Went Right On Ranting

Joining the Catholic Church is countercultural—it’s a rejection of relativism in favor of stability, tradition, and the truth. Having spent the past year on this faith journey, I’m grateful to God for leading me home. I can truly say that it has changed my life in ways I never imagined. I had the good fortune of sharing a few thoughts with @KatiePavlich on her @NewsNation show. Praying for all the catechumens and candidates who are entering the church this weekend. Happy Easter!

Neil McDonough, a devout Catholic actor known for his refusal to do kissing or sex scenes out of respect for his wife, Ruvé, recently made a rare exception—but with a twist. In his latest film, the script called for a kiss at the end, so McDonough convinced his wife to play the role of the woman he kisses. That way, he could stay true to both the character and his convictions. The couple, who have five children together, made the creative decision to preserve his long-standing vow while honoring the demands of the story. McDonough has previously paid a steep price for his moral stance. In 2010, he lost a $1 million role on the ABC show Scoundrels after refusing to perform sex scenes with actress Virginia Madsen. “They said, ‘You have to do it, or you're fired.’ I said, ‘Then fire me,’ and they did,” he recalled. “I was blackballed for two years. I couldn’t find work, and because of that, I lost my big beautiful house in L.A., my shiny Mercedes, everything—including my confidence. It was crushing. People saw me as some kind of religious fanatic. But for me, it was just about doing what I believed was right. And above all, I love my wife. As I’ve said a million times—these lips are meant for one woman.”

May I offer a different perspective on the whole transatlantic family feud brewing over NATO. Europeans are furious at what they call American unilateralism and "wars of choice," while Americans are done subsidizing allies who won't lift a finger when Washington actually needs them. Given all the sentimentality and historical baggage, there’s been a lot of bad blood and high grade insults thrown both ways. A lot of pride here is at stake. But given that I am not American or European, what I can provide is an Asian perspective. The whole thing looks very different as there are no blood ties or cultural nostalgia to pull me either way. Because of distance, the default Asian lens on America has always been colder, clearer, and far more pragmatic than the European one. Asians have never lived under the illusion that their relationship to the US is one based on shared values. If they ever did, the illusion was shattered during the Cold War. Instead, Asian nations saw the relationship to America as a cold, interest-driven bargain in a dangerous neighborhood full of communists, insurgents, and bigger powers. Fast forward to today, and this lesson still holds. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia all partner with America because their interests (not values) align - especially when it comes to countering China. These nations have reasons to be alarmed about Beijing's ambitions in the South China Sea, around Taiwan, and across the Indo-Pacific. They don't need lectures about democracy or liberal international order to see the value in US forward presence, intelligence sharing, tech transfers, and security guarantees. It's a straight-up transactional deal: the US keeps the sea lanes open and the PLA at bay. Meanwhile, Asian nations host your bases, buy your weapons, and join your alliances (Quad, AUKUS, etc.). When interests diverge, they adjust pragmatically, without the drama and meltdown. Probably not many in the West know this, but one of the forces that shaped this attitude was the US pullout of Vietnam and the rest of America’s Cold War shenanigans. Lee Kuan Yew was one of America’s loudest cheerleaders in Southeast Asia. In 1967 he flew to Washington, testified to Congress, and begged Lyndon Johnson (and later Nixon) not to cut and run in Vietnam. He warned that a hasty US exit would trigger the dominoes - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and then pressure on the rest of Southeast Asia. Singapore became a logistical hub, providing a haven for US troops on R&R, oil refineries supplying the American war machine, and Lockheed servicing aircraft. At one point, US military-related spending made up 15% of Singapore’s entire GDP. Singapore didn’t support the war because it loved American democracy but because it kept the communists tied up and bought Southeast Asia time to build up its own economy and military. Then came the pullout - the Paris Accords in 1973 and then Saigon falls in 1975. Despite all the lobbying, despite the blood and resources America had spent, domestic politics in the US (the anti-war movement, Congress, Vietnam syndrome etc.) ended it. LKY watched in disbelief as the superpower that had promised to hold the line simply walked away. The lesson was that American commitments are real only as long as they serve American interests and American voters don’t get tired. It’s a brutal one to internalize. LKY was disappointed and noted American “unreliability” but Singapore didn’t collapse into panic or anti-Americanism. They just recalibrated and kept pursuing pragmatism by building its own deterrent, diversifying partners, and later offered the US naval logistics access (Sembawang port) when the Philippines kicked them out of Subic Bay in the early 1990s. Malaysia drew the same conclusion. The Tunku was pro-Western and anti-communist early on, but Malaysia never joined SEATO and pushed ZOPFAN (Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality) instead. When the British announced their East-of-Suez withdrawal in 1968 and Nixon’s Doctrine (1969) told Asians “you defend yourselves first, we’ll just help,” Kuala Lumpur accelerated its neutralist tilt. The message was clear - don’t count on Washington to bleed indefinitely for distant allies. South Korea is similarly pragmatic but it operates under far higher stakes due to baggage from the Korean War and the ongoing North Korean threat. American intervention literally saved the South from conquest, resulting in a bond that is forged in blood. While South Korea had to learn the same lessons - that the American umbrella isn’t permanent, sharing a border with a nuclear-armed adversary forces tighter coupling with Washington. The reverberations of Nixon’s 1973 opening to Beijing cannot be understated. It shocked the entire region that America, the great anti-communist crusader, suddenly would cozy up to Mao to counter the Soviets. If Washington could flip on core principles when interests demanded it, why should smaller states pretend the relationship was about anything deeper? The core Asian critique of the European approach to dealing with America is that it is entirely bound up in moral values and civilizational kinship. This means that every disagreement feels like a betrayal and breeds resentment on both sides. Because Europe is so hyped up on abstract values, it makes NATO feel like a sacred club that America is disrespecting. Asia's interest-based lens sees alliances as tools - useful until they're not. Maybe Europe thinks the Asian approach is cynical but the irony is that this is actually what keeps Indo-Pacific partners far more reliable counterweights to China than many NATO members ever were against Russia.

General Douglas MacArthur was fired by a hat salesman. General George B. McClellan was fired by a small town lawyer. And during WW-II, US generals were replaced constantly. You see, a competent leader uses generals like a basketball coach uses players. Bench them, swap them out, shift them to different positions based on how they stack up against the opposing team. They are players who fill positions as the coach deems best. But our problem is those organizational charts, and the ranks, where the inclination is to view their jobs as positions in a social hierarchy, like they were dukedoms or baronages granted by the king until promotion or retirement. So for over half a century, the US only removed generals for cause, and that cause was almost always a sex scandal or getting quoted saying the wrong thing by the press. No generals were being relieved for failure to perform, no matter how badly they were bungling things. They were just rotated in for a one year command stint, and there they stayed no matter what.

@jpodhoretz Sick cited witnesses claiming that Bush was at a secret Paris meeting on October 20, 1980. Nope. Bush was at a campaign rally in New Haven, Connecticut. I was there and shook hands with him!

This guy got famous for telling a blatant lie in October 1980 about a supposedly secret compact between Reagan and Iran and here he is again, at the age of 284, bullshitting, when he should have been run out of town on a rail for his outrageous slander 45 years ago.

MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN. 🇺🇸

CNN senior data analyst Harry Enten said Thursday that congressional Democrats are under water with their own voter base. But it’s Republicans who are in trouble. dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2026/04/02/cnn…

Full DHS statement to @FoxNews

BREAKING: DHS tells @FoxNews that this “asylum seeker” is actually a Honduran illegal alien who has had a final deportation order since 2018, & when ICE targeted him in Baltimore, he fled in his vehicle at high speeds, slammed on his brakes and caused a multi car pileup, then he bailed out and ran away on foot before being chased down and arrested. DHS says two ICE agents were hospitalized as a result of the crash, and they are accusing Sen. Van Hollen (D-MD) of misrepresenting what happened here.

Protesters March on Good Friday to Site of ‘Crucifixions’ of George Floyd, Renee Good, Alex Pretti twitchy.com/brettt/2026/04… It was the protestors Pretti Good Friday observance.

They were no longer married when she went to work for Fox News.

Righhht!

One answer: While he enjoyed the protection of Nancy Pelosi, no one would run against him in Calif so he could do these kinds of things and get away with it. Same -- not re Pelosi -- for Newsom. Midwit politicians do all kinds of stupid things when there is no accountability, and then think that "accountability" isn't really a thing. Newsom is learning how wrong he was now. Every skeleton is going to tumble out of his closet over the next 18 months.

Ah, but remember, they live in a “full democracy” and we live in a “dictatorship”. 
I’m sure the people who make the freedom and democracy indexes will be updating them immediately.

I just had a very disturbing Good Friday encounter with an ICE agent at the airport As I was going through security, an ICE agent asked me for my ID. I told him this isn’t Soviet Russia and that the only citizenship papers I planned to show him were the Declaration of Independence “Sir, I’m just asking for ID, not proof of citizenship,” he said. “Today is the anniversary of Jesus’s resurrection,” I replied. “He was an American. Would you have asked to see his papers too? Would the scars on his hands not have been enough for you?” He was stunned silent. I strode past him without showing my ID and went through the metal detector I received a standing ovation

One positive about this conflict is that it clarifies which pundits who have been shaping American narrative for decades should be unequivocally shamed, then ignored.

NYC during Holy Week in 1956

I think Trump believes the regime is "tapping him along" as his saying goes. But I don't think he's advanced his red line. That 10-day buffer was to pause taking out electrical power plants and plunging the country into darkness and encourage them to make a deal. All these other strikes are attention-getters to remind them their time is about up. The 10-day red line expires tomorrow.

And he was probably let out an hour later by some leftist social justice judge.