“The people I despise, and who despise me, believe America’s values and goals are blood, soil, swagger, and an insipid and arrogant conformity. They are the values of bullies and their sycophants. They may prevail. There’s no promise they will not.”

—Libertarian pundit Ken White, in the introduction to his annual retelling of personal July 4th reminiscence.

What happened to Ken White over the last several years or so? Once a frequently-praised, reliable advocate of free speech and responsible analysis, he has slowly morphed into a standard issue “resistance” hack, although better writer than most. As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds might say (and maybe he has), “Ken White morphed into Charles M. Blow so slowly I almost didn’t notice it.”

Ken was the main blogger at the now defunct libertarian blog Popehat. Now he periodically issues his Popehat Report newsletter, which you can subscribe to for free. That’s a good thing, because the most recent edition was the first one in 2025. He also has a podcast, like virtually everyone breathing but me.

Apparently every Fourth of July Ken posts some version of his “Fourth of July story,” a personal reminiscence about an incident he says was “epiphanal and . It describes “a formative experience in my life and in my identity as an American.” It’s a nice story about a naturalization ceremony the judge he was clerking for at the time performed for some aging Filipino veterans. However, White feels compelled to introduce it this year with the same kind of lazy, reflex, Trump-Deranged snark that infests so many of the less erudite post of my Facebook friends these days. A favorite approach of their posts is the “Everything is Terrible” Big Lie (#5), which has been, as I wrote in “The Big Lies of the Resistance,” “has been a veritable mantra of the ‘resistance,’ Democrats, progressives and the mainstream news media from the second Donald Trump had been declared the winner of the 2016 election.” You read this in social media and hear it from all over, the side comments about “the way things are now,” “these difficult times,” and “with what’s going on.” This is how the Trump Deranged signal that they’re not a deplorable: it’s like a secret handshake. If I wanted to have whole days wasted by arguments with people who don’t care about reality, I would ask these TDS sufferers, “What exactly is that supposed to refer to?” Then their answers would make me lose respect for them, because they would be regurgitated talking points, massive hypocrisy, or proof positive of crippling ignorance and gullibility.

I expect better, much better, from Ken White, or at least I used to. Before he spits out the Unethical Quote of the Week, he writes, “Every day of 2025 I am reminded that many of my fellow citizens do not share my view of America. The America I love is not a stretch of soil or a place where the people of my blood lived and died. It’s a set of impudent and improbable goals: the rule of law and equality before it, liberty, freedom of speech and conscience, decency.”

Wow, you’re wonderful, Ken! What he means, of course, is that he doesn’t like having Donald Trump in the White House and somehow believes we had more liberty, freedom of speech, conscience and decency when we were being governed by persons unknown while the Democrats and the mainstream media covered up a President’s dementia, political adversaries were prosecuted, members of the Republican Party were officially labeled as fascists and immigration laws were deliberately left unenforced. Meanwhile, holding or expressing insufficiently woke views was punished in myriad ways while Big Tech and social media platforms did the Biden Administration’s bidding by censoring opinions the administration wanted to keep unexpressed.

What the hell was Ken referring to by “blood, soil, swagger, and an insipid and arrogant conformity“? Oh, you know (wink)! Just for giggles, I asked an AI bot what it thought he meant, and it spit out, “This phrase, sharp and evocative, seeks to highlight the perceived essence of the Trump era.” Gee thanks, Hallucination Face. It’s not “sharp,” it’s deliberately vague. If Ken had to genuinely make a substantive argument to support his blanket condemnation, we would presumably get familiar rhetoric about mean policies towards illegal immigrants, how defunding USAID will “kill millions,” and how the people Ken despises believe that the United States should prioritize the welfare of U.S. and its citizens above all else. The Horror.

“Swagger” evokes the Left’s anti-male trope, and Ken’s leftist weenie friends’ revulsion at a President that apologetically projects American power and uses it proactively. I guess Ken prefers Presidential weakness along with ducking interviews, falling down stairs, and being the world’s patsies. Ken is grandstanding about American values and character, and he doesn’t know what they are. “Swagger” is one of them. Teddy Roosevelt, indeed FDR, as difficult as it is to swagger in a wheel chair, had “swagger.” John Wayne, Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise can be defined by the word; so can Bruce Springsteen. We like swagger. I like swagger.

The last bit, the characterization of “insipid and arrogant conformity” as bullying, is the most obnoxious of all. Trump’s insistence on loyalty and ideological alignment within his administration has largely foiled the Left’s efforts to sabotage his efforts to govern: he learned his lesson after his first term. It’s more difficult now to undermine him, and Ken’s allies can’t stand it. Tough, assholes: you abused our politics and our democracy the first time round, and Trump learned. Surprise!

The Right is insisting on “insipid” conformity? That’s hilarious. Which side of the political spectrum “cancels” iconoclasts? Which side calls its critics racists, sexists, xenophobes and Nazis? Which administration established the Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board”? Whose educational institutions are 90 percent or more progressive? Whose law firms discriminate against men, whites and conservatives? Newsbusters found that over 90% of the guests on late night talk shows are progressive: who’s demanding “conformity”?

Ken White quit Twitter when Elon Musk put it back on track as an uncensored platform, and moved to Bluesky, which is hostile to any opinions from the political right. He is ethically estopped from complaining about insipid and arrogant conformity.

And what could be more arrogant than presenting yourself as the champion of “American values” and diversity of thought while stating that you “despise” anyone who has a different view?

Once upon a time, when I wrote this post in 2018, White deserved my description of him that began, “whatever Ken White is, he is not partisan, or political.” That Ken White has been erased by Trump Derangement. I never would have believed it.