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Hostage crisis in Sydney just another example of Glenn’s predictions coming true

December 16, 2014
Wilson

Writer

Monday morning, a radical Iranian cleric burst into a café in Sydney, Australia,holding approximately a dozen people hostage at gunpoint for 16 hours. The standoff ended with two hostages dead and the cleric killed by commandos who raided the cafe. Sadly, the whole tragedy is just the latest example of Glenn's "crazy caliphate" prediction coming true. The world is becoming destabilized, radicalism is destabilizing the world, and we are seeing the fruits of revolution grow. Glenn welcomed TheBlaze's National Security Expert Buck Sexton to the program Monday night to discuss this story and the oft-ignored threat of radical Islam.

Glenn: It’s finally over. Early Monday morning, a radical Iranian cleric — who would’ve seen this? — burst into a café and held approximately a dozen people hostage at gunpoint for 16 hours. Two hostages are now dead. The cleric, darn it, was killed when commandos raided the café this morning. The Prime Minister took an interesting politically correct route and said that he was shocked. Watch.

VIDEO

Prime Minister Abbott: It is profoundly shocking that innocent people should be held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation.

Glenn: Alrighty, an armed person claiming political motivation…I would say that’s the result of being on the bottom of the earth when all of your blood is rushing to your head, but we are this stupid as well. The guy was a radical cleric. He was holding up a store directly across the street from a television news network. He forced hostages to hold a black jihad flag with Arabic writing, not the Islamic State flag, but on his list of demands was a demand, can you get me an ISIS flag?

He posted this hostage video on YouTube:

VIDEO

W: One is to send an ISIS flag as soon as possible, and one hostage will be released; to please broadcast on all media that this is an attack on Australia by the Islamic State.

Glenn: By the Islamic State, so I guess yes, technically the cleric was an armed person with political motivations, but it seems to be just a little bit of wishful ignorance given Australia’s jihad problem already which we’ll talk about here in a second.

Hundreds of Australians are fighting for the Islamic State, including this guy, whose idea of a father-son bonding involved tweeting photos of his son holding severed human heads. Australian Islamic State radicals called for the beheading of random Australians. ISIS named Australia one of their main targets and encouraged attacks, lone wolf attacks. “Every Muslim should get out of his house, find a crusader, and kill him. It is important that the killing becomes attributed to patrons of the Islamic State who have obeyed its leadership. ‘Rely upon Allah and stab the crusader’ should be the battle cry for all Islamic State patrons.”

This is what they’re saying to do, but Sydney police say this is an isolated incident, nothing to worry about. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Obviously Australia is taking the jihad problem seriously. They have fought back with tough crackdowns and raids on homegrown terrorists. Jihadists are getting more and more organized in the country, and the government knows it. Why? What is happening?

Do you remember when we talked about the Arab Spring when I was at FOX? We have to go back to what should be the most important thing I ever did at FOX. I didn’t do anything more important than this. I told you radicals, Islamists, Communists, and Socialists would work together against Israel. Has it been done? Yes. Work together against capitalism? Yes. Work together to overturn stability.

Then I added part two. Protests would become then contagious. They would cascade. Have we seen that? Yes. They swept to the Middle East? Yes. Begin to destabilize Europe? Yes. And the rest of the world? Yes. That’s what we’re seeing, the fruits of that revolution.

Radicals are rising up, and we can expect to see more of this type of action. Yes, this particular terrorist attack in Sydney was one guy. Yes, he was an amateur, letting hostages go, letting them use their cell phones, not having the right flag, which was bizarre. It’s easy to dismiss him as a lone wolf, but here’s the point, there’s more than one wolf, and when you have a bunch of lone wolves, they all belong to a pack.

ISIS cannot easily transport militants from one country to the next, so they’ve done the next best thing, they inspire radicalism abroad and let individuals carry out attacks in their name. It’s the perfect system.

Glenn: We have TheBlaze national security editor, Buck Sexton, with us now from our newsroom in New York. Buck, what am I missing here?

Buck: Glenn, you’re not missing anything. I mean, the tie-in to the Islamic State is pretty clear when you have an individual who saying he’s doing this in the name of that entity, and so I think that the debate that’s happening right now as to whether he received a specific exhortation to do this or he just decided to act on previous instructions isn’t really particularly meaningful.

Glenn: Does it matter?

Buck: It doesn’t matter at all. This is exactly what the Islamic State wants, and we can see that the Australians, while they have gotten aggressive, there were hundreds of police officers involved in raids back in September, it’s not enough. They’re not going to catch everyone. We saw a few casualties from this attack. There could’ve been a lot more casualties, Glenn, quite honestly, and I think that the Australians have recognized that this problem is going to continue on. We’re not even counting possible returnees from the main fronts in Iraq and Syria. These are people that are already in Australia.

Glenn: Okay, so we didn’t talk about his criminal record. The guy is not a nobody. What do you have to do to be deported in Australia? Explain his criminal record.

Buck: I want to know what you have to do to be put in prison for a long time in Australia, because he is charged with dozens of different sexual crimes, various assaults, and also on top of that is a suspect, allegedly stabbed or was involved in a stabbing death of his ex-wife and lit her on fire and left her body in the stairwell of an apartment building. So he was a very bad guy with all sorts of outstanding incredibly serious criminal charges before he decided to seize a number of hostages and execute some of them when the assault actually happened today. So I think that’s actually where the Australian government is vulnerable to some real criticism. How was this guy still walking around on the streets?

By the way, Glenn, you can still rifle through his Twitter account which makes it quite clear that he thinks people should join the Islamic State, he hates Australia, and he wants to wage jihad, so he was literally advertising this.

Glenn: Tell me the difference between that guy and an Islamic jihad guy, I mean, somebody who’s with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. It doesn’t matter. He is following their instructions. He’s doing what they ask. He’s doing their bidding. What’s the difference?

Buck: There is no difference. It’s just a command-and-control discussion that doesn’t really mean anything, Glenn, except for the possibility of follow-on attacks, so if he did receive, for example, a direct order from the Islamic State. And by the way, in those September raids in Australia, there was a direct connection. There was an Islamic State member who was Australian who was saying get involved in this strike. They wanted to behead a random civilian in Australia, and that was one of the plots that was disrupted, but the only reason you’d want to know this, Glenn, is in case there are others who may have received similar instructions.

So for investigative purposes, it could be necessary, but for ideological purposes, no, all we need to know is that this was in solidarity with the Islamic State, and there are more of these lone wolves or self-radicalized individuals out there.

Glenn: So is there a reason, Buck, at all that we excuse our politicians, not just in Australia, but here too, that we excuse our politicians? I read the statement, you know, from the Prime Minister, and he said well, you know, it’s just a lone wolf, and we don’t want to give them everything that they want. That is exactly what they wanted. In their order, they said rise up, make sure you give credit to ISIS, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is there a reason why we can all just say okay, they don’t want to give ISIS more power, or is that just bull crap?

Buck: No, Glenn, I think that the acting on the instructions here is very much the game plan from the Islamic State’s point of view, and I think the government, the Australian government, is always taking this position of well, you know, this happened this one time, and we need to have these stricter security policies, but let’s not jump to any conclusions. And when you have a guy who’s saying please get me an Islamic State flag so I can really put their signature on this thing, you’re not jumping to a conclusion, you’re just making one. And the Australian government seems to be falling into the same trap that we have here.

Remember, after Fort Hood, we had a general saying, we had a general, a four-star, saying that he hoped diversity wasn’t a casualty, and this was after we had a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. You have Australians already speaking out about how they’re so concerned about a backlash. The backlash never happens here. No one’s worried about an individual or rather about a society deciding to pick on one individual for this.

We’re worried about a society that’s under assault from extremist elements that are working in a systemic fashion over time to try to undermine the very freedoms the Australians enjoy, and the same thing with us here at home. That’s the real concern, not the possibility of there being some sort of an overreach if we just call it what it is. We all know what it is.

Glenn: So we’re going to be launching a show with Buck here soon, and I went up to New York last week, and I started talking to him about showing that basically I would want his show to pretty much center around that chalkboard — radical Islamists, Communists, Socialists, work together against Israel, together against capitalism, together to overturn stability, the protests become contagious, they cascade, sweep the Middle East, begin to destabilize Europe and the rest of the world, and show you those connections, because it’s not just happening here in the United States. It’s happening all over the world, and anybody who thinks that it’s a lone wolf, what’s the difference?

I was at a mall, Buck, this weekend, and I went Christmas shopping. And I’m at a Belk store. Al Sharpton did not call for this no justice, no peace. I’m sure Al Sharpton wasn’t there, but a group of local people got into the mall. They carried the signs, and they were doing no justice, no peace. It’s the same story, is it not? Is that a lone wolf, or is that connected?

Buck: Well, the broader ideology, Glenn, does have an impact, and revolutionary ideology, which we should be clear, global jihad is a revolutionary ideology. It’s based upon individuals and groups around the world acting to overturn existing societies to create a totalitarian Islamic theocracy around the world, so it’s very much a revolutionary ideology, and the whole purpose of it is to be spread, is to be spread through fear, through violence, and through intimidation, and we see various iterations of revolutionary ideology here at home as well.

I walked into a protest also trying to just buy Christmas presents for my family, and I couldn’t believe the things that are being said. They’re talking about racist, murdering cops walking around in the streets. No surprise here, Glenn, we’ve already had now a number of serious assaults against police officers in the city from these protesters. They’re planning to do another big one tomorrow night.

Now, we can either believe that this is all just them venting, letting off some steam, and they don’t actually, none of them, even the hardcore elements among them don’t believe this is going to mean anything, or you can think that they’re actually trying to push for some kind of a real inciting event and a transformation of society. I think the hardliners would say it’s the latter in a moment of honesty, and I’ve heard them say that, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some pretty outrageous stuff from them the weeks ahead.

Glenn: Buck, thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

Buck: Thanks, Glenn.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth-seeking is real work

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

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

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

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

Bad-faith questions

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

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

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

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

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

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

The real target

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

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.