Rip’s Newsletter - test #3
May 19, 2026
Rip’s Newsletter
May 19, 2026
Articles in This Issue
Victor Davis Hanson - America: The Real Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon › American Greatness
Anthony Esolen - The Electoral College and the American Union › American Greatness
Ahmed Charai - Trump in Beijing: Respect, Leverage, and the New Realism of US-China Relations
Douglas Andrews - Brits March to Save Britain
Cal Thomas - A Lesson in Economics for AOC
Michael Barone - Trump’s Churchillian Foreign Policy | Frontpage Mag
Overview
I pulled together today’s opinion roundup, with a fast read on the main arguments shaping the conversation. I open with America: The Real Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon › American Greatness; The Electoral College and the American Union › American Greatness; Trump in Beijing: Respect, Leverage, and the New Realism of US-China Relations. You’ll see recurring themes echoed across americangreatness, gatestoneinstitute, patriotpost, townhall_Columnists, frontpagemag. Taken together, these pieces sketch where the pressure points are right now and where the debate is heading next.
1. America: The Real Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon › American Greatness
Site: American Greatness
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Date: 2026-05-19
One American view of China—now increasingly popular on the Left and the Right alike, especially among the hate-Trump crowd—is that the communist colossus will be forever ascendant, with continued astonishing levels of food production, ship construction, and industrial output. In this pessimistic view, China will soon replace America as the world’s predominant power. We are, supposedly, like an exhausted British Empire circa 1945, and China is the new version of the postwar American powerhouse. Yet even Beijing’s miraculous 30-year leap out of poverty into first-world affluence and Westernized power is hardly the same as parity with the US.
2. The Electoral College and the American Union › American Greatness
Site: American Greatness
Author: Anthony Esolen
Date: 2026-05-19
Every few years, we in the United States endure something like the sweats of malaria while certain people, devoted to “democracy,” call to abolish the Electoral College, now merely a counting system whereby each state is assigned an electoral weight based on its representation in Congress—the sum of its senators and representatives. There are two main lines of the argument. The first is that because of the College, a president can be elected without a majority or a plurality of the vote. In elections involving two main candidates, this has happened three times: 1888 (Harrison over Cleveland), 2000 (Bush over Gore), and 2016 (Trump over Clinton).
3. Trump in Beijing: Respect, Leverage, and the New Realism of US-China Relations
Site: The Gatestone Institute
Author: Ahmed Charai
Date: 2026-05-19
President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing should be understood not merely as a diplomatic episode, but as a strategic signal. It revealed something essential about the future of the international order: the relationship between the United States and China can no longer be managed by illusion, slogans, or the comfortable assumptions of the past. Trump understood a fact many in the Western establishment were slow to accept. China cannot be reduced to a commercial competitor. Nor can it be treated only as an ideological adversary.
4. Brits March to Save Britain
Site: The Patriot Post
Author: Douglas Andrews
Date: 2026-05-19
Brits March to Save Britain Tens of thousands of Brits turned out at a massive “Unite the Kingdom” march in London to denounce the leftism and the Islamic immigration that are destroying British identity. They marched, yes, and they turned out by the tens of thousands. But it’s gonna take a lot more than marching to save Great Britain. Saturday’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally was organized by the brave and outspoken Tommy Robinson, whose real name, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so sweetly. I say “brave and outspoken” because Robinson, the founder of the nationalist and a...
5. A Lesson in Economics for AOC
Site: Townhall
Author: Cal Thomas
Date: 2026-05-19
I am not an economist, but I do have some personal experience with the principles of economics and the rules that allow especially Americans to prosper while becoming more self-reliant and less dependent on government. Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), aka AOC, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, graduated from Boston University cum laude, and then returned to the Bronx and worked as a bartender and waitress to help her mother fight foreclosure of their home. Nothing wrong with that, but her life experience apparently has taught her little.
6. Trump’s Churchillian Foreign Policy | Frontpage Mag
Site: FrontPage Magazine
Author: Michael Barone
Date: 2026-05-19
Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas’: HERE. Knowingly or not, President Donald Trump, in his decision to attack Iran, has embarked on a foreign policy that has been, on and off, both persistent and controversial in the great English-speaking nations. You can trace it back at least to the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89: the ouster of King James II of England and his replacement by his son-in-law and nephew William, Prince of Orange, and his daughter Mary, as William III and Mary II.
[Included here for consistency.]
