'Never Again Is Now': Glenn announces relief campaign for Middle East, 'Restoring Honor' anniversary event in Birmingham, and much more

Below are the prepared remarks from Glenn's radio show Monday June 8th, 2015

Get the key information from the announcement of 'Never Again Is Now' HERE

Five years ago this August 28th five hundred thousand americans boarded a plane, train or bus. They came from all over the country and indeed all over the world. They didn’t know what to expect. They just knew something big was going to happen. Those that were not there, do not understand. But those five hundred thousand people felt something that they still feel today. It was the start of something divine and we thirst for more of it.

Since we met, things in our country have gotten worse. I don't even mean politically, I mean we have gone over the cliff of madness, and indifference. Nothing makes sense anymore. Our Pentagon is told the biggest threat to our nation is global warming, we are told that we have ended the war in Afghanistan and Iraq yet our planes are still dropping bombs and our sons and daughters are still losing their lives. Those who seek high office are telling us about a war on women but it has nothing to do with the women and young girls that are raped and sold into slavery every day by people we sold guns to. The gay rights activists sue over flowers and wedding cakes and say nothing about the homosexuals that are thrown of the roofs of buildings in Syria everyday. We as Christians claim our rights are being violated while at the same time children are being crucified for their profession of Jesus Christ and we say nothing.

How many stories, and hours of network time has been lost forever on Bruce Jenner or the Duggars that drown out the voices of those beheaded cry out from the blood soaked sands of Libya?

We have become a people that are frankly absurd. We are a gross parody of the Great Americans that came before us. Our so called Civil rights leaders have become a sick joke who have turned the cries of racism, sexism, rape from cries of help to shouts of blackmail or threats.

We can no longer even teach our children that 2+2=4 because our math no longer contains absolute answers. If you feel good about 5 or 8, those can be correct as well. Our institutions of higher learning have become the modern day slave trade, enslaving our children to debt while insuring that they cannot read, reason or think for themselves.

Our churches have gone silent because they have built huge cathedrals to themselves and the God that they obey is the God of the Bank. They convince themselves that they cannot say things that might be too controversial because they would lose too many “customers” in the pew, they couldn’t service the debt. We have replaced revealed truth with light shows and rock bands.

The hatreds of old have reappeared, hatred of the jew, the banker, or the rich. We say we must be tolerant but we persecute, silence and destroy anyone who dares speak an opinion other than the newly accepted political “truth”. The murder rate in city after city has sky rocketed by 20 and 25% in the last 6 months while the citizens cry out for justice as they commit an injustice by burning their own city down. Only to have the city leaders thank the Bloods, Crips and Nation of Islam for partnering with them to keep the peace. The good cops will no longer risk their lives to keep the peace because we have condemned all police and labeled them killers. They are ALL guilty until proven innocent and even when they are declared innocent no one seems to care or to report.

In 2001 an enemy attacked us. He was unlike anything we had seen. He was vicious and had a set of principles that were too insane to rationally accept. Those days seem reasonable now. Currently our enemy marches people in orange jumpsuits and beheads them while quoting scriptures from the Koran or locks them in cages and sets them on fire. They crucify, behead and literally rip open the chests of our fallen on the battle field and eat the raw organs and our leaders call for more war or tell us the cannibals are a JV squad.

I will no longer pretend that nothing is wrong and act as though things are normal and that this is progress. This is not progress, this is madness. When America, the last bastion of Freedom, the best hope for all of mankind, becomes a place where her citizens turn their eyes from Crucifixions of children we are no longer a country or people I recognize.

We are a nation in which our citizenship is more of an indictment than an honor.

If we are to stand in the gap when real trouble comes to our shores, when our cities have been set on fire by our fellow countrymen, when ISIS comes to our malls and schools, we must begin to prepare now. Real war unlike we have seen since the 1940s is coming, like it or not. But a bigger battle is already in play. A battle for the soul of America. In this battle, we must soften our hearts. Rid ourselves of anger and hatred of each other that has been ginned up by the enemy within. We must also begin to organize ourselves in ways that the real civil rights giants have done in the past because this, in time, may just well be the last stand for the republic and we must not allow false hatreds to tear us apart.

There are no solutions on our streets in Ferguson or Baltimore because there is no unity of Principles. Where are those who stand for real justice without looting? Who are seeking the truth no matter if it means the cops are innocent or guilty? Who is preaching that God is the only one that can provide real peace and eternal justice? They are there, but there are not enough of them, and most of the ones that do preach this are not being seen.

I am happy to live in these days because we are now FORCED to grapple with the problems that have faced others throughout history, and our very survival demands that we solve them – now.

We must stick together and unify. Not around a common cause or a common outcome but instead unchanging universal principles, regardless of the outcome.

Whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, it causes trouble in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. We must disregard the things that are being taught by the Pharaohs all around us.

These Pharaohs are working on all sides and in almost every camp and they have successfully redefined hate. It is being packaged and sold as diversity, political correctness and progress. It is Godless and it seeks a victory over reconciliation and in the end will only produce generations of war, despair and hopelessness.

The silencing and destruction of others because of their viewpoint in the name of progress has become the new norm and revenge and vengeance is the new law of the streets.

We must stand united and declare: Just because one might disagree does not mean that we hate one another. We as Christians are commanded to Love one another and to abide by His higher laws. If we abandon these two principles our faith is dead. But as Christians we cannot pick and choose which laws we obey.

We ourselves have become unrighteous, covetous, full of envy, deceit and proud. We are boastful covenant breakers. By professing ourselves wise we have become fools. Our practice of our faith in word only too many times gives people the opportunity, rightly in many cases, to confuse with disagreement with Judgment and hatred.

Let each of us be subject unto the higher powers for there is no power but of God. Love works no ill to his neighbor. Love is the fulfilling of the law. It is high time we awake from our sleep for trouble is nearer than we believe. We must again find away to live with one another in peace and understanding.

Rev Dr Martin Luther King had the right idea. He saw a vision built on God’s truth, with Unity and love as key principles, and the concept of boycott and non-violent were his tactics, driven by principles, and based on truth. This non-violent resistance also worked with Gandhi, but Gandhi, a Hindu, said he learned it from Jesus - the revolutionary. Gandhi even chided the modern followers of Jesus for not following Jesus’ example, telling them, “You Christians have in your keeping a document with enough dynamite in it to blow the whole of civilization to bits; to turn society upside down; to bring peace to this war torn world. But you read it as if it were just good literature, and nothing else.”

He was right. The Gospel of Jesus Christ will start a revolution. It has before and it will again – if its teachings are applied and lived out in each of us.

This is not about politics. Politics has failed us because we have failed to stand for justice and righteousness. We have failed to stand for first principles and too many hearts have grown cold. This is about who we are and our culture. We must jump start the American heart. We must prepare to be stronger and more disciplined than we ever thought possible. We must dedicate ourselves to the principles of America and the principles of God.

In talking about the Gospel based non-violent resistance, Martin Luther King, said:

"As we begin to struggle with this evil we must always be sure that we struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. As we press on for Justice, we must be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If we succumb to the temptation of using violence in this struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos."

It is not the 1960s anymore. The dark days full of hate and rage have come and gone. We are no longer those people or those so-called and self-appointed civil rights community organizers who wish to drag us back; we dismiss them.

Those who seek retribution over reconciliation, those who blackmail or incite --- We do not need you anymore. There is a new generation of men and women, young and old, Christian, Jew, agnostic, liberal and conservative, black and white, straight and not, that have a better idea.

We do not need catchy slogans nor political parties, we believe less in the power of the check book and more in the power of the back bone.

To heal our country, we must stand in line with the everlasting truth of the Almighty, accept His will and His grace and then put our faith into action. We then that are strong ought to bear the troubles and infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.

Currently the weakest among us are those of all faiths and walks of life being killed by ISIS in Syria, Lybia, Iraq and all across the middle east but also by those in Iran, Afghanistan, and even those in Saudi Arabia.

After the second world war we as a people promised "Never Again".

May I suggest that Never again is NOW.

A genocide is going on now and we all know it. The pictures are on the web, yet we turn our eyes. We must be brave enough to look, and Christian enough to act. God specifically tells us: “When you happen on someone who’s in trouble or needs help . . . don’t look the other way pretending you don’t see him – don’t keep a tight grip on your purse. No. Look at him; open your purse; lend whatever and as much as he needs. . . . Give freely and spontaneously. Don’t have a stingy heart. The way you handle matters like this triggers God’s blessing in everything you do – all your work and ventures. . . .”

First they came for the Coptic Christians but I didn't speak out because I wasn't Coptic.

Then they came for the Homosexual and stoned them to death, but I didn't speak out because I wasn't homosexual.

Then they sold the Kurdish women and children in to slavery but I wasn't a 9 year old kurd so I didn't say anything.

Then they came for the muslim who wasn't muslim enough and the Christian that wouldn't convert but I didn't say anything because I didn't think it involved me and I didn't think I could do anything anyway.

Eventually they will come for you, and there will be no one left to speak out for you.

Not to speak is to speak, not to stand is to stand. God will not hold us blameless.

Evil exists. But so does God. As the sky grows darker, it is only then that we can see the stars that begin to shine. We must be those pinholes of light and as others begin to join us, the sky will grow bright and it will be those very stars that are in fixed positions of stability that will guide all those lost in the darkness to safety.

The world may tell you that it is foolish to stand for things that are right and just, that you are too weak but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and He has chosen the weak to confound those things that are mighty.

Let us develop a dangerous unselfishness.

Let us be the new righteous among the nations, those who declare themselves free of all men, yet make themselves servants unto all, that they might gain the more. Let us be the next Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fredrick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, Hilda Solis, Nelson Mandela, Oskar Schindler. All giants that had nothing more than you. Just a willingness to stand against injustice and bend the arc of History.

We are those that have been called for this time. This could have happened in any other generation, but it didn’t; it happened in ours. It happened now, and We can be the civil rights leaders of this generation.

It will take dedication, hard work, and perseverance on our part – it will require actually living by the teachings of faith that so many of us so casually profess. But we will not give up and we will not give in to hopelessness or hate.

The Christian who speaks out for the homosexual being stoned in Iran, the homosexual who stands for the Christian Baker in Oregon, The Jew that sees the dark echoes of the past and wakes his people to the plight of the Coptic Christians and the Christian who stands in defense of the Jew in France or on an American college campus. These will be the people that begin to change the world.

We will not go over the cliff with the rest of humanity. But where there is true hatred, murder, corruption, power and evil, it will not be tossed aside easily. We fight not against flesh and bone, but principalities. Nevertheless, we will stand against them.

Whenever you take a stand for truth and justice, you are liable to scorn. Often you will be called an impractical idealist or a dangerous radical. It might even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent life of spiritual death, than nothing could be more Christian. We should not worry about persecution. We should expect it because we know that is what happens when any individual stands for a great principle, for a great principle – a great truth – is often unpopular.

We will be troubled at every side but not distressed, we will be perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed.

I will not silently sit by as others redefine bravery as Caitlyn Jenner while a Father in Erbil watches his children slaughtered in front of him because his children would not deny Christ.

I will not pretend that free on demand abortions constitute a war on women while women are murdered in cold blood by there own families in so called honor killings here in our own country.

There are many things to fix in America and racism, sexism and injustice does exist here, but we must recognize how grotesque we have become in our cry of ‘injustice’.

We are a country who has lost not only its way, but history will show we have lost our mind. When finger guns constitute a class three look a like weapon in schools, while children are being slaughtered in schools by isis, when teachers can take their students to porn stores for a field trip and parents are told that they need to embrace this, when people claim there are 82 genders when God created two and some now are arguing for TransAblism - the person who feels they were born handicapped but were born in a fully able body and so they want the medical system to remove a limb, our society has gone over the edge of no return.

I am announcing today that I am a community organizer of sorts and I would like you to join me.

We are going to start with the clearest injustice on the planet today. One that will bring us together and something we can all unite on. This is something that our houses of worship should be leading on, but far too many are silent. It is time we turn the tables over and chase the money changers out of the churches and hold the arms up of those brave enough to say the things that need to be said.

Five years ago on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial we introduced you to the Black Robe Regiment. There were just over three hundred that joined us that day. Spiritual leaders from all denominations. Today we have in our data banks over 70 thousand pastors, priests and rabbis. I am told that if this were Germany 1939 over ten thousand of these holy men would have walked to the gas chambers themselves as they would not have complied. But the real secret is, Bonhoeffer had less then 10 pastors with him, had he had 10,000 maybe the Holocaust would not have happened at all.

I am not a preacher, but I am going to be starting a tour of churches this summer. We are going to begin to shake ourselves awake and we will begin with the pulpits. God is not dead, but many of his pulpits are. I will be speaking at churches where the pastors can be trusted to say the difficult things. Places were pastors know what time it is and will sleep no more. NEVER AGAIN IS NOW. .

Our faith requires us to put our Christian belief into action.

Together we will wake the most powerful force on earth --- the people of God, together we can be an army of good.

I am beginning where Martin Luther King began --- in Birmingham, Alabama. Guiding Light Church in Birmingham, Alabama is just down the street from the building where MLK began his historic stand against Bull Connor. Bishop James Lowe is a brave and outspoken man. We may not agree on everything, but He and his congregation are unafraid and have welcomed us for the anniversary of Restoring Honor and Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech. Friday August 28th.

There are no tickets to buy and space will be limited. I will speak at as many churches that we can afford. If it is three churches or 300 in the end, I do not know but it is time the flocks demand from the shepherds a return to first principles. We must not lose our uniqueness as different denominations, I am not suggesting we mix our theology, I am however suggesting that the hour grows late and God is the only answer. If we turn our faces back toward Him, He will heal our land. But we must humble ourselves, do the uncomfortable things and come together. The body is made up of many parts and all of those parts are needed now.

What could bring us all together? We needed to find the most glaring injustice on earth. Something that black, white, straight or gay, Glenn Beck or even Bill Maher could agree on:

ALL LIFE MATTERS. The genocide perpetrated by the psychotic killers named ISIS must stop. So the first thing we are doing is raising money to help those innocents in the middle east. I hope to be traveling to the middle east in the next two or three months with a plane load of aid and my cameras to bring home the story of the children who are standing up against the evil of isis.

I may ask you to join me as we bring aid and comfort to those most in need. I would ask for your donation to help us in this goal of raising $2 million dollars in relief. We will also ask some of your churches around the country to take this money and actually fill the boxes and the planes. We will be asking your children to write letters to children in refugee camps so they know that America has not forgotten them. Please go to mercuryone.org right now and donate and join our cause.

There is much more to this campaign as it will be an on going movement and we will begin discussing it on tonights TV show on TheBlaze TV. We are going to begin to gather like minded people and train for non violent resistance and civil disobedience. We must understand that we are now David and Goliath has all the power.

I am asking you to be a man or woman of merit. Of honor, courage, love and discipline. It is an honor to have been born at this time. It is by the grace of God that he has allowed such a flawed man as me to have this platform and get to know you everyday.

I don't know how this all works, nor do I know where it all ends, but I do know it is a journey I must take and if we refuse to ask if God is on our side, but instead ask if we are on His side, Americans will again change the world with Malice toward none and charity for all.

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.

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.