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Former agent weighs in on Secret Service sex scandal

April 17, 2012
Wilson

Writer

The Secret Service sex scandal just keeps getting worse and worse. The latest says that some of the prostitues involved were even under age and they may have even compromised the President's schedule! Dan Bongino is a former Secret Service agent who served under both the Bush and Obama administrations. What does he think about the allegations being levied at the world’s premiere protective force? Any chance this actually happened or is a set up more likely? Bongino offered his unique perspective on the scandal to Glenn on radio this morning.

Rush Transcript of Interview:

GLENN:  Investigators probing the secret service process substitute scandal are looking into whether the girls involved now were underage.  This story gets worse and worse and worse and one of the guys who I have great faith in is a -- is a decent, honorable man.  Of course, I've never asked him if he's ever been with hookers -- is Dan Bongino.  He is running for Congress in Maryland.  He is a guy who -- what?

 

STU:  Senate.

 

PAT:  Senate.

 

GLENN:  And he's -- he's -- was with the secret service, did advance work for the secret service under Bush and Obama.  Right, Dan?

 

BONGINO:  That's right, Glenn.

 

GLENN:  Okay.

 

BONGINO:  Thanks for having me.

 

GLENN:  And I'm reading this story, Dan, and I've wanted to talk to you for the last few days.  What is going on here?

 

BONGINO:  What a mess, Glenn.  I mean, personally for me, professionally, we have been out on this story from the start.  You know, we don't only do the good stories, unlike most politicians who go and hide under a rock.  We are -- this is a disgrace.  I have a brother who was on the trip who has been providing information.  Thank God he's not involved in any prostitution component of it, but has been actively involved in it and it is -- it's an embarrassment.  It's a disgrace to the secret service and I really hope and, Glenn, you know a lot of secret service agents.  We've known each other for awhile, that this does not forever tarnish --

 

GLENN:  So you're saying that all of this stuff is true, that this is --

 

BONGINO:  I don't know about all of it because I don't even know at this point who knows when something else if going to leak out or come out at this point, but, yeah, unfortunately a lot of what's come out is true and --

 

GLENN:  Do you believe that there is any kind of foreign influence that these guys were set up at all?

 

BONGINO:  I can't say.  I don't know, but I really can't say for sure, but, you know, certainly, you know, there's always potential for things like that when you get involved of situations of tremendously poor judgment.  That may be the understatement of the year.

 

GLENN:  Tremendously poor judgment.  Hang on just a second.  11 secret service agents?  Is this the kind of behavior that you saw with your comrades?

 

BONGINO:  You know, Glenn, I've always been straight with you and absolutely not.  This is a -- on the presidential protection division where I was, I gave a quote to the New York Times that these guys lived like monks and I meant it.  I meant every word it.  I mean, these guys -- all they -- they used to go to the hotel and they would be (inaudible) to work out.

 

PAT:  Did you ever -- did you ever go on a secret service trip to Columbia, Dan?

 

BONGINO:  Couple of times.  I've been to Bogota.  I've been to Cartagena, yeah.

 

GLENN:  Have you stayed at that hotel?

 

BONGINO:  No, no.  I stayed in the old city, there's a city in the new city and they were in the new city.

 

PAT:  How many hookers were you involved with?

 

BONGINO:  Oh, Glenn.

 

PAT:  Could you even count?

 

GLENN:  That's Pat.  I'm not asking that.  I want to know how many were underage, but that's a different -- that's a different story.  So, hang on just a second.  So, I you've never seen this behavior?

 

BONGINO:  No.

 

GLENN:  So, this is a wild aberration?

 

BONGINO:  Yeah, it is.

 

GLENN:  And did you -- did or did you not receive training and instructions that -- that you have to be on the straight and narrow when you're in a foreign country or even in our country because that puts you in a compromised position?

 

BONGINO:  Sure.  It's almost to the point -- with the training they give you, you've got to take a lot of the online courses and go to -- you know those courses, just click next, next, you have to read them and take tests with them, that I remember people saying, I can't remember we have to take this course again on expected behavior.  The secret service stakes its reputation, I mean, obviously --

 

GLENN:  The reputation --

 

BONGINO:  -- the President of the United States.

 

GLENN:  The reputation of the secret service under this President I contend is being so tarnished.  The limo was stuck and bottomed out.  I mean, I -- who didn't -- who didn't drive that route in advance?  Do you remember that?

 

BONGINO:  Yeah.  Actually --

 

PAT:  It was high centered?  Yeah.

 

GLENN:  It was high centered.  Ridiculous.  They're questioning a little kid up in Oregon in the Seattle area.  All kinds of stuff that have happened with the --

 

PAT:  With the unwanted guests at the parties.

 

GLENN:  Yeah.

 

PAT:  That got through security around the President.

 

GLENN:  Dan, how did that happen?  How did two guests get into the White House?

 

PAT:  Is this a whole new secret service under Obama or what is going on?  How could it have gone so far afield in just the last few years since you've been there, Dan?

 

BONGINO:  As a matter of fact, with the change in administration, some of these agents are the same ones that were with President Bush.  I was there for the transition.  I didn't (inaudible) Bush administration in two years with President Obama.  So, those are problems -- I don't work for the secret service anymore.  I haven't been there for a year, but I have (inaudible) campaign to the former secret service agent and it was my responsibility to get out here and say, Yeah, what you're saying is true.  They've had some real black eyes and it's unfortunate this black eye cements to be the blackest eye of all and at some point they're going to have to move forward.

 

GLENN:  Is our President in danger, Dan?

 

BONGINO:  No, no, not -- although --

 

GLENN:  Well, if you have 11 -- if you have 11 secret service agents with such bad judgment that while he's in one of the most dangerous countries in the world, that they are -- they're having underage -- possible underage sex with hookers, how can we be -- how can we be assured at all?

 

BONGINO:  I know.  This is not a moment where America's proud of our secret service, but I want you to assure you that the guys, a lot of -- I mean, I missed countless birthdays.  I mean, my daughter once told me when I came home -- I was on the road 300 days one year -- you know, dad, I hope you sleep good tonight (inaudible) because I was gone so often.  I mean, these are guys that have really sacrificed, Glenn.  They've sacrificed a lot and they would (inaudible.)  And I really hope this doesn't permanently tarnish those guys.  These guys fools.  They made foolish decisions.  Again, one of them (inaudible.)  Terrible decisions, Glenn, and no one is apologizing for it, but I really hope that those guys who put in blood, sweat, and tears to keep our President alive and have been successful for decades, since the Reagan incident, I really hope this doesn't tarnish for them.  It's embarrassing for them.  It really embarrasses me.  I don't even work for them anymore.  It really stinks having to do these kind of interviews.

 

STU:  It's certainly not something to beat up the secret service and just by the evidence that we've had over the years of talking to so many people from the secret service, this is hard to believe this is anything but an exception.

 

GLENN:  A total aberration.  To me it doesn't make any sense, but then I hear this report.  This is out today and I'd love to get your comment on this.  Your phone is breaking up a little bit.  I don't know if you're moving into a bad section, but listen to this audio.

 

(Audio played.)

 

VOICE:  They don't even insist on regular physical fitness testing or regular firearms requalification testing.  Sometimes they will ask agents to fill out their own test scores on these things which is just dishonest.  All this culture filters down and I think led to this really scandalous situation.

 

GLENN:  Is that true?  Is any of that stuff true?

 

BONGINO:  No.  I think he's talking about moments where, you know, if you were at a UN, during a really busy time, United Nations where no one's in their field office, where you go to a gym at the hotel and do a fitness test because there was just nowhere around.  I mean, that's how you may have filled it out, but there's nothing unusual about it.  That wasn't a big conspiracy.  As for the firearms, if you don't -- you have to shoot every month on the presidential detail.  If you miss a month, that was it.  You were done.  (Inaudible.)  So, I never saw that.

 

GLENN:  Okay.  All right.

 

BONGINO:  But, yeah (inaudible.)

 

GLENN:  All right.  That's good news.  Help me out on one more thing and, that is, according to NBC news, the incident raised a possibility of potential security breach, telling NBC news that all secret service personnel had been given copies of the President's schedule which they were told to lock up safe in their hotel rooms.  If they had hookers in their hotel rooms, didn't that pose a danger to the President of the United States?

 

BONGINO:  You can lock up your paperwork on a secure floor (Inaudible.)  The entire floor, every room.  That's the code.  That's what you do.  If you didn't do that, of course -- and I can't say that happened on this trip.  From my source, it did not.  There was no paperwork.  I can't attest to that personally, Glenn, me not being there, but, yeah, that's wrong if that was the case and forget about a hooker.  Anyone who is a foreign national who is in your room with the President's itenary, that would be disastrous.  I'm hearing that is not the case here, that all the paperwork was properly secured.  You know, I hope, but, again, I wasn't there and I'm not privy to the investigation, but I'm speculating on that.

 

GLENN:  Dan, I appreciate your honesty and, I mean, that's why I called you, because you are a -- you are a guy that I trust.  I have seen you in action.  I've seen your honor and integrity over the years and I respect you and I respect the guys -- you know how I feel about the secret service.

 

BONGINO:  Yeah.  We've had this conversation many times.  He's not lying to you.  On the air, off the air, he's telling the exact same thing.

 

GLENN:  All right.  Thanks a lot, Dan.  God bless you.

 

STU:  He's running for U.S. Senate in Maryland.  Bongino.com is his website.

 

GLENN:  And if I were living in Maryland and had a guy to vote for, Dan Bongino would be the guy.  Did we put the thing up there about all the different people that we're -- that like Dan that I've met with personally?  Is that up at glennbeck.com?

 

STU:  I think it is, yeah.

 

GLENN:  People that I've met with -- if you're looking -- and there's only about 10 of them up there.  If you're looking for, you know, is this guy good, bad guy, I can just tell you I've met with -- I don't know -- 6 or 10 of these guys around the country and this is a list of people that I say I would feel comfortable with these guys.  I think more than comfortable with these guys.  And you can find that list at glennbeck.com and Dan is clearly one of them.

 

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The founders warned us

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

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

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

Not-so-expert advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

A republic no more?

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

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

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choosing death over care

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

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

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

They offered her MAID.

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

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

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

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

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

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Sharia arrives

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

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

The warning from those who have lived under it

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

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

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

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

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

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

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

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

Wake up before it is too late

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet return of meaning

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

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

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

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.