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Glenn's Show Prep

Is this Glenn's favorite show on TV?

June 21, 2013
Wilson

Writer

One of Glenn's favorite TV shows is Pawn Stars, and this morning on radio, he interviewed one of the stars of the show, Rick Harrison. There is no question that Rick is a tough negotiator, but Glenn respects his fairness. Rick explained his business philosophy and revealed some of the incredible government bureaucracy his company has endured.

Full Transcript of interview is below:

GLENN: We are ‑‑ it's Friday and we're going to take a different tack today. We're going to talk about, I think if I had to name my favorite show on television and I watch such little television, I mean really I don't think I ever get a chance to watch a full episode of anything, my favorite show on television has to be Pawn Stars. I was a fan of Antiques Road Show but that was like, I don't know, I felt I had to wear an ascot and be in a robe.

PAT: Oh, this is so much better than Antiques Road Show.

GLENN: Yeah, but it's the same ‑‑ it's the same thing. They bring in really cool stuff and you get to see really cool stuff, but this one has an attitude to it.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And it's like for regular people. But the stuff that they show and the things that you see on the show are just fantastic.

PAT: What I like about it is Rick is a brutal negotiator. Somebody will come in and they will tell you their thing is worth, you know, "This is the original flag that George Washington rode into battle with against the British at Yorktown." Really? Okay. Uh, what do you want for it? What do you want to do with it?

GLENN: I want to sell it.

PAT: What do you want?

GLENN: $198,000.

PAT: Not gonna happen. I'll give you $12.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Usually gets it for 11.

PAT: Yes. And they wind up, you know, and you see them interviewed before they go in and, "I'm not gonna take a Penny under $194,000." "I'll give you $15." "Okay."

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: And I love the people who don't sell. It's usually the crap you wouldn't want to buy anyway because the crap ‑‑ and they're like, "I wouldn't take it. I'm not going to be insulted by him saying that it was a complete fake." It says ‑‑ it's the Declaration of Independence and it says made in China on the back.

We have Rick Harrison on the phone. Hi, Rick, how are ya?

HARRISON: I'm doing great this morning.

GLENN: Good to talk to you. I'm just such a huge fan and I actually, we spoke off the air, I don't know, a few weeks ago and I said to you ‑‑ because I watch your show and I'm like, man, I want to develop a relationship with Rick because I want to know when you get stuff like that in there, I want to be on your call list because we're putting together a museum and I want to know if you're getting really cool, unique stuff. But mainly the stuff, Rick, that most people, you know, you would never see it in a museum because people are like, "Oh, that's just, that's silly, that's..." and I've seen a couple of things where I'm like, this is one of the coolest pieces of history I've ever seen.

HARRISON: I actually think I bought probably the coolest thing I ever bought since I've had the pawn shop a couple of weeks ago actually. It was a ‑‑ it was a contemporary copy. General Lee from the South, his father was George Washington's main general during the Whiskey Rebellion, and George Washington wrote him a letter. You would ‑‑ once you see the episode, you will be amazed. He basically wrote him a letter saying "These are the powers of the government. You know, I have to go to Washington. I have to do everything in the government. These are the powers that should be the army, this should be the powers of civil court," and this general, you know, thought it was so important that he made a contemporary copy. It's not the actual copy by George Washington. That would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But this was ‑‑ he thought the letter was so important, that he made a copy for himself and put it in his own records.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: So ‑‑

HARRISON: So it's a pretty amazing letter.

GLENN: So Rick ‑‑

HARRISON: I'll send you a copy of it.

GLENN: I'd love to ‑‑ I'd love to see it. You have to come out here sometime. I know you're really super busy because you do more than that show. You also ‑‑ how many shows do you ‑‑ how many shows are you responsible for now on TV?

HARRISON: I work on, like, three other shows, I'm producing some other shows. Was going to ‑‑ was going to produce another show but the ‑‑ the BLM decided because of sequester I couldn't pay the government for a filming permit on government land, which is insane to me, but ‑‑

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

HARRISON: That's another story.

GLENN: Would you mind telling the story, Rick, about ‑‑ speaking about a control government, of your expansion? Are you willing to tell that story about your expansion of your business?

HARRISON: Well, it's everything. You know, I go to ‑‑ you know, over the years, you know, this show has just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger, more and more customers. I need to expand my showroom. Luckily I wanted to tear down a wall, okay? Because right behind that wall I had warehouse space to turn into the showroom. $400,000 to tear down a wall.

GLENN: What?

PAT: Jeez.

HARRISON: I mean, these are the things I run into. Put a new sign out in front of my building. 6 bucks.

PAT: To put a sign in front of the building?

HARRISON: Oh, yeah, because ‑‑

PAT: Is that for the permit process and all that nonsense?

HARRISON: The permit process and everything and they come back, well, you're on a scenic byway, you're in a historical district, you need to go in front of 20 different committees.

PAT: Jeez.

HARRISON: And, you know, "Oh, we're going to have to change your sign here, change your sign here, change your sign here." And it just never ends. I mean ‑‑

GLENN: When did we go wrong, Rick? When did we go wrong? When do you think we started going wrong?

HARRISON: Because every legislature and every congress thinks, oh, we need more laws, we need more laws, we need more laws. And it just comes to a point where it just grinds business to a standstill.

I wanted to produce a show in Southern California. It was on government land. It's a ‑‑ it was about off‑roading and stuff like that. People off‑road there every day. I went, you know, and ‑‑ you know, even a small reality show employs 100 people.

GLENN: Mmm‑hmmm.

HARRISON: The BLM comes back and says, "No, we can't issue a film permit because of the sequester." So I said, "Let me get this straight. I'm going to pay you $250 a day to film and..."

GLENN: You can't ‑‑

HARRISON: "‑‑ you can't do it because of budget cuts?"

PAT: Jeez.

HARRISON: He mean, this is what we deal with nowadays.

GLENN: I mean, you're in Nevada which, jeez, man, you have legalized prostitution. You would think that Nevada would be ‑‑ would be okay to work in. Is Nevada okay?

HARRISON: Nevada's better than most states. I have a lot of friends that make very good money. They're just packing up out of California and leaving. They cannot deal with it anymore.

GLENN: I know.

HARRISON: You know, I said, yeah, come on up. Help our economy out.

GLENN: I know.

HARRISON: I mean, it's government in general. I mean, all the way from ‑‑ where I was filming the television show was Southern California, but it was on federal land. But it's government on every level, you know. It's business, it's the EPA. The EPA would rather, you know, close down a factory in the United States that puts out some air pollution, okay? They would rather close that down and have the same factory open in China with ten times the air pollution. It's all the same air we breathe. There's no sense to it all.

GLENN: Do you ‑‑ I was in Washington D.C. this week and for the first time I saw a difference in the capitol police. I mean, we've always been friends with the police. We have ‑‑ I have good relationships. We do fundraisers for the police and the sheriffs and everybody else, and we have always ‑‑ I believe in a good strong police department. Rat the bad guys out. Don't punish all the police. Rat the bad guys out and get them off the force. And when I was in Washington, between the permits and the way the Department of Homeland Security and the capitol police treated people and even looked at the people that were standing there for the Constitution, I've never seen anything like it. And now when you start to say, "I don't know if I can trust the police" or "I don't know if I can trust the judicial system," I mean, you're in a different world, man.

HARRISON: Umm, it's all the bureaucracy. I mean, I have a close family member that something really bad happened to her. I'll even say his name. He's pleaded guilty to forceable sexual abuse in Utah. And this guy was charged four years ago; hasn't spent a day in jail because of all the bureaucracy.

GLENN: Wait. Wait a minute, wait. He pleaded guilty to forced sexual abuse, he pleaded guilty?

HARRISON: Yes.

GLENN: And he hasn't ‑‑ he hasn't spent a day in jail yet? Four years?

HARRISON: No, because he ‑‑ because he asked to have his psychosexual evaluation before they can sentence him.

GLENN: Oh, dear God.

HARRISON: And that was in February. They're saying it's now delayed until September. And mind you, he doesn't have to register as a sex offender until he's sentenced.

GLENN: Where in Utah is this happening? Who's the judge? Who's the judge? Where is it?

HARRISON: Okay, the judge is St. George, Utah. It's southern Utah. Wallace A. Lee. He literally let this person ‑‑ you know, I mean, you would think once he pled guilty, okay, we're going to remand you to custody until ‑‑

PAT: Yeah.

HARRISON: You know, until you're sentenced. So ‑‑

GLENN: Is Wallace A. Lee, is that the judge or is that the ‑‑

HARRISON: That's the judge. The ‑‑ well, I was going to call him ‑‑ we're on the radio. I'm sorry. I almost said something else.

GLENN: Well, no. He pleaded guilty to sexual ‑‑ what was it, sexual assault, sexual ‑‑

HARRISON: Felony sexual abuse. This was a plea bargain, by the way.

GLENN: Felony sexual abuse?

HARRISON: There was over seven felony assault charges against him and, you know, his name is Richard Burdette. The ‑‑ and I'm on the phone the other day to the prosecutor and I'm going, "What is the problem here?" And they go, "Well, they need this psychosexual evaluation to see if he's going to reoffend."

GLENN: The guy plead ‑‑ the guy pleaded guilty!

HARRISON: He pleaded guilty and they want him to talk to a psychologist to see if he's going to reoffend. You really think he's going to tell the psychologist the truth?

PAT: I mean, he's create sexual assault but he's not a liar, you know? These guys draw the line somewhere.

HARRISON: This is what you're dealing with where we have to ‑‑

GLENN: So hang on just a second. I'm trying to understand. This is ‑‑ what's the judge's name again?

HARRISON: Wallace A. Lee.

GLENN: Wallace A. Lee. So you're telling me that the judge in St. George, Utah, Wallace A. Lee, is actually saying, "Well, before I give him his penalty, I want to make sure that he ‑‑ that he's already learned his lesson." He's learned his lesson? You haven't even punished him yet. He's learning ‑‑ he is learning. Hey, judge, he is learning a lesson here. You're teaching him a very important lesson. So he's ‑‑ I'm going to listen to him, we want to talk to him, we want to make sure the psychiatrists talk to him to see if he's learned his lesson before we've given him any punishment at all. So then, what, he'll lessen the sentence? Is that the idea?

HARRISON: I have no idea. And you know we ‑‑ you know he's not going to go to a psychologist and say, you know, "I like having sex with children." "No, I'm all better." It's the insanity of our legal system. You know, a DUI is a very, very bad thing and I think those people should be punished, but he would have spent more time in jail if he got a DUI.

GLENN: Wow.

HARRISON: And there's other things too. I mean, you have young kids who do something stupid and you give them a ‑‑ you give them a record for the rest of their life, as opposed to what we used to do is, "Hey, put the kid in the military; he'll be all right." That's what they ended up doing to my dad and he ended up being a great person to society. So every ‑‑

GLENN: I don't think your dad likes you too much, though. I see your dad.

HARRISON: My dad is the greatest guy in the world.

GLENN: No, he really is. He really is.

HARRISON: He gets up ‑‑ even if there is nothing for him to do at work, he is there at 6:30 in the morning with a suit on.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: You know what's really great, what I love about it is you guys work hard, you're honest, you don't ‑‑ you're not cheating anybody. I've never seen anything where you're trying to get the leg up on a deal. And you're straight up with people. That's why, you know, Pat said you're brutal at negotiating. No, you're just honest: Dude, this is what it's worth; I have to resell it.

PAT: Well, and you've got to make money.

GLENN: I have to make money.

PAT: Have to make money.

GLENN: That's all it is.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And you win because of the two lessons I've learned from very wealthy people: One, never get emotionally attached to anything. You don't want ‑‑ you don't need it, you don't want it that much; don't get emotionally attached to something. It's just something ‑‑ something else will come along. And the second thing is, is just be straight‑up honest and be willing to walk away. Never bluff. Be willing to walk away from the table. How is that a ‑‑

HARRISON: Well, I mean ‑‑ yeah, I've always told ‑‑ I mean, I've told people this in a million interviews and people I know: The deal's not right, the deal's not right.

GLENN: Yep.

PAT: Yeah.

HARRISON: Just plain and simple it's not. And, you know, I own a small business and I ‑‑ well, the government considers me a medium business now.

STU: Congratulations.

HARRISON: And I've been in business for over 25 years and I really truly believe in that whole six degrees of separation you're honest and good to your employees, good to your customers, it's good for business.

GLENN: I tell you, Rick, I would really, I would really love ‑‑ I'm coming out to Vegas I think next week, I think we're doing ‑‑

PAT: Next Friday I think we're doing it.

GLENN: I'm doing some stuff with the people ‑‑ I don't know if you've ever heard fly‑by Foy but they are the people who do all the fly‑by wire stuff for Cirque du Soleil.

HARRISON: Okay.

GLENN: And they are working on a show with me, Man in the Moon, and I have to, they have to tear it all ‑‑

HARRISON: Are you going to start doing back flips in the air and stuff like that?

GLENN: You'd be surprised what you're going to see.

PAT: Oh, he's limber ‑‑ limber.

GLENN: Before they break it down, I have to go see it myself in Vegas before they ship it out. And so I'm going to be in town. I'd love to stop by and shake your hand and just stroll through your ‑‑ stroll through your place. But I'm not bringing my wallet.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: I'm not bringing my wallet.

HARRISON: Well, come by and maybe I'll bring you to lunch.

GLENN: All right, man. Thank you. Rick, I appreciate it. Keep up the good work. You guys are doing a great, great job. And let us know what happens. Let us know what happens with Judge Lee and the dirtbag.

HARRISON: I will. Talk to you later.

GLENN: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

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.

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.