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Glenn's Show Prep

'How good were you with math?': Glenn confronts Mike Lee on his controversial tax plan

April 15, 2015
Staff

WRITER

Senator Mike Lee helped co-author the controversial tax plan presented by Senator Marco Rubio and Glenn confronted him on the facts today on radio. Glenn, who has been one of Lee’s most vocal supporters, asked him if he was as good at math as he is the law.

GLENN: So yesterday, we read the Rubio Tax Plan, and we think it's butt ugly. However, the Easter egg, as we called it yesterday, was -- the co-sponsor was Mike Lee. So that got us scratching your heads, because we know Mike Lee. And maybe the brilliance of this is it only looks butt ugly, and that's the genes you, because all the Democrats will say this is butt ugly if you are conservative. Mike Lee is smarter than we are. We are missing something. Please tell me that is the case, Mike Lee.

LEE: That is absolutely the case. Thank you for having me on the show. It is hard to get people's attention when introducing a tax plan --

GLENN: Oh, no. Not on America's "Charity Day", when we all feel so very charitable for all the money we gave to the charity called the government?

LEE: Right. Right.

PAT: What are we missing --

LEE: Charity does not take money from people at the point of a gun. Look, our current tax code is bad, okay. It consists of tens of thousands of pages, together with implementing regulations. The current tax code discourages work, savings, investment, new business formation, marriage, and even having children. That's bad. So what we are trying to do is offset that.

I agree with what you were saying a minute ago. It would be great if we had a single rate system. What was true for Malachi ought to be true for government. There ought to be one rate. The problem is you can't really get there from here. You can't really go from a seven-rate system to a one-rate system without raising taxes on a lot of poor and middle class folks.

So we want to simplify the code and do it in a way that's pro-growth and pro-family and offsets the penalties against the very things the government is discouraging right now and ought not be discouraging any longer.

PAT: How did the Russians do it?

LEE: I'm not really an expert in Soviet tax policy.

GLENN: Maybe you should ask someone in the Obama administration. They know all about the Soviets.

PAT: Seriously, this a tax increase for people -- we were figuring about $116,000 to $600,000 some, an increase for them, right?

LEE: No. That is a distortion brought about through the media

PAT: We were looking at it, thinking it looks like an increase.

STU: I know there's more deductions in there, so how do you get rid of that? Seems like the people in that group would pay a little more by the basic numbers.

LEE: The other overwhelming majority of them would not. 80% of all Americans would pay under a simple rate. You could call it a flat rate of 15% under the plan. All income learned below $75,000 by single filerswould be taxed a 15% under this plan, subjection to two deductions.

Then all income below $150,000 for people filing jointly, married, would be taxed at 15% also. We think it is a huge improvement over the status quo, because we don't think your taxes should go up significantly just because you get married. And right now, that is true. Today, some of hat income below $75,000 for singles and below $150,000 for joint filers is taxed at 25%, not under 15% rate, as it would be under our plan. Importantly, and I think it has been misrepresented in the press on this point, is that your tax bill wouldn't jump to 35% on all of your earnings once you make $151,000. Instead, you would pay 15% on $150,000 and 35% of the marginal $1,000 over that level.

GLENN: Can I ask a question? You are saying that we are worried about you are going to raise the taxes on a lot of people paying at the lower end. So you've got a 15% flat tax there, right?

LEE: Yes.

PAT: Two rates.

GLENN: So why don't we do one 15 and one 25 over 150?

LEE: That would been one approach, but as we have run the numbers, we think it is the best way of making it work in a way that doesn't add unduly to our deficit.

This is a work in progress. Rome wasn't built in a day, we are open to all kinds of suggestions. We are open to considering something like that. We weren't able to make the numbers work the first round when we put it together.

But this is still a big tax cut. This is still a $1 trillion tax cut, and that's putting it conservatively. Some would say it is more like a $4 trillion tax cut. This is a very aggressive tax cut, a Reagan-esque type of tax cut. You could say a lot of things about it, but you can't call a tax hike, under any interpretation, any form of mathematics cannot call this --

GLENN: You are so good with the law. How good were you at math? I just want some assurance here, because I trust you, Mike and I like you, and you are really truly one of the good guys, but we are look at this and we just don't see this the same way. We are trying to figure this out.

STU: I'm sure you have accounted for this. But looking at it from the surface, right now, there's a 35% bracket, which kicks in at $411,000 before you start paying that. Now that same rate kicks in at $75,000 with your plan. That is a significant change. I understand the rate below 75,000 for some people will be lower, but that's a big change. You are getting hit with a high rate at $75,000.

LEE: Well, that first $75,000 or first $150,000, if you are married and filing jointly, is never taxed at 35%. It's taxed at 15%, and a --

GLENN: But at $76,000, if I am single, I am paying 35%.

LEE: Yeah. I've got lots of charts and things I could show you, if we were there, but the overwhelming majority of people would not see any tax increase on this, and for most Americans, this would be a very significant tax cut. As important as anything else, it is a tax code simplification. We have to remember, complexity is a subsidy for lawyers and for accountants, for lobbyists and for people who make their business the process of contacting and influences government.

So there are no easy fixes here, but part of the beauty of this plan is that it would dramatically simplify the tax code. It is pro-family, pro-growth, and this is a tax cut plan Reagan would be proud of.

GLENN: Tell me about businesses.

LEE: On the business side, we lower the rate quite significantly down to 20%. We look to a single layer taxation system, and it's at 25%. It's a business tax rate of 25%. We get rid of the double taxation that's in our existing code on the business side by eliminating taxes on capital gains and on dividends. And so we think this is incentivizing all the right things, incentivizing investment and business formation. And overall, it's diminishing the disincentives, the penalties the government is currently putting in place on getting married and having children.

We don't think the government should be involved in those decisions. It shouldn't. And it currently is, and it is punishing the very people who are building our society and getting married and having children. We shouldn't be doing that. We also shouldn't be disincentivizing people from forming businesses.

STU: Seems like every conservative that has looked at this plan loved the business side of this. It really does look like it is a role pro-growth plan and would really help people not only in corporations, but also LLCs and things like that, correct?

LEE: Yes. And it would also be very, very helpful to growing small businesses. It would allow for immediate full expensing to provide tax relief for grows small businesses. So look, Americans, all Americans, will end up being wealthier on this. They will end up having more disposable income, end up with a lot for economic growth as a result.

I'm not saying it's perfect or the kind of plan I would design if we were designing a tax plan ab initio. We have to start

with the government that we have, rather than the one that might have been, had we more sanity in your government over the years.

STU: Real quick, before Glenn comes in with a much smarter question, I'm sure. Reading the way it's structured, it seems to me that what you are doing here -- and there's a lot of good things. The business side is good. I think the vast majority of people, individual earners would pay less under the plan. Not just the majority, but the vast majority would. Is there an element, though, where you are saying let's be honest. Every time we introduce something like a flat tax, they come out, beat it up, say it is a tax cut for the rich. So if we let some of the rich get hit at little bit, we are shielded from that and maybe we can kind of get a bunch of good policy in, but not the whole thing. Is that --

LEE: No, that's not the motivation here, nor is it an accurate description of how this operates in any objective way.

The reason is, first of all, when we get rid of the double layer taxation from the double taxation by eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends, that by itself is opening up -- us up to a huge amount of attack from the left that hates this. They also hate the fact we are levering the playing field between big and small businesses. What we want is fair competition, instead of cronyism. What we've got now is cronyism. When we have fair competition, that creates millions of new jobs.

GLENN: But the only way you only have fair competition is to be flat.

LEE: That is a very fair point, Glenn. Again, I can't emphasize enough I would prefer a single flat --

GLENN: Because this is what you said. We can't get there from here. And I understand. I really do understand, you can't change a tire going 150 miles per hour. And so I get that. But, you know, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Barak Obama, they all gave us the biggest tire changes at 150 miles per hour this country has ever seen on our side, on the conservative side. We had Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Regan. That's it. Calvin Coolidge. That's it. Why is it we are so afraid of standing up and talking common sense and saying you damn right, if the Soviet Union can figure this out, we can do it. If the Marxists and the communists realize that this was a better system, then why can't we? When you look -- I don't remember the number, and I'm sure you know it, like 17.9 or 18% that's the number, no matter what you do to the rates you always collect about that much. So why aren't we just targeting that number?

LEE: Right. Well, again, I would love to go to that kind of system. On average we are able to collect about 18% of GDP through our income tax system. That seems to be a relatively constant figure, regardless of how high you set the top marginal rate, but again, what we are looking at here is the biggest simplification we can get, and one bit eliminates a lot of the --

GLENN: But may I ask you -- and Mike, you know I love you, right?

LEE: I do. And I appreciate that.

GLENN: I respect you. We all respect you and love you.

We are just so frustrated, because if people in Congress would have used and rightly so, and it's not too late -- if they would stand on their desks and shout at the top of their lungs, the IRS has become a weapon against the American people. You could redo it, because you could shut it down. There is nobody on the right or the left except for those in power, that want the IRS to become a weapon. And you have the best shot of shutting the IRS down and cleaning house right now than you have had in 100 years.

LEE: That is a very fair point, and that is exactly why we all ought to be reforming government along exactly the lines I describe in my new awesome book,Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document.

PAT: Nice.

GLENN: Whoa. Man, a week on the radio tour, trying to sell your book. You got good. That was good.

LEE: That stuff doesn't go -- it just flows from the lips. If we have to choose between two rates and tax fairness for working parents, or on the other hand, a one rate system that raises taxes on all families, I think we have to go with the two-rate system. That is fair. That is conservative. This is Burkean conservatism. You are taking a set of contemporary problems and dealing with them in a practical way.

PAT: You just said A 'Barack Obama' false premise there, Mike. I don't think those are the two options, are they? Can we not work it out where it's fair for working families and -- the wealthy are working families, too, by the way.

LEE: Under the current system, we can't work it out that way, because the current system really does punish people for getting married and pushing them for having children.

GLENN: You know why?

LEE: - interacts with your senior entitlement program. There's no way that you get out of having children without a huge penalty through our tax system. The parent tax penalty is something the mainstream media goes out of its way to obscure, and this is a proposal that finally addresses that, in a way that none other does.

GLENN: Because, Mike, with those penalties are there, because it's a -- say it with me -- a Progressive income tax. So maybe we should stop trying to play in the Progressive field. I have one question for you, when we come back, if you could hold for a second. I have to take a break, then I ever one question for you, then we'll cut you lose.

Featured image courtesy of the AP

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

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: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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.

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

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatism as stewardship

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding what is broken

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

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

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

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

A creed for the rising generation

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.