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Glenn's Show Prep

Off The Record with Sean Hannity

February 21, 2014
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The Glenn Beck Program

Over the last several months, Glenn has emphasized the importance of bringing together individuals who share the same goals and unifying principles so that we can learn from one another. GlennBeck.com is working to fulfill that goal by sitting down with some of the most interesting minds to give you an inside look at who they are and what they are working on.

We begin our series with conservative radio and TV personality Sean Hannity, who spoke with GlennBeck.com assistant editor Meg Storm about the “most anti-capitalist thing” he’s ever said, what he really thinks of the GOP (HINT: They are “timid” and “weak”), and what he has planned for 2014.

Below is a transcript of the interview:

Thank you so much for hopping on a call with us! We are running a new interview series in the Glenn Beck Newsletter that features interesting people –-

So you want me to give you a list!?

You actually make the list!

Oh, okay.

So I heard you have had some odd jobs over the years…

You know, I have. It’s actually the best thing that’s ever happened to me that I’ve done all these crazy jobs. I have a pretty strong blue-collar background.

I had my first job when I was 8 years old. It was a paper route. You had to be 12 to have the paper route, so we put it in my older sister’s name instead. I never liked it because I hated collecting, which probably is the most anti-capitalist thing I’ve ever said because that’s when you get paid and get your tips. But that was the hard part of the job.

When I was 12 years old, I got a job washing dishes in a place in West Hempstead, Long Island called the Norwood Inn. It was a pretty busy pub restaurant, and I would go there on Friday nights after school. They didn’t clean one thing all week long, so there were piles and piles. It was hard work. We would work until 2 o’clock in the morning. And this was kind of illegal, but we would then get a St. Pauli Girl beer and go home.

A year later, when I was 13, the chef walked out one Thanksgiving, and the owner threw me the apron and said, “You’re in.” I got promoted to be a short order cook. I still love to cook. I cook shrimp scampi, lobster tails, steak, fettuccini.

Then I worked as a busboy at the Merry Pedlar in Floral Park. On my 17th birthday they let me be a bartender, so I tended bar there and at Salisbury on the Green in Eisenhower Park. It was like a wedding factory. They would have five weddings on Friday, five in the afternoon on Saturday, five Saturday night, five Sunday mid-day, five Sunday night. I would work all those weddings, and I made a fortune. It was great.

I was paying for my own college, so all that money I made all those years went to the first year of college. One year I went to Adelphi. One year I went to New York University. Then I got into construction. I started painting houses. I did a small apprenticeship for a builder. And then I went to building school – actual college to learn how to be a contractor. I did everything in contracting you can imagine. I kind of specialized in finish work because I have a good eye.

It’s funny because my kids know me for radio and TV. My daughter recently said she wanted to paint her room. And I said I would do it, but everyone in my family is rolling their eyes like I can’t do it. One day about a month ago, I went out and bought all the materials, and two hours later, it was done perfectly. They are like, “How did you do this?” And I was like, “I used to do it for a living! What are you guys talking about?” They just didn’t know it that way. It was pretty funny.

The one constant – and this kind of ties into how I got into radio – is since I was a teenager I was listening to talk radio everyday. I would be on ladders, and I started calling talk radio shows. And I guess that is what kind of led me into talk radio in 1986 or ‘87 out in California.

Did you ever think you would end up in radio?

No, I had no intention of getting into journalism or news. I had a double major in college of economics and political science. I was really interested in politics and really interested in radio. My parents never came in and said, “Turn off the TV.” They said, “Shut that stupid radio off.”

In California was when the radio stuff started. At that point, I had built a pretty good business in Rhode Island doing rehab and finish work. There was this Rhode Island tech college that I went to, and the whole point was that I wanted to build houses. On one hand, I made a lot of money and had some pretty big contracts. I did pretty well, but it wasn’t my passion in life.

Like the Glenn Beck Radio Program, the Sean Hannity Show premiered nationally just before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

My show began day the before September 11 – September 10, 2001. It’s kind of hard because I can never say, “This is my anniversary.” It’s just not what we expected.

What was it like to be on air that day?

We couldn’t get into Manhattan to do the show that day. We ended up going to WLIR in Garden City, Long Island. It was amazing because I think they were able to wire in and get four other radio stations on the air at the same time. The amazing thing was you would walk in the halls and there were wires everywhere, but everyone got on the air and everyone got listened to that day. It was amazing.

Glenn talks about how much that experience changed his outlook. Do you feel the same way?

It changed my life in this way: I really think the world needs to understand radical Islamists. I think in the year 2014 we have let out guard down. There was a story in the Daily Caller late last week about how people with limited terrorist ties can still get into the country – as long as they’re ‘limited’. When you think of it – the people that did it that day are still at war with us, and they are still plotting and would like nothing better than to hit us again.

You also have your nightly program on Fox News. Do you prefer one medium to the other?

It’s not a preference. I love doing it all. I feel lucky to be doing it all. I’ve been at Fox since the beginning. They are really just great to me. I enjoy doing the show every night. We have fun; we talk about serious topics; we cover the issues. I am very fortunate to have the platform.

Are there differences between the way you cover a topic on radio versus the way you cover it on TV?

On TV you are always running out of time. What’s great is I go through this cathartic experience where I have gotten everything I want to say out – and more importantly, I fine-tune my argument on radio. After I go through a 20-minute monologue, I can reduce it to a specific question. And it actually really helps. It is really preparation in a way. They fit together perfectly.

You can do things on TV you can’t do on radio – make a face, shake my head, use a video. All of that helps you make your points versus explaining everything. Radio is the theater of the mind.

Between your radio and television programs and prepping for the two, what is a typical day like for you?

Today is probably pretty typical. I got up around 7am to say goodbye to kids before they head off to school. I like to start slow, and I don’t like to start with email right away. I usually start with headlines. I get early delivery of the New York Post, Daily News, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. I don’t get the New York Times anymore – I can’t stand it.

Then I move to the Internet and start answering email. I begin meetings with radio and TV – usually have a few email exchanges before we get to the actual meeting part, which is somewhere between 9 and 10 o’clock. If I have interviews that morning, I will do those. I get into hard prep after that.

I have an hour’s ride in, so I usually read and answer emails, and then I usually like to do some writing. I don’t write anything script-wise, but I like notes. I have files – a security file, an ‘other’ file. I do this news and information overload hour on radio, and it’s just to bring up topics that maybe aren’t the top stories of the day. And then I go for the top story of the day.

Once I finish radio, I do TV. Then I get home, hang out until my kids go to sleep, and I start all over again in bed with my iPad.

In the wake of Andrew Cuomo’s comments about ‘extreme conservatives’ in New York, you were vocal about your willingness to leave the state. I know Glenn would love to have you in Texas. Are you still considering a move?

The way the media played it, they said, “Oh look, he is not really leaving because he is not gone tomorrow.” I don’t know what universe they live in. The idea that I have well over 100 people on radio and TV that count on me for jobs – they have mortgages to pay, and kids in college, and car payments, and apartments. The idea that I am just going to say, “See ya” and walk away from people – I am not an irresponsible person. Number one.

Number two: I have contractual obligations that take me well through the 2016 elections. It doesn’t mean I am leaving radio or TV either. It’s just my wife and I have decided we want to leave New York. High taxes is one of the reasons. I also feel the government just takes and takes and takes too much money.

Apparently other people think so too because New York was the number one state people left in the last census – 3.5 million people left the state. New Jersey lost $70 billion worth in wealth leaving the state in a 4-year period. Liberals have destroyed the state. I don’t know if it can be fixed. It probably could, if the right person was in office. But I think people have been so conditioned to get government stuff, I am not sure if that battle can be won anymore.

Are you looking anyplace in particular?

When my son graduates high school, yeah, we are looking at Florida, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee. My wife is originally from Alabama. States like that. I have to say, Florida and Texas are the leading two candidates in my mind.

Glenn is open about how fed up he is with the establishment GOP and what he describes as the progressive element of the Republican Party --

Me too.

Do you have similar frustrations?

I am fed up too. There is a group of about 40 conservatives that are in the Republican Party that are fed up with us, but that’s it. I would argue they are timid. They are weak. They are too focused on their own power, their own reelections. They are uninspiring, and they don’t have an agenda that is going to help solve this country’s problems.

This morning, I woke up to the news that Republicans are going to leave open the debt ceiling. They do not want to fight on the debt ceiling debate. They originally were going to fight on the issue of the Keystone Pipeline or bailing out Obamacare, and now they are going to leave the debt ceiling open until March 2015. So it is no longer $17 trillion in debt. It is whatever this President decides until then.

To me, if they want to be the party of limited government. They have to fight to be the party of limited government. What they need to say is: We are the party that is going to stop robbing from our children. I have put a list of these things on my website. It is called the Conservative Solutions Caucus 2014. What is wrong with the penny plan, baseline budgeting, having a balanced budget amendment, and explaining to people you don’t want to steal from your children anymore? It seems like common sense.

Editor’s Note: You can learn more about the Conservative Solutions Caucus 2014 HERE.

Switching topics a bit, you broadcasted your radio show from TheBlaze’s New York studios last fall.

I miss my Liberty Treehouse friends!

They miss you too! I know I speak on behalf of all TheBlaze staff when I say thank you for the delicious pizza lunches. The way to our hearts is definitely through our stomachs.

I have learned that is a very common trait in radio and TV. It was just my way of saying thanks.

How was it broadcasting at TheBlaze?

Glenn was very gracious. He not only gave me the studio, while they were rebuilding mine, but he gave me his office with a view of the Empire State Building. I just got to know everybody there. I saw some old friends, made some new friends, and everybody couldn’t have been more gracious to me.

You obviously have a very busy schedule, but do you have anything you like to do in your free time?

I try to shut down as much as I can over the weekend. My kids play in a lot of national tennis tournaments, so we are traveling all over the place. When you enter the tennis world, it is a total escape.

I am not a big golfer, but I will play occasionally. I play a lot of tennis. And I try to work out as much as I can. Running and the elliptical – stuff like that.

I like to go to concerts. I love country music. I saw Florida Georgia Line recently. Brad Paisley is playing at Nassau Coliseum this week, so I might go out and try to see him.

Is there anything people would be surprised to learn about you?

Yes, but I won’t tell you.

(Laughs)

Just kidding!

Most of my private life is pretty boring. I like to read. I don’t have enough time though. I am just doing typical dad stuff.

I like to be private. I never go to dinners. I never go to Washington. I never do anything like that. I prefer anonymity. It’s silly, considering the profession I am in, but if you see me, I am going to be in sweatpants or jeans, a t-shirt, baseball hat, and glasses. By the way, I have worn that since I was little. Same outfit. Same shirt even – if I can save it, I save it.

Do you have any big plans for 2014?

I am just looking for the best people, the best candidates I can support. I don’t like that Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Mike Lee are sort of outcasts within their own party. So I am looking for other people like that, and if they show up, hopefully we can get them elected.

Okay, I am going to ask you a few ‘lightening round’ questions, so one word answers will do.

Go for it.

What’s your favorite book?

Well, I have to say the Bible because that’s the one I read the most. That is your roadmap for life.

What’s your favorite movie?

Okay, it is a tie: Gladiator, Brave Heart, and the Passion of the Christ.

What’s your favorite TV show?

Hannity on the Fox News Channel at 10pm ET. Just kidding. I love sports and Duck Dynasty. I am a big Duck Dynasty fan.

What’s your favorite food?

Steak

What’s your favorite place to visit?

Anyplace warm

Who is your favorite artist?

I would have to say Garth because he got me into country music. I am a big Garth Brooks fan.

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us!

Anytime.

Hannity airs weeknights at 10pm ET on the Fox News Channel.

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

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

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

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

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

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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.