Micheal Medved Part II: The Most Important Cigars in American History

In Part II of Glenn's interview with Michael Medved, author of the new book The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic, the two radio hosts discuss the role divine providence played in Lincoln's presidency, how Sam Houston went from humiliated drunk to Texas statesman and President-elect Trump's pick for Secretary of State.

"With so many outstanding people that could have been appointed by President-elect Trump, where people would say, terrific, whether it's John Bolton or Mitt Romney, I don't know, even arguably Bob Corker or any of the other people he was talking about, why he has to pick someone who won a friendship award from Vladimir Putin . . . I think this will come out in the confirmation hearings, and that's a good thing," Medved said.

The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic, is available in bookstores everywhere.

Listen to Part II of this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: Michael Medved is with us. He has a new book out called The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic.

Michael, you were just going to talk a little bit about Abraham Lincoln.

MICHAEL: Well, Abraham Lincoln was one of the most unlikely people. In fact, probably the most up likely person to ever become president of the United States. He wasn't a billionaire. He wasn't a celebrity. He was a politician locally in southern Illinois, who had never won statewide office. Had only won one single term, a two-year term in the Congress of the United States. And he saw his own rise to the presidency as -- as an act of Providence, as something remarkable. His contemporaries saw it that way.

And he was haunted with looking for signs of the divine will. And I tell the story in the book of the most important cigars in American history, which were the three cigars that were discovered by a 42-year-old corporal, whose name was Barton K. Mitchell, who's reclining in September 17th, 1862, in an open field in Frederick, Maryland. Reaches out. Finds these cigars in the middle of a field. Has no idea why they're there. Opens them up.

And then his buddy says, "Wait a minute. What are those papers?"

The papers were the lost dispatch, general orders number 181 from Robert E. Lee, which falling into the hands of the Union allowed the Battle of Antietam to happen, which Lincoln told his cabinet was the sign from God he had been waiting for, to free the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation.

GLENN: Isn't humility required for all of this? Because I think that's what scares people when you talk about signs from God. Because Adolf Hitler, he talked a lot about God. He was anti-God. But he used all the rhetoric. And he wasn't a humble man, obviously.

Isn't humility -- you just said, he was haunted by this. He saw it as not him, but as a sign from God. All of the great statesmen, presidents, patriots in our -- in our history have all been deeply humble.

MICHAEL: That's exactly correct. And Lincoln used the term, and he used it more than a dozen times in his public statements and his private correspondence, that he was an instrument. That he wasn't the author of what he was doing. He was the instrument of -- of basically the will of history. Hegel and Tolstoy and great thinkers in the past, who, again, are religiously unconventional, nonetheless say that, "Look, if you look at human affairs and you look at some of the amazing things that have particularly surrounded this incredibly blessed country -- and in terms of America's unique blessings, it's not just Americans who think that.

I cite Goethe, the great German poet, who said very early on in our history, right after America was launched, that there was something special, destined, different about America. That's what America's exceptionalism means. It doesn't mean American perfectionism.

What it means is a very special status for this country, in terms of influencing the rest of humanity.

GLENN: Real quick, tell me one last story. It's in The American Miracle, Michael Medved's new book.

Tell me the story of Sam Houston.

MICHAEL: Well -- well, here, if -- if -- this guy whose Indian name was derisively Big Drunk, who was a Big Drunk. He may have been 6-6.

If he has a successful wedding night and he doesn't go into exile and resign as governor of Tennessee because of the embarrassment surrounding his wedding night -- he never goes to Texas. And where you are today in Dallas, Glenn, is now one of the biggest cities in Mexico.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. I don't know about his wedding night. Can you tell me about his wedding night?

MICHAEL: Yeah. He's Andrew Jackson's protÈgÈ. And he's a hero who miraculously survives battle. And he becomes a young governor of Tennessee. He's a US congressman. He's on the road to the presidency. And he marries the most beautiful young woman in Tennessee whose family is very politically prominent. Something happened on their wedding night where she told a friend the morning after, "I want to kill him." It's something -- and historians have different theories about what actually happened in privacy. In any event, his wife leaves him.

He is so humiliated by that, that he has to resign as governor. He goes into a drinking binge. Goes off to live with the Cherokees. Develops a relationship to native American spirituality. Starts seeing eagles and ravens. His Indian name was Colonneh, the raven. And all of this leads him to Texas.

This is a former governor of Tennessee. And in Texas, he becomes commander of the Texas army fighting for independence. People are slaughtered at Goliad. They're slaughtered at the Alamo, where all the prisoners, everyone is killed. The last chance for that rebellion, which, by the way, was representing a population that was 90 percent American. It was not a Mexican population, though there were Mexican people who were Spanish speakers who were fighting alongside Houston. He wins in 18 minutes this battle of San Jacinto, which remains one of the most remarkable, astonishing, illogical military victories in all of human history and gives Texas ultimately to the United States.

GLENN: He refuses to let Texas join the United States during the civil war though, does he not?

MICHAEL: No. It's quite the contrary. He was opposed to secession. He was -- he was the governor of Texas, at the -- at the time of secession. And he predicted to the South -- he said exactly what was going to happen. He said, "If you secede, you are going to see the destruction of all of your dreams."

And Houston actually was selected by John F. Kennedy as one of his profiles on courage because at the end of his life, he stood up, even though he himself was a southerner. He was from Virginia originally and then from Tennessee and then from --

GLENN: Why did he -- why did he do that? Why did he say, "You have to stay with the United States?"

MICHAEL: Because he believed that America was a God-anointed country. And that to take up arms against this country -- he was a unionist above all else. And that, it seems to me -- one of the great heroes in the Civil War, the Rock of Chickamauga, George Thomas, a Union hero, who right along with Sherman and Grant was one of the most successful generals. He was in Virginia. And, again, a people of conscience in the South understood that the union -- America was the greatest cause worth fighting for.

GLENN: Michael Medved. I'd love to have you down sometime and have you into our vault. We have about 8,000 items from American history that is just -- it's pretty mind-blowing. And I'd love to just take a tour with you and have you tell stories of the things that you find. Because you've proven yourself to be too smart for this program.

All of us are looking at each other -- you're mentioning names. We're all like, of course, that's -- yes, I know exactly who you're talking about.

PAT: I was talking about that yesterday.

GLENN: Yeah. Anyway, Michael, one last question. Can I get your thought on Tillerson? What do you think about Rex Tillerson being Department of State?

MICHAEL: Well, I look forward to the confirmation hearings. Look, I don't understand it. With so many outstanding people that could have been appointed by -- by President-elect Trump, where people would say, "Terrific," whether it's John Bolton or Mitt Romney, I don't know, even arguably Bob Corker or any of the other people he was talking about, why he has to pick someone who won a friendship award from Vladimir Putin, I think this will come out in the confirmation hearings. And that's a good thing.

GLENN: Are you as perplexed as I am on how the right is suddenly fine with Vladimir Putin and we're buddies with Vladimir Putin and, of course, Russia is not doing anything wrong and trying to disrupt our system? I mean, that's crazy talk.

MICHAEL: It is completely crazy talk. And this is not an issue of partisanship. It's an issue of patriotism. Whether you're left, right, or center, people who love America cannot abide with the idea of any foreign nation interfering or attempting to interfere with our election.

And if Mr. Trump were to do the smart thing, it would also be the right thing, which is get out in front of this and say, "Yes, I want as much evidence as I possibly can." And Putin involving himself in American elections and American policy is not legitimate.

And Trump above all saying he puts America first has to put that priority first.

GLENN: Michael Medved, thank you so much. Good friend of the program.

MICHAEL: I appreciate it, my friend. Thank you. And thanks for all of your great work. And I really mean this from my heart: Letting Americans understand that the issues here in our country today go very, very deep and deep into our history.

GLENN: Thank you very much, Michael. I appreciate it.

Michael Medved. The name of the book is The American Miracle.

PAT: Jeffy and I were just talking about the Rock of Cucamonga yesterday or the day before.

JEFFY: Oh, my gosh.

GLENN: Were you talking with Goethe?

PAT: Yes.

GLENN: Yeah, me too.

PAT: Well, I mean, the Gertrude quotes are prevalent on the Rock of Cucamonga.

GLENN: Yeah. I've never heard of the Rock of Cucamonga.

PAT: That's not even what he said.

GLENN: That's not what he said? He said something like that, that I have never --

PAT: It was Chickamauga?

GLENN: I have no idea.

JEFFY: I mean, the former German chancellor Otto von (mumbling). I mean, we quote him all the time.

PAT: Who?

GLENN: He's a brilliant guy. And I will tell you, the stories we will save for another time and maybe after we cross to the other side. Michael Medved is one of the more brave people in America today.

PAT: He's a good guy.

GLENN: He is a very good guy and extraordinarily brave. Extraordinarily brave. And I am appreciative that there are people like him in the world today. Pick up his new book. The American Miracle.

Featured Image: Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Chester French

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.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet return of meaning

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

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

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

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What triggers the Bubba effect

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

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

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

A country cracking from the inside

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

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

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

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

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

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

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

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

How to respond without breaking ourselves

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

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

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.