Who is the leader of the free world?

Buck Sexton filled in for Glenn on TV Monday night, and in the opening monologue he took a hard look at Obama's poor foreign policy performance. Who is leading the free world if America's President is more interested in the job?

The below is an edited transcript of Buck Sexton's monologue:

As we hunker down across the country trying to escape freakishly inclement weather in many places, there is also a very disturbing trend playing out abroad around the globe day after day, the signs of something of a new world order, a post-American century emerging on the international scene. 

Yes, of course, there are vicious civil wars raging on – Syria, Afghanistan, now the Central African Republic, Somalia, continuously, and there are others as well.  But it’s not merely that there is conflict going on.  There will always be fighting somewhere over something.  It’s that something is missing in the background, on the sidelines.  It just feels different right now around the world.

The good guys, the cavalry, they’re nowhere to be found, and I don’t necessarily mean charging into every situation with actual cavalry tanks and planes but in words and deeds on the world stage.  In policies, pronouncements, and principles, America under this administration has gone MIA.  Our allies feel as though they must fend for themselves.  Our enemies know that they can move with impunity up to a point, and they keep pushing that line with more cunning and brashness.

Sure, look, things at home are a mess, no doubt about it.  ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster that will only rot and fester with time, but despite all that, whether the Obama administration cares to admit it or not, the struggle for human freedom rages on, and America will either play a role or cede into the background.  Even the casual observer of events right now in Eurasia, China, and the Middle East has to wonder where the clarion call to liberty from the White House is.  It’s not there.

When will we hear the stirring words of support for those who have answered the call and in their own countries risked their lives and fortunes for a better future?  It’s not there.  And it’s not from this president, not from his cabinet.  There’s a deafening silence right now, apart from perhaps some quisling, whiny Carney remarks and some other stuff from the president that we don’t really need to hear.

Rule of thumb, whenever smarmy Jay Carney or Obama or anyone else in this administration says “let me be clear,” you know they’re about to make something up, lead you astray, obfuscate, change the subject, tell you something that you know is untrue.  The only thing clear about this administration’s foreign policy is that it’s been a total disaster and has reduced the United States into a prompter-reading paper tiger.

Now this begs the inevitable question, if no one is listening to the U.S. anymore, who is the leader of the free world?  Now, of course it should be our president, and yet Obama’s words and actions seem to indicate that he scoffs at that title.  He scorns the responsibilities it bears.  It’s as if he’s almost ashamed at the idea that America should lead the way.  Oh, too harsh?  Unfair?  People would say that, of course.  His cronies in the media will say that.  Not at all, this is a mere recognition of reality.

There were plenty of reasons to believe this before the last few months, but the debacle of the Syrian so small they can’t even feel it punitive strike, that’s just completely tipped the balance.  After a brief romance with the idea of Obama, nobody on the world stage even takes him seriously anymore.  Nobody who matters is listening to his droning, platitudinous prompter reading sessions.

His lack of clarity, character, and principle in foreign policy is blindingly obvious.  You don’t have to take my word for it.  Let’s go to the data.  A new Pew Research poll shows that America is now less powerful, less important, and less respected than when Obama took office.  Now that’s quite a feat, of course, considering that there wasn’t a whole lot of place to go except for up after George W. Bush’s low rating in the very same poll with the same question – some tough years for Bush at the end there.

But Obama has still managed to lower the bar, and once again, this week, right now, we’re seeing how that translates onto the world stage.  Let me focus on just for the time being one clash of liberty versus tyranny, one clash that is playing out as we speak.  Ukraine is on the verge of revolution.  What started out as just massive street protests against this government looks more and more like an all-out uprising. 

Now, here you see protesters, and they’re pulling down a statue of Lenin –

Yes!  That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?  Ukrainians are pulling down statues of Lenin, but if you listen to President Obama lately, it sounds like he might want to erect a few Lenin statues here, but I digress.

In Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, protesters have set up an encampment in the middle of Independence Square.  They’re building barricades throughout downtown.  They are hoarding brick, wood, and other debris in order to throw them at the police in a violent confrontation that could happen at any moment.  Riot police are gathering around them.  This could get very ugly, and it has implications far beyond the streets of Kiev.  That’s what we have to also focus on.

Ukraine is a country of 50 million people.  It’s a battlefield for much more than just a trade agreement.  I want to show you what I’m talking about over here on a map.  Sure, Putin bribed and pleaded and strong-armed to have Ukraine’s President Yanukovych side with Russia, a kleptocratic mafia state, mind you, over the EU.  That’s the short version of the facts, the basic facts of this case that you should know as you read the headlines, but under that surface there’s a much deeper conflict.  It’s really a continuation of the old Cold War battle lines.

Ukraine or the Ukraine, if you prefer, although most Ukrainians prefer Ukraine, means borderland.  You can see right here, it is literally and figuratively a borderland between East and West.  It sort of separates East from West, autocracy from liberty.  The Iron Curtain used to come right down here.  So it’s a battleground with two clear sides, those who want free markets and increased liberty and those who feel they would benefit from being a Russian cline state like Belarus right up here, basically a part of Russia.

The Iron Curtain may be gone, but the iron fist of Putin and his corrupt cronies, they can oppress and coerce and do whatever they want around here in Russia’s backyard, around these borders.  Now, boiled down to its essential parts, this fight in Ukraine is about freedom versus statism.  It’s really about Western democratic models versus the old authoritarian autocratic models.

Once you put it in those terms, it becomes very clear what needs to be done here.  This is a chance, a chance, for America to stand with liberty, with Western European rule of law, and for once teach that punk Putin yeah, a lesson in the bargain.  It’s about time.  He’s been smacking us around for months.  This is also a moment though for real statesmanship, for resolve, for leadership.

Even the imagery that we saw in Kiev, even the imagery that we’re seeing in Ukraine, that suggests something, doesn’t it?  It suggests the time is now.  This statue, by the way, this one here, this is a statue of Stalin that came down during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.  At first, the communist government fell, but the West did nothing, and then the Soviets at first were willing to negotiate, but then they decided to come in with tanks and crush the rebellion.  Thousands of people died, and the Hungarian people suffered under communism for decades after that.

The statue came down, but then what?  The stature in Ukraine has come down.  Now what?  For the Hungarians, by the way, who rose up in 1956, we know the West was nowhere to be seen despite their bravery on the streets.  And to nobody’s surprise today, the Obama administration is nowhere to be found.

I think the best we’ve done so far is a phone call from Vice President Joe Biden.  Ooh, I’m sure Putin and the rest are quaking in their boots.  Even when Putin makes audacious, freedom-crushing moves like he did today, he abolished the state news agency, RIA Novosti, and replaced it with a new agency designed to promote Moscow’s image abroad – he’s going global with that propaganda, baby, yeah – the president, our president, MIA on this, nothing to say while Putin is deciding to shut down media and propagate Russia’s worldview around the world.

But it’s not fair to say that President Obama hasn’t said anything about this.  I should take that back.  Scratch that one for the record, because we know that President Obama loves to give speeches, and we can find him at one of his propaganda rallies here at home peddling the same warmed-over Marxist class warfare rhetoric to the American people, anything to get them to think about something other than ObamaCare, which is canceling their health care plans and ripping their doctors away from them.

So yeah, Obama has plenty of things to say, things that you don’t want to hear but things like this:

VIDEO

President Obama:  They experience in a very personal way the relentless decades-long trend that I want to spend some time talking about today, and that is a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain, that if you work hard you have a chance to get ahead.  I believe this is the defining challenge of our time, making sure our economy works for every working American.  That’s why I ran for president.  It was the center of last year’s campaign.  It drives everything I do in this office.

Battling the evil inequality monster, what a noble and righteous goal.  Listening to these speeches should be considered a form of torture, I think, at this point.  But don’t you just hate it when someone is rewarded for working hard and being successful?  That creates or it can create a gap, something that’s bad.  We don’t like that because everyone should be the same, homogenized, generic, uniform, equal, communal.  Merit is a foreign concept to this president in many ways.  Look at how he explains American exceptionalism on the world stage.

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President Obama:  I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

I’m not sure about Greek exceptionalism these days.  They’re kind of bankrupt and in a whole lot of trouble, but you get the sense there President Obama really doesn’t think that America has any reason to think that it’s got anything to teach or share with the rest of the world because we’re all just equal partners in this whole crazy planet.  No wonder Americans feel America is less important and respected in the world.  Their own president is teaching them that.  He’s literally coming out and saying it.  We’re not putting words into his mouth, everybody is exceptional.

And when he isn’t downplaying America’s role in the world or apologizing for our past, he’s just outright debasing his position as commander-in-chief in some show of pseudo-intellectual cultural sensitivity.  What is that?  What is that?

You see, the free world is no longer cool to say.  We don’t want to make the not-free world feel bad, I guess, so you can hold your tears, Kim Jong-un.  No worries, bro.  It’s all good, ayatollahs.  We got your back.  It’s fine.  Everything’s going to be cool.  We’re all going to be friends.  Everybody gets a trophy.  Every country gets a trophy, and after all, no one is exceptional.  We’re all the same, so we should get the same trophy, the same size trophy.  Sounds good to me.

See, now we’ve actually switched a huge paradigm shift in our view of America versus the rest of the world, where we stand on the planet.  We’ve switched to a concept of the world community, commune, of course, tucked into that word.  Obama likes this term much better.  He doesn’t want to be all imperialistic and whatnot, but ironically the community organizer in chief doesn’t want to organize the world community.  He just wants to be yet another member of it.

In Obama’s ideal world, America and Argentina have the same things to say because well, why not?  I mean, we just have sort of the same power and authority and gravitas and heck, what do I know?  Now, it doesn’t have to be this way.  Maybe a better question is was it always this way?  You know the answer, of course it wasn’t always this way, but as a reminder of how a real leader of the free world, how a great leader used the moment, seized it, and tried to turn the tide of history in favor of freedom, let’s take a trip back in time, shall we?

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President Reagan:  There is one sign that the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.  General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate.  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

You see, Reagan got it.  He stared down the Soviets, and tens of millions of people had a chance at freedom, because when all was said and done, Reagan actually believed America was special, and that meant standing for others.  America was different.  It set an example, and it shone the light down the path to liberty for others to follow.

This core principle often referred to as exceptionalisn, that’s really just a dainty way though of saying what we really are, so let’s just get down to it.  We are the biggest, strongest, best force for freedom the world has ever known, America, us.  This is a truth that existed at the founding of our republic.  It’s a gift bequeathed to us by the Constitution, a country founded on the premise of liberty, if we could keep it of course. 

Now, this is all true irrespective of foreign policy.  It is a simple truth of what makes this America.  Now, Abraham Lincoln didn’t live in a globalized world.  He couldn’t call foreign leaders on cell phones.  He didn’t have an Air Force and a Navy that could respond to any crisis in hours if not minutes, but he understood something that this president does not.  He said it himself, “America is the last best hope of earth.”  

And it wasn’t about our place at the United Nations, which obviously didn’t exist at the time, and it wasn’t about our economic power.  It was about what America was meant to stand for from the beginning, liberty.  Now, we didn’t always live up to it.  We be honest about that always.  We fought bloody battles to achieve that ideal, and at different times it seemed we may have been lost, but we stood firm.  We pushed on, and there it remained rooted in the soul of this country.

But now it is not merely our liberty that is at stake.  Today, we drift slowly and surely into a post-American world.  It’s a digital dark ages, one in which aggressive authoritarian regimes harness 21st century technology to oppress their own people and intimidate their more liberal neighbors.  Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, those are really the most obvious offenders.  There are going to be others.  More will join along.

To borrow from this administration’s favorite phrase, let me be clear, Mr. President, if you don’t pick up the torch of liberty and sound the clarion call, tyranny will triumph.  If you continue in your apathy with the decline of freedom, you’ll have the distinct dishonor of being the first president in American history, even among the most progressive presidents like FDR, who didn’t have the backbone to call evil by its name.

As other nations cry for our help, for our friendship, or merely encouragement, those calls increasingly are unanswered because well, we wouldn’t want that darn inequality monster to rear its ugly head, would we?  We wouldn’t want another nation to feel bad about how it approaches the world.  That, Mr. President, is cowardice.  Is that clear enough for you? 

Perhaps the president will miraculously wake from his somnambulant state and realize we need to be as a country once again the leader of the free world.  For if not us, then who?  We are indeed the last hope, and we are running out of time.

URGENT: FIVE steps to CONTROL AI before it's too late!

MANAURE QUINTERO / Contributor | Getty Images

By now, many of us are familiar with AI and its potential benefits and threats. However, unless you're a tech tycoon, it can feel like you have little influence over the future of artificial intelligence.

For years, Glenn has warned about the dangers of rapidly developing AI technologies that have taken the world by storm.

He acknowledges their significant benefits but emphasizes the need to establish proper boundaries and ethics now, while we still have control. But since most people aren’t Silicon Valley tech leaders making the decisions, how can they help keep AI in check?

Recently, Glenn interviewed Tristan Harris, a tech ethicist deeply concerned about the potential harm of unchecked AI, to discuss its societal implications. Harris highlighted a concerning new piece of legislation proposed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. This legislation proposes a state-level moratorium on AI regulation, meaning only the federal government could regulate AI. Harris noted that there’s currently no Federal plan for regulating AI. Until the federal government establishes a plan, tech companies would have nearly free rein with their AI. And we all know how slowly the federal government moves.

This is where you come in. Tristan Harris shared with Glenn the top five actions you should urge your representatives to take regarding AI, including opposing the moratorium until a concrete plan is in place. Now is your chance to influence the future of AI. Contact your senator and congressman today and share these five crucial steps they must take to keep AI in check:

Ban engagement-optimized AI companions for kids

Create legislation that will prevent AI from being designed to maximize addiction, sexualization, flattery, and attachment disorders, and to protect young people’s mental health and ability to form real-life friendships.

Establish basic liability laws

Companies need to be held accountable when their products cause real-world harm.

Pass increased whistleblower protections

Protect concerned technologists working inside the AI labs from facing untenable pressures and threats that prevent them from warning the public when the AI rollout is unsafe or crosses dangerous red lines.

Prevent AI from having legal rights

Enact laws so AIs don’t have protected speech or have their own bank accounts, making sure our legal system works for human interests over AI interests.

Oppose the state moratorium on AI 

Call your congressman or Senator Cruz’s office, and demand they oppose the state moratorium on AI without a plan for how we will set guardrails for this technology.

Glenn: Only Trump dared to deliver on decades of empty promises

Tasos Katopodis / Stringer | Getty Images

The Islamic regime has been killing Americans since 1979. Now Trump’s response proves we’re no longer playing defense — we’re finally hitting back.

The United States has taken direct military action against Iran’s nuclear program. Whatever you think of the strike, it’s over. It’s happened. And now, we have to predict what happens next. I want to help you understand the gravity of this situation: what happened, what it means, and what might come next. To that end, we need to begin with a little history.

Since 1979, Iran has been at war with us — even if we refused to call it that.

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell.

It began with the hostage crisis, when 66 Americans were seized and 52 were held for over a year by the radical Islamic regime. Four years later, 17 more Americans were murdered in the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, followed by 241 Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing.

Then came the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 more U.S. airmen. Iran had its fingerprints all over it.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian-backed proxies killed hundreds of American soldiers. From 2001 to 2020 in Afghanistan and 2003 to 2011 in Iraq, Iran supplied IEDs and tactical support.

The Iranians have plotted assassinations and kidnappings on U.S. soil — in 2011, 2021, and again in 2024 — and yet we’ve never really responded.

The precedent for U.S. retaliation has always been present, but no president has chosen to pull the trigger until this past weekend. President Donald Trump struck decisively. And what our military pulled off this weekend was nothing short of extraordinary.

Operation Midnight Hammer

The strike was reportedly called Operation Midnight Hammer. It involved as many as 175 U.S. aircraft, including 12 B-2 stealth bombers — out of just 19 in our entire arsenal. Those bombers are among the most complex machines in the world, and they were kept mission-ready by some of the finest mechanics on the planet.

USAF / Handout | Getty Images

To throw off Iranian radar and intelligence, some bombers flew west toward Guam — classic misdirection. The rest flew east, toward the real targets.

As the B-2s approached Iranian airspace, U.S. submarines launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Iran’s fortified nuclear facilities. Minutes later, the bombers dropped 14 MOPs — massive ordnance penetrators — each designed to drill deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers. These bombs are the size of an F-16 and cost millions of dollars apiece. They are so accurate, I’ve been told they can hit the top of a soda can from 15,000 feet.

They were built for this mission — and we’ve been rehearsing this run for 15 years.

If the satellite imagery is accurate — and if what my sources tell me is true — the targeted nuclear sites were utterly destroyed. We’ll likely rely on the Israelis to confirm that on the ground.

This was a master class in strategy, execution, and deterrence. And it proved that only the United States could carry out a strike like this. I am very proud of our military, what we are capable of doing, and what we can accomplish.

What comes next

We don’t yet know how Iran will respond, but many of the possibilities are troubling. The Iranians could target U.S. forces across the Middle East. On Monday, Tehran launched 20 missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar, Syria, and Kuwait, to no effect. God forbid, they could also unleash Hezbollah or other terrorist proxies to strike here at home — and they just might.

Iran has also threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the artery through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil flows. On Sunday, Iran’s parliament voted to begin the process. If the Supreme Council and the ayatollah give the go-ahead, we could see oil prices spike to $150 or even $200 a barrel.

That would be catastrophic.

The 2008 financial collapse was pushed over the edge when oil hit $130. Western economies — including ours — simply cannot sustain oil above $120 for long. If this conflict escalates and the Strait is closed, the global economy could unravel.

The strike also raises questions about regime stability. Will it spark an uprising, or will the Islamic regime respond with a brutal crackdown on dissidents?

Early signs aren’t hopeful. Reports suggest hundreds of arrests over the weekend and at least one dissident executed on charges of spying for Israel. The regime’s infamous morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, are back on the streets. Every phone, every vehicle — monitored. The U.S. embassy in Qatar issued a shelter-in-place warning for Americans.

Russia and China both condemned the strike. On Monday, a senior Iranian official flew to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. That meeting should alarm anyone paying attention. Their alliance continues to deepen — and that’s a serious concern.

Now we pray

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell. But either way, President Trump didn’t start this. He inherited it — and he took decisive action.

The difference is, he did what they all said they would do. He didn’t send pallets of cash in the dead of night. He didn’t sign another failed treaty.

He acted. Now, we pray. For peace, for wisdom, and for the strength to meet whatever comes next.


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Globalize the Intifada? Why Mamdani’s plan spells DOOM for America

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

If New Yorkers hand City Hall to Zohran Mamdani, they’re not voting for change. They’re opening the door to an alliance of socialism, Islamism, and chaos.

It only took 25 years for New York City to go from the resilient, flag-waving pride following the 9/11 attacks to a political fever dream. To quote Michael Malice, “I'm old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”

Malice is talking about Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens now eyeing the mayor’s office. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state representative emerging from relative political obscurity, is now receiving substantial funding for his mayoral campaign from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR has a long and concerning history, including being born out of the Muslim Brotherhood and named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. Why would the group have dropped $100,000 into a PAC backing Mamdani’s campaign?

Mamdani blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone.

Perhaps CAIR has a vested interest in Mamdani’s call to “globalize the intifada.” That’s not a call for peaceful protest. Intifada refers to historic uprisings of Muslims against what they call the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Suicide bombings and street violence are part of the playbook. So when Mamdani says he wants to “globalize” that, who exactly is the enemy in this global scenario? Because it sure sounds like he's saying America is the new Israel, and anyone who supports Western democracy is the new Zionist.

Mamdani tried to clean up his language by citing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which once used “intifada” in an Arabic-language article to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So now he’s comparing Palestinians to Jewish victims of the Nazis? If that doesn’t twist your stomach into knots, you’re not paying attention.

If you’re “globalizing” an intifada, and positioning Israel — and now America — as the Nazis, that’s not a cry for human rights. That’s a call for chaos and violence.

Rising Islamism

But hey, this is New York. Faculty members at Columbia University — where Mamdani’s own father once worked — signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas after October 7. They also contributed to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. And his father? He blamed Ronald Reagan and the religious right for inspiring Islamic terrorism, as if the roots of 9/11 grew in Washington, not the caves of Tora Bora.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

This isn’t about Islam as a faith. We should distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a religion followed peacefully by millions. Islamism is something entirely different — an ideology that seeks to merge mosque and state, impose Sharia law, and destroy secular liberal democracies from within. Islamism isn’t about prayer and fasting. It’s about power.

Criticizing Islamism is not Islamophobia. It is not an attack on peaceful Muslims. In fact, Muslims are often its first victims.

Islamism is misogynistic, theocratic, violent, and supremacist. It’s hostile to free speech, religious pluralism, gay rights, secularism — even to moderate Muslims. Yet somehow, the progressive left — the same left that claims to fight for feminism, LGBTQ rights, and free expression — finds itself defending candidates like Mamdani. You can’t make this stuff up.

Blending the worst ideologies

And if that weren’t enough, Mamdani also identifies as a Democratic Socialist. He blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone. But don’t worry, New York. I’m sure this time socialism will totally work. Just like it always didn’t.

If you’re a business owner, a parent, a person who’s saved anything, or just someone who values sanity: Get out. I’m serious. If Mamdani becomes mayor, as seems likely, then New York City will become a case study in what happens when you marry ideological extremism with political power. And it won’t be pretty.

This is about more than one mayoral race. It’s about the future of Western liberalism. It’s about drawing a bright line between faith and fanaticism, between healthy pluralism and authoritarian dogma.

Call out radicalism

We must call out political Islam the same way we call out white nationalism or any other supremacist ideology. When someone chants “globalize the intifada,” that should send a chill down your spine — whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, or anything in between.

The left may try to shame you into silence with words like “Islamophobia,” but the record is worn out. The grooves are shallow. The American people see what’s happening. And we’re not buying it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Could China OWN our National Parks?

Jonathan Newton / Contributor | Getty Images

The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images

Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.