There is a palpable level of panic that seems to have taken hold of Washington this week. Establishment figures are raising the alarm over the rise of dangerous figures as if they are the barbarians at the gate before the sacking of Rome in 410. The threat is coming from both parties in the form of the new Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. They may be the worst type of barbarians because they came to this city with the best of intentions.

For some in Washington, there may nothing more unnerving than the best of intentions. This is a one-industry town where fortunes are made the old-fashioned way with influence peddling, special dealing, and pork barreling. In that world, the rise of Johnson and Kennedy are about as welcomed as a priest among the Pirates of Penzance.

Johnson is the ultimate buzz kill.

[What’s amazing — and definitely not amusing — is the elite horror of Johnson and his profession of rather mundane Christian values while the same elites run interference for Hamas in Congress and on the streets of America’s cities. The problem isn’t the “new barbarians”; it’s that the barbarians have already taken over, and we need to rescue civilization from them. — Ed]