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Marysville dad speaks about school shooting and the thing Glenn Beck did to change him

October 28, 2014
Wilson

Writer

Glenn spoke with a dad from Marysville on radio today, in the wake of a deadly school shooting at the high school there. Lance Van Winkle’s daughter texted him as she hid under a desk, reporting that her friend was shot in the head, suddenly something changed in Lance. He explained on radio today.

WATCH:

Read a rough transcript of the segment below:

GLENN: On Sunday night, right before I turn off the lights, I wrote this on Facebook. I just said my prayers with the kids and tucked them in. Rarely do I remember my prayers with my family being so pleading. For me, the family, those in our military, those in our government, our neighbors, and all those around the world who have never even known hope. Please, Lord, help us. Please help us. I don't need or want any special favors. I don't need my prayers answered my way. Just please, please give us the strength to find joy and to find you in whatever is coming. We have endured many things, but hope to endure all things. And with you, we can and will.

I spent the weekend working on a series of episodes that are going to air on -- beginning November 10th. I'm writing every word of these episodes myself as it is really important to get this right because this is a very personal message from me and from my family. And something that has been coming for five years, but I haven't been able to share it. Haven't been willing to share it. And I didn't know exactly what it was going to mean for our relationship. And where, you know -- what we were going to do.

But because of our relationship, now comes the time that I need to share. And that episode is happening on November 10th on television.

But I wrote on Facebook after I had finished writing some more of those episodes, I wrote: You don't know how much you mean to me and how much you lift my family.

This afternoon, my daughter Hannah had her in-laws -- they were in town. They're so great. They asked us if we would go with them to the air show to see the thunderbirds. So we did.

When I got in, a woman and her son stopped me right at the gate at the air show and said, Glenn Beck, we're such huge fans.

Just that simple kindness brightened my day. She told me that her husband happened to work for the thunderbirds or work with the thunderbirds, and she invited us to go and meet and greet them. It was a thrill for me and the kids.

What happened however was a mini miracle for me. So many things had been verified and answered this weekend. I had been struggling with a few things and wondering what we are to do. Wondering if what we have done in the past has even mattered or if it's just in our heads. We all have jobs to do. How much do each of our jobs actually mean.

This woman told me about how she had volunteered for Restoring Honor, 8/28 in Washington, DC, how it changed her and her family. We spoke together with the jets rolling overhead with tears rolling down our faces about that day and the hope that we lived on and feasted on for so long. I think it's time to gather again.

What I have in my mind makes 8/28 look like a birthday party, but I would ask for you to pray and join me as I lay some ideas down at your feet soon.

But what I really want to tell you is I love you. And I really thank you for making my life so complete. We don't really have many friends. But it seems that no matter where we go, we're always surrounded by family.

I wrote that about 11 o'clock at night on Sunday. The next morning I get up and I see this from a guy named Lance Van Winkle.

Lance wrote and said, please, all of you, pray for us in Marysville, Washington. Glenn, I wish I could so sit and talk with you. I'm only one man, a man your recent reaffirming new direction has changed.

I'm moving away from divisiveness and moving towards God will. Your decision started me thinking the events in my town made me realize, it really is the only way. When my daughter called and then texted me and said she was under a desk hiding and that her friend had been shot in the head, I was really done. My son also goes to that high school. We didn't know where he was at. I was terrified.

I had the means to protect myself, and there was nothing I could do. I was utterly and totally helpless. I felt a little like I did in 9/11, except I had family and friends in the building. My kids were safe, but that tragedy made me think of Glenn and his solution. It's been there all along. Thy will, not mine be done. Pray all of you that you never have a day like we had in Marysville. Prayers and thoughts that those who have had that day, God bless you.

This has bothered -- not bothered me -- stuck with me since I read it. Early Monday morning. I thought of Lance last night as I was saying my prayers. We went to the football game here, the Redskins/Cowboys. It was about 11:30 by the time we got home. My son went upstairs to go to bed. Said our prayers. And Lance came to mind. He came to mind again this morning as I was saying my prayers. He said, I wish I could just sit and talk with you.

I asked Keith to get him on the phone. He's on the phone now.

Lance, how are you?

LANCE: I'm okay, Glenn. Good morning.

GLENN: How are things?

LANCE: Things are okay. It's just very emotional for me. And speaking to you and your audience, I never thought anything like this would happen. It was kind of funny. I was watching the game last night, and sorry about the deal, but I know that you were there. And I was thinking about you being there, and I almost mentioned it. I almost said, Glenn Beck is at that game. But everybody would have looked at me like, what? So I kept it to myself. But I was thinking of it there.

My kids are doing well. My daughter is kind of taking a leadership role. She took some friends to the Space Needle last night. She's trying to help as many people as she can. Just talking to them. Being with them. It's -- you know, everybody seems to be doing well. The community has totally blown me away with the support and what they're doing to help everybody get through this.

I saw a thing with the Seahawks praying for our students, and I just found out last night that Pete Carroll invited the Marysville-Pilchuck high school football team and also the Oak Harbor football team that were supposed to play Friday night down to an extended practice at the Seahawk facilities. And I've never witnessed anything like this so close. I've seen it, of course, like everybody has in other situations.

But it's -- it's a beautiful thing, you know.

GLENN: I will tell you: Lance, I don't know you keep coming to mind, but I'm glad we have this chance to talk. When I read your letter and you talked about how your daughter had called and then texted that she was under a desk, did she -- and I don't need to get into anything you don't want to discuss, but did she see her friend shot? How far away was she?

LANCE: No. She didn't, thank God. I know some kids -- this is a community that's grown a lot, but it's a small hometown field community.

GLENN: I grew up in Mount Vernon, which is not far away. So I group up in Mount Vernon, and we used to pass Marysville. And Marysville was just this small little town. I'm not surprised that the community is reacting this way, but maybe it's changed -- it had to have. It's been 30 years. But it used to be just a small little town where everybody would treat you right.

LANCE: It's -- you know, the stories are starting to come out, and Maria didn't see anything. She was out of the lunchroom. Of course, it's also came out that this was planned and premeditated, which is just horrific to me.

You know, the reservation, the Tulalip Indian reservation is right across Interstate 5 from us. And it's tied to the community, I mean, in a real deep way. I know a lot of Native Americans over there. It's -- we're always doing things together as a community and everything else.

And so when this happened, of course, it -- who knows what -- what people think. I hear a lot of things. I read a lot of things that are just awful. I know some kids that were there and saw it happen. They're remodeling the lunchroom. The school shut down for a week because I know several kids that would never go back in there again.

GLENN: I can't imagine.

LANCE: Yeah. And I don't know what to think. I don't have any answers for this. It just totally -- I'm just one guy in the community that feels the same way. Of course, we have families that lost loved ones. They're still in the hospital. My prayers go out for them, you know.

GLENN: So, Lance, help me out on this. You wrote: I'm just one man, a man your recent, reaffirming new direction has changed. I'm moving away from divisiveness and moving towards God's will. You wrote that when the tragedy happened, you thought of -- you thought of what we've been talking on the program. Can you tell me a little about that?

LANCE: Sure. I had been listening to you for some time. And, you know, I got to be careful. I don't want to go off on some weird rant. But I love the United States of America. I love our country. I feel it's being attacked from every which direction. Culture, language, borders, everything. But I -- and I've listened to your show.

I've enjoyed the controversies and the, you know, calling different sides out on the carpet. Whatever. The whole back and forth thing that goes on. And I've listened recently -- of course, it's well-known you've changed a direction. And it stopped me. I went, wow. And at first -- and I heard -- I mean, I heard while people thought -- were calling Glenn Beck, well, now he's a traitor and all this stuff, you know. And I just thought that that was a huge honorable thing to do in such a public life that you have. And to apologize and to -- I mean, it was just humble.

And so this was going on in the back of my mind. And I've had a lot of rants myself on Facebook sharing posts about this, that, the other thing.

GLENN: Right.

LANCE: And then this school thing happened. And I was sitting at my desk looking out the window of our office. I'm a real estate agent. And I get this call that's kind of broken up. And then pretty soon, my daughter and I are texting. And, as you know, what was said, she had described where she's hiding under a desk. Nobody knew about it. There were no sirens yet. There were no helicopters overhead. Her mom didn't even know. Then she texted me that her friend was shot in the head. And my world just kind of collapsed.

It was -- the only thing I can liken it to is that 9/11 event. I remember that so clearly and how it felt. And so I'm heading up to the school. I get up there. And they've got a perimeter set up. Nobody is getting in. I call my daughter's mom. We meet around the other side. We walk to a church where they're already assembling. Things went pretty fast after that. The whole event took about four minutes. They were assembling in a church nearby. And I -- our daughter and her mother were already at the church. I parked four blocks away. And was walking toward the church, and the -- it seemed like half of Marysville was there.

And the streams of people heading to the church and the frantic women and just the whole thing. I get there and we haven't seen our son yet. We had word that he was okay. So I waited outside for him to get out of the bus. And he's 6'4" and 15 years old, so he's not hard to spot. But he comes -- we're in the middle of this huge crowd of people being reunited with their children, and all this thing going on, I just realized, there's no answer for it. I don't have an answer for it. I don't have an explanation. I read all the posts. I see the anger, the frustration the hate. I see the tribal members come forth and they're talking about forgiveness and love. There are families and victims of the shooting have forgiven the person that shot their family members. And it started to sink in. It just hit me that the only answer is not on this earth.

And I've been a spiritual person for a long time. I believe in the Lord, but it never sunk in like this, that that's the only way. There is no other way. And, you know --

GLENN: Lance, I have to tell you. It's an honor to talk to you. And I'm so glad that you wrote and you posted that on my Facebook page. And you're one of the good guys, and you're now -- now your responsibility to be a force for good because you're awake. I'm sorry it took this to really have it set in, but thank goodness it did. Thank goodness it did. God bless you, lance. You and your whole community.

LANCE: Glenn, can I say something. It means a lot to me that I know you're bombarded with everything all the time. And it means a lot to me to know that you picked it up and listened. It's an honor to speak with you. I love you guys. You guys crack me up. I'm one of the guys driving down the road and people are looking at me as I'm laughing and talking to myself when I'm listening to your show. I've enjoyed it for a long time and believe you're a force of good in this world and you're making a difference in a big way. And so thank you also.

GLENN: Thank you God bless you. Thanks, Lance. Good people. We are surrounded by good people.

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

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

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

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.