“For many, the American dream has become a nightmare,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said, capturing a sentiment that has become common on the political left and across modern culture.

That line now travels far beyond politics. Scroll social media for five minutes, and you’ll see the same message repeated in endless variations: Owning a home is impossible. Raising a family is irresponsible. Work doesn’t pay. The system is rigged. The future is closed.

The American dream was never a promise of ease or comfort by age 25. It was an invitation to build something meaningful over time through responsibility and perseverance.

This message is everywhere, and it is doing real damage.

Harder lives, false conclusions

Life has become harder in tangible ways. Housing costs have surged. College has grown bloated and expensive. Inflation punished families already living close to the margins. Young adults feel delayed, uncertain, and anxious about the future.

Those frustrations are real. The conclusion being pushed alongside them is not.

The lie is not that things are harder. The lie is that effort no longer matters.

That lie spreads quickly online because it feels validating. A 30-second video declaring the system broken beyond repair asks nothing of the viewer except agreement. Building a life requires patience, sacrifice, and time. One goes viral. The other happens quietly.

Much of this shift comes from where young Americans now form their beliefs. For many in Generation Z, ideas about money, marriage, and the future are no longer shaped primarily by parents, churches, employers, or local communities. They are shaped by algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok and X, where extremity is rewarded with attention.

In those spaces, online figures routinely dismiss the American dream as a scam and portray starting a family as a trap rather than a source of meaning or stability. Cynicism is marketed as realism. Detachment is framed as wisdom. A generation looking for guidance is taught to expect failure before it ever tries.

Why despair is profitable

This narrative didn’t arise by accident. It feeds on real pain, but it’s also profitable. Political movements gain leverage by convincing voters that only sweeping control from the top can fix a hopeless system. Media companies thrive on pessimism because fear keeps people watching. Online grievance entrepreneurs build massive followings by telling young people that nothing they do will ever be enough.

If Americans stop believing they can build a future, someone else will gladly build power over them.

History keeps disproving this story.

Tell the generation that survived the Great Depression that the American dream was dead. Tell the men who returned from World War II, many wounded and broke, who used the GI Bill to buy homes and start families, that the climb was too steep. Tell the children of factory workers who grew up without air conditioning, college degrees, or safety nets — but still built middle-class lives through work and sacrifice — that the odds were unfair.

Tell the families of the 1950s and 1960s who lived modestly, saved slowly, and delayed gratification for decades that life was easy. Tell the Americans who endured oil crises, layoffs, and double-digit inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s that the system was designed for their comfort.

The dream was never easy

Life has never been easy. The climb has always been steep. The American dream was never built on convenience. It was built on resilience.

The truth is less dramatic — and far more hopeful. The American dream didn’t disappear. It changed shape.

It was never a promise of ease or comfort by age 25. It was an invitation to build something meaningful over time through responsibility and perseverance. For generations, it rested on a simple foundation: Work hard, form families, contribute locally, and invest in something bigger than yourself.

That path was never easy. What changed is not the dream, but our tolerance for effort and our patience for delayed reward.

The quiet math of real life

Despite the noise, the American dream remains visible in places social media rarely celebrates. It shows up in the quiet math of real life.

Research from the Institute for Family Studies finds that stably married Americans approaching retirement hold, on average, more than $640,000 in household assets, compared with roughly $167,000 for divorced or never-married adults — even after accounting for age, education, and race. That gap reflects decades of shared sacrifice, income pooling, planning, and commitment.

These stories don’t trend online. They play out quietly every day.

Ironically, many of the loudest voices declaring the dream dead are doing quite well selling that message. Entire online brands are built on telling people that life is impossible — while generating substantial revenue and influence in the process. Despair has become an industry.

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

What truly threatens the American dream is not capitalism, competition, or even inequality. It’s a culture that encourages permanent adolescence. A culture that treats commitment as a burden, delays adulthood indefinitely, and then wonders why people feel anxious and untethered.

The American dream doesn’t die because life is hard. It dies when people are convinced that hard things aren’t worth doing.

Too many young Americans are told that marriage can wait, children are optional, faith is outdated, and roots are restrictive. They’re promised freedom through detachment and fulfillment through endless choice — then wake up years later with more options than ever and less meaning than expected.

Builders still have the advantage

This isn’t a policy argument. It’s a cultural one. No law can manufacture purpose. No program can force optimism. But a nation that teaches its citizens the dream is dead shouldn’t be surprised when fewer people try to live it.

The American dream has always belonged to builders of families, businesses, and communities. It never belonged to those waiting for perfect conditions or guaranteed outcomes.

The American dream isn’t dead. But telling Americans that it is has become fashionable, profitable, and politically useful.

The question is whether we continue to accept that story — or choose, once again, to build.

Why the kids are not all right — and Boomers still pretend nothing’s wrong

Here’s a message Baby Boomers need to hear: The America you were born into no longer exists.

A rising tide of young Americans are embracing socialism at a pace this country has never seen. Boomers often assume that it's about handouts. It isn't. Beneath the surface is a decades-long campaign so destructive to middle-class mobility that it threatens to push the nation toward civil conflict. The more you study it, the more coordinated it looks.

A people dependent upon ‘gimme gimme’ socialism is an easily managed population. A demoralized middle class keeps the ruling class secure.

In a way, it was.

Short-term profit-maximizing globalists on Wall Street teamed up with the K Street lobbying blob to drown Americans in cheap Chinese goods while saddling them with student debt, consumer debt, and medical debt.

Young people are being priced out of the American dream.

My urgent message to Boomers — especially those who want to keep influence: The kids are not all right.

The America your kids and grandkids know is not the America you knew. Most Boomers were born in the 1950s, when the country was booming — united by postwar optimism, American industrial strength, shared national institutions, Walter Cronkite on one television in every home, full-fat milkshakes, and Elvis shaking up the culture.

Today, we live in a golden age of technological revolution. We are making remarkable advances in space travel, tech, and medicine — increasingly led by the private sector and unapologetic capitalists. But on the basics — housing, health, education — we’re failing the next generation.

In 1955, the median homebuyer was in his late 20s. In 2025, it’s 56. A minimum-wage worker in the 1950s needed roughly seven years of pay to buy a modest home without a mortgage. Today, it’s around 27.

In 1955, a student could pay college tuition by working a few hours a day at minimum wage. Today, that same student would need to work about six hours a day. If a kid wants Yale or any Ivy League school, he would have to work 26.4 hours a day — an impossible figure that illustrates how detached elite education has become from reality.

Here’s a frightening divide: 93% of Boomers say political violence is never justified; 44% of Gen Z say it “sometimes” is.

Ninety-nine percent of kids are not out for blood, but 100% of them face a massive relative disadvantage. The upward mobility Boomers took for granted has been hollowed out by globalist and left-wing policies sold as progress but experienced as decline.

We spent trillions of American dollars on foreign wars, foreign infrastructure, and foreign elections. We borrowed recklessly. Now the dollar is frail. We allowed millions of illegal migrants to enter the country, fueling crime and pushing Americans out of jobs. Young households are buried in debt — not mortgage debt that builds equity, but consumer debt used to numb the anxiety left by a collapse in community and faith.

Here’s the truth: The populist right and the socialist left agree on the diagnosis. Listen to the first half of Bernie Sanders’ interview with Joe Rogan in June. For an hour, Bernie describes America’s economic troubles. Most people, right or left, would nod along.

Then comes the pivot: Socialism is the cure.

This is the left’s great deceit. Progressives' proposed “solutions” hurt the very people they claim to help.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Take restrictive zoning and rent regulations — blue-state staples designed to “create” affordable housing. In reality, they choke supply and drive rents higher. Or look at no-cash bail. The neighborhoods hit hardest by serially released offenders are the same minority communities progressives claim to champion. The examples pile up.

So why do left-wing billionaires back these ideas? Simple: Socialism, communism, and their logical end point — fascism — are excellent for entrenched oligarchs. A people dependent upon “gimme gimme” socialism is an easily managed population. A demoralized middle class keeps the ruling class secure.

There is another path.

We must reverse the policies that got us here. Strengthen education outcomes, lower health care costs, rebuild domestic supply chains, expand American energy generation, and restore competence to the workforce.

Boomers, if you don’t lead this shift, your influence will vanish before your next Social Security check arrives. Moderate Democrats already know the socialist tide is rising. They’re afraid to say it out loud.

The Gen Z and Millennial voting bloc will dominate the 2028 election. They are demanding change. Moderates — in both parties — are being replaced by extremists.

You have a choice: Allow yourselves to be absorbed into the socialist machine, or correct the mistakes of the last two decades, return power to citizens, and rebuild access to the American dream.

The kids aren’t all right — they’re being seduced by socialism

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

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

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

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

The appeal of a broken dream

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

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

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

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

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

The bridge that never ends

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

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

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

Photo by Angela Weiss / Contributor via Getty Images

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

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

What young America deserves

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

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ROOKE: Senate Democrat Tells Party Only Way To Win — Forget Obama, Be More Like Trump

'Democrats sound too much like Harvard professors'

Fake money fuels real pain as elites cash in and families fall behind

Think for a moment about the “speed of life.” Two centuries ago, it took months to cross the Atlantic on a wooden ship. Today, it takes five hours by plane. The Pony Express once needed weeks to deliver a message. The telegraph shrank that to seconds.

Human ingenuity has always accelerated life, but it was still bound by reality — the limits of earth’s raw materials.

On August 15, 1971, America traded reality for illusion.

Technology built from those natural parts is real, sustainable, and grounded. But when systems detach from the real world, they become artificial. They may run for a time, but they cannot endure.

Now consider money as a form of energy. Once, it was tangible: gold coins, silver dollars, bills you could hold in your hand. Even when transactions became electronic, they were still tethered to reality, with gold as their anchor. Cotton became fabric, chickens became food, gold became money. Nature set the limits.

That changed on August 15, 1971.

Faced with economic pressures, President Richard Nixon severed the dollar from gold. In doing so, he handed America’s financial energy supply to the Federal Reserve and the political class — a system now untethered from nature. Money no longer reflected real value. It was conjured from nothing. Now the government, once dependent on the real economy, had the power to create its own artificial economy.

You can’t print money to pay your bills. You live in reality. Washington escaped it — at least temporarily. The result is a false economy where the supply of “financial energy” outruns the natural world.

The treadmill effect

That’s why ordinary Americans feel like they are running on a treadmill that only speeds up. The $37 trillion in so-called “debt” isn’t debt at all. Debt requires repayment. It is the measure of money created out of thin air. When fake energy collides with real commodities, prices rise.

Look around you. Everything in your home — your chair, your phone, your groceries — is either a commodity or built from one. Oil powers the machinery that produces and delivers them. Since 2000, the cost of commodities has risen about 8% every year. Wages, in contrast, have only risen about 3% annually. That gap explains why families can’t keep up, why the middle class shrinks, and why frustration mounts. And because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, this inflation doesn’t just punish Americans — it ripples out to every nation on earth.

The burnout economy

Think of the human body. It runs on about six volts of electricity. Plug it into 220 volts and you’ll get incredible output — briefly — before the system burns out. That’s what the Federal Reserve and political elites have done to our economy: forced humanity into hyper-speed, compressing decades of natural economic activity into a few frantic years. The result is burnout — social unrest, inequality, rage, endless wars, and declining health.

Even environmental strain ties back to this misalignment. Artificial money fuels artificial demand, driving overproduction and overconsumption. Elites congratulate themselves for “managing” the system while ordinary citizens pay the price — in higher bills, weaker wages, and a constant sense of instability.

This was not inevitable. For nearly two centuries, the dollar was worth 100 cents, because it was tied to gold. Today, it’s worth about three cents. The rest has been stolen — not from us, but from the future. Tomorrow’s dollars are being dragged into yesterday’s spending. But eventually, nothing will be left to plunder. That is the endgame of artificial money: a collision between illusion and reality.

RELATED: Is Fort Knox still secure?

Photo by nopparit via iStock/Getty Images

Most Americans don’t fully understand this, but they feel it in their bones. They sense that something is wrong, that they work harder only to fall farther behind. Artificial money creates artificial problems — and artificial problems have no real solutions. Only a reckoning with reality can set them right.

Reclaim reality

Elites in Washington and on Wall Street will not save us. They are the ones benefiting from the distortion. The rest of us are left to adapt. For many, that means simplifying life, rediscovering the virtues of family, community, and localism — the parts of America still tethered to reality. In the countryside, where life is slower, you can still glimpse the America that once was.

On August 15, 1971, America traded reality for illusion. The day Nixon closed the gold window, government and elites unshackled themselves from the limits the rest of us still live under. Until we recognize that truth, we will keep chasing solutions to problems that can’t be solved — because they were never real to begin with.

Welcome to Rent Nation, where no one owns and no one is free

For generations, homeownership has been a cornerstone of the American dream. It meant stability, responsibility, and the chance to pass wealth to the next generation. It gave people a stake in their communities.

But that dream is slipping away. And it’s not by accident.

If we want Americans to remain free and self-governing, they must be able to own their homes and their futures.

We are drifting into a rental society. Fewer families can afford to buy a home, while massive investment firms and corporate landlords are buying up the housing supply and turning America into a nation of tenants.

This is hardly the natural evolution of the market. Rather, it’s the result of decades of bad policy, turbocharged by emerging technology and justified by global elites who’ve decided that private property is both outdated and unsustainable.

The corporate land grab

The “renters’ revolution” emerged from bad policy. For years, local, state, and federal governments have made it more difficult and expensive to build homes. Zoning restrictions choke supply.

Environmental rules delay development. Add in the unintended consequences of government-backed mortgage schemes in the Bill Clinton era, which played a major role in the 2008 housing market crash, and you’ve got a system that makes homes less attainable, despite the stated intentions of the enacted policies.

Into that broken system stepped Wall Street. After the crash, investment giants like Blackstone began buying up foreclosed homes in bulk, turning millions of single-family homes into rental properties. Much of this trend is made possible by emerging technology.

Today, institutional investors use artificial intelligence and algorithmic tools to scan markets and make instant cash offers, often outbidding families looking to buy their first homes. Companies such as Invitation Homes own tens of thousands of properties, all of which are managed through centralized apps, automated lease terms, and data-driven pricing tools.

We are experiencing a market shift — from millions of individual owners to a few corporate landlords.

Ideological push against ownership

This shift is also being encouraged, explicitly and implicitly, by international organizations pushing a post-ownership future. The World Economic Forum’s “you’ll own nothing and be happy” slogan was presented as a prediction, not a policy.

But look closer, and you’ll see that many World Economic Forum and United Nations initiatives actively promote this shift. The U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals call for denser high-rise cities, a move away from single-family zoning, and new restrictions on suburban development, all in the name of “sustainability” and “equity.”

It’s a coordinated ideological push to replace ownership with access, property with subscriptions, and permanence with flexibility. And the consequences are already showing.

The price of being a permanent renter

When you don’t own your home, you don’t control it. You follow the rules set by someone else. That might mean no pets, no subleasing, and often no firearms on the premises.

As environmental, social, and governance scores, smart devices, and digital IDs creep into the rental landscape, we are fast approaching a future where landlords, driven by corporate and political incentives, can enforce ideological compliance under the guise of lease terms.

Renting means you’re always paying, never building. Homes have long been the foundation of middle-class wealth in America. When families are locked out of ownership, they’re locked out of that opportunity. The result is a cycle where equity flows upward to institutional investors while working families remain stuck on the hamster wheel.

Photo by: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The “renters’ revolution” isn’t without psychological and cultural costs too. People who own their homes are more likely to put down roots, raise families, get involved in their communities, and feel a stake in the future of the country. Renters, especially when forced into that role, often feel transient and disempowered. That rootlessness is breeding disconnection and resentment.

The political fallout

These psychological costs have political consequences. Younger Americans, who increasingly see homeownership as unattainable, are also more likely to believe the system is rigged against them.

And who can blame them? They’re being told that capitalism failed them, when in reality, it’s crony capitalism, ESG corporatism, and global central planners who’ve rigged the game. But that distinction is often lost — or intentionally obscured. This increases the potential for them to turn to the siren song of socialism or further government action.

This is not just an economic problem. It’s a civic one. A society where most people don’t own anything is a society that’s easier to control, easier to manipulate, and easier to pacify. If we want Americans to remain free and self-governing, they must be able to own their homes and their futures.

We need lawmakers to investigate the concentration of housing in corporate hands. We need to roll back ESG-driven distortions in markets and rethink zoning rules that throttle supply. We should do more to promote first-time homeownership, rather than punishing it. And we must restore the idea that private property is not just an economic good — it’s a political necessity.

9 reasons we (still) love America — and you should too

1. We're incurable optimists

H. Armstrong Roberts/Classic Stock

If you're on music duty for the barbecue this weekend, don't overlook "Little Pink Houses."

The John Cougar Mellencamp classic is a dependable crowd-pleaser because it's one of those songs people tend to forget they love. At least until it gets to the first "Ain't that America?" — at which point everybody's singing along. An essential addition to any patriotic playlist.

Now, some party poopers love to point out that "Little Pink Houses" isn't really a celebration of America. (They do this with "Born in the U.S.A." too.) Even Mellencamp himself.

“This one has been misconstrued over the years because of the chorus — it sounds very rah-rah. But it’s really an anti-American song."

Tell you what, Mr. Mellencamp: We'll be the judge of that. And as soon as we hear that opening riff, our hearts swell with patriotic pride.

It's not that we haven't heard the lyrics. It's that we don't feel sorry for the everyday Americans they describe — as we're apparently supposed to.

Take the black guy in the first verse, with the interstate running through the front yard of his little pink house.

That guy inspired the song. He's based on a real person Mellencamp saw in Indianapolis, sitting in a cheap lawn chair with a cat and watching the endless traffic go past his front yard.

The most striking thing to Mellencamp was how content the guy seemed. But instead of contemplating this mysterious serenity, he dismisses it as delusional.

"You know he thinks he got it so good."

Who are we to say he doesn't? Have you ever seen a better distillation of patronizing, paternal liberalism?

From that simple image, by the way, the up-and-coming singer-songwriter built a top-10 hit and classic rock staple beloved by millions for more than four decades. How's that for the American dream? The dream "Little Pink Houses" is supposed to "critique."

Or consider the young man with the greasy hair and greasy smile "listening to the rock and roll station."

When we hear that verse, we get an intense nostalgic feeling of doing nothing on a lazy summer afternoon before smartphones were invented.

Paradise. He's young and it's morning in America. And we're supposed to think he's sad that he's not going to be president?

Forget the self-defeating, sad-sack interpretations. "Little Pink Houses" is about the kind of determined optimism only Americans understand. "There's winners, and there's losers," the song notes. Can you think of a better place to be either?

It's the pedantic killjoys who miss the point. Yes, we're taking a tale of ordinary hardship and cheerfully focusing on the good parts until the hardship itself almost seems fun. It's the American way.

From the moment "Little Pink Houses" hit the airwaves in October 1983, all the Debbie Downers and Gloomy Guses trying to bum us out didn't stand a chance.

Or as one scold puts it, "Most people simply heard 'America,' tuned out the sarcasm, and unfurled the flag."

Exactly. Sounds like the perfect Fourth of July to us.

—Matt Himes, managing editor, Align

2. We love pulling off the impossible

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Democracy is slow and sluggish and inefficient, but once the will of the people is set in motion, nothing can stop it.”

At least, that’s what I remember him saying, but my computer says no. Maybe he said it to me in confidence and I thought I read it in a book.

At any rate, it’s true. Americans are capable of letting the pendulum swing very far into chaos (not as far as South Africa, but almost) before correcting. Chicago went from the frying pan of Lori Lightfoot into the fire of Brandon Johnson. New York City has been choosing progressively worse progressives since Giuliani and currently has its sites set on a spoiled rich kid who thinks he hates money and loves Palestine.

However, after Biden, we got Trump. After letting in more immigrants in four years than Ellis Island did from 1892 to 1954, we got deportations. After praising Antifa and BLM for burning our country to the ground and then condemning innocent J6ers to decades in prison, we we got pardons for the innocent and punishment for the pyromaniacs.

It might feel sometimes that we are losing our country and the pendulum is locked into “slow and sluggish” mode, but Trump should give us hope. If the presidency can be saved, so can the whole country.

Andrew Breitbart always said, “Politics is downstream from culture,” but MAGA is both. Last week a replica of the "Dukes of Hazzard" car was jumped over the downtown fountain in Somerset, Kentucky, as 35,000 people screamed their heads off. It wasn’t just a random stunt. It was a sign. America is becoming great again. We just have to stay the course and have faith.

—Gavin McInnes, host of "Get Off My Lawn"

3. You can't shut us up

CORBIS via Getty Images

Once upon a time Hollywood loved free speech, the all-American value we need now more than ever.

The 1995 political romance "The American President" ended with a stem-winder by President Shepherd, played by Michael Douglas.

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

That was then. Hollywood wouldn't allow that opinion in a feature film today. The industry recoils over "hate speech," refuses to defend conservatives banned from social media, and twiddles its thumbs while "sensitivity readers" swarm the publishing ranks.

Oh, and the best and brightest cheered when social media platforms booted President Donald Trump off of their digital turf.

I want that 1995-era Hollywood back. And if today's version can't rise to the occasion, a new Hollywood will emerge. It won't be based in California, mind you, but as technology gives artists the tools to tell their stories their way, new tales will be told across the fruited plain.

Why? Because that's how America works. Still.

—Christian Toto, film critic

Photo by Nawrocki/ClassicStock/Getty Images

4. We have the need for speed

Bernard Cahier/Getty Images

America, to me, is the land of boundless opportunity, where hard work, creativity, and ingenuity drive progress, from the open road to the factory floor.

Our nation is built on the freedom to chase dreams, like restoring classic cars; driving the type of vehicle you want, where you want and when you want; or pioneering new technologies, all while honoring the values that keep us strong.

For our family, our life is all about cars, auto racing, and restoration. One American who has especially inspired us is the famous car racer, designer, and marketer Carroll Shelby.

In the early 1960s, GT automobile racing was dominated by European brands like Jaguar, Ferrari, and Aston Martin. Shelby, a young Texan who had won Le Mans in an Aston Martin, thought he could make something faster. And he did — putting a Ford V8 engine in a sleek, lightweight body.

For us, Shelby represents American ingenuity, hard work, and never-say-die spirit. He reminds us of the simple, uniquely American freedom of getting behind the wheel of your own car and hitting the open road.

It's impossible to drive or ride in a Shelby Mustang or Cobra without a big smile on your face; it's one of those special experiences you don't forget. We certainly won't — we named our daughter Shelby.

—Lauren Fix, Align Cars

5. We love a long shot

Joshua Lisec

Scott Adams was working at Pacific Bell and wanted a career change. So he woke up early every day before work to figure out his next step.

Even though he had little artistic experience and no special talent, the career that stuck was newspaper cartoonist. "Dilbert" was born. After almost a decade of grinding it out, he made it the most successful comic strip in the country.

With his MBA and corporate resume, Adams had no business trying to break in to the hyper-competitive world of syndicated newspaper strips. It shouldn't have worked — but it did. As he writes in his book "Reframe Your Brain,"

Once you realize you're terrible at estimating the odds of your own success, you're free to try things you might otherwise not consider. You are allowed to expand beyond your comfort zone without pressure because the only way to know what will work is to test it yourself.

In 2015, Adams noticed another corporate guy attempting an improbable career change. He was the first to predict that Donald Trump would win the presidency. People laughed, but of course Adams was right.

Since then, Adams has gone on to launch a beloved YouTube show, publish a few books, and build a reputation as one of the wisest political commentators and dispensers of career and life advice around.

When Adams announced that he had terminal prostate cancer in May, the outpouring of tributes on X and elsewhere was a powerful indication of how many lives he changed.

Since then, he's continued to show up for the community he's built, while acknowledging that he's on borrowed time. His fans plan on sticking with him to the end.

In the words of Adams' frequent collaborator, ghostwriter, editor, and publisher Joshua Lisec:

Scott is the original internet dad. It's obvious to all that basically everyone under 45 or so has the father wound — either from overbearing dads who weren't helpful in giving quality life advice or dads who were totally checked out while a second-wave feminist mom ran the show. So what's it like to have a father who wants the absolute best for you and provides you firm yet kind counsel in every area of your life, from career, health, and relationships to how to think productively about politics, religion, and happiness? That's Scott Adams.

—Matt Himes

6. We're different but the same

Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

Order a "hot dog" in New York City and you'll get an all-beef frankfurter in a natural casing with mustard and maybe some sauerkraut and onions. In Chicago they'll load you up with everything: yellow mustard, dark green relish, chopped raw onion, peppers, pickles, and tomato — crammed into a poppy-seed bun with celery salt on top.

In D.C. the style is half beef, half pork with chili and onions. In Philadelphia they'll make it surf and turf by adding a fish cake.

In Cleveland they have the Polish Boy, which is a kielbasa with french fries, slaw, and barbecue sauce. Go to a Colorado Rockies game and you'll get a foot-long with grilled peppers. Up in Maine they like their dogs bright red.

At Fenway Park they boil and grill them and offer to put baked beans on top. Cincinnati is known for chili and cheese. And in the Southwest, they'll add salsa, bacon, and pinto beans.

Come to think of it, this is a great metaphor for the big immigration brouhaha these days. Opening the borders to millions of foreigners who have no interest in America except as a nice place to set up their own ethnic enclaves and send money home is like replacing all the hot-dog stands in Albany with samosa carts or kebab trucks.

You want both. And when it comes to hot dogs, you want something recognizably American (a hot dog) but with its own regional spin. Making it their own while still respecting the core elements (frankfurter, bun, toppings) that make it work. That's the kind of "diversity" this country is built on.

—Matt Himes

7. Show us a frontier and we'll build on it

Just returned from weekend at Wagon Box. It was great.

Beautiful, intellectual, long conversations, incredible local beef, flow of locals and weirdos interfacing with Substack religo-dorks and scenester art women. A little janky, not everything works right, everything a bit slanted, erratic, and natural. Some things you pay for, some you don't.

Nobody quite knows the rules. An overtly hostile shouting bartender whom everyone learns to love. Two types of delicious local ale and only three items on the lunch menu. Zero gloss of private equity. A positive and non-hateful crossroads of genuinely strange IRL human connection, contemplation, and discussion.

And most importantly, no policing of thought or language.

When Paul McNiel bought it a few years ago, it was a former biker bar in the woods where hardcore one-percenters would stop on their way around upper Wyoming and Montana. They used to sit on that porch and howl and make trouble all night long, until cultural feminization quelled their activity to a trickle.

And now instead of bikers, it's a bunch of thinkers and talkers who sit on that porch thinking and talking late into the night, with a lot less meth and a lot less fighting and a lot more plotting and planning to benefit the globe and humankind. It's a free zone one way or another.

—Isaac Simpson, founder and director, WILL

8. We elected Donald Trump. Twice.

SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

No modern American president has ever been this fully president before. He is pulling every lever and pressing every button, even ones that haven't been pressed in decades, if ever. He is dusting off the forgotten control panels and firing up the long-abandoned machines.

It may not be exactly to your liking, but this is the best we are ever going to get in our lifetimes, so enjoy it while it lasts.

—Peachy Keenan, author of "Domestic Extremist"

9. Because it's worth fighting for

Portland Press Herald/Getty Images

It's wild that simply loving America has become a revolutionary act. But since it's the closest I'll get to the founding fathers, I'll take it.

—Lou Perez, writer and comedian

The real land-grab isn’t Mike Lee’s — it’s Biden’s ‘30 by 30’

Something ugly is unfolding on social media, and most people aren’t seeing it clearly. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — one of the most constitutionally grounded conservatives in Washington — is under fire for a housing provision he first proposed in 2022.

You wouldn’t know that from scrolling through X. According to the latest online frenzy, Lee wants to sell off national parks, bulldoze public lands, gut hunting and fishing rights, and hand America’s wilderness to Amazon, BlackRock, and the Chinese Communist Party. None of that is true.

Lee’s bill would have protected against the massive land-grab that’s already under way — courtesy of the Biden administration.

I covered this last month. Since then, the backlash has grown into something like a political witch hunt — not just from the left but from the right. Even Donald Trump Jr., someone I typically agree with, has attacked Lee’s proposal. He’s not alone.

Time to look at the facts the media refuses to cover about Lee’s federal land plan.

What Lee actually proposed

Over the weekend, Lee announced that he would withdraw the federal land sale provision from his housing bill. He said the decision was in response to “a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies,” but also acknowledged that many Americans brought forward sincere, thoughtful concerns.

Because of the strict rules surrounding the budget reconciliation process, Lee couldn’t secure legally enforceable protections to ensure that the land would be made available “only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.” Without those safeguards, he chose to walk it back.

— (@)

That’s not selling out. That’s leadership.

It's what the legislative process is supposed to look like: A senator proposes a bill, the people respond, and the lawmaker listens. That was once known as representative democracy. These days, it gets you labeled a globalist sellout.

The Biden land-grab

To many Americans, “public land” brings to mind open spaces for hunting, fishing, hiking, and recreation. But that’s not what Sen. Mike Lee’s bill targeted.

His proposal would have protected against the real land-grab already under way — the one pushed by the Biden administration.

In 2021, Biden launched a plan to “conserve” 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030. This effort follows the United Nations-backed “30 by 30” initiative, which seeks to place one-third of all land and water under government control.

Ask yourself: Is the U.N. focused on preserving your right to hunt and fish? Or are radical environmentalists exploiting climate fears to restrict your access to American land?

JohnnyGreig via iStock/Getty Images

As it stands, the federal government already owns 640 million acres — nearly one-third of the entire country. At this rate, the government will hit that 30% benchmark with ease. But it doesn’t end there. The next phase is already in play: the “50 by 50” agenda.

That brings me to a piece of legislation most Americans haven’t even heard of: the Sustains Act.

Passed in 2023, the law allows the federal government to accept private funding from organizations, such as BlackRock or the Bill Gates Foundation, to support “conservation programs.” In practice, the law enables wealthy elites to buy influence over how American land is used and managed.

Moreover, the government doesn’t even need the landowner’s permission to declare that your property contributes to “pollination,” or “photosynthesis,” or “air quality” — and then regulate it accordingly. You could wake up one morning and find out that the land you own no longer belongs to you in any meaningful sense.

Where was the outrage then? Where were the online crusaders when private capital and federal bureaucrats teamed up to quietly erode private property rights across America?

American families pay the price

The real danger isn’t in Mike Lee’s attempt to offer more housing near population centers — land that would be limited, clarified, and safeguarded in the final bill. The real threat is the creeping partnership between unelected global elites and our own government, a partnership designed to consolidate land, control rural development, and keep Americans penned in so-called “15-minute cities.”

BlackRock buying entire neighborhoods and pricing out regular families isn’t by accident. It’s part of a larger strategy to centralize populations into manageable zones, where cars are unnecessary, rural living is unaffordable, and every facet of life is tracked, regulated, and optimized.

That’s the real agenda. And it’s already happening , and Mike Lee’s bill would have been an effort to ensure that you — not BlackRock, not China — get first dibs.

I live in a town of 451 people. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, housing is unaffordable. The American dream of owning a patch of land is slipping away, not because of one proposal from a constitutional conservative, but because global powers and their political allies are already devouring it.

Divide and conquer

This controversy isn’t really about Mike Lee. It’s about whether we, as a nation, are still capable of having honest debates about public policy — or whether the online mob now controls the narrative. It’s about whether conservatives will focus on facts or fall into the trap of friendly fire and circular firing squads.

More importantly, it’s about whether we’ll recognize the real land-grab happening in our country — and have the courage to fight back before it’s too late.

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