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Pediatrician: Here’s What Really Happens When Children ‘Transition’

October 18, 2017
Staff

WRITER

It’s one thing when adults experiencing gender dysphoria decide to “transition” to live as the other gender through hormone treatments, operations and makeovers. But what happens when kids say they’re transgender and think they’re ready for hormones that will disrupt their normal growth?

Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, spent 17 years as a general pediatrician with a focus on child behavioral health. She talked about gender dysphoria on today’s show to explain what being dosed with hormones does to kids who aren’t old enough to know their own minds yet.

Schools are starting to teach students from a young age that they can easily switch from one gender to the other.

“It is outrageous; it is terrifying for these young children; it’s a lie,” Cretella said.

Here are more facets of the debate covered in this clip:

  • Why denying the existence of gender is truly anti-science

  • What hormone treatments do to kids’ bodies

  • Why allowing kids to go through normal, healthy puberty is the best option

  • How we can actually help children experiencing gender dysphoria

Listen to the full interview to hear all the details.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: The Heritage Foundation had a talk that they had a pediatrician there. In fact, the president of the American College of Pediatricians, who has received a lot of heat because she said this about transgenderism.

VOICE: As to the studies, there are two that I'm aware of which claim that affirming your child's gender confusion is good for them, number one, it assumes that coaching a child into a fixed false belief is mentally healthy. Science doesn't allow to you assume your conclusion.

Number two, those studies are extremely small. Number three, those studies are very short-term. And number four, the control group of mentally healthy children are the siblings. Most of them are siblings of the trans-identifying child. And there's a number five: The parents were the ones evaluating the mental health of the children.

This is not science. I don't think you need to have an M.D. or a Ph.D. to know, that's not science. That's ideology masquerading as science. Chemical castration, which is what you are doing when you put any biologically normal child on puberty blockers.

GLENN: She went on and had a lot to say. And she joins us now, Dr. Michelle Cretella.

Doctor, how are you?

MICHELLE: Fine. Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

GLENN: So you had to have quite a weekend.

(laughter)

MICHELLE: I -- I'd rather -- I've been at this fighting for the truth on behalf of all children, not only the gender confused children, who are being put on toxic medications, but also for all of our children in the -- in public and private schools, who are now being taught that from preschool forward, they are being taught that you could be trapped in the wrong body.

This is outrageous. It is outrageous. It is terrifying for these young children. It's a lie.

GLENN: So -- so tell me -- tell me what your thought is on those people who feel that they are trapped in -- in the wrong body.

MICHELLE: Well, there's a degree of injustice to them. Let's even back up.

Look, when we're talking about mental health, we should all agree that, A, there is an objective physical reality that we live in. Okay. That's what science is all about. Science about the physical reality we live in.

And to be mentally healthy, at a bare minimum, your thinking and perceptions should be in line with that physical reality.

And here -- transgenderism alone, that psychology and medicine say, you can have a -- a fixed false belief. You can believe something that's contrary to genetics, physiology. You can believe something that's contrary to hard science. And still be mentally well.

That's insanity. If I go to my doctor and say, "Hi, I'm Margaret Thatcher," and you hold a gun to my head, and I still insist that I am Margaret Thatcher, well, I'm crazy. I'm delusional. And my doctor will recognize that and put me on antipsychotics. But if I go in and say, "I'm a man and I insist it, persistently, insistently, versus consistently.

Okay. Yeah. Congratulations. You're transgender. This is who you are.

This is -- it's cooperating. And my colleague and friend Dr. Paul McHugh said it best. He said, it's cooperating with mental illness. And in the case of children, I refer to it as coaching them into a mental illness. As far as I'm concerned, when children say, I'm not my biological sex, or a little boy says, I want to cut off my penis, a young woman says, I'm binding my breasts. I want a mastectomy. That's a cry for help, not a cry for hormones.

They're confused. This is a symptom. They're -- they are emotionally troubled. And it's a cry for help. Not a cry for hormones.

GLENN: Michelle, I -- I -- you know, I am of the mindset that, you know, jeez, what you want to do with your body, I don't -- I don't -- I mean, people, you know, do horrible things to their body. And I -- I think that it's a cry for help, you know, just when I see people who have put, you know, rings through their face over and over and over again. And it's their choice.

There's -- there's a difference, however, when it comes to children. And what we are -- what we are now advocating -- what our doctors are now advocating is sterilization and to -- to actually take really detrimental hormones and -- and change you forever. And you made a great point over the weekend. The American Society of Pediatrics said, you know, we shouldn't -- doctors should discourage kids from having a tattoo because it's permanent and it's scarring.

And yet they'll give a child without parental permission a double mastectomy.

MICHELLE: Right. So you raise several excellent points. Number one, yes, adults -- adults have a maturity, both experiential maturity and cognitive maturity that children and teenagers do not have. This isn't just known through common sense and -- I mean, any -- any mother, school teacher, father, grandparent, knows this. Shakespeare knew it. Okay?

Children are not little adults. And teenagers and adolescents do crazy things. Neuroscience has now proven it. We know this through functional brain imaging, that the risk center and the control -- the frontal lobes are the portions of the brain that control judgment rebuke risk assessment, and self-control. Those don't mature until the early 20s.

So as you said, if we're talking about an adult who is convinced that they are thoroughly unhappy. They believe they're the opposite sex. I still consider that a tragedy.

But if they go forth and they're going to pay out of their own pocket for these surgeries and these hormones because they and the physicians they've consulted think this is all that's left for them, as a society, okay. Okay. I can see that.

But what the College of Pediatricians and I are arguing is specifically what you said. These are children. These are children who need protection and guidance and authentic mental health.

And what's even more important, we know already that the vast majority of young children, up to 95 percent, who are supported through natural puberty, up to 95 percent, certainly well over 75 percent, will accept their biological sex by young adulthood.

So, you know, as you said, to put them on puberty blockers, plus the cross-sex hormones together, if you've never allowed them to mature enough through puberty, you are permanently sterilizing them. A child at age 11, even a child, a teenager cannot possibly comprehend what it means to be permanently sterile.

The same thing with getting a double mastectomy. The same thing -- when you go on these hormones, your risk -- it elevates risk for heart disease. Hypertension or high blood pressure. Strokes. Cancers.

This is crazy. It is absolutely crazy to put children at risk on these high-risk medications, when the vast majority would simply outgrow it with support through natural puberty.

GLENN: I want to come back. We have to take a break. But I want to come back and talk to you.

Because there's a real crisis of suicide -- and I believe it's a loss of meaning in our culture. And what is being pushed in the schools, I think is extraordinarily dangerous. And I want to further that conversation with you, when we continue.

STU: Back with more with Dr. Michelle Cretella here in just a moment. She's president of the American College of Pediatricians. You can follow them on Twitter. @ACPeds.

STU: Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians. Joins us.

GLENN: She was speaking at the Heritage Foundation. She gave quite a stirring talk and caused a lot of controversy online. I can't imagine the -- the hell that your life is, quite honestly. Can you -- can you tell us, first, Michelle, the difference between sex and gender. What's the difference between sex and gender?

MICHELLE: Sure. Sex, quite simply, is biologically determined at fertilization by genetics. Any -- any unborn child who has a functioning Y chromosome is going to develop into a male. And if that unborn child is missing a functional Y chromosome, the child develops into a female. There's nothing -- now, there's nothing in between.

The body declares our sex.

GLENN: Right.

MICHELLE: It's there in our body.

GLENN: Right.

MICHELLE: Now, gender has essentially become a political -- just a political term.

GLENN: Right. When I was growing up, there was -- gender and sex were the same.

MICHELLE: Were the same, yes, exactly.

GLENN: So I just wanted to make sure that I hadn't missed anything along the way, that somebody was taking terms and changing them. Okay.

MICHELLE: Well, this is what happened. Prior to the 1950s, gender was not anywhere to be found in the medical literature. But in the 1950s, that's when sexologists, like John Money and Harry Benjamin were wanting to justify sex reassignment surgery, so-called.

And they needed -- they knew they couldn't -- that you can't change sex. Surgery and chemicals cannot change sex. They knew this.

So they had to invent a term to justify their profiting from this surgery. And so they grabbed on to gender and said, "Oh, gender for us means the social expression of an internal sex identity." And that is what is being put forth now, without any -- it's -- it's made up. There's no such thing as an innate sex identity.

GLENN: Okay. So -- so -- here's the real problem. At seven years old, you know, in my faith, you choose to be a member of our faith at what we call the age of accountability at eight years old. However, there's a lot of people that make a choice early on that, I'm a Baptist. I'm a Catholic. I'm an atheist. I'm whatever.

MICHELLE: Right.

GLENN: And they change.

MICHELLE: Right.

GLENN: No decision that is permanent should be made by a 7-year-old, under any circumstance, or, quite honestly, there would be a lot of us that would be walking around that wanted at seven to be a kitty cat or Batman.

MICHELLE: Right. Right. Exactly.

And that's what I tried to make -- you know, in this debate, we're debating physical reality, the physical reality of sex, versus identity. And identity refers to thinking and perceiving which is in the mind, and that is changeable, okay?

As far as gender identity, meaning recognizing your own sex, the -- the gender experts, so-called, are correct, that most children correctly identify themselves as boys or girls by age three. But what the experts are not saying, is that many children, ages seven and below, do not understand that sex is constant and permanent and stable.

In other words, some seven-year-olds actually believe -- if they watch a man put on a dress and makeup, will actually think, oh, he just became a woman.

So cognitively speaking, it is a process of development. And because of -- that's why it's so damaging, to have three-year-olds being read to by drag queens, particularly when the drag queens are reading these ridiculous gender-bending picture books to them. It is confusing and will derail the normal psychological and cognitive development of those preschool children.

STU: Lifelong decisions should not be made while viewing Peppa Pig is what you're saying?

MICHELLE: Lifelong decisions should not be made by children.

STU: Right.

MICHELLE: Even teenagers. I mean, adolescence is full of changeability.

GLENN: Okay. Hold on for just a second. I want to continue our conversation in just a second. With Dr. Michelle Cretella. She's the president of the American College of Pedestrians. We're going to talk a little bit about what your kids are being taught in school, and how to talk to them about it, coming up.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.