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Former Police Officer and Afghan Vet Shares the Testimony That Saved His Marriage and Life

February 16, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Chad Robichaux knows adversity --- and how to overcome it. In a powerful testimony, Robichaux shared his story in studio with Glenn on Thursday, recounting how he shot and killed a man as a police officer, returned from the War on Terror in Afghanistan with PTSD, but most importantly, brought his marriage and life back from the brink. As a way to help other vets, Robichaux and his wife began Mighty Oaks Warrior Programs to help other vets and families suffering from PTSD.

"Mercury One just gave a $25,000 donation yesterday to Mighty Oaks Foundation, and I want you to be involved. If you care about our servicemen and this issue, this is a great way to get involved," Glenn said.

Mighty Oaks Warrior Programs serves the brokenhearted by providing intensive peer-based discipleship through a series of programs, outpost meetings and speaking events.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: I want to introduce you to a new friend of the program. Met yesterday. And I've heard your story before. And I was so excited that you would come in today and talk to -- we -- we spoke yesterday about the Mighty Oaks Program, which is we have got to work together to find a way to save our servicemen because the rate of suicide is just off the charts. And the government is not doing much.

PAT: There's a 22 a day. Isn't that the statistic we hear?

GLENN: Twenty-two a day.

CHAD: That's the statistic right now. Kind of varying reports. But that's the kind of industry -- if it was an industry, the industry word is 22 a day.

PAT: Man.

GLENN: It's probably more than that.

CHAD: Yes. Yes.

GLENN: But it's really bad. And you were there.

CHAD: Yes.

GLENN: And can we start with you being a policeman and the day you shot a man?

CHAD: Yeah, yeah. I had already did four years in the Marine Corps. And I shifted from active duty to reserves. I was going to go back in as an officer. And so my college job was a police officer in New Orleans, and I had a wife and kid. And I was only a police officer for a short period of time, and I was involved in a shooting. I was a -- I'm not sure how you want to go into the story.

GLENN: Domestic abuse.

CHAD: But, yeah, it was a domestic violence call. And I got to the house. It was kind of the typical scenario where husband and wife were fighting. There was a large crowd of people, about 30 people outside of the house. And we had separated the wife. Got her into this crowd. People were holding her back.

And the man had barricaded himself into the house with a gun. My partner went to the window of the room that he was in, to make sure he didn't shoot out the window. And I stood in the main doorway.

And I could see catercorner across the room. There was a mirror. And so I could see him barricaded against the wall. And he had the chamber -- he was messing with the chamber of the gun. So I knew he was trying to load it or checking it to make sure it was loaded. So I was yelling at him, you know, not to come out. To put down his gun. First to talk.

And he said he was coming out, telling us to leave.

And when he came around the corner, he actually had a gun in a very weird way. He didn't have it like this. He had it over his shoulder. And I think he was maybe taunting me or seeing how far he could push it.

And I always say, if I was asked that morning, what I would have done in that scenario, I would have made a decision, clearly shoot the guy.

But I'm in this guy's house. His kids are outside. His wife is screaming. His toys are on the floor for his children. And family pictures.

I just felt like I could still control the situation. So, you know, I was yelling at him, you know, put down the gun, I'm going to kill you. Like, I wasn't talking to him like a policeman. I'm like, I'm going to kill you. And he's telling me to put down my gun. And I'm a little small guy. He was 6-3, 260 pounds. And I felt like I could disarm him. So I -- as I walked towards him, I grabbed the barrel of the gun and pushed it away from him. And I kicked him -- I kicked him right in the nuts.

(laughter)

STU: That's probably the right way.

CHAD: I thought I could pull the gun out of his hand. And the first time I kicked him, he just held the gun so tight. And the second time I kicked him, my gun came away, and he grabbed my hand.

So we're fighting for two guns now. And I realize that it really had escalated and I was going to have kill him and -- or shoot him. So I just broke, like his grip and came over and shot. Pow! And then I shot five more times. I shot six times total. Pow, pow, pow. My partner was -- my parter was -- he had shot -- I didn't even realize my partner came behind me, but he shot six times as well right over my shoulder.

PAT: Hmm.

CHAD: We hit him 11 out of 12 times. And as we hit him, he turned around, and he fell on his knees and he just -- he looked back, and he said, "You killed me."

And I just tackled him and pulled the gun out from under him and handcuffed him. And I think his wrist must have been in front of him because all of the shots hit center mass, but his wrist was blown out. So I got like blood like -- I was covered in blood. His wife was screaming. And --

PAT: Jeez.

GLENN: So you were cleared of any wrongdoing in that.

CHAD: Yeah.

GLENN: But you went home that night. And the amazing part of this story -- and I got to try to condense this as much as I can. But you said your wife said to you -- just, you told her, I killed somebody. You were a wreck.

CHAD: Yeah.

GLENN: And she just rolled over in bed and went back to sleep.

CHAD: At the time, I was just really angry about that. I mean, my wife very naive to that kind of world. And so I think that's what equipped her to -- my eight deployments to Afghanistan. And being a police officer because she just thought that's what policemen did every night, just went to work and got in gunfights. And so she went back to sleep. And I was very angry at her for many years. I felt like very -- I couldn't talk to her about those types of things. And eventually in Afghanistan, I just really didn't talk much about --

GLENN: You left the police force. You went back. You became Special Forces.

CHAD: Yeah.

GLENN: And one thing that I've heard you say is that there's real darkness over there and real bad guys over there. And you felt yourself becoming one of the bad guys.

CHAD: Yeah, yeah. You know, when you go to a place like Afghanistan, you think you go with some patriotic sense of duty. I wanted to go after 9/11. But then you realize beyond America what the Afghan people endured from the Taliban people. The things that happened to these children. You start to learn about the culture and what had happened there. I lived in the community. And so it really just grabbed a hold of my heart in a bad way, where I just filled myself with anger and rage towards these people. And so really, it kind of -- you feel like you're going there to fight these evil people, and you kind of become that as well.

GLENN: You come home, you have all kinds of PTSD.

CHAD: Yeah.

GLENN: You don't deal with it. You start to in a way protect your family by being a beast and pushing them away.

CHAD: Yeah.

GLENN: At one point it's your daughter's birthday.

CHAD: Yeah. My -- I was just -- my home became a very like unhappy place or unsafe place for my children. I was like time bomb, angry, at the drop of a hat. One time I came home from Afghanistan, my daughter was just so excited I was going to be there for her birthday. But she's very opinionated and had a cake. And the icing was not the icing she wanted, and she said -- you know, she voiced that out. And I just got so enraged. I would lose control. And I grabbed her cake in front of all of her little friends and threw it against the wall and just destroyed my little girl's birthday. And that behavior was like very common. And I knew it was wrong, but I just felt like I had no control over it at that time.

GLENN: So I can imagine how this dog piles on you. And, you know, men know when they're -- everybody knows -- you know when you're wrong and out of control. And then it just starts to, "I'm a bad person." And you just spiraled out of control.

CHAD: Yeah.

GLENN: How did you get out of the nose dive?

CHAD: Well, it was -- it wasn't until, unfortunately for me, rock bottom. I walked out of my marriage. We sold our home. We lived in two separate apartments, and I became one of those statistics that we talked about, the 22 a day. I decided I was going to take my life. And not because I wanted to escape my pain. Because I recognized I was the problem.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

CHAD: And so I thought my family would be better off -- maybe they'll be sad, but they'll be better off.

And I had decided I was going to take my life. And during this time of contemplating how I was going to do it -- I wanted to make it look like an accident -- my wife came to me --

GLENN: You sat in the closet for every day, trying to convince yourself.

CHAD: Yeah, for about two weeks. About two weeks.

I had heard a statistic that one in three children from a parent that commits suicide will as well. I didn't know where I heard that from. But I kept thinking of that.

My boys, you know, I've wrestled and did martial arts my whole life. My boys really followed me in that. So I knew they looked up to me, and I didn't want to leave that pattern in my family. So I was contemplating how I could make it look like an accident.

GLENN: An accident.

CHAD: And that's when my wife came to my apartment, and she asked me that question, the reason I'm sitting here in this chair. She asked me how I could be as successful as I was, as an athlete, as a (inaudible) marine. And she had seen the training I had done. We had been married for a long time. Seen all the workups to go to overseas and knowing the job I did.

She's like, "How could you do all of that, and when it comes to your family, you'll quit?" And that question for me, just -- it was like that time in my life just radically impacted me and challenged me. And, you know, she was right.

I quit on the most important things in my life. My role as a husband, my role as a father. That 17-year-old kid that raised his hand and said he wanted to do something important with his life, I quit on all the things that are the most important, including my health. And I made a decision that day that I was going to turn around and fight with the same work ethic and tenacity for the most important things in my life.

GLENN: Because you were not only a police officer, Special Forces, you were an MMA fighter. I mean, you have been at the top of the game on everything you do.

CHAD: I had 18 and 2 professional record. So I did really well. And so the whole time you imagine my wife is and my family is observing me being successful in the professional things, which I think many men are. And when it comes to the most important things, we don't put in the same effort.

GLENN: I know I've blown it for most of my life until really the last 15 years.

CHAD: Yeah.

GLENN: You know, we just don't see it until sometimes it's too late.

PAT: So did you save your family? You got it back together?

CHAD: Yes. We -- really -- I didn't know how to do it. I just knew I was going to. And so I was able to -- I had a lot of people following me because I was in MMA at the time. So I had 1,000 students. But I didn't have people that were holding me accountable to things. I had a lot of people enabling me. So I was able to align with this guy named Steve Tothe (phonetic), who became a mentor to me. And he really mentored me in a Biblical model of living. Manhood.

And at the end of that, I really -- like, I felt like I found -- like I was dying of Stage 4 terminal cancer and found the cure. Like I had to share it. And that's why I do it. I do it today.

I mean, I had went from having panic attacks still at night. Anger, anxiety, things that I felt were uncontrollable, to becoming back in control of my life by the choices I made every day.

It was really a realization of that, that regardless of what happened to me, whether it was heroic or destructive or a sad story, those things didn't put me in a situation I was in. The choices I was making was. And so when I realized that and realized I had control of my life, still, I was able to make different choices moving forward.

GLENN: Mercury One just gave a $25,000 donation yesterday to Mighty Oaks Foundation. And I want you to be involved. If you care about our servicemen and this issue, this is a great way to get involved.

CHAD: Yeah, Mighty Oaks wasn't an idea that started as a non-profit. It was me wanting to pay for it with the challenge my wife gave me, the second chance God gave me, and the mentorship Steve gave me. I felt like I had found the solution and I had an obligation to share it.

And so today, it's grown into this very large organization that runs -- we're running 30 programs a year. And those programs are -- is a week-long intensive to take guys through the same transitional process I went through and then equip them to pass it on to someone else. So it's taking a leader who fell on his face and raising him back town a leader again and a warrior again.

GLENN: How much of the 12-step program have you used? Or have you looked at any of the 12-step program?

CHAD: Yeah, we have. I would say some components of it are put into our methodology. But our methodology is simply contrast your life to the life you were created to live. Coming to the point to where you accept responsibility, that regardless of what happened to you, you're responsible for moving forward, the choices you make. And then coming alongside guys that could hold you accountable to that. All of our instructors are combat vets. So it's non-clinical. So they're able to share their story of what worked for them. And whether a psychologist is more qualified than one of our instructors is irrelevant because the combat veteran typically will only listen to someone that's been there before them. So the power of testimony.

GLENN: What's the website? Mighty --

CHAD: The website is MightyOaksPrograms.org.

GLENN: MightyOaksPrograms.org. Can't recommend it highly enough. If you care about making a difference and helping these guys who so desperately need our help, this is the way for you to get involved.

CHAD: And the US military sends guys to us on active duty orders, which we fund. So no veteran, no active duty military pays to come.

GLENN: And what is it? Like $2500 a person.

CHAD: So it's underwritten because we have so much great support. So $1,000 in scholarship, one guy into the program.

GLENN: That's amazing. So you want to change one guy's life, it's $1,000.

CHAD: Yes.

GLENN: And it really does change lives.

CHAD: I try.

GLENN: Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it.

CHAD: Thank you so much, Glenn. Thank you guys. God bless you guys.

STU: Thank you.

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.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.