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Glenn's Show Prep

Utah Senator hopes candidates appeal to Constitution during GOP debate

December 15, 2015
Ted Tuttle

Editor

The final GOP presidential debate of 2015 happens tonight on CNN. Joining Glenn to talk about what he hopes happens at the debate was friend of the program, Utah Senator Mike Lee.

Lee told Glenn he would like to see a larger discussion of how we can solve our nation's problems by adhering more rigidly to the U.S. Constitution.

"The candidate who can make the best pitch for that I think will stand to gain the most from the American people," Lee said.

Glenn laughingly told Lee that sounds like "riveting television" right there, to which the senator delivered a surprisingly matter-of-fact, yet powerful response.

"Well, it is," Lee said. "There's nothing more appealing than someone who is willing to say, 'Look, I don't have all the answers. And because I don't have all the answers, I'm going to look to that 228-year-old founding document written by the hands of wise men raised up by their God to that very purpose.'"

He went on.

"That's the kind of discussion we need to have more of, and I think the American people, regardless of their traditional political ideologies and their partisan affiliations, that's where they want the discussion to go," Lee said.

Listen to more of the interview or read the transcript below.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

GLENN: One of the real good guys in Washington, DC. One of the very few that we -- we totally trust, which every time somebody burns us, we say we're never going to trust anybody totally ever again. But this guy we do. And he's the senator from the great state of Utah. Welcome to the program, Senator Mike Lee. How are you doing, sir?

MIKE: Doing great. Thank you very much, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay. So the NSA. Can we just start here? Do you think the NSA has actually ceased in your own state of Utah the data collection?

MIKE: Yes. This is what the USA Freedom Act did. I was proud to author and introduce the USA Freedom Act as a sponsor in the Senate. And that ended the process of bulk data collection. So now, rather than sucking up every American's telephone data without a warrant, the FBI goes to the court. Gets a court order, based on a showing that they need to get calling data connected to a particular number that is itself related to a terrorist investigation. Then they go to the phone company and get the data they need. There is a big difference for privacy purposes and a big difference for Fourth Amendment purposes. And the USA Freedom did a lot to correct that problem.

GLENN: So can I ask you how many billions of dollars that data collection facility in your own state cost?

MIKE: It was not cheap. I don't know the exact price. But you're correct to express it in --

GLENN: Billions.

MIKE: Words that start with a B rather than an M.

GLENN: Right.

MIKE: This is an enormous facility.

GLENN: Right. And are we using it as a storage hangar now? I mean, I just don't believe that the United States government and with all the black ops that happened and with all the black ops money that the NSA has just shut that thing down.

MIKE: No, they haven't shut it down. It's important to remember that a lot of what the NSA does has nothing to do with domestic communications. A lot of what they do involves collecting information about communications going on with people outside the United States. And that's a different category altogether. The USA Freedom Act dealt with domestic communications and metadata connected to those communications.

GLENN: So we were told that the NSA -- that this was vital. And, in fact, anybody who voted for this bill, Ted Cruz included, and I believe Ted cosponsored or coauthored with you on this.

MIKE: Yes, Ted was a cosponsor and a very hopeful supporter of getting it past. We were grateful for not only his vote, but also for his assistance in getting this -- this issue out there. Getting the argument out there, that this is a problem.

I spent years explaining why it's a problem. I even wrote part of my book, Our Lost Constitution -- it focuses on the Fourth Amendment aspect of this and how this problem has its roots going back 250 years to pre-revolutionary colonial times and at corresponding times in Britain when we had the use of general warrants underway. And why general warrants were incompatible with what we later developed as our Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

GLENN: Okay. So Ted has been thrown under the bus. You have been thrown under the bus. Anybody who voted for this, as somebody who just doesn't support -- somebody that doesn't want to keep America safe. But I look at what happened in San Bernardino. We had all the information at our fingertips, without the NSA. But when we had the NSA, what happened to all that great technology that was supposed to save us?

MIKE: Well, that's just the point. We were no safer as a result of collecting information under the old system, under section 215 of the Patriot Act. Bulk data collection didn't make us more safe. It made us less free in the sense that our privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment were being infringed without our knowledge, without our consent, and contrary to the spirit if not to the letter of the Fourth Amendment. But no one can point to a single instance in which that former system, under the Patriot Act, prevented a terrorist act.

And no one can point to a single instance since the passage of the USA Freedom Act where we've been made less safe. So really what it did, among other things, the old system, was it made it harder to find that needle in a haystack. They created a much bigger haystack. And our current system, the one devised by the USA Freedom Act narrowed the haystack and keeps the NSA focused on what's most relevant.

GLENN: Money runs out to fund the government I think tonight or tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. Why is it, Mike, that we keep putting ourselves in this situation?

MIKE: It -- it really is disappointing. It is one of the most frustrating things associated with serving in Washington, with being a member of the United States Senate. I knew that this place had a lot of problems. This is one that is much, much worse than I anticipated when I got here. The fact that we're operating a 4 trillion-dollar government and the fact that we operate it on the basis of one binary decision a year, we --

GLENN: Right. Fund it or don't fund it.

MIKE: Right. Fund it or don't fund it. Fund everything basically as is or fund nothing at all and shut it all down. That is an absolutely preposterous way to run any organization, especially the most powerful nation on earth and its government.

And, you know, I would like to have seen us put an omnibus spending package, if that's how we were going to do it, on the floor weeks, if not months ago to allow individual members to offer amendments to improve it so that it's an open, publicly debated process. Instead, what I'm predicting is that we'll get stuck with probably a 1500 to 2,000-page deal. One that spends roughly a billion dollars per page and that we'll only have hours, if not minutes to read it before we have to vote on it. And that's wrong. That is absolutely wrong

GLENN: Whose fault is that?

MIKE: Well, this is a process that has evolved over the course of years. We've had Republicans and Democrats who have been involved in it. But any time you've got that process moving forward, people who vote for bills like that, vote for bills that they can't possibly read, that they can't possibly know the contents of, is in one way or another responsible for the problem because that's what perpetuates the problem.

GLENN: You going to vote for it?

MIKE: Not if I don't have an adequate opportunity to review it certainly. And depending on what's in it, I may have other reasons to oppose it as well. With any bill, I wait until I see it to make a final decision. But I know in advance, if I don't have time to read it before it's time to vote, I will vote no every single time.

GLENN: Paul Ryan, is he a help, a hindrance, or nothing?

MIKE: Well, look, we will see -- we will see whether this kind of thing continues under his watch. We've got to keep in mind that before he became speaker, a lot of this was in process anyway. A lot of this was in the pipeline. And if this kind of thing continues to happen on his watch, I don't think that's going to be good for him. I -- I hope that he will make sure that this doesn't happen again. Never ever again on his watch.

GLENN: You're running for reelection. Now, let's just play this out. You're running for reelection. And you're the only person that I've -- that I've ever endorsed. And you didn't ask for my endorsement. And you could clearly tell me not to endorse you, if you think that would help you. Anything to help you. But I've never endorsed anyone before, but I've endorsed you.

Now, but let's play this out. Ted Cruz becomes president. One of the Supreme Court justices kick it. And he says, "I want you to be the Supreme Court justice." What do you say?

MIKE: Well, I don't think I know any lawyer, certainly I don't know any law gig who wouldn't be highly flattered by even a hypothetical like that being asked. And I would count myself among those who would be highly flattered by something like that. I would be very grateful. We'll see what happens.

PAT: Can you imagine, Mike, at your age, how the left would react to you being nominated for the US Supreme Court? I mean, you could have 50 years on the court, and I think they would just be delighted with that.

GLENN: Oh, I think --

PAT: Would be delighted.

MIKE: Yeah, it's interesting. I don't think I would be their first choice.

PAT: No. I don't think so.

GLENN: I will tell you, I've had a conversation with Ted about you and others. I said, "We need people like Mike on the Supreme Court, but I don't think anybody has the guts to say -- they'll look and they'll triangulate, "Well, who can I get on," where the left just doesn't move.

PAT: No.

GLENN: And he just smiled at me and he said, "Well, I have the guts." And I believe him. I believe him. So I'm hoping to see you in robes some day and not a bathrobe.

MIKE: Well, thank you. That's kind of you.

GLENN: Yeah.

MIKE: They say black is a flattering color.

PAT: Slimming. I think it's slimming.

MIKE: Yes, exactly right. We all need that.

But, by the way, Glenn, I wanted to mention to you, Sharon and I read The Immortal Nicholas over Thanksgiving. We loved it. It was a fantastic book. Thank you for sending it to us.

GLENN: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. You bet. Thank you.

Okay. So tonight, the debate on CNN, what are you hoping happens? What are you hoping that we talk about?

MIKE: I would like to see a fulsome discussion tonight of how we need to adhere more rigidly to the Constitution, of how a lot of the problems that we've got in Washington relate to the fact that we have ignored the most important features of the Constitution, namely the structural protections in our founding document. The vertical protection, which is federalism, the principle that says most of the powers should remain close to the people at the state and local level. And the horizontal protection, which we call separation of powers. We flip both of those principles on their heads. And I would like to see more of a discussion of that, of the structural deviations from the Constitution and how we need to restore those. The candidate who can make the best pitch for that I think will stand to gain the most from the American people.

GLENN: I will tell you this, Mike, that sounds like riveting television right there.

(laughter)

MIKE: Well, it is. Actually there's nothing cooler from the standpoint of the typical, rank-and-file Republican primary presidential election voter. There's nothing more appealing than someone who is willing to say, "Look, I don't have all the answers. And because I don't have all the answers, I'm going to look to that 228-year-old founding document written by the hands of wise men raised up by their God to that very purpose. And I'm going to return us to that. And here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to put the law-making power back in Congress where it belongs, instead of delegating it to executive branch agencies, where people who are not elected by the people and not accountable to them are making them. And I'm going to put most of the power back, close to the people. If you're from Vermont and you want a single-payer health system, knock yourself out. Do it through the state system, not the national government."

That's the kind of discussion we need to have more of, and I think the American people, regardless of their traditional political ideologies and their partisan affiliations, that's where they want the discussion to go. And that's what intuitively understand when the argument is made.

GLENN: So tell me about this. Because I think we have a real problem with immigration in our country, and I think that we have really bad guys in our country and we have no idea. And my gut tells me, "Shut the system down and cleanse it all. You know, get all the -- fine all the people that have overstayed on visas. Get them out of here. Find out who is here. Then look at how we're vetting everybody and reopen the immigration system."

Donald Trump said we should -- we should stop all Muslims from coming in. Constitutionally speaking, can he even do that?

MIKE: Strictly constitutionally speaking, there have been times when distinctions have been made on religious affiliation, particularly when taking -- when agreeing to take certain persecuted religious minorities. It's also been suggested that for similar reasons, perhaps the government might be able to do that. But I don't think that is the right approach for a variety of reasons.

Number one, as you point out, you've got to fix the problem more holistically than that. And I don't think religious paths, when you're talking about solutions necessarily the way to go. In part because they're incompatible with how we've traditionally treated religion in this country. And part because they're easy to cheat. So I think what you may be suggesting, at least what I tend to believe is that given the security threats that we face right now, we ought to, at least with respect to certain regions of the world that are volatile right now, we have to just halt all immigration until we figure out how to make sure that those who are coming in from those parts of the world present no threat to us.

As some have suggested in the past, when you look at reforms like this, you might analogize it to a leaky basement. If you've got water in your basement, you got to figure out where the leak is. You got to fix the leak before you start bailing out water. And sometimes you've got to turn off the water main for a while while you diagnosis and then address the problem. And I think that's what we ought to be doing here.

GLENN: Senator Mike Lee, always good to talk to you, sir.

PAT: We should get to the real issue though before we get off the phone with Mike. And that's, of course, you attended BYU. Your father was the president at BYU. Who should be the next head coach of the football team at BYU?

MIKE: I was hoping that either you or Glenn might take it.

GLENN: Do you wear black? Because if it's slimming, I'll take the job.

MIKE: That's right. That's right. Look, our friend who is at the Naval Academy, whose name I routinely butcher --

PAT: Niumatalolo?

MIKE: Yes. I think he's an ideal candidate for the job, and I hope he takes it. I think he would do a great job.

PAT: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Appreciate it.

STU: Breaking news.

MIKE: That is, if the two of you aren't willing to take it together.

GLENN: Oh, I think I'd do wonders.

PAT: I'm not sure if the university will be willing to take us.

GLENN: No, I don't think the university would be willing to take us in any capacity.

PAT: Not even allow us on campus.

GLENN: No, not even janitorial service.

Mike, thanks so much.

MIKE: They do need more of a conservative voice on the political science faculty. As an alum of that faculty, I can vouch for the fact that the student body that's fairly conservative, a faculty that is less so. So, you know.

GLENN: Big time less so. Big time less so.

MIKE: Yeah. Yeah.

GLENN: Thank you so much, Mike. Appreciate it.

MIKE: Okay. Thank you.

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.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

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.