

Not bad to remember as 2024 approaches. 

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It's bad enough that five members of the Supreme Court wrongly claimed that the U.S. Constitution requires a new definition of marriage. But as the Senate looks to codify this redefinition of marriage, all it will do is add fuel to the fire of those harassing and penalizing citizens and organizations that hold to enduring and well-grounded truths about marriage. 

The Senate bill pays lip service to religious liberty and conscience rights, but it does not offer any meaningful protections for those rights. Had the Senate sponsors wanted to, they could have explicitly stated that no individual or organization could be penalized by the government for operating according to the conviction that marriage unites husband and wife—  particularly that the IRS may not strip any such organization of its non-profit status. 

The bill offers no such protections.

That’s not public policy for the common good. 

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On Tuesday of this week, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy secured the support of an overwhelming majority in his caucus to become the party's choice to be the next Speaker of the House.

It's an appropriate time for a hearty congratulations.

California's McCarthy has been the de facto leader of the GOP House since then-Speaker Paul Ryan announced retirement in April 2018. McCarthy guided Republicans to increased numbers in 2020—and he did so against political headwinds as the GOP lost ground in the Senate and, of course, President Biden defeated Trump.

McCarthy's a coalition manager, a candidate recruiter par excellence and one of the hardest working leaders in D.C.

What this means is that when the gavel is banged in for the 118th Congress, it will be in the hands of a Republican in the House. That's not a small win. That's a huge win.

The best path to greater gains in 2024 would be for the GOP to rally around the new Speaker-in-waiting and use the narrow majority to maximum effect.

Congratulations, Leader McCarthy!

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So: it’s time for the post mortems on the 2022 election to begin.

Two of the most important aspects have nothing to do with what actually happened on Election Day. It’s all about what happened before, and then after. 

First, before. In many states, it’s about Election Season, not Election Day. Republicans need to master the new rules. In Pennsylvania, for example, you can’t beat fifty days of collected ballots with one day of in-person voting. It’s impossible.

After the election, we need results in a timely and transparent way. If the left is concerned about democracy, it should act like it—by agreeing to reforms that enhance trust in our system. Even absent corruption, delayed results, long vote counts, ballot drops and the like undermine trust in the system. And that corrodes democracy.

Election Day should matter more than what happens before or after it. 

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