Ryan: Kamala Harris and the wheels on the bus

December 05, 2019

Photo by Sean Ryan

Kevin is an award-winning writer who focuses on long-form literary nonfiction and investigative reporting.

This fall, I saw Kamala Harris 15-odd times, and wrote five stories about her, because she was on fire. By the time I finished the stories, she had begun a nosedive that finally made contact a few days ago with the suspension of her 2020 presidential bid. I've released one of the stories already, an account of what was one of the most magical moments in my reporting, this is the second. May the other three rest easy.

Acrobats leapt around the padded floors of world-renowned Chow's Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, an affluent suburb of Des Moines that once belonged to the Sac Tribe.

Half-a-mile away, Kamala Harris was rousing a crowd.

Photo by Sean Ryan

People of all ages had jammed into this marble-floor rotunda, the colonnaded hub of Valley Southwoods Freshman High School. Something like the Ancient Greek agora, the open area where everyone gathered.

Harris is a lifelong performer. As a girl, she sang in the church choir. As a teenager, she traveled to different community centers, to talent shows and fundraisers, as part of a six-person dance troupe.

Now, she is not a dancer so much as a boxer or a chess player or, better yet, a big game hunter with a collection of heads, the newest of which is, oddly, her own.

*
She doddled across the makeshift stage, between a pillar inscribed with the word "Gratitude" and one that said "Attitude."

At one point, her microphone went out like a mic-drop, and she shouted, "Next question" then everybody laughed.

Then the next microphone went out. So she spoke without a microphone, with a determined look that said "All right, Kamala, prove to them you can think quickly, in a charming, down-to-earth way."

People got quiet, leaned forward. Occasionally they laughed in unison. Sometimes they clapped.

Within two minutes she had a new microphone, but by then people had grown accustomed to her softer voice.

She grinned vigorously. She was the dangling punchline that people skipped the joke for.

*

They were like worshippers and she was their pagoda. She spoke facing a pillar that said Loyalty.

In the parking lot, her purple-dominant bus with the words "FOR THE PEOPLE" emblazoned along one side, and "HARRIS" on the other. Above it all, a trenching blue radiated the sky, dappled here and there with cottonballs, feathered topiaries. It was barely 80 degrees.

Photo by Sean Ryan

"We need a new Commander in Chief," she shouted, in the crowded high school. Everybody loved that one. The confidence. The certainty. The boldness. The wild and soft look to her eyes. Almost bravado. Almost arrogance. Maybe it was the look of a leader. Quite possibly the stare of Mark Antony or Napoleon Bonaparte, Che Guevara or Margaret Thatcher, Cleopatra or Queen Victoria. The nestled glare of power, real power, bolstered by the natural ability to make it hers.

Then the crowd started chanting.

Ka!

Mall!

Ah!

Ka!

Mall!

Ah!

*

As she does in nearly every speech, Harris talked about her "3a.m. agenda." It's an important question, one that every candidate ought to be asking. What keeps us up at night, as people, as ordinary Americans?

Photo by Sean Ryan

Between thoughts she stopped, pointed to her husband. "Hi, Doug," smiling.

And the people cheered!

The tear-jerker of her stump speech was about how her first grade teacher believed in her. Believed in her so much that she attended Harris' high school graduation.

Every time she said the line about believing in children, people cooed. Several women put their hands over their hearts and sighed.

Photo by Sean Ryan

It helps that's she was saying this at a high school. If she stuck to education maybe people would forget the slew of tiny controversies she's attracted over the years.

Then they laughed when she followed it with the quip about how we were maybe not as special as we thought.
Sometimes she laughed along with them.

"We need action," she often said. "We need action. We need action."

Then she said, "we don't lack ideas." Then she did the thing where she complimented her fellow candidates. Then she talked about what she will do as President. Then she said, "it's time to act."

The high school graduation rate in Iowa is 88 percent, 17 percent above the national average. Iowa also boasts the nation's highest literacy rate.

Photo by Sean Ryan

"In the America we believe in," she said, and people listened deeply. She repeated the phrase like it was a line in a Walt Whitman poem. "In the America we believe in … In the America we believe in …" It was one of the most compelling parts of a compelling stump speech.

Her eyes got misty, and she said, "By our very nature, we are aspirational."

When she spoke, she incited deep emotions within the audience. Her audience. Nobody was keeping quiet. Not after that rally. They only spoke when Harris was not speaking, as if maybe she knew what they wanted to say.

Photo by Sean Ryan

She apportioned blame to Trump himself. She's called Trump a "predator," citing her work prosecuting sexual deviants as proof of her expertise in handling those types.

"He didn't pull the trigger," she said. "But he certainly tweeted out the ammunition."

She was calling Trump a racist before the rest of the candidates had caught onto the punchiness of the accusation.

Kamala Harris Calls Donald Trump A Racist, Calls for Decriminalization of Sex Workwww.youtube.com

Now, she was fired up. Unlike the day before, she was yelling her points. All her quiet voice was gone. The Kamala aggressiveness fully on display.

*

The other words on pillars around the circular room:

Self Control

Respect

Compassion

Empathy

Courage.

Photo by Sean Ryan

*

Harris had given a spectacular performance. Her fourth rally that day. And immediately after, she would be speaking at Jasper Winery, where she'd display yet more of her prowess. So underhanded and petty, vicious and caustic, combative and clever. It was a joy to watch, like a good boxing match.

White button-up shirts, khaki jeans, and black Converse All-Stars with black laces. A stamped golden necklace.
She slowly paced the stage with somber control.

*

The day before, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, she was a different person, mostly.

"Hi, what's your name," she asked. Then she turned, smiling, "I feel like Oprah."

Photo by Sean Ryan

Kamala Harris, who turned 55 in October, made tiny silly quips like this all the time.

It was 5:00 p.m., and Harris had started late because her tour bus maxes at 55 mph, and everywhere she goes, people want her time.

Photo by Sean Ryan

Now, a fresh crowd had gathered in the band room of Fort Dodge Middle School. Mostly middle-aged. In t-shirts or blouses and cargo shorts or khakis or jeans. Packed room, all seats taken, people slanting along the walls.

Harris often refers to children as "our babies." At the middle school, in a room full of teachers and patient-eyed children, she leaned on the phrase even harder than usual.

*

During the Q&A, a kid in a Washington Redskins Jersey raised his hand. Harris quickly seized on the opportunity.

"I'm a rising 5th grader," the boy said. People laughed because it's funny when kids say stupid things with an elegant timbre. He did not laugh, because most kids don't realize how cruel life can be so we adults needlaughter. He asked, could Harris imagine what school was like for him, with all these shootings and mass shooting drills and all that fear all the time?

Photo by Sean Ryan

Consensus was, "Ouch" and "Our country? It's in trouble." Then the entire room turned to Harris. She had the messiah look. Yet another of Harris' looks that deeply spooked my dad.

"I was from you to me away from her," he said. "To the side of the stage. And I swear that she had a tear at the edge of her eye the whole time. She could have let it fall at any moment."

She's telegenic, photogenic. In 2013, then-President Obama took heat for describing Harris as "best-looking attorney general in the country." She knows how to turn a phrase. She knows how to go viral. If anything, she has mastered these talents a little too well. At times it's like she's an actress, the way she can control her affect and emotions, aware of each shifting muscle and arched smile.

*

The boy in the Redskins jersey gawked at Harris as she told him that she had answers to his heart-rending question.

Politically, Harris showed an incredible amount of charm. She played the role of mother. Because that's the job she was vying for. The ultimate big momma. The lady in charge. The matriarch of the world.

Photo by Sean Ryan

"We judge a society by how it treats its children," she said.

She is good with kids. Doesn't have any of her own. Two step-kids. They call her their "Momala."

*

A row bass drums stacked on cabinets looked like a herd of wooly mammoths, facing the table behind a row of ferns. The acoustics in that room were perfect. Designed to capture every musical sound in its purest form.

Photo by Sean Ryan

This environment lended itself perfectly to any pauses and music. It was sultry in that middle school bandroom, about 86 degrees. Made hotter by the studio lights facing the table and the media with all their cameras and recorders and laptops. The floor was a snake pit of extension cords and outlets and cables. At both sides of the room, skyhook light-rigs like you see on movie sets.

The room cooled down within a few minutes of Harris's opening lines.

On the wall, laminated posters advised us to "Be Kind. Be Responsible. Be Safe. Be Respectful." Each imperative had a long-winded explanation. If you went to school in America you know the kind of wacky font the poster had, and the background full of neon shapes right out of the 1980s. How did advice so often turn into that? Into trite, uncool attempts at what? inspiration? Weren't these the same truisms and half-phrases that politicians used? A good thing, overall, this desire to improve the world. But was there a reason that the posters were rarely updated?

"Be Kind," we tell children on repeat. "Be Responsible, Be Safe, Be Respectful." And here was this kid asking about mass shooting drills.

*

Harris was far more composed in person than during, say, the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. You remember those? That was long, long ago, maybe a year. The hearings were where most people first encountered Harris, captivated or annoyed by her dramatic and at times ruthless performances.

Photo by Sean Ryan

This is part of her divide. Her duality. Commentators often hint at it, but they struggle to capture its allure. In person, you can feel it. A shawoman in punk rock sneakers. For some reason, she reminded me of the character Circe, from Homer's Odyssey,who turns Odysseus' men to swine and, well, does other stuff.

Elected to Senate in 2016, she has approached her job on the Senate Judiciary Committee with the same toughness that made her a formidable prosecutor. And she operates with that belligerent style.

Like when she roasted former Attorney General Jeff Sessions so ruthlessly that he got flustered.

Many on the left label her a cop, as pointed out by the Atlantic in the article "When Kamala was a Top Cop."

More subtly, the New Yorker described her as a law-and-order Democrat. Another way to say it is that she has a lot of experience at the highest levels of law enforcement in the country. Rebecca Young, a senior trial attorney in the San Francisco public defender's office, told the New Yorker, "Much of what [Harris] says is driven by political expediency, and that's why it becomes difficult to trust. We know she advocated for high bails around guns, drugs — around everything, frankly, but misdemeanors."
Tulsi Gabbard went straight for the jugular during the second Democratic debate:

Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence -- she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California.

She was referring to comments that Harris made during February, 2019 appearance on "The Breakfast Club" radio show.

"What were you listening to when you was high?" Charlamagne Tha God asked her. "What was on? What song was on?"

"Was it Snoop?" DJ Envy asked.

"Yeah, definitely Snoop," Harris laughed. "Tupac for sure."

This itself has provoked controversy. If Harris graduated in 1989Snoop Dogg's debut, "Doggystyle," came out in 1993. Tupac's "2Pacalypse Now" came out in 1991.

After the backlash, Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy appeared on MSNBC to defend Harris

I mean, we wanted to humanize her, not just talk about politics, talk about what she likes, what she does," DJ Envy said. "And I asked what she listens to and she said she listens to Snoop Dogg and Tupac at the same time my co-host was still talking about the marijuana and it was just a funny exchange but she was actually answering me and people took it that she was answering Charlamagne and said she was lying, which was not true.

Problem was, as a D.A., however, Harris had been staunchly against marijuana legalization.

Harris' father — who emigrated from Jamaica for graduate school — also took issue with the Breakfast Club interview.

Specifically, her answer to the question about does she smoke pot. "Half my family's from Jamaica," she said. "Are you kidding me?"

*

The woman who introduced Harris said, "My biggest motivation around Senator Harris is that she genuinely cares about people. And not to say that we all don't care about people. But she cares about people in such a way that is gonna move this country forward."

I was learning that, almost every time, the person who introduced the candidates overdoes the whole "I trust this candidate because they truly care about people."

Harris wore the affect of a careful listener. When she asked a question she'd lower the mic onto the table. Then she'd follow up with a well-crafted answer. Stories that got to the point. Numbered arguments.

Strategic or not, it was admirable. Here she was, a Senator running for the Presidency, and she's asking local special ed teachers questions. Not the other way around.

Although her body language would decline as the campaign continues, it was obvious that she was well-trained in her physical cues, like all the candidates. Except Marianne Williamson. It's the hands. And the affect. And Bernie, of course. Because he doesn't seem to care about surface appearances.

And Yang, sort of. He has body language that isn't political in the slightest, most often with charming effect. Like how, in the Spin Room after the Houston debate, anytime someone interviewed him, he shook their hand. He also flings his arms around like the rapper YG, or many of the other L.A. gangsta rappers from the 1990s. Stiff, yet incredibly confident.

Harris is mostly quiet about her father. He, in turn, has dealt a couple of very public attacks on Harris' character and her lineage, including an article he posted on Jamaica Global Online, claiming that her paternal grandfather owned slaves in Jamaica.

Summers, she and Maya visited their father in Palo Alto, California, home to Stanford University and part of Silicon Valley. The neighbors' children weren't allowed to play with Harris and Maya because they were black.

*

Her mother's family was a member of the Brahmin class, at the top of the caste system. Both of her parents are academics, so she grew up around activists and academics. As she artfully pointed out during the second Democratic Debate, she was bussed to kindergarten as a young girl.

During her Ft. Dodge speech, in the middle school band room, Harris didn't talk about Trump at all. She mentioned her fellow candidates. But she did it with civility, complimenting them. Maybe she took a potshot at Biden. Didn't matter. She was too relaxed for it to come across as offensive.

Photo by Sean Ryan

At several points, she had everyone's attention. Even the media. Even the bored men and women behind station-logoed cameras. In part because she tells a good story.

As soon as she finished, people suctioned toward Harris. They doted. They would have juggled claymores for a chance to say a few sentences to Harris, who kept asking her aides out the side of her mouth, "How's the bus situation? The bus ready?"

She had to jaunt 88 miles north to Clear Lake for Wing Ding at the Surf Ballroom, only able to go 55mph. But the line of people seemed barely to move at all. Seemed to be growing even, somehow. Harris hid a worried look. Smiled for the voters. Smiled for the selfies and the group shots and the jokes she's heard so many times before.

Across the street, a chubby 10-year-old-boy revved around his yard on a go-kart. He spilled into the road, laughing as he did donuts, sending exhaust and rubber into the air.

Next Monday is the final installment of "Field of Dreams," part one of my 2020 election series. I'll pick back up again mid-January, with a unique angle building into the Iowa Caucuses. For updates on any other work, check out my website and my Twitter. Send all ideas, corrections, notes, or hate-mail to kryan@mercurystudios.com. Thanks for reading.

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

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

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

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?

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.