The late, great Angelo Codevilla had a way of cutting through the fog of foreign policy.In the Claremont Review of Books in 2019, he asked, “What’s Russia to us?” He didn’t ask because he had any special admiration for Russia. He asked because Washington had turned Russia into a utility: a convenient villain that justified budgets, scolded dissent, and kept the governing class in charge. Codevilla’s point was simple but brutal. Strategy begins with interests. Interests require discrimination. Most of what passes for “grand strategy” amounts to habit and vanity.Greenland touches national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.That question — his question — fits the Greenland uproar better than any of the Davos hand-wringing last week.European leaders want this story to be about Trump’s manners and apparent recklessness. They want it to be about “norms,” about “tone,” about the precious feelings of the alliance. They want Americans to believe the true scandal lies in a U.S. president speaking too plainly or belligerently.Trump did speak plainly. In Davos on Wednesday, he pushed for “immediate negotiations” to acquire Greenland and ruled out the use of military force. He also floated a “framework” tied to Arctic security after meeting NATO’s secretary general, while walking back tariff threats that had rattled allies and markets.Fine. Trump being Trump shouldn’t surprise anyone.But Europe’s reaction should surprise people, because it revealed how unserious the continent has become — even about something as serious as Greenland.Instead of handling business like adults — hard bargaining among allies over a piece of real estate that actually matters — European capitals staged indignation, offered lectures, and then produced the usual substitute for seriousness: a symbolic “show of force” meant for domestic consumption.The numbers tell the laughable story. Sweden sent three officers. Norway sent two. Finland sent two liaison officers. The Netherlands sent one naval officer. The U.K. sent one officer. France sent around 15 mountain specialists. Germany sent a reconnaissance team of 13. Denmark led with about 100 troops. Reuters called it “modest.” That word was kind.But that’s the European governing class in a nutshell for you: Perform alarm, then perform resolve, then declare victory over a crisis they helped manufacture.All of this theater tried to sell one idea: Greenland needs protection from the United States.Preposterous.Greenland matters because it helps defend the United States. Pituffik Space Base — some Americans may still know it as Thule — sits where U.S. forces can track threats coming over the pole. The Arctic doesn’t care about European speeches. Missiles don’t fly around Greenland out of respect for allied etiquette. Geography dictates capability, and Greenland sits where the map says it sits.RELATED: Pressed on Greenland, Trump tells Davos the US has weapons he ‘can’t even talk about’ Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP via Getty ImagesEurope’s commissioners understand that. They just hate saying it out loud because it reminds them of the arrangement they prefer to obscure: America provides the real security; Europe provides the indignant boo-hoo commentary.The Greenland tantrum exposed another reality that should make America’s sensible policy planners sweat, assuming they still exist: The industrial foundations of power have become strategic again, and the West has behaved like an empire that forgot how to build.Rare-earths sound like an investor pitch until you remember where they go. Modern weapons systems and advanced electronics depend on them. We need minerals you have likely never heard of — neodymium, dysprosium, samarium, and yttrium — to keep our F-35s flying and our missiles precision-guided.But the supply chain runs through the part nobody wants to talk about: processing and refining. China dominates that bottleneck — especially the heavy rare-earth elements that sit in the highest-end systems. One major estimate put China’s share of global heavy rare-earth processing at more than 90%. That’s a massive national security hole.Greenland matters because it offers a way out — not a magic wand, but an exit. Greenland holds serious mineral potential. That potential shifts the long-term strategic balance only if development happens.Greenland’s own politics have made development tricky. In 2021, Greenland reinstated a uranium ban that effectively froze the Kvanefjeld project, one of the world’s most significant rare-earth deposits, because uranium appears alongside rare-earth ore and triggers the political and regulatory trip wires that make major mining projects difficult to sustain.Greenland’s voters have every right to weigh environmental costs. Strategy still counts consequences. But the practical result of the ban didn’t restrain Beijing. It protected Beijing’s advantage.The Europeans, of course, love a green virtue-signal that imposes no serious cost on Europe. Through it all, however, the continent remains dependent on America’s military might, dependent on Chinese processing, and increasingly dependent on slogans to conceal both.So yes — Trump’s aggressive posture creates complications. Acquisition talk puts Denmark in a public box and turns what should be an alliance negotiation into a freak show. It hands European leaders a stage they don’t deserve and an excuse to treat American interests as a moral problem.RELATED: Trump announces ‘framework’ of ‘great’ deal with NATO on Greenland Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty ImagesBut Europe’s leaders made fools of themselves by trying to address a strategic reality through choreography. A reconnaissance team, a few liaison officers, and a weekend of headlines don’t secure Greenland against anyone. Their “show of force” invited contempt, not respect.Codevilla’s 2019 essay mocked the way our establishment inflates foreign threats to discipline the home front. The Greenland episode shows a mirror image: European elites inflating a U.S. negotiating push into a crisis because they can’t handle an America that talks like a serious country.Greenland touches our national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.So use Codevilla’s test. Strip away the moral fog. Rank interests and act like the answers matter.What’s Greenland to us?A hell of a lot.

Years ago, I worked in a large office building with a woman who walked with a terrible limp. Not a slight hitch, but a pronounced, jarring gait caused by a car accident that left her with significant bone loss in one leg. She was a delightful person, but no one could ignore the limp. It shaped how she moved through the world and, at times, how the world responded to her.She lived that way for more than 25 years.Liberation may begin with a D-Day assault or a precision, middle-of-the-night special-forces strike, but rehabilitation always moves slower.Then one morning, everything changed.She walked into the office upright and steady. No limp. No sway. Her posture looked different. Her face looked different. The transformation was so striking, people stopped what they were doing just to stare.An orthotist had fitted her with a lift for her shoe. For the first time in decades, her body was aligned.It felt dramatic. It felt hopeful.Three weeks later, she showed up at work limping again.When I asked what happened, she looked down and said quietly, “It was too painful.”For years, that story stayed with me. I assumed she should have pushed through the discomfort. If she really wanted to walk straight, I thought, she would have endured the pain. I put the burden on her.Decades later, while talking with the man who makes my wife’s prosthetic legs — who is also a certified orthotist — I mentioned the story. He didn’t hesitate.“That was the orthotist’s fault.”With that degree of limb difference, he explained, correction must happen in small increments over time. You do not force a body that has adapted to damage for decades into alignment overnight. The shock alone can undo the good you intend. Pain, in that case, isn’t weakness. It’s warning.The problem was never the goal of walking straight. It was the pace. The change looked impressive, but it couldn’t last.Had she been guided wisely, she might still be walking straight today.That realization reshaped how I think about far more than posture and gait.RELATED: Do not pass the plow: The danger of declaring a golden age without repentance Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP via Getty ImagesWe talk a lot about sustainability, but the word often gets treated as corporate jargon. In real life, it means something simpler: Can you keep going without being damaged by the very solution meant to help you?The question isn’t whether disruption can be endured for a season. The question is what happens when it lasts long enough to reshape the body, the household, or even a culture itself.The longer misalignment persists, the more people adjust to it. Not because it’s right, but because it becomes familiar.I think of family caregivers who, like that woman, adapt to dysfunction. They normalize exhaustion. They compensate for imbalance. What once felt untenable becomes routine. The standard slowly drops, and despair and resentment find room to grow.This pattern doesn’t stop with individuals.It shows up in institutions and nations, especially those emerging from long seasons of corruption, fear, or misrule. The fraud being uncovered in Minnesota will not be corrected quickly. Venezuela didn’t unravel overnight, and it won’t be restored all at once. Iran won’t shed decades of tyranny through slogans or spectacle. Systems deformed over time don’t heal on announcement alone.Liberation may begin with a D-Day assault or a precision, middle-of-the-night special-forces strike, but rehabilitation always moves slower. Hard ground is taken a little at a time. Institutions get rebuilt inch by inch. The work costs money. It lacks glamour. No one escapes it.Trying to fix everything at once is like forcing a damaged body into alignment without preparation. The result may look decisive, but it often collapses under its own weight.This is where leadership gets tested.Not by how loudly change is declared, but by whether it can be endured.RELATED: When human worth becomes conditional, caregiving becomes impossible Photo by: Edwin Remsburg/VW Pics via Getty ImagesReal leadership doesn’t just name what’s wrong. It requires patience and competence. It understands limits. It moves deliberately. It produces progress people can live with — and live inside — over time.People can endure difficult change when it leads somewhere stable. What they can’t endure is repeated pain with no lasting gain.A deliberate pace doesn’t mean abandoning the goal. Real leadership — whether for a caregiver or a nation — recognizes the trauma that brought us here. It refuses to confuse speed with progress. It commits instead to patient steps that straighten what has been bent without breaking what remains.That kind of leadership doesn’t rush healing. It makes healing possible.For caregivers, for communities, and for nations, alignment imposed too quickly can injure the very people it claims to help. Alignment applied with patience, competence, and resolve can change a life permanently.That woman wanted to walk straight. She simply needed someone wise enough to guide her there.

Canada’s decision to slash tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles is being sold as a pragmatic trade adjustment. In reality, it looks more like a self-inflicted wound to the country’s auto industry, workforce, and long-term economic sovereignty. Lower prices today may come at the cost of lost manufacturing tomorrow — along with vehicles that struggle with quality and cold-weather reliability in a country where winter is not a minor inconvenience but a defining reality.A vehicle that looks competitive on paper may tell a very different story after several Canadian winters.Under an agreement announced earlier this month, Canada will allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country each year at a tariff of just 6.1%, down from the 100% rate imposed in 2024. Officials emphasize that this represents less than 3% of the domestic market. But auto markets are shaped at the margins. Even a relatively small influx of aggressively priced vehicles can disrupt pricing, undercut domestic producers, and discourage future investment.Under pressureCanada’s auto sector is deeply integrated with the United States, with parts, vehicles, and labor flowing across the border daily. That system has supported hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs for decades. Introducing low-cost Chinese imports into that ecosystem does not simply add consumer choice; it destabilizes a supply chain already under pressure from regulatory mandates, rising costs, and declining market share.That pressure is already visible. The combined market share of General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis in Canada has fallen from nearly 50% to roughly 36%. These companies are not just brands on a dealership lot. They are employers, investors, and anchors for entire communities. When their market position erodes, the consequences ripple outward through plant closures, canceled expansion plans, and lost supplier contracts.Cold comfortSupporters argue that Chinese EVs will make electric vehicles more affordable, accelerating adoption and helping Canada meet emissions targets. But affordability without durability is a hollow promise. Many Chinese EVs entering global markets have yet to prove themselves in extreme climates. Cold weather is notoriously hard on batteries, reducing range, slowing charging times, and increasing mechanical stress — conditions Canadian winters deliver in abundance.Reports from colder regions already using Chinese EVs raise concerns about performance degradation, software issues, and inconsistent build quality. Battery thermal management systems that perform adequately in mild climates can struggle in deep cold. Door handles freeze, sensors fail, and range estimates become unreliable. These are not minor inconveniences when temperatures plunge and drivers depend on their vehicles for safety as much as transportation.Quality concerns extend beyond climate performance. Chinese automakers have made rapid progress, but speed has often come at the expense of long-term durability testing. Western manufacturers spend years validating vehicles under extreme conditions precisely because failure carries real consequences. A vehicle that looks competitive on paper may tell a very different story after several Canadian winters.Cheap creepThere is also the question of what happens to Canada’s manufacturing base as these imports gain a foothold. History offers a clear lesson. When markets are flooded with low-cost vehicles produced under different labor standards and supported by state-backed industrial policy, domestic production suffers. Plants close, jobs disappear, and skills erode — losses that are extraordinarily difficult to reverse.Europe offers a cautionary example. In the rush to meet climate targets, policymakers opened the door to inexpensive Chinese vehicles, only to see domestic automakers squeezed between regulatory costs and subsidized foreign competition. The result has been declining investment, layoffs, and growing concern about long-term competitiveness. Canada risks repeating that mistake but without Europe’s scale or leverage.RELATED: Exclusive: 'Anti-China moves' pay off BIGLY — Governor Sanders and Arkansas earn A+ for crushing CCP land-grabs Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImageSpy gameThe geopolitical implications cannot be ignored. Modern EVs are data-collecting machines, equipped with cameras, sensors, GPS tracking, and constant connectivity. U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Chinese-built vehicles pose national security risks. Whether or not those fears are fully realized, perception matters. The United States has already signaled that Chinese EVs will not be allowed across its border, even temporarily.That leaves Canadian consumers in a difficult position. A vehicle purchased legally in Canada could become a barrier to travel, commerce, or even family visits. The idea that a car could determine whether a driver can cross the world’s longest undefended border should give policymakers pause. Instead the Carney government appears willing to accept that risk as collateral damage.Realism over resentmentSome Canadians, frustrated by U.S. tariffs and rhetoric, may view this pivot toward China as an act of defiance. But trade policy driven by resentment rather than realism rarely ends well. Replacing dependence on the United States with dependence on China does not restore sovereignty; it simply shifts leverage from one superpower to another, often with fewer shared values and less transparency.President Donald Trump has made his position clear. He is open to Chinese companies building vehicles in North America if they invest in domestic factories and employ domestic workers. What he opposes are imports that bypass production, undermine jobs, and introduce security risks. Canada’s deal does nothing to address those concerns. Instead it places Canadian workers and consumers squarely in the crossfire.The promise of cheaper EVs may sound appealing in the short term, but the long-term costs are becoming harder to ignore. Lost manufacturing jobs, weakened supply chains, unresolved quality and cold-weather issues, and strained relations with Canada’s largest trading partner are not abstract risks. They are predictable outcomes.Canada built its auto industry through integration, investment, and a commitment to quality. Undermining that foundation for a limited influx of low-cost imports is not a strategy. It is a gamble — and one Canadian workers, manufacturers, and drivers are likely to lose.

In late 2025, two songs by "Christian artist" Solomon Ray — "Find Your Rest" and "Goodbye Temptation" — topped Billboard's gospel digital song sales chart and iTunes' Christian music songs chart, reaching the No. 1 and No. 2 spots.Christians across the globe deeply resonate with Ray’s Southern revival style and emotive, biblically solid lyrics. In just a matter of weeks, Ray’s music has amassed hundreds of thousands of monthly Spotify listeners, millions of streams, and significant YouTube views.There’s only one problem: Solomon Ray isn’t a real person. It’s an AI generation.Despite their popularity, Ray’s songs have sparked intense ethical and theological debate in the Christian music community — drawing criticism from artists like Forrest Frank over issues of authenticity, the absence of the Holy Spirit, and whether AI can truly convey genuine faith or soul in worship music.On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick Burgess addresses the controversy. Rick acknowledges that while there’s certainly room to disagree on this issue, “something about it in my spirit … doesn't seem right.”“The first thing that we have to consider,” he says, “is that Solomon Ray has no soul; he has no spirit; he isn't real. The pictures we see of him are not real. They're like watching an animation of someone.”Even though Rick gives credit where it’s due — “they’re good songs,” he admits — he nonetheless feels that Christians who engage with this music are flirting with something sinister.Many proponents of Ray’s music, however, argue that because the songs were allegedly written by Christopher "Topher" Townsend, the conservative Christian hip-hop artist who created Solomon Ray, it shouldn’t matter who — or what — sings the lyrics. AI, they contend, is simply the next “evolutionary step in music.”But Rick disagrees.“It may be true [that AI is the next evolutionary step in music], but there's something that's also kind of dishonest about it,” he says, “because when you read [the] Spotify profile, Solomon Ray is a ‘Mississippi-made soul singer carrying a Southern soul revival into the present.’”“No, he's not,” he says bluntly.“We're starting to blur the lines of reality and truth.”Rick quotes popular Christian music artist Forrest Frank, who echoed these concerns when he said, “At minimum, AI does not have the Holy Spirit inside of it. So I think that it's really weird to be opening up your spirit to something that has no spirit.”If artificial intelligence and Christendom continue to intersect — and they almost certainly will — Rick is concerned about what else our spirits will be subjected to.“How many sermons are we going to start hearing that no longer feature[] a man of God sitting down with the word of God, praying for the Holy Spirit to inspire him for his next message, as opposed to getting down to the computer, saying, ‘Here's what I need to speak on Sunday. Crank me out a sermon’?” he wonders.He cites a recent book by Pastor Todd Korpi titled “AI Goes to Church: Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence”: “The biggest threat to creation at the hands of AI is in how it continues to feed our appetite for consumption and progress. AI-generated music is faster, easier to produce than a studio album that requires real musicians, songwriters, audio engineers, the relational part of making music. … AI might continue this trend of disconnection and preference for the convenience of a disembodied interaction that has shaped the last decade.”Rick agrees with Korpi’s warning. When it comes to AI music, “we're dealing with something that's disembodied. That feels demonic to me,” he says.“The adversary and his demons love to manipulate scripture,” he reminds us, referring to the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden and Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.“The apostle Paul warned Timothy that these days were coming — that people would begin to look for pastors — and I would say musicians and singers — that tickle their ears and satisfy their desires, as opposed to being rebuked by scripture, to being convicted, to being drawn into the holiness of God for praise and worship,” says Rick.“I'm just concerned that disembodied AI-generated messages and music may not bring me into the awe-ness of God and how awesome He is because it's those spirit-inspired things about God that always bring me into worship … and it just seems like if I want to manipulate scripture and manipulate theology, AI sure does give me an easy path in.”To hear more of Rick’s analysis, watch the full episode above.Want more from Rick Burgess?To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.