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Would You Die for Your Faith? ‘Martyr’s Oath’ Author Talks Tough Questions

November 16, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Around the world, Christians are being persecuted and murdered in record numbers.

Author Johnnie Moore didn’t realize how dangerous it could be to profess faith until he witnessed the oath that is part of a graduation ceremony for theology students in India. Graduates vow to be willing to die for their faith if needed.

For his new book, “The Martyr’s Oath: Living for the Jesus They’re Willing to Die For,” Moore traveled the world to collect eyewitness accounts from people who had been persecuted for their Christian faith as well as stories about people who sacrificed their lives as martyrs.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Johnnie Moore, good friend of the program, and the author of the book The Martyr's Oath, joins us now.

He is -- he is the guy who provided the inspiration to start the Nazarene Fund, and we welcome him to the program. Hi, Johnnie, how are you?

JOHNNIE: Hey, Glenn, I'm good. Good to hear your voice.

GLENN: So I don't know if you saw this on CNN yesterday, but CNN is starting a series now. They've been doing an investigation for a year, and they found out that slaves are still being sold in the Middle East. They didn't -- they didn't touch on the Christian slaves. They just touched on the -- the slaves in Libya. But I'm hoping that they will find the -- the -- the enormity of the problem soon, that it's not just happening in Libya.

JOHNNIE: Yeah. No. The situation has changed. But it hasn't improved. You know, ISIS taught these terrorists all around the world, in different places, new brutality. New techniques. And it persists. It's not what we were seeing. You know, the beheading of Christians on live television. Now it's back in the shadows.

But in Nigeria alone, Boko Haram, which pledges its allegiance to ISIS -- I mean, they killed more Christians last year than ISIS did in Syria. I mean, this is still a very, very intense, intense situation. Not to mention, you know, these communities still need to be rebuilt.

And, Glenn, I got to tell you, I was thinking really, really small, until I got on your radio program, and, you know, because of the Nazarene fund and your vision and your voice, I mean, a lot of people were helped. But we can't let up now. There's a lot of work that needs to be done.

GLENN: So Johnnie, you went over -- and this is kind of what your book is about, you went over with kind of a comfortable, Christian attitude -- an American, Christian attitude. And you met these people who are living -- we are seeing first century kind of persecution of Christians. They are now the most persecuted people on earth. And nobody is -- nobody is even talking about it.

And you saw it firsthand. And it kind of shook you to your core. Did it not?

JOHNNIE: No, it changed me. I totally changed my lifestyle. I changed my job. I changed how I was investing my time. I could not not have a good answer to this question, you know, what was I doing when this was happening in history?

And, you know, with this latest book, The Martyr's Oath, you know, we went around to 30 different countries, sent research teams everywhere to document the firsthand accounts of persecution. And I was even surprised at what was happening in countries I barely even knew anything about.

And, you know, then, Glenn, we have allies like Turkey. You know, Turkey is a country where last year the director of religious affairs, appointed an imam to the Hagia Sophia.

The Hagia Sophia was for a thousand years, the most important church in Christianity. And it has been a museum since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. But last year, Turkey, you know, under the nose of the whole world, appointed an imam to supervise one of history's most famous Christian churches.

They also confiscated 50 Christian holy sites. And so it's not just the imprisonment and beheading and the torture and all these things, you know, the thousands of people that are affected by that -- countries like North Korea where 70,000 Christians are imprisoned. But it's also this subtle discrimination and prioritization and supremacy of Islam that's erupting, you know, all around the world. And we have to keep pressure on people. And we have to keep telling these stories. And we got to help them too.

GLENN: Tell me these stories that you found in your research.

JOHNNIE: Well, one that I can't get out of my head, I met a family that had fled Syria. You know, I was in a neighboring country. You know, they were sitting across the table from me. They had converted to Christianity. And because of it, their jihadist relatives in Syria were threatening their lives. They sent them a letter. And the letter literally said, we know where you are. We're going to come find you, and we're going to crucify you, like your Jesus.

And, you know, my saw was on the floor already. But then they told me what they did. They said, we wrote him back. They wrote the jihadist relative back.

And the letter said, please, please, come find us. You know, we're ready to die for -- for our Jesus. But please don't crucify us. We're not worthy to die the same death.

And I just couldn't -- I just didn't know a faith like that. I mean, I see in it in the Bible, right? But I don't see it in our real world. And, you know, I found that as much as we've helped these people. And you know this more than anyone, Glenn. This audience saved the lives of thousands of thousands of Christians. But as much as we try to help these people, I find that they help us. They show us what's really important.

GLENN: All the time.

JOHNNIE: You know, they show us how to live because of their willingness to die.

GLENN: So what causes that? What have we lost, Johnnie, to where -- because I can't imagine -- I don't know a single Christian that I think would sit down with the family and say, let's write them back and say, please, just don't crucify us like our Lord. You can crucify us upside down. But we're willing to do that.

But just don't -- don't put us in his category. I don't know a single person here in the United States that could sit down with the family and really say that.

What happened -- what happened to us? Where is the disconnect?

JOHNNIE: You know, and I don't know that I could say it. And it causes me to look inside of my own heart. You know, in my -- in my reading of the Bible. You see a lot of this, right? The New Testament is all about persecuted people. They're either being persecuted. Or they're helping people who are being persecuted. And I'm just convinced that we cannot have a real faith life, unless we're close to people whose faith costs them something. And this is the most subtle thing, because it gets at our character. And we don't even know it's getting at us. You know, but it changes us. And it changes us in profound ways.

We don't care about truth anymore because truth doesn't cost us anything. We don't forgive our enemies. We don't forgive our political opponents, much less our enemies, because we don't have to.

And yet the Coptic church, you know, which has endured terrible persecution in the last six months, multiple suicide bombings, a bus of children massacred, and yet the Coptic pastors all across Egypt publicly said that they forgive the terrorists that killed them. It's like, crazy. Until you read the Bible, and then it's like ever present. You know, there's a role of government. You know, it's to keep nations secure. And there's a role for the church and for people of faith. And that is, by our compassion, by our service, by our testimony. We -- we cause less problems in the world for governments to solve. You know, we work on hearts. They work on security. And our persecuted brothers and sisters, they have a faith we need to learn from.

You know, Boko Haram went after this mom that we interviewed, and they were trying to behead her after they beheaded her husband and her children. And they were demanding that she say Allahu Akbar. They were trying to convert her on the spot, probably to make her one of their wives. And you know what she did, Glenn, she said to us, with a raspy voice, because she nearly died -- she said, every time they demanded that I say, Allahu Akbar, I looked back over my shoulder at them, and I screamed Jesus. She was fearless. You know, she has a real faith. And I think a lot of us sort of -- you know, we have -- we have a fake faith sometimes.

STU: Wow. I will say though, my i Phone 10 has not been delivered yet. It's been delayed. I'm very upset about it.

GLENN: He's been talking about it all day.

So, Johnnie, you know, I can't even get to the beheading part and see that kind of faith.

I am -- I'm struggling now with -- with faith. Not my faith. But with -- with religion and religionists, that we don't believe in Jesus enough to turn the other cheek. We don't believe in the message of the gospel, which is -- which is what Gandhi and Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King lived.

We are escalating the -- the trouble by not being messengers of peace. And it strikes me that we don't really believe it. We don't really believe that it works. When push comes to shove, no, it's the sword. It's not the knee.

JOHNNIE: Yeah. And it says something about us in a deep and profound place. And the only way I know how to change is to meet those people who don't have what we have, they don't have our religious freedom. They don't have our wealth and our prosperity. They don't have our security. They don't have any of these other things. But what they do have is their faith. And their faith is all that they need. And, you know, this is why for 2,000 years, we've told these stories. You know, in early America, every American home had a Bible, a copy of Pilgrim's Progress, and they had Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

GLENN: Of martyrs.

JOHNNIE: You know, it's no surprise, that there was something unique about the Judeo-Christian foundation of this country, because it was -- you know, we were close to people whose faith meant something to them.

They expected they would have to sacrifice their lives, their money, their reputation. Something. They would lose something if they were faithful.

GLENN: And that is what this book is, The Martyr's Oath. It is a new version of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. And Johnnie Moore is its author.

Thank you, Johnnie, God bless you.

JOHNNIE: Thank you, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.