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

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Atheist Gamer Attacked for Tweet Defends Faith, Free Speech and the Constitution

March 13, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Colin Moriarty, gamer and cofounder of KindaFunny.com, recently found himself in hot water with gaming industry colleagues over a tweet he meant as a joke.

Apparently, no one has a sense of humor anymore --- on the left or right (just ask Sam B).

RELATED: Maybe We Should Just Lay off the Nazi Jokes for the Time Being? (Except for Mel Brooks)

A longtime fan of Glenn's, Moriarty joined The Glenn Beck Program on Monday to talk about the brouhaha and why his political viewpoints confuse people.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

Colin Moriarty joins us now. He's the cofounder of kindafunny.com. And he's a gamer. And welcome to the program, Colin. How are you, sir?

COLIN: I'm well. Thank you so much for having me. It's very surreal. I appreciate you taking the time.

GLENN: Why do you say it's very surreal?

COLIN: Well, my father and I -- well, I grew up with my father listening to talk radio and kind of listening to all sorts of people. And when I told him I was going to be on with you, he said he got chills actually because we used to listen to you and watch together.

GLENN: Oh, that's wild. That's wild.

Well, I am so glad that you have joined us. I saw you on Dave Reuben's show. And was fascinated by you, because you say you're a Libertarian, but you're also a proud conservative. And if this was visual, you're all tatted up. You live in San Francisco. And I can't imagine -- it's one thing to say Libertarian, it's another thing to say conservative in San Francisco. How is that going for you?

(chuckling)

COLIN: Not very well, as you can see.

GLENN: Yeah.

COLIN: Yeah. But, no, I kind of take -- you know, I think the good parts of both sides. And I think even the good parts of liberalism to come up with some amalgamation that makes sense to me. So I think -- socially, I think I'm very Libertarian. In fact, I think I'm more Libertarian than many progressive liberals.

But at the same time, I believe in the Constitution. I believe in deference to the Founders. I believe in a small government that stays out of your business. The thing is that I marked those altogether. So a government that stays out of your business, to tell you you can have a gun, for instance, is the same government that I think should stay out of your business if a man wants to marry another man. And I think that's where my Libertarianism comes into play.

GLENN: Yes. Colin, it's why I was in this strange position ten, 15 years ago of saying, look, you know, morally my religion teaches one thing. But my constitutionalism tells me I have no place to tell anybody who can marry and who can't. The government should be out of this entirely. Don't affect my church. And I won't affect your marriage. Just leave each other alone. And that creates some really strange bedfellows that we're currently trying to chase out of the public square. And that's the answer.

COLIN: I agree with you. You know, this is where -- I think people have a hard time identifying people like me, Glenn. Because I'm actually an atheist. But I grew up in a Catholic household, a very devoutly Catholic household. And people of faith have a very great ally in me because I believe that faith is a good thing. I believe it's good for polity. I think it's good for people to have faith in something, in a higher being. I just don't. But I would always protect to the very last a person's right, for instance, to believe.

Just because I don't believe doesn't mean, as you said, you can't believe. And so I also respect -- you know, I'm pro-choice, but I respect the pro-life argument. I think it's a very principled argument. I think it's good that there are people out there that are challenging my beliefs. And so this is the kind of the confusing thing, this kind of -- this kind of thought policing that's happening. This very -- you know, I'm considered an enemy to liberalism, even though I share many of their values, because I believe the government should stay out of your business. So I'm the enemy.

GLENN: Isn't it strange to see how people have flipped on almost every point just because their guy is not in office? Now liberals are concerned --

COLIN: Yes.

GLENN: -- they're concerned about, you know, executive orders. But they weren't under Obama. And now the people who were concerned about executive orders under Obama are fine with it now. It's crazy.

COLIN: To me, I agree with you. It's insane. You know, people that listen to me and know me -- I go off on politics often. And, you know, I was disgusted with the Republican Party. I was a registered Republican. And, you know, I'm not a Trump fan at all. I was sickened by how people took what I thought Republicanism was and, you know, morphed into something that it wasn't, simply to win. And to me, that's not -- that's not principled. And I'd rather lose and retain my principles. So when it was clear Trump was going to win, here in California -- we vote very late, as you know -- I voted for Kasich as a protest vote. And then I disavowed the party completely.

That doesn't mean I'm a conservative -- or, I'm sorry, that doesn't mean that I'm not a conservative. It means that I think the conservative principles and the free principles that we stand upon were actually kind of taken away by people that don't really share our values. And it seems like it's all in the name of winning. It's all in the name of being better than the other side. There is no one talking to each other. There's no gray area. It's just all orthodoxy. And it really makes me sick.

GLENN: So help me out what conservative -- I know what Republicanism means right now. It means the same exact thing as being a Democrat. It means I'll do whatever it takes and whatever it has to, to win. But conservatives, what does it mean to be a conservative? I mean, you're 32 years old. You're out in San Francisco. You're a gamer. You do -- you know, you do a gaming kind of blog.

So who are -- the people you relate to, what does that word even mean to them and to you?

COLIN: Well, I think -- you know, as you said, things are changing. I think we're at an inflection point. And, to me, conservatism simply means -- in my mind, and everyone might have a different opinion on this, I'm sure they do -- you know, a deference to the Constitution. If the government can get out of something, it should get out of something. If the state or local government can take care of something over the federal government, I think that's ideal. To me, it's personal freedom, responsibility, the right to succeed, and the right to fail. And the right to express yourself freely, without having to worry about being called a bigot or being called a sexist, as I was for making a silly joke. And I'm glad you brought that up specifically because there are so many people that play video games, there are so many people that enjoy entertainment that don't have anyone speaking for them.

GLENN: Yes.

COLIN: The video game industry in the United States is out of San Francisco. The media, which I come from -- I used to be the senior editor of the biggest video game website in the world. And two years ago, I quit to do my own thing with my friends.

But it is exclusively liberal. I am the only real conservative voice out there in what I would call mainstream media. Obviously there are people on YouTube that do that as well in the gaming space. And you would be shocked about how many people talk to me every day, and they're like, you are the only person I can relate to. I am a gun owner, for instance. You know, I'm not. But they're saying, I'm a gun owner, for instance, and I would be ridiculed and labeled by these other people. But you support me. Or I'm a man of faith. Or I'm Christian. Or I'm Jewish. Whatever it might be. And you don't judge me for that. So I think that there's a conservative bent to gaming and a conservative bent -- or an independent bent -- or a Libertarian bent to those things that people support.

GLENN: But what I'm asking you is, does the word conservative -- the word itself. Because what you're saying -- to me, conservative has been so bastardized that it doesn't mean anything that we almost -- and this is not the right word because it's so misunderstood, but almost classic liberalism. Because I think -- you know, everything -- I hope. And maybe this is wishful thinking. You will be able to tell me. Is anybody in San Francisco waking up to the point of, "Hey, safe spaces is a restriction on speech. And we're really starting to go down on the roads of fascism, and it's really kind of the progressive side that's pushing hard?"

COLIN: Yes. There are some people. And I want to keep it in the scope of reality. You know, there are people here that are waking up. That said, only 10 percent -- and I'm not saying a vote for Trump is a good thing. But just as an illustration, only 10 percent of San Francisco voted for Trump. So you're dealing with a very hyper liberal society here in San Francisco.

GLENN: Right. Right.

COLIN: That supports those things more than anything. But there are people, even in the gaming industry that are waking up to this and think this stuff is so silly.

And, Glenn, I've expressed it in the past. I went to Northeastern in Boston, and I studied American history. And I couldn't imagine -- you know, I graduated in 2007, and I couldn't imagine being in college now where people are restricted. I took a bunch of classes on Nazi Germany, for instance, or the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict, as I'm sure you know, as you're very learned, in American history. And I couldn't imagine how they might teach those things now to kind of placate people or to make sure that they're coddled.

So, yeah, there are people waking up. But what's disappointing to me is I'm one of the only ones speaking outwardly, and I'm the proxy for a lot of people that are afraid to talk. They talk to me. People at gaming companies, all the way up to CEOs of gaming companies, down to the lowest trenches, as I told Dave, will talk to me and tell me, I believe what you say. But, man, I'm afraid to say it. Because they're going to get ridiculed in the public population.

GLENN: So then what makes you -- what do you say to people like that? What makes you heroic and them not willing to do something that is now considered heroic?

COLIN: I think, you know -- I try not to judge anyone for that. I think that there's a real fear for people's jobs. These people have families. They don't want to be basically blacklisted from the industry, as people have -- you know, de facto kind of tried to do to me over the years. And as you see with this joke, people came down on me -- nobody is offended by that joke, Glenn.

GLENN: Oh, I know. I agree. Nobody is offended by that.

COLIN: They see an opportunity. They see an opportunity to take down someone that speaks a different language than them.

GLENN: Yep. Yep.

COLIN: So to me -- I'm sorry. Go ahead.

GLENN: So to you --

COLIN: I was going to say, so to me, it's just, I understand people's fear, but I'm also kind of getting exhausted by being their proxy because I know they're out there. And, you know, I was so happy that a few people came to my defense in such a way. And people that are not even conservative.

A buddy of mine, David Jaffe, who is a well-known game developer. He makes the game -- he was responsible for the games Twisted Metal and God of War. These are very big games. Came out and said -- basically, I'm just paraphrasing. But, what is everyone's problem here?

So there are even people on the left. He's a very liberal person. That are concerned about that as well. But San Francisco, specifically, is as cartoonish, if not more so, than people think it is.

GLENN: Hey, I would be -- it would be wrong of me to have you on because a lot of people that listen to you don't like me because I have said, quoting, colonel -- I'm trying to remember his name. He wrote On Killing. And he is one of -- he is the leading expert on killing and has developed all these programs for the Pentagon to be able to get people to have a positive shooting experience. How do we get guys to shoot when they first get off the back of an airplane? Et cetera, et cetera.

And he has said -- and his research shows that video games help break down a mental wall that -- they don't make you into a killer. But they break down a mental wall where it makes it easier for you to kill.

And that is somehow very controversial for me to even say. I don't believe video games make you into a killer. I think you have something inside of you or don't have something inside of you. But it does break down a wall.

Do you want to tell me off for that? I want to give your fans an opportunity to say, "Yeah, all right. You told him."

COLIN: I mean, I have no interest in telling anyone offering a differing opinion or whatever like that. But to me, I'm not an expert, and I haven't read the work you're talking about.

GLENN: Yes.

COLIN: What I will say is that, it doesn't -- it doesn't I believe -- for me to say that if a person plays Grand Theft Auto 5 and he might already have some preexisting mental condition or some preexisting propensity, as you said, to do something already that, running around in a car, murdering people with it, might set that person off, is that possible? I'm sure that it probably is.

But I try keep the numbers in balance. This is actually a similar argument to what I use with the right to own a gun, which is to say Grand Theft Auto 5, which is a very violent, very provocative game, had sold 70 million units around the world, one of the best-selling games of all time. If there are five people that play Grand Theft Auto 5 and go on to kill someone because they're inspired by that, I know it sounds kind of strange, but that's a really almost mathematically insignificant number of people, if that makes any sense.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

COLIN: Similarly to a person that has access to a gun. Should none of us have access to a gun because a mentally unstable person has access to a gun and kills himself? I always defer -- you know, it's like an old Benjamin Franklin quote, you defer to liberty over kind of security, in that regard. And so I take a similar stance there. Can something like that set someone off? Of course. I'm sure that's possible.

GLENN: Colin. Colin, I would love to talk to you again. Colin Moriarty. He is the cofounder of kindafunny.com.

It's great meeting you. Really great meeting you. Thanks, Colin, I appreciate it.

COLIN: Thank you so much, Glenn. I appreciate it.

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

Al Drago / Stringer | Getty Images

Prosecutors stopped a New Year’s Eve bombing plot rooted in ideology that treats the US as an enemy to be destroyed.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that four members of an anti-capitalist extremist group were arrested on Friday for plotting coordinated bombings in California on New Year’s Eve.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspects planned to detonate explosives concealed in backpacks at various businesses while also targeting ICE agents and vehicles. The attacks were supposed to coincide with midnight celebrations.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

The plot was disrupted before any lives were lost. The group behind the plot calls itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front. That name matters more than you might think.

When ideology turns operational

For years, the media has told us that radical, violent rhetoric on the left is mostly symbolic. They explained away the angry slogans, destructive language, and calls for “liberation” as performance or hyperbole.

Bombs are not metaphors, however.

Once explosives enter the picture, framing the issue as harmless expression becomes much more difficult. What makes this case different is the ideological ecosystem behind it.

The Turtle Island Liberation Front was not a single-issue group. It was anti-American, anti-capitalist, and explicitly revolutionary. Its members viewed the United States as an illegitimate occupying force rather than a sovereign nation. America, in their view, is not a nation, not a country; it is a structure that must be dismantled at any cost.

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

“Turtle Island” is not an innocent cultural reference. In modern activist usage, it is shorthand for the claim that the United States has no moral or legal right to exist. It reframes the country as stolen land, permanently occupied by an illegitimate society.

Once people accept that premise, the use of violence against their perceived enemies becomes not only permissible, but virtuous. That framing is not unique to one movement. It appears again and again across radical networks that otherwise disagree on nearly everything.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements do not share the same vision for the future. They do not even trust one another. But they share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed. The alignment of radical, hostile ideologies is anything but a coincidence.

The red-green alliance

For decades, analysts have warned about what is often called the red-green alliance: the convergence of far-left revolutionary politics with Islamist movements. The alliance is not based on shared values, but on shared enemies. Capitalism, national sovereignty, Western culture, and constitutional government all fall into that category.

History has shown us how this process works. Revolutionary coalitions form to tear down an existing order, promising liberation and justice. Once power is seized, the alliance fractures, and the most ruthless faction takes control.

Iran’s 1979 revolution followed this exact pattern. Leftist revolutionaries helped topple the shah. Within a few years, tens of thousands of them were imprisoned, executed, or “disappeared” by the Islamist regime they helped install. Those who do not understand history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it.

ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

This moment is different

What happened in California was not a foreign conflict bleeding into the United States or a solitary extremist acting on impulse. It was an organized domestic group, steeped in ideological narratives long validated by universities, activist networks, and the media.

The language that once circulated on campuses and social media is now appearing in criminal indictments. “Liberation” has become a justification for explosives. “Resistance” has become a plan with a date and a time. When groups openly call for the destruction of the United States and then prepare bombs to make it happen, the country has entered a new phase. Pretending things have not gotten worse, that we have not crossed a line as a country, is reckless denial.

Every movement like this depends on confusion. Its supporters insist that calls for America’s destruction are symbolic, even as they stockpile weapons. They denounce violence while preparing for it. They cloak criminal intent in the language of justice and morality. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The California plot should end the debate over whether these red-green alliances exist. They do. The only question left is whether the country will recognize the pattern before more plots advance farther — and succeed.

This is not about one group, one ideology, or one arrest. It is about a growing coalition that has moved past rhetoric and into action. History leaves no doubt where that path leads. The only uncertainty is whether Americans will step in and stop it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

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.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

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'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choosing death over care

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

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

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

They offered her MAID.

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

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

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

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

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

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Sharia arrives

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

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

The warning from those who have lived under it

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

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

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

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

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

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

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

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

Wake up before it is too late

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.