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Monkey Bread, Crab Cakes: What Thanksgiving Recipe Is Your State Searching For?

November 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

What are people in your state searching for as they prepare for Thanksgiving? A survey from General Mills had some surprising results.

The study looked at three popular recipe sites to find the top recipes people were searching for in each state from Nov. 1 to Thanksgiving of last year. Californians were apparently looking for a good mac ‘n’ cheese recipe; Illinois stuck to traditional mashed potatoes; and Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia all wanted to add some heat with buffalo chicken dip.

Iowa, Nebraska and Rhode Island were all searching for the same recipe. Listen to Doc and Chef Patrick’s chat on today’s show (above) to find out what it is and how to make it.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

DOC: Hi, there. It's Doc Thompson in for Beck. And happy Thanksgiving. Hopefully you'll be getting together with family tomorrow. You'll have some good times. Hopefully you'll count your blessings, truly recognizing how much good there is in the world. We focus on a lot of bad, because it's frustrating. We want the world to be better. And I think most people want better for our fellow citizens, for our fellow man. And most of us are passionate about how to accomplish that. We know things like the Constitution lead to that good. And that's the reason we're so passionate about it.

But somewhere in there, our passion for the right to help people gets twisted just a little bit. Still driven by the same cause. We're willing to be meaner. More combative. And by we, I mean we.

I'm as guilty as anybody. I think if we take a moment and recognize that while we differ on the -- on the method, we still want the same outcome.

I'm not sure our friends on the left give us enough due. I think they really think that somehow we want some sort of society that we really don't want. That we really think oppressing people is good. Really racist, whatever.

But I for one, recognize most people on the left really want good stuff for people. I believe they're misguided. But they want good stuff. About you so on maybe we take a step back as we count our blessings and say, as F we're trying to accomplish (?) good things for the right reasons, let's make sure our methods are still good.

I know how frustrating it is. I've lived this every day. I'm on the air with it. I do the research. I see the social media. I live it every day. And it's really frustrating.

But good is good. Bad is bad. Stay focused on the good. Count your blessings.

Chef Patrick Mosher is with us. Obviously, a big favorite around the holidays. So do you cook on the holidays? Do you cook for your family? Because, you know, a lot of people they don't want to bring their work home. You know, mechanics, they don't work on their own home that often.

PATRICK: No. Cooking for family and friends is really why I do this. I love the restaurant industry and all that goes with that. But it bills down to cooking for the ones you love, absolutely.

DOC: So you still do?

PATRICK: Traditionally, I used to smoke one turkey and roast another one. Because we had such a big crowd. Not so much anymore.

DOC: Not so much anymore.

PATRICK: Yeah.

DOC: It's funny (?) on the holidays, I don't say a word. I'm like a mute. I don't I don't a a word. I get up in the mornings. Okay. Everybody knows that's not true. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's the same stuff here. I'm doing the same stuff at home. Challenging people. Challenging me. Political debate. I actually love good political solid debate. It's family and friends.

PATRICK: It's entertaining.

DOC: Now, when you're out and barbecue, let's say you're at a gathering, (?) cocktail party. And you're introduced to new people. You're mingling. When they find out you're a chef, they ask you, don't they?

PATRICK: Immediately.

DOC: You know, how do you make a --

PATRICK: What's your specialty? And when I say Japanese food, it's interesting. Ah.

DOC: Oh. Because they don't know what to --

PATRICK: White guy. Japanese food. It doesn't compute.

DOC: Plus, most people don't have a go-to Japanese dish.

PATRICK: Other than sushi, they don't know any other Japanese food.

DOC: Or ramen.

PATRICK: Or boxed ramen.

DOC: I can see that. Because doctors (?) they're like, I got this right in the back -- in the shoulder blade. Can you take a --

PATRICK: You know, I have these chest pains. (?) and it's in mean arm. It's in my Czech chest.

DOC: Can you take a look at it?

PATRICK: Yeah. Quick pop (?)

DOC: Look at this. It's down the side of my leg here.

PATRICK: Does this look infected to you?

DOC: Right. You're at dinner, right? That's got to be horrible.

PATRICK: That is -- I do get captured quite often in the food conversation. But --

DOC: It's still probably pretty good. Because you're passionate about it.

PATRICK: Anybody who knows me, knows that I love food. It's been my life for almost 30 years. I love to share knowledge and my passion for the food industry. And teach people that the food -- everybody at some point NBC life, (?), well, it probably would be cool. But it's also expensive.

DOC: Uh-huh.

PATRICK: Exhausting.

DOC: Yeah. If you're worth $450 million and you start a small restaurant and you can lose $100,000 a year, it's probably pretty cool. You get to go in, mingle, you own the restaurant. But when you got to make it balance or profit, that's where it gets tricky, right?

PATRICK: It's a 24/7 business. The average margin I found out (?) the average restaurant makes 4 percent.

DOC: So traditionally, in supermarkets, I'm going way back, the margins was percent, percent and a half. 2 percent?

PATRICK: Yeah. It used to be two. (?) somewhere in the one and a half range.

DOC: At one point in broadcasting, because Telecommunications Act of 1966 said that you could earn more than radio stations that you used to -- I think at one point you could own across the country 17 or 20 or something like that. But you could only own 1:00 a.m. or FM (?) you could own. Per market. Yeah. Ravioli and that's what -- I remember when some of those sold. Some of the stations I worked at. The profit margin was imagine if I told you it was 40 percent, would you think that's pretty good?

SHAWN: Absolutely. Yeah.

DOC: They were 70 percent. (?)

PATRICK: More power to them. I'm obviously in the wrong business.

DOC: The reason why it was 70 percent -- because they didn't pay Doc Thompson. They were like, it's all right. Kid. You can eat ramen, that's fine.

PATRICK: Wait. Where's my paycheck --

DOC: That has all changed somewhat. You just get on. And it works. So we're talking a little bit about Thanksgiving and some of the other things that people search for by state. And some of them seem pretty traditional. Some of them not. Give you some of the other ones. Maybe we'll hit your state here. Indiana, peanut butter cookies. That's kind of a holiday thing. (?)

PATRICK: At least it's a cookie.

DOC: Pin wheels. That's also a cookie. That's in Kansas. Cornbread (?) dressing in Louisiana. That makes sense. Chicken potpie in Maine. Maryland, crab cakes. You know what, I think they search for that all the time in Maryland. That's not a holiday.

PATRICK: That's year around because you can get them cheap.

DOC: Cheesecake in Massachusetts.

PATRICK: And New York. And being from New York, that's pretty common.

DOC: Makes sense. Michigan is chili. Odd choice.

PATRICK: It's really cold up there.

DOC: Minnesota, green bean casserole. Does anybody else have that? That's the only one?

PATRICK: I think so.

DOC: What is chicken spaghetti in Mississippi and also Texas. Chicken spaghetti.

PATRICK: I found a few recipes for that. (?) dish. Which I think you would just substitute turkey for that. But it's made in spaghetti than turkey.

DOC: (?) oven roasted vegetables for Montana. Nevada, peanut butter cookies. New Hampshire, blueberry pie. Thank you, Kal. Blueberry pie. Although, New Hampshire (?) so maybe.

PATRICK: Yeah, it's cold.

DOC: Crab cakes in New Jersey. Pecan pie in New Mexico. Sweet potato pie (?) that's an interesting one. In both Ohio and West Virginia, buffalo chicken dip.

PATRICK: Why not?

DOC: Have you ever had that?

KAL: That stuff is awesome.

DOC: Yeah. And checking account me -- it's shredded chicken with (?)

PATRICK: Mixture of cream cheese, heavy cream, and main ace.

DOC: And it's layered in there?

PATRICK: No, you mix the whole thing (?) served on baguette or toast. Crackers. Whatever you have.

DOC: Oklahoma, pecan pie. I'm sorry. Pecan pie. Whichever. Oregon, bread stuffing. Pennsylvania, also chicken dip. That whole region, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania. Interesting. You know that he probably just found out about it. (?), yeah, we had that 30 years ago. We're like, have you tried this new thing?

PATRICK: Which is interesting. Because Ohio is typically the test region. I don't understand why. But it's the test region for new foods for the major food companies.

DOC: Yeah. Columbus, in particular. For some reason, demographically, it cuts across all of them. Midwest. But you're also east. You have older (?) just demographically, it's worked for them.

PATRICK: Well, you would think so, but no candidate has won that won the state of Iowa. So I don't understand (?)

DOC: No Ohio. Without winning Ohio. I think that's the history. Anyway --

PATRICK: So maybe you keep Ohio --

DOC: Yeah. (?) pumpkin pie. (?) sausage balls in Tennessee. Just like Alabama.

You've got crescent recipes in Utah. Crescent rolls. Butter nut soup. (?) sugar cookies in Washington. And then shrimp in Wisconsin. And Wyoming pork chops. And then I left out three states.

New Hampshire -- I'm sorry.

KAL: New Hampshire.

DOC: Appreciate you being there, even though I screwed it up. Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Iowa, all search for something that is an odd pick. Kal, have you ever had monkey bread?

KAL: Is that brain?

DOC: No. Monkey bread. Because you're thinking sweetbread.

KAL: Yes. Might as well be bread.

DOC: It's made with only part of the monkey. Not the entire monkey. You're giving me the look. It has nothing to do with monkey.

KAL: Like Rocky Mountain oysters?

PATRICK: Kind of. (?) I was a Boy Scout. Monkey balls instead of monkey bread. But it has nothing to do with monkeys. I don't know where the term came from.

KAL: What is it made of?

DOC: It's cinnamon bread.

PATRICK: Yeah, you are take any kind of a canned biscuit or Doe. You cut it into pieces. (?) and then you make a caramel mixture. So it's sugar and butter in the bottom of like -- like --

DOC: Your roasting pan?

PATRICK: Like an angel food cake pan. A buttoned cake pan. Then you put the (?) you roll them in cinnamon sugar. You put them in there. You bake it. You turn it upside down. I it has this wonderful. (?) it's actually really good.

KAL: That sounds awesome.

DOC: Yeah, it's fantastic or whatever. It seems like an odd pick -- it's not really a breakfast dish. It can be. Not as much as cinnamon rolls.

PATRICK: That you can serve (?) a lot of people with. That doesn't require a lot of preparation.

DOC: This is more, like you said, camping, or late at night, snacky thing. Maybe people are using it for all those. Maybe breakfast or even a desert then it could be used for.

PATRICK: Yeah. I suppose.

DOC: You know what, though, it's probably simple to make for a sweet dessert or whatever you're going to use it for, by comparison. (?)

PATRICK: You don't have to make a Doe.

DOC: You don't have to make the Doe --

PATRICK: It's sugar, butter, (?) those are the ingredients.

DOC: So you're already starting the Doe made. That probably works really well. That's interesting.

PATRICK: It's like the crescent recipes in the other states. Alaska and Utah.

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.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet return of meaning

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

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

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

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.