Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been an imperfect man, but God made him a leader

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Below is a transcript of Glenn's opening monologue

The year was 1900, when a poet, not a famous poet at the time, his name was James Weldon Johnson, wrote this song, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing. It became hugely popular in the black community, and its author, years and years later, became the organizer, the national organizer, for the NAACP.

This song became the Negro national anthem. That’s what people called it. It’s a song that I had never heard of until Alveda King taught it to me. I love this song, because it’s not a song about oppression. It’s a song about the “harmonies” of liberty. It’s not about raising our voice in anger or marching in the streets angry and burning things down. It’s about letting our rejoicing rise and letting it resound loud as the rolling sea, to quote the poem.

It’s a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, a song full of hope that the present has brought us. It was written at a time when we all still agreed on the good guys and the bad guys. This was written in 1900. It wasn’t written as the black national anthem, but it was written to commemorate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, the American Moses.

Here we sit on Martin Luther King Day, a day that should unite us, but I fear now in today’s America it divides us. Last week, I saw Oprah Winfrey’s movie Selma. I said that it was critical that every American go see it. The media seemed surprised by that statement. I don’t know why. Is it because I favor smaller government? Is it because I believe in personal responsibility? Why?

Martin Luther King is an exceptional American hero that belongs to all of us. He is our modern-day Abraham Lincoln, our modern-day Moses, delivering people from slavery. As we were planning the show today, I thought about all of the bizarre emails that I have seen and the bizarre Facebook posts that I have seen—very few. I am really proud to say very few, but enough, enough—the people who said, “How could you possibly like Martin Luther King?” And some of this I get, because the smear on him being a Communist. I don’t know if he was a Communist or not.

I don’t believe anybody about Martin Luther King. I don’t believe his family anymore on Martin Luther King. He is a business. Do you know that they couldn’t use the words of Martin Luther King in the movie because the Martin Luther King words are now copywritten, and you just can’t use them? There’s too much money involved, and I know that people have put words in my mouth or taken the words that I have said and twisted them so much I could look like anybody as well, and I’m still alive, so I’m not going to believe anybody.

I’ll talk to Martin when I get upstairs and I see him. But there are also people who say he’s not upstairs because he was a philanderer, you know? Yeah, he was. He was. He cheated on his wife, a really bad thing, which makes me wonder at first, thinking out loud, how could God use somebody like that? Pretty easily.

I think we all have our roles to play, and we all have opportunities, and there comes a time that we either step to the plate or we don’t. Most people don’t. Most people can talk a good game, but most people don’t. It’s those people who are the most comfortable. It’s those people who are the leaders who have the most to lose that usually don’t, because they’re comfortable.

It’s like the rich man that came to see Jesus. That story is not about his money. That story is about the guy coming in and saying “Don’t you guys know who I am?” Please, apostles, can’t you tell this Jesus cat who I am? I can help him here. I’ve got connections. I have power. I have influence. I have money. They’re going to kill him. And what does Jesus say? Go, leave all your stuff, come follow me.

I see that story as the guy looking again to the apostles and saying, “What the hell is wrong with this guy? Tell him who I am. I can help him.” How many people did God go to before Martin Luther King? They were like no, I’m not going to do that. That’s crazy. Listen to me. I can do this. I can do this. I have power. I have influence. As imperfect as MLK was, cheating on his wife, he at least said yes, I’ll pay the price. How many people said no before he got to that guy?

I want to talk to you about a cartoon world, not a real world, cartoon world, full of cartoon people. I’m a cartoon person. You’re a cartoon person. Black people are cartoon people. The people on the border coming across, they’re cartoon people. Everybody’s a cartoon person, and if you look at the world as cartoon people, black and white people, well, a cartoon white person will see the cartoon black person as somebody who’s lazy, who wants to steal, who lives off the state, right?

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That’s the cartoon black person according to a cartoon white person, and the cartoon black person sees the cartoon white person as the oppressor, as a fat cat who is a Klan member, who’s an elitist, who never sees anything. That’s the cartoon world. No, I take that back. That’s the political world. That’s what we’re being taught. Listen to that—that’s what we’re being taught.

Instead, if we were just brave enough, if we were just quiet enough, if we were just humble enough, if we were just willing to see each other as we really are, we would see that we’re none of those things. We’re humans. We’re moms. We’re dads. We’re brothers. We’re sisters. We’re sons and daughters. We’re all alike. All men are created equal, and so we have the same basic hopes and dreams.

We’re not living in a Henry Ford world where everybody wants the same thing. Henry Ford, you could have whatever car you wanted as long as it was black. It took Chevy to come by and say I think people want more variety than that. There’s a lot of stuff we’re never going to agree on. We’re always going to vote differently. We’re always going to have different policies and politics. We’re always going to like different styles, different hamburgers. We’re all going to be different, always. It’s the way we’re supposed to be, but there’s a few things that we have in common.

I don’t know how to teach this. We all in the end want the same thing. We all want to belong to something bigger than ourselves, something good, something great. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I want to be mediocre for the rest of my life.” None of us as kids said, “I want to be a zero. I want to be somebody that nobody notices.” All of us want to be noticed. All of us want to do something great. All of us want to have true love.

How many people are in dead-end marriages? I don’t care what their color is. How many people are in dead-end marriages or in dead-end relationships where you’re just like, “This isn’t it, man,” but you’re afraid. You’re in that relationship. You’re not going to get out of that relationship because you’re afraid that that’s as good as it’s going to get. That’s a lie.

We all want control of our own life. We don’t want to be manipulated. We just want some control. We want to know that justice is real. We’re willing to take the hard knocks. We know that justice isn’t served all the time. We don’t always get what we want. We don’t always get what we deserve, but in the end, the good guys win.

We all want peace. We all want our kids to work together and to play together. What am I telling you? I’m telling you Martin Luther King’s dream. Martin Luther King wouldn’t have been effective if what he wanted, what he articulated on those steps that I was not allowed to stand on—I wouldn’t have done it anyway, but I was told by the government I can’t stand on those steps to deliver my message when I was in Washington. A month later, a black man, Van Jones, stood on those steps and delivered a message of politics.

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When he stood on those steps, he articulated something that touched the heart of all of us, anybody with an open heart, something we all wanted. It’s this. Think about this message, not in today’s world, in the 1960s. Think of this—I am a man. What is that? What I just told you, we’re all the same. We want to be seen. We want to be heard. We want a fair shake.

He didn’t say I want stuff; I want equal stuff in my house that that guy has. That’s not what the message was. It was give me a chance. Let me prove myself. I might be the most naïve man alive. I believe this. I believe the only thing that is stopping us is our faith in one another. All we see is the cartoon of the other person.

I don’t know how many people are watching this or will see this clip and will say, “Listen to Glenn Beck. Who the hell does he think he is?” Nobody…nobody…probably the worst messenger that could bring this to you. I know that. A lot of people hate me. A lot of people think that I’m a racist. I got it. I got it. I guess some of it is deserved if we live in a world where you think out loud, and that is wrong, where you question authority. That’s wrong, but none of it was intentional. But it doesn’t matter.

I don’t care who you are, I think we’re a lot alike. I’m a guy that is a dad who is just trying to figure out what’s happening to our society. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m sorry, I don’t believe what the president said over the holidays that race relations are getting better. They’re not. They’re not. I know people who have never said anything ever about race relations ever, have never had a problem, who are now starting to say, “What the hell is going on in Ferguson? People are just trying to steal stuff.” They’re becoming the cartoon people. That’s got to stop.

We’ve made progress. It’s disintegrating in front of our eyes, and no matter what happens, it will disintegrate if we don’t stand, if we don’t say no, no, no, no, not going down, I’m not going to have that earth crumble beneath my feet. I won’t. We’ve never been perfect. Since the beginning of time, nobody’s ever been perfect. It’s never happened. Read your history. People have been enslaving people, whipping people, treating people like garbage forever. I got it. We’re never going to get past that. Why? It’s not a black thing or a white thing or a yellow thing or a brown thing or a red thing. It’s a human thing. Humans stink on ice. God is great.

Is there anybody else that looks around the world and says, “Where is Martin Luther King today? Where is Winston Churchill today?” Anybody else besides me say that? Because I don’t see them. I’ve looked. I’ve spent ten years. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had on my show—maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s you. Can I help you? How can I hold your arms up? Here, let me help you. Can I help you? Let me expose you. Please, maybe it’s you.

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Maybe it’s you. Can I help you? Can I hold your arms up? Maybe it’s your children. My kids don’t have school today. Today is the day I want them to have school. I told my kids when I left this morning, I want you to tell me who Martin Luther King is when I come home. Tell me who he is. He was a real. The problems in this country were horrible. They’re not that way now. Are they perfect? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Are they getting better? No.

I saw the play South Pacific on Broadway a few years ago. I had never seen it. My mother used to always sing it, and I used to hate it. Oh my gosh, that’s a powerful play. It’s all about racism. There’s a song in it that says you have to be carefully taught. To hate like that, you have to be carefully taught. Don’t you see in all of society we are being carefully taught?

Whether it’s the Al Sharptons, Jesse Jackson, the Klansmen, the anarchists, whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s on all sides. All sides are doing it. We’re being carefully taught. Can we look past it?

Again, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so I have no place to talk here, and then again, I think I’m the perfect guy to tell you, because I didn’t grow up with all of this crap, and that’s all it is, it’s crap. It’s all crap that we keep inside, and it’s rotting us from the inside. I’m blessed that I didn’t grow up with all of this crap. I’m happy, but I look at my country and I look at my fellow countrymen and I’m like, “What is wrong with you people?”

Oh my gosh, they’re black. Oh my gosh, they’re white. Get over it. We just don’t speak the same language, that’s it. We all speak English, but not quite. I happen to believe for millions of Americans, especially those under 30, the Martin Luther King dream has been realized. For the most part, it has been realized. We work together. We play together. We marry each other. We love each other.

Martin Luther King talked about all of this as a mountain, a mountain to climb. Why? Because it’s hard work. Man, I posted something last night on Facebook that, I mean, I saw the haters come out—Oh my gosh, look at Glenn Beck, such a poser. Whatever, shut up. You don’t know me.

There’s a dear, sweet woman in my life who has adopted me as her son, and I have adopted her as my mom, but it started out with her hating my guts. I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. She didn’t watch. She didn’t listen. She only read what was written about me, and she hated me. She’s black. She thought I was a racist, and when God told her to pray for me, she did not want to.

She told me later, she said to God, “No, not him.” About a year later, she went to Dallas Cowboy Stadium for Restoring Love, and she said she cracked open, and she saw me for the first time. Several months later, it was on a Sunday night, she came to my house. I didn’t know this whole story. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know that she had spent years hating my guts, but she came to apologize to me, a woman of profound integrity.

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Her name is Falma. She was at my house last night with a group of friends. What the headlines are saying today is Glenn Beck had a Martin Luther King celebration at his house. No, I didn’t. I had friends over at my house who happen to be gospel singers, and they come over, and they sing, and we pray together, and we have food together, and it’s great.

But last night, we were sitting there having barbecue in my kitchen. There are about 25 of us, and we started talking about the civil rights movement. They had just seen Selma, and Falma had lived through it. She remembered what it was like to be a young black girl in the 1960s in the South. Watch.

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Falma: During the 60s, and Martin Luther King was talking about his peaceful marches and his protesters. In school, we all wanted to do it. You know, we loved him. You know, we loved him back then. We loved him back then more than the people love him now, but it was exciting just to know that this man wants to change things. We didn’t know the logistics. We didn’t know it was about voting. We didn’t know what it was about. We just knew we liked him.

All of the South was full of racism, and when I was growing up as a little girl, we had gotten accustomed to the white-only fountain, the white-only entrances. You know, when you’re growing up, you don’t notice things. There’s a system in place, so to speak, and what I did notice was that my mother took us downtown to take pictures one day. I was like maybe nine or ten, and she took us to take pictures.

Well, we had to get on the trolley, and we actually had to wait for the guy to get off the trolley, turn it around so that we would be seated in the back.

Well, actually, we lived in a neighborhood, and next door to our house was a bakery, a very small bakery, and we would go there and buy bread and stuff. You could buy it real cheap, $0.25. My sisters were on the back porch. It was a screened-in porch. The owner had employed a black man, and when he employed this black man, I came home, and they said, “Oh, it’s going to happen again. He’s going to do it again.”

And I’m looking at them, and I’m going, “Do what? What is he going to do?” And they’re saying, “He’s going to do it again. Let’s go see.” So, they had seen it before. The black man had done whatever he had done wrong, and this man, the owner, pulled off his belt, and he actually beat him.

We’re standing there looking at it, and I’ll never forget the look on that man’s…the black man’s face. It was shame, because we saw it. It probably wouldn’t have affected me if I hadn’t seen his eyes, because it was total shame.

Trump's proposal explained: Ukraine's path to peace without NATO expansion

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / Contributor | Getty Images

Strategic compromise, not absolute victory, often ensures lasting stability.

When has any country been asked to give up land it won in a war? Even if a nation is at fault, the punishment must be measured.

After World War I, Germany, the main aggressor, faced harsh penalties under the Treaty of Versailles. Germans resented the restrictions, and that resentment fueled the rise of Adolf Hitler, ultimately leading to World War II. History teaches that justice for transgressions must avoid creating conditions for future conflict.

Ukraine and Russia must choose to either continue the cycle of bloodshed or make difficult compromises in pursuit of survival and stability.

Russia and Ukraine now stand at a similar crossroads. They can cling to disputed land and prolong a devastating war, or they can make concessions that might secure a lasting peace. The stakes could not be higher: Tens of thousands die each month, and the choice between endless bloodshed and negotiated stability hinges on each side’s willingness to yield.

History offers a guide. In 1967, Israel faced annihilation. Surrounded by hostile armies, the nation fought back and seized large swaths of territory from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Yet Israel did not seek an empire. It held only the buffer zones needed for survival and returned most of the land. Security and peace, not conquest, drove its decisions.

Peace requires concessions

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says both Russia and Ukraine will need to “get something” from a peace deal. He’s right. Israel proved that survival outweighs pride. By giving up land in exchange for recognition and an end to hostilities, it stopped the cycle of war. Egypt and Israel have not fought in more than 50 years.

Russia and Ukraine now press opposing security demands. Moscow wants a buffer to block NATO. Kyiv, scarred by invasion, seeks NATO membership — a pledge that any attack would trigger collective defense by the United States and Europe.

President Donald Trump and his allies have floated a middle path: an Article 5-style guarantee without full NATO membership. Article 5, the core of NATO’s charter, declares that an attack on one is an attack on all. For Ukraine, such a pledge would act as a powerful deterrent. For Russia, it might be more palatable than NATO expansion to its border

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

Peace requires concessions. The human cost is staggering: U.S. estimates indicate 20,000 Russian soldiers died in a single month — nearly half the total U.S. casualties in Vietnam — and the toll on Ukrainians is also severe. To stop this bloodshed, both sides need to recognize reality on the ground, make difficult choices, and anchor negotiations in security and peace rather than pride.

Peace or bloodshed?

Both Russia and Ukraine claim deep historical grievances. Ukraine arguably has a stronger claim of injustice. But the question is not whose parchment is older or whose deed is more valid. The question is whether either side is willing to trade some land for the lives of thousands of innocent people. True security, not historical vindication, must guide the path forward.

History shows that punitive measures or rigid insistence on territorial claims can perpetuate cycles of war. Germany’s punishment after World War I contributed directly to World War II. By contrast, Israel’s willingness to cede land for security and recognition created enduring peace. Ukraine and Russia now face the same choice: Continue the cycle of bloodshed or make difficult compromises in pursuit of survival and stability.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The loneliness epidemic: Are machines replacing human connection?

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Seniors, children, and the isolated increasingly rely on machines for conversation, risking real relationships and the emotional depth that only humans provide.

Jill Smola is 75 years old. She’s a retiree from Orlando, Florida, and she spent her life caring for the elderly. She played games, assembled puzzles, and offered company to those who otherwise would have sat alone.

Now, she sits alone herself. Her husband has died. She has a lung condition. She can’t drive. She can’t leave her home. Weeks can pass without human interaction.

Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

But CBS News reports that she has a new companion. And she likes this companion more than her own daughter.

The companion? Artificial intelligence.

She spends five hours a day talking to her AI friend. They play games, do trivia, and just talk. She says she even prefers it to real people.

My first thought was simple: Stop this. We are losing our humanity.

But as I sat with the story, I realized something uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve already lost some of our humanity — not to AI, but to ourselves.

Outsourcing presence

How often do we know the right thing to do yet fail to act? We know we should visit the lonely. We know we should sit with someone in pain. We know what Jesus would do: Notice the forgotten, touch the untouchable, offer time and attention without outsourcing compassion.

Yet how often do we just … talk about it? On the radio, online, in lectures, in posts. We pontificate, and then we retreat.

I asked myself: What am I actually doing to close the distance between knowing and doing?

Human connection is messy. It’s inconvenient. It takes patience, humility, and endurance. AI doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t interrupt your day. It doesn’t ask anything of you. Real people do. Real people make us confront our pride, our discomfort, our loneliness.

We’ve built an economy of convenience. We can have groceries delivered, movies streamed, answers instantly. But friendships — real relationships — are slow, inefficient, unpredictable. They happen in the blank spaces of life that we’ve been trained to ignore.

And now we’re replacing that inefficiency with machines.

AI provides comfort without challenge. It eliminates the risk of real intimacy. It’s an elegant coping mechanism for loneliness, but a poor substitute for life. If we’re not careful, the lonely won’t just be alone — they’ll be alone with an anesthetic, a shadow that never asks for anything, never interrupts, never makes them grow.

Reclaiming our humanity

We need to reclaim our humanity. Presence matters. Not theory. Not outrage. Action.

It starts small. Pull up a chair for someone who eats alone. Call a neighbor you haven’t spoken to in months. Visit a nursing home once a month — then once a week. Ask their names, hear their stories. Teach your children how to be present, to sit with someone in grief, without rushing to fix it.

Turn phones off at dinner. Make Sunday afternoons human time. Listen. Ask questions. Don’t post about it afterward. Make the act itself sacred.

Humility is central. We prefer machines because we can control them. Real people are inconvenient. They interrupt our narratives. They demand patience, forgiveness, and endurance. They make us confront ourselves.

A friend will challenge your self-image. A chatbot won’t.

Our homes are quieter. Our streets are emptier. Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

Before we worry about how AI will reshape humanity, we must first practice humanity. It can start with 15 minutes a day of undivided attention, presence, and listening.

Change usually comes when pain finally wins. Let’s not wait for that. Let’s start now. Because real connection restores faster than any machine ever will.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Exposed: The radical Left's bloody rampage against America

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For years, the media warned of right-wing terror. But the bullets, bombs, and body bags are piling up on the left — with support from Democrat leaders and voters.

For decades, the media and federal agencies have warned Americans that the greatest threat to our homeland is the political right — gun-owning veterans, conservative Christians, anyone who ever voted for President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden once declared that white supremacy is “the single most dangerous terrorist threat” in the nation.

Since Trump’s re-election, the rhetoric has only escalated. Outlets like the Washington Post and the Guardian warned that his second term would trigger a wave of far-right violence.

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing.

They were wrong.

The real domestic threat isn’t coming from MAGA grandmas or rifle-toting red-staters. It’s coming from the radical left — the anarchists, the Marxists, the pro-Palestinian militants, and the anti-American agitators who have declared war on law enforcement, elected officials, and civil society.

Willful blindness

On July 4, a group of black-clad terrorists ambushed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado, Texas. They hurled fireworks at the building, spray-painted graffiti, and then opened fire on responding law enforcement, shooting a local officer in the neck. Journalist Andy Ngo has linked the attackers to an Antifa cell in the Dallas area.

Authorities have so far charged 14 people in the plot and recovered AR-style rifles, body armor, Kevlar vests, helmets, tactical gloves, and radios. According to the Department of Justice, this was a “planned ambush with intent to kill.”

And it wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a growing pattern of continuous violent left-wing incidents since December last year.

Monthly attacks

Most notably, in December 2024, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan. Mangione reportedly left a manifesto raging against the American health care system and was glorified by some on social media as a kind of modern Robin Hood.

One Emerson College poll found that 41% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 said the murder was “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.”

The next month, a man carrying Molotov cocktails was arrested near the U.S. Capitol. He allegedly planned to assassinate Trump-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

In February, the “Tesla Takedown” attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships started picking up traction.

In March, a self-described “queer scientist” was arrested after allegedly firebombing the Republican Party headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Graffiti on the burned building read “ICE = KKK.”

In April, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-Pa.) official residence was firebombed on Passover night. The suspect allegedly set the governor’s mansion on fire because of what Shapiro, who is Jewish, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

In May, two young Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Witnesses said the shooter shouted “Free Palestine” as he was being arrested. The suspect told police he acted “for Gaza” and was reportedly linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

In June, an Egyptian national who had entered the U.S. illegally allegedly threw a firebomb at a peaceful pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado. Eight people were hospitalized, and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor later died from her injuries.

That same month, a pro-Palestinian rioter in New York was arrested for allegedly setting fire to 11 police vehicles. In Los Angeles, anti-ICE rioters smashed cars, set fires, and hurled rocks at law enforcement. House Democrats refused to condemn the violence.

Barbara Davidson / Contributor | Getty Images

In Portland, Oregon, rioters tried to burn down another ICE facility and assaulted police officers before being dispersed with tear gas. Graffiti left behind read: “Kill your masters.”

On July 7, a Michigan man opened fire on a Customs and Border Protection facility in McAllen, Texas, wounding two police officers and an agent. Border agents returned fire, killing the suspect.

Days later in California, ICE officers conducting a raid on an illegal cannabis farm in Ventura County were attacked by left-wing activists. One protester appeared to fire at federal agents.

This is not a series of isolated incidents. It’s a timeline of escalation. Political assassinations, firebombings, arson, ambushes — all carried out in the name of radical leftist ideology.

Democrats are radicalizing

This isn’t just the work of fringe agitators. It’s being enabled — and in many cases encouraged — by elected Democrats.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz routinely calls ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attempted to block an ICE operation in her city. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu compared ICE agents to a neo-Nazi group. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson referred to them as “secret police terrorizing our communities.”

Apparently, other Democratic lawmakers, according to Axios, are privately troubled by their own base. One unnamed House Democrat admitted that supporters were urging members to escalate further: “Some of them have suggested what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.” Others were demanding blood in the streets to get the media’s attention.

A study from Rutgers University and the National Contagion Research Institute found that 55% of Americans who identify as “left of center” believe that murdering Donald Trump would be at least “somewhat justified.”

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing. They don’t want the chaos to stop. They want to harness it, normalize it, and weaponize it.

The truth is, this isn’t just about ICE. It’s not even about Trump. It’s about whether a republic can survive when one major party decides that our institutions no longer apply.

Truth still matters. Law and order still matter. And if the left refuses to defend them, then we must be the ones who do.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

America's comeback: Trump is crushing crime in the Capitol

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

Trump’s DC crackdown is about more than controlling crime — it’s about restoring America’s strength and credibility on the world stage.

Donald Trump on Monday invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control and deploying the National Guard to restore law and order. This move is long overdue.

D.C.’s crime problem has been spiraling for years as local authorities and Democratic leadership have abandoned the nation’s capital to the consequences of their own failed policies. The city’s murder rate is about three times higher than that of Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than that of communist-led Havana, Cuba.

When DC is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak.

Theft, assaults, and carjackings have transformed many of its streets into war zones. D.C. saw a 32% increase in homicides from 2022 to 2023, marking the highest number in two decades and surpassing both New York and Los Angeles. Even if crime rates dropped to 2019 levels, that wouldn’t be good enough.

Local leaders have downplayed the crisis, manipulating crime stats to preserve their image. Felony assault, for example, is no longer considered a “violent crime” in their crime stats. Same with carjacking. But the reality on the streets is different. People in D.C. are living in constant fear.

Trump isn’t waiting for the crime rate to improve on its own. He’s taking action.

Broken windows theory in action

Trump’s takeover of D.C. puts the “broken windows theory” into action — the idea that ignoring minor crimes invites bigger ones. When authorities look the other way on turnstile-jumping or graffiti, they signal that lawbreaking carries no real consequence.

Rudy Giuliani used this approach in the 1990s to clean up New York, cracking down on small offenses before they escalated. Trump is doing the same in the capital, drawing a hard line and declaring enough is enough. Letting crime fester in Washington tells the world that the seat of American power tolerates lawlessness.

What Trump is doing for D.C. isn’t just about law enforcement — it’s about national identity. When D.C. is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak. The capital city represents the soul of the country. If we can’t even keep our own capital safe, how can we expect anyone to take us seriously?

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Reversing the decline

Anyone who has visited D.C. regularly over the past several years has witnessed its rapid decline. Homeless people bathe in the fountains outside Union Station. People are tripping out in Dupont Circle. The left’s negligence is a disgrace, enabling drug use and homelessness to explode on our capital’s streets while depriving these individuals of desperately needed care and help.

Restoring law and order to D.C. is not about politics or scoring points. It’s about doing what’s right for the people. It’s about protecting communities, taking the vulnerable off the streets, and sending the message to both law-abiding and law-breaking citizens alike that the rule of law matters.

D.C. should be a lesson to the rest of America. If we want to take our cities back, we need leadership willing to take bold action. Trump is showing how to do it.

Now, it’s time for other cities to step up and follow his lead. We can restore law and order. We can make our cities something to be proud of again.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.