The Quiet Breaking of the American Spirit

American Spirit Crisis: I see a nation rich in government programs and poor in purpose. I see a people who have been told to trade fathers for agencies, faith for comfort, and dignity for red tape.

Under the glow of a hundred comforting lies, a question burns: Where did Americas courage go, and who taught us to fear our own voice? In New York we face what I call the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis, not a one-off mistake, but a continuous selling of false promises that our people, Americanos, have fallen for.

It is a cultural decay, a rot nudging a nation into silence, teaching us to shout down ideas and treat disagreement as violence. It is a crisis of vanishing backbone and vanishing truth. And it must be confronted before it consumes us completely.

Over just four years, from 2020 to 2024, prices for food in the United States rose by about twenty three and a half percent, meaning a hundred dollar grocery trip in 2020 costs roughly one hundred twenty five dollars in 2024, even before you add gas and utilities.

I hear it in the voices of everyday Americans. The phone lines light up with people asking if we have all become pawns on someone elses board. Are we being used one caller wonders. Absolutely, I answer. The political class left and right has too often treated citizens like expendable pieces. And there is a worse side today, an extremist left that sells anti American, anti God lies gift wrapped in pretty words.

They preach inclusion while silencing dissent, claim compassion while creating dependency. They hand out false promises and call it progress, feeding this Vanbōōlzalness Crisis until our youth choke on it. Malcolm X warned us decades ago about political deceit, and his words still cut like a bell. The white liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical than the open conservative. Harsh medicine, but a test of truth. Who is using you, and who is telling you the truth. In this crisis of lies, every American must ask that question.

We look homeward and see institutions failing the people. In my own city, they pay the school board like champions and graduate our children like afterthoughts. Free speech is slipping.

Monroe County, I am looking at you. Our young are taught what to think, not how to think. Propaganda passes for education, while teachers and cowards in power let ideology trump truth. The result is an entire generation afraid to speak freely, conditioned to equate words with harm. This is not education. This is training wheels for tyranny.

Nationwide, surveys of tens of thousands of college students now show that more than seventy percent say it is acceptable in at least some circumstances to shout down a campus speaker they dislike, and about thirty four percent say it is acceptable, at least rarely, to use violence to stop a speech.

In New York, nearly half of college students say they self censor on campus. A zealot minority are willing to swing bats to silence ideas. They have been trained for tyranny, raised to believe that silencing dissent is virtuous and that fists are an answer. This is how a free society dies, not with a bang but with students cheering the death of debate.

How did we get here. By trading faith for comfort and family for government, until we are buried in programs and starving for purpose. We allowed a creeping government overreach to sell soft slavery as kindness. Let us confront the quiet cruelty hiding in plain sight, a welfare system that warehouses the poor, a disability bureaucracy that traps people in endless dependency, a culture that sidelines fatherhood and calls it progress.

In fiscal year 2024, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program served an average of about forty one point seven million people every month, roughly twelve point three percent of the United States population, which means more than one in eight residents are buying food with federal assistance as a way of life, not just emergency help.

In New York, for instance, a Medicaid recipient cannot save more than two thousand dollars without losing benefits, an asset cap frozen since nineteen eighty seven. Imagine being a struggling family trying to get ahead, but a thirty eight year old rule says if you put a few thousand in the bank for your kids you get cut off. That is not compassion. That is control.

Today, for seniors seeking long term care coverage, New York sets an individual Medicaid asset limit in the low thirty thousand dollar range, while a single year in a nursing home can easily cost more than one hundred thousand dollars, which means many middle class families are still one diagnosis away from financial ruin.

We see leaders talk a big game about racial equity or helping the little guy, but they duck responsibility when it counts. They tell single moms the government will be Daddy. They tell communities that bureaucrats know best. And what has it gotten us. Broken families and whole neighborhoods where purpose has dried up. A nation rich in programs and poor in purpose indeed.

The Vanbōōlzalness Crisis wears many masks, but perhaps the ugliest is how we treat our veterans. Think about the values we claim to hold, honor, service, support our troops. Now look at reality. There are over forty thousand veterans homeless on any given night in this country.

The latest federal point in time count found that on a single night in January 2024 there were 32,882 veterans experiencing homelessness in the United States, even as overall homelessness reached a record 771,480 people, up more than eighteen percent in just one year.

Here in New York, veteran homelessness plummeted from thousands a decade ago to about one thousand one hundred eighty veterans statewide in two thousand twenty four. That is better, but still one thousand one hundred eighty too many living on the streets of the state they defended. Veterans make up just seven percent of the United States population, yet they account for a far larger share of homeless adults.

Nationally, there are about fifteen to eighteen million living veterans, roughly six to seven percent of the adult population, which means this small share of Americans is carrying a disproportionate burden of homelessness and invisible wounds.

And the tragedy does not end there. We are losing our heroes to despair. In two thousand twenty alone, more than six thousand veterans died by suicide, nearly seventeen brothers and sisters in arms taking their own lives every single day. Seventeen a day. The headlines talk about every other crisis, but not this one. Where is the national outrage for those who survived war only to come home and lose the battle within.

The most recent National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report shows that in 2022, 6,407 veterans died by suicide, an average of 17.6 veteran suicides every single day, confirming that this crisis is not abstract, it is measured one life at a time.

I spoke with a former Army sergeant, let us call him Sarge, who laid it out plain. Veterans Day is not a slogan, it is a standard. Every veteran combat or not earned their title. He and I confronted some painful truths. The culture now makes military service seem uncool, our young people ignorant of the honor in putting on that uniform. Meanwhile, the VA and government programs wrap our vets in so much red tape that they have to ask permission for basic care they were promised. It is a national disgrace.

They build so called veteran housing complexes where the fine print excludes a one hundred percent service connected disabled vet because his modest benefit check is a hair too high, yet migrants who came here illegally are given rooms for zero dollars rent as a political stunt in compassion. A disabled vet in our community lives on three thousand dollars a month in benefits, he cannot even qualify for the housing built in the name of veterans, but elsewhere in New York we have non citizens being housed virtually free.

This is the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis at its most perverse. Compassion packaged as betrayal, putting those who sacrificed last and those who break the rules first.

We have forced our warriors to beg for scraps while others get a feast. We wave flags at parades once a year, then ignore the struggling vet on the corner the day after. As Sarge said on my show, the answer is not more pageantry. It is policy that works, boots on ground leadership by those who know the mission. Ceremony is easy. Responsibility is victory. If we truly valued duty, we would never leave our wounded behind in bureaucratic no mans land. Yet here we are.

At the very same time, veterans are still giving back in powerful ways. In 2021 there were about 1.6 million veteran owned firms in the United States employing more than 3.2 million workers and generating nearly 984 billion dollars in sales, proof that when government gets out of the way, these men and women continue to serve by building jobs and communities.

Is it any wonder our youth are disillusioned. They see a society that preaches equality and integrity but delivers hypocrisy and chaos. They have watched adults tear each other apart over elections, over vaccines, over every dividing line imaginable. They have been told America is racist, rotten, not worth believing in. So some tune out entirely, cynical, checked out, overdosing on nihilism. Others turn that disillusionment into rage, lashing out in protests or even violence because nobody taught them constructive patriotism.

I hear from young callers who feel politically homeless, convinced the system is so rigged that only extreme measures remain. They doubt that voting matters at all. In two thousand twenty, only a little more than half of eighteen to twenty four year olds even voted. A generation primed for hopelessness. And those who do engage often think shouting or fighting is the way. The 2020 presidential election had the highest overall turnout in more than a century at about 66.8 percent of eligible citizens, yet younger citizens still lagged, with turnout among eighteen to twenty four year olds estimated around the low fifties.

This is the product of an ideological machine that has poisoned their love of country. When students say violence is acceptable to shut down speech, we have a generation ready to burn down the very republic we are asking them to inherit. We have failed them by example. We have shown them leaders who lie, institutions that cheat, and a culture that rewards victimhood over responsibility. If we do not restore their faith, if we do not show them an America worth believing in, then the political violence we fear will only grow.

So how do we restore that faith. How do we fight the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis gnawing at our national soul. The first step is to speak the truth and defend it, openly and bravely. That is why I use my voice on the air.

Free speech is the first freedom, the one that guards all others. But it is more than talk. It is about action, about living our values. It means saying no to those false promises, those free handouts that come at the cost of our independence. It means reasserting that the best social program remains a job, not a government check. It means reminding our neighbors that the best defense of liberty remains you, your character, your work, your willingness to stand up.

Government overreach ends when enough of us simply refuse to play along with the charade. We clean up our communities instead of waiting for a grant from Albany. We teach our kids to be resilient and informed instead of outsourcing their morals to social media and ideological institutions. We put family back at the center. No federal program can love a child like a parent can. No politician has ever replaced a father or a mother. We must shun the cultural rot that says fathers do not matter and personal responsibility is optional.

And as we fix our gaze on leadership, we must demand honesty and accountability, especially in our elections, the bedrock of our republic. I recently hosted a historic conversation. For the first time ever, both Democrat and Republican commissioners of our county Board of Elections came on my show together, facing live questions from the public. It was a brave step toward transparency. They could have stayed hidden behind press releases, but they chose dialogue. That is what leadership should look like. Yet what happened.

Some people took that moment of openness and used it to attack rather than engage. The commissioners opened the door, and instead of walking through it, critics started swinging hammers. This is exactly what we must stop. We all say we want honest government, that we are worried about election integrity. Well, integrity cuts both ways. When officials give us a chance at dialogue, we the people have a duty to show up with civility and courage, not cynicism. If we want secure, fair elections, then volunteer as poll watchers. Learn how the count works in your town. Vote in every election, not just the flashy ones. Hold your officials accountable without turning every disagreement into a war of malice. We cannot fix our system by burning it down.

People are messy. Leaders clean up messes. So be a leader. If you see misinformation, correct it with facts and grace. If you see corruption, expose it with evidence and backbone. But do it anchored in truth, not tribalism. If we want change, we must lead with grace and moral conviction, not just rage.

The good news is, I see Americans rising to this challenge. I see it in the veteran who starts a business to employ his fellow vets, cutting through red tape with the same determination that carried him through war. Veterans own millions of businesses in America and employ millions more. According to federal business surveys, veteran owned employer firms make up about five percent of all employer businesses, employ more than three million workers, and generate well over nine hundred billion dollars in revenue each year.

I see it in Hispanic entrepreneurs in my city who refuse to wait for permission or pity. They are proving every day that freedom and self reliance, not government handouts, drive real progress. These are men and women who were told you are under represented, the deck is stacked against you. And yes, under representation is real, discrimination is real, but their answer is not to surrender. Their answer is mission, discipline, and access.

Across the country there are roughly 4.7 million Hispanic owned businesses contributing more than 700 billion dollars to the American economy each year, and Hispanic business owners now represent about 14.5 percent of all business owners.

They join together in associations, they mentor each other, they seize opportunities through minority business programs, but they never adopt a handout mindset. As one business leader said, we do not beg, we build. They push back against policies that suffocate growth. They show that entrepreneurship beats bureaucracy every time. These builders are living proof that the American Dream is alive, if only we have the courage to claim it. They have not given up on Americas promise, and neither should we.

My friends, the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis is a line in the sand. It is the moment we decide what kind of country we will be. Will we continue down this road of cowardice and decay, muzzling ourselves, abandoning our veterans, indulging the corruption of both morals and institutions. Or will we take a stand, draw that line, and say enough. I will not be silent. I will not lie to make weak men feel comfortable. This is not a rant. It is a reckoning. It is a call to every American heart. Remember who we are. We are the nation that stormed the beaches of Normandy and raised the flag at Iwo Jima. We are the country where a poor kid can become a successful entrepreneur through grit and faith. We are still the home of free people, but only as long as free people have the courage to act like it.

It is time to restore what has been lost. Teach your children what true freedom means, that it comes with responsibility and courage. Reach out to that struggling veteran in your church or neighborhood. Do not wait for the VA. You be the helping hand. Challenge the lies when you hear them, whether it is in the classroom, the break room, or on the evening news. Refuse to let Americas values die a slow death. Pray for wisdom and speak the truth in love, but speak it loudly. Because one brave voice at a time is how a free people win.

The masks are off, and the lines are lit. The Vanbōōlzalness Crisis touches everything, our schools, our economy, our military, our ballots, our very sense of right and wrong. But crises are also moments of decision. I believe we still have heroes among us ready to step up. I believe you can be one of them. Parents who teach grit and grace to their kids, pastors who preach truth instead of trend, entrepreneurs who build instead of beg, voters who do their homework and hold leaders to account, this is how we turn the tide. Not with violence or vitriol, but with virtue. Not with fear, but with faith.

America, the hour is late, but the path is clear. Courage lost can be found again. Values trampled can rise back up. The Vanbōōlzalness Crisis will fall when enough of us stand. So stand. Stand for honesty. Stand for your family. Stand for the flag and the ideals it represents, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The next steps are ours to take, in our homes, our school boards, our businesses, our ballots. The politicians can mail out their little inflation relief checks and call it salvation. We know better. The best social program is still a good job, and the best welfare program is a strong family. The best way to care for our veterans is to treat them as the national treasures they are, not obstacles to budget cuts. And the best defense of our liberty is still us, We the People, who love this country enough to save it.

I refuse to let America crumble on my watch. Do you. The time for talk is over. Now it is time for action, bold, principled, unafraid. Mira la izquierda, mira la derecha. Look around. See clearly. The masks have fallen, the stakes are plain. The Vanbōōlzalness Crisis must fall, and it falls with each of us saying no more and stepping forward. Listen, get uncomfortable, and then take your next step. Each of us, in our own corner of this great nation, can light a fire of renewal. And together, those fires will forge an America that is still the land of the free and the home of the brave, an America that lives up to the best within us, not the worst. Let us get to work, with courage and with conviction. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.