The Mother of All Financial Bubbles: A Burst of Unimaginable Destruction

Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Chris Martenson with PeakProsperity.com.

At PeakProsperity.com, we pride ourselves on providing fact-based context to breaking important events.

Within 72 hours of the Japan tsunami in 2011, we had analyzed the situation and concluded with high probability that three core meltdowns had occurred at the Fukushima nuclear plant. While it took years for officials to finally admit to the full extent of the crisis, history has validated our initial analysis.

How did we get it right? By using a science-based approach grounded in observation, deduction and a healthy skepticism of what the "experts" in charge claimed. We also went to great lengths to educate our readers about the science in play, explaining in detail how radioactivity and contamination differ, the health risks from such a nuclear accident, and what concerned folks could do to remain as safe as possible.

When California's authorities suddenly reversed course and scrambled to evacuate nearly 200,000 residents living downstream of the Oroville dam, within an hour, we had released an analysis of the situation, explaining the critical differences among the primary spillway, the main dam, and the auxiliary spillway.

Where mainstream media outlets were consumed by covering the Grammy’s, we were able to tweet and blog relevant details to the worried people hungry for information about the dam's integrity, keeping them both grounded and informed:

By 10:00pm that same Sunday night of February 12th, we had shared a series of updates with schematics, images and conclusions that was more complete, accurate and hysteria-free than any other news source we could find at the time.

By the next morning, we had located and interviewed one of America's top dam experts, who provided an absolutely spectacular assessment of the situation at Oroville. That podcast has been listened to by nearly 50,000 people at this point, including residents of Oroville who have used its insights to determine whether or not to return home at this time.

And on top of all this, our own community began filling in the blanks with their expertise. One community member, an emergency worker deployed to the dam earlier this week, has been providing us with valuable insider information that state officials have resisted making public.

The reason I'm relating all of this now is because of the instructive lessons involved. It’s worth noting that communications from officials in Oroville transitioned from a steady, repeated stream of “Everything is fine. There's nothing to worry about” to suddenly “Run for your lives!” within an hour.

Of course, the 188,000 people living downstream from the dam were caught off guard by the mandatory evacuation order. Many left with none of their possessions, only to get hopelessly caught on clogged roads. It was a time of panic and disorder, with no one seemingly in control.

The main lesson from Oroville -- or Fukushima, or Katrina -- is that governments do a poor job of relating accurate information to their citizens when big threats are involved. Part of that is likely due to a desire to avoid stoking fear. Part probably due to politics and bureaucracy. And part probably due to plain old incompetence.

Regardless of the cause, it means that the public -- even the vigilant ones -- suffer information deficits when it matters most. Simply put, the authorities do not share all the facts necessary for making informed decisions.

Which is why our longstanding advice has been a straightforward call to 'trust yourself' when assessing crisis risk. In most cases, good old-fashioned common sense and a little sleuthing will get you far closer to the truth, and faster, than 99% of your peers who are relying on being told what’s happening by those in charge.

In most cases, the information you need to assess the truth will be right there, hiding in plain sight but always obvious in retrospect. This means it’s also available to you in real-time, providing you're willing to trust your own eyes and you know where to look.

Which brings us to one of the truly great risks we're facing today. One with much more destructive potential than a single failed dam but, like Oroville, one the authorities are desperate to keep us in the dark about.

The Mother Of All Financial Bubbles

We are now living through the mother of all financial bubbles. We've been living with it so long now that we have to take three giant steps backwards to even detect its broad outlines.

As a reminder, a bubble exists when asset prices rise beyond what incomes can sustain. Florida swampland in the 1920’s, tech stocks in the late 1990s, or Toronto real estate today -- all are fine examples of this.

The US government and the private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve, in cahoots with a very compliant and complicit mainstream media, are doing everything in their vast and considerable power to convince us that we are living in an golden era of risk-free prosperity. And that tomorrow will be even better.

Now, regular readers of PeakProsperity.com's reports will know there's a mountain of evidence contracting this. But it's critical to understand that this is the same public perception management style as we've recently seen at Oroville: Deny, deny, deny... and then finally admit the obvious.

So let’s take those three giant steps backwards and see if we can spot the flaw in the ‘everything is awesome!’ meme that the Fed et al are trying to paint for everyone by flooding the “markets” with so much thin-air liquidity (between $150-$200 billion a month) that nobody has any clue what anything is truly worth anymore.

Giant Step Backwards #1: Infinite growth is impossible.

This is such an easy concept that I'm continually surprised at how poorly appreciated it is and how much resistance it receives when raised. But it works like this: the earth is a sphere and therefore has a defined surface area and a defined amount of resources available for use.

The availability of these resources ranges across a spectrum from dense/concentrated on one end to dilute/useless at the other. Humans have already extracted and consumed most of the easily obtainable stuff. Now it gets harder.

Regardless of the economics of these resources, they are finite. And as our economic requires resources to function, if we want our economy to grow from here, that means consuming more resources at a faster rate then we have been. If resources are finite, then growth will one day prove finite, too.

This should be utterly, blindingly obvious to everyone. But it’s not, apparently. The Federal Reserve and the central banks in other nations are unified in their call for more economic growth, always and forever. That’s plan A. There is no plan B.

Giant step backwards #2: You can’t print your way to prosperity.

History is replete with the failed attempts of nations to print their way to prosperity. The pursuit operates on the same principle as alchemy: trying to get something for nothing. It has invariably and always ended the same way. In tears.

At first it, issuing more currency feels good because those closest to the money printing get stinking rich while doing practically nothing. As that trickles down, everybody initially feel smart and wealthier. Well, not everybody; but those running the system sure do.

After a while, though, all that feel-good activity is revealed as a fraud. It turns out prosperity wasn't printed, instead it was redistributed. From one party’s pocket into another. And in most cases, from poorer pockets into those of the already-privileged.

The same is happening today with the "thin air" money printing being conducted by the world's central banks. We are now living with one of the most extreme wealth gaps in US history, with the top 1% (really, the top 0.1%) owning a greater percentage of the nation's wealth than they ever have.

But it's even more nefarious than that, because the Fed is not simply stealing from today's public; it is also stealing the prosperity of future generations. When the party being stolen from hasn't been born yet, it can't fight back.

In short, you cannot print your way to prosperity. Yet somehow we've forgotten that. And we're dooming ourselves (and our children and grandchildren) to becoming serfs in the process.

Giant step backwards #3: You can’t grow your debts faster than your income forever.

This, too, should be completely obvious. You know perfectly well it holds true for your personal life or your business, if you have one. And it’s equally true for a nation, which is simply an aggregation of individuals and businesses. But somehow this simple truth has been either forgotten or deliberately ignored by today's economists and politicians.

Our grand experiment in debt-based fiat currency -- unbacked by anything tangible, like gold -- began on August 15th, 1971 when Nixon unilaterally broke the Bretton Woods agreement and forced the entire world off of the gold standard. Not that the world minded much, because this then meant that politicians and monetary hacks everywhere could ignore centuries of economic lessons and begin making exorbitant promises by printing currency like mad.

The giant step towards monetary (and debt) expansion this represented is clear to anybody who can read a chart.

Here’s the total credit market debt in the US. It has exploded higher at a near-perfect exponential rate since that fateful day in 1971:

But what we really need to do is compare debt to income. Remember, you're not supposed to grow the former at faster rate than the latter. So let’s add (nominal) GDP to our chart and see what comes up:

As you can see, those lines began diverging a long time ago (aha! Right around 1971. Imagine that.). They've been diverging at an increasing pace for pretty much the entire adult lives of everybody in power. At this point, our leaders just assume “This is how the world works.”

“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”

~ Vice President Dick Cheney

The little wiggle in the exponential curve there, during 2008-2009, was the wiggle that almost destroyed the world. Our entire system of credit and money came very close to full-scale collapse, simply because it didn't grow for a few brief years. Makes you shudder to think what would have happened had it acutally contracted...

But back to the main point. If we compare the beginning of this wanton debt-binge in 1970 with the state of things today:

We see that debt has shot up by a factor of 40 while income has only increased by a factor of 17. We have indeed grown our debts wildly faster than our income over the past 45 years

And, it should be noted, a lot of that GDP ‘growth’ is the byproduct of borrowing and spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need. Said differently: the debts will remain during any serious future economic downturn but the GDP that is fraudulently based on excessive rates of borrowing will vaporize as if it never existed in the first place.

That, my friends, right there is the very definition of unsustainable.

If something cannot go on, it won’t.

But the Federal Reserve, under the leadership of a pure academic like Janet Yellen, cannot conceive of any approach other than perpetuation the same system that has been in place while she's built her career.

Conclusion

The Fed is desperately seeking to keep the status quo in place, praying that somehow things turn out OK, and clearly scared to death behind the scenes. But, just like the officials at Oroville, when the cameras are on her, Yellen smiles and tells us that all is well.

The Fed has printed as much money as it has dared for the time being. It has since handed the baton over the ECB, and the Bank of Japan, who have stepped in to keep the wheels of the world's debt production well-greased.

Around and around the baton gets passed. And we're told by our government and media that this is all in our best interests. However, the only thing these central banks are truly doing is stealing from savers and the elderly today, and pretty much everyone tomorrow.

What have they done with the trillions in "thin air" currency they have printed up? They handed them to the big banks, to speculators and the already wealthy. Which should come as little surprise. These are the people they count on for their high-status jobs, as well as the big payouts awaiting them when they return to the private sector.

In the meantime, they’ve blown the Mother Of All Financial Bubbles.

This is primarily a bubble in debt (i.e., the bond market). But in its making, new bubbles in real estate, stocks and a whole slew of other asset classes were created.

When these bubbles burst, and they must, it will be a massively destructive event. There will literally be nowhere to hide from the repercussions.

You simply cannot count on anyone in power giving you anything like timely warning or useful advice in advance. You need to find accurate, trustworthy indicators on your own, and then decide how you're going to position yourself, your loved ones, and your wealth accordingly.

In Part 2: How Bad Will It Get? we detail the tremendous scale of the losses that will result when this Mother Of All Financial Bubbles bursts. It will be a traumatizing time for society, and many, many people will see their wealth vaporize.

The key objective at this time is to position yourself for physical and financial safety. For those who do will be in a position to prosper greatly, as well as offer much-needed support to others, when the coming reset arrives.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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: 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.

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.