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Affluenza kid captured in Mexico

December 29, 2015
Ted Tuttle

Editor

At long last, the infamous "affluenza" teen Ethan Couch may pay for his crimes.

Couch and his mother were detained in Mexico Tuesday morning in the Pacific resort town of Puerto Vallarta. Couch and his mother were being sought by Texas authorities after he disappeared when video surfaced of him allegedly violating his 10-year probation. Texas authorities then issued a warrant for his arrest. Couch, 18, was under probation for a 2013 drunk driving crash that killed four people and drew nationwide attention over his lawyers' use of his privileged upbringing as part of their defense at trial.

The U.S. Marshals Service tracked Couch down using electronic surveillance, including tracking a cell phone believed to be linked to him, an official briefed on the investigation told CNN. The Marshals Service alerted Mexican authorities, who detained Couch and his mother.

Once "affluenza" teen Ethan Couch and his mother, Tonya Couch, are repatriated to the United States, both will be taken into custody, Tarrant County, Texas, Sheriff Dee Anderson said Tuesday morning. Ethan Couch will be put into the juvenile system and appear before a juvenile judge, and his mother will be arrested and face a charge of hindering apprehension.

Couch could face a maximum sentence of four months in the juvenile system, Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson said. Wilson said she wants to move Couch's case to adult court, where the punishment could be more severe.

Doc and Skip, in for Glenn, discussed details of the case on air today. Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

 

 

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

DOC: His name is Ethan Couch. Do you remember Ethan Couch, also known as the affluenza kid. Affluenza teen. Let me refresh your memory. 2013, at the age of 16, Ethan Couch was speeding, driving a pickup truck in excessive rates of speed. He had a blood alcohol level of almost three times the legal limit, which technically there was no legal limit for him because he was 16.

He fatally struck a stranded motorist on the side of the road and also killed three Good Samaritans who had stopped to help the stranded motorist. Yes, at the age of 16, while drinking and he should not have been, while driving, having been intoxicated and should not have been, killed four people. Also, injured several people riding in the truck with him, including one who is permanently brain damaged.

That was Ethan Couch in 2013. At the trial, he was convicted. And he got probation. He got probation because a psychologist said that he can't tell the difference between wrong and right because he's so wealthy, his parents are so affluent, they have raised him in such an affluent environment that he suffers from affluenza.

SKIP: Affluenza?

DOC: Yeah, affluent affluenza, if you will, affluenza because he's so wealthy.

SKIP: It's the rich illness.

DOC: We can't sentence him to jail for killing four people. We can't do that because he's so rich. He doesn't know what's right and wrong. Apparently, you can be so rich, you don't know what's right and wrong.

He was sentenced to ten years probation. Recently, a video surfaced of him showing him at a party likely violating his probation. I'm going to play a little clip of the video. It's very visual, but we'll play a little of the audio for you. And then we'll go ahead and tweet a link to the video so you can see it. The video shows him playing beer pong

SKIP: Yeah, he's playing beer pong with a bunch of people. He's off to the side. I don't know he was in the exact match. But him and his buddies apparently playing the beer pong.

DOC: At 18, possibly drinking, possibly violating his parole. You can hear them partying. Then you hear the buddy at the end of the beer pong table take a run and jump on to the table and it collapses and everybody laughs. Likely in a drunken stupor. Here's the audio.

(laughter)

DOC: He was at this likely violating his parole. After that came out, when faced with questions violating a probation, he disappeared. No one could find him. His mom disappeared as well. Which prompted the county in Texas which he lives in to put him on the county's most wanted list and issue a warrant. Nobody could find him though. His passport gone. His mom's passport, gone. So he and his mommy, 48-year-old Tonya Couch have been discovered. I'm happy to tell you this morning they've found them and they're being detained in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Likely to be turned over to the U.S. Marshal service. The affluenza teen may finally actually pay for his crimes.

SKIP: Which is wonderful. Not since -- not since OJ Simpson had I had the feelings of, wow, the legal system really got this wrong.

DOC: This is unbelievable. If there's anybody in America that actually says, "Oh, I could see he should have only got ten years probation," I would be shocked. Who in their right mind would say that it's any type of consideration when you commit a crime that you're so rich you don't know what you're doing. If anything, couldn't you say that somebody is so poor that they don't know what they're doing. I mean, that's still not an argument. But it's a better one than you're so rich. At least you could say I'm so poor that I was raised in an environment of criminals or I'm so poor I had to do something because I'm so hungry. But to say I'm so rich I'm above the law!

SKIP: And how can this be a defense when -- obviously ignorance of the law is not an acceptable defense. So you not knowing the right or wrong of it too, isn't that kind of in the same vein of ignorance of the law?

DOC: I know one thing, he may suffer from affluenza, but very soon he'll be suffering from arrestogenic shock. Possibly Bubba Love Syndrome.

SKIP: Yeah, probably.

DOC: Well, I don't know if he'll suffer from those. But he'll definitely feel some sort of pain in his lower quardrant. His backside. Something like that. Probably going to happen.

SKIP: The prison shakes, if you will.

DOC: Could be. Could be.

How do you do that with a straight face? I guess the psychologist -- maybe if you're getting paid, you could do it with a straight face. But an attorney, a psychologist -- you know, because a psychologist, you're supposed to be a doctor. What about your oath? And you're really going to throw this out there? I mean, I know you're getting paid by the defense or whatever.

SKIP: Probably handsomely, by the way.

DOC: But still, does your oath not matter to you? Do you have such low standards for your profession that you would throw out there, he's so rich, he doesn't know what he's doing and it's a syndrome, affluenza?

SKIP: And if you do somehow hit the legal lottery that Ethan Couch was able to get the winning chance for, gets that second chance, where you won't be in jail for murdering four people, how then do you continue to just completely not give a damn about anything and flee, continue to drink underage, and then after this not attempt to do a mea culpa with your life.

DOC: What this shows is having affluenza. That the reason or one of the reasons or a contributing factor to him drinking and driving at 16, killing four people and then still not taking responsibility is that his parents have never made him take responsibility. They likely coddled him with their affluent lifestyle. Never forcing him to take responsibility. And by claiming affluenza, where he gets ten years probation for killing four people, once again not making him take responsibility for actions. And because of that, what happened? He still is being irresponsible.

He still has not learned. Many times throughout his life he likely was not taught the hard life lessons of personal responsibility. And that led, at least a contributing factor likely to what happened. And by getting him off with ten years of probation because of your money, power, and influence, once again is doing him and society a disservice, because you don't know what he's going to end up doing. And here he is again proving what we said. He's still not being responsible. His mommy even ran away with him. Do you believe you're 18, you screw up after your parents get you off of this, killing four people, four people -- think about their families. Did they get justice?

Four families going about their lives, likely at least three of them trying to help somebody else out, being Good Samaritans. Now they're gone? This kid gets off. You go through all that. You get so lucky. And then you're still not responsible enough to keep your nose clean and you don't learn a hard life lesson? No. Because they got him off. Trust me, had his ass been sitting in jail for a couple of years, he would have been learning a lesson.

SKIP: Furthermore, the judge who said, okay, this guy did not know the difference between right and wrong, so you're saying that there's a person out there that killed four people, permanently brain damaged his friend, was so irresponsible, does not know the difference between right and wrong because he was -- you're going to put him back out on the street? This kid that does not understand what was right and what is wrong. He's raised in a system that, I don't know if this is a good or bad thing to do. Just put him back out there with probation. How is that in any way -- this guy should be locked up in a mental institute then.

DOC: You're right. If he doesn't know right from wrong and he has the money to travel and do whatever he wants -- what's going to stop him from running another four people over? I don't know.

SKIP: Oh, that was bad? Oh see, I still didn't know because I have the affluenza.

DOC: Oh, I just raped a couple of girls.

SKIP: That's bad? See, because I wanted to have sex with them. They didn't want to have sex with me, but I did. So I just raped them.

KAL: If it was my daughter that did this, I mean, I'm not going to say for sure, but I'm going to say about 90 percent that I think I would have let -- the first part, once you got to the accident, I would have let the sentence go. Let her do whatever they think is justified.

DOC: Uh-huh.

KAL: And the fact that his mother didn't do that just tells you exactly what kind of people they are.

DOC: It's Doc and Skip pitch-hitting for Glenn Beck this morning. Kal is spinning the dials radio style in New York City.

Kal -- if it were one of my sons, I would do everything I could to see them not go to jail and try to help them. You'll just do that as a parent. However, that does not mean they would not be punished. Because, first of all, I would have no reasonable expectation that he would not get punished somehow. And even probation, it's not completely let off but it's soft for killing four people.

KAL: Killing four people. I feel like that's a lesson that needs to be learned. Your parents cannot protect you from something like that. That's something you need to carry with you for the rest of your life.

DOC: Well, as a parent, Kal, I have a question, what do you think -- the mommy fled with him. They used their influence to get him off, hire attorneys, whatever. What did they say to him at the night of the incident? Four people dead, whatever. You bring the kid home. Or the next morning after he sobers up or whatever.

SKIP: Now, Ethan, you shouldn't be doing that.

DOC: Were they even angry? What did they say to him over the months and months during the investigation leading up to the trial? What did they say to him during the trial and after the trial?

KAL: Don't worry. You'll be fine. We'll take care of it.

DOC: But were they angry, Kal? Did they yell at him? Did they discipline him themself?

KAL: I would like to think they would, but the actions I'm seeing doesn't tell me that they did.

DOC: No, I don't think they did. I think they were like, you know what you need, a time out.

SKIP: Go sit in the corner now, Ethan.

DOC: Right. I don't think they were even angry at him.

SKIP: I'm going to take away your Mercedes. You'll have to drive the Jetta now. Okay?

DOC: Let me get some calls in. We'll open the phone lines. 877-727-BECK.

What would you as a parent do and say in this situation? What would you do? What would your parents have done or said to you if you were Ethan Couch? 877-727-BECK.

Doc and Skip pitch-hitting for Glenn Beck today.

Featured Image: Ethan Couch after being detained by Mexico authorities. Source: ABC News/Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The founders warned us

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

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

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

Not-so-expert advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

A republic no more?

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

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

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Sharia arrives

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

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

The warning from those who have lived under it

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

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

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

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

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

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

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

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

Wake up before it is too late

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet return of meaning

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

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

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

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.