Glenn: Why is the Confederate Flag our #1 priority?

June 23, 2015

WRITER

Many are calling for the Confederate flag to be removed from grounds of the South Carolina state capitol in the wake of the church shooting in Charleston. Yesterday, Glenn made it clear that he doesn’t think it should be flown at the capitol, but he also knows that as a resident of Texas he doesn’t have much say in the matter. But he did see a deeper issue with the story - with everything in the country we should be upset about, why are we making the Confederate flag the top priority? Glenn delivered an epic response to everyone worried about a flag in South Carolina while ignoring some very scary problems in the U.S. and abroad.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it may contain errors:

GLENN: Nikki Haley. I want to start here. Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag. Cut 176.

NIKKI: We respect freedom for expression. And that for those who wish to show their respect for the flag, on their private property, no one will stand in your way.

But the statehouse is different. And the events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way. Fifteen years ago after much contentious debate, South Carolina came together in a bipartisan way to move the flag from atop the capitol dome. Today, we're here in a moment of unity in our state, without ill will, to say it's time to move the flag from the capitol grounds.

[applauding]

GLENN: Okay. I'm not going to get involved in this debate. I made my feelings clear on the Confederate flag yesterday. I don't see a reason for it. A lot of people do. That's up to the state. They don't fly it here in Texas. So I as a citizen of Texas, have nothing to say about it. If you want to fly something yourself, you can fly the Nazi flag for all I care. I -- I actually like to know -- you know, like the guy who is a Nazi -- and I'm not comparing the Confederacy with the Nazis. But you have to a right to do what you do in your own life and on your own property. That's what you have.

Yesterday when we talked about the Nazi wearing the Nazi armband in Seattle. Said, what do you do about that? There's nothing you can do about that. You have a right to wear the Nazi armband. I wish everyone would wear an armband. I know that goes towards the Nazi rule. But you at least know who this guy is. You at least know who this guy is.

So the worst thing I can think of is the Nazis. You can fly that flag if you want. I know exactly who you are then. Done.

So we're not even talking about the Nazi flag. We're talking about the Confederate flag. I don't agree with it. But I didn't grow up in the South. If you want to fly that put it on your truck, you can put that on your truck. Whatever. I don't like in a state like South Carolina where they are flying it on the grounds. I don't think it should be flown on the grounds. But I don't live in South Carolina. That's up to you. Now, with that being said, could I ask a question?

This is the biggest thing we have going on in our country? Because if this is the biggest thing going on in our country, we have a sweet, sweet life

PAT: Well, it caused the shooting in South Carolina. You have to take it down so it doesn't cause anymore.

GLENN: No, it didn't cause the shooting in South Carolina.

We have $18 trillion in debt. We have the latest on Jonathan Gruber in the White House. And play the audio for you in a little while. We have the press not even willing to say the president lied. Here's yet another lie, and nobody is willing to say the president lied. Obamacare is in collapse. Your insurance rates for your children is skyrocketing. Kids in fourth grade, they can read as well as a kindergartener. Mutual fund managers all around the world is saying, you better have cash on hand. You better have cash on hand.

Our fed has lied to us, said they would never print money. They did. And we taught the rest of the world how to print money. Now the central banks all over the world are printing money. That's not going to end well. Our wars are still going. And they're not going well. ISIS is still beheading people, throwing homosexuals off the roof. Killing Christians because they won't comply. Muslims who aren't Muslim enough are enslaved. There was a new contest on the Koran with ISIS. The winners got women to be used as sex slaves.

Yesterday, the parliament of Iran met. They talked about the president's proposal. And they rejected any -- any inspections of their nuke sites. Oh, and then the parliament got together and, you know -- I don't understand parliamentary rules, but they got together and they chanted, death to America. But we're still going forward on a -- on a pact with Iran.

Baltimore is still on fire and hasn't been solved. Ferguson is still on fire and hasn't been solved. Debt for student loans is higher than ever. People don't even know how they'll pay these debts off.

Jihad. The threat against jihad. Our government came out and told us it is the highest threat level we've ever had. And we're talking about the Confederate flag? Are you kidding me?

This is the biggest thing we've got? The Confederate flag is the thing that America has got to stop and talk about and solve right now?

We have -- we are living in an Alice in Wonderland world. We have stepped threw the looking glass, and we're having tea parties with the Mad freaking Hatter. Don't say the N-word! Whatever you do! Yet Cornel West can say the N-word on television, and nobody seems to care. The network doesn't come out. They don't apologize. They don't say, oh, my gosh, we're so sorry. We apologize for him using that word. We're still concerned that Sarah Palin might use the word "targeting."

Meanwhile, the president has a podcast. And on his podcast, he's asked a question, and he uses the N-word without hesitation. The president of the United States uses the N-word, but that's not really the big deal.

I mean, after all, he was on a podcast called WTF. I'd tell you what WTF means, if you didn't know, but I'm on a federally licensed radio station, and so I can't tell you.

But let's spend the day talked about the Confederate flag. Because once we get that settled, everything will be fixed.

PAT: When you lay it out that way, I mean, it doesn't sound as important.

[laughter]

GLENN: You think? You think?

PAT: Wow. That's --

GLENN: What are we doing? We're insane. We're insane.

Look, I care about the Confederate flag. It's a part of history. I wish it would stay in the history books. I don't think that it is something that people should fly over the state. If you want to fly it because your family fought in the Confederacy and they weren't for slavery -- and I know all of the rigamarole. I've lived in the South long enough. I know it. I know the argument. That's great.

I don't think it should be flown on state property. I don't think that it is something that should be flown there. If you do and you live in a state where they're flying it, that's for you to decide. Here's my evil Libertarian plan: To slowly take over the world and then leave everyone alone. Yes! I've said it out loud.

That's for you to decide.

Maybe we should decide together the things that affect all of us. $18 trillion in debt. How are we going to pay for that?

Are we okay with someone who said, okay, so a couple of guys go walking down the street at night and decide to kill some Americans, what difference does that make? And we know that's a lie. We know that's a lie. Someone who erases their own hard drives and lies about it. Are we cool with that person being president of the United States? Apparently yes. The Confederate flag, God forbid!

We're being lectured about how we're supposed to live our lives and how we're supposed to be better people by a guy who uses the N-word, while telling us to never use the N-word. While telling us that we are supposed to watch our language in every step of the way, has made us so afraid of saying anything, that we could lose our job for calling a -- a homosexual couple a homosexual couple or is it a gay couple -- I'm not sure which one is politically correct anymore.

We are so skittish on probably 100 words right now. One hundred words. It's gone from, hey, it's not very nice to call people handicapped. Wouldn't it be better if we call them handicapable. To, you use that word, I'm going to boycott your company. And yet, the president uses it without hesitation.

Meanwhile, while he's doing that, he is telling us, you can keep your health care if you like your health care, when he knows it's a lie. And how do we know it's a lie? Because Jonathan Gruber told us that they sold that because they looked at us as stupid people. That we were nothing, but sheep. That the American people were so stupid, they would buy anything. That's Jonathan Gruber. That's what he said. But then the president came out and immediately said, he's a know-nothing. I don't even know who this guy is. He didn't work on health care. He had nothing to do with it. We finally find out yesterday, finally, it is confirmed -- something that everybody knew -- finally it was confirmed that, yes, indeed, he was one of the main architects of universal health care. He was one of the main guys in the White House with Obamacare.

So the president has lied again! Do we care? Get the flag down!

Watch the other hand. Watch the other hand.

They talk to us about women's rights and a War on Women, really? A War on Women?

ISIS has already committed countless unspeakable acts on Christian and Yazidi girls and women in Iraq. But the terrorist army may have now reached a new low with a twisted new contest in which female slaves captured in war are given away as prizes to fighters who show they have mastered the holy book of the Koran.

The shocking practice, giving away human beings as prizes called Sivia (phonetic) was organized by the Dawah and the mosque's department at Al-Barkara (phonetic) Province in Syria, in honor of the beginning of the new holy month of Ramadan.

So for their highest holy month of Ramadan, which, by the way, we moved Fourth of July to the third of June as to not upset any Muslims because we didn't want to say to them that our Fourth of July, our Independence Day, would interfere in any way with their holy month of Ramadan. Which, by the way, to commemorate the holy month of Ramadan, they're now giving away women and children, slaves that have been captured in war. They're giving them away as prizes, if you've mastered the holy book, which God forbid, we ever say a word about, the holy book! If you've mastered that, then you know you can capture slaves. You know you can give them away as prizes. You know you can have sex with them any time you want, against their will, because it's the holy book, and you have mastered it. And God forbid, as the president said, I will not live in a world where someone can blaspheme the prophet or the holy book.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is getting ready to decide what they're going to do with Christians and Christian churches. Tax-exempt status will probably be attacked nationwide. Christian colleges and schools, their accreditation will be attacked. Faith-based adoption and foster care providers will be attacked. Federal contractors and grantees including those with loans at religious schools will be attacked. They already are. Religious staffing at faith-based organizations will be attacked. Those in military who don't follow the agenda are already being attacked.

But I will not live in a country that blasphemes the prophet, peace be upon him.

Stop it. Stand up. Raise your hand. Be counted. Don't be shop! Be counted. For once in your life, do something. You're about to do something great.

Be counted. You are not born just to exist. You weren't born just to take up space. You weren't born to do the stupid job that I'm doing now or you're doing now. That's not what you were here for. You were meant to make a difference. Stand up, right now. Raise your hand and say, enough is enough! Yes, the Confederate flag is important. That's not the priority! How about we save some lives? How about we stop the madness? How about we stand for honor and truth and real justice, not social justice, equal justice?

Then maybe we can take care of the flag.

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

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?

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

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.

Glenn's Show Prep

Glenn: Why is the Confederate Flag our #1 priority?

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

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.

Conservatism as stewardship

Rebuilding what is broken

A creed for the rising generation

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Transcript

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

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 wins when good people mirror its rage.

Ancient evil, new clothes

A time for choosing

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

The new currency of power

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

The forgotten way

The only way