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Glenn interviews Ted Nugent on radio

April 26, 2012
Wilson

Writer

Ted Nugent joined Glenn on radio to discuss some of the ridiculous regulations that have overtaken then country. Nugent explained an incident from a hunting trip in Alaska that gave him some legal trouble - nearly resulting in him being charged with a felony. Watch the clip above, and tune into GBTV tonight at 5pm for more on this story!

Full Transcript Below:

GLENN: Turn that hippie rock‑and‑roll music down. It's too loud. Ted Nugent is with us. He's on tour in Los Angeles. Are you still in Los Angeles? Didn't you have something happen in Los Angeles yesterday, Ted?

NUGENT: Oh, something happens every minute of every day but, yes, it happens in Los Angeles, too. I'm shooting .50‑caliber sniper rifles in Los Angeles legally, 100% legal.

GLENN: Really?

NUGENT: We went up to the hills, up to the Oak Tree Shooting Range to test out some new ammo that I'm creating and just hanging with the SWAT guys and with a bunch of commandos of law enforcement and military, and Mrs. Nugent and I were shooting large caliber weapons getting ready for real rock‑and‑roll excitement.

GLENN: Okay. So Ted, tonight you're going to be on the program and we're going to go into detail about what this government tried to do to you over the last, the last few and what you ‑‑ what you've just signed. You want to get into what you've just signed and then we can talk tonight about what the government did to you?

NUGENT: You bet. Bottom line is I've been hunting all my life, Glenn. My mom and dad raised me to be 100% legal, law‑abiding, respect law enforcement and to be in the asset column of life, to use my heart and soul to think and be conscientious about how I conduct myself. And now as a perfect human being, I've stumbled perfectly over the years on occasion, but at the tender age of 63, I don't stumble anymore. I really put my heart and soul, especially as a representative of the honorable hunting outdoor lifestyle and the gun owners of this country and people who celebrate the U.S. Constitution that is enforced and supported at such great sacrifice by the heroes of the military. That being said, I stumbled in Alaska. There was a new law that it's very important to note that I wasn't the only one that had never heard of it. We can't find anybody that ever heard of this new unprecedented law that if your arrow or bullet shows sign of nicking or touching an animal that your big game tag is null and void, including the resident judge in the courtroom who's lived in the only zone where this law exists. He said on record during the court proceedings that he had never heard of the law, and he deals with law enforcement and wild game enforcement all the time.

My attorney has been a lifetime licensed guide and outfitter in Alaska, a lifetime hunter in Alaska. He never heard of the law. That notwithstanding, I have by all information been the first and only person ever charged with this. The State of Alaska was not interested in charging me, but the federal government was.

GLENN: Now, it's very interesting because this has been going on for how long? I'm trying to remember. A year, year and a half?

NUGENT: Well, I ‑‑ the bear hunt in question took place with my sons in the Prince of Wales Island in 2009. Remember, Glenn, I've been hunting in Alaska since 1977 and the law has always been the same, that when you take possession of your animal, you apply your tag. That's the universal law.

GLENN: Sure.

NUGENT: Since the early 1900s.

GLENN: It's like ‑‑ it would be like if you're going fishing and you caught a fish and it got away, you wouldn't count that as one of the fish you caught.

NUGENT: That's it in a nutshell, yes, sir.

GLENN: I mean, it's ridiculous.

NUGENT: It really is. And I've got to tell you, they gave me the ultimatum the day after I endorsed Mitt Romney and this has been ongoing now in the California, I've got to tell you the California no‑contest plea I gave, I'm going to write a piece that's going to tell you about the horror story, the unprecedented horror story. Once again the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service.

Now, if some U.S. Fish and Wildlife service are getting angry at me, that would be guilt, you're guilty of corruption and abuse of power. I'm not talking about good agents. I'm not talking about agents who abide by their oath to the U.S. Constitution and follow the letter of the law, including the Fourth Amendment. I'm talking about jackbooted thugs who are kicking down doors predawn, guns drawn over a charge that there might have been, quote, feed within 450 yards of my tree stand bow hunting for deer in California, Glenn.

GLENN: This is crazy. Now listen ‑‑

NUGENT: Which carries the weight of a jaywalking ticket, by the way.

GLENN: I want you to know they threatened to charge, may I say?

NUGENT: Yes. My friend Mitch Moore.

GLENN: I was going to say that what they threatened to charge you in Alaska.

NUGENT: Oh, in Alaska. Felonies.

GLENN: Felony.

NUGENT: Felony.

GLENN: Felony.

NUGENT: Felony. The Lasiak was first designed many years ago to stop the illegal importation of endangered species. I supported it 100%. But now the Lasiak is being used to charge innocent young men and women who abided by every game law ‑‑ get this ‑‑ for shooting a deer with all the right licenses during the right season with the right equipment but because they used the wrong broad head, a broad head, by the way, which is the number one selling broad head on planet Earth that is legal everywhere except two states and they shoot their deer, proper licenses, proper tags, bring it home and they're charged with felonies equal to armed robbery and rape and murder.

GLENN: Yeah. And going to jail. Now ‑‑

NUGENT: Yes.

GLENN: Now, you lose your right to have a gun forever.

NUGENT: Yes.

GLENN: You go to prison.

NUGENT: To vote.

GLENN: Right. You lose everything.

NUGENT: You become ‑‑ it's just like, let me ‑‑ can I have just 60 seconds ‑‑

GLENN: Yeah.

NUGENT: ‑‑ to make an analogy that no one will fail to grasp? In Michigan they are slaughtering law‑abiding innocent farmers' livestock based on fraudulent terms, claiming they're feral and invasive when everyone on planet Earth knows that livestock within a confined pen or corral or fenced area, it can't be feral or invasive by any stretch of those terms. But they call them feral and invasive and they're destroying private property.

Now Glenn, if you had a lever action 30.30 and all of a sudden the federal government went, "We're now calling lever action 30.30 rifles machine guns. We're going to call them machine guns and we're coming to get them." They can call anything what they want. They're destroying animals that are not feral and not invasive. They're calling them things they're not. It's a lie.

GLENN: So in other words, in case you don't know feral means basically they're wild.

NUGENT: Yeah, feral means the animals have escaped.

GLENN: If they're in a pen ‑‑

NUGENT: They're not escaped.

GLENN: ‑‑ they can't be feral.

NUGENT: But they're enforcing this with guns, Glenn.

GLENN: Now Ted, there's so much more to talk about tonight, but I want to tell you something that I found. I've been reading a lot of stuff from the Communist Manifesto and early communism because you're dealing with a lot of Marxists in this government now, and one of the things they have to do is seize or destroy the property of rebels. And I thought, you know, who, who are the strongest people against this president and they would be the ones in the red states. And the red states, those are farmers and hunters.

NUGENT: Yes.

GLENN: I really truly believe ‑‑ I know why you were targeted. I mean, you were targeted and run through the wringer, and you're not my only friend that this has happened to. And I don't mean just for hunting. I mean for other things. I have had friends who are some of the most honorable men I know. I mean, I about blew my stack on Monday when I came back from the NRA and I heard what they were doing to you and you had to meet with the Secret Service. I blew my stack on the air and ‑‑

NUGENT: A stack blower.

GLENN: And I said, because I know who Ted Nugent is. I know. And I was so angry about it because not only is it Ted Nugent, it's other friends of mine who are being put through the wringer the same way. And they are ‑‑ they are being bullied, they are being threatened with prison time, they are being threatened, "Confess, confess, confess." And they're like, I didn't do anything wrong.

NUGENT: Yep.

GLENN: And in your case you did but it ‑‑ when was that law put in?

NUGENT: That law was enacted in 2004‑2005, and it's only in the Prince of Wales Southeast Alaska area has this law ever existed. Remember the judge that lives there never heard of it.

GLENN: So nobody's ever been charged with it.

NUGENT: No one's ever been.

GLENN: And how is it that the federal government, that the judge didn't know about it but the federal government knew about it and nailed you on it.

NUGENT: Because the federal government for a long, long time has been trying, increasing the net of felonies, what qualifies as a felony. Do you know that the humane society of the United States somehow convinced some soulless people in Pennsylvania that killing a deer illegally is now a felon, a felony. A felony.

GLENN: Can you talk about ‑‑

NUGENT: Now, I'm all for management of wildlife, I think you should stop poaching, I think you have to abide by the law. Even the goofy laws. Until you change a goofy law, you have to abide by it. But some of these laws are indescribably bizarre and illogical.

GLENN: You describe one more law, I've got to go in about a minute, but describe one more thing that is happening on your ranch here in Texas that is not, it's not illogical. It is ‑‑ it's inhumane.

NUGENT: Yes. I ‑‑ the scimitar‑horned oryx was brought to Texas landowners, private land, many years ago because it's a magnificent animal and it was endangered in Africa. It is no longer endangered. We put a value on it where we harvest the surplus bulls and we went from like 1200 to 20,000‑something oryx, more than stabilizing the herd because they're valuable to landowners. The federal government sided with an animal rights maniac to ban the hunting. I have to get federal permits to touch my thriving, growing, healthy heard of oryx. There was a ‑‑

GLENN: And if you leave them alone, if you leave them alone, it's like bunny rabbits. They will overrun everything.

NUGENT: They will eat everything and all life will cease. It will be a moonscape.

GLENN: Okay.

NUGENT: That's why the annual season of harvest is a stewardship duty. So I have a crippled calf oryx that has three legs that is all gaunt and my wife and I are watching it slowly die. But if I were to do the right thing and dispatch this animal, put it out of its misery, I would be a felon, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay. So we have people, we have people in this administration that are actually making the case that you should put a human down, a baby down if they're deformed, if they have any kind of handicap, if they don't have any quality of life, they should be killed; but you can't do it to an oryx.

NUGENT: It's unbelievable. My brain won't accept this vile abuse of power. We've got to take this country back. And I've got to tell you, Glenn, I'm walking the streets of Los Angeles. You wouldn't think it's Ted Nugent country but, my goodness, the support you have out here for blowing the whistle. You're doing We the people, freedom of the press, First Amendment duties, and the supportive out here is unbelievable. Everywhere, Glenn, every cop, every family, every person walking the street, the spiked‑hair, pierced‑ear guy, everybody says, "Go, Ted, we support you. Thank you for standing up for common sense." I've never seen anything like it, Glenn.

GLENN: Well, you won't find that at CNN. Or the administration.

NUGENT: Oh, but when I bring it to Piers Morgan or CNN, my buddy, I can't even think of his name, Anderson Cooper, believe me, when I bring it, their ratings are representative of common sense, I promise you that.

STU: (Laughing).

GLENN: Ted Nugent, we'll talk to you tonight at 5:00 and there's so much more to tell of this story. Thank you very much

NUGENT: God speed, Glenn. You guys are doing God's work. I'm with you.

GLENN: All right. Talk to you later.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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?