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Glenn's Show Prep

Adam Corolla and Dennis Prager Hit the Road to Save College Campuses

June 23, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Glenn welcomed Adam Corolla, comedian and former host of The Man Show, to discuss his new project with Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces.

"They're trying to go in and help people think and learn to think on college campuses, and they want to make a movie," Glenn said.

Corolla and Prager will tour college campuses, teaching about the need for open dialogue and ideation --- not safe spaces where people aren't challenged.

"We're going to try to explain is that hard work, values, no safe spaces, a little adversity, a little gravity is a good thing when you're growing," Corolla said.

The partnership between the two diverse men provides an example which Corolla wishes others would embrace.

"You can't get further apart from me and Dennis Prager as human beings," Corolla said. "He's a deeply religious person, I've told him 2,000 times I'm an atheist, and he does not care at all. It does not hinder our relationship or the way he feels about me at all, which is a lesson in these times I would love to get across to the world."

Corolla and Prager are currently raising funds to produce their film --- which includes a humorous approach with deep ideas --- at NoSafeSpaces.com. If you'd like to be a part of the solution, get involved today.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Comedian, radio personality, television host, actor, podcaster, author, director, do you ever sleep, Adam Carolla? Welcome to the program.

ADAM: Thanks for having me, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet. Hey, I want to start with something. We gonna get to No Safe Spaces, and a movie that you're trying to put together with Dennis Prager and some of the things that I think, really brilliant stuff that you're doing. But you're a guy who obviously No Safe Spaces. We have to have a conversation with each other. We have to not be afraid to say the unthinkable. And the only speech that needs protection is the speech that nobody likes. Is there a line in this for you -- and let me take you to what's his face...that just said this in --

ADAM: Johnny Depp?

GLENN: Yeah, Johnny Depp. If you didn't hear it, listen to it.

JOHNNY: Can we bring Trump here?

GLENN: He's in London. He says can we bring Trump here?

JOHNNY: No. No. No. You misunderstand.

GLENN: He says no. No. No. You misunderstand.

JOHNNY: I think he needs help.

GLENN: I think he needs help.

JOHNNY: This is going to be in the press. It's going to be horrible.

PAT: This is going to be in the press. It's going to be horrible.

JOHNNY: When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?

GLENN: When was the last time an actor assassinated the president? And then he says I'm not an actor. I'm a professional liar. But then, he closes this out with -- but maybe it's time that was repeated or something like that. Adam, where do you go with that?

ADAM: Well, I have a couple of thoughts. First off, you have to understand what it's like to live out here in Hollywood. It's like, remember when you're 12 or 13 years old, and you got together and maybe girls are a little more guilty of this than boys, but I can remember doing it when I was 12 or 13 years old. You get together, and there was that one kid you didn't like, and he wasn't at the party, and it was really just a competition to talk more smack about that person who wasn't there at the party. Who can say worse things about bad Ronald at the pool party? And you start getting drunk with this, and it almost becomes a competition, and there's no gravity. There's no push back. It's not like there's a 13-year-old Dennis Prager wearing an old-time, one-piece bathing suit with stripes on it.

GLENN: No, he's the one you're making fun of at the pool party.

ADAM: Yeah, bad Dennis. He doesn't come up and tap you on the shoulder. So it becomes this sort of crazy, insular competition with no gravity and no push back and sometimes someone you take it on the road and puts a microphone in front of you, and you don't realize that you're not in the friendly confines of your backyard swimming pool talking crap about bad Ronald.

So to these guys, Johnny Depp in Hollywood, this is just conversation that you would have on Tuesday, that's number one. Number two, if you really want my honest opinion about this kind of stuff. Johnny Depp, Kathy Griffin, what have you, it's outrageous, and I understand, but I am not outraged. Because these are comedians and actors being stupid, and that's what we do. I don't want to be a hypocrite. It's outrageous, but I'm not outraged. Here's what outrages me. What outrages me is the politicians and the civil rights leaders and the whomever, who talk about, you know, if you're black you have a target on your back, if you're gay, you have a target on your back, this guy's gunning for you. He hates women. He hates gays. He hates Jews. And if you're in this group, you better run serpentine to the mailbox.

Well, that kind of talk will get somebody shot because if you hear enough of that talk, you think -- you compare this guy to Hitler enough. Well, who amongst us wouldn't be a hero for taking out Hitler before he rose to his ultimate power?

GLENN: So is there a limit? I agree with you. I -- it's a really hard line because I agree with your analogy that these guys -- this is the way they talk. And they don't like it when somebody else says the same kind of junk with the same meaningless, mindless rhetoric about their guy, which is outrageous and wrong. But they become so outraged when somebody else says it. And then they say it so flippantly. And they do say it publicly because there is no push back. I don't want to be a push back police but as a society, when society pushes back, and I'm not talking special interest groups, I'm not talking about the law, I'm not talking anybody else when people going, "Ick, Johnny, what the hell is wrong with you?" When there isn't that societal push back, couldn't you spiral out of control and shouldn't there be societal push back?

ADAM: I think there should. I think there is. In a way, I kind of like it because they are with each proclamation and allegation, losing credibility.

GLENN: Yes.

ADAM: I've always used this analogy. There's never been a better time in America to be an actual racist because everybody's a racist now.

GLENN: Yeah.

ADAM: You're getting lumped in with Adam Carolla and Glenn Beck. So, like, what does it even mean anymore? I mean, could you remember what the word racist meant? Could you remember, you know, circa 1997 if you opened a newspaper, and it said this racist comment by this sportscaster, your mind went to the darkest, deepest part of, "Oh what did he shout?" If you opened the newspaper, and you heard a comedian made a racist remark or whomever, especially somebody on the right, would you even bother reading the article? Would you bat an eye?

GLENN: No.

ADAM: Okay. So they've taken one of the most powerful words and completely dumped a sack of flower in it and diminished it completely. I'm sorry I had to pick the whitest powder.

GLENN: It could have been wheat flower.

ADAM: It could have been wheat flower.

GLENN: It could have been blue tortilla flower. Anyway, go ahead

ADAM: Yeah, they took a word that used to mean something and took all the teeth out of it, right? Or most of them, essentially defanged it. And they're doing that with almost everything now. So we used to have to listen when actors spoke. Do we have to listen anymore? I don't mean we had to listen but, you know, this person pulled up to the microphone is going to endorse a candidate. This is going to be a big deal. You want to get his endorsement. Do you even care anymore? Do we need anybody's endorsement?

STU: It's nice to have the freedom to ignore, isn't it?

ADAM: Right so maybe this is a good thing. Maybe Hollywood is just sinking in the ocean.

GLENN: Well, of course. I think it is a good thing, and that's why I've always been a big free speech guy because I want to know -- don't cry racist, don't shut them up. I want to know what people actually believe. Then I can decide myself. I want -- oh, yeah, that guy down the street? He's an actual Nazi. Kids, don't play with his kids. You know what I mean? I want to know who they are. People start to shut up, and then it starts to fester in them, and then it gets really bad.

Let me take you here, though, moving from racism to a broader topic. No words have meaning anymore. Truth has no meaning anymore. Lies have no meaning. Anybody can say anything about anybody, and it doesn't matter. Joanna gains, by the way, is leaving her TV show to go into a facial cream. Now, that's an actual sponsored paid for ad that is being run on several websites, including mine up until this last week. And then we went to them and said you can't run that ad. It's completely false. Do you want our money or not? No. But there's no consequence nympho lies.

ADAM: Well, the, you know, we replace -- it's a very interesting thing -- we replaced I think with I feel. How many times if you had this conversation with somebody where, you know, I see it all the time, right? I say to people, look, this guy on the airplane, the airlines made a mistake. They overbooked it, or they did whatever. But somewhere around the 25th time, the security guard tells you to please stand up and exit the plane, you have to comply. I don't know what the other options are. If you're not going to do it, they have to physically remove you. And the answer when you say when you ask, what would you do if you were there, and they asked someone to be removed from your plane, and they refused? You have to lift them up and remove them from the plane. And the answer I would get from everyone is I just feel like there's a better way to handle this. And the word is feel. And my point is I'm wide open on better ways to handle this. Now you have to tell me how this should be handled. You're telling me I feel like we shouldn't have dropped a bomb in Hiroshima. I feel like the Japanese never should have bombed Pearl Harbor. I feel like the planes should have never hit the Twin Towers. That's what I feel, but I need you to tell me how to stop it.

GLENN: Adam Corolla is joining us. He's looking for some crowd funding and really close to his goal. He and Dennis Prager are putting a film together No Safe Spaces, and they're actually traveling to some of the most dangerous places in the world for ideas, and that is not over in Islamic countries, necessarily. That is in our -- in our own country on the campuses of universities.

[break]

GLENN: What Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager are trying to do is they're trying to go in and help people think and learn to think in college campuses, and they want to make a movie. Crowd funding at Indiegogo. They're making a money. 30 days to raise a million dollars. They're very, very close to their current goal. Adam, tell me about the project.

ADAM: Well, first off, I love Dennis Prager because he has so much wisdom.

GLENN: Yeah.

ADAM: And I wish more people would approach life this way, which is you can't get further apart from me and Dennis Prager as human beings. He's a very religious Jew. I'm an atheist from the San Fernando valley. He grew up on the east coast, he went to great schools, he traveled. I never left North Hollywood. I never went to college. I never learned a second language. I never had a religion. I got dumped off on a construction site and picked up garbage for a living, but I was always a fan of his because I thought the guy had wisdom, and I used to listen to Religion on the Line, his old radio show as an atheist construction worker because I wanted to know. Not just because I wanted to convert, but I wanted to gain some knowledge. I wish more people could approach life this way.

And, by the way, he's a deeply religious person, I've told him 2,000 times I'm an atheist, and he does not care at all. It does not hinder our relationship or the way he feels about me at all, which is a lesson in these times I would love to get across to the world.

I had the privilege of doing some speaking engagements with him. We fell in love with each other. Again, not because of the things we had in common but because of the things we sought after, which is just knowledge, understanding, and he came to me with this project, and I said, oh, my god. I have two 11-year-old twins. We're talking, you know, for the day that they were born, we set up a college fund for them. That was 11 years ago. I'm seriously considering not letting them go to college.

GLENN: I'm doing the same thing. I'm doing the same thing. I mean, I have a 13-year-old and a 11-year-old, and I'm, like, I don't think I want to send them to college. It's going to cripple them.

ADAM: Right and not only that. But, look, if college were free, I wouldn't want them to go.

GLENN: Yes.

ADAM: Not to mention the 50 grand a year or whatever the hell it is these days. Dennis came to me and said we have to do this project. I said Dennis, anywhere you go, I'll follow. And we're going to go to colleges, we're going to speak at colleges, and we're going to -- it's not going to be a straight documentary. There's going to be reenactments, there's going to be young Dennis, there's going to be young Adam. We're going to have fun with it. It's going to be a film, and there's going to be a lot of comedy in it. And if your listeners go to NoSafeSpaces.com, they can go look at -- we already hit Cal State Northridge, so we've been to one college. There's a whole bunch of little two-minute vignettes of us up on stage, and you can get a good idea for our dynamic, and I bring the humor. Dennis brings the thought-provoking conversation.

GLENN: Will you put Dennis Prager on a trampoline, scantily clad?

ADAM: I'll get him back into that one-piece swimsuit he wore in the '40s, and we'll get him on that trampoline.

GLENN: That was good. That was good. All right. So just go to NoSafeSpaces.com. When are you -- when do you think you'd have this done? You get the --

ADAM: I think we're -- yeah, I think we're looking for mid-early 2018. We shot at one college already. And once we secure the funding, we'll get started earnest and hit it.

GLENN: And what are you looking to show in the movie, quickly?

ADAM: You know, part of it is I would like to find -- part of it is I want to see what's going on. I've never been on a college campus before. I just see what I saw on the news, and it seems kind of disturbing. I think what we're going to try to explain is that hard work, values, no safe spaces, a little adversity, a little gravity is a good thing when you're growing.

GLENN: NoSafeSpaces.com. Join the fight right now. NoSafeSpaces.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.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.