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Glenn's Show Prep

'We explode the code' - Rick Santorum's tax plan eliminates the IRS as we know it

October 13, 2015
Staff

WRITER

A good friend to the program and 2016 presidential hopeful Senator Rick Santorum joined Glenn on the radio Tuesday to talk about his revolutionary tax plan he announced Monday.

Santorum said his tax plan will feature a flat tax on all income, without a value added tax, which is something he said differentiates his plan from Rand Paul's.

"It's a 20 percent income tax on all income. It's on individual income. 20 percent on corporate income. 20 percent, capital gains, dividends and interest. Everything is taxed at the same level," Santorum said.

He went on to describe how his plan would eliminate the IRS as we know it.

We explode the code. It's gone. There's no IRS as we know it. It's simple. I mean, there's -- there's the tax credit that I talked to you about. There's the deduction for home mortgages and for charitable donations.

The difference is, everybody can take that deduction, not just those who are high income. So everybody has this available to them. So it's really helpful for everybody to have this deduction. And that's it. No other exemptions. No other exclusions. Same thing with the corporate side. Nothing. No special energy provisions or any kind of things. All that -- all that stuff goes away. It's a very simple code. And it gets the IRS out of everybody's hair.

Listen to the full exchange or read the transcript below.

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

GLENN: A good friend of the program. A good friend and a very good man. 2016 presidential hopeful. The thing that made Pat fall in love with Rand Paul, I think, the love story may begin here with Rick Santorum. Because yesterday, he announced his tax plan, and it sounds similar.

PAT: Oh, nice.

GLENN: Welcome to the program, Rick Santorum.

RICK: Just a little better, I might add.

GLENN: A little better. I don't know. That's hard to beat.

RICK: Well, here's why I say it's better than his. Because -- well, his rate is 14.5 percent. It includes the value-added tax. Mine is at 20 percent, flat tax with no value-added tax. It has a tax on corporate --

GLENN: Hang on just a second.

PAT: Wait. I didn't know it included a value-added tax.

GLENN: Hold on just a second. He put a value-added tax on that?

RICK: Yeah.

PAT: I didn't know that.

GLENN: I had no idea.

RICK: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: Can you look that up, Stu? That's really bad.

PAT: At what percent? What percentage?

GLENN: Doesn't matter.

RICK: Fourteen and a half. That's how he's able to accomplish fourteen and a half because he does a value-added tax.

GLENN: He was doing 14 and a half and a 14 and a half VAT tax?

RICK: Yeah. Fourteen and a half income and fourteen and a half VAT.

PAT: That's like 29 percent.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. That is really bad -- that's dishonest. That's dishonest. The way he presented that, I think that's dishonest.

RICK: Well, I think -- if you look it up, that's exactly what his, quote, business tax is, is value-added tax.

GLENN: Okay. Wait. Wait. That's business or that's income?

RICK: He has an income tax. He has what he calls a business-something tax. But it's a value-added tax. That's what it is.

PAT: Jeez.

GLENN: Okay. All right. So we'll look that up. We'll look that up.

PAT: Okay.

RICK: That's why mine is better. It's a 20 percent income tax on all income. It's on individual income. 20 percent on corporate income. 20 percent, capital gains, dividends, and interest. Everything is taxed at the same level. There's no playing around from one to the other. It is a powerful, you know, corporate tax reduction from 35 percent now down to 20 percent, with full expensing, which is really important, if you're going to encourage manufacturing in this country. Which, as you know, Glenn, I mean, that's been my passion for a long time, is to make sure that America can be number one in manufacturing again. And we'll have a tax code that's going to be as strong on manufacturing -- has a repatriotism provision to get that $2 trillion sitting overseas to come back to America. Invest it in plant and equipment here. You know, there is a guy in this race who is famous for saying you're fired. I want to be famous for saying you're hired. And that's -- this thing will -- this tax plan will explode the code. It's a single rate plan. There's no deductions. No special tax provisions. The -- we eliminate everything on the individual side, except every person gets a 2,750-dollar tax credit. So depending on how large your family is, multiple that by $2,750 for every person in your house. Get a credit off your taxes for every person in your house. It's pro-family. It's pro-growth. And it keeps the rates low, and that means growth high.

PAT: So you're talking -- Rick, you're talking run rate for everybody, including --

RICK: One rate for everybody.

PAT: Wow.

RICK: All income. All income is set to 20 percent. So there's no gaming. Oh, I can move this money here. Move this money there. It's all passed at the same right. Provides generous -- for the corporate side, this being able to write off capital, equipment, and buildings. You can expense the year -- so it's a very powerful incentive.

GLENN: Tell me about capital gains. Is that income?

RICK: Just a flat -- everybody pays a 20 percent capital gains tax.

PAT: Okay. So the capital gains would be 20 percent as well?

RICK: And we get rid of the marriage -- we get rid of the death tax. So there's no estate tax.

PAT: That's good.

RICK: Get rid of all the Obamacare taxes. And under our plan, obviously you want to get rid of Obamacare. If you look at how it's scored by the tax foundation, if you get rid of all the Obamacare taxes, as well as the Obamacare subsidies, it comes out over a ten-year period of time at actually increasing revenues over ten years by $600 billion. It does that, and it's while still increasing growth by 1 percent a year for ten years. So it will go from 2.3 to 3.3. We add another 3.2 million new jobs, above what's projected. And wages go up almost 1 percent a year.

GLENN: What happens to the IRS?

RICK: We explode the code. It's gone. There's no IRS as we know it. It's simple. I mean, there's -- there's the tax credit that I talked to you about. There's the deduction for home mortgages and for charitable donations.

PAT: Oh.

RICK: The difference is, everybody can take that deduction, not just those who are high income. So everybody has this available to them. So it's really helpful for everybody to have this deduction. And that's it. No other exemptions. No other exclusions. Same thing with the corporate side. Nothing. No special energy provisions or any kind of things. All that -- all that stuff goes away. It's a very simple code. And it gets the IRS out of everybody's hair.

GLENN: Okay. So I love this. From what I know -- then, again, I loved Rand Paul's until you just told me some things.

RICK: Sorry to burst your bubble there, Glenn.

GLENN: So I loved this. With one thing you said. And it's a red flag to me. And if we can get really geeky to me. Most people won't even think this way. But I believe, Rick, you and I believe that what the fed has done is just absolutely disastrous. You said you wanted to repatriot $2 trillion into the United States. That money comes flooding back into this system, and we could have hyperinflation. Are you concerned about that at all?

RICK: Well, I mean, there will be a tax on it. It's a 10 percent tax when you bring it back. Am I concerned that it will have economic growth that will cause inflation? Yes. Any time you have -- you know, we look at going from around 2 percent growth, to under our plan, about 4 percent growth, that's a concern. In there, we talk about sound money policy and obviously auditing the fed and putting the fed back on the course of being a -- a sound money fed, not a, you know, growing the economy fed, not a lowering unemployment fed.

GLENN: And how do you do that?

RICK: Well, I think part of it is who you appoint to the fed and the messages you send out. You know, that's -- that's the -- that's the leverage you have. Look, there's no question this president hasn't had a huge impact over the fed and its policies. By his policies and what -- and the governors he's put on the fed. And that's what you have to do. You have to put sound money governors on the fed and as chairman of the fed.

GLENN: Yeah, but you don't as president get to pick that person. They give you a list to pick from.

RICK: Well, that's true. And as you all know, you have some influence on that process. The president is not -- if you look at the people that they put on the fed, they've been put on the fed who are very much in line with where the president wants to take the fed. And I think that's been the case really since the fed has been around. There's an accommodation made to where the president wants to take the fed.

GLENN: Okay. So, Rick, let's get down to brass tacks on you and your campaign. I was with a candidate on Friday, and I heard him -- actually it wasn't him. It was somebody in his campaign. Talking to a group of people. And they were saying, you know, they were just going through all the people. And they said, and Rick Santorum is going to be in this thing even if he has no money, he will go and he will go door to door on foot if he has to, he is never leaving this campaign because there's a chance of a lightning strike and he will take advantage of that. Is that -- is that where you're at -- that you're just -- I mean, because we're looking at a new debate two weeks away on CNBC. I don't know if you'll make it. I don't know if Rand will make it. I don't know who will make it to the big table. They're playing all these games. How long do you survive? And do you believe that it's the right thing to do, if you continue to poll the way you are?

RICK: Well, all I can tell you, Glenn, four years ago I was in the same situation. In fact, in national polls, I was at 2 percent the week before the Iowa caucuses and won the Iowa caucuses. And, you know, I don't know if you saw, Gallup is no longer polling national elections. Pew is saying that they may not do it because the polls are simply wrong.

I can tell you. I mean, I was talking to one of our folks. And she works with five people. And they're all for a particular candidate. I won't say who. And she asked the question, have any of you ever been to an Iowa caucus? And they all said no. And she said, well, do you know what a caucus is? And they all said no. And she said told them. And all of them said, oh, we're not going to do that. We're not going to show up at 7 o'clock at night and spend two hours at some place to vote.

There's a lot of polling that goes on that simply doesn't reflect who will actually vote. I saw it. I witnessed it in reality. And what I have to do is I have to trust what I see on the ground. I did that four years ago. I trusted what I saw on the ground. I trusted that, even though in the state of Iowa, four weeks out, I was at 3 percent in the polls. I knew what I was seeing from caucus goers in Iowa who actually make these decisions. And so had I gotten a good break, which is to win on caucus night, instead of getting an errant count that didn't declare me the winner, I think it would have been a very different situation.

But here's what I do know. The media focuses in on polls and how much money you've raised, both of which feed into each other. They don't focus on what's going on on the ground, which counts, which is, who will vote? And that's what I focus on, and that's what I'm going to trust.

GLENN: Well, I will tell you, you have the -- the image of the hardest working guy in politics. You have the image of a good who is just not going to let a single door go unknocked.

RICK: Well, here's the thing, Glenn. I mean, you can spend all your time raising money. A lot of guys do it. And you look at their campaign schedule. They don't have a lot of town hall meetings. They don't get out and talk to voters. And they're relying on people presenting their image to the voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. I do the opposite. I don't spend a lot of time raising money. I spend a lot of time out there, and I try to present that image directly and try to obviously build a very loyal cadre of folks who in a caucus state will make a difference.

GLENN: So tonight is the Democratic debate. If you had one question to ask all of the candidates, what would the question be?

RICK: You know, as you know,, I mean, my focus is on right now, the biggest problem -- this president is going to deal with, is a potential nuclear Iran. So my focus is, you know, will you stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? Because there's no question in my mind that under this deal, Iran is on a pathway to getting a nuclear weapon. And it's necessary to make sure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. And I suspect that the policy of containment, which is what the Obama administration has now put us toward, is the policy that every one of those candidates will follow along.

STU: Rick, I was wondering, maybe this will be a good question to answer, maybe you'll have a good answer to it. Can you identify anything that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, would identify as an actual violation to this agreement? It seems like they could do literally anything, and it still would fall within their framework.

RICK: Yeah, this is -- if you look at what's going on in Syria right now, in Syria, we have an agreement with Syria that supposedly is the model for verification and making sure that they're following along with it. And, of course, Syria has been using chemical weapons since this treaty was put in place. There's no question that chemical weapons have been used and that the Assad regime is the one that's been targeted. Yet, there's been no claim of violation of this treaty, even though they're using chemical weapons. And the reason is, they structure the treaty to where if they don't have weapons at this site and at this location or at that location, they're not in violation. So they can go ahead and use chemical weapons. Develop them somewhere else. Use them on their people. And still be in full compliance of a chemicals weapon treaty. This is the problem, is that we have a president who doesn't want to act. And he's trying to create a facade that he's actually doing something, when he's actually enabling people to move forward with their weapons of mass destruction.

GLENN: All right. Rick, just last night on TV and the rest of it is happening tonight. Last Friday, we spent an hour on radio with Bobby Jindal. And I'd like to offer this to you. I'm not offering this to everybody. I'm just offering this to about six of the people that I think America needs to see and meet. Would you come in and spend a couple of hours with us here in the next couple of weeks.

RICK: I'll spend a whole day with you, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay.

RICK: I'll take you out to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

GLENN: No, and you're not going to knock on my door and ask me for my vote either. I mean, no.

STU: Also, Rick, you don't know how much he eats. I don't think you have those kind of campaign funds.

GLENN: Yeah, you haven't seen me for a while, Rick. It's gone down quickly.

RICK: I know the rest of the family doesn't eat much. They're in great shape.

STU: That's true.

GLENN: Rick, God bless you. If you want more information, go to RickSantorum.com. It's RickSantorum.com. Rick, thanks a lot. We'll talk to you soon.

Let's get him scheduled to come in.

STU: Yeah, that would be great.

GLENN: Do the same thing we just did with Bobby Jindal. By the way, the rest of the Bobby Jindal interview is tonight at 5 o'clock on the Blaze TV. You don't want to miss it. Really, really a good candidate.

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.

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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.