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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 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.

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.

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

A creed for the rising generation

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.