Which Path Will Gen Z Take?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This evening, I will be speaking for a visual event
for Charlie Kirk that's going to be held at Presno's State.
So today's show is going to be kind of a
bit of what that speech is going to be. The
main thing is I want to sort of think about
this from the perspective of young people, gen Z, kids

(00:25):
who gen Z, young adults who maybe just voted for
the first time in twenty twenty four, and kind of
what Charlie Kirk is going to mean for them. So
this is going to be a bit of a ramble,
But here's what I'm going to be saying to these
kids later tonight. This is sort of the thrust of it.
I think that gen Z and gen Z surprised everybody

(00:50):
in the twenty twenty four election. Usually the trend when
Americans go to the polls is young people are more
liberal and older people are more conservative. I think it
was a Winston Churchill quote. Maybe it wasn't Churchill. I
don't know that. If it's something along the lines of
if you're not a communist in your twenties, you have

(01:12):
no heart, if you're not a conservative in your forties,
you have no brain, and that trend seems to be true.
People are more liberal when they're younger, and time and
age and experience in life and family, marriage and children especially,

(01:37):
they change you. They change your politics pretty drastically. But
gen Z bucked that trend with young men. I think
there was a bit of a shift among gen Z
women too, but young men voted for Trump overwhelmingly. It

(02:01):
was this enormous shift, and so it's almost like you've
got conservatives with a ten mile head start on that
generation of voters. Now, pretty much every generation gets a

(02:26):
kind of political moment, a significant time frame, event, series
of events that winds up giving a kind of political
identity to a whole group for a whole generation. And
pretty much every generation gets it. Really, you could almost

(02:49):
argue that Boomer's got it twice. Nineteen sixties you had
these formative moments for boomers sort of older than Boomer
is a little in a sense with Kennedy, the Kennedy era,
Kennedy's election, Kennedy's assassination, the hold that Robert Kennedy and

(03:14):
then Ted Kennedy sort of had on the party. I
an'lthough Ted Kennedy not as much. The Kennedy era was
this extremely formative thing for a whole generation of Democrats.
It gave us a generation of incredibly important Democrat politicians,

(03:36):
Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, all of those guys.
I think probably even Nancy Pelosi was sort of in
that era. All of those people had their political identities
formed by the Kennedy's. I mean, even John Kerry, like

(03:59):
he starts to go by John F. Kerry. I don't
think that. I don't think that was coincidental. All of
those guys had their whole their political identities, their political
ideals formed by Kennedy and identified as Kennedy Democrats. And
there's a whole generation of voters who also thought of

(04:23):
looked at the Kennedy era as sort of their formative moment.
Reagan was another such formative moment. The conservative establishment, if
you will, the old guard of conservatism today, had their
formative event during the eighties, during the Reagan era. That

(04:47):
was their camelot, that was their time, that was when
they were all ascendant. Now those guys are all old
and they're you know, yelling at the Charlie Kirks of
the world to get off their lawn. I don't know
how formative Clinton was necessarily. I don't know how formative
Bush was, but sad to say, I hate it, but

(05:07):
I think it's true. I think Obama was this hugely
formative thing for my generation. Obama's election in eight and
twenty twelve. If you were in college in eight and
twenty twelve, Obama was this dominant cultural presence, and so

(05:31):
many young people identified with politics because of Obama. It
was this incredibly formative thing, and that era shaped the
politics against which this current crop of gen Z kids
is now rebelling. The whole importing of college of university

(05:56):
academic liberalism into mainstream Democrat policy. It happened during and
because of the college era. Because of the Obama era,
you had young liberals coming out of their colleges and universities,
taking critical race theory with them, taking gender theory with them,

(06:17):
taking the various sorts of woke cancelation doctrines with them,
the sort of language censorship models. All of that they
took with them out of college, out of grad school,
out of universities, and into politics. And it was that

(06:40):
era that shaped millennials. Millennial politics was profoundly shaped by Obama,
and it defined the Biden presidency really all of the

(07:01):
dei stuff, the maximal woke stuff, the idea that we
could import, that we could carry over the experience that
we saw with gay marriage going from banned in many, many,
many states to mandated nationwide by the Supreme Court. The

(07:23):
thought was that that exact same line of quote progress
could happen for the transgender movement, and that there was
no difference between them, and so millennials were maximally pushing
the transgender agenda as if it was just as much
a civil rights cause as gay marriage, or which allegedly
was just as much a civil rights cause as the

(07:44):
actual civil rights movement. That was the era defining moment
though those twenty eight and twenty twelve elections. It shaped
the political identity of millennials. Well, I think the twenty
twenty this time we're in now, twenty twenty four to

(08:10):
twenty twenty five, this might be an era shaping, a generation,
shaping political moment for gen Z. Something is happening for them,

(08:30):
And it may be that Charlie Kirk's death, as horrific
as it is, might wind up having a times ten
magnifying event magnifying effect on this political era, this political era,

(08:51):
this year has been bookended by two assassinations, one attempted assassination,
one accomplished assassination, the attempted assassination of Don Trump, the
actual assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempted assassination with Donald Trump,
which I think was a as much as the media

(09:14):
doesn't want it to be, I think it was a
massive turning point for that election cycle. I think the
actual genuine courage Trump showed physical in the moment, courage
Trump showed at that time, and strength was a huge thing.

(09:39):
It was a huge thing that resonated with young men.
Kirk's assassination, the assassination of this guy who fundamentally was
not like as much as the media is trying to
portray him as that, this was not the most far
right character out there. And by the way, for anyone,

(10:03):
for any one on the left who's decrying Charlie Kirk
is a fascist and all that which is sheer nonsense,
realize what kinds of things Charlie Kirk was very skillfully
and artfully blocking. He was blocking the Nick Flinteses of
the world, blocking stupid younger commentators who were approaching flat

(10:27):
out anti semitism, extremism, etc. He was offering, actually, for
young men especially all things considered very moderating path for
their political energies and enthusiasms, a far more mainstream, healthy,

(10:53):
wholesome vision of conservatism than whatever was on author whatever
was on display in the more fringe, dark corners of
the online right now. I think these two assassination attempts

(11:15):
could be an era defining moment, and it's also fresh
off the heels of COVID. These young gen Z men
all lived through COVID, a lot of them as high schoolers,
high schoolers or early college students, and had their high
school and early college experience and college experiences ruined by COVID,

(11:41):
and saw the insanity of the various COVID restrictions. How
so many of these mandates that were coming from governments
had no real rational relationship to them and their well being.
They saw how many lies that public officials were trying
to force down their throats. The idea that well, a

(12:03):
black lives matters protest isn't a vector for transmission, but
you know, you wanting to go to church as a
vector fred transmission? Apparently, how many lies? The transgender movement
was sort of forcing them to swallow this, this idea
that you know, these are young men participating in high school,
maybe college intramural sports being told that it doesn't really

(12:24):
matter if a biological male plays a woman's sport. I mean,
they could just see that it's bs. They can see
that it's wrong, they can see that that's a lie.
And this is the problem for the left, especially for

(12:44):
young millennials. Millennials have always wanted to view themselves liberal
millennials people my age, they always wanted to view themselves
as being in rebellion when they weren't. Really. They were
all the best kids in class. Especially the politics culture
shaping Obamaites. They were actually the straight a students. They

(13:09):
weren't the rebels, but they liked to think that they were. Somehow,
that their embrace of the LGBT movement, etc. Was still
subversive against some form of imagined establishment that they thought,
like maybe Christianity or the views of their Republican leaning
parents represented. But here's the problem. Their movement became dominant,

(13:34):
became the establishment. Dei became the establishment at every college
and university practically in this country. Their beliefs became the establishment.
And guess what when gen Z comes along. That's the
establishment against they were going to rebel. So here's this

(13:54):
group of kids with these shared experiences of living under stupid,
many tyrannies, and along comes Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk
to say, no, those tyrannies are silly and stupid and wrong,
and we're fighting back against it. We're pushing back against it.

(14:18):
They almost assassinate Donald Trump for it. He's a one
inch away from his brains being blown out, and they
do assassinate Charlie Kirk for it. And I think that
gives young people a sort of sense of all right, well,

(14:40):
there are people out there who flat out hate us, us,
what we believe, what we represent, what we stand for.
And I think that can give a group a sense
of identity and a sense of purpose. Now, when we return,
I want to talk about what is the future. What

(15:02):
does the future hold for this post Charlie Kirk world
of gen Z Conservatism. I think it holds whatever they decide.
It holds for them whatever they decide it's going to be.
That's next. On the John Girardi Show. After Charlie Kirk's death,
I was asked by the Turning Point USA group at

(15:24):
Fresno State to give a little address for a vigil event.
They're doing this evening for Charlie Kirk. So this show
today is going to be kind of a lot of
my comments about it now for a lot of comment.
Anytime you'd have a funeral, eulogy, whatever, a lot of
it is retrospective. You're looking back. Obviously, that makes sense.

(15:46):
Someone has passed away, we look back at their lives,
what they did. I want to be a little more
prospective here. I want to look forward. As I said
in the first segment, I think this year book ended
between the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the actual
assassination of Charlie Kirk. I think is going to be

(16:08):
a political epoch, defining time for gen Z, especially for
young gen Z men, that this year is going to
profoundly shape them and their political identities. In the same
way that the Kennedy era shaped that generation of young Democrats,

(16:30):
the way that the Reagan Revolution shaped that generation of
young Republicans, the way that the Obama era shaped that
generation millennials liberals, this year is shaping this generation of
young conservatives. And what is the identity that this generation

(16:51):
is going to get My hope is that among the
many paths that could be open to young conservatives, they
choose kind of the Charlie kirkiest path, the path that
was exemplified by the kinds of things Charlie Kirk believed

(17:13):
and how he lived his life, especially especially I think
how he lived his life. So let me let me
explain that I think there are multiple paths laid out
for young conservatives right now. On the one hand, you
have the barstool sports conservatives, and this is always going

(17:34):
to be a temptation to rowty young men who want
to sew wild oats. This is the kind of conservatism
that's willing to say, you know, transgenderism is lame liberal
speech codes or lame. That's dumb. Stop trying to censor me.

(17:57):
Leave me alone. I want to drink beer, hang out
with hot girls, watch college football, watch Nascar, listen to
country music, have a good time, smoke some weed. It's
a kind of devil may care libertarianism. Now there's something

(18:26):
that prompts me to have a little smile at this
sort of branch, at the irreverence of this sort of
branch of kind of conservatism and the way that it
is willing to take a whiz on the pieties of
millennial liberalism, but I don't know if it's a real
way forward for a genuine political movement. It's not very

(18:54):
serious or interested in politics. Really, it's a kind of
anti politics. I don't want to bother with this kind
of crap. And it's also in many ways profoundly selfish.
So the CEO of Barstool Sports, this guy, Dave Portnoy,
he keeps getting airtime on Fox News and things like that,

(19:15):
profoundly socially liberal at his core, totally okay with gay marriage.
That was furious that the Supreme Court overturned Rov Wade
because he's ultimately a hedonist. He ultimately is profoundly selfish
and wants to enjoy money in parties and pleasure and girls, etc.

(19:37):
And does not care about family or marriage or anything
like that. That is a path that is open to
young conservatives. It's not the path Charlie Kirk sort of
opens up to people, though it's not the path he
sort of invited people to go down. And I don't
think it's the path for any kind of enduring and
stable political movement. It's one that can very easily get

(20:03):
co opted by the right. In fact, that sort of
attitude has historically been the left's political mo I remember
when the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ads came on, that
there was so little going on in politics at the
time that that was all we talked about for two
weeks was a stupid blue jeans ad with a girl,
you know, a hot girl in it. Having sexually explicit,

(20:27):
sexually provocative advertising was a tool of the left. It
was a means of undermining traditional principles and beliefs of
Christianity about modesty and sex and all kinds of Christian ideals.

(20:48):
But today it gets labeled as conservative, I guess because
of the mere fact that Sidney Sweeney is not a lesbian,
or is not transgender, or something like that. This is
one of the problems with conservatism is that it often
all it winds up doing is conserving liberalism from you know,
ten years ago. One path that I guess could be

(21:15):
available to young conservatives is a more bookish libertarianism, but
I don't think that's going to happen. The Cato Institute
types the kinds of people whose big takeaway from the
Reagan Revolution was you know, lower taxes, lower taxes, less regulation.

(21:36):
I don't know that that's much of what really young
conservatives are all that interested. And you know, lower taxes
are good. Less regulation is good. I'm not saying it isn't,
but it's not necessarily the what's lighting a fire under
their butts right now. And I don't know that it's

(21:57):
the basis for a whole revolution. I guess it kind
of was for the Reagan era. Maybe it was a
revolution among thirty and forty year olds who were actually
looking at how much they were paying in taxes and
were desperately relieved at Reagan. The Reagan Revolution, though, also
had a lot to do with foreign policy and a
lot to do with communism and stuff like that. That is

(22:19):
not necessarily as active an issue right now. I guess
the last path forward for young conservatives is the stuff
Charlie Kirk was talking about a lot. The stuff Charlie
Kirk talked about way more than I realized after I
saw him speak. It's a lot more Kirk's talking. His

(22:45):
actual political messaging was so much more about faith, marriage
and family. He never bent on social conservatives stuff. It's
one thing to note about Kirk, even when it was
extremely unpopular. He never bent on gay marriage, he never

(23:09):
bent on transgenderism, and he never bent on abortion because
I think the vision of cherishing human life marriage as
the corner stone, the most concrete expression of love that
there is, I give myself entirely for the sake of
your good, and marriage being the cornerstone of civilization. Those

(23:39):
were things so profoundly important to him, and that it
wasn't just stuff that he talked about. He talked about
it way more than I think people realize. It was
also what he lived out. That is the road that
I hope is open to young conservatives when we return
the tensions in American conservatism between the enlightened and the Bible.

(24:01):
I'll talk about that next here on the John Growardi Show.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, I think that
gen Z is having a real moment, a real sort
of time for their political identity to receive formation, and

(24:22):
I think it is going to be remembered as something
as significant as the Kennedy era. However, that era was
defined relative to Kennedy's rise in American politics as assassination,
and how that time influenced that generation, how Reagan influenced
his generation, how Obama influenced millennials. I think this book

(24:45):
ended time between the Trump assassination and the Kirk assassination
is going to profoundly shape gen Z going forward. And
I think I talked about sort of the various paths
that could be open to gen Z. It could be
a kind of bro barstool sports esque libertarianism, could be.

(25:10):
I don't think it's going to be at all a
more bookish, sort of reheated Reganism, libertarian leaning conservatism. Or
it could be something that's more I think aligned with
what Charlie Kirk himself believed and taught, which is a
conservatism where social conservatism is at the core of it
and everything else is flowing from the sort of religious

(25:32):
commitments to which Kirk was attached. He was, first and
foremost he was a Christian, and his views on marriage
and family were at the corner of everything he did.
It was not just not just how much he talked
about social conservative stuff, but also how he lived his life.

(25:57):
He was married, had two kids, and those things were
profoundly important for him. When I look at this future
of where the conservative movement can go, I'm pulled in
to reflect on this quote that I heard from this

(26:19):
author named Joseph Bottom whom. It's this author that I
don't really like at all. He used to be the
editor of First Things, and I always thought he was
kind of pretentious. So I hate the fact that he
has like one of the best quotes sort of summarizing
American conservatism I've ever heard. American conservatism has been in
a tug of war between the Enlightenment on the one

(26:40):
hand and the Bible on the other. So let me
explain that the ideals of the historical era known as
the Enlightenment sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, the new political
philosophies that were coming to fruition in that time, that
they had one of their better expressions in the American

(27:04):
Revolution and one of their worse expressions in the French Revolution.
It was a kind of rejection of the politics of
Aristotle and the politics of Aristotle the philosophical the philosophical
ideas of Aristotle. That basically, the view of Aristotelian politics

(27:28):
is that human beings are ordered towards the good, and
political communities rightly ordered. Political communities should also be ordered
towards men's ultimate good. We can know that good, and
we can point men towards that good. Now, the argument

(27:55):
from classical liberals, whose ideas came to be in the
sixteen and seventeen hundreds is that this idea that we
can know the good and it is the right and
duty of the government to point men towards the good.
This is what leads to all the wars of religion.
After the Protestant Reformation, you had Catholics at the throats

(28:16):
of Protestants. And it's because each king thinks, or each
prince thinks, it's his job to forcefully point people towards
the good. So you have Catholics burning Protestants at the stake.
You have Protestants burning Catholics at the stake. This is bad.
Let's just get away from all this silly Christianity and

(28:36):
let's adopt a new idea of government, which is that
the government should be neutral on the idea of the
ultimate good, and we give every individual the freedom. This
is why it's liberalism. Libert is the Latin word for
free liberalism. We give every person the maximal space to
choose and pursue the good for him or herself. Now,

(29:08):
the problem is, I think Ultimately, when the rubber meets
the road, it's hard to maintain a genuine liberalism all
the way through because you have to at some point
talk about choosing the good in a way that impacts
other people, and liberalism has to have this kind of
caveat well, you can choose the good as long as
you're not stepping on the toes of other people. But

(29:32):
then liberalism has to wrestle with the idea of well,
which persons matter in that equation as people whose toes
you can't step on? What about unborn children? What about
the weak? What about people who don't have the strength
to raise their voice in protests? What about you know,

(29:54):
benighted workers? What about And that has been a problem
and a struggle for liberalism all the way through. That's true.
What is freedom of choice? Really? This sort of really
hardcore libertarianism would which is good? Libertarianism is kind of
in a way that the logical extreme conclusion of some

(30:17):
of those ideas of classical liberalism. Hardcore libertarianism thinks that
hard drug use should be legal. Hardcore libertarianism thinks that
prostitution should be legal. And my approach to those things is, well,
you're not what is the value of quote, freedom of

(30:40):
choice in these situations. First of all, I mean especially
with prostitution, when it's often women in drastically desperate circumstances.
First of all, and secondly, it's an activity that can
switch from the most profound act of violation of a
human person. You can conceive of rape to consensual within

(31:05):
the snap of a finger. And this is why American
conservatism has always been intention with the Bible, because certainly
the founding fathers were very influenced by these ideals of liberalism.
But American conservatism has had this backstop of the Bible,

(31:27):
which I think is in certain ways profoundly illiberal. It
has a very clear conception of the human good. Now
there's a kind of liberalism one could see that what
one needs to choose an objective good freely. And now

(31:50):
whether that kind of moderated classical liberalism can work ultimately,
I'm not sure, but I think it's certainly something that
Charlie believed. I think Charlie would say, Charlie Kirk would say,
there is objective truth, there is an objectively, objectively knowable
moral order, and while we should try to safeguard human freedoms,

(32:17):
in ways to allow people to choose the good freely. Ultimately,
we should use the weight and force of government to
direct people towards ultimate goods. Yes, the government should coercively
stop abortion. Yes, the government should recognize actual marriage as

(32:42):
something correct and good and beneficial to the political community,
and as something different from whatever arrangement to homosexuals might
try to make with each other. Yes, there is biological
reality to men and women, and your body is part

(33:05):
of who you are, and it's not a pure you know,
liberalism taken to the ultimate extreme of saying, well, I
am what I decide I am. I have the full
latitude and freedom to choose the good for myself to
such an extent that I will reject my very biology.
So this is the tension that it has existed, especially

(33:27):
in American American conservatism for its entire time, the classical
the ideals of the enlightened, so called enlightenment and classical
liberalism on the one hand, in the Bible on the other.
And you know, this is me kind of what path,
young gen Z conservatives, what path are you going to take?

(33:53):
I think the path that Charlie Kirk was very clearly
laying out and offering young people the path he wanted
them to take. And I'm sure if I sat down
with Charlie, I would have my you know, philosophy disagreements
about political philosophy and things like that. I'm sure if
we were to discuss liberalism and Enlightenment liberalism, classical liberalism, bubbah,

(34:15):
the American tradition, blah blah blah, I'm sure we would
have a disagree on a lot of things, and agree
on many things and have a fruitful discussion. But I
think at the end of the day, the path Charlie
would want to point young people too, And I hope
I'm not. You know, it's easy. I think there's a
real temptation right now for conservative influencers to say, this

(34:39):
is what Charlie Kirk would want, This is what he
would he would say if he were alive, now, this
is what he would want. There's a real risk of
ascribing one's own views to you know, this recently deceased figure.
And I don't I want to make clear, I don't
think Charlie Kirk would agree with me about everything, but

(35:00):
I do think he would agree with me on this
that the natural law ethics that can be found in
the pages of the Bible about marriage, about sexuality. That
that has to be the foundation for whatever conservatism comes

(35:24):
out of this era. It should be the foundation. It
ought to be the foundation. It must be the foundation.
And if you want to start, you young person listening
to this hopefully, if you want to start a kind
of gen Z Kirkian conservatism, if you want it to

(35:46):
actually be the kind of conservatism Kirk would espouse, it
has to have the Bible and Biblical morality, the natural
law tradition, which I think is embedded in the Bible.
It has to have that as its cornerstone. That's the

(36:08):
future that I think. You know, again, I don't want
to describe all my views on the Kirk, but I
think that's the tradition, that that's the future he would
want this generation to pursue when we return. I'm done
with my talking to zoomers, to gen Z. I want

(36:30):
to talk a little bit to millennials right now, especially
millennial women, millennial moms. That's next on the John Girardi Show.
You know, I kind of was trashing on millennials pretty much,
that entire segment being one I feel I have that right,
but one of the things I think is happening right

(36:53):
now is how suburban moms are processing the killing of
Charlie Kirk, because I think a lot of millennial moms
knew of Charlie Kirk at least a little bit, and
to see this guy get murders is going to have
a big effect. So here's one thing, all right, let's

(37:14):
think about this. Statistically speaking, millennial women are very liberal.
The ones who are moms probably Obama convinced them to
vote for Democrats at some point. Statistically speaking, though, a
lot of them have Republican leaning husbands, and if they're
married and they have kids, they have husbands, and they
love their husbands and they love their kids, and they

(37:35):
see Charlie Kirk, a guy with views probably similar to
what their husbands, many of their husbands believe. To see
this guy get murdered in cold blood right in front
of his wife and kids, I think that's going to
have an impact. I think Kirk's murder could have an
impact on millennials. I think it could have an impact
on millennial women. I think it could have an impact

(37:58):
kind of across the spectrum because of the callousness of it,
and especially to see people clearly enunciating that they still
kind of hate Charlie Kirk, meaning they still hate your husband.
That can have a big impact. You know, this is
sort of the maturing thing that happens, why young people
vote liberal when they're young and more conservative when they're older.
That'll do it. Johns already shows see you next time

(38:19):
on Power Talk.