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Glenn's Show Prep

Do Hollywood Elites Look Better in HD or 4K Ultra HD?

January 09, 2017
Staff

WRITER

What could cause a tough and seasoned radio commentator to watch a bunch of Hollywood elites rubbing elbows, patting backs and sharing their politic views during acceptance speeches? One thing and one thing only: a new 4K Ultra HD TV.

"Now we find out the real reason why Pat watched the Golden Globes," Glenn said Monday on radio.

Pat Gray, co-host of The Glenn Beck Program, received a very nice TV from his wife for Christmas.

"Anything that's in 4K, I'm there. So when the Globes came on, I thought, Oh, look at that, it seems to be ultra HD 4K. But I lasted about 10 minutes," Pat said.

Luckily, that 10 minutes did not include Meryl Streep's diatribe on the persecution of Hollywood actors.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: Four millennials pick up this handicap kid and beat on him. I'm having a hard time with the CBS story because it doesn't sound like the same story that we all saw last week. We'll give that to you here in just a second. Also, did anybody watch the Golden Globes? I mean, I didn't. Did anybody turn them on. Believe it or not, Pat --

PAT: I tried to. I tried to watch for a minute.

GLENN: Why? Why?

PAT: I just wanted to see what movies were going to get awards.

GLENN: The ones you haven't seen.

PAT: Eh, it turns out that way. Pretty much.

GLENN: It turns out that way every time. And lo and behold, some of the speeches given --

PAT: Oh, agonizing.

GLENN: Of course. That's why we didn't watch it, Pat. We didn't watch it. We begin there, right now.

(music)

GLENN: Wow. Pat watched it. Now we find out the real reason why patched watched the Golden Globes. His wife gave him -- I mean --

PAT: A nice TV for Christmas.

GLENN: I don't know where this came from. She gave him a big 4K TV.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And so you're just watching anything in 4K.

PAT: Anything that's in 4K, I'm there. So when the Globes came on, I thought, "Oh, look at that, it seems to be --

JEFFY: Oh, Jennifer Lawrence, 4K.

PAT: -- ultra HD 4K. But I lasted about ten minutes.

GLENN: Did they look different in 4K?

PAT: Yeah, you can see everything. It's like x-ray vision. You can see their underwear. It's amazing.

GLENN: No, seriously. No, seriously.

PAT: I mean, everything is so much clearer. It's just that much more vivid. You know how blurry regular TV, standard television looks now when you have HD?

GLENN: Yes, yes, yes.

PAT: It's the same from HD to 4K.

JEFFY: Tell us how -- tell us how blurry it is, Pat.

PAT: That dramatic?

PAT: It's pretty dramatic.

So it's really blurry. Yeah.

GLENN: So do they look better, worse, or about the same?

PAT: They look worse. They look better now than they did -- well, it depends on who you're looking at, obviously, like always. Like always.

JEFFY: Yeah.

STU: It's amazing though because I remember when HD came out. I remember thinking I was going to beat the system. And I don't care about the stupid HD. So what it looks a little bit better. Now I can save a lot of money on the standard definition ones. You can pay nothing for them. And thinking it was the smartest thing in the world. And it's amazing. It comes to the point that you have on your cable system 1,000 channels, 18 of them are in HD, and those are the only channels I would watch.

PAT: Only ones I watch.

STU: And when that transition happened -- now probably the same thing with 4K. I haven't even seen it yet. I haven't even seen the quality.

GLENN: I've seen it displayed. I haven't received an invite yet from Pat Gray.

PAT: You have an open invitation to come over any time.

GLENN: Yeah.

But it's dramatic. It's dramatic.

STU: Really? Because it just doesn't like --

GLENN: Yeah. But I'm not going to buy one until it's like $800. I've done that train before.

STU: Yes.

GLENN: I'm not being fooled again.

PAT: And the thing is, not that much is broadcast right now in 4K. So...

STU: Except the Golden Globes. You'll get the Oscars. You'll get the Super Bowl. A lot of the big events.

PAT: And some stuff on Netflix. Their new stuff is generally 4K.

STU: Really? Through the freaking internet?

PAT: I think The Crown is in 4K.

GLENN: Is it?

PAT: Yeah. And some of the other shows.

GLENN: So you might watch The Crown?

PAT: So I'm thinking about watching The Crown now.

GLENN: It's really good.

PAT: It won the Golden Globe last night. Right? It's highly acclaimed. I know that.

GLENN: So is there anything last night that we should know about?

STU: The big news is the Meryl Streep thing, I guess. The political --

PAT: Oh, jeez. This speech was agonizing. I mean, listen to this.

MERYL: So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out --

PAT: May I first say: There is no A in the word "foreigners." So can we just start there? Foreigners. It's not "foar." It's "for." Foreigners.

GLENN: Okay. All right.

MERYL: You'll have nothing to watch, but football and Mixed Martial Arts, which are not the arts.

GLENN: Whoa, whoa, whoa.

JEFFY: And a lot of people seriously disagreed with that.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: Whoa. I didn't know that. I had already called the Trump administration. I'm trying to be part of the National Endowment for the Arts. I was hoping we could give all of the money to the MMA. I thought that was it.

STU: And, by the way, I don't know if Meryl has seen this, but if she's seen the TV ratings, they already are only watching football.

JEFFY: Thank you.

STU: I don't know if you've noticed this, but like the top five of the top six shows every single week are the NFL.

PAT: No kidding. No kidding.

GLENN: And honestly, do you care that some of the best shows on television now are made in England or made in Vancouver, BC?

STU: No.

PAT: No.

GLENN: Do you care?

PAT: No.

STU: I don't care. And also I've noticed a few -- and, Pat, maybe you can back me up on this, a few people of color and foreigners in sports. Noticed a few of them.

PAT: Yes.

STU: Noticed a few of them.

JEFFY: What?

STU: It's weird. I've noticed in the NFL, it's not all white people. Not all white people. In fact -- and we still seem to love watching it. It's almost as if her point is completely inane. Completely --

GLENN: Almost. I've missed you, Stu. I've missed you.

STU: Okay. I missed you too.

PAT: And also, Trump didn't even say that. Trump's not talking about kicking out all foreigners.

STU: Trump is Hollywood. All he talks about is ratings.

JEFFY: Right.

PAT: Yeah.

STU: There's never been -- outside of Reagan probably, a president that was more closely aligned with Hollywood than Donald Trump.

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: Next to Reagan.

STU: Right.

PAT: That's so agonizing.

GLENN: You brought it on yourself, brother.

PAT: I know. Well, that was the last straw for me. I turned the channel immediately. I couldn't take it.

I mean, she made me in love with Donald Trump. I wanted to go back in time and vote for him, not just once, but multiple times, just because I'm so sick of these people.

STU: And I will say --

PAT: It's agonizing.

STU: I 100 percent agree with Donald Trump on what he took today, which is a much more difficult stand than saying Meryl Streep's an idiot when she makes a political speech. That's an easy stance to take.

JEFFY: Which she is.

STU: The tough one and the true one is that Meryl Streep sucks as an actress.

JEFFY: Amen.

STU: Not as a speaker. Not as a political theorist. As an actress, she's terrible --

PAT: Never been more with you than I am right now.

STU: Thank you, Pat.

JEFFY: And she's so overrated.

STU: She stinks. She's overrated. Trump tweeted it today. I've been saying it on this show for how many freaking years.

GLENN: He did not say she's overrated.

PAT: Did he say she's overrated?

STU: She's the most overrated actress.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. He says that about everybody.

STU: But he's right on this one. Give him credit when he's right. He's 100 percent right. She stinks. And history will hopefully correctly recognize that she's terrible. Terrible.

PAT: I mean, they made her out to be the queen last night.

STU: Of course, they always do. They just give her the awards before she even does the movies. But she's terrible. And it's finally -- we have a president that can recognize that. Because I don't even know, would Reagan have done it? I don't know if he'd have the guts.

GLENN: No. No.

STU: Luckily, Trump is out there with the guts to say Meryl Streep sucks, and --

JEFFY: Meryl Streep, one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood. Doesn't know me, but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She's a Hillary flunky who lost big.

(laughter)

PAT: I love that. You got to love --

GLENN: Why? Why?

STU: Hillary lost big. Because Meryl won the award. Right? Meryl didn't lose big in the particular award. But who cares. I'm 100 percent with him on this point, and I'm happy to celebrate it.

GLENN: They don't even -- they don't even -- they don't even recognize the rot in their own state. They don't even recognize --

PAT: Oh, no.

GLENN: Why are you not paying, you know, the people in California to do your food catering, to pick you up? Why do you have to fly to someplace else? Your house is in California. Why do you have to fly someplace else to do it?

Why is Duck Dynasty done in Louisiana? Do you even know how they found Duck Dynasty? You know how that came to be?

JEFFY: Yeah, from the tax incentives from the state.

GLENN: Tax incentives.

JEFFY: Which I believe they pulled out of.

GLENN: Louisiana said, "We're going to make this the most -- the easiest place to do movies and television. You film anything here, we're going to give you a huge tax break." Okay.

So they do.

The producers don't say, "Hey, there's these guys in Louisiana that are great."

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: The producers say, "Go to Louisiana and find a story that might be a show."

STU: Yeah, and this has happened throughout history. Rocky was -- if I remember the story right -- was initially a New York story. You know, it's so associated with Philadelphia.

GLENN: Right.

STU: But it was kind of a New York story. It was supposed to be filmed large portions of it in New York. But because of unions, they went to Philadelphia.

GLENN: The unions were better in Philadelphia than --

STU: They found a more willing environment. And they had to -- a lot of it, they still had to -- like, one of the reasons they developed the Steadicam and used the Steadicam a lot for that was because -- by their telling at least because they basically had to run around and hide from people where they weren't supposed to be shooting the movie, which is kind of a funny thing.

GLENN: Really?

PAT: That's great.

STU: But these things do lead to innovations. And you see this. This is Hollywood at its most out of touch. And everyone was tweeting and Facebooking about how this is why Trump won because they see people like Meryl Streep with these attitudes and treating everyone out there, half the country, in this way.

And it's so annoying. Even when they don't like Donald Trump, they'll vote for him. Because they're just so sick of that.

GLENN: It's so elitist. It is this understanding that everyone in this room is right. Even though everyone in that room are not in lockstep. But they've silenced those people. So everyone in this room is right. And we're now being broadcast across the country, so now we're going to tell the little people --

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: I mean, it is Norma Desmond: All you little people out there in the dark.

They just -- they believe we're stupid. And so there's no way we're ever going to listen to one of your points, while you're telling us we're stupid.

STU: I've got great examples of this too.

GLENN: Okay.

JEFFY: Well, we don't think you're stupid. Just watch football and MMA.

GLENN: And that's not the arts.

I mean, I think that was written as a funny line. But she delivered it, maybe because he's a bad actress --

STU: Yes!

GLENN: But she delivered it as a slam in everybody's face, like we don't know that's not art.

And now, this: Told you last week, threw my back out. And one of the reasons why is because I was away from my Casper mattress

PAT: Plus, you moved in your chair. You were in a chair, and you moved.

JEFFY: You moved. You've made another chair to sit in.

PAT: We tried to tell you -- we warned you, I don't know, how many times, don't move because you've got to be careful. Don't move. And you moved.

GLENN: I know this makes you guys feel good some way. I'm just not sure how it makes you feel good.

URGENT: FIVE steps to CONTROL AI before it's too late!

MANAURE QUINTERO / Contributor | Getty Images

By now, many of us are familiar with AI and its potential benefits and threats. However, unless you're a tech tycoon, it can feel like you have little influence over the future of artificial intelligence.

For years, Glenn has warned about the dangers of rapidly developing AI technologies that have taken the world by storm.

He acknowledges their significant benefits but emphasizes the need to establish proper boundaries and ethics now, while we still have control. But since most people aren’t Silicon Valley tech leaders making the decisions, how can they help keep AI in check?

Recently, Glenn interviewed Tristan Harris, a tech ethicist deeply concerned about the potential harm of unchecked AI, to discuss its societal implications. Harris highlighted a concerning new piece of legislation proposed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. This legislation proposes a state-level moratorium on AI regulation, meaning only the federal government could regulate AI. Harris noted that there’s currently no Federal plan for regulating AI. Until the federal government establishes a plan, tech companies would have nearly free rein with their AI. And we all know how slowly the federal government moves.

This is where you come in. Tristan Harris shared with Glenn the top five actions you should urge your representatives to take regarding AI, including opposing the moratorium until a concrete plan is in place. Now is your chance to influence the future of AI. Contact your senator and congressman today and share these five crucial steps they must take to keep AI in check:

Ban engagement-optimized AI companions for kids

Create legislation that will prevent AI from being designed to maximize addiction, sexualization, flattery, and attachment disorders, and to protect young people’s mental health and ability to form real-life friendships.

Establish basic liability laws

Companies need to be held accountable when their products cause real-world harm.

Pass increased whistleblower protections

Protect concerned technologists working inside the AI labs from facing untenable pressures and threats that prevent them from warning the public when the AI rollout is unsafe or crosses dangerous red lines.

Prevent AI from having legal rights

Enact laws so AIs don’t have protected speech or have their own bank accounts, making sure our legal system works for human interests over AI interests.

Oppose the state moratorium on AI 

Call your congressman or Senator Cruz’s office, and demand they oppose the state moratorium on AI without a plan for how we will set guardrails for this technology.

Glenn: Only Trump dared to deliver on decades of empty promises

Tasos Katopodis / Stringer | Getty Images

The Islamic regime has been killing Americans since 1979. Now Trump’s response proves we’re no longer playing defense — we’re finally hitting back.

The United States has taken direct military action against Iran’s nuclear program. Whatever you think of the strike, it’s over. It’s happened. And now, we have to predict what happens next. I want to help you understand the gravity of this situation: what happened, what it means, and what might come next. To that end, we need to begin with a little history.

Since 1979, Iran has been at war with us — even if we refused to call it that.

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell.

It began with the hostage crisis, when 66 Americans were seized and 52 were held for over a year by the radical Islamic regime. Four years later, 17 more Americans were murdered in the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, followed by 241 Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing.

Then came the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 more U.S. airmen. Iran had its fingerprints all over it.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian-backed proxies killed hundreds of American soldiers. From 2001 to 2020 in Afghanistan and 2003 to 2011 in Iraq, Iran supplied IEDs and tactical support.

The Iranians have plotted assassinations and kidnappings on U.S. soil — in 2011, 2021, and again in 2024 — and yet we’ve never really responded.

The precedent for U.S. retaliation has always been present, but no president has chosen to pull the trigger until this past weekend. President Donald Trump struck decisively. And what our military pulled off this weekend was nothing short of extraordinary.

Operation Midnight Hammer

The strike was reportedly called Operation Midnight Hammer. It involved as many as 175 U.S. aircraft, including 12 B-2 stealth bombers — out of just 19 in our entire arsenal. Those bombers are among the most complex machines in the world, and they were kept mission-ready by some of the finest mechanics on the planet.

USAF / Handout | Getty Images

To throw off Iranian radar and intelligence, some bombers flew west toward Guam — classic misdirection. The rest flew east, toward the real targets.

As the B-2s approached Iranian airspace, U.S. submarines launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Iran’s fortified nuclear facilities. Minutes later, the bombers dropped 14 MOPs — massive ordnance penetrators — each designed to drill deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers. These bombs are the size of an F-16 and cost millions of dollars apiece. They are so accurate, I’ve been told they can hit the top of a soda can from 15,000 feet.

They were built for this mission — and we’ve been rehearsing this run for 15 years.

If the satellite imagery is accurate — and if what my sources tell me is true — the targeted nuclear sites were utterly destroyed. We’ll likely rely on the Israelis to confirm that on the ground.

This was a master class in strategy, execution, and deterrence. And it proved that only the United States could carry out a strike like this. I am very proud of our military, what we are capable of doing, and what we can accomplish.

What comes next

We don’t yet know how Iran will respond, but many of the possibilities are troubling. The Iranians could target U.S. forces across the Middle East. On Monday, Tehran launched 20 missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar, Syria, and Kuwait, to no effect. God forbid, they could also unleash Hezbollah or other terrorist proxies to strike here at home — and they just might.

Iran has also threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the artery through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil flows. On Sunday, Iran’s parliament voted to begin the process. If the Supreme Council and the ayatollah give the go-ahead, we could see oil prices spike to $150 or even $200 a barrel.

That would be catastrophic.

The 2008 financial collapse was pushed over the edge when oil hit $130. Western economies — including ours — simply cannot sustain oil above $120 for long. If this conflict escalates and the Strait is closed, the global economy could unravel.

The strike also raises questions about regime stability. Will it spark an uprising, or will the Islamic regime respond with a brutal crackdown on dissidents?

Early signs aren’t hopeful. Reports suggest hundreds of arrests over the weekend and at least one dissident executed on charges of spying for Israel. The regime’s infamous morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, are back on the streets. Every phone, every vehicle — monitored. The U.S. embassy in Qatar issued a shelter-in-place warning for Americans.

Russia and China both condemned the strike. On Monday, a senior Iranian official flew to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. That meeting should alarm anyone paying attention. Their alliance continues to deepen — and that’s a serious concern.

Now we pray

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell. But either way, President Trump didn’t start this. He inherited it — and he took decisive action.

The difference is, he did what they all said they would do. He didn’t send pallets of cash in the dead of night. He didn’t sign another failed treaty.

He acted. Now, we pray. For peace, for wisdom, and for the strength to meet whatever comes next.


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Globalize the Intifada? Why Mamdani’s plan spells DOOM for America

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

If New Yorkers hand City Hall to Zohran Mamdani, they’re not voting for change. They’re opening the door to an alliance of socialism, Islamism, and chaos.

It only took 25 years for New York City to go from the resilient, flag-waving pride following the 9/11 attacks to a political fever dream. To quote Michael Malice, “I'm old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”

Malice is talking about Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens now eyeing the mayor’s office. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state representative emerging from relative political obscurity, is now receiving substantial funding for his mayoral campaign from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR has a long and concerning history, including being born out of the Muslim Brotherhood and named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. Why would the group have dropped $100,000 into a PAC backing Mamdani’s campaign?

Mamdani blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone.

Perhaps CAIR has a vested interest in Mamdani’s call to “globalize the intifada.” That’s not a call for peaceful protest. Intifada refers to historic uprisings of Muslims against what they call the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Suicide bombings and street violence are part of the playbook. So when Mamdani says he wants to “globalize” that, who exactly is the enemy in this global scenario? Because it sure sounds like he's saying America is the new Israel, and anyone who supports Western democracy is the new Zionist.

Mamdani tried to clean up his language by citing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which once used “intifada” in an Arabic-language article to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So now he’s comparing Palestinians to Jewish victims of the Nazis? If that doesn’t twist your stomach into knots, you’re not paying attention.

If you’re “globalizing” an intifada, and positioning Israel — and now America — as the Nazis, that’s not a cry for human rights. That’s a call for chaos and violence.

Rising Islamism

But hey, this is New York. Faculty members at Columbia University — where Mamdani’s own father once worked — signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas after October 7. They also contributed to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. And his father? He blamed Ronald Reagan and the religious right for inspiring Islamic terrorism, as if the roots of 9/11 grew in Washington, not the caves of Tora Bora.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

This isn’t about Islam as a faith. We should distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a religion followed peacefully by millions. Islamism is something entirely different — an ideology that seeks to merge mosque and state, impose Sharia law, and destroy secular liberal democracies from within. Islamism isn’t about prayer and fasting. It’s about power.

Criticizing Islamism is not Islamophobia. It is not an attack on peaceful Muslims. In fact, Muslims are often its first victims.

Islamism is misogynistic, theocratic, violent, and supremacist. It’s hostile to free speech, religious pluralism, gay rights, secularism — even to moderate Muslims. Yet somehow, the progressive left — the same left that claims to fight for feminism, LGBTQ rights, and free expression — finds itself defending candidates like Mamdani. You can’t make this stuff up.

Blending the worst ideologies

And if that weren’t enough, Mamdani also identifies as a Democratic Socialist. He blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone. But don’t worry, New York. I’m sure this time socialism will totally work. Just like it always didn’t.

If you’re a business owner, a parent, a person who’s saved anything, or just someone who values sanity: Get out. I’m serious. If Mamdani becomes mayor, as seems likely, then New York City will become a case study in what happens when you marry ideological extremism with political power. And it won’t be pretty.

This is about more than one mayoral race. It’s about the future of Western liberalism. It’s about drawing a bright line between faith and fanaticism, between healthy pluralism and authoritarian dogma.

Call out radicalism

We must call out political Islam the same way we call out white nationalism or any other supremacist ideology. When someone chants “globalize the intifada,” that should send a chill down your spine — whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, or anything in between.

The left may try to shame you into silence with words like “Islamophobia,” but the record is worn out. The grooves are shallow. The American people see what’s happening. And we’re not buying it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Could China OWN our National Parks?

Jonathan Newton / Contributor | Getty Images

The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images

Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.