America used to be the powerhouse of the world, exporting not only the best manufactured goods but also the best ideas the world has seen. But now, areas that were once rich in economic activity have turned into ghost towns as the State Department exports some of the worst ideas the world has seen.

On "Zero Hour," Mike Benz, a former State Department official in the Trump administration and the founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, sat down with James Poulos to discuss the state of the U.S. State Department and its dystopian control of information.

Even though many of America’s manufacturing hubs have their best days behind them, America can still be proud to be the world's beacon of liberty — until now.

“The thing that we had to hold our hat onto is … the distinct values that we have in the U.S. We have free speech, [and] we have a rule of law which will protect you in court to always be able to defend your rights,” Benz told Poulos.

“What we've seen instead,” Benz added, “is this wanton abuse of the sanctions system so that anybody who does business in a way that upsets our State Department or Defense Department or Intelligence Community gets sanctioned.”

Benz attributes the rise of these ill-advised sanctions and censorship tools to America’s declining influence in the world today.

"We don't abide by this free-trade concept any more because any trade between two other countries that bothers us, we sanction. And we do the same thing if anyone invests here. You've got to be a little bit crazy, frankly, to put your money here under this current administration," he said.

What’s more, these sanctions have contributed to China’s growing might. Benz argues that Hungary, along with other countries, is strengthening its ties with China due to the West’s antagonism toward military restraint and traditional values.

“The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [came] out and [said] that Hungary should be sanctioned because they're not co-signing war on Russia or military support for Ukraine or the LGBT agenda pushed by the State Department,” Benz noted.

To hear more of what Mike Benz had to say about censorship, free speech, China, semiconductors, and more, watch the full episode of "Zero Hour with James Poulos."

America was convinced tech would complete our mastery of the world. Instead, we got catastrophe — constant crises from politics and the economy down to the spiritual fiber of our being. Time’s up for the era we grew up in. How do we pick ourselves up and begin again? To find out, visionary author and media theorist James Poulos cracks open the minds — and hearts — of today’s top figures in politics, tech, ideas, and culture on "Zero Hour" on BlazeTV.