Imagine a Priceline.com or Upside.com for Everything (Even Health Insurance)

Could an ingenious, buyer-driven consumer experience like Priceline.com or Upside.com solve our health care problem? Serial entrepreneur, historian and dreamer Jay Walker joined Glenn on radio Wednesday to discuss why health care is broken and how his patented business model could go a long way in providing solutions --- but it isn't the entire answer.

"Up to now, Americans have had a lot of choices. But unless they're super shoppers, they never see what their choices are worth. In complicated worlds like buying business travel or buying health insurance or buying medical care, there are millions of choices. You can't figure them all out. Software makes it possible for the first time to find choices that makes sense for you," Walker explained.

However, in the case of applying free market principles to health care, there's a Catch-22.

"We're not in charge of our health care," Glenn said.

Therein lies one of the big problems.

"Glenn, one of the reasons why health care is so broken --- one of the many reasons, but one of the big reasons --- is that the person paying for it isn't the person using it," Walker said.

Glenn agreed.

While most people make a co-payment, it's the government, insurance provider or employer paying the bulk of their medical expenses.

"And what happens when somebody else is paying for something else and I get to use it? I overconsume: give me the gold-plated everything. After all, I want every test, I want every treatment," Walker explained.

The unfortunate reality is that no one knows how much anything ultimately costs.

"You go in and ask the x-ray technician, how much is this x-ray? They have no idea. They don't know. So the seller doesn't know. The buyer doesn't know. Is it any doubt the system has completely run amuck on costs?" Walker said.

In keeping with his systematic worldview, Walker explained how a free market health care system can't solve every problem.

"Again, health and wellness is a system, all right? It's not a binary A or B thing. If you treat your body like a garbage can . . . you're going to get sick, no matter who pays for it. So at the end of the day, this isn't a question of just making sure you're paying the right amount of money. You bet, we've got to make sure rational free market economics, which work for everything well, work for health care. But there are plenty of people who can't afford health care. There are plenty of children whose parents make decisions for them. This isn't going to fix that problem. We have challenges in childhood obesity. It isn't going to fix that problem. We have an opioid epidemic. It isn't going to fix that. So market solutions are critically important --- but they're important as part of the whole," Walker said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.com. 900 patents to his name. Wired magazine calls his library on imagination -- he's an expert on imagination. The most amazing library in the world. He is a techno optimist. He is also the guy who started the new travel website upside.com. Full disclosure, that is a sponsor --

JAY: That's how we met.

GLENN: Yeah, that's how we met. However, the reason why he's here is not for that, it's for a conversation we had -- I said, what's the catch? How is this working? How is everybody making money here? Because you're reducing the time that the person spends from 80 minutes to about -- what are you down to?

JAY: Five.

GLENN: Five minutes to make the decision. You're booking the hotel. You're booking the flight. And you're --

JAY: Saving money.

GLENN: Saving money for the company. And then you're giving an Amazon gift card. And we've done things where it works out to where we've spent $200, with something that should have cost us 1,000 or would have cost us 1,000. It's like -- in the end, it's like a 200-dollar ticket and stay. That's insane.

And I said to you, okay. What -- when it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true.

JAY: Ask extra questions.

GLENN: Correct.

And you said, no, here's how it works. And imagine this with -- with everything.

Explain what that means.

JAY: Up to now, Americans have had a lot of choices. But unless they're super shoppers, they never see what their choices are worth. In complicated worlds like buying business travel or buying health insurance or buying medical care, there are millions of choices. You can't figure them all out.

Software makes it possible for the first time to find choices that makes sense for you.

GLENN: So, but we're not in charge of our health care. So I've been saying, everyone should be -- I want to give $5,000 a year. I'll cover the first -- I'll buy catastrophic for everything else. Give me $5,000 a year. You go spend it.

So when the doctor says, go get this x-ray. I can go get that x-ray here. But if I have a system that says, you know what, if you go tomorrow morning at this location, you're going to pay a fraction of that.

JAY: Glenn, one of the reasons why health care is so broken -- one of the many reasons, but one of the big reasons is that the person paying for it isn't the person using it.

GLENN: Yes.

JAY: And what happens when somebody else is paying for something else and I get to use it? I overconsume. Give me the gold-plated everything. After all, I want every test. I want every treatment.

GLENN: We don't care. Correct.

JAY: So we right at the start -- either the government is paying for it or my health insurer is paying for it or my boss is paying for it.

When you have a system where a single decision by me could be costing $10,000 to somebody else -- and, by the way, not only am I not paying for it, the person selling it to me, the doctor or the hospital, they can't even tell me what the price is. You go in and ask the x-ray technician, how much is this x-ray? They have no idea. They don't know.

So the seller doesn't know. The buyer doesn't know. Is it any doubt the system has completely run amuck on costs?

GLENN: So what we have going on in Washington, you sound like this is the solution that I've been looking for. How are you going to get that when we're headed towards --

JAY: Well, it's not a solution. So, again, health and wellness is a system, all right? It's not a binary A or B thing. If you treat your body like a garbage can, all right? You're going to get sick, no matter who pays for it.

GLENN: Right.

JAY: So at the end of the day, this isn't a question of just making sure you're paying the right amount of money. You bet, we've got to make sure rational free market economics, which work for everything well, work for health care. But there are plenty of people who can't afford health care. There are plenty of children whose parents make decisions for them. This isn't going to fix that problem. We have challenges in childhood obesity. It isn't going to fix that problem. We have an opioid epidemic. It isn't going to fix that. So market solutions are critically important. But they're important as part of the whole.

GLENN: So how do you -- let's stick to market here for a second.

How do you -- how do you correct a system and sell the free market system, when the free market system hasn't really been practiced in this country for a very long time, not in --

JAY: Not in health care.

GLENN: Yeah, not in health care. But in many ways, in many industries it hasn't been practiced in a very long time.

JAY: Many industries.

GLENN: And people are taught that this is the free market system. And they see that it doesn't work. That it just -- it's awful and cumbersome. And they're being taught that, hey, this Marxism idea is a better idea.

How do we tell the truth about the free market system to a -- to a group of people that really don't know and don't really care about what the free market system really is?

JAY: So the answer is telling people who don't want to hear is probably not going to be our winning strategy. Okay?

GLENN: Yes, right.

JAY: It's just not going to be our winning strategy. So we're going to have to offer alternatives that exist against the dysfunctional system. And those alternatives will have to compete to attract people based on cost, efficacy, easiness, and those kinds of things. It churns out -- this system is probably going to do that. The mobile phone, when you add sensors and your ability to actually, within a few years see what's going on inside your body, probably means we're going to have two systems, a public system that is going to be broken for a long time and we should try to improve and a new technology that's going to emerge along the side, where people -- a significant amount of people say, look, I just want better health for my children. And if this helps my kid, then I'm using this system. I don't care who's paying for it. People want their kids to be healthy. People want their parents to be healthy. A little less themselves, unfortunately.

GLENN: You're a historian. You know that we've been around fake news forever. I mean, I have documents of fake news from the Revolutionary War.

JAY: About to say, it was perfectly normal for Thomas Jefferson to create fake news.

GLENN: It happened.

JAY: Hardball those days.

GLENN: Yeah. Your heads -- if you elect John Adams, your children's heads will be on a pike.

JAY: There you go.

GLENN: Hello. So we've had it forever. However, we are now in a system -- you came up with the friend button at Facebook.

Facebook is so freeing and gives people the power to connect with people like you and me and people -- and give people the power to have a voice just as powerful as anybody else's. But it also is -- just because of the algorithms, making everyone's world smaller. And we're hearing the voices that we agree with, and not necessarily the full spectrum. Then you add on top of that, fake news. How are we going to imagine this?

JAY: Well, first of all, let me set it straight. I'm not the inventor of the friend button. Some of the inventions I created led to it. So I don't want to take credit for something I'm not the inventor.

That being said, you're asking a tough question. And here's the question: The weather today is cold and rainy, but the climate is really what matters most here in Dallas, Texas. Right? It might be cold and rainy today, but we live in -- you're in Texas here. We have to remember that when we're hacking away at the weather, we're simply just hacking at the leaves. The climate is really the bigger issue.

And let's talk about the climate. More people are getting more news from more sources than ever before. Yes, some of those sources are being constrained. But if you have confidence in people, you know what, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. We live in a world where the ability to control the news like Nazi Germany or to control what any one person hears is less than ever before.

You know, white men -- old white men in New York City do not decide what's on the evening news anymore. We live in a much more information-open society. Yes, within certain realms, it appears we're being contradicted. We're having bracelets put around the news we see on Facebook, but that's not maybe what we're going to see on Twitter, or something new will emerge tomorrow.

Remember, the phone is going away, Glenn. The phone is an intermediate system. It's just an on-ramp to the network. It's almost certainly going to go to the glasses. And probably with a little thing in your ear, assuming we don't direct connect to the brain.

This is what's really going to happen. You're going to have way more opportunity here, way more people. And these younger kids, they're way more global. Yeah, it's easy to fool some of the people some of the time, but overall, the climate is more open, more information. You know, I don't care whether you're the Chinese government or whether you're a dictator in Africa, you're having -- or Korea. You're having a hard time controlling the flow of information.

GLENN: When you look at the climate, I am a -- I am a -- some would call me jingoistic. I would not. I would call myself proud of the -- the best system that has ever been created to help people explore -- the minute you come up with a better system than our Constitution and the free market connecting Moral Sentiments to Wealth of Nations, I'm in. I'm in. But this is the best that's been created.

But we're now being taught that America -- our children are being taught, America doesn't matter. It's a global community. And it is a global community. But how do we balance a global community with, these principles are global and eternal?

JAY: Well, there you've got the core of the problem. We used to have a much more of a common heritage. We used to have much more of a common heritage. We used to talk about Western values and Western civilization as an absolute good in the larger scheme of history. And we don't do that any longer.

GLENN: Is it an absolute source of good? In the overall picture?

JAY: If you study history, there is no systems, other than ours, that have lifted more people out of poverty, that have given more opportunity to more people who never had opportunity. If you're a woman, you want to be an American. If you're an African-American, you want to be an American (sic). Half the world would like to come to America. I'm not arguing that we're perfect or even better in every way, but what I'm saying is, market-based systems with real competition and checks and balances that in a government that works, has been by far and away the best. System. There isn't anybody in second place, right?

There are just fakes. So at the end of the day, when China wanted to lift hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty, they turned to capitalism to do it. Yeah, they put a Chinese brand on it. But, baby, they unlocked initiative. They unlocked risk-taking. They unlocked imagination at the market value. They opened their borders to global supply. They basically adopted the western system. They just called it the Chinese communist party.

GLENN: A friend of mine went over and talked to the Chinese. This was 2008. And he was very concerned about us.

And Chinese said, you guys might be kicked down. And you might have some time where you're kicked down for a while, but you have something that the world doesn't have. And that is imagination.

JAY: Permission to fail. The big difference in America is, in the rest of the world, when you're a failure, you're dead. You're done. In America, when you're a failure, you're Bill Gates. You're Steve Jobs. You're a failure? Perfect. You've dropped out of school, perfect. We love you. Okay?

America is a country that reinvents itself and has always done so. We believe in the individual. We believe in responsibility.

Look, we're the most charitable nation by far in the world. Just look at the nature of charity in America. Only people of generosity and wealth can be charitable. Most of the world doesn't -- that makes no sense in China, to donate money to a hospital. There are no hospitals in China, paid for by wealthy Chinese. That doesn't work that way.

America does that. And it's because we have permission to try, to fail, to try again. We literally, from the very start in our patent system said, if you can invent something, you don't have to practice it, and you don't have to be rich to get a patent.

GLENN: I think one of the worst things we've done are the bailouts and everything else. And a lot of people will say, because it's not our position as government. But my core on that is I have a right to fail. As much as I have a right to succeed -- my failures are more important to me than my successes. I am who I am today because of massive failures in my life.

JAY: All great hitters strike out a lot. Okay? They swing at the ball, and they strike out. The poor hitters watch the ball go by. Right? The great hitters put it in play, and they're out. But that's no difference than all of us. The fact of the matter is America allows for that.

Now, sure we have bailouts. Why? Because we have a political democracy. And you put enough people out of work, that's a lot of votes going out of work. So there's enormous pressure to not let those enterprises fail.

But we've learned over and over again, even when the largest enterprises in our country have failed over their history or have become irrelevant in their arc of history, the country bounces back. It finds new ways to deploy resources. It motivates people to learn.

In America, everybody wants to be wealthy. They don't want to drag the wealthy down. They want to join the wealthy. That's why America lives the way it lives.

GLENN: Jay Walker is our guest. An inventor. Described as a serial entrepreneur. Founder of Priceline. Founder of upside.com. An imagination expert. Has the library of the history of human imagination. A techno optimist. And we only have about two minutes left. On the other side, I want to come back. I want to ask you, if you're an entrepreneur and you're out there swinging for the fences today, what is the one thing -- one piece of advice that you would give them, to say, "Just focus here, or have you asked yourself this?"

We'll do that when we come back. First, our sponsor this half-hour is Casper. Are you having sleepless nights? Research shows sleepless nights may be because of warmer weather. And if you have a foam mattress, holy cow do you know that. You'll wake up in the middle of December with your windows open, and the top of you will be ice cold, and the bottom of you that's next to the mattress will be boiling hot.

This is one of the first things that Casper tried to do. They wanted the perfect mattress, so they went back to the laboratory, and they came up with a new foam -- two actual high-tech foams that will guarantee that you will sleep cool and comfortable. Then they wanted to see, how can we keep the price down to where normal people can afford a great mattress?

What they did is they cut out the middle man. And they ship right directly to you. So instead of going to some place where they're paying somebody to say, hey, why don't you lay down on this mattress? What you do is you just go to Casper.com, and you buy the mattress.

In 100 nights, you can send it back. They'll refund every single penny. They'll come and pick it up from you if you don't love it. But you're going to love it.

One hundred nights in your home. Try it. See if it doesn't just change the way you sleep and doesn't make you think about, I can't wait to go home and go to bed. Casper mattress. Casper.com. Use the promo code Beck. Get $50 off the purchase of your mattress right now. Terms and conditions do apply. It's Casper.com. Promo code Beck.

(OUT AT 10:52AM)

GLENN: Jay -- Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline and upside.com. Tell me if you're an entrepreneur and you're out there struggling, give me a piece of advice.

JAY: There's only one person that matters, assuming you've got the oxygen you need. Right? The oxygen is the capital you need to do anything. But if you've got the oxygen, it's all about the customer.

People are continuously reinventing how to serve customers. If you serve the customer, you win the game. There are endless ways to serve customers that have never been possible before. And that's what this new technology revolution is doing. It's putting things up in the air that have never been up in the air, that you can actually find customers and serve them. That's the key. Serve the customer.

GLENN: Upside.com. Jay Walker. Great to have you. We'll be on Facebook later today. Don't miss it.

JAY: Thank you.

EXPOSED: Why Eisenhower warned us about endless wars

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Censorship, spying, lies—The Deep State’s web finally unmasked

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From surveillance abuse to censorship, the deep state used state power and private institutions to suppress dissent and influence two US elections.

The term “deep state” has long been dismissed as the province of cranks and conspiracists. But the recent declassification of two critical documents — the Durham annex, released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and a report publicized by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — has rendered further denial untenable.

These documents lay bare the structure and function of a bureaucratic, semi-autonomous network of agencies, contractors, nonprofits, and media entities that together constitute a parallel government operating alongside — and at times in opposition to — the duly elected one.

The ‘deep state’ is a self-reinforcing institutional machine — a decentralized, global bureaucracy whose members share ideological alignment.

The disclosures do not merely recount past abuses; they offer a schematic of how modern influence operations are conceived, coordinated, and deployed across domestic and international domains.

What they reveal is not a rogue element operating in secret, but a systematized apparatus capable of shaping elections, suppressing dissent, and laundering narratives through a transnational network of intelligence, academia, media, and philanthropic institutions.

Narrative engineering from the top

According to Gabbard’s report, a pivotal moment occurred on December 9, 2016, when the Obama White House convened its national security leadership in the Situation Room. Attendees included CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry, and others.

During this meeting, the consensus view up to that point — that Russia had not manipulated the election outcome — was subordinated to new instructions.

The record states plainly: The intelligence community was directed to prepare an assessment “per the President’s request” that would frame Russia as the aggressor and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as its preferred candidate. Notably absent was any claim that new intelligence had emerged. The motivation was political, not evidentiary.

This maneuver became the foundation for the now-discredited 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference. From that point on, U.S. intelligence agencies became not neutral evaluators of fact but active participants in constructing a public narrative designed to delegitimize the incoming administration.

Institutional and media coordination

The ODNI report and the Durham annex jointly describe a feedback loop in which intelligence is laundered through think tanks and nongovernmental organizations, then cited by media outlets as “independent verification.” At the center of this loop are agencies like the CIA, FBI, and ODNI; law firms such as Perkins Coie; and NGOs such as the Open Society Foundations.

According to the Durham annex, think tanks including the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for a New American Security were allegedly informed of Clinton’s 2016 plan to link Trump to Russia. These institutions, operating under the veneer of academic independence, helped diffuse the narrative into public discourse.

Media coordination was not incidental. On the very day of the aforementioned White House meeting, the Washington Post published a front-page article headlined “Obama Orders Review of Russian Hacking During Presidential Campaign” — a story that mirrored the internal shift in official narrative. The article marked the beginning of a coordinated media campaign that would amplify the Trump-Russia collusion narrative throughout the transition period.

Surveillance and suppression

Surveillance, once limited to foreign intelligence operations, was turned inward through the abuse of FISA warrants. The Steele dossier — funded by the Clinton campaign via Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS — served as the basis for wiretaps on Trump affiliates, despite being unverified and partially discredited. The FBI even altered emails to facilitate the warrants.

ROBYN BECK / Contributor | Getty Images

This capacity for internal subversion reappeared in 2020, when 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter labeling the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.” According to polling, 79% of Americans believed truthful coverage of the laptop could have altered the election. The suppression of that story — now confirmed as authentic — was election interference, pure and simple.

A machine, not a ‘conspiracy theory’

The deep state is a self-reinforcing institutional machine — a decentralized, global bureaucracy whose members share ideological alignment and strategic goals.

Each node — law firms, think tanks, newsrooms, federal agencies — operates with plausible deniability. But taken together, they form a matrix of influence capable of undermining electoral legitimacy and redirecting national policy without democratic input.

The ODNI report and the Durham annex mark the first crack in the firewall shielding this machine. They expose more than a political scandal buried in the past. They lay bare a living system of elite coordination — one that demands exposure, confrontation, and ultimately dismantling.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump's proposal explained: Ukraine's path to peace without NATO expansion

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / Contributor | Getty Images

Strategic compromise, not absolute victory, often ensures lasting stability.

When has any country been asked to give up land it won in a war? Even if a nation is at fault, the punishment must be measured.

After World War I, Germany, the main aggressor, faced harsh penalties under the Treaty of Versailles. Germans resented the restrictions, and that resentment fueled the rise of Adolf Hitler, ultimately leading to World War II. History teaches that justice for transgressions must avoid creating conditions for future conflict.

Ukraine and Russia must choose to either continue the cycle of bloodshed or make difficult compromises in pursuit of survival and stability.

Russia and Ukraine now stand at a similar crossroads. They can cling to disputed land and prolong a devastating war, or they can make concessions that might secure a lasting peace. The stakes could not be higher: Tens of thousands die each month, and the choice between endless bloodshed and negotiated stability hinges on each side’s willingness to yield.

History offers a guide. In 1967, Israel faced annihilation. Surrounded by hostile armies, the nation fought back and seized large swaths of territory from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Yet Israel did not seek an empire. It held only the buffer zones needed for survival and returned most of the land. Security and peace, not conquest, drove its decisions.

Peace requires concessions

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says both Russia and Ukraine will need to “get something” from a peace deal. He’s right. Israel proved that survival outweighs pride. By giving up land in exchange for recognition and an end to hostilities, it stopped the cycle of war. Egypt and Israel have not fought in more than 50 years.

Russia and Ukraine now press opposing security demands. Moscow wants a buffer to block NATO. Kyiv, scarred by invasion, seeks NATO membership — a pledge that any attack would trigger collective defense by the United States and Europe.

President Donald Trump and his allies have floated a middle path: an Article 5-style guarantee without full NATO membership. Article 5, the core of NATO’s charter, declares that an attack on one is an attack on all. For Ukraine, such a pledge would act as a powerful deterrent. For Russia, it might be more palatable than NATO expansion to its border

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

Peace requires concessions. The human cost is staggering: U.S. estimates indicate 20,000 Russian soldiers died in a single month — nearly half the total U.S. casualties in Vietnam — and the toll on Ukrainians is also severe. To stop this bloodshed, both sides need to recognize reality on the ground, make difficult choices, and anchor negotiations in security and peace rather than pride.

Peace or bloodshed?

Both Russia and Ukraine claim deep historical grievances. Ukraine arguably has a stronger claim of injustice. But the question is not whose parchment is older or whose deed is more valid. The question is whether either side is willing to trade some land for the lives of thousands of innocent people. True security, not historical vindication, must guide the path forward.

History shows that punitive measures or rigid insistence on territorial claims can perpetuate cycles of war. Germany’s punishment after World War I contributed directly to World War II. By contrast, Israel’s willingness to cede land for security and recognition created enduring peace. Ukraine and Russia now face the same choice: Continue the cycle of bloodshed or make difficult compromises in pursuit of survival and stability.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The loneliness epidemic: Are machines replacing human connection?

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Seniors, children, and the isolated increasingly rely on machines for conversation, risking real relationships and the emotional depth that only humans provide.

Jill Smola is 75 years old. She’s a retiree from Orlando, Florida, and she spent her life caring for the elderly. She played games, assembled puzzles, and offered company to those who otherwise would have sat alone.

Now, she sits alone herself. Her husband has died. She has a lung condition. She can’t drive. She can’t leave her home. Weeks can pass without human interaction.

Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

But CBS News reports that she has a new companion. And she likes this companion more than her own daughter.

The companion? Artificial intelligence.

She spends five hours a day talking to her AI friend. They play games, do trivia, and just talk. She says she even prefers it to real people.

My first thought was simple: Stop this. We are losing our humanity.

But as I sat with the story, I realized something uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve already lost some of our humanity — not to AI, but to ourselves.

Outsourcing presence

How often do we know the right thing to do yet fail to act? We know we should visit the lonely. We know we should sit with someone in pain. We know what Jesus would do: Notice the forgotten, touch the untouchable, offer time and attention without outsourcing compassion.

Yet how often do we just … talk about it? On the radio, online, in lectures, in posts. We pontificate, and then we retreat.

I asked myself: What am I actually doing to close the distance between knowing and doing?

Human connection is messy. It’s inconvenient. It takes patience, humility, and endurance. AI doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t interrupt your day. It doesn’t ask anything of you. Real people do. Real people make us confront our pride, our discomfort, our loneliness.

We’ve built an economy of convenience. We can have groceries delivered, movies streamed, answers instantly. But friendships — real relationships — are slow, inefficient, unpredictable. They happen in the blank spaces of life that we’ve been trained to ignore.

And now we’re replacing that inefficiency with machines.

AI provides comfort without challenge. It eliminates the risk of real intimacy. It’s an elegant coping mechanism for loneliness, but a poor substitute for life. If we’re not careful, the lonely won’t just be alone — they’ll be alone with an anesthetic, a shadow that never asks for anything, never interrupts, never makes them grow.

Reclaiming our humanity

We need to reclaim our humanity. Presence matters. Not theory. Not outrage. Action.

It starts small. Pull up a chair for someone who eats alone. Call a neighbor you haven’t spoken to in months. Visit a nursing home once a month — then once a week. Ask their names, hear their stories. Teach your children how to be present, to sit with someone in grief, without rushing to fix it.

Turn phones off at dinner. Make Sunday afternoons human time. Listen. Ask questions. Don’t post about it afterward. Make the act itself sacred.

Humility is central. We prefer machines because we can control them. Real people are inconvenient. They interrupt our narratives. They demand patience, forgiveness, and endurance. They make us confront ourselves.

A friend will challenge your self-image. A chatbot won’t.

Our homes are quieter. Our streets are emptier. Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

Before we worry about how AI will reshape humanity, we must first practice humanity. It can start with 15 minutes a day of undivided attention, presence, and listening.

Change usually comes when pain finally wins. Let’s not wait for that. Let’s start now. Because real connection restores faster than any machine ever will.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.