Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcasts
The Glenn Beck ProgramThe Glenn Beck PodcastThe Beck Story
Fine Art
Real Estate
Shop
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Glenn interviews Marco Rubio and Josh Mandel

November 02, 2012
Wilson

Writer

You’ve heard of Marco Rubio and you know he’s the type of guy America needs in Congress - Josh Mandel is running in a tight race in Ohio and he is another guy this country desperately needs. He’s a military veteran and a tea party style conservative - and he’s only 35 years old. Glenn interviewed them both on radio this morning while they were campaigning in Ohio.

Transcript of interview is below:

GLENN: All right. We're going to be in Ohio. You know, I think they are ‑‑ we are on the verge of miracles, quite honestly. I don't know how else to describe it. It is ‑‑ you're going to see on Tuesday I believe Chick‑fil‑A. Remember there was no big ‑‑ nobody was bussing people in. Just, everybody just came.

PAT: So Tuesday we're going to see a lot of chicken sandwiches?

GLENN: Yes, we're going to see a lot of chicken sandwiches.

PAT: Wow, I can't wait.

GLENN: And people will be standing in line to vote and they are going to be like, where's the chicken sandwich? But remember ‑‑ and it went on for a couple of days.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: That's what's going to happen. They are running out of "I voted" stickers in Texas. In Texas. I mean, Texas is like it doesn't ‑‑ I'm not going to really count in the presidential election. But they are running out of "I voted" stickers here. That's fantastic. In Ohio things are dicey. I personally think if it's not stolen, you are going to see an amazing upset in almost all of these states. We have one of the guys who's running, he's state treasurer now, he is running for Senate against Sherrod Brown. I'll let Josh tell the difference. We have Josh on the phone. Also Marco Rubio is on. Is he on the same line?

STU: Yeah, they're separate ‑‑ I think they are sharing the phone there, with each other.

GLENN: Is this a party line? Is that what's going on?

MANDEL: Hey, Glenn, how are you doing?

GLENN: Good. How are you. Is this Josh?

MANDEL: Yeah, this is Josh on the party line in Cleveland, Ohio.

GLENN: Marco, where are you.

MANDEL: He's coming. He's out in the diner shaking hands with some folks.

GLENN: Okay. So Josh, first of all, what's the difference between you and Sherrod Brown?

MANDEL: Well, he was named the most liberal senator in the United States of America, he's never seen a regulation he didn't like or a tax he didn't hike, and I'm a proud full spectrum conservative. While I am a Republican, I'm a conservative first and I'm a constitutional conservative and in Washington some of the Republicans are oftentimes just as much a problem as some of the Democrats and we need to elect more senators like Senator Rubio and others who will stand proudly as conservatives to do the right thing for our country.

GLENN: Small government conservatives?

MANDEL: Small government conservative. I believe the private select ‑‑ private sector is the solution to our problems. When it comes to a lot of our social woes, I think we should look to religious organizations and nonprofit organizations oftentimes before we look to government. And I also believe that while so many politicians, my opponent and others think that the federal government is the answer, I think Washington's the problem. Is the more we can get Washington out of the way, the stronger our economy and our country will be.

GLENN: So you're the treasurer in Ohio State and ‑‑ which is fantastic, because you obviously are a numbers cruncher. The financial cliff that is coming our way and all the trouble we're having. If we don't change the course now, how long do you think we have?

MANDEL: Not very long. It's ‑‑ we are running 100 miles per hour down the tracks and it's I believe soon going to be off the rails if we don't get some new leaders in Washington, $16 trillion debt, over a trillion dollars to China, Social Security, Medicare, bankruptcy.

GLENN: How are you ‑‑ how would you suggest that we stop the money printing and the QE infinity and pull ourselves back up without ‑‑ I mean because the first thing that will happen is interest rates will go up. How do we ‑‑

MANDEL: Sure.

GLENN: How do we not collapse ourselves by trying to heal ourselves?

MANDEL: Well, I think we need to make aggressive cuts in our federal government quickly and, you know, there's a lot of Republicans who disagree with some of the things I stand for. For instance, many Republicans will say, you know, we can't touch defense spending as well. I actually believe we need to do a top/bottom review of all of our bases throughout the world and, for instance, in Europe we're not fighting the Nazis anymore, we're not fighting the Cold War anymore. We could probably trim down or shut down some of our installations and ‑‑

GLENN: So how aggressive are you talking? You know, when Calvin cool age came in, he and Harding, they put the spending by 50%.

MANDEL: Right.

GLENN: How aggressive, how aggressive do you think we should be?

MANDEL: We have to be very aggressive. We need to do a top/bottom review of the federal government and for every agency administration bureaucracy that is not called for in the United States Constitution, we have to really ask the question what is its purpose, how many people work there, how much does it cost the taxpayers and what is the value to our society.

GLENN: I love you.

MANDEL: And one of the first acts, Glenn, of ‑‑

GLENN: If we wouldn't be sued by Barry White, I would play Barry White right now and turn the lights down.

MANDEL: Hey, Glenn, I have someone here who wants to say hello.

GLENN: Oh, wait, wait.

MANDEL: Go ahead.

GLENN: Wait, I just want to thank you for your service, first of all, especially for everything that's going on in Benghazi. You were a Marine for eight years and you know we don't leave men behind. And thank ‑‑

MANDEL: I do know that.

GLENN: And thank you for your service. And I can't wait until you get to Washington and start pulling the bodies out.

MANDEL: I appreciate that. You know, it was my honor to do my small part and do a couple of tours in Iraq and it sickens me to see when our Americans are killed overseas and abroad and I ‑‑ this is just disgraceful how this is playing out with Benghazi. And I'll tell you something else, just while you're on this topic. I didn't like those comments the president of the United States made to Governor Romney at the debate about bayonets and horses. When I went through Marine boot camp in Paris Island, South Carolina, we actually did have bayonets that we trained with. And as a Marine if Iraq, I actually did have a bayonet that I wore on my flak jacket and I just think the commander‑in‑chief of our military needs to be more respectful of our men and women when he's making comments about our military and he should really understand who it is out there carrying a weapon and protecting our country every day.

GLENN: And I know I have Marco Rubio waiting but I mean, you're an official in Ohio. How concerned are you on the stealing of the election in Ohio?

MANDEL: Ballot integrity is definitely a big issue here. I mean, I was down by the board of elections the other day and there's just vans and vans and vans of people being dropped off there to vote and obviously the default is giving ‑‑ is believing the people are following the law and doing everything legally within the bounds, and I'm ‑‑ I hope and assume that's happening. But at the same time with such a volume of people voting early here in Ohio, we need poll watchers and we need folks keeping eyeballs on every ballot site. But I think it's also important, Glenn, that those poll watchers are Americans. I don't know if you caught this.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

MANDEL: Crazy idea about the UN observers wanting to come into America ‑‑

GLENN: I don't know how Ohio handled it but Texas said, go to hell, we'll arrest you if you come in.

MANDEL: Yeah. Over my dead body.

GLENN: Exactly right. Thank you very much, Josh.

MANDEL: So if any of your listeners want to help us out here in the last week, our website's pretty simple. It's JoshMandel.com.

GLENN: Thanks, Josh. JoshMandel.com.

MANDEL: Let me pass out the phone. We've got Senator Marco Rubio here. We're calling you from Joe's Diner in Ohio.

GLENN: Oh, really? Is Joe Biden there because ‑‑

MANDEL: Joe Biden's not here but Marco sure is. Hang on one second.

GLENN: Thanks a lot.

RUBIO: Glenn, good to talk to you.

GLENN: Hey, senator, how are you?

RUBIO: I think people understand the choice of this election is not just between two people. It's between two very different views of our government's role and our future and what America should be, what America should remain. And, you know, I think you're starting to sense that from people as you talk to them.

GLENN: Oh, I tell you I think you're going to see a miracle on Tuesday. I really do. I mean, a miracle as far as the distance between the two. I think America is wide awake. They've just had enough. They're quiet about it. It's like my grandparents. My grandparents didn't have to say anything. They would just go do it. And I think that's what's going to ‑‑ that's what's going to happen.

RUBIO: Yeah, I think that as well.

GLENN: Is ‑‑ how do you think things are going to fare for Romney in Ohio and Florida? How close?

RUBIO: Let me start with Florida, yeah, because that's ‑‑ obviously live there and spend a lot of time there. I feel great about Florida. The analogy I always use is I know people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 that are going to vote for Mitt Romney. I don't know anyone who voted for John McCain that's going to vote for Barack Obama this time. I know that's anecdotal but I think that's the feeling people have. There's a lot of disappointment. Some people just kind of bought into the 2008 notion that, you know, he's ‑‑ let's try something different, he's going to unify our country, he's going to bring us together. And it's just been a disaster. I mean economically, politically, all the way around. And people are just ready to walk away from that and kind of go back to the free enterprise system which made us the most prosperous people that have ever walked the Earth.

GLENN: I am really concerned about what's happening in Benghazi.

RUBIO: Yeah.

GLENN: And even when Mitt Romney wins on Tuesday, on Wednesday I will still be pushing for ‑‑

RUBIO: Yeah.

GLENN: ‑‑ serious investigations because we are ‑‑ what we have is a president that let guys die and a lot of people watched them die in realtime. There's a massive coverup on this. And beyond that, you've got at least ‑‑ you've got anywhere from 25 to 500 people who know and are now having a hard time sleeping at night. And if those guys are allowed to let that just cook in their soul, man, we go really dark. It's not good. We've never been that way as Americans, to leave just people die.

RUBIO: Yeah. Two things are happening. On the one hand I think there's a very serious concern that I have and I think it's a legitimate question to ask and that is, is the reason why they spent two weeks telling us that this was the result of a spontaneous uprising, is the reason why they're saying that because it went counter to their narrative that Al‑Qaeda had been defeated, Bin Laden was dead and the world was safer. And then they bragged about this for months. It was a key part of their convention. Obviously we're very happy Bin Laden is dead, but Al‑Qaeda unfortunately has reconstituted itself in North Africa including Libya. So that's the first element of it. The second is that there's clearly something going on here in terms of our different agencies to be able to interact and coordinate and make the right decisions in a timely fashion to save lives. So we're going to have what they call classified hearings. But I'm going to push for open hearings as well. And by the way, these hearings should have happened a long time ago.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

RUBIO: They shouldn't be happening after the election. And there's a lot of information out there that's going to be classified that shouldn't be classified. There's no reason to keep it that way. The American people have the right to hold their government accountable for its failures, A, so that the people who did it can be held accountable and, B, so that it never, ever happens again.

GLENN: Thank you very much, Senator. You and you keep going and we wish you luck that I think the real hard work for America begins on Wednesday.

RUBIO: Well, thanks for what you've been doing for years all the way back to the 9/12 movement and your involvement in that years ago. It really began in '09 right after the election when folks like you raised your voice and began to educate the American people about what was going on. That led to the big wave in 2010 that allowed me to get elected and the wave in 2012 that's going to give us a new president and is going to give us Josh Mandel.

GLENN: Well, just don't ‑‑ don't let us down. One quick question. How worried are you about the lame duck session?

RUBIO: I'm worried. I mean, a lot of bad things happen in lame duck sessions. You have folks who are never going to run again who don't feel like they're accountable. You have a lot of ‑‑ you know, they will package a couple of good ideas with ten bad ones and tell you that's the way business is done, that's the only way to get things done. So I am concerned about some pretty bad policy happening in the lame duck. You know, we got that START treaty with the Russians and a couple of other things that were not good for our country as well.

GLENN: Thank you very much, Senator, appreciate it.

RUBIO: Thank you.

GLENN: We'll talk again soon.

STU: They're both great.

PAT: I liked Josh Mandel, too. Liked him.

GLENN: He knows ‑‑

PAT: He knows what he's talking about.

GLENN: He knows what he's talking about. He's a Jewish American, strong on Israel. I mean, he gets it.

PAT: And clearly Rubio is ‑‑

STU: Fantastic.

PAT: There's hardly anybody better.

STU: I will say I maintain ‑‑ a lot of people said they liked the Clint Eastwood thing and whatever, you liked it or you didn't like it. One of the worst things that happened in that convention was that Clint Eastwood thing took all the attention from Marco Rubio's speech which was one of the best speeches by a Republican that, I mean, I can remember.

PAT: And it got no attention at all.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: None.

STU: I mean, here's a guy who's really smart, different. Obviously the optics are good on politically and demographically. It's just one of those things that Marco Rubio needs to be heard.

GLENN: Every time I ‑‑ every time he speaks, gives a major speech, like ten of my friends write to me and says, "My gosh, did you see this guy?"

STU: Yeah, he's great.

GLENN: He's really, really effective.

STU: Josh Mandel was great, too. That's the first time I heard him in an extended area. He's great.

GLENN: I talked to him in Ohio last time. I met him backstage and we spent about ten minutes together. He's really sharp. He's really sharp.

STU: That's great.

GLENN: Come on, Ohio, come on.

STU: Come on, Ohio.

GLENN: Come on, Ohio. Remember how pissed you were at Florida?

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Yeah. That's the way we're going to be with you.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: You don't want none of this.

GLENN: No, you don't. We'll come up there and give you such a hit.

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.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

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.