Losing our freedom of conscience in America at a blinding speed

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen that America is being torn apart. Fundamental principles and common sense are being destroyed. Up is down, down is up, and two plus two suddenly equals five. People are losing their jobs because they stand up for religious principles. Politicians espouse whatever stance on is popular at the moment. Gun rights and freedom of speech are attacked at every opportunity. When will it stop?

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

GLENN: So you remember the song from Lee Greenwood. I mean, it's Fourth of July week so we'll hear it this weekend in every city across America, God Bless the USA. The chorus goes, and I'll gladly stand up next to you. And I'll -- and defend her still today. You know that part?

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: I've always thought that that part referred to standing side by side on a battlefield. I'll always stand up next to you and defend her still today. But I don't think that's the case now.

I'm sure that's not what he intended when he wrote it. You know, to see our situation. Maybe he did. But I see us standing up defending her here at home without any weapons. I see us standing for the right of conscience.

If anybody has been paying attention, and you haven't been playing politics, just paying attention, America is being torn apart. We're just being ripped apart at the seams. All of our most fundamental principles are being bludgeoned to death. And I say that with full confidence. Hillary Clinton said that traditional marriage was a fundamental, bedrock principle.

Now she doesn't. That was like eight years ago she said that. A fundamental, bedrock principle. Well, I agree with her. And now it's gone. But I think our speech is going away quickly as well. You can say anything you want if you don't mind being hungry for the rest of your life. You can't support your family. If you love unemployment, speak your mind all you want, baby. The CEO of Firefox, fired. Because six years prior he had donated money to a cause in which he believed. Donald Trump this week, fired because he said something I don't agree with, but I don't want him fired for it.

People working at ESPN, right chink in the armor, fired. Freedom of speech? Nope. Nope. Fundamental, bedrock principle, gone. Freedom of religion, religious institutions in some cases have been forced against their doctrine to provide birth control, contraception, and even abortion. Have you heard the latest on Steve Green's place? Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby may have to close.

Because the government is going after them again. And they just came out and said, we may not be able to stay open this time. Hobby Lobby!

So don't tell me we have freedom of religion. People are being forced to provide services for ceremonies in which they conscientiously object. It's called a conscientious objector. We've always had that, that carve-out in the Constitution. If your God tells you I can't do that, you don't do it, and no one can force you to do it.

But now, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, two ministers who operate church threatened with arrest for not performing a gay wedding ceremony. Arrest, jail time!

The Supreme Court ruling that came out last week, is that going to help or hurt? Listen to what our first openly gay senator Tammy Baldwin said about religious liberty this week.

TAMMY: Certainly the First Amendment says that in institutions of faith, that there is absolute power to, you know, to observe religious deeply held religious beliefs. But I don't think it extends far beyond that.

GLENN: Okay. It doesn't extend very far beyond that.

Say whatever you like in your church -- this is James Madison -- say -- yap all you want. Got this. Got that, whatever. But as soon as you step out on the sidewalk, your ass is mine.

I don't think so.

By the way, so you know how that works, Tammy, if I may call you that, Tammy, a guy who has been in the service forever, forever -- I'm sorry. No. A guy who is -- I was thinking of another religious case.

This guy is a fire chief in Atlanta. A fire chief.

He said something inside the walls of his church. He was fired from his job because he said at his church from the pulpit, I don't believe in gay marriage. He was fired. So tell me how that one works, Tammy.

By the way, the First Amendment doesn't say anything about institutions of faith. What it does say is Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. I'm exercising my faith right now by telling you what I believe.

The right to keep and bear arms every single time some psycho senselessly takes an innocent life, they roll out the tired, old argument that guns have no place in our society, despite what the Constitution says. The right to be secure in your home, papers, documents, unmolested by authorities, unless there is a probable cause to search or seize your property. Three letters for you: NSA. Here's three more: IRS.

Those are all gone, gang. Or they're on the ropes. Power is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, reserved for the states.

Yeah. Right.

(laughter)

No, that doesn't happen. There's no marriage. There's no straight marriage in the Constitution.

That is a power reserved for the states. Not the Constitution. It says it in the Constitution. So the Tenth Amendment is gone. The only thing we have to not really worry about is probably the quartering of soldiers in our homes. Knock on wood. Well, don't knock on wood because that might be a little confusing to some because there might actually be a knock on your wooden door and I don't know it might be the Third Mechanized Infantry Division that is just wanting to stay.

PAT: Looking for a place.

GLENN: Can we crash here? Our public schools and universities are turning out kids and they're turning them into entitlement addicts. It doesn't begin at school. Because even at our sporting events and other extracurricular activities prepare them to expect everything without earning anything. Participation trophies. Telling them that they're special for no apparent reason. Heaping undue praise on them. Even, when just maybe, constructive criticism would keep a few losers off of American Idol. We told you about UC Berkeley, where Janet Napolitano and her staff are banning certain phrases. These are not words. These are now ideas.

This week, last week it was UC Berkeley. This week it was University of Wisconsin joining the list of racist microaggressions. Microaggressions. Take your microaggression and...

America used to be a place where based on your hard work, dedication, and talent, you could have a legitimate chance to get ahead in life. You could actually possibly become successful. Thanks to the University of Wisconsin and UC Berkeley, we discovered now that's just not true. Gaining reward based on your efforts apparently cannot happen. It's referred to as the myth of meritocracy. Saying things like the most qualified person should get the job just accentuates the microaggression that is seething inside of you. Desperately trying to get out.

What you really mean by that phrase is that people are -- of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race. Why are you such a racist?

And for the holy love of heaven, will you please don't give me the old, everybody can succeed in this society, if they don't work hard -- if they work hard enough. Please don't give that to me. I -- you know that's a lie. Go ahead, say it. Say it to your microaggressive, hateful self. Go ahead say it. Colored people are just lazy. Yeah, that's what you say. Colored people. Hello, Mr. 1956. You're saying they're incompetent and need to work harder. I know exactly what you're saying.

Yep. Can't hide from the University of Wisconsin or UC Berkeley. This is what's being taught to your kids. Take your kids out of school. Don't. Send them to a local community college before this crap.

This is what's happening in the United States of America today. The family, the fundamental building block of civilization is being transformed. Marriage transformed. Speech transformed. Rights rewritten. Invented. Suppressed. It's all happening at the same time by design by the progressives.

And the result will be that America's cream will no longer rise to the top. Cream, we can't have cream. That implies a cow. Who are you to put your hand on the utter of an animal without asking for permission?

Merit is going to just be a parts of in Connecticut. That's it. We'll have generations of Americans who wait to be given what they believe they have coming to them because they're entitled. It won't come, but government benefits will, while they last. More and more fundamental rights will be created.

There is no fundamental right to marriage. Not in the Constitution. For straight people, either. There is no such thing as a fundamental right for health care. Those are things we like. But that's not something government is doing. Marriage was an institution that was started by the religious. And government cannot interfere with the religious inside the walls of the church. So how is it that they say they can -- no, we understand the First Amendment. We got it. You can do whatever you want in the church. And we'll leave you alone. It just doesn't expand past the church. By the way, open up the door of the church because we have to tell you what you're doing on the altar there with those two people. Can't have it both ways, dude.

Health care is the same way. Now they're talking about a guaranteed minimum wage. There is no fundamental right to a minimum wage. A job. There's no fundamental right to food. Now, these rights did exist in that glorious place called the Soviet Union. They still exist in that wonderful utopia of China. But not here in the United States of America. Why?

Well, because our fathers had a different idea. And I'll tell you about that coming up in a second.

[BREAK]

GLENN: So do you remember when the president said this about the Constitution?

OBAMA: That generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you. But it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

GLENN: Right. Right. He is a constitutional scholar. He has that wrapped up tightly in a nice little box. That is exactly what it says because that's exactly what the founders designed it to do and be. Why? Because they studied all previous governments. They studied it from ancient Greece and Mesopotamia. They went out and they really searched what worked, what didn't, why did it fail, when did it fail. And then they tried to design something that took all of that into account.

They knew that the government shouldn't do certain things to the citizenry, the way Britain did. They wanted government out of the way. They believed that we can do it. We can do it on our own, and we can do it better. Except for a few things like military. Now, who doesn't think -- does Apple think the government can do computers better than Apple? Does Google think they can run the internet better than Google (sic)? Do you think you can run your life and your family, or the government would be better at that? Based on merit, we're given the right to pursue our happiness. Not the guarantee that the government would provide for us.

You got to grab your kids because they are being reprogrammed. We are being reprogrammed to accept that the most qualified person should not get the job. That the special person should. The first person, the first black, Hispanic, woman, gay, lesbian, transgendered man that's still questioning and a little bit transabled or maybe the first transracial. First dwarf. First something should get that job. But not the person who is actually qualified. No. Look, if Ted Cruz were gay, he had exactly the same policies, I would absolutely vote for him. If he would just for the love of Pete, man, put on a skirt, then he would be the first transgendered woman president. Then he's -- he's more than qualified.

We're being directed down that path. And if we continue down that path, America will cease to be great. We've already slid way past good. We're now in, kind of mediocre. It's okay. Kind of like Canada is looking pretty good right now.

Perhaps one day even less.

I started this with that Lee Greenwood quote. I think it's the first time in my career that I've quoted Lee Greenwood. But I'll stand up next to you and defend her still today.

It's time to stand. It's not time to stand against something. It's time to stand for something. Stand for the Constitution. Stand for people's rights. Not even your rights. Don't even worry about your rights. Somebody else's right. We're going to talk about Ted Cruz and he's talking about his solution to gay marriage. But I think in a way, what he's saying is, we got to stand up against gay marriage and get this thing overturned.

I think we need to get it overturned, but not because of gay marriage. We got to get the government out of gay marriage. Rand Paul has the right position on this. Get the government out of marriage entirely. They have no place in our marriage. Right of conscience.

They have no place in our marriage. If you want to get married, you get married. I may disagree with it, but how does it pick my pocket or break my leg? It doesn't.

You want to get married. Get married. If you're two consenting adults, how does this hurt me?

If you want to force my church to marry you, if I go to a gay church and they're like, we won't marry any straight people, so be it. Why would I want them to do it? I'm not going to force them to do it. I'm not going to force your church or whatever to do whatever. You don't force me to do whatever. Why can't we all just kind of be cool with each other? My evil plan, slowly, quietly take over the world, and then leave everybody alone.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

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The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.