Untold History: Edison and the botching of the electric chair

July 28, 2014

Writer

Below is a rush transcript of this segment:

I want to tell you a story about a guy you never heard of before, William Kemmler. He lived in New York City, a pretty bad guy, a drunk, very abusive to his wife, his child, ugly. He was a vegetable cart salesman, and he would take his vegetables and stuff out, and he would get the food from the farmer's market, stack up his cart, push his push cart out and sell it all day, he'd come home, start drinking and beat his wife.

One day, he came home and I don't remember what the scrabble was about, but all the neighbors heard it, and he went downstairs and he went back to his cart -- trying to remember what he used. I think it was a tapper or 2-by-4, but he went back upstairs, in front of his child, he beat his wife to death. Blood splattered everywhere. He throws the weapon down, walks out in the hall. Everybody in the building had heard it. Everyone was standing out in the hall. As he came around, splattered in blood, he looked at the crowd in the hallway and he said well, they'll hang me for this. He went outside, police came, arrested him.

It was one of the more famous murders in New York City. New York City at the time was a very rough and gruesome place, especially in the Tenderloin District. This is 1890, when political corruption had gone awry, but there was something else that was going on.

Before this murder, for about five years, there was a dentist up in Buffalo, who had written Thomas Edison over and over again, and said there's got to be a more humane way of killing people than hanging. It's barbaric. How can we do it? You are the smartest man in the country.

Thomas Edison wrote back I have no stake on this. I don't know how to help you. The guy kept writing him over and over. Edison, you know, was perturbed by this guy. What does he have to do with me? But that

letter kept coming.

It was sitting on his desk one day, when everyone was up in arms about Kemmler. Edison was trying to stop Tesla's new radical idea of AC. DC was where Edison put all his money. That's a battery, but date, it was a

power plant. A power plant would have been about every two blocks, no more than a mile away, and this would have to be some sort of a coal-fired or diesel-fired generator. I think it was coal-fired at the time and they would have to keep the again rater running all the time to keep your electricity running in your house, and it was now battery-powered, but then, little teeny generators all over the country. That was Edison's idea.

Well, Tesla thought that was ridiculous. You can't have all these generators running every wrote, so he thought of alternating current, AC. That's where we get our plug, our outlets are AC outlets.

Well, Edison had all his money in DC. Edison had all the power, literally, the power in Wall Street and the power of the government. He needed to start some way to thwart Tesla. So what he had done, just google search a couple things today. Google search Topsy the Elephant.

This came after the turn of the century, but in the 1880 an '90s, Edison actually hired a really sick, almost Mengele-like doctor to go around in the towns, all around the country and electrocute with this new AC power, new AC current, electrocute horses and cows and sheep and dogs. It made people violently ill. The doctor would say, just want you to know, this is DC power. Look, I can hold onto it and it shocks you, but doesn't kill you, but let me show you what AC can do. It will kill you dead. You don't want this sitting in your home? How many of us will die because of Tesla and that greedy Westinghouse? Let me show you what happens to a dog.

He would fry a dog, kill a horse. Edison himself, after the turn of the century, just out of sheer spite, electrocuted an elephant. Topsy the Elephant, you can see it on Edison vision, Edison films. He was proud of it. Look it up. Google it.

The reason I bring this story up is because at the time, he couldn't convince the American people, so he decided he would embrace AC. He would embrace Tesla. And say that is really good for something. There's progress for you. We can use this to electrocute people. So because the world or the country was so enamored with the brutal killings that William Kemmler did, Edison used that as the case. He wrote the doctor in Buffalo, New York and said I know what to do. You need to Westinghouse Mr. Kemmler. Westinghouse has this new AC power. I have been saying how dangerous it is.

While Kemmler was in the prison for about two years, because this went on and on. They could have hung him, but they wanted a new humane way. So Edison went and he testified and said this is the way. The doctor that went around, the sick doctor that went around electrocuting horses and -- testified this is the way to do it. Do you have the volts right? You sure we can kill them quickly?

Well, while this was going on, Kemmler, now away from alcohol, now being preached to by the guards and by the warden, had happen change of heart.

He accepted his consequence, knew he had to die, wanted to die, but didn't look forward to it with glee, kill me now. He wanted to go meet Jesus. He knew the only way is if he asked true forgiveness, then accepted the consequences of his actions. At the end, he was actually preaching to the other cell mates, the other people on death row. When the warden eventually came in, the warden was crying, he didn't want to kill him. He knew he had to. Kemmler said don't worry about it. It's my actions that brought this on.

When they strapped him to the electric chair, Kemmler knew that it was a big deal and knew that if it didn't go well, it would hurt the warden. So as they strapped him in, they shaved his head, put a sponge on his head and strapped all this sponge with water, dripping down his face, they strapped his arms in, he said warden, because there were people from The New York Times, people from all over the press, witnesses there, they were all -- I need to talk to you for a second. The warden came over. He said I need to talk to you privately. The warden leaned right into him. He whispered, 'This is not going to go well for you if

I jerk too much. You don't have the straps on my arms tight enough. Please have someone tighten them.'

The warden could barely hold back the tears. He asked for a guard to tighten them back up again. Then they threw the switch. The generator was down below. All the lights dimmed and the juice ran through Kemmler's body. It reason through for I don't know how long, and they stopped. And he was pronounced dead. Then he moved. They listened to his heart. And the people in the room cried out, 'Dear God, he's still alive!'

They scrambled and they turned the juice on again, and they turned the juice on so long to kill him. Reports will say -- there were erroneous reports that he was actually set on fire. I believe he was actually set on fire. I believe that was the Edison machine that tried to lessen the effects, because the reports that I have read was that he was set on fire, that people were vomiting, that people couldn't get out fast enough, because of the stench of the burning flesh. Edison was never, ever questioned or held responsible in any way for that electrocution.

The reason I tell you this story today is because there is a --there's something that happened in Arizona. A man was given the death penalty. He was executed, and he lived. Now, there are some reports saying this was cruel and unusual punishment, because he was groaning, coughing, gasping for air. Others say that's not true. I don't know what the truth is. I don't know what the truth is.

But there's two things that have to be brought up: One, whether we agree with the death penalty or not is beside the point. We have the death penalty in certain states. If we are going to do the death penalty, it needs to be done correctly, swiftly, quickly. I don't know why we don't have a firing squad anymore. You have not 10, 12, 15 people, put a couple of bullets in, make sure they are marksmen, shoot them in the head. That's if you believe in the death penalty. If you don't, then let's make that case. But if you do, what's the fastest way to kill someone? We don't stone people, we don't do what Edison did. And Edison, the worst, I mean -- I hope Edison had a lot of time to think about it in the eternal courts of what he did somewhere for money. But we do the right thing.

So there's point number one. But a bigger point, because it is about us, is what's now happening on the message boards. What's happening on comment sections, what's happening online, what people are actually saying about this guy. And it's the same story we're hearing, no matter what it is, whether it's about Israel, whether it is about the border, or this execution. Yeah, well, look what happened. Look what's been going on for so long. For instance, Israel. Yeah, but this has been going on for a long time. You don't know how disenfranchised and humiliated they were. Whatever. I got it. With the border. Yeah, but this is destroying our country and we have been talking about this for a long time.

I got it. I got it. Justifiable anger. In this case, this guy's been waiting for 25 years. How long do we have to wait? What are all of them saying? What do all those have in common? They all have one thing in common. I want justice. I want justice. When the government loses a handle on justice, we lose a handle on our mercy, because we get angry.

Now, I don't think that the average person is what we're reading on the message boards, the comment sections. I don't think those people are, but I don't know anymore. I don't know anymore. I choose to believe that that is the vast minority, and I really, truly believe it. But I will tell you I don't want to believe the other. I don't want to live in that world where everyone is ugly and dark, because if that's really the way we are, then we are so far lost, the Constitution, everything else, we are going to become Nazi Germany. If that is really who we are, where we don't care and say well, I don't care. Torture him. Kill him, who cares. If that's who we are, kill all the Jews. Let those people on the border just starve. If that's who we are, we are already lost and too far gone, but I don't think we are.

This is why we have to talk about justice. Freedom is a concept, is a luxury, is a luxury for society that pays attention, but we are not even paying attention, so how can we possibly teach freedom when there's no justice? Because what everybody says about freedom, yeah, but what do you do about the bad guys. Well, you don't have an answer for that, because how do I make things -- how do they make things more free, when justice isn't being served under this system?

We have to look for the ways to be just and merciful. We have to boil it down, stop look at the big concepts for a while, and start -- or the small concepts and start looking at the fundamentals, just the fundamentals. And we have to be those people that begin to demand justice on all fronts. If there's an injustice anywhere, there's an injustice everywhere, so we must start to train ourselves to care about the other person's injustice, even though it is not ours, because quite honestly, it is easy to fight for our injustice. It is really hard and I think it's the only when that gives us credibility, when we fight against the injustice against someone else we don't agree with. And that's where we need to be on the front line.

This is a battle, this is a revolution, but it is a revolution of the mind and the heart first.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

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What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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