Beware: Fake News Is Propaganda and Must Be Vetted Before Sharing

It was Founding Father John Adams who said this about our government:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

"This system of freedom is not designed for the people we are becoming," Glenn said Tuesday on radio. "You can't have a free people if free people won't do their work."

Part of that work includes vetting news sources in a post-factual society. It requires personal responsibility.

RELATED: Pizzagate: Fake News Conspiracy Theory That Led Gunman to DC’s Comet Ping Pong, Explained

For example, if a reader encounters a news story about Hillary Clinton running a child prostitution ring in a tunnel system underneath a pizza parlor in Washington, DC, said reader might want to further investigate the source before showing up at the establishment with a weapon.

"It requires you to engage your brain. And it also requires you to have something we used to call common sense," Glenn said.

Listen to this segment, beginning at mark 2:12, from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: All right. I want to talk a little bit about Pizzagate. And beyond Pizzagate, the trend of fake news. I keep -- we keep saying this for the past couple of days. I keep coming back to -- and, Pat, you would know this. Isn't it John Adams who said, "This system is wholly inadequate for an irreligious and uneducated people?"

PAT: And immoral.

GLENN: And immoral people.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: This system of freedom is not designed for the people we are becoming. You can't have freedom -- look at the solutions on fake news.

We should have some sort of vetting system with Facebook.

Or, you could do the work and engage your head and say, "Hmm, A, does this make sense? B, how come it's only on yournewsatthehour.com.ca.tv? Why am I only getting it from this one source? And let's look at the source.

Do we know anything about the source? People don't -- people read the headline. They're lucky if they read the first paragraph before they share it.

PAT: Uh-huh.

STU: And some of the studies have found, you know, 80 percent of people or more don't read the stories they share on Facebook. They see the headline. They share it.

GLENN: Right. They read the headline. And that's --

STU: And how many headlines -- how many times have we read stories where you click on the headline, and you're like, "Oh, my gosh."

And then you read the story, and you're like, "Well, that's not it?"

PAT: Well, how many times have you posted something on Facebook, and you get some angry responder -- and they address -- they're yelling at you about the things you address in the context of the post.

GLENN: Right.

PAT: Well, I -- that's what I addressed. That's what this is -- you should read the post. They never do. They never do.

GLENN: They don't even read the post.

STU: They don't even read it.

GLENN: So you can't have a free people if free people won't do their work.

PAT: Yeah, there's got to be some personal responsibility.

GLENN: Personal responsibility. It requires you to engage your brain. And it also requires you to have something we used to call common sense.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: I mean, common sense tells you -- what is the Pizzagate story? The Pizzagate story was that Hillary Clinton was running a prostitution ring of underage prostitutes in a tunnel system underneath a pizza parlor in Washington, DC.

STU: In the middle of the campaign. She was like, "Yeah, I'm going to run for president. But also the child prostitution thing."

PAT: Well, they did talk about pizza a lot in the emails. So obviously that was code.

GLENN: So you have to believe that, A -- I mean, how bad -- this is -- this is, again, the problem of the press and the problem with people like us is demonizing people. Once you demonize -- there was nothing -- there was nothing anyone could say to the left about Donald Trump that they would ever believe, in a good way. And there's nothing that anyone on the right could possibly say to convince you that Hillary Clinton was not the most evil person in the world.

So the first hurdle is already done because of conditioning. We just make you into a person who is the worst person in the world. And I won't listen to anything else because everything I have seen on my side of the media, on my side of the feed, tell me that that's a bad person. And if anyone on my side starts to say, "Well, wait a minute, guys, they've been gotten to, they're afraid for their life, somebody has their family, or they've been paid off to say those things."

PAT: Sold out.

GLENN: There's no way to cross those lines.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: So we're already bifurcate the country. We already Balkanize. And so now the possible truth about the other side can't jump over that chasm.

So the first thing you had to believe is that Hillary Clinton would be so evil that she should be -- well, she would also be competent enough to run a prostitution ring of underage kids. There's step one. Step two is, there's a tunnel system underneath Washington, DC, for pizza parlors. Not for the government, but for pizza parlors. Three, she's running this during the campaign. Four, when somebody calls to order pizza, that's when they're ordering a child for sex.

STU: Do you want --

GLENN: Is there more?

STU: Do you want the full list of terms? I have the full list. Buzzfeed came up with the full list of terms that I thought was pretty interesting.

GLENN: Buzzfeed was debunking this.

STU: Yes. There's a whole -- it's a really interesting story about how something like this spreads. Which, you know, interestingly with this one spread from literally nothing. It was just someone randomly tweeting that this was going on. Started with a person saying that October 30th, right before the election, right? People are right at the height of their sensitivities of the other side.

White supremacy Twitter account that presents itself as belonging to a Jewish lawyer in New York tweeted that the NYPD was looking into evidence --

GLENN: Why does it always have to be a Jewish lawyer? We have a guest on today --

STU: It's not. I mean --

GLENN: I know. I know. We have a guest on today: Jon Ronson. He's this fascinating guy, who's talked to people whose lives have been destroyed by the internet. And he said, I was talking to a member of the Aryan Nation. And they were talking about the Bilderberg Group.

And he said, "You know, I don't know how they can be a Jewish conspiracy because most of the people that go there are not Jewish." And he said -- this is the quote from the Aryan Nation guy.

Yes, they're not necessarily a Jew, but they are Jewish.

JEFFY: Yeah.

STU: Oh. Oh.

GLENN: Oh. Okay. Good. All right.

STU: So the -- the initial tweet from the white supremacy account said that Anthony Weiner's laptop contained evidence of Clinton involvement in an international child enslavement ring. Okay?

GLENN: They're so into that.

STU: Well, there you go. It's totally --

GLENN: They're not helping down in Haiti. They're abducting children for the pizza parlor.

PAT: Right. So then it spread to a message board. That message board was then posted by a guy who worked with a British conspiracy theorist and posted a site on yournewswire.com, which I know is --

PAT: Well, if it's My News Wire, then it's obviously news.

STU: It says it's news in the site.

GLENN: It says it's news in the site. Like ABC -- ABCNews.ca.tv.

STU: Yeah, there's some.

GLENN: Yeah, dot-tv or dot.co -- or, AU. That's what it was.

STU: The next story on Your News Wire, took a step by claiming an FBI insider had confirmed the claims.

Now, again, we don't have anything yet. So this is where we are right now. One random account on Twitter. And a woman in Missouri claimed that an NYPD source was telling them the Clintons were about to be brought down by a massive child trafficking sex scandal. One anonymous person on a 4chan thread who claimed to work for law enforcement and said something similar a few months ago, before news of the FBI, looking into emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop broke, and a conspiracy theorist who pulled these things together into a post and then used them to claim that evidence had emerged from the Clinton email investigation that a massive child trafficking and pedophile sex ring operates in Washington.

Your News Wire story from October 31st was then noticed by right-wing and fringe blogs. They began to aggregate it and spread it, as you would expect.

One site plagiarized the text from the original post. These guys have no ethics in their fake news. Plagiarism.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STU: I mean, if you can't get fake news people to write their own stories, what have we become as a nation?

GLENN: Holy cow.

STU: 85,000 shares for that one. Now, Glenn, you post things on Facebook. You're active on Facebook. 85,000 is a big number.

GLENN: That's a lot.

PAT: That's a lot. That's a lot of shares.

STU: Because shares isn't just like, "Eh, I just happened to read it." Shares is someone taking the story so seriously that they're actually pushing it out. Now, whether they read it or not, who knows?

But they're pushing it out to spread it even further. And Facebook detects a story that is being shared widely and winds up it in even more feeds. Because that's -- it's a smart system. It's a -- I mean, Facebook -- by the way, these people are smart.

While many sites repeated the details from the original post, others introduced new baseless claims.

Subjectpolitics.com -- you guys big on subjectpolitics.com? They wrote a story with, "It's over. NYPD just raided Hillary's property. What they found there will, capital letters, ruin her life."

Well, of course, they did not actually raid the property. And the associated photograph was just a stock photo of the FBI doing something. Not at her house. Nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. Just the picture of the FBI carrying evidence in some unrelated case.

That one had 107,000 shares. And on and on and on and on.

True Pundit published a story the same day setting its own anonymous NYPD and FBI sources, listing new allegations. Ending the Fed posted a story and managed to generate significant engagement on Facebook.

They were known for promoting and making it to the Facebook trending. Remember the Facebook trending topics when they said Megyn Kelly was being fired. That story came from them, apparently. It goes on and on and on.

Now, three days later -- and David Goldberg, who apparently started this whole thing, then tweets the story from True Pundit saying, "My source was right." Well, True Pundit's source was essentially David Goldberg who tweeted it initially, three days earlier.

And this is how this happens. Hundreds of thousands of -- of shares.

GLENN: Can I just say something? Remember the story about George Washington saying that he was a big philanderer? It was a big that was -- this is all something that has been done to us before. There was a book that was the first one to take down George Washington. It was published in I think 1943. Look at the footnotes. I'll -- we'll post it someplace else, where we can show you the name of the book and the following book.

And what it was, was a historian, a progressive historian that had the agenda of taking down George Washington. So he publishes this book. There's no -- there's no footnotes in this book. It's just stories about how bad of a guy he was. Another professor, he sees this book, and he's outraged by it. And he writes a book, all footnoted, and says, "None of this is true." For the first book sold an awful lot of copies. Then the book came out that said that wasn't true, that was all footnoted. Then a third book comes out and says, "This book is true," and uses footnotes referencing the first book. Okay?

(laughter)

GLENN: And that has gone on. And you can actually watch the tree of lies that has come from that one book. And they are all -- so the next book that is defending the first book, its footnotes go to the third book.

PAT: That's exactly what progressives have done with the Constitution. Using case law, instead of the Constitution.

GLENN: Correct. You don't even make it progressives. You just make it liars.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: They start referencing each other as proof that that's --

PAT: Right. Well, we had another crappy decision that backs up this crappy decision. Yeah, but none of it is based in the Constitution.

GLENN: Correct. Right.

STU: If only there was a book that explained the tie between progressives and liars.

JEFFY: Right.

PAT: Oh, man.

STU: If there was a book --

GLENN: What would you call a book like that?

STU: Maybe you would call it one of the two words. Progressive -- maybe Liars, I guess.

PAT: Who would write such a book though? I mean -- what a coincidence.

GLENN: That would be a number one times best-seller.

STU: Would it have footnotes in it though?

GLENN: Yeah, it would. And it would make a great Christmas gift.

JEFFY: It would be available?

GLENN: It would be available at bookstores and online everywhere, really. You can download it right now.

STU: Wow. It sounds like fake news to me.

GLENN: It does to me too. It's called Liars. It's available in bookstores everywhere.

[break]

GLENN: What's amazing about this pizza story is you also have to believe that no one else called to order pizza and then had like an underage kid show up at their house. And you're like, "No, I really wanted Canadian bacon and pineapple. I don't -- why are these Alusian (phonetic) kids all of a sudden in my house?"

STU: As conspiracy theories spread, it went to this pizza restaurant called Comic Ping-pong, which was I guess a place where people at DC really liked. And I think the owner is a Democratic donor and things like that. So he got tied into this somehow.

And they've been getting harassing calls. They got this guy who came up from North Carolina with a gun. And went in to investigate what he believed was a real child prostitution sting. And then left after he realized there were no tunnels --

PAT: Somehow he couldn't find the tunnels. They hid the tunnels so well, he could not find them.

STU: But this is -- it wound up growing into one guy on Twitter, yet again, saying, "I'm dreaming about -- this is from the Podesta emails. "I'm dreaming about your hotdog stand in Hawaii." This is code for something. Sex trafficking? So that piece of evidence, quote, unquote --

GLENN: The evidence is Podesta just saying, "I'm dreaming about your hotdog stand in Hawaii." That's the evidence that they're --

STU: Right. Because that's code.

GLENN: -- underage trafficking at a pizza parlor.

STU: So from that, they built a list of terms that you can find in the Podesta emails.

Hotdog equals boy. Pizza equals girl. Cheese equals little girl. Pasta equals little boy. Ice cream equals male prostitute. Walnut equals a person of color. And sauce equals orgy.

(chuckling)

STU: Now you have the real choice behind the story. Sauce equals orgy.

GLENN: Now, how do you stand against this? We'll address that, next.

Featured Image: Facebook logos are pictured on the screens of a smartphone (R), and a laptop computer, in central London on November 21, 2016. Facebook on Monday became the latest US tech giant to announce new investment in Britain with hundreds of extra jobs but hinted its success depended on skilled migration after Britain leaves the European Union. The premier social network underlined London's status as a global technology hub at a British company bosses' summit where Prime Minister Theresa May sought to allay business concerns about Brexit. (Photo Credit: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

EXCLUSIVE: Tech Ethicist reveals 5 ways to control AI NOW

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

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

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

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

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

Ban engagement-optimized AI companions for kids

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

Establish basic liability laws

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

Pass increased whistleblower protections

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

Prevent AI from having legal rights

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

Oppose the state moratorium on AI 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Midnight Hammer

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

USAF / Handout | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

What comes next

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

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

That would be catastrophic.

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

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

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

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

Now we pray

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

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

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


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rising Islamism

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

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

Blending the worst ideologies

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

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

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

Call out radicalism

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Could China OWN our National Parks?

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The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images

Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.