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How to Stop the Seismic Cultural Shift Threatening the Next Generation

March 15, 2017
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America is facing a moral and cultural crisis like never before. In his new book, Fault Line:  How a Seismic Shift in Culture is Threatening Free Speech and Shaping the Next Generation, author and journalist Billy Hallowell explores the battle being waged against our foundation through the mainstream media, the entertainment industry and the educational system. He also offers practical steps for all Christians to take and provides advice on how to respond to these growing problems. Hallowell joined Glenn Wednesday on radio for a lively discussion.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN:  I'm going to look something up here.  I'm looking -- I'm reading Billy Holloway's book Fault Line.  And he says how to be able to solve this, one, you have to be informed.  I think we're informed on this story.

PAT:  Yes.

JEFFY:  We are.

PAT:  I think so.

GLENN:  Then don't tell me what you believe, live what you believe.  What are your values and beliefs?

PAT:  Okay.

JEFFY:  We put on the red, white, and blue flag.  We believe in America, amen.

GLENN:  Okay.  Got to make sure you're living it.  

PAT:  Right.

GLENN:  So the people that were wearing the red, white, and blue, they were living what they believe.  It wasn't about -- it was team spirit for their school.  Why is it that somebody else is -- why is there a problem here?  Most likely because people on the other side took offense.  That was coming from them.  Not from the other side.

PAT:  Right.

GLENN:  They took offense to it because they weren't informed on the subject.  They didn't know these guys did this all the time.  And they're not living their principles of, I am a refugee from a very oppressed place, and I'm coming to the United States for shelter.

PAT:  And the United States is taking me in.  So I should enjoy seeing those --

GLENN:  Hello.  I'm grateful that I live in a place with diversity.

PAT:  Yeah.  How about the fact that I'm at a basketball game looking at other students wearing red, White, and blue, rather than I'm looking out the window at an ISIS fighter slicing the head off of somebody?  How about that?

GLENN:  All right.  All right.  All right.  All right.  Okay.  I got it.  

Let me -- can I get Billy Hallowell on?  

Billy Hallowell has a new book called Fault Line:  How a Seismic Shift in Culture is Threatening Free Speech and Shaping the Next Generation.

This is really important to pay attention to.  Because the facts and figures in this book are accurate.  And they are going to fundamentally transform us.  Billy, welcome to the program.

BILLY:  Hey, thanks for having me.  

GLENN:  So let's go to -- you talk about in the book, you say, you know, one of the biggest faults we have -- and I don't want to misquote you, but basically that it is the line between being tolerant and being relative.  And we have slid into moral relativism, where we need to be tolerant, but it has been used against us.  How do we -- first, give me the facts or the stats on this.  And then tell me how to fix that.

BILLY:  Yeah, we've got over half of the country saying that it's up to cultures to figure out what they think is moral.  Right?  So there's this baseline of morality that's completely gone.  I mean, the majority of us are saying, oh, you just have to decide for yourself what you believe to be true.  And that's specifically true with millennials.  Fifty-one percent of millennials believe that truth is relative.  So you have a big problem there.  

And so that's sort of the starting point.  How do we fix it?  Well, you've got to acknowledge the problem first, which is that the Hollywood content we've seen, media universities, all three of those have really reshaped the culture.  We've allowed that to happen.  And we've allowed that to happen because so many of us have disengaged.  

So my big solution to this, and this is from a 30,000 foot level in fault line is that we've got to get engaged.  We have to make good Hollywood content.  We have to make -- you know, get involved in media.  We've got to be professors.  We've got to be out there.  People who are Christians, conservatives, people who are complaining -- you know, it's great to complain, but what are you going to do to fix the problem?

PAT:  Yeah, we got to -- we have to make an impact in the culture.  It's interesting that you note in the book, Billy, that 35 percent of millennials have no faith whatsoever.  They're atheist or agnostics.  Is it 35 percent?

BILLY:  So that number, in fact -- and it's crazy because every two years, you know, a new study will come out.  It was 2015 that Pew first came out saying it was about 34, 35 percent.

PAT:  Wow.

BILLY:  Now we've got a poll out saying it's about 39 percent.  Now, those people are -- and here's sort of the hope.  They're atheist, agnostic, or just unaffiliated.  And the biggest chunk are unaffiliated.  

But those are the people who we're going to lose, right?  If we don't go out there and bring the message to them, we're going to totally lose them.  

But the hope is, hey, they're not agnostic, they're not atheist.  They believe in something.  But because of this chaos that we've created in culture and that we've allowed, they're just not sure what that is.  So would he give you to get that message to them.

GLENN:  But, Billy, I think the churches are approaching -- most of the churches -- many of the churches are approaching these things all wrong.  They're still coming at it with the -- with the -- with the same style of message.  The message has to remain true.  But the same style of message.  And if -- if it's not the same style, it's just the -- the same kind of almost judgmental message.  Except now it has, you know, fog machines and -- and rock bands behind it.  People are not -- millennials are not interested in talk.  They're interested in, show me the results.  Do it.

BILLY:  Absolutely.  And so we've got a lot of Christian actors, which is great, right?  A lot of Christian journalists, which is wonderful.  But we need actors who are Christian, directors who are Christian.  I mean, look at Hacksaw Ridge.  Look at some of these films that tell really good stories.  And I think Christian moviemaking is great.  God's Not Dead.  All that is fine.  If you want to preach to the choir, that's great.  But that is not going to solve this problem.  We have got -- I know you've talked about this a lot over the years.  We have got to get engaged.

And I think the whole point here, you know, with this book is to show the problem, right?  These numbers -- you mention the statistics.  A lot of us don't know.  We kind of have a feeling that Hollywood is off.  The media is off.  Universities are off.  We see these anecdotal examples.  But we don't really have the data.  

And I wanted to really put that data out there and sort of show that there's this triangular dominance and sort of what I call this progressive privilege that has existed in these areas for too long.  And, yes, we've got to complain about that, like I said.  But we have to figure out how to tell the stories and do it in a way that reaches people and shows them, not just tells them, the message.

STU:  There was a video that came out, it went viral, Billy, right after the -- after the election, that I saw a lot of people posting.  And it was -- you know, a lot of the left was kind of coming out and saying, how could this have happened, Donald Trump won.  Here's a guy who, you know, said he was going to grab women in ways and look how crass he is.  How is this -- the culture allow this.  The culture is getting so much more crass.

And this person pointed out, hey, wait a minute.  Have you guys noticed that every piece of our culture -- forget the president -- every piece of our culture has become more and more crass over a long period of time, and it's been cheered on by the left.

And you really go through that in the book, in that the development -- as we've gone through on television and movies, has become much more advanced to that -- the anti-faith sort of side.  And many people haven't even noticed it.

BILLY:  Well, and that's why, you've got to look at the numbers, from like 2007, 2002, to 2014 and 2016.  When you look at what Gallup has measured and others have measured.  I mean, moral acceptability on so many issues.  

Even -- even polygamy, you go down the line, it's insane, because of the relativism, what people are now willing to accept.  We've got, you know, 67 percent of the country saying that having a baby, you know, outside of marriage is morally acceptable.  Seventy-two percent, saying divorce is morally acceptable.  

And these numbers have changed dramatically, even within the last decade, decade and a half.  And we have been pushing -- we have allowed this to be pushed out.  We haven't been effective in our messaging.  

And I think, you know, Fault Line really kind of leaves people convicted a little bit.  And I hope, you know, it has us thinking, how can we do this?  Not all of us can be directors, actors, you know, professors.  But, you know, we have to figure out how -- how we can at least encourage people, good people who have their values in check, to enter into these arenas.

GLENN:  I have to tell you though, Billy, the answer really is living it ourself.

Look, Donald Trump -- you can blame Donald Trump on a lot of things if you want to talk just about him to the left.  You know, they try to, "Well, you take responsibility for him."  You know who Donald Trump is?  Donald Trump is the first Howard Stern president.  That's what he is.

PAT:  Hmm.

GLENN:  He's a guest on Howard Stern that loved Howard Stern.  Played hard.  And we all laughed.  And we all thought it was great.  And some stood against and said, "No, this is immoral.  This is wrong."  And those people were driven out of society because they have sticks up their butt.  But this became the mainstream culture.

And, look, that's just how guys talk.  Yes, they do talk that way.  On Howard Stern.

And now we seem to have a problem.  The left does.  Because they don't -- they don't like that.

Well, okay.  But you -- you were fine with it.  You were totally fine with it in Hollywood.  If anyone dare says like clean films -- or clean pure flicks, whatever that is, where they want to edit and make things less crass, how dare you don't touch my art.

BILLY:  Well, they've created this environment.

GLENN:  Right.

BILLY:  They've created this very environment, which is so fascinating to me.  Everything that Donald Trump has represented and everything that both candidates represented in the general is basically what they have created.

And so they're kind of relishing in that and trying to figure out, you know, well, how did we get here?  Well, turn on prime time TV, and you'll figure out how we got here.  There's nothing you can watch with your kids outside of The Middle and maybe a couple of other shows.  So...

GLENN:  We tried to say that this is why character matters in the '90s when the women's organizations were defending Bill Clinton as just a rogue.

No, that's like saying what Donald Trump said, well, that's all the way men -- no.  If that is the way men behaved, men shouldn't behave that way.  Those are boys that behave that.  Men do not behave that way.  But it requires us to be consistent.  And I like this about your book.

You know, you talk about how most people can't even tell you what they believe.  95 percent of Christians, according to Billy in his book, cannot tell you what they believe.  Well, that's a real problem.

The first thing we need to do is figure out what we believe.  And then live it.

BILLY:  Absolutely.  Living it out.  That's the example we set, right?  So we've got to do that.  And we've got to encourage other people, particularly millennials, because that's the generation this most impacts.  Although, I'm sure the generation behind them will be hit even harder by this.  We've got to figure out how to have that presence.  But doing it by living it first, I think is the most important.  And that's what I encourage in Fault Line.  And people can get more information at HallowellFaultLineBook.com.  

GLENN:  Billy Hallowell.  The name of the book again is Fault Line.  Billy wrote for TheBlaze for a long time.  And I'm so proud of you.  And proud of your success and to see where you're going.  Thank you for everything you're doing.  Billy Hallowell.

BILLY:  Thank you, appreciate it.

GLENN:  The name of the book again is Fault Line.

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

Al Drago / Stringer | Getty Images

Prosecutors stopped a New Year’s Eve bombing plot rooted in ideology that treats the US as an enemy to be destroyed.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that four members of an anti-capitalist extremist group were arrested on Friday for plotting coordinated bombings in California on New Year’s Eve.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspects planned to detonate explosives concealed in backpacks at various businesses while also targeting ICE agents and vehicles. The attacks were supposed to coincide with midnight celebrations.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

The plot was disrupted before any lives were lost. The group behind the plot calls itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front. That name matters more than you might think.

When ideology turns operational

For years, the media has told us that radical, violent rhetoric on the left is mostly symbolic. They explained away the angry slogans, destructive language, and calls for “liberation” as performance or hyperbole.

Bombs are not metaphors, however.

Once explosives enter the picture, framing the issue as harmless expression becomes much more difficult. What makes this case different is the ideological ecosystem behind it.

The Turtle Island Liberation Front was not a single-issue group. It was anti-American, anti-capitalist, and explicitly revolutionary. Its members viewed the United States as an illegitimate occupying force rather than a sovereign nation. America, in their view, is not a nation, not a country; it is a structure that must be dismantled at any cost.

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

“Turtle Island” is not an innocent cultural reference. In modern activist usage, it is shorthand for the claim that the United States has no moral or legal right to exist. It reframes the country as stolen land, permanently occupied by an illegitimate society.

Once people accept that premise, the use of violence against their perceived enemies becomes not only permissible, but virtuous. That framing is not unique to one movement. It appears again and again across radical networks that otherwise disagree on nearly everything.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements do not share the same vision for the future. They do not even trust one another. But they share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed. The alignment of radical, hostile ideologies is anything but a coincidence.

The red-green alliance

For decades, analysts have warned about what is often called the red-green alliance: the convergence of far-left revolutionary politics with Islamist movements. The alliance is not based on shared values, but on shared enemies. Capitalism, national sovereignty, Western culture, and constitutional government all fall into that category.

History has shown us how this process works. Revolutionary coalitions form to tear down an existing order, promising liberation and justice. Once power is seized, the alliance fractures, and the most ruthless faction takes control.

Iran’s 1979 revolution followed this exact pattern. Leftist revolutionaries helped topple the shah. Within a few years, tens of thousands of them were imprisoned, executed, or “disappeared” by the Islamist regime they helped install. Those who do not understand history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it.

ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

This moment is different

What happened in California was not a foreign conflict bleeding into the United States or a solitary extremist acting on impulse. It was an organized domestic group, steeped in ideological narratives long validated by universities, activist networks, and the media.

The language that once circulated on campuses and social media is now appearing in criminal indictments. “Liberation” has become a justification for explosives. “Resistance” has become a plan with a date and a time. When groups openly call for the destruction of the United States and then prepare bombs to make it happen, the country has entered a new phase. Pretending things have not gotten worse, that we have not crossed a line as a country, is reckless denial.

Every movement like this depends on confusion. Its supporters insist that calls for America’s destruction are symbolic, even as they stockpile weapons. They denounce violence while preparing for it. They cloak criminal intent in the language of justice and morality. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The California plot should end the debate over whether these red-green alliances exist. They do. The only question left is whether the country will recognize the pattern before more plots advance farther — and succeed.

This is not about one group, one ideology, or one arrest. It is about a growing coalition that has moved past rhetoric and into action. History leaves no doubt where that path leads. The only uncertainty is whether Americans will step in and stop it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The founders warned us

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

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

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

Not-so-expert advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

A republic no more?

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

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

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choosing death over care

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

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

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

They offered her MAID.

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

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

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

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

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

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Sharia arrives

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

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

The warning from those who have lived under it

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

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

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

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

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

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

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

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

Wake up before it is too late

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.