Lies cause great pain

We say the truth lives here, but what does that even mean?  Where does the truth really live?  That’s all that matters is truth.  When all is said and done, everything, everything that is outside of truth will be swept away, and everything that is truth will stand.  That’s it.

So when you see all the news and all the lies, I know it’s hard, but we really shouldn’t get even angry, because the lies are great teachers, and it won’t last.  Today, this morning, I got up, and I read the story on TheBlaze about the jobs numbers.  Just before the 2012 election, they now say oh, it looks like those were fabricated.  Really?

Unemployment dipped below 8%.  All indicators for the economy pointed to bad news, and I remember we talked about it – that’s not true.  That’s not possible.  How did that happen?  There are some other things you know to know about when it comes to truth.  Last night in a phone conference, the president said 100 million Americans had signed up at Healthcare.gov in the first month.  Listen.

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President Obama:  In the first month alone, we’ve seen more than 100 million Americans already successfully enroll in the new insurance plans.

Okay, not true, and it wouldn’t have been like 100,000 people.  The actual number is 26,000.  Where did that number come from?  The press isn’t too upset.  The just say he flubbed.  Did he?  So far, there’s no effort by the White House to correct the so-called mistake, so he can just say it, and everybody just says oh well, he just flubbed.

Last month there was another flub.  The president read a letter from a 48-year-old single mom, and he held her up as an ObamaCare success story but apparently not so much.  She’s saying that she received a letter of her own.  It was from the state exchange, notifying her that her tax credit was reduced.  A few days later, another letter came, said her tax credit was completely taken away, so now she can’t afford health care and health insurance at all.

Predictably over the coming weeks, the spin masters are going to try to find ways to explain things away or get you to lose, you know, attention, whatever.  I want you to remember one thing.  It’s really straightforward, and it’s not just to you and me but a lot of people.  They’re beginning to realize they’re not being told the truth.  But I’d like to change that.

It’s not that you haven’t been told the truth.  You are being lied to.  And I want you to ask your friends and neighbors if we use the same ethics in parenting as we do in politics, would everybody be okay?  I mean, you catch your kid lying.  Would it be okay for somebody to say, “Oh, did you just make a little flub?  Oh, you don’t need to correct that.  Did you just misspeak?”

I have never, ever asked my kids if they have misspoken.  “Did you misspeak?  Was that a misspeak?  Was that a flub?”  I always say, “Did you lie to me?  Did you lie to your mother?”  Why?  Because we know that lying is wrong.  Why is it wrong?  We teach our kids you have to own up to whatever it is you did.  Don’t ever lie.  Why?  Because it makes a difference.  Why?  Because lying makes everything 100 times worse, and you have no trust in the family.  You have no trust of everybody if you start to lie.

That’s why we put such an emphasis on truth, because we know lying leads to another lie and another lie, and it all causes pain, pain to the person on the receiving end and ultimately sooner or later even greater pain to the one dishing out the lies and everyone along the line.  But what defeats lie?  Truth, the truth sets you free.  It’s the most powerful weapon you have.  Empower the truth.

Play your cards face up on the table, and you’ll be able to stand with courage.  Keep things hidden, and you will cower in constant fear of being exposed.  How many of us don’t actually believe, you know, we can do anything great because we believe the lie that maybe this is as good as it gets, maybe that’s the best I can do?  It’s a lie.  It’s a lie.  Lies hold us hostage.  Lies keep us enslaved.  Lies tear us apart.

We have been lied to about almost everything by both sides.  America, you don’t even know who you are.  I didn’t.  I didn’t.  I wrote this book, Miracles and Massacres, and when I say I, it’s the collective I.  I picked all the stories.  I found the stories with my team, and then we wrote it together, because it’s 12 stories.

We spent a lot of time researching these 12 stories to make sure that it’s all right, and you will see that it has the, you know, it has all that you need here, all of the footnotes and everything else so you can see where we got it because miracles and massacres, that’s what this country is, miracles and massacres.

You have to know the worst of our country and the best.  What can you possibly learn from the worst of America?  How is it possibly relevant to today?  Well, if I said what day did Pearl Harbor happen, you’d say December 7, 1941, a date which would live in infamy.  Great, that’s a speech, but tell me about the ramifications of Pearl Harbor and how does the war with Japan relate to any news happening today?  I’ll show you.

I want to tell you about a 25-year-old daughter of a Japanese American immigrant.  She had set sail for her homeland of Japan.  She was born here, but she was going to go see a sick relative.  Well, then December 7, 1941 happened, and now she was trapped there, because the war happened, and we’re not going to bring in people from Japan, especially while we’re putting people up in internment camps.  We’re not going to bring this, you know, 20-something back into the United States.

She was steadfast in her patriotism.  She loved the country.  She declared at one point, “A tiger doesn’t change its stripes.”  Now, who did she declare that to?  The Japanese government, because the Japanese government told her she had to renounce her American citizenship, and she said a tiger does not change its stripes.

Well, she took a typing job.  She was actually friendly with the American POWs, and she had access to them.  And it came out later that she had smuggled food and medicine to the POWs.  She eventually found work as a typist to make ends meet while she was on the outs, and she ended up at a place called Radio Tokyo.

She was first recruited by Australian POW Major Charles Cousins, and he said you should be a host.  It wasn’t a huge role.  There were 20 minutes here and there.  The Japanese had wanted her to broadcast American propaganda and use the POWs to do it to demoralize American troops, but she said no, she wouldn’t do it.

She actually devised a plan of sending messages to our troops to help our troops.  The Japanese didn’t catch her.  Her stage name was Ann, and it was just short for announcer, but everybody knows her by the nickname Tokyo Rose, Tokyo Rose.  That’s what she use on the air, and after the war ended, she was anxious to come back home.  She was really excited to not only come back home but to tell the story.

A reporter reached out to her, promising her $2,000 for an interview to tell her story.  Well, she wanted to go home.  Two thousand dollars, she didn’t have the money to go home, and that was it.  It was her ticket home.  So she agreed to the interview because after all, she’s an American citizen.  She told her story.  She said the POWs and me, we didn’t go along with the Japanese propaganda plan.  She was proud of it.  She left the interview thinking this is going to be great, but when the story publication was released, she realized she had been lied to.

It was titled “Traitor’s Pay:  Tokyo Rose got 100 Yen a Month…$6.60.”  As soon as that happened, there was a knock on her door from three officers and a master sergeant from the Army Counterintelligence Corps.  She was under arrest.  She was deemed a traitor to her country.  A traitor?  There was evidence.  The POWs knew, right?

It didn’t stop anybody.  The prosecution plowed forward.  It was the most expensive trial in the United States history up until that time, and why was it so expensive?  Because they had to bribe people and get them to shut up.  She was sentenced to ten years in prison.  She served six years of a ten-year sentence before the witnesses, the POWs, began to admit they were lying during the trial, and this was wrong.

But the damage was already done.  You know Tokyo Rose.  Tokyo Rose was a traitor, right?  You know that.  We all know that.  While she was in prison and torn away from her family, her mother died in a Japanese internment camp.  She had her country stolen from her, both her homeland and her home of America, both of them.  She wasn’t wanted in any place, and it all started with a lie and furthered by lies on top of lies.

How did she possibly go to prison?  Why?  Why did they do that to her?  Well, because the press thought it was a good story.  It was a great story.  Everybody knows Tokyo Rose.  We’re going to get that story, and they already had it written before they ever met her.  And the administration needed good headlines.  There was an election, so putting her behind bars, getting the real bad Tokyo Rose, that worked.

The two groups separately or together, I’m not really sure, they just decided it’s okay to destroy somebody’s life because they knew the truth anyway, and the truth, you know, doesn’t really matter.  The ends justify the means.  So why did I put that story in this book, and how is that relevant to today?  Well, let me show you.  If you know history, you know that it repeats itself.

Do you remember the unemployment story right before the election, just talked about it with Jack Welch?  This is what happened.  Jack Welch, when he saw those numbers, he tweeted this.  He said, “Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers.”  He explained his position in an interview.  Listen.

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Jack Welch:  Chris, these numbers are all a series of assumptions, tons of assumptions, and it just seems somewhat coincidental that the month before the election, the numbers go 1/10 of a point below where they were when the president started, although I don’t see anything in the economy that says these surges are true.

As it turns out, they weren’t.  People dog piled.  People in the press, they called him a crazy old man, an unemployment rate truther, an insane crabby lesbian, and then they labeled him finally Conspiracy Jack.  So you know, Jack Welch is one of the most respected men, one of the most respected businessman in American history.  But not anymore.

Just like Tokyo Rose, where does Tokyo Rose go?  Where did Jack Welch go to get his reputation back?  Where does he go?  You see, the media, those people in power, the administration and the media, feel it’s okay.  You can destroy a man’s reputation because it serves a purpose just like Tokyo Rose.

Maybe years from now Jack Welch will be long dead, and nobody will really remember who he was.  And maybe a president of the day will recognize him and say hey, you know, he was right about that, but don’t hold your breath.  It wasn’t until 1976 that Gerald Ford recognized Tokyo Rose and pardoned her, but everybody still thinks of Tokyo Rose as a traitor.

This, this is her microphone that was used to help the Americans and to warn them.  This was taken by somebody who tried to burn Radio Tokyo down.  See, there were five Tokyo Roses, but the one that went to prison was on our side.  History tells a truth.

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.  President couldn’t show up, and when he did, Ken Burns is now saying that he specifically asked him to drop the “under God” out from the address.  Maybe he did.  Maybe he didn’t.  I don’t know.  I would’ve never accused him of lying, but I don’t know what the truth is anymore.

Lincoln spoke these words.  This is the Gettysburg Address, spoke these words on these two pieces of paper.  This is a very old copy, by the way, obviously not the real Gettysburg Address.  But he spoke these words.  That’s it.  At a time when America was at its breaking point, America literally hung in the balance, they didn’t know what was true.

He united the country by reaffirming America’s virtues and her commitment to the idea that all men are created equal, that we now here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that governments of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.  Lincoln spoke the truth.

Today, we’re lied to.  He died because of that truth.  This is a piece of his bed sheet, and you can see the faded bloodstains here as they took the bed sheet and actually pushed it into his skull trying to stop the bleeding.  People die for the truth, so why don’t we value the truth anymore?  Why don’t people just give you the truth?  Why don’t you say the truth no matter how ugly or scary it is?

Because people are afraid or they don’t have the spine to deal with the problem.  They don’t have the spine to tell their kids you can’t sing.  They don’t know what to do, and so they kick the can down the road.  And some people do it because they can get what they want.  I’ll get free healthcare, doesn’t matter.  We’ll have a nice jobs report.  It doesn’t matter and crush Jack Welch.

Progressives lie because they are taught the ends justify the means.  Hey, ObamaCare is going to be great.  We’ve been trying to get it the right way.  We’ve been trying to convince people.  We can’t convince people.  It’s okay to lie.  You’re going to have to pass it to see what’s in it.  And people are stupid enough to buy it.

Prosecuting Tokyo Rose, it will make America feel good.  It doesn’t matter.  Okay, it’s one person, but it will make the collective feel good.  If we just lie on this one jobs report, we’ll get reelected, and we’ll be able to help people.  The ends justify the means.  This is the book that teaches this.  This is the book that the president taught when he was in college.  They say he was a constitutional scholar, my hat.  He taught this.

This is Saul Alinsky.  This is a copy that was signed by Saul Alinsky.  This is a copy I want to show you right here, the dedication page.  By the way, there’s a reason people don’t use fountain pens anymore, as you can see right here, although it has been freaking people out as I’ve been saying that that’s the sheet from Lincoln all day.

But here he says, “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical, from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.”

I’m sorry, Lucifer is the father of all lies, so if you know that, and you’re still doing this, I know who your father is.  The truth shall set you free, and you know, that’s not actually what was said.  I mean, that’s part of it, but that’s not the entire phrase, the truth shall set you free.  That’s only part of it.

The first part of that line is you will know the truth.  You will know the truth, and everybody does.  Everybody does.  You just have to stop and think about it.  You will know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.  When that was first uttered, the guys standing around the guy who said that said we’re are not slaves.  We came from Abraham, and we were freed by Moses.  What are you even talking about?

Anybody who lies, cheats, steals, tell this to your children.  I know you already do.  Anyone who hurts someone else is a slave.  We already fought to set men free, died to set men free.  One died to make men holy.  Only the truth works.  Only goodness prevails.  In the end, it does.  Jesus said I just do what I’ve seen my father do, and that’s how you will know me.  And I know you because I know who your father is.  I know you’re only doing what you’ve seen your father do.

It is the choice between good and evil, and it all starts with the simple truth.  It all starts with just doing the right thing.  So the job numbers came out, and they sucked, oh well, that’s the way it is.  There was the lie, the job numbers is down, and then they had to pile another one on, and they destroyed a man.

Don’t be a part of that at all, ever, ever, ever, ever.  Let the chips fall where they may.  The right path is here.  Choose the right path.  The time to choose it is now.  And only the truth leads to freedom.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

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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

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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.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

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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

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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.