Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcasts
The Glenn Beck ProgramThe Glenn Beck PodcastThe Beck Story
Fine Art
Real Estate
Shop
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Glenn: For the First Time, I Heard Ted Cruz Calculate

September 26, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Following his interview with Senator Ted Cruz, Glenn shared his impression of the exchange on his radio program Monday.

"For the very first time, I heard Ted Cruz calculate. And when that happened, the whole thing fell apart for me," he said.

Glenn blamed himself for the inevitable letdown.

"It's my fault," Glenn said. "It's my fault for believing that men can actually be George Washington."

RELATED: Glenn Grills Ted Cruz on What It Means to ‘Vote Your Conscience’

He went on to share an idea that would sound "outrageous" to some.

"I am not here to fight for the saving of America. I am not here to fight for the saving of this land. I am not here to save the system that we have built. I am here and you are here --- we all are here --- for this time to save the idea of America," Glenn said.

Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these principled questions:

• What is the idea of America?

• What reason should Senator Cruz have given for his decision?

• Should Glenn have supported Marco Rubio?

• Will the two major parties destroy the idea of America?

• Would Glenn still vote for Senator Cruz?

• Has the Republican Party become like PETA?

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: For the first time -- and I'm sorry if that was too contentious for people.

STU: It's what we should do, right?

GLENN: And I will tell you, that's not what I expected, but there was something in there. And I'm not going to go into it. There is something there, where I have private conversations with people. And I know private -- I know what was said, and I know -- I know the story. And for the very first time, I heard Ted Cruz calculate. And when that happened, the whole thing fell apart for me. And it's my fault. It's my fault for believing that men can actually be George Washington. It's my fault.

I should have said, "You know who can win? You know who could beat Hillary Clinton? Marco Rubio. And I disagree with him on the Gang of Eight, and there's about 80 percent that I do agree with him on. And he's kind of a politician, but he's a different kind of politician: He's a young politician. He's a Hispanic. He can win. Let's go for it!" Instead, I said, "Let's find a truly honorable man." And that will always let you down. It will always let you down.

STU: Yes. I kept thinking this weekend of like, you know, we keep -- there's a lesson that we're supposed to learn, I believe a pretty important person once talked about it, in that: Don't put your faith in man. That's not the right place.

GLENN: It's not the place. It's not the place.

PAT: Well, and but we thought we were putting our faith in the principles that he held.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

PAT: And -- and -- because he led us to believe -- and he did it through his work, that he was going to be a man of his principle. Because he was.

GLENN: Here's how he could have -- here's how he could have addressed this today.

PAT: "You know what, guys, I caved. I need donors. They all left. I caved." Just tell the truth.

GLENN: Yes. Yeah. "Guys, here's the thing: I said -- he's reframing what he did in Cleveland.

PAT: Yeah, you can't say what you're saying now and what you said in Cleveland are the same thing.

GLENN: They're not.

PAT: Everybody knows they're not.

GLENN: One is, vote for Donald Trump. And one is, vote for your conscience. There's a clear difference.

PAT: Big time.

GLENN: But he's recasting that now.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And, yes, was he trying to force Donald Trump and the G.O.P. to come closer? Yeah, I think he was.

PAT: Even if that's what he was trying to do, what have they done to get closer? Nothing! Nothing.

GLENN: So he said -- so he could have come on and said --

PAT: I don't buy it.

GLENN: -- "Look, guys, here's the thing: My supporters are yelling at me." And I know that, because so are mine.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: My donors, who were all in with the G.O.P., they're all saying, "I'll never fund you -- I won't fund you for the Senate. I won't fund you for the run in 2020." And I have to make a decision. So the question is: Do I completely shut myself out of this game, or do I play the game as much as I possibly can? Look, there's nobody that has held out longer than me, he should have said.

STU: It wouldn't be accurate, but it would be close to that.

GLENN: It wouldn't be accurate, yes. They're down to 12.

You know, if you count us and Ben Shapiro and everybody else, they're down to 12.

STU: Kasich is a candidate --

GLENN: Yes. Kasich!

PAT: Ben Sasse.

GLENN: Ben Sasse.

STU: Ben Sasse. Mike Lee. And when's the last time anyone asked Ben Sasse about this? He was able to avoid it completely because he was honest and said what he believed early on.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: So people stopped bugging him about it.

GLENN: Yes. So, anyway -- and people would have stopped bugging him about this.

So, anyway, if he would have just come on and said that, I would have had a lot easier time. But to become the politician --

STU: Right.

GLENN: -- is -- is disappointing. Really disappointing.

STU: Well, two things --

GLENN: But I don't want to get into a situation to where -- I think Ted Cruz is still a good man. I I think he's a good man. I do think he prayed on this. And I can't argue with him. I think everybody's back is up against the wall. And so I'm not going to condemn him. He is, still, I believe, a good man. He is just a politician, first. I've never put him into the category of politician, and that's my fault. He is a politician.

STU: Right. And that's not a condemnation of him, it's a condemnation of our decision-making process, I suppose.

GLENN: Yes, yes.

STU: And so two quick things, positive on Cruz: Number one, he's got the balls to come in here and face this.

GLENN: Not a lot of people would do that.

STU: Not a lot of people would do that.

Number two: He'll still be one of the best senators in the Senate. You know, we had this same sort of issue with Rand Paul when he endorsed Mitch McConnell.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: And we gave him a really hard time about that, and it's forever changed the general way we think about him.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: He's a good senator. He's right on almost everything --

GLENN: And I still support him. I'd still vote for him.

STU: I still support him. Right.

GLENN: But I know who he is.

STU: I don't separate him from the pack. He's just a good, quality conservative senator with good Libertarian leanings. And he's usually right. And that's what I'll think about Ted Cruz in the future.

GLENN: Yes, yes. Yes. Yes.

STU: He's Rand Paul, and that's okay. He's still going to be one of the best senators.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

STU: But this idea that now he's bringing to us the binary choice argument --

PAT: I hate that.

STU: -- is so --

PAT: That drove me nuts more than just about anything in that conversation.

STU: Oh, just about anything. It's so ridiculous.

PAT: It's a binary choice? No, I thought it was vote your conscience.

STU: Conscience and principles.

PAT: Those are mutually exclusive. I'm sorry.

STU: And if you haven't heard the binary choice argument before --

GLENN: Everybody has.

STU: Well, but just to review.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: Basically, Hillary Clinton is going to be bad on 100 percent of the things. We know she's a liberal and she's nuts. On the other side, you're going to have someone who might be good on some things. Maybe he's at least saying he's for a flat tax and the IRS --

PAT: And he gives us no indication to think he will be better on anything.

STU: Well, let me finish. Maybe he's better for more localized education. Maybe he's better on campaign reform term limits. Maybe he's better on foreign policy that's a little bit more sensible. Maybe he's better on monetary policy. You know, better on the fed. Maybe he would give us better Supreme Court justices.

What I just described to you is straight off the David Duke website. That is his platform. Those things are his platform. So if we had a binary choice between David Duke -- who would be better than taxes than Hillary Clinton -- he would be better on localized education than Hillary Clinton. Are we to cross the line and vote for David Duke because, "Well, he's better on X, Y, and Z?" And to me, that's why it's not a binary choice.

GLENN: Binary choices as we said, last hour, lead you to a kakistocracy.

STU: Kakistocracy.

GLENN: Say it.

STU: No.

GLENN: You can't, can you? Nobody can.

STU: The point is --

GLENN: But it is a government run by the worst people of society. Because everybody keeps saying, "Well, it's the lesser of two evils." And eventually you get down to Pol Pot or Mao.

STU: Right.

GLENN: I mean, eventually you get there.

Now, we're not anywhere close to that.

STU: Right. And obviously --

GLENN: But you are on that road.

STU: Obviously, Donald Trump is not as bad as David Duke.

GLENN: No.

STU: But the point is, there has to be a line of principle. And obviously Cruz is saying here that Trump doesn't violate that line. Because I think every mainstream Trump supporter would say, "I'm not going to vote for David Duke in that scenario."

GLENN: Correct.

STU: However, every argument they make about Donald Trump could be applied to David Duke.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: You could get anyone that isn't Hillary Clinton, you could apply these arguments to.

GLENN: See, this is the problem: The problem is we have divided ourselves in teams, and it doesn't matter if your team is inflating the ball or not. If the other side is inflating the ball, you cry bloody murder. If your side is inflating the ball, it doesn't matter. That's the problem. We're all wearing jerseys, it doesn't matter what is happening anymore. I'm for my team.

This is -- this is exactly what our Founders warned us about. George Washington was clear. Thomas Jefferson was clear. Adams was clear. They were all clear!

This is the end of the republic if you just play teams. And that's the problem. We're playing teams.

Look, I want you to listen very carefully to me because this is going to sound pretty outrageous: I am not here to fight for the -- for the saving of America. I am not here to fight for the saving of this land. I am not here to save the -- the -- the -- the -- the system that we have built. I am here and you are here -- we all are here for this time to save the idea of America.

America is no more than that: an idea, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. And among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That you have charge over your own life and you only answer to God, and God gives you those rights, and you give some of those rights to the government for protection. And the minute that that government begins to infringe on any of those rights, it is not just your -- not just your willingness, it is your duty to overthrow anyone who would take those rights away.

Those rights are what have us say, "I can do this. I can build a better mousetrap. I could be president. I could build a rocket and go to Mars. I can be left alone. I can participate. I can not participate." It's an idea that had never, ever happened before.

And right now, what we are arguing about is the -- is the destruction of our banking system. The destruction of our two-party system. The destruction of our capital. The destruction of law and order, whatever the hell that even means anymore. The destruction of our culture. The destruction of our churches, whatever the hell that means anymore.

I don't care if my children are more rich or less rich than me. I don't care. I don't care.

What I do care is that my children are free to be able to chart their own course, free to be able to work or not work and starve. My children have a right to worship in the way they see fit and to move as their conscience tells them to move.

Right now, we have become PETA. Shame on all of us. Why not -- just if you won't vote for Hillary our you won't vote for Trump, why not just cover me in a bucket of blood? Why not just shame me in the public square? Why not run them out of business? They're climate deniers!

There is no difference between the two teams anymore. Oh, sure, one's for a little lower taxes. One is the for border, one is not. One is for international rule, one is for national rule.

Which one is for the idea that all men are created equal, that all men have a right to pursue their own happiness and make their own goddamn decision? Which one? Which one?

I contend neither of them. And so we will just soak each other in buckets of blood. We'll be a happy little bumper sticker community that shames one another into making sure you walk in goose-step with all the other Hillary supporters or walk in goose-step with all the other Trump supporters. Because she's going to mean the destruction of America. No, no, says the Hillary supporter, you must vote for us because he means the destruction of America.

I contend they both mean the destruction of the idea.

[break]

GLENN: So I apologize for my outburst in language. I don't apologize for the thoughts behind it. But sometimes, when you're doing four hours a day live, that's what happens. Welcome to the program. Welcome to real life.

When we come back, next hour, the debates.

STU: Oh, good.

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.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

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.