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Glenn's Show Prep

Investor Jim Rogers: Obama is "delusional"

February 13, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Jim Rogers is one of the most successful investors in American history, and now, thanks to America's not so "business friendly" policies, runs his operation in Singapore. This morning on radio, Jim joined to radio program to give Glenn his reactions to the plan for the economy Obama laid out in last night's SOTU address. Did Obama convince Rogers to relocate back to the U.S.?

Transcript of the interview is below:

GLENN: Well, welcome to Hour Number 3. You're about to hear some truth. If you ‑‑ if you don't want to hear the truth, you know, I don't know. Watch, you know, watch ‑‑ go turn on CNN. If you want the truth here on what you're about to enter and the truth about our economy, you're about to hear it from one of the smartest guys. Been around and successful for a very long time, Jim Rogers. He's the author of a new book called Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets. Paul Krugman says Jim Rogers makes my head hurt. So please, Jim, keep it up. The ‑‑

ROGERS: You know, one reason I did the book was so I could put that on the cover, I make Paul Krugman's head hurt. I wanted the world to know.

GLENN: I just love that. I love that. Okay.

ROGERS: Glenn, is this television? There I am.

GLENN: Yeah, that's television.

ROGERS: Let me put on my tie for God sakes.

GLENN: You don't need to wear a tie, Jim. No need to wear it.

ROGERS: I thought it was radio.

GLENN: It is radio. It is radio and television.

ROGERS: Okay. Go ahead. Carry on. I'm sorry.

GLENN: You don't need to wear a tie.

ROGERS: I know I don't. I'm trying to bring a little class to this group.

GLENN: It's impossible. So Jim, you're going to be on television with me tonight at 5:00 and we're going to kind of go over, you know, the ideas that really quite honestly the president and many in the GOP are just going right along with. And we just had Rand Paul on who, you know, he's ‑‑ he's got I think a plan that would actually, might work at this point. Are we past the point of no return?

ROGERS: Yes, because the debt is physically impossible to pay off. We are the largest debtor nation in the history of the world, in the history of the world. Not just the largest debtor nation in the world, but in world history. And if you take in the off‑balance sheet, Glenn, it's physically impossible to pay it off. If everybody paid 100% of their earnings as taxes, we still couldn't pay it off.

GLENN: I actually, I talked to some banker friends of mine who are, you know, strangely, you know, like, "You know, hey, what we can do," and they don't notice the slide that they are in, you know. I talked to them for ten years and they ‑‑ and it's always, "Well, that's not going to happen." "Yes, it is." "No, it's not going to happen. They would never do that. And they just keep sliding down. The last conversation I had with one of them is they said, "Glenn, it's not so bad. And listen to this. It's not so bad." How do you believe it's not so bad? We still have the national parks.

ROGERS: So we're going to sell the ‑‑

GLENN: Sell the national parks.

ROGERS: You know what we could do? Second sell Santa ‑‑ we could sell the North Pole, too. We could occupy the North Pole, sell the North Pole.

GLENN: It's crazy talk. It's crazy talk.

ROGERS: I know. It's insane.

GLENN: Okay. So wait a minute. So how does this, how does this go from here? What are the road signs that we should look at? And, you know, people like you, you know, you can get on your plane and you can go to Singapore. I can't go to Singapore. And most people can't go to Singapore. And quite honestly if America goes away, I don't know how lucky you are in Singapore. You know, who's policing anything in the world or providing stability except dictators?

ROGERS: Well, there are people in the world who don't think that America's doing a good job of policing the world right now.

GLENN: No. We suck at it. We suck at it.

ROGERS: If that's your idea, you've got problems.

GLENN: Right, right. But at least there is some stability. You know, there's still some question on who wins, who fails here, at least in the minds of the average person, the average bad guy. There's still some ‑‑ you know, I think they know we're at the edge and just a little push will push us over and then the world changes.

ROGERS: Of course the world changes. The world changed when the U.K. ‑‑ you know, after the first world war, the U.K. was the richest, most powerful country in the world. There was no Number 2. They were bankrupt three generations later. One generation there was economic chaos because it was corroded from within. We're on the same path. There's no way we can pay ‑‑ you know, Glenn, right now interest rates are 0%. In America, the Central Bank is destroying the people who save and invest. You know all the people you know who save their money, who didn't get six houses, who didn't have ‑‑ make no down payments on their property, et cetera, they are being destroyed now. That whole class of people who saved and invested and did things right.

GLENN: So Jim, what do they do? I mean, because you're talking to ‑‑ I mean, you're right now eight million people and they're listening, and out of that eight million people 1%, 2%, we probably have 5% of this audience is in a class where they can actually, you know, they can maneuver and they've got a lot of money. Most people are living right at the edge. What does the person do who has saved their whole life? You know, I just read something that said if you are a saver, you lose. So really the best thing to do is just pile up debt. I'm like, okay, that doesn't sound good either.

ROGERS: That's not good for a society. They are save ‑‑ what they are doing, they are bailing out the people who did it the wrong way. The people who did save, you're right, they are being destroyed. All of those people are getting zero on their earnings to bail away, Glenn, to bail out the people who did it wrong.

GLENN: So let's take my parents. My in‑laws just retired. He still has his small business. He's an insurance agent. They have saved their whole life. She's got pension, they have got 401(k). What are they supposed to do with it? What do they do?

ROGERS: Well, Mr. Obama last night said everything is great.

GLENN: They don't believe him and neither do I, neither do you.

ROGERS: Don't your in‑laws know what Mr. Obama said?

GLENN: I know.

ROGERS: He said that everything is great and the middle class is on the way back and everything is fine now. I mean, the man is delusional. I was really afraid when I saw that. The only reason I watched it, I wouldn't watch that stuff except I was coming here to be with you.

GLENN: Oh, I didn't watch it. So you ‑‑ thanks for watching it for me.

ROGERS: I don't watch it either. I don't waste my time.

GLENN: I know what he's going to say and I know what the response is going to be.

ROGERS: But it's delusional. It's frightening. I don't live in the U.S. anymore. It was fright ‑‑ I'm still a taxpayer. So I have to know something about what's going on. But he was totally ‑‑ I don't know if he believed it or if he was just lying.

GLENN: I don't really care at this point. I mean, he's either ‑‑ he's either the best liar or he is completely delusional. I don't know which it is, but it doesn't matter.

ROGERS: There's a whole crowd of good liars.

GLENN: Right.

ROGERS: Up there in Washington. So ‑‑

GLENN: Right. But again, let me go back to the question: What does the average person do to be able to survive, Jim?

ROGERS: Well, that's an extremely good question and everybody in America right now is, at least the people who saved for the future, are facing that question right now. The only thing I can urge them to do is, like your in‑law, in‑laws, put their money back into their own business. That's at least what they know. Don't go putting your money into some hot tips you hear from a guy on radio or TV. Certainly don't listen to the government telling you what to do. Just stay with what you know. These are very perilous times. The government is not on your side if you're saving and investing.

GLENN: Okay. So the idea, when you say invest in your business, I've tried to explain, and you'll probably be able to explain this better than I can. I've tried to explain that I think the stock market is going to continue to go up because it's meaningless, and it's paper. And the cheaper the money is, et cetera, et cetera, that paper will go up and up and up. And so you'll read this and say two things: One, we're getting better because look at the stock market. We have this delusion of that that means something. But as that money is going up in your 401(k) and you're seeing, well, I'm making more, the value of when you turn that paper in is going down. So yes, it might be worth $1,000, but your buying power, once you turn that money in, your buying power is maybe $800.

ROGERS: Glenn, everybody listening to this knows that prices are going up. Go to the grocery store. Education, entertainment, anything, price ‑‑ healthcare, oh, my gosh. Prices are going up. The government says they're not going up. But you make a very good point. You could say you have $20,000, but the $20,000 is worth less and less and less because they're debasing the currency. It's an active policy in Washington. The head of the Central Bank, head of the Federal Reserve in America is dedicated policy to debase the currency. This is not good for you, me, or anybody in America except for some ‑‑ a few people in Washington and a few people on Wall Street.

GLENN: I've been urging people to become as self‑reliant as they possibly can, to take care of their ‑‑ make sure that they understand how fragile the food, the supply lines are, to understand that farming is going to become extraordinarily important again, to know that any way you can get off the grid and not be dependent on power from somebody else is very important. Anything you can do to make yourself free, independent as possible.

ROGERS: Well, you are doing a good deed for many people if they listen to you because there are going to be many breakdowns like that. We're going to have serious food shortages, not just in America but in the world coming up. And by the way, as an aside, farming's going to be one of the great professions of the next 10, 20, 30 years. You should become a farmer.

GLENN: I am. I am.

ROGERS: You have?

GLENN: Oh, I am. I have a ‑‑ I have cattle and a farm out West and I have cattle here as well.

ROGERS: I will tell you I ‑‑ when I speak to universities and students, I tell them all they should be studying agriculture. They don't want to do it. They all want to get MBAs. But it's a terrible mistake. They should be studying agriculture.

GLENN: Nobody ‑‑ and you said this to me a couple of years ago and it really sat with me. I've thought about it. In fact, I quoted you just the other day in a group of friends, that farming, nobody is studying it. And nobody wants to do that job. And it's not just here. It's around the entire world. And so farming has become a lost art.

ROGERS: The average age of farmers in America is 58. In Japan it's 66. In Canada it's the oldest in recorded history. In Australia it's 58. In ten years those guys will be 68 if they're still alive. Somebody's got to go into the fields. More people in America study public relations than study agriculture. We don't have any farmers coming up.

GLENN: Even if you do study, you know, farming or whatever, I don't even know what they would call it now, but it becomes about environmental studies. It's not even about how to grow things. It's how to get man out of touching the Earth.

ROGERS: That's true too, but some of the courses, if you go down to Texas A&M, I'm sure they show you how to ‑‑

GLENN: No, no, Texas ‑‑ no, Texas A&M, they will ‑‑ you know, here in Texas they'll, you know, they'll teach you something.

ROGERS: I suspect at Auburn they teach you to plow. You know, and to plant and to fertilize. There are some schools left that teach you the proper thing but not many because there are only 10,000 students, 10,000 study agriculture, 200,000 get MBAs. That's the graduate degrees.

GLENN: So if you want ‑‑ if you were ‑‑ if you had a 15‑year‑old and they were planning their future, you would say to them what?

ROGERS: I would tell her to go into the fields and if she likes the fields or he likes the fields to become a farmer. Because that's going ‑‑ the farmers are going to be driving the Lamborghinis. The farmers are going to be rich. We don't have any farmers. What more do you need to know? There's no competition. You know, and stockbroking and finance, there are lots of competition. 200,000 MBAs every year, Glenn, every year. Nobody ‑‑

GLENN: What makes you believe that farmers would be able to keep their land? I mean, if things break down, this government ‑‑ I mean, you watched him last night. He's already saying, you know, you don't do the environmental study, I'm going to do it for you. I'll just, executive order. I mean, he's going around the Constitution. He's going around everything. So makes you think that farmers would be able to keep their land?

ROGERS: Well, it's certainly not the land of the free that it used to be, you know. There's no more habeas corpus. They don't have to have a search warrant anymore to go into your house or to your bank account or ‑‑

GLENN: It's crazy.

ROGERS: ‑‑ anything. I know, it's just startling.

GLENN: When did you see this coming, Jim?

ROGERS: Well, I've seen it coming. You've seen it coming for a while, I've seen it coming, but I'm stunned at how rapidly it's happened. I guess ‑‑

GLENN: Were you stunned by ‑‑ because you're watching it from (loss of audio) you know, maybe I'll get away because I'll be driving the Lamborghini along with the farmers.

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.

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.