Glenn: Time to get out of the herd because you're being led to the slaughter

It was twelve years ago people were inspired by the words "let's roll", willing to undergo self-sacrifice to help others. Today, people seem willing to just be cattle. The latest example? A Baltimore man was arrested for simply standing up and asking tough questions during a Common Core town hall meeting. Could this just be the latest step to government taking control of the American people, and using force and intimidation to suppress objections? Glenn thinks so, and he opened the show by explaining just what happened and what it all means.

Watch:

Below is a transcript of Glenn's opening monologue:

If you’ve been watching my show for a long time, you are familiar with this – nudge, shove, shoot, and it’s how every Marxist utopian dream begins with just, it starts simple with just a little nudge. It’s cash for clunkers. It is trying to figure out a way to make energy prices necessarily skyrocket, nudge you into hybrids or french fries versus carrots, you know? You put them in front of the chip so the kid eats healthy.

Then when this doesn’t work anymore, then they have to start shoving, and that’s when it gets more serious. That’s when they use the IRS to shut down the opposing voices. They use the NSA to monitor and track American citizens. They use labor intimidation, send the labor unions over to people’s houses. Then they start using regulation, and they start arresting people to scare everybody.

Eventually, that doesn’t work anymore, because people want to be free, and they understand common sense, and they want to live in a world that makes sense to them. And so when this doesn’t make sense, and this no longer works, if you really want your Marxist utopia, then it goes to this, and that’s when you start shooting. You start shooting people or you send them to a reeducation camp or you send them to an internment camp.

It happens every time, and it happens when you forget about the individual, and you make it about the collective. It happens with every revolution, whether it is a revolution in the French Revolution or if it is a revolution in Egypt. So now where are we on the scale? Are we at nudge, shove, or shoot? Well, it really comes down to this, how do you transform a nation? How do you do it?

This is the list that I made about six years ago when I first started, maybe right before I started at Fox. I saw what was coming, and I thought okay, so if you’re going to do fundamental transformation, what do you need? How do you do it? How do you take a nation that’s free and do it? And I came up with a list of things you had to control.

You had to control the media. They had that one a long time ago. They control the media. They control the culture through Hollywood. Education, they’re putting the final nails on that. They’ve controlled it for a long time but not like they’re trying now. Banking, well they pretty much control everything. They control through the Fed your money. They control the value of what you’ve even saved.

Medical, they’ve got that coming in the next couple of weeks. Communication, three little letters, NSA, they pretty much have that done. Food and farms, they are currently working on that like you wouldn’t believe. We’ll show you in the next couple of weeks. Police, have you noticed how much money the Department of Homeland Security has put into your local police force? Have you noticed that the Department of Homeland Security is actually being used now as a local police force?

And the military, I never thought they’d get that one. That one’s almost completely done, and of course labor. So they have all this done now. They didn’t have all this done six years ago. They do now. And then they have to do one other thing, they have to use, exploit, or create an economic crisis, security fears, war. And when you’re in war, you get to define who your enemies are, so you redefine the enemies.

Propaganda, we just had, our government just okayed, our Congress actually said it’s okay for our United States government now to do propaganda on our own people. Since when? Why did they need that piece? They have to use behavioral scientists. They have to figure out how to nudge and when to reeducate. Well, we know from The New York Times the president uses behavioral scientists, and nudge, shove, shoot. So where are we? Where are we?

Well, on Thursday, there was an event that happened that I found out about Friday night, and I couldn’t sleep for two hours, because I believe it is a very important piece that moves us further towards shoot. It happened in Towson, Maryland, an upscale, or it used to be upscale suburb of Baltimore. A dad was arrested after a public forum. This is it, Common Core State Standards. This was the invitation. This was the flyer that went out.

It says here “Your chance to get answers to your Common Core questions.” Well, that’s what it was. Dad stands up, and he’s got a question about Common Core. His name is Robert Small, and he wasn’t merely arrested. He was removed with excessive force and today, he faces ten years in prison.

By the way, this story is getting national coverage now. It hasn’t received any local coverage yet. Now, if I told you that story, you would say there’s got to be a catch. I want you to decide for yourself, because it’s all thank goodness captured on video.

But before I show it to you, here’s what was going on: The school board decided that they instead of actually engaging with the parents in a back-and-forth question-and-answer session, that your questions, all the answers to your Common Core questions would need to be written down on paper and then handed in to the schoolmarm.

Now with this method, sure, maybe it’s a little more orderly, but it also removes the possibility of follow-up questions on the spot, takes the microphone out of the crowd, takes the emotion out of the room, which I guess could be argued good thing or bad thing. But what happens is you suppress and minimize any possible objections.

Okay, so you could play that either way. You could be okay, well, they’re just trying to move things along, make sure people don’t get longwinded, and make sure nobody gets angry, but then they screened and edited the questions in advance. So for over an hour, the crowd had to listen to the county superintendent talk about how wonderful Common Core was. Then they showed a video on how great Common Core is. Then they started reading some of the softball questions, and that’s when Robert Small couldn’t take it anymore, but he stood up in total self-control, and here’s what happened. Watch.

VIDEO

Robert Small: I went to Community College. I finished at the University of Maryland. And now I move my family out to Howard County because of the reputation the schools. My children are being prepared for community college. You’re not talking to them about which colleges. You’re not preparing them for Harvard.

Take control. We’re sick of this. This is not a CNN political debate. This is a public town hall. Don’t stand for this. You’re sitting here like cattle. You have questions. Confront them. They don’t want to do it in public. Is this America? This is not a CNN political debate. Parents, you need to question these people. Do the research. It’s online.

Look at this. Okay, now did he look at all out of control? That guy was intimidating him. He was manhandling him. This is the way it used to happen in mother Russia, not America. Now here’s the kicker: The reason why I couldn’t sleep on Friday is because this guy, the father, was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, faces a $2,500 fine and up to ten years in prison. Excuse me? Show me the physical threat. Show me the assault.

The assault happened the other way around as the officer was violently yanking him by his arm in an attempt to remove him. Remove him from what? What was his crime, asking a question about what’s going to happen with his children? What law did this man break that warranted such a use of force? I’ll tell you what it was, doing this, doing this. You know this picture? You know what that is?

That’s Norman Rockwell, a guy standing up in a school board meeting and speaking his mind. That’s what Norman Rockwell said was one of the four freedoms, stating your opinion. As Small was being dragged out, he said don’t stand for this. You’re sitting here like cattle. Mr. Small’s admonition to the herd is spot on.

Where were the teachers as he was being removed, you know, the ones that always teach about it’s a wrong to bully people? Did no one feel that he was being bullied? Did not one person have the decency to say stop, stop, stop? Up there on the board, no one said lets him…stop? One woman taping asked that question. Another woman stood up, said something to the guard to no avail, but other than that, nothing, nothing.

We have seen in the last few months teachers stand up for a colleague who sexually molested and raped an eighth grade student, but the teachers don’t stand up against this? No one, none of the parents dare ask a question out loud or directly addressed the almighty school board without writing it down on paper first; otherwise it will turn into the Salem witch trials. Cattle, time to get out of the herd, because you’re being led to slaughter.

Perhaps people were afraid to speak because they were afraid of being dragged off by a police officer, and so the option is I sit here with my mouth closed like cattle. And when nobody is there to stand up for you, it’s because you weren’t there to stand up for everybody else that was dragged off. I just want you to put this in perspective. It was 12 years ago. We’re still the same Americans. It’s not like some past generation. We’re still the same generation that 12 years ago we were inspired by the rallying cry of the typical American that said let’s roll.

We’ve gone from let’s roll to cattle in 12 years. Don’t tell me that we haven’t lost our country. Don’t tell me that we haven’t been fundamentally transformed. I don’t even recognize Americans anymore. Now, here’s why I want you to remember this video: I want you to write this down. If you keep a journal, I want you to write this down, because you’re going to look like a prophet to your kids someday. Believe me on this.

Do you remember when I was at Fox and I told you about the fruit cart vendor in Tunisia that set himself on fire? And I said that guy, that, nobody will understand, and everybody will call me crazy, which they did, but that will lead to a watershed moment, and it will spread across the Middle East, and it will turn everything into chaos. And it did. Write it down in your journal. This is a watershed moment.

It doesn’t matter if this guy goes to jail or not. Did people learn their lesson? It’s dictatorship 101, make someone an example, and the rest will stay in line. The next meeting of that school district, they should have 10,000 people there, but I doubt they will. To quote Mr. Small, “is this America?” I don’t know.

Now, I want to take you to the other big story that happened this weekend, but I want to make sure you couple it with this story, because remember, we started with that list of how do you take over a nation like this. This story’s happening on the other side of the globe. It happened in Kenya, where at least 62 people are dead as terrorists have taken an upscale mall by violent and coordinated attack that targeted non-Muslims.

Now, by the way, Kenya is a country that has all kinds of gun restrictions, can’t have an automatic weapon, can’t have a semi-automatic weapon. You can’t even have a handgun yourself. If you use a gun in self-defense, you’re in trouble. So what happens? The group responsible for this was an Al Qaeda affiliated group, you know, Al Qaeda, the one that’s on the run that we’ve pretty much put out of business.

This group is called Al Shabaab. You need to know the name, Al Shabaab. They claim to be retaliating against “what Muslims in Somalia experienced at the hands of Kenyon invaders.” So when they went into this mall, they asked the shoppers what is the name of Muhammad’s mother? Sylvia isn’t the right answer apparently. If you couldn’t answer it, you got shot.

They tweeted the rampage live, “Like it or loathe it! Our mujahideen confirmed all executions were point blank range.” I loathe it, I don’t know about you. So people will watch this, and they’ll say how does this even affect me? I mean, we’re here in America. Well, here’s how: One of the Twitter accounts used by the terrorists identified ten of the gunmen. Three of them, at least three they say, were Americans, two allegedly from Minneapolis, an area which is Al Shabaab.

They have actively recruited in Minneapolis. Now, U.S. officials don’t have any confirmation of Americans having been involved in the attacks as of yet. They’re still working on it. We’ll focus on that angle tomorrow, but you’re not going to believe who our government is inviting and moving into our country, and you won’t believe the numbers that they’re doing it in.

This administration says they believe the U.S. is not really a priority for Al Shabaab right now. Really? That’s not what For the Record tells us. Two weeks ago, For the Record, a new program, the 60 Minutes of our generation – mark my words; put that in your journal as well – they reported just two weeks ago that there was documented proof that Al Shabaab members had crossed oh, our unsecured Mexican border into the U.S.

VIDEO

The Al Qaeda linked terrorist group Al Shabaab based in Somalia has attracted dozens of American recruits.

Sara Carter: I’ve covered stories where we know Somalians were attempting to cross into the United States from the Mexican border that were connected to Al Shabaab. That was documented. The documents were right there. I was able to write the story, prove that there were terrorists connected to Al Shabaab trying to enter the United States from Mexico. The Mexican authorities had released them, and then they disappeared inside Mexico. And there was a scramble to try to find them.

Really? Are they coming here looking for some undocumented jobs? Is that what it is? We have an administration that has sided with radical Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, who by the way were banned once again today in Egypt, while our own government is cozying up to the Brotherhood and turning a blind eye to dangerous extremists and making it easy, beyond making it easy, they are sending them here. We’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

In 2010, the president issued an executive order allowing 80,000 refugees to immigrate to the U.S. So what happens when all hell breaks loose? What happens to us when, let’s say, Al Shabaab members start shooting in our Westlake malls, and people plead for help? The top comes crashing down all too ready to help with all kinds of excuses that will be made to remove more freedoms from America, all of course in the name of safety.

And as the people in Baltimore demonstrated, even though people know it’s wrong, they won’t do anything. They’ll sit like cattle. Anyone who disagrees and stands will be deemed an enemy of the state, a security risk, and will be shoved and eventually shot. I said at the beginning, this is happening in Egypt. This is current. Fifty-five thousand unlicensed clerics were rounded up this weekend because they were deemed a threat to Egypt security. See, it happens this way every time.

If Egypt can round up that many people, I mean, do you think our government could do…I mean, can you imagine what we could do in a weekend? And please don’t start with me oh, yeah, he’s crazy talking. It’s never happened here. It already has happen. You need to go back and look at the images from the Japanese internment camps? All you need is a war. All you need is a threat. All you need is somebody at the top, and it’s always a Progressive that says round them up.

Oh, and in totally unrelated news that would make it easier for government to round people up, President Obama turned the naval yard memorial into a gun control speech, believe it or not, arguing that transformation was needed. Watch.

VIDEO

President Obama: These families have endured a shattering tragedy. It ought to be a shock to all of us as a nation and as a people. It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead to some sort of transformation.

And it will. Translation: We have to disarm more Americans. Watch the speech. It’s outrageous. Disarm more Americans, all in the name of safety, of course. Let me ask the question that I’ve asked a few times here, and I don’t seem to get an answer to. We are arming Al Qaeda and the rebels in the Middle East, not just with guns but automatic weapons and rockets, and some of the rebels are from here in the U.S., and yet at the same time, the same guy arming them is trying to disarm loyal American citizens.

The time to decide who you are and what you believe and what’s worth standing for, fighting for, dying for, going to jail for, is not when you’re sitting in a school district meeting. The time to decide who you are is right now, long before you have to make that decision.

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

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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.

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.