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Bitcoin Entrepreneur: 'Something Happens to the Social Fabric When People Cannot Trust Something As Basic As Money'

August 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

The CEO of a Bitcoin wallet startup explained the social importance of a digital currency that isn’t controlled by the government on radio Tuesday.

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been rising in value but is still mysterious to most people. One of its distinguishing characteristics is that bitcoin is a currency that operates outside any government, country or other entity that could manipulate it.

Wences Casares, founder of Bitcoin wallet startup Xapo, shared a moving story from his childhood to illustrate why an independent currency could be the future.

Glenn Beck asked about Casares’ experience growing up in Argentina at the time when their currency collapsed.

“I’m imagining that that drives you quite a bit when it comes to Bitcoin,” Glenn noted.

Casares recalled the day that his mom interrupted the school day to pick up him and his two sisters for a trip to get groceries, something that was highly unusual. His mom carried two plastic bags of cash because she had been paid that day, and she gave each child a list of groceries to get. When they had gotten everything on the list and had money left, she told them to get more food, saying, “Tomorrow, [the money is] going to be worth less. We have to spend it all today.”

A currency that can’t be devalued overnight could not only help people to eat that day, but also hold society together. “Something happens to the social fabric when people cannot trust something as basic as money,” Casares said.

GLENN: Wences Casares, he is the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. He's a technology entrepreneur, founder and CEO of this bitcoin wallet start-up. He says that bitcoin will end up being bigger that night internet itself and changing our lives more than the internet.

That is quite a claim, Wences.

WENCES: Yes. I also think that bitcoin is an experiment still. And as such, it has chances of failing and chances of failing that are nontrivial. So it's quite broad that it can also fail.

GLENN: Yes.

WENCES: But if it succeeds, it's likely to be more important than the internet itself, especially for many billions of people I could imagine in the future, preferring that you take away their internet, but not their bitcoin.

GLENN: Okay. So I want to get to that in a second. But I want to just explain what he said is so true. And it's why I've said to people, look, you have $500, you should put it into bitcoin. But don't put anything into bitcoin that you actually think, "Oh, man, I'd hate to lose that." Then don't put it in. Because it is really risky. You don't make the kind of money that is being made right now on something that isn't risky. This is really risky.

WENCES: This is incredibly risky. And what you're saying is very good advice. Which is: Nobody should own an amount of bitcoin they cannot afford to lose because they may very well lose it. So it's important to understand that any money you cannot afford to lose, you should not have in bitcoin. It should only be play money, that if you lose it, you're okay. It's a small amount.

GLENN: Right. And that kind of explains, I mean, there are -- what? Ninety percent of the people who own bitcoin, maybe more, own less than one bitcoin.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: I mean, people are in it literally for 500 bucks or $100 or whatever.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: Is there a minimum getting in?

WENCES: There is no minimum.

GLENN: So tell me how you believe people will say, "Don't take my bitcoin, but you can take my internet." What do you mean by that?

WENCES: Understanding bitcoin -- bitcoin is simpler than the internet at a technical level, if you will. And I think when people don't understand it, it's not their fault, but our fault. The people explaining it. We make it more complicated than it needs to be, because it makes us sound more intelligent, I guess, or something.

STU: We try that a lot too. It doesn't work for us.

(chuckling)

WENCES: You think about it, most people feel confident and comfortable about their understanding of the internet. Right? Without really understanding how --

GLENN: How it works.

WENCES: -- it really works, technically. It's not necessary to understand it. Or even a credit card. Right? Most people feel very confident with a credit card, understanding how it works.

But if you ask them, what happens when you swipe the card, where does that information go? Does it go to your bank or to the merchant's bank? At what point does it get approved? Who says it, right?

We don't really need to understand a lot of those details, to understand how credit cards work and what they can and cannot do for us. The same thing with internet and the same thing for bitcoin.

And the things that do matter and that we do need to understand of bitcoin are quite simple, really. And it's three, three things that make bitcoin unique, that we're not -- that did not exist before bitcoin existed, that bitcoin brought to the world.

Number one and most important: It's that it's not controlled by anyone. And it is not possible to control it. And it's a key feature. Without it, it would be irrelevant. It has a lot of very positive consequences. It has some potentially negative consequences. But it's what makes bitcoin bitcoin. Nobody can control it. Not me. Not any group of people. Not any company. Not any country. Not any army. Nobody can control it. That's number one.

Number two, is there will never be more than 21 million bitcoin. It's a finite number. And that cannot be changed.

And number three, whenever you have some bitcoin, you are free to send it to anyone you want, anywhere in the world, pretty much in real time, and pretty much for a very, very low cost. That last quality, it's quite revolutionary. And I call -- a lot of people call it the uncensorability of bitcoin.

No one can keep you from acquiring some bitcoin. It's impossible to do. No one can keep you from keeping those bitcoin, and no one can keep you from sending those bitcoin to whomever you want.

When you put those three qualities together, that's really all you need to understand about bitcoin. How that gets accomplished, it's complicated and technical, but not really needed to understand. Just like you don't need to understand how the internet manages to deliver all of this movies and stuff that it does.

GLENN: You grew up in Argentina --

WENCES: Yep.

GLENN: -- when the economy collapsed. When the money collapsed.

WENCES: Correct.

GLENN: And I am imagining that that drives you quite a bit when it comes to bitcoin.

WENCES: I think so, yes. I would imagine so.

GLENN: Tell me the story of what it's like when there's a currency collapse.

WENCES: My parents are sheep ranchers. And in my lifetime, in my childhood, I saw them lose everything three times. The first time that I have a memory of it, it's because of hyperinflation. And I have this -- everything -- that they lose everything, it was because something happened with a country, either hyperinflation or the government confiscated all bank deposits or a huge devaluation, right?

All kinds of crazy experiments that are hard to fathom from the perspective of someone who has lived in an economy where you've always been able to trust the dollar and the banks. And so did your parents and grandparents.

I have this memory of my mom coming to get my two sisters and I out of school. That never happened before, so something was going on in the middle of the school day.

And she was carrying two plastic bags full of cash. And she was a receptionist at the government bureau. And she had just been paid. And her salary, two plastic bags of cash, of bills.

GLENN: Wow.

WENCES: And she took us to the supermarket, and she gave us each a list and told us what to carry. We each had an aisle. Got all of those things, and we all met at the cashier.

And after everything had gone through the cashier, there was some money left over, and she sent us back to get more stuff.

And one of my sisters asked, "Why don't we save money for tomorrow?" And my mom explained, "No. Tomorrow, it's going to be worth less. We have to spend it all today."

And I'll never forget that. Partly because it's easy to understand the economic and financial consequences in a family, in a society of that. But it's harder to imagine what's really going on, which is much more beyond financial consequences. Something happens to the social fabric, when people cannot trust something as basic as money. And a lot of people go crazy and desperate. And something -- very quickly, some trust breaks down that takes years or generations to rebuild.

GLENN: Yeah. Talking to the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. It is a bitcoin wallet startup.

So I buy my bitcoin. And it's now in a wallet. It's in your bank, if you will. If I'm not mistaken, your bank is buried in some mountain in Switzerland or something, right?

WENCES: Correct.

GLENN: But it's not a bank like we think of a bank.

WENCES: No. It is a bank in that you can use us to buy bitcoin, to store, to keep the bitcoin safely, to make it very easy to acquire the bitcoin, to store them safely, to send bitcoin.

It is not like a bank in a more technical manner, in which today the -- when you go to a normal bank, they own your money. And they owe it to you. So if you look at their balance sheet, they have an asset. That is the money you gave them and a liability, that is what they owe to you.

We are a purely custodian. So we do not own your bitcoins. Your bitcoins are only yours. And there are many reasons why we think that that's a lot safer. So we are the digital equivalent of a safety deposit box, right?

And the safety-deposit box is ours. But whatever is inside, it's yours. And if we were to disappear or go bankrupt, what can go away is the safety deposit box, but the contents have to go back to you.

GLENN: And what makes you think that -- well, before we get there, tell me what happened with this fork in the road. Because this caused some real panic with people because they didn't know -- they didn't really even understand the concept that bitcoin because it's -- it's becoming to be used more frequently. I believe Japan now has recognized it as an official currency. And if I'm not mistaken, isn't Japan becoming a bitcoin society?

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: And because the transactions are happening so rapidly, there was talk about, we have to have a faster way to process these.

This is my understanding.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: And there became this fork in the road between bitcoin cash and bitcoin. I don't know the difference. What is the difference?

WENCES: Not really -- again, it's not really a big deal basically what happened. And bitcoin is an open source software. So we all can see every single line is public. And the five of us could do another fork, and if we wanted. Right? Just copy all the code, paste it, and run it ourselves, or run it with another group of people. And it's up to the market to decide if they want to use ours or the other one. So this was always a possibility. Finally, someone did it for the first time. I think this would be a feature, bitcoin going forward, we'll see forks here or there. And there will always be one version of bitcoin that is the most used, the one that has the longest history, and then there will be others that will be like cousins that were derived of bitcoin, but will turn out to be different. Right?

GLENN: Can you turn your bitcoin into cash?

WENCES: Of course. Into normal cash?

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

WENCES: Of course, yeah. It's like any currency.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. And what is the percentage now of things that you can buy -- I mean, there was a big push -- we spoke five years ago. You know, people need to start -- you know, companies need to start taking bitcoin as payment.

What are the big companies doing to accept it? Are you seeing any big movement?

WENCES: There's about 100,000 merchants online that accept bitcoin. It's my opinion that bitcoin has been around for -- for less than nine years. And it will take another decade or two for it to get established. I think that the age of bitcoin becoming a way to pay at a merchant is quite far away.

I think that the era we're looking at is about something very different. In fact, I think that things like what we're seeing -- we had to go this year through the fork, for everybody to stop worrying about and learn that it's not a big deal.

Forks are something we can live with. It doesn't really hurt anyone. And -- but until it happened, a lot of people were freaking out about it, right? And I can tell you so many things that people freaked out about, every three months, in bitcoin. And we have to see them happen. People say, "Oh, that's good. Oh, it's robust. It works." I think we have a lot more of that to come.

Right now, I think bitcoin is in this first stage establishing itself more as a -- as a -- not so much for payment. What you said you were doing, Glenn, which you're holding it as historic value, just in case, not unlike what some families did with -- they had somewhere in the house, a stash of some jewelry, just in case, right? Or gold. It's more like that.

And only if it succeeds at that first, with very massive adoption, and hundreds of millions of people, it will then make sense as a payment mechanism.

GLENN: Yeah.

WENCES: But right now, it's a bit too early. It can be used. And a lot of people do use it. But from my subjective point of view, the more important thing that is happening at this stage is it's standing at historic value.

GLENN: Wences Casares, he is the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. You should check it out. And as I said earlier, don't -- don't put money into this that you can't -- you can't easily say, "Oh. I'm fine without it." At this point, it's one of those things that could make you a lot of money and you could lose every single dime. And -- and so you put just a little bit in there to -- to just, what the heck, let's give it a whirl, and see what happens.

Thank you, Wences. I appreciate it. God bless.

WENCES: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

(OUT AT 10:25AM)

GLENN: We -- we're going to have -- we're going to have --

STU: It's fascinating.

JEFFY: It sure is.

GLENN: The CEO of Xapo stay with us for a second. Because we were just talking in the break, there is a real downside, a risk to this. But the world completely changes if it works. And you were just saying that there's about a 20 percent chance that you use all the money, right?

WENCES: I would say at least a 20 percent chance that you use all the money.

JEFFY: At least.

GLENN: And you said that there was --

PAT: On the other side, there's an upside.

GLENN: You were saying that there's a 50 percent chance --

WENCES: Yes.

GLENN: -- that bitcoin, one single bitcoin, now worth $4,000. Was worth 200 when Trump took that long escalator ride down, two years ago. You're saying that in ten years, you believe that could hit a million dollars?

WENCES: I think there is a 50 percent chance that one bitcoin could be worth more than a million dollars and less than --

PAT: I mean, that's -- that's worth the 4,000-dollar investment. Right?

WENCES: What I would say is that it's very worthwhile -- just like I would say, the most irresponsible thing you could do would be to own an amount of bitcoin you cannot afford to lose, to have the kid's college fund there or your retirement or mortgage. That would be really -- the most irresponsible thing you can do.

GLENN: But if you put $500 in because you're like, "You know what, we're going to scrimp, and we're going to save. And I'm not touching our savings. I'm not touching anything. We're just going to stop going to movies. Going out to eat for a while. I'll put $500 in." $500 is worth a lot of money if this is right in ten years.

PAT: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

WENCES: Yeah. Yeah. That's my point, is that the second most irresponsible thing you could do is not to have any. Right? It's so asymmetrical, that you can have something that doesn't really -- is not material to you, but it can have a very material impact on your life.

So why not do it?

 

The Deep State's NEW plan to backstab Trump

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

We cannot make the same mistake we made in 2016 — celebrating victory while the deep state plots its next move.

In 2016, Donald Trump shocked the world by defeating Hillary Clinton. Conservatives cheered, believing we’d taken back the reins of our country. But we missed the bigger battle. We failed to recognize the extent of the damage caused by eight years of Barack Obama and decades of progressive entrenchment. The real war isn’t won at the ballot box. It’s being waged against an insidious force embedded deep within our institutions: the administrative state, or the “deep state.”

This isn’t a new problem. America’s founders foresaw it, though they didn’t have a term for “deep state” back in the 1700s. James Madison, in Federalist 48, warned us that combining legislative, executive, and judicial powers in the same hands is “the very definition of tyranny.” Yet today, that’s exactly where we stand. Unelected bureaucrats in agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Justice hold more power than the officials we vote for. They control the levers of government with impunity, dictating policies and stifling change.

This is the fight for the soul of our nation. The founders’ vision of a constitutional republic is under siege.

We’ve felt the consequences of this growing tyranny firsthand. During COVID-19, so-called experts ran our lives, crushing civil liberties under the guise of public safety. Our intelligence agencies and justice system turned into weapons of political warfare, targeting a sitting president and his supporters. Meanwhile, actual criminals were given a pass, turning American cities into lawless war zones.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816 that “the functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.” Today, we see Jefferson’s prophecy fulfilled. The deep state exercises unchecked power over our freedoms, and information itself is controlled by the fourth branch of government: the legacy media.

Even when we win elections, the deep state doesn’t concede defeat. It switches to survival mode. Trump’s first term proved this. Despite a historic mandate to dismantle the bureaucracy, the deep state fought back with everything it had: leaks, investigations, court rulings, and obstruction at every turn. And now, with the possibility of Trump returning to office, the deep state is preparing to do it again.

Progressives are laying out their attack plan — and they’re not even hiding it.

U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.) recently boasted about forming a “shadow cabinet” to govern alongside the deep state, regardless of who’s in the White House. Nickel called it “democracy’s insurance policy.” Let’s be clear: This isn’t insurance. It’s sabotage.

They’ll employ a “top down, bottom up, inside out” strategy to overwhelm and collapse any effort to reform the system. From the top, federal judges and shadow officials will block Trump’s every move. Governors in blue states like California and New York are gearing up to resist federal authority. During Trump’s first term, California filed over 100 lawsuits against his administration. Expect more of the same starting January 20.

From the bottom, progressive groups like the American Civil Liberties Union will flood the streets with protesters, much as they did to oppose Trump’s first-term immigration reforms. They’ve refined their tactics since 2016 and are prepared to unleash a wave of civil unrest. These aren’t spontaneous movements; they’re coordinated assaults designed to destabilize the administration.

Finally, from the inside, the deep state will continue its mission of self-preservation. Agencies will drag their feet, leak sensitive information, and undermine policies from within. Their goal is to make everything a chaotic mess, so the heart of their power — the bureaucratic core — remains untouched and grows stronger.

We cannot make the same mistake we made in 2016 — celebrating victory while the deep state plots its next move. Progressives never see themselves as losing. When they’re out of power, they simply shift tactics, pumping more blood into their bureaucratic heart. We may win elections, but the war against the deep state will only intensify. As George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force; and force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

This is the fight for the soul of our nation. The founders’ vision of a constitutional republic is under siege. The deep state has shown us its plan: to govern from the shadows, circumventing the will of the people. But now that the shadows have been exposed, we have a choice. Will we accept this silent tyranny, or will we demand accountability and reclaim our nation’s heart?

The battle is just beginning. We can’t afford to lose.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Drone mystery exposes GLARING government incompetence

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone issue is getting way out of hand.

Earlier this month, Glenn first reported on the mysterious drones stalking the night sky over New Jersey, but the situation is increasingly concerning as the sightings have escalated. Not only have drones been seen across the Northeast Coast, including over New York City, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, but recently, they have been spotted over the night skies of San Diego and other parts of Southern California.

It doesn't take an expert to identify the potential dangers and risks that dozens of undetectable, unidentified six-foot or larger drones pose to national security. Yet, our government's response has been one of unimaginable incompetence, leaving us to speculate on the origin and intention of these drones and wonder in astonishment at the government's ineptitude. Here are three examples of the government's lackluster response to the mystery drones:

Iranian Mothership and Missing Nuclear Warheads

- / Stringer | Getty Images

After several weeks of hubbub, New Jersey Representative, Jeff Van Drew gave an interview on Fox News where he claimed that the drones originated from an Iranian "mothership" off the East Coast of the United States. This theory has since been disproven by satellite images, which show that all Iranian drone carriers are far from U.S. shores. Another theory suggests that drones may be equipped with sensors capable of detecting nuclear material and that they are looking for a nuclear warhead that recently went missing! With these apocalyptic theories gaining traction in the absence of any real answer from our government, one can't help but question the motive behind the silence.

Pentagon's Limp Wristed Response

Alex Wong / Staff | Getty Images

In a recent press conference, national security spokesman John Kirby responded to reporters demanding answers about the government's lack of transparency, which has caused increasing public anxiety. He insisted that the drones did not pose a threat and were not assets of a foreign power, such as from Iran or China--even though he is still uncertain about their identity and origin. He also claimed that many of the sightings were simply misidentifications of normal aircraft.

This lackluster answer has only further inflamed national anxieties and raised even more questions. If the government is unsure of the identity of the drones, how do they know if they are a threat or if they aren't foreign assets? If they aren't foreign, does that mean they are U.S. assets? If so, why not just say so?

The Pentagon has also stated that they are leaving it up to local law enforcement to spearhead the investigation after concluding that these drones pose no threat to any military installation. This has left many feeling like the federal government has turned a blind eye to a serious issue that many Americans are very concerned about.

Where's Pete Buttigieg?

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

We are in the closing weeks of the Biden administration, and with the finish line in sight, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg probably figured nothing else could go wrong on his watch—but boy was he wrong. As Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg is in charge of the FAA, the agency responsible for managing all air traffic across the nation. One would think that mysterious, 6-foot-long, seemingly intractable drones are invisible on radar and flying above major cities would pose a serious threat to the myriad of legal aircraft that traverse our skies. Yet, Buttigieg has been silent on the issue, adding another failure to his resume which includes: malfunctioning airplanes, the train derailment in Ohio, and the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse, just to name a few.

Glenn: How Alvin Bragg turned hero Daniel Penny into a villain

Michael M. Santiago / Staff | Getty Images

We cannot allow corrupt institutions to punish those who act to protect life and liberty.

America no longer has a single, shared understanding of justice. Two Americas now exist, each applying justice differently depending on who you are and where you live. One America, ruled by common sense and individual courage, praises heroes who stand up to protect others. The other, driven by political agendas and corrupted institutions, punishes those same heroes for daring to act.

This stark division couldn’t be clearer than in the case of Daniel Penny, the Marine whose trial in New York City this week drew strong reactions from both sides across the divided line of justice.

If we let this slide, we accept a world in which heroes are treated as criminals and the law is a weapon for ideological warfare.

Penny was on a subway train last year when Jordan Neely — a man suffering from severe mental illness and reportedly high on drugs — began threatening passengers, saying, “I’m going to kill you all.” The fear on that subway car was palpable, but nobody moved. Nobody, that is, until Penny did what needed to be done. He took action to protect innocent lives.

In the America many of us used to believe in, Penny’s response would be heralded as heroic. His actions mirrored the courage of Todd Beamer on Flight 93, who, on September 11, 2001, rallied others with the words, “Let’s roll,” to prevent further tragedy. But in New York, courage doesn’t seem to count anymore. There, the system turns heroes into villains.

Penny subdued Neely using a chokehold, intending only to restrain him, not kill him. Tragically, Neely died. Penny, filled with remorse, told the police he never meant to hurt anyone. Yet, instead of being recognized for protecting others from a clear and present threat, Penny stood trial for criminally negligent homicide.

In Alvin Bragg’s New York, justice bends to ideology. The Manhattan district attorney has made a career of weaponizing the law, selectively prosecuting those who don’t fit his narrative. He’s the same prosecutor who twisted legal precedent to go after Donald Trump on business charges no one had ever faced before. Then, he turned his sights on Daniel Penny.

A jury may have acquitted Penny, but what happened in New York City this week isn’t justice. When the rule of law changes depending on the defendant’s identity or the prosecutor's political motives, we’re no longer living in a free country. We’re living in a state where justice is a game, and ordinary Americans are the pawns.

The system failed Jordan Neely

It’s worth asking: Where were activists like Alvin Bragg when Neely was suffering on the streets? Jordan Neely was a tragic figure — a man with a long history of mental illness and over 40 arrests, including violent assaults. The system failed him long before he stepped onto that subway train. Yet rather than confront that uncomfortable truth, Bragg’s office decided to target the man who stepped in to prevent a tragedy.

This isn’t about justice. It’s about power. It’s about advancing a narrative where race and identity matter more than truth and common sense.

It’s time to demand change

The Daniel Penny case — and others like it — is a wake-up call. We cannot allow corrupt institutions to punish those who act to protect life and liberty. Americans must demand an end to politically driven prosecutions, hold DAs like Alvin Bragg accountable, and stand up for the principle that true justice is blind, consistent, and fair.

If we let this slide, we accept a world in which heroes are treated as criminals and the law is a weapon for ideological warfare. It’s time to choose which America we want to live in.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

CEO Brian Thompson's killer reveals COWARDICE of the far-left death cult

Jeff Swensen / Stringer | Getty Images

Early on the chilly morning of Wednesday, December 4th, Brian Thompson, CEO of health insurance giant, UnitedHealthcare, was walking through Midtown Manhattan on his way to a company conference. Suddenly, a masked and hooded figure silently allegedly stepped onto the sidewalk behind Thompson, drew a 3-D printed, silenced pistol, and without warning fired multiple shots into Thompson's back before fleeing the scene on an electric bicycle. After a multiple-day manhunt, a 26-year-old lead suspect was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania after being recognized by an employee.

This was not "vigilante justice." This was cold-blooded murder.

As horrific as the murder of a husband and father in broad daylight in the center of New York City is, the story only gets worse. Even before the murder suspect was arrested, left-wing extremists were already taking to X to call him a "hero" and a "vigilante" who "took matters into his own hands." Even the mainstream media joined in on the glorification, as Glenn pointed out on air recently, going out of the way to show how physically attractive the murder suspect was. This wave of revolting and nihilistic fanfare came in response to the findings of online investigators who surmised the murder suspect's motives to retaliate against healthcare companies for corruption and denied coverage. The murder suspect supposedly underwent a major back surgery that left him with back pain, and some of his internet fans apparently viewed his murder of Thompson as retribution for the mistreatment that he and many other Americans have suffered from healthcare companies.

The murder suspect and his lackeys don't seem to understand that, other than depriving two children of their father right before Christmas, he accomplished nothing.

The murder suspect failed to achieve his goal because he was too cowardly to try.

If the murder suspect's goals were truly to "right the wrongs" of the U.S. healthcare system, he had every tool available to him to do so in a constructive and meaningful manner. He came from a wealthy and prominent family in the Baltimore area, became the valedictorian at a prestigious all-boys prep school, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master's in engineering. Clearly, the murder suspect was intelligent and capable, and if he had put his talent into creating solutions for the healthcare industry, who knows what he could have accomplished?

This is the kind of behavior the far-left idolizes, like communists on college campuses who wear shirts that celebrate the brutal Cuban warlord, Che Guevara. Merchandise celebrating the UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect is already available, including shirts, hoodies, mugs, and even Christmas ornaments. Will they be sporting his face on their T-shirts too?

This macabre behavior does not breed creation, achievement, success, or life. It only brings death and risks more Americans falling into this dangerous paradigm. But we still have a chance to choose life. We just have to wake up and take it.