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Best-selling author Richard Paul Evans discusses his new book "Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen"

August 14, 2012
Wilson

Writer

Today, author Richard Paul Evans released the latest installment of the "Michael Vey" series: Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen. Published by Glenn Beck’s Mercury Ink imprint, Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen is the sequel to the instant #1 New York Times bestselling thriller Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25. Evans joined Glenn on radio this morning to discuss the new Young Adult novel.

“Rise of the Elgen, of course, takes off where the first book ended,” Evans told Glenn.

“Michael's mother was kidnapped and in Rise of the Elgen Michael is going down to save his mother. And it takes them to South America and into the jungles of the Amazon. I've actually spent a lot of time in the jungles. I've done a lot of humanitarian work down there. So it's a ride. That's all I can say. It's fun. It's a little scarier than the first book but I think that's good for especially the young male readers.”

Many fans of the series may not know that the book didn’t have a lot of supporters until Glenn decided to publish it as the first book from Mercury Ink.

“No one believed in the book,” Evans explained.

“The book debuts at number one of the New York Times,” he said, “ By the second day it was in its second printing.”

Back in June, Glenn encouraged viewers to create and interact with art that reflected positive values and lessons. The ‘Michael Vey’ series is just one example of this call being put into action. A story about hope and the power of goodness in an increasingly dark world, Michael Vey is a vehicle to teach kids important lessons and values.It teaches children that if they persist, and do what they know to be right, no matter how much pressure they face to do otherwise, then anything is possible.

You can get your copy of Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgin for 50% off TODAY ONLY by clicking HERE.

Read the full interview transcript below:

GLENN: During Restoring Love, we had book signings. David Barton was one of them. Michele Bachmann was one of them. We had ‑‑

PAT: Pat and Stu was one of them.

GLENN: Whatever.

PAT: Hello. It's huge.

STU: Huge.

GLENN: Brad Thor.

PAT: 730,000 people lined up.

GLENN: Brad Thor was there. I mean, we had some really big authors. And then there was Richard Paul Evans. Richard Paul Evans ‑‑

STU: Was that an insult?

GLENN: No.

PAT: Then this guy.

GLENN: Richard Paul Evans ‑‑ let me explain. Richard Paul Evans is one of the reasons why the Department of Homeland Security came to us and said they were worried about crowd control. His line for his book signing for Michael Vey: The Rise of the Elgin which is the Michael Vey, the second in the series, the reason why they said that they were concerned about crowds, his line was a quarter of a mile long. And you just told me, I didn't know this story. You stood in your own line.

EVANS: Yeah, I thought that was the line to get in to the event. I was there two hours early. I waited in line and thought, this line's not going anywhere.

PAT: What a buffoon!

EVANS: Thank you.

GLENN: Brad Thor wouldn't have done that.

PAT: Nope. Nope.

GLENN: (Laughing.)

EVANS: I'm a humble guy, okay? So I walked around.

GLENN: You stood in your own line.

EVANS: Yes. And so then I walked around and went to the front like I'm going to ‑‑ I have to get in there. And when I got to the front, people were wearing these T‑shirts they had made that said Vayniacs, and they started pointing at me and this guy said, this is your line for your book signing. I said, no, no, no.

GLENN: What's so funny is you were standing in your own line. Nobody knew. They're all waiting to meet you, they're all waiting to get your autograph and the people around you had no idea who you were.

EVANS: Well, it's all context.

GLENN: So amazing. The Michael Vey series, I'm just ‑‑ my kids were a little too young to read it last year. Raphe's just about 8 now and I'm reading it to my son and my daughter who is 7, and we love it. Just love it. I've been waiting to be able to share the books with them and I told Raphe last night ‑‑ we're just about finished with the first one and I told Raphe last night, we have to finish this because with new one comes out tomorrow. I told this story earlier. He looked at me like, he is not buying into me. And he was like, what are you selling? And I looked at him and I said, what's the problem? He said, Dad, it comes out tomorrow? And I said, yeah and he said, then how come we've had a copy for about a month?

EVANS: (Laughing.)

GLENN: He discovered Dad's a liar. But so we started. I haven't read it yet because I want to read it with the kids. Tell me about Rise of the Elgin.

EVANS: Rise of the Elgin, of course, takes off where the first book ended. Michael's mother was kidnapped and in Rise of the Elgin Michael is going down to save his mother. And it takes them to South America and into the jungles of the Amazon which I've actually spent a lot of time in the jungles. I've done a lot of humanitarian work down there. So it's a ride. That's all I can say. It's fun. It's a little scarier than the first book but I think that's good for especially the young male readers.

GLENN: You are ‑‑ you and I have one thing in common on when it comes to books, and it sets us apart, I think, from the rest of the publishing world. When you first had this book, you went to publishers and they said ‑‑

EVANS: They weren't interested. Remember how much fun we had last year, Glenn?

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

EVANS: Because no one believed in the book.

GLENN: I know.

EVANS: The book debuts at number one of the New York Times.

GLENN: I know.

EVANS: I just, I don't know if you know this. By the second day it was in its second printing.

GLENN: Holy cow.

EVANS: Yeah. Then basically Simon and Schuster stopped all the other books and just printed Michael Vey to keep up with the demand.

GLENN: The book comes out and all of the publishers kept saying you have to dumb it down, dumb it down. And when I read it, I said, Richard, smarten it up a little bit. It's got to be a little smarter and a little darker for kids. This is our first, as Mercury Ink, this is my first moving into try to get the young adults in a way they understand. Everybody else tries to get ‑‑ everybody else was like, I've got to do a moralistic book now. Golly gee, Wally, mom's going to be so upset when they find out. Leave It to Beaver doesn't connect. It just doesn't connect if the kids are in the filth that's out there. So this is kind of going into their world and dragging them back.

EVANS: Right. If you want to teach about self‑sacrifice, you could put an essay on there or you could do what Zeus does when all of a sudden they are being ‑‑ they are in a hall filled with rats and he ‑‑

GLENN: Don't tell me ‑‑ yeah, don't ‑‑

EVANS: But, you know, they make ‑‑ these kids make sacrifices because their love and their friendship.

GLENN: And it's easy to be able to read it with your kids and have conversations that are real that are not moralistic that are just real conversations. What are the ‑‑ what are you seeing? Did we give this out to advance readers? I know we did some but have you gotten any reviews back or anything from advance readers?

EVANS: Getting it back on my Facebook page and what they're saying is most are saying it's better than the first book. Getting a lot of, well, it's a little bit scarier than the first book, a lot of fun. And what I'm really hearing is the end of the book, the last third, once you start there, you'll be up all night reading it because once it starts rolling, you can't stop.

PAT: How many people are saying it needs more vampires? A lot? Are you getting a lot of that?

EVANS: You know what, people ‑‑

PAT: Shakespearian vampires, though.

EVANS: People are so glad there's no vampires in this and no wizards.

PAT: I bet. Have you seen the bookshelves, especially for young adults. You can't find anything that's not vampire‑related.

GLENN: You know why?

PAT: It's ridiculous.

GLENN: Because nobody is independent. They are all just sheep.

PAT: Yep.

GLENN: They are all sheep.

PAT: Yep.

GLENN: And so somebody comes up with an idea for a good book. Yeah, Stephenie Meyer does the Twilight thing and like, well, the kids love vampires. No, it was a really good story. Can you stop and come up with something original, which is what you did with Michael Vey. Let me ‑‑ I can't help. I hope I don't make you uncomfortable. I can't help because I'm reading it now and Michael keeps talking about his ticks. Michael has Tourette's syndrome. You have Tourette's syndrome.

EVANS: I have Tourette's syndrome.

GLENN: He keeps saying right when he gets into a nervous situation or he's about to be around a girl or whatever, he starts, you know, twitching and his eye starts blinking.

EVANS: Like I am right now.

GLENN: You're not now but when Pat was talking to you, your eye was twitching. You have a crush on him or ‑‑

EVANS: No, it's anxiety.

GLENN: It's anxiety?

EVANS: That's what Michael ‑‑ Taylor can always in the book tell when Michael's nervous because he starts twitching.

GLENN: Twitching. How was that when you were growing up? How much of this ‑‑ how much of Michael is you?

EVANS: Most of it. And I didn't realize it until I ‑‑ after the book was out a year that a friend came and said, you know, this is you, right? You do know you wrote a book about yourself?

GLENN: Except you're not electric.

EVANS: I'm not electric. But the electricity's really a metaphor, the power we have within ourselves. Whether it's our love or our talents. It's just one other different thing we can use. And I had different ‑‑ I didn't have electricity. I had a different way of communicating with other people.

GLENN: There is a great ‑‑ there are several scenes in it that I mean, I think towards the very beginning and I think what people, kids and adults see in it is themselves. You say Michael Vey is you. I don't have Tourette's, but I had kind of the childhood that Michael Vey had, too, where you were just kind of the loser kid and you got beat up and, you know, whatever. And I think a lot of us had that kind of experience. Yeah, no, I know it's crazy. People didn't want to hear about George Washington. But the ‑‑ that you see yourself and your own childhood and we all kind of see ourselves as the ‑‑ as the outsider, being picked on somebody. But there is a really important scene in the first book about when Michael teams up with the guys who have been beating up on him and I just read this part with Raphe about two days ago and it was such a great conversation to have with Raphe where you realize what these kids who are bullies, what's happening to them in their life and it just, I could see lights go on in his head. Have you heard that very often? Have you heard that from anybody else that kids are ‑‑ they're getting ‑‑ they are not only seeing themselves but they're opening up and seeing other things that they never even considered before?

EVANS: You know expressed not quite so articulately.

GLENN: You're being kind.

EVANS: But what kids say is, wow, that's kind of tough being the bully. But also I can see why he does that. And Michael makes that statement. He goes, I probably will be shoving kids in lockers, too, if that happened to me at home. And so in fact, Jack because one of the favorite characters. In fact, my daughter said, she's my writing assistant, she goes, I think Jack's my favorite character now.

GLENN: Is he in 2?

EVANS: He's in 2. He's a big part of 2. And you get to see, one of the things that Michael is, why they love him so much is that Michael brings the Bess out of everybody. So Jack, he knows Jack wants to be a hero. He wants to be like his brother who is a marine and Jack gets to lay that part. And he becomes the best he can be, and all of them do. There's a scene in the jungle between Austin and McKenna, two of the characters that I think is stunning in the second book. It's one of the favorite things I've written of all my novels. I just read it over and over and thought, I love that scene. Because she inspires him to be who he really can be.

GLENN: The name of the book is Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgin and it is available everywhere. There's a reason why the line to get the autograph on this book was a quarter of a mile long. Just think of that, a quarter of a mile long for a book that most of America has not heard of really yet. I don't think this book will take off really until Book 3. And that's when this book will start to have momentum because that's kind of the pattern of these twilight and Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and everything else. It starts to build momentum around Book 3. In Book 1 it was already a bigger seller than Book 1 of Harry Potter when it was first released.

EVANS: It's actually Simon and Schuster's largest new series, young adult release in their history.

GLENN: So you've got that going for you now. There's a reason why it's a quarter of a mile long to say hello. Get your kids on the bandwagon and share it with a friend. It is a great way to teach your kids. Great way just to have a great read and it's not just for kids. Really not. It's a great book. Pat read it. You loved it.

PAT: Oh, yeah, loved it.

GLENN: I read it by myself, loved it. And this is one of the reasons why I said smarten it up a bit because you can really make me love it. And Pat, after he read the edits, Pat loved it as well. I mean, you can read it as an adult as well.

EVANS: We ran into a little bit of a problem with the adults were liking it so much, then giving it to the kids, the kids, there's a kind of lag here. Like if adults like it, then maybe we shouldn't be reading this.

GLENN: Yeah, don't let your kids see you like it.

EVANS: But then they caught on and their friends start reading it.

GLENN: And that's one of the reasons that also the first book was prisoner of cell 25. It had kind of a dark cover because I wanted it to not be like, your parents liked it.

EVANS: Well, this one is scary. It has rats all over the second one.

GLENN: It's really good. Who is the artist that did the cover? Do you remember?

EVANS: I forgot his name. He does video games. He's fantastic.

GLENN: Really, really good. Go ahead.

EVANS: You heard about the deal we have on the book today?

GLENN: No.

EVANS: Oh, it's fantastic. It's just for your listeners. Premiere ‑‑ if you go to, of course it's available right now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. But if you go to Premiere, just actually go to MichaelVey2.com.

GLENN: MichaelVey2.com.

EVANS: 50% off. It's like 9 bucks for the hard cover book.

GLENN: These are first edition copies. And may I make a recommendation. Keep your first edition copy. Buy two. Put one on the shelf. Have you seen, have you seen what a Harry Potter goes for? Buy 2, put one on a shelf. Mark my words. I collect books. Michael Vey, first edition copies. You can get them at MichaelVey2.com only for this audience. 50% off, today only if you go to MichaelVey2.com. But tell all your ‑‑ tell all your ‑‑ what did Michelle Obama call them? Knucklehead friends? Tell all your knucklehead friends that they can ‑‑ that they can get it at Amazon.com. Okay. Richard, we'll talk to you later. Thank you so much.

EVANS: Thank you.

 

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.