A rare books collector exposed one of the biggest progressive cover-ups in history

How did a lost letter expose the deception of world-famous author Upton Sinclair? America's first real war on terror was against communist and socialist progressives that engaged in anarchist activity against the United States. In his novel 'Boston', Sinclair told the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two men who were tried and executed for murder. The two were heroes of the left, and Sinclair wanted to clear their names in his book. But he did so knowing that the opposite was true, and a forgotten letter revealed the truth. Paul Hegness found the letter, and revealed the story to Glenn on radio.

Order your copy of Dreamers and Deceivers HERE.

Rough transcript of this segment is below:

GLENN: There is one chapter in the book "Dreamers and Deceivers" that is -- is so essential that you read because it's all happening again. It is a story that you will find in the health care debacle that is going on now where the president has lied and we are now seeing all of these tapes where it showed that they plotted out the lie. You're also seeing it on the streets of Ferguson, where the president and others are meeting with the people who are -- are revolutionaries. Meeting with them, telling them, keep the revolution on track. This is outrageous what is happening. But it's all happened before. I'm going to introduce you to two names that you most likely have never heard before. Sacco and Vanzetti. These two guys were really some of America's first terrorists. Yes, I know, your kids are being taught now that the pilgrims were America's first terrorists but these guys were America's first terrorists. They were communist revolutionaries. You don't know their name but they have streets named after them in the former Soviet Union. They have pencil factories. All of the pencils that the kids used as they were taking their tests and doing all of their homework in the former Soviet Union had the name of America's two terrorists. Because they died in vain. They were not -- Stalin was not going to get them die in vain in the Soviet Union. He wanted to make sure everyone knew who these two guys were. I'm going to introduce you to somebody else. His name is Upton Sinclair. He's a guy you probably know. He is a literary giant but he is also a really deeply disturbed man. He wanted a second American revolution in the name of Karl Marx. He was George Bernard Shaw's good friend. When he -- when his wife got pregnant as we outline in the book, he wanted an abortion. But they were illegal. And so he convinced his wife to continually throw herself down on the ground and try to have a miscarriage. Deeply disturbed man. But he is a literary giant. We all love him. He wrote a couple of books that you might know. "The Jungle" is one of them. The other one that he wrote is called "Boston."

And that's the one that we want -- we really want to focus on here. "Boston" is the story of those two men that he tried to make sure that they -- their names were cleared. I want to bring in Paul Haggis. He's the guy who gave us all of the information on this chapter on Upton Sinclair in the new book "Dreamers and Deceivers." He is a collector of history, a rare book collector, and he ran into a box of rare papers that nobody knew really what they had when he purchased them. We'll get to the papers, but first, tell me the story of -- get me to the paper. Tell me the beginning -- it's in the Woodrow Wilson administration.

HAGGIS: Well, the beginning is pretty interesting because of course, we had Upton Sinclair, this world famous author, great socialist. He was a vice presidential candidate for the socialist party. Along with Jack London who was the presidential candidate the same year for the socialist party. He wrote many articles, many books, promoting socialism. He claimed thought to be an anarchist but nonetheless, he protected anarchists. And that was kind of the lead-up to my going to an auction, that my friend of mine, Bruce Lawrence, was the auctioneer at, asked me to come over to the auction which I did, and looking through the various things that interested in me, but there was a box of old letters that attracted my attention. And as I dug through those letters, maybe a thousand or 2,000 letters, and they seemed to be the estate of a fella by the name of John Beardsley who was an attorney in Los Angeles in the '20s and the '30s. And as I dug through those letters, I came upon this letter. And what attracted me is it said, after 10 days returned Upton Sinclair, P. O. box 3022, station B, Long Beach, California. Of course, I knew who Upton Sinclair was because I'm kind of an amateur student of American history. And when I opened the letter, I also knew he had written the book "The Jungle," which led to the formation of the FDA. Also knew that he had written the book "Boston", which was the story of Sacco and Vanzetti, wherein he attributed innocence to Sacco and Vanzetti.

GLENN: Now, what these guys did, these guys went and -- they were terrorists. And couldn't get them on terror rap but they had robbed a payroll of a shoe factory. And there were witnesses to it. And as they were driving away, it seemed like it was a pretty button-upped case. They had a lot of people that say I saw them, and I can't swear to you, but it looked just like them. It may not have been there. Maybe it was their twins. But it looked like just like those two guys. They ended up getting the death sentence and they were both electrocuted. One of them last words was, long live the revolution or some nut thing like that. The other guy kept saying, I'm innocent. I'm telling you I'm an innocent man. Upton Sinclair wanted to make sure, because it was good for the revolution, to make sure that progressives and socialists and communists did not look like violent terrorists. And so he needed to make sure, in his book, "Boston," that he cleared their name. So he -- do you think he believed it at the beginning, that they were innocent?

HAGGIS: You know, the thing about socialists and communists, it doesn't matter whether or not they believe the facts. The issue is they've got to protect the revolution.

GLENN: Right. So --

HAGGIS: And of course, Upton Sinclair was a major proponent of protecting the revolution.

GLENN: Correct. And he had gone and het met with Teddy Roosevelt. Even Teddy Roosevelt hated this guy. Teddy Roosevelt said this guy is so dishonest. And so as he -- he starts to write this book, he wants to clear the two guys and make sure that everybody believes that these -- these socialist revolutionaries certainly weren't violent. It wasn't them. It was the bad evil capitalist system that wrongly put -- put them to death.

HAGGIS: And he claims in the letter that he -- he approaches them as if they were innocent. Which is kind of interesting, isn't it, because how do you know whether or not someone is innocent or guilty until you hear the facts?

GLENN: Right.

HAGGIS: But he had heard the facts as promulgated by his fellow socialists and he intended to prove that these people were in fact innocent.

GLENN: Okay. Now, he writes the book "Boston", clearing these guys' name. It becomes a huge best-seller. It becomes a very big propaganda tool against the capitalist state. And in it he says they are absolutely innocent. He leaves something out in the book. He's talking to one of the prosecutors. What was his name? Moore.

HAGGIS: Fred Moore.

GLENN: Fred Moore.

HAGGIS: No, actually I think Fred Moore was part of the defense team. Not sure --

GLENN: He might have been the defensive.

HAGGIS: I think he was part of the defense team.

GLENN: He is interviewing him and Sinclair says, he's writing this book. He's like, yes, he was defendants, because they were both progressives. And he said, he said, look, he's bluffing. He says, you know and I know. They're guilty as sin. That's when the lawyer says, yeah, you're right. And let me tell you a few things I know about them. And he just unloads. Well, Sinclair now is -- now is -- he's got -- what is he going to do? Everybody knows he's in the middle of writing this book. He's already released some chapters in this book to the press. He's been this big proponent for him. So what is he going to do? Is he going to say, oh, wow, I was wrong? Is he going to hurt the progressive movement? Is he going to -- is she going to just let the book just -- is he going to let the book just fade away and say I don't know anything, or is he going to proceed is lie about it.

HAGGIS: And he decides to proceed and lie.

GLENN: And this letter was written and held for a later date, right?

HAGGIS: Well you know, it what astonished me about the letter as I flipped through it, I went to the conclusion, and as you point out so well in the book, which by the way, I really enjoyed the book.

GLENN: Thank you.

HAGGIS: And all of the various chapters, primarily because I knew Richard Nixon and also Walt Disney.

GLENN: Wow.

HAGGIS: But the book is well written. What I like about it is a series of different stories that are very easy to read and you don't get lost in the book.

GLENN: Right.

HAGGIS: It's really neat.

GLENN: Thank you.

HAGGIS: But as I pulled out this letter, he had written in this letter, this letter is for yourself alone. Stick it away in your safe and sometime in the far distant future, the world may know the real truth about the matter. Well, the implication there of course is they didn't get the real truth from me earlier in the book "Boston" which as you pointed out was a best-seller.

GLENN: Right.

HAGGIS: He said I'm here trying to play my own part in the story and the basis of my seemingly contradictory moods and decisions. And of course, he made the -- he discloses in the letter that he made the affirmative decision not to tell the truth. He had been told by Fred Moore that Moore was one of the people who invented the false story of the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti as part of the defense team and notwithstanding that as a good socialist and a good communist, they let the book go to press and it became a best-seller. It was distributed worldwide. It was very popular book in the Soviet Union. And as you point out, in the book, "Dreamers and Deceivers," one of the people who came to their aid was none other than Josef Stalin. Which ought to tell us something right off the top.

GLENN: That's incredible.

HAGGIS: The murder of 100 million people.

GLENN: Incredible. Did you know the whole story about --

HAGGIS: I knew the Sacco and Vanzetti story. I was particularly interested in American history. And it was fun. I found this letter and of course I'm looking around to make sure that no one see what is I'm looking at because I then quickly slipped the letter back into the box.

GLENN: Right.

HAGGIS: And when the box came up for sale, I raised my paddle and I bought the box for a hundred dollars.

GLENN: A hundred dollars.

HAGGIS: Yeah.

GLENN: So this had been sitting there since 1920 in a vault.

HAGGIS: The letter is dated August 29th, 1929. I found the book in -- or the letter in I think 1997 at this auction. And the letter sat in my collection for a number of years until I was subsequently interviewed by someone in the "L.A. Times" on another subject and we were talking about historical documents and I mentioned this. And that author Jean Pasco of the "L.A. Times," says, gee, I want to do a story on that. So she went to the university of Indiana where the Upton Sinclair collection is kept, authenticated the letter and wrote a story that was front page of the California section of the "L.A. Times." On Christmas Day, maybe five years ago. And it sat there until you discovered this presumably -- that story.

GLENN: Yeah.

HAGGIS: And you know, and I think what's important about your book, not only in the context of the Upton Sinclair story, but you've done a marvelous job of correcting the truth with respect to circumstances in American history that are clearly misrepresented.

GLENN: It's not only -- I mean, you know, that's one of the big things that I want to do, is correct the truth. But not just to, for instance -- I think one of the guys who's been so -- so wronged in American history is Tesla. And that I would like to correct the truth because it's just right. But this story in particular is repeating itself right now. We're watching this play out again in the streets of Ferguson. We're watching it play out in the White House. We're watching it play out in the newsroom, we're watching it play out with the writers of today. We're watching it play out with the -- with the propaganda that's going into our schools. And they know it's lies. They know -- they know these things are lie. But the glorious revolution is more important.

HAGGIS: Well, and if you read the history of socialism in this country, and particularly from the '20s and the '30s, you'll see the goal of the socialists at that time are really the goals that are part of the Democratic Party agenda the Obama Administration agenda. It's curious that as you say, it doesn't seem to matter to people what the truth is and particularly to the socialists. What matters is furthering the revolution.

GLENN: Paul, thank you very much for everything.

HAGGIS: Appreciate it.

GLENN: Really appreciate it. What are you going to do with the letter? What's it worth now?

HAGGIS: Oh, I have no idea. I'm a collector of this, that, and the other and I have a couple of -- of firearms that came off the battlefield at the Little Big Horn and I have an original transcript from the trial of the Roman Catholic priest who opposed the king of England.

GLENN: Holy cow.

HAGGIS: When the -- when the --

GLENN: What's the most shocking thing you ever had your hands on?

Anything you ever held? Somebody just let me hold what's called the Marquette, the actual plaster cast. Of the Lincoln Memorial. He actually handed it to me it's about 12 inches tall. And he handed it to me. And I said, no, no. And he said go ahead. I'd recommend you sit down first. And I sat down and I held in it my lap. And my hand shook. It was remarkable. Have you ever --

HAGGIS: I think about the things that I lost and one of them was something that my wife just wouldn't permit me to bring home. It was a bronze canon that carried the inscription of a presentation from the Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington.

GLENN: Holy cow.

HAGGIS: That was at an auction also.

PAT: Did you file for divorce after that?

HAGGIS: Yeah, I'll tell you.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: Why wouldn't she let you bring it home?

HAGGIS: It was about 10 feet long and it weighed probably around four tons.

PAT: Still.

HAGGIS: I just didn't think she would appreciate that in the living room.

PAT: Here's what you say --

[laughter]

HAGGIS: I would have put it there.

GLENN: I would have put it there, too. Thanks so much, Paul.

HAGGIS: Thank you. Pleasure being here.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

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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.

Shocking: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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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.

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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”

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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.

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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

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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.