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‘As you wish’ - Glenn interviews Princess Bride star Cary Elwes

December 18, 2014
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The Glenn Beck Program

We'll never survive.

Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has.  - The Princess Bride, 1987

If you have been listening to Glenn for awhile, you are very well aware that 'The Princess Bride' is one of his favorite movies. He loves it so much he declared the film a "right of passage" in his family. Glenn was honored to have actor Cary Elwes on radio today to talk about his new book As You Wish, which takes readers behind-the-scenes on the making of 'The Princess Bride'. The book includes photographs, exclusive interviews and never before told stories.

That's a lot of content! Why it's..."INCONCEIVABLE!"

During the interview, Glenn took the opportunity (as any proper fan would) to ask Elwes some of the stories during the making of the film. The story about the Rodents of Unusual Size (better known as R.O.U.S') is definitely one that is worth a listen.

So don your black mask and "prepare to die" of laughter as you listen to this great interview.

GLENN: We are thrilled to have somebody on today that has a new book on called As You Wish. You know that phrase if you're our kind of people. And when I say that, I don't care how you vote. Where you're from in the world. If you know the word as you wish, and it brings back fond memories, you're my kind of people. We've used this -- I have used, do you like the Princess Bride when I was dating. If they said no, we're not going to get along.

[laughter]

We've done this with friends, with writers, with everybody we know. This is perhaps the Wizard of Oz of our time. This is a magical movie that will last for generations and has become such a part of our culture. And Cary Elwes is the guy who played Wesley, who said, as you wish. Twenty-fifth anniversary of the movie came and went, and he decided, I have to write some of the stories down. And he put out a new book called As You Wish. And Cary is with us now.

Hello, Cary, how are you?

CARY: I'm well, Glenn. How are you, sir?

GLENN: I'm really good. I will tell you, I feel a little for you today because you must be sitting in your hotel room, wherever you are, thinking to yourself, good God, is my career over? I'm on the Glenn Beck Program. I can't go any lower than this.

CARY: No. Not at all, sir. I'm happy to be on your show. Thank you.

GLENN: So, Cary, first of all, thank you for the joy that you have given me, my family, my children. Just recently we watched the Princess Bride. Again, that was a magical movie, and I would imagine one that people would look to make their entire life and don't usually get to make. But more importantly, thank you for appreciating the fact that you were in that and you're not shunning it and saying, I'm above that now.

CARY: No. I'm beyond grateful to be apart of it. I think I can speak for everyone on the film when we say we feel blessed to be a part of it. It's the film that gave me my career and gave me the life I lead today. So I'm eternally grateful.

GLENN: I've wondered this about the movie Moulin Rouge. I don't know if you saw that.

CARY: Sure.

GLENN: But Baz Luhrmann is a genius. And Rob Reiner is a genius. And I think those are probably the only two that could make actors stand in a room and say, okay, have you way out of a -- you'll be dancing in an elephant in Moulin Rouge or you'll be wrestling with rodents of unusual size, and feel comfortable.

CARY: Yes.

GLENN: Was there any time on the set that you thought, this is either going to be magic or a disaster?

CARY: There was one moment. When the little fellow who was playing the rodent of unusual size I was put to wrestle with didn't show up to work. And Rob decided that the only alternative available to us, because we were going to lose the set that day, was to have me wrestle a rubber rat. And that -- I had some -- I had some moments there while Rob was directing me on how to make the rubber rat seem more realistic. I was definitely going to myself, hmm, I wonder if this is going to sell.

[laughter]

We didn't have the money for CGI or anything back then, you know.

GLENN: And the guy actually had been arrested the night before.

CARY: Correct. That is correct. He was driving 5 miles an hour in a 25-mile per hour zone. And I think he had had a couple of drinks. And he was -- had to spend the night in jail. Poor guy.

GLENN: Right.

CARY: He did eventually arrive and saved me from having to wrestle the latex foam rodent of unusual size.

GLENN: The scene, you describe that whole fire swam in great detail. There were a lot of problems in that scene. I mean, the dress really didn't catch fire over and over again.

CARY: Yes. Well, the dress was made -- had a flame retardant liquid that had been -- it had been dipped in. And one area had, I believe, some, I guess, it was alcohol or some kind of area where the flame was supposed to catch the dress on fire, yeah. But Bill Goldman, the author and playwright, showed up in the middle of the first take and had no idea what we were shooting that day. And saw Robin catch fire and screamed out loud, she's on fire. Robin Wright is on fire, at the top of his lungs.

And Rob Reiner yelled, cut, and turned to him and went, Bill, she's supposed to catch fire. That's part of the script. You've written it in the last eight drafts.

And he was mortified, the poor guy. But he had no idea. Imagine anyone walking on the set and seeing Robin Wright on fire. If you had no idea what the context was, you'd probably do the same thing.

GLENN: Right. I would say pretty much anybody on fire. But Robin Wright -- and Robin Wright, let's be honest, is typically on fire, if you know what I mean.

CARY: Very good. Very good.

GLENN: I will tell you, when I saw in the book, that you did the -- the, you know, most passionate kiss ever, and it took you like seven or eight takes, I didn't feel badly for you.

CARY: No. Well, it had to do with the fact that we were giggling so much. Robin and I became very good friends. Still are good friends. And, you know, it's weird kissing your best friend. It's -- so Rob got a little frustrated with us because obviously Wesley and Buttercup were not supposed to be giggling while they were engaging in the passionate embrace. But we got it in the end.

GLENN: Right. Can you tell me about the -- and I'm trying to remember the name of the actor. He's a great actor. So I apologize. The inconceivable guy.

CARY: Wallace Shawn, yeah.

GLENN: So I love that guy.

CARY: Oh, he's great.

GLENN: He's brilliant, and just brilliant in it. Even reading the book, The Princess Bride, which if you haven't read the book, it's just brilliant. It reads just like the movie.

But he played that role so perfectly, but you say he broke out in hives because he was so convinced he was going to be cut.

CARY: Not just cut, but replaced. His agent had told him before he got on the plane to fly to England that, in fact, he was not the first choice to play that scene. The filmmakers wanted Danny DeVito. And he was convinced that he was merely standing in, waiting for Mr. DeVito to become available.

And I only had the one scene with him. The battle of wits scene. And he showed up to work. Here's the guy, always the smallest guy in the room. Fulbright scholar. Lectures at Oxford and Cambridge. Here he is sweating at this little scene. I didn't know what it was about.

But I found out from writing this book that he had actually -- he was convinced that his ticket had already been booked, and when you look at his performance now, it's inconceivable to think of anybody else playing that role, other than him. I mean, he's just perfect in that.

GLENN: When you are -- you're in the fight scene at the top of the cliffs of insanity. And you have to sword fight.

CARY: Yeah.

GLENN: I've always found it amazing that it was clearly you guys sword fighting.

In the book --

CARY: Yes.

GLENN: -- you say we should perhaps even be more amazed because of your foot and because of changes at the last minute.

CARY: Yes. So by the -- first of all, I broke my toe fooling around on Andre the Giant's all-terrain vehicle, which I had no business being on. But he kept taunting me to try it. Eventually -- you know, when a giant says you should try his toy --

GLENN: You do.

CARY: -- several times a day, at some point, you need to relent.

GLENN: Wait. Wait. Wait. Before you get to the sword fight scene. Just talk -- I have to verify, he never actually was riding -- I love the way -- I love the way you say that you walked on the set, and you saw him on the top of the horse and you realized, this is the craziest job in the world.

CARY: In the world.

GLENN: He never actually road the horse.

CARY: No. He was always on wires. Never touched -- the horse would never allow -- the horses are very smart. The horse took one look at Andre, all 460 pounds, 7'5" of him and said, there's no -- this was a Clydesdale. The kind you see on the Budweiser commercial. The biggest horse ever. It just refused. So they had to blindfold it and then lower Andre down on a wire, not actually touching the horse.

GLENN: Is that crazy?

CARY: Huh?

GLENN: That's crazy.

CARY: Crazy. Anyway, so I broke my toe fooling around on his all-terrain vehicle. Luckily, it was fairly reasonably well-healed by the time -- it was three weeks later we shot the sword fight.

But when we came to show it to Rob Reiner, Manny and I had become so fast at the routine that it clocked in at about a minute. And Rob turned to us and went, guys, you got to go back and add another two minutes. You know, look at this set I built for you. This beautiful set. You can't be in here for just a minute.

So we had literally four or five days to go. We had to go back and add another two minutes to the fight, which we did. And we added the whole acrobatic piece, where we had this gymnast do this wonderful flip on the bars. And it was fun.

GLENN: I was going to say, Cary is obviously a great storyteller. He just butchered that. It's great in the book. It's great in the book.

So, Cary, you are -- and I let you decide or want to leave it for the reader to discover. But when you get to the end of the book, you talk about Peter Falk and the touching scene between a grandfather and his grandson.

CARY: Yes.

GLENN: And how that became real. Do you care to go into that at all?

CARY: Sure. I lost my own grandfather during the making of the film. And my grandfather was the hero in my life. He was a real-life World War II veteran. He had been sort of a commando. He worked for special operations executives, SOE, and their job was to fly behind enemy lines and create a fit column (phonetic) to fight the Germans and the Italians in Albania and in many other places.

Anyway, he died of complications related to diabetes. And he was the kind of guy who used to tell tales to me as a kid, much like Peter Falk did with Fred Savage.

And when I went to the hospital after I wrapped the movie, I started to share with him -- because he was unable to come to the set, he was too sick. I shared with him the whole story of my experience making the film. And he was under a lot of medication at the time. I don't know how much he really could understand what I was saying. But I wanted to share it with him anyway. And I realized while I was sharing the whole making of the film with him that I was having my own as-you-wish moment with him. So it was very moving for me. And, yeah, it was -- it was very sad. Very touching.

GLENN: Cary, we were talking before you came on about the movie Galaxy Quest with Tim Allen. Okay. You know that. So I can't remember the guy or the character he plays. But he plays basically the Spock character.

CARY: Right.

GLENN: And he is -- he's pissed that he's been in this movie and that's all people -- he's like, yeah, I got it. I got it. There has to be times that even if you love -- and, I mean, that character he didn't love it. He was really pissed that's what he turned into be. You've done so much. You've been in really critically acclaimed movies. You're a great actor.

CARY: Thank you.

GLENN: But there has to be times that you run into fans where you're like, okay, it's a movie, dude. It's a movie.

CARY: I got to share with you this. Here's how I look at it, Glenn. I think as an actor you are blessed to have anyone resonate with your work. Some actors go through life and don't have a single movie that anyone has even cared to watch or have -- you know, feels anything about.

And I look at it like, how blessed am I that I have a film that has touched so many people. I call this the gift that keeps on giving. This is like a generational film. I meet families who have passed down their VHS copies from grandparents to grandkids. It's just incredible.

GLENN: It's a rite of passage. It really is. We shared it with our kids. I have kids in their 20s and an 8-year-old. And it is a rite of passage that we're watching this movie.

So, Cary, I thank you very much for being on the program.

CARY: Thank you, sir.

GLENN: I've never done this before. But I would like to ask if we could send you a few copies of your book and you could sign them so we could give some away.

CARY: Absolutely.

GLENN: Thank you for being so cool. I appreciate it.

CARY: Happy Holidays to you and all your listeners. And thank you for having me on your show.

GLENN: God bless you. Thank you very much.

CARY: God bless you too.

GLENN: Name of the book is As You Wish: The Inconceivable Tales From the Making of the Princess Bride.

STU: He was great.

GLENN: I have to tell you, after my experience with B.B. King, where my wife fell asleep at a B.B. King concert, and I am a huge B.B. King fan. And we went backstage to meet him, and he couldn't give a flying crap about me.

STU: He was hitting on Tania, wasn't he?

GLENN: He was hitting on my wife the whole time. And I wanted to say to him, she fell asleep. She hates you. She's like, stop with B.B. King all the time.

And after that, and then an experience with Billy Joel and Elton John right in the same summer, I swore off meeting anyone that I liked. If I liked your music, I liked your work. I don't want to meet you. It's going to be disappointing. That was a cool interview. Really, really gracious guy. Really great.

STU: Yeah. I must remind you that I brought that to the table. So there's one for the last ten or 15 years.

[laughter]

GLENN: As You Wish the name of the book. The inconceivable tales of the making of the Princess Bride.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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.