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Glenn's Show Prep

Matt Kibbe and "The Hostile Takeover"

June 19, 2012
Wilson

Writer

FreedomWorks founder Matt Kibbe joined Glenn on radio today to talk about his new book Hostile Takeover and the upcoming FreedomPac that will be taking place the week of Restoring Love. The FreedomPac event will be a gathering of a global Tea Party and will feature a large number of people from Europe coming to learn more about America's Tea Party and libertarian movement.

A rough transcript of the interview is below:

GLENN: Matt Kibbe is with us. He has a new book called Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America. Matt is from FreedomWorks.org and a good guy, really, really gets it. You describe yourself more as a libertarian, Matt?

KIBBE: Yeah, I definitely am in the libertarian camp.

GLENN: Okay. Which I think is why I like you because you're not ‑‑ you're against both the Republicans and the Democrats. You'd vote for either of them if they understood small government, but you're trying to work within the system. The point of your book is trying to explain what's going on and how to get out of it. In my book Cowards, I have a chapter on libertarianism where it talks about, "Look, you can't be the crazy libertarian, hey, let's legalize heroin tomorrow." That can't happen tomorrow. You automatically count yourself out. There are steps that you need to take, which is really kind of what you believe, isn't it?

KIBBE: Yeah. Libertarianism is about individual freedom and responsibility, and these are the values that defined our country. But it's a ‑‑ the interesting question today is how do we get from where we are. We all know we're off track. How do we get back to those principles. And it's got to be done through the process that the founders established. It's got to be done frankly between one ‑‑ between one of the two parties. And that's why we've called for a hostile takeover of the Republican Party because we've given up on the Democrats, the progressives have hijacked that party and when you look at what they say at least, I see only one party that's at least talking the talk.

GLENN: Let me play a little bit from Chris Matthews yesterday. He's talking about Mitt Romney. I'll play the whole cut later but listen just a little of about. This is amazing.

MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with this Romney character. I don't think Romney cares all that much about the presidency except that he wants it. If he weren't running do you think he would be watching this show or any other show on politics?

PAT: No one watches your show, Chris.

MATTHEWS: Mitt cares about three things: His faith, his family, his business. Right now his business is running for the president. That's why he's interested in the presidency. It's his business to be interested. Let's answer questions, if the interviewer doesn't ask the most obvious thing, something that Mitt's briefers have been over and over with him, he seemed stunned. He doesn't have an answer. Why? Because he never thought of that one. Fact is he hasn't thought about many things outside his zone of interest which again includes his faith, his family, his business. And this is the most dangerous thing about this guy. Since he doesn't have a foreign policy, he buys the foreign policies of the powers that be. So he sings this song of his neocon so‑called advisors. What they really are, of course, are people advocate a point of view: The need for a new war with each new Republican president.

GLENN: Okay. Stop. This is amazing. He's trying to, A, make Romney look like an empty airhead, which he's not, and beholden to people like Grover Norquist. First of all, do you believe that Mitt Romney is beholden to people like Grover Norquist and, B, how do we make sure, if he is or isn't, that he doesn't become beholden to anybody except the Constitution?

KIBBE: Well, I don't think he's necessarily beholden to any particular person. I would love for him beholden to the values and the people that he needs to get elected in this cycle and I think that's the challenge. We've talked a lot about Mitt Romney's weaknesses and whether or not he shares the values that everybody that listens to the show does. I think if we show up, if we do all the things that you've talked about and I talk about in Hostile Takeover, Mitt Romney can be a placeholder for those values. It's not so much whether or not he believes them. It's what he does in office that matters.

GLENN: So tell me, because people will say that you're just playing the game. Here you are, Matt Kibbe, you're just playing the game. You're ‑‑ you know, they always give you two choices, you decide to go with the Republican and ‑‑ I mean, look what ‑‑ look what Rand Paul, who's one of the best libertarians out there, the best thing that's happened to libertarianism in I don't know how long and look what the libertarians are doing to him.

KIBBE: Yeah.

GLENN: Because he's saying "You've got to go with Mitt Romney."

KIBBE: Well, here's the bottom line, and I think we forget this sometimes. We've obsessed so much about who's going to be in charge of the executive branch as if we're looking for a benevolent despot to solve all our problems for us. We don't believe that. We've never believed that. George Washington certainly didn't believe that. It's gotta be bottom‑up accountability. It's got to be our ability as a sustained social movement based on a set of values to constantly hold who's ever in the White House, who's ever in the Senate, who's ever in the house, we have to hold these guys accountable because elections don't matter as much as our ability to sustain a set of opinions. Because politicians will respond to that. I've been arguing in the book that even George Washington was responding to the bottom‑up values of colonial America that insisted on respect for the individual over anybody in power.

GLENN: What do you ‑‑ are you concerned at all, Matt, about the movement, if Mitt Romney would win, the movement all of a sudden saying, whew, okay, we dodged that bullet, and we kind of go back to sleep. That people don't understand that this is a runaway freight train and you're going to have to go for cuts for yourself, they're going to affect you, and you can't sit down.

KIBBE: Well, this is the challenge of the evolution of the Tea Party movement, the evolution of decentralization and politics. Do people understand that this is not a one‑time event, it's not about getting somebody elected and that November 7th is more important than November 6th because the process of making sure that Mitt Romney keeps the promises he's made on the election trail, that the senators that we elect. This is what our responsibility is as citizens, and if you just elect a new set of bums and then leave them to their own devices, you're going to have the same disappointments you've had in the last cycle.

GLENN: Any comment on Orrin Hatch last week during a debate on radio with Dan Liljenquist? He called Freedom Works sleazy?

KIBBE: He said we were the sleaziest group he had ever seen before. And I couldn't help but think about his good friend, his good self‑proclaimed friend Teddy Kennedy. And I wonder, really? Am I sleazier than Ted Kennedy?

STU: (Laughing.)

KIBBE: I think it's politics. I think he's trying to demonize Freedom Works and all of the activists in Utah that want to hold him accountable. Because he doesn't want to talk about his record.

STU: Not to mention Kennedy worked his entire life for that title. I mean, you couldn't have possibly outpaced him this early in your life.

GLENN: You're still really early on in the game, Matt. I don't know if you know that.

The name of the book is Hostile Takeover: Resisting centralized government's stranglehold on America, a great roadmap out, a great book to really help you understand where we are, where we're going, what we have to do, why we have to do it. Hostile Takeover, available in bookstores ‑‑ it's out today, right?

KIBBE: It's out today.

GLENN: Out today. Go ahead.

KIBBE: And if I say so myself, it's awesome.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: With all the enthusiasm that Matt Kibbe can muster there. Calm down, Matt.

By the way, Matt is going to be with us on July 26th at Free PAC. You can grab your tickets. They're like 15 bucks, here in Dallas. That is the weekend of Restoring Love. That's on the Thursday. A ton of people coming for it. It is really, really cool. I don't know if Rand Paul was supposed to let the cat out of the bag, but he did a couple of days ago that he's coming. Did you know that he did that?

KIBBE: I actually didn't know that he did that.

GLENN: Yeah. Did you know that he's coming?

KIBBE: Well, we were wrestling with the Senate schedule because I know he's desperately interested in coming and, you know, if Harry Reid messes with the schedule, we're going to have to deal with that.

GLENN: Yeah. All right. Well, that is happening. You can find out all the details on that at FreePAC.com. FreePAC.com. Thanks very much, Matt. Talk to you, man.

KIBBE: Thanks, Glenn.

GLENN: Appreciate it. Bye‑bye.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parallel societies do not end well

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

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

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

A crisis of confidence

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

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

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

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

A new world of artificial experience

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

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

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

What machines can never do

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

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

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

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

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

Questions that define us

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

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

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

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

The appeal of a broken dream

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

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

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

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

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

The bridge that never ends

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

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

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

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

What young America deserves

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.