Fr. Brendan Kilcoyne is one of the few priests in Ireland with the courage to say what others won’t.

Week after week, he tells the truth that the rest of public life tiptoes around: Ireland, like Britain and much of the West, is being reshaped by two forces at once — an aggressively secular culture that mocks belief, and a rising influx of people whose values come from religious traditions deeply at odds with Christianity.

This is the part the West refuses to face: A culture without God doesn’t stay neutral.

Both currents weaken what remains of Ireland’s Christian foundations. One breaks it down. The other builds something else in its place.

Kilcoyne doesn’t simply call for “legal immigration” — the safe line politicians repeat to sound reasonable — but he goes farther.

He calls for Christian-only immigration, not as a provocation but as a survival strategy for a civilization that once took the gospel for granted. In a country where faith once shaped the architecture of daily life, he argues that if people must come from abroad, they should be people who can carry that faith forward.

He’s right. It’s the only sane path left.

I know this to be true from experience. Ireland hosts thousands of Filipino workers, many of them nurses and care staff. They are some of the warmest people I have ever met. In many ways, they remind many Irish people of an older Ireland — devout, hardworking, grateful, family-centered.

My mother works closely with a Filipino woman in her home-nursing work. She describes her as one of the kindest souls she has ever known. This isn’t some abstract argument about cultural cohesion. Instead, it’s something I’ve watched play out in real life. Their Catholic faith shapes their character, their sense of duty, and their reverence for life. Wherever they go, they make the place stronger.

Contrast that with what just happened in the U.S.

Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old Army specialist, was shot and killed in Washington, D.C. The alleged gunman, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, came into the country after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. One can’t pretend cases like this exist in a vacuum, any more than one can pretend the grooming-gang scandals in Britain came out of thin air.

These tragedies sit inside a larger pattern. The West has opened its doors to people with radically different expectations about women, law, authority, violence, and faith — and then acts stunned when those differences surface in the streets.

RELATED: Correcting the narrative: What the Bible actually says about immigration

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In America, Islam is on track to become the second-largest religion by 2040, outpacing Judaism and mainline Protestantism. That shift isn’t driven by conversion but by immigration patterns and birth rates.

Let that sink in. A country built on Christian memory and Christian morals is heading toward a religious landscape its founders would barely recognize. None of this is speculation. It’s demographic math.

This matters because religions aren’t interchangeable. They shape law, culture, expectations for public life, attitudes toward authority, dissent, forgiveness, and the value of the individual. A society shaped by the Sermon on the Mount will never think or function the same as one shaped by Islam’s foundational texts.

The two traditions couldn’t be farther apart.

One formed cultures around decency and love of neighbor. The other arose in an age of conquest, tribal loyalty, and rigid obedience. These differences aren’t cosmetic but civilizational. And with Christianity in the West losing its fighting spirit, it’s not hard to see which force will fill the vacuum. Islam is not a private spirituality, but a complete system of life — legal, social, political — built on the expectation that it will shape the society around it.

Again, this isn’t speculation. It’s written into its earliest texts and confirmed by its history, which raises the obvious question: What kind of West emerges when the religious balance tips this far?

Kilcoyne’s message isn’t aimed at Ireland alone. It applies to any nation whose culture was built on Christianity — meaning most of Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

A society can’t function without shared belief and shared boundaries. Christianity once provided both. It shaped civic standards, festivals, art, manners, and the meaning of freedom. Remove it, and the God-sized space is claimed by something else immediately, like nihilism, resentment, and ideologies far more savage and unforgiving.

While being Christian doesn’t automatically make people decent, it does mean they’re far more likely to share the values that hold a society together.

This is the part the West refuses to face: A culture without God doesn’t stay neutral. It slides into something far less humane. And a country that imports large numbers of people who follow a religion with no respect for Christian norms doesn’t stay stable. It absorbs that religion’s worldview whether it wants to or not.

If immigration is necessary — and in many aging nations it is — Kilcoyne asks why we wouldn’t welcome those whose faith strengthens, rather than weakens, the society they enter.

Why not bring in people who see children not as burdens but blessings, who honor marriage, who take charity seriously, who treat the elderly with care, who believe suffering has meaning, and who know the world is more than appetite and impulse?

These are the qualities that once made the West strong. And while being Christian doesn’t automatically make people decent, it does mean they’re far more likely to share the values that hold a society together.

Sarah Beckstrom is dead. A young woman who trusted her country, trusted its leaders, trusted the system that put her in uniform. If America had been more serious about value-based immigration — if it had prioritized people who share its creed and its cultural instincts — she might still be alive. Her death shouldn’t be treated as another tragic headline to scroll past.

If anything, let it mark the moment the country finally admits that immigration policy isn’t a paperwork issue but a question of national survival in the most literal sense. Let her death mean something.

Let it push America toward choosing people who lift the nation up — not those who drag it into the abyss.

​Brendan kilcoyne, Catholic, Christian, Christianity, God, Immigration, Sarah beckstrom, Faith 

Our new addition is finally finished — level floors, wide doors, and a space where my wife, Gracie, can move freely despite her severe disabilities. After years of improvising in tight quarters, we’re grateful to have a place that works for us, even if it’s not perfect.

The new part of the house went up during Trump’s second non-consecutive term; the original part went up during the second term of the only other president to do the same, Grover Cleveland. Joining the two is a bit like welding a Tesla to a horse-drawn buggy — functional, charming, and only slightly defiant of gravity.

When most of life leans, you can still make one crooked thing right.

During construction, the fridge in our tiny kitchen got bumped off the carefully placed shims and tilted just enough to drive me crazy. Admittedly, that’s not a long trip.

I ignored it for about a week but finally couldn’t stand it anymore. Leveling a refrigerator in a cabin built during the Cleveland administration isn’t simple. There are pulleys, levers, questions about physics, and — in my case — a call to the engineering department at Montana State. They were not amused. My neighbor Charles, who often “pity helps” me, wasn’t available. I can’t prove it, but I think he hung up and immediately burst into laughter.

So I did it myself.

I knew it would be a project — and once I started, it could not easily be interrupted by caregiving duties. But exasperation collided with need, and I got down on the floor (at a slant) and went to work. It went exactly as expected: mild swearing, a few tears, and then a small victory. When the bubble on the level finally drifted near the center, I declared success, remembering that old rancher’s saying: “Most things can be fixed with baling wire and bad language.”

It’s level — well, Montana level — but I’ll take it.

Much of what I’ve faced as a caregiver over 40 years can’t be fixed. But small victories, like leveling a refrigerator in a house built when bread was 3 cents and buffalo still outnumbered politicians, remind me that even when most of life leans, you can still make one crooked thing right.

Everyone has a version of that tilted refrigerator — something off-kilter you keep meaning to fix but never quite reach. It might be a strained relationship, a stack of bills, or a heart worn down by too much bad news. You can’t straighten the world, but you can steady what’s right in front of you.

When life feels unsettled, taking time to level something — even a small thing — matters more than we think. Sometimes that quiet act of setting one thing right gives us just enough footing to stand through the rest of it.

RELATED: When fathers fall, grace asks more of us

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Years ago, city officials talked about “broken-window” policing: Neglect one thing, and the whole neighborhood starts to crumble. The opposite is also true. Fix one small thing, and a bit of order comes back. Leveling even one ordinary object pushes back against the chaos.

Most caregiving must be repeated tomorrow, but every so often something stays fixed. A grab bar anchored in the right place. A ramp that finally fits the chair. The day may still be full of mess and pain, but that one thing won’t need doing again. It stands there quietly, reminding you that not everything leans. Some things still hold. And sometimes that’s enough to remind you that you still can too.

When I turn on the news, I see dysfunction I can’t do anything about. But when I fix dinner, my refrigerator no longer leans.

There’s an old Appalachian saying: “Fix what you can. The rest was never yours to mend.”

Level what you can. Let the rest lean.

​Opinion & analysis, Caregiving, Caregivers, House, Crooked, Homeownership, Fix, Donald trump, Grover cleveland, Family, Marriage 

Back in July, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, establishing Trump Accounts — a tax-free savings program that provides a $1,000 government deposit for every U.S. newborn from 2025 to 2028. Families are permitted to contribute up to $5,000 annually starting July 4, 2026. Funds are locked until age 18, when they become available for uses like education, a first home, or business startup.

The core idea behind the initiative is to revive the American dream for today’s young Americans, who have lower home ownership rates, more student debt, and less wealth at age 30 than their parents or grandparents did.

But is it really a good idea? Or is it just another form of socialist wealth redistribution that creates dependency rather than true opportunity?

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn spoke with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s adviser Joseph Lavorgna.

Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described these Trump Accounts as “the beginning of a shareholder economy” during a panel at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York.

“That’s a little frightening because we’ve been warning against the stakeholder economy. How far down the road does Secretary Bessent think we were on the stakeholder if this is the beginning of a shareholder economy?” Glenn asks.

But Lavorgna says there’s nothing frightening about Bessent’s statement.

“What he meant by that was that the U.S. economy is one that thrives when you’ve got incentives to produce and work,” he says.

“The bill that the president signed … encourages capital formation and growth and the ability to invest in the future to teach, in many cases yet-to-be-born boys and girls, the power of compound interest in being a stakeholder in the capitalist system.”

“In other words, if you have a stake in the system, you don’t want to burn it down?” Glenn asks.

“Right. It’s essentially the American dream. It’s a way to build wealth creation,” Lavorgna confirms, praising Trump Accounts as “a great investment for the future.”

But Glenn has two major concerns.

One: The same idea was proposed to our founders, but they shut it down.

“This was proposed before, during the founding era. It was called Agrarian Justice, and Thomas Paine said, ‘We should give 15 pounds to everybody who turns 21,’ and that 15 pounds … would be, in today’s dollars, about $2,500 to $3,000,” says Glenn.

The founders, he explains, “rejected it” as “redistribution of wealth” and “not government’s role.”

But Lavorgna defends the idea. “That was over a couple hundred years ago, and the economy and the capitalist system has evolved significantly. This isn’t a redistribution of wealth; this is an investment in the future and people’s livelihoods.”

He also argues that the program is a tool for developing “financial literacy,” meaning American youth will be taught that “when they put money aside, that money will grow and do wondrous things through the power of compound interest.”

Glenn’s second counterargument is that we shouldn’t be beginning any new government programs when the national debt is already out of control.

“We’re $38 trillion in debt. I’m so torn on this because I really do understand people feel like they don’t have a stake; they’re never going to get ahead; they’re never going to get a house — all of this stuff that’s leading them to this lie of socialism,” he says.

“We have to do something. But again, I’m so concerned about opening up a can of worms here that just gets out of control again.”

But Lavorgna says Trump Accounts are “not consumption.” The money, he says, goes straight “back into the capitalist system” — sparking businesses, growing companies, and creating jobs and wealth.

“The only way that we are going to be able to deal with the debt situation is to grow and to grow fast,” he says.

To hear Glenn’s response, watch the full interview above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Scott bessent, Joseph lavorgna, Us treasury, Trump accounts, Capitalism, Wealth redistribution, Socialism, National debt 

Following the unrest that unfolded at a Turning Point USA event at the University of California, Berkeley, the Department of Justice has launched an investigation into those behind the disruption.

One of the alleged organizers of the recent protest, By Any Means Necessary, has been described as part of the ecosystem of the “anti-fascist” movement.

These educators are attempting to advance their political agenda through statewide governmental jobs and teachers’ union leadership positions.

Unfortunately, UC Berkeley is no stranger to left-wing protests turning violent.

In 2017, several far-left agitators were arrested at a conservative rally on the same campus. One of those individuals was BAMN member and middle school teacher Yvette Felarca, who had previously defended the use of militant violence in an interview. She had also been charged in 2016 with assault related to a previous counter-protest.

But Felarca is not an anomaly. Rather, she is one example of a fringe of aggressive, far-left revolutionaries who seek to corrupt the K-12 education ecosystem to advance their radical political ideology. Whether through ethnic studies curriculums, organizing “Teach-ins for Gaza” and anti-Israel activism, or alleged glorification of terrorism and endorsement of Antifa, activist teachers are leveraging the historical trust bestowed upon the education profession to foment an anti-Western, anti-American mindset in schools and the culture writ large.

Not surprisingly, the teachers’ unions play a role in funding, promoting, and protecting these activist educators.

In fact, the American Federation of Teachers came to Felarca’s aid in 2018 by passing a resolution in support of her and her lawsuit against Judicial Watch. The legal action was aimed at stopping the watchdog group from obtaining public records from the school district. But the lawsuit failed.

Yet this has not stopped Felarca and other BAMN members from continuing to advance a far-left ideology both inside and outside K-12 schools.

For example, in March, Oakland High School (Calif.) students, flanked by teachers who affiliate with BAMN, led a protest over immigration policies. In this instance, the influence of the teacher-activists is no secret. The student protesters publicly claimed they received help from the local BAMN chapter in organizing the event.

RELATED: The radical left is poisoning our schools — here’s how we fight back

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Even though street activism can be the most visible form of ideological battle on the American culture, these educators are attempting to advance their political agenda through statewide government jobs and teachers’ union leadership positions.

The executive vice president of United Educators of San Francisco, for example, is currently running for state superintendent of public instruction. The San Francisco Unified teacher touts that under his leadership, the UESF “transformed into one of California’s strongest and most militant unions.” His site also states that he is an activist and “longtime organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation” — an organization known to be behind many of the anti-Israel and anti-ICE protests that have taken place across the country.

In Los Angeles, the Association of Raza Educators, the education wing of the radical group Union del Barrio, has a slate of individuals running for positions of leadership in United Teachers Los Angeles. Included on the roster is teacher Ron Gochez, who is no stranger to controversial comments and actions.

In fact, he was recently the subject of a DOJ probe over public statements he made toward Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Other ARE members have served on committees for the California Teachers Association, have been delegates to the NEA convention, and are engaged in groups such as Educators for Justice in Palestine and Queers for Palestine.

The system is being used as a tool to advance a radical left-wing political agenda.

But should ARE achieve its goal of taking over leadership of the union of one of the largest school districts in the country, it would be more status quo than anomaly.

In 2021, UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz infamously proclaimed that “there is no such thing as learning loss.” She continued by stating that it was “OK that our babies may not have learned their times tables … they learned the difference between riot and a protest.”

Myart-Cruz said the quiet part out loud — the teachers’ unions and far-left educators value political activism over learning.

Yet parents, public officials, and even other teachers are either willfully blind or largely unaware of the influence that these nefarious actors have on education despite the increase in public-facing activism. The system is being used as a tool to advance a radical left-wing political agenda, and it comes with a very steep cost for American children.

The proof is already starting to rear its ugly head, as evidenced by a recent University of California, San Diego, report.

Regardless of one’s position on public schools or teachers’ unions, this issue will eventually impact all Americans if left unaddressed. It is time to put a stop to the “school to far-left activism” pipeline and return the institution to its primary charter — to teach children to read and do math.

​Radical left, Education takeover, Teachers unions, Education 

After the nearly unanimous passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month, many have wondered what other files and information have yet to be disclosed amid the heated controversy over the Epstein files.

A federal judge in Florida just ordered the release of grand jury documents from an old case against Epstein, defying past orders not to release them.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith argued that a recent law now takes precedence over the rules that prohibited past disclosure.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith has ordered the release of grand jury transcripts related to investigations from 2005 and 2007 involving convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

RELATED: Was the latest Epstein document dump just Trump’s 4D chess trap? Steve Deace answers.

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Grand jury proceedings are often conducted in private and there are higher standards to meet in order to disclose transcripts from them.

However, U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith, in his short decision to release the transcripts, argued that a recent law now takes precedence over the rules that prohibited past disclosure.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky), who spearheaded the effort for disclosure, posted the news of the ruling on X on Friday afternoon.

Massie highlighted the fact that the Epstein Files Transparency Act played a crucial role in the judge’s decision to override past decisions against disclosure.

The Act, being “later-enacted” and more “specific”, trumps the rules barring the release of the documents in the past.

Epstein was not convicted of any crimes as a result of this grand jury investigation..

Instead, he famously pleaded guilty to comparatively minor charges in 2008 under the U.S. Attorney at the time, Alex Acosta, who later became Trump’s Labor Secretary in his first term. Acosta subsequently resigned following scrutiny over the non-prosecution agreement in 2008.

It is not clear when the grand jury transcripts will be released or exactly how much new information will be disclosed.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law on November 19, gives the government 30 days to prepare and release all relevant records.

Those following the case can expect an update on the release of any remaining files by December 19.

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​Politics, Epstein, Epstein files, Trump, Trump administration, Rodney smith, Epstein files transparency act, Thomas massie, Florida, Jeffrey epstein