We’re on the path of the Weimar Republic

June 30, 2015

WRITER

Printing money, violating the Constitution, abandoning morality, legalizing drugs - these were all steps on the path of Germany's transformation from Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. We are seeing the same disturbing parallels play out in Greece - and America doesn't seem far behind either. We're on a dangerous road, but it's not too late to speak up. Glenn said there is a key moment in German history we haven't seen play out yet. Will the world wake up before it's too late?

Below is a transcript of this segment:

I’ve been warning about a financial collapse in Greece for years, and here it is. I said probably six years ago that in Spain or Greece we would see the rise of the Nazi party—it happened in Greece—and Spain or Greece would be the first that would actually be the domino that would begin to make the EU crumble. We have talked about this for a long time. I was mocked about it, and here it is.

This is a precursor for us. Stocks around the globe have tanked in the wake of the news that Greece’s demise is now imminent. Banks in Greece have closed. Their stock exchange is shut down all week. People rushed at two o’clock in the morning to go to an ATM machine to find out that they had been limited no matter how much they had in the bank to 68 bucks. Visitors to Greece should be aware of the possibility that banking services including credit card processing and servicing of ATMs throughout Greece could potentially become limited at short notice, so bring large sums of cash. What could possibly happen by encouraging people to carry large sums of cash when banking services are down? That seems like it’s going to be great.

A few years ago, I went to Greece, and this is when the austerity protests were taking over. I want to remind you of some of it.

VIDEO

Glenn: Across the street, what makes a significant is what’s across the street. This is the National Bank of Greece right here, and you can see that it has been spray-painted. They’ve been throwing paint bombs up against the wall. There’s anarchy symbols all on the street all leading up to it, but still that’s not the significant piece. What is significant is that building. That is the Central Bank of Greece. The central banks, like our Fed, are a real problem all around the world.

You see this on the wall back there? If my memory serves me right, what that says on that wall is if the revolution doesn’t come by peace, it will come through violence, anarchy. We’re about to see the violence.

Remember, we have Nazis on the ground, and the leader is a communist. Russia is butting in now, so you’re going to have the fascists and the communists, the Nazis and the communists, going at it once again. We’re going to re-air part of this documentary at 8:00 p.m. on, is it Wednesday? Wednesday, at 8:00 p.m. They’re bracing for social unrest as the ATMs run out of cash. Self-preservation is kicking in. People are hoarding gasoline and groceries.

I’m mocked all the time for saying to prepare. I was mocked for saying this about Greece. I was mocked to say that the caliphate, but look how quickly things go down the moment you lose access to all the conveniences that we assume you’re just always going to have access to. Let me ask you a question, do you think we’ll be any different when our economic day of reckoning comes? #LoveWins, because it’s coming.

Everything Greece has done, everything we’re doing, we have seen it play out before. The parallels are striking. In the 1920s, Germany’s Weimar Republic, it rose in the aftermath of World War I and suffered from a horrible economy. Most of it stemmed from the government’s decision to attempt to pay its deep foreign debts inflicted by progressive Woodrow Wilson on Germany. They decided they were going to print the money and just give the rest of the world inflated money because they didn’t have any money so they just printed it. Sound familiar?

This caused hyperinflation which crippled the economy, put it out. Unemployment, food and energy shortages were everywhere, and the people were desperate. It opened the door for extremist views to take root. This is how the Nazi party became popular. Golden Dawn in Greece is doing the same thing all over again, and the same thing will happen here if we don’t wake up. We’re making the same mistakes.

In the Weimar Republic, the government decided to enact gun registration and then allowed for governments to confiscate the firearms if needed for public safety. When Hitler eventually seized power, he used all of the registration of the firearms to disarm the political opponents and the Jews. The Jews weren’t allowed to own guns. They got 20 years in labor camps if they were caught with one.

Weimar tried to print their way out of debt. So did Greece. So are we. Weimar restricted guns. So have we. Nazis used suffering to gain power. Extremists did the same in Greece, and we’re beginning to do it here as well. We’ll dismiss them—oh, it’ll never happen here. In Weimar, they legalized drugs and abandoned morals to become hypersexualized, depicted in movies like Cabaret. So, what have we done? We legalize drugs, and I don’t think I have to spend any time convincing anyone that the ship has sailed on valuing morality. Then they had an assassination attempt on their leader, the president of Germany. The then chancellor, like our speaker of the house kind of, broke the constitution, broke all the laws, and went out and hunted down the supposed killers. It was called the Night of Long Knives.

This leader of their country broke every single law, broke the constitution blatantly, and killed all of his enemies. The next morning he got on radio, and he admitted it. He came clean. He said with hat in hand in a long speech to the Nazi controlled Reichstag in Parliament that 74 people had been shot, and I did this because I was trying to save the republic.

He said, “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it, we called it the ‘Night of Long Knives.’ Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”

Guess what happened. This was the turning point. When Hitler broke the constitution and broke the law, if the German people would have stood up, the legitimate German president would’ve kicked him out, but the German people stood up and applauded. The government forgave him, and when they did, the president wanted to elevate him to a new office because he was going to retire. Hitler again with hat in hand said oh my, I could never replace him as president. That’s too much power for me. That’s too lofty of a title. I’ll take a new lowly office. Let’s just call me the Fuhrer.

He changed history. He changed the course of that country and the world. He based everything in his country on a new pseudoscience. Sound familiar? He nationalized and socialized their new economy. He imaged himself as a Christian. Indeed, he was not a Christian. Even though he claimed to be one, when he was running, boy, oh boy, did he talk about Christian values, but in the end he became an antichrist himself.

It was just a few years in to him being the Fuhrer that he told churches what they could and couldn’t do. Sound familiar? He replaced all the crucifixes in the churches with a picture of himself that was placed on the altar, and he said “the only religion in Germany is that of the Fuhrer.”

A good friend of mine, Eric Metaxas, wrote a fantastic book that’s soon going to be a movie. He wrote a friend of mine this weekend, and he said this is the time of Bonhoeffer. We are living this history again. Bonhoeffer couldn’t save the German people from themselves, but there weren’t a lot of people on board with him. We cannot make the mistakes of the past. Our government is already making them. We as a people must begin to gather together and stand for eternal principles in our own lives. No matter what our faith or our doctrines, we must come together.

Even though the world has been turned upside down, the phrase that did it is actually true, and if it is properly interpreted, it is the secret. It’s love wins, and it has nothing to do with who you sleep with.

Glenn: Pay attention to what the State Department's RADICAL reset is signaling

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For years, the U.S. State Department operated on inertia—an institution locked into a cycle of caution, consensus, and risk aversion.

Speeches were careful, strategies were diluted by committees, and action was often defined by what couldn’t be done. The language was always the same: "nuance," "complexity," "stakeholders." Rarely was it about results.

That has changed.

What’s come out of the State Department in the last hundred days is a complete departure—not just in tone, but in structure.

Under Secretary Rubio, the department isn’t just adjusting tactics. It’s undergoing a philosophical reset.

The most telling shift is this: the department is no longer preoccupied with managing decline or defending abstractions. It’s operating from the premise that U.S. foreign policy must serve actual national interests, not vague global norms or ideological missions.

Look at the key decisions. The Global Engagement Center—an office that claimed to combat disinformation but increasingly acted as an internal censorship tool—is gone. Not repurposed. Not renamed. Eliminated. Aid programs that masked themselves as diplomacy while undermining core U.S. positions have been cut. Contracts to NGOs with open hostility toward U.S. policy goals? Revoked.

This isn’t cosmetic. It’s structural.

The department’s reorganization is consolidating power downward—removing bureaucratic silos, emphasizing merit over ideology, and restoring clarity to diplomatic goals. This isn’t about optics. It’s about removing friction between strategy and implementation. On immigration and border enforcement, there’s now a foreign policy posture that treats visa privileges as exactly that—privileges, not entitlements. Visa holders who break laws or support terrorist groups lose their status. Period. No press conference required. Just enforcement.

Regional partnerships are now framed by expectations, not entanglements.

Countries that allow mass illegal migration into the U.S. are being held accountable. Agreements are being structured around reciprocity. When those agreements are ignored, consequences follow. China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, long treated as inevitable, has been directly challenged. Beijing’s role in Panama, particularly regarding the canal, has been dismantled through diplomacy backed by leverage, not lectures. That wasn’t done through press statements—it required statecraft, pressure, and the willingness to say no.

In Europe, there’s been a reframing of NATO obligations. Not as symbolic unity, but as measurable responsibility. The benchmark is no longer two percent. The conversation is now five. That changes the nature of the alliance. In Africa, the posture is shifting from dependency to commercial engagement. Trade, not aid. Access, not assistance. Diplomacy with terms, not with guilt.

The contrast is stark.

This isn’t a matter of tone or branding. This is a systemic shift away from a model that rewarded process over outcomes, toward one that is rediscovering the purpose of diplomacy: to secure advantage, resolve conflict, and protect national interests.

This recalibration will not be popular in foreign capitals used to ambiguity, or in institutions comfortable with drift. It’s also not universally admirable. It’s direct. It’s unambiguous. And it signals something rare in modern American foreign policy: conviction.

That alone is worth paying attention to.

Glenn: Why Memorial Day is not just another holiday

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They wore the uniform so you could live free. This holiday, ask yourself if you're living in a way that honors that sacrifice — or cheapens it.

Your son has been a Marine for what feels like an eternity. Only those who have watched their children deploy into war zones can truly understand why time seems to freeze in worry. What begins as concern turns to panic, then helplessness. You live suspended in a silent winter, where days blur and dread becomes your constant companion.

Then, in an instant, it happens. What you don’t know yet is that your child — your most precious gift — fell in combat 60 seconds ago.

This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives.

While you go about your day, unaware, military protocol kicks into motion. Notification must happen within eight hours. Officers are dispatched. A chaplain joins them. A medic may accompany them in case the grief is too much to bear.

Three figures arrive at your door. One asks your name. Then, by protocol, they ask to enter your home. You already know what’s coming. You sit down. He looks you in the eye and says:

The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son John was killed in action on Friday, March 28. The commandant and the United States Marine Corps extend their deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss.

This moment has played out thousands of times across American soil. In 2003 alone — just two years after 9/11 — 312 families endured it. In 2007, 847 American service members died in combat. In 2008, 352. In 2009, 346. The list goes on. And with every name, a family became a Gold Star family.

Honor the fallen

For most Americans, Memorial Day means backyard barbecues, family gatherings, maybe a trip to the lake or a sweet Airbnb. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying these things. But we must never forget why we can.

Ask any veteran who lived when others did not, and you’ll understand: Memorial Day is not just another holiday. It is a solemn day set apart for reverence.

So this weekend, reach out to a Gold Star family. Acknowledge their pain. Ask about their son or daughter. Let them know they’re not alone.

This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives — not for accolades but for love of country and the preservation of liberty. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

They died for the Constitution, for our shared American ideals, and the worst thing we could do now would be to betray those ideals in a spirit of rage or division.

We cannot dishonor their sacrifice by abandoning the very principles they died to protect — equal justice, the rule of law, the enduring promise of liberty.

This Memorial Day, let us remember the fallen. Let us honor their families. Let us recommit ourselves to the cause they gave everything for: the American way of life.

They are the best of us.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump exposes Left’s habeas corpus hijack in border crisis

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Democrats accused the president of declaring war on civil rights. In reality, he’s defending habeas corpus while they drown it in delays and legal loopholes.

Tuesday’s congressional testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem turned heads for all the wrong reasons. Pressed to define “habeas corpus,” she stumbled. And while I respect Noem, this moment revealed just how dangerously misunderstood one of our most vital legal protections has become — especially as it’s weaponized in the immigration debate.

Habeas corpus is not a loophole. It’s a shield. It’s the constitutional protection that prevents a government from detaining a person — any person — without first justifying the detention before a neutral judge. It doesn’t guarantee freedom. It demands due process. Prove it or release them.

Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

And yet, this doctrine — so essential to our liberty — is now being twisted by the political left into something it was never meant to be: a free pass for illegal immigration.

The left wants to frame this as a matter of compassion and rights. Leftists ask: “What about habeas corpus for migrants?” The implication is clear: They see any attempt to enforce immigration law as an attack on civil liberties.

But that’s a lie. Habeas corpus is not an excuse for indefinite presence. It doesn’t guarantee that every person who crosses the border gets to stay. It simply requires that we follow a process — a just process.

And that’s exactly what President Donald Trump has proposed.

Habeas corpus, rightly understood

Habeas corpus is the front door to the courtroom. It simply requires the government to justify why someone is being held or detained. It’s not about citizenship. It’s about human dignity.

America’s founders knew this — and that’s why they extended the right to persons, not just citizens. Habeas corpus isn’t a pass to stay in America forever — it’s a demand for legal clarity: “Why are you holding me?” That’s it.

If the government has a lawful reason — such as illegal entry — then deportation is a legitimate outcome. And yet, the left treats any enforcement of immigration law as a betrayal of American ideals.

The danger today isn’t that habeas corpus is being ignored; it’s that it’s being hijacked. The system is being overwhelmed with bad-faith cases, endless appeals, and delays that stretch for years. Right now, the immigration courts are buried under 3.3 million pending cases. The average wait time to have your case heard is four years. In some places, people are being scheduled for court dates as far out in 2032. Where is the justice in that?

This is not compassion. This is national sabotage.

Weaponizing due process

The left uses this legal bottleneck as a weapon, not a shield. Democrats invoke due process as if it requires the government to play a never-ending shell game with public safety. But that’s not what due process means. Due process means the state must play by the rules. It means a judge hears a case. It means the law is applied justly and equally. It does not mean an open border by procedural default.

So no, Trump is not proposing the end of habeas corpus. He’s calling out a broken system and saying, out loud, what millions of Americans already know: If we don’t fix this, we don’t have a country.

This crisis wasn’t an accident — it was engineered. It’s a Cloward-Piven playbook, designed to overwhelm the system. Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

Abandon the Constitution?

Remember, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But how do we balance the Constitution and our national survival without descending into authoritarianism? Abandon the Constitution? No. Burn the house down to get rid of the rats? Absolutely not. The Constitution itself gives us the tools to take on this crisis head on.

The federal government has clear authority over immigration. Illegal presence in the United States is not a protected right. Congress has the power to deny entry, enforce expedited removals, and reject bogus asylum claims. Much of this is already authorized by law — it’s simply not being used.

President Trump’s idea is simple: Use the tools we already have. Declare the southern border a national security emergency. Establish temporary military tribunals for triage. Process asylum claims swiftly outside the clogged court system. Restore “Remain in Mexico” so that the border is no longer a remote court room. Appoint more immigration judges, assign them to high-volume areas, and hold streamlined hearings that still respect due process.

That’s not authoritarian. That’s leadership.

The path forward

Trump is not trying to destroy habeas corpus. He’s trying to save it from being twisted into a self-destructive parody of itself. Leftists have turned due process into delay, justice into gridlock, and they’re dragging the entire country into their chaos.

It’s time to draw the line. Protect habeas corpus. Use it lawfully. Use it wisely. And yes — use it to restore order at the border. Because if we lose that firewall, we lose the republic.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Betrayal of trust: Medicare insurers face lawsuit over kickback scheme

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Editor's note: This article is sponsored by Chapter.

The U.S. government has filed a major lawsuit under the False Claims Act, targeting some of the biggest names in health insurance—Aetna, Elevance Health (formerly Anthem), and Humana—along with top insurance brokers eHealth, GoHealth, and SelectQuote. The allegation? From 2016 to at least 2021, these companies funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to brokers to steer seniors into their Medicare Advantage plans.

If the allegations are true, it means many Americans may have been steered into Medicare Advantage plans that weren’t necessarily the best fit for their needs—not because the plans were better, but because brokers were incentivized by illegal kickbacks.

The Kickback Conspiracy

Navigating Medicare Advantage’s maze of plan options is daunting, so beneficiaries rely on brokers like eHealth, GoHealth, and SelectQuote, who claim to be unbiased guides. But from 2016 to 2021, insurers Aetna, Humana, and Elevance Health allegedly paid brokers millions in kickbacks to favor their plans, regardless of quality. Disguised as “co-op” or “marketing” deals, these payments were tied to enrollment targets. Internal emails revealed executives knew this violated the Anti-Kickback Statute, with one eHealth leader joking that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would miss a $15 million Humana deal for minimal enrollments. Brokers used call routing to prioritize high-paying insurers, betraying beneficiaries’ trust.

Discrimination Against the Vulnerable

The scheme wasn’t just about profits—it targeted vulnerable beneficiaries. Medicare Advantage must accept all eligible enrollees, including disabled people under 65. Yet Aetna and Humana allegedly pressured brokers to limit their enrollment, as these beneficiaries were deemed to be less profitable. Brokers complied, rejecting referrals and filtering calls to favor healthier enrollees, incentivized by bonuses. This violated federal anti-discrimination laws and CMS contracts, undermining the founding principles of Medicare by discriminating against the very people it was created to aid.

False Claims and the Pursuit of Justice

The schemes led to false claims to CMS, with insurers certifying enrollments as “valid” despite kickbacks and discrimination. The government paid billions, unaware of the fraud. Examples include Humana’s $12,477 for a 2016 enrollment and Aetna’s $79,047 for a 2020 case. On May 1, 2025, the U.S. filed suit, seeking treble damages and penalties under the False Claims Act. Aetna and others deny the allegations, per May 2025 reports, promising a fierce defense. The case, demanding a jury trial, seeks justice for beneficiaries and taxpayers.

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