Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcasts
The Glenn Beck ProgramThe Glenn Beck PodcastThe Beck Story
Fine Art
Real Estate
Shop
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Stephen King, massive hypocrite

January 28, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Updated: Glenn addressed Stephen King's hypocrisy Monday night - watch it in the clip above!

Notorious horror author Stephen King has decided to publicly bash the NRA for apparently promoting violence. He said they should have to be the ones who clean up the blood and ‘guts’ in the next shooting. For a supposedly brilliant it’s quite difficult to understand how he does not see the hypocrisy in this statement.

Transcript of segment is below:

GLENN: Plenty of gun advocates cling to their semi‑automatics the way Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson clung to the stuff that was killing them. This is according to Stephen King in a 25‑page essay called "Guns. Guns. I don't like guns." It's a ‑‑ it's amazing. He says to claim that America's culture of violence is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of cancer. It took ‑‑ it took more than one slim novel to cause these teenagers to do what they did. Yeah, one, one slim novel? Don't you do, these ‑‑ Stephen King is the only one who can churn a book out faster than I can. And everybody's like, geez, my gosh, Glenn Beck is writing another book? Yeah, mine aren't 8,000 pages long. He's got book after book after book, and tell me the sweet "Cuddle by the fireplace and read to your children" books that he has created. They're all bloodbaths. And he says, "One only wishes that Wayne La Pierre and his NRA board of directors..." oh, please. Wayne, please make me an honorary board of directors, make me ‑‑ I'll empty the garbage. Please, I'd wear it as such a badge of honor, such a badge of honor to be ‑‑ I count it as one of my ‑‑ I might even want to have this engraved on my tombstone: Lifetime member, NRA, currently trying to make it post‑lifetime member.

So anyway, he says, "One only wishes Wayne La Pierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of those violent scenes where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestines still containing the poor wads of half‑digested food that were some innocent bystander's last meal."

PAT: Good gosh.

GLENN: This guy's bad.

PAT: He's sick.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

PAT: Sick.

GLENN: Remember this is a guy who says all people in the military are stupid. Do we still have that?

PAT: I think so.

GLENN: This is a guy who says, you know, if you want to be ‑‑ you know, if you want to be in the military, don't read. Just be stupid.

KING: I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is that if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like...

PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.

GLENN: Oh. So if you can't read, you have the Army. This guy is an America‑hating ‑‑

PAT: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: ‑‑ military‑hating dirtbag. And I hate it because I like his work.

STU: Yeah, he's one of the ‑‑

GLENN: I mean, he's one of the best writers, you know, of the 20th century. He's a great horror writer. He's great.

STU: But one of the most purely stupid political commentators in existence.

PAT: Oh, no question.

GLENN: He is just an idiot.

STU: Every time.

PAT: And to blame the NRA for this. When he pumps out the books and movies he pumps out, he's got no culpability for any of it.

GLENN: Here's the reason why: Because he knows, he knows that the culture of violence ‑‑ look. You have the American Pediatrics, you have the American Medical Association, you have every single study that has ever come out say ‑‑ any credibility, they all say movies and violent games with kids lead to these things. Not in all cases.

STU: And obviously the vast, vast minority of them.

GLENN: Right.

STU: But ‑‑

GLENN: But your brain is not formed. Your brain's not set really until it's like 25. But up until, like, 13 or, what is it, 10 or 13, it's really, you're laying new pathways down. You start to put this kind of violence and stuff, it changes the way you process stuff. And so it's proven. It's proven fact. And yet nobody wants to talk about this. And so he wants to make sure that he's the guardian. He's the guardian of the gate. "I'm Stephen King, after all. And I mean, I've written about shootings and guttings and everything else." He's poured it into your mind, and he's done it well. I read Stephen King novels. Scares the crap out of me. Although, you know, Stephen, there is another writer. I mean, I know you want to be the king of all scary writers. There's another writer. Who was the guy who wrote that book? Oh, man, I can't remember. I only read half of it. Scared the ‑‑ makes ‑‑ it makes Stephen King look like the president. Makes him look like a girl. You're a girl. Demon Game, Devil's Game? I can't remember. Scary.

So Stephen is out now. All he's doing is carrying all of the water for the culture, for those who want to put violence and blood and everything else in the culture and say that there's no effect. I'm sorry. I'm not saying regulate you. I'm not saying ban you. I'm not saying regulate the movies. I'm just saying be responsible, that's all. I don't want to put you out of business or anything else. Be responsible. And understand as a consumer be responsible and understand that this is affecting your children. Once your ‑‑ once your brain is formed and everything, some people are going to take, you know, Catcher in the Rye and they're going to read Catcher in the Rye and they're going to be like, "Oh, I've got to go kill somebody." Okay. Well, that's just because they're crazy. But when it comes to the youth, it does make a difference. I don't want more regulation. I don't want more power. I want the power to remain with the people, and I want the power of the people to be able to go, "You know what? Stephen King is an ass. Stephen King is an idiot. He might write a good book but I don't need to give him any more money," you know, or not. Again, I read his books, or used to. I read his boobs. I think he's a great writer. I like his stuff. I think It's one of the scariest movies, until you find out it's a stupid spider, you moron! You make us read 800 pages and you give us a spider in the end?

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Man!

PAT: Thank you. That had to be said.

STU: Yeah, no.

PAT: Had to be said.

GLENN: I'm a lifetime member of the NRA and I didn't even think about picking up a gun and coming and stalk you, my friend. And after 800 pages, you give me a spider. If the NRA membership made me a killer, you'd be long gone, brother.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Spider!

STU: But nobody has a higher opinion of Stephen King than Stephen King.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

STU: I mean, this guy thinks he is the greatest thing ever.

PAT: Oh, yeah.

STU: And he constantly is commenting on topics like this and he's just a more ‑‑ in his own, in this essay he talks about how it's the NRA, it's the people like these that cause these incidents, it's not the culture. And then he talks about how he pulled his own book off the shelf because it kept popping up at school shootings. It kept popping up with all these violent teenagers and so he pulled ‑‑ I can't remember, Rage maybe was the name of the book, but he popped ‑‑ he pulled it off the shelf because he was worried about its impact on children.

PAT: Wow.

STU: But the culture isn't at all a problem.

GLENN: No, uh‑uh.

PAT: And Carrie is like a lullaby. That's like a lullaby for kids.

GLENN: The Shining? The Shining is great.

PAT: All of these bloodbaths that are just horrifying. Those are just sweet little tales. It's really the NRA that's the problem.

GLENN: The Stand. The Stand.

PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.

GLENN: It's a love story. It's a love story.

PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.

GLENN: You'd think that this guy would realize, you know, he's seeing that he wrote The Stand, that he's practically setting up the kingdom of Vegas. I mean, you're on the wrong side, Steve. You're on the wrong side. Come to the other side of the mountains.

STU: No, stay over there. I don't want you.

GLENN: Yeah, you're right.

STU: Seriously.

GLENN: I know how it ends. Go over there. We don't want you.

STU: I don't remember that book, but ‑‑

GLENN: We should never give up. We love you, Stephen.

STU: Well ‑‑

GLENN: We'd love you over here. We really ‑‑

STU: Well, I don't know what "over here" means but if "over here" means I have to talk to him in the next 50 years, no thanks.

GLENN: I'd like him to change his mind. I'd like you to ‑‑ I'd like you to find happiness. I'd like you to ‑‑

STU: That's up to him.

GLENN: I'd like you to find it.

STU: Good luck.

GLENN: You know, there in Maine. Not down here in Texas.

STU: Yes.

GLENN: But if you can find it in Maine ‑‑

STU: E‑mail us.

GLENN: ‑‑ e‑mail us. And I'm hoping before I get that e‑mail, we're hit by an EMP. I'd rather be foraging for food in garbage cans after an EMP than read your e‑mail saying, "I found Jesus."

STU: You find that, just ‑‑

GLENN: No, he's going to find him and it's going to be great and I wish him all the best of luck in finding Him. Now I'm ‑‑ you know what, Pat?

PAT: Hmmm?

GLENN: We should ‑‑ we should send the boys and bikes over to his house. I know where he lives. We should send the boys. Because I care so much.

PAT: No, I'm sensing some of that from you.

GLENN: We should call ‑‑

PAT: I'm sensing that.

GLENN: We should call every night every time you see one of those commercials on TV, call for your copy, "Hi, I'm Stephen King."

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: "I know you guys have come over to my house every day for the last four weeks, but this time..."

PAT: But this time I really want you here. I really want you here. And don't even listen to me when I say I don't want you here.

GLENN: Don't take no for an answer. Come in and sit down.

PAT: I think I might be possessed by demons. So make sure that you just don't listen to what I'm saying.

GLENN: Please ‑‑

PAT: That's just the demons talking.

GLENN: Please do it. Please do it.

STU: I'm calling you now because this is my one moment of sobriety for the day.

GLENN: I need help.

STU: When you come, I'm going to be hammered and I'm going to resist. Please, listen.

GLENN: I need your help. Listen. Please, help me, help me. Bring some Catholic priests with you. Bring ‑‑ heck, bring some Jehovah Witnesses with you. Just keep coming to my door.

PAT: I like that.

GLENN: Yeah. See?

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: That's ‑‑ and that's what Jesus taught.

PAT: Right. Yes. Be persistent.

GLENN: He was like, "Don't give up. Be persistent." I highly recommend. Get his address. I'm making a call the next time I see the ad.

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.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.