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This Author Was Told His Series Idea Was ‘Too Smart’ for Kids – Now Book 7 Is in Stores

September 12, 2017
Staff

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“The Final Spark,” the last installment of the Michael Vey series by “Christmas Box” author Richard Paul Evans, was released Tuesday. The bestselling novelist joined Glenn on radio to talk about the seventh Michael Vey book, his inspiring fans and the strange and wonderful journey to the conclusion of his story about a boy with a mysterious power.

When he first started shopping around the idea for the series, Evans was told by publishers that it was “too smart to be a kid’s book.”

“Don’t ever underestimate the youth,” Glenn remembered telling Evans as he introduced the author on Tuesday’s show. He shared his perspective on the books as a dad who has read each new installment with his son.

“Every summer we read it,” Glenn said. “He’s grown up with this now, and … it’s still as relevant to him now [in his early teens].”

“It’s by far the most complex thing I’ve ever written,” Evans said of the series, explaining how elements in the first book that he at first didn’t understand later became relevant in “The Final Spark.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Twenty-nine-year-old advertising guy sits down, and he writes a book for his two daughters. He makes copies of it, and he gives it to some friends. And it starts to be passed around. And pretty soon, people are calling the bookstore saying, "How can I get a copy of this book?" They don't even know what it is. Because it was just a -- it was -- it was a Xerox copy of something that the guy had written for his daughters.

It wasn't too much longer that there were 8 million copies of that one book in print and a number one television movie of the year. It was called The Christmas Box. The author, the dad, the advertising guy was Richard Paul Evans. He sold more than 17 million books, written 26 novels. Four of his books have been made into television/movies.

In 2011, he called me and he said, "I have this idea for a seven-book series. It's called Michael Vey. And it is a story that I've just been told by publishers is too smart to be a kid's book." And I said, "Don't ever underestimate the youth." He said, "Right!"

He sent me a copy of the first book and Mercury, Inc., said, "We'll help you publish this." It's now been a best-seller. And the seventh novel is out now. It is the last, Michael Vey: The Final Spark. It comes out today. And I have not read this one. If it is like the other six, it is going to be thrilling to the end. And I'm going to be really upset that it is the last one. Richard Paul Evans, welcome.

RICHARD: Good to be here, Glenn. Thank you.

GLENN: So is this really the last one?

RICHARD: I don't know. It is for right now because I've been writing three books a year. And they offered me a million years to write the next one. I said, "I will have to write it from a psych ward." I go, "I am -- I am writing non-stop. I have no life." It's like, "I will snap."

GLENN: Yeah.

RICHARD: I go, "I'm done. I can't." So I need basically a year. I still have other contracts, finish them out. And then maybe come back.

And part of me doesn't want to do that because it's -- I love to keep something special.

GLENN: And this one was -- I mean, when you first talked to me about it, you were really, really clear that this wasn't -- this was almost downloaded to you.

RICHARD: It still is. Someone asked me how the book ends. And I go -- I look at book seven -- and there are things in book one, that if I had not put them there would not have -- book seven would not have been possible. And when I put them in the first book, I thought, "Where is this going? Why am I -- why is he growing in power? That has no point to the book."

There were some things that were happening that became completely relevant. I didn't know it until the last year.

GLENN: Why is this book downloaded like that to you?

RICHARD: Because I think there's a deeper message. I think it's a very spiritual message. It's by far the most complex thing I've ever written, even though --

GLENN: It's unbelievably -- and it's so consistent.

I mean, you've been writing this for eight years? Nine years?

RICHARD: Seven years.

GLENN: Seven years.

And I picked it up. I've only read the first chapter of this one, but it picks up right exactly where it was. I mean, the complexity of this story over seven years and seven books is really difficult.

RICHARD: Right. The French publisher said, "We want an arc for the whole thing." I said, "I have no arc. I don't know where it's going. I don't know how it ends." And it really wasn't until about nine months ago that I thought, "Oh, my goodness, really? That's what happens." I go, "This has actually followed some sacred Scripture all the way through." I go, "This is kind of amazing."

GLENN: Amazing.

RICHARD: You know, I told you at the beginning, like the names were downloaded to me. And then I realized that their initials spelled Mount Zion. That's bizarre. Right. That's just a bizarre coincidence. But I have found more coincidences like that throughout the book.

GLENN: And you think that this book is -- I mean, it is -- my son -- I don't think my son has enjoyed a series -- I don't even think Percy Jackson made it through all of them and liked them through the end. And this has been seven years. And every summer, we read it. And love it every single time. It's a tradition with us.

And I don't think there's another book series that he has made it all the way through that he has liked all the way through. Because he grew -- you know, seven years. That's half his life. And he's grown up with this now. And it's still as relevant to him now -- you know, you think -- you're 13 years old, okay -- it's not. It's not. You know, and he's reading -- he's reading everything.

He was reading I.T. for the love of Pete. But he loves it. And he loves the messages in it. And it's pretty remarkable what's happening with the -- the youth that are reading it.

RICHARD: I -- that's absolutely true. I had a young woman -- you remember our first book signing, they were like mostly adults. They looked like my adult book signings with a few kids.

My -- we just did the launch party for Michael Vey. We had between 4 and 5,000 kids come to it. So -- but a few weeks ago, I received a letter from a young women in Paris.

And she said, Mr. Evans, you probably have been wondering where I've been. And I said to my assistant, "Who is this?"

He said, "Oh, she writes about every week." And she says, "I'm not doing well. I'm in the hospital. I tried to kill myself." She said, "I have one friend in this world, and it's Michael Vey. And he gives me the strength to go on. Thank you."

And I said, "Let's get her immediately." And I told her that Michael loves her. I love her. And that just how Michael has to face the Elgen and his Dr. Hatches, you will too. But you're going to do okay. And just hang in there. This is a hard time of life.

And I think that's why I have so many youth who have disabilities, who have struggles. Even at my book signing, one group came. And I just -- I held one young woman. She kept crying. She said, "My father died during the second book." She goes, "Michael Vey has been there with me the whole time through it." She goes, "I don't know what to do now that the seventh book is out." So the book means -- to me, it's a very spiritual book in a sense that -- I mean, it's here to heal and help kids.

GLENN: Tell the story. For anybody who hasn't read it, tell the story.

JEFFY: Michael is a 15-year-old boy with Tourette's Syndrome, who discovers he has electricity in his body. And he can shock people, basically. But he doesn't know what this is about and why he has this power. He learns that he's one of 17 kids who were an accident, who kind of an MRI machine. And that there's a group trying to find them because they realize that they can create a better race than what's on this earth right now. And that's what this is about.

STU: There were a lot more than 17 kids that were accidents in this world. You know that. There were a lot of crazy things that have happened, just to be clear.

(laughter)

GLENN: You -- you have Tourette's. Your son has Tourette's.

RICHARD: Yes.

GLENN: But this is not -- what's interesting about this is I think there's -- every kid is in this book, no matter if you were the outcast or you were the popular one. You were the bully or you were bullied. Every kid is in this book.

And I think that is the secret of this, is they -- everybody -- every kid who reads it, sees themselves. Finds themself in that character. Or you knew that character growing up.

RICHARD: I agree. You know what's been interesting about this, Glenn, is that the publishing world has largely ignored it. Remember we were sitting here and the book was number one on the New York Times. And the Wall Street Journal did a story on the next big YA book, and it didn't even mention Michael Vey. It was not only number one, it was six times higher than the book next to it. Even today, it's like, I had a book signing with 5,000 people --

GLENN: Why is that?

RICHARD: I don't know. I don't know.

I've been attacked by having a male hero, as if it's a bad thing. Boys need heroes right now. It's really bad.

GLENN: Big time. You know what I compare this to is the Flash series that is now on television, where it's -- it's a boy hero. He's -- he's a great role model. Loves his parents. Has all of these great things going for him. And I think it's what people want. But I don't think that's what the media wants. I don't think they -- they don't want that. They don't want something that, you know, a boy who loves his mother and treats his mother with respect and treats others with respect and does the right thing. And, yes, he is the hero of the story. And while there are other girls around that also are heroines in the story, you know, they're separate and distinct. And they all have their own thing. I don't think that's what -- I don't think that's what -- that's what the people want. I don't think that's what culture is saying is acceptable.

RICHARD: That's exactly right. That's true.

We -- we see it -- when they came out with Maze Runner, and it was a young boy series. And it was one of the few YA books that made money in the movies. And it's like, well, big surprise. It's like, well, boys like this. They want to read. And the girls will read -- now, there are some very, very strong girl characters. Taylor is just as strong --

GLENN: Yeah, really strong.

RICHARD: Just as strong as Michael. He takes counsel from her. This isn't a gender war. These are people trying to get along. And like you said, I remember a school teacher saying to me, Michael loves his mother. She was, like, freaked out. Like, he loves his mother. He says so.

It's like, well, yeah, most boys do love their mother. This is reality. So I think Michael Vey has this truth to it that resonates with kids. It's also just -- I hear from -- I hear every single day, multiple letters every day for the last seven years saying, you got my kid to read.

I mean, I hear it every single day. It's like, this is the only book or only series my kid has ever read, especially the reluctant male readers. One school teacher said, in 18 years, it's the first time every student in the class finished the assignment. One boy took his grade from an F to an A-minus because he practically memorized Michael Vey. I said, well, because you have to give them books they like to read. I was a reluctant reader.

GLENN: Yeah, so was I.

RICHARD: I didn't read till I found The Hobbit. The Hobbit changed my world. I realized that reading actually could be fun. And the Hobbit is a very intelligent book, right?

GLENN: Yeah.

RICHARD: And I pick it up. It's like, there's no pictures in here. Why would I want to read this? The next thing I know, it's like, I want to be --

GLENN: For me -- for me it was Sherlock Holmes. And I think -- and I think this happens with -- with -- with Michael Vey. I read Sherlock Holmes. I was probably 18. Maybe 19 years old. I hated reading. Found that book. And I read it, I think, two or three times. Because I was like, no other book could be this -- I mean, this is really good. Right?

And so you just read it over and over again, until you get sick of it. And you're like, I wonder if there's something else. And then once you go down that rabbit hole -- Raphe hated to read. He told me -- he must have been six. Right around this time. Never going to -- I don't like to read, Dad. I don't like to read books. I don't.

Now, Tania and I feel like the worst parent in the world, because we're always saying, "You say that to him. I'm not going to say that to him." Put the book down. Go out and do something. Go play a video game. Put the book down. Go put the book down.

And I think Michael Vey had a lot to do with that. The book comes out today. If you have not read the series, this is the last in the series. Does it have a satisfying ending?

RICHARD: Yes. It has a very powerful ending.

STU: Does it have a Death Star in it?

RICHARD: No. And no Tyrannosaurus Rex. But I read the last page to my assistant, and she broke down crying. And she goes, my friends. My friends -- you'll love -- you'll love the ending. The big question is, where is Michael Vey? It will shock you, no pun intended, when you find out what's really going on. There's so many reveals. You'll feel like, "Wow. After seven years, I finally get it."

GLENN: Is there a TV show coming?

RICHARD: It looks like. At the launch party, we had Hollywood executives there.

GLENN: Excellent.

RICHARD: And the crowd was crazy.

GLENN: Excellent. Excellent. This will be a great TV show. It is a great series. Michael Vey: The Final Spark. If you haven't started, start from the beginning. You will not regret it. And you can read it with your kids. It is a fantastic series.

(music)

STU: Michael Vey: The Final Spark is the seventh book in the Michael Vey series. You can buy all of them. He didn't take the other ones off the market. So you can catch up whenever you want. We'll tweet the link @worldofStu on Twitter.

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.