Save the NRA: The Solid Case Against Grover Norquist

April 25, 2016

Writer

Message From Glenn:

At the beginning of my speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), I mentioned Dr. Zuhdi Jasser was voted onto the Board of the American Conservative Union (ACU) which runs CPAC. This change will help ensure supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood are removed from the ACU. As you know, there is an effort underway at the National Rifle Association (NRA) to do the same thing. I have tremendous respect for Former Army Green Beret officer and Pastor Stu Weber for being man enough to take this on by submitting the original petition to remove Grover Norquist from the Board of the NRA. To change the world, it starts with one person. It's time to vote Grover Norquist off the board of the NRA. Not because I ask you to, but because you read the information below and decide it is the right thing to do. We must stand to defend our institutions. Support the NRA and support the brave men and women — like Stu Weber — who step forward to change the world.

DOWNLOAD THE BALLOT

Important Ballot in NRA Magazines

Current issues of NRA Magazines include two important ballots: one to elect board members and one to recall an association official. Don’t ignore either, but pay particular attention to the latter. Our long-term national security depends on your voting “YES” on this ballot and delivering it before May 1.

Recall of Association Official Ballot — Due Before May 1

Who is the “official” on this important recall ballot? His name is Grover Norquist, and he’s a 15-year Board Member of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Additionally, Mr. Norquist sits on the Board of the American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest and largest conservative grassroots organization. Mr. Norquist is the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform and co-founder of the Islamic Free Market Institute.

Why Recall Grover Norquist?

While Mr. Norquist’s efforts on trying to reduce taxes are admirable, his co-founding of the Islamic Free Market Institute and its connections to highly suspect individuals are puzzling at best, very dangerous at worst.

Mr. Norquist has well-documented associations with radical Islamists, including Abdurahman Alamoudi who is serving a 23-year prison term on terrorism charges. Mr. Norquist’s Islamic Institute received two $10,000 contributions in 1999 drawn from the personal bank account of Alamoudi. But that’s only scratching the surface of Mr. Norquist’s connections to radical Islam.

The Center for Security Policy laid out a 101-page document that explicitly details Mr. Norquist’s history with Islamists directly connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.

This document is signed by ten influential national security practitioners, including:

• Bush ’43 Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey

• Clinton Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey

• Former Congressman Allen West

• Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy

• Former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons

• Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Lieutenant General William G. Boykin

• Former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz

Additionally, former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons wrote an open letter published in March 2016 issues of NRA publications urging NRA members to give serious consideration to recalling Mr. Norquist’s Board position.

VOTE “YES” BEFORE MAY 1 TO RECALL GROVER NORQUIST

The Muslim Brotherhood: The Enemy Within

Why wage a bloody jihad on the greatest Western nation when you can slowly destroy it from within, using the shields of religious freedom and political correctness? It’s called “civilization jihad,” and it’s the secretly stated mission of the Muslim Brotherhood.

This form of warfare includes cultural subversion, the co-opting of senior leaders, influence operations and propaganda, and other means of insinuating Sharia Law into Western societies. Many Brotherhood leaders advocate patience in promoting their goals. Back in 1995, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, told the Toledo, Ohio Muslim Arab Youth Association convention, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through the sword, but through dawah (Islamic renewal and outreach).” The prime practitioners of this stealthy form of jihad are the ostensibly “non-violent” Muslim Brotherhood and their front groups and affiliates.

A strategic plan dated May 22, 1991, entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group [Muslim Brotherhood] in North America,” was discovered by the FBI in 2004. The “Memorandum” describes the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan [the Muslim Brotherhood in Arabic] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.

Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny...

Sounding the Alarm

For years, respected security and military officials within the U.S. have sounded the alarm regarding Grover Norquist's troubling ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Those warnings, for the most part, have fallen on deaf ears.

Since Paul Revere’s midnight ride, the precedent has been set for American patriots to sound the alarm at threats to our liberty and way of life. After learning of Mr. Norquist’s connections to Islamists and his participation on the NRA board — an organization of which Glenn is a lifetime member — Glenn began speaking out about it.

In March 2015, Glenn announced on air he would resign his membership in the NRA if Mr. Norquist remained a member of the Board, prompting hundreds of listeners to call the NRA. The organization subsequently opened an ethics investigation into Mr. Norquist. Later that same month, Mr. Norquist joined Glenn on air to defend himself against accusations that he is an agent of influence for radical Islamists. In the contentious interview, Glenn hammered Mr. Norquist on his connections to known terrorists.

VOTE “YES” BEFORE MAY 1 TO RECALL GROVER NORQUIST

Hearing No

Mr. Stuart Weber, an NRA member, sponsored the original petition to remove Mr. Norquist from the Board. A Hearing Committee appointed to review the petition ultimately voted against it, citing three reasons for voting “No” to removing Mr. Norquist (see below why these reasons are wholly unacceptable). Interestingly, Mr. Weber was unable to attend the hearing, as he was given very short notice. Based on NRA bylaws, Mr. Weber had no input on the hearing date.

The Solid Case Against Grover Norquist

Reason #1: The Truth Is Ageless

The Hearing Committee based its decision on “old charges” that have gone stale. Since when does the truth have an expiration date? Pursuing truth and exposing nefarious — or at the very least suspect — intentions should be a constant, never-ending effort. The Hearing Committee is not a court of law, and there should not be a statute of limitations. Further, when Mr. Weber filed the petition, the board never declared the ‘staleness’ rule — it was only after the fact.

The charges against Mr. Norquist do not fade away because of other people’s delay in recognizing their seriousness. Moreover, the stated tactic of the Muslim Brotherhood to patiently and slowly wage their “civilization jihad” indicates their willingness to spend years, even decades reaching their goal. Shouldn’t Americans commit an equal amount of time to exposing the truth and protecting liberty?

Reason #2: The Facts Are Overwhelming

The Hearing Committee based its decision on a “lack of factual support.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The Center for Security Policy prepared Agent of Influence, a 101-page document with 87 Statements of Fact signed by 10 influential security experts at the highest levels of government. The Statement of Facts establishes that:

• Islamist enemies of the United States, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, are engaged in a concerted effort to destroy this country and impose their supremacist doctrine of Sharia worldwide.

• Muslim Brotherhood front groups and operatives have targeted, among others, the Republican Party and conservative movement.

• Leaders of organizations identified by the federal government as Muslim Brotherhood fronts—and, in some cases, tied to terrorists—were involved in influence operations targeting the GOP and conservatives during the late 1990s and some or all of the decade that followed. Such leaders included, notably: Abdurahman Alamoudi, Sami al-Arian, Nihad Awad and Khaled Saffuri.

• Over the past fifteen years, Grover Norquist has had personal, professional and/or organizational associations with each of these Muslim Brotherhood operatives.

• Norquist’s connections, organizations and personal efforts have enabled the influence operations of Islamists, including those of Iran.

The Hearing Committee, which had full access to the dossier of information with 87 supporting facts, was unable to define who is right or wrong in its Process Overview. But it seems, based on its decision, the Committee was reviewing for a criminal prosecution which requires evidence beyond reasonable doubt, rather than the much less exacting preponderance of the evidence standard. Regardless of right or wrong, there is overwhelming evidence to call into question Mr. Norquist’s associations and the appropriateness of his position on the Board of the NRA.

Reason #3: Distractions

The Hearing Committee based its decision on the petition not rising to the level of being a “distraction to the NRA.” On the contrary, Mr. Weber’s original petition states the very presence of Mr. Norquist on the NRA board presents a distraction the NRA cannot tolerate, particularly during a heated and contested election season. All available NRA resources in time, staff and money must be invested to advance the candidates who hold similar principles.

Reason #4: Jury of Your Peers

The Hearing Committee was put into an unenviable position: Voting on the outing of a long-term board member, possibly a friend, and frankly, a powerful person within the GOP establishment. While members of the Hearing Committee did their best under the circumstances, those close affiliations — direct or indirect, implicit or explicit — undoubtedly impacted the outcome.

Power to the People

The Hearing Committee’s vote is nothing more than a recommendation. NRA members have the power to rise up and vote “YES” to remove Grover Norquist.

By using the recall ballot in current NRA magazines, NRA lifetime members — or yearly members in good standing for five consecutive years — are eligible to vote on this critical decision. Should eligible members need a copy of the ballot, they are encouraged to contact the NRA.

In the event members have already cast their vote, but feel moved to vote differently based on the information provided here, they can request the NRA void their original vote and issue them a new ballot.

The evidence gathered by The Center for Security Policy is overwhelming and can lead to only one conclusion: Grover Norquist has engaged in conduct on behalf of jihadists and their associates that is incompatible with service in a leadership role with the NRA or any other conservative organization.

VOTE “YES” BEFORE MAY 1 TO RECALL GROVER NORQUIST

Featured Image: Caption:WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 05: Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform, visits 'SiriusXM Patriot Forum with Grover Norquist' at SiriusXM Studio on March 5, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The founders warned us

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

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

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

Not-so-expert advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

A republic no more?

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

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

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choosing death over care

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

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

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

They offered her MAID.

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

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

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

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

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

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Sharia arrives

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

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

The warning from those who have lived under it

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

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

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

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

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

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

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

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

Wake up before it is too late

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.