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What Can You Learn From a Drunk, Sexting College Student? Mercy.

November 01, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Unless you've been ignoring the headlines to avoid election coverage, you've probably seen the story about a young female college student who crashed her car into a police officer's car following a party. And, you've probably heard she was tipsy, taking topless photos to send her boyfriend. Undeniably, it was not her finest moment.

"How do you face your family? How do you call your mom? How do you call your dad? What is it like when you get up that morning and see your face everywhere on Facebook? Your moment of absolute shame and you are being ridiculed by everyone," Glenn asked Tuesday on his radio program.

RELATED: How Backyard Fence Conversations Could Save America

Planning to discuss the story Monday on radio, Glenn had second thoughts after teaching the Beatitudes at church on Sunday.

"As I had my finger on send, the Beatitudes came to mind. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy," Glenn said. "I had my finger on send because she was going to be funny. I hit delete. I didn't bring it up yesterday. And the reason why is because I want to talk to you today about mercy."

Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these questions:

• For how long will the college girl's life be destroyed by her mistake?

• Has a study been done on the people who have been destroyed by Facebook?

• Whose business was destroyed after a single, misinterpreted tweet?

• Would we have treated people so hatefully before social media?

• Has Glenn softened his approach or his principles?

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: Hello, America. All right. I want to tell you a -- I want to tell you a story. And I want to tell it in two different ways.

Sunday morning, I get up, and I'm reading the news. And I see this amazing story about this 20-year-old girl who is leaving a party. She is driving back to her dorm room, and she slams into the back of a police cruiser. The police cruiser is parked.

JEFFY: Not fun.

GLENN: The police cruiser is -- the cop just got out of the cruiser, and he was walking over to a house where he was investigating some, you know, phone call. And he turns around after he hears, pam!

And he runs over to the car to see if the girl is okay. And she is quickly trying to put her blouse on. She has a sweater or a blouse, and she's pulling it over her head. And the cop says, "Miss, are you okay?"

And she says, "Yes, yes, I'm fine. I'm sorry. I just -- I'm sorry."

He said, "Can you step out?"

She said, "Yes."

And now she's trying to hook her bra back up and put her blouse back on. Nobody else is in the car. There is an open wine bottle in the car.

JEFFY: Wow.

GLENN: And the police officer notices that she's having a hard time kind of navigating.

And he says, "You been drinking?" And she says, "Well, I just got back from a party, but I'm not drunk." And he says okay. He gives her a sobriety test.

All I know is that she had to go to the hospital for blood tests, so I'm guessing that she flunked the sobriety test.

And he said, "Can you tell me what you were doing?" And she blushes, and she says, "Yeah. I -- I just left a party, and my boyfriend wanted a topless picture of me driving home."

So she had taken off her blouse and her bra, and she was taking a hot photo of her topless, driving home, for her boyfriend.

Now, there's plenty of places to go here, are there not, Pat?

PAT: Yes, many.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

JEFFY: Yes?

GLENN: So I'm seeing this story, and I immediately think, "Oh, my gosh, is this society -- is this girl just dumb as a box of rocks?"

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And I copy and paste. I put it into an email, and I'm sending it to one of our producers for yesterday's show. This is Monday -- this is Sunday morning. And as I'm ready to hit "send," I look down at her face one more time. And she's a normal-looking sweet 20-year-old girl. And suddenly, I think to myself, "Everybody -- her life is destroyed, at least for a year."

Everybody she knows -- she's this 20-something -- you know, 19, 20-year-old, going to college. Her parents think she's sweet, most likely. All of her parents' friends think she's sweet most likely. Her aunts, her uncles, everybody in her circle that doesn't see her taking her top off for her boyfriend now has a very different image of her.

One thing to be drinking. Another thing to be drinking and driving. Another thing to be drinking and driving and slam into the back of a police officer. It's another thing to be drinking and driving and slamming into the back of the police officer while sexting. It's another thing to be drinking and driving and slamming into the back of the police cruiser while sexting and taking a photo of yourself topless and the reason you were slamming into the back of the police officer is because you were trying to put your shirt back on.

Done. How do you face your family -- how do you call your mom? How do you call your dad? What are your friends -- what is it like when you get up that morning and see your face everywhere on Facebook? Your moment of absolute shame and you are being ridiculed by everyone.

It's a good thing that this thing happened to me on Sunday. Because I teach Sunday school. And this Sunday, I taught the Beatitudes.

And, you know, Ellen, if I have time today, I want to teach them on Facebook -- I want to teach them on Facebook Live today, if I can.

But I got to mercy. As I had my finger on "send," the Beatitudes came to mind. Those -- those who are merciful will receive mercy.

Now, I have been thinking about Facebook and the comments on Facebook -- because has anybody read my comments lately? Woo!

And I thought to myself a lot, "Most these people don't know me. Most of these people have never listened to me. They -- some of them have, but I contend, they've heard, but they've never really listened to me. Those who are making the case that I've changed. No, I haven't.

If anything, I have softened my stance, but -- not my stance, not my principles, but I've softened my approach. But I haven't changed my principles at all. They're exactly the same. So I contend you may have heard me, but you didn't listen to me. But most of them haven't listened to me. They don't know the first thing about me. And they are getting more and more vitriolic. Really nasty. And everyone is getting that way.

And so I've been thinking a lot of, "What's happening to us? What is happening to us?" Because we would have never treated each other this way before. But now we're traveling in packs and we're traveling anonymously. And it's easy to say things anonymously or virtually because it's not -- you don't have to look at the person in the eye. But you'll notice -- I saw a video today of a woman who went, and she was standing in a Trump rally. She started protesting. Trump kicked her out. Okay. Fine.

But when they get out, people surround her. And she is angry, and she's shouting angry liberal, Berkeley, California, things. I don't even care about what she was saying or what anyone else was saying. What was happening is they were yelling at each other. Okay. I get it. Everybody is angry.

But then one side started to chant lock her up. Lock her up. All she did was express her opinion. She might have done it horribly. I don't agree with her opinion at all. But in a crowd, lock her up. Lock her up. We're becoming bullies in crowds and bullies virtually, on both sides. This is not about a candidate. This is about all of us.

I had my finger on "send" because she was going to be funny. I hit delete. And I didn't bring it up yesterday. And the reason why is because I want to talk to you today about mercy.

Is there something about using people -- we're using -- we're no longer looking -- in fact, we don't like it. We don't watch television as much because -- we're not watching situation comedies as much. Because why use a situation comedy? Reality is funnier than anything else. Look at all this crazy, stupid people. And look at how we're mocking everything on Facebook now.

But we don't see people as people. They're just for our entertainment purposes. And then we move on.

We pile on -- what business is it of us, this girl's life? Now, Pat, because I brought this up in church, Pat had an argument -- a discussion with his wife on the way home. She happened to agree with me. He didn't.

PAT: Yeah, you know, I think you can use that as a cautionary tale for other girls in similar situations not to do that because so many things can go wrong. Almost everything that can happen is bad. And -- and it's a -- so it might prevent somebody else from doing that the next time.

JEFFY: You would hope.

PAT: You would hope so. You would hope. You would hope so.

GLENN: You wouldn't hope so. You wouldn't hope so?

(chuckling)

PAT: It's also a story about where we're headed culturally.

GLENN: I agree with you on that. I agree with you on that.

The problem is you're identifying -- I don't think people understand -- I don't think any of us really understand, especially for somebody, unlike me, unlike Ben Shapiro, and unlike anybody -- David French, who is really getting hammered right now, we at least have an outlet. People like that, they don't.

The entire country turns on them, mocks them, ridicules them, and then moves on. That experience I think has to change people.

I would love to see -- has anybody ever done -- you would know this, Stu. Has anybody ever done a study on the people who have been destroyed by Facebook?

STU: Yeah, we haven't talked about this? There's a really interesting article that came out, it's probably six months ago now. Of the woman, and you might remember this story --

GLENN: I knew he would know.

STU: -- where she went to Africa, and she --

GLENN: Yeah, she got on the plane.

STU: She got on a plane. She tweeted before she got on the plane. She tweeted a joke and said, "I'm going to Africa, but don't worry, I'm white. So I won't get AIDS," or something like that.

So gets on the plane, flies to Africa. Someone -- it was at the former institution, you might remember as Gawker, posted this tweet of hers and made it into a news story. And -- but she was in the air the whole time as the thing blew up and she didn't know. There was a hashtag. I don't remember -- again, this is me.

GLENN: Landed yet, or something?

STU: Yeah, has she landed yet? I don't even remember her name, proving your point. So she was a PR person, and she made the joke not to say that white people can't get AIDS.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: That was not her point. Her point was -- she was actually kind of liberal and was pointing out that we don't care enough about Africa, basically.

The attitude of Americans are we just -- you know, we think that none of this stuff will happen to us. That's kind of her point. Like is it a little bit offensive? Yes. But, you know, she was trying to be offensive. It's Twitter, right?

There's no reason -- she had worked in charity in these areas before like for -- to help people in these situations. There was no reason to believe she was a hard-core racist who wanted black people to get AIDS and black people not to. There was no backing for this -- in a completely -- in a person who generally speaking was not a public person. Right? Like she was not a person in which she was trying to get on TV all the time. Although she was in PR, so she had some of that background.

Anyway, so by the time she had landed, she was fired.

JEFFY: Yeah. Before she even had a chance to respond to anything at all.

STU: Right. She didn't even get a chance to respond to it, and her life was over.

GLENN: Imagine landing, turning on your cell phone and hearing bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, big, and everybody is writing to her, saying, "Boy, this is not good."

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And she's fired.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: Right.

GLENN: On the tarmac, she finds out, "I've been -- I've lost my job?"

STU: Yeah. And her business was destroyed too. Because she was -- if I remember correctly, she had a bunch of clients. Like she had a business with a bunch of clients, and they just all dropped her. So she had nothing.

She went through a period of, you know, real depression. And, again, everyone else had moved on. We had all forgotten her name.

GLENN: Right. All left.

STU: We had all moved on.

GLENN: We all were higher than -- holier than thou, and we went on with our life to destroy somebody else.

STU: Exactly. Now, I believe -- I can't remember -- that was probably, the whole story happened, I don't know, two years ago. And so a year after that, she wound up getting her head back on her shoulders and putting her life back together a little bit. Wound up eventually contacting the Gawker author who came around to essentially apologize for, you know, publicizing her tweet. And they kind of became friends, if I remember the story correctly. And she's been able to sort of put her life back together.

GLENN: See if we can get her on the air.

STU: Yeah, it was a fascinating story. And, yeah, let's do that. I mean, it was really interesting --

GLENN: We should see if we can find a few people who have been destroyed and just cannot put their life back together.

STU: Yeah, there's several examples in that story, if I remember.

Featured Image: The Sermon On the Mount, Dansk: Bjergprædiken, Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle (Wiki Commons)

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parallel societies do not end well

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

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

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

A crisis of confidence

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

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

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

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

A new world of artificial experience

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

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

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

What machines can never do

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

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

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

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

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

Questions that define us

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

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

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

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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.