Ryan: Who will save our shopping malls now?

February 12, 2020

Photo by Kevin Ryan

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

A woman in a black-and-white sweater vacuumed Gardner-Collier jewelry store. No customers. No reason to vacuum.

Penn Central Mall in Oskaloosa, Iowa, a town of roughly 11,000 people. The building looks like hell, attached to a Hy-Vee and a Goodwill.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

But on Feb. 3, 2020, the mall showed hints of activity in anticipation of Democratic presidential nominee Andrew Yang. Three or four dozen people, all wearing Yang 2020 apparel. Including the cheeky "MATH" hat.

"Is he here?" they kept asking.

Yang had spent the past few weeks with Dave Chappelle, who performed a few shows, and made calls, including this gem.

And now, with the caucuses in a day, it was time to let Iowans decide.

Walk through the tinted doors into the south entrance of Penn Central Mall, and to your right, for an uncomfortably long distance, a wall of trinkets and knick-knacks and replica souvenirs. Useless trophies. All the other hallways throb with wallpaper that clearly hadn't been updated since 1980, so the whole place resembled the hotel from Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Besides the Yang supporters, there were only a dozen other people, and they seemed to walk in circles, saying nothing.

No kiosks. No food court. Not even a Wetzel's Pretzels.

Photo, caption: The same cheesy song blared out of a boombox around the corner as a color-guard team practiced, huddling into one corner of the giant carpeted promenadePhoto by Kevin Ryan

Then, turn left, past the Merle Norman Cosmetics with an old green sign. Toward an arcade — now abandoned, chain-locked, doors tinted. You can still see banks of pinball machines and air hockey tables and videogame cabinets like at the old-school pizzerias.

Across from the shuttered nail salon with no window was Andrew Yang's 2020 Presidential Oskaloosa headquarters.
He Intentionally chose abandoned malls like Penn Central Mall for his campaign sites.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Because he believes in the cultural and commercial revitalization of these American institutions. His idea is an extension of his human-centered capitalism: "Humans are more important than money. The unit of a Human Capitalism economy is each person, not each dollar. Markets exist to serve our common goals and values."

With the American Mall Act, Yang would "redirect tax incentives away from big-box retailers and toward more sustainable employers—or even non-commercial uses."

What's more American than a shopping mall?

Unfulfilled

In the 22nd season of South Park, the town gets an Amazon fulfillment center, which quickly becomes a monopoly, and it destroys local business, employing everyone so that their wages become a kind of company scrip they use exclusively for Amazon purchases, a reference to Amazon's "gamification" system.

The villain, Jeff Bezos, resembles Star Trek's Talosians, the ghastly, bulb-headed aliens, who plan to capture the USS Enterprise and enslave its crew for the purposes of breeding. Bezos monitors the townspeople through their Amazon Echo devices.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

In "Unfulfilled" the ninth episode, the factory workers go on strike, and Bezos cuts off their accounts. Unexpected heroes emerge from a derelict mall, former employees who've been trapped there so long they turned green and mangled and rotten, hideous creatures based on the Morlocks, an underground-dwelling from H.G. Wells's novel "The Time Machine."

The mutant mall workers become scabs and the fulfillment center. And, after a bizarre revolution that involves Santa Clause and a cannabis farm and a talking piece of feces, the entire town shows up to City Hall to tell Bezos that they're taking their town back.

Dead Malls

There's something post-apocalyptic about dead malls. A once extravagant giant, eroding. Former cathedrals of consumption slumping into vacancy and disrepair.

So naturally the disintegration of a once-vital cultural institution has both alarmed and intrigued us. You know how there's a subreddit for everything? Dead Malls is a running catalogue of all things Dead Mall, and with 78,000 subscribers.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

One estimate holds that roughly one in four malls in America will close by 2022.

The dead mall phenomenon began in the early 1990s, as the vacancy rate started to rise and the consumer traffic began to dwindle.

Department store giants like Macy's and JcPenney, bring traffic, serve as anchor tenants, that draw people to the mall, making them vital for the success of the smaller businesses that rely on passersby.

Enclosed shopping malls, once an emblem of Post-War America, began losing customers to big-box stores like Walmart, Ikea, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond.

Department store giants began to feel the hit. And when they hurt, every part of the shopping mall ecosystem suffers.
Then — Bezos.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

E-commerce accounted for 12 percent of retail sales in the country, amounting to $3.46 trillion, up from 3.6% in 2008.

2007 marked a tipping point, the first time in 50 years that no new enclosed shopping malls were built in America. Not one. It was five years before another was built, City Creek Mall Center in Salt Lake City. In 2010 came the retail apocalypse, when brick-and-mortar retail stores began closing at a steepening clip.

The first thing everyone I talked to about this story said, "Malls are dead because of Amazon."

Yes. But research indicates that the issue is far more complicated, with numerous variables involved. Real estate research group Costar pointed to the cost of upkeep, shifting demographics and out-of-date tenants.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Our expectations for a shopping experience have evolved. More often, open-air markets and outlet malls give us what we once found in the massive concrete compounds of enclosed shopping malls.

There are a few oddities. Ulta Beauty, the cosmetics chain, is booming in malls. Dave & Busters, with its flexible real estate model, has done incredibly well, with 10 percent growth a year, a third of their locations are inside malls.

The commentary about shopping malls is often either bleak — malls are dying and will soon be obsolete — or optimistic — malls are just evolving to fit the needs of our digital world.

In reality, it's a blend of both.

The way we shop has changed, with Amazon. Because we're also changing the way we spend money. And we're never going to go back. But that doesn't mean we have to get rid of malls. And not all malls are in trouble.

And we can always rest our hope on Gen Z.

Shopping Mall Ecosystem

The success or failure of a mall usually depends on the area it's located. Malls in wealthier communities continue to thrive.They've undergone a revitalization. Malls in middle-class and lower income areas, however, are suffering.

Abandoned malls also happen to be bad for neighborhoods, with less traffic and industry, the crime rates increase. When a mall sinks, it brings the surrounding neighborhoods down with it.

Malls are ranked on a three-tiered system. Class A, Class B, Class C, with A being the most successful and C the least. These are determined by sales per square foot, the average revenue divided by the selling area in square feet. At the very top of the foodchain, you've got Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, which stands as the most valuable mall in America, boasting $1,450 sales per square foot, with a $5.74 billion total asset value.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

So pick a city. Take my hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for instance.

Class A malls are the thriving malls Simon Property Group, General Growth Properties, Macerich and Westfield, with $500 or more in sales per square foot. Like Woodland Hills Mall, near Broken Arrow. It boasts Tulsa's only Apple Store, of the 272 nationwide. Owned by Simon Property Group, it has two bus routes, 580 seats in its food court. There's even a Texas De Brazil Brazilian steakhouse. Located in a thriving area, with big-box stores and restaurants. It's the mall you go to when you want to see the fancy Santa.

The drop-off from Class A is fairly sharp. Class B malls aren't doing well at all, with $300 to $500 in sales per square foot. Promenade Mall has fiddled with repossession — did you know that malls can be repossessed? — but the traffic is still decent because it's more centrally-located. In April of this year, the JCPenney will be closing, Dillard's will be the only anchor store. But while vacancies are noticeable, there are tenants to replace them, however unconventional. Like how the former Mervyn's has been converted into a Sky Fitness & Wellbeing, a Tulsa-based gym chain.

Class C malls are in bad shape, sometimes worse than bad. Less than $300 in sales per square foot, with high vacancies, usually in lower income areas, on the brink of bankruptcy or abandonment. And "greyfields" are malls where the annual sales-per-square-foot drops below $150.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Eastland Mall, in East Tulsa, the most inaccessible of the three, in a less developed area. A gradual slide from the 1990s. Closures in the early 2000s. Unable to find brand-name tenants, the owners leased to dance studios, martial arts schools, even a country music bar and a wedding chapel. By 2006, it had become a dead mall, and the Simon Property Group put it up for sale. It's at this point of a mall's life when things can get pretty ugly. But Eastland serves as proof that even a gutted mall can be brought to life.

A North-Carolina developer bought it for $2.8 million, rebranded it as Eastgate Metroplex, renovated it, and now it's used as office space, with call centers for Coca Cola, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Capital One. A University of Phoenix campus, a food-handler permit training center, a family health clinic, and a DMV, with the mall's entire lowel level as its waiting area.

Recycling

A 17-minute drive from Washington D.C. at the Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virgina, Macy's , a homeless shelter, with 60 beds and toilets uprooted from an abandoned Lord & Taylor.

Google offices at Mayfield Mall in Mountain View, California.

A hockey rink at Hickory Hollow Mall in Antioch, Tennessee.

Following a tornado in 2011 that killed 161 people in Joplin and ravaged the high school, students relocated to Northpark Mall for several years. A few blocks from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, the Galleria at Erieview, known for its glass exterior, once served as a massive urban greenhouse farm called Gardens Under Glass, which has since closed, but the mall has since been remodeled as a YMCA.

Last November, the Mall of America, the biggest mall in the nation, opened a walk-in medical clinic, with a pharmacy, a radiology room, and laboratories.

Fitting, then, that the oldest shopping mall in our country, the Arcade Providence, in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, repurposed its upper two floors into 48 micro-apartments — between 225 and 775 square feet. On the first floor, various boutiques, as well as a bar, a coffee shop, a pizzeria, a bookstore, and a spa.

House of the Lord

The earliest Christians met in their homes or synagogues, not churches. It wasn't until 230 years after the death of Jesus Christ that the first church, the Europos church, was built as a place of worship.

The Bible doesn't include guidelines for where, specifically, Christians have to worship. Joel Osteen holds services in the 16,800-seat arena that many Houstonians still call The Summit, home to the Houston Rockets for 28 years.

Lexington Mall in Lexington, Kentucky, built on the former grounds of Eilerslie estate, constructed by Abraham Lincoln's father-in-law. It began to decline in the early 1990s, and in 2005, the lost the only remaining retailer, Dillard's. Southland Christian Church — an evangelical megachurch founded in 1956 — has several satellite campuses around northeast Kentucky. It bought Lexington Mall in 2010 for $8 million, and rebuilt it into official campus of the church. They use the Dillard's for nurseries and classrooms.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Coffee and hot chocolate, open mic nights , blood drives, concerts, game nights at Church in the Mall, in Heath, Ohio Indian Mound Mall, a C Class mall, a ghost town, with $242 sales per square foot, and no restaurants except a Wetzel's and those are the sloths of the restaurant kingdom — like, not terrible, but would you rather see a sloth or a killer whale?

For a while there, every Sunday and Wednesday, you could find worshippers at the Euclid Square Shopping Mall in Euclid, Ohio. In the old Lane Bryant, was New Praise Ministries. Across from it, in a former One Price Clothing outlet, was World of Faith Christian Center. In total, there were 22 other churches inside the mall. It closed in 2016, because of leaks, demolished two years later. In its place, an Amazon fulfillment center.

Yang Arrives

In Oscaloosa, Yang's supporters all huddled into the crowded shopface of the room, scoping around to catch a glimpse of Yang out the back door. They'd bottle-necked into the room and they appeared to be stuck, clogged.

Yang's bus chugged down the sidestreet behind the mall.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

His wife had traveled along with him. Pictures of the two of them leaving a canvass lunch in Davenport had sprouted up on Twitter.

His red-and-beige scarf, his boxy shoes.

Yang gave the entire speech through a karaoke speaker with a distorted microphone.

He looked tired, indifferent. Maybe, in that moment, he was sick of campaigning.

When he finished, Mark Morrison's "Return of the Mack" started playing through the karaoke speaker. After that, Drake. Fittingly, "Started from the Bottom." Because Yang started from the bottom now he's here.

People asking for selfies or blurting out phrases. To my immediate left, an older man missing some crucial teeth kept shouting, "Andrew! Andrew! Andrew!"

When Yang turned in the man's direction, the man thrusted a wiry baseball hat and a Sharpie toward Yang. A dozen people formed a wall between Yang and the man. But this guy was adamant. Yang stared back, as if perplexed. Nodded, smiled.

Then the man turned his wiry cap around to reveal a giant iron-on patch of a marijuana leaf. "Sign my hat, Andrew!"

Before Yang could fully react, one of his campaign staff ushered him out of the room, apologizing to the YangGang with a sense of imperative.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Then he was off again. Outside briefly before shuffling back onto the Yang tour bus. From there, he returned to Des Moines, to wait for the results of the caucuses. Then on to New Hampshire, where his 2020 campaign to become president will come to an end.

Still, it's worth remembering Yang's campaign slogans: "Not Left, Not Right, Forward".

New stories come out every Monday and Thursday. Check out my Twitter. Send all notes, tips, corrections to kryan@blazemedia.com

GLENN

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

GLENN

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

GLENN

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

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

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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.