Winning Over the Youth Isn’t Complicated

Trendiness should never take the place of timelessness. Not in the life of the individual, not in society, and not in a political movement that earnestly seeks to do good for society.

Yet the mainstream conservative movement’s desperation to be “hip” and “relevant” in order to win over the youth vote has led to a pitiful state. Like a dog chasing its tail, conservatives and Republicans so often appear to be bereft of integrity or any real principles, and bounce around to whatever position will score them some brownie points with the liberal late-night pundits.

For example, the contemporary “Conservative Inc.” claims to be for the traditional family as ordained in the Bible, as well as to be against the trans degeneracy that has enveloped popular culture.

Yet Republicans instantly go gaga over any homosexual or trans-sexual individual who puts on a MAGA hat. 

Time after time, conservatives don’t even think twice about giving a platform to someone who is clearly a leftist plant or a grifter or a saboteur simply because they happen to be an ethnic minority or a “reformed feminist” or a popular Hollywood celebrity who may have said one common-sense thing that goes against the grain of the leftist establishment. 

The neediness of mainstream conservatives is embarrassing and pathetic. The groveling comes because they badly want to break the hold Democrats have over the youth, yet have no idea how to achieve it. And they don’t have a clue because they have a superficial understanding of both society and politics that forever dooms them to humiliating pandering.

The reality is that none of that pandering is necessary in the slightest. The war for the hearts and minds of the youth, along with the broader culture war of which the battle for the youth is a subset, is not difficult to understand.

This is the simple truth the Right must understand if they really want to win: The culture war is the institution war.

That is, the fight for the culture is indistinguishable and cannot be separated from the fight for our institutions — for it is our societal institutions that actually shape and mold the culture.

Any attempt to fight the culture war independent of the institutions will ultimately fail.

For example, if Republicans exclusively fight the culture war in the political sphere, such as by passing laws banning abortion and drag queen story hours, they might enjoy some temporary success. But within a generation, those laws will be repealed when the rising generation — which has been inculcated in extreme cultural Marxism by our societal institutions — is eligible to vote.

Rightists must understand human nature. No one exists in a vacuum. Even those of us who consider ourselves proud individuals and independent thinkers are really the sum total of a vast array of influences that surround us. 

Therefore, he who controls the main organs of social influence — the society’s institutions — has control over the culture, over the beliefs and desires of the masses.

This doubly applies to the youth, who — being in a state of development — are even more impressionable and sensitive to social influence than adults.

This is why it’s utterly pointless for conservatives to so often break their heads trying to figure out how to “appeal to kids today.”

Conservatives, get this through your heads: There is no universal ideology or policy that applies to kids. They will believe whatever they are told by the voices that comprise their sphere of influence. The Left understands this. It is only conservatives who have falsely bought into the idea (which the Left is happy to foster) that young people are inherently inclined to being liberal.

Notice that even well-meaning conservatives often promote this false notion, with sayings such as “it’s natural to be liberal when you’re a kid, until you get a job and start a family,” or, “if you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart; if you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.”

Again, young people do not naturally lean one way or the other. They believe as they’re reared to believe. If they were naturally liberal, why weren’t there generations of rabid Marxists and transgenders hundreds of years ago?

Leftists love saying everything they hate is Nazism. Why was national socialism so popular among the youth in Nazi Germany as opposed to Bolshevism? Well, you had programs like the Hitler Youth inculcating German children in national socialism.

In 15th-century Florence, the city briefly came under the rule of a charismatic Dominican friar named Girolamo Savonarola. During his time in power, he turned the city into a strict Christian theocracy, outlawing most nonreligious activities and burning secular literature and art.

Did the youth of Florence oppose him because he was a “boring,” “backwards” religious zealot? No. On the contrary, Savonarola’s biggest support was among the youth; he had an army of children and teenagers policing the streets on his behalf, ransacking home after home for secular items to throw on the pyre.

The reason — the only reason — leftism is the dominant mentality among today’s youth in the West is because the Left successfully took over most major institutions: The public schools, the universities, the news media, the movie and music industries, the book publishers, the comic industry, the social-media companies. Even institutions that were formerly seen as conservative bastions, such as churches and the Boy Scouts, have been converted by the Left.

If kids are being bombarded with the leftist, globalist, anti-Christian narrative day after day from their earliest infancy, then of course that’s what they’re going to believe.

The solution is simple: The Right needs to quit the pandering and focus on the institution war, reclaiming the important institutions of influence while simultaneously building new ones and guarding them from leftist infiltration.

If the Right does not learn how to participate in this fight effectively, then all the legislation in the world won’t make a difference in a few years’ time.