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Illinois Bet the Farm and Lost—You'll Never Guess Who They Want to Pay the Tab

June 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Illinois is facing a fiscal crisis that would see normal businesses shutting their doors and packing up the U-Haul. But states are an entirely different matter. They're not allowed to declare bankruptcy.

Pensions, which a judge ordered must be paid by Illinois, now amount to 100 percent of the state's revenue. Moreover, those pension funds are invested in the stock market and cannot be paid without a guaranteed five to seven percent return --- which is nearly impossible. So lawmakers have come up with a new plan to solve the problem created by an overburdened, overreaching government: tax the rich.

"This is an actual proposal now. They want to tax the rich, but in particular, they are mad at the people who are making so much money on the stock market. So what they're going to do, in Illinois, they are now proposing a 'small' tax of 20 percent," Glenn explained Thursday on radio.

The other proposal on the table is to break up the state and have it absorbed by the surrounding states.

"How many people in Missouri want to now be responsible for East St. Louis?" Glenn asked.

Thanks, but no thanks, Illinois.

GLENN: Hello, America.

Back in -- when I was at Fox, I did a segment on pensions and how pensions were working for fire firefighters and police and everything else. And if you remember, it was like four or five -- when pensions first started, it was like four or five workers would support the firefighter that left. Remember?

The problem is, is that the pyramid has been turned upside down. Now, what's happening, is one person is trying to take care of three or four pensioners. And there's absolutely no way to cover it. The math doesn't work. The pyramid is upside down. And it's a pyramid scheme.

So what did they do? The -- the unions decided that they would take all of the money that was supposed to go to pensions and they would put it into the stock market. And they had to get a return of five to 7 percent a year to be able to cover -- what they said, cover all of the pensions. It still didn't work.

Stu, you're wise enough to -- on money investment. How -- how difficult is it to get a guaranteed return of five to 7 percent a year?

STU: There's actually no such thing as a guaranteed return, in this particular climate, of five to 7 percent a year.

GLENN: Right.

STU: I mean, if it's in the stock market, it's obviously never guaranteed.

GLENN: Right. And in the stock market, or any investment, say I need 7 percent or I collapse every year. Is that something you should put together?

STU: That's a horrific idea.

GLENN: Horrific idea. There's no -- there's nobody in --

PAT: You might get that some years.

GLENN: Correct.

PAT: You might even do better than that some years.

STU: Oh, yeah. And you will.

PAT: But it's almost a guarantee you won't get it every year.

GLENN: So because the pension is upside down, the pyramid pension is upside down, now you have one person paying for three people, it doesn't work. And the stock market has been up and down. You never know if you're going to get five to 7 percent. But if you put your money in, in 2008, when the stock market was, what? At about 8,000.

STU: It was in the 6800 range --

GLENN: Yeah, might have been 6800.

Okay. Today, the stock market is at 21,000.

STU: Right.

GLENN: So you got a pretty good return on your money, don't you think?

PAT: Yeah. Tripled it.

GLENN: Yeah. You put your money into the teacher's union and the teacher's union is invested in stocks, that's fantastic. You went from 6800 went to 21,000. That's probably the best run of the stock market in history.

We were at an all-time high of 21,000. Illinois now has 100 percent of every tax dollar coming in, going out to pay for the pensions. 100 percent of every tax dollar, which means nothing for schools, nothing for roads, nothing for infrastructure, nothing to pay the mayor, nothing but graft now for city council. Nothing. 100 percent.

And a judge has said, "You cannot reduce any of the pensions. They must -- the state of Illinois must pay 100 percent of those pensions," which is now taking 100 percent of every tax dollar to pay.

So now they're saying, "We're going to break Illinois up." One suggestion is we're going to break Illinois up into five separate states and give portions of the state of Illinois. So congratulations, St. Louis, you're going to get east St. Louis as well. And you just to have take care of that.

Or is it -- it's east St. Louis, isn't it? Across the border? Yeah. Congratulations. How many people in Missouri want to now be responsible for east St. Louis?

But congratulations. You might get that. And, you know, it will now be part of your state. Congratulations.

No, thank you. And you can pay for all the pensions and everything there. Well, that's not going to work. The states aren't going to do it. Because every state is in this condition.

So --

PAT: Except for Texas.

GLENN: Except for Texas. Be careful.

Now, what are they talking about -- besides -- they're not going to break the state up. So besides that, what is the state of Illinois suggesting that they do?

The state has a great idea. They say that the wealthy are getting rich off of the stock market. Now, let's remember that the pensions are all in the stock market. So it's not just the wealthy that are getting rich on the stock market. It's the people who have their money in 401(k)s, IRAs, and in pension funds. They're getting rich on the stock market. Or they're at least getting partially paid because of the stock market being run up. So what is Illinois' plan?

Oh, I'll show you next. And show you how this works out, a little like what's happening in London, when we come back.

GLENN: All right. Let me just -- let me just take you through this real quick, and then we're going to get to what lessons did the Democrats learn and where is the world headed.

The problem in Illinois is going to hit every -- is going to hit every state. And it's going to hit every state differently. The pensions -- and we're talked about the fire, the police, all -- all state workers -- the pensions are out of control and have been for a long time. And back in 2008 or 2009, as I outlined, if we don't take care of these problems now, we are going to be facing massive issues in the future and there will be no good outcome. The outcome will be, dump it into the lap of the federal government. That's what I said at the time, 2008, 2009, if you remember that episode.

Well, we're here now. And Illinois, which is the state that I used as the example, is the first one to start to collapse. They have -- the money that they owe people in pensions is going to take 100 percent of the budget, and the state has said that they have to have -- they have to pay these pensions. So that's 100 percent of the budget.

The pensions are invested in the stock market. And for them to pay the pensions -- this is what they claimed -- they needed a five to 7 percent guaranteed return on their money. Well, that's impossible. I mean, that's -- you know, I know the Bernie Madoff. But it's on the road to Bernie Madoff. Nobody can promise you five to seven. But you had to have five to 7 percent in pensions because they wouldn't reduce the pensions they promised everybody. And we all accepted it. And the politicians were too greedy to say these unions are lying to you. You're never going to be able to retire because this is -- this is nothing but a Ponzi scheme.

All right. They're not getting enough of the return. They're not able to be able to make the money when the stock market is at 21,000. The highest ever. And they still can't make these pensions work.

It's not like, we had a crash, and it was unexpected. No, no, no. Highest stock market ever. And it's still not enough.

What happens if we have a correction and it falls to 15,000? What happens if -- let's be crazy and say another, you know, 2008 happens and it falls down to 16800. Or another Great Depression happens.

Well, what happens to then the Illinois pension fund, which is now taking 100 percent of the budget? Is it 200 percent of the budget?

So Illinois has bankruptcy. No, that's not going to work. Because a state can't declare bankruptcy. They can break the state apart. That's not going to happen.

So they're left with taxes. Let's take more from the poor, right? Isn't it the poor?

No. No. Sorry. They want to tax the rich.

Now, who are they taxing? Who are they going to tax? This is an actual proposal now. They want to tax the rich, but in particular, they are mad at the people who are making so much money on the stock market.

So what they're going to do, in Illinois, they are now proposing a small tax of 20 percent.

PAT: Oh, my gosh. On --

GLENN: On transactions in the stock market. Okay.

PAT: Good golly.

STU: What?

GLENN: 20 percent tax over a certain amount for the uber rich.

Well, Stu, you're investing money in the stock market, and Illinois sets a trap up to take 20 percent of your money. What do you do?

STU: Putting my money somewhere else, because even if I'm successful, I lose under this proposal.

GLENN: Correct. If I get a 7 percent return on my money and I want to move my money, I lose an additional 13 percent. I lose the 13 percent -- I'm sorry. No, no, no, wait. I lose -- yeah, 13 percent. Because I've made seven, but they're taking 20. So I've lost 13 percent of my money, even though I gained.

STU: So then, of course, these wealthy individuals do not invest in the stock market. And what happens to the stock market when they don't invest in it?

GLENN: What? What are you talking about?

STU: Yeah, it doesn't stay up. If you start taking millionaires or billionaires out of the stock market, that doesn't help.

GLENN: Yeah. Or because you are taxing the people of Illinois, something else happens too.

STU: People move the hell out of the state.

GLENN: Yes. There we go. They move. They take their crap and they leave Illinois.

STU: Now, that helps the pension funding, right?

GLENN: No.

STU: Because not having those people there -- they're so bad for the economy, those rich people.

GLENN: No. No. No.

So now they're gone.

PAT: Jeez.

JEFFY: Well, we've got to do something about that. We've got to make it so that they can't move.

GLENN: Right. Right. So now there's two problems: That's not going to work. It will only make things worse. And then the state will say, we've got to make it so people can't move.

This is going to be -- there's another problem that is going on. So the state will have to move it up to the federal government because the federal government will be the only one that could be the backstop. Because Illinois is too big to fail. There's another problem.

If I have my pension in the firefighters union or the police union and I'm already seeing in places like Dallas that there's no way I'm going to get my pension, it's starting to collapse in a healthy city, like Dallas. I'm going to do, what? I'm going to ask for my cash payout. I'll take less to get my money now.

So once they start to see what's really happening in Illinois and they realize, this whole thing is going to collapse, all of the people who have pensions are now going to say, "I'm getting my money out now." And that's -- what happens -- what do we call that when it happens to banks?

PAT: Run on the bank.

GLENN: Run on the bank. So what do they do? They usually close the bank so you can't do a run on the bank. And then they tell you, you can only take out a certain amount. So now you don't have a choice anymore.

The federal government will tell you, you can't take the pension money. You can't take a lump sum anymore because it will cause a run on the pensions. So when this happens and you have the stock market -- let's say the stock market crashes and the extra taxes on the rich don't work and then people start to lose their job and lose their money in their 401(k) and you don't have a pension, the federal government is going to bail you out. By putting that much money -- by printing that much money, what happens then again to our money? Because now we're printing millions and billions of dollars, that is going to have velocity.

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.