Beware: Fake News Is Propaganda and Must Be Vetted Before Sharing

December 06, 2016

Writer

It was Founding Father John Adams who said this about our government:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

"This system of freedom is not designed for the people we are becoming," Glenn said Tuesday on radio. "You can't have a free people if free people won't do their work."

Part of that work includes vetting news sources in a post-factual society. It requires personal responsibility.

For example, if a reader encounters a news story about Hillary Clinton running a child prostitution ring in a tunnel system underneath a pizza parlor in Washington, DC, said reader might want to further investigate the source before showing up at the establishment with a weapon.

"It requires you to engage your brain. And it also requires you to have something we used to call common sense," Glenn said.

Listen to this segment, beginning at mark 2:12, from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: All right. I want to talk a little bit about Pizzagate. And beyond Pizzagate, the trend of fake news. I keep -- we keep saying this for the past couple of days. I keep coming back to -- and, Pat, you would know this. Isn't it John Adams who said, "This system is wholly inadequate for an irreligious and uneducated people?"

PAT: And immoral.

GLENN: And immoral people.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: This system of freedom is not designed for the people we are becoming. You can't have freedom -- look at the solutions on fake news.

We should have some sort of vetting system with Facebook.

Or, you could do the work and engage your head and say, "Hmm, A, does this make sense? B, how come it's only on yournewsatthehour.com.ca.tv? Why am I only getting it from this one source? And let's look at the source.

Do we know anything about the source? People don't -- people read the headline. They're lucky if they read the first paragraph before they share it.

PAT: Uh-huh.

STU: And some of the studies have found, you know, 80 percent of people or more don't read the stories they share on Facebook. They see the headline. They share it.

GLENN: Right. They read the headline. And that's --

STU: And how many headlines -- how many times have we read stories where you click on the headline, and you're like, "Oh, my gosh."

And then you read the story, and you're like, "Well, that's not it?"

PAT: Well, how many times have you posted something on Facebook, and you get some angry responder -- and they address -- they're yelling at you about the things you address in the context of the post.

GLENN: Right.

PAT: Well, I -- that's what I addressed. That's what this is -- you should read the post. They never do. They never do.

GLENN: They don't even read the post.

STU: They don't even read it.

GLENN: So you can't have a free people if free people won't do their work.

PAT: Yeah, there's got to be some personal responsibility.

GLENN: Personal responsibility. It requires you to engage your brain. And it also requires you to have something we used to call common sense.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: I mean, common sense tells you -- what is the Pizzagate story? The Pizzagate story was that Hillary Clinton was running a prostitution ring of underage prostitutes in a tunnel system underneath a pizza parlor in Washington, DC.

STU: In the middle of the campaign. She was like, "Yeah, I'm going to run for president. But also the child prostitution thing."

PAT: Well, they did talk about pizza a lot in the emails. So obviously that was code.

GLENN: So you have to believe that, A -- I mean, how bad -- this is -- this is, again, the problem of the press and the problem with people like us is demonizing people. Once you demonize -- there was nothing -- there was nothing anyone could say to the left about Donald Trump that they would ever believe, in a good way. And there's nothing that anyone on the right could possibly say to convince you that Hillary Clinton was not the most evil person in the world.

So the first hurdle is already done because of conditioning. We just make you into a person who is the worst person in the world. And I won't listen to anything else because everything I have seen on my side of the media, on my side of the feed, tell me that that's a bad person. And if anyone on my side starts to say, "Well, wait a minute, guys, they've been gotten to, they're afraid for their life, somebody has their family, or they've been paid off to say those things."

PAT: Sold out.

GLENN: There's no way to cross those lines.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: So we're already bifurcate the country. We already Balkanize. And so now the possible truth about the other side can't jump over that chasm.

So the first thing you had to believe is that Hillary Clinton would be so evil that she should be -- well, she would also be competent enough to run a prostitution ring of underage kids. There's step one. Step two is, there's a tunnel system underneath Washington, DC, for pizza parlors. Not for the government, but for pizza parlors. Three, she's running this during the campaign. Four, when somebody calls to order pizza, that's when they're ordering a child for sex.

STU: Do you want --

GLENN: Is there more?

STU: Do you want the full list of terms? I have the full list. Buzzfeed came up with the full list of terms that I thought was pretty interesting.

GLENN: Buzzfeed was debunking this.

STU: Yes. There's a whole -- it's a really interesting story about how something like this spreads. Which, you know, interestingly with this one spread from literally nothing. It was just someone randomly tweeting that this was going on. Started with a person saying that October 30th, right before the election, right? People are right at the height of their sensitivities of the other side.

White supremacy Twitter account that presents itself as belonging to a Jewish lawyer in New York tweeted that the NYPD was looking into evidence --

GLENN: Why does it always have to be a Jewish lawyer? We have a guest on today --

STU: It's not. I mean --

GLENN: I know. I know. We have a guest on today: Jon Ronson. He's this fascinating guy, who's talked to people whose lives have been destroyed by the internet. And he said, I was talking to a member of the Aryan Nation. And they were talking about the Bilderberg Group.

And he said, "You know, I don't know how they can be a Jewish conspiracy because most of the people that go there are not Jewish." And he said -- this is the quote from the Aryan Nation guy.

Yes, they're not necessarily a Jew, but they are Jewish.

JEFFY: Yeah.

STU: Oh. Oh.

GLENN: Oh. Okay. Good. All right.

STU: So the -- the initial tweet from the white supremacy account said that Anthony Weiner's laptop contained evidence of Clinton involvement in an international child enslavement ring. Okay?

GLENN: They're so into that.

STU: Well, there you go. It's totally --

GLENN: They're not helping down in Haiti. They're abducting children for the pizza parlor.

PAT: Right. So then it spread to a message board. That message board was then posted by a guy who worked with a British conspiracy theorist and posted a site on yournewswire.com, which I know is --

PAT: Well, if it's My News Wire, then it's obviously news.

STU: It says it's news in the site.

GLENN: It says it's news in the site. Like ABC -- ABCNews.ca.tv.

STU: Yeah, there's some.

GLENN: Yeah, dot-tv or dot.co -- or, AU. That's what it was.

STU: The next story on Your News Wire, took a step by claiming an FBI insider had confirmed the claims.

Now, again, we don't have anything yet. So this is where we are right now. One random account on Twitter. And a woman in Missouri claimed that an NYPD source was telling them the Clintons were about to be brought down by a massive child trafficking sex scandal. One anonymous person on a 4chan thread who claimed to work for law enforcement and said something similar a few months ago, before news of the FBI, looking into emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop broke, and a conspiracy theorist who pulled these things together into a post and then used them to claim that evidence had emerged from the Clinton email investigation that a massive child trafficking and pedophile sex ring operates in Washington.

Your News Wire story from October 31st was then noticed by right-wing and fringe blogs. They began to aggregate it and spread it, as you would expect.

One site plagiarized the text from the original post. These guys have no ethics in their fake news. Plagiarism.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STU: I mean, if you can't get fake news people to write their own stories, what have we become as a nation?

GLENN: Holy cow.

STU: 85,000 shares for that one. Now, Glenn, you post things on Facebook. You're active on Facebook. 85,000 is a big number.

GLENN: That's a lot.

PAT: That's a lot. That's a lot of shares.

STU: Because shares isn't just like, "Eh, I just happened to read it." Shares is someone taking the story so seriously that they're actually pushing it out. Now, whether they read it or not, who knows?

But they're pushing it out to spread it even further. And Facebook detects a story that is being shared widely and winds up it in even more feeds. Because that's -- it's a smart system. It's a -- I mean, Facebook -- by the way, these people are smart.

While many sites repeated the details from the original post, others introduced new baseless claims.

Subjectpolitics.com -- you guys big on subjectpolitics.com? They wrote a story with, "It's over. NYPD just raided Hillary's property. What they found there will, capital letters, ruin her life."

Well, of course, they did not actually raid the property. And the associated photograph was just a stock photo of the FBI doing something. Not at her house. Nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. Just the picture of the FBI carrying evidence in some unrelated case.

That one had 107,000 shares. And on and on and on and on.

True Pundit published a story the same day setting its own anonymous NYPD and FBI sources, listing new allegations. Ending the Fed posted a story and managed to generate significant engagement on Facebook.

They were known for promoting and making it to the Facebook trending. Remember the Facebook trending topics when they said Megyn Kelly was being fired. That story came from them, apparently. It goes on and on and on.

Now, three days later -- and David Goldberg, who apparently started this whole thing, then tweets the story from True Pundit saying, "My source was right." Well, True Pundit's source was essentially David Goldberg who tweeted it initially, three days earlier.

And this is how this happens. Hundreds of thousands of -- of shares.

GLENN: Can I just say something? Remember the story about George Washington saying that he was a big philanderer? It was a big that was -- this is all something that has been done to us before. There was a book that was the first one to take down George Washington. It was published in I think 1943. Look at the footnotes. I'll -- we'll post it someplace else, where we can show you the name of the book and the following book.

And what it was, was a historian, a progressive historian that had the agenda of taking down George Washington. So he publishes this book. There's no -- there's no footnotes in this book. It's just stories about how bad of a guy he was. Another professor, he sees this book, and he's outraged by it. And he writes a book, all footnoted, and says, "None of this is true." For the first book sold an awful lot of copies. Then the book came out that said that wasn't true, that was all footnoted. Then a third book comes out and says, "This book is true," and uses footnotes referencing the first book. Okay?

(laughter)

GLENN: And that has gone on. And you can actually watch the tree of lies that has come from that one book. And they are all -- so the next book that is defending the first book, its footnotes go to the third book.

PAT: That's exactly what progressives have done with the Constitution. Using case law, instead of the Constitution.

GLENN: Correct. You don't even make it progressives. You just make it liars.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: They start referencing each other as proof that that's --

PAT: Right. Well, we had another crappy decision that backs up this crappy decision. Yeah, but none of it is based in the Constitution.

GLENN: Correct. Right.

STU: If only there was a book that explained the tie between progressives and liars.

JEFFY: Right.

PAT: Oh, man.

STU: If there was a book --

GLENN: What would you call a book like that?

STU: Maybe you would call it one of the two words. Progressive -- maybe Liars, I guess.

PAT: Who would write such a book though? I mean -- what a coincidence.

GLENN: That would be a number one times best-seller.

STU: Would it have footnotes in it though?

GLENN: Yeah, it would. And it would make a great Christmas gift.

JEFFY: It would be available?

GLENN: It would be available at bookstores and online everywhere, really. You can download it right now.

STU: Wow. It sounds like fake news to me.

GLENN: It does to me too. It's called Liars. It's available in bookstores everywhere.

[break]

GLENN: What's amazing about this pizza story is you also have to believe that no one else called to order pizza and then had like an underage kid show up at their house. And you're like, "No, I really wanted Canadian bacon and pineapple. I don't -- why are these Alusian (phonetic) kids all of a sudden in my house?"

STU: As conspiracy theories spread, it went to this pizza restaurant called Comic Ping-pong, which was I guess a place where people at DC really liked. And I think the owner is a Democratic donor and things like that. So he got tied into this somehow.

And they've been getting harassing calls. They got this guy who came up from North Carolina with a gun. And went in to investigate what he believed was a real child prostitution sting. And then left after he realized there were no tunnels --

PAT: Somehow he couldn't find the tunnels. They hid the tunnels so well, he could not find them.

STU: But this is -- it wound up growing into one guy on Twitter, yet again, saying, "I'm dreaming about -- this is from the Podesta emails. "I'm dreaming about your hotdog stand in Hawaii." This is code for something. Sex trafficking? So that piece of evidence, quote, unquote --

GLENN: The evidence is Podesta just saying, "I'm dreaming about your hotdog stand in Hawaii." That's the evidence that they're --

STU: Right. Because that's code.

GLENN: -- underage trafficking at a pizza parlor.

STU: So from that, they built a list of terms that you can find in the Podesta emails.

Hotdog equals boy. Pizza equals girl. Cheese equals little girl. Pasta equals little boy. Ice cream equals male prostitute. Walnut equals a person of color. And sauce equals orgy.

(chuckling)

STU: Now you have the real choice behind the story. Sauce equals orgy.

GLENN: Now, how do you stand against this? We'll address that, next.

Featured Image: Facebook logos are pictured on the screens of a smartphone (R), and a laptop computer, in central London on November 21, 2016. Facebook on Monday became the latest US tech giant to announce new investment in Britain with hundreds of extra jobs but hinted its success depended on skilled migration after Britain leaves the European Union. The premier social network underlined London's status as a global technology hub at a British company bosses' summit where Prime Minister Theresa May sought to allay business concerns about Brexit. (Photo Credit: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

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.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn's Show Prep

Beware: Fake News Is Propaganda and Must Be Vetted Before Sharing

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

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.

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.

How Sharia arrives

The warning from those who have lived under it

America is vulnerable

Wake up before it is too late

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

The quiet return of meaning

Where renewal begins

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

What triggers the Bubba effect

A country cracking from the inside

The dangers of a faithless system

The responsibility now belongs to us

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

Truth-seeking is real work

Bad-faith questions

The real target