The gains made in classical education in recent years are truly encouraging. Students are once again learning great names and great stories, and they are encountering primary texts that invite them to participate rather than be passive observers.

But while the classical academic program is teaching our children the names of virtues long out of fashion, we should ask whether we have created the conditions in which those virtues can truly take root and flourish.

Students need raw contact with nature so that virtue is exercised with cold hands and aching backs, not merely batted around the seminar table as an abstraction.

In the “Cyropaedia,” Xenophon’s account of Cyrus’ formation and adventures before he ascended to Persia’s throne, Xenophon describes the paideia, or the process of formation whereby young men become statesmen. Xenophon’s Cyrus grew up with rigorous discipline: combat, cold exposure, fasting, and the austere corrections of men hardened by war.

His education was a series of experiences fashioning him for military service, accustoming him to privation, and schooling him in the unapologetic art of justice.

What Xenophon sketches out, in the main, mirrors the Greek historian Herodotus’ description of the education of noble Persian youth in “The Histories.” They were sent away to spend time with military commanders on the empire’s frontiers.

Far from the corrosive luxuries and intrigues of the court, the young learned to “ride, shoot the bow, and speak the truth.” Only when sufficiently hardened were they considered fit to return to the seats of power and take their place in the political life of the empire.

Both Herodotus and Xenophon depicted an ideal education that prioritizes exposure to nature, the cultivation of martial virtue, and the use of simple, manly rhetoric consisting of straightforward, honest speech — rather than the forked-tongued parlance common in the halls of power. This, both Greeks report, is education that forms kings.

Unfortunately, this is far removed from our modern approach to education. You won’t find anything like the kind of education depicted in the “Cyropaedia” in public, private, or STEM-focused schools — or even most classical schools.

To help us take seriously what Xenophon and Herodotus say about education, especially where it is at odds with contemporary practice, we should enlist the aid of John Henry Newman, a theologian who wrote luminously about education. In a series of sermons, Newman criticized the nearly homogeneous-in-form book learning we call education today.

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Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu/Getty Images

In a sermon on the state of innocence before the Fall, Newman argues that our reason is just as fallen and corrupt as our passions. He asks, “What then is intellect itself, as exercised in the world, but a fruit of the fall, not found in paradise or in heaven, more than in little children, and at the utmost but tolerated in the Church?” He continues, noting that after the Fall, “passion and reason have abandoned their due place in man’s nature, which is one of subordination, and conspired together against the Divine light within him, which is his proper guide.”

Newman acknowledges reason as a gift from God for which we should be grateful. But this hardly contradicts his call for us to refrain from idolizing it, whether at the expense of the passions or not.

In another sermon, Newman exhorts, “Now the danger of an elegant and polite education is, that it separates feeling and acting; it teaches us to think, speak, and be affected aright, without forcing us to practise what is right.” He continues: “The refinement which literature gives, is that of thinking, feeling, knowing and speaking, right, not of acting right; and thus, while it makes the manners amiable, and the conversation decorous and agreeable, it has no tendency to make the conduct, the practice of the man virtuous.”

This sounds like bad news for a culture whose educational practice consists almost entirely of sitting, reading, and thinking.

But we might object that reading about heroic characters can inspire us to emulate their virtues. So too can vicious characters warn us off their path and help us to see patterns of evil as they develop. Without rejecting literature-based education entirely, Newman plays out a likely scenario involving the breakdown of character when it has been reared on affect rather than its rougher cousin, reality:

For instance, we will say we have read again and again, of the heroism of facing danger, and we have glowed with the thought of its nobleness. We have felt how great it is to bear pain, and submit to indignities, rather than wound our conscience; and all this, again and again, when we had no opportunity of carrying our good feelings into practice. Now, suppose at length we actually come into trial, and let us say, our feelings become roused, as often before, at the thought of boldly resisting temptations to cowardice, shall we therefore do our duty, quitting ourselves like men? Rather, we are likely to talk loudly, and then run from the danger. Why? — rather, let us ask, why not? What is to keep us from yielding? Because we feel aright? Nay, we have again and again felt aright and thought aright, without accustoming ourselves to act aright; and though there was an original connexion in our minds between feeling and acting, there is none now; the wires within us, as they may be called, are loosened and powerless.

“Loosened and powerless” is a sad substitute for what Newman suggests we ought to demonstrate instead: “hardy, rough-handed obedience.”

We now find ourselves back with Cyrus on the frontier, where reality itself is the teacher and the lesson is not optional. Even students in the best classical schools today spend too much time in purely intellectual arenas, where they can separate feeling from action, sentiment from reality — arenas where talk is as cheap as it is plentiful.

Fortunately, there is a corrective. But be warned: It is as rugged and as demanding of adults as of the young. It will require many in education who are accustomed to the relative comfort of lecture halls and seminar tables to relearn the feel of callouses and the inevitable alternation between sweating and shivering that the unmediated life provokes.

The corrective, simply put, is robust physical training in fitness, athletics, or the school of the outdoors — camping, climbing, and diving. Students need raw contact with nature so that virtue is exercised with cold hands and aching backs, not merely batted around the seminar table as an abstraction.

They need hard, physical work — tilling the soil or caring for animals — that teaches patience and responsibility and impresses upon them the limits of human will. They need to willingly forgo modern comforts that obscure the lessons contained in God’s book of nature.

Hard labor and self-mastery learned through challenge can no longer serve as mere supplements to education. As long as we treat them as such, we should not expect our children to demonstrate the “hardy, rough-handed obedience” that Newman argued is the hallmark of citizens of great nations.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Public schools, Private schools, Classical education, Physical education, Xenephon, Herodotus, John henry newman, Physical labor, Cyrus the great, Opinion & analysis 

Oklahoma City Police this week released video recorded around 8 a.m. July 2 showing a suspect throwing a Molotov cocktail at a victim in a wheelchair — and authorities said the “terrifying incident unfolded right across the street” from police headquarters.

“What happened next showed the absolute best of our community and our first responders,” police said.

‘These are people, these are our neighbors, these are our fellow Oklahomans. These are people with hopes and dreams, just like any of us.’

Police department detectives and a “quick-thinking bystander immediately rushed into danger to help the victim and take the suspect into custody on the spot,” police said, adding that the city’s fire department “was also quick to the scene to provide crucial medical aid.”

Police said, “Thanks to this rapid, heroic response, the victim is expected to recover, and the suspect is behind bars.”

The Oklahoman reported that a city police officer wrote in a court affidavit that the perpetrator was walking westbound on Main Street when he saw the victim — who was in a wheelchair — crossing the street. The perpetrator turned around and approached the victim, then ignited a Molotov cocktail and threw it directly at the victim, which set him on fire, the paper noted.

RELATED: Man flings Molotov cocktails at federal building while yelling ‘anti-ICE’ comments, feds say

The Oklahoman said the video shows the victim wheeling himself out of the fire — but the suspect who threw the Molotov cocktail then appears to try to push the victim back into the flames.

Two Oklahoma City police detectives exited a vehicle at the intersection and took a 38-year-old suspect into custody, the paper said.

The victim was treated for minor injuries, including burns on the back of his neck and arms, the Oklahoman said, citing court documents.

More from the paper:

According to the court affidavit, the suspect told investigators he was “looking for marks” and intended to kill the victim because he thought he saw a “mark” and believed the victim was a child molester. He also told investigators he made two Molotov cocktails but was only able to use one before detectives stopped him.

After the attack, the suspect was booked into the Oklahoma County jail on complaints of first-degree arson, assault and battery with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to kill and two counts of possessing, using, manufacturing or threatening to use an incendiary device or explosives.

KOCO-TV identified the suspect as Alexander Emery, adding that authorities said Emery has a lengthy criminal history, including charges of trespassing, burglary, drug offenses, breaking and entering, and assault and battery — with cases dating back about a decade.

Jail records indicate Emery’s bond amount is $200,000.

RELATED: Democrats wanted a makeover. They got Marxism and Molotov cocktails.

Alexander Emery. Image source: Oklahoma County Jail

KOCO said a news crew from the station found the Molotov cocktail attack victim, who is homeless, in his wheelchair near the scene of the attack. The station said he declined to go on camera but told the news crew he’s OK, feels grateful, and believes God was with him during the harrowing incident.

The victim also told KOCO he was treated at the scene but declined to go to the hospital. He also told the station he doesn’t know the attacker or the reason behind the assault.

Meghan Mueller, president and CEO of the Homeless Alliance, told KOCO the video of the attack is “absolutely horrific.”

“The fact that this happened is something that should shock the community,” Mueller added to the station. “These are people, these are our neighbors, these are our fellow Oklahomans. These are people with hopes and dreams, just like any of us.”

Mueller also told KOCO that “the really important thing to remember is that we all need to take better care of each other.”

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​Oklahoma city, Molotov cocktail attack, Wheelchair, Arrest, Police headquarters, Police, Crime 

The Social Security trust fund is projected to run out of money by 2032. Without legislative reforms, retirement benefits for tens of millions of Americans could face significant cuts.

As lawmakers debate how to preserve the program, most proposals focus on raising payroll tax revenue or making other budgetary adjustments. But these discussions miss a larger point: The program itself is increasingly ill-suited for younger generations.

Americans who are decades away from retirement should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and pursue retirement planning through private alternatives.

Rather than forcing Americans into a system that may not deliver on its promises, policymakers should allow young workers to opt out and prepare for retirement in their own way.

America’s younger generations are coming of age amid an affordability crisis. Housing costs, groceries, health insurance, transportation, and higher education consume a growing share of household budgets. In such an environment, financial flexibility matters more than ever.

Yet every paycheck is hit by a 6.2% Social Security payroll tax, withheld with the promise that workers will receive benefits decades later when they reach retirement age. For many Millennials and members of Generation Z, that promise appears increasingly uncertain.

The idea that workers simply “pay in” and later receive back what they contributed has long been misleading. Today’s payroll taxes largely fund benefits for today’s retirees. As demographic pressures strain the system, younger Americans face the prospect of paying into Social Security for decades while receiving far less in benefits than previous generations.

In turn, few Gen Zers count on Social Security to support them in retirement someday. More than half expect to rely on personal retirement accounts as their primary source of income in retirement. Only 35% expect the program to still be around when they retire.

Rather than dragging younger workers through years of uncertain taxation, policymakers should give them a choice. Americans who are decades away from retirement should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and pursue retirement planning through private alternatives.

The freedom to decide how to spend and save one’s income is deeply ingrained in American culture. Some people rent apartments, rely on public transportation, and prioritize international travel. Others buy homes, raise families, and invest heavily in property or small businesses. The diversity of lifestyles that defines the United States is made possible by economic liberty.

Social Security’s mandatory payroll tax limits that liberty, particularly for younger generations who are unlikely to receive the same value from the program as their parents and grandparents. Every dollar directed to Social Security is a dollar that cannot be used to pay down debt, purchase a home, invest in education, build a business, or save independently for retirement.

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Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Private retirement accounts also offer greater opportunities for long-term growth. Historically, diversified investments held through 401(k)s, IRAs, and other retirement vehicles have generated substantially higher returns than the growth reflected in Social Security benefits. Depending on their investments, 401(k) plans may return 5% to 8% annually, while some Roth IRA portfolios may return 7% to 10%.

In contrast, Social Security payments reflect 1% to 3% annual growth, matching cost-of-living adjustment inflation rates.

Younger workers with decades of investing ahead of them are uniquely positioned to benefit from compound growth. But the ineffective Social Security system holds them back from the thousands to millions in returns available by private-sector investment vehicles.

In an era of accessible investing platforms and unprecedented financial tools, a one-size-fits-all government retirement system makes less sense than ever. Americans are capable of making different choices about their financial futures. They should have the freedom to decide whether Social Security is one of them.

As lawmakers confront Social Security’s looming insolvency, they should look beyond tax increases and accounting fixes. The debate should include a more fundamental question: Why should younger Americans be required to participate in a system they increasingly doubt will deliver on its promises?

Social Security was created for a different era, when workers had fewer options, people did not live as long, and America’s population was booming. Those conditions no longer exist, and it leaves the system unable to afford its original obligations.

If Social Security cannot provide future generations with the same security it once promised, then those generations should be free to pursue their own path. Young Americans deserve the freedom to build their own financial future.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Social security, Gen z, Opinion & analysis 

A 17-year-old boy is on trial for allegedly shooting to death an elderly couple that had hired him to do odd jobs around their home in Mississippi.

Cordarius Hobbs was arrested by Simpson County Sheriff’s deputies after an hours-long standoff on June 3 when they were called to the residence near Mendenhall.

Less than a week after Hobbs was taken into custody to face charges for double murder, his two brothers were involved in a massive manhunt.

The incident unfolded after three contractors went to the home of 75-year-old Bill Blair and his 71-year-old wife, Carol Blair, to install a generator at about 10 a.m.

They said they noticed that the door to the wife’s car was left open and there were multiple guns on the seats, according to a Mississippi Bureau of Investigation investigator.

An hour and a half later, they called the Simpson County Sheriff’s Department for a welfare check on the Blairs.

A half hour later, at noon, deputies arrived and tried to push through a screen door to find gunshots being fired at them. That began a standoff between police and the alleged shooter, which lasted for about two hours.

Hobbs tried to flee from the home on foot, but police were able to capture him. They said he was wearing all black and holding a bag but did not have a weapon when captured. He was also shot during the incident, but his injuries were not life-threatening.

According to investigators, 280 bullet casings were found inside the home, as well as three guns, which all belonged to Bill Blair.

Inside the home they found Carol Blair in a fetal position in a bedroom with three gunshots to the back of her head. Bill Blair was found lying on his back in the kitchen with three gunshots to his face.

Hobbs was charged with two counts of capital murder along with a burglary count, four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, four counts of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, and two counts of aggravated assault on individuals 65 or older.

The family of the victims said they had hired Hobbs to clean up around the home.

RELATED: Suspect in brutal beating of Trump supporter in San Diego identified as neighbor — and victim’s medical update is devastating

The Blairs’ pastor told KPTV-TV they were the “sweetest couple” and one was rarely seen without the other nearby.

“They loved the Lord, and it was evident in their life. … You knew that they were just good people that would help anyone,” Pastor Andy Fullington said.

Less than a week after Hobbs was taken into custody to face charges for double murder, his two brothers were involved in a massive manhunt after an officer was shot during a traffic stop.

Cortavious Lawayne Hobbs, 18, and Cortavion Dewayne Hobbs, 19, got into a shoot-out with police and were later found hiding underneath a house, prosecutors said.

Covington County Deputy Yates Rodney, who was critically wounded, is still undergoing treatment for his injuries.

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​Double murder, Standoff, Massive manhunt, Brutal murder, Elderly couple, Crime 

Most of us like to think we would be willing to die for a great cause, granted the courage. A harder question is whether we would be willing to spend 20 years losing for one.

More than two centuries ago, a young British politician named William Wilberforce confronted exactly that question. His answer changed the moral character of an empire.

‘You have the far greater honour of being a Representative for the Lord, in a place where many know him not.’

Young, wealthy, and well connected, Wilberforce entered Parliament at just 21 years of age, quickly earning a reputation as one of the finest orators in Britain. Charming, witty, and socially connected, he was hardly known for disciplined seriousness. The writer and socialite Madame de Staël called him “the wittiest man in England.”

Everything changed after a profound Christian conversion in 1785.

Amazing grace

Politics suddenly seemed worldly, perhaps even incompatible with genuine discipleship. Wilberforce reluctantly considered resigning his seat in Parliament and entering the ministry. Had he done so, history might remember him — if at all — as an obscure Anglican clergyman.

Before making his decision, however, he visited St. Mary Woolnoth, a modest parish church in the City of London, to seek the advice of its rector, the Rev. John Newton.

Newton urged him to stay. Parliament, he insisted, was not an obstacle to Wilberforce’s calling. It was his calling.

That counsel carried unusual weight. Newton, known mainly today as the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” had once captained slave ships himself, enriching himself along with his country. His repentance forced him to confront an evil that Britain had conveniently learned to ignore.

It would become the defining cause of Wilberforce’s life.

Accidental abolitionist

Wilberforce did not set out to become the face of the abolition movement. After his conversion, he found himself drawn into a growing circle of evangelical reformers increasingly alarmed by the slave trade.

At Barham Court in Teston, the Kent home of Sir Charles and Lady Middleton, he listened to James Ramsay, a former naval surgeon who described the horrors he had witnessed in the Caribbean. Around the same time, Thomas Clarkson and the Quaker abolitionists were traveling the country interviewing sailors, surgeons, and former slaves, collecting physical evidence from slave ships, and assembling what would eventually amount to some 900 pages of testimony.

They had built an overwhelming case but lacked one crucial thing: a champion inside Parliament.

Encouraged by his friend William Pitt, now prime minister, Wilberforce accepted that role. Clarkson would gather the evidence. Wilberforce would lay it before the nation.

‘We can no longer plead ignorance’

In 1789, standing not far from where visitors stand today outside the Palace of Westminster, Wilberforce rose in the House of Commons to deliver what would become one of the most famous speeches in British parliamentary history.

“The nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us,” he declared. “We can no longer plead ignorance.”

The slave trade was, in his words, “so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable” that he had determined he would “never rest” until it was abolished.

The three-hour speech was a triumph. Newspapers praised its eloquence. Many believed abolition was now inevitable.

Instead, opponents shifted the battle from the moral arena to the procedural one.

The powerful West India lobby argued that the evidence was incomplete and demanded further hearings. Parliament agreed. More witnesses were summoned. More testimony was taken. Months slipped away. When time ran out, the debate was adjourned until the following session.

The next year the matter disappeared into a select committee. Then a general election dissolved Parliament, forcing much of the process to begin again.

By the time the House finally voted in 1791, nearly two years had passed since Wilberforce’s celebrated speech.

The result was crushing. His first abolition bill was defeated by 163 votes to 88.

The cause had not been defeated by a single great rebuttal; it had been slowly drained of momentum through delay.

‘Scandal from the Christian name’

Wilberforce could have accepted the verdict as proof that the country simply was not ready. Instead, he rose and made a promise that would define the rest of his public life.

Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic.

Notice what troubled him most.

Slavery was not merely an economic mistake or a political embarrassment.

It was “a scandal” upon “the Christian name.” Britain claimed to be a Christian nation while enriching itself through the buying and selling of human beings. That contradiction could not simply be managed. It had to be removed.

And so Wilberforce returned, again and again. He introduced new motions, reopened old debates, and refused to let the issue disappear beneath the next political crisis.

Meanwhile, the defeat of 1791 energized the public. Hundreds of thousands of Britons signed petitions demanding abolition. An estimated 400,000 people — many of them women directing household purchases — joined a nationwide boycott of West Indian sugar produced by enslaved labor.

The pressure worked, and when Wilberforce returned to Parliament in 1792, immediate abolition suddenly appeared possible.

Wicked compromise

Then Henry Dundas proposed what sounded like a reasonable compromise. The trade, he agreed, was unjust. It should therefore be abolished — gradually.

With the insertion of a single word, Parliament transformed an urgent moral demand into an indefinite political process. On paper, Parliament had voted to abolish the slave trade. In practice, nothing changed.

The cause weakened further when Britain entered into war with Revolutionary France. Opponents of abolition portrayed reformers as dangerous radicals infected by French ideas. Government attention shifted toward financing the war and preserving stability at home.

Wilberforce’s motion in 1793 failed by just eight votes. Public enthusiasm faded. Thomas Clarkson collapsed from exhaustion and withdrew from active campaigning. Wilberforce increasingly found himself carrying the cause almost alone inside Parliament.

‘Permanently hurt’

Then came perhaps the cruelest setback of all. In 1796, after years of promises that the trade would be “gradually” abolished, Wilberforce made another determined push for immediate action.

The measure failed by four votes.

Afterward he learned that several reliable supporters had missed the vote because they had gone to a fashionable new Italian opera. His diary captured the heartbreak in a single sentence: “Enough at the Opera to have carried it. I am permanently hurt about the Slave Trade.”

Seven years after taking up the cause, Wilberforce appeared scarcely closer to success than when he had begun. The defeat left him physically exhausted and emotionally broken.

Stand firm

Once again, he turned to John Newton. More than a decade earlier, Newton had persuaded the newly converted Wilberforce not to leave Parliament. Now he offered a different kind of counsel.

He did not suggest success was just around the corner; instead, he challenged Wilberforce’s definition of success itself.

“You are not only a Representative for Yorkshire,” Newton wrote. “You have the far greater honour of being a Representative for the Lord, in a place where many know him not.”

It was a radically different way of measuring a political life.

Newton then pointed Wilberforce to one of Scripture’s great public servants.

“Daniel likewise was a public man,” he wrote, “and in critical circumstances. But he trusted in the Lord … and therefore though he had enemies, they could not prevail against him.”

Newton acknowledged that Wilberforce might never accomplish all the good he hoped for, but refused to judge the value of his work by legislative victories alone.

“Though you cannot do all the good you wish for,” Newton wrote, “some good is done, and some evil is probably prevented.”

RELATED: CS Lewis: Angry atheist surprised by God

John Chillingworth/Getty Images

Year after year

Wilberforce stayed. Over the next 11 years, one apparent breakthrough after another dissolved into disappointment. Some years Parliament rejected abolition outright. Other years it settled for minor reforms that regulated the trade rather than ending it. Constitutional crises, changes of government, renewed war with France, and shifting political alliances repeatedly pushed abolition to the margins.

In 1804, after fifteen years of labor, Wilberforce finally succeeded in carrying an abolition bill through the House of Commons. The House of Lords quietly buried it. Claiming they needed more time to examine the evidence, they postponed consideration until the parliamentary session expired.

It was, in essence, the same procedural tactic that had greeted his first great speech 15 years earlier. Yet Wilberforce again refused to conclude that delay meant defeat. Year after year he returned to the same chamber, made the same arguments, presented the same evidence, and asked the same question of his country.

Remaining at his post

Then, in 1806, everything changed. William Pitt was dead. A new government under Lord Grenville and Charles James Fox made abolition a priority rather than a private sympathy.

On February 23, 1807, after nearly 20 years of defeats, delays, compromises, and disappointments, the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to abolish the British slave trade.

As members rose to cheer, Wilberforce remained seated with bowed head and tears streaming.

The applause was not for a brilliant speech delivered that evening. It was for two decades of quiet perseverance.

The victory belonged to many people: Thomas Clarkson, who gathered the evidence; John Newton, whose counsel twice kept Wilberforce at his post; the Quakers who organized, petitioned, and sacrificed despite having no seats in Parliament; and the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Britons who signed petitions and quietly changed their buying habits.

But none of them would have witnessed that day had Wilberforce concluded, somewhere along the way, that 20 years of apparent failure was enough.

Christians today still debate the best strategy for engaging an increasingly hostile culture. Some emphasize building institutions. Others speak of retreat. Those are important questions.

But Wilberforce reminds us of something more fundamental.

He never discovered the perfect political strategy. He never enjoyed ideal political conditions. He spent most of his public life with little prospect of victory. Yet he refused to postpone obedience until circumstances became favorable. He simply remained at the post God had given him.

Most of us imagine faithfulness as a single dramatic stand. Wilberforce reminds us that it often looks much quieter. Doing the same work, year after year, long after applause has faded, allies have drifted away, and success seems impossible.

That is how, by God’s grace, the moral character of an empire was changed.

​Converts, William wilberforce, Britain, Abolition, Slavery, Uk, John newton, Christianity, Parliament, Lifestyle, Faith 

“Citizen Vigilante,” a 2026 action thriller starring Armie Hammer, has sparked such intense controversy, Germany outright banned it.

The film centers on a vigilante who rebels against the government to target violent criminals and rapists (often portrayed as Muslim migrants) along with the corrupt officials enabling them. Maintaining his anonymity, he builds a massively popular social media presence, rallying the public against the reigning authorities.

“[‘Citizen Vigilante’] is being viewed with satisfaction in some communities,” Glenn Beck says, calling it “extraordinarily dangerous.”

Unlike other iconic anti-hero characters in films like “The Equalizer,” “Death Wish,” and “Pale Rider” who reluctantly step in to quell evil, Hammer’s character, Glenn says, not only “wants to” be a punisher of evil, but he compels others to join him in that endeavor.

Calling this film indicative of “an enormous moral shift,” Glenn warns that “the gunfighter that stays becomes the tyrant.”

Instead of washing the blood from his hands and “[riding] away in the sunset” after his mission is accomplished, Hammer’s character revels in his notoriety as a social media star and vows to continue his vigilantism until citizens learn to take justice into their own hands.

“This is a dangerous movie,” Glenn says.

“I think the whole point was to … point out actual things that are happening … like in the U.K. There are some very bad things that are happening because of mass illegal immigration. The governments are failing. They’re turning a blind eye to it,” adds Jason Buttrill, Glenn’s head researcher and writer.

He doesn’t believe, however, that Hammer’s vigilante character is presented as the solution to disorder and corruption.

“They showed that this is not a good guy. He’s a very bad guy. He’s an evil guy. If government fails to protect their people, if they allow these things to happen, there will be a Bubba effect, and you will not like the devil that shows up afterwards,” he explains.

Glenn agrees but fears that most spectators will miss this and interpret Hammer’s character as the answer to society’s ills.

“If you’re over in England or you’re in Germany, that stuff is happening,” he says, referring to how some governments are willfully enabling a breakdown of law and order by protecting and covering for violent criminals (especially migrants), while ordinary citizens suffer unchecked crime, two-tier policing, and suppressed criticism of mass immigration.

Glenn is deeply concerned that citizens suffering under this kind of soft totalitarianism will watch this movie and say, “Damn right — that’s exactly what should happen.”

But “you’re not gonna like the guy who shows up,” he warns.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Citizen vigilante