One of the key incentives many Republicans had for trashing Donald Trump and his supporters was their concern about elites — who made it clear that populist conservatism was a bright red line no one should cross. And Trump dances right over that line like a running back doing an endzone dance, several times a week. (Just yesterday, I noted his posting of a Top Gun parody video showing him flying a “King Trump” jet over the hordes of “No Kings” protestors and dousing them with poop.)
Now “concern about elites” is on one hand pretty contemptible — it amounts to worry what the “cool kids” who control the money, power, and influence will think about you personally. Will society’s power brokers blackball you from country clubs, refuse to review your books, and ban you from media appearances? Will the opposite sex simply shun you? Still worse — given how ruthless and authoritarian our elites have proven since 2016 — will they target you for cancellation, lawfare, or even unjust prosecution?
But there’s something more here, and we need to try to be fair. Peel away the cowardice, the desperate craving to belong, the natural (if far from admirable) desire to fit in and be accepted by one’s most powerful peers. Let’s try to isolate what seems perhaps legitimate in “stuffy” conservatives’ objection to Trump’s populism, and see if they have a point. What we’re doing here is looking for the “steel man” version of the anti-Trump critique — which is simply the opposite of bashing a “straw man,” accomplishing little.
There are a long list of institutions, social norms, conventions, and precedents which it is natural and wholesome — in most situations — for conservatives and Christians to honor, even cherish. One of the attributes of the Left we find so hateful is the glee with which it tears down things that may have taken centuries to build, and might serve critical functions that modern folk have forgotten. It’s always “Year Zero” on the Left, and they’re constantly trying to shake the social Etch-a-Sketch, to fill it with their scrawlings.
Conservatives, by contrast, try to conserve. That’s hardly surprising.
But what about when:
- Institutions have been comprehensively infiltrated and hijacked? See the FBI since Obama politicized it completely, our elite universities, and professional organizations such as the American Bar Association, and most medical groups.
- Norms are applied selectively, by biased referees who always ensure that our side loses — and the norms themselves get twisted into caricatures of themselves? See churchmen who insist on obedience to shepherds who have sold out the Gospel.
- Conventions only get respected by one side, and not the other? See legislative traditions such as the “blue slip” courtesy that lets U.S. senators essentially veto nominations from their home states — which only Republicans honor, and Democrats now abuse to keep hundreds of Trump appointees out of their jobs.
- Precedents that enshrine old phony arguments that never should have prevailed, which were shocking novelties in their day, which we’re expected to treat as if they were torn from holy writ? See how the Left tried to make Roe v. Wade a “super-precedent,” and how it now treats the narrowly-decided, badly argued Obergefell decision that imposed same-sex “marriage” nationwide.
As such instances pile up, you can’t be a small-c “conservative” anymore, lest you end up like the last convinced Communist in Moscow, 1991, or one of those Japanese soldiers holed up on Pacific islands still fighting World War II in the 1970s. There’s a time to plant, a time to reap, and a time to just burn the fields — to wipe out the deadly pestilence that has taken root there. Then your task isn’t “conserving” but restoring, reviving, replacing.
To hijack a phrase from the Marxists, you need to know “what time it is.”
The Orcs Take Over J.R.R. Tolkien’s Oxford
What brings all this to mind? The latest appalling occurrence in our battered mother country, Great Britain, and its most venerable institution of higher education and research, Oxford University. Its premier student organization is the Oxford Student Union, which sponsors high-level debates that train its students in logic and rhetoric — whose founding ethos is rational persuasion, free speech, and civil discourse. Of course, like seemingly everything else in guilt-haunted post-Imperial Britain, those traditions have been doused in grubby, postcolonial Marxist filth.
Earlier this year, the Student Union elected as its president a dred-locked Leftist, George Abaraonye. To his credit, he was willing to debate Charlie Kirk. He met the man in an open, free exchange. And then a few months later, when an assassin deranged by transgender madness shot Charlie through the throat, Abaronye went public and celebrated that murder.
The reaction was widespread and powerful, as alumni moved to strip that office from Abaronye, as the disgrace to the Oxford Union and Oxford University that he is. They had the votes and used them, and Abaronye was set for removal. Then the corrupt sell-outs in power stepped in. As an Oxford publication reported yesterday:
The proceedings for the vote of no confidence against Union President-Elect George Abaraonye were “informally suspended” from early morning to noon today.
The suspension was announced by a Union notice posted to the bulletin and signed by Extraordinary Returning Officer Donovan Lock. The notice read: “This was not a formal decision taken based on procedural necessity, but rather due to the development of an impossible working atmosphere.”
It continued: “The Extraordinary Returning Officer was subjected to obstruction, intimidation, and unwarranted hostility by a number of Representatives, and on account of this had no choice but to informally suspend the process as co-operation and progress was rendered untenable.”
It’s not clear who pulled what string, but apparently the optics of a black student with dredlocks getting punished for celebrating the murder of a white Christian conservative were too much for Oxford officials to face.
UPDATE: Thankfully, the swell of opinion among Oxford Union alums was just too strong, and the delayed vote finally happened, ousting Abaronye as president of the organization:
Breaking: The no-confidence motion against Oxford Union President George Abaraonye has CARRIED by a vote of 1228-501, forcing Abaraonye’s automatic resignation. pic.twitter.com/EbxNZDm09d
— Blake Neff (@BlakeSNeff) October 21, 2025
What’s still a little shocking is that Abaraonye got more than a third of the votes. It should have been unanimous.
Judge Overturns Outrageous Order Preventing Trump from Using National Guard
Another institution wrapped up in norms and precedents is judicial review, the power of federal judges to stop the other two branches of government from enforcing laws which they deem unconstitutional. Nobody expected conservative judges in 2008 to abuse that power to crippled the newly elected Barack Obama. And none of them did, because they understood that federal injunctions against the president are very serious matters, and only ought to be used to prevent egregious, illegal abuses.
That norm went out the window when President Donald Trump survived assassination attempts, defeated historic lawfare, outpolled the best efforts of election fraudsters, and was actually inaugurated a second time in 2025. Leftist judges with obvious conflicts of interest, blatant biases, and long track records of politicized decisions started a full court press to obstruct Trump’s every effort to operate as previous presidents had, and a long list of lawless court orders hampered him at every turn.
In Portland, Oregon, the state and local police refuse to cooperate with ICE in enforcing our immigration laws. In fact, at the governor’s urging, they actively impede ICE — as Antifa riots intimidate and physically interfere with embattled federal officers. In response, President Trump ordered National Guard units to Portland, and met with a predictable injunction.
Now finally some good news, as The New York Post reports:
President Trump can move forward with his plan to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, an appeals court ruled on Monday in a major legal victory for the administration.
A three-member panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals delivered the 2-1 decision, striking down one of two temporary restraining orders issued by lower courts that halted the National Guard deployment to the ultra-woke city.
Judge Ryan Nelson and Judge Bridget Bade, both appointed by Trump, sided with the president, who has continued to push for the federal troops into Democrat-led cities.
“After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority under 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3), which authorizes the federalization of the National Guard when ‘the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,’” the majority said.
Why can’t Trump “execute the laws of the United States” in Portland, Oregon? Because the state and city are defying them, as South Carolina and other Confederate states did in 1861. What kind of president would put up with such rebellion? Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t, and Donald Trump won’t.
Another Norm That’s Spoiling: Free Speech on TV
Remember when Hollywood elites, and Establishment conservatives, rallied around Jimmy Kimmel after he lied about Charlie Kirk’s killer being “MAGA”? They embraced the pretense that broadcast TV, which relies on government-granted monopolies to serve “the public interest” is entitled to turn itself into massive, in-kind donations to one political party. If you try to rein that in, you’re practicing “censorship.” Now Kimmel is rubbing our faces in just how “free” he feels he is to abuse the public airwaves in pursuit of elite agendas. He’s using his show to groom children:
So grooming little children with disgusting drag queens doesn’t constitute sufficient indecency for the government to suggest to broadcasting stations that they shouldn’t run the Jimmy Kimmel show, not to mention the gross and lying attribution of Charlie Kirk’s assassination to… https://t.co/hUoTxTGDja
— Robert A. J. Gagnon (@RobertAJGagnon1) October 20, 2025
Spanish Priest Acquitted of “Islamophobia,” Spared Prison
In some actual good news on the free speech front, a Spanish court has acquitted a conservative Catholic priest who’d faced prison time for speaking truthfully about the nature of Islam. The Catholic Herald reports:
Two Spanish priests and a journalist who faced the prospect of prison for criticising radical Islam have been acquitted by a provincial court, bringing to an end an eight-year legal battle that tested the limits of free expression in religious debate.
The Provincial Court of Málaga cleared Father Custodio Ballester, Father Jesús Calvo, and journalist Armando Robles of hate crime charges arising from a 2017 television broadcast in which they made comments critical of radical Islam.
Prosecutors had sought prison sentences of up to three years for the priests and four years for Robles, along with fines and a teaching ban.
In its ruling, the court found that while the remarks were “clearly offensive” and “unfortunate”, they did not meet the legal threshold for hate crimes under Spanish law. “Not only is there speech protected by freedom of expression,” the judges said, “but we could even accept that there is intolerant speech that also exists within the scope of freedom of expression, even though it may be offensive.”
Imagine that.
Along The Stream
Later this morning, read Jules Gomes’ fascinating critique of Pope Leo’s less-than-truthful statements about religious freedom.
Don’t miss this look at how Tucker Carlson seems to completely misunderstand Islam and Muslim terrorism.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.
