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‘We Live in Two Americas’ – but the Dividing Line Isn’t What You’re Thinking

February 26, 2018
Staff

WRITER

How did we get here? Why do so many people just not care about the facts anymore?

On today’s show, Glenn talked about why the gun debate and so many other issues show that our country is divided into those who are willing to listen to logic and reason and those who are not.

“This is the problem,” Glenn said. “There are two Americas, and it is not left and right. It is those who are willing to engage in logical conversation and actual thinking and those who want to do Common Core, ‘2 plus 2 equals 5 if you can show me how you got there.’”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: I've been reading a lot of history. I've been reading a lot of philosophy. I've been reading a lot of Jesus. I've been reading a lot. Trying to figure out, how the hell did we get here?

Now, I -- I know the Progressive Era. I know the movement of post modernism.

I know history. So I know where we're headed. But what happened? How is it so many people just don't care about facts anymore? What is that?

I believe we have come to the end of the enlightenment. The enlightenment was a period of the 1700s that was the -- the death of religion and the death of the king.

It was the death of people ruling over other people. Because people had an opportunity to read, to think, to pray, to read their Bible. To listen to science.

And so they said, no more nonsense, no more nonsense, no more -- no more people telling me, I am your king. Because God told me I was your king.

Well, I can't sense that. I can't feel that. I can't taste that. I can't see it, hear it, smell it. I'm not going to buy into that. Because it's nonsense.

And so we put an end to nonsense, and we came to common sense. There is something in all of us called common sense.

And we're going to base our lives on common sense and the search for truth. Being right isn't the important thing. The actual search for truth is the important thing.

And we're not going to take the truth, hand it down to us, from some king, from some priest. We're going to find it ourself.

That was the enlightenment. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and question with boldness even the he very existence of God. For if there be a God, he must surely honest questions over blindfolded fear.

Tell me the last time you saw an honest question come out of somebody on TV. Tell me the last time you saw an honest question being uttered by a politician.

I mean, when I say honest question, I mean one where the person is actually seeking the truth and it could change their mind. They're willing to ask a question, where if the person on the other side has a really great answer, they might say, huh. I don't know. I -- I don't know. I've never thought of it that way. I can't respond to that right now. I might have to get back to you.

When was the last time you saw that? That's the spirit of the enlightenment. That is what set America apart.

But we have replaced our churches with our parties, with our ideological dogma. We have replaced our church and our God with the planet and global warming. Fix reason firmly in her seat.

Is global warming happening? Well, it was for a while because I can read a thermometer. .7 degrees in the last 100 years. So is global warming happening? Well, it was.

Yes. Now, no. Will it start again? Maybe.

Do I believe in global warming? Let me check the thermometers. It's pretty easy. Do I believe that it's man made?

Hmm. I don't know. I -- my reason tells me that you can't just trash the sky and the water and the -- and the forests and the land and everything. Just trash it and everything is going to be great.

So, yeah, I think man does affect the planet. Does he affect it enough with -- with CO2, something that trees breathe, something that plants breathe? I don't know. Maybe. I don't think so.

I've seen the science. You can make a case. You can make a stronger case the other way. $14 trillion to fight it. Does any of it work? No.

If you believe in CO2, well, then, common sense would say that you need to stop eating all animals. Stop eating farm animals.

If you stop eating beef, you will do more to help, quote, the planet, than getting rid of all of the cars and everything else combined. It is the biggest factor.

So if you fix reason firmly in her seat, I'll have a conversation with somebody that believes in global warming. I'm going to have a hard time if it's your religion. But if you're opened to a rational conversation and you're a vegetarian, a vegan, I'm cool. Okay. At least you're consistent.

Now, let's have a discussion. But I will not listen to somebody who has burger breath and telling me that we are -- we are five years away from not being able to turn things around. You should be going after the meat industry, not the car industry, if that's what you believe.

Let's try this one: If you believe that we have to stop children from picking up sticks and pretending that it's a gun, that we must stop -- in fact, you've gone so far to classify finger guns, which all kids have played with forever.

That we have to fix our society because we are teaching our kids to be violent, with the class two lookalike firearm. That is now in the code book, as a finger gun. You know, like you used to as a kid. That's a class two lookalike finger gun. Okay. All right.

You believe that that is so dangerous, that our kids are pointing their fingers at one another, that that teaches them to be violent. Well, I'm -- I don't believe that, but I am with you, if -- if you are leading the way in Hollywood to stop all violence in movies. Because certainly, if a kid points his finger with a finger gun, that's training him, certainly watching all that violence with big, impressive stars, has got to be doing something. And God forbid, Hollywood, let's talk about games, where we can -- gaming our kids can be in virtual reality, with a machine gun. They can be a sniper and shooting people in the head.

And you don't want to have a conversation about that at all. Oh, you just -- what, are you some Neanderthal. Oh, yeah, like the games are making it -- wait. The class two lookalike finger gun. That does, but games don't?

I can't have a conversation with you. I cannot have a conversation with you. This is the problem. There are two Americas. And it is not left and right. It is those who are willing to engage in logical conversation and actual thinking. And those who want to do Common Core. Two plus two equals five, if you can show me how you got there.

You want to ban all guns. Let's think this through. We're the only country on earth that has the right to bear arms in the Constitution. So to get all guns taken away, to get ARs -- ARs have been around since Vietnam. Why is it that all of a sudden, we're having shooting with AR? Why are ARs a problem now? They weren't a problem in the '70s, but they are suddenly now.

If you fix reason firmly in her seat, that will tell you something has changed within us. Not the gun. However, you want to take away all guns. That will take you possibly a Civil War. But it will take you years to get that done. But you want to make sure that we never have this problem in school again.

Okay. Well, then we probably shouldn't start with the guns. We can talk about that, as long as we fix reason firmly in her seat, but are you aware that out of all of the mass shootings since 1950, all of them, only two have happened in the place where people can carry guns.

98.9 percent of all mass shootings in America have happened in a gun-free zone. That should tell you something.

How about this one? I don't want my kids living in a prison. Well, I don't want my kids living in a prison either.

Well, that's what it will be if you have armed guards around our schools. A prison?

I don't know. I've gone to a football game recently. They practically gave me an anal cavity search. It's a football game.

I didn't feel like I was living in a prison. I go travel at the airport. That's pretty intense. I don't feel like the airport is a prison. I feel it's nonsense, but I don't feel like it's a prison.

I go to megachurches. Megachurches have security everywhere. Armed personnel. I don't feel like that's a prison. I go to a concert, they check my wife's bag. I walk through a metal detector. I'm wanded. I don't feel like the concert is a prison.

I go to a bank. There's armed guards there, cameras everywhere, alarm systems. I don't feel like I'm in a prison. I feel like I'm in a bank. Why is it we protect everything?

We make sure you're wanded for everything. But God forbid we do that to protect our children. Is the stuff in your bank worth more than your child? Is a concert a higher priority to protect than our children in schools, everywhere, across the country?

I'm just trying to -- just trying to figure out what we're actually trying to accomplish here. Because I don't think -- I don't think we're actually trying to accomplish anything, except win.

That's it. We're not actually trying to solve a problem. Both sides just want to be right. That's it.

They just want to make sure that we get guns off the street, because they're right. No.

No, I don't think that's been decided, except for you in your mass. In your -- in your church service, wherever you hold that strange, I hate the Second Amendment church service. Wherever you hold that ceremony, that's what you've decided.

Now, I don't know if we can pull you out of your church long enough to fix reason firmly in her seat. But the problem with our country is that we have a officially -- officially unpegged ourself from the -- from the first principle of making this system, this grand American experiment, that man can rule himself. We have unpegged -- we have drawn up the anchor. And we have pulled out of the port of reason.

It is the enlightenment that gave this experience -- this experiment breath. It gave it life. Man cannot -- cannot rule himself without reason.

We're better than this. We know these things to be self-evident. We have just put on jerseys.

I will tell you what I've told the NRA since the day I joined them. I don't join clubs. I don't join groups. The only two groups that I think I belong to, my church, and I question all the time. I'm in trouble all the time because I question all the time. Good.

Same with the NRA. The minute they would violate and start to become a political source that was betraying the Second Amendment in any way. I'm done with it. That's the only reason.

I don't join for the discounts. I join the NRA because they stand to protect the Second Amendment.

And they do it with reason. The problem is, our society has unbegged from reason. I urge you today, fix reason firmly in her seat, and question with boldness. Question to the point to where you're open to changing your mind. Ask honest questions. Because that's the only way we're going to save our children.

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.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

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.