Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcasts
The Glenn Beck ProgramThe Glenn Beck PodcastThe Beck Story
Fine Art
Real Estate
Shop
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Is Norquist an 'agent of influence'? Here's what the experts have to say

March 26, 2015
Staff

WRITER

On radio this morning, Glenn welcomed Patrick Poole, national security expert for PJ Media, and Joseph Scmitz, former Inspector General for the Department of Defense, onto the radio show to discuss the connections between Grover Norquist and the Muslim Brotherhood. Grover's on the board of the NRA and has his hand in a number of conservative groups. At the same time, he's got all kinds of questionable connections to radical Islamists and convicted terrorists. What do the experts have to say?

Watch a complimentary highlight below, scroll down for audio of the full hour and a rush transcript of this segment. Don't miss Grover Norquist's response tonight on TheBlaze TV.

The full interview begins 38 minutes into the audio below:

Below is a rush transcript.

GLENN: We're talking a little about Grover Norquist. He is going to be my guest tonight. I'm making this episode free. So you can watch it. Last night, I kind of did the Fox thing. And pulled out my chalkboards and dusted them off and tried to show you the connections and how disturbing these connections really are and how they're all connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. And if you are familiar -- if you buy the line, the Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular, they have Muslim in their name, they're largely secular, and they're a peace group, well, then you're too far gone to save anyway.

If you know who the Muslim Brotherhood is, you know how dangerous these connections are. Grover canceled yesterday. I got a note during the show that he was not going to be on the show. Then he wrote this morning and said, no, I didn't mean that. I meant I wanted to be on the show. So he'll be on tonight. And I will tell you, it will be one of those shows like we've had in the past. I think I know his answers and I think he'll try to make this into race-baiting or smearing other people. This is not about other people. It's not about his family. It's not about him personally. This is about his connections. And I want to get the straight answers on the connections. Period. I have very little tolerance for people that try to grandstand or change the subject. And I'm just not going to play any games. So he'll be on with us at 5 o'clock. It is free. You'll be able to watch it. You'll be able to blog with us during the episode. We will make that available and explain that to you later on in the program today.

But I brought in Joe Schmitz, he is the former Inspector General of the Department of Defense and the guy who literally wrote the textbook on inspector generals. The handbook for inspector generals. A very reasoned and rational guy whose voice needs to be heard more and more. Also, Patrick Poole. National security and terrorism correspondent for PJMedia.com. And a guy who has really helped us over the years. Works closely with For the Record. And tries to get to the bottom of all the connections of Islamic terror.

Patrick, I want to talk to you about where I left off. I'm concerned that Grover is on all these boards. The National Rifle Association is one of them. Because if you know what the Muslim Brotherhood project is, you know their goal was to get agents of influence into the boardrooms of America. Into our culture. Mainstream them and then slowly exert their influence.

This is why we can't say anything anymore. This is why we're so politically correct. Because these agents of influence have tremendous power at the highest levels.

We were talking a little about Grover when he was on the board of directors of CPAC. And he was -- well, you tell the story. Because you know it firsthand. Tell me what his influence on a board means.

PATRICK: One of the reasons he is there is because of the money he brings to the table. That's why he's on all these boards. And that's why largely he was on the board of the American Conservative Union. Both he and his pal, Suhail Khan, was the money that they were helping to keep ACU afloat and CPAC. And not just Grover, but particularly Suhail made a big thing about the fact that the people that were now excluded from speaking at CPAC because they had fallen out of favor and were raising these concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood. You know, we see how well that foreign policy worked out in the Middle East over the past couple of years. Embracing the so-called moderate Muslim Brotherhood. And for -- I've been to the CPAC for the past eight years. I think. And national security was -- was absent for a number of years. I mean, there weren't any panels about the collapse of our foreign policy. And Grover and Suhail were architects of that. Keeping the people out who were raising concerns about our engaging the moderate Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, or us partnering with Abdul Helkein Belhaj (phonetic), the Libyan al-Qaeda figure who we have pictures with, not just Democrats, but with John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The CIA renditioned him back to Libya, and this is the guy we backed to overthrow Muammar Gadhafi. People who were raising concerns about the time, and there was nothing said about it at CPAC.

GLENN: And you believe it's because of Grover's influence?

PATRICK: Well, certainly Suhail went out publicly.

GLENN: Explain the connection to Suhail and who Suhail is.

PATRICK: Well, Suhail is a very close associate of Grover. I mean, there are pictures of -- there was a picture I remember from the National Journal of Grover at one of his Wednesday morning meetings. And you can see Suhail sitting directly behind him. And Grover helped get Suhail his position as the lobbyist for Microsoft. That's currently his position. And, you know, got him the position on the American Conservative Union board. The group that runs CPAC.

GLENN: This is what is so disturbing. These guys have been white-washed so much that they can go work for Microsoft at the highest levels. They can go into these boardrooms. Who is on the board of Seagrams?

GLENN: Certainly, Seagrams was a long-time client of Grover's and sponsored a lot of his events. I think that's part of the question when you raise the topics of these boards and he brings money to the table to these organizations is, where is that money coming from?

GLENN: Correct. This has all been done in the name of tolerance. We're being taught to be tolerant. And that is a good thing. To a point. Isn't it, Joe?

JOE: You know, if you ask any group of people typically if you're in favor of tolerance. Most of the hands will go up. Instinctively we like tolerance. But there's a famous noble laureate by the name of Thomas Mann who escaped Germany in 1928 and became an American. And in one of his books he said, tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. And if you really think about it. When people who will say instinctively, I'm in favor of tolerance. Then you ask them, do you tolerate human slavery? Well, no, we don't tolerate that.

GLENN: Correct.

JOE: Do you tolerate child abuse? No, we don't tolerate that. So tolerance has its limits. And, you know, the idea of agents of influence in our society is not new. We had British agents of influence literally spying on our forefathers during the American Revolutionary War. During the second war, leading up, literally at the same time when Thomas Mann was escaping what became Nazi Germany, we had the Bruderbund (phonetic). Which was very active in trying to influence American public policy.

GLENN: Right.

JOE: You know, during the Cold War, we have documented time after time agents of influence from the Soviet Communist Party trying to influence American foreign policy.

GLENN: You have Alger Hiss. What's fascinating about Alger Hiss. It's so striking with agents of influence. And the way Grover Norquist -- Alger Hiss, when another -- another guy who knew said, no, no, let me tell you who he is. I know because I'm on that side. He is a bad, bad guy. Everybody laughed it off because Alger Hiss had so much power and influence. The State Department continued to laugh it off up until Alger Hiss' death. And even when he died, NBC reported, not the facts, because we did prove later in life -- he was convicted, went to prison and proved, went to prison. And even after death, that's the only time that the State Department came out and said, yes, and we knew at the time. But NBC, when they reported his death, Tom Brokaw came on and said, a guy who a lot of people believed was an agent for the Soviet Union. He went to prison for it. And they're still trying to cover those tracks. So those agents of influence have been with us forever. It's not a new deal.

JOE: We know from the Venona transcripts, released in the '90s, how deep the US intelligence agencies knew the penetration was. And we know from some of the terrorism trials like the Holy Land Foundation trial, the United States government knows how deep the penetration of these Islamist organizations are into our own government right now. I mean, we have the absolutely bizarre situation of the Department of Justice going into federal court saying these organizations and individuals are bad guys, leaving federal court, going to an outreach meeting. Putting their arms around the same organizations and individuals and saying, these are our outreach partners. That's how utterly insane it is.

PAT: That's what's disturbing about this whole thing is, because we know the Democrats are lost to us. I mean, they've been radicalized infiltrated. Who knows what all has happened in the Democrat Party. But here we have a guy, a big-time conservative operative who everybody thinks is just this small government, lower tax guy. Bouncing around in conservative circles and really influencing people all over the place who also then influenced other people and have influence at the highest levels of government. How do you get the American people to understand who he is? Because we've known a lot of these connections for a long time. And nothing ever sticks to them.

GLENN: They're always just dismissed.

PAT: How do you get the American people to stand up and recognize what's going on here?

JOE: Well, what I try to do when I talk around the country. Is I try to -- what resonates with the American people. In my experience is sort of American first things. You know, you talk about the Constitution. You talk about the first amendment. You talk about the fact that Americans will literally die for religious liberty. So that's -- we're not -- we're not out to get some religious sect. That's exactly the opposite of what we're out to.

PAT: Yeah.

JOE: And you just try to bring home the issues. The facts. I think the American people are frankly very good at recognizing facts when they see them.

GLENN: Yes.

JOE: The problem is -- and this is classic military strategy, if you were trying to engage in a civilization jihad as the North American Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum says that is what their plan. Is. You would want to infiltrate the Republicans at this time more than you would want to infiltrate the Democrats because that's how you're more affected.

GLENN: Yes. How is -- and I only have about two minutes. How is Karl Rove connected to this? I mean, $26 million from Crossroads going to the American Tax Reform. Karl Rove was there the whole time. He had to know -- these guys aren't stupid. So they know who is being brought into the White House.

PATRICK: We have pictures of Karl Rove at the Texas governor's mansion with some of these characters.

GLENN: Right. After they were giving the speech. Who is with Hamas, who is with Hezbollah. And it has been exposed. They all know. What role does Karl Rove play in this? How much does the G.O.P. know?

PATRICK: I think the establishment G.O.P. doesn't want to know. Because they -- they know -- they lift up that lid and then suddenly --

PAT: Does that include Karl Rove or is he a knowing participant in this?

PATRICK: Well, I don't know. But certainly we know he's participated in it. It's been reported a number of times that Rove took these meetings with these extremists --

GLENN: So it's a convenient lie to themselves. That if they don't know, they have every reason to know, it's all around them. It's not like we're informing them. They're just dismissing it because they get a lot of money from these guys.

PATRICK: And it's precisely that attitude that has us in the position we are with respect to our foreign policy where we are --

GLENN: Yeah, it's interest over principles. Their interest is the money and a win. Their principles would say, no, you can't do this with these guys.

JOE: Well, stated differently, it's very, very important second things over first things. CS Lewis coined this principle, says if you're always focusing on second things. Classic second things are money and survival. But if that's what you're always focusing on and you're ignoring those first things, the core values that you would literally die for, in the end, you don't achieve your second things. You don't get your money and you lose the first things in the process.

GLENN: That's where we are.

JOE: So Karl Rove may be a great money guy. That's very important in the overall equation. But we have to focus on things other than money if in the end we'll succeed.

GLENN: And, boy, that explains everything in the G.O.P. They're only concerned about second things. They're concerned about winning and money and power. And the American people are. The American people are concerned about first things because we know we're about to lose everything. And it's the first things that made us who we are. And if we lose the first things, we're done. We're done.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet return of meaning

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

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

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

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

What triggers the Bubba effect

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

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

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

A country cracking from the inside

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

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

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

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

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

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

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

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

How to respond without breaking ourselves

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

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

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.