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Bitcoin Entrepreneur: 'Something Happens to the Social Fabric When People Cannot Trust Something As Basic As Money'

August 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

The CEO of a Bitcoin wallet startup explained the social importance of a digital currency that isn’t controlled by the government on radio Tuesday.

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been rising in value but is still mysterious to most people. One of its distinguishing characteristics is that bitcoin is a currency that operates outside any government, country or other entity that could manipulate it.

Wences Casares, founder of Bitcoin wallet startup Xapo, shared a moving story from his childhood to illustrate why an independent currency could be the future.

Glenn Beck asked about Casares’ experience growing up in Argentina at the time when their currency collapsed.

“I’m imagining that that drives you quite a bit when it comes to Bitcoin,” Glenn noted.

Casares recalled the day that his mom interrupted the school day to pick up him and his two sisters for a trip to get groceries, something that was highly unusual. His mom carried two plastic bags of cash because she had been paid that day, and she gave each child a list of groceries to get. When they had gotten everything on the list and had money left, she told them to get more food, saying, “Tomorrow, [the money is] going to be worth less. We have to spend it all today.”

A currency that can’t be devalued overnight could not only help people to eat that day, but also hold society together. “Something happens to the social fabric when people cannot trust something as basic as money,” Casares said.

GLENN: Wences Casares, he is the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. He's a technology entrepreneur, founder and CEO of this bitcoin wallet start-up. He says that bitcoin will end up being bigger that night internet itself and changing our lives more than the internet.

That is quite a claim, Wences.

WENCES: Yes. I also think that bitcoin is an experiment still. And as such, it has chances of failing and chances of failing that are nontrivial. So it's quite broad that it can also fail.

GLENN: Yes.

WENCES: But if it succeeds, it's likely to be more important than the internet itself, especially for many billions of people I could imagine in the future, preferring that you take away their internet, but not their bitcoin.

GLENN: Okay. So I want to get to that in a second. But I want to just explain what he said is so true. And it's why I've said to people, look, you have $500, you should put it into bitcoin. But don't put anything into bitcoin that you actually think, "Oh, man, I'd hate to lose that." Then don't put it in. Because it is really risky. You don't make the kind of money that is being made right now on something that isn't risky. This is really risky.

WENCES: This is incredibly risky. And what you're saying is very good advice. Which is: Nobody should own an amount of bitcoin they cannot afford to lose because they may very well lose it. So it's important to understand that any money you cannot afford to lose, you should not have in bitcoin. It should only be play money, that if you lose it, you're okay. It's a small amount.

GLENN: Right. And that kind of explains, I mean, there are -- what? Ninety percent of the people who own bitcoin, maybe more, own less than one bitcoin.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: I mean, people are in it literally for 500 bucks or $100 or whatever.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: Is there a minimum getting in?

WENCES: There is no minimum.

GLENN: So tell me how you believe people will say, "Don't take my bitcoin, but you can take my internet." What do you mean by that?

WENCES: Understanding bitcoin -- bitcoin is simpler than the internet at a technical level, if you will. And I think when people don't understand it, it's not their fault, but our fault. The people explaining it. We make it more complicated than it needs to be, because it makes us sound more intelligent, I guess, or something.

STU: We try that a lot too. It doesn't work for us.

(chuckling)

WENCES: You think about it, most people feel confident and comfortable about their understanding of the internet. Right? Without really understanding how --

GLENN: How it works.

WENCES: -- it really works, technically. It's not necessary to understand it. Or even a credit card. Right? Most people feel very confident with a credit card, understanding how it works.

But if you ask them, what happens when you swipe the card, where does that information go? Does it go to your bank or to the merchant's bank? At what point does it get approved? Who says it, right?

We don't really need to understand a lot of those details, to understand how credit cards work and what they can and cannot do for us. The same thing with internet and the same thing for bitcoin.

And the things that do matter and that we do need to understand of bitcoin are quite simple, really. And it's three, three things that make bitcoin unique, that we're not -- that did not exist before bitcoin existed, that bitcoin brought to the world.

Number one and most important: It's that it's not controlled by anyone. And it is not possible to control it. And it's a key feature. Without it, it would be irrelevant. It has a lot of very positive consequences. It has some potentially negative consequences. But it's what makes bitcoin bitcoin. Nobody can control it. Not me. Not any group of people. Not any company. Not any country. Not any army. Nobody can control it. That's number one.

Number two, is there will never be more than 21 million bitcoin. It's a finite number. And that cannot be changed.

And number three, whenever you have some bitcoin, you are free to send it to anyone you want, anywhere in the world, pretty much in real time, and pretty much for a very, very low cost. That last quality, it's quite revolutionary. And I call -- a lot of people call it the uncensorability of bitcoin.

No one can keep you from acquiring some bitcoin. It's impossible to do. No one can keep you from keeping those bitcoin, and no one can keep you from sending those bitcoin to whomever you want.

When you put those three qualities together, that's really all you need to understand about bitcoin. How that gets accomplished, it's complicated and technical, but not really needed to understand. Just like you don't need to understand how the internet manages to deliver all of this movies and stuff that it does.

GLENN: You grew up in Argentina --

WENCES: Yep.

GLENN: -- when the economy collapsed. When the money collapsed.

WENCES: Correct.

GLENN: And I am imagining that that drives you quite a bit when it comes to bitcoin.

WENCES: I think so, yes. I would imagine so.

GLENN: Tell me the story of what it's like when there's a currency collapse.

WENCES: My parents are sheep ranchers. And in my lifetime, in my childhood, I saw them lose everything three times. The first time that I have a memory of it, it's because of hyperinflation. And I have this -- everything -- that they lose everything, it was because something happened with a country, either hyperinflation or the government confiscated all bank deposits or a huge devaluation, right?

All kinds of crazy experiments that are hard to fathom from the perspective of someone who has lived in an economy where you've always been able to trust the dollar and the banks. And so did your parents and grandparents.

I have this memory of my mom coming to get my two sisters and I out of school. That never happened before, so something was going on in the middle of the school day.

And she was carrying two plastic bags full of cash. And she was a receptionist at the government bureau. And she had just been paid. And her salary, two plastic bags of cash, of bills.

GLENN: Wow.

WENCES: And she took us to the supermarket, and she gave us each a list and told us what to carry. We each had an aisle. Got all of those things, and we all met at the cashier.

And after everything had gone through the cashier, there was some money left over, and she sent us back to get more stuff.

And one of my sisters asked, "Why don't we save money for tomorrow?" And my mom explained, "No. Tomorrow, it's going to be worth less. We have to spend it all today."

And I'll never forget that. Partly because it's easy to understand the economic and financial consequences in a family, in a society of that. But it's harder to imagine what's really going on, which is much more beyond financial consequences. Something happens to the social fabric, when people cannot trust something as basic as money. And a lot of people go crazy and desperate. And something -- very quickly, some trust breaks down that takes years or generations to rebuild.

GLENN: Yeah. Talking to the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. It is a bitcoin wallet startup.

So I buy my bitcoin. And it's now in a wallet. It's in your bank, if you will. If I'm not mistaken, your bank is buried in some mountain in Switzerland or something, right?

WENCES: Correct.

GLENN: But it's not a bank like we think of a bank.

WENCES: No. It is a bank in that you can use us to buy bitcoin, to store, to keep the bitcoin safely, to make it very easy to acquire the bitcoin, to store them safely, to send bitcoin.

It is not like a bank in a more technical manner, in which today the -- when you go to a normal bank, they own your money. And they owe it to you. So if you look at their balance sheet, they have an asset. That is the money you gave them and a liability, that is what they owe to you.

We are a purely custodian. So we do not own your bitcoins. Your bitcoins are only yours. And there are many reasons why we think that that's a lot safer. So we are the digital equivalent of a safety deposit box, right?

And the safety-deposit box is ours. But whatever is inside, it's yours. And if we were to disappear or go bankrupt, what can go away is the safety deposit box, but the contents have to go back to you.

GLENN: And what makes you think that -- well, before we get there, tell me what happened with this fork in the road. Because this caused some real panic with people because they didn't know -- they didn't really even understand the concept that bitcoin because it's -- it's becoming to be used more frequently. I believe Japan now has recognized it as an official currency. And if I'm not mistaken, isn't Japan becoming a bitcoin society?

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: And because the transactions are happening so rapidly, there was talk about, we have to have a faster way to process these.

This is my understanding.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: And there became this fork in the road between bitcoin cash and bitcoin. I don't know the difference. What is the difference?

WENCES: Not really -- again, it's not really a big deal basically what happened. And bitcoin is an open source software. So we all can see every single line is public. And the five of us could do another fork, and if we wanted. Right? Just copy all the code, paste it, and run it ourselves, or run it with another group of people. And it's up to the market to decide if they want to use ours or the other one. So this was always a possibility. Finally, someone did it for the first time. I think this would be a feature, bitcoin going forward, we'll see forks here or there. And there will always be one version of bitcoin that is the most used, the one that has the longest history, and then there will be others that will be like cousins that were derived of bitcoin, but will turn out to be different. Right?

GLENN: Can you turn your bitcoin into cash?

WENCES: Of course. Into normal cash?

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

WENCES: Of course, yeah. It's like any currency.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. And what is the percentage now of things that you can buy -- I mean, there was a big push -- we spoke five years ago. You know, people need to start -- you know, companies need to start taking bitcoin as payment.

What are the big companies doing to accept it? Are you seeing any big movement?

WENCES: There's about 100,000 merchants online that accept bitcoin. It's my opinion that bitcoin has been around for -- for less than nine years. And it will take another decade or two for it to get established. I think that the age of bitcoin becoming a way to pay at a merchant is quite far away.

I think that the era we're looking at is about something very different. In fact, I think that things like what we're seeing -- we had to go this year through the fork, for everybody to stop worrying about and learn that it's not a big deal.

Forks are something we can live with. It doesn't really hurt anyone. And -- but until it happened, a lot of people were freaking out about it, right? And I can tell you so many things that people freaked out about, every three months, in bitcoin. And we have to see them happen. People say, "Oh, that's good. Oh, it's robust. It works." I think we have a lot more of that to come.

Right now, I think bitcoin is in this first stage establishing itself more as a -- as a -- not so much for payment. What you said you were doing, Glenn, which you're holding it as historic value, just in case, not unlike what some families did with -- they had somewhere in the house, a stash of some jewelry, just in case, right? Or gold. It's more like that.

And only if it succeeds at that first, with very massive adoption, and hundreds of millions of people, it will then make sense as a payment mechanism.

GLENN: Yeah.

WENCES: But right now, it's a bit too early. It can be used. And a lot of people do use it. But from my subjective point of view, the more important thing that is happening at this stage is it's standing at historic value.

GLENN: Wences Casares, he is the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. You should check it out. And as I said earlier, don't -- don't put money into this that you can't -- you can't easily say, "Oh. I'm fine without it." At this point, it's one of those things that could make you a lot of money and you could lose every single dime. And -- and so you put just a little bit in there to -- to just, what the heck, let's give it a whirl, and see what happens.

Thank you, Wences. I appreciate it. God bless.

WENCES: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

(OUT AT 10:25AM)

GLENN: We -- we're going to have -- we're going to have --

STU: It's fascinating.

JEFFY: It sure is.

GLENN: The CEO of Xapo stay with us for a second. Because we were just talking in the break, there is a real downside, a risk to this. But the world completely changes if it works. And you were just saying that there's about a 20 percent chance that you use all the money, right?

WENCES: I would say at least a 20 percent chance that you use all the money.

JEFFY: At least.

GLENN: And you said that there was --

PAT: On the other side, there's an upside.

GLENN: You were saying that there's a 50 percent chance --

WENCES: Yes.

GLENN: -- that bitcoin, one single bitcoin, now worth $4,000. Was worth 200 when Trump took that long escalator ride down, two years ago. You're saying that in ten years, you believe that could hit a million dollars?

WENCES: I think there is a 50 percent chance that one bitcoin could be worth more than a million dollars and less than --

PAT: I mean, that's -- that's worth the 4,000-dollar investment. Right?

WENCES: What I would say is that it's very worthwhile -- just like I would say, the most irresponsible thing you could do would be to own an amount of bitcoin you cannot afford to lose, to have the kid's college fund there or your retirement or mortgage. That would be really -- the most irresponsible thing you can do.

GLENN: But if you put $500 in because you're like, "You know what, we're going to scrimp, and we're going to save. And I'm not touching our savings. I'm not touching anything. We're just going to stop going to movies. Going out to eat for a while. I'll put $500 in." $500 is worth a lot of money if this is right in ten years.

PAT: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

WENCES: Yeah. Yeah. That's my point, is that the second most irresponsible thing you could do is not to have any. Right? It's so asymmetrical, that you can have something that doesn't really -- is not material to you, but it can have a very material impact on your life.

So why not do it?

 

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

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatism as stewardship

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding what is broken

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

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

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

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

A creed for the rising generation

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

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

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

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

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

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

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

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global reality.

And moral reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our faith is almost gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why can't we open the government?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not in nostalgia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A conservative in 2025, '26.

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

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

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

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

And one can't be stronger than the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

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

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

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

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.