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Glenn's Show Prep

The Challenge of Conservative Media

August 31, 2017
Jonathan Schreiber

(Author’s note: What follows is a relatively short summary of piecemeal conversations Glenn and I have had about Conservative Media over the last number of years. For the most part, the thoughts are ours, but the words are mine. It’s possible that I have accidentally taken his words or used his thoughts incorrectly. My apologies in advance for any oversights — I will be sure to make comments post facto. This is related to Glenn’s post, "A Heavy Heart and the Road Ahead.")

What does success look like?

If you are an entrepreneur, this seemingly simple question may be hard to answer. And no one even tells you to think about it, let alone helps you define it.

Is it top-line revenue? EBITA? Cash flow? A liquidity event? Influence and relevance? Doing good in the world? Some combination of all these things? Or will you just “know it when you see it”?

Failure, on the other hand, is easy to define.

When I joined Glenn coming up on three years ago now, we didn’t have a clear definition for success. For some of our business lines, the definition is obvious. For others, less so. At this point, here’s what I know: 

I am certain that TheBlaze is not a failure, yet I am equally as sure that TheBlaze is not a success.

I know that success, however defined, must reflect the three principles that got Glenn and this company to where he is today: transparency, humility and humanity.

The only way a media organization can earn trust is to be worthy of trust. For the people who already believe we try to be the best we can be, thank you. For those who don’t yet, or who think they never will, maybe this will help… or maybe not.

Today, Glenn announced we are laying off about 20 percent of the combined workforce of Mercury Radio Arts — with the majority of those impacted working at TheBlaze. We are doing this for a number of reasons. Glenn touches on several in his post. I would like to touch on a few more and go a bit deeper.

  • Glenn is a self-described catastrophist (though a hopeful one) and is drawn to the challenges in front of us. It is both a blessing and a curse for someone who spends so much time reading history to be able to recognize patterns they have seen before. The decisions we made today were predicated on our trying to figure out what comes tomorrow.

  • “Conservative Media” is down across the board from what we can see and what we are hearing. We are not immune.

  • The media industry, profitable or otherwise, is in disarray. And, like everyone else, we are going to be part of the problem or part of the solution. Currently, we are not part of the solution.

  • When TheBlaze started, it was important for it to look and feel as polished and “professional” as the big boys. Maybe that was true then, or maybe we projected something that was unnecessary at the time, but today, “polished and professional” often feels inauthentic, which can be deadly when authenticity is king. Because we believe authenticity is about removing the artificial filters between our content and the audience, we are drastically changing how we produce content (less studio shoots, control rooms, and PEDs[SJ1], for example).

  • Glenn is a content creator, that is his unique skill and passion. Everything else we do is to support that gift, but nothing else we do is unique to us. We have to hone that gift and focus on making it better, rather than attempting at being the best (or good enough) at so many different things.

I won’t do all (maybe any) of these topics justice — as Glenn mentioned — this was going to be an eight-part series we were working on together, but I hope it provides some context for our thinking going forward.

The Media:

I think it is historically accurate to say that the media has always skewed left, at least by some degree. I think — besides his significant talent — it is why Rush became Rush. He was the antidote to the “drive-by” media. But as we fast-forward through the 80s and 90s and 00s, does anyone, feel that the media has just “skewed” a couple degrees? I’m not suggesting that you ask someone from the right. Ask anyone. Of course those on the right will answer “yes”, but I believe many on the left agree. I read the same polling data you do — the Democrats trust the media more than the GOP, and I understand that. But if you look deeper into the data and you look at who is trusting what, I think it is obvious that the relationship between the public and the media is in a terrible place — regardless who is to blame. I am not making excuses for the media (or for Glenn — he has apologized enough for any one person for their role). I am just stating the facts as I see them.

What we can all agree on — I think, I hope — is that a media outlet that is actually trusted, knows the difference between fact and opinion and has no agenda other than speaking truth. A news media that speaks truth to power is a requirement for our democratic experiment.

We have been waiting for a reckoning, a decision by individual members of the media and their corporate bosses to make the hard choices. We have waited a while, and we believe we will be waiting a long time to come.

If we believe, which I believe most of us (“us” being Americans) do, that the Fourth Estate is vital to our nation, what comes next? I can’t speak for the media, I can’t speak for talk radio, I can only speak for myself (and somewhat for Glenn). What comes next for us is to continue down the road we have been — trying every day to do better and be better than we were the day before.

What follows is some of our thinking of the challenges within Conservative Media. I do not in any way mean to speak for it. I have been a consumer of Conservative Media for over 20 years, but an insider for less than three. I have vetted these ideas with colleagues, friends, Glenn and even “frenemies,” and they seem to hold some truth to these thoughts. But I look forward (in comments or otherwise) to learning from others in how to think differently and/or more clearly.

Conservative Media is a UNIQUE Industry:

Has there ever been an industry that has a Coca-Cola as the number one and an unbranded carbonated cola water as a number two? I can’t think of another. Certainly, not over a prolonged period of time. I do not believe there is one answer as to why. It is a confluence of factors. For purposes of the below, I ask you to define Conservative Media any way you want, within reason (CNN is not Conservative Media for an example as being outside reason). You can put TheBlaze at the outer rim or you can put anyone else at the outer rim — the issues described below are just as applicable. (Which, by just the sheer number of people who are center/center right in the country, is an unbelievable thing to behold.)

Lack of funding & “Liquidity Events”:

I can think of two significant media properties that have been purchased for multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in the last number of years: The Huffington Post and Business Insider. Similarly, BuzzFeed and Vice received massive investments from the mainstream media outlets. But there have been no acquisitions or significant investments in Conservative Media. We can argue about the why, but we cannot argue with the facts. A company should never (or at least rarely) start with an exit in mind, but what happens when there is no prospect of an exit, be it through an IPO or an acquisition?

What happens is that you cannot grow faster than your revenue allows. Why would anyone want to invest significant money (let alone why would responsible management want to raise significant money) when there is seemingly no prospect of liquidity in the future? Without equity investment, you cannot focus on building an audience and monetizing it later. You won’t see the Facebook or Amazon approach simply because we as an industry cannot afford it. Jeff Bezos is famous for thinking years out and not caring about quarterly or even yearly P&L —  I challenge him (or anyone else) to do that in Conservative Media.

Attracting and retaining talent:

(Author’s note: Considering this post is being shared on the day we have let go a lot of friends, I have included this section only because I deem it so important to the overall discourse. The choices we made does not change the overall challenges, though I readily recognize that it may appear tone deaf, and apologize in advance for that.)

Growing from five to 50 people is relatively easy. Of course, there are risks and challenges in getting the right people, but in terms of finding 45 additional people who share the heart and soul, and who see a future — that is doable. But 500 people? Harder. Now 500 people who all know there is no liquidity event on the horizon (either because they are smart enough to know this or because management does not lie to them) — really hard.

This also means that for people who we do attract they are either true believers — the good and the bad of that (you want fans, not sycophants) and/or need to be paid market rate in compensation because there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Cash plus equity is not a compelling proposition when Conservative Media does not have a liquidity event on the horizon.

But talent is not just about compensation — we all know that. It is also about a career path. A career path has multiple variables, from who you know, to what city you live in, to the credibility of your last role, etc. If someone starts at Conservative Media company X as a writer and they are writing “within the goalposts” of mainstream conservative content and popping out four to six stories a day and hitting their traffic goals and then some, what’s next? If they are at one of the few conservative media companies that is not considered monstrous (which I am gratified (?) that TheBlaze is not one of them) they can get a job elsewhere — we have many writers and on-air personalities who have moved on to bigger jobs at bigger companies. But at the same time, we could not keep them, because they hit their limit in terms of growth, in career or compensation. So, we actually function as a farm system — which is okay — but it is also a drain. In football parlance, we can never build through the draft because as soon as someone hits free agency, they’re eager to pursue their next opportunity.

Now for the companies that are considered monsters: where do their best and brightest go? How many can even find their next job? There are some, of course, but there is no farm system? Which just continues a cycle that I dig further into below; a spiral affect where a lot of blogs that don’t work together, have no ability to scale, each with its own voice and each in a race to get as many clicks and monetize their pages any which way they can.

(Author’s note: Friends on the left, you do not inspire conservative media to throw less red meat by ostracizing it).

Advertising is harder for Conservative Media:

I don’t know the number off the top of my head, but the percentage of Fortune 500 or even Fortune 1000 companies that advertise on Conservative Media vs. Media in general is very low. This matters even more so in digital than in traditional. In Digital media where every click or even eyeball (by way of heat maps) is monitored, the theoretical goal of a media site is to keep the user on the site for as long as possible/reasonable. Conservative Media is reliant, because of the paucity of media campaigns from big advertisers or big ad agencies, on direct response advertisers. Direct response (DR) makes sense for radio and we are incredibly grateful for our advertisers who have been with us from day one. But DR makes less sense when the goal is for the consumer to take an action, likely taking them off-site, while the goal for the media property is to keep the user on the site as long as possible.

You see the inherent conflict?

I wish the “other side” realized what they were doing when they lump all Conservative Media together? If you are on the left, ask yourself whether there is ANY publisher that you respect (even if you disagree with)? If so, how many? The problem are those who believe they are keeping Conservative Media ‘honest’, when they are only making the problem worse.

Think about it this way: As a publisher, if the punishment for bad behavior is that the same advertisers who won’t advertise with you, won’t advertise with you anymore; and the reward for bad behavior is that you generate more traffic and make more money, how do we think this ends?

Expanding on the point: If you consider that liquidity events are rare (or non-existent) and the significant challenge of attracting the highest paying advertisers, how will Conservative Media outlets make money? You don’t have to guess, look around….

A bunch of super smart people who work in small teams, who game the system to spend as little money as possible to make as much money as possible. I am NOT accusing Conservative Media of being the cause of clickbait by any stretch of the imagination. But if you see another way for Conservative Media to be successful other than playing the Facebook-Algorithm game, the clickbait game, the get-on-the-Drudge-home-page game, etc., then you truly do not understand how (digital) media works. Hence, every boycott, every time the “media” lumps everyone to the right of MSNBC as monsters, every time Conservative Media is all bad and “mainstream media” is all good, the outcome is predictable and it will continue to accelerate.

A final thought about advertising….

Conservative Media is reliant on direct response (CPA or CPC or CPM — no matter how it is ultimately billed for) and ad-networks. None of which are negatives in and of themselves. But the reality is that ad-networks — even the good ones — are not trying to make the experience of ads elegant for the user, they are trying to make the experience less terrible for the users. Direct Response, specifically on digital, sometimes actually have an incentive (depending on if they pay on a CPA, CPC, CPM) of making the worst and most obnoxious ad possible — basically through self-selection a user won’t click on it and the advertiser won’t have to pay OR the user will click on it and be more likely to go through with a conversion. I’m painting with a broad brush here and in giving extreme examples, but you can see how this plays out. Just look around the Conservative web if you need convincing.

The Lack of a Conservative Ecosystem:

We can all agree that there are too many echo chambers but let’s not confuse echo chambers with ecosystems. There is no Conservative Media ecosystem. Glenn literally met Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, and Ben Shapiro over the last ~2 years. We barely know each other let alone have an ecosystem. Yes, there is talk radio, and, of course, have a great relationship with Premiere/iHeart, and I assume the same is true for other hosts, but that is not an ecosystem, it’s one company.

(Author’s note: Read Brad Feld’s book on creating an ecosystem in your community and/or Start-up Nation and how Israel created an ecosystem.)

People talk about the ‘Paypal Mafia’ — the (mostly) original founders of Paypal — 5, all of whom have gone on to be worth at least a billion dollars and have founded companies such as Tesla (and all other things Elon Musk), LinkedIn, Palantair (all other things Peter Thiel), Youtube, Yelp, Yammer, etc… It is no accident that this one small group of people had an outsized influence. It is the basics of them creating their own ecosystem. An ecosystem of resources, talent, expertise, shared knowledge, shared marketing, shared success, etc.

Or look at any tech community and see that it takes a number of successful companies working together over many years to build a system where the next generation can walk on the shoulders of giants…..Conservative Media …. we have not done this yet.

Conservatives think we can do it all better ourselves:

Both because of the lack of ecosystem AND because we are all ‘rugged libertarians’, we on the right, believe we can do everything better ourselves. It is the same reason that there are 1000 charities that do the same thing; wealthy person X wants to do good, they want to make sure that it is done right, they will do it themselves. Conservatives who have made or found success, believe that they can do it better than the other guy. It doesn’t matter if they made their money in oil and the other guy is an expert in software development; they can’t partner, they need to own it.

Now frankly, I think this is tied to point number one (there are no liquidity events), at least in part; so if I am going to start something knowing that there is no exit, it may behoove me to retain 100% ownership and control. This is logical but I think it is only part of the answer.

I think there is more to the rugged individualism who sees the lack of ecosystem and looks around and says, “the pie is 100 ft., I can get 50 ft. of pie” vs. the entrepreneur who sees 100 ft. pie and says, together we can make that pie 10K ft., let’s get to work.

Beyond Conservative Media — Our Role going forward:

We fundamentally believe that we as a society need a functional media. We as a society need to have some trust in our institutions — even and especially while we seek to hold those same institutions accountable. But we as a society cannot effectively move forward if we share no facts and no narratives. As Yuval Harrari points out in Homo Deus, man has three core narratives; religion, currency, and nationhood. Without those shared narratives, which are being pulled at from every direction, society’s grip on humanity gets increasingly tenuous. Media has a role to play to keep us from unraveling, though they often seem to encourage and celebrate our unraveling… someone else long ago observed an unfortunate universal truth: if it bleeds it leads.

TheBlaze:

As I said earlier, at this time, TheBlaze is neither a success nor a failure in my eyes. It is a struggle that has and will continue to require hard decisions and going down an unknown road. But one of the benefits of radical transparency is that we have nothing to fear because we have nothing to hide. This is who we are, and our self-awareness informs the decisions we make. Whatever happens, good or bad, it will be deserved.

When you add up all the challenges that I list above, which are industry specific not company specific, for TheBlaze to be a successful business, it has a lot of work to do. It has to create great content, develop software, manage talent, sell advertising, deal with ad-blockers, move quicker to follow our users to mobile, open additional beach heads in social, etc. Anyone of those things is hard, doing all of them is, well, harder…..

In the next few weeks you will see the beginning of what we are trying to do at TheBlaze. And we’ll keep adjusting course and disrupting ourselves until we either get it right OR until we believe we can’t.

We believe that there is a path forward to find true success for TheBlaze and to help, in our way, Conservative Media answer the challenges it faces. But frankly, the world does not need just another “Conservative Media” company and we don’t need to spend another 5 years of our life proving it does. 

We are no more afraid of failure than we are of success, but we are terrified of being neither.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

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

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

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

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

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

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

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global reality.

And moral reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our faith is almost gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why can't we open the government?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not in nostalgia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A conservative in 2025, '26.

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

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

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

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

And one can't be stronger than the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

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

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.