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Medical Technology Analyst discusses the spooky implications of data mining in Common Core

April 10, 2013
Wilson

Writer

GLENN: Before we went on vacation a couple of weeks ago, Nic Anderson, he called us up and we were talking about the Common Core and what they were using. And I had mentioned something that was in Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance: Critical factors for success in the 21st century. And this is from the Department of Education. This is their handbook that they had posted. And I asked him, because he called up and he said ‑‑ he could define what an FCAT ‑‑ or an fMRI was. And it talks about fMRIs, it talks about, you know, digital wristbands around your kids' wrists and monitoring everything about your kids while they're in class. And he called in to say, "Hey, look, the definition of, you know, some of these things." And I said, well, would you look into this. Well, he did, and he's reporting back now. And he's a guy who uses this technology. He is actually a medical technology analyst and owner of North Carolina Anderson Consulting. Let's bring Nic in. Nic, is it NC Anderson or is it North Carolina Anderson Consulting?

ANDERSON: NC Anderson.

GLENN: NC Anderson Consulting.

ANDERSON: But I'm sure the people of North Carolina appreciate the shout‑out.

GLENN: Okay. So Nic, first of all, you are only working off of what you found in the Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance from the Department of Education's website, right?

ANDERSON: That's right. Either there or from the people that they cite as experts. I've gone to them and I've looked up what they are doing, what they are working on. But yes, it's all based off of this document from the Department of Education.

GLENN: I told you two weeks ago, I said anything that you find, make sure you burn it to a DVD because, are you aware of what the Department of Education has done with this handbook?

ANDERSON: Yeah. So I ‑‑ the day after, maybe the day of when you and I spoke on March 28th, I went and I logged on and tried to find the PDF and couldn't find it anywhere. And thank goodness Keith had ‑‑ one of your ‑‑

GLENN: Producers.

ANDERSON: Yeah. He called ‑‑ he sent me the link and I was able to go to it straight from there. But then I tried to look it up on my own and couldn't find it anywhere and I just found it again yesterday but it's ‑‑

GLENN: Buried.

ANDERSON: You have to dig for it. It's not right there.

GLENN: Yeah. It used to be right there.

ANDERSON: Right.

GLENN: They know we are onto them and they are trying to cover their tracks. If you are doing anything on Common Core, I'm telling you this is absolute evil. It is evil. Make no mistake. And you are going to come up against the big Republicans and the big Democrats on this one. Evil.

Nic, what did you find about the things that they are doing? I mean, they are making our kids into guinea pigs and they are monitoring them and they are collecting data points on them. What did you find?

ANDERSON: That's right. I mean, one of the interesting things is right at the top of this document, right in the beginning, let me read this little paragraph. I mean, this is just, it's comical if it wasn't scary. It says, "It may not always be productive to persevere in the face of challenge. For example, persevering to accomplish goals that are extrinsically motivated, unimportant to the student or in some way inappropriate for the student and potentially induce stress, anxiety and distraction and have detrimental impacts on students' long‑term retention, conceptual learning or psychological wellbeing. Careful research is still necessary to help educators learn how to protect students, engage them, and fine‑tune practices..."

GLENN: So wait a minute. They are saying that it might be inappropriate, it might be uncomfortable but they still have to do it?

ANDERSON: That's right. And the funny thing is this whole document's about grit and perseverance and they are saying, you know what? It might not be a good thing to always try hard. There are times when, you know, we don't want to overstress these kids because, you know, heaven, heaven forbid they actually have to work for something.

GLENN: Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the fMRI.

ANDERSON: Sure.

GLENN: Skin conductance and pupil monitoring that they are planning on doing.

ANDERSON: So the document, let's see. Page 32 says, for example, data mining techniques can track students' trajectories or persistence and learning over time, thereby providing actionable feedback to students and teachers. In additional, functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, and psychological indicators offer insight into the biology and neuroscience underlying observed students' behaviors.

Well, fMRI is based on the premise that as your brain thinks, it consumes oxygen and increases the magnetization of certain regions of your brain. So in theory I could take a kid and put him in the scanner and ask him a series of questions, things he should have learned in class and if his brain isn't consuming oxygen as I would expect it to be, well, then in theory I could hold the kid back at the end of the year, I could advance him if he answers really well and so on. The fusion tensor imaging is not mentioned in the article but it is a major research point right now by a couple of the authors. The fusion tensor imaging is able to track how two areas of the brain are connected. So if I said the color "brown" and you think of dirt, those are two separate things. Dirt is brown and brown is brown. Those are two separate parts of the brain thinking of something, but they're connected. And if I did an fMRI on you, I could see that, wait a minute, why when I said the word "brown" did this part of your brain light up. Well, diffusion tenser imaging will allow me to draw a connection between where the color brown is located in your brain and where the word "dirt" or the concept of dirt is located in your brain, and I can connect those two things.

GLENN: So what does that do?

ANDERSON: Well ‑‑

GLENN: Why do I need that or what is the good part of that and bad part of that?

ANDERSON: The good, some of the good parts, it's used in stroke. You know, like in detecting a stroke patient, you know, so on, certain things. But where it's being proposed in education is that if I could do diffusion tenser imaging, if kids aren't making these connections like I would expect them to be, something's wrong. And once again I could hold the kid back. So if I said, you know, 4 times 4 and then the part of your brain that is able to analyze that is not connected to the 4 times 4 part of your brain, then I suspect that something's wrong with you.

GLENN: Can I tell you something? I just had ‑‑ because I'm trying some holistic things and everything else and ‑‑ because I have really severe neuropathy and so I was on vacation. I went and I had a brain scan and I think it was probably kind of like an fMRI. But they did this whole scan on me and the doctor, when he got to the brain scan, he was sitting behind the deal and he went, whoa, never seen that before. And that's really something you don't want your doctor to say. And I said, what is that? And he said, you've got to look at this. And the creative side of my brain was just on fire. He's like, I've not ever seen the creative side. And he said, he started showing me. He said, look at how this all connects all the way down. Well, I would be spat out as abnormal, but you in a good way. Now ‑‑

ANDERSON: Yeah.

GLENN: Now, if I am ‑‑ the things that make me unique, for instance my ADHD, that has made me unique and has made me, because I can adapt to it, it gives me a different set of skills than everybody else. If they start saying, well, you're not functioning like everybody else, you're going to destroy the people like Steve Jobs because I can guarantee you Steve Jobs doesn't think like everybody else. The guy who runs Virgin Airways.

ANDERSON: Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, or anybody.

GLENN: Einstein, yeah, didn't they ‑‑ I think they pickled his brain to be able to see it later because he operated differently. So isn't this doing extraordinary damage to people?

ANDERSON: That's right ‑‑ ‑ that to the overseers of this. So if we did skin conductance testing which is, you know, if I say something and it makes you panic, your skin gets clammy, that's part of your sympathetic nervous system and I can detect the clamminess of your skin and I go, wait, you shouldn't be freaking out like that. That was a simple question I asked you about, you know, some mathematical problem or whatever. And I can detect that data point. This whole article, by the way, this whole draft is all based on data mining. They mention it a hundred times. And that's ‑‑

GLENN: Explain what data mining means. Explain why that's bad.

ANDERSON: So let me see if I can find. They mention data mining right in the very top of it. New technologies using educational data mining and affective computing ‑‑ "affective computing" is fMRIs, skin conductants, pupil dilation monitoring ‑‑ are being ‑‑ are beginning to focus on microlevel moment‑by‑moment data within digital and blended learning environments to provide feedback to adapt learning tasks to personalized needs.

So what they will do is I could take a group of 100 kids, and they're all let's say in twelfth grade and I'm able to ask them all a series of questions while I'm monitoring them with skin conduct ants or pressure monitors or whatever it is. And then I'd be able in theory, this is all in theory, to collect that data over fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade and so on and stratify those children maybe by the time they get to high school and say, "okay, over the last 10 years every time I ask Tommy and Billy and Sally a mathematical question, they clam up, they freak out and they get the answer wrong" and now I can use that data to steer them or whatever it may be. But this data mining, if I can collect data ‑‑ and don't get me wrong. I'm not against data. That's all I do all day long is analyze data. I love data, but I love data in the free market. I don't love data in the government. And if parents could opt out, if parents could choose to have nothing to do with this, then that's one thing. But ‑‑

GLENN: No, but it won't work that way. You create too ‑‑

ANDERSON: ‑‑ opt out of Social Security taxes if I could.

GLENN: You will create two class systems. If you opt out of the government collecting 20 years of data on your kid, they will make it so no one will want to hire you because I know exactly what I'm going to get from Nic. If I hire Nic, I know who he is because I've got this 20‑year research study done by the government. But I don't know who you are.

ANDERSON: Correct.

GLENN: And why is it that you are so freaky that you didn't want in this system in the first place, right?

ANDERSON: This is funny because you mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, where are we going? I mean, this is sci‑fi stuff that if I mentioned this to you 10 years ago, you would have called me a conspiracy theorist, and here I am. I'm holding the document in my hand.

GLENN: And let me tell you something. And Nic, they are still saying ‑‑ I mean, you have Republicans coming out and saying this is conspiracy theorist stuff.

ANDERSON: Right.

GLENN: They are saying that today. We're not talking about making this up and drawing conclusions. It is in the Department of Education's own textbook.

ANDERSON: That's right.

GLENN: It is in their plan.

ANDERSON: You know, in 1840 a man named Frederick Bastiat. You can read his book, it's 100 pages long called The Law. And he said if you suggest the doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is directly said, quote, you're a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws. You would shake the basis upon which society rests.

GLENN: Explain that.

ANDERSON: If any one of us stands up, Mia Love did this year in Utah saying, no, we've got to get rid of the Department of Education. She was lambasted, you know. This is a fascinating thing to me that if I stand up ‑‑ and I do this all the time in arguments against the FDA. We do not need the Food and Drug Administration. If you think the Department of Education's bad, the FDA's ab horn. And I know this because I study medical devices all day long. But if you stand up and you say, "We just don't need the FDA, they need to go away, or the United States Department of Education," it is said of you you're a dangerous experimenter, Nic, you're a utopian, you're a theorist, in the modern day terms you're a conspiracy theorist. But no, I need to get rid of the Department of Education, they need to get out, it needs to be privatized. And I mean, this is the stuff that makes heads at MSNBC explode is that, well, what are the poor kids going to do? Incidentally I call MSNBC an intellectual coloring book for adults. You know, I don't really want to think; I just want to doodle. But I mean, MSNBC, this is what makes those brains explode is that they can't fathom a world where the government stays out in the free market, takes care of education. You would get a better education for cheaper, and kids could ‑‑ you could collect data on those kids and it would be private amongst the parents and the children. And then the child, when he does graduate in high ‑‑ high school in twelfth grade, could have his own data that he could present to a university and say, "You know what? I have real data. I don't have the government‑collected data garbage that all my peers have."

GLENN: They have some pictures ‑‑

ANDERSON: They could have that and the free market could do it.

GLENN: They have some pictures in this. They have chairs that monitor the kids, they have these wristbands that they put on. It's really disturbing‑looking stuff.

ANDERSON: Right.

GLENN: Is it just the pictures look bad? Are these like assault pictures because the wristband is black? I mean, you know ‑‑

ANDERSON: Right, exactly. It's black. So it's ‑‑ does it have a pistol grip?

GLENN: I mean, the facial expression cameras that will be on each of our kids, the pupil cameras, those ‑‑ that's disturbing, isn't it?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Yeah, the pupil dilation and the skin conduct ants are based off the same principle that there is the sympathetic nervous system, which we all know as the "fight or flight" you know. So if I asked your kid, like the picture in the documents, one of those web cams and it would be able to detect your kid's pupils dilating meaning, "I'm shocked and I don't know the answer to the question."

GLENN: Right. But it also could be –

ANDERSON: like point out America on a map of North America, which most kids can't do.

GLENN: It could be also like your parents have guns, you'll see the pupil dilate and you'll see, why are you nervous about that, right?

ANDERSON: That's right. That's right.

GLENN: Nic, thank you very much. We'll have you on again, Nic Anderson, medical technology analyst and owner of NC Anderson Consulting. Again if you do anything on Common Core, make sure you burn it to disc because they are erasing it all and it is extraordinarily dangerous.

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: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

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.