The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend is wrapping up this morning. It has been, as always, a fun and informative three days. The event, held at the Breakers in Palm Beach, was sold out. I don’t know how many attenders were here, but there were a lot.
We didn’t catch all of the speeches, but the ones we saw were uniformly excellent. Victor Davis Hanson, Jason Whitlock, Miranda Devine, and Brian Wesbury were all terrific. James O’Keefe put on a good show and fired up the crowd, but didn’t say anything we didn’t already know about the FBI’s colluding with the Biden administration and (apparently) the New York Times to attack Project Veritas. I had the honor of introducing Heather Mac Donald, who talked about the wide-ranging attack on meritocracy that is undermining our civilization. And I spoke about the evolution, over the last 15 years or so, from liberal media bias to the press’s overt war on conservatism. Other speakers included Dinesh D’Souza, Pete Hegseth, Guy Benson, Dan Bongino and more. As always at such events, I met a number of friendly Power Line readers.
One of the event’s lesser speakers at the podium
At dinner last night, the annual Annie Taylor awards–named after a woman who once went over Niagara Falls in a barrel–were presented to Senator Ron Johnson, who has come a long way from the rather stiff businessman who began his political career, and Andy Ngo, who gave a moving testimony to how his refugee family’s love for America motivates him to expose Antifa’s anti-American violence. I should add that Katie Hopkins MC’ed the dinner, and was hilarious.
One person who was missing from this year’s event was David Horowitz himself. He is well into his 80s, and has just undergone surgery of an orthopedic, non-threatening type. Michael Finch and Lonny Leitner carried on ably in his absence.
Reportedly, this may be the last year that the Breakers hosts Restoration Weekend. We understand that after 20 or 25 years, the hotel has told the Freedom Center that its events will no longer be welcome. We have stayed at the Breakers a number of times and have loved the resort, but if this report turns out to be correct, we won’t be returning. Happily, we tacked on a couple of vacation days at the beginning of our trip and stayed at the Colony Hotel, an excellent alternative just a mile down the coast from the Breakers.
Restoration Weekend is one of the country’s great conservative get-togethers, and I recommend that you check it out for next year, regardless of where it may be held.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.