Trump Breaks Promise to 'Lock Her Up'

This might get a little annoying. According to former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, the President-elect will not pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, despite his inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail, during a presidential debate and the overwhelming evidence that Clinton lied.

"You get dizzy with all the lies. I feel like that's actually a Clinton strategy, right? If they throw enough lies at you, it's sort of like being in the batting cage . . . you've got a few of them firing at you at once, and you can't handle it," Buck Sexton said, filling in for Glenn on radio Tuesday.

While their political brand is forever damaged by years of scandals, it looks like the Clintons will get a pass once again.

"I don't think you can expect there will be a Clinton dynasty that, sort of, continues on after this whole. Remember, this is the second time Hillary has been the inevitable candidate. This is the second time the Clintons have had all of the media, all of the machinery behind them. They couldn't get it done either time. I mean, to borrow from W.: Fool me once, can't get fooled again," Buck said.

Whether Trump's political brand will be damaged by the backpedaling remains to be seen.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

BUCK: I've got some breaking news for you. Which is always fun when you're on radio and it's happening right as it's coming in. Donald Trump, according to a senior aide, I believe it's Kellyanne Conway, but Donald Trump has said that he will not pursue the criminal case against Hillary Clinton. That that is going to be off the table now.

Ooh. Some of you are probably a little annoyed about this. Others of you will think it's a good idea. I think we should spend some idea together talking about the pros and cons of doing this. Or, I should say, really, not doing this. Deciding to not continue the prosecution against Hillary Clinton.

I was a very early and vocal, not just critic of this whole thing. But I was telling everybody who would listen. I would go on CNN where I was a contributor. I would say, "Look, I had a TS clearance. I know the laws about this stuff pretty darn well. And there's no way what Hillary Clinton did in any way, shape, or form would just be sort of let go, if we were talking about somebody who wasn't a Clinton. There's just no way. It wouldn't happen." And, of course, early on, they were saying, "Oh, that's just conjecture from you. You don't really know -- there's no classified." Okay. There is classified. It wasn't marked classified. Actually, it was marked classified. Oh, she didn't know about it. Actually, she did know.

Oh, you get dizzy with all the lies. I feel like that's actually a Clinton strategy, right? If they throw enough lies at you, it's sort of like being in the batting cage. And it's just -- everything -- you've got a few of them firing at you at once, and you can't handle it. I haven't been in a batting cage in a while. It used to be kind of fun. So Trump is saying he won't go after Hillary.

A couple things about this -- on the -- let's start with the why this might upset some people. The first thing is that Trump was talking a lot during the campaign, as I think he should have, about how what Hillary did was very illegal, very wrong, and how there would be accountability. How, if you voted for Donald Trump, he would actually try to find some way. He would find some means of holding her accountable through the law.

And we knew that there was all kinds of funky stuff going on. Not funky like dance party. But funky like, "Hmm, that's not right." The head of the FBI went ahead of the Department of Justice -- they make the decision about prosecuting or not prosecuting. The head of the FBI went ahead and said that no reasonable federal prosecutor should bring charges. Shouldn't we have heard from the prosecutor? In this case, typically been from Loretta Lynch or one of her top officials. One of those who works for her at the DOJ.

But, no, it was Comey who went out, after Loretta Lynch had sat on that plane, on the tarmac, to talk about the future stuff. And they sat down. They had this discussion.

It all looked so bad. It looked terrible. Meanwhile, Trump is chanting, "Lock her up." His supporters are chanting, "Lock her up." This became one of the sort of rallying cries of the campaign.

"Lock her up." Could they, if you had appointed a special prosecutor, is it likely? Is it possible? Well, is it possible, first? How about that? And then is it likely that there could be criminal charges brought against Hillary Clinton for what she did? A direct and clear reading of the statute would be yes.

Now, what would the guidelines say about this sort of thing? She would probably take a plea deal. I think it's unlikely, even if she were a non-Clinton that she would go to jail. Probably pay a large fine. Have a number of years of -- a number of years of probation. And never hold a clearance for the rest of her life. And if she were also a non-political person -- meaning, if she just worked for an Intel agency or a military -- a branch of the military, she would be fired.

But that's probably what would happen. But Trump and his supporters were chanting lock her up. At least the implication there is, well, there she be a full-fledged investigation, absent the sort of politics that bails the Clintons out time and again, whether it's Bill or Hillary. Some could argue that this was a promise that was made.

This is on the negative side. And I think that there are going to be those in the Trump camp, or those who supported Trump all along, who see this and say to themselves, "is this the beginning of the waffling, the wavering, the undulating with the political winds?"

Is this going to be a moment in time when we all of a sudden realize, "Oh, Trump was saying that stuff to get elected, but he didn't really mean it?" Is this a broken promise?

I don't think we should go that far. But I don't know. And everyone is entitled to their opinion on this one. But on the negative side of things, you have that. Seems to be a sort of broken promise from Trump. And then also justice.

Hillary did things that are in clear violation of federal statute. Those of you listening who have had a security clearance or have a security clearance, worked in the national security side of things, whether military, Intel, or any of the jobs where you'd have to have a clearance, you know how crazy those rules are, how strict they are. And you probably think to yourself, "No. She should just be held accountable. Rule of law is rule of law. Rule of law doesn't mean exceptions for people based upon how important they are to one political party or another, how connected they are, how much strife it will cause within our political discussions, if they're actually held to account with the law."

So you probably think that a special prosecutor appointed by Donald Trump would be a good idea, if you take that position.

Now, let's look at the other side for a moment. Because this is -- this is pretty big because this means now that the Clintons are going to be able to sort of go off into the sunset. We'll see what the donations are like to the Clinton Foundation. I have a feeling that they're going to be plummeting dramatically over the next year or two.

I also think that the speeches that Bill and Hillary will give will be at quite a discounted rate. They will be rock-bottom prices, compared to what they were before, which will prove all of us who were saying that Hillary wasn't selling a speech, she wasn't selling wisdom, she wasn't even selling -- or -- and Bill too. They weren't selling this sort of gravitas that they give an organization. They were selling access or at least the appearance of access, which is just as bad.

Meaning the people buying it, thought that's what they were buying. All right? You can't take money -- you can't be a politician and take money from somebody and say, "Yeah, I'll make sure we pass that bill you want me to pass. Don't worry about it. I've got it covered." And then if the FBI is running a sting and you've taken that paper bag full of cash, you don't get to say, "Well, I wasn't really going to vote that way." Come on. Come on. That's not how it works.

So the Clintons get to continue on. I think that their brand is -- their political brand is forever damaged by all of this. I don't think you can expect there will be a Clinton dynasty that sort of continues on after this whole -- remember, this is the second time Hillary has been the inevitable candidate. This is the second time the Clintons have had all of the media, all of the machinery behind them. They couldn't get it done either time. I mean, to borrow from W.: Fool me once, can't get fooled again. Get can't get fooled again.

So -- now, let's look at the, this is a good idea for Trump side of the issue. And I will tell you, to be up front about it, I think it is. And I know some of you -- oh, I'm going to get some emails, I'm going to get some Facebook messages from current or former military or Intel -- some of my Intel brothers inside Langley and other places. They're going to be mad at me for this one, and I understand that. But let me make my case about why I think this is the right move for Trump.

As long as you're okay with Trump kind of breaking his word on this one. Lock her up was just theatrics, I guess. Okay. It was just theatrics.

Or maybe you just take the position that he looked on the facts and he's changing his mind based on the circumstances of today. That's usually what politicians do, by the way. When they want to change their mind about something, they go out and they tell you, "Well, things are different now." Are they different because they are, or because the politician wants them to be? I leave that to you.

So by Trump not pursuing this, you have, one, the possibility of unity. Do you buy that?

Given that the Democrats are hell-bent, it seems, on creating the perception that Trump is the sort of modern reincarnation of either the KKK or the neo-Nazis. Or the -- I -- the alt-right neo-Nazi KKK consortium -- whatever it is. They seem to be under the impression that they can convince -- if they just keep hammering this, they will convince Americans that that's who Donald Trump is. And so they stay on this -- which makes it seem like unity is kind of a tough thing to pull off. Right?

It's one thing when you disagree with the top marginal tax rate. It's one thing when you disagree with how to handle ballooning entitlement spending because of the Baby Boomers. You can disagree on that and still sit down and be friends at the end of the day.

And I hope that that's where we actually get in our politics. It's a whole 'nother situation though when one side is just pointing a finger at the other side and saying, "You support somebody who is morally the equivalent of a KKK member." Maybe not actually in the KKK. But somebody who is really, really bad.

It's tough to sit down with them and say, "Yeah, let's have a civil discussion about all of this." But unity -- if you're looking for reasons why Trump would decide not to pursue charges. And this is just breaking now.

Not to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton for what she did with her email. Oh, by the way, I believe also that means for what she did at the Clinton Foundation. That one's tough to take too. Because the legacy of the Clintons, really, more than anything else, is going to be the creation of a vast international enterprise under the guise of a charity that was really using charity as a front for creating a tremendous amount of political clout and brand value and cronies getting all sorts of payoffs and money and paying salaries. And building an enterprise that is really a for-profit under the guise of a nonprofit. A for-profit for the Clintons.

The end goal of which, was not just to make them rich, but also to make Hillary Clinton president. So that's gone too.

But, okay, unity, that's one reason. Then there's another one, but this is sort of a contingent reason, right?

So on the one hand, we've got, this is bad. Trump is breaking his word. Trump is also not pursuing justice. You can take that position. By not going after Hillary with a special prosecutor in -- during his presidency. I guess we could also, by the way -- just throw this out there, just to make things really crazy, Trump could also change his mind on this. We had a couple of months. He could be like, "Yeah, you know, I've decided, actually, she's pretty bad. We're going to go for it." All right. But let's just assume that he's going to keep his word on this one or that this report is true.

Then there's the possibility of just the Machiavellian side of this. Trump looks a bit magnanimous in the process, right? There will be some good will created here. Maybe it's a distraction for the Trump administration that actually realizes that they have a wide open field to do incredible things for this country.

Got a Republican House. A Republican Senate. Tons of Republican governorships. Republican statehouses. Wide open. He's made these promises. The people have spoken. We have voted. People want some of the stuff that Trump has said he would do to actually happen. Maybe he realizes that's much more important to many of us, to most of us, than settling a score with Hillary Clinton. And so by doing this, he sort of looks magnanimous in the process. And he looks like he's being gracious, gracious to the other side.

Do I think he'll be rewarded by the other side for this graciousness? No, no, I do not. I think that would be a naive point of view for you to take on it. But those of fair mind, for those of open mind, for those who are willing to at least judge Donald Trump based on what he does now as president, I'd have to say that moving beyond the prosecution of Hillary Clinton -- again, this sort of ties in for the purposes of unity. But it makes Trump look good. It will make him look good.

There's one more thing I want to throw in there, he says he's not going to prosecute her -- or, he's not -- I should say, continue the investigation.

But if he appointed a special prosecutor, I mean, over a hundred classified emails. I mean, this is not hard. They wanted to go after her.

They gave her a special pass, created this well-she-didn't-mean-to exception for a federal statute, for which, when you talk about the handling of classified information, there is no special, oopsies -- Oopsies loophole. The other side of this is, what if he decides that he's going to pardon her?

Now, sort of like a political endorsement that you didn't ask for. A pardon sticks to you no matter what. Hillary could say, "Well, I didn't want this pardon." It doesn't matter. He can say he's not going to investigate her, but just to be a super-duper nice guy, he pardons Hillary Clinton for the email situation. Maybe just that, so that if people want to dig up some other stuff from the past, that's on them. But he pardons her for the email situation.

Now you have the would-be standard -- or, the former standard-bearer and would-be president of the Democratic Party with a pardon for criminal activity on her record.

Trump looks magnanimous in the process. Trump looks like he's trying to achieve unity.

And anytime somebody brings up Hillary and the popular vote, they'll be like, "Hillary is lucky that she's not walking around in an orange jumpsuit because did you hear about the pardon?" A little Machiavellian. Anything that could stop Trump from doing this? Not that I'm aware of.

Anything that makes me think that Trump might do this? Yeah. It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it.

Going into a break. We'll be right back.

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Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The founders warned us

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

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

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

Not-so-expert advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

A republic no more?

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

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

And the people become spectators of their own government.

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The path forward

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choosing death over care

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

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

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

They offered her MAID.

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

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

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

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

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

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The logical end of a broken system

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Sharia arrives

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

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

The warning from those who have lived under it

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

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

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

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

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

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

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

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

Wake up before it is too late

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet return of meaning

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

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

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

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Where renewal begins

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.