Shampoo Socialism

Posted on September 29, 2026 by The Political Hat

     One of the totalitarian, and socialist, voices on the (purported) “Right” these days is Charles Haywood, the “Shampoo Socialist” who waxes poetically about taking over and imposing his vision on America whether people like it or not. Much has been said as of late about him, but yet more evidence is always useful. From Jason Hart, whose post is quoted in full below due to Twitter’s/X’s embed limitations.

Episode 1 of the @NewFounding podcast, released in May 2023, was an interview with Charles Haywood – a “Foundationalist” crank who has donated $390,500 to @ClaremontInst since 2022.

Predicting America will undergo a “relatively peaceful” “civil fracture” by 2030, Haywood said, “Most of American society does nothing of net social value. Well over 50% of the people in white collar and semi-white collar type jobs, 95 plus percent in academia, probably closer to 99% in academia, all of those people provide no value, and at some point that will become evident.”

“I think there’s no positive outcome without getting rid of the stupid, so I think it’s very important to build these structures so they can be dropped into place when the underbrush is cleared with fire,” Haywood said before spelling out how New Founding fits into his vision.

“My theory is that some small amount are ideological enough to want to go down fighting, but the rest of them will simply change their views and get a job that allows them to eat, and that will presumably be a job that’s set up through the structures of people like New Founding, that are setting up the structures for companies and businesses that provide real value,” Haywood explained (before predicting there would be a civil war if Trump was reelected in 2024).

     And if you want to hear it in his own words…

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Woke Censorship Comes For Fantasy Art

Posted on September 28, 2026 by The Political Hat

     The “de-lewding” of characters and art to satisfy woke-scolds is, sadly, nothing new.   Half-a-decade ago the iconic character Taarna from “Heavy Metal” magazine and movie was redesigned to replace the “bikini armor” with full body armor, with people disagreeing with this invariably declared sexist. Now, the official D&D has reissued an old novel from the 1980s with a censored cover.

Original novel cover art on the left; newer censored novel cover art on the right.

     The wokeness of modern day D&D is well established. But this is worse than either the wokification of the game mechanics/setting, or even the redesigning of a character: They censored the original art piece! To make matters even more ridiculous, that “boob window” and “impractical armor” is actually part of the written book itself and to the character being depicted [Warning: Spoilers]:

“While people have mocked the cover of that book for decades, in the context of the book it makes sense when you realize that Alias was intentionally given that armor to weaken her, but she couldn’t bring herself to be rid of it (probably because a major theme in the novel is how controlled she is, and her struggle for identity and independence).

“The ‘boob window’ in the armor is actually mentioned and discussed repeatedly in the novel itself, with it being introduced as an intentional weakness put there by her creator (the character in question is literally a created being) even explicitly saying it was an easy target for a sword, and her companion urges her to wear more practical armor, but Alias insisted on wearing it because it was more comfortable than the heavy breastplate that her companions offered.

“Eliminating it in the cover art, unless they ALSO started rewriting the book to eliminate that part of her character and how it was brought up repeatedly by various characters around her just turns it into another novel cover that doesn’t accurately reflect the actual story being told.”

     Oh, and the artist who drew the art is decidedly unhappy about it.

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News of the Week (September 27th, 2026)

Posted on September 27, 2026 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for September 27th, 2026


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Firing Line Friday: Ten Years of Firing Line: 1966-1976

Posted on September 25, 2026 by The Political Hat

     In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.

     Half-a-century ago Firing Line celebrated it’s ten year anniversary, and explained the laudable purpose behind it: “Our aim is to get people who have something to say. They can say it on Firing Line without having to jump over roadblocks every few minutes. They can indulge their own styles of thought and speech. They can be frenetic or leisurely. They need only to watch their logic, and be prepared to examine previously unexamined deposits of prejudice, if they are burdened by them. Firing Line is devoted to the proposition that interesting people can be interesting through the course of an entire hour. Failures at this level have been very few. But then, to quote the buoyant observation of Harold Nicolson, ‘Ninety-nine people out of a hundred are interesting; and the hundredth is interesting because he is the exception.’”

     Until next Friday.

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Quick Takes – Meanwhile In Academia: No Reverse Racism At Auburn; DEI Leadership Programs At Kentucky; Teaching Institutionalization In New Jersey

Posted on September 24, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: Woke Warrior Boot Camps

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     Some people are still hellbent on believing that you can’t be racist against Whites.

“Auburn University’s counseling course titled ‘Living and Communicating in a Diverse Society’ has recently come under fire for allegedly shining a negative light on white men.

“The course teaches that, in the ‘acceptance’ stage of racial identity development, whites ‘can still dismiss or diminish comments or actions that indicate that racism is alive,’ according to materials obtained by 1819 News from an anonymous student.

“‘They express the view that everyone has struggles and people should just accept the way things are and try to be American. They expect of color to “get over it” and go forward as Americans which really means be more like White people,’ it states.

“The course also claims there is no such thing as ‘reverse racism,’ meaning members of a historically dominant group can’t experience prejudice.”

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The Long March: Then & Now

Posted on September 22, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Many are familiar with the phrase “long march through the institutions”. But how does it work and where did it come from?   James Lindsay discusses this and builds upon Krzysztof Szczawinski’s history of the man who is responsible for it’s naming, both of which are quoted in full below due to Twitter’s/X’s embed limitaitons.

     As Lindsay explains:

This is the strategy we’re seeing playing out around us all over the place, Woke Left, Woke Right, Salafist Bolshevik (Muslim Brotherhood), and beyond.

The strategy is based in Western Marxist theory (“Cultural Marxism” and Critical Theory) and employs classic Communist entryism as a primary tactic. That means getting inside institutions and transforming them from within or collapsing them from a combination of internal and external pressure.

It is sometimes called “boring from within.” The idea is like they’re drilling a hole in the side of an institution and going in through the wall, transforming the inside, and leaving the outside apparently intact so it can keep doing its work until people finally catch on, far too late. Think about the Heritage Foundation. Or academia. Or the Bar Association. Or, or, or, or…

In one strategy it uses, it acts like a “virus,” even in its own telling. People are trained in the ideology and turned into “viral agents.” They’re then sent out into the world to join institutions, jobs, schools, movements, whatever. Their goal is to slowly turn people and then institutions and to open the door to more of themselves.

After Dutschke was shot in 1968, Herbert Marcuse, father of the New Left and Frankfurt School Critical Theory giant, took up his cause, instructing his strategy be followed in his 1972 book Counter-revolution and Revolt, naming Dutschke and the strategy (which is named after Mao’s “Long March”) and describing how to do it. The primary listed target was “education at all levels.”

That’s how it happened, and it’s still going on today, everywhere, rampantly, from all the bad guys.

     And who was this Dutschke fellow?

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American Governance: Limited, Constrained, and Yoked

Posted on September 21, 2026 by The Political Hat

     Is there any greater false manichean choice than the idea that liberty and virtue are in opposition and that the government can not push one except at the expense of the other… or indeed that government is the proper vehicle to push either?

     Far too many people, as of late, believe that materialism and prosperity is destroying the spiritual good and that the economy has become a god unto itself that the country (through the state, of course) worships, and that the only alternative is for the government to subsume the economy into a tool to work for the country, as guided by an enlightened state of course, and towards some virtuous society as determined by the enlightened few who run the government.

     This is, as it always has been, a false dilemma fallacy. The “market” is just the free interaction of free individuals, and these people can not brook people who exercise their freedom contrary to their idea of how things ought to be, which is dishonestly packaged as the “common good”.

     The proper role of American governance is a constrained one, and limited by our unique heritage and culture going back to the better part of a millennium. The Mangna Carta and the Charter of the Forest made it clear that there were fundamental rights that not even the state could trample upon—the state must be yoked lest it yoke the people. It is that history and heritage which confines the state to limited to the confines of fundamental precepts, and enshrined in the Constitution as a paragon of that wisdom. As Edmund Burke noted:

     Is that constraining of the state to acting within the substance and fundamentals of America’s heritage, and the liberties that protects, that serve as the glue that we hold individually in common that makes America, America. It is not a “shared good” provided from some societal collective, and certainly not something the state can be trusted to judge as desirable or not. It must come organically from the people themselves, and while the state will reflect that, empowering it to specific social ends is destructive of any “good”.

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News of the Week (September 20th, 2026)

Posted on September 20, 2026 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for September 20th, 2026


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Firing Line Friday: Civil Rights and Foreign Policy

Posted on September 18, 2026 by The Political Hat

     In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.

     Sixty years ago, the question of how America’s foreign policy was primarily about combating Communism. The question of America’s impact on the rights of the people affected by that is certainly a cromulent one, but could such concerns go so far as to become tools of America’s enemies?   William F. Buckley, Jr. debated Floyd B. McKissick on just such a concern over civil rights and foreign policy.

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Happy Constitution Day!

Posted on September 17, 2026 by The Political Hat

     The Constitution of the United States of America is one of the crowning achievements of mankind. It was a distillation of the Anglo-American tradition and heritage set as the Law of the Land and sets the rules above the rulers. Unlike the rest of the Anglosphere, it supersedes mere parliamentary or legislative whim to serve as a lodestone that has endured from the 18th century through today. As the Sharon Statement so eloquently put it: “That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power”.

     Even though it has and in many ways continues to be bent, twisted, or even outright violated from time to time, it serves as beacon to to return to that rises above the honeyed words of politicians, and though abused, has warded off the fundamental transformation that has wrecked havoc not only through the Anglosphere, but through the Western world more broadly.

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