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Glenn's Show Prep

Adam Corolla and Dennis Prager Hit the Road to Save College Campuses

June 23, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Glenn welcomed Adam Corolla, comedian and former host of The Man Show, to discuss his new project with Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces.

"They're trying to go in and help people think and learn to think on college campuses, and they want to make a movie," Glenn said.

Corolla and Prager will tour college campuses, teaching about the need for open dialogue and ideation --- not safe spaces where people aren't challenged.

"We're going to try to explain is that hard work, values, no safe spaces, a little adversity, a little gravity is a good thing when you're growing," Corolla said.

The partnership between the two diverse men provides an example which Corolla wishes others would embrace.

"You can't get further apart from me and Dennis Prager as human beings," Corolla said. "He's a deeply religious person, I've told him 2,000 times I'm an atheist, and he does not care at all. It does not hinder our relationship or the way he feels about me at all, which is a lesson in these times I would love to get across to the world."

Corolla and Prager are currently raising funds to produce their film --- which includes a humorous approach with deep ideas --- at NoSafeSpaces.com. If you'd like to be a part of the solution, get involved today.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Comedian, radio personality, television host, actor, podcaster, author, director, do you ever sleep, Adam Carolla? Welcome to the program.

ADAM: Thanks for having me, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet. Hey, I want to start with something. We gonna get to No Safe Spaces, and a movie that you're trying to put together with Dennis Prager and some of the things that I think, really brilliant stuff that you're doing. But you're a guy who obviously No Safe Spaces. We have to have a conversation with each other. We have to not be afraid to say the unthinkable. And the only speech that needs protection is the speech that nobody likes. Is there a line in this for you -- and let me take you to what's his face...that just said this in --

ADAM: Johnny Depp?

GLENN: Yeah, Johnny Depp. If you didn't hear it, listen to it.

JOHNNY: Can we bring Trump here?

GLENN: He's in London. He says can we bring Trump here?

JOHNNY: No. No. No. You misunderstand.

GLENN: He says no. No. No. You misunderstand.

JOHNNY: I think he needs help.

GLENN: I think he needs help.

JOHNNY: This is going to be in the press. It's going to be horrible.

PAT: This is going to be in the press. It's going to be horrible.

JOHNNY: When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?

GLENN: When was the last time an actor assassinated the president? And then he says I'm not an actor. I'm a professional liar. But then, he closes this out with -- but maybe it's time that was repeated or something like that. Adam, where do you go with that?

ADAM: Well, I have a couple of thoughts. First off, you have to understand what it's like to live out here in Hollywood. It's like, remember when you're 12 or 13 years old, and you got together and maybe girls are a little more guilty of this than boys, but I can remember doing it when I was 12 or 13 years old. You get together, and there was that one kid you didn't like, and he wasn't at the party, and it was really just a competition to talk more smack about that person who wasn't there at the party. Who can say worse things about bad Ronald at the pool party? And you start getting drunk with this, and it almost becomes a competition, and there's no gravity. There's no push back. It's not like there's a 13-year-old Dennis Prager wearing an old-time, one-piece bathing suit with stripes on it.

GLENN: No, he's the one you're making fun of at the pool party.

ADAM: Yeah, bad Dennis. He doesn't come up and tap you on the shoulder. So it becomes this sort of crazy, insular competition with no gravity and no push back and sometimes someone you take it on the road and puts a microphone in front of you, and you don't realize that you're not in the friendly confines of your backyard swimming pool talking crap about bad Ronald.

So to these guys, Johnny Depp in Hollywood, this is just conversation that you would have on Tuesday, that's number one. Number two, if you really want my honest opinion about this kind of stuff. Johnny Depp, Kathy Griffin, what have you, it's outrageous, and I understand, but I am not outraged. Because these are comedians and actors being stupid, and that's what we do. I don't want to be a hypocrite. It's outrageous, but I'm not outraged. Here's what outrages me. What outrages me is the politicians and the civil rights leaders and the whomever, who talk about, you know, if you're black you have a target on your back, if you're gay, you have a target on your back, this guy's gunning for you. He hates women. He hates gays. He hates Jews. And if you're in this group, you better run serpentine to the mailbox.

Well, that kind of talk will get somebody shot because if you hear enough of that talk, you think -- you compare this guy to Hitler enough. Well, who amongst us wouldn't be a hero for taking out Hitler before he rose to his ultimate power?

GLENN: So is there a limit? I agree with you. I -- it's a really hard line because I agree with your analogy that these guys -- this is the way they talk. And they don't like it when somebody else says the same kind of junk with the same meaningless, mindless rhetoric about their guy, which is outrageous and wrong. But they become so outraged when somebody else says it. And then they say it so flippantly. And they do say it publicly because there is no push back. I don't want to be a push back police but as a society, when society pushes back, and I'm not talking special interest groups, I'm not talking about the law, I'm not talking anybody else when people going, "Ick, Johnny, what the hell is wrong with you?" When there isn't that societal push back, couldn't you spiral out of control and shouldn't there be societal push back?

ADAM: I think there should. I think there is. In a way, I kind of like it because they are with each proclamation and allegation, losing credibility.

GLENN: Yes.

ADAM: I've always used this analogy. There's never been a better time in America to be an actual racist because everybody's a racist now.

GLENN: Yeah.

ADAM: You're getting lumped in with Adam Carolla and Glenn Beck. So, like, what does it even mean anymore? I mean, could you remember what the word racist meant? Could you remember, you know, circa 1997 if you opened a newspaper, and it said this racist comment by this sportscaster, your mind went to the darkest, deepest part of, "Oh what did he shout?" If you opened the newspaper, and you heard a comedian made a racist remark or whomever, especially somebody on the right, would you even bother reading the article? Would you bat an eye?

GLENN: No.

ADAM: Okay. So they've taken one of the most powerful words and completely dumped a sack of flower in it and diminished it completely. I'm sorry I had to pick the whitest powder.

GLENN: It could have been wheat flower.

ADAM: It could have been wheat flower.

GLENN: It could have been blue tortilla flower. Anyway, go ahead

ADAM: Yeah, they took a word that used to mean something and took all the teeth out of it, right? Or most of them, essentially defanged it. And they're doing that with almost everything now. So we used to have to listen when actors spoke. Do we have to listen anymore? I don't mean we had to listen but, you know, this person pulled up to the microphone is going to endorse a candidate. This is going to be a big deal. You want to get his endorsement. Do you even care anymore? Do we need anybody's endorsement?

STU: It's nice to have the freedom to ignore, isn't it?

ADAM: Right so maybe this is a good thing. Maybe Hollywood is just sinking in the ocean.

GLENN: Well, of course. I think it is a good thing, and that's why I've always been a big free speech guy because I want to know -- don't cry racist, don't shut them up. I want to know what people actually believe. Then I can decide myself. I want -- oh, yeah, that guy down the street? He's an actual Nazi. Kids, don't play with his kids. You know what I mean? I want to know who they are. People start to shut up, and then it starts to fester in them, and then it gets really bad.

Let me take you here, though, moving from racism to a broader topic. No words have meaning anymore. Truth has no meaning anymore. Lies have no meaning. Anybody can say anything about anybody, and it doesn't matter. Joanna gains, by the way, is leaving her TV show to go into a facial cream. Now, that's an actual sponsored paid for ad that is being run on several websites, including mine up until this last week. And then we went to them and said you can't run that ad. It's completely false. Do you want our money or not? No. But there's no consequence nympho lies.

ADAM: Well, the, you know, we replace -- it's a very interesting thing -- we replaced I think with I feel. How many times if you had this conversation with somebody where, you know, I see it all the time, right? I say to people, look, this guy on the airplane, the airlines made a mistake. They overbooked it, or they did whatever. But somewhere around the 25th time, the security guard tells you to please stand up and exit the plane, you have to comply. I don't know what the other options are. If you're not going to do it, they have to physically remove you. And the answer when you say when you ask, what would you do if you were there, and they asked someone to be removed from your plane, and they refused? You have to lift them up and remove them from the plane. And the answer I would get from everyone is I just feel like there's a better way to handle this. And the word is feel. And my point is I'm wide open on better ways to handle this. Now you have to tell me how this should be handled. You're telling me I feel like we shouldn't have dropped a bomb in Hiroshima. I feel like the Japanese never should have bombed Pearl Harbor. I feel like the planes should have never hit the Twin Towers. That's what I feel, but I need you to tell me how to stop it.

GLENN: Adam Corolla is joining us. He's looking for some crowd funding and really close to his goal. He and Dennis Prager are putting a film together No Safe Spaces, and they're actually traveling to some of the most dangerous places in the world for ideas, and that is not over in Islamic countries, necessarily. That is in our -- in our own country on the campuses of universities.

[break]

GLENN: What Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager are trying to do is they're trying to go in and help people think and learn to think in college campuses, and they want to make a movie. Crowd funding at Indiegogo. They're making a money. 30 days to raise a million dollars. They're very, very close to their current goal. Adam, tell me about the project.

ADAM: Well, first off, I love Dennis Prager because he has so much wisdom.

GLENN: Yeah.

ADAM: And I wish more people would approach life this way, which is you can't get further apart from me and Dennis Prager as human beings. He's a very religious Jew. I'm an atheist from the San Fernando valley. He grew up on the east coast, he went to great schools, he traveled. I never left North Hollywood. I never went to college. I never learned a second language. I never had a religion. I got dumped off on a construction site and picked up garbage for a living, but I was always a fan of his because I thought the guy had wisdom, and I used to listen to Religion on the Line, his old radio show as an atheist construction worker because I wanted to know. Not just because I wanted to convert, but I wanted to gain some knowledge. I wish more people could approach life this way.

And, by the way, he's a deeply religious person, I've told him 2,000 times I'm an atheist, and he does not care at all. It does not hinder our relationship or the way he feels about me at all, which is a lesson in these times I would love to get across to the world.

I had the privilege of doing some speaking engagements with him. We fell in love with each other. Again, not because of the things we had in common but because of the things we sought after, which is just knowledge, understanding, and he came to me with this project, and I said, oh, my god. I have two 11-year-old twins. We're talking, you know, for the day that they were born, we set up a college fund for them. That was 11 years ago. I'm seriously considering not letting them go to college.

GLENN: I'm doing the same thing. I'm doing the same thing. I mean, I have a 13-year-old and a 11-year-old, and I'm, like, I don't think I want to send them to college. It's going to cripple them.

ADAM: Right and not only that. But, look, if college were free, I wouldn't want them to go.

GLENN: Yes.

ADAM: Not to mention the 50 grand a year or whatever the hell it is these days. Dennis came to me and said we have to do this project. I said Dennis, anywhere you go, I'll follow. And we're going to go to colleges, we're going to speak at colleges, and we're going to -- it's not going to be a straight documentary. There's going to be reenactments, there's going to be young Dennis, there's going to be young Adam. We're going to have fun with it. It's going to be a film, and there's going to be a lot of comedy in it. And if your listeners go to NoSafeSpaces.com, they can go look at -- we already hit Cal State Northridge, so we've been to one college. There's a whole bunch of little two-minute vignettes of us up on stage, and you can get a good idea for our dynamic, and I bring the humor. Dennis brings the thought-provoking conversation.

GLENN: Will you put Dennis Prager on a trampoline, scantily clad?

ADAM: I'll get him back into that one-piece swimsuit he wore in the '40s, and we'll get him on that trampoline.

GLENN: That was good. That was good. All right. So just go to NoSafeSpaces.com. When are you -- when do you think you'd have this done? You get the --

ADAM: I think we're -- yeah, I think we're looking for mid-early 2018. We shot at one college already. And once we secure the funding, we'll get started earnest and hit it.

GLENN: And what are you looking to show in the movie, quickly?

ADAM: You know, part of it is I would like to find -- part of it is I want to see what's going on. I've never been on a college campus before. I just see what I saw on the news, and it seems kind of disturbing. I think what we're going to try to explain is that hard work, values, no safe spaces, a little adversity, a little gravity is a good thing when you're growing.

GLENN: NoSafeSpaces.com. Join the fight right now. NoSafeSpaces.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.