The verdict: Inside the Manosphere raises important questions about masculinity and media, but ultimately avoids confronting a loss of human dignity in how men and women are taught to see one another.

WHY THIS DOCUMENTARY MATTERS

Over the past decade, a new online ecosystem of male influencers has emerged. At its most compelling, “the manosphere” promises a clear path: build your value through money, dating, and social dynamics. In a culture where many young men feel lost, that message is both simple and seductive. But what it actually does is blend genuinely good self-improvement advice with more extreme (and often contradictory and problematic) views. Louis Theroux’s documentary arrives when this shift is impossible to ignore. Young men today are drifting; less likely to marry, less engaged in education or work, and struggling with a loss of direction.

THE STORY

Theroux travels to Miami and Marbella to meet prominent influencers who attract millions of young men seeking guidance on discipline, money, and relationships.As the institutions that once shaped male identity—stable families, vocational pathways, community, and faith—have weakened, the manosphere offers an answer that is often crude, sometimes insightful and frequently contradictory. It combines self-help advice about fitness and entrepreneurship with aggressive commentary on modern dating culture. The result is part motivational seminar, part reality show, and part ideological rebellion against progressive cultural norms. Although Theroux’s documentary captures the spectacle of that world, it struggles to interrogate the crisis beneath it.

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

On the surface, the documentary asks whether the manosphere represents a dangerous radicalization of young men with status, money, and sexual access as the currency of success. What is striking, though, is not just the ambition of this model, but what it leaves out: any serious account of love, responsibility, or the inherent dignity of the human person.

Women are not only objectified within this framework, but also shown as complicit within it, reinforcing a kind of mutual resignation in which both men and women accept a diminished view of themselves, framed instead as liberation, optimization and success.

WHAT WORKS

One of the most revealing tensions lies in the movement’s relationship with the sexually-explicit social media platform OnlyFans. Several influencers openly profit from the very system they claim to despise, benefiting financially from the commodification of women while simultaneously condemning it as a sign of cultural decay. The documentary effectively exposes this hypocrisy. This contradiction is not incidental; it reveals a worldview that critiques moral decline while actively participating in it, exposing not just hypocrisy, but an absence of any coherent moral framework.

WHAT DOESN’T

The documentary repeatedly frames the influencers as provocateurs who profit from controversy, but spends far less time examining the cultural vacuum that created their audience in the first place.

While Theroux briefly acknowledges fatherlessness, trauma, and social isolation as possible drivers, he doesn’t delve into them enough. It leaves the important question largely untouched: what social, economic, and cultural shifts have made this form of masculinity so compelling to so many young men?

THE CULTURAL MOMENT

For those concerned with restoring Western civilization, the task extends beyond criticising the manosphere itself. It requires rebuilding the foundations that once formed young men: family life, faith, education, and community—offering healthier models of responsibility, purpose, and belonging. The documentary captures an instinctive skepticism reflecting a broader collapse of trust, not just in media production, but in these very institutions that have, over time, lost credibility with many.

The film also risks flattening the manosphere into a single, coherent ideology. In reality, it is a fragmented and contradictory ecosystem: part business model, part cultural rebellion, and part sincere search for meaning and masculine identity in a rapidly shifting social landscape.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Inside the Manosphere reveals a culture arguing with itself about masculinity, authority, and truth. But until we address the deeper crisis of meaning facing young men, the voices filling that vacuum (however flawed) will only grow louder.

The challenge is not just to critique this movement, but to offer something better: a shared moral vision of manhood and womanhood rooted not in dominance or optimization, but in dignity, responsibility, and ultimately, love.

1. U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

Ostensibly, UNRWA serves Palestinian refugees. In reality, UNRWA propagates the myth that the descendants of Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948—after five Arab nations invaded the Jewish state—have a never-ending "right of return" to their ancestors' homes. Inevitably, this would mean a Middle East ethnically cleansed of Jews.

UNRWA encourages resentment among Palestinians. On October 7, 2023, UNRWA employees were involved in the massacre of innocent Jewish men, women, and children. Since then, UNRWA facilities have hidden Hamas fighters and weapons.

2. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Ostensibly, UNESCO promotes peace "through international cooperation in sciences, education and culture.” In reality, it promotes an anti-Jewish agenda. UNESCO's 2016 Jerusalem Resolution exemplifies this, referring to the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, exclusively as “Haram al-Sharif.” Reagan withdrew from UNESCO in 1984 because of its pro-Soviet leanings. The U.S. later rejoined, but little changed. Trump's decision to withdraw again recognizes that reality.

3. World Health Organization (WHO)

Ostensibly, WHO proves the value of global governance to human well-being, protecting public health worldwide by working to influence policy and craft strategy in response to health emergencies. In reality, it pursues a hidden political agenda. Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus has shown himself a staunch supporter of China. In its response to COVID-19, WHO helped cover up COVID’s origins in order to protect China.

4. United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)

Ostensibly, the UNHRC protects human rights globally by calling out violators and examining the human rights records of UN members. In reality, the organization provides cover for human rights abusers such as Cuba, China, Russia, Venezuela, and Sudan, all of whom have been UNHRC members. The UNHRC has adopted more than 112 resolutions against Israel, a democracy that assiduously respects human rights. By comparison China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others have never or rarely been formally condemned by the UNHRC.

5. United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC)

Ostensibly, the UNAOC—first proposed in 2004 to build bridges between the West and the Muslim world in the wake of September 11—"aims to improve understanding and cooperation among nations and peoples across cultures." In reality, the UNAOC often ignores Islamist violence and promotes a mushy, postmodern multicultural relativism. In effect, this lends support to Islamism. This sort of tyranny of relativism is at the heart of Western civilizational decline.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The U.S.'s intended withdrawal from a total of 66 international organizations is key to overcoming the machinery of global governance. Even sovereigntists can get lost in the all-consuming nature of this system, which is dominated by anti-Westernism, antisemitism, and a view of human rights which elevates individual autonomy and group identity above objective truth.

WHY IT MATTERS

Chief Justice John Marshall warned, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Anyone who has reviewed his or her pay stub or tax return can see how much of their own economic prosperity is lost to high rates and a complex, unfair system. Even calculating and paying taxes is so onerous that the total cost that Americans paid for tax compliance reached nearly $464 billion last year.

We often hear, especially during election season, that nearly half of U.S. households pay no taxes. This claim is misleading. Many of these households still pay payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and virtually all pay sales, use, or property taxes. However, there is a meaningful distinction between these taxes and the federal income tax system. Under the current progressive structure, the top 10% of earners pay about 72% of federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% contribute only 3% at an average income tax rate of less than 4%.

One of the most controversial features of the tax code contributing to this disparity is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). This is a refundable credit, meaning that if a taxpayer’s liability is less than the credit, the IRS pays the difference as a refund. In 2025, total EITC payments were nearly $70 billion. The credit is intended to support low-income families, but it presents such significant challenges that even its supporters acknowledge them. It disincentivizes additional earning and saving, is vulnerable to fraud, and has variable eligibility requirements. Beyond these issues, the EITC raises ethical questions about the fairness and legality of transferring wealth from those deemed able to “afford” it to those considered to “need” it. It effectively divides taxpayers into net contributors and net recipients.

“If Americans are to regain confidence in their government, reforming a tax system that is both overly complex and widely perceived as unfair would be a strong place to begin.”

The most outrageous aspect of the U.S. tax system, however, is its inefficiency and waste. While government waste is difficult to measure precisely, Americans have little confidence in how their tax dollars are spent. Many believe that nearly 60% of tax revenue is wasted. Some go further, arguing that “taxation is theft” because it is imposed without consent. Our social contract, however, almost certainly permits taxation to fund legitimate government functions such as maintaining order, enforcing the law, and providing national defense. It tends to be the $9 billion dollars swindled in the Medicaid fraud cases in Minnesota, the $312 million in business loans to children, and the $11 million spent to produce a Middle East version of Sesame Street that tends to raise the ire of American taxpayers.

If the power to tax truly is the power to destroy, it is deeply frustrating to see an unfair and inefficient system limiting Americans’ ability to save, invest, and enjoy the fruits of their labor—often in service of unnecessary programs and, at times, direct wealth transfers. If Americans are to regain confidence in their government, reforming a tax system that is both overly complex and widely perceived as unfair would be a strong place to begin.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Another April 15 has come and gone, and with it, another opportunity to rectify the inequities of the U.S. tax scheme. Americans need to muster the political will to overhaul the system before the stress and strain of a broken system destroys American prosperity.

WHY IT MATTERS

A generation taught to view Western civilization primarily as oppressive will struggle to understand the source of its own liberties. A free society cannot endure if its citizens are trained to despise the tradition that made freedom possible. And when students exercise rights they do not understand, they become less prepared to defend them, preserve them, or pass them on.

These anti-Western attitudes first found voice at Stanford University in the 1980s when Jesse Jackson led 500 protesters in the now-infamous chant, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go.” They complained that the program lacked diversity and demanded that Stanford end its introductory humanities program in “Western Culture,” then a graduation requirement. Since then, students have decried Western civilization as both a course of study and a cultural norm. Such courses rarely exist on today’s college campuses, leaving students woefully ignorant of the principles and traditions that comprise our intellectual inheritance. In fact, only 7% of Americans can name all five First Amendment rights.

If students still took Western Civ, they would learn that our rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, and the freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances—all enshrined in the First Amendment—have roots in ancient Greece, the English legal system, and early colonial America. These rights did not emerge suddenly or accidentally; they developed over centuries through philosophical inquiry, legal precedent, and political struggle. A recent report from the Cato Institute documents that the first government to allow citizens to openly criticize the state was that of 5th-century Athens, which helped foster a culture of broad debate.

English legal tradition also informs our system of expressive rights. Our rights to petition and assembly can be traced to Chapter 61 of the Magna Carta, which established a mechanism for subjects to hold the king accountable. By the 15th century, English subjects routinely gathered to present collective petitions to the king or Parliament. These practices normalized the idea that people could assemble peacefully to express political grievances. The rights to petition and assembly were codified in the English Bill of Rights in 1689, which also included the right to free speech within Parliament. This was admittedly a limited application, but it paved the way for broader rights in the future. Unfortunately, most Americans do not know this history.

That’s because this history of expressive rights is rarely taught in high school or college classrooms. As a result, many student protesters exercise these rights without appreciating how precious, hard-won, and historically rare they are. They may take for granted freedoms that emerged only through centuries of intellectual and legal refinement. We should instead teach students that it’s no accident of history that Americans enjoy the expressive rights codified in our First Amendment. We have the legal traditions of Western civilization to thank for such rights, and they deserve both understanding and stewardship.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A society cannot preserve liberties it no longer understands. Restoring serious instruction in the Western tradition, through general education requirements and civics curricula, would ensure that students are equipped to understand, defend, and responsibly exercise their own rights, rather than trampling on the tradition that afforded them.

By Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel, Polity, 2026 • 192 pages

The verdict: Pornocracy is a deeply unsettling but necessary book that convincingly exposes pornography as an exploitative system that demands far greater public attention.

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel intervene at a moment when pornography is more accessible, normalized, and technologically embedded than ever before. Rather than relying on explicitly religious arguments, they assemble secular, empirical evidence to challenge the assumption that pornography is benign. The book addresses a broad audience, especially the indifferent or uncritical consumer, and raises alarm about the formative impact on children growing up with smartphones. Its central concern is cultural: how an entire generation is being shaped by an industry operating with minimal scrutiny.

THE ARGUMENT

The authors argue that modern pornography functions as a highly addictive, algorithm-driven system that escalates users toward increasingly extreme material. What begins as casual consumption can lead to desensitization, with platforms recommending content involving violence, degradation, and simulated underage scenarios. Drawing on studies and large-scale analyses, they claim that such content is not marginal but dominant, with high proportions depicting aggression toward women. Crucially, Pornocracy contends that online consumption does not remain confined to the screen. It correlates with shifts in sexual behaviour, expectations, and, in some cases, criminal trajectories. The authors emphasize the opacity of the industry, both financially and operationally, arguing that its true scale and harm remain deliberately obscured. The result is a system in which users themselves become commodified, echoing critiques of digital capitalism.

The book adopts an investigative, evidence-led approach, combining social research, media analysis, and cultural critique. It opens by contrasting earlier forms of pornography with today’s algorithmically amplified, increasingly violent content. Subsequent chapters explore themes such as addiction, gender relations, and the economic structures underpinning the industry. The argument is cumulative: case studies, statistics, and cultural observations build toward a systemic critique rather than a purely moral one.

WHAT WORKS

Pornocracy does not just gesture vaguely at the harms of pornography; it names them, documents them, and shows their scale with sobering clarity, drawing on deeply disturbing data to show how far the industry has shifted.What is particularly striking is their analysis of how pornography is reshaping the relationship between men and women. In the chapter “Pulled Apart by Porn,” they show how an entire vision of the opposite sex is being eroded, replaced by domination and control. They touch on the impact of Andrew Tate in this space, who they claim teaches his young followers “that to be a man is to be in total control.” These sentiments thrive and grow in a pornified culture. What pornography forms in private, voices like Tate then articulate in public. The result is not just damaged individuals, but a breakdown in the mutual dignity necessary for love, relationships, and ultimately marriage itself.

WHAT DOESN'T

Where the book is less persuasive is in its limited articulation of a positive alternative. While its diagnosis is powerful and convincing, its solutions—largely legislative—feel insufficient to match the scale of the problem. If pornography is destructive, there must also be a clear vision of sex as something rooted in love, dignity, and human flourishing. Without this, the critique lacks a constructive horizon. The authors show how the Pornocracy deforms individuals and society, but they say less about how we rebuild—particularly for a generation shaped by it from a young age. This is understandably beyond the scope of one book, but for restoration to happen, our society needs to be told a better story about love, relationships, and marriage.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Within the broader question of Western cultural renewal, Pornocracy functions as a diagnostic text. It reveals how technological systems, market incentives, and cultural narratives converge to reshape fundamental human experiences: intimacy, desire, and relationships. The book does lead us to understand that any project of restoration must grapple not only with economics or politics, but with the moral ecology of everyday life. It exposes a tension at the heart of modern liberal societies between the language of freedom and the realities of exploitation. In doing so, it highlights the urgent need for a deeper renewal of our culture and moral vision.

THE BOTTOM LINE

This is essential reading for anyone concerned with the direction of our culture. It confronts the reader with the deeper erosion of love, desire, and human dignity in a pornified age. What it offers is not a full solution, but a necessary reckoning with the consequences of a freedom detached from truth.

There are ideas and lines of inquiry that conventional publishing channels no longer handle well. Some are too controversial, unfashionable, or dangerous to the reigning orthodoxies of our age. Others simply require more seriousness and courage than the current climate tends to reward.

That is why we are launching Restoring the West Samizdat.

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Millions of ordinary people lost jobs, savings, and businesses through no fault of their own, and the man most responsible for fumbling the global response faced no professional reckoning whatsoever. The institution he leads emerged from the worst public health catastrophe in a century, not humbled but acquisitive, lobbying to expanded its powers.

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What I’m Thinking About

Instead of welcoming critique, questions and, curiosity, Islamic cultures usually discourage dissent, individuality, or doubts. Such a “tight” everyday culture often transfers to other areas, including scientific inquiry. That’s how you know something is built upon a shaky foundation—because the truth can stand on its own feet and doesn’t require protection from challenges. Western nations were built not only on individual freedoms, but on intellectual curiosity. Were this bedrock value nonexistent, Western-based scientists never would have discovered germ theory, man-made flight, or the cause of diabetes. Yet the COVID tyranny demonstrated that modern Westerners have forgotten about that curiosity-driven heritage, instead eagerly punishing anyone who disagreed or even questioned the official party line on origin and transmission.

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali is Chief Editor of Restoring the West and a leading writer on freedom, religion, and Western civilization. After fleeing Somalia to escape a forced marriage, she built a life in the Netherlands and served as a Member of Parliament. Her journey from Islam to atheism and ultimately to Christianity shapes her perspective on faith, family, and the future of the West.

Drawing on her experiences across continents and cultures, she considers why Western art and culture feel adrift today, how centuries of faith and creativity have guided human meaning, and what it would take to restore a sense of shared purpose, moral depth, and aesthetic wonder back into our society today.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

RtW: Many great works of art seem to wrestle with uncomfortable truths about human nature. Do you think the role of art is to comfort people or to confront them?

AHA: I think it’s both. Some art—especially Christian art—is about worship. If you visit the Sistine Chapel or look at centuries of paintings of Jesus, the disciples, angels, or scenes from Dante, hell, purgatory, heaven, and God’s kingdom, they all show worship. And it’s not just paintings —cathedrals, music, and literature do this, too. Many stories and works put us in moral dilemmas and ask questions about God and suffering. These questions show up in prose, paintings, and statues. Art can comfort us with the hope of salvation and praise, but it can also challenge us. Art deals with times when people have done terrible things, like the Holocaust, and makes us face hard truths about human nature, which Christianity calls the fallen nature.

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By Melanie Phillips, Post Hill Press, 2025 • 307 pages

The verdict: This book documents the West's severe decline, urging Jews, Christians, and others of good faith to revive the Judeo-Christian principles and practices that made the West.

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

The Builder's Stone structures its thesis around the Hamas atrocities against Israel on October 7, 2023. The West is at a "momentous and fateful juncture": when Hamas's brutality revealed the choice before us between civilization and barbarism, many Westerners chose barbarism. The situation is dire, but not hopeless: we can renew our commitment to the West's fundamental principles, deriving from the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old and New Testaments.

THE ARGUMENT

Phillips argues that antisemitism and anti-Westernism have a common root: a hateful rejection of biblical religion and the values that sustain Western civilization. In its virulent hatred of the West, anti-biblical progressivism even ignores Islam’s fierce opposition to Western secularism’s licentious morality, and progressives must embrace jihadism because it is their most dedicated ally in dismantling the West. Judaism, Phillips opines, is Christianity’s “parent” religion, and Judaism’s moral foundation—as expressed in the Ten Commandments—is that of Christianity also. And Christians can learn from Judaism as well. In this era of multicultural “universalist liberalism,” Jewish history teaches us the importance of particularity, upholding nation, tradition, and history.

Phillips surveys the baleful effects of Westerners’ lost faith: a demoralizing moral vacuum filled by destructive pathologies, perhaps foremost of which is the West’s loss of will to defend itself. She shows how Britain and America, in dropping religion, forfeited an entire way of life. She probes the value the West can glean from Jewish history and resilience, and from Talmudic principles of interpretation, which encourage logical reasoning and constant openness to new insights. The Jews’ miraculous survival, she writes, offers an invaluable lesson in the centrality of a “profound reverence for an unbroken chain of cultural transmission.”

WHAT WORKS

The Builder's Stone establishes the biblical religions, Judaism and Christianity, as the West's heart and soul. Phillips points out that the Hebrew Bible—which Christians refer to as the Old Testament—is the origin of the Western way of thinking. She exposes progressives' "liberal universalism," the idea that we are all citizens of the world and that cultural rootedness is chauvinistic, as civilizationally erosive and inherently antisemitic: universalism opposes the particularity, tradition, and collective memory that characterize the Jewish life and that are needed to sustain the West. The Jewish "covenantal society….[grounded in] family and the transmission of tradition and collective memory" is not exclusive; it is open to Jews, Christians, and non-religious alike.

WHAT DOESN'T

The final chapter's ten-point program for saving the West is practical and profound. However, it treats religion too much in an earthly, civilizational sense. In an unintentional nod to dead, liberal Christianity, the section "doing, not dogma," comes close to recommending that Christianity's core doctrines be downplayed in order to "cement Christian identity into [the] everyday lives" of those who are not religious. Similarly, Phillips never acknowledges how Christians understand the Hebrew Bible in the light of Jesus as the Messiah. This profoundly changes its meaning. Without that, Christianity is dead. As the Apostle Paul—a Jewish Christian— said, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

THE BIGGER PICTURE

This book lays bare the civilizational lesson of October 7, 2023 and the West's reaction to it: we must protect Judaism in order to protect the Judeo-Christian West. Phillips convincingly argues that both religions, not just one of them, are constitutive to the development and survival of the West. Since October 7, many on the civilizational right have begun to flirt with antisemitism. This book helps inoculate civilizational conservatism from this folly.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A central biblical admonition frames the entire book: "I have set before you life and death…. Now choose life." This is a divine command, an imperative. For both Jews and Christians, civilizational renewal means covenantal renewal. We have the choice. If God exists, to choose faithfulness to him is to choose life—and to choose civilization over barbarism.

The core disagreement: The Jewish community is right to invest in Jewish formation, but the rest of us must work to contain violent antisemitism that threatens us all.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT

Jewish American columnist Bret Stephens criticized the prevailing strategies for responding to antisemitism. The world’s oldest hatred, he said, is not simply prejudice born of ignorance but a nearly incurable neurosis. Rather than seeking acceptance by ingratiating themselves to others, Jews should focus on Jewish flourishing. Jewish life, he argued, thrives when Jewish identity becomes the central fact of life—the source of meaning and purpose, a spiritual compass, moral anchor, and emotional refuge.

WHERE THEY GO WRONG

Stephens’s proposed solution, however, is only partly right. He argued that fighting antisemitism “is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort,” and that the millions of dollars devoted to it would be better spent strengthening Jewish life—especially through institutions like Jewish day schools that transmit Jewish values to children. Bari Weiss made a similar point last year at the Tikvah Fund’s Jewish Leadership Conference, arguing that “all of the resources in [the Jewish] community should go” to Jewish day schools. Any community, after all, including the Jewish community, ceases to exist when it stops transmitting its culture and values to the next generation.

But this Jewish equivalent of the Benedict Option, Rod Dreher’s proposal for a more inwardly focused Christian posture toward the world, does not take into account the existential threat that the resurgence of violent antisemitism across the West presents to civilization itself, not to mention Jews and Jewish institutions. It is undoubtedly the responsibility of Jewish parents and community leaders to see to it that Jewish young people learn Jewish history, religion, customs, and culture. That duty cannot be outsourced. But the resurgence of political and cultural forces that would be pleased to see Jewish people, Jewish institutions, and the Jewish state eradicated imperil even the possibility of that important work.

THE REAL STORY

Stephens’s position is incomplete because he overlooks two significant and related aspects of the problem. First, antisemitism is not merely a Jewish problem;. it is a civilizational one, threatening not only Jewish people and institutions but the moral and political foundations of the societies in which it emerges. If the problem is civilizational, the response must be as well. Jewish philanthropists should generously support Jewish formation. But non-Jewish philanthropists should be equally committed to supporting programs confronting antisemitism. This hatred will never disappear entirely; it can only be contained. Like a cancer in the body, the ideal would be to eliminate it. Failing that goal, we must pursue strategies of fearless confrontation to limit and mitigate its corrosive effects.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Antisemitism has always been a canary in the cultural coal mine. Civilizations that tolerate it eventually descend into violence and disorder. The enemies of civilization often begin their assault where they perceive the greatest vulnerability. When antisemitism is tolerated, therefore, it is not only Jews who are endangered. Instead, it signals a broader moral decay that threatens society as a whole. To tolerate antisemitism is to allow a corrosive poison to spread—one that ultimately weakens and undermines the foundations of the West itself.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Restoring the West is a mission requiring the courage to oppose the ideologies that threaten our civilization. Yes, Jewish philanthropists should continue to support the formation and vitality of Jewish life within their communities. But non-Jewish philanthropists must also step forward and invest in the work of confronting antisemitism and preserving the civilizational conditions that make such formation possible.

A shocking number of Americans don’t know or understand their own country or its constitutional traditions. This ignorance is especially true of young people. At every level, our schools fail to deliver adequate civic knowledge. Primary documents are one remedy to civic ignorance. Every student should start with these:

1. The Declaration of Independence: Without the Declaration of Independence, there would be no American Experiment. This document, penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, asserted our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while establishing that those rights come from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” — not from government. It further asserted that power comes from the consent of the governed. Careful reading of the colonies’ list of grievances can awaken students to the rights they take for granted today.

2. The U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights: These documents provide the structure of American government — as well as its limitations. Close reading of the Constitution demonstrates to students the balance of power necessary to safeguard our liberties and also sows appreciation of the deliberate process created by America’s founders to limit and decentralize power. The Constitution also reveals the philosophical foundations of our republic, including the rule of law, due process, and federalism. All are built into the delicate design of the Constitution itself.

3. Federalist Papers No. 10: If students can only read one of the Federalist Papers, it should be Number 10 by James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution.” In it, Madison argues that only a large federal government can “control the violence of faction” and prevent the tyranny of the majority. Especially pertinent as Americans become more divided, this essay advises that since differences of opinion are “sown in the nature of man,” we must learn to live together in a carefully constructed pluralist society.

4. The Gettysburg Address: Abraham Lincoln’s short remarks following the Battle of Gettysburg have become one of the most famous speeches in American history. More importantly, Lincoln calls our “new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” an “unfinished work.” Lincoln’s words emphasize that American ideals, especially the idea of “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” are worth preserving and advancing even in the face of human moral failings.

5. Letter From Birmingham Jail: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous letter from his Alabama jail cell is a powerful call for justice and “constitutional and God-given rights” for all Americans. Despite its calls for change, the letter is a defense of the principles that shaped our founding. King also outlines the process for nonviolent protest against injustice. His template of fact-finding, negotiation, and direct action is a wise guide for today’s students, who often erroneously believe that censorship and violence are appropriate answers to offensive speech.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In order for students to appreciate and appropriately exercise their rights, privileges, and responsibilities as American citizens, they must first understand them. States should make this civic understanding a priority by adopting legislation modeled on the REACH Act, which requires all public university students to take a civics course grounded in primary documents.

WHY IT MATTERS

We are not in a single holy day but in the Easter season—the Church’s 50-day proclamation, culminating with the feast of Pentecost, that Christ is risen. This claim is about reality, not sentiment. When Christians fail to live this truth publicly and with conviction, the cultural consequences follow quickly. Political and legal systems begin to take on responsibilities that belong to conscience and conversion. For those concerned with the West’s future, this is not abstract theology but the foundation of freedom itself.

For many Christians, Easter and Christmas are the only times they step into church, an opportunity for a long weekend rather than entering into the paschal mystery of His life, death, and resurrection. But if only we knew the depth of what we celebrated, our lives would be transformed! The Resurrection demands a radically different way of living: repentance, unshakeable joy in suffering, and courageous witness to the truth, even when it costs our reputations. When Christians neglect this demand, the shared moral language of society breaks down. What needs restoring is Christians who live like Christ has truly conquered sin and death.

This erosion is visible in proposals like Canada’s Combatting Hate Act. The bill expands hate crime provisions (including a broadly defined offense of “intimidation” based on perceived intent), increases penalties, and removes protections for good-faith expressions of religious texts. The minister of Canadian identity and culture has argued there is “clear hatred” in the Bible and questioned whether such texts can be quoted in good faith. In such a framework, even Scripture may fall under legal scrutiny. These developments do not emerge in a vacuum; they arise in societies that have forgotten that their moral framework was built upon Christianity. They also no longer trust that Christians living their faith freely will make society flourish.

Critics argue that such legislation is necessary to combat real hatred and protect vulnerable communities, a concern that should not be dismissed. Yet what is often labeled “hate speech” will only ever be misunderstood when it is apart from the freedom found in Christ. The deeper issue is the lack of a credible and joyful Christian witness—because if Christians truly lived the Gospel, would truth spoken in love be seen as harm? The onus is therefore on us to live with clarity, charity, and conviction so that Christ’s way is recognized as transformative and not oppressive. And for those without faith who worry about these growing limits on freedom, this life is offered to you, too.

The path forward is not withdrawal, but renewal. The West will not be restored by legislation alone, but by Christians who live the Resurrection fully, embody joy, speak truth with charity, and repent humbly of the ways that do not honor God. Easter is a season of transformation, not complacency. A civilization renewed in this way can sustain both freedom and truth, because it no longer relies on coercion to uphold what should be lived from within.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If Christians treat Easter lightly, society will compensate with heavy-handed law. The answer is not fear, but conversion. Live the Resurrection, and freedom has a chance to endure.

Books are where the ideas that shape our institutions, our laws, and our lives are tested, refined, and sometimes overturned. At Restoring the West, we believe that serious reading and serious conversation about what we read are among the most important things a defender of the West can do.

That is why we are launching the Restoring the West Book Club.

Each month, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and RtW editors will sit down with a prominent author, scholar, or public intellectual whose work engages the defining questions of our civilizational moment, on the forces threatening the West and the people fighting to restore it. These are not publicity appearances or promotional interviews. They are conversations driven by the ideas in the book and the questions they raise for everyone who cares about the future of free societies.

The RtW Book Club is a benefit for paid subscribers. If you are already a subscriber, you are in. If you have been thinking about upgrading, this is a good moment.

THE FIRST DISCUSSION:

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What I’m Thinking About

I love having deep conversations on topics that truly matter. In a world that is so often superficial and artificial, taking a deep dive on weighty issues affecting our world gives me hope for the future. That’s what AHA Foundation President Trey Dimsdale and I did recently when he interviewed me for “Ayaan Answers: Why Western Liberty Cannot Coexist with Islamic Law.” We discussed the current disastrous trend of Western societies assuming that all cultures are created equal—which, unless halted, can only result in the degradation of the very values that made Western society so great. Our conversation was no fatuous complaint session either, as we see what so many seem to be missing: the West is worth preserving.

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WHY IT MATTERS

Recently, the International Olympic Committee announced a new policy to protect the female category in Olympic sport beginning with the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The decision reflects a growing recognition that biological sex differences matter in competition. After years of heated debate, the world’s most influential sporting body is acknowledging a simple reality: fairness in women’s sport requires recognizing that men and women are not physically identical.

Yet while sport is beginning to reassert this very real biological distinction, popular culture continues to blur it. Hollywood action films increasingly portray men and women as physically interchangeable in fight scenes, routinely depicting female characters overpowering much larger male opponents (see Red Notice, Pitch Perfect 3, both Jumanjis, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga for examples). The goal is often to signal empowerment, but the result is a subtle cultural message that equality requires denying biological differences.

To be clear, films do more than entertain; they also shape how millions understand human nature, gender, and social expectations. So when Hollywood repeatedly depicts men and women as evenly matched in physical confrontation, it subtly rewrites basic truths about the human body. When Angelina Jolie easily keeps pace with Brad Pitt in Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s fight scenes, for instance, even emerging victorious in hand-to-hand combat in a typical suburban setting, she isn’t merely amusing filmgoers on a Saturday night—she is instead signaling that if she can do it, other women can, too. But that simply isn’t reality, as science overwhelmingly demonstrates the significant advantages the average man holds over even a highly-trained, fit woman.

That fact is why we must ensure that biological reality is respected on screen, as well as in the boxing ring. In England and Wales, 72.1% of victims in domestic abuse-related crimes were female in the year ending March 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics. When films routinely depict men and women trading blows as equals, they normalize a vision of violence that conflicts with real-world vulnerability. Storytelling that ignores this truth risks shaping perceptions of strength, protection, and what moral behaviour is considered acceptable beyond the screen.

The choreography of these films is entertaining, sure, but it strains credibility. Fans may argue that action films are merely escapist fiction, yet these repeated portrayals weaken a long-standing moral intuition at the heart of Western civilization: that strength carries responsibility. For centuries, societies understood that men’s greater physical strength carried a duty of restraint and protection. The norm that men should not strike women was not an expression of female inferiority, but a recognition of asymmetry, and the civilizing expectation that strength should be used to protect, not dominate. When cultural narratives erase those differences, they also risk erasing the moral framework that once governed them.

The International Olympic Committee’s recent policy highlights the tension. In elite sport, biological difference is now being openly acknowledged again because fairness requires it. Yet outside sport, many cultural institutions still resist recognizing the same reality. Studies of mixed‑gender military training show that female recruits tend to experience higher rates of certain musculoskeletal injuries than their male counterparts during basic training, partly because they are often performing the same physically demanding tasks in integrated units without adjustments for average sex‑based differences in strength and physiology.

Restoring clarity here does not diminish women. On the contrary, it allows female achievement to be recognized within the truth of embodied difference rather than within artificial standards of sameness.Western civilization has historically understood equality in richer terms: equal dignity, equal moral worth, and equal protection under the law paired with an honest recognition that men and women are not identical. Recovering that balance needs to be part of restoring cultural sanity.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The debate over women’s sport is ultimately a debate about truth. Equality does not mean pretending differences do not exist. If the West hopes to restore a culture grounded in reality, our stories (on the screen and beyond) must rediscover the wisdom that dignity and difference can coexist.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is Chief Editor of Restoring the West and a leading writer on freedom, religion, and Western civilization. After fleeing Somalia to escape a forced marriage, she built a life in the Netherlands and served as a Member of Parliament before moving to the United States. Her journey from Islam to atheism and ultimately Christianity shapes her perspective on faith, family, and the future of the West.

This conversation explores why citizenship must be understood as loyalty, belonging, and commitment rather than as a merely instrumental legal status. Ayaan reflects on national sovereignty, mass immigration, divided loyalties, and the way Christian faith informs a healthy understanding of nationhood and civic responsibility.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

RtW: How would you define citizenship, and what is its importance to restoring the West?

AHA: Being an American citizen is a core part of who I am. Of course, I have other identities—I’m a woman, I’m 5’7”—but my national identity shapes where I belong. That sense of belonging brings with it solidarity and loyalty. For me, it means knowing which society I would live and die for, something many people overlook when they talk about citizenship.

The importance is that we have to restore that particular meaning of citizenship and move away from citizenship as an instrument. For some, citizenship can become little more than a practical arrangement—a way to escape hardship in a country of origin, build a life somewhere else, and gain the benefits of stability and mobility without any real sense of commitment or belonging. A person may continue to see his or her original national identity as more important than their American identity, while valuing an American passport mainly for the access and convenience it provides. Even the simple appeal of living in America can be understood in primarily utilitarian terms. But citizenship has to return to its original meaning, which is bound up with national identity—and we have to restore it to that meaning.

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WHY IT MATTERS

Aleksandar Vucic was first elected to public office in Serbia in 1993. Over the following decades he steadily consolidated power, rising through government ranks to become prime minister and, ultimately, president in 2017. For the people of Serbia, this thirty-year period has been marked by corruption, election irregularities, and a sharp decline in press freedom. A nation with the potential to stabilize the region’s economy and help secure Europe’s borders has instead been constrained by the autocratic and narcissistic control of a single leader.

In response to decades of stagnant progress and empty promises, the United States Congress took the extraordinary step of passing the Western Balkans Democracy and Prosperity Act, signed into law in December 2025 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation underscores the region’s strategic importance while detailing the many challenges that have hindered its development. Notably, Serbia is identified as a particularly problematic actor in the region. The act notably includes provisions for imposing sanctions on individuals and organizations. Europe is not typically a breeding ground for sanction-worthy autocrats, but the case for sanctioning Aleksandar Vucic is clear if there is to be any real hope for freedom in Serbia and for the nation to take its place among those advancing liberty and prosperity.

On November 1, 2024, tragedy struck in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, when a train station’s concrete canopy collapsed, killing 16 people. Renovations on the Yugoslav-era structure had been completed just months earlier to prepare the station as a hub for a high-speed rail. The collapse was likely the result of corruption that turned a blind eye to poor workmanship. In response, university students took to the streets in protest, and the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the lack of transparency in Vucic’s government regarding both the construction of the canopy and the investigation into its collapse.

Just a year after the Novi Sad tragedy, another scandal erupted in the capital. Vucic announced plans to invoke a law—intended only for extraordinary circumstances—to remove cultural protections from a parcel of land containing the ruins of government buildings bombed by NATO in 1999. His government then pushed legislation through the National Assembly to enable the site’s redevelopment as a luxury Trump-branded hotel. The plan was ultimately scrapped, and Vucic offered up proxies in an effort to quell the anti-corruption protests that once again rocked the nation.

Serbia currently holds the third-lowest Freedom House score among Council of Europe member states. In just the past few days, another round of elections has been compromised by Vucic’s party, as hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed into just ten contests in small municipalities, overwhelming the modest resources of opposition parties. Unsurprisingly, these developments have sparked renewed anti-Vucic demonstrations, both in the affected municipalities and in the capital.

THE BOTTOM LINE

For the twentieth consecutive year, global freedom has declined. Autocrats like Aleksandar Vucic have been able to operate in the shadows for far too long, impeding the economic, political, and social progress of their nations and regions. Congress has now provided the tools for an appropriate response. It is time to use them to hold Vucic accountable and to send a clear message to autocrats everywhere.

The core disagreement: Matejko’s recommended book list focuses on contemporary, and likely fleeting, leftist preoccupations rather than timeless truths. Students should read Great Books instead of recent bestsellers.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT

In her introduction, Matejko encourages students to read widely, “consider broad perspectives,” and to treat her recommended books as “conversation starters” rather than definitive answers. This is sound advice, reflecting an admirable openness to inquiry. College is a rare season in life when students have both the time and the supportive environment to immerse themselves in serious reading. Matejko’s general advice acknowledges this ideal.

WHERE THEY GO WRONG

Instead of focusing on “the best that has been thought and said,” Matejko’s list of recommended books is almost exclusively contemporary and ideological. She fails to follow through on her own advice about reading broadly. For example, the first book on the list is How to Be a (Young) Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone. The book, published in 2023, is one of several on this list that focus on the modern preoccupation of structural racism in America. Others include Dear Martin (also by Nic Stone) and The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones. All three were written within the last ten years. The same pattern emerges in the books included about modern feminism.

C.S. Lewis addressed the downsides of this approach in his introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. He notes, first, that “A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of … thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light.” Lewis also reminds readers that “Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes.” Students in particular must heed this advice, since they are not yet experts in the subjects they are encountering. They are fish who don’t realize that they’re wet.

THE REAL STORY

Lewis provides a solution to the problem he propounds. “We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.” He continues, “the only palliative,” to the dogmas and blindnesses of our own age, “is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.” Lewis recommends that students read one old book after each new one. In other words, students should read Great Books—the foundational works of literature, philosophy, history, and science that have shaped civilization and continue to illuminate enduring questions about truth, virtue, beauty, and the human condition. These books have endured across generations, slowly building a “Great Conversation” among the most influential ideas of every era.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Students should seek the “clean sea breeze of the centuries” as an antidote to modern dogma. The books they read shape their understanding and opinions of themselves, their country, and the wider world. Reading only from narrow, contemporary works risks leaving them with a distorted understanding of their own civilization and its achievements. Students may come away fluent in critique but unfamiliar with the intellectual inheritance they are critiquing, including its arguments, aspirations, and internal debates. Without that grounding, students’ judgment becomes shallow and historically untethered. And a civilization cannot survive if its heirs never learn what made it.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Students preparing for college should read books that have stood the test of time, not merely those that reflect the passing concerns of the present moment. Great Books connect students to the long conversation of civilization and sharpen their judgment. If students want to understand the world they are entering, they should begin with the books that helped build it.