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Are we living in a post-Christian world?

June 29, 2015
Staff

WRITER

Immediately after the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, supporters took to social media to not only celebrate their victory, but to also trash anyone who believes in traditional marriage. It seems that if #LoveWins, then anyone who doesn’t support same-sex marriage implicitly loses - especially Christians. Time Magazine even printed an article about America transforming into a post-Christian nation. The fight over gay marriage was never about who you sleep with and everything to do with the right of conscience.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it may contain errors:

GLENN: I don't know about you, but I spent some time this weekend with my family. And spent some time myself in quiet reflection trying to figure out truth and tolerance. What is -- where do we go from here? TIME Magazine said this weekend that we now live in a post Christian America. They went so far as to say, Christians now find themselves as exiles in their own land.

Those are some pretty intense statements. This has nothing to do with who you sleep with. Because I don't care who you sleep with. Do you care who I sleep with, honestly? Do you want to know about my sexual habits? Because I barely want to know about my sexual habits.

This has nothing to do with who you sleep with. This has everything to do with the right of conscience.

One ruling puts us into a post Christian world? Yes. Because the president has signed some executive -- some executive orders that now put us into a situation to where, if you receive any federal money, any federal grant, you happen to be Liberty University, you're going to lose that money, unless you now accept and you preach what the Supreme Court preaches. Right of conscience. Truth and tolerance.

I think that we have to -- we have to regather now, and we have to -- the world has changed. I told you at one point, you won't recognize your own country. We are here. You are now on the outside looking in. And, again, it has nothing to do with who you sleep with.

It has everything to do with your right to say what you believe. See, we're picking and choosing now. They're talking about banning the statue and taking down the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest. I completely agree with that. That guy was -- he was a great general, but he also was the founder of the KKK. Should we have that? No. But if you're going to take that down, we also should not have any statue -- or, we certainly shouldn't have a school of foreign policy named after Woodrow Wilson.

See, we're getting into a real problem here because somebody has got to tell us exactly what's right and what's wrong. Well, who is that someone?

We used to believe in absolute truth. I still do. I want to say that again. I believe in absolute truth. I believe there is the existence of absolute truth and right and wrong as established by God's commandments. Now, that may make me an exile in my own land, so be it, that's okay.

I believe in all truth. No sect, no denomination, no single principle of truth is out there that I don't accept or will reject. I accept the existence of truth, and I'm willing to receive all truth from whatever source that truth may come from. Because the truth will stand and will endure.

We don't even recognize truth anymore. We ask, well, whose truth? What is truth? Truth is the acknowledgment of things as they are, as they were, and as they will be in the future. Truth doesn't change.

Truth exists and so does evil. There are some things that are simply, seriously an everlasting evil, period. Things that I can tell you that you know are wrong. Mixing sex with death. You know that's wrong. It just feels wrong. It's evil.

People are now telling us that there is no absolute right and wrong. And that all authority and all rules of behavior are all man-made choices that can prevail over the commandments of God. That everything is a man-made choice. And that's why we can't decide which cakes we can make and which cakes we can't make. That's why we're down to micromanaging cakes!

People are questioning whether there is a God. Faith is on the retreat. The philosophy of moral relativism, which holds that every person is free to choose for himself what is right and wrong. I believe that you have the choice between right and wrong, and you are the only one that can make it.

But that you can make up your own right and wrong, I disagree with. It's absurd. It's why we are caught up in -- in our self-serving pleasures, in the things that we just want to do. If it feels good, I'm going to do it. It's why you could walk down the street with your children and nobody watches their language anymore. You can be anywhere, and nobody -- you want to say to them, hey, can you stop for a second? Don't you see I have my child here? And what do they say, you don't like it, go someplace else. Because they will not recognize the difference between right and wrong.

There was a study done in about 1995 that showed -- or, sorry -- 79 percent of Americans believed that there were, quote, clear guidelines about what was good and what was evil that applied to everyone, regardless of the situation. This is 1995. Think about what was happening in America. We thought the world was coming to an end then. 1995. 79 percent said that the rules apply to everyone, regardless of the situation.

There's a new college -- new poll out of college seniors. 75 percent of them now believe the difference between right and wrong is relative and up to the individual. That's 20 years. It's why we are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.

Gang, the world has changed. We are now at the beginning of the place that I said that we would eventually find ourselves. Greece is on fire today. The banks are closed for up to ten days. Nobody knows what's going to happen.

#LoveWins was the big hashtag. But did you read anything online? Love lost. Why?

Because winning -- winning was the goal, not reconciliation. Winning. Which implies there's a winner. And everybody who won wanted to rub the nose of anybody who lost. Anybody who lost was seeking vengeance and revenge. Love didn't win. A political action committee won.

We have a duty to stand at this time. Do you know what tolerance is defined as? Tolerance is defined as a friendly and fair attitude toward unfamiliar opinions and practices or towards persons who hold or practice those things.

What is that 1955 when we were all reading National Geographic? When that was the only way we could see things that were unfamiliar -- what is unfamiliar to us now? We live in a global community. We are so diverse now in our thinking. We can see and talk to people on the other side of the planet.

We are diverse. And it has enriched our lives, but it has also complicated them.

When does tolerance apply? This is really a hard question for those people who say there is a God and there is absolute truth. It's a really tough question for those people. Because the weaker your belief in God, the fewer things that you believe are absolutes. The fewer occasions when something happens to you that you're like, hey, hey, hey, hey.

An atheist doesn't need to decide what kind and occasions profanity or blasphemy can be tolerated and what kinds should be confronted. An atheist never has to stand up and say, hey, that's kind of blasphemous. Persons who don't believe in God or absolute truth in moral matters can see themselves as the most tolerant people alive. But those of us who say there is a right and wrong, there is a moral standard, well, wait a minute. Hang on just a second. I got to stand up. I know I'm not as tolerant as you because you have no standards. I do. That doesn't make me right and you wrong, it just says, these are the things that I believe in. And I have to stand. I'm compelled to stand.

But we have to -- there are few things that are absolutely true, that God teaches us, that are true. And the first thing he teaches us is that we are all brothers and sisters. We're all taught this in our various religions, and we're all taught that we have to serve one another.

We might disagree or have different interpretations of Him. But we are all sons of God. Therefore we have to work harder to build mutual respect. We have to respect one another. We have to do what Paul taught us. Follow after those things that make for peace. We don't bash each other.

I had a discussion before we went on the air. I don't know how to do my job anymore. None of us do. There are things that we cannot say anymore if we want to work tomorrow. There are also this lie, I think, that talk radio is built on confrontation. I'm -- I don't want confrontation. I don't want any more confrontation. I'm tired of confrontation. I'm tired of the hatred between each other. That's not who we are. That's not who I want to be. That's not who I've ever tried to be. None of us have. But that's the role that we're put into. That's what the world makes us, and we help it along. I'm tired of it.

We have to respect one another. But more importantly, we have to respect ourselves. We cannot abandon the truth. There is no middle ground on truth. We have to stand up for the truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas that are different than ours and for the people that hold those ideas. We must practice tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs, including their constitutional right to state them openly.

But first and foremost, we're losing our kids, man. We're losing our kids because we don't practice what we preach. First, the one thing we should not tolerate is a deviance from truth in our own lives. We must be ruled by the demands of truth. We must be strong in keeping the commandments ourselves.

Forget about everybody else. How are you today? How am I today? What other people is not nearly as important in the grand scheme of things for our family as what we're doing today. What our children are witnessing us do today. We must be the ones that stand for the right, even if we stand alone.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.