Will 2014 be the year America says enough is enough?

TheBlaze's national security editor Buck Sexton opened Monday's Glenn Beck Program with a simple question: Will 2014 be the year America says enough is enough? As Buck explained, the United States has been teetering on the edge of big government progressivism for quite some time now, and soon the weight of a bloated government and overregulation will prove to be too much for this country to bear. With the midterm elections just around the corner, 2014 provides the opportunity to take a step back and reevaluate the current state of this country. Will Americans finally be ready say enough is enough?

Full transcript of the monologue below:

Now, Barack Obama promised Dmitry Medvedev that he’d have more flexibility after the 2012 election. You remember that. And they turned out to be truer words than I think even any of us could have imagined.

It was quite a harbinger for 2013. I mean, I thought Mr. Fundamental Transformation couldn’t get much worse after round one which brought us, let’s just take a little joyride through the wreckage, shall we? ObamaCare, we know how that’s been, QE ad infinitum, the QE, the easing that can never stop, Solyndra and the never-ending parade of green investment fails because it’s not their money, so why do they care? It’s your money.

Benghazi, we know that Hillary Clinton says it doesn’t make much difference, right? What difference does it make at this point that Benghazi happened? A lot, Hillary, a lot, we’re going to remind you of that in 2016. That’s what we’ve had to deal with over the past year, these issues, including Fast and Furious and others like them. I mean, this is right here, if you will, this is the pinnacle you would think of the problems this administration could possibly offer for us. But he was actually just getting warmed up.

Tonight, we take a look back at 2013, but more importantly, we’re going to look ahead to 2014 as well. And here’s my question, is this the year? Will 2014 be the year the pendulum finally swings back away from Progressives? Can Conservatives finally retake the high ground? It should be the year. Look, how many more big government failures and scandals does one need before they realize it ain’t working?

I bet you’ve forgotten more Obama scandals and debacles than most administrations ever have. In 2013, we saw tremendous amounts of scandals. Now, of course there was the IRS targeting scandal, right? The Associated phone records scandal, that was the thing that Eric Holder, by the way, said he had no idea, right? But he did have an idea, just like he said he learned about Fast and Furious through press reports, but I thought he knew about it before that – hmm, silly me. Oh, there was the ObamaCare rollout, after the NSA spying. NSA spying of course, there we go, and NSA spying, we know that that’s now something that the administration says they’re going to do something about.

What are they going to do about it though? They’re contesting it in court. They say okay, maybe we went too far. And the ObamaCare rollout, wow, even the staunchest Marxist left wing I-don’t-even-think-America-should-be-pretending-to-be-capitalist kind of guy knows that the ObamaCare rollout was a disaster, the round two of the Obama administration, the round two.

Now, if Conservatives cannot turn this disaster that we’ve talked to you about here into a winning message, if we can’t transform it into some kind of story for the American people that makes them trust Conservatives with government power so that they can limit government power and restore some semblance of liberty, we deserve our fate. We’re toast.

So something needs to change fast, because the other side is relentless. They’re pushing for more bills. They’re pushing for more huge comprehensive bills on immigration, for example, on climate change, also known as amnesty, and yet another redistribution of wealth scheme. There’s tons of those going around.

So 2014 is going to be a fight. It’s going to be a fight against the Marxist administration that we see now increasingly trying to take money from some people and give it to others. But the biggest fight for 2014 isn’t against Obama per se, there is also going to be a fight, because this is a midterm election, between the establishment increasingly progressive GOP with the Ted Cruzes of the world, the conservative members of Congress.

We have a choice that we’re going to have to face on our side, go with the moderate establishment Republican who can win or go with the candidate who stands on Tea Party conservative principles. Will we go with the Ted Cruz type even if the outcome doesn’t look all that great? I remember when Ted Cruz’s outcome didn’t look all that great. He had to win the primary against Dewhurst during Texas.

See, we’ve seen the lesser of these two evils approaches before. We know where it’s gotten us. And not only now are we in a dire fiscal situation, we’re approaching dangerous territory when it comes to centralized power in general. I mean, everybody should be appalled at how the president has been haphazardly ad hoc tinkering with the Affordable Care Act law.

Look, like it or not, it’s a law. As they have said so many times when there was the government shutdown and the fights over it, it’s the law. Well, they know that for Conservatives, for constitutionalists, that has meaning that it’s the law. When we read the words on the page that are supposed to be the law that Congress has passed, we care about those.

We find ourselves increasingly in a place where there is not a moral necessarily issue with what’s going on. We don’t feel like we have to give into this because the government is doing good. We have to give in because the government has force, can make us do these things.

So the president can go in and change a law as he pleases, it seems. Those are the sorts of things that maybe a Hugo Chavez or a Robert Mugabe may do. Now, last week President Obama changed the healthcare law again, this time extending the deadline for people to choose plans and relaxing the rules for those who had their plans canceled.

The press is so hyperfocused on making this stupid law work that they’re overlooking the fact that the administration thinks nothing of just changing laws without Congress or any process whatsoever. Remember all that talk in the first term about being tempted to do it on my own? President Obama said it over and over again, he’s going to do it on his own. I’m going to do it on my own, all this gridlock in Congress.

It looks like Obama has given himself over to his temptations. By the way, he was also tempted to enroll at least as sort of an act of good faith in his own ObamaCare law. By the way, he chose a bronze plan. Oh yeah, I don’t think he’s going to get that level of care. Now to be fair, the White House said that the military is still going to give the commander-in-chief his medical care, but that really tells us a lot, doesn’t it?

The president thinks that it’s an act of solidarity to pretend to sign up under the healthcare law that he’s making millions of Americans sign up for after getting millions of their plans canceled. He thinks that’s solidarity. He thinks that should make us feel better, even though it will never touch him or his family or anybody that he knows. It will never be a problem for them.

Oh, but it’s all about political theatre then. It’s all about the president saying I picked my bronze plan. He picked a bronze plan. Let’s be serious for a second. This is the President of the United States. It was all ridiculous, but it shows you how out of touch they are with your problems, with your healthcare concerns. Because this president can’t resist the flexibility offered to him in his second term. He just can’t.

Now look, Bill Clinton, he was maybe a little powerless against the sexual advances he received from a zoftig intern. This president apparently is tempted whenever a chance to override Congress walks by in something low-cut and lacey. You know Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would be going all oh, the Constitution, the separation of powers, the prerogative of the legislature, if it was a Republican in the White House.

If the next conservative president announced that he was going to alter income tax rates to 10% or let’s make it 1%, hey, across-the-board 1% to help people in a tough economy…hang on a second. I want to take a moment to reflect on a 1% tax. As Glenn would say, that’s some good old-fashioned conservative red meat right there. It shouldn’t matter if you agree or disagree with the changes made. Everyone should be alarmed when a president goes around Congress.

A 1% flat tax, if President Obama can change the ObamaCare law all the time willy-nilly as he sees fit, why can’t all of a sudden we just have a president declare that the IRS is only going to enforce a 1% tax rate? Well, there’s no good reason, and in fact, this might actually be a really good idea. This could help people. I would love to pay a 1% tax per year.

But you see, changing laws without any accountability, changing laws without even consulting the representatives of the people, changing laws that absolutely blur any sense of separation of power into government, that’s what dictators do. So back to the original question if I can for a moment, is this the year?

Is 2014 the year people drop their allegiance to party? Is this the year even those on the left realize that government has grown too dangerous and unprecedented levels of control? Is this the year people say enough is enough? I sure hope so, because there’s only so much big government Progressivism this country can withstand, and we are teetering close to the edge.

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

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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.

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

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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.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

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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.

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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.