If you disagree with the war in Iran, and you’ve been labeled ‘conservative’ or ‘Republican,’ you’re a panican. It’s an insult, if we’re blunt. Calling somebody a ‘panican’ is never approbative, not the way ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ or progressive’ might be. ‘Panican’ is an accusation of poor character or at least poor judgement. So we should carefully understand what is meant, whether it fits the purported ‘panicans,’ and whether the panican critique is justified.

Now, I’m not going to try to cover the whole sweep of modern ‘panican’ discourse. Many people use the term, and while there is a general consensus on who is included (see article opening), I expect many people have their own variation on what, precisely, the insult means. So I’m going to turn to a single person, a single user of the term, and take advantage of his article on the topic to understand what he means by ‘panican,’ compare it to the examples he gives, and show that his use does not comport with wisdom.

Caveat

This article is a direct response to and disagreement with Jon Harris’s article here. If you are using a browser that supports it, I advise opening it in a split window; if not, be prepared to reference it, to be sure I’m getting Harris right. Moreover, don’t take my disagreement here as an enmity (even if this is the second time I’ve written a counter-article). I respect Harris and regard him as generally a good source, particularly on church affairs. I’ve read his book (though he’s written others I haven’t gotten around to yet. Rushdoony takes time!), I’ve profited from it, and I plan to post a book recommendation on my Substack for it in the next few months. That said, he’s wrong here, and I present this article in order to show where.

Also, because this is a response, it turned out long. Have fun.

[Pre-Publishing Note: This article was sent to Harris prior to publication, as per Matthew 18:15. At time of scheduling, no response requiring its alteration has been received.]

[Further, this article was written in the week leading up to 4/23/26, so it does not address any developments thereafter, unless I added a reference I’ve forgotten about. Due to its time-relevance, I’m not putting it on a delay for Creational Story or putting it on the usual schedule.]

What is a Panican?

A panican, the article nearly says, is somebody who has bet against Trump in the influence-and-money game (“New Incentives, New Influencer Class”). He’s seen a trend heading that way, starting with anti-Israel content, and he’s decided to hitch his wagon on, in hopes of becoming a bigger voice in the maelstrom, appealing to the disaffected across the political spectrum. If he was around long enough, he probably hitched his wagon to the anti-woke sometime around 2021 or possibly, with some business acumen, even earlier.

The panican is particularly identifiable by his reaction to recent Trump actions, inasmuch as he’s loudly against them. The war? Terrible. Trump’s policies? Either worthless or malicious. Trump’s victories? Hollow. Trump himself? Somewhere between Netanhyahu’s pet and a vicious traitor, but almost certainly a weakling coward. Component to this, the panican is blackpilled (defined as ‘believing political action is doomed or useless’) or, if not himself blackpilled, a purveyor of that ebony pharmaceutical (“The Anti-Authority Trap”). He calls on and validates the suspicions of the politically discouraged and disaffected, comforting them that they don’t need to actually do anything because it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Finally, the panican is anti-Israel. The article is unclear whether being against Israel’s government suffices or if panicans generally are anti-Semitic. At least they hold that, “Apparently Israel and the Trump administration can control most everything except the most popular podcasts” (Harris).

We’ve got our definition; now let’s look at his examples.

Representatives

Harris names names and provides links, for which I thank him. Those he names as panicans in the first section (by implication at least) are in order of appearance: Nick Fuentes, Saagar Enjeti, Col. MacGregor, Tucker Carlson, Ian Carrol, Joe Kent, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Alex Jones.¹ For each of these, I’ll go over my assessment of the speaker (this is relevant), the point Harris brings up against them, and how they line up with ‘panican’ as he’s defined it.

Fuentes

Nick Fuentes is a bad actor. He spews sin like a fire hose, and people who listen to him receptively are only harmed. Frankly, I’d be unsurprised to find out he’s been on the federal payroll for most of his career, particularly given his evasion of consequences for agitating at Jan 6. His views on race are vile, and his ‘Christianity’ putrid. He has some value in the public discourse, but that value is as a warning, a sign post showing (by how he’s taken root) where certain cracks in our society lie, and as a demonstration of where certain false ideas lead, to dissuade people from the rabbit-hole. But is he a panican?

Well, he’s certainly against recent Trump actions, including the Iran war. But he was never consistently pro-Trump. His anti-Israel sentiment is also an old, old story, key to his persona since 2017 (according to Robert Barnes, who debated him on Israel back in 2021). He’s also a self-proclaimed fascist. How sincere he is, we can debate (of all the people I know much about on this list, he’s the second most likely to be a grifter). Regardless, he fits the anti-Trump, anti-Israel part of ‘panican’ to a tee, except for not being Republican or even politically sympathetic to purported Republican goals (he said he would not vote for Trump in 2024).

But now we get to his comments, as quoted by Harris, focusing on the Iran War, and…. Fuentes comes out better than he deserves to (which is saying something, given that he has the worst quote in the article). Harris quotes three instances. From February 2026 comes, “If Trump brings us to war in Iran you can forget about 2026 and you can forget about a ticket with Vance or Rubio in 2028. This is literally Iraq 2.0. The GOP has utterly and completely betrayed America First.” From March, as quoted by Harris, we have Fuentes warning of $200-a-barrel oil. Finally, from April, we have Fuentes cheering on the Iranian military in their efforts against Israel.

Let the last go first. Fuentes’s injunction to “pray for Iran” in their war against Israel is wrong. It certainly qualifies for the anti-Israel label (but nobody doubted that, with Fuentes). If Fuentes were right about Israel, the statement would have value, particularly with its (possibly performative) caveats, but his view of Israel’s power and maleficence is grossly exaggerated compared to reality. It also does some blackpilling, as it implies that American efforts against Israeli dominance are in vain.

The second point leveled against Fuentes is his prediction of $200-a-barrel gas, a sentiment shared by Saagar Enjeti and taken up to $300 by Col. MacGregor. Now, Fuentes’s statement wasn’t a bare ‘going to be $200 a barrel.’ It was, ‘Since we haven’t toppled the Iranian regime, the Strait is likely to stay shut; while it stays shut, oil prices will go up, possibly to $200 a barrel.’ Oil futures rose from $71 at the end of February to $118 at the end of March, before dropping back to an as-of-writing $98. But the actual oil was going for over $150 recently (another source)- well on the way to $200. America can’t cover the difference.

Fuentes seems at worst to be perpetrating mild hyperbole, and even that much disparagement is unwarranted. Taking the futures prices from pre-war markets as indicative of the actual price (which, absent market manipulation and unexpected events, they generally would be), oil’s price has increased by at least 100%, possibly 150%; a little more rise, to $200, seems predictable. $300 may be possible; I wouldn’t call it implausible without study.

As for the first case Harris brings up, Fuentes insists Iran is shaping up to be Iraq 2.0, a point repeated in the oil clip. He is echoed by Candace Owens, and though Harris doesn’t explicitly point it out, I know a variety of potential panicans have made the comparison: Tucker Carlson, Robert Barnes, Alex Jones, Ron Paul, and more. Fuentes also warns that war in Iran will kill the Republican chances in 2026 and 2028 elections. Richard Barris is a consistently accurate pollster across the past decades who has polled Trump more accurately and more favorably than the media pollsters, and he says much the same. We should also remember America’s powerful long-term anti-war preference, one that since WWII lapses only in the early stages of a war and that barely staggered this time. The anti-war vote matters, and Iran certainly didn’t gain Republicans voters.

But back to the first point: is Iran like Iraq? Well, it’s a Middle Eastern war that may involve ground troops, promoted by Israel, and premised on one of four things: oil (Hormuz), terrorism, weapons of mass destruction that may or may not exist (US intelligence says they don’t), or regime change. The comparison is natural, even if you find it eventually inaccurate. Certainly Iran seems much more resilient than Iraq (and, if our failures to root out the Houthis is any indication, will likely remain so); certainly we’ve as yet committed much less force; certainly Iraq failed to present leverage on the scale of the Strait of Hormuz.

Why are we in Iran anyway? Why are we risking economic strangulation? Why are we countenancing Israeli war efforts? We weren’t at war with them; we’ve had multiple treaties since 1979 and insignificant conflict. Iran was selling us oil; they hadn’t closed or tolled the Strait (not even after we bombed them in 2025). If they were nearing a nuke, the current course certainly convinced them they needed one pronto, to avoid Gaddafi 2.0, perhaps enough to pay what North Korea or Pakistan would want to sell one. Besides, we left the treaty to limit Iranian nuclear technology and never bothered to make a new one (until now); jumping to war seems immoral. They had no capacity to nuke us and (at least before the interceptors were so much used up) a dubious capacity to nuke Israel, even if they got ahold of the uranium. Nor had they given reason to believe they were interested in enduring Israel’s nuclear retaliation.

Fuentes also said the war would cost $200 billion, a large number. Of course, counting up damages and money spent for the US and its allies gets us to around $280 billion so far. Is all of that on the US? No, but it demonstrates that Fuentes’s figure is far from impossible. More, the economic results of that damage, much of it to oil and raw material infrastructure, is going to echo into the American economy over the next years; we won’t be able to count those damages for quite some time, except as projections. We also have to tally the cost of the interruption to the oil supply. Besides, the pure military cost has already made up a good portion of $200 billion. Perhaps there’s a reason the White House budget officer refused to tell Congress how much the war was costing, even in face of accusations it had passed $50 billion.

Is Fuentes a panican? Two of the points against him turn out to be more in his favor than otherwise. Still, he is anti-Israel and anti-Trump enough to qualify, if he had ever been a Republican or a conservative, and accelerationism is next-door to blackpilling. I’d put him down as a maybe and question how many people he actually represents.

Saagar Enjeti

I don’t know much about him, though some people I’ve found reliable or informative have commended him. His only appearance in the list was already covered under Fuentes’s section, as he predicted $200 oil; he also gets a drive-by as a ‘Tucker Carlson guest,’ a title he shares with Fuentes and Macgregor in the section. I suppose this denomination is being used to demonstrate either his bona fides as a panican or Tucker Carlson’s (treating him as a nexus), though the phrasing makes it seem that being a ‘Tucker Carlson’ guest is damning.

Is he a panican? I’ll let the verdict rest on the emptiness of the point against him and on innocent until proven guilty.

Col. MacGregor

I have little more on him than on Enjeti. I do know that he comes recommended well; I do know that he’s been right about the Ukraine war, unlike Fox News and most of the media. I also know, what’s much more important here, that Harris’s example of his ‘panicanism’ doesn’t hold water, as already shown.

Ian Carrol

I’ve heard bad stuff about Carrol (mainly from Robert Barnes, a source I trust for reasons similar to those Harris commends near the end of his article), but I’ve never actually looked into him. I actually didn’t know what he looked like until I watched the clip Harris linked. From what I’ve heard, he seems to be in the grifter tradition, a sort of Candace-Owens-alike. But….

He’s right about the Iranians winning so far. What is their objective? Stay in power; keep control over the Strait; keep good relations with Russia and China. Mission achieved, so far, and no sign of that changing. Meanwhile, American objectives- an open Strait, no nuclear program, or regime change- have all failed, and Israel keeps getting battered with missiles. In fact, Iran is winning so hard we’re blockading the Strait for them, forcing them to send their oil north, which will hardly cripple them before they can respond (and we won’t be able to interfere, because Russia and China won’t let us). Further, Iran is surviving against America; that’s a PR win all on its own in the Middle East.

(Between sessions of writing this, the Strait of Hormuz was declared open for the duration of the ceasefire. I’m happy to hear it, though it’s far from ‘victory’ or even a conclusion. The Strait was open (and lacking its current bevy of naval mines) in February (not a victory). The ceasefire is less than two weeks long, with manifest uncertainty as to whether peace continues thereafter (not a conclusion). The oil deficit is still poised to echo through the economy. And the infrastructure damage to the Gulf, including Iran, is still going to cost many billions to repair, not even considering the damages levied by its lack. Beyond this, we already have a report of Israel breaking the ceasefire, as is in the interest of their current pro-war administration. Whether the strait is actually open is also in question.)

I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to judge his correctness on the military specifics he cites, but Iran is still firing missiles and still holds the strategic victory. This isn’t anti-American to recognize. I’m not advocating for Iran to win. I’m stating the truth, which is where we have to start.

So, is Carrol a panican? Going by the point instanced, we have insufficient evidence, as he just proffers that the official narrative of total success is false (and no official narrative is ever quite true, not in war time, not from the government). From my other knowledge of him, though, I’d be comfortable believing him an anti-Israel grifter. If that makes him a panican, sobeit.

Candace Owens

Candace Owens, I believe, is a grifter. For proof, look at her three distinct periods: first, a left-winger doxxing conservatives; second, a Daily Wire host; and third, a conspiracy nutter who achieved mild success going anti-Israel (with a sideshow about Bridgitte Macrone) but got massively popular (in a politically unimportant audience) prosecuting vile theories about Charlie Kirk’s murder. In that last role particularly she seems to have no moral boundaries and less concern for truth. This Iran war has been a massive boost to her credibility; due to her anti-Israel position, she got on the anti-war train, apparently alongside Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones.

If there is only one valid panican in the bunch (defined for anti-Israel, anti-Trump, conspiracy-spewing grifterism with blackpills on the side), it’s Owens.

Still, Harris’s points against her are weak. The Fuentes tweet she endorsed held up pretty well (see above). And her anti-American advocacy, in Harris’s last point of the section, consisted of telling Americans to stay out of or leave the military in order to avoid being told to die for Israel. If you believe, as I do, that America is currently fighting an unjust and impractical war, this advice is inoffensive. As you may have noticed, I dislike Owens strongly, but where is she wrong, here? In attributing more influence to Israel than is proper, perhaps, though there is some evidence suggesting undue Israeli involvement (possibly even in the pretext for Israel’s current militarist bent). But military men have not only a right but a moral duty to refrain from engaging in an unjust war. That’s pro-America, pro-freedom; that’s refusing to say, ‘I was just following orders.’

Joe Kent

Joe Kent I have significant respect for. He seems to me a man of integrity. He made the choice to step down, according to his interview with Carlson, because he could no longer countenance the current policies and did not think he did enough good in his position to be worth it. He was immediately chased by now-dispersed allegations of an investigation (an investigation which apparently didn’t involve removing his security clearance, since he had that up until resignation). I do not believe that Americans have a duty to lockstep with our government, and I hold that American magistrates have more duty than most to refuse lockstep, when the government does wrong. That’s the doctrine of the lesser magistrate on which America was built, by which we waged our War of Independence. In that light, Kent’s resignation was an act of patriotism, if you accept his reasoning and believe him when he says the Iran war was unjustified by the data (data he, as a major intelligence official, had access to).

Joe Kent, another Tucker Carlson guest, is noted by Harris to have advocated against war with Iran back in 2024. Presumably this shows Kent to be a panican because he was so early on the anti-Iran-war train, showing his acuity in jumping onto the anti-Trump, anti-Israel wave early; I can’t see how else it would support the ‘panican’ verdict, as the context implies it does. But Trump was anti-Iran-war in 2024, making this the reverse of jumping on an anti-Trump trend, while Israel is never mentioned in the clip. The results Kent anticipates are a bogged down war resulting in a proliferation of terrorism, the results we got from Iraq and Afghanistan, nothing to do with Israel.

Harris also provides two more substantial points against Kent. The first comes from an embedded X post, wherein Kent warns that if Trump follows through on this threat that a “whole civilization [might] die tonight, never to be brought back again” (given in context of this threat to blow up civilian infrastructure), “the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilizing force in the world, but as an agent of chaos—effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.” To be blunt, I agree on the face of it: if the US decided to go genocidal on Iran (or even just to Stone Age it), we’d lose all pretension of being the adults in the room, with disastrous results for our foreign influence. The only critique I see is that Kent is misinterpreting Trump, that Trump didn’t have any intention of doing what he said he would do. But Kent didn’t assume it. He said that Trump could avert the disaster if he chose via serious diplomacy- i.e. showing the Truth post to have been merely rhetoric.

On a side note, perhaps the president of these United States should refrain from offering to murder hundreds if not thousands of civilians, as any close-to-literal reading of the post requires him to have done.

The other point Harris brings up for Kent is in a different section, where he notes that “Joe Kent [legitimized] Iranian state linked Tasnim News reporting that the United States was attempting to kill the missing pilot,” calling it a “slop narrative,” an example of panicanism. This reading of Kent’s post, however, falls short. For one, the quote-post to which Kent’s statement is attached explicitly identifies Tasnim News as connected to the Iranian government in the excerpt X provides. For another, Kent’s own words are a statement that he’s praying for the safety of the pilot… and the “Special Operators going in to get him back,” a statement explicitly contradicting the Iranian assertion. I see no reason to believe Kent was against the recovery of the airman (a recovery every American should be glad of, as many ‘panicans’ were).

Kent shows no signs of being a grifter that aren’t as well explained by him being a man of integrity and independently exercised judgement. He’s not gone after Trump personally, so far as I’m aware, sticking to criticizing the Iran decision on grounds he repeatedly lays out. He’s got no apparent animus towards Israel. I’ve seen no signs he’s a blackpiller or blackpilled. By all the metrics available, Kent is not a blackpiller; he’s a patriot.

Marjory Taylor Greene

Former Representative Greene left Congress after Trump betrayed his promise to unseal the Epstein Files and tried to browbeat her into going along with it, as well as other attacks on her. Also, if you look at this list of her breaks from Trump, where is MTG on the wrong side?

Is she a grifter? Well, she became $25M richer over the course of her Congressional tenure, but it was by inheriting her father’s business, worth around $25M (as per Robert Barnes). Is she blackpilled or blackpiller? A little, but it seems to me the honest fruit of spending years in DC, ending in betrayal by a president she supported for years. Is she anti-Israel? Well, she has a history of being skeptical and even a little conspiratorial, if you believe the mainstream news. Is she a panican? Well, that depends on whether you think the Iran war is justified. If it isn’t, or if there’s a plausible case for it not to be, the evidence is insufficient to call her a panican, not over this.

I’ll leave Harris’s point on her to the Alex Jones section, though.

Tucker Carlson

My knowledge of Tucker Carlson comes from a few clips, several interviews, a few monologues, and the testimony of several sources I find reliable. The conclusion I’ve come to is this: Tucker Carlson is honest, admits and apologizes when he recognizes his errors moral and otherwise (including to Tucker Carlson guest Mike Huckabee in the infamous interview), has a certain interview policy (wait a moment), and has a worldview still fairly imperfect, with major blindspots for Islam (driven, I think, partly by the direction of the criticism he receives) and various non-mainstream sources. I have never found him to be a liar, though I have many times found him to be wrong, mostly on matters of principle or analysis.² If you have proof to the contrary, please link it in the comments or here.

His interview policy, as he expressed it to Doug Wilson (I think; I may be mixing up interviews), is to try and draw out the thoughts and knowledge of the person he’s interviewing. Some people, of course, (and this is my own statement, not his) require a little more coaxing; Fuentes and Putin likely require much less adversarial drawing-out than Mike Huckabee seems to (I’m halfway through the interview, and Huckabee has spent most of the time trying to give only the shallow answer). He is also willing to interview whoever he believes is worth it, on criteria that don’t exclude the unlikable or those he disagrees with; he reasons, as far as I understand, that it’s better to hear them out in order to understand and (where necessary) argue against them.

Carlson gets three entries in Harris’s list: this post-video, this statement and this one, and this video. I’ll (again) take them out of Harris’s order. Let’s start with the statement at the end of this article: “It’s worth pointing out that a strike on the Iranian nuclear sites will almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths…” (original post here), made in May 2025. Now, the ‘Twelve Day War’ certainly didn’t live up to this prediction (unless we count the current kerfuffle and extrapolate forward), but we could also take Carlson at his word that this is “the Pentagon’s own estimates” or his rationale that it would “set off a war, and it will be America’s war.” This statement seems at worst hyperbolic- and the current war, partially based on the nuke argument, is almost certainly going to have at least a triple-digit casualty count when all is said and done.

Harris links another statement by Carlson, made June 2025, to the above. Here Carlson points out the familiarity of the WMD argument, the incentive posed by Libya for Iran to keep nukes in development (Gaddafi gave up nukes, and the West let him die a brutal death), warns that this is an excuse for regime change, points out that Turkey and Pakistan both have nukes already without being subject to the same rhetoric as Iran, warns of the dangers of Iranian conventional missiles to Americans in the Gulf region, warns of oil-price-triggered inflation resulting in “$30 gasoline”, warns of Iran’s connections to powerful neighbor states and the possibility war with Iran could therefore spiral towards world war, and finishes by inveigling against Levin and other pro-war voices. It’s not a short X post.

In all this, let’s note that: (1) the WMD argument is old; (2) we have been talking about both WMDs and regime change; (3) Iranian conventional missiles have been exacting a toll; (4) and Carlson’s warning of “$30 gasoline” becomes much less extreme, more realistic, and more alarming when taken in context with a worry about inflation (which tends to accompany wars, due to government spending). Further, warnings about World War Three are hardly ‘panican’ in themselves; otherwise we’ve got to start eyeing President Trump with suspicion.

Next, consider Tucker’s statement on Trump’s famous “Praise be to Allah” statement. I listened to the 40-minute monologue, and Carlson isn’t always right (mocking other people’s religion is the essence of Isaiah’s passage on carving out an idol, and he’s overbroad in condemning Christian violence). But is he wrong to say that a man who uses Easter Sunday to threaten attacks on civilians is in a morally dubious place? Is he wrong to point out that the arguments being presented to Trump by Trump’s new favorite TV host include arguments for nuclear war? I have one substantive complaint about Carlson, though: if I recall correctly, he did not call on Trump to repent.

The last point Harris brings up is this, a clip from that monologue linked above. Harris paraphrases this as “calls for the… administration [to] disobey orders.” But, if you listen to the clip, there’s context to what Carlson says. He urges that if orders are given to use a nuclear weapon on civilians, officers, particularly those high up, should threaten resignation to avert it and use every legal means at their disposal to remonstrate. If any Christian said differently, I’d be shocked. Deuteronomy 20 makes clear that nuclear weapons are immoral to use on civilian targets, as do the laws of war America has passed (and which could get Trump impeached). Officers using their social and political capital to avoid atrocity is precisely what we should want of them; this, again, is the doctrine of the lesser magistrate on which America was built, and in a restrained form too.

Is Carlson a panican? I don’t believe so. Now, you may think him a grifter, but you have to consider: is he wrong in what he says here? Is he wrong to dread nuclear war, to want to avoid escalation towards any sort of war? Moreover, Carlson is hardly a blackpiller, as he urges action on a regular basis. Nor can we really accuse him of benign overly eager to jump on the anti-Trump train, as he’s been close to the Trump sphere for a long time and got kicked off of Fox News because, unlike that reliable institution, he thought the 2020 election was hinky enough to make the news.

Alex Jones

For the past three decades, Alex Jones has been an anti-war, pro-freedom voice. He’s had his issues, including an acknowledged period of alcoholism-on-air, and his missteps. He’s also been a clarion voice, from the hermaphroditizing of the frogs to the presence of the Epstein-Files-confirmed elite obscenity network to the COVID manufacturing to the election theft to seeing Jan 6 on the spot and warning against being taken in by the government’s lure (the Q lure). It was after his 2016, early-in-the-race support of Trump which earned him the Sandy Hook prosecutions, monuments of judicial malfeasance and bias. He spent years facing the gun barrel, got served a billion-dollar-plus bill, and is still (to my knowledge) facing the possibility that he may never be allowed to profit from his work for the rest of his life.They even tried to steal his right to his own name, voice, and reputation. Alex Jones is the farthest you can get from a grifter in the whole political sphere, and he’s a man of perception.

Alex Jones, moreover, has been pro-Trump since 2016, to the point of over-optimism in 2020. He’s only come after Trump when Trump came after one of Jones’s oldest causes: peace. Jones does not want to spill American blood for any reason but the best, and Trump broke his promise to be the peace president.

That’s why Alex Jones called for the 25th Amendment, with some agreement from Robert Barnes (who dissents, I understand, in large part because he recognizes the 25th isn’t politically viable).³

Similar reasons underly the call issued by MTG.

Candace Owens issues the call because she’s a drama-loving grifter who sees an easy win with her audience.

Alex Jones is not a panican. Alex Jones has turned against Trump because Trump turned on the principles Alex Jones holds dearer than Trump, a result that could have been predicted, given only the facts of these two persons, in 2015. Alex Jones is not a blackpiller (the opposite), he is not a grifter, and he is not against Israel, except as he believes Israel is against America. I disagree with him regularly, but he deserves respect as a patriot.

Lumping Them Together

The implication of the given sample and of the article, taking a cross-sample, is that disagreement with the Iran war, combined with previous support (even mixed, see Fuentes) of Trump, is enough to qualify as a ‘panican.’ But should we be so quick as to lump all these together? Should we put them all on the same level? Or are there differences between these people, between various critics of the war, differences we should recognize even if we come down pro-war (which I don’t)? To put it in the bluntest terms: should we equate Ron Paul to Candace Owens?

The critics of the Iran war are no cohesive monolith. I’m proof of that, as we’ve already seen. I, a critic of the war, agree with Jones and Carlson on a fair bit (though far from everything), I despise Candace Owens (as a self-proclaimed medium and as an inveterate liar), and I respect Joe Kent. Ron Paul and Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson are all very different people, with different strengths and weaknesses.

Making all these people out as if they are equivalent risks making them equivalent in the hearer’s mind. If he is for the war, the effect of this is to drag men of character down to the level of Fuentes or Owens in his eyes. If he is against the war or becomes so (as, going by historical patterns, most Americans will end up against this war in the next few years), he may then turn to Owens or Fuentes and regard them as credible, reliable sources, not having been shown how their being on the right side of this question was a mere historical accident, built off of a coincidence of con or prejudice rather than off of good character and principle.

Labelling everybody a ‘panican,’ even just by not distinguishing them, is a bad strategy, whether you like the war or not, whether you think we should get lockstep behind the war or not. It leads people astray in the long run; it blurs truth in the short run. Label the true grifters as panicans, sure, though even then counterargument may be mete (Prov. 26:4-5). But deal with the arguments of the men with integrity; deal with the arguments which men of integrity can hold, even if their presenters are vicious. That’s how to win the public discourse; more importantly, that’s how to honor God.

Criticism Is Loyalty

“If we do something you don’t like, the response should be to get more involved, to try to push things in the direction that you want them to be pushed” (starting about 0:35). Such are the words of Vice President JD Vance, as found in the video Harris posted. Also, as Proverbs 27:5-6 states, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” Criticism of a leader’s missteps and sins is not treachery; it is not disloyalty. Such criticism is indeed a high form of loyalty.

If my friend gets in the driver seat and starts driving full speed ahead at a brick wall, I am his friend only if I seek to prevent him from slamming into the wall. At first, this means warning him of the obstacle, assuming he doesn’t see it. When this fails, I turn to convincing him of the inadvisability of 120mph collisions with walls. If this does not stop his careening, loyalty demands that I wrestle control of the car from him. In parallel, Trump has received from his most loyal and from his true friends (the ones who, like Jones, have suffered) first warnings of consequences, then remonstrances for his disregard of the consequences, and finally, at this late hour, intervention aimed at wrestling the power out of Trump’s hands.

Further, we owe loyalty to America and her people above that loyalty proper to Trump (with which it does not clash, if we view loyalty as a subset of Biblical love (Rom. 13:10)). Loyalty and love for America means pointing out to her leaders when they are risking the life, liberty, or property of her people. It means, when that leader persists in his destructive actions, seeking to intervene, if only to shock him into wisdom (Heb. 12:11). Nor are Trump’s critics (bar the bad actors like Fuentes and Owens) Job-friends; they have specific points where Trump has erred and where he can improve.

These non-panican critics of Trump are not being “therapeutic maternal figures who understands how [their audience] feel, justify their anger, and do not expect too much from them” (Harris) [altered from singular to plural]. They are issuing calls to action, not excuses for inaction. They are trying to motivate our leaders and our populace to take the steps necessary to avoid perceived disaster.

Nor does the so-far-lack of nuclear war or other apocalyptic disaster (or even the fizzle of the Twelve Day War) make their concern ridiculous. As was shown above, many of their predictions are fulfilled already or plausibly on the way to being fulfilled. More than that, if my friend drives at the wall, 120mph, and manages to swerve away at the last moment, just after I thought we were done for, the lack of a crash doesn’t make foolish my warnings against it. A warning heeded does not retroactively become worthy of contempt, and a warning not yet fulfilled is not to be disregarded for being future tense.

As for the undoubted anger against Trump in some critics, I don’t blame them. Trump said he wasn’t going to go to war (not in Iran, not anywhere), and now he’s gone to war in Iran, is yelling about ending a civilization and hurling abuse at those who suffered in his cause. It’s not endearing. But setting aside that point, even maintaining the utmost affection for Trump, are their arguments wrong? If they are right, shouldn’t we, in loyalty to Trump (though for me it’s more loyalty to America), critique the president, seeking to, as VP Vance put it, push things in the right direction?

Conclusion

Once again, this piece is friendly, not the reverse. I would direct my arguments differently if I spoke to a statement by Mark Levin, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, or Nick Fuentes; I would argue to the audience and disregard the man. I would do so because, to me, the evidence says that (unlike Harris) these pundits are uninterested in listening to honest disagreement. I do not do so here; I present this argument not only to the reader of Harris’s article but to Harris himself. Will I convince him? Dunno; that’s God’s province. But I know he’ll give me as fair a shot as his time permits, and even if he disagrees, I’ll still respect him.

The current policy on Iran is potentially disastrous. By some accounts, it is already a disaster. Calling its critics ‘panicans’ obscures that the critique is necessary. Further, it conflates the honest critics with the actual grifters, tearing down the just or building up the unjust. Better to deal with the problem. Better to work on building the solution and using our power as citizens well, to motivate proper use of governmental power, not the current confused, counterproductive effort.

God bless.

–

The following section was excerpted from the main body as technically peripheral to its point, but it’s still relevant:

A Quick Note

All the respectable Trump critics I know of have more problems with Trump than just the Iran war; their dissatisfaction has been building for the past two years, give or take, and is the aggregate of many open wounds, wounds Trump hardly seems to notice he’s inflicted on the voters. Here’s I’ll present a list of some common, supportable complaints, to demonstrate that the ‘anti-Trump’ has reason, not just grifteristic incentive, in its foundations. As you read, remember that men like Alex Jones, Joe Kent, Tucker Carlson, and Robert Barnes have all shown the utmost willingness to support and aid Trump- so long as he stays true to America.

1. Foreign Policy
   1. Intervention in Iran and Venezuela
   2. The emphasis on foreign policy, which naturally crowds out domestic policy.
2. Judicial Matters – Individual
   1. Alex Jones got railroaded, and they attempted to take literally his right to use his own name, voice, and image in public. Trump did nothing.
   2. The Brook Jackson whistleblower case against the COVID vaccine has gotten no help.
   3. Tina Peters, election whistleblower, is still in jail. She has, since her sentencing, become a relevant witness to corruption and violence inside the CO prison system.
   4. The DC pipe-bomber case is avoiding the probable culprit in favor of a socially-disabled autistic guy.
   5. No help for the Amish facing persecution in PA.
3. Judicial Matters – Inaction
   1. No Epstein arrests.
   2. Trump tried to prevent any real Epstein disclosure.
   3. One Deep State arrest (Comey) that fell apart on procedure and is nearing Statute of Limitations.
   4. Very few judicial impeachments (legislative, yes, but the executive can agitate).
   5. No vaccine cases.
   6. Nothing doing on Big Pharma, except promoting glyphosate.
      1. Actually, RFK Jr. has had the most real success of all the administration, though he’s getting bogged down in the agency without the political power of a vital Trump admin behind him.
4. Judicial Matters – Action
   1. Pam Bondi is corrupt (partly via Mike Davis), and Kash Patel is a hypocrite.
   2. Some interesting pardons.
   3. Action against the Second Amendment.
5. Other
   1. That bizarre pro-Trans tweet which changed to this
   2. Minimal DOGE impact
   3. Heel-turn on FISA from Trump’s promises.
6. Midterms and 2028
   1. Republicans will lose Congress in 2026. If they don’t turn it around, 2028 will be bad too. Iran is a significant part of that.

Actual Footnotes

1. Names of prominent accused panicans missing from this list include Robert Barnes, Owen Shroyer, Thomas Massie (I presume; he may be assumed already too anti-Trump to count), Matt Walsh (kinda), and Rich Barris, though Barnes nearly gets a mention (he was part of Alex Jones’s call for the 25th Amendment). ↩︎
2. I can’t remember a point he was factually incorrect on off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure I’ve encountered at least one. ↩︎
3. According to Barnes, who has reason to know, Trump is actually showing some signs of mild mental difficulties- like a shortened, irrational temper and short-term memory problems. See this stream. ↩︎