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Glenn's Show Prep

Glenn interviews Texas Senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz

May 10, 2012
Wilson

Writer

Glenn has said before that he think Ted Cruz understands what the country is facing economically and, if elected, will help put a stop to some of the big spenders in Congress. Cruz joined Glenn on radio to discuss his campaign - as well as some attack ads targeting him that are so bad they seem like an SNL parody.

Transcript of interview:

GLENN: We're just listening to these amazing Ted Cruz, anti‑Ted Cruz commercials.

PAT: Oh, they're horrible.

GLENN: Here in Texas. You have to hear just one of them.

PAT: Here's one of them.

GLENN: See if one word sticks out.

VOICE: The competition Ted Cruz is also lawyer Ted Cruz. Cruz is helping this Chinese company put this American manufacturer out of business. Cruz's Chinese client stole American blueprints.

VOICE: The jury found them liable for stealing our blueprints.

VOICE: But with lawyer Ted Cruz's help, the Chinese keep counterfeiting and Ted Cruz keeps getting paid.

VOICE: There's too many people like Ted Cruz.

PAT: That's because he's a lawyer. Have you ever noticed how closely lawyer and liar sound?

GLENN: Many of the same letters in "lawyer" and "liar."

STU: (Laughing.)

PAT: Quite a few, in fact.

GLENN: Is it a coincidence that not only lawyer, but trial lawyer politician Ted Cruz.

PAT: Following in the footsteps of other trial lawyers like John Adams.

GLENN: John Adams was a lawyer.

PAT: Who tried to overthrow the U.S. Government.

STU: Traitor.

PAT: Call Ted Cruz and ask him why he's a traitor lawyer, lawyer traitor.

GLENN: Lawyer, politician trial lawyer.

PAT: Lawyer.

GLENN: Revolutionary lawyer.

PAT: Lawyer.

GLENN: (Laughing.) And this is all done by Dewhurst who is just ‑‑

PAT: A nightmare.

GLENN: ‑‑ a nightmare. Texas, come on, come on, you're better than this. Ted Cruz is on the ‑‑ lawyer Ted Cruz.

PAT: Thank you, Glenn. Lawyer. Ted Cruz, who's a lawyer.

GLENN: Have you noticed, Ted, how many letters in "lawyer" are also in "liar"?

PAT: And liar?

CRUZ: I've got to say y'all have a future in comedy and attack ads.

GLENN: Really?

CRUZ: That is right in front of you.

GLENN: Will you defend us when we're in court trying to put American companies out of business?

PAT: Call Ted's office and ask him, why do you defend people? Why?

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Why do you defend?

PAT: Is it because you're a defense lawyer?

GLENN: (Laughing.)

CRUZ: Well, we know it's silly season when we're 19 days out from the election.

STU: Yeah, we probably think this is a lot more funny than Ted does.

PAT: Probably.

GLENN: Ted Cruz isn't laughing when we call him lawyer.

PAT: So Ted, tell us about the Chinese company, the Chinese company and why you defended them.

CRUZ: Look, the ad that you played is filled with lies, and Dewhurst is spending $3 million saturating the airwaves with it.

PAT: Yep.

CRUZ: It's a lie.

PAT: I hear it every day, several times a day.

STU: All the time.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: I have to tell you I've met with people in Texas, I was for Ted Cruz but have you heard he's a lawyer?

PAT: He's a lawyer?

GLENN: He's a lawyer politician.

CRUZ: It is filled with lots of lies, the biggest one of which is they tell you that the opposing party in this lawsuit is, quote, an American manufacturer.

PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.

GLENN: What they don't tell you is 20 years ago, he moved his factory to China.

PAT: Oh, my gosh.

CRUZ: This is, in fact, a lawsuit between two Chinese tire factories.

PAT: Really?

CRUZ: Really.

PAT: That is conveniently missing from the ad.

CRUZ: They just omitted, he incorporated his company in the Channel Islands, a notorious tax haven, and he spends eight months a year in China running his factory there.

PAT: What was the underhanded technique that was used supposedly? Because one of them, one of them is that supposedly some underhanded technique was used to defend them?

CRUZ: Which is that the company filed an appeal, and there are actually three tire companies in the case. All three appealed, including the plaintiff, including the fellow in the ad. He appealed.

PAT: Wow.

STU: Wow, he used the same underhanded technique?

PAT: As lawyer Ted Cruz?

GLENN: There's too many people like you, Ted Cruz.

CRUZ: Well, and you know what's interesting, he also doesn't tell people that I didn't argue the case. I wasn't the lead lawyer. And if you look at a case I did argue last year in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Chinese counterfeiting. I represented a major manufacturer against a Chinese company that stole a U.S. patent.

GLENN: So let me translate. He was using his tricks again in a courtroom, as a lawyer.

STU: On the same topic.

PAT: Again, with China being involved.

CRUZ: It IS hard to argue with that.

GLENN: We can turn it against you any way you throw it at us.

GLENN: And you know what? If I were Dewhurst and I had millions and millions and millions of dollars, I would turn it against you every single way. I mean, it wouldn't matter anymore. "Do we have enough lawyers? Don't we have enough Dewhursts in Washington already"?

PAT: Boy, that's for sure.

GLENN: We do.

PAT: We do have more than enough Dewhursts in Washington already.

GLENN: Tell me about ‑‑ tell me why you should be there, Ted.

CRUZ: Because our nation is in crisis and we've got too many go‑along‑to‑get‑along establishment politicians to Washington. We need conservatives and with he need fighters.

GLENN: Are you a Club For Growth guy?

CRUZ: Club For Growth has endorsed me, Freedom Works has endorsed me, the five strongest conservatives in the U.S. Senate, Jim DeMint, Mike Lee, Rand, Paul and Pat Toomey, and Tom Coburn have endorsed me. And just an hour ago, you may not have seen the news, Governor Sarah Palin endorsed me.

PAT: Wow, that's nice.

GLENN: Now let me ask you this: Texas, what the hell is wrong with you! How are the poll numbers doing?

CRUZ: The poll numbers are great. It is a two‑man race between me and David Dewhurst. He is the moderate establishment. He is a tax‑and‑spend Republican.

PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.

CRUZ: And our numbers are surging because conservatives are uniting behind Tea Party activists, Republican women. And I'll tell you the Dewhurst campaign is terrified, after Mourdock's win in Indiana.

GLENN: They should be.

CRUZ: Because as you know, all the pundits said that the moderate incumbent there was unbeatable and the people rose up and said, look, we're tired of these spineless jellyfish that don't believe anything.

GLENN: But how do you honestly, how do you combat somebody who has unlimited funds that are running ad campaigns? I mean, these ad campaigns make you ‑‑ Ted, I don't know you well but I've met you several times. You're not a monster and you're certainly not the guy that is portrayed in these ads.

CRUZ: Right.

GLENN: And, you know, if I didn't know you and I was just kind of a casual person, I'd think... he's a lawyer.

PAT: A Chinese operative.

GLENN: I mean, I would think you were the worst monster on the planet. How do you fight this without a lot of money against a guy who has an unlimited amount of cash?

CRUZ: Yeah, he's putting a million bucks of his own money in. You know the answer is support from the people all over Texas and all over the country. We've raised over $5.2 million from 19,000 people. Every time I'm on your show, Glenn, I've got to tell you hundreds and hundreds of people all over Texas and all over the country come to our website, TedCruz.org. They contribute. And it's how we're keeping up because this is conservatives all over the country.

GLENN: But here ‑‑ hang on. Here's something interesting. I mean, here's a guy who's running for the Senate seat from Texas and again one of his dirty tricks: He doesn't spell "Cruz" the way you would normally spell "cruise." Another dirty underhanded trick. So if you're going the Website and you're trying to find "cruise" ‑‑

PAT: Yeah. TedCruz.org, you would spell it Ted Cruz, C‑r‑u‑z, if I'm not mistaken.

CRUZ: That is exactly right.

PAT: Isn't that the underhanded trick you're using?

GLENN: Underhanded trick.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: It's not "cruise" like, hey, I'm putting it in cruise control.

PAT: No.

GLENN: It's that kind of underhanded stuff ‑‑

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: ‑‑ that we've had enough of.

PAT: Tell us, what's the biggest difference between you and David Dewhurst? Why should Texas vote for you as opposed to him, the guy everybody knows?

CRUZ: I'm a conservative and I'm a fighter. I've spent my entire life fighting for the Constitution and fighting for freedom. As the solicitor general for Texas for five and a half years serving under Greg Abbott, we led the nation fighting for conservative opinions, we defended the Ten Commandments and won, defended the "Pledge of Allegiance" and won, defended the Second Amendment and won. And we stood up and fought the world court and the United Nations and the president of the United States defended U.S. sovereignty and won.

PAT: Against Mexico, right?

CRUZ: Mexico and actually 90 nations against us. Mexico sued the United States and the world court.

GLENN: You did that as a lawyer.

PAT: As a lawyer. Tell us about that case because that ‑‑

GLENN: I didn't know you were the guy who did that.

PAT: Yeah, that was an important case. Tell us about that one.

CRUZ: Well, it was a case that began tragically in Houston. Two teenage girls were gang‑raped and murdered.

PAT: 1993?

CRUZ: Yeah.

PAT: Yeah.

CRUZ: And one of the gang rapists and murderers was named José Medellin. He was an illegal alien. And he was convicted and what happened was Mexico sued the United States and the world court, and the world court issued an order to the United States to reopen the convictions of 51 murderers across the country.

PAT: And in my final straw with George W. Bush, he actually sided with Mexico on this.

CRUZ: It was heartbreaking. I think he received some very, very poor advice.

PAT: Yep.

CRUZ: And he signed an order that attempted to order the state courts to obey the world court.

GLENN: This is ‑‑

PAT: Unbelievable.

GLENN: This is ‑‑

PAT: That was unbelievable.

GLENN: This is where I really lost it with George Bush.

PAT: Me, too.

GLENN: When this stuff was starting to happen, this was when I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

PAT: What?

GLENN: What the hell was George Bush doing? And you're the guy who fought it and argued it in the Supreme Court?

CRUZ: Yeah, I argued it twice. And as you know, one of the things we need ‑‑

PAT: And won, by the way.

GLENN: Yes.

CRUZ: Is we need leaders who have the backbone to stand up not just to Democrats but to fellow Republicans when they go off the reservation and they are not honoring the Constitution.

GLENN: Thank you.

PAT: Exactly.

GLENN: Thank you. Okay, now look. Last Tuesday Indiana, the Tea Party and Freedom Works and everybody else got together and they got Dick Lugar out.

CRUZ: Yep.

GLENN: We're not fighting the Democrats. We're fighting the Republicans. Got Dick Lugar out. Now the eyes are going to turn to Texas. Can the Tea Party, can freedom lovers, can constitutionalists, can real conservatives stand and make it past somebody who has millions of dollars and deep pockets to smear this guy left and right? This guy doesn't have deep pockets.

PAT: An established, moderate establishment candidate in David Dewhurst.

GLENN: Big time. Big time.

PAT: That's who that guy is. I mean, "moderate" is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

GLENN: Big time. This is ‑‑ you know, this is another one of those RINOs, this is one of those GOP "I'll play whatever game they want me to play" and Ted Cruz is not. Running for U.S. Senate out of Texas. If you want to donate, if you want to help him, go to TedCruz.org, C‑r‑u‑z‑e. TedCruz.org.

PAT: C‑r‑u‑z.

GLENN: What did I say?

PAT: No E.

GLENN: Okay. Another dirty trick?

PAT: Yes. Still another one.

GLENN: Oh, my goodness. I don't know if I can ‑‑

PAT: It's a long U sound without the E at the end. How did he pull that off?

GLENN: He's being outspent 9‑1. Early voting starts on Monday all over Texas. Dewhurst needs 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff which would most likely be with Ted. Concentrate your efforts one at a time. We've got to take the Senate back and that means even taking it back from the Republicans. We've got to have people who understand what we're facing, and Ted is one of those guys. Thank you, Ted. I appreciate it, man.

CRUZ: It's always a pleasure. You guys are fighting for freedom and making a difference. And you know what? A lot of the media said the Tea Party was dead. Tuesday proved that wrong. And on May 29th, 19 days from today, Texas is going to prove it wrong. We're going to send a strong conservative and a fighter to the Senate. And you have my word: Texas will lead the fight to stop the Obama agenda, to defend free market principles, and to restore the Constitution.

GLENN: And you have my word that if you don't hold that up, you will... you'll receive the wrath, the wrath of this program and everybody who voted for ya.

CRUZ: And Glenn, I am asking you, hold me accountable.

GLENN: Oh, we will. You don't have to ask. It's our pleasure.

CRUZ: Because if I am anything other than leading the fight with arrows up and down my torso.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

CRUZ: I mean, Glenn, as you know my dad fled oppression in Cuba. I mean, he was imprisoned. He was tortured. Freedom for me is not an abstract concept in a book.

GLENN: Yeah, yeah. Is your dad still alive?

CRUZ: He is. He's a pastor ‑‑

GLENN: We'll get him on a plane and we'll personally have him punch you in the face if you start screwing around in Washington. No, I mean it. It will be your worst nightmare. I mean it.

CRUZ: I'm much more scared of my dad than I am of you.

GLENN: You should be.

CRUZ: Because I'd have to look him in the eyes if I didn't fight for freedom and help turn this around.

GLENN: All right. Ted, thanks a lot. I appreciate it, man.

PAT: TedCruz.org.

GLENN: Again is lawyer Ted Cruz.

PAT: TedCruz.org.

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

Al Drago / Stringer | Getty Images

Prosecutors stopped a New Year’s Eve bombing plot rooted in ideology that treats the US as an enemy to be destroyed.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that four members of an anti-capitalist extremist group were arrested on Friday for plotting coordinated bombings in California on New Year’s Eve.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspects planned to detonate explosives concealed in backpacks at various businesses while also targeting ICE agents and vehicles. The attacks were supposed to coincide with midnight celebrations.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

The plot was disrupted before any lives were lost. The group behind the plot calls itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front. That name matters more than you might think.

When ideology turns operational

For years, the media has told us that radical, violent rhetoric on the left is mostly symbolic. They explained away the angry slogans, destructive language, and calls for “liberation” as performance or hyperbole.

Bombs are not metaphors, however.

Once explosives enter the picture, framing the issue as harmless expression becomes much more difficult. What makes this case different is the ideological ecosystem behind it.

The Turtle Island Liberation Front was not a single-issue group. It was anti-American, anti-capitalist, and explicitly revolutionary. Its members viewed the United States as an illegitimate occupying force rather than a sovereign nation. America, in their view, is not a nation, not a country; it is a structure that must be dismantled at any cost.

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

“Turtle Island” is not an innocent cultural reference. In modern activist usage, it is shorthand for the claim that the United States has no moral or legal right to exist. It reframes the country as stolen land, permanently occupied by an illegitimate society.

Once people accept that premise, the use of violence against their perceived enemies becomes not only permissible, but virtuous. That framing is not unique to one movement. It appears again and again across radical networks that otherwise disagree on nearly everything.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements do not share the same vision for the future. They do not even trust one another. But they share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed. The alignment of radical, hostile ideologies is anything but a coincidence.

The red-green alliance

For decades, analysts have warned about what is often called the red-green alliance: the convergence of far-left revolutionary politics with Islamist movements. The alliance is not based on shared values, but on shared enemies. Capitalism, national sovereignty, Western culture, and constitutional government all fall into that category.

History has shown us how this process works. Revolutionary coalitions form to tear down an existing order, promising liberation and justice. Once power is seized, the alliance fractures, and the most ruthless faction takes control.

Iran’s 1979 revolution followed this exact pattern. Leftist revolutionaries helped topple the shah. Within a few years, tens of thousands of them were imprisoned, executed, or “disappeared” by the Islamist regime they helped install. Those who do not understand history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it.

ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

This moment is different

What happened in California was not a foreign conflict bleeding into the United States or a solitary extremist acting on impulse. It was an organized domestic group, steeped in ideological narratives long validated by universities, activist networks, and the media.

The language that once circulated on campuses and social media is now appearing in criminal indictments. “Liberation” has become a justification for explosives. “Resistance” has become a plan with a date and a time. When groups openly call for the destruction of the United States and then prepare bombs to make it happen, the country has entered a new phase. Pretending things have not gotten worse, that we have not crossed a line as a country, is reckless denial.

Every movement like this depends on confusion. Its supporters insist that calls for America’s destruction are symbolic, even as they stockpile weapons. They denounce violence while preparing for it. They cloak criminal intent in the language of justice and morality. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The California plot should end the debate over whether these red-green alliances exist. They do. The only question left is whether the country will recognize the pattern before more plots advance farther — and succeed.

This is not about one group, one ideology, or one arrest. It is about a growing coalition that has moved past rhetoric and into action. History leaves no doubt where that path leads. The only uncertainty is whether Americans will step in and stop it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.