Beheadings, slavery, and the hellish reality of radical Islam

Erick Stakelbeck joined Glenn on radio and assailed the administration’s view that ISIS can be dealt with like a petty criminal. There is an evil ideology behind this barbarism, ignoring it will have devastating consequences. With another American caught trying to join ISIS this week, it’s time to deal with reality.

Check out Erick's new book: ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam

Below is a rush transcript of this segment:

Erick Stakelbeck is here. He's the author of a new book called Exposed. ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam. This is something that I really wanted to -- I want to talk to you about us getting involved as people. And this is something that I'm working towards on something this summer that I hope to be announcing soon. I want to go to the Middle East and I want to bring this story home to you. I want to meet with the people who have lost their families. I want to show you what is happening. A lot of people say on Facebook, I'll be conversing with people on Facebook, they'll say, Glenn, what is a Coptic Christian? Coptic originated from the Greek word for Egyptian. So all Egyptians were Coptic until -- at the time, Egypt was a Christian nation. It was like 65, 70 percent Christian. Then after a couple of Muslim conquests, Coptic became a derogatory term. Now you're a Coptic Christian, which really basically only means an Egyptian Christian. But this is the oldest church on earth. And there are slaughtering people. And, luckily, the new president of Egypt, which we don't hear anything about, is a really good guy when it comes to Christians.

For the first time, an Egyptian president went and celebrated Christmas and Easter mass at Coptic Christian churches. Can you imagine that? When the Muslim Brotherhood was in, they were burning the churches, and they were slaughtering people. He is standing with the Christians. But he's one of the only people in the Middle East. And, of course, the United States is not standing. And they are now taking children as young as five and sending them off into the sex slavery racket. It is horrific what is happening. And last couple of days, I've been posting some stuff on Facebook. And I've said, you know, when are the Christians going to stand up? And I've made a suggestion, and I was shocked at the heat that I got back from many of the readers saying this was a stupid idea. And we just got to grab our guns and go over there with guns ablazing. I would suggest that we don't -- we are so uneducated on this that we don't know what we're doing yet. And certainly no one in our -- in Washington, DC, has a clue as to what's going on and can't verbalize it. They can't even say that Islam is the problem over there. And it is. There might be moderate Muslims everywhere else in the world, but in the Middle East, they are a rare find.

And the last thing we need to do is just go over and start another war. ISIS, what we need to do first is comfort those who mourn. If you have a Coptic Christian church in your area, find it. Comfort them. Help them. Many of them are terrified of even going to church because they know they're a target even over here. Many of them have fled and come here now or they have relatives who have been slain and slaughtered and beheaded over there. They need our support. They need to know that they're not alone. The next thing I suggested is go to your pastor, priest or rabbi and talk to them about it. And ask them, why are we not as a church standing? Why are we not personally involved in this? At least in real education and real prayer power. There are many things that we can do.

And, yesterday -- we're going to have an interview with the guy at the bottom of this hour. Chris Tony. He is a US Navy veteran who had enough. And he's not the first guy to do it. And said, you know what, who wants to go with me to the Middle East? I'll go over and volunteer and train these people because the Christians have been abandoned. There are many things that you can do. But education is the first. And we wanted to get Erick Stakelbeck in because he's done a lot of research the last couple of years on ISIS and he knows who they are. And this is information that you're just not going to find on mainstream media because they're unwilling to say the things that sound crazy. But these guys are crazy. And they are psychotic. And they are religious zealots. Any doubt in your mind, Erick, that this is a holy war for them?

ERICK: No, Glenn. First of all, thanks for having me. And absolutely. They have declared war, the jihadists against us. Against Christians, Jews. And, by the way, against Muslims who do not agree with them. We are in a war right now. Number one, our government, our mainstream media cannot acknowledge that. Will not acknowledge it. To the Obama administration, this is a big part of the problem, Glenn, they consider this just a criminal action. A minor nuisance that can be handled in federal courts. To the contrary, it is a global jihadist movement. I'll give you an example, Glenn. We had people from 90 countries around the world who have flocked to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. At least 180 US citizens. 3500 Europeans. At least have all been drawn to this new caliphate. And one day, they may return home. So this is a global movement. And it is a war without a doubt.

GLENN: So here's the thing, Erick, we are now seeing people who are tired of waiting for our country. We used to be leaders. And they are tired of it. And these are military veterans who are going over and saying, you know what, I can help fight. And they are volunteering and they are going over and helping these people fight, not as US military. But just as a private citizen going over and saying, I'm going to help train these Christians to protect themselves.

ERICK: Yeah. I think it's great, Glenn. Look, number one, you'll see more of it, I think. Number two, we've left the fact that we're supposed to be the leader of the free world. We've left a complete vacuum in the Middle East. Simple as that. That vacuum has been filled by Iran and ISIS.

GLENN: I don't think it's just a vacuum. I think we're actually on the wrong side, Erick.

ERICK: Yeah.

GLENN: Do you? Would you agree with that?

ERICK: We're on the wrong side, without a doubt.

GLENN: So tell me, as you were doing the research for this book, tell me the thing that shocked or horrified you the most that you just -- that you sat back in your chair and thought, good God, we're dealing literally with the powers of hell.

ERICK: Yeah. This is a demonic movement. And, Glenn, I got firsthand accounts from on the ground in Syria in Iraq from Christian leaders there. Who told me, look, there are cases of Christian children being beheaded. Not only that, when ISIS goes into a town, a village, a city, it basically enslaves the vanquished population. And ISIS now has brothels in Syria, in particular, Glenn, where Christian women, Yazidi women, are used as sex slaves. An ISIS fighter will come off the battlefield, and then he will have a brothel full of Christian sex slaves awaiting them. And it's a constant thing.

The videos ISIS releases. You just see men being beheaded, which is bad enough. But people on the ground have told me, look, this is happening to women, children, of all ages. When it comes to slaughtering and butchering, ISIS doesn't discriminate, Glenn. They're making it very clear, like Hitler did during World War II with the Jewish people, ISIS is very up front with what they want to do. They want to liquidate every last Christian from the Middle East from the cradle of the faith, the birthplace of the faith. They're doing it right now in realtime as we speak.

GLENN: They're actually sorting the girls out. They -- they have a cut-off at five. You can go to the brothel if you're five years old. But they categorize them by age. If you're too old, they send you to another Muslim country that is getting I guess the remnants. The best go to the fighters, and if you are -- if you are pretty and you are young, you are put into one of these brothels. And this is all done according to the Koran.

ERICK: That's right. It's done under Islamic Sharia law. You ask about shocking aspects of the book that I found. Here's one for you. One of these ISIS brothels, at least one of them, in Syria, in Raqaa, which is ISIS's capital, is being run by British women. British women, recruits to ISIS are actually running this brothel. We have western women playing prominent roles now for ISIS.

GLENN: Do we have any idea who they are, where they came from, or why?

ERICK: Well, at least one is a medical student from London. So much for poverty causes terrorism. President Obama says, look, lack of economic opportunity is driving this. We've had medical students. We've had business majors. We've had people from affluent communities in Britain and the United States. When it comes to the women, and, by the way, Glenn, just last week, we had three women, US citizens in New York City and Philadelphia all arrested for supporting ISIS. With the women, there's a few things. When you are building this caliphate, this ideal society, you need women. You need to reproduce. You need to keep your fighters happy. That's one aspect of it. But why are the women drawn to it? Online, ISIS does so much on Facebook, on social media, and a lot of times they lure naive, troubled young women. In my research, Glenn, I found, who are desperate and who are drawn to the darkness of ISIS in many cases, then they're the jihadi brides. On the other hand, though, you have women that actually want to go there, pick up arms and kill people. So ISIS is drawing people -- all kinds. Women from all races, ethnicities, genders, they're drawing all kinds of sick, twisted, evil people to this caliphate.

GLENN: We're talking to Erick Stakelbeck. His book is ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam.

Erick, I'm working on a book right now that is -- its working title is Islam is the Problem: The Theology Behind the Army of Armageddon. And I know you well enough to know that you know what they mean about the armies of Rome, and that this is a holy war for them. How -- how deep is the -- the idea that they're going to bring about Armageddon? And how committed are they to that?

ERICK: Glenn, this is a central pillar of ISIS's ideology. They believe that they literally are the army of the apocalypse, as you said. And they believe that they will be the tip of the spear for the end times armies of Islam and the armies of the Mahdi. Which you discussed many times during the show. They believe that there will actually be an apocalyptic showdown in Syria in a city called Dabiq in Syria. ISIS believes that they and the armies of Islam will fight the West in a climactic battle. So in one sense, they're not -- they actually welcome western involvement in the Middle East because this fits into their end times scenario. The whole scenario they will have an end times battle with the West in Syria. If you look at their publications, Glenn, their official magazines, their websites, their propaganda videos, they talk about the end times and the apocalypse frequently. Much like the Iranian regime, by the way, different in some ways. But both the Iranian regime and ISIS, central pillars of their ideology is that we're in the end times. And in the West, my gosh, our leadership cannot wrap its head around that, won't even acknowledge the ideological driving force behind all the terrorism. Terrorism is only a tactic. It is driven by an apocalyptic ideology.

GLENN: Okay. I have to take a break. I want to talk to you about the chapter in your book called the Islamic State of Minnesota. They are here in the United States. And in particular, there is a huge Somali population in Minnesota, which is being -- which is a target for recruitment. And the southern border. Things that nobody wants to talk about, it is here. And it's very dangerous. Back with Erick Stakelbeck in just a minute.

[break]

GLENN: We're with Erick Stakelbeck. He's the author of ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam. I want to talk to you a little bit about the Islamic State of Minnesota, which is a chapter in your book. Tell people what's going on with the Somali population going on there.

ERICK: You know, this will shock people. The Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, very nice place to live, very high standard of living up there in the great tundra of the upper Midwest. Well, some 100,000 Somali Muslims, more than any other place in North America, live in the Twin Cities. And it has become a magnet, Glenn, for terrorist recruitment. Dozens of young Somali Muslims, American citizens have left their comfortable homes in the Twin Cities, traveled overseas to join terrorist groups like ISIS.

By the way, recently we saw the group Al-Shabaab, the Somali terror group linked to al-Qaeda carry out a horrific massacre at a Kenyan University. Well, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, there's been literally a pipeline going from Minnesota to Somalia with young people joining Al-Shabaab.

GLENN: Are we looking -- are we looking for the recruiters?

ERICK: That's a great question. Glenn, I spoke to a law enforcement source -- actually a few law enforcement sources and Somali community leaders on the ground in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and they said, look, this is how it works with the recruiters. Number one, they'll show up. They'll come on the scene. And then they kind of disappear. But when they do show up, Glenn, what they do is they'll go to a local mosque or they'll go to a local rec center, wherever there are kids hanging out. And they'll target 18, 19, 20-year-old Somali kids. At first, they will befriend them. And then the radicalization process starts. And they tell them, look, come to the caliphate. You'll be a glorious holy warrior. The entire world will know your name. You'll be at the vanguard of this new Islamic empire.

And a lot of the times, Glenn, it's interesting, these guys are in the mid- to late 20s, so they're still young enough to relate to young people. The one guy who showed up last summer in Minneapolis was Egyptian American, drove a fancy car, was showing a lot of cash, dressed in hip clothes. And he was able to ingratiate himself with the young people there. And, reportedly, a few Somalis who he had befriended headed over to Iraq to join ISIS.

GLENN: Did we get him?

ERICK: No.

GLENN: Did we arrest him?

ERICK: No. His name is Amir Meshal. No one knows where he is right now. He was in Minneapolis and St. Paul. And now no one quite knows who he is. Or at least they're not saying that they know where he is or what he's doing right now. In this Somali community, another problem they've had -- now, he was kind of an outsider, Glenn, but another problem they've had in that Somali community in Minneapolis and St. Paul is just people from the community who are recruiting. And it reminds me, you know, I've been there several times over the past few years. On the ground, been investigating, and it reminds me a lot in a bad way of what we see in western Europe right now in the Muslim communities there. In that these young Somalis are not assimilating, they're not integrating into American society. I think the unemployment rate in the Twin Cities among the Somalis is something like 30 or 40 percent. It's not going well.

GLENN: Erick, I appreciate it.

ERICK: If this continues, we'll head down the road they've headed down in Britain, France, Germany, where you have these large restless unassimilated Muslim populations that are breeding grounds for radicals.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

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.