Senator Rand Paul - 'Being conservative is not enough'

Joining Glenn on his radio program Monday morning, presidential hopeful Rand Paul shared his thoughts on liberty and conservatism.

After introducing his new book, Our Presidents and Their Prayers, Paul pointed out what it means to him to be a Libertarian.

"Because I believe that you should have the liberty to do anything you want, doesn't mean I believe that you should do anything that you want," Paul said.

Later, he talked about why being conservative is not enough.

"You have to be a conservative and a Libertarian, or someone who believes in liberty also," Paul said. "I think it is that spice of life that spices it up and says to young people, 'We want you you to be free.' We don't want you to be bound by the state."

During the interview, Glenn challenged Paul on "turning his guns" on Ted Cruz.

"I think that's probably a misinterpretation," Paul said. "We're not out there campaigning against him."

Listen to the full interview or read the dialogue below.

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Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

GLENN: Senator Rand Paul. And presidential hopeful is joining us now. How are you doing, Rand?

RAND: Thanks for having me, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet. I want to start off with the new book. And I'm a little hacked off. I didn't get a copy of the book. It's all up in New York. Just the title of it. Our Presidents and Their Prayers is fascinating to me. Tell me about the book.

RAND: Well, so often people want to say, "Well, we have separation of church and state." Well, we do. But the main separation was to keep the government out of the church, and not vice-versa. And we went back and looked at all the prayers and proclamations. And every president, bar none, has had prayers and proclamations indicating that faith influenced their decision-making. And then I kind of weave in through that some of the story of my faith, which I tell people hasn't always been linear. It's been sort of a zigzag.

GLENN: Mine too. A few cliffs on mine.

(laughter)

RAND: But always been profound, and something that I really sometimes really struggled over, but something that is very important to me and that I don't run away from and I'm not embarrassed to say that my faith and belief in right and wrong and morality and looking at every government policy that way is important.

GLENN: This is -- to me, I would think that this is surprising to a lot of people that you would be the one that would take on faith because Libertarians, I think, mistakenly are thought of as people that don't believe in faith.

RAND: What I think the funny thing is, is because I believe that you should have the liberty to do anything you want, doesn't mean I believe that you should do anything that you want.

GLENN: Right.

RAND: And, in fact, I'm a big fan of Os Guinness. You know Os Guinness?

GLENN: No.

RAND: He wrote a book called The Suicide of the Free People. And in it, I think he has a profound statement. He says that liberty requires restraint, but the only restraint consistent with liberty is self-restraint. So liberty and virtue are important.

Don Devine has another book where he talks about this, that they kind of need each other. That if you liberty without any kind of sense of self-restraint, without any sense of belief in something greater, without any sense of conscience and right and wrong, that if you have a society without any of that, liberty could be a disaster.

GLENN: This goes to almost what Thomas Paine was told by Benjamin Franklin. You know, basically, "How dare you. It's cool that you don't believe in God. But you're being produced by a society that did believe no God and those standards are what produced a stable enough society to be able to get you to this place." So I don't understand the hostility sometimes that we --

RAND: Really it's a combination. Don Devine in his book, called America's Way Back, talks about one of the great things of our Founding was the synchronism of freedom and tradition, of bringing both together.

GLENN: Yes.

RAND: And Don Devine says that freedom needs tradition for law and order and for inspiration. But tradition needs liberty or tradition needs freedom to escape stagnation.

GLENN: Yes.

RAND: And really, they do need both. And being -- that's why being conservative is not enough. You have to be a conservative and a Libertarian, or someone who believes in liberty also. Because I think it is that spice of life that spices it up and says to young people, "We want you you to be free." We don't want you to be bound by the state.

GLENN: Last week, we heard that they were going to do -- the House is going to go with Paul Ryan. And I flipped my wig just a little bit. Maybe a lot. Because I think the G.O.P. is hanging themselves. I mean, you put another guy in who is going to do absolutely nothing and play the same game and block the liberty people, you're going to lose the presidential election. To me, this is why people like Donald Trump are, at least at this point, up at the top, because people are sick of the game. They're absolutely sick of the game.

What do you think should happen in the House?

RAND: Well, you know, I've traveled the country, and what I hear from Republicans is the same thing: Very unhappy. Republicans control the House, Republicans control the Senate, and they're doing nothing.

We have not exerted the power of the purse. So I've been saying over and over again, "Yes, we need to exert the power of the purse." So my question is, "Will the next Speaker exert the power of the purse?" He's going to have a chance. We have a debt ceiling. What are they going to do? Is the new Speaker just going to raise the debt ceiling without demanding any reforms?

In 2011, we played this gambit, and the president said, "Oh, I won't negotiate with a gun to my head," but then it turned out the president did negotiate. We got something called the sequester, which was an across-the-line slowing down of the rate of growth of government. It wasn't even a cut. At the time I didn't think it was enough.

But you know who abandoned it? Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan and Patty Murray got together about a year, a year and a half ago, and the people on the right said, we got to have more money for the military. And the people on the left said, we got to have more money for welfare. So what did they do? They got together, and they did the secret handshake and we got more money for both. But that means that Paul Ryan was instrumental in getting rid of the sequester.

So my question now, "Do we really believe that he's going to use the debt ceiling to get reforms, or that he's not going to bust the budget caps?" I think they're going to bust the budget caps for military and welfare in December.

GLENN: When we look at people like Bernie Sanders -- I watched the debate with the Democrats. And I listen to Bernie Sanders, and I think, "I got a lot in common with Bernie Sanders." None of it on policy. None of it on policy. His solutions are hairbrained.

RAND: Sounds like Donald Trump to me. Has the correct anger and angry at Washington, but the policy may not exactly be there.

GLENN: Not really. I don't even think Donald Trump is this accurate. Bernie Sanders is talking about the way capitalism is being done is immoral. And he can make a good case for it. The way the crony capitalists are in with the people in Washington, the way Washington is being run is immoral.

RAND: Yeah, the problem though is Bernie complains about crony capitalism, and he kind of gets it right. But he equates it with all of capitalism, and he actually promotes something called Democratic socialism.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

RAND: And I've been trying to point out -- because I'm on a lot of college campuses. We have a big following in college campuses -- that there's nothing sexy, and there's nothing cool about socialism. What there is, is the implied force that goes along with taking away your choice.

They tell you, you cannot make reindeer. You cannot make cars. You cannot sell water. Only the state tells you what you can do. It's the most anti-choice economic system. If you don't listen, they fine you. If you don't pay the fine, they imprison you. If you will not listen, ultimately, what has happened in history -- and people get mad when I say this -- but they exterminate you. And that's what happened under Stalin.

People say, "Oh, no, no, he wants Democratic socialism." The problem is, a majority can be just as bad as one single authoritarian. And that's why we shouldn't allow any of our rights to be subject to a majority. Our Founding Fathers understood that. They understood that your rights come from your Creator, and no majority should be able to take them away from you.

GLENN: Let me ask you a tough question. I'm frustrated. And this is something we've talked about before. I'm frustrated with any of the -- any of the guys, you Santorum, Cruz, trying to think who else --

PAT: Jindal.

GLENN: Anybody that would take -- you guys have targets like crazy. Donald Trump. Take -- you can -- Jeb Bush, take them.

Why have you decided to turn your guns on Ted Cruz at this point, where I would love for everybody on our side just to get along. Turn the guns on the other guys and talk liberty together.

RAND: Yeah, I think that's probably a misinterpretation. I'm on a lot of programs. People like you ask my questions, and I tend to respond to them and answer the questions.

But we've had nothing where we're sort of promoting any kind of animosity with Ted Cruz. We answer questions. If you ask me, you know, do I disagree with his vote on criminal justice this week, where he voted against the criminal justice reform, I will tell you that. But we're not out there campaigning against him.

GLENN: Well, you're saying that he has no future in the US Senate. Isn't that kind of --

RAND: I was asked a question. That is my honest answer. And the reason is, is that, he has a different vision than I do. His vision is, there's plenty of people, if you just rouse them up on our side to win elections. My opinion is, you have to rouse up and energize the electorate, the grassroots that are on our side, but you also have to reach out and get new people. I do not believe we will win by just rattling our cages for the base. We should energize the base, and we should be true to our principles. But I've been taking our principles to the south side of Chicago, to Philadelphia, to Baltimore, to Ferguson.

GLENN: You've done more in that than anybody I've ever seen in my life.

RAND: But I think it's also how you win elections. I mean, that's how you win a general election, is you got to get people in the middle and on the other side, who have never seen or heard or met a real live Republican, to start thinking about voting Republican. And that's just a difference in, I guess, vision of how you win elections. Philosophically, we're fairly close. You know, our voting records are fairly similar.

GLENN: You are coming up to the CNBC debate. It's all going to be about the economy and business.

Conventional wisdom would say that a businessman like Donald Trump, I think, if the country goes into economic insecurity, where we have a disruption of the economy like we did in 2008, I think Donald Trump would rocket to the top because a lot of people see him as a businessman because they watch his TV show.

And they just think that he's the guy to get it done. Why should you be the guy, being a doctor and a senator, not necessarily a businessman, why should you be the guy that America listens to?

RAND: Because I think that government is inversely proportional to liberty. That the bigger your government is, the less liberty you have. And that I think a free people are also a prosperous people. The freer you are, the more prosperous we will be. The reason why I think, you know, it would be a mistake to sort of elect or nominate someone who believes in their all-powerful, all-knowing sort of narcissism is that --

GLENN: Are you calling Donald Trump a narcissist?

RAND: Yeah, I know that's a stretch. I know that's a stretch. But that might be an understatement, actually.

GLENN: I was going to say. Because that's pretty kind. We've called him worse.

RAND: Yeah, but I think the thing is that worries me about it, from a point of view of liberty, is that when someone says they're all-knowing and that they are so smart, they can figure things out, it sounds like they want you to give them more power. And the biggest problem I see in our country is that we've given too much power to the presidency. And that over 100 years, more and more power has gravitated in Republican administrations and Democrat administrations, until the presidency has become maybe 1,000 fold more powerful than Congress.

So I don't want an all-powerful president. I don't want a president who promises me he's so smart that he can take care of me if I just give up a little bit more liberty. So that does worry me. That concerns me a great deal. But I do think that we need to know -- you know, he has this little slogan. He wants to make America great again.

Well, you have to understand what made America great to begin with. And what made us great to begin with is that we allowed people to be free to trade with each other, and we allowed them the freedom to interact and the freedom to make choices in the marketplace. But we didn't use big government like through eminent domain to come in and take the property of a small property owner and give it to a casino magnate. That wasn't part of the liberty. It isn't part of the liberty that anybody I know in the liberty movement would accept.

GLENN: I don't know if you know this, but Zemeckis has come out, the director of Back to the Future II, and he says Biff Tanner (sic) in Back to the Future II was modeled after Donald Trump.

(laughter)

RAND: It doesn't surprise me.

GLENN: Yeah. Are you concerned that Canada just elected a celebrity playboy. What was the country that I just --

STU: Guatemala.

GLENN: Guatemala just elected a comedian. Are you concerned at all that governments all around the world have so discredited themselves that we're quickly sliding towards a Weimar Republic re-do?

RAND: I think that when you look at it, there is a great deal of anger towards government. In fact, that's why I ran for office. Because I was unhappy with government. I tell people, I was tired of throwing things at my TV. You know, because I was so unhappy with what they were saying and doing.

And, frankly, the Tea Party movement arose because people were unhappy with Republicans. I was unhappy with Republicans who voted to do the bank bailout. But I was also unhappy with the Republicans who created new entitlement programs and doubled the size of the debt when they were in charge. And I ran, frankly, because I thought Republicans needed a better voice. But the interesting thing is -- and this boggles my mind that Trump could attract anybody from the Tea Party because he was for all the things we opposed. He was for the bailout of the banks. He was for the bailout of the car companies.

GLENN: Are you surprised at the Tea Party? Because I'm just devastated by 20 percent of the Tea Party saying, "Yeah, he's my guy." What is that?

RAND: I don't think we're getting to polling that's very accurate yet.

GLENN: Okay.

RAND: I think we're getting to polling that is of leaners. Because most of the polls -- two-thirds of the people in the polls are saying, "Well, I'm undecided." Then they're saying, "Well, no, no, who are you for if you had to make a choice?" So really this is a poll that is of undecided. It's doing a disservice to the whole process to bank so much information and so much of a conclusion from it. In fact, I tell people, because a lot of people in the media weren't very good at math, is that because there's a number, they think it's math. Oh, someone has 21 percent. Oh, that's math. It must be certain. Well, there's no certainty at all to these things. And I predict you'll see a great deal of upheaval and switch by the time we get to an election.

GLENN: I think so too. Rand Paul, joining us Wednesday. We will talk about the economy and fiat currency and, hopefully, a little more about his book, Our Presidents and Their Prayers. That will be on Wednesday's television show, only on TheBlaze TV. Tonight, an hour with Ted Cruz that you don't want to miss.

Is the U.N. plotting to control 30% of U.S. land by 2030?

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

A reliable conservative senator faces cancellation for listening to voters. But the real threat to public lands comes from the last president’s backdoor globalist agenda.

Something ugly is unfolding on social media, and most people aren’t seeing it clearly. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — one of the most constitutionally grounded conservatives in Washington — is under fire for a housing provision he first proposed in 2022.

You wouldn’t know that from scrolling through X. According to the latest online frenzy, Lee wants to sell off national parks, bulldoze public lands, gut hunting and fishing rights, and hand America’s wilderness to Amazon, BlackRock, and the Chinese Communist Party. None of that is true.

Lee’s bill would have protected against the massive land-grab that’s already under way — courtesy of the Biden administration.

I covered this last month. Since then, the backlash has grown into something like a political witch hunt — not just from the left but from the right. Even Donald Trump Jr., someone I typically agree with, has attacked Lee’s proposal. He’s not alone.

Time to look at the facts the media refuses to cover about Lee’s federal land plan.

What Lee actually proposed

Over the weekend, Lee announced that he would withdraw the federal land sale provision from his housing bill. He said the decision was in response to “a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies,” but also acknowledged that many Americans brought forward sincere, thoughtful concerns.

Because of the strict rules surrounding the budget reconciliation process, Lee couldn’t secure legally enforceable protections to ensure that the land would be made available “only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.” Without those safeguards, he chose to walk it back.

That’s not selling out. That’s leadership.

It's what the legislative process is supposed to look like: A senator proposes a bill, the people respond, and the lawmaker listens. That was once known as representative democracy. These days, it gets you labeled a globalist sellout.

The Biden land-grab

To many Americans, “public land” brings to mind open spaces for hunting, fishing, hiking, and recreation. But that’s not what Sen. Mike Lee’s bill targeted.

His proposal would have protected against the real land-grab already under way — the one pushed by the Biden administration.

In 2021, Biden launched a plan to “conserve” 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030. This effort follows the United Nations-backed “30 by 30” initiative, which seeks to place one-third of all land and water under government control.

Ask yourself: Is the U.N. focused on preserving your right to hunt and fish? Or are radical environmentalists exploiting climate fears to restrict your access to American land?

  Smith Collection/Gado / Contributor | Getty Images

As it stands, the federal government already owns 640 million acres — nearly one-third of the entire country. At this rate, the government will hit that 30% benchmark with ease. But it doesn’t end there. The next phase is already in play: the “50 by 50” agenda.

That brings me to a piece of legislation most Americans haven’t even heard of: the Sustains Act.

Passed in 2023, the law allows the federal government to accept private funding from organizations, such as BlackRock or the Bill Gates Foundation, to support “conservation programs.” In practice, the law enables wealthy elites to buy influence over how American land is used and managed.

Moreover, the government doesn’t even need the landowner’s permission to declare that your property contributes to “pollination,” or “photosynthesis,” or “air quality” — and then regulate it accordingly. You could wake up one morning and find out that the land you own no longer belongs to you in any meaningful sense.

Where was the outrage then? Where were the online crusaders when private capital and federal bureaucrats teamed up to quietly erode private property rights across America?

American families pay the price

The real danger isn’t in Mike Lee’s attempt to offer more housing near population centers — land that would be limited, clarified, and safeguarded in the final bill. The real threat is the creeping partnership between unelected global elites and our own government, a partnership designed to consolidate land, control rural development, and keep Americans penned in so-called “15-minute cities.”

BlackRock buying entire neighborhoods and pricing out regular families isn’t by accident. It’s part of a larger strategy to centralize populations into manageable zones, where cars are unnecessary, rural living is unaffordable, and every facet of life is tracked, regulated, and optimized.

That’s the real agenda. And it’s already happening , and Mike Lee’s bill would have been an effort to ensure that you — not BlackRock, not China — get first dibs.

I live in a town of 451 people. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, housing is unaffordable. The American dream of owning a patch of land is slipping away, not because of one proposal from a constitutional conservative, but because global powers and their political allies are already devouring it.

Divide and conquer

This controversy isn’t really about Mike Lee. It’s about whether we, as a nation, are still capable of having honest debates about public policy — or whether the online mob now controls the narrative. It’s about whether conservatives will focus on facts or fall into the trap of friendly fire and circular firing squads.

More importantly, it’s about whether we’ll recognize the real land-grab happening in our country — and have the courage to fight back before it’s too late.


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

MANAURE QUINTERO / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

  

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

Ban engagement-optimized AI companions for kids

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

Establish basic liability laws

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

Pass increased whistleblower protections

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

Prevent AI from having legal rights

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

Oppose the state moratorium on AI 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Midnight Hammer

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

   USAF / Handout | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

What comes next

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

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

That would be catastrophic.

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

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

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

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

Now we pray

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

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

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


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rising Islamism

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

   Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

 

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

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

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

Blending the worst ideologies

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

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

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

Call out radicalism

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.