By Taylor Lewis 

It’s probably in bad taste to call it the “verratennacht.” What with the Jewish students being harangued on college campuses and the favorite Gotham mayor candidate endorsing “Globalize the Intifada” as another corporatized uplift slogan printed on Home Goods relief boards next to “Live Laugh Love” cross-stitch canvases.

My own sense of ars poetica honor would force me to commit grizzly felo de se if I invoked the tired Niemöller poem “First They Came,” intoning with moralistic flourish: “First they came for the shitposters/And I did not speak out.”

Guess I’ll just get to it like a Stadtbahn train.

Everyone knows Germans are as effervescent as a rotting corpse. But now they’ve taken technocratic misery to a dark new depth, to a palled pool so devoid of sunlight that Josef Mengele would beg for a warm towelette.

During an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday, German police briefly transmogrified into GDR shocktroopers, launching a countrywide raid. The target of their carbon-fiber helmets, steeled truncheons, and leathern jackboots? Short-eyed perverts? Narcotic traffickers? Incorrigible acolytes of Führer Adolph?

Try: miffed grandfathers who, after a few Maßkrugs, let off some heavy index-fingered steam on Facebook.

The Bundespolizei committed a mass-shackling operation on nearly 200 heinous poltroons who, in their sinful lust for crossing the moral code, committed the inexpiable crime of cussing out a politician over cyberspace.

Apparently this roundup of internet guano-keyers is an annual hootenanny that’s gone down every calendar cycle since the adoption of Article 188 of the German Criminal Code in 2017. These so-called “action days” are an admixture of “the Purge” and the ending scene of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” The op is instigated by two of the most sinister forces plaguing the modern West: left-wing quangos and the brittle self-esteem of the elected. These two malevolent spirits intertwine to bring the law down hard upon normal, powerless people carping at an inscrutable system, under the guise of stamping out offensive bigotry.

Tamás Orbán reports that the number of registered “hate crimes” has “quadrupled” since 2021—in line with the sensitivity trend launched globally by America’s Summer of Floyd. The cuffs-for-cursing dragnet is on the up-and-up for the ostensibly center-right ruling party, the Christian Democratic Union. “Digital arsonists must not be able to hide behind their cell phones or computers… what you don’t do in the real world isn’t appropriate digitally either,” finger-wagged Herbert Reul, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister.

Hear that, you cold-cooked krauts? You aren’t allowed to send epithet-ridden tweets to your burg’s constable because you can’t slur him in real life. Or is that the authorities would prefer you to slander your hamlet’s treasurer to his bespectacled pinch-face instead of from the smartphone remove? Or maybe the core issue is that your insults are lobbed behind the shield of anonymity?

Whatever the case, the famously iced German nerve apparently has a kryptonite: comment-section guttersnipery. And only the Bundesregierung can nip budding effrontery, lest some cue-balled, pale-cheeked Fritz get his lederhosen in a knot.

Americans may scoff, what with our First Amendment-guaranteed freedoms and penchant for flapping tongue at anyone who mildly inconveniences us. Germany, however, is different, with a more malignant past. Fining and jailing a couple hundred comment-section stirrers must be the price paid to keep the Nazi bugbear from renascing. Case in point: a 64-year-old Bavarian who had the temerity to call Green Party Leader Robert Habeck a schwachkopf professional, which translates to “professional idiot.” You see, in German, calling someone an “idiot” is really Reich-code for… well, it must have something to do with reviving the Wehrmacht.

The slag crackdown isn’t exclusive to the Teutonic left. The current German chancellor, Friedrich Merz of the CDU, has wielded the speech code against his detractors, including a nurse who called him an arschlöcher. What does a burro’s behind have to do with creeping herrenvolkism? It’s a simple daisy chain, really. First the low volk are allowed to speak their piddling minds. Next, blood libels bubble forth. Then, before the Western nations know it, a beer hall putsch brings another Hitler to power and we’re back to the systematic crematoria. As easy as eins, zwei, drei!

The United States is blessed to have enshrined the right to lob brickbat at bigs in its founding document. We need not worry about a knock at the door for telling the president to reproduce himself—yet.

This July, instead of celebrating independence by blowing a crater in the street, do the next best, American thing. Insult a politician from the comfort of online anonymity. Call Donald Trump a nacarat galoot, AOC a dingbat, J.D. Vance an Oompa Loompa, Chuck Schumer a wheezing bridge troll; smear ‘em all as a bunch of avaristic varlets only out to suckle your wallet.

Appreciate the glorious liberty to bite your thumb at the highhanded, while others are forced to tighten their lips.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Taylor Lewis 

A midsummer malaise has set on MAGA.

Fresh off the triumph of dumping Generation Alpha’s Social Security payout into ICE brigades, Trumpers received a cold splash of water to their scrunched, ruddy faces. And it didn’t geyser from a Banana Boat-lathered Tim Walz cannonballing into a mildewish public pool.

This may come as a shock, or be depressively cynical, but, dear reader, you deserve the truth: sometimes—more often than not—politicians break a vow to voters. I know, everyone from George Washington to Jefferson Smith to Steve Rogers to Ned Flanders scoffs at the notion of a man, elected by his fellow citizens and swearing duty upon the Holy Bible, scraping a pledge. But the homo politicus is a craven creature, a bender of facts, mixer of truth, mouther of prattle, muddier of clear waters. As an infamous operator once put it, “unless you fake sincerity, you’ll never get anywhere in this business.”

The inherent mendacity of democracy became all too apparent for Trumpy tubthumpers when the President, including his top posse, dropped any interest in revealing the exploits of Jeffrey Epstein, the late human-trafficker.

For the uninitiated, Epstein was long rumored to have been a kind of concierge for an elite harem frequented by rarefied men, including the three Bills: Clinton, Gates, and Richardson (former governor of New Mexico). More outré potin holds that he was a hand of one or various intelligence agencies, particularly Mossad, who organized high-profile trysts for the purposes of future blackmail. The latter is unproven in every way: objectively, and within the minds of its exponents who spot spooks lurking behind every nefarious happening. But what is known is that Epstein palled around with big names in big industries, and they weren’t just sitting around palatial Swedish chalets swirling glasses of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, talking the odds of Travis Kelce putting in another season. Nubile flesh was the recreation, which is why Epstein’s closest confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving two decades in the bin.

Despite feting with the fat-walleted overclass, including one debauched member of the British crown, the jewel-strung pimp couldn’t evade the law forever. He was eventually charged with operating an elaborate cathouse circuit, tossed in the clink, only to top himself in his cell one dark, inscrutable night in 2019.

Such was the official narrative during Trump Term One. We’re being treated to the same exact movie during Term Two—the writers not bothering to alter the storyline even slightly. At least, J.J. Abrams would have changed some element!

Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are hewing to the original line that Epstein met his end by his own hand in that Manhattan hoosegow. Moreover, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum concluding that no “incriminating client list” is sitting secret in the bowels of the Robert F. Kennedy Building, locked behind a fortified cabinet drawer, sheafed within Oswald’s CIA surveillance file.

Contrast the staid documentary conclusion to the words of the Attorney General only four months prior. “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi assertedwhen asked about the Epstein Rolodex on Fox News. But now? She parlously screeches: “There ain’t no Epstein files and there never was!”

In similar slimy fashion, her cuffing compadre Patel speculated in a 2023 podcast interview that the Epstein rolls were being kept dark and that ineffectual congressmen should hike up their “big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are.” Perhaps Kash can use some of his children’s book royalties to purchase a pair of Gap chinos and demonstrate his own fortitude by yanking them up to his armpits.

The President himself is implicated in the callet cabal, though the extent of his involvement is disputed. Former First Pal Elon Musk accused Trump of being named within the Epstein chapbook but has since walked it back. Regardless of past affiliation, Donald Trump suggested last year he might order the declassification of the smut binder, though he was wary of its “phony” contents. But when recently pressed about its release, the President begged off the enjoiners in his inimitable idiom: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years… are people still talking about this guy, this creep?”

Well, yes, Mr. President. Your tough-talking, Glock-toting, baton-gripping, chain-swinging, board-with-nail-wielding enforcement brass promised voters scores of pedo pates on pikes. Was it all just a load of boob bait for the bubbas? So much chum for hopeless paranoics? Empty deliverance for backwoods cousin-marrying fundamentalists? Scads of mindslop shoveled onto internet-addled conspiracists?

The answer is: OF COURSE NOT. President Trump is obviously compromised; his inner circle too cowed to reveal the sick, twisted truth. A more menacing force is at work. A demonic shadow haunts the nation’s moneyed set. It’s going to take the nextpresident, one with an adamantine spine, to finally root out the perverse evil that preys on the innocent.

Come 2029, the American people, filled with despondency over the predations of the rich, will elect a new paladin unbowed before well-heeled concupiscence, prepared to divulge the seamy fetishes of the unrepentant aristocratic elect.

The anguished cry of the dashed voter: We’ll get ‘em next time! Trust the plan!

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Christopher E. Baecker 

“You knew dealing with regulations was part of owning a business. You should just accept it.”

Whenever entrepreneurs and small business owners face new regulatory obstacles, I think of that statement directed at a friend several years ago. More such impediments have popped up recently at all levels of government, instigated by both ends of the political spectrum.

A recent report in The Wall Street Journal described how, in the face of surging tariffs under President Trump, some businesses are being forced to lay off staff. Others are holding off on capital investments, or seeking outside investors to help.

Some store shelves are going bare.

Here in Texas, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick spearheaded a drive to ban “all THC products.” That will drastically curtail an $8 billion industry made possible, ironically enough, by a 2019 law loosening up regulations on hemp.

Since then, it has grown to thousands of businesses that employ 50,000 Texans.

Closer to home, while on the one hand promoting “buy local,” the San Antonio City Council doles out taxpayer-funded subsidies to multimillion-dollar corporations from the other hand. They’ve also shown a willingness to seize businesses and arbitrarily shutter whole industries.

Small businesses are important to the economy, but they are also vital to society in general. At their most organic, they are a path to greater independence.

One of my jobs while in college was at a video store (remember those?). The owner had left his prior job because he wanted to be his “own boss.” Probably the easiest part was deciding exactly which industry to jump into.

Every other decision is what should command more respect from our leaders.

First of all, entrepreneurs have to save. In a country where government and mediamistake consumption for growth (“consume: to destroy”), saving goes against the grain. Next, they have to sell their idea to potential investors in order to get the venture off the ground.

Then the risk comes into play.

After giving up a regular paycheck in order to make their idea a reality, there’s the pressure to succeed. It essentially becomes a member of the family, one of the children that must be looked after, and nurtured, 24/7.

In addition to the employment opportunities they create in the community, they also serve as laboratories for wealth creation.

When a business starts selling beyond city limits, it grows. More employees are hired, including those who bring their skills and ideas from other cities and towns. It expands capacity. After evolving into a big business, new small businesses sprout out around it. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Larry, the guy I worked for at the video store, came from one of those big businesses.

Government recognizes all this progress with overbearing mandates, high taxes, and reminders that they can shut them down at any time for any reason (see lockdowns). This creates the perverse illusion among politicians and bureaucrats that they can then offer assistance.

According to the WSJ report, lobbying groups are appealing to the federal government to grant exemptions from the tariffs. The Small Business Administration also “has endorsed bipartisan plans to double loan limits.”

Entrepreneurs can be forgiven their skepticism given the experience of the Paycheck Protection Program.

In tandem with the THC ban, the Texas legislature loosened up its medical marijuana program.

Meanwhile, our city council gave the horse-drawn carriage industry five years to close-up shop. Also, to assuage businesses harmed by the lockdowns and construction that “lasts a painfully long time,” they’ve handed out millions of dollars in grants.

Insufficient, obstructive, and counterproductive. The dependence built-in to all this ‘help’ runs against the very streak of independence that drove these entrepreneurs in the first place.

Why does any of this happen at all?

Some of our elected leaders may have struggled to find success in the private sector. They are sometimes lobbied by their counterparts in the business community who are losing out to their competition. We saw this during the paid sick leave debate here several years ago.

Such lobbying is frequently accompanied by campaign donations and their accompanying undue influence.

Policymakers may simply be ignorant about how the market works, how it motivates business owners to deliver the best product or service at the lowest possible price. They may furthermore feel government is an equal partner.

Or, it’s simply a lack of humility.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott tapped the brakes by vetoing the outright THC ban, calling instead for “an approach similar to the way alcohol is regulated.” Hopefully the rest of the governing class takes a cue from that slight course correction, and stops shortchanging us all.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.