A story of hope in a hopeless world

This morning on radio Darryl and Tracy Strawberry called in to discuss their new book The Imperfect Marriage: Help for those who think it's over.

Some of you may remember Darryl and Tracey were guests of the Glenn Beck Program, covering their own personal addiction and struggles in life. This morning, Glenn asked Darryl and Tracy how do people take that first step towards going to church. Glenn said, "There's a lot of people I'm sure listening to you and they're like — and are struggling, that are like, I don't know if I believe in God and this whole Jesus things drives me out of my mind and how am I ever going to get to church because church people are going to look down on me anyway."

Darryl Strawberry provided some amazing advice concerning that subject, saying:

People have to understand. The church is like a hospital. You come there to get well. You come there to hear the word of God. Don't look at man, don't look at woman. You got to listen to the word. It's the word that changes people. And I think people need to get really that clarification in their mind, Glenn, that it's not the people who ought to change. It's the word of God that's going to change you. It's the word that changed Tracy. It wasn't the people. If I sat and worried about the people, I'm never going to get well. They talked about me when I was rich. They talked me when I was famous. Now they talk about me because I love Jesus. They're going to always talk about you.

Watch some of this amazing interview below:

GLENN: I want to introduce you to a man and wife, Darryl and Tracy. You know — you know Darryl Strawberry. Darryl Strawberry played for the Mets, the Yankees, the Dodgers, probably would have been one of the greatest ballplayers of all time had it not been for massive drug abuse. He turned his life around 12 years ago, married his now wife Tracy eight years ago. And together they have found a way through alcoholism and addiction and really bad, bad places. Before I bring them on, I want to tell you a story. They were on the TV with me. And we have an employee that — their family is struggling. Somebody in their family is struggling with a member who is addicted to heroin. Not only did I talk to Darryl and Tracy about this and said, look, I don't know what advice has come to me. I don't know what advice to give. I was never addicted to heroin and the family is at wit's end. Not only did they immediately ask to meet with us — with this employee, but they met with him for about 20 minutes, talked to him, comforted him. Darryl then reaches into his pocket and says, look, I run a treatment center and if we can get your family member in, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. Which I thought was amazing. Then I find out later that they had called the mother of this employee who is really struggling and happened to call her on the worst day of her life. She had given up. And she didn't know what to do and the phone rings and it's Darryl and Tracy Strawberry. And they spent I don't know how much time with her on the phone just counseling. This is who these people have become. They are the real deal. And I'm really impressed with them and I wanted to bring them on the program. They have a new book called "The Imperfect Marriage, Help For Those Who Think It's Over."

Darryl and Tracy, welcome to the program. How are you guys?

TRACY: Good morning, thanks for having us.

DARRYL: We're doing great, Glenn. Thanks for having us.

GLENN: Let me start with you real quick. You don't have any memorabilia in your house at all. Where you were a great baseball player. You've gotten rid of all of that stuff. Do you ever think to yourself what could I have done had I been clean?

DARRYL: Oh, not at all. The journey of each person life is the journey they will go through and I think a lot of times too many people try to revisit the past and you can't. You can't look at the past because you can't — Glenn, you'll never walk into the anew. I think that's where most people struggle in their life and not just in addiction but in life period. They look in the past, what the past used to be like. That's old. That's not who you are anymore. It was — at that time who I was. That's who I was. I had a lot of issues inside. I mean, I was famous, I was rich, I was successful. I had everything you could want but I had nothing inside. Inside I was empty and I think a lot of times I prefer where I'm at today not to be empty. When I was back there having everything and to be whole where I'm at today and being imperfect. So I'm grateful for all the things that have happened because it brought new character and it made me a true man. I think sometimes we think success makes you a man and that's not the case. Success doesn't make you a man. Success makes you successful doing what you're doing. But becoming a man and moving in purpose and doing God's will is the most incredible gift I've ever received, in a trophy, in a championship, and millions of dollars. To be in the know — the principles that I live by, the biblical principles. Not worldly principles, but biblical principles, that I'm stronger than ever and I'm in purpose and leading them to salvation.

GLENN: Tracy, were you a wreck yourself? We all know Darryl. He was — he was — I mean, what I would dare to call times in his life a waste of skin where he was the worst of the worst. You were in bad shape yourself. You two get together at some point. First of all, I mean, what does that say about you in some ways that you were seeing him at his low point? You had to be just kind of in that same kind of cesspool. What were you like when you first met and why did you guys get together?

TRACY: Well, Darryl and I hit it immediately and right away because we were the same person dysfunctionally. We could understand each other right out of the gate. There wasn't any judgment there. We couldn't judge each other because we were in the same people. He was just the male, I was a female participating in the same defeated lifestyle. So this was this sick safety, of you will, created there. We felt safe with one another. We understood one another. The problem is, dysfunction, when it gets together, operates dysfunctionally and produced more dysfunction. And many people in this world today just so desperately want to be loved, desire to be loved and really want to be loved. And I truly believe want to be well. But we are not equipped to love. We have to become well and become a whole person in Christ before we can even think about becoming whole as one with another person. And Darryl and I, we came together relationally. But that quickly deteriorated and fell apart and it just became another struggle, another problem, another issue, because we could not get along. We couldn't —

GLENN: You were knocking down doors of like crackhouses to find him and try to pull him out at one point.

TRACY: I was. I was trying to be his savior. I was working harder at his life than he was. I was working harder at his faith than he was. You're going to believe and you're going get well whether you want to or not. It's called codependency in the world. Living a life without God, I was his savior. So he had no reason to look to a savior and no reason to look for help because I was his help and his hope.

GLENN: Darryl, you told me at one point when she said "no" to you, and sell this story, this is the first time ever in your life anyone had ever said no.

DARRYL: Yes, it was a defining moment in my life. We were together. We had came to St. Louis together and we were living in her parents' home. And Tracy started studying the Bible and we were — said we was going to go to church and get on with her life.

First, we're not married. So this is the people who are not married. We were just shacking up. There's nothing great that's going to come out of that and I think a lot of times people think this can work. And we thought it could, too. And she woke up one morning and she had be studying the Bible and said I can't do it anymore. And I said what do you mean, she said we're not having sex anymore. I said what. No, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not compromising anymore. And I think that's it. And I said I think I need to get out of here. And she said I think that's what you need to do.

That was a defining moment in my life when she came to me, that's it. Right there, Tracy took a stand. Not only for her but it was a stand that changed me because it sent me off running to California to stay with my sister Regina. And her three kids. And in her two-bedroom apartment and I went there and I got my life together. I stopped sex, I stopped drugs. I stopped everything. I went back to church and got myself right with God.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. What happened, because there's a lot of times that people will say, what? That's fine. And then you go out and you trash her, you know. She becomes the bad person. And you just go deeper. What was the — why was that your bottom?

DARRYL: Well, because I had never been told "no."

And I think — you know, I think most people never tell the other person "no."

This is not going on anymore. They just continue to do it. You know. And for me that was — that was a defining moment. I had to look at me. There was something wrong with me. I needed to look at myself. You know, after Tracy had cut me off and said she's not doing this no more, I'm not living this way. And the thing about it, Glenn, we didn't even know if we were going to get back together. I know most people think, maybe we'll come back together and we'll make it work, but we didn't even know we were going to get back together. The thing was there was a breakoff and there was a pivotal point in my life that I realized, you know, I needed to do something different in my life. I need to go and rededicate my life to God like Tracy is doing and get myself together. And when we broke off, it was a six-month period that I — we broke off for. And I went and got myself together, got it back in church and she went and got herself together and then we decided, you know, well, maybe we're doing the right thing now. And maybe we can come back together and make this work. And that's how it turned out for us. You know, we went our separate ways and got our own self together. And I think a lot of times people don't want to look at themselves and they want to point the finger. When you point the finger, three are pointing right back at you.

GLENN: Tracy, you guys are — you guys write the book and I've heard people say, yeah, like I'm going to listen to these guys who are both addicts. Yeah. I am going to listen to two people who have taken and been at the absolute bottom of the barrel and then changed their life and really truly changed their life and are happy and successful now. And successful in a — in the happiness quotient more importantly. What is it that you think is unique that you guys have to offer here?

TRACY: Well, number one, I truly believe that this book is — we keep it very real in here. We keep it very real. We don't paint a picture of a fairy tale story that's not attainable, number one. We really get to the core issue. And I believe instead of blaming your partner or working on outside things, to expect an inward healing, we don't address those things. We talk about those things in the book. But the book really leads you to look within yourself and take responsibility for yourself and your own life. And how you do that with practical application. And understanding that you know, God has to be in the center, but how do you make that happen? I was one of these people going where I was like, look, I know God is important. I know all this stuff is important. Can you help me with that? I'm angry with God. I don't understand Him. I don't what you understand my problem is. I know I'm powerless over alcohol and drug addiction, but boom, now another powerless thing has popped up. I'm powerless over my marriage, my kids, my mind, my thinking, my entire life. And it leads people — my prayer is into the understanding, we're born with this thing called a sinful nature that we're powerless over. We're born with original sin. This character that cannot mold to God. It separates us from God. I'm completely separated from God. I'm not — I didn't do anything to earn this sinful nature. I was born with it. So I don't do anything to earn God's love. And that's the power of the cross right there. And having an understanding of what the true gospel is and understanding what of what is wrong with you and why we need Jesus Christ to make it right, how you put God in the center and then how you live that out in an everyday life, overcome adulteries, addictions, everything that is birthed out of the sinful nature. We want to get a real understanding of that.

GLENN: Can you ask you guys a question? There's a lot of people I'm sure listening to you and they're like — and are struggling, that are like, I don't know if I believe in God and this whole Jesus things drives me out of my mind and how am I ever going to get to church because church people are going to look down on me anyway.

TRACY: Uh-huh.

DARRYL: You go to church because everybody is screwed up anyway. No one there is perfect. That's why we go there.

GLENN: Unfortunately a lot of people who are in the pews think they are.

DARRYL: They're not. That's the whole point.

GLENN: I know.

DARRYL: People have to understand. The church is like a hospital. You come there to get well. You come there to hear the word of God. Don't look at man, don't look at woman. You got to listen to the word. It's the word that changes people. And I think people need to get really that clarification in their mind, Glenn, that it's not the people who ought to change. It's the word of God that's going to change you. It's the word that changed Tracy. It wasn't the people. If I sat and worried about the people, I'm never going to get well. They talked about me when I was rich. They talked me when I was famous. Now they talk about me because I love Jesus. They're going to always talk about you. But what has happened in our life is we allowed the word to change us and bring us to a greater understanding, a greater place of why we were created. I think a lot of people don't even know why they exist. You know, I think a lot of times husbands are supposed to be the head but they're a knuckle head because they think I'm successful, I don't need this God and my family is falling apart. My wife and kids are falling apart. Because I don't know this God to lead my wife and family. Because the man is supposed to lead his family in the biblical principle ways. I lead my family. And that's what this is all about. And I think we're ought off order. We got it all backwards. Most of the women in church. They're loving God. The husbands are out running around chasing football games, basketball games and all kind of other stuff to be successful. And they're missing the point because they don't know the — they don't know the biblical principles of living.

TRACY: And Glenn, I believe, too, it's the goodness of God that leads people to repentance. And sometimes it's easy to get a wrong introduction to God. Some people were raised with harshness and why harmed by what we call a church and they put a label on the church and Jesus said, my God, my God, you're pushing my people away. I love them. I know what's wrong with you. I know what's in you. You are no surprise to me. I'm not trying to get you to fall in love with the church, a place. I'm not trying to get you fall in love with a preacher. I'm not banging you over the head with my word. I'm trying to get you to fall in love with me. I know everything that's wrong with you. You're no surprise to me. I am the solution and I'm leading you in love and I'm leading you with solution. I already know. I just want you to come to me. And we give this misrepresentation and it pushes people away from God.

GLENN: Darryl and Tracy Strawberry, I want to thank you for being on the program and thank you for your book, "The Imperfect Marriage." I have to tell you. I've lived this. I don't care how you get there. What they're saying is right. I've lived exactly the same thing and it is true. If you happen to be in need for you know somebody in need, please, consider the "Imperfect Marriage, Help For Those Who Think It's Over. Darryl and Tracy Strawberry. Thanks.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

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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.

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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'?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.