Did Muslims play a role in the founding of the country? Here's what David Barton found...

Has Islam been woven into the fabric of the country since it was founded? That's what President Obama tried to say in a conference on countering violent extremism. Glenn couldn't believe it, so he invited the expert on the Founders: David Barton.

 

Read the rush transcript below:

GLENN: We heard from the president yesterday that from the very beginning of our country, Islam has been woven into the fabric of our nation. The founders were, of course, huge.

PAT: Oh, my gosh. All of them were --

GLENN: Fifty-two of the 56 signers --

PAT: Like 19 were Muslim clerics. And 52 were full-on Muslim.

GLENN: Yeah. David Barton is here to fill us with his no-they-weren't-all-Muslim lies. Welcome to the program, David.

DAVID: Hey, guys. So glad we're going to talk. This is great.

GLENN: So when you heard the president say yesterday that from the very foundation of our nation, Islam has been critical and integral to our founding and our nation, what were your thoughts?

DAVID: Oh, I just expected it. I laughed. It was really pretty ridiculous. I have since then actually tried -- because in all the reading I've done, you know, thousands of books, there's nothing there. You and I know some of the stuff that's out there, I mean, we know that Muslims were the folks who captured the slaves sent to America largely out of Africa. The Dutch would hall anything they were given. They were traders. The Muslims who did the slave hunting and the slave trading, et cetera. The first Muslims came to America as a result of the Muslims capturing them and sending them to the Dutch traders. We know beyond that we had a 32-year war with Muslims. At first American edition of the Koran, the editors said, you guys have to read this. This is crazy stuff. You'll understand why we've had 32 years of war with these nuts. I mean, those exactly are contributions that would jump to mind. That's about all you can point to back then. So I spent a little bit of time to look up.

If you go to a website called Islam101.com and look at the contribution of Islams to America. I'm telling you, bro, we're really sparse here. 1732. Here's a contribution of a Muslim to America. 1732, a Muslim is set free by James Oglethorpe, who is the founder of Georgia. He's set free and given passage to England. That's what they consider a contribution to America.

1790. It says, well, Muslims are known to be living in Florida. Oh, yeah, that's a Spanish possession of Florida. And Moorish Muslims occupied Spain, so no surprise there.

Then, 1807, it says a Muslim is set free. He buys shares in a bank. Now, we have someone who actually bought stock in America.

PAT: Now, you're talking -- this is really woven into the fabric.

GLENN: When was the stock purchase?

DAVID: 1807.

GLENN: Okay.

DAVID: I have two more for you. Here's another one. In 1828, the governor of South Carolina, soon to be governor, John Owen, actually visited a Muslim in jail and took him to his plantation. That's another Muslim contribution. Add it to the governor. Here's what I love. This is actually kind of fun.

In 1856, the American military is engaged in all sorts of Indian wars in western lands. They're trying innovative new things, and the secretary of war at that time was Jefferson Davis. Five years later, he would become part of the secession and the president of the Confederacy. But at that time, he's secretary of war. What they did was they hired a Muslim to raise camels in Arizona because the cavalry said, you know, instead of using horses across the desert, let's try these camels. So across the southern part of the country, across Arizona and Mexico, Texas, the cavalry actually used camels at that point in time. So they hired a Muslim to raise camels. That's a contribution of Muslims to America.

GLENN: This is the fabric. I mean, it's practical the whole blanket.

PAT: Yeah. Well, so we were confused because the story of Jefferson's Koran, Salon.com says he had that 16 years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

GLENN: And we had always heard, David, that he had asked, who are these Muslims, what do they want? That's when somebody said you have to read the Koran. And he said, can you get me a copy? And he sent over to England for a copy. Which is true?

DAVID: Well, some of both. I mean, he was particularly interested in it. Once he had the idea of, know your enemy. I mean, who are these guys? Because he's one of the first three American diplomats to have to negotiate with Muslim terrorists. So he was really interested at that point. But like most other people in that day, they read most -- from a politics standpoint, you want to know what other people believe so you can argue your own case. So it was not unusual at all to be familiar with the writings of Muslims, to be familiar with the writings of Hindus or others. They studied other religions. If you want to -- they had comparative religions. And that helped them better know what they believed about their own faith and how to talk to those of other faiths. So that's not at all incompatible with Jefferson or that day.

Now, the real interest came when he had to start negotiating with them, and now I have to take this stuff a lot more seriously. It was an academic inquiry before, but now this is a policy matter now. So it's really some of both that goes with it. It's a 1746 copy of the Koran that he got from London.

So that's much earlier. But at the same time it was one of those apologetic things that you learned in academics back then. Part of what they did.

GLENN: And he was just very far ahead in looking in all religions. If the Dalai Lama had been around at the time, he would have had dinner with the Dalai Lama, and he wouldn't have brought him behind the house with the Dumpster.

DAVID: It was not unusual. That was very much an academic practice back then. Academics looked at other religions, other faiths, other countries, other beliefs, and they talked about that, even in the Constitution. We've looked at every other republic that's out there to see how their government works so we know what works and what doesn't. So you have these guys writing about Muslims early on because they want to know what people believe and what it did to their culture their practice, their behavior, et cetera. Jefferson is one of many guys. Not unusual to look at other religions. That was a standard practice for most of the founders.

PAT: Did you say he obtained his copy in 1746. He would have been three years old?

DAVID: No. The Koran he obtained was a 1746 edition of the Koran.

PAT: When did he come by it?

DAVID: Gracious.

STU: Eleven years before he wrote the declaration.

PAT: Eleven years?

DAVID: And I think that's right. Because at that point in time, tensions with Great Britain are starting. But at that point in time, he's more of a student too. Remember, I mean, from his age at that point, he was more into his academic inquiries. And 1765, he had just become a member of the Virginia legislature. So he's a brand-new legislator. And Virginia is where you have a lot of Muslim slaves in the state. So that's where slavery is first introduced or reported to be first introduced --

GLENN: And these are the slaves just like we have ISIS enslaving Muslims now. These are the slaves that they said at the time, were not Muslim enough. Right?

Over in --

DAVID: Overseas, yeah.

GLENN: Yeah, overseas. The Muslims -- the ISIS of their day would have scooped these guys up and sold them to the slave traders because the Koran calls for that and says as long as they're not Muslim enough.

DAVID: That's right. They were apostate Muslims, so you can ship them off into slavery.

GLENN: So what's amazing is, the Muslims that would have been here would have been the Muslims that would have wanted to be the reformers.

DAVID: Yeah, that's right.

GLENN: They would have been the ones we would have liked.

DAVID: And you look at that point in time, Muslims took 1.25 million slaves in that point of time. We look at the Founding Fathers, in that three decades or so, 1.52 million slaves that were calmed by Muslims. This is a big part of what their faith was.

GLENN: Then the president is right then. They did -- they were important to the fabric of early America. They were the actual slave traders that sold the blacks into slavery to the Dutch trading companies?

DAVID: There you go. That and their terrorism. The jihadism against Americans overseas. Those are the two biggest contributions.

GLENN: That's amazing.

DAVID: The guys who raised camels. I have to give him credit. That has to be tough raising camels in the Arizona desert.

PAT: The rest of the cavalry laughed at him, so they stopped using them.

GLENN: Where did they get the camels?

DAVID: Watch the movie Hawmps! H-A-W-M-P-S. It was slim pickings. Done back with that thing with Jeff Davis. They got the word hawmps because the cavalry looked and said, those are just horses with hawmps. What are those? So that's what they used for several years. And the Indians laughed at them when they tried to chase them down with camels.

JEFFY: Yeah, the military wouldn't ride them anymore.

DAVID: Exactly. It was a short-lived experiment. I have to credit their technology. If you're going to be in the desert chasing folks, why not use the animals that will go for several days, rather than several hours. But they were just so slow, they couldn't keep up with the Indians.

GLENN: David, thank you very much for enlightening me on this. I think this is the headline: President Obama is correct. Muslims provided most of the slaves for America.

STU: Jeez.

DAVID: Yeah.

GLENN: Is that accurate, David?

DAVID: I can't say that's accurate, but I can say they supplied more than any other entity, but -- the Portuguese traders, the Spanish traders, there were a bunch of traders that went there. But the Muslims were the chief ones in Africa that were able to sell slaves and those who wanted to sell slaves.

GLENN: Okay. So it would be accurate to say, most African slaves or most slaves from Africa --

STU: A plurality of slaves.

DAVID: Has been obtained by Muslim enslavers. Spanish, Portuguese, or the Dutch, or whoever else, the greatest supplier of slaves would undoubtedly have been Muslims.

GLENN: Unbelievable. Thank you very much, David. That's -- that's a story. Blaze has to write that story.

STU: That's an amazing --

GLENN: That's a great story.

STU: I assume the president is talking about this argument from Salon, it's a book called Thomas Jefferson's Islam: Islam and the Founders. Listen. Even in this argument on Salon, a left-wing website, says this -- talking about how the founders of the time were talking about Muslims being tolerated and given rights like other religions --

GLENN: Of course. Every religion was.

STU: They did so not for the sake of actual Muslims because none were known at the time to be living in America. Instead, Jefferson and others defended Muslim rights for the sake of, quote, imagined Muslims, end quote. The promotion of whose theoretical citizenship would prove the true universality of American rights. Indeed, the defense of imagined Muslims would also create political room to consider the rights of other despised minorities whose numbers in America though small were quite real, namely Jews and Catholics.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

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Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

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If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parallel societies do not end well

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

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

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

A crisis of confidence

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

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

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

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A new world of artificial experience

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

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

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

What machines can never do

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

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

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

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

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

Questions that define us

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

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

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

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The miracle machines can never copy

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The appeal of a broken dream

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

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

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

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

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

The bridge that never ends

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

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

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

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

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

What young America deserves

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.