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Rand Paul says GOP is united against Obamacare… for the most part

September 25, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Senator Rand Paul made headlines last week when the Associated Press quoted him saying Obamacare probably couldn’t be defeated. He later clarified his remarks and reiterated that he would vote against a resolution funding the President’s healthcare legislation. Last night, Sen. Paul brought a good dose of experience to the Senate floor when he took part in fellow Sen. Ted Cruz’s marathon anti-Obamacare speech. This morning, Sen. Paul joined Glenn to talk about what the next steps are for the Republican Party.

Glenn, who introduced Sen. Paul as “the guy who began to give me some hope that there was a way out," asked him to elaborate on what this moment means for the future of Obamacare and, more generally, the future of the Republican Party.

“No. I mean, whether we win or lose on this, and I don't think we have the votes ultimately to win on this, but whether we win or lose on this, we will continue to stand on principle against ObamaCare,” Sen. Paul said. “Many state legislatures are going to have the same fight. The same fervor and the same excitement we've had in Washington this week will be in state capitals when they get the bill for the expansion of Medicaid. And all the states that are expanding Medicaid are going to have to either raise taxes or go further in debt, and this is going to be a problem. But it comes about over the next year or two.”

“The other thing that's going to happen is people who had good insurance, this could be wealthy executives or it could be union workers who had good insurance, are going to be paying taxes on it,” he continued. “People are going to find out that their prices for their insurance is higher, part‑time workers are going to lose hours, and full‑time workers may well lose their job. There's going to be a lot of bad things that come out of this. And so I think the fight goes on. But this is a milestone in that fight.”

There has a good deal of highly publicized in fighting within the Republican Party. But Sen. Paul explained that while Republicans in Washington might not agree on how to defeat Obamacare, they are united against the legislation.

“I think the caucus is unified against ObamaCare. I mean, I truly do. I think there are some differences on how we best should do it, and I think they are honest differences, to tell you the truth,” he explained. “I think it is a little bit unfair on some of the criticism. For example, you know, Senator Barrasso, the M.D., has fought ObamaCare like nobody else, puts out information every week on it, has always voted to defund it. It's a little unfair really to say that if he's unwilling to filibuster a bill that he actually agrees with that he's opposed to ObamaCare. And so I think that really some of the tactics aren't necessarily fair, and I think that our caucus is unified, our caucus is not unified on exactly how to do it.”

Read a full transcript of the interview below:

GLENN: Let's go to Senator Rand Paul, a guy who I will never forget as the guy who began to give me some hope that there was a way out. When he stood and he filibustered, must have been six months ago now, and now we're seeing Ted Cruz and the rest of the good guys come up and stand. Not technically the same kind of filibuster as Rand did, and I don't know how this is going to play with the American people, but I hope well.

Rand Paul is joining us from Washington, D.C. Senator, how are you, sir?

RAND PAUL: Very good, Glenn. Thanks for having me.

GLENN: So is ‑‑ what do you think is coming out of this? What do you think's going to happen here

RAND PAUL: Everywhere I go people want us to stand on principle, they want us to oppose ObamaCare because they think it's a disaster for the country. You know, I think it's going to help precisely the people that it was intended to help, I think it's going to actually hurt those people. And, you know, I've been saying if it's such a great thing, why didn't President Obama take it? If it's such a great thing, why didn't justice Roberts get it? You know, so I have one amendment, if they let us vote on amendments that will say all federal workers get it. If we've got to be stuck with this darn thing, they should all get it too.

GLENN: Is there any way to get that in afterwards? I mean, that has to be done.

RAND PAUL: In all likelihood there will be no amendments ‑‑ well, there will be one amendment. This is the way it works up here: It's Harry Reid's way or the highway. It's President Obama's way or the highway. They get 100% of ObamaCare or they are either going to shut down the government or ‑‑ they are not going to allow amendments. There's going to be one amendment and that's going to strip the language that defunds ObamaCare. So it is really, it's funny and it amazes me that some of the mainstream media say, "Oh, Republicans are just being obstructionist trying to get their way." Republicans are trying to get ‑‑ to be even part of the process is what we're trying to do. Democrats are getting 100% of what they want, a bill written by them with no votes by Republicans.

GLENN: Is this the last ‑‑ is this the last stop?

RAND PAUL: No. I mean, whether we win or lose on this, and I don't think we have the votes ultimately to win on this, but whether we win or lose on this, we will continue to stand on principle against ObamaCare. Many state legislatures are going to have the same fight. The same fervor and the same excitement we've had in Washington this week will be in state capitals when they get the bill for the expansion of Medicaid. And all the states that are expanding Medicaid are going to have to either raise taxes or go further in debt, and this is going to be a problem. But it comes about over the next year or two.

The other thing that's going to happen is people who had good insurance, this could be wealthy executives or it could be union workers who had good insurance are going to be paying taxes on it. People are going to find out that their prices for their insurance is higher, part‑time workers are going to lose hours, and full‑time workers may well lose their job. There's going to be a lot of bad things that come out of this and so I think the fight goes on. But this is a milestone in that fight.

GLENN: So there was a tweet yesterday from NBC News, and I want to read it to you and get your comment. NBC News has learned while Senator Rand Paul does not expect to speak publicly about his opposition to Cruz's tactic, Paul sided with Mitch McConnell.

Is that true?

RAND PAUL: What I've said is what I'll continue to say all along, that I won't spend a penny on and I won't vote for a penny for ObamaCare, and I'll do anything I can to stop it.

I have also said that I don't want to shut down the government, and I think shutting down the government is just a deadline that if we go through, even though it will be the president's fault, it will be him wanting everything he wants if it happens, it's probably not good for our cause overall to go through a shutdown and so I have some mixed feelings as to how this all turns out. I don't want to fund ObamaCare, but I also think that for us to win and take over the Senate or the White House, it doesn't ‑‑ it isn't in our best interest to be perceived or accused of shutting down government.

GLENN: But you're going to be accused ‑‑ I mean, look what you're accused of.

RAND PAUL: I've been accused of my fair share of things.

GLENN: That's right. If you're going to be accused, we can't live in a world where we're afraid of what the accusations are going to be because it doesn't matter. That's, you know, that's Mitch McConnell and John McCain kind of thinking that gets ‑‑ John McCain's worse, but ‑‑

RAND PAUL: I guess my point is that if we're willing to do it, what we have to do is be willing to go through the deadline. And the only way to leverage or our poker hand holds any value or power is if people will ‑‑ do believe we'll go through the deadline. With the debt ceiling I've always been willing to go through the deadline. I'm willing to go a month, two months, three months, as long as it takes. And I think we could use that leverage to bring the Democrats to the negotiating table. With the actual disruption of spending, there is a way we could have done this but it would have required assistance from leadership and that would have been in January we should have started passing appropriations bill. See, if the defense appropriations bill were passed, we couldn't have anybody up here saying, "Oh, you're going to not pay the soldiers." Right now soldiers wouldn't get paid.

GLENN: See, this is the problem, Rand, and you know this. I mean, you know, you just know this: The leadership that we have as the GOP with Boehner and McConnell and everybody else, they are way ‑‑ they are a waste of a seat. They are not ‑‑ I don't understand how they think they're going to win. The reason why the Republicans have a 34% approval rating is not because of you guys but because America now says ‑‑ 68% of Americans say we're on the wrong track. And what Mitch McConnell is giving them is the same track, different speed. They don't want to be on this track anymore.

RAND PAUL: Well, I think the vast majority of people are with us on, you know, defunding ObamaCare, getting rid of stopping ObamaCare, and the fight is worth having. This is the time to have the fight and so I'm going to keep doing what I can to stoke the flame, stoke the fire and to say, you know, this is bad, that coercion is bad, that mandates are bad, that the hundreds of mandates that run throughout ObamaCare are not consistent with our American ideals, not consistent with the American concept of freedom of choice, of volunteerism. And I think we should have that debate and put it in stark terms because the bottom line is there will be one or two choices on these exchanges, and right now you have hundreds of choices. If I want to choose a high deductible plan and a health savings account, I can do it. That will not be offered to me under these exchanges.

GLENN: Anything you're comfortable about sharing about the whip process going on behind closed doors? Yesterday there was a Breitbart report out that Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn were looking for votes against Cruz? I mean, in effect is the GOP trying to make sure that the funding goes through?

RAND PAUL: No, I think the caucus is unified against ObamaCare. I mean, I truly do. I think there are some differences on how we best should do it, and I think they are honest differences, to tell you the truth. But I think the caucus ‑‑ and while I think it is a little bit unfair on some of the criticism. For example, you know, Senator Barrasso, the MD, has fought ObamaCare like nobody else, puts out information every week on it, has always voted to defund it. It's a little unfair really to say that if he's unwilling to filibuster a bill that he actually agrees with that he's opposed to ObamaCare and so I think that really some of the tactics aren't necessarily fair, and I think that our caucus is unified, our caucus is not unified on exactly how to do it.

GLENN: Chris Wallace said on Fox News Sunday that the Republicans were taking Cruz out and then they went to Karl Rove, of all people, to explain why. You know, I saw Cruz talk about this, and I thought like a statesman last night, saying, you know, the older guys, they don't know the young freshmen. They just don't know, they don't really care ‑‑ and I'm making it worse than what he did. But they don't know us and, you know, the freshmen have not turned on each other. It is the older guys turning on the new guys. Who's turning on ‑‑ what is this? What's going on? Because Rove said yesterday, "Well, it's just ‑‑ on Sunday. He said, "Well, that's just because Cruz didn't go to the older guys, didn't go in to the caucus and tell them what he was going to do and so we had to find out on our own." Is that kind of pettiness true?

RAND PAUL: I would say that there are always growing pains and, you know, we're in the minority. So we have to figure out how to grow. And in growing pains, there's always a struggle on the best way forward, the best way to grow the movement. Some of it is standing on principle. It's standing and not giving up and saying "We are opposed to ObamaCare and we'll do anything we can to stop it." But some of it's also on some things that I think that trying ‑‑ that I'm trying to do which is beyond our party base. ObamaCare unites our party base but doesn't make our party necessarily bigger.

I'm also talking about some liberty issues, some issues of fairness and justice within criminal justice system, within, you know, how we approach our foreign policy that I think will broaden our base and get us to a bigger party. So I think it's a combination of all those things.

But there's always going to be internal disagreement on the tactics of exactly how you do it. But other than that, I would say that really there's more unity than disunity in the sense of what our position is on ObamaCare. And it's probably unfair really to characterize anybody in our caucus as not being absolutely 100% committed to defunding ObamaCare.

GLENN: The story out today about John Kerry signing the ‑‑ he says he's going to sign the UN arms treaty that's being negotiated now. Fox is telling us nothing to worry about. I couldn't disagree with that more strongly.

RAND PAUL: Yeah, I'm not a big fan of signing a UN treaty that gives up on the Second Amendment or allows them to infringe on the Second Amendment. There should be no international treaties that ever infringe on our constitutional rights or our sovereignty.

GLENN: But they are saying that this one is just going to be for international, it won't infringe on that at all.

RAND PAUL: Yeah, that's ‑‑ you know, they can talk a good line and say it's not going to do this, it's not going to do that. I can tell you that that's one of these other things that we will stand on principle and I will be right there at the forefront saying I will get 34 senators, and I can stop that because Senate treaties take 67 votes. So 34 votes to defeat them. So far we've defeated every one of these treaties that have come forward from the United Nations because Americans don't want us to give up our sovereignty to an international body full of two‑bit tin‑horn dictators who often, and for the most part, hate America.

GLENN: How could we possibly sign a UN arms treaty that stops people from giving arms to the, you know, to the bad guys when the president has to waive himself our own laws to stop us from giving weapons to Al‑Qaeda?

RAND PAUL: Yeah, it's kind of interesting that, yeah, we're going to sign a treaty banning weapons transfers while exempting ourselves to send weapons to Syrian Islamic radical elements that may well hate America as much as they hate Assad.

GLENN: I don't know if you saw the picture we released yesterday on TheBlaze, but in a USA Aid tent or U.S. Aid tent, we have a known Al‑Qaeda terrorist standing next to a guy with a rocket launcher, in our tent in Syria.

RAND PAUL: The only thing that could be better is if you had an American senator over there having their picture taken with them. Yeah.

STU: Wow.

RAND PAUL: You know, the thing is this is the ridiculous nature of people saying, "Oh, we're giving the weapons only to the vetted moderate resistance." It's like, if you don't speak Arabic, you can't even pretend to think you're even talking to the moderate vetted rebels. But the thing is even if you do speak Arabic, how are you going to know who's lying to you and who's not lying to ya? They're all going to have made‑up names. Do you think they're carrying around, you know, a birth certificate that you can prove who they are?

GLENN: I've got news for ya: I don't even know who the good guys are in the United States of America and they speak English. I mean, I don't even know ‑‑ I don't know if you saw the school board meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, where the dad was escorted out for standing up and asking a question, and he was charged with second degree assault on a police officer. It's all on tape. There was no assault. The officer was completely in the wrong. They charged him. They decided to drop the charges. Even though they say that they were totally justified but it wouldn't help justice if they pressed it.

RAND PAUL: You know what, Glenn? You know what this reminds me of? When I was detained by the TSA, they put out a report saying I was resisting arrest or whatever. So then somebody must have been my friend at the airport and they put out the surveillance footage of me when I was in the detention cubicle. I'm sitting there for, like, hours on end just kind of bored to death looking at my phone. I never had words with anybody. But they put out a press release saying that I was irate and that I was yelling and screaming. I never did any of that. I sat quietly and bored to death on my phone trying to tell people I was in captivity. But I wasn't talking to anybody. So, you know, it ‑‑

But with regard to, you know, the Islamic rebels, we really have to say to ourselves, are we not completely insane to be giving surface‑to‑air missiles to guys who are using machetes to cut people's heads off?

GLENN: Yeah, we are completely insane unfortunately. Thank you so much, Senator. I appreciate it, and thanks for your tough stand and keep standing, and we wish you all the best of luck today. The vote coming today? Do you know?

RAND PAUL: Yes. Well, there will be at least one vote today around noon, but it probably is going to be the motion to proceed. Then there may be another filibuster. This may be the beginning. There may be another 30 hours. I don't know if anybody's got the same stamina as Ted Cruz. So we'll see if anybody else can stand for 30 hours. But we've got another 30 hours after this maybe.

GLENN: You've got time to get a nap in.

RAND PAUL: That's right. I've got ‑‑ my voice is already a little raspy and I wasn't up all night.

GLENN: Thanks so much, Senator. I appreciate it.

RAND PAUL: Thanks, Glenn.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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.

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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.