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Glenn's Show Prep

What Did Glenn's Listeners Think About Trump's Acceptance Speech?

July 22, 2016
Lori Hanes

Writer

Glenn mixed it up on his radio program Friday following Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

"We're going to try something different today because I want to know how the speech that Donald Trump did played to you, the average American in your home. I know how it played in my home . . . we want to hear from you," Glenn said.

As one might expect, many on the right heralded the speech, while those on the left lambasted it.

RELATED: Bill Maher on Trump’s Scary RNC Speech: ‘He Looked a Lot Like Mussolini’

"What went through your mind last night? Good or bad? What did you think America?" Glenn asked.

Here's what callers had to say:

Wallace in Kansas

Well, after 76 minutes, I actually had to go back and find a hard copy because I heard the word "Constitution" one time. I never heard the word "freedom," never heard the word "liberty." What I heard was a mashing of the last year of Donald Trump's stump speeches. I wasn't inspired, you know, very much.

I will vote for Donald Trump. A vote is not an endorsement of everything he stands for; it's just Hillary Clinton scares me so bad. If Hillary gets in, here's what I know: This country has a 100 percent chance of getting shot in the head with Hillary Clinton. With Donald Trump, it's a 99 percent. I just hope I'm in the 1 percent.

Darren in Wyoming

Well, we're screwed. We got a high school bully and a crook running as our two leaders that are going to direct our country. And the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, about 40 pounds. So they're one and the same --- more empty promises.

Derek in Utah

Going into the speech, I thought it was going to be the same thing --- build a wall, do this, do that --- coming out, the thing that really stuck in my mind was law and order, how many times he brought that up, how he was going to restore law and order. And in some ways, I believe that is good with a lot of the things that have been going on with the police forces, but at the same time, it really scares me on how he plans on accomplishing that.

I have never been a Trump supporter. Some things I can relate to 100 percent because there's so much anger, so much hate going on in America right now, and he really tapped into that. Even with his aggressive tone, with his position that he was taking there on stage, he was embodying what a lot of Americans feel right now and bringing that out. So they were able to tap into that, but it really worries me on how he's going to accomplish that. And that's the biggest thing I took away, that I'm a little bit scared about our freedoms and our liberties.

Carol in New York

My frame of mind going into it was, with our options, I was feeling desperate. I'm going to vote, but what decision am I going to make? I wanted to like him. No, I absolutely wanted to like him. The problem is that I don't, and I don't trust him. But there was something last night that changed my heart about him. I guess I'm -- I'm -- I love God, and I love our country. I run a food pantry. I've been a giver my whole life, and not because I'm a good person, but because God is good. And I believe our country needs to become stronger by uniting. If everyone would just be kinder and stronger and meet the need they see in front of them, I believe there would be no needs.

I see that people are running out of options. And he's someone, last night, that made me see that it's possible to have options again, and that gave me hope. And for the first time, I'm like, 'Okay. Alright. Now I'm going to listen.'

It was my gut feeling. I felt he was a little bit humble. I'm concerned about him not being a good guy. But I saw his family, and I'm starting to put all the pieces together. Like, well, you know, with the media the way it is, what do we really hear about anybody? You know, we just hear what they want us to hear. I'm becoming paranoid.

Brian in Oklahoma

I'll be completely honest with you, I have not been a Donald Trump supporter. I was a Ted Cruz supporter. So what I heard last night was a very strong understanding and itemization of the problems our country is having. And a lot of these problems that you listed, Obama won't even utter the words. So when I listened to him last night, he's uttering like the problem with unemployment, the problem with trade deals, the problem with illegal immigration. It's really hard to go in and give you specifics on a trade deal. You know, we're going to Page 405, Paragraph C, you know, Section whatever, and we're going to strike that line. People are most of the time not going to understand that. It's going to go over their head. But he understands that the trade deal with NAFTA and the TPP are lousy deals. It hurts our GDP. He understands that American jobs are being lost to illegal immigrants.

The main thing that I come away from this is, what gives me hope is that the guy gets it. We have a lot of problems, and he knows what they are. He's identified them. He spent 20 minutes listing them. I can't even get Obama to say the words "radical Islamic terrorism."

Shauuna in Utah

I went into it absolutely hating him. I've hated him for years. But his children impressed me so much that I'm hopeful that his love for his children will cause him to live up to the things he's promising. I think that he's promising that he'll take over the financial and pretty much leave the rest to Pence. That's what I'm thinking. He'll negotiate the deals with other countries so that we have a better balance.

I watched the whole thing. I'm a glutton for punishment.

Josh in Florida

Really, at heart, I couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton. So I have to do my citizen duty and vote. But what really stuck out to me was when he started speaking about the evangelical votes and when he said he didn't even know if he deserved it. To me, that sounded like he was trying to humble himself, for the first time really, and that's what really stuck out to me.

And my opinion is, the borders: Hillary wants them open; he wants them closed. That alone should be the deciding factor of this election because these people are trying to come in here and change the culture of America. Not even just our constitutional rights and all of that, the culture of America. So, yes, I am voting for Donald Trump.

Robin in Florida

I went into the speech with a little bit of anxiety because you've been hearing the snippets and seeing the snippets of him on TV: "I'm wealthy." "I build." "I did." "I did."

What I saw last night -- and mind you, the first time I've watched an entire acceptance speech; I've never watched the entire thing -- last night, I heard you, the citizen. This is about the people of America. I'm going to come get your back. I'm going to come watch over you. I'm going to stand between you and whatever's coming at us. It was all about us the citizens and someone coming back for us.

The other thing I've said I've seen and was reiterated last night is his family. And his family really surrounds him. And that is a building block that we are really missing now in this day.

Steve in Georgia

So I've now been watching this stuff for 25 years. And I'll tell you what, it never ceases to amaze me. What I saw last night was what I saw when Obama was giving his speeches, when Obama was running. When Obama stood behind the Greek pillars and accepted the mantel of leadership from the country, he was going to solve all of their problems. He was going to walk across water. And the people believed it because he told them what they wanted to hear. And those of us on the right, we watched this. And we watched this, and we were enamored with the ignorance of the American people. We watched this, and we were like, "How can these people believe this? How could they fall for this?"

And now, all of the people who commented on Obama are doing the same thing for Trump. He's promising that he's going to solve their problems. Yeah, it's nice to have somebody to stand up and speak what a lot of us believe to be truths. That's always great to hear, especially when political correctness has been working at removing free speech from society for the last 20 years. It's nice to hear that. It's refreshing.

However, where he loses me, do I believe that he'll do it? No, I'm not going to be one of the people in the country who is chasing a shiny object. I believe that, as you and many of your listeners do, that this country is about done. The experiment is about over. And I also believe that we had one more shot to solve the problem, and I think that we've missed it.

When anyone stands up and tells us that we have all these problems and he is the only one who can solve these problems, that's a problem. That's a problem in and of itself. And people need to wake up to that.

And, unfortunately, I've almost lost faith that the American people will wake up to it. Those of us who listen to your show, those of us who have been following this, those of us who take and have taken an objective view of politics and of the nature of what our country has become, sheer disappointment. Sheer disappointment.

Mark in Ohio

I'm a teacher in Manso, Ohio, and I live in a very economically depressed area. We used to have the GM staffing plant here, and it's gone. But, anyway, I had to defend myself quite a bit against other teachers who are Democratic supporters. And being a Republican, I had to keep coming up, what is the basis of my argument? And I kept thinking about Trump being a businessman who understands corporate taxes. And I kept hearing him say that he's going to bring back manufacturing to America. And I think that's one of the biggest areas that has concern for me, is bringing jobs to America. And giving people jobs. When he talks about understanding corporate taxes and taxes in general, I believe that's because he's a businessman. So, yes, it does strengthen my position among colleagues and friends.

Nicole in Massachusetts

I'm so pleased to speak to you. And before I start, I just want to say one thing: You've had such a profound impact in my life that I actually met my husband and happily married because of Restoring Love. I met him at Highpoint Church. So I just wanted to let you know that you had that impact on my life. And thank you so much.

So as a millennial in Massachusetts, my BS-ometer was just blowing up last night, and I believe that this man has no integrity at all, and he has proven that to me over and over and over again, throughout his campaign.

I think what the speech and what all of the speeches preceding his speech attempted to do was to make him that good guy --- and he has no integrity. So I think people really want to believe that he's a good guy, and as my mom has pointed out to me repeatedly, his family is his biggest asset because they speak so highly. And people so desperately want to cling to the idea that Donald Trump might be a good man.

I don't think we can trust anything he said last night. It was a complete overreach, to the point where he was even hitting Democratic talking points. And I understand that, you know, unity was the theme. So in that regard, his speech made sense. But he really -- I mean, it was just -- it was lies. And to me, it was so apparent, he's not a good man, he's not going to honor his word. And if we're going to fall for the, "Oh, well, his children say he's wonderful," listen, criminals are really good to their own family. So why would we think that just because he's good to his family, he won't screw us in the long run?

Ashley in Georgia

I went in feeling lost, and I came out feeling lost. I feel like he's got some really good speechwriters around him, and he's going to turn into a really good politician.

I feel like my only hope is that he'll be smart enough to put really smart people around him so he doesn't totally screw up the country if he gets in. I don't believe anything he said because of his actions in the past. Because the history of this man doing what he's done his whole entire life, why would this be any different? I don't think he will be any different. I think he will be who he is, even though he says something different, even though he said something different last night. Our words mean nothing if there's no action to support what we say.

When your actions over the years have proven you to be one way and then all of a sudden you start saying something else, I don't believe you, until your actions start following suit. In life, you can say what you want to me. You can say all the right things to me, but when you've got a history, you condition me not to believe you. I've been conditioned not to believe him because of his actions. And I think that's a big thing.

Mary in Ohio

I went into the speech last night undecided because I am definitely not a Hillary supporter, but I came out frightened because he was whipping those people into a frenzy. He was spouting and screaming nationalism, and it's what I imagined the German people were hearing in the late '20s and early '30s. I think it was the position of his head, which may sound kind of strange, but when he was waiting for a reaction, his chin went up, he was looking down. I think he looked like any dictator that I have ever seen speak, and it frightened me.

Vince in Tennessee

Going in, I did not have any expectation of voting for Donald Trump. I was actually going to be proud to, for the first time in my life, sit home and not vote because I couldn't put my name on this and go before God.

Living in Tennessee, I know how Tennessee is going to go anyways. However, shy of speaking of the Constitution, return to constitutional values, I didn't hear that last night, so I didn't have any change in my heart for Trump. The thing that did make an impact on me was when Ted Cruz said, "Please, don't stay at home." And he said, "I tell you, I'm not voting for Hillary." He didn't come out and say he's voting for Donald, but the fact that he said, "Don't stay home," that spoke to me a little bit more. And now I'm having to reenter into prayer about, "What do I do now?"

Pat in Mississippi

Well, me and my husband live in rural Mississippi. My husband stayed up. He gets up at 4:30 in the morning. He stayed up to listen to this speech. We were both big Cruz supporters. We're voting for Trump. It's a no-brainer.

Number one, the wall. The safety of our country. Number two, I work in the schools. I see the kids have no motivation because the parents either live off the government or have two low-paying jobs. They have to live in a family where the people are working and have something to look forward to. The third thing is, I believe he's going to get the right people for the job to fix this government mess. It is so bad. There are so many good people out here in this country that are well educated and can fix stuff.

Featured Image: Screenshot from The Glenn Beck Program, July 22, 2016.

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

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

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

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

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

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

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

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

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global reality.

And moral reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our faith is almost gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why can't we open the government?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not in nostalgia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A conservative in 2025, '26.

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

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

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

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

And one can't be stronger than the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

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

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

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

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

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

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

Ancient evil, new clothes

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

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

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

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The new currency of power

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

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

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

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

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

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

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

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

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

The forgotten way

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

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

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

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

Both are traps.

The only way

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A restoration, not a renovation

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

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

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

The selective guardians of history

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

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

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

The real desecration

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

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

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.