In January, Bill Kristol responded to a question posed on X, “Can a man become a woman?” saying “Yes.… I personally know adults who were men and are now women.”

Keep in mind that the man now spouting culturally leftist talking points was once regarded as a standard-bearer for the American right, pushing neoconservative military interventions and laissez-faire free market policies on Fox News, along with his comrades David French, Jonah Goldberg, and Max Boot. The older generation, who are supposed to be the wise counselors of younger conservatives, have mostly failed. We can’t trust our elders. 

To put it bluntly, the New Right views the neoconservative Republican establishment of the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s as a money-obsessed, morally ambivalent, emotionally and spiritually disinterested father—the kind that can’t be trusted. 

Certainly, we should take what was good from the Reagan-Bush era, and many among their ranks are good, decent people. It was courageous men like Pat Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, and the writers of this esteemed magazine who planted the intellectual seeds for the New Right, but those men and institutions were never the establishment’s figureheads. They were outsiders, unfairly shunned and smeared by the establishment right’s gatekeepers. 

For all of the hand-wringing about Nick Fuentes and his followers (the “Groypers”) since his interview with Tucker Carlson, there seemed to be very little serious soul-searching among the establishment about why my generation is turning to questionable figures like Nick Fuentes. Why do young conservative men—including my friends—find him so compelling? 

Perhaps it is because the elder statesmen of the conservative movement failed to conserve much of anything, to the point that young, white, Christian men feel like foreigners walking on the sidewalk in their own country. Why wouldn’t young men turn to someone who actually acknowledges their silent thoughts while riding the subway in New York City? 

This is not to defend Fuentes and his ilk. I am no Groyper. Like the establishment, they too fail to give a productive, moral path forward. But when the New Right veers into unproductive territory—which it certainly does when it fixates on insane conspiracy theories, prefers Gavin Newsom over JD Vance, or tells young men not to get married and have a family—there are few trustworthy elders around to steer us away from the Cliffs of Stupidity. Calls for moderation and reason are suspect when they come from the same globalist ideologues who left us an economy in which we cannot even afford to own homes.

This is a tragedy for my generation, Gen Z. We need to acknowledge that we lack the steady, guiding hand of our movement’s elders on our shoulders. This presents us with the temptation to be merely a destructive movement that has no real political strategy. 

It is a dangerous thing for a group of dissatisfied, resentful young men to spurn their elders and head in a new direction. Sometimes, though, it is necessary. After all, that is how our nation came to be. But there is a danger in rebellion for its own sake. This is not a call to be nicer to people like Bill Kristol on X, but let’s admit that there’s limited utility in repeatedly pointing out that our elders have failed. Our goal should be not to fail the generations that come after us. 

Looking at the online discourse of the Groypers, it seems like the plan is to call family life “gay” and blame all our problems on the Jews. Spurning our elders by going incel-mode is a terrible plan. If the Bushites were “beautiful losers,” the New Right is at risk of being “lonely losers.”

If we are going to reject what the conservative establishment has left us, we need to adopt a cathedral mindset. Building a cathedral requires laborers who work sunup to sundown, every day, knowing they will die before the project is complete, but their children or grandchildren just might get to see the fruit of their labor. Laying the foundation for a project of civilizational renewal that we will never see completed—and frankly, may even fail—is a worthy and noble endeavor. Modern Americans lack this long-term, multigenerational thinking. Our recent elders certainly did—just look at the size of the national debt. 

So where do we begin? The first step is to dispense with ideology itself and replace it with genuine love for what is ours: our people, our nation, and our culture. 

The single best response to the Groyper crowd came from Vice President JD Vance. After Fuentes repeatedly made vile comments about Second Lady Usha Vance, the vice president said in an interview with Sohrab Ahmari published by UnHerd, “Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki [the former Biden press secretary] or Nick Fuentes, can eat shit. That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.” 

This is the way forward. The vice president does not engage with the racial theory of the Groypers, nor does he respond, as the neoconservatives would, with some globalist talking point about how immigration is so wonderful for diversity and the economy. Instead, Vance simply defends his own, as a father, husband, and patriot should. His response is one of love, not theory. 

The first step for the New Right is to dispense with ideology itself, regardless of source. Instead, we ought to ground our politics in a deep-seated love for our people, nation, and way of life. After all, history has not yet ended, and we owe something to those who will come after us. ◆