At Ease: Marcus Luttrell and other special ops soldiers sound off

The Glenn Beck program aired a unique special last night featuring four former spec op soldiers, some lawn chairs, a bucket of beer and some microphones. This is simply something you don’t get to see every day - elite American soldiers sounding off on the VA, ISIS and more.

Watch a preview below - TheBlaze TV subscribers can watch the full episode on demand HERE.

Pete: How do you guys feel about Iraq right now? I mean, we all fought there. We all lost friends there. How do you feel about watching basically everything we fought for just—?

Marcus: Is it still there?

Paul: You’ve got to go get an x-ray. If you x-ray it off of your body, does that count that you have it?

Chad: I asked him if I could do a hostage picture with a newspaper behind the missing leg. Here’s the date, the leg’s gone.

Marcus: I didn’t lose it. It’s not like I misplaced my leg.

Chad: Anybody that served in Iraq called it. I mean, why do you have all these brilliant military minds that you’ve chosen to promote to four-star general and admiral and all that stuff, and then you discount everything that they tell you about how to fight a war? So, you decide to pull out early so that you can make political gains, and this is what you’re going to get.

Paul: No, the colonels were telling everybody, and then they got out. Then the people that went lockstep with them for the majority, the guys that went lockstep in that mentality of just whatever, those are the ones that are the four-star admirals and generals.

Marcus: That is a bit baffling. I mean, you don’t join the military and get elected or appointed straight to general or admiral.

Chad: Everybody called this.

Paul: You know, it’s hard to even care. If no one else does, then just don’t put our troops there.

Chad: Look at two of the top commanders in ISIS, they were former Republican Guard Colonels for Saddam, you know? So, now you’ve got these guys who actually were trained at some point in time in the United States leading the biggest terrorist organization in the history of the modern world.

Paul: I think it would be a lot easier for me to care about it, and maybe you guys feel different, but it would be a lot easier for me to care about it if when you watch 70 guys that are crossing across to go fight ISIS and 700 military-age men are cheering them on, I’d stop and be like, “Hey, man, get in.” When they care, then maybe we should care a little more. That was the disconnect when we were over there going FID and everything else.

Marcus: Look, here’s the deal, man. They’re not stupid. So, every time they do something and we talk about it like hey, we’re discussing this, we disagree with what you’re doing. You disagree with somebody getting strung up, heads cut off and burned. I’m sure they really care about the fact that we disagree with them over here. That means absolutely nothing. I mean, the only way you handle a terrorist, and it should go for over here as well—we’re not talking about a criminal. Somebody breaks the law, yeah, you put them through the justice system, and then you put them in prison and let them do their time. We’re talking about a terrorist, somebody who is trying to eradicate or destroy and kill multiple people. You kill them right there. It’s right there.

Pete: Lawrence of Arabia, what he said, you know, an opinion can be argued with, but a conviction is best shot.

Marcus: What are they afraid of? Why would they be afraid of us?

Paul: President Obama.

Pete: They’re afraid of the six [indiscernible] a day. I mean, that’s just a devastating show of force.

Chad: I mean, if you want to talk about a leader, look at King Abdullah. You’re going to burn my guy, let me put on my flight suit. I’m about to get in my Cobra.

Paul: That’s his lineage. That’s where he came from. I wouldn’t expect any of our politicians, but at least let the guys that would jock up and go over there and hand somebody their…you know, let them do it.

Marcus: That female prisoner there, the terrorist, you better get your prayers in, because it’s going to be ending tomorrow.

Chad: Yeah, but instead we’re alienating the only ally, the true ally that we’ve had for, you know, the Israelis, you know? I mean, you want to go down that road.

Pete: I mean, at what point, you guys watched the whole Arab Spring go, rolled right across northern Africa into Syria. At what point do you just have to stop and go, “Are we intentionally aiding?” Are we letting this happen for a reason? I mean, because we’ve done absolutely nothing, and we’ve watched all of—and you knew what was going to happen in Egypt. It wasn’t like…they were like, “Oh, there’s going to be democracy and democratic elections.” You have the Muslim Brotherhood stepping up across the board.

Marcus: I get the perspective from what a lot of those people are saying that they don’t want to put boots. I get it, man. Why are you going to send us over there? The America soldiers, why are you going to send them over there? Why? To die. It’s going to happen. Soldiers die. We get paid. It’s a part of it, man. We get it. That’s not a problem with us. The issue is not a problem of us wanting to go. We’ll go, but why? So, it’s to secure what, nothing? Okay. You’ve got to have a reason.

People are dying. Yeah, people are dying, man. People die all the time. People have been dying over there for thousands of years, man. I mean, if you’re going to give a reason and have all the American public sign off on it and say yeah, it’s worth my boy going over there to die in a foreign land against a foreign land kind of deal, right?

Pete: I’m just saying an action across the board, not just military action. I’m not just saying military action, but look across action, any kind of action, sanctions. I mean, let’s just take it from a bigger picture. What did we really do? It’s like football. You build momentum, right? They have momentum right now. How do you take care? I mean, there’s one side of it where you say okay, if you walk into your kitchen, you turn on the lights, and there’s a bunch of cockroaches, do you walk in the next day, turn on the lights, and kill a couple cockroaches or do you turn the lights down, let all the cockroaches show up and then kill them in the dark?

Paul: They don’t scatter when you turn the light on. These cockroaches stay right there, and they “Here we are.” You’re right in one sense, Marcus, I think, but what do we stand for? I don’t know if I could walk into any military anywhere and say, “What does America right now in the world stand for?”

Chad: What was the statistic you gave earlier, the 27% or something?

Paul : In the Military Times, I think it was right before or right after Hagel was fired or quit or whatever happened there, they did a poll of the senior leadership, the junior people in the military. When you say senior leadership, I would presume that’s the O-6 and above level, and when they polled, they probably polled the E-5 and below, the E-5 Mafia down. They asked them, they said well, “Do you have confidence in your senior leadership?” Twenty-seven percent confidence. What’s Congress at? If you’re parallel with Congress, you’re in trouble.

Pete: Number one priority at Naval Academy, what would you imagine it would be just common sense? Like creating officers to fight and win a war?

Paul: Social engineering.

Pete: No, their number one priority is diversity above everything else at the Naval Academy. I don’t care how well you could lead. If we’re diverse, then we’re winning.

Marcus: Never had to question why I was doing something. It was because you were there. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m here. If everybody leaves, okay, I’ll go too, man, but if you’re going, I’m going—you jump, I jump kind of deal. Maybe an ignorant mentality, but it’s what keeps us alive.

Paul: But with phones and media and all the things and breakdown of leadership and unlawful command influence that happens constantly, which is, you know, it’s a horrible thing that when senior commanders are telling like the guy that had the counterterrorism—I hate to just throw it out, but the guy that was at West Point that taught the counterterrorism course that mentioned radical Islam and all that and then the secretary or the chief of staff of the army ended up getting involved. You remember all this? He ended up getting involved in this. Basically he’s a light colonel or a full-bird colonel, and they trashed his career because all the pressure from above, and you can’t say Islam when you’re talking about terrorism.

Marcus: Islam is the last thing you need to worry about me calling you.

Pau;: Yeah, right?

Marcus: I just say it how it is, man. That’s straight up.

Pete: But don’t you think it’s kind of scary that we’re not even acknowledging that it’s radical Islam, that it’s just extremism? Because to me that scares me domestically, because then, okay, if we’re going to battle extremists, well then you can make anybody an extremist. You’re a right-wing extremist. That to me scares me coming back, like we’re just battling extremists, so now hey, there you go.

Marcus: You know how hard that is for these younger kids, not us, not what we were in, these younger kids having to fight an ideologue? They’re not fighting a uniform. If I look at somebody, I can’t tell if he’s extremist or not.

Chad: It’s lack of knowledge. It’s lack of experience. Everybody sitting here has seen that airplane land in a combat zone and congressmen and senators and representatives get off, and they’re surrounded by PSD.

Pete: The 30th of the month, and then they stay until like the first or the second so they get two months tax-free.

Chad: They get two months tax-free, and then they stay for 45 minutes to an hour. They get back on the plane, and they leave. Then the first thing they do when they get home is they say I just returned from a war zone. It’s like no, you didn’t. You want to go to a war zone? Get in this truck with me. Hop in the truck. Jump in this truck and let me see what your pucker factor does.

Pete: Take your bloody cammies off. Put your nice cammies on.

Marcus: You spent all those months growing that beard out, and oh, you need to shave for the day. What?

Paul: Have you seen this?

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

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A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

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Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.