History of the Democratic Party: Part I

Progressives have mastered the language of manipulation, always finding a way to turn the narrative in their favor. Remarkably, the party with deep roots in slavery managed to rebrand the Republican Party as racist --- a problem that plagues conservatives to this day. Join Glenn in this serial as he revisits the true history of the Democratic Party and corrects the record.

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GLENN:  Rising from the ashes of the Democratic Republican Party in 1830.  Yeah, the name.  They were together at one time.  Vastly different than they are now.

However, the Democratic Party, now by itself, is by any account unrecognizable from the party at its founding in 1830.

Martin Van Buren built the party around the principles of Thomas Jefferson, intending to follow current president and war hero Andrew Jackson.  So let's cross the threshold of truth here first.

The Democratic Party was pro-slavery, period.  Democrats can say whatever they want about the G.O.P. today, but the fact is, the Democrats were the ones who were pro-slavery, and the Republican Party was instituted to stop slavery.

On the other hand, the early Democrats wanted to emulate Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson and the early party leaders viewed the central government as an enemy of liberty, which is, oh, I don't know, going in the other direction from the Democratic Party today.

They actually believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special interest groups.  Thus, it was to be avoided at all costs.

Now, imagine a Democratic Party that actually feared the concentration of power in Washington.  A Democratic Party that wanted to restore the liberty of the individual, that wanted to end federal support of banks and corporations.

In other words, the Democratic Party wanted government out of the lives of people and out of the economy.

I don't even know what that looks like.  But it certainly doesn't have Chuck Schumer hanging around.  This was a party that disliked the public education reform programs because they feared public schools would interfere with parental responsibility and undermine freedom of religion by replacing church schools with public schools.

It is really hard to imagine any of that, yet that was the initial Democratic Party.  The Democratic Party of today is virtually the antithesis of its 1830 founding principles.  So what happens?  Six words:  William Jennings Bryant and Woodrow Wilson.

But we'll cover that in an upcoming episode.  The Democrats of today like to ignore, even sweep under the rug, the horrible racist origins of their party.  Democrats treated blacks and American natives terribly.  In fact, the first official Democratic president, Andrew Jackson, immediately set the tone for what was to come.

VOICE:  Jackson's administration immediately began expelling Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River.  An issue that defined the new administration.  After he signed the Indian removal act into law in 1830, five large tribes were rounded up and forcibly marched into territories and camps further west.

GLENN:  That action, rounding up minority groups and sending them to camps would become a blight and an ugly stain on several Democratic presidencies, but there was more.

VOICE:  The Democrats' ambitions didn't stop there.  In the 1840s, the party adopted the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the idea that Americans, white Americans, were divinely entitled to dominate the whole North American continent.

Democratic president James K. Polk put this idea into action, massively expanding US holdings by annexing Texas, acquiring Oregon, and winning much of what's now the southwestern US in a war with Mexico.

GLENN:  Andrew Jackson was so dedicated to this hatred of the American native and to removing the Indians from the United States, that he even defied a US Supreme Court ruling against him and the removal.

VOICE:  First major piece of legislation that he recommended and got passed was the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

VOICE:  This act empowered Jackson to forcibly evict all the Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi River.  Five Indian nations were directly affected.

GLENN:  In the beginning, while some of the policies of the Democratic Party, if they had been put in practice, would have led to limited government, a government too small to oppress its people, but in reality, the racism at the heart of the party led to rounding up the Native American, repeatedly lying to them and forcing them from their lands.

VOICE:  Instead of going on the warpath, the way their fathers and grandfathers might have done, this generation of Cherokee Indians took Georgia to court.

VOICE:  The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.  In a historic decision, chief justice John Marshall ruled in favor of the Cherokee saying they didn't have to move.  But Andrew Jackson thought differently.

VOICE:  Jackson sent a marshal.  He made his ruling.  Now let him enforce it.

VOICE:  The result was that they were rounded up at gunpoint and forced to move.  Their property was seized, and they were forced west, of course, on the Cherokee's forced march, about one out of every four Cherokees died en route, which is why they called it the Trail of Tears.

GLENN:  Democrats also supported and continued the policy of enslaving an entire race of people, the despised Confederate flag, came from, say it with me, the Democrats.  Secession, Civil War, Democrats.  David Barton picks up the story in 1854, during the formation of a new party.

VOICE:  In May of 1854, a number of the anti-slavery Democrats in Congress formed a new political party to fight slavery and secure equal rights for black Americans.  The name of that party, they called it the Republican Party.  They called it that because they wanted to return to the principles of freedom and equality, first set forth in the governing documents of the republic, before the pro-slavery members of Congress had perverted those original principles.

One of the founders of that new party was US senator Charles Sumner, who had taken the seat of the great anti-slavery senator, Daniel Webster.  Sumner had a record of promoting civil rights.  In fact, he championed the desegregation of public schools in Boston.  Here is his argument before the state Supreme Court on that issue.

In 1856, Sumner gave a two-day long speech in the US Senate against slavery.  Following that speech, Democratic representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina came from the House, across the rotunda of the capitol, and over to the Senate, where he literally clubbed down Sumner on the floor of the Senate, knocked him unconscious, and beat him almost to death.  Many Democrats thought that Sumner's clubbing was deserved, and it even amused them.

It was three and a half years before Sumner recovered himself sufficiently to return to the Senate.  And not surprisingly, the first speech he delivered on his return to the Senate was, again, against slavery.

GLENN:  It's almost unthinkable that the Democratic assailant was never even charged with the attempted murder of a United States senator on the Senate floor.

In 1856, America would have to elect a new president.

VOICE:  In 1856, the Republican Party entered its first presidential election, and that election, the Republican Party issued this, his first party platform.  It was a short document.  There were only nine planks in the platform, but significantly, six sent forth bold declarations of equality and civil rights for African-Americans, based on the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

The Democratic platform of that year took an opposite position, strongly defending slavery.  Amazingly, according to Democrats in 1856, attempting to end slavery would ruin the happiness of the people.  Despite such clear differences, the Republicans lost that election.

The next year, 1857, a Democrat-controlled Supreme Court delivered the Dred Scott decision, declaring blacks were not persons or citizens, but instead were property and therefore had no rights.

In fact, quoting from this infamous decision, Democrats on the court announced that blacks had no rights, which the white man was bound to respect and the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.

GLENN:  In the historic election of 1860, the Democratic Party continued its proud support of slavery.

VOICE:  In the 1860 presidential election, Republican Abraham Lincoln ran against Democrat US senator Steven Douglass of Illinois.  Both parties, again, issued platforms.  The Republican platform of 1860 blasted both the fugitive slave law and the Dred Scott decision and it announced its continued intent to end slavery and secure equal civil rights for black Americans.

On the other hand, the Democrats and their 1860 platform praised both the fugitive slave law and the Dred Scott decision.  In fact, Democrats handed out copies of the Dred Scott decision, along with their platform, to affirm their belief that it was proper to have slavery and to hold African-Americans in bondage.

GLENN:  Abraham Lincoln won the election, receiving just 40 percent of the popular vote, with almost no support in the South, but 59 percent of the electoral college vote.  By the time he took the oath of office, seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union, and the stage was set for the darkest period in American history.

Next time, we explore the Democratic Party following the Civil War, through the formation of the Klan.  And on to Woodrow Wilson.

VOICE:  Tomorrow on the Glenn Beck Program, in chapter two of the history of the Democratic Party, you'll learn about the racist roots of the party.  Listen live or online at GlennBeck.com/serials.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

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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.

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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

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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.

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Stand up and tell the truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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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.

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The miracle machines can never copy

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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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.

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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.