Does NBC's 'Emerald City' Feature the First Transgender Kid Hero?

April 03, 2017

WRITER

NBC's Emerald City is based on the L. Frank Baum Oz books, which inspired the movie classic The Wizard Of Oz. The TV new series features different versions of beloved characters like Dorothy and The Scarecrow, as well as Tip, a young boy. Tip is a character from the original books who is ultimately revealed as the long-lost Princess Ozma, heir to the throne.

"This kid has been kept by a witch, locked in this room forever, and escaped. She kept giving him this medicine, otherwise, he would die. She was protecting him because he is not a he. He's a she," Glenn said Monday on radio.

In the last episode, the newly transformed Tip wears a dress and says, "I feel like a boy inside. I don't want to be a girl. You don't know the struggle."

While it's unlikely Baum was writing a book about transgendered people, Ozma works pretty well to promote the agenda --- and apparently the network was happy to oblige.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Anybody watch the show Emerald City?

PAT: No.

STU: No.

GLENN: So Emerald City, the end of the season --

STU: What is this?

GLENN: NBC show. So at the end of the season, they had Ozma, who is this princess, okay? She's been lost. Well, you find out that Ozma --

PAT: Is this the spoiler alert for people --

GLENN: Yeah, spoiler alert. Well, I mean, we're going to talk about stuff. We're going to talk about life from time to time. It's an NBC show. And it doesn't really wreck anything.

This kid who has been kept by a witch, locked in this room forever, and escaped. And she kept giving him this medicine. Otherwise, he would die.

She was protecting him because he is not a he. He's a she. So in the last two episodes --

PAT: Oh.

GLENN: She's he -- he is wearing a dress, and he's like, "I feel like a boy inside. I don't want to be a girl. You don't know the struggle."

PAT: Oh, boy.

GLENN: I think it's the first kid trans hero of network television. And notice, nobody is really talking about it.

PAT: No. Nobody cares anymore.

[break]

GLENN: You know what's -- you know what's strange to me is how we have gone from a country 15 years ago and you can look at some of this and say, "This is really good." And some of it, not so good.

We are a country that has such tolerance, that while we are at war with Islam, we need -- and we are Islamists. While we're at war with Islamists, we elect a guy named Barack Obama.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: That it just -- we know the difference.

PAT: Barack Hussein Obama.

GLENN: Yeah, Barack Hussein Obama. We know the difference. It's not like, oh, my gosh. Look at -- they all have slant eyes. Quick, let's put them in internment camps. We're not that people anymore.

PAT: No.

GLENN: We've gone from a country that 15 years ago it was a big deal to have Ellen have a kiss on her show.

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: First lesbian kiss.

Now -- right? Wasn't it, Stu?

STU: Wasn't it Roseanne had the first --

JEFFY: I was just going to say, I think Roseanne did have the first one. But Ellen was --

STU: She was the first openly gay character, I think. That like --

JEFFY: It was a big deal.

GLENN: Was it?

STU: First openly gay character that had her own shoe, I think, was the -- she had some barrier --

GLENN: No, there was some --

JEFFY: She did have the big kiss.

GLENN: I remember -- because I remember there was a show that was important.

JEFFY: That was over the top, yes.

PAT: Yes.

GLENN: And I don't remember what it was.

STU: That was her coming out, wasn't it?

GLENN: I don't remember. But I remember it was a big deal. And even then, I don't think America had a problem with that episode. America had a problem with the agenda, that it just became the agenda, you know what I mean?

PAT: Right.

And what is it, 98 percent of all shows now feature homosexual encounters? I mean, it feels like that. It feels like that.

GLENN: Especially if you watch the BBC, it's almost every show.

JEFFY: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: And I was just telling you about, Oz, I don't know if this is where they're going. But you can't not see the parallels of what we're talking about. Here's something that we are still discussing, transgendered bathrooms.

And, by the way, for anybody who says that, you know, it's not a problem -- did you guys hear the woman from Disneyland. She went to Disneyland.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: She said I was off to the side waiting with the two boys when I noticed a man walk into the restroom.

My first thought was, oh, crap, he's walked into the wrong restroom by mistake. He took a few more steps. At which point, he would definitely notice all the women lined up, and he kept walking.

My next thought was, maybe he's looking for his wife or his child. They had been in there for a while.

But he didn't call out any names or look around. He just stood there off to the side and leaned against the wall. At this point, I'm like WTF.

(chuckling)

GLENN: There is definitely a very large burly man in a Lakers' jersey who just walked in here. Am I the only one seeing this?

I surveyed the room, and I saw roughly 12 women and children in tow, staring at him with the exact same look on their faces. Everyone was visibly uncomfortable.

We were all trading looks and motioning with our eyes over to him. Like, what's had he doing in here? Every single one of us was silent. This is why I wrote this blog.

PAT: I mean, think of that. You're supposed to be okay with that. Right?

JEFFY: Yeah.

PAT: They're haters now. They're made to feel like you're not supposed to say anything. And that's what she kind of goes through here.

GLENN: She says, if this had been five years ago, you bet your ass every woman in here would have been like, what are you doing in here? But in 2017, the mood has shifted. We've been culturally bullied into silence.

PAT: Yep.

GLENN: Women were mid-changing their baby's diapers on changing tables. I could see them shifting to block his view, but they remained silent. I stayed silent. We all did.

Every woman who exited a stall and immediately zeroed in on him said nothing. And why? Because and I'm sure all others were scared of the, what if. What if I say something and he identifies as a woman? And then I come off as the intolerant one in the happiest place on earth.

STU: And I got news for you, in local news reports and national news reports, that would follow. You would be presented that way.

JEFFY: Yes, you would.

GLENN: Yep. Yep.

PAT: And, again, this guy is not identifying -- he's not saying anything about being a woman. He's just being a guy leering at women in the bathroom.

STU: And knowing he can now get away with it.

PAT: Which is what we said would be the problem the whole time.

STU: Yep.

GLENN: An older lady said to me out loud, what is he doing in here? I'm ashamed to admit I silently shrugged and mouthed, I don't know. She immediately walked out. I saw two other people leave with their children.

This is why -- and this is why pushing for laws to allow anyone to use the bathroom, whatever they identify with is absurd and dangerous. Before 2017, we shared the ladies' room with transgendered people, and we either didn't know, or we never said anything because we knew we weren't in danger. It's something you didn't talk about. You just pee and leave.

But the making of a capital case out of it, literally inviting anyone into a female safe space, the government has put women and children at risk for peeping Toms, rapists, pedophiles, drunks, and vagrants. Predators already capitalize and count on women's reluctance to fight back or speak out. Now it's worse because if you do speak up, you'll be labeled transphobic, and the predators know it. She goes on. This is quite an amazing thing.

She goes on. She was for -- she was for, you know, tolerance and everything else.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: She now has experienced for herself. The moral of the story is speak up, ladies. If a man walks into the bathroom, don't stop and think about it. Start yelling, get out, while dialing 911. Take whatever criticism any loon wants to throw at you. Your life and the lives of your children are worth more than public opinion.

JEFFY: Good luck.

PAT: And, again, that happened at Disneyland. Disneyland.

GLENN: So here's what -- and isn't Disneyland the place to go if you're a pedophile? You go by yourself.

STU: I will say, it's not in their advertisements, if that's true. That is not their slogan.

GLENN: No. It's not.

STU: The place to go if you're a pedophile!

GLENN: You know they hang out where there's children.

STU: Well, of course.

GLENN: Just leering at children.

STU: Of course.

GLENN: I mean, it only makes sense.

GLENN: The thing is -- remember when I went over to Auschwitz and I met with the woman, Paulina, she's the -- I know. I'm the only person who can make --

STU: We're joking about a ridiculous Disney slogan. You brought it to Auschwitz in 12 seconds. You're the only person in America who could do this.

GLENN: That's the charm of this show. That's why we are where we are. So, anyway, I brought this -- we met this woman named Paulina. I've told this story a million times. What did she say?

She's a woman who saved the Christians from the Germans.

PAT: She just didn't go off the cliff with the rest of the people.

GLENN: Right. That makes more sense to me now than ever before.

PAT: Yeah. She said, "The righteous didn't suddenly become righteous. We just didn't go off the cliff with the rest of humanity." Meaning, we just stood in place. We just continued to do the things we always would have done. Which is her point.

PAT: And we did something. They hid Jews. We can do something. All you have to do is speak up and say, "Get out of here. Get out. Get out of this bathroom."

JEFFY: Well, the people are speaking up a little bit with their money though because according to Marvel, their sales have been struggling. They've been wanting to sell more comics. And while feminists and progressive activists pushed for more diversity in comics, minority and female heroes, Dan Gabriel, senior vice president of sales, Marvel's core fan base just wasn't interested.

PAT: How about that? How about that?

GLENN: I will tell you this, I talk to Raphe all the time about going to get comic books. And let's get into comic books. Won't do it. Don't know where a local comic bookstore is even in Dallas. But want to go to a comic bookstore and get all the old ones. I don't want the new ones.

Just, I'm not interested. I'm not interested.

JEFFY: Yeah, he said we saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character --

GLENN: Nothing.

JEFFY: -- no sales.

STU: Not interested. Well, because they don't -- no one minds having a different character, having diversity. It's when it feels forced that people reject it.

GLENN: It's an agenda.

STU: When you're trying to make -- you know what, as a comic book, I'm going there -- if I'm going to read comic books, I'm going there to be entertained, be part of the story. You're not going there to be lectured by people about who you're supposed to accept and not accept.

GLENN: For instance -- for instance, didn't have a problem with Ozma from the Wizard of Oz because I don't know if that's the story or if they were trying to make it a political point.

Now, my radar is up on political point, so I thought -- I just assume, this is a political point. Stop it.

However, it might just be that that's logical, if he was -- if she was transformed by a motion into a girl. However, I just don't think that this is -- I mean, five years ago, ten years ago, that story line wouldn't have stuck out at all. You would be like, oh, wow. Yeah, that would suck. You see yourself -- right? But now, is NBC -- and it's NBC, that's another reason. Is NBC now telling us, oh, yes, the planet is on fire. You have to do something about the planet. And the progressive way of life is absolutely the right way of life. And, oh, look, here's this poor little character who is a kid who sees him -- sees herself as a him.

I mean...

PAT: Uh-huh.

STU: Well, it goes to your point -- we talked about this with Beauty and the Beast. Is that everyone was like, oh, there could be a gay character. The story is about bestiality.

JEFFY: Right.

GLENN: Right.

STU: We're all fine with the bestiality story for decades. But it's like, wait a minute. You're starting to see these things because a lot of times it is about agenda. I think it was NBC that aired it a few weeks ago. And I don't know, it was some mini-series about the struggle of gay Americans and something. And, look, there's been -- there are amazing stories in this world. I'm glad they're told. The one about World War II --

GLENN: Turing.

STU: Yeah, Alan Turing, that just came out. I mean, I'm glad these stories are coming out.

However, they just represent it in such a bizarre way. Like, they had this one conversation between like a son and his dad. And I just happened to flip it on. And the son is like, Dad, I want you to know that I'm gay.

No, you will not be gay! I have raised you in a way and you will not tell anyone that you're gay. And it's like, all right. How preachy do we have to be here?

JEFFY: Right.

STU: Like, I get that there have been these -- I get it. I understand. These networks, however, seem to have this idea that if we can tell these stories in the most overt way possible --

JEFFY: Yeah, they do.

STU: Try to make every person who has ever gone to church an alien, then we've accomplished our duty for the week. I mean, that is -- there's got to be some balance there between these two positions.

JEFFY: Remember when you went to Auschwitz?

(chuckling)

GLENN: Shut up, Jeffy.

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.

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