Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned recently in the London Guardian that artificial intelligence “is getting far too little discussion in Congress, the media, and within the general population” despite the speed at which it is developing. “That has got to change.”
To my surprise, as a conservative advocate of limited government and free markets, I agree completely.
AI is neither a left nor a right issue. It is a human issue that will decide who holds power in the decades ahead and whether individuals retain sovereignty.
As I read Sanders’ piece, I kept thinking, “This sounds like something I could have written!” That alone should tell us something. If two people who disagree on almost everything else see the same dangers emerging from artificial intelligence, then maybe we can set aside the usual partisan divides and confront a problem that will touch every American.
I’ve worked in the policy world for more than a decade, and it’s fair to say Bernie Sanders and I have opposed each other in nearly every major fight. I’ve pushed back against his single-payer health care plans. I’ve worked to stop his Green New Deal agenda. On economic policy, Sanders has long stood for the exact opposite of the free-market principles I believe make prosperity possible.
That’s why reading his AI op-ed felt almost jarring. Time after time, his concerns mirrored my own.
Sanders warned about the unprecedented power Silicon Valley elites now wield over this transformational technology. As someone who spent years battling Big Tech censorship, I share his alarm over unaccountable tech oligarchs shaping information, culture, and political discourse.
He points to forecasts showing AI-driven automation could displace nearly 100 million American jobs in the coming decade. I helped Glenn Beck write “Dark Future: Uncovering the Great Reset’s Terrifying Next Phase” in 2023, where we raised the exact same red flag, that rapid automation could destabilize the workforce faster than society can adapt.
Sanders highlights how AI threatens privacy, civil liberties, and personal autonomy. These are concerns I write and speak about constantly. Sanders notes that AI isn’t just changing industry; it’s reshaping the human condition, foreign policy, and even the structure of democratic life. On all of this, he is correct.
When a Democratic Socialist and a free-market conservative diagnose the same disease, it usually means the symptoms are too obvious to ignore.
While Sanders and I share almost identical fears about AI, I suspect we would quickly diverge on the solutions. In his op-ed, he offers no real policy prescriptions at all. Instead, he simply says, “Congress must act now.” Act how? Sanders never says. And to be fair, that ambiguity is a dilemma I recognize.
As someone who argues consistently for limited government, I’m reluctant to call for new regulations. History shows that sweeping, top-down interventions usually create more problems than they solve. Yet AI poses a challenge unlike anything we’ve seen before — one that neither the market nor Congress can responsibly ignore.
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When Sanders says, “Congress must act,” does he want sweeping, heavy-handed regulations that freeze innovation? Does he envision embedding ESG-style subjective metrics into AI systems, politicizing them further? Does he want to codify conformity to European Union AI regulations?
We cannot allow a handful of corporations or governments to embed their subjective values into systems that increasingly manipulate our decisions, influence our communications, and deter our autonomy.
Instead of vague calls for Congress to “do something,” we need a clear framework rooted in enduring American principles.
AI systems (especially those deployed across major sectors) must be built with hard, nonnegotiable safeguards that protect the individual from both corporate and governmental overreach.
This means embedding constitutional values into AI design, enshrining guarantees for free speech, due process, privacy, and equal treatment. It means ensuring transparency around how these systems operate and what data they collect.
This also means preventing ideological influence, whether from Beijing, Silicon Valley, or Washington, D.C., by insisting on objectivity, neutrality, and accountability.
These principles should not be considered partisan. They are the guardrails, rooted in the Constitution, which protect us from any institution, public or private, that seeks too much power.
And that is why the overlap between Sanders’ concerns and mine matters so much. AI is neither a left nor a right issue. It is a human issue that will decide who holds power in the decades ahead and whether individuals retain sovereignty.
If Bernie Sanders and I both see the same storm gathering on the horizon, perhaps it’s time the rest of the country looks up and recognizes the clouds for what they are.
Now is the moment for Americans, across parties and philosophies, to insist that AI strengthen liberty rather than erode it. If we fail to set those boundaries today, we may soon find that the most important choices about our future are no longer made by people at all.
If Democrats seem extreme now, wait until they adopt ranked-choice voting. Some activists inside the party want exactly that — a reform that would push presidential nominations even further left and force establishment figures to navigate an ideological gauntlet to win.
Multiple reports indicate that Democratic Party activists and elected officials are pressuring the party to adopt ranked-choice voting for its 2028 presidential primaries. Axios notes that the push has grown serious enough that top party officials met in late October with advocates including Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), pollster Celinda Lake, and representatives from FairVote Action.
Ranked-choice voting would pour accelerant on a process already pulling Democrats further left.
Such an effort fits a long pattern: For decades, Democrats have shifted presidential nominations away from party leadership. On ranked-choice voting specifically, several states already use it — Maine and Alaska among them — along with deep-blue cities such as New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Ranked-choice voting takes multiple forms, but New York City’s model illustrates the dynamic. Voters rank up to five candidates. If no candidate wins an initial majority, the last-place candidate drops out, and those voters’ second-choice votes are redistributed. This “loser leaves” process continues until a candidate secures a majority.
Assuming rational behavior, Democratic voters would likely rank candidates from more extreme to less extreme. That pattern would advantage the leftmost candidates again and again as lower-preference votes transfer upward.
This structural boost would encourage both supply and demand for extreme candidacies. Candidates on the ideological edge would have more incentive to run. Voters who prefer them would have more influence. Ranked-choice voting’s supporters tout this expanded participation as a virtue.
Offering voters multiple choices would foster coalition-building. Knowing the race may go to multiple rounds, candidates would angle for second- and third-choice votes. The horse-trading once done in old convention “smoke-filled rooms” would unfold publicly through a series of ranked ballots.
But the key question is simple: Why would ranked-choice voting necessarily supercharge extremism inside the Democratic Party? Because the system rewards voters for casting marginal votes — and among today’s Democrats, “marginal” means “further left.”
The party’s ideological shift is measurable. In Gallup’s 2023 polling, 54% of Democrats identified as liberal — an all-time high. Support for democratic socialists in major-city mayoral primaries shows how rapidly the party’s activist base has moved left. In 1995, the liberal share of the party was 25%, roughly equal to conservatives. Three decades later, conservatives make up just 10% of Democrats.
Exit polling confirms the trend: In 2024, 91% of self-identified liberals voted for Kamala Harris; only 9% of conservatives did.
Extrapolate from this trajectory, and the danger becomes even clearer. Extreme candidates increasingly win Democratic primaries in major cities. Those cities dominate statewide Democratic politics. And in closed primaries, only Democrats vote — meaning the hyper-engaged activist left already sets the terms of competition. Ranked-choice voting would amplify that influence. The same voters who nominated democratic socialists in New York and Seattle would wield disproportionate power in a presidential contest.
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Consider how the 2020 Democratic primary might have played out under ranked-choice voting. Joe Biden — an establishment candidate favored by moderates — would have faced a field dominated by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Tom Steyer, and others to his left. Ranked-choice voting would have forced him through a gauntlet designed by the party’s most ideological voters.
This trend is not new. In 1972, George McGovern reshaped Democratic nominating rules and then benefited from the changes. Since then, the party has repeatedly weakened its establishment’s role (with key exceptions). Ranked-choice voting would accelerate that shift dramatically.
With moderates now only 36% of the party, according to Gallup, how could they resist a move toward ranked-choice voting? More importantly, which remaining moderate or establishment Democrat could survive a ranked-choice system dominated by the party’s left wing?
Ranked-choice voting would pour accelerant on a process already pulling Democrats further left. The only question is how long it takes for the party to adopt it — and how long the party can remain viable nationally if it does.
Here’s a message Baby Boomers need to hear: The America you were born into no longer exists.
A rising tide of young Americans are embracing socialism at a pace this country has never seen. Boomers often assume that it's about handouts. It isn't. Beneath the surface is a decades-long campaign so destructive to middle-class mobility that it threatens to push the nation toward civil conflict. The more you study it, the more coordinated it looks.
A people dependent upon ‘gimme gimme’ socialism is an easily managed population. A demoralized middle class keeps the ruling class secure.
In a way, it was.
Short-term profit-maximizing globalists on Wall Street teamed up with the K Street lobbying blob to drown Americans in cheap Chinese goods while saddling them with student debt, consumer debt, and medical debt.
Young people are being priced out of the American dream.
My urgent message to Boomers — especially those who want to keep influence: The kids are not all right.
The America your kids and grandkids know is not the America you knew. Most Boomers were born in the 1950s, when the country was booming — united by postwar optimism, American industrial strength, shared national institutions, Walter Cronkite on one television in every home, full-fat milkshakes, and Elvis shaking up the culture.
Today, we live in a golden age of technological revolution. We are making remarkable advances in space travel, tech, and medicine — increasingly led by the private sector and unapologetic capitalists. But on the basics — housing, health, education — we’re failing the next generation.
In 1955, the median homebuyer was in his late 20s. In 2025, it’s 56. A minimum-wage worker in the 1950s needed roughly seven years of pay to buy a modest home without a mortgage. Today, it’s around 27.
In 1955, a student could pay college tuition by working a few hours a day at minimum wage. Today, that same student would need to work about six hours a day. If a kid wants Yale or any Ivy League school, he would have to work 26.4 hours a day — an impossible figure that illustrates how detached elite education has become from reality.
Here’s a frightening divide: 93% of Boomers say political violence is never justified; 44% of Gen Z say it “sometimes” is.
Ninety-nine percent of kids are not out for blood, but 100% of them face a massive relative disadvantage. The upward mobility Boomers took for granted has been hollowed out by globalist and left-wing policies sold as progress but experienced as decline.
We spent trillions of American dollars on foreign wars, foreign infrastructure, and foreign elections. We borrowed recklessly. Now the dollar is frail. We allowed millions of illegal migrants to enter the country, fueling crime and pushing Americans out of jobs. Young households are buried in debt — not mortgage debt that builds equity, but consumer debt used to numb the anxiety left by a collapse in community and faith.
Here’s the truth: The populist right and the socialist left agree on the diagnosis. Listen to the first half of Bernie Sanders’ interview with Joe Rogan in June. For an hour, Bernie describes America’s economic troubles. Most people, right or left, would nod along.
Then comes the pivot: Socialism is the cure.
This is the left’s great deceit. Progressives' proposed “solutions” hurt the very people they claim to help.
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Take restrictive zoning and rent regulations — blue-state staples designed to “create” affordable housing. In reality, they choke supply and drive rents higher. Or look at no-cash bail. The neighborhoods hit hardest by serially released offenders are the same minority communities progressives claim to champion. The examples pile up.
So why do left-wing billionaires back these ideas? Simple: Socialism, communism, and their logical end point — fascism — are excellent for entrenched oligarchs. A people dependent upon “gimme gimme” socialism is an easily managed population. A demoralized middle class keeps the ruling class secure.
There is another path.
We must reverse the policies that got us here. Strengthen education outcomes, lower health care costs, rebuild domestic supply chains, expand American energy generation, and restore competence to the workforce.
Boomers, if you don’t lead this shift, your influence will vanish before your next Social Security check arrives. Moderate Democrats already know the socialist tide is rising. They’re afraid to say it out loud.
The Gen Z and Millennial voting bloc will dominate the 2028 election. They are demanding change. Moderates — in both parties — are being replaced by extremists.
You have a choice: Allow yourselves to be absorbed into the socialist machine, or correct the mistakes of the last two decades, return power to citizens, and rebuild access to the American dream.
If you want to know how conservatives should think about media ownership policy, a good starting point is to head opposite the people who think that President Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr are “autocratic,” “fascist,” and engaged in “mob-style government.” Those are charges levied in recent comments from Free Press, a left-wing nonprofit opposing the proposed reforms to the FCC’s rules capping ownership of broadcast stations.
A strong conservative consensus exists in favor of reform or outright repeal of the ownership limits. Exhibit A is a letter signed by leaders of 18 conservative organizations, including Heritage Action, the Center for Renewing America, Americans for Prosperity, and Americans for Tax Reform. This represents a broad coalition from MAGA to the Reaganite right.
Reading the list of commentators reveals a 'who’s who' of the irrelevant and Trump-hating.
A few voices now feign uncertainty about where the White House or FCC will land. But conservatives don’t need a crystal ball. When every liberal and left-wing advocacy shop in Washington locks arms on one side of a policy debate, the right answer is almost always the opposite.
The liberal groups are not powerful in themselves — Democrat FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez has already sent strong signals that she opposes repeal, and in all events, her single vote cannot stop commission action as long as Republican appointees remain united. But the position of Gomez and her outside allies on the left on a controversial policy question should give any conservative pause — why would we agree with the other party?
When the commission last invited comment on this topic in August, TVTech reported, “a large number of filings from unions, consumer groups, civil rights groups, church groups, liberal organizations, free speech advocates and others have come out strongly opposed to any change to the current 39% ownership cap.” Indeed, reading the list of commentators reveals a “who’s who” of the irrelevant and Trump-hating.
The unions, for instance, include the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians and the News Guild. The Writers Guild of America, which also opposes the reforms, recently attacked President Trump for a supposed “un-American … unprecedented, authoritarian assault” on the First Amendment, complete with the line: “We don’t have a king, we have a president.” These are the advocates of maintaining the caps on media ownership by Nexstar, Sinclair, and others.
Another joint FCC filing included a laundry list of left-wing groups: United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Hispanic Federation, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network separately weighed in, warning that reform would be contrary to its mission of “economic justice, political empowerment, and fair representation in all aspects of public life.” The horror!
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This isn’t the FCC’s first time down this path. When the first Trump administration floated reforms along these lines, 21 Senate Democrats and one independent (Bernie Sanders) sent a letter opposing any further flexibility under the caps. This has been liberal orthodoxy for decades.
Hollywood labor unions, left-wing pressure groups, Al Sharpton, Bernie Sanders — these are not normally reliable predictors of good policy. Broken clocks may still be right twice a day, but this is not one of those moments. Trump administration leaders should be deeply skeptical when they’re asked to be on the same side as all of these people.
Welcome to Sesame Street. The word of the day is “affordability.”
Democrats have treated it as a magic spell ever since their 2024 collapse drove the party’s approval to historic lows. New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and governors-elect Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey ran very different races, yet all credited their wins to a relentless focus on the cost of living. Mamdani in particular used the term like an incantation to bury a record full of extremist statements and friendly nods toward terrorist movements.
Turning ‘affordability’ into a political idol guarantees policies that cannibalize the future.
Democrats also see the “affordability” push as an opportunity to turn Republicans’ most effective weapon against them. Joe Biden’s low approval ratings on the economy dogged him throughout his entire term, and his constant insistence that things were improving did not cut the (suddenly expensive) mustard.
On his first day back in office, Donald Trump ordered “all executive departments and agencies to deliver emergency price relief.” But Democrats’ stronger-than-expected showing in the 2025 elections has GOP strategists wondering whether that relief is moving too slowly to blunt the message.
Trump, who dominated the 2024 campaign by hammering prices, sounds irritated that his best issue has turned into a liability. He avoids the word “affordability,” though it has begun sneaking into his teleprompter.
“We’re making incredible strides to Make America Affordable Again,” he told the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum. “Democrats had the worst inflation in history. They had the highest prices in history. The country was going to hell. ... We’re bringing prices down.”
Both parties now talk about the cost of living as their top priority, and struggling families need the attention. But a politics built around “affordability” can easily turn into a race to the bottom — an auction of quick fixes that burn next year’s seed corn for a bump in the polls.
Plenty of shortcuts tempt politicians. Mamdani floated the most obvious one: freezing rents across one million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City. If he pulls it off — a big “if” — tenants will enjoy short-term relief. Yet the move will also choke new construction and allow existing homes to deteriorate as landlords lose the revenue needed to maintain them.
Even Republicans flirt with shortcuts. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) teamed up on a bill capping credit-card interest rates at 10%. Cheaper interest sounds great until you follow the consequences. A hard cap would force lenders to reject more applications, denying low-income Americans the credit they often need to escape poverty or cover emergencies.
Republicans face their own affordability temptation as well. AI data centers, which consume enormous amounts of power, are driving up electric bills faster than increased energy production can offset. Slowing or freezing data-center construction could save households money for a year or two. It would also cripple America’s position in the AI race with China and cost the country trillions of dollars in long-term economic growth.
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Trump’s tariffs have become a favorite target for Democrats claiming to champion affordability. The administration recently eased tariffs on food imports such as bananas and coffee. But gutting the entire tariff regime — if the Supreme Court allows it to remain in place — would be a profound mistake.
Tariffs have pushed some prices upward, but the Harvard Business School tariff tracker estimates that only 20% of tariff costs reach consumers. Foreign companies and foreign governments absorb the rest.
Meanwhile, tariff revenue strengthens the government’s financial footing, and trillions of dollars in investment continue to flow into new and expanded U.S. manufacturing. Reverting to the failed neoliberal free-trade dogma in the name of “affordability” might give politicians a quick approval boost. It would gut the industrial base, weaken the budget, and destroy the very blue-collar jobs voters were promised.
Blaming the other party for rising prices works because it taps into real pain. But it also encourages the kind of policymaking you would expect from the child in the famous experiment who couldn’t wait 15 minutes for a second marshmallow. He ate the first one instantly and lost the reward.
The cost of living in America (to say nothing of thriving) is far too high. Families need real relief. But turning “affordability” into a political idol guarantees policies that cannibalize the future. Prosperity demands discipline. A country that chases quick fixes will never escape its long-term economic traps.
We have received multiple-page Christmas letters, which should be punished as the hate crime that it is.
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