2016 hopeful Governor Bobby Jindal joins Glenn

Joining Glenn on radio for a full hour Friday, Governor Bobby Jindal delved into a variety of issues he hopes to address in a dramatic way as President of the United States. From major tax reform to dealing with Islamic terrorism, Jindal shared his plans on how to address some of the most important issues facing our nation.

By way of introduction, Glenn told his audience, "I don't think you'll disagree with very much that he has to say."

Listen to the conversation or read the transcript below.

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

GLENN: Bobby Jindal, I'll be spending an hour with him on Monday's television show. Then we'll have some more of that on Tuesday as well. So you can really get to know him and hear his policies. But he joins us today on the program.

BOBBY: Glenn, thank you for having me. Look, you and I, we go way back. You're a long-time friend. I'm a big fan of yours. What you're doing to fight for the conservative cause.

For your listeners out at home, I've always done the show, remotely, calling in. This is my first time to physically come into your studios since y'all have modernized, and this is a beautiful, beautiful space.

For the folks that only get to see it on the podcast from TV or hear about it, let me tell you, Glenn has done a great, great job here with this space.

GLENN: Thank you. It's nice to have you here.

BOBBY: Thank you for having me.

GLENN: How is the family, first of all?

BOBBY: Doing well. You can relate. I know you've got -- we've talked about our kids before. My oldest, 13-year-old girl, she just went to her first boy/girl dance a couple of weeks ago. I'm completely against this. I think that's enough to convince every father to be for the Second Amendment.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

BOBBY: I offered to send the S.W.A.T. team with her. She did not want that. My wife offered to chaperone. She didn't want that either.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: My daughter when she started dating, I about put the kid into just a coma because I brought my security to sit down and meet him. And I just told the security, just play along. Sit at the other table. If I look over to you, just look at me. Look at your phone and then shake your head yes. And I had this kid so spooked that I knew all about him. If you need any tips, as she gets a little older, you call me. I have some good ones.

BOBBY: Out of all the fathers, I have to imagine, dating Glenn Beck's daughter has got to be pretty darn intimidating. Any boy that was brave enough to go through that gauntlet earns points for showing up.

GLENN: Oh, this kid -- the father the next day because I actually -- I ended the conversation. I put a plastic bag in my suit pocket. And we were just having pizza. And he had a Coke, and he drank the Coke. And at the end of the meeting, I said, are you done with that? And he said, yeah. And I took the plastic bag out, and I put his Coke can like I wasn't touching it and I was going to dust it for prints.

And he said, "Are you dusting -- I said, "I just -- hey, no big deal." The father called me the next day. And he said, "Mr. Beck." And I said, "Yes." He said, "Did you dust my son's Coke can for prints?" He was pissed. And I was going to say, well, not really. It was just -- and I said, well, yeah. And he said, you, sir, are a genius. I have daughters. I am doing it to them.

BOBBY: Let's not give away all of our secrets. I don't want our daughters listening to this thinking, oh, they were bluffing. Uncertainty is a good thing.

GLENN: Oh, I have more for you, Bobby. So you have a family. You know what this is -- is going to be like. You know what it's going to be like for them. You know that they're going to tear you apart. The next president, no matter who he is, is going to face Abraham Lincoln-style problems. Why would you want this job?

BOBBY: That's a great question. And look, I think it's the same reason you continue to speak out. Look, you could just easily say, I'm going to stay at home and be quiet. Because you know when you speak out, people come after you. If the next president is going to do what needs to be done, we're going to have to upset a lot of people. We're not talking about incremental change.

That's why I've said it's not enough to elect just any Republican. Folks are running because they want fame or they want glory, they're misguided. The only reason to do this, the idea of America is slipping away from us.

Now, look, every politician will tell you this election is the most important one. This one really is. If we don't change direction dramatically, I don't mean gradually or incrementally, I think we're done.

GLENN: So tell me the most dramatic thing that you think -- because this is -- we were talking about this yesterday.

I want tax plans that say, "We're shutting down the IRS. We're going a completely different way." I want to hear big Silicon Valley-type thinking.

PAT: Bold ideas.

GLENN: Really bold idea. Because that's what will captivate the imagination. And, quite honestly, that's the only thing that will heal us. So tell me -- give me some Bobby Jindal Silicon Valley --

BOBBY: Well, and look, we can start with tax plans. Domestically, we have got to shrink the size of the federal government. Not just slow its growth rate. I'm the only candidate who has done that. We cut our state budget 26 percent. 30,000 fewer state bureaucrats.

All these other candidates talk about shrinking government. They've never done that. So my tax plan, every Republican has a tax plan with lower rates. And we've got that. You know, 25 percent, 10 percent, 2 percent.

Three things that are radically different about my tax plan. So a bunch of these Republicans say -- you know, Trump and Jeb have said, we're going to have half of Americans pay no income tax.

GLENN: That's crazy.

BOBBY: I think that's crazy. I think everybody should pay something.

GLENN: Yes.

BOBBY: So our plan has a 2 percent rate. It's not about how much money we raise, but it's the most important 2 percent rate. We're all in this together. If we want government to stop wasting money, we have to care about it. It has to be our money. It's too easy to think, well, that money grows on trees, if we're not paying something.

PAT: So you have a 2 percent rate up to what?

BOBBY: So up to $10,000 for a single filer. $20,000 for a married filer.

The next level is 90,000 for single. 180,000 for married when you get up to 10 percent. So a middle class family, teacher, police officer married today making 150, they're paying 25 percent today. They would pay 10 percent under my plan. It does two other things that are dramatic. Number one, it also eliminates the corporate tax. Not reduces it. Just gets rid of it.

PAT: Oh, wow.

BOBBY: These guys play games. They hire accountants and lobbyists. They don't pay these taxes. Make the CEOs pay. We get rid of a whole bunch of the deductions and all the loopholes. We preserve five. But we get rid of all the other nonsense they put in the tax code. Here's the thing where the left -- they will attack me on this, but I'm actually proud of this. We shrink how much money -- we dramatically -- we cut 22 percent of the revenues going to the federal government over the next ten years. Now, the left is going to hate it. They're going to say, you can't do that. Well, if we don't do that, we're done.

If we elect a Republican president -- before, we've had Republican majorities, Republican presidents, they slow the growth rate. Nothing changes. We got $18 trillion of debt. We're drowning in debt. Now, this tax plan grows the economy. All kinds of numbers. 14 percent GDP growth. 6 million jobs. You know, 9 percent. Over eight to 9 percent wage growth. But here's the fundamental thing.

Here's the most important thing we have to do domestically. And then one other thing internationally. Domestically, this president has done a great job changing the American dream to be all about the government taking care of us. That's what he's tried to do.

We're on the path towards socialism. Let's just be honest about it. Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist. Hillary Clinton is no better. Obama is no better. And there are a bunch of Republicans that aren't a whole lot better. They want to be Obamacare-lite. They want to be -- look, if this election is about who can give away the most stuff from the government, we're done. We never win that fight. It's not a fight worth having.

We have to look the American people in the eye and be honest with them and say, what makes the government great is not the government gives you stuff. It's that you have freedom in this country. We have to fight to get that freedom back. Shrinking the government is not just about growing the economy, it's getting our freedoms back. But secondly, internationally, this country better be serious -- and I know you've written about this. I know you feel strongly about this as well. We better feel seriously about the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

GLENN: So tell me about ISIS. Let's start more basic than that. Tell me about Islam.

BOBBY: The reality is, Islam has a problem. And, you know, nobody on this stage is politically correct. But let's just be honest. I know we'll get a bunch of folks, you're anti-Muslim. You're racist. That's nonsense. This is just true. Islam has a problem. And that's radical Islam. And what we need our president to say to Muslim clerics and leaders, they've got to do two things. At least one, they have to explicitly say, they have to condemn by name these individual -- these terrorists. These murderers. Let's call them what they are.

You can't just condemn a generic act of violence. You can't just say, oh, well, we're against -- no, you have to say, these individuals are not martyrs. They're not going to enjoy a reward in the afterlife. They're going to straight to hell, where they belong.

Then, secondly, they have to explicitly say, we fully embrace religious liberty and all the freedoms for people that have different religious beliefs that we want for ourself. It can't be that we want freedoms for us, but we don't other people to have those same freedoms.

When it comes to ISIS, when it comes to Islam, we have a president who went to the Pentagon a few weeks ago, and said this is a generational conflict. We have to change hearts and minds.

Glenn, they are burning people leave alive. Raping. Crucifying. Torturing. Killing Christians. Other Muslims. Other religious minorities. He wants to negotiate with them? We have to hunt them down and kill them.

He calls Fort Hood an incidence of workplace violence. If we won't name -- Secretary Kerry wants to allow many more Syrian refugees in our countries. We know ISIS wants to send terrorists into Europe and into America. Why are we letting them in? They don't even have to sneak in. If we're going to let them in the front door, why would we do that?

GLENN: Well, we're accepting 15,000 in the next year. They're all being vetted by the United Nations. That's insane. But how do we -- you know, we've just raised -- I just got a note this morning. We have broken the 10 million-dollar mark in what has it been, six weeks? All coming in, in hundred-dollar checks, trying to raise money to save the Christians in the Middle East, the Nazarene fund. $10 million. So that tells me, at least this audience is very well aware of what's going on. That we are now facing the St. Louis, the ship that we turned in the 1930s. That we're facing the same thing that the world faced before. An extermination of a race of people based on their religion.

And I get a lot of heat from people, even in this audience, saying, "You can't bring any of them here." My answer to that is, A, our vetting is far superior than anything the United States is going to do. Second of all, how many members of ISIS are Christian? Zero.

How do you deal with the crisis of not the war refugees because if you're Muslim, as far as I'm concerned, Saudi Arabia has lots of room. Jordan has lots of room. They know the difference between the bad guys and the good guys. The West won't admit it. So they can do that. How do you deal with the Christians and this open door in Europe that's going to crush Europe?

BOBBY: Well, you're exactly right. What I worry about is those folks going to Europe have a much easier time than coming to the United States, where they can do us harm.

GLENN: Yes.

BOBBY: But the vetting is so important. And I applaud the generosity of your audience. Let's get to the root cause of this. This administration wants to talk bandaids. This didn't happen by accident. You have millions of refugees there because of this president's failed foreign policy. Let's for a moment step back and think about what we're seeing today.

So you have Assad and Putin and Iran and Hezbollah working together. I mean, can you imagine -- this all happened because this president, he created a void. He said there would be a red line. He said if Assad crossed that red line and used chemical weapons, there would be consequences. It has been his official policy that Assad has to go, but he's done nothing to accomplish that. He has said his official policy is, we'll hunt down and kill ISIS. He's done not enough to accomplish that. Glenn, we have to take the handcuffs off the military. You've had General Petraeus come to the Congress and offer ideas. You have other military, current and foreign military leaders saying what we should be doing. Why aren't we arming and training the Kurds directly?

GLENN: Amen.

BOBBY: I mean, we're going through Baghdad. The Kurds have been the effective force on the ground. Turkey is willing to help us to go in -- and other Sunni allies are willing to go after ISIS. What they don't want to do is to go after ISIS if it leaves Assad in power. What they don't want to do is prop up Iran, a Shia power. They're not convinced America is in this to win this. So now we're in a position where our friends don't trust us. Our enemies don't fear and respect us. Look, Putin went into the Ukraine and Crimea because he didn't respect the White House. Nothing -- nothing of consequence happened to him, so now he's going into Syria. China is testing us in the South China Sea. Let's be clear about what's going on. These are big adversaries. They respect the Turks. They don't want a conflict with the United States. If they feel like there's no strong pushback, they'll keep doing this.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

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.

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.