Ryan: Kamala Harris and the wheels on the bus

December 05, 2019

Photo by Sean Ryan

Kevin is an award-winning writer who focuses on long-form literary nonfiction and investigative reporting.

This fall, I saw Kamala Harris 15-odd times, and wrote five stories about her, because she was on fire. By the time I finished the stories, she had begun a nosedive that finally made contact a few days ago with the suspension of her 2020 presidential bid. I've released one of the stories already, an account of what was one of the most magical moments in my reporting, this is the second. May the other three rest easy.

Acrobats leapt around the padded floors of world-renowned Chow's Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, an affluent suburb of Des Moines that once belonged to the Sac Tribe.

Half-a-mile away, Kamala Harris was rousing a crowd.

Photo by Sean Ryan

People of all ages had jammed into this marble-floor rotunda, the colonnaded hub of Valley Southwoods Freshman High School. Something like the Ancient Greek agora, the open area where everyone gathered.

Harris is a lifelong performer. As a girl, she sang in the church choir. As a teenager, she traveled to different community centers, to talent shows and fundraisers, as part of a six-person dance troupe.

Now, she is not a dancer so much as a boxer or a chess player or, better yet, a big game hunter with a collection of heads, the newest of which is, oddly, her own.

*
She doddled across the makeshift stage, between a pillar inscribed with the word "Gratitude" and one that said "Attitude."

At one point, her microphone went out like a mic-drop, and she shouted, "Next question" then everybody laughed.

Then the next microphone went out. So she spoke without a microphone, with a determined look that said "All right, Kamala, prove to them you can think quickly, in a charming, down-to-earth way."

People got quiet, leaned forward. Occasionally they laughed in unison. Sometimes they clapped.

Within two minutes she had a new microphone, but by then people had grown accustomed to her softer voice.

She grinned vigorously. She was the dangling punchline that people skipped the joke for.

*

They were like worshippers and she was their pagoda. She spoke facing a pillar that said Loyalty.

In the parking lot, her purple-dominant bus with the words "FOR THE PEOPLE" emblazoned along one side, and "HARRIS" on the other. Above it all, a trenching blue radiated the sky, dappled here and there with cottonballs, feathered topiaries. It was barely 80 degrees.

Photo by Sean Ryan

"We need a new Commander in Chief," she shouted, in the crowded high school. Everybody loved that one. The confidence. The certainty. The boldness. The wild and soft look to her eyes. Almost bravado. Almost arrogance. Maybe it was the look of a leader. Quite possibly the stare of Mark Antony or Napoleon Bonaparte, Che Guevara or Margaret Thatcher, Cleopatra or Queen Victoria. The nestled glare of power, real power, bolstered by the natural ability to make it hers.

Then the crowd started chanting.

Ka!

Mall!

Ah!

Ka!

Mall!

Ah!

*

As she does in nearly every speech, Harris talked about her "3a.m. agenda." It's an important question, one that every candidate ought to be asking. What keeps us up at night, as people, as ordinary Americans?

Photo by Sean Ryan

Between thoughts she stopped, pointed to her husband. "Hi, Doug," smiling.

And the people cheered!

The tear-jerker of her stump speech was about how her first grade teacher believed in her. Believed in her so much that she attended Harris' high school graduation.

Every time she said the line about believing in children, people cooed. Several women put their hands over their hearts and sighed.

Photo by Sean Ryan

It helps that's she was saying this at a high school. If she stuck to education maybe people would forget the slew of tiny controversies she's attracted over the years.

Then they laughed when she followed it with the quip about how we were maybe not as special as we thought.
Sometimes she laughed along with them.

"We need action," she often said. "We need action. We need action."

Then she said, "we don't lack ideas." Then she did the thing where she complimented her fellow candidates. Then she talked about what she will do as President. Then she said, "it's time to act."

The high school graduation rate in Iowa is 88 percent, 17 percent above the national average. Iowa also boasts the nation's highest literacy rate.

Photo by Sean Ryan

"In the America we believe in," she said, and people listened deeply. She repeated the phrase like it was a line in a Walt Whitman poem. "In the America we believe in … In the America we believe in …" It was one of the most compelling parts of a compelling stump speech.

Her eyes got misty, and she said, "By our very nature, we are aspirational."

When she spoke, she incited deep emotions within the audience. Her audience. Nobody was keeping quiet. Not after that rally. They only spoke when Harris was not speaking, as if maybe she knew what they wanted to say.

Photo by Sean Ryan

She apportioned blame to Trump himself. She's called Trump a "predator," citing her work prosecuting sexual deviants as proof of her expertise in handling those types.

"He didn't pull the trigger," she said. "But he certainly tweeted out the ammunition."

She was calling Trump a racist before the rest of the candidates had caught onto the punchiness of the accusation.

Kamala Harris Calls Donald Trump A Racist, Calls for Decriminalization of Sex Workwww.youtube.com

Now, she was fired up. Unlike the day before, she was yelling her points. All her quiet voice was gone. The Kamala aggressiveness fully on display.

*

The other words on pillars around the circular room:

Self Control

Respect

Compassion

Empathy

Courage.

Photo by Sean Ryan

*

Harris had given a spectacular performance. Her fourth rally that day. And immediately after, she would be speaking at Jasper Winery, where she'd display yet more of her prowess. So underhanded and petty, vicious and caustic, combative and clever. It was a joy to watch, like a good boxing match.

White button-up shirts, khaki jeans, and black Converse All-Stars with black laces. A stamped golden necklace.
She slowly paced the stage with somber control.

*

The day before, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, she was a different person, mostly.

"Hi, what's your name," she asked. Then she turned, smiling, "I feel like Oprah."

Photo by Sean Ryan

Kamala Harris, who turned 55 in October, made tiny silly quips like this all the time.

It was 5:00 p.m., and Harris had started late because her tour bus maxes at 55 mph, and everywhere she goes, people want her time.

Photo by Sean Ryan

Now, a fresh crowd had gathered in the band room of Fort Dodge Middle School. Mostly middle-aged. In t-shirts or blouses and cargo shorts or khakis or jeans. Packed room, all seats taken, people slanting along the walls.

Harris often refers to children as "our babies." At the middle school, in a room full of teachers and patient-eyed children, she leaned on the phrase even harder than usual.

*

During the Q&A, a kid in a Washington Redskins Jersey raised his hand. Harris quickly seized on the opportunity.

"I'm a rising 5th grader," the boy said. People laughed because it's funny when kids say stupid things with an elegant timbre. He did not laugh, because most kids don't realize how cruel life can be so we adults needlaughter. He asked, could Harris imagine what school was like for him, with all these shootings and mass shooting drills and all that fear all the time?

Photo by Sean Ryan

Consensus was, "Ouch" and "Our country? It's in trouble." Then the entire room turned to Harris. She had the messiah look. Yet another of Harris' looks that deeply spooked my dad.

"I was from you to me away from her," he said. "To the side of the stage. And I swear that she had a tear at the edge of her eye the whole time. She could have let it fall at any moment."

She's telegenic, photogenic. In 2013, then-President Obama took heat for describing Harris as "best-looking attorney general in the country." She knows how to turn a phrase. She knows how to go viral. If anything, she has mastered these talents a little too well. At times it's like she's an actress, the way she can control her affect and emotions, aware of each shifting muscle and arched smile.

*

The boy in the Redskins jersey gawked at Harris as she told him that she had answers to his heart-rending question.

Politically, Harris showed an incredible amount of charm. She played the role of mother. Because that's the job she was vying for. The ultimate big momma. The lady in charge. The matriarch of the world.

Photo by Sean Ryan

"We judge a society by how it treats its children," she said.

She is good with kids. Doesn't have any of her own. Two step-kids. They call her their "Momala."

*

A row bass drums stacked on cabinets looked like a herd of wooly mammoths, facing the table behind a row of ferns. The acoustics in that room were perfect. Designed to capture every musical sound in its purest form.

Photo by Sean Ryan

This environment lended itself perfectly to any pauses and music. It was sultry in that middle school bandroom, about 86 degrees. Made hotter by the studio lights facing the table and the media with all their cameras and recorders and laptops. The floor was a snake pit of extension cords and outlets and cables. At both sides of the room, skyhook light-rigs like you see on movie sets.

The room cooled down within a few minutes of Harris's opening lines.

On the wall, laminated posters advised us to "Be Kind. Be Responsible. Be Safe. Be Respectful." Each imperative had a long-winded explanation. If you went to school in America you know the kind of wacky font the poster had, and the background full of neon shapes right out of the 1980s. How did advice so often turn into that? Into trite, uncool attempts at what? inspiration? Weren't these the same truisms and half-phrases that politicians used? A good thing, overall, this desire to improve the world. But was there a reason that the posters were rarely updated?

"Be Kind," we tell children on repeat. "Be Responsible, Be Safe, Be Respectful." And here was this kid asking about mass shooting drills.

*

Harris was far more composed in person than during, say, the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. You remember those? That was long, long ago, maybe a year. The hearings were where most people first encountered Harris, captivated or annoyed by her dramatic and at times ruthless performances.

Photo by Sean Ryan

This is part of her divide. Her duality. Commentators often hint at it, but they struggle to capture its allure. In person, you can feel it. A shawoman in punk rock sneakers. For some reason, she reminded me of the character Circe, from Homer's Odyssey,who turns Odysseus' men to swine and, well, does other stuff.

Elected to Senate in 2016, she has approached her job on the Senate Judiciary Committee with the same toughness that made her a formidable prosecutor. And she operates with that belligerent style.

Like when she roasted former Attorney General Jeff Sessions so ruthlessly that he got flustered.

Many on the left label her a cop, as pointed out by the Atlantic in the article "When Kamala was a Top Cop."

More subtly, the New Yorker described her as a law-and-order Democrat. Another way to say it is that she has a lot of experience at the highest levels of law enforcement in the country. Rebecca Young, a senior trial attorney in the San Francisco public defender's office, told the New Yorker, "Much of what [Harris] says is driven by political expediency, and that's why it becomes difficult to trust. We know she advocated for high bails around guns, drugs — around everything, frankly, but misdemeanors."
Tulsi Gabbard went straight for the jugular during the second Democratic debate:

Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence -- she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California.

She was referring to comments that Harris made during February, 2019 appearance on "The Breakfast Club" radio show.

"What were you listening to when you was high?" Charlamagne Tha God asked her. "What was on? What song was on?"

"Was it Snoop?" DJ Envy asked.

"Yeah, definitely Snoop," Harris laughed. "Tupac for sure."

This itself has provoked controversy. If Harris graduated in 1989Snoop Dogg's debut, "Doggystyle," came out in 1993. Tupac's "2Pacalypse Now" came out in 1991.

After the backlash, Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy appeared on MSNBC to defend Harris

I mean, we wanted to humanize her, not just talk about politics, talk about what she likes, what she does," DJ Envy said. "And I asked what she listens to and she said she listens to Snoop Dogg and Tupac at the same time my co-host was still talking about the marijuana and it was just a funny exchange but she was actually answering me and people took it that she was answering Charlamagne and said she was lying, which was not true.

Problem was, as a D.A., however, Harris had been staunchly against marijuana legalization.

Harris' father — who emigrated from Jamaica for graduate school — also took issue with the Breakfast Club interview.

Specifically, her answer to the question about does she smoke pot. "Half my family's from Jamaica," she said. "Are you kidding me?"

*

The woman who introduced Harris said, "My biggest motivation around Senator Harris is that she genuinely cares about people. And not to say that we all don't care about people. But she cares about people in such a way that is gonna move this country forward."

I was learning that, almost every time, the person who introduced the candidates overdoes the whole "I trust this candidate because they truly care about people."

Harris wore the affect of a careful listener. When she asked a question she'd lower the mic onto the table. Then she'd follow up with a well-crafted answer. Stories that got to the point. Numbered arguments.

Strategic or not, it was admirable. Here she was, a Senator running for the Presidency, and she's asking local special ed teachers questions. Not the other way around.

Although her body language would decline as the campaign continues, it was obvious that she was well-trained in her physical cues, like all the candidates. Except Marianne Williamson. It's the hands. And the affect. And Bernie, of course. Because he doesn't seem to care about surface appearances.

And Yang, sort of. He has body language that isn't political in the slightest, most often with charming effect. Like how, in the Spin Room after the Houston debate, anytime someone interviewed him, he shook their hand. He also flings his arms around like the rapper YG, or many of the other L.A. gangsta rappers from the 1990s. Stiff, yet incredibly confident.

Harris is mostly quiet about her father. He, in turn, has dealt a couple of very public attacks on Harris' character and her lineage, including an article he posted on Jamaica Global Online, claiming that her paternal grandfather owned slaves in Jamaica.

Summers, she and Maya visited their father in Palo Alto, California, home to Stanford University and part of Silicon Valley. The neighbors' children weren't allowed to play with Harris and Maya because they were black.

*

Her mother's family was a member of the Brahmin class, at the top of the caste system. Both of her parents are academics, so she grew up around activists and academics. As she artfully pointed out during the second Democratic Debate, she was bussed to kindergarten as a young girl.

During her Ft. Dodge speech, in the middle school band room, Harris didn't talk about Trump at all. She mentioned her fellow candidates. But she did it with civility, complimenting them. Maybe she took a potshot at Biden. Didn't matter. She was too relaxed for it to come across as offensive.

Photo by Sean Ryan

At several points, she had everyone's attention. Even the media. Even the bored men and women behind station-logoed cameras. In part because she tells a good story.

As soon as she finished, people suctioned toward Harris. They doted. They would have juggled claymores for a chance to say a few sentences to Harris, who kept asking her aides out the side of her mouth, "How's the bus situation? The bus ready?"

She had to jaunt 88 miles north to Clear Lake for Wing Ding at the Surf Ballroom, only able to go 55mph. But the line of people seemed barely to move at all. Seemed to be growing even, somehow. Harris hid a worried look. Smiled for the voters. Smiled for the selfies and the group shots and the jokes she's heard so many times before.

Across the street, a chubby 10-year-old-boy revved around his yard on a go-kart. He spilled into the road, laughing as he did donuts, sending exhaust and rubber into the air.

Next Monday is the final installment of "Field of Dreams," part one of my 2020 election series. I'll pick back up again mid-January, with a unique angle building into the Iowa Caucuses. For updates on any other work, check out my website and my Twitter. Send all ideas, corrections, notes, or hate-mail to kryan@mercurystudios.com. Thanks for reading.

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A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

The appeal of a broken dream

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

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

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

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

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

The bridge that never ends

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

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

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

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

What young America deserves

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatism as stewardship

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding what is broken

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

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

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

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

A creed for the rising generation

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.