Health Update: Glenn's dog Victor

December 13, 2012

Writer

Last night, Glenn told the audience about the health problems facing his dog Victor as he is getting older. Glenn gave an update on Victor's health this morning, and the difficult choice facing his family about how to handle his failing health.

" We have ‑‑ we have gotten an awful lot of mail from last night's episode of the program. We talked about The Hobbit but at the end, the last four or five minutes, I... I just, I did a little tribute to my dog Victor who, if you are a long‑time listener of this program, you know Victor. We used to talk about him all the time. He used to come to work with me because he's a service dog and Victor has been at my side for, well, shortly after 9/11," Glenn said.

"Our lives have changed so much. At that time we didn't want to get a gun because neither of us grew up with a gun and we were like, 'I'm not responsible enough.' Well, get over that, dummy. Why don't you become responsible enough."

"But we decided we didn't want to get a gun. We decided we would get a dog. And we got Victor, and I'll never forget. I was on tour. We got Victor from this great place called Harrison K‑9 and these are amazing dogs, amazing, amazing dogs and they love them and they ‑‑ they go over to Germany and find these dogs for you. They ask you exactly what your situation is. They don't sell them to everybody because they don't like people who want, like, attack dogs. And these are working dogs and so they ask you your situation and then they go over to Germany and try to find the right dog for you and then they train him. He's already been in three years of training over in Germany and then they tune him for your family. And we wanted a dog that could rip somebody's throat out but also be with the family and be good with the kids. And we didn't have any kids at the time, and Victor, when we were going through our trouble trying to have another child, Victor was kind of our child."

"And I remember having a conversation with Victor right before Raphe was born because Tania was down on the ground with him, and she was every night. And she was laying down on the ground with him in the bedroom and she was talking to him and rubbing his face and I said, 'Oh, poor Victor. Victor, Mommy is not ‑‑ Mommy is going to be like, what is this dog doing. The minute this baby is born, you better be on your best behavior because now the firstborn is not quite as special.'"

"And I think Victor took my advice, and I will never forget when Raphe was old enough to sit on my lap, I was on the phone talking to somebody and I was holding Raphe on my lap and Victor was sitting there at my knee. And Raphe was, like, moving really hard and I'm like, 'What are you doing?' And I looked down and he has Victor by the fangs, in this giant mouth. I mean, this dog is gigantic. He used to look like a lion. And he had him by the canine teeth and he was rocking his face back and forth like it was a ride, like those were the handlebars of this giant mouth ride that he was in. And Victor was just looking up at me like, 'You know I could take his hands right now but I won't because I love you.'"

"He's the best dog in the world. And I got home last night and the phone was ringing and everybody was calling and I didn't want to talk to anybody and my wife just looked at me and said, 'What did you do?' And I said, 'I just talked about Victor on the air and the decisions that we have to make.' And she said, 'He's fine.' And I said, 'Uh‑huh.' And he goes through these spurts where ‑‑ he's approaching 13. He's 12 now. For a pure bred German Shepherd that's like 1,000. And he goes through these periods of real pain. And he was standing in the living room yesterday by himself and I walk in and he's just, he's whimpering. And I went over and I ‑‑ I held him. And he goes through these periods where he seems to be fine and then he can't get up and he's dragging his feet behind him. And we're stuck in this place that we love him so much."

"And I find myself having these odd Margaret Sanger conversations in my head, that life is life and who am I to say when it's time for him to go. But I again don't know. I don't want him in pain. I don't want him to ‑‑ he's ‑‑ he's blind now and he's ‑‑ at times he's the same old Victor. But when do you know?"

Glenn explained that he has wondered if the best thing for Victor would be to put him to sleep, which prompted a conversation between everyone about euthanasia in both people and animals.

Read the transcript of the conversation below:

GLENN: We were talking about this in the office this morning, and Stu is I guess my angel on one shoulder saying life is life and you don't do it. And Pat is the other good angel on my shoulder saying you don't let him suffer. And I'm in the middle saying I... my whole family isn't even convinced that he's suffering. And I don't know if we're in denial or if I'm trying to just get past it. It's a tough decision.
STU: I mean, you know, you're ‑‑ it's impossible obviously, but you're in a ‑‑ you're trying to make a, essentially a quality of life judgment.
GLENN: You're making a God decision.
STU: Yeah. And especially if there's ‑‑ if there's doubt. I mean, if there's ‑‑ you know, if the doctor is saying he's not in that much pain.
GLENN: I don't know. The doctor is ‑‑ I mean, first of all, how do you know a dog is in pain?
STU: Yeah, but you're not erring on the side of life, though, I mean at that point. If the medical information, people in your family think that he's okay.
GLENN: No, nobody thinks that he's okay.
STU: Not okay. You know, he might be in pain but you don't ‑‑ there's a certain amount of pain that everybody has. If he's ‑‑ if the doctors are saying it's not that bad, to me you don't want to err on the side of saying, "No, I think he is in that much pain, therefore we should end life."
GLENN: He has an IV in his leg. He has an ulcer in his eye. So his eyes are bleeding. So his eyes are red. So he's looking. He can't see out of his eye anymore. He's dragging his legs behind him. He's, times can't get up. Sometimes he can.
Like last night the doctor put him ‑‑ you know, gave him, just gave him some medicine. You know, he's been on IV, blah, blah‑blah. He comes home, she says give him this dog food. I haven't seen him run to the bowl of food for I don't know how long. We've had to hand‑feed him for a while because he just can't even ‑‑ he can just barely even stand. He can't stand up and put his head down in the bowl anymore. And ‑‑ but in the last, now like the last 36 hours, where two days ago... I wrote my kids and said, (inaudible). And last night he runs to his bowl. And it's like...
STU: He is surviving.
PAT: He is.
GLENN: How do you make this decision? How do you make this decision? And, you know, it's really, especially with all this stuff with ObamaCare, you can't make that decision.
PAT: Your dog is not covered, though, by ObamaCare.
STU: No.
PAT: That's not a good thing.
GLENN: You can't, you have these people ‑‑
PAT: Your 42‑year‑old children and your dog.
STU: That's Bo care.
GLENN: You have these panels that will make this decision that will just be cold and calculating.
PAT: Yeah, about humans.
GLENN: About humans.
PAT: About humans. And that's ‑‑ I mean ‑‑
STU: Right.
PAT: It's staggering to think about for a dog. Try it for humans. I mean, it's unbelievable the things we're considering doing and are doing now because ObamaCare is the law of the land.
GLENN: They're starving them to death. Now imagine this. I mean, I would go and put a bullet in his head so fast rather than starving him to death.
PAT: Oh, yeah, it's painful. It's awful. It's awful.
GLENN: Starving him to death would be the most cruel thing possible.
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: And that's what they are doing in the British healthcare system now.
PAT: Yeah. To babies.
GLENN: To babies. And to handicap.
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: Starving people, and the elderly, starving them to death. That's just one of the most cruel things I've ever seen or heard of in my life. I can't ‑‑ I wouldn't do that to my dog. I would ‑‑ I contend they would put me in jail if I did that to Victor, if I starved him to death out of compassion.
STU: And they should.
GLENN: And they should. And yet that's what the healthcare system is doing in England. And that's what we will do here. Because it will be an easier way. We've already done it here. We did it with Terri Schiavo. Just starve them to death. Out of compassion. That's not compassion.
STU: I'm admittedly weird on this issue. I mean, you know, as some people probably know, I'm like the world's only conservative vegetarian and part of the reason for that is that there is part of that that goes into that equation that ‑‑
GLENN: Wow, listen to this. Listen to this. This is new information.
STU: No, it's not.
PAT: We have not heard this yet.
GLENN: We said this about him the minute, and he's like, no, I'm just, I'm tired of meat. Go ahead.
PAT: Go ahead.
STU: Or you could have read it in your own magazine in which I wrote this, Fusion magazine, which is ‑‑
GLENN: We don't hide it in the ‑‑ hide it in the pages of magazines. Who reads magazines?
STU: No, I did ‑‑
PAT: All right. Let's hear it. What's the big admission then?
STU: No, I mean, I have ‑‑ it's not a big admission.
PAT: Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. You've not admitted it to us on the air.
GLENN: Not on the air.
PAT: Go ahead.
GLENN: Let's hear it.
PAT: Let's hear it.
STU: It's not a big admission at all. I think ‑‑
PAT: Go ahead. Let's hear the little admission.
STU: It's already been admitted in a magazine.
GLENN: Hang on. Take off your leather shoes before you admit this. Go ahead.
STU: These are not leather shoes. However, but I ‑‑
GLENN: We haven't lost you to the no‑leather people, have we?
STU: No. I will say that there's part of me ‑‑ and this did happen for my dog, by the way, in that I don't think ‑‑ I do think that man has domain over animals. I do believe that. But I don't necessarily mean that ‑‑ think that that's a great idea. I still believe in the principle of life. And if it's at all possible, I believe to err on the side of life. That goes with humans and it goes with animals. You know, and I do ‑‑
PAT: So part of this is you don't believe man should eat animals?
STU: No, I don't ‑‑ I feel like I err on the side of life. So like, I don't make that decision for you guys, don't criticize you at all. I've never criticized you for a second. When I really think about it ‑‑
GLENN: But I want you to know we've criticized you.
STU: You have, often.
GLENN: And behind your back.
PAT: And vocally. But much more in front of your back than behind your back.
STU: That's fine. That's fine.
GLENN: Really cruel stuff but I'd have to say that's the really funny stuff, too.
PAT: Of course, of course.
GLENN: Is behind your back.
STU: Is ‑‑ and I believe that. But no, it's a very personal decision. I do not pushy on anybody. I'm not PETA, I'm not taking out billboards telling you shouldn't do it. But my point is that I don't under ‑‑ you know, it comes to that point of here I am. If I feel like you, Glenn, with my dog, I will probably be out of work for a week when that dog dies. I will be absolutely crushed and unable to do anything. And, you know, I'll go to the point of taking the dog to the vet all the time and all these crazy things I'll do to keep this dog alive, but that's just because I know this dog. The only difference between this dog and all these other animals that I would normally have on an egg sandwich is the fact that I've never met them and I have no relationship with them.
GLENN: That's why Raphe said to me the other day ‑‑
STU: Why I feel it's inconsistent.
GLENN: ‑‑ "I don't want to eat chicken." He's a kid who just won't eat anything. I mean, we can put anything in front of him and he's got a reason not to eat it. He just won't eat it. He will power eat morning for breakfast. He will eat like 14 bowls of cereal, eggs, bacon, anything you put in front of him. God help you if you get your hands in front of the boy in the morning. But by night, he's just not interested. And so it was an excuse, but I think there was a little bit of it. He said, "I don't want chicken." I said, Raphe, you like chicken. "No, I don't want chicken. I don't like chicken." Well, that's what we're... arghhhh! Man, it's a good thing my grandfather does not live anywhere near this boy. But he said, I don't want chicken because I don't... "Why?" "Because it reminds me of my chicken." And I said, "What's the first thing I told you when we got chickens?" "I know, don't name the chickens." That's right.
STU: But why ‑‑ I mean, and this is my point. It's an argument of are you pro life or are you pro personality. When you have a relationship with a specific animal ‑‑
GLENN: No, I'm pro life.
STU: ‑‑ you want to keep it alive at all costs. It's the Charlotte's Web thing. It's like Wilbur because a stupid spider can put a name above his head, all of a sudden you save him.
GLENN: When it comes to ‑‑ first of all, I don't equate animal life the same as human life.
STU: I agree.
GLENN: There's a big difference there.
STU: There's a big difference there. And if I was starve, I would absolutely eat ‑‑
GLENN: That's why I don't eat veal, and I am vocal about this, I don't eat veal because I think it's wrong to torture your food to make it taste better. It's just not ‑‑ that's just beyond unethical. That's just evil. You don't torture your food to make it taste better. No, definitely not.
STU: There was a little hesitation there.
GLENN: I just wanted to make sure. I was... however, when it comes to your mixing in eating with saving your dog, I don't believe in this, I just don't believe in ‑‑ you know, if you have the money, like you have the money. Go ahead and do the CAT scans and the, you know, all of the, you know, plastic surgery, you'll never change your pug's face but do all of that you want, whatever, if that's good for the dog, if it's ‑‑
STU: Right.
GLENN: But these people, people will get into debt with chemotherapy.
STU: Oh, yeah.
GLENN: And if you have the money, that's fine. But I don't ‑‑ I don't understand. And I would do it for my dog but I ‑‑
PAT: Me, too.
GLENN: But you look at it and you think, I don't know if this is even right. It is if you have the money. But if you are putting your family in jeopardy for it, I mean, there is something to be said with your family first. And I know.
PAT: Oh, yeah.
GLENN: The dog is a member of the family.
STU: That's tough.
GLENN: I know.
STU: You have to put your family first.
GLENN: It's awful.
STU: You have to do that. But, like, that stupid question kind of stuck in my head is why don't I eat my dog? Why don't I? The reason I don't do it is probably taste. I don't know what dogs taste like but people on farms will tell you that they have cows that they love and why don't I eat them? Why don't I eat ‑‑ why don't they eat Wilbur? They don't eat Wilbur because they have a relationship with Wilbur. And if you can have a relationship with Wilbur, then why don't you consider that in the equation? I still believe that man is superior. I'm not some crazy, like, I don't think I'm pushing anything on anybody. But it's something, I feel like as a conservative who wants to remain consistent ‑‑
PAT: Listen to this. This is pretty new information.
GLENN: We've lost him.
PAT: This is new information.
STU: It's all in the article eight years ago.
GLENN: He's going to be wearing Birkenstocks.
PAT: We don't read you dumb articles.
GLENN: Oh, yeah.
PAT: I mean, we read everything else in TheBlaze magazine.
GLENN: Have you read ‑‑
PAT: And don't read yours, Stu?
GLENN: Have you read Agenda 21 yet?

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

Al Drago / Stringer | Getty Images

Prosecutors stopped a New Year’s Eve bombing plot rooted in ideology that treats the US as an enemy to be destroyed.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that four members of an anti-capitalist extremist group were arrested on Friday for plotting coordinated bombings in California on New Year’s Eve.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspects planned to detonate explosives concealed in backpacks at various businesses while also targeting ICE agents and vehicles. The attacks were supposed to coincide with midnight celebrations.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

The plot was disrupted before any lives were lost. The group behind the plot calls itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front. That name matters more than you might think.

When ideology turns operational

For years, the media has told us that radical, violent rhetoric on the left is mostly symbolic. They explained away the angry slogans, destructive language, and calls for “liberation” as performance or hyperbole.

Bombs are not metaphors, however.

Once explosives enter the picture, framing the issue as harmless expression becomes much more difficult. What makes this case different is the ideological ecosystem behind it.

The Turtle Island Liberation Front was not a single-issue group. It was anti-American, anti-capitalist, and explicitly revolutionary. Its members viewed the United States as an illegitimate occupying force rather than a sovereign nation. America, in their view, is not a nation, not a country; it is a structure that must be dismantled at any cost.

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

“Turtle Island” is not an innocent cultural reference. In modern activist usage, it is shorthand for the claim that the United States has no moral or legal right to exist. It reframes the country as stolen land, permanently occupied by an illegitimate society.

Once people accept that premise, the use of violence against their perceived enemies becomes not only permissible, but virtuous. That framing is not unique to one movement. It appears again and again across radical networks that otherwise disagree on nearly everything.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements do not share the same vision for the future. They do not even trust one another. But they share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed. The alignment of radical, hostile ideologies is anything but a coincidence.

The red-green alliance

For decades, analysts have warned about what is often called the red-green alliance: the convergence of far-left revolutionary politics with Islamist movements. The alliance is not based on shared values, but on shared enemies. Capitalism, national sovereignty, Western culture, and constitutional government all fall into that category.

History has shown us how this process works. Revolutionary coalitions form to tear down an existing order, promising liberation and justice. Once power is seized, the alliance fractures, and the most ruthless faction takes control.

Iran’s 1979 revolution followed this exact pattern. Leftist revolutionaries helped topple the shah. Within a few years, tens of thousands of them were imprisoned, executed, or “disappeared” by the Islamist regime they helped install. Those who do not understand history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it.

ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

This moment is different

What happened in California was not a foreign conflict bleeding into the United States or a solitary extremist acting on impulse. It was an organized domestic group, steeped in ideological narratives long validated by universities, activist networks, and the media.

The language that once circulated on campuses and social media is now appearing in criminal indictments. “Liberation” has become a justification for explosives. “Resistance” has become a plan with a date and a time. When groups openly call for the destruction of the United States and then prepare bombs to make it happen, the country has entered a new phase. Pretending things have not gotten worse, that we have not crossed a line as a country, is reckless denial.

Every movement like this depends on confusion. Its supporters insist that calls for America’s destruction are symbolic, even as they stockpile weapons. They denounce violence while preparing for it. They cloak criminal intent in the language of justice and morality. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The California plot should end the debate over whether these red-green alliances exist. They do. The only question left is whether the country will recognize the pattern before more plots advance farther — and succeed.

This is not about one group, one ideology, or one arrest. It is about a growing coalition that has moved past rhetoric and into action. History leaves no doubt where that path leads. The only uncertainty is whether Americans will step in and stop it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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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.

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

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.

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.

How Sharia arrives

The warning from those who have lived under it

America is vulnerable

Wake up before it is too late