Tim Kaine Executed His Assignment: Get Sound Bites for New Hillary Campaign Ad

October 05, 2016

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Leon Wolf, new Managing Editor for TheBlaze, joined The Glenn Beck Program on Wednesday for a post-VP debate analysis. Having watched Kaine for some time, Wolf said the Democratic vice presidential nominee didn't seem like himself, diplomatically calling him "grumpier" that usual and "very negative."

"He was a jerk," Glenn added, skipping the niceties.

More importantly, Wolf vocalized what he believed to be Kaine's primary objective during the debate --- and it wasn't to win.

RELATED: Did Kaine’s Debate Plan Include Being the Most Obnoxious Man on Earth?

"I think he was assigned a job going into the debate, right? It's not to win the debate because nobody cares who wins the VP debate. He was assigned the job to get commercial material to cut," Wolf proposed.

In fact, the day following the debate, the Clinton campaign released a new ad showing Pence making contradictory statements.

"So this is the ad that they just released and dumped online . . . you see Mike Pence just shaking his head and denying each one of those charges. And I think, Leon, that was his job, to get a good viral commercial out of it, period," Glenn said.

Read below or watch the clip for answers to these soundbite-worthy questions:

• Was Tim Kaine playing a role?

• Who is winning the Bernie or bust people?

• Does Leon think Hillary or Trump will win?

• What does Jeffy do in cold, dark, lonely places?

• Are Republicans doomed?

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

GLENN: Leon Wolf is with us. He's joining us from RedState, where you helped build that thing along with Erick Erickson, for what? For the last 11 years in.

LEON: Eleven years.

GLENN: And he is now our editor and chief at TheBlaze. And we're excited to have you join us. What did you think of the debate last night?

LEON: Thank you, Glenn.

You know, it's interesting. I think a lot of people's impressions pretty much universally were -- that watched the debate -- were that Mike Pence won. I think he came off better during the course of the debate, just because Kaine -- and I've watched Tim Kaine for a long time -- didn't really seem like himself. He was much grumpier, seems like than he usually -- he was very negative.

GLENN: He was a jerk.

LEON: Yeah.

GLENN: He was a jerk. I mean, I've never seen him -- yeah, I've always heard that he was a nice guy and a gentle guy. You know, a quiet -- he was -- he was a jerk.

STU: He seems to be playing a character.

GLENN: Yeah, yeah.

STU: The same thing at the convention speech, which was weird, he was trying to be goofy and make all these jokes. And here, there was a lot of prepared lines. I don't know if that's just his role in the campaign or what. It's strange.

LEON: Well, I think -- yeah, I think he was assigned a job going into the debate. Right? It's not to win the debate. Because nobody cares who wins the VP debate. He was assigned the job -- was to get commercial material to cut. And that's what we talked about just before the show.

GLENN: So he walked in with a new commercial. And do we have this?

Hillary Clinton is the first on the air with a commercial from last night's debate. Listen. Here it says, Mike Pence realized he was running with Donald Trump last night.

TIM: Let's start with not praising Vladimir Putin as a great leader. Donald Trump and Mike Pence have said he's a great leader. And Donald Trump has --

MIKE: No, we haven't.

DONALD: Putin's been a very strong leader for Russia.

VOICE: Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.

TIM: Donald Trump, on the other hand, didn't know that Russia had invaded the Crimea.

MIKE: Oh, that's nonsense.

DONALD: He's not going to go into Ukraine. You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it any way you want.

VOICE: Well, he's already there, isn't he?

VOICE: Donald Trump has said it?

TIM: A deportation force -- they want to go house to house, school to school, business to business, and kick out 16 million people. And I cannot believe --

MIKE: It's nonsense.

DONALD: You're going to have a deportation force.

MIKE: Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that would punish women.

VOICE: Should the woman be punished?

PAT: Oh, man.

DONALD: There should be some form of punishment.

TIM: More nations should get nuclear weapons. Try to defend that.

MIKE: Well, he never said that.

DONALD: Wouldn't you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons --

VOICE: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?

DONALD: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.

TIM: Donald Trump said, keep them out if they're Muslim. Mike Pence put a program in place to --

DONALD: Total and complete shutdown of Muslims --

TIM: He is asking everybody to vote for somebody that he cannot defend.

GLENN: Okay. So this is the ad that they just released and dumped online, and it's much more effective with the visuals because you see Mike Pence just shaking his head and denying each one of those charges. And I think, Leon, that was his job is get a good viral commercial out of it, period.

LEON: Right. I mean, I think every year, the VP sideshow is much more insignificant than the presidential sideshow. But I think this year, it's doubly so.

Because I think the central question of this election is, can you see Donald Trump sitting behind the desk at the Oval Office after something like 9/11 happens? Is that something you can even possibly conceive of in your mind?

I think that's what the gut check America is being asked to do right now, is. And I think that Tim Kaine, for however he came off in the debate and probably didn't do himself any favors, I think his job was to drive that point home. And he may have scored some effective points along that line.

GLENN: I don't think he changed anybody's mind. I think he hardened people in their own -- I mean, if you were a Trump supporter, you had no problem with Pence saying, "He never said any of those things."

LEON: Well, that's what Pence has to say, right? Because he's a reasonable person. He can't say, "I agree with all the crazy things that Donald Trump has said." His only recourse is to say, "No, he never said those things."

I think that was his only possible --

GLENN: It's our job as human beings to say, "Yeah, Mike. Yes, he did."

LEON: Right.

GLENN: That's the hard thing. These politicians are putting us in a no-win situation because they're in a so-called no-win situation. So they're putting us in that no-win situation. Where we're having to go, hmm, well, he's lying, and he's lying.

I mean, this whole thing about -- I mean, you could make another commercial for Donald Trump where he's saying, you know, the Israelis loved this idea, this deal with Iran, and they've completely stopped.

No, they didn't. No, they didn't. And the Israelis don't love that idea. You know, you could make the same kind of commercial. They're both liars.

LEON: Yeah. In order to win the debate last night, Mike Pence had to prepare to lose the post debate fact-check. That was the position he was in.

GLENN: Yes.

LEON: That's probably the best-case scenario. I think he accomplished that.

GLENN: Yeah. I agree. You know, the blue tie said it all: He had to look stable. And like somebody you could go, I could see him -- as long as he's in the room with him, I would be okay with that.

STU: It's sort of a central thing that's been raised from this election too, is what do you want with people? People you interact with politically. People you interact with in the media. Do you want someone who is going to say that a candidate has lied even if you want that candidate to win? Do you want to go to someone and have a conversation and then they say, "Well, no, actually, let me give you a justification, or I will deny that he said those things," do you want that? Or do you want someone who is going to say, "Look, I want that guy to win, however, he's lying here." That --

GLENN: I want that.

STU: I want that. 100 percent, I want that. That is -- we may be in the minority on that particular point.

PAT: We may be? We absolutely are.

GLENN: We absolutely are.

PAT: We absolutely are.

GLENN: I think there's about 10 percent of the country that wants that.

PAT: They don't care. They don't care how much he lies. And neither do Hillary Clinton supporters.

STU: It's both sides, I think.

PAT: It is.

GLENN: Oh, it is.

STU: Do you think Democrats want to go turn on a media source and hear actually Donald Trump is way worse and Hillary Clinton is telling the truth about her emails, or do they want somebody saying, "Look, Donald Trump is crazy, but, you know what, Hillary Clinton is really bad on these emails. She's handling herself terribly and she's corrupt." I as a Democrat would love that.

GLENN: Right. And it's amazing because we for the last ten years have been saying, is there no one -- is there no one on the left who will say the emperor has no clothes? Is there not one honest journalist? One honest person who says, look, I'm part -- I'm not going to vote for your side, but our side is despicable here.

The answer has been no. No. We've gotten a few journalists who are at least asking some tough questions during the Obama administration, but not really. Not really taking them to task.

There hasn't been anybody on that side. And yet, when you find them -- you worked with Erick Erickson.

STU: Right.

GLENN: RedState's pretty Never Trump. I mean, Erick is taking a bludgeoning for it. A bludgeoning for it.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Our side at least has had a few stand up and go, "I can't play this game. I want my side to win. I think my side is right, but not on this. Because they're lying."

LEON: Yeah, you know, I definitely haven't seen -- and we were told that this was going to be the year that we have all the Bernie or bust people, right? They were like, we're going to stand by these principles, and we'll go vote for, you know, Jill Stein or whoever it is.

I think those people have much more assimilated into the Hillary Clinton machine than a lot of the Never Trump people have --

GLENN: It's interesting.

LEON: Despite what the media would have you believe. Because a lot of them say, well, this movement is dead. It's totally insignificant. And it's not true. A lot of the polls that you show -- that you see, show that one of the fundamental differences in this race is that Hillary Clinton is pulling over 90 percent of registered Democrats, which you would expect. But Donald Trump is pulling between 80 and 85 registered Republicans, and that's a major difference.

GLENN: Yeah. I saw in North Carolina because she is pulling -- she's pulling every black. She's pulling every black in North Carolina. And he is pulling, what? 60 percent, or somewhere in that area of whites.

He's -- they say, it's -- unless he picks up eight points of whites or eight points of blacks or eight points of Hispanics or a little of each, he's not going to make it. That's the analysis I saw last night.

LEON: And he's -- I saw the New York Times -- Sienna did a poll a couple weeks ago. Mitt Romney kind of eked out North Carolina because he won Mecklenburg County and suburban Charlotte white voters by over 21 points. And Hillary Clinton is running even with those voters, with the suburban, kind of wealthy Charlotte area voters.

GLENN: Wow.

LEON: They want nothing to do with Trump. And I live in a very wealthy county myself in Tennessee. And back in 2012, I saw Romney/Ryan signs everywhere. I see maybe two in my entire area --

GLENN: Okay. So but what -- how much -- Jeffy and I were having this conversation earlier today.

JEFFY: Yes.

GLENN: How many people are actually secretly for Trump?

JEFFY: In the cold, dark, lonely place of that voting booth. When it comes down to --

LEON: Right.

GLENN: You know what, I'll never tell a friend that I did it, but I'm voting for Trump because I can't take her.

JEFFY: Right.

GLENN: They'll never put a sign up, but they can vote for him.

LEON: Oh, I have no doubt, he'll win Tennessee, he'll win my county. But the enthusiasm is definitely way down between kind of your core Republican voters, you know.

GLENN: How do you see this? You see her winning or him winning at this point if it was held today?

LEON: I see her winning.

GLENN: You see her winning?

LEON: I see her winning probably by more than what the polls are predicting.

GLENN: And anything that could happen that would change that?

LEON: I think it's difficult. So all the polls basically work on assumptions, right? It's supposedly science. But it's basically an assumption by every pollster on what the electorate will look like. And one of the things that I don't think anybody knows is to what extent kind of Trump's rhetoric about Hispanics is going to affect the makeup of the electorate.

Whites and blacks in this country vote at a rate of 62-63 percent. Hispanics who are legally vote at a rate of about 51 percent. So they are drastic undervoters in this country.

GLENN: Yeah.

LEON: If -- so even though they represent -- Hispanics who are here legally represent about 17 percent of the United States population right now. They tend to pull in nine to 11 percent of the electorate. If they actually become 17 percent of the electorate, this could be a ten or 11-point whitewashing by Hillary Clinton that nobody --

GLENN: I will tell you this, if that turns out like that, the Republicans are doomed from here on out. Because that is the election that has made them Democrat for the rest of their -- for the rest of their life. The rest of their life.

Featured Image: Screenshot from Hillary's new, post-VP debate campaign ad.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.