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Meet the entrepreneur who may have just discovered the next way to connect people together

March 06, 2015
Staff

WRITER

Glenn was in Silicon Valley this week speaking at a number of tech conferences and meeting with some of the biggest dreamers and creators alive today. While at the Launch Festival, Glenn spoke with Nation Builder CEO Jim Gilligan about how his company is connecting people all over world.

Glenn: I want to introduce you to a guy who is one of the people who believes he can change the world or together we can change the world. His name is Jim Gilliam, and he is the founder and CEO of something called Nation Builder. How are you?

Jim Gilligan: Hi, Glenn. Thanks for having me.

You have a fascinating story because of your journey. You have cancer. How are you now?

I’m good. I’ve got a little bit of skin cancer here left, but that’s just my third bout. I had leukemia. I had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and I’ve been great for about eight years.

Okay, and so you have gone through a fundamental transformation as a human being. A lot of people have seen the video The Internet is My Religion, and if we have time, I want to talk to about it, because I think it’s an interesting, really interesting part of your journey, but I want to talk to you a little bit about Nation Builder and what you’re trying to accomplish and what you think can be done.

I’ve had this just enormous blessing to have this experience of community in my life. It started when I was very young in a big mega-church in the early 80s out in San Jose, and then over my life, like I kind of lost that faith, but I started to sort of find a new faith in sort of the power of a connected humanity and like what’s possible when people come together to help each other. So, I made a bunch of like documentary films in like 2o04 and 2005, and they were the kinds of films that the traditional media, the stories that they weren’t telling, so I was really passionate about getting them out there.

Because I was just an Internet geek, we kind of hacked all the like online stuff to sort of get people to distribute the films and host screenings and do all these things. In that process, the only reason we were able to really do that effectively was because I just happened to have like all of these tech skills so I could like pull together, you know, this donation processing system and this like email newsletter thing and a website and video and all this stuff and make it work. But the average person sort of didn’t have access to be able to do that.

Correct.

So, I would go around, and I would go to like film festivals and be like, “Hey, you can get your documentary out there,” and all this stuff. Folks would be like, “Okay, great, I’m signed up. I want to sign up. I want to do that.” They’d be like, “What do I do?” You know, “What do I do next?” I’d be like, “Well, you have to do this and this.” And then, “Can I hire you?” I was like, “No, not really.” So, that really set me on like what could I contribute to help people sort of tap into this immense power of building community online to accomplish whatever it is that you want to make happen? That led me into politics, because organizing people is about very much politics.

You know, when we started something called the 9/12 Project, years ago, right around the Tea Party time, and the Tea Party was doing similar things, we were focused on principles. They were focused on politics, but almost everybody who got involved were looking for somebody who was 20 that knew something about building a website or how to connect with each other, and a lot of people still don’t know how to do it. I mean, the power is unlimited if you know how to do it, you know? So, who is using it, and what are the results?

So, we’re seeing all kinds of different folks using it. About half of our customers come out of politics or advocacy-oriented efforts. They look at Nation Builder, and they’re like, “Yes, okay, I don’t have to deal with all this muck anymore,” and they know what to do with it. It’s like a toolkit, but there also seems like another half of our customers are smaller folks, like there’s a gelato shop in downtown LA that uses it to sort of organize their community. They have folks like suggesting like what flavors they should try next. Duck Dynasty did a whole campaign like overnight, right, when that whole thing happened. They drove a whole amount of like attention and change around.

They used it for the gay issue?

Yeah, so when the media really started to pick up on that, like overnight they got a site set up on Nation Builder, and they grew a list of people to about 250,000 people. They’re now a whole organization called Faith-Driven Consumer that’s working on a whole host of issues on the area, but there are actually press articles about the fact like how on earth did they get a website up like so quickly and sort of capitalize on that moment?

Right. So, how does it work?

So, you’ll know things like you have a Facebook page, and you have like a YouTube channel or Twitter or whatever, but if you want to sort of take it to the next level, right, where is like you’re building your own database, your own nation, what we would call it, you need to sort of like really up your game. You need to like have your own website. You need to connect into all of those different places like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and whatnot, sort of pull all those people together and actually own those relationships, know who the people are and start to actually engage them.

So, when you’ve got a lot of folks that really care about what you’re doing, like the next step, right, is you have to find the folks who care the most and then really engage them and say, “Hey, why don’t you take a leadership position, right? Why don’t you sort of go and organize your own group of people around this and give them the tools and empower them to do that?” Because the most effective way to organize is people sharing their stories with each other, and the way that you scale that is when you create the leadership capacity like within your donors, your supporters, or your customer base.

So, Nation Builder was really designed to help you find those people, really connect with them, and empower them with the tools to make this stuff happen.

Old media doesn’t understand this, and old traditional thinking doesn’t understand that you’re so much more effective when you’re not leading the parade all the time, you know? They fight against it. Everybody fights no, no, you know, we’ve got to be leading the parade. How are you getting politicians to use this when politicians generally are I’m going to control the message, I’m going to control all of it? This requires you to let it go.

Yeah, really that is exactly the issue. It’s a toolkit. People can use it how they want to use it, but what we’ve found is like the most effective use of it is when you sort of give up that control. So initially, like a very early version of Nation Builder, I was like okay look, it’s all about giving up like power to like your members and your customers.

Let them do it.

And I went out, and I was preaching this to like everybody, and nobody bought it, nobody. So, I completely flipped it around. I said it’s the exact opposite, about everybody building their own power, which everybody wants to do. I realized that like the sum total of all of that is that then everybody has power, right?

It’s the same theory, just a different way to look at it. One is more altruistic.

It’s a different way into it. There’s also a business model behind it which works for us, which is nice, so we can scale it all up and make it work. But by providing the tools to everybody, right, if you’re in power and you’re not like really engaging folks and helping like other folks do the leadership, somebody else will. That’s the big opportunity.

So, give me some examples of the best uses of it.

Well, oddly enough, Senator Mitch McConnell has used Nation Builder really well.

Oh my gosh.

So, in his last election campaign, he used Nation Builder to do a lot of field organizing, which generally speaking, the Republicans are sort of, you know, generally not the best at, but they really got into it. They had walk sheets, and they were scanning them all in. The senator was like actually there at the trainings, right? He was like really engaged. I was pretty impressed by that.

Wow. So, Nation Builder can be used for good and evil.

We don’t get to decide that.

No, I know. I know. I do. I do.

Let’s talk a little bit about your journey, because you have gone through a lot and have started at a real religious place. You went to Liberty University, a real God-fearing guy, and you’ve ended or at least you’re at this point in a completely different place.

Yeah, I found God somewhere else. You know, in the speech, I said, you know, God is just what happens when humanity is connected, and that community, the power of that community is immense. What I spent a lot of time thinking about is like, you know, there is a God of love, right? There is also a God that can be very vicious and judgmental, and I see so much of that happening, right?

 

I don’t think of that as God, but you’re thinking of God as humanity.

 

But we can see it happening like as we connect more and more, right, sort of the online lynch mob sort of thing that happens sometimes and the way things spread. There’s amazingly wonderful things happen, like, you know, people coming together to save my life, right? So, it’s like there’s incredible, wonderful power in it, but there’s also like we’re in this like adolescence of understanding what that power really is and how we can sort of most effectively channel it. What really makes me excited is that we get to decide that. We get to choose how that plays out, and so I’m really hopeful that people will look more and more to how they can contribute, right, to making this world better, right, making this a God more of love than of vengeance.

 

Has the world ever been in a place like this before?

 

Oh no, no.

 

I don’t think people really understand how profound of a moment we’re at right now.

 

I see it as communities. M. Scott Peck is a psychologist who did a lot of work on understanding how community works, and he identified sort of four stages that lead to community, pseudo-community. Pseudo-community, it’s like the dinner party, right, where like everybody goes, and no one talks about politics or religion, and everyone is sort of nice and cordial to each other. Then, you know, you go home with your spouse afterwards in the car, and you’re like sort of talking dirt about everybody, right? Like that’s pseudo-community.

 

But then the next phase is chaos, and chaos is when people start getting real. It’s when they stop with all of those sort of like niceties, and they start actually talking about the real issues. Then there’s two ways that you can go from there, right? You can organize your way out of that chaos where you create systems and structures and laws and like all of this infrastructure which we have done, like, that is the world, or you can empty, and you can just let go of all of your preconceived ideas of who other people are, right, everything, all the things that you try to do to change somebody else, and you start to accept people for who they are. Out of that can come real, genuine community.

 

So, we see that happening like on small levels. You can see it happening in churches. You can see it happen in school. You can see elements of it happening here and there sometimes, and it’s really special and amazing.

 

That happened today with me.

 

Did it?

 

Yeah, I mean, I walk out on stage with there had to be 20% of the people there that were like, “You’ve got to be kidding.” I’m reading the tweets, and they’re like, “I don’t like this guy. I’m confused. I really liked what he had to say.” It was just a moment of hey, let’s listen to each other for a minute. Let’s just listen to each other and break down the stereotypes. It’s really an amazing…fear is our enemy.

 

Amen.

 

If we can get rid of the fear and let go and say you know, “I may disagree with you on a lot of things, but I recognize that there is more that we have in common than not,” we can really create an amazing world.

 

The Internet is my religion, and I would say the greatest sin is fear. That’s the one thing that holds us back from creating what we are meant to create. It disconnects us from each other, absolutely.

 

What a pleasure. God bless.

 

Thank you.

 

Thank you.

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.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

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.