How to Stop the Seismic Cultural Shift Threatening the Next Generation

March 15, 2017

WRITER

America is facing a moral and cultural crisis like never before. In his new book, Fault Line: How a Seismic Shift in Culture is Threatening Free Speech and Shaping the Next Generation, author and journalist Billy Hallowell explores the battle being waged against our foundation through the mainstream media, the entertainment industry and the educational system. He also offers practical steps for all Christians to take and provides advice on how to respond to these growing problems. Hallowell joined Glenn Wednesday on radio for a lively discussion.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: I'm going to look something up here. I'm looking -- I'm reading Billy Holloway's book Fault Line. And he says how to be able to solve this, one, you have to be informed. I think we're informed on this story.

PAT: Yes.

JEFFY: We are.

PAT: I think so.

GLENN: Then don't tell me what you believe, live what you believe. What are your values and beliefs?

PAT: Okay.

JEFFY: We put on the red, white, and blue flag. We believe in America, amen.

GLENN: Okay. Got to make sure you're living it.

PAT: Right.

GLENN: So the people that were wearing the red, white, and blue, they were living what they believe. It wasn't about -- it was team spirit for their school. Why is it that somebody else is -- why is there a problem here? Most likely because people on the other side took offense. That was coming from them. Not from the other side.

PAT: Right.

GLENN: They took offense to it because they weren't informed on the subject. They didn't know these guys did this all the time. And they're not living their principles of, I am a refugee from a very oppressed place, and I'm coming to the United States for shelter.

PAT: And the United States is taking me in. So I should enjoy seeing those --

GLENN: Hello. I'm grateful that I live in a place with diversity.

PAT: Yeah. How about the fact that I'm at a basketball game looking at other students wearing red, White, and blue, rather than I'm looking out the window at an ISIS fighter slicing the head off of somebody? How about that?

GLENN: All right. All right. All right. All right. Okay. I got it.

Let me -- can I get Billy Hallowell on?

Billy Hallowell has a new book called Fault Line: How a Seismic Shift in Culture is Threatening Free Speech and Shaping the Next Generation.

This is really important to pay attention to. Because the facts and figures in this book are accurate. And they are going to fundamentally transform us. Billy, welcome to the program.

BILLY: Hey, thanks for having me.

GLENN: So let's go to -- you talk about in the book, you say, you know, one of the biggest faults we have -- and I don't want to misquote you, but basically that it is the line between being tolerant and being relative. And we have slid into moral relativism, where we need to be tolerant, but it has been used against us. How do we -- first, give me the facts or the stats on this. And then tell me how to fix that.

BILLY: Yeah, we've got over half of the country saying that it's up to cultures to figure out what they think is moral. Right? So there's this baseline of morality that's completely gone. I mean, the majority of us are saying, oh, you just have to decide for yourself what you believe to be true. And that's specifically true with millennials. Fifty-one percent of millennials believe that truth is relative. So you have a big problem there.

And so that's sort of the starting point. How do we fix it? Well, you've got to acknowledge the problem first, which is that the Hollywood content we've seen, media universities, all three of those have really reshaped the culture. We've allowed that to happen. And we've allowed that to happen because so many of us have disengaged.

So my big solution to this, and this is from a 30,000 foot level in fault line is that we've got to get engaged. We have to make good Hollywood content. We have to make -- you know, get involved in media. We've got to be professors. We've got to be out there. People who are Christians, conservatives, people who are complaining -- you know, it's great to complain, but what are you going to do to fix the problem?

PAT: Yeah, we got to -- we have to make an impact in the culture. It's interesting that you note in the book, Billy, that 35 percent of millennials have no faith whatsoever. They're atheist or agnostics. Is it 35 percent?

BILLY: So that number, in fact -- and it's crazy because every two years, you know, a new study will come out. It was 2015 that Pew first came out saying it was about 34, 35 percent.

PAT: Wow.

BILLY: Now we've got a poll out saying it's about 39 percent. Now, those people are -- and here's sort of the hope. They're atheist, agnostic, or just unaffiliated. And the biggest chunk are unaffiliated.

But those are the people who we're going to lose, right? If we don't go out there and bring the message to them, we're going to totally lose them.

But the hope is, hey, they're not agnostic, they're not atheist. They believe in something. But because of this chaos that we've created in culture and that we've allowed, they're just not sure what that is. So would he give you to get that message to them.

GLENN: But, Billy, I think the churches are approaching -- most of the churches -- many of the churches are approaching these things all wrong. They're still coming at it with the -- with the -- with the same style of message. The message has to remain true. But the same style of message. And if -- if it's not the same style, it's just the -- the same kind of almost judgmental message. Except now it has, you know, fog machines and -- and rock bands behind it. People are not -- millennials are not interested in talk. They're interested in, show me the results. Do it.

BILLY: Absolutely. And so we've got a lot of Christian actors, which is great, right? A lot of Christian journalists, which is wonderful. But we need actors who are Christian, directors who are Christian. I mean, look at Hacksaw Ridge. Look at some of these films that tell really good stories. And I think Christian moviemaking is great. God's Not Dead. All that is fine. If you want to preach to the choir, that's great. But that is not going to solve this problem. We have got -- I know you've talked about this a lot over the years. We have got to get engaged.

And I think the whole point here, you know, with this book is to show the problem, right? These numbers -- you mention the statistics. A lot of us don't know. We kind of have a feeling that Hollywood is off. The media is off. Universities are off. We see these anecdotal examples. But we don't really have the data.

And I wanted to really put that data out there and sort of show that there's this triangular dominance and sort of what I call this progressive privilege that has existed in these areas for too long. And, yes, we've got to complain about that, like I said. But we have to figure out how to tell the stories and do it in a way that reaches people and shows them, not just tells them, the message.

STU: There was a video that came out, it went viral, Billy, right after the -- after the election, that I saw a lot of people posting. And it was -- you know, a lot of the left was kind of coming out and saying, how could this have happened, Donald Trump won. Here's a guy who, you know, said he was going to grab women in ways and look how crass he is. How is this -- the culture allow this. The culture is getting so much more crass.

And this person pointed out, hey, wait a minute. Have you guys noticed that every piece of our culture -- forget the president -- every piece of our culture has become more and more crass over a long period of time, and it's been cheered on by the left.

And you really go through that in the book, in that the development -- as we've gone through on television and movies, has become much more advanced to that -- the anti-faith sort of side. And many people haven't even noticed it.

BILLY: Well, and that's why, you've got to look at the numbers, from like 2007, 2002, to 2014 and 2016. When you look at what Gallup has measured and others have measured. I mean, moral acceptability on so many issues.

Even -- even polygamy, you go down the line, it's insane, because of the relativism, what people are now willing to accept. We've got, you know, 67 percent of the country saying that having a baby, you know, outside of marriage is morally acceptable. Seventy-two percent, saying divorce is morally acceptable.

And these numbers have changed dramatically, even within the last decade, decade and a half. And we have been pushing -- we have allowed this to be pushed out. We haven't been effective in our messaging.

And I think, you know, Fault Line really kind of leaves people convicted a little bit. And I hope, you know, it has us thinking, how can we do this? Not all of us can be directors, actors, you know, professors. But, you know, we have to figure out how -- how we can at least encourage people, good people who have their values in check, to enter into these arenas.

GLENN: I have to tell you though, Billy, the answer really is living it ourself.

Look, Donald Trump -- you can blame Donald Trump on a lot of things if you want to talk just about him to the left. You know, they try to, "Well, you take responsibility for him." You know who Donald Trump is? Donald Trump is the first Howard Stern president. That's what he is.

PAT: Hmm.

GLENN: He's a guest on Howard Stern that loved Howard Stern. Played hard. And we all laughed. And we all thought it was great. And some stood against and said, "No, this is immoral. This is wrong." And those people were driven out of society because they have sticks up their butt. But this became the mainstream culture.

And, look, that's just how guys talk. Yes, they do talk that way. On Howard Stern.

And now we seem to have a problem. The left does. Because they don't -- they don't like that.

Well, okay. But you -- you were fine with it. You were totally fine with it in Hollywood. If anyone dare says like clean films -- or clean pure flicks, whatever that is, where they want to edit and make things less crass, how dare you don't touch my art.

BILLY: Well, they've created this environment.

GLENN: Right.

BILLY: They've created this very environment, which is so fascinating to me. Everything that Donald Trump has represented and everything that both candidates represented in the general is basically what they have created.

And so they're kind of relishing in that and trying to figure out, you know, well, how did we get here? Well, turn on prime time TV, and you'll figure out how we got here. There's nothing you can watch with your kids outside of The Middle and maybe a couple of other shows. So...

GLENN: We tried to say that this is why character matters in the '90s when the women's organizations were defending Bill Clinton as just a rogue.

No, that's like saying what Donald Trump said, well, that's all the way men -- no. If that is the way men behaved, men shouldn't behave that way. Those are boys that behave that. Men do not behave that way. But it requires us to be consistent. And I like this about your book.

You know, you talk about how most people can't even tell you what they believe. 95 percent of Christians, according to Billy in his book, cannot tell you what they believe. Well, that's a real problem.

The first thing we need to do is figure out what we believe. And then live it.

BILLY: Absolutely. Living it out. That's the example we set, right? So we've got to do that. And we've got to encourage other people, particularly millennials, because that's the generation this most impacts. Although, I'm sure the generation behind them will be hit even harder by this. We've got to figure out how to have that presence. But doing it by living it first, I think is the most important. And that's what I encourage in Fault Line. And people can get more information at HallowellFaultLineBook.com.

GLENN: Billy Hallowell. The name of the book again is Fault Line. Billy wrote for TheBlaze for a long time. And I'm so proud of you. And proud of your success and to see where you're going. Thank you for everything you're doing. Billy Hallowell.

BILLY: Thank you, appreciate it.

GLENN: The name of the book again is Fault Line.

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?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

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

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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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