"How Conservatism Died", An Open Letter to Rod Dreher

Sometimes one needs to be direct

Dear Mr. Dreher,

Or can I call you Rod? I’m fairly certain that I called you “Rod” in our conversation earlier this year. Either way, I feel it necessary to reach out again to express something directly, in a way that only the written word can convey, and “open letters” seem to be in vogue this time of year.

You see, talking to conservatives in the fall of 2025, only bluntness feels appropriate. I’m not trying to be unnecessarily confrontational with this letter. I am not trying to “pull a dunk” as the Zoomers might say. I don’t want to drag you down. But I need to communicate something essential to you and others like you.

Dear Mr. Dreher

Specifically, I need to tell you that it’s time to stop. It’s time to put away this charade. It’s time to drop the act.

What “act” you might ask? Well, the “Conservative Act”, of course. Because, like it or not, no one is buying this schtick anymore

Perhaps you don’t consider yourself a “conservative”?

I’ve noticed that recently, many in center-right circles have internalized the neo-reactionary observation that “there is nothing left to conserve” in the modern world. There even seems to be a growing understanding that the post-war Buckley-ite project was a failure, and that appealing to mainstream institutions by calling out their hypocrisy is a delusional approach to politics.

The analysis sounds sober enough in the abstract. Yet the conservative delusions persist unchanged.

In recent weeks, these conservative delusions have been very much on display in the wake of an interview between Tucker Carlson and infamous internet provocateur Nicholas J. Fuentes. I watched the conversation and found it boring enough. It’s not particularly spicy content, especially for YouTube. Nevertheless, the apoplexy erupting from the institutional conservative movement was nothing short of apocalyptic. One would think that there had been no greater atrocity in the last decade than the evil wrought by one former T.V. show host talking publicly with one internet edge lord.

Naturally, there were the usual justifications for the hysteria, repeated by you and many others.

“Nick Fuentes is a Racist! He’s a Nazi! He’s a deplorable Anti-Semite! He needs to be kept out of polite society! The interview published by Tucker is outrageous, and there needs to be immediate consequences!”

The infamous interview

The histrionics were then typically followed by overwrought moralism extracted from oblique references to post-World War 2 political propaganda (the more obscure the better), and then followed by a call to do everything necessary to guard our sacred institutions against insidious “Nazi” infiltration.

The routine reads well enough, especially when written by a talented writer like you, Rod. There’s only one problem: the story has absolutely no connection to the reality that we live in. It’s bullshit. And this hysterical bullshit goes to the heart of the enormous mountain of bullshit modern conservatives have been feeding to young people for decades.

Perhaps we could begin by examining the relationship conservatives believe they have with these mainstream institutions they are eager to protect. Sure, I can understand how one wouldn’t want a society’s sober and respected institution polluted by the unhinged ideas of the extreme right. Conservatives, true to their name, should always be on guard against radicalism.

But wait, just a moment.

Haven’t you conservatives been telling us that these same institutions have already been, not just infiltrated, but captured by the radical left? Haven’t you explained at length that these legacy seats of power are lost and no longer represent any notion of Christian normalcy? Haven’t you told conservative youths that they must seek a separate peace outside of the mainstream order that hates them?

If that’s the case, why are you calling on young conservatives to defend that same mainstream order against Nick Fuentes, a man impugned as a pariah with the same labels progressives reserve for all right-wingers, conservative or otherwise?

Honestly, Rod, I don’t understand what you want right-wingers’ relationship with modern society to be. Are we its guardians or its exiles? And why should it be such a priority for us to protect something that we are otherwise excluded from?

After all, it’s not like modern America isn’t full to the brim with radicalism and identity politics, at least the kind that is hostile to white men; and volunteering to be the hall monitor against political extremism in 2025 feels like trying to close the barn door long after the horse has bolted.

Often, Rod, I hear conservatives like you defending the prospect of gate-keeping as some principled stand against radicalism across the board:

We need to oppose extremism on both sides! Both Communism and Fascism are dangers to our sacred republic and the American tradition!

Yes, that’s a fine sentiment in the abstract. But long experience has taught me to doubt the earnestness of this principled stand.

As you well know, Rod, both mainstream journalism and academia have been riddled with radical leftists for more than half a century, most of them directly or indirectly associated with Marxism, the most bloodthirsty form of totalitarianism in human history. So, granted the absolute state of your alma mater and the world of prestige media, how do you deal with the leftist radicals that you encounter there? What form does your opposition take?

Do you attempt to get left-wingers fired from their jobs? Do you campaign to have them de-platformed and otherwise excluded from social media? Put on no-fly lists or otherwise censored? Do you support the blacklist against communists, like you apparently do for Groypers? Do you refuse to interview radical leftists yourself?

Of course not.

Doing anything like that to communists or Marxists would be McCarthyist, which is very unconservative. So naturally, the only acceptable opposition to radicals from the left is polite collegiate discourse and calm argumentation. Sure, the lefties are wrong, and they might even believe in dangerous radical ideas. However, society has a responsibility to foster open public discourse, and Marxists have a right to be heard in public, as well as to be published and interviewed by reputable media outlets. America is a free country after all, and even extremists have a right to have their opinions heard publicly.

Case in point, just a few weeks ago, almost every prestigious media establishment was running puff pieces on dirtbag leftist, Hasan Piker, an extreme figure on the left who frequently flirts with violent rhetoric in the form of jokes. Hasan even scored an interview with conservative New York Times journalist Ross Douthat, with minimal outrage coming either from the New York Times or the conservative movement itself. Of course, conservatives assured us that this was all well and good, the press needs to platform radicals to challenge them; that’s just how discourse works in an open society.

Sometimes interviewing radicals isn’t controversial

But why doesn’t this right to public discourse apply to the interview between Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes?

I can probably anticipate your response.

Nick Fuentes is a real Nazi. Nick Fuentes is a genuine extremist, much more so than all those radical Marxists and Communist party members who were gainfully employed in academia and journalism, and who conservative pundits have gladly engaged with for the last half-century.

I guess there might be a valid argument by degree here.

All those other left-wing radicals and communists, with whom conservatives engaged in dialogue, were just fake extremists. They didn’t really mean all those radical things they said. Their revolutionary ideology was just a revolutionary-chic fashion statement, draped over their sincere liberal disposition. However, Nick Fuentes is a different story. Nick is the real deal. Nick is the true extremist. Nick Fuentes is an actual Nazi.

Perhaps a sound case for a double standard? There’s just one problem. Nick Fuentes is not an actual Nazi.

I should admit that I don’t particularly like Nick Fuentes, personally speaking. Certainly, Fuentes is a bright man, an excellent orator, and a master debater. His ambition and skill with rhetoric exceed my own.

But that being said, Nick is also a supremely immature person. He is unnecessarily cruel and excessively combative. He has difficulty forming professional relationships, and the course of his online career has been marked by a series of broken friendships that he has sabotaged in pursuit of his personal brand. Nick’s content is so heavily irony-poisoned that it is hard to discern his sincere beliefs, and he frequently circulates intentionally bad takes to drive his own clout through manufactured controversy.

But that being said. Nick is still not a Nazi. The clips of him praising Hitler are obvious jokes, easily recognizable as such by the most Boomer-brained viewer. Furthermore, even if Nick did believe that Hitler or Stalin had gotten a bad wrap, that didn’t take into account the context of their crimes; such heterodoxy still would not make him a National Socialist in any meaningful way.

In fact, I should probably point out the obvious fact that there is no real national socialist movement in America today. With incredibly rare exceptions, no one is unironically brandishing swastikas the way that people have confidently presented communist paraphernalia since the early 1970s. There are no Nazi politicians winning elections the way Marxists often do. And the populism and reactionary political movements that have emerged in the wake of the Trump presidency are only “Nazi” to the extent that one labels all political ideas popular before 1946 as “Nazi,” as most progressives do.

But for conservatives, maybe excluding older ideas is the whole point, “Nazi” just being a general stand-in for pre-modern political understanding of society?

I often get the sense that many so-called conservatives would like to exclude all ideals that predate the specific period in time that they want to “conserve”. Indeed, it is hard to forget that many in the well-to-do center-right even considered “neo-reactionary” ideas beyond the pale. That was, of course, until Tucker Carlson took a risk and interviewed the infamous “Mencius Moldbug”. Now, three years later, Curtis Yarvin is a regular speaker in conservative circles, and the discourse is much the better for it.

At least it’s less boring.

Tucker platforms another radical

But couldn’t the same be true for Nick Fuentes?

Perhaps the key problem with Nick is one of propriety. Those Marxist radicals that conservatives platformed in the past were very civil, and many other right-wing highbrows, such as Yarvin or Lomez, possess the same general collegiate temperament. By contrast, Nick Fuentes is a very nasty person.

On this point, Rod, there is some agreement between you and me. Nick is not a nice person. He isn’t a team player, and his Groyper fans are easily among the most irritating online communities operating in 2025. Despite his talents, I am not fond of Fuente’s behavior as a political leader, and I think that young alienated men deserve something better than to be recruited into the world’s most obnoxious troll army in support of a hot-headed political streamer who has difficulty managing his optics.

But before I join you in handwringing over the scourge of online radical trolls, there’s just one problem that we need to discuss, Rod. Because, despite how much you might hate Niccholas J. Fuentes, you created him. You made the Groypers necessary, and until we address the problems with the conservative message, the pathologies of these young men will, in some sense, be inevitable. Your decisions led us to this place, and the Groypers are hardly the worst of what’s coming.

To illustrate the central problem, maybe we can start with this very simple political fact:

Legitimate political grievances, especially those of young men, will either be integrated into your political formula or used by your enemies against you.

Almost all serious political thinkers throughout history have understood this dimension of politics, from Machiavelli to Sun Tzu. However, in the modern social media era, its most popular iteration is found in the apocryphal African proverb:

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

I know you understand this wisdom, Rod. I know you have written as much in many of your articles. But given that we both understand the imperative to address young men’s grievances, what solutions are you and your fellow conservatives proposing? Where should the lost sons of the West be directed? What is the alternative to Nick Fuentes?

After all, despite what some of your recent essays imply, the Groypers aren’t Demons, Rod. They aren’t cartoon villains who “just want to see the world burn”. These are kids who want a future and can see all the manifest ways that the deck has been stacked against them. They understand that they have been locked out of a middle-class life and societal respect, both individually and collectively, and they want some solution to their problems that might give them hope.

I suppose, hypothetically, if you considered these men’s objections as entirely illegitimate, you might propose that society suppress these malcontents with brutal censorship and naked police force, the way many other countries have handled dissent in the modern world.

However, I don’t think you’d commend such actions, not least because you have, in your past writing, acknowledged that many of the problems the Groypers complain about are valid. Telling people that their grievances are legitimate and then sic’ing the police on them when they try to do something about it is a “dick move” in most people’s books, so I imagine this can’t be what you have in mind.

But, Rod, if outright suppression is off the table, what other solutions are we offering these young men?

But wait, just a moment, here.

Before you respond with the standard conservative line, I need to provide some caveats to my question.

When I ask for “solutions” for men, I am asking for real solutions, not fantasies. I am not talking about cute “just-so” stories where a young man can get a job by walking into a bank and giving the manager a firm handshake, or find a virtuous woman to marry at the local gas station, I am not interested in unrealistic pollyannish quick-fixes that claim a 24-year old might afford a down-payment for a house by canceling his Netflix subscription, find a community by walking into a local geriatric church, or reconnnect with tradition by contributing to an out-of-town hobby farm run by a bunch of comfortable Boomer professionals.

Furthermore, I am tired of hearing romanticized Shagbark-Hickman pipe dreams about impoverished rural existence, obviously lifted from Jack Kerouac, Thomas Merton, or some random Hallmark special. I am not going to tell a 20-year-old student that sleeping in a graveyard and eating out of a dumpster is a reasonable path to a financially stable future. I am not going to inform debt-ridden college graduates that their best prospect is working at Panda Express. I have no interest in instructing disillusioned, young professionals that their lives would be more fulfilled by quitting their jobs and buying a shack in a depressed backwater to “restore community” to a town that died before they were born. Moreover, the solution for an entire cohort of alienated young men can’t be to flee from modernity by joining some far-off monastic religious community, not that you would ever recommend something like that, Rod.

St Benedict of Nursia, apropos of nothing

In all cases, these solutions are not real solutions.

Nevertheless, some variation of these ideas inevitably emanates from the conservative side of the internet every time the question of young men’s alienation becomes the subject of discussion. To say they are disconnected would be a massive understatement. In fact, these “suggestions” are borderline insults, all the more cutting when they are juxtaposed against the lives of the older conservative men who routinely offer them to young people, posted between pictures of them buying new boats and dining at fancy European restaurants.

To be fair to conservatives, I understand that their “advice” is somewhat facetious and designed to illustrate the “can-do spirit " they wish young men would adopt. There are flakes of truth floating in the sea of Boomer bullshit.

Poverty, rough living, and monastic chastity might be part of the total solution for young people. Still, it doesn’t seem like too much to ask that the answers conservatives provide to young people’s questions reflect the seriousness with which they were asked. When instructing the young, we older folks have the responsibility to be practical and think deeply about what it would take to make our proposals work in the real world.

For instance, a young man might forge a meaningful proletarian existence for himself if, somehow, he could locate an identity that gives him pride, self-respect, and the opportunity to form a family. It is also possible to revitalize dying rural communities if a highly ambitious group of young families could collectively organize and coordinate to take bold and radical risks in the name of a shared purpose. Furthermore, young men might find the religious life appealing if they were supported by a church of confident Christians who manifestly made sacrifices for their faith. And even the ordinary standard white-collar path might yet be made tolerable if the young men slogging through the dregs of corporate America knew that they represented something larger than themselves and were part of a political project that fought for their future and others like them.

But notice, here, that none of the conservatives’ favorite “solutions” for young men work without a broader community, along with a sense of identity and purpose that supports their life project.

Young men need to be told, clearly, who they are and what their mission is from the older men among them. This was the heritage that the conservative movement was supposed to provide the young people of our time. Those who represented themselves as the guardians of the Western tradition were supposed to convey a thick collective identity and an attendant sense of political purpose to those youths whose hearts burned with passion.

For the most part, conservatives failed in this task. As such, their proposals can never be taken seriously.

Am I being unfair with this assessment, Rod? If so, I will put the question to you once more, directly, in case there is a better answer that I just haven’t heard yet.

What identity do conservatives like you provide to young white men? What sense of collective purpose do they endorse that offers such youth an avenue for their passion without weighing them down in endless guilt and useless introspection?

These are not trivial questions, Rod, especially for modern conservatives whose understanding of nationalism consists of passport paperwork, GDP contributions, and loyalty to obsolete 18th-century political documents, and whose approach to religion consists of telling young men to be winsome, meek, and not to rock the boat politically until enlightenment comes to them sometime in middle age.

That kind of minimalist identity might have worked well for older generations who slid through their 20s with marriage and professional success well within their grasp. But for young men now, wandering through the wastelands of economic and cultural despair, the conservative gruel is thin indeed, and no amount of hand-wringing over “the sorry state of things” is going to stop them from resenting the people who feed it to them day in and day out.

Men want a way to live life ardently and vigorously. They want to possess confidence and purpose, hopefully steering clear of spiritual pride and narcissism. Moreover, while Christians should be somewhat wary of worldly ambition and the overconfidence of youth, in our own age the reciprocal sin of inertness and fear is far more pressing, and the boy who lacks all ardor will perish in despondency before he even gets a chance to love life too deeply.

Young men know instinctively that unless they love who they are, individually, politically, and collectively, they will never succeed at anything, much less find a wife, a family, or a respected position in society. Furthermore, without an internal sense of collective worth and a feeling that one has a responsibility to protect the dignity of that collective, people cannot engage in politics effectively, a fact that has become all too obvious in the last 20 years.

But if we have learned this lesson about the collective nature in politics, do conservatives have a positive group identity to offer young white men in 2025, Rod?

Is the answer just that idealistic conservative bromide about how “identity politics are bad for everyone”?

Yes, we all know principled conservatives reject identity based on race or religious nationalism, in theory. But watch those conservatives for any length of time and you will see that these principles are transparent bullshit, demonstrated no more clearly than in their rabid defense of Israel’s wars, Zionism, and Jewish ethnic pride.

After all, despite what the propaganda says, the Zionist project is a prime example of racial and religious nationalism if ever there was one.

What makes the Jewish case so different?

Why do conservatives, who otherwise condemn collective identity politics, so comfortably celebrate it when it comes to Zionism and the Jewish identity more broadly?

Why do conservatives attribute any number of positive qualities to Jews collectively, but consider any discussion of their negative attributes a special thought-crime called “Antisemitism”?

Is the answer simply that conservatives believe “collective guilt is always wrong” for any group?

But I am not sure I believe that either.

I frequently hear conservative commentators, like you, Rod, talk about World War 2 and American slavery in a way that implies the collective guilt of Germans and Southern whites. Yet, when you discuss any other protected minority groups, all questions of culpability are redirected towards the individual actors or explained away as a product of white Gentile villainy. The double standard even goes to ridiculous lengths, where the decisions of Jews to enter lucrative, unethical professions or undertake violent nationalist projects are ultimately attributed to the villainy of white gentile oppressors.

It seems that, when conservatives examine the question of historic crimes, neither Jews nor any other minority group has agency, individually or collectively. The notion of collective culpability is only properly applicable to peoples who are both white and Christian. And despite the fact that conservatives oppose collective guilt in concept, they still think that modern white gentiles have a responsibility to rectify the wrongdoings of their ancestors.

You see, sometimes collective guilt is a myth; other times it’s a reality. Sometimes group identity is a noble political endeavor; other times, its existence is inexcusable bigotry. Conservatives are aware of the double standard when it occurs on the left, but somehow they still participate in the same pattern.

Once more, conservatives’ problems stem from a disconnect between theory and practice. In theory, conservatives understand how selective attribution of agency works between whites and other protected classes. In the abstract, they condemn the concept of collective guilt and the notion of group identity. But in practice, it is easy to see which groups conservatives believe have a legitimate collective identity and which groups do not.

Just think, Rod, of all the unhinged outrages that have erupted in conservative circles when young white men have made gestures towards race-consciousness or a political identity for ethnic white Americans. Would such outrage be foisted on any other group of young people for expressing similar feelings?

Would conservatives like you condemn traditional Cambodian-Americans for expressing pride in their ethnic heritage and a desire to preserve their group’s existence into the future? Would Christian leaders call out a group of African American parishioners who believed that they had a special duty to protect the political interests of the Black Community in America?

To ask the question is to answer it. Conservatives would never treat other ethnic identities the way they treat white gentile ethnic identities, not because they consider the two different in theory, but because they wouldn’t dare to behave that way in practice.

But that’s the problem, Rod. Even if the conservative double standard exists only in exceptions, eventually the small hypocrisies begin to tell a story about how things work. The knife only cuts one way, and it consistently cuts against the collective interests of young alienated white men.

Is it any wonder that these young white men are looking for a way to strike out and wave the middle finger at the current state of affairs?

After all, this group has been the object of a slew of attacks against their race and sex across their entire education, only to see the conservative crowd shrink back and endorse a “winsome” and impotent stance of neutrality towards identity politics. Young men need something more than platitudes about how things “ought to be otherwise” and invocations about how they should never answer anti-white aggression in turn.

Frankly, I find this problem most striking among Christian conservatives in particular, who seem quite comfortable commending an attitude of passivism to young men on the receiving end of hostile anti-white personal attacks:

Sure, young man, the world is evil and hostile to your interests, but isn’t the best response to pull inward and turn the other cheek, not letting those other evil-doers draw you into a war on their terms?

Once more, in the abstract, this teaching is correct. Spiritual serenity is perhaps the most potent thing that men can cultivate within themselves, and great masters have been able to use conditional acquiescence to significant effect, winning victories both politically and spiritually.

However, sitting down passively in the face of attacks against one’s dignity is a deeply unnatural way for a young man to behave. And teachers often forget that, before obtaining the mastery of spiritual stoicism, a man must first have an internal sense of self-worth, which very few young men have been given in the modern world.

As such, most standard Christian advice seems out of touch, directed more at an ideal situation rather than the real-world problems young people face every day.

Furthermore, when I see conservative leaders’ nonchalant acceptance of their in-group’s denigration, I feel like I am seeing an example of easy, “gamed”, virtue. Like the politician patting himself on the back for reducing divorce when declining marriage rates are the cause of the reduction, or a morbidly obese person who dismisses the consequences of his weight gain because “bodybuilders have high BMI too!”, the achievement of inward emotional resilience is being faked through confusion with rank apathy.

Yes, certain spiritual masters comfortably sustain verbal attacks against their group’s dignity without blinking an eye because they have developed inner peace. But cowards and weaklings do the same easily, because they just don’t care.

I remember how it worked well enough in high school. My jock friends always got defensive when the discussions of “white privilege” and “patriarchy” entered the conversation. At the same time, nerds who orbited around the feminist girls never seemed to care at all.

According to the male feminist nerds, this was because the jocks were deeply insecure. But this was the opposite of what I saw in ordinary life, where the jocks were better put together emotionally than their counterparts in almost all other circumstances. Indeed, a more straightforward explanation was obvious. The jocks were offended by anti-white and anti-male tirades because they recognized them as genuine attacks on their identity; meanwhile, the male feminists understood that these critiques didn’t apply to them or anything else they valued, so they were otherwise unfazed.

This state of affairs is probably the reason that, throughout most Christian history, virtuous men were expected to stand up and fight back against people who attempted to denigrate their groups, physically or reputationally. In some sense, this was a core Christian responsibility of all men.

Is it really so surprising now that young men want to assert their identities, in very much the same terms that they were attacked? Is it any wonder that they want to proclaim a certain pride in their “maleness” and even -shock- their whiteness?

Although, Rod, I imagine you would provide the natural conservative critique to this proposition:

Racial identity is hollow. It doesn’t address the core spiritual issues of our age. Furthermore, ‘whiteness’ is a modern construction largely separated from traditional ethnic identities that have deeper roots. Therefore, how can race be any basis for giving young men, even young white men, an identity in the modern world?

Perhaps here we can share some common ground, Rod.

Whiteness is indeed a 20th-century construction. Insofar as it is synonymous with “Caucasian”, the term is a broad taxonomic classification developed from a bird's-eye view of human anthropological development over millennia. It is not an organic ethnic identity, nor does it possess a historical tradition that could provide a foundation for meaning in a meaningless age. Contra Jared Taylor, whiteness alone cannot provide a sense of religious purpose, and for this reason, among many others, I do not consider myself a white nationalist.

However, “Whiteness” is a valid categorical term, and, like it or not, “Whiteness” is the broad label through which the progressive establishment attacks many other authentic ethnic traditions, denigrating their members, deconstructing their identity, and consigning them to demographic replacement. The pattern of hostility expressed towards the label “white” is manifest to almost every young person born in the last 30 years. While we might not prefer to use this label ourselves, we need to be comfortable in dialogue with people who do.

And this more open attitude towards racial identity needs to be the first step towards a more realistic and non-hysterical approach to modern group politics generally, something almost all public conservatives have failed to do up to this point.

While it may offend our 20th-century sensitivities, certain truths need to be faced head-on.

Race is a reality. Different groups identify and understand themselves in different ways. They exhibit different behaviors, they express different political priorities, and they achieve at different levels. And regardless of the ultimate source of these differences, it is quite clear that they cannot be undone within any timeframe that modern nations would consider relevant.

The extent to which this situation implies the need for alternative forms of government or separate living situations inside ethnically mixed countries is an open question. However, at some level, we must engage with these facts, along with the other realities of group politics, even if these sordid truths make us feel uncomfortable.

And if you are looking for some reason why conservatives have failed at their attempts to connect to youth, or the reason for Nick Fuentes’ continued popularity, look no further than conservatives’ manifest inability to deal with uncomfortable truths.

Every time, there is a reality that’s difficult to process, or that cuts against your comforting understanding of the world, you shrink away from it, retreat from all challenges, and withdraw into smaller and smaller spaces, never taking a stand on any principle unless it involves punishing your own friends for violating your enemies’ rules. And all the while, you make sure to broadcast your own dispossession and defeat in the loudest, most melodramatic way possible, to the maximum entertainment of the people who hate you.

This is not the role for serious political leaders; this is the role for clowns. Every time men under the age of 40 witness this pattern, they naturally want to do everything in their power to move in the opposite direction, which brings them to men like Nick Fuentes. At least he asserts himself. At least he faces the problems of the age head-on when no one else does. At least he acts like he has a backbone and commands the respect of even his enemies.

Once more, I will say the obvious. You conservatives made Nick Fuentes and the Groypers necessary. And that’s a problem because, despite it all, I think the young people deserve better than Nick Fuentes.

Younger men need older men, like us, Rod, who are willing to struggle with them, to make their cause our own. They need a connection to a tradition and wise counsel from others who have gone before them. They need sober analysis that prioritizes what matters, as well as insightful thinkers who provide clarity amid the noisy distractions that drive algorithms and new cycles. Young men need leaders.

Sure, many of the conversations that happen, from this point forward, might be a little scary. They are going to incorporate many ideas from before the 20th century that everyone thought were outdated. They will touch on a lot of taboo topics that other people have labeled “mean,” “racist,” or “exclusionary”. And these new conversations won’t be conducted under the rules of liberal propriety, not because we want to be edgy, but because, in 2025, essential truths lie outside of the Overton window, and we owe more to the truth than to being polite.

And personally, Rod, I think you could make some valuable contributions to this conversation. However, regardless of your participation, one more thing needs to be made absolutely clear at this stage.

You are not going to gate-keep the right wing.

You aren’t going to veto the discussion of reality by pearl-clutching and making appeals to being “reasonable”, you aren’t going to restore the risk-averse conservativism of National Review by telling century-old horror stories about the ascendency of Adolf Hitler. You aren’t going to shut out critical conversations because you think their conclusions are distasteful.

The time when mainstream conservatism held this kind of power is over. And you will never have it ever again. Which is why you, and other conservatives, need to abandon the pretension and stop trying to pursue this futile task, for your good and the good of others that come after you.

Is it possible for conservatives to finally break from the form that has defined their own failure? Might you all stop quixotically raging against the sky and try to adopt a more practical approach?

I know that many of you are fond of that one saying by William F Buckley that “A conservative is someone who stands athwart the tracks of history, yelling Stop.” No doubt many conservatives find a certain nobility in these futile gestures, especially as America’s political reality grows much darker.

However, that train you now see coming down the tracks isn’t the crisis of modernity; nor is it some specific bad actor like Nick Fuentes, or even some popular mass delusion. The train is just a reality. It is the inevitable consequence of the politics promoted over the last three decades by those weak men too cowed to face hard truths head-on.

And no one can stop this train from coming, because all the opportunities to slow it down have been sabotaged, more often than not, by the very conservatives who were busy lamenting the sorry state of their predicament.

But lament your predicament or not, the train is still approaching. You are all going to have to make an adjustment to how you approach politics, or the juggernaut will run you down where you stand, not because you stood on some principle, but because you didn’t acknowledge the machine hurling towards you, just in front of your nose.

But perhaps this is history’s well-known sense of irony. Because, in the wake of this tragedy, everyone will naturally look back at your careers and wonder.

How?

How, after everything, after all of the articles, after all of the books, after all of the histrionic predictions of collapse and societal decline repeated over and over again, how could you still be so unprepared to face the world that you saw coming decades ago?

It is an eternal mystery. It is the story of how conservatism died.