What America Would Look Like if Hillary Had Won the Election

December 27, 2016

WRITER

With Glenn on vacation, entrepreneur and former police officer John Cardillo filled in on The Glenn Beck Program Tuesday. Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter joined him to discuss what America might look like if Hillary Clinton had won the election.

"Every day I wake up giggling and smiling at the utter rejection and humiliation of Hillary Clinton, and with a sense of exhilaration at the giant bullet America dodged," Schlichter said.

Listen to the segment or read the transcript below.

JOHN: Now, I don't know if you're like me, but one of the shows I really enjoy, one of the television shows I really enjoy -- it's actually on Amazon, I'll just call it Amazon on demand or Amazon digital streaming. Is The Man In the High Castle, which is a great show. Some people don't like it. I find it really interesting. I binge watch it. And if you don't know what it's about -- it's about -- if Germany and Japan had won World War II. Germany controls the eastern part of the United States. Their headquarters in New York City. The Nazis do. And the Japanese empire controls the west coast, with their headquarters in San Francisco. So I watched season two. And I think season two launched -- they released season two, December 16th. Well, three days after that, Kurt Schlichter, Townhall columnist, did a story that I call The Woman With the High Collar. And it was entitled The Terrifying Aftermath of Hillary's Election Victory. If Hillary Clinton -- what America would look like if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election. And Kurt Schlichter joins me now to discuss -- you know, Kurt, you scared me with this. You know, Man In the High Castle is a little bit depressing. You wonder what might have been. Then three days later you put this in my face.

KURT: Well, you know, I'm always there for you, John.

JOHN: You are. You are.

So tell us a little bit about what America would look like if we had Madam Clinton of being inaugurated in three weeks.

KURT: I don't even like you saying that. I have a terrible cold right now, and you've made me feel worse.

Look, every day I wake up giggling and smiling at the utter rejection and humiliation of Hillary Clinton. And with a sense of exhilaration at the giant bullet America dodged because that -- we -- we -- we told that daughter (phonetic) and corrupt monster, go back to Chappaqua. Just think about what would have happened if she had won. First of all, I think we'd all be choking on her smugness. The smugness in the media. The smugness issuing from her, of just the -- the utter -- utter hate and contempt they'd express for the rest of us. We'd be written out of the game.

JOHN: Let me ask you, Kurt, do you think they would be preaching unity and reaching across the aisle and concessions and -- and we need the White House to understand that there's another half of America, or would they be saying? Elections have consequences, again, deal with it.

KURT: Let me think about the track record of the last eight years. Yeah, I'll go with option two.

JOHN: Yeah.

KURT: Can you imagine the stream of leftist monsters she would be appointing?

JOHN: Well, that's the thing.

KURT: Oh, climate change weirdos. Anti-DOJ people. Forget every investigating any corruption anymore.

JOHN: But the Supreme Court -- you're an attorney -- yeah, you're a trial attorney and you're a legal scholar, the Supreme Court, I argue, the Supreme Court would have been tipped from 25 to 35 years, depending on the age of somebody she appointed.

Because, look, if Trump say nominates a Ted Cruz, right? What is Cruz? 45 years old. He's a healthy guy. Cruz could conceivably sit on the court for 35 years.

KURT: Oh, I would love that.

JOHN: How terrifying is that if Hillary appointed a 45-year-old far left radical?

KURT: Look. Just think of what we would have. You know, discovering a constitutional requirement that we all, you know, chip in to pay for long-term abortions.

JOHN: Yeah.

KURT: How about the Second Amendment. Nope. How about the First Amendment?

JOHN: That would be gone.

KURT: Oh, well, there are exceptions now. Stuff like that.

JOHN: As an attorney, what do you think -- and you've been a great satirist of the political process. I'm speaking with Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter, who is also a trial lawyer, and I should note, a retired colonel in the United States Army, served 27 years. You know, Kurt, what do you think that a left -- a Hillary Clinton-appointed Supreme Court, had she won, thank God she didn't -- what do you think the top three agenda items they would have gone after? Would have been. I think Second Amendment, First Amendment.

KURT: Yeah, Second Amendment definitely. First Amendment.

You have to understand, she keeps talking about Citizens United. Citizens United was a case brought to determine whether the government could criminally prosecute you for putting out a movie critical of -- wait for it -- Hillary Clinton.

Now, here's Hillary Clinton's argument. The government has the power, despite the First Amendment, to put you in jail if you put out a movie criticizing her. Let's roll that around in our heads for a minute.

JOHN: You know what's interesting, I never heard that on CNN.

KURT: No. You never heard that. I was on with some leftist on some show. And, you know, being a lawyer and having a legal background, I said, do you know what Citizens United was?

It's about money.

Well, let me ask you something: If Citizens United resolved in your favor, what do you think the appropriate jail sentence for someone putting a movie critical of Hillary Clinton, that Hillary Clinton like should be? And she gives me this blank stare. And I'm like, "You do know what Citizens United is about. You do know that the solicitor general of the United States went up and heard you before the United States Supreme Court that the government could ban a book."

JOHN: Right. But what people were told -- and you know this. You and I have discussed this on my show. People were told -- the American public was sold by the DNC's cohorts in the media, that Citizens United was all about big bad rich corporations run by Republican conservatives, being able to donate to political campaigns. That's what most Americans believe that citizens united is about. Prior to it, you could only make an individual contribution to a hard money campaign. Now corporations can do it.

They have no idea that it has anything to do with the First Amendment and production of media projects.

KURT: Well, you know, this is -- that they would allow the government to put people in jail for being critical of the government is not a flaw in the eyes of Hillary Clinton. That is a feature.

JOHN: Right.

KURT: Hillary Clinton is not a believer in freedom. She is not a believer in free expression. She is a leftist totalitarian who hates us.

JOHN: I'm concerned about one thing though. I think I lost some money here. I was going to surprise you here. It was a Christmas present. I bought you a plane ticket to New York with me, and we were going to walk through the woods, looking for Hillary together. I really thought you would enjoy that. But now I'm a little concerned that I might have missed the mark on that one.

(laughter)

KURT: Oh, I like how she's wandering through Whole Foods, taking selfies with random losers. People going, "I cried for so long, Hillary. Now I can't make love to my husband because Trump's won." And their husband is sitting there going, "Yes!"

JOHN: And she's walking through the woods like finding Bigfoot, that reality show. It's like people are out there with GPS and night vision, finding Hillary in the woods of Chappaqua. It is the most bizarre thing.

KURT: How about The Nightmare of Naked and Alone with Hillary. Ugh.

JOHN: Yes.

KURT: That's scarier than anything in Man In the High Castle.

JOHN: Yeah, survivor man, Chappaqua. You're out there with your little GoPro on your little tripod.

KURT: Can you imagine how horrifying it would be? Because this is a woman -- and, again, I have to say it, and I want to be very clear, she and her cohorts hate us. They don't dislike us. They don't find us opponents. They hate us and want to do things to harm us, simply because they can. There is no other reason -- for example, the giant cake baking thing has happened.

JOHN: Right. Right.

KURT: Other than just to rub our faces in their power. And what happens when you rub America's -- Americans' faces in something for long enough. You're a student of history. You're a New Yorker. You were a cop. How do Americans react when you push and push and push?

JOHN: Well, look, it's about power though. You nailed it, right?

Hillary Clinton has had power in some form for 40 years -- 30-some-odd years, right? She was the wife of the attorney general of Arkansas, in a state like Arkansas in the '80s. That's pretty powerful.

Then wife of the governor. That's really powerful. Then went to the White House, which is the ultimate power. I mean, remember that debacle back in the '90s when she mapped out that convoluted Rube Goldberg rendition of health care?

KURT: Oh, yeah.

JOHN: On that whiteboard. And the congressmen were all sitting there like dogs looking at a milk bone dog biscuit, like they were just utterly confused. What in the world is this woman talking about?

And then she kind of disappeared. And -- and -- but what's even worse is Hillary Clinton was Bill Clinton's liaison on the hill, who sold the most radical anti-gay agenda in history, right? Defense of Marriage Act. Freedom Restoration Act. Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And you didn't hear a word about that.

I mean, now, the reinvented Queen Hillary was the champion of gay rights. She sold Bill Clinton's crime bill on the hill. Look, I was a cop. I benefited. I got a new gun. We got new cars. But we also got these Draconian sentences. And we were locking guys up for dumb drug offenses. And our lieutenants were shaking their head, going, "This is the south Bronx, why are we doing this?" That was all Hillary Clinton. And it was always about power. The ability to impose the power of the Clinton regime.

KURT: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it frankly would have torn this country apart. Imagine -- I just came back from Texas. Spent a few days there over Christmas with my wife's family. Texas is vibrant. The economy is moving.

JOHN: It's doing great.

KURT: It's doing great. Now, can you imagine when Hillary's EPA says no more fracking. No more oil drilling. We're going to leave it in the ground because of this global warming pagan nonsense.

JOHN: It's so ridiculous. That's what they're afraid of, Kurt. That's what they're afraid of. They're afraid of energy exploration. Because look at North Dakota.

Energy exploration is the quickest path to prosperity and job creation. Really in terms of US industry, it's the quickest path. You pull oil and natural gas out of the ground, you need thousands of bodies to get it to market. Progressives are terrified of that.

KURT: Well, and they can't take any of that power. They don't get the money. They don't get the power.

With these green -- this green nonsense -- the Solyndras, they can reward their friends. They can choose winners and losers. It's more power and more money for them. That's the common -- this is the common key. Remember in the '70s when they were talking about the impending ice age.

JOHN: Yes, I do. I was in school. I was terrified. I went and bought -- I wanted new winter coats for Christmas every year. I didn't even want toys.

KURT: And, of course, their solution was more money and power for liberals.

JOHN: Of course. And, look, it's the same people --

KURT: Same with the ozone hole.

JOHN: Acid rain was the -- yeah, that was big in the late '80s. Early '90s.

You know, Kurt, it's always an absolute -- I feel so much after I talk to you. And after the show, I'm going to give you a call. I'm going to get you to Chappaqua with me. We're going to walk through the woods.

KURT: We should go. We need a camera crew.

JOHN: We got to go. Kurt Schlichter, everybody. Catch him on Townhall.com. The great Colonel Schlichter will be speaking soon my friend.

You've been with John Cardillo. Well, you're still with John Cardillo, sitting in for Glenn Beck. The Glenn Beck Program. We'll be right back.

Featured Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn's Show Prep

What America Would Look Like if Hillary Had Won the Election

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

Not-so-expert advice

A republic no more?

The path forward

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

Choosing death over care

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

The logical end of a broken system

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

How Sharia arrives

The warning from those who have lived under it

America is vulnerable

Wake up before it is too late

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

The crisis beneath the headlines

The quiet return of meaning

Where renewal begins