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‘As you wish’ - Glenn interviews Princess Bride star Cary Elwes

December 18, 2014
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The Glenn Beck Program

We'll never survive.

Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has.  - The Princess Bride, 1987

If you have been listening to Glenn for awhile, you are very well aware that 'The Princess Bride' is one of his favorite movies. He loves it so much he declared the film a "right of passage" in his family. Glenn was honored to have actor Cary Elwes on radio today to talk about his new book As You Wish, which takes readers behind-the-scenes on the making of 'The Princess Bride'. The book includes photographs, exclusive interviews and never before told stories.

That's a lot of content! Why it's..."INCONCEIVABLE!"

During the interview, Glenn took the opportunity (as any proper fan would) to ask Elwes some of the stories during the making of the film. The story about the Rodents of Unusual Size (better known as R.O.U.S') is definitely one that is worth a listen.

So don your black mask and "prepare to die" of laughter as you listen to this great interview.

GLENN: We are thrilled to have somebody on today that has a new book on called As You Wish. You know that phrase if you're our kind of people. And when I say that, I don't care how you vote. Where you're from in the world. If you know the word as you wish, and it brings back fond memories, you're my kind of people. We've used this -- I have used, do you like the Princess Bride when I was dating. If they said no, we're not going to get along.

[laughter]

We've done this with friends, with writers, with everybody we know. This is perhaps the Wizard of Oz of our time. This is a magical movie that will last for generations and has become such a part of our culture. And Cary Elwes is the guy who played Wesley, who said, as you wish. Twenty-fifth anniversary of the movie came and went, and he decided, I have to write some of the stories down. And he put out a new book called As You Wish. And Cary is with us now.

Hello, Cary, how are you?

CARY: I'm well, Glenn. How are you, sir?

GLENN: I'm really good. I will tell you, I feel a little for you today because you must be sitting in your hotel room, wherever you are, thinking to yourself, good God, is my career over? I'm on the Glenn Beck Program. I can't go any lower than this.

CARY: No. Not at all, sir. I'm happy to be on your show. Thank you.

GLENN: So, Cary, first of all, thank you for the joy that you have given me, my family, my children. Just recently we watched the Princess Bride. Again, that was a magical movie, and I would imagine one that people would look to make their entire life and don't usually get to make. But more importantly, thank you for appreciating the fact that you were in that and you're not shunning it and saying, I'm above that now.

CARY: No. I'm beyond grateful to be apart of it. I think I can speak for everyone on the film when we say we feel blessed to be a part of it. It's the film that gave me my career and gave me the life I lead today. So I'm eternally grateful.

GLENN: I've wondered this about the movie Moulin Rouge. I don't know if you saw that.

CARY: Sure.

GLENN: But Baz Luhrmann is a genius. And Rob Reiner is a genius. And I think those are probably the only two that could make actors stand in a room and say, okay, have you way out of a -- you'll be dancing in an elephant in Moulin Rouge or you'll be wrestling with rodents of unusual size, and feel comfortable.

CARY: Yes.

GLENN: Was there any time on the set that you thought, this is either going to be magic or a disaster?

CARY: There was one moment. When the little fellow who was playing the rodent of unusual size I was put to wrestle with didn't show up to work. And Rob decided that the only alternative available to us, because we were going to lose the set that day, was to have me wrestle a rubber rat. And that -- I had some -- I had some moments there while Rob was directing me on how to make the rubber rat seem more realistic. I was definitely going to myself, hmm, I wonder if this is going to sell.

[laughter]

We didn't have the money for CGI or anything back then, you know.

GLENN: And the guy actually had been arrested the night before.

CARY: Correct. That is correct. He was driving 5 miles an hour in a 25-mile per hour zone. And I think he had had a couple of drinks. And he was -- had to spend the night in jail. Poor guy.

GLENN: Right.

CARY: He did eventually arrive and saved me from having to wrestle the latex foam rodent of unusual size.

GLENN: The scene, you describe that whole fire swam in great detail. There were a lot of problems in that scene. I mean, the dress really didn't catch fire over and over again.

CARY: Yes. Well, the dress was made -- had a flame retardant liquid that had been -- it had been dipped in. And one area had, I believe, some, I guess, it was alcohol or some kind of area where the flame was supposed to catch the dress on fire, yeah. But Bill Goldman, the author and playwright, showed up in the middle of the first take and had no idea what we were shooting that day. And saw Robin catch fire and screamed out loud, she's on fire. Robin Wright is on fire, at the top of his lungs.

And Rob Reiner yelled, cut, and turned to him and went, Bill, she's supposed to catch fire. That's part of the script. You've written it in the last eight drafts.

And he was mortified, the poor guy. But he had no idea. Imagine anyone walking on the set and seeing Robin Wright on fire. If you had no idea what the context was, you'd probably do the same thing.

GLENN: Right. I would say pretty much anybody on fire. But Robin Wright -- and Robin Wright, let's be honest, is typically on fire, if you know what I mean.

CARY: Very good. Very good.

GLENN: I will tell you, when I saw in the book, that you did the -- the, you know, most passionate kiss ever, and it took you like seven or eight takes, I didn't feel badly for you.

CARY: No. Well, it had to do with the fact that we were giggling so much. Robin and I became very good friends. Still are good friends. And, you know, it's weird kissing your best friend. It's -- so Rob got a little frustrated with us because obviously Wesley and Buttercup were not supposed to be giggling while they were engaging in the passionate embrace. But we got it in the end.

GLENN: Right. Can you tell me about the -- and I'm trying to remember the name of the actor. He's a great actor. So I apologize. The inconceivable guy.

CARY: Wallace Shawn, yeah.

GLENN: So I love that guy.

CARY: Oh, he's great.

GLENN: He's brilliant, and just brilliant in it. Even reading the book, The Princess Bride, which if you haven't read the book, it's just brilliant. It reads just like the movie.

But he played that role so perfectly, but you say he broke out in hives because he was so convinced he was going to be cut.

CARY: Not just cut, but replaced. His agent had told him before he got on the plane to fly to England that, in fact, he was not the first choice to play that scene. The filmmakers wanted Danny DeVito. And he was convinced that he was merely standing in, waiting for Mr. DeVito to become available.

And I only had the one scene with him. The battle of wits scene. And he showed up to work. Here's the guy, always the smallest guy in the room. Fulbright scholar. Lectures at Oxford and Cambridge. Here he is sweating at this little scene. I didn't know what it was about.

But I found out from writing this book that he had actually -- he was convinced that his ticket had already been booked, and when you look at his performance now, it's inconceivable to think of anybody else playing that role, other than him. I mean, he's just perfect in that.

GLENN: When you are -- you're in the fight scene at the top of the cliffs of insanity. And you have to sword fight.

CARY: Yeah.

GLENN: I've always found it amazing that it was clearly you guys sword fighting.

In the book --

CARY: Yes.

GLENN: -- you say we should perhaps even be more amazed because of your foot and because of changes at the last minute.

CARY: Yes. So by the -- first of all, I broke my toe fooling around on Andre the Giant's all-terrain vehicle, which I had no business being on. But he kept taunting me to try it. Eventually -- you know, when a giant says you should try his toy --

GLENN: You do.

CARY: -- several times a day, at some point, you need to relent.

GLENN: Wait. Wait. Wait. Before you get to the sword fight scene. Just talk -- I have to verify, he never actually was riding -- I love the way -- I love the way you say that you walked on the set, and you saw him on the top of the horse and you realized, this is the craziest job in the world.

CARY: In the world.

GLENN: He never actually road the horse.

CARY: No. He was always on wires. Never touched -- the horse would never allow -- the horses are very smart. The horse took one look at Andre, all 460 pounds, 7'5" of him and said, there's no -- this was a Clydesdale. The kind you see on the Budweiser commercial. The biggest horse ever. It just refused. So they had to blindfold it and then lower Andre down on a wire, not actually touching the horse.

GLENN: Is that crazy?

CARY: Huh?

GLENN: That's crazy.

CARY: Crazy. Anyway, so I broke my toe fooling around on his all-terrain vehicle. Luckily, it was fairly reasonably well-healed by the time -- it was three weeks later we shot the sword fight.

But when we came to show it to Rob Reiner, Manny and I had become so fast at the routine that it clocked in at about a minute. And Rob turned to us and went, guys, you got to go back and add another two minutes. You know, look at this set I built for you. This beautiful set. You can't be in here for just a minute.

So we had literally four or five days to go. We had to go back and add another two minutes to the fight, which we did. And we added the whole acrobatic piece, where we had this gymnast do this wonderful flip on the bars. And it was fun.

GLENN: I was going to say, Cary is obviously a great storyteller. He just butchered that. It's great in the book. It's great in the book.

So, Cary, you are -- and I let you decide or want to leave it for the reader to discover. But when you get to the end of the book, you talk about Peter Falk and the touching scene between a grandfather and his grandson.

CARY: Yes.

GLENN: And how that became real. Do you care to go into that at all?

CARY: Sure. I lost my own grandfather during the making of the film. And my grandfather was the hero in my life. He was a real-life World War II veteran. He had been sort of a commando. He worked for special operations executives, SOE, and their job was to fly behind enemy lines and create a fit column (phonetic) to fight the Germans and the Italians in Albania and in many other places.

Anyway, he died of complications related to diabetes. And he was the kind of guy who used to tell tales to me as a kid, much like Peter Falk did with Fred Savage.

And when I went to the hospital after I wrapped the movie, I started to share with him -- because he was unable to come to the set, he was too sick. I shared with him the whole story of my experience making the film. And he was under a lot of medication at the time. I don't know how much he really could understand what I was saying. But I wanted to share it with him anyway. And I realized while I was sharing the whole making of the film with him that I was having my own as-you-wish moment with him. So it was very moving for me. And, yeah, it was -- it was very sad. Very touching.

GLENN: Cary, we were talking before you came on about the movie Galaxy Quest with Tim Allen. Okay. You know that. So I can't remember the guy or the character he plays. But he plays basically the Spock character.

CARY: Right.

GLENN: And he is -- he's pissed that he's been in this movie and that's all people -- he's like, yeah, I got it. I got it. There has to be times that even if you love -- and, I mean, that character he didn't love it. He was really pissed that's what he turned into be. You've done so much. You've been in really critically acclaimed movies. You're a great actor.

CARY: Thank you.

GLENN: But there has to be times that you run into fans where you're like, okay, it's a movie, dude. It's a movie.

CARY: I got to share with you this. Here's how I look at it, Glenn. I think as an actor you are blessed to have anyone resonate with your work. Some actors go through life and don't have a single movie that anyone has even cared to watch or have -- you know, feels anything about.

And I look at it like, how blessed am I that I have a film that has touched so many people. I call this the gift that keeps on giving. This is like a generational film. I meet families who have passed down their VHS copies from grandparents to grandkids. It's just incredible.

GLENN: It's a rite of passage. It really is. We shared it with our kids. I have kids in their 20s and an 8-year-old. And it is a rite of passage that we're watching this movie.

So, Cary, I thank you very much for being on the program.

CARY: Thank you, sir.

GLENN: I've never done this before. But I would like to ask if we could send you a few copies of your book and you could sign them so we could give some away.

CARY: Absolutely.

GLENN: Thank you for being so cool. I appreciate it.

CARY: Happy Holidays to you and all your listeners. And thank you for having me on your show.

GLENN: God bless you. Thank you very much.

CARY: God bless you too.

GLENN: Name of the book is As You Wish: The Inconceivable Tales From the Making of the Princess Bride.

STU: He was great.

GLENN: I have to tell you, after my experience with B.B. King, where my wife fell asleep at a B.B. King concert, and I am a huge B.B. King fan. And we went backstage to meet him, and he couldn't give a flying crap about me.

STU: He was hitting on Tania, wasn't he?

GLENN: He was hitting on my wife the whole time. And I wanted to say to him, she fell asleep. She hates you. She's like, stop with B.B. King all the time.

And after that, and then an experience with Billy Joel and Elton John right in the same summer, I swore off meeting anyone that I liked. If I liked your music, I liked your work. I don't want to meet you. It's going to be disappointing. That was a cool interview. Really, really gracious guy. Really great.

STU: Yeah. I must remind you that I brought that to the table. So there's one for the last ten or 15 years.

[laughter]

GLENN: As You Wish the name of the book. The inconceivable tales of the making of the Princess Bride.

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.