TAKE ACTION: Call Speaker Ryan to Urge Support of New Concealed Carry Legislation in DC

June 22, 2017

WRITER

Rep. Thomas Massie joined Glenn on radio Thursday to explain his new concealed carry reciprocity bill and ask Glenn's audience to start making calls. Glenn expressed concerns about those calls falling on deaf ears.

"I have to tell you, I'm so sick of hearing 'call your congressman' because they don't care. If you think Paul Ryan gives a flying crap about you and your gun rights, you know, I mean, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me my entire 53 years of life, well, I should be locked in an institution. So make the case that I should lift a finger to call," Glenn said.

Following the shooting in Alexandria that targeted actual legislators, Rep. Massive believes the time could be right to affect change.

"I know I sound like a broken record, but I am going to say you should call the Speaker's office and say, 'We know you have protection for yourself. What about the other members of Congress and the rest of the public? Don't think this issue will go away. The next time it could be much worse,'" Massie said.

The congressman also addressed the urgency of passing his bill as written, with reciprocity for both legislators and citizens.

"Here's the problem with doing it just for members of Congress: then the urgency to restore your right to self-defense goes down. And I'm seeing this with our leadership right now. The people who are in charge of whether this bill comes to the floor or not are the same people who have had their own personal security detail, which amounts to less than one percent of the House of Representatives," Massie explained.

If you would like to respectfully voice your support for Rep. Massie's bill, call Speaker Ryan's office at (202) 225-0600 and urge him to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote.

GLENN: Hello, America. We want to introduce you again to Congressman Thomas Massie from Kentucky. He is proposing a -- a really good change to our gun laws. One that I think that we can all get behind and help him. I want you to hear why he's proposing it and what it means. We begin there, right now.

(music)

GLENN: Now, you're going to hear things like Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton -- she's from DC -- she says, "This bill flies in the face of the calls for unity."

What Congress is talking about is, how are we going to protect ourselves? And, of course, there are some that say, we want to be able to carry a gun no matter where we go because we're congressmen.

Thomas Massie says, "I've got a better idea." And he's joining us now. Hello, Congressman, how are you?

THOMAS: I'm doing well, Glenn. Thanks for having me on to talk about this bill. This shooting was a real wake-up call, I think, not just for congressmen, but for all Americans.

GLENN: So, first of all, how is everybody that was involved in the shooting? Do you have an update? I know that Scalise was upgraded to I think fair, or was it good yesterday?

THOMAS: Fair. And, yes, he's doing much better. He's taking visitors, in fact. But we've been encouraged not to visit him because he's such a gregarious guy, he'd probably take everybody that visited him. So we have to restrain ourselves here because we want to reach out to him. But he's recovering. It's going to be a long recovery. There's going to be rehabilitation to walk and whatnot.

GLENN: So there's a couple things now that I've been reading that Congress needs to look at. And one of them is, what would have happened if 30 congressmen died? This is one thing that the Constitution doesn't cover. How do we -- how do we get you guys, you know, replaced if you are killed?

And the second thing is this -- this idea that maybe congressmen need more protection or need to be allowed to carry a gun.

THOMAS: Well, let me respond to something that you mentioned about my colleague from Washington, DC. If she's saying this flies in the face of calls for unity, the fact of the matter is, this unites the Republican Party. It may divide the Democrat Party. Because I can tell you, there are members on the other side of the aisle that would vote for this bill if we could get it on the floor today. So I think it actually works across the aisle.

GLENN: So why can't we -- we control the House and the Senate and the White House. Why can't we get it on the floor of the House today?

THOMAS: Well, you know, there are some members of Congress -- and there are very pro-gun members of Congress, who want to bring up legislation only to protect congressmen. Now, listen, those are good ideas. And those members of Congress support the Second Amendment. But here's the problem with doing it just for members of Congress: Then the urgency to restore your right to self-defense goes down. And I'm seeing this with our leadership right now. It -- the people who are in charge of whether this bill comes to the floor or not, are the same people who have had their own personal security detail, which amounts to less than 1 percent of the House of Representatives. By the way, very quickly, just so we all know what we're talking about, my bill would make the District of Columbia honor your concealed carry permit from any state -- and this is for anybody, not just members of Congress -- who comes and visits Washington, DC.

Over three-quarters of the states already offer reciprocity among the states. Washington, DC, is an anomaly. And it's an unsafe spot. Because not only can members of Congress not defend themselves. Members of the public can't defend themselves here.

GLENN: So I know we're talking about Washington, DC, but --

THOMAS: Yep.

GLENN: And if I can look a gift horse in the mouth --

THOMAS: Yeah.

GLENN: -- why are we not talking about this for the entire country, that you -- you know, you got to be able to honor other states? If I have to honor somebody's marriage certificate, why don't they have to honor my concealed weapon permit?

THOMAS: Well, the argument that some people will put up about the -- the Capitol, you know, US Congress telling states that they have honor other state's permits, there's some people that argue the Tenth Amendment, you have to balance that against the Second Amendment.

GLENN: Sure. But they're not doing that with marriage license.

THOMAS: Yeah, exactly. And I would love to see us be able to carry in all states. But the beauty of my bill, Glenn, is that there is no conflict here. There is no legislator for Washington, DC. There is no governor for Washington, DC. Because the Founding Fathers wanted to make sure that the US Congress could write the laws for the city where they had to meet, in just this exact instance, so that they could come here and be safe and so that there would be arbitrary laws that kept our government from functioning. So this is constitutional. The Constitution says that we write the laws for DC.

GLENN: Correct.

THOMAS: Like you just said, if you got a House that's Republican, a Senate that's Republican, and a president that's Republican, and you have clear jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, why does it have the worst gun control laws in the country?

GLENN: So what is the response to your bill so far?

THOMAS: So far, among the membership here, it's been overwhelming. Yesterday, I presented my idea to the entire G.O.P. conference, and before I could sit down, they erupted in applause. And I had members who are not members of the Freedom Caucus come up to me and say, "I know I'm not very conservative, but I sure as heck support your bill." They literally said that to me.

And it's important, but I think our leadership is not responding well to it. They say it's not the right time. I say, this is the exact right time.

GLENN: When is it going to be better? When will it be better? When 30 congressmen were killed?

THOMAS: It's never going to be better. This is urgent. In fact, I have 44 co-sponsors for this bill already, and I just introduced it last Thursday. And I'll probably pick up another four or five today, cosponsors. And I'm telling you, Glenn, if this went to the floor, Democrats would vote for it. Three years ago, I offered legislation that would defund Washington, DC,'s gun control laws. Ironically, I was able to get that to the floor under John Boehner, and Paul Ryan blocked it last summer. He said it wasn't the right time last summer to offer the legislation. But when I got it to the floor under John Boehner, 20 Democrats voted to defund Washington DC's gun control laws.

GLENN: Jeez.

THOMAS: And there was no imperative then like there is now. This is a wake-up call.

GLENN: Okay. So, Thomas, what do you -- I have to tell you, I'm so sick of hearing, "Call your congressman." Call (sound effect). Because they don't care. If you think Paul Ryan gives a flying crap about you and your gun rights, you know -- I mean, how -- again, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me my entire 53 years of life, well, I'm just -- I should be locked in an institution.

So make the case that I should lift a finger to call.

THOMAS: Well, I think, whoever is listening to this, it's probably not your member of Congress who is the problem. It's the leadership, who is preventing this bill from coming to the floor.

And I know I sound like a broken record, but I am going to say you should call the Speaker's office and say, "We know you have protection for yourself. What about the other members of Congress and the rest of the public? Don't think this issue will go away. The next time it could be much worse."

GLENN: All right. So if we call the Speaker's -- do you have -- somebody look up the stupid Speaker's phone number so we can give it out. If we call the Speaker, we specifically need to ask for your bill to be introduced, don't we? Otherwise, they're going to come up with one that just allows them to carry guns, which is a horrible idea.

THOMAS: The reason that idea probably won't work, just to allow members of Congress -- not only does it not restore your Second Amendment rights here in the Capitol City, just to extend it to Congress, it reduces the urgency of some members of Congress. Not all members of Congress.

GLENN: Correct.

THOMAS: But once they feel safe, their urgency to -- to protect your right to protect yourself will go down. Just like it has for the Speaker.

GLENN: Oh, but I will tell you, I mean, they don't seem to care. You know, they did that with health care. And a lot of the Republicans are in on that. They get all the special deals. They get everything. Screw the American people. I got it.

I mean, it sounds like what they will do.

THOMAS: Yep. Well...

GLENN: Sorry, Thomas. I don't mean to take the wind out of your sails. Because I really appreciate you. I really appreciate what you're introducing. And I want to help. And, yes, I will call the Speaker. I mean --

PAT: It's frustrating because we've been so beaten down.

GLENN: It's frustrating.

THOMAS: There's not much wind to take out of my sails. I'm here in the swamp, trying to swim among these creatures.

(laughter)

THOMAS: I can't even get to the wind.

PAT: Does (202)225-0600 sound right for the Speaker's number?

THOMAS: It sounds good. You could call the switchboard here, or you could ask your member of Congress to ask the Speaker to bring this bill up for a vote. Because Democrats will vote for it. I'm telling you, they will vote for it.

There's -- I would love to see the senator who was elected in a state that Trump won, that's up for election, this cycle, telling people that he is against reciprocity in Washington, DC, which is honoring anybody in their states, concealed carry permit.

GLENN: Right. Right.

THOMAS: And it's an indefensible position to say the public and members of Congress can't defend themselves, when the Constitution says the US Congress makes all the laws for Washington, DC.

GLENN: So let's play devil's advocate.

When -- do you have a second, Thomas? Can I take a quick break?

THOMAS: Please.

GLENN: Okay. I'll take a quick break, and then I want to play devil's advocate here and see how you argue the other side.

THOMAS: Sure.

GLENN: Back in a second. Give me the phone number again, Pat.

PAT: Yeah, (202) -- wait a second.

GLENN: Okay. You got to call Speaker Ryan.

PAT: 225 -- oh, yeah. (202)225-0600.

GLENN: Okay. Call speaker Ryan and say you want Thomas Massie's gun legislation for the DC area to be passed as is. Call your congressman and tell him to pressure Speaker Ryan.

What a surprise. Paul Ryan is turning out to be a weasel. I can't believe it!

Call that number now. One more time. Here is the number.

PAT: (202)225-0600.

GLENN: Here's the phone number for the Capitol Hill. And call Republican leadership and tell them you want Thomas Massie's reciprocity bill for the District of Columbia to accept your concealed carry permit for all congressmen and the American public.

PAT: (202)225-0600.

GLENN: Okay. So let's take a couple of things.

Thomas, first, let's talk a little about the leadership and why they would want -- why they're not jumping on this bill.

STU: Right. Thomas, because I don't see Paul Ryan as necessarily an anti-gun guy. I've never seen that out of him. I mean, certainly part of leadership is Steve Scalise. So this is -- I mean, when you say leadership is at fault here, who are we talking about, and what's going on?

GLENN: Or what's the motivation?

THOMAS: Well, I've pitched it to members of the G.O.P. conference here. They love it. But I got a really icy reception with Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McCarthy.

I have to suspect part of their lack of urgency -- they say, well, they kind of -- maybe we should do it later, just not now.

I suspect their lack of urgency could be due to the fact that they have two security officers with them at all time.

GLENN: Hmm. Okay.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: All right.

PAT: That's amazing.

GLENN: So let's get into that a little bit.

When you have security, you tend not to worry about all the other people because you start to look at everybody else carrying a gun as a threat to your security. And that's what the other side will -- will say. We're in Washington, DC. And we've got -- you know, you're going to have a gun in the Smithsonian. A gun in the national archives. A gun in the nation's Capitol. You can't do that. The American people coming in with guns.

THOMAS: Well, Glenn, I can see across the river from here to Virginia, which offers reciprocity to 49 other states. Okay? And there's problems over there in Virginia. The Pentagon is there in Virginia. It's almost still part of DC.

GLENN: Yeah, but, Thomas, the Pentagon -- they have soldiers there.

THOMAS: I'm just saying that's the proximity to the Capitol. It's virtually the same area. And they have reciprocity. In fact, these congressmen were playing in Virginia at a ball field. But the reason they couldn't carry a weapon is they were coming from DC and were going to return to DC.

GLENN: Right.

THOMAS: The other thing, Glenn, 98 percent of mass public shootings, since 1950, have been in places where citizens haven't been able to defend themselves.

And if you are in a gun-free zone, which effectively all of Washington, DC, is, you are -- you're 20 times more likely in a gun-free zone to be the victim of a mass shooting.

GLENN: So I can't take a gun into a federal building in any city, or a state building, or a school, or anything else. If I'm traveling with my gun and I go into the Smithsonian or I go into the Capitol, you won't let me bring my gun into the Capitol. But you have a locker there or something for the guns? Is that what you would imagine would happen?

THOMAS: Well, in the Capitol, in the buildings here, in the complex, people say, "Well, you know, do you want tourists carrying guns in there?" The Capitol is literal the only example of a gun-free zone. The buildings themselves. Because they have two police officers at every entrance and a metal detector.

GLENN: Correct.

THOMAS: So that when you're inside one of these congressional buildings, you are in what is really a unicorn because it's so expensive to create. You are in a gun-free zone, where criminals -- where the criminals don't have guns.

GLENN: But if I don't -- if every federal building says it's a gun-free zone. Has a sign that says, "You can't bring your gun in," then my gun is locked in the hotel room because I want to go to the museum or -- go ahead.

THOMAS: Glenn, if it were up to me, I would let you carry in the Smithsonian. I mean, I don't see a problem with that.

GLENN: Right. I don't either.

THOMAS: And, in fact, I think it's -- I don't want to even phrase it that way, I want you to be able to carry in the Smithsonian. It would be safer in the Smithsonian if you could. You would be 20 times less likely to be the victim of a mass shooting.

GLENN: I know. Thomas Massie, the congressman from Kentucky. Really, truly one of the good guys. Keep up the fight. Don't get discouraged. We will call Speaker Ryan and say, "Introduce Thomas Massie's bill for carrying a concealed weapon in Washington, DC, for all people." Thank you, Thomas. Back in a minute.

THOMAS: Thank you, Glenn.

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.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

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.

Glenn's Show Prep

TAKE ACTION: Call Speaker Ryan to Urge Support of New Concealed Carry Legislation in DC

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

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.

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

Not-so-expert advice

A republic no more?

The path forward

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

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.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

Choosing death over care

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

The logical end of a broken system

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

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.

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.

How Sharia arrives

The warning from those who have lived under it

America is vulnerable

Wake up before it is too late

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

The crisis beneath the headlines

The quiet return of meaning

Where renewal begins