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Glenn's Show Prep

The Best Time of Your Life Could Be Right Now — So Enjoy It

October 03, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Are you better off now than you were eight years ago? Gauge it by your general happiness, your relationships, where you devote your time.

RELATED: The Times That Try Men’s Souls: Words That Could Have Been Written Today

"Look at the number of people who have rooted themselves in something deep. I've prayed like I've never prayed before. I've served like I've never served before. People are becoming heroic in many ways over the last eight years. Never seen that before in my life," Glenn said Monday on his radio program.

This may be the toughest time we've experienced in our nation's history, but will we remember it that way?

Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these peachy questions:

• What does Glenn consider one of the best times in his life?

• Would it be a good or bad choice to rob Kim Kardashian to pay the mortgage?

• Is Glenn more of a sick twisted freak than even he thought?

• Why is it so easy for Stu to judge Jeffy?

• As a nation, is there a difference between doing good and doing well?

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: Why do we say the ends justify the means? And why do we say it's wrong? The ends justify the means usually is said by people who is, "Well, we got to get there. Somehow or another, we got to get there. Right? So it doesn't matter what you do." But why do we say that's wrong? Why is it wrong that the ends justify the means?

PAT: Well, because the means are sometimes untenable for us. Sometimes the means are -- the ends justify the means, means that when you get where you want, everything that you did in between was fine. Well, that's not necessarily the case.

STU: Right. Everyone has to pay their mortgage. But if you rob Kim Kardashian at gunpoint and steal her jewelry to do it --

PAT: That's probably not good.

STU: Yeah, yeah, it's not worth it.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And you could probably pay everybody's mortgage several times over for a very long time.

STU: And that might feel great. But, again, you don't do it because the way you did it is --

GLENN: I have a different -- because that's the way I always looked at it. And I have a different -- I had a different thought yesterday, and I want to share this.

Let's start here. Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?

PAT: In what way?

GLENN: Oh, good question. In any way?

PAT: Let's see, financially --

STU: I'm being set up. I feel like I'm being set up. They're always setups.

GLENN: No. This is just a -- I am going someplace obviously, but I don't necessarily the answers. I know my answer, but you guys might find flaws in it.

So are we better off than we were eight years go?

PAT: On an individual basis, you're talking about? Or are you --

GLENN: Or as a nation. Individual. Any way.

PAT: As a nation, certainly not. No. Absolutely not.

JEFFY: But a number of people individually are.

PAT: Yeah. A number of people are also worse off.

JEFFY: A lot worse.

PAT: Including many blacks.

GLENN: Are you? Are you?

PAT: I would say no. Uh-uh.

STU: Yeah. I mean, you go back to eight years ago, we were just about to hit the cliff of the financial crisis eight years ago today.

GLENN: Correct. Correct.

STU: So that was a terrible era financially for the economy. And, you know, while we've -- you know, we've -- we don't need to go into the details of it. You're not looking for a detailed financial answer. You know, it's changed.

GLENN: Yeah. Right.

So yesterday, I just made some notes -- just having some stream of consciousness, just wrote some stream of consciousness notes. And I think I disagree with what I answered last night in my notes. I wrote: As a nation, no, clearly. But I'm not sure that's even true.

PAT: As a nation, we are worse off, you mean?

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

JEFFY: Oh, yes.

PAT: And you're note sure that's true?

GLENN: I'm not sure that's true. And listen. Just hear me out here for a second.

PAT: All right.

GLENN: Are you better as a man or a woman or a mom or a dad -- as a family, are you better off as a family than you were eight years ago? Are you a better man than you were eight years ago?

Wow, you guys can't answer that?

PAT: I don't know. I don't like to do that kind of introspection. It's way too challenging for --

STU: I like to judge Jeffy, instead of judging ourselves.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: I am -- I am more of a freak than even I know. I know I'm a freak.

STU: I just don't like -- that's hard to judge.

PAT: Yeah. I don't --

STU: I try. I mean, you try to be a better person.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Come on, guys. You're much better than you were. You're much better than you were. Absolutely.

PAT: I think in some ways, we're more aware, certainly. We're more --

GLENN: Yes. You're more educated. Probably not you -- not Pat. Pat was like -- Pat knew the Constitution before, you know --

STU: Before it was cool.

GLENN: Before it was cool.

PAT: Before 2008, yes?

GLENN: Yes, he knew the Constitution.

STU: No, I mean, I think we've tried to improve ourselves in those ways.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

PAT: Yeah, we have.

STU: I feel like sometimes -- you know, I feel more -- less optimistic about the world, and I don't like that about myself.

GLENN: Yes, yes.

STU: And so that makes me --

GLENN: But in all of the ways that really count -- when you're talking about -- because, look, our house, our finances -- all of that stuff -- and I know I'm going to say this, and people are going to roll their eyes, going, "Well, that's just a guy who's got money saying that."

No, this is a coming from a guy who's lost everything in his life. I lost everything in my life.

And my kids always make fun of me. They're like, "Dad, will you stop saying, 'Enjoy it while it lasts?'" And I've done it for years. "Enjoy it while it lasts."

STU: I say that all the time.

GLENN: Right. And they say to me, "Dad, why do you say that?"

Because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow. I could lose my job tomorrow. You know, the world could blow up tomorrow. Whatever.

It just -- it could be like this for the rest of our lives, in this special moment, but enjoy the moment and don't worry about tomorrow.

Whatever comes tomorrow, we'll enjoy that moment. I didn't have that perspective, totally, eight years ago because I didn't know what was important eight years ago.

Eight years ago, I hadn't done the introspection on, "What are you willing to live for, really live for?"

Everybody was like, "What are you willing to die for?" Yeah, okay. "I don't know if we all know what we're willing to die for, until they put the gun to your head." You know what I mean? You don't know what -- you don't know who you are. You don't really know what you'll do until that moment.

So what are you really willing to live for and dedicate yourself and risk losing it all?

I know that. I didn't know that eight years ago. I thought I did. In theory, I did. But I'm -- I am -- and I contend, almost everyone in this audience is better as -- in some form of their life -- we immediately say, are you better off than you were eight years ago? We immediately go to finances or whatever.

PAT: Yeah. And say no.

GLENN: And we say no.

Why is that our immediate -- because we have made everything in our life about politics. And in the end of our days, we won't think about politics for a second. Unless we're thinking this: "Why did I waste all of that time and energy on that?"

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: Pat said to me, forever, "Glenn, you got to find joy." I'm trying to. I'm trying to learn all this stuff. But, you know what, I'm just starting to find joy, even in all the learning of all the stuff I don't want to learn.

PAT: Hmm.

GLENN: You got to -- we -- let me ask you this: I want you to right now think of the best time in your life. The time that you think, "Those were the days."

Did those days that you just thought of revolve around success and money, or did they revolve around happiness? And I would venture a guess that most people's best times were in the hardest struggle. Is that true for anybody? Yes, Jeffy?

JEFFY: Oh, yes. Yes.

GLENN: Pat.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: In the best -- in the biggest struggle -- I wouldn't want to go back to those days. I don't want to go back. But those were -- and why were those your best days? Because you found out who you were. You -- you conquered something. You stretched -- they were so hard because you -- you might have -- I mean, one of the best times of my life -- I think of a few best times of my life: The first one best time of my life was when I moved to Washington, DC. I had never lived in a place without mountains. So I couldn't even get around. I was so lost without mountains because I had no direction. I had no internal compass. And I would get lost all the time in Washington, DC. Not a place you want to get lost in.

I was completely alone. No one -- no one in my family lived past the Rocky Mountains on the western side. I'm out by myself, 18 years old, at one of the biggest radio stations in the country. I don't know a soul. I'm making very little money. I live in this apartment building that I don't know why I always live like elderly people. But I think it was almost like a nursing home that I moved into, I found out afterwards.

PAT: It was affordable.

GLENN: Yeah, it was affordable. There's no one my age. There's -- there's nothing. I had a box, an apple crate box. If anybody from the West remembers Peaches record store, they would sell the record box in peaches. And so I had a Peaches' crate, a small little 12-inch black-and-white television set, a chair, and beer in my refrigerator.

JEFFY: That's good living right there.

GLENN: That's good living, right? I remember that as one of the best times of my life.

Now, what the hell is -- what -- do you remember what that was like?

No. I don't. What I remember is, I conquered it. It was new. It was discovery. It was freaky terrifying. But I made it, and I discovered who I was. This is -- those are the times. The times we struggle. I promise you this: Should you choose, this will not only be remembered as one of the best times of your life -- right now -- but should you choose, it can be one of the best times of your life right now.

If you have the longer term perspective. I haven't even -- I haven't -- man, I have three pages, and I just have the first two bullet points. This might take us all day to get through. But I think you're going to like the perspective. I think you're going to -- because it ends with a new answer, for me at least, on why the ends don't justify the means.

[break]

GLENN: We have so much to talk about today. But let me -- let me just start where we started. Why do we say it's wrong to believe that the ends justify the means? Are we better off than we were eight years ago?

I -- I believe that we are. But not in anything having to do with politics. It is that moment in your life where you really struggle. You have money pressure. Fear, loneliness, desperation.

But unless you become something that you're not, unless you become a thief, unless you become something that you're not, you will look at those times with favorable eyes. The times when you really struggled, because you made it, even though you thought you couldn't.

But if you become those things that you're not, if you said, "I'm going to take the easy -- I'm going to steal," you will look at those times -- I don't know why I gestured towards Jeffy on that.

STU: I noticed that.

JEFFY: Is there an amount?

GLENN: You will look back at those times as the worst time of your life, because you made a tragic mistake.

Next question: Does God need America? I used to believe, in some ways, yeah. If not us, who? But does God need America?

PAT: No, it's the other way around.

GLENN: Yeah. It's absolutely the other way. But a lot of people will say, "Yes, he does." Why?

Well, to do good. Who is there to do good?

But based on how you answered the first question, "Are you better off than you were eight years ago?" If you said, "No," as your knee-jerk response, then your focus is really on doing well rather than doing good. Your knee-jerk reaction was, "No, we're not better off because look at our finances," instead of saying, "Are you kidding me? Look at the number of people who have -- who have rooted themselves in something deep. I've prayed like I've never prayed before. I've served like I've never served before. And I've seen service, and I've seen people. People are becoming heroic in many ways over the last eight years. Never seen that before in my life."

If your knee-jerk reaction was that, then, yeah. Then, yeah. We are a nation that does good. But right now, we're a nation that says we do good because we send our military. In other words, we do good by proxy. Or we send our money. We do good by proxy.

Right now, we live in a nation that is concerned with doing well and not doing good. And you know it. Because how many people say, "I deserve it. It's owed to me? If I can take it, it's mine. They won't even notice if it's gone." How many people are willing to live off of the -- the sweat of the brow of someone else? How many people are just willing to take it?

I saw a video this weekend. A guy put -- did a social study. Put a cell phone down. And he would go to park benches and picnic tables and in cities. And he would just put his cell phone down. And he would lay his head down on the picnic table. Or he would set it a little bit away from him. And then he would pretend he was falling asleep. You wouldn't believe the nay number of men, women, black, white, Hispanic that just came and took his cell phone.

PAT: Really?

GLENN: I mean, I was just -- I was shocked at how many people would just come up -- a sleeping guy, and just take it. And normal-looking people.

JEFFY: They don't know if the phone belongs to that guy.

STU: You know it doesn't belong to you.

GLENN: Yes. You know it doesn't belong to you.

STU: Not to mention stealing something with a GPS device in it is never a good idea.

PAT: I know. I was thinking that. What a dumb --

JEFFY: Real dumb. Real dumb.

STU: What are you going to do with it? Make free phone calls?

(laughter)

GLENN: So how can a nation do good with the attitude of, "I've got to do well?"

We can't. We can't.

STU: You can do both, can't you? Yeah, you can't do good and do well?

GLENN: Oh, you can. You can. But not if your attitude is, "I've got to do well. Ends justify the means."

Featured Image: Peaches record crate

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.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A restoration, not a renovation

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

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

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

The selective guardians of history

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

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

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

The real desecration

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

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

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.