Glenn's bookshelf: Part 3

Does it seem like every time you tune into the radio show Glenn's talking about another book he just read? He might just be the most well read man on the airwaves and now he's ready to share his list with you.

It's turned into quite an extensive list so over the next few days we will post enough recommendations to keep you busy all through 2019 and beyond. Pick up a book or 20 and read the material that's been shaping Glenn's thinking this past year.

Enjoy!


The Know Your Bill of Rights Book: Don't Lose Your Constitutional Rights--Learn Them!

By Sean Patrick

Let's face it:

The Bill of Rights is very hard to understand if you just pick it up and give it a read.

The eloquent style in which it was written can be confusing.

There's a lot of legal terminology that's beyond most of us.

And without the right historical background, it's impossible to fully understand the meaning, importance, and scope of several of the amendments (and especially the second amendment).

Furthermore, there are countless politicians and mainstream pundits that want to interpret our rights for us and tell us what the Founders meant, making it even harder to know what to believe.

But are you comfortable letting crooked baby-kissers and propagandists decide what your rights are? Or would you rather discover them for yourself?

In other words, would you rather know and insist on the exact freedoms our Founders intended for you, your family, your friends, and your fellow Americans?

If you're like millions of other Americans, your answer to that question is YES, and this book is for you.

It will help you quickly and easily reach a deep understanding of the Bill of Rights by...

  • Walking you through each amendment, clarifying the precise definitions of key words, so you understand exactly what the Founders wanted you to know.
  • Providing you with the key historical context you need to fully grasp and spirit and importance of the amendments, so you understand how they apply to our 21st century society.
  • Sharing powerfully insightful quotes on each amendment, straight from the Founders and their peers, so you have absolutely no questions as to their purposes and intentions.
  • Supplying you with an extensive glossary of terms so you never get lost in a dictionary or encyclopedia trying to understand what you're reading.
  • And more.

    Thomas Jefferson once said, "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
  • And he also said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be."

    That's why this book was created.

    My mission is to teach you truths most people will never know about their specific rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
    And that's what you're going to learn in this book: the things the two-faced corruptocrats and their media lackeys absolutely hate the most about our country and Constitution.

    The Founders fought tirelessly to guarantee you specific rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Don't lose them. Learn them.

    Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for Our Connected World

    By Marc Goodman

    Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flip side: our technology can be turned against us. And just over the horizon is a tidal wave of scientific progress that will leave our heads spinning—from implantable medical devices to drones and 3-D printers, all of which can be hacked, with disastrous consequences.

    With explosive insights based on a career in law enforcement and counterterrorism, leading authority on global security Marc Goodman takes readers on a vivid journey through the darkest recesses of the Internet. He explores how bad actors are primed to hijack the technologies of tomorrow. Provocative, thrilling, and ultimately empowering, Future Crimes will serve as an urgent call to action that shows how we can take back control of our own devices and harness technology's tremendous power for the betterment of humanity—before it's too late.

    The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place

    By Andy Crouch

    Making conscientious choices about technology in our families is more than just using internet filters and determining screen time limits for our children. It's about developing wisdom, character, and courage in the way we use digital media rather than accepting technology's promises of ease, instant gratification, and the world's knowledge at our fingertips. And it's definitely not just about the kids.

    Drawing on in-depth original research from the Barna Group, Andy Crouch shows readers that the choices we make about technology have consequences we may never have considered. He takes readers beyond the typical questions of what, where, and when and instead challenges them to answer provocative questions like, Who do we want to be as a family? and How does our use of a particular technology move us closer or farther away from that goal? Anyone who has felt their family relationships suffer or their time slip away amid technology's distractions will find in this book a path forward to reclaiming their real life in a world of devices.

    Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

    By James Barrat

    In as little as a decade, artificial intelligence could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies around the world are pouring billions into achieving AI's Holy Grail―human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine.

    Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, James Barrat's Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?

    Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

    By Max Tegmark

    In this authoritative and eye-opening book, Max Tegmark describes and illuminates the recent, path-breaking advances in Artificial Intelligence and how it is poised to overtake human intelligence. How will AI affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

    How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today's kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?

    What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn't shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues—from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.

    The Industries of the Future

    By Alec Ross

    While Alec Ross was working as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State, he traveled to forty-one countries, exploring the latest advances coming out of every continent. From startup hubs in Kenya to R&D labs in South Korea, Ross has seen what the future holds.

    In The Industries of the Future, Ross provides a "lucid and informed guide" (Financial Times) to the changes coming in the next ten years. He examines the fields that will most shape our economic future, including robotics and artificial intelligence, cybercrime and cybersecurity, the commercialization of genomics, the next step for big data, and the impact of digital technology on money and markets. In each of these realms, Ross addresses the toughest questions: How will we have to adapt to the changing nature of work? Is the prospect of cyberwar sparking the next arms race? How can the world's rising nations hope to match Silicon Valley with their own innovation hotspots? And what can today's parents do to prepare their children for tomorrow?

    Ross blends storytelling and economic analysis to show how sweeping global trends are affecting the ways we live. Sharing insights from global leaders—from the founders of Google and Twitter to defense experts like David Petraeus—Ross reveals the technologies and industries that will drive the next stage of globalization. The Industries of the Future is "a riveting and mind-bending book" (New York Journal of Books), a "must read" (Wendy Kopp, Founder of Teach for America) regardless of "whether you follow these fields closely or you still think of Honda as a car rather than a robotics company" (Forbes).

    Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence

    By Calum Chace

    Artificial intelligence is our most powerful technology, and in the coming decades it will change everything in our lives. If we get it right it will make humans almost godlike. If we get it wrong... well, extinction is not the worst possible outcome.

    "Surviving AI" is a concise, easy-to-read guide to what's coming, taking you through technological unemployment (the economic singularity) and the possible creation of a superintelligence (the technological singularity).

    Here's what some of the leading thinkers in the field have to say about it:

    A sober and easy-to-read review of the risks and opportunities that humanity will face from AI.

    Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane 

    The Internet and smartphone are just the latest in a 250 year long cycle of disruption that has continuously changed the way we live, the way we work and the way we interact. The coming Augmented Age, however, promises a level of disruption, behavioral shifts and changes that are unparalleled. While consumers today are camping outside of an Apple store waiting to be one of the first to score a new Apple Watch or iPhone, the next generation of wearables will be able to predict if we're likely to have a heart attack and recommend a course of action. We watch news of Google's self-driving cars, but don't likely realize this means progressive cities will have to ban human drives in the next decade because us humans are too risky.

    Following on from the Industrial or Machine Age, the Space Age and the Digital Age, the Augmented Age will be based on four key disruptive themes - Artificial Intelligence, Experience Design, Smart Infrastructure, and HealthTech. Historically the previous 'ages' bought significant disruption and changes, but on a net basis jobs were created, wealth was enhanced, and the health and security of society improved. What will the Augmented Age bring? Will robots take our jobs, and AI's subsume us as inferior intelligences, or will this usher in a new age of abundance?

    Augmented is a book on future history, but more than that, it is a story about how you will live your life in a world that will change more in the next 20 years than it has in the last 250 years. Are you ready to adapt? Because if history proves anything, you don't have much of a choice.

    The People's Republic of the Disappeared: Stories from inside China's system for enforced disappearances 

    By Michael Caster

    With these words, Chinese lawyer Xie Yangwas introduced to the brutality of Residential Surveillance at aDesignated Location (RSDL), China's rapidly expanding system forenforced disappearances. Little is known of RSDL, or what happensinside. The People's Republic of the Disappeared will change that. RSDLfacilities, often secret, custom-built and unmarked prisons, are run bypolice or State Security officials. Inside, people are placed outsidethe normal legal system, left in solitary confinement, interrogatedrepeatedly, and often subjected to torture. There is no oversight of the police, and no protection for those inside. In RSDL, you simply vanish. In RSDL, the police have total control.

    This book exposes what it islike to be disappeared in China. It is the first anthology written bythe victims themselves, from lawyer Wang Yu who was abducted in themiddle of the night to engineer Tang Zhishun who was taken from acrossthe border in Burma; from IT worker Jiang Xiaoyu who was beaten andthreatened with permanent disappearance to Pan Jinling whose only crimewas dating an NGO worker.

    The People's Republic of the Disappearedincludes a foreword by well-known exiled human rights lawyer Teng Biao.The foreword and introduction provide the reader with an understandingof RSDL. The legal chapter at the end offers an exhaustive,authoritative analysis of the domestic law giving rise to RSDL, and theinternational legal framework that China brazenly violates. Thesechapters, along with stories by lawyers Tang Jitian and Liu Shihui trace China's obsession with disappearing dissidents from the early 2000s,through to the Jasmine Revolution movement in China in 2011, and intothe current system of RSDL.

    This book is essential reading for academics and journalists, governments and nonprofit workers alike working on orinterested in China, because these stories illustrate, with narrativeclarity, the hollowness of China's rhetoric of the rule of law.Likewise, it is worthwhile reading for anyone studying authoritarianregimes and the struggle for human rights.

    It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear

    By Greg Easterbrook

    Most people who read the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems: fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality, and more.

    Yet this narrative misses something important: by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better than it ever has been. In the United States, disease, crime, discrimination, and most forms of pollution are in long-term decline, while longevity and education keep rising and economic indicators are better than in any past generation. Worldwide, malnutrition and extreme poverty are at historic lows, and the risk of dying by war or violence is the lowest in human history.
    It's not a coincidence that we're confused--our perspectives on the world are blurred by the rise of social media, the machinations of politicians, and our own biases. Meanwhile, political reforms like the Clean Air Act and technological innovations like the hybridization of wheat have saved huge numbers of lives. In that optimistic spirit, Easterbrook offers specific policy reforms to address climate change, inequality, and other problems, and reminds us that there is real hope in conquering such challenges. In an age of discord and fear-mongering, It's Better Than It Looks will profoundly change your perspective on who we are, where we're headed, and what we're capable of.

    The Fourth Political Theory

    By Alexander Dugin

    All the political systems of the modern age have been the products of three distinct ideologies: the first, and oldest, is liberal democracy; the second is Marxism; and the third is fascism. The latter two have long since failed and passed out of the pages of history, and the first no longer operates as an ideology, but rather as something taken for granted. The world today finds itself on the brink of a post-political reality — one in which the values of liberalism are so deeply embedded that the average person is not aware that there is an ideology at work around him. As a result, liberalism is threatening to monopolise political discourse and drown the world in a universal sameness, destroying everything that makes the various cultures and peoples unique. According to Alexander Dugin, what is needed to break through this morass is a fourth ideology — one that will sift through the debris of the first three to look for elements that might be useful, but that remains innovative and unique in itself. Dugin does not offer a point-by-point program for this new theory, but rather outlines the parameters within which it might develop and the issues which it must address. Dugin foresees that the Fourth Political Theory will use the tools and concepts of modernity against itself, to bring about a return of cultural diversity against commercialisation, as well as the traditional worldview of all the peoples of the world — albeit within an entirely new context. Written by a scholar who is actively influencing the direction of Russian geopolitical strategy today, The Fourth Political Theory is an introduction to an idea that may well shape the course of the world's political future.

    The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

    By Steven Pinker

    Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.

    Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

    By Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

    Why is it so hard to say "I made a mistake"—and really believe it?

    When we make mistakes, cling to outdated attitudes, or mistreat other people, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so, unconsciously, we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Backed by years of research, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-justification—how it works, the damage it can cause, and how we can overcome it. This updated edition features new examples and concludes with an extended discussion of how we can live with dissonance, learn from it, and perhaps, eventually, forgive ourselves.

    Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

    By Christopher R. Browning

    Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.

    While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.

    Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

    Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

    By Steven Pinker

    Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.

    Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.

    With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

    Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History

    By Bill O'Reilly

    As the true horrors of the Third Reich began to be exposed immediately after World War II, the Nazi war criminals who committed genocide went on the run. A few were swiftly caught, including the notorious SS leader, Heinrich Himmler. Others, however, evaded capture through a sophisticated Nazi organization designed to hide them. Among those war criminals were Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" who performed hideous medical experiments at Auschwitz; Martin Bormann, Hitler's brutal personal secretary; Klaus Barbie, the cruel "Butcher of Lyon"; and perhaps the most awful Nazi of all: Adolf Eichmann.

    Killing the SS is the epic saga of the espionage and daring waged by self-styled "Nazi hunters." This determined and disparate group included a French husband and wife team, an American lawyer who served in the army on D-Day, a German prosecutor who had signed an oath to the Nazi Party, Israeli Mossad agents, and a death camp survivor. Over decades, these men and women scoured the world, tracking down the SS fugitives and bringing them to justice, which often meant death.

    Written in the fast-paced style of the Killing series, Killing the SS will educate and stun the reader.

    The final chapter is truly shocking.

    Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

    By Glenn Beck

    History is about so much more than memorizing facts. It is, as more than half of the word suggests, about the story. And, told in the right way, it is the greatest one ever written: Good and evil, triumph and tragedy, despicable acts of barbarism and courageous acts of heroism.

    The things you've never learned about our past will shock you. The reason why gun control is so important to government elites can be found in a story about Athens that no one dares teach. Not the city in ancient Greece, but the one in 1946 Tennessee. The power of an individual who trusts his gut can be found in the story of the man who stopped the twentieth hijacker from being part of 9/11. And a lesson on what happens when an all-powerful president is in need of positive headlines is revealed in a story about eight saboteurs who invaded America during World War II.

    Miracles and Massacres is history as you've never heard it told. It's incredible events that you never knew existed. And it's stories so important and relevant to today that you won't have to ask, Why didn't they teach me this? You will instantly know. If the truth shall set you free, then your freedom begins on page one of this book. By the end, your understanding of the lies and half-truths you've been taught may change, but your perception of who we are as Americans and where our country is headed definitely will.

    The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life

    By Glenn Beck and Dr. Keith Ablow

    Radio and television host Glenn Beck has experienced the rollercoaster of life like few others. From the suicide of his mother when he was just thirteen, to his eventual alcoholism, depression, divorce, unemployment, and health scares—Glenn has weathered life's darkest storms.

    Any one of those struggles could've ruined him, yet Glenn was able to keep moving forward. He saw past the darkness into the light; past his grief and addictions and into what his life could be.

    The process of finding happiness through personal redemption was not easy, but it left Glenn with a blueprint for how to confront future adversity. Glenn is living proof that these steps—he calls them wonders—don't just work on paper. They helped transform his life and can they can help to transform yours as well.

    Glenn Beck and Dr. Keith Ablow—two of the most popular and influential personalities in American media today—have joined forces to present a powerful guide to personal transformation and fulfillment that is as unique as their own unlikely partnership. They are called the "7 Wonders" and they can be used by anyone who has made the decision that they are ready to change their life.

    After the television talk show host and the bestselling psychiatrist struck up a fast friendship they realized that their experiences with life's struggles were complementary. What Keith had studied, Glenn had lived. What Keith had counseled patients on for years, Glenn had suffered through for decades.

    The deeply personal insights they shared brought them to realize that their life stories had seven key principles in common; seven wonders that seemed to be essential ingredients for anyone attempting to transform their life.

    The Immortal Nicholas

    By Glenn Beck

    BEFORE HE WAS FATHER CHRISTMAS…HE WAS SIMPLY A FATHER.

    Thirteen-time #1 national bestselling author Glenn Beck realized years ago that somewhere along the way, his four children had become more focused on Santa than the meaning of Christmas. No matter how he tried, he could not redirect their attention away from presents and elves to the manger instead.

    Glenn didn't want to be the Grinch who spoiled the magic of Kris Kringle, so he had to find a unique way to turn his kids back toward the true meaning of Christmas. He decided the best place to start was by first turning Santa himself back toward Christ.

    That was when one of America's best storytellers began to craft a tale that would change everything his kids thought they knew about Santa—the incredible story he went on to tell them that Christmas Eve spans over a thousand years and explains the meaning behind the immortality and generosity of the man named Claus.

    The Immortal Nicholas has now been expanded and reimagined into this novel for adults; a novel full of drama, history, legend, and heart. From the snowy mountains of Western Asia, to the deserts of Egypt, to Yemen's elusive frankincense-bearing boswellia trees, this is an epic tale that gives the legend of Santa a long overdue Christ-centered mission.

    In this novel, Glenn Beck fundamentally transforms the figure that the world now mainly associates with shopping, all while staying true to the real story of the baby who brought redemption and salvation to the entire world.

    The Christmas Sweater

    By Glenn Beck

    If You Could Change Your Life by Reversing Your Biggest Regrets, Sorrows and Mistakes...Would You?

    We weren't wealthy, we weren't poor -- we just were. We never wanted for anything, except maybe more time together....

    When Eddie was twelve years old, all he wanted for Christmas was a bike. Although his life had gotten harder -- and money tighter -- since his father died and the family bakery closed...Eddie dreamed that somehow his mother would find a way to have his dream bike gleaming beside their modest Christmas tree that magical morning.

    What he got from her instead was a sweater. "A stupid, handmade, ugly sweater" that young Eddie left in a crumpled ball in the corner of his room.

    Scarred deeply by the realization that kids don't always get what they want, and too young to understand that he already owned life's most valuable treasures, that Christmas morning was the beginning of Eddie's dark and painful journey on the road to manhood. It will take wrestling with himself, his faith, and his family -- and the guidance of a mysterious neighbor named Russell -- to help Eddie find his path through the storm clouds of life and finally see the real significance of that simple gift his mother had crafted by hand with love in her heart.

    Based on a deeply personal true story, The Christmas Sweater is a warm and poignant tale of family, faith and forgiveness that offers us a glimpse of our own lives -- while also making us question if we really know what's most important in them.

    Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

    Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

    Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

    Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

    President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

    If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

    The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

    First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

    “I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

    A restoration, not a renovation

    Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

    What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

    The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

    The selective guardians of history

    Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

    Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

    If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

    The real desecration

    The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

    The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

    Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

    Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

    The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

    This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

    Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

    Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

    The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

    For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

    The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

    The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

    While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

    Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

    Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

    Beyond Venezuela

    Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

    Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

    PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

    All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

    It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

    Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

    Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

    Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

    This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

    Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

    Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

    The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

    Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

    Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

    Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

    Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

    A history of violence

    For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

    The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

    History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

    Dismember the dragon

    The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

    But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

    AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

    This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

    Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

    This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

    URGENT: Supreme Court case could redefine religious liberty

    Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

    The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

    This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

    The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

    The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

    The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

    Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

    One‑sided freedom

    Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

    Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

    Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

    If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

    Censored belief

    I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

    I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

    I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

    And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

    Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

    Faith on trial

    In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

    That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

    The real test

    No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

    Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

    If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

    The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

    This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.