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Can Los Angeles Be Saved?

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Last March, a makeshift drug factory exploded next to Los Angeles resident Juan Galicia’s craftsman-style home, built in 1910. The flames spread to his gas line, setting off a fire that destroyed the house and killed his three dogs — he tearfully shows me their picture. Had the accident happened an hour earlier, it would have killed one of his sons, as well. “I lived here 18 years and now it’s gone,” the 55-year-old father, an immigrant from El Salvador, tells me. The empty lot next door, he says, was occupied by homeless squatters who cooked methamphetamine there. “People occupy a place and the city does nothing,” he says.

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Look Past Partisanship and Celebrate 250 Years of Freedom

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It’s tragic that the country’s 250th anniversary is coming at a time of profoundly performative division.

In one part of America, and among certain classes, the very idea of patriotism is off limits. Once there was little difference between the parties in patriotic sentiment, but more recently — even before President Donald Trump — the gap has expanded dramatically. In Gallup’s most recent survey, 93% of Republicans call themselves very or extremely proud to be an American, versus just 27% of Democrats.

The rising class of anti-American Americans is concentrated in our cities and college towns, most notably among younger, educated people. One recent survey of young Americans concluded that most thought they were living in what surveyors described as “a dying empire led by bad people.”

Many who declared Trump “not my president” now increasingly feel that America is not their country, either. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tried to restrict some celebrations, including public events at Times Square. The traditional Fourth of July fireworks show in Long Beach has been canceled. San Marcos, an affluent San Diego County community that leans Democratic, has even banned hanging flags on the street.

Hollywood, now largely a bastion of the progressive left, is not likely to celebrate our semiquincentennial, either. Not with stars like Billie Eilish claiming that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” I doubt she plans to hand back her manse to the Tongva, the original inhabitants of Los Angeles, or to move somewhere that has no history of taking land from someone else (if she can find such a place).

Some leftist politicians, notably from the ascendant Democratic Socialists of America, see the autocracies of the Third World as their preferred role model. Some politicians, particularly on the left, even get away with saying they favor other countries over their own. The two Democrats in one of the recent New York congressional primaries said they were cheering for Senegal or Mexico, rather than the US, in the Word Cup, a position that once would have been disqualifying.

Many would say that President Trump is not helping to bring Americans together, either. Critics say that he has attempted to turn the 250th anniversary into what the National Review labeled “another Trump campaign rally.” The leftist New Republic called the celebration “Donald Trump’s lost cause.”

Read the rest of this piece at California Post.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Anthony Quintano via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Why the Fourth of July is Relevant to Canada, Too

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The United States approaches its 250th anniversary deeply divided. Pride in the country, at roughly 40 per cent, has dropped to a historic low, notes Gallup, a trend most evident among younger, educated people.

To be sure it depends where in the U.S. you go. There used to be little difference between the parties, as was evidenced in the 1976 centennial. But, again predating Donald Trump, the gap between Republicans and Democrats has widened, with the latter generally not proud of their country. In deep blue areas like California and New York, celebrations are muted; even the traditional Fourth of July fireworks show in Long Beach, Calif., has been cancelled. Don’t expect much celebratory treatment in left-dominated Hollywood either.

No doubt these phenomena will please some Canadians, for whom hostility to America has created a kind of negative sense of identity. After all, they, and most European countries, are still considerably less patriotic than Americans.

A key factor in the diminishment of patriotism lies with an education system, in almost all western countries, that stresses western nations’ perfidy. In academia, history has been reduced to the paradigm of a settler-colonial mantra that essentially sees former colonies, as well as former colonial powers, as inherently illegitimate.

These views have penetrated our culture to an astounding degree. In Canada, allegations of unmarked graves containing First Nations children at the site of a former residential school have been largely debunked, but not in the eyes of most media. Rather than celebrate Canada’s great achievement of providing a better life for millions of immigrants, the new mentality states that the country, like the U.S. or the U.K., is fundamentally evil and illegitimate.

This kind of thinking defines the cultural elites in both countries. Stars like Billie Eilish routinely claim that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” although I doubt she plans to hand back her manse to the Tongva, the original inhabitants of Los Angeles.

To be sure there is much ugliness in the past of all nations. America’s embrace of slavery in the South and often brutal treatment of Indigenous populations need to be acknowledged, as should the arguably more muted, but also repressive, attitude of Canadian governments towards its First Nations.

But pride in country is important, even more so as both of our societies become dominated by more recent immigrants from primarily non-western countries. Unless you embrace the notions of the global socialist commonwealth, our sense of identity is tied to our embrace of a past we all can honour.

The intellectuals and artists who demean western civilization have a particularly toxic impact on newcomers from autocratic lands. Muslims, notes the Manhattan Institute’s Reihan Salam, may not come here radically anti-western, but their children’s exposure to the current academic and media culture has bred hostility to the West. This is evident in the numerous antisemitic rallies, particularly in Canada, as well as the rise of young, affluent, educated cosmopolitans like Hasan Piker and New York’s new boss, Zohran Mamdani.

The 250th anniversary is also a good time to recognize, and maybe celebrate, the fundamental differences between our countries. America emerged as a revolutionary power that emboldened many peoples to rebel against monarchism; there were even some Canadians swept up in what historian R.R. Palmer called the age of “democratic revolution.”

Read the rest of this piece at Yahoo News.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage photo: Ben Grewell via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Retiring the Nutty Professor

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The movie The Nutty Professor, both the original 1963 version starring Jerry Lewis and the successful remake by Eddie Murphy in 1996, is about a genius professor, obese but kind, who develops a potion that turns him into a handsome, manipulative womanizer.

Today, the education industry is no longer marginal and the university faculty no longer fits the awkward-brainiac stereotype. Professors have become powerful politically — they are the core of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and they predictably hold Leftist views, treating us to spectacles such as the University of Michigan faculty senate accusing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of “war crimes.” Much of the Leftist elite, in fact, comes from academia — for example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren taught at Harvard Law School for 20 years, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the son of a famous radical academic, who teaches at Columbia University. Read more

The American Revolution at 250: a Legacy to Fulfill

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The American revolution and the constitution have left us a legacy that it is up to us to fulfill.

Two central ideas made the revolution and the constitution important: that government power is limited and that the true mission of our society lies in that wonderful phrase, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

What does that mean? It depends on the person, the community, one’s view of the world. It allows for more excess in terms of free speech, free association and, yes, capitalist activity than most countries. And for all its many downsides, it also has been an enormous success.

To foreigners, America may look foolish given that it has been governed by fools, knaves and mental mediocrities for many years, particularly in the last decade. But our founding documents remains critical and have helped curb the idiocies of our leaders.

Individual striving and constitutional limits make America so different. Unlike the revolution in France and even less so that which occurred in Russia, ours was not about unleashing social forces in ways that led predictably to tyrannical rule. It was about allowing individuals, families, companies and communities to seek their own ways to achieve ‘happiness” along with the blessings of life and liberty.

Right now, our national politics works against this, on both sides of the spectrum. Many people on the left think that it would be better to be ruled in the manner of third world ‘people’s democracies’ ­– for example Cuba under Castro or Venezuela under Chavez. Perhaps they prefer to live under regimes in Russia or China that, in many ways, increasingly reprise not Marxism but fascist ideas of state control with allowances for vast private greed.

Then there’s the call on the left for global governance and no growth, at least in the west. This is a form of justice that works for well-paid academics, bureaucrats and professionals but not for most people no longer capable of achieving a better life, a house, raise a family or build a business. No happiness is allowed to the masses.

The right, as Rodney Dangerfield, they are no bargain either. Many see the pursuit of happiness as a license for unlimited greed. These attitudes are common on Wall Street and the tech elite. Sadly, their personal pursuit of happiness means unhappiness for the vast majority. Their vision for the public seems to have us transformed into subsidized mindless consumers to be replaced by algorithms, robots or cheap foreign labor.

Yet despite our political failing left and right, our republic remains strong because both individual or communal striving is allowed and protected. It is that striving, as much as anything, that makes us uniquely great country.

I don’t pretend we are a model for the world, but we should remain a model for ourselves. It’s been attractive enough to lure millions of people and investors from around the world here.

‘Pursuit of happiness’ defines America and reflects views rarely found in Europe. The continent that we sprang from may be more civilized in some respects, but at the cost of its animal spirits. This difference does much to explain the vast differences in the two economies. Europe is fine for vacations but not in terms of economic growth, technological and cultural innovation.

In our embrace of striving, we still honor the farmers, mechanics and merchants who created the revolution. The declaration is in essence a rejection of autocracy — whether in the hands of kings, technocrats or tech oligarchs, and a recognition of the ability of people to govern themselves.

Fortunately, as I travel and report across the breadth of the country, I see much that is encouraging, and reflective of our historic ideals. I see it in the growing class of artisans and innovators, often in their 20s, who are looking to create a better tangible future, whether in food or fashion, new materials, space travel, or medical advances.

Our founders would be amazed if they went to a place like El Segundo, a small city next to LAX. Although much of the economy around the region, my home for over a half century, is moribund, El Segundo, where SpaceX originated, is brimming with young innovative companies. One hundred of them. Six billion in venture funds. And these people are not just expanding the digital universe — they are building things, employing skilled labor, and looking for to build space stations, develop mines in space or build more energy efficient aircraft.

The great thing is that many of these people are young. One, a 22-year-old who never attended college, has moved to a bigger space in Torrance and plans to build a million drones a year — he was a drone racing champ — that will go to both the US and to Ukraine.

These new innovators are not cut from the same cloth as our silicon valley overlords, with their head in sky ideas of replacing humanity or turning us into passive consumers of the metaverse.

I also see our basic principles reflected in efforts in small blue-collar communities to improve themselves. I have spent time in small, predominately Latino cities south of the city of LA, which do what the big city can’t — eliminate graffiti, reduce crime, keep businesses, and improve local schools. I also see it also in school programs that seek to return education back to the basics. Some of these are state sponsored and others by religious groups.

I see the republic’s great value in the successful integration of so many immigrants, and how ‘the pursuit of happiness’ lives among them. At the University of Texas, we asked Latinos, our largest ethnic minority and shapers of our future, about what they want: at the university of Texas, we surveyed them.

Their goal was not to be victims or part of a revolution led by academics and trustfunders, but to start a business, give a good education to their kids, buy a single-family house. They cared little if their neighbors looked like them or spoke Spanish. They want to become something other than permanent labor and rental serfs. They want their happiness too, and many of them, despite the odds, are achieving it.

I see republican virtue in the new cities being built, mostly in the exurbs, that house families in a nature-friendly environment. Most New Yorkers will never see places like The Woodlands, Irvine, or New Albany (that’s in Ohio, folks) or the success working class people have when they move from an economy that does not work for them to one that does. I see this every time I go to Texas, and increasingly places in places like the Carolinas, Florida, even Arkansas and Alabama.

Americans have always moved in the pursuit of happiness. It is intrinsic to our revolutionary tradition and the survival of a liberal republic.

Of course, America is far from perfect but the legacy of the founders persists. Much needs to change but the basic form of a decentralized republic, with protections for basic rights, has no equal anywhere.

I can imagine that Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, the Roosevelts, and Norman Thomas would all be bewildered by our contemporary republic but they would also see much to admire as well.

America may have a sick political system and an economy that does not work well for many, but it is distinctly different, and in many ways better than its prime competitors. Our legacy, and our future, lies in large part in preserving that system without falling into the trap of centralized autocracy.

I have ideas about how to preserve our strength and expand the pursuit of happiness — which is different that assuring happiness. We need to drill down into the essence of what our system provides, which is to give communities, families, churches, neighborhoods more control over their own lives.

This need not be seen as a conservative idea. William Appleman Williams, a self-described radical, recognized that “mass democracy” which seems to thrill many DSA radicals usually ends up as “little democracy.” Instead, he suggested that radicals “devise workable plans and procedures that will enable us to realize and richer and more creative conception of freedom.”

To save the republic, we must stay true to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We are not China, Russia, France or even the UK. We are heirs of a republic that redefined society as built around individuals and voluntary associations, and not designed to worship a single church, potentate or technocracy.

This is our inheritance. Now how do we maintain it?

This article is a transcript from the second of Joel’s speaker panels at The American Revolution at 250, an event held in New York City on June 21, 2026, sponsored by Sublation Media.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage graphic: from the event.

The American Revolution at 250

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My closest comparison of the American Revolution at 250 years is from Roman republican history. So far, America today is still a republic in form, and the constraints of the constitution have not all been frittered away. Read more

The Myth of Europe’s Fascist Revival

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There’s a spectre haunting Europe – the spectre of fascism. Or at least that is what the Brussels establishment and its media allies seem to think. They never cease to liken the rise of national-populism to the movement that devastated the continent from the early 1920s until the end of the Second World War.

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I’d Like to Believe California Can Be Saved from the Left

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In the coming weeks, the conservative media will have a field day thanks to the seemingly strong primary election performances of Republican Steve Hilton in the race to become the next governor of California and of Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayor’s contest.

Hilton, a former advisor to David Cameron in the UK, as well as a Fox News commentator, is certainly a brainy candidate, with personal appeal and a constructive platform. Pratt, a former reality-TV star, has run an eye-catching campaign.

But however much the Right will enjoy the notion of a Californian rebellion against its entrenched establishment, it very much remains a one-party state. Conservatives may party during the so-called “Pratt Summer” or tout “the revenge of the bourgeoisie” but the Republicans’ chances are between middling to non-existent.

It’s not even certain that either of them will reach the general election. California’s insanely slow-moving vote count leaves the possibility that one or another will fall behind once the union-led “ballot harvesting” of late ballots alters the result. This has become increasingly common, with conservative candidates often eliminated weeks after election day.

Indeed, political, demographic, and economic trends are against the Republicans’ chances. The state that spawned Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan is now reliably Democratic. Overall registration in the state is almost two to one Democratic over Republican. There has not been a Republican elected statewide for two decades.

California’s demographic profile is increasingly bad for Republicans. The state has been consistently losing its Anglo population, as well as the middle class, particularly families of all ethnicities, to Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Those most likely to stay, notes the Public Policy Institute, tend to be young and often underpaid professionals, the very class that elected New York mayor Mamdani, public workers and their wards.

Long gone are the days when California was a job-producing machine in everything from manufacturing to logistics as well as tech. These constituencies were the ones who cared most about brutal income taxes, the nation’s highest unemployment (as well as youth unemployment), unaffordable housing, poor roads, mediocre schools and ever fewer good jobs. Increasingly, these constituencies and the companies they work for are just choosing to leave.

In the governor’s race, Hilton will also be up against the full power of current governor Gavin Newsom’s political machine, largely financed by public unions and Left-leaning oligarchs. Shawn Steel, the state’s irrepressible GOP National Committeeman, told me that Hilton’s financial resources are paltry compared to what his thoroughly mediocre opponent, former Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra, will be able to draw on.

Read the rest of this piece at Yahoo News.
The piece first appeared on Telegraph.

Joel in the Media: Is Fascism the Wave of the Future?

RealClearInvestigations Podcast hosts, J. Peder Zane and James Varney speak with Joel Kotkin about his recent article for RCI exploring how and why fascism hasbecome a buzzword of American politics.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage image: composite of election results from Wikimedia data accessed June 7.

The Strange Afterlife of Fascism

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There’s hardly a ruler in the world who would identify as fascist, but if you trust the mainstream media, you will assume fascism is on the march. Mentions of the term have skyrocketed ever since Donald Trump emerged from the land of chandeliers; fascist mentions on cable reached unprecedented levels in the run-up to the 2024 election. Now, almost anything Trump does – from cracking down on illegal immigration to proposing construction of a victory arch – is seen by the Washington Post and others as fascist.

Tellingly, the term has not just been applied to Trump. It has, for decades, been slapped on almost everyone progressives don’t like. George W. Bush, John McCain, and even meek Mitt Romney have all been called the F-word. Same goes for the former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who is running for mayor in Los Angeles.

The net has been widened by using the term to describe the millions of people who support such figures. One Canadian economist claims to have identified 1,000 words – including rebirth, liberalism, ethnic, and Jewry – he says are indicative of “fascist jargon.”

Given that fascism’s heyday was from the early 1920s until the end of World War II and that the last fascist leader of a major country, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, died in 1975, the endurance of this term may seem surprising. This is especially true in the American context, given that fascism – unlike socialism –never gained a foothold here, largely remaining a European and Latin American phenomenon. Read more

Steve Hilton’s Rise Won’t Kill California Progressivism

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California, a place not known for its psychological normality, went crazy last night. Two separate elections show the political direction of travel for the state, with many of the details still far from certain. In a gubernatorial race that was always slated to be close, overnight results point to Republican Steve Hilton narrowly leading Democrat Xavier Becerra, while Left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer trails in third. Read more