Five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America, again

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. - Barack Obama, 2008

When he said that five years ‑‑ five days before the election four years ago, most of America didn't even pay attention. Most of America didn't even know what that meant. And when we started pointing out, this guy is going to fundamentally transform the United States of America, I said you will come to a day where you won't even recognize this country anymore. You will wake up in the morning and you won't recognize it. Have you felt that way yet? Because I have. I hit the wall to where I really truly do not recognize my country anymore when we left the guys on the roof painting the enemy. With a laser in Benghazi and the president saying "No." When we said, no, you know what, we're not going to go after the Black Panthers," I didn't understand my country anymore. When the president said the cops acted stupidly, when the president said, you know, Trayvon, he could be my son" with absolutely no evidence, nothing, I didn't recognize my country anymore. When I can see this media spin, and I mean, we've all had this conversation ever since we were young. If you're a conservative, you've had this conversation for a very, very long time. I mean, they're all liberals. The spin is out of control. But not like this. When they will cover, when they will take a man like Jack Welch and throw him under the bus because he said there's something wrong with the jobs numbers, they're cooking the books. I don't know how they are a he doing it but I've been in the business long enough to know they're cooking the books. It's not 7.8 unemployment, they're cooking the books. And they go and throw the man, a legend like Jack Welch and throw him under the bus and then not report that ADP ‑‑ this is the payroll service. They feed in some of the stats to the labor department. They've just announced that, oh, they changed the way they calculate unemployment. And it looks like that may have affected their number. It looks like unemployment was cut down by a third to half. Oh, so you mean Jack Welch is right? At the same time the president is saying, "Oh, by the way, we may not have those labor statistics this week. We may have to wait until next week after the election because of Hurricane Sandy," and nobody says anything. I don't recognize my country anymore. When I see people standing in record numbers twice in one year at the mall in Washington, when I see people reading the Constitution, when I see people arguing about the Constitution, when I see people having real debates, when I see people leaving the parties because they say, "I don't want anything to do with the pears," you know what, the Republicans had their chance; they blew it. I think they've sold us out. When I see conservatives say that, I don't recognize my country anymore... in a good way.

Look what's happened to us since the president of the United States said those words. Fundamentally transform the United States of America. We're five days away again. The exact same spot four years later. We will fundamentally transform back to our values, our traditions and our principles. Upon this, upon which this nation was founded. And I'm not saying we're going to go back to George Bush. I don't want to go back to George Bush. I don't think you want to go back to George Bush. But that's the choice in five days. To go back to something that makes sense. Real transparency. The truth. Not a bunch of these cronies in Washington, not a bunch of bogus facts and bogus jobs where we all know it's not true. But closer to the way we were on 9/11, after the attack, closer to the way we were on 9/12. To where we all started to break through our fear and we just did the right thing, Republican and Democrat. Are we going to go there, or will Barack Obama finish the job he started and close the book on what we have always known as the United States of America, one that never gives up, one that never sits down, one that never says, I don't know, I'm too tired; I don't know, we're just an oppressor nation. Are we going to believe the lies that have been told to us? Because that is the choice, and I know that seems radical, at least it does four years ago when we were saying it, but I think we've made a very good case. And the easiest way to make this case is just to paraphrase President Obama: Let me be clear, as I've said in the past, judge me by the people I associate with.

Who I associate with on economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker.  If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate foreign relations committee or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO. Before debating healthcare, I talked to Andy Stern and SEIU members.  Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I talked with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members. - Barack Obama

You notice that there is, you notice that there is a difference between the president, the way he is even speaking. Because the way ‑‑ the man wears a mask. He will say one thing to one audience and another thing to another audience. And when he's speaking to mainstream America, he sounds just like you. But when he's speaking to radicals and labor unions and revolutionaries, all of a sudden he's got a whole different sound to him. Because the president is a fraud. Who does he associate with? Radical, revolutionary Communist Van Jones. Marxist professors. Radical anti‑Israel buddy Rashid Khalidi, Marxist spiritual advisors Jim Wallis, Jeremiah Wright, you know the list. And it is excruciatingly long. And yet today we have another one, one that we were told to dismiss, the civil rights icon, the man who delivered the benediction prayer at Obama's inauguration, Joseph Lowery, a man who gave a prayer that day that we all said, "Now wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute." But everyone told us, "Dismiss it."

"We ask you to help us work for that day when blacks will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yella will be mella, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right. " - Lowery

When white will do right. We were told he's just a quaint little old man and, sure, he's living in the past because I haven't grown up in this world that President Obama keeps saying we are in. One of the most controversial prayers at any inauguration, ever, and we were told dismiss it. And it's very clear from this that he doesn't believe that whites have ever or could do what's right. But this past weekend, it rears its ugly red again. Racism again. Lowery said that when he was a young militant, he believed that all whites were going to hell. Then he mellowed with age and decided only most of whites were going to hell. There is your mellowing according to this radical. That the president chose as the person to give the benediction to bring us all together. Who did he choose? Someone who said, "Well, I used to believe all whites go to hell. Now I only believe that most whites go to hell." Does this sound like your pastor, your priest, your rabbi? Or does this sound more like Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright? Now he's amended this again. He told a rally at St. James Baptist church in Georgia he's back where he started. He's back to saying, "You know what? I now believe that all whites are going to hell.

Now, I understand people tell me that he was a valiant warrior and a just cause. He may have been a warrior in a just cause, but I'm sorry if you are a warrior in that just cause and you believe that all whites were going to hell. You are not a valiant warrior. That's not Abraham Lincoln. That's not Martin Luther King. That's not Gandhi, that's not Jesus. I don't know who that is, but that's not valiant. And let's be clear about that. Just because, just because you're for freeways, and one of the greatest advocates of freeway systems was Adolf Hitler doesn't make him a strong, valiant advocate for the international highway system. It goes without saying that if it were a clergyman that Romney had invited to pray at one of his events and that man later said all blacks are going to hell, the outcry would be vicious and deafening as it should be. It would cost Romney the election. And there would be, there would be no question of age. Do you remember Jesse Helms? There would be no question of, "Well, he's just an old man. He's just no questions asked. It would be over. This is why Romney is going to win, because there's enough Americans that are tired of the double standard and they won't accept it from Mitt Romney, either. If Mitt Romney gets in and he has the double standard and he says, well, hold me to a different standard, which I've never seen him do before, Americans won't put up with it. We're tired of it. We're tired of the lies, we're tired of the deceit, we're tired of the double standard. We're tired of being told and taught that we're something that we're not.

Now, our children are being taught this in school and we better grab onto our children, we better grab onto them fast. It was Karl Marx that said you give me one generation and I'll change the world. They almost have that generation wholly purchased now. And it's been done through our indoctrination of our school systems and through our television, through our movies, and it's got to stop and we've got to stop it right now. And that doesn't mean we have to round people up or have hearings or anything else. Get your kids out of school. You find a different way to educate your children. You stop giving your hard‑earned dollars and your hard‑earned time to those media corporations that are lying to you. That are teaching and filling your kids' heads with lies and deceit. How many of us even trust Disney anymore? Everybody was so excited about, "Oh, Walt Disney, they just did Star Wars." Great. Do you trust Disney? Because I don't. I don't ever sit ‑‑ I don't ever sit my kids in front of a Disney, the Disney channel and think, "Okay, they're safe." Not even ‑‑ not even for a second. I don't like my kids watching the Disney channel. Believe me I've worked for Disney ABC. I know how that game is played. I have good reason not to trust Disney ABC. And so do you because you've seen it.

The reason why Mitt Romney's going to win is because I've seen what happened with Chick‑fil‑A and there wasn't a single labor union bus involved in that. That was just moms and dads and people who go to church together and people who are just regular people who said, justify is justify. They may not have even agreed with the guy at Chick‑fil‑A but they knew he had a right to say it and they were sick and tired of it. Sick and tired of it. I am sick and tired of being told what the white man is. I am sick and tired of being told what this country is and is not. By people who have no idea what this country is and is not. They don't even have any idea what this country was at any given time. They can't tell you about Abraham Lincoln's real feelings. They can't tell you about George Washington and his real feelings. They can't put it into any historic context at all. They live in a bogus plastic Eurocentric world. And most Americans do not. Most Americans are not radical. Most Americans are good, decent, honest people who are now being told "You didn't create that. You didn't build that. You're no different than every other country." Then why? Then why have we been so different? "Well, because you've been stealing it from the other countries." Really? We've been stealing it? We have lifted more people out of squalor worldwide than any other institution, any other country in the history of the world. There has never been a country like the United States of America and there never will be. Never. The world will weep when the Western way of life is washed away. It's time to stop ignoring the obvious. It's time to take Obama at his word and judge him by the people whom he associates, associates with. Radicals. Radicals. Muslim Brotherhood radicals. Barack Obama has always and continues to associate with radicals, always. He's comfortable in their company but he is not comfortable with anybody from the TEA Party. He is not comfortable with anybody in a tricorner hat who says "I understand the founders; I like the founders." He is not comfortable with them but, boy, he is comfortable to have them work in the White House if they're a Communist revolutionary. He is comfortable with radicals because he himself is a radical. America, listen to these words once again.

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. - Barack Obama, 2008

And this time our founders have hope for real change.

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.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

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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.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

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

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

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

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

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

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

What triggers the Bubba effect

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

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

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

A country cracking from the inside

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

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

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

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

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

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

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

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

How to respond without breaking ourselves

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth-seeking is real work

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

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

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

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

Bad-faith questions

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

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

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

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

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

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

The real target

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.