I grew up in an age of assassinations. The President, John F. Kennedy, was gunned down in 1963, when I was nine years old. His brother, Robert Kennedy, was killed five years later, little more than a month after I saw him at a campaign event in my home town. That was the same month Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Malcolm X had been killed three years before.
Americans often speak proudly of our peaceful transitions of power, but that is because we are only thinking in terms of political power. Yes, compared to the violence that often accompanied the change of rulers in imperial Rome or medieval England, our transfers of leadership are relatively tranquil. Our system of free elections circumvents the need for violent revolution.
But in a democratic republic, political power is bestowed by the people, and the ideas of the people are shaped by the culture. When cultural power changes hands in the U.S., that’s when the shooting starts. The Civil War did not begin because Abraham Lincoln threatened to free the slaves. He didn’t. The war began because his election telegraphed to the slave states that the tide of the culture was shifting against them.
The 1960s marked the dawn of another such shift. A leftward swing was in the making, a rebellion against the post-war consensus. New voices were rising in the academies and in the arts, voices that challenged the efficacy of capitalism, the treatment of minorities, the roles of women, and traditional norms of language, behavior, and dress. It was as that shift was forming, that leaders who spoke even moderately of change began to seem threatening, that rhetoric became inflated and incendiary, and that dealing death began to seem a reasonable political action in the worst of minds. It didn’t work. If anything, it destroyed reasonable leaders like the Kennedys and MLK, and allowed them to be replaced by radicals and grifters.
Today is also such a time.
For at least the last thirty years, American culture has been all but monopolized by the Left. The news media are almost exclusively located in left-wing coastal enclaves. Journalists’ political donations go to Democrats by a huge margin. The news coverage of Donald Trump’s largely moderate policies is relentlessly negative, not to mention hysterical, childish, and absurd. In Hollywood, outspoken conservatives are vanishingly rare. Those less entrenched than, say, Clint Eastwood and Jon Voight keep their mouths shut and, when they don’t, it hobbles their careers. In the academies, conservative speakers are routinely greeted by demonstrations and violence. Liberal arts courses are no longer liberal: they are indoctrination centers where leftist critical theory drowns out the voices of classic writers and thinkers of the past.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1247-the-opposite-of-murder?elementPosition=0&amp;row=5&amp;rowHeadline=The+Andrew+Klavan+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
Only such a cultural monopoly could have spread the radical ideas of the left and bullied businesses and citizens into pretending to believe their ridiculous untruths. People can’t change sex. Dysfunction in black communities is caused by black culture, not racism. Women have grown steadily unhappier under feminism. Homosexuality is not a source of pride. Facts are not hate speech, and what some may call hate speech is protected under the First Amendment. These are not bigoted, mean, radical opinions. To those who break through the fog of leftist narrative, there are obvious conclusions drawn from the evidence of our own eyes. The years in which the Left was able to declare these self-evident truths unspeakable were years of cultural tyranny.
But now, the leftist cultural monopoly is crumbling. New media — like the Daily Wire, Elon Musk’s X, and the Megyn Kelly and Joe Rogan podcasts — have risen to prominence in spite of widespread attempts by the government and social media outlets to censor us, demonize us, and starve us out. We have not yet developed the cultural power of radical left-wing institutions like the New York Times, Yale University, and Disney, but we are able to debunk the distortions of those institutions almost as fast as they can produce them.
On the night Donald Trump was re-elected, it was immediately evident that the tide had turned. The ceaseless news stories calling Trump an authoritarian, the banana republic lawfare with which the powerful tried to imprison him, the media-wide (and mordantly hilarious) attempts to depict first Joe Biden then Kamala Harris as viable presidential candidates — all these strategies and more were not enough to create a narrative the majority of voters would believe. Like the American Revolutionaries who inspired us, our ragtag band of culture warriors had beaten back an Empire of Lies.
Charlie Kirk was the next generation of that effort. He believed in God, in family, and in American liberty, things that most Americans have believed for nearly 250 years. He utilized techniques of open debate pioneered by forerunners like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder to invade the academic enclaves of the left and create free conversations that freed minds. Inscriptions on the bullets in the gun that killed him suggest the killer believed Charlie to be a fascist. The killer is responsible for his own actions, but that utterly false belief was impressed upon him through the power of a culture too long dominated by radicals.
That culture is over. That power is changing hands.
I sometimes joke to my wife that I am the Ernie Pyle of the Culture War. Not a speaker-slash-debater like Ben. Not an activist master of samizdat like Matt Walsh. Not a future politician like Michael Knowles. Just a writer in the trenches who tries to get an up-close view of the fight and report what’s happening.
This is what’s happening: We’re winning.
Watch your six.
* * *
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is now available for Pre-Order. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>

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In America, Violence Arises When Cultural Power Shifts

In America, Violence Arises When Cultural Power Shift

Andrew Klavan

Charlie Kirk

Conservatives

Culture

Democrats

Leftists

Murder

Political Violence

Words will never be able to convey how devastated we are that Charlie Kirk was taken from us far too soon.
I had the honor and privilege of not just knowing Charlie professionally as a fellow warrior in the conservative movement, but as a close friend and my most influential mentor for the past eight years.
All of you know Charlie for what you saw on social media and television — a fierce fighter with strong convictions who deeply loved our country and fearlessly advocated for his vision for a stronger future. I spent a lot of time with this Charlie — speaking on college campuses and facing the crowds of protesters with a smile on our faces, staying up into all hours of the night live-streaming election coverage, and breaking the news of the day on The Charlie Kirk Show.
What most of you never saw, what God blessed me with the opportunity to witness, was the Charlie who lived off-screen. The young man who lived for a Chicago Cubs game and watched them in green rooms before speeches all over the country. The person who recorded silly videos with my siblings at the endless political conferences we attended over the years. The guy who would spar with me over TikTok’s necessity to save the country as I pleaded with him to finally make an account (and thank God he did). The friend who personally wrote my recommendation letter for my job application for a position at the White House. The husband who inspired me to get serious about the type of man I wanted to marry. The father who’d sing with his beautiful wife and children on FaceTime while traveling away from home, promising that daddy would be home soon. The enthusiastic big-brother-figure who spent an hour ignoring his fans at Mar-a-Lago while dressed to the nines to rattle off parenting advice to my husband and me as we joyfully shared the news of our pregnancy last winter. The servant leader who sought wisdom from God above all else, and deeply yearned for the closest relationship to Christ he could foster.
Today, we are all shocked, devastated, angry, and deeply filled with sorrow — but I unexpectedly also find a glimmer of joy after spending the day with Charlie last week, sharing the stage at a church in central California.
We’d been briefed a few days before that there’d be some protesters outside, so extra security was called in, and we laughed about how this felt like old times when I was a student at Colorado State and he came to campus, making quite a buzz in the process. We dined with the organizers of the event, and Charlie graciously gestured for me to join him in a Q&amp;A with a smaller group of donors before the main speeches, who, fascinatingly, above all else, had questions about the true battle of good and evil waging in our time and the role people of faith must take to continue spreading the light of the gospel.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/thank-you-charlie-kirk?elementPosition=1&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Isabel Brown Show</a></h3>
We get these questions a lot, but something felt different about this event. Charlie (as always) spoke with such powerful moral clarity, but I found myself locked in on every word he said as if I was hearing it for the first time. He radiated wisdom from the Holy Spirit in a way that I had never witnessed, publicly or privately, and it was inspiring to behold.
Moments later, we were whisked into separate green rooms before the actual event began on stage with a crowd of about 2,500 people. I poked my head in to wave to Charlie and his team, and he immediately waved me over to sit down and hang out for about an hour before we delivered our speeches.
Normally, we’d talk about politics and what’s happening in the media, but Charlie only wanted to talk about God and the Church. For about an hour, we jovially debated on matters of theology and spoke about, of all things, heaven. Again, I was so touched by his zeal for his faith that was always pervasive in his life, but seemed especially ignited on this particular day.
I left to give my speech, and Charlie said, “Turn the volume up on that monitor! I want to hear the great Isabel speak!!” To which I giggled, and he told me to break a leg.
After I spoke for about 20 minutes, Charlie took the stage, and again captivated the audience in a way I’ve perhaps never seen. He spoke not just about the importance of fighting for our country, but for humanity to once and for all defeat evil. For us to show up and fight in the spiritual warfare we don’t see with our own two eyes, but is waging on constantly all around us. For several minutes, he spoke to our calling from Christ to be “Salt and Light:” a calling misunderstood by many, but boils down to one action — to transform its surroundings.
He pleaded with the audience, humbly and earnestly, that none of us can be in this fight alone. Nor can we expect someone else to do the fighting for us. Instead, we have to show up, on offense, ready to transform culture and society to be rooted in what is good and true and beautiful. We have to be salt and light.
You could hear a pin drop in the room, and the thunderous applause after he was done speaking was deafening.
To me, Charlie Kirk will always be the perfect embodiment of salt and light. Charlie always remembered his friends — not just when it was convenient for him, but he constantly went out of his way to serve others in the small ways you’ll never hear about in the media. He was a fierce friend and a trusted confidant to all who knew him, humbly putting others before himself whenever he could. But he was also a shining beacon. He inspired a nation and an entire generation to seek and speak the truth, consequences be damned. He knew it was his vocation to inspire others with hope to keep fighting for goodness and for God in a society demanding we sit down and shut up and lose that hope.
He transformed the world. And we will never be the same without him.
It’s not an exaggeration to say I owe everything to Charlie. I owe my career to him, I owe my family to him — it was because of Charlie I met my husband at a TPUSA conference, and my daughter wouldn’t exist otherwise. And, in many ways, I owe my faith to him as I sat in a front row seat, marveling at this extraordinary young man’s quest for the Truth of God day in and day out for nearly a decade of my life.
Thinking back to last week, I am so moved by the fact that Charlie spent so much of his quiet free time in the green room with me, talking about faith and heaven. As people of faith, we know that death is a devastating loss, especially when someone so pure was robbed of life so violently and prematurely. But I rejoice in prayer today, even through tears, knowing that today Charlie is more alive than we are in the fullness of eternal life with his Savior and his anchor in heaven. My heart today is with his beautiful wife and children, and I ask that you pray for them earnestly.
Our hearts are shattered, but we promise to keep showing up tomorrow to be salt and light. We love you, Charlie. Pray for us while we wait and yearn to join you in eternal life.
“If you believe in something, you need to have the courage to fight for those ideas &#8211; not run away from them or try and silence them.” —<a href="https://x.com/charliekirk11"> @charliekirk11</a>

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Charlie Kirk, The Perfect Embodiment Of Salt And Light

assassination

Isabel Brown

Obituaries

Turning Point USA

It is easier to be a great man than to be a good man.
To be a great man very often just means you have an impact on the world, that you change people&#8217;s lives, that you create structures that make the world a better place.
But to be a good man requires you to put yourself last, and your family first. To believe in the promises of the Bible and its values, to believe that there is a good and there is a bad.
That is who Charlie Kirk was. A good man.
I believe that as he got older, Charlie focused more and more on being a good man. He got married, had two adorable children.
As a father of four, including very small children, I cannot even imagine the feelings of his wife Erika today, or the children that she will have to raise without their father there. 
And all the words that we tell ourselves — that Charlie died for something meaningful, which is obviously true — are not going to replace Charlie in the lives of his wife and children. 
It isn&#8217;t going to fill that hole because nothing can. 
On July 27, Charlie tweeted, “Get married, have kids, and stop partying into oblivion. Leave a legacy, be courageous. Happy Sunday. God Bless all the parents out there.” 
That is who Charlie was at the end of the day. Yes, obviously a public figure; yes, a hugely important public figure; and yes, a transformative public figure, particularly for young people, transformative in allowing them to open their minds about politics and consider things from a different point of view.
But what he really was could be seen in the video of Charlie with his three-year-old daughter on “Fox &amp; Friends,” when she ran to her daddy to give him a hug.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2278?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
I watched Charlie grow from a boy into a man. I watched that happen. I watched him go from 18 to 31. We were all privileged to know Charlie, to watch Charlie work, to watch him build. He was a builder. He was a lion of a human being.
He was engaged in a tremendously difficult business, the pragmatic growth of coalition politics. People aren&#8217;t going to agree with every decision he made along the way, with every view he expressed, but what they are going to remember Charlie for is what he died doing, expressing truth in public places through open and honest debate with people who disagree.
That is what they will build statues of Charlie Kirk for.
And they should.
It&#8217;s unbelievable that we have to talk about Charlie using the past tense. It&#8217;s unbelievable and horrifying in every possible way.
On Wednesday, I read Psalm 23 for Charlie on the podcast. It states: 
<blockquote>The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name&#8217;s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.</blockquote>
Charlie will be dwelling in the House of the Lord forever. 
He was a good man who leaves behind a beautiful family. When people you know enter the pages of history, something happens: The brightest part of them shines through everything else. 
That&#8217;s what you&#8217;re seeing today; the brightest part of Charlie, the part of him that was about faith and family and community and Biblical values and God and country and American patriotism and, yes, free speech and debate and discussion and the vibrant, bustling democracy that is America.
Charlie spent his entire life fighting for all of that to shine through.
And every time you see a picture of Charlie, you can see it in his face. The joy with which he engaged the world, the willingness to go to battle on behalf of the country, the willingness to say things, and the willingness to go to places where people disagreed.
He was what made America great and will continue to make America great going forward, because we&#8217;re going to have to pick up that baton.
I will end with a prayer that we recite at Jewish funerals. It states:
<blockquote>Oh God, full of compassion, thou who dwells on high ground, perfect rest beneath the sheltering wings of thy presence among the holy and pure, who shine as the brightness on the heavens unto the soul of Charlie, the son of Robert, who has gone unto eternity, and in whose memory charity is offered. May his repose be in Paradise. May the Lord of mercy bring him under the cover of his wings forever. May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life. May the Lord be his possession, and may he rest in peace.</blockquote>
May Charlie rest in peace.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP-INAUGURATION

Unthinkable: Charlie Kirk, 31, Assassinated

Ben Shapiro

The last time I saw my friend Charlie Kirk in person was when I appeared with him on stage at the TPUSA pastor’s summit back in the spring. I spoke with him backstage beforehand and told him, as I had several times before, that I was incredibly impressed by this institution and movement that he built. But he wasn&#8217;t interested in listening to me compliment him. He deflected, as always, and started asking me about myself and saying nice and encouraging things. 
A few months before that, in the wake of Trump’s victory, Charlie made a point of posting something to X to give me credit for helping Trump win. It was one of the very few times that I&#8217;ve disagreed with something Charlie said. The truth is that he was the primary reason why Trump won. It was his organizing and advocacy and activism and mobilization that helped to turn the tide. And yet he wanted to give the credit to other people, even people who didn’t deserve it. That&#8217;s the kind of guy that Charlie was. A rare type in the world today. Even rarer in this business. It may seem like a small thing. But Charlie’s desire to give other people credit, to point to and praise and lift up other people rather than himself, is one of the most profound testaments to his character.
Charlie was truly a great man. Great in personal virtue. Great in achievement. Great in his talents. He was a builder, an organizer, and a fighter — a rare combination. In this movement, you have a bunch of big personalities who can inform, entertain, and hold your attention on stage or in front of a camera. And then you have the organizers who know how to orchestrate and build, harness those personalities and point them in the right direction. Charlie was the only guy I ever knew who was truly great in both areas. He was a one of a kind talent. Everyone who knew him — and so many who did not know him personally — could tell that he was destined to be the President of the United States one day. I would have been proud to vote for him. Tens of millions of Americans felt the same way.
Charlie was brave. He would go anywhere and talk to anyone. He would debate anyone in any environment. He trusted in his own vast rhetorical skill, and in the rightness of his ideas. Most of all, as a man of deep faith, he trusted in the Lord. I don&#8217;t know if he had Isaiah 41:10 written as a mantra in his house somewhere, but it certainly seemed to be written on his heart. “Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” He knew that the Lord was with him, protecting him, guiding his thoughts and his words. Which is really the only way to explain Charlie&#8217;s nearly supernatural ability to win every debate he ever had with anyone. God had called him to this moment, and blessed him as he rose to it, again and again.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1656-america-will-never-be-the-same-after-charlie-kirk-s-assassination?elementPosition=0&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
Charlie was a patriot. He loved America. He fought for her every day. And he died for her. His central ambition was not for his own personal advancement but for the well-being and flourishing of this country. For Charlie, Make America Great Again was not a slogan on a hat. It was his mission, his great project. He did more to complete that mission than you could ever expect one man to do. Most importantly of all, of course, Charlie was a husband and a father. He loved his family dearly. You didn&#8217;t have to know him or ever meet him in person to know that about him. It came across in everything he said and did. This was a man who cherished his family. And would have died to make a better world for them. And did.
Now he’s gone. We have seen him die right in front of our eyes, on stage. He died while trying to have a free and civil debate, which is all he ever did. He didn&#8217;t insult. He didn’t defame. He didn’t shout anyone down. He invited everyone to come and speak to him, to prove him wrong. And for that, they killed him. I have to tell you that, as a fellow conservative in the public eye, I always worried that it would come to this. That eventually they would start killing us. But I never thought it would be Charlie. He was the nicest, most generous and charitable of us. Far less inflammatory than plenty of other people in this space, myself included. And they killed him in spite of that. Or not in spite, but because of that. He was too effective. Too widely beloved, especially among the younger generations. So they killed him.
I can only be honest with you in this moment and tell you that I am sad, I am heartbroken, and I am full of rage. If you want a kumbaya message of unity and togetherness, you will not get it from me. Over the past 24 hours, I have seen some in the media — some of the very same people who intentionally stoked murderous hatred against people like Charlie Kirk — now saying that we need to &#8220;turn the temperature down&#8221; and “start having conversations.” Well, Charlie tried to have conversations with you on the Left. And you killed him for it. You’re killing us in our churches. You tried to kill our president. You killed one of our greatest advocates in Charlie Kirk. You have been openly cheering for and celebrating and encouraging and committing political violence for years. Antifa. BLM. Well-funded, highly orchestrated, widespread movements based in and fueled by violence. You made a hero out of Luigi Mangione. And you celebrate Charlie’s death even now. It is too late to turn the temperature down. This is not a time to hold hands. It&#8217;s a time for justice. It&#8217;s a time for good to fight back against evil. It is a time for the righteous to prevail. For the sake of our country. For our children. For Charlie.
Many of you have seen all of the myriad posts and videos from leftist demons celebrating Charlie&#8217;s death. I know we want to tell ourselves that these are fringe voices, but they aren&#8217;t. There is a very large group of people out there who want us dead. Even in Congress, they tried to have a moment of silence after Charlie&#8217;s passing, but Democrats jeered and heckled. This is who they are. Not on the fringes, but in the main. They could not possibly make themselves any clearer about it. 
But I do want to say this. When I see these rodents gloating now over the death of my friend, I am, of course, disgusted by it. Yet also, I truly see it as a powerful tribute to Charlie’s life and work. Charlie had many friends who loved him dearly. Many fans who adored and admired him. That is, without a doubt, the greatest testament to the sort of man he was. But as a true culture warrior, it must be said that the evil gloating of his enemies is an accolade in its own right. May we all be so successful and productive that our enemies celebrate when we die. May we all be so devastating to the Leftist project that they long for our demise. May we all fight so hard and so effectively that they have no choice but to try to kill us. May our lives be a problem for these people, and our deaths a relief. Let them dance on my grave, as they dance on Charlie&#8217;s. Then I will know that I did my duty. Our opponent should be happy when we leave the ring. If they aren&#8217;t, then we didn&#8217;t punch hard enough.
Charlie punched harder than anyone. He did it with a smile. He did it through speech and debate. But he was a devastating fighter all the same. And his opponents are overjoyed because they think they’ve gotten rid of him. But they&#8217;re wrong. They’ve gravely misjudged the situation. The only thing more powerful than a living fighter is a martyred one. In life, Charlie motivated and rallied us to put on the armor of God and fight for what we believe in. In death, he motivates and rallies us all the more. I want to be very clear that we will not back down after this. We will not shrink away or go into hiding. We will not fall silent. We will not walk in fear. We will stand taller and prouder than we ever have, and be louder and bolder than we&#8217;ve ever been, and fight harder than we’ve ever fought. They think they can kill the movement by killing us. But in the entire history of the world, that strategy has never worked. And it won&#8217;t work now. I promise you that.
You can kill a man. You can shoot him in the neck on stage. You can spill his blood for the whole world to see. But you cannot kill a cause. Especially when that cause is nothing else but love of God, love of country, love of family. That cause is truth. You can&#8217;t kill the truth. No matter how many of us you shoot. You cannot kill it. 
Many of us — conservatives on the public stage — have seen the death threats and death wishes over the last several hours. Leftists across social media are making their wishlist of who they’d like to see assassinated next. I’m often on the list. Ben is on it. Many other names. I do think the chances of a copycat event are very high. And that is why I feel it&#8217;s important for me to say that I will not back down. I am not going to hide. None of us will. If we back down, then the demons who killed Charlie will win. And they cannot win. They will not win.
A day before his death, Charlie posted a picture of Iryna, the young woman who was killed on the light rail in Charlotte, and added a short caption. “America will never be the same,” he wrote. Amen, my friend. You had no idea how right you were. America will never be the same. It will be better. Thanks in large part to your work, your legacy, and your example, America will ultimately be better. But there is a lot more to be done in the meantime. The fight continues. You finished your race, Charlie. You fought the good fight. You kept the faith. Now we will take it from here. And we won&#8217;t give up until the work is done. You can rest in peace, knowing that. Godspeed.

FILES-US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRK

America Will Never Be The Same After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

America Will Never Be The Same After Charlie Kirk's Assassination

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Just days ago, Rudy Giuliani <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rudy-giuliani-hospitalized-after-vehicle-struck-from-behind-at-high-speed?author=Tim+Pearce&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Rudy+Giuliani+Hospitalized+After+Vehicle+%E2%80%98Struck+From+Behind+At+High+Speed%E2%80%99">made headlines</a> for surviving a car accident after stopping on the side of a highway to help a woman reporting domestic violence.
This recent act of public service from &#8220;America’s Mayor&#8221; reflects a lifetime of public service, from taking down the Mafia in the Southern District of New York’s famed 1980s &#8220;Commission Trial,&#8221; to prosecuting high-profile terrorism cases that were tied to the first World Trade Center bombing in the 1990s with Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy.
Unfortunately, that history of fearless, nonpartisan justice stands in sharp contrast to the SDNY’s posture today, where partisan lawfare seems to dominate.
That’s why it’s so encouraging that a group of judges <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/08/18/us-news/judges-approve-trump-pick-jay-clayton-to-remain-interim-us-attorney-for-southern-district-of-new-york/">ruled</a> in late August that Trump appointee Jay Clayton can remain in place as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Clayton has the potential to restore the SDNY back to its former glory during the Giuliani years.
He is a longtime Republican who clerked for a Reagan-appointed judge and served as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration.
For far too long, the SDNY has seemed to specialize in partisan lawfare.
For example, SDNY Judge Lewis Kaplan presided over journalist E. Jean Carroll’s 2019 civil <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226626397/trump-defamation-trial#:~:text=What%20this%20case%20is%20about,former%20president%20was%20also%20liable.">lawsuit</a> against Trump, which accused the sitting president of rape and defamation.
Carroll <a href="https://dailydodge.com/e-jean-carroll-testifying-in-civil-case-says-she-cant-recall-date-of-alleged-trump-attack/">couldn’t remember</a> what year the alleged assault took place, never mentioned it in her diary, and claimed that the numerous similarities between her account and a 2012 &#8220;Law and Order&#8221; episode were an “astonishing” coincidence.
But despite all these holes in Carroll’s story, the Left saw a chance to undermine Trump and leaped at it. Democrat billionaire megadonor Reid Hoffman <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/05/10/what-was-reid-hoffmans-role-in-funding-e-jean-carrolls-case/">funded</a> the entire lawsuit through his nonprofit American Future Republic, and it was anti-Trump commentator George Conway who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usxxlZosnNs">urged</a> Carroll to sue in the first place.
Kaplan not only oversaw this farce but also put his thumb on the scale for Carroll. He <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-rape-case-lawyers-banned-from-speaking-about-dna-judge-rules-2023-3">ruled</a> male DNA found on Carroll’s dress inadmissible, even after Trump offered to provide a sample. He <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-fails-narrow-rape-accusers-case-trial-looms-2023-03-28/">admitted</a> additional defamation charges that punished Trump for defending himself on social media. He even <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23793781-tacopina-mistrial-filing/">interrupted</a> a line of questioning from Trump’s lawyer in a way that signaled clearly to the jury where his sympathies lay.
<div id="attachment_968215" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-968215" class="size-large wp-image-968215" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-865x576.jpg" alt="Jocelyn Strauber, commissioner of New York City's Department of Investigation, speaks during a new conference at the US Attorney's Office-Southern District of New York (SDNY) in New York, US, on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on bribery and fraud charges following a federal corruption investigation, calling into question the political future of the man in charge of running the biggest US city. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
The SDNY also conveniently <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/new-york-city-mayor-eric-adams-charged-bribery-and-campaign-finance-offenses">charged</a> New York City Mayor Eric Adams with bribery shortly after he started <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/nyregion/eric-adams-mexico-border-migrants.html">speaking out</a> against the Biden administration’s open border policies.
When the Trump administration ordered the charges dropped, multiple prosecutors <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/nx-s1-5297120/eric-adams-federal-prosecutors-resignations">resigned</a> in outrage after failing to make a single peep about the lawfare campaign against Trump.
These partisan prosecutions even extend to the realm of antitrust enforcement. 
 
The SDNY is currently <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/video/justice-department-sues-visa-monopolizing-debit-markets#:~:text=Description:%20Today%2C%20the%20Justice%20Department,developing%20new%20and%20innovative%20alternatives.&amp;text=Review%20the%20YouTube%20Terms%20of%20Service%20and%20the%20Google%20Privacy%20Policy%20.">playing host</a> to a Biden-era Justice Department lawsuit against Visa. Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the company of driving up “the price of nearly everything” by monopolizing the debit transaction market.
In fact, it was Biden’s own inflationary policies that were driving up prices. Visa, which has a high market share because of its popularity but nothing close to a monopoly, just provided a handy scapegoat.
Meanwhile, the district always seems to drop the ball when it comes to getting actual justice for actual victims.
They <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/business/sam-bankman-fried-campaign-finance-charge.html#:~:text=Federal%20prosecutors%20pursuing%20the%20criminal,The%20authorities%20have%20said%20Mr.">failed</a> to charge crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried until his whole fraudulent empire was collapsing around him, even though the writing was on the wall long before the crash.
By that point, it was already too late. Bankman-Fried was the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-political-donations-2022/">largest single donor</a> to Democrats in the 2022 midterms, ploughing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/14/sbf-ftx-political-donations/">over $40 million</a> into PACs that helped Democrats keep the Senate and hold Republican gains in the House to historic lows.
Damian Williams, then the U.S. attorney for the SDNY, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/united-states-attorney-announces-charges-against-ftx-founder-samuel-bankman-fried#:~:text=BANKMAN%2DFRIED%20was%20arrested%20yesterday,fraud%2C%20plain%20and%20simple.%E2%80%9D">made it clear</a> that these donations from SBF and his cronies were funded with “stolen customer money.” The people SBF defrauded might get their money back, but voters have no such remedy. There’s no way to un-air the ads his ill-gotten gains bankrolled.
The sex trafficking case against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs provides another example of the SDNY’s failure. Maurene Comey, the lead prosecutor on the case, botched it so badly that the Justice Department <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxDE8izOUc">fired</a> her just weeks after the verdict came down.
Although Combs was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/07/03/nx-s1-5454769/sean-combs-found-guilty-on-2-counts-but-acquitted-on-most-serious-charges">convicted</a> of prostitution offenses and faces up to 20 years in prison, the jury <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jury-reaches-verdict-sean-diddy-combs-sex-trafficking-trial-rcna214785">found</a> him not guilty on the more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
Incidentally, Comey also <a href="https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-james-comey-maurene-trump-dda5d1f40f08346bd97696ce4791e8ec">worked</a> on district’s prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. That case <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ghislaine-maxwell-sentenced-20-years-prison-conspiring-jeffrey-epstein-sexually-abuse">ended</a> with a conviction and a 20-year prison sentence but left so many unanswered questions that it’s difficult to call it an unqualified win.
During her confirmation hearings, Attorney General Pam Bondi <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pam-bondi-senate-confirmation-hearing-attorney-general-nominee-planned-remarks/">promised</a> to end “partisan weaponization” and “restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice – and each of its components.”
The SDNY is a particularly dysfunctional component that’s been fouling the gears of our justice system for far too long.
By ending the disastrous tradition of “blue slips,” the administration can take a major step toward the restoration of truly impartial justice.
There is no better way to honor the now recovering “America’s Mayor” than by restoring one of his top legacies back to its former glory.
* * *
James Skyles is a legal policy analyst and the principal of Skyles Law Group. He has written for some of the largest legal publications in the United States, including Law.com and Law360.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

MixCollage-03-Sep-2025-10-30-AM-275

Giuliani’s DAs Tackled The Mob. Now The Same Office Targets Political Enemies.

Andrew McCarthy

Court

E. Jean Carroll

Eric Adams

New York

Rudy Giuliani

Sam Bankman-Fried

Sean 'Diddy' Combs

In our household, we lean more Carrie Underwood than Taylor Swift. It’s nothing personal — though, I’ll admit, it sometimes feels personal when celebrities use their platforms not only to sing but also to lecture half the country. Taylor Swift has been explicit in her support of President Biden and left-leaning causes. Travis Kelce, for his part, was the face of a national campaign telling Americans to roll up their sleeves and get the COVID shot. So, let’s be clear from the outset: their politics aren’t mine, and their cultural influence often points in the opposite direction of what I want for my family and this country.
And yet, here we are — celebrating their engagement. And celebrating is exactly the right word.
Because while my ideological Venn diagram doesn’t perfectly overlap with “Swiftie Nation” or its new hubby, there is one place where the circles meet in the middle: the enduring institution of marriage. Two people at the absolute height of their careers, perhaps the most famous singer and the greatest tight end to ever wear an NFL uniform, have chosen to stop, look each other in the eye, and say: “This is the person I want to commit my life to.” That is worth applauding.
Swift commands more than 280 million followers on Instagram alone. Kelce has over seven million. Combine their reach, and you have a cultural juggernaut — bigger than most cable networks.
Young people study their lives like Scripture. So, when two such figures choose marriage — not another “situationship,” not cohabitation without vows, not endless serial dating, but marriage — they are broadcasting a message stronger than any new single or touchdown dance: love is worth binding. Commitment is worth celebrating.
That matters in a culture where marriage is often delayed, derided, or dismissed altogether. Divorce rates may be down, but so too are marriage rates, with many young people opting out of family life altogether. Celebrities, more often than not, model instability rather than stability. Swift and Kelce choosing marriage provides an image of permanence at a time when our culture too often glorifies impermanence.
Make no mistake: this isn’t an argument that either of them has suddenly found their inner Ronald Reagan. I’m not suggesting Taylor Swift is about to record a country ballad praising the Second Amendment or that Travis Kelce will do the Trump dance after his next touchdown. Their politics are what they are. But we conservatives don’t need to agree with someone on everything to recognize when they’ve taken a step toward timeless truth.
Marriage is older than the United States. It predates kings, constitutions, and pop charts. It is the bedrock of civilization. Even when cultural elites mock or minimize it, they cannot erase the reality: when a man and woman bind themselves together in marriage, they are creating the most time-tested foundation for family and community that the world has ever known.
That’s why this engagement — between two people we wouldn’t consider political allies — is so instructive. It reminds us that truth has a stubborn way of showing up in places we least expect it. It reminds us that marriage is attractive even to those who don’t share our worldview. And it reminds us that conservatives should not be shy in celebrating when culture, however briefly, affirms what we’ve known all along.
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Taylor Swift has sung about breakups for nearly two decades. Now she’s signaling something far more meaningful than another heartbreak anthem. Travis Kelce has been praised for toughness on the field; now he’s showing a different kind of courage off of it — the courage to commit. For young people watching — and let’s be honest, tens of millions of them are — this story has the potential to shift the narrative. Instead of “just keep swiping,” the message becomes: “choose one, and choose forever.”
There’s a deeper point here for conservatives. Too often, we — myself included — reduce culture to a scoreboard of “us versus them.” Who endorsed Biden? Who took a knee? Who did the Bud Light ad? That matters, yes. Ideas have consequences, and politics shapes the future. But not everything has to be reduced to the partisan trenches. Sometimes, culture reminds us that God’s design still resonates even when people don’t recognize it as His design.
Marriage is one of those reminders.
So no, I don’t expect Taylor Swift to headline CPAC anytime soon. And no, I don’t expect Travis Kelce to start quoting C.S. Lewis in the locker room. But I do expect that their engagement will make some young people pause and reconsider the script they’ve been fed — that career comes first, that love is temporary, that vows are outdated. Seeing the most famous woman on the planet say yes to marriage — and seeing one of the NFL’s biggest stars embrace that same choice — undercuts the lie that commitment is uncool.
We don’t have to be Swifties to be happy for them. We don’t have to endorse their politics to endorse their vows. In fact, it is precisely because we disagree with them on so much that celebrating this moment becomes even more powerful. It shows that conservatives can recognize and affirm the good, even in those who don’t see the world as we do.
And maybe — just maybe — Swift and Kelce will discover that the overlap between their world and ours is bigger than they think.
For now, let’s give them this: congratulations. Marriage is still worth singing about.
* * *
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

2025 Stanley Cup Final – Game Four

Love Wins: Even When We Don’t Vote The Same

Dating

Gen Z

Liberals

Marriage

Taylor Swift

Travis Kelce

In the most recent flashpoint in the culture war, American Eagle showcased actress Sydney Sweeney in an advertisement with the caption “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
The ad is overtly sexual, with the camera highlighting sexual features more than the denim itself, with suggestive poses that frame Sweeney as an erotic object of desire.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” Sweeney says, back arched, while zipping up her pants. “My jeans are blue.”
The reaction to the ad was a Rorschach test. The Left, locked into a hermeneutic of suspicion with a reflex to read nefarious messaging into things that seem anodyne at a cursory glance, were outraged at the perceived fascist signaling of the ad (Sweeney is thin, blonde, and blue-eyed). Some on the Left interpreted it as a dog whistle for eugenics and white supremacy.
The Right, which often settles for cultural scraps, celebrated the ad as a win against “woke” culture for featuring an attractive, thin white woman after years of brands being influenced by the Left’s ideological fixations with inclusivity. One commentator <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-war-on-hot-women-why-the-woke-mob-hates-sydney-sweeney/ar-AA1Jz1Vf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed</a> the ad was a sign that “the American people are done with ‘woke,” and another said it meant that “woke is dead, and beauty is back.” The X account <a href="https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1948383505974510061" target="_blank" rel="noopener">End Wokeness</a>, juxtaposing a picture of an American Eagle ad featuring a heavy-set black woman with a picture of Sweeney immodestly posing, commented, “woke is dead.”
For us social conservatives, much of the Right’s reaction was a bleak cultural bellwether. One can argue that the big-budget designers who created the ad knew exactly how the “great jeans” innuendo would be received, and that it was intended to create the media buzz it has. I personally don’t believe that American Eagle, which has a <a href="https://www.aeo-inc.com/inclusion-diversity/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pride flag on its website</a>, is engaged in Nazi dog-whistling.
The Right’s reaction, however, should alarm conservatives who are concerned with the erosion of family-friendly culture. The celebratory reaction to the ad demonstrates just how steeped in liberal paradigms and assumptions the American Right is today. The ad treats sexuality as public, performative, and consumable. It’s revealing and immodest, something I would try to shield my children from seeing at the mall. It’s not a rupture from “woke” in the slightest, rather an embrace of the liberal anthropology that detached sexuality from marriage and procreation during the 1960s sexual revolution.
Much of the contemporary Right now swims in these waters, too steeped in liberalism to even realize that by cheering the American Eagle ad as an “anti-woke” victory, they’re participating in and enabling a culture that the left created.
The ad demonstrated the triumph of liberalism and its assault on the religious right in particular, which, through different kinds of grassroots activist groups, has long campaigned against the kind of sexualized media that brands like American Eagle promote because of the harm it inflicts on families and children.
At the heart of Christianity is the belief that each person is made Imago Dei, in the image of God, and that the human body is not an object of consumption. Pope Saint John Paul II expresses this in “Theology of the Body,” a set of teachings he delivered between 1979 and 1984. He explained how sexual pathologies like pornography distort human dignity and invert the body’s purpose of self-giving love. When this fundamental truth is rejected, it comes as no surprise that the prevalence of sexualized media<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496?src=recsys&amp;journalCode=hjsr20" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> leads to</a> consequences like higher levels of body dissatisfaction, a greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women, and diminished views of women’s humanity.
For social conservatives who believe moral guardrails are necessary for human flourishing, mainstream culture is still hostile terrain, and the American Eagle Sydney Sweeney ad exposes the cultural captivity of much of the Right.
Being “anti-woke” is not enough, even if the campaign against wokeness generally aligns with the objectives of any socially conservative movement.  Anyone serious about making the public square welcoming to children and families must work to reclaim modesty as the standard cultural norm, and they must have the courage to oppose the liberal foundations of our sexualized marketplace itself.
Marlo Slayback is the Executive Director of the Collegiate Network for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
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The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Sydney Sweeney

Sex Sells, And The Right Bought It: The Hollow ‘Victory’ Of The Sydney Sweeney Ad

advertising

Christianity

Liberalism

Wokeness

The following excerpt is taken from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495">The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer</a>,” by Daniel J. Flynn, (Encounter Books, August 19, 2025)
* * *
&#8220;For the ﬁrst time in the past few months I find myself viscerally as well as intellectually deeply concerned about the immediate future of the country,” Frank Meyer wrote in March 1968 to co-founder of National Review Willi Schlamm in Europe. “Between Vietnam, this summer’s projected insurrectionary riots, and the real threat to twenty years of economic stability that the monetary situation poses, almost anything could happen.”
Everything did.
Lyndon Johnson soon announced his decision to neither seek nor accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Days later, a career criminal on the run after escaping prison murdered Martin Luther King Jr. The tragedy, and the initial elusiveness of the murderer, fueled riots that killed dozens in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and points beyond. Uprisings that spring plagued campuses. Columbia, where student activists occupied university buildings and held administrators hostage, served as the focal point. In June, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant incensed over U.S. aid to Israel, murdered Robert Kennedy. All the while the Vietnam War reached peak violence; more than three hundred American men died in combat each week.
The chaos jarred Meyer. Even prior to Kennedy’s murder, the National Review columnist had described the times as the most fateful for Americans since Fort Sumter. The upheaval, he reasoned, emanated not from deprivation but abundance. This did not lead to a more contented society. Riots, campus takeovers, civil disobedience, crime, and other actions often vaguely or specifically linked to political demands counterintuitively followed. The more authorities rewarded disobedience, disorder, and disregard for law, the more disobedience, disorder, and disregard for law proliferated. The damage from nihilism and a West alienated from itself, he concluded, bore this bitter fruit of attempted civilizational suicide.
His articles adopted an ominous tone. More shocking to readers, his order-liberty emphasis flipped. He still articulated libertarian positions in opposing the draft and in shunning calls for gun control in the wake of the assassinations (“An unarmed citizenry is potentially the victim, ﬁrst of anarchy, then of tyranny and totalitarianism”). The holstered ﬁrearm spotted under his jacket at a Philadelphia Society meeting in Chicago, where American Communists knew him best, indicated he practiced what he preached. The times dictated a condemnation of freedom’s unsavory cousin chaos. In March, Richard Nixon identiﬁed order as the priority. Meyer followed that summer by telling readers that “order is the ﬁrst condition of civilizational existence, the only foundation of freedom and well-being for anyone and everyone.”
<div id="attachment_961609" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-961609" class="size-large wp-image-961609" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Encounter Books" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Encounter Books</div>
His son John’s attendance at Columbia amid the takeover and riots laying waste to his hometown of Newark the previous summer personalized the events. So did his own history. He had once stood on the other side of the barricades. If he regarded many antiwar protestors as effectively aiding the Vietcong, then he surely recalled his own role in the 1930s peace movement that had softened Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. Meyer the Communist had shouted down speakers, disrupted meetings, and scoffed at campus authorities the way Mark Rudd now did. He saw others reliving his life and wanted to stop them from inflicting the damage that he had once caused.
“The issue facing the United States this summer is the survival of a free society,” he told readers. “No society can exist in a state of endemic disorder. Specifically, a representative republic cannot function if its magistrates and its representative assemblies are subject to blackmail by mob violence.” From Death Valley Days came a sheriff to make things right.
Meyer saw in Ronald Reagan the ﬁgure to lead Americans out of the smoke, grime, and darkness of 1968 to a place more resemblant of America. Some regarded this as a pipe dream; others as unwise.
◆ ◆ ◆
HUGH KENNER wrote William F. Buckley, Jr., a private letter critical of his “Ronald Reagan: A Relaxing View,” an unusually long cover article. Kenner explained of his letter to Guy Davenport, “It is to their honor that they want it revised for print. Imagine, per contra, The Nation running a pro-Reagan piece.” Not everyone welcomed Buckley’s tolerance. And, because
of that, Kenner’s view of the magazine changed. “Communication from WFB just re[a]d from Switzerland says that my Nervous View of Ronald Reagan has been held over till April (!) at Frank Meyer’s (!!) intervention, in the interests of fairness, Frank having held that Reagan (!!!) should be given a chance to reply,” Kenner wrote Davenport. “If Reagan does not, the accompanying rebuttal will be by Frank (!!!!).”
Behind the scenes, a January editorial meeting resulted in the board’s endorsement of Meyer’s personally rebutting the anti-Reagan piece. In February, Bill Rusher supplied the Master — the sobriquet he had long ago given to Meyer — with a dossier. Jeffrey Hart later received the task of writing the Meyer-engineered counterpoint to an article preoccupied with Reagan’s treatment of the universities. This substitution, given that it negated one English professor’s charge of anti-intellectualism with another’s rebuttal, struck as a master stroke to anyone paying attention but too cute by half to anyone really paying attention.
When “A Nervous View of Ronald Reagan” ran in May as an “Open Question,” Kenner, though a major asset as a literary critic, appeared outside of his element. Unlike Davenport, who had threatened to resign in 1965 after being assigned to cover a Philadelphia Society meeting, Kenner did subscribe to the general tenets that animated National Review. Nevertheless, the University of California–Santa Barbara professor came off as a parochial cosmopolitan in portraying California’s governor as a philistine for supporting the ﬁring of the university system’s president, Clark Kerr, and for his periodic clashes with academia, which to many conservatives increasingly resembled a left-wing training ground. The philistinism, to them, occurred among the people perverting intellectual pursuits toward the service of narrow, ideological ends.
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Hart, on leave from both Dartmouth and National Review to write speeches for Reagan, authored the “Open Question” that appeared immediately after Kenner’s. He juxtaposed Reagan’s widely shared critique of the campuses with Kenner’s use of “zamindary,” a ten-cent word even by National Review standards. He wondered why Kenner must psychoanalyze his subjects as though the mind holds the answer for all questions. For Kenner this undoubtedly avouched philistinism’s further inroads on the intellectual right; for many readers, it likely contrasted California’s man of the people with yet another of its professors above all in an ivory tower. The byline did not fully obscure who lurked behind every word. As a bewildered Davenport had explained to Kenner, “Frank thinks that Reagan ought to be president of the USA.”
Kenner lost sleep. He went from gaining respect for the magazine to losing it. Buckley, though playing a passive role, allowed this to happen. He acted as godfather to Kenner’s daughter, paid for another daughter’s freshman year at college, and served as best man at the widowed Kenner’s second wedding. The active involvement of his other friend of more than a decade, the editor of his book reviews, sharpened the sting. So did yet another colleague’s mockery of him in print as an egghead. “I can sympathize with you,” Davenport wrote, “knowing how I would feel to be hee-hawed at by a cold bastard like Hart who can scarcely hide the fact that he has been called in to wipe a well-aimed egg off a politician, and to denounce the opposition with cultivated yelps and whimpers.” Meyer lost his section’s most accomplished literary critic.
He pleaded with Davenport to beg his friend back. The last issue in May listed Kenner as an associate. Any trace of him had disappeared from the masthead by June.
Meyer succeeded in shielding his favored candidate but at terrible cost. The tear revealed the frayed fabric holding together the two elements — the cynosure for conservatives and a citadel for reﬁned literary appraisal — that made National Review great. Meyer could play conservative pope. He could serve as keeper of culture. Could he play both? The question did not always yield an answer in the affirmative.
◆ ◆ ◆
THE SAME WEEK that National Review offset Kenner’s criticism with Hart’s rebuttal, The New Republic published Meyer’s “Why I Am for Reagan,” one in a series from supporters of the various presidential contenders. The magazine commissioned Meyer to write the piece for obvious reasons. His campaign for Reagan began the moment the campaign for Goldwater ended.
In December 1964, Meyer spotlighted Reagan as the Republican future. The veteran actor had delivered a compelling infomercial for Goldwater that aired a week before the election. He did not merely replace Goldwater’s scowl with a smile. He eviscerated Great Society liberalism with humor, anecdotes, and folksy logic. Reagan connected. One could almost see the studio audience, and Frank Meyer listening in his living room, wondering, “Why can’t I vote for this man?” People who knew him as a star nevertheless experienced a revelation that night that they had watched, well, a star.
Reagan parlayed that speech into a run for governor in the state that suddenly boasted the most people. He vanquished Nixon’s vanquisher. Weeks before Reagan assumed office, Meyer touted him as the next president. As with Goldwater, the enthusiasm masked a <a href="https://youtu.be/WBMWd49rtu8?feature=shared&amp;t=187">Johnny Bravo</a> quality. Ronald Reagan nevertheless ﬁt the suit better.
Reagan met the requirements of “a candidate who can stir conservative enthusiasm and behind whom a campaign for delegates to the Republican National Convention of 1968 can be launched,” “Principles and Heresies” maintained in 1966. “By the principled positions he has taken, and by his proven ability as a campaigner, demonstrated both in 1964 and this year in California, Ronald Reagan, should he prove the governor he promises to be, qualiﬁes for this role.”
Rusher shared Meyer’s enthusiasms. Buckley touted Reagan, too. Again, James Burnham opposed.
“I insist that Reagan is a serious candidate,” Meyer responded to Burnham’s insistence to the contrary. “Furthermore, if it were journalistically advisable to support a single candidate, it would unquestionably be our duty to make Reagan our choice with Nixon as our second choice.”
* * *
This excerpt from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495">The Man Who Invented Conservatism</a>,” by Daniel J. Flynn is published by permission of Encounter Books.
Daniel J. Flynn is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has authored seven books, including “Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America;” “A Conservative History of the American Left;” and “Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco.”
The views expressed in this excerpt are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

1968 Republican National Convention

The Man Who Backed Reagan Before Reagan Was Ready

Books

National Review

Ronald Reagan

William F. Buckley Jr.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration will &#8220;make a determination over the next few weeks&#8221; on whether to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug.
During a press conference in the White House Briefing Room, Trump was asked about a Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-marijuana-federal-drug-classification-01a73b8c?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAgpZ8UL7Mw6HKwBVKPjsmn_wP6A2h8SNZiG41aF9hPed4QVwq2_gG6R&amp;gaa_ts=6897fc20&amp;gaa_sig=Nm9TnTCPjVnNlMv_P1PaH_NVhN3Nn8RbA8H9lDEnLY0FBfl1b_Sd78D-SH_icaL7fTnMQ1iwaisKOLJA0cNS5g%3D%3D">report</a> stating that he was considering a possible marijuana reclassification, an issue that has caused some division among Trump&#8217;s base. The president acknowledged that marijuana reclassification is a &#8220;very complicated subject.&#8221;
&#8220;Some people hate the whole concept of marijuana because if it does bad for the children, it does bad for people older than children,&#8221; Trump said.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a very complicated subject, the subject of marijuana,&#8221; he added. &#8220;I&#8217;ve heard great things having to do with medical [marijuana], and I&#8217;ve [heard] bad things having to do with just about everything else.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
President Trump on marijuana: &#8220;We&#8217;re looking at reclassification and we&#8217;ll make a determination over the next few weeks.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/GTiYKogmuA">pic.twitter.com/GTiYKogmuA</a>
— CSPAN (@cspan) <a href="https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1954928772991291413?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
Trump reportedly floated the idea of reclassifying marijuana during a fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club earlier this month in front of guests that included Kim Rivers, the CEO of Trulieve, one of the largest marijuana companies in the United States. The discussions within the Trump administration focus on whether weed should be reclassified as a Schedule III drug, which would drop certain restrictions on marijuana without completely legalizing it, according to the WSJ.
While some states have passed laws legalizing recreational and medical marijuana use, it is still <a href="https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/orangebook/c_cs_alpha.pdf">listed</a> as a Schedule I drug under federal law. Schedule I <a href="https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling">means</a> a drug has &#8220;no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.&#8221; Reclassifying marijuana as Schedule III would put the drug in the same category as drugs that have &#8220;a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.&#8221;
Marijuana reclassification was pursued by the Biden administration, but it wasn&#8217;t achieved before President Joe Biden left office in January. Trump signaled his support for recreational marijuana last year when he voted to legalize the drug in Florida last year, pitting himself against conservatives such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The marijuana amendment push in Florida received 56%, falling just short of the 60% needed to pass it into law.
A senior White House official told the WSJ that Trump wants to take on issues like marijuana that are viewed as “80-20 cultural issues.” Trump&#8217;s inroads among independent and younger voters could also make the reclassification push more attractive to the Trump administration as Republicans seek to hold onto the momentum gained in the 2024 election as the 2026 midterm elections approach.
The campaign to downgrade marijuana&#8217;s drug classification also receives a lot of money. Marijuana companies have donated millions of dollars to the American Rights and Reform PAC, which <a href="https://www.americanrightsreform.com/">pushes</a> to &#8220;end the war on medical cannabis.&#8221; Consultants working for Trulieve have presented Trump&#8217;s team with polling that shows that more than 80% of independent voters support reclassifying marijuana, the WSJ reported.
“This is not calling for decriminalization or legalization but simply knocking it down a few notches on the criminal scale,” Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz told the WSJ. “It’s probably targeted more to a younger demographic, where the president has made great headway.” Bruesewitz was paid $300,000 by the American Rights and Reform PAC to work on social media and advertisements.
Some independents and conservatives, however, strongly oppose the effort to reclassify marijuana and want the federal government to ramp up enforcement of existing laws on marijuana.
&#8220;Our society thrived when everyone was smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey. We became the most powerful nation in the world with liquor and nicotine. No country of potheads has ever thrived, or ever achieved anything at all,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1954264828626780162">wrote</a> Daily Wire host Matt Walsh. &#8220;Every city that legalized it became an even bigger s***hole basically overnight. The entire history of western civilization tells us that marijuana is far, far worse for society.&#8221;
Walsh <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1954225938113126716">added</a> that the federal government should be doing &#8220;exactly the opposite&#8221; of what the Trump administration is considering.
Other independents and conservatives also chimed in, expressing their disapproval of reclassifying marijuana.
&#8220;Marijuana mass normalization has been a disaster for the United States,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/esaagar/status/1954633873486495964">said</a> Breaking Points host Saagar Enjeti. &#8220;Our cities stink, our kids are literally being poisoned and made stupid, DWIs are skyrocketing and the promised revenue doesn&#8217;t even come close to making up the mass social chaos.&#8221;
&#8220;Weed is a scourge, rewarding some of the worst elements of society while sapping the will and productivity of far too many citizens, especially young men,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/CortesSteve/status/1954513837668925493">added</a> conservative commentator Steve Cortes. &#8220;MAGA must focus on quality of life issues &#8212; we can do so much better than cities that reek of disgusting smoke.&#8221;

Donald Trump/Marijuana

Trump Sparks Debate With Comments On Reclassifying Weed

Donald Trump

Drugs

Marijuana

Trump Administration

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Left can’t meme, but can only scold the Right for memeing well.
This dynamic was once confined to esoteric feuds among terminally online partisans. Now, it’s playing out in the open — between government agencies and what remains of the legacy media — and the stakes are increasingly tangible.
The Trump administration’s social media accounts have spent their summer appropriating classic images of Americana, notably J.M. Flagg’s famous<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Montgomery_Flagg#/media/File:I_Want_You_for_U.S._Army_by_James_Montgomery_Flagg.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 1917 Uncle Sam poster</a>. But things really hit a fever pitch when the Department of Homeland Security shared three seemingly innocuous images: <a href="https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1948150126494482555" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Gast’s 1872 “American Progress,”</a> with the caption “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.” <a href="https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1940164863793549747" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thomas Kinkade’s “Morning Pledge”</a> with the caption “Protect the Homeland,” and<a href="https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1944875154745778525" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Morgan Weistling’s “A Prayer for a New Life”</a> captioned “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Protect the Homeland.
“Morning Pledge” by Thomas Kinkade <a href="https://t.co/JLs26R3VlO">pic.twitter.com/JLs26R3VlO</a>
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1940164863793549747?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
According to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/07/29/trump-dhs-immigrants-social-paintings/">Washington Post</a>, “the art world is not happy” with these posts because they are “part of an effort to rewrite the past with an exclusionary view of American history,” one in which there are clear standards of good and evil.
The Post doesn’t attempt to show why ordinary Americans should care about this. But while the Post’s freakout may be amusing to behold, it also gets at something important. Liberals are right to panic about these posts — and conservatives should pay attention.
The second Trump administration is staffed with right-wing Zoomers. These staffers are digital natives: born in the memeworld, molded by it, and in many cases more radically opposed to the leftwing hegemony that reached its apogee during their formative years than those of us who remember the days when cable news still dictated the terms of national conversation.
Those days are gone. Millennials like JD Vance and Stephen Miller hold high office. The aesthetic sensibilities of the Zoomers on their staff are shaping the administration’s narrative warfare, providing unprecedented air cover to the administration’s ground operations. Their social media habits are a visible sign of just how far the Left has fallen from its media and, thus, meaning-making monopoly.
The recent dustup about Homeland Security posting Americana paintings is just a minor skirmish in the larger war that is being waged for the sensibilities of the American people. Liberals have long realized that he who controls the production, distribution, and regulation of images controls the hearts, minds, and imaginations of the population.
Despite their confusion over other fundamental truths such as the difference between a man and a woman, liberals grasp this reality — and in it, something essential to the human condition.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.
American Progress &#8211; John Gast <a href="https://t.co/agU6bl8TZ8">pic.twitter.com/agU6bl8TZ8</a>
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1948150126494482555?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
We are imaginative as well as rational creatures, embodied as well as capable of abstract thought. Our reasoning about right and wrong, true and false, never gets very far without referring to something particular we’ve experienced, either directly in our own lives or vicariously through the testimony of others — including stories and history. “Music,” in the classical and comprehensive sense of “the arts of the Muses,” matters.
In ancient Greece, the nine Muses were the daughters of “Memory” and presided over the arts. Mythology and biography, parable and narrative, have always been the primary means of moral and political education, and they remain so today. Americans in general still recognize the power of the “Muse-ical arts,” mainly in the potency of historical narratives such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement.
We would do well to recover the sense of power contained in other forms of “Music,” especially the storytelling power of films. Newer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/watch/movies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ventures</a> on the <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/07/20/2025/founders-films-aims-to-remake-hollywood-with-patriotism-palantir-and-ayn-rand" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Right</a> are beginning to do this.
But we still have a long way to go. Even the artists whose work the Trump administration is now using aren’t safe from the Left’s appropriation.
The Kinkade Family Foundation, scandalized by the Trump administration’s use of his work, <a href="https://www.kinkadefamilyfoundation.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declared</a> it was “deeply troubled to see this image used to promote division and xenophobia associated with the ideals of DHS” and pledged solidarity with “our communities who have been threatened and targeted by DHS, especially our immigrant, BIPOC, undocumented, LGBTQ+, and disabled relatives and neighbors.” Weistling, the only artist of the three still alive, took to his <a href="https://www.morganweistling.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a> to distance himself from the politics of the moment: “The recent DHS post on social media using a painting of mine that I painted a few years ago was used without my permission.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.
New Life in a New Land &#8211; Morgan Weistling <a href="https://t.co/nFL61Nljbw">pic.twitter.com/nFL61Nljbw</a>
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1944875154745778525?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Still, there is a virtually inexhaustible store of classic works of mythology, literature, and history, ancient as well as American, waiting to be adapted by artists who love rather than revile our inheritance.
There is a lesson here for older conservatives. Liberal donors have long appreciated the political utility of culture. As a class, they have lavished funds on all manner of artistic ventures, sowing seeds broadly in the expectation that just a few of their investments will blossom into captivating cultural products. As a result, they have dominated the culture for generations — not because young people are naturally more liberal (Zoomer men are currently disproving this myth) — but because their cold, hard cash has helped drag the next generation leftward.
Conservative donors are more comfortable running a business than patronizing the arts. They tend to focus their charitable giving on well-defined causes with short-term returns on investment. They have thereby won discrete battles — winning this election, pushing that policy through Congress — while losing the broader war for the soul of the nation.
That the unembarrassed Americanism of artists like Kinkade and Weistling has enjoyed commercial success while swimming against the tide of liberal cultural hegemony is a sign of just how high a demand remains in the American public for non-leftist cultural products. Liberal hegemony is cracking up, and as the Trump administration gets serious about winding down its taxpayer-funded power bases, from NPR and PBS to elite universities, the crack-up is bound to continue.
The emergence of an energetic and effective American Right has far more to do with digital disruption than with a strategic change in the conservative donor class. Conservatives who are serious about reclaiming American culture, and consigning the most anti-American elements of the Left to the dustbin of history, should put a shoulder to the wheel — not just in lobbying and campaign donations, but in directly patronizing the artists, educators, and other culture creators who celebrate rather than denigrate our civilizational heritage.
Pavlos Papadopoulos is Associate Professor of Humanities at Wyoming Catholic College.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

American Progress

Americana Posting And The War For Culture

Department of Homeland Security

Painting

Washington Post

I lock my front door every night. Not because I despise the families who live down the street, but because I cherish the three sleeping heads under my roof.
That impulse — to guard what we love — lies at the heart of the conservative case for a secure border. Too often, we let opponents cast us as people against something (immigrants) when, in fact, we’re actually: for our children’s safety, for working-class wages, for the fragile civic glue that lets strangers treat one another like neighbors.
Polling shows the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/15/how-americans-view-the-u-s-mexico-border-situation-and-the-governments-handling-of-the-issue/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mainstream agrees</a>. Eighty percent of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, say Washington is mishandling the migrant surge, and immigration now tops Gallup’s <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“most important problem”</a> list.
Conservatives are right to sound the alarm. We just need to explain that we&#8217;re doing so out of a sense of stewardship, not spite.
History backs the prudence of timed, purposeful immigration. During the American Revolution, foreign-born allies such as <a href="https://www.history.com/articles/6-foreign-born-heroes-of-the-american-revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener">France’s Lafayette and Prussia’s von Steuben</a> arrived with artillery drills, engineering skills, and diplomatic muscle that an infant republic simply lacked; without them, Yorktown’s surrender may never have come. The young nation welcomed outsiders for a specific mission: win independence and teach the citizen army how to march, aim, and dig trenches.
Fast-forward to the wreckage after Appomattox. The Civil War killed more than 600,000 Americans and scorched the rail lines meant to reunite the continent. Rebuilding demanded manpower the battered South and draft-depleted North no longer possessed. Thousands of Irish and German laborers <a href="https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?psid=3147&amp;smtID=2&amp;utm_" target="_blank" rel="noopener">laid the ties and pounded the spikes</a> of the transcontinental railroad, knitting markets back together and jump-starting a devastated economy. Immigration in that moment was not charity. It was the scaffolding of national recovery.
The same pattern repeated when smokestacks crowded city skylines. By 1920, immigrants and their children supplied <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2760060/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over half of all manufacturing workers</a> — two-thirds if you count grandchildren — allowing American factories to roar at a scale native labor alone could not have matched. The message is clear: when the nation needs fresh shoulders, controlled immigration can be a patriotic tool.
Yet prudence also means knowing when the job is done. After the industrial boom settled, Congress judged the house full and passed the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Johnson-Reed Act of 1924</a>, limiting visas to 2% of each nationality’s 1890 population, and virtually closing the door to Asia. Even a country famous for welcoming immigrants understood that unending inflows can outrun assimilation, depress wages, and strain public trust.
We are living through another such inflection point. The crisis is not a shortage of bodies but a shortage of babies. America’s fertility rate hovers well below replacement while housing prices, classroom head counts, and entitlement programs all creak under existing loads. Before we import millions more people, we should ask why so many citizens feel they cannot afford to start or grow a family.
Conservatives aren’t anti-immigrant. We are pro-family, pro-fairness, and pro-order.
When we do invite guests, we open the front entrance — offering lawful visas to people who follow the rules — rather than waving strangers through a broken window. Securing the southern border, finishing reliable fencing, and speeding up deportations for criminals are not acts of hostility but of hospitality rightly ordered. They protect wages for citizens at the bottom rung, preserve classroom resources for kids who are already falling behind, and honor the millions who waited in line.
Positive reform flows from the same ethic. Conservatives can champion faster asylum rulings so genuine refugees are sheltered quickly while false claims end swiftly. We can simplify legal work visas tied to market demand, not political patronage, and insist those visas come with a date certain to go home or a clear path to stay that includes English proficiency, tax compliance, and civic education. We can tighten E-Verify so employers cannot undercut American labor, and we can steer foreign aid toward church-based charities that fight cartel terror in place — reducing the push factors long before migrants reach the Rio Grande.
The test for our movement is tone. Instead of saying, “We’re against immigration,” say, “We’re for the American worker, for the rule of law, for assimilation strong enough to turn strangers into compatriots.” Tell the single mom in El Paso that a porous border lets fentanyl and traffickers hunt her kids. Tell the legal immigrant in Phoenix that respecting the line he stood in is an act of justice. Tell the Honduran father that a stable, self-confident United States is the best gift we can offer the world, because chaos here would slam every golden door shut.
Someday my children will ask what we did with the inheritance our grandparents secured — ordered liberty, decent wages, a common language of rights and responsibilities. I want to tell them we acted as guardians, not gatekeepers; that we said “yes” to a future large enough for newcomers and natives, but only after we repaired the foundation already cracking beneath our feet.
Conservatives are right on immigration because we refuse to trade short-term sentiment for long-term stability. We are not building a wall of hate; we are stewarding a border of love. And love, like any good father knows, sometimes says “stop” today so it can say “welcome” tomorrow.
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

American flag

Conservatives Are Right On Immigration. We Just Need To Say It Better. 

Illegal Immigration

Polls

Southern Border

As conservatives, we’re fond of praising marriage and family, and for good reason — marriage is both a cornerstone and a hallmark of a healthy society.
The conservative movement can’t seem to get its fill of telling young people to marry, settle down, and have kids. That’s fair enough. But unfortunately, eager to marry everyone off, conservatives tend to skip over one crucial detail: how exactly you get there.
For all their discussion of marriage, most conservatives don’t seem to touch the topic of dating with a 10-foot pole.
And to the extent they do discuss it, that discussion typically centers on the beginning of dating. They encourage men to make the first move and ask women out, or warn women against making the first move themselves. Or, their discussion centers on what not to do: don’t have sex before marriage, and definitely don’t move in together.
But no one talks about what healthy dating should look like. There’s no practical discussion of how to date in a way that’s likely to lead to marriage, or how to get to know someone and discern whether you should marry them while also maintaining healthy boundaries in the understanding that you aren’t yet married.
This leaves young conservatives caught between two flawed views of dating.
On the one hand, they’re faced with the destructive habits of their peers — hookup culture, casual dating, or even long-term dating relationships with no intention of marriage.
On the other hand, they’re confronted by the romanticism of the older generation and the ideal of the knight in shining armor, a perspective that mainly consists of strictures for the man to open the door, pay for dates, or show up with flowers, and for the woman to be “feminine” — bonus points for wearing a sundress.
While some of these principles have value, none of them address the actual day-to-day or week-to-week of dating, and it’s easy for them to turn into pressure to act a certain way simply to meet certain standards.
Perhaps it’s this black hole that accounts for the fact that, while <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw11y2CTM9KUJuVUXxIYfD1v">69%</a> of those ages 18-34 who have never been married say they hope to be married, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">a full 50%</a> of singles aren’t currently looking to date or enter a relationship.
Trapped between a hookup culture that leaves people feeling empty and broken and a romantic idealism that places performative pressure on both parties, many may decide dating is too difficult and that they have <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">“more important priorities.”</a>
For those who do decide to date, there’s a relative dearth of older role models who exemplify healthy marital relationships, let alone healthy dating relationships. In <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1t_puy52HWeCinUKRP1O3C">recent years</a>, overall marriage numbers have declined; divorces among older couples have increased; and the number of couples, including older couples, cohabitating with an unmarried partner has increased.
Add to that the chronic pervasiveness of utterly flawed dating perspectives online, and you’ve got a recipe for the current situation: one in which well-intentioned young people are left on their own, groping in the dark for wisdom to guide their dating lives.
This leaves many struggling to successfully navigate relationships. According to one survey, 67% of “daters” say their dating life is either <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">not going too well</a> or not going well at all.
As a result, many relationships otherwise full of potential end up amounting to nothing, falling prey to miscommunication, social pressures, or other issues — many of which could be easily remedied with a dose of wisdom from an elder.
If conservatives are serious about wanting young people to get married, it’s time to stop simply preaching the merits of marriage and start offering practical advice on how to get there.
That starts at the individual level: older, happily married members of a community (like a church, for example) should come alongside younger members of that community, making themselves available to answer any questions those younger members may have.
This isn’t to say people don’t do that already. I’ve personally been blessed to have several members of my church walk with me in this manner.
But the same should also be practiced in society more broadly. Dating isn’t going to look the same for everyone—so influencers, commentators, and others in healthy marriages should share their personal stories of how they approached dating, offering examples of the ways to approach dating wisely.
Without these kinds of examples, we may stay stuck where we are now: a society where most people hope for marriage but few are capable of taking the necessary steps to achieve it.
Mary Mobley is an Editorial Fellow in the Strategic Communications department of the Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Couple getting married in church

What Conservatives Miss About Marriage 

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