Greetings, Dear Reader,

I hadn’t mentioned anything about Charlie Kirk yesterday. Part of it was me just being too busy. The other part was me thinking about what to actually say.

I think I figured it out.

“RELIGION OF PEACE”

While linguistic inversion of reality has become commonplace, especially in the last few years, the mother of all inversions is Islam’s “Religion of Peace” slogan.

Its fusion into popular English lexicon – by George Bush no less – has acted as a societal anesthetic. The numbing shot to end all numbing shots, it paralyzed our ability not only to assess reality, but also risk. After the successful marketing of “Religion of Peace,” other inversions were introduced. The inversions imposed on us got more frequent and more audacious.

Men are women. Children are consenting adults. Speech is violence. Violence is speech. Crime isn’t crime. In some places, crime is now legal. Fighting crime is illegal. Illegal is just undocumented. Colorblindness is racism. Racism is social justice.

Our capacity to fight back against these inversions has been hamstrung by the introduction and acceptance of the very first and arguably the biggest one: that Islam is anything other than a fraudulent religion of codified violence, conquest, slavery and sexual deviancy.

Exactly a month before his assassination, Kirk laid his vision of the next sociopolitical battle of our time.

“The spiritual battle is coming to the West and the enemies are woke-ism or Marxism combining with Islamism to go after what we call the American way of life,” he said during Freedom Night in America in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Aug. 10.

A year later, how right he was.

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The inventor of the slogan was Islamic ideologue Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, who wrote the book “Religion of Peace” in 1930 specifically for English-speaking audiences who were, at the time, either wholly ignorant of or flat out civically allergic to jihad.

Before his book, the slogan English-speakers widely attached to Islam, if they discussed it at all, was “Religion of the Sword.”

Both are accurate, in some regards. Aquinas would refer to the kind of peace Islam offered as a peace of a garrison, meaning that Islamic peace is one immediately following overwhelming conquest and submission.

Both Islamic scripture and the acts of their prophet Muhammad confirm the religion is a martial state of violent subjugation, second-class citizenry with significant concessions from infidels, and codified child marriage (which still happens to this very day).

The peace slogan puttered around for a few decades until it found its most apt, English-speaking adoptive father: Malcolm X.

In the 1960s, speaking for the Nation of Islam, X used the phrase “Religion of Peace” routinely, while his militants in the streets terrorized every “other” they could possibly find, something they also still do to this day. X eventually broke with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad due to what X referred to as Muhammad’s thirst for “teenage secretaries.”

So it turns out the apple doesn’t fall far from the Islamic tree, eh?

Muhammad, leader of the “Religion of Peace” in America, then had X assassinated. How peaceful of ‘em.

The slogan moved on from there to get kicked around by Islamic academics and writers in academic audiences until the 90s, when Islam was having a bit of an episode. The Embassy bombing in Beirut in the 80s was followed up with several other violent spasms. Plane hijackings. Suicide bombings. Civil War in Algeria. Hamas and Islamic jihad attacks.

In 1993, you had the first WTC bombing, followed by an essay months later by Sam Huntington called “The Clash of Civilizations.” The essay was a global bombshell. It posited that the next global competition post-Cold War would be about, among other things but perhaps most prominently, religion, or “man’s relationship with God.”

Three years later, in ‘96, an Islamic coalition put out a communications bolo: We have to improve our image. Start printing the phrase “Religion of Peace.”

Five years after that and just six days after jihad struck the Twin Towers, the avatar of compassionate conservatism George Bush wanted us to look at the pile of ash and corpses and try hard to remember that “Islam is peace.”

He was standing in an Islamic center in New York City. In the 25 years since then, NYC has basically become a province of the exact kind of Islamomarxism Charlie Kirk was getting ready to fight.

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I am a Christian. More specifically, I’m Catholic.

I know Muslims. Was partying with one just this past weekend. I spent at least some time trying to convince him to come to mass with me.

The blame ultimately falls at the feet of the deceiver, not the deceived.

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You don’t have to be all that adept an analyst to see the straight line between “Religion of Peace” and the unhinged, covid-paranoid guy at the cash register assaulting an unmasked shopper while shouting, “why are you putting me at risk?!”

Language is the most important tool we have for understanding the world around us. Successfully inverting it gives the deceiver incalculable power of persuasion. At least enough to convince everyone war in Iraq is a good idea, then down the line that mutilating your confused child’s sexual organs will actually prevent suicide rather than hasten it.

It’s not a mistake that “Religion of Peace” became widely popular in American discourse while first responders were still sifting through rubble looking for the body parts of friends, parents, husbands and wives.

If you could convince the West that 9/11 was the act of a peaceful religion, you could convince them of anything.

WHAT I’M READING

Seems Like Every Single Political Race Centers Around Single Issue

The debate to decide it all.

—

‘Maybe They Kill Everyone’: Former Employee At OpenAI Tells Joe Rogan How Weird ‘Agents’ Behaving

Yikes.

—

EXCLUSIVE: Illegal Alien Gets Arrested After Voting In 2024 Presidential Election

We’re told this never happens.

—

Trump Honors ‘The Man In The Red Bandana’ With Medal Of Freedom

A nice moment.

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MORE FROM GEOFF INGERSOLL

Greetings, Dear Reader,

How about some positivity?

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Today’s newsletter continues below

WE WILL TRIUMPH

Believe it or not, I’ve always been an optimist. Down 10. Fourth quarter. Guess what? We’re running the ball. Fullback’s in the backfield foaming at the mouth. You don’t even have to guess. It’s a run. And the next play? Also a run.

We’re imposing our will.

Here’s Rep. Brandon Gill to open up the first ever midterm GOP convention:

“I think it’s only appropriate that we kick this convention off properly with a land acknowledgement.

I’d like to acknowledge that we stand here today in the great state of Texas in the United States of America, the ancestral homeland of great American patriots, pioneers, and explorers who put down roots, fought for freedom all over the globe, and bled and died to build the greatest civilization ever known to man.

My friends, we live in the finest country in the history of the world. And we’re no longer going to apologize for that.”

No longer.

Speaking of runs, let’s run through some stats. The total foreign-born population is down almost 3 million in the last 1.5 years. Say it with me: Negative net migration for the first time since 1930. Border encounters are also down to levels not seen since 1970. Native-born employment from Jan ‘25 to Aug ‘26 has gone up about 474,000, while foreign-born employment has cratered more than 897,000.

Deportations have also hit stunning highs. Maybe because Trump shitcanned and replaced more than a hundred immigration judges.

Yeah, sorry, we’re just going to do things now. Enough is enough.

Not only did Trump’s DOJ put universities through the runner, not only did SCOTUS strike down affirmative action, but colleges are actually starting to go back to test scores. All the Ivies, Caltech, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, UT Austin, the Florida and Georgia school systems, Purdue, Ohio State, Auburn and so on.

Only so long before the rest follow. Turns out it’s a huge pain in the ass catering to outraged idiots all the time, eh?

Oh, and have you heard, H1B visas are out. Done.

The Trump admin introduced a new $100,000 fee. And the best part: There’s no refund mechanism if your application is denied.

H1-B registrations have dropped precipitously, from a peak of about 800k in FY24 to 343k in FY26 and finally to a projected 220k in FY27. Some firms reduced their applications by 100%.

The industry producing “Student driver” bumper stickers might just be the hardest hit.

In case you aren’t following along, this’ll force everyone from university IT departments to actual legit technology companies to compete over native-born technicians, driving up wages as a result.

Oh and the census in 2030: It’s only going to count legal bodies. It’s also not going to count racial makeup. Hsss ahhhh, poor Democrats!

Let’s just go ahead and put her in the endzone, huh? Do you get the sense that nonpolitical people are starting to realize just how abnormal the political left is?

They’ve lost faith in their establishment and, lacking any better options, they’ve flocked to … Muslim socialists.

How do you imagine those’ll poll nationally? Probably about as well as nationalized grocery stores that open with the call to prayer.

The political left is really out of options. The numbers don’t add up and as far as personality goes, you people are weird and annoying. From Jazz Hands Tim Waltz to wealthy theater kid Zohran. It might play well to small audiences, but it won’t work in the big leagues.

Which brings me back to Gill.

An eminently normal man who was basically unknown five years ago takes the stage and says the obvious: America is great. This country is great. I will not apologize for it.

That can’t be measured like deportations or violent crime (which saw the largest drop since the FBI started keeping records in 1936). It’s not GDP or gas at the pump (which is still too high, I’ll admit, but American energy is winning and will win). It’s not a test score to get into college.

It’s a feeling we all know to be true. You walk into a diner in rural Pennsylvania and don’t see a single hijab. None of the bussing staff are obviously illegal aliens. The nice local teenager shows you to your table and as you look outside, you notice there’s no litter on the streets. No bums or drug addicts either. Your waitress speaks perfect English with a hint of local accent. Her pronouns are not on her nametag.

We will not apologize. America is great.

That’s a message of triumph.

WHAT I’M READING

How Trump Ended Big Globohomo

Say what now?

—

Grassroots Conservatives Coalescing Around New Governor Candidate To Defeat Left-Leaning GOP Nominee

People are getting riled up again. Good.

—

Two Nephews In 24 Hours, And I Couldn’t Be There

Family is most important.

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MORE FROM GEOFF INGERSOLL

Greetings, Dear Reader,

I might have mentioned this in previous State of the Days, but my favorite bit of Ingersoll genealogy is that I’m related to the guy who hosted the first ever witch trials … in a bar.

Lieutenant Nathaniel Ingersoll was a prominent local business owner, militia member, and church leader. Of the 20 women he either accused or testified against, eight were hanged.

By the way, did you see …

THE THREE CRONES

There’s The Fates, The Grey Sisters, The Norns, and most popularly due to Shakespeare, The Weird Sisters, and then there’s the three batty crones who appeared on local television last night to complain incessantly about the one juror who refused to acquit Lindsay Clancy.

The three, who (ironically?) appeared on NBC and CBS Boston, made no attempt to mask their disgust of the prosecution and the lone male juror who refused to acquiesce to their appeals.

They accused the prosecution of lacking “compassion.” They said there was no “smoking gun” to prove Clancy’s guilt. They called the holdout juror “very arrogant” for not listening to the “nurses” in the room.

Yes, there were nurses in the room. Not that I want to digress, but some people are calling their reliance on external “expertise” cause for a mistrial. And to not digress further: About one third of nurses have some form of mental illness themselves!

Moving on … in the most disturbing clip of all, which simply must be watched, the three of them utterly lambast the holdout.

Here’s a transcript, emphasis mine (I’m withholding juror names, if you want to find them, it’s not difficult):

Juror 1:

He had reasonable doubt. He admitted he had reasonable doubt after we watched that video of the interview. I think that’s when it was. He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms. I was so excited. There were three forms I had to fill out, and I started filling them out. I wrote my signature on each one, and then he said, “But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Juror 2:

He was very arrogant. He really did not take anything that anybody said. He tried to ask a question about the medications, and we went back to the report from South Shore Hospital. We had the toxicology report. We could see exactly the amounts. The nurses in the room spoke to that. That was a question that he had. And he just completely disregarded the information that they gave him.

Juror 3:

I’m not sure if “rogue” is the right word. But every one of us, in the hours of our frustration, would get up and walk the room, because you just couldn’t sit anymore, and would all go to the cart with the exhibits. He, I think, got up to the cart once, very briefly, and went back to his seat. He would not interact with us and try to understand.

We read to him on numerous occasions the definition of reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan’s instruction. He actually said one day in the end, “Well, why don’t we have the judge come in and read it again?” And we were like, “No. We have it in front of us. We don’t need that.” And we would highlight it — this is the definition of reasonable doubt. But he had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.

I genuinely had to do a double take when I read that last portion. He couldn’t get past “the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”

Well no kidding, huh?

(Also, I’m not sure what exactly the third one is on, but her speech was slurred enough to call for a roadside test.)

We’ve also got the rapidly infamous “no smoking gun” assertion from a fourth juror who (wisely) chose to stay anonymous.

But she also recounted how she’d essentially been bullied into an acquittal despite her initial intuition.

Transcript:

Juror:

A majority of the people — it doesn’t matter what side it was on — was very firm in their stance and their beliefs kind of from the beginning. This standalone juror was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side. So I’m going to kind of defend that individual in a sense. There were some big personalities in that room. But at the end of the day, it just came down to an inability to move past your convictions. And even after that dynamite charge, to be unable to self-analyze yourself and be like, ‘Okay, am I missing something? Am I failing to acknowledge or give this doubt the weight that it needs?’ That majority of the room was trying to sway that person from the very beginning.

Reporter:

So where did you come down from the very beginning? What was your vote?

Juror:

Originally I felt as though she was guilty and she was criminally responsible for it. And maybe I still believe that in a certain way. I think that this was a woman who was not mentally healthy. She was someone that was in the throes of a significant mental health crisis. I really just felt like she was so deep in it that she couldn’t see her way out. And this was the only option.

Truly wild.

… what an evolution of the term. From “ugly, withered or unpleasant” to “wise and respected post-menopausal woman.”

MORE LINKS

Leftist Professor Doxxes ICE Agent, Urges Crowd To ‘F*ck Him Up’

This is who is teaching the next generation.

—

ROOKE: Trump Admin’s Boastful Post Shows We’re Leaving Half Of Country Behind

What are all the men up to?

—

Trump Honors ‘The Man In The Red Bandana’ With Medal Of Freedom

A nice moment.

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Greetings, Dear Readers,

There are many serious things happening this week. Almost too many. Apparently people think JD Vance is a socialist now. Are Republicans winning or losing among the American electorate? No idea, both? There’s the first ever midterm political convention. Obviously the party was Trump’s idea.

PISA education scores are out. America is not doing well. There’s data centers making West Virginia rich apparently? Then there’s Boomers making us all broke as well.

And then there’s a girl at a sporting event.

DEAR SARA SMITH

It was a high scoring game that came down to the wire.

Ole Miss played Louisville this weekend in a season opener. The Rebels were a hard favorite to trounce the Cardinals. Then something funny happened.

No, it wasn’t that the Rebels looked ready to lose and needed a fourth quarter, 48-yard field goal and some prayers to win.

It was Sara Smith, seen on the sidelines genuinely worried about the outcome.

Pictures of her looking worried have approached 30+ million views since the moment occurred on the broadcast almost two days ago, according to a Grok review of social media. They’ll likely climb even further in the coming days.

We’ve seen this before. The most recent ignominious example was the “hawk tuah” girl who stumbled from podcast to podcast, through a crypto scam and finally landed on OnlyFans. You also have Kait the Oilers fan who went viral for flashing the crowd during an ice hockey game. She did Playboy. Did you know that Pam Anderson was discovered because she appeared on the jumbotron during a CFL game in Vancouver? Like who even watches Canadian football?

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The most wholesome “discovered by sports camera operator” girl is hands down Katherine Webb. She was quarterback AJ McCarron’s girlfriend at the time.

Here’s what the broadcasters said when they saw her.

Brent Musburger: “Now when you’re a quarterback at Alabama — you see that lovely lady there? She does go to Auburn, I want to admit that, but she’s also Miss Alabama, and that’s A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend, okay. And right there on the right is Dee Dee Bonner — that’s A.J.’s mom. Wow. I’m telling you, you quarterbacks, you get all the good-looking women. What a beautiful woman. Wow!”

Kirk Herbstreit: “Wow.” / “A.J.’s doing some things right down in Tuscaloosa.”

Musburger: “Whoa! … So if you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with Pop.”

Americans admire beautiful women, it’s true.

But here’s some advice for you, Ms. Smith: Get married to that guy.

You know who I mean. Think about it and you know exactly who I mean.

Ignore the hoopla. Ignore the Barstools and the NBCs and the podcasters. For the love of God ignore the folks who work in the skin trade, of all degrees.

Marry that guy. Start a family. Be normal.

I’ll be in the crowd cheering for you.

MORE LINKS

Trump To Fix Marriage Penalty Hidden Inside America’s Childcare Fund

A look into Trump’s latest move on families, from Mary.

—

Did Lindsay Clancy Inspire A Copycat?

Truly heartbreaking.

—

Mamdani Signs 9/11 Order Recognizing Day Of Remembrance, Then Hands Symbolic Pen To Al-Qaida Lawyer

Wow. Or maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

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