Could Democratic Leaders’ Choice for SOTU Rebuttal Be More out of Touch?

Why can’t the Democratic Party let go of the past?

Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.) was chosen to give the Democrats’ response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, a puzzling decision that shows a toxic attachment to political dynasties.

“If you’re going after white, wealthy and privilege, you don’t pick a Kennedy to deliver the message,” Glenn said on today’s show. “Democrats continue to claim that they are the party of diversity and the poor, but last night, the grandson of Robert Kennedy was hand-picked of course by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: So I just -- I -- we assigned this out. We assigned this out.

STU: Full disclosure here.

GLENN: To watch Kennedy last night.

Did you notice, there was something wrong with -- maybe it was just the way the lights were on him, I don't know.

So Joe Kennedy last night delivered the address. And, you know, it -- I don't think anybody was watching by that time. And here to talk about it, the man we assigned is Jeff Fisher. Hello, Jeffy, how are you?

JEFFY: I'm fine. Thank you. And, you know, hey, this country from textiles to robots is a place that knows how to make great things. I mean, he told us that.

GLENN: Yeah.

JEFFY: And, you know, we believe that.

STU: It's amazing to have someone actually watch the -- the -- to watch this and not have to actually deal with viewing it myself. Because I did not -- I did not want to hear any of the content of it. I kind of figured it would be, oh, textiles.

GLENN: I'm kind of disappointed because -- you know, because it was Kennedy. It was -- at least was he any good at it, Jeffy?

JEFFY: Look, it would be easy to dismiss the past year as chaos, Glenn. Partisan politics. But for them, dignity isn't something you're born with, but something you measure by your net worth, your celebrity, your headlines, your crowd size.

GLENN: Wow.

STU: Because the Democrats have not played any identity politics when it comes to celebrity. They didn't have the first celebrity president or anything.

That's not how they promoted Barack Obama with his giant rallies or anything like that. No, this is all new. This is only -- only Donald Trump, a brand-new for Republicans.

GLENN: Right. So what else did he talk about?

JEFFY: Look, they're turning American life into a zero sum game, Glenn, where in order to win, another must lose. Where we can guarantee America's safety, if we slash our safety net. Coal miners, our single moms --

GLENN: Uh-huh. You know, can I just ask a question? Is it like Jeffy even watched this, or is he just quoting everything?

STU: It does sort of feel like potentially Jeffy -- well, he certainly is -- he definitely -- he definitely -- I could say this --

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: He definitely saw the video of it. I'm sensing from -- as we talk to him, I'm getting -- he definitely saw the video.

GLENN: I didn't see the video.

JEFFY: Well, look, we choose an economy strong enough to boast record stock prices and brave enough to admit the top CEO is making 300 times the average worker is not right, Glenn. You know that.

GLENN: Right. Right.

JEFFY: And I would just like to say to all the dreamers, let me be clear --

GLENN: Look in the camera when you say that, will you? This camera over here.

JEFFY: This camera here?

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

JEFFY: I'd like to just say to all the Dreamers, (foreign language).

GLENN: Oh, he did not.

STU: No, he did not.

GLENN: No, he did not. No, he did not.

STU: Oh, you want to talk about pandering.

GLENN: No! He did not.

STU: He actually went to -- so you're saying he -- this is amazing, he actually broke into the Spanish to pander even more to the Dreamers. Which, again, we already found out in the Trump part of the speech, that saying that Americans can be dreamers too is incredibly offensive. And now apparently so offensive, that they had to double pander to the Hispanic audience by actually breaking into -- I just --

GLENN: I do have to -- I do have to point out. I do have to point out that last night -- I mean, I -- I saw a little bit of it this morning. I didn't watch the whole thing. But it was like -- it was like Joe Kennedy had a Chapstick accident.

STU: It did --

GLENN: Did you notice that, Jeffy? Do you think people --

JEFFY: I don't think anybody noticed. I think everybody heard the words that he said about proudly marching together.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

JEFFY: Thousands deep in the streets of Vegas, Philadelphia, Nashville. I think they all heard that. They paid -- I mean, looks, you're not supposed to pay attention to that.

STU: When people quote Joe Kennedy's words, they tend to have -- they tend to have a little bit of a -- I don't know if I would call it an accident. But they seem to have an issue with Chapstick when they quote his --

GLENN: Jeffy, did you see any of that?

JEFFY: I did not. Look, politicians can be cheered for the promises they make. Our country will be judged by the promises we keep.

GLENN: All right. Jeffy, thank you so much. It's been --

JEFFY: You build a wall. We'll tear it down.

GLENN: All right. Thank you.

STU: I will say this, I wouldn't normally recommend people view a Jeffy segment, instead of just listening. But --

(laughter)

GLENN: But this is -- yeah, thank you for the update. I appreciate it.

JEFFY: You're welcome. I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to do it.

STU: Joe Kennedy.

GLENN: If you think you may have missed some of that, we just gave you the information, so we've fulfilled our obligation here.

But there might have been a little mocking going on visually.

STU: Possibly.

GLENN: Visually, a little bit of mocking.

STU: You look great though, Jeffy. You look great.

GLENN: So seriously, the Chapstick thing, what happened? It just started spreading all over his face. Almost like in clumps.

STU: It made it actually worse in a way.

GLENN: It did. It did.

First, I thought, is he drooling? Is it spital? No.

JEFFY: No one heard a word he said. The entire country just --

STU: That is what happened. Because this happened once to Ted Cruz.

You remember this? During one of the debates, he had a little bit of spittle on his lips. And he was having a great debate at the time --

GLENN: He had that little white spittle. And you remember, what was his name?

STU: And that was it.

JEFFY: Bobby Jindal.

GLENN: Bobby Jindal, he had a drink of water.

JEFFY: He was sweating and stumbling. And, oh, man.

GLENN: Yeah. That's right. I minimized the Bobby Jindal.

(laughter)

Thank you, Jeffy. I appreciate it.

Hey, by the way, what did you think of this -- did you watch the speech?

JEFFY: I did.

GLENN: What did you think?

JEFFY: I thought it was pretty darn good. He pulled it off. He stayed strong. Focused through it. You know, he slowed down a little bit.

GLENN: I thought that was the best speech I've ever heard him give.

JEFFY: You know, one person called last night. We were broadcasting it on TheBlaze radio network. And they reminded us that it was, you know, pretty humble for Trump. There wasn't a lot of eyes. It was all about the country. It was all about us. It was pretty strong.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: He hit exactly the right tone.

JEFFY: Look, if you're for a job, the African caucus, the African-American caucus gave him no credit. Nothing.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. They looked like radicals.

JEFFY: No credit. Nothing. The other Democrats of the other caucuses gave him nothing. It was terrible.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: I'm not saying I'm having a difficult time taking it seriously right now. But there's a little -- there's a small part of me that's having --

GLENN: That's funny. I could talk to him like this. I've never taken him seriously. So it doesn't change.

JEFFY: Wait.

GLENN: Thanks, Jeffy. I appreciate it.

STU: That was awesome.

(music)

STU: Sorry.

(laughter)

GLENN: Yeah. There was --

STU: Jeffy is just like -- he goes all in on that stuff, man. Jeffy is the man.

GLENN: He has about 6 inches of Vaseline on his face now.

STU: Very similar to Joe Kennedy.

GLENN: Yeah.

Oil prices are going up from the amount of Vaseline used in the last few minutes.

STU: We have to put that on Facebook and Twitter today. You'll need to see that one. We also have a bunch of audio that we need to get to at some point, from the actual speech.

GLENN: Let's go through it now. Tonight at 5 o'clock, we'll go through a few things. One, were you -- am I alone in the way I felt -- I mean, don't get me wrong. I loved the speech.

I was -- I was blown away by it. I thought it was the best speech he's ever given.

I think it's one of the best speeches politically I've heard in a long time.

He hit Barack Obama -- I think Barack Obama will feel like he hit him in the face for 45 minutes. But I don't -- that wasn't his intent.

It was just the opposite of Barack Obama.

STU: Yeah. So much more effective than, you know, calling Barack Obama a name or saying he was a disaster.

GLENN: Yeah, there was nothing of that. It was just a repudiation of everything he did.

STU: Of everything he did.

GLENN: And it was amazingly satisfying. He got into spending which is, you know, over $2 trillion of spending. Which I am absolutely not for.

However, what was amazing to me was the Democrats. They were given everything they say they want. I mean, the only thing he didn't say was, and, you know what, free universal education.

STU: And they wouldn't have clapped for that either.

GLENN: And they wouldn't have clapped.

It made them look so radical, I think to the average person. 46 percent of Democrats thought this was a really good speech. Approved of it.

STU: Yeah, 43, I believe it was. But that's incredibly high for something like this. For Trump especially.

GLENN: For him. For Trump, oh, my gosh, yes.

STU: Ninety-seven percent of Republicans. But overall, was 75 percent approval for a speech like that is incredibly high.

GLENN: That's big. That's big. For this guy, that's huge.

STU: It's really big for anybody though.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: I mean, even the highly praised by the media Barack Obama speeches didn't have 75 percent approval ratings, typically.

GLENN: So I really liked the speech all the way through. I liked the way he handled it. And I can praise him, not for the policies, but for what he was trying to do in reaching out to the left.

But they wanted no part of it. It was remarkable. But am I the only one -- because I haven't heard anybody say this today. I was really freaked out by the war thing.

STU: Yeah, you brought that up. I know you wanted to go over this today at 5:00 p.m., really dissecting it.

GLENN: Yeah. It's kind of like new war and classic war. You don't want classic war coming back.

STU: No. No.

GLENN: Like New Coke, Classic Coke. Yeah, yeah. Let's say with the new war. And I'm going to compare. Because this is not the same.

This is not what people my age have lived through. If we go to war with North Korea, it will probably be much more like World War II. Don't want to do it.

And it's really concerning. You didn't pick up that vibe?

STU: You know, I was not surprised to see him hit North Korea. Obviously, it's been a big topic. And it was right after the ISIS section. So it felt like there was a natural flow to it.

You know, if you think about it, I didn't pick it up at the time. As you laid out the case, and I know you'll do it again tonight at 5:00 on TheBlaze. Not only did he focus on it, he used very I think precise language.

GLENN: Precise.

STU: And then he illustrated it emotionally with multiple guests to show you how bad North Korea really is.

GLENN: Yep. Yep. It's one thing to do the -- the guy on the crutches. Because that was -- that was emotional. And it was really powerful. And if you're my age, it reminds you of the Cold War. And he was sending a message to the people who lived through the Cold War, this hasn't stopped. This evil is still here.

And then with the -- the family of -- you know, the Warmbier family, whose son went over, was arrested on a stupid charge of taking something off of a bulletin board that he wanted to keep as a souvenir, they charged him as an enemy of the state. They tortured him for a year. Dumped his body over here in the United States. And he died a few days later.

That one -- quite honestly, that is act of war stuff.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And the way it was presented last night was, look, here's the evil. And here's what they did to us.

It was -- I'm hoping that --

STU: Powerful.

GLENN: -- it is posturing for North Korea, but it is also historically speaking, that feels like laying the foundation of, we're going for these guys. We're going for war.

STU: You felt like it was an axis of evil type of case, right? He's laying out exactly --

GLENN: Yeah, not even an axis of evil. This was, this is an evil empire. It was Reagan's evil empire speech. Which I support. And I support what Donald Trump did.

You know, I've always said I want a president with a twitchy eye. Which means I want somebody that the foes don't know. This guy could do it. The problem is that Donald Trump has like two twitchy eyes and like a -- and a twitchy leg. I think he has restless leg syndrome too. So nobody knows exactly what he's going to do. So it makes me a little nervous.

If he's just doing this to scare North Korea -- which is the case I'm going to lay out tonight, that's good. And he's -- he does that really well.

But there is also a chance that we are preparing for war. And I'm also going to lay out the case tonight, that is an entirely different thing than the wars we have seen in the last 30 or 40 years.

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.

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.