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Glenn's Show Prep

Philly's Soda Tax is Progressivism at Its Worst

January 12, 2017
Staff

WRITER

It's for the children. It's for the children and their well-being. Because no one loves children and is more concerned about their well-being than progressives. That's why Philadelphia's mayor has signed into law a tax on sickeningly sugary drinks, nearly doubling the cost of beverages deemed "bad" by the city's government.

"There's three groups affected by this policy: The consumer, totally screwed. The business owner, totally screwed. The government, helped. How often is this the direction and goal of policy in this freaking country?" Co-host Stu Burguiere asked Thursday on The Glenn Beck Program.

The new tax is creating a hailstorm of backfire from consumers.

"Progressives overplay their hand every single time," Glenn added.

Enjoy this complimentary clip from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: The city of Philadelphia is in outrage. Why? Because the soda tax. It is in effect and people realize, "Wait a minute. I voted for, what?" And it's causing a hailstorm. But there's a fake news story that the media fails to call fake news because the media, I would imagine, would be for the soda tax. And that is the mayor of Philadelphia blaming the high price of soda not on the tax, instead on price gouging. Uh-huh. We'll give you the facts. Fake news. Philadelphia. Not here. Beginning, right now.

(music)

GLENN: If you ever want to know anything about global warming or soda tax or really bizarre fascist dictators that you've never heard of in countries you didn't even know existed, Pat -- or, Stu is your guy. Stu is absolutely the guy.

Favorite dictator, Stu?

STU: Well, Turkmenboshi, I would say had to be number one.

GLENN: His reign?

STU: Well, he died -- he was, of course, replaced by Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

GLENN: Right. Okay.

STU: In Turkmenistan.

PAT: Don't insult our intelligence like we must know that.

STU: Which was actually his dentist. Was Turkmenboshi's dentist, who they put as the new dictator.

GLENN: Really? Really?

STU: So in case you want to read up on that. We can always talk about that.

GLENN: Okay. We can talk about that some other time. I just want to get your bona fides out there, that I don't just say that higgledy-piggledy. When it comes to weird dictators you've never heard of, anything on global warming, or soda tax, Stu is the guy to go to.

STU: Stunningly, not a good combination to pick up the ladies throughout the life.

GLENN: No. Stunningly not really a collection of anything that does you any good at all.

STU: It really didn't work well. No. Except for right now, while Philadelphia is putting together --

GLENN: Shine, baby. It's your moment.

STU: -- the most ridiculous soda tax of all time. And they're applying it to all sorts of different things.

If you remember, a lot of cities have tried to pass these things, which were supposedly designed not for them to get money, of course, but for -- to protect us from ourselves and our bad choices.

GLENN: Of course.

STU: We're all getting too fat. And I realize that this show is not the one to --

GLENN: We're not the one to point that out.

STU: We got it. We are too fat. However, we're fat by own decision-making.

GLENN: Right. We go in eyes wide open.

STU: Absolutely. And mouth wide open, to be perfectly honest about it.

GLENN: Right.

STU: So they decided to try to pass this in Philadelphia by saying, "Well, you know, sure, it will have some health benefits. But really what we need is new money for Pre-K and all sorts of programs that everyone wants."

GLENN: Sure. This is going to be good for you. Help the children.

STU: It's going to be good for you. So it got through. They were successful to push it through. Started this month, for the first time.

The tax is 1.5 cents per ounce. So, you know, obviously a 20-ounce bottle of soda is going to add 30 cents. He might say, "Eh, it's not that big -- if you're paying two bucks, now it's 2.30. It might not necessarily hit you that hard." However, it gets worse, of course.

For example, Carbonator Rental Services in Philadelphia sells the syrup for sodas.

GLENN: So this is when you go into -- you know, if you're lucky to have a fountain in your house or you go into a restaurant and they're just pulling it out, there's nothing better than direct out of the fountain.

STU: Right.

GLENN: McDonald's makes the best Cokes on the planet.

STU: Their straws are great too.

GLENN: Yeah, just wanted to throw that out.

STU: But -- so that's -- so normally they sell a 5-gallon box of syrup. You want to get into the straw talk, Jeffy? He seems interested.

Five-gallon box of syrup, usually 60 bucks. Sixty bucks.

GLENN: So this is the -- they come with the fizz and the syrup. And they mix it together.

STU: Right.

GLENN: So you can have a glass of carbonated water, or they can add this syrup. A little bit of that syrup. So how much is the syrup?

STU: Normally it costs $60.

GLENN: Sixty dollars for the syrup.

STU: In December, $60 for the -- it's a lot of soda for $60.

GLENN: Sure.

STU: The new city tax applies to this beverage because it's sugary and it's a beverage.

GLENN: Sure.

STU: It applies $57.60 of additional cost.

GLENN: Wait. The syrup is $60.

STU: Sixty dollars for the syrup.

JEFFY: Right. Okay.

PAT: $57 for the tax.

STU: It's 60 cents for the tax.

PAT: That's price gouging right there. That's price gouging.

STU: Because, again, we're going from $60 to up 117.60 for the same product.

PAT: So in order to service their customers, they need to lower the price of that syrup to $3.

GLENN: Well, no, no, no. No, no, no.

PAT: Right? So it's $60. Right?

GLENN: So if they could stop price gouging, they might be able to, you know, pay the $15 of a working wage that they should be paying for those minimum jobs of making that syrup.

PAT: Well, yes, that too.

STU: I know. I know. Because they're supposed to do both of those things.

PAT: It's gone up to $117.60 for the same syrup.

STU: Reason has a story on this. In the real world, sandwich shops in grocery stores, of course, are adjusting --

PAT: That's essentially doubled the price.

STU: Yes. Because they were trying to make the case, it's not going to be that big of a deal.

In the real world, sandwich shops, grocery stores, of course, are adjusting the retail price of sugary drinks to make up for the added cost imposed by the tax.

And, by the way, the tax -- you know when you go to a store and you buy something and then you get the receipt and there's like a sales tax at the bottom -- right? That's how everything -- the way they structured this tax is that it hit before the retail side.

GLENN: Oh, my God.

STU: So they put it in there, so it's not separately listed on any of the receipts. It's just all the prices are jacked up through the ceiling.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: You know what, everybody should have on their menus and on receipts: Soda is this price because of this price of tax.

PAT: Absolutely.

STU: And that's starting to happen around the city. They're saying, this is why this happening.

PAT: You'd have to.

STU: The mayor who passed the tax says, the efforts of alerting people why their soda costs so much are wrong and misleading. And suggested that it could be an extension of the expensive fight put up by soda companies.

Big soda is at fault here.

GLENN: This is so crazy.

STU: It is so crazy.

GLENN: When now Coca-Cola is sending in the mob to break some legs and get every dime out of their -- that's crazy.

PAT: Every country over 200 employees is evil now. And they only act in their own best interest. And they don't care what they destroy in their wake.

GLENN: The cities don't. The cities don't. The city council. The mayor. They don't. They're always acting in your best interest, even though the bills that they pass, the regulations that they put in, on cities, drive the jobs out, make your cities less safe, make your cities more expensive, drive businesses to other cities or other states, and they're just fine. There's nothing bad about them.

If a -- if a company decides to leave the state, the state will say, "Look at the evil company." But nobody -- who is on the bandwagon saying, "Wait. It's the state's income tax that is killing us right now."

PAT: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

GLENN: It's their regulations on my business that makes it unaffordable for me to go here.

STU: Right. And in Philly, what they did was do everything they could to hide it from people. And then deny the reality that that's the reason why the prices are going up.

PAT: And sadly it works.

STU: It does.

PAT: It works.

GLENN: But will it work here?

PAT: In this article, they're interviewing the owner of a really small convenience store, who was doing really well before this tax.

Now he says he can count on one finger in the last week the number of people who have come in and bought soda, tea, or energy drinks, in any quantity bigger than a can.

Because you think about that. A 12-ounce can of soda is going to cost you, what? Sixty cents? Seventy-five? I hardly ever buy soda. So more than that? A dollar?

STU: Yeah. Yeah. More.

PAT: So then -- a dollar would be 1.18, if let's say it's a dollar. But when you're talking about the bigger quantities, like you mentioned, it can double the price.

STU: I hold in my hand Diet Arizona Blueberry Green Tea, which is for some reason I purchased. I bought two of these. These are gallon containers for $6, which I thought was a really good value.

Two gallons for $6. I thought that was solid, okay? If I was in Philly buying it, it would not be $6. It would be over, with all the taxes, over $10. Now, you talk about trying to do this with a family, to get -- when you're buying in large quantities --

GLENN: No. No. No.

STU: You are absolutely bilking the family that buys in bulk.

GLENN: No. No, you're not.

STU: You're not?

GLENN: Families should not be buying high sugary drinks.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: And that's the point, this isn't even a sugary beverage. There is no sugar whatsoever in it.

GLENN: It's green tea, and it's not even green. There's something wrong with that.

STU: It's blueberry, so it's blue.

JEFFY: So if there's no sugar in it, why are you getting taxed?

STU: I know. Isn't that interesting? Well, they've applied the tax to non-sugary drinks. Because, remember, this isn't about health. This is about getting more money.

GLENN: The children.

PAT: It's for the children.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: For the children.

GLENN: Wow.

STU: Again, $6 for iced tea --

GLENN: It's your moment to shine, Pat.

STU: I thought it was my moment to shine on taxes.

GLENN: It was his. Look, very few times you can talk about sugary taxes, and even fewer times you can talk about Michael Jackson.

PAT: That's right.

GLENN: So this is his moment to shine.

STU: Okay.

PAT: Did I stole your moment? Steal it?

STU: No. These are good moments. Soda and Michael Jackson. So $6 turns into $10. That's a 67 percent tax.

PAT: That's madness. That's madness!

STU: Think about that. That's incredible, that they expect people to swallow this.

GLENN: They're going to.

STU: It's insane.

PAT: They literally need a tea party revolt in Philadelphia. Literal tea.

STU: I think they may have even in Philadelphia, overreached so badly --

JEFFY: This has been coming for years.

STU: I mean, a lot of these cities have tried to do this with small taxes and saying it's about health.

They've tried so hard, and they've gone so overboard, that perhaps, maybe we have a chance here to push back against this movement and say this is insane. Because people rally are pissed off about this, even in Philadelphia.

PAT: Well, they have to be.

STU: You have to be. It's killing you.

PAT: One and a half cents an ounce!

STU: An ounce.

GLENN: If I were Pepsi or Coke, I would be buying massive, massive ads on anything that anybody in Philadelphia is watching.

I would be buying massive ads and saying, "Look, here's what your mayor said. We want you to know, Coca-Cola is the same price." Go to New Jersey.

STU: Buy it in New Jersey.

GLENN: You'll buy it for the price you bought it last week.

PAT: Well, in this case, it's even easier than that. Go to Bala Cynwyd. You know, that's all you have to do.

GLENN: Go across the city line.

PAT: Across the line and go to their suburb, and you'll pay a lot less.

GLENN: Right. The only ones who are being hurt by this are the ones who are trapped in their food deserts, having to go buy their -- because they can't afford to go to Bala Cynwyd and drive out of the city. Anybody who uses a bus, anybody who walks to the supermarket, anybody who does that, you're the one being hurt.

STU: Think about that.

PAT: It's so easy to do too. Because you have Wawa in the city limits, right? Then you'd have Wawa just outside the city limits. And you can just show them the price. Here's the price in Philadelphia. Here's the price in Bala Cynwyd.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: No-brainer.

STU: Think about this. There's three groups affected by this policy: The consumer, totally screwed. The business owner, totally screwed. The government, helped.

How often is this the direction and goal of policy in this freaking country?

PAT: Almost always is.

JEFFY: Really, and the government hasn't really helped because they're selling less product.

STU: Yeah, but they're getting a huge income stream from people like me who would still go and buy it because I'm an idiot.

But if you need to fight this stuff, this needs to be overturned.

JEFFY: I agree.

STU: And I think like -- you look at this, and like, they get money, for whatever stupid policy, they say they're achieving, which of course, will wind up in ten years realizing they didn't achieve it and they'll ask for more money and more taxes.

GLENN: Well, what they'll do is they'll -- if this hangs on long enough, they'll say, "Well, we have to replace this money," and they'll just find a group that they can pin that on, that they can make everybody hate.

STU: Need to kill it fast, right?

GLENN: Yes. Because if it holds on, then they'll have the money and they'll say, "We need to raise this much money because we have to replace it." And they'll just find a group that is in a minority or can be sold to let people. Gas companies. Oil companies. Big business. Whoever. And they'll drive the jobs out even more.

PAT: It's for the children. And we love the children.

(chuckling)

GLENN: You won't let him have that moment. You won't let him have that moment. Yeah.

STU: When you talk about the overreach, you know, you can talk -- you can get people to pay an extra little bit here and there.

To go from $60 to 117 is completely ridiculous. But, I mean, look at the guy -- this is the guy who owns the company whose product is now from $60 to 117.60.

He says, "We're not talking about a couple of bucks on a 60-dollar item." If it was, probably people wouldn't be bitching and there wouldn't be an opportunity to overturn this and push back against this. That's bad.

GLENN: Progressives overplay their hand every single time.

STU: Which is weird, because progressive, it's designed not to overplay your hand.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: Progressivism is, let's take the very little bit that we can and keep --

GLENN: They always think they're at the finish line. And only once did the Americans choose a nonprogressive to reverse it all, and that's in the 1920s. Usually they just -- they grab somebody who is offering those progressive ideas, just in a different package. Richard Nixon is a good example.

STU: '80s, I would say they did not choose progressive.

GLENN: But I don't consider him a progressive, as much just a flatout bad Marxist. Jimmy Carter.

PAT: Who?

STU: In the '80s. Ronald Reagan. Do you know the guy I'm referring to?

GLENN: He wasn't a progressive.

STU: Right. You said only one time have they chosen -- I think -- oh, you're saying --

GLENN: I would say, you know, the big progressives --

STU: Right. Okay. I see what you're saying.

GLENN: Woodrow Wilson.

STU: Not an ideological, necessarily progressive, that was reversed by conservatism -- that's only happened --

GLENN: Correct.

PAT: They're tired of waiting. And they've gotten so close lately. I think they're just tired of waiting, and now they're trying to push it the rest of the way. Don't you think?

They've gotten a little impatient lately because Obama brought them so far. And they're like, "We're right there. Let's just push it the rest of the way."

GLENN: Because they know what I have been saying is true.

PAT: The pendulum. Pendulum.

GLENN: Yes. And this doesn't last.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: It doesn't last long. It's on the verge of collapse.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: The question is, who is going to be the one holding the reigns when it collapses? Is it going to be the left or is it going to be the right?

PAT: I don't know. But it's horrifying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The new currency of power

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

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

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

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

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

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

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

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

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

The forgotten way

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

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.