Signs of Hope: A Millennial Makes Glenn's Day

June 29, 2017

WRITER

Ready for a spark of hope? Glenn spoke with Carolyn on radio today, an 18-year-old millennial who called from Pennsylvania to talk about her upbringing, interests and plans for the future. Aside from her impressive and exemplary manners, Carolyn calmly and confidently articulated her ideas with thoughtfulness and intelligence.

Speaking about her father, Carolyn had this to say:

"He really is my role model because he always lived a life, he always does live a life of integrity. You know, it's . . . sort of like in Ayn Rand's book Fountainhead, you know, he'll take whatever job necessary as long as he keeps his integrity," she said.

Carolyn also revealed that she began listening to Glenn in the fourth grade.

"She's killing me," Glenn replied.

Having just graduated from high school, Carolyn will attend Hillsdale College in the fall to study politics and history.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: America, I want to introduce you to Carolyn, as we meet for the very first time, calling from Pennsylvania.

Hello, Carolyn.

CALLER: Hi, Mr. Beck.

GLENN: How are you? You can call me Glenn. You're 19 years old?

CALLER: I'm actually 18, sir. I just graduated.

GLENN: Wow, 18. You are so polite. You were homeschooled?

CALLER: Actually no. No, sir. I went to Catholic school.

GLENN: Okay. You were -- you grew up in a military family?

CALLER: No, sir. I grew up --

GLENN: Okay. Wait. Wait. You grew -- I'm just guessing -- you grew up in the South?

CALLER: No, sir. Western PA.

STU: You're doing a good job of cold reading here.

GLENN: I've gone through everything that usually is tied directly to, yes, sir, no, sir. Where did you pick that up? It's refreshing and wonderful.

CALLER: I mean, I grew up with a father who was a small business owner, who taught his sons and daughters from a small age to go in for a strong handshake, look someone in the eye, and say, yes, sir, no, sir.

GLENN: I love your dad.

(chuckling)

CALLER: He's been a very big fan of your show.

GLENN: What does he do? What's his business?

CALLER: Well, for most of my life, my father owned furniture store companies. Though he would sell furniture to people in the local area. But after the crash in '08, you know, things got rough. And he tried and tried again to start something up. But he bit his tongue and just took a kind of different path in life.

GLENN: And what happened? He's selling drugs now?

CALLER: No. He -- he works for the state. He works for -- well, we call it PennDOT. He works for the state as a foreman.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. That must be killing him. That must be killing him.

CALLER: Yes, sir. He's part of a union. And I now kind of see it as a blessing because I now understand, you know, not just the side of the entrepreneur, but the side of the union man. And it's very humbling.

GLENN: Carolyn, I want you to close your eyes right now and put your hand on the radio, and we're going to heal your father from his deep scars. My gosh, I can't imagine what it would be like to join a union after a lifetime of working for yourself. To join a union and then -- and then PennDOT. I used to live in Pennsylvania, so I know.

CALLER: Yeah. Yeah. He really is my role model because he -- he always lived a life -- he always does live a life of integrity. You know, it's not -- sort of like in Ayn Rand's book, Fountainhead, you know, he'll take whatever job necessary as long as he keeps his integrity.

GLENN: Wow, I could talk to you all day. You make me feel good.

So, Carolyn, how can we help you?

CALLER: You posed a question yesterday of how your life has changed since 2006. But I can kind of trace it back a little bit further. I first started talking about politics when I was in kindergarten. I came home -- I came home crying on the bus in kindergarten because in 2004, no one wanted to discuss the Bush versus Gore reelection with me, and I was very, very much so at politics even at that young age. And I actually started watching your show in about fourth grade.

In fourth grade, I had received --

GLENN: She's killing me.

CALLER: Yeah. I had received a B in I think it was my reading class, and so I wasn't allowed to watch TV for the rest of the school year. So every night, my dad would let me sneak in and watch Bill O'Reilly's show, which really got me started. And after that, I would come home after school every day and sit and watch your show at 5 o'clock exactly.

GLENN: Wow. Thank you so much. So that has -- that has damaged you and oppressed you.

CALLER: No. No, sir.

GLENN: Or?

CALLER: It's definitely taught me the importance of principles. You know, I know today in the political climate we live in, especially as a young student, it's hard to -- to be able to see right versus left because it seems as though politics infiltrates not just culture, but the classroom. And what I've learned over time is that, yes, people who are liberals can be friends with conservatives.

The key is that you stand on principles. And not rhetoric. I know after the very -- very scary shooting last week of -- at Capitol Hill, I texted a lot of my -- my more liberal friends, you know, who supported Bernie Sanders, voted for Clinton. And I just said, "Hey, I'm someone who stands on the principle of individuality. And I know that just because one Bernie Sanders supporter did such a terrible act, that does not make all Bernie Sanders supporters terrible people." And I just wanted to remind them that. And that I loved them.

GLENN: And what was their response?

CALLER: A lot of them were just so grateful that I gave -- that I showed love. And they said, Carolyn, you've taught me that not all Trump supporters are KKK members. Or not all Trump supporters are Nazis. Because if you don't show love and reach out during those moments, it would be easy to let the status quo persist. And I just wanted to be able to show, you know, just little acts of live. And it does change people's minds rather quickly when you do that.

GLENN: You know, it's funny, I was having dinner last night with some Silicon Valley and some Hollywood lefties. And as we were -- we were talking, a couple of them sounded very much like people that -- one person in particular that I spoke to yesterday to, on the radio, a woman called, and she was very animated. And felt that --

CALLER: Sir.

GLENN: I was, you know, betraying the cause by -- by saying that we have to be -- we have to change our language and we have to be very aware of how we're talking. Because we can make an impact for the good as opposed to just building up more walls.

And -- and most of the people that were at dinner with me last night, they felt the same way. And they were looking for a way to start talking to people. And not necessarily about politics. Just talking to people. And one of the guys said something along the lines of, you know, we need to fix things politically. We need the government to -- to fix all of these things. And, you know, the language is not going to break through.

And I have found -- I mean, I -- I am sitting with you guys. Because I changed my language. And I haven't changed a thing in my policy and my principles. But we're talking. So how can you not say that it doesn't work? It does.

CALLER: I -- I -- I whole-heartedly agree with you, sir. I think it's very interesting that you're discussing, you know, the idea of care versus harm, liberty and oppression. Because last summer I was actually sitting in a lecture where we were discussing, you know, political campaigning and the such. And the speaker put up on the screen this chart about how liberals use certain words and they react to certain words versus conservatives. And it was the same kind of idea of liberty, care, harm, justice.

GLENN: Yes.

CALLER: And I just sat there, and I thought, you know, that's it. That's the secret.

And so ever since then, I've been able to engage some of my liberal friends on things such as Planned Parenthood and being pro-life and really some hot button topics. But if you go in and speak the language and you go in with genuine love and intellectual curiosity, which most of my liberal friends are curious, they want to know what a conservative believes. Why we believe what we believe. They don't just want to label everyone. They do want to know. And if you go in from that approach, they are much more open and much more understanding. They may not change their minds, but they want to understand, the same way we should want to understand.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. And it's really amazing -- and I have example after example after example of this -- people don't know how to be able to have that dialogue. But they want that dialogue. And if you will model it, they will fall into it.

And it's -- you know, the -- one of the -- one of the guys that was there last night said, you know, I read a book. And he said, "It totally changed my mind. Totally changed my mind."

CALLER: Yeah.

GLENN: And he said, "It is the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt."

CALLER: Hmm.

GLENN: Which is the book that really takes the care and harm and liberty and oppression and is teaching me -- has totally changed the way I view things. And you can. I spoke at a table with 20 Silicon Valley liberals last night. One Libertarian.

And we spoke about abortion. And I talked about how they see oppression of women, and they all shook their heads. And I said, "We see sanctity." And I could feel their eyes roll up. And I said, and that's a word that you guys don't speak. So let's just talk about harm to women. And we had this conversation.

And it was -- I don't know if anybody changed their mind or anything, but at least it didn't devolve into where it usually devolves.

I mean, one of the guys who was with me, he sat back from the table, and he said -- I said, "What did you notice about things?" And he said, "I was watching people and listening." And he said, "As you were speaking, I heard so many people say, huh. Wow."

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: And that's the beginning of it. Just opening people's minds to, that's not what I thought at all.

CALLER: Yeah. Exactly. And I think as soon as -- as soon as that spark kind of goes off in someone's mind and the wheels start to turn -- it's not that you should go in with the approach of you want to change their mind, but you just want to understand and they want to understand, that's when real change happens.

GLENN: Yeah. The problems that I have with talking people is when they say, "How do you win?" Or they're trying to win the argument.

There's no -- Martin Luther King said -- and he is absolutely right. Winning assumes that there's going to be a loser. And you want everyone walking from the table feeling that they've -- that they've won, that they've reconciled with somebody else.

CALLER: Exactly.

GLENN: Because we're going to have to -- if you play this out in your head -- if the Democrats get absolutely everything that they want, and let's say they rule for the next 20 years and they get this socialist utopia. Well, there are going to be people like me and maybe you that -- no. Never. I'm not going there. I won't buy into it. I'm not going to speak that language. I'm not -- I will not go over the cliff with the rest of humanity because it's easier. I will stand for what I believe is the truth.

So what do they do with that ten to 30 percent of that population that doesn't comply? Well, usually, it's round them up and kill them or put them in a training camp or whatever.

That's what happens. And the same would happen if you are a big government person on the right. What are you going to do with the people that disagree with you that will never change their mind? You have to reconcile with them and live in peace. And that has to be done before we talk about any policies. We have to start trusting each other.

Carolyn, quickly, what do you want to do for a living?

CALLER: I've not thought that far. I will be attending Hillsdale College in the fall, where I'll be studying politics and history.

GLENN: Good choice.

CALLER: And I know I -- I joke with my mother, I was adopted from South Korea -- so I can't run for president. But I love to joke with my parents that I would like to find a way to be First Lady.

GLENN: Oh, that's great.

CALLER: The same way Jackie Kennedy went in and sort of restored the White House with interior design. I would say I would like to restore it with making it the people's house again. Allowing -- allowing people from all over the country to come in and, you know, have lunch with the president or the First Lady and just spend hours talking and really knowing what they want to hear.

GLENN: Carolyn, I would love to spend more time with you. I would like to have our producers grab your phone number. I would like to have you on at least once a year to see that you have held the course all the way through school. And if you're ever looking for an internship, I would love to have you intern directly with me. So I want to put you on hold. We'll get the phone numbers. Thank you so much. And say hello to your father and your mother.

CALLER: Thank you, sir.

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.

Glenn's Show Prep

Signs of Hope: A Millennial Makes Glenn's Day

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

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

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

When ideology turns operational

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

The red-green alliance

This moment is different

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

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.

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

Not-so-expert advice

A republic no more?

The path forward

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

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.

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

Choosing death over care

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

The logical end of a broken system

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

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.

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.

How Sharia arrives

The warning from those who have lived under it

America is vulnerable

Wake up before it is too late