Who is America's God now? | Cults

April 17, 2022

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Covid-19 broke us.

People who were once reasonable began to call for the banishment of the unvaccinated from civil society. Death was divided by vaccine status and treated accordingly. Information was censored for “our own good.” Anyone who questioned the leader or fell out of line, was deemed as dangerous or literally accused of murder.

Steven Hassan developed the B.I.T.E model by, among other things, studying brainwashing in Maoist China. B.I.T.E stands for:

B — Behavior
I — Information
T — Thought and
E — Emotional control

B.I.T.E identifies patterns used by cults to manipulate their members.

There are fifty attributes to watch out for. Listen to some of these and compare them to your experience during the Covid-19 pandemic:

Dictate where, how and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates
Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence
Restrict leisure, entertainment and vacation time
Permission is required for major decisions
Rewards and punishments are used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative
Discourage individualism, encourage group-think
Impose rigid rules and regulations
Instill dependency and obedience
Deliberately withhold information
Distort information to make it more acceptable
Systematically lie
Minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information, including:
- Internet, TV, radio, books, articles, newspapers, magazines, media
- Critical information
- Former members
- Keep members busy so they don’t have time to think and investigate
- Control through cell phone with texting, calls, internet tracking
Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs. Insider doctrines
- Ensure that information is not freely accessible
- Control information at different levels and missions within group
- Allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when
Encourage spying on other members
- Impose a buddy system to monitor and control member
- Report deviant thoughts, feelings and actions to leadership
- Ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group
Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda, including newsletters, magazines, journals, audiotapes, videotapes, YouTube, movies and other media
Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth
- Adopting the group’s "map of reality" as reality
- Instill black and white thinking
- Decide between good vs. evil
- Organize people into us vs. them (insiders vs. outsiders)
Use of loaded language and clichés that constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words (“Follow the science”)
Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism
Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine or policy allowed
Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil or not useful
Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the fault of the leaders or the group
Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as:
- Identity guilt
- You are not living up to your potential
- Your family is deficient
- Your past is suspect
- Your affiliations are unwise
- Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish
- Social guilt
- Historical guilt
Shunning of those who leave; fear of being rejected by friends and family
Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins
Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority
- No happiness or fulfillment possible outside of the group
- Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc.

That is basically all of them except for rape, murder, torture and kidnapping. So that’s horrifying. But what’s even scarier, is that most of us went along with it, even just for a little while. As a nation, as a world, we are still going along with it in many ways.

Now, look at antiracism.

Antiracism requires blind obedience to leaders like Ibram X Kendi — who can arbitrarily assign or remove guilt based on his own perception. The work of being an antiracist never stops. There is always more internalized racism to uncover and implicit bias to reveal.

The work of being an antiracist never stops.

Can you ever be forgiven? Can you ever be cleansed?

No. Because the moment you say you are not racist, it is taken as a proclamation of guilt, and the cycle can just begin again.

It’s brilliant gaslighting.

They convince you that you have a problem — a problem so deep-rooted you can’t even see it, and the only way to solve that problem is to do whatever the leaders say. And if you don’t do what they say, it’s because you are extra guilty.

It’s cult initiation 101.

Cults seek out people with a vulnerability — say a sense of guilt (which almost all humans carry just from being alive) — after they identify the vulnerability, the cult offers an antidote, one that can only be obtained through obedience. From there, the reprogramming begins.

After reprogramming, it’s really hard to come back. But it can be done.

Let's use Megan Phelps Roper's story to illustrate.

Meghan Phelps-Roper was only five years old when she stood on her first picket line in Kansas. She had a sign that read:

“Gays are worthy of death.”

She had no idea what it said, nonetheless what it meant. But her mother had brought her there and handed her that sign, so she waved it around happily. She was making her family proud, for a five-year-old girl, that’s better than candy.

Megan is the granddaughter of the founder of Westboro Baptist Church who, among many other horrific statements, once said:

“The Jews killed the Lord Jesus….Now they are carrying water for the f**s; that’s what they do best, sin.”

The Westboro Baptist Church has become infamous for its lack of humanity. They protest military funerals, wish death upon others, and because they are so convinced their crusade is holy, they feel empowered to be as rude and inhumane as they want. The ends justify the means and they feel that hate — directed at the right people — is a holy work.

Megan lived for 27 years under the Westboro Baptist Church. She brandished signs that said things like:

“Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

and

“God Hates You.”

She was the face of the movement and battled it out on Twitter with the naysayers on behalf of the whole congregation.

Those Twitter battles ended up being her saving grace.

Can you imagine?

The usual crowd of angry people came out on Twitter to admonish her, criticize her, and throw hate right back at her. But not everyone did that. There were a few who never lost their humanity. Their message was “we are all human beings worthy of love and respect, including Megan.” They didn’t condone her hate or tip-toe around her misunderstandings, but they saw beyond them. She was a person who had trapped herself in the toxic ideas she inherited. But, most importantly, she was a person.

Two men went above and beyond — one man named David, who had a blog named Jewlicious. Another named Chad, later became her husband.

What began on Twitter as a verbal rock-throwing fight, slowly evolved into a real conversation — one that appealed to Megan’s humanity. They asked questions, which made Megan feel respected and heard. She could let her guard down now — these people weren’t here to fight, they were here to understand. That changed everything. The questions they asked inspired questions in herself. There were holes in her thinking she hadn’t considered, and given the right environment, she felt safe to really wrestle with those questions.

One day, David met Megan on the picket line to give her food from a market in Jerusalem. A Jewish man brought treats to the woman who held signs that said:

"Your Rabbi is a whore.”

He was a person. A nice person. A smart person who could debate her on the Bible.

And a Jew!

There was no way for Megan to reconcile it. Her whole reality unraveled from there.

Imagine being her, and realizing that you have inherited lies from the people you love most. Knowing the truth meant leaving them, maybe forever. She was the church’s rising star but after leaving the church, she would be just another “them" — another outsider.

Megan and her sister left Westboro baptist church in 2012.

The cult mentality spreads across social media like a virus.

Since leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, Megan has said she sees the tactics of her former cult all over our public discourse. The cult mentality spreads across social media like a virus, and although it’s slower in real life, it’s spreading there too.

To combat this, she gave this advice:

Don’t Assume Ill-Intent

This is a hard one because some people actually do have bad intentions, but not everyone. Megan believed she was doing good work with the Westboro Baptist Church. That may be hard for you or me to imagine, but it’s all she knew. It would be easy to assume that the woman tweeting “Thank God for AIDS” has horrible intentions. But the few who chose to believe otherwise changed Megan's life forever.

Ask Questions

We can not assume we know why people believe the way they do and even if we really do know, we open doors when we ask questions. Questions indicate sincere interest and respect and in the best cases, may even lead the other person to ask you what you think.

Stay Calm

Another hard one. Don’t yell. Don’t freak out. Don’t lose your cool. You don’t have to hold back the truth, but if anger is in the driver's seat — expect a wreck.

Make Your Case

Your opinion may not be as self-evident as it seems or even as self-evident as it should be. Why should men not be in women's prison?

We have to make the complete case. Every. Single. Time.

No one had made the case to Megan that what she was doing was harmful. When they did, she changed her mind. The Bible says to be wise as serpents, but also as gentle as doves. We can’t be naive, but we also can’t give up on people prematurely.

It’s tempting to look at the person tweeting that “unvaccinated people deserve death” and assume that they are past hope. But what if they aren’t?

It’s one thing to recognize the cult-like tendencies pulsing through American politics and work to stop it, but the real question is: what made us vulnerable to cultic authoritarianism in the first place?

Why is it that we keep misplacing our religious instincts? Because we all do it. Even if just in small ways, we all are vulnerable to tribal and yes, even cultic inclinations.

Is this whole religion thing just too dangerous? Should we abandon it altogether? Or is an abandonment of religion what got us in this mess in the first place?

In 1798, John Adams wrote in a letter to the Massachusetts militia:

“We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by…morality and Religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Adams said our Representative Republic needed not only a moral, but religious people to survive. If not restrained by the government, then people must foster the discipline to restrain themselves. Religion, having played that role in societies for centuries, seemed the best way to encourage that.

I am not suggesting we all convert to one faith or that, God forbid, the government imposes that on us, but we do need moral agreements. We need a plumbline to guide us as a nation, and we each need to come to it of our own free volition.

Generation to generation we are losing our spiritual well-being.

Our nation is undergoing a cultural revolution, a technological revolution and a sexual revolution, but what we really need is a spiritual restoration.

We need a national revival.

But what does that look like?

They worshiped new gods — gods of meaningless realities. That would always lead to destruction for them.

After God delivered the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, they did not go straight to the promised land. For forty years they wandered the desert while God prepared their hearts. They still had a slave mentality, they had bad habits and they needed time to work that out of them. But the new generations forgot the God who had parted the sea, sent the plagues and freed them from Pharoah. They worshiped new gods — gods of meaningless realities. That would always lead to destruction for them. Then they would beg God to take them back, and he would, and a generation later the people would forget again.

Joshua, one of the Bible’s mightiest warriors, spoke to the Hebrew people and said:

"If you love God, follow him. If you love Baal, or if you love another god, follow him, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

That is essentially what early Americans said. Other nations could choose a god for themselves. (They had seen how poorly that went.) But America said: As for this Nation, we will humble ourselves before the God of the Bible.

God was with our founding generation. We call it divine providence because it just doesn’t make sense without God. How could we have done that on our own?

But we are the new generation and we have forgotten the God of our ancestors. We forgot the prayers, the devotion and the miracles and we are reaping the consequences.

But because the God our founders worshiped believes in free will, we have a choice to make. Just like the Hebrews, we can decide; do we like our new “gods,” or would like to serve the God we called on to found this nation?

I’m going to use a loaded word — repentance. For some, repentance is associated with shame, guilt, fire and brimstone and for others, it’s a get out a jail free card on your way back to do whatever you want.

But it’s neither of those things.

That’s not what I’m talking about at all.

In Hebrew, the word for repentance is Teshuvah which literally means to turn. If you are going in the wrong direction, repentance/Teshuvah is turning around and going the other way. Repentance is about changing what you do, just as much as it is about the condition of your heart. Thus when we repent, we turn around and start over in the right direction — the direction God wants us to go.

That is not easy. It takes incredible faith to humble yourself and repent.

It’s not easy, but it is possible.

And in the next installment, I will tell you about the impossible repentance of the people we consider to be the most guilty of sinners — the Germans after World War 2.

Catch up with the rest of the "Who Is America's God Now?" series here:

This post is part of a series by Glenn and Mikayla G. Hedrick exploring Who is America's God now?

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

The appeal of a broken dream

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

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

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

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

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

The bridge that never ends

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

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

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

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

What young America deserves

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatism as stewardship

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding what is broken

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

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

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

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

A creed for the rising generation

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

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

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

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

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

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global reality.

And moral reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our faith is almost gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why can't we open the government?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not in nostalgia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A conservative in 2025, '26.

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

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

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

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

And one can't be stronger than the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

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

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

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

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

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

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

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

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

Ancient evil, new clothes

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

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

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

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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Transcript

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

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

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

Ancient evil, new clothes

A time for choosing