The most dramatic narrative shift in this post-lockdown period has been the flip in the perceptions of government itself. For decades and even centuries, government was seen as the essential bulwark to defend the poor, empower the marginalized, realize justice, even the playing field in commerce, and guarantee rights to all.

Government was the wise manager, curbing the excess of populist enthusiasm, blunting the impact of ferocious market dynamics, guaranteeing the safety of products, breaking up dangerous pockets of wealth accumulation, and protecting the rights of minority populations. That was the ethos and the perception.

Taxation itself was sold to the population for centuries as the price we pay for civilization, a slogan emblazoned in marble at the DC headquarters of the IRS and attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who said this in 1904, ten years before the federal income tax was even legal in the US.

This claim was not just about a method of funding; it was a commentary on the perceived merit of the whole of the public sector.

Below is my column in The Hill on Musk-mania gripping Washington. Democrats are using Musk to double down on rage rhetoric and rallying supporters to "fight in the street" in a declared "war." It is a familiar pattern for many of us.

Here is the column:

Across the Internet, politicians and pundits are in a monstrous mood. The same people who spent the last year declaring the imminent death of democracy if Donald Trump were elected are now insisting that the real threat is the "monster" he has unleashed upon the federal bureaucracy.

It is the thing of legend, a Beltway monster that you told your children about around campfires late at night: An outsider who comes to town and lays waste to government waste, firing thousands and slashing budgets. Part Frankenstein, part Bigfoot, that creature never had a name, but would be beholden to no one and uninterested in the status quo.

The monster now has a name, and it is Elon Musk.

The world of finance is witnessing a significant shift as a massive transfer of gold makes it way from London to the United States. This isn't merely a shuffling of bullion, it's a symptom of worldwide economic anxieties.

London is encountering a gold shortage as many major gold holders are transferring their gold to the U.S. This is no minor exchange. London companies have sent an estimated 134 billion dollars worth of gold recently to the United States. This has led to a significant backlog in gold retrieval waiting times in the United Kingdom, with some investors having to wait nearly two months for the process to complete.

Economists have speculated that this is due to the perception of America as both an investment "safe haven." Specifically, the threat of major global tariffs on the horizon has foreign businessmen seeking to get their goods into America before the price of doing so becomes much more steep. This trend has been intensified by President Trump's recent imposition of tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. The tariffs have created significant market uncertainty and heightened inflationary concerns, further boosting gold's appeal as a hedge against economic instability.

The man behind the curtain is naked and weak

It has been barely two weeks and already we're living in another world, one that to me at least seemed remote and unimaginable just two months ago. The change has the potential to be as big — or bigger — than the fall of communism over thirty years ago.

John Carter calls it the Second American Revolution. Pundits are saying that Trump has done more in two weeks than Biden did in four years. I'll go further than that. He is dismantling a pathological system which took decades to build.

Read John's The Blitzkrieg Through the Institutions, because he's right.

Here's how he put it:

For years now we've talked of the left's Long March Through the Institutions. The metaphor comes from Mao's conquest of China, but the process has been more similar to the creeping spread of an invasive fungus than it has been to military manoeuvres. Over the course of long decades during which it seemed that the left's steady advance was absolutely inexorable, progressives slowly, patiently consolidated control over every organ of society. They took power job by job, appointment by appointment, sinecure by sinecure, board position by board position, department by department, committee by committee.

The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025.

In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.

"We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it."

Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury's operations than people who had worked there for decades.

This wasn't a hack. This wasn't a breach. This was authorized disruption.

French police are investigating the deaths of a retired British couple who were found in their renovated rural home in Aveyron, south-west France.

The bodies of Andrew Searle, a retired fraud investigator, and his wife, Dawn, a project manager, were discovered at about 12.30pm on Thursday at their home in the village of Les Pesquiès, south of Villefranche-de-Rouergue.

According to local media reports, Dawn Searle was found naked outside the property with a serious head injury and jewellery strewn around her. She was reportedly found by a neighbour, who thought she had passed out, and called the emergency services.

A federal judge has temporarily barred the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington's primary vehicle for funding political projects abroad, from putting thousands of employees on paid leave. The order was in response to a lawsuit filed by two labor unions representing federal workers.

A "limited," temporary restraining order issued by Judge Carl Nichols in the US District Court in Washington, DC, on Friday, banned the US government from placing around 2,200 USAID workers on administrative leave or evacuating them from their host countries before the end of the day on February 14. The ruling also reinstates some 500 employees who had already been furloughed.

The order reads:

"All USAID employees currently on administrative leave shall be reinstated until that date, and shall be given complete access to email, payment, and security notification systems until that date, and no additional employees shall be placed on administrative leave before that date,"

A request for a longer-term pause will be considered at a hearing on Wednesday, according to the ruling.

We're the Regime now.

For years now we've talked of the left's Long March Through the Institutions. The metaphor comes from Mao's conquest of China, but the process has been more similar to the creeping spread of an invasive fungus than it has been to military manoeuvres. Over the course of long decades during which it seemed that the left's steady advance was absolutely inexorable, progressives slowly, patiently consolidated control over every organ of society. They took power job by job, appointment by appointment, sinecure by sinecure, board position by board position, department by department, committee by committee,

There were those who noticed, and tried to do something about the infection - Senator McCarthy, for example. It is a symptom of the total control of the left over the popular consciousness that despite having known for years now that McCarthy was absolutely correct that the United States federal government was being infiltrated at every level by agents of the communist party, his name has remained a byword for hysterical, unjustified witch hunts.

By and large, however, absolutely nothing was done. We believed in merit, you see, and in the freedoms of speech and conscience. So what if an applicant for a position is an avowed leftist who is hostile to Western civilization down to his very marrow? He's still the best man for the job, competent within the boundaries of his discipline, and it would be a great crime to blackball him on the basis of his political beliefs. As we saw during the Cancelled Years, such broad-minded tolerance only goes one way. Frank Herbert captured it well: "When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."

Our self-appointed "ruling class" is insufferable. Two-plus weeks into the restored Trump administration, and the Democrat/media outrage template has become utterly banal:

(1) Trump delivers on a campaign promise.

(2) Democrats collapse onto fainting couches and wail, "He can't do that!," and then

(3) those same sobbing sad sacks get back up, clutch their pearls, and collapse in anguish yet again.

It would be amusing if their funerary pantomime were not so exhausting.

Unindicted "Russia collusion" co-conspirator and former acting director of the FBI Andrew McCabe ran to the Communist News Network to complain that all his old friends at the Bureau are terrified of being fired. He reported to fellow Democrat traveler Anderson Cooper that FBI officials are worried about how they're going to pay their bills and take care of their families. "If you get fired," McCabe explained energetically, like one toddler telling another toddler about the world, "you're done. That's the end of your reputation, your ability to get any job. You lose your pay, you lose your chance at a pension, you lose your health insurance." Baby Cooper agreed with Baby McCabe that those consequences sound scary.

A small plane contracted by the US Defence Department crashed in the southern Philippines on Thursday, killing all four people on board including one US service member, the US Indo-Pacific Command announced.

"The aircraft was providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support at the request of our Philippine allies," the Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement about the crash on Mindanao island.

"The incident occurred during a routine mission in support of US-Philippine security cooperation activities."

The US military said one service member and three defence contractors were killed in the incident. They were not immediately identified pending notification of their families.

"We can confirm no survivors of the crash," the statement said.