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Glenn's Show Prep

Muslim reformer articulates dangers of Islamism, which candidates 'get it'

September 29, 2015
Ted Tuttle

Editor

On radio Tuesday, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, joined Glenn to discuss what is being done to confront radical Islamism. As a Muslim himself, Jasser offered a very unique perspective on the situation.

"Muslims aren't making it clear that we're not Islamists. And we've been painfully silent," Jasser said, adding, "We need to have that room to differentiate between Muslims who are against theocracy and Muslims who are Islamists that are part of the problem.

When Glenn asked the most pressing question of how to tell the difference, Jasser left no room for confusion in his response.

The difference is: Those who have allegiance to the Islamic State (be it all 56 majority Islamic states that are identity, and with it comes jihad and a dedication to being a citizen of that Islamic State, to fight for it).

Or you believe in the secular state, the separation of mosque and state or church and state, as our establishment clause calls for and, ultimately, you are a warrior against theocracy, against Islamism and for liberty.

Later in the conversation, Glenn shifted to presidential politics, asking if there is a candidate that Jasser thinks "gets it." Here is what he said:

Well, I can tell you, we graded the candidates in the first two debates. And Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio were at the top of that. Ted Cruz was high up in there in being able to articulate that there's a problem with a faction of political movements of Islamists, and there's a position for America -- a role for America to play in the world. And we graded them very high compared to the other candidates.

Listen to the segment or read the full transcript below.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

GLENN: Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Good friend of the program. Great American. I believe he was a captain in the Navy. Zuhdi, correct me if I'm wrong.

ZUHDI: No. Lieutenant commander.

GLENN: Lieutenant commander.

ZUHDI: Great to be with you, Glenn.

GLENN: Great to talk to you. Zuhdi, you're really, truly one of the good guys and a guy that I always look to as one of the first real heroes of my lifetime standing up and doing the dangerous things when it really counts. I mean, I think, after September 11th, the world changed. And people began -- regular people began to risk their lives. And you have done this now for 15 years. You were doing it before. But you were ringing the bell and trying to get, you know, the rest of the world to stand and up see the difference between a Muslim and an Islamist.

Zuhdi, I want to play some audio here and get your reaction as a Muslim.

There is this debate going on on whether a Muslim should be president of the United States. And I think Ben Carson is answering this inartfully, but I think if I understand him right, I think I agree with him. And I want to see -- I kind of want to do a bigot check here on me. Not on him. On me. And make sure that I'm seeing things the proper way. Here's what he said to Jake Tapper.

JAKE: I think one of the things, you are a member of a church that there's a lot of misinformation about, the Seventh Day Adventist church. You're an African-American. You know what it's like for people to make false assumptions about you, and you seem to be doing the same thing with Muslims.

BEN: In which way am I making a false assumption about them?

JAKE: You're assuming that Muslim Americans put their religion ahead of the country.

BEN: I'm assuming that if you accept all the tenets of Islam, that you'll have a very difficult time abiding under the Constitution of the United States.

VOICE: This interview is over.

GLENN: Okay. Stop there.

So here's the thing, Zuhdi, and I don't know whether this -- whether Sharia law would be classified as a tenet of Islam. I know it's a tenet of Islamists. Would you agree with him there or not?

ZUHDI: Well, I certainly -- you know, listen, as you said, the reason I'm doing all this work is our community has been so silent that, you know, it's no wonder most Americans that are doubly as fearful of Islam today as they were after 9/11. Because Muslims aren't making it clear that we're not Islamists. And we've been painfully silent.

Now, having said that, if you want Muslims to be in that time in history that Christianity was -- as our Founding Fathers were, where they were not Christianists, they were devout Christians that rejected theocracy. If we're going to make that stand, which I think is the most important stand in the world today, is this battle within the house of Islam. Then we need to have that room to differentiate between Muslims who are against theocracy and Muslims who are Islamists that are part of the problem.

And, by the way, it's not just about being president. It's about security clearances. It's about every position in government, whether you take that oath as the president, or oath as a military office, or oath in Homeland Security. If you're an Islamist, you should not be getting those clearances. But if you're a Muslim, who is anti-theocratic, you are not only an essential patriot, you're probably one of the most important ideologues on the planet today in order to defeat this threat.

GLENN: So here's the problem, Zuhdi. And we're seeing this overseas. We're seeing this with the people who are coming out of the Middle East, the, quote, refugees out of the Middle East. You don't know how to tell the difference between an Islamist who is lying to you and just saying that they're a Muslim and a Muslim, who is actually -- because a Muslim, as I define a Muslim, compared to an Islamist -- and correct me if I'm wrong, Zuhdi, but I write about it in my book, that a Muslim by definition in today's world is a reformer of Islam and an Islamist is somebody who believes in all of the tenets of the Koran and the Hadith with Sharia law as it's understood in the Middle East. So how do you know what the difference is?

ZUHDI: Well, the difference is, those who have allegiance to the Islamic State, be it all 56 majority Islamic states that are identity. And with it comes jihad and a dedication to being a citizen of that Islamic State, to fight for it. Or you believe in the secular state, the separation of mosque and state or church and state, as our establishment clause calls for and, ultimately, you are a warrior against theocracy, against Islamism and for liberty.

So those people coming here, they're coming here because they're part of a jihad. They're our enemy. If they're coming here seeking freedom like my family did, then they're not only allies -- and that's why we have to be careful. There's ISIS already in all 50 states. But yet the refugees coming here for the most part and see that narrative that the West stands for their only solace against the two evils of political Islam or Islamism and secular HEP atocracy of Assad and other dictators of the Middle East -- so we can't change who we are, what our Statue of Liberty stands for. Yes, we should vet the refugees. But if we say we're not going to take anyone, remember, most of the jihadists that attacked us, are -- might be kids of immigrants. But they certainly aren't new refugees for the most part. I'm not saying there aren't any threats there, but we can't change who we are, because otherwise we become the Russias and the Saudi Arabias of the world and take nobody.

GLENN: But here's the thing. I have gone off -- and I know this is a controversial stance. But I don't know -- I'm not qualified myself to do this. And we're having the United Nations do all of our vetting for the refugees, which I think is a tremendous mistake. But I look at the refugee status and say, "Look, Saudi Arabia and everybody else, they have plenty of room for refugees who are Muslim, and they're more qualified to figure out which one is which. Good guys and bad guys. We're not. We won't even admit that there are bad guys in that mix." So we've got to take care of the Christians who cannot be taken care of in the Middle East. They're not going to find a friendly home -- you know, you're not going to bring your Bible into Saudi Arabia. They have to get out of there.

Meanwhile, all of the Islamic nations in the Middle East are not taking refugees. They're expecting -- they're expecting the West to take all of them. How, Zuhdi, would we possibly know -- what's a litmus test that you would think would even work on who the good guys and the bad guys are?

ZUHDI: Well, remember, our country has fought so many wars. In the Vietnam War, World War II, we took in refugees, and we had ways to tell who were the Vietnamese that were with us and who were fighting against us. And yet we didn't say, "Well, no refugees because there may be some communists in those that we take in." Yes, there is a problem, yes, with an administration that won't even say the word "Islamist" as the president caters to the blasphemy laws of all Islamic states and doesn't even identify Islamism as a threat. We'll have major difficulties. But in the Cold War, we were mastering the fact that Soviet War Theory, Communist war Theory was our enemy.

GLENN: Yeah, but we admitted it at that point.

I mean, Zuhdi, honestly, if I'm president of the United States, I go and I find people like you and say, "Okay. Help us weed the good guys from the bad guys." But that's not what our administration is doing. That's not what the last administration was doing. They refused to even look at it as if Islamists even exist.

ZUHDI: That's why we have to thread this needle, where if we have leaders -- I'm getting whiplash where now we've had six and a half years of an administration that caters to the Islamist. And now we're finally having courageous candidates that are identifying that there's a problem in the house of Islam, but we need to thread the needle and say, "You know, it's not a battle between Islam and Christians or Islam and Christianity or the West. It's a battle between liberty versus the theocrats. And we have to bond with those Muslims." We have a coalition of reformers that you know many of. Including Kad Ahmed and Assir Nomani and Zani BelHEP. And so many who could help our administration vet the jihadist versus the non-jihadist. And yet we can't even set foot in the White House because he wants to have a coalition to fight al-Qaeda. It's like having a coalition against drug violence and inviting the meth distributors into the White House to help you fight drug violence. It just doesn't make any sense.

GLENN: You're exactly right. So yesterday at the United Nations, the president spoke. And then Rouhani spoke. And then Putin spoke. I don't know. Did you see any of the speeches?

ZUHDI: I did. Yes.

GLENN: Did any of those make sense to you?

ZUHDI: They make sense if you have a new unraveling of the world order, where the Islamists are filling in a vacuum where you had an opportunity in Arab wakening that could have seen the ushering in of a change where Islam is going through that time in history, that the West went through between the 15th and 18th century. But now what makes sense is, we've aggregated that to the Russias and the Irans of the world. We're handing Iran $150 billion to help Assad.

I don't know what's happening with the meeting between Putin and Obama. But the bottom line is, a genocide against the Sunnis in Syria is turning against genocide against minorities. And we're seeing ISIS fill that vacuum. And now Iran is going to homogenize the Middle East. The world order is unraveling. The refugees are one symptom of it. And if we don't take sides within the house of Islam and get candidates that can articulate that Islamism is the problem and we're going to take the side of liberty and not alienate a core of the world's population, but yet realize that we have friends within this revolution happening.

GLENN: Have you had any candidate on either side reach out to you and talk to you about the Islamic world?

ZUHDI: We have had a few candidate conversations. And I think you can tell some of them that are able to be articulate on this issue and those that aren't. But I -- I want to be careful.

GLENN: Have you seen anyone -- yeah. I don't want to put you -- you feel free to say no. Because I don't want to put you in a spot because you need all the allies you can get.

ZUHDI: Yes.

GLENN: Is there a candidate that you see that you say, this guy gets it. Even if he doesn't get anything else, he gets this -- or she.

ZUHDI: Well, I can tell you, we graded the candidates in the first two debates. And Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio were at the top of that. Ted Cruz was high up in there in being able to articulate that there's a problem with a faction of political movements of Islamists, and there's a position for America -- a role for America to play in the world. And we graded them very high compared to the other candidates.

GLENN: Zuhdi, what can we do to help you? I'm starting to just be much more action-oriented. I'm tired of just talking about things. And I'm looking to support the people that are out on the front lines. What can somebody do that is listening to you and is like, I want to help. I want to be part of the solution. What can people do? How can they help you?

ZUHDI: When we have these conversations, to realize a think tank like the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and our coalition, the American Islamic Leadership Coalition, should be playing an active role publicly in media, in government, in universities.

Yale just had a center bought by another Wahhabi petro-dollar HEP Saudi who spent $10 million for a center on Sharia. Georgetown has one. Harvard does. I mean, if you wonder where the moderate voices of Islam are, we're being drowned out by the petro HEP Islamists that are spending millions to make sure that we don't have a voice. And, you know, we need to be at the table. And then you'll realize that there's a diversity within the house of Islam, and we're not all -- and this is why candidates are confused. Because the moderate voices are shut out by the institutions that are making us less and less relevant. And your listeners and Americans can make sure we have a seat at the table. No different than the Founding Fathers did in that battle against against theocracy.

GLENN: Zuhdi, always good to talk to you, my friend. Stay safe. God bless you.

ZUHDI: Thank you. God bless.

GLENN: You can find Zuhdi. His website is AIFdemocracy.org. That's AIFdemocracy.org. Truly one of the good guys. And a guy who risks his life every day to stand up against Islamists as a Muslim himself.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

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

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

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.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

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

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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.