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Glenn's Show Prep

Time to Pass the Baton to the Next Hero Generation: The Millennials

October 18, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

It's time to take the plastic off the furniture and turn off the TV set. Millennials are the next hero generation queued up to save the republic. They're depending on older generations to show them the way. They don't care about political parties, they don't care about Ronald Reagan. They care about making a difference. So let's show them how to do it --- the American way.

RELATED: Will Millennials Turn to Capitalism or Socialism on Their Quest for Truth?

Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these questions:

• Do millennials watch television?

• What unrealistic expectations did parents set for millennials?

• Do millennials think older generations are like old grumpy neighbors?

• Why don't more millennials know about Mao Tse-tung?

• Do millennials want your house?

• Does Glenn surf the Kondratiev wave?

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN:  So if -- imagine that you are a -- imagine that you're a millennial, and you're 20-something years old, and you're seeing the world as it is today.  And you're watching people on television -- on television, which is no longer a part of your world.  You go over to your mom and dad's house, and they're sitting on their couch, watching television, which you don't do.  You don't do it.  You don't sit and watch an hour of commercials in a television program.  And so it's already kind of cute and quaint.  It's kind of like going over to your grandparents when they had the plastic on the furniture.  You're like, "They're just old.  Don't -- you know, just go along with it."  Okay?

PAT:  I don't know if it's quite that bad.

GLENN:  It's pretty close.  It's pretty close.  Millennials do not watch television.

JEFFY:  No.  No, they do not.

PAT:  I mean, they watch it less.  But they do watch it.

GLENN:  Not cable news.  Not cable news.

PAT:  Nobody watches cable news anymore.

JEFFY:  No cable.

GLENN:  Yes, they do.  

So the ones who are connected to politics, they're watching cable news.  So they come over from their world into yours, and you're watching cable news.  And you're seeing usually two old white guys and a young person, a millennial, a girl, a hot girl, who isn't talking at all like any of your millennial friends.  Is like old people speak.

PAT:  Uh-huh.

GLENN:  And you're rolling your eyes at her.  Because you're like, "Total sellout."  And the other one -- because you're like, "This is so obvious.  They're saying the same basic thing.  They're arguing over things that -- oh, my gosh, I don't know why my dad does this."  Okay?

That's the world they're coming from.  Then they go to their world where they're listening to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and everybody else saying that jobs are good.  Hey, we're on the road to recovery.  They're massively in debt.  They have -- they are -- they've gone to college.  All their friends have gone to college.  Their friends aren't getting jobs.

JEFFY:  If they are, they're underemployed.

GLENN:  Yes, they're underemployed.  They can't pay for their --

PAT:  And let's not forget, they've been told that which drives me out of my mind.  That their debt is not their fault, they believe.  Which pisses me off.

GLENN:  Well, hang on just a second, they have now -- they see this crushing debt that they have --

PAT:  That they accrued.

GLENN:  Hang on just a second.

PAT:  All right.

GLENN:  That the old world, as they see it --

PAT:  Uh-huh.

GLENN:  -- has been encouraged since they were little, "You got to go to college.  When are going to go to college?  Where are you going to go to college?  Got to go to college.  Got to go to college.  Everybody goes to college.  Got to go to college.  Got to get into a good college."  

Everyone in their life who they're now seeing represented on dad's/grandpa's TV set yelling at each other about a solution that they know won't work, and they think to themselves, "I -- I mean, this doesn't work, and I'm screwed with this debt."  

Meanwhile, while everybody has been saying, "Got to go to college, got to go to college, got to go to college," they went to college.  And where everybody -- where mom and dad said, "This is the best college.  This is a great college."  Those people that mom and dad endorsed taught them that you didn't really incur this debt and this whole system doesn't work.  And so maybe I do know a little bit more than mom and dad.

Even if they don't go that far, they know this system doesn't work, and they don't want to become like mom and dad, who are now in debt.  Dad is still having to work.  Maybe their retirement isn't coming through the way it was.  They haven't really been happy.  Mom or dad have just been kind of tolerating each other for a while, maybe till the kids -- they've drifted apart.  Or maybe they're really happy, but they're -- they are under such pressure with debt because of the house and the lifestyle, that the millennial looks at and says, "Why not just buy a smaller house?  Why -- we didn't need all this stuff, mom and dad.  Why did you do that?"

STU:  It would be great if that's the way they were -- that's the way they were thinking about these things.  It doesn't seem like that's the way they're thinking about it.

JEFFY:  No, it is not.

STU:  Good example of your generational thing.

GLENN:  Some.  Some.  I'm telling you --

STU:  Of course, some --

GLENN:  -- they're being indoctrinated to think the other way.

STU:  Right.  But let's think about --

PAT:  Some believe they're entitled to the house that mom and dad are living in.

JEFFY:  Exactly right.

GLENN:  I agree with you.

PAT:  Move out of that house.

GLENN:  I agree with you.

STU:  Why would you bring that up?  That's a weird thing to bring up.

PAT:  I don't have any examples, no.

(laughter)

STU:  Okay.

PAT:  I just know that exists.

GLENN:  You have five examples.  You have five examples.

(chuckling)

STU:  The generational thing you've talked about many times -- and this is an interesting -- potentially an interesting example of it, the situation -- the old system is faulty.  Right?  We spend all of this money.  We get in lots of debt to get college.  And they agree that that's faulty.  You know what, I agree also that that's faulty.  My, let's call it, generation would look at that issue and say, "Let's execute a cost-benefit analysis.  Is it wise for us to enter into this agreement that everyone is telling me I have to do and acquire all this debt?  Should I consider being educated in a way that is less expensive?  Should I chase a different way of approaching this problem?"

PAT:  Should I have gotten a job in high school and earned money?

GLENN:  Hang on.  Hang on.

STU:  Hold on.  Let me just finish the point.  

They seem to be looking at this as, it's not the idea that college should be required, that's the problem.  The issue is, I just shouldn't have to pay for it.  I completely accept without questioning --

JEFFY:  Yes.

STU:  -- the idea that I must go to college and must do all these things, despite the fact that I'm going to spend 80 percent of my time now doing schoolwork, as has been shown in study after study.  That, I shouldn't question at all.  I should only question the cost I acquire for it.  And that's why we continually complain about them -- millennials looking at socialist solutions.

A real -- a real questioning the status quo, really, is to say, do I need this?  Do I need to do it in a different way?  Do I do it in a way that maybe doesn't --

PAT:  Can I go to trade school?  Can I go to a community college?  

Can I go to a State University where it's going to be cheaper than Harvard?  

JEFFY:  Not without getting a job though.

PAT:  You know.  Right.

STU:  I stopped talking already.  Glenn is giving me that look of how dare you.  How dare you.

GLENN:  No, no.  No, no, no.  

I agree with your point -- I agree with your point of view.  I absolutely agree with your point of view.  Here's where we differ, I think.

STU:  Uh-huh.

GLENN:  Do you know how hard it is to cut your own way anyway?  Everybody likes to think, I'm different.  I'm special.  I'm cutting my own way.

JEFFY:  Right.

GLENN:  Well, first of all, that wasn't true for most of us when it was cool to think that you were different, but this generation, it's not cool to necessarily think differently.  It's to think collectively because of their generation.  Okay?  To make things better collectively.

So they're coming to it from a different place than we are.  It's why -- it's why grandparents usually understand -- have such a great bond with the grandchild.  I've always thought that it's because, "I don't have the responsibility.  So it's kind of fun."  No, it's because it's an 80-year cycle.  Your experiences are closer than the experiences of your children.  It skips a generation because it's an 80-year we/me cycle.  Okay?

So the grandchildren are looking at things much differently.  Our children are looking at things much differently than we are.  We were more independent-minded.

Also, at the time -- at our time, there were more people like Ronald Reagan, who were living this and saying, "Be this.  Do this."  All of society was, "You -- you can do it."  All of society now is, "No, you can't do it, nor should you want to do it.  No man is an island.  You all have to work together for the common good."  Everything is teaching them the opposite.  And on top of it, who the hell do we have on our side that they can -- that they even relate to?

Because everybody that is on our side looks like me, sounds like me, does talk radio, or a stupid talk show on television, that come at that only their dads are watching.  And they think their dad doesn't understand them.

There's nobody positioning themselves on our side that's speaking their language or even doing anything, but, "These crazy kids.  Get off my lawn."  That's who we're turning into, to them.

(chuckling)

GLENN:  Where their professors are all --

PAT:  Well, I don't want them on my lawn.

GLENN:  All the professors are really super cool and telling them all the super cool things they can do collectively.

JEFFY:  That's right.

GLENN:  We're not.  We're not.

We are never going to make an impact trying to speak the language of Ronald Reagan to a group of people who don't -- nor do they care.  And in most cases, have been taught he's a bad guy.  Nobody is going to listen to, "We got to be more like Ronald Reagan.  We need another Ronald Reagan."  They don't even know who the hell that is.  

STU:  I mean, I think that's the point I was making.  In that, that's the generational gap.  Right?  That's the difference.

PAT:  Yeah.

STU:  And it's not just even bringing up Ronald Reagan.  They don't even know who freaking Ronald Reagan is.

JEFFY:  Right.

STU:  I mean, you know, we talked about them not knowing who killed more people, Mao or Bush.  Forty-two percent of people were unfamiliar with Mao.  Almost half of them have never even heard of the guy.  So I'm not -- you're right on language, I think.  What I was trying to define is more of like what their approach is.  And I think you've tried to do this with guest after guest after guest, and Kondratiev wave after Kondratiev wave after pendulum -- all of those things are pointing to the same general conclusion, that these -- that younger voters think completely differently about this stuff.  And, you know, I find it to be problematic.  I think -- I think you're looking at it as, well, how do we win them over, which I think is appropriate and is necessary.  But, I mean, I do think it's problematic.

GLENN:  But there's no -- the question I keep asking -- Kondratiev wave after Kondratiev wave after Kondratiev wave -- and I go back and do my history and look -- you do not beat -- it's like standing in front of the ocean expecting to change the tide.  You're not.

Now, how can you get into the water and work with that tide and that force and perhaps change the direction?  Because that happens every time.  It's why we have the French Revolution and the American Revolution.  Very different things, all the same piece:  We, the people.  We, the people.

That's really important to understand, just that one thing.  That was a generation that understood -- that looked at things as a collective.  

Now, you can push back and say, "Yeah, well, we had the Bill of Rights.  That was all about individual liberties."  

Yes, because they know that the eternal truth was that no one is over you.  But that's why they started it with, "We, the people."  Not, I, the individual:  We, the people.  We'll establish this to protect these things, to protect the individual.  We're going to get together as a collective.  

Now, unless you have somebody who is teaching, "Hey, as a collective, we have to protect the individual."  Because that's all they want to do.  "We want to help the downtrodden.  We want to help."  Great.  Well, there's ways to do that.  And the two times before this wave was the Founders' wave.  

And they said, "We, the people, need to protect the individual and what the individual -- because that is supreme."  Where all of the other generational we thinkers at that time went Robespierre and said, "We are the collective, and we'll crush the individual that stands in our way."  And that's already happening.

You disagree with global warming, they will crush you.  You disagree with Donald Trump, and they will crush you.

We are in that scenario, that always leads to witch hunts and to blacklists, unless somebody on our side is appealing to the youth and knows who they can be.  They've just not had anybody on our side actually reaching out to them and saying, "I know who you are.  You're not who everybody says who you are.  I know who you are.  You are the hero generation.  And people are going to try to misguide you.  We, collectively -- you can change the world and chart the course, away from the death you never learned about."

When somebody teaches you something and you realize that somebody intentionally has kept a very important detail away from you, you don't run into their arms and say, "Hey, thank you for that."  You look at them and say, "What the hell were you thinking?  You didn't tell me about this part?  You didn't tell me about Mao and 100 million people that he killed.  You let me believe that George W. Bush was a bigger killer.  I can't trust you at all."  We have a massive win.  But it's slipping through our fingers every time we betray our values by living something differently than what we say is important.

Featured Image: USA's Gil Roberts (L) grabs the baton from USA's Tony McQuay as they compete in the Men's 4x400m Relay Final during the athletics event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on August 20, 2016. / AFP / PEDRO UGARTE (Photo credit should read PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/Getty Images)

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

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: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

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.

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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.