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Glenn's Show Prep

Michael Medved Part I: Divine Providence and the American Miracle

December 13, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Author and radio talk show host Michael Medved joined Glenn on radio Tuesday for a fascinating look at the role divine providence has played in the history of America. It's the subject of his latest book, The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic, available in bookstores everywhere.

"We live in a time where we keep having this argument whether we're a Christian nation or not. People are trying to denigrate the role of God in America. And here you are, writing The American Miracle, which is phenomenal and great proof of God's existence and his critical role in bringing about America," Glenn said.

Medved agreed that believing in divine providence has united great leaders across every partisan divide and America's entire history.

"As you very well know, people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were religiously unconventional. They weren't orthodox Christians. But they believed very firmly, as it says in the Declaration, and as you, Glenn, emphasized time and again, a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Even these people, some of whom didn't go to church, understood that there was a design in American history. It didn't just result from a series of random occurrences, from a pattern of happy accidents," Medved said.

In The American Miracle, Medved makes the case that even a pattern of happy accidents is still a pattern --- and gives evidence of design.

"A lot of people would say, Sure, well, that design was from these very smart Founders. The problem for that argument is that the Founders themselves insisted that they weren't the designers. They were the instruments of the designer," Medved said.

The American Miracle recounts how at moments of crisis, when the odds against success seemed overwhelming and disaster looked imminent, fate intervened to provide deliverance and success. Historians may categorize these incidents as happy accidents, but the most notable leaders of the past four hundred years have identified this good fortune as something else entirely --- a reflection of God's divine providence.

Listen to Part I of this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: Michael Medved joins us now. Hello, Michael, how are you?

MICHAEL: I'm very well indeed, Glenn. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you.

GLENN: Thank you very much. Happy Hanukkah.

Let me ask you, Michael, before we get into the book, a couple of questions.

You are a Yale-trained attorney. And then you went from there to being a very good and credible movie reviewer. And then you went to talk radio. I can't make your career work. How have you done this?

I mean, you -- how did that happen?

MICHAEL: I'm not sure I made it work either. But --

GLENN: Yes, you have.

MICHAEL: Basically, I -- first of all, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an attorney. I went to law school once upon a time.

GLENN: Okay.

MICHAEL: And it is true. I will plead guilty. I went to law school together with Bill and Hillary Clinton. And you can ask me later whether they inhaled.

GLENN: Right. I think I know the answer.

MICHAEL: I think you probably do too, Glenn.

GLENN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: But the truth of the matter is, I've always been consumingly interested in history and politics, since my dad who was the son of immigrants under miraculous circumstances that allowed them to come to America.

We grew up in Philadelphia. And my dad used to take me around to historical sights. Independence Hall. Valley Forge.

And even though my dad was not at that stage in his life, until later in life when he moved to Israel, at that stage of his life, my dad was not a deeply religious guy, but he understood that God had a role in this miracle known as America. And I majored in American history at Yale. It's what I studied. What I always cared about. And then I started writing about it.

And then because of some of the books that I had written were about movies. I sort of drifted into commenting about movies, during the time I was writing about history. So -- and all of it, as you know, comes together in talk radio.

GLENN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Because we have this great gift, from God, I believe of being able to talk about whatever is on our heart or in our mind.

GLENN: Yeah.

Michael, you are an Orthodox Jew. And a lover of America and American history.

We live in a time where we keep having this argument whether we're a Christian nation or not. People trying to denigrate the role of God in -- in America. And here you are, writing the American miracle, which is phenomenal and -- and a great proof of God's existence and his critical role in being -- in bringing about America.

MICHAEL: Well, that's exactly right.

And it is the one thing that has been able to unite great leaders across every partisan divide. Across our entire history.

I mean, it's true. As you very well know that people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were religiously unconventional. They weren't orthodox Christians. But they believed very firmly, as it says in the Declaration, and as you, Glenn, emphasized time and again, a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Even these people some of whom didn't go to church, understood that there was a design in American history. It didn't just result from a series of random occurrences, from a pattern of happy accidents.

In the book, I make the case that a pattern of happy accidents is still a pattern. And it gives evidence of design.

A lot of people would say, "Sure, well, that design was from these very smart Founders." The problem for that argument is that the Founders themselves insisted that they weren't the designers. They were the instruments of the designer.

GLENN: Right. How much of that, Michael -- this is the case that would be made, is that they were just using the language of the time. That that's the way people spoke. Even you just said, you know, Thomas Jefferson wasn't conventional. I believe he was. I mean, in his own writings, he talks about Jesus. And he is -- he's very Christian, if you looked at him as a man today. But very not Christian -- because I think he had a problem with the churches in some ways.

MICHAEL: Exactly right. Exactly right.

GLENN: The dogma was the problem.

MICHAEL: Right. The dogma and the organizations and the corruption of some of the organizations.

GLENN: Yes. Correct.

MICHAEL: But today, all of these people would be viewed as Christian fanatics.

GLENN: Yes.

MICHAEL: Because they had -- including, by the way, Franklin Roosevelt, for goodness' sake.

GLENN: Yes.

MICHAEL: Including Theodore Roosevelt, certainly. I mean, the people that -- that were way over on the left.

If you listen to Roosevelt's D-Day's prayer, Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, he says that America is fighting for Christianity. Right?

Can you imagine if someone said that today?

I mean, the -- the ACLU would be calling for impeachment.

GLENN: So, Michael, so go back to my question. In doing your research for this book, The American Miracle, tell me how you separate and convince people today that are being taught that this is all nonsense, that they weren't just using the language of the day, that they actually believed these things.

PAT: It's very simple. They stake their lives on it. They stake their lives on the belief.

And the truth of the matter is -- and this is the core argument of the book. And it's become the core argument of my life. You have to do something to explain the extraordinary nature of the emergence of the United States. No one who was alive in the year 1600 would ever have predicted that the dominant civilization in the world would emerge in North America. But it did. Against all odds.

And okay. You can say it emerged because America was this brutal, horrible, exploitative, rapacious place. The problem is other powers, Spain, Portugal, France, were more brutal. If brutality and exploitation and slavery and genocide against the natives -- if that was the secret of America's strength, then there are these other powers that would have been much stronger because they were much more cruel. So that's out.

Then you come to this question about a pattern of happy accidents. But a pattern of happy accidents, still a pattern. And then the question is, "What does that pattern mean?" And the founders were smart people. And they all believed that it meant not special privileges for this country, but special responsibilities.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

MICHAEL: And that's precisely why people on the left and people in the secular side are very reluctant to endorse the idea of providential protection.

GLENN: Well, isn't it -- I mean, this is -- I think, Michael, that we -- the Founders, if they would have lived to 1850, I don't think they would have recognized us really as America, for this one reason: By 1830, we changed Divine Providence to man if he is destiny. And there is a huge difference.

And I really believe that the -- the problem is, there are a lot of people on the religious right that don't know the difference between the two, and that's what is scaring people on the left. This idea that once I get power, I'm on a mission from God, and I'll tell you exactly what to do. That's not who our Founders were.

MICHAEL: No. Not at all. Because one of the stories that I tell in the book has to do with believing that God is entangled with your affairs, doesn't mean that you can do anything you want. It means that you have a special obligation to try to discern the divine will.

I actually quote the German chancellor, who created modern Germany, Otto von Bismarck, two amazing quotes that you will love, Glenn.

He says that on the one hand that it is the job of the statesman to simply try to hear God's footsteps in history and then grab hold of his coattails and follow.

And then on another occasion, Bismarck said that the God Almighty has special protection for imbeciles, drunkards, lost dogs, and the United States of America.

(chuckling)

GLENN: Back with Michael Medved here in just a second. The new book that he has just put out is The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic. This is one of those books that I think everyone -- everyone should have because there is a real problem in this country being taught that God had anything to do, especially with the founding of our nation. And I believe God is not a watchmaker. He does live. And he was instrumental in our founding.

And so Michael is making this case. The American Miracle.

[break]

GLENN: We're back with Michael Medved. The American Miracle: The Divine Providence and the Rise of the Republic.

In this, you make the case, Michael, about the California gold -- I have never heard this tied to Divine Providence. Do you want to -- do you want to talk about that a bit?

MICHAEL: Sure. It's one of those things, if you simply look at a calendar, it sort of jumps out at you as it did to people at the time.

The -- the California gold rush began when gold was discovered at the end of January in 1848.

And originally it was kept a secret. Then it became known. And it produced a huge impact on the American economy because we all of a sudden had the leading gold reserves of any country in the world. Because they had discovered gold in the hills of California.

Here's what leaps out to you in the contract: The very moment that James Marshall, who was an itinerate carpenter from New Jersey all of a sudden notices these flecks in a millrace near Sacramento in the middle of nowhere, that same day, 1600 miles away, in Mexico City, a rebellious clerk defies the president of the United States and risks arrest to sign America onto a probably illegal paper that deeds California and this real estate with all the gold in it to the United States of America.

In other words, people at the time asked, "How is it that God hid the existence of this huge load of gold from all of humanity until that precise moment that America was having California handed directly to us?"

GLENN: Signed on the same day?

MICHAEL: It could be the same day. We don't know the exact day --

JEFFY: That's amazing.

MICHAEL: -- that gold was discovered. We know within a week. It was 100 percent the same week.

GLENN: That's unbelievable.

MICHAEL: It is. And people at the time said so. See, what's so amazing to me, Glenn, is that people living through this history said, "Wait a minute. This is not us. This is some bigger power."

George Washington, who you write about so beautifully, I mean, George Washington understood that he is one of 70 British officers at the Battle of Monongahela, in the French and Indian war.

Seventy British officers ride out into battle on horseback. Sixty-nine of the 70 are either wounded or killed. George Washington has the hat out shot out from over his head. He has two different mounts shot out from under him. He has bullet holes in his cloak. Nothing touches him.

It was so striking that he's a 23-year-old officer at the time in the British Army, in the actually Virginia Militia. And Samuel Davies, who later became president of Princeton University, delivers a sermon about this 23-year-old guy and says, "No doubt, God has raised up this magnificent youth to help to save and perform a signal purpose for his people."

GLENN: God still doing this with America, Michael?

MICHAEL: I hope so. I hope so. But this is another aspect to this, Glenn, is that American patriots have always feared that we were breaking the bargain.

And the bargain again is not that we have special privileges. It's that we have special burdens. That because all of our forefathers -- all of our ancestors and foremothers, to be politically correct, they all recognized that America was no accident. That was actually one of the titles I was playing with for this book: America's No Accident. It didn't just happen. It happened for a purpose. If we lose sight of that purpose, our leaders have always believed that we will -- we will lose the special protection.

GLENN: I believe that 100 percent. Have we lost that? And what evidence do you have that we haven't lost that?

MICHAEL: Well, I know that there are some people -- you and I share something else, which is great skepticism about the president-elect. But the fact that he is president-elect seems so unexpected --

GLENN: Unlikely.

MICHAEL: -- and so bizarre in so many ways --

GLENN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And the appointment of this new Secretary of State candidate, all of it is so astonishing and unusual, that you have to think that there must be some message here, that there must be some challenge here. There must be. Or maybe some of our colleagues and friends are correct, that this is actually redemptive. It actually may be taking unusual instruments and using it for God's purpose.

I tell the story of Lincoln in that regard. And this is not -- let me make clear to compare Trump to Lincoln.

GLENN: Hang on. I want you to make this. I don't want you to be interrupted. So hang on just a second. And then I want to come back and talk to you about Sam Houston in your book. The American Miracle: The Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic by Michael Medved. Grab this book. It makes a great Christmas gift for somebody. Back with Michael Medved.

Featured Image: John Trumbull’s painting, Declaration of Independence, depicting the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress. The painting can be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill. The original hangs in the US Capitol rotunda.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

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: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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.