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Sen. Rand Paul reacts to the latest terror threat

August 06, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) joined the radio program this morning to speak about his book, Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds, the current terror threat, and what will be on the agenda in Washington D.C. following the Congressional recess.

Transcript of the full interview below:

GLENN: [Rand Paul] doesn't want to shut down the government. He just wants to defund a wildly already out‑of‑control government program – the universal healthcare program of the president. And I think this is our ‑‑ this is our last chance. This is our last chance. He has a book that's come out in paperback: "Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds." It's stunning, stunning excoriation of what our country has become. And he is on the phone with us now. Senator, how are you, sir?

RAND PAUL: Good. Glad to be with you, Glenn.

GLENN: So... Chris Christie ‑‑

RAND PAUL: Oh, don't get me started, Glenn.

GLENN: ‑‑ has said, and he's not alone ‑‑

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: ‑‑ that there's a rising strain of libertarianism and that you are dangerous.

RAND PAUL: Now, you've seen me, Glenn. I'm not that dangerous. I'm not even scary.

GLENN: You're really not.

RAND PAUL: But the thing is that ‑‑ here's the real problem with their analysis is that I believe the most important thing we do at the federal government level, the thing that is absolutely authorized by the Constitution is national defense. And that it takes a priority over really just about everything we do up there. So I would, if I were in charge, do everything possible to find savings in order to preserve national defense. However, if you're a liberal Republican and you think you want all of the pork everywhere that all the Democrats want and you want national defense, it's a little bit hard to argue because there's no money left over for national defense unless you're willing to cut somewhere.

GLENN: I was shocked in two things, first of all, that Newt Gingrich over the weekend was as honest as he was. He claimed that he was a neocon, and anybody ‑‑ and Newt is enough of a wordsmith to know exactly the origins of that word. That means somebody who is a big government progressive liberal that also believes in huge national defense and spreading democracy by force. And that's what the definition of a neocon is. And he said, "I am a neocon, but I've ‑‑ I've started to reconsider. Maybe, maybe some of our national defense stuff is misguided here."

RAND PAUL: Well, see, I think part of the problem is we characterize things too absolutely. I always tell people that are there polls. One is that we're everywhere all the time and one is that we're nowhere any of the time. That would be isolationism. I'm not for nowhere any of the time. I'm for defending the country, protecting the country from attackers. I was for going into Afghanistan. I'm for having robust presence around the world, but I'm not for being in every Civil War. I'm not for arming the Islamic rebels in Syria who are going to be killing and are killing Christians. And so there are debates, but what happens is the other side wants to characterize one side as not believing and defending the country and that's just not accurate.

GLENN: So the ‑‑ we've had prison break after prison break. You know, if you look at Al‑Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood as two rival gangs, which they are. They're the Crips and the Bloods except they're even worse than the Crips and the Bloods obviously, and we have ‑‑ we're not anti‑ ‑‑ we're not anti‑gang. We just picked the Bloods. We just don't like the Crips much and so we've gone after Al‑Qaeda but we've embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is crumbling in the Middle East and in Egypt and now Al‑Qaeda is releasing prisoners by opening up all of the prisons across the Middle East and now we've taken this unprecedented act of shutting down our embassies all across the region. Rand, are we ‑‑ I mean, I've never seen America do this. Al‑Qaeda's not on the run. We're on the run.

RAND PAUL: Well, you know, I still have questions about whether we're adequately protecting our embassies, and I think it really was inexcusable in Benghazi that when Hillary Clinton was asked for more security, she turned them down and then had the gall to say, "Oh, really wasn't my problem. Somebody underneath me made that decision." And I really think that that kind of behavior's inexcusable. And still to this day, you know, they're talking this morning all over the news about how Benghazi's ten times more dangerous than it was. I think the whole country, I think the host country, there may be people there who are willing to protect our embassy but I don't think they have the capability. So I don't think we really should have an embassy there under State Department control. It actually ought to be under military control the way initially things were in Afghanistan and in Iraq, or we shouldn't have an embassy in Libya at all. But you do have to protect your embassies, and shutting them down is not an ultimate answer. I don't want to second‑guess the decision yesterday, reliable information, but I do say we have to have more protection for our embassies.

GLENN: I don't want to put you in a situation to where you're speculating on, you know, whether this is genuine, whether this is just another, you know, this is scare tactic to get everybody talking ‑‑ not talking about Benghazi, which we were again last week or supporting the NSA or anything like that. What I want to ‑‑ what I just want to ask you is how should the American people digest what's going on with this giant terror scare?

RAND PAUL: You know, I think that you can have both security and privacy and obey the Bill of Rights. They make it out like, "Oh, we need these short steps, we don't need warrants, we need to be able to get all of this information from Americans and store it out in Utah," but the thing is almost really every case that they've said, oh, was stopped by using this surveillance, it really isn't exactly true. Every name of every person that they started their investigation with all came from an informant and came with an actual name. They are just using, enable to use this data to find terrorists. They are working from information they get from informants and then they could do it the traditional way and just ask for judges' warrants for their phone records and whoever they link to and we would be able to get terrorists and still would even without, you know, disobeying the Fourth Amendment and invading all Americans' privacy.

GLENN: I have respect for Michele Bachmann, but we have respectfully parted ways on the NSA thing. She is convinced that the NSA has never done anything wrong and, you know, got to work with the evidence at hand, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know why you are building the biggest data collection center the world has ever seen if you're not actually going to store any of that data, but what is your reaction to the House's failure to defund the NSA?

RAND PAUL: You know, actually I was pretty impressed with the effort because first of all, leadership on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, didn't want to have a vote. And they forced the vote and actually almost worked to put controls on the NSA. The problem with not having any controls and expecting the NSA or policemen in general just to pass their own rules, it's sort of like the presidential problem. People who have power think that because they're good, there don't need to be limits on it. So policemen who are good people, I know policemen in my community, I know FBI agents are good people, but they don't want restrictions outside of their group because it just sort of gets in the way of doing work. But increasingly they want more and more power because they say we're good people and we're going to do good things. But then ultimately so much power accumulates that then, like, people in the IRS are able to use that power against their political enemies. Could the NSA be turned on your enemies? Absolutely.

GLENN: Congress is on break right now, but when you come back, there is a push that you're involved in to defund universal healthcare by carving it out of the next continuing resolution. Already they're calling everybody involved an extremist. I personally think that if this would work, you would not only defund the president's healthcare plan and stop it dead in its tracks, I really, truly believe you would see John McCain walk out of the GOP and say I'm going ‑‑ I'm going to do Joe Lieberman, I'm independent because this party has been taken over by extremists and that would be the biggest victory of all. How is the defunding program coming in your opinion?

RAND PAUL: Well, but for a few Republicans who have been critical of it before it got started, you know, I think it would have had more success. What I tell people is that when I come home in Kentucky, everybody's exactly the way they were in 2010. They want us to do something to defund ObamaCare. Medicare's $35 to $40 trillion in the hole, and taking money from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare just isn't going to work. And they want us to do something. We control a third of the government, which means we may not be able to win, but they want us to stand up and try. And if you control a third of the government, shouldn't you use that leverage to at least get rid of some of ObamaCare or try to get rid of some of it? You start out with defunding the whole thing but maybe we just get it delayed. I don't know what the final outcome is because I can't guarantee victory, but I can guarantee you get nothing if you don't try and that's why I think Republicans are hungry for leadership in our party to say somebody stand up to the president. Somebody stand up to ObamaCare and do something.

GLENN: I saw a story from a progressive Democrat that said after this is funded, if you guys lose this fight, and once this thing is funded and on its way, the TEA Party and small government conservatives are over. And they said that it is really one of the last stands here and it's a real fight in the ‑‑ it's just a, it's a fight against American constitutionalists and progressives on both sides.

RAND PAUL: Yeah, but I think the fight doesn't end because I've told people even if we lose this fight on funding it, there's going to be another fight within a year when all the bills come due at the state legislative level because they don't have a printing press at the state capitol and so they will have bills and they're going to be enormous for this thing. And I think also there's going to be a rebellion among the people when they see how much their premiums are and then, guess what, they had insurance before but they lose their doctor, lose their insurance and they are paying more for their premiums. They are going, now, why did I vote for the president on this?

GLENN: Do you think they're going to ‑‑ I mean, to add fuel to the fire, do you think they're going to ‑‑ there's going to be a real movement to bail out Detroit?

RAND PAUL: I think there may. And, you know, I've been talking with my staff about having a Republican alternative to it because I think there is a way in an economically depressed zone to have some tax forbearance, reduce some taxes, encourage businesses, encourage people to come in and take abandoned property.

The other thing I suggested is the money we're sending to Egypt for tanks and planes, we could put it into infrastructure. Doesn't have to go just to Detroit but it ‑‑ across America, it would go into repairing infrastructure. And so I think there are ways that we could do it in a Republican fashion, but I will not be for borrowing any money, you know, from China to try to bail out Detroit, particularly if they continue the same policies. Really bankruptcy is an opportunity to try to get rid of bad contracts, start out afresh and try to maybe pay your workers, have fewer workers but pay them closer to what the market pays them in the private sector.

GLENN: I will tell you that, you know, the boys were talking about, we could buy homes, Glenn. We could buy a home for a dollar. We could buy a whole block for 10. And they were talking about there, you know, some people are going in and, you know, buying, you know, lots of houses, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, "I wouldn't do it because I'm not convinced that I wouldn't be held responsible or liable now for all of the bad decisions that that city makes." You have to have a fresh start. If you had a fresh start, new money would pour in there and people would say, "I've got an idea. I know how we can do this. I know how we can fix this. I know how we can turn it around. But who's going to do that in ‑‑

RAND PAUL: You'd have to bring in new politics, too, that maybe the people who have been voting for the Democrats for 50 years in Detroit who ran the once great city into the ground, maybe they would choose some new leadership in the Republican Party.

GLENN: No, that's ‑‑

RAND PAUL: ‑‑ have a resurgence in Detroit and say, look, we have the ability and the ideas to bring forward a recovery for Detroit. But that may be wishful thinking.

GLENN: Yeah, I think that's ‑‑ I think that's wishful thinking. I think what is a possibility, not now, but what is a possibility is to get entrepreneurs, libertarians, smallest possible government, the kind of guys that are doing the, you know, the cutting‑edge ideas of, you know, what is that sea thing that, they have that big ship out in sea and they're like we're going to try to redesign everything? I mean, you have some real libertarian thinkers, some real big money and some entrepreneurs in there and say, "All bets are off. We want this property to try something entirely different," that I think could excite the minds and imaginations of Americans. And if you just said, "Look, I own it and that's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to take care of it and police it myself and we're going to try some new experiment," that would capture the imagination.

RAND PAUL: You've hit on it because what you have to have is not only tax‑free zones, you need to have regulation free zones. Apparently Detroit, you know, there's 46 pages of regulations for setting up a business and everywhere you go, you're paying off somebody or paying a legalized bribe to get your business license. You have to eliminate all that red tape and so it has to be a low‑tax or a tax‑free zone and a regulation‑free zone and just do it because it's blighted and see if people will come in if you tell them they can just open their business and start tomorrow.

GLENN: Well, the name of the book is Government Bullies: How everyday Americans are being harassed, abused, and imprison by the Feds. And if you ever have a friend who says, "Oh, tell me where the rights have gone away," you just give them this book. I's available now in paperback everywhere, government bullies by senator Rand Paul out today in paperback in stores everywhere. Thank you so much, Senator.

RAND PAUL: Thanks, Glenn.

GLENN: Appreciate it. Bye‑bye.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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.

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.