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Glenn interviews Ben Shapiro, author of 'Bullies'

January 09, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Today on radio, Glenn interviewed Ben Shapiro, Editor-at-Large for Breitbart.com and the author of the new book Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans. How do conservatives move forward when the left tries to shut down every argument and ostracize them and their ideas? Shapiro and Glenn discussed the issue on radio.

Full Transcript of Interview:

GLENN: Ben Shapiro is really truly a remarkable, remarkable reporter and he's the editor at‑large of Breitbart.com. He entered UCLA at the age of 16 years old and he does not sit down at a fight. And he is the author of a new book called Bullies, and I'm a fan of Ben's and I wanted to put him on the air and talk about the book because I think that really, Ben, what we're facing now is, you know, when you have somebody from the labor unions coming out the other day saying, you know, labor unions 100 years ago had no problem just saying what it was, and it's killed the rich. And people cheered. We are headed towards real trouble with bullies.

SHAPIRO: Yeah, we certainly are. And Glenn, you know this better than anybody because you've been standing up to bullies for virtually your entire career. But I mean, when you look at how the left operates, the way that they operate now today, and it's infected the entire democratic establishment, is they see us as morally deficient. They are not interested in having a simple political discussion. The reason that Mitt Romney lost this last election was not because he lost on policy. The exit poll showed that most Americans agreed with him on policy. It's not because they thought that President Obama is a good president. Most agree that President Obama is a really bad president.

GLENN: Okay, can you stop saying ‑‑ hang on just a second, Ben. We've banned that guy's name. So can you just call him that guy? Because I'm almost in shock therapy with you saying his name so much.

SHAPIRO: Okay.

GLENN: We can't take him anymore. But go ahead. Go ahead. Just try your best.

SHAPIRO: Okay. I'll do my best. The fact is the reason that Mitt Romney lost is because he was perceived, widely perceived as a bad guy. That guy's campaign, the president's campaign ‑‑

GLENN: Thank you, thank you.

SHAPIRO: ‑‑ was designed, designed to make Mitt Romney look like a horrible human being. If you just watch that campaign from the outside, the impression you got is that that guy, the president, is a nice guy. Because Mitt Romney kept saying over and over he's a nice guy. And the impression you got of Mitt Romney is that Mitt Romney is a racist, bigoted sexist homophobe because that's what the media and President Obama were pushing. And they do this so they don't have to debate us. That's the whole point. To bully us into silence and to make the American public think these guys are all evil and they are all nasty and that's why now we're in discussions about how we reach out to the black and Hispanic community and convince them we're not racist. You can't convince them you're not racist. Once you've been tarred with that brush, there's no way to defeat that. The only answer is to fight back against these guys and as that guy once said, punch back twice as hard.

GLENN: Okay. So now here you are, and we're looking at the war with guns. They are bullying ‑‑ I had a gun manufacturer call me and say all of his bank funding has been stopped because ‑‑ and this is the second one now in just a couple of days ‑‑ because the bank said we just can't do business with you. That's bullying. That's the federal government being, their hands deeply in these banks, the banks afraid and they are just not going to do business because we can't handle it.

SHAPIRO: That's exactly right. I mean, look at even the media strategy on the whole gun control debate. What they've been doing, Sandy Hook, they are standing on the dead bodies, the kids from Sandy Hook and saying if you don't agree with our gun control proposals, it's because you're a bad person. It's because you don't care about these kids." They are not interested in discussing which policies actually best protect against violence. They are not interested in talking about the City of Chicago had a has tons of gun legislation and regulation and is the American center for gun violence. They are not interested in discussing any of that stuff. What they are interested in doing is sitting on their high horse and then looking at us and saying, "You guys don't care about dead kids and the reason you don't care about dead kids is because of politics." And it's despicable and it really is evil. I mean, look at how they are targeting the National Rifle Association. What does the NRA have to do with anything here? They are an interest group that's designed to defend the Second Amendment, but the media has them on and then berates them for not abandoning their position on the Second Amendment. There's been a lot of talk, I mean you've seen it, a lot of talk about violent video games and violence in the culture and kind of nastiness in the culture. I have yet to hear David Gregory have on the head of the ACLU and say Europe's extreme defense of a broad interpretation led to sandy hook. They don't do that. They only do it with rightwing interest groups or conservative interest groups because they use incidents like sandy hook as a club to wield on our side of the aisle.

GLENN: You know the thing I like about your book is it makes the case on all of it. I mean, we've just talked Sandy Hook, you can talk Hobby Lobby they are doing it, they did it with Chick‑fil‑A, they are doing it with the EPA as you point out. We talked about it with the banks. It's race. It's all of it. It is silence people. Silence them, silence them, silence them. Make them afraid.

SHAPIRO: Yep. I mean, Glenn, look. The best example of it is what they tried to do to you, right? If you take a look at what Media Matters, the David Brock organization has been doing for years, what they do there is they sit there at the behest of the government, at the behest of the White House, they have weekly meetings with the White House and Media Matters sits there and monitor programs like yours and they wait there to hear you say something, take out of context and use it to launch boycotts against the advertisers, trying to destroy advertisers' business based on false constructions than what people like you say. And that's specifically designed to get you to shut up. That's what they want to do. There are two goals and one of two things have to happen: You either voluntarily stop talking which isn't going to happen or they try and shut you up. These are not pro First Amendment people, these are not pro speech people. These are not pro civility people. They are not civil. We have to stop treating them as if civility is going to win the day. We had the moral high ground in the 2012 election and we lost. The moral high ground doesn't do us a lot of good when we're fighting people who are absolutely ‑‑

GLENN: So how do you ‑‑ so I don't want to become everything I despise.

SHAPIRO: You know, I don't think that we have to become everything we despise but I do think that there is a Geneva Convention with regard to civility. I think that civility is like the Geneva Convention. If you operate in uniform, then the Geneva Conventions cover you. If you operator out of uniform, if you're a terrorist, the Geneva Conventions don't cover you, right? If you look at civility, it's sort of the same way. If you operate within the bounds of, look, we all want to get the right thing done for the American people, we're just trying to figure out the best way to get there, that's civil conversation we can all have. If it turns into them screaming at you that you're a racist, you sitting there defending yourself, I'm not a racist and let's discuss policy, that's not going to help. That's a good recipe for losing.

GLENN: I'm writing down the Geneva Convention for civility.

PAT: I like that.

GLENN: I think you should develop that.

PAT: I like that.

GLENN: I think that is absolutely ‑‑

STU: In other words, we're stealing your idea, Ben.

SHAPIRO: Go for it. Appreciate it.

GLENN: I just think that's ‑‑

PAT: That's great stuff.

GLENN: I think that's profound. I mean, I really do. What is the ‑‑ what is the one I think that you think that, A is coming our way that people aren't really putting together yet and, B, what is the one thing that you wish people could grab and say, guys, if you would just understand and do this," things would begin to change?

SHAPIRO: I say the one thing I think that's coming our way is the kind of internationalization of American values on a broad level. The attempt to take American values and make them obsolete or unseen. You are now unpatriotic if you don't believe that we ought to sign onto Kyoto protocol. You are now unpatriotic if you don't believe we should sign onto Agenda 21. You are now unpatriotic if you think we should sacrifice in favor of internationalism. If you don't see this coming ‑‑ you see it played out domestically. On the fiscal cliff debate, the class warfare stuff they are pushing, that's been pushed in Europe for years. The idea is if we defend free enterprise, that makes us bad people. If we don't see this coming, then we're going to lose the debate. And the way to push back against it is to label people what they are. These people are antipatriotic. They are antipatriotic. They don't believe in patriotism. They don't believe in American values. All the leftists who are out there talking about how, you know, they believe in the Second Amendment but then they want a UN treaty on gun control, you don't get to have it both ways.

GLENN: Yeah, you're not unpatriotic. You're an anticonstitutionalist.

SHAPIRO: Exactly. Exactly.

GLENN: You're against the Constitution and the declaration of the United States of America. And that they can't defend because you can show them all the time. The idea that people are patriotic or not patriotic, I don't even know what patriotic means anymore.

SHAPIRO: Right.

GLENN: I really don't know.

SHAPIRO: This is what they've done. They've redefined patriotism to mean anything they want it to mean. They say that the centrist patriotism which is basically saying that being unpatriotic is patriotic. I mean, it defends what you're dissenting to and what you're dissenting from. They've created these slogans. Right now if you dissent from President ‑‑ from that guy, then ‑‑

GLENN: Thank you.

SHAPIRO: You are not going to ‑‑ then you're unpatriotic, right? If you dissented from George W. Bush, then you are patriotic according to the left. They have completely hijacked the term "patriotism" to mean that if you flag‑burn, that is the highest form of patriotism but if you don't think that people should be allowed to flag‑burn, then you're unpatriotic. They've completely skewed it. So you are exactly right, Glenn. I mean, you've been on this for a while. Did the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are the documents that matter and we have to make an affirmative case for them again. People don't read the Federalist Papers. They don't know about it. People don't know the basis for the Second Amendment. They think the basis for the Second Amendment is that you should be able to hunt. That's not the basis for the Second Amendment. And anybody who reads the Federalist Papers knows it. We have to make an affirmative case again for why the ‑‑ I mean, it's sad that we have to do this but this is what the left has done with their bully tactics, with their polarization of America. They've turned it into if you defend the Constitution, it's because you're a racist. Because after all, the Constitution enshrined the 3/5ths rule. So we have to go back and we have to make a fundamental case for why the Constitution matters and Declaration matters and why those who oppose it are objects of tyranny and freedom.

GLENN: Ben, you keep doing what you're doing. I'm a huge fan of yours and I'm glad that it's always nice to see on our own islands that there's another island out there as well shouting just as hard, and I appreciate it.

SHAPIRO: Hey, thanks so much. You're the best.

GLENN: You bet. Ben Shapiro. The name of the book is Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silencing America.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

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.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

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.