Colorado’s Zoning Tyrants Go To War Against A Christian-Owned French Bakery
Is it truly in the county’s best interest to destroy a thriving business and a cherished community hub simply to enforce its zoning ordinance?Is it truly in the county’s best interest to destroy a thriving business and a cherished community hub simply to enforce its zoning ordinance?America First foreign policy gets an Office of Natural Rights
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio executed a sweeping restructuring plan to implement an America First foreign policy in the State Department. Although many offices were either eliminated or combined, a few new ones were created. Among them is the Office of Natural Rights.
The very name has drawn the usual harrumphing from establishment voices who insist that “human rights” is the only proper diplomatic term. While human rights terminology is significant, the State Department has long been blind to an even more critical truth behind such language: Without human nature, human rights don’t exist.
Without reference to the inherent limitations of our shared human nature, the argument over rights becomes a mere yelling match.
If our rights are not grounded in a shared nature, they are founded simply on the will of the government. If the government grants us rights at one particular moment, it may arbitrarily retract them at the next.
The Trump administration has observed this phenomenon with great alarm. Vice President JD Vance argued that this is Europe’s greatest threat in his now-famous Munich speech, and the State Department weighed in with an official article shortly thereafter.
U.S. officials are rightly concerned about natural rights abroad — not because they are Republicans, but rather because they are Americans. The recognition of natural rights is the foundation of our own government.
Conflicting rights
Our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to uphold the truth that “all men are created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Today, the founders’ fledgling nation is the oldest constitutional republic on earth and the foundation of a peaceful and prosperous world order. While conflict has not been eradicated — and never will be — America stands as a beacon of liberty due to our status as a natural-rights republic.
A right is a powerful thing. It is an absolute claim that cannot be questioned or curtailed except in the most dire and limited circumstances. Any law that denies a natural right is unjust on its face. Politicians who threaten natural rights threaten society itself.
Nonetheless, over the last several decades, the concept of rights has become untethered from its grounding in human nature, leading to an inflationary crisis of rights. Today, we suffer from violent clashes over the pecking order of a multitude of conflicting rights people claim for themselves — often at the expense of others.
Without reference to the inherent limitations of our shared human nature, the argument over rights becomes a mere yelling match, devoid of moral content and determined by sheer power. That is why the fiercest proponents of novel rights always impose them on society through force, such as angry protests and public shaming rather than true debate.
Such imposition poses a threat to the free exercise of genuine rights in our societies. True natural rights are, like the rest of nature, ordered and mutually compatible. They rarely conflict and do so only at the margins. The introduction of so-called human rights destroys that balance and often pits new “rights” directly against the old.
Free speech in particular has been trampled in many countries in order to make room for an oppressive and dictatorial version of “tolerance.” Just ask the 12,000 Brits imprisoned for “hate speech” every year. Foundational rights to person, property, and self-defense are likewise under threat from diversity, equity, and inclusion fanatics who are eager to enact judgment on the basis of race rather than character.
Rooting out imposters
We urgently need to distinguish between true natural rights and the imposter rights pushed on us by fractious groups pursuing their own ends. The following three criteria can help distinguish genuine rights from modern imposters: functional universality, necessity by nature, and corresponding duty.
First, functional universality means that the right can be secured without vast government interference. Free speech is universally attainable; free college less so.
Second, necessity by nature means all people must be free to do what nature has designed them for: working to provide for themselves and their children and associating freely with others for the purpose of mutual support, inquiry, and worship. Though just government is built on the recognition of man’s nature, it cannot promise to all what cannot be practically provided to all.
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Finally, all authentic rights have corresponding duties. The right to private property implies the duty to respect others’ property as well. Any right with no corresponding duty is just a handout by a different name.
By applying these and similar criteria, the Office of Natural Rights will bring crucial clarity to our foreign policy and end the tyranny of special interests masquerading as human rights. So-called rights that do not fit this framework might involve good and desirable ends for individuals and society — but they cannot be allowed to claim the mantle and privileges of a natural right.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.
Tulsi Gabbard scores huge win for Americans' data privacy against foreign governments
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has announced that American Apple users will now enjoy more data privacy after she struck a new deal overseas.
Citizens in the U.K. have been concerned for months ever since their government demanded the ability to tap into their bank records as well as their personal photos and messages through their iPhones, according to the Telegraph.
In February, an order from the U.K.'s home secretary, the equivalent of Homeland Security, required Apple to remove its "advanced data protection" and "end-to-end encryption" for users in their country, causing Director Gabbard to step in and protect user privacy.
'The UK and the EU have gotten in the habit of bullying American companies when they don't have a leg to stand on.'
After months of reported pressure from President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Gabbard, the U.K. and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper have decided to drop the demand for the "back door" into the Apple phones, protecting not only American citizens, but those in the U.K. as well.
"Over the past few months, I've been working closely with our partners in the UK, alongside [Trump] and [Vance], to ensure Americans' private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected," Gabbard announced on X.
She continued, "As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a 'back door' that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties."
RELATED: Tulsi Gabbard drops declassified top secret document implicating James Clapper in Russiagate
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A U.K. government spokesman told the Telegraph that the agreement with the United States includes "critical safeguards to prevent the U.K. and U.S. from targeting the data of each other's citizens."
The long-standing joint security initiative between the two nations will continue to build, the spokesperson added, noting that the U.K. will continue to "pursue terrorists and serious criminals operating" in its countries.
The government official did note that the U.K. countries plan to "take all actions necessary" at the domestic level in order to "keep U.K. citizens safe."
There is still another fish to fry, according to tech writer Josh Centers, who says the European Union needs a stern warning from U.S. tech companies to fall in line.
"I'm glad the federal government is finally fighting for the rights of American tech companies and their users abroad," Centers told Blaze News. "The U.K. and the EU have gotten in the habit of bullying American companies when they don't have a leg to stand on."
Because of this, Centers added, American corporations should be willing to take things a step further.
"If the EU doesn't also follow suit, the American tech industry should boycott the entire continent," Centers said.
From the U.K. side, this is a small but important victory, according to Lewis Brackpool, director of investigations at Restore Britain.
"Privacy and free speech are inseparable," Brackpool told Blaze News. Considering what little free speech citizens in the U.K. have currently, Brackpool said it was important to take strides forward.
"When the state can read everything you say, your right to freedom of expression is put in the grave before it even begins," he said.
Citing George Orwell's "1984," Brackpool noted that the character Winston cowers in the corner when facing his greatest fear, a symbol of the government's complete destruction of his integrity. "Now it seems the British state caving to Donald Trump's demands has pushed them into a corner."
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JD Vance: Rekindling statesmanship to secure America’s golden future
California generally and the Claremont Institute in particular have produced some of the most profound and revolutionary conservative thinkers of the last half-century.
And for a great many of them, it’s because they understood what’s at stake if we abandon our American identity.
This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless, extraordinary people across many generations, a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty. But more importantly, it’s home.
And we’re lucky enough to have a few of them, like Michael Anton, now working in the administration with us.
Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams asked me to speak a little bit about statesmanship and, more to the point, about how to respond to some of the challenges our movement will need to confront in the years to come.
It’s an interesting question. And I think it’s useful to reflect on the state of the left in 2025 America.
Mamdani: A harrowing zeitgeist
On July 1, a 33-year-old communist running an insurgent campaign beat a multimillion-dollar establishment machine in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary.
I don’t want to harp on a municipal election, but there were two interesting threads that I wanted to highlight. The first is that it drives home how much the voters in each party have changed.
If our victory in 2024 was rooted in a broad, working- and middle-class coalition, Zohran Mamdani’s coalition is the inverse.
Look at his electoral performance, which the left is already talking about as a blueprint for future electoral success. The guy won high-income and college-educated New Yorkers — and especially both young and highly educated voters — but was weakest among black voters and those without a college degree. He did better in Bangladeshi areas of New York and worse in Chinese areas.
Mamdani’s strongest vote share was in New York’s gentrifying neighborhoods, like Ridgewood and Bushwick.
His victory was the product of a lot of young people who live reasonably comfortable lives but see that their elite degrees aren’t really delivering what they expected. And so their own prospects, with all the college debt, may not in fact be greater than those of their parents.
And I think in the results, we can start to see the future of the Democrats: as the party not of dispossession, but of elite disaffection.
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The party of highly educated but downwardly mobile elites who compose a highly energetic activist base — one, critically, supplemented by carefully selected ethnic blocs carved out of the electorate, using identity politics as the knife.
That, by the way, explains all of Mamdani’s bizarre appeals to foreign politics intended to signal to one diaspora community or another in New York.
Why is a mayoral candidate in our nation’s biggest city whining about banning Bibi Netanyahu from visiting and threatening to arrest him if he tries? Or attacking Narendra Modi as a “war criminal”? Why is he talking about “globalizing the intifada”? What the hell does that even mean in Manhattan?
But what might seem like a contradiction makes sense if you peel back the onion a bit. Consider: a movement that rails against the billionaire class despite the fact that the billionaire class remains firmly in its corner. It idolizes foreign religions even as it rejects the teachings of those faiths. It rails against white people even as many of its funders and grassroots activists are privileged whites.
America in 2025 is more diverse than it has ever been. And yet the institutions that form culture are also weaker.
I was once comforted by these contradictions. How could privileged whites march around decrying white privilege? How could progressives pretend to love Muslims despite their cultural views on gender and sexuality?
But the answer is obvious, isn’t it? The radicals of the far left don’t need a unifying ideology of what they’re for, because they know very well what they’re against.
What unites Islamists, gender studies majors, socially liberal white urbanites, and Big Pharma lobbyists? It isn’t the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or even Karl Marx. It’s hatred. They hate the people in this room, they hate the president of the United States, and most of all, they hate the people who voted for him.
This is the animating principle of the American far left. It isn’t true of most of the people who vote for Democrats, of course. Most of them are good people, even if they’re misguided in their politics. But pay attention to what their leadership says outside glossy campaign ads or general election-tested messaging, and it’s obvious that this is what animates the modern Democratic Party.
Defining the modern left
The far left doesn’t care that Black Lives Matter led to a spike in violent crime in urban black neighborhoods, because it also led to anarchy in middle-class white neighborhoods.
The leftists don’t care that Islamism hates gays and subjugates women, because for now, it is a useful tool of death against Americans.
They don’t care that too many pharmaceutical companies are getting rich from experimental hormonal therapies, because it destroys the “gender binary” that has structured social relations between the genders for the whole of Western civilization.
They don’t care that deporting low-wage immigrants will raise the wages of the native-born, because they don’t mean to create higher living standards for those born and raised here — black, white, or any other skin color. They mean to replace them with people who will listen to their increasingly bizarre ethnic and religious appeals.
They are arsonists, and they will make common cause with anyone else willing to light the match. It’s why Mamdani himself is such an appealing instrument to the left. He captures so many of the movement’s apparent contradictions in a single human being: a guy who describes the Palestinian cause as “central” to his identity, yet holds views — abortion on demand and using taxpayer money to fund transgender surgeries for minors, for example — that would be incomprehensible on the streets of Gaza.
This politics doesn’t make sense as a positive political program. But it’s very effective at tearing down the things the left hates.
The right’s answer: Create
One task of statesmanship is to recognize what the left wishes to do to American society. But the most important thing is to be for something. And that’s the second thread I want to touch on today: If the left wishes to destroy, we must create.
The most obvious way to do that is to ensure that the people we serve have a better life in the country their grandparents built. This is why the president cares so much about tariffs — in a globalized economy, we must be willing to penalize those who would build outside our own nation.
And it’s why he worked so hard to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — if tariffs are the stick, then lower taxes and regulations are the carrots. We want to make it easy to save and invest in America, to build a business in America, and most of all to work a dignified job and earn the kind of wage that can support a family in comfort.
But this is not a purely material question, because we are not just producers and consumers. We are human beings, made in the image of God, who love our home not just because we earn a living here but because we discover our purpose and meaning here.
Every Western society has demographic problems. There is something about Western liberalism that is socially suicidal or parasitic — that tends to feed off a healthy host until there’s nothing left.
The radicals of the far left don’t need a unifying ideology of what they’re for, because they know very well what they’re against.
America in 2025 is more diverse than it has ever been. And yet the institutions that form culture are also weaker. We are confronted with a society that has less in common than ever and whose cultural leaders seem totally uninterested in fixing that.
Just four years ago, we had people promoting alternative national anthems at one of the few remaining national pastimes that transcend ethnic and cultural differences. Too many of our current crop of statesmen remain unable to break out of that moment, destined to erode the very thing that makes Americans put on a uniform and sacrifice their lives for something.
Part of the solution — the most important part of the solution — is to stop the bleeding. This is why President Trump’s immigration policies are so important. Social bonds form among people who have something in common. If you stop importing millions of foreigners, you allow social cohesion to form naturally.
But even so: If you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, very few of our leaders would have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America?
That definition is overinclusive and underinclusive. It would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of foreigners. Must we admit them tomorrow? But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people the Anti-Defamation League would label domestic extremists, even though their own ancestors were here at the time of the Revolutionary War.
What American citizenship means
So perhaps the most pressing thing to build now is the meaning of American citizenship in the 21st century.
The right needs to do a better job of articulating what that means. And while I don’t have a comprehensive answer for you, there are a few things I’d suggest off the top of my head.
For one, it means sovereignty. More precisely, American citizenship must mean belonging to a nation that guards the sovereignty of its people, especially from a modern world that’s hell-bent on dissolving borders and differences in national character.
That means having a government that vigorously defends the basic qualities of sovereignty — that secures the border from foreign invasion; that protects its citizens and their enterprises against unfair foreign tax schemes; that erects tariff walls and similar barriers to protect its people’s industry; that avoids needlessly entangling them in prolonged, distant wars.
It also means preserving the basic legal privileges of citizenship — things like voting, including in state and local elections, or access to public benefits like certain state-run health care programs — for citizens. When states start handing these out to illegal aliens, they cheapen the very meaning of citizenship. And a nation that refuses to make that distinction won’t stay a nation for very long.
I’d also say that citizenship in the 21st century necessarily means building.
America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.
Our ancestors realized that to carve a successful nation from a new land meant creating new, tangible things. New homes, new towns, new infrastructure to tame a wild continent. That attitude enabled us to build the world’s greatest cities, its tallest skyscrapers, the most impressive dams and canals.
Over time, it expanded the horizons of what we even thought possible as human beings, with Americans taking our species into the air and, just a generation later, into Earth’s orbit. Our innovations revolutionized communications, medicine, and agriculture, extending human life spans decades at a time.
None of that would be possible if our citizens believed we lived in a postindustrial era. Or an era when our finest minds just went to what are essentially speculative trades or to writing software that makes us more efficient consumers.
We need to build. We need to make great things here, for the betterment of our fellow Americans but also for our posterity. We need to continue to invent groundbreaking innovations and to leave homes and libraries and factories that our descendants will look at someday and feel awe.
This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless extraordinary people across many generations, a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty.
And we need to build together. Getting to the moon required a lot of brilliant scientists working on what were effectively pocket calculators. But it also required a national system of education that produced that level of genius and inspired young graduates to want to design new rockets on behalf of their nation. And it required a ton of phenomenally talented engineers and welders and custodians to manufacture cutting-edge engines and keep the facilities that housed them spotless. It was a national project in the truest sense of the phrase.
To be a citizen in the 21st century, I think, should mean seeking out similar projects. Citizenship should mean feeling pride in our heritage, of course. But it should also mean understanding milestones like the moon landings not only as the product of past national greatness but as an achievement we should surpass by aligning the goals and ambitions of Americans at all levels of society.
Lastly, I’d say citizenship must mean recognizing the unique relationship, and especially the unique obligations, you share with your fellow Americans.
You cannot swap 10 million people from anywhere else in the world and expect America to remain unchanged. In the same way, you can’t export our Constitution to a random country and expect it to take hold.
That’s not something to lament but to take pride in. The founders understood that our shared qualities — our heritage, our values, our manners and customs — confer a special and indispensable advantage. A decisive one, even, in rebellion against the world’s greatest military power at the time.
That means something today. Citizenship — true citizenship — is not just about rights. In a world of globalized commerce and communication, it’s also about obligations, including to your countrymen. It’s about recognizing that your fellow citizens are not interchangeable cogs in the global economy, nor, in law or commerce, should they be treated that way.
And I think it’s impossible to feel a sense of obligation to something without having gratitude for it. We should demand that our people, whether first- or 10th-generation Americans, have gratitude for this country. We should be skeptical of anyone who lacks it, especially if they purport to lead it.
And that brings me back to the likely next mayor of New York. Today is July 5, 2025, which means that yesterday we celebrated the 249th anniversary of the birth of our nation.
The person who wishes to lead our largest city had, according to media reports, never once publicly mentioned America’s Independence Day in earnest. But when he did so this year, this is what he said.
America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better.
There is no gratitude here. No sense of owing something to this land and the people who turned its wilderness into the most powerful nation in the world.
Zohran Mamdani’s father fled Uganda when the tyrant Idi Amin decided to ethnically cleanse his nation’s Indian population. Mamdani’s family fled violent racial hatred only for him to come to this country — a country built by people he never knew, overflowing with generosity to his family, offering a haven from the kind of violent ethnic conflict that is commonplace in world history.
And he dares, on its 249th birthday, to congratulate it by paying homage to its incompleteness and to its, as he calls it, “contradiction.” Has he ever read the letters from boy soldiers in the Union Army to parents and sweethearts they’d never see again? Has he ever visited a gravesite of a loved one who gave his life to build the kind of society where his family could escape theft and violence? Has he ever looked in the mirror and recognized that he might not be alive were it not for the generosity of a country he dares to insult on its most sacred day?
Who the hell do these people think they are?
Make America Great Again
Yesterday, I visited the construction site for the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library. We went hiking in the badlands of North Dakota. My 5-year-old so desperately wanted to see a buffalo, and he saw a dozen of them. My 8-year-old spotted a bald eagle perched on a low cliff. And my 3-year-old brought me a dandelion.
Her little lungs weren’t strong enough to send the dandelion seeds over the hillside, so she asked me to do it. Watching her face light up as she watched those seeds blow over the hills, I felt a profound sense of gratitude for this country. For its natural beauty, the settlers who carved a civilization out of the wilderness. For making the love story of that little girl’s mother and father possible. For the common yet profound joy of watching a 3-year-old’s beautiful eyes light up as she watches a dandelion’s seeds dance in the wind against an ancient rock formation.
This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless extraordinary people across many generations, a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty. But more importantly, it’s home. For the vast bulk of Americans, it’s where we’re born, it’s where we will raise our children and grandchildren, and it’s where we ourselves will one day be buried. And when that day comes, I hope my kids can take solace in knowing that their inheritance as Americans is not some unfinished or contradictory project, but a home that provided their parents shelter, and sustenance, and endless amounts of love.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Editor’s note: This article was adapted from JD Vance’s address to the Claremont Institute on July 5, 2025, and published originally at the American Mind.
Trump bets big on AI to make America dominant again
The Trump administration is preparing to launch a sweeping series of executive orders aimed at securing America’s position as the world’s leader in artificial intelligence. If carried out properly, these efforts could help spark a new era of economic prosperity and technological dominance.
The forthcoming executive actions would radically streamline federal approvals for AI-related infrastructure, vastly expand energy resources devoted to artificial intelligence development, and prioritize the construction of new transmission and data projects critical to powering America’s AI future.
Artificial intelligence could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.
It is a remarkable development — and one desperately needed.
Trump’s AI infrastructure revolution
The expected executive orders outline sweeping changes. One key measure would create a national Clean Water Act permit tailored to speed up environmental approvals for AI-related infrastructure — especially energy and data facilities.
Another directive would push the federal government to prioritize “shovel-ready” transmission projects, helping the electric grid expand quickly enough to meet the demands of AI growth.
The orders would also unlock federally managed land for rapid development of the infrastructure needed to power and support artificial intelligence operations.
Finally, the administration plans to increase dramatically the energy resources dedicated to AI development, treating the technology as a national priority.
These changes aim to eliminate major regulatory and logistical obstacles slowing AI advancement. By streamlining permitting, securing energy access, and opening federal land, the orders would lay the groundwork for building and deploying large-scale AI systems nationwide.
A critical change
Each of these reforms matters. The numbers make that clear.
An article published earlier this year in MIT Technology Review summarized estimates from multiple researchers analyzing AI’s future impact. One study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projected that by 2028, powering AI in the U.S. could require between 165 and 326 terawatt-hours of electricity annually.
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That would exceed the total power consumption of all U.S. data centers today. It’s enough to supply more than 20% of American households.
Put another way, the article noted that AI’s energy demand could create emissions equivalent to driving 300 billion miles — roughly 1,600 round trips between Earth and the sun.
This isn’t a modest technological shift. It’s an industrial revolution, and it’s already under way.
The global AI race
China’s leaders understand the potential benefits and costs of artificial intelligence, too, which is why they have approved dramatic increases in energy development in recent years.
In May, the Chinese government approved a plan to build 10 new nuclear reactors at a cost of $27.7 billion. If implemented, it would make China the planet’s largest generator of nuclear power by 2030.
China also invested more than $900 billion in renewable energy sources in 2024, nearly matching global investment in fossil fuels.
China is taking its energy needs seriously, and the Trump administration appears committed to ensuring that the United States doesn’t fall behind.
AI’s $13 trillion opportunity
Artificial intelligence is not just a futuristic novelty. It is the key to unlocking one of the greatest economic booms in modern history.
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that AI could generate as much as $13 trillion in additional global economic productivity by 2030. That is the equivalent of adding three new economies the size of India’s. Nations that lead in AI development will enjoy a productivity surge, revolutionizing manufacturing, logistics, transportation, health care, finance, and nearly every other sector.
For the United States, this means the potential to revitalize American industry, re-shore critical supply chains, and create millions of high-wage jobs. AI could supercharge small business growth, empower entrepreneurs, and streamline government services. It could give America the edge in military technology, scientific research, and global competitiveness.
In short, it could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.
But to get there, America needs to act quickly. Building the infrastructure necessary to power AI’s massive growth, both physically and digitally, will require bold and aggressive leadership. That is exactly what Trump’s new executive orders represent.
Protecting liberty
Artificial intelligence will transform nearly every part of American life — our economy, schools, military, and medical system.
The upside is immense. With the right leadership, AI could spark a new American golden age, driving productivity and innovation beyond anything in living memory. That’s the future President Trump aims to deliver. If his initiative succeeds, it could define America’s 21st-century revival.
But the risks are real.
So far, Congress and most state legislatures have done practically nothing to safeguard Americans’ basic freedoms in the age of AI. No national guardrails exist to stop this technology from being used to suppress free speech, erode religious liberty, or undermine economic independence.
Without decisive action, the very tools that promise prosperity could become the greatest threat to liberty in American history.
That’s why the Trump administration and Congress should tie any pro-AI legislation to strong protections for individual rights. If America plans to lead the world into the AI future, it must lead with freedom front and center.
Allie Beth Stuckey: Why I’m proud to be an American
The long sun and firework-filled weekend of Independence Day has officially kicked off, and before you crack a beer or fire up a burger — you might want to take a moment to remember why this country is so great.
BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” hasn’t forgotten, and despite knowing that our country is imperfect — she’s well aware that perfection isn’t required to be great.
“We have learned probably more than ever over the past few years how corrupt so many of our leaders are. Our bureaucratic state has turned itself in many ways against its own people,” Stuckey says.
“And so I celebrate America, not because she’s perfect, not because she does no wrong, not because there aren’t some really, really big things to change and to fight for, but because I believe that the values upon which we were established are the greatest values that a country could be founded on,” she continues.
“The idea that all men were created equal, the idea of inherent rights that come from a creator whose authority is transcendent and supreme and above the government. The idea of self-governance, of freedom of speech, of freedom of religion. There is no other country in the world that has championed these things as well as the United States,” she adds.
And while these are the ideas the United States was founded on, they’re only here to stay as long as we continue to fight for them.
“It takes vigilance, it takes dedication, it takes commitment on our part to make sure that we are keeping those things. I mean, it takes, really, a constant struggle, to ensure that liberty is passed down from one generation to the next,” she explains.
“God has placed us here and now, specifically, and with purpose. And that purpose is, of course, to glorify Him, to serve him with joy, and with excellence. But part of that obedience to God is to ensure that we are making better every sphere that we occupy, that we are infusing every sphere of life with as much light and as much truth and as much goodness as we possibly can,” she continues.
“This is what Christians have done for thousands of years, not just engagement in politics and culture, but also through the creation of charities and organizations and all different kinds of entities that have served the human race,” she adds.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
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One declaration sparked a nation. The other sparks confusion.
This week, my university emailed a Fourth of July reflection that caught my attention. It claimed the “backbone of our independence” is entrepreneurship and praised secular universities as the seedbed of innovation — and, by extension, democracy itself.
I’m all for business. Enterprise, creativity, and free markets foster prosperity and reward initiative. But business doesn’t create liberty. It depends on liberty. Markets flourish only when justice, rights, and human dignity already exist. In other words, business is a fruit of independence, not its root.
Our freedoms — legal, political, scientific, and economic — grow best in soil nourished by the belief in human dignity grounded in something greater than man.
As we celebrate Independence Day, it’s worth remembering the true foundation of American freedom. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t just announce our break with Britain — it explains why that break was just. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” it says, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
That single sentence tells us where rights come from: not from governments or markets, but from God. Human equality doesn’t rest on ability, wealth, or status — qualities that always vary. It rests on the shared reality that each of us bears the image of the same Creator.
This truth isn’t just historical. It remains the cornerstone of liberty. Without it, terms like “human rights” or “justice” collapse into slogans. If rights don’t come from God, where do they come from? Who gives them? And who can take them away?
Contrast our Declaration with the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document says people “have” rights — but doesn’t explain why or where they come from or why rights matter. It invokes no Creator, no image of God, no natural law, no self-evident truth or moral source beyond political consensus. Rights, it suggests, are whatever the international community agrees they are.
That’s a dangerous idea. If rights come from consensus, consensus can erase them. If governments or global committees grant rights, they can redefine or revoke them when convenient. There is no firm ground, only shifting sands.
Many Americans now prefer this softer, godless version of human dignity. They invoke justice but reject the Judge. They want rights without a Creator, happiness without truth, liberty without responsibility. But rights without God offer no security — and happiness without God dissolves into fantasy. It’s a mirage.
This project of cutting freedom off from its source cannot last. Our freedoms — legal, political, scientific, and economic — grow best in soil nourished by the belief in human dignity grounded in something greater than man.
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We live in God’s world. That distinction matters. A society built on contracts negotiates rights. A society built on covenants honors obligations to the truth. The difference isn’t just theological — it’s civilizational.
By rejecting the Creator, we don’t advance progress. We erase the foundation that made progress possible. C.S. Lewis put it this way: “You cannot go on 'explaining away' forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away.”
Explain away God, and you explain away the reason rights exist.
So this Independence Day, remember what liberty really means — and what sustains it. We’re not free because we said so. We’re free because we answer to a law higher than any court or committee. We are created equal because we are created — period.
Entrepreneurship has its place. But the American experiment wasn’t born from a business plan. It began with a declaration that acknowledged God. If we want that experiment to endure, we must not forget what made it possible in the first place.
This Independence Day, Ditch The DNA Test And Learn More About Your American Ancestors
In a frustratingly divided nation, we need stories that unite us to a shared American vision of the good life based on our nation’s founding principles.How a viral video exposed the fall — and rise? — of California
Social media often serves as a cultural barometer, providing useful insight into cultural trends and their shifts. Consider a song parody video that recently went viral. “California Freedom” is an AI-generated satirical reimagining of the 1960s classic “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas. Remember that one?
The original song painted California as a paradisiacal escape from the drab and dreary East Coast, a dream only a lucky few could call their home: “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day. I’d be safe and warm if I was in L.A. — California dreamin’, on such a winter’s day.”
California Freedom gets closer every day as locals rise to the challenge and opportunity in front of them.
The song predates the internet era, but its imagery is timeless: golden sunshine, palm trees, beaches, teens in drop-top cars cruising down Sunset Boulevard. It depicted California as a place of effortless joy — life as it ought to be.
— (@)
This is a starkly different California. The scenes are familiar but jarring: riots, wildfires, corrupt officials with clown faces, piles of money from China and other state malefactors. Set to the same tune, the new lyrics deliver a biting contrast:
Our governor’s a clown, so’s the mayor of L.A. Corruption at the top, arrogance on display. Always assumed we would conform — we’re finally awake. California freedom gets closer every day ...
At first glance, this parody video might seem dark and pessimistic, a major fall away from the sunshine of the original. But the opposite is true. The Mamas and the Papas’ version is the one with a sad, nostalgic, depressed message despite its lovely harmonies and lilting flute interlude. The writer is resigned, stuck. He has little agency in his condition. He tells us:
Stopped into a church I passed along the way. Got down on my knees, and I pretended to pray. You know the preacher liked the cold, he knows I’m gonna stay ... if I didn’t tell her I could leave today… California dreamin’ on such a winter’s day ...
The lead singer contributed nothing to the California dream he longed for and felt no control over his own life. Many in his generation shared that attitude. Baby Boomers who came of age in the mid-1960s soaked up messages that told them they were powerless over their future. They grew up and raised children with little resilience, unprepared to face adversity.
These were the kids who never walked alone in the woods or dug up worms by hand. They grew into college students who needed “safe spaces” and coloring books to cope with opposing viewpoints. They are the fragile offspring of a generation that surrendered its agency — and passed along the habit.
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But the “California Freedom” video tells a different story. Early on, the bear from the state flag rears up, growls, and bares its teeth — startling Nancy Pelosi. We see ICE and law enforcement pushing back on rioters. And after a litany of the corrupt and destructive acts of key state leaders, the original song’s flute solo plays once again — but this time, Donald Trump is shown performing it in front of California’s most iconic and breathtaking landscapes.
Trump playing the flute may draw laughs — a wink at his claim of childhood musical talent — but the image carries weight. His administration has moved swiftly and forcefully to restore order where leftist leaders welcomed chaos and destruction. Through initiatives like the Department of Government Efficiency and budgetary reform, Trump has choked off taxpayer funds to activist groups pushing bloated, often corrupt government control over everyday life.
The video places Trump against California’s most iconic landscapes — redwoods, poppy fields, the Golden Gate — transforming a moment of satire into something more. It’s not just a gag. It’s a statement: California’s promise still lives. Freedom, prosperity, and integrity don’t flow from bureaucrats or ideologues. They come from the land itself — and the people who choose to defend it.
The video speaks clearly: We have agency. California doesn’t have to remain broken. Beneath the corruption, arrogance, and engineered collapse lies a chance to rebuild. The bear — California’s symbol — rises, growls, and shows its teeth. And through the noise, the music plays again. Behind the drug camps and trash-choked boulevards, the state’s beauty and strength still hum with life.
This energy, stronger than COVID lockdowns that crushed working people while Gavin Newsom dined at the French Laundry, signals something new. The future is coming — and it looks nothing like the ruins left behind.
I first traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s to meet my fiancé’s family, and I fell in love immediately with the land and the sea. Later, while living in Silicon Valley, we explored the state whenever possible. In the L.A. area, I walked the ocean paths often.
What happened to California in the decades since grieves me. It’s one reason I refused to retire there.
But now, a new generation offers hope. Young people inspired by Trump are shedding the passive fragility their parents too often embraced and indulged. They’re building a different California — one rooted not in globalist pretensions or bureaucratic arrogance but in the sea, the mountains, and the enduring beauty of the land itself.
California freedom gets closer every day as locals rise to the challenge and seize the opportunity in front of them.
MASSIVE VICTORY: SCOTUS sides with parents; Alito nukes LGBT indoctrination campaign
Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland's largest school district, approved over 20 works of LGBT propaganda for inclusion as instructional materials in its curriculum in late 2022.
The woke district was initially willing to let parents opt their kids out of lessons incorporating the non-straight agitprop and to provide notice when radical works celebrating sex changes, Pride parades, and reality-defying pronouns such as "Pride Puppy," "Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope," and "My Rainbow" were read.
However, the district determined that the opt-outs required by state law for sex education units of health classes did not apply, as the LGBT propaganda was introduced as part of the English curriculum.
'These books impose upon children a set of values and beliefs that are "hostile" to their parents' religious beliefs.'
Unwilling to surrender their children to cultural imperialists and confident that the district's policy violated their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion, Christian and Muslim parents represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty took the MCPS to court — not seeking to ban the books but to reclaim the right to control their kids' exposure to them.
On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the parents are entitled to a preliminary injunction that would permit them to have their kids excused from instruction related to the LGBT propaganda while their lawsuit proceeds.
The high court reversed a lesser court's judgment and noted that the parents "are likely to succeed on their claim that the Board’s policies unconstitutionally burden their religious exercise."
"We hold that the Board’s introduction of the 'LGBTQ+-inclusive' storybooks — combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs — substantially interferes with the religious development of their children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder found unacceptable," Justice Samuel Alito noted in the opinion for the high court.
Alito emphasized in the majority opinion that storybooks targeting young children are "unmistakably normative" and "clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected."
The conservative justice highlighted, for example, that one of the works of LGBT propaganda pushed in the district "does not simply refer to same-sex marriage as an existing practice. Instead, it presents acceptance of same-sex marriage as a perspective that should be celebrated."
"These books carry with them 'a very real threat of undermining' the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children," continued Alito. "Like the compulsory high school education considered in Yoder, these books impose upon children a set of values and beliefs that are 'hostile' to their parents' religious beliefs."
Alito suggested further that the three dissenting liberal justices' "blinkered view" that the LGBT propaganda was merely aimed at exposing students to the message that non-straight people exist and teaching them kindness "ignores the messages that the authors plainly intended to convey" as well as the school board's stated reasons for inserting the books into the curriculum.
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, was among the many parental rights activists who celebrated the ruling.
"We owe immense gratitude to the courageous parents, like Tamer Mahmoud and Rosalind Hanson, who bravely stepped forward as plaintiffs in this landmark case," said Justice. "This decision protects family values and religious freedom from ideological overreach, sending a clear warning to every public school in America: Respect the sacred, fundamental rights of parents, or face the consequences."
Anticipating that the court would side with the parents, Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Culture Project and a visiting fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, told Blaze News previously that "a ruling in favor of families would be a landmark victory for parental rights in education" — one that would "reaffirm the Supreme Court precedent and the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children."
The Supreme Court made abundantly clear a century ago in Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary that "the child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."
'It's all about indoctrination.'
According to a poll of 1,000 American adults conducted in fall 2024 by the research company Heart+Mind Strategies, 69% of Americans agree that parents are the primary educators of their children and 77% agree that parents should be able to opt out their children from curriculum on "gender" and sexuality if they believe it is not age-appropriate or if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.
"A victory would put wind at the sails of the movement to secure parental rights in education. A win would embolden parents to raise the alarm when school districts trample on their rights and try to lay claim to their children's upbringing in the future," continued DeAngelis. "A win would put school districts on notice and send a nationwide signal that kids do not belong to the government."
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Alvin Lui, president of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, told Blaze News, "Schools have over the last 20 years, especially in the last 10, been very aggressive in cutting parents out and not allowing them to opt out."
"Parents have had enough," added Lui.
The parental rights advocate stressed that the content at issue "has nothing to do with academics. Obviously. It has nothing to do with reading proficiency. It has nothing to do with what schools are supposed to be or what parents think schools are supposed to be. It's all about indoctrination."
The high court's ruling is a major upset for non-straight activists and their fellow travelers, including PEN America, which claimed in an amicus brief that if the petitioners prevailed, LGBT propagandists might suffer losses in sales and Montgomery County teachers might ultimately "steer clear of any lessons that include LGBTQ individuals and content rather than risk violating a court order."
Lui noted that this case serves as a "reminder of how important it is for parents to stick on offense" and to make good use of tools like opt-outs to keep ideologues in the education system on the back foot.
While evidently happy about the outcome, DeAngelis indicated there is another form of opt-out that parents should seek.
"Families should be able to opt their children out of content that conflicts with their values regardless of whether the reason has anything to do with religion. And we shouldn't stop there," said DeAngelis. "Families shouldn't only be able to opt out of specific content — they should have the power to opt out of any government school that is in fundamental misalignment with their values."
"And when they opt out, parents should be able to take their children's education tax dollars to the school that best meets their needs," added DeAngelis.
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