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Glenn's Show Prep

Why does Stu think Planned Parenthood should be shut down?

July 14, 2015
Staff

WRITER

There are many, many reasons to shut down Planned Parenthood. First and foremost would be they facilitate the murder of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies each year. They also were caught helping sex slaves figure out how to cheat on taxes. Selling body parts of aborted babies was another strike against.

TheBlaze reports:

A video, titled, “Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts,” from the Center for Medical Progress, a group concerned with medical ethics, features comments from Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s senior director of medical services, allegedly showing her describing how some doctors carefully conduct abortions that leave fetal body parts in tact.

Get the full story HERE.

Watch the shocking video below, and scroll down for a transcript of the reaction from Tuesday's radio show.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it may contain errors:

PAT: Incredible story with Planned Parenthood. I mean, we know that's an evil organization to begin with, founded by an evil person, Margaret Sanger. Whose goal was to eliminate minorities, especially blacks. Look it up. If you don't know. It's a story. It's true. She was a progressive.

And she was not a good person. And Hillary Clinton is a big, big fan of Margaret Sanger.

STU: Uh-huh.

PAT: And we'll have to play this some other time. But I love what she said when she was asked about that. You know, despite the fact that Margaret Sanger had these genocidal tendencies, how are you such a big fan of her? And she said, well, I'm a fan of Thomas Jefferson too who owned slaves. That's not everything she did. Oh, okay. All right. Good comparison too. Good analogy.

STU: Cooked a good omelet too. He's kind of known for his other work.

PAT: Volkswagen. Good things.

STU: It's amazing. It's not just Hillary, she's a progressive hero. And, you know, it's a right of religious fervor basically at this point to -- if anyone tries to --

PAT: And why? Have you ever wondered why the abortion thing is so critical to them? Why removing babies from the womb is so important to them? There's money in it. There's just a ton of money in it. Planned Parenthood makes a lot of money with it.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: Democrats make a lot of money from Planned Parenthood. There's just money. Follow the trail of the cash. And I think you might have a clue as to what's going on.

STU: And how do you make money off of abortions? Obviously, number one. You're charging the person to do them. You've got -- all sorts of different funding that comes from not only charities, but governmental institutions.

PAT: Yeah, including federal funding now.

STU: Which they, of course, said would never happen. But beyond that, you get a nice collection of body parts of dead fetuses that you can sell.

PAT: Which is great news we're finding out now. I didn't even -- I mean, I wouldn't have even -- would you have thought to guess that that part was going on? That they were selling body parts of aborted fetuses.

STU: It certainly doesn't shock me. I'm not shocked by anything that these people will do. To see the video. The video is done -- excuse me -- Center for Medical Progress and live action news. It's one of these behind the scenes undercover videos. And you have to see the video. The way they're discussing selling these body parts, including, by the way, in the video, you can see an online order form to order a certain amount of livers. A certain amount of hearts.

And to see her discuss this while just nibbling away at a delicious salad at a restaurant, as if it's something you discuss in polite company is quite amazing.

PAT: So these would have to be pretty developed babies.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: To be harvesting organs to sell to people?

STU: I'll give you this quote. I don't think you have this in your audio. Because it's blatantly. She describes partial birth abortion which is illegal. Illegal. You can't do it. This is how she gets around that. She says the federal partial birth abortion plan is a law and laws are up to interpretation. So if I say on day one I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn't matter. Now, you say, okay, that's a person blatantly going around the law. I mean, she's admitting it on camera. This is not just some employee. Because we've seen it before, where it's some employee working at a center and she's doing something blatantly illegal.

The woman who is saying this is the Senior Director for Medical Services at Planned Parenthood. This is not some low-level person. This is the Senior Director for Medical Services. She is describing in-depth about how --

PAT: At the Planned Parenthood in Bemidji, Minnesota? Like, just the overall Planned Parenthood?

STU: Yeah, a top Planned Parenthood executive. Senior Director for Medical Services is not nobody. She's describing -- she goes into great depth through the videos. We'll go through audio in a second. About how when they kill the child, they crush the head and they'll crush other parts of the body. But they try to avoid the organs because they can sell those. And they go through all this -- all of this rigamarole to make sure that they don't harm those precious organs that could bring in 30 to $100 per specimen.

PAT: Thirty to $100. That's it?

STU: Uh-huh. They talk about cutting off legs and sending them to people. They talk about -- they talk about how much people really want liver. Apparently it's a hot item. Hot commodity on this market. By the way, selling body parts of fetuses is also blatantly illegal. In any rational country. Assuming this video checks out. Which it has been released today. So it's very early on. But no one is denying it's her saying these things. Assuming that this is true. This should shut down the entire organization.

PAT: It should. It won't.

STU: It is -- when you create an online order form. This is not a whimsical person saying, maybe we could sell a couple of these things. You have an online form for illegal activity. They shut down -- what was it -- Silk Road? They shut down these things that sell drugs on the internet. You're selling body parts on the internet. This entire organization should be shut down if this is accurate.

JEFFY: And I got news for you. When you start out the day saying, gee, I'm not going to do that, but you still mean to do it, uh, the police still arrest you.

STU: Yeah. You should know that, Jeffy, better than anybody.

But if you say, look, as long as we said we didn't mean to do a partial birth abortion, but then when it happens, we do one so we can keep the organs. Oopsy. That's the sort of thing that is difficult to prove, unless you have someone, I don't know, who is the Senior Director for Medical Services admitting it on camera.

PAT: Wow.

STU: Should we play some of these clips? It's pretty amazing.

PAT: Yeah.

VOICE: We'll give person specific nodes. An essay. I was like, wow. I didn't even know. Good for them. Yesterday was the first time she said people wanted lungs.

STU: There we go. So she says a lot of people want different parts for different nodes. Yesterday was the first time they asked us for lungs. Wanted some lungs. We sold them lungs.

PAT: Are these --

JEFFY: Who is buying?

PAT: Yeah, is this for implant?

STU: I think medical testing.

PAT: Because you can't take a liver from a baby that's unborn and implant it in a human being. Right? And keep them alive with it, I would think. So it's for testing. I guess research.

STU: Research and whatever else. Who knows. The reason she's telling people this is she believes they're buyers.

PAT: And Glenn asks this question all the time, who have we become? If we tolerate this, if we put up with this, if we don't stand against it, who are we?

JEFFY: We have people shutting down facilities because they have monkeys caged up to test.

PAT: Yeah. You're spraying hair spray in their eyes. Or you get shampoo in their face.

JEFFY: But this is okay? No.

PAT: Of an animal, of a monkey or a rat, and we're shutting down facilities. Yeah, but this is okay, with human beings. Unbelievable.

VOICE: Yeah, liver. Yeah, liver is huge.

VOICE: That's simple. I mean, that's easy. I don't know what they're doing with it. I guess they want muscle.

VOICE: Yeah, a dime a dozen.

PAT: So what essentially was said there. Could you tell?

STU: Yeah. It's livers. People -- livers are the hot thing on the market. And I think that's when he says they're dime a dozen. That's the buyer kind of just egging the whole thing -- at that point, he's just sort of echoing what she's saying. She's flippant. She has a bite of her salad on her fork. She's waving her hands back and forth.

PAT: So they're just at a restaurant, talking about this?

STU: That's all that room noise you hear. And why it's difficult to hear. They transcribe it on the video. I'll post this on StuFacebook.com. Go to my Facebook page. We'll post it in just a second. You have to watch this. This is eight or nine minutes the whole thing. You'll get the point before that. But just to get -- it's worth watching the whole nine minutes. This is a huge organization that Democrats support, that is in the public domain all the time for federal funding. And that are selling livers on the -- on the -- on online order forms. Blatantly against the law. Skirting abortion law. Admitting it on camera with top level executives. This should be the biggest story in the country. Obviously the Iran thing will be big today. But this should be the biggest story in the country. This is a huge deal. Will the media pick up on it at all?

PAT: Here's more.

VOICE: How much of a difference can it actually make if you know what's expected or what we need?

VOICE: It makes a huge difference. I would say a lot of people want liver.

STU: A lot of people want liver.

VOICE: And for that reason, less providers (inaudible).

STU: Okay. Stop for a second. So he's saying, like, what parts can I get? Essentially, the buyer. And she's responding, well, if I know what you want, we can take certain procedures, certain measures to make sure we protect it. So, you know, they will use the ultrasound that they don't want to make anyone have before they abort the child. They will utilize that to make sure they're crushing other parts of the body to kill the child so that they don't crush the liver so they can sell the liver. She's talking about it basically that flippantly, as you can hear. It's hard to pick up. But you can get her tone of voice as she's saying it.

PAT: And they don't want to do the ultrasound. Because 90 percent of women that see the ultrasound don't want to go through with the abortion because they understand what's inside them and it's not just their body at that point, and they know that.

STU: Right. Again, the whole argument of the abortion thing in the first place is that this is a meaningless clump of cells. But, apparently, that meaningless clump of cells has value on the open market, so therefore it's not so meaningless anymore.

PAT: Wow.

VOICE: Forceps. (inaudible) Of the procedures. Calvaria. Calvaria, the head is --

STU: She's talking about the head. She's talking about the calvaria, which is the head. And she's discussing about how they'll reverse the body to be born feet first so that they can get this procedure done, get the organs and still crush the head inside.

PAT: In a partial birth abortion.

STU: Which is blatantly illegal. Which she goes on to admit that she can't do unless she acts like she didn't mean to do it. Like if you go down the road and something goes wrong, you can still theoretically do this under the law, but with the intent in advance, you certainly can't. It's a federal crime.

VOICE: Yeah. Most of the other stuff can come out intact. It's very rare that they have that effect (inaudible).

VOICE: To bring the body cavity out intact and all that?

VOICE: Yeah. Exactly. Then you kind of (inaudible).

STU: So basically. You can't pick up any of that. It's too hard to hear. She's saying, you can get the rest of the body intact. It's worth hearing with the audio, so you know this stuff exists. We're not making this stuff up. She says, at one point, we've been good at getting the heart, lung, and liver because we know, well, we're not going to crush that part. I'm basically going to crush below. I'm going to crush above and see if I can get it all intact.

This is a human body. A live person she is talking about this way.

She goes on to, you know, talk about, you know, the procedures they go through. Specific procedures that they go through to avoid damaging these organs that they can sell. And they have screen shots of the online order form. This --

PAT: It's soul crushing.

STU: It's soul crushing. It's one thing to talk about a bad organization that could potentially hopefully get shut down or at the very at least have trouble because of this. What we're talking about is human people.

PAT: It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. It will be interesting to see if anyone talks about this today.

STU: Can there be anymore of an open-and-shut case? This is not one of those things where you're guessing at their intent. She's telling you.

PAT: No. And like you said, it's not some janitor at Planned Parenthood that they caught on an open mic. This is a top-level executive.

STU: Because some of the videos you've seen, oh, well, they're registering voters. Some person registering voters making $9 an hour tells you to break the law. That's one thing. This is one of the executive-level people at Planned Parenthood saying it's their procedure to intentionally avoid partial abortion law.

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

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Sharia arrives

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

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

The warning from those who have lived under it

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

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

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

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

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

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

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

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

Wake up before it is too late

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet return of meaning

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

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

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

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

What triggers the Bubba effect

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

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

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

A country cracking from the inside

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

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

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

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

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

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

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

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

How to respond without breaking ourselves

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

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

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth-seeking is real work

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

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

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

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

Bad-faith questions

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

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

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

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

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

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

The real target

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.