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Glenn's Show Prep

The Candidates on ISIS, National Security and Immigration

February 15, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

It’s President’s Day 2016. And this election year, we’re bringing you a special edition of The Glenn Beck Program. Iowa and New Hampshire have now voiced their opinions in the primaries, but most of the country has yet to vote. Over the past several months, we have extended an offer to all of the presidential candidates to sit down and talk one-on-one in a long-form setting. Many of the candidates took us up on that offer; some did not.

We weren’t looking for gotcha questions, and we didn’t want sound bite answers. Anyone can do an interview where the politicians can give a polished and rehearsed answer. But we wanted to go in depth with the people who want to lead our country through, which will be no doubt, a very intense period in our nation’s history.

For those who participated, we discussed important issues, ranging from what to do about ISIS to Common Core to favorite Founding Fathers. It’s insightful and important even from those candidates out of the presidential race who could potentially be a vice presidential candidate.

ISIS and National Security

Ted Cruz:

    • We need a commander-in-chief that lays out a clear objective, and that objective should be to destroy ISIS. ISIS hates America. They've declared an Islamic caliphate. They've declared an intention to murder us. They are beheading journalists. They are lighting people on fire. They intend to wage jihad and murder millions. It is in our national security interest to prevent that. A commander-in-chief who lays out the objective, we will destroy them, I believe we can do so.

    • I think connecting U.S. national security interests to foreign policy should be the touchstone for everything we do in foreign policy.

    • I opposed Obama wanting to go into Syria and unilaterally attack Syria. Because when I asked the administration, "Well, gosh, if you succeed in toppling Assad and the chemical weapons fall into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists of al-Qaeda or al-Nusra HEP or ISIS --- how is that better for us? They had no answer for that. On the other hand, when you look at Iran, for example, the reason I led the Iran rally, the reason I led the opposition to this nuclear deal, is when the Ayatollah Khamenei says death to America, I believe him.

    • The Kurds are our friends. They're fighting ISIS right now. And ISIS has U.S. military equipment they've seized from Iraq. The Kurds have outmoded HEP equipment, but Obama doesn't want to give the Kurds weaponry because he thinks it would upset the government in Baghdad and it would upset Iran. I mean, this is lunacy.

Rand Paul:

    • I warned about ISIS in 2013. We had a vote in the Foreign Relations Committee about whether we should send arms to Islamic rebels fighting against Assad. I said, "Are any of these groups in support of recognizing Israel as a country?" Absolutely not. These are the people we're giving arms to. Do these people like Israel or like the United States? Absolutely not. And I said, "The great irony is, the people you're arming today, will be back within a year fighting against our own arms." I warned them. I didn't know the name ISIS. I didn't know IS. I didn't know any of that. But I knew they were radical jihadists and it was a mistake to give them weapons because ultimately they would turn those weapons on us.

    • The first thing you have to do if you really think ISIS is a threat to mankind and to the world, quit funding them. Quit sending arms to them. And quit giving them money.

    • I think Kurds are a real fighting force. They have a land base. They live there. They're from there. And they will fight to the death. And they're good fighters. We have 7 billion dollars worth of rotting equipment in Afghanistan. Airlift it all directly to the Kurds, or at least a portion of it.

Rick Santorum

    • Islam is not just a religion. It's also a political doctrine. And they are, in fact, one and the same. They're melted together. Unlike Christianity, which is not. Jesus didn't come to establish an earthly kingdom. Muhammad did. Muhammad governed. Muhammad set rules. Here is how civilization is to behave. And there are people who --- certainly in America, Muslims who are --- faithful Muslims who don't buy into Sharia law, don't buy into this that, you know, we're here to govern. But I would say that that is, in the world, a minority. I think that most in the world believe that Sharia law and --- is integrated into Islam, and it's hard to separate the two.

    • If you're not willing to stand up and articulate one of the most virulent threats to the security of our country --- I mean, Iran, ISIS, all these other radical --- Hezbollah, all these other organizations, they want to destroy the United States of America. You hear in their defense planning, the Iranians talking about EMPs. I'm principally concerned about that. There are other methodologies. Obviously they can attack the United States. But that's the most cataclyzmic one. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that that can happen.

Ben Carson

    • If the Muslim accepts the whole Islamic mantra, which includes Sharia that to me is not compatible with our Constitution.

    • One of the reasons they're [ISIS] being so successful with their recruitment efforts is because they have, in fact, established a caliphate: half of Iraq, a third of Syria, beachheads in Somalia, Nigeria, Tunisia. And they are looking extraordinarily successful, and they're able to offer people who frequently live in pretty desperate situations, some semblance of prestige in their life and money that they can send to their families. What I would do is make them not look like winners. How would you do that? Well, the easiest place I think to go is Iraq. The government in Iraq is pretty much in shambles at this stage in the game. But I think it would be relatively easy to take the territory back from them. That would be a huge blow to their prestige.

    • I think we would have to put our own people on the ground. We also have a lot of Special Forces. We have capabilities that are very substantial. We have the capabilities of doing things. But our people won't let them do it.

    • There are several factions of the Kurds. The one that we hear about the most are the Peshmerga. The PKK is the faction of the Kurds that Turkey is at war with. And, you know, I definitely think we should be directly helping them. I think they're an enormous fighting force who has a tremendous history. And they have a lot of variations, including Christians, among them.

Bobby Jindal

    • We're going to have to go and build our military. That means more resources. That means the right people in the right places that understand the whole point of our military is to be the greatest fighting force in the history of the world. We have to take the political handcuffs off the military and have the right people in place to say, all right, if we send the military in, it's to get a mission done, to be victorious, and then to come home.

    • Under this president, you've gotten the extreme where America tries to retreat from the world. Our friends don't trust us. Our enemies don't fear and respect us.

    • The other extreme in American foreign policy is we cannot remake the world in our image by force. People don't want to change, you can't force them to change. This is the greatest country in the history of the world. We're exceptional. We're unique. It's naive to think that everybody else is going to be the same. They're not. And we're blessed to be here.

    • We can give them moral support. There are soft tools in diplomacy. That doesn't mean we should be sending boots on the ground every chance there is. What Reagan understood was, the best way to avoid war is to prepare for it. So you build up that military so they don't test you.

Immigration

Carly Fiorina

    • I've been absolutely consistent in this. We have to secure the border. We've talked about it every election. We haven't done it for 25 years. Securing the border takes, what? Money, manpower, technology, mostly, apparently it takes political willpower and leadership.

    • For sanctuary cities, I would enforce federal law. The legal immigration system has been broke for 25 years. We talk about it. Nothing happens.

    • Pass a border security bill. How hard is this?

    • We have to fix the legal immigration system. We hand out Mexican border crossing cards every day. We don't check to see if anybody goes home. If you come in on a legal visa, we never see if you've left. We have to fix the legal immigration system.

    • The reason zero-based budgeting is so important is because it's only when we know where our money is being spent that we can prioritize our money. Have you ever noticed, most people have when they think about it, that the federal government spends more money every year and never has enough money to do the important things. Never. Securing the border is the federal government's job, yet they never have enough money.

Rick Santorum

    • There's a website called NumbersUSA.com. And Numbers USA actually rates all the candidates, Republicans and Democrats, on the immigration issue, both legal and illegal and what they're going to do on everything from birthright citizenship to securing the border. And there's only one person who gets an A --- that would be Rick Santorum.

    • Since 2000, there have been 5.7 new new jobs created between 2000 and 2014. Of those 5.7 million net new jobs created, what percentage are held by people who are not born in this country? The answer: All of them.

    • Half the people who are here [illegally], are here are on visa overstays. We know their names. We know where they live. And you know what we don't do? We don't tell them to go home. In fact, we encourage them not to go home.

Ted Cruz

    • We should protect this country. And in particular that his [Obama's] plan to bring in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees makes no sense. The administration cannot vet whether these individuals are affiliated with ISIS. Whether there are ISIS terrorists among us. And we shouldn't be bringing in people that are coming in to wage jihad.

    • It's a very different situation with the persecuted Christians in the Middle East, who are facing persecution, who are facing genocide. And we should be working to provide a safe haven for them. I know that's been a passion of yours and mine for a long time. And in response to that, President Obama says you and I and millions of Americans who want to keep this country safe, that we are both offensive and un-American. And I will note there's something particularly rich about the president calling you un-American as he's standing in Turkey, on foreign soil, lambasting the desire to keep the United States safe.

    • If you look at the refugee wave that's pouring into Europe right now, one estimate is that 77 percent of those refugees are young males. That is a very unusual demographic for a refugee wave. We know that at least one of the terrorists who committed these horrific attacks in Paris came through with the refugees. And yet the president insists we're going to vet them. Well, the director of the FBI, who I might note Barack Obama appointed, the director of the FBI told Congress they can't vet them. Because they said, "Look, we can run a query in the database. But if we don't have any information in the database about who are Syrian terrorists and who aren't, we can run the query until the cows come home. It's not going to tell us anything."

    Ben Carson

      • Border fence. Yes or no? The right kind of fence, yes. Right kind of fence means what has worked in the past, like in Yuma County, Arizona. A double fence with the asphalt so you can get rapidly from point to point.

        • Prosecute first time offenders. You can't catch and release.

          • Fine companies that hire illegals? Absolutely.

            • Deport illegals? I would give people the ability to register in a certain period of time, and if they have pristine records and they're willing to work as guest workers under the circumstances that we provide, they could stay. But they don't become citizens and they don't vote.

            Featured Image: Republican presidential candidates (L-R) Ohio Governor John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ben Carson stand on stage during a CBS News GOP Debate February 13, 2016 at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Residents of South Carolina will vote for the Republican candidate at the primary on February 20. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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?

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.