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Imagine a Priceline.com or Upside.com for Everything (Even Health Insurance)

May 18, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Could an ingenious, buyer-driven consumer experience like Priceline.com or Upside.com solve our health care problem? Serial entrepreneur, historian and dreamer Jay Walker joined Glenn on radio Wednesday to discuss why health care is broken and how his patented business model could go a long way in providing solutions --- but it isn't the entire answer.

"Up to now, Americans have had a lot of choices. But unless they're super shoppers, they never see what their choices are worth. In complicated worlds like buying business travel or buying health insurance or buying medical care, there are millions of choices. You can't figure them all out. Software makes it possible for the first time to find choices that makes sense for you," Walker explained.

However, in the case of applying free market principles to health care, there's a Catch-22.

"We're not in charge of our health care," Glenn said.

Therein lies one of the big problems.

"Glenn, one of the reasons why health care is so broken --- one of the many reasons, but one of the big reasons --- is that the person paying for it isn't the person using it," Walker said.

Glenn agreed.

While most people make a co-payment, it's the government, insurance provider or employer paying the bulk of their medical expenses.

"And what happens when somebody else is paying for something else and I get to use it? I overconsume: give me the gold-plated everything. After all, I want every test, I want every treatment," Walker explained.

The unfortunate reality is that no one knows how much anything ultimately costs.

"You go in and ask the x-ray technician, how much is this x-ray? They have no idea. They don't know. So the seller doesn't know. The buyer doesn't know. Is it any doubt the system has completely run amuck on costs?" Walker said.

In keeping with his systematic worldview, Walker explained how a free market health care system can't solve every problem.

"Again, health and wellness is a system, all right? It's not a binary A or B thing. If you treat your body like a garbage can . . . you're going to get sick, no matter who pays for it. So at the end of the day, this isn't a question of just making sure you're paying the right amount of money. You bet, we've got to make sure rational free market economics, which work for everything well, work for health care. But there are plenty of people who can't afford health care. There are plenty of children whose parents make decisions for them. This isn't going to fix that problem. We have challenges in childhood obesity. It isn't going to fix that problem. We have an opioid epidemic. It isn't going to fix that. So market solutions are critically important --- but they're important as part of the whole," Walker said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.com. 900 patents to his name. Wired magazine calls his library on imagination -- he's an expert on imagination. The most amazing library in the world. He is a techno optimist. He is also the guy who started the new travel website upside.com. Full disclosure, that is a sponsor --

JAY: That's how we met.

GLENN: Yeah, that's how we met. However, the reason why he's here is not for that, it's for a conversation we had -- I said, what's the catch? How is this working? How is everybody making money here? Because you're reducing the time that the person spends from 80 minutes to about -- what are you down to?

JAY: Five.

GLENN: Five minutes to make the decision. You're booking the hotel. You're booking the flight. And you're --

JAY: Saving money.

GLENN: Saving money for the company. And then you're giving an Amazon gift card. And we've done things where it works out to where we've spent $200, with something that should have cost us 1,000 or would have cost us 1,000. It's like -- in the end, it's like a 200-dollar ticket and stay. That's insane.

And I said to you, okay. What -- when it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true.

JAY: Ask extra questions.

GLENN: Correct.

And you said, no, here's how it works. And imagine this with -- with everything.

Explain what that means.

JAY: Up to now, Americans have had a lot of choices. But unless they're super shoppers, they never see what their choices are worth. In complicated worlds like buying business travel or buying health insurance or buying medical care, there are millions of choices. You can't figure them all out.

Software makes it possible for the first time to find choices that makes sense for you.

GLENN: So, but we're not in charge of our health care. So I've been saying, everyone should be -- I want to give $5,000 a year. I'll cover the first -- I'll buy catastrophic for everything else. Give me $5,000 a year. You go spend it.

So when the doctor says, go get this x-ray. I can go get that x-ray here. But if I have a system that says, you know what, if you go tomorrow morning at this location, you're going to pay a fraction of that.

JAY: Glenn, one of the reasons why health care is so broken -- one of the many reasons, but one of the big reasons is that the person paying for it isn't the person using it.

GLENN: Yes.

JAY: And what happens when somebody else is paying for something else and I get to use it? I overconsume. Give me the gold-plated everything. After all, I want every test. I want every treatment.

GLENN: We don't care. Correct.

JAY: So we right at the start -- either the government is paying for it or my health insurer is paying for it or my boss is paying for it.

When you have a system where a single decision by me could be costing $10,000 to somebody else -- and, by the way, not only am I not paying for it, the person selling it to me, the doctor or the hospital, they can't even tell me what the price is. You go in and ask the x-ray technician, how much is this x-ray? They have no idea. They don't know.

So the seller doesn't know. The buyer doesn't know. Is it any doubt the system has completely run amuck on costs?

GLENN: So what we have going on in Washington, you sound like this is the solution that I've been looking for. How are you going to get that when we're headed towards --

JAY: Well, it's not a solution. So, again, health and wellness is a system, all right? It's not a binary A or B thing. If you treat your body like a garbage can, all right? You're going to get sick, no matter who pays for it.

GLENN: Right.

JAY: So at the end of the day, this isn't a question of just making sure you're paying the right amount of money. You bet, we've got to make sure rational free market economics, which work for everything well, work for health care. But there are plenty of people who can't afford health care. There are plenty of children whose parents make decisions for them. This isn't going to fix that problem. We have challenges in childhood obesity. It isn't going to fix that problem. We have an opioid epidemic. It isn't going to fix that. So market solutions are critically important. But they're important as part of the whole.

GLENN: So how do you -- let's stick to market here for a second.

How do you -- how do you correct a system and sell the free market system, when the free market system hasn't really been practiced in this country for a very long time, not in --

JAY: Not in health care.

GLENN: Yeah, not in health care. But in many ways, in many industries it hasn't been practiced in a very long time.

JAY: Many industries.

GLENN: And people are taught that this is the free market system. And they see that it doesn't work. That it just -- it's awful and cumbersome. And they're being taught that, hey, this Marxism idea is a better idea.

How do we tell the truth about the free market system to a -- to a group of people that really don't know and don't really care about what the free market system really is?

JAY: So the answer is telling people who don't want to hear is probably not going to be our winning strategy. Okay?

GLENN: Yes, right.

JAY: It's just not going to be our winning strategy. So we're going to have to offer alternatives that exist against the dysfunctional system. And those alternatives will have to compete to attract people based on cost, efficacy, easiness, and those kinds of things. It churns out -- this system is probably going to do that. The mobile phone, when you add sensors and your ability to actually, within a few years see what's going on inside your body, probably means we're going to have two systems, a public system that is going to be broken for a long time and we should try to improve and a new technology that's going to emerge along the side, where people -- a significant amount of people say, look, I just want better health for my children. And if this helps my kid, then I'm using this system. I don't care who's paying for it. People want their kids to be healthy. People want their parents to be healthy. A little less themselves, unfortunately.

GLENN: You're a historian. You know that we've been around fake news forever. I mean, I have documents of fake news from the Revolutionary War.

JAY: About to say, it was perfectly normal for Thomas Jefferson to create fake news.

GLENN: It happened.

JAY: Hardball those days.

GLENN: Yeah. Your heads -- if you elect John Adams, your children's heads will be on a pike.

JAY: There you go.

GLENN: Hello. So we've had it forever. However, we are now in a system -- you came up with the friend button at Facebook.

Facebook is so freeing and gives people the power to connect with people like you and me and people -- and give people the power to have a voice just as powerful as anybody else's. But it also is -- just because of the algorithms, making everyone's world smaller. And we're hearing the voices that we agree with, and not necessarily the full spectrum. Then you add on top of that, fake news. How are we going to imagine this?

JAY: Well, first of all, let me set it straight. I'm not the inventor of the friend button. Some of the inventions I created led to it. So I don't want to take credit for something I'm not the inventor.

That being said, you're asking a tough question. And here's the question: The weather today is cold and rainy, but the climate is really what matters most here in Dallas, Texas. Right? It might be cold and rainy today, but we live in -- you're in Texas here. We have to remember that when we're hacking away at the weather, we're simply just hacking at the leaves. The climate is really the bigger issue.

And let's talk about the climate. More people are getting more news from more sources than ever before. Yes, some of those sources are being constrained. But if you have confidence in people, you know what, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. We live in a world where the ability to control the news like Nazi Germany or to control what any one person hears is less than ever before.

You know, white men -- old white men in New York City do not decide what's on the evening news anymore. We live in a much more information-open society. Yes, within certain realms, it appears we're being contradicted. We're having bracelets put around the news we see on Facebook, but that's not maybe what we're going to see on Twitter, or something new will emerge tomorrow.

Remember, the phone is going away, Glenn. The phone is an intermediate system. It's just an on-ramp to the network. It's almost certainly going to go to the glasses. And probably with a little thing in your ear, assuming we don't direct connect to the brain.

This is what's really going to happen. You're going to have way more opportunity here, way more people. And these younger kids, they're way more global. Yeah, it's easy to fool some of the people some of the time, but overall, the climate is more open, more information. You know, I don't care whether you're the Chinese government or whether you're a dictator in Africa, you're having -- or Korea. You're having a hard time controlling the flow of information.

GLENN: When you look at the climate, I am a -- I am a -- some would call me jingoistic. I would not. I would call myself proud of the -- the best system that has ever been created to help people explore -- the minute you come up with a better system than our Constitution and the free market connecting Moral Sentiments to Wealth of Nations, I'm in. I'm in. But this is the best that's been created.

But we're now being taught that America -- our children are being taught, America doesn't matter. It's a global community. And it is a global community. But how do we balance a global community with, these principles are global and eternal?

JAY: Well, there you've got the core of the problem. We used to have a much more of a common heritage. We used to have much more of a common heritage. We used to talk about Western values and Western civilization as an absolute good in the larger scheme of history. And we don't do that any longer.

GLENN: Is it an absolute source of good? In the overall picture?

JAY: If you study history, there is no systems, other than ours, that have lifted more people out of poverty, that have given more opportunity to more people who never had opportunity. If you're a woman, you want to be an American. If you're an African-American, you want to be an American (sic). Half the world would like to come to America. I'm not arguing that we're perfect or even better in every way, but what I'm saying is, market-based systems with real competition and checks and balances that in a government that works, has been by far and away the best. System. There isn't anybody in second place, right?

There are just fakes. So at the end of the day, when China wanted to lift hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty, they turned to capitalism to do it. Yeah, they put a Chinese brand on it. But, baby, they unlocked initiative. They unlocked risk-taking. They unlocked imagination at the market value. They opened their borders to global supply. They basically adopted the western system. They just called it the Chinese communist party.

GLENN: A friend of mine went over and talked to the Chinese. This was 2008. And he was very concerned about us.

And Chinese said, you guys might be kicked down. And you might have some time where you're kicked down for a while, but you have something that the world doesn't have. And that is imagination.

JAY: Permission to fail. The big difference in America is, in the rest of the world, when you're a failure, you're dead. You're done. In America, when you're a failure, you're Bill Gates. You're Steve Jobs. You're a failure? Perfect. You've dropped out of school, perfect. We love you. Okay?

America is a country that reinvents itself and has always done so. We believe in the individual. We believe in responsibility.

Look, we're the most charitable nation by far in the world. Just look at the nature of charity in America. Only people of generosity and wealth can be charitable. Most of the world doesn't -- that makes no sense in China, to donate money to a hospital. There are no hospitals in China, paid for by wealthy Chinese. That doesn't work that way.

America does that. And it's because we have permission to try, to fail, to try again. We literally, from the very start in our patent system said, if you can invent something, you don't have to practice it, and you don't have to be rich to get a patent.

GLENN: I think one of the worst things we've done are the bailouts and everything else. And a lot of people will say, because it's not our position as government. But my core on that is I have a right to fail. As much as I have a right to succeed -- my failures are more important to me than my successes. I am who I am today because of massive failures in my life.

JAY: All great hitters strike out a lot. Okay? They swing at the ball, and they strike out. The poor hitters watch the ball go by. Right? The great hitters put it in play, and they're out. But that's no difference than all of us. The fact of the matter is America allows for that.

Now, sure we have bailouts. Why? Because we have a political democracy. And you put enough people out of work, that's a lot of votes going out of work. So there's enormous pressure to not let those enterprises fail.

But we've learned over and over again, even when the largest enterprises in our country have failed over their history or have become irrelevant in their arc of history, the country bounces back. It finds new ways to deploy resources. It motivates people to learn.

In America, everybody wants to be wealthy. They don't want to drag the wealthy down. They want to join the wealthy. That's why America lives the way it lives.

GLENN: Jay Walker is our guest. An inventor. Described as a serial entrepreneur. Founder of Priceline. Founder of upside.com. An imagination expert. Has the library of the history of human imagination. A techno optimist. And we only have about two minutes left. On the other side, I want to come back. I want to ask you, if you're an entrepreneur and you're out there swinging for the fences today, what is the one thing -- one piece of advice that you would give them, to say, "Just focus here, or have you asked yourself this?"

We'll do that when we come back. First, our sponsor this half-hour is Casper. Are you having sleepless nights? Research shows sleepless nights may be because of warmer weather. And if you have a foam mattress, holy cow do you know that. You'll wake up in the middle of December with your windows open, and the top of you will be ice cold, and the bottom of you that's next to the mattress will be boiling hot.

This is one of the first things that Casper tried to do. They wanted the perfect mattress, so they went back to the laboratory, and they came up with a new foam -- two actual high-tech foams that will guarantee that you will sleep cool and comfortable. Then they wanted to see, how can we keep the price down to where normal people can afford a great mattress?

What they did is they cut out the middle man. And they ship right directly to you. So instead of going to some place where they're paying somebody to say, hey, why don't you lay down on this mattress? What you do is you just go to Casper.com, and you buy the mattress.

In 100 nights, you can send it back. They'll refund every single penny. They'll come and pick it up from you if you don't love it. But you're going to love it.

One hundred nights in your home. Try it. See if it doesn't just change the way you sleep and doesn't make you think about, I can't wait to go home and go to bed. Casper mattress. Casper.com. Use the promo code Beck. Get $50 off the purchase of your mattress right now. Terms and conditions do apply. It's Casper.com. Promo code Beck.

(OUT AT 10:52AM)

GLENN: Jay -- Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline and upside.com. Tell me if you're an entrepreneur and you're out there struggling, give me a piece of advice.

JAY: There's only one person that matters, assuming you've got the oxygen you need. Right? The oxygen is the capital you need to do anything. But if you've got the oxygen, it's all about the customer.

People are continuously reinventing how to serve customers. If you serve the customer, you win the game. There are endless ways to serve customers that have never been possible before. And that's what this new technology revolution is doing. It's putting things up in the air that have never been up in the air, that you can actually find customers and serve them. That's the key. Serve the customer.

GLENN: Upside.com. Jay Walker. Great to have you. We'll be on Facebook later today. Don't miss it.

JAY: Thank you.

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

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?

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

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.