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Beck and O'Reilly Are Skeptical of This University That Wants a ‘Free Speech Year’

August 17, 2017
Staff

WRITER

University of California – Berkeley will commemorate a “Free Speech Year” under new chancellor Carol T. Christ, who is planning to use “point-counterpoint” panels to promote open-minded discussions.

Asserting that “more speech” is the right response to hate speech, Christ has said that she aims to keep students “physically safe” while not shielding them “from ideas that you may find wrong, even noxious.”

In February, UC Berkeley students wreaked havoc on campus and caused $100,000 worth of damage in order to stop an appearance from Milo Yiannopoulos, a Trump supporter and former Breitbart editor who is known for his outrageous and often offensive remarks.

“Now what public speech is about is shouting, screaming your point of view in a public space rather than really thoughtfully engaging someone with a different point of view,” Christ told the Los Angeles Times. “We have to build a deeper and richer shared public understanding.

On radio Thursday, Glenn and Bill O’Reilly were a bit skeptical of UC Berkeley’s ability to promote open discussion.

“I’m sure they’ll respect what I’ll say, and we can have a very, very intelligent, calm dialogue,” O’Reilly said sarcastically.

“And that is the problem with America: we can’t,” Glenn added.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Here's what's really exciting is we have BillO'Reilly.com and Bill O'Reilly on with us right now. I don't think he's going to have much to say when I ask him about Berkeley announcing the free speech year, where Berkeley is going to teach everybody how to all come together and be tolerant and really celebrate diversity and free speech.

Bill, that's exciting news, isn't it?

BILL: Very exciting.

(laughter)

GLENN: You sound almost like you don't believe that might happen.

BILL: No, it's so exciting, Beck, I'm going to buy a condo in Berkeley. I'm moving there, so I can have free speech rights because I'm sure they'll respect what I say, and we can have a very, very intelligent calm dialogue with those people out there.

GLENN: Yeah. And that is the problem with America is we can't.

Now, let me change to the media.

Bill, I think you would agree with me that, you know, the -- the media and tolerance and actual fair and balance has changed on multiple fronts.

BILL: It's done. Absolutely done.

GLENN: Done.

BILL: What you're seeing -- you know, talk radio is the last holdout because basically you guys can run the show the way you want. Your syndicators and your corporations understand who you are. That's why they hired you. You're going to take some hits on sponsors from time to time, but you basically do and say what you want.

But on television, it's totally different because there's so many things involved. You've got, in cable, you've got all the different systems that have to buy the program. You've got the corporations that run the actual presentations. And all of these people are very susceptible to being attacked, as we talked about in the prior segment.

And the far left knows this. They know they can hire people like Color of Change. I want everybody to Google "Color of Change." This is an organization that was formed solely to get paid to go out and attack people with whom they disagree publicly. Right?

GLENN: No.

BILL: And so they're for hire. You can hire them to go stand in front of a building or to go stand in front of a house and scream and yell and accuse and smear and hold signs and do whatever they want.

Well, instead of marginalizing that group as anti-democracy, the corporations fear them. And Color of Change, Media Matters, all of these people, they know that.

GLENN: Well, besides -- hang on. Hang on. That's quite a statement here, Bill. Besides the actual evidence of one of the guys who started Color for Change, Van Jones, working for CNN, what evidence do you have that they embrace and bring Color of Change into the news media?

(laughter)

BILL: Beck, first of all, Van Jones is a self-avowed communist. We all know that, right?

GLENN: No!

BILL: All right. So he even says he is. I don't have anything against Van Jones, by the way.

But the organization -- all right? And many others like it, they're not the only ones. All right?

They are basically being paid good money to do destructive things. And corporations know it, but look the other way and tremble when they get the call from Color of Change.

GLENN: Do you think --

BILL: So this is what -- you want Nazis again? Let's get Nazis here again. You want Nazis? I'll give you Nazis. Okay? This is exactly what happened in Germany in the early '30s, when the Third Reich people would show up and basically tell the newspapers, "Hey, if you say one bad word against us, we're going to burn your place down. Okay? So you better not." Now, the Color of Change people, they're burning the place down through sponsors, not through torches. But it's the same thing. And Stalin did it. And Castro did.

GLENN: Mussolini. Yep.

BILL: They all do it. And people don't know about it.

GLENN: So, Bill --

BILL: No, I'll ask your next question and answer it, Beck.

so how does that affect on television that you see every night? They're scared as well. They're frightened. One of the few that isn't is Hannity.

You know, I've had my issues with Hannity in the past. But I admire Hannity for going out and basically being in your face, telling folks what's going on. You may not agree with Hannity's take, but he's honest about it. And he loves Trump. He thinks Trump is the savior to the country, but he'll tell you that he's under siege 24/7. So -- but that's a very rare exception.

The others are -- I better not say this. Everybody -- oh, that's right. We have to condemn Trump. You know, Trump made a mistake, a tactical error. All right?

He's not an idealistic Nazi, but that's what you're hearing in the media constantly over and over. And who's saying that's not true? They're afraid to say it, Beck. Because then they'll be lumped in with Trump.

GLENN: Well, hang on -- let me give you -- and I agree with you, Bill. You know that I agree with you. I mean, when you're treading the Van Jones, Color of Change, Media Matters thing, I got that one down in spades. I'll show you all the chalkboards on that. So I agree with you.

However, there is one name that people don't pay attention to, and they should. Because I believe -- this guy is one of my heroes: Michael Medved.

BILL: Oh, he's great! He's great.

GLENN: Okay. So do you know what happened to Michael?

BILL: Tell me.

GLENN: So his corporation -- his radio corporation put down an edict that you are not allowed to have anybody on -- on-air that is anti-Trump. And everybody is falling in line. Michael was the only one that pushed back and was fired.

Michael doesn't have his radio gig now because he stood against the same kind of fascism, just on the other side. There is the fascists on both sides.

BILL: Yes. But it's nearly as organized.

GLENN: Oh, I agree with you on that. I agree with you on that.

BILL: I experienced it when I did The Radio Factor. I did The Radio Factor for seven years, and I was not a conservative ideologue by any means. And I got attacked by the right, as you know.

GLENN: Yeah. Yes.

BILL: And I remember one station in Houston basically called us and said, "Well, we don't like O'Reilly. We're going to drop him." Good. You know, I mean, because it was -- but it was just one station out of 280.

GLENN: Yeah. I --

BILL: That we had. Or something like that.

GLENN: I agree with you. And the -- the blessing on the right is, you know, herding a bunch of Libertarians and free market people is like herding cats. It's almost impossible. So we can't get our act together well enough to boycott the free speech that we shouldn't -- so that's a good thing, they're so disorganized, they're way behind the left.

BILL: Way behind.

GLENN: It does exist, but it is way behind.

So let me ask you this, Bill: Play out the media. Because people may not know the names. They may not know the connections like you do, like we've tried to lay out for a long time.

But they -- they know they're not getting the truth. And on top of it, all they're getting is yelling back and forth. You're a Nazi, or you're a communist.

BILL: But there's not even much yelling anymore. Because all of the -- not all -- but most of the commentators, at least on cable news, are cowed. They know now that their whole livelihood is in jeopardy.

Look, on Wednesday night -- no, sorry. Tuesday night. Tuesday night. The -- the biggest news night of the year, with Trump in Charlottesville, right? The press conference.

GLENN: Yep.

BILL: Guess who came in third in cable news? Guess who came in third.

GLENN: Fox? Fox?

BILL: Yes. Fox News came in third. CNN and MSNBC -- CNN beat them in the demo. MSNBC beat them outright. And it wasn't even close.

Fox -- it was stunning to watch the television ratings come in. Why? Because on Fox, which would be naturally inclined to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt. All right? The benefit of the doubt.

GLENN: Yep.

BILL: They no longer do that, en masse. Because they're afraid. And so the audience of Fox knows, outside of Hannity and maybe Carlson a little bit, they're not going to get a robust defense of the right, of the conservative position. And so they don't watch.

Yet, the left hate Trumpers. Flock in to watch CNN and MSNBC work Donald Trump over.

GLENN: Okay.

BILL: So, therefore, the whole thing is changing and collapsing.

GLENN: Okay. So may I propose one change to this theory and see what you think.

I agree with that theory, generally. Generally. Except this time.

Because of the injection of the actual torch-carrying Nazi banner-wearing Jew -- you know, anti-Jew chanting Nazis, now people don't want to -- they don't feel comfortable with a full-throated -- and I'm talked about the audience. A full-throated defense. Because they -- it worked to Trump's -- to his advantage.

BILL: That's absolutely right, Beck. But you don't have to do that. You do what I did in my two columns on this: You explain the mistakes Trump is making.

GLENN: Correct.

BILL: Which I did. All right? And then you say, "Here's what should take place."

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

BILL: Here's the truth. Okay? That's all the audience wants.

The audience isn't mad at me. My audience on BillO'Reilly.com and on The Hill and every place else I go isn't mad at me because I point out Trump's mistakes -- they aren't. They're happy that I'm trying to apply some perspective to it. That's what's missing.

And so that you have a media now that is -- it's flocking -- it's unbelievable. Let's get Trump out of office. That's the goal of the media.

GLENN: Yes.

BILL: So where is the counter to that? It's evaporating, which is why Fox News came in third place on Tuesday.

GLENN: Because I don't think, honestly -- I mean, I have a very low opinion of people in the news. I don't think they're generally curious. I think they're intellectually dishonest. I mean, I think they've gone a little dead inside, quite honestly. And so I don't know a lot of people that can make that intelligent case and draw that line and -- and be able to say, "No. He's wrong here. He's right there."

Most of them are too afraid by the numbers, by, you know, whatever.

And so --

BILL: They're intimidated. They don't really have the intellectual heft to do it anyway. All right?

GLENN: Exactly right. And you have the intellectual heft to do that. And that's why you're being successful right now. Our ratings are going up. While everybody else is going down, our ratings are up 11 percent. Why? Because we will tell you when Donald Trump has done well. And we will tell you when he's really screwing it up. We will try to give you perspective as well.

But we don't -- I don't believe that people are comfortable right now. And this is what the media thinks they have to do on the right. And that is just, you back him. Back him. Back him. No matter what.

That's not the right course.

BILL: You can't do that. But you can't buy into a dishonest analysis. But you're wrong about why your ratings are going up, Beck.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

BILL: It's your goatee. It's the goatee. Ever since --

STU: Oh.

GLENN: Wait a minute. Did Bill O'Reilly just make something not about him?

STU: I thought for sure --

GLENN: That is not possible.

BILL: Personal attack. Personal attack.

JEFFY: Wow.

GLENN: Bill, good to talk to you. BillO'Reilly.com. Check out his new webcast. Once in a while he has a good guest like Colonel Sanders.

BILL: Oh, yeah, is it all about you, Beck?

GLENN: But BillO'Reilly.com. Check him out every day. The No Spin News. Thank you very much, Bill. I appreciate it.

BILL: All right. Thanks for having me in.

GLENN: You bet.

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.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

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.