Stembridge News Digest

  • America needs heroes who do not apologize for being heroes Sun, 26 Jul 2026 19:00:00 +0000


    Hollywood can erase Achilles, redefine manhood, and make the hero apologize. It still cannot escape Homer’s warning: Civilization dies when men reject sacred duties. Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” opened to more than $120 million at the domestic box office. Millions will see it, and for many, Nolan’s version will become the only “Odyssey” they know. The fight over this film is therefore a fight over who gets to explain Western civilization to the next generation.

    Christopher Nolan may change Homer’s story, but he cannot change the truth beneath it. Hollywood can rewrite the hero. It cannot rewrite the law above him.

    Hollywood wants Homer’s name. It wants his monsters, battles, kings, ships, blood, and glory. It simply does not want Homer’s moral world.

    The clearest example comes in the land of the dead. In Homer’s telling, Odysseus meets Achilles, the greatest champion of the Greeks. Nolan removes Achilles and substitutes Sinon, a figure absent from Homer’s poem and known chiefly from Virgil’s later “Aeneid.” The film recasts Sinon as an innocent sacrifice and moral conscience, and Odysseus calls him the greatest soldier he ever knew.

    “Elliot” Page plays Sinon. This is not an argument about Page’s dignity or talent. Every person bears the image of God. It is an argument about symbolism. Movies communicate through casting as surely as through dialogue. One of Western civilization’s defining male warriors disappears. A newly elevated character replaces him, becomes the moral center, and receives the story’s highest praise for soldierly greatness.

    Whatever Nolan intended, the cultural message is hard to miss: The old hero must be displaced, the old understanding of manhood rewritten, and the victorious Western warrior made to apologize for winning.

    Homer never presents Odysseus as flawless. He is proud, deceptive, and reckless. His cunning saves lives; his arrogance costs them. Those flaws do not erase his heroism. They make him human. The Western tradition has always understood that a great man can also be a gravely flawed man. The Old Testament’s King David proves the point.

    Modern culture increasingly treats male imperfection as proof that male greatness itself is suspect. Nolan therefore turns Odysseus into another Robert Oppenheimer: a brilliant man psychologically crushed by what his brilliance accomplished. The Trojan horse becomes less a triumph of courage and cunning than an original sin haunting its inventor. Victory becomes guilt. Authority becomes a burden. Odysseus returns home only to surrender the throne to Telemachus and leave Ithaca with Penelope. A king becomes an exile.

    That is a moral inversion of Homer.

    RELATED: Odysseus sails west with nowhere left to go

    Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

    Homer did not need to weaken men to honor women. Penelope is already one of the strongest women in Western literature. For 20 years, she protects her household, preserves her son’s inheritance, resists the suitors, and outwits the men trying to seize her husband’s kingdom.

    When Odysseus returns, Penelope tests him by ordering their marriage bed moved. He knows it cannot be moved because he built it around the living trunk of an olive tree. Homer gives us a courageous husband and an intelligent wife. Their strengths differ, but their dignity does not.

    Modern ideology often imagines equality only as interchangeability, as though men and women must become the same or one must dominate the other. Homer offers something richer. Masculine courage does not diminish women. Feminine fidelity does not diminish men. Odysseus and Penelope are great together because their distinct strengths serve the same home.

    Why, then, do the secular elite keep returning to the Western classics only to dismantle them?

    Because the classics teach that we are not self-created. We inherit a family, a history, a nation, a body, and obligations that precede our desires. That lesson is intolerable to an ideology built on radical autonomy.

    A young man who admires Odysseus may conclude that courage, loyalty, fatherhood, and duty are good. A young woman who admires Penelope may discover that faithfulness, wisdom, and defending a household are forms of strength. A child who learns that even kings answer to the divine may ask whether presidents, professors, and politicians answer to an authority above themselves.

    That is why the hero must apologize, the father must abdicate, the home must become a prison, and the divine must become a psychological projection. The secular elite do not merely dislike Western civilization. They need Westerners to lose confidence in it.

    Yet Nolan’s film accidentally preserves one of Homer’s central truths. Characters repeatedly invoke “Zeus’ law,” which Nolan presents as a version of the Golden Rule. The Greeks called it xenia: the sacred duties binding host and guest. Hospitality demanded generosity from the host and restraint from the guest.

    Penelope’s suitors are therefore more than rude houseguests. They are enemies of civilization. They occupy Odysseus’ home, consume his wealth, pursue his wife, and plot to murder his son. They exploit an inheritance they did not build while rejecting every duty that inheritance imposes.

    RELATED: Elon Musk wants ‘historically accurate’ ‘Odyssey’ movie — and may put his money where his mouth is

    Print Collector/Getty Images

    Our universities, museums, entertainment companies, foundations, and public institutions were built through generations of sacrifice, learning, faith, and trust. Today’s cultural elite inherited them and now use them to teach that Western civilization is uniquely wicked, Christianity oppressive, fathers tyrants, heroes frauds, and the family an instrument of domination. They are Homer’s suitors with graduate degrees. They feast inside the house while condemning the people who built it.

    What Nolan calls Zeus’ law points toward a higher law. Christians do not worship Zeus. Homer’s gods are false and morally compromised. Yet even the Greeks understood a truth our enlightened age often forgets: Civilization depends on a moral law higher than human appetite.

    Christ reveals that law perfectly: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” Paul goes farther: “In humility count others more significant than yourselves.

    Christianity gives sacred obligation its true foundation. We honor the stranger because he bears God’s image. We honor marriage, family, country, and neighbor because every human relationship answers ultimately to God.

    Without God, the Golden Rule becomes a fragile suggestion. Why should the powerful restrain themselves? Why sacrifice for future generations? Why preserve an inheritance instead of consuming it? A civilization cannot live forever on moral habits inherited from a religion it has abandoned.

    America needs families who read the Bible, schools that teach the classics without apologizing for them, and churches that form courageous Christians rather than timid spectators.

    Christopher Nolan may change Homer’s story, but he cannot change the truth beneath it. A man still needs a home worth returning to. A family still needs protection. A civilization still needs heroes. A nation still needs a God above itself.

    Hollywood can rewrite the hero. It cannot rewrite the law above him.

  • Glenn Beck: The housing crisis will spiral out of control unless we do this NOW Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:00:00 +0000


    Why does buying a home feel more out of reach than ever? According to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck, the answer isn’t corporate greed, mysterious market manipulation, or some hidden conspiracy theory. It’s basic economics and government policy.

    Citing new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and data from the National Association of Home Builders, Beck argues that America’s housing affordability crisis stems from a collision of rising demand and artificially constrained supply.

    “Thirty percent of the increase in U.S. home prices from '21 to '24 along with 20% of the rise in rent prices comes from just bringing in seven, 10, 15 million people and just adding them in,” Glenn explains.

    “Today, our home, the typical American house, runs closer to five times what a family earns in a year,” he adds.


    Back in March, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas ran the numbers on what seven million illegal border crossings under the Biden administration did to the local housing market.

    In Dallas, it put “roughly 30% of the total run-up in home prices and about 20% of the run-up in rents.”

    “Every 1% increase in unauthorized workers relative to the local workforce pushed the home price up 2.2%. And rents up 1.4%. So you want to know why we’re having a hard time buying houses?” he asks, answering, “It’s because our local governments along with the federal and state government are completely out of control with regulation, and our federal government just opened up the borders.”

    “Now, why isn’t that being explained to the American people?” he asks.

    “It’s not the builders. It’s not the people selling the houses. It’s the government that is the problem,” he says.

    And while the Biden administration spent four years adding millions of people to the demand side, local and federal governments made it "slower and more expensive to add anything to the supply side."

    “There’s no mystery here. There’s no shadowy cartel. There’s no Jew behind the corner. It’s a bathtub with the tap wide open and a towel that is stuffed in the drain,” Glenn explains.

    “Which means the fix should be just as simple. And there are three fixes,” he says.

    “One, don’t add people to the country faster than you can add roofs to it. ... Two, make it legal to build a cheap house. ... Three, stop borrowing money you didn’t have because the deficit sets the interest rate and the interest rate sets the mortgage,” he continues.

    “I don’t know why we don’t do this.”

    Want more from Glenn Beck?

    To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

  • Can you trust a machine to decide if a human wrote this? Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:30:00 +0000


    Substack has identified a real problem. It may have chosen the worst possible solution.

    On July 21, Substack co‑founder Chris Best announced a new feature called “scan for AI text.” Readers can run posts, Notes, comments, and replies longer than 100 words through an AI detector made by Pangram. The resulting report estimates how much of the text was written by a human and how much was generated or assisted by artificial intelligence.

  • Every long arrest video exposes the same failure Sun, 26 Jul 2026 13:30:00 +0000


    What do Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and a viral body-camera video from the University of Central Florida have in common? More than most people might think.

    Last weekend, I attended an instructor-certification program at Gracie University in Torrance, California. It was my third time completing the training since I began studying Gracie Jiu-Jitsu six years ago. Rener and Ryron Gracie have developed a remarkable system that adapts essential techniques for real-world confrontations while prioritizing everyone’s safety.

    The objective of every arrest should be simple: The officer goes home safely, the suspect enters custody alive and without unnecessary injury, and bystanders remain safe.

    They also helped develop SafeWrap, a restraint system created after medical professionals asked for a safer way to control violent patients. Hospitals sometimes needed five or six nurses to restrain one belligerent person, exposing staff and patients to serious injury.

    That problem came to mind while I watched the UCF video. The encounter has become another argument about pronouns, mental health, and whether the officer used the right words. Those questions may deserve discussion. But the video also reveals a more practical failure: It took officers far too long to place one resisting person in handcuffs.

    The officer began with verbal commands. When those failed, he warned that he would use pepper spray. Backup arrived. The student continued resisting. Officers threatened a Taser and eventually deployed it, yet the struggle continued before they finally secured the handcuffs.

    Whatever one thinks about the politics surrounding the incident, a prolonged physical struggle endangers everyone involved.

    Every additional second increases the chance of serious injury. Officers suffer damaged shoulders, backs, and hands. Suspects can strike their heads, break bones, or experience medical emergencies. Bystanders can become involved. A routine arrest can turn into a tragedy when officers lack a reliable method for establishing control without escalating through increasingly severe force.

    This is where Gracie training deserves serious attention.

    I am a professor, not a police officer or medical professional. But I have trained in Gracie Combatives and SafeWrap, and the underlying principle is straightforward: Use position, leverage, and technique to control a dangerous person quickly while minimizing injury.

    RELATED: ‘Just say the right pronoun!’ How one cop-cam video exemplifies the absurdity of 'hands-off' policing

    kali9/iStock/Getty Images

    Police departments should study Gracie Survival Tactics. The program adapts the same philosophy behind SafeWrap for law enforcement, teaching officers to establish positional control, restrain resisting subjects, and transition safely to handcuffing.

    Gracie Jiu-Jitsu teaches a smaller or weaker person to overcome a larger opponent through skill rather than brute force. Applied properly, those techniques help officers manage dangerous encounters involving suspects, bystanders, and fellow officers.

    The goal is not to win a fight. It is to end the fight safely and move the suspect into the justice system.

    Good control tactics can reduce the need for repeated strikes, prolonged wrestling, and repeated use of intermediate weapons. They also make officers less likely to escalate out of fear or frustration because they have techniques that work under pressure.

    Pain compliance often fails when a person is intoxicated, mentally ill, or in extreme emotional distress. Pepper spray does not affect everyone equally. Tasers do not always produce immediate compliance. The UCF student was tased and still resisted.

    RELATED: ‘Back the blue’ cannot mean blind obedience

    gorodenkoff/iStock/Getty Images

    When those tools fail, officers need a dependable way to control the person. Simply forcing a suspect prone and placing a knee on the back is neither reliable nor always medically safe. A subject can still posture onto his hands and knees, and prolonged pressure can create additional risks.

    Safe restraint training offers a better option. Departments around the country have trained with Rener Gracie, and law enforcement professionals have provided favorable testimonials. The Los Angeles Police Department has also discussed the program’s effectiveness here.

    America spends enormous sums on police technology while devoting comparatively little time to ensuring that every officer has competent grappling and restraint skills. We would never expect firefighters to rely on better hoses while neglecting rescue training. Policing deserves the same practical standard.

    The objective of every arrest should be simple: The officer goes home safely, the suspect enters custody alive and without unnecessary injury, and bystanders remain safe.

    Viral arrest videos will always invite political arguments. But anyone who wants fewer injuries, lawsuits, and controversial uses of force should support one practical reform: Train officers to control resisting suspects safely, efficiently, and humanely before the encounter spirals into something worse.

    I train at Gracie Glendale in Phoenix and value every trip to Gracie University in Torrance. Medical and law enforcement professionals should consider SafeWrap and Gracie Survival Tactics. Citizens who want policing to be both effective and humane should ask their local departments whether officers receive this kind of training.

  • Scottish World Cup fans fell in love with this iconic American beer so much they're selling it in the UK now Sun, 26 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000


    The 2026 World Cup was initially about soccer for Scottish travelers, but it very quickly became about beer.

    During the historic tournament, the Scots used Boston as their home base, where they became known for showing up at different events in droves, singing and drinking.

    'Do they ever sleep? Do they ever get tired?'

    Whether it was Fenway Park or the local pub, the Scottish fans drank multiple establishments dry. One example was the Black Rose, where a local fan remarked that the bar had never gone dry in its 50-year history. With the Scottish travelers around, however, the venue ran out of drinks "including water" for the first time.

    Scotland played two out of its three World Cup games at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts: a 1-0 win against Haiti and a 1-0 loss to Morocco.

    During that time, the fans known as the Tartan Army — which refers to the tartan pattern, aka plaid — fell in love with one particular American staple native to the area: Samuel Adams.

    In particular, the Scots loved Samuel Adams Boston Lager so much that the brewery pub ran out.

    The company told ABC News in June that its flagship taproom went dry after the Tartan Army drank four times what is typically sold, all during Scotland's first game.

    "Do they ever sleep? Do they ever get tired?" one employee asked. This spawned an "emergency order" to prepare for the next game, and the rest is history.

    Now, the new favorite is officially available in Scotland for fans to (responsibly) pound on their home turf.

    RELATED: Belgian soccer players mock Trump after absolute rout of Team USA in World Cup

    Plaid-ing out

    U.K.-based online craft beer retailer Beerhunter is now officially carrying Samuel Adams Boston Lager on its website.

    As an import, it's obviously going to cost a few quid, currently listed on sale for £49.46 (~$56) for a 12-pack, down from its usual price of £54.95 (~$62).

    "Samuel Adams Boston Lager became part of Scotland's World Cup story this summer," Ryan Smith, director of Beerhunter, told Scottish outlet the Herald.

    "We saw incredible interest after the Tartan Army made headlines in Boston, and we've had customers asking us ever since when it would be available in the U.K. again," Smith continued.

    Smith said he was delighted to bring the beer back to Scotland while praising its tradition. The beer had become scarce in Scotland somewhere between 2023 and 2024.

    "It's an iconic American lager with a fantastic brewing heritage, and we think Scottish fans will enjoy raising another glass to some unforgettable memories."

    RELATED: Jasmine Crockett suggests anyone who was rooting for Argentina at the World Cup is racist

    Taylor Coester/Washington Post/Getty Images

    A hoppy revolution

    Of course, it cannot be glossed over how Samuel Adams himself was a British citizen who fell in love with the idea of the United States.

    According to his biography, Adams often cited the Magna Carta of 1215 as a reason to protest British rule over Massachusetts. Barons in England had faced resistance for their taxation, and Adams found Boston's struggles against taxes "all too familiar."

    Adams founded the Sons of Liberty, a paramilitary political organization that coined the phrase "No taxation without representation."

    While Adams and taxation may have been part of what separated the British and the Americans at one time, the beer that bears Adams' name is seemingly what has brought them back together — at least the Scottish portion of them.

    Beerhunter also lists Samuel Adams American Cherry Wheat Beer, Summer Ale, and the Beers of Summer variety pack on its website.

    Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

  • Holy cow, the climate crowd is full of bull Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:30:00 +0000


    Wildfire smoke has again spread across large swaths of the United States, some of it settling into our Montana valley.

    As I watch it drift across the landscape, I have questions.

    Until climate activists learn proportion, humility, and a willingness to live under the rules they prescribe for everyone else, let the cows fart in their general direction.

    For most of my adult life, I have heard that cattle are harming the climate. The public warning is often reduced to a crude slogan: Cow flatulence is destroying the planet.

    Cattle actually release far more methane by belching than by farting. That distinction is easily missed by people who lecture ranchers about animals they have never raised.

    Some of those lecturers also live on a scale few ranchers could imagine.

    One billionaire owns a home in this region whose construction consumed enormous quantities of timber, stone, concrete, copper, fuel, heavy equipment, transportation, and energy. And that was before anyone heated, cooled, maintained, or traveled to it.

    He is free to build it. His lectures about someone else’s cattle still deserve scrutiny.

    This is not an argument against climate science. Cattle produce methane. Human activity affects the environment. Clean air, healthy soil, responsible forestry, and wise stewardship all deserve serious attention.

    So do perspective, proportion, and credibility.

    Our family partners with local ranchers to graze cattle on our property. They evaluate the grass, moisture, acreage, herd size, grazing time, and recovery period. They know which pasture can carry cattle and which one needs rest.

    Responsible grazing reduces excess vegetation while improving grass for cattle and wildlife.

    We have also logged portions of the property, removing unhealthy and overcrowded trees. We cannot prevent lightning or command the weather. Wildfires will happen. Thoughtful grazing, logging, and forest management can still reduce fuel and risk.

    That is good old-fashioned stewardship.

    Protecting land does not always mean leaving it untouched. Sometimes it means tending what has been entrusted to us. That principle ought to provide common ground rather than another excuse for a climate battle.

    People with dirt under their fingernails rarely spend much time posting about sustainability. They are too busy practicing it. Their environmentalism is not a brand. It is a responsibility.

    RELATED: How one lowered flag carried me home

    Peter Rosenberger

    The land corrects arrogance. Rain may not come. Winter may arrive early. One careless decision can damage a pasture for years.

    Farmers and ranchers understand stewardship because their livelihoods, families, and futures depend on it. They have skin in the game.

    Cattle do not recognize Christmas, birthdays, or weekends. They require attention every day.

    Yet ranchers must stop that work to gather records, attend hearings, answer regulators, call attorneys, and explain livestock to people who have never raised an animal, repaired a fence in January, or waited anxiously for rain.

    Every hour spent defending ranching is an hour not spent ranching.

    The activist loses nothing by being wrong. The bureaucrat still gets paid. The rancher loses time, money, and sometimes the ability to pass the operation to the next generation.

    The absurdity does more than insult the people producing our food. It interrupts them.

    I watch smoke from fires whose damage might have been reduced through better stewardship. I watch other nations operate under standards American producers would never be allowed to ignore. Then I hear wealthy climate voices lambaste farmers and ranchers who must dip into thin profits to defend themselves against well-funded organizations that bear few consequences for bad policy.

    Those critics do not wake before dawn to tend livestock or land.

    A third-generation rancher will naturally hesitate to take livestock advice from someone lecturing on TikTok from Starbucks.

    Agriculture has an environmental footprint, as does nearly everything required to sustain human life.

    Yet when wildfires send smoke across a continent and major industrial nations emit pollution on a scale no Montana rancher could approach, the cow somehow remains a favorite villain.

    Perhaps ranchers make convenient targets because they are nearby. They pay taxes, keep records, answer regulators, and obey the law. They are much easier to pressure than foreign governments or wealthy climate evangelists whose lifestyles make their sermons difficult to take seriously.

    America’s ranchers may be easier to regulate than the Chinese Communist Party. That does not make them the greater threat.

    RELATED: Consider the lilies — and one old Montana fir

    Peter Rosenberger

    The double standard is not confined to policy. The people demanding sacrifice from everyone else often embody it.

    None of this disproves climate science. It reveals something about conviction.

    If you insist the theater is on fire while buying a penthouse above the stage, the audience may wonder whether you believe your own warning.

    Hypocrisy destroys moral authority.

    If the threat is global, apply the standards globally. If sacrifice is urgent, those demanding it should go first. If sustainability matters, listen to the people who have spent generations sustaining land, livestock, families, and communities.

    Regulating American production out of existence does not make the world cleaner when the same goods are produced elsewhere under weaker standards and shipped back across an ocean.

    That is outsourcing with a halo.

    Ranchers are not asking to escape responsibility. They are asking not to be treated as environmental criminals by people who share neither their experience nor their consequences.

    Perhaps, for once, we need more consistency and less cowbell.

    Until climate activists learn proportion, humility, and a willingness to live under the rules they prescribe for everyone else, let the cows fart in their general direction.

  • How Lucifer fell: The origin of Satan and sin in heaven Sun, 26 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000


    The fall of the angel Lucifer is a story that oftentimes doesn’t get a lot of attention, as many Christians tend to focus on how the devil plagues humanity today.

    But how did Lucifer become the devil? What did that devolution look like, and when did sin really begin?

    On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” BlazeTV host Rick Burgess sits down with Pastor Mac Brunson to dive into the origin story of the cosmos’ greatest enemy.

    “Somewhere in eternity past before God created the heavens and the earth, He created what we call, or what Scripture calls, angels,” Brunson says, noting the different varieties of angelic beings, including seraphim, cherubim, Michael the archangel, and messenger angels like Gabriel.

    Lucifer, he notes, was none of these, however. “Created above all the others,” his name means “light-bearer,” and he was “far more beautiful” than the others.

    Rick argues that God, despite being all-knowing, “is not afraid of choices” and allowed the angels to make their own.

    “He certainly gave angels intelligence; he gave them personality. They each have a name. ... They also have the ability to communicate, not only to communicate with man ... [but also] with each other,” Brunson adds, highlighting the individuality and agency of angelic beings.

    Lucificer was no different. Free to make his own choices, he rebelled against God.

    Brunson, reading from Isaiah 14, recounts Lucifer’s evil desire to “ascend to heaven,” “raise [his] throne above the stars of God,” “sit on the mount of assembly,” “ascend above the heights of the clouds,” and “make [himself] like the Most High.”

    “And he makes that choice, and Revelation tells us that a third of the angels went along with him, and, of course, they were cast out of heaven,” he says.

    “So sin did not begin on earth; it began in heaven? That’s why Jesus says we’re going to have a new heaven and a new earth?” Rick asks.

    “That’s exactly right,” Brunson says, noting that “evil begins with this creature [Lucifer].”

    But his power always has and always will pale in comparison to God’s.

    “He’s a problem for us, but —” Rick says.

    “He’s not a problem for God,” Brunson concludes.

    To hear more of the theological deep dive into the origins of heaven and Satan, watch the episode above.

    Want more from Rick Burgess?

    To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

  • To raise Christian children who become Christian adults, one simple habit matters most Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:30:00 +0000


    For decades, a familiar story has shaped Christian family life. It involves Sunday morning in the pews. A week at Bible camp each summer. Wednesday night youth group with pizza and a lesson. Parents pour real love and intention into these routines.

    Noble as the effort is, a recent study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion suggests they are only part of the picture. Researchers analyzed data from more than 16,000 Christians nationwide, comparing childhood religious experiences with adult outcomes. Church attendance mattered. So did stable families. But the strongest predictor of lasting adult faith asked nothing extraordinary of parents.

    I walked away from the faith with the kind of cocky certainty God seems to install in everyone between the ages of 13 and 19.

    It was simply this: They talked to their children about God.

    Homilies at home

    That finding immediately took me back to my own childhood.

    The first picture that comes to mind isn't a sanctuary or a stained-glass window, but the front seat of the car on the way home from school. The back yard, where my father pulled weeds like the yard had personally offended him. The living room at 10:30 on a school night, all of us long past bedtime and pretending the clock didn't exist. My grandmother, with a cup of tea that was always either too hot or somehow already cold, telling me about the importance of the Bible.

    Those conversations are the reason I still believe.

    My parents were, and still are, very decent people. For many years, they were overworked and underpaid in the way most ordinary families know all too well. Bills on the counter. Shifts that ran long. Sleep that ran short. Children who treated the front seat like contested real estate.

    And yet they always found the energy to talk to me about Christianity — not in a recited, hands-folded-in-our-laps sort of way, but as if God were actually in the room.

    We talked about how Christianity shaped the West. The fall of Rome. Forgiveness, suffering, and why Christians built the first hospitals while emperors were busy building coliseums to watch people die in. We talked about why the values modern secular society treats as self-evident — human dignity, charity, and mercy toward strangers — didn't fall from the sky. They grew slowly out of Christian soil, across centuries of tending.

    What my parents said at home stayed with me longer than any sermon. Ask around, and plenty of people will say the same.

    Half-cocked heretic

    I was a rebellious teenager, and I rebelled with real enthusiasm. I walked away from the faith with the kind of cocky certainty God seems to install in everyone between the ages of 13 and 19, presumably as a test of parental patience. Christianity struck me as restrictive and embarrassing. I mistook cynicism for intelligence — a standard rookie mistake among precocious teenagers. I got good grades and assumed an A in English qualified me to dismiss theology, philosophy, and 2,000 years of Christian thought.

    And yet, even at my wildest and most stubborn, even when I was giving the New Atheists more attention than they ever deserved, something my parents had planted refused to be dug up.

    I expected my mother to lose her mind during a particularly insufferable phase of all this. Instead, she sat me down and spoke to me like an adult. No yelling. No guilt-tripping. No dragging me back to church by the collar or, as Irish mothers sometimes prefer, the ear.

    RELATED: The Ireland I grew up in is gone

    SOPA Images/Getty Images

    Talking it out

    Instead, she calmly walked me through the contradictions in the worldview I had been presenting to my friends. She pointed out, without raising her voice, where ego had been doing my thinking for me. And then, with the patience of a woman who had already won the argument before it started, she explained why atheism was a fool's errand.

    That was the moment I rediscovered the faith. Fifteen years on, I have never looked back.

    That is exactly what the new study captures. Faith transmission is relational before it is institutional. Children remember whether their parents actually believed the things they claimed to believe, or whether church was just another Sunday errand sandwiched between a leisurely breakfast and a last-minute homework check.

    A kid can sit in a pew every week of childhood and still walk away convinced that religion is little more than an incredibly polite social club. Conversation breaks that spell. Conversation forces engagement. Questions surface. Doubts get aired. Faith becomes something a young person can actually argue with, wrestle against, and eventually own.

  • Mamdani’s one-word border answer said it all Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:00:00 +0000


    "Have you ever been to the U.S.-Mexico border?”

    “No.”

  • Brainless humans? Backup bodies? Inside biotech's depraved new world Sat, 25 Jul 2026 16:30:00 +0000


    Social media's magicians spent decades perfecting the art of slicing human attention into advertising revenue. Is the next step on the corporate road map farming human tissue for spare parts?

    The tech is there, or almost there. The ideas have percolated for decades. All it takes, it seems, is the will.

    The concept of individual self-ownership becomes entirely obsolete.

    An early pitch deck for R3 Bio, a quiet biotech startup operating out of California, laid out a vision that makes classic horror fiction look rather mild. The company’s leadership, reports suggest, engaged in internal discussions regarding the production of brainless, nonsentient human bodies designed for the explicit purpose of organ harvesting, pharmaceutical testing, and eventual commercial deployment.

    They christened these biological monstrosities "organ sacks."

    The terminology speaks volumes to the moral framework seizing imaginations in the contemporary tech executive class. When a team of researchers and engineers looks at the human form and sees an inconveniently conscious container for marketable kidneys, the line between medical innovation and factory farming disappears completely.

    Executives at R3 Bio floated plans to reprogram monkey cells, cultivate complete organ systems, and engineer these living biological constructs to be intentionally primitive enough to bypass federal ethical guidelines.

    But this isn't some sudden Silicon Valley obsession. The ambition to redesign human biology has been gathering momentum worldwide for years.

    They have a dream

    In October 2022, biotech investors gathered in Zurich to debate the commercial viability of synthetic biology, openly celebrating the day human biology would be fully decoupled from traditional ideas of personhood. The attendees viewed the human body as an inefficient piece of legacy software requiring a total architectural overhaul. It was only a matter of time before the idea caught on.

    Scientists at R3 Bio defended their research behind the usual wall of righteous PR speak, insisting their work aims to end the chronic shortage of donor organs and cure terminal illnesses. They publicly insist that full-scale human organ fabrication remains outside their current operational scope and that their public website reflects a commitment to safe, traditional cell therapy.

    But the problem runs deeper than what R3 Bio says it is or isn't doing today. It's what history tells us can happen when scientific ambition outruns consent, oversight, and basic human dignity.

    The playbook never changes. In 1951, researchers extracted cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge or consent, creating the HeLa cell line that generated billions in profit for pharmaceutical giants while her family struggled to pay medical bills. The medical establishment transformed a living human being into a self-sustaining corporate product, establishing a precedent that today's biotech firms are eager to scale up to the entire human torso. There is an enormous amount of money to be made. And where the fevered dreams of high-tech immortality are concerned, human morality has a troubling habit of turning negotiable.

    RELATED: Anti-aging mogul's next act? He'll harvest organs from his own clone

    L-R: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images

    A society grounded in the belief that human life possesses inherent dignity treats the human body as an inherently sacred structure rather than a machine assembled from interchangeable parts. The secular technocracy reigning in Northern California views the human body as a collection of meat components that can be optimized, monetized, and swapped out.

    Death of the self

    The transition from healing the sick to manufacturing customized human vessels happened while everyone was distracted by social media algorithms. Engineers want to replace a failing heart, grow an artificial liver in a vat, construct a brainless body to house the spares, and call the whole process market efficiency. The language of human medicine was completely swallowed by the inhumane jargon of auto repair.

    This mechanistic worldview demands that every biological boundary be erased in the name of efficiency and infinite growth. If a brainless body exists as a legal product, the entity owning the patent exercises total property rights over a human biological shell. If a corporation can copyright the genetic sequence of a custom-grown torso, the concept of individual self-ownership becomes entirely obsolete.

    Tech elites frequently talk about death as a minor coding error awaiting a software upgrade. They invest billions in longevity protocols, upload schemes, and cellular rejuvenation, completely convinced that their wealth entitles them to bypass mortality itself. They view the average citizen as a temporary user of biological material that will eventually be recycled into the supply chain.

    When a society permits a handful of unaccountable individuals to determine what constitutes a real human being, we have entered troubling territory. Will the directors sitting on biotech boards inevitably declare themselves the rightful managers of the human species, reserving complete bodies for themselves while the rest of the population functions as the raw resource pool?

    That may sound absurd. So did the idea that machines would one day run businesses, create music, and think well enough to replace the people who created them. Now, the same people who gave us artificial intelligence want to start redesigning natural intelligence.

    The men running these laboratories will continue pushing the boundaries of biological desecration until explicit, uncompromising legal barriers stop them. They operate with the supreme confidence of individuals who believe they are God's gifts to science, entirely blind to the horrifying reality of what they are creating.

    Who asked America's biotech heavyweights to play God? Not the average American, that's for sure.

    Nobody held a referendum on whether human beings should be redesigned, disassembled, and rebuilt by private companies with billions of dollars and almost no public accountability. But they're not waiting for permission.

  • Is it wrong for Christians to read the Quran or Book of Mormon? Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0000


    Many Christians avoid reading texts like the Quran or the Book of Mormon altogether, fearing they could be led astray.

    However, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey argues that understanding what other religions actually teach can be valuable — if it’s done carefully.

    “I don’t think it’s wrong to read the Quran or the Book of Mormon as a Christian to try to really understand like a primary source for what these people believe,” Stuckey explains, though she notes that she “wouldn’t do it alone” and “wouldn’t do it without your Bible.”

    “I wouldn’t do it without supplemental resources from Christians who really have studied and understood these texts because I think it would be easy in the Book of Mormon to be like, ‘Oh yeah, well, you know, that kind of makes sense,’ but ... we have to be comparing it to the word of God to make sure that everything totally aligns,” she says.


    Looking into scholars who have “done a lot of work, understand the historical context,” and “have cross-referenced these texts” would be essential for anyone determined to understand other religious texts.

    “So, I don’t know necessarily that you have to go to the primary source to understand their perspective,” she says.

    Rather, “do so in community, do so with the leadership and mentorship of other mature Christians.”

    “Do so alongside your Bible. I think if you do all of those things prayerfully, then it can be OK,” she continues.

    Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

    To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

  • The socialists are coming for the Senate Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:30:00 +0000


    As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, Americans are rightly reflecting on the enduring genius of the Constitution. For two and a half centuries, separated powers, federalism, and institutional checks have protected liberty against the concentration of power.

    That system has survived civil war, depressions, and foreign totalitarian threats. Yet as the nation celebrates this milestone, a radical faction at home has published a manifesto aimed at dismantling the constitutional structure that made those achievements possible.

    The platform calls for the ‘public ownership and democratic control’ of major corporations, energy grids, and transportation infrastructure.

    The Democratic Socialists of America just released a national platform titled “Workers Deserve More.” The populist title conceals an agenda far more radical than another increase in the minimum wage or an expansion of organized labor’s influence.

    This is not a conventional progressive wish list. It is a blueprint for remaking the American republic and weakening the constitutional limits that stand between citizens and concentrated political power.

    The platform begins by demanding the abolition of the United States Senate. The DSA would replace the bicameral Congress with a single legislative chamber, concentrating federal lawmaking power in a radically expanded House of Representatives.

    That proposal attacks one of the central compromises of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The Senate protects smaller states from domination by a handful of heavily populated metropolitan regions and forces national majorities to build broader coalitions.

    A single chamber based solely on proportional representation would move the country toward unchecked majority rule — precisely the danger James Madison warned against in Federalist 62.

    RELATED: ‘Need a cop? Thank socialism’ is dumb - but dangerously effective

    kali9/iStock/Getty Images

    The assault does not stop with Congress. The DSA platform also calls for severe restrictions on judicial review, placing the Supreme Court under congressional control and preventing it from striking down unconstitutional laws enacted by the proposed single chamber.

    The platform would also replace the independently elected presidency with a centralized “premier” chosen by the legislature.

    Consider the structure as a whole: one dominant legislative chamber, a premier answerable to that chamber, and a Supreme Court stripped of its ability to enforce constitutional limits.

    That is not democratic reform. It is the consolidation of federal power in a single political institution, with few meaningful safeguards for individual liberty or dissenting minorities.

    The economic program is equally sweeping. “Workers Deserve More” calls for the “public ownership” and “democratic control” of major corporations, energy systems, and transportation infrastructure. In plain English, it proposes state control of large sectors of the private economy.

    History offers no shortage of warnings about such nationalization. From Eastern Europe to Venezuela, government seizure of private industry has produced shortages, economic decay, corruption, and diminished personal freedom.

    The DSA pairs this centralization of political and economic power with a direct assault on national sovereignty. Its platform treats borders and citizenship not as foundations of self-government but as obstacles to be removed.

    RELATED: The Democrat civil war is real — and it is happening in Wisconsin

    Yutthana Gaetgeaw/iStock/Getty Images

    Its immigration plank demands unrestricted “freedom of movement,” abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an end to deportations, and federal voting rights for noncitizens.

    Combined with proposals to eliminate cash bail, demilitarize law enforcement, and dismantle the carceral system, the agenda would weaken the government’s ability to protect law-abiding citizens while expanding its control over nearly every other part of life.

    The timing is supremely ironic. This summer, as Americans celebrate 250 years under a system designed to limit government power, the DSA is offering a system designed to maximize it.

    The organization claims to speak for workers. Its platform would instead make ordinary Americans increasingly dependent on a centralized state that controls political institutions, major industries, public safety, and access to citizenship itself.

    The country should call this platform what it is: an anti-constitutional program dressed in democratic language. America’s strength lies in the limits placed on government, not in the power surrendered to it.

    The DSA platform is a reminder that the struggle to preserve the republic did not end with its founding. On America’s 250th anniversary, citizens should defend the constitutional guardrails that have kept power divided and Americans free.

  • Motorist whose middle name is 'Thor' exits car, dives over side of bridge amid police chase — but wild tale doesn't end there Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:00:00 +0000


    A Missouri motorist was caught on police dashcam video exiting his car on a bridge amid a police chase last weekend — and actually diving over the side of the bridge. But that's only part of the wild turn of events.

    The Stone County Sheriff’s Office said deputies tried to stop a car on the north end of Kimberling City around 1:50 a.m. last Saturday, KYTV-TV reported. Kimberling City is a little over half an hour west of Branson.

    'Contact water patrol. He just jumped over the bridge!'

    The driver then fled going south, the station said, adding that deputies noted the car was going 75 miles per hour in a 45-mile-per-hour zone.

    The pursuit led deputies to the Kimberling City Bridge, where the driver — later identified as Gavin Thor Lundgren — exited the car and jumped off the east side of the bridge, landing in Rock Lake, the station said.

    An annoyed deputy can be heard on dashcam video remarking, "Contact water patrol. He just jumped over the bridge!"

    According to Better Branson, the Kimberling City Bridge's "vertical clearance above deck" is 15.8 feet. But Sheriff Doug Rader said in KYTV's video report that it's about a 40-foot drop to the water.

    RELATED: Inmate hands judge 'wad' of counterfeit cash to pay bond — then actually tells judge to 'keep the change': Police

    Deputies said they stopped Lundgren's car as it was still in drive and was continuing to roll forward, KYTV noted.

    Southern Stone County firefighters on a boat assisted in locating Lundgren while other units remained on shore, the station said, adding that a deputy on scene later found Lundgren.

    "This was definitely a first, and luckily he survived the fall," Rader said.

    Besides his outlandish stunt, Lundgren also is accused of injuring three deputies while he was being taken into custody; KYTV said Lundgren head-butted two of the deputies.

    Deputies eventually brought Lundgren to the Stone County Jail, the station said, citing the probable cause statement.

    Jail records indicate that Lundgren, 26, is charged with resisting arrest by fleeing, careless driving, three counts of third-degree assault, and resisting/interfering with arrest for a felony. He remained behind bars Friday.

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  • Boys will be boys: Shane Gillis' record-breaking Philadelphia show was more than just a comedy set Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000


    Shane Gillis put on a night that his fans will never forget last week in Philadelphia, and it wasn't an anomaly, it was the new normal.

    Gillis broke two Guinness World Records at a sold-out Lincoln Financial Field that night, a venue that typically hosts NFL games.

    'I put all of your lives at risk.'

    Gillis not only set a new mark for the largest audience for a comedian with 73,946 attendees, but he also sold the most tickets for a comedy show ever for a single billing with 77,047 tickets.

    Moreover, what Gillis was able to do with nearly a city-sized group of fans sitting all around him was culminate almost 15 years of hard work into a cultural moment. Gillis brought with him everything he loves, a protest in its own right given how he was treated by the media for simply being a regular guy.

    The Gillis tribute opened with a flyover followed by Millennials' favorite rambunctious skateboarder Bam Margera, a Pennsylvania native, announcing a new season of Gillis' Netflix comedy "Tires."

    A festival for the rest of us

    Gillis tapped two of his friends and fellow comedians from the area to open for him, Matt McCusker and Jay Oakerson. While they were the only other comedy acts on the card, a series of unannounced appearances followed, each more surprising than the last.

    For a comedian who was unilaterally labeled a bigot, racist, and homophobe just seven years ago, Gillis had no shortage of celebrities willing to appear under his banner.

    RELATED: 'Hot' Chelsea Handler digs up dirt from Tony Hinchcliffe, Shane Gillis ex-files

    Making appearances from the sports world were two Philadelphia Eagles players: offensive tackle Jordan Mailata and defensive back Cooper DeJean.

    Former Eagles center Jason Kelce — brother of Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift's husband — was also in the mix, coming on stage and screaming into the microphone to hype up the crowd.

    The night also featured performances from rappers Meek Mill and Three 6 Mafia, and although Kanye West was rumored to make an appearance (he did not), in the end the biggest cameo came after Gillis' 30-minute set.

    Unexpected improv

    Like a boxer on his way to the ring, Dave Chappelle walked down the aisle to screaming fans and joined Gillis for 20 minutes of off-the-cuff banter.

    Chappelle immediately became that friend who brings up politics when he came to the stage and commented on what he described as an Air Force flyover.

    "Y'all n*****s should be at the Straight of Hormuz, opening that s**t up. But I'm glad you could make it here for Shane's show."

    Gillis quickly corrected Chappelle, laughing that they were actually World War II planes he needed to get insurance for.

    "I put all of your lives at risk," Gillis joked. "I was not worried about you guys, I was worried about how much money I would have to pay if a World War II Mustang crashed into you guys."

    RELATED: SNL comedian hosts ESPY Awards, celebrates immigrants while taking shots at American culture

    Gonzalo Marroquin/Getty Images for Netflix

    You'll buy a ticket and you'll be happy

    Even Guinness World Records adjudicator Andy Glass praised Gillis' ability to put on an unforgettable night.

    "Tonight's event was a powerful reminder that record-breaking achievements continue to capture people's imagination around the world," Glass said, per CBS News.

    Gillis' football field extravaganza is indeed the new normal for what was so recently portrayed as fringe entertainment for far-right audiences. Not only is he following in the footsteps of Tony Hinchcliffe's frequent Madison Square Garden appearances, he is elevating the scene to new heights never imagined before.

    Touring arenas and doing the occasional stadium is not new for comedians, but for ones who were universally excommunicated by the entertainment industry, it certainly is.

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  • Trump changed the game with the 2020 files, now Congress must act Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:30:00 +0000


    America remains deeply divided over whether the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Millions believe the system failed them, while the media, intelligence bureaucracy, and the left have treated their doubts as something to suppress rather than investigate.

    The documents released this week by the Trump administration do not close the case. They reopen it — and make the “nothing to see here” narrative indefensible.

    Start with communist China.

    The released intelligence reports that approximately 220 million American voter records are in Chinese hands. Tens of millions of records across 18 states were bought, stolen, or hacked and included names, addresses, phone numbers, party preferences, and other sensitive information.

    A sovereign nation must know that the people selecting its government are its citizens.

    That does not prove China changed a single ballot, but it does prove Beijing possessed a political targeting asset. When a strategic rival aggregates enormous datasets and applies modern analytics, it gains the ability to identify, target, and influence American voters at industrial scale.

    The most disturbing disclosure involves the President’s Daily Brief — the president’s most sensitive and consequential intelligence product. In one released email, an official wrote: “We have deliberately massaged our one pending PDB to avoid any direct links to the election.”

    In a separate internal chat, a counterintelligence official boasted: “I’m basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point.”

    The left has spent years ridiculing concerns about a “deep state” as conspiracy theory. These revelations make that ridicule look increasingly like camouflage.

    Then comes the voting-system reveal.

    A Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency report included in the administration’s document release identifies weak access controls, outdated operating systems, flat networks, inadequate monitoring, and legacy remote-access pathways across state and local election environments. During multiple penetration tests and red-team exercises, CISA assessors gained full control of election-office networks within hours or days.

    Separately, the report cites research involving one ballot-marking system showing that barcode-encoded votes could be altered without changing the human-readable selections displayed to the voter.

    The release also includes intelligence concerning methods allegedly developed by Venezuela’s Maduro regime to manipulate electronic totals while concealing the changes.

    Precision matters. A Venezuelan capability is not proof of an American operation. A demonstrated vulnerability is not proof it was exploited. The documents do not establish that American vote totals were secretly changed in 2020.

    But they demolish the claim that election technology is immune from manipulation. These are computer systems with software, databases, vendors, administrators, updates, and attack surfaces. Compromise must be anticipated and independently detectable.

    RELATED: America needs an artificial intelligence coalition, not an AI fortress

    Burcu demir/Getty Images

    A limited Department of Homeland Security review raises another alarm. The White House says it identified approximately 278,000 potential noncitizen registrations. DHS’ public follow-up described more than 250,000 preliminary potential matches in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — only four states.

    No serious person should dismiss numbers of this magnitude. Biden’s certified Georgia margin in 2020 was 11,779 votes. In 2016, Trump carried Michigan and Wisconsin by a combined 33,452 votes — and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania by just 77,744.

    The media formula — “the documents do not prove vote totals changed; therefore they prove nothing” — is analytical malpractice. Absence of final proof is not proof of institutional innocence.

    The proper question is whether this new information raises the probability that foreign influence, intelligence suppression, ineligible registrations, or exploitable technology played a larger role in the 2020 election environment than Americans were told — and whether future elections remain at risk.

    The answer to both questions is yes.

    That is why Congress must pass the SAVE America Act before November. The House-passed legislation requires documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration and photo identification for federal voting.

    These are basic risk controls. Pew found that 83% of Americans — including 71% of Democrats and 95% of Republicans — support government-issued photo identification.

    A sovereign nation must know that the people selecting its government are its citizens. A constitutional republic must demonstrate — not merely assert — that its elections are accurate.

    Congress should stop stalling and pass the SAVE America Act. As the president likes to say: Let’s go.

    This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

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