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FLASHBACK: Paul Ryan explains his conservative values to Glenn in April 2010

August 11, 2012
Wilson

Writer

This morning, Mitt Romney announced he had selected Paul Ryan to be his running mate in the Presidential election. Below is video and a transcript of their first radio conversation from April 2010.

GLENN: 888‑727‑BECK. One name that I hear an awful lot about and, you know, it’s strange. I’m getting a lot of heat now from this article that was in Forbes magazine called Beck, Inc. It was on the cover. I think it’s ought on newsstands today, the cover. And it starts with the opening line of, I could give a flying crap about politics. I care about principles. I don’t care about the process at all. And there’s a followup story in Forbes now on that because so many people misunderstood it. Or they are using it to smear me. I don’t follow the people day to day in Washington, but when I hear names over and over again, I look into them. Paul Ryan is a name I keep hearing of just, you know, he’s a god among conservatives. So I asked Stu, I don’t know, about a week ago. I said, Stu, can you look into Paul Ryan, found out what you can about him. He found a speech that I read to you or portions of that he gave in Oklahoma, and it appeared to me that he was standing up for progressivism which doesn’t really sit well with me. We heard from Paul Ryan’s office as soon as the show was over and they said, no, you’ve got that all wrong. If I get it wrong, I don’t care what political party it’s in; I will correct the record. Heritage.org has corrected the record today and the guy who wrote the article is a guy who I know hates progressives because he’s one of our researchers on the progressive movement. And the best guy to do it is Paul Ryan. So he joins us now. Hello, congressman, how are you, sir?

PAUL RYAN: Hey, nice to meet you.

GLENN: Nice to meet you, sir. Tell me, tell me your thoughts on progressivism.

PAUL RYAN: Right. What I have been trying to do, and if you read the entire Oklahoma speech or read my speech to Hillsdale College that they put in there on Primus Magazine, you can get them on my Facebook page, what I’ve been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism because I see progressivism as the source, the intellectual source for the big government problems that are plaguing us today and so to me it’s really important to flush progressives out into the field of open debate.

GLENN: I love you.

PAUL RYAN: So people can actually see what this ideology means and where it’s going to lead us and how it attacks the American idea.

GLENN: Okay. Hang on just a second. I ‑‑ did you see my speech at CPAC?

PAUL RYAN: I’ve read it. I didn’t see it. I’ve read it, a transcript of it.

GLENN: And I think we’re saying the same thing. I call it ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: We are saying the same thing.

GLENN: It’s a cancer.

PAUL RYAN: Exactly. Look, I come from ‑‑ I’m calling you from Janesville, Wisconsin where I’m born and raised.

GLENN: Holy cow.

PAUL RYAN: Where we raise our family, 35 miles from Madison. I grew up hearing about this stuff. This stuff came from these German intellectuals to Madison‑University of Wisconsin and sort of out there from the beginning of the last century. So this is something we are familiar with where I come from. It never sat right with me. And as I grew up, I learned more about the founders and reading the Austrians and others that this is really a cancer because it basically takes the notion that our rights come from God and nature and turns it on its head and says, no, no, no, no, no, they come from government, and we here in government are here to give you your rights and therefore ration, redistribute and regulate your rights. It’s a complete affront of the whole idea of this country and that is to me what we as conservatives, or classical liberals if you want to get technical.

GLENN: Thank you.

PAUL RYAN: ‑‑ ought to be doing to flush this out. So what I was simply tying to do in that speech was simply saying those first versions, those first progressives, they tried to use populism and popular ideas as a means to getting ‑‑ detaching people from the Constitution and founding principles to pave the way for the centralized bureaucratic welfare state.

GLENN: Okay. So you and I have ‑‑ wait, wait, hang on just a second. You and I agree because ‑‑ the way it was worded.

PAUL RYAN: Yeah.

GLENN: It sounded like you thought that Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt and their progressivism was good and that’s ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: Yeah. There was one blog which I think you cited that completely misinterpreted my remarks.

GLENN: Thank you.

PAUL RYAN: All the other blogs that wrote about my speech I think got it accurately. What I probably should have done was added a couple more sentences. I cut the thing back for time.

GLENN: No, no, that’s fine.

PAUL RYAN: I should have just added a couple more sentences. What I was basically saying is the progressives we have now who are the people we have run our government, they don’t even try to do that. They don’t even try to pretend to be advancing a popular agenda. They try to cram through their agenda as fast as they can while they have the power that they have in order to get this stuff in place. So that is basically what I was saying is the kinds of progressives we have today, you know, aren’t even pretending to do what people want for the country.

GLENN: Paul, how is it that you and I have never met?

PAUL RYAN: You know, I don’t ‑‑ it’s a really good question. You don’t go to Washington much, do you?

GLENN: No, I avoid it like the plague.

PAUL RYAN: I go to Washington and Wisconsin every week and I don’t really go anywhere in between, except for Oklahoma where my in‑laws live.

GLENN: Do you watch or ever listen to the show? Are you familiar with what I’ve been saying?

PAUL RYAN: I’m familiar with it but you are on at a time of day that I just can’t get to a television. You are on too early. So I just haven’t had a chance to watch. I’ve watched you on O’Reilly and you’ve been replayed on Greta. So obviously I’m familiar with you.

GLENN: I’m just ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: And I know you’ve been going after progressivism which is exactly what I’ve been trying to do as well.

GLENN: I mean, I’m just surprised that, I mean because it sounds like you’re on exactly the same ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: Yes.

GLENN: ‑‑ road that I’m on, and I have been feeling, and I imagine you are, too, feeling wildly alone on this because most people don’t even understand progressivism.

PAUL RYAN: Right.

GLENN: So many dopes out in America are just like, yeah, well, I’m for progress.

PAUL RYAN: That’s right.

GLENN: Jeez, it’s not about progress. It’s not even about the Constitution. I just gave a talk this weekend where we were talking about, you know, we’re fundamental ‑‑ the president of the United States is saying we’re going to fundamentally transform the country.

PAUL RYAN: Right.

GLENN: Into what? We’re going to make progress to where?

PAUL RYAN: Right.

GLENN: What are we progressing to?

PAUL RYAN: If you read the entire Oklahoma speech, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m saying, here’s what this means ‑‑

GLENN: My fault, my fault.

PAUL RYAN: They are leading us to a social welfare state, cradle‑to‑grave society where they create a culture of dependency on the government, not on oneself. It is meant to replace the American idea. And the reason I’m doing a lot of these speeches ‑‑ the reason I’m talking about Hegel and Faber and Bismarck, you know, and what those people stood for and what they did and said and all their disciples, you know, in America is because I really believe we’ve got to have a debate and a political realignment fast because we will win the debate now. We are a center‑right country. But if they succeed in moving us faster down the tipping point where more Americans are dependent on the government than upon themselves, where a debt crisis sparked money entitlement explosion brings us to, you know, a really tough fiscal situation, then down the road we may not win that referendum and so that is why I’m trying to, you know, do what I can from my position in congress to sound the alarm bells on what this agenda really means, what this philosophy’s all about and how we need to have a referendum in America in real elections to untangle this mess they created and prevent us from reaching this tipping point where we are a social welfare state, cradle‑to‑grave society, dependent on the government that lulls us into lies of complicity and dependency versus the America idea of, you know, making the most of your life, equal opportunity, equal natural rights. You know, those are the things that got us where we are and that’s why I put this roadmap plan out there. I introduced it three years ago. I put a new version out in January. You can go to my website, Americanroadmap.org. It is a very specific economic and fiscal plan. It’s a piece of legislation that says there is an alternative to this progressivist vision for America. There is a way to reapply and reclaim the founding principles in America and still get America back and make this century another American Century appeared that’s why I’ve been, you know, speaking from the hilltop. It’s not popular and it’s ‑‑ and for my party, we can’t afford to screw up again. But we’ve got to get people to stop being worried or afraid of taking on this debate and that’s what I’m simply trying to do.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I don’t think I’ve heard a politician, really, I’m looking at my producers. Have we had a politician on this show since when, when we first met Santorum maybe, maybe. DeMint is really, really good but I don’t know anybody, not even Santorum, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody ‑‑ I need to find out more about you, Paul. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody ‑‑

PAT: Nobody’s articulated progressivism like that.

GLENN: ‑‑that is articulating the problem in this country and knows what the root is like you have.

PAUL RYAN: Look, I grew up in the orbit of Madison, Wisconsin. I know who these people are, I know what they think, I know what they believe. And so I would just encourage you, go to my roadmap website, read the roadmap.

GLENN: Give me the website.

PAUL RYAN: Americanroadmap.org. Read the full text of the Oklahoma speech, read my in Primus Hillsdale speech on progressivism and healthcare. Those three things right there, I mean, I could go on and on but those three things tell you what I’ve been trying to lay out and do just from my perch, you know, in congress.

GLENN: Paul, tonight and for the next five nights I am going to be softening the ground. I am laying out an idea of cutting the budget, doing what we did in 1920 after the first progressive ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: Yeah, Calvin Coolidge, sure.

GLENN: And I’m going to cut the ‑‑ show America that the budget can be cut by 50%. It’s going to cause pain, but it has to. It has to be cut or we die. And show a way that we can reduce taxes to be ‑‑ do what Georgia did to Russia. Just keep lowering the taxes.

PAUL RYAN: Right.

GLENN: So they could survive. We need to do that. And I’m telling you that it’s ‑‑ I’ve been telling the audience it’s going to be wildly unpopular. You are going to hate me by the end of the week because everybody will experience pain. But man, I’ve got to tell ya, I’m not running for anything. If you can get people in Washington to actually stand up and say, I mean, I’ll soften the ground and show people why it has to be cut, but we’ve got to cut this and we need somebody with a spine in Washington that will stand up. I’m ‑‑ boy, I hope I don’t find out ‑‑ you are not like a dirt bag, are you?

PAUL RYAN: Yeah, right.

GLENN: I just don’t want to find out, oh, jeez.

PAUL RYAN: Look, I ‑‑

GLENN: You don’t know Eliot Spitzer ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: No.

GLENN: Or anything like that, right?

PAUL RYAN: I’m not running for president. I’m not trying to be somebody else. I’m not trying to be somebody I’m not. I’m not running for president. I’m a ranking member of the budget committee. You know, my background is in economics. That’s my aptitude. If you read my roadmap, it is basically a plan that lays out how to relimit government, how to turn these entitlements into individual ownership programs where you are not dependent on the government for all these things, where you are more independent. And how you can basically reclaim the 21st century for the American idea instead of ‑‑ and we are very quickly approaching this tipping point in this country.

GLENN: I know.

CALLER: Where I mean, 60% of our fellow citizens right now get more benefits from the federal government in dollar value than they pay back in taxes. So we’re already very quickly going down this path. Throw healthcare on top and then cap and trade and implement this Obama budget and you are way down that path.

GLENN: Well, we won’t survive that.

PAUL RYAN: So and that’s what I lay out on my roadmap. I show you using Congressional Budget Office numbers just how we are going to implode. We have an economic implosion on the horizon. Everybody knows this but nobody’s doing anything about it. And that’s why I’ve decided to put this plan out there ‑‑

GLENN: God bless you.

PAUL RYAN: ‑‑ that has been certified by the CBO as doing what I say it does.

GLENN: Okay.

PAUL RYAN: So I encourage you to take a look at it.

GLENN: I will. Paul, and I would like to stay in touch with you. I appreciate your correcting my error and I apologize for that.

PAUL RYAN: Look, that one blog really misinterpreted what I was trying to say and you know, as you just mentioned in your lead‑in, you get misinterpreted sometimes.

GLENN: Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared it up and we’ll stay in touch. Paul Ryan, thank you very much, sir.

PAUL RYAN: Sounds good.

GLENN: Appreciate it. You bet. Bye‑bye. Oh, my gosh.

PAT: You weren’t already married, I think you would have proposed to him.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

PAT: I think you would have proposed to him then. I saw the look in your eye.

GLENN: You know what it is? You know what it is? Hope, why, because someone knows the truth and knows how to articulate it.

PAT: He really does and did. That was really good.

GLENN: Let me ask you something. Let me ask you something. I said that my time would be done when I found somebody else that would articulate it.

PAT: I think you are in the clear.

GLENN: Can I go home now? Can I go home?

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.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.