Buck Sexton: Tyranny of Bureaucracy destroying America slowly

July 10, 2013

Writer

The president still doesn’t get it. In the past few weeks, Americans have been bombarded with massive government failures and overreaches. We know about the NSA snooping, the IRS and DOJ targeting of Conservatives as well as reporters. Ah, the First Amendment’s such an anachronism.

Then there’s the EPA. ObamaCare now costs double what they thought it would. Amnesty, yeah the list goes on and on. So what does the president have the gall to say just yesterday?

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President Obama: And I directed the cabinet to develop an aggressive management agenda for my second term that delivers a smarter, more innovative, and more accountable government for its citizens.

Ah, yes, that’s all we need. We’ll just make our massive, bloated government smarter. Why didn’t I think of that? His view on government is so warped, listen to how he describes the government-citizen relationship.

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President Obama: And it’s a reminder that in this democracy, we the people recognize that this government belongs to us, and it’s up to each of us and every one of us to make it work better. We can’t just stand on the sidelines. We can’t take comfort in just being cynical. We all have a stake in government success because the government is us. And we’re doing things right.

I take a lot of comfort in being cynical when he’s the president. And we’re doing things right? You must be joking. Well, he’s not joking. But something tells me he’s not entirely accurate on that, that something that begins with the number 17, has about 12 zeros after it. The president’s description of the government-citizen relationship is fundamentally opposed to what the founders intended. He still thinks it’s the government that is America’s primary engine, not the people, not you at home. No, no, it’s government.

And since we’re vested in government because we’re paying taxes; therefore, we are what government needs, we must cheer for it to get bigger and solve everything and just give us big warm hugs. This is a statist ideology. They think they know better than you. They think they’re smarter than you, and they will try to force their will on the people.

And when we don’t go along with it, by the way, they have to find a way to enforce their will.

I believe the president has called this “going on his own without Congress.” Well, how does he do that? This is what’s key. This is what I want to talk to you about today – with a petty little army of petty bureaucrats, meddling Commissars, these groups, these agencies that harass, intimidate, and break the will of the people to be free. That’s happening every day now in America, all across this country.

The growth and power of the statist federal bureaucracy is a timeless threat. It does not go away with elections. It just gets bigger year after year. And the soulless, unaccountable edifices of a regulatory and legal bureaucracy in America that eradicates our liberty is something that is an existential threat to constitutional principles. As they say in the State Department, presidents come and go, but the department, well, that’s forever.

Now that’s true as well of DHS, FBI, HHS, EPA. I could keep going, because there’s a slew of bloated, quasi-authoritarian government agencies. This has caused a dramatic shift in the relationship of American citizens with the state. It’s a situation fundamentally of us versus them. It’s comprised of government agencies on one side and all of us, the citizens, who by the way are paying for those agencies, on the other.

The targeting of the Tea Party by the IRS was just one symptom of this much larger and more pernicious disease. We know from the NSA that we have no rights that they will not concede to us, and if they so choose, they can just dig up every phone call, Facebook post, e-mail, instant message. Whatever you’ve written your whole life, they can pull it all out, right? Oh, they can, but is for your safety, they’ll tell you. That’s what they’ll say. It’s to protect us from terrorists.

All of us are treated with this suspicion. All of us are treated as though we can’t figure out on our own what rights we should and should not be allowed to enjoy in this country, and it’s because bureaucrats feel empowered to intimidate us at will regardless of what the Constitution says.

Look, I can tell you as a former government employee myself, always be skeptical of those who wield power but not prestige, who operate without public approval but who can inflict endless damage on the public and on the Constitution in situations like this:

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Officer: I need you to just pull right over to the side right there, right there.
Male: Am I being detained?
Officer: Pull over to the side right there.
Male: Am I being detained, or am I free to go?
Officer: Pull over to the side right there. Okay, step on out.
Male: So I’m being detained?
Officer: Either pull over to the other side, or you can step out right here. Which do you want?

Apparently that elicits a laugh these days or perhaps a roll of the eyes. He’s perfectly innocent. He knows his rights. He knows the Constitution, so let’s harass, intimidate, and belittle him. That was at a drunk-driving stop. They decided that they were going to go after this guy because he happened to know that what they were doing was not legal in the eyes of the Constitution.

Bureaucratic assaults on freedom are increasingly commonplace. We are being conditioned as a society to accept this. Recently, a man faced 11 years in jail for chalk drawings on the street which you could get rid of by pouring water on them, or they would just go away with the rain. Now, the prosecution went forward with this. A jury acquitted him of all charges, by the way. Thankfully, I guess you can still rely on a jury of your peers when the statist bureaucrats run amok, but not always, and it shouldn’t be that way.

And it’s not just as though this is a once-in-a-while thing. A Pittsburgh man, for example – this is a smaller issue, but I’m sure it matters to him –

has four pet ducks, and authorities want to fine him $500 a day for it because they’re calling it unlicensed poultry rising. They’re his pets. They say he’s raising poultry.

America’s most treasured citizens, by the way, veterans, who every politician’s always saying we must do everything we can for our veterans, the federal government apparently does a lot for them, because they give them tons of forms, 613 across 18 different federal agencies in order to get the full range of benefits. That makes a ton of sense, doesn’t it – 600, 600-plus?

What do all of these things, what do all of these transgressions have in common? Spiteful, stupid, or careless bureaucrats who took it upon themselves to punish citizens, go far beyond any rational judgment, in many cases to just forget about the Constitution and interpret the law as they see fit. And it’s not just there. We see this at the 30,000-foot level as well. The tax code, it’s 70,000 pages. Why is that?

Criminal statutes are in the 4,500 range now, going up all the time. That’s quite an increase from the original three named in the Constitution. Nobody even knows how many laws there are. The people that are supposed to enforce them and bring prosecutions couldn’t even tell you.

And it’s not like these laws are written by intellectual giants – Aristotle, Kant, Edmund Burke. No, we have people of the mental capacity of Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz creating moronic laws that could easily send you to jail for the rest of your life or at least ruin your life through a stupid prosecution.

Amoral bureaucracy is the greatest single threat to American liberty today. The world has seen this before, by the way. This is not a new concept, not a new idea. It’s one we must pay very serious attention to, though.

In 2010, Glenn warned you that America was repeating many of the same mistakes that caused the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire. The comparisons he cited are chilling. For example, declining moral values and civility – check, an overextended military – check, irresponsible fiscal policy – big check. I want to add one more to Glenn’s list, by the way – the tyranny of bureaucrats.

I believe that in many ways that contributed to, caused, or amplified all of the other symptoms that brought ancient Rome to its knees, that dissolved the Empire and led us, by the way, into centuries of darkness known as the Dark Ages. Rome was not perfect, not at all. There were absolutely moral failings, but it was functional. It worked. People wanted to be citizens of the Republic. But then something changed, gradually, but unquestionably, the separation of the government from the governed.

All of a sudden, this bureaucracy that was supposed to be there to support and assist the people and implement the law, Rome became a tyranny of bureaucrats. It all changed. And it was characterized by – see if any of this sounds familiar to you right now here in America – regulation, inflation, taxation. These are massive problems now just as they were crippling problems then.

But there’s something more visceral at work than that, the res publica. This is the Latin term from which we derive republic, and it means the public thing, the idea that there was more than just what you were doing day to day. There was something greater, an idea that was worth fighting for, that was worth believing in. That evaporated in Rome, and it evaporated in large part because the politicians, the tax collectors, and yes, even the military in ancient Rome began to operate solely for their own benefit.

They became simply too numerous, too powerful, and like a swarm of locusts, they descended upon the people and took from them. Now from Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, we can take just one quote to illustrate this: “The number of ministers, of magistrates, of officers, and of servants, who filled the different departments of the state, was multiplied beyond the example of former times; and (if we may borrow the warm expression of a contemporary) ‘when the proportion of those who received exceeded the proportion of those who contributed the provinces were oppressed by the weight of tributes.’”

The bureaucrats were just taking too much, asking for too much, wanted too much. A rapacious, insatiable bureaucracy taxed the people beyond anyone’s imagination. They increased taxes dramatically and almost continuously over the course of a couple centuries, by the way. And this led directly to Rome’s demise, as did the debasement of currency needed to try to prop up this rapacious bureaucracy.

What did they do, by the way, other than just raise taxes? They started to ignore and flaunt the law. In Rome under Emperor Domitian, assets of the rich were seized. They just said you’re really rich. We’re going to take some your stuff. Oh, you don’t think that could happen now? Under Caracalla, another emperor, they said that there was some victory far away that required a tribute from a province nearby, another means of raising revenue.

Now, the military apparatus became absolutely all-powerful. Emperors came and went very quickly because the military became the sole source of legitimacy. The Praetorian Guard played kingmaker. They cared not a whit for citizens. They were involved in assassination plots. They were deciding what was best for them. They didn’t care about the average citizen.

And as the bureaucracy grew, and it needed more, it also became more authoritarian. It became less legitimate, and eventually in the Fifth Century, Rome ceased to exist. There was no more Rome. The res publica was gone. It had rotted from the inside out, and those who were supposed to administer the state to protect citizens and help the Roman polity function, they were the ones that did it in.

The collapse of Rome was caused in large part by a government that was simply too big and too self-interested. It was a failure of political culture. It was the destruction of the res publica. Meanwhile, today, our president wants to believe he can solve the nation’s ills by simply making a bloated, massive bureaucracy smart. But the only smart government is a small government, a small government that seeks to keep its people as free as possible.

Tonight, we discuss how petty bureaucrats have helped bring down great empires throughout history, and we’re going to look at how modern bureaucrats today are slowly strangling our freedom. Unless we stand against this, it will bring about our decline and fall.

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

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

The appeal of a broken dream

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

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

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

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

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

The bridge that never ends

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

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

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

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

What young America deserves

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatism as stewardship

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding what is broken

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

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

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

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

A creed for the rising generation

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

Ancient evil, new clothes

A time for choosing