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'How the Right Lost Its Mind': Charlie Sykes Asks Conservatives What They Truly Care About

October 30, 2017
Staff

WRITER

What happened to the conservative movement?

That’s the question asked in Charlie Sykes’ new book, “How the Right Lost Its Mind,” an exploration of the conservative movement’s descent into alt-right insanity and Trumpian demagoguery. On today’s show, he and Glenn talked about the real values that conservatives should return to and the questions we should be asking.

“What is it that we care about?” Sykes asked rhetorically. “It’s freedom, limited government, constitutionalism, personal responsibility, respect for the truth. … Rather than be locked into some sort of a zombie-like dogma, you know, ask, ‘What kind of a society do we want to be?’”

Listen to the full segment (above) to hear Sykes explain why we need to break out of our “tribes” to reconnect as people.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: There's a lot going on in the news today. Robert Mueller has issued an indictment. It's not a surprise at all. It is for Paul Manafort and his -- and his business partner. Bad guy.

We've told you that for a long time. This is putting Donald Trump in a very bad position, and we'll get more on that, coming up.

We also have Charlie Sykes. Charles Sykes is the author of the book, How the Right Lost Its Mind. Up until a few years ago, he was the most powerful talk show host in Wisconsin. And he just had to walk away from it because he didn't understand the conservatives anymore.

I think now, wrongfully, he is being labeled as, you know, somebody who has just run over to the left because he's seen on NBC and he's read in the New York Times and everything else.

But that's not who he is. At least that's not who I think he is. And we welcome him now, Charlie Sykes.

Hi, Charlie, how are you?

CHARLIE: Good morning. Thank you for that, by the way, Glenn. I appreciate that.

GLENN: You're welcome.

So are we some of those right who have lost their minds?

CHARLIE: You mean you and me?

GLENN: Yeah.

CHARLIE: Well, I don't know. I think there are some -- some oasis of sanity. But I think we all need to look in the mirror and go, okay. Did we contribute to this? Did we help create this monster? And I know that you go to this introspection.

And part of what I did after I left my radio show was to sit back and just sort of sit for a little while, and go, how did that happen? What did we miss?

Were there things that were stewing out there that we didn't understand? Were our allies not exactly who they were?

You mentioned the people saying, well, you obviously have defending -- no. I'm actually saying exactly the same things I have been saying for a very, very long time.

GLENN: Yeah.

CHARLIE: And I'm watching a lot of people that I I thought I understood -- do 180 flips. And you really have to watch, what's going on sneer.

GLENN: So, Charlie, it's really difficult. Because we feel the same way, that there's a lot of people who say, we've defected. Blah, blah, blah. No, we've stood in place. We're not going over the cliff with the rest of the party and the rest of humanity.

And I'm more concerned -- Jimmy Kimmel said this weekend, which I was glad to hear him say -- I don't know if he's tying it to the right alone, but I said, under Barack Obama, you can't let this kind of stuff fester, because who is going to come into office next time? And we have an answer to that.

Now, who follows Donald Trump? Now is the time to get a hold of ourselves and our principles. Or we're in real trouble. From both sides.

CHARLIE: Oh, I completely agree. And, you know, Donald Trump -- please, don't misunderstand me when I say this, that Donald Trump doesn't shock me or bother me. Because he is what he is. You know, he's always been the same thing. He's not going to change. What's really bothering me is what's happening to the rest of us. The damage to the culture. I think that his legacy won't be measured simply in policy decisions, you know, including some that I would agree with.

It's going to be measured in the coarsening of our culture, in what we Americans have decided that we are willing to accept, look the other way.

I was actually on a show yesterday morning with somebody that I had deeply admired for more than a decade. And he was suggesting that, you know, once we get tax reform through, we will no longer have to worry about the character of the president.

And I will tell you, Glenn, I was actually shocked. Because I said, you know, I'm old enough to remember when conservatives actually thought things like character and truth and decency, honestly, all of those things actually did fundamentally matter. And maybe were even more important than politics.

GLENN: Policies. Yeah. It was. To me, it still is. Character -- if you don't have character, you don't have anything. You don't have a chance at survival without character.

So, Charlie, how do you -- how do you repair this?

CHARLIE: I don't honestly know. That's a really, really good question. I think it is going back to these first principles. And, you know, the -- there was a time where you realized, okay. We're going to be in the wilderness for a while.

It turns out, that the wilderness is a little bit -- there are fewer of us in the wilderness than I was perhaps expecting, but the wilderness is a good place to begin rethinking these things. What is really important? What is really valuable?

I've lived a life, like a lot of conservative talk show hosts, where you go from one election to another. And every single election is the apocalypse. Every single election, everything is at stake. And maybe you need to step back and you realize, okay. Elections are important. There's no question about that.

But there are some things that are more important. So let's go back. What is it that we -- that we care about? Is it -- it's freedom. Limited government. Constitutionalism. Personal responsibility.

Respect for the truth. All of those things. And also, understand that maybe we ought to look around to our fellow Americans. And rather than be locked into some sort of zombie-like dogma. You know, ask, what kind of a society do we want to be? What makes for the good life? Are we actually treating one another the way that we ought to be treating one another?

Now, in order to get back to it, I think we kind of have to break out of the chrysalis of our tribe, which may be mixing the metaphor. And maybe if you look around and go, "Okay. We've been engaging in these tribal politics. But look at where it led us. Look at what it's done to us. And is this really who we want to be?

GLENN: So, Charlie, you are somebody who -- I mean, I have been out to Silicon Valley and Hollywood. I have not gone to Washington and New York.

And I find at the upper echelon of both of those, I find people who are Democrats and who are now saying, I'm just afraid of my side as your side. There's something bad happening. And we have to solve this. And they fight -- I think like all people do, they fight against this feeling of ugh, you know, the other side is getting away with X, Y, and Z. But they have realized, this is what has caused the problem, is just looking at the -- at the splinter in someone else's eye. They've missed the beam in their own side. However, when I do talk to people in the media -- and you're probably closer to people in the media than I am, I don't see that from them. I don't -- I don't see a willingness to look at the -- the beam in their own eye.

Do you?

CHARLIE: No. But let me -- let me get to a point that you made before. You know, one of the great shocks for me, has been this -- this adoption of -- this moral relativism, across -- across the lines of American politics. That winning is so important, that, you know, if they did it, we can do it as well.

And to see conservatives adopt that, that sort of relativistic approach has been really appalling. But your point on the media is right on. One of the things that have happened -- and I talk about it in my book. Is, I've been a long-time media critic, talking about the bias, the double standards. I think at some point, we have perhaps succeeded at delegitimizing the media in the eyes of a lot of folks, which broke down our immunity to fake information and propaganda. But having said that, I do think that everybody in American politics and the media does need to step back and have this moment of introspection. You know, the -- I do have a lot of context in the media. And I don't sense that kind of introspection, that I think is necessary. Do you understand why so many people believe that you are biased, that you do have the double standards?

Do you understand how you manage to blow all of that credibility? You created the space for, you know, the demagogues. You know, the folks like Breitbart. And Infowars. And all of those folks.

But I don't sense that there is that sort of looking in the mirror and going on.

GLENN: Do you have time to stay with us for a little longer?

CHARLIE: Sure. Absolutely.

GLENN: Okay. Charlie Sykes. The author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. And I think -- I can count them -- I can count them on three fingers, I think. I think I can count them on three fingers, the people who actually stood. And Charlie was one of them. In fact, Charlie -- Charlie kind of just disappeared for a while and said, "I can't do this anymore."

And I have profound respect for him. And I have -- I have not read the book cover to cover, but I have read enough of the book to tell you that he's right about how we -- how we went awry and how we each of us have to look, on both sides of the aisle, at our own role and say, "What did I propagate?" But also, what did I accept in my own life?

And we'll continue our conversation. And talk a little bit about Mueller and what's going to happen next, with Charlie Sykes.

GLENN: At that point in time get Paul Manafort for here with Charlie Sykes in just a second.

STU: Charlie, Glenn and I have been talking about this for a while. And I'm sure you've been doing a lot of thinking of this, writing the book. I think a lot of the people in the talk radio audience want that perfect world, they want a world where there is about principles, they want a world where this is about real foundations.

But they see, with the media landscape, that if they don't push back against every single thing and fight super hard, nobody is going to do it for them. And they're just going to get rolled over. Do you think that's where the audience is, and why sometimes they might embrace some of the way the media is run now?

CHARLIE: Oh, yes, I do. In fact, that was me. I felt, okay. I'm on the rampart. And my job is to push back on this. If I don't push back on this, who will? And I do think that that contributed to it. And I think over the years, it ramped up. It ramped up in intensity, to the point where you look around you, like, okay. How did I get here? How did I come all the way this far?

GLENN: So, Charlie, I've never shared this on the air, but you would have the brain that could get your arms around this one, to see if you think this is valid. I think what Rush Limbaugh did was absolutely valid and accurate for 1990. What he did was say a point of view that nobody heard. And nobody had articulated. And he taught us how to articulate an argument. But then a couple of things happened.

Our friends stopped listening, as soon as they said, where did you get that? Rush Limbaugh? Well, yeah. So they stopped listening. But Rush kept giving us the argument for our friends. The friends over time disappeared. And then people like us populated radio. And we did the Rush Limbaugh model. And we weren't saying how to talk to your friends. We were saying, this is what is right. This is where you go. And we just grew further and further apart, into our own echo chambers. And we didn't listen to one another. We were no longer trying to make the argument to our friends, who we thought were rational, because we were really being told that our friends aren't rational. And they became irrational, as we became irrational.

CHARLIE: I certainly was think that you followed that trajectory. And then I started in the early 1990s on radio as well. When -- you know, there was a time when actually we had to formulate these arguments. When, in fact, our job was to persuade.

But I think you're absolutely right, that as time went on. We really did separate ourselves into what I began calling the alternative reality silos, where, you know, really, we didn't wall ourselves off.

GLENN: Wait. Wait. Wait. I don't think we did. I mean, I think in some ways we did because we didn't recognize it.

CHARLIE: Right.

GLENN: But we were walled off. The left did its number on us to wall us off. Yeah.

CHARLIE: They stopped. Oh, no, no. This goes both ways. There's no question about it. Somebody has got to write multiple volumes of how the left lost its mind. By the way, your story about the George Washington plaque would be chapter one on that. That's somebody else's --

GLENN: Yeah.

CHARLIE: But we were walled off. And part of the problem that I think folks in the left and the media ought to recognize is to realize they have no idea what conservatives were thinking for many, many years. They simply -- they didn't read conservative books. They didn't listen to conservative talk radio. They had a caricature out there. And as a result, they did not understand how they looked and how they sounded to conservatives. And they certainly do not understand what happened over the last several years.

GLENN: So let me go to Paul Manafort. What is this going to do?

CHARLIE: Well, it's going to put a heck of a lot of pressure on the White House. I see already that there are some people trying to spin this as, this is a nothing burger because it does not relate directly to the Trump campaign and collusion.

GLENN: This is huge.

CHARLIE: But, look, let's just take a step back here. This investigation is very much the real deal. This is just the beginning. It's a rolling investigation. And I think the Paul Manafort -- the whole Paul Manafort story for me sort of represents the worst people in the world phenomenon, which is that whatever Donald Trump's personal flaws are, he also at various points in his campaign and administration empowered, the people have called, the worst people in the world. Drowned himself with some really skeezy folks, whether it's Roger Stone or Paul Manafort.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

CHARLIE: Here's my other point for conservatives: Look, it is one thing to agree with the administration, support them on issues where you share their values. The right to life. Conservative judges. Small government. Regulatory reform.

But that doesn't mean that you need to defend every single aspect, including if, in fact, the Russians did interfere in our elections, tried to hack our democracy. This is not something that we should rationalize or look the other way.

GLENN: Charlie, thank you very much. Author of the book: How the Right Lost Its Mind. Worth a read.

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

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatism as stewardship

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding what is broken

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

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

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

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

A creed for the rising generation

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.