WATCH: Eternal Vigilance

Alright, let’s talk about this weekend, because it really was the tale of two weekends. One group gathered in Houston, Texas, men and women who understand the times in which we live, that liberty comes with responsibility, that without liberty there is tyranny, the time is now if not passed, to stand. They get it. Government is part of the problem. I mean, we’re part of the problem, but it’s certainly not the solution.

And then there were those gathered to say exactly the opposite, that the American people are the problem, and government is the solution. First, let me take you to a university where the president was speaking. Notice he’ll always speak to university students. He is reaching right directly for the youth of the world.

President Obama said Mexico’s gang violence is because of our addiction, the U.S. citizens’ drug addictions, not Mexican cartels, no, no, no. Watch.

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President Obama: We understand that much of the root cause of violence that’s been happening here in Mexico for which so many Mexicans have suffered is the demand for illegal drugs in the United States. And we also recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.

Do you hear what he has done? What he has done…most of the guns that kill Mexicans – he is setting us up. He is setting us up. When we are weak, they will pile across the border, because the president has even verified it’s your fault. It’s your fault. There was no mention of Fast and Furious. They’ll be no questioning of the DOJ officials responsible for trafficking guns over the border, guns that were later used by criminals to kill U.S. border agent Brian Terry and over 300 others in Mexico.

To date, no one in the DOJ has gone to jail for this number. Nobody’s even being questioned. No one’s been held accountable for trying to use guns as a way to show America and push for stricter gun control laws. Incredibly, as our own government goes to extremes to try and infringe on the right that shall not be infringed, the president is also at the same time this weekend advising American students to ignore anyone who warns against big, out-of-control governments.

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President Obama: Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.

This is amazing to me. This is truly amazing. He says you’ve grown up. This is very reminiscent of what Al Gore said where, you know, you just know things that your parents don’t – you’ve grown up hearing voices. Will who’s been telling them that? Who’s been telling them? Certainly not in the classroom…they haven’t been told this in the classroom.

Nobody has taught Thomas Jefferson in quite some time, who said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” George Washington said, “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence – it is force like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master...” He had so little trust in government that he fretted over his job title. He wanted be called president. Everybody else wanted him to be called king.

He and the other framers were more concerned about building a government that wouldn’t get out of control. It’s what they feared the most. Fast forward now 236 years, and our president now scoffs at Washington and Jefferson’s advice and instructs America’s youth to just trust the government, trust them, and reject anyone who is vigilant, basically saying the government can’t go bad. There can’t be a tyrannical government, a tyrant taking over, so let your guard down.

Let me tell you something. We have failed to teach our kids not only American history but world history. We have failed to such an extent that the students didn’t even laugh. May I ask you a question? Imagine if the president gave this very same speech in Egypt or any of the former communist countries. Can you imagine?

Can you imagine if he went down to Foxconn? This is where your Apple iPad – oh Apple is such a great businesses, isn’t it? It’s fantastic. These people here are the ones who make your iPad for Apple. Imagine if he met in this cafeteria.

This is the building where you leave – I’m sorry, you never leave. You live in this, and you never leave, because the business where they’re building your Apple product is underneath these housing tenants here. And they all go down to, like I think it’s the third floor and eat. And then they go down and work, and then they go up and sleep. It’s beautiful existence. That’s why people are throwing themselves off this building, and they’re doing it because this is what the government tells them they have to do.

Now imagine if the president went down to the cafeteria in this building and said that – hey, don’t listen to these people who say there might be a problem, there might be a tyrant, that somebody could control your life. Well, the fact is freedom is so rare, the experience that we have had living under freedom…so rare. Ninety-five percent of the time, mankind has lived under some form of oppression. Only 5% of all the people throughout human history have lived free. It’s an exception, not the rule.

Washington and Jefferson’s advice was wise. To advise otherwise is reckless. It flies in the absolute face of history. Government tyranny – that’s what this office has always guarded against, government tyranny. I mean, Abe Lincoln, he freed the slaves, right? What was that all about? What was that about? What was the Civil War about? The slaves were liberated, and then later, they were severely discriminated against.

I did the speech this last Saturday. Please watch it, because I talked about the political party that was set up to stop slaves who had been freed from having any freedom. It was all about power. How about this, the wrong Native Americans? This is a government agent standing on the top, and those are buffalo heads. These government agents would go out, and they would kill all the buffalo. And then they would stack them up in a pile to say to the Indians, no food for you. Get out.

Was that individuals that did that, or was that the United States government? Mr. President, I can’t believe that you tried to present yourself as a friend of the oppressed. Who was it that slaughtered tens of millions? Well, it was Mao. It was Stalin. It was Hitler. It was Pol Pot. It was Mugabe. Should I go on? Those are just the last 20th century.

One of the president’s advisers said power generally comes from the barrel of the gun. Well, who’s he quoting? Mao – power comes from the barrel of the gun. He should know. He killed 80 million people. Mr. President, you have a guy who says that…we generally agree with Mao.

Well maybe the president, maybe the president just meant America, that it never happens in America. You have to have this conversation with your friends about slavery. Forget about your friends. Have this conversation with your kids, because your kids are being taught the exact opposite junk.

You ask your kids and anybody who will listen to you that’s more than just politics, that really cares about the country, ask them about this advice that the president gave to the students, and if they generally agree or disagree. If they’re like, well, I’m not really – have a talk with them.

What about the enslaved African-Americans? Who enslaved them? Was it the people or the government? The secret is it is the people, but the government is the enforcer. It has to come from the people. That’s why we have to be good, decent people. But it’s the government that is the enforcer.

We had indentured servitude here in America, but then in 1654, things changed. John Casor became the first legal slave in America. He was owned by an African-American. Did your friends know that? Do your kids know that? Look it up, John Casor.

How did it happen? Well, John said, I just bought this guy, and I have him for life. And he said no, indentured servitude. No, for life. Well, he went to court. Who ran the court, the people or the government? It was the government of England at the time. It was a court decision that started slavery here in America.

So ask your friends after slaves were freed with the Emancipation Proclamation, was the government in the south not operating as tyrants? They had already lost, but then what happened? The government in the south rose up again for reconstruction.

How about the way they treated the Native Americans? This is a tragic story of how… I mean they killed an entire tribe. On Saturday, I had the gun of Kicking Bear of this tribe. This was for gun control – this picture, gun control. What I’m trying to understand here is how the president could make a statement like that in the face, not only of all of the facts, but also his own past.

I mean, what happened to the guy who listed all the horrible things about America, one right after another? In France, he said Americans were arrogant and dismissive and derisive. Does he mean the people, like the people we know next door? The American people are arrogant, dismissive, and derisive? Or did he mean the government was? Because I know a lot of people who are arrogant, but I dismiss them. It only matters if, you know, they have power.

In Turkey, he said the United States was still working through some of our darker periods in history. What does that mean? Maybe it’s this – when we rounded up the Japanese-Americans? Is that what this is? I love this picture. This is in my office. “Office of Free Press,” but this is an internment camp for the Japanese-Americans.

Or maybe it was the Native Americans or slavery, which darker period? Was there some darker period where hundreds of thousands ended up in total misery that was done by our neighbors and not the government? In Trinidad, he said the United States has been disengaged, and at times, we sought to dictate our terms. Who, Steve, or the United States government?

In Egypt, he said America acted out of fear and anger, after which 9/11 led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. He condemned the U.S. soldiers in the Quran burning, which they did nothing wrong. He scolded America over torture tactics. I know Bob down the street’s not torturing anybody. The government is. Now we can add Mexico to that list.

I’m sorry, Mr. President, I just don’t know who you’re talking about. Who do you mean? Do you mean the government? Because I don’t agree with you, but if you mean the neighbor down the street, I agree with you. Don’t worry. They’re not going to really become a tyrant, unless you’re down the street is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or anybody who works at the Capitol building.

See, he forgets his own speeches, I think, because I don’t think he actually even reads them. He just says the words that are on the screen. I could be wrong. I don’t know. But one of the things he warns about, still warns about, is how the government is in bed with Wall Street and big oil and big pharmaceutical. Well, isn’t that tyranny?

He said the police acted stupidly. Isn’t that tyranny? He went to a church for 20 years with a guy who said the United States government is so evil it created the HIV virus in order to kill African-Americans. Don’t believe me? Watch.

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Rev. Jeremiah Wright: The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. Governments lie. The government lied about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and a connection between on 9/11/01 and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Governments lie.

Okay, the governments lie. I mean everybody that surrounds this guy…Van Jones, a 9/11 truther who signed a petition that said the United States blew up the World Trade Center in order to further its militaristic agenda. He also, Van Jones says we stole the wealth from the American Indians.

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Van Jones: They now own and control 80% of the renewable energy resources. No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth. Give them the wealth.

Okay so we stole the wealth. This is current. He is saying we stole the wealth. Okay. Currently, this president is acquaintances, neighbors with Bill Ayers, who didn’t just say he hated the government. He literally tried to overthrow it by building bombs and bombing buildings.

In 2008, New York City judge recalled the Weather Underground’s attempt to kill his family said, “We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: Free the Panther 21; the Viet Cong have won; kill the pigs.”

Does he mean real pigs, Mr. President? Does he mean the neighbor pigs, or does he mean the cops as your hippie friends used to say? Cops, you know, the kind that act stupidly and work for the government. Who was Bill Ayers trying to stop in Vietnam, my neighbor, Skippy, or the government?

This is all very reminiscent of when he told American students not to watch me but read instead the Huffington Post.

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President Obama: If you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of the New York Times, try glancing at the page of the Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website.

I do. Hillary Clinton said to watch Al Jazeera. America, it’s not really about who we listen to in the media. It’s what we know to be true of who we really are. This is the place where we really come together as Americans, and if we can’t, I mean, we’re just not going to make it. We have to unite on a few things.

Can we unite on at least those things that our country is up against? Can we unite on a few things just to move our country forward? I mean, I want maximum freedom and maximum responsibility. Those people who believe in government but know that governments go corrupt…I mean, we all knew it was corrupt under George W. Bush. It’s worse now, but it was corrupt then. Can’t we agree on that? Can’t we unite on that one thing?

We have to reach out to our friends and neighbors and not in anger but in gentleness and peace. People are going to become more and more angry as the days go by. We need to unite and become one in mind. The lies, the deception, has to stop. I’ve never asked you to take my word on anything, nor will I.

The pictures of the internment camps, you know, the buffalo piles, I want you to ask your kids if they know about it. Ask them to do a research paper on it. Do it with them. Do a paper on it. Have them find online the things our government has done that is bad. You know, that’s something that the left would always say, Oh no conservative would tell you to do that.

I want you to look these things up. I want you to know them. It will, believe it or not, deepen your love and respect for the country when it goes right. It will help you keep the country going right. We did horrible things. Look up the Lakota Indians – horrible, horrible stuff. I talked about ’em at the NRA.

I said a lot of things at the NRA, and if you haven’t seen the speech, I urge you to watch it. It’s available at TheBlaze.com or I think at GlennBeck.com. The transcript is up there now, but you should read it or watch it. Anybody that says trust me, trust me on this, don’t even think about it, dismiss everybody, you shouldn’t trust them.

Make a list of all the people that you truly trust right now. Have your kids do the same. Who do you trust with your money? Ask yourself as a parent or ask your neighbors. Your money, your Social Security, your sensitive information, your e-mails, your children’s education, your welfare, your health, all of those things…can you name the individuals that you would just blindly hand over, that you would put your kids into their trust for their welfare, their education, everything else, and not ask any questions?

I can’t think of anybody. I mean, good friends, I wouldn’t do that. I would certainly not hand my kids’ future and literally hand my kid over all day without asking any real questions. I certainly wouldn’t do that to anybody who still works in Washington.

I don’t have to believe that the government blew up the World Trade Center or created AIDS, but I know if I sat in a church where they taught that for 20 years, I don’t think I’d be the guy who came out and said, “Hey, the government is good.” What I would actually try to do – if I sat in that church for 20 years, and I had all of the friends that he has – what I would actually try to do is try to dismantle it, because this would be evil. All this would be evil to me, because if I heard that my whole life, I would despise this. My wife wouldn’t be able to get out of here fast enough.

Jefferson, Washington, and all the presidents in our past, all of them have warned about getting too cozy with big business with our government – warned. Watch the government when they start getting into bed with special interest. It means the government will make laws that are good for those special interests, the banks or GE but not good for you. Well, isn’t that tyranny? Someone from the left should understand this concept.

You see, they’ve always maintained that our biggest danger to society was special interest groups, the banks, big money, big business, or big corporations. Well, that’s what’s happening now. Big business and big corporations and big military, they’re getting together. And I can’t figure out how I’m the one now saying that and warning the left. Your friends should be warned and just ask the question – I’m puzzled.

The first president to warn about this, the one who gave the hippie left their whole language was a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower. I believe Dwight Eisenhower may be the last president who actually really spoke the truth on this issue very openly. Watch:

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President Eisenhower: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Okay, so what he’s saying is the military, the government, along with business, if you put them together, it’s disastrous. The potential for disastrous and misplaced power exists and will persist. It’s arrogance or a lie that this president would believe that he has defeated this threat for all time – eternal vigilance. Eternal vigilance is no longer required?

Well, that’s what he’s telling the students, and why is he telling the students to put their guard down? It’s eternal vigilance, and every president on both sides of the aisle have always said that. Is that why he’s okay with taking guns away from law-abiding citizens, because we’re safe? Does he recognize the opening that some future tyrant would have if we weren’t vigilant at all? Or is there something else?

The potential always exists. That’s why we have to teach our children the opposite of what everybody in school is teaching them today. The president is teaching our college graduates. It’s not just other countries. It’s not just China. It’s not Cuba, which they have been taught isn’t so bad. I don’t want to live in Cuba. Do you?

It’s not individual Americans, because individual Americans don’t have the force of law behind them. If I don’t have the force of law, I can’t be a Fascist. I can have fascistic tendencies, but I can’t be a Fascist, because I can’t force you to do anything. If Hitler’s living next door, but he doesn’t have control of the government and the media and everything else, Hitler’s just a crazy neighbor that I don’t want to live next to.

Governments do things. Those governments have to be created, and then those governments have to be let go, and so the people allow that government that the people created to become bad. The people had to allow Andrew Jackson and that big government to follow manifest destiny that wiped Indians out.

We had to allow Woodrow Wilson to round up the dangerous foreigners and naturalized American citizens, you know, of German and Irish ancestry. The people had to allow slavery and segregation and Jim Crow laws. They had to allow FDR and the progressive icon to round up the Japanese through executive order and put them in an internment camp.

We’ve heard forever the horrors of Jim Crow laws, but could we focus on…just a second, it’s the last word there in those three that give it power, Jim Crowe laws, written, and more importantly enforced, by a government. If we’re not vigilant, who will stop Jim Crow laws from happening again?

It would be a miracle if our young generation even noticed, because they’re being taught to exchange freedoms and responsibility for government freebies and promises of protection. We’ll feed you. We’ll keep you safe. Just trust us with more of your money and higher taxes. Give us your guns. Let us come into your house whenever we’re shutting a city down looking for somebody.

We’re raising a generation that doesn’t understand nor appreciate the value of freedom. We have to teach them. Please, do some homework with your kids tonight. I don’t care how old they are. Do some homework with your kids. Last century was one of the deadliest in the world. In all of human history, last century was the worst. Why, because the neighbors down the street in Germany or because of those who had power of governments? Evil claimed the lives of millions, but goodness prevailed.

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Glenn Beck: Because of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, later Martin Luther King and Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa, Henrietta Szold, they awoke the world. They gave their lives in the pursuit of human rights. They took the side of justice against injustice. They held aloft the torch of freedom to push back the darkness of hate.

But the cause now of human rights has been taken over by organizations who share little with those individuals who originally led those movements. Human rights, the cry, “but I have a right,” used to be a plea. All too often now it has become a threat.

These organizations now have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent. They criticize free nations. They criticize the free nations, and they spare the unfree. They denounce nations like Israel and America who have high standards for freedom, and they leave alone the nations that have no freedom at all. They are nearly comical in their double standards. Whatever moral force they once have had is spent, and so today, we dismiss them.

Those words are almost two years old now, but they were alive again this weekend at the NRA speech. It was the tale of two weekends – those who realize that freedom is in trouble, the freedom of all mankind is at stake, and those who don’t or don’t care. The lines are being drawn, and it is time to choose sides. It’s really pretty easy to choose. I’m going to show you the signs of the near future, the sides of the near future, by showing you the sides and the signs, the echoes of the past, next.

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.

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.

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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

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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.

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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.