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What Can You Learn From a Drunk, Sexting College Student? Mercy.

November 01, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Unless you've been ignoring the headlines to avoid election coverage, you've probably seen the story about a young female college student who crashed her car into a police officer's car following a party. And, you've probably heard she was tipsy, taking topless photos to send her boyfriend. Undeniably, it was not her finest moment.

"How do you face your family? How do you call your mom? How do you call your dad? What is it like when you get up that morning and see your face everywhere on Facebook? Your moment of absolute shame and you are being ridiculed by everyone," Glenn asked Tuesday on his radio program.

RELATED: How Backyard Fence Conversations Could Save America

Planning to discuss the story Monday on radio, Glenn had second thoughts after teaching the Beatitudes at church on Sunday.

"As I had my finger on send, the Beatitudes came to mind. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy," Glenn said. "I had my finger on send because she was going to be funny. I hit delete. I didn't bring it up yesterday. And the reason why is because I want to talk to you today about mercy."

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

• For how long will the college girl's life be destroyed by her mistake?

• Has a study been done on the people who have been destroyed by Facebook?

• Whose business was destroyed after a single, misinterpreted tweet?

• Would we have treated people so hatefully before social media?

• Has Glenn softened his approach or his principles?

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: Hello, America. All right. I want to tell you a -- I want to tell you a story. And I want to tell it in two different ways.

Sunday morning, I get up, and I'm reading the news. And I see this amazing story about this 20-year-old girl who is leaving a party. She is driving back to her dorm room, and she slams into the back of a police cruiser. The police cruiser is parked.

JEFFY: Not fun.

GLENN: The police cruiser is -- the cop just got out of the cruiser, and he was walking over to a house where he was investigating some, you know, phone call. And he turns around after he hears, pam!

And he runs over to the car to see if the girl is okay. And she is quickly trying to put her blouse on. She has a sweater or a blouse, and she's pulling it over her head. And the cop says, "Miss, are you okay?"

And she says, "Yes, yes, I'm fine. I'm sorry. I just -- I'm sorry."

He said, "Can you step out?"

She said, "Yes."

And now she's trying to hook her bra back up and put her blouse back on. Nobody else is in the car. There is an open wine bottle in the car.

JEFFY: Wow.

GLENN: And the police officer notices that she's having a hard time kind of navigating.

And he says, "You been drinking?" And she says, "Well, I just got back from a party, but I'm not drunk." And he says okay. He gives her a sobriety test.

All I know is that she had to go to the hospital for blood tests, so I'm guessing that she flunked the sobriety test.

And he said, "Can you tell me what you were doing?" And she blushes, and she says, "Yeah. I -- I just left a party, and my boyfriend wanted a topless picture of me driving home."

So she had taken off her blouse and her bra, and she was taking a hot photo of her topless, driving home, for her boyfriend.

Now, there's plenty of places to go here, are there not, Pat?

PAT: Yes, many.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

JEFFY: Yes?

GLENN: So I'm seeing this story, and I immediately think, "Oh, my gosh, is this society -- is this girl just dumb as a box of rocks?"

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And I copy and paste. I put it into an email, and I'm sending it to one of our producers for yesterday's show. This is Monday -- this is Sunday morning. And as I'm ready to hit "send," I look down at her face one more time. And she's a normal-looking sweet 20-year-old girl. And suddenly, I think to myself, "Everybody -- her life is destroyed, at least for a year."

Everybody she knows -- she's this 20-something -- you know, 19, 20-year-old, going to college. Her parents think she's sweet, most likely. All of her parents' friends think she's sweet most likely. Her aunts, her uncles, everybody in her circle that doesn't see her taking her top off for her boyfriend now has a very different image of her.

One thing to be drinking. Another thing to be drinking and driving. Another thing to be drinking and driving and slam into the back of a police officer. It's another thing to be drinking and driving and slamming into the back of the police officer while sexting. It's another thing to be drinking and driving and slamming into the back of the police cruiser while sexting and taking a photo of yourself topless and the reason you were slamming into the back of the police officer is because you were trying to put your shirt back on.

Done. How do you face your family -- how do you call your mom? How do you call your dad? What are your friends -- what is it like when you get up that morning and see your face everywhere on Facebook? Your moment of absolute shame and you are being ridiculed by everyone.

It's a good thing that this thing happened to me on Sunday. Because I teach Sunday school. And this Sunday, I taught the Beatitudes.

And, you know, Ellen, if I have time today, I want to teach them on Facebook -- I want to teach them on Facebook Live today, if I can.

But I got to mercy. As I had my finger on "send," the Beatitudes came to mind. Those -- those who are merciful will receive mercy.

Now, I have been thinking about Facebook and the comments on Facebook -- because has anybody read my comments lately? Woo!

And I thought to myself a lot, "Most these people don't know me. Most of these people have never listened to me. They -- some of them have, but I contend, they've heard, but they've never really listened to me. Those who are making the case that I've changed. No, I haven't.

If anything, I have softened my stance, but -- not my stance, not my principles, but I've softened my approach. But I haven't changed my principles at all. They're exactly the same. So I contend you may have heard me, but you didn't listen to me. But most of them haven't listened to me. They don't know the first thing about me. And they are getting more and more vitriolic. Really nasty. And everyone is getting that way.

And so I've been thinking a lot of, "What's happening to us? What is happening to us?" Because we would have never treated each other this way before. But now we're traveling in packs and we're traveling anonymously. And it's easy to say things anonymously or virtually because it's not -- you don't have to look at the person in the eye. But you'll notice -- I saw a video today of a woman who went, and she was standing in a Trump rally. She started protesting. Trump kicked her out. Okay. Fine.

But when they get out, people surround her. And she is angry, and she's shouting angry liberal, Berkeley, California, things. I don't even care about what she was saying or what anyone else was saying. What was happening is they were yelling at each other. Okay. I get it. Everybody is angry.

But then one side started to chant lock her up. Lock her up. All she did was express her opinion. She might have done it horribly. I don't agree with her opinion at all. But in a crowd, lock her up. Lock her up. We're becoming bullies in crowds and bullies virtually, on both sides. This is not about a candidate. This is about all of us.

I had my finger on "send" because she was going to be funny. I hit delete. And I didn't bring it up yesterday. And the reason why is because I want to talk to you today about mercy.

Is there something about using people -- we're using -- we're no longer looking -- in fact, we don't like it. We don't watch television as much because -- we're not watching situation comedies as much. Because why use a situation comedy? Reality is funnier than anything else. Look at all this crazy, stupid people. And look at how we're mocking everything on Facebook now.

But we don't see people as people. They're just for our entertainment purposes. And then we move on.

We pile on -- what business is it of us, this girl's life? Now, Pat, because I brought this up in church, Pat had an argument -- a discussion with his wife on the way home. She happened to agree with me. He didn't.

PAT: Yeah, you know, I think you can use that as a cautionary tale for other girls in similar situations not to do that because so many things can go wrong. Almost everything that can happen is bad. And -- and it's a -- so it might prevent somebody else from doing that the next time.

JEFFY: You would hope.

PAT: You would hope so. You would hope. You would hope so.

GLENN: You wouldn't hope so. You wouldn't hope so?

(chuckling)

PAT: It's also a story about where we're headed culturally.

GLENN: I agree with you on that. I agree with you on that.

The problem is you're identifying -- I don't think people understand -- I don't think any of us really understand, especially for somebody, unlike me, unlike Ben Shapiro, and unlike anybody -- David French, who is really getting hammered right now, we at least have an outlet. People like that, they don't.

The entire country turns on them, mocks them, ridicules them, and then moves on. That experience I think has to change people.

I would love to see -- has anybody ever done -- you would know this, Stu. Has anybody ever done a study on the people who have been destroyed by Facebook?

STU: Yeah, we haven't talked about this? There's a really interesting article that came out, it's probably six months ago now. Of the woman, and you might remember this story --

GLENN: I knew he would know.

STU: -- where she went to Africa, and she --

GLENN: Yeah, she got on the plane.

STU: She got on a plane. She tweeted before she got on the plane. She tweeted a joke and said, "I'm going to Africa, but don't worry, I'm white. So I won't get AIDS," or something like that.

So gets on the plane, flies to Africa. Someone -- it was at the former institution, you might remember as Gawker, posted this tweet of hers and made it into a news story. And -- but she was in the air the whole time as the thing blew up and she didn't know. There was a hashtag. I don't remember -- again, this is me.

GLENN: Landed yet, or something?

STU: Yeah, has she landed yet? I don't even remember her name, proving your point. So she was a PR person, and she made the joke not to say that white people can't get AIDS.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: That was not her point. Her point was -- she was actually kind of liberal and was pointing out that we don't care enough about Africa, basically.

The attitude of Americans are we just -- you know, we think that none of this stuff will happen to us. That's kind of her point. Like is it a little bit offensive? Yes. But, you know, she was trying to be offensive. It's Twitter, right?

There's no reason -- she had worked in charity in these areas before like for -- to help people in these situations. There was no reason to believe she was a hard-core racist who wanted black people to get AIDS and black people not to. There was no backing for this -- in a completely -- in a person who generally speaking was not a public person. Right? Like she was not a person in which she was trying to get on TV all the time. Although she was in PR, so she had some of that background.

Anyway, so by the time she had landed, she was fired.

JEFFY: Yeah. Before she even had a chance to respond to anything at all.

STU: Right. She didn't even get a chance to respond to it, and her life was over.

GLENN: Imagine landing, turning on your cell phone and hearing bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, big, and everybody is writing to her, saying, "Boy, this is not good."

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And she's fired.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: Right.

GLENN: On the tarmac, she finds out, "I've been -- I've lost my job?"

STU: Yeah. And her business was destroyed too. Because she was -- if I remember correctly, she had a bunch of clients. Like she had a business with a bunch of clients, and they just all dropped her. So she had nothing.

She went through a period of, you know, real depression. And, again, everyone else had moved on. We had all forgotten her name.

GLENN: Right. All left.

STU: We had all moved on.

GLENN: We all were higher than -- holier than thou, and we went on with our life to destroy somebody else.

STU: Exactly. Now, I believe -- I can't remember -- that was probably, the whole story happened, I don't know, two years ago. And so a year after that, she wound up getting her head back on her shoulders and putting her life back together a little bit. Wound up eventually contacting the Gawker author who came around to essentially apologize for, you know, publicizing her tweet. And they kind of became friends, if I remember the story correctly. And she's been able to sort of put her life back together.

GLENN: See if we can get her on the air.

STU: Yeah, it was a fascinating story. And, yeah, let's do that. I mean, it was really interesting --

GLENN: We should see if we can find a few people who have been destroyed and just cannot put their life back together.

STU: Yeah, there's several examples in that story, if I remember.

Featured Image: The Sermon On the Mount, Dansk: Bjergprædiken, Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle (Wiki Commons)

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

Tasos Katopodis / Stringer | Getty Images

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

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

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.