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Glenn's Show Prep

"Heroes For My Daughter"

April 10, 2012
Wilson

Writer

On radio this morning, Glenn interviewed "Heroes For My Daughter" author Brad Meltzer about his new book. Watch the full interview in the clip above.

Rush Transcript:

GLENN: Brad Meltzer is here. Out today is a new book called Heroes For My Daughter, a follow-up to a book that he wrote -- how many years ago was that? Two, three?

MELTZER: Two and a half years ago.

GLENN: Two and a half years ago. Heroes For My Son. Brad is a good friend of mine and the Heroes For My Son is a great book. Heroes For My Daughter includes stories on Tina Turner and what she had in her pocket. Brad, do you want to tell this story?

MELTZER: Yeah. You know the story. Basically six years ago when my daughter was born, I decided to write a book that lasts her whole life and I was going to fill it with all the things she needed to become a great woman and I wrote rules for her like love God and be nice to kids and the truth was I had done Heroes to My Son, as you know. You helped me launch it. For three -- for two years now my daughter has asked me, where the heck is my book? That's been the No. 1 thing she wants to know, because she's, like, you've got the son one. Where is mine? But I looked at people like Tina Turner. You know, Tina Turner what I loved about her -- and, you know, we have obviously Rosa Parks and Amelia Earhart, all the people that, you know, we all know and love, but why I wrote about Tina Turner is when she ran out of the hotel room after Ike had beat her up, do you know what she had in her pocket? She had $0.36 and a Mobil credit card. That was it. And after 16 years of cruelty, she walked out on Ike Turner and what I think her lesson is for, you know, every young girl but also every woman is just to know that you have to fight back and you have to never forget that no matter how deep the hole is, you can always find a way out because she kept saying to herself over and over, I will die before I go back. And, you know, she fought her way to become, again, this great rock icon and I said, I want my daughter to learn how to fight. I want her to learn how to stand up for herself and so I picked heroes like Rosa Parks, you know --

GLENN: Tell me about Sally Ride. Tell me about Sally Ride. Why was she picked to be an astronaut?

MELTZER: People say it was because -- when she was picked to be an astronaut, it was just because she was (inaudible) great athlete, some say because she was fearless and all those things are true, but here's what she also had to do: She had to answer an ad in her college newspaper that said NASA was looking for astronauts and she had to look at it moment and see this and I said, I want my daughter -- you know, that's how she became the woman that did what no one had ever done before. She saw a moment and she seized it and I want that lesson for my daughter and that's what Heroes to My Daughters was designed to be, is to give her those lessons and examples.

GLENN: One of my sister's heroes is Julia Childs because Julia Childs was a massive failure.

MELTZER: Yeah, she was. You hit it right on the head. You know, everyone knows Julia Childs. Everyone loves Julia Childs. You know, she's one of my heroes because she was actually a spy, also. People don't know that about her. She was a spy for the U.S. Government as part of the OSS. But what I love about her is, you know, she wrote the greatest cookbook of all time, mastering The Art of French Cooking but, you know, she got rejection letter, rejection letter, rejection letter, over and over again after six years of working at it and everyone said this book is never going to work and she never, ever ever gave up. Her secret ingredient was the most vital ingredient of all. It's to never give up on what you love and I said -- the funny part is, again, when I was writing the book, I handed in the first draft and my editor said to me, We have a problem. I said, what's the problem? She said, you use one word over and over again in all these heroes. I said, What's the word? She said fighter. She said, you use the word fighter for the

Dalai Lama's entry. The Dalai Lama's a passivist and I use the word fighter, but clearly it tells you about me as a father. One, I'm overprotective of my daughter. No question about it, but, two, and here's what I don't apologize for -- I do want my daughter to learn how to fight. You know, I tell her all the time, I said, you know, you have to fight for something when you want it and when you see injustice, you have to fight harder than ever before and I also tell her, don't be the princess who's waiting for Prince Charming to come save you. You can save yourself and I said, that's what I want the book to be full of examples of that.

GLENN: Do you think that heroes for your daughter is more important in today's world or Heroes For My Son?

MELTZER: You know, when I started doing the book, I thought I was going to do equal books, one for my son, one for my daughter, my son's would have more male heroes, my daughter would have more female heroes and it would be the exactly the same and I would treat them the same, but what I realized in this fighter comment that I just was talking about is I do treat my daughter differently and do you know why I do? Because the world treats my daughter differently. It is a statistical fact and I wish this weren't the case, but my daughter will have a harder life just be by being a woman. She is going to statistically make less money, have a harder time getting a promotion and I hope these things will change. We all hope these things will change, but I know that I do treat my daughter differently for that. And people sometimes say that with our sons, we inspire and with our daughters we try and teach them how to battle and we try and protect them and I fight myself every day to be a good father and just put them on equal ground, but I know that, like any father with their daughter, I'm just always going to be protective of her.

GLENN: Okay. Can I ask you a question? There are male heroes in this book, as well?

MELTZER: Of course there are male heroes. If I just put male heroes for my son, I wouldn't be doing it justice and for my daughter, of course I -- I mean, how do I not --

GLENN: I can't believe that the Three Stooges is in --

MELTZER: Do you want to hear -- you've got to hear the Three Stooges story. So, yeah, let me start with the big one. Yeah, I've got to give my daughter Abraham Lincoln, I have to give my daughter Christopher Reeve, I've got to give my daughter Ben Franklin and I want to give my daughter, you know -- there are male heroes I want her to have. I saved Ben Franklin for her because I just love him, but I have the Three Stooges in there and I put that in there because my dad, when I was growing up, used to show me the Three Stooges. My mother hated it. My wife hates it. Most women hate the Three Stooges. Here's what I want you to know about the Three Stooges is that the three stages were actually the first ones to parody Adolf Hitler on film. Everyone thinks that Charlie Chaplin The Great Dictator was the great one, but the Three Stooges who were three Jews, the Three Stooges were the first one to parody him. They actually did it two years, almost two years before Pearl Harbor, the three Stooges stood up to the bully and said, You know what? Everyone said we can't make propaganda. Everyone said you're not allowed to do any propaganda about Hitler. Hollywood really kind of had a serious push not to do such things and these three so-called idiots were the ones who stood up to him and I said, I love that. I've got to give my daughter the lesson of what it means to stand up to the bully.

GLENN: So, the name of the book is Heroes For My Daughter. It's out today. I have Heroes For My Son. I will be getting Heroes For My Daughter, as well. Just great books. Brad is a good friend, a great writer, knows heroes. In my book he is -- he is a hero himself and, Brad, it's always great to talk to you.

MELTZER: Yeah. No. I appreciate it, Glenn, and I appreciate your support from the very start. Can I say one thing? The last hero in the book is the most important one because it's a blank page and it says: Your hero's photo here and your hero's story here and I promise you, you take a picture of your mom or your grandmother or military for you family and you write one sentence of what they mean to you and you put in in this book and it is the most perfect page in Heroes For My Daughter is the hero they live with every day.

GLENN: Brad, thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

MELTZER: Thank you, sir

GLENN: You bet. Heroes For My Daughter, available in book stores everywhere today.

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.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.